31941	----	PHILOSOPHIES ANCIENT AND MODERN RATIONALISM * * * * * RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN +Animism.+ By EDWARD CLODD, author of _The Story of Creation_. +Pantheism.+ By JAMES ALLANSON PICTON, author of _The Religion of the Universe_. +The Religions of Ancient China.+ By Professor GILES, LL.D., Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge. +The Religion of Ancient Greece.+ By JANE HARRISON, Lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge, author of _Prolegomena to Study of Greek Religion_. +Islam.+ By the Rt. Hon. AMEER ALI SYED, of the Judicial Committee of His Majesty's Privy Council, author of _The Spirit of Islam and Ethics of Islam_. +Magic and Fetishism.+ By Dr. A. C. HADDON, F.R.S., Lecturer on Ethnology at Cambridge University. +The Religion of Ancient Egypt.+ By Professor W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, F.R.S. +The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria.+ By THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, late of the British Museum. +Early Buddhism.+ By Professor RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., late Secretary of The Royal Asiatic Society. +Hinduism.+ By Dr. L. D. BARNETT, of the Department of Oriental Printed Books and MSS., British Museum. +Scandinavian Religion.+ By WILLIAM A. CRAIGIE, Joint Editor of the _Oxford English Dictionary_. +Celtic Religion.+ By Professor ANWYL, Professor of Welsh at University College, Aberystwyth. +The Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland.+ By CHARLES SQUIRE, author of _The Mythology of the British Islands_. +Judaism.+ By ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature in Cambridge University, author of _Jewish Life in the Middle Ages_. +The Religion of Ancient Rome.+ By CYRIL BAILEY, M.A. +Shinto, The Ancient Religion of Japan.+ By W. G. ASTON, C.M.G. +The Religion of Ancient Mexico and Peru.+ By LEWIS SPENCE, M.A. +Early Christianity.+ By S. B. BLACK, Professor at M'Gill University. +The Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion.+ By Professor J. H. LEUBA. +The Religion of Ancient Palestine.+ By STANLEY A. COOK. +Manicheeism.+ By F. C. CONYBEARE. (_Shortly._) PHILOSOPHIES +Early Greek Philosophy.+ By A. W. BENN, author of _The Philosophy of Greece, Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century_. +Stoicism.+ By Professor ST. GEORGE STOCK, author of _Deductive Logic_, editor of the _Apology of Plato_, etc. +Plato.+ By Professor A. E. TAYLOR, St. Andrews University, author of _The Problem of Conduct_. +Scholasticism.+ By Father RICKABY, S.J. +Hobbes.+ By Professor A. E. TAYLOR. +Locke.+ By Professor ALEXANDER, of Owens College. +Comte and Mill.+ By T. WHITTAKER, author of _The Neoplatonists, Apollonius of Tyana and other Essays_. +Herbert Spencer.+ By W. H. HUDSON, author of _An Introduction to Spencer's Philosophy_. +Schopenhauer.+ By T. WHITTAKER. +Berkeley.+ By Professor CAMPBELL FRASER, D.C.L., LL.D. +Swedenborg.+ By Dr. SEWALL. +Nietzsche: His Life and Works.+ By ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI. +Bergson.+ By JOSEPH SOLOMON. +Rationalism.+ By J. M. ROBERTSON. +Lucretius and the Atomists.+ By EDWARD CLODD. * * * * * RATIONALISM By J. M. ROBERTSON AUTHOR OF 'A SHORT HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT' 'LETTERS ON REASONING,' ETC. LONDON CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD 1912 CONTENTS PAGE § 1. THE TERM 1 § 2. THE PRACTICAL POSITION 7 § 3. THE RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE 12 § 4. THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHALLENGE 20 § 5. THE SKEPTICAL RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE 27 § 6. THE MEANING OF REASON 37 § 7. THE TEST OF TRUTH 47 § 8. ULTIMATE PROBLEMS 62 § 9. IDEALS 76 RATIONALISM § 1. THE TERM The names 'rationalist' and 'rationalism' have been used in so many senses within the past three hundred years that they cannot be said to stand quite definitely for any type or school of philosophic thought. For Bacon, a 'rationalist' or _rationalis_ was a physician with _a priori_ views of disease and bodily function; and the Aristotelian humanists of the Helmstadt school were named _rationalistas_ about the same period by their opponents. A little later some Continental scholars applied the name to the Socinians and deists; and later still it designated, in Britain, types of Christian thinkers who sought to give a relatively reasoned form to articles of the current creed which had generally been propounded as mysteries to be taken on faith. The claim to apply 'reason' in such matters was by many orthodox persons regarded as in itself impious, while others derided the adoption of the title of 'rationalist' or 'reasonist' by professing Christians as an unwarranted pretence of superior reasonableness. Used in ethics, the label 'rationalism' served in the earlier part of the eighteenth century to stigmatise, as lacking in evangelical faith, those Christians who sought to make their moral philosophy quadrate with that of 'natural religion.' Later in the century, though in England we find the status of 'rational' claimed for orthodox belief in miracles and prophecies as the only valid evidence for Christianity,[1] rationalism became the recognised name for the critical methods of the liberal German theologians who sought to reduce the supernatural episodes of the Scriptures to the status of natural events misunderstood; and several professed histories of modern 'rationalism' have accordingly dealt mainly or wholly with the developments of Biblical criticism in Germany. New connotations, however, began to accrue to the terms in virtue of the philosophical procedure of Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_, though his _Religion within the Bounds of Simple [blossen] Reason_ went far to countenance the current usage; and when Hegel subsequently proceeded to identify (at times) reason with the cosmic process, there were set up implications which still give various technical significances to 'rationalism' in some academic circles. In the brilliant work of Professor William James on _Pragmatism_, for instance, the term is represented as connoting, in contrast to the thinking of 'tough-minded' empiricists, that of a type or school of 'tender-minded' people who are collectively-- 'Rationalistic (going by "principles") Intellectualistic Idealistic Optimistic Religious Free-willist Monistic Dogmatical.' Yet it is safe to say that in Britain, for a generation back, the name has carried to the general mind only two or three of the connotations in Professor James's list, and much more nearly coincides with his contrary list characterising 'the tough-minded':-- 'Empiricist (going by "facts") Sensationalistic Materialistic Pessimistic Irreligious Fatalistic Pluralistic Skeptical' --though here again the item 'pluralistic' does not chime with the common conception, and 'pessimistic' is hardly less open to challenge. 'Intellectualistic' appears to be aimed at Hegelians, but would be understood by many as describing the tendency to set up 'reason' against 'authority'; and Professor James's 'rationalists,' who would appear to include thinkers like his colleague Professor Royce, would not be so described in England by many university men, clergymen, or journalists. The name 'rationalist,' in short, has come to mean for most people in this country very much what 'freethinker' used to mean for those who did not employ it as a mere term of abuse. It stands, that is to say, for one who rejects the claims of 'revelation,' the idea of a personal God, the belief in personal immortality, and in general the conceptions logically accruing to the practices of prayer and worship. Perhaps the best name for such persons would be 'naturalist,' which was already in use with some such force in the time of Bodin and Montaigne. Kant, it may be remembered, distinguished between 'rationalists,' as thinkers who did not deny the possibility of a revelation, and 'naturalists' who did. But though 'natural_ism_,' has latterly been recognised by many as a highly convenient term for the view of things which rejects 'supernaturalism,' and will be so used in the present discussion, the correlative 'natural_ist_' has never, so to speak, been naturalised in English. For one thing, it has been specialised in ordinary language in the sense of 'student of nature,' or rather of what has come to be specially known as 'natural history'--in particular, the life of birds, insects, fishes, and animals. And, further, the term 'naturalism,' like every other general label for a way of thinking, is liable to divagations and misunderstandings. Some thinkers (known to the present writer only through the accounts given of them by others) appear to formulate as a philosophic principle the doctrine that the best way to regulate our lives is to find out how the broad processes of 'Nature' is tending, and to conform to it alike our ideals and our practice. The notion is that if, say, Nature appears to be making for the extermination of backward races, we should try to help the process forward. It is doubtful whether more than a very small number of instructed men have ever entertained such a principle. It is certainly not the expression of the philosophy of those ancients who sought to 'live according to Nature'; and it would certainly not have been assented to by such modern 'naturalists' as Spencer and Huxley and Mill. But if the principle is current at all, it makes the name of 'naturalist' as ambiguous philosophically as 'rationalist' can be.[2] And similar drawbacks attach to another set of terms which have much to recommend them--'positive,' 'positivist,' and 'positivism.' They stand theoretically for (1) the provable, (2) the attitude of the seeker for intelligible proof in all things, (3) the conviction that the rights of reason are ultimate and indefeasible. But here again, to say nothing of the equivoque of 'positive,' we are met by a claim of pre-emption, the claim of Comte to associate the 'ism' specifically with his system, theoretic and practical. And for the majority of men with positivist proclivities, the gist of the 'practical application' of Comte is incompatible with the positive spirit. Positivism with a capital P is thereby made for them, as it was for Littré, something alien to positivism as the free scientific spirit would seek to shape it. And a wrangle over the ownership of the word would be a waste of time. FOOTNOTES: [1] See _A Full Answer to a late View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion, in a Dialogue between a Rational Christian and his Friend_. London, 1777. The orthodox writer deals severely with some lines of Christian apologetics which have since had vogue. [2] The somewhat awkward term 'naturalistic,' which is sometimes useful, is hereinafter used in relation to the sense above given for 'naturalism.' § 2. THE PRACTICAL POSITION The usages being so, most of us who can answer to the term 'rationalist' may reasonably let its general force be decided for us by the stream of tendency in ordinary speech; and, recognising the existence of other applications, one may usefully seek to give a philosophic account of what its adoption seems to involve. That is to say, the present treatise does not undertake to present, much less to justify, all the views which have ever been described as 'rationalistic,' but merely to present current rationalism in the broad sense indicated, as on the one hand an outcome of tendencies seen at work in the earlier movements so named, and on the other hand as apparently committing its representatives to a certain body or class of conclusions. For there is this capital element in common for all the stirrings known by the name of rationalism, that they stand for 'private judgment' as against mere tradition or mere authority. Early 'rationalists' might indeed seek to put a quasi-rational form upon tradition, and to give reasons for recognising authority. But in their day and degree they had their active part in the evolution of the critical faculty, inasmuch as they outwent the line of mere acquiescence; and views which to-day form part of uncritically accepted creeds were once products of innovating (however fallacious) reasoning. There is no _saltum mortale_ in the evolution of thought. The very opponents of the rationalist often claim to be more rational than he, and must at least use his methods up to a certain point. This is done even by the quasi-skeptical school, of whom some claim to subordinate reason to some species of insight which they either omit to discriminate intelligibly from the process of judgment, or do not admit to need its sanction. 'Rationalism,' then, is to be understood relatively. To be significant to-day, accordingly, it should stand first and last for the habit and tendency to challenge the doctrines which claim 'religious' or sacrosanct authority--to seek by reflection a defensible theory of things rather than accept enrolment under traditional creeds which demand allegiance on supernaturalist grounds. Of such thinkers the number is daily increasing. There are now, probably, tens of thousands of more or less instructed men and women in this country who would call themselves rationalists in the broad sense above specified as now generally current. They are all, probably, Darwinians or evolutionists, mostly 'monists' in Spencer's way, 'determinists' in the philosophic sense of that term if they have worked at the 'free-will' problem at all, and non-believers in personal immortality. Very few, at least, bracket the term 'rationalist' with 'spiritualist' in describing themselves: the two tendencies nearly always divide sharply, though it cannot be said that in strict logic they are mutually exclusive. Of most, the philosophic attitude approximates broadly to that of Spencer, though many recognise and avow the inexpertness of Spencer's metaphysic. Only a few, probably, if any, could properly be termed 'skeptics' in the strict philosophic sense of doubters of all inferences. That is a mental attitude more often professed by defenders of 'revelation,' as Pascal and Huet, who seek to make the judgment despair of itself in preparation for an act of assent which is already discredited by such despair. Yet it belongs to the rationalistic attitude to be ready, in consistency, to analyse all one's own convictions and listen candidly to all negations of them. A belief in the possibility of rational certitude is implicit in every process of sincere criticism; but the discrimination or gradation of certitudes is the task of rational philosophy. As we shall see, quasi-rational certitude as regards the process of evolution is challenged from two points of view by professed believers in the reality of that process. One school argues that scientific conclusions are all uncertain because the ultimate assumptions of science are unverifiable, and that, accordingly, religious assumptions, being neither more nor less rational than others, may 'reasonably' stand. Others argue that the process of judgment or reasoning which is held to establish scientific truth is not adequate to any theory of interpretation; and that, accordingly, some species of divination--which in the terms of the case eludes judgment--is to be relied on. Such thinkers ostensibly profess to 'reason' to the effect that reasoning is invalid. Against them, those who claim to hold by reason as the totality of judgment may fitly call themselves by the name 'rationalist.' Given such a general attitude, then, to what philosophic form is it justifiably to be reduced? Those who have longest meditated the question will perhaps be the least quick to give a precise and confident answer. If training in the scrupulous use of reason sets up any mental habit in face of large problems, it is the habit of tentative approach; and the rationalist of to-day should be a much less readily self-satisfied thinker than the former claimants to the name. Professor James, indeed, is able to reconcile an ostensible certainty of rightness of method and result with much experience in investigation. 'A pragmatist,' he tells us, 'turns his back resolutely and once for all upon a lot of inveterate habits dear to professional philosophers. He turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins.' One is delighted to hear it; but it is perhaps the course of prudence for most of us to doubt our power of getting entirely clear of inveterate habits.[3] Scrutiny of philosophic literature fails to reveal any one who entirely succeeded in it, even slowly. A constant concern for revision, then, would seem to be forced upon the professed rationalist, who knows how often the appeal to reason has yielded mere modifications of error, one unjustifiable credence ousting another. 'Knows,' one says, because the error is provable to the satisfaction of the judgment which seeks certainty. Such negative knowledge is the promise of positive. FOOTNOTE: [3] 'Pragmatism' soon becomes 'she' in Professor James's hands. Mr. Schiller seems to prefer 'it'; but he too makes much play with pragmatism as an entity. Whatever be the amount of 'abstraction' involved, the verbal method savours of very old-established malpractices. § 3. THE RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE It is fitting, then, at the very outset to make a critical scrutiny of the implications of our term. Rationalism, broadly, implies the habitual resort to reason, to reflection, to judgment. The rationalist, in effect, says, 'That which I find to be incredible I must disbelieve, whatever prestige may attach to its assertion; that which I find to be doubtful or inconceivable I will so describe. Finding the practice of prayer to be incompatible not only with any sincere belief in natural law, but with the professed religious beliefs of the more educated of those who resort to it, I will not pray. Seeing all religions to be but halting manipulations of the guesses and intuitions of savages, to be still as uncritically credulous in their affirmations as they are blind in their denials, and to be thus mere loose modifications of older beliefs felt to be astray, I will go behind them all for my own theory of things, getting all the help I can alike from those who have reasoned most loyally on the deeper problems involved, and from those who have striven most circumspectly to understand the process of causation in the universe.' So far, the procedure is one of rejecting demonstrably fallacious beliefs in regard to the general order of things, substantially on the lines on which tested and testable conclusions have been substituted for old delusions in what we term 'the sciences.' At every step the rationalist is assailed, just as were and are the reformers of the sciences; first by angry epithets, then by bad arguments as to 'evidence,' then by cooler attempts to demonstrate that his method will lead to moral harm, whether or not to present or future punishment at the hands of an angry God. In particular he is assured that on his principles there can be no restraint upon men's evil proclivities; and that even the most thoughtful man runs endless dangers of wrong-doing when he substitutes his private judgment for the 'categorical imperative' embodied either in religious codes or in the current body of morality.[4] To such representations the critical answer is that undoubtedly the application of reason to moral issues incurs the risks of fallacy which beset all reasoning in science so-called; but that, on the other hand, every one of those risks attaches at least equally to all acceptance of 'authoritative' teaching. Galileo could not well err worse than ancient Semites or Christian priests in matters scientific; and Clifford could not conceivably div agate more dangerously in morals than did the plotters and agents of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Even if we put out of the account the overwhelming record of undenied wickedness wrought in the name of God and faith, there never has been, and there is no prospect of our ever seeing, unanimity of moral opinion among even the most disciplined types of religious believers in 'authority.' Even in the Catholic Church it would be difficult to find any two men of judicial habit of mind who agree in all points as to what is 'right.' Nor is the rationalist's position a whit more open to utilitarian criticism (for his religious opponents, it will be observed, are narrowly utilitarian even in professing to combat _his_ utilitarianism) when he is challenged upon his acceptance of 'the voice of conscience,' otherwise the 'categorical imperative.' The Kantian argument on that head is a fallacy of shifting terms. Mental hesitation as to obeying the sense of 'ought' is the proof of the vacillation of the perception of 'oughtness.' When I feel, first, that I 'ought' to forgive a peculator, and then that I 'ought' to give him up to 'justice'; or, alternatively, that I ought to rise earlier, and, again, that I may as well enjoy more sleep, I have reduced the 'categorical imperative' to the last term in a calculation. And exactly the same thing is done by the believer who is perplexed as to the 'voice of God.' Religious history and biography are full of avowals, on the one hand, of the murderous clash of convictions alike resting on 'revelation' of all kinds, and, on the other hand, of the agonies of zealots 'wrestling in prayer' to know what is really the divine will.[5] Cromwell's life illustrates both orders of dilemma, with a sufficiency of resultant moral evil to arrest propaganda on the side of faith. And the philosopher of the 'categorical imperative' miscarries as instructively as does the soldier of divine will. Kant, on the one hand, vetoes even the telling of a lie to a would-be murderer to put him astray, and, on the other hand, commends to 'enlightened' clergymen the systematic preaching of their religion in a double sense, because _populus vult decipi_. The 'categorical imperative,' as propounded by him, is a form of self-deception. When, again, the psychic facts are critically faced and the 'categorical imperative' is rationally recognised as either the sum of the persisting moral judgments or the mere verbalism that we ought to do what we feel we ought to do, the rationalist is still at no disadvantage, utilitarian or other. It is not there that his tether tightens. Religious morality, as finally ratified by the more thoughtful among religious men, is but the endorsement of 'natural' morality. There is not one social commandment, as distinguished from religious or ritualist dogma, that did not emerge as a prescription of the natural moral sense, primitive or otherwise--a supererogatory proof that the religious prescriptions are from the same source. All surviving religious ethic is to-day actually accredited as such, precisely because--and only in so far as--it conforms to natural judgment. Without resort to that tribunal, the religionist could not discriminate between the sanction of the sixth commandment and the law of the levirate, which he has cancelled. The religious sanction, therefore, is logically null, in terms of the religious man's own mental processes.[6] There is left him, to discredit the rationalist, only the threat that the God whom he terms infinitely good will or may punish the unbeliever for not believing on the strength of a Bible packed with incredible narrative and indefensible doctrine. The anti-rationalist position is thus reduced to 'Pascal's wager'--at once the most childish and, from the standpoint of other and nobler religious thought, the most irreligious argument ever advanced by a competent intelligence on the side of faith. Pascal's thesis is that if the unbeliever is wrong, he runs a frightful risk of future torment; whereas, if he should after all be right, he will be no worse off after death for having believed. So the 'belief' required of him is a simple mindless and faithless conformity to a conditional threat. To such moral perversity can religion persuade. To Pascal's wager there have been many retorts. Mill declared that if a God should doom him to hell for having been unable to believe in such a God, 'to hell he would go'--glad, by implication, not to be in heaven. Mansel's sole answer was a puerile attempt at a pious sneer. Clifford, in effect, denounced the Pascalian appeal for what it was, a base appeal to fear.[7] But it is unnecessary to resort to such logical supererogation. There are two obvious and decisive rebuttals to Pascal's doctrine on purely logical ground. Firstly, his thesis is available to the Moslem or the polytheist no less than to the Christian; and when put from either of these sides it leaves the Christian running the very risk with which he menaces the unbeliever. He may have chosen the wrong God. Secondly, the hypothetical Good God, if in any intelligible sense worthy of the name, would conceivably be as likely to send Pascal to hell for dishonouring him as to send the honest atheist there for refusing to make-believe. The pietist has dishonoured himself to no purpose. The _a posteriori_ argument for religious conformity has thus come to nothing; and the process of argument has revealed the religio-utilitarian champion of morality as traitor to that cause. There is left him, indeed, the plea that religious fears and sanctions are good for the ill-disposed believer, who ought, therefore, not to be disillusioned. As regards the simple dogma of deity, the position has the emphatic support of Voltaire. But Voltaire declined to use the favourite menaces of faith, as do many religionists of to-day; and if those menaces are to be rationally vindicated, there must first be raised the question whether they could not be improved upon for the purpose professed. Leaving that task to those who affect them, the rationalist may claim to be justified in acting on the maxim that honesty is the best policy in the intellectual as in the commercial life. There has been no such historical harvest of moral betterment from the religion of fear as could induce him of all men to employ it as a moral prophylactic. Thus far he figures as the vindicator of simple veracity against those who, in the name of morals, would make it of no account. He has still to meet, indeed, the challenge: What of the ill-disposed among your own way of thinking? If an unbeliever should see his way to gain by falsehood or licit fraud, what should deter him? Much satisfaction appears to be derived by many well-meaning people from the propounding of this dilemma. They may or may not be gratified by the answer that if a rationalist should not be, by training and bias, spontaneously averse to lying and cheating, or generally unwilling to do otherwise than he would be done by, or sensitive enough to the blame of his fellows to fear it, there is indeed no more security for his veracity or honesty than for that of a typical Jesuit or a pious company promoter. One can but add that, seeing that in the terms of the case he began by unprofitably avowing an unpopular opinion, he is presumably, on the average, rather less likely to lie for gain than those who confessedly find the sheer fear of consequences a highly important consideration in their own plan of life, and who have at the same time the promise from their own code of plenary pardon for all sins on the simple condition of ultimate repentance. FOOTNOTES: [4] Even Professor F. H. Bradley, the ablest of living English philosophers, is responsible for the proposition that 'to wish to be better than the world is to be already on the threshold of immorality' (_Ethical Studies_, 1876, p. 180). As the book has not been reprinted, despite much demand, it may be inferred that the author no longer stands to all its positions. [5] Thus we are told of the heroic Gordon that he was 'perplexed perpetually, and perpetually in doubt as to the precise will of God with him' (W. S. Blunt, _Gordon at Khartoum_, 1911, p. 88). [6] The logical analysis may be carried further, as by Mr. A. J. Balfour:--'To assume a special faculty which is to announce ultimate moral laws can add nothing to their validity, nor will it do so the more if we suppose its authority supported by such sanctions as remorse or self-approval. Conscience regarded in this way is not ethically to be distinguished from any external authority, as, for instance, the Deity, or the laws of the land' (_A Defence of Philosophic Doubt_, 1879, p. 345). [7] The same might be said of Mrs. Browning's minatory picture of the moment's passage ''Twixt the dying atheist's negative, And God's face waiting after all'-- round the corner with a flail, belike. Religion cannot be more dishonoured than by the moral ideals of some of its champions. § 4. THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHALLENGE But we have now clearly imported into the rationalist philosophy a principle or factor which ostensibly rivals or primes reason. The rationalist avows a moral bias--an attitude towards his fellows, a moral 'taste,' let us say--which partly determines his reasoned judgment. He has a conception of goodness in virtue of which he finds 'revelation' frequently repellent and the popular 'God' a chimera; even as the believer finds them satisfactory because they are in part conformable to his moral and speculative bias, and he has been brought up to pretermit judgment beyond those limits. This bias appears to be partly congenital, partly acquired; though most men are agreed that many who reveal a given bias would have presented another had they been differently trained. Certain forms of congenital bias, that is to say, yield more or less easily to others, specially fostered or exercised. Whatever be the respective force of the generative factors, the fact of bias remains; and there is no escape from the conclusion that it operates in regard to 'intellectual' as well as to 'moral' judgments--to judgments, that is, of causal interpretation or non-moral discrimination as well as to judgments upon human action. The rationalist, in fact, is merely a person who in certain directions carries the processes of doubt, analysis, and judgment further than do persons of a different habit of mind. His neighbour, who believes in 'God' or 'the saints' or Mrs. Eddy, may chance to carry those processes in other directions further than he,--may be more reflective and experimental and judicious, for instance, in matters of diet,--may even be an analytical thinker in matters of science to which the so-called rationalist has given no independent thought. There are well-known instances of men of science who by analysis widen the bounds of physical knowledge while accepting, in ways which other men find grotesquely uncritical, loose propositions on psychic existence. When sounds are heard from furniture, the rationalist, with his naturalistic bias, looks for explanations in terms of physics; while the spiritualist, even if he chance to be a professed physicist, looks for them in terms of speculative psychics. Upon a strictly impartial and 'objective' consideration, the two kinds of bias are seen to be alike forms of craving, desires seeking satisfaction. Both inquirers seek for 'causes.' But one has the habit of seeking causes in terms of sequences of known or intelligible processes, capable of willed repetition; the other yearns to find proof of the existence of non-material personalities in the cosmos and in his personal neighbourhood, and, believing in such existence in advance, either provisionally or rootedly, hopes to bring others to his way of thinking by a demonstration that certain physical phenomena are not physically producible. And it must be granted him that herein he is theoretically at par with the man of science--physical or moral--who, having spontaneously framed a hypothesis, seeks to find that facts conform to it. Every man with a hypothesis, broadly speaking, wants to find that facts are so-and-so. The rationalist, then, has his bias like another. Though it takes in part a critical or negative form, it is fundamentally as positive as another. He has come to crave for coherence and consistency in narratives, statements, explanations, arguments, propositions, and systems of thought; even as his 'contrary' or competitor has come to crave for evidence that something 'supernatural' wields a purposive and 'intelligent' control, mediate or immediate, over all things, using among others 'supernormal' means. This 'contrary' thinker may or may not believe in 'spirits' in the ordinary sense, may or may not believe in the immortality of human minds; but if he is really to be an opponent of the rationalist bias he is to be classed as having a bias to traditional or authoritative views of the cosmos, to religious as against naturalistic explanations of history, to a conception of the human as of the extra-human processes in terms of a controlling will and purpose. He too, it is true, must have some craving for coherence and consistency--else he could not debate and reason at all; but the other craving in him has primed that. It is a fallacy, we may note in passing, to suppose that the 'agnostic' attitude, so-called, is something between the two main forms of bias here posited. Agnosticism, logically carried out, can differentiate from other forms of rationalism only in local limitation of belief; and in practice it is not often found to do even that. The agnostic inevitably begins in terms of the rationalist bias, in craving for coherence and consistency of statement; and his most circumspect negations stand for precaution against inconsistent credulity. But precisely in virtue of that bias, he is the opponent of the supernaturalist bias. He does not in effect merely say, 'I do not know': he implicitly says 'You do not know' to the professor of non-natural knowledge. Bias, then, being clearly posited, the debate at once turns--as indeed it usually does even without formal acknowledgment of bias--to a competition of claims to consistency. All debate presupposes agreement on something. As antagonists _in_ religion appeal either to God-idea or to Bible, to probability or to usage, to expediency or to authority, or to historic evidence for one revelation as against another, so antagonists upon the fundamentals of religion appeal to accepted laws of proof, measures of evidence, consistency of reasoning. The most tenacious of traditionists must put his case in a 'reasoned' form. And therein, of course, lies the secret of the gradual historic dissolution of traditional credence in the minds of those who come at all within the range of the argument. Every act of reasoning--as priesthoods are more or less clearly aware--is a concession to the rationalist position to begin with; and only superior skill in fence can ostensibly countervail the advantage thus given to the disputant who claims that reason must determine beliefs. Reasoning against the validity of reason is recognisable as suicidal by all who can reason coherently. If reason be untrustworthy, what is the value of reasoning to that effect? Either you go by reason or you do not. If not, you are out of the debate, or you are grasping your sword by the blade, a course not long to be persisted in. Even the skeptical defender of religion, following religious precedent, says, 'Come now, let us reason together.' Thus we reach the standing anomaly that the defence of faith against rationalistic criticism alternately takes the courses of pronouncing the appeal to reason a foolish presumption, and of claiming to reason more faithfully than the rationalist. The two positions being, to say the least, incompatible from the point of view of dialectic, we must fight upon one or the other at a time; and, having briefly dealt with the former, we may fitly consider at greater length the latter. The more philosophic assailant of the rationalist, we assume, professes after all to stand or fall by reasoning. That is to say, he claims to hold his supernaturalist positions in logical and moral consistency with his historical positions, his practice as a judge or juror, as a man of science, as a critic in politics, as a man of honour, as a player of cricket by the rules of the game. As a matter of fact, however, he at times goes about the task by way of an undertaking to show, not that his beliefs are well founded in reason, but that no beliefs are; and that his beliefs are therefore at least as valid as any one else's. All the while he is ostensibly appealing to reason, to judgment. That position in turn must be considered. § 5. THE SKEPTICAL RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE The philosophic issue under this head has been usefully cleared for English readers by Mr. A. J. Balfour in his _Defence of Philosophic Doubt_; and, in another sense, very usefully for rationalists by the same writer in his work _The Foundations of Belief_. The gist of the former treatise is an expansion of the proposition of Hume that all moral judgments, on analysis, are found to root in a sentiment or bias. In particular, Mr. Balfour argues that all scientific beliefs so-called, however immediately proved, rest upon general beliefs which are 'incapable of proof.' It is noteworthy that never through the whole treatise does Mr. Balfour analyse the concept of 'proof,' though his main aim is ostensibly to discriminate between proved and unproved propositions. It may be worth while, then, at this stage, to note the risks of intellectual confusion in connection with the term proof. The common conception, implicit in Mr. Balfour's argument, is that concerning a 'proved' thing either we have, or men of science say we have, a right of certainty, as it were, which we cannot have concerning anything not proved or not capable of proof. The simple fact is that the very idea of proof involves that of uncertainty you seek to prove that which is not unquestionable. To prove is to _probe_,[8] to test. The idea of 'demonstration,' which seems commonly to connote special certainty, carries us no further. It means a 'showing,' a 'letting you see with your own eyes.' In geometry, it stands for a chain of reasoning in which every step rests upon previous steps which ultimately rest upon axioms and definitions agreed upon. There the process is one of analysis--a showing that a proposition formerly unknown as such is really contained in or implied by propositions known. Certainty follows. Yet there is abundant record of 'proofs' or 'tests' which were fallacious, and of ostensible demonstrations which were flawed--modes of squaring the circle, for instance. The ultimate in the matter is the belief arrived at or evoked; and the significant fact for us is, that beliefs ostensibly so arrived at may be false, because the cited proof or evidence is erroneous or the demonstration inconsequent. Certainty, on the other hand, attaches in the highest degree to certain beliefs that, in the nature of the case, are 'incapable of proof,' that is, of being tested. No belief is more certain for all men than the belief that they will all die, though the event, posited as future, cannot as such be 'tested.' In this case, the connotation of the word 'proof,' nevertheless, is by common consent transferred to the concept of mortality: the invariable dying of all previous men is allowed to be 'proof,' or decisive evidence, that all living men will die to the last generation. In regard to some other certainties, the concept of 'proof' is wholly irrelevant. You cannot 'prove' that you feel a pain, though it is one of the most certain of all facts for you while it lasts. If, then, any general scientific or other belief be shown to be 'incapable of proof,' in this merely negative sense (as distinguished from 'capable of disproof'), that is no argument against it for any practical or philosophic purpose. Such a belief is that in the 'uniformity of nature,' which is held by the same tenure as that in the mortality of all men. It cannot be 'proved,' either as to the past or the future, in the sense of being tested, save as regards past particulars, which are necessarily a small selection from the totality of phenomena. For the future, in the terms of the case, there can be no proof. Yet no man has any more doubt as to the rising of the sun to-morrow than as to his own ultimate death. Concerning this we are quite certain, which we cannot be as to many things reasonably held to have been 'proved.' Such and such are our 'certainties.' What, then, is Mr. Balfour's case against men of 'science,' and those whom he calls 'the Freethinkers'? It may be put under three heads. 1. They are lax, he thinks, in their conception of proof. As it happens, he argues against Mill's criticism of the syllogism, which is that there can be no real inference from the premisses of a syllogism, because in the major premiss there is already asserted what is afterwards asserted in the conclusion. Mr. Balfour's reply is, that 'So long as in fact we do assert the major premiss without first believing the conclusion, so long will the latter be an inference from the former.' Now, Mill's express contention is that we never do assert the major premiss without first believing the conclusion; and the dispute resolves itself into one as to the proper meaning of 'inference.' Mill is at this point guarding against erroneous conceptions of proof; his thesis being that the 'proof' of the conclusion is not given in the major, but in the body of evidence on which that is founded, and which carries the conclusion at the same time. As the kind of syllogism in question is the old one about the mortality of Sokrates, Mill here takes as 'proof' the evidence which all men now reckon sufficient to establish the fact of universal human mortality, though, as aforesaid, it is not literally a complete 'proof' at all. Mr. Balfour is arguing, if anything relevant to his main thesis, that a so-called 'inference' which is merely a statement in one particular of what is believed of all such particulars, is a 'real' inference, and therefore somehow more valid than inferences not so drawn. Perhaps he does not mean this: if so, the argument has no bearing on his main case. Concerning 'inference,' the proper development of Mill's position would be that the processes of reasoning properly to be so called are either hypotheses still to be tested or beliefs held by the tenure of uncontradicted experience. And inferences of the latter kind are in fact of the most various degrees of certainty. We 'infer' that we shall all die, not from the generalisation that all men are mortal, but from the accepted fact that all men hitherto have been. The major premiss in the typical syllogism is itself the inference. But we also infer, from a much narrower experience, that inasmuch as pitchblende, say, has been found to yield radium in certain very small quantities, other pitchblende will do so in future. Here the certainty is distinctly less: few men would wager heavily on it. And we may at once grant to Mr. Balfour that in this and many other cases 'scientific beliefs' fall far short of 'certainty,' as that term is established for us by other beliefs. As Mill put it, inference from particulars never can be formally cogent. He might have added as aforesaid, that all real inference as to events is from particulars, and that formal cogency belongs only to mathematics. Mr. Balfour says he will not 'go so far' as Mill. So that, whatever be Mill's inconsistencies--and they are many--Mill was at this point somewhat less confident of belief than Mr. Balfour. 2. Mr. Balfour impugns what he takes to be 'the most ordinary view of scientific philosophy, ... that science, in so far as it consists of a statement of the laws of phenomena, is founded entirely on observation and experiment,' which 'furnish not only the occasions of scientific discovery, but also the sole evidence of scientific truth--evidence, however, which is considered by most men of science not only amply sufficient, but also as good as any which can be well imagined.'[9] In this statement there are obvious laxities, which may serve as openings for idle dispute. No man of science, surely, holds that all statements of the laws of phenomena are equally well 'proved' by observation and experiment. They do hold that such a proposition as that of 'the uniformity of nature,' considered as a 'law of phenomena,' is founded on observation and experiment, as fully as any proposition of natural mode can be. But there is obvious room for ambiguity, again, in the expression 'laws of phenomena.' Let us consider, for instance, 3. Mr. Balfour's contention that the 'law of universal causation' is incapable of proof, and cannot properly be said to be founded on observation and experiment. Here the rationalist may safely grant him his whole case--at least the present writer does. He is right, I submit, in his criticism of Mill's ostensible attempt to prove that the so-called 'law of universal causation' is deduced from observation and experiment. I will further waive the question whether he rebuts the proof offered by Kant for his proposition that 'the judgment of sequence cannot be made without the presupposition of the judgment of causality,' which, like many of Kant's formulas, seems to me very awkwardly phrased. But I advance without hesitation the proposition that all reflection upon events involves the conception of universal causation, and that all reflection upon things involves the conception of them _in eventu_.[10] And this necessary assumption is not as such a product of observation and experiment, though we can never exactly say how far experience may condition[11] our manner of making the assumption. It is quite needless to trace the history of it in human experience, for it is clearly pre-human. If from a tree you fire at and wound a tiger who sees you, he will try to get at you, plainly regarding you as the cause of his wound, though he may never have been shot or seen a shot fired before. The accuracy of his inference is worth noting, though he might chance, of course, to have been wounded by a shot fired by an unseen companion of yours. It may 'reasonably' be 'inferred' (to use terms which Mr. Balfour would probably censure), that man has always obeyed the law of _thought_ thus illustrated; and no number of wrong particular inferences can affect the inevitableness of his assumption that any event has a cause. The _concept_ of cause roots in primary animal habit. Is this assumption, then, a 'law of phenomena' in Mr. Balfour's sense? is it to be ruled out, on his principles, as not being founded on observation and experiment? and are men of science thereby shown to be wrong in holding that every scientific statement of the laws of phenomena is so founded? I do not see how he can thus argue; for he has expressly contended (p. 135), that 'A law of nature refers to a fixed relation, _not_ between the totality of phenomena, but between extremely small portions of that totality.' Is a law of phenomena, then, something other than a law of nature? This he cannot mean; and the conclusion is that the so-called 'law of universal causation' is not properly to be called a law of nature, or a law at all, unless we are so to call a necessary element of all reflection upon nature. The dispute here, in short, resolves itself into a question of terminology; and it is quite likely that many men of science, and many freethinkers, have used lax terminology. But as regards the reasonableness of their beliefs, or their way of believing, in contrast with those of the supernaturalists whom Mr. Balfour champions, he has thus far made out no hostile case whatever. And when we come to what appear to be his conclusions, they are such as can wring no rationalist's withers. Our ultimate premisses, he contends, are incapable of proof. Granted--if the assumption of universal causation is to be termed a premiss, as is that of the uniformity of nature. The practical issue for him appears to be contained in this passage (italics ours):-- 'That men ought not to give up on speculative grounds the belief in "the uniformity of nature, or any other great principle," I hold, as the reader will see if his patience lasts to the end of the volume, with as much persistence as any man. But I must altogether take exception to the statement, which is the central point of the argument just stated, namely, that the fact that these principles work in practice is _any ground for believing them to be even approximately true_' (p. 145). Our patience may easily stand the suggested test, since Mr. Balfour's book is for the most part extremely well written; and unless I have totally misunderstood him, his conclusions are (_a_) that he and we do well to accept the general body of accepted scientific doctrines, including those of the theory of evolution and the uniformity of nature, without _any ground for believing them to be even approximately true_; and (_b_) that he and his co-believers do equally well to hold what he vaguely indicates (p. 324) as 'the Theological opinions to which I adhere,' _also_ without 'any ground for believing them to be even approximately true.' In a sentence (p. 320) of which the diction is noticeably lax, he says:-- '...I and an indefinite number of other persons, if we contemplate Religion and Science as unproved systems of belief standing side by side, _feel a practical need for both_; and if this need is, in the case of those few and fragmentary scientific truths by which we regulate our animal actions, or an especially imperious and indestructible character--on the other hand, _the need for religious truth, rooted as it is in the loftiest region of our moral nature_, is one from which we would not, if we could, be freed.... _We are in this matter_,' he adds, '_unfortunately altogether outside the sphere of Reason_.' FOOTNOTES: [8] This is the elucidation of the puzzling phrase, 'the exception proves the rule,' so often fallaciously used. It comes from the Latin schoolmen's 'Exceptio _probat_ regulam,' where the meaning is patent enough. [9] _Defence of Philosophic Doubt_, p. 13. [10] Compare Professor Royce:--'Our intelligent ideas of things never consist of mere images of things, but always involve a consciousness of how we propose to act towards the things of which we have ideas' (_Gifford Lectures_, 1900, i. 22). [11] I exclude the possibility that 'experience' might be construed to mean the entire development of the mind from infancy. Such a construction would reduce the argument to insignificance all round. § 6. THE MEANING OF REASON The problem as to 'the sphere of Reason' could not be more effectually raised. Mr. Balfour clearly implies that there _is_ a sphere of Reason, but forces a perplexed query as to when he believes himself to enter it. Evidently, by his own definitions, his whole political life is lived outside it. Alike his generalisations from past history, and his predictions of the future, are such as afford 'no ground for believing them to be even approximately true': those of his opponents, of course, coming for him under the same category. He would, perhaps, hold himself to be in the sphere of Reason when following a proposition in mathematics; but he does not admit himself to be there even when he consents to believe that he will die, and that he had better avoid prussic acid. 'No experience, however large,' he insists (p. 75), 'and no experiments, however well contrived and successful, could give us _any reasonable assurance_ that the co-existences or sequences which have been observed among phenomena will be repeated in the future.' Not 'certainty,' be it observed, but 'any reasonable assurance.' That is to say, we have no reasonable assurance that we shall die. Obviously the extravagance of this proposition is calculated. The point is that no belief whatever concerning life and death and morality and the process of nature can be justified by 'reason'; and that accordingly no religious belief whatever can be discredited on the score of being opposed to reason or 'unreasonable.' If not more reasonable than the most carefully tested or the most widely accepted belief in science, or the belief that the sun will rise or fire burn to-morrow, or that we shall all die, it is not less reasonable than they. Therefore, believe as your bias leads. It is only fair to Mr. Balfour to say that there is nothing new in his position, though probably it has never before been quite so violently formulated. The Greek Pyrrho (fl. 300-350 B.C.) argued that almost all propositions were doubtful; and some of his followers are said to have been consistent enough to doubt whether they doubted. In the dialogues of Cicero we find the skeptical method employed, with supreme inconsistency, by the official exponents of unbelieved doctrines, to discredit competing doctrines. Among the pagans it was also turned, with no special religious purpose, against all forms of dogmatic doctrine by Sextus the Empiric (fl. 200-250 A.C.); and in the early Christian dialogue of Minucius Felix a pagan is presented as turning it against Christianity. In the later Middle Ages it is resorted to by Cornelius Agrippa, previously a great propounder of fantastic propositions in science, against the current science of his time, and in favour of a return to the simplicity of the early Christian creed. Still later, it was much resorted to, after the Reformation, by Catholics for the purpose of discrediting Protestantism; and Pascal and Huet, the latter in particular, sought to employ it against 'unbelief.' Huet left behind him, as his legacy to his church and generation, what Mark Pattison has termed 'a work of the most outrageous skepticism'; and Pascal's use of the method has left a standing debate as to whether he himself was a 'skeptic.' In England, on the Protestant side, Bishop Berkeley put forth an argument to the effect that the Newtonian doctrine of fluxions involved the acceptance of unproved 'mysteries,' and that those who applied it had accordingly no excuse for rejecting the mysteries of Christianity. Finally, it is fair to note that Mr. Balfour's nihilistic treatment of reason has a surprising sanction in Hume, to say nothing of the other writers who have practically limited reasoning to mathematical deduction. That great thinker, with his frequent great carelessness, wrote that 'Our conclusions from experience [of cause and effect] are not founded on reasoning, or any process of the understanding' (_Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding_, Sect. iv. Part ii., par. 2). 'All inferences from experience are effects of custom, not of reasoning' (Sect. v., par. 3). 'All these [spontaneous feelings] are a species of natural instincts, which no reasoning _or process of the thought and understanding_ is able either to produce or to prevent' (_Ib._ par. 6). But Hume, be it noted, would in his earlier life have recoiled from Mr. Balfour's religious Irrationalism, for in his deistic period he wrote that the belief in Deity is 'conformable to sound reason.' And, what is more important, he in effect cancelled his own remarks on reason, above cited, by writing as follows in Note B on the _Inquiry_ cited:-- 'Nothing is more usual than for writers, even on moral, political, or physical subjects, to distinguish between reason and experience, and to suppose that these species of argumentation (_sic_) are entirely different from each other. The former are taken for the mere result of our intellectual faculties, which, by considering _a priori_ the nature of things, and examining the effects that must follow from their operation, establish particular principles of science and philosophy. The latter are supposed to be derived entirely from sense and observation, by which we know what has actually happened from the operation of particular objects, and are thence able to infer what will for the future result from them.... But notwithstanding that this distinction be thus universally received, both in the active and speculative scenes of life, I shall not scruple to pronounce that it is at bottom erroneous, or at least superficial.' Hume, it will be observed, is not here bent on vindicating the rational character of direct inference from observation: he had set out in the text by disparaging customary thinking as non-rational; and he is now claiming for the 'reasoning' man that experience goes a long way to generate his reasoning processes. 'The truth is,' he says in his final paragraph, 'an inexperienced reasoner could be no reasoner at all, were he absolutely inexperienced.' It is a fragmentary note to a hasty passage; but at least it concedes that reasoning _is_ largely a matter of inference from experience, and thus decisively gainsays the assertion in the text that no inference from experience is an 'effect of reasoning,' inasmuch as it says such inference is reasoning; that reasoning is a working of the mind on the facts of life; and that the common distinction between reasoning and [beliefs derived direct from] experience 'is at bottom erroneous, or at least superficial.'[12] If, he says in the fourth paragraph of the Note, 'If we examine those _arguments_ which, in any of the sciences above mentioned, are supposed to be the _mere_ effects of reasoning and reflection, they will be found to _terminate_ at last in some general principle or conclusion for which we can assign no _reason_ but observation and experience.' If an argument be not a process of reasoning, neither word is intelligible. If an argument terminates (=has one end) in a conclusion founded on observation, and if that observation be a 'reason' for a proposition, then arguing is reasoning. If not, what is Mr. Balfour's book? By his own definition, _that_ is 'outside the sphere of Reason,' inasmuch as it is a series of negative propositions which, like their denied contraries, must be 'incapable of proof.' What term, then, would he apply to his argument, if he admits that he is arguing? The philosophic skeptic, it would appear, has logically overreached himself--a very usual consummation. There is little sign that any of the religious skeptics above named ever made any converts to religion; and there is much 'reason' to think that they turned many to unbelief. Mr. Balfour from time to time speaks of 'reasonable people' and of 'absurdity.' But he leaves us in the dark as to what absurdity means, and his thesis excludes from the 'reasonable' class alike all religious persons and all scientific persons, unless, possibly, mathematicians as such. Since there is no 'reasonable assurance' for the belief that the sun will rise to-morrow, and politicians have no ground in reason for anything they say as such, the mass of the ordinary beliefs of educated mankind are not reasonable or rational; and since we have no 'reason' for believing in either mortality or immortality, we can have no reason for believing (whether we do or not) in Mr. Balfour, who avowedly believes in both without reason. His book, by implication, is not an appeal to reason, is not a process of reasoning, and can give no 'reasonable assurance' of anything, positive or negative, to anybody. All this by his own showing. The rationalist, it should seem, has small cause to deprecate such antagonism. He could hardly have a more comprehensive clearing of the field of dialectic for the formulation of his own conception of reason and reasoning, and his own appeal to the reason of reasonable people. As thus:-- 1. _Reason_ is our name for (_a_) the sum of all the judging processes; (_b_) the act of reflex judgment; (_c_) 'private judgment' as against obedience to authority; and (_d_) the state of sanity contrasted with that of insanity; and '_a_ reason' is a fact or motive or surmise which we judge sufficient to induce us or others to believe or do (or doubt or not do) something without much or any danger of error, failure, or injury. 2. _Reasoning_ is our name for the process of comparing or stating 'reasons why' certain propositions or judgments should be believed or disbelieved, or certain acts done or not done. 3. We are emphatically 'in the sphere of Reason' when we are reflecting and reasoning, as distinct from merely feeling, sensating, desiring, or hating; but even the feelings are, as it were, part of the stuff of Reason. Strictly speaking, we are in the sphere of Reason even when we believe what we are told to believe on matters outside the knowledge of our instructors (in so far as we credit them with greater wisdom than our own), or try to believe that what we would like to be true must be true because we would like it (inasmuch as we are proceeding reflectively on a 'reason why'); though in these cases we are reasoning fallaciously--that is, in a way which can lead to manifold error and injury. 4. _Reasonable_ is our approbatory epithet for an action, course, or person that is guided by reasoning which we see to exclude most risks of error and injury--save of course where the taking of risk of injury is assumed. Every one of these definitions is justified by the dictionary to begin with, though the dictionaries, of necessity, note further conflicting meanings, as when reason is indicated as 'the faculty or capacity of the human mind by which it is distinguished from the intelligence of the lower animals,' or hazily distinguished, on philosophic authority, from 'the understanding.' But the lexicographer loyally notes that _a_ reason is 'a thought or consideration offered in support of a determination or an opinion'; and that _to_ reason means, among other things, 'to reach conclusions by a systematic comparison of facts,' 'to examine or discuss by arguments.' These senses are implicit in daily usage. The concept of Reason, in short, must include the whole factory of beliefs. The judging faculty, the judging propensity, is a complex of instincts, experiences, inferences, and necessities of thought. It originates at an animal stage, and conserves to the last animal elements--as when, without any process of calculation, you infer, as it were through the muscular sense, that a top-heavy omnibus is likely to overbalance, or that in riding your bicycle round a sharp corner you must incline your body inwards. It deals with diet and medicine, art and industry, no less than with theology and science and politics. In the former, its accepted procedure is obviously a set of survivals of more or less tested ideas from among an infinity of detected mistakes; and the moral law of the intellectual life for the rationalist, the principle which best justifies his assumption of that name, is that every belief or preference whatever is fitly to be tried by all or any of the tests by which beliefs have been sifted in the past, or may more effectually be tested in the future. We are to do with both our religion and our science in general what we have done in the past and are still doing with our medicine, our sanitation, our education, our physics, our historiography. Without more ado, then, we may proceed to ask how reasons for beliefs are ultimately to be appraised by reasonable and consistent people--in other words, how beliefs are honestly to be justified. FOOTNOTE: [12] So Kant: 'Thoughts without content are void; intuitions without conceptions are blind' (_Kritik der reinen Vernunft_, ed. Kirchmann, 1870, p. 100); and Comte: 'There is no absolute separation between observing and reasoning' (_Politique Positive_, 1851, i. 500). § 7. THE TEST OF TRUTH It may have been observed, with or without perplexity, that Mr. Balfour specified a 'need for religious _truth_' as his ground for holding his unspecified 'theological beliefs,' this after bracketing Religion and Science as alike 'unproved systems,' consisting (by implication) of a body of propositions as to which we have not 'any ground for believing them to be even approximately true.' The skeptico-religious conception of truth being thus found to be as nugatory as that of 'reason' put forward from the same quarter, we are compelled to posit one more conformable to common sense, common usage, and common honesty. For the generality of instructed men, truth in secular affairs means not merely 'that which is trowed,' but (_a_) that which we have adequate 'reason' to trow, and (_b_) that of which our acceptance is consistent with our way of testing credences of any or all other kinds. The ultimate criterion of our beliefs, in short, is the consistency with which we hold them. By this test the ground is rapidly cleared of skeptico-religious literature. That puts a spurious problem to mask a real one. The question for us is not and cannot be whether, seeing that by inference from experience some of the beliefs we now hold are likely to be found false by posterity, we have any right to accept one belief and discredit another. The skeptic is himself doing so in this very argument, and all the time. His whole intellectual life is one of judgments and preferences. There is no intellectual life without them. The question is whether we have applied to any one belief or set of beliefs the tests we have applied to others: whether, for instance, we can honestly profess to believe in prayer or the doctrine of the Trinity or heaven and hell as we believe in Gresham's Law or the effects of quinine or the roundness of the earth; whether we have criticised the religion in which we were brought up as we criticise Mohammedanism or any other; whether we have scrutinised the legends of our creed as we have scrutinised the legend of King Arthur and his Knights; or whether, on the other hand, we hold the atomic theory or faith in vaccination by mere authority, while we dispute about religious teaching in the schools. This does not mean that we are to apply the same kind of test to every kind of proposition; that we are to ask for evidence of immortality as we ask for evidence of the Darwinian theory. The test is one of consistency. Does the belief in immortality, we are to ask, consist with either our knowledge or our imagination? Do we hold it critically and coherently or as a mere congeries of irreconcilable propositions? Do we ask ourselves what we mean by 'meeting again'? Is it anything more than a fantasy which we affirm for our own comfort or the supposed comfort of others, or for the sake of mere conformity with popular sentiment? No thoughtful man, perhaps, will deny that he holds some of his opinions by some such easy tenure; were it only for the reason that consistent ascertainment is often laborious, and that common consent has to be allowed to take its place in regard to many beliefs of plainly inferior importance. But religious beliefs are not so classed by those who seriously debate them; and here, if ever, the challenge to scrutiny and consistency is imperative. And so disturbing is the challenge that for centuries past the higher religious consciousness has been engaged in an unceasing effort to persuade itself and its antagonists of the secular or mundane reasonableness of its supernaturalist creed. Religious life is seen going on at two widely removed standpoints: one that of the emotional believer who knows no conceptual difficulties, and is concerned only to maintain in himself and others the quasi-ecstatic state of faith; the other that of the would-be reasoner who is concerned to secure peace of mind by arguing down his own misgivings and the positive antagonism of unbelief. Between those extremes, probably, is lived the mass of religious life so-called, untouched either by ecstasy or by conceptual unbelief as distinguished from passive conformity. But the conflict of the thinking minority is unceasing; and orthodox professions of triumph deceive no one who is really engaged in the struggle. On both sides it has long been a question of balancing 'probabilities,' a conflict of 'reasons.' Bacon, declaring that he would 'rather believe all the fables in the Golden Legend and the Koran than that this universal frame is without a mind,' opened a door that let in all the forces of doubt. The Koran is the form in which the God-idea recommended itself to the Moslem mind, as the Bible is the form in which it commended itself to the Christian; and if for each the other is always fabulising in detail, where could be the certitude of the common doctrine? Was mind any likelier to be the form of the power of the universe than any other of the anthropomorphic characteristics of Jehovah and Allah and Zeus? However that might be, Bacon was appealing to the sheer sense of probability; the 'Evidences' of Grotius were addressed to the same kind of judgment; and Pascal's 'wager' was a blank appeal to the principle of chances plus the instinct of fear. Butler, anxiously striving to reduce the straggling deistic controversy to its logical bases, accepted the test of probability as the guide of life; and Gladstone, his last champion, with all his show of sheer faith, strenuously endorses the doctrine. The vital question is seen to be, then, whether the Butlerian 'believer' or the rationalist is the more loyal to that standard of probability by which each avowedly guides himself. But Butler, in the very act of professedly basing his case on probability, introduced the contrary principle. Gladstone, gravely reprehending that Jesuit doctrine misleadingly termed Probabilism--which permits of a choice of the less probable course in morals and belief--supposed himself to be upholding a true Probabilism in Butler. The fact is that Butler, seeking to checkmate the Deists, committed himself to anomaly as a mark of revelation. 'You believe,' he virtually argued, 'in a benevolent God of Nature, though Nature is full of ostensible cruelty and heartlessness: if these moral anomalies do not stagger your deism, why should anomalies in the Scriptures be for you an argument against their being a divine revelation? Should you not rather expect to find difficulties in the revelation as in Nature?' So that the champion of the standard of probability ends by putting an element of improbability as a mark of divine truth. It was long ago pointed out that Butler's argument was thus as good for Islam or any other religion as for Christianity. Gladstone framed a futile rebuttal to the effect that Christianity had marks of truth, in respect of prophecy and miracles, which Islam lacked--a mere stultification of the Butlerian thesis. The Moslem could retort that if his creed succeeded more rapidly than the Christian with special marks of anomaly upon it, those were presumably the right anomalies! By the Butlerian analogy of Nature, what sort of anomalies, pray, were to be expected in a divine revelation? Gladstone actually made it a disqualification of Islam that it had succeeded by the sword; this when his own creed had slain more than ever did Islam. But on Butler's principles, his plea was vain even if true. If a divinely ruled Nature be red in tooth and claw, why should not the divine faith be so likewise? What is the lesson, by deistic analogy, of the volcano? The complete answer to Butler, of course, lies in stating the simple fact that analogy leads rationally to the conclusion that all the alleged revelations are alike human products. If every one in turn is found to embody cosmological delusion, historical falsity, fabulous narrative, barbarous ethic, and irrational sanctions, all of which are by each believer singly admitted to be the normal marks of human stumbling, the case is at an end. The one salient and sovereign probability is the one that the believer ignores. When this mountainous fact is realised, the full force of the Butlerian argument is seen to recoil on its premiss no less than on its conclusion. The dilemma that was to turn deists into Christians is simply the confutation of all theism. Upon none of the tested principles of inference now normally acted on by men of science, men of business, and men of affairs, is it rationally to be inferred that the universe is ruled by a superhuman Good Male Person, who loves and hates, punishes and rewards, plans and reconsiders, injures and compensates. As little are we entitled to infer that it is governed by a Superhuman Bad Person, or a number of Superhuman Persons, male or female, good or bad, or both. The polytheistic and theistic solutions are the natural ones for unreflecting ignorance and priestly policy, and the latter remains the natural one for reverent ingrained prejudice, alias inculcated faith; but it is only so much sophisticated folklore for the student of life, nature, history, philosophy. The latest forms of it are but defecations of the earlier. For Arnold, trained in reverence and avid of reverend sanctions, the deity of his fellows is confessedly but a 'magnified non-natural man'; and his substituted 'Something-not-ourselves-which-makes-for-righteousness,' in turn, is for his critics but an evasion of the problem of the something-not-ourselves-which-makes-for-unrighteousness. In sum, then, the case for rationalism as against the creeds is that they recognise no rational test for truth, and apply none. They are all, to say the least, grossly improbable in the light of the fullest human knowledge; and the acceptance of them means either passive disregard of the principle of sufficient reason or the habitual employment of arguments which upon any other kind of issue would be recognised by all competent men as at best utterly inadequate. Theology is the most uncandid of all the current sciences; its results are the most self-contradictory; its premisses the most incoherent. Upon those theologians, then, who accuse the rationalist of self-will and prejudice, he is forced to retort the charge with a double emphasis. They are daily disloyal to the Canon of Consistency, which is for him the moral law of the intellectual life. Claiming to propound the highest truth, they override all the tests by which truth is to be known. The modern defence of 'faith,' whether Christian or theistic, is less and less an attempt to prove truth of doctrine--save as regards the defence of historicity; more and more an attempt to prove its usefulness or its comfortableness. Faith has turned utilitarian, as regards its apologetics. John Mill erred somewhat, indeed, in endorsing the statement that down to his time much had been written on the truth of religion, and 'little, at least in the way of discussion or controversy, concerning its usefulness.' Christian bishops early learned to claim for their creed a gift of prosperity; and in the eighteenth century there was an abundance of utilitarian vindication of the faith. But latterly this has more and more coloured the whole defence. Either as a promise of peace or as one of comfort and stimulus, as a plea for emotional indulgence or for the joy of the sense of deliverance from responsibility for sin, as a guarantee for good government or as a condition of general progress, Christianity is defended on any ground rather than on that of the truth of its narratives or the conformity of its doctrine to good sense, moral or other. And the pleas are entertainingly internecine. One day we are told that it makes for race-survival; the next, that it is a spiritual stay for races that are dying out, and a great deathbed comfort to ex-cannibals, with a past of many murders. A creed which involves a cosmology is recommended, not by such arguments as may commend a cosmology, but by pleas of subjective agreeableness which in any discussion of historic fact would be felt to savour of trifling. And this simple and spontaneous sophistry is in a measure kept in countenance by quasi-philosophies such as that of the 'Will to Believe' and that latterly termed Pragmatism. The former, as brilliantly propounded by the late Professor James, amounts simply to this, that in matters on which there is no good or sufficient evidence either way, we do well to believe what we would like to believe. As the precept comes from the thinker who passed on to students the counsel of Pascal concerning the opiate value of religious practices,[13] it is easy to infer how it will tend to be interpreted. And the second philosophy is like unto the first, in so far as it conveys, under cover of the true formula that the valid beliefs are those which affect action, the antinomian hint that if we think we have found any belief a help to action, it is thereby sufficiently certificated as true. The rationalist comment on Pragmatism, thus applied, is that it really discredits the religious beliefs of most men, inasmuch as they never relate their faith to action in general, would not stake a shilling on a prayer, have no working faith in providence, and do not in the least desire to pass from this life to another. But these men do not study philosophy; while the emotional believers, who really feel their faith to be a help in life, do not need the pragmatist's precept, and believe without it. What is true in Pragmatism is of the essence of Rationalism. Our lives at their best are made valid for us by our mutual trust, our reciprocal sincerities; and Rationalism consists in the effort to extend intellectual and moral sincerity to the study of all problems. It may permit, none the less, of some such genial or affectionate glozing of some facts as love and friendship tend to set up in the relations of persons, tolerance taking on the vesture of sympathy; and it no more makes for Gradgrindism, or the belittlement of any of the higher joys, than for concentration on the lower. Its antagonists alternately indict it for 'gloom' and for licence; for coldness and for 'Epicureanism'; for seeking only happiness, and for turning happiness out of doors. The contradictions of the indictment tell of its collective origin in mere hostility of temper. Rationalism, of all codes and modes of life-philosophy, must most seek to make the best of life. Some professed rationalists, indeed, at times grind in the mills of the Philistines by professing an apprehension lest their fellows, in pursuing truth, should lose sight of beauty; and such misconceiving mentors plead confusedly for some formal association of rationalism with the arts of feeling, with poetry, with music, with drama, with fiction--as if without cultivating these things _in the name of_ Rationalism we should be divested of them or discredited as not possessing them. The fallacy is of a piece with that which identifies Christianity with progress in civilisation. The rationalistic bias is in actual experience found to be as compatible with any æsthetic bias as with the scientific, specially so called; though in point of fact a scientific culture is in itself more conducive to rationalism in respect of historical and ultimate problems than is culture in the arts, which are mostly enjoyed, appraised, and even practised without deliberate resort to critical analysis. Some rationalists, again, have been found to contend that the critical analysis of things æsthetic is destructive of æsthetic joy--an error of errors, involving blindness to the facts that even a science is in itself ultimately perceptible as an artistic construction, and that all the arts live and renew themselves by the sense of truth. The solution of the verbal conflict lies in recognising that rationalism is after all but a name for considerate consistency in the intellectual life, where consistency is still so sadly little cultivated, and where established habits and institutions tend so powerfully to its exclusion; whereas in the arts there is no call for such specific championship. There the very joy of novelty is soon potent to overcome the resistance of habit--which, for the rest, roots in structural or acquired limitations not greatly dependent upon cultivation or neglect of the rationalistic habit. A man of science or of critical research may be dull to new refinements of æsthesis where an unscientific emotionalist _may_ be sensitive to them. Recognising all this, the balanced rationalist will shun as a special sin of religion the ritualising of his joys, the sectarian extension of his differences of credence to the field of æsthetics. His rationalism as such implies no one of the special 'isms' of the arts; though there he may be an 'ist' like another. For him all art, all literature, all beauty, is so much of Nature's fruitage; and Christian cathedral and Moslem mosque can yield him pleasures which Christian and Moslem can never derive from _his_ distinctive intellectual work. He may even take artistic satisfaction in contemplating the figure of the winged angel which Christianity took over from Paganism, without believing it to be the image of a reality, as so many pietists have so childishly done for thousands of years. 'Religious' music can minister to him in virtue of the common psychosis. His very names for himself and his intellectual code are but insistences on complete inner loyalty to a moral law which most men profess to obey, and which all of necessity obey in many if not in most matters. The time is for him even in sight, as it were, when most men will recognise and live by that law; and when that day comes there will be no more need to profess rationalism than to profess, as a creed, any of the daily reciprocities by which society subsists. But till that day comes he marks himself, and is marked--to his frequent discomfort, it may be--by his insistence, in the deepest matters, on that law of truth which so many still persistently subordinate to pleas or preferences of authority or habit, convention or subjective taste. Avowing it as his bias, if so challenged, he claims that it is the bias to perfection in the intellectual life as the bias to order and sympathy is the bias to perfection in the civil. FOOTNOTE: [13] See Professor James's _Principles of Psychology_, 1891, ii. 321. § 8. ULTIMATE PROBLEMS To a surprising degree, the philosophic disputes of the ages turn upon the same problems; and to an extent that is nothing short of sinister, they resolve themselves for most of the onlookers, if not of the participants, into the question of the maintenance of the popular religion. Thus academic theists in our own day are found resenting the tendency of ancient freethinkers to discredit and disestablish the Gods of Olympus, who for the academics themselves, as for everybody else, are a set of chimeras. Are we to infer that the current academic philosophies, even where constructive, are no better bottomed than the popular credences they seek to shelter? Kant's 'critical' philosophy was by himself soon turned to the account of pulpit religion; Fichte ended in restating the gospels in terms of his pantheistic personal equation; Hegel soon attained to the championship of the Prussian State Church; Lotze has reformulated Christianity to the end of giving it continuance as a creed for the educated. Nietzsche said with substantial truth that the vogue of Kant has been that of a philosopher who enabled theological teachers to put a philosophic face upon a doctrine not otherwise presentable to their students; and the vogue of Berkeley in England has been of a similar kind. In our own day the fortunes of new treatises in popular philosophy turn upon their adaptability to orthodox sophistics. Our generation has seen in succession (1) the absurd work of the late Professor Drummond on 'Natural Law in the Spiritual World' welcomed as turning the tables on 'science' by showing that its doctrines are fundamentally at one with those of the faith; (2) the still more absurd work of Mr. Benjamin Kidd on 'Social Evolution' hailed as demonstrating by ratiocination that the reasonable course for society is not to reason; and (3) the incomparably subtler books of Mr. Balfour acclaimed (whether or not read) as proving that reason cannot bite on religious opinions, and that we could never enjoy our music and our dinners as we do if we thought of ourselves merely as evolved from animal forms, without somewhere inserting Deity as the sanction and exemplar of our preferences, æsthetic or moral.[14] Always the acclamation tells of a passion somehow to humiliate 'science,' to put reason in the wrong, to triumph over 'negation,' to show that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in any philosophy which does not make play with 'spirit,' worship, and the supernatural. The cure, however, is never found to be permanent; and latterly we see the not very accommodating philosophy of M. Bergson grasped at as yielding some kind of weapon wherewith to beat back the advance of the ever-encroaching assailant. Sooth to say, neither the analyses nor the syntheses of M. Bergson are in any way damaging to rationalism, or in any way rationally ancillary to supernaturalism. The anti-rationalists have clutched eagerly at his dictum that reason, considered as a light upon the universe, is a poor thing; and that there is something in us higher than intelligence. Apart from the disparaging form given (gratuitously) to the content of these propositions, there is nothing in them that has not been rationalistically put. That is to say, it is a rationalistic proposition that new truths are reached neither by deduction nor by induction, but by a leap of the judgment, by spontaneous guess or hypothesis. What then? To say or imply that the guessing faculty is something incomparably higher than intelligence is one of the inconsequences of M. Bergson, whose very acute analysis is apt to play upon special problems without controlling his own dialectic procedure. The sobering fact is that the false hypotheses are reached in the same way as the true, the wrong guesses in the same way as the right, the delusions in the same way as the discoveries. The very theses in science which M. Bergson contemns were reached by the way which he arbitrarily pronounces 'superior' to the way of reason. And the court of appeal that determines which is which, is after all just that intelligence or reason which M. Bergson, imitating one of the old methods he has ably helped to discredit, had verbally belittled in merely discriminating its function. No prerogative whatever can thereby be conferred upon either the guessing faculty or the guesser as such. The 'divining' faculty is not more divine than another: it is not really more wonderful to catch fish than to cook them; and the gift of establishing hypotheses is as rare as the gift of framing them. When all is said, the self-confidence of the transcendentalist avails for none but himself: as his own craving for countenance shows, his hypothesis must pass muster before reason if it is to persuade. And for this among other reasons, M. Bergson's attack upon Spencer and other generalisers in science for their 'mechanical' way of conceiving evolution is no blow to 'science,' as M. Bergson would probably avow, though he is lax enough to delimit science at times in his dialectic. His own way of stating evolution is only another mode of science. To call 'science' superficial is to be so; for the demonstration that any scientific doctrine is inadequate must itself be science or nothing. And here again M. Bergson's criticism, though searching, is not new, however freshly put. In respect of his sociology in particular, Mr. Spencer has been repeatedly so criticised; and it is here alone that his limitation of method is really serious, inasmuch as it affects his prescriptions. As regards the conception of sub-human evolution, his way of reducing the past to 'pieces' of evolution is not only not injurious, it was the only way in which evolution in Nature could well have been realised by men. M. Bergson is all for the 'creative' aspect of evolution, the Living Now, the emergence of the latest phenomenon as not merely the result of the one before, but the living manifestation of the whole. But this is simply the instinctive, pre-scientific relation to the problem, returned to and restored, as it had need be, to its place in a scientific schema from which it had been dropped precisely because it led nowhere. M. Bergson has suffered, probably, from the zeal even of instructed exponents, to say nothing of the acclamations of the amateur; but perhaps even M. Bergson, by reason of his linear mode of advance, misconceives the full significance of his own restatements of perceptual and conceptual fact. His theorem has been represented as vindicating the thesis of Mr. Samuel Butler's 'Luck or Cunning'--the thesis, namely, that animal survival and progress are to be conceived in terms of gift or effort rather than of environment; that Lamarckism, once more, is truer than Darwinism. But the argument overlooks the fact that Cunning may be envisaged as Luck; and that Lamarckism without Darwinism halts far worse than Darwinism without Lamarckism. At best, the 'living' view of evolution is but a complement of the other, a return from analysis to outcome. Put singly, it is no addition to knowledge. 'We called the chess-board white: we call it black,' the onlooker might say, with Browning; while the analyst might retort that, like the savage, he was quite conscious of the ever-moving point of life, the Living Now, but preferred to give his mind to the still and spacious past, and 'to cut it up into pieces' by way of knowing something about the law of things, past, present, and future. The morally valid element in M. Bergson's insistence on 'creative evolution' (again an old term, by the way) is the vindication of personality as a creative form. But this was not necessary as regards the rational determinist, whose position really assumed it, though possibly individual determinists may have obscured the truth by their phraseology. As of old, anti-rationalists persist in assuming that the determinist view of things, mostly accepted by the rationalist, impairs character by reducing will to a 'mechanism.' But that is a calculated obscuration of the doctrine. It is a bad sophism to assert that 'the rejection of mechanism by non-libertarians is a mere phrase. Sooner or later they have to affirm that man is mechanically determined.'[15] It is not so. 'Going Universe' negates Machine. _That_ concept adheres to the schema of those who affirm the universe to be _made_: Naturalism excludes it. Theistic determinism _does_ make man a mere vessel, a tool: for Naturalism he is an individuation of the Living All. The intelligent determinist never was and never will be put out by his conceptual recognition of himself as part of an infinite sequence; and he has no need of M. Bergson's (untenable) restatement of the problem of free-will and determinism to the effect that the will is sometimes free and sometimes not. That is indeed a hopeless fallacy--an illicit inference from the unduly stressed re-discovery that new truth is reached by a leap and not by a sequence. To say that we are 'free' when we have an original idea or guess is to miss the logical truth set forth by so unsophisticated a philosopher as Locke--that the concept of 'freedom' is irrelevant to every process of thought. M. Bergson insists on the irrelevance of spatial terms to psychic processes, but overlooks the equal irrelevance of terms of preventable personal action. Precisely because he is, so to say, the latest outcome of the universe, the rational determinist will insist upon 'pulling his weight' and having things go, as far as may be, in the way he prefers. No one's right is better! And he can confidently claim that here, where he is philosophically at one with the thorough-going theist, he has all the possible moral gain from his determinism without an iota of the theist's perplexity. That gain consists in the lead to mercy in human affairs. The theist-determinist is certainly not, as some Christian rhetoricians (ignorant of Christian history) affirm all determinists must be, either a coward or a licentious knave, in the ordinary sense. Augustine and Luther and Calvin and Knox were neither, though all four were sadly sinful men. But the theistic determinist is open always on the one hand to the paralysing thought that if he should err he is resisting God, and on the other to the equally deadly instigation of the thought that those who resist him are God's enemies. To escape both snares he must turn thorough pantheist=non-theist. And the upshot is that the theistic determinist is never merciful, whereas the rational determinist is at least under a logical compulsion to be so, however he may resist or divagate. He is free to defend himself, and to defend society; but in so far as he hates and hurts he is illogical, and in so far as he makes punishment retaliation, or prevention punitive, he is either confounding himself or setting lust against light. Were there no other betterment from the substitution of the non-theistic for the theistic relation to ultimate problems, this might be held to outweigh all claims on the other side, to say nothing of the simple rationality of the negative solution. But that is, of course, in itself decisive. The logically strongest form of the theistic case as against the non-theist is that, even as he lives and moves in gravitation without any subjective consciousness of it, so he may be controlled in every thought by a transcendent volition. But this argument, which excludes M. Bergson's formula of our occasional 'freedom' of will, equally shelters determinism from the contention that we are 'conscious' of freedom of thought. Even as we are demonstrably conditioned by gravitation while unconscious of its control, we are demonstrably conditioned by our experience and structure as regards even our guesses. Neither the ignorant nor the ungifted man makes the valid new hypothesis. There remain for use by the theist only the old reproaches that a non-theistic philosophy is 'desolate,' 'negative,' 'materialistic,' and incapable of explaining the universe. The last is a mere _ignoratio elenchi_, for the very essence of the non-theistic challenge is that every 'explanation of the universe' is an imposture, exposed as such either by its self-contradictions or by its evasions. The normal theist either bilks the problem of evil by avowing it to be a mystery--a thing he cannot explain--or falls back on the alternative evasions that there cannot be good without evil (that is to say, that good needs evil, which is thus good) or that 'partial ill is universal good,' and that evil is thus _non-ens_--which again is a denial of any moral problem. To complain of 'negation' as such while making such negations as these is to be more entertaining than impressive. And to be told that, in putting aside these logomachies, he is depriving himself of intellectual and moral comfort, is for the rationalist no perturbing experience. He is what he is because he knows the utter inanity of the theistic declamation about his putting in place of the 'Immeasurable Divine Eye' a 'vast bottomless Eye-Socket'; knows that for the vast mass of mankind the imagined Eye has been a menace of all their myriad ills, that its levin slays them like flies, that the iron has entered uncounted millions of souls who daily prayed for divine succour. The prate of his 'negation' is as childish as the complaint of the avowal that we cannot reach the planet Jupiter, not to say the constellation Hercules: he does but affirm the incontrovertible truth that an infinite universe cannot be compassed by our thought, and that to assert its permeation by 'mind'--a finite process of perception and discrimination, verbally defined as transcending both--is to pay ourselves with words. To the Berkeleyan formula that existence is only as perceived, and that without perception there can be no existence, he answers, similarly, that the first proposition means only that we perceive what we perceive, and that the second is mere intellectual nullity, a verbal pretence to unthinkable knowledge. The further Zenonian frivolity of the denial of an 'external world' needs from him no further comment than this, that in the terms of the argument 'external' has no meaning, and the proposition, therefore, none either. It may be left to the denier of existence 'outside consciousness' to tell us _where_ consciousness is. The inquiry may perhaps lead him to the discovery that he, the professed foe of materialism, has been limiting consciousness to the compass of the skull. The ultimate claims of the theist to spiritual superiority and serenity are oddly bracketed with the charges of arrogance and Epicureanism constantly made by him against his antagonist. All alike are irrelevant to the issue of truth; and all alike tell of other motives than those of truth-seeking. Those other motives are substantially what our theological ancestors called 'will-worship,' self-pleasing, the bias of pre-supposition, the aversion to surrender. All theistic dialects alike sing the song of self-esteem. The spiritist pronounces his gainsayer 'impercipient,' thus inexpensively cutting the knot of argument; and, himself a wilful continuator of the thought-forms of the savage, declares himself to be transcending the earthiness of the sciences in virtue of which he is civilised. All this is a poor way of proving serenity; as poor, at bottom, as the perpetual display of wrath at gainsaying by men who claim to have the backing of Omnipotence. Consciousness of intercourse with the supernatural has never ostensibly availed to give the common run of theists imperturbability in their intercourse with the naturalist. And if in the stress of controversy the rationalist should in turn prove himself capable of perturbation, let him, avowing that he claims no supernatural stay, at least plead that he sets up no intellectual 'colour line,' and that his gospel is after all fraternal enough. Once more, he does but ask the theist to take one more step in a criticism which he has already carried far, with small trouble to himself. Every religion sets aside every other: the rationalist only sets aside one more. Every theist has negated a million Gods save one: the rationalist does but negate the millionth. And in doing this, he is not committing the verbal nullity of saying, There is no God--a formula never fathered by a considerate atheist. God, undefined,=_x_; and we do not say, There is no _x_. Of the defined God-idea, whichsoever, we demonstrate the untenableness; but in giving the theist an inconceivable universe we surely meet his appetite for the transcendent. Rationalism, when all is said, is the undertaking, in George Eliot's phrase, to do without opium. And perhaps the shrewdest challenge to it is the denial that the average man can so abstain--a denial which may be backed by the reminder that the framer of the phrase did not. A jurist once cheerfully assured the present writer that the mass of men will never do without alcohol and religion. He was not aware that he was adapting a Byronic blasphemy. It may be that in a world in which most men chronically crave alternately stimulants and narcotics, he was in a measure right. But as one of his two necessaries is already under a widening medical indictment and avoidance, it may be that the other will fare similarly. In any case, is not the ideal a worthy one, as ideals go? FOOTNOTES: [14] It is an orthodox writer who applies to this ratiocination the tag, _Credibile est quia ineptum est_, dismissing it as 'a blending of sceptical analysis with credulous assertion' (Rev. Dr. Mackintosh, _Hegel and Hegelianism_, p. 219). [15] Rev. Dr. R. Mackintosh, _Hegel and Hegelianism_, 1903, p. 216. § 9. IDEALS Ideals, obviously, are part--the best part--of our bias: to that admission we may unhesitatingly revert. By his bias the rationalist can afford to be tried. Intellectually he makes truth his paramount consideration, and morally he insists upon the same sincerity in things intellectual as men profess to practise in honourable intercourse. I have heard a distinguished Christian scholar denounce these canons as commanding such an outrage as telling a child of its mother's shame. The charge is an illustration of the strange malice of which piety is capable. No human being ever proposed to communicate all truth of any kind to children; and the limit to the gratuitous telling of wounding truth is fixed by normal courtesy and sympathy as regards the sufferings even of adults. The charge is in fact one more illustration of the anti-veridical bias of pietism--the need to distort and pervert the case against the rationalist. And if pietism can thus distort the bearing of the intellectual canons of rationalism, much more habitually does it distort the specific purport of rationalist morals. The fact that naturalism implies utilitarianism is transformed into the proposition that utilitarianism means the subordination of all play of sympathy to an incessant calculus of profit. As we have seen, theism and Christianity alike do chronically subordinate the veridical instinct--a moral instinct like another--to lower considerations of utility; and only too often in history do we see them annulling the instincts of mercy and reciprocity by the law of dogma. Not by propounders of that test is the rationalist to be put to shame. The very basis of Christianity, in fine, is an other-world utilitarianism. 'What _profits_ it a man----?' Utilitarianism means for him, in brief, what it meant when it first took shape as a moral plea--the testing of traditional moral canons, and their annulment when they are seen to be mere survivals of barbarism, sanctioned only by custom and religion; never the substitution of a calculus of utility for an accepted moral canon in every act of life. Any general moral rule rationally seen to be broadly utilitarian is thereby vindicated _qua_ rule; and to put its practice at the hazard of every trying emergency would be to sin against the very principle of utility. For the rest, the rationalist has his moral bias like another; and in virtue of it, as animating rationalisers of various developments, has been wrought the main part of the modern purification of working morality, though the moral instinct in religious men has responded, and has at times initiated reformation. It is left to the religionist to argue that a bias which has wrought for truth, justice, and mercy will somehow fail to preserve other virtues. No reminiscence of the sexual history of Christian societies can restrain Christian advocates from imputing to the spirit of reason a tendency to promote promiscuity in the sex relation and thus to overthrow 'the family.' Holding as they do that the family is the keystone of society and civilisation, they in effect argue that the practice of rational calculation of means and ends will destroy both. Pessimism could no further go; and if this be not the height of pessimism it is a stress of false-witness which puts the accuser outside the pale of controversy. As an imputation upon known rationalists in general the theorem is simply false. The systematic revival of Aryan polygamy has been a religious process; and the freest practitioners of sexual choice among reasoning unbelievers, the Russian Nihilists, have been notoriously monogynous. It may be hoped that we shall in future hear less and less in these matters of the extremities of orthodox malice or misgiving, as we hear less and less of the old plea that whereas a bad believer may be held in moral check by his religious fears, a bad unbeliever will fear only the police. The statistics of the jails do not encourage that line of apologetics; and the records of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children do not go to show either that rationalism makes parents cruel or that religion keeps them kind. The plain truth is that upon bad bias law is the main check; and that the most vaunted religious methods of developing the good bias of the weak have latterly been systematically supplemented, in the organisation, for instance, of the Salvation Army so called, by secular methods which are the avowal of the final and general futility of the others. In no other direction are the moral ideals of rationalism less fully vindicated by the movement of civilisation. The humane and scientific treatment of criminals has actually been antagonised, in the name of the Christian doctrine of sin, from the ranks of the Howard Society, established to promote such humane treatment. Rationalism can no other: religion seems willing to leave it the credit. Above all, the great cause of Peace on earth--the very motto (a mistranslation, as it happens) cited as that of nascent Christianity--visibly depends more and more on the spread of rational calculation, the spirit of reason, rather than on that of faith, however faithfully many a good Christian continues to plead for it. There is no Peace Church: even Quakerism has latterly had its war-mongers; and there is no record in history that the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God ever withheld men from fratricidal war. We shall still hear, it may be, that the intellectual pride of rationalism is in tendency anti-democratic; Gibbon and Hume being cited as cases in point. And the rationalist democrat, shunning the lead of his antagonist to panacea-mongering, may here at once--or once more--confess that the spirit of reason in things intellectual is no guarantee for the immediate elimination of egoism in human relations. Christianity has claimed to be such a guarantee--with the results we know. But it is flatly inconceivable that the spirit which challenges all authority and anomaly in doctrine can tend to conserve either tyranny or social and political inequality. The very apologists who make the charge are the successors and coadjutors of those who have charged upon irreligious philosophy the generating of the French Revolution. Anti-democratic rationalists there will be, as there have been; but for every one such there are a hundred of the contrary ideal; and it is not in conservative parties that they are found to avow themselves. For rationalism, on the side of thought, must forever mean liberty, equality, fraternity, 'the giving and receiving of reasons,' the complete reciprocity of judgment. To all races, all castes, it makes the same appeal, being as universalist as science, naming no master, proffering no ritual, holding out no threat. The rationalist, as such, can have no part in the errant Darwinism which would conserve struggle because struggle _has_ yielded progress; much less in the pseudo-Darwinism which would further degrade backward races because they have been ill-placed. Of race-hatred he cannot be guilty without infidelity to his first principles. And if all this be termed vaunting, the objector may, perhaps, be placated by the repeated avowal that neither is rationalism proclaimed to be a wholly new way for the nations, nor is the rationalist as such acclaimed as the monopolist of good. He respectfully urges upon the best and ablest followers of other flags that under his they will not deteriorate or be less cherished; that their gifts are precious in his eyes; that he wants their collaboration for humanity's sake. His panegyric of Reason is but the praise of what is wisest and best in man: his 'ism' is the concern to put off dead husks of opinion, to lift all life to the plane of light. The religionist may, if he must, come over with permission to call the cultus of truth and sanity a religion: some there are who suppose themselves to solve the dispute by that means, as Spencer thought to solve it by inviting Science and Religion to join hands in an avowal of a common ignorance. Such eirenicons do not seem widely acceptable: it is really better to let words keep their historic meanings than wilfully to change their values. But if the question be whether rationalism is a creed to live by, an ideal to live by, let these pages be taken as giving part of the answer. Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press 
39455	----	Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including non-standard spelling and punctuation. Some changes of spelling and punctuation have been made. They are listed at the end of the text. OE ligatures have been expanded. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. Bold text has been marked with =equals signs=. _Sacrificing the earth for paradise is giving up the substance for the shadow._ --Victor Hugo. Is Life Worth Living Without Immortality? A Lecture Delivered Before the Independent Religious Society, Chicago By M. M. MANGASARIAN I may be doing you an injustice, Bertie, but it seemed to me in your last that there were indications that the free expression of my religious views had been distasteful to you. That you should disagree with me I am prepared for; but that you should object to free and honest discussion of those subjects which above all others men should be honest over, would, I confess, be a disappointment. The Free-thinker is placed at this disadvantage in ordinary society, that whereas it would be considered very bad taste upon his part to obtrude his unorthodox opinion, no such consideration hampers those with whom he disagrees. There was a time when it took a brave man to be a Christian. Now it takes a brave man not to be. SIR A. CONAN DOYLE, The Stark Munro Letters--Fourth Letter. Is Life Worth Living Without Immortality? Is life worth living? If we are in good health, it certainly is. In a certain sense, even to ask such a question implies that we are not at our best. It is the sick, mentally as well as physically, who question the value of life. We cannot appreciate health too highly. Our philosophy of life is more profoundly affected by the condition of our body than we have any idea. If I were composing a new set of beatitudes, one of them would be in exaltation of health: _Blessed are they that have health, for they shall take pleasure in life._ Health also inspires _faith_ in life. The first commandment of the decalogue, instead of reading, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," which is metaphysical and without definite meaning, could with much advantage be altered to read: _Thou shalt not trifle with thy health._ How fortunate it would have been for man had the "Deity" given that as his first and best thought to the world! Then, indeed, would he have been the friend of man. We cannot preserve our health without observing all the other commandments--of temperance, purity, sanity, self possession, contentment, and serenity of mind. "Behold I bring unto you health" ought to be the glad tidings of salvation. Give us that, and all the rest will be added unto us. Health is the foundation of character. If the foundation is insecure--if we have inherited disease and corruption, we can be sound, neither in our thoughts nor in our actions. The time may come when to be sickly will be considered a crime. A revolution in our feelings in this matter is already taking place. Formerly it was thought that the path to self-development is through sorrow and suffering, and that the sick were the saints. The verdict of science today, which has been confirmed by the growing experience of man, is that pleasurable activity is the most wholesome environment for man. Happiness has upon human nature the same effect that the sunshine has upon the soil. Man is a failure if he is not happy. The highest accomplishment is the ability to enjoy life. To those who say that service or usefulness is the noblest aim of life, we answer, "Why should those who serve the noblest ends of life be unhappy?" But let me first present to you the answer which one of America's best known psychologists, Prof. William James, of Harvard, gives to this most interesting question. Prof. James is a teacher not only of the young men in one of our leading Universities, but his ideas have become a part of the furniture of the American mind. Both his thought and the candor with which he expresses himself have secured for him a large following. Prof. James has an engaging style. Not that he is not also a profound thinker, but his sentences are as symmetrical as they are solid. He writes to be understood. That, I take it, is the secret of the masters of style. The gods always speak from behind "clouds and darkness." That explains why it is so difficult to understand what they say. But the great teachers permit no screens, draperies, curtains, or hangings of any sort to come between them and the public. There is nothing hidden about their thoughts. Neither do they speak in parables. Whoever can not make himself understood should hold his peace. The parents of this renowned psychologist were Swedenborgians, and I believe the professor is still, nominally, at least, a member of the Swedenborgian church. Swedenborg, as you know, was a mystic; he was, indeed, a sort of a medium, who claimed to have seen and conversed with God face to face, and to have received from him a supplementary revelation, in some such sense that Mrs. Eddy or Joseph Smith received one. Of course, Swedenborg was also a philosopher, which Smith and Eddy are not. The early connections and training of Prof. James explain in part his interest in the work of the Psychical Research Society, of which he is one of the officers. So-called spiritist or occult phenomena, such as automatic slate writing, table tipping and telepathy, have always interested Prof. James, but he is by no means an easy victim, though he looks forward hopefully to the time when science will definitely locate the undiscovered country whose bourne has not yet been sighted. Some years ago when Prof. James and I were summer neighbors in New Hampshire--near Chocorua lake--I heard the professor deliver a lecture on hypnotism in the village church of Tamworth. An incident occurred at the time which has its bearing on the experience our Society is having with the directors of the Orchestral Association. While Prof. James was explaining the phenomena of hypnotism from the pulpit, I saw, from where I was sitting, an elderly woman showing signs of restlessness in her seat. Presently she rose to her feet, walked up the aisle slowly, and taking her stand directly in front of Prof. James on the platform, she upbraided him for desecrating the House of God by delivering in it a lecture on hypnotism. In clear, though trembling tones, she ordered him out of the church. Naturally the professor was greatly embarrassed, as was also his audience. The old woman, however, was soon prevailed upon by the elders of the church to resume her seat and keep the peace. But she was trying to oust Prof. James from the church, as the trustees of this building are trying to oust our Society from this hall, on account of religious differences. The old woman of New Hampshire was not successful, and I trust that the old woman of Chicago will not fare any better. To close a hall to a movement is an easy thing, but to close the ear of the world to its message is not so easy. I have spoken of the early education of Prof. James in order to explain the metaphysical bent of his mind. As a psychologist, he has an international reputation, but his greatest vogue is among, what are called, the liberal Christians. The orthodox have no use for him, but to those who are endeavoring to interpret Christianity so as to make it harmonize with modern thought--who are filling the ancient skins with wine newly pressed--he is a defender and a champion of the faith. Prof. James seems to have discovered a way by which one can be a scientist and a supernaturalist at the same time. He appears to be of the opinion that a person may deny or reject many of the orthodox dogmas, and still be justified in calling himself a Christian. He is, in fact, one of the New Theologians, who are supposed to have reconstructed Christianity, and saved the supernatural. For this service, Prof. James and his _confreres_ are held in high esteem by those who would have had to give up Christianity but for their timely help. In his lecture on, "Is Life Worth Living," the professor admits that he is writing for the pessimists. It is they who are in the "to be or not to be" mood of mind. The optimist does not need consolation, for he is incapable of even suspecting that life is not worth living. Some temperaments are as incapable of depression or gloom, as others are of happiness. If there are parts of the world on which the sun never goes down, so there are natures which know no night. We make a mistake, however, if we think that the pessimist represents a lower type of mental evolution. On the contrary, pessimism comes with civilization, and it generally attacks men and women of a higher culture. Suicide is rare among the negroes or the less advanced races; but in the United States, representing the most perfect type of civilization, dowered magnificently, and rich in the possession of the treasures of art and nature; in America, the home of hope and opportunity--with its immense prairies, its great West, its army of earth-subduers, empire-builders, large-natured, generous, daring, enduring, restless, resistless pioneers--more than three thousand people every year kill themselves. If we were to seek for an explanation of this strange phenomenon, the nearest we can come to it would be to say that these people prefer death to life because they do not find life worth their while. There is not enough in it to satisfy them. To use an Emersonian phrase, life is to them no more than "a sucked orange." When the perfume, the aroma, the taste, the tints, and the juices have been extracted from the fruit--who cares for what is left. Of course, these remarks have no reference to the cases of sudden suicide, committed in a moment of frenzy--when a man driven, as it were, by a storm in the brain, lets go of his hold and slips into the darkness. The professor has in mind rather those who even though they do not commit suicide, live on reluctantly, under protest, and who treat life as we would a guest who has overstaid his welcome, and to whose final departure we look forward with pleasure. But there is still another class of pessimists who need to be reasoned with. These are the people who brood over the existence of evil in the world, and feel the misery of the many so keenly, that they think it involves a point of honor to consent to be happy in such a world. The contemplation of human sorrow, the surging waves of which break upon every shore; and the cry of human anguish rising like the blind cry of all the seas that roll, has a tendency to slacken the hold of the reflective mind upon life. Prof. James admits that pessimism is essentially a religious disease, in the sense that it results from the inability of man to entertain two contradictory thoughts at the same time: A father in heaven, whose tender mercies are over all his children, and children dying of hunger and neglect! Infinite wisdom enthroned in heaven, and a world running topsy-turvy. The refined mind cannot contemplate this contradiction without distress. If God is everywhere, why is there darkness anywhere? If there is within reach an ocean of truth, why is it doled out to us in driblets which hardly wet our lips, when we are burning with thirst? Religion provokes desires which it cannot satisfy, and makes promises which it will not fulfil. It is this contradiction which bites the soul black and blue. God is infinite! and behold we are starving. God is light! and we grope in darkness. God is great! and we cannot budge without crutches. It is this thought which teases us out of our peace of mind. The idea of a God, gifted with infinite parts, measured against the helplessness of man, makes for pessimism. But in the opinion of Prof. James, religion alone can cure the disease which religion creates. By religion, he does not mean merely loving one's neighbor and being loyal to one's best thoughts. Religion, according to Prof. James, means the belief that beyond this present life, "there is an unseen world of which we now know nothing positive but in its relation to which the significance of our mundane life consists." If this is the first act of an unending drama, it would have great worth and significance, but if it is a detached and disconnected piece, upon which the curtain will soon fall never to rise again--if it is never going to be finished--it loses, according to Prof. James, its seriousness. In other words, it is the belief that man is an eternal being whom no catastrophe can crush or annihilate, which makes our present existence worth while, and which also reconciles us to the discipline of pain and evil. Life is worth living, in short, if man is immortal. This is the drift of Prof. James' teaching, as it is also that of all supernaturalists. What evidence does the professor offer to prove the existence of an unseen world and the immortality of man? He offers none. He admits that science has not as yet demonstrated the reality of an invisible world. Perhaps it never will, but what of that? "You have got a right to believe in an unseen world," declares the professor. Is it not interesting? It will be seen that if the professor has no evidence, he has many arguments. One of his arguments is that, since, we must either believe or disbelieve in a future life, neutrality in the matter being an unattainable thing, why not take our choice, and while we are at it, choose immortality. Another argument is, that as our longings and yearnings in other directions have turned out to be prophetic, we have every reason to believe that the desire for eternal life also will be fulfilled. Art, science, music, health, have come to us because of an inner impulse which prompted us to go after them. A similar impulse urges us to seek the divine, which is a sort of proof that the divine exists. Still another argument is this: All the great successes or achievements of life came as a result of the courage that takes risks. Without audacity, man would never have crossed the ocean, or invented the aeroplane. If the belief in immortality requires the taking of risks, if it is hazardous even to hold it, we should not hesitate on that account, since some of the best things have come to us by taking risks. Start out for God and immortality; and some day you may cast anchor in the shining waters that lap the shores of a divine continent. "We are free to trust at our own risk anything that is not impossible," concludes the professor. Finally, there is the argument from analogy, which I may explain by a personal experience. In the Pasteur Institute in Paris, last summer, I saw in the vivisection room, physicians in their white aprons, operating upon live rabbits, cutting and dissecting them, while the helpless creatures were so fastened to the tables that they could not move a muscle. Now all this must seem very cruel to the rabbit. It must think the physician a butcher, devoid of all feeling, or justice, and it must perforce denounce the world in which such wanton torture is inflicted by the strong upon the weak. But if the rabbit could take a larger view, if it could be made to see that its sufferings are contributing to the progress of science and the amelioration of the conditions of life upon this planet, and thereby helping to hasten the day when disease shall be conquered, would it not be reconciled to the physician's knife and the operating table? The larger view which would embrace the world unseen will help to give to evil, suffering and misery, which now we do not understand, a _raison d'être_. The part of wisdom as well as of courage then, is to "believe what is in the line of our needs, for only by the belief is the need fulfilled. Refuse to believe, and you shall indeed be right, for you shall irretrievably perish. But believe, and again you shall be right, for you shall save yourself." It will be seen by what has preceded, that Prof. James of Harvard University, throws the weight of his influence on the side of those who have always maintained that God and immortality are indispensable to the happiness of man. In his opinion, what a man would be if deprived of his reason, the universe would be if deprived of a God, and life, of a future existence. The eminent psychologist takes the further position that it is immaterial whether or not there is any evidence to prove the existence of a God or of a life after death. If the belief is essential to our happiness and usefulness, he thinks we have got the right to entertain it, irrespective of the question of evidence. "If there is a belief of any kind to which you have taken a special fancy, or one that you feel like crying for," the professor seems to say, "help yourself to it; you have only yourself to suit." Even if such a belief should involve an element of risk, we are urged to take the risk. If it requires audacity even to believe in a God and immortality, we are told to have the audacity. It is his idea that when we are dealing with the unknown, the important thing is the heart's desire, and not the question of evidence. In passing, I might suggest that Prof. James would never have thought of pushing aside with such nonchalance, the question of evidence, were it not for an irrepressible suspicion that the evidence is against him. He hopes to do without the evidence because the evidence will not help him. This reminds us of the saying of the philosopher Hobbes, that, men are generally against reason when reason is against _them_. As already intimated, the liberal party in the church regards Prof. James as a defender of the faith. He is classed with such men as Sir Oliver Lodge and Lord Kelvin, who though scientists still believe in the supernatural, and by their example have made such a belief respectable. It must be borne in mind, however, that these distinguished men are Christians only, if at all, in a very loose sense of the word. All the cardinal doctrines of revelation, such as the creation, the atonement, the incarnation, and a personal God--even one, to say nothing of a trinity--they reject. These gentlemen have not enough faith to be baptised to-day, had they not been baptised in their childhood,--or to be received into any Christian church without greatly stretching the rules in their behalf. It remains then quite true, and the argument has not yet been answered, that there is not a single eminent thinker in the world to-day who will subscribe to the creed of Christendom without first going through it with a blue pencil, or a pair of scissors. But Prof. James, as also Lodge and Kelvin, if they are not supernaturalists in the ordinary sense of the word, neither are they anti-supernaturalists. They are between and betwixt, if I may use that phrase--not quite ready to part with supernaturalism altogether, nor yet able to hold on to it in its entirety, and so they linger somewhere on the borders or the edge of it. The first remark I have to make on the position of these newly recruited defenders of supernaturalism--even though the supernaturalism which they defend be of the attenuated kind--is, that their argument is not even an improvement on that of the theologian. I like the dogmatic and autocratic, "thus saith the Lord," of theology, much better than the "suit yourself" of these gentlemen. The one position is as destructive of intellectual integrity, as the other. The theologian starts with the fallacy that God can make a thing true by an act of his will--that his _say so_ makes all need of evidence superfluous. Prof. James and the men of his school start with a proposition equally fatal to the truth--namely; that whatever we wish to be true concerning the unknown is true. All that is needed, for instance, to give the universe a God is to wish for one. All that is necessary to make a man immortal is to desire and believe that he is. "The Will to Believe," which is the title of one of the professor's writings, makes truth the creature of man, as theology makes it the creature of God. You see that after all, the theologian and the "scientific" supernaturalist pull together. That is to say, when science lends itself to theology, it ceases to be scientific. It is not theology that goes over to science, but science that goes over to theology. As soon as science appears at the camp of theology, it is forthwith swallowed up. When Prof. James speaks of the "will to believe," and never mind the evidence, he is borrowing from theology, the "will to create" of God. Even as the Deity in creating did not have to consider anything but his glory and pleasure, likewise man in believing does not have to consider anything but his needs and desires. Ask, "What is Truth?" and the theologian answers: "Whatever God wants it to be." Ask now the scientist allies of the supernatural, "What is Truth," and they answer: "Whatever man desires or craves it to be." Of course, it may be objected that it is only concerning the unknown that man is permitted to dispense with evidence and consult his will. But there is no merit, for instance, in a man not telling any falsehoods where he is sure of being found out; his character is tested by his refusal to lie where he is sure he never will be found out. It is concerning the unknown about which we can say anything and everything we please without the fear of ever being caught, that we should restrain ourselves and show our loyalty to the everlasting law of honor, never to depart from veracity. To make any assertions about the unknown is to take an undue advantage of one's neighbors. "Truth is not mine to do with it as I please," said Giordano Bruno, "I must obey the truth, not command it." But the theologico-scientific position is the very reverse of this. If a god were to ask the question, "What is Truth?" His priests would answer, "Lord, suit thyself." If men asked, "What is Truth?" the Harvard professor and his colleagues would reply, "It depends upon your will to believe." The name given to this "free and easy philosophy," if I may use such an expression--is pragmatism, which is a word from the Greek root _pragmatikos_, whence our word "practice" and "practical." The idea at the basis of this philosophy is that whatever is practical and business-like--whatever is necessary to a given program, is authoritative. The philosopher, Kant, was one of the first to urge that we have a right to believe as we please concerning the things which we can neither prove nor disprove by evidence, if such beliefs are necessary to morality. His modern disciples following his leadership, take the position that it is the usefulness of a hypothesis or a belief, and not its truth, that should concern us. "Does it work," is the test, they say, of the value of a scheme or statement, and not, "Is it true?" If it works, what do we care whether or not it be true. If it does not work, it is of no help to us even if it were true. This is identically the same argument which is advanced by the Roman Catholics, to justify for instance, the belief in the existence, somewhere in the universe, of a place called purgatory. "The doctrine of purgatory works," argues the priest, and therefore, it makes no difference whether or not such a place really exists. It is a useful, consoling and profitable doctrine. Therefore it is as good as true. In the phraseology of pragmatism, millions of people want a purgatory, therefore, there is one. And once again, to the question, "What is Truth," the answer of both the theologian and the pragmatist is, "Do not bother about it." And this describes the attitude of the Protestant as well as of the Catholic toward truth. They do not bother about it. Yes, _they do not bother about it_. That is why progress limps and the darkness lingers. People have been brought up not to bother about truth, which explains why error is still king of more than half of the world. I cannot find the words--all words fail me to express my disappointment that a teacher of the youth in one of our great institutions, who are to be the America of tomorrow, should in any way contribute to the impression that truth is secondary; that our needs, our interests, our inclinations, or our whims, come first, and that if we have not the courage to look the truth in the face, we can turn around and make terms with myth and fable. If we were disposed to trip the professor, or by one single thrust to disqualify him for further action in the arena of thought, we could say that even from the point of view of the pragmatist, truth comes first, and that by no imaginable manoeuvring can truth be shifted to a subordinate rank. It cannot be done. Listen! You may not have to prove the existence of a God, or of a future, or of a purgatory, before believing in it. Granted: but you have to prove and you are trying to prove, that it is _true_ that you do not have to prove them. Even pragmatists who say that utility is before truth, labor to prove that it is _true_ that utility is before truth. In other words, they have got to prove the truth of their theory, whatever that may be, before they can make it have any value, or before it can command our respect. Things have to be true else they cannot exist. All the labor of Prof. James has for its object the demonstration of what he considers to be a truth, namely: that the truth of the belief concerning the unknown is not essential. In other words, God may be true or not, a future life may be true or not, but it has to be true that it makes no difference whether they are true or not. Wiggle as we may, we cannot escape the ring of reason that embraces life. This is what I mean when I say that the stars fight for Rationalism. Truth is so tightly screwed and made fast to the top of the flag-pole that even hands of iron and steel cannot pull it down to a lower notch. A second remark I would make on Prof. James' manner of reasoning is that such arguments as he uses to prop up the belief in God and immortality show, not confidence, but desperation, if it is not too strong a word to use. Urging us to take risks, to have the audacity, to ignore the question of evidence, to suit ourselves, and, not to mind the facts, is not the language of sobriety, but of recklessness. To say to a man standing on the edge of a precipice and looking down into a chasm of unknown depth and darkness, to jump over, because, perchance, he may discover his heart's desire at the bottom, is frantic advice, and a man has to be in a panicky state of mind to let go of the sun and of the green earth for a possible world at the bottom of the abyss. It was a thought of Emerson that the humblest bug crawling in the dust with its back to the sun, and shining with the colors of the rainbow, is a thing more sublime than any possible angel. If there were the slightest foundation for the belief in an unseen world, no one would think of resorting to such extreme measures as our learned professor does, to uphold it. When I see a man huffing and puffing, I do not conclude that he has a strong case, on the contrary, I am apt to suspect that it is the weakness of his cause which has disturbed his serenity. To tell us that we can will ourselves immortal, or will God into existence, and that all we need is the audacity to plunge into the unknown, whatever the risks, reminds me of La Fontaine's parable of the frog--who thought he could will himself into the size of a cow--with fatal results. The beginning of wisdom is to recognize one's limitations. To tell a man that he can _will_ things into existence is to do him an injury. Pitiful is the God, and chimerical the immortality that has no better foundation than the whim of man. According to the doctrine of "The will to believe" there would be no God if there were no men to "will" his existence, and no immortality if men did not desire it. This is theology dressed up as philosophy or science. How was the world made? And the theologians answer, God said, "Let there be light, and there was light." How was God made? And the pragmatists answer, "Man said, let there be a God, and there was one." This is trifling. If the word is not too harsh, I shall call it sophistry, or mental gymnastics, to which men never resort except when straight reasoning will not help them. Sophistry is a plea of guilty. I was debating the other evening in a Milwaukee theater on the question of the responsibility for the burning of Joan of Arc. While listening to the defense of the gentleman who was trying to prove that the Catholic Church was not responsible for her martyrdom, I said to myself that such a defense would never have been thought of were it not for the fact that the old claim that the church of God cannot err had not broken down. In the same way the defense that the bible should be taken allegorically, proves that the old position that the bible is from cover to cover the word of God with every letter and punctuation, as well as word and meaning inspired, is no longer tenable. To say that the bible must not be taken literally is but another way of saying that the bible is not true, or that you can make it mean what you please. Men never put up such a defense for anything unless they are driven to it by sheer desperation. My third remark on the pragmatic philosophy of Professor James is that, besides doing violence to our reason, his doctrine that an unseen world is indispensable to make life worth living, or to help make the world moral, places man not only in an unenviable light, but it also does him a great injustice. If it is true that a man will make a beast of himself if he finds out that he is not a God, I take the position that he is beyond hope. Nothing can save him. But it is not true. It is a priestly tale that a man will not behave himself unless we can promise him the moon, or the sun, or eternity. A man would only be a contemptible animal if he must be given toys and trinkets and sawdust dolls to divert his attention from mischief. The claim of the preachers that unless men are assured of black-eyed houris and golden harps, or at least,--some sort of a ghostly existence,--somewhere and at sometime in the future, they will convert life into a debauch, is simply a falsehood. Man is not so depraved as that. Indeed, the doctrine of total depravity was invented by the priests to create a demand for the offices of the church. The priest cannot afford to believe in human nature. If a man can save himself, or if he can do good by his own effort, what need would there be of the mysteries and the sacraments,--the rites and the dogmas? I had occasion to tell you a few Sundays ago that if a lily can be white, or a rose so wondrous fair, or a dog so loyal and heroic, without dickering with the universe for a future reward, man can do, at least, as much. Would this be expecting too much of him? In France, there is, in one of the close-by suburbs of Paris, a cemetery for dogs. Of course, no priest or pastor would think of officiating at the interment of a dog, however useful or faithful the animal may have been. They are brought here by their owners and quietly buried. The visitor finds here, however, many tokens of appreciation and gratitude for the services and value of the dog to man. Little monuments are raised over the remains of some of the occupants of the modest graves. One of these bears the inscription: "He saved forty lives, and lost his own in the attempt to save the forty-first." He did his best without the hope of a future reward. Is man lower than the animal? Does he require the help of the Holy Ghost, the holy angels, the holy Trinity, the holy infallible church, and all the terrors of hell fire to make him prefer sense to nonsense, cleanliness to dirt, honor to disgrace, the respect of his fellows to their contempt, and a peaceful mind to one full of scorpions? Do we have to swing into existence fabled and mythical beings and worlds before we can induce a human being to be as natural as a plant and as faithful as a dog? The doctrine of total depravity is a disgrace to those who have invented it, and a blight to those who believe in it. It is not true that we have to be put through acrobatic exercises,--make our reason turn somersaults, resort to sophistry,--become frantic with fear about our future,--postulate the existence of ghosts, Gods, and celestial abodes before we can prefer the good to the bad and the light to darkness. Supernaturalism is both negative and destructive. It denies goodness, and it destroys in man the power of self-help. Von Humboldt's indignation seems pardonable, when he used the word "infamous," to characterize the theologian's attempt to make the well-being of the human race depend upon such supernatural gossip as he had to market. And what is the verdict of history on this question? Does the belief in God and immortality make for morality? How then shall we explain the dark ages which were ages of faith, and why are not the Moslems, whose faith in Allah and in a future life is very much stronger than ours, a more moral people than the Europeans or Americans? Why was King Leopold, the Christian, a moral leper to the hour of his death, while Socrates, the pagan, who was uncertain about the future, has perfumed the centuries with his virtues? Has the belief in the supernatural prevented the criminal waste of human life, protected the child from the sweat-shop and the factory, or even robbed religion of its sting--the sting whose bite is mortal to tolerance, brotherhood and intellectual honesty? There are excellent people who believe in the supernatural and equally excellent people who ignore the supernatural, from which it would follow that excellence of character is independent of one's speculations about either the eternal past, or the eternal future. It is not true then that we have to prove to man that he has always existed, or that he shall always exist before we can make him see that the sunset is beautiful, or that the sea is vast, or that love is the greatest thing in the world. A man will be careful of his health whether he expects to live again or not. He will avoid headaches, fevers, colds, anaemia, nervous prostrations and diseases of every kind which rack the body and make life a misery, irrespective of his attitude to the question of survival after death. The question of health, then, which is a very important one, is independent of any supernatural belief. It would not affect our health a particle were the heavens empty or full of gods. In the same way, men will continue the culture of the mind irrespective of theological beliefs. Will a man neglect the pleasures of the mind, despise knowledge and remain content in his ignorance, if he cannot be sure that he is going to live forever? But if neither the culture of the body nor that of the mind is in danger of being neglected, is there any reason to fear that the culture of the affections and the conscience will suffer without a belief in an unseen world? We have only to look into the motives which govern human actions to recover our confidence in the essential soundness of human nature, and in the ability of morality to take care of itself without the help of ghosts and gods. You love your country and you are willing to defend its institutions, if need be, with your life, but is it because your country is immortal? Is America going to live forever? Is it going to have a future existence? And yet Washington and his soldiers loved it dearly and risked their lives for it. Were the ancient Greeks and Romans, to whom patriotism was a religion, and who loved and fought for their country--fools, because they did not first make sure that their country was going to live forever? You are devoted to art, you have built palaces for the treasures of the brush and the chisel. You have paid fabulous prices for the works of a Rembrandt and a Titian. Is it because these paintings are never going to perish? Is the canvas which you adore immortal? You prize the works of genius--of a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Voltaire, a Darwin. You have edifices of marble and steel in which to house the great books of the world. And yet a fire tomorrow may wipe them out of existence--they may become lost, as many great works have been lost in the past. Nevertheless, are they not precious while we have them? If a humane society will interest itself in the welfare of the horse and the cat and the dog, which live but a few years; if the flower which blooms in the morning and fades in the evening can command our attention and devotion--must a man be a god before we can take any interest in him? Must somebody be always whispering in our ears, "Ye are gods; ye are gods," to prevent us from doing violence to ourselves or to our fellows? And men seek health for the present, not for the future. And they cultivate the mind to make life richer now and here. And love is desired because it makes each passing moment a thrill and an ecstasy. What then is the value of any speculation about the unseen world, since man can care for his body, mind and heart, without venturing out on an ocean for which he has neither the sails nor the compass? * * * * * But the unseen world is necessary, the professor seems to think, in order to explain the suffering and the injustice in this. In my opinion, such a belief has done more to postpone the reform of present abuses than anything else. The time to suppress injustice and to relieve human suffering is now, not in some distant future,--here and not in an undiscovered country. The belief in God has tempted man to shirk his responsibilities. He has left many things to be done by God which he should have done himself. It is a nobler religion that tells man to do all he can now, and to do it himself. Moreover, how can what is wrong here be made right in the next world? What, for instance, can make Joan of Arc's atrocious murder--a girl of nineteen, who had saved her country, roasted over a slow fire--right in heaven? What explanation can the Deity give to us which shall reconcile us to so infamous a crime. A million eternities, it seems to me, cannot alter the character of that act. The deed cannot be undone. That frightful page cannot be torn from the book of life. You cannot destroy the memory of that injustice; you cannot rub so foul a stain from the hands of even a God. Suppose God were to say to us in the next world that this crime was necessary to the progress of civilization. Would that satisfy us? Would we not still wish for a God who could have contributed to the progress of civilization without resorting to so unspeakable a murder? And there you are. Another world can never reconcile us to a policy that required the commission of crimes whose stench rises to our nostrils. What is wrong can never be made right. You remember that to illustrate the thought of Professor James, I spoke of my visit to the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where, in the vivisection hall, I saw the physicians operating on live rabbits. Professor James thinks that if the rabbit could see everything, it might say to the physician, "Thy will be done." But the rabbit might also say this: "It is well to advance science and civilization; and if it is a part of the _scheme_ to make me contribute to it by my sufferings, I am resigned; but what about the character of the _schemer_ who must torture to death some of his creatures--slaughter with excruciating pain a portion of his family--in order to make secure the lives of the rest?" The existence of evil in a world created by a perfect God is the rock upon which all religions go to pieces. If God can prevent misery and crime, but prefers to work through them, he is to be feared; if he cannot help himself, then he is to be pitied. Who would not rather be the rabbit on the operating table, with the knife in his flesh, than such a God! A God who cannot make a rose red except by dipping it in human blood can be sure that no human being would ever envy him his office. On the last day of judgment, if such a day there be, it will not be the rabbit, or man, who will fear the opening of the books; it will be God. And how do we know that things will be better in the unseen world? Suppose they should be worse? Jesus intimated that the next world would be worse, for he says in Matthew 7:13-14, "Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." Surely this is not an encouraging prospect. A future which offers happiness to a small minority cannot be looked forward to with enthusiasm. Neither is the thought of a few saved and the many damned a consolation. One of the oft-repeated claims is that the belief in God and immortality is such a happiness that he must be an enemy of his race who would deprive people of it. Even Rationalists are said to envy the believer his peace of mind. But the truth is the very opposite of this. There is abundant testimony to prove that of all people the real and consistent believer is the most unhappy being in the world. The proverbial unhappiness of the Rationalist, like the proverbial death-bed horrors of a Thomas Paine and a Voltaire, is a pure fabrication. While there is absolutely nothing in Rationalism to make anybody miserable, since it does away with fear, which is the only thing to fear, Orthodoxy, on the other hand, starts by not only calling this a vale of tears, but proceeds forthwith to make it so. If we were to place the greatest known Christian saints on the stand to interrogate them on this subject, they would one and all confirm our statement. Listen, for instance, to the confession of Thomas à Kempis: "Lord, I am not worthy of thy consolation.... Thou dealest justly with me when thou leavest me poor and desolate, for if I could shed tears as the sea, yet should I not be worthy of thy consolation. I am worthy only to be scourged and punished."[A] These are not the words of a buoyant and happy soul. And listen to the lamentation of John Bunyan: "Sometimes I could for whole days together feel my very body as well as my mind to shake and totter under the sense of this dreadful judgment of God.... I felt also such a clogging and heat in my stomach by reason of this terror that I thought my breast-bone would split asunder. Oh, how gladly would I have been anything but a man."[B] I could quote long chapters from the biographies of the saints to show the wretchedness, the despair and the agony of the believer, shuddering upon the brink of eternity--uncertain whether heaven or hell awaits to receive him. I could give you a similar chapter from my own experience. When I was much younger, I had implicit faith in the bible and the unseen world. What was the effect of this belief upon me? Did it make me happy? I can never forget the moments of agony I spent on my knees, at the "throne of grace." My pillow was often wet with weeping over sins I had never committed, and fearing a depravity I could never be guilty of. Christianity in its virile form took hold of my young heart as the roots of a tree take hold of the earth in which they grow. I was as sensitive and responsive to its influence as fire is to the wind that fans it into flame. "Am I saved? How can I be sure that God has forgiven me? Where would I open my eyes if I should die tonight? Oh, God! what if I should after all be one of the reprobates--damned forever." Such was the terrible superstition that cheated me out of a thousand glorious moments, and made my youth a punishment to me. One day a member of my church came to me in great distress of mind. He behaved like one who had actually seen hell. "I am damned, I am damned," he cried. "God has forsaken me; there is no hope for me." If a wild beast had its paws in his hair, or a hound its teeth in his flesh, he could not have been more scared. If he could have only laughed at the stupid superstition, all the devils of his distorted imagination would have melted into thin air. [A] _Imitation_--III 52. [B] Quoted by Cotter Morrison, _Service of Man_--34. * * * * * "Our religion does not trouble us that way," I hear the Christians say in reply. Of course not, they no longer believe in it. They let art, music, science, the drama, business, to divert their attention from this Asiatic fetish. Rationalism has dissipated the terrors of the future, and tinted the horizon with beauty and light. But let them believe in Christianity as their fathers believed in it, let them be sincere with it, and it will make life miserable for them as it has for thousands of others. Yes, believe in Christianity as the Apostle Paul did, for example, and you must agree with him, that, "If in this life only we have a hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." And listen to the cry of despair from the lips of the Son of God: "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" The nails in his hands and feet tore his flesh, but it was the thought that he had been forsaken by God that broke his heart. Surely, if a belief in a future life could make anybody happy, it should have made the death of Jesus a symphony, instead of a tragedy. * * * * * In conclusion: Not God, nor the unseen world, but Truth is the sovereign good. There is nothing more excellent. If there be philosophies, they shall pass away; if there be theologies, they shall pass away; if there be creeds, cults, gods, they shall pass away. But Truth is _from_ everlasting _to_ everlasting. In my mind's eye, I see a wonderful building, something like the Coliseum of ancient Rome. The galleries are black with people; tier upon tier rise like waves the multitude of spectators who have come to see a great contest. A great contest, indeed! A contest in which all the world and all the centuries are interested. It is the contest--the fight to death--between Truth and Error. The door opens, and a slight, small, shy and insignificant looking thing steps into the arena. It is Truth. The vast audience bursts into hilarious and derisive laughter. Is this Truth? This shuddering thing in tattered clothes, and almost naked? And the house shakes again with mocking and hisses. The door opens again, and Error enters,--clad in cloth of gold, imposing in appearance, tall of stature, glittering with gems, sleek and huge and ponderous, causing the building to tremble with the thud of its steps. The audience is for a moment dazzled into silence, then it breaks into applause, long and deafening. "Welcome!" "Welcome!" is the greeting from the multitude. "Welcome!" shout ten thousand throats. The two contestants face each other. Error, in full armor,--backed by the sympathies of the audience, greeted by the clamorous cheering of the spectators; and Truth, scorned, scoffed at, and _hated_. "The issue is a foregone conclusion," murmurs the vast audience. "Error will trample Truth under its big feet." The battle begins. The two clinch, separate, and clinch again. Truth holds its own. The spectators are alarmed. Anxiety appears in their faces. Their voices grow faint. Is it possible? Look! See! There! Error recedes! It fears the gaze of Truth! It shuns its beauteous eyes! Hear it squeak and scream as it feels Truth's squeeze upon its wrists. Error is trying to break away from Truth's grip. It is making for the door. It is gone! The spectators are mute. Every tongue is smitten with the palsy. The people bite their lips until they bleed. They cannot explain what they have seen. "Who would have believed it?" "Is it possible?"--they exclaim. But they can not doubt what their eyes have seen. That puny and insignificant looking thing called Truth has put ancient and entrenched Error, backed by the throne, the altar, the army, the press, the people, and the gods--to rout. The pursuit of truth! Is not that worth living for? To seek the truth, to love the truth, to live the truth? Can any religion offer more? What is the remedy for the pessimism that asks, "Is life worth living?" A sound mind in a sound body. There is no better preventive of that depression of spirits whence proceed the diseases which menace life, and mar the happiness of man, than health--moral, intellectual, physical--health; individual and social health. The highest ideal of Christianity is a man of sorrows. The highest ideal of Rationalism is a man of joy! THE STORY OF MY MIND OR HOW I BECAME A RATIONALIST _Price, Fifty Cents_ # In this latest publication of the Independent Religious Society, M. M. Mangasarian describes his religious experience--how, starting as a Calvinist, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, and a pastor of the Spring Garden Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, he thought and fought his way up to RATIONALISM # The book contains a dedication to "My Children," in which the author says: "I am going to put the story in writing, that you may have it with you when I am gone, to remind you of the aims and interests for which I lived, as well as to acquaint you with the most earnest and intimate period in my career as a teacher of men." _ORDER THROUGH_ THE INDEPENDENT RELIGIOUS SOCIETY CHICAGO EARLIER PUBLICATIONS BY MR. MANGASARIAN =A New Catechism.= Fifth Edition, Revised and Enlarged, with Portrait of Author. Price $1.00 =The Truth About Jesus: Is He a Myth?= A new book of 295 pages. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.00; Paper $0.50 =Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate on the Historicity of Jesus.= 25c. =Pearls.= (New Edition.) Brave Thoughts from Brave Minds. Selected and arranged by M. M. Mangasarian. 25c. Presentation Edition, limp leather $1.00 A FEW LECTURES--10c A COPY Is the Morality of Jesus Sound? Rome-Rule in Ireland, with Postlude on Ferrer. How the Bible Was Invented. Morality Without God. Sent postpaid on receipt of price. Ask for complete list. INDEPENDENT RELIGIOUS SOCIETY CHICAGO Transcriber's Note: The following is a list of changes made to the original. The first line is the original line, the second the corrected one. other gods before me" which is metaphysical and without other gods before me," which is metaphysical and without a _raison d'etre_. The part of wisdom as well as of courage then, a _raison d'être_. The part of wisdom as well as of courage then, take an undue advantage of one's neighbors," "Truth is not take an undue advantage of one's neighbors. "Truth is not manoeuvreing can truth be shifted to a subordinate rank. manoeuvring can truth be shifted to a subordinate rank. frantic advice, and a man has to be in a panicy state of mind frantic advice, and a man has to be in a panicky state of mind because it makes each passing moment a thrill and an ecstacy. because it makes each passing moment a thrill and an ecstasy. straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth instance, to the confession of Thomas A'Kempis: "Lord, I instance, to the confession of Thomas à Kempis: "Lord, I 
10684	----	Note: Numbers enclosed in square brackets are page numbers. HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE No. 69 Editors: HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, Litt.D., LL.D., F.B.A. Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. Prof. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT BY J. B. BURY, M.A., F.B.A HON. D.LITT. OF OXFORD, DURHAM, AND DUBLIN, AND HON. LL.D. OF EDINBURGH, GLASGOW, AND ABERDEEN UNIVERSITIES; REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY AUTHOR OF �HISTORY OF THE LATTER ROMAN EMPIRE,� �HISTORY OF GREECE,� �HISTORY OF THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE,� ETC. [IV] 1913, [V] CONTENTS CHAP. I Introductory II Reason Free (Greece And Rome) III Reason in Prison (The Middle Ages) IV Prospect of Deliverance (The Renaissance and the Reformation) V Religious Toleration VI The Growth of Rationalism (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries) VII The Progress of Rationalism (Nineteenth Century) VIII The Justification of Liberty of Thought Bibliography Index [7] A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT CHAPTER I FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND THE FORCES AGAINST IT (INTRODUCTORY) IT is a common saying that thought is free. A man can never be hindered from thinking whatever he chooses so long as he conceals what he thinks. The working of his mind is limited only by the bounds of his experience and the power of his imagination. But this natural liberty of private thinking is of little value. It is unsatisfactory and even painful to the thinker himself, if he is not permitted to communicate his thoughts to others, and it is obviously of no value to his neighbours. Moreover it is extremely difficult to hide thoughts that have any power over the mind. If a man�s thinking leads him to call in question ideas and customs which regulate the behaviour of those about him, to reject beliefs which they hold, to see better ways of life than those they follow, it is almost [8] impossible for him, if he is convinced of the truth of his own reasoning, not to betray by silence, chance words, or general attitude that he is different from them and does not share their opinions. Some have preferred, like Socrates, some would prefer to-day, to face death rather than conceal their thoughts. Thus freedom of thought, in any valuable sense, includes freedom of speech. At present, in the most civilized countries, freedom of speech is taken as a matter of course and seems a perfectly simple thing. We are so accustomed to it that we look on it as a natural right. But this right has been acquired only in quite recent times, and the way to its attainment has lain through lakes of blood. It has taken centuries to persuade the most enlightened peoples that liberty to publish one�s opinions and to discuss all questions is a good and not a bad thing. Human societies (there are some brilliant exceptions) have been generally opposed to freedom of thought, or, in other words, to new ideas, and it is easy to see why. The average brain is naturally lazy and tends to take the line of least resistance. The mental world of the ordinary man consists of beliefs which he has accepted without questioning and to which he is firmly attached; he is instinctively hostile to anything which [9] would upset the established order of this familiar world. A new idea, inconsistent with some of the beliefs which he holds, means the necessity of rearranging his mind; and this process is laborious, requiring a painful expenditure of brain-energy. To him and his fellows, who form the vast majority, new ideas, and opinions which cast doubt on established beliefs and institutions, seem evil because they are disagreeable. The repugnance due to mere mental laziness is increased by a positive feeling of fear. The conservative instinct hardens into the conservative doctrine that the foundations of society are endangered by any alterations in the structure. It is only recently that men have been abandoning the belief that the welfare of a state depends on rigid stability and on the preservation of its traditions and institutions unchanged. Wherever that belief prevails, novel opinions are felt to be dangerous as well as annoying, and any one who asks inconvenient questions about the why and the wherefore of accepted principles is considered a pestilent person. The conservative instinct, and the conservative doctrine which is its consequence, are strengthened by superstition. If the social structure, including the whole body of customs and opinions, is associated intimately [10] with religious belief and is supposed to be under divine patronage, criticism of the social order savours of impiety, while criticism of the religious belief is a direct challenge to the wrath of supernatural powers. The psychological motives which produce a conservative spirit hostile to new ideas are reinforced by the active opposition of certain powerful sections of the community, such as a class, a caste, or a priesthood, whose interests are bound up with the maintenance of the established order and the ideas on which it rests. Let us suppose, for instance, that a people believes that solar eclipses are signs employed by their Deity for the special purpose of communicating useful information to them, and that a clever man discovers the true cause of eclipses. His compatriots in the first place dislike his discovery because they find it very difficult to reconcile with their other ideas; in the second place, it disturbs them, because it upsets an arrangement which they consider highly advantageous to their community; finally, it frightens them, as an offence to their Divinity. The priests, one of whose functions is to interpret the divine signs, are alarmed and enraged at a doctrine which menaces their power. In prehistoric days, these motives, operating [11] strongly, must have made change slow in communities which progressed, and hindered some communities from progressing at all. But they have continued to operate more or less throughout history, obstructing knowledge and progress. We can observe them at work to-day even in the most advanced societies, where they have no longer the power to arrest development or repress the publication of revolutionary opinions. We still meet people who consider a new idea an annoyance and probably a danger. Of those to whom socialism is repugnant, how many are there who have never examined the arguments for and against it, but turn away in disgust simply because the notion disturbs their mental universe and implies a drastic criticism on the order of things to which they are accustomed? And how many are there who would refuse to consider any proposals for altering our imperfect matrimonial institutions, because such an idea offends a mass of prejudice associated with religious sanctions? They may be right or not, but if they are, it is not their fault. They are actuated by the same motives which were a bar to progress in primitive societies. The existence of people of this mentality, reared in an atmosphere of freedom, side by side with others who are always looking out for new ideas and [12] regretting that there are not more about, enables us to realize how, when public opinion was formed by the views of such men, thought was fettered and the impediments to knowledge enormous. Although the liberty to publish one�s opinions on any subject without regard to authority or the prejudices of one�s neighbours is now a well- established principle, I imagine that only the minority of those who would be ready to fight to the death rather than surrender it could defend it on rational grounds. We are apt to take for granted that freedom of speech is a natural and inalienable birthright of man, and perhaps to think that this is a sufficient answer to all that can be said on the other side. But it is difficult to see how such a right can be established. If a man has any �natural rights,� the right to preserve his life and the right to reproduce his kind are certainly such. Yet human societies impose upon their members restrictions in the exercise of both these rights. A starving man is prohibited from taking food which belongs to somebody else. Promiscuous reproduction is restricted by various laws or customs. It is admitted that society is justified in restricting these elementary rights, because without such restrictions an ordered society could not exist. If then we [13] concede that the expression of opinion is a right of the same kind, it is impossible to contend that on this ground it can claim immunity from interference or that society acts unjustly in regulating it. But the concession is too large. For whereas in the other cases the limitations affect the conduct of every one, restrictions on freedom of opinion affect only the comparatively small number who have any opinions, revolutionary or unconventional, to express. The truth is that no valid argument can be founded on the conception of natural rights, because it involves an untenable theory of the relations between society and its members. On the other hand, those who have the responsibility of governing a society can argue that it is as incumbent on them to prohibit the circulation of pernicious opinions as to prohibit any anti-social actions. They can argue that a man may do far more harm by propagating anti-social doctrines than by stealing his neighbour�s horse or making love to his neighbour�s wife. They are responsible for the welfare of the State, and if they are convinced that an opinion is dangerous, by menacing the political, religious, or moral assumptions on which the society is based, it is their duty to protect society against it, as against any other danger. [14] The true answer to this argument for limiting freedom of thought will appear in due course. It was far from obvious. A long time was needed to arrive at the conclusion that coercion of opinion is a mistake, and only a part of the world is yet convinced. That conclusion, so far as I can judge, is the most important ever reached by men. It was the issue of a continuous struggle between authority and reason�the subject of this volume. The word authority requires some comment. If you ask somebody how he knows something, he may say, �I have it on good authority,� or, �I read it in a book,� or, �It is a matter of common knowledge,� or, �I learned it at school.� Any of these replies means that he has accepted information from others, trusting in their knowledge, without verifying their statements or thinking the matter out for himself. And the greater part of most men�s knowledge and beliefs is of this kind, taken without verification from their parents, teachers, acquaintances, books, newspapers. When an English boy learns French, he takes the conjugations and the meanings of the words on the authority of his teacher or his grammar. The fact that in a certain place, marked on the map, there is a populous city called Calcutta, is for most [15] people a fact accepted on authority. So is the existence of Napoleon or Julius Caesar. Familiar astronomical facts are known only in the same way, except by those who have studied astronomy. It is obvious that every one�s knowledge would be very limited indeed, if we were not justified in accepting facts on the authority of others. But we are justified only under one condition. The facts which we can safely accept must be capable of demonstration or verification. The examples I have given belong to this class. The boy can verify when he goes to France or is able to read a French book that the facts which he took on authority are true. I am confronted every day with evidence which proves to me that, if I took the trouble, I could verify the existence of Calcutta for myself. I cannot convince myself in this way of the existence of Napoleon, but if I have doubts about it, a simple process of reasoning shows me that there are hosts of facts which are incompatible with his non-existence. I have no doubt that the earth is some 93 millions of miles distant from the sun, because all astronomers agree that it has been demonstrated, and their agreement is only explicable on the supposition that this has been demonstrated and that, if I took the trouble to work out the calculation, I should reach the same result. [16] But all our mental furniture is not of this kind. The thoughts of the average man consist not only of facts open to verification, but also of many beliefs and opinions which he has accepted on authority and cannot verify or prove. Belief in the Trinity depends on the authority of the Church and is clearly of a different order from belief in the existence of Calcutta. We cannot go behind the authority and verify or prove it. If we accept it, we do so because we have such implicit faith in the authority that we credit its assertions though incapable of proof. The distinction may seem so obvious as to be hardly worth making. But it is important to be quite clear about it. The primitive man who had learned from his elders that there were bears in the hills and likewise evil spirits, soon verified the former statement by seeing a bear, but if he did not happen to meet an evil spirit, it did not occur to him, unless he was a prodigy, that there was a distinction between the two statements; he would rather have argued, if he argued at all, that as his tribesmen were right about the bears they were sure to be right also about the spirits. In the Middle Ages a man who believed on authority that there is a city called Constantinople and that comets are portents signifying divine wrath, would not [17] distinguish the nature of the evidence in the two cases. You may still sometimes hear arguments amounting to this: since I believe in Calcutta on authority, am I not entitled to believe in the Devil on authority? Now people at all times have been commanded or expected or invited to accept on authority alone�the authority, for instance, of public opinion, or a Church, or a sacred book�doctrines which are not proved or are not capable of proof. Most beliefs about nature and man, which were not founded on scientific observation, have served directly or indirectly religious and social interests, and hence they have been protected by force against the criticisms of persons who have the inconvenient habit of using their reason. Nobody minds if his neighbour disbelieves a demonstrable fact. If a sceptic denies that Napoleon existed, or that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, he causes amusement or ridicule. But if he denies doctrines which cannot be demonstrated, such as the existence of a personal God or the immortality of the soul, he incurs serious disapprobation and at one time he might have been put to death. Our mediaeval friend would have only been called a fool if he doubted the existence of Constantinople, but if he had questioned the significance of comets he [18] might have got into trouble. It is possible that if he had been so mad as to deny the existence of Jerusalem he would not have escaped with ridicule, for Jerusalem is mentioned in the Bible. In the Middle Ages a large field was covered by beliefs which authority claimed to impose as true, and reason was warned off the ground. But reason cannot recognize arbitrary prohibitions or barriers, without being untrue to herself. The universe of experience is her province, and as its parts are all linked together and interdependent, it is impossible for her to recognize any territory on which she may not tread, or to surrender any of her rights to an authority whose credentials she has not examined and approved. The uncompromising assertion by reason of her absolute rights throughout the whole domain of thought is termed rationalism, and the slight stigma which is still attached to the word reflects the bitterness of the struggle between reason and the forces arrayed against her. The term is limited to the field of theology, because it was in that field that the self-assertion of reason was most violently and pertinaciously opposed. In the same way free thought, the refusal of thought to be controlled by any authority but its own, has a definitely theological reference. Throughout [19] the conflict, authority has had great advantages. At any time the people who really care about reason have been a small minority, and probably will be so for a long time to come. Reason�s only weapon has been argument. Authority has employed physical and moral violence, legal coercion and social displeasure. Sometimes she has attempted to use the sword of her adversary, thereby wounding herself. Indeed the weakest point in the strategical position of authority was that her champions, being human, could not help making use of reasoning processes and the result was that they were divided among themselves. This gave reason her chance. Operating, as it were, in the enemy�s camp and professedly in the enemy�s cause, she was preparing her own victory. It may be objected that there is a legitimate domain for authority, consisting of doctrines which lie outside human experience and therefore cannot be proved or verified, but at the same time cannot be disproved. Of course, any number of propositions can be invented which cannot be disproved, and it is open to any one who possesses exuberant faith to believe them; but no one will maintain that they all deserve credence so long as their falsehood is not demonstrated. And if only some deserve credence, who, except reason, [20] is to decide which? If the reply is, Authority, we are confronted by the difficulty that many beliefs backed by authority have been finally disproved and are universally abandoned. Yet some people speak as if we were not justified in rejecting a theological doctrine unless we can prove it false. But the burden of proof does not lie upon the rejecter. I remember a conversation in which, when some disrespectful remark was made about hell, a loyal friend of that establishment said triumphantly, �But, absurd as it may seem, you cannot disprove it.� If you were told that in a certain planet revolving round Sirius there is a race of donkeys who talk the English language and spend their time in discussing eugenics, you could not disprove the statement, but would it, on that account, have any claim to be believed? Some minds would be prepared to accept it, if it were reiterated often enough, through the potent force of suggestion. This force, exercised largely by emphatic repetition (the theoretical basis, as has been observed, of the modern practice of advertising), has played a great part in establishing authoritative opinions and propagating religious creeds. Reason fortunately is able to avail herself of the same help. The following sketch is confined to Western [21] civilization. It begins with Greece and attempts to indicate the chief phases. It is the merest introduction to a vast and intricate subject, which, treated adequately, would involve not only the history of religion, of the Churches, of heresies, of persecution, but also the history of philosophy, of the natural sciences and of political theories. From the sixteenth century to the French Revolution nearly all important historical events bore in some way on the struggle for freedom of thought. It would require a lifetime to calculate, and many books to describe, all the directions and interactions of the intellectual and social forces which, since the fall of ancient civilization, have hindered and helped the emancipation of reason. All one can do, all one could do even in a much bigger volume than this, is to indicate the general course of the struggle and dwell on some particular aspects which the writer may happen to have specially studied. [21] CHAPTER II REASON FREE (GREECE AND ROME) WHEN we are asked to specify the debt which civilization owes to the Greeks, their [22] achievements in literature and art naturally occur to us first of all. But a truer answer may be that our deepest gratitude is due to them as the originators of liberty of thought and discussion. For this freedom of spirit was not only the condition of their speculations in philosophy, their progress in science, their experiments in political institutions; it was also a condition of their literary and artistic excellence. Their literature, for instance, could not have been what it is if they had been debarred from free criticism of life. But apart from what they actually accomplished, even if they had not achieved the wonderful things they did in most of the realms of human activity, their assertion of the principle of liberty would place them in the highest rank among the benefactors of the race; for it was one of the greatest steps in human progress. We do not know enough about the earliest history of the Greeks to explain how it was that they attained their free outlook upon the world and came to possess the will and courage to set no bounds to the range of their criticism and curiosity. We have to take this character as a fact. But it must be remembered that the Greeks consisted of a large number of separate peoples, who varied largely in temper, customs and traditions, [23] though they had important features common to all. Some were conservative, or backward, or unintellectual compared with others. In this chapter �the Greeks� does not mean all the Greeks, but only those who count most in the history of civilization, especially the Ionians and Athenians. Ionia in Asia Minor was the cradle of free speculation. The history of European science and European philosophy begins in Ionia. Here (in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.) the early philosophers by using their reason sought to penetrate into the origin and structure of the world. They could not of course free their minds entirely from received notions, but they began the work of destroying orthodox views and religious faiths. Xenophanes may specially be named among these pioneers of thought (though he was not the most important or the ablest), because the toleration of his teaching illustrates the freedom of the atmosphere in which these men lived. He went about from city to city, calling in question on moral grounds the popular beliefs about the gods and goddesses, and ridiculing the anthropomorphic conceptions which the Greeks had formed of their divinities. �If oxen had hands and the capacities of men, they would make gods in the shape of oxen.� This attack on received [24] theology was an attack on the veracity of the old poets, especially Homer, who was considered the highest authority on mythology. Xenophanes criticized him severely for ascribing to the gods acts which, committed by men, would be considered highly disgraceful. We do not hear that any attempt was made to restrain him from thus assailing traditional beliefs and branding Homer as immoral. We must remember that the Homeric poems were never supposed to be the word of God. It has been said that Homer was the Bible of the Greeks. The remark exactly misses the truth. The Greeks fortunately had no Bible, and this fact was both an expression and an important condition of their freedom. Homer�s poems were secular, not religious, and it may be noted that they are freer from immorality and savagery than sacred books that one could mention. Their authority was immense; but it was not binding like the authority of a sacred book, and so Homeric criticism was never hampered like Biblical criticism. In this connexion, notice may be taken of another expression and condition of freedom, the absence of sacerdotalism. The priests of the temples never became powerful castes, tyrannizing over the community in their own interests and able to silence voices raised against religious beliefs. The civil authorities [25] kept the general control of public worship in their own hands, and, if some priestly families might have considerable influence, yet as a rule the priests were virtually State servants whose voice carried no weight except concerning the technical details of ritual. To return to the early philosophers, who were mostly materialists, the record of their speculations is an interesting chapter in the history of rationalism. Two great names may be selected, Heraclitus and Democritus, because they did more perhaps than any of the others, by sheer hard thinking, to train reason to look upon the universe in new ways and to shock the unreasoned conceptions of common sense. It was startling to be taught, for the first time, by Heraclitus, that the appearance of stability and permanence which material things present to our senses is a false appearance, and that the world and everything in it are changing every instant. Democritus performed the amazing feat of working out an atomic theory of the universe, which was revived in the seventeenth century and is connected, in the history of speculation, with the most modern physical and chemical theories of matter. No fantastic tales of creation, imposed by sacred authority, hampered these powerful brains. All this philosophical speculation prepared [26] the way for the educationalists who were known as the Sophists. They begin to appear after the middle of the fifth century. They worked here and there throughout Greece, constantly travelling, training young men for public life, and teaching them to use their reason. As educators they had practical ends in view. They turned away from the problems of the physical universe to the problems of human life�morality and polities. Here they were confronted with the difficulty of distinguishing between truth and error, and the ablest of them investigated the nature of knowledge, the method of reason�logic� and the instrument of reason�speech. Whatever their particular theories might be, their general spirit was that of free inquiry and discussion. They sought to test everything by reason. The second half of the fifth century might be called the age of Illumination. It may be remarked that the knowledge of foreign countries which the Greeks had acquired had a considerable effect in promoting a sceptical attitude towards authority. When a man is acquainted only with the habits of his own country, they seem so much a matter of course that he ascribes them to nature, but when he travels abroad and finds totally different habits and standards of conduct prevailing, he begins to understand [27] the power of custom; and learns that morality and religion are matters of latitude. This discovery tends to weaken authority, and to raise disquieting reflections, as in the case of one who, brought up as a Christian, comes to realize that, if he had been born on the Ganges or the Euphrates, he would have firmly believed in entirely different dogmas. Of course these movements of intellectual freedom were, as in all ages, confined to the minority. Everywhere the masses were exceedingly superstitious. They believed that the safety of their cities depended on the good-will of their gods. If this superstitious spirit were alarmed, there was always a danger that philosophical speculations might be persecuted. And this occurred in Athens. About the middle of the fifth century Athens had not only become the most powerful State in Greece, but was also taking the highest place in literature and art. She was a full-fledged democracy. Political discussion was perfectly free. At this time she was guided by the statesman Pericles, who was personally a freethinker, or at least was in touch with all the subversive speculations of the day. He was especially intimate with the philosopher Anaxagoras who had come from Ionia to teach at Athens. In regard to the popular gods Anaxagoras was a thorough-going [28] unbeliever. The political enemies of Pericles struck at him by attacking his friend. They introduced and carried a blasphemy law, to the effect that unbelievers and those who taught theories about the celestial world might be impeached. It was easy to prove that Anaxagoras was a blasphemer who taught that the gods were abstractions and that the sun, to which the ordinary Athenian said prayers morning and evening, was a mass of flaming matter. The influence of Pericles saved him from death; he was heavily fined and left Athens for Lampsacus, where he was treated with consideration and honour. Other cases are recorded which show that anti-religious thought was liable to be persecuted. Protagoras, one of the greatest of the Sophists, published a book On the Gods, the object of which seems to have been to prove that one cannot know the gods by reason. The first words ran: �Concerning the gods, I cannot say that they exist nor yet that they do not exist. There are more reasons than one why we cannot know. There is the obscurity of the subject and there is the brevity of human life.� A charge of blasphemy was lodged against him and he fled from Athens. But there was no systematic policy of suppressing free thought. Copies of the work of Protagoras were collected and [29] burned, but the book of Anaxagoras setting forth the views for which he had been condemned was for sale on the Athenian book-stalls at a popular price. Rationalistic ideas moreover were venturing to appear on the stage, though the dramatic performances, at the feasts of the god Dionysus, were religious solemnities. The poet Euripides was saturated with modern speculation, and, while different opinions may be held as to the tendencies of some of his tragedies, he often allows his characters to express highly unorthodox views. He was prosecuted for impiety by a popular politician. We may suspect that during the last thirty years of the fifth century unorthodoxy spread considerably among the educated classes. There was a large enough section of influential rationalists to render impossible any organized repression of liberty, and the chief evil of the blasphemy law was that it could be used for personal or party reasons. Some of the prosecutions, about which we know, were certainly due to such motives, others may have been prompted by genuine bigotry and by the fear lest sceptical thought should extend beyond the highly educated and leisured class. It was a generally accepted principle among the Greeks, and afterwards among the Romans, that religion was a good and necessary thing [30] for the common people. Men who did not believe in its truth believed in its usefulness as a political institution, and as a rule philosophers did not seek to diffuse disturbing �truth� among the masses. It was the custom, much more than at the present day, for those who did not believe in the established cults to conform to them externally. Popular higher education was not an article in the programme of Greek statesmen or thinkers. And perhaps it may be argued that in the circumstances of the ancient world it would have been hardly practicable. There was, however, one illustrious Athenian, who thought differently�Socrates, the philosopher. Socrates was the greatest of the educationalists, but unlike the others he taught gratuitously, though he was a poor man. His teaching always took the form of discussion; the discussion often ended in no positive result, but had the effect of showing that some received opinion was untenable and that truth is difficult to ascertain. He had indeed certain definite views about knowledge and virtue, which are of the highest importance in the history of philosophy, but for our present purpose his significance lies in his enthusiasm for discussion and criticism. He taught those with whom he conversed�and he conversed indiscriminately [31] with all who would listen to him�to bring all popular beliefs before the bar of reason, to approach every inquiry with an open mind, and not to judge by the opinion of majorities or the dictate of authority; in short to seek for other tests of the truth of an opinion than the fact that it is held by a great many people. Among his disciples were all the young men who were to become the leading philosophers of the next generation and some who played prominent parts in Athenian history. If the Athenians had had a daily press, Socrates would have been denounced by the journalists as a dangerous person. They had a comic drama, which constantly held up to ridicule philosophers and sophists and their vain doctrines. We possess one play (the Clouds of Aristophanes) in which Socrates is pilloried as a typical representative of impious and destructive speculations. Apart from annoyances of this kind, Socrates reached old age, pursuing the task of instructing his fellow-citizens, without any evil befalling him. Then, at the age of seventy, he was prosecuted as an atheist and corrupter of youth and was put to death (399 B.C.). It is strange that if the Athenians really thought him dangerous they should have suffered him so long. There can, I think, be [32] little doubt that the motives of the accusation were political. [1] Socrates, looking at things as he did, could not be sympathetic with unlimited democracy, or approve of the principle that the will of the ignorant majority was a good guide. He was probably known to sympathize with those who wished to limit the franchise. When, after a struggle in which the constitution had been more than once overthrown, democracy emerged triumphant (403 B.C.), there was a bitter feeling against those who had not been its friends, and of these disloyal persons Socrates was chosen as a victim. If he had wished, he could easily have escaped. If he had given an undertaking to teach no more, he would almost certainly have been acquitted. As it was, of the 501 ordinary Athenians who were his judges, a very large minority voted for his acquittal. Even then, if he had adopted a different tone, he would not have been condemned to death. He rose to the great occasion and vindicated freedom of discussion in a wonderful unconventional speech. The Apology of Socrates, which was composed by his most brilliant pupil, Plato the philosopher, reproduces [33] the general tenor of his defence. It is clear that he was not able to meet satisfactorily the charge that he did not acknowledge the gods worshipped by the city, and his explanations on this point are the weak part of his speech. But he met the accusation that he corrupted the minds of the young by a splendid plea for free discussion. This is the most valuable section of the Apology; it is as impressive to-day as ever. I think the two principal points which he makes are these� (1) He maintains that the individual should at any cost refuse to be coerced by any human authority or tribunal into a course which his own mind condemns as wrong. That is, he asserts the supremacy of the individual conscience, as we should say, over human law. He represents his own life-work as a sort of religious quest; he feels convinced that in devoting himself to philosophical discussion he has done the bidding of a super-human guide; and he goes to death rather than be untrue to this personal conviction. �If you propose to acquit me,� he says, �on condition that I abandon my search for truth, I will say: I thank you, O Athenians, but I will obey God, who, as I believe, set me this task, rather than you, and so long as I have breath and strength I will never [34] cease from my occupation with philosophy. I will continue the practice of accosting whomever I meet and saying to him, �Are you not ashamed of setting your heart on wealth and honours while you have no care for wisdom and truth and making your soul better?� I know not what death is�it may be a good thing, and I am not afraid of it. But I do know that it is a bad thing to desert one�s post and I prefer what may be good to what I know to be bad.� (2) He insists on the public value of free discussion. �In me you have a stimulating critic, persistently urging you with persuasion and reproaches, persistently testing your opinions and trying to show you that you are really ignorant of what you suppose you know. Daily discussion of the matters about which you hear me conversing is the highest good for man. Life that is not tested by such discussion is not worth living.� Thus in what we may call the earliest justification of liberty of thought we have two significant claims affirmed: the indefeasible right of the conscience of the individual �a claim on which later struggles for liberty were to turn; and the social importance of discussion and criticism. The former claim is not based on argument but on intuition; it rests in fact on the assumption [35] of some sort of superhuman moral principle, and to those who, not having the same personal experience as Socrates, reject this assumption, his pleading does not carry weight. The second claim, after the experience of more than 2,000 years, can be formulated more comprehensively now with bearings of which he did not dream. The circumstances of the trial of Socrates illustrate both the tolerance and the intolerance which prevailed at Athens. His long immunity, the fact that he was at last indicted from political motives and perhaps personal also, the large minority in his favour, all show that thought was normally free, and that the mass of intolerance which existed was only fitfully invoked, and perhaps most often to serve other purposes. I may mention the case of the philosopher Aristotle, who some seventy years later left Athens because he was menaced by a prosecution for blasphemy, the charge being a pretext for attacking one who belonged to a certain political party. The persecution of opinion was never organized. It may seem curious that to find the persecuting spirit in Greece we have to turn to the philosophers. Plato, the most brilliant disciple of Socrates, constructed in his later years an ideal State. In this State he instituted [36] a religion considerably different from the current religion, and proposed to compel all the citizens to believe in his gods on pain of death or imprisonment. All freedom of discussion was excluded under the cast-iron system which he conceived. But the point of interest in his attitude is that he did not care much whether a religion was true, but only whether it was morally useful; he was prepared to promote morality by edifying fables; and he condemned the popular mythology not because it was false, but because it did not make for righteousness. The outcome of the large freedom permitted at Athens was a series of philosophies which had a common source in the conversations of Socrates. Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Sceptics�it may be maintained that the efforts of thought represented by these names have had a deeper influence on the progress of man than any other continuous intellectual movement, at least until the rise of modern science in a new epoch of liberty. The doctrines of the Epicureans, Stoics, and Sceptics all aimed at securing peace and guidance for the individual soul. They were widely propagated throughout the Greek world from the third century B.C., and we may say that from this time onward most [37] well-educated Greeks were more or less rationalists. The teaching of Epicurus had a distinct anti-religious tendency. He considered fear to be the fundamental motive of religion, and to free men�s minds from this fear was a principal object of his teaching. He was a Materialist, explaining the world by the atomic theory of Democritus and denying any divine government of the universe. [2] He did indeed hold the existence of gods, but, so far as men are concerned, his gods are as if they were not�living in some remote abode and enjoying a �sacred and everlasting calm.� They just served as an example of the realization of the ideal Epicurean life. There was something in this philosophy which had the power to inspire a poet of singular genius to expound it in verse. The Roman Lucretius (first century B.C.) regarded Epicurus as the great deliverer of the human race and determined to proclaim the glad tidings of his philosophy in a poem On the Nature of the World. [3] With all the fervour [38] of a religious enthusiast he denounces religion, sounding every note of defiance, loathing, and contempt, and branding in burning words the crimes to which it had urged man on. He rides forth as a leader of the hosts of atheism against the walls of heaven. He explains the scientific arguments as if they were the radiant revelation of a new world; and the rapture of his enthusiasm is a strange accompaniment of a doctrine which aimed at perfect calm. Although the Greek thinkers had done all the work and the Latin poem is a hymn of triumph over prostrate deities, yet in the literature of free thought it must always hold an eminent place by the sincerity of its audacious, defiant spirit. In the history of rationalism its interest would be greater if it had exploded in the midst of an orthodox community. But the educated Romans in the days of Lucretius were sceptical in religious matters, some of them were Epicureans, and we may suspect that not many of those who read it were shocked or influenced by the audacities of the champion of irreligion. The Stoic philosophy made notable contributions to the cause of liberty and could hardly have flourished in an atmosphere where discussion was not free. It asserted the rights of individuals against public [39] authority. Socrates had seen that laws may be unjust and that peoples may go wrong, but he had found no principle for the guidance of society. The Stoics discovered it in the law of nature, prior and superior to all the customs and written laws of peoples, and this doctrine, spreading outside Stoic circles, caught hold of the Roman world and affected Roman legislation. These philosophies have carried us from Greece to Rome. In the later Roman Republic and the early Empire, no restrictions were imposed on opinion, and these philosophies, which made the individual the first consideration, spread widely. Most of the leading men were unbelievers in the official religion of the State, but they considered it valuable for the purpose of keeping the uneducated populace in order. A Greek historian expresses high approval of the Roman policy of cultivating superstition for the benefit of the masses. This was the attitude of Cicero, and the view that a false religion is indispensable as a social machine was general among ancient unbelievers. It is common, in one form or another, to-day; at least, religions are constantly defended on the ground not of truth but of utility. This defence belongs to the statecraft of Machiavelli, who taught that religion is necessary for government, [40] and that it may be the duty of a ruler to support a religion which he believes to be false. A word must be said of Lucian (second century A.D.), the last Greek man of letters whose writings appeal to everybody. He attacked the popular mythology with open ridicule. It is impossible to say whether his satires had any effect at the time beyond affording enjoyment to educated infidels who read them. Zeus in a Tragedy Part is one of the most effective. The situation which Lucian imagined here would be paralleled if a modern writer were blasphemously to represent the Persons of the Trinity with some eminent angels and saints discussing in a celestial smoke-room the alarming growth of unbelief in England and then by means of a telephonic apparatus overhearing a dispute between a freethinker and a parson on a public platform in London. The absurdities of anthropomorphism have never been the subject of more brilliant jesting than in Lucian�s satires. The general rule of Roman policy was to tolerate throughout the Empire all religions and all opinions. Blasphemy was not punished. The principle was expressed in the maxim of the Emperor Tiberius: �If the gods are insulted, let them see to it themselves.� An exception to the rule of tolerance [41] was made in the case of the Christian sect, and the treatment of this Oriental religion may be said to have inaugurated religious persecution in Europe. It is a matter of interest to understand why Emperors who were able, humane, and not in the least fanatical, adopted this exceptional policy. For a long time the Christians were only known to those Romans who happened to hear of them, as a sect of the Jews. The Jewish was the one religion which, on account of its exclusiveness and intolerance, was regarded by the tolerant pagans with disfavour and suspicion. But though it sometimes came into collision with the Roman authorities and some ill-advised attacks upon it were made, it was the constant policy of the Emperors to let it alone and to protect the Jews against the hatred which their own fanaticism aroused. But while the Jewish religion was endured so long as it was confined to those who were born into it, the prospect of its dissemination raised a new question. Grave misgivings might arise in the mind of a ruler at seeing a creed spreading which was aggressively hostile to all the other creeds of the world�creeds which lived together in amity�and had earned for its adherents the reputation of being the enemies of the human race. Might not its expansion [42] beyond the Israelites involve ultimately a danger to the Empire? For its spirit was incompatible with the traditions and basis of Roman society. The Emperor Domitian seems to have seen the question in this light, and he took severe measures to hinder the proselytizing of Roman citizens. Some of those whom he struck may have been Christians, but if he was aware of the distinction, there was from his point of view no difference. Christianity resembled Judaism, from which it sprang, in intolerance and in hostility towards Roman society, but it differed by the fact that it made many proselytes while Judaism made few. Under Trajan we find that the principle has been laid down that to be a Christian is an offence punishable by death. Henceforward Christianity remained an illegal religion. But in practice the law was not applied rigorously or logically. The Emperors desired, if possible, to extirpate Christianity without shedding blood. Trajan laid down that Christians were not to be sought out, that no anonymous charges were to be noticed, and that an informer who failed to make good his charge should be liable to be punished under the laws against calumny. Christians themselves recognized that this edict practically protected them. There were [43] some executions in the second century�not many that are well attested�and Christians courted the pain and glory of martyrdom. There is evidence to show that when they were arrested their escape was often connived at. In general, the persecution of the Christians was rather provoked by the populace than desired by the authorities. The populace felt a horror of this mysterious Oriental sect which openly hated all the gods and prayed for the destruction of the world. When floods, famines, and especially fires occurred they were apt to be attributed to the black magic of the Christians. When any one was accused of Christianity, he was required, as a means of testing the truth of the charge, to offer incense to the gods or to the statues of deified Emperors. His compliance at once exonerated him. The objection of the Christians�they and the Jews were the only objectors�to the worship of the Emperors was, in the eyes of the Romans, one of the most sinister signs that their religion was dangerous. The purpose of this worship was to symbolize the unity and solidarity of an Empire which embraced so many peoples of different beliefs and different gods; its intention was political, to promote union and loyalty; and it is not surprising that those who denounced it should [44] be suspected of a disloyal spirit. But it must be noted that there was no necessity for any citizen to take part in this worship. No conformity was required from any inhabitants of the Empire who were not serving the State as soldiers or civil functionaries. Thus the effect was to debar Christians from military and official careers. The Apologies for Christianity which appeared at this period (second century) might have helped, if the Emperors (to whom some of them were addressed) had read them, to confirm the view that it was a political danger. It would have been easy to read between the lines that, if the Christians ever got the upper hand, they would not spare the cults of the State. The contemporary work of Tatian (A Discourse to the Greeks) reveals what the Apologists more or less sought to disguise, invincible hatred towards the civilization in which they lived. Any reader of the Christian literature of the time could not fail to see that in a State where Christians had the power there would be no tolerance of other religious practices. [4] If the Emperors made an exception to their tolerant policy in the case of Christianity, their purpose was to safeguard tolerance. [45] In the third century the religion, though still forbidden, was quite openly tolerated; the Church organized itself without concealment; ecclesiastical councils assembled without interference. There were some brief and local attempts at repression, there was only one grave persecution (begun by Decius, A.D. 250, and continued by Valerian). In fact, throughout this century, there were not many victims, though afterwards the Christians invented a whole mythology of martyrdoms. Many cruelties were imputed to Emperors under whom we know that the Church enjoyed perfect peace. A long period of civil confusion, in which the Empire seemed to be tottering to its fall, had been terminated by the Emperor Diocletian, who, by his radical administrative reforms, helped to preserve the Roman power in its integrity for another century. He desired to support his work of political consolidation by reviving the Roman spirit, and he attempted to infuse new life into the official religion. To this end he determined to suppress the growing influence of the Christians, who, though a minority, were very numerous, and he organized a persecution. It was long, cruel and bloody; it was the most whole-hearted, general and systematic effort to crush the forbidden faith. It was a [46] failure, the Christians were now too numerous to be crushed. After the abdication of Diocletian, the Emperors who reigned in different parts of the realm did not agree as to the expediency of his policy, and the persecution ended by edicts of toleration (A.D. 311 and 313). These documents have an interest for the history of religious liberty. The first, issued in the eastern provinces, ran as follows:� �We were particularly desirous of reclaiming into the way of reason and nature the deluded Christians, who had renounced the religion and ceremonies instituted by their fathers and, presumptuously despising the practice of antiquity, had invented extravagant laws and opinions according to the dictates of their fancy, and had collected a various society from the different provinces of our Empire. The edicts which we have published to enforce the worship of the gods, having exposed many of the Christians to danger and distress, many having suffered death and many more, who still persist in their impious folly, being left destitute of any public exercise of religion, we are disposed to extend to those unhappy men the effects of our wonted clemency. We permit them, therefore, freely to profess their private opinions, and to assemble in their conventicles [47] without fear or molestation, provided always that they preserve a due respect to the established laws and government.� [5] The second, of which Constantine was the author, known as the Edict of Milan, was to a similar effect, and based toleration on the Emperor�s care for the peace and happiness of his subjects and on the hope of appeasing the Deity whose seat is in heaven. The relations between the Roman government and the Christians raised the general question of persecution and freedom of conscience. A State, with an official religion, but perfectly tolerant of all creeds and cults, finds that a society had arisen in its midst which is uncompromisingly hostile to all creeds but its own and which, if it had the power, would suppress all but its own. The government, in self-defence, decides to check the dissemination of these subversive ideas and makes the profession of that creed a crime, not on account of its particular tenets, but on account of the social consequences of those tenets. The members of the society cannot without violating their consciences and incurring damnation abandon their exclusive doctrine. The principle of freedom of conscience is asserted as superior to all obligations to the State, and the State, confronted [48] by this new claim, is unable to admit it. Persecution is the result. Even from the standpoint of an orthodox and loyal pagan the persecution of the Christians is indefensible, because blood was shed uselessly. In other words, it was a great mistake because it was unsuccessful. For persecution is a choice between two evils. The alternatives are violence (which no reasonable defender of persecution would deny to be an evil in itself) and the spread of dangerous opinions. The first is chosen simply to avoid the second, on the ground that the second is the greater evil. But if the persecution is not so devised and carried out as to accomplish its end, then you have two evils instead of one, and nothing can justify this. From their point of view, the Emperors had good reasons for regarding Christianity as dangerous and anti-social, but they should either have let it alone or taken systematic measures to destroy it. If at an early stage they had established a drastic and systematic inquisition, they might possibly have exterminated it. This at least would have been statesmanlike. But they had no conception of extreme measures, and they did not understand �they had no experience to guide them �the sort of problem they had to deal with. They hoped to succeed by intimidation. [49] Their attempts at suppression were vacillating, fitful, and ridiculously ineffectual. The later persecutions (of A.D. 250 and 303) had no prospect of success. It is particularly to be observed that no effort was made to suppress Christian literature. The higher problem whether persecution, even if it attains the desired end, is justifiable, was not considered. The struggle hinged on antagonism between the conscience of the individual and the authority and supposed interests of the State. It was the question which had been raised by Socrates, raised now on a wider platform in a more pressing and formidable shape: what is to happen when obedience to the law is inconsistent with obedience to an invisible master? Is it incumbent on the State to respect the conscience of the individual at all costs, or within what limits? The Christians did not attempt a solution, the general problem did not interest them. They claimed the right of freedom exclusively for themselves from a non-Christian government; and it is hardly going too far to suspect that they would have applauded the government if it had suppressed the Gnostic sects whom they hated and calumniated. In any case, when a Christian State was established, they would completely forget the principle which they [50] had invoked. The martyrs died for conscience, but not for liberty. To-day the greatest of the Churches demands freedom of conscience in the modern States which she does not control, but refuses to admit that, where she had the power, it would be incumbent on her to concede it. If we review the history of classical antiquity as a whole, we may almost say that freedom of thought was like the air men breathed. It was taken for granted and nobody thought about it. If seven or eight thinkers at Athens were penalized for heterodoxy, in some and perhaps in most of these cases heterodoxy was only a pretext. They do not invalidate the general facts that the advance of knowledge was not impeded by prejudice, or science retarded by the weight of unscientific authority. The educated Greeks were tolerant because they were friends of reason and did not set up any authority to overrule reason. Opinions were not imposed except by argument; you were not expected to receive some �kingdom of heaven� like a little child, or to prostrate your intellect before an authority claiming to be infallible. But this liberty was not the result of a conscious policy or deliberate conviction, and therefore it was precarious. The problems [51] of freedom of thought, religious liberty, toleration, had not been forced upon society and were never seriously considered. When Christianity confronted the Roman government, no one saw that in the treatment of a small, obscure, and, to pagan thinkers, uninteresting or repugnant sect, a principle of the deepest social importance was involved. A long experience of the theory and practice of persecution was required to base securely the theory of freedom of thought. The lurid policy of coercion which the Christian Church adopted, and its consequences, would at last compel reason to wrestle with the problem and discover the justification of intellectual liberty. The spirit of the Greeks and Romans, alive in their works, would, after a long period of obscuration, again enlighten the world and aid in re-establishing the reign of reason, which they had carelessly enjoyed without assuring its foundations. [1] This has been shown very clearly by Professor Jackson in the article on �Socrates� in the Encyclopoedia Britannica, last edition. [2] He stated the theological difficulty as to the origin of evil in this form: God either wishes to abolish evil and cannot, or can and will not, or neither can nor will, or both can and will. The first three are unthinkable, if he is a God worthy of the name; therefore the last alternative must be true. Why then does evil exist? The inference is that there is no God, in the sense of a governor of the world. [3] An admirable appreciation of the poem will be found in R. V. Tyrrell�s Lectures on Latin Poetry. [4] For the evidence of the Apologists see A. Bouché-Leclercq, Religious Intolerance and Politics (French, 1911) �a valuable review of the whole subject. [5] This is Gibbon�s translation. CHAPTER III REASON IN PRISON (THE MIDDLE AGES) ABOUT ten years after the Edict of Toleration, Constantine the Great adopted Christianity. This momentous decision inaugurated [52] a millennium in which reason was enchained, thought was enslaved, and knowledge made no progress. During the two centuries in which they had been a forbidden sect the Christians had claimed toleration on the ground that religious belief is voluntary and not a thing which can be enforced. When their faith became the predominant creed and had the power of the State behind it, they abandoned this view. They embarked on the hopeful enterprise of bringing about a complete uniformity in men�s opinions on the mysteries of the universe, and began a more or less definite policy of coercing thought. This policy was adopted by Emperors and Governments partly on political grounds; religious divisions, bitter as they were, seemed dangerous to the unity of the State. But the fundamental principle lay in the doctrine that salvation is to be found exclusively in the Christian Church. The profound conviction that those who did not believe in its doctrines would be damned eternally, and that God punishes theological error as if it were the most heinous of crimes, led naturally to persecution. It was a duty to impose on men the only true doctrine, seeing that their own eternal interests were at stake, and to hinder errors from spreading. Heretics were more [53] than ordinary criminals and the pains that man could inflict on them were as nothing to the tortures awaiting them in hell. To rid the earth of men who, however virtuous, were, through their religious errors, enemies of the Almighty, was a plain duty. Their virtues were no excuse. We must remember that, according to the humane doctrine of the Christians, pagan, that is, merely human, virtues were vices, and infants who died unbaptized passed the rest of time in creeping on the floor of hell. The intolerance arising from such views could not but differ in kind and intensity from anything that the world had yet witnessed. Besides the logic of its doctrines, the character of its Sacred Book must also be held partly accountable for the intolerant principles of the Christian Church. It was unfortunate that the early Christians had included in their Scripture the Jewish writings which reflect the ideas of a low stage of civilization and are full of savagery. It would be difficult to say how much harm has been done, in corrupting the morals of men, by the precepts and examples of inhumanity, violence, and bigotry which the reverent reader of the Old Testament, implicitly believing in its inspiration, is bound to approve. It furnished an armoury for the theory of [54] persecution. The truth is that Sacred Books are an obstacle to moral and intellectual progress, because they consecrate the ideas of a given epoch, and its customs, as divinely appointed. Christianity, by adopting books of a long past age, placed in the path of human development a particularly nasty stumbling-block. It may occur to one to wonder how history might have been altered �altered it surely would have been�if the Christians had cut Jehovah out of their programme and, content with the New Testament, had rejected the inspiration of the Old. Under Constantine the Great and his successors, edict after edict fulminated against the worship of the old pagan gods and against heretical Christian sects. Julian the Apostate, who in his brief reign (A.D. 361�3) sought to revive the old order of things, proclaimed universal toleration, but he placed Christians at a disadvantage by forbidding them to teach in schools. This was only a momentary check. Paganism was finally shattered by the severe laws of Theodosius I (end of fourth century). It lingered on here and there for more than another century, especially at Rome and Athens, but had little importance. The Christians were more concerned in striving among themselves than in [55] crushing the prostrate spirit of antiquity. The execution of the heretic Priscillian in Spain (fourth century) inaugurated the punishment of heresy by death. It is interesting to see a non-Christian of this age teaching the Christian sects that they should suffer one another. Themistius in an address to the Emperor Valens urged him to repeal his edicts against the Christians with whom he did not agree, and expounded a theory of toleration. �The religious beliefs of individuals are a field in which the authority of a government cannot be effective; compliance can only lead to hypocritical professions. Every faith should be allowed; the civil government should govern orthodox and heterodox to the common good. God himself plainly shows that he wishes various forms of worship; there are many roads by which one can reach him.� No father of the Church has been more esteemed or enjoyed higher authority than St. Augustine (died A.D. 410). He formulated the principle of persecution for the guidance of future generations, basing it on the firm foundation of Scripture�on words used by Jesus Christ in one of his parables, �Compel them to come in.� Till the end of the twelfth century the Church worked hard to suppress heterodoxies. There was much [56] persecution, but it was not systematic. There is reason to think that in the pursuit of heresy the Church was mainly guided by considerations of its temporal interest, and was roused to severe action only when the spread of false doctrine threatened to reduce its revenues or seemed a menace to society. At the end of the twelfth century Innocent III became Pope and under him the Church of Western Europe reached the height of its power. He and his immediate successors are responsible for imagining and beginning an organized movement to sweep heretics out of Christendom. Languedoc in Southwestern France was largely populated by heretics, whose opinions were considered particularly offensive, known as the Albigeois. They were the subjects of the Count of Toulouse, and were an industrious and respectable people. But the Church got far too little money out of this anti- clerical population, and Innocent called upon the Count to extirpate heresy from his dominion. As he would not obey, the Pope announced a Crusade against the Albigeois, and offered to all who would bear a hand the usual rewards granted to Crusaders, including absolution from all their sins. A series of sanguinary wars followed in which the Englishman, Simon de Montfort, took part. There were [57] wholesale burnings and hangings of men, women and children. The resistance of the people was broken down, though the heresy was not eradicated, and the struggle ended in 1229 with the complete humiliation of the Count of Toulouse. The important point of the episode is this: the Church introduced into the public law of Europe the new principle that a sovran held his crown on the condition that he should extirpate heresy. If he hesitated to persecute at the command of the Pope, he must be coerced; his lands were forfeited; and his dominions were thrown open to be seized by any one whom the Church could induce to attack him. The Popes thus established a theocratic system in which all other interests were to be subordinated to the grand duty of maintaining the purity of the Faith. But in order to root out heresy it was necessary to discover it in its most secret retreats. The Albigeois had been crushed, but the poison of their doctrine was not yet destroyed. The organized system of searching out heretics known as the Inquisition was founded by Pope Gregory IX about A.D. 1233, and fully established by a Bull of Innocent IV (A.D. 1252) which regulated the machinery of persecution �as an integral part of the social edifice in every city and every [58] State.� This powerful engine for the suppression of the freedom of men�s religious opinions is unique in history. The bishops were not equal to the new talk undertaken by the Church, and in every ecclesiastical province suitable monks were selected and to them was delegated the authority of the Pope for discovering heretics. These inquisitors had unlimited authority, they were subject to no supervision and responsible to no man. It would not have been easy to establish this system but for the fact that contemporary secular rulers had inaugurated independently a merciless legislation against heresy. The Emperor Frederick II, who was himself undoubtedly a freethinker, made laws for his extensive dominions in Italy and Germany (between 1220 and 1235), enacting that all heretics should be outlawed, that those who did not recant should be burned, those who recanted should be imprisoned, but if they relapsed should be executed; that their property should be confiscated, their houses destroyed, and their children, to the second generation, ineligible to positions of emolument unless they had betrayed their father or some other heretic. Frederick�s legislation consecrated the stake as the proper punishment for heresy. This [59] cruel form of death for that crime seems to have been first inflicted on heretics by a French king (1017). We must remember that in the Middle Ages, and much later, crimes of all kinds were punished with the utmost cruelty. In England in the reign of Henry VIII there is a case of prisoners being boiled to death. Heresy was the foulest of all crimes; and to prevail against it was to prevail against the legions of hell. The cruel enactments against heretics were strongly supported by the public opinion of the masses. When the Inquisition was fully developed it covered Western Christendom with a net from the meshes of which it was difficult for a heretic to escape. The inquisitors in the various kingdoms co-operated, and communicated information; there was �a chain of tribunals throughout continental Europe.� England stood outside the system, but from the age of Henry IV and Henry V the government repressed heresy by the stake under a special statute (A.D. 1400; repealed 1533; revived under Mary; finally repealed in 1676). In its task of imposing unity of belief the Inquisition was most successful in Spain. Here towards the end of the fifteenth century a system was instituted which had peculiarities of its own and was very jealous of [60] Roman interference. One of the achievements of the Spanish Inquisition (which was not abolished till the nineteenth century) was to expel the Moriscos or converted Moors, who retained many of their old Mohammedan opinions and customs. It is also said to have eradicated Judaism and to have preserved the country from the zeal of Protestant missionaries. But it cannot be proved that it deserves the credit of having protected Spain against Protestantism, for it is quite possible that if the seeds of Protestant opinion had been sown they would, in any case, have fallen dead on an uncongenial soil. Freedom of thought however was entirely suppressed. One of the most efficacious means for hunting down heresy was the �Edict of Faith,� which enlisted the people in the service of the Inquisition and required every man to be an informer. From time to time a certain district was visited and an edict issued commanding those who knew anything of any heresy to come forward and reveal it, under fearful penalties temporal and spiritual. In consequence, no one was free from the suspicion of his neighbours or even of his own family. �No more ingenious device has been invented to subjugate a whole population, to paralyze its intellect, and to reduce it [61] to blind obedience. It elevated delation to the rank of high religious duty.� The process employed in the trials of those accused of heresy in Spain rejected every reasonable means for the ascertainment of truth. The prisoner was assumed to be guilty, the burden of proving his innocence rested on him; his judge was virtually his prosecutor. All witnesses against him, however infamous, were admitted. The rules for allowing witnesses for the prosecution were lax; those for rejecting witnesses for the defence were rigid. Jews, Moriscos, and servants could give evidence against the prisoner but not for him, and the same rule applied to kinsmen to the fourth degree. The principle on which the Inquisition proceeded was that better a hundred innocent should suffer than one guilty person escape. Indulgences were granted to any one who contributed wood to the pile. But the tribunal of the Inquisition did not itself condemn to the stake, for the Church must not be guilty of the shedding of blood. The ecclesiastical judge pronounced the prisoner to be a heretic of whose conversion there was no hope, and handed him over (�relaxed� him was the official term) to the secular authority, asking and charging the magistrate �to treat him benignantly and mercifully.� But this [62] formal plea for mercy could not be entertained by the civil power; it had no choice but to inflict death; if it did otherwise, it was a promoter of heresy. All princes and officials, according to the Canon Law, must punish duly and promptly heretics handed over to them by the Inquisition, under pain of excommunication. It is to be noted that the number of deaths at the stake has been much over-estimated by popular imagination; but the sum of suffering caused by the methods of the system and the punishments that fell short of death can hardly be exaggerated. The legal processes employed by the Church in these persecutions exercised a corrupting influence on the criminal jurisprudence of the Continent. Lea, the historian of the Inquisition, observes: �Of all the curses which the Inquisition brought in its train, this perhaps was the greatest�that, until the closing years of the eighteenth century, throughout the greater part of Europe, the inquisitorial process, as developed for the destruction of heresy, became the customary method of dealing with all who were under any accusation.� The Inquisitors who, as Gibbon says, �defended nonsense by cruelties,� are often regarded as monsters. It may be said for them and for the kings who did their will that [63] they were not a bit worse than the priests and monarchs of primitive ages who sacrificed human beings to their deities. The Greek king, Agamemnon, who immolated his daughter Iphigenia to obtain favourable winds from the gods, was perhaps a most affectionate father, and the seer who advised him to do so may have been a man of high integrity. They acted according to their beliefs. And so in the Middle Ages and afterwards men of kindly temper and the purest zeal for morality were absolutely devoid of mercy where heresy was suspected. Hatred of heresy was a sort of infectious germ, generated by the doctrine of exclusive salvation. It has been observed that this dogma also injured the sense of truth. As man�s eternal fate was at stake, it seemed plainly legitimate or rather imperative to use any means to enforce the true belief�even falsehood and imposture. There was no scruple about the invention of miracles or any fictions that were edifying. A disinterested appreciation of truth will not begin to prevail till the seventeenth century. While this principle, with the associated doctrines of sin, hell, and the last judgment, led to such consequences, there were other doctrines and implications in Christianity which, forming a solid rampart against the [64] advance of knowledge, blocked the paths of science in the Middle Ages, and obstructed its progress till the latter half of the nineteenth century. In every important field of scientific research, the ground was occupied by false views which the Church declared to be true on the infallible authority of the Bible. The Jewish account of Creation and the Fall of Man, inextricably bound up with the Christian theory of Redemption, excluded from free inquiry geology, zoology, and anthropology. The literal interpretation of the Bible involved the truth that the sun revolves round the earth. The Church condemned the theory of the antipodes. One of the charges against Servetus (who was burned in the sixteenth century; see below, p. 79) was that he believed the statement of a Greek geographer that Judea is a wretched barren country in spite of the fact that the Bible describes it as a land flowing with milk and honey. The Greek physician Hippocrates had based the study of medicine and disease on experience and methodical research. In the Middle Ages men relapsed to the primitive notions of a barbarous age. Bodily ailments were ascribed to occult agencies�the malice of the Devil or the wrath of God. St. Augustine said that the diseases of Christians were caused by demons, [65] and Luther in the same way attributed them to Satan. It was only logical that supernatural remedies should be sought to counteract the effects of supernatural causes. There was an immense traffic in relics with miraculous virtues, and this had the advantage of bringing in a large revenue to the Church. Physicians were often exposed to suspicions of sorcery and unbelief. Anatomy was forbidden, partly perhaps on account of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. The opposition of ecclesiastics to inoculation in the eighteenth century was a survival of the mediaeval view of disease. Chemistry (alchemy) was considered a diabolical art and in 1317 was condemned by the Pope. The long imprisonment of Roger Bacon (thirteenth century) who, while he professed zeal for orthodoxy, had an inconvenient instinct for scientific research, illustrates the mediaeval distrust of science. It is possible that the knowledge of nature would have progressed little, even if this distrust of science on theological grounds had not prevailed. For Greek science had ceased to advance five hundred years before Christianity became powerful. After about 200 B.C. no important discoveries were made. The explanation of this decay is not easy, but we may be sure that it is to be sought in the [66] social conditions of the Greek and Roman world. And we may suspect that the social conditions of the Middle Ages would have proved unfavourable to the scientific spirit� the disinterested quest of facts�even if the controlling beliefs had not been hostile. We may suspect that the rebirth of science would in any case have been postponed till new social conditions, which began to appear in the thirteenth century (see next Chapter), had reached a certain maturity. Theological prejudice may have injured knowledge principally by its survival after the Middle Ages had passed away. In other words, the harm done by Christian doctrines, in this respect, may lie less in the obscurantism of the dark interval between ancient and modern civilization, than in the obstructions which they offered when science had revived in spite of them and could no longer be crushed. The firm belief in witchcraft, magic, and demons was inherited by the Middle Ages from antiquity, but it became far more lurid and made the world terrible. Men believed that they were surrounded by fiends watching for every opportunity to harm them, that pestilences, storms, eclipses, and famines were the work of the Devil; but they believed as firmly that ecclesiastical rites were capable of coping with these enemies. Some of the [67] early Christian Emperors legislated against magic, but till the fourteenth century there was no systematic attempt to root out witchcraft. The fearful epidemic, known as the Black Death, which devastated Europe in that century, seems to have aggravated the haunting terror of the invisible world of demons. Trials for witchcraft multiplied, and for three hundred years the discovery of witchcraft and the destruction of those who were accused of practising it, chiefly women, was a standing feature of European civilization. Both the theory and the persecution were supported by Holy Scripture. �Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live� was the clear injunction of the highest authority. Pope Innocent VIII issued a Bull on the matter (1484) in which he asserted that plagues and storms are the work of witches, and the ablest minds believed in the reality of their devilish powers. No story is more painful than the persecution of witches, and nowhere was it more atrocious than in England and Scotland. I mention it because it was the direct result of theological doctrines, and because, as we shall see, it was rationalism which brought the long chapter of horrors to an end. In the period, then, in which the Church exercised its greatest influence, reason was [68] enchained in the prison which Christianity had built around the human mind. It was not indeed inactive, but its activity took the form of heresy; or, to pursue the metaphor, those who broke chains were unable for the most part to scale the walls of the prison; their freedom extended only so far as to arrive at beliefs, which, like orthodoxy itself, were based on Christian mythology. There were some exceptions to the rule. At the end of the twelfth century a stimulus from another world began to make itself felt. The philosophy of Aristotle became known to learned men in Western Christendom; their teachers were Jews and Mohammedans. Among the Mohammedans there was a certain amount of free thought, provoked by their knowledge of ancient Greek speculation. The works of the freethinker Averroes (twelfth century) which were based on Aristotle�s philosophy, propagated a small wave of rationalism in Christian countries. Averroes held the eternity of matter and denied the immortality of the soul; his general view may be described as pantheism. But he sought to avoid difficulties with the orthodox authorities of Islam by laying down the doctrine of double truth, that is the coexistence of two independent and contradictory truths, the one philosophical, and the other religious. This [69] did not save him from being banished from the court of the Spanish caliph. In the University of Paris his teaching produced a school of freethinkers who held that the Creation, the resurrection of the body, and other essential dogmas, might be true from the standpoint of religion but are false from the standpoint of reason. To a plain mind this seems much as if one said that the doctrine of immortality is true on Sundays but not on week-days, or that the Apostles� Creed is false in the drawing-room and true in the kitchen. This dangerous movement was crushed, and the saving principle of double truth condemned, by Pope John XXI. The spread of Averroistic and similar speculations called forth the Theology of Thomas, of Aquino in South Italy (died 1274), a most subtle thinker, whose mind had a natural turn for scepticism. He enlisted Aristotle, hitherto the guide of infidelity, on the side of orthodoxy, and constructed an ingenious Christian philosophy which is still authoritative in the Roman Church. But Aristotle and reason are dangerous allies for faith, and the treatise of Thomas is perhaps more calculated to unsettle a believing mind by the doubts which it powerfully states than to quiet the scruples of a doubter by its solutions. There must always have been some private [70] and underground unbelief here and there, which did not lead to any serious consequences. The blasphemous statement that the world had been deceived by three impostors, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, was current in the thirteenth century. It was attributed to the freethinking Emperor Frederick II (died 1250), who has been described as �the first modern man.� The same idea, in a milder form, was expressed in the story of the Three Rings, which is at least as old. A Mohammedan ruler, desiring to extort money from a rich Jew, summoned him to his court and laid a snare for him. �My friend,� he said, �I have often heard it reported that thou art a very wise man. Tell me therefore which of the three religions, that of the Jews, that of the Mohammedans, and that of the Christians, thou believest to be the truest.� The Jew saw that a trap was laid for him and answered as follows: �My lord, there was once a rich man who among his treasures had a ring of such great value that he wished to leave it as a perpetual heirloom to his successors. So he made a will that whichever of his sons should be found in possession of this ring after his death should be considered his heir. The son to whom he gave the ring acted in the same way as his father, and so the ring passed from hand to [71] hand. At last it came into the possession of a man who had three sons whom he loved equally. Unable to make up his mind to which of them he should leave the ring, he promised it to each of them privately, and then in order to satisfy them all caused a goldsmith to make two other rings so closely resembling the true ring that he was unable to distinguish them himself. On his death-bed he gave each of them a ring, and each claimed to be his heir, but no one could prove his title because the rings were indistinguishable, and the suit at law lasts till this day. It is even so, my lord, with the three religions, given by God to the three peoples. They each think they have the true religion, but which of them really has it, is a question, like that of the rings, still undecided.� This sceptical story became famous in the eighteenth century, when the German poet, Lessing, built upon it his drama Nathan the Sage, which was intended to show the unreasonableness of intolerance. CHAPTER IV PROSPECT OF DELIVERANCE (THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION) THE intellectual and social movement which was to dispel the darkness of the [72] Middle Ages and prepare the way for those who would ultimately deliver reason from her prison, began in Italy in the thirteenth century. The misty veil woven of credulity and infantile naïveté which had hung over men�s souls and protected them from understanding either themselves or their relation to the world began to lift. The individual began to feel his separate individuality, to be conscious of his own value as a person apart from his race or country (as in the later ages of Greece and Rome); and the world around him began to emerge from the mists of mediaeval dreams. The change was due to the political and social conditions of the little Italian States, of which some were republics and others governed by tyrants. To the human world, thus unveiling itself, the individual who sought to make it serve his purposes required a guide; and the guide was found in the ancient literature of Greece and Rome. Hence the whole transformation, which presently extended from Italy to Northern Europe, is known as the Renaissance, or rebirth of classical antiquity. But the awakened interest in classical literature while it coloured the character and stimulated the growth of the movement, supplying new ideals and suggesting new points of view, was only the form in which the change of spirit [73] began to express itself in the fourteenth century. The change might conceivably have taken some other shape. Its true name is Humanism. At the time men hardly felt that they were passing into a new age of civilization, nor did the culture of the Renaissance immediately produce any open or general intellectual rebellion against orthodox beliefs. The world was gradually assuming an aspect decidedly unfriendly to the teaching of mediaeval orthodoxy; but there was no explosion of hostility; it was not till the seventeenth century that war between religion and authority was systematically waged. The humanists were not hostile to theological authority or to the claims of religious dogma; but they had discovered a purely human curiosity about this world and it absorbed their interest. They idolized pagan literature which abounded in poisonous germs; the secular side of education became all-important; religion and theology were kept in a separate compartment. Some speculative minds, which were sensitive to the contradiction, might seek to reconcile the old religion with new ideas; but the general tendency of thinkers in the Renaissance period was to keep the two worlds distinct, and to practise outward conformity to the creed without any real intellectual submission. [74] I may illustrate this double-facedness of the Renaissance by Montaigne (second half of sixteenth century). His Essays make for rationalism, but contain frequent professions of orthodox Catholicism, in which he was perfectly sincere. There is no attempt to reconcile the two points of view; in fact, he takes the sceptical position that there is no bridge between reason and religion. The human intellect is incapable in the domain of theology, and religion must be placed aloft, out of reach and beyond the interference of reason; to be humbly accepted. But while he humbly accepted it, on sceptical grounds which would have induced him to accept Mohammadanism if he had been born in Cairo, his soul was not in its dominion. It was the philosophers and wise men of antiquity, Cicero, and Seneca, and Plutarch, who moulded and possessed his mind. It is to them, and not to the consolations of Christianity, that he turns when he discusses the problem of death. The religious wars in France which he witnessed and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew�s Day (1572) were calculated to confirm him in his scepticism. His attitude to persecution is expressed in the remark that �it is setting a high value on one�s opinions to roast men on account of them.� The logical results of Montaigne�s scepticism [75] were made visible by his friend Charron, who published a book On Wisdom in 1601. Here it is taught that true morality is not founded on religion, and the author surveys the history of Christianity to show the evils which it had produced. He says of immortality that it is the most generally received doctrine, the most usefully believed, and the most weakly established by human reasons; but he modified this and some other passages in a second edition. A contemporary Jesuit placed Charron in the catalogue of the most dangerous and wicked atheists. He was really a deist; but in those days, and long after, no one scrupled to call a non- Christian deist an atheist. His book would doubtless have been suppressed and he would have suffered but for the support of King Henry IV. It has a particular interest because it transports us directly from the atmosphere of the Renaissance, represented by Montaigne, into the new age of more or less aggressive rationalism. What Humanism did in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, at first in Italy, then in other countries, was to create an intellectual atmosphere in which the emancipation of reason could begin and knowledge could resume its progress. The period saw the invention of printing and [76] the discovery of new parts of the globe, and these things were to aid powerfully in the future defeat of authority. But the triumph of freedom depended on other causes also; it was not to be brought about by the intellect alone. The chief political facts of the period were the decline of the power of the Pope in Europe, the decay of the Holy Roman Empire, and the growth of strong monarchies, in which worldly interests determined and dictated ecclesiastical policy, and from which the modern State was to develop. The success of the Reformation was made possible by these conditions. Its victory in North Germany was due to the secular interest of the princes, who profited by the confiscation of Church lands. In England there was no popular movement; the change was carried through by the government for its own purposes. The principal cause of the Reformation was the general corruption of the Church and the flagrancy of its oppression. For a long time the Papacy had had no higher aim than to be a secular power exploiting its spiritual authority for the purpose of promoting its worldly interests, by which it was exclusively governed. All the European States based their diplomacy on this assumption. Since the fourteenth century every one acknowledged [77] the need of reforming the Church, and reform had been promised, but things went from bad to worse, and there was no resource but rebellion. The rebellion led by Luther was the result not of a revolt of reason against dogmas, but of widely spread anti-clerical feeling due to the ecclesiastical methods of extorting money, particularly by the sale of Indulgences, the most glaring abuse of the time. It was his study of the theory of Papal Indulgences that led Luther on to his theological heresies. It is an elementary error, but one which is still shared by many people who have read history superficially, that the Reformation established religious liberty and the right of private judgment. What it did was to bring about a new set of political and social conditions, under which religious liberty could ultimately be secured, and, by virtue of its inherent inconsistencies, to lead to results at which its leaders would have shuddered. But nothing was further from the minds of the leading Reformers than the toleration of doctrines differing from their own. They replaced one authority by another. They set up the authority of the Bible instead of that of the Church, but it was the Bible according to Luther or the Bible according to Calvin. So far as the spirit of intolerance went, there [78] was nothing to choose between the new and the old Churches. The religious wars were not for the cause of freedom, but for particular sets of doctrines; and in France, if the Protestants had been victorious, it is certain that they would not have given more liberal terms to the Catholics than the Catholics gave to them. Luther was quite opposed to liberty of conscience and worship, a doctrine which was inconsistent with Scripture as he read it. He might protest against coercion and condemn the burning of heretics, when he was in fear that he and his party might be victims, but when he was safe and in power, he asserted his real view that it was the duty of the State to impose the true doctrine and exterminate heresy, which was an abomination, that unlimited obedience to their prince in religious as in other matters was the duty of subjects, and that the end of the State was to defend the faith. He held that Anabaptists should be put to the sword. With Protestants and Catholics alike the dogma of exclusive salvation led to the same place. Calvin�s fame for intolerance is blackest. He did not, like Luther, advocate the absolute power of the civil ruler; he stood for the control of the State by the Church�a form of government which is commonly called theocracy; [79] and he established a theocracy at Geneva. Here liberty was completely crushed; false doctrines were put down by imprisonment, exile, and death. The punishment of Servetus is the most famous exploit of Calvin�s warfare against heresy. The Spaniard Servetus, who had written against the dogma of the Trinity, was imprisoned at Lyons (partly through the machinations of Calvin) and having escaped came rashly to Geneva. He was tried for heresy and committed to the flames (1553), though Geneva had no jurisdiction over him. Melanchthon, who formulated the principles of persecution, praised this act as a memorable example to posterity. Posterity however was one day to be ashamed of that example. In 1903 the Calvinists of Geneva felt impelled to erect an expiatory monument, in which Calvin �our great Reformer� is excused as guilty of an error �which was that of his century.� Thus the Reformers, like the Church from which they parted, cared nothing for freedom, they only cared for �truth.� If the mediaeval ideal was to purge the world of heretics, the object of the Protestant was to exclude all dissidents from his own land. The people at large were to be driven into a fold, to accept their faith at the command of their sovran. This was the principle laid down in the [80] religious peace which (1555) composed the struggle between the Catholic Emperor and the Protestant German princes. It was recognized by Catherine de� Medici when she massacred the French Protestants and signified to Queen Elizabeth that she might do likewise with English Catholics. Nor did the Protestant creeds represent enlightenment. The Reformation on the Continent was as hostile to enlightenment as it was to liberty; and science, if it seemed to contradict the Bible, has as little chance with Luther as with the Pope. The Bible, interpreted by the Protestants or the Roman Church, was equally fatal to witches. In Germany the development of learning received a long set-back. Yet the Reformation involuntarily helped the cause of liberty. The result was contrary to the intentions of its leaders, was indirect, and long delayed. In the first place, the great rent in Western Christianity, substituting a number of theological authorities instead of one�several gods, we may say, instead of one God�produced a weakening of ecclesiastical authority in general. The religious tradition was broken. In the second place, in the Protestant States, the supreme ecclesiastical power was vested in the sovran; the sovran had other interests besides those of [81] the Church to consider; and political reasons would compel him sooner or later to modify the principle of ecclesiastical intolerance. Catholic States in the same way were forced to depart from the duty of not suffering heretics. The religious wars in France ended in a limited toleration of Protestants. The policy of Cardinal Richelieu, who supported the Protestant cause in Germany, illustrates how secular interests obstructed the cause of faith. Again, the intellectual justification of the Protestant rebellion against the Church had been the right of private judgment, that is, the principle of religious liberty. But the Reformers had asserted it only for themselves, and as soon as they had framed their own articles of faith, they had practically repudiated it. This was the most glaring inconsistency in the Protestant position; and the claim which they had thrust aside could not be permanently suppressed. Once more, the Protestant doctrines rested on an insecure foundation which no logic could defend, and inevitably led from one untenable position to another. If we are to believe on authority, why should we prefer the upstart dictation of the Lutheran Confession of Augsburg or the English Thirty- nine Articles to the venerable authority of the Church of Rome? If we decide against Rome, we must do so by means [82] of reason; but once we exercise reason in the matter, why should we stop where Luther or Calvin or any of the other rebels stopped, unless we assume that one of them was inspired? If we reject superstitions which they rejected, there is nothing except their authority to prevent us from rejecting all or some of the superstitions which they retained. Moreover, their Bible-worship promoted results which they did not foresee. [1] The inspired record on which the creeds depend became an open book. Public attention was directed to it as never before, though it cannot be said to have been universally read before the nineteenth century. Study led to criticism, the difficulties of the dogma of inspiration were appreciated, and the Bible was ultimately to be submitted to a remorseless dissection which has altered at least the quality of its authority in the eyes of intelligent believers. This process of Biblical criticism has been conducted mainly in a Protestant atmosphere and the new position in which the Bible was placed by the Reformation must be held partly accountable. In these ways, Protestantism was adapted to be a stepping-stone to rationalism, and thus served the cause of freedom. [83] That cause however was powerfully and directly promoted by one sect of Reformers, who in the eyes of all the others were blasphemers and of whom most people never think when they talk of the Reformation. I mean the Socinians. Of their far-reaching influence something will be said in the next chapter. Another result of the Reformation has still to be mentioned, its renovating effect on the Roman Church, which had now to fight for its existence. A new series of Popes who were in earnest about religion began with Paul III (1534) and reorganized the Papacy and its resources for a struggle of centuries. [2] The institution of the Jesuit order, the establishment of the Inquisition at Rome, the Council of Trent, the censorship of the Press (Index of Forbidden Books) were the expression of the new spirit and the means to cope with the new situation. The reformed Papacy was good fortune for believing children of the Church, but what here concerns us is that one of its chief objects was to repress freedom more effectually. Savonarola who preached right living at Florence had been executed (1498) under Pope Alexander VI who was a notorious profligate. If Savonarola had lived [84] in the new era he might have been canonized, but Giordano Bruno was burned. Giordano Bruno had constructed a religious philosophy, based partly upon Epicurus, from whom he took the theory of the infinity of the universe. But Epicurean materialism was transformed into a pantheistic mysticism by the doctrine that God is the soul of matter. Accepting the recent discovery of Copernicus, which Catholics and Protestants alike rejected, that the earth revolves round the sun, Bruno took the further step of regarding the fixed stars as suns, each with its invisible satellites. He sought to come to an understanding with the Bible, which (he held) being intended for the vulgar had to accommodate itself to their prejudices. Leaving Italy, because he was suspected of heresy, he lived successively in Switzerland, France, England, and Germany, and in 1592, induced by a false friend to return to Venice he was seized by order of the Inquisition. Finally condemned in Rome, he was burned (1600) in the Campo de� Fiori, where a monument now stands in his honour, erected some years ago, to the great chagrin of the Roman Church. Much is made of the fate of Bruno because he is one of the world�s famous men. No country has so illustrious a victim of that era to commemorate as Italy, but in other lands [85] blood just as innocent was shed for heterodox opinions. In France there was rather more freedom than elsewhere under the relatively tolerant government of Henry IV and of the Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, till about 1660. But at Toulouse (1619) Lucilio Vanini, a learned Italian who like Bruno wandered about Europe, was convicted as an atheist and blasphemer; his tongue was torn out and he was burned. Protestant England, under Elizabeth and James I, did not lag behind the Roman Inquisition, but on account of the obscurity of the victims her zeal for faith has been unduly forgotten. Yet, but for an accident, she might have covered herself with the glory of having done to death a heretic not less famous than Giordano Bruno. The poet Marlowe was accused of atheism, but while the prosecution was hanging over him he was killed in a sordid quarrel in a tavern (1593). Another dramatist (Kyd) who was implicated in the charge was put to the torture. At the same time Sir Walter Raleigh was prosecuted for unbelief but not convicted. Others were not so fortunate. Three or four persons were burned at Norwich in the reign of Elizabeth for unchristian doctrines, among them Francis Kett who had been a Fellow of Corpus Christi, Cambridge. Under James I, who [86] interested himself personally in such matters, Bartholomew Legate was charged with holding various pestilent opinions. The king summoned him to his presence and asked him whether he did not pray daily to Jesus Christ. Legate replied he had prayed to Christ in the days of his ignorance, but not for the last seven years. �Away, base fellow,� said James, spurning him with his foot, �it shall never be said that one stayeth in my palace that hath never prayed to our Saviour for seven years together.� Legate, having been imprisoned for some time in Newgate, was declared an incorrigible heretic and burned at Smithfield (1611). Just a month later, one Wightman was burned at Lichfield, by the Bishop of Coventry, for heterodox doctrines. It is possible that public opinion was shocked by these two burnings. They were the last cases in England of death for unbelief. Puritan intolerance, indeed, passed an ordinance in 1648, by which all who denied the Trinity, Christ�s divinity, the inspiration of Scripture, or a future state, were liable to death, and persons guilty of other heresies, to imprisonment. But this did not lead to any executions. The Renaissance age saw the first signs of the beginning of modern science, but the mediaeval prejudices against the investigation [87] of nature were not dissipated till the seventeenth century, and in Italy they continued to a much later period. The history of modern astronomy begins in 1543, with the publication of the work of Copernicus revealing the truth about the motions of the earth. The appearance of this work is important in the history of free thought, because it raised a clear and definite issue between science and Scripture; and Osiander, who edited it (Copernicus was dying), forseeing the outcry it would raise, stated untruly in the preface that the earth�s motion was put forward only as a hypothesis. The theory was denounced by Catholics and Reformers, and it did not convince some men (e.g. Bacon) who were not influenced by theological prejudice. The observations of the Italian astronomer Galileo de� Galilei demonstrated the Copernican theory beyond question. His telescope discovered the moons of Jupiter, and his observation of the spots in the sun confirmed the earth�s rotation. In the pulpits of Florence, where he lived under the protection of the Grand Duke, his sensational discoveries were condemned. �Men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?� He was then denounced to the Holy Office of the Inquisition by two Dominican monks. Learning that his investigations were being considered [88] at Rome, Galileo went thither, confident that he would be able to convince the ecclesiastical authorities of the manifest truth of Copernicanism. He did not realize what theology was capable of. In February 1616 the Holy Office decided that the Copernican system was in itself absurd, and, in respect of Scripture, heretical. Cardinal Bellarmin, by the Pope�s direction, summoned Galileo and officially admonished him to abandon his opinion and cease to teach it, otherwise the Inquisition would proceed against him. Galileo promised to obey. The book of Copernicus was placed on the Index. It has been remarked that Galileo�s book on Solar Spots contains no mention of Scripture, and thus the Holy Office, in its decree which related to that book, passed judgment on a scientific, not a theological, question. Galileo was silenced for a while, but it was impossible for him to be mute for ever. Under a new Pope (Urban VIII) he looked for greater liberty, and there were many in the Papal circle who were well disposed to him. He hoped to avoid difficulties by the device of placing the arguments for the old and the new theories side by side, and pretending not to judge between them. He wrote a treatise on the two systems (the Ptolemaic and the Copernican) in the form [89] of Dialogues, of which the preface declares that the purpose is to explain the pros and cons of the two views. But the spirit of the work is Copernican. He received permission, quite definite as he thought, from Father Riccardi (master of the Sacred Palace) to print it, and it appeared in 1632. The Pope however disapproved of it, the book was examined by a commission, and Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition. He was old and ill, and the humiliations which he had to endure are a painful story. He would probably have been more severely treated, if one of the members of the tribunal had not been a man of scientific training (Macolano, a Dominican), who was able to appreciate his ability. Under examination, Galileo denied that he had upheld the motion of the earth in the Dialogues, and asserted that he had shown the reasons of Copernicus to be inconclusive. This defence was in accordance with the statement in his preface, but contradicted his deepest conviction. In struggling with such a tribunal, it was the only line which a man who was not a hero could take. At a later session, he forced himself ignominiously to confess that some of the arguments on the Copernican side had been put too strongly and to declare himself ready to confute the [90] theory. In the final examination, he was threatened with torture. He said that before the decree of 1616 he had held the truth of the Copernican system to be arguable, but since then he had held the Ptolemaic to be true. Next day, he publicly abjured the scientific truth which he had demonstrated. He was allowed to retire to the country, on condition that he saw no one. In the last months of his life he wrote to a friend to this effect: �The falsity of the Copernican system cannot be doubted, especially by us Catholics. It is refuted by the irrefragable authority of Scripture. The conjectures of Copernicus and his disciples were all disposed of by the one solid argument: God�s omnipotence can operate in infinitely various ways. If something appears to our observation to happen in one particular way, we must not curtail God�s arm, and sustain a thing in which we may be deceived.� The irony is evident. Rome did not permit the truth about the solar system to be taught till after the middle of the eighteenth century, and Galileo�s books remained on the Index till 1835. The prohibition was fatal to the study of natural science in Italy. The Roman Index reminds us of the significance of the invention of printing in the struggle for freedom of thought, by making [91] it easy to propagate new ideas far and wide. Authority speedily realized the danger, and took measures to place its yoke on the new contrivance, which promised to be such a powerful ally of reason. Pope Alexander VI inaugurated censorship of the Press by his Bull against unlicensed printing (1501). In France King Henry II made printing without official permission punishable by death. In Germany, censorship was introduced in 1529. In England, under Elizabeth, books could not be printed without a license, and printing presses were not allowed except in London, Oxford, and Cambridge; the regulation of the Press was under the authority of the Star Chamber. Nowhere did the Press become really free till the nineteenth century. While the Reformation and the renovated Roman Church meant a reaction against the Renaissance, the vital changes which the Renaissance signified�individualism, a new intellectual attitude to the world, the cultivation of secular knowledge�were permanent and destined to lead, amid the competing intolerances of Catholic and Protestant powers, to the goal of liberty. We shall see how reason and the growth of knowledge undermined the bases of theological authority. At each step in this process, in which philosophical speculation, historical [92] criticism, natural science have all taken part, the opposition between reason and faith deepened; doubt, clear or vague, increased; and secularism, derived from the Humanists, and always implying scepticism, whether latent or conscious, substituted an interest in the fortunes of the human race upon earth for the interest in a future world. And along with this steady intellectual advance, toleration gained ground and freedom won more champions. In the meantime the force of political circumstances was compelling governments to mitigate their maintenance of one religious creed by measures of relief to other Christian sects, and the principle of exclusiveness was broken down for reasons of worldly expediency. Religious liberty was an important step towards complete freedom of opinion. [1] The danger, however, was felt in Germany, and in the seventeenth century the study of Scripture was not encouraged at German Universities. [2] See Barry, Papacy and Modern Times (in this series), 113 seq. CHAPTER V RELIGIOUS TOLERATION IN the third century B.C. the Indian king Asoka, a man of religious zeal but of tolerant spirit, confronted by the struggle between two hostile religions (Brahmanism and Buddhism), decided that both should be equally privileged and honoured in his dominions. His ordinances on the matter are memorable [93] as the earliest existing Edicts of toleration. In Europe, as we saw, the principle of toleration was for the first time definitely expressed in the Roman Imperial Edicts which terminated the persecution of the Christians. The religious strife of the sixteenth century raised the question in its modern form, and for many generations it was one of the chief problems of statesmen and the subject of endless controversial pamphlets. Toleration means incomplete religious liberty, and there are many degrees of it. It might be granted to certain Christian sects; it might be granted to Christian sects, but these alone; it might be granted to all religions, but not to freethinkers; or to deists, but not to atheists. It might mean the concession of some civil rights, but not of others; it might mean the exclusion of those who are tolerated from public offices or from certain professions. The religious liberty now enjoyed in Western lands has been gained through various stages of toleration. We owe the modern principle of toleration to the Italian group of Reformers, who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and were the fathers of Unitarianism. The Reformation movement had spread to Italy, but Rome was successful in suppressing it, and many heretics fled to Switzerland. The anti-Trinitarian [94] group were forced by the intolerance of Calvin to flee to Transylvania and Poland where they propagated their doctrines. The Unitarian creed was moulded by Fausto Sozzini, generally known as Socinus, and in the catechism of his sect (1574) persecution is condemned. This repudiation of the use of force in the interest of religion is a consequence of the Socinian doctrines. For, unlike Luther and Calvin, the Socinians conceded such a wide room to individual judgment in the interpretation of Scripture that to impose Socinianism would have been inconsistent with its principles. In other words, there was a strong rationalistic element which was lacking in the Trinitarian creeds. It was under the influence of the Socinian spirit that Castellion of Savoy sounded the trumpet of toleration in a pamphlet denouncing the burning of Servetus, whereby he earned the malignant hatred of Calvin. He maintained the innocence of error and ridiculed the importance which the Churches laid on obscure questions such as predestination and the Trinity. �To discuss the difference between the Law and the Gospel, gratuitous remission of sins or imputed righteousness, is as if a man were to discuss whether a prince was to come on horseback, [95] or in a chariot, or dressed in white or in red.� [1] Religion is a curse if persecution is a necessary part of it. For a long time the Socinians and those who came under their influence when, driven from Poland, they passed into Germany and Holland, were the only sects which advocated toleration. It was adopted from them by the Anabaptists and by the Arminian section of the Reformed Church of Holland. And in Holland, the founder of the English Congregationalists, who (under the name of Independents) played such an important part in the history of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, learned the principle of liberty of conscience. Socinus thought that this principle could be realized without abolishing the State Church. He contemplated a close union between the State and the prevailing Church, combined with complete toleration for other sects. It is under this system (which has been called jurisdictional) that religious liberty has been realized in European States. But there is another and simpler method, that of separating Church from State and placing all religions on an equality. This was the solution which the Anabaptists would have preferred. They detested the State; and the doctrine of religious liberty was not [96] precious to them. Their ideal system would have been an Anabaptist theocracy; separation was the second best. In Europe, public opinion was not ripe for separation, inasmuch as the most powerful religious bodies were alike in regarding toleration as wicked indifference. But it was introduced in a small corner of the new world beyond the Atlantic in the seventeenth century. The Puritans who fled from the intolerance of the English Church and State and founded colonies in New England, were themselves equally intolerant, not only to Anglicans and Catholics, but to Baptists and Quakers. They set up theocratical governments from which all who did not belong to their own sect were excluded. Roger Williams had imbibed from the Dutch Arminians the idea of separation of Church from State. On account of this heresy he was driven from Massachusetts, and he founded Providence to be a refuge for those whom the Puritan colonists persecuted. Here he set up a democratic constitution in which the magistrates had power only in civil matters and could not interfere with religion. Other towns were presently founded in Rhode Island, and a charter of Charles II (1663) confirmed the constitution, which secured to all citizens professing Christianity, of whatever [97] form, the full enjoyment of political rights. Non-Christians were tolerated, but were not admitted to the political rights of Christians. So far, the new State fell short of perfect liberty. But the fact that Jews were soon admitted, notwithstanding, to full citizenship shows how free the atmosphere was. To Roger Williams belongs the glory of having founded the first modern State which was really tolerant and was based on the principle of taking the control of religious matters entirely out of the hands of the civil government. Toleration was also established in the Roman Catholic colony of Maryland, but in a different way. Through the influence of Lord Baltimore an Act of Toleration was passed in 1649, notable as the first decree, voted by a legal assembly, granting complete freedom to all Christians. No one professing faith in Christ was to be molested in regard to his religion. But the law was heavy on all outside this pale. Any one who blasphemed God or attacked the Trinity or any member of the Trinity was threatened by the penalty of death. The tolerance of Maryland attracted so many Protestant settlers from Virginia that the Protestants became a majority, and as soon as they won political preponderance, they introduced an Act (1654) [98] excluding Papists and Prelatists from toleration. The rule of the Baltimores was restored after 1660, and the old religious freedom was revived, but with the accession of William III the Protestants again came into power and the toleration which the Catholics had instituted in Maryland came to an end. It will be observed that in both these cases freedom was incomplete; but it was much larger and more fundamental in Rhode Island, where it had been ultimately derived from the doctrine of Socinus. [2] When the colonies became independent of England the Federal Constitution which they set up was absolutely secular, but it was left to each member of the Union to adopt Separation or not (1789). If separation has become the rule in the American States, it may be largely due to the fact that on any other system the governments would have found it difficult to impose mutual tolerance on the sects. It must be added that in Maryland and a few southern States atheists still suffer from some political disabilities. In England, the experiment of Separation would have been tried under the Commonwealth, if the Independents had had their way. This policy was overruled by Cromwell. [99] The new national Church included Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, but liberty of worship was granted to all Christian sects, except Roman Catholics and Anglicans. If the parliament had had the power, this toleration would have been a mere name. The Presbyterians regarded toleration as a work of the Devil, and would have persecuted the Independents if they could. But under Cromwell�s autocratic rule even the Anglicans lived in peace, and toleration was extended to the Jews. In these days, voices were raised from various quarters advocating toleration on general grounds. [3] The most illustrious advocate was Milton, the poet, who was in favour of the severance of Church from State. In Milton�s Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing (1644), the freedom of the Press is eloquently sustained by arguments which are valid for freedom of thought in general. It is shown that the censorship will conduce �to the discouragement of all learning and the stop of truth, not only by disexercising and blunting our abilities in what we know already, but by hindering and cropping the discovery that might be yet further made, both in religious [100] and civil wisdom.� For knowledge is advanced through the utterance of new opinions, and truth is discovered by free discussion. If the waters of truth �flow not in a perpetual progression they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.� Books which are authorized by the licensers are apt to be, as Bacon said, �but the language of the times,� and do not contribute to progress. The examples of the countries where the censorship is severe do not suggest that it is useful for morals: �look into Italy and Spain, whether those places be one scruple the better, the honester, the wiser, the chaster, since all the inquisitional rigour that hath been executed upon books.� Spain indeed could reply, �We are, what is more important, more orthodox.� It is interesting to notice that Milton places freedom of thought above civil liberty: �Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all other liberties.� With the restoration of the Monarchy and the Anglican Church, religious liberty was extinguished by a series of laws against Dissenters. To the Revolution we owe the Act of Toleration (1689) from which the religious freedom which England enjoys at present is derived. It granted freedom of worship to Presbyterians, Congregationalists, [101] Baptists and Quakers, but only to these; Catholics and Unitarians were expressly excepted and the repressive legislation of Charles II remained in force against them. It was a characteristically English measure, logically inconsistent and absurd, a mixture of tolerance and intolerance, but suitable to the circumstances and the state of public opinion at the time. In the same year John Locke�s famous (first) Letter concerning Toleration appeared in Latin. Three subsequent letters developed and illustrated his thesis. The main argument is based on the principle that the business of civil government is quite distinct from that of religion, that the State is a society constituted only for preserving and promoting the civil interests of its members �civil interests meaning life, liberty, health, and the possession of property. The care of souls is not committed to magistrates more than to other men. For the magistrate can only use outward force; but true religion means the inward persuasion of the mind, and the mind is so made that force cannot compel it to believe. So too it is absurd for a State to make laws to enforce a religion, for laws are useless without penalties, and penalties are impertinent because they cannot convince. Moreover, even if penalties could change [102] men�s beliefs, this would not conduce to the salvation of souls. Would more men be saved if all blindly resigned themselves to the will of their rulers and accepted the religion of their country? For as the princes of the world are divided in religion, one country alone would be in the right, and all the rest of the world would have to follow their princes to destruction; �and that which heightens the absurdity, and very ill suits the notion of a deity, men would owe their eternal happiness or their eternal misery to the places of their nativity.� This is a principle on which Locke repeatedly insists. If a State is justified in imposing a creed, it follows that in all the lands, except the one or few in which the true faith prevails, it is the duty of the subjects to embrace a false religion. If Protestantism is promoted in England, Popery by the same rule will be promoted in France. �What is true and good in England will be true and good at Rome too, in China, or Geneva.� Toleration is the principle which gives to the true faith the best chance of prevailing. Locke would concede full liberty to idolaters, by whom he means the Indians of North America, and he makes some scathing remarks on the ecclesiastical zeal which forced these �innocent pagans� to forsake [103] their ancient religion. But his toleration, though it extends beyond the Christian pale, is not complete. He excepts in the first place Roman Catholics, not on account of their theological dogmas but because they �teach that faith is not to be kept with heretics,� that �kings excommunicated forfeit their crowns and kingdoms,� and because they deliver themselves up to the protection and service of a foreign prince�the Pope. In other words, they are politically dangerous. His other exception is atheists. �Those are not all to be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all. Besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion to challenge the privilege of a Toleration.� Thus Locke is not free from the prejudices of his time. These exceptions contradict his own principle that �it is absurd that things should be enjoined by laws which are not in men�s power to perform. And to believe this or that to be true does not depend upon our will.� This applies to Roman Catholics as to Protestants, to atheists as to deists. Locke, however, perhaps thought [104] that the speculative opinion of atheism, which was uncommon in his day, does depend on the will. He would have excluded from his State his great contemporary Spinoza. But in spite of its limitations Locke�s Toleration is a work of the highest value, and its argument takes us further than its author went. It asserts unrestrictedly the secular principle, and its logical issue is Disestablishment. A Church is merely �a free and voluntary society.� I may notice the remark that if infidels were to be converted by force, it was easier for God to do it �with armies of heavenly legions than for any son of the Church, how potent soever, with all his dragoons.� This is a polite way of stating a maxim analogous to that of the Emperor Tiberius (above, p. 41). If false beliefs are an offence to God, it is, really, his affair. The toleration of Nonconformists was far from pleasing extreme Anglicans, and the influence of this party at the beginning of the eighteenth century menaced the liberty of Dissenters. The situation provoked Defoe, who was a zealous Nonconformist, to write his pamphlet, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), an ironical attack upon the principle of toleration. It pretends to show that the Dissenters are at heart incorrigible rebels, that a gentle policy is useless, and suggests [105] that all preachers at conventicles should be hanged and all persons found attending such meetings should be banished. This exceedingly amusing but terribly earnest caricature of the sentiments of the High Anglican party at first deceived and alarmed the Dissenters themselves. But the High Churchmen were furious. Defoe was fined, exposed in the pillory three times, and sent to Newgate prison. But the Tory reaction was only temporary. During the eighteenth century a relatively tolerant spirit prevailed among the Christian sects and new sects were founded. The official Church became less fanatical; many of its leading divines were influenced by rationalistic thought. If it had not been for the opposition of King George III, the Catholics might have been freed from their disabilities before the end of the century. This measure, eloquently advocated by Burke and desired by Pitt, was not carried till 1829, and then under the threat of a revolution in Ireland. In the meantime legal toleration had been extended to the Unitarians in 1813, but they were not relieved from all disabilities till the forties. Jews were not admitted to the full rights of citizenship till 1858. The achievement of religious liberty in England in the nineteenth century has been mainly the work of Liberals. The Liberal [106] party has been moving towards the ultimate goal of complete secularization and the separation of the Church from the State� the logical results of Locke�s theory of civil government. The Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland in 1869 partly realized this ideal, and now more than forty years later the Liberal party is seeking to apply the principle to Wales. It is highly characteristic of English politics and English psychology that the change should be carried out in this piecemeal fashion. In the other countries of the British Empire the system of Separation prevails; there is no connection between the State and any sect; no Church is anything more than a voluntary society. But secularization has advanced under the State Church system. It is enough to mention the Education Act of 1870 and the abolition of religious tests at Universities (1871). Other gains for freedom will be noticed when I come to speak in another chapter of the progress of rationalism. If we compare the religious situation in France in the seventeenth with that in the eighteenth century, it seems to be sharply contrasted with the development in England. In England there was a great advance towards religious liberty, in France there was a falling away. Until 1676 the French Protestants [107] (Huguenots) were tolerated; for the next hundred years they were outlaws. But the toleration, which their charter (the Edict of Nantes, 1598) secured them, was of a limited kind. They were excluded, for instance, from the army; they were excluded from Paris and other cities and districts. And the liberty which they enjoyed was confined to them; it was not granted to any other sect. The charter was faithfully maintained by the two great Cardinals (Richelieu and Mazarin) who governed France under Louis XIII and Louis XIV, but when the latter assumed the active power in 1661 he began a series of laws against the Protestants which culminated in the revoking of the charter (1676) and the beginning of a Protestant persecution. The French clergy justified this policy by the notorious text �Compel them to come in,� and appealed to St. Augustine. Their arguments evoked a defence of toleration by Bayle, a French Protestant who had taken refuge in Holland. It was entitled a Philosophical Commentary on the text �Compel them to come in� (1686) and in importance stands beside Locke�s work which was being composed at the same time. Many of the arguments urged by the two writers are identical. They agreed, and for the same reasons, in excluding Roman Catholics. The [108] most characteristic thing in Bayle�s treatise is his sceptical argument that, even if it were a right principle to suppress error by force, no truth is certain enough to justify us in applying the theory. We shall see (next chapter) this eminent scholar�s contribution to rationalism. Though there was an immense exodus of Protestants from France, Louis did not succeed in his design of extirpating heresy from his lands. In the eighteenth century, under Louis XV, the presence of Protestants was tolerated though they were outlaws; their marriages were not recognized as legal, and they were liable at any moment to persecution. About the middle of the century a literary agitation began, conducted mainly by rationalists, but finally supported by enlightened Catholics, to relieve the affliction of the oppressed sect. It resulted at last in an Edict of Toleration (1787), which made the position of the Protestants endurable, though it excluded them from certain careers. The most energetic and forceful leader in the campaign against intolerance was Voltaire (see next chapter), and his exposure of some glaring cases of unjust persecution did more than general arguments to achieve the object. The most infamous case was that of Jean Calas, a Protestant merchant of Toulouse, whose son committed suicide. A report [109] was set abroad that the young man had decided to join the Catholic Church, and that his father, mother, and brother, filled with Protestant bigotry, killed him, with the help of a friend. They were all put in irons, tried, and condemned, though there were no arguments for their guilt, except the conjecture of bigotry. Jean Calas was broken on the wheel, his son and daughter cast into convents, his wife left to starve. Through the activity of Voltaire, then living near Geneva, the widow was induced to go to Paris, where she was kindly received, and assisted by eminent lawyers; a judicial inquiry was made; the Toulouse sentence was reversed and the King granted pensions to those who had suffered. This scandal could only have happened in the provinces, according to Voltaire: �at Paris,� he says, �fanaticism, powerful though it may be, is always controlled by reason.� The case of Sirven, though it did not end tragically, was similar, and the government of Toulouse was again responsible. He was accused of having drowned his daughter in a well to hinder her from becoming a Catholic, and was, with his wife, sentenced to death. Fortunately he and his family had escaped to Switzerland, where they persuaded Voltaire of their innocence. To get the sentence reversed was the work of nine years, and this [110] time it was reversed at Toulouse. When Voltaire visited Paris in 1778 he was acclaimed by crowds as the �defender of Calas and the Sirvens.� His disinterested practical activity against persecution was of far more value than the treatise on Toleration which he wrote in connexion with the Calas episode. It is a poor work compared with those of Locke and Bayle. The tolerance which he advocates is of a limited kind; he would confine public offices and dignities to those who belong to the State religion. But if Voltaire�s system of toleration is limited, it is wide compared with the religious establishment advocated by his contemporary, Rousseau. Though of Swiss birth, Rousseau belongs to the literature and history of France; but it was not for nothing that he was brought up in the traditions of Calvinistic Geneva. His ideal State would, in its way, have been little better than any theocracy. He proposed to establish a �civil religion� which was to be a sort of undogmatic Christianity. But certain dogmas, which he considered essential, were to be imposed on all citizens on pain of banishment. Such were the existence of a deity, the future bliss of the good and punishment of the bad, the duty of tolerance towards all those who accepted the fundamental [111] articles of faith. It may be said that a State founded on this basis would be fairly inclusive�that all Christian sects and many deists could find a place in it. But by imposing indispensable beliefs, it denies the principle of toleration. The importance of Rousseau�s idea lies in the fact that it inspired one of the experiments in religious policy which were made during the French Revolution. The Revolution established religious liberty in France. Most of the leaders were unorthodox. Their rationalism was naturally of the eighteenth-century type, and in the preamble to the Declaration of Rights (1789) deism was asserted by the words �in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being� (against which only one voice protested). The Declaration laid down that no one was to be vexed on account of his religious opinions provided he did not thereby trouble public order. Catholicism was retained as the �dominant� religion; Protestants (but not Jews) were admitted to public office. Mirabeau, the greatest statesman of the day, protested strongly against the use of words like �tolerance� and �dominant.� He said: �The most unlimited liberty of religion is in my eyes a right so sacred that to express it by the word �toleration� seems to me itself a sort of tyranny, [112] since the authority which tolerates might also not tolerate.� The same protest was made in Thomas Paine�s Rights of Man which appeared two years later: �Toleration is not the opposite of Intolerance, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it.� Paine was an ardent deist, and he added: �Were a bill brought into any parliament, entitled �An Act to tolerate or grant liberty to the Almighty to receive the worship of a Jew or a Turk,� or �to prohibit the Almighty from receiving it,� all men would startle and call it blasphemy. There would be an uproar. The presumption of toleration in religious matters would then present itself unmasked.� The Revolution began well, but the spirit of Mirabeau was not in the ascendant throughout its course. The vicissitudes in religious policy from 1789 to 1801 have a particular interest, because they show that the principle of liberty of conscience was far from possessing the minds of the men who were proud of abolishing the intolerance of the government which they had overthrown. The State Church was reorganized by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790), by which French citizens were forbidden to acknowledge the authority of the Pope and [113] the appointment of Bishops was transferred to the Electors of the Departments, so that the commanding influence passed from the Crown to the nation. Doctrine and worship were not touched. Under the democratic Republic which succeeded the fall of the monarchy (1792�5) this Constitution was maintained, but a movement to dechristianize France was inaugurated, and the Commune of Paris ordered the churches of all religions to be closed. The worship of Reason, with rites modelled on the Catholic, was organized in Paris and the provinces. The government, violently anti-Catholic, did not care to use force against the prevalent faith; direct persecution would have weakened the national defence and scandalized Europe. They naïvely hoped that the superstition would disappear by degrees. Robespierre declared against the policy of unchristianizing France, and when he had the power (April, 1795), he established as a State religion the worship of the Supreme Being. �The French people recognizes the existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the Soul�; the liberty of other cults was maintained. Thus, for a few months, Rousseau�s idea was more or less realized. It meant intolerance. Atheism was regarded as a vice, and �all were atheists who did not think like Robespierre.� [114] The democratic was succeeded by the middle-class Republic (1795�9), and the policy of its government was to hinder the preponderance of any one religious group; to hold the balance among all the creeds, but with a certain partiality against the strongest, the Catholic, which threatened, as was thought, to destroy the others or even the Republic. The plan was to favour the growth of new rationalistic cults, and to undermine revealed religion by a secular system of education. Accordingly the Church was separated from the State by the Constitution of 1795, which affirmed the liberty of all worship and withdrew from the Catholic clergy the salaries which the State had hitherto paid. The elementary schools were laicized. The Declaration of Rights, the articles of the Constitution, and republican morality were taught instead of religion. An enthusiast declared that �the religion of Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero would soon be the religion of the world.� A new rationalistic religion was introduced under the name of Theophilanthropy. It was the �natural religion� of the philosophers and poets of the century, of Voltaire and the English deists�not the purified Christianity of Rousseau, but anterior and superior to Christianity. Its doctrines, briefly formulated, [115] were: God, immortality, fraternity, humanity; no attacks on other religions, but respect and honour towards all; gatherings in a family, or in a temple, to encourage one another to practise morality. Protected by the government sometimes secretly, sometimes openly, it had a certain success among the cultivated classes. The idea of the lay State was popularized under this rule, and by the end of the century there was virtually religious peace in France. Under the Consulate (from 1799) the same system continued, but Napoleon ceased to protect Theophilanthropy. In 1801, though there seems to have been little discontent with the existing arrangement, Napoleon decided to upset it and bring the Pope upon the scene. The Catholic religion, as that of the majority, was again taken under the special protection of the State, the salaries of the clergy again paid by the nation, and the Papal authority over the Church again recognized within well-defined limits; while full toleration of other religions was maintained. This was the effect of the Concordat between the French Republic and the Pope. It is the judgment of a high authority that the nation, if it had been consulted, would have pronounced against the change. It may be doubted whether this is true. But Napoleon�s policy [116] seems to have been prompted by the calculation that, using the Pope as an instrument, he could control the consciences of men, and more easily carry out his plans of empire. Apart from its ecclesiastical policies and its experiments in new creeds based on the principles of rationalistic thinkers, the French Revolution itself has an interest, in connexion with our subject, as an example of the coercion of reason by an intolerant faith. The leaders believed that, by applying certain principles, they could regenerate France and show the world how the lasting happiness of mankind can be secured. They acted in the name of reason, but their principles were articles of faith, which were accepted just as blindly and irrationally as the dogmas of any supernatural creed. One of these dogmas was the false doctrine of Rousseau that man is a being who is naturally good and loves justice and order. Another was the illusion that all men are equal by nature. The puerile conviction prevailed that legislation could completely blot out the past and radically transform the character of a society. �Liberty, equality, and fraternity� was as much a creed as the Creed of the Apostles; it hypnotized men�s minds like a revelation from on high; and reason had as little part in its propagation as in the spread [117] of Christianity or of Protestantism. It meant anything but equality, fraternity, or liberty, especially liberty, when it was translated into action by the fanatical apostles of �Reason,� who were blind to the facts of human nature and defied the facts of econnomics. Terror, the usual instrument in propagating religions, was never more mercilessly applied. Any one who questioned the doctrines was a heretic and deserved a heretic�s fate. And, as in most religious movements, the milder and less unreasonable spirits succumbed to the fanatics. Never was the name of reason more grievously abused than by those who believed they were inaugurating her reign. Religious liberty, however, among other good things, did emerge from the Revolution, at first in the form of Separation, and then under the Concordat. The Concordat lasted for more than a century, under monarchies and republics, till it was abolished in December, 1905, when the system of Separation was introduced again. In the German States the history of religious liberty differs in many ways, but it resembles the development in France in so far as toleration in a limited form was at first brought about by war. The Thirty Years� War, which divided Germany in the first half [118] of the seventeenth century, and in which, as in the English Civil War, religion and politics were mixed, was terminated by the Peace of Westphalia (1648). By this act, three religions, the Catholic, the Lutheran, and the Reformed [4] were legally recognized by the Holy Roman Empire, and placed on an equality; all other religious were excluded. But it was left to each of the German States, of which the Empire consisted, to tolerate or not any religion it pleased. That is, every prince could impose on his subjects whichever of the three religions he chose, and refuse to tolerate the others in his territory. But he might also admit one or both of the others, and he might allow the followers of other creeds to reside in his dominion, and practise their religion within the precincts of their own houses. Thus toleration varied, from State to State, according to the policy of each particular prince. As elsewhere, so in Germany, considerations of political expediency promoted the growth of toleration, especially in Prussia; and as elsewhere, theoretical advocates exercised great influence on public opinion. But the case for toleration was based by its German defenders chiefly on legal, not, as in [119] England and France, on moral and intellectual grounds. They regarded it as a question of law, and discussed it from the point of view of the legal relations between State and Church. It had been considered long ago from this standpoint by an original Italian thinker, Marsilius of Padua (thirteenth century), who had maintained that the Church had no power to employ physical coercion, and that if the lay authority punished heretics, the punishment was inflicted for the violation not of divine ordinances but of the law of the State, which excluded heretics from its territory. Christian Thomasius may be taken as a leading exponent of the theory that religious liberty logically follows from a right conception of law. He laid down in a series of pamphlets (1693�1697) that the prince, who alone has the power of coercion, has no right to interfere in spiritual matters, while the clergy step beyond their province if they interfere in secular matters or defend their faith by any other means than teaching. But the secular power has no legal right to coerce heretics unless heresy is a crime. And heresy is not a crime, but an error; for it is not a matter of will. Thomasius, moreover, urges the view that the public welfare has nothing to gain from unity of faith, that it makes no [120] difference what faith a man professes so long as he is loyal to the State. His toleration indeed is not complete. He was much influenced by the writings of his contemporary Locke, and he excepts from the benefit of toleration the same classes which Locke excepted. Besides the influence of the jurists, we may note that the Pietistic movement�a reaction of religious enthusiasm against the formal theology of the Lutheran divines�was animated by a spirit favourable to toleration; and that the cause was promoted by the leading men of letters, especially by Lessing, in the second half of the eighteenth century. But perhaps the most important fact of all in hastening the realization of religious liberty in Germany was the accession of a rationalist to the throne of Prussia, in the person of Frederick the Great. A few months after his accession (1740) he wrote in the margin of a State paper, in which a question of religious policy occurred, that every one should be allowed to get to heaven in his own way. His view that morality was independent of religion and therefore compatible with all religions, and that thus a man could be a good citizen�the only thing which the State was entitled to demand�whatever faith he might profess, led to the logical consequence of complete religious liberty. Catholics [121] were placed on an equality with Protestants, and the Treaty of Westphalia was violated by the extension of full toleration to all the forbidden sects. Frederick even conceived the idea of introducing Mohammedan settlers into some parts of his realm. Contrast England under George III, France under Louis XV, Italy under the shadow of the Popes. It is an important fact in history, which has hardly been duly emphasized, that full religious liberty was for the first time, in any country in modern Europe, realized under a free-thinking ruler, the friend of the great �blasphemer� Voltaire. The policy and principles of Frederick were formulated in the Prussian Territorial Code of 1794, by which unrestricted liberty of conscience was guaranteed, and the three chief religions, the Lutheran, the Reformed, and the Catholic, were placed on the same footing and enjoyed the same privileges. The system is �jurisdictional�; only, three Churches here occupy the position which the Anglican Church alone occupies in England. The rest of Germany did not begin to move in the direction pointed out by Prussia until, by one of the last acts of the Holy Roman Empire (1803), the Westphalian settlement had been modified. Before the foundation of the new Empire (1870), freedom was established throughout Germany. [122] In Austria, the Emperor Joseph II issued an Edict of Toleration in 1781, which may be considered a broad measure for a Catholic State at that time. Joseph was a sincere Catholic, but he was not impervious to the enlightened ideas of his age; he was an admirer of Frederick, and his edict was prompted by a genuinely tolerant spirit, such as had not inspired the English Act of 1689. It extended only to the Lutheran and Reformed sects and the communities of the Greek Church which had entered into union with Rome, and it was of a limited kind. Religious liberty was not established till 1867. The measure of Joseph applied to the Austrian States in Italy, and helped to prepare that country for the idea of religious freedom. It is notable that in Italy in the eighteenth century toleration found its advocate, not in a rationalist or a philosopher, but in a Catholic ecclesiastic, Tamburinni, who (under the name of his friend Trautmansdorf) published a work On Ecclesiastical and Civil Toleration (1783). A sharp line is drawn between the provinces of the Church and the State, persecution and the Inquisition are condemned, coercion of conscience is declared inconsistent with the Christian spirit, and the principle is laid down that the sovran should only exercise coercion where [123] the interests of public safety are concerned. Like Locke, the author thinks that atheism is a legitimate case for such coercion. The new States which Napoleon set up in Italy exhibited toleration in various degrees, but real liberty was first introduced in Piedmont by Cavour (1848), a measure which prepared the way for the full liberty which was one of the first-fruits of the foundation of the Italian kingdom in 1870. The union of Italy, with all that it meant, is the most signal and dramatic act in the triumph of the ideas of the modern State over the traditional principles of the Christian Church. Rome, which preserved those principles most faithfully, has offered a steadfast, we may say a heroic, resistance to the liberal ideas which swept Europe in the nineteenth century. The guides of her policy grasped thoroughly the danger which liberal thought meant for an institution which, founded in a remote past, claimed to be unchangeable and never out of date. Gregory XVI issued a solemn protest maintaining authority against freedom, the mediaeval against the modern ideal, in an Encyclical Letter (1832), which was intended as a rebuke to some young French Catholics (Lamennais and his friends) who had conceived the promising idea of transforming the Church by the Liberal spirit [124] of the day. The Pope denounces �the absurd and erroneous maxim, or rather insanity, that liberty of conscience should be procured and guaranteed to every one. The path to this pernicious error is prepared by that full and unlimited liberty of thought which is spread abroad to the misfortune of Church and State and which certain persons, with excessive impudence, venture to represent as an advantage for religion. Hence comes the corruption of youth, contempt for religion and for the most venerable laws, and a general mental change in the world�in short the most deadly scourge of society; since the experience of history has shown that the States which have shone by their wealth and power and glory have perished just by this evil� immoderate freedom of opinion, licence of conversation, and love of novelties. With this is connected the liberty of publishing any writing of any kind. This is a deadly and execrable liberty for which we cannot feel sufficient horror, though some men dare to acclaim it noisily and enthusiastically.� A generation later Pius IX was to astonish the world by a similar manifesto�his Syllabus of Modern Errors (1864). Yet, notwithstanding the fundamental antagonism between the principles of the Church and the drift of modern civilization, the Papacy survives, [125] powerful and respected, in a world where the ideas which it condemned have become the commonplace conditions of life. The progress of Western nations from the system of unity which prevailed in the fifteenth, to the system of liberty which was the rule in the nineteenth century, was slow and painful, illogical and wavering, generally dictated by political necessities, seldom inspired by deliberate conviction. We have seen how religious liberty has been realized, so far as the law is concerned, under two distinct systems, �Jurisdiction� and �Separation.� But legal toleration may coexist with much practical intolerance, and liberty before the law is compatible with serious disabilities of which the law cannot take account. For instance, the expression of unorthodox opinions may exclude a man from obtaining a secular post or hinder his advancement. The question has been asked, which of the two systems is more favourable to the creation of a tolerant social atmosphere? Ruffini (of whose excellent work on Religious Liberty I have made much use in this chapter) decides in favour of Jurisdiction. He points out that while Socinus, a true friend of liberty of thought, contemplated this system, the Anabaptists, whose spirit was intolerant, sought Separation. More important [126] is the observation that in Germany, England, and Italy, where the most powerful Church or Churches are under the control of the State, there is more freedom, more tolerance of opinion, than in many of the American States where Separation prevails. A hundred years ago the Americans showed appalling ingratitude to Thomas Paine, who had done them eminent service in the War of Independence, simply because he published a very unorthodox book. It is notorious that free thought is still a serious hindrance and handicap to an American, even in most of the Universities. This proves that Separation is not an infallible receipt for producing tolerance. But I see no reason to suppose that public opinion in America would be different, if either the Federal Republic or the particular States had adopted Jurisdiction. Given legal liberty under either system, I should say that the tolerance of public opinion depends on social conditions and especially on the degree of culture among the educated classes. From this sketch it will be seen that toleration was the outcome of new political circumstances and necessities, brought about by the disunion of the Church through the Reformation. But it meant that in those States which granted toleration the opinion of [127] a sufficiently influential group of the governing class was ripe for the change, and this new mental attitude was in a great measure due to the scepticism and rationalism which were diffused by the Renaissance movement, and which subtly and unconsciously had affected the minds of many who were sincerely devoted to rigidly orthodox beliefs; so effective is the force of suggestion. In the next two chapters the advance of reason at the expense of faith will be traced through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. [1] Translated by Lecky. [2] Complete toleration was established by Penn in the Quaker Colony of Pennsylvania in 1682. [3] Especially Chillingworth�s Religion of Protestants (1637), and Jeremy Taylor�s Liberty of Prophesying (1646). [4] The Reformed Church consists of the followers of Calvin and Zwingli. CHAPTER VI THE GROWTH OF RATIONALISM (SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES) DURING the last three hundred years reason has been slowly but steadily destroying Christian mythology and exposing the pretensions of supernatural revelation. The progress of rationalism falls naturally into two periods. (1) In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries those thinkers who rejected Christian theology and the book on which it relies were mainly influenced by the inconsistencies, contradictions, and absurdities which they discovered in the evidence, and by the moral [128] difficulties of the creed. Some scientific facts were known which seemed to reflect on the accuracy of Revelation, but arguments based on science were subsidiary. (2) In the nineteenth century the discoveries of science in many fields bore with full force upon fabrics which had been constructed in a naïve and ignorant age; and historical criticism undermined methodically the authority of the sacred documents which had hitherto been exposed chiefly to the acute but unmethodical criticisms of common sense. A disinterested love of facts, without any regard to the bearing which those facts may have on one�s hopes or fears or destiny, is a rare quality in all ages, and it had been very rare indeed since the ancient days of Greece and Rome. It means the scientific spirit. Now in the seventeenth century we may say (without disrespect to a few precursors) that the modern study of natural science began, and in the same period we have a series of famous thinkers who were guided by a disinterested love of truth. Of the most acute minds some reached the conclusion that the Christian scheme of the world is irrational, and according to their temperament some rejected it, whilst others, like the great Frenchman Pascal, fell back upon an unreasoning act of faith. Bacon, who professed [129] orthodoxy, was perhaps at heart a deist, but in any case the whole spirit of his writings was to exclude authority from the domain of scientific investigation which he did so much to stimulate. Descartes, illustrious not only as the founder of modern metaphysics but also by his original contributions to science, might seek to conciliate the ecclesiastical authorities�his temper was timid� but his philosophical method was a powerful incentive to rationalistic thought. The general tendency of superior intellects was to exalt reason at the expense of authority; and in England this principle was established so firmly by Locke, that throughout the theological warfare of the eighteenth century both parties relied on reason, and no theologian of repute assumed faith to be a higher faculty. A striking illustration of the gradual encroachments of reason is the change which was silently wrought in public opinion on the subject of witchcraft. The famous efforts of James I to carry out the Biblical command, �Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,� were outdone by the zeal of the Puritans under the Commonwealth to suppress the wicked old women who had commerce with Satan. After the Restoration, the belief in witchcraft declined among educated people�though [130] some able writers maintained it�and there were few executions. The last trial of a witch was in 1712, when some clergymen in Hertfordshire prosecuted Jane Wenham. The jury found her guilty, but the judge, who had summed up in her favour, was able to procure the remission of her sentence; and the laws against witchcraft were repealed in 1735. John Wesley said with perfect truth that to disbelieve in witchcraft is to disbelieve in the Bible. In France and in Holland the decline of belief and interest in this particular form of Satan�s activity was simultaneous. In Scotland, where theology was very powerful, a woman was burnt in 1722. It can be no mere coincidence that the general decline of this superstition belongs to the age which saw the rise of modern science and modern philosophy. Hobbes, who was perhaps the most brilliant English thinker of the seventeenth century, was a freethinker and materialist. He had come under the influence of his friend the French philosopher Gassendi, who had revived materialism in its Epicurean shape. Yet he was a champion not of freedom of conscience but of coercion in its most uncompromising form. In the political theory which he expounded in Leviathan, the sovran has autocratic power in the domain of doctrine, [131] as in everything else, and it is the duty of subjects to conform to the religion which the sovran imposes. Religious persecution is thus defended, but no independent power is left to the Church. But the principles on which Hobbes built up his theory were rationalistic. He separated morality from religion and identified �the true moral philosophy� with the �true doctrine of the laws of nature.� What he really thought of religion could be inferred from his remark that the fanciful fear of things invisible (due to ignorance) is the natural seed of that feeling which, in himself, a man calls religion, but, in those who fear or worship the invisible power differently, superstition. In the reign of Charles II Hobbes was silenced and his books were burned. Spinoza, the Jewish philosopher of Holland, owed a great deal to Descartes and (in political speculation) to Hobbes, but his philosophy meant a far wider and more open breach with orthodox opinion than either of his masters had ventured on. He conceived ultimate reality, which he called God, as an absolutely perfect, impersonal Being, a substance whose nature is constituted by two �attributes�� thought and spatial extension. When Spinoza speaks of love of God, in which he considered happiness to consist, he means knowledge [132] and contemplation of the order of nature, including human nature, which is subject to fixed, invariable laws. He rejects free-will and the �superstition,� as he calls it, of final causes in nature. If we want to label his philosophy, we may say that it is a form of pantheism. It has often been described as atheism. If atheism means, as I suppose in ordinary use it is generally taken to mean, rejection of a personal God, Spinoza was an atheist. It should be observed that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries atheist was used in the wildest way as a term of abuse for freethinkers, and when we read of atheists (except in careful writers) we may generally assume that the persons so stigmatized were really deists, that is, they believed in a personal God but not in Revelation. [1] Spinoza�s daring philosophy was not in harmony with the general trend of speculation at the time, and did not exert any profound influence on thought till a much later period. The thinker whose writings appealed most to the men of his age and were most opportune and effective was John Locke, who professed more or less orthodox Anglicanism. His great contribution to philosophy is equivalent to a very powerful defence [133] of reason against the usurpations of authority. The object of his Essay on the Human Understanding (1690) is to show that all knowledge is derived from experience. He subordinated faith completely to reason. While he accepted the Christian revelation, he held that revelation if it contradicted the higher tribunal of reason must be rejected, and that revelation cannot give us knowledge as certain as the knowledge which reason gives. �He that takes away reason to make room for revelation puts out the light of both; and does much what the same as if he would persuade a man to put out his eyes, the better to receive the remote light of an invisible star by a telescope.� He wrote a book to show that the Christian revelation is not contrary to reason, and its title, The Reasonableness of Christianity, sounds the note of all religious controversy in England during the next hundred years. Both the orthodox and their opponents warmly agreed that reasonableness was the only test of the claims of revealed religion. It was under the direct influence of Locke that Toland, an Irishman who had been converted from Roman Catholicism, composed a sensational book, Christianity Not Mysterious (1696). He assumes that Christianity is true and argues that there can be no mysteries in it, because mysteries, that [134] is, unintelligible dogmas, cannot be accepted by reason. And if a reasonable Deity gave a revelation, its purpose must be to enlighten, not to puzzle. The assumption of the truth of Christianity was a mere pretence, as an intelligent reader could not fail to see. The work was important because it drew the logical inference from Locke�s philosophy, and it had a wide circulation. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu met a Turkish Effendi at Belgrade who asked her for news of Mr. Toland. It is characteristic of this stage of the struggle between reason and authority that (excepting the leading French thinkers in the eighteenth century) the rationalists, who attacked theology, generally feigned to acknowledge the truth of the ideas which they were assailing. They pretended that their speculations did not affect religion; they could separate the domains of reason and of faith; they could show that Revelation was superfluous without questioning it; they could do homage to orthodoxy and lay down views with which orthodoxy was irreconcilable. The errors which they exposed in the sphere of reason were ironically allowed to be truths in the sphere of theology. The mediaeval principle of double truth and other shifts were resorted to, in self-protection [135] against the tyranny of orthodoxy�though they did not always avail; and in reading much of the rationalistic literature of this period we have to read between the lines. Bayle is an interesting instance. If Locke�s philosophy, by setting authority in its place and deriving all knowledge from experience, was a powerful aid to rationalism, his contemporary Bayle worked in the same direction by the investigation of history. Driven from France (see above, p. 107), he lived at Amsterdam, where he published his Philosophical Dictionary. He was really a freethinker, but he never dropped the disguise of orthodoxy, and this lends a particular piquancy to his work. He takes a delight in marshalling all the objections which heretics had made to essential Christian dogmas. He exposed without mercy the crimes and brutalities of David, and showed that this favourite of the Almighty was a person with whom one would refuse to shake hands. There was a great outcry at this unedifying candour. Bayle, in replying, adopted the attitude of Montaigne and Pascal, and opposed faith to reason. The theological virtue of faith, he said, consists in believing revealed truths simply and solely on God�s authority. If you believe in the immortality of the soul for [136] philosophical reasons, you are orthodox, but you have no part in faith. The merit of faith becomes greater, in proportion as the revealed truth surpasses all the powers of our mind; the more incomprehensible the truth and the more repugnant to reason, the greater is the sacrifice we make in accepting it, the deeper our submission to God. Therefore a merciless inventory of the objections which reason has to urge against fundamental doctrines serves to exalt the merits of faith. The Dictionary was also criticized for the justice done to the moral excellencies of persons who denied the existence of God. Bayle replies that if he had been able to find any atheistical thinkers who lived bad lives, he would have been delighted to dwell on their vices, but he knew of none such. As for the criminals you meet in history, whose abominable actions make you tremble, their impieties and blasphemies prove they believed in a Divinity. This is a natural consequence of the theological doctrine that the Devil, who is incapable of atheism, is the instigator of all the sins of men. For man�s wickedness must clearly resemble that of the Devil and must therefore be joined to a belief in God�s existence, since the Devil is not an atheist. And is it not a proof of the infinite wisdom of God that the worst criminals [137] are not atheists, and that most of the atheists whose names are recorded have been honest men? By this arrangement Providence sets bounds to the corruption of man; for if atheism and moral wickedness were united in the same persons, the societies of earth would be exposed to a fatal inundation of sin. There was much more in the same vein; and the upshot was, under the thin veil of serving faith, to show that the Christian dogmas were essentially unreasonable. Bayle�s work, marked by scholarship and extraordinary learning, had a great influence in England as well as in France. It supplied weapons to assailants of Christianity in both countries. At first the assault was carried on with most vigour and ability by the English deists, who, though their writings are little read now, did memorable work by their polemic against the authority of revealed religion. The controversy between the deists and their orthodox opponents turned on the question whether the Deity of natural religion �the God whose existence, as was thought, could be proved by reason�can be identified with the author of the Christian revelation. To the deists this seemed impossible. The nature of the alleged revelation seemed inconsistent with the character [138] of the God to whom reason pointed. The defenders of revelation, at least all the most competent, agreed with the deists in making reason supreme, and through this reliance on reason some of them fell into heresies. Clarke, for instance, one of the ablest, was very unsound on the dogma of the Trinity. It is also to be noticed that with both sections the interest of morality was the principal motive. The orthodox held that the revealed doctrine of future rewards and punishments is necessary for morality; the deists, that morality depends on reason alone, and that revelation contains a great deal that is repugnant to moral ideals. Throughout the eighteenth century morality was the guiding consideration with Anglican Churchmen, and religious emotion, finding no satisfaction within the Church, was driven, as it were, outside, and sought an outlet in the Methodism of Wesley and Whitefield. Spinoza had laid down the principle that Scripture must be interpreted like any other book (1670), [2] and with the deists this principle was fundamental. In order to avoid persecution they generally veiled their conclusions [139] under sufficiently thin disguises. Hitherto the Press Licensing Act (1662) had very effectually prevented the publication of heterodox works, and it is from orthodox works denouncing infidel opinions that we know how rationalism was spreading. But in 1695, the Press Law was allowed to drop, and immediately deistic literature began to appear. There was, however, the danger of prosecution under the Blasphemy laws. There were three legal weapons for coercing those who attacked Christianity: (1) The Ecclesiastical Courts had and have the power of imprisoning for a maximum term of six months, for atheism, blasphemy, heresy, and damnable opinions. (2) The common law as interpreted by Lord Chief Justice Hale in 1676, when a certain Taylor was charged with having said that religion was a cheat and blasphemed against Christ. The accused was condemned to a fine and the pillory by the Judge, who ruled that the Court of King�s Bench has jurisdiction in such a case, inasmuch as blasphemous words of the kind are an offence against the laws and the State, and to speak against Christianity is to speak in subversion of the law, since Christianity is �parcel of the laws of England.� (3) The statute of 1698 enacts that if any person educated in the Christian religion �shall by [140] writing, printing, teaching, or advised speaking deny any one of the persons in the Holy Trinity to be God, or shall assert or maintain there are more gods than one, or shall deny the Christian religion to be true, or shall deny the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be of divine authority,� is convicted, he shall for the first offence be adjudged incapable to hold any public offices or employments, and on the second shall lose his civil rights and be imprisoned for three years. This Statute expressly states as its motive the fact that �many persons have of late years openly avowed and published many blasphemous and impious opinions contrary to the doctrine and principles of the Christian religion.� As a matter of fact, most trials for blasphemy during the past two hundred years fall under the second head. But the new Statute of 1698 was very intimidating, and we can easily understand how it drove heterodox writers to ambiguous disguises. One of these disguises was allegorical interpretation of Scripture. They showed that literal interpretation led to absurdities or to inconsistencies with the wisdom and justice of God, and pretended to infer that allegorical interpretation must be substituted. But they meant the reader to reject their pretended [141] solution and draw a conclusion damaging to Revelation. Among the arguments used in favour of the truth of Revelation the fulfilment of prophecies and the miracles of the New Testament were conspicuous. Anthony Collins, a country gentleman who was a disciple of Locke, published in 1733 his Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion, in which he drastically exposed the weakness of the evidence for fulfilment of prophecy, depending as it does on forced and unnatural figurative interpretations. Twenty years before he had written a Discourse of Free-thinking (in which Bayle�s influence is evident) pleading for free discussion and the reference of all religious questions to reason. He complained of the general intolerance which prevailed; but the same facts which testify to intolerance testify also to the spread of unbelief. Collins escaped with comparative impunity, but Thomas Woolston, a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, who wrote six aggressive Discourses on the Miracles of our Saviour (1727�1730) paid the penalty for his audacity. Deprived of his Fellowship, he was prosecuted for libel, and sentenced to a fine of £100 and a year�s imprisonment. Unable to pay, he died in prison. He does [142] not adopt the line of arguing that miracles are incredible or impossible. He examines the chief miracles related in the Gospels, and shows with great ability and shrewd common sense that they are absurd or unworthy of the performer. He pointed out, as Huxley was to point out in a controversy with Gladstone, that the miraculous driving of devils into a herd of swine was an unwarrantable injury to somebody�s property. On the story of the Divine blasting of the fig tree, he remarks: �What if a yeoman of Kent should go to look for pippins in his orchard at Easter (the supposed time that Jesus sought for these figs) and because of a disappointment cut down his trees? What then would his neighbours make of him? Nothing less than a laughing-stock; and if the story got into our Publick News, he would be the jest and ridicule of mankind.� Or take his comment on the miracle of the Pool of Bethesda, where an angel used to trouble the waters and the man who first entered the pool was cured of his infirmity. �An odd and a merry way of conferring a Divine mercy. And one would think that the angels of God did this for their own diversion more than to do good to mankind. Just as some throw a bone among a kennel of hounds for the pleasure of seeing them [143] quarrel for it, or as others cast a piece of money among a company of boys for the sport of seeing them scramble for it, so was the pastime of the angels here.� In dealing with the healing of the woman who suffered from a bloody flux, he asks: �What if we had been told of the Pope�s curing an haemorrhage like this before us, what would Protestants have said to it? Why, �that a foolish, credulous, and superstitious woman had fancied herself cured of some slight indisposition, and the crafty Pope and his adherents, aspiring after popular applause, magnified the presumed cure into a miracle.� The application of such a supposed story of a miracle wrought by the Pope is easy; and if Infidels, Jews, and Mahometans, who have no better opinion of Jesus than we have of the Pope, should make it, there�s no help for it.� Woolston professed no doubts of the inspiration of Scripture. While he argued that it was out of the question to suppose the miracles literally true, he pretended to believe in the fantastic theory that they were intended allegorically as figures of Christ�s mysterious operations in the soul of man. Origen, a not very orthodox Christian Father, had employed the allegorical method, and Woolston quotes him in his favour. His [144] vigorous criticisms vary in value, but many of them hit the nail on the head, and the fashion of some modern critics to pass over Woolston�s productions as unimportant because they are �ribald� or coarse, is perfectly unjust. The pamphlets had an enormous sale, and Woolston�s notoriety is illustrated by the anecdote of the �jolly young woman� who met him walking abroad and accosted him with �You old rogue, are you not hanged yet?� Mr. Woolston answered, �Good woman, I know you not; pray what have I done to offend you?� �You have writ against my Saviour,� she said; �what would become of my poor sinful soul if it was not for my dear Saviour?� About the same time, Matthew Tindal (a Fellow of All Souls) attacked Revelation from a more general point of view. In his Christianity as old as the Creation (1730) he undertook to show that the Bible as a revelation is superfluous, for it adds nothing to natural religion, which God revealed to man from the very first by the sole light of reason. He argues that those who defend Revealed religion by its agreement with Natural religion, and thus set up a double government of reason and authority, fall between the two. �It �s an odd jumble,� he observes, �to prove the truth of a book by the truth [145] of the doctrines it contains, and at the same time conclude those doctrines to be true because contained in that book.� He goes on to criticize the Bible in detail. In order to maintain its infallibility, without doing violence to reason, you have, when you find irrational statements, to torture them and depart from the literal sense. Would you think that a Mohammedan was governed by his Koran, who on all occasions departed from the literal sense? �Nay, would you not tell him that his inspired book fell infinitely short of Cicero�s uninspired writings, where there is no such occasion to recede from the letter?� As to chronological and physical errors, which seemed to endanger the infallibility of the Scriptures, a bishop had met the argument by saying, reasonably enough, that in the Bible God speaks according to the conceptions of those to whom he speaks, and that it is not the business of Revelation to rectify their opinions in such matters. Tindal made this rejoinder:� �Is there no difference between God�s not rectifying men�s sentiments in those matters and using himself such sentiments as needs be rectified; or between God�s not mending men�s logic and rhetoric where �t is defective and using such himself; or between God�s [146] not contradicting vulgar notions and confirming them by speaking according to them? Can infinite wisdom despair of gaining or keeping people�s affections without having recourse to such mean acts?� He exposes with considerable effect the monstrosity of the doctrine of exclusive salvation. Must we not consider, he asks, whether one can be said to be sent as a Saviour of mankind, if he comes to shut Heaven�s gate against those to whom, before he came, it was open provided they followed the dictates of their reason? He criticizes the inconsistency of the impartial and universal goodness of God, known to us by the light of nature, with acts committed by Jehovah or his prophets. Take the cases in which the order of nature is violated to punish men for crimes of which they were not guilty, such as Elijah�s hindering rain from falling for three years and a half. If God could break in upon the ordinary rules of his providence to punish the innocent for the guilty, we have no guarantee that if he deals thus with us in this life, he will not act in the same way in the life to come, �since if the eternal rules of justice are once broken how can we imagine any stop?� But the ideals of holiness and justice in the Old Testament are strange indeed. The holier men [147] are represented to be, the more cruel they seem and the more addicted to cursing. How surprising to find the holy prophet Elisha cursing in the name of the Lord little children for calling him Bald- pate! And, what is still more surprising, two she-bears immediately devoured forty-two little children. I have remarked that theologians at this time generally took the line of basing Christianity on reason and not on faith. An interesting little book, Christianity not founded on Argument, couched in the form of a letter to a young gentleman at Oxford, by Henry Dodwell (Junior), appeared in 1741, and pointed out the dangers of such confidence in reason. It is an ironical development of the principle of Bayle, working out the thesis that Christianity is essentially unreasonable, and that if you want to believe, reasoning is fatal. The cultivation of faith and reasoning produce contrary effects; the philosopher is disqualified for Divine influences by his very progress in carnal wisdom; the Gospel must be received with all the obsequious submission of a babe who has no other disposition but to learn his lesson. Christ did not propose his doctrines to investigation; he did not lay the arguments for his mission before his disciples and give them time to consider [148] calmly of their force, and liberty to determine as their reason should direct them; the apostles had no qualifications for the task, being the most artless and illiterate persons living. Dodwell exposes the absurdity of the Protestant position. To give all men liberty to judge for themselves and to expect at the same time that they shall be of the Preacher�s mind is such a scheme for unanimity as one would scarcely imagine any one could be weak enough to devise in speculation and much less that any could ever be found hardy enough to avow and propose it to practice. The men of Rome �shall rise up in the judgment (of all considering persons) against this generation and shall condemn it; for they invented but the one absurdity of infallibility, and behold a greater absurdity than infallibility is here.� I have still to speak of the (Third) Earl of Shaftesbury, whose style has rescued his writings from entire neglect. His special interest was ethics. While the valuable work of most of the heterodox writers of this period lay in their destructive criticism of supernatural religion, they clung, as we have seen, to what was called natural religion� the belief in a kind and wise personal God, who created the world, governs it by natural laws, and desires our happiness. The idea [149] was derived from ancient philosophers and had been revived by Lord Herbert of Cherbury in his Latin treatise On Truth (in the reign of James I). The deists contended that this was a sufficient basis for morality and that the Christian inducements to good behaviour were unnecessary. Shaftesbury in his Inquiry concerning Virtue (1699) debated the question and argued that the scheme of heaven and hell, with the selfish hopes and fears which they inspire, corrupts morality and that the only worthy motive for conduct is the beauty of virtue in itself. He does not even consider deism a necessary assumption for a moral code; he admits that the opinion of atheists does not undermine ethics. But he thinks that the belief in a good governor of the universe is a powerful support to the practice of virtue. He is a thorough optimist, and is perfectly satisfied with the admirable adaptation of means to ends, whereby it is the function of one animal to be food for another. He makes no attempt to reconcile the red claws and teeth of nature with the beneficence of its powerful artist. �In the main all things are kindly and well disposed.� The atheist might have said that he preferred to be at the mercy of blind chance than in the hands of an autocrat who, if he pleased Lord Shaftesbury�s sense [150] of order, had created flies to be devoured by spiders. But this was an aspect of the universe which did not much trouble thinkers in the eighteenth century. On the other hand, the character of the God of the Old Testament roused Shaftesbury�s aversion. He attacks Scripture not directly, but by allusion or with irony. He hints that if there is a God, he would be less displeased with atheists than with those who accepted him in the guise of Jehovah. As Plutarch said, �I had rather men should say of me that there neither is nor ever was such a one as Plutarch, than they should say �There was a Plutarch, an unsteady, changeable, easily provokable and revengeful man.� � Shaftesbury�s significance is that he built up a positive theory of morals, and although it had no philosophical depth, his influence on French and German thinkers of the eighteenth century was immense. In some ways perhaps the ablest of the deists, and certainly the most scholarly, was Rev. Conyers Middleton, who remained within the Church. He supported Christianity on grounds of utility. Even if it is an imposture, he said, it would be wrong to destroy it. For it is established by law and it has a long tradition behind it. Some traditional religion is necessary and it would [151] be hopeless to supplant Christianity by reason. But his writings contain effective arguments which go to undermine Revelation. The most important was his Free Inquiry into Christian miracles (1748), which put in a new and dangerous light an old question: At what time did the Church cease to have the power of performing miracles? We shall see presently how Gibbon applied Middleton�s method. The leading adversaries of the deists appealed, like them, to reason, and, in appealing to reason, did much to undermine authority. The ablest defence of the faith, Bishop Butler�s Analogy (1736), is suspected of having raised more doubts than it appeased. This was the experience of William Pitt the Younger, and the Analogy made James Mill (the utilitarian) an unbeliever. The deists, argued that the unjust and cruel God of Revelation could not be the God of nature; Butler pointed to nature and said, There you behold cruelty and injustice. The argument was perfectly good against the optimism of Shaftesbury, but it plainly admitted of the conclusion�opposite to that which Butler wished to establish�that a just and beneficent God does not exist. Butler is driven to fall back on the sceptical argument that we are extremely ignorant; that all things [152] are possible, even eternal hell fire; and that therefore the safe and prudent course is to accept the Christian doctrine. It may be remarked that this reasoning, with a few modifications, could be used in favour of other religions, at Mecca or at Timbuctoo. He has, in effect, revived the argument used by Pascal that if there is one chance in any very large number that Christianity is true, it is a man�s interest to be a Christian; for, if it prove false, it will do him no harm to have believed it; if it prove true, he will be infinitely the gainer. Butler seeks indeed to show that the chances in favour amount to a probability, but his argument is essentially of the same intellectual and moral value as Pascal�s. It has been pointed out that it leads by an easy logical step from the Anglican to the Roman Church. Catholics and Protestants (as King Henry IV of France argued) agree that a Catholic may be saved; the Catholics assert that a Protestant will be damned; therefore the safe course is to embrace Catholicism. [3] I have dwelt at some length upon some of the English deists, because, while they occupy an important place in the history of [153] rationalism in England, they also supplied, along with Bayle, a great deal of the thought which, manipulated by brilliant writers on the other side of the Channel, captured the educated classes in France. We are now in the age of Voltaire. He was a convinced deist. He considered that the nature of the universe proved that it was made by a conscious architect, he held that God was required in the interests of conduct, and he ardently combated atheism. His great achievements were his efficacious labour in the cause of toleration, and his systematic warfare against superstitions. He was profoundly influenced by English thinkers, especially Locke and Bolingbroke. This statesman had concealed his infidelity during his lifetime except from his intimates; he had lived long as an exile in France; and his rationalistic essays were published (1754) after his death. Voltaire, whose literary genius converted the work of the English thinkers into a world-force, did not begin his campaign against Christianity till after the middle of the century, when superstitious practices and religious persecutions were becoming a scandal in his country. He assailed the Catholic Church in every field with ridicule and satire. In a little work called The Tomb of Fanaticism (written 1736, [154] published 1767), he begins by observing that a man who accepts his religion (as most people do) without examining it is like an ox which allows itself to be harnessed, and proceeds to review the difficulties in the Bible, the rise of Christianity, and the course of Church history; from which he concludes that every sensible man should hold the Christian sect in horror. �Men are blind to prefer an absurd and sanguinary creed, supported by executioners and surrounded by fiery faggots, a creed which can only be approved by those to whom it gives power and riches, a particular creed only accepted in a small part of the world�to a simple and universal religion.� In the Sermon of the Fifty and the Questions of Zapata we can see what he owed to Bayle and English critics, but his touch is lighter and his irony more telling. His comment on geographical mistakes in the Old Testament is: �God was evidently not strong in geography.� Having called attention to the �horrible crime� of Lot�s wife in looking backward, and her conversion into a pillar of salt, he hopes that the stories of Scripture will make us better, if they do not make us more enlightened. One of his favourite methods is to approach Christian doctrines as a person who had just heard of the existence of Christians or Jews for the first time in his life. [155] His drama, Saul (1763), which the police tried to suppress, presents the career of David, the man after God�s own heart, in all its naked horror. The scene in which Samuel reproves Saul for not having slain Agag will give an idea of the spirit of the piece. SAMUEL: God commands me to tell you that he repents of having made you king. SAUL: God repents! Only they who commit errors repent. His eternal wisdom cannot be unwise. God cannot commit errors. SAMUEL: He can repent of having set on the throne those who do. SAUL: Well, who does not? Tell me, what is my fault? SAMUEL: You have pardoned a king. AGAG: What! Is the fairest of virtues considered a crime in Judea? SAMUEL (to Agag): Silence! do not blaspheme. (To Saul). Saul, formerly king of the Jews, did not God command you by my mouth to destroy all the Amalekites, without sparing women, or maidens, or children at the breast? AGAG: Your god�gave such a command! You are mistaken, you meant to say, your devil. SAMUEL: Saul, did you obey God? SAUL: I did not suppose such a command [156] was positive. I thought that goodness was the first attribute of the Supreme Being, and that a compassionate heart could not displease him. SAMUEL: You are mistaken, unbeliever. God reproves you, your sceptre will pass into other hands. Perhaps no writer has ever roused more hatred in Christendom than Voltaire. He was looked on as a sort of anti-Christ. That was natural; his attacks were so tremendously effective at the time. But he has been sometimes decried on the ground that he only demolished and made no effort to build up where he had pulled down. This is a narrow complaint. It might be replied that when a sewer is spreading plague in a town, we cannot wait to remove it till we have a new system of drains, and it may fairly be said that religion as practised in contemporary France was a poisonous sewer. But the true answer is that knowledge, and therefore civilization, are advanced by criticism and negation, as well as by construction and positive discovery. When a man has the talent to attack with effect falsehood, prejudice, and imposture, it is his duty, if there are any social duties, to use it. For constructive thinking we must go to the other great leader of French thought, [157] Rousseau, who contributed to the growth of freedom in a different way. He was a deist, but his deism, unlike that of Voltaire, was religious and emotional. He regarded Christianity with a sort of reverent scepticism. But his thought was revolutionary and repugnant to orthodoxy; it made against authority in every sphere; and it had an enormous influence. The clergy perhaps dreaded his theories more than the scoffs and negations of Voltaire. For some years he was a fugitive on the face of the earth. Émile, his brilliant contribution to the theory of education, appeared in 1762. It contains some remarkable pages on religion, �the profession of faith of a Savoyard vicar,� in which the author�s deistic faith is strongly affirmed and revelation and theology rejected. The book was publicly burned in Paris and an order issued for Rousseau�s arrest. Forced by his friends to flee, he was debarred from returning to Geneva, for the government of that canton followed the example of Paris. He sought refuge in the canton of Bern and was ordered to quit. He then fled to the principality of Neufchâtel which belonged to Prussia. Frederick the Great, the one really tolerant ruler of the age, gave him protection, but he was persecuted and calumniated by the local clergy, who but for Frederick would [158] have expelled him, and he went to England for a few months (1766), then returning to France, where he was left unmolested till his death. The religious views of Rousseau are only a minor point in his heretical speculations. It was by his daring social and political theories that he set the world on fire. His Social Contract in which these theories were set forth was burned at Geneva. Though his principles will not stand criticism for a moment, and though his doctrine worked mischief by its extraordinary power of turning men into fanatics, yet it contributed to progress, by helping to discredit privilege and to establish the view that the object of a State is to secure the wellbeing of all its members. Deism�whether in the semi-Christian form of Rousseau or the anti- Christian form of Voltaire�was a house built on the sand, and thinkers arose in France, England, and Germany to shatter its foundations. In France, it proved to be only a half-way inn to atheism. In 1770, French readers were startled by the appearance of Baron D�Holbach�s System of Nature, in which God�s existence and the immortality of the soul were denied and the world declared to be matter spontaneously moving. Holbach was a friend of Diderot, who had also come to reject deism. All the leading [159] ideas in the revolt against the Church had a place in Diderot�s great work, the Encyclopedia, in which a number of leading thinkers collaborated with him. It was not merely a scientific book of reference. It was representative of the whole movement of the enemies of faith. It was intended to lead men from Christianity with its original sin to a new conception of the world as a place which can be made agreeable and in which the actual evils are due not to radical faults of human nature but to perverse institutions and perverse education. To divert interest from the dogmas of religion to the improvement of society, to persuade the world that man�s felicity depends not on Revelation but on social transformation�this was what Diderot and Rousseau in their different ways did so much to effect. And their work influenced those who did not abandon orthodoxy; it affected the spirit of the Church itself. Contrast the Catholic Church in France in the eighteenth and in the nineteenth century. Without the work of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and their fellow-combatants, would it have been reformed? �The Christian Churches� (I quote Lord Morley) �are assimilating as rapidly as their formulae will permit, the new light and the more generous moral ideas and the higher spirituality of [160] teachers who have abandoned all churches and who are systematically denounced as enemies of the souls of men.� In England the prevalent deistic thought did not lead to the same intellectual consequences as in France; yet Hume, the greatest English philosopher of the century, showed that the arguments commonly adduced for a personal God were untenable. I may first speak of his discussion on miracles in his Essay on Miracles and in his philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748). Hitherto the credibility of miracles had not been submitted to a general examination independent of theological assumptions. Hume, pointing out that there must be a uniform experience against every miraculous event (otherwise it would not merit the name of miracle), and that it will require stronger testimony to establish a miracle than an event which is not contrary to experience, lays down the general maxim that �no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony is of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.� But, as a matter of fact, no testimony exists of which the falsehood would be a prodigy. We cannot find in history any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men of such unquestionable good [161] sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves; of such undoubted integrity as to place them beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit in the eyes of mankind as to have a great deal to lose in case of their being detected in any falsehood, and at the same time attesting facts performed in such a public manner as to render detection unavoidable �all which circumstances are requisite to give us a full assurance in the testimony of men. In the Dialogues on Natural Religion which were not published till after his death (1776), Hume made an attack on the �argument from design,� on which deists and Christians alike relied to prove the existence of a Deity. The argument is that the world presents clear marks of design, endless adaptation of means to ends, which can only be explained as due to the deliberate plan of a powerful intelligence. Hume disputes the inference on the ground that a mere intelligent being is not a sufficient cause to explain the effect. For the argument must be that the system of the material world demands as a cause a corresponding system of interconnected ideas; but such a mental system would demand an explanation of its existence just as much as the material world; and thus we find ourselves [162] committed to an endless series of causes. But in any case, even if the argument held, it would prove only the existence of a Deity whose powers, though superior to man�s, might be very limited and whose workmanship might be very imperfect. For this world may be very faulty, compared to a superior standard. It may be the first rude experiment �of some infant Deity who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance�; or the work of some inferior Deity at which his superior would scoff; or the production of some old superannuated Deity which since his death has pursued an adventurous career from the first impulse which he gave it. An argument which leaves such deities in the running is worse than useless for the purposes of Deism or of Christianity. The sceptical philosophy of Hume had less influence on the general public than Gibbon�s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Of the numerous freethinking books that appeared in England in the eighteenth century, this is the only one which is still a widely read classic. In what a lady friend of Dr. Johnson called �the two offensive chapters� (XV and XVI) the causes of the rise and success of Christianity are for the first time critically investigated as a simple historical phenomenon. Like most freethinkers of the [163] time Gibbon thought it well to protect himself and his work against the possibility of prosecution by paying ironical lip-homage to the orthodox creed. But even if there had been no such danger, he could not have chosen a more incisive weapon for his merciless criticism of orthodox opinion than the irony which he wielded with superb ease. Having pointed out that the victory of Christianity is obviously and satisfactorily explained by the convincing evidence of the doctrine and by the ruling providence of its great Author, he proceeds �with becoming submission� to inquire into the secondary causes. He traces the history of the faith up to the time of Constantine in such a way as clearly to suggest that the hypothesis of divine interposition is superfluous and that we have to do with a purely human development. He marshals, with ironical protests, the obvious objections to the alleged evidence for supernatural control. He does not himself criticize Moses and the prophets, but he reproduces the objections which were made against their authority by �the vain science of the gnostics.� He notes that the doctrine of immortality is omitted in the law of Moses, but this doubtless was a mysterious dispensation of Providence. We cannot entirely remove �the imputation of ignorance and [164] obscurity which has been so arrogantly cast on the first proselytes of Christianity,� but we must �convert the occasion of scandal into a subject of edification� and remember that �the lower we depress the temporal condition of the first Christians, the more reason we shall find to admire their merit and success.� Gibbon�s treatment of miracles from the purely historical point of view (he owed a great deal to Middleton, see above, p. 150) was particularly disconcerting. In the early age of Christianity �the laws of nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the Church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of Tiberius the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman Empire, was involved in a praeternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these [165] philosophers in a laborious work has recorded all the great phenomena of nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe.� How �shall we excuse the supine inattention of the pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses?� Again, if every believer is convinced of the reality of miracles, every reasonable man is convinced of their cessation. Yet every age bears testimony to miracles, and the testimony seems no less respectable than that of the preceding generation. When did they cease? How was it that the generation which saw the last genuine miracles performed could not distinguish them from the impostures which followed? Had men so soon forgotten �the style of the divine artist�? The inference is that genuine and spurious miracles are indistinguishable. But the credulity or �softness of temper� among early believers was beneficial to the cause of truth and religion. �In modern times, a latent and even involuntary scepticism adheres to the most pious dispositions. Their [166] admission of supernatural truths is much less an active consent than a cold and passive acquiescence. Accustomed long since to observe and to respect the invariable order of nature, our reason, or at least our imagination, is not sufficiently prepared to sustain the visible action of the Deity.� Gibbon had not the advantage of the minute critical labours which in the following century were expended on his sources of information, but his masterly exposure of the conventional history of the early Church remains in many of its most important points perfectly valid to-day. I suspect that his artillery has produced more effect on intelligent minds in subsequent generations than the archery of Voltaire. For his book became indispensable as the great history of the Middle Ages; the most orthodox could not do without it; and the poison must have often worked. We have seen how theological controversy in the first half of the eighteenth century had turned on the question whether the revealed religion was consistent and compatible with natural religion. The deistic attacks, on this line, were almost exhausted by the middle of the century, and the orthodox thought that they had been satisfactorily answered. But it was not enough to show that the revelation [167] is reasonable; it was necessary to prove that it is real and rests on a solid historical basis. This was the question raised in an acute form by the criticisms of Hume and Middleton (1748) on miracles. The ablest answer was given by Paley in his Evidences of Christianity (1794), the only one of the apologies of that age which is still read, though it has ceased to have any value. Paley�s theology illustrates how orthodox opinions are coloured, unconsciously, by the spirit of the time. He proved (in his Natural Theology) the existence of God by the argument from design �without taking any account of the criticisms of Hume on that argument. Just as a watchmaker is inferred from a watch, so a divine workman is inferred from contrivances in nature. Paley takes his instances of such contrivance largely from the organs and constitution of the human body. His idea of God is that of an ingenious contriver dealing with rather obstinate material. Paley�s �God� (Mr. Leslie Stephen remarked) �has been civilized like man; he has become scientific and ingenious; he is superior to Watt or Priestley in devising mechanical and chemical contrivances, and is therefore made in the image of that generation of which Watt and Priestley were conspicuous lights.� When a God of this kind [168] is established there is no difficulty about miracles, and it is on miracles that Paley bases the case for Christianity�all other arguments are subsidiary. And his proof of the New Testament miracles is that the apostles who were eye-witnesses believed in them, for otherwise they would not have acted and suffered in the cause of their new religion. Paley�s defence is the performance of an able legal adviser to the Almighty. The list of the English deistic writers of the eighteenth century closes with one whose name is more familiar than any of his predecessors, Thomas Paine. A Norfolk man, he migrated to America and played a leading part in the Revolution. Then he returned to England and in 1791 published his Rights of Man in two parts. I have been considering, almost exclusively, freedom of thought in religion, because it may be taken as the thermometer for freedom of thought in general. At this period it was as dangerous to publish revolutionary opinions in politics as in theology. Paine was an enthusiastic admirer of the American Constitution and a supporter of the French Revolution (in which also he was to play a part). His Rights of Man is an indictment of the monarchical form of government, and a plea for representative democracy. It had an enormous [169] sale, a cheap edition was issued, and the government, finding that it was accessible to the poorer classes, decided to prosecute. Paine escaped to France, and received a brilliant ovation at Calais, which returned him as deputy to the National Convention. His trial for high treason came on at the end of 1792. Among the passages in his book, on which the charge was founded, were these: �All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny.� �The time is not very distant when England will laugh at itself for sending to Holland, Hanover, Zell, or Brunswick for men� [meaning King William III and King George I] �at the expense of a million a year who understood neither her laws, her language, nor her interest, and whose capacities would scarcely have fitted them for the office of a parish constable. If government could be trusted to such hands, it must be some easy and simple thing indeed, and materials fit for all the purposes may be found in every town and village in England.� Erskine was Paine�s counsel, and he made a fine oration in defence of freedom of speech. �Constraint,� he said, �is the natural parent of resistance, and a pregnant proof that reason is not on the side of those who use it. You must all remember, gentlemen, Lucian�s pleasant story: Jupiter and a countryman [170] were walking together, conversing with great freedom and familiarity upon the subject of heaven and earth. The countryman listened with attention and acquiescence while Jupiter strove only to convince him; but happening to hint a doubt, Jupiter turned hastily around and threatened him with his thunder. �Ah, ha!� says the countryman, �now, Jupiter, I know that you are wrong; you are always wrong when you appeal to your thunder.� This is the case with me. I can reason with the people of England, but I cannot fight against the thunder of authority.� Paine was found guilty and outlawed. He soon committed a new offence by the publication of an anti-Christian work, The Age of Reason (1794 and 1796), which he began to write in the Paris prison into which he had been thrown by Robespierre. This book is remarkable as the first important English publication in which the Christian scheme of salvation and the Bible are assailed in plain language without any disguise or reserve. In the second place it was written in such a way as to reach the masses. And, thirdly, while the criticisms on the Bible are in the same vein as those of the earlier deists, Paine is the first to present with force the incongruity of the Christian scheme with the conception of the universe attained by astronomical science. [171] �Though it is not a direct article of the Christian system that this world that we inhabit is the whole of the inhabitable globe, yet it is so worked up therewith�from what is called the Mosaic account of the creation, the story of Eve and the apple, and the counterpart of that story, the death of the Son of God�that to believe otherwise (that is, to believe that God created a plurality of worlds at least as numerous as what we call stars) renders the Christian system of faith at once little and ridiculous, and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air. The two beliefs cannot be held together in the same mind; and he who thinks that he believes both has thought but little of either.� As an ardent deist, who regarded nature as God�s revelation, Paine was able to press this argument with particular force. Referring to some of the tales in the Old Testament, he says: �When we contemplate the immensity of that Being who directs and governs the incomprehensible Whole, of which the utmost ken of human sight can discover but a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry stories the Word of God.� The book drew a reply from Bishop Watson, one of those admirable eighteenth-century divines, who admitted the right of private judgment and thought that argument [172] should be met by argument and not by force. His reply had the rather significant title, An Apology for the Bible. George III remarked that he was not aware that any apology was needed for that book. It is a weak defence, but is remarkable for the concessions which it makes to several of Paine�s criticisms of Scripture�admissions which were calculated to damage the doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible. It was doubtless in consequence of the enormous circulation of the Age of Reason that a Society for the Suppression of Vice decided to prosecute the publisher. Unbelief was common among the ruling class, but the view was firmly held that religion was necessary for the populace and that any attempt to disseminate unbelief among the lower classes must be suppressed. Religion was regarded as a valuable instrument to keep the poor in order. It is notable that of the earlier rationalists (apart from the case of Woolston) the only one who was punished was Peter Annet, a schoolmaster, who tried to popularize freethought and was sentenced for diffusing �diabolical� opinions to the pillory and hard labour (1763). Paine held that the people at large had the right of access to all new ideas, and he wrote so as to reach the people. Hence his book must be suppressed. [173] At the trial (1797) the judge placed every obstacle in the way of the defence. The publisher was sentenced to a year�s imprisonment. This was not the end of Paine prosecutions. In 1811 a Third Part of the Age of Reason appeared, and Eaton the publisher was condemned to eighteen months� imprisonment and to stand in the pillory once a month. The judge, Lord Ellenborough, said in his charge, that �to deny the truths of the book which is the foundation of our faith has never been permitted.� The poet Shelley addressed to Lord Ellenborough a scathing letter. �Do you think to convert Mr. Eaton to your religion by embittering his existence? You might force him by torture to profess your tenets, but he could not believe them except you should make them credible, which perhaps exceeds your power. Do you think to please the God you worship by this exhibition of your zeal? If so, the demon to whom some nations offer human hecatombs is less barbarous than the deity of civilized society!� In 1819 Richard Carlisle was prosecuted for publishing the Age of Reason and sentenced to a large fine and three years� imprisonment. Unable to pay the fine he was kept in prison for three years. His wife and sister, who carried on the business [174] and continued to sell the book, were fined and imprisoned soon afterwards and a whole host of shop assistants. If his publishers suffered in England, the author himself suffered in America where bigotry did all it could to make the last years of his life bitter. The age of enlightenment began in Germany in the middle of the eighteenth century. In most of the German States, thought was considerably less free than in England. Under Frederick the Great�s father, the philosopher Wolff was banished from Prussia for according to the moral teachings of the Chinese sage Confucius a praise which, it was thought, ought to be reserved for Christianity. He returned after the accession of Frederick, under whose tolerant rule Prussia was an asylum for those writers who suffered for their opinions in neighbouring States. Frederick, indeed, held the view which was held by so many English rationalists of the time, and is still held widely enough, that freethought is not desirable for the multitude, because they are incapable of understanding philosophy. Germany felt the influence of the English Deists, of the French freethinkers, and of Spinoza; but in the German rationalistic propaganda of this period there is nothing very original or interesting. [175] The names of Edelmann and Bahrdt may be mentioned. The works of Edelmann, who attacked the inspiration of the Bible, were burned in various cities, and he was forced to seek Frederick�s protection at Berlin. Bahrdt was more aggressive than any other writer of the time. Originally a preacher, it was by slow degrees that he moved away from the orthodox faith. His translation of the New Testament cut short his ecclesiastical career. His last years were spent as an inn-keeper. His writings, for instance his popular Letters on the Bible, must have had a considerable effect, if we may judge by the hatred which he excited among theologians. It was not, however, in direct rationalistic propaganda, but in literature and philosophy, that the German enlightenment of this century expressed itself. The most illustrious men of letters, Goethe (who was profoundly influenced by Spinoza) and Schiller, stood outside the Churches, and the effect of their writings and of the whole literary movement of the time made for the freest treatment of human experience. One German thinker shook the world�the philosopher Kant. His Critic of Pure Reason demonstrated that when we attempt to prove by the fight of the intellect the existence of [176] God and the immortality of the Soul, we fall helplessly into contradictions. His destructive criticism of the argument from design and all natural theology was more complete than that of Hume; and his philosophy, different though his system was, issued in the same practical result as that of Locke, to confine knowledge to experience. It is true that afterwards, in the interest of ethics, he tried to smuggle in by a back-door the Deity whom he had turned out by the front gate, but the attempt was not a success. His philosophy�while it led to new speculative systems in which the name of God was used to mean something very different from the Deistic conception�was a significant step further in the deliverance of reason from the yoke of authority. [1] For the sake of simplicity I use �deist� in this sense throughout, though �theist� is now the usual term. [2] Spinoza�s Theological Political Treatise, which deals with the interpretation of Scripture, was translated into English in 1689. [3] See Benn, Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, vol. i, p. 138 seq., for a good exposure of the fallacies and sophistries of Butler. CHAPTER VII THE PROGRESS OF RATIONALISM (NINETEENTH CENTURY) MODERN science, heralded by the researches of Copernicus, was founded in the seventeenth century, which saw the demonstration of the Copernican theory, the discovery of gravitation, the discovery of the circulation of the blood, and the foundation [177] of modern chemistry and physics. The true nature of comets was ascertained, and they ceased to be regarded as signs of heavenly wrath. But several generations were to pass before science became, in Protestant countries, an involuntary arch-enemy of theology. Till the nineteenth century, it was only in minor points, such as the movement of the earth, that proved scientific facts seemed to conflict with Scripture, and it was easy enough to explain away these inconsistencies by a new interpretation of the sacred texts. Yet remarkable facts were accumulating which, though not explained by science, seemed to menace the credibility of Biblical history. If the story of Noah�s Ark and the Flood is true, how was it that beasts unable to swim or fly inhabit America and the islands of the Ocean? And what about the new species which were constantly being found in the New World and did not exist in the Old? Where did the kangaroos of Australia drop from? The only explanation compatible with received theology seemed to be the hypothesis of innumerable new acts of creation, later than the Flood. It was in the field of natural history that scientific men of the eighteenth century suffered most from the coercion of authority. Linnaeus felt it in Sweden, Buffon [178] in France. Buffon was compelled to retract hypotheses which he put forward about the formation of the earth in his Natural History (1749), and to state that he believed implicitly in the Bible account of Creation. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Laplace worked out the mechanics of the universe, on the nebular hypothesis. His results dispensed, as he said to Napoleon, with the hypothesis of God, and were duly denounced. His theory involved a long physical process before the earth and solar system came to be formed; but this was not fatal, for a little ingenuity might preserve the credit of the first chapter of Genesis. Geology was to prove a more formidable enemy to the Biblical story of the Creation and the Deluge. The theory of a French naturalist (Cuvier) that the earth had repeatedly experienced catastrophes, each of which necessitated a new creative act, helped for a time to save the belief in divine intervention, and Lyell, in his Principles of Geology (1830), while he undermined the assumption of catastrophes, by showing that the earth�s history could be explained by the ordinary processes which we still see in operation, yet held fast to successive acts of creation. It was not till 1863 that he presented fully, in his Antiquity of Man, the [179] evidence which showed that the human race had inhabited the earth for a far longer period than could be reconciled with the record of Scripture. That record might be adapted to the results of science in regard not only to the earth itself but also to the plants and lower animals, by explaining the word �day� in the Jewish story of creation to signify some long period of time. But this way out was impossible in the case of the creation of man, for the sacred chronology is quite definite. An English divine of the seventeenth century ingeniously calculated that man was created by the Trinity on October 23, B.C. 4004, at 9 o�clock in the morning, and no reckoning of the Bible dates could put the event much further back. Other evidence reinforced the conclusions from geology, but geology alone was sufficient to damage irretrievably the historical truth of the Jewish legend of Creation. The only means of rescuing it was to suppose that God had created misleading evidence for the express purpose of deceiving man. Geology shook the infallibility of the Bible, but left the creation of some prehistoric Adam and Eve a still admissible hypothesis. Here however zoology stepped in, and pronounced upon the origin of man. It was an old conjecture that the higher forms of life, including [180] man, had developed out of lower forms, and advanced thinkers had been reaching the conclusion that the universe, as we find it, is the result of a continuous process, unbroken by supernatural interference, and explicable by uniform natural laws. But while the reign of law in the world of non-living matter seemed to be established, the world of life could be considered a field in which the theory of divine intervention is perfectly valid, so long as science failed to assign satisfactory causes for the origination of the various kinds of animals and plants. The publication of Darwin�s Origin of Species in 1859 is, therefore, a landmark not only in science but in the war between science and theology. When this book appeared, Bishop Wilberforce truly said that �the principle of natural selection is incompatible with the word of God,� and theologians in Germany and France as well as in England cried aloud against the threatened dethronement of the Deity. The appearance of the Descent of Man (1871), in which the evidence for the pedigree of the human race from lower animals was marshalled with masterly force, renewed the outcry. The Bible said that God created man in his own image, Darwin said that man descended from an ape. The feelings of the orthodox world may be [181] expressed in the words of Mr. Gladstone: �Upon the grounds of what is called evolution God is relieved of the labour of creation, and in the name of unchangeable laws is discharged from governing the world.� It was a discharge which, as Spencer observed, had begun with Newton�s discovery of gravitation. If Darwin did not, as is now recognized, supply a complete explanation of the origin of species, his researches shattered the supernatural theory and confirmed the view to which many able thinkers had been led that development is continuous in the living as in the non-living world. Another nail was driven into the coffin of Creation and the Fall of Adam, and the doctrine of redemption could only be rescued by making it independent of the Jewish fable on which it was founded. Darwinism, as it is called, has had the larger effect of discrediting the theory of the adaptation of means to ends in nature by an external and infinitely powerful intelligence. The inadequacy of the argument from design, as a proof of God�s existence, had been shown by the logic of Hume and Kant; but the observation of the life-processes of nature shows that the very analogy between nature and art, on which the argument depends, breaks down. The impropriety of the analogy has been [182] pointed out, in a telling way, by a German writer (Lange). If a man wants to shoot a hare which is in a certain field, he does not procure thousands of guns, surround the field, and cause them all to be fired off; or if he wants a house to live in, he does not build a whole town and abandon to weather and decay all the houses but one. If he did either of these things we should say he was mad or amazingly unintelligent; his actions certainly would not be held to indicate a powerful mind, expert in adapting means to ends. But these are the sort of things that nature does. Her wastefulness in the propagation of life is reckless. For the production of one life she sacrifices innumerable germs. The �end� is achieved in one case out of thousands; the rule is destruction and failure. If intelligence had anything to do with this bungling process, it would be an intelligence infinitely low. And the finished product, if regarded as a work of design, points to incompetence in the designer. Take the human eye. An illustrious man of science (Helmholtz) said, �If an optician sent it to me as an instrument, I should send it back with reproaches for the carelessness of his work and demand the return of my money. Darwin showed how the phenomena might be explained as events not brought about [183] intentionally, but due to exceptional concurrences of circumstances. The phenomena of nature are a system of things which co-exist and follow each other according to invariable laws. This deadly proposition was asserted early in the nineteenth century to be an axiom of science. It was formulated by Mill (in his System of Logic, 1843) as the foundation on which scientific induction rests. It means that at any moment the state of the whole universe is the effect of its state at the preceding moment; the casual sequence between two successive states is not broken by any arbitrary interference suppressing or altering the relation between cause and effect. Some ancient Greek philosophers were convinced of this principle; the work done by modern science in every field seems to be a verification of it. But it need not be stated in such an absolute form. Recently, scientific men have been inclined to express the axiom with more reserve and less dogmatically. They are prepared to recognize that it is simply a postulate without which the scientific comprehension of the universe would be impossible, and they are inclined to state it not as a law of causation�for the idea of causation leads into metaphysics�but rather as uniformity of experience. But they are not [184] readier to admit exceptions to this uniformity than their predecessors were to admit exceptions to the law of causation. The idea of development has been applied not only to nature, but to the mind of man and to the history of civilization, including thought and religion. The first who attempted to apply this idea methodically to the whole universe was not a student of natural science, but a metaphysician, Hegel. His extremely difficult philosophy had such a wide influence on thought that a few words must be said about its tendency. He conceived the whole of existence as what he called the Absolute Idea, which is not in space or time and is compelled by the laws of its being to manifest itself in the process of the world, first externalizing itself in nature, and then becoming conscious of itself as spirit in individual minds. His system is hence called Absolute Idealism. The attraction which it exercised has probably been in great measure due to the fact that it was in harmony with nineteenth-century thought, in so far as it conceived the process of the world, both in nature and spirit, as a necessary development from lower to higher stages. In this respect indeed Hegel�s vision was limited. He treats the process as if it were practically complete already, and does not take into account [185] the probability of further development in the future, to which other thinkers of his own time were turning their attention. But what concerns us here is that, while Hegel�s system is �idealistic,� finding the explanation of the universe in thought and not in matter, it tended as powerfully as any materialistic system to subvert orthodox beliefs. It is true that some have claimed it as supporting Christianity. A certain colour is lent to this by Hegel�s view that the Christian creed, as the highest religion, contains doctrines which express imperfectly some of the ideas of the highest philosophy�his own; along with the fact that he sometimes speaks of the Absolute Idea as if it were a person, though personality would be a limitation inconsistent with his conception of it. But it is sufficient to observe that, whatever value be assigned to Christianity, he regarded it from the superior standpoint of a purely intellectual philosophy, not as a special revelation of truth, but as a certain approximation to the truth which philosophy alone can reach; and it may be said with some confidence that any one who comes under Hegel�s spell feels that he is in possession of a theory of the universe which relieves him from the need or desire of any revealed religion. His influence in Germany, Russia, and elsewhere has entirely made for highly unorthodox thought. [186] Hegel was not aggressive, he was superior. His French contemporary, Comte, who also thought out a comprehensive system, aggressively and explicitly rejected theology as an obsolete way of explaining the universe. He rejected metaphysics likewise, and all that Hegel stood for, as equally useless, on the ground that metaphysicians explain nothing, but merely describe phenomena in abstract terms, and that questions about the origin of the world and why it exists are quite beyond the reach of reason. Both theology and metaphysics are superseded by science�the investigation of causes and effects and coexistences; and the future progress of society will be guided by the scientific view of the world which confines itself to the positive data of experience. Comte was convinced that religion is a social necessity, and, to supply the place of the theological religions which he pronounced to be doomed, he invented a new religion�the religion of Humanity. It differs from the great religions of the world in having no supernatural or non-rational articles of belief, and on that account he had few adherents. But the �Positive Philosophy� of Comte has exercised great influence, not least in England, where its principles have been promulgated especially by Mr. Frederic Harrison, who in the latter [187] half of the nineteenth century has been one of the most indefatigable workers in the cause of reason against authority. Another comprehensive system was worked out by an Englishman, Herbert Spencer. Like Comte�s, it was based on science, and attempts to show how, starting with a nebular universe, the whole knowable world, psychical and social as well as physical, can be deduced. His Synthetic Philosophy perhaps did more than anything else to make the idea of evolution familiar in England. I must mention one other modern explanation of the world, that of Haeckel, the zoologist, professor at Jena, who may be called the prophet of evolution. His Creation of Man (1868) covered the same ground as Darwin�s Descent, had an enormous circulation, and was translated, I believe, into fourteen languages. His World-riddles (1899) enjoys the same popularity. He has taught, like Spencer, that the principle of evolution applies not only to the history of nature, but also to human civilization and human thought. He differs from Spencer and Comte in not assuming any unknowable reality behind natural phenomena. His adversaries commonly stigmatize his theory as materialism, but this is a mistake. Like Spinoza he recognizes matter and mind, body and thought, as [188] two inseparable sides of ultimate reality, which he calls God; in fact, he identifies his philosophy with that of Spinoza. And he logically proceeds to conceive material atoms as thinking. His idea of the physical world is based on the old mechanical conception of matter, which in recent years has been discredited. But Haeckel�s Monism, [1] as he called his doctrine, has lately been reshaped and in its new form promises to exercise wide influence on thoughtful people in Germany. I will return later to this Monistic movement. It had been a fundamental principle of Comte that human actions and human history are as strictly subject as nature is, to the law of causation. Two psychological works appeared in England in 1855 (Bain�s Senses and Intellect and Spencer�s Principles of Psychology), which taught that our volitions are completely determined, being the inevitable consequences of chains of causes and effects. But a far deeper impression was produced two years later by the first volume of Buckle�s History of Civilization in England (a work of much less permanent value), which attempted to apply this principle to history. Men act in consequence of motives; their motives are the results of preceding facts; so that �if we were acquainted with the whole of the antecedents [189] and with all the laws of their movements, we could with unerring certainty predict the whole of their immediate results.� Thus history is an unbroken chain of causes and effects. Chance is excluded; it is a mere name for the defects of our knowledge. Mysterious and providential interference is excluded. Buckle maintained God�s existence, but eliminated him from history; and his book dealt a resounding blow at the theory that human actions are not submitted to the law of universal causation. The science of anthropology has in recent years aroused wide interest. Inquiries into the condition of early man have shown (independently of Darwinism) that there is nothing to be said for the view that he fell from a higher to a lower state; the evidence points to a slow rise from mere animality. The origin of religious beliefs has been investigated, with results disquieting for orthodoxy. The researches of students of anthropology and comparative religion�such as Tylor, Robertson Smith, and Frazer�have gone to show that mysterious ideas and dogma and rites which were held to be peculiar to the Christian revelation are derived from the crude ideas of primitive religions. That the mystery of the Eucharist comes from the common savage rite of eating a dead god, [190] that the death and resurrection of a god in human form, which form the central fact of Christianity, and the miraculous birth of a Saviour are features which it has in common with pagan religions�such conclusions are supremely unedifying. It may be said that in themselves they are not fatal to the claims of the current theology. It may be held, for instance, that, as part of Christian revelation, such ideas acquired a new significance and that God wisely availed himself of familiar beliefs�which, though false and leading to cruel practices, he himself had inspired and permitted�in order to construct a scheme of redemption which should appeal to the prejudices of man. Some minds may find satisfaction in this sort of explanation, but it may be suspected that most of the few who study modern researches into the origin of religious beliefs will feel the lines which were supposed to mark off the Christian from all other faiths dissolving before their eyes. The general result of the advance of science, including anthropology, has been to create a coherent view of the world, in which the Christian scheme, based on the notions of an unscientific age and on the arrogant assumption that the universe was made for man, has no suitable or reasonable place. If Paine felt this a hundred years ago, it is far [191] more apparent now. All minds however are not equally impressed with this incongruity. There are many who will admit the proofs furnished by science that the Biblical record as to the antiquity of man is false, but are not affected by the incongruity between the scientific and theological conceptions of the world. For such minds science has only succeeded in carrying some entrenchments, which may be abandoned without much harm. It has made the old orthodox view of the infallibility of the Bible untenable, and upset the doctrine of the Creation and Fall. But it would still be possible for Christianity to maintain the supernatural claim, by modifying its theory of the authority of the Bible and revising its theory of redemption, if the evidence of natural science were the only group of facts with which it collided. It might be argued that the law of universal causation is a hypothesis inferred from experience, but that experience includes the testimonies of history and must therefore take account of the clear evidence of miraculous occurrences in the New Testament (evidence which is valid, even if that book was not inspired). Thus, a stand could be taken against the generalization of science on the firm ground of historical fact. That solid ground, however, has given [192] way, undermined by historical criticism, which has been more deadly than the common-sense criticism of the eighteenth century. The methodical examination of the records contained in the Bible, dealing with them as if they were purely human documents, is the work of the nineteenth century. Something, indeed, had already been done. Spinoza, for instance (above, p. 138), and Simon, a Frenchman whose books were burnt, were pioneers; and the modern criticism of the Old Testament was begun by Astruc (professor of medicine at Paris), who discovered an important clue for distinguishing different documents used by the compiler of the Book of Genesis (1753). His German contemporary, Reimarus, a student of the New Testament, anticipated the modern conclusion that Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion, and saw that the Gospel of St. John presents a different figure from the Jesus of the other evangelists. But in the nineteenth century the methods of criticism, applied by German scholars to Homer and to the records of early Roman history, were extended to the investigation of the Bible. The work has been done principally in Germany. The old tradition that the Pentateuch was written by Moses has been completely discredited. It is now [193] agreed unanimously by all who have studied the facts that the Pentateuch was put together from a number of different documents of different ages, the earliest dating from the ninth, the last from the fifth, century B.C.; and there are later minor additions. An important, though undesigned, contribution was made to this exposure by an Englishman, Colenso, Bishop of Natal. It had been held that the oldest of the documents which had been distinguished was a narrative which begins in Genesis, Chapter I, but there was the difficulty that this narrative seemed to be closely associated with the legislation of Leviticus which could be proved to belong to the fifth century. In 1862 Colenso published the first part of his Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Critically Examined. His doubts of the truth of Old Testament history had been awakened by a converted Zulu who asked the intelligent question whether he could really believe in the story of the Flood, �that all the beasts and birds and creeping things upon the earth, large and small, from hot countries and cold, came thus by pairs and entered into the ark with Noah? And did Noah gather food for them all, for the beasts and birds of prey as well as the rest?� The Bishop then proceeded to test the accuracy of the inspired books by examining [194] the numerical statements which they contain. The results were fatal to them as historical records. Quite apart from miracles (the possibility of which he did not question), he showed that the whole story of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt and the wilderness was full of absurdities and impossibilities. Colenso�s book raised a storm of indignation in England�he was known as �the wicked bishop�; but on the Continent its reception was very different. The portions of the Pentateuch and Joshua, which he proved to be unhistorical, belonged precisely to the narrative which had caused perplexity; and critics were led by his results to conclude that, like the Levitical laws with which it was connected, it was as late as the fifth century. One of the most striking results of the researches on the Old Testament has been that the Jews themselves handled their traditions freely. Each of the successive documents, which were afterwards woven together, was written by men who adopted a perfectly free attitude towards the older traditions, and having no suspicion that they were of divine origin did not bow down before their authority. It was reserved for the Christians to invest with infallible authority the whole indiscriminate lump of these Jewish documents, inconsistent not [195] only in their tendencies (since they reflect the spirit of different ages), but also in some respects in substance. The examination of most of the other Old Testament books has led to conclusions likewise adverse to the orthodox view of their origin and character. New knowledge on many points has been derived from the Babylonian literature which has been recovered during the last half century. One of the earliest (1872) and most sensational discoveries was that the Jews got their story of the Flood from Babylonian mythology. Modern criticism of the New Testament began with the stimulating works of Baur and of Strauss, whose Life of Jesus (1835), in which the supernatural was entirely rejected, had an immense success and caused furious controversy. Both these rationalists were influenced by Hegel. At the same time a classical scholar, Lachmann, laid the foundations of the criticism of the Greek text of the New Testament, by issuing the first scientific edition. Since then seventy years of work have led to some certain results which are generally accepted. In the first place, no intelligent person who has studied modern criticism holds the old view that each of the four biographies of Jesus is an independent work and an independent [196] testimony to the facts which are related. It is acknowledged that those portions which are common to more than one and are written in identical language have the same origin and represent only one testimony. In the second place, it is allowed that the first Gospel is not the oldest and that the apostle Matthew was not its author. There is also a pretty general agreement that Mark�s book is the oldest. The authorship of the fourth Gospel, which like the first was supposed to have been written by an eye-witness, is still contested, but even those who adhere to the tradition admit that it represents a theory about Jesus which is widely different from the view of the three other biographers. The result is that it can no longer be said that for the life of Jesus there is the evidence of eye-witnesses. The oldest account (Mark) was composed at the earliest some thirty years after the Crucifixion. If such evidence is considered good enough to establish the supernatural events described in that document, there are few alleged supernatural occurrences which we shall not be equally entitled to believe. As a matter of fact, an interval of thirty years makes little difference, for we know that legends require little time to grow. In the East, you will hear of miracles which happened the day before [197] yesterday. The birth of religions is always enveloped in legend, and the miraculous thing would be, as M. Salomon Reinach has observed, if the story of the birth of Christianity were pure history. Another disturbing result of unprejudiced examination of the first three Gospels is that, if you take the recorded words of Jesus to be genuine tradition, he had no idea of founding a new religion. And he was fully persuaded that the end of the world was at hand. At present, the chief problem of advanced criticism seems to be whether his entire teaching was not determined by this delusive conviction. It may be said that the advance of knowledge has thrown no light on one of the most important beliefs that we are asked to accept on authority, the doctrine of immortality. Physiology and psychology have indeed emphasized the difficulties of conceiving a thinking mind without a nervous system. Some are sanguine enough to think that, by scientific examination of psychical phenomena, we may possibly come to know whether the �spirits� of dead people exist. If the existence of such a world of spirits were ever established, it would possibly be the greatest blow ever sustained by Christianity. For the great appeal of this and of some other religions [198] lies in the promise of a future life of which otherwise we should have no knowledge. If existence after death were proved and became a scientific fact like the law of gravitation, a revealed religion might lose its power. For the whole point of a revealed religion is that it is not based on scientific facts. So far as I know, those who are convinced, by spiritualistic experiments, that they have actual converse with spirits of the dead, and for whom this converse, however delusive the evidence may be, is a fact proved by experience, cease to feel any interest in religion. They possess knowledge and can dispense with faith. The havoc which science and historical criticism have wrought among orthodox beliefs during the last hundred years was not tamely submitted to, and controversy was not the only weapon employed. Strauss was deprived of his professorship at Tübingen, and his career was ruined. Renan, whose sensational Life of Jesus also rejected the supernatural, lost his chair in the Collège de France. Büchner was driven from Tübingen (1855) for his book on Force and Matter, which, appealing to the general public, set forth the futility of supernatural explanations of the universe. An attempt was made to chase Haeckel from Jena. In recent years, [199] a French Catholic, the Abbé Loisy, has made notable contributions to the study of the New Testament and he was rewarded by major excommunication in 1907. Loisy is the most prominent figure in a growing movement within the Catholic Church known as Modernism�a movement which some think is the gravest crisis in the history of the Church since the thirteenth century. The Modernists do not form an organized party; they have no programme. They are devoted to the Church, to its traditions and associations, but they look on Christianity as a religion which has developed, and whose vitality depends upon its continuing to develop. They are bent on reinterpreting the dogmas in the light of modern science and criticism. The idea of development had already been applied by Cardinal Newman to Catholic theology. He taught that it was a natural, and therefore legitimate, development of the primitive creed. But he did not draw the conclusion which the Modernists draw that if Catholicism is not to lose its power of growth and die, it must assimilate some of the results of modern thought. This is what they are attempting to do for it. Pope Pius X has made every effort to suppress the Modernists. In 1907 (July) he [200] issued a decree denouncing various results of modern Biblical criticism which are defended in Loisy�s works. The two fundamental propositions that �the organic constitution of the Church is not immutable, but that Christian society is subject, like every human society, to a perpetual evolution,� and that �the dogmas which the Church regards as revealed are not fallen from heaven but are an interpretation of religious facts at which the human mind laboriously arrived��both of which might be deduced from Newman�s writings�are condemned. Three months later the Pope issued a long Encyclical letter, containing an elaborate study of Modernist opinions, and ordaining various measures for stamping out the evil. No Modernist would admit that this document represents his views fairly. Yet some of the remarks seem very much to the point. Take one of their books: �one page might be signed by a Catholic; turn over and you think you are reading the work of a rationalist. In writing history, they make no mention of Christ�s divinity; in the pulpit, they proclaim it loudly.� A plain man may be puzzled by these attempts to retain the letter of old dogmas emptied of their old meaning, and may think it natural enough that the head of the Catholic [201] Church should take a clear and definite stand against the new learning which, seems fatal to its fundamental doctrines. For many years past, liberal divines in the Protestant Churches have been doing what the Modernists are doing. The phrase �Divinity of Christ� is used, but is interpreted so as not to imply a miraculous birth. The Resurrection is preached, but is interpreted so as not to imply a miraculous bodily resurrection. The Bible is said to be an inspired book, but inspiration is used in a vague sense, much as when one says that Plato was inspired; and the vagueness of this new idea of inspiration is even put forward as a merit. Between the extreme views which discard the miraculous altogether, and the old orthodoxy, there are many gradations of belief. In the Church of England to-day it would be difficult to say what is the minimum belief required either from its members or from its clergy. Probably every leading ecclesiastic would give a different answer. The rise of rationalism within the English Church is interesting and illustrates the relations between Church and State. The pietistic movement known as Evangelicalism, which Wilberforce�s Practical View of Christianity (1797) did much to make popular, introduced the spirit of Methodism [202] within the Anglican Church, and soon put an end to the delightful type of eighteenth-century divine, who, as Gibbon says, �subscribed with a sigh or a smile� the articles of faith. The rigorous taboo of the Sabbath was revived, the theatre was denounced, the corruption of human nature became the dominant theme, and the Bible more a fetish than ever. The success of this religious �reaction,� as it is called, was aided, though not caused, by the common belief that the French Revolution had been mainly due to infidelity; the Revolution was taken for an object lesson showing the value of religion for keeping the people in order. There was also a religious �reaction� in France itself. But in both cases this means not that free thought was less prevalent, but that the beliefs of the majority were more aggressive and had powerful spokesmen, while the eighteenth-century form of rationalism fell out of fashion. A new form of rationalism, which sought to interpret orthodoxy in such a liberal way as to reconcile it with philosophy, was represented by Coleridge, who was influenced by German philosophers. Coleridge was a supporter of the Church, and he contributed to the foundation of a school of liberal theology which was to make itself felt after the middle of the century. [203] Newman, the most eminent of the new High Church party, said that he indulged in a liberty of speculation which no Christian could tolerate. The High Church movement which marked the second quarter of the century was as hostile as Evangelicalism to the freedom of religious thought. The change came after the middle of the century, when the effects of the philosophies of Hegel and Comte, and of foreign Biblical criticism, began to make themselves felt within the English Church. Two remarkable freethinking books appeared at this period which were widely read, F. W. Newman�s Phases of Faith and W. R. Greg�s Creed of Christendom (both in 1850). Newman (brother of Cardinal Newman) entirely broke with Christianity, and in his book he describes the mental process by which he came to abandon the beliefs he had once held. Perhaps the most interesting point he makes is the deficiency of the New Testament teaching as a system of morals. Greg was a Unitarian. He rejected dogma and inspiration, but he regarded himself as a Christian. Sir J. F. Stephen wittily described his position as that of a disciple �who had heard the Sermon on the Mount, whose attention had not been called to the Miracles, and who died before the Resurrection.� [204] There were a few English clergymen (chiefly Oxford men) who were interested in German criticism and leaned to broad views, which to the Evangelicals and High Churchmen seemed indistinguishable from infidelity. We may call them the Broad Church�though the name did not come in till later. In 1855 Jowett (afterwards Master of Balliol) published an edition of some of St. Paul�s Epistles, in which he showed the cloven hoof. It contained an annihilating criticism of the doctrine of the Atonement, an explicit rejection of original sin, and a rationalistic discussion of the question of God�s existence. But this and some other unorthodox works of liberal theologians attracted little public attention, though their authors had to endure petty persecution. Five years later, Jowett and some other members of the small liberal group decided to defy the �abominable system of terrorism which prevents the statement of the plainest fact,� and issued a volume of Essays and Reviews (1860) by seven writers of whom six were clergymen. The views advocated in these essays seem mild enough to-day, and many of them would be accepted by most well-educated clergymen, but at the time they produced a very painful impression. The authors were called the �Seven against Christ.� It was [205] laid down that the Bible is to be interpreted like any other book. �It is not a useful lesson for the young student to apply to Scripture principles which he would hesitate to apply to other books; to make formal reconcilements of discrepancies which he would not think of reconciling in ordinary history; to divide simple words into double meanings; to adopt the fancies or conjectures of Fathers and Commentators as real knowledge.� It is suggested that the Hebrew prophecies do not contain the element of prediction. Contradictory accounts, or accounts which can only be reconciled by conjecture, cannot possibly have been dictated by God. The discrepancies between the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, or between the accounts of the Resurrection, can be attributed �neither to any defect in our capacities nor to any reasonable presumption of a hidden wise design, nor to any partial spiritual endowments in the narrators.� The orthodox arguments which lay stress on the assertion of witnesses as the supreme evidence of fact, in support of miraculous occurrences, are set aside on the ground that testimony is a blind guide and can avail nothing against reason and the strong grounds we have for believing in permanent order. It is argued that, under the Thirty-nine [206] Articles, it is permissible to accept as �parable or poetry or legend� such stories as that of an ass speaking with a man�s voice, of waters standing in a solid heap, of witches and a variety of apparitions, and to judge for ourselves of such questions as the personality of Satan or the primeval institution of the Sabbath. The whole spirit of this volume is perhaps expressed in the observation that if any one perceives �to how great an extent the origin itself of Christianity rests upon probable evidence, his principle will relieve him from many difficulties which might otherwise be very disturbing. For relations which may repose on doubtful grounds as matters of history, and, as history, be incapable of being ascertained or verified, may yet be equally suggestive of true ideas with facts absolutely certain��that is, they may have a spiritual significance although they are historically false. The most daring Essay was the Rev. Baden Powell�s Study of the Evidences of Christianity. He was a believer in evolution, who accepted Darwinism, and considered miracles impossible. The volume was denounced by the Bishops, and in 1862 two of the contributors, who were beneficed clergymen and thus open to a legal attack, were prosecuted and tried in the Ecclesiastical Court. Condemned on [207] certain points, acquitted on others, they were sentenced to be suspended for a year, and they appealed to the Privy Council. Lord Westbury (Lord Chancellor) pronounced the judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Council, which reversed the decision of the Ecclesiastical Court. The Committee held, among other things, that it is not essential for a clergyman to believe in eternal punishment. This prompted the following epitaph on Lord Westbury: �Towards the close of his earthly career he dismissed Hell with costs and took away from Orthodox members of the Church of England their last hope of everlasting damnation.� This was a great triumph for the Broad Church party, and it is an interesting event in the history of the English State-Church. Laymen decided (overruling the opinion of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York) what theological doctrines are and are not binding on a clergyman, and granted within the Church a liberty of opinion which the majority of the Church�s representatives regarded as pernicious. This liberty was formally established in 1865 by an Act of Parliament, which altered the form in which clergymen were required to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles. The episode of Essays and Reviews is a landmark in the history of religious thought in England. [208] The liberal views of the Broad Churchmen and their attitude to the Bible gradually produced some effect upon those who differed most from them; and nowadays there is probably no one who would not admit, at least, that such a passage as Genesis, Chapter XIX, might have been composed without the direct inspiration of the Deity. During the next few years orthodox public opinion was shocked or disturbed by the appearance of several remarkable books which criticized, ignored, or defied authority�Lyell�s Antiquity of Man, Seeley�s Ecce Homo (which the pious Lord Shaftesbury said was �vomited from the jaws of hell�), Lecky�s History of Rationalism. And a new poet of liberty arose who did not fear to sound the loudest notes of defiance against all that authority held sacred. All the great poets of the nineteenth century were more or less unorthodox; Wordsworth in the years of his highest inspiration was a pantheist; and the greatest of all, Shelley, was a declared atheist. In fearless utterance, in unfaltering zeal against the tyranny of Gods and Governments, Swinburne was like Shelley. His drama Atalanta in Calydon (1865), even though a poet is strictly not answerable for what the persons in his drama say, yet with its denunciation of �the supreme evil, God,� heralded the coming [209] of a new champion who would defy the fortresses of authority. And in the following year his Poems and Ballads expressed the spirit of a pagan who flouted all the prejudices and sanctities of the Christian world. But the most intense and exciting period of literary warfare against orthodoxy in England began about 1869, and lasted for about a dozen years, during which enemies of dogma, of all complexions, were less reticent and more aggressive than at any other time in the century. Lord Morley has observed that �the force of speculative literature always hangs on practical opportuneness,� and this remark is illustrated by the rationalistic literature of the seventies. It was a time of hope and fear, of progress and danger. Secularists and rationalists were encouraged by the Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland (1869), by the Act which allowed atheists to give evidence in a court of justice (1869), by the abolition of religious tests at all the universities (a measure frequently attempted in vain) in 1871. On the other hand, the Education Act of 1870, progressive though it was, disappointed the advocates of secular education, and was an unwelcome sign of the strength of ecclesiastical influence. Then there was the general alarm felt in Europe by all outside the Roman Church, [210] and by some within it, at the decree of the infallibility of the Pope (by the Vatican Council 1869�70), and an Englishman (Cardinal Manning) was one of the most active spirits in bringing about this decree. It would perhaps have caused less alarm if the Pope�s denunciation of modern errors had not been fresh in men�s memories. At the end of 1864 he startled the world by issuing a Syllabus �embracing the principal errors of our age.� Among these were the propositions, that every man is free to adopt and profess the religion he considers true, according to the light of reason; that the Church has no right to employ force; that metaphysics can and ought to be pursued without reference to divine and ecclesiastical authority; that Catholic states are right to allow foreign immigrants to exercise their own religion in public; that the Pope ought to make terms with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization. The document was taken as a declaration of war against enlightenment, and the Vatican Council as the first strategic move of the hosts of darkness. It seemed that the powers of obscurantism were lifting up their heads with a new menace, and there was an instinctive feeling that all the forces of reason should be brought into the field. The history of the last forty years shows that the theory of [211] Infallibility, since it has become a dogma, is not more harmful than it was before. But the efforts of the Catholic Church in the years following the Council to overthrow the French Republic and to rupture the new German Empire were sufficiently disquieting. Against this was to be set the destruction of the temporal power of the Popes and the complete freedom of Italy. This event was the sunrise of Swinburne�s Songs before Sunrise (which appeared in 1871), a seedplot of atheism and revolution, sown with implacable hatred of creeds and tyrants. The most wonderful poem in the volume, the Hymn of Man, was written while the Vatican Council was sitting. It is a song of triumph over the God of the priests, stricken by the doom of the Pope�s temporal power. The concluding verses will show the spirit. �By thy name that in hellfire was written, and burned at the point of thy sword, Thou art smitten, thou God, thou art smitten; thy death is upon thee, O Lord. And the lovesong of earth as thou diest resounds through the wind of her wings� Glory to Man in the highest! for Man is the master of things.� [212] The fact that such a volume could appear with impunity vividly illustrates the English policy of enforcing the laws for blasphemy only in the case of publications addressed to the masses. Political circumstances thus invited and stimulated rationalists to come forward boldly, but we must not leave out of account the influence of the Broad Church movement and of Darwinism. The Descent of Man appeared precisely in 1871. A new, undogmatic Christianity was being preached in pulpits. Mr. Leslie Stephen remarked (1873) that �it may be said, with little exaggeration, that there is not only no article in the creeds which may not be contradicted with impunity, but that there is none which may not be contradicted in a sermon calculated to win the reputation of orthodoxy and be regarded as a judicious bid for a bishopric. The popular state of mind seems to be typified in the well- known anecdote of the cautious churchwarden, who, whilst commending the general tendency of his incumbent�s sermon, felt bound to hazard a protest upon one point. �You see, sir,� as he apologetically explained, �I think there be a God.� He thought it an error of taste or perhaps of judgment, to hint a doubt as to the first article of the creed.� The influence exerted among the cultivated [213] classes by the aesthetic movement (Ruskin, Morris, the Pre- Raphaelite painters; then Pater�s Lectures on the Renaissance, 1873) was also a sign of the times. For the attitude of these critics, artists, and poets was essentially pagan. The saving truths of theology were for them as if they did not exist. The ideal of happiness was found in a region in which heaven was ignored. The time then seemed opportune for speaking out. Of the unorthodox books and essays, [2] which influenced the young and alarmed believers, in these exciting years, most were the works of men who may be most fairly described by the comprehensive term agnostics�a name which had been recently invented by Professor Huxley. The agnostic holds that there are limits to human reason, and that theology lies outside those limits. Within those limits lies the world with which science (including psychology) deals. Science deals entirely with phenomena, and has nothing to say to the nature of the ultimate reality which may lie behind phenomena. There are four possible [214] attitudes to this ultimate reality. There is the attitude of the metaphysician and theologian, who are convinced not only that it exists but that it can be at least partly known. There is the attitude of the man who denies that it exists; but he must be also a metaphysician, for its existence can only be disproved by metaphysical arguments. Then there are those who assert that it exists but deny that we can know anything about it. And finally there are those who say that we cannot know whether it exists or not. These last are �agnostics� in the strict sense of the term, men who profess not to know. The third class go beyond phenomena in so far as they assert that there is an ultimate though unknowable reality beneath phenomena. But agnostic is commonly used in a wide sense so as to include the third as well as the fourth class�those who assume an unknowable, as well as those who do not know whether there is an unknowable or not. Comte and Spencer, for instance, who believed in an unknowable, are counted as agnostics. The difference between an agnostic and an atheist is that the atheist positively denies the existence of a personal God, the agnostic does not believe in it. The writer of this period who held agnosticism [215] in its purest form, and who turned the dry light of reason on to theological opinions with the most merciless logic, was Mr. Leslie Stephen. His best-known essay, �An Agnostic�s Apology� (Fortnightly Review, 1876), raises the question, have the dogmas of orthodox theologians any meaning? Do they offer, for this is what we want, an intelligible reconciliation of the discords in the universe? It is shown in detail that the various theological explanations of the dealings of God with man, when logically pressed, issue in a confession of ignorance. And what is this but agnosticism? You may call your doubt a mystery, but mystery is only the theological phrase for agnosticism. �Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant? We are a company of ignorant beings, dimly discerning light enough for our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures to declare that we don�t know the map of the Universe as well as the map of our infinitesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, [216] and perhaps told that he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness.� The characteristic of Leslie Stephen�s essays is that they are less directed to showing that orthodox theology is untrue as that there is no reality about it, and that its solutions of difficulties are sham solutions. If it solved any part of the mystery, it would be welcome, but it does not, it only adds new difficulties. It is �a mere edifice of moonshine.� The writer makes no attempt to prove by logic that ultimate reality lies outside the limits of human reason. He bases this conclusion on the fact that all philosophers hopelessly contradict one another; if the subject-matter of philosophy were, like physical science, within the reach of the intelligence, some agreement must have been reached. The Broad Church movement, the attempts to liberalize Christianity, to pour its old wine into new bottles, to make it unsectarian and undogmatic, to find compromises between theology and science, found no favour in Leslie Stephen�s eyes, and he criticized all this with a certain contempt. There was a controversy about the efficacy of prayer. Is it reasonable, for instance, to pray for rain? Here science and theology were at issue on a practical [217] point which comes within the domain of science. Some theologians adopted the compromise that to pray against an eclipse would be foolish, but to pray for rain might be sensible. �One phenomenon,� Stephen wrote, �is just as much the result of fixed causes as the other; but it is easier for the imagination to suppose the interference of a divine agent to be hidden away somewhere amidst the infinitely complex play of forces, which elude our calculations in meteorological phenomena, than to believe in it where the forces are simple enough to admit of prediction. The distinction is of course invalid in a scientific sense. Almighty power can interfere as easily with the events which are, as with those which are not, in the Nautical Almanac. One cannot suppose that God retreats as science advances, and that he spoke in thunder and lightning till Franklin unravelled the laws of their phenomena.� Again, when a controversy about hell engaged public attention, and some otherwise orthodox theologians bethought themselves that eternal punishment was a horrible doctrine and then found that the evidence for it was not quite conclusive and were bold enough to say so, Leslie Stephen stepped in to point out that, if so, historical [218] Christianity deserves all that its most virulent enemies have said about it in this respect. When the Christian creed really ruled men�s consciences, nobody could utter a word against the truth of the dogma of hell. If that dogma had not an intimate organic connection with the creed, if it had been a mere unimportant accident, it could not have been so vigorous and persistent wherever Christianity was strongest. The attempt to eliminate it or soften it down is a sign of decline. �Now, at last, your creed is decaying. People have discovered that you know nothing about it; that heaven and hell belong to dreamland; that the impertinent young curate who tells me that I shall be burnt everlastingly for not sharing his superstition is just as ignorant as I am myself, and that I know as much as my dog. And then you calmly say again, �It is all a mistake. Only believe in a something �and we will make it as easy for you as possible. Hell shall have no more than a fine equable temperature, really good for the constitution; there shall be nobody in it except Judas Iscariot and one or two others; and even the poor Devil shall have a chance if he will resolve to mend his ways.� � Mr. Matthew Arnold may, I suppose, be numbered among the agnostics, but he was [219] of a very different type. He introduced a new kind of criticism of the Bible�literary criticism. Deeply concerned for morality and religion, a supporter of the Established Church, he took the Bible under his special protection, and in three works, St. Paul and Protestantism, 1870, Literature and Dogma, 1873, and God and the Bible, 1875, he endeavoured to rescue that book from its orthodox exponents, whom he regarded as the corrupters of Christianity. It would be just, he says, �but hardly perhaps Christian,� to fling back the word infidel at the orthodox theologians for their bad literary and scientific criticisms of the Bible and to speak of �the torrent of infidelity which pours every Sunday from our pulpits!� The corruption of Christianity has been due to theology �with its insane licence of affirmation about God, its insane licence of affirmation about immortality�; to the hypothesis of �a magnified and non-natural man at the head of mankind�s and the world�s affairs�; and the fancy account of God �made up by putting scattered expressions of the Bible together and taking them literally.� He chastises with urbane persiflage the knowledge which the orthodox think they possess about the proceedings and plans of God. �To think they know what passed in the Council of the [220] Trinity is not hard to them; they could easily think they even knew what were the hangings of the Trinity�s council-chamber.� Yet �the very expression, the Trinity, jars with the whole idea and character of Bible-religion; but, lest the Socinian should be unduly elated at hearing this, let us hasten to add that so too, and just as much, does the expression, a great Personal First Cause.� He uses God as the least inadequate name for that universal order which the intellect feels after as a law, and the heart feels after as a benefit; and defines it as �the stream of tendency by which all things strive to fulfil the law of their being.� He defined it further as a Power that makes for righteousness, and thus went considerably beyond the agnostic position. He was impatient of the minute criticism which analyzes the Biblical documents and discovers inconsistencies and absurdities, and he did not appreciate the importance of the comparative study of religions. But when we read of a dignitary in a recent Church congress laying down that the narratives in the books of Jonah and Daniel must be accepted because Jesus quoted them, we may wish that Arnold were here to reproach the orthodox for �want of intellectual seriousness.� These years also saw the appearance of [221] Mr. John Morley�s sympathetic studies of the French freethinkers of the eighteenth century, Voltaire (1872), Rousseau (1873), and Diderot (1878). He edited the Fortnightly Review, and for some years this journal was distinguished by brilliant criticisms on the popular religion, contributed by able men writing from many points of view. A part of the book which he afterwards published under the title Compromise appeared in the Fortnightly in 1874. In Compromise, �the whole system of objective propositions which make up the popular belief of the day� is condemned as mischievous, and it is urged that those who disbelieve should speak out plainly. Speaking out is an intellectual duty. Englishmen have a strong sense of political responsibility, and a correspondingly weak sense of intellectual responsibility. Even minds that are not commonplace are affected for the worse by the political spirit which �is the great force in throwing love of truth and accurate reasoning into a secondary place.� And the principles which have prevailed in politics have been adopted by theology for her own use. In the one case, convenience first, truth second; in the other, emotional comfort first, truth second. If the immorality is less gross in the case of religion, [222] there is �the stain of intellectual improbity.� And this is a crime against society, for �they who tamper with veracity from whatever motive are tampering with the vital force of human progress.� The intellectual insincerity which is here blamed is just as prevalent to- day. The English have not changed their nature, the �political� spirit is still rampant, and we are ruled by the view that because compromise is necessary in politics it is also a good thing in the intellectual domain. The Fortnightly under Mr. Morley�s guidance was an effective organ of enlightenment. I have no space to touch on the works of other men of letters and of men of science in these combative years, but it is to be noted that, while denunciations of modern thought poured from the pulpits, a popular diffusion of freethought was carried on, especially by Mr. Bradlaugh in public lectures and in his paper, the National Reformer, not without collisions with the civil authorities. If we take the cases in which the civil authorities in England have intervened to repress the publication of unorthodox opinions during the last two centuries, we find that the object has always been to prevent the spread of freethought among the masses. [223] The victims have been either poor, uneducated people, or men who propagated freethought in a popular form. I touched upon this before in speaking of Paine, and it is borne out by the prosecutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The unconfessed motive has been fear of the people. Theology has been regarded as a good instrument for keeping the poor in order, and unbelief as a cause or accompaniment of dangerous political opinions. The idea has not altogether disappeared that free thought is peculiarly indecent in the poor, that it is highly desirable to keep them superstitious in order to keep them contented, that they should be duly thankful for all the theological as well as social arrangements which have been made for them by their betters. I may quote from an essay of Mr. Frederic Harrison an anecdote which admirably expresses the becoming attitude of the poor towards ecclesiastical institutions. �The master of a workhouse in Essex was once called in to act as chaplain to a dying pauper. The poor soul faintly murmured some hopes of heaven. But this the master abruptly cut short and warned him to turn his last thoughts towards hell. �And thankful you ought to be,� said he, �that you have a hell to go to.� � [224] The most important English freethinkers who appealed to the masses were Holyoake, [3] the apostle of �secularism,� and Bradlaugh. The great achievement for which Bradlaugh will be best remembered was the securing of the right of unbelievers to sit in Parliament without taking an oath (1888). The chief work to which Holyoake (who in his early years was imprisoned for blasphemy) contributed was the abolition of taxes on the Press, which seriously hampered the popular diffusion of knowledge. [4] In England, censorship of the Press had long ago disappeared (above, p. 139); in most other European countries it was abolished in the course of the nineteenth century. [5] In the progressive countries of Europe there has been a marked growth of tolerance (I do not mean legal toleration, but the tolerance [225] of public opinion) during the last thirty years. A generation ago Lord Morley wrote: �The preliminary stage has scarcely been reached�the stage in which public opinion grants to every one the unrestricted right of shaping his own beliefs, independently of those of the people who surround him.� I think this preliminary stage has now been passed. Take England. We are now far from the days when Dr. Arnold would have sent the elder Mill to Botany Bay for irreligious opinions. But we are also far from the days when Darwin�s Descent created an uproar. Darwin has been buried in Westminster Abbey. To-day books can appear denying the historical existence of Jesus without causing any commotion. It may be doubted whether what Lord Acton wrote in 1877 would be true now: �There are in our day many educated men who think it right to persecute.� In 1895, Lecky was a candidate for the representation of Dublin University. His rationalistic opinions were indeed brought up against him, but he was successful, though the majority of the constituents were orthodox. In the seventies his candidature would have been hopeless. The old commonplace that a freethinker is sure to be immoral is no longer heard. We may say that we have now [226] reached a stage at which it is admitted by every one who counts (except at the Vatican), that there is nothing in earth or heaven which may not legitimately be treated without any of the assumptions which in old days authority used to impose. In this brief review of the triumphs of reason in the nineteenth century, we have been considering the discoveries of science and criticism which made the old orthodoxy logically untenable. But the advance in freedom of thought, the marked difference in the general attitude of men in all lands towards theological authority to-day from the attitude of a hundred years ago, cannot altogether be explained by the power of logic. It is not so much criticism of old ideas as the appearance of new ideas and interests that changes the views of men at large. It is not logical demonstrations but new social conceptions that bring about a general transformation of attitude towards ultimate problems. Now the idea of the progress of the human race must, I think, be held largely answerable for this change of attitude. It must, I think, be held to have operated powerfully as a solvent of theological beliefs. I have spoken of the teaching of Diderot and his friends that man�s energies should be devoted to making the earth pleasant. A [227] new ideal was substituted for the old ideal based on theological propositions. It inspired the English Utilitarian philosophers (Bentham, James Mill, J. S. Mill, Grote) who preached the greatest happiness of the greatest number as the supreme object of action and the basis of morality. This ideal was powerfully reinforced by the doctrine of historical progress, which was started in France (1750) by Turgot, who made progress the organic principle of history. It was developed by Condorcet (1793), and put forward by Priestley in England. The idea was seized upon by the French socialistic philosophers, Saint-Simon and Fourier. The optimism of Fourier went so far as to anticipate the time when the sea would be turned by man�s ingenuity into lemonade, when there would be 37 million poets as great as Homer, 37 million writers as great as Molière, 37 million men of science equal to Newton. But it was Comte who gave the doctrine weight and power. His social philosophy and his religion of Humanity are based upon it. The triumphs of science endorsed it; it has been associated with, though it is not necessarily implied in, the scientific theory of evolution; and it is perhaps fair to say that it has been the guiding spiritual force of the nineteenth century. It has introduced [228] the new ethical principle of duty to posterity. We shall hardly be far wrong if we say that the new interest in the future and the progress of the race has done a great deal to undermine unconsciously the old interest in a life beyond the grave; and it has dissolved the blighting doctrine of the radical corruption of man. Nowhere has the theory of progress been more emphatically recognized than in the Monistic movement which has been exciting great interest in Germany (1910�12). This movement is based on the ideas of Haeckel, who is looked up to as the master; but those ideas have been considerably changed under the influence of Ostwald, the new leader. While Haeckel is a biologist, Ostwald�s brilliant work was done in chemistry and physics. The new Monism differs from the old, in the first place, in being much less dogmatic. It declares that all that is in our experience can be the object of a corresponding science. It is much more a method than a system, for its sole ultimate object is to comprehend all human experience in unified knowledge. Secondly, while it maintains, with Haeckel, evolution as the guiding principle in the history of living things, it rejects his pantheism and his theory of thinking atoms. The old mechanical theory of the [229] physical world has been gradually supplanted by the theory of energy, and Ostwald, who was one of the foremost exponents of energy, has made it a leading idea of Monism. What has been called matter is, so far as we know now, simply a complex of energies, and he has sought to extend the �energetic� principle from physical or chemical to biological, psychical, and social phenomena. But it is to be observed that no finality is claimed for the conception of energy; it is simply an hypothesis which corresponds to our present stage of knowledge, and may, as knowledge advances, be superseded. Monism resembles the positive philosophy and religion of Comte in so far as it means an outlook on life based entirely on science and excluding theology, mysticism, and metaphysics. It may be called a religion, if we adopt Mr. MacTaggart�s definition of religion as �an emotion resting on a conviction of the harmony between ourselves and the universe at large.� But it is much better not to use the word religion in connexion with it, and the Monists have no thought of finding a Monistic, as Comte founded a Positivist, church. They insist upon the sharp opposition between the outlook of science and the outlook of religion, and find the mark of spiritual progress in the fact that religion is [230] gradually becoming less indispensable. The further we go back in the past, the more valuable is religion as an element in civilization; as we advance, it retreats more and more into the background, to be replaced by science. Religions have been, in principle, pessimistic, so far as the present world is concerned; Monism is, in principle, optimistic, for it recognizes that the process of his evolution has overcome, in increasing measure, the bad element in man, and will go on overcoming it still more. Monism proclaims that development and progress are the practical principles of human conduct, while the Churches, especially the Catholic Church, have been steadily conservative, and though they have been unable to put a stop to progress have endeavoured to suppress its symptoms�to bottle up the steam. [6] The Monistic congress at Hamburg in 1911 had a success which surprised its promoters. The movement bids fair to be a powerful influence in diffusing rationalistic thought. [7] If we take the three large States of [231] Western Europe, in which the majority of Christians are Catholics, we see how the ideal of progress, freedom of thought, and the decline of ecclesiastical power go together. In Spain, where the Church has enormous power and wealth and can still dictate to the Court and the politicians, the idea of progress, which is vital in France and Italy, has not yet made its influence seriously felt. Liberal thought indeed is widely spread in the small educated class, but the great majority of the whole population are illiterate, and it is the interest of the Church to keep them so. The education of the people, as all enlightened Spaniards confess, is the pressing need of the country. How formidable are the obstacles which will have to be overcome before modern education is allowed to spread was shown four years ago by the tragedy of Francisco Ferrer, which reminded everybody that in one corner of Western Europe the mediaeval spirit is still vigorous. Ferrer had devoted himself to the founding of modern schools in the province of Catalonia (since 1901). He was a rationalist, and his schools, which had a marked success, were entirely secular. The ecclesiastical authorities execrated him, and in the summer of 1909 chance gave them the means of destroying him. A strike of workmen at [232] Barcelona developed into a violent revolution, Ferrer happened to be in Barcelona for some days at the beginning of the movement, with which he had no connection whatever, and his enemies seized the opportunity to make him responsible for it. False evidence (including forged documents) was manufactured. Evidence which would have helped his case was suppressed. The Catholic papers agitated against him, and the leading ecclesiastics of Barcelona urged the Government not to spare the man who founded the modern schools, the root of all the trouble. Ferrer was condemned by a military tribunal and shot (Oct. 13). He suffered in the cause of reason and freedom of thought, though, as there is no longer an Inquisition, his enemies had to kill him under the false charge of anarchy and treason. It is possible that the indignation which was felt in Europe and was most loudly expressed in France may prevent the repetition of such extreme measures, but almost anything may happen in a country where the Church is so powerful and so bigoted, and the politicians so corrupt. [1] From Greek monos, alone. [2] Besides the works referred to in the text, may be mentioned: Winwood Reade, Martyrdom of Man, 1871; Mill, Three Essays on Religion; W. R. Cassels, Supernatural Religion; Tyndall, Address to British Association at Belfast; Huxley, Animal Automatism; W. K. Clifford, Body and Mind; all in 1874. [3] It may be noted that Holyoake towards the end of his life helped to found the Rationalist Press Association, of which Mr. Edward Clodd has been for many years Chairman. This is the chief society in England for propagating rationalism, and its main object is to diffuse in a cheap form the works of freethinkers of mark (cp. Bibliography). I understand that more than two million copies of its cheap reprints have been sold. [4] The advertisement tax was abolished in 1853, the stamp tax in 1855, the paper duty in 1861, and the optional duty in 1870. [5] In Austria-Hungary the police have the power to suppress printed matter provisionally. In Russia the Press was declared free in 1905 by an Imperial decree, which, however, has become a dead letter. The newspapers are completely under the control of the police. [6] I have taken these points, illustrating the Monistic attitude to the Churches, from Ostwald�s Monistic Sunday Sermons (German), 1911, 1912. [7] I may note here that, as this is not a history of thought, I make no reference to recent philosophical speculations (in America, England, and France) which are sometimes claimed as tending to bolster up theology. But they are all profoundly unorthodox. [233] CHAPTER VIII THE JUSTIFICATION OF LIBERTY OF THOUGHT MOST men who have been brought up in the free atmosphere of a modern State sympathize with liberty in its long struggle with authority and may find it difficult to see that anything can be said for the tyrannical, and as they think extraordinarily perverse, policy by which communities and governments persistently sought to stifle new ideas and suppress free speculation. The conflict sketched in these pages appears as a war between light and darkness. We exclaim that altar and throne formed a sinister conspiracy against the progress of humanity. We look back with horror at the things which so many champions of reason endured at the hands of blind, if not malignant, bearers of authority. But a more or less plausible case can be made out for coercion. Let us take the most limited view of the lawful powers of society over its individual members. Let us lay down, with Mill, that �the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually and collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their members is self- protection,� and that coercion is only justified [234] for the prevention of harm to others. This is the minimum claim the State can make, and it will be admitted that it is not only the right but the duty of the State to prevent harm to its members. That is what it is for. Now no abstract or independent principle is discoverable, why liberty of speech should be a privileged form of liberty of action, or why society should lay down its arms of defence and fold its hands, when it is persuaded that harm is threatened to it through the speech of any of its members. The Government has to judge of the danger, and its judgment may be wrong; but if it is convinced that harm is being done, is it not its plain duty to interfere? This argument supplies an apology for the suppression of free opinion by Governments in ancient and modern times. It can be urged for the Inquisition, for Censorship of the Press, for Blasphemy laws, for all coercive measures of the kind, that, if excessive or ill-judged, they were intended to protect society against what their authors sincerely believed to be grave injury, and were simple acts of duty. (This apology, of course, does not extend to acts done for the sake of the alleged good of the victims themselves, namely, to secure their future salvation.) Nowadays we condemn all such measures [235] and disallow the right of the State to interfere with the free expression of opinion. So deeply is the doctrine of liberty seated in our minds that we find it difficult to make allowances for the coercive practices of our misguided ancestors. How is this doctrine justified? It rests on no abstract basis, on no principle independent of society itself, but entirely on considerations of utility. We saw how Socrates indicated the social value of freedom of discussion. We saw how Milton observed that such freedom was necessary for the advance of knowledge. But in the period during which the cause of toleration was fought for and practically won, the argument more generally used was the injustice of punishing a man for opinions which he honestly held and could not help holding, since conviction is not a matter of will; in other words, the argument that error is not a crime and that it is therefore unjust to punish it. This argument, however, does not prove the case for freedom of discussion. The advocate of coercion may reply: We admit that it is unjust to punish a man for private erroneous beliefs; but it is not unjust to forbid the propagation of such beliefs if we are convinced that they are harmful; it is not unjust to punish him, not for holding them, but for publishing them. The truth [236] is that, in examining principles, the word just is misleading. All the virtues are based on experience, physiological or social, and justice is no exception. Just designates a class of rules or principles of which the social utility has been found by experience to be paramount and which are recognized to be so important as to override all considerations of immediate expediency. And social utility is the only test. It is futile, therefore, to say to a Government that it acts unjustly in coercing opinion, unless it is shown that freedom of opinion is a principle of such overmastering social utility as to render other considerations negligible. Socrates had a true instinct in taking the line that freedom is valuable to society. The reasoned justification of liberty of thought is due to J. S. Mill, who set it forth in his work On Liberty, published in 1859. This book treats of liberty in general, and attempts to fix the frontier of the region in which individual freedom should be considered absolute and unassailable. The second chapter considers liberty of thought and discussion, and if many may think that Mill unduly minimized the functions of society, underrating its claims as against the individual, few will deny the justice of the chief arguments or question the general soundness of his conclusions. [237] Pointing out that no fixed standard was recognized for testing the propriety of the interference on the part of the community with its individual members, he finds the test in self-protection, that is, the prevention of harm to others. He bases the proposition not on abstract rights, but on �utility, in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.� He then uses the following argument to show that to silence opinion and discussion is always contrary to those permanent interests. Those who would suppress an opinion (it is assumed that they are honest) deny its truth, but they are not infallible. They may be wrong, or right, or partly wrong and partly right. (1) If they are wrong and the opinion they would crush is true, they have robbed, or done their utmost to rob, mankind of a truth. They will say: But we were justified, for we exercised our judgment to the best of our ability, and are we to be told that because our judgment is fallible we are not to use it? We forbade the propagation of an opinion which we were sure was false and pernicious; this implies no greater claim to infallibility than any act done by public authority. If we are to act at all, we must assume our own opinion to be true. To this Mill acutely replies: �There is the greatest difference [238] between assuming an opinion to be true, because with every opportunity for contesting it it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action, and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.� (2) If the received opinion which it is sought to protect against the intrusion of error is true, the suppression of discussion is still contrary to general utility. A received opinion may happen to be true (it is very seldom entirely true); but a rational certainty that it is so can only be secured by the fact that it has been fully canvassed but has not been shaken. Commoner and more important is (3) the case where the conflicting doctrines share the truth between them. Here Mill has little difficulty in proving the utility of supplementing one-sided popular truths by other truths which popular opinion omits to consider. And he observes that if either of the opinions which share the truth has a claim not merely to be tolerated but to be encouraged, it is the one which happens to be held by the minority, since this is the one �which [239] for the time being represents the neglected interests.� He takes the doctrines of Rousseau, which might conceivably have been suppressed as pernicious. To the self-complacent eighteenth century those doctrines came as �a salutary shock, dislocating the compact mass of one-sided opinion.� The current opinions were indeed nearer to the truth than Rousseau�s, they contained much less of error; �nevertheless there lay in Rousseau�s doctrine, and has floated down the stream of opinion along with it, a considerable amount of exactly those truths which the popular opinion wanted; and these are the deposit which we left behind when the flood subsided.� Such is the drift of Mill�s main argument. The present writer would prefer to state the justification of freedom of opinion in a somewhat different form, though in accordance with Mill�s reasoning. The progress of civilization, if it is partly conditioned by circumstances beyond man�s control, depends more, and in an increasing measure, on things which are within his own power. Prominent among these are the advancement of knowledge and the deliberate adaptation of his habits and institutions to new conditions. To advance knowledge and to correct errors, unrestricted freedom of discussion is required. [240] History shows that knowledge grew when speculation was perfectly free in Greece, and that in modern times, since restrictions on inquiry have been entirely removed, it has advanced with a velocity which would seem diabolical to the slaves of the mediaeval Church. Then, it is obvious that in order to readjust social customs, institutions, and methods to new needs and circumstances, there must be unlimited freedom of canvassing and criticizing them, of expressing the most unpopular opinions, no matter how offensive to prevailing sentiment they may be. If the history of civilization has any lesson to teach it is this: there is one supreme condition of mental and moral progress which it is completely within the power of man himself to secure, and that is perfect liberty of thought and discussion. The establishment of this liberty may be considered the most valuable achievement of modern civilization, and as a condition of social progress it should be deemed fundamental. The considerations of permanent utility on which it rests must outweigh any calculations of present advantage which from time to time might be thought to demand its violation. It is evident that this whole argument depends on the assumption that the progress of the race, its intellectual and moral development, [241] is a reality and is valuable. The argument will not appeal to any one who holds with Cardinal Newman that �our race�s progress and perfectibility is a dream, because revelation contradicts it�; and he may consistently subscribe to the same writer�s conviction that �it would be a gain to this country were it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion, than at present it shows itself to be.� While Mill was writing his brilliant Essay, which every one should read, the English Government of the day (1858) instituted prosecutions for the circulation of the doctrine that it is lawful to put tyrants to death, on the ground that the doctrine is immoral. Fortunately the prosecutions were not persisted in. Mill refers to the matter, and maintains that such a doctrine as tyrannicide (and, let us add, anarchy) does not form any exception to the rule that �there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.� Exceptions, cases where the interference of the authorities is proper, are only apparent, for they really come under another rule. For instance, if there is a direct instigation [242] to particular acts of violence, there may be a legitimate case for interference. But the incitement must be deliberate and direct. If I write a book condemning existing societies and defending a theory of anarchy, and a man who reads it presently commits an outrage, it may clearly be established that my book made the man an anarchist and induced him to commit the crime, but it would be illegitimate to punish me or suppress the book unless it contained a direct incitement to the specific crime which he committed. It is conceivable that difficult cases might arise where a government might be strongly tempted, and might be urged by public clamour, to violate the principle of liberty. Let us suppose a case, very improbable, but which will make the issue clear and definite. Imagine that a man of highly magnetic personality, endowed with a wonderful power of infecting others with his own ideas however irrational, in short a typical religious leader, is convinced that the world will come to an end in the course of a few months. He goes about the country preaching and distributing pamphlets; his words have an electrical effect; and the masses of the uneducated and half-educated are persuaded that they have indeed only a few weeks to prepare for the day of Judgment. Multitudes leave their [243] occupations, abandon their work, in order to spend the short time that remains in prayer and listening to the exhortations of the prophet. The country is paralyzed by the gigantic strike; traffic and industries come to a standstill. The people have a perfect legal right to give up their work, and the prophet has a perfect legal right to propagate his opinion that the end of the world is at hand �an opinion which Jesus Christ and his followers in their day held quite as erroneously. It would be said that desperate ills have desperate remedies, and there would be a strong temptation to suppress the fanatic. But to arrest a man who is not breaking the law or exhorting any one to break it, or causing a breach of the peace, would be an act of glaring tyranny. Many will hold that the evil of setting back the clock of liberty would out- balance all the temporary evils, great as they might be, caused by the propagation of a delusion. It would be absurd to deny that liberty of speech may sometimes cause particular harm. Every good thing sometimes does harm. Government, for instance, which makes fatal mistakes; law, which so often bears hardly and inequitably in individual cases. And can the Christians urge any other plea for their religion when they are unpleasantly reminded that it has caused untold [244] suffering by its principle of exclusive salvation? Once the principle of liberty of thought is accepted as a supreme condition of social progress, it passes from the sphere of ordinary expediency into the sphere of higher expediency which we call justice. In other words it becomes a right on which every man should be able to count. The fact that this right is ultimately based on utility does not justify a government in curtailing it, on the ground of utility, in particular cases. The recent rather alarming inflictions of penalties for blasphemy in England illustrate this point. It was commonly supposed that the Blasphemy laws (see above, p. 139), though unrepealed, were a dead letter. But since December, 1911, half a dozen persons have been imprisoned for this offence. In these cases Christian doctrines were attacked by poor and more or less uneducated persons in language which may be described as coarse and offensive. Some of the judges seem to have taken the line that it is not blasphemy to attack the fundamental doctrines provided �the decencies of controversy� are preserved, but that �indecent� attacks constitute blasphemy. This implies a new definition of legal blasphemy, and is entirely contrary to the intention of the laws. Sir [245] J. F. Stephen pointed out that the decisions of judges from the time of Lord Hale (XVIIth century) to the trial of Foote (1883) laid down the same doctrine and based it on the same principle: the doctrine being that it is a crime either to deny the truth of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion or to hold them up to contempt or ridicule; and the principle being that Christianity is a part of the law of the land. The apology offered for such prosecutions is that their object is to protect religious sentiment from insult and ridicule. Sir J. F. Stephen observed: �If the law were really impartial and punished blasphemy only, because it offends the feelings of believers, it ought also to punish such preaching as offends the feelings of unbelievers. All the more earnest and enthusiastic forms of religion are extremely offensive to those who do not believe them.� If the law does not in any sense recognize the truth of Christian doctrine, it would have to apply the same rule to the Salvation Army. In fact the law �can be explained and justified only on what I regard as its true principle�the principle of persecution.� The opponents of Christianity may justly say: If Christianity is false, why is it to be attacked only in polite language? Its goodness depends on its truth. If you [246] grant its falsehood, you cannot maintain that it deserves special protection. But the law imposes no restraint on the Christian, however offensive his teaching may be to those who do not agree with him; therefore it is not based on an impartial desire to prevent the use of language which causes offence; therefore it is based on the hypothesis that Christianity is true; and therefore its principle is persecution. Of course, the present administration of the common law in regard to blasphemy does not endanger the liberty of those unbelievers who have the capacity for contributing to progress. But it violates the supreme principle of liberty of opinion and discussion. It hinders uneducated people from saying in the only ways in which they know how to say it, what those who have been brought up differently say, with impunity, far more effectively and far more insidiously. Some of the men who have been imprisoned during the last two years, only uttered in language of deplorable taste views that are expressed more or less politely in books which are in the library of a bishop unless he is a very ignorant person, and against which the law, if it has any validity, ought to have been enforced. Thus the law, as now administered, simply penalizes bad taste and places disabilities [247] upon uneducated freethinkers. If their words offend their audience so far as to cause a disturbance, they should be prosecuted for a breach of public order, [1] not because their words are blasphemous. A man who robs or injures a church, or even an episcopal palace, is not prosecuted for sacrilege, but for larceny or malicious damage or something of the kind. The abolition of penalties for blasphemy was proposed in the House of Commons (by Bradlaugh) in 1889 and rejected. The reform is urgently needed. It would �prevent the recurrence at irregular intervals of scandalous prosecutions which have never in any one instance benefited any one, least of all the cause which they were intended to serve, and which sometimes afford a channel for the gratification of private malice under the cloak of religion.� [2] The struggle of reason against authority has ended in what appears now to be a decisive and permanent victory for liberty. In the most civilized and progressive countries, freedom of discussion is recognized as a [248] fundamental principle. In fact, we may say it is accepted as a test of enlightenment, and the man in the street is forward in acknowledging that countries like Russia and Spain, where opinion is more or less fettered, must on that account be considered less civilized than their neighbours. All intellectual people who count take it for granted that there is no subject in heaven or earth which ought not to be investigated without any deference or reference to theological assumptions. No man of science has any fear of publishing his researches, whatever consequences they may involve for current beliefs. Criticism of religious doctrines and of political and social institutions is free. Hopeful people may feel confident that the victory is permanent; that intellectual freedom is now assured to mankind as a possession for ever; that the future will see the collapse of those forces which still work against it and its gradual diffusion in the more backward parts of the earth. Yet history may suggest that this prospect is not assured. Can we be certain that there may not come a great set- back? For freedom of discussion and speculation was, as we saw, fully realized in the Greek and Roman world, and then an unforeseen force, in the shape of Christianity, came in and laid chains upon the human mind and [249] suppressed freedom and imposed upon man a weary struggle to recover the freedom which he had lost. Is it not conceivable that something of the same kind may occur again? that some new force, emerging from the unknown, may surprise the world and cause a similar set-back? The possibility cannot be denied, but there are some considerations which render it improbable (apart from a catastrophe sweeping away European culture). There are certain radical differences between the intellectual situation now and in antiquity. The facts known to the Greeks about the nature of the physical universe were few. Much that was taught was not proved. Compare what they knew and what we know about astronomy and geography�to take the two branches in which (besides mathematics) they made most progress. When there were so few demonstrated facts to work upon, there was the widest room for speculation. Now to suppress a number of rival theories in favour of one is a very different thing from suppressing whole systems of established facts. If one school of astronomers holds that the earth goes round the sun, another that the sun goes round the earth, but neither is able to demonstrate its proposition, it is easy for an authority, which has coercive power, [250] to suppress one of them successfully. But once it is agreed by all astronomers that the earth goes round the sun, it is a hopeless task for any authority to compel men to accept a false view. In short, because she is in possession of a vast mass of ascertained facts about the nature of the universe, reason holds a much stronger position now than at the time when Christian theology led her captive. All these facts are her fortifications. Again, it is difficult to see what can arrest the continuous progress of knowledge in the future. In ancient times this progress depended on a few; nowadays, many nations take part in the work. A general conviction of the importance of science prevails to-day, which did not prevail in Greece. And the circumstance that the advance of material civilization depends on science is perhaps a practical guarantee that scientific research will not come to an abrupt halt. In fact science is now a social institution, as much as religion. But if science seems pretty safe, it is always possible that in countries where the scientific spirit is held in honour, nevertheless, serious restrictions may be laid on speculations touching social, political, and religious questions. Russia has men of science inferior to none, and Russia has its notorious censorship. It [251] is by no means inconceivable that in lands where opinion is now free coercion might be introduced. If a revolutionary social movement prevailed, led by men inspired by faith in formulas (like the men of the French Revolution) and resolved to impose their creed, experience shows that coercion would almost inevitably be resorted to. Nevertheless, while it would be silly to suppose that attempts may not be made in the future to put back the clock, liberty is in a far more favourable position now than under the Roman Empire. For at that time the social importance of freedom of opinion was not appreciated, whereas now, in consequence of the long conflict which was necessary in order to re- establish it, men consciously realize its value. Perhaps this conviction will be strong enough to resist all conspiracies against liberty. Meanwhile, nothing should be left undone to impress upon the young that freedom of thought is an axiom of human progress. It may be feared, however, that this is not likely to be done for a long time to come. For our methods of early education are founded on authority. It is true that children are sometimes exhorted to think for themselves. But the parent or instructor who gives this excellent advice is confident that the results of the child�s thinking for [252] himself will agree with the opinions which his elders consider desirable. It is assumed that he will reason from principles which have already been instilled into him by authority. But if his thinking for himself takes the form of questioning these principles, whether moral or religious, his parents and teachers, unless they are very exceptional persons, will be extremely displeased, and will certainly discourage him. It is, of course, only singularly promising children whose freedom of thought will go so far. In this sense it might be said that �distrust thy father and mother� is the first commandment with promise. It should be a part of education to explain to children, as soon as they are old enough to understand, when it is reasonable, and when it is not, to accept what they are told, on authority. [1] Blasphemy is an offence in Germany; but it must be proved that offence has actually been given, and the penalty does not exceed imprisonment for three days. [2] The quotations are from Sir J. F. Stephen�s article, �Blasphemy and Blasphemous Libel,� in the Fortnightly Review, March, 1884, pp. 289�318. [253] BIBLIOGRAPHY General Lecky, W. E. H., History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, 2 vols. (originally published in 1865). White, A. D., A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, 2 vols., 1896. Robertson, J. M., A Short History of Free-thought, Ancient and Modern, 2 vols., 1906. [Comprehensive, but the notices of the leading freethinkers are necessarily brief, as the field covered is so large. The judgments are always independent.] Benn, A. W., The History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols., 1906. [Very full and valuable] Greek Thought Gomperz, Th., Greek Thinkers (English translation), 4 vols. (1901-12). English Deists Stephen, Leslie, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i, 1881. French Freethinkers of Eighteenth Century Morley, J., Voltaire; Diderot and the Encyclopaedists; Rousseau (see above, Chapter VI). Rationalistic Criticism of the Bible (Nineteenth Century) Articles in Encyclopoedia Biblica, 4 vols. Duff, A., History of Old Testament Criticism, 1910. Conybeare, F. C., History of New Testament Criticism, 1910. Persecution and Inquisition Lea, H., A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 3 vols., 1888; A History of the Inquisition of Spain, 4 vols., 1906. Haynes, E. S. P., Religious Persecution, 1904. For the case of Ferrer see Archer, W., The Life, Trial and Death of Francisco Ferrer, 1911, and McCabe, J., The Martyrdom of Ferrer, 1909. Toleration Ruffini, F., Religious Liberty (English translation), 1912. The essays of L. Luzzatti. Liberty of Conscience and Science (Italian), are suggestive. [254] INDEX Aesthetic movement, 213 Agnosticism, meaning of, 213 sq. Albigeois, persecution of, 58 Anabaptists, 78, 95, 125 Anatomy, 65 Anaxagoras, 27 Annet, Peter, 172 Anthropology, 189 Anthropomorphism. 23 Aristotle, 35, 68, 69 Arnold, Matthew, 218 sqq. Asoka, 92 Astronomy, 87�90 Atheism, 103, 113, 123, 132, 158 Athens, 27 sqq. Augustine, St., 55 Austria-Hungary, 122, 224 Authority, meaning of, 14 sqq. Averroism, 88 Bacon, Roger, 85 Bahrdt, 175 Rain, A., 188 Bayle, 107 sq., 135 sqq. Benn, A. W, 152 Bible, O. T., 192 sqq.; N. T., 195 sqq Bible-worship, 82, 201 Blasphemy laws, 23, 88, 139 sq., 244 sqq. Bolingbroke, 153 Bradlaugh, 228, 247 Bruno, Giordano, 84 Büchner, 188 Buckle, 188 Butler, Bishop, Analogy, 151 sq. Calvin, 78 Cassels, W Castellion, 94 Causation, Law of, 183 sq. Charron. 75 Cicero, 39 Clifford, W. K., 213 Clodd, Edward, 224 Colenso, Bishop, 193 Collins, Anthony, 141 Comte, Auguste. 188 sq., 229 Concordat of 1801, French, 115 Condorcet, 227 Congregationalists (Independents), 95, 99, 100 Constantine I, Emperor, 47, 51 Copernicus, 87 Darwin; Darwinism, 180, 182, 225 Defoe, Daniel, 104 sq. Deism, 137 sqq. Democritus, 25 Descartes, 129, 131 Design, argument from, 181, 178 D�Holbach, 158 Diderot, 158 sq. Diocletian, Emperor, 45 Disestablishment, 104, 108 Dodwell, Henry, 147 Domitian, Emperor, 42 Double Truth, 68 sq., 134 Edelmann, 175 Epicureanism, 36 sqq., 84 Essays and Review, 204 sqq. Euripides, 29 Exclusive salvation, 52 sq., 63, 78 Ferrer, Francisco, 231 sq. Fortnightly Review, 221 Fourier, 227 France, 74, 100 sqq., 152 sqq. Frederick the Great, 120 sq. Frederick II, Emperor, 58, 70 Free thought, meaning of, 18 Galileo de� Galilei, 87 sqq. Gassendi, 130 Geology, 178 sq. Germany, 78 sqq., 117 sqq., 174 sqq. Gibbon, 82, 162 sqq. Goethe, 175 Greg, W. R., 203 Gregory IX, Pope, 57 Gregory XVI, Encyclical of, 123 sq. Haeckel, 187, 228 Hale, Lord Chief Justice, 139 Harrison, Frederic, 188, 223 Hegel, 184 sqq. Hell, controversy on, 217 [255] Helmholtz, 182 Heraclitus, 25 Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, 149 Hippocrates, 64 Hobbes, 130 sq. Holland, 95, 107, 130, 131 Holyoake, 224 Homer, 24 Hume, 160 sqq. Huxley, 213 Independents, 95, 98 sq. Infallibility, Papal, 210 sq. Innocent III, Pope, 56 Innocent IV, Pope, 57 Innocent VIII, Pope, 67 Inquisition, 57 sqq.; Spanish, 59 sqq.; Roman, 83, 84, 87 sqq. Italy, 122 sqq., 210 James I (England). 85 sq. Jews, 41 sqq., 68, 99, 105, 111, 194 Joseph II, Emperor, 122 Jowett, Benjamin, 204 sq. Julian, Emperor, 54 Justice, arguments from, 235 Kant, 175 sq. Kett, Francis, 85 Kyd, 85 Laplace, 178 Lecky. W. H., 208, 225 Legate, Bartholomew, 86 Lessing, 71, 120 Linnaeus, 177 Locke, 101 sqq., 120, 132 sq. Loisy, Abbé, 200 sq. Lucian, 40 Lucretius, 37 sq. Luther, 77 sq., 81 Lyell, 178, 208 Manning, Cardinal, 210 Marlowe, Christopher, 85 Marsilius, 119 Maryland, 97 sq. Mazarin, Cardinal, 85, 107 Middleton, Conyers, 150, 164 Mill, James, 151, 227 Mill, J. S., 182, 213, 227, 233, 235 sqq. Milton, 99 sq. Mirabeau, 112 Miracles, 141 sqq., 151, 180, 164 sq., 206 Modernism, 199 sqq. Mohammedan free thought, 68 Monism, 188, 228 sqq. Montaigne, 74 Morley, Lord (Mr. John), 159, 209, 221 sq., 225 Nantes, Edict of, 107 Napoleon I, 115 Newman, Cardinal, 199, 241 Newman, F. W., 203 Ostwald, Professor, 228 sqq. Paine, Thomas, 112, 168 sqq. Paley, 167 sqq. Pascal, 123, 152 sq. Pater, 213 Pentateuch, 192 sq. Pericles, 27 Persecution, theory of, 47 sqq., 232 sqq. Pitt, William, 151 Pius IX, Syllabus, 210 sq. Pius X, Pope, 199 sq. Plato, 36 sq. Plutarch, 150 Prayer, controversy on, 216 Press, censorship, 91 sq., 224 sq. Priestley, 227 Priscillian, 55 Progress, idea of, 226 sqq. Protagoras, 25 Raleigh, Sir W., 85 Rationalism, meaning of, 18 Reade, Winwood, 213 Reinach, S., 197 Renan, 198 Revolution, French, 111 sqq. Rhode Island, 98 Richelieu, Cardinal, 85, 107 Rousseau. 111, 156 sqq., 239 Ruffini, Professor, 125 Russia, 224 Sacred books, 24, 53 sq., 191 Science, physical, 64 sq., 176 sqq. Secularism, 224 Seeley, J. R., 208 Servetus, 79 Shaftesbury. 148 sqq., 151 Shelley, 173, 208 Socinianism, 83, 93 sqq. Socrates, 30 sqq., 39, 235, 236 Sophists, Greek, 26 Spain, 59 sqq., 231 sq. Spencer, Herbert. 187 Spinoza, 131 sq., 138, 191 Stephen. Leslie, 167, 215 sqq. Stephen, J. F.. 203, 245 sq., 247 Stoicism, 36, 38 sq. [256] Strauss, David, 195, 198 Swinburne. 208, 211 sq. Tamburini. 122 Tatian, 44 Themistius, 55 Theodosius I, Emperor, 54 Theophilanthropy, 114 sq. Thomas Aquinas, 69 Thomasius, Chr., 119 Three Rings, story of, 70 Tiherius, Emperor, 40 Tindal, Matthew, 144 sqq. Toland, 133 sq. Toleration, 46 sqq., 92 sqq. Trajan, Emperor, 42 Turgot, 227 Tyndall, 213 Unitarians, 93, 105 United States, 96 sqq., 128 Universities, tests at, 108 Utilitarianism, 227 Vanini, Lucilio, 85 Vatican Council (1869�70), 210 Voltaire, 108 sqq., 114, 121, 153 sqq. Wesley, 130 Westbury, Lord, 207 Wilberforce, 201 Williams, Roger, 96 sq. Witchcraft, 66 sq., 80, 129 sq. Woolston, 141 sqq. Xenophanes, 23 sq. 
24594	----	None 
40211	----	CHURCH REFORM: THE ONLY MEANS TO THAT END, STATED IN A LETTER TO Sir ROBERT PEEL, Bart. FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY, &c. By Richard Carlile. TO WHICH IS PREFACED A CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE BISHOP OF LONDON ON THE SAME SUBJECT. London: PRINTED & PUBLISHED. By R. CARLILE, 62 FLEET STREET. PREFACE. CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE BISHOP OF LONDON, IN 1833, ON THE SUBJECT OF A REFORM IN THE CHURCH. "To the Right Reverend Father in God, the Lord Bishop of London. "62, Fleet Street, November 18,1833. "My Lord, "I have long and deliberately thought, that the state of the Country, the state of the Church, and the state of the Public Mind in relation to the Church, calls upon me to offer myself for an interview with your Lordship, as my Diocesan, that your Lordship may hear from me what I have to advance against the present state and condition of the Church, and what I have to propose as an immediately necessary and proper Reform. "I offer to wait on your Lordship, with your Lordship's consent; and promise, that my conversation shall be altogether courteous and reasonable. "I am one of your Lordship's scattered sheep, wishing for the fold of a good shepherd,--(which is Christ Jesus),-- "RICHARD CARLILE." "P. S.--I may add, my Lord Bishop, that I am altogether a Christian; save the mark at which superstition has been planted upon Christianity." ***** "Fulham, November 20,1833. "Sir, "I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, in which you propose an interview with me, for the purpose of making known to me your opinions respecting the present state of the Church. "I beg to say, that I shall be ready to receive, and to give all due consideration to any communication which you may think proper to make me in writing; as being, on many accounts, a more convenient method than that of personal conference. "I remain, Sir, "Your obedient Servant, "C. J. LONDON." ***** "To the Right Reverend Father in God, the Lord Bishop of London. "62, Fleet Street, November 24,1833. "My Lord Bishop, "In answer to my proposal to meet your Lordship in conversation, on the state of the Country, the state of the Church, and the state of the Public Mind with relation to the Church, your Lordship has encouraged me to write what I have to say, and has promised to receive it and to give it due consideration. I write as early as my circumstances have afforded me the necessary leisure and composure of mind. "The first point to which I beg leave to call your Lordship's attention is--that there is a very numerous degree of dissent from the Established Church among the people of this country. "The second point is, that this spirit of dissent has led to a very extended opposition to the support of the Church in its fiscal claims. "The third point is, that there is a preparation of a public mind going forward for the putting of the present Established Church on the same footing as the present Establishments of the Dissenters--the footing of voluntary rather than legal support; and that the preparation of this state of mind is accelerated by the embarrassed state of the country. "The evidence of these three points in prospect is, that the present state of the Church will be entirely overthrown in the course of two or three Sessions of Parliament. "On the principle of dissent from the Established Church, I have to observe, that it is desirable there should be no dissent; but then the Church should be invulnerable. There can be no popular dissent from any Institution that can be defended as good and best; and though I am instructed to allow that the general body of dissenters from the Church have dissented on very frivolous, even on indefensible grounds, (inasmuch as the Dissenters have not corrected in themselves the errors of the Church), there still remains the proof that where the Church has been assailed or dissented from, it has not been in a condition to defend and justify itself. "This incapability of the Church to defend and justify itself, where assailed, must have arisen from a defective state of its doctrine and discipline. "This doctrine and discipline is founded upon the literal reading of the Sacred Scriptures, or the books of the Old and New Testament. "I impugn the literal as an erroneous reading: it claims to be local and temporal history, and is not. Not one of its apparent historical subjects can be verified. Every one of them can be falsified, upon the principle that other things were being done at the time, and that other people dwelt in the places; and that nothing of contemporary character, purporting to be history, has corroborated the historical claims of the Old and New Testament. "It is said of the writings of the Old and New Testament, that they are allegorical, and that they contain the moral of human salvation from evil. Under this view, they may be true, and may be important as a matter of instruction. I so believe them to be true, and to be important as a matter of instruction; but as your Lordship may put me on the task of mentioning some particular facts and grounds on which I impugn the literal reading of the Sacred Scriptures, and may properly suggest that it is necessary this ground should be first cleared before we try them on the other ground, I submit, as two well-weighed and conclusive propositions:-- "1st. That the person of Jesus Christ, or the name, is not in mention by any author of the first century, if the passage in Josephus be excepted as an interpolation; and that this defect in the evidence is fatal to the historical claim. "2nd. That the people called Jews, or Israelites, neither formed colony nor nation in that part of the earth which is now called Judea, or Holy Land, before the time of Alexander of Macedon; consequently all that is said of their dwelling in and going out of Egypt, their sojourn in the Wilderness, their warfare with the Canaanites and Philistines, their occupation of that country, their subsequent conquest, captivity, and restoration, is entirely fiction or allegory. "I read it as political and moral instruction veiled in allegory \ and as it is to be desired, that, in the removal of a system, all its defects be made apparent, so it becomes a desideratum, that we account for the origin of the sects named Jews and Christians. "This may be done in two ways---one, that they were public philosophical sects; the other, that they were degrees of order in the ancient mysteries. "The moral of the allegory belonging to each is throughout the same, and is an encouragement to the resistance and overthrow of the tyranny of man, when it appears in the open authority of a King, or in the covert authority of a Priest; and the preparing of a people to do this, and the doing it, is precisely what is meant by human salvation,--which is a sure and certain salvation from earthly evils. "The absence of a proof of personal identity in the characters sketched in the Old and New Testament, is the presence of proof (if utility of any kind there be in the form of the allegory), that the persons mentioned are like what all the gods and goddesses of ancient religion were--personifications of principles, either physical or moral, or both. "In so receiving the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, I find them pregnant with the most important political and moral instruction. In receiving them according to the literal or historical reading, I find difficulties insuperable, and such as justify all that Thomas Paine or any other straightforward critic has advanced on the subject, while the moral and the allegory were concealed from their view. "The point at which this personification of principles begins, is the point at which superstition begins; for though knowledge may justify the poetic licence taken with language, ignorance mistakes and evil design misrepresents, until the personification is extensively dwelt on as a reality. "Here I trace the fundamental errors of the present doctrine and discipline of the Established Church; the errors upon which dissent has progressed, upon which an outcry of infidelity has been raised, but upon which the Church could not defend itself and maintain its position. "My remedy for the present difficulties, and my proposition \ for a Reform in the Church is, that no difficulties, mysteries, or superstition be allowed to remain attached to its doctrines and discipline; that the allegory of the Sacred Scriptures be avowed, the personifications taught upon their principles as known principles of nature, and not as personified incomprehensibilities; that the Church, in short, be made a school for the people, than which, if it originally meant any good thing, could mean no other thing, where from time to time all acquired or acquirable knowledge should be taught. On this ground, the utility of the Institution is evident, the benefit to the people certain, the idea of dissent inadmissible. "In this first letter, I have thought it necessary only to give your Lordship the leading points of objection to the present doctrine and discipline of the Church. With details in proof, I can proceed to a voluminous length; and I now offer myself to submit to the catechism of your Lordship, or to that of any person whom your Lordship shall appoint to see me, with the distinct promise, that I will not evade the giving of a direct answer to any distinct and intelligible question that can be put to me upon any part of this important subject. "It may not be improper that I now declare to your Lordship, that, after having worn out the spirit of persecution by a large amount of personal and pecuniary suffering, I have never been acting upon any other motive than a love of truth, and honesty, and public good; that it is under such a motive, and no other mixed motive, that I have now presented myself to your Lordship, viewing your Lordship as a public functionary that has inherited and not created the error of which I complain; and hoping that I shall be met with the disposition of a fair investigation, when so much good is at this moment the promised consequence, "I am, My Lord, "Your Lordship's most obedient humble servant, "RICHARD CARLILE." LETTER TO SIR ROBERT PEEL Sir, I write as a politician to a politician, with oblivion of the past, without any profession of respect for the present, waiting and watching your future. I am stimulated to address you, and the country through your name, on reading your Address to the Electors of Tamworth, after taking the offices of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. The portion of your Address which I select as my subject, is that relating to the Church--the first of all political subjects. Not to understand how to deal with this, is to be utterly deficient in every other political branch. Not to reform this, is to reform nothing. State ever did, and ever will, depend upon the Church. As far as your individual promise is sufficient, it is, that Church Rates shall be abolished. This is so far good. It has been a disgrace to all parties concerned, and an injury to every housekeeper, that a Church Rate has existed. Such a rate has existed only because of the dishonest application of that Church Property which was the legitimate supply for all Church Buildings and repairs. And should the rate be continued under any other form of taxation, and not supplied from existing Church Property, an injury and an injustice will still be inflicted upon the people. You seem willing to abate the religious ceremony of marriage, so far as to allow each couple to let it be to its liking. Pray go a step farther, and let the law cease to trammel that civil contract with religious ceremony, while each couple will be at liberty of its own accord to go through whatever religious ceremony it may think proper. And while on this subject, I pray you to give, or seek for the poor, justice in facile divorce. The mystery of marriage is too sacred for constraint. It should never be other than a spirit of pure and mutual liberty and consent, subject to some legal recognition for the care of offspring. Much of the morals of society must depend on the freedom of marriage and facility of divorce. We have not hitherto been right on this subject. That can be no good tie which opposes the will of an individual in so sacred and delicate an affair as that of marriage. The beginning, middle, and end of marriage should be the love of affection and friendship. Marriage should cease when affection between the parties has ceased. It may be truly added, that marriage has morally ceased, when affection has ceased. Then the legal tie becomes an abomination, a source of vice and wrong; and, in nine cases out of ten, the religious ceremony is treated as a burlesque, save the idea, that it is a fashionable distinction to have observed it as the chief criterion of legal marriage. I entirely agree with you, that Church Property should not be alienated from strictly ecclesiastical purposes. I have changed my view, and see more than formerly on this head. For the same reason, I entirely disagree with you on any commutation of tithes. Let the original application be restored, and no one will find fault but he who loses by that just principle, that first and best of Church Property and most important of popular rights. The point, in your address, on which my letter is to be based, is the following paragraph:-- "With regard to alterations in the laws which govern our ecclesiastical establishment, I have had no recent opportunity of giving that grave consideration to a subject of the deepest interest, which could alone justify me in making any public declaration of opinion. It is a subject which must undergo the fullest deliberation, and into that deliberation the Government will enter with the sincerest desire to remove every abuse that can impair the efficiency of the Establishment, extend the sphere of its usefulness, and to strengthen and confirm its just claims upon the respect and affections of the people." This is just what I wanted you to say. It is honest, if you will but act up to it. This is the sort of Church Reform that I propose. Here we have from you, as the Chief Minister, a promise that your Administration will enter into the fullest deliberation, with the sincerest desire to remove every abuse that can impair the efficiency of the Church Establishment, extend the sphere of its usefulness, and strengthen and confirm its just claims upon the respect and affections of the people. Had I been called to your situation, I could not have promised more; but I should have acted up to that promise, and I hope you will so act. In the performance of that promise, everlasting fame will be yours. So act--and greater than the name of Lycurgus or Solon--greater than that of Cicero, Constantine, or Napoleon--greater than the name of any past man will be that of Robert Peel. If the Duke of Wellington join you in this sentiment, and goes manly and honestly forward to its accomplishment, his, too, will be an imperishable name. This would wreathe him an evergreen chaplet, that would survive the memory of all his physical victories! This is the great moral victory to be obtained before any society can settle down into peace, welfare, and happiness:--_the best use that can be made of the Church_. It is a subject of the deepest interest; it requires grave consideration; I pray that it may have that consideration. I pray that I may be heard by a Commission, in grave consideration of that subject of the deepest interest, before any legislative change be entered upon. I put myself forward in this letter. Many will be the schemes proposed to your consideration: let mine be one, and then select and improve the best. The first consideration is--What is now the Church? What are its defects? What the cause of that dissent, which has made a revision necessary? The second consideration will be--What ought the Church to be, so as to leave no ground and reason of dissent? To some minds, the fickleness and fallibility of human nature will appear as an insurmountable obstacle to the construction of such a Church. I see farther and will propose in order. I flatter myself that I am writing this letter with very proper feelings toward all institutions and all persons. I suspend, _pro tem_., all quarrels that I have with all men, to assist you in this common good, in which you deserve and will have, in the ratio of their goodness, the assistance of all good men. If I can sink the past in oblivion for common good, who should say he cannot? To the altar and shrine of that Reformed Church, which you contemplate, I have sacrificed property much--all I had, and years of liberty many. I am still worshipping, still so sacrificing, both property and personal liberty, and will so continue to the end. I say it not boastfully; but in comparative claim to attention, and in encouragement and example of union to assist you in the performance of your present promise. Let me be permitted to say, too, that the Church is a subject which I have studied in its origin, its history, its first principle, all its dissent or variation from that first principle, down to its present standing. I have so studied it, that I cannot now find author or preacher who can present me any thing new as to its general merits, past or present. This is the chief ground on which I solicit your and the public attention to my view of this subject of Church Reform. I presume to know what the Church is, and what it ought to be. It may be taken as a point to be yielded by all parties, that the desire with regard to the Law Established Church is, the removal of all ground of dissent, so as not to leave it a mere sectarian Church, which any mere abatement of existing dissenting objections will do. No Dissenter can complain, if the ground of his dissent be removed from the Church. And if there be no ground of future dissent left, there can be no future complaint, no new dissension arising. Without the absence of the possibility of dissent, there can be no just holding and application of a public and common property for the business of the Church. With that absence, the property is justly held and applied. Any law that recognizes and tolerates the Dissenter, recognizes and tolerates the justness of his dissent, and calls for the primary justice of removing the ground of dissent. No man can reasonably say, _let us not be of one Church_; but every man can reasonably say, _let the Church be purified of its errors_; and while any man can show an error, it is his duty to call for the purification, and the duty of authorities to attend to his call and to purify. A permanent Church then must be an improving, self-purifying Church, and continue a true picture of the best state of the human mind, meeting every well-founded and majority-decided call upon its utility. Any idea of keeping up a Law Established Church with public property, surrounded by Dissenting Churches, without a public property, can enter the head of no man who understands the subject. There can be no peace or final settlement under such an arrangement. The effect to be accomplished is, not to break up the Church Property; but to break up the Dissenters from the Church. This will startle the present state of mind and feeling. I propose no abridgement of equal liberty. Is not this the grand _desideratum?_ Can it be accomplished?--I think it can, and so proceed to unfold the two-fold consideration. First.--What is now the Church? What are its defects? What the cause of that dissent which has made a revision necessary? This, in reality, is but one question, with a three-fold expression. The Church is now the Theatre of the Drama of the Books of Common Prayer, the Thirty-nine Articles, and the Old and New Testament; to which is generally added a sermonic epilogue or exhortation, commonly called a Sermon. Be not offended at my use of the word _Theatre_ here: no other would substitute. Its root is the Greek [------], God, and signified originally, the house, place or stage, where the Drama of Theism or attributes of Deity were exhibited. The word is now much distorted from its root, in being made to describe the place of modern dramatic performances. Nor must the word _Drama_ be objected to; because the ceremony of the Church was originally so constructed, so meant, and so practised, as I will prove in the course of this letter. Even the word _Tragedy_ has its root in the Greek word [------], a goat, and signifies, in the dramatic exhibition of Theism, the death of the year, under the form of a personification, in the twelfth or zodiacal month of the goat. So that the death sorrowed for and lamented, was, dramatically, the apparent death of the sun, the death of the year, in the sign or month of the goat; and on St. Thomas's day, as we read in the Prophet Ezekiel, chap. viii. v. 14--"_and behold there sat women weeping for Tammuz;_" and v. 16--"_about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east_," which is no other than a representation of the performance of the tragedy, in which the performers had lost the moral of the Lord's Temple: precisely the present state and condition of the Church. All ancient mythology is in harmony with this conclusion; and the Christian tragedy is only a continued version, uniting the general drama of human morals with the annual tragedy of solar physics, and forming a two-fold or two-keyed allegory or mystery, physical and moral, as it was known even in the Celtic or Druid Church. Christianity was never new, or young, in this country, by existing records. There are not many persons in this secret, perhaps, not even you, the first Minister of the country; so it will be deemed too abstruse and mystical on which to find a warrant for legislation or change of law: but I strenuously maintain, that such was the origin of the Christian Church, and such is now its generally lost meaning. The proof of the solar part of the allegory is not so much to my present purpose as the proof of the general drama of human morals being the basis of the present mystery of the Christian Church. To stay a growing difficulty, we must go to the root:--it will grow again, if we do not go to the root. It will be so with the present Church, and all attempts to reform it. In plainer language, then, I will describe the existing Church, as having, in its ceremonies and business, the mystery of the Christian Religion, without its revelation; that all the defects and all the grounds of dissent from it are the absence of the revelation, or want of knowing the meaning of the mystery. Whatever are called its doctrines, are all mysterious; its discipline is equally mysterious, and by its present ministers, unaccountable. Dissenters have dissented without being able to assign a reason for their dissent, and have set up for themselves something equally mysterious and unaccountable; and so the whole principle and practice of Religion in the country is in confusion and conflict; and no measure can reconcile the dissentients, short of developing the first principles of the Church and the Christian Religion, the one language, the one course of reason, the one ground of human welfare, the one system of morals, which is now buried in a Babel of confused tongues, doctrines, idol-houses, and superstitious ceremonies. The ground, then, on which I proceed, is, that TO REFORM THE CHURCH, THE DISSENTERS MUST BE ANNIHILATED. Not annihilated by slaughter or physical force; but by superior knowledge, and consequent superior teaching, by openness, by honesty, by throwing off the mask of hypocrisy, and leaving the Church of Christ to be no longer a theatre of dramatic ceremony in mystery, with parts and actors as ignorant as automata of their subject, and who not knowing, can value it not, beyond the salaries they receive for its performance in unrevealed mystery. Can that be a Reform of the Church, with "just claims upon the respect and affections of the people," which shall leave a ground and excuse for dissent by any one of the people? I say, NO. Can it be a Church of Christ? I say, NO. Do we know what a Church of Christ is in reality? For myself, I say, YES. A Church, too, founded upon an understanding of the _Sacred_ Scriptures, of the Old and New Testament, upon the revelation of the mystery of those Scriptures, and upon all the first principles essential and conducive to general human and social welfare; that shall no more admit of dissent than the multiplication table, or the accurately placed sun-dial, than the elements of Euclid, and all the never-failing tests of the science of chemistry. The Apostle that told us to "_prove all things, and hold fast that which is good_," gave us a definition of the exhortation of the Evangelist or the Baptist--"_Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand_." A repenting and a proving people are necessary to make a Church of Christ. Repentance and enquiry are the pillars and foundations of that Church; without repentance and enquiry there can be no Church of Christ; and I ask, confidently ask, with the assurance that a true answer must be in the negative,--has anything calling itself a Christian Church in Europe, established by law, or dissenting from such an establishment, anything to do with the two principles of repentance and proving, the one meaning reflection by animadversion, the other a trial by outward tests of that reflection? There is not a congregation of people in Europe, calling itself a Church, that is founded upon an understanding of the Sacred Scriptures, the understanding which shows that the "letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." I impugn, as being in error,--I denounce, as that error is the cause of all dissent, of dissent uninstructed,--all the churches or congregations called churches in the British dominions; and I call for a reform that shall eradicate that dissent, and make all become one in efficiency, usefulness, and respect and affections of the people. The present state of the Church is, that it is a theatre of mystery, giving no solid satisfaction to the people, and for which, among the receivers of salaries and benefits only, can there be a particle of real respect and affection. Its defects are, that none understand, neither priests nor people understand what any part of its dramatic ceremonies mean. And this is the cause of that dissent which has made a revision necessary. What, then, ought the Church to be, so as to have no ground and reason of dissent? In two words, I answer, A SCHOOL. What kind of a school? A school for knowledge only; for revelation without mystery; and for practical use and benefit to every member, without parade or pomp, even without ceremony, beyond what order and good may require. And would such be a Church of Christ? Such alone can be a Church of Christ. Christ the Logos, Jesus the Saviour of Man, is, in principle, nothing more in its dramatic or mystified and present church presentation, than a personification of the principle of reason, or of the knowledge of which the human being is a recipient, and without which can have no salvation, has no relation to the idea of a salvation, or any evil from which to be saved. Such is a true revelation of the mystery of Christ. And a Church of Christ has no other true meaning, than a convenient and sessional gathering of the people in districts, for purposes of mutual enquiry and mutual instruction; for catechism and intelligible and useful exhortation; for revelation of knowledge, or mind, or reason; for mental improvement; and not for mystery, nor dramatic ceremony, nor superstition, nor idolatry. It is in this sense only, that the Church of Christ is superior to all other Churches--the word Church meaning a gathering or association of the people for mental improvement. This generation has no proof, nor has history a warrant, that any other generation of man has had a proof of the material existence of the being called Jesus Christ. The seeming narrative of such a purport is the current mythology of the ancients, or people of two thousand years ago, taken up by us in its literal sense, and so mistaken; so mistaken, as to warrant a belief in the literality and fact of the material, temporal, and local existence of every one of the Gods of the Pantheon, or of human imagination, and then we shall have rivalry enough for the best. But then, I should make a choice of Christ, as the only one that makes due provision for the right cultivation of the human mind; the only one that has laid the foundations of the kingdom of Heaven, in the peace and good-will of mankind, dwelling upon a land flowing with milk and honey, and overflowing with knowledge. I challenge the Bishops and the whole priesthood, to produce me any knowledge that is intelligible to themselves or to any other person, as an interpretation of the narratives in the Old and New Testament, about Jehovah or Christ, other than that which I am now unfolding. Mine has a warrant in the spirit of the language of the books, in the roots of words, and in all the principles of things that relate to man's welfare; and more particularly in that to man most important of all, MORAL SCIENCE. I am not insensible to the circumstance, that a man might have a knowledge of a thing, of a train of circumstances, of causes and effects, in his own mind, with a difficulty to find language in which to communicate it, that shall be equally and immediately clear to all other states of mind. A resemblance, nearness, or similarity of mind, almost an equality of knowledge, is requisite to a clear understanding. It is thus, that men, in different languages, understand each other, when other men, bystanders, do not understand them. And it so happens, in all first developments of science, the new discovery wants a new language in which to be presented to others, and it often happens, that first words made or chosen are not the best and clearest. Know you not, Sir, that knowledge is power? You must have read that celebrated axiom of Bacon's; but have you considered it, have you reflected, have you repented and proved that axiom? I may add, by way of explanation, that knowledge is the only moral power. What seeks your Church to be? Or what should it seek to be, other than a moral power? On what rock, then, must the Church of Christ be built, so that the gates of hell, or of evil design, or of dissent, may not prevail against it? On what, but KNOWLEDGE? Is it now so built? Is not, rather, the present ministry of the Church more afraid of knowledge than of the people's ignorant dissent; more of "Carlile and his crew," than of all the dissenters; more of free discussion, than of any kind of superstition? The dissent of knowledge and the dissent of ignorance, though disunited, are becoming too powerful for your knowledgeless Church; and you, at last, have consented to speak of its necessary reform! To which will you yield, or whom will you join? Those who dissent by knowledge, or those by ignorance? If you take the former, your work will be perfected at once; if the latter, your work will never be done, and you will become weaker and weaker; for I know not one body of worshipping associated dissenters, whose ground of association and dissent is better than that of the Established Church. Find me the minister of one of them, who will stand up in discussion before a public audience with me, so as to have his language reported. I have not yet found him in England or Scotland. The pretences of the kind that have been made, have been so deficient in respectability of character and of good manners, that I do not think them worth a recognition. I am not insensible to the circumstance, that you have a difficult task to perform, and I am not sure that you are equal to it: I hope you are; that is, I would have you so, or any other who may be the King's adviser, and the real head of the Church. Nothing is wanted for this reform but honesty and moral courage. Where the will and the power exist, the task is an easy one. _I desire to save the Church and its property, and to annihilate the Dissenters_. I would have the present dignities of the Church dignify themselves in a triumph over the Dissenters. A collusion with the Dissenters will be a hugging of pestilence and death to the bosom of the Church. There can be no co-existence: there was proof enough of that in the seventeenth century, and still in Scotland. A revolution in the affairs and manners of the Church must take place, even by your own confession, in language admitting of the inference; and I desire that good may be educed from that revolution. I would make the Church triumph in the correction of every mental error in the country, and noble would be that triumph! You may ask, how is this to be done? I will tell you. Let the Church become the oracle of truth, the fountain of knowledge, the mistress and dispenser of all science. Let its ministers declare this great truth:--_that, hitherto, the mystery of Christ has alone been taught in the Church, without the revelation of that mystery; that the Church has been the depository of that sacred mystery, until the fulness of time, in which it is promised, that all people shall be prepared to partake of the revelation; that the mystery has been kept up in outward form and without any spiritual grace; that the spiritual grace and all the pro-mises are to be fulfilled in the understanding of the revelation; that the spirit or revelation has been buried in a resting on the letter of the Sacred Scriptures; that Christ is only now risen or beginning to rise, after thousands of years, we may say three thousand years, rather than three days of crucifixion, death and burial_. In me, he has risen indeed, as, in me, he has been last crucified; and I crave the pleasure of seeing his principles rise in the Church; for that craving is the nature of Christ. Let the Church declare _that the time is now come to reveal the mystery of Christ_. Exhibition has not been revelation. What, then, is the revelation of the mystery of Christ? It is, that Christ is God and not man, that it is God in man; that it is knowledge, reason, or all its essences in moral principle; and that it is not an idol to be worshipped as a statue, but a principle to be taught and inherited by the human race. The mystery sets forth Christ as a statue or image to be worshipped after the fashion of the Pagan world. The revelation teaches, that it is the principle of knowledge, to be gained by labour, by asking, seeking and knocking, or prayer; by repentance, that is, reflection; by enquiry, that is, proving all things, and holding fast that which is good; by mutual instruction, by free discussion, by whatever constitutes a school for useful knowledge, and that constitution is a Church of Christ: all the rest is mistake or imposture, whether it be established by law, or ignorantly dissented from; whether it have a King for its head, or be carried on in a garret or a cellar. I must go to the root of my subject, and leave no excuse for evasion. The root of religion is the relation of God to man, and man to God. What does man know of God? Books can teach him nothing, unless those books be written pictures of existing things and things that have existed. Things that have existed have no source of trial or test, but in the similarity of things that do exist. Man's knowledge of existence is of a twofold nature: the things that do exist, and the power by which he has that knowledge. The first is distinguished as material existence; the second, as spiritual existence. Material and spiritual existence are the only two positive existences of which man can speak or write, to which no inspiration can add; for inspiration is only knowledge; and the recognition of material and spiritual existence is the limitation of knowledge. The details of knowledge can be nothing more than definitions and descriptions of existing things,--the plantings of art upon nature. All knowledge is matter of art. Nature is the thing known--art the knowledge of the thing. This art can not only know nature, but can invent descriptions of unreal things; can describe things by types, and principles by figurative allegories; can imitate nature by appearances, such as pictures, statues, &c.; and can, by mysterious constructions of language, make the appearance of a thing to represent a principle or describe qualities in the absence of the thing: this is spiritual power. Nothing of the kind is seen beyond human life; certainly not beyond animal life. We may, therefore, reasonably speak of spiritual power or spiritual existence as confined to the human race--speech and language being a primary necessity to its existence: the art of other animals extending not beyond their wants. Man, then, is the creator of spirit; and, beyond man, spirit is not known. Man is not known to be the creature, but the creator of art; not the creature, but the creator of spirit, soul, mind, reason, knowledge, or whatever other term relates to the mental phenomena. I maintain, because it is a truth of the deepest importance to the human race, and without the knowledge of which nothing can work well in human society, that man is the creator of all spiritual existence; and in the sense in which God is a spirit, man is the creator of that God, and has been the creator of every description of existence that has been made of such a God. We may also correctly speak of this two-fold existence as physical and moral. The physical, its forms and compositions excepted, is eternal and immutable--the moral is evanescent, mortal, and mutable in its personal existence, but immutable and immortal as to principle. The root of God, therefore, as of man, is in physical power, which is correctly described as almighty, immutable and omnipresent: it is only omniscient, as being the fountain of knowledge--the all that can be known. Science is art; therefore, there can be no science in an infinite or eternal sense, as we can speak of the physical power of Deity; but science, as art, is limited to human power,--the all that is known, and not the all that exists to be known. This is evidence, that man has created not only all the descriptions that have been made of spiritual existence, but that existence itself: and so it is true, that man has been the inventor of a spiritual God; that religion and all its appurtenances have been the offspring of the art of man; and that man alone is capable of correcting any of its errors,--which is to be done in the same way by which I propose to put down the Dissenters--the acquisition and communication of knowledge by the Church. I pass by the Pagan mythology, which, in its understood personifications and allegories, is as beautiful a picture of physical and moral nature, as the Christian Religion itself; and I rest on the Christian, as, when understood, the only religion for human improvement that has been presented to the notice of the human race. As man is the inventor of the Spiritual Deity, which is peculiarly the Deity of the Christian Religion, so I infer, by evidence to come, that the Deity of the Christian Religion is no other, nothing more, than a personification of the mental phenomena of the human race, which was the work of the philosophers and scientific men of the Pagan world: and noble was their task--important for man was their production. Not the thing called the Christian Religion now in existence, which is no other than a religion mistaken, a corruption and Pagan superstition, the dregs and drivellings of the gross ignorance and superstition of the dark ages; something two thousand times worse than the Paganism of the Millenium before the so-called Christian era. But a personification after deifications of the mental phenomena, is a sounding, preaching, writing, carving or painting God, as the perfection of knowledge; Christ, as the perfection of reason; and the Holy Spirit of communication, as the perfection of all attainable moral power by the human race: making those perfections to be things sought, the things worshipped, the best religion, as it undoubtedly is, for the whole human race. It was the best plan of scholastic improvement, when acted upon, that human wisdom could have devised, and to this I would have you bring our Church. There is a two-fold way of reading the Bible, which I have before described, as it is described in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. iii. v. 6, a reading or a ministration according to the letter, and another according to the spirit. The Apostle or author of that Epistle declares himself to have been a minister of the New Testament according to the spirit, and complains, that the Jews, in his time, did not know how to read the Old Testament. I declare that the Church now existing ministers to nothing but the letter of the Bible, which is a ministration not to life, but to death; and such is the evidence of the whole era of such a ministration; such has been the cause of the dark ages, on which no dissenting sect has yet thrown a ray of light; and the reform that is now required throughout the Church, that established by law and all others, is the understanding of the Sacred Scriptures, that shall cause them to be taught according to the spirit, the spirit of knowledge, reason and constant human improvement. I now see, that none of the people called Jews or Christians know how to read either Old or New Testament according to the spirit. To read the Bible according to the letter, is to make it a piece of human history; to make a creation of the world, and an attempt to account for everything past, present and future. I proclaim this conduct to be the folly of ignorance, opposed by all real history of the human race, and by all the developments of science, in relation to the earth's existence, its qualities, and its relation to the general planetary system. I challenge the proof of any one apparent historical fact, in either Old or New Testament. I challenge the production of the existing mention of any one of the supposed facts about the personal or material Jesus Christ, within one hundred years of the time at which it is said to have happened, putting the disputed passages of Josephus and Tacitus out of the question. I challenge the proof of the existence of the Jews, in any country, as a distinct nation, before the time of Alexander the Great. No other contemporaneous history recognizes such an assumed history as that which I challenge. And farther, I am prepared to prove that Christianity existed among Romans, Greeks, Persians, Hindoos, and Celtic Druids, or the northern nations, before the Christian era. The present ministration of the Church entirely depends on the necessity of a clear historical proof of the literal contents of the Old and New Testaments. But a spiritual reading of that volume solves every difficulty, and teaches us how to extract the truth, the system of religion that is a necessary and sure salvation for the human race, when reduced to practice, and to see it as a part of the wisdom of all ancient men of all times and countries. It is ten years and upwards since I sent a petition to you, Sir, to be laid before the King, asking for a commission to examine my oppugnancy to the religion and administration of the existing Church. Will you now grant that commission? If you will not, you, while you remain in power, will blunder on in and through growing troubles and difficulties, until you, or some other person, be compelled to come to my school for information. It may be a galling pain, a conscience-smitten task to you to do so; but you have no alternative with honesty and wisdom. It is not a little of this cry for Church Reform, that has sprung out of my labours and sufferings. And here am I, though still in prison through that Church's iniquity, in the proud and triumphant position, clearly seeing that you can reform nothing in the Church that will satisfy the people without coming to my ground. Your pledge is so to reform the Church as to make it meet the respect and affection of the people. I rejoiced when I read that sentiment; for I saw and felt, that I alone had proposed a reform equal to that end; and mine, as well as others, by the glorious power of the printing press, must come into consideration. I assure you that the correspondence with the Bishop of London, which I shall append to this letter, has been sold to the extent of many thousands, and is in great demand. This is but an enlargement of my second letter to the Bishop. So that my lamp has been constantly trimmed for your advent as a Reformer of the Church. It is not what you and others call "the rabble," "the destructives," "the mob," that I seek. I seek you and the Bishops, all the learned men in the country, as in application of mind to mind, learning to learning, and wisdom to wisdom. I will now proceed to explain the distinction between the mystery and the revelation of Christ, between the letter and the spirit of the books of the Old and New Testament, between false and true religion, between superstition and idolatry on one side, and reason with growing knowledge in the Church on the other. I begin with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The Church of the dark ages has taught the doctrine professedly founded upon the letter of the Sacred Scriptures: of God, as consisting of three persons in one person, coexistent, co-equal, and co-eternal, which, in expression, has been abridged, under the name of Trinity, and described as the Holy Trinity; and, in definition or distinction, as Father, Son and Holy Ghost. This doctrine has always been dissented from while dissent has been tolerated. It is no more a physical absurdity than the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, or the changing of water to wine, or the feeding of five thousand with five small loaves and two fishes, or any other narrated miracle: still it has been dissented from, and when dissented from, no defence could be made of it. In every other case of dissent, the Church could make no defence and no other apology than ancientness of the doctrine in the Church. Truly this has been a verification of the blind leading the blind, until both fell into the ditch together. With a doctrine of personality in Deity, including the ideas of physical and moral power, this of the Trinity has been declared a mystery incomprehensible to the human mind; and I declare that a mystery incomprehensible to the human mind, pressed upon human attention, as of importance, is an absurdity, and must be an imposture; for who has comprehended it so to state? This is the matter-of-fact view of the subject. But the subject being a declared mystery in the theological sense, there is a spiritual interpretation to be put upon the language of the letter; and that I take to be thus:-- That the Trinity is not to be considered as of persons, but of principles; and then we shall find it a philosophical doctrine, true to nature, and proved by science; true to physical and to moral science. All the ideas that physical science can bring us of creation is the root of three in one. Whatever admits of analysis sets forth the truth and doctrine of the Trinity. Water, the great parent of production on this planet, is known to be composed of two gases--hydrogen and oxygen. They become water through contact and decomposition by electric action. Thus, in the order of a Trinity in Unity, we may describe it as of hydrogen, oxygen, electric contact=water. I do not mention this as any thing new; but it is new in application to a definition of the doctrine of the Trinity. Water had not been made but by the electric contact of hydrogen with oxygen, by the power of a Trinity in Unity. Chemistry teaches us, that this power of a Trinity in Unity is an all-creating power; and so far it is man's comprehension of the creating power or Deity, and not a thing or principle incomprehensible: it is a doctrine older than the Christian era; was a doctrine among the Pagan Philosophers, and is true as to principles or powers; but not true in our modern sense of persons, as identical and separate beings. A great mistake, too, has been made in the understanding of the word _person_, in relation to theology: it never was meant to express beings in the image of you and me; but the dramatic manner of presenting a description of the principles of nature in the theatre, _per sonantem_, by sound or song, by fiction, by disguise, by allegory, by mask or mystery, by representative action: the revelation of which would be to understand the principles of nature so personated on the stage, as I have defined the Trinity. And it is in this, and no other sense, that I read the names of Deity in the Old or New Testament, as brought apparently on the stage of human affairs, in person, by the authors; that _personating_ meaning nothing more than a present picture or representation of an absent or infinite power, by sounds or voice, and sometimes by masks, as was the earliest known practice in dramatic exhibition, which explains everything about gods and oracles, and makes the Hymns of Orpheus as sacred as the Psalms of David; as they are as certainly beautiful in poetic composition, and equally useful to human welfare. You, Sir, if you enter the House of Commons next month, may be said to personate the Electors of Tamworth; a power in the abstract greater than you, because many and supposed qualified to reject your personation and to elect another. Therefore, the personation is not the power personated. As the King's chief Minister, you will also personate the King's Government in the House of Commons; but you are not in reality that governing power; because, it is something distinct from you, and greater than can be concentrated in your person. You, as plain Robert Peel, and I, as Richard Carlile, are not persons; and though it is a custom so to use the word and so to describe us, yet it is a mistake and misuse of the word, unless the body may be said to personate the mind, soul, &c. I hope you see that much of the error of our Church has turned upon this point; because a person was never the reality of the power, and consequently the persons of the Trinity are not to be considered the reality of the Trinity: and hence the Unitarian Dissenter has no reasonable ground of dissent. The doctrine of the Trinity, as a description of Deity, is a valid theological and philosophical doctrine, admitting of no rational dissent. I wish the Bishops to learn this before the Dissenters, so that the Church may be taught how to call back her errant and ignorant children, that her property may be held together for useful purposes, and not be wasted at the shrine of dissenting ignorance or bankrupt government. And now, Sir, can you yet see your way with me, "to remove every abuse that can impair the efficiency of the establishment; extend the sphere of its usefulness, and strengthen and confirm its just claims upon the respect and affections of the people?" If you cannot, I beg you to follow me farther. It is not only in physics that the doctrine of the Trinity is theologically and scientifically correct, but in morals also; and this is the foundation of the Christian Religion. As God, the Father, personates all science, under the attribute of omniscience; that is, personates all existence, both omnipotence and omnipresence, and is, in that reality, the fountain of knowledge--the all and every part that can be known; so God the Son, Christ or Logos, personates the human mind, as the existence or manifestation of knowledge and reason, as Jesus or the principle of salvation from evil, in possessing that knowledge, and as the true God, in us and with us, in and with whom we live, and move, and have our being. So God the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter to come, to complete the happiness of the human race, personates that spirit of free communication of knowledge which should be found in the Church, the theatre, not of any superstition or dramatic ceremony, but of the freedom of the human mind, and all its emanations of free enquiry, free discussion, mutual instruction, which are the necessary elements of brotherly love and peace, in the proving of all things and holding fast that which is good. And thus I prove the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity. This, Sir, is a true picture or effigies of the moral Trinity of the Christian Church, which you will find to be a key to every mysterious sentence of the Bible; and I ask you seriously, as between man and man, is any thing of this kind known or practised in the present Church? Are not the ministers of that Church afraid of every new discovery in science? Have they not, as far as they could, persecuted every man who has attempted to publish any criticism, enquiry, or objection to their mysterious subjects? History says--Yes. And I say that they have known nothing of the subject for themselves, and that they have dreaded all knowledge of, all enquiry into, the subject. Will their pride let them learn of me? Well may I say:--"Come unto me, all that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me: for I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." That is the language of the personated Logos, or Principle of Reason, addressed to the present state of British mind, as it was formerly addressed to the general state of the human mind. The doctrine of the transubstantiation of bread and wine, as the elements of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, into the real body and blood of Christ, has been another stumbling-block in the Church. On this head, our law-established Church has dissented from its former self, which when I mentioned on my last jury trial, the Judge, Sir Allan Park, called it a vilifying of the Church. I knew better; but saw that the Judge was not a man to be reasoned with, and so I did not press the subject: but through this letter and your name, Sir, I desire to teach him how it has been done. Transubstantiation is no stumbling-block to my mind. The twenty-eighth article of the Church says on this subject:--"Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of bread and wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions. The body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner; and the mean whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper, is Faith." It is very clear to me that the Bishops of that time, the sixteenth century, did not know how to read Holy Writ. I could defend the entire doctrine of transubstantiation, in its fullest application, from the language of the Gospel according to Saint John. This subject affords me another proof, that the doctrine of transubstantiation is much older than any of the books of the New Testament: for, where understood, there is nothing in theology more dear than this doctrine, or that comes nearer to a physical and moral truth. First, let us understand that the root of the word _Sacrament_ is a secret in the mind; and _Transubstantiation_ is a change of substance from one to another thing. Now the secret in the mind is, where understood, and where not understood there is no Sacrament, that, like the Trinity, all the appearances of God are in the principle of transubstantiation or change from one to another thing. All is motion.--Nature knows no rest. All is change, all is transubstantiation. It is like the Trinity,--one of the attributes of Deity, one not to be doubted,--because everywhere visible. The present Church of England calls it a damnable doctrine; but it is so called through ignorance. Like that of the Trinity, it is a doctrine much older than the Christian era; and so also was that of the Lord's Supper, as a practised ceremony. When the name of Christ was set up to personate all the attributes of Deity, the various names of the Pagan gods were decried. It had become a matter of wisdom thus to set up the name of Christ as a personation of all the gods and goddesses: it was a concentration of philosophy, to unite mankind in one form of religion and for one great purpose, that of progressive and perpetual improvement. The plan was good; but the principle has never been rightly developed. Teaching by mystery is a bad system. The mass of the people are not so to be taught. We must begin and teach by revelation. The Christian Religion, when revealed, will be eternal, and realise all its real promises of peace on earth, good-will among men, and a land flowing with milk and honey. Before the name of Christ was used, Bacchus was called a Saviour, as were many other if not all the gods, as Jehovah is declared the only Saviour in the Old Testament. And this Bacchus had the name of Jesus, or Saviour, inscribed on his altar pieces, in the very letters now inscribed in our Churches, the three Greek letters Iota, Eta, Sigma, I.H.S., not Jesus Hominum Salvator, in initials, though so in meaning; but Yes, which is the same as Jesus, and signifies Saviour. Isis is of the same root, one of whose names was Ceres. Ceres personated corn or bread, and Bacchus personated wine. It was a Pagan custom, in religious ceremonies, to break and eat bread in honour of Ceres, and to pour and drink wine in honour of Bacchus, as the bread and wine or body and blood of salvation, of both physical and moral salvation. Christ being made all, both physical and moral Saviour, was intended to swallow up all the various Pagan honours and ceremonies, every one of which, in part or whole, is still retained in our law-established Church; and so Christ personated both the elements, bread and wine, as his body and blood, as before they had been called body of Ceres and blood of Bacchus. Be it remembered, that the Pagans had no other ideas of these matters, than those of dramatic effect. The origin of the drama was in and with the religion of the human race. And we must come back or come up to this for a right understanding and use of the Christian Religion. As food, bread and wine are the best elemental representatives of the body and blood of the human being, and will sustain human life in health and vigour. As bread and wine, they are elements of the physical nature of God; and when taken into the human body, they transubstantiate in that body, and, in making blood, become the blood which is necessary to sustain the moral god or reason in the godly man: so, through the transubstantiation, they do not cease to be the body and blood of Christ. This is what is meant in the matter, and this solves the language of Saint Augustine, cited in the twenty-ninth article, that though the wicked eat the consecrated bread and drink the wine, they do not eat the real body and blood of Christ, because in leading bad lives they do not improve themselves, and so eat and drink but for new condemnation. The revelation of the mysterious word sin, in the Sacred Scriptures, is generally applicable to the ignorance of the human race; and so of original sin, which is not to be otherwise reasonably understood. Man is born without knowledge, but may, by due care, be made a member of the Church of Christ; that is, may be made a scholar, as the foundation of a wise and good man. I shrink not from a full and reasonable explanation of every part of the mysterious doctrine of the Christian Church, in this way; and I am prepared to maintain, before all men, that this is the true revelation of the mystery, the true spirit of the letter, both of the Old and New Testament: "the truth as it is in Jesus"--in nature: the truth, by God. This beautiful and deeply-woven allegory embraces, in its mystery, almost every known process of nature; and must, in my opinion, have been the labour of the united science of many generations of the wisest men---of truly inspired men. This very doctrine of transubstantiation in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, is descriptive, and is in fact and principle, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ in. man. The bread and wine are swallowed, are buried in the human stomach, there decomposed or transubstantiated, formed into chyle, rise again into blood, and form the spirit of the man: which is, in reality, a death of the body and resurrection of the spirit: and the brain being the chief of the sentient principle, there becomes an ascension into that kingdom of heaven, which it is in a reasonable man, and than; which there can be, by law of nature, no other. The same or similar explanation applies to the first and second birth; the birth of the physical body in its original sin, the second the birth of the spiritual mind or inward man, which is the Lord Christ Jesus. It is a divine riddle, and such is the solution. The riddle is of larger comprehension than the mere relations of God to man. It is an astronomical almanack, a written and dramatized picture of the celestial globe; and is, in truth, a most perfect allegory of all known nature, both in physics and morals, in matter and spirit. There are no such men in the Church now as the writers of the Sacred Scriptures; none even with sufficient knowledge to understand them. We have fallen; yes, we have fallen into the dark ages; and the revelation, when known, is to be the millennium. We have fallen by that Scarlet Whore, the Babylon of Mystery; and have to rise again, by getting a knowledge of Christ, which is not now in the Church, nor yet among any of the Dissenters so called. Nothing can be imagined more anti-Christian in spirit and character, than that which has been called the Christian Church of the last fifteen hundred years. Christ, in his physical character, personates the sun and solar year, while his twelve disciples personate the twelve months, or the signs of the zodiac; and; in this sense, we have a death, descent, resurrection and ascension, once a year. It is in that sense he performs the miracle of turning the water of the pot of Aquarius (January or Winter) into the wine of Autumn; the story, of course, is told, in the gospel, after the form of a personated narrative of a dramatic incident. So the product of the corn-seed of five small loaves and two fishes, becomes sufficient, in the season, to feed five thousand. The knowledge and ingenuity of the state of mind, that could so construct the allegory, as an harmonious picture of the works of nature, is absolutely wonderful, and has my admiration, even my ejaculatory adoration; and I am not a little proud of my own ingenuity, in having penetrated thus far into so deep and mysterious a subject. It has brought me perfect peace of mind, as to the general system of nature, and left me burning with the desire to acquire more knowledge. In the Church now existing, is there aught but mystery that can be called its religion? And in mystery unexplained, unrevealed, can there be aught but impudent knavery in the ministration, with general hypocrisy or credulous folly in the reception? I have penetrated the subject so deeply as not to shrink from saying, that the present ministration of the Church is an impudent and mischievous imposture, sanctioned by the custom of antiquity, that neither instructs nor moralizes the people; for, notwithstanding all the pretences to religion, greater immorality than is here found cannot be supposed to exist among a people holding or held together as a community, in daily danger of disruption, and utterly without a code of moral guidance or guides: and this not so much among the poor as among the rich. Even this city is in danger, from its ill-assorted and ill-conditioned population, of all the disasters that befell Babylon, Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople or Paris. And almost every village in the Island groans under want, and courts even the desolation of contested revolution for a change. And that very feeling and profession, which is now miscalled the religion of peace, will, from its state of ignorant dissension, only serve to whet the appetite for contention and slaughter, and make another war in the name of God. I call upon you to repent, by which I mean reflection. I ask you to be honest, and that, too, because the season of profitable dishonesty is exhausted, and you have wealth enough: save it. It is never too late to reform and do justly; but the later the reform is deferred, the more necessity that the justice be rigid and prompt. I feel that if I had your authority, I could save the Church and its property, not for a farther career of its iniquity and error, but as a noble institution for the good of the people, a sufficient school for all, and a hospital for the infirm; to which, I add, that this, or nothing good, must have been the purpose of its first institution. I believe, from what I now see of the foundation of the Christian Religion, that this was the first purpose of its institution. Banish the superstition of the Church, plant the tree of knowledge there, and you will quickly overthrow the morally pestilent Dissenters. I mean, of course, by moral means, by the exhibition of more knowledge and wisdom and utility than they. This would be salvation and reform to every good institution in the country; for when knowledge becomes the nation's religion and moral pole-star, everything good is safe, everything evil will vanish before a discussion of its merits. This or blood-thirsty contention is your choice. You may delay for a while; but you cannot otherwise reform. You, by delay, will merely bid the people wait until they are strong enough to combat your authority. Delay will be a challenge to them of physical combat. What can confer more dignity on the "Dignitaries of the Church" than for the Legislature to say to them:--"Feed the people with knowledge and no longer fill them with superstition?" If I understand human nature rightly, it has more pleasure in honesty than in dishonesty. Would the experimental lectures of a Faraday, desecrate the building? Or a beautifully reflected picture of the heavens and its explanation lessen true devotion? Would moral; science profane the pulpit or injure the congregation? Would the real catechism; and instruction, of children in matters of physical and moral science be of less importance than the parrotlike catechism of the language of the present mystery? There would then be some ground for a bishop's or overseer's examination and confirmation; but what does confirmation now mean? All that I can remember of it is a learn-ing to repeat from memory a prayer and a creed, perhaps a few commandments, which are studied to-day, to be gone through tomorrow, and neglected ever after. Give the people something which they can feel and know to be useful, which they can reduce to practice, and they will emulate each other in flocking to Church at the appointed times. You will then have need of still more churches to receive the increasing population. It will be an emulative pleasure to children, a new delight to parents, a mutual gratification to be at school together in church. I can say from observation, comparison and experience, that among the most moral of the working people in the metropolis, will be found those who have attended scientific lectures on the Sunday, and who have thereby been taught, to contemn superstition. You find them not in the house of intoxication; but passing soberly in the evening from their homes to the school; and gratifiedly after the lecture from the school to their homes. The greatest error that toryism and superstition have fallen into has been to suppose that knowledge will make a people disorderly. Bacon's aphorism is true, that superstition is the _primum mobile_ of sedition, the great agitator; and ignorance the great disorderer of States. Is it not so in Ireland? Is it not your greatest trouble in this island? The wisest act of the life of the late Lord Castlereagh was to propose to send _Paine's Age of Reason_ among the Roman Catholics of Ireland. If it had been so thoroughly done, when he proposed it, they would have been all quiet enough by this time. Real knowledge is the water-cup of sobriety for a people: with that they will seek to rid themselves of nothing but error and evil that cannot be morally defended. Make the change that I propose in the business and ceremony of the Church, and you instantly make a Christian Religion, eminently Catholic, that will not only annihilate the Dissenters, but convert Jew, Mahometan and Pagan. It will be irresistible to all mankind. They cannot argue against science; but each argues against the superstition of the other. Science is the essence of Judaism, but the men called Jews understand it not. It is the foundation of their name, the ground on which they have been considered a chosen people, it is the only sign of God in man, the only proof of true religion. Science and morals are the whole duty and all needful to man; beyond which he can gain nothing but superstition, error and evil. Science and morals, then, are the only proper business of the Church. Let us have our National Education in the Church. Let the Church be the fountain of knowledge, and all be there baptized, as a true sign of mental birth and membership of Christ. Gather together all the property that was ever ecclesiastical; get it back from whoever may hold it; take it out of the hands of the priesthood or the ministers of the Church, tithes and all; and give it into the hands of its true owners, the people, each parish with its separate share, and let the majority of the parishioners make the best use of it they can for ecclesiastical, that is scholastical purposes; and with it, also, provide for their infirm and accidentally poor. This one act of public justice and public good would go far toward settling the affairs of this distracted and unsettled nation, and do injury to no one. Let the State Parliament be also the Church Convocation, which may be well done when there are no superstitious disputes, all will go on smoothly with due and sufficient authority and order, and Britain look forward to happy days. It would be the regeneration of the whole earth in a few years. This is what is meant by the promise of the knowledge of the Lord covering the earth as the waters fill the ocean. Somebody must publicly break through the trammels of superstition, I have done it as far as a private man can do it; but wo public man in England has yet dared to approach the subject. Be you the first. No other circumstance could bring you a more imperishable name and fame. Of wealth you have enough. I ask nothing more than that you fulfil the promise of your administration made to the Electors of Tamworth. If you say, that you did not mean what I express, I shall answer you, that you could have no other meaning. Were I in Parliament, I would carry the subject in spite of prejudice; so strong is my faith in the power of knowledge. I would move, in such a clear and simple way, that a man should not hold up his face to his fellow man after voting against me. Give us a commission, with power to enquire into this subject. I will be content to wait all the time that justice to all concerned may require. If religion be any thing more than I make it--mental cultivation from infancy to death, it must be the private business of every man's life and nothing national; like national sobriety, it must be made up of the sobriety of each individual, and cannot rest on social forms and ceremonies. Ceremonial sobriety would be but the mockery of a good principle. I care not how much repenting and proving we have, how much trial, let us but have free, full, and fair enquiry and discussion, in Parliament and out of Parliament. Giving a man knowledge cannot be a disqualification for true religion. Feeding him with science can have no tendency to injure his morals. Occupying his time well can be no source of bad habits. Spurring him on to a moral emulation in the acquisition of equal or more knowledge than his neighbour, will not create ill will toward that neighbour. The best occupation of time is a question at the very root of individual happiness and national prosperity: I find it everywhere sadly neglected; here in prison, out in church, at the theatre, in public and private business, in families, in pursuit of pleasure, in the army--everywhere. It can be scarcely said, that there is anything solid in our actions; frivolity prevails everywhere, and is mixed up with our most serious professions. I cannot look back to Pagan times without seeing that they were a superior people to ourselves, and that we have fallen, through the management of our religion and politics, from, rather than risen, above them: we exceed them in nothing but hard and lengthy labour for small wages, insufficient for the necessaries of life. We have not learnt from Seneca, "that he lives longest who has made the best use of his time." Be it your study to seek to give us some sound moral reforms, and sink party politics in the moral of public good; withdraw all licences from houses of intoxication and late hours; let there be no public resort, in Parliament or elsewhere, after ten at night; if it would be no abridgement of general liberty, confine shop business to limited hours, that the conductors and assistants may have due time for mental improvement. Some of the young men and women in London shops, bitterly lament the want of more time for rational recreation, for health and improvement. They are among the veriest of slaves in confinement. Let knowledge be once legislatively encouraged, remove all taxes from it, and then a hundred minor arrangements, by legislation, may be made conducive to public good, and a bar be set against injurious, offensive, and slavish competition. It is the Tory fear--and, in justice, I will add, Whig fear too--of knowledge that has produced all the present wrongs and evils of the country; for if cunning men have legislated, it has not been done for the public good; because there has not been sufficient public responsibility. This is all Church as well as State business that I am proposing. The clear distinction as to Church and State is--that the Church means the people, congregated for mental improvement; and the State means the exercise of that mental improvement in their public business: so true it is, that Church must precede and give character to the State. Tithes are a recognition of the original proprietorship of the whole people in the land; a rent paid under that consideration, appropriate-able to the sustenance of the poor, and the mental improvement of all. Church Property is the property of the whole people who constitute the Church; and not, as now, of the ministers, who profess to be, and ought to be, the servants of the Church. At present, the servants are set above, defy, and tyrannize over the masters. All public officers in Church and State, from the King to the Beadle, should be subject to the periodical election of an intelligent people: without this, there can be no just and dignified authority--no proper public officers,--all will be tyranny, corruption, and inefficiency! In thus stating my subject, I am not insensible to the state of mind and conflicting interests with which you have to deal: but you are in a dilemma, from which nothing but wisdom and honesty can relieve you; every false or inefficient step will weaken you; any attempt to patch the holes made by Time in the mystery of the Church, will be like the tinker's work of mending one and making two: it is rusty and rotten, and must be knocked to pieces and burnt up, to produce the brilliant revelation from its ashes! There can be no mixture of the mystery with the revelation. The latter is a spirit that will explode the former; and, if you be a good Christian, let me tell you that the advent of the revelation will be the fulfilment of the promise of the gospel. We have had nothing but the mystery, nothing but the dark ages of ignorance and superstition: the mystery is not Christianity; the revelation alone, which we have not had, is Christianity. The mystery and the revelation are as unlike each other, as the grossest superstition is unlike reason. What a delightful state of society do I see before me, when the watchword of all shall be--GET KNOWLEDGE! The Bible abounds with this exhortation; tells us all our disorders are lack of knowledge; and yet we have been through centuries, almost through millenia, studiously and tyrannically keeping each other blind and ignorant. This has been the reign of the devil, Anti-Christianity, and not Christianity. When the portico of each Church-build-ing shall bear the inscription of--KNOW THYSELF, AND ENTER HERE TO GET KNOWLEDGE, the communicant will see a friend in his minister, and the minister will strive to raise up wisdom in his communicant. Now what do we see? Studied ignorance, and suppression of knowledge with both: each ashamed to look in the face of the other. And wherever a man advances beyond the existing state of mind, and publishes his sentiments, he is persecuted as an outcast, and unrelentingly subjected to prison-discipline, since the law has ceased to make the "offence" capital. The unrevealed mystery of religion has been the curse and moral devil of the human race. A statesman cannot be wise and honest without setting his face against it, and seeking to rid of it the minds of his countrymen. With it, a state can have no permanent peace, nor can statesmanship be an honour. If you are not master of this subject, I am; if you will not press it upon the attention of the country, I will; and I have not a doubt, but that, by its superior moral power, it will enable me to succeed you in office. I invite you to take the task in your hands, and I will be content to be anything, to remain in prison, if this great reform be but put in motion while I live. It is simply to begin to teach the people something useful in the Church, to give them useful knowledge, as easy in practicability as it is for a ripe scholar to become a schoolmaster to uninstructed youth. We have teachers all prepared for the purpose in the Clergy themselves. You have now to deal with a suspected and not a respected clergy. Though the great mass of the people do not understand where the fault theologically lies, yet they have instinctive discernment enough to see, that the relation of their condition to that of the Clergy is not founded in honesty and social utility. As sure as I, who see through the whole subject, the people feel that they are not fairly dealt with by the Clergy; and thus feeling, with such a Clergy, there can be no social peace. The feeling will increase as they get knowledge on the subject, and I have thrown that knowledge into the market, in defiance of all the power you have possessed or can possess; and that knowledge you cannot withdraw from the market of human intellect: the whole people will get at it in time. Your boast is now that of being chief or leader of the CONSERVATIVES. This is not what the nation wants. It needs purgation of error, abuse and wrong, and a restoration of all the first principles of its Institutions. It is a fair question to put to you and your party, if you know the first principles of the Institutions of this country? You certainly have seen none of them in practice; for your scholarship and administration have been full of error and wickedness. As I told Sir Allan Park, that the Church had dissented from itself, so I now tell you, that every Institution in this country that is a thousand years old in name, has dissented from itself, and has, in fact, been changed diabolically--which means directly opposite, or from good to evil; and there never was a country whose cup of iniquity was more filled. Conservation means preservation, and there is nothing in the present Institutions of this country but public wrongs and private abuses to be preserved. The name of a Destructive is far more honourable, in the present state of the country; the only name indeed that can be honourable, if it be interpreted, an intended destruction of error and abuses, of which the country is brim-full, and the fermentation pouring over. I dislike all these names. They are all dishonestly used. They form no real distinction between man and man. The word Radical has always been to me an offensive word; the more particularly so as I have seen some very bad and ignorant men making a great noise under it and about it. We want knowledge and honesty to make it practicable, and no names by which to be distinguished: such names spring from ignorance and dishonesty. The origin of our ancient Institutions has its foundation laid in the moral of law springing from the law of morals; and the restoration would be easy, if existing authority would resign itself to the change, or if it could be overpowered and made so to do. One or the other of these changes is necessary, before anything can be done, and the first the wisest and to be preferred. I believe there was a time when they existed without a mixture of any kind of deception practised upon the people, and that is just what I desire to see restored; and which, I am sure, from the growth of knowledge and criticism, is the one thing needful to keep the country in a state of inward peace. Knowledge is the only spiritual interest of the people: it should be fostered, promoted and increased in the Church, so as to be equalized as far as possible among the mass or greater number. The ignorance of the people has been an excuse for many an act of hypocrisy, deception and tyranny: its continuance is now the fault of the Church, and of those who have its direction. Cunning cannot invent an assumption that any qualification can better serve the spiritual and temporal interests of the people than knowledge. Their degree of knowledge is the all that is spiritual or of good within them. It is an affair, too, where honest brokerage is scarcely probable; because no check can be kept upon it. What, therefore, is not to be defended as knowledge is not of God but of the devil. In that sense, I arraign the whole Church as now constituted, and challenge it to stand a trial. I fear it is now too corrupt even to be militant. Let us suppose you about to attempt a reconciliation with the present Dissenters, as to the doctrines and ceremonies of the Church. To please the advocates of adult baptism, you must exchange the infant for adult baptism, and then you will displease those who are not pleased with adult baptism. To please the Unitarians, you must give up the doctrine of the Trinity; and then you will displease all the Trinitarians. What is to be done to satisfy the Wesleyans or Methodists? They will have irregular prayers and preachings, which are contrary to the discipline of the Church. What is to be done with the Swedenborgians, the Muggletonians, and Southcotians? How can you furnish spirit and noise enough for the Unknown Tongues of the Irvingites? And what but the spirit of silence will conciliate the Quakers? All of them will require the abolition of your bishopricks and other offices, while none of them will object, and all will claim if a chance offer, to divide the Church Property among them. The spirit of dissent, in matters of religion, prevailing in this country, is nothing more than an infectious mental disease: with it, there is no reason mixed. The moment it becomes a profit to lead such a congregation, men of comparative talent as to capability will take it up and lead; and thus the thing has gone on to confusion and mental distraction, because the Church was not in a condition to defend itself and set a better example. You cannot please one sect of the Dissenters, without increasing the displeasure of the other: and thus your task is hopeless, on any other ground than that which I propose, to beat them in the superior communication of knowledge. On the other hand, let us suppose the Church of England to begin to reveal the mystery of Jesus Christ, which I define, and maintain, to consist of a cultivation of the human mind, with all possible knowledge and reason; all other Churches must instantly bow to its superiority. The effect among men throughout the earth would be wonderful and intellectually electric. It is the only system that can be imagined to be a Catholic Christianity, and the very thing that is meant by the word Catholic, something alike suited to the welfare of every man, and which presents the principle of a moral equality, which is the only foundation for true liberty, and the only guarantee for an improvement of public morals; one that would make the Church an attraction to the wisest as well as to the most ignorant of men; those as teachers, these as learners. We may carry the idea farther; and as in the present state of mind, millions in Europe and America are attached to an idea of the superiority of the Church authorities at Rome, through ignorance and custom I grant, but not less attached,--I would, to humour that conceit and turn it to good, consent to make the Pope of Rome the centre of communication from all parts of the earth for discovered knowledge, as it would be desirable to have such a central recipient and fountain to give it forth again in the best possible manner. This would accelerate the reconciliation of the dissenting race, without an idea of dishonourable submission on the part of an individual. Indeed, the perfection of my proposition is, that no man can feel injury or degradation in the change. It is an overthrow of nothing, but simply the development and better understanding of the mystery that has existed since the world of human intellect began: the revelation of that mystery; and, consequently, the completion or carrying out of the true Christian scheme. It is not to be expected, that, in a pamphlet letter, I can do more than briefly notice a few leading points of this important subject; but I am quite prepared to extend it through volumes, and shall go on so to do. I am quite prepared to meet or be one of any commission on the subject. I would willingly put my life upon the hazard of verifying my present views of original Christianity. It would have been done in former ages, had the printing press existed. Its doing now is consequent on the gradual power of criticism which the Press has brought with it into existence. It is the truth, and must prevail. It is the God in man. It is the Church of Christ, against which the gates of Hell shall not prevail. They have certainly prevailed against every other existing Church, and the whole of the past is a wreck. When speaking of the original Christian Religion, or of the revelation of the mystery, I wish to be understood, as not meaning that the revelation was ever before preached or openly taught to the human race on any part of the earth. We have no evidence of it beyond the reasoning and moral precepts of the philosophical world, which were not put forth as a scheme or system of religion. But when it is confessedly the fact, that something called a Christian scheme has been talked about for eighteen hundred years; and when we can trace the fac simile of that something, even in its whole nomenclature, principle and practice, through Greeks and Romans, Persians and Hindoos, up to the Celtic Druids and earliest known universal worship of Budha, the first personation of Jesus Christ now on record;--I mean, that the mystery has been the only general public part of it, and that the knowledge of the revelation was confined to the learned class and ancient mysteries of all countries, was the esoteric doctrine of the initiated into those mysteries; and the breaking up of those mysteries, from the time of Alexander to the Augustan era, was the cause of the first publication in writing of the books or traditions handed down through the agency of those secret and sacred Associations, bearing the mystery only on its surface and by the letter; and that after the mystery was so published, the very ministers of it lost the revelation, which is what the Freemasons profess to be in search of, the lost word, the word that I have found and now declare, that the salvation by Jesus Christ is only to be found in the increasing cultivation of the human mind with all attainable knowledge; that the true worship of God has no other meaning, the root of the word worship being to cultivate, and the field to be cultivated the human mind; that repentance is reflection for improvement; the second birth is the birth of mind, as distinguished from physical birth or birth of body, the one describing the man Adam, the other the God Christ; and that the kingdom of Heaven is to be established upon a general knowledge and practice of this revelation, is to be upon this earth, in successive generations of the human race, and not reasonably to be sought under any other speculation, calculation or hope. These are not only possibilities but probabilities, and immediate practicabilities, if the existing Devil will be pleased to retire: if not, we must resist him, and, as we are promised, on that condition, he will flee. Such is the foundation of a Catholic Church, from which there can be no dissent; for what is understood cannot be dissented from: the existing dissent is ignorance dissenting from ignorance. In the common use of the word, I am not a Dissenter; but a trier, prover, teacher, revealer of that which is the true meaning of the mystery that has been through ignorance the cause of the dissent. The personation of Deity in the written mystery has been nothing more than a drama prepared for stage effect, which, to the initiated only, would be matter of instruction or refreshment of memory. The ancient mystery meant a play, a drama, in our modern sense; but was first called a mystery, then a morality; was first private, and afterwards made common to the public, and is now for the first time revealed to the general understanding, through the instrumentality of the printing press. In my lecturings and discussions, both in town and country, I find this revelation has a great charm among all classes who have good temper and good manners to hear patiently. It is pure reason, pure knowledge, pure translation of language; it clashes with no other man's knowledge, and I have not found the man who can raise an argument against it. Of its final and complete success in regenerating the world, I have not a doubt; it is only a question of time. It is now a question, if you and the Parliament will look at it. I know you well enough to know, that you will not like its propounder; but who else has been ripe and bold enough to do it? Who else deserves the honour of being its propounder; but I, its honest martyr and zealous student, through a ten years' imprisonment? I call you to witness my fidelity in this matter. I was your prisoner through four years; you sanctioned the two years I had suffered before you came to the Home Department: you sanctioned my imprisonment by Lord Melbourne, through thirty-two months: and, by virtue of your office, you are sanctioning my present imprisonment. I do not say this in anger. I am retaliating upon you, as I would have you retaliate upon the Dissenters, by superior knowledge. If you do not now or early take me by the hand, I shall drive you out of the field of politics, and all who may succeed of your disposition. It is not to be denied, that there are moral exhortations put forth in every Church; the mystery would not pass on the people without them. But it is a truth, that, in all of them, morals are treated as a secondary consideration; and in some of the madder dissenting Churches, are counted as of no weight in the question of religion. The truth, as it is in Jesus, is, that morals are every thing as to practice, and knowledge with succeeding reason, the principles of speculation, the WORD to be sought, or the prize to be gained, the crown of glory, the spiritual and immortal life, which is emphatically the language of Saint John's Gospel; and this is the totality of the root and principle of the Christian Religion, the promotion of which is the only proper business of the ministration in the Church. No mystery: down with mystery. It is the folly of the human race, and worse than ignorance, or knowing, or confessing to know, nothing. There is no Christ in the mystery. "How can we reason, but from what we know?" The knowledge must be first. Nothing precedes knowledge but the thing to be known. Nothing is required after; but a dealing with the thing known by principle of reason. Unknown worlds, unknown spirits, unknown matter, is nothing to us, until the knowledge is obtained. Our knowledge is our all, in moral power, and we can have nothing of a religious nature but our knowledge. Superstitious fears, we know to be the property or sensation of ignorance and misconception. We are morally responsible for nothing but an improper use of our knowledge. It is wickedness to teach ignorance any other doctrine. My Christian proposition for the Reform of the Church harmonizes with all science, and clashes with nothing but positive error and wicked policy; and I venture to tell you, that you can find no other scheme to produce the same effect, and to give satisfaction to the present and to all future generations of men, to make the Church "meet the respect and affections of the people." Each paltry sect now considers its tenets as a Catholic Faith; but the truth is, as Dr. Oeddes well observed, "that what is Christian is Catholic, and what is Catholic must be Christian;" but then, this follows, that neither Christianity nor Catholicity will bear a union with the word dissent, unless the dissenter be an intelligent corrector at the same time: they are adverse to every admissible idea of undiscussed dissent. All standing dissent is of the devil; while Christianity and Catholicity are of God and Heaven. The multiplication table, the elements of Euclid, the doctrines of the Trinity and Transubstantiation, the proved analysis and composition of all known substances, are Catholic doctrines, from which nothing but ignorance can dissent. The whole of the present Church Ritual is a mass of words that conceal a truth; but that truth is not known in the Church, cannot therefore be used or worshipped, and the words can only be deemed the lumber of the memory: treating man as man treats a parrot, teaching him constantly to exclaim "pretty Poll," without giving him understanding whom or what "Poll" personates. If I were to sit in Church through a morning or evening service, I should have a perfect understanding of all the words used, and, consequently, should be worshipping according to the limit of THE WORD there presented; because I have in me the spirit of revelation. But this is not the case with those who now attend the Church, their attendance is upon form, ceremony, mystery, hypocrisy, which is the real meaning of the whole present business of the Church: hypocrisy, or dramatical acting, set forth in a mystery, without a mixture or accompanying revelation; and like the flimsy gildings of a theatre, or the spangles of an actress' dress, gilded over with a little moral exhortation, that you may observe or not, as you please, so as you are a cheerful payer of all dues, rates, and oblations. The first revision wanted in the Church is a translation of the revelation from the dead language of its mystery, into language comprehensible by all. Consequent upon such a revision would be, that the parishioners would take the management of their own Church Property into their own hands, and recover and hold THEIR MOST SACRED RENT OF TITHE, on recovery of the knowledge that they are the first and inalienable proprietors of the land. My subject is so far novel as to justify a little repetition. That twice two is four need not be repeated; but where the human being is enveloped in a cloud of verbose mystery, that cloud can only be dispelled by continued flashes of moral lightning. So I will return to methodical statement. The mystery of the existing Church, in all its grades of dissent, having set forth and caused the belief of a temporal and local existence of the personated principles of Deity, as distinct and separate from ourselves, in imitation of the Pagan Mythology, and not as simulated beings; it is requisite, as matter of proof, sooth and truth, that a case of clear human history of the circumstances be first made out, the doing of which my knowledge, after trial, challenges; and if that could be done, the more difficult task would remain, to prove, that such beings, the authors of such circumstances, as could be historically proved, were super-human. If the first cannot be done, the clumsy mystery falls to the ground, as the Dagon of the day, before historical criticism: and if the first be done, and the second cannot bear the light of scientific and philosophical criticism, the mystery is still but a mummery, which belief can no longer prop, nor physical power farther propagate; it is thrown into the crucible of moral criticism, and men will not longer consent to believe that the same causes will demonstrate differing effects, nor that varying causes may be made to demonstrate the same effect. I have read in public prints of your creditable attendance at the Royal Institution of Albemarle Street, on the demonstrative Lectures of Mr. Faraday in the Science of Chemistry. When there, were you asked to believe anything? Was not everything demonstrated, so that the words were verified by the acts of the Lecturer? If Mr. Faraday had played you _hocus pocus_ or legerdemain tricks, as a pretence of chemistry, would you have been satisfied? If he had told you of strange and incomprehensible things, which he could not demonstrate, would you have believed?--I think not: I give you credit for a better state of mind. Take a lesson from the inference, and grasp this truth, that the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street is the best Church in the country, and is, in reality, the nearest existing approach to the Catholic Church of Christ. It would be rational, it would be wisdom, if all were spending their Church time at such lectures, who are old enough to receive such instruction. I hope it will not offend you, nor be an untruth, to say, that you learnt something on every occasion of attending Mr. Faraday; that you, a Secretary of State, there found you had something to learn; and that a field was there opened to knowledge, which would, had it pleased you, before all other occupation, have wisely and usefully engaged the whole time of your remaining life. On the other hand, in the spirit of truth and charity, but of free enquiry, allow me to ask, if you could ever say the same, after an attendance at Church, on leaving, that you had learned something that was, without pretence, matter of real learning, an acquisition in knowledge possessed, that was not previously known in your school-hours and as a matter of school-business, or that might not have been learned from a book at home? I extend the question, in asking, whether anything that may be taught a boy at seven years of age, is improved on, by an attendance on the present state of the Church to seventy or four score years of age? If not, and I say--No, to what good purpose does this expensive establishment exist? Or, may it not be put to a better purpose? and if it may, why not? To talk about Church Reform, without doing something that shall tend to a full amount of practical and permanent good, is to insult the Nation; because the existing state of the Church is really a burthen and a grievance, and of no general utility. No Church was ever reformed by and with the consent of its Priesthood. I am of opinion that the Bishops and Clergy ought not to be consulted in this affair:--they are not the Church; but the ministers or servants of the people, which form, or ought to form, the Church. A Royal or Parliamentary Commission, with unlimited powers of enquiry, is the first power necessary with which to commence this subject of Reform in the Church. If we did not know human nature, history affords the warrant, that the Bishops and Clergy generally will follow the profits of the Church: those in the reign of the Tudors changed back and forward five times from Catholic to Protestant. But under this proposition of mine, what dignity is evident in the change! Instead of making the Bishops overseers and the Clergy generally actors of a drama, I purpose to put the whole structure of the human mind under their superintendance and guidance: not to be dealt with as now, but really to be educated in all attainable knowledge. My purpose is as practicable as that any other person can teach any kind of knowledge. Give the human being a better occupation of time, let the human mind expand where it may, and you guarantee perpetual peace and improvement, with dignity to every class of men, with injury to none. The change which I propose will be tantamount to a national change from diseased and crippled infancy to healthy adolescence. General man has not yet had fair play. No Nation, the history of which is known, has made a real effort to promote the happiness of all its members. Class has preyed upon class; idleness has been claimed as a privilege on one side, and slavery, through force, been made an inevitable duty on the other. For the furtherance of such a state of society, superstition has been encouraged, that a pompous class might be decorated to preach submission among the labourers to the Spirit of Tyranny and Imposture that was riding riotously over them. There can be no liberty and solid happiness among a superstitious people; and all attempts, at what is called political reform, that leave the people mentally rotting in superstition, will be abortive. I take credit for one fact--that there has been no change made in the political spirit of this country through any other medium than warfare with superstition; for the baneful and blighting spirit of that superstition admitted not of the thought of any other change. There is a glimpse of light latent to show that all the monastic institutions, the temples, the abbeys, priories, convents, nunneries, the mysteries, the churches, synagogues, and oratories, were originally instituted as schools of useful knowledge; and for what other good purpose could they have been instituted? The better part of the human mind is now making an effort to restore the purity of that state of things. Nothing short of this can tend to harmonize the human race in their several nations, with this improvement upon the past, that all, and not a class only, be educated. It was this education of a class only that has created all the mischief of superstitious society. The class educated has imposed untruths upon the uneducated class, until education itself to that class became swallowed up in imposture; and now both preacher and hearer may be truly said to be alike ignorant of all the great truths that are important to man, and necessary to social welfare. In the way in which the Bible is now read, after being printed, no preachers or teachers are necessary: to have been taught to read is sufficient. Give every man his Bible from Church Property, after teaching him to read, and the present Church business is completed: but much otherwise is my view of the subject. There is not a man living that has now a thorough understanding of the contents and meaning of the Bible. Many are working for the restoration of its lost science; and it is a subject worthy of a Church. It may startle a First Lord of the Treasury into new thought, to be told, that neither of the Books of the Bible is a piece of human history, not a history of beings like you, me, or any one else. I have given up all idea of the kind as untenable and indefensible. It may startle the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is supposed to have the counting or reckoning of millions of money yearly, and contemplating that Giant of Despair--the Debt, to be told, that the Bible is fundamentally a mathematical book; and that he who does not so understand it, understands it not at all, or but in a very small degree, as to its moral bearing. The Duke of Sussex can give you an opinion on this head, as to the Bible being a book of algebraical science; though, perhaps, he would not like to say it applied to astronomical motion, and was a record of time so calculated through myriads of ages. A Bishop should understand this. It is a book of much more importance than has been made of it in the last thousand years in England. If the Bishops were required to have studied this book before they took office, we should find them generally as lean and as sallow as a lawyer who has to wade through the statutes at large, and law reports as large, for his sort of knowledge; a knowledge that I do not like, and will have none of, but what is forced upon me. No kind of knowledge is requisite to make a modern Bishop. The very origin of the title of a Bishop is that of an astronomical seer, a looker-out or overseer of the subordinate offices of science. There is a plenty of work, so as to allow of no idleness in any office of the Church, if justice be done to the people; and I will not grudge a thousand pounds a-year as a salary to a competent Bishop, or even more than that, if the Property of the Church will afford it. Ignorant fools they must have been, to have allowed so important, so honourable and dignified an office to become corrupt, and to fall into disrepute among the people. This algebraical reading of the Bible subdues all idea of contradiction to any science, geology for instance, chemistry or any other science, as well as of the apparent language of the book in letter to letter. For instance, the letter-objecting Infidels have laid great stress on Moses being set forth as having seen God; when the author of the Gospel according to Saint John says "No man hath seen God at any time." This is ignorantly set down as a clear contradiction. The explanation is, that _Moses was not a man_; and then there is no appearance of contradiction. One is mythologically, and the other morally, true. The Hebrew and Greek alphabets, being numerical as well as literal signs, which was probably the case with all other ancient languages, and these accumulating large numbers, by additional points, it is impossible that we can have a clear understanding of the meaning of their mythological sacred books, without a full algebraical knowledge of the language; and this explains how the letter killeth or stupifieth, while the spirit or knowledge of the entire meaning alone giveth life or understanding. The deepest investigators of the Hebrew Bible of this day maintain that it should be algebraically understood as a book of astronomical science--as a record of time by astronomical motion, which, physically speaking, can alone be the WORD OF THE WORKS OF GOD. The only true religion must be founded in man's reasonable comprehension; all other pretences to it are presumptions and nonsense to be condemned. We may as properly speak of religious horses and cows, as of men who are ignorant of the subject, substance and meaning, of what is religion. Saint Anthony's preaching to fishes is not without its simile in the practical part of that which has been mistakenly called the Christian Religion. That which is in practice, under the name of the Christian Religion, among many grades of Dissenters, is a disgrace to the government of the country, and to the name of civilized society: it grows worse and worse. Madness is beginning to be added to mystery; or is now produced by the mystery without the key of revelation. Through revelation there can be healthy excitement and enthusiasm; but none through mystery. Our King is not now the head of a Church, nor the King of a People: he can only be truly described as the head or King of Dissenters, which is an office much more troublesome and dangerous than honourable. To his Ministers, the present state of religious mind must be a prolific source of trouble; and has, I believe, made them persecutors, where the inclination of their own hearts was not coincident with the act. The Dissenters are now much less tolerant than the law-established Church; and if they are not undermined by my proposition, it will not take them many years to undermine that Church, or to demand a share of its property. To be able to see this, it is only necessary that we be acquainted with the workings of human nature, where not under the controul of knowledge. I am not content that the Established Church shall stand merely as one among Dissenting Churches; no Minister of State should be so content: the King is thereby dishonoured, and the State in disorder. I would have it a Church morally dominant and militant against all error, as it always should be, and as it was in the beginning. The meaning of the word militant has been entirely lost, in the growth of mystery and decay of revelation in the Church. There is a great talk now about revelation, or of something revealed in the Church; but there is no reality in the revelation. There is a mystery pregnant with revelation; but not in itself the revelation. It is a fountain of knowledge, but the genius of man must draw it out. It is good for nothing, but has caused a world of mischief, where read and understood as merely by the letter, as we read an ordinary book of history. The Church now wants the revelation or spirit. Not one of those existing has a particle of spirit. My proposition for a Reform will annihilate infidelity as well as dissent. There is no infidelity toward knowledge. It has been ignorance all through, on both sides, that has raised the cry of infidelity: each has been unequal to teaching. The Infidel has rejected that literal reading which the professing believer could not defend; because he did not understand its relation, as mystery to revelation. Both, in fact, have been alike Infidels. If I have been the chief of Infidels, I will atone for it in becoming the chief defender of revelation, and the faith, as it is in Christ Jesus, and not as it is in any Dissenting Church. Already the ignorant Infidels murmur at what they mistakenly call my apostacy, while no member of any existing Church holds out a hand to my welcome. As the Church goes now, it is not required that its Ministers be learned men: they have nothing to do for which talent is requisite--it is a mere school-boy's task; and even among the Dissenters, where the prayer and preaching is extemporaneous, it is not learning, but memory and habit, that are required. In the Church, as I would have it reformed, not only learning but talent to teach would be necessary; and the Ministers would rise to Bishoprics, not through family or political interest, but through preparation and capability to fill the office; for it would be required of them to be first-rate scholars and practical men in display of science, that sort of science, too, of which they are now so much afraid--the unlimited knowledge of things, rather than of languages. In what class of ages do we place the dark ages of man's history? To whose account are they placed? To the Pagan, Jew, Mahometan, Infidel, or whose? I blush for the Church when I consider it--to the account of that _misnomer_, the _Christian Church!_ So your pretended light to lighten the Gentiles, made them all darker, did it? Yes, it did and does, as your Church has mistaken it! And none of you are yet out of the fog created by the mystery. Not one of you has gained light of mind sufficient to dispel a particle of that fog of the dark ages. You are all, as Churchmen, as dark as any of those who lived in the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, or any other century; talk about your Reformation, Printing Press, Bible Societies, Dissenters, or what you please! The admission which has been made, not by the adversary, but by the Church itself, that the dark ages are within its reign, is decisive of the question as between me and any who may oppose me. Let it not be said, that the fault was in the Roman Catholic Church, and that it has been removed. I deny the assumption; the fault is not removed, nor has any Church made the least improvement on that called Roman Catholic. The fault lies in the remaining unrevealed mystery of the Church and the Sacred Scriptures. As far as Church is in question, this Nation is as dark as ever it was, and such is the case throughout Europe. There is much thick darkness to be yet dispelled; before our gentility is enlightened. We are precisely in the same error as the Hindoos, to whom we send Missionaries; and though we talk about civilization, we have it not. Our general state of society would shock the moral feelings of an American Indian. There are, in reality, but two distinct states of society: the superstitious and the civilized, the dark and the light. Can any man reasonably say, that we have yet passed the superstitious state? Are we not rather in the very depth of it; the light of a few individuals, now and then visible, acting upon the whole like flashes of lightning on a dark night, are seen and spent quickly, lost or buried in the general darkness, though effects may be left? The liberty which I have won in prison, to make the printing press bear upon this darkness, is the first unextinguished light that has been set up and kept burning. I now desire to light the seven candles of the English Church from my lighted torch. I would not be presumptuous if I saw any other man putting himself forward to propose this necessary business. It is not in me conceit: it is a passionate desire to do good and to leave the world better than I found it. So many years of imprisonment (this being the tenth) must shorten the period of my life, so I grow the more anxious to do the more while I remain a bubble on the sea of matter borne. Not that I despair of eternal life, but I learn from the Gospel that I must provide it for myself. In the present state of the Church, there is no sufficient and satisfactory motive given for keeping holy the sabbath-day; there is no reason given for holding a sabbath. I state it as a necessary civil institution for the improvement of the human mind, since labour to live is the condition of life. While the honest labourer is following his social avocation through six days, I would have his children going through a course of education by the Ministers in the Church, their especial office--"suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of Heaven"--and on the seventh, or sabbath day, I would have such discourses, such teaching in the Church, as should be suitable to the united presence of both old and young. This would be a satisfactory motive to keep that day holy; and such, as far as I can see, was the evident purpose of the Sabbath and of the Christian Church. No other use of the Church can be more hallowed; no purpose more sacred; no employment more dignified to the minister as well as to the people. When Peter, in the Gospel, is called upon to feed the lambs of Christ, what was meant?--to feed them with grass? No! to feed the infants of the Church with true and useful knowledge; not to do which is treason to society and breach of trust in the Ministers of the Church. Oh! here is a fine field open, in which the lambs may gambol and grow up in spiritual stature, without living to be led like sheep to the slaughter! Knowledge is the proper business of the Church, and the people's only spiritual interest; and this is the foundation of a Catholic Church and of a Christian Religion, that is to bring peace on earth and good-will among men, which have not yet been seen, notwithstanding the supposed promise of the mistaken mystery for the last seventeen hundred years, so many centuries of a sinking state of things, of a fall of man from the light into dark ages! Let there be light in the Church and the people shall be enlightened. The true Church is now eclipsed by the mystery, and is a dark body. The knowledge of the revelation will be the extinction of the mystery, the light of the Church, and the salvation of the people from war, pestilence and famine. That revelation, according to the gospel itself, I take to be, that, as knowledge is the only distinction between man and any other animal, the more can be accumulated for him in the Church, the more good will be done, and the more he will be saved from evil. Existing things can alone be the subject of man's knowledge, and it is of more importance to him to know their properties than their time or history. Now, nothing of the properties of existing things is taught in the Church; but through the medium of the mystery remaining unrevealed, unexplained, or untranslated in our language, every thing is falsified to man's credulous view and consideration, by the ministers of the Church; nature appears to him distorted, and he lives without certainty, and dies deceived as to the future. Knowledge is as infinite as existing things, and man's power of acquisition illimitable. It is, then, a proper labour and business, and moral duty, of each generation of men, to leave behind them, for their successors, the largest possible amount of knowledge. This is true wealth, and will increase the value of all other wealth: without knowledge, other wealth is mere animal gratification. The spirit of knowledge gives life and new properties to everything, as far as man's use of it be in question. The Church is the proper fountain of this knowledge; should be the public library, the parish laboratory for investigations, the school for infants and adults, and everything that is auxiliary to the acquisition and extension of knowledge. From all I can trace, I verily believe that such was the original purpose and construction of the Christian Church; and that back to this it may be easiest and best reformed. I am confirmed in the opinion, that putting knowledge under the form of an allegorical mystery, for the purpose of confining it to a class, has been the cause of the mistake and its declension, and of the scholar's fall from a former higher estate of knowledge. Decidedly do I conclude, that our stock of knowledge is much below the quantity possessed some two or three thousand years ago, when the holders of the sacred books held the revelation with the mystery. I am sure it may be recovered, if fairly and earnestly sought. I see an impulse gathering over both Europe and America for the recovery of that knowledge. The Church was instituted to become the repository of knowledge; and all would have gone on well, but for the ancient system of deceiving what were and are called the vulgar--of having a double doctrine, the exoteric and esoteric, telling the people one thing and understanding quite another among themselves. Such were deceivers and not teachers of the people; and though the revelation has really been lost, lost I may say, as a just punishment for the wickedness of so deceiving the people, the successive Clergy has been ignorantly deceivers and not teachers of the people. They have inherited the exoteric or mysterious doctrine, and have not inherited the esoteric doctrine or the revelation of the mystery. This they have to learn, before they can reform their Church, or, before any one can reform it for them. I am confident enough to say, that you have no other ground on which to reform the Church, than that which I am proposing. Whatever other step you take will only be an aggravation of the evil of which you have now to complain; or of which others complain. If the Bishops have one item of wisdom among them, they will take me by the hand, and put their houses in order this way: if not, you and they may dissipate the existing Church Property, which you say you will not do; and after, we shall begin to form such a-new, and recover what we can of that property. I shall not despair of taking an active part in this thorough Reform of the Church while life remains: the People can do it for themselves, if Clergy, Ministers and King will not consent. It is what I began to do in my house in the year 1828, in critical and philosophical lectures and free discussion on the Sunday: an example which I am happy to see followed in many parts of this metropolis, and which will go on, if it be not cordially met, until it swallows up the Church and all the Churches. The true meaning of Church, is STATE OF MIND. Church is the state of mind. It is not made up of building and clergy; but of the people, the proper depositaries of mind. Property belonging to the Church is property belonging to the People, sacred to the preservation, strengthening, and increase of mind or knowledge. It has been monopolized dishonestly by the Clergy; and, in that sense, they have been robbers as well as deceivers of the people. This is the matter to be reformed, and nothing short of this will be reform. In Tithes, the people stand as the original proprietors of the land, the true inheritors of its tithes and first-fruits. Other rent is a minor consideration of value in labour or capital bestowed on the land. We must come back to this by some means or other. The office of King, as head of the Church, is a clerical office--the crown both of the Church and the State; and, for the sustentation of its true splendour and dignity, the man or woman filling the office should be the first scholar and most wise and virtuous being of the Nation. Whether this is a principle to be conveyed by hereditary descent, I do not stop to enquire; but the true hereditary principle of church office is talent and moral character; upon which, I doubt if any improvement can be made for purposes of state. Originally, in this island, Church and State were but one. The branching into two has been the result of wars and evil passions, to distinguish between the instructive and the destructive offices, hierarchy founded upon knowledge would be equal to all that society wants as government. State, as well as Church, signifies the People. As the latter relates to their minds, knowledge, or spiritual affairs, so the former expresses their politics and civil arrangements, their local and temporal affairs: they may be well united in one common interest, and under one common authority, in the reign of a people devoted to the acquisition of knowledge. It is matter of curious observation to see how the use of names among political parties is abused, and how they get reversed in applicable meaning. The class that has lately taken the title of Conservatives, is the class that, by the showing of this letter, has been destructive of everything valuable in our Institutions, so that we have the name only left, without any virtuous principle that formerly existed in those Institutions. We have the evidence of this in all the present difficulties of the country, both in Church and State. The ancestors of this class have not known how, or not cared to preserve those ancient Institutions in their original purity; and the class now wanted is the class of Restoratives, of men whose knowledge, wisdom, honesty and virtue, will enable them to purge out the accumulated errors of centuries, and restore the Institutions of the country to their pristine purity. I grant that this class is not found among the men who are commonly called or claim to be called Radical Reformers: there is as much ignorance in that class as in any other. But they certainly are not likely to be more destructive than they who call themselves Conservatives; for these have left nothing to be destroyed. The true and real aim of the men now called Radicals is to begin something a-new. Their profession of respect for existing Institutions is hollow, hypocritical and deceitful. I have had acquaintance enough with them to know that; and more than for the reminiscence of which I can now find respect. Still they will supersede both Tory and Whig, if these do not something upon the principle of a true restoration of Institutions to original and best principles. I would have the Radicals treated as the Dissenters: leave them no ground of complaint, and so annihilate them. A wise King or a wise Minister would see that the time is now come at which that step should be taken, and that further delays will be dangerous to every man in office. Necessary Institutions, if destroyed for a time, will rise again. I fear no kind of change as to the prospect of future advantage. Is not the idea horrible, and of the worst description, that a Church and King, or Church and State, should exist and hold together on no better tenure than a military power; than that of an army constantly under arms to keep the people from carrying their complaints to an extent disagreeable or alarming to the men in office? Yet such is all that you can boast of in the present state of the Institutions of the country. These Institutions did not originate under the protection of an army; nor did they, at their origination, require an army to protect and keep them in existence. An army is a disgraceful appendage, and destructive of every good principle in the Church:--it is not an honourable appendage to the office of King. To the people, it is a burthen and an immoral pest; less requisite in this island than in a continental nation. Give the people knowledge in their Churches, and they will soon dispense with an army. Evils accumulate because there is error at the bottom. There is now no People's Church: it is, as now existing, a Church of the Clergy, engrossing and wasting a large property of the people's due to a most valuable social purpose. The Dissenters have only made the matter worse, in new exactions for no new benefits. Not one tittle of good, not a particle of utility, now proceeds from the Clergy toward the people. They are obstacles to the people's welfare, and their use of means of provision for a new and better Church. God is the subject of man's adoration. But what is God? Man is but an idiot if he professes adoration beyond his understanding. Indeed, worship is but a synonymy of reason and its cultivation; and as we say:--_how can we reason but from what we know?_ so we may as truly say:--_how can we worship what we do not know?_ There is no worship without knowledge; all other pretence to it is idolatry and superstition. I have not space to enter upon this topic largely here; but a voluminous treatise on the word GOD will be the subject of my next Essay. For the purpose of this illustration of what the Church is, and what it ought to be, I can say correctly, that God, as the aggregate of existence, is known to be a physical and moral power. We have distinct ideas of this two-fold power. The American Indians, who speak of God as a Great Spirit, make the best general definition of the word that can be made, and appear to me to have the clearest, purest and wisest idea of Deity, as far as the regulation of their actions by that word is in question,--the pursuit of knowledge, by the use of letters and figures excepted. It corresponds with the emphatic declaration of the Gospel according to Saint John, chap. iv., v. 24:--"God is a Spirit, and they that worship must worship in spirit and in truth"--which means what I have before stated, that they must know what they worship before they can worship. There is evidence of physical as well as moral spirit. Both are seen in man, and constitute what may be termed the Spirit of Man. The one in man is worshipped or cultivated by attention to health; the other by attention to mental improvement or increased acquisition of knowledge. Speaking of God, as the aggregate and source of physical and moral spirit, of which man is a part or unit, we experience that we cannot alter our physical construction, or physical spirit, other than by attention to rules of health in the law of nature; but we can, by study and labour, greatly alter the state of mind or moral spirit. It is here we draw from God as from a fountain; and this asking, seeking, drawing from God, constitutes the whole principle of right prayer and worship, and the structure of the true Christian Church; other than which, I declare, is worship of the Devil and not of God. And I do not shrink from saying, that, as revelation is light and knowledge of God, and mystery is darkness and presence of the Devil, there has not through the last fifteen hundred years, the dark ages, throughout Europe, been carried on any other kind of worship than Devil-worship, and evil has been the fruit thereof. It was under this knowledge that I was moved to exhibit the effigy of the Devil arm in arm with the Bishop, in the front of my house and in several prints, for which I am now suffering imprisonment, like all other martyrs to truth, punished for acting upon my knowledge. My purpose was good, to open the eyes of my neighbours and passers by. It might have inconvenienced some of them; but such is the effect of every newly-published truth in eradication of error: your Reform of the Church, be it what it may, will inconvenience the Bishops and some of the Clergy. There would be no Devil, if there were not pleasure in Hell as well as in Heaven; as pardon can be had by asking for it. If all evil were naturally punished, we should not want penal laws. As true worship is a getting of a knowledge of God, so it follows, that the Ministry of the Church should consist of a teaching that knowledge, which is not now the case; for nothing as knowledge is in the Church taught. There can be nothing more clear in mathematical demonstration, than that, as God is a Spirit, of which man may partake, the participation must increase with that only which can increase in man--the amount of his knowledge. The whole declaration of the Christian Creed, read by the spirit, is, that God is the Spirit of Knowledge, the thing known, the principle of omniscience; and that man approaches and lives with God, as his mind expands in the accumulation of knowledge. A Bishop may write or preach spiritually or metaphysically by the year, and he can make no more of the word God, of his Church, or of himself, than I have made. The subject now wants a radical reform in the human mind. I have mentioned, in a former page, that the Jews can trace no nationality to the time of the Emperor Alexander of Macedon. The highest antiquity that can be given to them as a colony, is the time of Ptolomy Lagus, who began to encourage science and literature in Alexandria; and, from that time, nothing but a colony could they have ever been. It is not in a nationality that the original character of a Jew is to be estimated, but in a philosophic character dispersed among the nations; a people devoted to science; and so a chosen or select, because a learned people. There is no resemblance in character between an ancient and a modern Jew:--the name is an Asiatic name of God; and can only apply to a race of men in the sense of having perfected human nature, which it is very probable the ancient Jews had done, as far as it was then possible to do it, according to the system of initiation, through a series of discipline, into all the schools and mysteries of that time and country. The first public reference to a stated existence of the Books of the Old Testament is the reign of Ptolomy Philadelphus. Egypt appears to have been the only country in which it can be said that a series of Kings gave encouragement to science, which appears, as far as history is witness, to have brought in the Augustan era. It became, as far as wars and tumults would permit, fashionable so to do, until superstition overwhelmed it and usurped all its names, leading on to the dark ages of what has been since mis-called the Christian era. Cultivation of science is the restorative power, and the only public or private act that confers true dignity on man. This is the only remedy for the disorder of the Church; and I have introduced this historical view of the Jewish name, to show how flimsy is that web of superstition which has been woven in the existing Church on the foundation of a supposed national history and origin of the Jews. Truth nowhere finds opposition in fact, date, or principle: error is opposed by endless proofs of the kind. It remains now only that I give an outline of the historical defects of the present received view of the mystery of the Christian Religion, and then draw to a conclusion. No record extant, or referred to, that, having been written in the first century, has mentioned the human existence of an individual of the name of Jesus Christ. A passage now in Josephus is a declared interpolation, inasmuch as it was first known to the world in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, written in the fourth century, after Photius and Origen, of the third century, had written, that Josephus had not made mention of Jesus Christ. In the writings of Philo Judæus, an Alexandrian Jew of the first century, much is said about the Logos, in carrying out the philosophy of Plato; but not a word about Jesus Christ. Pliny the younger, in his letter to the Emperor Trajan, written from Bythinia between the years 106 and 112, is the first to mention the name of Christ. This mention is as of a God and not as of a man: no reference is made to Judea or to Jews; and the worshippers of this God he describes under the name of Christians, and as having long existed as a sect in that province. He writes as if he had heard nothing of the sect at Rome, and describes their worship as an excessive superstition. The passage in Tacitus is rejected, as not noticed by Eusebius or any one before the fifteenth century; that it was found in a copy by Johannes de Spire at Venice. This brings us to Justin Martyr, who can only be considered a Christian of the Platonic order, making no reference to Gospels or Epistles. Thence we come to St. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, who has very much the appearance of a Druidical Bishop rather than as a newly-appointed Christian Bishop. Irenæus mentions the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and gives the reason why there should be four; as because there are four seasons in the year. He has many other allegorical extravagancies in his writings, and is not deemed the most respectable of the Fathers of the present Church. In the third century, and toward the latter part of that century, near three hundred years after the supposed birth of the man Jesus Christ, we have a recognition of all the Books in the New Testament, which received the stamp of the authority of a Council of Bishops, as a selection from many similar and dissimilar books under similar titles, in the fourth century; but whether the revelation of the mystery was then understood by the Bishops does not appear. The Epistles of the New Testament have no dates nor reference to any persons who were known to have lived at any particular time. They are not supported by, nor do they support, the Gospels. The idea of allegorism prevailed in the third century. The Christian era was not reduced to chronology until the sixth century; and that chronology was very little used or referred to until the tenth, that the era of the Hegira of Mahomet had come much into use. The real struggle of the present Christian Church was not with the Pagan but with the Mahometan Religion, and they are near a balance of numerical power to this day. A battle in France, in the reign of Charles Martel, checked the progress of the Mahometans, and saved the entire overthrow of the mysterious Christian Church on the continent of Europe. There was a much greater similarity between the Pagan and the Christian, than between the Christian and the Mahometan Religion. I have no objection to the religion of the Jew or the Christian, that is founded on the spiritual reading of the Bible. Mahometanism is superior to both, while founded on the reading of the letter. The restoration of the Jews to original character and the millennium of the Christians is only to be brought about by the spiritual reading, which will lead to a devotion to science. The future Temple of the New Jerusalem must be a Temple devoted to the promulgation of truth and all sciences, and such must be the Church of Rome, and such our English Church, under any real state of reformation. The practical part of my proposition for a Reform in the Church, is, that all indefensible superstition or mystery be banished or explained, that it be made the best possible general school for the people, to which the knowledge of the time is equal; that the people being the Church, and the Ministers not being the Church, the property of the Church in each parish shall be managed by the parishioners as their property, and the best provision be made with that property, including tithes, that can be made for all the physical and moral necessities of the people. The property must be put under some authority, cannot be allowed to remain as it is, cannot be well put under extra parochial authority; but may be well and honestly left to parochial management, as the property of the parish. As our Institutions were all so first arranged for this purpose, so it will be found, that every thing emanating will fall back easily into its natural, moral, and original use. I cannot see the least difficulty, beyond the dishonesty and reluctance to yield of existing spirit. Such as are so weak in mind as to desire the present Church ceremony, may have it as long as they like, so as they do not exclude more useful business. I repeat, that, if the Bishops and Clergy be wise, they will take this advice: if they do not, they will very soon be where their predecessors were in the seventeenth century, not to be restored again. I flatter myself, that, in this letter, I have produced a pamphlet that will not be dead-born. As far as possible, or as clearness of purpose would permit, I have endeavoured to avoid the use of offensive language. Whatever the world may think of me, I know nothing more of myself, than that of having a passion to be useful, to my country and fellow-men generally, in and previous to the critical coming time of change. It is not now to be mistaken as near. It is near, and very near. The present system may be dragged on through several years; but no one can insure it a twelve months' existence. I know that all bad passions are allied to ignorance, and I desire to see all those passions softened down by knowledge. I am sure that the new man, the spiritual man, the good and moral man, must be created by knowledge and independent individuality of action; and as I prefer (the Government having the choice) a moral to any other revolution, brought about by words rather than by harder and harsher weapons, I feel, that I have but performed a social, a civil, and a religious duty, in presenting this letter to your notice. That it may be read, marked, learned and inwardly digested, is the prayer of Your humble Servant, And prisoner in the business of Church Reform, RICHARD CARLILE. Giltspur Street Compter, January 29,1835. TENTH YEAR OF IMPRISONMENT. 
15968	----	The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old by George Bethune English, A.M. �First understand, then judge.� �Bring forth the people blind, although they have eyes; And deaf, although they have ears. Let them produce their witnesses, that they may be justified; Or let them hear their turn, and say, THIS IS TRUE.� ISAIAH. Boston 1813 To the Intelligent and the Candid Who are Willing to Listen to Every Opinion That is Supported by Reason; And Not Averse to Bringing their Own Opinions To the Test of Examination; THIS BOOK Is Respectfully Dedicated By The Author CONTENTS Chapter I. Introductory,--Showing that the Apostles and Authors of the New Testament endeavour to prove Christianity from the Old. Chapter II. Statement of the Question in Dispute. Chapter III. The Characteristics of the Messiah, as given by the Hebrew Prophets. Chapter IV. The character of Jesus tested by those characteristic marks of the messiah, given by the Prophets of the Old Testament. Chapter V. Examination of the arguments from the Old Testament adduced in the New, to prove that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah. Chapter VI. Examination of the meaning of the phrase �this was done that it might be fulfilled.� Chapter VII. Examination of the arguments alledged from the Hebrew Prophets, to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. Chapter VIII. Statement of Arguments which prove that Jesus was not the Messiah of the Old Testament. Chapter IX. On the character of Jesus of Nazareth, and the weight to be allowed to the argument of martyrdom, as a test of truth, in this question. Chapter X. Miscellaneous. Chapter XI. Whether the Mosaic Law be represented in the Old Testament as a temporary, or a perpetual institution. Chapter XII. On the character of Paul, and his manner of reasoning. Chapter XIII. Examination of some doctrines in the New testament, derived from the Cabbala, the Oriental philosophy, and the tenets of Zoroaster. Chapter XIV. A consideration of the �gift of tongues,� and other miraculous powers, ascribed to the Primitive Christians; and whether recorded miracles are infallible proofs of the Divine Authority of doctrines said to have been confirmed by them. Chapter XV. Application of the two tests, said in Deuteronomy to have been given by God as discriminating a true prophet from a false one, to the character and actions of Jesus. Chapter XVI. Examination of the evidence, external and internal, in favour of the credibility of the Gospel history. Chapter XVII. On the peculiar morality of the New Testament, as it affects nations and political societies. Chapter XIX. A consideration of some supposed advantages attributed to the New, over the Old, testament; and whether the doctrine of a Resurrection and a Life to Come, is not taught by the Old testament, in contradiction the assertion, that �life and immorality were brought to light by the Gospel.� Conclusion Appendix Addenda PREFACE The celebrated Dr. Price, in his valuable �Observation on the Importance of the American Revolution,� addressed to the people of the United States, observes that, �It is a common opinion, that there are some doctrines so sacred, and others of so bad a tendency, that no public discussion of them ought to be allowed. Were this a right opinion, all the persecution that has ever been practised would be justified; for if it is a part of the duty of civil magistrates to prevent the discussion of such doctrines, they must, in doing this, act on their own judgments of the nature and tendency of doctrines; and, consequently, they must have a right to prevent the discussion of all doctrines which they think to be too sacred for discussion, or too dangerous in their tendency; and this right they must exercise in the only way in which civil power is capable of exercising it--'by inflicting penalties upon all who oppose sacred doctrines, or who maintain pernicious opinions.' In Mahometan, countries, therefore, magistrates would have a right to silence and punish all who oppose the divine mission of Mahomet, a doctrine there reckoned of the most sacred nature. The like is true of the doctrines of transubstantiation, worship of the Virgin Mary, &c. &c., in Popish countries; and of the doctrines of the Trinity, satisfaction, &c., in Protestant countries. All such laws are right, if the opinion I have mentioned is right. But, in reality, civil power has nothing to do in such matters, and civil governors go miserably out of their proper province, whenever they take upon them the care of truth, or the support of any doctrinal points. They are not judges of truth, and if they pretend to decide about it, they will decide wrong. This all the countries under heaven think of the application of civil power to doctrinal points in every country, but their own. It is indeed superstition, idolatry, and nonsense, that civil power at present supports almost every where under the idea of supporting sacred truth, and opposing dangerous error. Would not, therefore, its perfect neutrality be the greatest blessing? Would not the interest of truth gain unspeakably, were all the rulers of states to aim at nothing but keeping the peace; or did they consider themselves bound to take care, not of the future, but the present, interest of man; not of their souls and of their faith, but of their person and property; not of any ecclesiastical, but secular, matters only?� �All the experience of past time proves, that the consequence of allowing civil power to judge of the nature and tendency of doctrines, must be making it a hindrance to the progress of truth, and an enemy to the improvement of the world.� �I would extend these observations to all points of faith, however sacred they may: be deemed. Nothing reasonable--can suffer by discussion. All doctrines, really sacred, must be clear, and incapable of being opposed with success.� �That immoral tendency of doctrines, which has been urged as a reason against allowing the public discussion of them, may be either avowed and direct? or only a consequence with which they are charged. If it is avowed and direct, such doctrines certainly will not spread; the principles rooted, in human nature will resist them, and the advocates of them will be soon disgraced. If, on the contrary, it is only a consequence with which a doctrine is charged, it should be considered how apt all parties are to charge the doctrines they oppose with bad tendencies. It is well known that Calvinists and Arminians, Trinitarians and Socinians, Fatalists and Free-Willers, are continually exclaiming against one another's opinions, as dangerous and licentious. Even Christianity itself could not, at its first introduction, escape this accusation. The professors of it were considered as atheists, because they opposed pagan idolatry; and their religion was, on this account, reckoned a destructive and pernicious enthusiasm. If, therefore, the rulers of a state are to prohibit the propagation of all doctrines, in which they apprehend immoral tendencies, an opening will be made, as I have before observed, for every species of persecution. There will be no doctrine, however true or important, the avowal of which will not, in, some country or other, be subjected to civil penalties.� These observations bear the stamp of good sense, and their truth has been abundantly confirmed by experience; and it is the peculiar honour of the United States, that in conformity with the principles of these observations, perfect freedom, of opinion and of speech, are here established by law, and are the birthright of every citizen thereof. Our country* is the only one which has not been guilty of the folly of establishing the ascendancy of one set of religious opinions, and persecuting or tolerating all others, and which does not permit any man to harass his neighbour, because he thinks differently from himself. In consequence of these excellent institutions, difference of religious sentiment; makes here no breach in private friendship, and works no danger to the public security. This is as it should be; for, in matters of opinion, especially with regard to so important a thing as religion, it is every man's natural right and duty to think for himself, and to judge upon such evidence as he can procure, after he has used his best endeavours to get information. Human decisions are of no weight in this matter, for another man has no more right to. determine what his opinions shall be, than I have to determine what another man�s opinions shall be. It is amazing that one man can dare to presume he has such a right over another; and that any man can be so weak and credulous, as to imagine, that another has such right over him. As it is every man's natural right and duty to think and judge for himself in matters of opinion; so he should be allowed freely to bring forward and defend his opinions, and to endeavour, when be judges proper, to convince others also of their truth. For unless all men are allowed freely to profess their opinions, the means of information, with respect to opinions, must, in a great measure, be wanting; and just inquiries into their truth be almost impracticable; and, by consequence, our natural right and duty to think and judge for ourselves, must be rendered almost nugatory, or be subverted, for want of materials whereon to employ our minds. A man by himself, without communication with other minds, can make no great progress in knowledge; and besides, an individual is indisposed to use his own strength, when an undisturbed laziness, ignorance, and prejudice give him full satisfaction as to the truth of his opinions. But if there be a free profession, or communication of sentiment, every man will have an opportunity of acquainting himself with all that can be known from others; and many for their own satisfaction will make inquiries, and, in order to ascertain the truth of opinions, will desire to know all that can be said on any question. If such liberty of professing and teaching be not allowed, error, if authorized, will keep its ground; and truth, if dormant, will never be brought to light; or, if authorized, will be supported on a false and absurd foundation, and such as would equally support error; and, if received on the ground of authority, will not be in the least meritorious to its professors. Besides, not to encourage capable and honest men to profess and defend their opinions when different from ours, is to distrust the truth of our own opinion, and to fear the light. Such conduct must, in a country of sense and learning, increase the number of unbelievers already so greatly complained of; who, if they see matters of opinion not allowed to be professed, and impartially debated, think, justly perhaps, that they have foul play, and, therefore, reject many things as false and ill grounded, which otherwise they might perhaps receive as truths. The grand principle of men considered as having relation to the Deity, and under an obligation to be religious, is, that they ought to consult their reason, and seek every where for the best instruction; and of Christians and Protestants the duty, and professed principle is, to consult reason and the Scripture, as the rule of their faith and practice. But how can these, which are practical principles, be duly put in practice, unless all be at liberty, at all times, and in all points, consider and debate with others, (as well as with themselves,) what reason and Scripture says; and to profess, and act openly, according to what they are convinced they say? How can we become better informed with regard to religion, than by using the best means of information? which consist in consulting reason and scripture, and calling in the aid of others. And of what use is it to consult reason, and Scripture at all, as any means of information., if we are not, upon conviction, to follow their dictates? No man has any reason to apprehend any ill consequences to truth, (for which alone he ought to have any concern,) from free inquiry and debate.--For truth is not a thing to dread examination, but when fairly proposed to an unbiased understanding, is like light to the eye; it must distinguish itself from error, as light does distinguish does distinguish itself from darkness. For, while free debate is allowed, truth is in no danger, for it will never want a professor thereof, nor an advocate to offer some plea in its behalf. And it can never be wholly banished, but when human decisions, backed by human power, carry all before them. We ought to examine foundations of opinions, not only, that we may attain the discovery of truth, but we ought to do so, on this account, because that it is our duty; and the way to recommend ourselves to the favour of God. For opinions, how true soever, when the effect of education or tradition, or interest, or passion, can never recommend a man to God. For those ways have no merit in them, and are the worst a man can possibly take to obtain truth; and therefore, though they may be objects of forgiveness, they can never be of reward from Him. Having promised these observations in order to persuade, and dispose the reader to be candid, I will now declare the motives, which induced me to submit to the consideration of the intelligent, the contents of this volume. The Author has spared, he thinks, no pains to arrive at certain Truth in matters of religion; the; sense of which is what distinguishes man from the brute. And in this most important subject that can employ the human understanding, he has been particularly desirous to become acquainted with the Grounds, and Doctrines of the Christian Religion; and nothing but the difficulties, which he in this volume lays before the public, staggers his faith in it. It may perhaps add to the interest the Reader may take in this work to inform him, that the Author was a believer in the religion of the New Testament, after what he conceived to be a sufficient examination of its evidence for a divine origin. He had terminated an examination of the controversy with the Deists to his own satisfaction, i.e. he felt convinced that their objections were not insurmountable, when he turned his attention to the consideration of the ancient, and obscure controversy between the Christians and the Jews. His curiosity was deeply interested to examine a subject in truth so little known, and to ascertain the causes, and the reasons, which had prevented a people more interested in the truth of Christianity than any other from believing it: and he set down to the subject without any suspicion, that the examination would not terminate in convincing him still more in favour of what were then his opinions. After a long, thorough, and startling examination of their Books, together with all the answers to them he could obtain from a Library amply furnished in this respect, he was finally very reluctantly compelled to feel persuaded, by proofs he could neither refute, nor evade, that how easily soever Christians might answer the Deists, so called, the Jews were clearly too hard for them. Because they set the Old and New Testament in opposition, and reduce Christians to this fatal dilemma.--Either the Old Testament contains a Revelation from God; or it does sot. If it does, then the New Testament cannot be from God, because it is palpably, and importantly repugnant to the Old Testament in doctrine, and some other things. Now Jews, and Christians, each of them admit the Old Testament as containing a divine Revelation; consequently the Jews cannot, and Christians ought not to receive and allow any thing as a Revelation from God which flatly contradicts a former by them acknowledged Revelation: because it cannot be supposed that God will contradict himself. On the other hand--if the Old Testament be not from God, still the New Testament must go down, because it asserts that the Old Testament is a revelation from God, and builds upon it as a foundation. And if the foundation fails, how can the house, stand? The Author pledges himself to the Reader, to prove, that they establish this dilemma completely. And he cannot help thinking, that there is reason to believe, that if both sides of this strangely neglected controversy had been made public in times past, and become known, that the consequences would have been long ago fatal at least to the New Testament. The Author has been earnestly dissuaded from making public the contents of this volume on account of apprehended mischievous consequences. He thought, however, that the age of pious frauds ought to be past, and their principle discarded, at least in Protestant countries. Deception and error are always, sooner or later, discovered; and truth in, the long run, both in politics, and religion, will never be ultimately harmful. If what the Book states is true, it ought to be known, if it is erroneous; it can, and will, be refuted. The Author therefore makes it public, for these reasons,--because he thinks, that the matter contained in the book, is true, and important,--because he wished, and found it necessary to justify himself from contemptible misrepresentations uttered behind his back; and to give to those who know him, good and sufficient reasons for past conduct, of which those to whom he is known, cannot be ignorant; and finally, he thought it right, and proper, and humane, to give to the world a work which contained the reasons for the unbelief of the countrymen of Jesus; who for almost eighteen hundred years have been made the unresisting victims of, as the reader will find, groundless misrepresentation, and the most amazing cruelty; because they refused to believe what it was impossible that they should believe, on account of reasons their persecutors did not know, and refused to be informed of. If the arguments and statements contained in this volume should be found to be correct, he believes that every honest and candid man, after his first surprise that they should not have been made known before, will feel for the victims of a mistake so singular and so ancient as the one which is the subject of the following pages; and will think with the author, that it is time, high time, that the truth should be known, and justice be done to them.* There is not in existence a more singular instance of the mischievous mistakes arising from taking things for granted which require proof, than the case before the reader. The world has all along been in total error with regard to the reasons and the motives which have prevented the Hebrew nation from receiving the system of the New Testament. They have been successfully accused of incorrigible blindness and obstinacy; and while volumes upon volumes have been written against them, and the arguments therein contained, supported and enforced by the power of the Inquisition, and the oppressions of all Christendom, these unfortunate people have not been willingly suffered to offer to the world one word in their own defence. They have not been allowed, after hearing with patience both arguments, and �railing accusations� in abundance, to answer in their turn; but have been compelled, through the fear of confiscation, persecution, and death, to leave misapprehensions unexplained, and misrepresentations unrefuted. Is it then to be wondered at, that mankind have considered their adversaries as in the right, and that deserted by reason, and even their own Scriptures, they were supported in their opinion only by a blind and pertinacious obstinacy, more worthy of wonder than curiosity? Alas! the world did not consider, that nothing was more easy than to confute people whose tongues were frozen by the terror of the Inquisition!! But, thanks to the good sense of this enlightened age, those times are past and gone. There is now one happy country where freedom of speech is allowed, where every harmless religious opinion is protected by law, and where every opinion is listened to that is supported by reason. The time, I trust, is now come when the substantial arguments of this oppressed, and, in this respect, certainly calumniated, people, may be produced and their reasons set forth, without the fear of harm, and with, and with the hope of hearing from the intelligent and the candid. They, we believe, will be fully convinced, that their adversaries have for so long a time triumphed over them without measure, only because they have been suffered to do so without contradiction. The reader is assured, that, notwithstanding the subject, he will find nothing in this volume but what is considered by the author to be fair and liberal argument; and such no honest man ought to decline looking in the face. He has endeavoured to discuss the important subject of the book in the most inoffensive manner; for he has no wish, and claims no right, to wound the feelings of those who differ from him in opinion. There is not, nor ought there to be, a word of reproach in it, against the moral character of Jesus, or the twelve Apostles; and the utmost the author attempts to prove is, that their system was founded, not upon fraud and imposture, but upon a mistake. After the deaths of Christ and his Apostles, it was indeed aided and supported by very bad means; but its first founders, the author believes, were guilty of no other crime than that of being mistaken; a very common one indeed. He hopes, therefore, that such a discussion as the one now laid before the public, will be fairly met, and fairly answered, if answered at all, and that recourse will not be had to dishonest and ungentlemanly misrepresentations, and calling names, in order to prevent people from examining things they have a right to know, and in order to blind and frighten the public, the jury to which he appeals. It is infallibly true, that the knowledge of truth is, and must be beneficial to mankind; and that, in the long run, it never was, and never can be, harmful. It is equally certain, that God would never give a Revelation so slightly founded as to be endangered by any sophistry of man. If the Christian system be from God, it will certainly stand, no human power can overthrow it; and, therefore, no sincere Christian who believes the New Testament, ought to be afraid to meet half way the objections of any one who offers them with fairness, and expresses them in decent language; and no sensible Christian ought to shut his ears against his neighbour, who respectfully asks �a reason for the faith that is in him.� The author has been told, indeed, that, �supposing the Christian system to be unfounded, yet that it is reasonable to believe, that the Supreme Being would view any attempts to disturb it, with displeasure, on account of its moral effects.� But is not this something like absurdity? Can God have made it necessary, that morals should be founded on delusion, in order that they might be supported? Can the God of TRUTH be displeased to have men convinced that they have been mistaken, or imposed upon, by Revelations pretended to be from Him, which if in fact not from him, must be the offspring either of error or falsehood? And if the Christian system be, in truth, not from God, can we suppose, that in his eyes its doctrines with regard to Him are atoned for, by a few good moral precepts? Can we suppose, that that Supreme and awful Being can feel Himself honoured, in having his creatures made to believe, that He was once nine months in the womb of a woman; that God, the Great and Holy, went through all the nastiness of infancy; that be lived a mendicant in a corner of the earth, and was finally scourged, and hanged on a gibbet by his own creatures? If these things be, in truth, all mistakes, can we suppose, that God is pleased in having them believed of Him? On the contrary, can they, together with the doctrine of the Trinity, I would respectfully ask, be possibly looked upon by Him (if they are not true), otherwise, than as so many--what I forbear to mention. But this is not all. The reader is requested to consider, that the Christian system is built upon the prostrate necks of the whole Hebrew nation. It is a tree which flourished in a soil watered by their tears; its leaves grew green in an atmosphere filled with their cries and groans; and its roots have been moistened and fattened with their blood. The ruin, reproach, and sufferings of that people, are considered, by its advocates, as the most striking proof of the Divine authority of the New Testament; and for almost eighteen hundred years the system contained in that book has been the cause of miseries and afflictions to that nation, the most horrible and unparalleled in the history of man. Now, if that system be indeed Divine, all this may be very well, and as it should be. But if, perchance, it should turn out to be a mistake if it be, in truth, not from God; will not, then, that system be justly chargeable with all those shocking cruelties which, on account of it, have been inflicted on that people? If that system be verily and indeed founded on a mistake, no language, no indignation, can do justice to its guilt in this respect. All its good moral effects are a mere drop of pure water in that ocean of Jewish and Gentile blood it has caused to be shed by embittering men's minds with groundless prejudices. And if it be not divine; if it be plainly and demonstrably proved to have originated in error; who is the man, that, after considering what has been suggested, will have the heart to come forward, and coolly say, �that it is better that a whole nation of men should continue, as heretofore, to be unjustly hated, reproached, cursed, and plundered, and massacred, on account of it, rather than that the received religious system should be demonstrated to be founded on mistake?" No! If it be, in fact, founded on mistake, every man of honour, honesty, and humanity, will say, without hesitation, "Let the delusion (if it is one) be done away, which must be supported at the expense of truth, of justice, and the happiness and respectability of a whole nation, who are men like ourselves, and more unfortunate than any others, in having already suffered but too much affliction and misery on account of it." No! though the moral effects ascribed to this system of religion were as good, as great, and ten times greater than they ever have been, or can be, yet, if it is a delusion, it would be absolutely wicked to support it, since it is erected upon the sufferings, wretchedness, and oppression of a people who compose millions of the great family of mankind. It is remarkable, that the ablest modern advocates for the truth and divine authority of the gospel, as if they knew of no certain, demonstrative proof which could be adduced in a case of so much importance, seem to content themselves, and expect their readers should be satisfied, with an accumulation of probable arguments in its favour; and it has been even said, that the case admits of no other kind of proof. If it be so, the author requests all so persuaded to consider, for a moment, whether it could be reconciled to any ideas of wisdom in an earthly potentate, if he should send an ambassador to a foreign state to mediate a negotiation of the greatest importance, without furnishing him with certain, indubitable credentials of the truth and authenticity of his mission? And to consider further, whether it be just or seemly, to attribute to the Omniscient, Omnipotent Deity, a degree of weakness and folly, which was never yet imputed to any of his creatures? for unless men are hardy enough to pass so gross an affront upon the tremendous Majesty of Heaven, the improbability that God should delegate the Mediator of a most important covenant to be proposed to all mankind, without enabling him to give them clear and, in reason, indisputable proof of the divine authority of his mission, must ever infinitely outweigh the aggregate sum of all the probabilities which can be accumulated in the opposite scale of the balance. And to conclude, I presume it will not be denied, that the authenticity and celestial origin of any thing pretending to be a Divine Revelation, before it has any claims upon our faith, ought to be made clear beyond all reasonable doubt; otherwise, it can have no just claims to a right to influence our conduct. And as for the opinions and the arguments contained in this volume, I have but trembling hopes that they will meet with favour, merely because the author is sincere, and wishes to do right. Conscious that I make a perilous attempt, in daring to defend myself by attacking ancient error supported by multitudes, with no other seconds besides Truth and Reason, it would be bootless for me to ask indulgence for them on account of my good intentions; and as they can derive no credit from the authority of the writer, I am sensible they must fall by their own weakness, or stand by their own strength. I must leave them, therefore, to their fate; and I can cheerfully do it, without fear for the issue, if the reader will only be candid, and will comply with my earnest request--�first to understand, and then judge.� Before I conclude these prefatory remarks, I would observe, that as the contents of this volume will be perfectly novel to nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand, it is but justice to the public, and to myself, to avow, that I do not claim to have originated all the arguments advanced in this book. A very considerable proportion of them were selected, and derived, from ancient and curious Jewish Tracts, translated from Chaldee into Latin, very little known even in Europe, and not at all known there to any but the curious and inquisitive. And I reasonably hope, that discerning men will be much more disposed to weigh with candour the arguments herein offered, when they consider that they are, in many instances, the reasonings of learned, ancient and venerable men, who, in times when the inquisition was in vigour, suffered under the most bloody oppression, and whose writings were cautiously preserved, and secretly handed down to the seventeenth century in manuscript, as the printing of them would assuredly have brought all concerned to the stake. Some few other arguments were derived from other authors, and were taken from works not so much known as I hope they will be. Finally, I commit my work to the discretion of the good sense of the reader, believing that if he is not convinced, he will at least be interested; and hoping that he will discover from the complexion of the book (what my own heart bears witness to) that the author is a sincere inquirer after truth, and perfectly willing to be convinced that he is in error by any one who can remove the difficulties, and refute the arguments, now laid by him before the public, with deference and respect. September 28, 1813. THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY Examined by Comparing the NEW TESTAMENT WITH THE OLD. CHAPTER I. Introductory,--showing that the Apostles and the authors of the New Testament, endeavour to prove Christianity from the Old. Christianity is founded on Judaism, and the New Testament upon the Old; and Jesus of Nazareth is the person said in the New Testament to be Promised in the Old, under the character and name of the Messiah of the Jews, and who as such only claims the obedience, and submission of the World. Accordingly, it is the design of the authors of the New, to prove Christianity from the Old, Testament; which is said Jo. 5:39, to contain the words of eternal life: and it represents Jesus and his Apostles, as fulfilling by their mission, doctrines and works, the predictions of the Prophets and the Law: which last is said to prophecy of, or to typify Christianity. Matthew, for example, proves several parts of Christianity from the Old Testament, either by asserting them to be things foretold therein as to come to pass under the gospel dispensation; or to be founded on the notions of the Old Testament. Thus he proves Mary�s being with child by the Holy Spirit, and the Angel�s telling her she �shall bring forth a son, and call his name Jesus;� and the other circumstances attending his miraculous birth; Jesus� birth at Bethlehem; his flight into Egypt; the slaughter of the infants; Jesus Dwelling at Nazareth, and at Capernaum, in the borders of Zabulon, and Naphtali; his casting out devils, and healing the sick; his eating with Publicans and sinners; his speaking in parables that the Jews might not understand him; his sending his disciples to fetch an ass, and a colt; the children�s crying in the Temple; the resurrection of Jesus from the dead; Jesus� being betrayed by Judas, and Judas� returning back the thirty pieces of Silver, and the Priest�s buying the Potter�s Field with them; and his hanging Himself; &c. &c. All these events, and many more, are said to be fulfillments of the Prophecies of the Old Testament, see Mat. 1, 2: and 4 chapters, and ch. 8: v. 16,17, and ch. 9: 11,13, and ch. 13: 13, ch. 21: 2--7. 15,16, ch. 22: 31, 32, ch. 26: 54, 56, ch. 27: 5--10. Jesus himself is represented as proving the truth of Christianity thus. He, joining himself to two of his Disciples, (Luke 28: 15-- 22,) after his resurrection, who knew him not, and complaining of their mistake about his person, whom they now took not to be the Messiah, because he had been condemned to death, and crucified; he, observing their disbelief of his resurrection, which had been reported to them by �certain women of their acquaintance,� upon the credit of the affirmation of angels, said unto them, �O Fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ (i.e. the Messiah) to have suffered these things, and to enter into his Glory? and beginning at Moses, and all the Prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.� Again he discoursed to all his Disciples, putting them in mind, that, before his Death, he told them (Luke 24: 44, 46, 47,) that �all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms concerning him;� adding, �thus it is written, and thus it behoveth Christ (1. e. the Messiah) to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day; and that repentance, and remission of sins should be preached in his name, beginning at Jerusalem.� When the people of several nations, Acts 2:12, were amazed at the Apostles speaking in their several tongues, and when many mocked the Apostles, saying they were full of new wine, Peter makes a speech in public, wherein, after saying they were not drunk, because it was but the third hour of the day, he endeavours to show them, that this was spoken of by the Prophet Joel, and he concludes with proving the resurrection of Jesus from the book of Psalms. Peter, and John, tell the people assembled at the Temple, �that God had showed by the mouth of all his Prophets, that Christ should suffer,� Acts 3:18. Peter to justify his preaching to the Gentiles, concludes his discourse with saying, Acts 10: 43--�To Jesus gave all the Prophets witness, that through his name whosoever (i.e. Jew, or Gentile) believeth in him, shall receive remission of sins.� Paul also endeavours to prove to the Jews in the Synagogue of Antioch, (Ib. v. 13) that the history of Jesus was contained in the Old Testament, and that he, and Barnabas were commanded in the Old Testament, to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. On the occasion of a dispute among the Christians whether the Gentile converts were to be circumcised after the Law of Moses, and to observe the Law, we find, that after much disputing, the point was settled by James by quotation from Amos. The Bereans are highly extolled (Acts 17: 11,) for searching the Scriptures, i.e. the Old Testament, daily, in order to find out whether the things preached to them by the Apostles were so, or no: who if they had not proved these things, i.e. Christianity from the Old Testament, ought, according to their own principles, to have been rejected by the Bereans, as teachers of false doctrine. Paul, when accused before Agrippa by the Jews, said (Acts 26; 6,) �I stand, and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers,� i.e. for teaching Christianity, or the true doctrine of the Old Testament, and to this accusation he pleads guilty, by declaring in the fullest manner, that he taught nothing but the Doctrines of the Old Testament. �Having therefore (says he) obtained help of God, I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small, and great, saying now other things than those which the Prophets, and Moses did say should come, that the Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first who should rise from the Dead, and should show light unto the People, and unto the Gentiles.� The Author of the first Epistle to the Cor. says, 15 ch. v. 4, that �Jesus rose again from the dead the third day, according to the Scriptures,� that is, according to the Old Testament, and he is supposed to ground this on the history of the prophet Jonas, who was three days and three nights in the fish's belly: though the cases do not seem to be parallel, for Jesus being buried on Friday evening, and rising on Sunday morning, was in the tomb but one day and two nights. But most singular is the argument of the Apostle Paul (in his Epistle to the Galatians) to prove Christianity from the Old Testament. �Tell me (says he, Gal. 4: 21,) ye that desire to be under the Law, do ye not hear the Law? For it is written, that Abraham had two Sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a free woman. But he who was of the bond woman, was born after the flesh; but he who was of the free woman was by promise. Which things are an Allegory. For these are the two covenants, the one from Mount Sinai which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. But this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem that now is, and is in bondage with her Children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the Mother of us all. For it is written (Isaiah 54: 1,) �Rejoice thou Barren that bearest not, break forth, and cry thou that travailest not, for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.� Now, we Brethren, as Isaac was, are children of the Promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit, even so it is now. But what saith the Scripture (Gen. 21: 10, 12,) Cast out the bond woman, and her son, for the son of the bond woman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. So then, Brethren, we are not the children of the bond woman, but of the free. Stand fast, therefore, in the Liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.� In fine, the Author of these Epistles reasons in the same singular manner from the Old Testament throughout; which is, according to him, (2 Tim. iii: 15,) �able to make men wise unto Salvation:� asserting himself and others to be ministers of the New Testament, as being ministers, not of �the letter but of �the Spirit,� (2Cor. iii: 6.) That is. Of the Old Testament, spiritually understood; and endeavouring to prove, especially in the Epistle to the Hebrews, that Christianity was veiled and contained in the Old Testament, and was implied in the Jewish history, and Law, both which he considers as types and shadows of Christianity. CHAPTER II. STATEMENT of THE QUESTION IN DISPUTE. How Christianity depends on the Old Testament, or what proofs are to be met with therein in behalf of Christianity, are the subjects of almost all the numerous books written by divines, and other apologists for Christianity, but the chief and principal of these proofs may be justly supposed to be urged in the New Testament itself, by the authors thereof; who relate the history of the first preaching of the Gospel, and profess themselves to be apostles of Jesus, or companions of the Apostles. Some of these proofs, as a specimen, have been already adduced. And if they are valid proofs, then is Christianity strongly and invincibly established: on its true foundations. It is established upon its true foundations, because Jesus and his Apostles did, as we have seen, ground Christianity on those proofs; and it is strongly and invincibly established on those foundations, because a proof drawn from an inspired book is perfectly conclusive. And prophecies delivered in an inspired book are, when fulfilled, such as may be justly deemed sure, and demonstrative proof; and which Peter (2 Peter 1: 19) prefers as an argument for the truth of Christianity, to that miraculous attestation (whereof he, and two other Apostles are said to have been witnesses,) given by God himself to the mission of Jesus of Nazareth. His argument appears to be as follows. �Laying this foundation, that Prophecy proceeds from the Holy Spirit, it is a stronger argument than a miracle, which depends upon eternal evidence, and testimony.� And this opinion of Peter�s is corroborated by the words of Jesus himself, who, in Mat. xxiv: 23, 24, Mark xiii: 21, 22, affirms, that miracles wrought in confirmation of a pretender�s being the Messiah, are not to be considered as proof of his being so--�though they show great signs and wonders, believe it not,� is his command to his disciples. Besides, prophecies fulfilled, seem the most proper of all arguments to evince the truth of a new revelation which is designed to be universally promulgated to men. For a man who has the Old Testament put into his hands, which contain prophecies, and the New Testament afterward, which is said to contain their completions, and is once satisfied, as he may be with the greatest ease, that the Old Testament existed before the New, may have a complete, internal, divine, demonstration of the truth of Christianity, without long, and laborious enquiries. Whereas, arguments of another nature, such, for instance, as relate to the authority and genuineness of the books, and the persons, and characters of authors, and witnesses, require more application, and understanding, than falls to the share of the bulk of mankind; or else are very precarious in themselves, since we know that in the first centuries there were numberless forged Gospels, and Apocryphal writings imposed upon the credulous as apostolic and authentic; and there were in the Apostles times, as many, and as great heresies and schisms as perhaps have been since in any age of the Church. So that, setting aside the before mentioned internal proofs from prophecy, (which were the Apostle's proofs and in their nature sufficient of themselves) we should have no certain proof at all for the Religion of the New Testament. On the other hand, if the proofs for Christianity from the Old Testament, are not valid, if the arguments founded on that Book be not conclusive, and the Prophecies cited from thence be not fulfilled, then has Christianity no just foundation; for the foundation on which Jesus and his Apostles built it is then invalid, and false. Nor can miracles, said to have been wrought by Jesus, and his Apostles in behalf of Christianity, avail anything in the case. For miracles can never render a foundation valid, which is in itself invalid; can never make a false inference true; can never make a prophecy fulfilled, which is not fulfilled; and can never designate a Messiah, or Jesus for the Messiah, if both are not marked out in the Old Testament; no more than they could prove the earth to be the sun, or a mouse a lion. Besides, miracles said to have been wrought, may be often justly decided false reports, when attributed to persons who claim an authority from the Old Testament, which they impertinently alledge to support their pretentions. God can never be supposed often to permit miracles to be done for the confirmation of a false, or pretended mission. And if at any time he does permit miracles to be done in confirmation of a pretended mission, we have express directions from the Old Testament (acknowledged by Christians to be of divine authority) Deut. xiii. 1, 2, not to regard such miracles; but to continue firm to the antecedent revelation given by Himself, and contained in the Old Testament, notwithstanding any �signs or wonders;� which, under the circumstance of attesting something contrary to an antecedent revelation, we are forewarned of as being no test of truth. No new revelation, however supported by miracles, ought ever to be received as coming from God, unless it confirms, or at least does not contradict, the preceding standing revelation, acknowledged to be from God. Accordingly, we find from the New Testament, that all the recorded miracles of Jesus could not make the Jews believe him to be the Messiah when they thought that he did not answer the description of that character given by the Prophets; on the contrary, they procured him to be crucified for pretending to be what to them he appeared plainly not to be. Nor had his miracles alone any effect on his own brethren, and kindred, who seem (Mark vi. 4; Jo. vii. 6,) to have been more incredulous in him than other Jews. Nor had they the effect, they are supposed to have been fitted to produce, among his immediate followers, and Disciples; some of whom did not believe in him, but deserted him, and particularly had no faith in him when he spake of his sufferings; and thought that he could not be their Messiah when they saw him suffer, notwithstanding his miracles, and his declaration to them that he was the Messiah. And so rooted were the Jews in the notion of the Messiah's being a temporal Prince, a conquering Pacificator, and Deliverer, even after the death of Jesus, and the progress of Christianity grounded on the belief of his being the Messiah, that they have in all times of distress, particularly in the apostolic sera, in great numbers followed impostors giving themselves out as the Messiah, with force, and arms, as the way to restore the kingdom of Israel. So that the Jews, who it seems mistook in this most important matter, and after the most egregious manner, the meaning of their own Books, might, till they were set right in their interpretation of the Old Testament, and were convinced from thence that Jesus was the Messiah, might I say, as justly reject Jesus asserting his mission, and Doctrines with miracles, as they might reject any other person, who in virtue of miracles would lead them into idolatry, or any other breach of their law. In fine, the miracles said to have been wrought by Jesus, are, according to the Old Testament, the gospel scheme, and the words of Jesus himself, no absolute proof of his being the Messiah, or of the truth of Christianity; and Jesus laid no great stress upon them as proving doctrines, for he forewarned his disciples, that �signs and wonders� would be performed, so great and stupendous, as to deceive, if possible, the very elect, and bids them not to give any heed to them.* CHAPTER III. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MESSIAH, AS GIVEN BY THE HEBREW PROPHETS. Having shewn from the New Testament, and proved from the nature of the case, that the whole credit and authority of the Christian religion, rests and depends upon Jesus' being the Messiah of the Jews; and, having stated the principles which ought to govern the decision of this question, and established the fact, that the pretensions of any claiming to be considered as this Messiah, must be tested solely by the coincidence of the character, and circumstances of the pretender with the descriptions given by the prophets as the means by which he may be known to be so--it is proper, in order that we may be enabled to form a correct opinion, to lay before the reader those passages of the Old Testament which contain the promise of the appearing, and express the characteristics of this �hope of Israel,� this beneficent saviour, and august monarch, in whose time a suffering world, was, according to the Hebrew prophets, to become the abode of happy beings. Leaving out for the present the consideration of the Shiloh mentioned in Gen. xlix., the first prophecy we meet with, supposed to relate to this great character, is contained in Num. xxiv. 17,19, �There shall come a star out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel, shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy the children of Seth.� Geddes interprets the latter clause--�shall destroy the sons of esdition;� but it probably means, according to the common interpretation, that this monarch was to govern the whole race of men, i. e. the children of Seth; for Noah, according to the Old Testament, was descended from him; and of the posterity of Noah, was the whole earth overspread. And in verse 19, it is added �out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion.�* God says to David, 2 Sam. vii. 12, �And when thy days shall be fulfilled, and thou shall sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels; and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his Father, and he shall be my Son--if he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men. But my mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before thee. And thy house, and thy kingdom shall be established before me, and thy throne shall be established for ever.� Mention is made of this promise in several of the Psalms, but it certainly suggests no idea of such a person as Jesus of Nazareth, but only that of a temporal prince of the posterity of David. It implies, that his family would never entirely fail for though it might be severely punished, it would recover its lustre again. And connecting this promise with that of the glory of the nation in general, foretold in the books of Moses, it might be inferred by the Hebrews, who believed them to be of Divine authority, that after long and great calamities (the consequences of their sins,) the people of Israel would be restored to their country, and attain the most distinguished felicity under a prince of the family of David. This is the subject of numberless prophecies throughout the Old Testament. Passing over all those prophecies in which the national glory is spoken of without any mention of a prince or head; I shall recite, and remark upon the most eminent of those in which mention is made of any particular person, under whom, or by means of whom, the Israelitish nation, it is said, would enjoy the transcendent prosperity elsewhere foretold. The second Psalm is no doubt well known to my readers, and supposing it to refer to the Messiah, it is evident, that it describes him enthroned upon mount Zion, the favorite of God, and the resistless conqueror of his enemies. The next prophecy of this distinguished individual is recorded in Isaiah ix. 6--�Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father shall call his name* the Prince of Peace.� [For thus it is pointed to be read in the original Hebrew, and this is the meaning of the passage, and not as in the absurd translation of this verse in the English version.] �Of the increase of his government there shall be no end upon the throne of David, and his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment, and with justice from henceforth and for ever: the zeal of the Lord of Hosts will do this.� Here again we have a mighty monarch, sitting upon the throne of David, upon earth; and not a spiritual king placed in heaven, upon the throne of �the mighty God, the everlasting Father.� The next passage which comes under notice, is in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, in which a person is mentioned, under whom Israel, and the whole earth was to enjoy great prosperity and felicity. He is described as an upright prince, endued with the spirit of God, under whose reign there would be universal peace, which was to take place after the return of the Israelites from their dispersed state, when the whole nation would be united and happy. �There shall spring forth a rod from the trunk of Jesse, and a scion from his roots shall become fruitful. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him; the spirit of wisdom, and understanding; the spirit of counsel, and strength; the spirit of knowledge, and the fear of the Lord. And he shall be quick of discernment in the fear of the Lord; so that not according to the sight of his eyes shall he judge, nor according to the hearing of the ears shall he reprove. With righteousness shall he judge the poor, and with equity shall he work conviction# on the meek of the earth. And he shall smite the earth with the blast of his mouth; and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked one. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his lions, and faithfulness the cincture of his reins. Then shall the wolf take up his abode with the lamb; and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling shall come together, and a little child shall lead them. And the heifer, and the she bear shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling shall play upon the hole of the asp; and upon the den of the basilisk shall the new weaned child lay his hand. They shall not hurt, nor destroy in my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And it shall come to pass in that day, the root of Jesse which standeth for an ensign to the people, unto him shall the nations repair, and his resting place shall be glorious.� As the scion here spoken of is said to spring from the root of Jesse, it looks as if it were intended to intimate, that the tree itself would be cut down, or that the power of David's Family would be for some time extinct; but that it would revive in �the latter days.� The same Prince is again mentioned, chap xxxiii. 1, 3, where the people are described to be both virtuous, and flourishing, and to continue to be so. (v. 15--17.) �Behold a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule with equity. And the man shall be a covert from the storm, as a refuge from the flood, as canals of waters in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a land of fainting with heat. And him the eyes of those that see shall regard, and the ears of them that hear shall harken, * * * * till the spirit from on high be poured out upon us, and the wilderness become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be esteemed a forest. And judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, and in the fruitful field shall reside righteousness. And the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness perpetual quiet, and security. And my people shall dwell in a peaceful mansion, and in habitations secure, and in resting places undisturbed.� The same Prophet, chap. lxii 1, speaks of a person under the title of �God�s Servant,� of a meek disposition, raised up by God to enlighten the world, even the Gentile part of it; to bring prisoners out of their confinement, and to open their eyes; alluding, probably, to the custom too common in the East; of sealing up the eyes, by sewing or fastening together the eyelids of persons, and then imprisoning thorn for life. It is doubted, however, whether the Prophet meant, or had in view, in this passage, the Messiah, or his own nation. �Behold my servant whom I will uphold, mine elect in whom my soul delighteth; I will make my spirit rest upon him, and he shall publish judgment to the nations. He shall not cry aloud, nor raise a clamour, nor cause his voice to be heard in the public places. The bruised reed shall he not break, and the dimly burning flax he shall not quench, he shall publish judgment so as to establish it perfectly. His force shall not be abated, nor broken, until he has firmly seated judgment in the earth, and the distant nations shall earnestly wait for his Law.� �Thus saith the Lord, even, the Eternal, who created the heavens, and stretched them out; who spread abroad the earth, and the produce thereof, who giveth breath to the people upon it, and spirit to them that tread thereon. I the Lord have called thee for a righteous purpose,* and I will take hold of thy hand, and I will preserve thee; and I will give thee for a covenant to the people, for a light to the nations; to open the eyes of the blind, to bring the captive out of confinement, and from the dungeon those that dwell in darkness. I am the Eternal, that is my name, and my glory will I not give to another, nor my praise to the graven images. The former predictions, lo! they are to come to pass, and now events I now declare; before they spring forth, behold I make them known unto you.� See also chap. xlix. 1,12, and chap. liv. 3, 5. In the 3d chapter of Hosea, verses 4 and 5, it is said by the Prophet, that �the sons of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without sacrifice, and without a statue, and without an ephod, and without Teraphim. Afterward shall the sons of Israel return, and shall seek the Lord their God, and DAVID their King, and shall fear the Lord, and his goodness in the latter days.� Micah chap. v. speaks of the Messiah thus, �And thou Bethlehem Ephratah, art thou too little to be among the leaders of Judah? Out of thee shall come forth unto me, him who is to be ruler in Israel; and his goings forth have been from old, from the days of hidden ages. Therefore will He (God) deliver them up, until the time when she that bringeth forth, hath brought forth, and until the residue of his brethren shall return together with the sons of Israel. And. he shall stand and feed his flock, in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and they shall abide, for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth, and he shall be Peace.� Jeremiah also speaks of the restoration of the Israelites under a Prince of the family of David, chap. xxiii. 5, 8. �Behold the days are coming, saith the Lord, that I will raise up unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign, and act wisely, and shall execute justice, and judgment in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell in security, and this is the name by which the Eternal shall call him, OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.�# [Heb.] The same is mentioned in chap. xxx. 8, 9. �And it shall be in that day, saith the Lord of Hosts, I will break his yoke from off his neck, and his bands will I burst asunder, and strangers shall no more exact service of him. But they shall serve the Lord their God, and DAVID their King, whom I will raise up for (or to) them. * * * The voice of joy, and the voice of mirth, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that say. Praise ye the Lord of Hosts, for the Lord is gracious, for his mercy endureth for ever, of them that bring praise to the house of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, yet again shall there be in this place that is desolate (Jerusalem and Palestine,) without man and beast, and in all the cities thereof, an habitation of shepherds folding sheep, in the cities of the hill country, and in the cities of the plain, and in the cities of the south, and in the land of Benjamin, and in the environs of Jerusalem. * * * Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will perform the good thing which I have spoken concerning the house of Israel, and concerning the house of Judah. In those days, and at that time, [he that readeth, let him observe] I will came to grow up of the line of David a branch of righteousness, and he shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In those days Judah shall be saved, and Jerusalem, shall dwell securely, and this is he whom the Lord shall call--�OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.� [Heb.] Surely, thus saith the Lord, there shall not be a failure in the line of David, one to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel, neither shall there be a failure in the line of the Priests, the Levites, of one to offer before me burnt offerings, and to perform sacrifice continually." See ch. xxxiiii. 14. In this place, the perpetuity of the tribe of Levi, as well as that of the house of David, is foretold. See also Jer. ch. xxx. 9. Contemporary with Jeremiah was Ezekiel. He likewise describes this happy state of the Israelites under a king of the name of David, chap. xxxiv. 22. �Therefore will I save my flock, and they shall no more be a prey: and I will judge between cattle, and cattle. And I will set up one Shepherd over them, and be shall feed them, even my servant DAVID: he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd, and I the Lord will be their God, and my servant DAVID a Prince among them. I the Lord have spoken it. And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land; and they shall dwell safely in' the wilderness, and sleep in the woods. And I will make them, and the places round about my hill, a blessing, and I will cause the shower to come down in the season: there shall be showers of blessing. And the tree of the field shall yield her fruit; and the earth shall yield her increase; and they shall be safe in their land; and shall know that I am the Lord, &c.� In another passage this prophet says, that the two nations, Israel and Judah, shall have one king, and that this king shall be named DAVID, who shall reign for ever, chap. xxxvii. 21--28. �Say unto them, thus saith the Lord God, behold I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land. And I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel, and one king shall be king to them all, and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all. Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions; but I will save them out of all their dwelling places wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them, so shall they be my people, and I will be their God. And DAVID my servant shall be king over them, and there shall be one shepherd. They shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes and do them. And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt, and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children�s children for ever, and my servant DAVID shall be their prince forever. Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them: it shall be an everlasting covenant with them, and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them, for evermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And the heathen shall know, that I the Lord do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall, be in the midst of them for evermore.� The natural construction of this seems to be this, �that a descendant of David, called by that name, should reign over the Israelites for ever.� In the very circumstantial description which Ezekiel gives of the state of the Israelites in their own country, yet expected by the Jews, he speaks of the prince, and the portion assigned him, chap. xlv. 78. And in his description of the temple service, he moreover speaks of the gate, by which the prince is to enter into it. See chap. xlvi. 1, 2. The next, and last, passage I shall quote, is from the book of Daniel, who, in the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, had a vision of four beasts, representing the four great Empires. At the close of his account of which, he speaks of �one like the son of man� being brought into the presence of God, and receiving from the Eternal an everlasting kingdom (chap. vii. 13)--�I saw in the night visions, and behold one like the son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and come to the ancient of days; and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.� I have now gone through the prophecies which are allowed both by Jews and Christians to relate to one person whom they call the Messiah. It must be evident from all these passages, that the characteristics of this, to both parties, highly interesting personage, as described by the Hebrew prophets, are these:-- 1. That he was to be a just, beneficent, wise, and mighty monarch, raised up and upheld, and established by God, to be the means of promoting universal peace, and happiness. That Israel should be gathered to him, and established in their own land; which was to be the seat of dominion, and the centre of union, and of worship to all the people, and nations of the earth; who were to live under the government, and receive, and obey the law of this beneficent prince; and enjoy unspeakable felicities on the earth, then changed to a universal paradise. And for all this happiness, they were to worship, and glorify the true God only, and glorify the Eternal, and give thanks to Him �because He is good, and his mercy endureth forever.� 2. That this prince was to be of the line of David, and as it should seem, called by that name, and was to reign on his throne in Jerusalem. 3. That according to Micah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, (see the quotations) his manifestation, and (and the restoration of Israel) were to be contemporaneous. See Hosea, chap. iii. 4, 5. And from Jeremiah xxxiii. 15, and from Micah v. 2, it should seem also, that he was not to be born, till the time of that restoration should be nearly arrived. The prophecies concerning the Messiah of the Jews being now laid before the reader, we have only to apply these descriptions to know whether an individual be their Messiah, or not. For, (according to the principles laid down, and established in the preceding chapter) where the foregoing characteristics given by the prophets do centre and agree, that person is the Messiah foretold; but where they are not found in any one claiming that character, miracles are nothing to the purpose, and nothing is more certain, than that he has no right to be considered as such; and could he with a word turn the sun black in the face, in proof of his being the Messiah, he is, nevertheless, not to be regarded; for, whether such a person has yet appeared, can certainly only be known by considering, whether the world has ever yet seen such a person as this Messiah of the Hebrew prophets. CHAPTER IV. THE CHARACTER OF JESUS TESTED BY THOSE CHARACTERISTIC MARKS OF THE MESSIAH GIVEN BY THE PROPHETS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. Had Jesus of Nazareth come into the world merely as a person sent with a revelation from God, he would have had a right to be attended to, and tried upon that ground. And if his doctrines and precepts were consistent with reason, consistent with one another, and with prior revelations, really such, and all tending to the honour of God, and the good of men; his miracles, with these circumstances, ought to have determined men to believe in him. But since he claimed to be the Messiah of the Jews, foretold by their prophets, it is requisite, that that claim should be made out; and it is reasonable in itself, and just to him, and necessary to all those who will not take their religion upon trust, that ho should be tried, by examining whether this claim can be made out, or not. The argument from prophecy becomes necessary to establish the claim of the Gospel: and as truth is consistent with itself, so this claim must be true, or, it destroys all others. Besides, what notions of common morality must he have, who pretends to come from God, and declares (Jo. v. 37,) �that the Scriptures testify of him,� if, in fact, the Scriptures do not testify of him? What honesty, or sincerity could he have, who could �begin at Moses, and all the prophets, and expound unto his disciples in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself,� if neither Moses nor the prophets ever spake a word about him? The prophets, therefore, must decide this question, and the foundation of Christianity must be laid upon them; or else, to avoid one difficulty, Christians will be forced into such absurdities, as no man can palliate, much less can extricate himself out of. Furthermore, this claim must be made out to the satisfaction of the Gentile, as well as the Jew. For since the fundamental article of Christianity is, that Jesus is the Christ; (Jo. xx. 31) that is to say, that he is the Messiah prophecied of in the Old Testament; whoever comes into the world as such, must come as the Messiah of the Jews, because no other nation did expect, or pretend to, the promise of a Messiah. Moreover, whoever comes as this Messiah of the Jews, must at least pretend to answer the character of their Messiah plainly delivered in the writings of their prophets. And the Jews themselves receiving those writings as divine, were not bound to, neither could they consistently with their duty, receive, any, who did not answer in all points to the description therein given. Let us now test the character of Jesus of Nazareth by the description of the Messiah given by the Hebrew prophets. If his character corresponds in all respects with that given by those prophets, he is undoubtedly to be acknowledged as the king of Israel foretold; but if they do not exactly correspond, if there be the slightest incongruity, he certainly was not this Messiah. For it is evident, that some of the characteristic marks given may belong to. many illustrious individuals, but the whole can belong to, and be found in, only one person. The first characteristic of the Messiah, the reader will recollect, was, according to the prophets, that he was to be �the Prince of Peace,� in whose times righteousness was to flourish, and mankind be made happy. That he was to sit upon the throne of David judging right; and that to him, and their own land, was Israel to be gathered, and all nations serve and obey him; and worship one God, even Jehovah. But of Jesus we read, that he asserted, that his kingdom was �not of this world.� Instead of effecting peace among the nations, he said, �Think not that I am come to send peace on earth, I have come to send a sword, I have come to put division between a son, and his father; the mother, and the daughter; the daughter-in-law, and her mother-in-law.� �Think ye, (said he to his disciples) that I have come to put peace on earth, I tell you nay, but rather division.� Again, �I have come to put fire on the earth.� These are not the characteristics of the Messiah of the prophets of the Old Testament. For of him Zechariah (ch. ix.) says, that �He shall speak peace to the nations;� and of him Isaiah says, �Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.� And so far from being the author of division, sword, and fire; according to Malachi, in the times of the Messiah, �the heart of the parents was to be converted to the children, and the heart of the children to their parents.� In the times of the Messiah, wars were to cease, righteousness was to flourish, and mankind be happy. Whether this has yet taken place, the experience of almost nineteen centuries, and the present state of the world, can enable every one to determine for himself. In the times of the Messiah, Israel was to be gathered, and planted in their own land, in honour, and prosperity. But not many years after the death of Jesus of Nazareth, the Jewish nation underwent the most dreadful calamities; and to this day, so far are they from being gathered, they are scattered to the four quarters of the globe. Instead of being in honour and prosperity, their history, since his time, is one dreadful record of unparalleled sufferings, written in letters of blood by the hands of murder, rapine, and cruelty. Again; the true Messiah was, it seems, to be called DAVID, and was to reign at Jerusalem, on the throne of David; but the name �Jesus� is not the same as �David,� and Christians have assigned him a spiritual kingdom, and a throne in heaven! But was the throne of David in heaven? No! it was in Jerusalem, and no more in Heaven, than that of the Caesars. Lastly, it appears from the prophecies of Hosea, Micah, and Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, quoted in the last chapter, that the manifestation of their Messiah was to be contemporaneous with the restoration of Israel, and from the quotations adduced from the three first mentioned prophets, it should seem that his birth was not to take place many years before that glorious event. But Jesus of Nazareth was born almost two thousand years ago; and the children of Israel yet expect a deliverer. And to conclude, it was foretold by Malachi, and believed by the Jews then, and ever since, that Elias the prophet, who did not die, but was removed from the earth, should precede the coming of the Messiah, and prepare them for his reception. But the prophet Elias certainly has not yet appeared! Indeed, nothing appears to be more dissimilar than the character of the Messiah, as given by the Hebrew prophets, and that of Jesus of Nazareth. It seems scarcely credible, that a man who, though amiable and virtuous, yet lived in a low state, was poor, living upon alms, without wealth, and without power; and who (though by misfortune) died the death of a malefactor, crucified between two robbers, (a death exactly parallel with being hanged at the public gallows in the present day) should ever be taken for that mighty prince, that universal potentate, and benefactor of the human race, foretold in the splendid language of the prophets of the Old Testament. CHAPTER V. EXAMINATION OF THE ARGUMENTS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT ADDUCED IN THE NEW, TO PROVE THAT JESUS OF NAZARETH WAS THE MESSIAH. But since one would esteem it almost incredible, that the apostles could persuade men to believe Jesus to be this Messiah, unless they had at least some proof to offer to their conviction, let us next consider, and examine, the proofs adduced by the apostles and their followers, from the Old Testament for that purpose. Of the strength or weakness of the proofs for Christianity out of the Old Testament, we are well qualified to judge, as we have the Old and New Testament in our hands; the first containing what are offered as proofs of Christianity, and the latter the application of those proofs, and we should seem to have nothing more to do, but to compare the Old and New Testament together. But these proofs taken out of the Old Testament, and urged in the New, being sometimes not to be found in the Old, nor urged in the New, according to the literal and obvious sense, which they appear to bear in their supposed places in the Old, and, therefore, not proofs according to the rules of interpretation established by reason, and acted upon in interpreting every other ancient book-- almost all Christian commentators on the Bible, and advocates for the religion of the New Testament, both ancient and modern, have judged them to be applied in a secondary, or typical, or mystical, or allegorical, or enigmatical sense; that is, in a sense different from the obvious and literal sense which they bear in the Old Testament. Thus, for example, Matthew, after having given an account of the conception of Mary, and the birth of Jesus, says (ch. i.,) �All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Behold a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.� But the words as they stand in Isaiah ch. vii. 14, from whence they are taken, do, in their obvious and literal sense, relate to a young woman in the days of Ahaz, King of Judah, as will appear, considering the context. When Rezin, King of Syria, and Pekah, King of Israel, were confederates in arms together, against Ahaz, King of Judah, Isaiah the prophet was sent by God, first to comfort Ahaz and the nation, and then to assure them by a sign, that his enemies should in a little time be confounded.--But Ahaz refusing a sign at the prophet�s hand, the prophet said (see the chapter,) �The Lord shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin, or �young woman� (for the Hebrew word means both as was truly and justly asserted by the Jews in the primitive ages against the Christians, and is now acknowledged, and established beyond dispute by the best Hebrew scholars of this age,) shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land which thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.� And this sign is accordingly given Ahaz by the prophet, who, ch. viii. v. 2, 18, took two witnesses and went to the said young woman, who in due time conceived, and bare a son, after whose birth the projects of Rezin and Pekah were, it appears, soon confounded, according to the prophecy and sign given by the prophet. And the prophet himself, puts it beyond dispute, that this is the proper interpretation of the prophecy, by express words, as well as by his whole narration; for he says, �Behold I, and the children whom the Lord hath given me, are for signs, and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of Hosts, that dwelleth in mount Zion.� Isaiah viii. 19. This is the plain drift and design of the prophet, literally, obviously, and primarily understood; and thus he is understood by one of the most judicious of interpreters, the great Grotius. Indeed, to understand the prophet as having the conception of Mary, and the birth of her son Jesus from a virgin mother literally, and primarily in view, is a very great absurdity, and contrary to the very intent and design of the sign given by the prophet. For the sign being given by Isaiah to convince Ahaz that he brought a message from God to him, to assure him that the two kings should not succeed in their attempt against him, how could a virgin�s conception, and bearing a son seven hundred years afterwards, be a sign to Ahaz, that the prophet came to him, with the said message from God? And how useless was it to Ahaz, as well as absurd in itself for the prophet, to say, �Before the child, born seven hundred years hence, shall distinguish between good and evil, the land which thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings,� which would be a banter, instead of a sign. But a prophecy of the certain birth of a male child, by a particular female within a short time, seems a proper sign, as being not only what could not with certainty, be foretold, except by a person inspired, but considered as soon coming to pass, it, consequently, evidences itself to be a divine sign, and answers all the purposes of a sign. And such a sign is agreeable to God�s conduct on like occasions; witness his conduct to Gideon and Hezekiah. Jud. vi.; 2 Kings xx. This prophecy, therefore, not being fulfilled in Jesus, according to the literal and obvious sense of the words as they stand in Isaiah, it is supposed that this, like the other prophecies cited in the New Testament, is fulfilled in a secondary, or typical, or mystical sense; that is, the said prophecy, which was literally fulfilled by the birth of the son foretold by the prophet, was again fulfilled by the birth of Jesus, as being an event of the same kind, and intended to be secretly and mystically signified either by the prophet or by God, who directed the prophet�s speech. If the reader desires further satisfaction that the literal and obvious sense of this prophecy relates to a son to be born in Isaiah's time, and not to Jesus, he is referred to the commentator Grotius, and to Huetius� Demonstrat. Evang. in loc., to the ancient fathers, and to the most respectable of the modern Christian. commentators, who all allow and show, that the words of Isaiah are not applicable to the birth of Jesus in their literal sense, but only in a mystical, or figurative, or allegorical sense. Again, Matthew gives us another prophecy, which he says was fulfilled. He tells us, that Jesus was carried into Egypt; from whence he returned after the death of Herod, (Mat. ii.) �that it might be fulfilled, which was of the Lord by the prophet, saying, �out of Egypt have I called my son.�� Which, being word for word in Hosea, (ch. xi. 1) and no where else to be found in the Old Testament, are supposed to be taken from thence; where according to their obvious sense they are no prophecy at all! but relate and refer to a past action, viz., to the calling of the children of Israel out of Egypt, which will, I think, be denied by few. This passage, therefore, or as it is styled, prophecy, of Hosea, is said by learned men among Christians to be mystically, or allegorically, applied, in order to render Matthew�s application of it, just; and they say all other methods of some learned men to solve the difficulty arising from Matthew's citation of this passage, have proved unsuccessful. Again, Matthew says, (ch. ii.) �Jesus came, and dwelt at Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophet, saying, �he shall be called a Nazarene;�� but as this passage does not occur in the Old Testament at all, we are precluded from ascertaining whether it be literal, mystical, or allegorical. Jesus says of John the Baptist, (Mat. xi. 14) �This is Elias that was for to come,� wherein he is supposed to refer to these words of Malachi, (ch. iv. 4) �Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord,� which, according to their literal, and obvious sense, are a prophecy, that Elijah or Elias was to come in person (which we know from the New Testament, as well as elsewhere, was the constant expectation of the Jews.) Besides, this Elijah was to come �before the great and terrible day of the Lord,� which has not yet arrived; and, therefore, this prophecy of Malachi, referred to by the evangelist, was certainly not literally, but only mystically, fulfilled in John the Baptist. Again, Jesus (Mat. xiii.) cites the prophecy of Isaiah (Is. vi. 9,) �By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand;� and he assures us, that it was fulfilled in his time in those to whom he spake in parables, (which, by the way, he did, it is said, in order to fulfil a passage of the Psalms) though it is manifest that the prophecy of Isaiah quoted, according to its literal sense, undoubtedly relates to the obstinate Jews who lived in the time of Isaiah. In fine, these, and the many other passages cited as prophecies from the Old Testament by the authors of the New, do so plainly relate, in their obvious and primary sense to other matters than those which they are adduced to prove, that it is allowed by the most learned defenders of Christianity, that to pretend that they prove in a literal sense what they are adduced to prove, is to give up with both hands the cause of Christianity to the enemies thereof, who can so easily show in so many undoubted instances, the Old and New Testament to have no manner of connection in that respect, but to be in an irreconcilable state. These proofs from the prophets being so different from what we should expect, it behoves us to enquire what could induce Jesus and his apostles to quote the Old Testament in such a manner? The Jews shortly answer this question, by saying, that they did so, because they did not understand the meaning of the books they quoted. But it has been answered by some learned Christians, that Jesus and the apostles did not quote in the manner they did through caprice or ignorance bat according to certain methods of interpretation, which were in their times of established authority among the Jews. The rules of interpretation, which were supposed to be irrecoverably lost afterwards recovered to the world by the learned Surenhusius, professor of the Hebrew language in the illustrious school of Amsterdam. He made an ample discovery to the world of the rules by which the apostles cited the Old Testament, and argued from thence, wherein the whole mystery of the apostles applying scripture in a secondary, or typical, or allegorical sense, seems to be unfolded. I shall, therefore, state this matter from Surenhusius. He (Surenhusius) says, �that when he considered the various opinions Of the learned about the passages of the Old Testament quoted in the New, He was filled with grief, not knowing where to set his foot; and was much concerned, that what had been done with good success upon profane authors, could not be so happily performed upon the sacred.� He tells us, �that having had frequent occasions to converse with the Jews (on account of his application to Hebrew literature from his youth) who insolently reflected upon the New Testament, affirming it to be plainly corrupted, because it seldom or never agreed with the Old Testament, some of whom were so confident in this opinion, as to say, they would profess the Christian religion, if any one could reconcile the New Testament with the Old. �I was the more grieved, because, (says this honest and well meaning man) I knew not how to apply a remedy to this evil.� But the matter being of great importance, he discoursed with several learned men about it, and read the books of others, being persuaded that the authors of the books of the New Testament had written nothing but what was suited to the time wherein they lived, and that Christ and his apostles had constantly followed the method of their ancestors. After he had long revolved this hypothesis in his mind, at last he met with a Rabbi well skilled in the Talmud, the Cabbala, and the allegorical books of the Jews. This Rabbi had once embraced the Christian religion, but was again relapsed to Judaism on account of the idolatry of the Papists, yet not perfectly disbelieving the integrity of the New Testament. Surenhusius asked him, what he thought of the passages of the Old Testament quoted in the New, whether they were rightly quoted or not, and whether the Jews had any just reason to cavil at them, and at the same time proposed to him two or three passages, which had very much exercised the most learned Christian commentators. The Rabbi having admirably explained those passages, to the great surprise of Surenhusius, and confirming his explications by several places of the Talmud, and other writings of the Jewish commentators, and allegorical writers, Surenhusius asked him what would be the best method to write a treatise in order to vindicate the passages of the Old Testament quoted in the New? The Rabbi answered, that he �thought the best way of succeeding in such an undertaking would be to peruse a great part of the Talmud, and the allegorical and literal commentators; to observe their several ways of quoting and interpreting scripture, and to collect as many materials of that kind, as would be sufficient for that purpose.� Surenhusius took the hint immediately: he read such books as were recommended, observed every thing that might be subservient to his design, and made a book upon the subject. And in the third part of that book he gives us the rules so long sought after, viz., the ten ways# used, he says, by the Jewish doctors in citing scripture. And here they are:-- 1. The first rule is--�reading the words of the Hebrew bible, not according to the points placed under them, but according to other points substituted in their stead,� as is done by Peter, Acts iii. 3; by Stephen, Acts vii. 43, and by Paul, 1 Cor. xv. 54; 2 Cor. viii. 16, and Heb. iii. 10; ix. 21; xii. 6. 2. The second rule is--�changing the letters, whether those letters be of the same organ (as the Hebrew grammarians speak,) or not,� as is done by Paul, Rom. ix. 33; 1 Cor. xi. 9; Heb. viii. 9, and x. 6; and by Stephen, Acts vii. 43. 3. The third is--�changing both letters and points,� as is done by Paul, Acts xiii. 41, and 2 Cor. viii. 15. 4. The fourth is--�adding some letters, and taking away others.� 5. The fifth is--�transposing words and letters.� 6. The sixth is--�dividing one word into two.� 7. The seventh is--�adding other words to those in the text, in order to make the sense more clear, and to accommodate it to the subject they we upon.� 8. The eighth is--�changing the order of words.� 9. The ninth is--�changing the order of words, and adding other words.� 10. The tenth is--�changing the order of words, adding words, and retrenching words,� which, (says he) is a method often used by Paul. Of the application of all these rules, he gives examples taken from the New Testament. It is not necessary to make many observations upon these rules, they speak for themselves most significantly; for what is there that cannot be proved from the Old Testament, or any other book, yea, from Euclid�s Elements! or even an old almanac! by the help of �altering words and sentences; adding; retrenching; and transposing, and cutting words in two,� as is stated above by a learned and good man, and sincere Christian who found out, and brought forward, these rules, as the best means of getting the authors of the New Testament out of a difficulty, which had long shocked and grieved their best friends. CHAPTER VI. EXAMINATION OF THE MEANING OF THE PHRASE �THIS WAS DONE THAT IT MIGHT BE FULFILLED.� It may be objected from divers learned authors, who have been very sensible of the difficulties stated in the preceding chapters, and have, sensible of the difficulties stated in the preceding chapters, therefore, taken other ground than their predecessors, in order to defend themselves the better; I say, it may be objected to what I have advanced, that Christianity is not in fact grounded on the prophetical, or other, quotations made from the Old, in the New, Testament; but that those quotations being allegorically applied by the authors of the New Testament, are merely arguments ad hominem, to convince the Jews of the truth of Christianity, who allowed such a method of arguing to be valid, and are not arguments to the rest of mankind. To which I answer--That this distinction is the pure invention of those who make the objection, and not only has no foundation in the New Testament, but is utterly subverted by its express declarations; for the authors of the books of the New Testament always argue absolutely from the quotations they cite as prophecies out of the books of the Old Testament. Moses and the prophets are every where represented to be a just foundation for Christianity; and the author of the Epistle to the Romans expressly says, ch. xvi. 26, 26, �The gospel, which was kept secret since the world began, was now made manifest by the scriptures of the prophets (wherein that gospel was secretly contained) to all nations,� by the means of the preachers of the gospel who gave the secret or spiritual sense of those scriptures; for to the ancient Jews, according to them, the gospel was preached by the types of their law, and, therefore, must have been considered as truly contained in it. Besides, the authors of the books of the New Testament were convinced long before the publication of them, that the gospel was to be preached to the Gentiles as well as the Jews, to both of whom, therefore, they reasoned allegorically in their books, as Peter and others did in their sermons, though with greater success on Gentiles than on Jews; and as Paul did before Felix, when he said he took his heresy, or Christianity, from the law, and the prophets. Acts xxiv., as also he did before Agrippa. It would, therefore, seem strange, that books written to all the world by men equally concerned to convert Gentiles as well as Jews, and that discourses made expressly to Gentiles as well as to Jews, should be designed to be pertinent only to Jews, much less to a very few Jews! Indeed, I am ashamed at being thus long engaged in showing what must be self evident; and did I not fear being further tedious to my readers, I would undertake to bring together passages from the New Testament, where the meaning and intention of the writers is obvious, in such abundance, as would immediately and entirely put the hypothesis of our opponents out of countenance. These quotations from the. Old Testament are certainly urged, and spoken of as direct proofs, as absolute proofs in themselves, and not as mere proofs ad hominem to the Jews; for if these prophecies are only urged by the apostles as proofs to the Jews, and intended only as proofs founded on the mistaken meanings of the Old Testament of some Jews of their time, what sense is there in appealing upon all occasions to the prophets, and recommending the reading and search of the Old Testament for the trial and proof of what was preached? for that was to proceed on weakness itself, knowing it to be so. Certainly nothing, but a real persuasion, that the prophecies of the Old Testament were really fulfilled in Jesus, could make them every where inculcate and appeal to the fulfilling of prophecy. In order to support their hypothesis, Christians have been forced to seek evidence to prove, that the phrase--�this was done that it might be fulfilled,� so frequent in the New Testament, meant no such thing, but was only a habit the Jews had got of introducing by such phrases a handsome quotation, or allusion, from the Old Testament. But this evasion must be given up, upon two accounts. 1. Because most of the European biblical critics of the present day (the learned annotator on Michaelis� Introduction to the New Testament, Dr. Marsh, among others) frankly acknowledge it not to be tenable; and 2. Because it can be proved not to be so from the New Testament itself. For example, when John represents (Jo. xix. 28,) Jesus upon the cross saying, ��I thirst� that the scripture might be fulfilled,� doth he not plainly represent Jesus as fulfilling a prophecy which foretold that the Messiah should thirst, or say, �I thirst,� upon the cross? Nay, does he not suppose him to say so, in order to fulfil, or that he might fulfil, a prophecy? Is it not also suitable to the character of Jesus, who founded his Messiahship on the prophecies in the Old Testament, and could not but have the accomplishment of those prophecies constantly in view to fulfil, and to intend to fulfil them? And is it not unsuitable in John, in describing his master dying upon the cross, to represent him as saying things, whereby he only gave occasion to observe, that he fulfilled, i. e., accommodated a phrase! not a prophecy!! Besides, they who set up this accommodating principle of accommodation, do, in some cases, take the term fulfilled in its proper sense, and do allow it, (when convenient) to relate to a prophecy really fulfilled. But I would ask them, what rule they have to know when the apostles mean a prophecy fulfilled, and when a phrase accommodated, since they are acknowledged to use the strong expression of fulfilling in the latter case no less than in the former? In a word, unless it be granted, that the citations were intended by the authors of the New Testament, to be adduced, and applied, as prophecies fulfilled; if you do suppose them not intended to be adduced, and applied, as prophecies; then, the whole affair of Jesus being foretold as the Messiah, is reduced to an accommodation of phrases! and it will, assuredly, follow, that the citations of Jesus and his apostles out of the Old Testament, are like and no better than the work of, the Empress Eudoxia, who wrote the History of Jesus in verses put together, and borrowed out of--HOMER! or that of Proba Palconia, who did the same, in verses, and words taken out of--Virgil! In fine, one of two things must be allowed, either (which is most probable) the authors of the New Testament conceived their citations to be indeed prophecies concerning Jesus, and then they were ignorant and blundered, and, therefore; were not inspired; or, they knowingly used them as means to deceive the simple and credulous into a belief of their being testimonies sufficient to prove what they themselves knew they had no relation to;--and then they were deceivers: there is no other alternative, and each horn of the dilemma, must prove as fatal as the other. Perhaps it may be said, �It is to no purpose for you to object to the quotations or the arguments of Jesus and his apostles, for God was with them confirming their doctrine by signs following, they had from God the power of working miracles, and, consequently, their interpretations of Scripture, however strange they may appear to your minds, must be infallible, they being men inspired.� To this argument it can be justly answered, first, that the question whether Jesus be the Messiah, entirely depends, as proved before, upon his answering the characteristics given of that personage by the Jewish prophets; and all the miracles in the world could never, from the nature of the case, prove him to be so, unless his character does entirely agree with the archetype laid down by them, as had been already abundantly proved. Secondly,--That whether these miracles were really performed, or not, depends entirely upon the credibility of the authors themselves who have thus quoted! which, as shall be shown hereafter, may be disputed; and, thirdly, it could be retorted upon Protestants, that this same argument is the same in principle with the often refuted popish argumentation. The Papists pretend to derive all their new invented and absurd doctrines and practices from the scriptures by their interpretations of them; but yet, when their interpretations are attacked from scripture, they immediately fly from thence to the miracles wrought in their church, and to the visions of their holy men and saints, for the establishment of their interpretations, by which they support those very doctrines and practices. And particularly they endeavour to prove thus the doctrine of transubstantiation, from the numerous miracles affirmed to have been wrought in its behalf, which reasoning Protestant Christians assert to be an argument absurd and inconclusive, therefore, they should not use it themselves. We allow, that if these interpretations of the sense of the Old Testament had been in existence before the Christian era, it might be something. But we beg leave to remind them, that it is certain, that these interpretations were not published till after the events to which they are referred took place, which is a circumstance of obvious significancy. In fine, to this argument I would answer, as in Cicero (de Natura Deor. Ed. Dav. p. 209) Cotta did to Balbus--�rumoribus mecum pugnas, ego autem a te roitones requiro.� CHAPTER VII. EXAMINATION OF THE ARGUMENTS ALLEGED FROM THE HEBREW PROPHETS, TO PBOVE THAT JESUS WAS THE MESSIAH. But it may be asked, how it was possible, that wise and good men could have been led to embrace the religion of the New Testament, if there were not in the Old Testament some prophecies which might be conceived by them to supply, at least, plausible arguments to prove that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah? Are there no other passages in the prophets besides those quoted in the New Testament, and are there not a few passages quoted in the New Testament, which appear more to the purpose than those we have been considering? To this I candidly answer that there are, and this chapter will be devoted to the consideration of them. Two of these prophecies, one from Genesis, and the other from Daniel, are thought by the advocates of Christianity, (because they conceive them to point out and to limit the time of the coming of the Messiah,) to be stronger in their favour than any of those quoted in die New Testament. If so, it is a very singular circumstance, that the inspired authors of the New Testament did not make use of them, instead of others not so much to the purpose. This circumstance of itself should teach us to examine the prophecies in question with caution, and also with candour, since many worthy and religious men have thought them sufficient to prove that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. These prophecies I shall reserve last for consideration, and shall now begin with the others usually adduced, taking them up pretty much in the order in which they stand in the Old Testament. The first passage is taken from Deut. xviii. 15, �The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, like unto me, unto him ye shall hearken. According to all that thou desiredst of the Lord thy God in Horeb, in the day of the assembly, saying. Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see his great fire any more, that I die not. And the Lord said unto me, they have well spoken that which they have spoken. I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and I will put my words into his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my, words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.� This passage is pertinaciously and solely applied to Jesus, by many Christian writers, because it is so applied by Peter in the 2 chap. of Acts, in his sermon to the Jews, just after he had received the full inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and of course must be considered as infallible. Nevertheless, these words of Moses are supposed by many learned men, both Jews and Christians, to be spoken of Joshua, whom Moses himself afterwards, at the command and appointment of God, declared to be his successor, and who was endowed with the spirit which was upon Moses, (see Deut. xxxi. 33, xxxiv. 17,) and to whom the Jews then promised to hearken, and pay obedience to, as they had done before to Moses. But others understand them to be a promise of a succession of prophets, to whom the Jews might upon all occasions have recourse; and one or the other of these seems to be the certain meaning of the place. From this consideration, that from the context it appears Moses was giving the Jews directions of immediate use; and, therefore, in promising a prophet to them, to whom they should hearken, he seems to intend an immediate prophet who might be of use to the Jews, and answer their common exigencies, and not a prophet two thousand years to come. But I take the words to promise a succession of prophets, and for that sense wherein Grotius and Le Clerc, and most of the Jews, take them. I shall give my reasons, for this, and show that they do not necessarily refer to Jesus Christ. Moses, in the verses preceding this prophecy in the same chapter, (Deut. xviii. 9--14) tells the Israelites from God, that �when they came into Canaan, they should not learn to do after, the abominations of the people thereof; and, particularly, that there should not be found among them any one that useth divination, or an observer of times, &c., or a consulter with familiar spirits, &c. For all, says he, �that do these things are an abomination to the Lord; and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive these people out from before thee. For these nations which thou shalt possess hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners. But as for thee, the Lord thy God hath not suffered thee to do so.� Then follow the words about the prophet, �The Lord thy God will raise unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee of thy brethren like unto me, unto him ye shall hearken.� All which is as much as to say, �When you come into Canaan, do not hearten to a diviner, &c., as the Canaanites do, for the Lord will give you a prophet of your own brethren inspired like me, to guide any instruct you, to whom ye shall hearken.� Or rather, �Do not hearken to diviners, &c., but to prophets, who shall be raised up among you.� Now that the words cited must relate to a succession of prophets to begin upon the Israelites taking possession of the land of Canaan, is manifest; because, the raising up of a prophet, to whom they were to hearken, is the reason given why they should not hearken to a diviner, &c., when they came to that land; which reason could have no force unless they were to have, 1st,--an immediate prophet in Canaan; for what sense is there, or would there be, in saying, �Don�t hearken to such diviners as are in Canaan, when you come there, for you shall have a prophet of your own, to whom ye shall hearken two thousand years after you come there!� Secondly,--As the context shows that the prophet to be raised up, was an immediate prophet, so it also shows, that the singular number here stands for the plural, according to the frequent custom of the Hebrew language, as is shown by Le Clerc and Stillingfleet, in loco; for one single prophet to be raised up immediately, who might soon die, could not be a reason why Jews of succeeding generations should not harken to diviners in Canaan. Finally,--The words of God by Moses, which follow the promise of a prophet, evidently show that by that promise prophets were intended, in laying-down a rule for the test or trial of the prophets before mentioned, in such a manner as implies, that that rule was to be applied to all prophets pretending to come from him. See the words in Deut. xviii., 19--22. I shall conclude this explication, by adducing, in confirmation of it, the paraphrase of the words given in the Targum of Jonathan. �The nations you are about to possess, (says the Jewish paraphrast) hearken to jugglers and diviners; but you shall not be like them; for your priests shall enquire by Urim and Thummim, and the Lord your God shall give you a true prophet.� And this explication is the one adopted by Origen,--[Contra Celsum, p. 28.] As to the difficulty that is raised against this explication from the words at the end of Deuteronomy--�that there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses whom the Lord knew face to face. In all the signs and wonders which the Lord sent him to do,� &c.-- it is nothing at all. For every one perceives, that the word �like� may be, and frequently is, used in scripture, and in common language, to signify, similarity in some, though not in every, particular; and every prophet, who speaks by God�s direction, is a prophet �like unto Moses,� who did the same, though he be not like, or equal to, him �in doing signs and wonders,� which is all that is affirmed in the last chapter of Deuteronomy. And, finally, there is nothing to limit this prophecy to Jesus of Nazareth, if we allowed (what we reject) the Christian interpretation; since God might to-morrow, if such were his will, raise up a prophet like unto Moses in every respect, which Jesus certainly was not; therefore, it cannot be applied and restrained to the purpose for which it is quoted by Peter. There is in the same sermon, in the 2 chap. of Acts, another passage quoted by Peter from the Psalms, and applied by him to prove the resurrection of Jesus, and on which he lays very great stress, which after all seems to be nothing to the purpose. Peter says, �Him (i. e., Jesus) God hath raised up, having loosed the pains [or bands] of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.� And why? �For [because] David speaketh concerning him, � I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved. Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope. Because thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, [the place of departed Spirits] nor suffer thy holy one to see corruption, thou hast made known to me the ways of life; thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance.� Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit upon his throne. He, seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in Hades, neither did his flesh see corruption.� How imposing is this argument! How plausible it appears! And yet it is irrelevant, as Dr. Priestly frankly confesses, who tries to save the credit of the apostle by the convenient principle of accommodation! The whole force of Peter�s reasoning depends upon the word �corruption.� David did see corruption; therefore, he could not mean himself, but �being a prophet,� &c., he meant Jesus Christ. Now, the whole of Peter�s argument is grounded upon two mistakes; for, 1st, the Hebrew word translated �corruption,� here signifies �destruction, perdition;� and in the next place, instead of being �thy holy One,� in the singular, it is in the Hebrew �thy saints,� in general. The passage is quoted from the 16th Psalm; and I will give a literal translation of it from the original, which will make the propriety or impropriety of Peter�s quotation perfectly obvious. The contents and import of the Psalm, according to the English version, are as follow; �David, in distrust of his merits, and hatred of idolatry, fleeth to God for preservation, He showeth the hope of his calling, of the resurrection, and of life everlasting.� And the passage in question, according to the original, reads thus:--�I have set the Lord always before me: Because he is on my right hand, I shall not be moved: Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory [i. e., tongue] rejoiceth: My flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt thou suffer thy saints to see destruction. Thou wilt show me the path of life: In thy presence is fullness of joy, and at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.� That is--�Because I have ever trusted in thee, and experienced thy constant protection, therefore I will not fear death; because thou wilt not for over leave my soul in the place of departed spirits, nor suffer thy saints to perish from existence. Thou wilt raise me from the dead, and make me happy for ever in thy presence.�# In the 4th chap. of the Acts, the apostles are represented as praying to God, and referring in their prayer to the 2d Psalm �why did the heathen rage," &c., as being a prophecy of the opposition of the Jews to Jesus; with how much justice may be seen from these circumstances. 1. That �the nations,� as it is in the original, did not assemble together to crucify Jesus, as this was done by a few soldiers. 2. The �kings of the earth� had no hand in it, for they knew nothing about it. And 3rdly, Those who were concerned did by no means �form vain designs,� since they effected their cruel purposes. And lastly, From that time to the present, God has not set Jesus as his king upon the �holy hill of Sion,� as the Psalm imports, nor given him �the nations for his inheritance, nor the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession.� The next prophecy usually adduced to prove that Jesus is the Messiah, is The passage quoted from Micah v. 2, in the 2d chapter of Mat.--�But from Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the chiefs of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me, that is, to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from old, from the days of hidden ages.� This passage probably refers to the Messiah, but by no means signifies that this Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, as asserted by Matthew; but only, that he was to be derived from Bethlehem, the city of Jesse, the father of David of famous memory, whose family was venerable for its antiquity, � being of the days of hidden ages.� And this interpretation is known, and acknowledged, by Hebrew scholars. But in order to cut short the dispute, w will permit the passage to be interpreted as signifying that Bethlehem was to be the birth place of the Messiah. What then? Will a man�s being born in Bethlehem be sufficient to make him to be the Messiah foretold by the Hebrew prophets? Surely it has been made plain in the beginning of this work, that many more characteristic marks than this must meet in one person in order to constitute him the Messiah described by them! In Zechariah ix. 9, it is written, �Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Sion, Shout, O Daughter of Jerusalem! Behold thy king cometh unto thee, the righteous one, and saved, or preserved [according to the Hebrew] lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass.� This has been applied by the evangelists to Jesus, who rode upon an ass into Jerusalem. But in the first place, it is to be observed, that there seems to have been a blunder in this transaction; for according to the Hebrew idiom of the passage quoted above, the personage there spoken of, was to ride upon �an ass� colt;� whereas, the apostles, in order to be sure of fulfilling the prophecy, represent Jesus as riding upon an ass, and the colt, too! "They spread their garments upon them, and set him upon them."[See the evangelists in loc.] In the next place, a man may ride into Jerusalem upon an ass, without being thus necessarily demonstrated to be the Messiah. And unless, as said before, every tittle of the marks given by the prophets to designate their Messiah, be found in Jesus, and in any other claiming to be that Messiah his being born in Bethlehem, and riding upon an ass into Jerusalem, will by no means prove him to be so. Besides, those who will take the trouble to look at the context in Zechariah, will find, that the event spoken of in the quotation, is spoken of as contemporaneous with the restoration Israel, and the establishment of peace and happiness, which seems to cut up by the roots the interpretation of the evangelists. And to conclude the argument,--Jesus being born in Bethlehem, and riding into Jerusalem, allowing it to be true, would not, we think, frustrate these prophecies of a future fulfillment--for no one can disprove, that if so be the will of God, such a person as the Messiah is described to be, might be born in Bethlehem to-morrow, and ride in triumph into Jerusalem, twenty years afterwards. The next passage which has been offered, as a prophecy of Jesus, is to be found in the 12th chap. of Zech. v. 10, and part of it has been misquoted by John. �And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplications, and they shall look on me whom they have pierced.� So it stands in the English version; but, before I state what it ought to be, I would observe, that before the evangelist, (who in his account of the crucifixion applies this passage as referring to Jesus� being pierced with a spear) could make this passage fit his purpose, he had to substitute the word �him� for �me,� as it is in the Hebrew; confirmed by, I believe, all the versions, ancient and modern, without exception. Yet, with this change, it will by no means answer his purpose; for the Hebrew word here translated �pierced,� in this place signifies �blasphemed,� or �insulted,� as it is understood by Grotius, who confirms this rendering from the Hebrew of Levit. xxiv. 11, where in this passage �the Israelitish woman's son blasphemed the name of the Lord.� The Hebrew word translated �blasphemed� is from the same root with the Hebrew word translated �pierced� in the passage in Zechariah quoted above. So that the passage ought to be translated thus:--�I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplications, and they shall look towards me whom they have blasphemed.� [To �look towards God� is a phrase frequently met with, and well understood.] Now, to enable us to understand more perfectly this passage, let us consider the context, where we shall find that it states, that there was to be a war in Judea, and a siege of Jerusalem, and then a deliverance of the Jews, by the destruction of all the nations, that should come up at that time, against Jerusalem. Immediately after which matters, follows the prophecy under consideration--�I will pour upon the house of David,� &c. Now, from these things thus laid together, I crave leave to argue in the words of Dr. Sykes [Essay, &c., p. 268]--�Did any one circumstance of all this happen to the Jews about the time of the death of Jesus? Or rather, was not every thing the reverse of what Zechariah says; and instead of all nations being destroyed that came about Jerusalem, Jerusalem itself was destroyed: instead of a spirit of grace and supplications, the Jews have had their hearts hardened against the Christ; instead of mourning for him whom they have pierced, they condemn him and his followers even until this day.� But it is tiresome thus to waste time in proving that parts and ends of verses, disjointed from their connexion, and even the words quoted, some of them changed and some transposed, (though even done according to the rules given by the venerable Surenhusius) prove nothing. We must, therefore, devote the remainder of this long chapter to the consideration of the three famous prophecies, on which Christians have not hesitated, with triumphing confidence, to rest the issue of their cause. These are the prophecy of Shiloh, Gen. 49; the 53d ch. of Isaiah; and Daniel�s prophecy of the �seventy weeks.� I will consider them in order, and thus wind up the chapter. I have some where read in a catechism, the following question and answer:--Q. �How can you confound the Jews, and prove, from prophecy, that the Messiah is already come?� A. �From these two prophecies--�The sceptre shall not depart from Judah,� &c.--Gen. xlix.; and this--�Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people,�� &c.--Dan. ix. 24. But, notwithstanding these overwhelming proofs, the stubborn Jews refuse to be confounded! on the contrary, they in fact laugh at Christians for being so easily imposed upon. The prophecy concerning Shiloh, the Jews acknowledge, refers to their Messiah. But they do not allow that it defines or limits the time of his coming. And that it in fact does not, will be perfectly, evident to all who will look at the place in the Hebrew bible, which they will find pointed to read not--�The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, and a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come,� &c.; but thus--�The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, for ever; for Shiloh shall come, and to him shall the gathering of the people be.� So that the prophecy does not intimate that the Messiah should come before the sceptre be departed from Judah; but that it should not depart for ever, but shall be restored when Shiloh comes. This is the plain and obvious sense of the prophecy; and, moreover, is the only one that is consistent with historical fact. For, in truth, the sceptre had departed from Judah several hundred years before Jesus of Nazareth was born. For from the time of the Babylonish captivity �Judah� has never been free, but in subjection to the Persians, the Syrians, the Romans, and all the world. If my readers desire further satisfaction with regard to this interpretation of this famous prophecy, I refer them to the dispute upon this subject between the celebrated Rittangelius, and a learned Jew, (preserved in Wagenseils� �Tela Ignea,�) where he will find Rittangelius first amicably inviting the Hebrew to discuss the point, who does so most ably and respectfully toward his Christian antagonist, and unanswerably establishes the interpretation above stated, by the laws of the Hebrew language, by the ancient interpretation of the Targum, by venerable tradition, and by appealing to history. Rittangelius begins his defence by shuffling, an ends by getting into a passion, and calling names; which his opponent, who is cool, because confident of being able to establish his argument, answers by notifying to Rittangelius his compassion and contempt. The next prophecy proposed to be considered, is the celebrated prophecy of Isaiah, consisting of part of the 52nd, and the whole of the 53rd, chapter. It is the only prophecy which Paley thinks worth bringing forward in his elaborate defence; and it must be confessed, that if this prophecy relates to the Messiah, it is by far the most plausible of any that are brought forward in favour of Jesus Christ. It merits, therefore, a thorough discussion, and I shall endeavour that it shall be a candid one. This prophecy is quoted by Jesus himself in Luke xxii. 39, and by Philip, when he converted the Eunuch, (Acts 8,) for �beginning at this prophecy, he preached unto him Jesus.� It will not be necessary to cite the passage at length, it being one perfectly familiar to every Christian. I will, then, before I consider it, first premise, that since it has been heretofore abundantly made evident, that the Messiah of the Old Testament was not to suffer, and die, but to live and reign, it is according to the rules of sound criticism, and I think sound theology too, to interpret this solitary passage, so that it may not contradict very many others of a directly contrary import. Now, if this passage can relate only to the Messiah, it will throw into utter confusion the whole scheme of the prophetical scriptures. But if it can be made to appear, that it does not necessarily relate to him; if it can, consistently with the context, be otherwise applied, the whole difficulty vanishes. Now, the authors of the New Testament have applied this prophecy to the Messiah, and to Jesus as the Messiah; and for doing so, they have been accused of misapplication of it-from the earliest times; since we know from Origen, that the Jews of his time derided the Christians for relying upon this prophecy; alleging that it related to their own nation, and was a prophecy of their suffering and persecuted state, and of their ultimate emancipation and happiness. And this interpretation of the prophecy the learned Vitringa, in his commentary upon Is. in loc., allows to be the most respectable he had met with among the Jews, and, according to him, �to be by no means dispised.� In order that the fitness or unfitness of this application of the prophecy may be made apparent, and evident, we will new lay before the reader this famous prophecy, part by part, each part accompanied by the Jewish interpretation. Isaiah lii. 13, �Behold, my servant shall prosper, he shall be exalted, and extolled, and be very high.� Interpretation--My servant Israel, though he be in great affliction for a time, yet hereafter shall be released from captivity, and be honoured and raised to elevation very high among the nations of the earth. [That the Jewish nation is spoken of, in the singular number and under the title of God�s servant frequently in the Old Testament, is well known, and will be here made certain by a few examples. Isaiah xli. (the chapter preceding the prophecy,) �But thou Israel my servant, thou, Jacob, whom I have chosen,� presently afterwards, �saying to thee, thou art my servant.� Again, chapter xliv.-- �Now, therefore, hear Jacob my servant,� and so frequently in the same chapter. See also ch. xlv., and Jer. ch. xxx., and Ps. cxxxvi., and Isaiah throughout, for similar examples.] �And many were astonished at thee (his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men.)� That is--And many were astonished at thee, on account of thy abject state, and miserable condition, being squalid with misery, and suffering more than any men. �So shall he sprinkle many nations, the kings shall shut their mouths at him; for that which had not been told them, shall they see, and that which they had not heard, shall they consider.� Interpretation--As the Gentiles wondered at their abject state, so as to make them a proverb of reproach, so shall they admire at their wonderful change of circumstances, from the depth of degradation to the height of prosperity and honour. So that they shall lay their hands upon their mouths, which had beforetime reproached them, when they shall see their felicity to be so far beyond what had been told them, and they shall attentively consider it, and they shall say to each other-- �Who hath believed our report, and the arm of the Lord to whom was it revealed? For he grew up [Hebrew, not �he shall grow up,� as in the English version] before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry soil; he had no form nor comeliness; and when we saw him, there was no beauty that we should desire him.� The sense is--The Gentiles shall say to each other in wonder, �Who believed what we heard concerning them? And to whom was the interest the Lord took in them made known? For it was a dispised people, feeble, and wretched, like a tender plant springing up out of a thirsty soil. Their appearance was abject, and there was nothing attractive in their manners.� �He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid, as it were, our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.� That is--They were despised, and held in abhorrence: they were men of sorrow, and familiar with suffering. We looked upon them with dislike: we hid our faces from them, and esteemed them not. �Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.� Interpretation--Surely their sufferings are as great as if they had borne the sins of the whole world; or, they are, nevertheless, the means appointed to remove the sufferings of an afflicted world, for God hath connected universal happiness with their prosperity; and the end of their sufferings, is the beginning of our joys. �Yet did we esteem him smitten of God, and afflicted.� Interpretation--Nevertheless, we considered them as a God- abandoned race, and devoted to wretchedness by him, for having crucified their king. �But he was wounded for [or by] our transgressions, he was bruised [for or by] our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and through his stripes we are healed.� That is--But, instead of being the victims of God�s wrath, they were wounded through our cruelty, they were bruised by our iniquitous treatment, we being suffered to do so, to chastise them for their sins, and to prove their obedience; and this chastisement is that by which our peace is to be effected; for their chastisement and probation being finished. God will by them impart and diffuse peace and happiness. �All we like sheep have gone astray, we, have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath caused to meet upon him the iniquity of us all.� But it is we who have sinned more than they: we have all gone astray in our ignorance, being without the knowledge of God, or of his law. Yet the Lord hath permitted us to make them the subjects of our oppressive iniquity. �He was oppressed, [or �exposed to pecuniary exactions�] and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he was brought as a lamb to the slaughter; and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened, not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation, [�into his manner of life, who stoopeth to look?� according to the Hebrew] for he was cut off out of the land of the living; for, [or by] the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked; but with the rich were his deaths, [or tomb] because he had done no violence, neither was deceit in his mouth.� Interpretation--How passive and unresisting were they, when oppressed!--They were afflicted, and they complained not; when through false accusations, and mistaken cruelty they were plundered, and condemned to die, they went like a Iamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so they opened not their mouth. They were taken from the dungeon to be slain, they were wantonly massacred, and every man was their foe; and the cause of the sufferers who condescended to examine; for by the thoughtless crimes of my people, they suffered. Yet notwithstanding their graves were appointed with the wicked; yet they were rich in their deaths. This did God grant them, because they had not done iniquity. Rabbi Isaac, author of the famous Munimen Fidei#, renders the original--�on account of impieties was he given to his sepulchre, and on account of his riches was his death, because he did no violence, neither was deceit in his mouth�--which he interprets thus:--We (the former speakers) raised against them false accusations of impiety, on account of their religion, and refusing to worship our idols; but their riches was the real cause why we put them to death. Nevertheless, they used no violence in opposition to our oppressions, neither would they forsake their religion, and deceitfully assent to ours in hypocrisy.* �Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him: he hath put him to grief. When thou shalt make his soul a propitiation for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hands.� [This proves that this prophecy cannot refer to any individual, but may refer to the Jewish nation, because one individual cannot be put to death, and yet �see his seed,� and �prolong his days.�] �After [or on account of] the travail of his soul, seeing he shall be satisfied, by his knowledge shall my righteous servant make many righteous [or show them righteousness,] and he shall bear the burden of their iniquities.� That is--After and for their sufferings, they shall be abundantly rewarded; by their superior knowledge of religious truth, shall they make many wise, �for many nations shall go, and say, come ye, and let us ascend to the mount of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways�--Mic. iv. ch. �Wherefore, I will give him a portion with the great, and with the mighty shall he divide the spoil, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors, and himself bear the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors.� Interpretation--Therefore, their reward shall be exceeding great, because for the sake of their duty, they willingly exposed themselves to death, and were accounted as transgressors, and bore the cruel afflictions inflicted by many, and made intercession for them who afflicted them. Such is the explication given by the Jews of this prophecy. I have made no important alterations of the common English translation; except, that in some passages, I have made it more conformable to the original by substituting a verb in the past tense, instead of leaving it in the future, as in the English version. Those translators have taken certain liberties in this respect to make this prophecy (and several others) more accordant to their own views, which are not supported by the Hebrew: many of these expressions, however, we have left unaltered, as they are quite harmless. But if any of our readers desire further information with regard to the propriety of this interpretation of this prophecy of Isaiah, we refer him to the �Munimen Fidei,� contained in Wagenseil's �Tela Ignea,� where he will find it amply illustrated, and defended. Here, in this work, we shall content ourselves with proving, that this prophecy can by no means relate to Jesus, from these circumstances:--1. Jesus certainly was not exalted and magnified, and made very great upon earth, which, as has been shown, was to be the scene of the exaltation of the Old Testament Messiah; but was put to a cruel and disgraceful death. 2. He was not oppressed by pecuniary exactions, as is said of the subject of this prophecy. 3. He was never taken from prison to die, for he was never in one. 4. He did not �see his seed,� nor �prolong his days,� since he died childless; and we will not permit the word �seed� to be spiritualized on this occasion, for the word �seed� in the Old Testament, means nothing else, than literally �children,� which it is not pretended he ever had; and how could he �prolong his days,� when he was cut off in his 33d year. 5. Besides, who were �the strong and mighty,� with whom he divided the spoil? Were they the twelve fishermen of Galilee? and what was the spoil divided? In a word, the literal application of this prophecy to Jesus is now given up by the most learned Hebrew scholars, who allow, that the literal sense of the original can never be understood of him. [See Priestley�s notes on the scriptures, in loco; and the context before and after.] We have now come to the last subject proposed to be considered in this chapter, viz., Daniel�s prophecy of the seventy weeks, the �instar omnium� of the prophetical proofs of Christianity, and which was for ages held up to the view of �the unbelieving race,� as cutting off beyond doubt their �hope of Israel� from ever appearing, since the time so distinctly foretold had elapsed. But such is the instability of human opinions, that it was at length suspected, and at last ascertained-by the learned, that �the stubborn Israelites� had some reason for denying that prophecy, any voice in the affair. During many years, one learned man after another, had amused himself with destroying the system of his predecessor, and replacing it with his own, not a whit better, but tending to the same end, viz., to make the prophecy of the seventy weeks tally and fit with the event of the crucifixion. At length Marsham, a learned Englishman, declared, and demonstrated, that his predecessors, in this enquiry, had been grossly mistaken, for that the prophecy in all its parts was totally irrelevant and irreconcileable with the time of the crucifixion. The appearance of his book put all the theologians of that age in an uproar! But many learned Christians in the last, and present, century, now freely acknowledge, that Daniel is not on their side, but as much a Jew as his brethren. This celebrated prophecy, literally translated from the original, is as follows:--Dan. ix. 24, &c.--�Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy, [i. e., the sanctum sanctorum, or Holy of Holies.] Know, therefore, and understand, that from the going forth of the word to restore and build Jerusalem, unto the anointed prince, shall be seven weeks; and (in) threescore and two weeks, the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall the anointed (one) be cut off, and be without a successor; (Heb. �and not, or none to him�) and the city and the sanctuary shall be destroyed# by the people of the prince that shall come; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week, and half the week (i. e., in the midst of the week) he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation and that (is) determined, be poured upon the desolate?� This is the prophecy on which such stress has been laid, as pointing out the precise time of the coming of the Messiah; and I shall fully demonstrate that it hath not the most distant reference to that event. And for the better explanation of the prophecy, it is proper that we attend a little to the context. *In the preceding chapter of Daniel it is said, that when Daniel was informed of the vision of the two thousand and three hundred days, he sought for the meaning; but not rightly understanding it, he judged, that that great number was a contradiction to the word of God as delivered by Jeremiah, concerning the redemption at the end of seventy years; (Jer. xxv. 11, 12, and ch. xxix. 10) and from thence he concluded that the captivity was prolonged on account of the sins of the nation. This doubt arose from his not understanding the prophecy, and, therefore, the angel said unto him,--�I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding.� And he proceeds to inform him, that as soon as he began to pray, and God saw, his perplexity, the royal command went forth from him, that he should come to Daniel to make him understand the truth of those matters, that were to come to pass in future time. And as the angel Gabriel had explained to him the vision from whence his doubt arose, it was incumbent on him to perfect the explanation; and that is what is meant by the expression �to show,� i. e., as I began the explanation, the commandment was, that I should finish it. Before I proceed to give the Jewish explanation of the prophecy, it is proper to show in what manner the answer of the angel in it, agreed to Daniel�s question, and also the reason of his using the term weeks, and not years, or times, as in the other visions. It appears, that Daniel, from the words of Jeremiah, perceived that God. would visit all the nations, and punish them for their sins, as may be observed from the following words:--�Thus saith the Lord God of Israel unto me, Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations to whom I send thee, to drink it�-- Jer, xxv. 15. He then mentions first Jerusalem, afterwards the king of Egypt, Tyre, Sidon, and all the Isles beyond the sea, and many others; and at last the king of Sheshak, or Babylon. He also further perceived, that the visitation of each nation would be at the end of seventy years, as Isaiah observes of Tyre: �And it shall come to pass in that day, that Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years.� Isaiah xxiii. 15, the same of Babylon: �And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, I will punish the King of Babylon.� Jer. xxv. 12, And as it is observed in the next verse: �All that is written in this book which Jeremiah hath prophecied, against all the nations.� From whence it appears, that as the visitation of Babylon was to be seventy years, so was that of the other nations to be; for so had the wisdom of God decreed to wait according to this number. For which reason, and because the prophets say that the restoration of Israel is to be contemporaneous with the destruction of their enemies, Daniel appears to have. judged, that the sins of his nation would be done away by the seventy years of the captivity of Babylon; and, therefore, the angel informed him of his error, by telling him, that this was not to be the case with his nation, for that their wickedness was come up before God, and their sin was very grievous; and that, therefore, their sins would not be atoned for by seventy years, as in the case of the rest of the nations, to whom he allowed seventy years to see if they would repent; and, if not, then he would punish them. But as for Israel, he would not only wait seventy years, but seven times seventy years; (for thus it is literally, in the Hebrew, the words translated �seventy weeks,� are, literally, �seventy sevens�) after which, if they had not repented and reformed, their kingdom should be cut off, and they return into captivity, to finish an atonement for their transgressions. Hence the cause of Daniel's question is evident; and the propriety of the angel�s answer to the question, is manifest; as also the expression of weeks or sevens. These seventy weeks are, without doubt, four hundred and ninety years, the time elapsed from the destruction of the first temple, till the destruction of the second. This, it seems, was the more necessary for the angel to inform him of; because Daniel judged, that after their return from Babylon, by means of that visitation only, all their sins would be done away. For which reason the angel showed him that it would not be so, [for the return from Babylon was not a perfect redemption, because there was not a general collection of all that were in captivity, even all the tribes, save only a few of Judah and Benjamin, and those not the most respectable. And after their return, they were not free, but were under the dominion of the Persians, Greeks and Romans. And although they, at one time, threw off their yoke, and had kings of the Asmonean and Herodean families, yet was there no king among them of the seed of David, neither had they the Shechinah, nor the Urim and Thummim, all which is a manifestation that it was not a perfect redemption, but only a visitation, with which God was pleased to visit them; so that they were allowed to build a temple to the Lord, by the permission of Cyrus, and according to the measure given by him. This was that they might be the better enabled to do the works of repentance during the time allowed, and thus �make atonement, and thus finish the transgression, and make an end of sins, and make reconciliation for iniquity;� and thus, at the end of the time assigned, even �seventy weeks,� they would bring in �everlasting righteousness,� i.e., universal virtue and felicity, throughout the world, when the Eternal should be known, worshipped, and obeyed by all mankind. But if they did not repent, and amend, if they did evil, as their fathers, then their kingdom was to be cut off at the expiration of the seventy weeks; which, in fact, took place.] After the angel had thus expressed himself in general terms, he descended to particulars; and laid down three propositions (if I may be allowed the term,) or periods. First. �Know, therefore, and understand, (that) from the going forth of the word to restore and build Jerusalem, unto the anointed prince, (shall be) seven weeks.� That is, it shall be seven weeks or forty nine years from the destruction of the first temple, to Cyrus, �the anointed prince,� who shall give leave to build the second. [With regard to the import of the phrase �the going forth of the word,� I refer the reader to Levi's Letters to Priestley, and shall here only concern myself with settling the meaning of the expression of �the anointed prince.�] Many Christians have objected to the term Messiah, or anointed, being applied, as in our interpretation to Cyrus a heathen prince; and they apply it themselves to Jesus of Nazareth. But that the term, or appellation, Messiah, can be applied to Cyrus, is evident; since we find it so applied by God himself in the xlv. ch. of Isaiah. �Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus. 2. It is a singular fact, that the appellation �Messiah� is never applied to the expected deliverer of the Israelites in the whole bible, except, perhaps, in ii. Psalm. It is an appellation indifferently applied to kings, and priests, and prophets; to all who were anointed, as an induction into their office, and has nothing in it peculiar and exclusive; but the application of it to the expected deliverer of Israel, originated in and from the Targums. 3. In order to make this prophecy, and this phrase, �Messiah the prince,� or �the anointed prince,� apply to Jesus of Nazareth, Christians connect, and join together, this first member of the prophecy with the second, in open defiance of the original Hebrew; and after all, they can reap no benefit from this manoeuvre; for the term �Messiah Nagid,� or �the anointed prince,� can never apply to Jesus, in this place, at any rate; because he certainly was no prince or �Nagid,� a word which in the Hebrew bible always, without exception, denotes a prince, or ruler, one invested with temporal authority, or supreme command. Now, as it is allowed on all hands, that Jesus had no such temporal power, as a prince, or ruler; it, consequently, follows, that he can by no means be the �anointed prince� mentioned in the prophecy. Second Period. �And (in) threescore and two weeks, the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times,� Here the angel gave him to understand, that after the seven weeks before mentioned, there would come a time in which the building would be hindered, (and which was on account of the letter written by Rheum and Shimshai to Artaxerxes, who, in consequence thereof, made the building to cease-See Ezra and Nehemiah) till the second year of Darius, who gave leave to finish the building: which continued till the destruction by the Romans, sixty-two weeks, beside the last week, at the beginning of which, the Romans came, and warred against them, and at length entirely destroyed the cities of Judah, Jerusalem, and the temple. For, from the time that Cyrus first gave leave to build the temple, till its completion, was twenty-one years; and its duration, four hundred and twenty; in the whole, sixty-three weeks, or four hundred and forty one years. But the angel made his division at sixty-two weeks, as he afterwards described what was to come to pass in the last week (and with reason, for the horrible Jewish war lasted seven years!) And by the words, �in troublous times,� he informed Daniel, that during the building of the temple, they would have continual trouble and alarms from their enemies, as is mentioned in Ezra and Nehemiah, where we find, that while some worked, the others held the shield and spear. And even after finishing it, they were almost continually in trouble, and persecuted, as is evident from the books of Maccabees, and from Josephus. Third Period. �And after threescore and two weeks shall the anointed be cut off, and have no successor--[Heb. �and not, or, none, to him�]--and the city and the sanctuary shall be destroyed by the people of the prince that shall come; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.� That is, and after that period, shall the High Priest (or �the anointed one�) be cut off--[The High Priest is called �Messiah,� witness Lev. iv. 3--�If the Messiah Priest, (or anointed priest) doth sin,� &c.]--and have no successor; and the city and the temple shall be destroyed by Titus and the Romans, and until the end of the war, your country shall be swept with the besom of destruction. The angel finishes the prophecy with these words:--�And he (the prince that shall come) shall strengthen the covenant with many, for one week. And in the midst of the week (i. e., the seventieth and last week,) he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease.� This prediction was fully accomplished; for 1. Titus, �the prince that should come,� was continually offering peace to the Jews, and tried to �strengthen the covenant�--i. e., their old treaties made with the Romans, and in fact did bring over many. 2. On account of the distress of the siege, the daily sacrifice did in fact cease to be offered in the temple some time before its destruction; and the angel further observes, that all this was to come upon them for their sins, �for the overspreading of abominations, it should be made desolate.� This is what appears to be a plain and fair explication of this prophecy; but since Christians, seeing mention made in it of a Messiah to be cut off, have eagerly endeavoured to press it into their service, it remains for me to show, that it is impossible to make this prophecy refer to �the cutting off� of Jesus. The difficulty that learned Christians have met with, in their attempts to do this, will be easily conceived by any person, when he knows, that more than a dozen different hypotheses have been framed by them for that purpose; but that they have lost their labour, will be obvious from this single observation, that �the anointed one, or Messiah,� who, the prophet says, was to be �cut off,� was to be cut off �AFTER the threescore and two weeks,� i. e., at the destruction of Jerusalem, or within the seven years preceding that event! Now, we know from the Evangelists, and; from profane history, that Jesus was crucified more than forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem. In addition to this, nothing need be said, for this circumstance lays flat their interpretation at one stroke. Those who desire to see a more elaborate discussion of this prophecy, and an ample defence of this interpretation, are referred to �Levi�s Letters, to Priestly;� and those who are desirous of seeing an account of the various, contradictory, perplexed and multitudinous contrivances, by which it has been endeavoured to apply this prophecy to Jesus, are referred to Prideaux, Michaelis, and Blayney. We have now gone through an examination of the evidence adduced from the prophets of the Old Testament, to prove that Jesus is the Messiah of the Old Testament; and those of our readers who love truth, are, we trust, now made sensible that the religion of the New Testament, if built upon such proofs as these, is, evidently, founded on--a mistake. CHAPTER VIII. STATEMENT OF ARGUMENTS WHICH PROVE THAT JESUS WAS NOT THE MESSIAH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. Most of our readers have, no doubt, heard from the pulpit, many exclamations and declamations against the �blindness of the Jews,� in not recognizing their Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth. The reasons of this �blindness� are made, I think, by this time pretty intelligible. Nevertheless, for the further satisfaction of the reader, I will here set down the principal reasons given by Rabbi Isaac, in his �Munimen Fidei,� which cause the Jews to deny the Messiahship of Jesus. �At a certain time, (says he,) a certain learned man of the wise men of the Christians said unto me:--�Wherefore are you Jews unwilling to believe Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah, when yet your veritable prophets testified of him, whose words you profess to have faith in.� �I gave him this answer. �How, I require, could we believe him to be the Messiah, when you can produce no genuine proof from the prophets in his favour, since all those things adduced by the evangelists from them, to prove Jesus the Messiah, are nothing to the purpose? And we have many and evident reasons to prove that he was not the Messiah. And of these, I will bring forward a few, arising, 1, From his genealogy. 2. From his works. 3. From the time of his appearing. 4. From the prophecies of the things to take place in the time of the Messiah not having seen fulfilled in his age. And in these things are contained the genuine marks characteristic of our Messiah.� �1. As to what concerns his genealogy; it does not prove this necessary thing, that Jesus was the son of David, because he was not begotten by Joseph, as the Gospel of Matthew testifies; for in the first chapter of it, it is written, that Jesus was born of Mary when she was yet a virgin, and had not been known by Joseph; which things being so, the genealogy of Joseph has nothing to do with Jesus. The descent and origin of Mary, is still less known, but it seems from Luke�s calling Elizabeth, who was of Levi, her cousin, that Mary was of the tribe of Levi, and not of Judah, and, consequently, not of David; and, if she were, still Jesus is not the more the son of David; descents being reckoned from the males only. Neither is the genealogy of Joseph rightly deduced from David, but labours under great difficulties. Matthew, and Luke also, not only disagree, but irreconcilably and flatly contradict each other, in their genealogies of Joseph. Now, it cannot be that the testimony of two witnesses, who directly contradict each other in the matter to be proved by them, can be received as true. But the prophets have directed us to expect no Messiah but one born of the seed of David. �2. As to the works of Jesus, we object to what he said concerning himself:--�Do not consider me as come to establish peace on earth, for I have come to send a sword, and to separate the son from the father, and the daughter from her mother, and the daughter-in-law from her mother-in-law,� which words are written in Mat. ch. x. But we find the prophecies concerning the Messiah to attribute to him very different works from these; nay, the very opposite. For, whereas Jesus testifies concerning himself, that he did not come to establish peace in the earth, but �division,� �fire� and �sword,� Zechariah says, concerning the expected Messiah, ch. ix.:--�He shall speak peace to the nations.� Jesus says he came to send �fire and sword� upon the earth, but Micah says, ch. ii., that in the times of the true Messiah they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.� Jesus says that he came �to put division between the father and the son,� &c. But in the time of the true Messiah, Elias, the prophet, shall come, of whom Malachi prophecied �that he shall convert the heart of the fathers unto the children, and the heart of the children to the fathers.� Jesus says �that he came to serve others, not to be served by them� � Mat. xx. 29. But of the true Messiah it is said, Psalm lxxii.:--�All kings shall bow themselves before him, all nations shall serve him.� The same also is said by Zechariah, ch. ix.:-- �His dominion shall be, from one sea to the other, and from the river unto the ends of the earth;� and so Dan., ch. vii.:--�All dominions shall serve and obey him.� �3. As to the time, we object to the Christians, that Jesus did not come at the time designated by the prophets; for the prophets testify, that the coming of the Messiah should be �in the end of days� or, in the latter days, (which, surely, have not yet arrived) as it is in Isaiah ch. ii.:--�It shall come to pass in the latter days, that the mountain of the Lord�s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and all nations shall flow unto it;� and it immediately follows, concerning the king Messiah, �that he shall judge among the nations, and rebuke many peoples, and they shall beat their words into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.� See also Hosea, ch. iii, and also Dan., ch. ii., where it is written:--�God hath made known unto king Nebuchadnezzar what shall come to pass in the latter days,� (or, in the end of days.) And this pertains to what follows, viz., to this:--�In the days of those kings, (i. e., of the kingdoms that arose out of the ruins of the Roman Empire) the God of heaven will raise up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed.� Thus you see, that the prophets predicted, that the kingdom of the Messiah should be after the destruction of the Roman Empire, not while it was in its vigour; when Jesus came; in �the latter days,� and not before.* �4. Besides all these difficulties, neither were the promises made to us by the prophets, concerning the things to come to pass at the coming of the Messiah, fulfilled in the time of Jesus. For examples, take the following:--�1. In the time of the king Messiah, there was to be one kingdom only, and one only king upon earth, viz., the king Messiah--see Daniel, ch. ii.; but behold, we see with our eyes, many independent kingdoms, distinct, and distinguished by different laws and customs, religious and political, which things being so, it follows, that the Messiah is not yet come. �2. In the time of the king Messiah, there was to be only one religion and one law throughout the world; for, it is written in Isaiah, ch. lii. and lxvi., that all nations shall come at stated times to worship the Eternal at Jerusalem. See also Zechariah, ch. xiv. and ch. viii., and indeed throughout the writings of the prophets. �3. In the time of the king Messiah, idols were to be cut off, and utterly to perish from the earth; as it is said in Zechariah, ch. xiii., and so in Isaiah, ch. ii., it is written, �And the glory of idols shall utterly pass away;� and so in Zephaniah, ch. ii., �The Lord shall be terrible among them, when he shall make lean (i. e., bring to nothing) all the gods of the earth; and all the countries of the nations shall bow themselves to Him, each out of his place.� �4. In the times of the Messiah, there shall obtain no more sins and crimes in the earth, especially among the children of Israel, as is affirmed in Deut. xxx., Zephaniah, ch. iii and in Jeremiah, ch. iii. And l., and so in Ezekiel, ch. xxxvi. and xxxvii. �5. In the times of the Messiah, there shall be peace between man and beast, and between the tiger and the tame beast; and the little child shall stroke, with impunity, the variegated skin of the serpent, and,--as one of our own poets has beautifully said,--�and with his forked tongue shall innocently play.� See in Isaiah, ch. xi. and lxv., the original from whence he derived his beautiful poem. �6. In the time of the king Messiah, there are to be no calamities, no afflictions, no lamentations throughout the world. But the inhabitants thereof are to lead joyful lives in gratitude to the good God, and in the enjoyment of his bounties. See Isaiah lxv. �Lastly. In the time of the king Messiah, the glory of God was again to return to Israel, and the spirit of the most High God was to be liberally poured out upon them, and they were to be endowed with the spirit of prophecy, and with wisdom, and knowledge, and understanding, and virtue; and God will no more hide his face from them; but will bless them, and give them a ready heart and a willing mind to obey his laws, and enjoy the felicities consequent thereupon. And the Shechinah shall inhabit the temple for ever, and the glory of God shall never depart from Israel; but they shall walk amid the splendours of the glory of the Eternal, and all the earth shall resound with his praise, as is written in Ezekiel, ch. xxxvii., and xxxix., and xliii.; and in Joel, ch. ii., and in Zech., ch. ii., and Isaiah, ch. xi., and throughout the latter part of his prophecies, and in Jer. xxxi.� And now, reader, let me ask you this question, has any one of the foregoing prophecies been yet fulfilled, either in the days of Jesus, or ever since? Thou canst not say it! Now, then, hear the conclusion, which, in sincerity, and with the hand upon the heart, I am compelled to draw from these precedents. �Since these distinctive characteristics predicted by the Hebrew prophets, as to be found in their Messiah, were certainly, and evidently, never found in Jesus; and since these conditions and circumstances, and many others beside, which, to avoid prolixity, have been omitted, most assuredly did not take place in the time of Jesus, nor ever since, and since they were according to those prophets, certainly to be expected in the time of their Messiah; therefore, from all this, it seems to be demonstrable (allowing the prophets to be true,) that Jesus of Nazareth was not this true Messiah.� And I would ask the candid Christian, in which link of this chain of proofs he can find a flaw? And I would ask him, too, as a moral and honest man, whether any Jew, in his right mind, could, without setting at nought what he conceived to be the word of God, receive him as the Messiah? The honest and upright answer, I believe, will be, that he could net. And, accordingly, it is very well known, that the Jewish nation have never done so. And this their obstinacy, as it is called, will not by this time, I think, appear unreasonable to any sensible man; and he will now be able to appreciate the justice of that idle cant about �the carnal Jews,� and their �worldly-minded� expectation of a temporal prince, as their Messiah. Certainly, the Jews had very good reason, from their prophecies, to expect no Messiah but a Messiah who should sit on the throne of David, and confer liberty and happiness upon them, and spread peace and happiness throughout the earth, and communicate the knowledge of God, and virtue, and the love of their fellow-men to every people. Whether this (carnal or not,) would have been better than a spiritual kingdom, and a throne in heaven; together with the ample list of councils, dogmas, excommunications, proscriptions, theological quarrels, and frauds, and an endless detail of blood and murder, I leave to the judgment of those capable of deciding for themselves. Neither, in fact, is it true, that the Jews were so �carnally minded� as to refuse Jesus as their Messiah, because he was poor and in a low estate. On the contrary, did they not ask him not to evade, but to speak plainly? �How long (said they) dost thou mean to keep us in suspense? If thou be the Messiah, tell us plainly.� These very men were willing to hazard, in his favour, their fortunes, their families, and their lives, in his cause, against the whole power of the Roman empire. Nay, so urgent were they, that they were going to make him their king by force, and he concealed himself from the honour. The evasions he used to avoid their pressing questions upon the subject, are known to all who have read the evangelists; and so timed was he in acknowledging himself as the Messiah, that he did not do so, till Simon Peter told him that he was. And can any candid man, after all this, wonder at, or condemn, �the blindness,� as it is called, of the Jews? or can he refrain from smiling at the frothy declamations in which divines load that nation with so much unmerited reproach? These Jews had just reason, we think, to doubt his Messiahship; and they had a right to satisfactory and unambiguous proof of his being so: even the proofs laid down, by their prophets. And this, it must be now acknowledged, they wanted; and, certainly, the wise and learned of the Jewish nation, might be allowed to have understood their sacred books upon the subject, as well, at least, if not better, than the illiterate apostles, who manifestly put new interpretations upon them, and those, confessedly, not agreeable to the obvious and literal meaning of those books; but contrary to the sense of the Jewish nation. And for this scepticism they might plead the example of the apostles themselves, who, at first, like other unbelieving Jews, expected a temporal prince; and did disbelieve Jesus to be the Messiah on account of his death, notwithstanding his miracles. And they continued in these thoughts, till it seems they come to understand the spiritual sense of the scriptures; which spiritual sense, it is said, they obtained by �the traditionary rules of interpretation in use among the Jews.� Yet, it is rather inconsistent and singular, that they should place so much dependence upon these traditionary rules, and yet pay so little regard to the traditionary explication of the scriptures, with respect to the temporal kingdom of the Messiah--inconsistent and singular is it, that they should "cry aloud" for that which would support their peculiar views, but reject it when militating against these views.* CHAPTER IX. ON THE CHARACTER Of JESUS OF NAZARETH AND THE WEIGHT TO BE ALLOWED TO THE ARGUMENT Of MARTYRDOM AS A TEST OF TRUTH IN THIS QUESTION. I am now about to consider a subject, to which, notwithstanding the harsh ness of my language in some of the preceding chapters, I approach with feelings of great respect. Far be it from me to reproach the meek, the compassionate, the amiable Jesus; or to attribute to him, the mischiefs occasioned by his followers*. No, I look upon his character with the respect which every man should pay to purity of morals: though mingled with something like the sentiments which we naturally feel for the mistaken enthusiast. Jesus of Nazareth appears to have been a man of irreproachable purity, of great piety, and of great mildness of disposition. Though the world has never beheld a character exactly parallel with his, yet it has seen many, greatly similar. Contemplative, and melancholy, it is said of him by his followers, �he was often seen to weep, but never to laugh.� He retired to solitary places, and there prayed: he went into the wilderness to sustain and to vanquish the assaults of the devil: In a word, he appears by such means to have persuaded himself, as hundreds have done since, that he was the chosen servant of God, raised up to preach righteousness to the hypocrites, and sinners of his day. It is remarkable, that he never claimed to be the Messiah, till encouraged to assume that character by Peter�s declaration. And it is observable, that in assuming that name, he could not assume the characteristics of the august personage to whom it belongs; but infused into the character all that softness, meekness, humility, and passive fortitude, which were so eminently his own. The natural disposition, and character of Jesus, could not permit him to attempt the character of a princely Messiah, a mighty monarch, the saviour of an oppressed people, and the benefactor of the human race. He could not do this, but he could act as much of the character as was consistent with his own. He could not indeed bring himself to attempt to be the saviour of his countrymen from the Romans, their fleshly foes; but he undertook to save them from the tyranny of their spiritual enemies. He could not undertake to set up his kingdom upon earth; but he told them that he had a kingdom in another world. He could not pretend to give unto his followers the splendid rewards of an earthly monarch: but he promised them instead thereof, forgiveness of sins, and spiritual remuneration. In a word, he was not a king fit for the, then, �carnal Jews,� but he was, from his mildness, and compassionate temper, worthy of their esteem, at least, of their forbearance. The only actions of his life which betray any marks of character deserving of serious reprehension, are his treatment of the woman taken in adultery; and his application of the prophecy of Malachi concerning Elias, to John the Baptist. As to his conduct to the woman, it was the conduct of a mild, and merciful man, but not that of one who declared, �that he came to fulfil the law.� For God commanded concerning such, �that they should surely be put to death.� Now though Jesus was not her judge, and had no right to pronounce her sentence; yet the contrivance by which he deterred the witness from testifying against her, was a contrivence directly calculated totally to frustrate the ends of justice; and which, if acted upon at this day, in Christian countries, would infallibly prevent the execution of the criminal law: For what testimony would be sufficient to prove a fact, if the witnesses were required to be �without sin?� Instead, therefore, of saying unto them, �whosoever of you is without sin, let him cast the first stone at her;� he should have said, �Men! who made me a judge, or a ruler over you? carry the accused to the proper tribunal.� As to his conduct about the matter of Elias, it was as follows. It is said, in the 17th chapter of Matthew, that at his transfiguration, as it is called, Moses, and Elias appeared to his disciples on the mount, talking with Jesus. Upon coming down from the mount, the disciples asked Jesus, �how say the scribes that Elias must come first, (that is, before the Messiah.) Jesus answered, Elias truly cometh first, and restoreth all things; but I say unto you, that Elias has come already and they have done unto him what they would;� meaning John the Baptist, who was beheaded by Herod. (See the parallel place in Mark.) And he says concerning John, (Mat. vi. 14,) �And if ye will receive it, this is Elias which was for to come.� Now certainly no one will pretend that John was the Elias prophecied of by Malachi, as to come before �the great, and terrible day of the Lord,� which has not yet taken place. And besides, that he was not Elias is testified of, and confirmed by, John himself, who in the gospel of John, chapter 1, to the question of the Scribes, asking him, �if he was Elias?� answers �I am not.� It is pretty clear that Jesus was embarrassed by the question of the Apostles, �how say the Scribes, that Elias must come first?� for his answer is confused; for he allows the truth of the observation of the Scribes, and then refers them to John, and insinuates that he was �the Elias to come.� However, it must be acknowledged, that he does it with an air of hesitation, �If you will receive it,� &c. But are these all the accusations you have to bring against him? may be said by some of my readers. Do you account as nothing, his claiming to forgive sins? his speeches wherein ho claims to be considered as an object of religious homage, if not to be God himself? Do you consider these impieties as nothing? I answer by asking--the following questions: What would you think of a man who, in our times, should set up those extraordinary claims? and who should assert, that �eating his flesh, and drinking his blood� were necessary to secure eternal life? Who should say, that �he and God were one?� and should affirm (as Jesus does in the last chapters of John) that �God was inside of him, and dwelt in him; and that �he who had seen him, had seen God?� What should we think of this? Should we consider such a man an object of wrath, or of pity? Should we not directly, and without hesitation, attribute such extravagancies to hallucination of mind? Yes, certainly! and therefore the Jews were to blame for crucifying Jesus. If Christians had put to death every unfortunate, who after being frenzied by religious fasting and contemplation, became wild enough to assert, that he was Christ, or God the Father, or the Virgin Mary, or even the Holy Trinity, they would have been guilty of more than fifty murders; for I have read of at least as many instances of this nature; and believe that more than two hundred such might be reckoned up from the hospital records of Europe alone. And that the founder of the Christian religion was not always in one coherent consistent mind, I think will appear plain to every intelligent physician who reads his discourses; especially those in the gospel of John. They are a mixture of something that looks like sublimity, strangely disfigured by wild, and incoherent words. So unintelligible indeed, that even the profoundest of Christian divines have never been able to fathom all their mysteries. To prove that I do not say these things rashly, wickedly, or out of any malignity towards the character of Jesus, which I really respect and venerate, I will establish my assertions by examples. For instance-- --Many instances might be adduced of conduct directly subversive of the very design, to promote which, he said that he was sent into the world. For example, he said that he came to preach glad tidings to the poor, and uninformed; and yet he declares to his disciples, that ho spake to this very multitude of poor and ignorant people in parables, lest they might understand him, and be converted from their sins, and God should heal, or pardon them. In the 26th chapter of Matthew, Jesus says to his disciples, in the garden at Gethsemane, these strange words, � Sleep on now, and take your rest--Arise! let us be going,� The commentators endeavour to get rid of the strange contradictoriness of these words, by turning the command into the future; and rendering the Greek word translated �now� thus--�for the rest of your time,� or �for the future.� And that he asked them �whether they slept for the future�? which appears to be just as rational as to have asked, �how they do to-morrow�?!! Jo. viii. 51, �Verily, verily.(said Jesus) I say unto you, if a man keep my saying, he shall never see death �Reader, what dost thou think of this saying? Has believing in the Christian religion, at all prevented men from dying as in afore time? And should we be at all astonished at what the Jews said to him, when they heard this assertion--�Then said the Jews unto him. Now we know that thou hast a demon [i. e. art mad.] Abraham is dead, and the Prophets, and thou sayest if a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death?� So said the Jews, and if in our times, a man was to make a similar assertion, should we not say the same? Many instances might also be given of strange and inconsequent reasoning; but I shall only adduce the following. He reproaches the Pharisees, Luke xi. 47, 48, for building and adorning the sepulchres of the Prophets, whom their wicked fathers slew; and says to them, �Your fathers slew them, and ye build their sepulchres,� and he adds, �that thus they showed that they approved the deeds of their fathers!� Surely this is absurd! Did the Athenians by setting up a statue to Socrates after his unjust death, show to the world that they �approved� the deed of them who slew him? did it not show the direct contrary? and was it not intended as a testimony of their regret, and repentance? Again, �Upon you (says Jesus to the Jews) shall come all the righteous blood that has been shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the righteous, to the blood of Zechariah,� &c. Now, herein is a marvellous thing! how could a man really sent from God, assert to the Jews, that of them should be required the blood of Abel, and of all the righteous slain upon the earth? Did the Jews kill Abel? or did their fathers kill him? No! he was slain by Cain, whose posterity all perished in the deluge; how then could God require of the Jews who lived four thousand years after the murder, the guilt of it; nay more, �of all the righteous blood that had been shed upon the earth,� were they guilty of all that too? If such assertions, and such reasonings do not prove what I asserted, what can? It is said, that Jesus, by giving himself up to suffer death, proved the truth of his mission and doctrines, by his readiness to die for them. But this is an argument which will recoil upon those who advance it. Are there no instances upon record of mild, zealous, and amiable men who preached to the savages of America that they ought to worship the Virgin Mary? and did they not cheerfully die by the most excruciating torments to prove it? Yes certainly! and let any Protestant Christian read the accounts of the preaching, sufferings, deaths, aye! and miracles too, of the Roman Catholic missionaries in Asia, and America; and then let him candidly answer whether he is willing to rest the issue of his controversy with the Papists upon the argument of martyrdom? We all know the power of enthusiasm upon a susceptible mind; and we have read of, and perhaps sees, its effects in producing martyrdoms among people of all religions, in all parts of the world. Nay, more, such is the power of this principle, that even now, women in India burn themselves alive on the funeral piles of their husbands, to prove, as they say, their love for them, and their determination to accompany them to the other world; when it is well known, that they burn themselves from the impulse of vanity, and the fear of disgrace, if they should not do so. Nay, more still, so little support does martyrdom yield to truth, that there are more martyrdoms in honour of the false, ridiculous, and abominable idols of Hindostan, than any where else. You may see men hooked through the ribs, and supported, and whirled round in the air in honour of their gods, clapping their hands, and testifying pleasure, instead of crying out with pain. You may see in that country, the misguided enthusiastic worshippers of misshapen idols prostrate their bodied before the enormous wheels of the car of Seeva, and piously suffering themselves to be crushed in pieces by the rolling mass. And any man who has been upon the banks of the Ganges, can tell you of the Yoguis, and of their self-inflicted torments, compared to which, even the cross is almost a bed of roses. Indeed the argument of martyrdom will support any religion; and it has, in fact, been cheerfully undergone by enthusiasts and zealots of all religions, in testimony of the firm belief of the sufferers not only in the absurdities of Popery, and Brachinanism, but of every, even the most monstrous system that ever disgraced the human understanding. There have been martyrs for Atheism itself. This argument of martyrdom has been more particularly applied to the Apostles and first Christians. �How can it be imagined, (say Christian Divines,) that simple men like the Apostles could be induced to leave their employment, and wander up and down, to teach the doctrines, and testify to the facts of the New Testament, and expose themselves to persecution, imprisonment, scourging, and untimely and violent death: unless they certainly knew, that both the doctrines, and the facts were true? Besides, what honours, what riches, could they expect to get by supporting false doctrine, and false testimony?� To this argument 1 might reply as in the preceding pages, for I would ask, have we not seen simple and honest men quit their employments, and wander up and down to preach doctrines which they not only had no means of certainly knowing to be true, but which they did not even understand? Have we not seen such men submit to deprivations of every kind, and exposed to imprisonment, and the whipping post? And do we not certainly know that some such have cheerfully suffered a most cruel death? Is it possible that any sensible man, after reading the History of the Roman Catholic Missionaries, the Baptists, the Quakers, and the Methodists, can be convinced of the certain truth of the Christian religion, or seriously endeavour to convince another of it, by such an argument as the above? But, much more than this can be said upon this topic; for it can be shown, that the Apostles in preaching Christianity, did not suffer near so much as some well meaning enthusiasts in modern times have suffered, to propagate religious tenets, notoriously false and absurd. And that the Apostles could expect to get neither fame, nor honour, nor riches by their preaching is doubtful. This is certain that they could not lose much. For they were confessedly men of the lowest rank in society, and of great poverty--poor fishermen, who could not feel a very great regard for their own dignity, or respectability. And it was by no means a small thing for such men to be considered as divine Apostles, and �in exchange for heavenly things,� to have the earthly possessions of their converts laid at their feet. Peter left his nets, his boat, and boorish companions, and after persuading his disciples to receive his words for oracles, go where he would, he found ample hospitality from them. This, at least, was an advantageous change, and though they did not acquire fame, or respect from the higher ranks of society, they were at least had in great respect by their followers. Neither George Fox, nor Whitfield, nor Westley were honoured by the nobility, or gentry, or scholars of England; nor Ann Lee, by the most respectable citizens of the United States. Yet among their disciples, the Quakers, the Methodists, and the Shakers they were held by the most implicit veneration and can any man believe that they did not think themselves thus well payed for the trouble of making converts? It is true that the Apostles did not acquire riches, for they were conversant only with the poor. But neither had they any to lose, by taking up the profession of Apostles, and Preachers. At least by preaching the gospel, they obtained food, and clothing, and contributions; as is evident from many places in the Epistles, where they write to their converts, �It is written, �thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn;�� and Paul tells them, that they must not think from this place, that God takes care for oxen, �for, (says he,) it was undoubtedly written for our sakes.� Thus we see that the gospel was by no means altogether unprofitable, and many men daily risk their lives for less gain than the Apostles did. As to the dangers to which it is said they exposed themselves, they had none to fear, except in Judea, which they quickly quitted, finding the Jews too stubborn, and went to the Greeks. From the Greeks, and likewise from the Romans, they had not much to fear, who were not very difficult or scrupulous in admitting new gods, and new modes of worship. Besides this, the Romans for a great while seem to have considered the Christians merely as a Jewish sect who differed from the rest of the Jews in matters not worth notice; as is to be gathered from Tacitus and Suetonius. And if the Apostles did speak against the Pagan gods, it was no more than what the Roman poets and philosophers did; and the magistrates were not then very severe about it. And it is evident from the Acts of the Apostles, that the Roman praetors considered the accusations against Paul and his companions, as mere trifles. But in Judea, where the danger was evident, it was otherwise. When Paul was in peril there, on account of his transgressions against the law, after being delivered from the Jews by the Roman garrison at Jerusalem, he pleaded before Festus and Agrippa, that he was falsely accused by the Jews; and he asserted that he had taught nothing against the Law of Moses, and his country, but that he only preached about the resurrection of the dead; and that it was for this that the Jews persecuted him; and ended by appealing to Caesar. When yet he knew that this was not the reason of the hatred of the Jew against him; but that it was because he taught that circumcision, and the Law of Moses were abolished, and no longer binding: which is evident to any one who will read the Acts, and the Epistle to the Galatians. So you see by what manoeuvre he got out of the difficulty: first, by at least equivocating, and then by refusing to be tried by his own countrymen, and appealing to Caesar; thus securing himself a safe conduct out of Judea, which was too dangerous for him. Among the Gentiles, their doctrine had a better chance of success, for they taught them marvellous doctrines, such as they had been accustomed to listen to, viz. how the Son of God was born of a virgin, and was cruelly put to death; and that his Divine Father raised him from the dead. The idea of God�s having a son of a woman did not shock them, for all their demigods they believed had been so begotten; and a great part of their poems are filled with the exploits and the sufferings of these heroes, who are at length rewarded by being raised from earth to heaven, as Jesus is said to have been. These doctrines were not disrelished by the common people, but were rejected by the wise and learned. Accordingly we see that Paul could make nothing of the philosophers of Athens, who derided him, and considered him as telling them a story similar to those of their own mythology, when he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. And in revenge, we see Paul railing against both the stubborn Jews, and the incorrigible philosophers, as being unworthy of knowing �the hidden wisdom,� which was to the one �a stumbling block,� and to the other, �foolishness,� and which he thought fit only for �the babes,� and �the devout women,� with whom he principally dealt. That the New Testament inculcates an excellent morality, cannot be denied; for its best moral precepts were taken from the Old Testament. And if the Apostles had not preached good morals, how could they have expected to be considered by the Gentiles as messengers from God? For if they had inculcated any immoralities, such as rebellion, murder, adultery, robbery, revenge, their mission would not only have been disbelieved, but they would have undergone capital punishment by the sentence of the judge, which it was their business to avoid. Mahomet, throughout the Koran, inculcates all the virtues, and pointedly reprobates vice of all kinds. His morality is merely the precepts of the Old and New Testaments, modified a little, and expressed in Arabic. They are good precepts, and always to be listened to with respect, wherever, and by whomsoever, inculcated. But surely that will not prove Islamism to be from God, nor that Mahomet was his prophet! That the Apostles suffered death on account of their preaching the gospel, if allowed to be fact, as said before, proves nothing. Many have suffered death for false and absurd doctrines. �But whether any of the Apostles, (besides James who was slain by Herod,) died a natural, or a violent death, the learned Christians do not certainly know. For there is extant no authentic history of the Apostles, besides the Acts. There are indeed many fabulous narrations published by the Papists, called Martyrologies, stuffed with the most extravagant lies, which no learned man now regards; and who therefore will credit what such books say of the Apostles? Peter is said in them to have been put to death at Rome by Nero, nevertheless most of the learned men of the Protestants assert, that Peter never was in Rome, and as for Paul, no one certainly knows where, when, or how ho finished his days. So that if we were even to allow the feeble argument of Martyrdom, all the influence and weight given to it, it would not apply to the Apostles, who, we are sure, derived some benefit, by preaching the gospel, and are not sure that they came to any harm by it. I will conclude this long chapter, by laying before my reader some extracts from the book written by Celsus, a heathen philosopher, against Christianity, preserved by Origen in his work against Celsus. That the entire work of Celsus is lost, is to be regretted; as he appears to have been a man of observation, though too sarcastic to please a fair inquirer; and from the picture given by him of the first Christians, their maxims, and their modes of teaching, and the subjects they chose for converts, it appears, that they were the exact prototypes of the Methodists and Shakers of the present day, both sects which contain excellent people, with hardly any fault but credulity. �If they (i. e. the teachers of Christianity,) say �do not examine,� and the like: it is however incumbent on them to teach what those things are which they assert, and whence they are derived.� �Wisdom in life is a bad thing, but folly is good.� �Why should Jesus, when an infant, be carried into Egypt, lest he should be murdered? God should not fear being put to death.� �You say that God was sent to sinners: but why not to those who are free from sin? What harm is it not to have sinned? �You encourage sinners, because you are not able to persuade any really good men: therefore you open the doors to the most wicked and abandoned.� �Some of them say �do not examine, but believe, and thy faith shall gave thee.�� �These are our institutions, say they, let not any man of learning come here, nor any wise man, nor any man of prudence: for these things are reckoned evil by us. But whoever is unlearned, ignorant, and silly, let him come without fear! Thus they own that they can gain only the foolish, the vulgar, the stupid slaves, women, and children.� �At first, when they were but few, they agreed. But when they became a multitude, they were rent, again and again, and each will have their own factions: for factious spirits they had from the beginning.� �All wise men are excluded from the doctrine of their faith; they call to it only fools, and men of a servile spirit.� �The preachers of their divine word only attempt to persuade silly, mean, senseless persons, slaves, women, and children. What harm is there in being well-informed; and both in being, and appearing a man of knowledge? What obstacle can this be to the knowledge of God? Must it not be an advantage?� �We see these Itinerants shewing readily their tricks to the vulgar, but not approaching the assemblies of wise men, nor daring there to show themselves. But wherever they see boys, a crowd of slaves, and ignorant men, there they thrust in themselves, and show off their doctrine.� �You may see weavers, tailors, and fullers, illiterate and rustic men, not daring to utter a word before persons of age, experience, and respectability; but when they get hold of boys privately, and silly women, they recount wonderful things; that they must not mind their fathers, or their tutors, but obey them; as their fathers, or guardians are quite ignorant, and in the dark; but themselves alone have the true wisdom. And if the children obey them, they pronounce them happy, and direct them to leave their fathers, and tutors, and go with the women, and their play-fellows, into the chambers of the females, or into a tailor�s, or fuller�s shop, that they may learn perfection.� Celsus compares a Christian teacher to a quack--�who promises to heal the sick, on condition that they keep from intelligent practitioners, lest his ignorance be detected.� �If one sort of them introduces one doctrine, another another, and all join in saying, �Believe if you would be saved, or depart:� what are they to do, who desire really to be saved? Are they to determine by the throw of a die, where they are to turn themselves, or which of these demanders of implicit faith they are to believe.� Omitting what Celsus says reproachfully of the moral characters of the Apostles, and the first teachers of Christianity, for which we certainly shall not take his word; it is easy to perceive from the above quotations, that they had more success among simple, and credulous people, than among the intelligent, and well-informed. Their introductory lesson to their pupils, was, �Believe, but do not examine;� and their succeeding instructions seem to have been a continued repetition, and practice of the dogma of implicit faith*. CHAPTER X. MISCELLANEOUS In Matthew, ch. v. Jesus says, �ye have heard that it was said, that shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy.'� But this is no where said in the Law, or the Prophets; but, on the contrary, we read directly the reverse. For it is written, Ex. xxiii. �If thou find the ox of thine enemy or his ass going astray, thou shalt certainly bring him back to him.� �If thou meet the ass of him that hateth thee, lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help him.� Again, Levit. xix. �Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart; rebuke thy neighbour, nor suffer sin upon him. Thou shalt not revenge, nor keep anger, (or bear any grudge,) against the children of thy people; but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; I am the Lord.� So also in Prov. xxxiv. � When thine enemy falleth, do not triumph, and when he stumbleth, let not thine heart exult.� So also in ch. xxv. �If thy enemy hunger, give him food; if he thirst, give him to drink.� These precepts are to the purpose, and are practicable; but this command of Jesus, � Love your enemies,� if by loving he means, �do them good,� it is commanded in the above passages in the Hebrew Law. But if by � love,� he means to look upon them with the same affection that we feel for those who love us, and with whom we are connected by the tenderest ties of mature, and friendship, the command is impracticable; and the fulfillment of it contrary to nature, and those very instincts given us by our Creator. And therefore, whoever thinks he fulfills, really fulfills this command, does in fact play the hypocrite unknown to himself; for though we can, and ought to do good to our enemy, yet to love him is as unnatural as to hate our friends. In Mark ch. ii. 25, Jesus says to the Pharisees, �Have ye not read what David did when he hungered, and those that were with him. How that he entered into the house of the Lord, in the time of Abiathar the High Priest, and did eat of the shew-bread, &c.� See the same also in Matthew, ch. xii. 3. Luke vi. 3. Now here is a great blunder; for this thing happened in the time of Achimelech, not in the time of Abiathar; for so it is written, 1 Sam. xxi. �And David came to Nob, to Achimelech the Priest, &c.� And in the 22d chapter it is said that Abiathar was his son. In Luke ch. i. 26, The angel Gabriel is said to have come from God to Mary, when she was yet a virgin, espoused to Joseph, who was of the house of David, and announced to her that she should conceive, and bear a son, and should call his name Jesus; that her holy offspring should be called the Son of God, and that God should give unto him �the throne of David his father, and that he should rule the house of Jacob for ever, and that to his kingdom there should be no end.� Now this story is encumbered with many difficulties, which I shall not consider; but confine myself to asking wherefore, if these things were true, did not the Mother of Jesus? and his brethren, knowing these extraordinary things, obey his teachings. For it is certain, that they did not at first believe him, but, as appears from the 7th chap. of John, derided him. Besides, neither did his mother nor his brethren, when they came to the house where he was preaching to simple and credulous men, come for the purpose of being edified, but �to lay hold of him,� to carry him home, for said they he is mad, or �beside himself [Mark iii. 24] which certainly they would not have dared to do, if this story of Luke�s were true. For their mother would have taught them of his miraculous conception, and extraordinary character. Moreover, how was it that God did not give him the throne of David, as was promised by the Angel to his Mother? For he did not sit upon the throne of David, nor exercise any authority in Israel. Moreover, how comes it that David is called the Father of Jesus, since Jesus was not the son of Joseph, who, according to the Evangelists drew his origin from that king. Finally, the saying �that to his kingdom there should be no end,� is directly contradicted by Paul in the 1st Epis. to the Cor. ch. xv: for he says therein, that �Jesus shall render up his kingdom unto the Father, and be himself subject unto him.� Here you see, that the kingdom of Jesus is to have an end; for when he renders up his kingdom to the Father, he certainly must divest himself of his authority. How then can it be said, that � to his kingdom there shall be no end? Jesus says, John v. 39, �And the Father himself which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me; ye have neither heard his voice at any time,� &c. But how does this agree with Moses, who says, Deut. iv. 33, �Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of fire, as thou hast heard?�--�And we heard his voice out of the midst of the fire; we have seen this day, that God doth talk with man, and he liveth.� Deut. v. 24. Luke, ch. 4, 17, �And they gave to Jesus the Book of Isaiah the Prophet, and he opened the Book, and found this place, where it was written, �The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, therefore hath he anointed me to preach the Gospel; to the poor hath he sent me, that I should bind up the broken in heart, proclaim liberty to the captives, and sight to the blind; that I should preach the acceptable year of the Lord.� And shutting the Book, he gave it to the minister, and afterwards addressed them, saying �This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.� Here you see the words which gave offence; and by turning to Is. in loco. ch. lxi. you may see the reason why the inhabitants of Nazareth arose up in wrath against him. For these words alledged in Luke, are somewhat perverted from the original in Isaiah; for these words, �and sight to the blind,� are not in Isaiah, but are inserted in Luke for purposes very obvious. And 2. he neglects the words following, �and the day of vengeance of our God, and of consolation to all who mourn. To give consolation to the mourners of Zion; to give them beauty instead of ashes, and the oil of joy instead of grief; a garment of praise instead of a broken heart,� &c. to the end of the chapter. From this it is very clear, that this prophecy has no reference to Jesus: but Isaiah speaks these things of himself; and the words � the Lord hath anointed me,� signify, �God hath chosen, established me to declare�--what follows. This exposition of anointing is confirmed from these passages;--1 Kings, xix ch. �Anoint a prophet in thy stead,� where the sense is, �constitute a prophet in thy place.� Again, �touch not mine anointed ones, and do my prophets no harm,� i. e. �Touch not my chosen servants�; and so in several other places. The meaning, therefore, of Isaiah is, that God had appointed, and constituted him a prophet to announce these consolations to the Israelites, who were to be in captivity, in order that they should not dispair of liberation; and that they should have hope, when they read those comfortable words spoken by the mouth of Isaiah, at the command of God. For he calls the subjects of his message �the broken in heart,� �the captives,� � the mourners of Zion,� &c. all which terms are applicable only to the Israelites. That this is the true interpretation, will be made further evident to any impartial person, by reading the context preceding, and following. Jo. ch. ii. v. 18. �The Jews said to Jesus, what sign showest thou to us, that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews answered, saying, forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou build it in three days?� The Jews could never have spoken these words, here related; for the temple then standing was built by Herod, who reigned but thirty-seven years, and built it in eight years. This, therefore, must be a blunder of the Evangelist�s. Jo. xiii. v. 21. Jesus says to his Disciples, �a new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.� This is not true, for the love of man towards his neighbour, was not a new precept, but at least as ancient as Moses, who gives it, Levit. xix. as the command of God, �Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.� Acts vii. v. 4. �When he (Abraham) went out of the land of the Chaldees, he dwelt in Charran; from thence after his father was dead, he led him into this land in which ye dwell.� This directly contradicts the chapter in Genesis where the story of Abraham's leaving Haran is related; for it is certain from thence, that Abraham left his father Terah in Haran alive, when he departed thence. And he did not die till many years afterwards. This chronological contradiction has given much trouble to Christian Commentators, as may be seen in Whitby, Hammond, &c. &c. V. 14, Stephen says, �Jacob therefore descended into Egypt, and our Fathers, and there died. And they were carried to Sichem, and buried in the sepulchre which Abraham bought from the Sons of Hemor the Father of Sichem.� Here is another blunder; for this piece of land was not purchased by Abraham, but by Jacob. Gen. xlix. 29; so also see the end of Joshua. But it is evident, that Stephen has confounded the story of the purchase of the field of Machpelah, recorded in Gen. xxiii. with the circumstances related concerning the purchase by Jacob. In v. 43 of the same chapter, there is another disagreement between Stephen's quotation from Amos, and the original. [In the Acts the quotation is,--�Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the Star of your God. Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them, and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.� In Amos, ch. v. 26--�But ye have borne the tabernacle of Moloch and Chinn your images, the Star of your God which ye made,� &c.] So also there is in the speech of James, Acts xv. a quotation from Amos, in which to make it fit the subject, (which after all it does not fit,) is the substitution of the words, �the remnant of men,� for the words, �remnant of Edom,� as it is in the original. All these mistakes, besides others to be met with in almost--I was going to say in every page, of these Histories of Jesus and his Apostles, sufficiently show how superficial was the acquaintance of these men with the Old Testament, and how grossly, either through design or ignorance, they have perverted it. Indeed from these mistakes alone, I should be led strongly to suspect, that the Books of the New Testament were written by Gentiles, as I can hardly conceive that any Jew could have quoted his Bible in such a blundering manner. CHAPTER XI. WHETHER THE MOSAIC LAW BE REPRESENTED IN THE OLD TESTAMENT AS A TEMPORARY, OR A PERPETUAL INSTITUTION. A very great part of Dogmatic Theology among Christians is founded upon the notion that the Jewish Law was a temporary dispensation, only to exist till the coming of Jesus, when it was to be superseded by a more perfect dispensation. On the contrary, the Jews are persuaded that their Law is of perpetual obligation, and the Doctrine of the Trinity itself is hardly more offensive to them, and, as they think, more contradictory to the Scriptures, than the notion of the abrogation of it. Now, that the Jews are on the right side of this question, i. e., arguing from the Old Testament, I shall endeavour to prove by several arguments. They are all comprised in these positions, 1. That the Mosaic Institutions are most solemnly, and repeatedly declared to be perpetual; and we have no account of their being abrogated, or to be abrogated in the Old Testament. 2. They are declared to be perpetual by Jesus himself, and were adhered to by the twelve apostles. 1. Nothing can be more expressly asserted in the Old Testament than the perpetual obligation of those rites which were to distinguish the Jews from other nations. It appears, for instance, (from the 17th ch. of Genesis,) in the tenor of the covenant made with Abraham, that circumcision was to distinguish his posterity, to the end of time. It is called �an everlasting covenant� to be kept by his posterity through all their generations. See the ch. where the condition of the covenant is, that God would give to Abraham and his posterity, the perpetual inheritance of the promised land with whatever privileges were implied in his being their God, on condition that their male children were circumcised in testimony of putting themselves under that covenant. There is no limitation with respect to time; nay it is expressly said that the covenant should be perpetual. The ordinance of the Passover is also said to be perpetual, Ex. xii. 14, &c. �And this day shall be unto you for a memorial, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever.� This is repeated afterwards, and the observance of this rite is confined to Israelites, Proselytes, and slaves who should be circumcised, v. 48. The observance of the Sabbath was never to be discontinued, Ex. xxxi. 16. �Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever.� The appointment of the Family of Aaron to be Priests, was to continue as long as the Israelites should be a nation. See Lev. vii. 35. The Feast of Tabernacles was to be forever. Lev. xxiii. 41. �It shall be a statute for ever, in your generations.� The observance of this Festival is particularly mentioned in the prophecies, which foretell a future settlement of the Jews in their own land, as obligatory on all the world; as if an union of worship at Jerusalem was to be, according to them, effected among all nations by the united observance of this Festival there, see Zech. 14; what he there says is confirmed by what Isaiah prophecied concerning the same period. Is. 2. �It shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go, and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and rebuke many people, and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation. shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.� With respect to all the Laws of Moses, it is evident from the manner in which they were promulgated, that they were intended to be of perpetual obligation upon the Hebrew nation, and that by the observance of them they were to be distinguished from the other nations, see Deut. xxvi. 16. The observance of their peculiar Laws was the express condition on which the Israelites were to continue in possession of the promised land; and though on account of their disobedience they were to be driven out of it, they had the strongest assurances given them that they should never be utterly destroyed, like many other nations who should oppress them; but that on their repentance God would gather them from the remote parts of the world, and bring them to their own country again. And both Moses, and the later Prophets assure them, that in consequence of their becoming obedient to God in all things, which it is asserted they will, (and which may be the natural consequence of the discipline they will have gone through,) they shall be continued in the peaceable enjoyment of the land of promise, in its greatest extent to the end of time. See to this purpose Deut. iv. 25, &c.; also. Deut. 30, where it is thus written. �And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and shalt call them to mind among all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee; and shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shall obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul; that, then, the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return, and gather thee from all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee. If any of thine be driven out unto the utmost parts of heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee. And the Lord thy God will bring thee unto the Land which thy Fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it, and He will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy Fathers. And the Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live; and the Lord thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them that hate thee, which persecuted thee. And thou shalt return, and obey the voice of the Lord, and do all his commandments which I command thee this day." &c. �What an extent of prophecy, and how firm a faith in the whole of it do we see here! (says Dr. Priestly.) The Israelites were not then in the land of Canaan. It was occupied by nations far more numerous, and powerful than they; and yet it is distinctly foretold in the 4th ch. that they would soon take possession of it, and multiply in it: and that afterwards they would offend God by their idolatry, and wickedness, and would in con-sequence of it be driven out of their country; and without being exterminated or lost, be scattered among the nations of the world; that by this dispersion, and their calamities, they would at length be reformed, and restored to the divine favour, and that then (as in the quotation) in the latter days they would be gathered from all nations, and restored to their own country, when they would observe all the laws which were then prescribed to them. Past history, and present appearances, correspond with such wonderful exactness to what has been fulfilled of this prophecy, that we can have no doubt with respect to the complete accomplishment of what remains to be fulfilled of it.� What was first announced by Moses, is repeated by Isaiah and other prophets, assuring them of their certain return wherever dispersed, to their own land in the latter days; and that they should have the undisturbed possession of it to the end of time. It has been objected, that the term "for ever" is not always to be understood in its greatest extant, but is to be interpreted according to circumstances. This for the sake of saving time I will acknowledge. But the circumstances in which this phrase is used in the passages already adduced, and in a number of others of similar import which might be adduced, clearly indicate, that it is to be understood in those passages to mean a period as long as the duration of the Israelitish nation, which elsewhere is said to continue to the end of the world. For this reason, among others, this final return of the Jews from their present dispersed state, cannot at any rate be said to have been accomplished at their return from the Babylonish captivity. For that captivity was not by any means such a total dispersion of the people among all nations, as Moses, and the later prophets have foretold. Nor does their possession of the country subsequent to it, at all correspond to that state of peace, and prosperity, which was promised to succeed this final return. Figures of speech must, no doubt, be allowed for. But if the whole of the Jewish polity was to terminate at the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, (as is maintained by Christians,) while the world is still to continue, the magnificent promises made to Abraham, and his posterity, and to the nation, in general, afterwards, have never had any proper accomplishment of all. Because with respect to external prosperity, which is contained in the promises, many nations have hitherto been more distinguished by God, than the Jews. Hitherto the posterity of Ishmael has had a much happier lot than that of Isaac. To say, as Christians do, that these prophecies have had a spiritual accomplishment in the spread of the Gospel, when there is nothing in the phraseology in which the promises are expressed, that could possibly suggest any such ideas, nay, when the promise itself in the most definite language expresses the contrary, is so arbitrary a construction as nothing can warrant. By this mode of interpretation, any event may be said to be the fulfillment of any prophecy whatever. Besides, it is perfectly evident, that these prophecies, whether they will be fulfilled, or not, cannot yet have been fulfilled. For all the calamity that was ever to befall the Jewish nation is expressly said to bear no sensible proportion to their subsequent prosperity: whereas, their prosperity has hitherto borne a small proportion to their calamity; so that had Abraham really foreseen the fate of his posterity, he would on this idea, have had little reason to rejoice in the prospect. It may be said, that the prosperity of the descendants of Abraham, was to depend on a condition, viz., their obedience, and that this condition was not fulfilled. But, besides that the Divine Being must have foreseen this circumstance, and therefore must have known that he was only tantalizing Abraham with a promise which would never be accomplished; this disobedience, and the consequences of it are expressly mentioned by Moses, and the other Prophets, only as a temporary thing, and what was to be succeeded by an effectual repentance, and perpetual obedience, and prosperity. Among others, let the following prophecy of Isaiah (in which the future security of Israel is compared to the security of the world from a second deluge) be considered, and let any impartial person say, whether the language does not necessarily lead those who believe the Old Testament, to the expectation of a much more durable state of Glory, and Happiness, than has, as yet, fallen to the lot of the posterity of Abraham. Is. 54, 7. �For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord, thy Redeemer. For this is as the waters of Noah unto me. For as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, go have I sworn, that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall [or �may�] depart, and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.--All thy children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children. In righteousness shalt thou be established. Thou shalt be far from oppression, for thou shalt not fear; and from terror, for it shall not come nigh thee. No weapon formed against thee, shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment, thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.� Here, as also in Moses, and other Prophets, an establishment in righteousness is promised to the Israelites, such as shall secure their future prosperity; and this promise has not yet been fulfilled. The promise of future virtue as connected with their future happiness, is also clearly expressed in Jer. ch. iii. 18. Had the Jewish nation become extinct, or likely to become so, it might, with some plausibility, have been said by Christians, that the purposes of God concerning them were actually fulfilled, and, therefore, that the words of the promise must have had some other signification than that which was most obvious. But the Jews are as much a distinct people as they ever were, and therefore seem reserved for some future strange destination. On the whole, it must be allowed, that the settlement of Israel in the land of Canaan, foretold with such emphasis by the Prophets, is a settlement which has not yet taken place, but may take place in that period so frequently, and so emphatically, distinguished by the title of �the latter days;� and therefore that whatever is said of Jewish customs, or modes of worship in �the latter days?� is a proof of the meant restoration of their ancient religious rites. That the institutions of the Mosaic Law are to be continued on the restoration of the Jews to their own land after their utter dispersion, is asserted by Moses himself in one of the passages already quoted; but is more clearly expressed by the subsequent Prophets. In some of their prophecies, particular mention is made of the observance of Jewish festivals, and of sacrifices; and in Ezechiel we find a description of a magnificent Temple, which being closely connected with his prophecy of the future happy state of the Israelites in their own land, cannot be understood of any other than a Temple which is then, according to the Hebrew Prophets, to be reared with greater magnificence than ever. Mention is also made of �the Glory of the Lord,� or that effulgent Shechinah which was the symbol of the divine presence, filling this Temple, as it did that of Solomon. Ezech. xliii. 1, &c. �Afterward he brought me to the gate, even the gate that looketh toward the East; and behold the glory of the Lord came from the way of the East, and his voice was like the noise of many waters, and the Earth shined with his Glory.--And the Glory of the Lord came into the house by the way of the gate, whose prospect is toward the East. So the Spirit took me up, and brought me into the inner court, and behold the Glory of the Lord filled the house.--And he said unto me, Son of man, the place of my Throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever, and my holy name shall the house of Israel no more defile,� &c. Towards the end of the same chapter we read an account of the dedication of this new Temple by sacrifices; and particular directions are given in the succeeding chapters for the Priests, and for the Prince. If, therefore, there be any truth in these prophecies, the Jews are not only to return to their own country, and to be distinguished among the nations, but are to rebuild the Temple, and to restore the ancient worship. Having proved that the Old Testament declares the perpetuity of the Mosaic Law, I proceed, 2dly, to prove that it is declared to be perpetual by Jesus himself. But before I adduce my proofs, I beg leave to premise, that when any Law is solemnly enacted, we expect that the abrogation of it should be equally solemn, and express, in order that no room for dispute may remain upon the subject. Accordingly, it is the custom, I believe, in all countries, not to make any new Law, contradictory to another before subsisting, without a previous express abrogation of the old one. And certainly it appears to me a strange notion to suppose, that the elaborate and noble Law given from mount Sinai amidst circumstances unexampled, awful, and tremendously magnificent, and believed to have been declared by the voice of God to be a perpetual and everlasting Code, should vanish, perish, and be annihilated by the mere dictum of twelve fishermen!! But the fact is otherwise, for Jesus was so far from teaching the abrogation of that law, that he expressly says--� Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the Prophets, I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.� This is a most explicit declaration that not the smallest punctilio in the law of Moses was intended to be set aside by the Gospel. Nay more, he expressly commanded his disciples to the same purpose--�The Scribes and Pharisees (says he,) sit in Moses� seat; all therefore whatsoever they command you, that observe, and do.� It is said in answer to this by Christian Divines, that his discourse relates to things of a moral nature, and that he only meant, that no part of the Moral Law was to be abolished. But besides that the expression is general, there could be no occasion to make so solemn a declaration against what he could not have been suspected of intending, viz. of abolishing the moral law. He seems in his discourse to have had in view the additions that had been made to the law. These he sets aside, but no part of the original law itself. It has also been urged that by fulfilling, may be meant such an accomplishment of it as would imply the superseding of it when the purposes for which it was instituted should be answered. To silence this explication it will be sufficient to produce a few out of many passages of the New Testament where the term fulfil occurs in connexion with the term law. Thus Paul says, Gal. v. 14, �All the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,� and again. Rom. xiii. 8, �He that loveth another, hath fulfilled the law.� But certainly, notwithstanding this fulfilment of the moral law, it remains in as full force as ever. The Apostles understood Jesus to mean as we have asserted. For it is evident from the Acts, that the Christians at Jerusalem were zealous in attachment to the law of Moses; this is evident from their surprise at Peter's conduct with regard to Cornelius; and in the dispute about imposing circumcision upon the Gentiles; observe there was no dispute about its being obligatory upon Jews. Paul was indeed vehemently accused of teaching a contrary doctrine, as we find in the history of the transactions respecting him in his last journey to Jerusalem. Acts xxi. 21,� They (i. e. the Christians) are informed of thee (says James to Paul) that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles, to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumscise their children, neither to walk after the custom.� Here James gives Paul to understand that he considered the report as a calumny, and accordingly, to convince the Jewish Christians that it was a false report, he advises Paul to be at charges with some Jewish Christians, who were under a vow of Nazaritism, (which is an instance in point to prove that the first Christians kept the law,) and thus publicly manifest that he himself �walked orderly, and kept the law.� Paul complies with this advice, and purified himself in the temple, and did what was done in like cases by the strictest Jews. He also circumcised Timothy, who was a convert to Christianity, because he was the son of a Jewish Mother. And he solemnly declared in open court. Acts xxv. 8, �Against the law of the Jews, neither against the Temple, have I offended any thing at all,� and again, to the Jews at Rome, Acts xxviii., 7, he assures them that �he had done nothing against the people, or the customs of the fathers.� But some men will say,� did not Paul expressly teach the abrogation of the law, in his Epistles, especially in that to the Galatians?� I answer, he undoubtedly did; and in so doing he contradicted the Old Testament, his master Jesus, the twelve Apostles, and himself too. But how can this be? I answer, it is none of my concern to reconcile the conduct of Paul; or to defend his equivocations. It is pretty clear, that he did not dare to preach this doctrine at Jerusalem. He confined this �hidden wisdom,� to the Gentiles. To the Jews he became as a Jew; and to the uncircumcised as one uncircumcised, he was �all things to all men!� and for this conduct he gives you his reason, viz. �that he was determined at any rate to gain some.� If this be double dealing, dissimulation, and equivocation, I cannot help it; it is none of my concern, I leave it to the Commentators, and the reconciliators, the disciples of Surenhusius; let them look to it; perhaps they can hunt up some �traditionary rules of interpretation among the Jews,� that will help them to explain the matter. Lastly, it has been said that there was no occasion for Jesus, or his Apostles to be very explicit with respect to the abolition of the laws of Moses, since the Temple was to be soon destroyed, when the Jewish worship would cease of course. This argument, flimsy as it is, is nevertheless the instar omnium of the Christian Divines to prove the abolishment of this Law: (for the other arguments adduced by them as prophecies of it from the 1 ch. of Isaiah, and some of the Psalms, are nothing, to the purpose; they being merely declarations of God, that he preferred obedience in the weightier matters of the Law; Justice, Mercy, and Holiness, to ceremonial observances; and that repentance was of more avail with him than offering thousands of rams, and fed beasts,) and this argument like so many others, when weighed in the balance, will be �found wanting.� For, as the destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar certainly did not abolish the Law, so neither did the destruction by Titus, do it. And as it would be notoriously absurd to maintain the first, so it is equally so to maintain the last, position. Besides, a very considerable part of that Law can be, and for these seventeen hundred years, has been kept without the Temple. As for example, circumcision, distinction of meats, and many others. And when, if ever, they shall return to their own land, and rebuild the Temple, they will then, according to the Old Testament, observe the whole, and with greater splendour than ever. CHAPTER XII. ON THE CHARACTER OF PAUL AND HIS MANNER OF REASONING. As Christians lay great stress upon their argument for the truth of their Religion, derived from the supposed miraculous conversion of Paul; and since almost the whole of Systematic Christianity is built upon the foundation of the Epistles ascribed to him, we shall pay a little more attention to his character and writings. Paul was evidently a man of no small capacity, a fiery temper, great subtilty, and considerably well versed in Jewish Traditionary, and Cabbalistic Learning, and not unacquainted with the principles of the Philosophy called the �Oriental.� He is said by Luke to have been converted to Christianity by a splendid apparition of Jesus, who struck him to the ground by the glory of his appearance. But by the Jews and the Nazarene Christians, he is represented as having been converted to Christianity from a different cause. They say that being a man of tried abilities and of some note, he demanded the High Priest�s daughter in marriage, and being refused, his rash and rageful temper, and a desire of revenge, drove him to join the �sect of the Nazarenes,� at that time beginning to become troublesome to the Sanhedrim. However this may be, whether he became a Christian from conviction, or from ambition; it is certain from the Acts that he always was considered by the Jewish Christians, as a suspected character; and it is evident that he taught a different doctrine from that promulgated by the twelve apostles. And this was the true cause of the great difficulty he was evidently under of keeping steady to him, his Gentile converts. For it is evident from the Epistles to the Galatians, and the Corinthians, that the Jewish Christians represented Paul to them as not �sound in the Faith,� but as teaching a different doctrine from that of the Twelve, and so influential were these representations, that Paul had the greatest difficulty in keeping them to his System. That there were two Parties, or Schools in the first Christian church, viz. the adherents of the Apostles, and the Disciples of Paul, is evident from the New Testament, and has been fully, and unanswerably proved by the learned Semler, the greatest scholar certainly in Christian Antiquities, that ever lived. The knowledge of this secret, accounts for the different conduct of Paul when among his Gentile converts, from that which he pursued when with the apostles at Jerusalem. He had a difficult part to act, and he managed admirably. He was indeed, as he says, himself, �all things to all men,� a Jew with the Jews, and as one uncircumcised among the uncircumcised. To the Jews, he asserted, that he � taught nothing contrary to the Law, and the Prophets,� and when brought before the Sanhedrim for teaching otherwise than he said, he dexterously got himself out of tribulation, by throwing a bone of contention among the Council, and setting his Judges together by the ears. �And when Paul perceived that the one part (of the Council) were Sadducees, and the other, Pharisees, he cried out in the Council: Brethren, I am a Pharisee, and the son of a Pharisee; concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead, I am now judged. And when he had said this, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the multitude was divided. For the Sadducees say there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both. And there was a great cry, and the Scribes that were on the part of the Pharisees, arose and strove, saying, �We find no evil in this man� &c. This, indeed, was a masterly manoeuvre, and produced the desired effect; and Paul by this shows his knowledge of the human heart, in trusting to make his Judges forget what he was accused of, by making an appeal to their sectarian passions. For, in truth, he was not accused concerning his opinion about �the hope, and the resurrection of the dead,� but for the following cause, as his accusers vociferated (in the xxi. ch.) when they seized him in the Temple, �Men of Israel, Help! This is the man, who teacheth all men every where against, the people, and the Law, and this place.� These strokes of character enable us to understand the man; and I shall now go into the consideration of some of the arguments he has deduced from passages in the Old Testament in support of his opinions; after premising, that the truth of the story of the manner of his conversion depends entirely upon his own assertion; and whether his credibility be absolutely unimpeachable, can be easily determined by an impartial consideration of the history of his conduct already mentioned. I will only add upon this subject, that in telling the story of his conversion, he ought to have had a better memory; for in telling it once in xxvi. ch. of Acts, he says, in describing his miraculous vision, that �those that were with me, saw indeed the light, and were afraid, but heard not the words of him that spake to me;� and thus he directly contradicts the story of it recorded in Acts ix., where it is said, �that the men who journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but seeing no one.� In the 9th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, v. 24, he thus proves; that the Old Testament prophecied of the conversion of the Gentiles, to the Gospel--�Even us whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles, as he saith also in Hosea �I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved. And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, you are not my people, there shall they be called the sons of the living God.�--Is not this to the purpose? yet, in applying this passage to the Gentiles, Paul has wilfully, (yes wilfully, for Paul was a learned man, and knew better) perverted the original from its proper reference, and has passed upon his simple converts., who did not know so much of the Jewish Scriptures, as he did, a prophecy relating entirely to the Jews, as referring to the Gentiles!! By turning to Hosea, Reader, you will find this to be verily the case; here is the passage, �Then said God, call his name (Hosea�s son) Loammi, for ye (the Israelites) are not my people, and I will not be your God, yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured, nor numbered. And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, ye are not my people, there shall it be said unto them, ye are the sons of the living God.� Hosea chapter i �Again v. 33. �As it is written, Behold I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, and every one who believeth in him shall not be ashamed.� Here Paul has pieced two passages together, which in the originals are disconnected. For in the 8th chapter of Isaiah it is written, �Sanctify the Lord of Hosts himself, and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling, and for a rock of offence, to both the houses of Israel; for a gin, and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.� And in the 28th chapter it is written, �therefore, thus saith the Lord God, behold I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation, he that believeth shall not be ashamed,� (or disappointed) Here �you see, reader, that he jams two distant passages together no ways related; and alters some words, and applies them to Jesus, with whom, it appears from the context of Isaiah, they have no concern. Ch. x. v. 6. �The scripture saith, �say not in thine heart, who shall ascend into Heaven? (that is, that he may bring down Jesus from above.) Again, �who shall descend into the abyss?� (that is, that he may bring up Jesus from the dead.) But what saith it? � The word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart.� (that is the word of Faith which we speak.) For if thou confess Jesus with thy mouth, and believe in thine heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.� Here you will see another instance of misapplication of Scripture by Paul, in order to dazzle the eyes of his simple and credulous converts, for let any one took at the place in the Scripture whence the quotation is taken, arid he will immediately see the inapplicability of the words, and the adulteration of those of the original, in order to make them apply. For the Scripture quoted speaks of, and refers to penitence, and. not at all about believing on, or bringing down Jesus from Heaven, or up from the dead; for here are the words, Deut. 30.--�If thou be converted to the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind.�--Immediately is subjoined--�For this Law which I command you this day is not far from thee; neither is it afar off. It is not in Heaven, that thou shouldst say, who shall ascend for us into Heaven, that he may bring it unto us, and declare it to us that we might do it,� &c. The sense of the whole is, that God wills us to repent of sin; and that you may know when you have sinned, you have only to look at his Law, which is not in Heaven, nor afar off, but is put in your own hands, and is perfectly familiar with your heart, and lips. 1 Cor, ch. v. 1. Paul accuses one of the Christians of the church of Corinth of the crime of incest, because he had married his step-mother, and orders them to excommunicate him. But Paul, in all his Epistles and teachings to the Gentiles, pronounced them free from the Law of Moses. Wherefore then for the violation of one of those Laws interdicting such a marriage, does he so vehemently, blame them? Such a marriage is not forbidden in the Gospel: it was forbidden to them no where in the Scriptures but in the Mosaic Code. Therefore, Paul must have founded his judgment against the criminal upon the dictum of that law in such cases. Paul puts the man under a curse; and it is the Mosaic Law which says, Deut. 27, �Cursed is he who lieth with his father�s wife.� It seems, therefore, that Jesus did not deliver his followers from �the curse of the law,� as Paul taught them it did in Gal. iii. 13. 1 Cor. ch. x.:--�And let us not pollute ourselves with fornication, as some of them were polluted, and fell in one day to the number of twenty-three thousand.� Here is a blunder, for it is written � twenty-four thousand.�--Num. 25. Gal. iii., 13, Paul says, �Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.� What he says of the Christ, or the Messiah redeeming from the curses written in the law, that by no means agrees with truth; for no Jew can be freed from the curses of the law, but by repenting of his sins, and becoming obedient to it. And in alledging the words �cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree,� from Deut. xxi., he, as usual, applies them irrelevantly. Paul says, Gal. iii, 10:--�For as many as are of the works of the law, are under the curse; for it is written, Deut. xxvii. 26, � Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them.�� And he interprets this to mean that all mankind, Jews and Gentile, are liable to damnation, (except those who are saved by faith) because no man ever did continue in all things written in the law. Now, in the first place I would observe, that Paul has inserted the word �all� in the passage he quotes from Deuteronomy, (in the original of which it is not) in order to make it support his system; for the whole of his argument is built upon this one surreptitiously inserted word. 2. The words according to the original are simply these:--�Cursed is he that continueth not the words of this law to do them;� i. e.,--He who disobeys, or neglects to fulfil the commands of the law, shall be under the curse denounced upon the disobedient. But who would conclude from this that repentance would not remove the curse? Does not God expressly declare in the xxx. ch. of Deut., that if they repent, the curses written shall be removed from them? And have we not innumerable instances recorded in the Old Testament, of sinners, and transgressors of this very law, received to pardon and favour, upon repentance and amendment? So that this argument founded upon an unwarrantable undeniable interpolation, and supported by bad logic, is every way bad, and insulting to God and his (by Paul acknowledged) word. Gal ch. iii. 16:--�To Abraham, and his seed were the promises made, He saith not � and to seeds,� (as of roomy) but as of one, � and to thy seed,� which is Christ.� Here is an argument which one would think too far-fetched, even for Paul; and it is built on a perversion of a passage from Genesis, which Paul, bold as he was in these matters, certainly would not have ventured, if he had not the most assured confidence in the blinking credulity of his Galatian converts. His argument in this place is drawn from the use of the word �seed� in the singular number, in the passage of Genesis, from whence he quotes. And because the word seed is in the singular number, fag tells the �foolish Galatians,� as he justly calls them, that this �seed� must mean one individual (and not many,) �which,� says he, �is Christ.� Now, let us look at the xv. ch. of Gen., from whence he quotes, and we shall see the force of this singular argument, derived from the use of the singular number. �And He (God) brought him (Abraham) forth abroad, and said. Look now towards heaven, and tell the stars if thou be able to number them, and He said unto him, so shall thy seed be.--And He said, know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and they shall afflict them, &c., afterwards they shall come out with great substance.--In that same day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying, unto thy seed have I given this land,� &c. Again, ch. xxii., God said to Abraham by his Angel, �I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his (or its) enemies, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice! Reader, what do you think now of Paul�s argument from the use of the singular number? Which is most to be admired? His offering such an argument to the Galatians; (for being a learned man, he certainly knew that the argument was nought,) or their credulity in receiving such reasoning as Divine? Really, I fear there is some reason for admitting as true what Celsus maliciously says of the simplicity of the Primitive Christians, if Paul could with impunity feed his �spiritual babes� with such pap as this! I intended to have concluded this subject, by bringing under examination some of the arguments and quotations in the Epistle to the Hebrews; but upon looking over that Epistle, and contemplating my task, I confess I shrink from it. That Epistle is so replete with daring, ridiculous, and impious applications of the words of the Old Testament, that I am glad to omit it; and I think after the specimens which have been already brought forward, that my reader is quite as much satiated as myself. I will, therefore, bring forward only one quotation, which is alledged in that Epistle to prove the abolition of the law of Moses; and as for the rest, I content myself with referring those who want to know more of it, to the pieces written by the celebrated Dr. Priestley upon Paul�s arguments in general, and those in that Epistle in particular, preserved in his Theological Repository, where he will see absurdity in reasoning, and, something worse, in quotation, exposed in a masterly manner. Indeed, some learned Christians are so sensible of the insuperable difficulties attending every attempt to reconcile that Epistle to the Doctrine of inspiration, or even to common sense, that they avoid the trouble, by denying that Paul could have been the author of such a work, and attribute it to the same, or a similar, hand, with that which forged the marvellous Epistle ascribed to Barnabas. The quotation brought forward in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to prove the abrogation of the Mosaic Law, and the substitution of a new one, is taken from Jer. xxxi. 31, &c.--�Behold the days come saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Judah. Not according to the covenant which I made with they fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, (which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord.) But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people; and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, saying know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity, and will remember their sins no more.� Upon this passage the author of the Epistle observes �in that he saith �a new covenant,� he hath made the first old;� and he sagely concludes � now that which decayeth, and waxeth old, is ready to vanish away!!� and takes the quotation to be a prophecy of the abolition of the old law, and the introduction of the Gospel Dispensation. Now, I would observe on his reasoning, in the first place, that, allowing for a moment his interpretation of the prophecy to be correct, (i. e., that it signifies the abolishment of the old, and an introduction of a new law) the prophecy, at any rate, cannot refer to Jesus, or the Gospel; for so far from having been fulfilled in the time of Jesus, or his Apostles, it has not been fulfilled to this day; for certainly God has not yet made a new covenant with the Jews, to whom the prophecy refers, nor has he yet �put his law in their hearts;� nor �caused them to walk in it;� neither has he yet � forgiven their sins, or forgotten their iniquities,� since they are even now suffering, the consequences of them. I will now retract what I granted, and assert that the prophet did not mean an abolition of the Mosaic, and the introduction of a new, law; for though the prophet speaks of a new covenant, he says nothing of a new law; but on the contrary, asserts that this new covenant would be effectual to make them obey the law. God promised to put his law within their hearts (not out of remembrance, as the catechisms say;) and in this alone this covenant differs from the one entered into at Mount Sinai. For, then, though the law was given them, it was not �put within their hearts,� but they were apt, to their own controul, to obey it, or not, being assured, however, that happiness should be the reward of obedience, and death and excision the punishment for revolt and disobedience. And you will moreover observe, that, notwithstanding what is here called a new covenant, nothing is here said of the abrogation of any former covenant, or constitution, or of any new terms, that would be required by God on the part of the Israelites. The prophet, by expanding his idea, sufficiently explains his whole meaning, which is evidently this, viz.: That God would make a new, and solemn promise to the Israelites, that they should be no more out of favor with him; that their hearts would be hereafter so right with God, that in consequence of it, they would continue in the quiet possession of their country to the end of time; and all this is intimated by Moses, in the quotation from Deuteronomy, quoted in the last chapter. Thus is the passage perfectly consistent with those in the Old Testament, which affirm, (whether right or wrong is not my concern) the perfection and perpetuity of the Mosaic Law. � Remember,� are the last words of the last of the prophets, Malachi,--�Remember the Law of Moses, my servant which I commanded unto him in Horeb, with the Statutes, and Judgments.� Also in the Psalms:--�The Law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The Testimony of the Lord is faithful, bringing wisdom to the simple. The Precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart, and enlightening the eyes.� �The works of his hands are Truth, and Judgment. All his Precepts are sure. They stand fast for ever and ever: being done in Truth and Uprightness.� CHAPTER XIII. EXAMINATION OF SOME DOCTRINES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT DERIVED FBOM THE CABALLA, THE ORIENTAL PHILOSOPHY, AND THE TENETS OF ZOROASTER. I have said in the preceding chapter, that Paul was well versed in Cabbalistic Learning, and not unacquainted with the principles of the Philosophy styled �the Oriental;� and to prove and exemplify this assertion, is the subject and intention of this chapter. None but the learned know, how much of Systematic Christianity is derived from the Cabbalism of the Jews; the Religion of the Magi of Persia; and the Philosophy of the Bramins of Indostan. I shall attempt to lay open these Theological Arcana, and make them known to those who ought to know what they have been kept in ignorance of. Many of my readers have, no doubt, frequently puzzled themselves over these words of Paul�s, Eph. v. 30:--�For we are members of his (Christ�s) body, of his flesh, and of his bones. Because of this, a man shall leave his father, and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This mystery is great, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.� This passage exemplifies the connexion between Christ and the Church, by that which subsists between a man and his wife; and this Paul calls �a great mystery;� and it no doubt must be a very mysterious passage to all those who are unacquainted with the cabbalistic notion to which it alludes, and refers. To illustrate the passage, and to prove that Paul raised his Cabbalism with his religion, I shall set down here the note of Dr. Whitby, the Christian Commentator, upon the text of Paul. �The learned Dr. Allix saith, The first match between Adam and Eve, was a type of that between Christ and his Church; and in this, saith he, the Apostle follows the Jewish notions. The Jews say, the mystery of Adam, is the mystery of the Messiah, who is the Bridegroom of the Church. These two persons, therefore, confirm the observation of Munster, that the creation of the woman from the rib of the man, was made by the Jews to signify the marriage of the celestial man who is blessed, or of the Messiah, with the Church; whence the Apostle applies the very words which Adam said concerning Eve his spouse, to the Church, who is the spouse of Christ; saying, �for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.� For the explanation of these words, take what follows:--�The profoundest of the Jewish Divines, whom they now call Cabbalists, having such a notion as this among them, that sensible things are but an imitation of things above, conceived from thence, that there was an original pattern of love and union, which is between a man and his wife in this world. This being expressed by the kindness of Tipheret and Malchut, which are the names they give to the invisible Bridegroom and Bride in the upper world. And this Tiphiret, or the celestial Adam, is so called in opposition to the terrestrial Adam; as Malchut also (i. e., the kingdom) they call by the name of Chinnereth Israel the Congregation of Israel, who is, they say, united to the celestial Adam as Eve was to the terrestrial.� So that in sum, they seem to say the same that Paul doth, when he tells us, that �marriage is a great mystery, but he speaks concerning Christ and his Church.� For the marriage of Tipheret and Malchuth, is the marriage of Christ, �the Lord from Heaven,� (�the first man was of the Earth earthly, the second man is the Lord from Heaven,� says Paul I Cor. xv.,) with his spouse the Church, which is the conjunction of Adam and Eve, and of all other men and women descended from them. Origen also seems to have had some notion of the relation of this passage to Adam and Eve, when he speaks thus:--�If any man deride us for using the example of Adam and Eve in these words, �and Adam knew his wife,� when we treat of the knowledge of God, let him consider these words--�This is a great mystery.�� Tertullian frequently alludes to the same thing, saying--�This is a great sacrament, carnally in Adam, spiritually in Christ, because of the spiritual marriage between Christ and the Church.� Thus far Dr. Whitby, and the intelligent reader, who is acquainted with the dogmas and philosophy of Indostan, will not fail to see through this cloud, of words the origin of this analogy of Paul. The fact is, that in India and in Egypt, the Divine creative power which produced all things and energizes in everything, was symbolized by the Phallus; and to this day, in Hindostan, the operation of Diety upon matter is symbolized by images of the same; and in the darkest recesses of their Temples, which none but the initiated were permitted to enter: the Phallus of stone is the solitary idol, before which the illuminated bowed. This symbol, though shameful and abominable, is yet looked upon in India with the profoundest veneration, and is not with them the occasion of shame or reproach. It is, however, a blasphemous abomination; and the marriage between Christ and the Church ought not to have been thus illustrated by Paul, who reproached the heathen mysteries as �works of darkness,� which mysteries, in fact, consisted principally in exhibiting these symbols, and similar abominations. But, it may be asked, what is the meaning of the other clause of the verse--what could Paul mean by the strong language, �We are members of his body? of his flesh, and of his bones?� Why, my reader, he meant, that Christians were really part of the body of Christ and if you desire to know How he imagined this union to be effected, I request you to see the 10th ch. of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, where at the 16th verse he thus writes to them:--�The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation of the blood of Christ? The loaf (according to the Greek original) which we break, is it not a participation of the body of Christ? for, Because the loaf is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of that one loaf.� Again, ch. xi. 19, �For he that eateth, and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not distinguishing (or discovering) the Lord�s body;� and in ch. xii. 27, he says to them, �Ye are the body of Christ, and his members severally.� (See the original of these passages in Griesbach�s Greek Testament.) Thus you see, reader, that Paul considered Christians �as members of his (Christ�s) body, of his flesh, and of his bones,� because they partook of one loaf, which was the body of Christ. The Papists are in the right, and have been much slandered by the Protestants, for the doctrine of Transubstantiation, or at least the Real Presence, is as plainly taught in the New Testament, as the doctrine of the Atonement. You have seen what Paul believed upon this subject, and I shall corroborate the sense I put upon his words, by the words of Jesus, his master, and by quotations from the earliest Fathers. Jesus says, John vi.--�I am the living bread which came down from Heaven; if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever, and the bread which I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.� The Jews, therefore, contended among themselves, saying, �How can this man give us his flesh to eat?� Jesus, therefore, said unto them, �Verily, verily, I say unto you, unless ye eat the flesh of the son of man, and drink his blood, ye have not life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is verily food, and my blood is verily drink. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, (here is an oath) so he likewise that eateth me shall live by me.� This strange doctrine was the faith of the Primitive Christians, as is well known to the learned Protestants, though they do not like to say so to their �weaker brethren.� Ignatius says, �There is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup in the unity of his blood;� and of certain heretics he says, �they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ.� Justin Martyr, in his Apology, asserts that the consecrated bread �is, some how or other, the flesh of Christ.� In the dispute with Latimer about Transubstantiation, it is acknowledged by the most candid writers, that the Roman Catholics had much the advantage. It must have been so, where quotations from the Fathers were allowed as arguments. For what answer can be made to the following extracts?--� What a miracle is this! He who sits above with the Father, at the same instant, is handled by the hands of men.� [Chrysostom.] Again, from the same, �That which is in the cup, is the same which flowed from the side of Christ.� Again, �Because we abhor the eating of raw flesh; therefore, it appeareth bread, though it be flesh.� [Theophylact.] Or to this?--�Christ was carried in his own hands, when he said �this is my body.�� [Austin,] Or to this?--�We are taught, that when this nourishing food is consecrated, it becomes the body and blood of our Saviour.� [Justin Martyr.] Or, lastly, to this? [from Ambrose]--� It is bread before consecration, but after that ceremony, it becomes the flesh of Christ.� Another doctrine which Paul derived from the Oriental Philosophy, and Which makes a great figure in his writings, is the notion, that moral corruption originates in the influxes of the body upon the mind. �It was one of the principal tenets of the Oriental Philosophy, that all evil resulted from matter, and its first founder appears to have argued in the following manner:--�There are many evils in the world, and men seem impelled of a natural instinct to the practice of those things which reason condemns. But that eternal mind, from which all spirits derive their existence, must be inaccessible to all kinds of evil, and also of a most perfect and beneficent nature; therefore, the origin of these evils with which the world abounds, must be sought somewhere else, than in the Deity. It cannot abide in him who is all perfection, and, therefore, it must be without him. Now, there is nothing without or beyond the Deity but matter; therefore, matter is the centre and source of all evil, of all vice.� One of the consequences they drew from this hypothesis was, that since All evil resulted from matter, the depravity of mankind arose from the pollution derived to the human soul, from its connexion with the material body which it inhabits; and, therefore, the only means by which the mind could purify itself from the defilement, and liberate itself from the bondage imposed upon it by the body, was to emaciate and humble the body by frequent fasting, and to invigorate the mind to overcome and subdue it by retirement and contemplation. The New Testament, though it does not recognise this principle of the Oriental Philosophy, �that evil originates from matter,� yet coincides with it in strenuously asserting that the corruption of the human mind is derived from its connexion with the human body. To prove this proposition, I shall show that Paul calls all crimes the works of the flesh.� �Now, the works of the flesh are manifest, (says he, Gal. v. 19,) which are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, rivalries, wrath, disputes, divisions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like.� He also describes the conflict between the flesh and the spirit, or mind, in these terms:-- �For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good, for to will is present with me, but to perform that which is good, I find not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of my sin in my members. O wretched man that I am! who will deliver me from the body of this death?� (or this body of death.) And he goes on to observe, �That I, the same man, with my mind serve the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin.�--Rom. vii. �For the flesh desireth against (or in opposition to) the spirit, and the spirit against �the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.� �Those that are Christ�s (says Paul, Gal. v. 24) have crucified the flesh, with its passions and desires.� And they are commanded (Rom. vi. 12 and viii. 13) �to mortify,� or, according to the original, �put to death or �kill their members;� and Paul himself uses language upon this subject exceeding strong. He represents (1 Cor. ix. 27) his mind and body as engaged in combat, and says, �I buffet my body, and subject it.� The word here translated � subject,� in the original, means �to carry into servitude,� and is a term taken from the language of the olympic games where the boxers dragged off the arena, their conquered, disabled, and helpless antagonists like slaves, in which humbled condition the Apostle represents his body to be with respect to his mind. From this notion of the sinfulness of �the flesh,� we are enabled to apprehend Paul�s reasonings about the sufferings of Jesus �in the flesh.� �Since the children are partakers of flesh and blood, Christ himself also in like manner partook of them�--Heb. ii. 14. �For (says Paul) what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God hath done, who by having sent his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and on account of sin, hath condemned sin in the flesh.�--Rom. viii. 3. �But now, through Christ Jesus, ye who formerly were far off, are brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our Peace who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us, having abolished by his flesh the cause of enmity.�--Ephes. ii. 16. �You that were formerly aliens, and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet he hath now reconciled by his fleshly body, through his death.�--Col. i. 20. Though these notions are sufficiently strange, yet they are not so very remarkable as the one I am about to consider. It is a singular, and a demonstrable fact, that the fundamental scheme of Christianity was derived from the religion of the ancient Persians, The whole of the New Testament scheme is built upon the hypothesis, that there is a powerful and malignant being, called the Devil and Satan, the chief of unknown myriads of other evil spirits; that he is, by the sufferance of God, the Prince of this world, and is the Author of sin, woe and death; the Tempter, the Tormentor of men, and the Tyrant of the Earth; that the Son of God, to deliver mankind from the vassalage of this monster, descended from heaven, and purchased their ransom of the Tyrant, at the price of his blood; for observe, my reader, that the idea of the death of Jesus being an atonement to God for the sins of men, is a modern notion; for the Primitive Christians, all of them, considered the death of Jesus as a ransom paid to the Devil, as may be proved from Origen and other Fathers. That the New Testament represents this character as the sovereign of this world, may be proved by the following passages:--�All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them, (said the Tempter to Jesus, when he showed him all the kingdoms of the earth,) for it is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it.� Luke iv., Jesus calls him �the Prince of this world;� John xii., and elsewhere. In his commission to Paul, he calls embracing his religion, �turning from darkness unto light, and from the power of Satan to God.�--. Acts xxvi. 18. Accordingly we find, that to become a Christian was considered as being freed from the tyranny of Satan. �God hath given life to you, (says Paul) who were dead in offences, and sins; in which ye formerly walked, according to the course (or constitution) of this world, according to the Prince of the Power of the air.�-- Ephesians ii., 1. And again:--�If our gospel be covered, (or hid) it is covered among those that are lost, among those unbelievers, whose minds the God of this world hath blinded, to the end that the glorious gospel of Christ should not enlighten them.�--2 Cor. iv. 4. John says in his Epistle, that �the whole world lieth in the power of the wicked one;� and Jesus in the gospels compares him to �a strong man armed, keeping his goods;� and himself to one stronger than he, who strippeth him of the arms in which he trusted, and spoileth his goods. �For this purpose was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the Devil.�--1 John iii. 8. And it is said, �that he came to send forth the captive into liberty, and to heal those who were oppressed of the Devil.� Men are also said to have been �taken captive of the Devil, to fulfil his will.�--2 Timothy ii. 26. And we find that the Christians attributed all their sufferings to the opposition of this Being. �Put on (says Paul) the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil. For we struggle not against flesh and blood only; but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in high places.�--Ephesians vi. 12. Christians are also said to be delivered by God from the power of darkness, and to be translated into the kingdom of his dear son. That is, as Christians were considered as being the subjects of Jesus, and the rest of the world as being of the kingdom of Satan, when a man became a Christian he was translated from the kingdom of one, to the kingdom of the other. Jesus accused the Devil as being the author of all evil, as a liar, and the father of lies, and a murderer of men, and of women, too, as appears in the Gospel, from the account of that one, whose back the Devil had bowed down for eighteen years--Luke xiii. 10--(on what account it does not appear.) In short, the New Testament represents to him as being the source of all evil and mischief, and the promoter of it; and the whole world as being his subjects, and combined with him against all good. But how does all this prove that these notions were derived from the religion of the ancient Persians? I answer by requesting you, my reader, to peruse, attentively, the following account of the fundamental principles of the religion of Zoroaster, the prophet of the Persians. The doctrine of Zoroaster was, that there was one Supreme Being, independent, and self-existing from all eternity; that inferior to him, there were two Angels, one the Angel of Light, who is the Author and Director of all Good; and the other, the Angel of Darkness, who is the Author and Director of all Evil; that these two are in a perpetual struggle with each other; and that where the Angel of Light prevails, there the most is good; awl where the Angel of Darkness prevails, there the most is evil. That this struggle shall continue to the end of the world; that then there shall be a general resurrection, and a day of judgment, wherein just retribution shall be rendered to all according to their works; after which, the Angel of Darkness, and his followers, shall go into a world of their own, where they shall suffer in darkness, the punishment of their evil deeds. And the Angel of Light, and his followers, shall also go into a world of their own, where they shall receive, in everlasting light, the reward due to their good deeds. It is impossible but that the reader must see the agreement of the doctrines of the New Testament with all this; and since it is undoubted, that these tenets of Zoroaster are far more ancient than the New Testament, and since, as we have seen, that that book is much indebted to oriental notions for many of its dogmas, there is no way of accounting for this coincidence (that I know of), besides supposing the Devil of the New Testament to be of Persian origin. It is, however, in my power to make this coincidence still more striking from the words of Jesus himself, who says, (Matthew xiii. 24), �The kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while men slept, his enemy (mark the expression) his enemy came, and sowed tares among the wheat; but when the blade sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came near, and said unto him, � Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? whence, then, hath it tares?� And he saith unto them, an enemy hath done this.� You know the rest of the parable. The explanation of it is as follows:--�He who soweth the good seed is the Son of Man, and the field is the world; and the good seed are the sons of the kingdom, and the tares are the sons of the Evil One, and the enemy who sowed them is the Devil.� Here you see, as far as it goes, a precise agreement with the doctrine of Zoroaster; and to complete the resemblance, you need but to recollect, that at the day of Judgment, according to the words of Jesus, the wicked go into the fire prepared for the Devil and his angels; and the righteous go into life eternal with the Son of God. But is there not a Satan mentioned in the Old Testament, and is he not there represented as an evil and malevolent angel? I think not. This notion probably arises from the habit of interpreting the Old Testament by the New. The Satan mentioned in the Old Testament, is represented as God�s minister of punishment, and as much his faithful servant as any of his angels. The prologue to the book of Job certainly supposes that this angel of punishment, by office, appeared in the court of Heaven, nay, he is ranked among �the Sons of God.� This Satan is merely the supposed chief of those ministers of God�s will, whose office is to execute his ordered commands upon the guilty, and who may be sometimes, as in the case of Job, the minister of probation only, rather than of punishment; and there is no reason why he should be ashamed of his office more than the General of an army, or the Judges of the criminal courts, who, though they are not unfrequently ministers of punishment are not, therefore, excluded the royal presence; but on the contrary, their office is considered as honourable;--i. e., punishment without malevolence, does not pollute the inflictor. Consider the story of the destruction of Sodom, Genesis xix.; of Egypt; Exodus xxii.; of Sennacherib, 1 Kings xxix. 35; also Joshua v. 13. The term Satan signifies an adversary, and is applied to any angel sent upon an errand of punishment For example, Numbers xxii. 23, �The Angel of the Lord stood in the way, for an adversary (literally, for a Satan) against Balaam, with his sword drawn in his hand.� �Curse ye Meroz, saith the Angel of the Lord,� whose office is to punish. So also Psalms xxxv. 5, �Let the Angel (of punishment) of the Lord chase them, (i. e., drive them before him in a military manner; pursue them:) let their way be dark and slippery, and the Angel of the Lord following them.� 2 Samuel xxiv. 16:--�The Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel--the angel (of punishment) stretched forth his hand and smote the people.�--1 Chronicles xxi. 16:--�David saw the angel (of punishment) having a drawn sword in his hand.� This notion is referred to, in the Apocryphal History of Susannah, verse 69. �The Angel of the Lord waiteth with his sword that he may cut thee in two.� Thus we see, that the term Satan is in the Old Testament applied to any Angel of the Lord sent upon an errand of punishment. And the term itself is so far from being reproachful (for David is said, 1 Samuel xxix. 4, to have been �a Satan to the Philistines,�) that I am not sure, that if I had by me a Hebrew concordance, but I could point out places, where God himself is represented as saying, that he would be an adversary or a Satan to bad men and wicked nations. And though there is in the Old Testament a particular angel styled, by way of eminence, �The Satan,� it is so far from being evident that he is an evil being, that I would undertake to give good reasons to prove that this distinguished angel is the real prototype, from whence the impostor Mahomet took the idea of his �Azrael,� the �Angel of Death;� who, in the Koran, is certainly represented as being as much the faithful servant of God, as any of the Angelic Hosts. In fine, the doctrine of the Old Testament upon this matter may be thus expressed:--�These be spirits created for vengeance, which in their fury lay on sore strokes; in the time of destruction, they pour out their force, sad appease the wrath of him that made them. They shall rejoice in his (God�s) commandment, and they shall be ready upon earth, when need is: and when their time is come, they shall not transgress his word.� Ecclesiasticus xxxix. 28. CHAPTER XIV. A CONSIDERATION OF THE �GIFT OF TONGUES,� AND OTHER MIRACULOUS GIFTS ASCRIBED O THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANS; AND WHETHER RECORDED MIRACLES ARE INFALLIBLE PROOFS OF THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF DOCTRINES SAID TO HAVE BEEN CONFIRMED BY THEM. Paul, in his 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, speaks to them as possessing several spiritual gifts, conferred on them by his ministration; such as the gift of prophecy, discerning of spirits, and speaking in unknown tongues. He gives them directions about the proper use of their gifts, and speaks to them as absolutely possessing those gifts, with the utmost confidence. Dr. Paley, in his Defence of Christianity, lays great stress upon the manner in which Paul addresses the Corinthians upon these miraculous powers; and he considers it as an absolute proof of the truth of Christianity-- because, he says, it is not conceivable that Paul could have had the boldness and presumption to speak to these men concerning the use and abuse of these gifts, if they really had them not. I am ready to confess, that this argument of Dr. Paley puzzled me; for though I was satisfied that Paul had imposed upon their credulity many irrelevant passages from the Scriptures as proofs of Christianity, yet I could not imagine that he could presume so much upon their stupidity, as to give them directions about the management of their miraculous powers, which being matters of fact known to themselves, therefore, if false, I conceived must place Paul in their minds in the light of a banterer, when he told them of gifts, which their own consciousness, I thought, must make them sensible they had not. I say I was puzzled with this argument, until I happened to meet with some extracts from Brown�s �History of the Shakers,� which convinced me at once, from the obvious likeness between these Shakers and the primitive Christians, that Paul might have written to the Corinthians � concerning their spiritual gifts,� with perfect impunity. This Brown had been a Shaker himself, and while with them, he was as great a believer in his own and their gifts, as the Corinthians could be; and since it must be obvious, that the gifts of these Shakers are mere self-delusions, there is, then, in our own times an example of the gifts of the primitive Christians, which enables us to comprehend their nature and character perfectly well. �Many of them,� (the Shakers) says Mr. Brown, �professed to have visions, and to see numbers of spirits, as plain as they saw their brethren and sisters, and to look into the invisible world, and to converse with many of the departed spirits, who had lived in the different ages of the world, and to learn and to see their different states in the world of spirits. Some they saw, they said, were happy, and others miserable. Several declared, that they often were in dark nights surrounded with a light, sometimes in their rooms, but more often when walking the road, so strong, that they could see to pick up a pin, which light would continue a considerable time, and enlighten them on their way. Many had gifts to speak languages, and many miracles were said to be wrought, and strange signs and great wonders shown, by the believers. And these poor creatures believed, and at this day do believe, all this. They are not, you will observe, artful impostors, for the Shakers are, certainly, a harmless and a moral people, and yet they confidently asserted (and continue to assert), that they had these miraculous powers of �discerning spirits, speaking with tongues, and doing great signs and wonders� Nevertheless, it must be evident, that these powers were conferred upon them only by their enthusiasm and heated imaginations. I have heard of the Shakers before, and have been informed, that those in New England are so convinced of their miraculous capabilities, that they have been known, in order to save their neighbours the trouble of applying to the tinman, charitably to offer to join the gaping seams of their worn-out tin coffee-pots, and other vessels, �without the carnal aid of solder,� merely by a touch of their wonder-working fingers. Mr. Brown, in describing their mode of conduct, in their religious assemblies, unwittingly gives a striking exposition of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians. He describes �the brethren and sisters� praying, singing, dancing, and preaching in known and unknown tongues, and sticking out their arms, and extatically following their noses round the church. He says, respecting such as speak in unknown tongues, �they have a strong faith in this gift, and think a person greatly favoured who has the gift of tongues; and at certain times, when the mind is overloaded with a fiery, strong zeal, it must have vent some way or other; their faith, or belief, at the time being in this, gift, and a will strikes the mind according to their faith, and then such break out in a fiery, energetic manner, and speak they know not what, as I have done several times. Part of what I spake at one time was-- �Liero devo jerankemango, ad sileambano, durem subramo, deviranto diacerimango, jasse vah pe cri evanigalio; de vom grom seb crinom, os vare cremo domo.� �When a person runs on in this manner for any length of time, I now thought it probable that he would strike into different languages, and give some words in each their right pronounciation, as I have heard some men of learning, who were present, say a few words, were Hebrew, three or four Greek, and a few Latin.� In another place he gives an account of his maiden speech in an unknown tongue; and it is easy to conjecture how he came by his gift, by attending to what passed before he broke out. Here it is:-- �We danced for near an hour, several turned round like tops, and, to crown all, I had a gift to speak in some other language; but the greatest misfortune was, that neither I, nor any other, understood what I said.� My reader will not be surprized after this, at hearing them say, that the spectators of �these signs and wonders,� instead of being properly affected, considered the performers as �out of their wits.� Let us, now, compare this account with what Paul says upon similar subjects, in the 14th chapter of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians. He advises them, in exercising their gifts, to a discreet use of them, as follows:--�He who speaketh in an unknown tongue, speaketh not to men, but to God, for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries.� Again: �For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to battle? So, likewise, unless ye utter by the tongue words to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken, for ye will speak to the air?� And as others did not understand the Corinthians speaking in unknown tongues, so it seems, too, that the Corinthians themselves were in the same unfortunate predicament with the Shakers, in not knowing the meaning of what they themselves said on these occasions. This is clear from this argument of Paul:--�Wherefore, let him that speaketh in an unknown tongue, pray that he may interpret.� Why, pray that he may interpret, if he understood himself? Does a man who speaks with understanding a foreign language, need to pray that he may be enabled to interpret what he says in his mother tongue? Surely every man who understands himself, can naturally do this? After more to the same purpose, Paul wisely concludes his argument by declaring, �that he would rather speak in the church five words with understanding, (i. e., knowing what he said) that he might instruct others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.� And he fortifies his reasoning by this sensible remark, �If, therefore, the whole church come together into one place, and all speak in unknown tongues, and those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, come in, will they not say, that ye are mad?� as the spectators said of the Shakers. He advises them, therefore, to conduct their assemblies with less uproar than formerly, and exhorts them as follows:--�How is it, then, brethren, when you come together, hath each of you a psalm, hath he a doctrine, hath he an unknown tongue, hath he a revelation? Let all things be done to edifying. Now, if any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be by two, or at most by three, and that in succession, and let one interpret; but if there be no interpreter, let such keep silence in the church, and let him speak to himself and to God. And let two or three prophets speak, and let the others discern. But if any thing be revealed to another who sitteth by, let the first keep silence. For ye may all prophecy, one by one, that all may learn, and all may be exhorted.� I presume it will be needless to point out more particularly, the perfect correspondence between �the spiritual gifts� of the Corinthians, and those of the Shakers. And I would ask the venerable Paley, if it were now possible, whether an apostolical epistle of Ann Lee, William Lee, or Whitaker, (the spiritual mother and. fathers of the Shakers,) addressed to them, and seriously giving directions about the use of �their gifts of working miracles, and speaking with tongues,� would be sufficient to prove that they really had those gifts? And, moreover, (to make the cases more analogous) suppose that the Shakers from this time become the dominant sect throughout the religious world, and kept the upper hand during a series of a thousand or two thousand years, taking especial care to collect and burn up every writing of their enemies and opposers. How should we, (supposing ourselves all the while invisible spectators of the thing), how should we pity our posterity, who, at the end of that period, should be gravely told by the learned and mitred advocates of Shakerism, that the miracles of the founders, and first followers of their religion were certainly true, for that they were honest and good men, with no motive to deceive, and had addressed letters to their first converts, wherein they make express mention of their possessing these gifts; and give in the simplest and most unassuming manner, directions for using them. Suppose, then, that our posterity, having been deprived by the prudential care of the old fathers of the then established church, of the means of detecting the fallacy which we possess; suppose that they should believe all this, and devoutly praise God every day for confirming the doctrines of his servants Lee and Whitaker, � with signs following�--how should we pity their delusion, and. what should we think of the unlucky authors of it. From all this, I think my reader must be sensible how extremely fallacious are all proofs of doctrines, pretended to be from God, derived from Miracles said to have been wrought in proof of their Divine authority. Miracles are related to have been performed in support of all religions without exception; even the followers of Mahomet, though he did not claim the power of working miracles, have said that he did. And they will tell you, that in proof of his mission, he, in the presence of hundreds, divided the moon with his finger, and put half of it in his pocket!* Speaking of the gift of healing diseases, which the Primitive Christians claimed. Dr. Middleton, in his Free Inquiry, observes-- �But be that as it will the pretence of curing diseases, by a miraculous power, was so suc-cessfully maintained in the heathen world by fraud, and craft, that when it came to be challenged by the Christians, it was not capable of exciting any attention to it among those who themselves pretended to the same power; which, although the certain effect of imposture, was yet managed with so much art, that the Christians could neither deny nor detect it; but insisted always that it was performed by demons, or evil spirits, deluding mankind to their ruin; and from the supposed reality of the fact, they inferred the reasonableness of believing what was more credibly affirmed by the Christians, to be performed by the power of the true God. �We do not deny says Athenagoras, �that, in different places, cities, and countries, there are some extraordinary works performed in the name of idols, from which some have received benefit, others harm.� And then he goes on to prove that they were not performed by God, but by demons. Doctor Middleton then proceeds, (p. 77.) �whatever proof, then, the primitive Church had among themselves, yet it could have but little effect towards making proselytes among those who pretended to the same gift; possessed more largely, and exerted more openly, than in the private assemblies of the Christians. For in the Temple of Esculapius, all kinds of diseases were believed to be publicly cured by the pretended help of that deity: in proof of which, there were erected in each temple columns, or tables of brass, and marble, on which a distinct narrative of each particular cure was inscribed.� He also observes that--�Pausanias writes, � that in the temple at Epidauras there were many columns anciently of this kind, and six of them remaining in his time inscribed with the names of men and women cured by the god, with �an account of their several cases, and the method of their cure; and that there was an old pillar besides, which stood apart, dedicated to the memory of Hippolytus, who had been raised from the dead!� Strabo, also, another grave writer, informs us, that these temples were constantly filled with the sick, imploring the help of the god: and that they had tables hanging around them, in which all the miraculous cures were described.� Dr. Middleton then proceeds thus--�There is a remarkable fragment of one of these tables still extant, and exhibited by Gruter, in his collection, as it was found in the ruins of Esculapius� Temple, in the island of the Tyber, at Rome, which gives an account of two blind men restored to sight, by Esculapius, in the open view, and with loud declamations of the people, acknowledging the manifest power of the god!!� Upon which he remarks, that �the learned Montfaucon makes this reflection, � that in this, are seen either the wiles of the Devil, or the tricks of Pagan priests, suborning men to counterfeit diseases, and miraculous cures.�� He then proceeds, (p.79)--�Now, though nothing can support the belief, or credit of miracles more authentically than public monuments erected in proof, and memory of them at the time they were performed, yet, in defiance of that authority, it is certain all these Heathen miracles were pure forgeries, contrived to delude the multitude; and, in truth, this particular claim of curing diseases miraculously, affords great room for such a delusion, and a wide field for the exercise of craft.� I need not observe, that by far the greater part of the miracles recorded in the New Testament, are casting out devils, and healing diseases, powers claimed by the heathens as well as these Christians: and these miracles, (undoubtedly false) are as well, if not far better authenticated than those of the New Testament: for books may be forged, but public monuments of brass and marble are not so capable of being so: and these are always con-sidered as better evidence for facts than books. What then will the Christian say to this? for since these miracles, recorded on brass and marble, inscribed with the narratives of them almost immediately after the occurrence of them, are unquestionably Lies; what can he pretend to say of those recorded in books certainly written many years after the events they record, and, as will be proved hereafter, more than suspected to be apocryphal? And what would become of truth? and who would be able to distinguish truth from falsehood, in matters of religion, if attested miracles, such as these, are sufficient to establish the divine authority of doctrines said to be confirmed by them? Miracles are as numerous, and better authenticated on the part of Jupiter, Apollo, and Esculapius, than on the part of Christianity. They are strong on the part of Popery against Protestantism: for the Roman Catholic Churches in Europe are full of monumental records of miracles wrought by the Virgin Mary and the Saints, in favour of their worshippers. Nay, there never were miracles better proved, as far as human testimony could prove them, than the famous miracle mentioned by Gibbon in his History of the Roman Empire, where he relates the story of the Arian Vandals cutting out the tongues of a great number of orthodox Athanasians, who, strange to tell, preached as much to the purpose, in favour of the Trinity, without their tongues, as they did with them! Never was there a miracle better authenticated by testimony than this. It is mentioned by all the Christian writers of that age. It is mentioned by two contemporary Roman historians, one of whom lived in Constantinople, and who says he looked into the mouths of some of these confessors, who had in fact their tongues cut out entirely by the roots; and it is recorded in the archives of the Eastern Empire. Is not this testimony enough; and yet, is it sufficient to prove the doctrine of the Trinity? Is it adequate to prove, that �the ancient of days� became a little child; was born of a woman, suckled, *******, &c., &c.; and that �He who liveth for ever and ever,� was whipped, was hanged, and died upon the cross, and was buried? Can this miracle, well attested as it is, prove for truths, such strange, such shocking things as these? The miracles of the Abbe Paris, too, are proved to be true, as far as testimony can prove any thing of the kind. For they happened within a hundred years, were seen by many, and were sworn to before the magistrates; by some of the most respectable inhabitants of the city of Paris. How can men, who pretend to believe the miracles of the New Testament upon such meagre evidence as they have in their favour, consistently reject the miracles of the Abbe Paris? attested by evidence recent, respectable, and so strong, that to this day, the juggle, and the means by which so many respectable people were imposed upon, have never yet been thoroughly developed, and explained. CHAPTER XV. APPLICATION OF THE TWO TESTS, SAID, IN DEUTERONOMY, TO HAVE BEEN GIVEN BY GOD, AS DISCRIMINATING A TRUE PROPHET FROM A FALSE ONE, TO THE CHARACTER AND ACTIONS OF JESUS. In the 18th chapter of Deuteronomy God says,--�The Prophet which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that Prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, how shall we know (or distinguish,) the word which the Lord hath not spoken?� Here is the criterion. �When a Prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass; that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken. That Prophet hath spoken presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.� Again, Deuteronomy 13, �If there arise among you a Prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and give you a sign or a wonder (i. e. a miracle,) and the sign or wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee saying, let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them: thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that Prophet, or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God proveth (or tryeth) you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all you heart, and with all your soul.� And now Christian reader, I ask you what you think of miracles, or �signs and wonders,� as proof of a divine mission, to teach doctrines novel and innovating, after such clear and unequivocal language as this, from such high authority? I am sure, that if you are a sincere lover of truth, you must certainly abandon that ground as untenable. For, from these direc-tions, the Jews were commanded these things#. 1. That the Prophet who presumes to speak a word, as from God, which God hath not commanded him to speak, must be put to death. 2. That the test, or criterion by which they are to discern a false prophet from a true one, is this: not his miracles, but the fulfillment of his words. If what he says comes to pass, he is a true prophet; if the event foretold does not take place, he has spoken presump-tuously, and must die the death. 3. �If any man arise in Israel,� and advise, or teach them to worship any other besides the Eternal; and in proof of the divinity of his mission promise a sign, or a wonder, and in fact does bring to pass the sign or wonder promised, he is nevertheless, not to be hearkened to; but to be put to death. And these criteria given by God, or Moses, as the means whereby they might know a true Prophet from a false one, most exquisitely prove his wisdom and foresight. For if he had not expressly excluded miracles, or �signs and wonders,� from being proof of the divinity of doctrines, the barriers which divided his religion from those of idolaters, must have been broken down; since, as we have seen, well attested miracles (meaning always by miracles, �signs and wonders,� brought to pass by human agency,) are related to have been performed in proof of the divinity of every religion under Heaven. But veritable prophecy is, and can he a proof proper only to a true Revelation, because none can know what is to come but God, and those sent by him. Accordingly, we find that the Jewish Prophets were not acknowledged as such, but on account of their foretelling the truth, or being supposed to do so. Thus, it is said, 1 Samuel iii. 20, �And all Israel, from Dan even to Beersheba, knew, that Samuel was established to be a Prophet of the Lord.� Why? Because he performed miracles? No! he performed none. But he was known as a Prophet because �the Lord was with him, and let none of his words fall to the ground,� i. e. fail of their accomplishment. The same, may be said of all the Hebrew Prophets, from Nathan to Malachi. For though Elijah and Elisha performed miracles, yet it was not in proof of their mission, for that was established before; but these miracles were occasional acts of beneficence, or protection, but were never considered, or offered by them as proofs of their being sent from God. These things being by this time, it is hoped, made plain and evident, let us now test the character of Jesus as a true Prophet, by the criteria, by Christians, and by the Jews, believed to be given by God. If his prophecies were fulfilled, and if he taught the worship of no other being besides the Eternal, he was, according to the Old Testament, a true Prophet. But if any of his prophecies were not fulfilled, or, if he taught the worship of any other Being besides the Eternal, he was not a true Prophet. And here it must be recollected, that those prophecies of Jesus only, can be brought forward in this question, which were committed to writing, before the event foretold came to pass; and therefore all Jesus� prophecies concerning the manner and circumstances of his death, &c., must be set aside, as all those events are allowed to have taken place before any of the Gospels were written; and of course it is not certain that Jesus did actually foretell them. This is acknowledged by Christians; and accordingly they confine themselves to bringing forward as conclusive evidence in their favour, his Prophecy of the Destruction of Jerusalem, and the events following. Here it is. Luke xxi. 21. �When ye shall see Jerusalem com-passed with armies, then know, that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let them which are in the midst of it, depart out, and let not them which are in the counter, enter thereinto. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe unto them that are with child, and to them which give suck in those days. For there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations, and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity, the sea and waves roaring, man�s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. And then, shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud, with power, and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. And he spake to them a parable, Behold the fig tree and all the trees. When they now shoot forth, ye see, and know of your own selves, that summer is now nigh at hand. So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand. Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.� Such is the prophecy, and on it I would remark, first, that what Jesus here foretells concerning Jerusalem did in fact come to pass. But that was not a fulfillment of his prophecy, but of Daniel�s, who did, as is set down in the 7th chapter of this work, expressly foretell the utter destruction of the city and the temple. And it was from Daniel that Jesus obtained his know-ledge of the approach of that event. For he expressly cites Daniel, Matthew xxiv. 15; Mark xiii. 14; and you will please to observe reader, that he refers to him in this quotation from Luke, in the words, �these be the days of vengeance that all things which are written, may be fulfilled. So that in foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem he did no more than any Jew of that age, who attentively read their Scriptures, could have done, and. been no prophet either. 2. It would have been better for his reputation as a Prophet, if he had stopped short where Daniel stopped. For what he goes on to foretell has not been fulfilled. For he proceeds to say, that �there shall be signs in the sun, and the moon, and the stars,� &c. All this is taken from the 2nd chapter of Joel, who says that such things shall take place; not, however, at the destruction of Jerusalem, but in �the latter days,� at the time of the restoration of Israel. So that here Jesus has been rather unlucky. For, in truth, there were no signs in the sun, and the moon, and the stars, at that time; neither was there upon earth any �great distress of nations,� except in Judea. Nor were �the powers of heaven� shaken. Certainly, they did not see Jesus �coming in the clouds of heaven, with power, and great glory;� and most assuredly, that generation did pass away, and many others since, and �all these things� have not been fulfilled. I know very well, and have very often smiled over the contrivances by which learned Christians have endeavoured to save the credit of this prophecy. They say that--it is a figurative prophecy relating entirely to the destruction of Jerusalem, which did in fact take place in that generation; that the expressions about the �distress of nations,� and �the sea and waves roaring,� the �signs in heaven,� &c., are merely poetical; and that the shaking of the powers of heaven was merely the shaking and pulling-down the stones of the temple, figuratively called heaven; and that the glorious coming of Jesus �in the clouds of heaven, with power, and great glory,� meant merely, that he sent Titus, and the Romans to destroy, Jerusalem, or perhaps might have been an invisible spectator himself. The reader will easily see, that all this is nonsense. And the Commentator Grotius, after meddling a great while in this troublesome business, at length ventures to insinuate, that God might have suffered Jesus to be in a mistake about the time of his second coming, and to tell the Apostles what he did, for the sake of keeping up their spirits! But to annihilate the figurative hypothesis of these well-meaning Commentators at once, it will be only necessary to bring forward the testimony following. 1. The other Evangelists make an express distinction between the destruction of Jerusalem and the coming of Jesus; and not only so, but represent him as saying, that after that event, (i. e., the destruction of Jerusalem, �in those days,� i. e., in the same era in which that event took place,) �the son of man shall come,� &c. Witness for me, Mark, chapter xiii. 24:--�But in those days, after that tribulation, (i. e., the destruction of Jerusalem) shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the son of man coming in the clouds, with power and glory; and-then shall he send his angels, and shall gather his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth, to the uttermost part of heaven Verily, I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be accomplished.� This is decisive, and cannot be evaded. 2. The Apostles and Primitive Christians believed that Jesus would come in that generation, as is evident from many passages of the New Testament. Paul�s Epistles to the Thessalonians prove this, and contain an argument to them, intended to allay their terrors, or their impatience. John says in his first Epistle, chapter ii. 18, �Little children, it is the last hour; and as ye have heard that Antichrist should come, even now (or already) there are many Antichrists, whereby know that it is the last hour.� Many passages of similar import might be brought forward. The meaning of it is this--It appears from Paul�s 2nd Epistle to the Thessalonians, that just before the second coming of Jesus, there was a personage to appear who was to be called Antichrist, i. e., an enemy to the Messiah. (This notion they got from the interpretation given by the angel of the vision of the �little horn� in Daniel.) John, therefore, seeing many Antichrists, i. e., opposers of the pretensions of Jesus, considered the sign, and thus knew that it was ��the last hour,� and that his master was soon to appear. It appears from the 2nd Epistle of Peter, chapter iii., that there were many in his days who scoffed at his master, saying, contemptuously, �where is the promise of his coming?� And Peter replies by telling them that their contempt is misplaced, for that �one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.� John, in the 1st chapter of Revelations, says, concerning the coming of Jesus, �Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.� And in the last chapter of Revelations he represents Jesus, as saying, �Surely I come quickly�! In short, the Apostles, when they wanted to encourage their desponding proselytes, they usually did it with such words as these,--�Be anxious for nothing, the Lord is at hand.�--�Behold! the Judge standeth before the day.�--�Be patient, therefore, brethren, (says James) for the coming of the Lord cometh nigh.� And this persuasion did not end, as might be expected, with that century; for we find that the heathens frequently laughed at the expec-tations of the Primitive Christians, who, till the fourth century, never gave up the expectation of the impending advent of their master. Nay, so rooted was the idea in their minds, that, understanding the words of Jesus concerning John, �if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee,� to mean that that disciple should not die, but survive till the glorious appearance of his lord, so far were they from being convinced of the vanity of their expectations by that Apostle�s actual decease, that they insisted, that, though he was buried, he was not dead, but only slept, and that the earth over his body rose and fell with the action of his breathing!! It is now hardly necessary to add, that Jesus did not at all answer the character of a true prophet, when tested by the criterion laid down in Deuteronomy for ascertaining the truth of the claims of a prophet to a divine mission. Let us now see, whether he taught the worship of other beings beside the Eternal, for if he did, the other test laid down in Deuteronomy will also decide against him. Now, did he not command the worship of himself in these words, �All men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father?� This, certainly, commands to render to Jesus the same homage which is rendered to God. I might prove that his disciples did worship him, by referring to many passages in the New Testament, especially in the Revelations, in the latter part of which, Jesus is represented as saying, �I am the Alpha, and the Omega, the beginning, and the end, the first, and, the last,� terms applied to the Eternal in Isaiah, where God says, (as if in express opposition to such doctrine) that �there is no God with him: He knows not any; there was none before him, neither shall there be any after him.� I could also adduce many passages relating to the Eternal of Hosts, quoted from the Old Testament, and applied in the New to Jesus. Witness �the following:--John xii. 41, alludes to Isaiah vi. 5; Revelations i. 8,.11, 17, and ii. 8, to Isaiah xli. 4, xliii. 11, and xliv. 6; John xxi. 16, 17, and Revelations ii. 23, to 1st Kings viii. 39; John vii. 9, Jeremiah xi. 20, and xvii. 20, Revelations xx. 12,. to Isaiah xl. 10; and, to crown all, Jesus, in Revelations i. 13, 14,15, 16, 17, is described in almost the same words as is the Supreme God; �the Ancient of Days� in Daniel, 7th chapter; and were there not other proofs in abundance to this purpose, this resemblance alone would decide me. I now leave it to the cool judgment of the reader, whether Jesus prophecied truly, or did, or did not, teach the duty of paying religious homage to other beings besides God? and, if so, it is consequent, according to the tests by Christians acknowledged to be given by God himself in Deuteronomy, that if Jesus was not sent by, or from, him; for if he was--God�s own words would be contradicted by God�s own deeds. CHAPTER XVI. EXAMINATION OF THE EVIDENCE, EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL, IN FAVOR OF THE CREDIBILITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY. In the preceding chapters, I have taken the New Testament as I found it, and have argued upon the supposition that Jesus and the apostles really said, and reasoned, as has been stated. I will now endeavour to show, by an examination of the authenticity of the four gospels, that it is not certain that they were really guilty of such mistakes as are related of them in those books. *The life and doctrines of Jesus, and his followers, are contained in the pieces composing the volume called the New Testament. The genuineness of the books, i. e., whether they were written by those to whom they are ascribed, must be judged of, from the external testimony concerning them, and from internal marks in the books themselves; for the miraculous acts therein, and therein only, contained and related, cannot prove the truth and authenticity of the books, because the authority and credibility of the books themselves must be firmly established, before the miracles related in them can reasonably be admitted as real facts. Now, the external evidence in favour of these books, is the testimony of those men called �the fathers;� and as the value of testimony depends upon the character of the witnesses, it would be proper, first, to state as much as, can be learned of these men. As time will not permit me to adduce all that might be said upon this subject, I shall here only take upon me to assert, that they were most credulous, superstitious, and weak men, and, what is worse, made no scruple of falsifying, to support and favour what they called �the cause of truth;� for they were writers of apocryphal books, attributing them to the apostles, and, moreover, great miracle-mongers, who vamped up stories of prodigies to delude their followers, and which they themselves knew to be false. I say, I take upon me to assert this; and to confirm and establish this accusation, I refer the reader to Dr. Middleton�s �Free Enquiry,� a learned Christian, who, therefore, had no interest to misrepresent this matter; and he will there find these accusations amply verified, and traits of character proved upon them. By no means favourable to the credibility of their testimony. The first of these Fathers whose testimony is usually adduced to prove the authenticity of the Gospels, is Papias, a Disciple of John. The character given of him by Eusebius is, that �he was a superstitious, and credulous man.� And this is easily proved by recording some of the stories, concerning Jesus, and his followers, written by this Papias in a book extant in the time of Eusebius. One of these stories is mentioned by Irenoeus, who says, that Papias had it from John; who, according to Papias, said, that Jesus said, that--� The days shall come, in which there shall be vines, which shall severally have ten thousand branches; and every one of these branches shall have ten thousand lesser branches; and every one of these branches shall have ten thousand twigs; and every one of these twigs shall have ten thousand clusters of grapes; and every one of these grapes being pressed shall yield two hundred and seventy-five gallons of wine. And when a man shall take hold of any of these sacred bunches, another bunch shall cry out �I am a better bunch, take me, and bless the Lord by me!� There�s a Munchausen for you, reader! Well! this Papias is the first witness who lived after Matthew, who has spoken of his Gospel. He lived about the year 116 after Jesus. And what does he say of it? Why this. �Matthew composed a writing of the Oracles (meaning without doubt the Doctrines of the Gospel,) in the Hebrew Language, and every one interpreted them as he was able.� So far as this Testimony goes it is positive evidence, that the only Gospel of Matthew extant in 116, was extant in Hebrew; and there was then no translation, of it, for �every one interpreted as he was able.� The present gospel called of Matthew was then not written by him, for it is in Greek. And that it has not at all the air of being a translation is asserted by most of the learned. As it stands then, it was not written by Matthew: and that it cannot be a translation of Matthew�s Hebrew, is not only plain from the circumstance of its style, and other marks understood by Biblical Critics, but can also be proved by another story related by this same Papias concerning the manner of the death of Judas. �His body, and head (says Papias) became so swollen, that at length he could not get through a street in Jerusalem, where two chariots might pass abreast, and having fallen to the ground, he--burst asunder. Now though this ridiculous story is undoubtedly false, yet it is not credible that Papias, who had so great a reverence for the Apostles as to collect and gather all �their sayings,� would so flatly by his story of the death of Judas contradict the story of Matthew, if the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew contained that part of the Greek Gospel of Matthew which relates the manner of Judas� Death. Justin Martyr lived after Papias, in the middle of the second century; and though he relates many circumstances agreeing in the main with those recorded in the Gospels, and appears to quote sayings of Jesus from some book or books; yet it is substantially acknowledged by Dr. Marsh, the learned annotator on Michaelis�s Introduction, that these quotations are so unlike the words, and circumstances in the received Evangelists to which they appear to correspond, that one of two things must be true; either, that Justin, who lived 140 years after Jesus, had never seen any of the present Gospels; or else, that they were in his time in a very different state from what they now are. The next Christian father who mentions the Gospel of Matthew is Irenoeus, who says also that �Matthew wrote his gospel in the Hebrew Language.� The character of Irenoeus is discoverable from his work against the Heresies of his time, to that I refer the Reader, who will find him to have been a zealous, though a very credulous, and ignorant man; for he believed the story of Papias just quoted, and many others equally absurd. He however furnishes this important intelligence, that in the second century, the Christian world was overrun with heresy, and a swarm of apocryphal, and spurious Books were received by many as genuine. The next witness in favour of the Gospel is Tertullian, who lived in the latter end of the second century. And the soundness of his Judgment, and his capability to distinguish the genuine Gospels from among a hundred apocryphal ones, and above all his regard for truth, may be judged of from these proofs given by himself. He asserts upon his own knowledge, �I know it,� says he--�that the corpse of a dead Christian, at the first breath of the prayer made by the priest, on occasion of its own funeral, removed its hands from its sides, into the usual posture of a supplicant; and when the service was ended, restored them again to their former situation.� (Tertul. de anima c. 51.) And he relates as a fact, which he, and all the orthodox of his time credited, that--�the body of another Christian already interred moved itself to one side of the grave to make room for another corpse which was going to be laid by it.� And it is on the testimony of such men as these, that the authenticity of the gospels entirely depends as to external evidence; for these are all the witnesses that can be produced as speaking of them, who lived within two hundred years after Jesus: Three men, (for Justin cannot be reckoned as a witness in favour of the gospels.) Three men, who are all of them evidently credulous, and two of whom are certainly *****. To convince a thinking man that histories recording such very extraordinary, ill supported, improbable facts as are contained in the gospels are divine, or even really written by the men to whom they are ascribed, and are not either some of the many spurious productions with which (as we learn from Irenoeus) that early age abounded, calculated to astonish the credulous, and superstitious, or else writings of authors who were themselves infected with the grossest superstitious credulity; of what use can it be to adduce the testimony of the very few writers, of the same, or next succeeding age, when the very reading of their works shews him that they themselves were tainted with that same superstitious credulity, of which are accused the real authors of the New Testament? It is an obvious rule in the admission of evidence in any cause whatsoever, that the more important the matter to be determined by it is, the more unsullied and unexceptionable ought the characters of the witnesses to be. And when no court of Justice, in determining a question of fraud to the amount of six pence, will admit the� testimony of witnesses who are themselves notoriously convicted of the same offence of which the defendant is accused; how can it be expected, that any reasonable, unprejudiced person, should admit similar evidence to be of weight, in a case of the greatest importance possible, not to himself only; but to the whole human race? But there is still a greater defect in the testimony of those early writers, than their superstitious credulity, I mean their disregard of honour, and veracity, in whatever concerned the cause of their particular system. Though Luke asserts, that many (even before he wrote his histories for the use of Theophilus,) had written upon the same subject: (who of course must have been of the Jewish nation,) and many more must have been written afterwards, whose writings must have been particularly valuable yet so singularly industrious have the fathers, and succeeding sons of the orthodox church been, in destroying every writing upon the subject of Christianity, which they could not by some means, or other, apply to the support of their own unholy superstition, that no work of importance of any Christian writer, within the three first centuries, hath been permitted to come down to us, except those books which they have thought fit to adopt, and transmit to us as the canon of apostolic scripture; and the works of a few other writers, who were all of them, not only converts from Paganism, but men who had been educated and well instructed in the Philosophic Schools of the latter Platonists, and Pythagoreans. The established maxim of these schools was, that it was not lawful only, but commendable to deceive, and assert falsehoods for the sake of promoting what they considered as the cause of truth and piety, and the effects of this maxim, which was fully acted upon by both orthodox Christians, and heretics, produced a multiplicity of false, and spurious writings wherewith the second century abounded. Nay, they did not spare from the operation of this maxim, the scriptures themselves. For they stuffed their copies of the Septuagint with a number of interpolated pretended prophecies concerning Jesus, and his death upon the cross; forgeries as weak, and contemptible, and clumsy in themselves, as they were impious and wicked. Whoever desires to see a number of them; may find them in the dispute, or dialogue of Justin with Trypho the Jew; where he will see the simple Justin bringing them out passage after passage against the stubborn Israelite, who contents himself with coolly answering, that these marvellous prophecies were not to be found in his Hebrew bible! There is also another well known, incontrovertible proof of the deceit and falsehood of the leading Christians of early times, of which every person in the least conversant with the ecclesiastical history of those times must be convinced--their pretended power of working miracles! On this subject I shall say nothing, but refer the reader to the work of Dr. Middleton already mentioned, for an ample account of their lying wonders, which they imposed as miraculous upon the simple people. With regard to the internal evidence for the authenticity of the writings; composing the New Testament, it is still less satisfactory than the external evidence. And this may be well believed, when the reader is informed that the great Semler, after spending his life in the study of ecclesiastical history; and antiquities, which he is allowed to have understood better than any before him, affirmed to his astonished coreligionists, that, except the Gospel of John, and the Apocalypse, the whole New Testament was a collection of forgeries written by the partizans of the Jewish and Gentile parties in the Christian church, and entitled apostolic, in order the better to answer their purpose. This opinion has been in part adopted in England, by a learned and shrewd clergyman named Evanson, who has almost demonstrated, that the Greek Gospel of Matthew was written in the second century after the birth of Jesus by a Gentile. For he proves that it could not be written by a Jew, on account of geographical mistakes, and manifest ignorance of Jewish customs. He also gives good reasons for rejecting the authenticity of some of the epistles. In short, he has poured such a flood of light upon the eyes of his terrified brethren, as will, ere long, no doubt enable them to see a little clearer than heretofore. He gives several instances of geographical blunders in Matthew. I shall mention only one. Matthew says, in the 2nd chapter, that when Joseph, the husband of Mary, returned from Egypt, �hearing that Archelaus reigned in Judea, he was afraid to go thither, and therefore turned aside, into the parts of Galilee.� Now this, as will appear from a map of Palestine, is just like saying, �a man at Philadelphia, intending to go to the State of New York, on his route heard something which made him afraid to go thither, and therefore he turned aside--into Boston!� That the author of that Gospel was ignorant of Jewish customs will be evident from the following circumstances. He says Jesus told Peter, that before the cock crew he would deny him thrice; and that afterwards, when Peter was cursing and swearing, saying �I know not the man! immediately the cock crew.� Now it is unfortunate for the credit of this story, that it is well known, that in conformity with Jewish customs, at that time subsisting, no cocks were allowed to be in Jerusalem, where Jesus was apprehended. This is known, and acknowledged by learned Christians, who have extricated themselves from this difficulty, by proving that the crowing of the cock, here mentioned, does not mean, as it appears to mean, absolutely the crowing of a cock, but that it means--what dost thou think reader? why it means---the sound of a trumpet!!* According to Luke, as soon as Jesus was dead, Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate, and begged his body, and hasted to bury it, because the Sabbath (which began at sunset,) drew on; that his female disciples attended the burial; observed how the body was placed in the sepulchre, and returned and prepared spices and ointments to embalm it with, before the Sabbath commenced; and then rested the Sabbath day, according to the commandment. The pretended Matthew, however, tells us, that �when the even was come (i. e., when the Sabbath day was actually begun,) Joseph went to beg the body--took it down, wrapped it in linen, and buried it; and that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, were sitting over against the sepulchre. From the time that this writer has thought fit to allot for the burial of Jesus, it is evident, that he was not only no Jew, but so ignorant of the customs of the Jews, that he did not know that their day always began with the evening, or he would never have employed, Joseph in doing what no Jew would, nor dared to have done, after the commencement of the Sabbath. He takes no notice at all of the preparation made by the women, mentioned by Luke; for that would not have agreed with the sequel of his story. But to make up for that omission, he informs us of a circumstance not mentioned at all by the other Evangelists. For he tells us that �on the next day which followeth the day of preparation, the Chief Priests, and Pharisees came together unto Pilate,� &c. �The next day which followeth the day of preparation!!�--such is the periphrasis that he uses for the Sabbath day! It is well known that among the Jews it was, and is, customary to prepare, and set out, in the afternoon of the Friday, all the food and necessaries for every family during the Sabbath day. Because they were forbidden to light a fire, or do any servile work, on that day; and therefore Friday was very properly called �the day of preparation.� But it appears to me next to impossible, that any Jew would call the sabbath �the day that followeth the day of the preparation.� Yet this singular historian so denominates it, and moreover, goes on to inform us, that the chief priests, and Pharisees went to Pilate to ask for a guard to place round the sepulchre, till the third day, to prevent his disciples from stealing away his body, and then saying, that he was risen from the dead; and that after obtaining the governor�s permission, �they, went, and secured the sepulchre by sealing the stone that was rolled against it; and setting a watch.� Though there appears nothing very strange in this account to a Christian, yet, I assure my reader, that to the Jews, it ever did, and must appear utterly incredible. For it is wonderful! that the Jewish rulers, and the rigorous Pharisees should in so public a manner thus violate the precept for observing the Sabbath day; for the penalty of this action of theirs was no less than death! More wonderful still is it that they should have so much better attended to, and comprehended the meaning of the prediction of Jesus to his disciples, than his own disciples did; and most wonderful of all, that a Roman Proconsul should consent to let his troops keep watch round a tomb, for fear it should be thought that a dead man was come to life again. But though our author�s history of these extraordinary facts is neither consistent with reason, and probability, nor with the other histories of the same event; it proceeds in pretty strict conformity to the manner in which it sets out. For to convince us still more fully that the author was totally ignorant of the mode of computing time in use among the Jews, and habituated to that in use among the Greeks and Romans? He reckons the Sabbath to last till day light on Sunday morn, and says, (chapter xxviii.), �that in the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn, towards the first day of the week,� the two Marys before mentioned, came, (not as in Luke, to embalm the body, for, with a guard round the sepulchre, that would have been impracticable, but) to see the sepulchre. �Whilst they were there, the author tells us, there was another great earthquake, and an angel descended, rolled away the stone, and sat upon it, at whose sight, the soldiers trembled, and were frighted to death. But to prevent the like effect of his appearance upon the women, he said unto them, fear not ye, for I know that ye seek Jesus who was crucified. That the women as well as the soldiers were present at the descent of this angel, appears not only from there being nobody else, by whom these uncommon circumstances could have been related, but also by the pronoun personal ye, inserted in the original Greek, which in that language is never done, unless it be emphatically to mark such a distinction, or antithesis, as there was on this occasion, between them and the Roman guard. Here, however, the author is inadvertently inconsistent with himself, as well as with the other evangelists; and forgetting that the sole intent of rolling away the stone, was to open a passage, absolutely necessary to the body of Jesus to come forth out of the sepulchre; and that if he had risen and come forth after the angel had rolled it away, both the women and the soldiers must have seen him rise, he makes the angel bid them look into the sepulchre, to see--that he was not there! and tell them that he was already risen; and that he was gone before them into Galilee, where they should see him! In their way, the author adds, Jesus himself met the women, and said, �be not afraid, go tell my brethren to go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.� He says that the eleven apostles went into Galilee, to an appointed mountain, and saw him there; notwithstanding that some of them were so incredulous, as not to believe even the testimony of their own senses. In the interim, whilst the women were going to the apostles, the author tells us, �some of the watch;� some strictly disciplined Roman soldiers left their station to bring an account of what had passed, not to the Governor their General, nor to any of their own officers--but to the chief priests of the Jews! that they assembled a council of the elders upon the occasion, and after deliberating what was to be done, induced the soldiers, by large bribes, to run the risk of being put to death themselves, upon the highly improbable chance of the Jewish rulers having influence sufficient with the Roman Proconsul to prevail on him to submit to the indelible infamy of neglecting the discipline of the army under his command, to such a degree, as to suffer an entire guard of soldiers avowedly to sleep upon their station, without any notice being taken of it! and to say �his disciples came and stole him away whilst we slept.� This incredible story is another instance how necessary it is, that those who do not adhere closely to the truth, should have extraordinary good memories to enable them to keep clear of absurdities, or palpable contradictions in their narrations. For, consider the circumstances. How were the tongues of these soldiers to be restrained among the inquisitive inhabitants of a large city, (at that time too, greatly crowded on account of the paschal feast,) not only in their way to the chief priests; but also during the whole time while the priests assembled the Sanhedrim, and were deliberating what was to be done? And if that part of the watch, who, the author says, came to inform the chief priests, were poltroons enough for the sake of a bribe to undergo so shameful a disgrace to themselves, as well as to hazard the resentment of their General, how could they undertake that all their comrades who remained at the sepulchre would do the same? and to what purpose could the Jewish council bribe some, without a possibility of some one knowing how the rest of the corps would act? And even supposing all these difficulties surmounted, and that the whole guard had agreed, and persisted in saying, �his disciples stole him away while we slept,� of what service could that be to the Jewish rulers? For if the guards were asleep, they could be no evidence to prove that the body was taken away; and it might be just as probable that he might rise to life again while the watch was asleep, as it was if no watch had been set. In a word, it appears from the numbers of Latin words in Greek characters, which this book contains; from the numerous geographical blunders; and the author�s evident ignorance of the customs of the Jews: from the form of Baptism enjoined at the conclusion, which was not in use in the first century, as appears from the form mentioned as then used in the Acts; from the Roman Centurion�s being made to call Jesus �a Son of a God,� which words in the mouth of a Pagan could only mean that he must be a Demigod, like Bacchus, Hercules, or Esculapius: it is clear that this Gospel is the patched work composition of some convert from the Pagan schools. At any rate, his gospel flatly contradicts the others in several important particulars in the history of the Resurrection. For he represents the apostles as being commanded by the Angel and by Jesus, to go to Galilee, in order to see him; and that they went there, and saw him on a mountain. Yet it is said by the other Evangelists, see Luke, ch. 24, and Acts 1, that he appeared on the saw day of the resurrection to Peter at Jerusalem; to two other disciples as they went to Emmaus; and on the succeeding night to this whole congregation of the Disciples, not in Galilee, but in Jerusalem, and that by his express command the apostles did not go into Galilee, but remained at Jerusalem till the feast of Pentecost. But as this author differs from the other Evangelists, so they also differ among themselves. And the latter part of the last chapter of Mark is so irreconcilable to the other historians of the resurrection, that in many Manuscripts it is found omitted. And that gospel ends in them, at the eighth Terse of the last chapter. And Mr. West, in his attempted reconciliation of their accounts of the resurrection, is obliged to make a number of postulates, to take a number of things for granted, which might be denied: and after elaborately arranging the stage for the performance, he sets the women, and the disciples a driving backwards, and forwards, from the city to the sepulchre, and from the sepulchre to the city, and so agitated that they forgot to know each other when they cross in their journeys. Notwithstanding his great ingenuity in reconciling contradictions, in which he beats Surenhusius himself, he makes but a sorry piece of work of it after all. He had much letter have let it alone; for his work upon the resurrection which he calls �the main fact of Christianity,� displays these contradictions in so glaring a light, that the very laboured ingenuity of his methods of reconciliation, inevitably, suggests �confirmation strong� to the keen-eyed reader, of that irreconcilability which the author endeavors to refute. What rational man therefore can reasonably be required to believe the story of a resurrection pretended to have been seen and known, only by the party interested in making it believed! when in their testimony even, they do not agree but contradict each other? There is really an immense number of discrepancies and contradiction in the New Testament which the acumen of learned Christians has of late discovered, and pointed out to the world. And Mr. Evanson, in his work on �the Dissonance of the four Evangelists,� has collected a mass enough, I should think, to terrify the most determined Reconciliator that ever lived. It is a little remarkable, that Mr. Evanson has asserted, and has proved, the spuriosness of the Gospel ascribed to John, which Semler spared, in the general wreck which he made of the authenticity of the other books of the New Testament. Mr. Evanson says, in his examination of it, what has been said before, that the speeches ascribed to Jesus in it, are most incoherent, contradictory, and falsified by well known facts. And indeed the author of the book itself, sterns to be sensible of this; for he very naturally represents the Jews repeatedly accusing Jesus of being mad. �He hath a devil, and is mad, (say they to the multitude) why hear ye him?� and so in other places. Mr. Evanson considers this work as the composition of a converted Platonist or of a� Platonizing Jew; the latter we think to be the most correct opinion; since it is evident that the author of that gospel had the works of Philo at his fingers� ends, which is more than can be supposed of John. As Semler excepted the Gospel of John only, so Mr. Evanson excepts the Gospel of Luke only from the charge of spuriousness: though he says that it is grossly corrupted, and interpolated. From these corruptions and interpolations, he endeavours to purify it; in which attempt wo think he has had very indifferent success. In short, his work has proved, (what he did not himself contemplate) that the providence of the God of truth has taken care, that so many absurdities and contradictions, should be contained in these books of the New Testament which were written to establish a mistake, as must I conceive, satisfy any man, who has them once pointed out to him, that the doctrine of those books is not, and cannot be from God. But it may be still asked, �how did this notion of the resurrection of Jesus become current?� �How can you account for the apostles believing such a thing?� We answer sincerely--we cannot absolutely ascertain. The Jews of that age have left no documents upon this business. The origin of the Christian religion is so extremely obscure, that Josephus takes no notice of it at all, (for the passage relating to Christian affairs now found in Josephus are notorious interpolations.) And it is evident from the Chronological, and other mistakes about Jesus, in the Talmud, that the curiosity of the learned Jews had never been interested by Christianity, till so long after Jesus, that the memory of him, and his, was almost entirely lost among that nation. And it appears from the last chapter of the Acts, that when Paul was received by the Jews at Rome, he had not been considered by the Jews of Jerusalem as of sufficient importance, as to cause them to warn their brethren of the Dispersion concerning him; for these Jews tell Paul, on his enquiring, that they had not received any letters concerning him from Jerusalem. So that we can offer nothing but conjecture, to solve the difficulty. It has been said by some, (and it is by no means an hypothesis destitute of plausibility) that Jesus was indeed crucified, but did not actually die on the cross. It is evident that Pilate was extremely desirous to save his life; and is it impossible that the Roman soldiers, who crucified him, had secret orders? Consider the ciscumstances. He was crucified at our nine in the morning, and was taken from the cross at about three in the afternoon. Now, crucifixion is not a death which kills men in six hours, and men have been known to have lived fastened to the cross for more than two days. Consider, besides, that when the soldiers gave the coup de grace to the two robbers, that they did not break the legs of Jews. This, the author of the Gospel according to John says, they did, in order to fulfill a prophecy; but I leave it to my reader, whether it is not more likely that they did so in order to fulfill secret orders? But to make up for that omission, the author adds, that they pierced Jesus with a spear. Now, besides that this is not mentioned by the other Evangelists, the very manner in which this circumstance is mentioned, and eagerly affirmed by him, looks as if the author was aware of the likelihood of a suspicion of the fact we are trying to prove probable, and that he wrote this in order to obviate it. And after all, the gospel according to John was certainly not written by him, and, therefore, what the author of it observes, may be true, or not. You will observe also, reader, that the body of Jesus was given by Pilate to his friends immediately; a favour never vouchsafed by the Romans in such a case, except �speciali gratia.� You will observe also, that the body was taken down by his friends, no doubt with great care; probably was washed from the blood, and rubbed perfectly dry; and was deposited in the cave or sepulchre, with a large quantity of spices, and aromatics. Now suppose that Jesus only swooned on the cross, and that his naked body, after being cleansed as aforesaid, was laid in the new sepulchre where the air was cool and fresh, wrapped in a considerable quantity of dry linen, together with many spices, and aromatics, what could be more opportune, or proper, to stimulate his drowsed senses, and recall the unfortunate sufferer to life? Suppose then, that on awaking from his trance, he disengaged himself, and took himself away as secretly as possible, might not all this have happened? Is it impossible? And does it not look plausible? It is not improbable that he might after this have shewed himself privately to his particular disciples; for you will recollect, reader, that the appearances of Jesus to his disciples after his crucifixion were to them, only, and for the most part in the night. And it is by no means impossible, that the twelve apostles, who were, I doubt not, well meaning men, though extremely simple and credulous; I say it is thus by no means impossible, that they might have believed sincerely, that their master had risen from the dead. This hypothesis must not be considered only as the brain work of an unbelieving sceptic; for it has been (in its main principle) advanced, and elaborately defended by Dr. Paulus the professor of divinity in the principal University in Bavaria. It is true, that it may be said, that this is all hypothesis, and mere conjecture. We allow it; it is true; and we assert that the account given by the Evangelists is no better, nay, worse than conjecture, as it is a mere forgery of the second century! For no man, we think, who knows all that has been made known by biblical critics, in later years, will now seriously contend for the literal truth of that account. [See Appendix A.] If all this will not satisfy the man that �believeth all things,� our last resource is to demy the act of this resurrection. And this we can do with perfect sang froid, as we know very well that it cannot be proved; for the only testimony in favour of it, are the four evangelists; four witnesses, the like of whose written testimony, with reference thereto, (being as contradic-tory as that is,) to say no more, certainly would not, we believe, be received in a modern court of justice, to settle the fact about a debt of five dollars. And if it be still urged, that such a story is unparalleled, and therefore respectable; we say that it is not unparalleled; as we have an account of a false Messiah, who applied the prophecies to himself, had a forerunner, and more than two hundred thousand followers, who publicly acknowledged him for the Messiah, raised contributions, and supported him magnificently. He too, quoted the prophets as speaking concerning him, and was said to have worked divers miracles, and was ultimately put to death by the order of the Grand Seignor at Constantinople; yet nevertheless was said to have been, seen again by certain of his followers, who wrote books in favour of that fact, and of his Messiahship. Many learned Rabbins enrolled themselves as his disciples, and wrote controversial works in his cause, as Paul did. And to conclude, his party was not entirely extinct within a very few years. Yet, notwithstanding all this, he was an impostor; and no man now believes the stories of his miracles, or his resurrection; notwithstanding that both are affirmed by more recent, more learned, and more respectable testimony than is, or can be, offered, in favour of the Messiahship of Jesus. The name of this famous impostor was Shabathai Tzevi, and his history is given by Basnage, in his history of the Jews, [and by other writers of Jewish history. See on this subject the Sepher Torath Hakenaoth, page 2. The learned Mr. Zedner has extracted the life of Shabetai Tsebi from tins book, and published it, with a German translation, in his Auswahl historischer Stucke aus Hebraischen Schriftstellern, Berlin, 1840.--D.] I wish the Christian reader to peruse carefully, and cooly, that account; and if he then persists in believing the history given by the evangelists; with such faith as his, he certainly ought to be able to move mountains; and I have no doubt at all, that with such a good natured understanding as his, if he had found in his New Testament the story of Jonah misquoted, and and by a small transposition a la mode de Surenhusius, representing that �Jonah swallowed the whale!� this sturdy �confidence in things not seen,� would, I doubt not have enabled him without difficulty to swallow the prophet with the whale in his belly. CHAPTER XVII. OF THE PECULIAR MORALITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, AS IT AFFECTS INDIVIDUALS. I have already expressed my respect for the character of Jesus. And I again declare, that I request it may be distinctly understood, that by nothing that I have said do I intend to impeach, or to deprecate his moral character. Whatever may have been his defects, or whatever were his foibles, they must have been the faults of his mind, not of his heart. For, though he may hare been a mistaken enthusiast; yet I do firmly believe, That, with such a character as he is represented to have possessed, he could not have been either a hypocrite, or a wilful impostor. And if it be replied, that I have, by some observations on his conduct, indirectly impeached the perfection of his moral character; I answer, that if so, it is certainly my misfortune, but it may not be his fault. To explain this observation, I request the reader to recall to mind, that Jesus wrote nothing himself! that the only accounts we have of him, are contained in books, probably apocryphal, certainly not generally known till after the middle of the second-century from his birth. The gospels now extant do not appear to have been known to Justin Martyr; and the earliest fathers, in their writings, generally quote traditions concernng Jesus, instead of histories. Since these things are so, who knows, but that the authors of the histories of him now extant, have attributed to him words and actions of which he was guiltless. We know how prone mankind are to invent falsehoods concerning eminent men; for instance, Mahomet expressly disclaimed the power of working miracles, and yet the writings of his early followers ascribe hundreds to him. Why may it not be possible then, since Jesus wrote nothing himself, that these books ascribe to him words and actions he neither spake nor performed? God grant that this may one day be proved! For I should rejoice to find the meek, gentle, and amiable man of Nazareth proved guiltless of the follies and impieties attributed to him in the New Testament as I find it, and to reason concerning the works and words of Jesus, as I find them there expressed, yet I would earnestly request the reader to consider me willing and desirous to exempt the author, or rather the cause of the Christian religion, from the reproach of the sentiments I am bound by my regard for one God, and his attributes, to express for the system itself. Yes! I can in my own mind separate Jesus from his religion and his followers. I read with admiration many of his beautiful parables. I shall ever contemplate his mildness, and benevolence with respect; and I peruse, with pity, the recital of his sufferings, and cruel death. All this I have done, and I believe I shall ever do; but I cannot! I cannot, in effect, deny the one living and true God, and renounce my reason, and common sense, by believing all the contradictory and strange doctrines contained in the New Testament. Having unburthened my mind upon this subject, and frankly expressed my sentiments and feelings with regard to the character of Jesus; I hope I may now be allowed (without incurring the charge of maliciously exposing him, or the twelve apostles, to reproach) to state my opinions with regard to the merit of the moral maxims, ascribed to him and them, in the New Testament. And I again caution the reader, that he is not obliged to lay to his, or their, charge, the mischievous consequences that originated from acting upon these maxims and principles, since it is by no means impossible that they may have been falsely ascribed to him and to them. Now then, let us attend to the subject of the chapter, viz., the moral maxims ascribed to Jesus. These moral maxims consist of 1st, Those which were adopted by him from the Old Testament. 2d, Those of which he himself is described as the author. With the consideration of those of the first class I shall not trouble the reader, but shall devote this chapter to the examination of those which are supposed to have originated from him. These are, 1st, � Do to others what you would that others should do to you.� 2d, � Resist not the injurious person; but if a man smite thee on one cheek, turn to him the other also.� 3d, If a man ask thy cloak, give him thy coat also.� 4th, � If thou wouldest be perfect, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor; and come follow me.� 5th, � Unless a man hate his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and possessions, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.� 6th, � Take no thought for the morrow.� With regard to the first of these maxims, it does not belong to Jesus, as the author. It is found in the book of Tobit, chapter iv. 15, and it was a maxim well known to the Rabbins. It is found in the Talmud verbatim. �What thou wouldest not have done to thee, do not thou to another.� (Tal. Bab. Schabbat. fol. 31.) So also Hillel addressed a proselyte thus, �What is hateful to thee, do not thou to thy neighbour.� Several other expressions of Jesus were, it appears from the Talmud, proverbial expressions in use among the Jews. For instance, the original of that saying recorded Matthew vii. 2. �With whatsoever measure ye mete,� &c., is found in the Talmud of Babylon (Sanhedrim fol. 100, Sotah, chapter 4, 7, 8,9.) �With whatsoever measure any one metes it shall be measured to him. So also the original of that expression of �Cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brother�s eye is to be found in the Talmud*. What is called by Christians �the Lord�s Prayer,� is merely a few clauses taken from Jewish prayers, and put together. Very many instances of a similar nature to these might be produced; but, as I must be brief, the reader is referred for further satisfaction to the works of Lightfoot, where he will learn, by extracts from Jewish writings, the source, and meaning of many more of the sayings of Jesus. I now proceed to the most disagreeable part of the subject, viz.: The consideration of the other maxims mentioned, which, it must be allowed, do belong to Jesus, or at least to the New Testament, since they are the peculiar moral principles of Christianity, and the honour of them can be challenged by, I believe, no other religion. These precepts are so extremely hyperbolical, that they are not, and cannot be perfectly observed by any Christian, who does not detach himself completely from the business of society; and these maxims, (which, as I said before, are the only parts of the morality of the New Testament, which are not borrowed,) never have been obeyed by any but the primitive Christians; and by the Monks, and Anchorets; for even the Quakers and Shakers, eminent as they are in Christian morality, have never been able to come quite up to the self denial required by the New Testament. Indeed, the moral maxims peculiar to Christianity are impracticable, except by one who confines his wealth to the possession of a suit of clothes, sad wooden platter, and who lives in a cave, or a monastery. They bear the stamp of enthusiasm upon their very front, and we have always seen, and ever shall see, that they are not fit for man: that they lift him out of the sphere in which God designed him to move; that they are useless to society, and frequently produce the most dangerous consequences to it. In a word, in these maxims we find commands, the fulfillment of which, is impossible by any man who is a husband, a father, or a citizen. It is an outrage to human nature, and to common sense, to order a virtuous man, in order to reach perfection, to strip himself of his property; to offer the other cheek to receive a new outrage; not to resist the most unjust violence, injury, and insult; not to defend himself, or his property, when �sued at the law;� to quit his house and goods, and to hate his parents, and brethren, and wife, and children, for the sake of Jesus; to refuse and reject innocent pleasures; to deny himself lawful enjoyments, appointed by the Creator to make the existence of man a blessing to himself and others. Who does not see in these commands the language of enthusiasm of hyperbole? These maxims! are they not directly fitted to discourage, and debase a man? to degrade him in his own eyes, and those of others? to plunge him into despair? And would not the literal fulfillment of them prove destructive to society? What shall we say of that morality which orders the heart to detach itself from objects, which God, and reason, and nature order it to love? To refuse to enjoy innocent and lawful happiness,--what is it but to despise the benefits of God? What real good can result for society from these melancholy virtues, which Christianity regards as perfections? Will a man become more useful to society when his mind is perpetually inquieted by imaginary terrors, by mournful thoughts, which prevent him from fulfilling the duties he owes to his family, his country and those with whom he is connected? It may be safely said, that enthusiasm is the base of the morality of Christianity; I say, the morality of Christianity, meaning thereby, not the morality of those called Christians, but the morality expressed, and required in the New Testament. The virtues it recommends, are the virtues caricatured, and rendered extravagant; virtues which divide a man from his neighbour, and plunge him in melancholy, and render him useless, and unhappy In this world we want human virtues, not those which make a man a misanthrope. Society desires, and wants virtues that help to maintain it, which gives it energy and activity. It wants virtues which render families industrious, and united; and which incite, and enable every one to obtain lawful pleasures, and to augment the general felicity. But the peculiar virtues of the New Testament, either debase the mind by overwhelming fears, or intoxicate it with visionary hopes, both which, are equally fitted to turn away men from their proper duties. In truth, what advantages can society derive from those virtues styled by Christians, Evangelical? which they prefer to the social virtues, the real and the useful, and without which, they assert, a man cannot please God, Let us examine these vaunted perfections, and let us see of what utility they can be to society, and whether they really merit the preference which is given them by their advocates. The first of these Christian virtues, which serves as a base for all the others, is faith. It consists in believing the truth of dogmas, of absurd fables, which Christianity (according to the catechisms) orders its disciples to believe--dogmas, as absurd and impossible as a square circle, or a round triangle--from which we see, that this virtue exacts an entire renunciation of common sense; an assent to incredible facts, and a blind credulity in absurd dogmas, which, yet, every Christian is required to believe, under pain of damnation. This virtue, too, though necessary to all men, is, nevertheless, the gift of heaven! the effect of special grace. It forbids doubt and examination; it �forbids a man the right to exercise his reason; it deprives him of the liberty of thinking, and degrades him into a bearded baby. This faith vanishes when a man reasons; this virtue cannot sustain a tranquil scrutiny. And this is the reason why all thorough going Christians are naturally, and, consequently, the enemies of science. This miraculous faith, which �believeth all things,� is not given to persons enlightened by science and reflection, and accustomed to think. It is not given but to those who are afraid to think, lest they should offend God. The next Christian virtue which flows from the first, is hope, founded upon the promises which the New Testament makes to those who render themselves miserable in this life. It nourishes their enthusiasm, it makes them �forget the things that are on earth, and reach forward unto the things� which are in another world. It renders them useless here below, and makes them firmly believe that God will recompense in heaven, the pains they have taken to make themselves miserable on earth. How can a man, occupied with such expectations of heavenly happiness, concern himself at all with, or for, the actual and present happiness of those around him, while he is indifferent as to his own? And how can he help this, when he believes that �friendship with the world is enmity with God?� The third virtue is charity. We have elsewhere said, that if universal love or charity means only general benevolence, and a desire to makes others happy, and to do them good, all this is commanded by reason and the ancient revelation; but if by this precept it is commanded to love those who hate, oppress or insult us, we do not at all scruple to assert, that the thing is impossible, and unnatural. For, though we can abstain from hurting our enemy; or even can do him good, we cannot really love him. Love is a movement of the heart, which is governed and directed by the laws of our nature, to those whom we think worthy of it, and to those only. Charity, considered as general benevolence of disposition, is virtuous and necessary. It is nothing more than a feeling which interests us in favour of our fellow beings. But how is this feeling consistent with the peculiar doctrines of the gospel? According to its maxims, it is a crime to offer God a heart, whoso affections are shared by terrestrial objects. And besides, does not experience show, that devotees obliged by principle to hate themselves, are little disposed to give better treatment to others? We should not be surprised that maxims, originating with enthusiasm, should aim at, and have the effect of, driving man out of himself. In the delirium of its enthusiasm, this religion forbids a man to love himself. It commands him to hate all pleasures but those of religion, and to cherish a long face. It attributes to him as meritorious, all the voluntary evils he inflicts upon himself. From thence originate those austerites, those penances, destructive to health; those cruel privations by which the inhabitants of the monastic cell kill themselves by inches, in order to merit the joys of heaven. Now, how can good sense admit that God delights in seeing his creatures torment themselves? It may be said to all this, perhaps, that this is mere declamation, for Christians now a days do not torment themselves, but live as comfortable as others. To this I answer that Christianity is to be judged not by what Christians do, but by what it commands them to do. Now, I presume it will not be denied that the New Testament commands its professors to renounce the world, to be dead to the world, to �crucify the flesh with its passions, and desires.� Certainly these directions were literally complied with by the primitive Christians; and, in doing so, they acted consistently. In those times, the deserts, the mountains, the forests were peopled with perfect Christians; who withdrew from the world, deprived their families of support, and their country of citizens, in order to lead unmolested �the divine life.� It was the New Testament morality that spawned those legions of monks and cenobites, who thought to secure the favour of heaven, by burying their talents in the deserts, and devoting themselves to inaction and celibacy. And at this very day we see these very same things in those Christian countries, which are truly faithful to the principles of their religion. In fine, Christianity seems from the first, to have taken pains to set itself in point blanc opposition to nature, and reason. If it admits and includes some virtues ordered and appointed by God, good sense, and universal experience; it drives them beyond their bounds into extravagance. It preserves no just medium, which is the point of perfection. Voluptuousness, adultery and debauchery are forbidden by the laws of God and reason. But Christianity not content with commanding, and encouraging marriage, as did the Old Testament, must forsooth go beyond it, and therefore encourages celibacy, as the state of perfection God says, in Genesis, �it is not good that man should be alone. I will make a companion for him.� And he blessed all his creatures, saying, � increase and multiply.� But the gospel annuls this law, and represents a single life to be most pleasing, to the very being, whose very first command was, �increase and multiply�! It advises a man to die without posterity, to refuse citizens to the state, and to himself, a support for his old age. �It is to no purpose to deny that Christianity recommends all this; I say, it substantially does! and I boldly appeal,--not to a few Protestant Divines,--but to the New Testament; to the Homilies of the Fathers of the Church; to the History, and Practice of the Primitive Christians; to the innumerable Monasteries of Europe, and Asia; to the immense multitudes who have lived, and died hermits; and, finally, (because I know very well, the Protestant divines attribute these follies to the influence of Platonism, Pythagoranism, and several other isms upon pure Christianity) I appeal to living evidence now in the world, to the only thoroughgoing Christians in it, viz., to the Society of the Shakers, who I maintain, and can prove, to be true, genuine imitators of the Primitive Christians, and a perfect exemplification of their manners, and modes of thinking. I adduce them the more confidently, because, being simple, and unlearned, their character has been formed by the spirit of the New Testament, and perfectly represents the effects of its principles fully carried out, and acted upon. They never heard of Platonism, or of Pythagoras in their lives, and, consequently, the polemic tricks, and evasions, which have been, as hinted just now, resorted to by Protestant divines, to shift from the shoulders of Christianity to those of Plato or Pythagoras, the obnoxious principles we have been considering, are of no use in this case, as, whatever the characters of these Shakers may be, they were formed by the New Testament, and by nothing else; and I believe, that every scholar in ecclesiastical history, who reads Brown�s history of the Shakers, will be immediately and powerfully struck with the resemblance subsisting between them, and the Christians of the two first centuries. As examples of the effects of those precepts of Christian morality, which command us to hate father, and mother, and sister, and brother, for the Bake of Jesus, take the following extracts from the history referred to. �According to their faith, natural affection must be eradicated; and they say they must love all equally alike, as brothers, and sisters in the gospel. It would exceed the limits of this work to give a particular account of the various schemes that have been contrived, to destroy all natural affection and social attachment between man and wife, parent and child, brothers and sisters; especially towards such as have left the society. Two instances that occurred about this time, as specimens of others, may suffice. A mother, who had renounced the faith, (i. e. left the society,) come to Niskeuna to see, her daughter. Eldress Hannah Matterson told the daughter to go into the room to her carnal mother, and say, � What do you come here for? I don�t want you to come and see me with your carnal affections!� �The mother being grieved, replied, �I did not expect that a daughter of mine would ever address me in that manner.� �The daughter, in obedience to what she was taught, replied again, �You have come here with your carnal fleshly desires, and I don't want to see you,� and left her mother.� �Some time after, one Duncan Shapley, who had belonged to the society, called to see Abigail, his sister, at Niskeuna, whom he had not seen for six or seven years; but he was not admitted: he waited some time, being loath to go away without seeing her. At last she was ordered to go to the window and address him in the language of abuse and scurrility. The words she made use of, it would be indecent to mention. For this she was applauded, and that in the author�s hearing, when he belonged to the society.� This man gives a very curious account how the elders treated � their babes,� in their spiritual nursery; but I shall notice only one or two examples, which illustrate what I have advanced concerning the natural hostility of the spirit of the New Testament towards science. �I know of several, who, soon after they joined the Church, have been counselled by the Elders to dispose of their books; and have accordingly done it. Elder Ebenezer being at my house one day, on seeing a number of books, he said--�Ah! Thomas must put away his books if he intends to become a good believer.� As an instance of its effects upon the human understanding, take the following:--�A short time after, being at a believer�s house, at eleven o�clock at night, they all having retired to rest, and I laying awake in a dry well finished room, in which was a stove and fire, there fell a large drop of water on my temples; on examination, I could not discover where the water came from. I told the believers of it in the morning.� �One said, � Ah! it is a warning to you respecting your unbelief.� �I then assigned some inconclusive reason, how the drop might have become formed in the room, and its falling.� �One replied, �Ah! that is the way you render a natural reason for the cause of every thing, and so reason away your faith and yourself out of the gospel.�� As another proof, that genuine Christianity discourages marriage, and considers celibacy as the only state of perfection, the Shakers allow of no marriages at all. Thus you see that, among these people, to become a �good believer,� you must insult your parents, revile your brother, depise learning, and never render a �natural reason� for any thing, lest you should �reason away your faith, and yourself out of the gospel.� CHAPTER XVIII. ON THE PECULIAR MORALITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, AS IT AFFECTS NATIONS AND POLITICAL SOCIETIES. After having seen the uselessness, and even the danger, to individuals, of the perfections, the virtues, and the duties, which Christianity peculiarly commands; let us now see whether it has a more happy influence upon politics; or whether it produces real happiness among the nations with whom this religion is established, and the spirit of it faithfully observed. Let us do so, and we shall find, that wherever Christianity is established and obeyed, it establishes a set of laws directly opposed to those of a well ordered national society; and it soon makes this disagreement and incompatibility distinctly to be felt. Politics are intended to maintain union and concord among the citizens. Christianity, though it preaches universal love, and commands its followers to live in peace; yet, by a strange inconsistency, consequentially annihilates the effect of these excellent precepts, by the inevitable divisions it causes among its followers, who necessarily understand differently the Old and New Testaments, because the latter is not only irreconcilably contradictory to the former, but it is even inconsistent with itself. From the very commencement of Christianity, we perceive very violent disputes among its founders and teachers; and through every succeeding century, we find, in the history of the Church, nothing but schism and heresy. These are followed by persecutions and quarrels, exceedingly well adapted to destroy this vaunted spirit of concord, said by its defenders to be peculiar to Christianity; and the existence of which is, in fact, impossible in a religion which is one entire chaos of obscure doctrines and impracticable precepts. In every religious dispute, both parties thought that God was on their side, and, consequently, they were obstinate and irreconcilable. And how should it have been otherwise, since they confounded the cause of God with the miserable interests of their own vanity? Thus, being little disposed to give way on one part or the other, they cut one another�s throats; they tormented, they burnt each other: they tore one another to pieces; and having exterminated or put down the obnoxious sects, they sung Te Deum. It is not my intention to pursue, in this place, the horrid detail of ecclesiastical history, as connected with that of the Roman empire. Mr. Gibbon has exhibited in such colours this dreadful record of follies, and of crimes, that it is difficult to see how the maxim of judging the tree by its fruit, will not fatally affect the cause of the Christian religion. I refer to Mr. Gibbon�s history as a cool and impartial narrative; for I am well satisfied that, so far from having reason to complain of him, the advocates of Christianity have very great reason, indeed, to thank him for his forbearance, since, with his eloquence, he might have drawn a picture that would have made humanity shudder. For, throughout the whole history, if a man had wished to know what was then the orthodox faith, the best method of ascertaining it, would have been, undoubtedly, to ask, � What is the catechism of this public executioner.� The Christian religion was, it is evident from his history, the principal, though by no means the only cause of the decline and fall of the Roman empire. Because it degraded the spirit of the people, and because it produced monks and hermits in abundance, but yielded no soldiers. The heathen adversaries of Christianity were in the right when they said, that �if it prevailed, Rome was no more!� The Christians would not serve in the armies of the emperor, if they could possibly avoid it. They justly considered the profession of a soldier, and that of a Christian, as incompatible. Celsus accuses them of abandoning the empire, under whose laws they lived, to its enemies. And what is the answer of Origen to this accusation? Look: at his pitiful reply! He endeavours to palliate this undutiful refusal by representing that--�the Christians had their peculiar camps, in which they incessantly combatted for the safety of the emperor and empire, by lifting up their right hands-- IN PRAYER!!� (See Origen contra Celsum, Lib. 8, p. 437.) This is a sneaking piece of business truly! But Origen could have given another answer, if he had dared to avow it, which is, that his co-religionists, in his time, had not ceased to expect their master momentarily to appear; and, of course, it little mattered what became of the emperor, or the empire. This notion was the principal engine for making proselytes; and it was by this expectation that many were frightened into baptism. That Christianity was considered incompatible with the military profession, is evident from many passages of the fathers. And one of them, I believe, Tertullian, ventures to insinuate to the Christians in the legions, the expediency of deserting, to rid themselves of �their carnal employment.� Nay, to such a height did this spirit prevail, that it never stopped till it taught the Roman youth in Italy the expedient of cutting off the thumbs of their right hands in order to avoid the conscription, and that they might be allowed to count their beads at home in quiet. If we examine, in detail, the precepts of this religion, as they affect nations, we shall see, that it interdicts every thing which can make a nation flourishing. We have seen already the notion of imperfection which Christianity attaches to marriage, and the esteem and preference it holds out to celibacy. These ideas certainly do not favour population, which is, without contradiction, the first source of power to every state. Commerce is not less obnoxious to the principles of a religion whose founder is represented as denouncing an anathema against the rich, and as excluding them from the kingdom of heaven. All industry is equally interdicted to perfect Christians, who are to spend their lives �as strangers, and pilgrims upon earth,� and who are �not to take care of the morrow.� Chrysostom says, that �a merchant cannot please God, and that such a one ought to be chased out of the church.� No Christian, also, without being inconsistent, can serve in the army. For a man, who is never sure of being in a state of grace, is the most extravagant of men, if, by the hazard of battle, he exposes himself to eternal perdition. And a Christian who ought to love his enemies, is he not guilty of the greatest of crimes, when he inflicts death upon a hostile soldier, of whose disposition he knows nothing: and whom he may, at a single stroke, precipitate into hell? A Christian soldier is a monster! a non-descript! and Lactantius affirms, that �a Christian cannot be either a soldier, or an accuser to a criminal cause.� And, at this day, the Quakers, and Mennonites refuse to carry arms, and, in so doing, they are consistent Christians. Christianity declares war against the sciences; they are regarded as an obstacle to salvation. �Science puffeth up.� says Paul. And the fathers of the church, St. Gregory, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine denounce vehemently astronomy, and geometry. And Jerome declares, that he was whipped by an angel only for reading that Pagan Cicero. It has been often remarked, that the most enlightened men are commonly bad Christians. For independent of its effects on faith, which science is exceedingly apt to subvert, it diverts the Christian from the work of his salvation, which is the only thing needful. In a word, the peculiar principles of Christianity literally obeyed, would entirely subvert from its foundations every political society now existing. If this assertion is doubted, let the doubter read the works of the early Fathers, and he will see that their morality is totally incompatible with the preservation and prosperity of a state. He will see according to Lactantius, and others, that �no Christian can lawfully be a soldier.� That according to Justin, �no Christian can be a magistrate.� That according to Chrysostom, �no Christian ought to be a merchant� And that according to several, �no Christian ought t study.� In fine, joining these maxims together with those of the New Testament, it will follow, that a Christian, who as he is commanded, aims at perfection, is a useless member of the community, useless to his family, and to all around him. He is an idle dreamer, who thinks of nothing but futurity; who has nothing in common with the interests of the world, and according to Tertullian �has no other business but to get out of it as quietly as possible.� Let us hearken to Esebius of Caesarea, and we shall abundantly discover the truth of what has been said. �The manner of life, (says he,) of the Christian church, surpasses our present nature, and the common life of men. It seeks neither marriage, nor children, nor riches. In fine, it is entirely a stranger to human modes of living. It is entirely absorbed in an insatiable love of heavenly things. Those who follow this course of life, have only their bodies upon earth, their whole souls are in heaven, and they already dwell among pure and celestial intelligences, and they despise the manner of life of other men� Demonstrat. Evang. vol. ii. p.29. Indeed a man firmly persuaded of the truth of; Christianity cannot attach himself to any thing here below. Every thing here is �an occasion of stumbling, a rock of offence.� Every thing here, diverts him from thinking of his salvation. If Christians in general, happily, for society, were not inconsistent, and did not neglect the peculiar precepts of their religion, no large society of them could exist; and the nations enlightened by the gospel would turn hermits, and nuns. All business, but fasting and prayer, would be at an end. There would be nothing but groaning in �this vale� of tears;� and they would make themselves, and others, as miserable as possible, from the best of motives, viz; the desire to fulfill what they mistakenly conceived to be the will of God. Is this a picture taken from the life, or is it a fanciful representation of something different from the peculiar morality of the New Testament? This serious question demands a serious answer. If it be such as it is represented above and such it really appears to me, and such I have unfortunately experienced its operation to be on my own mind--I would respectfully ask--can such a religion, whose peculiar principles tend to render men hateful, and hating one another: which has often rendered sovereigns, persecutors, and subjects, either rebels, or slaves: a religion, whose peculiar moral principles and maxims, teach the mind to grovel, and humble, and break down the energies of man; and which divert him from thinking of his true interests, and the true happiness of himself and his fellow men. Can such a religion, I would respectfully ask, be from God, since where fully obeyed, it would prove utterly destructive to society? CHAPTER XIX. A CONSIDERATION OF SOME SUPPOSED ADVANTAGES ATTRIBUTED TO THE NEW, OVER THE OLD, TESTAMENT; AND WHETHER THE DOCTRINE OF A RESURRECTION, AND A LIFE TO COME, IS NOT TAUGHT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT; IN CONTRADICTION TO THE ASSERTION, THAT �LIFE AND IMMORTALITY WERE BROUGHT TO LIGHT BY THE GOSPEL.� From the preceding chapters, you may judge, reader, of the justice and truth of the opinion, that �the yoke of Christian morality is easy, and its �burthen light;� and also of the veracity and fairness of that constant assertion of divines, �that Jesus came to remove the heavy yoke of the Mosaic Law, and to substitute in its room one of easier observance.�--Whether this, their assertion, be not rash, and ill founded, I will cheerfully leave to be decided by any cool and thinking man, who knows human nature, and is acquainted with the human heart. I say, I would cheerfully leave it to such a man, �whether the Mosaic Law, with all its numerous rites, and ceremonial observances, nay, with all �the (ridiculous) traditions of the Elders,� superadded, would not be much more bearable to human nature, and much easier to be observed and obeyed, than such precepts as these, �Sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor.� �If a man ask thy cloak, give him thy coat also.� �Resist not the injurious person, but if a man smite thee on one cheek, turn to him the other also.� �Extirpate and destroy all carnal affection, and love nothing, but religion.� �Take no thought for to-morrow;�--I am confident that the decision would be given in my favour; and have no doubt, that with thinking men, the contrary opinion would be instantly rejected with the contempt it merits. Whether the Mosaic Code be the best possible, or really divine, is of no consequence in this inquiry, and is with me another question from that of its inferiority to that of the New Testament. I do by no means assert the former; but have no hesitation to give my opinion, after a pretty thorough examination of the subject, that the reflections of Paul, and those usually thrown out against the Mosaic Code by Theologians, when comparing it with that of the New Testament, in order to deprecate the former, appear to me extremely partial and unjust; and so far from true, that I think, that the ancient law has the advantage over the precepts of the New Testament, in being, at least, practicable and consistent.* Another unfounded reproach which Theologians, in order to magnify the importance of the New Testament, cast upon the Old, is this: They say, that the Old Testament represents God only as the tutelary Deity of the Israelites, and as not so much concerned for the rest of mankind. To show that this is a very mistaken notion, and to manifest that the Eternal of the Old Testament is represented therein, not as the God of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles, I refer to these words:--�The Lord thy God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty and a terrible; who regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward. He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless, and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye, therefore, the stranger. Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him, for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Hear the causes between your brethren, and judge righteously between a man and his brother, and the stranger that is with him. One law shall be to him that is home born, and to the stranger that sojourneth among you. The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself. I am the Lord your God.� Indeed, so little truth is there in the notion, that the law and religion of the Old Testament were established with the intention of confining them to one people, exclusive of all others, that the Old Testament certainly represents them in such manner, as shows, that they were intended to be as unconfined as the Christian, or Mahometan; its religion, in fact, admitted every one who would receive it. And what is more, it can be proved that the Old Testament dispensation claims, as appears from itself, to have been given for the common advantage of all mankind. And it is asserted in it, (whether truly or not, is not the question; it is sufficient for my purpose, that it asserts it), that the religion contained in it, will one day be the religion of all mankind. For it declares that Jerusalem will be the centre of worship for all nations, and the temple there, be �the house of prayer for all nations;� that the Eternal will be the only God worshipped; and his laws the only laws obeyed. It represents Abraham and his posterity as merely the instruments of the Eternal to bring about these ends; it is repeatedly declared therein, that the reason of God�s dispensations towards them was, �that all the earth might know that the Eternal is God, and that there is no other but Him.� According to its history, when God threatened to destroy the Israelites for their perverseness in the wilderness, and offers Moses, interceding for them, to raise, up his seed to fulfil the purposes for which he designed the posterity of Abraham; he tells Moses that his purpose should not be frustrated through the perverseness of the chosen instruments; �but, (saith He), as surely as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord,� Numbers xiv. 21. Many passages of similar import are contained in the Psalms, and the Prophets. In fact, there is no truth at all in the statement of the Catechisms, that the Old Testament was merely preparatory, and intended merely to prepare the way for �a better covenant,� as Paul says; even for another religion, (the Christian) which was to convert all nations; for, (if the Old Testament be suffered to tell its own story,) we shall find, that it claims, and challenges the honour of beginning, and completing, this magnificent design solely to itself. I was going to overwhelm the patience of the reader with quotations from it, to this purpose; but being willing to spare him and myself, I will only produce one, which, as it is direct and peremptory to this effect, is as good as a hundred, to demonstrate that the Old Testament at least claims what I have said. Zech. viii. 20, �Thus saith the Eternal of Hosts: It shall yet come to pass, that there shall come people, and the inhabitants of many cities; and the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying: �Let us go speedily to pray before the Eternal, and to seek the Eternal of Hosts: I will go also. Yea, many people, and strong nations shall come to seek the Eternal of Hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Eternal. Thus saith the Eternal of Hosts: In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all the languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, we will go with you.� Be it so, it may be said;--�Still, it is to Christianity the world owes the consoling doctrine of a life to come. Life and immortality were brought to light by the Gospel,� say the Christian divines; and they assert, that the doctrine of a resurrection was not known to Jew or Gentile, till they learned it from Jesus� followers. The Old Testament, (say they,) taught the Jews nothing of the glorious truths concerning �the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting,� their �beggarly elements� confined their views to temporal happiness, only.� These assertions I shall prove from the Old Testament itself, to be contrary to fact; for the Jews both knew, and were taught by their Bibles to expect a resurrection, and believed it as firmly as any Christian can, or ever did. For proof hereof, I shall, in the first place, quote the 37th chapter of Ezekiel, and which is as follows, �The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley, which was full of bones. And caused me to pass by them round about, and behold there were very many in the open valley, and behold they were dry.--And he said unto me. Son of man, can these bones live? and I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest. Again he said unto me. Prophecy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones, behold I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live, and I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you; and cover you with skin, and put breath into you; and ye shall live, and know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded, and, as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And �when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above; but there was no breath in them. Then said he unto me. Prophecy son of man, and say unto the wind, thus saith the Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath! and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up again upon their feet, an exceeding great army.� A plainer resurrection than this is, I think never was preached either by Jesus or his followers. Again, Daniel the prophet says, �Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt,� Daniel xii. 2. Now Ezekiel lived almost six hundred years before Jesus, and Daniel was contemporary with the former; and is it not a little surprising, that the Jews should learn, for the first time, the doctrine of a resurrection of the followers of Jesus Christ, when they knew of the resurrection almost six hundred years before he was born? Isaiah also, (who lived before either Ezekiel or Daniel), in the 26th chapter of his prophesies, (exciting the Jews to have confidence in God, and not to despair on account of their captivity, and the troubles and afflictions which they should suffer therein), foretells to them that death would not deprive them of the reward of their piety and virtue; for God would raise them from the dead, and make them happy. �Thy dead men shall live, my dead bodies# (i. e., the bodies of God�s servants) they shall arise. Awake! and sing! ye that dwell in the dust, for thy dew is as the dew of herbs,� The meaning of the last clause is--that, as the grass, which in Oriental countries becomes brown and shrivelled by the heat of the sun; from the effects of the dew it changes and springs up, as it were, in a moment, green and fresh and beautiful; so, by the instantaneous influence of the word of God, the dry and decayed remains of mortality shall become blooming with immortal freshness and beauty. See also Hosea xiii. 14. I might easily multiply passages from the Old Testament, to prove that the doctrine of a resurrection was familiar to the ancient Israelites, but I suppose that what I have already produced, is sufficient. Those, however, who wish to see the subject more thoroughly examined, are referred to �Greave�s Lectures on the Pentateuch,� a work lately published in Europe, highly honourable to the author. See also a Tract upon this subject, published by Dr. Priestley, in 1801. I shall only add one observation more on this subject, viz., that it is very singular that Christian divines should assert, that �life and immortality were first brought to light by the Gospel,� when the New Testament itself represents the resurrection of the dead as being perfectly well known to the Jews, and describes Jesus himself as proving it to the Sadducees out of the Old Testament!!! CONCLUSION. I have now finished my work, which I have written in order to exculpate myself, and to do justice to others; and having re-examined every link of the chain of my argument, I think it amply strong to support the conclusions attached to it. Though there might have been drawn from the Old and New Testaments, many additional arguments corroborative of what has been said, yet, at present, I shall add no more; as I think that what has been brought forward has just claims to be considered by the impartial as quite sufficient to prove these two points--that the New Testament can neither subsist with the Old Testament, nor without it; and that the New Testament system was built first upon a mistake, and afterwards buttressed up with forged and apocryphal documents. Let the candid now judge, whether the author, knowing these things, or, at least persuaded of their truth, could have persisted in affirming, (in a place where sincerity is expected), in the name of the Almighty, that the claims of the New Testament were valid, without being a hypocrite, and an impostor. Let them also consider, whether, after being unable to obtain a satisfactory refutation of the objections contained in this volume, his resigning a profession whose duties obliged him to say what he was convinced was false, was conduct to be reprehended. And lastly, he appeals to the good sense of the public, for a decision, whether, with such objections and difficulties weighing upon his mind, as he has now exposed, his conduct in that respect can reasonably be attributed to the unmanly influence of caprice and fickle-ness, (as has been circulated by some who had an interest in making it believed;) or to the just influence of motives deserving a better name. With regard to the unfortunate people whose arguments have been brought forward in this volume, we have, reader, now gone over, and distinctly felt, the whole ground of the controversy between them and their persecutors, mentioned in the Preface. And as they make use of the Old Testament as a foundation, admitted, and necessarily admitted by Christians, to be of divine authority, and are surrounded by the bulwarks they have raised out of the demolished entrenchments of their adversaries, I do not see but that �their castle�s strength may laugh a siege to scorn.� And after reviewing, and revolving, over and over in my own mind the arguments on both sides, I am obliged to believe, that the stoutest Polemical Goliath who may venture to attack it, especially their strong hold--their arguments about the Messiahship, will find to his cost, that when his weak point is but known, the mightiest Achilles must fall before the feeblest Paris, whose arrow is--aimed at his heel. The author hopes, and thinks he has a right to expect, that whoever may attempt to answer his book, will do it fairly, like a man of candour; without trying to evade the main question--that of the Messiahship of Jesus. He fears, that he shall see an answer precisely resembling the many others he has seen upon that subject. Except two--those of Sukes, and Jeffries. (who acknowledge that miracles have nothing to do with the question of the Messiahship, which can be decided by the Old Testament only;)-- all that he has ever met with, evade this question, and slide over to the ground of miracles. Such conduct in an answerer of this book would be very unfair, and also very absurd. For the case is precisely resembling the following--A father informs by letter his son in a foreign country, that he is about to send him a Tutor, whom he will know by the following marks; �He is learned in the mathematics, and the physical sciences; acquainted with the learned languages, and an excellent physician; of a dark complexion; six feet high, and with a voice loud, and commanding.� By and by, a man comes to the young man, professing to be this tutor sent to him by his father. On examining the man, and comparing him with the description in his father�s letter, he finds him totally unlike the person he had been taught to expect. Instead of being acquainted with the sciences, therein mentioned, he knows nothing about them; instead of being �six feet high, of a dark complexion, and with a voice loud and commanding,� he is a diminutive creature of five feet, of a light complexion, with a voice like a woman�s. The young man, with his father�s letter in his hand, tells the pretended tutor, that he certainly cannot be the person he has been told to expect. The man persists, and appeals to certain �wonderful works� he performs in order to convince the young man, that he is acquainted with the sciences aforesaid, and that he is also six feet high; of a dark complexion; and talks like an Emperor! The young man replies. �Friend, you are either an enthusiast, a mad man, or something worse. As to your � signs and wonders,� I have been warned in my father�s letter to pay no regard to any such things in this case. Besides, you ought to be sensible, that your identity with the person I am taught by my father�s letter to expect, can be only determined by comparing you with the description of him given therein. Whether your �wonderful works� are real miracles or not, I neither know, nor care. At any rate, they cannot, in the nature of things, be any thing to the purpose in; this case. For you to pretend, that they prove what you offer them to prove, is quite absurd; you might as well, and as reasonably, pretend, that they could prove Aristotle to have been Alexander; or the Methodist George Whitfield to be the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte!� To conclude, if any person should feel inclined to attempt to refute this book, let him do it like a man; without evading the question, or equivocating, or caviling about little things. Let him consider the principal question, and the main arguments on which he perceives that the author relies, and not pass over these silently, and hold up a few petty mistakes and subsidiary arguments as specimens of the whole book. Such a mode of defence would be very disengenuous, and with a discerning reader, perfectly futile and insufficient. It would be as if a man prostrate, and bleeding under a lion whose teeth and claws were infixed in his throat, should tear a handful of hairs out of the animal�s mane, and hold them up as proofs of victory. In fine, let him, before his undertaking, carefully consider these pungent words of Bishop Beveridge, �Opposite answers, and downright arguments advantage a cause; but when a disputant leaves many things untouched, as if they were too hot for his fingers; and declines the weight of other things, and alters the true state of the question: it is a shrewd sign, either that he has not weighed things maturely, or else (which is more probable,) that he maintains a desperate cause.� FINIS. APPENDIX A.# As reasons for this assertion, (that �the account of the resurrection given by the evangelists is no better, nay, worse, than conjecture, as it is a mere forgery of the second century.--Vide page 86) take the following facts, which are now ascertained, and can be proved:--1. Several sects of Christians in the first century, in the apostolic era, denied that Jesus was crucified, as the Basildeans, &c. The author of the epistle ascribed to Barnabas, I think, denied it, and the author of the gospel of Thomas certainly did. 2. The Jewish Christians, the disciples of the twelve apostles, never received, but rejected every individual book of the present New Testament. They held in especial abomination the writings of Paul, whom they called �an apostate;� and there is extant, in � Cotelerius� Patres Apostolici,� a letter ascribed to Peter, written to James at Jerusalem wherein he complains bitterly of Paul, styling him �a lawless man,� and a crafty misrepresenter of him (Peter,) and his doctrine, in that Paul represented, every where, Peter as being secretly of the same opinions with himself; against this he enters his protest, and declares that he reprobates the doctrine of Paul. (See Appendix B.) 3. It is certain, that from the beginning, the Christians were never agreed as to points of faith; and that the apostles themselves, so far from being considered as inspired, and infallible, were frequently contradicted, thwarted, and set at naught by their own converts: and there were as many sects, heresies, and quarrels, in the first century, as in the second or third. 4. Jesus and his apostles were no sooner off the stage, than forgeries of all kinds broke in with irresistible force: Gospels, Epistles, Acts, Revelations without number, published in the names, and under the feigned authority, of Jesus and his apostles, abounded in the Christian church; and as some of these were as early in time as any of the writings in the present canon of the New Testament, so they were received promiscuously with them, and held in equal credit and veneration, and read in the public assemblies as of equal authority with those now received. 5. The very learned and pious Dodwell, in his Dissertations on Iraeneus avows, that he cannot find in ecclesiastical antiquities, (which he understood better than any man of his age,) any evidence at all, that the four Gospels were known or heard of, before the time of Trajan, and Adrian, i.e. before the middle of the second century, i. e. nearly a hundred years after the apostles were dead. (See Appendix C.) Long before this time, we know that there were extant numbers of spurious gospels, forged, and ascribed to the apostles; and we have not the least evidence to be depended on, that those now received were not also apocryphal. For they were written nobody certainly knows by whom, or where, or when. They first appeared in an age of credulity, when forgeries of this kind abounded and were received with avidity by those whose opinions they favoured, while they were rejected as spurious by many sects of Christians, who asserted that they were possessed of the genuine apostles, which, however, those who received �the four,� denied. 6. All the different sects of Christians, without a known exception, altered, interpolated, and without scruple garbled, their different copies of their various and discordant gospels, in order to adapt them to their jarring and whimsical philosophical notions, Celsus accuses them of this, and they accuse each other. And that they were continually tampering with their copies of the books of the New Testament, is evident from the immense number of various readings, and from some whole phrases, and even verses, which for knavish purposes were foisted into the text, but have been detected, and exposed by Griesbach, and others. They also forged certain rhapsodies under the name of �Sybbiline Oracles,� and then adduce them as prophetic proofs of the truth of their religion. They also interpolated certain clumsy forgeries as prophecies of Jesus into their copies of their Greek version of the Old Testament. 7. The present canon of the New Testament has never been sanctioned by the general consent of Christians. The Syrian church rejects some of its books;--some of its books were not admitted until after long opposition, and not until several hundred years after Jesus. The lists of what were considered as canonical books, differ in different ages, and some books now acknowledged by all Christians to be forgeries, were in the second and third centuries considered as equally apostolic as those now received, and as such, were publicly read in the churches. 8. The reason why we have not now extant gospels, different and contradictory to those now received, is, because that the sect or party which finally got the better of its adversaries, and styled itself Catholic, or orthodox, took care to burn and destroy the heretics, and their gospels with them. They likewise took care to hunt up and burn the books of the pagan adversaries of Christianity, �because they were shockingly offensive to pious ears.� 9. Semler considered the New Testament as a collection of pious frauds, written for pious purposes, in the latter part of the second century, (the very time assigned for their first appearance by Dodwell.) Evanson adopts, and gives good reasons for a similar opinion with regard to most of the books which go to compose it. Lastly. The reason why the New Testament canon has been so long respected, seems to have been purely owing to the credulity of the ignorant, and the laziness, indifference, or fears of the learned. Douglas, in his famous �Criterion,� gives us, as infallible tests, by which we may distinguish when written accounts of miracles are fabulous, the following marks:-- 1. �We have reason to suspect (he says) the accounts to be false, when they are not published to the world till after the time when they are said to have been performed.� 2. �We have reason to suspect them to be false, when they are not published in the place where it is pretended the facts were wrought, but are propagated only at a great distance from the supposed scene of action.� 3. �Supposing the accounts to have the two fore-mentioned qualifications, we still have reason to suspect them to be false, if in the time when, and at the place where, they took their rise, they might be suffered to pass without examination.� These are the marks he gives us as infallible tests by which we may distinguish the accounts of miracles in the New Testament to be true; and accounts of miracles in other books (though supported by more testimony than the former,) to be false; with how much justice, may be evident from the following observations:-- 1. If �we have reason to suspect the accounts to be false, when they are not published to the world till long after the time when they are said to have been performed,� then we have reasons to suspect the accounts given in the four gospels; for we have no proof in the world, that any of them were written till nearly one hundred years after the supposed writers of them were all dead. 2. If �we have reason to suspect them to be false, when they are not published in the place where it is pretended the facts were wrought, but are propagated only at a great distance from the supposed scene of action,� then it is still further evident that the accounts in question are not true. For they were apparently none of them published in Judea, the scene of the events recorded in them. But it is pretty clear that they were written in countries at a distance from Palestine. And the facts recorded in them were-no where so little believed as in Judea, among the people in whose sight they are said to have been wrought, where they ought, if true, to have met with most credit. It is, however, evident from the histories themselves, that these stories were laughed at, by the learned and intelligent of the Jewish nation, and disbelieved by the great body of the people. In truth the first Christians were merely one hundred and twenty Galilaeans, who asserted to their co-religionists, that Jesus of Nazareth was the ejected Messiah. It was a mere national quarrel between the great body of the Jews, and a few schismatics. This is evident from the Acts, where we find that for several years they confined their preaching to Jews only. Till the conversion of Cornelius, they do not appear to have thought the Gentiles any way interested in their dispute with their countrymen. So that it is not improbable, (as the Jewish Christians dwindled very rapidly,) that had it not been for the Gentile proselytes to Judaism, Christianity would have perished in its cradle. These people were very numerous, and formed the connecting link between the Jews and the Gentiles. And it was through the medium of these people, that Christianity became known to the heathens. For we find that after the apostles could make nothing of the stubborn Jews �they shook their garments, and told them that from henceforth we go to the Gentiles.�--Accordingly, when the apostles preached in the synagogues, and the Jews contradicted, and blasphemed,� and made fun of their mode of proving from the prophets, �that Jesus was the Christ; yet the �proselytes and devout women� listened, and believed. 3. If �supposing the accounts to have the two foregoing qualifications, we still may suspect them to be false; if, in the time when, and in the place where, they took their rise, they might be suffered to pass without examination,� we have still less reason to believe the gospels. For one reason why they might be suffered to pass without examination is, where the miracles proposed coincided with the notions and superstitious prejudices of those whom they were reported, and who, on that account, might be prone to receive them unexamined. Now, we have documents in plenty, which abundantly prove, along with the virtues, the extreme credulity and simplicity of the Primitive Christians, whose maxim was, �believe, but do not examine, and thy faith shall save thee.� Another very good reason why they might be suffered to pass without, examination is, that the miracles of the gospels were entirely unknown to, or at least acknowledged by, any heathen or Jew of the age in which they are recorded to have happened. Nobody seems to have known a syllable about them but the apostles and their converts. Even the books of the New Testament were not generally known to the heathens until some hundred years after the birth of Jesus; and it seems from the few fragments of their works come down to us, that the only notice they did take of them, was to accuse them of telling lies and old wives fables. And as for the Jews, the origin and early propagation of Christianity was so very obscure, that those who lived nearest the times of the apostles, do not seem to have known any thing about them, or their doctrines. Though a little out of place, yet I will here adduce a fact which illustrates and exemplifies the power of enthusiasm, to make people believe they saw what they did not see. Lucian gives an account of one Peregrinus, a philosophist very famous in his time, who had a great number of disciples. He ended his life by throwing himself, in the presence of assembled thousands, into a burning pile. Yet such was the enthusiastic veneration of his followers, that some of his disciples did solemnly aver, that they had seen him after his death, clothed in white, and crowned; and they were believed, insomuch that altars and statues were erected to Peregrinus as to a demi-god. See Lucian�s account. APPENDIX B. See Cotelerius �Patres Apostolic,� Tom. 1, p. 602. Extract of a letter from Peter to James, prefixed to the Clementines. �For, if this be not done, (says Peter, after entreating James not to communicate his preachings to any Gentile without previous examination,) our speech of truth will be divided into many opinions, nor do I know this thing as being a prophet, but as seeing even now the beginning of this evil. For some from among the Gentiles have rejected my legal preaching, embracing the trifling, and lawless doctrine of a man who is an enemy; and these things, some have endeavoured to do now in my own lifetime, transforming my words by various interpretations, to the destruction of the Laws: as if I had been of the same mind, but dared not openly profess it, (see Galatians ii. 11, 12, &c.,) which be far from me! For this were to act against the law of God, spoken by Moses, and which has the testimony of our Lord for its perpetual duration; since he thus has said, �Heaven and earth shall pass away, yet one jot, or one tittle, shall not pass from the law.� But these, I know not how, promising to deliver my opinion, (see Galatians as above) take upon them to explain the words they heard from me, better than I that spoke them; telling their disciples, my sense was that of which I had not so much as thought. Now, if in my own life time, they dare feign such things, how much more will those that come after, do the same.� APPENDIX C. Extract from Dodwell�s Dissertations on Irenaeus, Diss. 1, p.p. 38, 39. �The Canonical writings (i. e. of the New Testament), lay concealed in the coffers of private churches, or persons, till the latter times of Trajan, or rather perhaps of Adrian; so that they could not come to the knowledge of the church. For if they had been published, they would have been overwhelmed under such a multitude as were then of apocryphal and suppositious books, that a new examination and a new testimony would be necessary to distinguish them from these false ones. And it is from this new testimony (whereby the genuine writings of the apostles were distinguished from the spurious pieces which went under their names,) that depends all the authority which the truly apostolic writings have formerly obtained, or which they have at present in the Catholic Church. But this fresh attestation of the canon is subject to the same inconveniences with those traditions of the ancient persons that I defend, and whom Irenaeus both heard and saw; for it is equally distant from the original, and could not be made except by such only as had reached those remote times. But it is very certain that before the period I mentioned of Trajan�s time, the canon of the sacred books, was not yet fixed, nor any certain number of books received in the Catholic Church, whose authority must ever after serve to determine matters of faith; neither were the spurious pieces of heretics yet rejected, nor were the faithful admonished to beware of them for the future. Likewise, the true writings of the apostles used to be so bound up in one volume with the apocryphal, that it was not manifest by any mark of public censure which of them should be preferred to the other. We have at this day, certain authentic writings of ecclesiastical authors of those times, as Clemens Romanus, Barnabas, Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp, who wrote in the same order wherein I have named them, and after all the other writers of the New Testament, except Jude, and the two Johns. But in Hermas you shall not meet with one passage, or any mention of the New Testament; nor in all the rest is any one of the evangelists called by his own name. And if sometimes they cite any passages like those we read in our gospels; yet, you will find them so much changed, and for the most part so interpolated, that it cannot be known, whether they produced them out of ours, or some apocryphal gospels; nay, they sometimes cite passages which it is most certain are not in the present gospels. From hence, therefore, it is evident that no difference was yet put between the apocryphal and canonical books of the New Testament, especially if it be considered, that they pass no censure on the apocryphal, nor leave any mark whereby the reader might discern whether they attributed less authority to the spurious than to the genuine gospels; from whence it may reasonably be suspected, that if they cite sometimes any passages conformable to ours, it was not done through any certain design, as if dubious things were to be confirmed only by the canonical books, so as it is very possible that both those and the like passages may have been borrowed from other gospels besides these we now have. But what need I mention books that are not canonical, when indeed it does not appear from those of our canonical books which were last written, that the church knew any thing of the gospels, or that the clergy made a common use of them. The writers of these times do not chequer their works with texts of the New Testament, which yet is the custom of the moderns, and was also theirs in such books as they acknowledge for scripture; for they most frequently cite the books of the Old Testament, and would, doubtless, have done so by those of the New, if they had then been received as canonical.� So far Mr. Dodwell, and (excepting the genuineness of the writings of Barnabas and the rest, for they are incontestably ancient,) it is certain that the matters of fact with regard to the New Testament are all true. Whoever has an inclination to write on this subject, is furnished from this passage with a great many curious disquisitions wherein to show his penetration and his judgment, as--how the immediate successors and disciples of the apostles could so grossly confound the genuine writings of their masters with such as were falsely attributed to them; or since they were in the dark about these matters so early, how come such as followed them, by a better light; why all those books which are cited by the earliest fathers with the same respect as those now received, should not be accounted equally authentic by them; and what stress should be laid on the testimony of those fathers, who not only contradict one another, but are often inconsistent with themselves, in relating the very same facts; with a great many other difficulties, which deserve a clear solution from any capable person. I have said the ancient heretics asserted that the present gospels were forgeries. As an example of this, take the following, from the works of Faustus, quoted by Augustine, contra Faustum Lib. 32, c. 2. �You think, (says Faustus to his adversaries,) that of all the books in the world the Testament of the Son only, could not be corrupted; that it alone contains nothing which ought to be disallowed; especially when it appears, that it was not written by the apostles, but a long time after them, by certain obscure persons, who, lest no credit should be given to the stories they told of what they could not know, did prefix, to their writings, the names of the apostles, and partly of those who succeeded the apostles, affirming, that what they wrote themselves, was written by these. Wherein they seem to me to have been the more heinously injurious to the disciples of Christ, by attributing to them what they wrote themselves so dissonant and repugnant; and that they pretended to write those gospels under their names, which are so full of mistakes, of contradictory relations and opinions, that they are neither coherent with themselves, nor consistent with one another. What is this, therefore, but to throw a calumny on good men, and to fix the accusation of discord on the unanimous society of Christ�s disciples.� ADDENDA. There is, in the Gospel ascribed to John, a passage, quoted as a prophecy, which, as it has been looked on as a proof text, ought to have been mentioned in the 7th chapter. It is this. The evangelist (John xix. 23) says, �Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat--now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said, therefore, among themselves, � Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it�; that the Scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, �They parted my raiment among them and for my vesture they did cast lots.� �Now, however plausible this prophesy may appear, it is one of the most impudent applications of passages from the Old Testament that occurs in the New. It is taken from the 18th verse of the 22d Psalm, which Psalm was probably made by David, in reference to his humiliating and wretched expulsion from Jerusalem by his son Absalom, and what was done in consequence, viz., that he was hunted by ferocious enemies, whom he compares to furious bulls, and roaring lions, gaping upon him to devour him; that his palace was plundered, and that they divided his treasured garments, (in the East, where the fashions never change, every great man has constantly presses full of hundreds and thousands of garments, many of them very costly: they are considered as a valuable part of his riches), and cast lots for his robes. This is the real meaning of this passage quoted as a prophecy. In the same Psalm, there is another verse, which has been from time immemorial quoted as a prophecy of the crucifixion, (v. 16,) �They pierced my hands and my feet.� In the original, there seems to have been a word dropped importing �they tear,� or something like it, for it is literally, �Like a lion--my hands and my feet,� and there is there no word answering to �pierced.� The meaning, however, of the verse is not difficult to be discerned, �dogs have compassed me; the assembly of wicked men have enclosed me; like a lion--(they tear) my hands and my feet.� The meaning may be discovered from the context, where David represents himself as in the utmost distress, helpless, and abandoned amidst his enemies, raging like wild beasts around him; then, by a strong, but striking Oriental figure, he represents himself like a carcass surrounded by dogs, who are busied in tearing the flesh from his bones; their teeth fixed in his hands and feet, and pulling him asunder. This is the import of the place, and this interpretation is at last adopted, for the first time, I believe, by Christians, in the new version of the Psalms used by the Unitarian Church in London. There is not a more palpable instance of the facility with which good natured and voracious piety is made to swallow the most flimsy arguments, if only agreeable to its wishes and wants, than the case under consideration. This Psalm, containing these passages, �they parted my raiment among them;� and �they pierced my hands and my feet,� is read, and for ages has been read, in the name of God, to the good people of the Church of England, on every Good Friday, as undoubtedly a prophesy of the Crucifixion; when yet the learned divines of the Church of England (and of these it can boast a noble Catalogue indeed) certainly know, and are conscious that the Psalm, which contains these passages, has no more relation to Jesus, than it has to Nebuchadnezzar. A reference ought to have been subjoined at the end of the 10th chapter to the dialogue, called �Philopatris� in Lucian�s Works, for an account of the customs, habits, and personal appearance of the early Christians, corroborative of what is said in the 17th and 18th chapters of this work. Lest, however, Lucian�s testimony in this matter should be objected to, because he was a satirist, and, of course, may have been guilty of giving an overcharged picture of the subjects of his ridicule, I request the reader to peruse, if he can obtain it, �Lami�s Account of the domestic habits and personal appearance and practices of the primitive Christians.� Lami was a very learned and sincere Christian, and of course his testimony cannot be objected to, and the reader will find, on a perusal of his work, that what I have asserted in the 17th and 18th chapters is altogether true, and not the whole truth neither. Indeed, that the statements in those chapters, as to the effects of the peculiar maxims of the New Testament upon the heart and understanding, are substantially correct, will, I believe, be discovered by asking any honest individual among the Methodists, who is an enthusiast, i. e sincere, and thorough-going in his religion. I have no doubt that he or she will avow, without hesitation, to the enquirer, and glory in it, that chastity is more honourable than marriage; that faith is every thing; that doubt is damnable, and a proof of �an unregenerated mind;� that all the goods and pleasures of this world are �trash;� that human institutions are mere �carnal ordinances;� and that human science and learning is a snare to faith and an abomination to a true disciple of the cross. Published 1785. * In the present day, various-attempts, insidious and powerful, have been made, even here, to coerce in matters of conscience, and to overthrow those wise barriers to the destructive effects of sectarian fanaticism and intolerance, which the great founders of the Republic, to their everlasting glory, erected.--D. * Do you know (says Rousseau) of many Christians who have taken the pains to examine, with care, what the Jews have to say against them? If some persons have seen any thing of the kind, it is in the books of Christians, A fine way, truly, to get instructed in the arguments of their adversaries! But what can they do? If any one should dare to publish among us, books, in which be openly favours their opinions, we punish the author, the editor, the bookseller. This policy is convenient, and sure always to be in the right. There is a pleasure in refuting people who dare not open their lips"--(Emilius.) In the same work he says that �he will never be convinced that the Jews have not something strong to say, till they shall be permitted to speak for themselves without fear, and without restraint." It was this hint of Rousseau which first excited the author's curiosity with regard to the subject of this book.--E. * There are a great many persons who conceive that Christianity is sufficiently proved to be true, if the miracles of Jesus are true, even without any regard to the prophecies, so often appealed to by him. But supposing the miracles to be true; yet no miracles can prove that which is false in itself to be true. If therefore Jesus be not foretold as the Messiah in the Old Testament, no miracles can prove Jesus to be the Messiah foretold. Nay, it would be a stronger argument to prove Jesus to be a false pretender, that he appealed to prophecies as relating to him, when in fact they had no relation whatever to him; and by that means imposed upon the ignorant people; than it would be that he came from God, merely because he worked miracles; for �False Christs and false prophets may arise, and may show such great signs and wonders as to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect.� Matt. xxiv. 24. Yet no Christian would allow it to be argued from thence, that those false Christs were true ones: nor would any one conclude; that a man came from God, (notwithstanding any miracle he might do) if he appealed to Scripture for that which is no where in it. In fine, if miracles would prove the Messiahship of Jesus, so also they would prove the Messiahship of the false Christs, and false prophets spoken of above. Nay more, they would demonstrate the Divine mission of Antichrist himself; who, according to the epistle to the Thessalonians, (2 Thes. ch. ii. 8, 9,10) and the Revelations, ch. xiii. 13, 14, was to perform "great signs and wonders," equal to any wrought by Jesus, for the same Greek words are used to express the wonderful works or �great signs and wonders� of Antichrist, which are elsewhere used to express the miracles, or �great signs and wonders� of Jesus himself. It is a striking circumstance, that the earliest apologists for Christianity laid little stress upon the miracles of its founder. Justin Martyr, in his Apology, is very shy of appealing to the miracles of Jesus in confirmation of his pretentions; he lays no stress upon them, but relies entirely upon the prophecies he quotes as in his favor. Jerome, in his comment on the eighty-first Psalm, assures us, �that the performance of miracles was no extraordinary thing: and that it was no more than what Appollonius, and Apulias, and innumerable impostors had done before.� Lactantius saw so little force in the miracles of Christ, exclusive of the prophecies, that he does not hesitate to affirm their utter inability to support the Christian religion by themselves. [Lactan. Div. Inst. L. v. c. 3.] Celsus, observing upon the words of Jesus, that �false prophets and false Christs shall arise, and show grant signs and wonders," sneeringly observes, "A fine thing truly! that miracles done by him should prove him to be a God, and when done by others should demonstrate them to be false prophets and impostors.� Tertullian, on the words of Jesus, here referred to by Celsus, says as follows; �Christ, foretelling that many imposters should come and perform many wonders, shews, that our faith cannot without great temerity be founded on miracles, since they were so early wrought, by false Christians themselves.� [Tertul. in Marc. L. ii. c. 3.] Indeed, miracles in the two first centuries were allowed very little weight in proving doctrines. Since the Christians did not deny, that the heathens performed miracles in behalf of their gods, and that the heretics performed them as will as the orthodox. This accounts for the perfect indifference of the heathens to the miracles said to have been performed by the founders of Christianity. Hierocles speaks with great contempt of what he calls "the little tricks of Jesus," And Origen, in his reply to Celsus, waves the consideration of the Christian miracles: �for (says he) the very mention of these things sets you heathens upon the. broad grin.� Indeed, that they laughed very heartily at what in the eighteenth century is read with a grave face, is evident from the few fragments of their works written against Christianity which has escaped the burning zeal of the fathers, and the Christian emperors; who piously sought for, and burned up, these mischievous volumes to prevent their doing mischief to posterity. This conduct of theirs is very suspicious. Why burn writing they could so triumphantly refute, if they were refutable? They should have remembered the just reflection of Arnobius, their own apologist, against the heathens, who were for abolishing at once such writings as promoted Christianity.--"Intercipere scripta et publicatam velle submergere lectionem, non est Deos defendere, sed veritatis testificationem timere."[Arnob. contra Gentes. Liber ni.]--E. * Before going into the consideration of the following prophecies, the author would warn the reader to bear in mind, that whether these prophecies ever will be fulfilled, is a question of no import in the world to the question under consideration, which is--whether they have been fulfilled eighteen hundred years ago, in the person of Jesus Christ, who is asserted by Christians to be the person foretold in these prophecies, and to have fulfilled their predictions. This question can be easily decided, and only, we think, by appealing to past history, and to the scenes passing around us, and comparing them with these predictions.--E. * The word in the original being Vayikra, in the Kal or Active form of the verb, and not Vayikare the Niphal or Passive form.--D. # reprove or argue.--D. * Or, in righteousness.--D. # Mr. English very properly takes notice of the disjunctive accent (Pasek) occurring here in the text.--D. # For a more correct enumeration of the thirteen cabalistic rules of exposition, the English reader is referred to vol. 1, page 209, of the �Conciliator� of B. Menasseh ben Israel, translated by E, H. Lindo, Esqr.--D. # Mr. E. was, doubtless, aware that this is an exposition given by Jewish Commentators.--D. # There exists an English translation of this work by Abraham de Sola. --D. * The person here spoken of by Isaiah is said to make his grave with the wicked, and be with the rich in his death. Whereas Jesus did exactly the contrary. He was with the wicked (i. e., the two thieves) in his death, and with the rich (i.e., Joseph of Arimathea) in his grave, or tomb. In the original, the words may be translated that �he shall avenge, or recompence upon the wicked his grave, and his death upon the rich.� Thus does the Targum and the Arabic version interpret the place, and Ezekiel ix. 10, uses the verb in the verse in Isaiah under consideration translated (in The English version)--�He made,� &c--in the same sense, given to this place in Isaiah, by the Targum, and the Arabic, as said above. See the place in Ezekiel, where it is translated--�I will recompence their way upon their head.� See also Deut. xxi. 8, in the original. The Syriac has it--�The wicked contributed to his burial, and the rich to his death.� The Arabic--�I will punish the wicked for his burial, and the rich for his death.� The Targum--�He shall send the wicked into hell, and the rich who put him to a cruel death.�--E. # Or, shall destroy.--D. * The remainder of this chapter is taken from Levi and Wagenseil.--E. * The reader is requested to consider the reasoning in the last paragraph. The prophecy in the second chapter of Daniel, is commonly supposed to relate to the four Great Empires, the Babylonian, Persian, Grecian and Roman. This last, it is (according to this interpretation,) foretold, should be divided into many kingdoms, and that �in the latter days of these kingdoms,� (which are now subsisting) God would set up a kingdom which would never be destroyed,--that of the Messiah. Of course, according to this interpretation, the kingdom of the Messiah was not to be not only sustain after the destruction of the Roman Empire, but not till the latter days of the kingdoms which grew up out of its ruins; whereas, Jesus was born in the time of Augustus, i. e., precisely when the Roman Empire itself was in the highest of its splendour and vigour. This is a remarkable, and very striking, repugnance, to the claims of the New Testament, and, if substantiated, must overset them entirely.--E. * The sum of our argument may be expressed thus. God is represented in the prophecies of the Old Testament as designing to send into the world an eminent deliverer, descended from David, the peace and prosperity of whose reign should far exceed all that went before him, in whom all the glorious things foretold by the prophets should receive their entire completion; and who should be distinguished by the character of the Messiah or Christ. This is an article of faith common to Christians and Jews. But that Jesus of Nazareth should be esteemed this Messiah, and that Christians can support that opinion, by alledging the prophecies of the Hebrew scriptures as belonging to, and fulfilled in, him, is what we can by no means allow, and that especially on account of these inconsistencies. 1. Because, these prophecies, acknowledged on both sides to point out the Messiah, could not otherwise answer the end of inspiring them than by an accomplishment so plain and sensible as might sufficiently distinguish the person meant by them to be that Messiah. But no such accomplishment, we contend, can possibly be discerned in Jesus, and, consequently, he cannot be the person meant by them. 2. Because, several predictions which Christians apply to Jesus, are wrested to a meaning which quite destroys the historical sense of scripture, and breaks the connexion of the passages from whence they are taken. Thus many shreds and loose sentences are culled out for this purpose, which do not appear to have any relation to Jesus, or to the Messiah either; but to have received their proper and intended completion in some other person, whom the prophet, as is manifest, had then only in view. 3. Because, in their forced applications of the prophecies, Christians, finding themselves hard pressed by the simple and natural construction, forsake the literal, and take shelter in spiritual and mystical senses; fly to hyperboles and strained metaphors, and thus expound the true meaning and importance of the prophecies quite away; the intent whereof being to instruct men in so necessary a point of faith as that relating to the Messiah, it is reasonable to think they would be delivered in the most perspicuous and intelligible terms. Since ambiguous expressions (capable of such strange meanings as they pretend,) would be too slippery a foundation to build such a point of faith upon; would be of no use, or worse than none; would be unable to teach the clear truth, and apt to ensnare men into dangerous errors, by leaving too great a latitude for fanciful interpretations, and introducing darkness and confusion, and contradiction inexplicable. 4. Because, admitting (as indeed it never was, or can be denied) that many passages of scripture, and of prophetical scripture especially, must be figuratively taken; yet, we must always put a wide difference between a sense not just as the words in their first signification import, and a sense directly the contrary of what they import. And yet we complain that this latter is the sense which Christians labour to obtrude upon the gainsayers. We say, that a kingdom of this world, and not of this world; contempt and adoration; poverty and magnificence; persecution and peace; sufferings and triumph; a cross and a throne; the scandalous death of a private man upon a gibbet, and the everlasting dominion of a universal monarch, must be reconciled, and mean the self same thing, before the prophecies appealed to, can do their cause any service. Granting, then, the goodness of God (according to them,) to have been better than his word, by giving spiritual blessings, instead of temporal; yet, what will become of the truth of God, if He act contrary to his word, even when it would be for our advantage, if He misleads people by expressions, which, if they mean any thing at all, must mean what the Jews understand by them? In short, it seems to me, that if Providence has, in truth, any concern with the predictions of the Old Testament, it could not have taken more effectual care to justify the unbelief and obstinacy of the Jews, than by ordering matters so, that the life and death of Jesus should be so exactly, and so entirely, the very reverse of all those ideas under which their prophets had constantly described, and the Hebrew nation as constantly expected of their Messiah, and his coming; and to suppose that the Supreme Being meant to describe and point out such a person as Jesus by such descriptions of the Messiah as are contained in the Old Testament, is certainly substantially to accuse him of the moat unjustifiable prevarication, and mockery of his creatures. In order that the subject we are examining, and the arguments we make use of, may be clearly understood by the reader, he is requested to bear in mind, that the author reasons all along upon the supposed Divine authority of the Old Testament; which is admitted by both Jews and Christians. Whether the supernatural claims of the Old Testament be just, or not, is of no consequence in the world to the controversy we are considering. For the dispute of the Jew with the Christian is one thing, and his dispute with the sceptic is another, totally different. For whether such a personage as the Messiah is described to be, has appeared eighteen hundred years ago, is quite a different thing from the question, whether such a personage will appear at all. The Christian says, that he has appeared in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. This the Jew denies, but looks forward to the future fulfilment of the promises of his Bible, while the Sceptic denies that the Messiah has come, or ever will. But the subject at present under consideration is the dispute of the Jew with the Christian, who acknowledges the Old Testament to be a Revelation, upon which a new Revelation, that of the New Testament, is founded and erected. To him the Jew argues, that if the Old Testament be a Divine Revelation, then the New Testament cannot be a Revelation, because it contradicts, and is repugnant to, the Old Testament, the more ancient, and acknowledged Revelation. Now God cannot be the author of two Revelations, one of which is repugnant to the other. One of them is certainly false. And if the Christian, conscious of the difficulty of reconciling the New, with the Old, Testament, attempts to support the New, at the expense of the Old, Testament, upon which the former is, and was, built by the founders of Christianity; then the Jew would tell him, that he acts as absurdly as would the man who should expect to make his house the firmer, by undermining, and weakening its foundation. So that whether the Christian affirms, or denies, he is ruined either way. For he is reduced to this fatal dilemma. If the Old Testament contains a Revelation from God, then the New Testament is not from God, for God cannot contradict himself: and it can be proved abundantly, that the New Testament is contradictory, and repugnant to the Old and to itself too. If, on the other hand, the Old Testament contains no Revelation from God, then the New Testament must go down at any rate because it asserts that the Old Testament does contain a Revelation from God, and builds upon it, as a foundation.--E. * There was nothing which gave the author, in writing this Book, so much uneasiness, at the apprehension of being supposed to entertain disrespectful sentiments of the Founder of the Christian Religion. I would most earnestly entreat the reader to believe my solemn assurances, that by nothing that I have said, or shall be under the necessity of saying, do I think, or mean to intimate the slightest disparagement to the moral character of one, whose purity of morals, and good intentions, deserve any thing else but reproach. That he was an enthusiast, I do not doubt, that he was a wilful impostor I never will believe. And I protest before God, that from the apprehensions above-mentioned alone, I would have confined the contents of this volume to myself, did I not feel compelled to justify myself for having quitted a profession: and did I not, above all, think it my duty, to make a well meant attempt, which I hope will be seconded, to vindicate the unbelief of an unfortunate nation, who, on that account, have for almost eighteen hundred years, been made the victim of rancorous prejudice, the most infernal cruelties, and the most atrocious wickedness. If the Christian religion be, in truth, not well founded, surely it is the duty of every honest and every humane, man, to endeavour to dispel an illusion, which certainly has been, notwithstanding any thing that can be said to the contrary, the bona fide, and real cause of unspeakable misery, and of repeated, and remorseless plunderings, and massacres, to an unhappy people; the journal of whose sufferings, on account of it, forms the blackest page in the history of the human race, and the most detestable one in the history of human superstition.--E. * Jerome, in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, says, that �The Church of Christ was not gathered from the Academy, or the Lyceum, but from the lowest of the people.� [Vili Plebecula.] And Coecilius, in Minutius Felix, says, that the Christian assemblies were made up �de ultima faece collectis, imperitioribus, et mulieribus credulis sexus suae facilitate labentibus,� i. e. �that they consisted of the lowest of the mob, simple and unlearned, men, and credulous women.� The president of a province is introduced, by Prudentius as thus addressing a martyr:--�Tu qui Doctor, ait, seris novellum Commenti genus, ut Leves Puellae, Lucos destituunt, Jovem relinquant; Damnes, si sapias, ANILE DOGMA.� The Christian Fathers confess, and glory in it, that the greater part of their congregations consisted of women and children, slaves, beggars, and vagabonds. The Jewish Christians were, as appears evidently from the New Testament, exceedingly poor, and therefore there is frequent mention made of contributions for �the poor Saints at Jerusalem.� From thence it was that the Jewish Christians got the name of Ebionites, i. e. Poor. The Jewish Christian Church consisted of the dregs of the Jewish people, simple and ignorant men, Samaritans, &c. No person in Judea of eminence, or learning, appears to have joined the sect of the Nazarenes, except Paul; after the destruction of Jerusalem they gradually dwindled in number, and became extinct.--E. * I will here lay before the reader the arguments advanced by the Mahometans in behalf of the miracles of their prophet, extracted from the learned Reland�s account of Mehometanism. They say that--�the miracles of Mahomet and his followers have been recorded in innumerable volumes of the most famous, learned, pious, and subtle Doctors of the Mahometan Faith, who let nothing pass without the strictest and severest examination, and whose tradition, therefore, is unexceptionable among them; that they were known throughout all the regions of Arabia, and transmitted by common and universal tradition from father to son, from generation to generation. That the books of Interpreters and Commentators on the Koran, the books of Historians, especially such as give an account of Mahomet�s life and actions, the books of annalists and lawyers, the books of mathematicians and philosophers, and, last of all, the books of both Jews and Christians concerning Mahomet, are full of his miracles. That if the authority of so many great and wise doctors be denied, then, for their part, they cannot see but that a universal scepticism as to all other accounts of miracles must obtain among people of all persuasions. For authority being the only proof of facts done out of our time, or out of our sight, if that be denied, there is no way to come to the certainty of any such, without immediate inspiration; and all accounts of matters recorded in history, must be doubtful and precarious.� �And these witnesses would not have dared to assert these miracles unless they were true; for such as forged any miracles for his, which he really did not, lay under a hearty curse from the prophet. For it was a received tradition among the faithful, that Mahomet denounced hell and damnation to all those who should tell any lies of him. So that none who believed in Mahomet, durst attribute miracles to him which he was not concerned in; and those who believed not in him, would certainly never have given him the honour of working any, unless he had done so.� Christian reader, thou seest how much can be said, and how many respectable witnesses and authorities can be adduced to prove that Mahomet wrought miracles. Canst thou adduce more, or better, authorities in behalf of the miracles of the New Testament? Art thou not rather satisfied how fallacious the evidence of testimony is in all such cases? This is not all that the Mahometan might urge in behalf of his prophet, for he might tell the Christian, boasting that Jesus and his Apostles converted the Roman world from idolatry, that they overthrew one system of idolatry, only to build up another, since the worship of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints, and their images was established in a few hundred years after Jesus, and continues to this day; an idolatry as rank, and much more inexcusable than the worship of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Whereas, Mahomet cut �up root and branch, both Christian and Pagan idolatry, and proclaimed one only God as the object of adoration; and if the Christian should urge the rapid propagation of Christianity, the Mahometan might reply, that Mahomet was a poor camel-driver, but that Islamism made more progress in one hundred years, than Christianity did in a thousand; that it was embraced by the noble, the great, the wise, and the learned, almost as soon as it appeared; whereas, Christianity was skulking and creeping among the mob of the Roman Empire for some hundred years before it dared to raise its head in public view. If the Christian should reply to this, by ascribing the success of Mahometanism to the sword, the Mahometan might reply, with truth, that it was a vulgar error; for that vastly more nations embraced Islamism voluntarily, than there were who freely received Christianity; and he might remind him, how much Christianity owed to the accession of Constantine; to Charlemagne; and the Teutonic Knights; and bid him recollect that the monks were assisted by soldiers to convert to Christianity almost every nation in Modern Europe.--E. # Compare the above with Maimonides, Hilchot Yessode Hattorah, from chapter 7.--D. * The reader is requested by the author to understand, and bear in mind, that it is not at all intended by any of the observations contained in this chapter on the histories of the four evangelists, to reflect upon, or to disparage, the characters of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, under whose names they go; because he believes, and thinks it is proved in this chapter, that the real authors of these histories were very different persons from the Apostles of Jesus; and that, in fact, the accounts were not written till the middle of the second century, about a hundred year�s after the supposed authors of them were dead. Of course, none of the observations contained in the chapter relative to these histories, ware considered, or intended, to apply to any of the twelve apostles, who were not men who could make such mistakes as will be pointed out. These mistakes belong entirely to the authors who have assumed their names.--E. * That the pretended Gospel of Matthew was not written by Matthew, or by an, inhabitant of Palestine, may also be inferred, I think, from the blundering attempts of the author of it to give the meaning of some expressions uttered by Jesus, and used by the Jews, in the language of the country, which was the Syro Chaldaic; and which the real Matthew could hardly be ignorant of. For instance, he says that Golgotha signifies--�the place of a skull.� Matthew xxvii. 33. Now, this is not true, for Golgotha, or as it should have been written, Golgoltha, does not signify �the place of a skull,� but simply �a skull.� The Gospels according to Mark, and John, are guilty of the same mistake, and thus betray the same marks of Gentilism. Again, the pretended Matthew says, that Jesus cried on the cross, �Eli Eli lama, sabackthani,� which he says meant, �My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?� (Matthew xxvii. 46.) If the reader will look at what Michaelis, in his introduction to the New Testament, says upon this subject, he will find the real Syro Chaldaic expression which must have been used by Jesus, to be so different from the one given by the supposed Matthew, that he will, (and the observation is not meant as a disparagement to the real Matthew, who certainly had no hand in the imposition of the Gospel covered with his name) I suspect be inclined to believe, that this pretended Matthew�s knowledge of the vulgar language of the Jews, used in Christ�s time, must have been about upon a par with the honest sailor�s knowledge of French; who assured his countrymen, on his return home, that the French called a horse a shovel and a hat a chopper!--E. * See Addenda, No. 2. * The author had prepared, in order to subjoin in this place, an examination of the Mosaic Code, and a development of its principles, which he thinks would have satisfied the reader of the truth of what he has said in the last paragraph. But as it would have too much increased the bulk of the volume, it has been omitted. It is an institution however curious enough to be the subject of an interesting discussion, which he should be happy to see from the hands of one able to do it justice.--E. # Mr. English, it will be perceived, differs in his translation of the Hebrew word �nebelati,� which is, certainly, in the singular number, and not plural. The correct rendering is, doubtless, �with my dead body they,� &c.; but this weakens not at all his argument, which is essentially a Jewish one. See the Commentators, Chizoook Emunah, &c. &c.--D. # This was, originally, a note; but, in order not to divert too much the reader�s attention, it has been thought advisable to insert it here.--D. 
3743	----	THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE By Thomas Paine Collected And Edited By Moncure Daniel Conway VOLUME IV. THE AGE OF REASON (1796) Contents Editor's Introduction Part One Chapter I - The Author's Profession Of Faith Chapter II - Of Missions And Revelations Chapter III - Concerning The Character of Jesus Christ, And His History Chapter IV - Of The Bases Of Christianity Chapter V - Examination In Detail Of The Preceding Bases Chapter VI - Of The True Theology Chapter VII - Examination Of The Old Testament Chapter VIII - Of The New Testament Chapter IX - In What The True Revelation Consists Chapter X - Concerning God, And The Lights Cast On His Existence And Attributes By The Bible Chapter XI - Of The Theology Of The Christians; And The True Theology Chapter XII - The Effects Of Christianism On Education; Proposed Reforms Chapter XIII - Comparison Of Christianism With The Religious Ideas Inspired By Nature Chapter XIV - System Of The Universe Chapter XV - Advantages Of The Existence Of Many Worlds In Each Solar System Chapter XVI - Applications Of The Preceding To The System Of The Christians Chapter XVII - Of The Means Employed In All Time, And Almost Universally, To Deceive The Peoples Recapitulation Part Two Preface Chapter I - The Old Testament Chapter II - The New Testament Chapter III - Conclusion EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION WITH SOME RESULTS OF RECENT RESEARCHES. IN the opening year, 1793, when revolutionary France had beheaded its king, the wrath turned next upon the King of kings, by whose grace every tyrant claimed to reign. But eventualities had brought among them a great English and American heart--Thomas Paine. He had pleaded for Louis Caper--"Kill the king but spare the man." Now he pleaded,--"Disbelieve in the King of kings, but do not confuse with that idol the Father of Mankind!" In Paine's Preface to the Second Part of "The Age of Reason" he describes himself as writing the First Part near the close of the year 1793. "I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has since appeared, before a guard came about three in the morning, with an order signed by the two Committees of Public Safety and Surety General, for putting me in arrestation." This was on the morning of December 28. But it is necessary to weigh the words just quoted--"in the state it has since appeared." For on August 5, 1794, Francois Lanthenas, in an appeal for Paine's liberation, wrote as follows: "I deliver to Merlin de Thionville a copy of the last work of T. Payne [The Age of Reason], formerly our colleague, and in custody since the decree excluding foreigners from the national representation. This book was written by the author in the beginning of the year '93 (old style). I undertook its translation before the revolution against priests, and it was published in French about the same time. Couthon, to whom I sent it, seemed offended with me for having translated this work." Under the frown of Couthon, one of the most atrocious colleagues of Robespierre, this early publication seems to have been so effectually suppressed that no copy bearing that date, 1793, can be found in France or elsewhere. In Paine's letter to Samuel Adams, printed in the present volume, he says that he had it translated into French, to stay the progress of atheism, and that he endangered his life "by opposing atheism." The time indicated by Lanthenas as that in which he submitted the work to Couthon would appear to be the latter part of March, 1793, the fury against the priesthood having reached its climax in the decrees against them of March 19 and 26. If the moral deformity of Couthon, even greater than that of his body, be remembered, and the readiness with which death was inflicted for the most theoretical opinion not approved by the "Mountain," it will appear probable that the offence given Couthon by Paine's book involved danger to him and his translator. On May 31, when the Girondins were accused, the name of Lanthenas was included, and he barely escaped; and on the same day Danton persuaded Paine not to appear in the Convention, as his life might be in danger. Whether this was because of the "Age of Reason," with its fling at the "Goddess Nature" or not, the statements of author and translator are harmonized by the fact that Paine prepared the manuscript, with considerable additions and changes, for publication in English, as he has stated in the Preface to Part II. A comparison of the French and English versions, sentence by sentence, proved to me that the translation sent by Lanthenas to Merlin de Thionville in 1794 is the same as that he sent to Couthon in 1793. This discovery was the means of recovering several interesting sentences of the original work. I have given as footnotes translations of such clauses and phrases of the French work as appeared to be important. Those familiar with the translations of Lanthenas need not be reminded that he was too much of a literalist to depart from the manuscript before him, and indeed he did not even venture to alter it in an instance (presently considered) where it was obviously needed. Nor would Lanthenas have omitted any of the paragraphs lacking in his translation. This original work was divided into seventeen chapters, and these I have restored, translating their headings into English. The "Age of Reason" is thus for the first time given to the world with nearly its original completeness. It should be remembered that Paine could not have read the proof of his "Age of Reason" (Part I.) which went through the press while he was in prison. To this must be ascribed the permanence of some sentences as abbreviated in the haste he has described. A notable instance is the dropping out of his estimate of Jesus the words rendered by Lanthenas "trop peu imite, trop oublie, trop meconnu." The addition of these words to Paine's tribute makes it the more notable that almost the only recognition of the human character and life of Jesus by any theological writer of that generation came from one long branded as an infidel. To the inability of the prisoner to give his work any revision must be attributed the preservation in it of the singular error already alluded to, as one that Lanthenas, but for his extreme fidelity, would have corrected. This is Paine's repeated mention of six planets, and enumeration of them, twelve years after the discovery of Uranus. Paine was a devoted student of astronomy, and it cannot for a moment be supposed that he had not participated in the universal welcome of Herschel's discovery. The omission of any allusion to it convinces me that the astronomical episode was printed from a manuscript written before 1781, when Uranus was discovered. Unfamiliar with French in 1793, Paine might not have discovered the erratum in Lanthenas' translation, and, having no time for copying, he would naturally use as much as possible of the same manuscript in preparing his work for English readers. But he had no opportunity of revision, and there remains an erratum which, if my conjecture be correct, casts a significant light on the paragraphs in which he alludes to the preparation of the work. He states that soon after his publication of "Common Sense" (1776), he "saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion," and that "man would return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one God and no more." He tells Samuel Adams that it had long been his intention to publish his thoughts upon religion, and he had made a similar remark to John Adams in 1776. Like the Quakers among whom he was reared Paine could then readily use the phrase "word of God" for anything in the Bible which approved itself to his "inner light," and as he had drawn from the first Book of Samuel a divine condemnation of monarchy, John Adams, a Unitarian, asked him if he believed in the inspiration of the Old Testament. Paine replied that he did not, and at a later period meant to publish his views on the subject. There is little doubt that he wrote from time to time on religious points, during the American war, without publishing his thoughts, just as he worked on the problem of steam navigation, in which he had invented a practicable method (ten years before John Fitch made his discovery) without publishing it. At any rate it appears to me certain that the part of "The Age of Reason" connected with Paine's favorite science, astronomy, was written before 1781, when Uranus was discovered. Paine's theism, however invested with biblical and Christian phraseology, was a birthright. It appears clear from several allusions in "The Age of Reason" to the Quakers that in his early life, or before the middle of the eighteenth century, the people so called were substantially Deists. An interesting confirmation of Paine's statements concerning them appears as I write in an account sent by Count Leo Tolstoi to the London 'Times' of the Russian sect called Dukhobortsy (The Times, October 23, 1895). This sect sprang up in the last century, and the narrative says: "The first seeds of the teaching called afterwards 'Dukhoborcheskaya' were sown by a foreigner, a Quaker, who came to Russia. The fundamental idea of his Quaker teaching was that in the soul of man dwells God himself, and that He himself guides man by His inner word. God lives in nature physically and in man's soul spiritually. To Christ, as to an historical personage, the Dukhobortsy do not ascribe great importance... Christ was God's son, but only in the sense in which we call, ourselves 'sons of God.' The purpose of Christ's sufferings was no other than to show us an example of suffering for truth. The Quakers who, in 1818, visited the Dukhobortsy, could not agree with them upon these religious subjects; and when they heard from them their opinion about Jesus Christ (that he was a man), exclaimed 'Darkness!' From the Old and New Testaments,' they say, 'we take only what is useful,' mostly the moral teaching.... The moral ideas of the Dukhobortsy are the following:--All men are, by nature, equal; external distinctions, whatsoever they may be, are worth nothing. This idea of men's equality the Dukhoborts have directed further, against the State authority.... Amongst themselves they hold subordination, and much more, a monarchical Government, to be contrary to their ideas." Here is an early Hicksite Quakerism carried to Russia long before the birth of Elias Hicks, who recovered it from Paine, to whom the American Quakers refused burial among them. Although Paine arraigned the union of Church and State, his ideal Republic was religious; it was based on a conception of equality based on the divine son-ship of every man. This faith underlay equally his burden against claims to divine partiality by a "Chosen People," a Priesthood, a Monarch "by the grace of God," or an Aristocracy. Paine's "Reason" is only an expansion of the Quaker's "inner light"; and the greater impression, as compared with previous republican and deistic writings made by his "Rights of Man" and "Age of Reason" (really volumes of one work), is partly explained by the apostolic fervor which made him a spiritual, successor of George Fox. Paine's mind was by no means skeptical, it was eminently instructive. That he should have waited until his fifty-seventh year before publishing his religious convictions was due to a desire to work out some positive and practicable system to take the place of that which he believed was crumbling. The English engineer Hall, who assisted Paine in making the model of his iron bridge, wrote to his friends in England, in 1786: "My employer has Common Sense enough to disbelieve most of the common systematic theories of Divinity, but does not seem to establish any for himself." But five years later Paine was able to lay the corner-stone of his temple: "With respect to religion itself, without regard to names, and as directing itself from the universal family of mankind to the 'Divine object of all adoration, it is man bringing to his Maker the fruits of his heart; and though those fruits may differ from each other like the fruits of the earth, the grateful tribute of every one, is accepted." ("Rights of Man." See my edition of Paine's Writings, ii., p. 326.) Here we have a reappearance of George Fox confuting the doctor in America who "denied the light and Spirit of God to be in every one; and affirmed that it was not in the Indians. Whereupon I called an Indian to us, and asked him 'whether or not, when he lied, or did wrong to anyone, there was not something in him that reproved him for it?' He said, 'There was such a thing in him that did so reprove him; and he was ashamed when he had done wrong, or spoken wrong.' So we shamed the doctor before the governor and the people." (Journal of George Fox, September 1672.) Paine, who coined the phrase "Religion of Humanity" (The Crisis, vii., 1778), did but logically defend it in "The Age of Reason," by denying a special revelation to any particular tribe, or divine authority in any particular creed of church; and the centenary of this much-abused publication has been celebrated by a great conservative champion of Church and State, Mr. Balfour, who, in his "Foundations of Belief," affirms that "inspiration" cannot be denied to the great Oriental teachers, unless grapes may be gathered from thorns. The centenary of the complete publication of "The Age of Reason," (October 25, 1795), was also celebrated at the Church Congress, Norwich, on October 10, 1895, when Professor Bonney, F.R.S., Canon of Manchester, read a paper in which he said: "I cannot deny that the increase of scientific knowledge has deprived parts of the earlier books of the Bible of the historical value which was generally attributed to them by our forefathers. The story of Creation in the Book of Genesis, unless we play fast and loose either with words or with science, cannot be brought into harmony with what we have learnt from geology. Its ethnological statements are imperfect, if not sometimes inaccurate. The stories of the Fall, of the Flood, and of the Tower of Babel, are incredible in their present form. Some historical element may underlie many of the traditions in the first eleven chapters in that book, but this we cannot hope to recover." Canon Bonney proceeded to say of the New Testament also, that "the Gospels are not so far as we know, strictly contemporaneous records, so we must admit the possibility of variations and even inaccuracies in details being introduced by oral tradition." The Canon thinks the interval too short for these importations to be serious, but that any question of this kind is left open proves the Age of Reason fully upon us. Reason alone can determine how many texts are as spurious as the three heavenly witnesses (i John v. 7), and like it "serious" enough to have cost good men their lives, and persecutors their charities. When men interpolate, it is because they believe their interpolation seriously needed. It will be seen by a note in Part II. of the work, that Paine calls attention to an interpolation introduced into the first American edition without indication of its being an editorial footnote. This footnote was: "The book of Luke was carried by a majority of one only. Vide Moshelm's Ecc. History." Dr. Priestley, then in America, answered Paine's work, and in quoting less than a page from the "Age of Reason" he made three alterations,--one of which changed "church mythologists" into "Christian mythologists,"--and also raised the editorial footnote into the text, omitting the reference to Mosheim. Having done this, Priestley writes: "As to the gospel of Luke being carried by a majority of one only, it is a legend, if not of Mr. Paine's own invention, of no better authority whatever." And so on with further castigation of the author for what he never wrote, and which he himself (Priestley) was the unconscious means of introducing into the text within the year of Paine's publication. If this could be done, unintentionally by a conscientious and exact man, and one not unfriendly to Paine, if such a writer as Priestley could make four mistakes in citing half a page, it will appear not very wonderful when I state that in a modern popular edition of "The Age of Reason," including both parts, I have noted about five hundred deviations from the original. These were mainly the accumulated efforts of friendly editors to improve Paine's grammar or spelling; some were misprints, or developed out of such; and some resulted from the sale in London of a copy of Part Second surreptitiously made from the manuscript. These facts add significance to Paine's footnote (itself altered in some editions!), in which he says: "If this has happened within such a short space of time, notwithstanding the aid of printing, which prevents the alteration of copies individually; what may not have happened in a much greater length of time, when there was no printing, and when any man who could write, could make a written copy, and call it an original, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John." Nothing appears to me more striking, as an illustration of the far-reaching effects of traditional prejudice, than the errors into which some of our ablest contemporary scholars have fallen by reason of their not having studied Paine. Professor Huxley, for instance, speaking of the freethinkers of the eighteenth century, admires the acuteness, common sense, wit, and the broad humanity of the best of them, but says "there is rarely much to be said for their work as an example of the adequate treatment of a grave and difficult investigation," and that they shared with their adversaries "to the full the fatal weakness of a priori philosophizing." [NOTE: Science and Christian Tradition, p. 18 (Lon. ed., 1894).] Professor Huxley does not name Paine, evidently because he knows nothing about him. Yet Paine represents the turning-point of the historical freethinking movement; he renounced the 'a priori' method, refused to pronounce anything impossible outside pure mathematics, rested everything on evidence, and really founded the Huxleyan school. He plagiarized by anticipation many things from the rationalistic leaders of our time, from Strauss and Baur (being the first to expatiate on "Christian Mythology"), from Renan (being the first to attempt recovery of the human Jesus), and notably from Huxley, who has repeated Paine's arguments on the untrustworthiness of the biblical manuscripts and canon, on the inconsistencies of the narratives of Christ's resurrection, and various other points. None can be more loyal to the memory of Huxley than the present writer, and it is even because of my sense of his grand leadership that he is here mentioned as a typical instance of the extent to which the very elect of free-thought may be unconsciously victimized by the phantasm with which they are contending. He says that Butler overthrew freethinkers of the eighteenth century type, but Paine was of the nineteenth century type; and it was precisely because of his critical method that he excited more animosity than his deistical predecessors. He compelled the apologists to defend the biblical narratives in detail, and thus implicitly acknowledge the tribunal of reason and knowledge to which they were summoned. The ultimate answer by police was a confession of judgment. A hundred years ago England was suppressing Paine's works, and many an honest Englishman has gone to prison for printing and circulating his "Age of Reason." The same views are now freely expressed; they are heard in the seats of learning, and even in the Church Congress; but the suppression of Paine, begun by bigotry and ignorance, is continued in the long indifference of the representatives of our Age of Reason to their pioneer and founder. It is a grievous loss to them and to their cause. It is impossible to understand the religious history of England, and of America, without studying the phases of their evolution represented in the writings of Thomas Paine, in the controversies that grew out of them with such practical accompaniments as the foundation of the Theophilanthropist Church in Paris and New York, and of the great rationalist wing of Quakerism in America. Whatever may be the case with scholars in our time, those of Paine's time took the "Age of Reason" very seriously indeed. Beginning with the learned Dr. Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, a large number of learned men replied to Paine's work, and it became a signal for the commencement of those concessions, on the part of theology, which have continued to our time; and indeed the so-called "Broad Church" is to some extent an outcome of "The Age of Reason." It would too much enlarge this Introduction to cite here the replies made to Paine (thirty-six are catalogued in the British Museum), but it may be remarked that they were notably free, as a rule, from the personalities that raged in the pulpits. I must venture to quote one passage from his very learned antagonist, the Rev. Gilbert Wakefield, B.A., "late Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge." Wakefield, who had resided in London during all the Paine panic, and was well acquainted with the slanders uttered against the author of "Rights of Man," indirectly brands them in answering Paine's argument that the original and traditional unbelief of the Jews, among whom the alleged miracles were wrought, is an important evidence against them. The learned divine writes: "But the subject before us admits of further illustration from the example of Mr. Paine himself. In this country, where his opposition to the corruptions of government has raised him so many adversaries, and such a swarm of unprincipled hirelings have exerted themselves in blackening his character and in misrepresenting all the transactions and incidents of his life, will it not be a most difficult, nay an impossible task, for posterity, after a lapse of 1700 years, if such a wreck of modern literature as that of the ancient, should intervene, to identify the real circumstances, moral and civil, of the man? And will a true historian, such as the Evangelists, be credited at that future period against such a predominant incredulity, without large and mighty accessions of collateral attestation? And how transcendently extraordinary, I had almost said miraculous, will it be estimated by candid and reasonable minds, that a writer whose object was a melioration of condition to the common people, and their deliverance from oppression, poverty, wretchedness, to the numberless blessings of upright and equal government, should be reviled, persecuted, and burned in effigy, with every circumstance of insult and execration, by these very objects of his benevolent intentions, in every corner of the kingdom?" After the execution of Louis XVI., for whose life Paine pleaded so earnestly,--while in England he was denounced as an accomplice in the deed,--he devoted himself to the preparation of a Constitution, and also to gathering up his religious compositions and adding to them. This manuscript I suppose to have been prepared in what was variously known as White's Hotel or Philadelphia House, in Paris, No. 7 Passage des Petits Peres. This compilation of early and fresh manuscripts (if my theory be correct) was labelled, "The Age of Reason," and given for translation to Francois Lanthenas in March 1793. It is entered, in Qudrard (La France Literaire) under the year 1793, but with the title "L'Age de la Raison" instead of that which it bore in 1794, "Le Siecle de la Raison." The latter, printed "Au Burcau de l'imprimerie, rue du Theatre-Francais, No. 4," is said to be by "Thomas Paine, Citoyen et cultivateur de l'Amerique septentrionale, secretaire du Congres du departement des affaires etrangeres pendant la guerre d'Amerique, et auteur des ouvrages intitules: LA SENS COMMUN et LES DROITS DE L'HOMME." When the Revolution was advancing to increasing terrors, Paine, unwilling to participate in the decrees of a Convention whose sole legal function was to frame a Constitution, retired to an old mansion and garden in the Faubourg St. Denis, No. 63. Mr. J.G. Alger, whose researches in personal details connected with the Revolution are original and useful, recently showed me in the National Archives at Paris, some papers connected with the trial of Georgeit, Paine's landlord, by which it appears that the present No. 63 is not, as I had supposed, the house in which Paine resided. Mr. Alger accompanied me to the neighborhood, but we were not able to identify the house. The arrest of Georgeit is mentioned by Paine in his essay on "Forgetfulness" (Writings, iii., 319). When his trial came on one of the charges was that he had kept in his house "Paine and other Englishmen,"--Paine being then in prison,--but he (Georgeit) was acquitted of the paltry accusations brought against him by his Section, the "Faubourg du Nord." This Section took in the whole east side of the Faubourg St. Denis, whereas the present No. 63 is on the west side. After Georgeit (or Georger) had been arrested, Paine was left alone in the large mansion (said by Rickman to have been once the hotel of Madame de Pompadour), and it would appear, by his account, that it was after the execution (October 31, 1793) Of his friends the Girondins, and political comrades, that he felt his end at hand, and set about his last literary bequest to the world,--"The Age of Reason,"--in the state in which it has since appeared, as he is careful to say. There was every probability, during the months in which he wrote (November and December 1793) that he would be executed. His religious testament was prepared with the blade of the guillotine suspended over him,--a fact which did not deter pious mythologists from portraying his death-bed remorse for having written the book. In editing Part I. of "The Age of Reason," I follow closely the first edition, which was printed by Barrois in Paris from the manuscript, no doubt under the superintendence of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine, on his way to the Luxembourg, had confided it. Barlow was an American ex-clergyman, a speculator on whose career French archives cast an unfavorable light, and one cannot be certain that no liberties were taken with Paine's proofs. I may repeat here what I have stated in the outset of my editorial work on Paine that my rule is to correct obvious misprints, and also any punctuation which seems to render the sense less clear. And to that I will now add that in following Paine's quotations from the Bible I have adopted the Plan now generally used in place of his occasionally too extended writing out of book, chapter, and verse. Paine was imprisoned in the Luxembourg on December 28, 1793, and released on November 4, 1794. His liberation was secured by his old friend, James Monroe (afterwards President), who had succeeded his (Paine's) relentless enemy, Gouverneur Morris, as American Minister in Paris. He was found by Monroe more dead than alive from semi-starvation, cold, and an abscess contracted in prison, and taken to the Minister's own residence. It was not supposed that he could survive, and he owed his life to the tender care of Mr. and Mrs. Monroe. It was while thus a prisoner in his room, with death still hovering over him, that Paine wrote Part Second of "The Age of Reason." The work was published in London by H.D. Symonds on October 25, 1795, and claimed to be "from the Author's manuscript." It is marked as "Entered at Stationers Hall," and prefaced by an apologetic note of "The Bookseller to the Public," whose commonplaces about avoiding both prejudice and partiality, and considering "both sides," need not be quoted. While his volume was going through the press in Paris, Paine heard of the publication in London, which drew from him the following hurried note to a London publisher, no doubt Daniel Isaacs Eaton: "SIR,--I have seen advertised in the London papers the second Edition [part] of the Age of Reason, printed, the advertisement says, from the Author's Manuscript, and entered at Stationers Hall. I have never sent any manuscript to any person. It is therefore a forgery to say it is printed from the author's manuscript; and I suppose is done to give the Publisher a pretence of Copy Right, which he has no title to. "I send you a printed copy, which is the only one I have sent to London. I wish you to make a cheap edition of it. I know not by what means any copy has got over to London. If any person has made a manuscript copy I have no doubt but it is full of errors. I wish you would talk to Mr. ----- upon this subject as I wish to know by what means this trick has been played, and from whom the publisher has got possession of any copy. "T. PAINE. "PARIS, December 4, 1795" Eaton's cheap edition appeared January 1, 1796, with the above letter on the reverse of the title. The blank in the note was probably "Symonds" in the original, and possibly that publisher was imposed upon. Eaton, already in trouble for printing one of Paine's political pamphlets, fled to America, and an edition of the "Age of Reason" was issued under a new title; no publisher appears; it is said to be "printed for, and sold by all the Booksellers in Great Britain and Ireland." It is also said to be "By Thomas Paine, author of several remarkable performances." I have never found any copy of this anonymous edition except the one in my possession. It is evidently the edition which was suppressed by the prosecution of Williams for selling a copy of it. A comparison with Paine's revised edition reveals a good many clerical and verbal errors in Symonds, though few that affect the sense. The worst are in the preface, where, instead of "1793," the misleading date "1790" is given as the year at whose close Paine completed Part First,--an error that spread far and wide and was fastened on by his calumnious American "biographer," Cheetham, to prove his inconsistency. The editors have been fairly demoralized by, and have altered in different ways, the following sentence of the preface in Symonds: "The intolerant spirit of religious persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, styled Revolutionary, supplied the place of the Inquisition; and the Guillotine of the State outdid the Fire and Faggot of the Church." The rogue who copied this little knew the care with which Paine weighed words, and that he would never call persecution "religious," nor connect the guillotine with the "State," nor concede that with all its horrors it had outdone the history of fire and faggot. What Paine wrote was: "The intolerant spirit of church persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, styled Revolutionary, supplied the place of an Inquisition and the Guillotine, of the Stake." An original letter of Paine, in the possession of Joseph Cowen, ex-M.P., which that gentleman permits me to bring to light, besides being one of general interest makes clear the circumstances of the original publication. Although the name of the correspondent does not appear on the letter, it was certainly written to Col. John Fellows of New York, who copyrighted Part I. of the "Age of Reason." He published the pamphlets of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine confided his manuscript on his way to prison. Fellows was afterwards Paine's intimate friend in New York, and it was chiefly due to him that some portions of the author's writings, left in manuscript to Madame Bonneville while she was a freethinker were rescued from her devout destructiveness after her return to Catholicism. The letter which Mr. Cowen sends me, is dated at Paris, January 20, 1797. "SIR,--Your friend Mr. Caritat being on the point of his departure for America, I make it the opportunity of writing to you. I received two letters from you with some pamphlets a considerable time past, in which you inform me of your entering a copyright of the first part of the Age of Reason: when I return to America we will settle for that matter. "As Doctor Franklin has been my intimate friend for thirty years past you will naturally see the reason of my continuing the connection with his grandson. I printed here (Paris) about fifteen thousand of the second part of the Age of Reason, which I sent to Mr. F[ranklin] Bache. I gave him notice of it in September 1795 and the copy-right by my own direction was entered by him. The books did not arrive till April following, but he had advertised it long before. "I sent to him in August last a manuscript letter of about 70 pages, from me to Mr. Washington to be printed in a pamphlet. Mr. Barnes of Philadelphia carried the letter from me over to London to be forwarded to America. It went by the ship Hope, Cap: Harley, who since his return from America told me that he put it into the post office at New York for Bache. I have yet no certain account of its publication. I mention this that the letter may be enquired after, in case it has not been published or has not arrived to Mr. Bache. Barnes wrote to me, from London 29 August informing me that he was offered three hundred pounds sterling for the manuscript. The offer was refused because it was my intention it should not appear till it appeared in America, as that, and not England was the place for its operation. "You ask me by your letter to Mr. Caritat for a list of my several works, in order to publish a collection of them. This is an undertaking I have always reserved for myself. It not only belongs to me of right, but nobody but myself can do it; and as every author is accountable (at least in reputation) for his works, he only is the person to do it. If he neglects it in his life-time the case is altered. It is my intention to return to America in the course of the present year. I shall then [do] it by subscription, with historical notes. As this work will employ many persons in different parts of the Union, I will confer with you upon the subject, and such part of it as will suit you to undertake, will be at your choice. I have sustained so much loss, by disinterestedness and inattention to money matters, and by accidents, that I am obliged to look closer to my affairs than I have done. The printer (an Englishman) whom I employed here to print the second part of 'the Age of Reason' made a manuscript copy of the work while he was printing it, which he sent to London and sold. It was by this means that an edition of it came out in London. "We are waiting here for news from America of the state of the federal elections. You will have heard long before this reaches you that the French government has refused to receive Mr. Pinckney as minister. While Mr. Monroe was minister he had the opportunity of softening matters with this government, for he was in good credit with them tho' they were in high indignation at the infidelity of the Washington Administration. It is time that Mr. Washington retire, for he has played off so much prudent hypocrisy between France and England that neither government believes anything he says. "Your friend, etc., "THOMAS PAINE." It would appear that Symonds' stolen edition must have got ahead of that sent by Paine to Franklin Bache, for some of its errors continue in all modern American editions to the present day, as well as in those of England. For in England it was only the shilling edition--that revised by Paine--which was suppressed. Symonds, who ministered to the half-crown folk, and who was also publisher of replies to Paine, was left undisturbed about his pirated edition, and the new Society for the suppression of Vice and Immorality fastened on one Thomas Williams, who sold pious tracts but was also convicted (June 24, 1797) of having sold one copy of the "Age of Reason." Erskine, who had defended Paine at his trial for the "Rights of Man," conducted the prosecution of Williams. He gained the victory from a packed jury, but was not much elated by it, especially after a certain adventure on his way to Lincoln's Inn. He felt his coat clutched and beheld at his feet a woman bathed in tears. She led him into the small book-shop of Thomas Williams, not yet called up for judgment, and there he beheld his victim stitching tracts in a wretched little room, where there were three children, two suffering with Smallpox. He saw that it would be ruin and even a sort of murder to take away to prison the husband, who was not a freethinker, and lamented his publication of the book, and a meeting of the Society which had retained him was summoned. There was a full meeting, the Bishop of London (Porteus) in the chair. Erskine reminded them that Williams was yet to be brought up for sentence, described the scene he had witnessed, and Williams' penitence, and, as the book was now suppressed, asked permission to move for a nominal sentence. Mercy, he urged, was a part of the Christianity they were defending. Not one of the Society took his side,--not even "philanthropic" Wilberforce--and Erskine threw up his brief. This action of Erskine led the Judge to give Williams only a year in prison instead of the three he said had been intended. While Williams was in prison the orthodox colporteurs were circulating Erskine's speech on Christianity, but also an anonymous sermon "On the Existence and Attributes of the Deity," all of which was from Paine's "Age of Reason," except a brief "Address to the Deity" appended. This picturesque anomaly was repeated in the circulation of Paine's "Discourse to the Theophilanthropists" (their and the author's names removed) under the title of "Atheism Refuted." Both of these pamphlets are now before me, and beside them a London tract of one page just sent for my spiritual benefit. This is headed "A Word of Caution." It begins by mentioning the "pernicious doctrines of Paine," the first being "that there is No GOD" (sic,) then proceeds to adduce evidences of divine existence taken from Paine's works. It should be added that this one dingy page is the only "survival" of the ancient Paine effigy in the tract form which I have been able to find in recent years, and to this no Society or Publisher's name is attached. The imprisonment of Williams was the beginning of a thirty years' war for religious liberty in England, in the course of which occurred many notable events, such as Eaton receiving homage in his pillory at Choring Cross, and the whole Carlile family imprisoned,--its head imprisoned more than nine years for publishing the "Age of Reason." This last victory of persecution was suicidal. Gentlemen of wealth, not adherents of Paine, helped in setting Carlile up in business in Fleet Street, where free-thinking publications have since been sold without interruption. But though Liberty triumphed in one sense, the "Age of Reason." remained to some extent suppressed among those whose attention it especially merited. Its original prosecution by a Society for the Suppression of Vice (a device to, relieve the Crown) amounted to a libel upon a morally clean book, restricting its perusal in families; and the fact that the shilling book sold by and among humble people was alone prosecuted, diffused among the educated an equally false notion that the "Age of Reason" was vulgar and illiterate. The theologians, as we have seen, estimated more justly the ability of their antagonist, the collaborator of Franklin, Rittenhouse, and Clymer, on whom the University of Pennsylvania had conferred the degree of Master of Arts,--but the gentry confused Paine with the class described by Burke as "the swinish multitude." Skepticism, or its free utterance, was temporarily driven out of polite circles by its complication with the out-lawed vindicator of the "Rights of Man." But that long combat has now passed away. Time has reduced the "Age of Reason" from a flag of popular radicalism to a comparatively conservative treatise, so far as its negations are concerned. An old friend tells me that in his youth he heard a sermon in which the preacher declared that "Tom Paine was so wicked that he could not be buried; his bones were thrown into a box which was bandied about the world till it came to a button-manufacturer; and now Paine is travelling round the world in the form of buttons!" This variant of the Wandering Jew myth may now be regarded as unconscious homage to the author whose metaphorical bones may be recognized in buttons now fashionable, and some even found useful in holding clerical vestments together. But the careful reader will find in Paine's "Age of Reason" something beyond negations, and in conclusion I will especially call attention to the new departure in Theism indicated in a passage corresponding to a famous aphorism of Kant, indicated by a note in Part II. The discovery already mentioned, that Part I. was written at least fourteen years before Part II., led me to compare the two; and it is plain that while the earlier work is an amplification of Newtonian Deism, based on the phenomena of planetary motion, the work of 1795 bases belief in God on "the universal display of himself in the works of the creation and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and disposition to do good ones." This exaltation of the moral nature of man to be the foundation of theistic religion, though now familiar, was a hundred years ago a new affirmation; it has led on a conception of deity subversive of last-century deism, it has steadily humanized religion, and its ultimate philosophical and ethical results have not yet been reached. CHAPTER I - THE AUTHOR'S PROFESSION OF FAITH. IT has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my thoughts upon religion; I am well aware of the difficulties that attend the subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to a more advanced period of life. I intended it to be the last offering I should make to my fellow-citizens of all nations, and that at a time when the purity of the motive that induced me to it could not admit of a question, even by those who might disapprove the work. The circumstance that has now taken place in France, of the total abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of everything appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive articles of faith, has not only precipitated my intention, but rendered a work of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest, in the general wreck of superstition, of false systems of government, and false theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true. As several of my colleagues, and others of my fellow-citizens of France, have given me the example of making their voluntary and individual profession of faith, I also will make mine; and I do this with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man communicates with itself. I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them. I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and, in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive anything more destructive to morality than this? Soon after I had published the pamphlet COMMON SENSE, in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion. The adulterous connection of church and state, wherever it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually prohibited, by pains and penalties, every discussion upon established creeds, and upon first principles of religion, that until the system of government should be changed, those subjects could not be brought fairly and openly before the world; but that whenever this should be done, a revolution in the system of religion would follow. Human inventions and priest-craft would be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one God, and no more. CHAPTER II - OF MISSIONS AND REVELATIONS. EVERY national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not open to every man alike. Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all. As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word 'revelation.' Revelation when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man. No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged to believe it. It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him. When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hand of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so, the commandments carrying no internal evidence of divinity with them. They contain some good moral precepts such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention. [NOTE: It is, however, necessary to except the declamation which says that God 'visits the sins of the fathers upon the children'. This is contrary to every principle of moral justice.--Author.] When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven, and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes to near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second hand authority as the former. I did not see the angel myself, and therefore I have a right not to believe it. When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not even this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves. It is only reported by others that they said so. It is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such evidence. It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given to the story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. He was born when the heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story. Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new thing at that time to believe a man to have been celestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited with hundreds; the story therefore had nothing in it either new, wonderful, or obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed among the people called Gentiles, or mythologists, and it was those people only that believed it. The Jews, who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited the story. It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian Church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which was about twenty or thirty thousand. The statue of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes changed into the canonization of saints. The Mythologists had gods for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything. The church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and Rome was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud. CHAPTER III - CONCERNING THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST, AND HIS HISTORY. NOTHING that is here said can apply, even with the most distant disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practiced was of the most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of morality had been preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many years before, by the Quakers since, and by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any. Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or anything else. Not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his writing. The history of him is altogether the work of other people; and as to the account given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. His historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground. The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told, exceeds everything that went before it. The first part, that of the miraculous conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity; and therefore the tellers of this part of the story had this advantage, that though they might not be credited, they could not be detected. They could not be expected to prove it, because it was not one of those things that admitted of proof, and it was impossible that the person of whom it was told could prove it himself. But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension through the air, is a thing very different, as to the evidence it admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the womb. The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon day, to all Jerusalem at least. A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; and as the public visibility of this last related act was the only evidence that could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to the ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas did not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas. It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it. Who were the authors of it is as impossible for us now to know, as it is for us to be assured that the books in which the account is related were written by the persons whose names they bear. The best surviving evidence we now have respecting this affair is the Jews. They are regularly descended from the people who lived in the time this resurrection and ascension is said to have happened, and they say 'it is not true.' It has long appeared to me a strange inconsistency to cite the Jews as a proof of the truth of the story. It is just the same as if a man were to say, I will prove the truth of what I have told you, by producing the people who say it is false. That such a person as Jesus Christ existed, and that he was crucified, which was the mode of execution at that day, are historical relations strictly within the limits of probability. He preached most excellent morality, and the equality of man; but he preached also against the corruptions and avarice of the Jewish priests, and this brought upon him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order of priest-hood. The accusation which those priests brought against him was that of sedition and conspiracy against the Roman government, to which the Jews were then subject and tributary; and it is not improbable that the Roman government might have some secret apprehension of the effects of his doctrine as well as the Jewish priests; neither is it improbable that Jesus Christ had in contemplation the delivery of the Jewish nation from the bondage of the Romans. Between the two, however, this virtuous reformer and revolutionist lost his life. [NOTE: The French work has here: "However this may be, for one or the other of these suppositions this virtuous reformer, this revolutionist, too little imitated, too much forgotten, too much misunderstood, lost his life."--Editor. (Conway)] CHAPTER IV - OF THE BASES OF CHRISTIANITY. IT is upon this plain narrative of facts, together with another case I am going to mention, that the Christian mythologists, calling themselves the Christian Church, have erected their fable, which for absurdity and extravagance is not exceeded by anything that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients. The ancient mythologists tell us that the race of Giants made war against Jupiter, and that one of them threw a hundred rocks against him at one throw; that Jupiter defeated him with thunder, and confined him afterwards under Mount Etna; and that every time the Giant turns himself, Mount Etna belches fire. It is here easy to see that the circumstance of the mountain, that of its being a volcano, suggested the idea of the fable; and that the fable is made to fit and wind itself up with that circumstance. The Christian mythologists tell that their Satan made war against the Almighty, who defeated him, and confined him afterwards, not under a mountain, but in a pit. It is here easy to see that the first fable suggested the idea of the second; for the fable of Jupiter and the Giants was told many hundred years before that of Satan. Thus far the ancient and the Christian mythologists differ very little from each other. But the latter have contrived to carry the matter much farther. They have contrived to connect the fabulous part of the story of Jesus Christ with the fable originating from Mount Etna; and, in order to make all the parts of the story tie together, they have taken to their aid the traditions of the Jews; for the Christian mythology is made up partly from the ancient mythology, and partly from the Jewish traditions. The Christian mythologists, after having confined Satan in a pit, were obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable. He is then introduced into the garden of Eden in the shape of a snake, or a serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar conversation with Eve, who is no ways surprised to hear a snake talk; and the issue of this tete-a-tate is, that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the eating of that apple damns all mankind. After giving Satan this triumph over the whole creation, one would have supposed that the church mythologists would have been kind enough to send him back again to the pit, or, if they had not done this, that they would have put a mountain upon him, (for they say that their faith can remove a mountain) or have put him under a mountain, as the former mythologists had done, to prevent his getting again among the women, and doing more mischief. But instead of this, they leave him at large, without even obliging him to give his parole. The secret of which is, that they could not do without him; and after being at the trouble of making him, they bribed him to stay. They promised him ALL the Jews, ALL the Turks by anticipation, nine-tenths of the world beside, and Mahomet into the bargain. After this, who can doubt the bountifulness of the Christian Mythology? Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in heaven, in which none of the combatants could be either killed or wounded--put Satan into the pit--let him out again--given him a triumph over the whole creation--damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, there Christian mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together. They represent this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at once both God and man, and also the Son of God, celestially begotten, on purpose to be sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her longing [NOTE: The French work has: "yielding to an unrestrained appetite."--Editor.] had eaten an apple. CHAPTER V - EXAMINATION IN DETAIL OF THE PRECEDING BASES. PUTTING aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity, or detestation by its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to an examination of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a story more derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom, more contradictory to his power, than this story is. In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the inventors were under the necessity of giving to the being whom they call Satan a power equally as great, if not greater, than they attribute to the Almighty. They have not only given him the power of liberating himself from the pit, after what they call his fall, but they have made that power increase afterwards to infinity. Before this fall they represent him only as an angel of limited existence, as they represent the rest. After his fall, he becomes, by their account, omnipresent. He exists everywhere, and at the same time. He occupies the whole immensity of space. Not content with this deification of Satan, they represent him as defeating by stratagem, in the shape of an animal of the creation, all the power and wisdom of the Almighty. They represent him as having compelled the Almighty to the direct necessity either of surrendering the whole of the creation to the government and sovereignty of this Satan, or of capitulating for its redemption by coming down upon earth, and exhibiting himself upon a cross in the shape of a man. Had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is, had they represented the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit himself on a cross in the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his new transgression, the story would have been less absurd, less contradictory. But, instead of this they make the transgressor triumph, and the Almighty fall. That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived very good lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime) is what I have no doubt of. In the first place, they were educated to believe it, and they would have believed anything else in the same manner. There are also many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by what they conceived to be the infinite love of God to man, in making a sacrifice of himself, that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden and deterred them from examining into the absurdity and profaneness of the story. The more unnatural anything is, the more is it capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration. [NOTE: The French work has "blind and" preceding dismal.--Editor.] CHAPTER VI - OF THE TRUE THEOLOGY. BUT if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born--a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator? I know that this bold investigation will alarm many, but it would be paying too great a compliment to their credulity to forbear it on that account. The times and the subject demand it to be done. The suspicion that the theory of what is called the Christian church is fabulous, is becoming very extensive in all countries; and it will be a consolation to men staggering under that suspicion, and doubting what to believe and what to disbelieve, to see the subject freely investigated. I therefore pass on to an examination of the books called the Old and the New Testament. CHAPTER VII - EXAMINATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. THESE books, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelations, (which, by the bye, is a book of riddles that requires a revelation to explain it) are, we are told, the word of God. It is, therefore, proper for us to know who told us so, that we may know what credit to give to the report. The answer to this question is, that nobody can tell, except that we tell one another so. The case, however, historically appears to be as follows: When the church mythologists established their system, they collected all the writings they could find, and managed them as they pleased. It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings as now appear under the name of the Old and the New Testament, are in the same state in which those collectors say they found them; or whether they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them up. Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of the collection they had made, should be the WORD OF GOD, and which should not. They rejected several; they voted others to be doubtful, such as the books called the Apocrypha; and those books which had a majority of votes, were voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all the people since calling themselves Christians had believed otherwise; for the belief of the one comes from the vote of the other. Who the people were that did all this, we know nothing of. They call themselves by the general name of the Church; and this is all we know of the matter. As we have no other external evidence or authority for believing these books to be the word of God, than what I have mentioned, which is no evidence or authority at all, I come, in the next place, to examine the internal evidence contained in the books themselves. In the former part of this essay, I have spoken of revelation. I now proceed further with that subject, for the purpose of applying it to the books in question. Revelation is a communication of something, which the person, to whom that thing is revealed, did not know before. For if I have done a thing, or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have done it, or seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write it. Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon earth of which man is himself the actor or the witness; and consequently all the historical and anecdotal part of the Bible, which is almost the whole of it, is not within the meaning and compass of the word revelation, and, therefore, is not the word of God. When Samson ran off with the gate-posts of Gaza, if he ever did so, (and whether he did or not is nothing to us,) or when he visited his Delilah, or caught his foxes, or did anything else, what has revelation to do with these things? If they were facts, he could tell them himself; or his secretary, if he kept one, could write them, if they were worth either telling or writing; and if they were fictions, revelation could not make them true; and whether true or not, we are neither the better nor the wiser for knowing them. When we contemplate the immensity of that Being, who directs and governs the incomprehensible WHOLE, of which the utmost ken of human sight can discover but a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry stories the word of God. As to the account of the creation, with which the book of Genesis opens, it has all the appearance of being a tradition which the Israelites had among them before they came into Egypt; and after their departure from that country, they put it at the head of their history, without telling, as it is most probable that they did not know, how they came by it. The manner in which the account opens, shows it to be traditionary. It begins abruptly. It is nobody that speaks. It is nobody that hears. It is addressed to nobody. It has neither first, second, nor third person. It has every criterion of being a tradition. It has no voucher. Moses does not take it upon himself by introducing it with the formality that he uses on other occasions, such as that of saying, "The Lords spake unto Moses, saying." Why it has been called the Mosaic account of the creation, I am at a loss to conceive. Moses, I believe, was too good a judge of such subjects to put his name to that account. He had been educated among the Egyptians, who were a people as well skilled in science, and particularly in astronomy, as any people of their day; and the silence and caution that Moses observes, in not authenticating the account, is a good negative evidence that he neither told it nor believed it.--The case is, that every nation of people has been world-makers, and the Israelites had as much right to set up the trade of world-making as any of the rest; and as Moses was not an Israelite, he might not chose to contradict the tradition. The account, however, is harmless; and this is more than can be said for many other parts of the Bible. Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible [NOTE: It must be borne in mind that by the "Bible" Paine always means the Old Testament alone.--Editor.] is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel. We scarcely meet with anything, a few phrases excepted, but what deserves either our abhorrence or our contempt, till we come to the miscellaneous parts of the Bible. In the anonymous publications, the Psalms, and the Book of Job, more particularly in the latter, we find a great deal of elevated sentiment reverentially expressed of the power and benignity of the Almighty; but they stand on no higher rank than many other compositions on similar subjects, as well before that time as since. The Proverbs which are said to be Solomon's, though most probably a collection, (because they discover a knowledge of life, which his situation excluded him from knowing) are an instructive table of ethics. They are inferior in keenness to the proverbs of the Spaniards, and not more wise and oeconomical than those of the American Franklin. All the remaining parts of the Bible, generally known by the name of the Prophets, are the works of the Jewish poets and itinerant preachers, who mixed poetry, anecdote, and devotion together--and those works still retain the air and style of poetry, though in translation. [NOTE: As there are many readers who do not see that a composition is poetry, unless it be in rhyme, it is for their information that I add this note. Poetry consists principally in two things--imagery and composition. The composition of poetry differs from that of prose in the manner of mixing long and short syllables together. Take a long syllable out of a line of poetry, and put a short one in the room of it, or put a long syllable where a short one should be, and that line will lose its poetical harmony. It will have an effect upon the line like that of misplacing a note in a song. The imagery in those books called the Prophets appertains altogether to poetry. It is fictitious, and often extravagant, and not admissible in any other kind of writing than poetry. To show that these writings are composed in poetical numbers, I will take ten syllables, as they stand in the book, and make a line of the same number of syllables, (heroic measure) that shall rhyme with the last word. It will then be seen that the composition of those books is poetical measure. The instance I shall first produce is from Isaiah:-- "Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth 'T is God himself that calls attention forth. Another instance I shall quote is from the mournful Jeremiah, to which I shall add two other lines, for the purpose of carrying out the figure, and showing the intention of the poet. "O, that mine head were waters and mine eyes Were fountains flowing like the liquid skies; Then would I give the mighty flood release And weep a deluge for the human race."--Author.] There is not, throughout the whole book called the Bible, any word that describes to us what we call a poet, nor any word that describes what we call poetry. The case is, that the word prophet, to which a later times have affixed a new idea, was the Bible word for poet, and the word 'propesying' meant the art of making poetry. It also meant the art of playing poetry to a tune upon any instrument of music. We read of prophesying with pipes, tabrets, and horns--of prophesying with harps, with psalteries, with cymbals, and with every other instrument of music then in fashion. Were we now to speak of prophesying with a fiddle, or with a pipe and tabor, the expression would have no meaning, or would appear ridiculous, and to some people contemptuous, because we have changed the meaning of the word. We are told of Saul being among the prophets, and also that he prophesied; but we are not told what they prophesied, nor what he prophesied. The case is, there was nothing to tell; for these prophets were a company of musicians and poets, and Saul joined in the concert, and this was called prophesying. The account given of this affair in the book called Samuel, is, that Saul met a company of prophets; a whole company of them! coming down with a psaltery, a tabret, a pipe, and a harp, and that they prophesied, and that he prophesied with them. But it appears afterwards, that Saul prophesied badly, that is, he performed his part badly; for it is said that an "evil spirit from God [NOTE: As thos; men who call themselves divines and commentators are very fond of puzzling one another, I leave them to contest the meaning of the first part of the phrase, that of an evil spirit of God. I keep to my text. I keep to the meaning of the word prophesy.--Author.] came upon Saul, and he prophesied." Now, were there no other passage in the book called the Bible, than this, to demonstrate to us that we have lost the original meaning of the word prophesy, and substituted another meaning in its place, this alone would be sufficient; for it is impossible to use and apply the word prophesy, in the place it is here used and applied, if we give to it the sense which later times have affixed to it. The manner in which it is here used strips it of all religious meaning, and shews that a man might then be a prophet, or he might Prophesy, as he may now be a poet or a musician, without any regard to the morality or the immorality of his character. The word was originally a term of science, promiscuously applied to poetry and to music, and not restricted to any subject upon which poetry and music might be exercised. Deborah and Barak are called prophets, not because they predicted anything, but because they composed the poem or song that bears their name, in celebration of an act already done. David is ranked among the prophets, for he was a musician, and was also reputed to be (though perhaps very erroneously) the author of the Psalms. But Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not called prophets; it does not appear from any accounts we have, that they could either sing, play music, or make poetry. We are told of the greater and the lesser prophets. They might as well tell us of the greater and the lesser God; for there cannot be degrees in prophesying consistently with its modern sense. But there are degrees in poetry, and there-fore the phrase is reconcilable to the case, when we understand by it the greater and the lesser poets. It is altogether unnecessary, after this, to offer any observations upon what those men, styled prophets, have written. The axe goes at once to the root, by showing that the original meaning of the word has been mistaken, and consequently all the inferences that have been drawn from those books, the devotional respect that has been paid to them, and the laboured commentaries that have been written upon them, under that mistaken meaning, are not worth disputing about.--In many things, however, the writings of the Jewish poets deserve a better fate than that of being bound up, as they now are, with the trash that accompanies them, under the abused name of the Word of God. If we permit ourselves to conceive right ideas of things, we must necessarily affix the idea, not only of unchangeableness, but of the utter impossibility of any change taking place, by any means or accident whatever, in that which we would honour with the name of the Word of God; and therefore the Word of God cannot exist in any written or human language. The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of an universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of wilful alteration, are of themselves evidences that human language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the Word of God.--The Word of God exists in something else. Did the book called the Bible excel in purity of ideas and expression all the books now extant in the world, I would not take it for my rule of faith, as being the Word of God; because the possibility would nevertheless exist of my being imposed upon. But when I see throughout the greatest part of this book scarcely anything but a history of the grossest vices, and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales, I cannot dishonour my Creator by calling it by his name. CHAPTER VIII - OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. THUS much for the Bible; I now go on to the book called the New Testament. The new Testament! that is, the 'new' Will, as if there could be two wills of the Creator. Had it been the object or the intention of Jesus Christ to establish a new religion, he would undoubtedly have written the system himself, or procured it to be written in his life time. But there is no publication extant authenticated with his name. All the books called the New Testament were written after his death. He was a Jew by birth and by profession; and he was the son of God in like manner that every other person is; for the Creator is the Father of All. The first four books, called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, do not give a history of the life of Jesus Christ, but only detached anecdotes of him. It appears from these books, that the whole time of his being a preacher was not more than eighteen months; and it was only during this short time that those men became acquainted with him. They make mention of him at the age of twelve years, sitting, they say, among the Jewish doctors, asking and answering them questions. As this was several years before their acquaintance with him began, it is most probable they had this anecdote from his parents. From this time there is no account of him for about sixteen years. Where he lived, or how he employed himself during this interval, is not known. Most probably he was working at his father's trade, which was that of a carpenter. It does not appear that he had any school education, and the probability is, that he could not write, for his parents were extremely poor, as appears from their not being able to pay for a bed when he was born. [NOTE: One of the few errors traceable to Paine's not having a Bible at hand while writing Part I. There is no indication that the family was poor, but the reverse may in fact be inferred.--Editor.] It is somewhat curious that the three persons whose names are the most universally recorded were of very obscure parentage. Moses was a foundling; Jesus Christ was born in a stable; and Mahomet was a mule driver. The first and the last of these men were founders of different systems of religion; but Jesus Christ founded no new system. He called men to the practice of moral virtues, and the belief of one God. The great trait in his character is philanthropy. The manner in which he was apprehended shows that he was not much known, at that time; and it shows also that the meetings he then held with his followers were in secret; and that he had given over or suspended preaching publicly. Judas could no otherways betray him than by giving information where he was, and pointing him out to the officers that went to arrest him; and the reason for employing and paying Judas to do this could arise only from the causes already mentioned, that of his not being much known, and living concealed. The idea of his concealment, not only agrees very ill with his reputed divinity, but associates with it something of pusillanimity; and his being betrayed, or in other words, his being apprehended, on the information of one of his followers, shows that he did not intend to be apprehended, and consequently that he did not intend to be crucified. The Christian mythologists tell us that Christ died for the sins of the world, and that he came on Purpose to die. Would it not then have been the same if he had died of a fever or of the small pox, of old age, or of anything else? The declaratory sentence which, they say, was passed upon Adam, in case he ate of the apple, was not, that thou shalt surely be crucified, but, thou shale surely die. The sentence was death, and not the manner of dying. Crucifixion, therefore, or any other particular manner of dying, made no part of the sentence that Adam was to suffer, and consequently, even upon their own tactic, it could make no part of the sentence that Christ was to suffer in the room of Adam. A fever would have done as well as a cross, if there was any occasion for either. This sentence of death, which, they tell us, was thus passed upon Adam, must either have meant dying naturally, that is, ceasing to live, or have meant what these mythologists call damnation; and consequently, the act of dying on the part of Jesus Christ, must, according to their system, apply as a prevention to one or other of these two things happening to Adam and to us. That it does not prevent our dying is evident, because we all die; and if their accounts of longevity be true, men die faster since the crucifixion than before: and with respect to the second explanation, (including with it the natural death of Jesus Christ as a substitute for the eternal death or damnation of all mankind,) it is impertinently representing the Creator as coming off, or revoking the sentence, by a pun or a quibble upon the word death. That manufacturer of, quibbles, St. Paul, if he wrote the books that bear his name, has helped this quibble on by making another quibble upon the word Adam. He makes there to be two Adams; the one who sins in fact, and suffers by proxy; the other who sins by proxy, and suffers in fact. A religion thus interlarded with quibble, subterfuge, and pun, has a tendency to instruct its professors in the practice of these arts. They acquire the habit without being aware of the cause. If Jesus Christ was the being which those mythologists tell us he was, and that he came into this world to suffer, which is a word they sometimes use instead of 'to die,' the only real suffering he could have endured would have been 'to live.' His existence here was a state of exilement or transportation from heaven, and the way back to his original country was to die.--In fine, everything in this strange system is the reverse of what it pretends to be. It is the reverse of truth, and I become so tired of examining into its inconsistencies and absurdities, that I hasten to the conclusion of it, in order to proceed to something better. How much, or what parts of the books called the New Testament, were written by the persons whose names they bear, is what we can know nothing of, neither are we certain in what language they were originally written. The matters they now contain may be classed under two heads: anecdote, and epistolary correspondence. The four books already mentioned, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are altogether anecdotal. They relate events after they had taken place. They tell what Jesus Christ did and said, and what others did and said to him; and in several instances they relate the same event differently. Revelation is necessarily out of the question with respect to those books; not only because of the disagreement of the writers, but because revelation cannot be applied to the relating of facts by the persons who saw them done, nor to the relating or recording of any discourse or conversation by those who heard it. The book called the Acts of the Apostles (an anonymous work) belongs also to the anecdotal part. All the other parts of the New Testament, except the book of enigmas, called the Revelations, are a collection of letters under the name of epistles; and the forgery of letters has been such a common practice in the world, that the probability is at least equal, whether they are genuine or forged. One thing, however, is much less equivocal, which is, that out of the matters contained in those books, together with the assistance of some old stories, the church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty. The invention of a purgatory, and of the releasing of souls therefrom, by prayers, bought of the church with money; the selling of pardons, dispensations, and indulgences, are revenue laws, without bearing that name or carrying that appearance. But the case nevertheless is, that those things derive their origin from the proxysm of the crucifixion, and the theory deduced therefrom, which was, that one person could stand in the place of another, and could perform meritorious services for him. The probability, therefore, is, that the whole theory or doctrine of what is called the redemption (which is said to have been accomplished by the act of one person in the room of another) was originally fabricated on purpose to bring forward and build all those secondary and pecuniary redemptions upon; and that the passages in the books upon which the idea of theory of redemption is built, have been manufactured and fabricated for that purpose. Why are we to give this church credit, when she tells us that those books are genuine in every part, any more than we give her credit for everything else she has told us; or for the miracles she says she has performed? That she could fabricate writings is certain, because she could write; and the composition of the writings in question, is of that kind that anybody might do it; and that she did fabricate them is not more inconsistent with probability, than that she should tell us, as she has done, that she could and did work miracles. Since, then, no external evidence can, at this long distance of time, be produced to prove whether the church fabricated the doctrine called redemption or not, (for such evidence, whether for or against, would be subject to the same suspicion of being fabricated,) the case can only be referred to the internal evidence which the thing carries of itself; and this affords a very strong presumption of its being a fabrication. For the internal evidence is, that the theory or doctrine of redemption has for its basis an idea of pecuniary justice, and not that of moral justice. If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge. This single reflection will show that the doctrine of redemption is founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again with the system of second redemptions, obtained through the means of money given to the church for pardons, the probability is that the same persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories; and that, in truth, there is no such thing as redemption; that it is fabulous; and that man stands in the same relative condition with his Maker he ever did stand, since man existed; and that it is his greatest consolation to think so. Let him believe this, and he will live more consistently and morally, than by any other system. It is by his being taught to contemplate himself as an out-law, as an out-cast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as one thrown as it were on a dunghill, at an immense distance from his Creator, and who must make his approaches by creeping, and cringing to intermediate beings, that he conceives either a contemptuous disregard for everything under the name of religion, or becomes indifferent, or turns what he calls devout. In the latter case, he consumes his life in grief, or the affectation of it. His prayers are reproaches. His humility is ingratitude. He calls himself a worm, and the fertile earth a dunghill; and all the blessings of life by the thankless name of vanities. He despises the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF REASON; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason, as if man could give reason to himself. Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility, and this contempt for human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions. He finds fault with everything. His selfishness is never satisfied; his ingratitude is never at an end. He takes on himself to direct the Almighty what to do, even in the govemment of the universe. He prays dictatorially. When it is sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for sunshine. He follows the same idea in everything that he prays for; for what is the amount of all his prayers, but an attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he were to say--thou knowest not so well as I. CHAPTER IX - IN WHAT THE TRUE REVELATION CONSISTS. BUT some perhaps will say--Are we to have no word of God--no revelation? I answer yes. There is a Word of God; there is a revelation. THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man. Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information. The idea that God sent Jesus Christ to publish, as they say, the glad tidings to all nations, from one end of the earth unto the other, is consistent only with the ignorance of those who know nothing of the extent of the world, and who believed, as those world-saviours believed, and continued to believe for several centuries, (and that in contradiction to the discoveries of philosophers and the experience of navigators,) that the earth was flat like a trencher; and that a man might walk to the end of it. But how was Jesus Christ to make anything known to all nations? He could speak but one language, which was Hebrew; and there are in the world several hundred languages. Scarcely any two nations speak the same language, or understand each other; and as to translations, every man who knows anything of languages, knows that it is impossible to translate from one language into another, not only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense; and besides all this, the art of printing was wholly unknown at the time Christ lived. It is always necessary that the means that are to accomplish any end be equal to the accomplishment of that end, or the end cannot be accomplished. It is in this that the difference between finite and infinite power and wisdom discovers itself. Man frequently fails in accomplishing his end, from a natural inability of the power to the purpose; and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply power properly. But it is impossible for infinite power and wisdom to fail as man faileth. The means it useth are always equal to the end: but human language, more especially as there is not an universal language, is incapable of being used as an universal means of unchangeable and uniform information; and therefore it is not the means that God useth in manifesting himself universally to man. It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God. Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation. CHAPTER X - CONCERNING GOD, AND THE LIGHTS CAST ON HIS EXISTENCE AND ATTRIBUTES BY THE BIBLE. THE only idea man can affix to the name of God, is that of a first cause, the cause of all things. And, incomprehensibly difficult as it is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief of it, from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it. It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time. In like manner of reasoning, everything we behold carries in itself the internal evidence that it did not make itself. Every man is an evidence to himself, that he did not make himself; neither could his father make himself, nor his grandfather, nor any of his race; neither could any tree, plant, or animal make itself; and it is the conviction arising from this evidence, that carries us on, as it were, by necessity, to the belief of a first cause eternally existing, of a nature totally different to any material existence we know of, and by the power of which all things exist; and this first cause, man calls God. It is only by the exercise of reason, that man can discover God. Take away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding anything; and in this case it would be just as consistent to read even the book called the Bible to a horse as to a man. How then is it that those people pretend to reject reason? Almost the only parts in the book called the Bible, that convey to us any idea of God, are some chapters in Job, and the 19th Psalm; I recollect no other. Those parts are true deistical compositions; for they treat of the Deity through his works. They take the book of Creation as the word of God; they refer to no other book; and all the inferences they make are drawn from that volume. I insert in this place the 19th Psalm, as paraphrased into English verse by Addison. I recollect not the prose, and where I write this I have not the opportunity of seeing it: The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue etherial sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great original proclaim. The unwearied sun, from day to day, Does his Creator's power display, And publishes to every land The work of an Almighty hand. Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the list'ning earth Repeats the story of her birth; Whilst all the stars that round her burn, And all the planets, in their turn, Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the truth from pole to pole. What though in solemn silence all Move round this dark terrestrial ball What though no real voice, nor sound, Amidst their radiant orbs be found, In reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice, Forever singing as they shine, THE HAND THAT MADE US IS DIVINE. What more does man want to know, than that the hand or power that made these things is divine, is omnipotent? Let him believe this, with the force it is impossible to repel if he permits his reason to act, and his rule of moral life will follow of course. The allusions in Job have all of them the same tendency with this Psalm; that of deducing or proving a truth that would be otherwise unknown, from truths already known. I recollect not enough of the passages in Job to insert them correctly; but there is one that occurs to me that is applicable to the subject I am speaking upon. "Canst thou by searching find out God; canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?" I know not how the printers have pointed this passage, for I keep no Bible; but it contains two distinct questions that admit of distinct answers. First, Canst thou by searching find out God? Yes. Because, in the first place, I know I did not make myself, and yet I have existence; and by searching into the nature of other things, I find that no other thing could make itself; and yet millions of other things exist; therefore it is, that I know, by positive conclusion resulting from this search, that there is a power superior to all those things, and that power is God. Secondly, Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection? No. Not only because the power and wisdom He has manifested in the structure of the Creation that I behold is to me incomprehensible; but because even this manifestation, great as it is is probably but a small display of that immensity of power and wisdom, by which millions of other worlds, to me invisible by their distance, were created and continue to exist. It is evident that both of these questions were put to the reason of the person to whom they are supposed to have been addressed; and it is only by admitting the first question to be answered affirmatively, that the second could follow. It would have been unnecessary, and even absurd, to have put a second question, more difficult than the first, if the first question had been answered negatively. The two questions have different objects; the first refers to the existence of God, the second to his attributes. Reason can discover the one, but it falls infinitely short in discovering the whole of the other. I recollect not a single passage in all the writings ascribed to the men called apostles, that conveys any idea of what God is. Those writings are chiefly controversial; and the gloominess of the subject they dwell upon, that of a man dying in agony on a cross, is better suited to the gloomy genius of a monk in a cell, by whom it is not impossible they were written, than to any man breathing the open air of the Creation. The only passage that occurs to me, that has any reference to the works of God, by which only his power and wisdom can be known, is related to have been spoken by Jesus Christ, as a remedy against distrustful care. "Behold the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin." This, however, is far inferior to the allusions in Job and in the 19th Psalm; but it is similar in idea, and the modesty of the imagery is correspondent to the modesty of the man. CHAPTER XI - OF THE THEOLOGY OF THE CHRISTIANS; AND THE TRUE THEOLOGY. As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of atheism; a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of man-ism with but little deism, and is as near to atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious or an irreligious eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade. The effect of this obscurity has been that of turning everything upside down, and representing it in reverse; and among the revolutions it has thus magically produced, it has made a revolution in Theology. That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology. As to the theology that is now studied in its place, it is the study of human opinions and of human fancies concerning God. It is not the study of God himself in the works that he has made, but in the works or writings that man has made; and it is not among the least of the mischiefs that the Christian system has done to the world, that it has abandoned the original and beautiful system of theology, like a beautiful innocent, to distress and reproach, to make room for the hag of superstition. The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the church admits to be more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to the original system of theology. The internal evidence of those orations proves to a demonstration that the study and contemplation of the works of creation, and of the power and wisdom of God revealed and manifested in those works, made a great part of the religious devotion of the times in which they were written; and it was this devotional study and contemplation that led to the discovery of the principles upon which what are now called Sciences are established; and it is to the discovery of these principles that almost all the Arts that contribute to the convenience of human life owe their existence. Every principal art has some science for its parent, though the person who mechanically performs the work does not always, and but very seldom, perceive the connection. It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences 'human inventions;' it is only the application of them that is human. Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them. For example: Every person who looks at an almanack sees an account when an eclipse will take place, and he sees also that it never fails to take place according to the account there given. This shows that man is acquainted with the laws by which the heavenly bodies move. But it would be something worse than ignorance, were any church on earth to say that those laws are an human invention. It would also be ignorance, or something worse, to say that the scientific principles, by the aid of which man is enabled to calculate and foreknow when an eclipse will take place, are an human invention. Man cannot invent any thing that is eternal and immutable; and the scientific principles he employs for this purpose must, and are, of necessity, as eternal and immutable as the laws by which the heavenly bodies move, or they could not be used as they are to ascertain the time when, and the manner how, an eclipse will take place. The scientific principles that man employs to obtain the foreknowledge of an eclipse, or of any thing else relating to the motion of the heavenly bodies, are contained chiefly in that part of science that is called trigonometry, or the properties of a triangle, which, when applied to the study of the heavenly bodies, is called astronomy; when applied to direct the course of a ship on the ocean, it is called navigation; when applied to the construction of figures drawn by a rule and compass, it is called geometry; when applied to the construction of plans of edifices, it is called architecture; when applied to the measurement of any portion of the surface of the earth, it is called land-surveying. In fine, it is the soul of science. It is an eternal truth: it contains the mathematical demonstration of which man speaks, and the extent of its uses are unknown. It may be said, that man can make or draw a triangle, and therefore a triangle is an human invention. But the triangle, when drawn, is no other than the image of the principle: it is a delineation to the eye, and from thence to the mind, of a principle that would otherwise be imperceptible. The triangle does not make the principle, any more than a candle taken into a room that was dark, makes the chairs and tables that before were invisible. All the properties of a triangle exist independently of the figure, and existed before any triangle was drawn or thought of by man. Man had no more to do in the formation of those properties or principles, than he had to do in making the laws by which the heavenly bodies move; and therefore the one must have the same divine origin as the other. In the same manner as, it may be said, that man can make a triangle, so also, may it be said, he can make the mechanical instrument called a lever. But the principle by which the lever acts, is a thing distinct from the instrument, and would exist if the instrument did not; it attaches itself to the instrument after it is made; the instrument, therefore, can act no otherwise than it does act; neither can all the efforts of human invention make it act otherwise. That which, in all such cases, man calls the effect, is no other than the principle itself rendered perceptible to the senses. Since, then, man cannot make principles, from whence did he gain a knowledge of them, so as to be able to apply them, not only to things on earth, but to ascertain the motion of bodies so immensely distant from him as all the heavenly bodies are? From whence, I ask, could he gain that knowledge, but from the study of the true theology? It is the structure of the universe that has taught this knowledge to man. That structure is an ever-existing exhibition of every principle upon which every part of mathematical science is founded. The offspring of this science is mechanics; for mechanics is no other than the principles of science applied practically. The man who proportions the several parts of a mill uses the same scientific principles as if he had the power of constructing an universe, but as he cannot give to matter that invisible agency by which all the component parts of the immense machine of the universe have influence upon each other, and act in motional unison together, without any apparent contact, and to which man has given the name of attraction, gravitation, and repulsion, he supplies the place of that agency by the humble imitation of teeth and cogs. All the parts of man's microcosm must visibly touch. But could he gain a knowledge of that agency, so as to be able to apply it in practice, we might then say that another canonical book of the word of God had been discovered. If man could alter the properties of the lever, so also could he alter the properties of the triangle: for a lever (taking that sort of lever which is called a steel-yard, for the sake of explanation) forms, when in motion, a triangle. The line it descends from, (one point of that line being in the fulcrum,) the line it descends to, and the chord of the arc, which the end of the lever describes in the air, are the three sides of a triangle. The other arm of the lever describes also a triangle; and the corresponding sides of those two triangles, calculated scientifically, or measured geometrically,--and also the sines, tangents, and secants generated from the angles, and geometrically measured,--have the same proportions to each other as the different weights have that will balance each other on the lever, leaving the weight of the lever out of the case. It may also be said, that man can make a wheel and axis; that he can put wheels of different magnitudes together, and produce a mill. Still the case comes back to the same point, which is, that he did not make the principle that gives the wheels those powers. This principle is as unalterable as in the former cases, or rather it is the same principle under a different appearance to the eye. The power that two wheels of different magnitudes have upon each other is in the same proportion as if the semi-diameter of the two wheels were joined together and made into that kind of lever I have described, suspended at the part where the semi-diameters join; for the two wheels, scientifically considered, are no other than the two circles generated by the motion of the compound lever. It is from the study of the true theology that all our knowledge of science is derived; and it is from that knowledge that all the arts have originated. The Almighty lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the structure of the universe, has invited man to study and to imitation. It is as if he had said to the inhabitants of this globe that we call ours, "I have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and I have rendered the starry heavens visible, to teach him science and the arts. He can now provide for his own comfort, AND LEARN FROM MY MUNIFICENCE TO ALL, TO BE KIND TO EACH OTHER." Of what use is it, unless it be to teach man something, that his eye is endowed with the power of beholding, to an incomprehensible distance, an immensity of worlds revolving in the ocean of space? Or of what use is it that this immensity of worlds is visible to man? What has man to do with the Pleiades, with Orion, with Sirius, with the star he calls the north star, with the moving orbs he has named Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury, if no uses are to follow from their being visible? A less power of vision would have been sufficient for man, if the immensity he now possesses were given only to waste itself, as it were, on an immense desert of space glittering with shows. It is only by contemplating what he calls the starry heavens, as the book and school of science, that he discovers any use in their being visible to him, or any advantage resulting from his immensity of vision. But when he contemplates the subject in this light, he sees an additional motive for saying, that nothing was made in vain; for in vain would be this power of vision if it taught man nothing. CHAPTER XII - THE EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANISM ON EDUCATION; PROPOSED REFORMS. As the Christian system of faith has made a revolution in theology, so also has it made a revolution in the state of learning. That which is now called learning, was not learning originally. Learning does not consist, as the schools now make it consist, in the knowledge of languages, but in the knowledge of things to which language gives names. The Greeks were a learned people, but learning with them did not consist in speaking Greek, any more than in a Roman's speaking Latin, or a Frenchman's speaking French, or an Englishman's speaking English. From what we know of the Greeks, it does not appear that they knew or studied any language but their own, and this was one cause of their becoming so learned; it afforded them more time to apply themselves to better studies. The schools of the Greeks were schools of science and philosophy, and not of languages; and it is in the knowledge of the things that science and philosophy teach that learning consists. Almost all the scientific learning that now exists, came to us from the Greeks, or the people who spoke the Greek language. It therefore became necessary to the people of other nations, who spoke a different language, that some among them should learn the Greek language, in order that the learning the Greeks had might be made known in those nations, by translating the Greek books of science and philosophy into the mother tongue of each nation. The study, therefore, of the Greek language (and in the same manner for the Latin) was no other than the drudgery business of a linguist; and the language thus obtained, was no other than the means, or as it were the tools, employed to obtain the learning the Greeks had. It made no part of the learning itself; and was so distinct from it as to make it exceedingly probable that the persons who had studied Greek sufficiently to translate those works, such for instance as Euclid's Elements, did not understand any of the learning the works contained. As there is now nothing new to be learned from the dead languages, all the useful books being already translated, the languages are become useless, and the time expended in teaching and in learning them is wasted. So far as the study of languages may contribute to the progress and communication of knowledge (for it has nothing to do with the creation of knowledge) it is only in the living languages that new knowledge is to be found; and certain it is, that, in general, a youth will learn more of a living language in one year, than of a dead language in seven; and it is but seldom that the teacher knows much of it himself. The difficulty of learning the dead languages does not arise from any superior abstruseness in the languages themselves, but in their being dead, and the pronunciation entirely lost. It would be the same thing with any other language when it becomes dead. The best Greek linguist that now exists does not understand Greek so well as a Grecian plowman did, or a Grecian milkmaid; and the same for the Latin, compared with a plowman or a milkmaid of the Romans; and with respect to pronunciation and idiom, not so well as the cows that she milked. It would therefore be advantageous to the state of learning to abolish the study of the dead languages, and to make learning consist, as it originally did, in scientific knowledge. The apology that is sometimes made for continuing to teach the dead languages is, that they are taught at a time when a child is not capable of exerting any other mental faculty than that of memory. But this is altogether erroneous. The human mind has a natural disposition to scientific knowledge, and to the things connected with it. The first and favourite amusement of a child, even before it begins to play, is that of imitating the works of man. It builds bouses with cards or sticks; it navigates the little ocean of a bowl of water with a paper boat; or dams the stream of a gutter, and contrives something which it calls a mill; and it interests itself in the fate of its works with a care that resembles affection. It afterwards goes to school, where its genius is killed by the barren study of a dead language, and the philosopher is lost in the linguist. But the apology that is now made for continuing to teach the dead languages, could not be the cause at first of cutting down learning to the narrow and humble sphere of linguistry; the cause therefore must be sought for elsewhere. In all researches of this kind, the best evidence that can be produced, is the internal evidence the thing carries with itself, and the evidence of circumstances that unites with it; both of which, in this case, are not difficult to be discovered. Putting then aside, as matter of distinct consideration, the outrage offered to the moral justice of God, by supposing him to make the innocent suffer for the guilty, and also the loose morality and low contrivance of supposing him to change himself into the shape of a man, in order to make an excuse to himself for not executing his supposed sentence upon Adam; putting, I say, those things aside as matter of distinct consideration, it is certain that what is called the christian system of faith, including in it the whimsical account of the creation--the strange story of Eve, the snake, and the apple--the amphibious idea of a man-god--the corporeal idea of the death of a god--the mythological idea of a family of gods, and the christian system of arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three, are all irreconcilable, not only to the divine gift of reason, that God has given to man, but to the knowledge that man gains of the power and wisdom of God by the aid of the sciences, and by studying the structure of the universe that God has made. The setters up, therefore, and the advocates of the Christian system of faith, could not but foresee that the continually progressive knowledge that man would gain by the aid of science, of the power and wisdom of God, manifested in the structure of the universe, and in all the works of creation, would militate against, and call into question, the truth of their system of faith; and therefore it became necessary to their purpose to cut learning down to a size less dangerous to their project, and this they effected by restricting the idea of learning to the dead study of dead languages. They not only rejected the study of science out of the christian schools, but they persecuted it; and it is only within about the last two centuries that the study has been revived. So late as 1610, Galileo, a Florentine, discovered and introduced the use of telescopes, and by applying them to observe the motions and appearances of the heavenly bodies, afforded additional means for ascertaining the true structure of the universe. Instead of being esteemed for these discoveries, he was sentenced to renounce them, or the opinions resulting from them, as a damnable heresy. And prior to that time Virgilius was condemned to be burned for asserting the antipodes, or in other words, that the earth was a globe, and habitable in every part where there was land; yet the truth of this is now too well known even to be told. [NOTE: I cannot discover the source of this statement concerning the ancient author whose Irish name Feirghill was Latinized into Virgilius. The British Museum possesses a copy of the work (Decalogiunt) which was the pretext of the charge of heresy made by Boniface, Archbishop of Mayence, against Virgilius, Abbot--bishop of Salzburg, These were leaders of the rival "British" and "Roman parties, and the British champion made a countercharge against Boniface of irreligious practices." Boniface had to express a "regret," but none the less pursued his rival. The Pope, Zachary II., decided that if his alleged "doctrine, against God and his soul, that beneath the earth there is another world, other men, or sun and moon," should be acknowledged by Virgilius, he should be excommunicated by a Council and condemned with canonical sanctions. Whatever may have been the fate involved by condemnation with "canonicis sanctionibus," in the middle of the eighth century, it did not fall on Virgilius. His accuser, Boniface, was martyred, 755, and it is probable that Virgilius harmonied his Antipodes with orthodoxy. The gravamen of the heresy seems to have been the suggestion that there were men not of the progeny of Adam. Virgilius was made Bishop of Salzburg in 768. He bore until his death, 789, the curious title, "Geometer and Solitary," or "lone wayfarer" (Solivagus). A suspicion of heresy clung to his memory until 1233, when he was raised by Gregory IX, to sainthood beside his accuser, St. Boniface.--Editor. (Conway)] If the belief of errors not morally bad did no mischief, it would make no part of the moral duty of man to oppose and remove them. There was no moral ill in believing the earth was flat like a trencher, any more than there was moral virtue in believing it was round like a globe; neither was there any moral ill in believing that the Creator made no other world than this, any more than there was moral virtue in believing that he made millions, and that the infinity of space is filled with worlds. But when a system of religion is made to grow out of a supposed system of creation that is not true, and to unite itself therewith in a manner almost inseparable therefrom, the case assumes an entirely different ground. It is then that errors, not morally bad, become fraught with the same mischiefs as if they were. It is then that the truth, though otherwise indifferent itself, becomes an essential, by becoming the criterion that either confirms by corresponding evidence, or denies by contradictory evidence, the reality of the religion itself. In this view of the case it is the moral duty of man to obtain every possible evidence that the structure of the heavens, or any other part of creation affords, with respect to systems of religion. But this, the supporters or partizans of the christian system, as if dreading the result, incessantly opposed, and not only rejected the sciences, but persecuted the professors. Had Newton or Descartes lived three or four hundred years ago, and pursued their studies as they did, it is most probable they would not have lived to finish them; and had Franklin drawn lightning from the clouds at the same time, it would have been at the hazard of expiring for it in flames. Later times have laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals, but, however unwilling the partizans of the Christian system may be to believe or to acknowledge it, it is nevertheless true, that the age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system. There was more knowledge in the world before that period, than for many centuries afterwards; and as to religious knowledge, the Christian system, as already said, was only another species of mythology; and the mythology to which it succeeded, was a corruption of an ancient system of theism. [NOTE by Paine: It is impossible for us now to know at what time the heathen mythology began; but it is certain, from the internal evidence that it carries, that it did not begin in the same state or condition in which it ended. All the gods of that mythology, except Saturn, were of modern invention. The supposed reign of Saturn was prior to that which is called the heathen mythology, and was so far a species of theism that it admitted the belief of only one God. Saturn is supposed to have abdicated the govemment in favour of his three sons and one daughter, Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune, and Juno; after this, thousands of other gods and demigods were imaginarily created, and the calendar of gods increased as fast as the calendar of saints and the calendar of courts have increased since. All the corruptions that have taken place, in theology and in religion have been produced by admitting of what man calls 'revealed religion.' The mythologists pretended to more revealed religion than the christians do. They had their oracles and their priests, who were supposed to receive and deliver the word of God verbally on almost all occasions. Since then all corruptions down from Moloch to modern predestinarianism, and the human sacrifices of the heathens to the christian sacrifice of the Creator, have been produced by admitting of what is called revealed religion, the most effectual means to prevent all such evils and impositions is, not to admit of any other revelation than that which is manifested in the book of Creation., and to contemplate the Creation as the only true and real word of God that ever did or ever will exist; and every thing else called the word of God is fable and imposition.--Author.] It is owing to this long interregnum of science, and to no other cause, that we have now to look back through a vast chasm of many hundred years to the respectable characters we call the Ancients. Had the progression of knowledge gone on proportionably with the stock that before existed, that chasm would have been filled up with characters rising superior in knowledge to each other; and those Ancients we now so much admire would have appeared respectably in the background of the scene. But the christian system laid all waste; and if we take our stand about the beginning of the sixteenth century, we look back through that long chasm, to the times of the Ancients, as over a vast sandy desert, in which not a shrub appears to intercept the vision to the fertile hills beyond. It is an inconsistency scarcely possible to be credited, that any thing should exist, under the name of a religion, that held it to be irreligious to study and contemplate the structure of the universe that God had made. But the fact is too well established to be denied. The event that served more than any other to break the first link in this long chain of despotic ignorance, is that known by the name of the Reformation by Luther. From that time, though it does not appear to have made any part of the intention of Luther, or of those who are called Reformers, the Sciences began to revive, and Liberality, their natural associate, began to appear. This was the only public good the Reformation did; for, with respect to religious good, it might as well not have taken place. The mythology still continued the same; and a multiplicity of National Popes grew out of the downfall of the Pope of Christendom. CHAPTER XIII - COMPARISON OF CHRISTIANISM WITH THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS INSPIRED BY NATURE. HAVING thus shewn, from the internal evidence of things, the cause that produced a change in the state of learning, and the motive for substituting the study of the dead languages, in the place of the Sciences, I proceed, in addition to the several observations already made in the former part of this work, to compare, or rather to confront, the evidence that the structure of the universe affords, with the christian system of religion. But as I cannot begin this part better than by referring to the ideas that occurred to me at an early part of life, and which I doubt not have occurred in some degree to almost every other person at one time or other, I shall state what those ideas were, and add thereto such other matter as shall arise out of the subject, giving to the whole, by way of preface, a short introduction. My father being of the quaker profession, it was my good fortune to have an exceedingly good moral education, and a tolerable stock of useful learning. Though I went to the grammar school, I did not learn Latin, not only because I had no inclination to learn languages, but because of the objection the quakers have against the books in which the language is taught. But this did not prevent me from being acquainted with the subjects of all the Latin books used in the school. The natural bent of my mind was to science. I had some turn, and I believe some talent for poetry; but this I rather repressed than encouraged, as leading too much into the field of imagination. As soon as I was able, I purchased a pair of globes, and attended the philosophical lectures of Martin and Ferguson, and became afterwards acquainted with Dr. Bevis, of the society called the Royal Society, then living in the Temple, and an excellent astronomer. I had no disposition for what was called politics. It presented to my mind no other idea than is contained in the word jockeyship. When, therefore, I turned my thoughts towards matters of government, I had to form a system for myself, that accorded with the moral and philosophic principles in which I had been educated. I saw, or at least I thought I saw, a vast scene opening itself to the world in the affairs of America; and it appeared to me, that unless the Americans changed the plan they were then pursuing, with respect to the government of England, and declared themselves independent, they would not only involve themselves in a multiplicity of new difficulties, but shut out the prospect that was then offering itself to mankind through their means. It was from these motives that I published the work known by the name of Common Sense, which is the first work I ever did publish, and so far as I can judge of myself, I believe I should never have been known in the world as an author on any subject whatever, had it not been for the affairs of America. I wrote Common Sense the latter end of the year 1775, and published it the first of January, 1776. Independence was declared the fourth of July following. [NOTE: The pamphlet Common Sense was first advertised, as "just published," on January 10, 1776. His plea for the Officers of Excise, written before leaving England, was printed, but not published until 1793. Despite his reiterated assertion that Common Sense was the first work he ever published the notion that he was "junius" still finds some believers. An indirect comment on our Paine-Junians may be found in Part 2 of this work where Paine says a man capable of writing Homer "would not have thrown away his own fame by giving it to another." It is probable that Paine ascribed the Letters of Junius to Thomas Hollis. His friend F. Lanthenas, in his translation of the Age of Reason (1794) advertises his translation of the Letters of Junius from the English "(Thomas Hollis)." This he could hardly have done without consultation with Paine. Unfortunately this translation of Junius cannot be found either in the Bibliotheque Nationale or the British Museum, and it cannot be said whether it contains any attempt at an identification of Junius--Editor.] Any person, who has made observations on the state and progress of the human mind, by observing his own, can not but have observed, that there are two distinct classes of what are called Thoughts; those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking, and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord. I have always made it a rule to treat those voluntary visitors with civility, taking care to examine, as well as I was able, if they were worth entertaining; and it is from them I have acquired almost all the knowledge that I have. As to the learning that any person gains from school education, it serves only, like a small capital, to put him in the way of beginning learning for himself afterwards. Every person of learning is finally his own teacher; the reason of which is, that principles, being of a distinct quality to circumstances, cannot be impressed upon the memory; their place of mental residence is the understanding, and they are never so lasting as when they begin by conception. Thus much for the introductory part. From the time I was capable of conceiving an idea, and acting upon it by reflection, I either doubted the truth of the christian system, or thought it to be a strange affair; I scarcely knew which it was: but I well remember, when about seven or eight years of age, hearing a sermon read by a relation of mine, who was a great devotee of the church, upon the subject of what is called Redemption by the death of the Son of God. After the sermon was ended, I went into the garden, and as I was going down the garden steps (for I perfectly recollect the spot) I revolted at the recollection of what I had heard, and thought to myself that it was making God Almighty act like a passionate man, that killed his son, when he could not revenge himself any other way; and as I was sure a man would be hanged that did such a thing, I could not see for what purpose they preached such sermons. This was not one of those kind of thoughts that had any thing in it of childish levity; it was to me a serious reflection, arising from the idea I had that God was too good to do such an action, and also too almighty to be under any necessity of doing it. I believe in the same manner to this moment; and I moreover believe, that any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system. It seems as if parents of the christian profession were ashamed to tell their children any thing about the principles of their religion. They sometimes instruct them in morals, and talk to them of the goodness of what they call Providence; for the Christian mythology has five deities: there is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the God Providence, and the Goddess Nature. But the christian story of God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it, (for that is the plain language of the story,) cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind happier and better, is making the story still worse; as if mankind could be improved by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a mystery, is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it. How different is this to the pure and simple profession of Deism! The true deist has but one Deity; and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavouring to imitate him in every thing moral, scientifical, and mechanical. The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true Deism, in the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the quakers: but they have contracted themselves too much by leaving the works of God out of their system. Though I reverence their philanthropy, I can not help smiling at the conceit, that if the taste of a quaker could have been consulted at the creation, what a silent and drab-colored creation it would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a bird been permitted to sing. Quitting these reflections, I proceed to other matters. After I had made myself master of the use of the globes, and of the orrery, [NOTE by Paine: As this book may fall into the bands of persons who do not know what an orrery is, it is for their information I add this note, as the name gives no idea of the uses of the thing. The orrery has its name from the person who invented it. It is a machinery of clock-work, representing the universe in miniature: and in which the revolution of the earth round itself and round the sun, the revolution of the moon round the earth, the revolution of the planets round the sun, their relative distances from the sun, as the center of the whole system, their relative distances from each other, and their different magnitudes, are represented as they really exist in what we call the heavens.--Author.] and conceived an idea of the infinity of space, and of the eternal divisibility of matter, and obtained, at least, a general knowledge of what was called natural philosophy, I began to compare, or, as I have before said, to confront, the internal evidence those things afford with the christian system of faith. Though it is not a direct article of the christian system that this world that we inhabit is the whole of the habitable creation, yet it is so worked up therewith, from what is called the Mosaic account of the creation, the story of Eve and the apple, and the counterpart of that story, the death of the Son of God, that to believe otherwise, that is, to believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the christian system of faith at once little and ridiculous; and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air. The two beliefs can not be held together in the same mind; and he who thinks that he believes both, has thought but little of either. Though the belief of a plurality of worlds was familiar to the ancients, it is only within the last three centuries that the extent and dimensions of this globe that we inhabit have been ascertained. Several vessels, following the tract of the ocean, have sailed entirely round the world, as a man may march in a circle, and come round by the contrary side of the circle to the spot he set out from. The circular dimensions of our world, in the widest part, as a man would measure the widest round of an apple, or a ball, is only twenty-five thousand and twenty English miles, reckoning sixty-nine miles and an half to an equatorial degree, and may be sailed round in the space of about three years. [NOTE by Paine: Allowing a ship to sail, on an average, three miles in an hour, she would sail entirely round the world in less than one year, if she could sail in a direct circle, but she is obliged to follow the course of the ocean.--Author.] A world of this extent may, at first thought, appear to us to be great; but if we compare it with the immensity of space in which it is suspended, like a bubble or a balloon in the air, it is infinitely less in proportion than the smallest grain of sand is to the size of the world, or the finest particle of dew to the whole ocean, and is therefore but small; and, as will be hereafter shown, is only one of a system of worlds, of which the universal creation is composed. It is not difficult to gain some faint idea of the immensity of space in which this and all the other worlds are suspended, if we follow a progression of ideas. When we think of the size or dimensions of, a room, our ideas limit themselves to the walls, and there they stop. But when our eye, or our imagination darts into space, that is, when it looks upward into what we call the open air, we cannot conceive any walls or boundaries it can have; and if for the sake of resting our ideas we suppose a boundary, the question immediately renews itself, and asks, what is beyond that boundary? and in the same manner, what beyond the next boundary? and so on till the fatigued imagination returns and says, there is no end. Certainly, then, the Creator was not pent for room when he made this world no larger than it is; and we have to seek the reason in something else. If we take a survey of our own world, or rather of this, of which the Creator has given us the use as our portion in the immense system of creation, we find every part of it, the earth, the waters, and the air that surround it, filled, and as it were crowded with life, down from the largest animals that we know of to the smallest insects the naked eye can behold, and from thence to others still smaller, and totally invisible without the assistance of the microscope. Every tree, every plant, every leaf, serves not only as an habitation, but as a world to some numerous race, till animal existence becomes so exceedingly refined, that the effluvia of a blade of grass would be food for thousands. Since then no part of our earth is left unoccupied, why is it to be supposed that the immensity of space is a naked void, lying in eternal waste? There is room for millions of worlds as large or larger than ours, and each of them millions of miles apart from each other. Having now arrived at this point, if we carry our ideas only one thought further, we shall see, perhaps, the true reason, at least a very good reason for our happiness, why the Creator, instead of making one immense world, extending over an immense quantity of space, has preferred dividing that quantity of matter into several distinct and separate worlds, which we call planets, of which our earth is one. But before I explain my ideas upon this subject, it is necessary (not for the sake of those that already know, but for those who do not) to show what the system of the universe is. CHAPTER XIV - SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE. THAT part of the universe that is called the solar system (meaning the system of worlds to which our earth belongs, and of which Sol, or in English language, the Sun, is the center) consists, besides the Sun, of six distinct orbs, or planets, or worlds, besides the secondary bodies, called the satellites, or moons, of which our earth has one that attends her in her annual revolution round the Sun, in like manner as the other satellites or moons, attend the planets or worlds to which they severally belong, as may be seen by the assistance of the telescope. The Sun is the center round which those six worlds or planets revolve at different distances therefrom, and in circles concentric to each other. Each world keeps constantly in nearly the same tract round the Sun, and continues at the same time turning round itself, in nearly an upright position, as a top turns round itself when it is spinning on the ground, and leans a little sideways. It is this leaning of the earth (23 1/2 degrees) that occasions summer and winter, and the different length of days and nights. If the earth turned round itself in a position perpendicular to the plane or level of the circle it moves in round the Sun, as a top turns round when it stands erect on the ground, the days and nights would be always of the same length, twelve hours day and twelve hours night, and the season would be uniformly the same throughout the year. Every time that a planet (our earth for example) turns round itself, it makes what we call day and night; and every time it goes entirely round the Sun, it makes what we call a year, consequently our world turns three hundred and sixty-five times round itself, in going once round the Sun. The names that the ancients gave to those six worlds, and which are still called by the same names, are Mercury, Venus, this world that we call ours, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They appear larger to the eye than the stars, being many million miles nearer to our earth than any of the stars are. The planet Venus is that which is called the evening star, and sometimes the morning star, as she happens to set after, or rise before the Sun, which in either case is never more than three hours. The Sun as before said being the center, the planet or world nearest the Sun is Mercury; his distance from the Sun is thirty-four million miles, and he moves round in a circle always at that distance from the Sun, as a top may be supposed to spin round in the tract in which a horse goes in a mill. The second world is Venus; she is fifty-seven million miles distant from the Sun, and consequently moves round in a circle much greater than that of Mercury. The third world is this that we inhabit, and which is eighty-eight million miles distant from the Sun, and consequently moves round in a circle greater than that of Venus. The fourth world is Mars; he is distant from the sun one hundred and thirty-four million miles, and consequently moves round in a circle greater than that of our earth. The fifth is Jupiter; he is distant from the Sun five hundred and fifty-seven million miles, and consequently moves round in a circle greater than that of Mars. The sixth world is Saturn; he is distant from the Sun seven hundred and sixty-three million miles, and consequently moves round in a circle that surrounds the circles or orbits of all the other worlds or planets. The space, therefore, in the air, or in the immensity of space, that our solar system takes up for the several worlds to perform their revolutions in round the Sun, is of the extent in a strait line of the whole diameter of the orbit or circle in which Saturn moves round the Sun, which being double his distance from the Sun, is fifteen hundred and twenty-six million miles; and its circular extent is nearly five thousand million; and its globical content is almost three thousand five hundred million times three thousand five hundred million square miles. [NOTE by Paine: If it should be asked, how can man know these things? I have one plain answer to give, which is, that man knows how to calculate an eclipse, and also how to calculate to a minute of time when the planet Venus, in making her revolutions round the Sun, will come in a strait line between our earth and the Sun, and will appear to us about the size of a large pea passing across the face of the Sun. This happens but twice in about a hundred years, at the distance of about eight years from each other, and has happened twice in our time, both of which were foreknown by calculation. It can also be known when they will happen again for a thousand years to come, or to any other portion of time. As therefore, man could not be able to do these things if he did not understand the solar system, and the manner in which the revolutions of the several planets or worlds are performed, the fact of calculating an eclipse, or a transit of Venus, is a proof in point that the knowledge exists; and as to a few thousand, or even a few million miles, more or less, it makes scarcely any sensible difference in such immense distances.--Author.] But this, immense as it is, is only one system of worlds. Beyond this, at a vast distance into space, far beyond all power of calculation, are the stars called the fixed stars. They are called fixed, because they have no revolutionary motion, as the six worlds or planets have that I have been describing. Those fixed stars continue always at the same distance from each other, and always in the same place, as the Sun does in the center of our system. The probability, therefore, is that each of those fixed stars is also a Sun, round which another system of worlds or planets, though too remote for us to discover, performs its revolutions, as our system of worlds does round our central Sun. By this easy progression of ideas, the immensity of space will appear to us to be filled with systems of worlds; and that no part of space lies at waste, any more than any part of our globe of earth and water is left unoccupied. Having thus endeavoured to convey, in a familiar and easy manner, some idea of the structure of the universe, I return to explain what I before alluded to, namely, the great benefits arising to man in consequence of the Creator having made a Plurality of worlds, such as our system is, consisting of a central Sun and six worlds, besides satellites, in preference to that of creating one world only of a vast extent. CHAPTER XV - ADVANTAGES OF THE EXISTENCE OF MANY WORLDS IN EACH SOLAR SYSTEM. IT is an idea I have never lost sight of, that all our knowledge of science is derived from the revolutions (exhibited to our eye and from thence to our understanding) which those several planets or worlds of which our system is composed make in their circuit round the Sun. Had then the quantity of matter which these six worlds contain been blended into one solitary globe, the consequence to us would have been, that either no revolutionary motion would have existed, or not a sufficiency of it to give us the ideas and the knowledge of science we now have; and it is from the sciences that all the mechanical arts that contribute so much to our earthly felicity and comfort are derived. As therefore the Creator made nothing in vain, so also must it be believed that he organized the structure of the universe in the most advantageous manner for the benefit of man; and as we see, and from experience feel, the benefits we derive from the structure of the universe, formed as it is, which benefits we should not have had the opportunity of enjoying if the structure, so far as relates to our system, had been a solitary globe, we can discover at least one reason why a plurality of worlds has been made, and that reason calls forth the devotional gratitude of man, as well as his admiration. But it is not to us, the inhabitants of this globe, only, that the benefits arising from a plurality of worlds are limited. The inhabitants of each of the worlds of which our system is composed, enjoy the same opportunities of knowledge as we do. They behold the revolutionary motions of our earth, as we behold theirs. All the planets revolve in sight of each other; and, therefore, the same universal school of science presents itself to all. Neither does the knowledge stop here. The system of worlds next to us exhibits, in its revolutions, the same principles and school of science, to the inhabitants of their system, as our system does to us, and in like manner throughout the immensity of space. Our ideas, not only of the almightiness of the Creator, but of his wisdom and his beneficence, become enlarged in proportion as we contemplate the extent and the structure of the universe. The solitary idea of a solitary world, rolling or at rest in the immense ocean of space, gives place to the cheerful idea of a society of worlds, so happily contrived as to administer, even by their motion, instruction to man. We see our own earth filled with abundance; but we forget to consider how much of that abundance is owing to the scientific knowledge the vast machinery of the universe has unfolded. CHAPTER XVI - APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING TO THE SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIANS. BUT, in the midst of those reflections, what are we to think of the christian system of faith that forms itself upon the idea of only one world, and that of no greater extent, as is before shown, than twenty-five thousand miles. An extent which a man, walking at the rate of three miles an hour for twelve hours in the day, could he keep on in a circular direction, would walk entirely round in less than two years. Alas! what is this to the mighty ocean of space, and the almighty power of the Creator! From whence then could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependent on his protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple! And, on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world in the boundless creation had an Eve, an apple, a serpent, and a redeemer? In this case, the person who is irreverently called the Son of God, and sometimes God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of death, with scarcely a momentary interval of life. It has been by rejecting the evidence, that the word, or works of God in the creation, affords to our senses, and the action of our reason upon that evidence, that so many wild and whimsical systems of faith, and of religion, have been fabricated and set up. There may be many systems of religion that so far from being morally bad are in many respects morally good: but there can be but ONE that is true; and that one necessarily must, as it ever will, be in all things consistent with the ever existing word of God that we behold in his works. But such is the strange construction of the christian system of faith, that every evidence the heavens affords to man, either directly contradicts it or renders it absurd. It is possible to believe, and I always feel pleasure in encouraging myself to believe it, that there have been men in the world who persuaded themselves that what is called a pious fraud, might, at least under particular circumstances, be productive of some good. But the fraud being once established, could not afterwards be explained; for it is with a pious fraud as with a bad action, it begets a calamitous necessity of going on. The persons who first preached the christian system of faith, and in some measure combined with it the morality preached by Jesus Christ, might persuade themselves that it was better than the heathen mythology that then prevailed. From the first preachers the fraud went on to the second, and to the third, till the idea of its being a pious fraud became lost in the belief of its being true; and that belief became again encouraged by the interest of those who made a livelihood by preaching it. But though such a belief might, by such means, be rendered almost general among the laity, it is next to impossible to account for the continual persecution carried on by the church, for several hundred years, against the sciences, and against the professors of science, if the church had not some record or tradition that it was originally no other than a pious fraud, or did not foresee that it could not be maintained against the evidence that the structure of the universe afforded. CHAPTER XVII - OF THE MEANS EMPLOYED IN ALL TIME, AND ALMOST UNIVERSALLY, TO DECEIVE THE PEOPLES. HAVING thus shown the irreconcileable inconsistencies between the real word of God existing in the universe, and that which is called the word of God, as shown to us in a printed book that any man might make, I proceed to speak of the three principal means that have been employed in all ages, and perhaps in all countries, to impose upon mankind. Those three means are Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy, The first two are incompatible with true religion, and the third ought always to be suspected. With respect to Mystery, everything we behold is, in one sense, a mystery to us. Our own existence is a mystery: the whole vegetable world is a mystery. We cannot account how it is that an acorn, when put into the ground, is made to develop itself and become an oak. We know not how it is that the seed we sow unfolds and multiplies itself, and returns to us such an abundant interest for so small a capital. The fact however, as distinct from the operating cause, is not a mystery, because we see it; and we know also the means we are to use, which is no other than putting the seed in the ground. We know, therefore, as much as is necessary for us to know; and that part of the operation that we do not know, and which if we did, we could not perform, the Creator takes upon himself and performs it for us. We are, therefore, better off than if we had been let into the secret, and left to do it for ourselves. But though every created thing is, in this sense, a mystery, the word mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity can be applied to light. The God in whom we believe is a God of moral truth, and not a God of mystery or obscurity. Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion. Truth never envelops itself in mystery; and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped, is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself. Religion, therefore, being the belief of a God, and the practice of moral truth, cannot have connection with mystery. The belief of a God, so far from having any thing of mystery in it, is of all beliefs the most easy, because it arises to us, as is before observed, out of necessity. And the practice of moral truth, or, in other words, a practical imitation of the moral goodness of God, is no other than our acting towards each other as he acts benignly towards all. We cannot serve God in the manner we serve those who cannot do without such service; and, therefore, the only idea we can have of serving God, is that of contributing to the happiness of the living creation that God has made. This cannot be done by retiring ourselves from the society of the world, and spending a recluse life in selfish devotion. The very nature and design of religion, if I may so express it, prove even to demonstration that it must be free from every thing of mystery, and unincumbered with every thing that is mysterious. Religion, considered as a duty, is incumbent upon every living soul alike, and, therefore, must be on a level to the understanding and comprehension of all. Man does not learn religion as he learns the secrets and mysteries of a trade. He learns the theory of religion by reflection. It arises out of the action of his own mind upon the things which he sees, or upon what he may happen to hear or to read, and the practice joins itself thereto. When men, whether from policy or pious fraud, set up systems of religion incompatible with the word or works of God in the creation, and not only above but repugnant to human comprehension, they were under the necessity of inventing or adopting a word that should serve as a bar to all questions, inquiries and speculations. The word mystery answered this purpose, and thus it has happened that religion, which is in itself without mystery, has been corrupted into a fog of mysteries. As mystery answered all general purposes, miracle followed as an occasional auxiliary. The former served to bewilder the mind, the latter to puzzle the senses. The one was the lingo, the other the legerdemain. But before going further into this subject, it will be proper to inquire what is to be understood by a miracle. In the same sense that every thing may be said to be a mystery, so also may it be said that every thing is a miracle, and that no one thing is a greater miracle than another. The elephant, though larger, is not a greater miracle than a mite: nor a mountain a greater miracle than an atom. To an almighty power it is no more difficult to make the one than the other, and no more difficult to make a million of worlds than to make one. Every thing, therefore, is a miracle, in one sense; whilst, in the other sense, there is no such thing as a miracle. It is a miracle when compared to our power, and to our comprehension. It is not a miracle compared to the power that performs it. But as nothing in this description conveys the idea that is affixed to the word miracle, it is necessary to carry the inquiry further. Mankind have conceived to themselves certain laws, by which what they call nature is supposed to act; and that a miracle is something contrary to the operation and effect of those laws. But unless we know the whole extent of those laws, and of what are commonly called the powers of nature, we are not able to judge whether any thing that may appear to us wonderful or miraculous, be within, or be beyond, or be contrary to, her natural power of acting. The ascension of a man several miles high into the air, would have everything in it that constitutes the idea of a miracle, if it were not known that a species of air can be generated several times lighter than the common atmospheric air, and yet possess elasticity enough to prevent the balloon, in which that light air is inclosed, from being compressed into as many times less bulk, by the common air that surrounds it. In like manner, extracting flashes or sparks of fire from the human body, as visibly as from a steel struck with a flint, and causing iron or steel to move without any visible agent, would also give the idea of a miracle, if we were not acquainted with electricity and magnetism; so also would many other experiments in natural philosophy, to those who are not acquainted with the subject. The restoring persons to life who are to appearance dead as is practised upon drowned persons, would also be a miracle, if it were not known that animation is capable of being suspended without being extinct. Besides these, there are performances by slight of hand, and by persons acting in concert, that have a miraculous appearance, which, when known, are thought nothing of. And, besides these, there are mechanical and optical deceptions. There is now an exhibition in Paris of ghosts or spectres, which, though it is not imposed upon the spectators as a fact, has an astonishing appearance. As, therefore, we know not the extent to which either nature or art can go, there is no criterion to determine what a miracle is; and mankind, in giving credit to appearances, under the idea of their being miracles, are subject to be continually imposed upon. Since then appearances are so capable of deceiving, and things not real have a strong resemblance to things that are, nothing can be more inconsistent than to suppose that the Almighty would make use of means, such as are called miracles, that would subject the person who performed them to the suspicion of being an impostor, and the person who related them to be suspected of lying, and the doctrine intended to be supported thereby to be suspected as a fabulous invention. Of all the modes of evidence that ever were invented to obtain belief to any system or opinion to which the name of religion has been given, that of miracle, however successful the imposition may have been, is the most inconsistent. For, in the first place, whenever recourse is had to show, for the purpose of procuring that belief (for a miracle, under any idea of the word, is a show) it implies a lameness or weakness in the doctrine that is preached. And, in the second place, it is degrading the Almighty into the character of a show-man, playing tricks to amuse and make the people stare and wonder. It is also the most equivocal sort of evidence that can be set up; for the belief is not to depend upon the thing called a miracle, but upon the credit of the reporter, who says that he saw it; and, therefore, the thing, were it true, would have no better chance of being believed than if it were a lie. Suppose I were to say, that when I sat down to write this book, a hand presented itself in the air, took up the pen and wrote every word that is herein written; would any body believe me? Certainly they would not. Would they believe me a whit the more if the thing had been a fact? Certainly they would not. Since then a real miracle, were it to happen, would be subject to the same fate as the falsehood, the inconsistency becomes the greater of supposing the Almighty would make use of means that would not answer the purpose for which they were intended, even if they were real. If we are to suppose a miracle to be something so entirely out of the course of what is called nature, that she must go out of that course to accomplish it, and we see an account given of such a miracle by the person who said he saw it, it raises a question in the mind very easily decided, which is,--Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is, therefore, at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie. The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is large enough to do it, borders greatly on the marvellous; but it would have approached nearer to the idea of a miracle, if Jonah had swallowed the whale. In this, which may serve for all cases of miracles, the matter would decide itself as before stated, namely, Is it more probable that a man should have, swallowed a whale, or told a lie? But suppose that Jonah had really swallowed the whale, and gone with it in his belly to Nineveh, and to convince the people that it was true have cast it up in their sight, of the full length and size of a whale, would they not have believed him to have been the devil instead of a prophet? or if the whale had carried Jonah to Nineveh, and cast him up in the same public manner, would they not have believed the whale to have been the devil, and Jonah one of his imps? The most extraordinary of all the things called miracles, related in the New Testament, is that of the devil flying away with Jesus Christ, and carrying him to the top of a high mountain; and to the top of the highest pinnacle of the temple, and showing him and promising to him all the kingdoms of the world. How happened it that he did not discover America? or is it only with kingdoms that his sooty highness has any interest. I have too much respect for the moral character of Christ to believe that he told this whale of a miracle himself: neither is it easy to account for what purpose it could have been fabricated, unless it were to impose upon the connoisseurs of miracles, as is sometimes practised upon the connoisseurs of Queen Anne's farthings, and collectors of relics and antiquities; or to render the belief of miracles ridiculous, by outdoing miracle, as Don Quixote outdid chivalry; or to embarrass the belief of miracles, by making it doubtful by what power, whether of God or of the devil, any thing called a miracle was performed. It requires, however, a great deal of faith in the devil to believe this miracle. In every point of view in which those things called miracles can be placed and considered, the reality of them is improbable, and their existence unnecessary. They would not, as before observed, answer any useful purpose, even if they were true; for it is more difficult to obtain belief to a miracle, than to a principle evidently moral, without any miracle. Moral principle speaks universally for itself. Miracle could be but a thing of the moment, and seen but by a few; after this it requires a transfer of faith from God to man to believe a miracle upon man's report. Instead, therefore, of admitting the recitals of miracles as evidence of any system of religion being true, they ought to be considered as symptoms of its being fabulous. It is necessary to the full and upright character of truth that it rejects the crutch; and it is consistent with the character of fable to seek the aid that truth rejects. Thus much for Mystery and Miracle. As Mystery and Miracle took charge of the past and the present, Prophecy took charge of the future, and rounded the tenses of faith. It was not sufficient to know what had been done, but what would be done. The supposed prophet was the supposed historian of times to come; and if he happened, in shooting with a long bow of a thousand years, to strike within a thousand miles of a mark, the ingenuity of posterity could make it point-blank; and if he happened to be directly wrong, it was only to suppose, as in the case of Jonah and Nineveh, that God had repented himself and changed his mind. What a fool do fabulous systems make of man! It has been shewn, in a former part of this work, that the original meaning of the words prophet and prophesying has been changed, and that a prophet, in the sense of the word as now used, is a creature of modern invention; and it is owing to this change in the meaning of the words, that the flights and metaphors of the Jewish poets, and phrases and expressions now rendered obscure by our not being acquainted with the local circumstances to which they applied at the time they were used, have been erected into prophecies, and made to bend to explanations at the will and whimsical conceits of sectaries, expounders, and commentators. Every thing unintelligible was prophetical, and every thing insignificant was typical. A blunder would have served for a prophecy; and a dish-clout for a type. If by a prophet we are to suppose a man to whom the Almighty communicated some event that would take place in future, either there were such men, or there were not. If there were, it is consistent to believe that the event so communicated would be told in terms that could be understood, and not related in such a loose and obscure manner as to be out of the comprehension of those that heard it, and so equivocal as to fit almost any circumstance that might happen afterwards. It is conceiving very irreverently of the Almighty, to suppose he would deal in this jesting manner with mankind; yet all the things called prophecies in the book called the Bible come under this description. But it is with Prophecy as it is with Miracle. It could not answer the purpose even if it were real. Those to whom a prophecy should be told could not tell whether the man prophesied or lied, or whether it had been revealed to him, or whether he conceited it; and if the thing that he prophesied, or pretended to prophesy, should happen, or some thing like it, among the multitude of things that are daily happening, nobody could again know whether he foreknew it, or guessed at it, or whether it was accidental. A prophet, therefore, is a character useless and unnecessary; and the safe side of the case is to guard against being imposed upon, by not giving credit to such relations. Upon the whole, Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy, are appendages that belong to fabulous and not to true religion. They are the means by which so many Lo heres! and Lo theres! have been spread about the world, and religion been made into a trade. The success of one impostor gave encouragement to another, and the quieting salvo of doing some good by keeping up a pious fraud protected them from remorse. RECAPITULATION. HAVING now extended the subject to a greater length than I first intended, I shall bring it to a close by abstracting a summary from the whole. First, That the idea or belief of a word of God existing in print, or in writing, or in speech, is inconsistent in itself for the reasons already assigned. These reasons, among many others, are the want of an universal language; the mutability of language; the errors to which translations are subject, the possibility of totally suppressing such a word; the probability of altering it, or of fabricating the whole, and imposing it upon the world. Secondly, That the Creation we behold is the real and ever existing word of God, in which we cannot be deceived. It proclaimeth his power, it demonstrates his wisdom, it manifests his goodness and beneficence. Thirdly, That the moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God manifested in the creation towards all his creatures. That seeing as we daily do the goodness of God to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practise the same towards each other; and, consequently, that every thing of persecution and revenge between man and man, and every thing of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty. I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. I content myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the power that gave me existence is able to continue it, in any form and manner he pleases, either with or without this body; and it appears more probable to me that I shall continue to exist hereafter than that I should have had existence, as I now have, before that existence began. It is certain that, in one point, all nations of the earth and all religions agree. All believe in a God. The things in which they disgrace are the redundancies annexed to that belief; and therefore, if ever an universal religion should prevail, it will not be believing any thing new, but in getting rid of redundancies, and believing as man believed at first. ["In the childhood of the world," according to the first (French) version; and the strict translation of the final sentence is: "Deism was the religion of Adam, supposing him not an imaginary being; but none the less must it be left to all men to follow, as is their right, the religion and worship they prefer."--Editor.] Adam, if ever there was such a man, was created a Deist; but in the mean time, let every man follow, as he has a right to do, the religion and worship he prefers. END OF PART I THE AGE OF REASON - PART II Contents * Preface * Chapter I - The Old Testament * Chapter II - The New Testament * Chapter III - Conclusion PREFACE I HAVE mentioned in the former part of The Age of Reason that it had long been my intention to publish my thoughts upon Religion; but that I had originally reserved it to a later period in life, intending it to be the last work I should undertake. The circumstances, however, which existed in France in the latter end of the year 1793, determined me to delay it no longer. The just and humane principles of the Revolution which Philosophy had first diffused, had been departed from. The Idea, always dangerous to Society as it is derogatory to the Almighty,--that priests could forgive sins,--though it seemed to exist no longer, had blunted the feelings of humanity, and callously prepared men for the commission of all crimes. The intolerant spirit of church persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, stiled Revolutionary, supplied the place of an Inquisition; and the Guillotine of the Stake. I saw many of my most intimate friends destroyed; others daily carried to prison; and I had reason to believe, and had also intimations given me, that the same danger was approaching myself. Under these disadvantages, I began the former part of the Age of Reason; I had, besides, neither Bible nor Testament [It must be borne in mind that throughout this work Paine generally means by "Bible" only the Old Testament, and speaks of the New as the "Testament."--Editor.] to refer to, though I was writing against both; nor could I procure any; notwithstanding which I have produced a work that no Bible Believer, though writing at his ease and with a Library of Church Books about him, can refute. Towards the latter end of December of that year, a motion was made and carried, to exclude foreigners from the Convention. There were but two, Anacharsis Cloots and myself; and I saw I was particularly pointed at by Bourdon de l'Oise, in his speech on that motion. Conceiving, after this, that I had but a few days of liberty, I sat down and brought the work to a close as speedily as possible; and I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has since appeared, [This is an allusion to the essay which Paine wrote at an earlier part of 1793. See Introduction.--Editor.] before a guard came there, about three in the morning, with an order signed by the two Committees of Public Safety and Surety General, for putting me in arrestation as a foreigner, and conveying me to the prison of the Luxembourg. I contrived, in my way there, to call on Joel Barlow, and I put the Manuscript of the work into his hands, as more safe than in my possession in prison; and not knowing what might be the fate in France either of the writer or the work, I addressed it to the protection of the citizens of the United States. It is justice that I say, that the guard who executed this order, and the interpreter to the Committee of General Surety, who accompanied them to examine my papers, treated me not only with civility, but with respect. The keeper of the 'Luxembourg, Benoit, a man of good heart, shewed to me every friendship in his power, as did also all his family, while he continued in that station. He was removed from it, put into arrestation, and carried before the tribunal upon a malignant accusation, but acquitted. After I had been in Luxembourg about three weeks, the Americans then in Paris went in a body to the Convention to reclaim me as their countryman and friend; but were answered by the President, Vadier, who was also President of the Committee of Surety General, and had signed the order for my arrestation, that I was born in England. [These excited Americans do not seem to have understood or reported the most important item in Vadeer's reply, namely that their application was "unofficial," i.e. not made through or sanctioned by Gouverneur Morris, American Minister. For the detailed history of all this see vol. iii.--Editor.] I heard no more, after this, from any person out of the walls of the prison, till the fall of Robespierre, on the 9th of Thermidor--July 27, 1794. About two months before this event, I was seized with a fever that in its progress had every symptom of becoming mortal, and from the effects of which I am not recovered. It was then that I remembered with renewed satisfaction, and congratulated myself most sincerely, on having written the former part of The Age of Reason. I had then but little expectation of surviving, and those about me had less. I know therefore by experience the conscientious trial of my own principles. I was then with three chamber comrades: Joseph Vanheule of Bruges, Charles Bastfni, and Michael Robyns of Louvain. The unceasing and anxious attention of these three friends to me, by night and day, I remember with gratitude and mention with pleasure. It happened that a physician (Dr. Graham) and a surgeon, (Mr. Bond,) part of the suite of General O'Hara, [The officer who at Yorktown, Virginia, carried out the sword of Cornwallis for surrender, and satirically offered it to Rochambeau instead of Washington. Paine loaned him 300 pounds when he (O'Hara) left the prison, the money he had concealed in the lock of his cell-door.--Editor.] were then in the Luxembourg: I ask not myself whether it be convenient to them, as men under the English Government, that I express to them my thanks; but I should reproach myself if I did not; and also to the physician of the Luxembourg, Dr. Markoski. I have some reason to believe, because I cannot discover any other, that this illness preserved me in existence. Among the papers of Robespierre that were examined and reported upon to the Convention by a Committee of Deputies, is a note in the hand writing of Robespierre, in the following words: "Demander que Thomas Paine soit decrete d'accusation, pour l'interet de l'Amerique autant que de la France." [Demand that Thomas Paine be decreed of accusation, for the interest of America, as well as of France.] From what cause it was that the intention was not put in execution, I know not, and cannot inform myself; and therefore I ascribe it to impossibility, on account of that illness. The Convention, to repair as much as lay in their power the injustice I had sustained, invited me publickly and unanimously to return into the Convention, and which I accepted, to shew I could bear an injury without permitting it to injure my principles or my disposition. It is not because right principles have been violated, that they are to be abandoned. I have seen, since I have been at liberty, several publications written, some in America, and some in England, as answers to the former part of "The Age of Reason." If the authors of these can amuse themselves by so doing, I shall not interrupt them, They may write against the work, and against me, as much as they please; they do me more service than they intend, and I can have no objection that they write on. They will find, however, by this Second Part, without its being written as an answer to them, that they must return to their work, and spin their cobweb over again. The first is brushed away by accident. They will now find that I have furnished myself with a Bible and Testament; and I can say also that I have found them to be much worse books than I had conceived. If I have erred in any thing, in the former part of the Age of Reason, it has been by speaking better of some parts than they deserved. I observe, that all my opponents resort, more or less, to what they call Scripture Evidence and Bible authority, to help them out. They are so little masters of the subject, as to confound a dispute about authenticity with a dispute about doctrines; I will, however, put them right, that if they should be disposed to write any more, they may know how to begin. THOMAS PAINE. October, 1795. CHAPTER I - THE OLD TESTAMENT IT has often been said that any thing may be proved from the Bible; but before any thing can be admitted as proved by Bible, the Bible itself must be proved to be true; for if the Bible be not true, or the truth of it be doubtful, it ceases to have authority, and cannot be admitted as proof of any thing. It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bible, and of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on the world as a mass of truth, and as the word of God; they have disputed and wrangled, and have anathematized each other about the supposeable meaning of particular parts and passages therein; one has said and insisted that such a passage meant such a thing, another that it meant directly the contrary, and a third, that it meant neither one nor the other, but something different from both; and this they have called understanding the Bible. It has happened, that all the answers that I have seen to the former part of 'The Age of Reason' have been written by priests: and these pious men, like their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and understand the Bible; each understands it differently, but each understands it best; and they have agreed in nothing but in telling their readers that Thomas Paine understands it not. Now instead of wasting their time, and heating themselves in fractious disputations about doctrinal points drawn from the Bible, these men ought to know, and if they do not it is civility to inform them, that the first thing to be understood is, whether there is sufficient authority for believing the Bible to be the word of God, or whether there is not? There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are repeated over and over again in those books, and that too with exulting ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority? It is not the antiquity of a tale that is an evidence of its truth; on the contrary, it is a symptom of its being fabulous; for the more ancient any history pretends to be, the more it has the resemblance of a fable. The origin of every nation is buried in fabulous tradition, and that of the Jews is as much to be suspected as any other. To charger the commission of things upon the Almighty, which in their own nature, and by every rule of moral justice, are crimes, as all assassination is, and more especially the assassination of infants, is matter of serious concern. The Bible tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express command of God. To believe therefore the Bible to be true, we must unbelieve all our belief in the moral justice of God; for wherein could crying or smiling infants offend? And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender, sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous, than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice. But in addition to all the moral evidence against the Bible, I will, in the progress of this work, produce such other evidence as even a priest cannot deny; and show, from that evidence, that the Bible is not entitled to credit, as being the word of God. But, before I proceed to this examination, I will show wherein the Bible differs from all other ancient writings with respect to the nature of the evidence necessary to establish its authenticity; and this is is the more proper to be done, because the advocates of the Bible, in their answers to the former part of 'The Age of Reason,' undertake to say, and they put some stress thereon, that the authenticity of the Bible is as well established as that of any other ancient book: as if our belief of the one could become any rule for our belief of the other. I know, however, but of one ancient book that authoritatively challenges universal consent and belief, and that is Euclid's Elements of Geometry; [Euclid, according to chronological history, lived three hundred years before Christ, and about one hundred before Archimedes; he was of the city of Alexandria, in Egypt.--Author.] and the reason is, because it is a book of self-evident demonstration, entirely independent of its author, and of every thing relating to time, place, and circumstance. The matters contained in that book would have the same authority they now have, had they been written by any other person, or had the work been anonymous, or had the author never been known; for the identical certainty of who was the author makes no part of our belief of the matters contained in the book. But it is quite otherwise with respect to the books ascribed to Moses, to Joshua, to Samuel, etc.: those are books of testimony, and they testify of things naturally incredible; and therefore the whole of our belief, as to the authenticity of those books, rests, in the first place, upon the certainty that they were written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel; secondly, upon the credit we give to their testimony. We may believe the first, that is, may believe the certainty of the authorship, and yet not the testimony; in the same manner that we may believe that a certain person gave evidence upon a case, and yet not believe the evidence that he gave. But if it should be found that the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, were not written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, every part of the authority and authenticity of those books is gone at once; for there can be no such thing as forged or invented testimony; neither can there be anonymous testimony, more especially as to things naturally incredible; such as that of talking with God face to face, or that of the sun and moon standing still at the command of a man. The greatest part of the other ancient books are works of genius; of which kind are those ascribed to Homer, to Plato, to Aristotle, to Demosthenes, to Cicero, etc. Here again the author is not an essential in the credit we give to any of those works; for as works of genius they would have the same merit they have now, were they anonymous. Nobody believes the Trojan story, as related by Homer, to be true; for it is the poet only that is admired, and the merit of the poet will remain, though the story be fabulous. But if we disbelieve the matters related by the Bible authors (Moses for instance) as we disbelieve the things related by Homer, there remains nothing of Moses in our estimation, but an imposter. As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no further: for if we do, we must believe the two miracles which Tacitus relates were performed by Vespasian, that of curing a lame man, and a blind man, in just the same manner as the same things are told of Jesus Christ by his historians. We must also believe the miracles cited by Josephus, that of the sea of Pamphilia opening to let Alexander and his army pass, as is related of the Red Sea in Exodus. These miracles are quite as well authenticated as the Bible miracles, and yet we do not believe them; consequently the degree of evidence necessary to establish our belief of things naturally incredible, whether in the Bible or elsewhere, is far greater than that which obtains our belief to natural and probable things; and therefore the advocates for the Bible have no claim to our belief of the Bible because that we believe things stated in other ancient writings; since that we believe the things stated in those writings no further than they are probable and credible, or because they are self-evident, like Euclid; or admire them because they are elegant, like Homer; or approve them because they are sedate, like Plato; or judicious, like Aristotle. Having premised these things, I proceed to examine the authenticity of the Bible; and I begin with what are called the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. My intention is to shew that those books are spurious, and that Moses is not the author of them; and still further, that they were not written in the time of Moses nor till several hundred years afterwards; that they are no other than an attempted history of the life of Moses, and of the times in which he is said to have lived, and also of the times prior thereto, written by some very ignorant and stupid pretenders to authorship, several hundred years after the death of Moses; as men now write histories of things that happened, or are supposed to have happened, several hundred or several thousand years ago. The evidence that I shall produce in this case is from the books themselves; and I will confine myself to this evidence only. Were I to refer for proofs to any of the ancient authors, whom the advocates of the Bible call prophane authors, they would controvert that authority, as I controvert theirs: I will therefore meet them on their own ground, and oppose them with their own weapon, the Bible. In the first place, there is no affirmative evidence that Moses is the author of those books; and that he is the author, is altogether an unfounded opinion, got abroad nobody knows how. The style and manner in which those books are written give no room to believe, or even to suppose, they were written by Moses; for it is altogether the style and manner of another person speaking of Moses. In Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, (for every thing in Genesis is prior to the times of Moses and not the least allusion is made to him therein,) the whole, I say, of these books is in the third person; it is always, the Lord said unto Moses, or Moses said unto the Lord; or Moses said unto the people, or the people said unto Moses; and this is the style and manner that historians use in speaking of the person whose lives and actions they are writing. It may be said, that a man may speak of himself in the third person, and, therefore, it may be supposed that Moses did; but supposition proves nothing; and if the advocates for the belief that Moses wrote those books himself have nothing better to advance than supposition, they may as well be silent. But granting the grammatical right, that Moses might speak of himself in the third person, because any man might speak of himself in that manner, it cannot be admitted as a fact in those books, that it is Moses who speaks, without rendering Moses truly ridiculous and absurd:--for example, Numbers xii. 3: "Now the man Moses was very MEEK, above all the men which were on the face of the earth." If Moses said this of himself, instead of being the meekest of men, he was one of the most vain and arrogant coxcombs; and the advocates for those books may now take which side they please, for both sides are against them: if Moses was not the author, the books are without authority; and if he was the author, the author is without credit, because to boast of meekness is the reverse of meekness, and is a lie in sentiment. In Deuteronomy, the style and manner of writing marks more evidently than in the former books that Moses is not the writer. The manner here used is dramatical; the writer opens the subject by a short introductory discourse, and then introduces Moses as in the act of speaking, and when he has made Moses finish his harrangue, he (the writer) resumes his own part, and speaks till he brings Moses forward again, and at last closes the scene with an account of the death, funeral, and character of Moses. This interchange of speakers occurs four times in this book: from the first verse of the first chapter, to the end of the fifth verse, it is the writer who speaks; he then introduces Moses as in the act of making his harrangue, and this continues to the end of the 40th verse of the fourth chapter; here the writer drops Moses, and speaks historically of what was done in consequence of what Moses, when living, is supposed to have said, and which the writer has dramatically rehearsed. The writer opens the subject again in the first verse of the fifth chapter, though it is only by saying that Moses called the people of Israel together; he then introduces Moses as before, and continues him as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 26th chapter. He does the same thing at the beginning of the 27th chapter; and continues Moses as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 28th chapter. At the 29th chapter the writer speaks again through the whole of the first verse, and the first line of the second verse, where he introduces Moses for the last time, and continues him as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 33d chapter. The writer having now finished the rehearsal on the part of Moses, comes forward, and speaks through the whole of the last chapter: he begins by telling the reader, that Moses went up to the top of Pisgah, that he saw from thence the land which (the writer says) had been promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; that he, Moses, died there in the land of Moab, that he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, but that no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day, that is unto the time in which the writer lived who wrote the book of Deuteronomy. The writer then tells us, that Moses was one hundred and ten years of age when he died--that his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated; and he concludes by saying, that there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom, says this anonymous writer, the Lord knew face to face. Having thus shewn, as far as grammatical evidence implies, that Moses was not the writer of those books, I will, after making a few observations on the inconsistencies of the writer of the book of Deuteronomy, proceed to shew, from the historical and chronological evidence contained in those books, that Moses was not, because he could not be, the writer of them; and consequently, that there is no authority for believing that the inhuman and horrid butcheries of men, women, and children, told of in those books, were done, as those books say they were, at the command of God. It is a duty incumbent on every true deist, that he vindicates the moral justice of God against the calumnies of the Bible. The writer of the book of Deuteronomy, whoever he was, for it is an anonymous work, is obscure, and also contradictory with himself in the account he has given of Moses. After telling that Moses went to the top of Pisgah (and it does not appear from any account that he ever came down again) he tells us, that Moses died there in the land of Moab, and that he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab; but as there is no antecedent to the pronoun he, there is no knowing who he was, that did bury him. If the writer meant that he (God) buried him, how should he (the writer) know it? or why should we (the readers) believe him? since we know not who the writer was that tells us so, for certainly Moses could not himself tell where he was buried. The writer also tells us, that no man knoweth where the sepulchre of Moses is unto this day, meaning the time in which this writer lived; how then should he know that Moses was buried in a valley in the land of Moab? for as the writer lived long after the time of Moses, as is evident from his using the expression of unto this day, meaning a great length of time after the death of Moses, he certainly was not at his funeral; and on the other hand, it is impossible that Moses himself could say that no man knoweth where the sepulchre is unto this day. To make Moses the speaker, would be an improvement on the play of a child that hides himself and cries nobody can find me; nobody can find Moses. This writer has no where told us how he came by the speeches which he has put into the mouth of Moses to speak, and therefore we have a right to conclude that he either composed them himself, or wrote them from oral tradition. One or other of these is the more probable, since he has given, in the fifth chapter, a table of commandments, in which that called the fourth commandment is different from the fourth commandment in the twentieth chapter of Exodus. In that of Exodus, the reason given for keeping the seventh day is, because (says the commandment) God made the heavens and the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh; but in that of Deuteronomy, the reason given is, that it was the day on which the children of Israel came out of Egypt, and therefore, says this commandment, the Lord thy God commanded thee to kee the sabbath-day This makes no mention of the creation, nor that of the coming out of Egypt. There are also many things given as laws of Moses in this book, that are not to be found in any of the other books; among which is that inhuman and brutal law, xxi. 18, 19, 20, 21, which authorizes parents, the father and the mother, to bring their own children to have them stoned to death for what it pleased them to call stubbornness.--But priests have always been fond of preaching up Deuteronomy, for Deuteronomy preaches up tythes; and it is from this book, xxv. 4, they have taken the phrase, and applied it to tything, that "thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth Out the corn:" and that this might not escape observation, they have noted it in the table of contents at the head of the chapter, though it is only a single verse of less than two lines. O priests! priests! ye are willing to be compared to an ox, for the sake of tythes. [An elegant pocket edition of Paine's Theological Works (London. R. Carlile, 1822) has in its title a picture of Paine, as a Moses in evening dress, unfolding the two tables of his "Age of Reason" to a farmer from whom the Bishop of Llandaff (who replied to this work) has taken a sheaf and a lamb which he is carrying to a church at the summit of a well stocked hill.--Editor.]--Though it is impossible for us to know identically who the writer of Deuteronomy was, it is not difficult to discover him professionally, that he was some Jewish priest, who lived, as I shall shew in the course of this work, at least three hundred and fifty years after the time of Moses. I come now to speak of the historical and chronological evidence. The chronology that I shall use is the Bible chronology; for I mean not to go out of the Bible for evidence of any thing, but to make the Bible itself prove historically and chronologically that Moses is not the author of the books ascribed to him. It is therefore proper that I inform the readers (such an one at least as may not have the opportunity of knowing it) that in the larger Bibles, and also in some smaller ones, there is a series of chronology printed in the margin of every page for the purpose of showing how long the historical matters stated in each page happened, or are supposed to have happened, before Christ, and consequently the distance of time between one historical circumstance and another. I begin with the book of Genesis.--In Genesis xiv., the writer gives an account of Lot being taken prisoner in a battle between the four kings against five, and carried off; and that when the account of Lot being taken came to Abraham, that he armed all his household and marched to rescue Lot from the captors; and that he pursued them unto Dan. (ver. 14.) To shew in what manner this expression of Pursuing them unto Dan applies to the case in question, I will refer to two circumstances, the one in America, the other in France. The city now called New York, in America, was originally New Amsterdam; and the town in France, lately called Havre Marat, was before called Havre-de-Grace. New Amsterdam was changed to New York in the year 1664; Havre-de-Grace to Havre Marat in the year 1793. Should, therefore, any writing be found, though without date, in which the name of New-York should be mentioned, it would be certain evidence that such a writing could not have been written before, and must have been written after New Amsterdam was changed to New York, and consequently not till after the year 1664, or at least during the course of that year. And in like manner, any dateless writing, with the name of Havre Marat, would be certain evidence that such a writing must have been written after Havre-de-Grace became Havre Marat, and consequently not till after the year 1793, or at least during the course of that year. I now come to the application of those cases, and to show that there was no such place as Dan till many years after the death of Moses; and consequently, that Moses could not be the writer of the book of Genesis, where this account of pursuing them unto Dan is given. The place that is called Dan in the Bible was originally a town of the Gentiles, called Laish; and when the tribe of Dan seized upon this town, they changed its name to Dan, in commemoration of Dan, who was the father of that tribe, and the great grandson of Abraham. To establish this in proof, it is necessary to refer from Genesis to chapter xviii. of the book called the Book of judges. It is there said (ver. 27) that "they (the Danites) came unto Laish to a people that were quiet and secure, and they smote them with the edge of the sword [the Bible is filled with murder] and burned the city with fire; and they built a city, (ver. 28,) and dwelt therein, and [ver. 29,] they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan, their father; howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the first." This account of the Danites taking possession of Laish and changing it to Dan, is placed in the book of Judges immediately after the death of Samson. The death of Samson is said to have happened B.C. 1120 and that of Moses B.C. 1451; and, therefore, according to the historical arrangement, the place was not called Dan till 331 years after the death of Moses. There is a striking confusion between the historical and the chronological arrangement in the book of judges. The last five chapters, as they stand in the book, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, are put chronologically before all the preceding chapters; they are made to be 28 years before the 16th chapter, 266 before the 15th, 245 before the 13th, 195 before the 9th, go before the 4th, and 15 years before the 1st chapter. This shews the uncertain and fabulous state of the Bible. According to the chronological arrangement, the taking of Laish, and giving it the name of Dan, is made to be twenty years after the death of Joshua, who was the successor of Moses; and by the historical order, as it stands in the book, it is made to be 306 years after the death of Joshua, and 331 after that of Moses; but they both exclude Moses from being the writer of Genesis, because, according to either of the statements, no such a place as Dan existed in the time of Moses; and therefore the writer of Genesis must have been some person who lived after the town of Laish had the name of Dan; and who that person was nobody knows, and consequently the book of Genesis is anonymous, and without authority. I come now to state another point of historical and chronological evidence, and to show therefrom, as in the preceding case, that Moses is not the author of the book of Genesis. In Genesis xxxvi. there is given a genealogy of the sons and descendants of Esau, who are called Edomites, and also a list by name of the kings of Edom; in enumerating of which, it is said, verse 31, "And these are the kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel." Now, were any dateless writing to be found, in which, speaking of any past events, the writer should say, these things happened before there was any Congress in America, or before there was any Convention in France, it would be evidence that such writing could not have been written before, and could only be written after there was a Congress in America or a Convention in France, as the case might be; and, consequently, that it could not be written by any person who died before there was a Congress in the one country, or a Convention in the other. Nothing is more frequent, as well in history as in conversation, than to refer to a fact in the room of a date: it is most natural so to do, because a fact fixes itself in the memory better than a date; secondly, because the fact includes the date, and serves to give two ideas at once; and this manner of speaking by circumstances implies as positively that the fact alluded to is past, as if it was so expressed. When a person in speaking upon any matter, says, it was before I was married, or before my son was born, or before I went to America, or before I went to France, it is absolutely understood, and intended to be understood, that he has been married, that he has had a son, that he has been in America, or been in France. Language does not admit of using this mode of expression in any other sense; and whenever such an expression is found anywhere, it can only be understood in the sense in which only it could have been used. The passage, therefore, that I have quoted--that "these are the kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel," could only have been written after the first king began to reign over them; and consequently that the book of Genesis, so far from having been written by Moses, could not have been written till the time of Saul at least. This is the positive sense of the passage; but the expression, any king, implies more kings than one, at least it implies two, and this will carry it to the time of David; and, if taken in a general sense, it carries itself through all times of the Jewish monarchy. Had we met with this verse in any part of the Bible that professed to have been written after kings began to reign in Israel, it would have been impossible not to have seen the application of it. It happens then that this is the case; the two books of Chronicles, which give a history of all the kings of Israel, are professedly, as well as in fact, written after the Jewish monarchy began; and this verse that I have quoted, and all the remaining verses of Genesis xxxvi. are, word for word, In 1 Chronicles i., beginning at the 43d verse. It was with consistency that the writer of the Chronicles could say as he has said, 1 Chron. i. 43, "These are the kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king ever the children of Israel," because he was going to give, and has given, a list of the kings that had reigned in Israel; but as it is impossible that the same expression could have been used before that period, it is as certain as any thing can be proved from historical language, that this part of Genesis is taken from Chronicles, and that Genesis is not so old as Chronicles, and probably not so old as the book of Homer, or as AEsop's Fables; admitting Homer to have been, as the tables of chronology state, contemporary with David or Solomon, and AEsop to have lived about the end of the Jewish monarchy. Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies. The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level with the Arabian Tales, without the merit of being entertaining, and the account of men living to eight and nine hundred years becomes as fabulous as the immortality of the giants of the Mythology. Besides, the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance: When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13): "And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, 'Have ye saved all the women alive?' behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, 'kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women-children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for Yourselves.'" Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters. Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of an executioner: let any daughter put herself in the situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings? It is in vain that we attempt to impose upon nature, for nature will have her course, and the religion that tortures all her social ties is a false religion. After this detestable order, follows an account of the plunder taken, and the manner of dividing it; and here it is that the profaneings of priestly hypocrisy increases the catalogue of crimes. Verse 37, "And the Lord's tribute of the sheep was six hundred and threescore and fifteen; and the beeves were thirty and six thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was threescore and twelve; and the asses were thirty thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was threescore and one; and the persons were sixteen thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was thirty and two." In short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read, or for decency to hear; for it appears, from the 35th verse of this chapter, that the number of women-children consigned to debauchery by the order of Moses was thirty-two thousand. People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite another thing, it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy, than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty! But to return to my subject, that of showing that Moses is not the author of the books ascribed to him, and that the Bible is spurious. The two instances I have already given would be sufficient, without any additional evidence, to invalidate the authenticity of any book that pretended to be four or five hundred years more ancient than the matters it speaks of, refers to, them as facts; for in the case of pursuing them unto Dan, and of the kings that reigned over the children of Israel; not even the flimsy pretence of prophecy can be pleaded. The expressions are in the preter tense, and it would be downright idiotism to say that a man could prophecy in the preter tense. But there are many other passages scattered throughout those books that unite in the same point of evidence. It is said in Exodus, (another of the books ascribed to Moses,) xvi. 35: "And the children of Israel did eat manna until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna until they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan." Whether the children of Israel ate manna or not, or what manna was, or whether it was anything more than a kind of fungus or small mushroom, or other vegetable substance common to that part of the country, makes no part of my argument; all that I mean to show is, that it is not Moses that could write this account, because the account extends itself beyond the life time of Moses. Moses, according to the Bible, (but it is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe, or whether any) died in the wilderness, and never came upon the borders of 'the land of Canaan; and consequently, it could not be he that said what the children of Israel did, or what they ate when they came there. This account of eating manna, which they tell us was written by Moses, extends itself to the time of Joshua, the successor of Moses, as appears by the account given in the book of Joshua, after the children of Israel had passed the river Jordan, and came into the borders of the land of Canaan. Joshua, v. 12: "And the manna ceased on the morrow, after they had eaten of the old corn of the land; neither had the children of Israel manna any more, but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year." But a more remarkable instance than this occurs in Deuteronomy; which, while it shows that Moses could not be the writer of that book, shows also the fabulous notions that prevailed at that time about giants' In Deuteronomy iii. 11, among the conquests said to be made by Moses, is an account of the taking of Og, king of Bashan: "For only Og, king of Bashan, remained of the race of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man." A cubit is 1 foot 9 888/1000 inches; the length therefore of the bed was 16 feet 4 inches, and the breadth 7 feet 4 inches: thus much for this giant's bed. Now for the historical part, which, though the evidence is not so direct and positive as in the former cases, is nevertheless very presumable and corroborating evidence, and is better than the best evidence on the contrary side. The writer, by way of proving the existence of this giant, refers to his bed, as an ancient relick, and says, is it not in Rabbath (or Rabbah) of the children of Ammon? meaning that it is; for such is frequently the bible method of affirming a thing. But it could not be Moses that said this, because Moses could know nothing about Rabbah, nor of what was in it. Rabbah was not a city belonging to this giant king, nor was it one of the cities that Moses took. The knowledge therefore that this bed was at Rabbah, and of the particulars of its dimensions, must be referred to the time when Rabbah was taken, and this was not till four hundred years after the death of Moses; for which, see 2 Sam. xii. 26: "And Joab [David's general] fought against Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and took the royal city," etc. As I am not undertaking to point out all the contradictions in time, place, and circumstance that abound in the books ascribed to Moses, and which prove to demonstration that those books could not be written by Moses, nor in the time of Moses, I proceed to the book of Joshua, and to shew that Joshua is not the author of that book, and that it is anonymous and without authority. The evidence I shall produce is contained in the book itself: I will not go out of the Bible for proof against the supposed authenticity of the Bible. False testimony is always good against itself. Joshua, according to Joshua i., was the immediate successor of Moses; he was, moreover, a military man, which Moses was not; and he continued as chief of the people of Israel twenty-five years; that is, from the time that Moses died, which, according to the Bible chronology, was B.C. 1451, until B.C. 1426, when, according to the same chronology, Joshua died. If, therefore, we find in this book, said to have been written by Joshua, references to facts done after the death of Joshua, it is evidence that Joshua could not be the author; and also that the book could not have been written till after the time of the latest fact which it records. As to the character of the book, it is horrid; it is a military history of rapine and murder, as savage and brutal as those recorded of his predecessor in villainy and hypocrisy, Moses; and the blasphemy consists, as in the former books, in ascribing those deeds to the orders of the Almighty. In the first place, the book of Joshua, as is the case in the preceding books, is written in the third person; it is the historian of Joshua that speaks, for it would have been absurd and vainglorious that Joshua should say of himself, as is said of him in the last verse of the sixth chapter, that "his fame was noised throughout all the country."--I now come more immediately to the proof. In Joshua xxiv. 31, it is said "And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that over-lived Joshua." Now, in the name of common sense, can it be Joshua that relates what people had done after he was dead? This account must not only have been written by some historian that lived after Joshua, but that lived also after the elders that out-lived Joshua. There are several passages of a general meaning with respect to time, scattered throughout the book of Joshua, that carries the time in which the book was written to a distance from the time of Joshua, but without marking by exclusion any particular time, as in the passage above quoted. In that passage, the time that intervened between the death of Joshua and the death of the elders is excluded descriptively and absolutely, and the evidence substantiates that the book could not have been written till after the death of the last. But though the passages to which I allude, and which I am going to quote, do not designate any particular time by exclusion, they imply a time far more distant from the days of Joshua than is contained between the death of Joshua and the death of the elders. Such is the passage, x. 14, where, after giving an account that the sun stood still upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, at the command of Joshua, (a tale only fit to amuse children) [NOTE: This tale of the sun standing still upon Motint Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, is one of those fables that detects itself. Such a circumstance could not have happened without being known all over the world. One half would have wondered why the sun did not rise, and the other why it did not set; and the tradition of it would be universal; whereas there is not a nation in the world that knows anything about it. But why must the moon stand still? What occasion could there be for moonlight in the daytime, and that too whilst the sun shined? As a poetical figure, the whole is well enough; it is akin to that in the song of Deborah and Barak, The stars in their courses fought against Sisera; but it is inferior to the figurative declaration of Mahomet to the persons who came to expostulate with him on his goings on, Wert thou, said he, to come to me with the sun in thy right hand and the moon in thy left, it should not alter my career. For Joshua to have exceeded Mahomet, he should have put the sun and moon, one in each pocket, and carried them as Guy Faux carried his dark lanthorn, and taken them out to shine as he might happen to want them. The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again; the account, however, abstracted from the poetical fancy, shews the ignorance of Joshua, for he should have commanded the earth to have stood still.--Author.] the passage says: "And there was no day like that, before it, nor after it, that the Lord hearkened to the voice of a man." The time implied by the expression after it, that is, after that day, being put in comparison with all the time that passed before it, must, in order to give any expressive signification to the passage, mean a great length of time:--for example, it would have been ridiculous to have said so the next day, or the next week, or the next month, or the next year; to give therefore meaning to the passage, comparative with the wonder it relates, and the prior time it alludes to, it must mean centuries of years; less however than one would be trifling, and less than two would be barely admissible. A distant, but general time is also expressed in chapter viii.; where, after giving an account of the taking the city of Ai, it is said, ver. 28th, "And Joshua burned Ai, and made it an heap for ever, a desolation unto this day;" and again, ver. 29, where speaking of the king of Ai, whom Joshua had hanged, and buried at the entering of the gate, it is said, "And he raised thereon a great heap of stones, which remaineth unto this day," that is, unto the day or time in which the writer of the book of Joshua lived. And again, in chapter x. where, after speaking of the five kings whom Joshua had hanged on five trees, and then thrown in a cave, it is said, "And he laid great stones on the cave's mouth, which remain unto this very day." In enumerating the several exploits of Joshua, and of the tribes, and of the places which they conquered or attempted, it is said, xv. 63, "As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out; but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah AT JERUSALEM unto this day." The question upon this passage is, At what time did the Jebusites and the children of Judah dwell together at Jerusalem? As this matter occurs again in judges i. I shall reserve my observations till I come to that part. Having thus shewn from the book of Joshua itself, without any auxiliary evidence whatever, that Joshua is not the author of that book, and that it is anonymous, and consequently without authority, I proceed, as before-mentioned, to the book of Judges. The book of Judges is anonymous on the face of it; and, therefore, even the pretence is wanting to call it the word of God; it has not so much as a nominal voucher; it is altogether fatherless. This book begins with the same expression as the book of Joshua. That of Joshua begins, chap i. 1, Now after the death of Moses, etc., and this of the Judges begins, Now after the death of Joshua, etc. This, and the similarity of stile between the two books, indicate that they are the work of the same author; but who he was, is altogether unknown; the only point that the book proves is that the author lived long after the time of Joshua; for though it begins as if it followed immediately after his death, the second chapter is an epitome or abstract of the whole book, which, according to the Bible chronology, extends its history through a space of 306 years; that is, from the death of Joshua, B.C. 1426 to the death of Samson, B.C. 1120, and only 25 years before Saul went to seek his father's asses, and was made king. But there is good reason to believe, that it was not written till the time of David, at least, and that the book of Joshua was not written before the same time. In Judges i., the writer, after announcing the death of Joshua, proceeds to tell what happened between the children of Judah and the native inhabitants of the land of Canaan. In this statement the writer, having abruptly mentioned Jerusalem in the 7th verse, says immediately after, in the 8th verse, by way of explanation, "Now the children of Judah had fought against Jerusalem, and taken it;" consequently this book could not have been written before Jerusalem had been taken. The reader will recollect the quotation I have just before made from Joshua xv. 63, where it said that the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem at this day; meaning the time when the book of Joshua was written. The evidence I have already produced to prove that the books I have hitherto treated of were not written by the persons to whom they are ascribed, nor till many years after their death, if such persons ever lived, is already so abundant, that I can afford to admit this passage with less weight than I am entitled to draw from it. For the case is, that so far as the Bible can be credited as an history, the city of Jerusalem was not taken till the time of David; and consequently, that the book of Joshua, and of Judges, were not written till after the commencement of the reign of David, which was 370 years after the death of Joshua. The name of the city that was afterward called Jerusalem was originally Jebus, or Jebusi, and was the capital of the Jebusites. The account of David's taking this city is given in 2 Samuel, v. 4, etc.; also in 1 Chron. xiv. 4, etc. There is no mention in any part of the Bible that it was ever taken before, nor any account that favours such an opinion. It is not said, either in Samuel or in Chronicles, that they "utterly destroyed men, women and children, that they left not a soul to breathe," as is said of their other conquests; and the silence here observed implies that it was taken by capitulation; and that the Jebusites, the native inhabitants, continued to live in the place after it was taken. The account therefore, given in Joshua, that "the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah" at Jerusalem at this day, corresponds to no other time than after taking the city by David. Having now shown that every book in the Bible, from Genesis to Judges, is without authenticity, I come to the book of Ruth, an idle, bungling story, foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about a strolling country-girl creeping slily to bed to her cousin Boaz. [The text of Ruth does not imply the unpleasant sense Paine's words are likely to convey.--Editor.] Pretty stuff indeed to be called the word of God. It is, however, one of the best books in the Bible, for it is free from murder and rapine. I come next to the two books of Samuel, and to shew that those books were not written by Samuel, nor till a great length of time after the death of Samuel; and that they are, like all the former books, anonymous, and without authority. To be convinced that these books have been written much later than the time of Samuel, and consequently not by him, it is only necessary to read the account which the writer gives of Saul going to seek his father's asses, and of his interview with Samuel, of whom Saul went to enquire about those lost asses, as foolish people now-a-days go to a conjuror to enquire after lost things. The writer, in relating this story of Saul, Samuel, and the asses, does not tell it as a thing that had just then happened, but as an ancient story in the time this writer lived; for he tells it in the language or terms used at the time that Samuel lived, which obliges the writer to explain the story in the terms or language used in the time the writer lived. Samuel, in the account given of him in the first of those books, chap. ix. 13 called the seer; and it is by this term that Saul enquires after him, ver. 11, "And as they [Saul and his servant] went up the hill to the city, they found young maidens going out to draw water; and they said unto them, Is the seer here?" Saul then went according to the direction of these maidens, and met Samuel without knowing him, and said unto him, ver. 18, "Tell me, I pray thee, where the seer's house is? and Samuel answered Saul, and said, I am the seer." As the writer of the book of Samuel relates these questions and answers, in the language or manner of speaking used in the time they are said to have been spoken, and as that manner of speaking was out of use when this author wrote, he found it necessary, in order to make the story understood, to explain the terms in which these questions and answers are spoken; and he does this in the 9th verse, where he says, "Before-time in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he spake, Come let us go to the seer; for he that is now called a prophet, was before-time called a seer." This proves, as I have before said, that this story of Saul, Samuel, and the asses, was an ancient story at the time the book of Samuel was written, and consequently that Samuel did not write it, and that the book is without authenticity. But if we go further into those books the evidence is still more positive that Samuel is not the writer of them; for they relate things that did not happen till several years after the death of Samuel. Samuel died before Saul; for i Samuel, xxviii. tells, that Saul and the witch of Endor conjured Samuel up after he was dead; yet the history of matters contained in those books is extended through the remaining part of Saul's life, and to the latter end of the life of David, who succeeded Saul. The account of the death and burial of Samuel (a thing which he could not write himself) is related in i Samuel xxv.; and the chronology affixed to this chapter makes this to be B.C. 1060; yet the history of this first book is brought down to B.C. 1056, that is, to the death of Saul, which was not till four years after the death of Samuel. The second book of Samuel begins with an account of things that did not happen till four years after Samuel was dead; for it begins with the reign of David, who succeeded Saul, and it goes on to the end of David's reign, which was forty-three years after the death of Samuel; and, therefore, the books are in themselves positive evidence that they were not written by Samuel. I have now gone through all the books in the first part of the Bible, to which the names of persons are affixed, as being the authors of those books, and which the church, styling itself the Christian church, have imposed upon the world as the writings of Moses, Joshua and Samuel; and I have detected and proved the falsehood of this imposition.--And now ye priests, of every description, who have preached and written against the former part of the 'Age of Reason,' what have ye to say? Will ye with all this mass of evidence against you, and staring you in the face, still have the assurance to march into your pulpits, and continue to impose these books on your congregations, as the works of inspired penmen and the word of God? when it is as evident as demonstration can make truth appear, that the persons who ye say are the authors, are not the authors, and that ye know not who the authors are. What shadow of pretence have ye now to produce for continuing the blasphemous fraud? What have ye still to offer against the pure and moral religion of deism, in support of your system of falsehood, idolatry, and pretended revelation? Had the cruel and murdering orders, with which the Bible is filled, and the numberless torturing executions of men, women, and children, in consequence of those orders, been ascribed to some friend, whose memory you revered, you would have glowed with satisfaction at detecting the falsehood of the charge, and gloried in defending his injured fame. It is because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honour of your Creator, that ye listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference. The evidence I have produced, and shall still produce in the course of this work, to prove that the Bible is without authority, will, whilst it wounds the stubbornness of a priest, relieve and tranquillize the minds of millions: it will free them from all those hard thoughts of the Almighty which priestcraft and the Bible had infused into their minds, and which stood in everlasting opposition to all their ideas of his moral justice and benevolence. I come now to the two books of Kings, and the two books of Chronicles.--Those books are altogether historical, and are chiefly confined to the lives and actions of the Jewish kings, who in general were a parcel of rascals: but these are matters with which we have no more concern than we have with the Roman emperors, or Homer's account of the Trojan war. Besides which, as those books are anonymous, and as we know nothing of the writer, or of his character, it is impossible for us to know what degree of credit to give to the matters related therein. Like all other ancient histories, they appear to be a jumble of fable and of fact, and of probable and of improbable things, but which distance of time and place, and change of circumstances in the world, have rendered obsolete and uninteresting. The chief use I shall make of those books will be that of comparing them with each other, and with other parts of the Bible, to show the confusion, contradiction, and cruelty in this pretended word of God. The first book of Kings begins with the reign of Solomon, which, according to the Bible chronology, was B.C. 1015; and the second book ends B.C. 588, being a little after the reign of Zedekiah, whom Nebuchadnezzar, after taking Jerusalem and conquering the Jews, carried captive to Babylon. The two books include a space of 427 years. The two books of Chronicles are an history of the same times, and in general of the same persons, by another author; for it would be absurd to suppose that the same author wrote the history twice over. The first book of Chronicles (after giving the genealogy from Adam to Saul, which takes up the first nine chapters) begins with the reign of David; and the last book ends, as in the last book of Kings, soon, after the reign of Zedekiah, about B.C. 588. The last two verses of the last chapter bring the history 52 years more forward, that is, to 536. But these verses do not belong to the book, as I shall show when I come to speak of the book of Ezra. The two books of Kings, besides the history of Saul, David, and Solomon, who reigned over all Israel, contain an abstract of the lives of seventeen kings, and one queen, who are stiled kings of Judah; and of nineteen, who are stiled kings of Israel; for the Jewish nation, immediately on the death of Solomon, split into two parties, who chose separate kings, and who carried on most rancorous wars against each other. These two books are little more than a history of assassinations, treachery, and wars. The cruelties that the Jews had accustomed themselves to practise on the Canaanites, whose country they had savagely invaded, under a pretended gift from God, they afterwards practised as furiously on each other. Scarcely half their kings died a natural death, and in some instances whole families were destroyed to secure possession to the successor, who, after a few years, and sometimes only a few months, or less, shared the same fate. In 2 Kings x., an account is given of two baskets full of children's heads, seventy in number, being exposed at the entrance of the city; they were the children of Ahab, and were murdered by the orders of Jehu, whom Elisha, the pretended man of God, had anointed to be king over Israel, on purpose to commit this bloody deed, and assassinate his predecessor. And in the account of the reign of Menahem, one of the kings of Israel who had murdered Shallum, who had reigned but one month, it is said, 2 Kings xv. 16, that Menahem smote the city of Tiphsah, because they opened not the city to him, and all the women therein that were with child he ripped up. Could we permit ourselves to suppose that the Almighty would distinguish any nation of people by the name of his chosen people, we must suppose that people to have been an example to all the rest of the world of the purest piety and humanity, and not such a nation of ruffians and cut-throats as the ancient Jews were,--a people who, corrupted by and copying after such monsters and imposters as Moses and Aaron, Joshua, Samuel, and David, had distinguished themselves above all others on the face of the known earth for barbarity and wickedness. If we will not stubbornly shut our eyes and steel our hearts it is impossible not to see, in spite of all that long-established superstition imposes upon the mind, that the flattering appellation of his chosen people is no other than a LIE which the priests and leaders of the Jews had invented to cover the baseness of their own characters; and which Christian priests sometimes as corrupt, and often as cruel, have professed to believe. The two books of Chronicles are a repetition of the same crimes; but the history is broken in several places, by the author leaving out the reign of some of their kings; and in this, as well as in that of Kings, there is such a frequent transition from kings of Judah to kings of Israel, and from kings of Israel to kings of Judah, that the narrative is obscure in the reading. In the same book the history sometimes contradicts itself: for example, in 2 Kings, i. 17, we are told, but in rather ambiguous terms, that after the death of Ahaziah, king of Israel, Jehoram, or Joram, (who was of the house of Ahab), reigned in his stead in the second Year of Jehoram, or Joram, son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah; and in viii. 16, of the same book, it is said, "And in the fifth year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Jehoshaphat being then king of Judah, Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat king of judah, began to reign." That is, one chapter says Joram of Judah began to reign in the second year of Joram of Israel; and the other chapter says, that Joram of Israel began to reign in the fifth year of Joram of Judah. Several of the most extraordinary matters related in one history, as having happened during the reign of such or such of their kings, are not to be found in the other, in relating the reign of the same king: for example, the two first rival kings, after the death of Solomon, were Rehoboam and Jeroboam; and in i Kings xii. and xiii. an account is given of Jeroboam making an offering of burnt incense, and that a man, who is there called a man of God, cried out against the altar (xiii. 2): "O altar, altar! thus saith the Lord: Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name, and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burned upon thee." Verse 4: "And it came to pass, when king Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, which had cried against the altar in Bethel, that he put forth his hand from the altar, saying, Lay hold on him; and his hand which he put out against him dried up so that he could not pull it again to him." One would think that such an extraordinary case as this, (which is spoken of as a judgement,) happening to the chief of one of the parties, and that at the first moment of the separation of the Israelites into two nations, would, if it,. had been true, have been recorded in both histories. But though men, in later times, have believed all that the prophets have said unto them, it does appear that those prophets, or historians, disbelieved each other: they knew each other too well. A long account also is given in Kings about Elijah. It runs through several chapters, and concludes with telling, 2 Kings ii. 11, "And it came to pass, as they (Elijah and Elisha) still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven." Hum! this the author of Chronicles, miraculous as the story is, makes no mention of, though he mentions Elijah by name; neither does he say anything of the story related in the second chapter of the same book of Kings, of a parcel of children calling Elisha bald head; and that this man of God (ver. 24) "turned back, and looked upon them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord; and there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them." He also passes over in silence the story told, 2 Kings xiii., that when they were burying a man in the sepulchre where Elisha had been buried, it happened that the dead man, as they were letting him down, (ver. 21) "touched the bones of Elisha, and he (the dead man) revived, and stood up on his feet." The story does not tell us whether they buried the man, notwithstanding he revived and stood upon his feet, or drew him up again. Upon all these stories the writer of the Chronicles is as silent as any writer of the present day, who did not chose to be accused of lying, or at least of romancing, would be about stories of the same kind. But, however these two historians may differ from each other with respect to the tales related by either, they are silent alike with respect to those men styled prophets whose writings fill up the latter part of the Bible. Isaiah, who lived in the time of Hezekiab, is mentioned in Kings, and again in Chronicles, when these histories are speaking of that reign; but except in one or two instances at most, and those very slightly, none of the rest are so much as spoken of, or even their existence hinted at; though, according to the Bible chronology, they lived within the time those histories were written; and some of them long before. If those prophets, as they are called, were men of such importance in their day, as the compilers of the Bible, and priests and commentators have since represented them to be, how can it be accounted for that not one of those histories should say anything about them? The history in the books of Kings and of Chronicles is brought forward, as I have already said, to the year B.C. 588; it will, therefore, be proper to examine which of these prophets lived before that period. Here follows a table of all the prophets, with the times in which they lived before Christ, according to the chronology affixed to the first chapter of each of the books of the prophets; and also of the number of years they lived before the books of Kings and Chronicles were written: TABLE of the Prophets, with the time in which they lived before Christ, and also before the books of Kings and Chronicles were written: Years Years before NAMES. before Kings and Observations. Christ. Chronicles. Isaiah............... 760 172 mentioned. (mentioned only in Jeremiah............. 629 41 the last [two] chapters of Chronicles. Ezekiel.............. 595 7 not mentioned. Daniel............... 607 19 not mentioned. Hosea................ 785 97 not mentioned. Joel................. 800 212 not mentioned. Amos................. 789 199 not mentioned. Obadiah.............. 789 199 not mentioned. Jonah................ 862 274 see the note. Micah................ 750 162 not mentioned. Nahum................ 713 125 not mentioned. Habakkuk............. 620 38 not mentioned. Zepbaniah............ 630 42 not mentioned. Haggai Zechariah all three after the year 588 Medachi [NOTE In 2 Kings xiv. 25, the name of Jonah is mentioned on account of the restoration of a tract of land by Jeroboam; but nothing further is said of him, nor is any allusion made to the book of Jonah, nor to his expedition to Nineveh, nor to his encounter with the whale.--Author.] This table is either not very honourable for the Bible historians, or not very honourable for the Bible prophets; and I leave to priests and commentators, who are very learned in little things, to settle the point of etiquette between the two; and to assign a reason, why the authors of Kings and of Chronicles have treated those prophets, whom, in the former part of the 'Age of Reason,' I have considered as poets, with as much degrading silence as any historian of the present day would treat Peter Pindar. I have one more observation to make on the book of Chronicles; after which I shall pass on to review the remaining books of the Bible. In my observations on the book of Genesis, I have quoted a passage from xxxvi. 31, which evidently refers to a time, after that kings began to reign over the children of Israel; and I have shown that as this verse is verbatim the same as in 1 Chronicles i. 43, where it stands consistently with the order of history, which in Genesis it does not, that the verse in Genesis, and a great part of the 36th chapter, have been taken from Chronicles; and that the book of Genesis, though it is placed first in the Bible, and ascribed to Moses, has been manufactured by some unknown person, after the book of Chronicles was written, which was not until at least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of Moses. The evidence I proceed by to substantiate this, is regular, and has in it but two stages. First, as I have already stated, that the passage in Genesis refers itself for time to Chronicles; secondly, that the book of Chronicles, to which this passage refers itself, was not begun to be written until at least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of Moses. To prove this, we have only to look into 1 Chronicles iii. 15, where the writer, in giving the genealogy of the descendants of David, mentions Zedekiah; and it was in the time of Zedekiah that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, B.C. 588, and consequently more than 860 years after Moses. Those who have superstitiously boasted of the antiquity of the Bible, and particularly of the books ascribed to Moses, have done it without examination, and without any other authority than that of one credulous man telling it to another: for, so far as historical and chronological evidence applies, the very first book in the Bible is not so ancient as the book of Homer, by more than three hundred years, and is about the same age with AEsop's Fables. I am not contending for the morality of Homer; on the contrary, I think it a book of false glory, and tending to inspire immoral and mischievous notions of honour; and with respect to AEsop, though the moral is in general just, the fable is often cruel; and the cruelty of the fable does more injury to the heart, especially in a child, than the moral does good to the judgment. Having now dismissed Kings and Chronicles, I come to the next in course, the book of Ezra. As one proof, among others I shall produce to shew the disorder in which this pretended word of God, the Bible, has been put together, and the uncertainty of who the authors were, we have only to look at the first three verses in Ezra, and the last two in 2 Chronicles; for by what kind of cutting and shuffling has it been that the first three verses in Ezra should be the last two verses in 2 Chronicles, or that the last two in 2 Chronicles should be the first three in Ezra? Either the authors did not know their own works or the compilers did not know the authors. Last Two Verses of 2 Chronicles. Ver. 22. Now in the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, that the word of the Lord, spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying. earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him an house in Jerusalem which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? the Lord his God be with him, and let him go up. *** First Three Verses of Ezra. Ver. 1. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord, by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying. 2. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. 3. Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel (he is the God) which is in Jerusalem. *** The last verse in Chronicles is broken abruptly, and ends in the middle of the phrase with the word 'up' without signifying to what place. This abrupt break, and the appearance of the same verses in different books, show as I have already said, the disorder and ignorance in which the Bible has been put together, and that the compilers of it had no authority for what they were doing, nor we any authority for believing what they have done. [NOTE I observed, as I passed along, several broken and senseless passages in the Bible, without thinking them of consequence enough to be introduced in the body of the work; such as that, 1 Samuel xiii. 1, where it is said, "Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel, Saul chose him three thousand men," &c. The first part of the verse, that Saul reigned one year has no sense, since it does not tell us what Saul did, nor say any thing of what happened at the end of that one year; and it is, besides, mere absurdity to say he reigned one year, when the very next phrase says he had reigned two for if he had reigned two, it was impossible not to have reigned one. Another instance occurs in Joshua v. where the writer tells us a story of an angel (for such the table of contents at the head of the chapter calls him) appearing unto Joshua; and the story ends abruptly, and without any conclusion. The story is as follows:--Ver. 13. "And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand; and Joshua went unto him and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?" Verse 14, "And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant?" Verse 15, "And the captain of the Lord's host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standeth is holy. And Joshua did so."--And what then? nothing: for here the story ends, and the chapter too. Either this story is broken off in the middle, or it is a story told by some Jewish humourist in ridicule of Joshua's pretended mission from God, and the compilers of the Bible, not perceiving the design of the story, have told it as a serious matter. As a story of humour and ridicule it has a great deal of point; for it pompously introduces an angel in the figure of a man, with a drawn sword in his hand, before whom Joshua falls on his face to the earth, and worships (which is contrary to their second commandment;) and then, this most important embassy from heaven ends in telling Joshua to pull off his shoe. It might as well have told him to pull up his breeches. It is certain, however, that the Jews did not credit every thing their leaders told them, as appears from the cavalier manner in which they speak of Moses, when he was gone into the mount. As for this Moses, say they, we wot not what is become of him. Exod. xxxii. 1.--Author. The only thing that has any appearance of certainty in the book of Ezra is the time in which it was written, which was immediately after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, about B.C. 536. Ezra (who, according to the Jewish commentators, is the same person as is called Esdras in the Apocrypha) was one of the persons who returned, and who, it is probable, wrote the account of that affair. Nebemiah, whose book follows next to Ezra, was another of the returned persons; and who, it is also probable, wrote the account of the same affair, in the book that bears his name. But those accounts are nothing to us, nor to any other person, unless it be to the Jews, as a part of the history of their nation; and there is just as much of the word of God in those books as there is in any of the histories of France, or Rapin's history of England, or the history of any other country. But even in matters of historical record, neither of those writers are to be depended upon. In Ezra ii., the writer gives a list of the tribes and families, and of the precise number of souls of each, that returned from Babylon to Jerusalem; and this enrolment of the persons so returned appears to have been one of the principal objects for writing the book; but in this there is an error that destroys the intention of the undertaking. The writer begins his enrolment in the following manner (ii. 3): "The children of Parosh, two thousand one hundred seventy and four." Ver. 4, "The children of Shephatiah, three hundred seventy and two." And in this manner he proceeds through all the families; and in the 64th verse, he makes a total, and says, the whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and threescore. But whoever will take the trouble of casting up the several particulars, will find that the total is but 29,818; so that the error is 12,542. What certainty then can there be in the Bible for any thing? [Here Mr. Paine includes the long list of numbers from the Bible of all the children listed and the total thereof. This can be had directly from the Bible.] Nehemiah, in like manner, gives a list of the returned families, and of the number of each family. He begins as in Ezra, by saying (vii. 8): "The children of Parosh, two thousand three hundred and seventy-two;" and so on through all the families. (The list differs in several of the particulars from that of Ezra.) In ver. 66, Nehemiah makes a total, and says, as Ezra had said, "The whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and threescore." But the particulars of this list make a total but of 31,089, so that the error here is 11,271. These writers may do well enough for Bible-makers, but not for any thing where truth and exactness is necessary. The next book in course is the book of Esther. If Madam Esther thought it any honour to offer herself as a kept mistress to Ahasuerus, or as a rival to Queen Vashti, who had refused to come to a drunken king in the midst of a drunken company, to be made a show of, (for the account says, they had been drinking seven days, and were merry,) let Esther and Mordecai look to that, it is no business of ours, at least it is none of mine; besides which, the story has a great deal the appearance of being fabulous, and is also anonymous. I pass on to the book of Job. The book of Job differs in character from all the books we have hitherto passed over. Treachery and murder make no part of this book; it is the meditations of a mind strongly impressed with the vicissitudes of human life, and by turns sinking under, and struggling against the pressure. It is a highly wrought composition, between willing submission and involuntary discontent; and shows man, as he sometimes is, more disposed to be resigned than he is capable of being. Patience has but a small share in the character of the person of whom the book treats; on the contrary, his grief is often impetuous; but he still endeavours to keep a guard upon it, and seems determined, in the midst of accumulating ills, to impose upon himself the hard duty of contentment. I have spoken in a respectful manner of the book of Job in the former part of the 'Age of Reason,' but without knowing at that time what I have learned since; which is, that from all the evidence that can be collected, the book of Job does not belong to the Bible. I have seen the opinion of two Hebrew commentators, Abenezra and Spinoza, upon this subject; they both say that the book of Job carries no internal evidence of being an Hebrew book; that the genius of the composition, and the drama of the piece, are not Hebrew; that it has been translated from another language into Hebrew, and that the author of the book was a Gentile; that the character represented under the name of Satan (which is the first and only time this name is mentioned in the Bible) [In a later work Paine notes that in "the Bible" (by which he always means the Old Testament alone) the word Satan occurs also in 1 Chron. xxi. 1, and remarks that the action there ascribed to Satan is in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, attributed to Jehovah ("Essay on Dreams"). In these places, however, and in Ps. cix. 6, Satan means "adversary," and is so translated (A.S. version) in 2 Sam. xix. 22, and 1 Kings v. 4, xi. 25. As a proper name, with the article, Satan appears in the Old Testament only in Job and in Zech. iii. 1, 2. But the authenticity of the passage in Zechariah has been questioned, and it may be that in finding the proper name of Satan in Job alone, Paine was following some opinion met with in one of the authorities whose comments are condensed in his paragraph.--Editor.] does not correspond to any Hebrew idea; and that the two convocations which the Deity is supposed to have made of those whom the poem calls sons of God, and the familiarity which this supposed Satan is stated to have with the Deity, are in the same case. It may also be observed, that the book shows itself to be the production of a mind cultivated in science, which the Jews, so far from being famous for, were very ignorant of. The allusions to objects of natural philosophy are frequent and strong, and are of a different cast to any thing in the books known to be Hebrew. The astronomical names, Pleiades, Orion, and Arcturus, are Greek and not Hebrew names, and it does not appear from any thing that is to be found in the Bible that the Jews knew any thing of astronomy, or that they studied it, they had no translation of those names into their own language, but adopted the names as they found them in the poem. [Paine's Jewish critic, David Levi, fastened on this slip ("Defence of the Old Testament," 1797, p. 152). In the original the names are Ash (Arcturus), Kesil' (Orion), Kimah' (Pleiades), though the identifications of the constellations in the A.S.V. have been questioned.--Editor.] That the Jews did translate the literary productions of the Gentile nations into the Hebrew language, and mix them with their own, is not a matter of doubt; Proverbs xxxi. i, is an evidence of this: it is there said, The word of king Lemuel, the prophecy which his mother taught him. This verse stands as a preface to the proverbs that follow, and which are not the proverbs of Solomon, but of Lemuel; and this Lemuel was not one of the kings of Israel, nor of Judah, but of some other country, and consequently a Gentile. The Jews however have adopted his proverbs; and as they cannot give any account who the author of the book of Job was, nor how they came by the book, and as it differs in character from the Hebrew writings, and stands totally unconnected with every other book and chapter in the Bible before it and after it, it has all the circumstantial evidence of being originally a book of the Gentiles. [The prayer known by the name of Agur's Prayer, in Proverbs xxx.,--immediately preceding the proverbs of Lemuel,--and which is the only sensible, well-conceived, and well-expressed prayer in the Bible, has much the appearance of being a prayer taken from the Gentiles. The name of Agur occurs on no other occasion than this; and he is introduced, together with the prayer ascribed to him, in the same manner, and nearly in the same words, that Lemuel and his proverbs are introduced in the chapter that follows. The first verse says, "The words of Agur, the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy:" here the word prophecy is used with the same application it has in the following chapter of Lemuel, unconnected with anything of prediction. The prayer of Agur is in the 8th and 9th verses, "Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither riches nor poverty, but feed me with food convenient for me; lest I be full and deny thee and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain." This has not any of the marks of being a Jewish prayer, for the Jews never prayed but when they were in trouble, and never for anything but victory, vengeance, or riches.--Author. (Prov. xxx. 1, and xxxi. 1) the word "prophecy" in these verses is translated "oracle" or "burden" (marg.) in the revised version.--The prayer of Agur was quoted by Paine in his plea for the officers of Excise, 1772.--Editor.] The Bible-makers, and those regulators of time, the Bible chronologists, appear to have been at a loss where to place and how to dispose of the book of Job; for it contains no one historical circumstance, nor allusion to any, that might serve to determine its place in the Bible. But it would not have answered the purpose of these men to have informed the world of their ignorance; and, therefore, they have affixed it to the aera of B.C. 1520, which is during the time the Israelites were in Egypt, and for which they have just as much authority and no more than I should have for saying it was a thousand years before that period. The probability however is, that it is older than any book in the Bible; and it is the only one that can be read without indignation or disgust. We know nothing of what the ancient Gentile world (as it is called) was before the time of the Jews, whose practice has been to calumniate and blacken the character of all other nations; and it is from the Jewish accounts that we have learned to call them heathens. But, as far as we know to the contrary, they were a just and moral people, and not addicted, like the Jews, to cruelty and revenge, but of whose profession of faith we are unacquainted. It appears to have been their custom to personify both virtue and vice by statues and images, as is done now-a-days both by statuary and by painting; but it does not follow from this that they worshipped them any more than we do.--I pass on to the book of, Psalms, of which it is not necessary to make much observation. Some of them are moral, and others are very revengeful; and the greater part relates to certain local circumstances of the Jewish nation at the time they were written, with which we have nothing to do. It is, however, an error or an imposition to call them the Psalms of David; they are a collection, as song-books are now-a-days, from different song-writers, who lived at different times. The 137th Psalm could not have been written till more than 400 years after the time of David, because it is written in commemoration of an event, the captivity of the Jews in Babylon, which did not happen till that distance of time. "By the rivers of Babylon we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows, in the midst thereof; for there they that carried us away captive required of us a song, saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion." As a man would say to an American, or to a Frenchman, or to an Englishman, sing us one of your American songs, or your French songs, or your English songs. This remark, with respect to the time this psalm was written, is of no other use than to show (among others already mentioned) the general imposition the world has been under with respect to the authors of the Bible. No regard has been paid to time, place, and circumstance; and the names of persons have been affixed to the several books which it was as impossible they should write, as that a man should walk in procession at his own funeral. The Book of Proverbs. These, like the Psalms, are a collection, and that from authors belonging to other nations than those of the Jewish nation, as I have shewn in the observations upon the book of Job; besides which, some of the Proverbs ascribed to Solomon did not appear till two hundred and fifty years after the death of Solomon; for it is said in xxv. i, "These are also proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out." It was two hundred and fifty years from the time of Solomon to the time of Hezekiah. When a man is famous and his name is abroad he is made the putative father of things he never said or did; and this, most probably, has been the case with Solomon. It appears to have been the fashion of that day to make proverbs, as it is now to make jest-books, and father them upon those who never saw them. [A "Tom Paine's Jest Book" had appeared in London with little or nothing of Paine in it.--Editor.] The book of Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, is also ascribed to Solomon, and that with much reason, if not with truth. It is written as the solitary reflections of a worn-out debauchee, such as Solomon was, who looking back on scenes he can no longer enjoy, cries out All is Vanity! A great deal of the metaphor and of the sentiment is obscure, most probably by translation; but enough is left to show they were strongly pointed in the original. [Those that look out of the window shall be darkened, is an obscure figure in translation for loss of sight.--Author.] From what is transmitted to us of the character of Solomon, he was witty, ostentatious, dissolute, and at last melancholy. He lived fast, and died, tired of the world, at the age of fifty-eight years. Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, are worse than none; and, however it may carry with it the appearance of heightened enjoyment, it defeats all the felicity of affection, by leaving it no point to fix upon; divided love is never happy. This was the case with Solomon; and if he could not, with all his pretensions to wisdom, discover it beforehand, he merited, unpitied, the mortification he afterwards endured. In this point of view, his preaching is unnecessary, because, to know the consequences, it is only necessary to know the cause. Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines would have stood in place of the whole book. It was needless after this to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to derive happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness. To be happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to objects that can accompany the mind all the way through life, and that we take the rest as good in their day. The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age; and the mere drudge in business is but little better: whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests, and of superstition, the study of those things is the study of the true theology; it teaches man to know and to admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable, and of divine origin. Those who knew Benjamin Franklin will recollect, that his mind was ever young; his temper ever serene; science, that never grows grey, was always his mistress. He was never without an object; for when we cease to have an object we become like an invalid in an hospital waiting for death. Solomon's Songs, amorous and foolish enough, but which wrinkled fanaticism has called divine.--The compilers of the Bible have placed these songs after the book of Ecclesiastes; and the chronologists have affixed to them the aera of B.C. 1014, at which time Solomon, according to the same chronology, was nineteen years of age, and was then forming his seraglio of wives and concubines. The Bible-makers and the chronologists should have managed this matter a little better, and either have said nothing about the time, or chosen a time less inconsistent with the supposed divinity of those songs; for Solomon was then in the honey-moon of one thousand debaucheries. It should also have occurred to them, that as he wrote, if he did write, the book of Ecclesiastes, long after these songs, and in which he exclaims that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, that he included those songs in that description. This is the more probable, because he says, or somebody for him, Ecclesiastes ii. 8, I got me men-singers, and women-singers [most probably to sing those songs], and musical instruments of all sorts; and behold (Ver. ii), "all was vanity and vexation of spirit." The compilers however have done their work but by halves; for as they have given us the songs they should have given us the tunes, that we might sing them. The books called the books of the Prophets fill up all the remaining part of the Bible; they are sixteen in number, beginning with Isaiah and ending with Malachi, of which I have given a list in the observations upon Chronicles. Of these sixteen prophets, all of whom except the last three lived within the time the books of Kings and Chronicles were written, two only, Isaiah and Jeremiah, are mentioned in the history of those books. I shall begin with those two, reserving, what I have to say on the general character of the men called prophets to another part of the work. Whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to Isaiah, will find it one of the most wild and disorderly compositions ever put together; it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; and, except a short historical part, and a few sketches of history in the first two or three chapters, is one continued incoherent, bombastical rant, full of extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute of meaning; a school-boy would scarcely have been excusable for writing such stuff; it is (at least in translation) that kind of composition and false taste that is properly called prose run mad. The historical part begins at chapter xxxvi., and is continued to the end of chapter xxxix. It relates some matters that are said to have passed during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah, at which time Isaiah lived. This fragment of history begins and ends abruptly; it has not the least connection with the chapter that precedes it, nor with that which follows it, nor with any other in the book. It is probable that Isaiah wrote this fragment himself, because he was an actor in the circumstances it treats of; but except this part there are scarcely two chapters that have any connection with each other. One is entitled, at the beginning of the first verse, the burden of Babylon; another, the burden of Moab; another, the burden of Damascus; another, the burden of Egypt; another, the burden of the Desert of the Sea; another, the burden of the Valley of Vision: as you would say the story of the Knight of the Burning Mountain, the story of Cinderella, or the glassen slipper, the story of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, etc., etc. I have already shown, in the instance of the last two verses of 2 Chronicles, and the first three in Ezra, that the compilers of the Bible mixed and confounded the writings of different authors with each other; which alone, were there no other cause, is sufficient to destroy the authenticity of an compilation, because it is more than presumptive evidence that the compilers are ignorant who the authors were. A very glaring instance of this occurs in the book ascribed to Isaiah: the latter part of the 44th chapter, and the beginning of the 45th, so far from having been written by Isaiah, could only have been written by some person who lived at least an hundred and fifty years after Isaiah was dead. These chapters are a compliment to Cyrus, who permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity, to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple, as is stated in Ezra. The last verse of the 44th chapter, and the beginning of the 45th [Isaiah] are in the following words: "That saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, thou shalt be built; and to the temple thy foundations shall be laid: thus saith the Lord to his enointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden to subdue nations before him, and I will loose the loins of kings to open before him the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut; I will go before thee," etc. What audacity of church and priestly ignorance it is to impose this book upon the world as the writing of Isaiah, when Isaiah, according to their own chronology, died soon after the death of Hezekiah, which was B.C. 698; and the decree of Cyrus, in favour of the Jews returning to Jerusalem, was, according to the same chronology, B.C. 536; which is a distance of time between the two of 162 years. I do not suppose that the compilers of the Bible made these books, but rather that they picked up some loose, anonymous essays, and put them together under the names of such authors as best suited their purpose. They have encouraged the imposition, which is next to inventing it; for it was impossible but they must have observed it. When we see the studied craft of the scripture-makers, in making every part of this romantic book of school-boy's eloquence bend to the monstrous idea of a Son of God, begotten by a ghost on the body of a virgin, there is no imposition we are not justified in suspecting them of. Every phrase and circumstance are marked with the barbarous hand of superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it was impossible they could have. The head of every chapter, and the top of every page, are blazoned with the names of Christ and the Church, that the unwary reader might suck in the error before he began to read. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son (Isa. vii. I4), has been interpreted to mean the person called Jesus Christ, and his mother Mary, and has been echoed through christendom for more than a thousand years; and such has been the rage of this opinion, that scarcely a spot in it but has been stained with blood and marked with desolation in consequence of it. Though it is not my intention to enter into controversy on subjects of this kind, but to confine myself to show that the Bible is spurious,--and thus, by taking away the foundation, to overthrow at once the whole structure of superstition raised thereon,--I will however stop a moment to expose the fallacious application of this passage. Whether Isaiah was playing a trick with Ahaz, king of Judah, to whom this passage is spoken, is no business of mine; I mean only to show the misapplication of the passage, and that it has no more reference to Christ and his mother, than it has to me and my mother. The story is simply this: The king of Syria and the king of Israel (I have already mentioned that the Jews were split into two nations, one of which was called Judah, the capital of which was Jerusalem, and the other Israel) made war jointly against Ahaz, king of Judah, and marched their armies towards Jerusalem. Ahaz and his people became alarmed, and the account says (Is. vii. 2), Their hearts were moved as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind. In this situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz, and assures him in the name of the Lord (the cant phrase of all the prophets) that these two kings should not succeed against him; and to satisfy Ahaz that this should be the case, tells him to ask a sign. This, the account says, Ahaz declined doing; giving as a reason that he would not tempt the Lord; upon which Isaiah, who is the speaker, says, ver. 14, "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son;" and the 16th verse says, "And before this child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land which thou abhorrest or dreadest [meaning Syria and the kingdom of Israel] shall be forsaken of both her kings." Here then was the sign, and the time limited for the completion of the assurance or promise; namely, before this child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good. Isaiah having committed himself thus far, it became necessary to him, in order to avoid the imputation of being a false prophet, and the consequences thereof, to take measures to make this sign appear. It certainly was not a difficult thing, in any time of the world, to find a girl with child, or to make her so; and perhaps Isaiah knew of one beforehand; for I do not suppose that the prophets of that day were any more to be trusted than the priests of this: be that, however, as it may, he says in the next chapter, ver. 2, "And I took unto me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah, and I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and bare a son." Here then is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child and this virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this story that the book of Matthew, and the impudence and sordid interest of priests in later times, have founded a theory, which they call the gospel; and have applied this story to signify the person they call Jesus Christ; begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom they call holy, on the body of a woman engaged in marriage, and afterwards married, whom they call a virgin, seven hundred years after this foolish story was told; a theory which, speaking for myself, I hesitate not to believe, and to say, is as fabulous and as false as God is true. [In Is. vii. 14, it is said that the child should be called Immanuel; but this name was not given to either of the children, otherwise than as a character, which the word signifies. That of the prophetess was called Maher-shalalhash-baz, and that of Mary was called Jesus.--Author.] But to show the imposition and falsehood of Isaiah we have only to attend to the sequel of this story; which, though it is passed over in silence in the book of Isaiah, is related in 2 Chronicles, xxviii; and which is, that instead of these two kings failing in their attempt against Ahaz, king of Judah, as Isaiah had pretended to foretel in the name of the Lord, they succeeded: Ahaz was defeated and destroyed; an hundred and twenty thousand of his people were slaughtered; Jerusalem was plundered, and two hundred thousand women and sons and daughters carried into captivity. Thus much for this lying prophet and imposter Isaiah, and the book of falsehoods that bears his name. I pass on to the book of Jeremiah. This prophet, as he is called, lived in the time that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, in the reign of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah; and the suspicion was strong against him that he was a traitor in the interest of Nebuchadnezzar. Every thing relating to Jeremiah shows him to have been a man of an equivocal character: in his metaphor of the potter and the clay, (ch. xviii.) he guards his prognostications in such a crafty manner as always to leave himself a door to escape by, in case the event should be contrary to what he had predicted. In the 7th and 8th verses he makes the Almighty to say, "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and destroy it, if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent me of the evil that I thought to do unto them." Here was a proviso against one side of the case: now for the other side. Verses 9 and 10, "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent me of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them." Here is a proviso against the other side; and, according to this plan of prophesying, a prophet could never be wrong, however mistaken the Almighty might be. This sort of absurd subterfuge, and this manner of speaking of the Almighty, as one would speak of a man, is consistent with nothing but the stupidity of the Bible. As to the authenticity of the book, it is only necessary to read it in order to decide positively that, though some passages recorded therein may have been spoken by Jeremiah, he is not the author of the book. The historical parts, if they can be called by that name, are in the most confused condition; the same events are several times repeated, and that in a manner different, and sometimes in contradiction to each other; and this disorder runs even to the last chapter, where the history, upon which the greater part of the book has been employed, begins anew, and ends abruptly. The book has all the appearance of being a medley of unconnected anecdotes respecting persons and things of that time, collected together in the same rude manner as if the various and contradictory accounts that are to be found in a bundle of newspapers, respecting persons and things of the present day, were put together without date, order, or explanation. I will give two or three examples of this kind. It appears, from the account of chapter xxxvii. that the army of Nebuchadnezzer, which is called the army of the Chaldeans, had besieged Jerusalem some time; and on their hearing that the army of Pharaoh of Egypt was marching against them, they raised the siege and retreated for a time. It may here be proper to mention, in order to understand this confused history, that Nebuchadnezzar had besieged and taken Jerusalem during the reign of Jehoakim, the redecessor of Zedekiah; and that it was Nebuchadnezzar who had make Zedekiah king, or rather viceroy; and that this second siege, of which the book of Jeremiah treats, was in consequence of the revolt of Zedekiah against Nebuchadnezzar. This will in some measure account for the suspicion that affixes itself to Jeremiah of being a traitor, and in the interest of Nebuchadnezzar,--whom Jeremiah calls, xliii. 10, the servant of God. Chapter xxxvii. 11-13, says, "And it came to pass, that, when the army of the Chaldeans was broken up from Jerusalem, for fear of Pharaoh's army, that Jeremiah went forth out of Jerusalem, to go (as this account states) into the land of Benjamin, to separate himself thence in the midst of the people; and when he was in the gate of Benjamin a captain of the ward was there, whose name was Irijah... and he took Jeremiah the prophet, saying, Thou fallest away to the Chaldeans; then Jeremiah said, It is false; I fall not away to the Chaldeans." Jeremiah being thus stopt and accused, was, after being examined, committed to prison, on suspicion of being a traitor, where he remained, as is stated in the last verse of this chapter. But the next chapter gives an account of the imprisonment of Jeremiah, which has no connection with this account, but ascribes his imprisonment to another circumstance, and for which we must go back to chapter xxi. It is there stated, ver. 1, that Zedekiah sent Pashur the son of Malchiah, and Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest, to Jeremiah, to enquire of him concerning Nebuchadnezzar, whose army was then before Jerusalem; and Jeremiah said to them, ver. 8, "Thus saith the Lord, Behold I set before you the way of life, and the way of death; he that abideth in this city shall die by the sword and by the famine, and by the pestilence; but he that goeth out and falleth to the Chaldeans that besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be unto him for a prey." This interview and conference breaks off abruptly at the end of the 10th verse of chapter xxi.; and such is the disorder of this book that we have to pass over sixteen chapters upon various subjects, in order to come at the continuation and event of this conference; and this brings us to the first verse of chapter xxxviii., as I have just mentioned. The chapter opens with saying, "Then Shaphatiah, the son of Mattan, Gedaliah the son of Pashur, and Jucal the son of Shelemiah, and Pashur the son of Malchiah, (here are more persons mentioned than in chapter xxi.) heard the words that Jeremiah spoke unto all the people, saying, Thus saith the Lord, He that remaineth in this city, shall die by the sword, by famine, and by the pestilence; but he that goeth forth to the Chaldeans shall live; for he shall have his life for a prey, and shall live"; [which are the words of the conference;] therefore, (say they to Zedekiah,) "We beseech thee, let this man be put to death, for thus he weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, in speaking such words unto them; for this man seeketh not the welfare of the people, but the hurt:" and at the 6th verse it is said, "Then they took Jeremiah, and put him into the dungeon of Malchiah." These two accounts are different and contradictory. The one ascribes his imprisonment to his attempt to escape out of the city; the other to his preaching and prophesying in the city; the one to his being seized by the guard at the gate; the other to his being accused before Zedekiah by the conferees. [I observed two chapters in I Samuel (xvi. and xvii.) that contradict each other with respect to David, and the manner he became acquainted with Saul; as Jeremiah xxxvii. and xxxviii. contradict each other with respect to the cause of Jeremiah's imprisonment. In 1 Samuel, xvi., it is said, that an evil spirit of God troubled Saul, and that his servants advised him (as a remedy) "to seek out a man who was a cunning player upon the harp." And Saul said, ver. 17, "Provide me now a man that can play well, and bring him to me. Then answered one of his servants, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with him; wherefore Saul sent messengers unto Jesse, and said, Send me David, thy son. And (verse 21) David came to Saul, and stood before him, and he loved him greatly, and he became his armour-bearer; and when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, (verse 23) David took his harp, and played with his hand, and Saul was refreshed, and was well." But the next chapter (xvii.) gives an account, all different to this, of the manner that Saul and David became acquainted. Here it is ascribed to David's encounter with Goliah, when David was sent by his father to carry provision to his brethren in the camp. In the 55th verse of this chapter it is said, "And when Saul saw David go forth against the Philistine (Goliah) he said to Abner, the captain of the host, Abner, whose son is this youth? And Abner said, As thy soul liveth, 0 king, I cannot tell. And the king said, Enquire thou whose son the stripling is. And as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with the head of the Philistine in his hand; and Saul said unto him, Whose son art thou, thou young man? And David answered, I am the son of thy servant, Jesse, the Betblehemite," These two accounts belie each other, because each of them supposes Saul and David not to have known each other before. This book, the Bible, is too ridiculous for criticism.--Author.] In the next chapter (Jer. xxxix.) we have another instance of the disordered state of this book; for notwithstanding the siege of the city by Nebuchadnezzar has been the subject of several of the preceding chapters, particularly xxxvii. and xxxviii., chapter xxxix. begins as if not a word had been said upon the subject, and as if the reader was still to be informed of every particular respecting it; for it begins with saying, ver. 1, "In the ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the tenth month, came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and all his army, against Jerusalem, and besieged it," etc. But the instance in the last chapter (lii.) is still more glaring; for though the story has been told over and over again, this chapter still supposes the reader not to know anything of it, for it begins by saying, ver. i, "Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem, and his mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah." (Ver. 4,) "And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and pitched against it, and built forts against it," etc. It is not possible that any one man, and more particularly Jeremiah, could have been the writer of this book. The errors are such as could not have been committed by any person sitting down to compose a work. Were I, or any other man, to write in such a disordered manner, no body would read what was written, and every body would suppose that the writer was in a state of insanity. The only way, therefore, to account for the disorder is, that the book is a medley of detached unauthenticated anecdotes, put together by some stupid book-maker, under the name of Jeremiah; because many of them refer to him, and to the circumstances of the times he lived in. Of the duplicity, and of the false predictions of Jeremiah, I shall mention two instances, and then proceed to review the remainder of the Bible. It appears from chapter xxxviii. that when Jeremiah was in prison, Zedekiah sent for him, and at this interview, which was private, Jeremiah pressed it strongly on Zedekiah to surrender himself to the enemy. "If," says he, (ver. 17,) "thou wilt assuredly go forth unto the king of Babylon's princes, then thy soul shall live," etc. Zedekiah was apprehensive that what passed at this conference should be known; and he said to Jeremiah, (ver. 25,) "If the princes [meaning those of Judah] hear that I have talked with thee, and they come unto thee, and say unto thee, Declare unto us now what thou hast said unto the king; hide it not from us, and we will not put thee to death; and also what the king said unto thee; then thou shalt say unto them, I presented my supplication before the king that he would not cause me to return to Jonathan's house, to die there. Then came all the princes unto Jeremiah, and asked him, and "he told them according to all the words the king had commanded." Thus, this man of God, as he is called, could tell a lie, or very strongly prevaricate, when he supposed it would answer his purpose; for certainly he did not go to Zedekiah to make this supplication, neither did he make it; he went because he was sent for, and he employed that opportunity to advise Zedekiah to surrender himself to Nebuchadnezzar. In chapter xxxiv. 2-5, is a prophecy of Jeremiah to Zedekiah in these words: "Thus saith the Lord, Behold I will give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will burn it with fire; and thou shalt not escape out of his hand, but thou shalt surely be taken, and delivered into his hand; and thine eyes shall behold the eyes of the king of Babylon, and he shall speak with thee mouth to mouth, and thou shalt go to Babylon. Yet hear the word of the Lord; O Zedekiah, king, of Judah, thus saith the Lord, Thou shalt not die by the sword, but thou shalt die in Peace; and with the burnings of thy fathers, the former kings that were before thee, so shall they burn odours for thee, and they will lament thee, saying, Ah, Lord! for I have pronounced the word, saith the Lord." Now, instead of Zedekiah beholding the eyes of the king of Babylon, and speaking with him mouth to mouth, and dying in peace, and with the burning of odours, as at the funeral of his fathers, (as Jeremiah had declared the Lord himself had pronounced,) the reverse, according to chapter Iii., 10, 11 was the case; it is there said, that the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes: then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him in chains, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death. What then can we say of these prophets, but that they are impostors and liars? As for Jeremiah, he experienced none of those evils. He was taken into favour by Nebuchadnezzar, who gave him in charge to the captain of the guard (xxxix, 12), "Take him (said he) and look well to him, and do him no harm; but do unto him even as he shall say unto thee." Jeremiah joined himself afterwards to Nebuchadnezzar, and went about prophesying for him against the Egyptians, who had marched to the relief of Jerusalem while it was besieged. Thus much for another of the lying prophets, and the book that bears his name. I have been the more particular in treating of the books ascribed to Isaiah and Jeremiah, because those two are spoken of in the books of Kings and Chronicles, which the others are not. The remainder of the books ascribed to the men called prophets I shall not trouble myself much about; but take them collectively into the observations I shall offer on the character of the men styled prophets. In the former part of the 'Age of Reason,' I have said that the word prophet was the Bible-word for poet, and that the flights and metaphors of Jewish poets have been foolishly erected into what are now called prophecies. I am sufficiently justified in this opinion, not only because the books called the prophecies are written in poetical language, but because there is no word in the Bible, except it be the word prophet, that describes what we mean by a poet. I have also said, that the word signified a performer upon musical instruments, of which I have given some instances; such as that of a company of prophets, prophesying with psalteries, with tabrets, with pipes, with harps, etc., and that Saul prophesied with them, 1 Sam. x., 5. It appears from this passage, and from other parts in the book of Samuel, that the word prophet was confined to signify poetry and music; for the person who was supposed to have a visionary insight into concealed things, was not a prophet but a seer, [I know not what is the Hebrew word that corresponds to the word seer in English; but I observe it is translated into French by Le Voyant, from the verb voir to see, and which means the person who sees, or the seer.--Author.] [The Hebrew word for Seer, in 1 Samuel ix., transliterated, is chozeh, the gazer, it is translated in Is. xlvii. 13, "the stargazers."--Editor.] (i Sam, ix. 9;) and it was not till after the word seer went out of use (which most probably was when Saul banished those he called wizards) that the profession of the seer, or the art of seeing, became incorporated into the word prophet. According to the modern meaning of the word prophet and prophesying, it signifies foretelling events to a great distance of time; and it became necessary to the inventors of the gospel to give it this latitude of meaning, in order to apply or to stretch what they call the prophecies of the Old Testament, to the times of the New. But according to the Old Testament, the prophesying of the seer, and afterwards of the prophet, so far as the meaning of the word "seer" was incorporated into that of prophet, had reference only to things of the time then passing, or very closely connected with it; such as the event of a battle they were going to engage in, or of a journey, or of any enterprise they were going to undertake, or of any circumstance then pending, or of any difficulty they were then in; all of which had immediate reference to themselves (as in the case already mentioned of Ahaz and Isaiah with respect to the expression, Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,) and not to any distant future time. It was that kind of prophesying that corresponds to what we call fortune-telling; such as casting nativities, predicting riches, fortunate or unfortunate marriages, conjuring for lost goods, etc.; and it is the fraud of the Christian church, not that of the Jews, and the ignorance and the superstition of modern, not that of ancient times, that elevated those poetical, musical, conjuring, dreaming, strolling gentry, into the rank they have since had. But, besides this general character of all the prophets, they had also a particular character. They were in parties, and they prophesied for or against, according to the party they were with; as the poetical and political writers of the present day write in defence of the party they associate with against the other. After the Jews were divided into two nations, that of Judah and that of Israel, each party had its prophets, who abused and accused each other of being false prophets, lying prophets, impostors, etc. The prophets of the party of Judah prophesied against the prophets of the party of Israel; and those of the party of Israel against those of Judah. This party prophesying showed itself immediately on the separation under the first two rival kings, Rehoboam and Jeroboam. The prophet that cursed, or prophesied against the altar that Jeroboam had built in Bethel, was of the party of Judah, where Rehoboam was king; and he was way-laid on his return home by a prophet of the party of Israel, who said unto him (i Kings xiii.) "Art thou the man of God that came from Judah? and he said, I am." Then the prophet of the party of Israel said to him "I am a prophet also, as thou art, [signifying of Judah,] and an angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with thee unto thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water; but (says the 18th verse) he lied unto him." The event, however, according to the story, is, that the prophet of Judah never got back to Judah; for he was found dead on the road by the contrivance of the prophet of Israel, who no doubt was called a true prophet by his own party, and the prophet of Judah a lying prophet. In 2 Kings, iii., a story is related of prophesying or conjuring that shews, in several particulars, the character of a prophet. Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and Joram king of Israel, had for a while ceased their party animosity, and entered into an alliance; and these two, together with the king of Edom, engaged in a war against the king of Moab. After uniting and marching their armies, the story says, they were in great distress for water, upon which Jehoshaphat said, "Is there not here a prophet of the Lord, that we may enquire of the Lord by him? and one of the servants of the king of Israel said here is Elisha. [Elisha was of the party of Judah.] And Jehoshaphat the king of Judah said, The word of the Lord is with him." The story then says, that these three kings went down to Elisha; and when Elisha [who, as I have said, was a Judahmite prophet] saw the King of Israel, he said unto him, "What have I to do with thee, get thee to the prophets of thy father and the prophets of thy mother. Nay but, said the king of Israel, the Lord hath called these three kings together, to deliver them into the hands of the king of Moab," (meaning because of the distress they were in for water;) upon which Elisha said, "As the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand, surely, were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, I would not look towards thee nor see thee." Here is all the venom and vulgarity of a party prophet. We are now to see the performance, or manner of prophesying. Ver. 15. "'Bring me,' (said Elisha), 'a minstrel'; and it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him." Here is the farce of the conjurer. Now for the prophecy: "And Elisha said, [singing most probably to the tune he was playing], Thus saith the Lord, Make this valley full of ditches;" which was just telling them what every countryman could have told them without either fiddle or farce, that the way to get water was to dig for it. But as every conjuror is not famous alike for the same thing, so neither were those prophets; for though all of them, at least those I have spoken of, were famous for lying, some of them excelled in cursing. Elisha, whom I have just mentioned, was a chief in this branch of prophesying; it was he that cursed the forty-two children in the name of the Lord, whom the two she-bears came and devoured. We are to suppose that those children were of the party of Israel; but as those who will curse will lie, there is just as much credit to be given to this story of Elisha's two she-bears as there is to that of the Dragon of Wantley, of whom it is said: Poor children three devoured be, That could not with him grapple; And at one sup he eat them up, As a man would eat an apple. There was another description of men called prophets, that amused themselves with dreams and visions; but whether by night or by day we know not. These, if they were not quite harmless, were but little mischievous. Of this class are, EZEKIEL and DANIEL; and the first question upon these books, as upon all the others, is, Are they genuine? that is, were they written by Ezekiel and Daniel? Of this there is no proof; but so far as my own opinion goes, I am more inclined to believe they were, than that they were not. My reasons for this opinion are as follows: First, Because those books do not contain internal evidence to prove they were not written by Ezekiel and Daniel, as the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc., prove they were not written by Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc. Secondly, Because they were not written till after the Babylonish captivity began; and there is good reason to believe that not any book in the bible was written before that period; at least it is proveable, from the books themselves, as I have already shown, that they were not written till after the commencement of the Jewish monarchy. Thirdly, Because the manner in which the books ascribed to Ezekiel and Daniel are written, agrees with the condition these men were in at the time of writing them. Had the numerous commentators and priests, who have foolishly employed or wasted their time in pretending to expound and unriddle those books, been carred into captivity, as Ezekiel and Daniel were, it would greatly have improved their intellects in comprehending the reason for this mode of writing, and have saved them the trouble of racking their invention, as they have done to no purpose; for they would have found that themselves would be obliged to write whatever they had to write, respecting their own affairs, or those of their friends, or of their country, in a concealed manner, as those men have done. These two books differ from all the rest; for it is only these that are filled with accounts of dreams and visions: and this difference arose from the situation the writers were in as prisoners of war, or prisoners of state, in a foreign country, which obliged them to convey even the most trifling information to each other, and all their political projects or opinions, in obscure and metaphorical terms. They pretend to have dreamed dreams, and seen visions, because it was unsafe for them to speak facts or plain language. We ought, however, to suppose, that the persons to whom they wrote understood what they meant, and that it was not intended anybody else should. But these busy commentators and priests have been puzzling their wits to find out what it was not intended they should know, and with which they have nothing to do. Ezekiel and Daniel were carried prisoners to Babylon, under the first captivity, in the time of Jehoiakim, nine years before the second captivity in the time of Zedekiah. The Jews were then still numerous, and had considerable force at Jerusalem; and as it is natural to suppose that men in the situation of Ezekiel and Daniel would be meditating the recovery of their country, and their own deliverance, it is reasonable to suppose that the accounts of dreams and visions with which these books are filled, are no other than a disguised mode of correspondence to facilitate those objects: it served them as a cypher, or secret alphabet. If they are not this, they are tales, reveries, and nonsense; or at least a fanciful way of wearing off the wearisomeness of captivity; but the presumption is, they are the former. Ezekiel begins his book by speaking of a vision of cherubims, and of a wheel within a wheel, which he says he saw by the river Chebar, in the land of his captivity. Is it not reasonable to suppose that by the cherubims he meant the temple at Jerusalem, where they had figures of cherubims? and by a wheel within a wheel (which as a figure has always been understood to signify political contrivance) the project or means of recovering Jerusalem? In the latter part of his book he supposes himself transported to Jerusalem, and into the temple; and he refers back to the vision on the river Chebar, and says, (xliii- 3,) that this last vision was like the vision on the river Chebar; which indicates that those pretended dreams and visions had for their object the recovery of Jerusalem, and nothing further. As to the romantic interpretations and applications, wild as the dreams and visions they undertake to explain, which commentators and priests have made of those books, that of converting them into things which they call prophecies, and making them bend to times and circumstances as far remote even as the present day, it shows the fraud or the extreme folly to which credulity or priestcraft can go. Scarcely anything can be more absurd than to suppose that men situated as Ezekiel and Daniel were, whose country was over-run, and in the possession of the enemy, all their friends and relations in captivity abroad, or in slavery at home, or massacred, or in continual danger of it; scarcely any thing, I say, can be more absurd than to suppose that such men should find nothing to do but that of employing their time and their thoughts about what was to happen to other nations a thousand or two thousand years after they were dead; at the same time nothing more natural than that they should meditate the recovery of Jerusalem, and their own deliverance; and that this was the sole object of all the obscure and apparently frantic writing contained in those books. In this sense the mode of writing used in those two books being forced by necessity, and not adopted by choice, is not irrational; but, if we are to use the books as prophecies, they are false. In Ezekiel xxix. 11., speaking of Egypt, it is said, "No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast pass through it; neither shall it be inhabited for forty years." This is what never came to pass, and consequently it is false, as all the books I have already reviewed are.--I here close this part of the subject. In the former part of 'The Age of Reason' I have spoken of Jonah, and of the story of him and the whale.--A fit story for ridicule, if it was written to be believed; or of laughter, if it was intended to try what credulity could swallow; for, if it could swallow Jonah and the whale it could swallow anything. But, as is already shown in the observations on the book of Job and of Proverbs, it is not always certain which of the books in the Bible are originally Hebrew, or only translations from the books of the Gentiles into Hebrew; and, as the book of Jonah, so far from treating of the affairs of the Jews, says nothing upon that subject, but treats altogether of the Gentiles, it is more probable that it is a book of the Gentiles than of the Jews, [I have read in an ancient Persian poem (Saadi, I believe, but have mislaid the reference) this phrase: "And now the whale swallowed Jonah: the sun set."--Editor.] and that it has been written as a fable to expose the nonsense, and satyrize the vicious and malignant character, of a Bible-prophet, or a predicting priest. Jonah is represented, first as a disobedient prophet, running away from his mission, and taking shelter aboard a vessel of the Gentiles, bound from Joppa to Tarshish; as if he ignorantly supposed, by such a paltry contrivance, he could hide himself where God could not find him. The vessel is overtaken by a storm at sea; and the mariners, all of whom are Gentiles, believing it to be a judgement on account of some one on board who had committed a crime, agreed to cast lots to discover the offender; and the lot fell upon Jonah. But before this they had cast all their wares and merchandise over-board to lighten the vessel, while Jonah, like a stupid fellow, was fast asleep in the hold. After the lot had designated Jonah to be the offender, they questioned him to know who and what he was? and he told them he was an Hebrew; and the story implies that he confessed himself to be guilty. But these Gentiles, instead of sacrificing him at once without pity or mercy, as a company of Bible-prophets or priests would have done by a Gentile in the same case, and as it is related Samuel had done by Agag, and Moses by the women and children, they endeavoured to save him, though at the risk of their own lives: for the account says, "Nevertheless [that is, though Jonah was a Jew and a foreigner, and the cause of all their misfortunes, and the loss of their cargo] the men rowed hard to bring the boat to land, but they could not, for the sea wrought and was tempestuous against them." Still however they were unwilling to put the fate of the lot into execution; and they cried, says the account, unto the Lord, saying, "We beseech thee, O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood; for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee." Meaning thereby, that they did not presume to judge Jonah guilty, since that he might be innocent; but that they considered the lot that had fallen upon him as a decree of God, or as it pleased God. The address of this prayer shows that the Gentiles worshipped one Supreme Being, and that they were not idolaters as the Jews represented them to be. But the storm still continuing, and the danger encreasing, they put the fate of the lot into execution, and cast Jonah in the sea; where, according to the story, a great fish swallowed him up whole and alive! We have now to consider Jonah securely housed from the storm in the fish's belly. Here we are told that he prayed; but the prayer is a made-up prayer, taken from various parts of the Psalms, without connection or consistency, and adapted to the distress, but not at all to the condition that Jonah was in. It is such a prayer as a Gentile, who might know something of the Psalms, could copy out for him. This circumstance alone, were there no other, is sufficient to indicate that the whole is a made-up story. The prayer, however, is supposed to have answered the purpose, and the story goes on, (taking-off at the same time the cant language of a Bible-prophet,) saying, "The Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon dry land." Jonah then received a second mission to Nineveh, with which he sets out; and we have now to consider him as a preacher. The distress he is represented to have suffered, the remembrance of his own disobedience as the cause of it, and the miraculous escape he is supposed to have had, were sufficient, one would conceive, to have impressed him with sympathy and benevolence in the execution of his mission; but, instead of this, he enters the city with denunciation and malediction in his mouth, crying, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." We have now to consider this supposed missionary in the last act of his mission; and here it is that the malevolent spirit of a Bible-prophet, or of a predicting priest, appears in all that blackness of character that men ascribe to the being they call the devil. Having published his predictions, he withdrew, says the story, to the east side of the city.--But for what? not to contemplate in retirement the mercy of his Creator to himself or to others, but to wait, with malignant impatience, the destruction of Nineveh. It came to pass, however, as the story relates, that the Ninevites reformed, and that God, according to the Bible phrase, repented him of the evil he had said he would do unto them, and did it not. This, saith the first verse of the last chapter, displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was very angry. His obdurate heart would rather that all Nineveh should be destroyed, and every soul, young and old, perish in its ruins, than that his prediction should not be fulfilled. To expose the character of a prophet still more, a gourd is made to grow up in the night, that promises him an agreeable shelter from the heat of the sun, in the place to which he is retired; and the next morning it dies. Here the rage of the prophet becomes excessive, and he is ready to destroy himself. "It is better, said he, for me to die than to live." This brings on a supposed expostulation between the Almighty and the prophet; in which the former says, "Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And Jonah said, I do well to be angry even unto death. Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it to grow, which came up in a night, and perished in a night; and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than threescore thousand persons, that cannot discern between their right hand and their left?" Here is both the winding up of the satire, and the moral of the fable. As a satire, it strikes against the character of all the Bible-prophets, and against all the indiscriminate judgements upon men, women and children, with which this lying book, the bible, is crowded; such as Noah's flood, the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the extirpation of the Canaanites, even to suckling infants, and women with child; because the same reflection 'that there are more than threescore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left,' meaning young children, applies to all their cases. It satirizes also the supposed partiality of the Creator for one nation more than for another. As a moral, it preaches against the malevolent spirit of prediction; for as certainly as a man predicts ill, he becomes inclined to wish it. The pride of having his judgment right hardens his heart, till at last he beholds with satisfaction, or sees with disappointment, the accomplishment or the failure of his predictions.--This book ends with the same kind of strong and well-directed point against prophets, prophecies and indiscriminate judgements, as the chapter that Benjamin Franklin made for the Bible, about Abraham and the stranger, ends against the intolerant spirit of religious persecutions--Thus much for the book Jonah. [The story of Abraham and the Fire-worshipper, ascribed to Franklin, is from Saadi. (See my "Sacred Anthology," p. 61.) Paine has often been called a "mere scoffer," but he seems to have been among the first to treat with dignity the book of Jonah, so especially liable to the ridicule of superficial readers, and discern in it the highest conception of Deity known to the Old Testament.--Editor.] Of the poetical parts of the Bible, that are called prophecies, I have spoken in the former part of 'The Age of Reason,' and already in this, where I have said that the word for prophet is the Bible-word for Poet, and that the flights and metaphors of those poets, many of which have become obscure by the lapse of time and the change of circumstances, have been ridiculously erected into things called prophecies, and applied to purposes the writers never thought of. When a priest quotes any of those passages, he unriddles it agreeably to his own views, and imposes that explanation upon his congregation as the meaning of the writer. The whore of Babylon has been the common whore of all the priests, and each has accused the other of keeping the strumpet; so well do they agree in their explanations. There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together. I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie; and the priests, if they can, may replant them. They may, perhaps, stick them in the ground, but they will never make them grow.--I pass on to the books of the New Testament. CHAPTER II - THE NEW TESTAMENT THE New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation. As it is nothing extraordinary that a woman should be with child before she was married, and that the son she might bring forth should be executed, even unjustly, I see no reason for not believing that such a woman as Mary, and such a man as Joseph, and Jesus, existed; their mere existence is a matter of indifference, about which there is no ground either to believe or to disbelieve, and which comes under the common head of, It may be so, and what then? The probability however is that there were such persons, or at least such as resembled them in part of the circumstances, because almost all romantic stories have been suggested by some actual circumstance; as the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, not a word of which is true, were suggested by the case of Alexander Selkirk. It is not then the existence or the non-existence, of the persons that I trouble myself about; it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene. It gives an account of a young woman engaged to be married, and while under this engagement, she is, to speak plain language, debauched by a ghost, under the impious pretence, (Luke i. 35,) that "the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee." Notwithstanding which, Joseph afterwards marries her, cohabits with her as his wife, and in his turn rivals the ghost. This is putting the story into intelligible language, and when told in this manner, there is not a priest but must be ashamed to own it. [Mary, the supposed virgin, mother of Jesus, had several other children, sons and daughters. See Matt. xiii. 55, 56.--Author.] Obscenity in matters of faith, however wrapped up, is always a token of fable and imposture; for it is necessary to our serious belief in God, that we do not connect it with stories that run, as this does, into ludicrous interpretations. This story is, upon the face of it, the same kind of story as that of Jupiter and Leda, or Jupiter and Europa, or any of the amorous adventures of Jupiter; and shews, as is already stated in the former part of 'The Age of Reason,' that the Christian faith is built upon the heathen Mythology. As the historical parts of the New Testament, so far as concerns Jesus Christ, are confined to a very short space of time, less than two years, and all within the same country, and nearly to the same spot, the discordance of time, place, and circumstance, which detects the fallacy of the books of the Old Testament, and proves them to be impositions, cannot be expected to be found here in the same abundance. The New Testament compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act, in which there is not room for very numerous violations of the unities. There are, however, some glaring contradictions, which, exclusive of the fallacy of the pretended prophecies, are sufficient to show the story of Jesus Christ to be false. I lay it down as a position which cannot be controverted, first, that the agreement of all the parts of a story does not prove that story to be true, because the parts may agree, and the whole may be false; secondly, that the disagreement of the parts of a story proves the whole cannot be true. The agreement does not prove truth, but the disagreement proves falsehood positively. The history of Jesus Christ is contained in the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.--The first chapter of Matthew begins with giving a genealogy of Jesus Christ; and in the third chapter of Luke there is also given a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Did these two agree, it would not prove the genealogy to be true, because it might nevertheless be a fabrication; but as they contradict each other in every particular, it proves falsehood absolutely. If Matthew speaks truth, Luke speaks falsehood; and if Luke speaks truth, Matthew speaks falsehood: and as there is no authority for believing one more than the other, there is no authority for believing either; and if they cannot be believed even in the very first thing they say, and set out to prove, they are not entitled to be believed in any thing they say afterwards. Truth is an uniform thing; and as to inspiration and revelation, were we to admit it, it is impossible to suppose it can be contradictory. Either then the men called apostles were imposters, or the books ascribed to them have been written by other persons, and fathered upon them, as is the case in the Old Testament. The book of Matthew gives (i. 6), a genealogy by name from David, up, through Joseph, the husband of Mary, to Christ; and makes there to be twent eight generations. The book of Luke gives also a genealogy by name from Christ, through Joseph the husband of Mary, down to David, and makes there to be forty-three generations; besides which, there is only the two names of David and Joseph that are alike in the two lists.--I here insert both genealogical lists, and for the sake of perspicuity and comparison, have placed them both in the same direction, that is, from Joseph down to David. Genealogy, according to Genealogy, according to Matthew. Luke. Christ Christ 2 Joseph 2 Joseph 3 Jacob 3 Heli 4 Matthan 4 Matthat 5 Eleazer 5 Levi 6 Eliud 6 Melchl 7 Achim 7 Janna 8 Sadoc 8 Joseph 9 Azor 9 Mattathias 10 Eliakim 10 Amos 11 Abiud 11 Naum 12 Zorobabel 12 Esli 13 Salathiel 13 Nagge 14 Jechonias 14 Maath 15 Josias 15 Mattathias 16 Amon 16 Semei 17 Manasses 17 Joseph 18 Ezekias 18 Juda 19 Achaz 19 Joanna 20 Joatham 20 Rhesa 21 Ozias 21 Zorobabel 22 Joram 22 Salathiel 23 Josaphat 23 Neri 24 Asa 24 Melchi 25 Abia 25 Addi 26 Roboam 26 Cosam 27 Solomon 27 Elmodam 28 David * 28 Er 29 Jose 30 Eliezer 31 Jorim 32 Matthat 33 Levi 34 Simeon 35 Juda 36 Joseph 37 Jonan 38 Eliakim 39 Melea 40 Menan 41 Mattatha 42 Nathan 43 David [NOTE: * From the birth of David to the birth of Christ is upwards of 1080 years; and as the life-time of Christ is not included, there are but 27 full generations. To find therefore the average age of each person mentioned in the list, at the time his first son was born, it is only necessary to divide 1080 by 27, which gives 40 years for each person. As the life-time of man was then but of the same extent it is now, it is an absurdity to suppose, that 27 following generations should all be old bachelors, before they married; and the more so, when we are told that Solomon, the next in succession to David, had a house full of wives and mistresses before he was twenty-one years of age. So far from this genealogy being a solemn truth, it is not even a reasonable lie. The list of Luke gives about twenty-six years for the average age, and this is too much.--Author.] Now, if these men, Matthew and Luke, set out with a falsehood between them (as these two accounts show they do) in the very commencement of their history of Jesus Christ, and of who, and of what he was, what authority (as I have before asked) is there left for believing the strange things they tell us afterwards? If they cannot be believed in their account of his natural genealogy, how are we to believe them when they tell us he was the son of God, begotten by a ghost; and that an angel announced this in secret to his mother? If they lied in one genealogy, why are we to believe them in the other? If his natural genealogy be manufactured, which it certainly is, why are we not to suppose that his celestial genealogy is manufactured also, and that the whole is fabulous? Can any man of serious reflection hazard his future happiness upon the belief of a story naturally impossible, repugnant to every idea of decency, and related by persons already detected of falsehood? Is it not more safe that we stop ourselves at the plain, pure, and unmixed belief of one God, which is deism, than that we commit ourselves on an ocean of improbable, irrational, indecent, and contradictory tales? The first question, however, upon the books of the New Testament, as upon those of the Old, is, Are they genuine? were they written by the persons to whom they are ascribed? For it is upon this ground only that the strange things related therein have been credited. Upon this point, there is no direct proof for or against; and all that this state of a case proves is doubtfulness; and doubtfulness is the opposite of belief. The state, therefore, that the books are in, proves against themselves as far as this kind of proof can go. But, exclusive of this, the presumption is that the books called the Evangelists, and ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and that they are impositions. The disordered state of the history in these four books, the silence of one book upon matters related in the other, and the disagreement that is to be found among them, implies that they are the productions of some unconnected individuals, many years after the things they pretend to relate, each of whom made his own legend; and not the writings of men living intimately together, as the men called apostles are supposed to have done: in fine, that they have been manufactured, as the books of the Old Testament have been, by other persons than those whose names they bear. The story of the angel announcing what the church calls the immaculate conception, is not so much as mentioned in the books ascribed to Mark, and John; and is differently related in Matthew and Luke. The former says the angel, appeared to Joseph; the latter says, it was to Mary; but either Joseph or Mary was the worst evidence that could have been thought of; for it was others that should have testified for them, and not they for themselves. Were any girl that is now with child to say, and even to swear it, that she was gotten with child by a ghost, and that an angel told her so, would she be believed? Certainly she would not. Why then are we to believe the same thing of another girl whom we never saw, told by nobody knows who, nor when, nor where? How strange and inconsistent is it, that the same circumstance that would weaken the belief even of a probable story, should be given as a motive for believing this one, that has upon the face of it every token of absolute impossibility and imposture. The story of Herod destroying all the children under two years old, belongs altogether to the book of Matthew; not one of the rest mentions anything about it. Had such a circumstance been true, the universality of it must have made it known to all the writers, and the thing would have been too striking to have been omitted by any. This writer tell us, that Jesus escaped this slaughter, because Joseph and Mary were warned by an angel to flee with him into Egypt; but he forgot to make provision for John [the Baptist], who was then under two years of age. John, however, who staid behind, fared as well as Jesus, who fled; and therefore the story circumstantially belies itself. Not any two of these writers agree in reciting, exactly in the same words, the written inscription, short as it is, which they tell us was put over Christ when he was crucified; and besides this, Mark says, He was crucified at the third hour, (nine in the morning;) and John says it was the sixth hour, (twelve at noon.) [According to John, (xix. 14) the sentence was not passed till about the sixth hour (noon,) and consequently the execution could not be till the afternoon; but Mark (xv. 25) Says expressly that he was crucified at the third hour, (nine in the morning,)--Author.] The inscription is thus stated in those books: Matthew--This is Jesus the king of the Jews. Mark--The king of the Jews. Luke--This is the king of the Jews. John--Jesus of Nazareth the king of the Jews. We may infer from these circumstances, trivial as they are, that those writers, whoever they were, and in whatever time they lived, were not present at the scene. The only one of the men called apostles who appears to have been near to the spot was Peter, and when he was accused of being one of Jesus's followers, it is said, (Matthew xxvi. 74,) "Then Peter began to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man:" yet we are now called to believe the same Peter, convicted, by their own account, of perjury. For what reason, or on what authority, should we do this? The accounts that are given of the circumstances, that they tell us attended the crucifixion, are differently related in those four books. The book ascribed to Matthew says 'there was darkness over all the land from the sixth hour unto the ninth hour--that the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom--that there was an earthquake--that the rocks rent--that the graves opened, that the bodies of many of the saints that slept arose and came out of their graves after the resurrection, and went into the holy city and appeared unto many.' Such is the account which this dashing writer of the book of Matthew gives, but in which he is not supported by the writers of the other books. The writer of the book ascribed to Mark, in detailing the circumstances of the crucifixion, makes no mention of any earthquake, nor of the rocks rending, nor of the graves opening, nor of the dead men walking out. The writer of the book of Luke is silent also upon the same points. And as to the writer of the book of John, though he details all the circumstances of the crucifixion down to the burial of Christ, he says nothing about either the darkness--the veil of the temple--the earthquake--the rocks--the graves--nor the dead men. Now if it had been true that these things had happened, and if the writers of these books had lived at the time they did happen, and had been the persons they are said to be--namely, the four men called apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,--it was not possible for them, as true historians, even without the aid of inspiration, not to have recorded them. The things, supposing them to have been facts, were of too much notoriety not to have been known, and of too much importance not to have been told. All these supposed apostles must have been witnesses of the earthquake, if there had been any, for it was not possible for them to have been absent from it: the opening of the graves and resurrection of the dead men, and their walking about the city, is of still greater importance than the earthquake. An earthquake is always possible, and natural, and proves nothing; but this opening of the graves is supernatural, and directly in point to their doctrine, their cause, and their apostleship. Had it been true, it would have filled up whole chapters of those books, and been the chosen theme and general chorus of all the writers; but instead of this, little and trivial things, and mere prattling conversation of 'he said this and she said that' are often tediously detailed, while this most important of all, had it been true, is passed off in a slovenly manner by a single dash of the pen, and that by one writer only, and not so much as hinted at by the rest. It is an easy thing to tell a lie, but it is difficult to support the lie after it is told. The writer of the book of Matthew should have told us who the saints were that came to life again, and went into the city, and what became of them afterwards, and who it was that saw them; for he is not hardy enough to say that he saw them himself;--whether they came out naked, and all in natural buff, he-saints and she-saints, or whether they came full dressed, and where they got their dresses; whether they went to their former habitations, and reclaimed their wives, their husbands, and their property, and how they were received; whether they entered ejectments for the recovery of their possessions, or brought actions of crim. con. against the rival interlopers; whether they remained on earth, and followed their former occupation of preaching or working; or whether they died again, or went back to their graves alive, and buried themselves. Strange indeed, that an army of saints should retum to life, and nobody know who they were, nor who it was that saw them, and that not a word more should be said upon the subject, nor these saints have any thing to tell us! Had it been the prophets who (as we are told) had formerly prophesied of these things, they must have had a great deal to say. They could have told us everything, and we should have had posthumous prophecies, with notes and commentaries upon the first, a little better at least than we have now. Had it been Moses, and Aaron, and Joshua, and Samuel, and David, not an unconverted Jew had remained in all Jerusalem. Had it been John the Baptist, and the saints of the times then present, everybody would have known them, and they would have out-preached and out-famed all the other apostles. But, instead of this, these saints are made to pop up, like Jonah's gourd in the night, for no purpose at all but to wither in the morning.--Thus much for this part of the story. The tale of the resurrection follows that of the crucifixion; and in this as well as in that, the writers, whoever they were, disagree so much as to make it evident that none of them were there. The book of Matthew states, that when Christ was put in the sepulchre the Jews applied to Pilate for a watch or a guard to be placed over the septilchre, to prevent the body being stolen by the disciples; and that in consequence of this request the sepulchre was made sure, sealing the stone that covered the mouth, and setting a watch. But the other books say nothing about this application, nor about the sealing, nor the guard, nor the watch; and according to their accounts, there were none. Matthew, however, follows up this part of the story of the guard or the watch with a second part, that I shall notice in the conclusion, as it serves to detect the fallacy of those books. The book of Matthew continues its account, and says, (xxviii. 1,) that at the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn, towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre. Mark says it was sun-rising, and John says it was dark. Luke says it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women, that came to the sepulchre; and John states that Mary Magdalene came alone. So well do they agree about their first evidence! They all, however, appear to have known most about Mary Magdalene; she was a woman of large acquaintance, and it was not an ill conjecture that she might be upon the stroll. [The Bishop of Llandaff, in his famous "Apology," censured Paine severely for this insinuation against Mary Magdalene, but the censure really falls on our English version, which, by a chapter-heading (Luke vii.), has unwarrantably identified her as the sinful woman who anointed Jesus, and irrevocably branded her.--Editor.] The book of Matthew goes on to say (ver. 2): "And behold there was a great earthquake, for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it" But the other books say nothing about any earthquake, nor about the angel rolling back the stone, and sitting upon it and, according to their account, there was no angel sitting there. Mark says the angel [Mark says "a young man," and Luke "two men."--Editor.] was within the sepulchre, sitting on the right side. Luke says there were two, and they were both standing up; and John says they were both sitting down, one at the head and the other at the feet. Matthew says, that the angel that was sitting upon the stone on the outside of the sepulchre told the two Marys that Christ was risen, and that the women went away quickly. Mark says, that the women, upon seeing the stone rolled away, and wondering at it, went into the sepulchre, and that it was the angel that was sitting within on the right side, that told them so. Luke says, it was the two angels that were Standing up; and John says, it was Jesus Christ himself that told it to Mary Magdalene; and that she did not go into the sepulchre, but only stooped down and looked in. Now, if the writers of these four books had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears cropt for perjury, and would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books, that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration, and as the unchangeable word of God. The writer of the book of Matthew, after giving this account, relates a story that is not to be found in any of the other books, and which is the same I have just before alluded to. "Now," says he, [that is, after the conversation the women had had with the angel sitting upon the stone,] "behold some of the watch [meaning the watch that he had said had been placed over the sepulchre] came into the city, and shawed unto the chief priests all the things that were done; and when they were assembled with the elders and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, Say ye, that his disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept; and if this come to the governor's ears, we will persuade him, and secure you. So they took the money, and did as they were taught; and this saying [that his disciples stole him away] is commonly reported among the Jews until this day." The expression, until this day, is an evidence that the book ascribed to Matthew was not written by Matthew, and that it has been manufactured long after the times and things of which it pretends to treat; for the expression implies a great length of intervening time. It would be inconsistent in us to speak in this manner of any thing happening in our own time. To give, therefore, intelligible meaning to the expression, we must suppose a lapse of some generations at least, for this manner of speaking carries the mind back to ancient time. The absurdity also of the story is worth noticing; for it shows the writer of the book of Matthew to have been an exceeding weak and foolish man. He tells a story that contradicts itself in point of possibility; for though the guard, if there were any, might be made to say that the body was taken away while they were asleep, and to give that as a reason for their not having prevented it, that same sleep must also have prevented their knowing how, and by whom, it was done; and yet they are made to say that it was the disciples who did it. Were a man to tender his evidence of something that he should say was done, and of the manner of doing it, and of the person who did it, while he was asleep, and could know nothing of the matter, such evidence could not be received: it will do well enough for Testament evidence, but not for any thing where truth is concerned. I come now to that part of the evidence in those books, that respects the pretended appearance of Christ after this pretended resurrection. The writer of the book of Matthew relates, that the angel that was sitting on the stone at the mouth of the sepulchre, said to the two Marys (xxviii. 7), "Behold Christ is gone before you into Galilee, there ye shall see him; lo, I have told you." And the same writer at the next two verses (8, 9,) makes Christ himself to speak to the same purpose to these women immediately after the angel had told it to them, and that they ran quickly to tell it to the disciples; and it is said (ver. 16), "Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them; and, when they saw him, they worshipped him." But the writer of the book of John tells us a story very different to this; for he says (xx. 19) "Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, [that is, the same day that Christ is said to have risen,] when the doors were shut, where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst of them." According to Matthew the eleven were marching to Galilee, to meet Jesus in a mountain, by his own appointment, at the very time when, according to John, they were assembled in another place, and that not by appointment, but in secret, for fear of the Jews. The writer of the book of Luke xxiv. 13, 33-36, contradicts that of Matthew more pointedly than John does; for he says expressly, that the meeting was in Jerusalem the evening of the same day that he (Christ) rose, and that the eleven were there. Now, it is not possible, unless we admit these supposed disciples the right of wilful lying, that the writers of these books could be any of the eleven persons called disciples; for if, according to Matthew, the eleven went into Galilee to meet Jesus in a mountain by his own appointment, on the same day that he is said to have risen, Luke and John must have been two of that eleven; yet the writer of Luke says expressly, and John implies as much, that the meeting was that same day, in a house in Jerusalem; and, on the other hand, if, according to Luke and John, the eleven were assembled in a house in Jerusalem, Matthew must have been one of that eleven; yet Matthew says the meeting was in a mountain in Galilee, and consequently the evidence given in those books destroy each other. The writer of the book of Mark says nothing about any meeting in Galilee; but he says (xvi. 12) that Christ, after his resurrection, appeared in another form to two of them, as they walked into the country, and that these two told it to the residue, who would not believe them. [This belongs to the late addition to Mark, which originally ended with xvi. 8.--Editor.] Luke also tells a story, in which he keeps Christ employed the whole of the day of this pretended resurrection, until the evening, and which totally invalidates the account of going to the mountain in Galilee. He says, that two of them, without saying which two, went that same day to a village called Emmaus, three score furlongs (seven miles and a half) from Jerusalem, and that Christ in disguise went with them, and stayed with them unto the evening, and supped with them, and then vanished out of their sight, and reappeared that same evening, at the meeting of the eleven in Jerusalem. This is the contradictory manner in which the evidence of this pretended reappearance of Christ is stated: the only point in which the writers agree, is the skulking privacy of that reappearance; for whether it was in the recess of a mountain in Galilee, or in a shut-up house in Jerusalem, it was still skulking. To what cause then are we to assign this skulking? On the one hand, it is directly repugnant to the supposed or pretended end, that of convincing the world that Christ was risen; and, on the other hand, to have asserted the publicity of it would have exposed the writers of those books to public detection; and, therefore, they have been under the necessity of making it a private affair. As to the account of Christ being seen by more than five hundred at once, it is Paul only who says it, and not the five hundred who say it for themselves. It is, therefore, the testimony of but one man, and that too of a man, who did not, according to the same account, believe a word of the matter himself at the time it is said to have happened. His evidence, supposing him to have been the writer of Corinthians xv., where this account is given, is like that of a man who comes into a court of justice to swear that what he had sworn before was false. A man may often see reason, and he has too always the right of changing his opinion; but this liberty does not extend to matters of fact. I now come to the last scene, that of the ascension into heaven.--Here all fear of the Jews, and of every thing else, must necessarily have been out of the question: it was that which, if true, was to seal the whole; and upon which the reality of the future mission of the disciples was to rest for proof. Words, whether declarations or promises, that passed in private, either in the recess of a mountain in Galilee, or in a shut-up house in Jerusalem, even supposing them to have been spoken, could not be evidence in public; it was therefore necessary that this last scene should preclude the possibility of denial and dispute; and that it should be, as I have stated in the former part of 'The Age of Reason,' as public and as visible as the sun at noon-day; at least it ought to have been as public as the crucifixion is reported to have been.--But to come to the point. In the first place, the writer of the book of Matthew does not say a syllable about it; neither does the writer of the book of John. This being the case, is it possible to suppose that those writers, who affect to be even minute in other matters, would have been silent upon this, had it been true? The writer of the book of Mark passes it off in a careless, slovenly manner, with a single dash of the pen, as if he was tired of romancing, or ashamed of the story. So also does the writer of Luke. And even between these two, there is not an apparent agreement, as to the place where this final parting is said to have been. [The last nine verses of Mark being ungenuine, the story of the ascension rests exclusively on the words in Luke xxiv. 51, "was carried up into heaven,"--words omitted by several ancient authorities.--Editor.] The book of Mark says that Christ appeared to the eleven as they sat at meat, alluding to the meeting of the eleven at Jerusalem: he then states the conversation that he says passed at that meeting; and immediately after says (as a school-boy would finish a dull story,) "So then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God." But the writer of Luke says, that the ascension was from Bethany; that he (Christ) led them out as far as Bethany, and was parted from them there, and was carried up into heaven. So also was Mahomet: and, as to Moses, the apostle Jude says, ver. 9. That 'Michael and the devil disputed about his body.' While we believe such fables as these, or either of them, we believe unworthily of the Almighty. I have now gone through the examination of the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; and when it is considered that the whole space of time, from the crucifixion to what is called the ascension, is but a few days, apparently not more than three or four, and that all the circumstances are reported to have happened nearly about the same spot, Jerusalem, it is, I believe, impossible to find in any story upon record so many and such glaring absurdities, contradictions, and falsehoods, as are in those books. They are more numerous and striking than I had any expectation of finding, when I began this examination, and far more so than I had any idea of when I wrote the former part of 'The Age of Reason.' I had then neither Bible nor Testament to refer to, nor could I procure any. My own situation, even as to existence, was becoming every day more precarious; and as I was willing to leave something behind me upon the subject, I was obliged to be quick and concise. The quotations I then made were from memory only, but they are correct; and the opinions I have advanced in that work are the effect of the most clear and long-established conviction,--that the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world;--that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonourable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty;--that the only true religion is deism, by which I then meant and now mean the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues;--and that it was upon this only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now--and so help me God. But to retum to the subject.--Though it is impossible, at this distance of time, to ascertain as a fact who were the writers of those four books (and this alone is sufficient to hold them in doubt, and where we doubt we do not believe) it is not difficult to ascertain negatively that they were not written by the persons to whom they are ascribed. The contradictions in those books demonstrate two things: First, that the writers cannot have been eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses of the matters they relate, or they would have related them without those contradictions; and, consequently that the books have not been written by the persons called apostles, who are supposed to have been witnesses of this kind. Secondly, that the writers, whoever they were, have not acted in concerted imposition, but each writer separately and individually for himself, and without the knowledge of the other. The same evidence that applies to prove the one, applies equally to prove both cases; that is, that the books were not written by the men called apostles, and also that they are not a concerted imposition. As to inspiration, it is altogether out of the question; we may as well attempt to unite truth and falsehood, as inspiration and contradiction. If four men are eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses to a scene, they will without any concert between them, agree as to time and place, when and where that scene happened. Their individual knowledge of the thing, each one knowing it for himself, renders concert totally unnecessary; the one will not say it was in a mountain in the country, and the other at a house in town; the one will not say it was at sunrise, and the other that it was dark. For in whatever place it was and whatever time it was, they know it equally alike. And on the other hand, if four men concert a story, they will make their separate relations of that story agree and corroborate with each other to support the whole. That concert supplies the want of fact in the one case, as the knowledge of the fact supersedes, in the other case, the necessity of a concert. The same contradictions, therefore, that prove there has been no concert, prove also that the reporters had no knowledge of the fact, (or rather of that which they relate as a fact,) and detect also the falsehood of their reports. Those books, therefore, have neither been written by the men called apostles, nor by imposters in concert.--How then have they been written? I am not one of those who are fond of believing there is much of that which is called wilful lying, or lying originally, except in the case of men setting up to be prophets, as in the Old Testament; for prophesying is lying professionally. In almost all other cases it is not difficult to discover the progress by which even simple supposition, with the aid of credulity, will in time grow into a lie, and at last be told as a fact; and whenever we can find a charitable reason for a thing of this kind, we ought not to indulge a severe one. The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar not many years before, and they generally have their origin in violent deaths, or in execution of innocent persons. In cases of this kind, compassion lends its aid, and benevolently stretches the story. It goes on a little and a little farther, till it becomes a most certain truth. Once start a ghost, and credulity fills up the history of its life, and assigns the cause of its appearance; one tells it one way, another another way, till there are as many stories about the ghost, and about the proprietor of the ghost, as there are about Jesus Christ in these four books. The story of the appearance of Jesus Christ is told with that strange mixture of the natural and impossible, that distinguishes legendary tale from fact. He is represented as suddenly coming in and going out when the doors are shut, and of vanishing out of sight, and appearing again, as one would conceive of an unsubstantial vision; then again he is hungry, sits down to meat, and eats his supper. But as those who tell stories of this kind never provide for all the cases, so it is here: they have told us, that when he arose he left his grave-clothes behind him; but they have forgotten to provide other clothes for him to appear in afterwards, or to tell us what he did with them when he ascended; whether he stripped all off, or went up clothes and all. In the case of Elijah, they have been careful enough to make him throw down his mantle; how it happened not to be burnt in the chariot of fire, they also have not told us; but as imagination supplies all deficiencies of this kind, we may suppose if we please that it was made of salamander's wool. Those who are not much acquainted with ecclesiastical history, may suppose that the book called the New Testament has existed ever since the time of Jesus Christ, as they suppose that the books ascribed to Moses have existed ever since the time of Moses. But the fact is historically otherwise; there was no such book as the New Testament till more than three hundred years after the time that Christ is said to have lived. At what time the books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, began to appear, is altogether a matter of uncertainty. There is not the least shadow of evidence of who the persons were that wrote them, nor at what time they were written; and they might as well have been called by the names of any of the other supposed apostles as by the names they are now called. The originals are not in the possession of any Christian Church existing, any more than the two tables of stone written on, they pretend, by the finger of God, upon Mount Sinai, and given to Moses, are in the possession of the Jews. And even if they were, there is no possibility of proving the hand-writing in either case. At the time those four books were written there was no printing, and consequently there could be no publication otherwise than by written copies, which any man might make or alter at pleasure, and call them originals. Can we suppose it is consistent with the wisdom of the Almighty to commit himself and his will to man upon such precarious means as these; or that it is consistent we should pin our faith upon such uncertainties? We cannot make nor alter, nor even imitate, so much as one blade of grass that he has made, and yet we can make or alter words of God as easily as words of man. [The former part of the 'Age of Reason' has not been published two years, and there is already an expression in it that is not mine. The expression is: The book of Luke was carried by a majority of one voice only. It may be true, but it is not I that have said it. Some person who might know of that circumstance, has added it in a note at the bottom of the page of some of the editions, printed either in England or in America; and the printers, after that, have erected it into the body of the work, and made me the author of it. If this has happened within such a short space of time, notwithstanding the aid of printing, which prevents the alteration of copies individually, what may not have happened in a much greater length of time, when there was no printing, and when any man who could write could make a written copy and call it an original by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John?--Author.] [The spurious addition to Paine's work alluded to in his footnote drew on him a severe criticism from Dr. Priestley ("Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever," p. 75), yet it seems to have been Priestley himself who, in his quotation, first incorporated into Paine's text the footnote added by the editor of the American edition (1794). The American added: "Vide Moshiem's (sic) Ecc. History," which Priestley omits. In a modern American edition I notice four verbal alterations introduced into the above footnote.--Editor.] About three hundred and fifty years after the time that Christ is said to have lived, several writings of the kind I am speaking of were scattered in the hands of divers individuals; and as the church had begun to form itself into an hierarchy, or church government, with temporal powers, it set itself about collecting them into a code, as we now see them, called 'The New Testament.' They decided by vote, as I have before said in the former part of the Age of Reason, which of those writings, out of the collection they had made, should be the word of God, and which should not. The Robbins of the Jews had decided, by vote, upon the books of the Bible before. As the object of the church, as is the case in all national establishments of churches, was power and revenue, and terror the means it used, it is consistent to suppose that the most miraculous and wonderful of the writings they had collected stood the best chance of being voted. And as to the authenticity of the books, the vote stands in the place of it; for it can be traced no higher. Disputes, however, ran high among the people then calling themselves Christians, not only as to points of doctrine, but as to the authenticity of the books. In the contest between the person called St. Augustine, and Fauste, about the year 400, the latter says, "The books called the Evangelists have been composed long after the times of the apostles, by some obscure men, who, fearing that the world would not give credit to their relation of matters of which they could not be informed, have published them under the names of the apostles; and which are so full of sottishness and discordant relations, that there is neither agreement nor connection between them." And in another place, addressing himself to the advocates of those books, as being the word of God, he says, "It is thus that your predecessors have inserted in the scriptures of our Lord many things which, though they carry his name, agree not with his doctrine." This is not surprising, since that we have often proved that these things have not been written by himself, nor by his apostles, but that for the greatest part they are founded upon tales, upon vague reports, and put together by I know not what half-Jews, with but little agreement between them; and which they have nevertheless published under the name of the apostles of our Lord, and have thus attributed to them their own errors and their lies. [I have taken these two extracts from Boulanger's Life of Paul, written in French; Boulanger has quoted them from the writings of Augustine against Fauste, to which he refers.--Author.] This Bishop Faustus is usually styled "The Manichaeum," Augustine having entitled his book, Contra Frustum Manichaeum Libri xxxiii., in which nearly the whole of Faustus' very able work is quoted.--Editor.] The reader will see by those extracts that the authenticity of the books of the New Testament was denied, and the books treated as tales, forgeries, and lies, at the time they were voted to be the word of God. But the interest of the church, with the assistance of the faggot, bore down the opposition, and at last suppressed all investigation. Miracles followed upon miracles, if we will believe them, and men were taught to say they believed whether they believed or not. But (by way of throwing in a thought) the French Revolution has excommunicated the church from the power of working miracles; she has not been able, with the assistance of all her saints, to work one miracle since the revolution began; and as she never stood in greater need than now, we may, without the aid of divination, conclude that all her former miracles are tricks and lies. [Boulanger in his life of Paul, has collected from the ecclesiastical histories, and the writings of the fathers as they are called, several matters which show the opinions that prevailed among the different sects of Christians, at the time the Testament, as we now see it, was voted to be the word of God. The following extracts are from the second chapter of that work: [The Marcionists (a Christian sect) asserted that the evangelists were filled with falsities. The Manichaeans, who formed a very numerous sect at the commencement of Christianity, rejected as false all the New Testament, and showed other writings quite different that they gave for authentic. The Corinthians, like the Marcionists, admitted not the Acts of the Apostles. The Encratites and the Sevenians adopted neither the Acts, nor the Epistles of Paul. Chrysostom, in a homily which he made upon the Acts of the Apostles, says that in his time, about the year 400, many people knew nothing either of the author or of the book. St. Irene, who lived before that time, reports that the Valentinians, like several other sects of the Christians, accused the scriptures of being filled with imperfections, errors, and contradictions. The Ebionites, or Nazarenes, who were the first Christians, rejected all the Epistles of Paul, and regarded him as an impostor. They report, among other things, that he was originally a Pagan; that he came to Jerusalem, where he lived some time; and that having a mind to marry the daughter of the high priest, he had himself been circumcised; but that not being able to obtain her, he quarrelled with the Jews and wrote against circumcision, and against the observation of the Sabbath, and against all the legal ordinances.--Author.] [Much abridged from the Exam. Crit. de la Vie de St. Paul, by N.A. Boulanger, 1770.--Editor.] When we consider the lapse of more than three hundred years intervening between the time that Christ is said to have lived and the time the New Testament was formed into a book, we must see, even without the assistance of historical evidence, the exceeding uncertainty there is of its authenticity. The authenticity of the book of Homer, so far as regards the authorship, is much better established than that of the New Testament, though Homer is a thousand years the most ancient. It was only an exceeding good poet that could have written the book of Homer, and, therefore, few men only could have attempted it; and a man capable of doing it would not have thrown away his own fame by giving it to another. In like manner, there were but few that could have composed Euclid's Elements, because none but an exceeding good geometrician could have been the author of that work. But with respect to the books of the New Testament, particularly such parts as tell us of the resurrection and ascension of Christ, any person who could tell a story of an apparition, or of a man's walking, could have made such books; for the story is most wretchedly told. The chance, therefore, of forgery in the Testament is millions to one greater than in the case of Homer or Euclid. Of the numerous priests or parsons of the present day, bishops and all, every one of them can make a sermon, or translate a scrap of Latin, especially if it has been translated a thousand times before; but is there any amongst them that can write poetry like Homer, or science like Euclid? The sum total of a parson's learning, with very few exceptions, is a, b, ab, and hic, haec, hoc; and their knowledge of science is, three times one is three; and this is more than sufficient to have enabled them, had they lived at the time, to have written all the books of the New Testament. As the opportunities of forgery were greater, so also was the inducement. A man could gain no advantage by writing under the name of Homer or Euclid; if he could write equal to them, it would be better that he wrote under his own name; if inferior, he could not succeed. Pride would prevent the former, and impossibility the latter. But with respect to such books as compose the New Testament, all the inducements were on the side of forgery. The best imagined history that could have been made, at the distance of two or three hundred years after the time, could not have passed for an original under the name of the real writer; the only chance of success lay in forgery; for the church wanted pretence for its new doctrine, and truth and talents were out of the question. But as it is not uncommon (as before observed) to relate stories of persons walking after they are dead, and of ghosts and apparitions of such as have fallen by some violent or extraordinary means; and as the people of that day were in the habit of believing such things, and of the appearance of angels, and also of devils, and of their getting into people's insides, and shaking them like a fit of an ague, and of their being cast out again as if by an emetic--(Mary Magdalene, the book of Mark tells us had brought up, or been brought to bed of seven devils;) it was nothing extraordinary that some story of this kind should get abroad of the person called Jesus Christ, and become afterwards the foundation of the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each writer told a tale as he heard it, or thereabouts, and gave to his book the name of the saint or the apostle whom tradition had given as the eye-witness. It is only upon this ground that the contradictions in those books can be accounted for; and if this be not the case, they are downright impositions, lies, and forgeries, without even the apology of credulity. That they have been written by a sort of half Jews, as the foregoing quotations mention, is discernible enough. The frequent references made to that chief assassin and impostor Moses, and to the men called prophets, establishes this point; and, on the other hand, the church has complimented the fraud, by admitting the Bible and the Testament to reply to each other. Between the Christian-Jew and the Christian-Gentile, the thing called a prophecy, and the thing prophesied of, the type and the thing typified, the sign and the thing signified, have been industriously rummaged up, and fitted together like old locks and pick-lock keys. The story foolishly enough told of Eve and the serpent, and naturally enough as to the enmity between men and serpents (for the serpent always bites about the heel, because it cannot reach higher, and the man always knocks the serpent about the head, as the most effectual way to prevent its biting;) ["It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Gen. iii. 15.--Author.] this foolish story, I say, has been made into a prophecy, a type, and a promise to begin with; and the lying imposition of Isaiah to Ahaz, 'That a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,' as a sign that Ahaz should conquer, when the event was that he was defeated (as already noticed in the observations on the book of Isaiah), has been perverted, and made to serve as a winder up. Jonah and the whale are also made into a sign and type. Jonah is Jesus, and the whale is the grave; for it is said, (and they have made Christ to say it of himself, Matt. xii. 40), "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." But it happens, awkwardly enough, that Christ, according to their own account, was but one day and two nights in the grave; about 36 hours instead of 72; that is, the Friday night, the Saturday, and the Saturday night; for they say he was up on the Sunday morning by sunrise, or before. But as this fits quite as well as the bite and the kick in Genesis, or the virgin and her son in Isaiah, it will pass in the lump of orthodox things.--Thus much for the historical part of the Testament and its evidences. Epistles of Paul--The epistles ascribed to Paul, being fourteen in number, almost fill up the remaining part of the Testament. Whether those epistles were written by the person to whom they are ascribed is a matter of no great importance, since that the writer, whoever he was, attempts to prove his doctrine by argument. He does not pretend to have been witness to any of the scenes told of the resurrection and the ascension; and he declares that he had not believed them. The story of his being struck to the ground as he was journeying to Damascus, has nothing in it miraculous or extraordinary; he escaped with life, and that is more than many others have done, who have been struck with lightning; and that he should lose his sight for three days, and be unable to eat or drink during that time, is nothing more than is common in such conditions. His companions that were with him appear not to have suffered in the same manner, for they were well enough to lead him the remainder of the journey; neither did they pretend to have seen any vision. The character of the person called Paul, according to the accounts given of him, has in it a great deal of violence and fanaticism; he had persecuted with as much heat as he preached afterwards; the stroke he had received had changed his thinking, without altering his constitution; and either as a Jew or a Christian he was the same zealot. Such men are never good moral evidences of any doctrine they preach. They are always in extremes, as well of action as of belief. The doctrine he sets out to prove by argument, is the resurrection of the same body: and he advances this as an evidence of immortality. But so much will men differ in their manner of thinking, and in the conclusions they draw from the same premises, that this doctrine of the resurrection of the same body, so far from being an evidence of immortality, appears to me to be an evidence against it; for if I have already died in this body, and am raised again in the same body in which I have died, it is presumptive evidence that I shall die again. That resurrection no more secures me against the repetition of dying, than an ague-fit, when past, secures me against another. To believe therefore in immortality, I must have a more elevated idea than is contained in the gloomy doctrine of the resurrection. Besides, as a matter of choice, as well as of hope, I had rather have a better body and a more convenient form than the present. Every animal in the creation excels us in something. The winged insects, without mentioning doves or eagles, can pass over more space with greater ease in a few minutes than man can in an hour. The glide of the smallest fish, in proportion to its bulk, exceeds us in motion almost beyond comparison, and without weariness. Even the sluggish snail can ascend from the bottom of a dungeon, where man, by the want of that ability, would perish; and a spider can launch itself from the top, as a playful amusement. The personal powers of man are so limited, and his heavy frame so little constructed to extensive enjoyment, that there is nothing to induce us to wish the opinion of Paul to be true. It is too little for the magnitude of the scene, too mean for the sublimity of the subject. But all other arguments apart, the consciousness of existence is the only conceivable idea we can have of another life, and the continuance of that consciousness is immortality. The consciousness of existence, or the knowing that we exist, is not necessarily confined to the same form, nor to the same matter, even in this life. We have not in all cases the same form, nor in any case the same matter, that composed our bodies twenty or thirty years ago; and yet we are conscious of being the same persons. Even legs and arms, which make up almost half the human frame, are not necessary to the consciousness of existence. These may be lost or taken away and the full consciousness of existence remain; and were their place supplied by wings, or other appendages, we cannot conceive that it could alter our consciousness of existence. In short, we know not how much, or rather how little, of our composition it is, and how exquisitely fine that little is, that creates in us this consciousness of existence; and all beyond that is like the pulp of a peach, distinct and separate from the vegetative speck in the kernel. Who can say by what exceeding fine action of fine matter it is that a thought is produced in what we call the mind? and yet that thought when produced, as I now produce the thought I am writing, is capable of becoming immortal, and is the only production of man that has that capacity. Statues of brass and marble will perish; and statues made in imitation of them are not the same statues, nor the same workmanship, any more than the copy of a picture is the same picture. But print and reprint a thought a thousand times over, and that with materials of any kind, carve it in wood, or engrave it on stone, the thought is eternally and identically the same thought in every case. It has a capacity of unimpaired existence, unaffected by change of matter, and is essentially distinct, and of a nature different from every thing else that we know of, or can conceive. If then the thing produced has in itself a capacity of being immortal, it is more than a token that the power that produced it, which is the self-same thing as consciousness of existence, can be immortal also; and that as independently of the matter it was first connected with, as the thought is of the printing or writing it first appeared in. The one idea is not more difficult to believe than the other; and we can see that one is true. That the consciousness of existence is not dependent on the same form or the same matter, is demonstrated to our senses in the works of the creation, as far as our senses are capable of receiving that demonstration. A very numerous part of the animal creation preaches to us, far better than Paul, the belief of a life hereafter. Their little life resembles an earth and a heaven, a present and a future state; and comprises, if it may be so expressed, immortality in miniature. The most beautiful parts of the creation to our eye are the winged insects, and they are not so originally. They acquire that form and that inimitable brilliancy by progressive changes. The slow and creeping caterpillar worm of to day, passes in a few days to a torpid figure, and a state resembling death; and in the next change comes forth in all the miniature magnificence of life, a splendid butterfly. No resemblance of the former creature remains; every thing is changed; all his powers are new, and life is to him another thing. We cannot conceive that the consciousness of existence is not the same in this state of the animal as before; why then must I believe that the resurrection of the same body is necessary to continue to me the consciousness of existence hereafter? In the former part of 'The Agee of Reason.' I have called the creation the true and only real word of God; and this instance, or this text, in the book of creation, not only shows to us that this thing may be so, but that it is so; and that the belief of a future state is a rational belief, founded upon facts visible in the creation: for it is not more difficult to believe that we shall exist hereafter in a better state and form than at present, than that a worm should become a butterfly, and quit the dunghill for the atmosphere, if we did not know it as a fact. As to the doubtful jargon ascribed to Paul in 1 Corinthians xv., which makes part of the burial service of some Christian sectaries, it is as destitute of meaning as the tolling of a bell at the funeral; it explains nothing to the understanding, it illustrates nothing to the imagination, but leaves the reader to find any meaning if he can. "All flesh," says he, "is not the same flesh. There is one flesh of men, another of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds." And what then? nothing. A cook could have said as much. "There are also," says he, "bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial; the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial is the other." And what then? nothing. And what is the difference? nothing that he has told. "There is," says he, "one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars." And what then? nothing; except that he says that one star differeth from another star in glory, instead of distance; and he might as well have told us that the moon did not shine so bright as the sun. All this is nothing better than the jargon of a conjuror, who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to have their fortune told. Priests and conjurors are of the same trade. Sometimes Paul affects to be a naturalist, and to prove his system of resurrection from the principles of vegetation. "Thou fool" says he, "that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." To which one might reply in his own language, and say, Thou fool, Paul, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die not; for the grain that dies in the ground never does, nor can vegetate. It is only the living grains that produce the next crop. But the metaphor, in any point of view, is no simile. It is succession, and [not] resurrection. The progress of an animal from one state of being to another, as from a worm to a butterfly, applies to the case; but this of a grain does not, and shows Paul to have been what he says of others, a fool. Whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul were written by him or not, is a matter of indifference; they are either argumentative or dogmatical; and as the argument is defective, and the dogmatical part is merely presumptive, it signifies not who wrote them. And the same may be said for the remaining parts of the Testament. It is not upon the Epistles, but upon what is called the Gospel, contained in the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and upon the pretended prophecies, that the theory of the church, calling itself the Christian Church, is founded. The Epistles are dependant upon those, and must follow their fate; for if the story of Jesus Christ be fabulous, all reasoning founded upon it, as a supposed truth, must fall with it. We know from history, that one of the principal leaders of this church, Athanasius, lived at the time the New Testament was formed; [Athanasius died, according to the Church chronology, in the year 371--Author.] and we know also, from the absurd jargon he has left us under the name of a creed, the character of the men who formed the New Testament; and we know also from the same history that the authenticity of the books of which it is composed was denied at the time. It was upon the vote of such as Athanasius that the Testament was decreed to be the word of God; and nothing can present to us a more strange idea than that of decreeing the word of God by vote. Those who rest their faith upon such authority put man in the place of God, and have no true foundation for future happiness. Credulity, however, is not a crime, but it becomes criminal by resisting conviction. It is strangling in the womb of the conscience the efforts it makes to ascertain truth. We should never force belief upon ourselves in any thing. I here close the subject on the Old Testament and the New. The evidence I have produced to prove them forgeries, is extracted from the books themselves, and acts, like a two-edge sword, either way. If the evidence be denied, the authenticity of the Scriptures is denied with it, for it is Scripture evidence: and if the evidence be admitted, the authenticity of the books is disproved. The contradictory impossibilities, contained in the Old Testament and the New, put them in the case of a man who swears for and against. Either evidence convicts him of perjury, and equally destroys reputation. Should the Bible and the Testament hereafter fall, it is not that I have done it. I have done no more than extracted the evidence from the confused mass of matters with which it is mixed, and arranged that evidence in a point of light to be clearly seen and easily comprehended; and, having done this, I leave the reader to judge for himself, as I have judged for myself. CHAPTER III - CONCLUSION IN the former part of 'The Age of Reason' I have spoken of the three frauds, mystery, miracle, and Prophecy; and as I have seen nothing in any of the answers to that work that in the least affects what I have there said upon those subjects, I shall not encumber this Second Part with additions that are not necessary. I have spoken also in the same work upon what is celled revelation, and have shown the absurd misapplication of that term to the books of the Old Testament and the New; for certainly revelation is out of the question in reciting any thing of which man has been the actor or the witness. That which man has done or seen, needs no revelation to tell him he has done it, or seen it--for he knows it already--nor to enable him to tell it or to write it. It is ignorance, or imposition, to apply the term revelation in such cases; yet the Bible and Testament are classed under this fraudulent description of being all revelation. Revelation then, so far as the term has relation between God and man, can only be applied to something which God reveals of his will to man; but though the power of the Almighty to make such a communication is necessarily admitted, because to that power all things are possible, yet, the thing so revealed (if any thing ever was revealed, and which, by the bye, it is impossible to prove) is revelation to the person only to whom it is made. His account of it to another is not revelation; and whoever puts faith in that account, puts it in the man from whom the account comes; and that man may have been deceived, or may have dreamed it; or he may be an impostor and may lie. There is no possible criterion whereby to judge of the truth of what he tells; for even the morality of it would be no proof of revelation. In all such cases, the proper answer should be, "When it is revealed to me, I will believe it to be revelation; but it is not and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the word of man as the word of God, and put man in the place of God." This is the manner in which I have spoken of revelation in the former part of The Age of Reason; and which, whilst it reverentially admits revelation as a possible thing, because, as before said, to the Almighty all things are possible, it prevents the imposition of one man upon another, and precludes the wicked use of pretended revelation. But though, speaking for myself, I thus admit the possibility of revelation, I totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did communicate any thing to man, by any mode of speech, in any language, or by any kind of vision, or appearance, or by any means which our senses are capable of receiving, otherwise than by the universal display of himself in the works of the creation, and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and disposition to good ones. [A fair parallel of the then unknown aphorism of Kant: "Two things fill the soul with wonder and reverence, increasing evermore as I meditate more closely upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me." (Kritik derpraktischen Vernunfe, 1788). Kant's religious utterances at the beginning of the French Revolution brought on him a royal mandate of silence, because he had worked out from "the moral law within" a principle of human equality precisely similar to that which Paine had derived from his Quaker doctrine of the "inner light" of every man. About the same time Paine's writings were suppressed in England. Paine did not understand German, but Kant, though always independent in the formation of his opinions, was evidently well acquainted with the literature of the Revolution, in America, England, and France.--Editor.] The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most dishonourable belief against the character of the divinity, the most destructive to morality, and the peace and happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist. It is better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one such impostor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit among us. Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death and religious wars, that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man? The lies of the Bible have been the cause of the one, and the lies of the Testament [of] the other. Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by the sword; but of what period of time do they speak? It was impossible that twelve men could begin with the sword: they had not the power; but no sooner were the professors of Christianity sufficiently powerful to employ the sword than they did so, and the stake and faggot too; and Mahomet could not do it sooner. By the same spirit that Peter cut off the ear of the high priest's servant (if the story be true) he would cut off his head, and the head of his master, had he been able. Besides this, Christianity grounds itself originally upon the [Hebrew] Bible, and the Bible was established altogether by the sword, and that in the worst use of it--not to terrify, but to extirpate. The Jews made no converts: they butchered all. The Bible is the sire of the [New] Testament, and both are called the word of God. The Christians read both books; the ministers preach from both books; and this thing called Christianity is made up of both. It is then false to say that Christianity was not established by the sword. The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the only reason that can be given for it is, that they are rather Deists than Christians. They do not believe much about Jesus Christ, and they call the scriptures a dead letter. [This is an interesting and correct testimony as to the beliefs of the earlier Quakers, one of whom was Paine's father.--Editor.] Had they called them by a worse name, they had been nearer the truth. It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the Creator, and who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial miseries, and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick among mankind, to expel all ideas of a revealed religion as a dangerous heresy, and an impious fraud. What is it that we have learned from this pretended thing called revealed religion? Nothing that is useful to man, and every thing that is dishonourable to his Maker. What is it the Bible teaches us?--repine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us?--to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith. As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly scattered in those books, they make no part of this pretended thing, revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience, and the bonds by which society is held together, and without which it cannot exist; and are nearly the same in all religions, and in all societies. The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and where it attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous. The doctrine of not retaliating injuries is much better expressed in Proverbs, which is a collection as well from the Gentiles as the Jews, than it is in the Testament. It is there said, (Xxv. 2 I) "If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink:" [According to what is called Christ's sermon on the mount, in the book of Matthew, where, among some other [and] good things, a great deal of this feigned morality is introduced, it is there expressly said, that the doctrine of forbearance, or of not retaliating injuries, was not any part of the doctrine of the Jews; but as this doctrine is found in "Proverbs," it must, according to that statement, have been copied from the Gentiles, from whom Christ had learned it. Those men whom Jewish and Christian idolators have abusively called heathen, had much better and clearer ideas of justice and morality than are to be found in the Old Testament, so far as it is Jewish, or in the New. The answer of Solon on the question, "Which is the most perfect popular govemment," has never been exceeded by any man since his time, as containing a maxim of political morality, "That," says he, "where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the whole constitution." Solon lived about 500 years before Christ.--Author.] but when it is said, as in the Testament, "If a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also," it is assassinating the dignity of forbearance, and sinking man into a spaniel. Loving, of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides no meaning. It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he does not revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political sense, for there is no end to retaliation; each retaliates on the other, and calls it justice: but to love in proportion to the injury, if it could be done, would be to offer a premium for a crime. Besides, the word enemies is too vague and general to be used in a moral maxim, which ought always to be clear and defined, like a proverb. If a man be the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incumbent upon us, and it contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we put the best construction upon a thing that it will bear. But even this erroneous motive in him makes no motive for love on the other part; and to say that we can love voluntarily, and without a motive, is morally and physically impossible. Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first place, are impossible to be performed, and if they could be would be productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime. The maxim of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine of loving enemies; for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime or for his enmity. Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies, are in general the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches. For my own part, I disown the doctrine, and consider it as a feigned or fabulous morality; yet the man does not exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men, either in the American Revolution, or in the French Revolution; or that I have, in any case, returned evil for evil. But it is not incumbent on man to reward a bad action with a good one, or to return good for evil; and wherever it is done, it is a voluntary act, and not a duty. It is also absurd to suppose that such doctrine can make any part of a revealed religion. We imitate the moral character of the Creator by forbearing with each other, for he forbears with all; but this doctrine would imply that he loved man, not in proportion as he was good, but as he was bad. If we consider the nature of our condition here, we must see there is no occasion for such a thing as revealed religion. What is it we want to know? Does not the creation, the universe we behold, preach to us the existence of an Almighty power, that governs and regulates the whole? And is not the evidence that this creation holds out to our senses infinitely stronger than any thing we can read in a book, that any imposter might make and call the word of God? As for morality, the knowledge of it exists in every man's conscience. Here we are. The existence of an Almighty power is sufficiently demonstrated to us, though we cannot conceive, as it is impossible we should, the nature and manner of its existence. We cannot conceive how we came here ourselves, and yet we know for a fact that we are here. We must know also, that the power that called us into being, can if he please, and when he pleases, call us to account for the manner in which we have lived here; and therefore without seeking any other motive for the belief, it is rational to believe that he will, for we know beforehand that he can. The probability or even possibility of the thing is all that we ought to know; for if we knew it as a fact, we should be the mere slaves of terror; our belief would have no merit, and our best actions no virtue. Deism then teaches us, without the possibility of being deceived, all that is necessary or proper to be known. The creation is the Bible of the deist. He there reads, in the hand-writing of the Creator himself, the certainty of his existence, and the immutability of his power; and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries. The probability that we may be called to account hereafter, will, to reflecting minds, have the influence of belief; for it is not our belief or disbelief that can make or unmake the fact. As this is the state we are in, and which it is proper we should be in, as free agents, it is the fool only, and not the philosopher, nor even the prudent man, that will live as if there were no God. But the belief of a God is so weakened by being mixed with the strange fable of the Christian creed, and with the wild adventures related in the Bible, and the obscurity and obscene nonsense of the Testament, that the mind of man is bewildered as in a fog. Viewing all these things in a confused mass, he confounds fact with fable; and as he cannot believe all, he feels a disposition to reject all. But the belief of a God is a belief distinct from all other things, and ought not to be confounded with any. The notion of a Trinity of Gods has enfeebled the belief of one God. A multiplication of beliefs acts as a division of belief; and in proportion as anything is divided, it is weakened. Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form instead of fact; of notion instead of principle: morality is banished to make room for an imaginary thing called faith, and this faith has its origin in a supposed debauchery; a man is preached instead of a God; an execution is an object for gratitude; the preachers daub themselves with the blood, like a troop of assassins, and pretend to admire the brilliancy it gives them; they preach a humdrum sermon on the merits of the execution; then praise Jesus Christ for being executed, and condemn the Jews for doing it. A man, by hearing all this nonsense lumped and preached together, confounds the God of the Creation with the imagined God of the Christians, and lives as if there were none. Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter. The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it every evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple deism. It must have been the first and will probably be the last that man believes. But pure and simple deism does not answer the purpose of despotic governments. They cannot lay hold of religion as an engine but by mixing it with human inventions, and making their own authority a part; neither does it answer the avarice of priests, but by incorporating themselves and their functions with it, and becoming, like the government, a party in the system. It is this that forms the otherwise mysterious connection of church and state; the church human, and the state tyrannic. Were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of belief; he would stand in awe of God, and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either. To give this belief the full opportunity of force, it is necessary that it acts alone. This is deism. But when, according to the Christian Trinitarian scheme, one part of God is represented by a dying man, and another part, called the Holy Ghost, by a flying pigeon, it is impossible that belief can attach itself to such wild conceits. [The book called the book of Matthew, says, (iii. 16,) that the Holy Ghost descended in the shape of a dove. It might as well have said a goose; the creatures are equally harmless, and the one is as much a nonsensical lie as the other. Acts, ii. 2, 3, says, that it descended in a mighty rushing wind, in the shape of cloven tongues: perhaps it was cloven feet. Such absurd stuff is fit only for tales of witches and wizards.--Author.] It has been the scheme of the Christian church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of government to hold him in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support. The study of theology as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and admits of no conclusion. Not any thing can be studied as a science without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing. Instead then of studying theology, as is now done, out of the Bible and Testament, the meanings of which books are always controverted, and the authenticity of which is disproved, it is necessary that we refer to the Bible of the creation. The principles we discover there are eternal, and of divine origin: they are the foundation of all the science that exists in the world, and must be the foundation of theology. We can know God only through his works. We cannot have a conception of any one attribute, but by following some principle that leads to it. We have only a confused idea of his power, if we have not the means of comprehending something of its immensity. We can have no idea of his wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in which it acts. The principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the Creator of man is the Creator of science, and it is through that medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face. Could a man be placed in a situation, and endowed with power of vision to behold at one view, and to contemplate deliberately, the structure of the universe, to mark the movements of the several planets, the cause of their varying appearances, the unerring order in which they revolve, even to the remotest comet, their connection and dependence on each other, and to know the system of laws established by the Creator, that governs and regulates the whole; he would then conceive, far beyond what any church theology can teach him, the power, the wisdom, the vastness, the munificence of the Creator. He would then see that all the knowledge man has of science, and that all the mechanical arts by which he renders his situation comfortable here, are derived from that source: his mind, exalted by the scene, and convinced by the fact, would increase in gratitude as it increased in knowledge: his religion or his worship would become united with his improvement as a man: any employment he followed that had connection with the principles of the creation,--as everything of agriculture, of science, and of the mechanical arts, has,--would teach him more of God, and of the gratitude he owes to him, than any theological Christian sermon he now hears. Great objects inspire great thoughts; great munificence excites great gratitude; but the grovelling tales and doctrines of the Bible and the Testament are fit only to excite contempt. Though man cannot arrive, at least in this life, at the actual scene I have described, he can demonstrate it, because he has knowledge of the principles upon which the creation is constructed. We know that the greatest works can be represented in model, and that the universe can be represented by the same means. The same principles by which we measure an inch or an acre of ground will measure to millions in extent. A circle of an inch diameter has the same geometrical properties as a circle that would circumscribe the universe. The same properties of a triangle that will demonstrate upon paper the course of a ship, will do it on the ocean; and, when applied to what are called the heavenly bodies, will ascertain to a minute the time of an eclipse, though those bodies are millions of miles distant from us. This knowledge is of divine origin; and it is from the Bible of the creation that man has learned it, and not from the stupid Bible of the church, that teaches man nothing. [The Bible-makers have undertaken to give us, in the first chapter of Genesis, an account of the creation; and in doing this they have demonstrated nothing but their ignorance. They make there to have been three days and three nights, evenings and mornings, before there was any sun; when it is the presence or absence of the sun that is the cause of day and night--and what is called his rising and setting that of morning and evening. Besides, it is a puerile and pitiful idea, to suppose the Almighty to say, "Let there be light." It is the imperative manner of speaking that a conjuror uses when he says to his cups and balls, Presto, be gone--and most probably has been taken from it, as Moses and his rod is a conjuror and his wand. Longinus calls this expression the sublime; and by the same rule the conjurer is sublime too; for the manner of speaking is expressively and grammatically the same. When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous. The sublime of the critics, like some parts of Edmund Burke's sublime and beautiful, is like a windmill just visible in a fog, which imagination might distort into a flying mountain, or an archangel, or a flock of wild geese.--Author.] All the knowledge man has of science and of machinery, by the aid of which his existence is rendered comfortable upon earth, and without which he would be scarcely distinguishable in appearance and condition from a common animal, comes from the great machine and structure of the universe. The constant and unwearied observations of our ancestors upon the movements and revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in what are supposed to have been the early ages of the world, have brought this knowledge upon earth. It is not Moses and the prophets, nor Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, that have done it. The Almighty is the great mechanic of the creation, the first philosopher, and original teacher of all science. Let us then learn to reverence our master, and not forget the labours of our ancestors. Had we, at this day, no knowledge of machinery, and were it possible that man could have a view, as I have before described, of the structure and machinery of the universe, he would soon conceive the idea of constructing some at least of the mechanical works we now have; and the idea so conceived would progressively advance in practice. Or could a model of the universe, such as is called an orrery, be presented before him and put in motion, his mind would arrive at the same idea. Such an object and such a subject would, whilst it improved him in knowledge useful to himself as a man and a member of society, as well as entertaining, afford far better matter for impressing him with a knowledge of, and a belief in the Creator, and of the reverence and gratitude that man owes to him, than the stupid texts of the Bible and the Testament, from which, be the talents of the preacher; what they may, only stupid sermons can be preached. If man must preach, let him preach something that is edifying, and from the texts that are known to be true. The Bible of the creation is inexhaustible in texts. Every part of science, whether connected with the geometry of the universe, with the systems of animal and vegetable life, or with the properties of inanimate matter, is a text as well for devotion as for philosophy--for gratitude, as for human improvement. It will perhaps be said, that if such a revolution in the system of religion takes place, every preacher ought to be a philosopher. Most certainly, and every house of devotion a school of science. It has been by wandering from the immutable laws of science, and the light of reason, and setting up an invented thing called "revealed religion," that so many wild and blasphemous conceits have been formed of the Almighty. The Jews have made him the assassin of the human species, to make room for the religion of the Jews. The Christians have made him the murderer of himself, and the founder of a new religion to supersede and expel the Jewish religion. And to find pretence and admission for these things, they must have supposed his power or his wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable; and the changeableness of the will is the imperfection of the judgement. The philosopher knows that the laws of the Creator have never changed, with respect either to the principles of science, or the properties of matter. Why then is it to be supposed they have changed with respect to man? I here close the subject. I have shown in all the foregoing parts of this work that the Bible and Testament are impositions and forgeries; and I leave the evidence I have produced in proof of it to be refuted, if any one can do it; and I leave the ideas that are suggested in the conclusion of the work to rest on the mind of the reader; certain as I am that when opinions are free, either in matters of govemment or religion, truth will finally and powerfully prevail. END OF PART II 
43728	----	NATURAL MAN By Arthur B. Moss PRICE ONE PENNY. LONDON: THE PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 28 Stonecutter Street. 1884. NATURAL MAN Concerning the when and how of the origin of man nothing positive is known. Genesis states that "god made man," but as the greatest intellects of modern times doubt the existence of deity, a ready acceptance of the Mosaic account of the creation of the haman species can only take place among those who are not well qualified to weigh evidence, balance probabilities, and appraise the evidence of rival theories. The researches of men of science lead us to the belief that the authors of the first and second chapters of Genesis were mistaken. They formulated a theory and imagined it to be a fact. Darwin, Haeckel, Huxley, and other eminent scientists, dispute altogether the theory that man was created perfect, and in their works have proved to demonstration that the beings called men have evolved from lower organisms; that they have the same anatomical structure as the Catarrhini apes; that there is a distinct blood-relationship between them, and that they have both had a common parentage. To establish the truth of the evolution theory, it is enough to look fairly at the facts of nature; to observe man under various aspects; to consider him in barbaric times, or in countries where he is not yet civilised; to see him in a nude condition, with nothing to cover him but a mass of hair which nature provides; to watch him in his struggle for life with his enemies, the destructive lower animals and his fellow men, and to find in the course of years that a higher form of man has evolved out of this barbaric creature. The evolution theory accounts for the facts as they are observed in life--facts which upon any other theory are quite inexplicable. And it must not be supposed that because the theory does not give a complete explanation to all the phenomena that it therefore is not reliable. Haeckel says ("Pedigree of Man," p. 36): "If we can only prove the general truth of the Darwinian theory, our idea of the origin of man from lower vertebrata follows of necessity, and we are not obliged to give a special proof as to this latter view if the general proposition is well established." That the general proposition is well established is now admitted by the most enlightened of the opponents of Darwinism. What is called the "evolution theory" is generally acknowledged to be removed from the region of hypothesis to that of fact. But it is not my purpose further to pursue the subject of man's origin, which, while it is confessedly a most interesting question, is one upon which no man who is not a skilled scientist can write or speak with authority. I can only deal with probabilities. Nobody, so far as we know, was present to witness the first man spring into existence. Indeed, we do not know that there was a first man! And if there was a first, it does not follow that he was conscious of being made, or when he was completed that he had the pleasure of seeing his maker, who told him how it was done. Or, on the other hand, if he were evolved from some lower creature it does not follow that he was conscious of the evolution. But at least we can be sure that history speaks with no uncertain sound concerning man's progress in the world and the means by which it was achieved. As a civilised creature man is not many centuries old. Even now we find many savage races existing on the earth, and in type so low in the scale are they that they more nearly resemble the brute beasts, both in intellect and in physique, than the higher forms of men. Now if we would study the progress of the human race to any advantage, we must study it apart from all prejudice, and not allow religious or superstitious notions concerning the superiority of one class of people to warp our minds and prevent us from understanding the important part played by savage peoples in the battle of life. For it must always be remembered that man's history is one of fearful warfare, not only between men and men, but between man and the lower animals. It is no flight of the imagination to say that there exist the clearest proofs that man many ages ago lived in "holes in the earth," and went in constant fear of animals who sought him as their prey. Sometimes he would have to scramble up trees to elude the vigilance of these sagacious beasts; sometimes the tree would form no place of safety, and he would have to run for dear life or become a living sacrifice to these savage beings. In the course of time man learnt how to keep himself warm, while the beasts of the field perished from cold or parched with thirst and famished with hunger, sunk and died; he learnt how to huddle himself up close to a fire in his mud-hut, out of all danger from the enemy. In addition to this he learnt how to speak, to communicate his thoughts to his fellows. These were great steps in advance. Man was still in a nude condition. But now he began to form a theory as to the cause of the phænomena of the universe. He began to establish the reign of the gods. All his gods, naturally enough, at first were fetishes. Those animals which he considered superior to himself he elected as special objects of worship. As soon as he found that these were not superior, but inferior, to himself, he began to make gods after his own image. Out of small tribes in course of ages grew great nations. Men could now manufacture weapons of destruction with which they could procure food and destroy their enemies; thus little by little were built up the nations of the earth. All advance, all progress towards civilisation made by primitive man was made by opposing with all his strength and skill the destructive forces of nature, and by strenuous attempts at improving upon human nature itself. Was man then inherently depraved and prone to evil continually? Not so. The germs of evil and good were alike sown in his nature; and if either of these was developed by favorable circumstances an evil or a good result followed of necessity. That man was not depraved by nature is seen by the fact that in the general evolution of things, instead of growing worse he has continued to improve--from the low, brutal and immoral creature of the past, to the purer, loftier, nobler being--the highest that can be found to-day. In his natural state, it is true, man was a wicked being. He had no intuitive knowledge of right and wrong. He had to perform an act, and he was never sure until he felt the results whether it was good or bad. In his natural state he was dirty, untruthful, unjust. No god came to tell him that "cleanliness was next to godliness;" nor admonish him to be truthful and just in all his dealings. He was left alone to use his own unaided intelligence as best he might. To test the truth of these assertions one has only to turn to savage races existing to-day. It will be found on investigation that not only are they unclean in their habits and destitute of any idea of justice, but for the most part they are unblushing liars and ingenious thieves. All the characteristics in human nature that are called virtues are purely of artificial growth, and result from man's cultivation of his better self; or, in other words, from his improvement upon nature's spontaneous course of action. In support of this view I may here quote J. S. Mill, who says ("Essay on Nature," p. 48): "Children and the lower classes of most countries seem to be actually fond of dirt: the vast majority of the human race are indifferent to it: whole nations of otherwise civilised and cultivated human beings tolerate it in some of its worst forms, and only a very small minority are consistently offended by it. Indeed, the universal law of the subject appears to be that uncleanliness offends only those to whom it is unfamiliar, so that those who have lived in so artificial a state as to be unused to it in any form, are the sole persons whom it disgusts in all forms. Of all virtues this is the most evidently not instinctive, but a triumph over instinct. Assuredly neither cleanliness nor the love of cleanliness is natural to man, but only the capacity of acquiring a love of cleanliness." On page 57 the same writer declares that "Savages are always liars. They have not the faintest notion of truth as a virtue." Having then all these bad qualities of nature, how is it that man has been able to put them into subjection and advance along the road to civilisation even at the pace that we have seen? Such advance has been wholly dependent upon the energy and skill with which he has opposed the destructive forces of nature, using one law to counteract another, and upon the determination with which he has striven to improve upon human nature itself. For centuries man groped about in the dark. Nature was deaf to his appeals and blind to his sufferings, and her daily performances frightened and bewildered him. And yet he did his best to ascertain the causes of the phænomena of the universe. But his best guesses were wide of the mark. Outside of nature he sought for explanation. He thought he had scaled nature's heights and fathomed her debts when he had merely gazed a few miles into the vast expanse of space above; and when the most learned among them declared that god was the author of the universe, a great theological enterprise commenced. Every nation started a god on its own account, and if one proved to be insufficient, a few more were easily drafted in, with a devil to keep them company. These gods and devils, which were material or spiritual, according as occasion required, were hereafter put forward as explanations of nature's workings. And the people believed in them. How could they do otherwise? Their credulity was perfectly natural. They could not investigate; all their faculties were untrained. Even the most learned among them were superlatively ignorant; incapable by virtue of an untrained mind of accurately perceiving, recording, remembering, or judging of nature's manifold manifestations. And so the theologian had a good time of it. He believed thoroughly in his own pretensions; believed that he possessed the key which opened the door of all mysteries; that he was a god-appointed teacher of men; and in all the countries of the world he was looked upon as second only in importance to the gods themselves. But all this time the people were anxious to know not only what sort of deity it was they worshipped, but what kind of action would be likely to win his favor. They were told that god was a jealous being, and that their first duty was obedience to his will. They believed it. When, therefore, they were instructed to slaughter their neighbors who worshipped a different deity, they went to the task with all the ardor of their nature, imagining in their ignorance that the more brutally they executed the deity's will, the more pleasantly would he smile upon them. The Jews killed the Midianites, the Amalakites, the Baalites, and all other peoples they were capable of mastering who despised their god. Later, the Mahommedans with equal mercilessness followed the example of their Jewish brethren. Later still, the Christians persecuted and murdered many who stubbornly refused to acknowledge that Jesus was the Christ; and each nation could not only refer the deed back to the priest from whom the wicked instructions came, but the priest in his turn could point to the passage in his sacred book distinctly commanding or sanctioning such barbarities. The Bible contained instructions for the Jews not only to kill unbelieving people of other nations, but minute details were given as to how believers of their own kith and kin should be put to death (Leviticus xxiv., 16). The Koran was equally explicit in its directions to murder the infidels (chapter on the "Cow," p. 23); and the New Testament, which the Christians accepted as a guide, not only bade the believer have "no fellowship with unbelievers," but into whatever city they went, and the people were indisposed to give heed to their preachings, they were to "shake off the dust of their feet," and god would make it warmer for such people in the next world than for ordinary sinners. Nay more: the Christian could point to the strong declaration of Jesus: "But those mine enemies who would not that I should reign over them, bring hither and slay before me" (Luke xix., 27). The people were told that angels existed. They believed it. They were told that witches were displeasing to the sight of God; that he had given instructions that they were not to be "suffered" to live. They believed it; and did their best to remove the witches from the face of the earth. They were told that their God liked nothing so much as roast lamb. They believed it. And when they couldn't spare a lamb, they thought it would be pleasant at least for their deity to smell the flavor of it. They were told that God was the father of all men; that he was just and good; but that he liked some nations better than others; and considered some men fit only to be the slaves of others. They believed it. They were told that God made man. They believed it. They were told that he made all other animals for man's pleasure and assistance. They believed it. They were told that he made the sun and the stars to give light to the earth. They believed it. They were told that he made the earth. They believed it. That it was flat, and they were flats enough to believe that also. But they were not told who made God; what intelligent mind designed him before he was made; who made the intelligent mind that designed the God that made the world out of nothing. These matters were allowed to remain impenetrable mysteries. In course of time morality improved. The would-be murderer found that there were men in the nation who could defend themselves against all assaults of the enemy; and that the only way to be secure from attack was to promise not to be the aggressive party. And the thief found that if he stole others would steal from him; that only by being honest could he hope to have his own property protected. Though very early in the progress of man laws had been made against murder and theft, it was not until men saw that their own life and property were at stake, and that unless they were peaceful and honest themselves they ran a risk of losing all they had, that anything approaching harmony existed among the people of the nations that were on the high road to civilisation. Among savage races, murder, theft and other crimes are almost as rife as ever; and it is only when barbarous races come in contact with races higher up the scale of life that their morality manifests rapid improvement. Scepticism is the sign of a healthy mind. Doubt and unbelief invariably arise as the result of earnest inquiry and vigorous thought. Except among the philosophical Greeks and cultured Romans, doubts concerning the truth of theology were not openly expressed, even by the few, until many centuries after the Christian era began. Of course, among the early Christians there were many who doubted; some who denied the divinity of Jesus; many who questioned the truth of the resurrection; among the Brahmins and Buddhists, many who were sceptical on dogmatic points of their faith. But it was not until the middle of the sixteenth century that we find men questioning the pretensions of theologians, and exposing with admirable fearlessness and candor the errors of theology. Martin Luther early in the sixteenth century boldly questioned the dogmas of the Romish Church. He was ably supported by Philip Melancthon, but these reformers, although fighting bravely for the right of Freethought, were fearful lest others in the exercise of this freedom should go further than they did. Bruno, Telesio, Campanella and Vanini are among the first mentioned in history who courageously declared their disbelief in the prevailing theology. Bruno was a Pantheist. He denied that God was a person, and declared that he was an essence. He affirmed that matter was indestructible; that nature produced "all phænomena as the fruit of her own womb." He believed in the plurality of worlds, and denied the teachings of Aristotle. Telesio and Campanella held much the same belief. Vanini was an Atheist. For their heresies Telesio and Oampanella were imprisoned; Bruno and Vanini both died at the stake. No doubt there were many others who entertained doubts similar to those expressed by these noble philosophers; but when they found that their scepticism would be burnt out of them if they expressed it, they doubtlessly came to the conclusion that they had better keep it to themselves until men were more prepared for the reception of it. And probably the time would never have come had it not been for the heroism of a Bruno, the defiance of a Vanini, and the persistent teaching of other less known Freethought worthies. Galileo the astronomer must also be numbered among the sceptics. He denied that the earth was the centre of the universe, and in opposition to such teaching declared that it moved round the sun. For making known this now well-established fact the great astronomer was imprisoned, and a short interval allowed for him to recant or die the death of an infidel. He was an old man, and life was sweet. He elected to live. He had sown the seeds of doubt concerning the Church's teaching of astronomy--he left it to blossom in its own good time. In Europe periodical efforts had been made to improve the social and domestic life of the people. Feudalism having developed to its highest point, decayed, and upon its ruins were established strong monarchies, which vied with each other in voluptuousness and wickedness. But if the nation showed any signs of going forward in the march of progress, there was always one chain at least to drag them hopelessly back again. This was the Romish Church with, its slavish theology and horrible corruption. "For centuries the popes at intervals had embroiled Italy. Sometimes several popes ruled at once, and sometimes the Catholic Church had no pope at all. To unite and maintain, the temporal and spiritual power in their own persons was ever the ruling passion of the Catholic potentates; and for this they have spilt rivers of human blood. Under their absolute power the Church and its vices has grown up for centuries. Rooted into the heart of society the people had learnt to revere the ancient institution. Their imaginations were captivated by its showy services; its priesthood had the keeping of their consciences; was their only means of access to heaven; gave consolation in sickness; married, buried, and sent them to paradise. Its superstitions and centuries of cruelty had as yet only increased its power. Europe was filled with its images of saints and martyrs, real or counterfeit, and the people were instructed to fall down and worship them. Dead saints were made the medium of access to the deity; the services of religion were muttered in dead languages; priests were decked in dazzling garments; wax candles burnt in the churches at noonday; vessels of gold and silver stood on the altars; preaching had become rare, and had degenerated into frivolous talking; monks who lived a life of ease or idleness, and often of vice, were scattered in multitudes throughout every nation of Christendom; and in order to prevent inquiry and crush opposition, the Inquisition was established and the fire of persecution lit. Pope Alexander VI., a man of unusual depravity, burnt Savonarola for preaching reform in the Church. In short, a frightful spiritual despotism, such as Europe had never seen before, held the human mind in abject bondage" (Dr. Bollock's "History of Modern Europe," p. 23). After the Reformation the disputes between Christians, regarding the doctrines of the Protestant as well as the Catholic Church, were numerous and exceedingly bitter. But the masses of the people having to work hard for a small pittance and little leisure, took comparatively small notice of these theological disputes, and applied themselves with commendable zeal to more useful labor than watching the wretched encounters of fanatical religionists. The printing-press having now got into working order, began to disturb the peace of mind of the clergy and others in authority. Every shot from the armory of intelligence shook to their foundation the dogmas of the Church. The people continued to work. Scientific men, too, continued their labors quietly. Columbus discovered America, and frightened credulous believers in the flatness of the earth out of all the wits they ever had. Descartes in France, Spinoza in Holland, formulated a philosophy that knocked the anthropomorphic deity of the Christians quite off his pedestal; it was done, however, in such a learned manner that the common people heard scarcely anything about it. These continued the useful labors of the world. They tilled the soil; they bred cattle; they erected magnificent houses for the rich and small hovels for the poor; they made gaudy raiment wherewith to bedeck the persons of kings and priests, and plain dresses as a covering for the common people. Periodically, their progress was thwarted by being called upon to fight religious wars for the priests, and wars for the glorification or vanity of kings. Running rapidly over the pages of history one important fact stands prominently out. It is this, that as soon as the nations were at peace, for however short a while, the sceptics appeared again, and with the growing intelligence of the people, spoke in language of unmistakeable plainness about religion. Thomas Paine directed his powerful intellect against the upas tree; Voltaire's wit went like a javelin to its core; while Mirabaud and D'Holbach tore off the mask and left theology's errors exposed in all their glaring hideousness. And now the dawn of a new era for Freethought began to appear. The clergy maligned great sceptics, but scepticism increased notwithstanding. Heretical works were condemned and the authors imprisoned; but the seeds of doubt having been widely sown, nothing short of the wholesale destruction of persons suspected of entertaining these doubts was likely to prove effectual in the extirpation of them. From this point rapid progress towards the higher civilisation was made in all countries in Europe where the people were bold enough to free themselves from the dogmatism of the priests, read the works of scientific men, take advantage of every new discovery, interest themselves in the political and social movements of the country. In short, man advanced in proportion as he devoted himself to the work of the world, and left the next world and all opinions in regard to it to take care of themselves. So far we have seen the progress of man has been won by a vigorous struggling against the harmful forces of nature. In truth, nature has been a very useful servant to those who understand her, but a harsh and brutal master to those who were ignorant of her ways. She is not, nor ever has been, worthy of worship. She destroys every being that lives once, and sometimes by the most painful process it is possible to conceive. How many thousands she has starved with hunger, frozen with cold, poisoned, drowned, or swept away by earthquakes or other frightful calamities, mankind will never know. All we can know is that thousands have been thus sacrificed, and that in proportion as man used one force of nature to counteract the effect of another he has advanced. When the sceptical man had a chance of life, his advance towards civilisation was rapid. The sceptical mind investigated; new discoveries were made; the printing press increased in usefulness and power; new forms of industry were started, and a higher happiness made possible for the masses of the people. The art of agriculture steadily improved; and the shipping of merchandise from one nation to another was greatly facilitated by improved skill in navigation. Great, however, as were the strides towards civilisation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they were all eclipsed in the early part of the nineteenth century by the utilisation of steam-power, electricity, and other great natural forces, which had the effect of greatly increasing the wealth-producing power of those nations that adopted them. Nor was this all; for immediately following, machinery, which saved an enormous amount of labor, was introduced. Food and clothing became cheaper. The people multiplied rapidly, and with this increase of population grew a proportionate demand for food and labor. In a short time the struggle for existence was manifestly keener than it had ever been before; the rich became richer and richer, while among the poor the tendency was to get poorer and more poor. Uncomplainingly the people devoted themselves to the labor of each day. Theology they set aside for six days of the week, and concerned themselves about the gods on Sunday. Though they did not often say so, the majority of men thought it was far better for them to be diligent workmen, performing all the secular duties of daily life--building houses, making clothes, machinery, writing books; acting the part of good husbands, fathers, or citizens--than to have the most orthodox belief it was possible for a being to entertain. And this sentiment grew stronger and stronger, and proved of immense importance to mankind. For hundreds of years theologians had talked about the importance of saving men's souls; and those who possessed the smallest seemed to make the most fuss about them. But now the aspect of things was changed. Men began to talk about looking after their bodies; and some ventured to suggest that if they had souls in their bodies it would, perhaps, be no disadvantage to them if their bodies were well fed, well clothed, and their whole being well trained. Necessity forced all but a small minority into the labor market. And after years of labor the earth was converted from a howling wilderness into a home fit for habitation. Here let me distinctly affirm that all that is admirable in civilised life--the comfort of home, the pleasure of education, the fascination of the drama, the beauty of painting or sculpture, the usefulness of scientific acquirements--owe their value to the secular labor of mankind. Theology deserves no credit in respect to these things. Theology did not help man to supersede the sailing vessel by the steamship, the old coach by the railroad, the reaping machine by the scythe (vice versa, DW), nor the fastest locomotion by the telegraph wires. The theologian did not discover the telephone, nor did he learn how to light--with a brilliancy previously unknown to man--our streets and great public buildings by means of electricity. One Stephenson is worth a thousand theologians; one Edison of more value to the world than all the gods that men's imagination have ever pictured. But see what additional wonders the secular laborer has accomplished. He has removed forests of trees and converted them into houses, the hides of cattle he turned into boots and shoes, the wool of sheep he has transformed into robes of beauty and utility. He has bedecked our walls with paintings, put books upon our shelves, and with sweet music gladdened our hearts. To accomplish all this he has had to rely solely upon his reason. Yet theologians call this splendid attribute _carnal reason,_ and declare that it is no safe guide to man. It has been man's only guide; and when he has trusted it he has been more often in the right than otherwise. Even his errors have assisted hint in future labors. Faith he has had, but it has always been secular faith. Experience has been his guide, science a lamp unto his feet. Even when he has walked down the wrong path he has done so with his eyes open. Theological faith is sightless. It allures you to the brink of a precipice and precipitates you to the earth beneath. It is a ship without a rudder; the tempestuous waves toss it about recklessly, the wind drives it savagely against the rocks, and to-day this ship called "Theological Faith" is a dreary wreck. But reason grows stronger and clearer as the ages roll on. Man has discovered that he can trust it; that he can use it; that he can assist himself and others by the employment of it. In other words, he can do his own thinking, reason out his own principles, act his own life. He can be a man. And it is better for an individual to be a bad original than a good copy of somebody else. Man is civilised to-day. He has fought a good fight, he has conquered a foe; but better than all, he has converted an enemy into a friend. What is man's future policy? Is there not still plenty of labor for him to perform? Is there not an ocean of enigmas yet to be fathomed, a gold-mine of knowledge yet to be explored? Is there not poverty to be remedied, pain to be alleviated, ignorance to be removed? The reformer has yet something to inspire his fervid soul; the philanthropist plenty to touch his generous heart. Why even now the wealthy rogue struts pompously upon the stage of life in grand attire, and fares sumptuously every day; while honest poverty in rags lies hungry and fainting at his door. Even now the rich own all the land, and many poor have not where to lay their head. Even now all men are not equal in the sight of the law; and one man gets pensioned for work for which another is incarcerated in gaol. Even now our sisters are outraged and turned adrift upon the world to be the playthings of vicious men for evermore. Even now our workhouses are filled with men and women who are able to work for an honest living--if they could get it--but cannot because labor is cheap, and there are too many waiting to perform it. Even now our gaols are filled with society-made criminals, that education and better circumstances might have rescued from a life of misery and crime. Even now youth is stunted and starved, and men and women pine away, racked with some terrible disease which thoughtless and careless parents have transmitted to them. Reformers abate not your enthusiasm, but work bravely on. Through the world diffuse the glorious light of knowledge, let men learn that all crime is a mistake, that effects always follow causes, and that a good effect never follows from a bad cause in a nation that is governed on the principles of truth and justice. Remove poverty by sound advice to the poor and by strenuous efforts to improve men's surroundings. Stay the drunkard in his downward course, and assist unceasingly all social and political progress. Popularity you may never attain; even praise for your unselfish labor may be denied you while you live. But good work must leave its influence in the world; and your children's children will assuredly profit by it. For as Carlyle truly says: "Beautiful it is to see and understand that no worth, or known or unknown, can die even on this earth. The work an unknown good man has done is like a hidden vein of water flowing underground, secretly making the ground green. It flows and flows; it joins itself with other veins and veinlets, and one day it will start forth as a visible perennial well." 
45068	----	provided by The Internet Archive THE TRUTH ABOUT JESUS IS HE A MYTH? Illustrated By M. M. Mangasarian 1909 [Illustration: 005 Woman Crucified. In the Church of St. Etienne, France. For a Long Time This Bearded Woman Was Supposed to be the Christ] _If it is not historically true that such and such things happened in Palestine eighteen centuries ago, what becomes of Christianity?_ --THOMAS HUXLEY. _By education most have been misled, So they believe because they were so bred; The priest continues what the nurse began, And thus the child imposes on the man_.--DRYDEN. PREFACE The following work offers in book form the series of studies on the question of the historicity of Jesus, presented from time to time before the Independent Religious Society in Orchestra Hall. No effort has been made to change the manner of the spoken, into the more regular form of the written, word. M. M. MANGASARIAN. [Illustration: 010 Picture in Herculaneum, of the Days of Pompeii, Showing Cupid Crowned with a Cross.] PART I. A PARABLE I am today twenty-five hundred years old. I have been dead for nearly as many years. My place of birth was Athens; my grave was not far from those of Xenophon and Plato, within view of the white glory of Athens and the shimmering waters of the Aegean sea. After sleeping in my grave for many centuries I awoke suddenly--I cannot tell how nor why--and was transported by a force beyond my control to this new day and this new city. I arrived here at daybreak, when the sky was still dull and drowsy. As I approached the city I heard bells ringing, and a little later I found the streets astir with throngs of well dressed people in family groups wending their way hither and thither. Evidently they were not going to work, for they were accompanied by their children in their best clothes, and a pleasant expression was upon their faces. "This must be a day of festival and worship, devoted to one of their gods," I murmured to myself. Looking about me I saw a gentleman in a neat black dress, smiling, and his hand extended to me with great cordiality. He must have realized I was a stranger and wished to tender his hospitality to me. I accepted it gratefully. I clasped his hand. He pressed mine. We gazed for a moment silently into each other's eyes. He understood my bewilderment amid my novel surroundings, and offered to enlighten me. He explained to me the ringing of the bells and the meaning of the holiday crowds moving in the streets. It was Sunday--Sunday before Christmas, and the people were going to "the House of God." "Of course you are going there, too," I said to my friendly guide. "Yes," he answered, "I conduct the worship. I am a priest." "A priest of Apollo?" I interrogated. "No, no," he replied, raising his hand to command silence, "Apollo is not a god; he was only an idol." "An idol?" I whispered, taken by surprise. "I perceive you are a Greek," he said to me, "and the Greeks," he continued, "notwithstanding their distinguished accomplishments, were an idolatrous people. They worshipped gods that did not exist. They built temples to divinities which were merely empty names--empty names," he repeated. "Apollo and Athene--and the entire Olympian lot were no more than inventions of the fancy." "But the Greeks loved their gods," I protested, my heart clamoring in my breast. "They were not gods, they were idols, and the difference between a god and an idol is this: an idol is a thing; God is a living being. When you cannot prove the existence of your god, when you have never seen him, nor heard his voice, nor touched him--when you have nothing provable about him, he is an idol. Have you seen Apollo? Have you heard him? Have you touched him?" "No," I said, in a low voice. "Do you know of any one who has?" I had to admit that I did not. "He was an idol, then, and not a god." "But many of us Greeks," I said, "have felt Apollo in our hearts and have been inspired by him." "You imagine you have," returned my guide. "If he were really divine he would be living to this day." "Is he, then, dead?" I asked. "He never lived; and for the last two thousand years or more his temple has been a heap of ruins." I wept to hear that Apollo, the god of light and music, was no more--that his fair temple had fallen into ruins and the fire upon his altar had been extinguished; then, wiping a tear from my eyes, I said, "Oh, but our gods were fair and beautiful; our religion was rich and picturesque. It made the Greeks a nation of poets, orators, artists, warriors, thinkers. It made Athens a city of light; it created the beautiful, the true, the good--yes, our religion was divine." "It had only one fault," interrupted my guide. "What was that?" I inquired, without knowing what his answer would be. "It was not true." "But I still believe in Apollo," I exclaimed; "he is not dead, I know he is alive." "Prove it," he said to me; then, pausing for a moment, "if you produce him," he said, "we shall all fall down and worship him. Produce Apollo and he shall be our god." "Produce him!" I whispered to myself. "What blasphemy!" Then, taking heart, I told my guide how more than once I had felt Apollo's radiant presence in my heart, and told him of the immortal lines of Homer concerning the divine Apollo. "Do you doubt Homer?" I said to him; "Homer, the inspired bard? Homer, whose inkwell was as big as the sea; whose imperishable page was Time? Homer, whose every word was a drop of light?" Then I proceeded to quote from Homer's _Iliad_, the Greek Bible, worshipped by all the Hellenes as the rarest Manuscript between heaven and earth. I quoted his description of Apollo, than whose lyre nothing is more musical, than whose speech even honey is not sweeter. I recited how his mother went from town to town to select a worthy place to give birth to the young god, son of Zeus, the Supreme Being, and how he was born and cradled amid the ministrations of all the goddesses, who bathed him in the running stream and fed him with nectar and ambrosia from Olympus. Then I recited the lines which picture Apollo bursting his bands, leaping forth from his cradle, and spreading his wings like a swan, soaring sunward, declaring that he had come to announce to mortals the will of God. "Is it possible," I asked, "that all this is pure fabrication, a fantasy of the brain, as unsubstantial as the air? No, no, Apollo is not an idol. He is a god, and the son of a god. The whole Greek world will bear me witness that I am telling the truth." Then I looked at my guide to see what impression this outburst of sincere enthusiasm had produced upon him, and I saw a cold smile upon his lips that cut me to the heart. It seemed as if he wished to say to me, "You poor deluded pagan! You are not intelligent enough to know that Homer was only a mortal after all, and that he was writing a play in which he manufactured the gods of whom he sang--that these gods existed only in his imagination, and that today they are as dead as is their inventor--the poet." By this time we stood at the entrance of a large edifice which my guide said was "the House of God." As we walked in I saw innumerable little lights blinking and winking all over the spacious interior. There were, besides, pictures, altars and images all around me. The air was heavy with incense; a number of men in gorgeous vestments were passing to and fro, bowing and kneeling before the various lights and images. The audience was upon its knees enveloped in silence--a silence so solemn that it awed me. Observing my anxiety to understand the meaning of all this, my guide took me aside and in a whisper told me that the people were celebrating the anniversary of the birthday of their beautiful Savior--Jesus, the Son of God. "So was Apollo the son of God," I replied, thinking perhaps that after all we might find ourselves in agreement with one another. "Forget Apollo," he said, with a suggestion of severity in his voice. "There is no such person. He was only an idol. If you were to search for Apollo in all the universe you would never find any one answering to his name or description. Jesus," he resumed, "is the Son of God. He came to our earth and was born of a virgin." Again I was tempted to tell my guide that that was how Apollo became incarnate; but I restrained myself. "Then Jesus grew up to be a man," continued my guide, "performing unheard-of wonders, such as treading the seas, giving sight, hearing and speech to the blind, the deaf and the dumb, converting water into wine, feeding the multitudes miraculously, predicting coming events and resurrecting the dead." "Of course, of your gods, too," he added, "it is claimed that they performed miracles, and of your oracles that they foretold the future, but there is this difference--the things related of your gods are a fiction, the things told of Jesus are a fact, and the difference between Paganism and Christianity is the difference between fiction and fact." Just then I heard a wave of murmur, like the rustling of leaves in a forest, sweep over the bowed audience. I turned about and unconsciously, my Greek curiosity impelling me, I pushed forward toward where the greater candle lights were blazing. I felt that perhaps the commotion in the house was the announcement that the God Jesus was about to make his appearance, and I wanted to see him. I wanted to touch him, or, if the crowd were too large to allow me that privilege, I wanted, at least, to hear his voice. I, who had never seen a god, never touched one, never heard one speak, I who had believed in Apollo without ever having known anything provable about him, I wanted to see the real God, Jesus. But my guide placed his hand quickly upon my shoulder, and held me back. "I want to see Jesus," I hastened, turning toward him. I said this reverently and in good faith. "Will he not be here this morning? Will he not speak to his worshippers?" I asked again. "Will he not permit them to touch him, to caress his hand, to clasp his divine feet, to inhale the ambrosial fragrance of his breath, to bask in the golden light of his eyes, to hear the music of his immaculate accents? Let me, too, see Jesus," I pleaded. "You cannot see him," answered my guide, with a trace of embarrassment in his voice. "He does not show himself any more." I was too much surprised at this to make any immediate reply. "For the last two thousand years," my guide continued, "it has not pleased Jesus to show himself to any one; neither has he been heard from for the same number of years." "For two thousand years no one has either seen or heard Jesus?" I asked, my eyes filled with wonder and my voice quivering with excitement. "No," he answered. "Would not that, then," I ventured to ask, impatiently, "make Jesus as much of an idol as Apollo? And are not these people on their knees before a god of whose existence they are as much in the dark as were the Greeks of fair Apollo, and of whose past they have only rumors such as Homer reports of our Olympian gods--as idolatrous as the Athenians? What would you say," I asked my guide, "if I were to demand that you should produce Jesus and prove him to my eyes and ears as you have asked me to produce and prove Apollo? What is the difference between a ceremony performed in honor of Apollo and one performed in honor of Jesus, since it is as impossible to give oracular demonstration of the existence of the one as of the other? If Jesus is alive and a god, and Apollo is an idol and dead, what is the evidence, since the one is as invisible, as inaccessible, and as unproducible as the other? And, if faith that Jesus is a god proves him a god, why will not faith in Apollo make him a god? But if worshipping Jesus, whom for the best part of the last two thousand years no man has seen, heard or touched; if building temples to him, burning incense upon his altars, bowing at his shrine and calling him 'God,' is not idolatry, neither is it idolatry to kindle fire upon the luminous altars of the Greek Apollo,--God of the dawn, master of the enchanted lyre--he with the bow and arrow tipped with fire! I am not denying," I said, "that Jesus ever lived. He may have been alive two thousand years ago, but if he has not been heard from since, if the same thing that happened to the people living at the time he lived has happened to him, namely--if he is dead, then you are worshipping the dead, which fact stamps your religion as idolatrous." And, then, remembering what he had said to me about the Greek mythology being beautiful but not true, I said to him: "Your temples are indeed gorgeous and costly; your music is grand; your altars are superb; your litany is exquisite; your chants are melting; your incense, and bells and flowers, your gold and silver vessels are all in rare taste, and I dare say your dogmas are subtle and your preachers eloquent, but your religion has one fault--_it is not true_." [Illustration: 022 Swastika. Earlier Form of the Cross. ] [Illustration: 023 The Lamb in the Holy Sepulchre, Mosaic of the IV Century, Sarcophagus of Luc de Bearn. Showing the Lamb on the Cross.] IN CONFIDENCE I shall speak in a straightforward way, and shall say today what perhaps I should say tomorrow, or ten years from now,--but shall say it today, because I cannot keep it back, because I have nothing better to say than the truth, or what I hold to be the truth. But why seek truths that are not pleasant? We cannot help it. No man can suppress the truth. Truth finds a crack or crevice to crop out of; it bobs up to the surface and all the volume and weight of waters can not keep it down. Truth prevails! Life, death, truth--behold, these three no power can keep back. And since we are doomed to know the truth, let us cultivate a love for it. It is of no avail to cry over lost illusions, to long for vanished dreams, or to call to the departing gods to come back. It may be pleasant to play with toys and dolls all our life, but evidently we are not meant to remain children always. The time comes when we must put away childish things and obey the summons of truth, stern and high. A people who fear the truth can never be a free people. If what I will say is the truth, do you know of any good reason why I should not say it? And if for prudential reasons I should sometimes hold back the truth, how would you know _when_ I am telling what I believe to be the truth, and when I am holding it back for reasons of policy? The truth, however unwelcome, is not injurious; it is error which raises false hopes, which destroys, degrades and pollutes, and which, sooner or later, must be abandoned. Was it not Spencer, whom Darwin called "our great philosopher," who said, "Repulsive as is its aspect, the hard fact which dissipates a cherished illusion is presently found to contain the germ of a more salutary belief?" Spain is decaying today because her teachers, for policy's sake, are withholding the disagreeable truth from the people. Holy water and sainted bones can give a nation illusions and dreams, but never,--strength. A difficult subject is in the nature of a challenge to the mind. One difficult task attempted is worth a thousand commonplace efforts completed. The majority of people avoid the difficult and fear danger. But he who would progress must even court danger. Political and religious liberty were discovered through peril and struggle. The world owes its emancipation to human daring. Had Columbus feared danger, America might have slept for another thousand years. I have a difficult subject in hand. It is also a delicate one. But I am determined not only to know, if it is possible, the whole truth about Jesus, but also to communicate that truth to others. Some people can keep their minds shut. I cannot; I must share my intellectual life with the world. If I lived a thousand years ago, I might have collapsed at the sight of the burning stake, but I feel sure I would have deserved the stake. People say to me, sometimes, "Why do you not confine yourself to moral and religious exhortation, such as, 'Be kind, do good, love one another, etc.'?" But there is more of a moral tonic in the open and candid discussion of a subject like the one in hand, than in a multitude of platitudes. We feel our moral fiber stiffen into force and purpose under the inspiration of a peril dared for the advancement of truth. "Tell us what you believe," is one of the requests frequently addressed to me. I never deliver a lecture in which I do not, either directly or indirectly, give full and free expression to my faith in everything that is worthy of faith. If I do not believe in dogma, it is because I believe in freedom. If I do not believe in one inspired book, it is because I believe that all truth and only truth is inspired. If I do not ask the gods to help us, it is because I believe in human help, so much more real than supernatural help. If I do not believe in standing still, it is because I believe in progress. If I am not attracted by the vision of a distant heaven, it is because I believe in human happiness, now and here. If I do not say "Lord, Lord!" to Jesus, it is because I bow my head to a greater Power than Jesus, to a more efficient Savior than he has ever been--Science! "Oh, he tears down, but does not build up," is another criticism about my work. It is not true. No preacher or priest is more constructive. To build up their churches and maintain their creeds the priests pulled down and destroyed the magnificent civilization of Greece and Rome, plunging Europe into the dark and sterile ages which lasted over a thousand years. When Galileo waved his hands for joy because he believed he had enriched humanity with a new truth and extended the sphere of knowledge, what did the church do to him? It conspired to destroy him. It shut him up in a dungeon! Clapping truth into jail; gagging the mouth of the student--is that building up or tearing down? When Bruno lighted a new torch to increase the light of the world, what was his reward? The stake! During all the ages that the church had the power to police the world, every time a thinker raised his head he was clubbed to death. Do you think it is kind of us--does it square with our sense of justice to call the priest constructive, and the scientists and philosophers who have helped people to their feet--helped them to self-government in politics, and to self-help in life,--destructive? Count your rights--political, religious, social, intellectual--and tell me which of them was conquered for you by the priest. "He is irreverent," is still another hasty criticism I have heard advanced against the rationalist. I wish to tell you something. But first let us be impersonal. The epithets "irreverent," "blasphemer," "atheist," and "infidel," are flung at a man, not from pity, but from envy. Not having the courage or the industry of our neighbor who works like a busy bee in the world of men and books, searching with the sweat of his brow for the real bread of life, wetting the open page before him with his tears, pushing into the "wee" hours of the night his quest, animated by the fairest of all loves, "the love of truth",--we ease our own indolent conscience by calling him names. We pretend that it is not because we are too lazy or too selfish to work as hard or think as freely as he does, but because we do not want to be as irreverent as he is that we keep the windows of our minds shut. To excuse our own mediocrity we call the man who tries to get out of the rut a "blasphemer." And so we ask the world to praise our indifference as a great virtue, and to denounce the conscientious toil and thought of another, as "blasphemy." [Illustration: 029 The Lamb Standing Upon the Gospels. VIII Century.] IS JESUS A MYTH? What is a myth? A myth is a fanciful explanation of a given phenomenon. Observing the sun, the moon, and the stars overhead, the primitive man wished to account for them. This was natural. The mind craves for knowledge. The child asks questions because of an inborn desire to know. Man feels ill at ease with a sense of a mental vacuum, until his questions are answered. Before the days of science, a fanciful answer was all that could be given to man's questions about the physical world. The primitive man guessed where knowledge failed him--what else could he do? A myth, then, is a guess, a story, a speculation, or a fanciful explanation of a phenomenon, in the absence of accurate information. Many are the myths about the heavenly bodies, which, while we call them myths, because we know better, were to the ancients truths. The Sun and Moon were once brother and sister, thought the child-man; but there arose a dispute between them; the woman ran away, and the man ran after her, until they came to the end of the earth where land and sky met. The woman jumped into the sky, and the man after her, where they kept chasing each other forever, as Sun and Moon. Now and then they came close enough to snap at each other. That was their explanation of an eclipse. (Childhood of the World.--Edward Clodd.) With this mythus, the primitive man was satisfied, until his developing intelligence realized its inadequacy. Science was born of that realization. During the middle ages it was believed by Europeans that in certain parts of the world, in India, for instance, there were people who had only one eye in the middle of their foreheads, and were more like monsters than humans. This was imaginary knowledge, which travel and research have corrected. The myth of a one-eyed people living in India has been replaced by accurate information concerning the Hindoos. Likewise, before the science of ancient languages was perfected--before archaeology had dug up buried cities and deciphered the hieroglyphics on the monuments of antiquity, most of our knowledge concerning the earlier ages was mythical, that is to say, it was knowledge not based on investigation, but made to order. Just as the theologians still speculate about the other world, primitive man speculated about this world. Even we moderns, not very long ago, believed, for instance, that the land of Egypt was visited by ten fantastic plagues; that in one bloody night every first born in the land was slain; that the angel of a tribal-god dipped his hand in blood and printed a red mark upon the doors of the houses of the Jews to protect them from harm; that Pharaoh and his armies were drowned in the Red Sea; that the children of Israel wandered for forty years around Mount Sinai; and so forth, and so forth. But now that we can read the inscriptions on the stone pages dug out of ancient ruins; now that we can compel a buried world to reveal its secret and to tell us its story, we do not have to go on making myths about the ancients. Myths die when history is born. It will be seen from these examples that there is no harm in myth-making if the myth is called a myth. It is when we use our fanciful knowledge to deny or to shut out real and scientific knowledge that the myth becomes a stumbling block. And this is precisely the use to which myths have been put. The king with his sword and the priest with his curses, have supported the myth against science. When a man _pretends_ to believe that the _Santa Claus_ of his childhood is real, and tries to compel also others to play a part, he becomes positively immoral. There is no harm in believing in _Santa Claus_ as a myth, but there is in pretending that he is real, because such an attitude of mind makes a mere trifle of truth. Is Jesus a myth? There is in man a faculty for fiction. Before history was born, there was myth; before men could think, they dreamed. It was with the human race in its infancy as it is with the child. The child's imagination is more active than its reason. It is easier for it to fancy even than to see. It thinks less than it guesses. This wild flight of fancy is checked only by experience. It is reflection which introduces a bit into the mouth of imagination, curbing its pace and subduing its restless spirit. It is, then, as we grow older, and, if I may use the word, riper, that we learn to distinguish between fact and fiction, between history and myth. In childhood we need playthings, and the more fantastic and _bizarre_ they are, the better we are pleased with them. We dream, for instance, of castles in the air--gorgeous and clothed with the azure hue of the skies. We fill the space about and over us with spirits, fairies, gods, and other invisible and airy beings. We covet the rainbow. We reach out for the moon. Our feet do not really begin to touch the firm ground until we have reached the years of discretion. I know there are those who wish they could always remain children,--living in dreamland. But even if this were desirable, it is not possible. Evolution is our destiny; of what use is it, then, to take up arms against destiny? Let it be borne in mind that all the religions of the world were born in the childhood of the race. Science was not born until man had matured. There is in this thought a world of meaning. Children make religions. Grown up people create science. The cradle is the womb of all the fairies and faiths of mankind. The school is the birthplace of science. Religion is the science of the child. Science is the religion of the matured man. In the discussion of this subject, I appeal to the mature, not to the child mind. I appeal to those who have cultivated a taste for truth--who are not easily scared, but who can "screw their courage to the sticking point" and follow to the end truth's leading. The multitude is ever joined to its idols; let them alone. I speak to the discerning few. There is an important difference between a lecturer and an ordained preacher. The latter can command a hearing in the name of God, or in the name of the Bible. He does not have to satisfy his hearers about the reasonableness of what he preaches. He is God's mouthpiece, and no one may disagree with him. He can also invoke the authority of the church and of the Christian world to enforce acceptance of his teaching. The only way I may command your respect is to be reasonable. You will not listen to me for God's sake, nor for the Bible's sake, nor yet for the love of heaven, or the fear of hell. My only protection is to be rational--to be truthful. In other words, the preacher can afford to ignore common sense in the name of Revelation. But if I depart from it in the least, or am caught once playing fast and loose with the facts, I will irretrievably lose my standing. [Illustration: 035 In Use Upon Heathen Altars Centuries Before Christianity.] Our answer to the question, Is Jesus a Myth? must depend more or less upon original research, as there is very little written on the subject. The majority of writers assume that a person answering to the description of Jesus lived some two thousand years ago. Even the few who entertain doubts on the subject, seem to hold that while there is a large mythical element in the Jesus story, nevertheless there is a historical nucleus round which has clustered the elaborate legend of the Christ. In all probability, they argue, there was a man called Jesus, who said many helpful things, and led an exemplary life, and all the miracles and wonders represent the accretions of fond and pious ages. Let us place ourselves entirely in the hands of the evidence. As far as possible, let us be passive, showing no predisposition one way or another. We can afford to be independent. If the evidence proves the historicity of Jesus, well and good; if the evidence is not sufficient to prove it, there is no reason why we should fear to say so; besides, it is our duty to inform ourselves on this question. As intelligent beings we desire to know whether this Jesus, whose worship is not only costing the world millions of the people's money, but which is also drawing to his service the time, the energies, the affection, the devotion, and the labor of humanity,--is a myth, or a reality. We believe that all religious persecutions, all sectarian wars, hatreds and intolerance, which still cramp and embitter our humanity, would be replaced by love and brotherhood, if the sects could be made to see that the God-Jesus they are quarreling over is a myth, a shadow to which credulity alone gives substance. Like people who have been fighting in the dark, fearing some danger, the sects, once relieved of the thraldom of a tradition which has been handed down to them by a childish age and country, will turn around and embrace one another. In every sense, the subject is an all-absorbing one. It goes to the root of things; it touches the vital parts, and it means life or death to the Christian religion. [Illustration: 037 Ascension of Jesus, Ninth Century.] [Illustration: 038 Juno Nursing Her Divine Child, Mars.] THE PROBLEM STATED Let me now give an idea of the method I propose to follow in the study of this subject. Let us suppose that a student living in the year 3000 desired to make sure that such a man as Abraham Lincoln really lived and did the things attributed to him. How would he go about it? A man must have a birthplace and a birthday. All the records agree as to where and when Lincoln was born. This is not enough to prove his historicity, but it is an important link in the chain. Neither the place nor the time of Jesus' birth is known. There has never been any unanimity about this matter. There has been considerable confusion and contradiction about it. It cannot be proved that the twenty-fifth of December is his birthday. A number of other dates were observed by the Christian church at various times as the birthday of Jesus. The Gospels give no date, and appear to be quite uncertain--really ignorant about it. When it is remembered that the Gospels purport to have been written by Jesus' intimate companions, and during the lifetime of his brothers and mother, their silence on this matter becomes significant. The selection of the twenty-fifth of December as his birthday is not only an arbitrary one, but that date, having been from time immemorial dedicated to the Sun, the inference is that the Son of God and the Sun of heaven enjoying the same birthday, were at one time identical beings. The fact that Jesus' death was accompanied with the darkening of the Sun, and that the date of his resurrection is also associated with the position of the Sun at the time of the vernal equinox, is a further intimation that we have in the story of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, an ancient and nearly universal Sun-myth, instead of verifiable historical events. The story of Jesus for three days in the heart of the earth; of Jonah, three days in the belly of a fish; of Hercules, three days in the belly of a whale, and of Little Red Riding Hood, sleeping in the belly of a great black wolf, represent the attempt of primitive man to explain the phenomenon of Day and Night. The Sun is swallowed by a dragon, a wolf, or a whale, which plunges the world into darkness; but the dragon is killed, and the Sun rises triumphant to make another Day. This ancient Sun myth is the starting point of nearly all miraculous religions, from the days of Egypt to the twentieth century. [Illustration: 041 The Persian God, Mithra. All the Gods Have the Solar Disc Around Their Heads, Showing That Sun-Worship Was One of the Earliest Forms of Religion.] The story which Mathew relates about a remarkable star, which sailing in the air pointed out to some unnamed magicians the cradle or cave in which the wonder-child was born, helps further to identify Jesus with the Sun. What became of this "performing" star, or of the magicians, and their costly gifts, the records do not say. It is more likely that it was the astrological predilections of the gospel writer which led him to assign to his God-child a star in the heavens. The belief that the stars determine human destinies is a very ancient one. Such expressions in our language as "ill-starred," "a lucky star," "disaster," "lunacy," and so on, indicate the hold which astrology once enjoyed upon the human mind. We still call a melancholy man, _Saturnine_; a cheerful man, _Jovial_; a quick-tempered man, _Mercurial_; showing how closely our ancestors associated the movements of celestial bodies with human affairs. * The prominence, therefore, of the sun and stars in the Gospel story tends to show that Jesus is an astrological rather than a historical character. *Childhood of the World.--Edward Clodd. That the time of his birth, his death, and supposed resurrection is _not_ verifiable is generally admitted. This uncertainty robs the story of Jesus, to an extent at least, of the atmosphere of reality. The twenty-fifth of December is celebrated as his birthday. Yet there is no evidence that he was born on that day. Although the Gospels are silent as to the date on which Jesus was born, there is circumstantial evidence in the accounts given of the event to show that the twenty-fifth of December could not have been his birthday. It snows in Palestine, though a warmer country, and we know that in December there are no shepherds tending their flocks in the night time in that country. Often at this time of the year the fields and hills are covered with snow. Hence, if the shepherds sleeping in the fields really saw the heavens open and heard the angel-song, in all probability it was in some other month of the year, and not late in December. We know, also, that early in the history of Christianity the months of May and June enjoyed the honor of containing the day of Jesus' birth. [Illustration: 043 Isis Nursing Her Divine Child, 3000 B. C.] Of course, it is immaterial on which day Jesus was born, but why is it not known? Yet not only is the date of his birth a matter of conjecture, but also the year in which he was born. Matthew, one of the Evangelists, suggests that Jesus was born in King Herod's time, for it was this king who, hearing from the Magi that a King of the Jews was born, decided to destroy him; but Luke, another Evangelist, intimates that Jesus was born when Quirinus was ruler of Judea, which makes the date of Jesus' birth about fourteen years later than the date given by Matthew. Why this discrepancy in a historical document, to say nothing about inspiration? The theologian might say that this little difficulty was introduced purposely into the scriptures to establish its infallibility, but it is only religious books that are pronounced infallible on the strength of the contradictions they contain. Again, Matthew says that to escape the evil designs of Herod, Mary and Joseph, with the infant Jesus, fled into Egypt, Luke says nothing about this hurried flight, nor of Herod's intention to kill the infant Messiah. On the contrary he tells us that after the forty days of purification were over Jesus was publicly presented at the temple, where Herod, if he really, as Matthew relates, wished to seize him, could have done so without difficulty. It is impossible to reconcile the flight to Egypt with the presentation in the temple, and this inconsistency is certainly insurmountable and makes it look as if the narrative had no value whatever as history. When we come to the more important chapters about Jesus, we meet with greater difficulties. Have you ever noticed that the day on which Jesus is supposed to have died falls invariably on a Friday? What is the reason for this? It is evident that nobody knows, and nobody ever knew the date on which the Crucifixion took place, if it ever took place. It is so obscure and so mythical that an artificial day has been fixed by the Ecclesiastical councils. While it is always on a Friday that the Crucifixion is commemorated, the week in which the day occurs varies from year to year. "Good Friday" falls not before the spring equinox, but as soon after the spring equinox as the full moon allows, thus making the calculation to depend upon the position of the sun in the Zodiac and the phases of the moon. But that was precisely the way the day for the festival of the pagan goddess Oestera was determined. The Pagan Oestera has become the Christian Easter. Does not this fact, as well as those already touched upon, make the story of Jesus to read very much like the stories of the Pagan deities. The early Christians, Origin, for instance, in his reply to the rationalist Celsus who questioned the reality of Jesus, instead of producing evidence of a historical nature, appealed to the mythology of the pagans to prove that the story of Jesus was no more incredible than those of the Greek and Roman gods. This is so important that we refer our readers to Origin's own words on the subject. "Before replying to Celsus, it is necessary to admit that in the matter of history, however true it might be," writes this Christian Father, "it is often very difficult and sometimes quite impossible to establish its truth by evidence which shall be considered sufficient." * This is a plain admission that as early as the second and third centuries the claims put forth about Jesus did not admit of positive historical demonstration. But in the absence of evidence Origin offers the following metaphysical arguments against the sceptical Celsus: 1. Such stories as are told of Jesus are admitted to be true when told of pagan divinities, why can they not also be true when told of the Christian Messiah? 2. They must be true because they are the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. In other words, the only proofs Origin can bring forth against the rationalistic criticism of Celsus is, that to deny Jesus would be equivalent to denying both the Pagan and Jewish mythologies. If Jesus is not real, says Origin, then Apollo was not real, and the Old Testament prophecies have not been fulfilled. If we are to have any mythology at all, he seems to argue, why object to adding to it the mythus of Jesus? There could not be a more damaging admission than this from one of the most conspicuous defenders of Jesus' story against early criticism. * Origin _Contre Celse._ 1. 58 et Suiv. Ibid. Justin Martyr, another early Father, offers the following argument against unbelievers in the Christian legend: "When we say also that the Word, which is the first birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified, died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter." * Which is another way of saying that the Christian mythus is very similar to the pagan, and should therefore be equally true. Pressing his argument further, this interesting Father discovers many resemblances between what he himself is preaching and what the pagans have always believed: "For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribe to Jupiter. Mercury, the interpreting word (he spells this word with a small _w_ while in the above quotation he uses a capital _W_ to denote the Christian incarnation) and teacher of all; Aesculapius...who ascended to heaven; one Hercules...and Perseus;...and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horses of Pegasus." ** If Jupiter can have, Justin Martyr seems to reason, half a dozen divine sons, why cannot Jehovah have at least one? * First Apology, Chapter xxi (Anti-Nicene Library). ** Ibid. [Illustration: 048 The Unsexed Christ, Naked In the Church of St. Antoine, Tours, France.] Instead of producing historical evidence or appealing to creditable documents, as one would to prove the existence of a Caesar or an Alexander, Justin Martyr draws upon pagan mythology in his reply to the critics of Christianity. All he seems to ask for is that Jesus be given a higher place among the divinities of the ancient world. To help their cause the Christian apologists not infrequently also changed the sense of certain Old Testament passages to make them support the miraculous stories in the New Testament. For example, having borrowed from Oriental books the story of the god in a manger, surrounded by staring animals, the Christian fathers introduced a prediction of this event into the following text from the book of Habakkuk in the Bible: "Accomplish thy work in the midst of the _years_, in the midst of the years make known, etc." * This Old Testament text appeared in the Greek translation as follows: "Thou shalt manifest thyself in the midst of _two animals_" which was fulfilled of course when Jesus was born in a stable. How weak must be one's case to resort to such tactics in order to command a following! And when it is remembered that these follies were deemed necessary to prove the reality of what has been claimed as the most stupendous event in all history, one can readily see upon how fragile a foundation is built the story of the Christian God-man. * Heb. iii. 2. Let us continue: Abraham Lincoln's associates and contemporaries are all known to history. The immediate companions of Jesus appear to be, on the other hand, as mythical as he is himself. Who was Matthew? Who was Mark? Who were John, Peter, Judas, and Mary? There is absolutely no evidence that they ever existed. They are not mentioned except in the New Testament books, which, as we shall see, are "supposed" copies of "supposed" originals. If Peter ever went to Rome with a new doctrine, how is it that no historian has taken note of him? If Paul visited Athens and preached from Mars Hill, how is it that there is no mention of him or of his strange Gospel in the Athenian chronicles? For all we know, both Peter and Paul may have really existed, but it is only a guess, as we have no means of ascertaining. The uncertainty about the apostles of Jesus is quite in keeping with the uncertainty about Jesus himself. The report that Jesus had twelve apostles seems also mythical. The number twelve, like the number seven, or three, or forty, plays an important role in all Sun-myths, and points to the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Jacob had twelve sons; there were twelve tribes of Israel; twelve months in the year; twelve gates or pillars of heaven, etc. In many of the religions of the world, the number twelve is sacred. There have been few god-saviors who did not have twelve apostles or messengers. In one or two places, in the New Testament, Jesus is made to send out "the seventy" to evangelize the world. Here again we see the presence of a myth. It was believed that there were seventy different nations in the world--to each nation an apostle. Seventy wise men are supposed to have translated the Old Testament, sitting in seventy different cells. That is why their translation is called "_the Septuagint_" But it is all a legend, as there is no evidence of seventy scholars working in seventy individual cells on the Hebrew Bible. One of the Church Fathers declares that he saw these seventy cells with his own eyes. He was the only one who saw them. That the "Twelve Apostles" are fanciful may be inferred from the obscurity in which the greater number of them have remained. Peter, Paul, John, James, Judas, occupy the stage almost exclusively. If Paul was an apostle, we have fourteen, instead of twelve. Leaving out Judas, and counting Matthias, who was elected in his place, we have thirteen apostles. The number forty figures also in many primitive myths. The Jews were in the wilderness for forty years; Jesus fasted for forty days; from the resurrection to the ascension were forty days; Moses was on the mountain with God for forty days. An account in which such scrupulous attention is shown to supposed sacred numbers is apt to be more artificial than real. The biographers of Lincoln or of Socrates do not seem to be interested in numbers. They write history, not stories. Again, many of the contemporaries of Lincoln bear written witness to his existence. The historians of the time, the statesmen, the publicists, the chroniclers--all seem to be acquainted with him, or to have heard of him. It is impossible to explain why the contemporaries of Jesus, the authors and historians of his time, do not take notice of him. If Abraham Lincoln was important enough to have attracted the attention of his contemporaries, how much more Jesus. Is it reasonable to suppose that these Pagan and Jewish writers knew of Jesus,--had heard of his incomparably great works and sayings,--but omitted to give him a page or a line? Could they have been in a conspiracy against him? How else is this unanimous silence to be accounted for? Is it not more likely that the wonder-working Jesus was unknown to them? And he was unknown to them because no such Jesus existed in their day. Should the student, looking into Abraham Lincoln's history, discover that no one of his biographers knew positively just when he lived or where he was born, he would have reason to conclude that because of this uncertainty on the part of the biographers, he must be more exacting than he otherwise would have been. That is precisely our position. Of course, there are in history great men of whose birthplaces or birthdays we are equally uncertain. But we believe in their existence, not because no one seems to know exactly when and where they were born, but because there is overwhelming evidence corroborating the other reports about them, and which is sufficient to remove the suspicion suggested by the darkness hanging over their nativity. Is there any evidence strong enough to prove the historicity of Jesus, in spite of the fact that not even his supposed companions, writing during the lifetime of Jesus' mother, have any definite information to give. But let us continue. The reports current about a man like Lincoln are verifiable, while many of those about Jesus are of a nature that no amount of evidence can confirm. That Lincoln was President of these United States, that he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and that he was assassinated, can be readily authenticated. But how can any amount of evidence satisfy one's self that Jesus was born of a virgin, for instance? Such a report or rumor can never even be examined; it does not lend itself to evidence; it is beyond the sphere of history; it is not a legitimate question for investigation. It belongs to mythology. Indeed, to put forth a report of that nature is to forbid the use of evidence, and to command forcible acquiescence, which, to say the least, is a very suspicious circumstance, calculated to hurt rather than to help the Jesus story. The report that Jesus was God is equally impossible of verification. How are we to prove whether or not a certain person was God? Jesus may have been a wonderful man, but is every wonderful man a God? Jesus may have claimed to have been a God, but is every one who puts forth such a claim a God? How, then, are we to decide which of the numerous candidates for divine honors should be given our votes? And can we by voting for Jesus make him a God? Observe to what confusion the mere attempt to follow such a report leads us. A human Jesus may or may not have existed, but we are as sure as we can be of anything, that a virgin-born God, named Jesus, such as we must believe in or be eternally lost, is an impossibility--except to credulity. But credulity is no evidence at all, even when it is dignified by the name of _faith_. Let us pause for a moment to reflect: The final argument for the existence of the miraculous Jesus, preached in church and Sunday-school, these two thousand years, as the sole savior of the world, is an appeal to faith--the same to which Mohammed resorts to establish his claims, and Brigham Young to prove his revelation. There is no other possible way by which the virgin-birth or the _godhood_ of a man can be established. And such a faith is never free, it is always maintained by the sword now, and by hell-fire hereafter. Once more, if it had been reported of Abraham Lincoln that he predicted his own assassination; that he promised some of his friends they would not die until they saw him coming again upon the clouds of heaven; that he would give them thrones to sit upon; that they could safely drink deadly poisons in his name, or that he would grant them any request which they might make, provided they asked it for his sake, we would be justified in concluding that such a Lincoln never existed. Yet the most impossible utterances are put in Jesus' mouth. He is made to say: "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name that will I do." No man who makes such a promise can keep it. It is not sayings like the above that can prove a man a God. Has Jesus kept his promise? Does he give his people everything, or "whatsoever" they ask of him? But, it is answered, "Jesus only meant to say that he would give whatever he himself considered good for his friends to have." Indeed! Is that the way to crawl out of a contract? If that is what he meant, why did he say something else? Could he not have _said_ just what he _meant_, in the first place? Would it not have been fairer not to have given his friends any occasion for false expectations? Better to promise a little and do more, than to promise everything and do nothing. But to say that Jesus really entered into any such agreement is to throw doubt upon his existence. Such a character is too wild to be real. Only a mythical Jesus could virtually hand over the government of the universe to courtiers who have petitions to press upon his attention. Moreover, if Jesus could keep his promise, there would be today no misery in the world, no orphans, no childless mothers, no shipwrecks, no floods, no famines, no disease, no crippled children, no insanity, no wars, no crime, no wrong! Have not a thousand, thousand prayers been offered in Jesus' name against every evil which has ploughed the face of our earth? Have these prayers been answered? Then why is there discontent in the world? Can the followers of Jesus move mountains, drink deadly poisons, touch serpents, or work greater miracles than are ascribed to Jesus, as it was promised that they would do? How many self-deluded prophets these extravagant claims have produced! And who can number the bitter disappointments caused by such impossible promises? George Jacob Holyoake, of England, tells how in the days of utter poverty, his believing mother asked the Lord, again and again--on her knees, with tears streaming from her eyes, and with absolute faith in Jesus' ability to keep His promise,--to give her starving children their daily bread. But the more fervently she prayed the heavier grew the burden of her life. A stone or wooden idol could not have been more indifferent to a mother's tears. "My mind aches as I think of those days," writes Mr. Holyoake. One day he went to see the Rev. Mr. Cribbace, who had invited inquirers to his house. "Do you really believe," asked young Holyoake to the clergyman, "that what we ask in faith we shall receive?" "It never struck me," continues Mr. Holyoake, "that the preacher's threadbare dress, his half-famished look, and necessity of taking up a collection the previous night to pay expenses showed that faith was not a source of income to him. It never struck me that if help could be obtained by prayer no church would be needy, no believer would be poor." What answer did the preacher give to Holyoake's earnest question? The same which the preachers of today give: "He parried his answer with many words, and at length said that the promise was to be taken with the provision that what we asked for would be given, _if God thought it for our good."_ Why then, did not Jesus explain that important _proviso_ when he made the promise? Was Jesus only making a half statement, the other half of which he would reveal later to protect himself against disappointed petitioners. But he said: "If ye ask anything in my name, I will do it," and "If it were not so, I would have told you." Did he not mean just what he said? The truth is that no historical person in his senses ever made such extraordinary, such impossible promises, and the report that Jesus made them only goes to confirm that their author is only a legendary being. When this truth dawned upon Mr. Holyoake he ceased to petition Heaven, which was like "dropping a bucket into an empty well," and began to look _elsewhere_ for help. * The world owes its advancement to the fact that men no longer look to Heaven for help, but help themselves. Self-effort, and not prayer, is the remedy against ignorance, slavery, poverty, and moral degradation. Fortunately, by holding up before us an impossible Jesus, with his impossible promises, the churches have succeeded only in postponing, but not in preventing, the progress of man. This is a compliment to human nature, and it is well earned. It is also a promise that in time humanity will be completely emancipated from every phantom which in the past has scared it into silence or submission, and "A loftier race than e'er the world Hath known shall rise With flame of liberty in their souls, And light of science in their eyes." * Bygones Worth Remembering.--George Jacob Holyoake [Illustration: 061 Portion of Manuscript Supposed to Be Copy of Lost Originals.] THE CHRISTIAN DOCUMENTS The documents containing the story of Jesus are so unlike those about Lincoln or any other historical character, that we must be doubly vigilant in our investigation. The Christians rely mainly on the four Gospels for the historicity of Jesus. But the original documents of which the books in the New Testament are claimed to be faithful copies are not in existence. _There is absolutely no evidence that they ever were in existence_. This is a statement which can not be controverted. Is it conceivable that the early believers lost through carelessness or purposely _every_ document written by an apostle, while guarding with all protecting jealousy and zeal the writings of anonymous persons? Is there any valid reason why the contributions to Christian literature of an inspired apostle should perish while those of a nameless scribe are preserved, why the original Gospel of Matthew should drop quietly out of sight, no one knows how, while a supposed copy of it in an alien language is preserved for many centuries? Jesus himself, it is admitted, did not write a single line. He had come, according to popular belief, to reveal the will of God--a most important mission indeed, and yet he not only did not put this revelation in writing during his lifetime, and with his own hand, which it is natural to suppose that a divine teacher, expressly come from heaven, would have done, but he left this all-important duty to anonymous chroniclers, who, naturally, made enough mistakes to split up Christendom into innumerable factions. It is worth a moment's pause to think of the persecutions, the cruel wars, and the centuries of hatred and bitterness which would have been spared our unfortunate humanity, if Jesus himself had written down his message in the clearest and plainest manner, instead of leaving it to his supposed disciples to publish it to the world, when he could no longer correct their mistakes. Moreover, not only did Jesus not write himself, but he has not even taken any pains to preserve the writings of his "apostles," It is well known that the original manuscripts, if there were any, are nowhere to be found. This is a grave matter. We have only supposed copies of supposed original manuscripts. Who copied them? When were they copied? How can we be sure that these copies are reliable? And why are there thousands upon thousands of various readings in these, numerous supposed copies? What means have we of deciding which version or reading to accept? Is it possible that as the result of Jesus' advent into our world, we have only a basketful of nameless and dateless copies and documents? Is it conceivable, I ask, that a God would send his Son to us, and then leave us to wander through a pile of dusty manuscripts to find out why He sent His Son, and what He taught when on earth? The only answer the Christian church can give to this question is that the original writings were purposely allowed to perish. When a precious document containing the testament of Almighty God, and inscribed for an eternal purpose by the Holy Ghost, disappears altogether there is absolutely no other way of accounting for its disappearance than by saying, as we have suggested, that its divine author must have intentionally withdrawn it from circulation. "God moves in a mysterious way" is the last resort of the believer. This is the one argument which is left to theology to fight science with. Unfortunately it is an argument which would prove every cult and "ism" under the heavens true. The Mohammedan, the Mazdaian, and the Pagan may also fall back upon faith. There is nothing which faith can not cover up from the light. But if a faith which ignores evidence be not a superstition, what then is superstition? I wonder if the Catholic Church, which pretends to believe--and which derives quite an income from the belief--that God has miraculously preserved the wood of the cross, the Holy Sepulchre, in Jerusalem, the coat of Jesus, and quite a number of other mementos, can explain why the original manuscripts were lost. I have a suspicion that there were no "original" manuscripts. I am not sure of this, of course, but if nails, bones and holy places could be miraculously preserved, why not also manuscripts? It is reasonable to suppose that the Deity would not have permitted the most important documents containing His Revelation to drop into some hole and disappear, or to be gnawed into dust by the insects, after having had them written by special inspiration. Again, when these documents, such as we find them, are examined, it will be observed that, even in the most elementary intelligence which they pretend to furnish, they are hopelessly at variance with one another. It is, for example, utterly impossible to reconcile Matthew's genealogy of Jesus with the one given by Luke. In copying the names of the supposed ancestors of Jesus, they tamper with the list as given in the book of Chronicles, in the Old Testament, and thereby justly expose themselves to the charge of bad faith. One evangelist says Jesus was descended from Solomon, born of "her that had been the wife of Urias." It will be remembered that David ordered Urias killed in a cowardly manner, that he may marry his widow, whom he coveted. According to Matthew, Jesus is one of the offspring of this adulterous relation. According to Luke, it is not through Solomon, but through Nathan, that Jesus is connected with the house of David. Again, Luke tells us that the name of the father of Joseph was _Heli;_ Matthew says it was _Jacob_. If the writers of the gospels were contemporaries of Joseph they could have easily learned the exact name of his father. Again, why do these biographers of Jesus give us the genealogy of Joseph if he was not the father of Jesus? It is the genealogy of Mary which they should have given to prove the descent of Jesus from the house of David, and not that of Joseph. These irreconcilable differences between Luke, Matthew and the other evangelists, go to prove that these authors possessed no reliable information concerning the subjects they were writing about. For if Jesus is a historical character, and these biographers were really his immediate associates, and were inspired besides, how are we to explain their blunders and contradictions about his genealogy? A good illustration of the mythical or unhistorical character of the New Testament is furnished by the story of John the Baptist. He is first represented as confessing publicly that Jesus is the Christ; that he himself is not worthy to unloose the latchet of his shoes; and that Jesus is the Lamb of God, "who taketh away the sins of the world." John was also present, the gospels say, when the heavens opened and a dove descended on Jesus' head, and he heard the voice from the skies, crying: "He is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Is it possible that, a few chapters later, this same John forgets his public confession,--the dove and the voice from heaven,--and actually sends two of his disciples to find out who this Jesus is, * The only way we can account for such strange conduct is that the compiler or editor in question had two different myths or stories before him, and he wished to use them both. * Matthew xi. A further proof of the loose and extravagant style of the Gospel writers is furnished by the concluding verse of the Fourth Gospel: "There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written, every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." This is more like the language of a myth-maker than of a historian. How much reliance can we put in a reporter who is given to such exaggeration? To say that the world itself would be too small to contain the unreported sayings and doings of a teacher whose public life possibly did not last longer than a year, and whose reported words and deeds fill only a few pages, is to prove one's statements unworthy of serious consideration. And it is worth our while to note also that the documents which have come down to our time and which purport to be the biographies of Jesus, are not only written in an alien language, that is to say, in a language which was not that of Jesus and his disciples, but neither are they dated or signed. Jesus and his twelve apostles were Jews; why are all the four Gospels written in Greek? If they were originally written in Hebrew, how can we tell that the Greek translation is accurate, since we can not compare it with the originals? And why are these Gospels anonymous? Why are they not dated? But as we shall say something more on this subject in the present volume, we confine ourselves at this point to reproducing a fragment of the manuscript pages from which our Greek Translations have been made. * It is admitted by scholars that owing to the difficulty of reading these ancient and imperfect and also conflicting texts, an accurate translation is impossible. But this is another way of saying that what the churches call the Word of God is not only the word of man, but a very imperfect word, at that. * See page 57. The belief in Jesus, then, is founded on secondary documents, altered and edited by various hands; on lost originals, and on anonymous manuscripts of an age considerably later than the events therein related--manuscripts which contradict each other as well as themselves. Such is clearly and undeniably the basis for the belief in a historical Jesus. It was this sense of the insufficiency of the evidence which drove the missionaries of Christianity to commit forgeries. If there was ample evidence for the historicity of Jesus, why did his biographers resort to forgery? The following admissions by Christian writers themselves show the helplessness of the early preachers in the presence of inquirers who asked for proofs. The church historian, Mosheim, writes that, "The Christian Fathers deemed it a pious act to employ deception and fraud." * * Ecclesiastical Hist., Vol. I, p. 247. Again, he says: "The greatest and most pious teachers were nearly all of them infected with this leprosy." Will not some believer tell us why forgery and fraud were necessary to prove the historicity of Jesus. Another historian, Milman, writes that, "Pious fraud was admitted and avowed" by the early missionaries of Jesus. "It was an age of literary frauds," writes Bishop Ellicott, speaking of the times immediately following the alleged crucifixion of Jesus. Dr. Giles declares that, "There can be no doubt that great numbers of books were written with no other purpose than to deceive." And it is the opinion of Dr. Robertson Smith that, "There was an enormous floating mass of spurious literature created to suit party views." Books which are now rejected as apochryphal were at one time received as inspired, and books which are now believed to be infallible were at one time regarded as of no authority in the Christian world. It certainly is puzzling that there should be a whole literature of fraud and forgery in the name of a historical person. But if Jesus was a myth, we can easily explain the legends and traditions springing up in his name. The early followers of Jesus, then, realizing the force of this objection, did actually resort to interpolation and forgery in order to prove that Jesus was a historical character. One of the oldest critics of the Christian religion was a Pagan, known to history under the name of Porphyry; yet, the early Fathers did not hesitate to tamper even with the writings of an avowed opponent of their religion. After issuing an edict to destroy, among others, the writings of this philosopher, a work, called _Philosophy of Oracles,_ was produced, in which the author is made to write almost as a Christian; and the name of Porphyry was signed to it as its author. St. Augustine was one of the first to reject it as a forgery. * A more astounding invention than this alleged work of a heathen bearing witness to Christ is difficult to produce. Do these forgeries, these apocryphal writings, these interpolations, freely admitted to have been the prevailing practice of the early Christians, help to prove the existence of Jesus? And when to this wholesale manufacture of doubtful evidence is added the terrible vandalism which nearly destroyed every great Pagan classic, we can form an idea of the desperate means to which the early Christians resorted to prove that Jesus was not a myth. It all goes to show how difficult it is to make a man out of a myth. * Geo. W. Foote. Crimes of Christianity. [Illustration: 072] [Illustration: 073 The Goddess Mother in the Grecian Pantheon.] VIRGIN BIRTHS Stories of gods born of virgins are to be found in nearly every age and country. There have been many virgin mothers, and Mary with her child is but a recent version of a very old and universal myth. In China and India, in Babylonia and Egypt, in Greece and Rome, "divine" beings selected from among the daughters of men the purest and most beautiful to serve them as a means of entrance into the world of mortals. Wishing to take upon themselves the human form, while retaining at the same time their "divinity," this compromise--of an earthly mother with a "divine" father--was effected. In the form of a swan Jupiter approached Leda, as in the guise of a dove, or a _Paracletus,_ Jehovah "overshadowed" Mary. A nymph bathing in a river in China is touched by a lotus plant, and the divine Fohi is born. In Siam, a wandering sunbeam caresses a girl in her teens, and the great and wonderful deliverer, Codom, is born. In the life of Buddha we read that he descended on his mother Maya, "in likeness as the heavenly queen, and entered her womb," and was "born from her right side, to save the world." * In Greece, the young god Apollo visits a fair maid of Athens, and a Plato is ushered into the world. * Stories of Virgin Births. Reference: Lord Macartney. Voyage dans "interview de la Chine et en Tartarie." Vol. I, p. 48. See also Les Vierges Meres et les Naissance Miraculeuse. p. Saintyves. p. 19, etc. In ancient Mexico, as well as in Babylonia, and in modern Corea, as in modern Palestine, as in the legends of all lands, virgins gave birth and became divine mothers. * * Stories of Virgin Births. Reference: Lord Macartney. Voyage dans "interview de la Chine et en Tartarie." Vol. I, p. 48. See also Les Vierges Meres et les Naissance Miraculeuse. p. Saintyves. p. 19, etc. But the real home of virgin births is the land of the Nile. Eighteen hundred years before Christ, we find carved on one of the walls of the great temple of Luxor a picture of the _annunciation, conception and birth_ of King Amunothph III, an almost exact copy of the annunciation, conception and birth of the Christian God. Of course no one will think of maintaining that the Egyptians borrowed the idea from the Catholics nearly two thousand years before the Christian era. "The story in the Gospel of Luke, the first and second chapters is," says Malvert, "a reproduction, 'point by point,' of the story in stone of the miraculous birth of Amunothph." * * Science and Religion p. 96. [Illustration: 076 The Annunciation, Birth, and Adoration of Amenophis of Egypt, Nearly 2000 Years Before Christ.] Sharpe in his Egyptian Mythology, page 19, gives the following description of the Luxor picture, quoted by G. W. Foote in his _Bible Romances,_ page 126: "In this picture we have the annunciation, the conception, the birth and the adoration, as described in the first and second chapters of Luke's Gospel." Massey gives a more minute description of the Luxor picture. "The first scene on the left hand shows the god Taht, the divine Word or Loges, in the act of hailing the virgin queen, announcing to her that she is to give birth to a son. In the second scene the god Kneph (assisted by Hathor) gives life to her. This is the Holy Ghost, or Spirit that causes conception....Next the mother is seated on the midwife's stool, and the child is supported in the hands of one of the nurses. The fourth scene is that of the adoration. Here the child is enthroned, receiving homage from the gods and gifts from men." * The picture on the wall of the Luxor temple, then, is one of the sources to which the anonymous writers of the Gospels went for their miraculous story. It is no wonder they suppressed their own identity as well as the source from which they borrowed their material. * Natural Genesis. Massey, Vol. II, p. 398 Not only the idea of a virgin mother, but all the other miraculous events, such as the stable cradle, the guiding star, the massacre of the children, the flight to Egypt, and the resurrection and bodily ascension toward the clouds, have not only been borrowed, but are even scarcely altered in the New Testament story of Jesus. [Illustration: 078 The Nativity of the God Dionysius, Museum of Naples. ] That the early Christians borrowed the legend of Jesus from earthly sources is too evident to be even questioned. Gerald Massey in his great work on Egyptian origins demonstrates the identity of Mary, the mother of Jesus, with Isis, the mother of Horus. He says: "The most ancient, gold-bedizened, smoke-stained Byzantine pictures of the virgin and child represent the mythical mother as Isis, and not as a human mother of Nazareth." * Science and research have made this fact so certain that, on the one hand ignorance, and on the other, interest only, can continue to claim inspiration for the authors of the undated and unsigned fragmentary documents which pass for the Word of God. If, then, Jesus is stripped of all the borrowed legends and miracles of which he is the subject; and if we also take away from him all the teachings which collected from Jewish and Pagan sources have been attributed to him--what will be left of him? That the ideas put in his mouth have been culled and compiled from other sources is as demonstrable as the Pagan origin of the legends related of him. * Natural Genesis. Massey, Vol. ii, p. 487. Nearly every one of the dogmas and ceremonies in the Christian cult were borrowed from other and older religions. The resurrection myth, the ascension, the eucharisty, baptism, worship by kneeling or prostration, the folding of the hands on the breast, the ringing of bells and the burning of incense, the vestments and vessels used in church, the candles, "holy" water,--even the word _Mass_ were all adopted and adapted by the Christians from the religions of the ancients. The Trinity is as much Pagan, as much Indian or Buddhist, as it is Christian. The idea of a Son of God is as old as the oldest cult. The sun is the son of heaven in all primitive faiths. The physical sun becomes in the course of evolution, the Son of Righteousness, or the Son of God, and heaven is personified as the Father on High. The halo around the head of Jesus, the horns of the older deities, the rays of light radiating from the heads of Hindu and Pagan gods are incontrovertible evidence that all gods were at one time--the sun in heaven. [Illustration: 080 Prehistoric Crosses Discovered in Pagan Sepulchres (Italy).] THE ORIGIN OF THE CROSS Only the uninformed, of whom, we regret to say, there are a great many, and who are the main support of the old religions, still believe that the cross originated with Christianity. Like the dogmas of the Trinity, the virgin birth, and the resurrection, the sign of the cross or the cross as an emblem or a symbol was borrowed from the more ancient faiths of Asia. Perhaps one of the most important discoveries which primitive man felt obliged never to be ungrateful enough to forget, was the production of fire by the friction of two sticks placed across each other in the form of a cross. As early as the stone age we find the cross carved on monuments which have been dug out of the earth and which can be seen in the museums of Europe. On the coins of later generations as well as on the altars of prehistoric times we find the "sacred" symbol of the cross. The dead in ancient cemeteries slept under the cross as they do in our day in Catholic churchyards. [Illustration: 081 House of Goodness, with Cross. Egyptian, 2000 B. C.] In ancient Egypt, as in modern China, India, Corea, the cross is venerated by the masses as a charm of great power. In the Musee Guimet, in Paris, we have seen specimens of pre-Christian crosses. In the Louvre Museum one of the "heathen" gods carries a cross on his head. During his second journey to New Zealand, Cook was surprised to find the natives marking the graves of their dead with the cross. We saw, in the Museum of St. Germain, an ancient divinity of Gaul, before the conquest of the country by Julius Caesar, wearing a garment on which was woven a cross. In the same museum an ancient altar of Gaul under Paganism, had a cross carved upon it. That the cross was not adopted by the followers of Jesus until a later date may be inferred from the silence of the earlier gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, on the details of the crucifixion, which is more fully developed in the later gospel of John. The first three evangelists say nothing about the nails or the blood, and give the impression that he was hanged. Writing of the two thieves who were sentenced to receive the same punishment, Luke says, "One of the malefactors that was _hanged_ with him." The idea of a bleeding Christ, such as we see on crosses in Catholic churches, is not present in these earlier descriptions of the crucifixion; the Christians of the time of Origin were called "the followers of the god who was hanged." In the fourth gospel we see the beginnings of the legend of the cross, of Jesus carrying or falling under the weight of the cross, of the nail prints in his hands and feet, of the spear drawing the blood from his side and smearing his body. Of all this, the first three evangelists are quite ignorant. [Illustration: 082 Pagan Priest of Herculaneum Wearing the Cross.] [Illustration: 083 Cross of the Chinese Emperor Fou-Hi,2953 Years Before Christ; and An Ancient Pagan Cross Discovered in Newgrange, Ireland.] Let it be further noted that it was not until eight hundred years after the supposed crucifixion that Jesus is seen in the form of a human being on the cross. Not in any of the paintings on the ancient catacombs is found a crucified Christ. The earliest cross bearing a human being is of the eighth century. For a long time a lamb with a cross, or on a cross, was the Christian symbol, and it is a lamb which we see entombed in the "holy sepulchre." In more than one mosaic of early Christian times, it is not Jesus, but a lamb, which is bleeding for the salvation of the world. How a lamb came to play so important a role in Christianity is variously explained. The similarity between the name of the Hindu god, _Agni_ and the meaning of the same word in Latin, which is a lamb, is one theory. Another is that a ram, one of the signs of the zodiac, often confounded by the ancients with a lamb, is the origin of the popular reverence for the lamb as a symbol--a reverence which all religions based on sun-worship shared. The lamb in Christianity takes away the sins of the people, just as the paschal lamb did in the Old Testament, and earlier still, just as it did in Babylonia. [Illustration: 084 Used by a Priest of Bacchus, Showing the Cross.] [Illustration: 085 Engraving of the XI Century; Lamb on Cross; A Lamb Carrying the Cross; The Lamb and the Cross, IX Century. ] To the same effect is the following letter of the bishop of Mende, in France, bearing date of the year 800 A. D.: "Because the darkness has disappeared, and because also Christ is a real man, Pope Adrian commands us to paint him under the form of a man. The lamb of God must not any longer be painted on a cross, but after a human form has been placed on the cross, there is no objection to have a lamb also represented with it, either at the foot of the cross or on the opposite side." * We leave it to our readers to draw the necessary conclusions from the above letter. How did a lamb hold its place on the cross for eight hundred years? If Jesus was really crucified, and that fact was a matter of history, why did it take eight hundred years for a Christian bishop to write, "now that Christ is a real man," etc.? Today, it would be considered a blasphemy to place a lamb on a cross. * Translated from the French of Didron. Quoted by Malvert. On the tombstones of Christians of the fourth century are pictures representing, not Jesus, but a lamb, working the miracles mentioned in the gospels, such as multiplying the loaves and fishes, and raising Lazarus from the dead. [Illustration: 086 Mosaic of St. Praxedes, V Century, Showing the Lamb Christ; The Lamb Slowly Becoming Human; The Lamb Multiplying the Loaves and Fishes, IV Century Sarcophagus.] The first representations of a human form on the cross differ considerably from those which prevail at the present time. [Illustration: 087 The Lamb Resurrecting Lazarus, IV Century Sarcophagus.] While the figure on the modern cross is almost naked, those on the earlier ones are clothed and completely covered. Wearing a flowing tunic, Jesus is standing straight against the cross with his arms outstretched, as though in the act of delivering an address. Frequently, at his feet, on the cross, there is still painted the figure of a lamb, which by and by, he is going to replace altogether. Gradually the robe disappears from the crucified one, until we see him crucified, as in the adjoining picture, with hardly any clothes on, and wearing an expression of great agony. [Illustration: 088 Modern Christ.] [Illustration: 089 Christ and the Twelve Apostles, Carrying Swastikas and Solar Discs Instead of the Cross. Sarcophagus, Milan.] THE SILENCE OF PROFANE WRITERS In all historical matters, we cannot ask for more than a _reasonable_ assurance concerning any question. In fact, absolute certainty in any branch of human knowledge, with the exception of mathematics, perhaps, is impossible. We are finite beings, limited in all our powers, and, hence, our conclusions are not only relative, but they should ever be held subject to correction. When our law courts send a man to the gallows, they can have no more than a reasonable assurance that he is guilty; when they acquit him, they can have no more than a reasonable assurance that he is innocent. Positive assurance is unattainable. The dogmatist is the only one who claims to possess absolute certainty. But his claim is no more than a groundless assumption. When, therefore, we learn that Josephus, for instance, who lived in the same country and about the same time as Jesus, and wrote an extensive history of the men and events of his day and country, does not mention Jesus, except by interpolation, which even a Christian clergyman, Bishop Warburton, calls "a rank forgery, and a very stupid one, too," we can be reasonably sure that no such Jesus as is described in the New Testament, lived about the same time and in the same country with Josephus. The failure of such a historian as Josephus to mention Jesus tends to make the existence of Jesus at least reasonably doubtful. Few Christians now place any reliance upon the evidence from Josephus. The early Fathers made this Jew admit that Jesus was the Son of God. Of course, the admission was a forgery. De Quincey says the passage is known to be "a forgery by all men not lunatics." Of one other supposed reference in Josephus, Canon Farrar says: "This passage was early tampered with by the Christians." The same writer says this of a third passage: "Respecting the third passage in Josephus, the only question is whether it be partly or entirely spurious." Lardner, the great English theologian, was the first man to prove that Josephus was a poor witness for Christ. In examining the evidence from profane writers we must remember that the silence of one contemporary author is more important than the supposed testimony of another. There was living in the same time with Jesus a great Jewish scholar by the name of Philo. He was an Alexandrian Jew, and he visited Jerusalem while Jesus was teaching and working miracles in the holy city. Yet Philo in all his works never once mentions Jesus. He does not seem to have heard of him. He could not have helped mentioning him if he had really seen him or heard of him. In one place in his works Philo is describing the difference between two Jewish names, Hosea and Jesus. Jesus, he says, means saviour of the people. What a fine opportunity for him to have added that, at that very time, there was living in Jerusalem a saviour by the name of Jesus, or one supposed to be, or claiming to be, a saviour. He could not have helped mentioning Jesus if he had ever seen or heard of him. We have elsewhere referred to the significant silence of the Pagan historians and miscellaneous writers on the wonderful events narrated in the New Testament. But a few remarks may be added here in explanation of the supposed testimony of Tacitus. The quotation from Tacitus is an important one. That part of the passage which concerns us is something like this:--"They have their denomination from _Chrestus,_ put to death as a criminal by Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius." I wish to say in the first place that this passage is not in the _History_ of Tacitus, known to the ancients, but in his _Annals,_ which is not quoted by any ancient writer. The _Annals_ of Tacitus were not known to be in existence until the year 1468. An English writer, Mr. Ross, has undertaken, in an interesting volume, to show that the _Annals_ were forged by an Italian, Bracciolini. I am not competent to say whether or not Mr. Ross proves his point. But is it conceivable that the early Christians would have ignored so valuable a testimony had they known of its existence, and would they not have known of it had it really existed? The Christian Fathers, who not only collected assiduously all that they could use to establish the reality of Jesus--but who did not hesitate even to forge passages, to invent documents, and also to destroy the testimony of witnesses unfavorable to their cause--would have certainly used the Tacitus passage had it been in existence in their day. _Not one of the Christian Fathers_ in his controversy with the unbelievers has quoted the passage from Tacitus, which passage is the church's strongest proof of the historicity of Jesus, outside the gospels. But, to begin with, this passage has the appearance, at least, of being penned by a Christian. It speaks of such persecutions of the Christians in Rome which contradict all that we know of Roman civilization. The abuse of Christians in the same passage may have been introduced purposely to cover up the identity of the writer. The terrible outrages against the Christians mentioned in the text from Tacitus are supposed to have taken place in the year 64 A. D. According to the New Testament, Paul was in Rome from the year 63 to the year 65, and must, therefore, have been an eye-witness of the persecution under Nero. Let me quote from the Bible to show that there could have been no such persecution as the Tacitus passage describes. The last verse in the book of Acts reads: "And he (Paul) abode two whole years in his own hired dwelling, and received all that went in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness, _none forbidding him_." How is this picture of peace and tranquility to be reconciled with the charge that the Romans rolled up the Christians in straw mats and burned them to illuminate the streets at night, and also that the lions were let loose upon the disciples of Jesus? Moreover, it is generally known that the Romans were indifferent to religious propaganda, and never persecuted any sect or party in the name of religion. In Rome, the Jews were free to be Jews; why should the Jewish Christians--and the early Christians were Jews--have been thrown to the lions? In all probability the persecutions were much milder than the Tacitus passage describes, and politics was the real cause. Until not very long ago, it was universally believed that William Tell was a historical character. But it is now proven beyond any reasonable doubt, that Tell and his apple are altogether mythical. Notwithstanding that a great poet has made him the theme of a powerful drama, and a great composer devoted one of his operas to his heroic achievements; notwithstanding also that the Swiss show the crossbow with which he is supposed to have shot at the apple on his son's head--he is now admitted to be only a legendary hero. The principal arguments which have led the educated world to revise its views concerning William Tell are that, the Swiss historians, Faber and Hamurbin, who lived shortly after the "hero," and who wrote the history of their country, as Josephus did that of his, do not mention Tell. Had such a man existed before their time, they could not have failed to refer to him. Their complete silence is damaging beyond help to the historicity of Tell. Neither does the historian, who was an eye witness of the battle of Morgarten in 1315, mention the name of Tell. The Zurich Chronicle of 1497, also omits to refer to his story. In the accounts of the struggle of the Swiss against Austria, which drove the former into rebellion and ultimate independence, Tell's name cannot be found. Yet all these arguments are not half so damaging to the William Tell story, as the silence of Josephus is to the Jesus story. Jesus was supposed to have worked greater wonders and to have created a wider sensation than Tell; therefore, it is more difficult to explain the silence of historians like Josephus, Pliny and Quintilian; or of philosophers like Philo, Seneca and Epictetus, concerning Jesus, than to explain the silence of the Swiss chroniclers concerning Tell. THE JESUS STORY A RELIGIOUS DRAMA We have now progressed far enough in our investigation to pause a moment for reflection before we proceed any further. I am conscious of no intentional misrepresentation or suppression of the facts relating to the question in hand. If I have erred through ignorance, I shall correct any mistake I may have made, if some good reader will take the trouble to enlighten me. I am also satisfied that I have not commanded the evidence, but have allowed the evidence to command me. I am not interested in either proving or disproving the existence of the New-Testament Jesus. I am not an advocate, I am rather an umpire, who hears the evidence and pronounces his decision accordingly. Let the lawyers or the advocates argue _pro_ and _con_. I only weigh,--and I am sure, impartially,--the evidence which the witnesses offer. We have heard and examined quite a number of these, and, I, at least, am compelled to say, that unless stronger evidence be forthcoming, a historical Jesus has not been proven by the evidence thus far taken in. This does not mean that there is no evidence whatever that Jesus was a real existence, but that the evidence is not enough to prove it. To condemn or to acquit a man in a court of law, there must not only be evidence, but enough of it to justify a decision. There is some evidence for almost any imaginable proposition; but that is not enough. Not only does the evidence offered to prove Jesus' historicity, already examined, fail to give this assurance, but, on the contrary, it lends much support to the opposite supposition, namely, that in all probability, Jesus was a myth--even as Mithra, Osiris, Isis, Hercules, Sampson, Adonis, Moses, Attis, Hermes, Heracles, Apollo of Tyanna, Chrishna, and Indra, were myths. The story of Jesus, we are constrained to say, possesses all the characteristics of the religious drama, full of startling episodes, thrilling situations, dramatic action and _denouement_. It reads more like a play than plain history. From such evidence as the gospels themselves furnish, the conclusion that he was no more than the principal character in a religious play receives much support. Mystery and morality plays are of a very ancient origin. In earlier times, almost all popular instruction was by means of _Tableaux vivant_. As a great scenic or dramatic performance, with Jesus as the hero, Judas as the villain--with conspiracy as its plot, and the trial, the resurrection and ascension as its _finale_, the story is intelligent enough. For instance, as the curtain rises, it discloses upon the stage shepherds tending their flocks in the green fields under the moonlit sky; again, as the scene shifts, the clouds break, the heavens open, and voices are heard from above, with a white-winged chorus chanting an anthem. The next scene suggests a stable with the cattle in their stalls, munching hay. In a corner of the stable, close to a manger, imagine a young woman, stooping to kiss a newly born babe. Anon appear three bearded and richly costumed men, with presents in their hands, bowing their heads in ecstatic adoration. Surely enough this is not history: It does not read like history. The element of fiction runs through the entire Gospels, and is its warp and woof. A careful analysis of the various incidents in this _ensemble_ will not fail to convince the unprejudiced reader that while they possess all the essentials for dramatic presentation, they lack the requirements of real history. The "opened-heavens," "angel-choirs," "grazing flocks," "watchful shepherds," "worshiping magicians," "the stable crib," "the mother and child," "the wonderful star," "the presents," "the anthem"--all these, while they fit admirably as stage setting, are questionable material for history. No historical person was ever born in so spectacular a manner. The Gospel account of Jesus is an embellished, ornamental, even sensationally dramatic creation to serve as an introduction for a legendary hero. Similar theatrical furniture has been used thousands of times to introduce other legendary characters. All the Savior Gods were born supernaturally. They were all half god, half man. They were all of royal descent. Miracles and wonders attended their birth. Jesus was not an exception. We reject as mythical the birth-stories about Mithra, and Apollo. Why accept as history those about Jesus? It rests with the preachers of Christianity to show that while the god-man of Persia, or of Greece, for example, was a myth, the god-man of Palestine is historical. The dramatic element is again plainly seen in the account of the betrayal of Jesus. Jesus, who preaches daily in the temples, and in the public places; who talks to the multitude on the mountain and at the seaside; who feeds thousands by miracle; the report of whose wonderful cures has reached the ends of the earth, and who is often followed by such a crush that to reach him an opening has to be made in the ceiling of the house where he is stopping; who goes in and out before the people and is constantly disputing with the elders and leaders of the nation--is, nevertheless, represented as being so unknown that his enemies have to resort to the device of bribing with thirty silver coins one of his disciples to point him out to them, and which is to be done by a kiss. This might make a great scene upon the stage, but it is not the way things happen in life. Then read how Jesus is carried before Pilate the Roman governor, and how while he is being tried a courier rushes in with a letter from Pilate's wife which is dramatically torn open and read aloud in the presence of the crowded court. The letter, it is said, was about a dream of Pilate's wife, in which some ghost tells her that Jesus is innocent, and that her husband should not proceed against him. Is this history? Roman jurisprudence had not degenerated to that extent as to permit the dreams of a woman or of a man to influence the course of justice. But this letter episode was invented by the playwright--if I may use the phrase--to prolong the dramatic suspense, to complicate the situation, to twist the plot, and thereby render the impression produced by his "piece" more lasting. The letter and the dream did not save Jesus. Pilate was not influenced by his dreaming wife. She dreamed in vain. In the next place we hear Pilate pronouncing Jesus guiltless; but, forthwith, he hands him over to the Jews to be killed. Does this read like history? Did ever a Roman court witness such a trial? To pronounce a man innocent and then to say to his prosecutors: "If you wish to kill him, you may do so," is extraordinary conduct. Then, proceeding, Pilate takes water and ostentatiously washes his hands, a proceeding introduced by a Greek or Latin scribe, who wished, in all probability, to throw the blame of the crucifixion entirely upon the Jews. Pilate, representing the Gentile world, washes his hands of the responsibility for the death of Jesus, while the Jews are made to say, "His blood be upon us and our children." Imagine the clamoring, howling Jews, trampling on one another, gesticulating furiously, gnashing their teeth, foaming at the mouth, and spitting in one another's face as they shout, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" A very powerful stage setting, to be sure--but it is impossible to imagine that such disorder, such anarchy could be permitted in any court of justice. But think once more of those terrible words placed in the mouths of the Jews, "His blood be upon us and our children." Think of a people openly cursing themselves and asking the whole Christian world to persecute them forever--"His blood be upon _us and our children_." Next, the composers of the gospels conduct us to the Garden of Gethsemane, that we may see there the hero of the play in his agony, fighting the great battle of his life alone, with neither help nor sympathy from his distracted followers. He is shown to us there, on his knees, crying tears of blood--sobbing and groaning under the shadow of an almost crushing fear. Tremblingly he prays, "Let this cup pass from me--if it be possible;" and then, yielding to the terror crowding in upon him, he sighs in the hearing of all the ages, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak," precisely the excuse given by everybody for not doing what they would do if they could. Now, we ask in all seriousness, is it likely that a God who had come down from heaven purposely to drink that cup and to be the martyr-Savior of humanity--would seek to be spared the fate for which he was ordained from all eternity? The objection that Jesus' hesitation on the eve of the crucifixion, as well as his cry of despair on the cross, were meant to show that he was as human as he was divine, does not solve the difficulty. In that event Jesus, then, was merely acting--feigning a fear which he did not feel, and pretending to dread a death which he knew could not hurt him. If, however, Jesus really felt alarmed at the approach of death, how much braver, then, were many of his followers who afterwards faced dangers and tortures far more cruel than his own! We honestly think that to have put in Jesus' mouth the words above quoted, and also to have represented him as closing his public career with a shriek on the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" was tantamount to an admission by the writers that they were dealing with a symbolic Christ, an ideal figure, the hero of a play, and not a historical character. It is highly dramatic, to be sure, to see the sun darkened, to feel the whole earth quaking, to behold the graves ripped open and the dead reappear in their shrouds--to hear the hero himself tearing his own heart with that cry of shuddering anguish, "My God! my God!"--but it is not history. If such a man as Jesus really lived, then his biographers have only given us a caricature of him. However beautiful some of the sayings attributed to Jesus, and whatever the source they may have been borrowed from, they are not enough to prove his historicity. But even as the Ten Commandments do not prove Moses to have been a historical personage or the author of the books and deeds attributed to him, neither do the parables and miracles of Jesus prove him to have once visited this earth as a god, or to have even existed as a man. Socrates and Jesus! Compare the quite natural behavior of Socrates in prison with that of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Greek sage is serene. Jesus is alarmed. The night agony of his soul, his tears of _blood_, his pitiful collapse when he prays, "if it be possible let this cup pass from me,"--all this would be very impressive on the boards, but they seem incredible of a real man engaged in saving a world. Once more we say that the defense that it was the man in Jesus and not the god in him that broke down, would be unjust to the memory of thousands of martyrs who died by a more terrible death than that of Jesus. As elsewhere stated, but which cannot be too often emphasized, what man would not have embraced death with enthusiasm,--without a moment's misgiving, did he think that by his death, death and sin would be no more! Who would shrink from a cross which is going to save millions to millions added from eternal burnings. He must be a phantom, indeed, who trembles and cries like a frightened child because he cannot have the crown without the cross! What a spectacle for the real heroes crowding the galleries of history! It is difficult to see the shrinking and shuddering Savior of the world, his face bathed in perspiration, blood oozing out of his forehead, his lips pale, his voice breaking into a shriek, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!"--it is difficult to witness all this and not to pity him. Poor Jesus! he is going to save the world, but who is going to save _him?_ If we compare the trial of Jesus with that of Socrates, the fictitious nature of the former cannot possibly escape detection. Socrates was so well known in Athens, that it was not necessary for his accusers to bribe one of his disciples to betray him. Jesus should have been even better known in Jerusalem than Socrates was in Athens. He was daily preaching in the synagogues, and his miracles had given him an _eclat_ which Socrates did not enjoy. Socrates is not taken to court at night, bound hand and feet. Jesus is arrested in the glare of torchlights, after he is betrayed by Judas with a kiss; then he is bound and forced into the high priest's presence. All this is admirable setting for a stage, but they are no more than that. The disciples of Socrates behave like real men, those of Jesus are actors. They run away; they hide and follow at a distance. One of them curses him. The cock crows, the apostate repents. This reads like a play. In the presence of his judges, Socrates makes his own defense. One by one he meets the charges. Jesus refused, according to two of the evangelists, to open his mouth at his trial. This is dramatic, but it is not history. It is not conceivable that a real person accused as Jesus was, would have refused a great opportunity to disprove the charges against him. Socrates' defense of himself is one of the classics. Jesus' silence is a conundrum. "But he answered nothing," "But Jesus as yet answered nothing," "And he answered him never a word," is the report of two of his biographers. The other two evangelists, as is usual, contradict the former and produce the following dialogues between Jesus and his judges, which from beginning to end possess all the marks of unreality: _Pilate_.--"Art thou the King of the Jews?" _Jesus_.--"Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?" _Pilate_--"Art thou a King?" _Jesus_.--"Thou sayest that I am a King." Is it possible that a real man, not to say the Savior of the world, would give such unmeaning and evasive replies to straightforward questions? Does it not read like a page from fiction? In the presence of the priests of his own race Jesus is as indefinite and sophistical as he is before the Roman Pilate. _The Priests_--"Art thou the Christ--tell us?" _Jesus._--"If I tell you ye will not believe me." _The Priests_.--"Art thou the Son of God?" _Jesus_.--"Ye say that I am." In the first answer he refuses to reveal himself because he does not think he can command belief in himself; in his second answer he either blames them for saying he was the Son of God, or quotes their own testimony to prove that he is the Son of God. But if they believed he was God, would they try to kill him? Is it not unthinkable? He intimates that the priests believe he is the Son of God--"Ye say that I am." Surely, it is more probable that these dialogues were invented by his anonymous biographers than that they really represent an actual conversation between Jesus and his judges. Compare in the next place the manner in which the public trials of Socrates and Jesus are conducted. There is order in the Athenian court; there is anarchy in the Jerusalem court. Witnesses and accusers walk up to Jesus and slap him on the face, and the judge does not reprove them for it. The court is in the hands of rowdies and hoodlums, who shout "Crucify him," and again, "Crucify him." A Roman judge, while admitting that he finds no guilt in Jesus deserving of death, is nevertheless represented as handing him over to the mob to be killed, after he has himself scourged him. No Roman judge could have behaved as this Pilate is reported to have behaved toward an accused person on trial for his life. All that we know of civilized government, all that we know of the jurisprudence of Rome, contradicts this "inspired" account of a pretended historical event. If Jesus was ever tried and condemned to death in a Roman court, an account of it that can command belief has yet to be written. Again, when we come to consider the random, disconnected and fragmentary form in which the teachings of Jesus are presented, we cannot avoid the conclusion that he is a _dramatis persona_ brought upon the stage to give expression not to a consistent, connected and carefully worked-out thought, but to voice with many breaks and interruptions, the ideas of his changing managers. He is made to play a number of contradictory roles, and appears in the same story in totally different characters. One editor or compiler of the Gospel describes Jesus as an ascetic and a mendicant, wandering from place to place, without a roof over his head, and crawling at eventide into his cave in the Mount of Olives. He introduces him as the "Man of Sorrows," fasting in the wilderness, counseling people to part with their riches, and promising the Kingdom of Heaven to Lazarus, the beggar. Another redactor announces him as "eating and drinking" at the banquets of "publicans and sinners,"--a "wine-bibbing" Son of Man. "John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, but the Son of Man came both eating and drinking," which, if it means anything, means that Jesus was the very opposite of the ascetic John. A partisan of the doctrine of non-resistance puts in Jesus' mouth the words: "Resist not evil;" "The meek shall inherit the earth," etc., and counsels that he who smites us on the one cheek should be permitted to strike us also on the other, and that to him who robs us of an undergarment, we should also hand over our outer garments. Another draws the picture of a militant Jesus who could never endorse such precepts of indolence and resignation. "The kingdom of heaven is taken by _violence_," cries this new Jesus, and intimates that no such beggar like Lazarus, sitting all day long with the dogs and his sores, can ever earn so great a prize. With a scourge in his hands this Jesus rushes upon the traders in the temple-court, upturns their tables and whips their owners into the streets. Surely this was resistance of the most pronounced type. The right to use physical force could not have been given a better endorsement than by this example of Jesus. It will not help matters to say that these money-changers were violating a divine law, and needed chastisement with a whip. Is not the man who smites us upon the cheek, or robs us of our clothing, equally guilty? Moreover, these traders in the outer courts of the synagogue were rendering the worshipers a useful service. Just as candles, rosaries, images and literature are sold in church vestibules for the accommodation of Catholics, so were doves, pigeons and Hebrew coins, necessary to the Jewish sacrifices, sold in the temple-courts for the Jewish worshiper. The money changer who supplied the pious Jew with the only sacred coin which the priests would accept was not very much less important to the Jewish religion than the rabbi. To have fallen upon these traders with a weapon, and to have caused them the loss of their property, was certainly the most inconsistent thing that a "meek" and "lowly" Jesus preaching non-resistance could have done. Again; one writer makes Jesus the teacher _par excellence_ of peace. He counsels forgiveness of injuries not seven times, but seventy times that number--meaning unlimited love and charity. "Love your enemies," "Bless them that curse you," is his unusual advice. But another hand retouches this picture, and we have a Jesus who breaks his own golden rule. This other Jesus heaps abuse upon the people who displease him; calls his enemies "vipers," "serpents," "devils," and predicts for them eternal burnings in sulphur and brimstone. How could he who said, "Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden," say also, "Depart from me ye _cursed_?" Who curses them? How can there be an everlasting hell in a universe whose author advises us to love our enemies, to bless them that curse us, and to forgive seventy times seven? How could the same Jesus who said, "Blessed are the peacemakers," say also, "I came not to bring peace, but a sword?" Is it possible that the same Jesus who commands us to love our _enemies_, commands us also to "hate" father, mother, wife and child, for "his name's sake?" Yes! the same Jesus who said, "Put up thy sword in its sheath," also commands us to sell our effects and "buy a sword." Once more: A believer in the divinity of Jesus--I am going to say--invents the following text: "The Father and I are _one_." An opponent to this Trinitarian dogma introduces a correction which robs the above text of its authority: "The Father is greater than I," and makes Jesus admit openly that there are some things known to the father only. It is difficult not to see in these passages the beginnings of the terrible controversies which, starting with Peter and Paul, have come down to our day, _and which will not end_ until Jesus shall take his place among the mythical saviors of the world. To harmonize these many and different Jesuses into something like unity or consistency a thousand books have been written by the clergy. They have not succeeded. How can a Jesus represented at one time as the image of divine perfection, and at another as protesting against being called "good," for "none is good, save one, God,"--how can these two conceptions be reconciled except by a resort to artificial and arbitrary interpretations? If such insurmountable contradictions in the teachings and character of another would weaken our faith in his historicity, then we are justified in inferring that in all probability Jesus was only a name--the name of an imaginary stage hero, uttering the conflicting thoughts of his prompters. Again, such phrases as, "and he was caught up in a cloud,"--describing the ascension and consequent disappearance of Jesus, betray the anxiety of the authors of the Gospels to bring their marvelous story to a close. Not knowing how to terminate the career of an imaginary Messiah, his creators invented the above method of dispatching him. "He was caught up in a cloud,"--but for that, the narrators would have been obliged to continue their story indefinitely. In tragedy the play ends with the death of the hero, but if the biographers of Jesus had given a similar excuse for bringing their narrative to a _finale_, there would have been the danger of their being asked to point out his grave. "He was caught up in a cloud," relieved them of all responsibility to produce his remains if called upon to do so, and, at the same time, furnished them with an excuse to bring their story to a close. It would hardly be necessary, were we all unbiased, to look for any further proofs of the mythical and fanciful nature of the Gospel narratives than this expedient to which the writers resorted. To questions, "Where is Jesus?" "What became of his body?" etc., they could answer, "He was caught up in a cloud." But a career that ends in the clouds was never begun on the earth. [Illustration: 117 Coin of the XII Century, Showing Halo Around Lamb's Head.] Let us imagine ourselves in Jerusalem in the year One, of the Christian era, when the apostles, as it is claimed, were proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah, crucified and risen. Desiring to be convinced before believing in the strange story, let us suppose the following conversation between the apostles and ourselves. We ask: How long have you known Jesus? I have known him for one year. And I for two. And I for three. Has any of you known him for more than three years? No. Was he with his apostles for one year or for three? For one. No, for three. You are not certain, then, how long Jesus was with his apostles. No. How old was Jesus when crucified? About thirty-one. No, about thirty-three. No, he was much older, about fifty. You cannot tell with any certainty, then, his age at the time of his death. No. You say he was tried and crucified in Jerusalem before your own eyes, can you remember the date of this great event? We cannot. Were you present when Jesus was taken down from the cross? We were not. You cannot tell, then, whether he was dead when taken down. We have no personal knowledge. Were you present when he was buried? We were not, because we were in hiding for our lives. You do not know, therefore, whether he was actually buried, or where he was buried. We do not. Were any of you present when Jesus came forth from the grave? Not one of us was present, Then, you were not with him when he was taken down from the cross; you were not with him when he was interred, and you were not present when he rose from the grave. We were not. When, therefore, you say, he was dead, buried and rose again, you are relying upon the testimony of others? We are. Will you mention the names of some of the witnesses who saw Jesus come forth from the tomb? Mary Magdalene, and she is here and may be questioned. Were you present, Mary, when the angels rolled away the stone, and when Jesus came forth from the dead? No, when I reached the burying place early in the morning, the grave had already been vacated, and there was no one sleeping in it. You saw him, then, as the apostles did, _after_ he had risen? Yes. But you did not see anybody rise out of the grave. I did not. Are there any witnesses who saw the resurrection? There are many who saw him after the resurrection. But if neither they nor you saw him dead, and buried, and did not see him rise, either, how can you tell that a most astounding and supposedly impossible miracle had taken place between the time you saw him last and when you saw him again two or three days after? Is it not more natural to suppose that, being in a hurry on account of the approaching Sabbath, Jesus, if ever crucified, was taken down from the cross before he had really died, and that he was not buried, as rumor states, but remained in hiding; and his showing himself to you under cover of darkness and in secluded spots and in the dead of night only, would seem to confirm this explanation. You admit also that the risen Jesus did not present himself at the synagogues of the people, in the public streets, or at the palace of the High Priest to convince them of his Messiahship. Do you not think that if he had done this, it would then have been impossible to deny his resurrection? Why, then, did Jesus hide himself after he came out of the grave? Why did he not show himself also to his enemies? Was he still afraid of them, or did he not care whether they believed or not? If so, why are _you_ trying to convert them? The question waits for a reasonable answer; Why did not Jesus challenge the whole world with the evidence of his resurrection? You say you saw him occasionally, a few moments at a time, now here, and now there, and finally on the top of a mountain whence he was caught up in a cloud and disappeared altogether. But that "cloud" has melted away, the sky is clear, and there is no Jesus visible there. The cloud, then, had nothing to hide. It was unnecessary to call in a cloud to close the career of your Christ. The grave is empty, the cloud has vanished. Where is Christ? In heaven! Ah, you have at last removed him to a world unknown, to the undiscovered country. Leave him there! Criticism, doubt, investigation, the light of day, cannot cross its shores. Leave him there! [Illustration: 122 St. Margaret of the Catholic Church, Westminster, England; The Goddess Astarte Carrying a Cross, British Museum.] THE JESUS OF PAUL The central figure of the New Testament is Jesus, and the question we are trying to answer is, whether we have sufficient evidence to prove to the unbiased mind that he is historical. An idea of the intellectual caliber of the average churchman may be had by the nature of the evidence he offers to justify his faith in the historical Jesus. "The whole world celebrates annually the nativity of Jesus; how could there be a Christmas celebration if there never was a Christ?" asks a Chicago clergyman. The simplicity of this plea would be touching were it not that it calls attention to the painful inefficiency of the pulpit as an educator. The church goer is trained to believe, not to think. The truth is withheld from him under the pious pretense that faith, and not knowledge, is the essential thing. A habit of untruthfulness is cultivated by systematically sacrificing everything to orthodoxy. This habit in the end destroys one's conscience for any truths which are prejudicial to one's interest. But is it true that the Christmas celebration proves a historical Jesus? We can only offer a few additional remarks to what we have already said elsewhere in these pages on the Pagan origin of Christmas. It will make us grateful to remember that just as we have to go to the Pagans for the origins of our civilized institutions--our courts of justice, our art and literature, and our political and religious liberties--we must thank them also for our merry festivals, such as Christmas and Easter. The ignorant, of course, do not know anything about the value and wealth of the legacy bequeathed to us by our glorious ancestors of Greek and Roman times, but the educated can have no excuse for any failure to own their everlasting indebtedness to the Pagans. It will be impossible today to write the history of civilization without giving to the classical world the leading role. But while accepting the gifts of the Pagan peoples we have abused the givers. A beneficiary who will defame a bounteous benefactor is unworthy of his good fortune. I regret to say that the Christian church, notwithstanding that it owes many of its most precious privileges to the Pagans, has returned for service rendered insolence and vituperation. No generous or just institution would treat a rival as Christianity has treated Paganism. Both Christmas and Easter are Pagan festivals. We do not know, no one knows, when Jesus was born; but we know the time of the winter solstice when the sun begins to retrace his steps, turning his radiant face toward our earth once more. It was this event, a natural, demonstrable, universal, event, that our European ancestors celebrated with song and dance--with green branches, through which twinkled a thousand lighted candles, and with the exchange of good wishes and gifts. Has the church had the courage to tell its people that Christmas is a Pagan festival which was adopted and adapted by the Christian world, reluctantly at first, and in the end as a measure of compromise only? The Protestants, especially, conveniently forget the severe Puritanic legislation against the observance of this Pagan festival, both in England and America. It is the return to Paganism which has given to Christmas and Easter their great popularity, as it is the revival of Paganism which is everywhere replacing the Bible ideas of monarchic government with republicanism. And yet, repeatedly, and without any scruples of conscience, preacher and people claim these festivals as the gifts of their creed to humanity, and quote them further to prove the historical existence of their god-man, Jesus. It was this open and persistent perversion of history by the church, the manufacture of evidence on the one hand, the suppression of witnesses prejudiced to her interests on the other, and the deliberate forging of documents, which provoked Carlyle into referring to one of its branches as _the great lying Church_. We have said enough to show that, in all probability--for let us not be dogmatic--the story of Jesus,--his birth and betrayal by one of his own disciples, his trial in a Roman court, his crucifixion, resurrection and ascension,--belongs to the order of imaginative literature. Conceived at first as a religious drama, it received many new accretions as it traveled from country to country and from age to age. The "piece" shows signs of having been touched and retouched to make it acceptable to the different countries in which it was played. The hand of the adapter, the interpolator and the reviser is unmistakably present. As an allegory, or as a dramatic composition, meant for the religious stage, it proved one of the strongest productions of Pagan or Christian times. But as real history, it lacks the fundamental requisite--probability. As a play, it is stirring and strong; as history, it lacks naturalness and consistency. The miraculous is ever outside the province of history. Jesus was a miracle, and as such, at least, we are safe in declaring him un-historical. We pass on now to the presentation of evidence which we venture to think demonstrates with an almost mathematic precision, that the Jesus of the four gospels is a legendary hero, as unhistorical as William Tell of Switzerland. This evidence is furnished by the epistles bearing the signature of Paul. He has been accepted as not only the greatest apostle of Christianity, but in a sense also the author of its theology. It is generally admitted that the epistles bearing the name of Paul are among the oldest apostolical writings. They are older than the gospels. This is very important information. When Paul was preaching, the four gospels had not yet been written. From the epistles of Paul, of which there are about thirteen in the Bible--making the New Testament largely the work of this one apostle--we learn that there were in different parts of Asia, a number of Christian churches already established. Not only Paul, then, but also the Christian church was in existence before the gospels were composed. It would be natural to infer that it was not the gospels which created the church, but the church which produced the gospels. Do not lose sight of the fact that when Paul was preaching to the Christians there was no written biography of Jesus in existence. There was a church without a book. In comparing the Jesus of Paul with the Jesus whose portrait is drawn for us in the gospels, we find that they are not the same persons at all. This is decisive. Paul knows nothing about a miraculously born savior. He does not mention a single time, in all his thirteen epistles, that Jesus was born of a virgin, or that his birth was accompanied with heavenly signs and wonders. He knew nothing of a Jesus born after the manner of the gospel writers. It is not imaginable that he knew the facts, but suppressed them, or that he considered them unimportant, or that he forgot to refer to them in any of his public utterances. Today, a preacher is expelled from his denomination if he suppresses or ignores the miraculous conception of the Son of God; but Paul was guilty of that very heresy. How explain it? It is quite simple: The virgin-born Jesus was not yet _invented_ when Paul was preaching Christianity. Neither he, nor the churches he had organized, had ever heard of such a person. The virgin-born Jesus was of later origin than the Apostle Paul. Let the meaning of this discrepancy between the Jesus of Paul, that is to say, the earliest portrait of Jesus, and the Jesus of the four evangelists, be fully grasped by the student, and it should prove beyond a doubt that in Paul's time the story of Jesus' birth from the virgin-mother and the Holy Ghost, which has since become a cardinal dogma of the Christian church, was not yet in circulation. Jesus had not yet been Hellenized; he was still a Jewish Messiah whose coming was foretold in the Old Testament, and who was to be a prophet like unto Moses, without the remotest suggestion of a supernatural origin. No proposition in Euclid is safer from contradiction than that, if Paul knew what the gospels tell about Jesus, he would have, at least once or twice during his long ministry, given evidence of his knowledge of it. The conclusion is inevitable that the gospel Jesus is later than Paul and his churches. Paul stood nearest to the time of Jesus. Of those whose writings are supposed to have come down to us, he is the most representative, and his epistles are the _first_ literature of the new religion. And yet there is absolutely not a single hint or suggestion in them of such a Jesus as is depicted in the gospels. The gospel Jesus was not yet put together or compiled, when Paul was preaching. Once more; if we peruse carefully and critically the writings of Paul, the earliest and greatest Christian apostle and missionary, we find that he is not only ignorant of the gospel stories about the birth and miracles of Jesus, but he is equally and just as innocently ignorant of the _teachings_ of Jesus. In the gospels Jesus is the author of the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Story of Dives, the Good Samaritan, etc. Is it conceivable that a preacher of Jesus could go throughout the world to convert people to the teachings of Jesus, as Paul did, without ever quoting a single one of his sayings? Had Paul known that Jesus had preached a sermon, or formulated a prayer, or said many inspired things about the here and the hereafter, he could not have helped quoting, now and then, from the words of his master. If Christianity could have been established without a knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, why, then, did Jesus come to teach, and why were his teachings preserved by divine inspiration? But if a knowledge of these teachings of Jesus is indispensable to making converts, Paul gives not the least evidence that he possessed such knowledge. But the Apostle Paul, judging from his many epistles to the earliest converts to Christianity, which are really his testimony, supposed to have been sealed by his blood, appears to be quite as ignorant of a Jesus who went about working miracles,--opening the eyes of the blind, giving health to the sick, hearing to the deaf, and life to the dead,--as he is of a Jesus born of a virgin woman and the Holy Ghost. Is not this remarkable? Does it not lend strong confirmation to the idea that the miracle-working Jesus of the gospels was not known in Paul's time, that is to say, the earliest Jesus known to the churches was a person altogether different from his namesake in the four evangelists. If Paul knew of a miracle-working Jesus, one who could feed the multitude with a few loaves and fishes--who could command the grave to open, who could cast out devils, and cleanse the land of the foulest disease of leprosy, who could, and did, perform many other wonderful works to convince the unbelieving generation of his divinity,--is it conceivable that either intentionally or inadvertently he would have never once referred to them in all his preaching? Is it not almost certain that, if the earliest Christians knew of the miracles of Jesus, they would have been greatly surprised at the failure of Paul to refer to them a single time? And would not Paul have told them of the promise of Jesus to give them power to work even greater miracles than his own, had he known of such a promise. Could Paul really have left out of his ministry so essential a chapter from the life of Jesus, had he been acquainted with it? The miraculous fills up the greater portion of the four gospels, and if these documents were dictated by the Holy Ghost, it means that they were too important to be left out. Why, then, does not Paul speak of them at all? There is only one reasonable answer: A miracle-working Jesus was unknown to Paul. What would we say of a disciple of Tolstoi, for example, who came to America to make converts to Count Tolstoi and never once quoted anything that Tolstoi had said? Or what would we think of the Christian missionaries who go to India, China, Japan and Africa to preach the gospel, if they never mentioned to the people of these countries the Sermon on the Mount, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Lord's Prayer--nor quoted a single text from the gospels? Yet Paul, the first missionary, did the very thing which would be inexplicable in a modern missionary. There is only one rational explanation for this: The Jesus of Paul was not born of a virgin; he did not work miracles; and he was not a teacher. It was after his day that such a Jesus was--I have to use again a strong word--_invented_. It has been hinted by certain professional defenders of Christianity that Paul's specific mission was to introduce Christianity among the Gentiles, and not to call attention to the miraculous element in the life of his Master. But this is a very lame defense. What is Christianity, but the life and teachings of Jesus? And how can it be introduced among the Gentiles without a knowledge of the doctrines and works of its founder? Paul gives no evidence of possessing any knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, how could he, then, be a missionary of Christianity to the heathen? There is no other answer which can be given than that the Christianity of Paul was something radically different from the Christianity of the later gospel writers, who in all probability were Greeks and not Jews. Moreover, it is known that Paul was reprimanded by his fellow-apostles for carrying Christianity to the Gentiles. What better defense could Paul have given for his conduct than to have quoted the commandment of Jesus-- "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." And he would have quoted the "divine" text had he been familiar with it. Nay, the other apostles would not have taken him to task for obeying the commandment of Jesus had they been familiar with such a commandment. It all goes to support the proposition that the gospel Jesus was of a date later than the apostolic times. That the authorities of the church realize how damaging to the reality of the gospel Jesus is the inexplicable silence of Paul concerning him, may be seen in their vain effort to find in a passage put in Paul's mouth by the unknown author of the book of _Acts_, evidence that Paul does quote the sayings of Jesus. The passage referred to is the following: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Paul is made to state that this was a saying of Jesus. In the first place, this quotation is not in the epistles of Paul, but in the _Acts_, of which Paul was not the author; in the second place, there is no such quotation in the gospels. The position, then, that there is not a single saying of Jesus in the gospels which is quoted by Paul in his many epistles is unassailable, and certainly fatal to the historicity of the gospel Jesus. Again, from Paul himself we learn that he was a zealous Hebrew, a Pharisee of Pharisees, studying with Gamaliel in Jerusalem, presumably to become a rabbi. Is it possible that such a man could remain totally ignorant of a miracle worker and teacher like Jesus, living in the same city with him? If Jesus really raised Lazarus from the grave, and entered Jerusalem at the head of a procession, waving branches and shouting, "hosanna"--if he was really crucified in Jerusalem, and ascended from one of its environs--is it possible that Paul neither saw Jesus nor heard anything about these miracles? But if he knew all these things about Jesus, is it possible that he could go through the world preaching Christ without ever once referring to them? It is more likely that when Paul was studying in Jerusalem there was no miraculous Jesus living or teaching in any part of Judea. If men make their gods they also make their Christs. * It is frequently urged that it was impossible for a band of illiterate fishermen to have created out of their own fancy so glorious a character as that of Jesus, and that it would be more miraculous to suppose that the unique sayings of Jesus and his incomparably perfect life were invented by a few plain people than to believe in his actual existence. But it is not honest to throw the question into that form. We do not know who were the authors of the gospels. It is pure assumption that they were written by plain fishermen. The authors of the gospels do not disclose their identity. The words, _according_ to Matthew, Mark, etc., represent only the guesses or opinions of translators and copyists. * Christianity and Mythology. J. M. Robertson, to whom the author acknowledges his indebtedness, for the difference between Paul's Jesus and that of the Gospels. Both in the gospels and in Christian history the apostles are represented as illiterate men. But if they spoke Greek, and could also write in Greek, they could not have been just plain fishermen. That they were Greeks, not Jews, and more or less educated, may be safely inferred from the fact that they all write in Greek, and one of them at least seems to be acquainted with the Alexandrian school of philosophy. Jesus was supposedly a Jew, his twelve apostles all Jews--how is it, then, that the only biographies of him extant are all in Greek? If his fishermen disciples were capable of composition in Greek, they could not have been illiterate men, if they could not have written in Greek--which was a rare accomplishment for a Jew, according to what Josephus says--then the gospels were not written by the apostles of Jesus. But the fact that though these documents are in a language alien both to Jesus and his disciples, they are unsigned and undated, goes to prove, we think, that their editors or authors wished to conceal their identity that they may be taken for the apostles themselves. In the next place it is equally an assumption that the portrait of Jesus is incomparable. It is now proven beyond a doubt that there is not a single saying of Jesus, I say this deliberately, which had not already been known both among the Jews and Pagans. Sometimes it is urged by pettifogging clergymen that, while it is true that Confucius gave the Golden Rule six hundred years before Jesus, it was in a negative form. Confucius said, "Do not unto another what you would not another to do unto you." Jesus said, "Do unto others," etc. But every negative has its corresponding affirmation. Moreover, are not the Ten Commandments in the negative? But the Greek sages gave the Golden Rule in as positive a form as we find it in the Gospels. "And may I do to others as I would that others should do to me," said Plato. * * Jowett Trans., V. p. 483. Besides, if the only difference between Jesus and Confucius, the one a God, the other a mere man, was that they both said the same thing, the one in the negative, the other in the positive, it is not enough to prove Jesus infinitely superior to Confucius. Many of Jesus' own commandments are in the negative: "Resist not evil," for instance.] And as to his life; it is in no sense superior or even as large and as many sided as that of Socrates. I know some consider it blasphemy to compare Jesus with Socrates, but that must be attributed to prejudice rather than to reason. And to the question that if Jesus be mythical, we cannot account for the rise and progress of the Christian church, we answer that the Pagan gods who occupied Mount Olympus were all mythical beings--mere shadows, and yet Paganism was the religion of the most advanced and cultured nations of antiquity. How could an imaginary Zeus, or Jupiter, draw to his temple the elite of Greece and Rome? And if there is nothing strange in the rise and spread of the Pagan church; in the rapid progress of the worship of Osiris, who never existed; in the wonderful success of the religion of Mithra, who is but a name; if the worship of Adonis, of Attis, of Isis, and the legends of Heracles, Prometheus, Hercules, and the Hindoo trinity,--Brahma, Shiva, Chrishna,--with their rock-hewn temples, can be explained without believing in the actual existence of these gods--why not Christianity? Religions, like everything else, are born, they grow old and die. They show the handiwork of whole races, and of different epochs, rather than of one man or of one age. Time gives them birth, and changing environments determine their career. Just as the portrait of Jesus we see in shops and churches is an invention, so is his character. The artist gave him his features, the theologian his attributes. What are the elements out of which the Jesus story was evolved? The Jewish people were in constant expectation of a Messiah. The belief prevailed that his name would be Joshua, which in English is Jesus. The meaning of the word is _savior_. In ancient Syrian mythology, Joshua was a Sun God. The Old-Testament Joshua, who "stopped the Sun," was in all probability this same Syrian divinity. According to tradition this Joshua, or Jesus, was the son of Mary, a name which with slight variations is found in nearly all the old mythologies. Greek and Hindoo divinities were mothered by either a Mary, Meriam, Myrrah, or Merri. Maria or Mares is the oldest word for sea--the earliest source of life. The ancients looked upon the sea-water as the mother of every living thing. "Joshua (or Jesus), son of Mary," was already a part of the religious outfit of the Asiatic world when Paul began his missionary tours. His Jesus, or anointed one, crucified or slain, did in no sense represent a new or original message. It is no more strange that Paul's mythological "savior" should loom into prominence and cast a spell over all the world, than that a mythical Apollo or Jupiter should rule for thousands of years over the fairest portions of the earth. It is also well known that there is in the Talmud the story of a Jesus, Ben, or son, of Pandira, who lived about a hundred years before the Gospel Jesus, and who was hanged from a tree. I believe this Jesus is quite as legendary as the Syrian Hesous, or Joshua. But may it not be that such a legend accepted as true--to the ancients all legends were true--contributed its share toward marking the outlines of the later Jesus, hanged on a cross? My idea has been to show that the materials for a Jesus myth were at hand, and that, therefore, to account for the rise and progress of the Christian cult is no more difficult than to explain the widely spread religion of the Indian Chrishna, or of the Persian Mithra. * * For a fuller discussion of the various "Christs" in mythology read Robertson's Christianity and Mythology and his Pagan Christs. Now, why have I given these conclusions to the world? Would I not have made more friends--provoked a warmer response from the public at large--had I repeated in pleasant accents the familiar phrases about the glory and beauty and sweetness of the Savior God, the Virgin-born Christ? Instead of that, I have run the risk of alienating the sympathies of my fellows by intimating that this Jesus whom Christendom worships today as a god, this Jesus at whose altar the Christian world bends its knees and bows its head, is as much of an idol as was Apollo of the Greeks; and that we--we Americans of the twentieth century--are an idolatrous people, inasmuch as we worship a name, or at most, a man of whom we know nothing provable. [Illustration: 142 Italian Sculpture of the X Century.] IS CHRISTIANITY REAL? It is assumed, without foundation, as I hope to show, that the religion of Jesus alone can save the world. We are not surprised at the claim, because there has never been a religion which has been too modest to make a similar claim. No religion has ever been satisfied to be _one_ of the saviors of man. Each religion wants to be the _only_ savior of man. There is no monopoly like religious monopoly. The industrial corporations with all their greed are less exacting than the Catholic church, for instance, which keeps heaven itself under lock and key. But what is meant by salvation? Let us consider its religious meaning first. An unbiased investigation of the dogmas and their supposed historical foundations will prove that the salvation which Christianity offers, and the means by which it proposes to effect the world's salvation, are extremely fanciful in nature. If this point could be made clear, there will be less reluctance on the part of the public to listen to the evidence on the un-historicity of the founder of Christianity. We are told that God, who is perfect, created this world about half a hundred centuries ago. Of course, being perfect himself the world which he created was perfect, too. But the world did not stay perfect very long. Nay, from the heights it fell, not slowly, but suddenly, into the lowest depths of degradation. How a world which God had created perfect, could in the twinkling of an eye become so vile as to be cursed by the same being who a moment before had pronounced it "good," and besides be handed over to the devil as fuel for eternal burnings, only credulity can explain. I am giving the story of what is called the "plan of salvation," in order to show its mythical nature. In the preceding pages we have discussed the question, Is Jesus a Myth, but I believe that when we have reflected upon the story of man's fall and his supposed subsequent salvation by the blood of Jesus, we shall conclude that the function, or the office, which Jesus is said to perform, is as mythical as his person. The story of Eden possesses all the marks of an allegory. Adam and Eve, and a perfect world _suddenly_ plunged from a snowy whiteness into the blackness of hell, are the thoughts of a child who exaggerates because of an as yet undisciplined fancy. Yet, if Adam and Eve are unreal, theologically speaking, Jesus is unreal. If they are allegory and myth, so is Jesus. It is claimed that it was the fall of Adam which necessitated the death of Jesus, but if Adam's fall be a fiction, as we know it is, Jesus' death as an atonement must also be a fiction. In the fall of Adam, we are told, humanity itself fell. Could anything be more fanciful than that? And what was Adam's sin? He coveted knowledge. He wished to improve his mind. He experimented with forbidden things. He dared to take the initiative. And for that imaginary crime, even the generations not yet born are to be forever blighted. Even the animals, the flowers and vegetables were cursed for it. Can you conceive of anything more mythical than that? One of the English divines of the age of Calvin declared that original sin,--Adam's sin imputed to us,--was so awful, that "if a man had never been born he would yet have been damned for it." It is from this mythical sin that a mythical Savior saves us. And how does he do it? In a very mythical way, as we shall see. When the world fell, it fell into the devil's hands. To redeem a part of it, at least, the deity concludes to give up his only son for a ransom. This is interesting. God is represented as being greatly offended, because the world which he had created perfect was all in a heap before him. To placate himself he sacrificed his son--not himself. But, as intimated above, he does not intend to restore the whole world to its pristine purity, but only a part of it. This is alarming. He creates the whole world perfect, but now he is satisfied to have only a portion of it redeemed from the devil. If he can save at all, pray, why not save all? This is not an irrelevant question when it is remembered that the whole world was created perfect in the first place. The refusal of the deity to save all of his world from the devil would lead one to believe that even when God created the world perfect he did not mean to keep all of it to himself, but meant that some of it, the greater part of it, as some theologians contend, should go to the devil! Surely this is nothing but myth. Let us hope for the sake of our ideals that all this is no more than the childish prattle of primitive man. But let us return to the story of the fall of man; God decides to save a part of his ruined perfect world by the sacrifice of his son. The latter is supposed to have said to his father: "Punish me, kill me, accept my blood, and let it pay for the sins of man." He thus interceded for the _elect_, and the deity was mollified. As Jesus is also God, it follows that one God tried to pacify another, which is pure myth. Some theologians have another theory--there is room here for many theories. According to these, God gave up his son as a ransom, not to himself, but to the devil, who now claimed the world as his own. I heard a distinguished minister explain this in the following manner: A poor man whose house is mortgaged hears that some philanthropist has redeemed the property by paying off the mortgage. The soul of man was by the fall of Adam mortgaged to the devil. God has raised the mortgage by abandoning his son to be killed to satisfy the devil who held the mortgage. The debt which we owed has been paid by Jesus. By this arrangement the devil loses his legal right to our souls and we are saved. All we need to do is to believe in this story and we'll be sure to go to heaven. And to think that intelligent Americans not only accept all this as inspired, but denounce the man who ventures to intimate modestly that it might be a myth, as a blasphemer! "O, judgment!" cries Shakespeare, "thou hast fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason." The morality which the Christian church teaches is of as mythical a nature as the story of the fall, and the blood-atonement. It is not natural morality, but something quite unintelligible and fictitious. For instance, we are told that we cannot of ourselves be righteous. We must first have the grace of God. Then we are told that we cannot have the grace of God unless he gives it to us. And he will not give it to us unless we ask for it. But we cannot ask for it, unless he moves us to ask for it. And there we are. We shall be damned if we do not come to God, and we cannot come to God unless he calls us. Besides, could anything be more mythical than a righteousness which can only be imputed to us,--any righteousness of our own being but "filthy rags?" The Christian religion has the appearance of being one great myth, constructed out of many minor myths. It is the same with Mohammedanism, or Judaism, which latter is the mischievous parent of both the Mohammedan and the Christian faiths. It is the same with all supernatural creeds. Myth is the dominating element in them all. Compared with these Asiatic religions how glorious is science! How wholesome, helpful, and luminous, are her commandments! If I were to command you to believe that Mount Olympus was once tenanted by blue-eyed gods and their consorts,--sipping nectar and ambrosia the live-long day,--you will answer, "Oh, that is only mythology." If I were to tell you that you cannot be saved unless you believe that Minerva was born full-fledged from the brain of Jupiter, you will laugh at me. If I were to tell you that you must punish your innocent sons for the guilt of their brothers and sisters, you will answer that I insult your moral sense. And yet, every Sunday, the preacher repeats the myth of Adam and Eve, and how God killed his innocent son to please himself, or to satisfy the devil, and with bated breath, and on your knees, you whisper, _Amen._ How is it that when you read the literature of the Greeks, the literature of the Persians, the literature of Hindoostan, or of the Mohammedan world, you discriminate between fact and fiction, between history and myth, but when it comes to the literature of the Jews, you stammer, you stutter, you bite your lips, you turn pale, and fall upon your face before it as the savage before his fetish? You would consider it unreasonable to believe that everything a Greek, or a Roman, or an Arab ever said was inspired. And yet, men have been hounded to death for not believing that everything that a Jew ever said in olden times was inspired. I do not have to use arguments, I hope, to prove to an intelligent public that an infallible book is as much a myth as the Garden of Eden, or the Star of Bethlehem. A mythical Savior, a mythical Bible, a mythical plan of salvation! When we subject what are called religious truths to the same tests by which we determine scientific or historical truths, we discover that they are not truths at all; they are only opinions. Any statement which snaps under the strain of reason is unworthy of credence. But it is claimed that religious truth is discovered by intuition and not by investigation. The believer, it is claimed, feels in his own soul--he has the witness of the spirit, that the Bible is infallible, and that Jesus is the Savior of man. The Christian does not have to look into the arguments for or against his religion, it is said, before he makes up his mind; he knows by an inward assurance; he has proved it to his own deepermost being that Jesus is real and that he is the only Savior. But what is that but another kind of argument? The argument is quite inadequate to inspire assurance, as you will presently see, but it is an argument nevertheless. To say that we must believe and not reason is a kind of reasoning, This device of reasoning against reasoning is resorted to by people who have been compelled by modern thought to give up, one after another, the strongholds of their position. They run under shelter of what they call faith, or the "inward witness of the spirit," or the intuitive argument, hoping thereby to escape the enemy's fire, if I may use so objectionable a phrase. What is called faith, then, or an intuitive spiritual assurance, is a species of reasoning; let its worth be tested honestly. In the first place, faith or the intuitive argument would prove too much. If Jesus is real, notwithstanding that there is no reliable historical data to warrant the belief, because the believer feels in his own soul that He is real and divine, I answer that, the same mode of reasoning--and let us not forget, it is a kind of _reasoning_--would prove Mohammed a divine savior, and the wooden idol of the savage a god. The African Bushman trembles before an image, because he feels in his own soul that the thing is real. Does that make it real? The Moslem cries unto Mohammed, because he believes in his innermost heart that Mohammed is near and can hear him. He will risk his life on that assurance. To quote to him history and science to prove that Mohammed is dead and unable to save, would be of no avail, for he has the witness of the spirit in him, an intuitive assurance, that the great prophet sits on the right hand of Allah. An argument which proves too much, proves nothing. In the second place, an intuition is not communicable. I may have an intuition that I see spirits all about me this morning. They come, they go, they nod, they brush my forehead with their wings. But do _you_ see them, too, because I see them? There is the difference between a scientific demonstration and a purely metaphysical assumption. I could go to the blackboard and assure you, as I am myself assured, that two parallel lines running in the same direction will not and cannot meet. That is demonstration. A fever patient when in a state of delirium, and a frightened child in the dark, see things. We do not deny that they do, but their testimony does not prove that the things they see are real. "What is this I see before me?" cries Macbeth, the murderer, and he shrieks and shakes from head to foot--he draws his sword and rushes upon Banquo's ghost, which he sees coldly staring at him. But is that any proof that what he saw we could see also? Yes, we could, if we were in the same frenzy! And it is the revivalist's aim, by creating a general excitement, to make everybody _see things_. "Doctor, Doctor, help! they are coming to kill me; there they are--the assassins,--one, two, three--oh, help," and the patient jumps out of bed to escape the banditti crowding in upon him. But is that any reason why the attending physician, his pulse normal and his brow cool, should believe that the room is filling up with assassins? I observe people jump up and down, as they do in holiness meetings; I hear them say they see angels, they see Jesus, they feel his presence. But is that any evidence for you or me? An intuitive argument is not communicable, and, therefore, it is no argument at all. Our orthodox friends are finally driven by modern thought, which is growing bolder every day, to the only refuge left for them. It is the one already mentioned. Granted that Jesus was an imaginary character, even then, as an ideal, they argue, he is an inspiration, and the most effective moral force the world has ever known. We do not care, they say, whether the story of his birth, trial, death, and resurrection is myth or actual history; such a man as Jesus may never have existed, the things he is reported as saying may have been put in his mouth by others, but what of that--is not the picture of his character perfect? Are not the Beatitudes beautiful--no matter who said them? To strengthen this position they call our attention to Shakespeare's creations, the majority of whom--Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Portia, Imogen, Desdemona, are fictitious. Yet where are there grander men, or finer women? These children of Shakespeare may never have lived, but, surely, they will never die. In the same sense, Jesus may be just as ideal a character as those of Shakespeare, they say, and still be "the light of the world." A New York preacher is reported as saying that if Christianity is a lie, it is a "glorious lie." My answer to the above is that such an argument evades instead of facing the question. It is receding from a position under cover of a rhetorical manoeuvre. It is a retreat in disguise. If Christianity is a "glorious lie," then call it such. The question under discussion is, Is Jesus Historical? To answer that it is immaterial whether or not he is historical, is to admit that there is no evidence that he is historical. To urge that, unhistorical though he be, he is, nevertheless, the only savior of the world, is, I regret to say, not only evasive,--not only does it beg the question, but it is also clearly dishonest. How long will the tremendous ecclesiastical machinery last, if it were candidly avowed that it is doubtful whether there ever was such a historical character as Jesus, or that in all probability he is no more real than one of Shakespeare's creations? What! all these prayers, these churches, these denominations, these sectarian wars which have shed oceans of human blood--these unfortunate persecutions which have blackened the face of man--the fear of hell and the devil which has blasted millions of lives--all these for a Christ who may, after all, be only a picture! Neither is it true that this pictorial Jesus saved the world. He has had two thousand years to do it in, but as missionaries are still being sent out, it follows that the world is yet to be saved. The argument presented elsewhere in these pages may here be recapitulated. There was war before Christianity; has Jesus abolished war? There was poverty and misery in the world before Christianity; has Jesus removed these evils? There was ignorance in the world before Christianity; has Jesus destroyed ignorance? There were disease, crime, persecution, oppression, slavery, massacres, and bloodshed in the world before Christianity; alas, are they not still with us? _When Jesus shall succeed in pacifying his own disciples; in healing the sectarian world of its endless and bitter quarrels, then it will be time to ask what else Jesus has done for humanity._ If the world is improving at all, and we believe it is, the progress is due to the fact that man pays now more attention to _this_ life than formerly. He is thinking less of the other world and more of this. He no longer sings with the believer: The world is all a fleeting show For man's delusion given. Its smiles of joy, its tears of woe, Deceitful shine, deceitful flow, There's nothing true but heaven. How could people with such feelings labor to improve a world they hated? How could they be in the least interested in social or political reforms when they were constantly repeating to themselves-- I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger-- I can tarry, I can tarry, but a night. That these same people should now claim not only a part of the credit for the many improvements, but all of it--saying that, but for their religion the "world would now have been a hell," * is really a little too much for even the most serene temperament. * Rev. Frank Gunsaulus, of the Central Church, Chicago. See A New Catechism.--M. M. Mangasarian. Which of the religions has persecuted as long and as relentlessly as Christianity? Which of the many faiths of the world has opposed Science as stubbornly and as bitterly as Christianity? In the name of what other prophets have more people been burned at the stake than in the names of Jesus and Moses? What other revelation has given rise to so many sects, hostile and irreconcilable, as the Christian? Which religion has furnished as many effective texts for political oppression, polygamy, slavery, and the subjection of woman as the religion of Jesus and Paul? Is there,--has there ever been another creed which makes salvation dependent on belief,--thereby encouraging hypocrisy, and making honest inquiry a crime? To send a thief to heaven from the gallows because he believes, and an honest man to hell because he doubts, is that the virtue which is going to save the world? The claim that Jesus has saved the world is another myth. A _pictorial_ Christ, then, has not done anything for humanity to deserve the tremendous expenditure of time, energy, love, and devotion, which has for two thousand years taxed the resources of civilization. The passing away of this imaginary savior will relieve the world of an unproductive investment. We conclude: Honesty, like charity, must begin at home. Unless we can tell the truth in our churches we will never tell the truth in our shops. Unless our teachers, the ministers of God, are honest, our insurance companies and corporations will have to be watched. Permit sham in your religious life, and the disease will spread to every member of the social body. If you may keep religion in the dark, and cry "hush," "hush," when people ask that it be brought out into the light, why may not politics or business cultivate a similar partiality for darkness? If the king cries, "rebel," when a citizen asks for justice, it is because he has heard the priest cry, "infidel," when a member of his church asked for evidence. Religious hypocrisy is the mother of all hypocrisies. Cure a man of that, and the human world will recover its health. Not so long ago, nearly everybody believed in the existence of a personal devil. People saw him, heard him, described him, danced with him, and claimed, besides, to have whipped him. Luther hurled his inkstand at him, and American women accused as witches were put to death in the name of the devil. Yet all this "evidence" has not saved the devil from passing out of existence. What has happened to the devil will happen to the gods. Man is the only real savior. If he is not a savior, there is no other. [Illustration: 160 The Hindu Trinity.] PART II. IS THE WORLD INDEBTED TO CHRISTIANITY? "But," says the believer, again, as a last resort, "Jesus, whether real or mythical, has certainly saved the world, and is its only hope." If this assertion can be supported with facts, then surely it would matter very little whether Jesus really lived and taught, or whether he is a mere picture. Although even then it would be more truthful to say we have no satisfactory evidence that such a teacher as Jesus ever lived, than to affirm dogmatically his existence, as it is now done. Whatever Jesus may have done for the world, he has certainly not freed us from the obligation of telling the truth. I call special attention to this point. Because Jesus has saved the world, granting for the moment that he has, is no reason why we should be indifferent to the truth. Nay, it would show that Jesus has not saved the world, if we can go on and speak of him as an actual existence, born of a virgin and risen from the dead, and in his name persecute one another--oppose the advance of science, deny freedom of thought, terrorize children and women with pictures of hell-fire and seek to establish a spiritual monopoly in the world, when the evidence in hand seems clearly to indicate that such a person never existed. We shall quote a chapter from Christian history to give our readers an idea of how much the religion of Jesus, when implicitly believed in, can do for the world. We have gone to the earliest centuries for our examples of the influence exerted by Christianity upon the ambitions and passions of human nature, because it is generally supposed that Christianity was then at its best. Let us, then, present a picture of the world, strictly speaking, of the Roman Empire, during the first four or five hundred years after its conversion to Christianity. We select this specific period, because Christianity was at this time fifteen hundred years nearer to its source, and was more virile and aggressive than it has ever been since. Shakespeare speaks of the uses of adversity; but the uses of prosperity are even greater. The proverb says that "adversity tries a man." While there is considerable truth in this, the fact is that prosperity is a much surer criterion of character. It is impossible to tell, for instance, what a man will do who has neither the power nor the opportunity to do anything. "Opportunity," says a French writer, "is the cleverest devil." Both our good and bad qualities wait upon opportunity to show themselves. It is quite easy to be virtuous when the opportunity to do evil is lacking. Behind the prison bars, every criminal is a penitent, but the credit belongs to the iron bars and not to the criminal. To be good when one cannot be bad, is an indifferent virtue. It is with institutions and religions as with individuals--they should be judged not by what they pretend in their weakness, but by what they do when they are strong. Christianity, Mohammedanism and Judaism, the three kindred religions--we call them kindred because they are related in blood and are the offspring of the same soil and climate--these three kindred religions must be interpreted not by what they profess today, but by what they did when they had both the power and the opportunity to do as they wished. When Christianity, or Mohammedanism, was professed only by a small handful of men--twelve fishermen, or a dozen camel-drivers of the desert--neither party advocated persecution. The worst punishment which either religion held out was a distant and a future punishment; but as soon as Christianity converted an Emperor, or Mohammed became the victorious warrior,--that is to say, as soon as, springing forth, they picked up the sword and felt their grip sure upon its hilt, this future and distant punishment materialized into a present and persistent persecution of their opponents. Is not that suggestive? Then, again, when in the course of human evolution, both Christianity and Mohammedanism lost the secular support--the throne, the favor of the courts, the imperial treasury--they fell back once more upon future penalties as the sole menace against an unbelieving world. As religion grows, secularly speaking, weaker, and is more completely divorced from the temporal, even the future penalties, from being both literal and frightful, pale into harmless figures of speech. It was but a short time after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, that the following edict was published throughout the provinces of the Roman Empire: "O ye enemies of truth, authors and counsellors of death--we enact by this law that none of you dare hereafter to meet at your conventicles...nor keep any meetings either in public buildings or private houses. We have commanded that all your places of meeting--your temples--be pulled down or confiscated to the Catholic Church." The man who affixed his signature to this edict was a monarch, that is to say, a man who had the power to do as he liked. The man and monarch, then, who affixed his imperial signature to this _first_ document of persecution in Europe--the first, because, as Renan has beautifully remarked, "We may search in vain the whole Roman law before Constantine for a single passage against freedom of thought, and the history of the imperial government furnishes no instance of a prosecution for entertaining an abstract doctrine,"--this is glory enough for the civilization 'which we call _Pagan_ and which was replaced by the Asiatic religion--the man and the monarch who fathered the first instrument of persecution in our Europe, who introduced into our midst the crazed hounds of religious wars, unknown either in Greece or Rome, Constantine, has been held up by Cardinal Newman as "a pattern to all succeeding monarchs." Only an Englishman, a European, infected with the malady of the East, could hold up the author of such an edict,--an edict which prostitutes the State to the service of a fad--as "a pattern." If we asked for a modern illustration of what a church will do when it has the power, there is the example of Russia. Russia is today centuries behind the other European nations. She is the most unfortunate, the most ignorant, the most poverty-pinched country, with the most orthodox type of Christianity. What is the difference between Greek Christianity, such as prevails in Russia, and American Christianity! Only this: The Christian Church in Russia has both the power and the opportunity to do things, while the Christian church in America or in France has not. We must judge Christianity as a religion by what it does in Russia, more than by what it does not do in France or America. There was a time when the church did in France and in England what it is doing now in Russia, which is a further confirmation of the fact that a religion must be judged not by what it pretends in its weakness, but by what it does when it can. In Russia, the priest can tie a man's hands and feet and deliver him up to the government; and it does so. In Protestant countries, the church, being deprived of all its badges and prerogatives, is more modest and humble. The poet Heine gives eloquent expression to this idea when he says: "Religion comes begging to us, when it can no longer burn us." There will be no revolution in Russia, nor even any radical improvement of existing conditions, so long as the Greek Church has the education of the masses in charge. To become politically free, men must first be intellectually emancipated. If a Russian is not permitted to choose his own religion, will he be permitted to choose his own form of government? If he will allow a priest to impose his religion upon him, why may he not permit the Czar to impose despotism upon him? If it is wrong for him to question the tenets of his religion, is it not equally wrong for him to discuss the laws of his government? If a slave of the church, why may he not be also a slave of the state? If there is room upon his neck for the yoke of the church, there will be room, also, for the yoke of the autocracy. If he is in the habit of bending his knees, what difference does it make to how many or to whom he bends them? Not until Russia has become religiously emancipated, will she conquer political freedom. She must first cast out of her mind the fear of the church, before she can enter into the glorious fellowship of the free. In Turkey, all the misery of the people will not so much as cause a ripple of discontent, because the Moslem has been brought up to submit to the Sultan as to the shadow on earth of Allah. Both in Russia and Turkey, the protestants are the heretics. The orthodox Turk and the orthodox Christian permit without a murmur both the priest and the king to impose upon them at the point of a bayonet, the one his religion, and the other his government. It is only by taking the education of the masses out of the hands of the clergy that either country can enjoy any prosperity. Orthodoxy and autocracy are twins. Let me now try to present to you a picture of the world under Christianity about the year 400 of the present era. Let us discuss this phase of the subject in a liberal spirit, extenuating nothing, nor setting down aught in malice. Please interpret what I say in the next few minutes metaphorically, and pardon me if my picture is a repellant one. We are in the year of our Lord, 400: I rose up early this morning to go to church. As I approached the building, I saw there a great multitude of people unable to secure admission into the edifice. The huge iron doors were closed, and upon them was affixed a notice from the authorities, to the effect that all who worshiped in this church would, by the authority of the state, be known and treated hereafter as "infamous heretics," and be exposed to the extreme penalty of the law if they persisted in holding services there. But the party to which I belonged heeded not the prohibition, but beat against the doors furiously and effected an entrance into the church. The excitement ran high; men and leaders shouted, gesticulated and came to blows. The Archbishop was urged to ascend his episcopal throne and officiate at the altar in spite of the formal interdiction against him. He consented. But he had not proceeded far when soldiers, with a wild rush, poured into the building and began to discharge arrows at the panic-stricken people. Instantly pandemonium was let loose. The officers commanding the soldiers demanded the head of the offending Archbishop. The worshipers made an attempt to resist; then blood was shed, the sight of which reeled people's heads, and, in an instant, the sanctuary was turned into a house of murder. Taking advantage of the uproar, the Archbishop, assisted by his secretaries, escaped through a secret door behind the altar. [Illustration: 170 Engraving of XV Century Representing the Trinity.] On my way home from this terrible scene, I fell upon a procession of monks. They were carrying images and relics, and a banner upon which were inscribed these words: "The Virgin Mary, Mother of God." As they marched on, their number increased by new additions. But suddenly they encountered another band of monks, carrying a different banner, bearing the same words which were on the other party's banner, but instead of "The Virgin Mary, Mother of God," their banner read: "The Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ." The two processions clashed, and a bloody encounter followed; in an instant images, relics and banners were all in an indiscriminate heap. The troops were called out again, but such was the zeal of the conflicting parties that not until the majority of them were disabled and exhausted, was tranquility restored. Looking about me, I saw the spire of a neighboring church. My curiosity prompted me to wend my steps thither. As soon as I entered, I was recognized as belonging to the forbidden sect, and in an instant a hundred fists rained down blows upon my head. "He has polluted the sanctuary," they cried. "He has committed sacrilege." "No quarter to the enemies of the true church," cried others, and it was a miracle that, beaten, bruised, my clothes torn from my back, I regained the street. A few seconds later, looking up the streets, I saw another troop of soldiers, rushing down toward this church at full speed. It seems that while I was being beaten in the main auditorium, in the baptistry of the church they were killing, in cold blood, the Archbishop, who was suspected of a predilection for the opposite party, and who had refused to retract or resign from his office. The next day I heard that one hundred and thirty-seven bodies were taken out of this building. Seized with terror, I now began to run, but, alas, I had worse experiences in store for me. I was compelled to pass the principal square in the center of the city before I could reach a place of safety. When I reached this square, it had the appearance of a veritable battlefield. It was Sunday morning, and the partisans of rival bishops, differing in their interpretation of theological doctrines, were fighting each other like maddened, malignant creatures. One could hear, over the babel of discordant yells, scriptural phrases. The words, "The Son is equal to the Father," "The Father is greater than the Son," "He is begotten of the same substance as the Father," "He is of like substance, but not of the same substance," "You are a heretic," "You are an atheist," were invariably accompanied with blows, stabs and sword thrusts, until, as an eye-witness, I can take an oath that I saw the streets leading out of the square deluged with palpitating human blood. Suddenly the commander of the cavalry, Hermogenes, rode upon the scene of feud and bloodshed. He ordered the followers of the rival bishops to disperse, but instead of minding his authority, the zealots of both sides rushed upon his horse, tore the rider from the saddle and began to beat him with clubs and stones which they picked up from the street. He managed to escape into a house close by, but the religious rabble surrounded the house and set fire to it. Hermogenes appeared at the window, begging for his life. He was attacked again, and killed, and his mangled body dragged through the streets and rushed into a ditch. The spectacle inflamed me, being a sectarian myself. I felt ashamed that I was not showing an equal zeal for _my_ party. I, too, longed to fight, to kill, to be killed, for my religion. And, anon! the opportunity presented itself. I saw, looking up the street to my right, a group of my fellow-believers, who, like myself, shut out of their own church by the orthodox authorities, armed with whips loaded with lead and with clubs, were entering a house. I followed them. As we went in, we commanded the head of the family and his wife to appear. When they did, we asked them if it was true that in their prayers to Mary they had refrained from the use of the words, "The mother of God." They hesitated to give a direct answer, whereupon we used the club, and then, the scourge. Then they said they believed in and revered the blessed virgin, but would not, even if we killed them, say that she was the mother of God. This obstinacy exasperated us and we felt it to be our religious duty, for the honor of our divine Queen, to perpetrate such cruelties upon them as would shock your gentle ears to hear. We held them over slowly burning fires, flung lime into their eyes, applied roasted eggs and hot irons to the sensitive parts of their bodies, and even gagged them to force the sacrament into their mouths.....As we went from house to house, bent upon our mission, I remember an expression of one of the party who said to the poor woman who was begging for mercy: "What! shall I be guilty of defrauding the vengeance of God of its victims?" A sudden chill ran down my back. I felt my flesh creep. Like a drop of poison the thought embodied in those words perverted whatever of pity or humanity was left in me, and I felt that I was only helping to secure victims with which to feed the vengeance of God! [Illustration: 175 Trinity in XIII Century.] I was willing to be a monster for the glory of God! The Christian sect to which I belonged was one of the oldest in Christendom. Our ancestors were called the Puritans of the fourth and fifth centuries. We believe that no one can be saved outside of our communion. When a Christian of another church joins us, we re-baptize him, for we do not believe in the validity of other baptisms. We are so particular that we deny our cemeteries to any other Christians than our own members. If we find that we have, by mistake, buried a member of another church in our cemetery, we dig up his bones, that he may not pollute the soil. When one of the churches of another denomination falls into our hands, we first fumigate the building, and with a sharp knife we scrape the wood off the altars upon which other Christian priests have offered prayers. We will, under no consideration, allow a brother Christian from another church to commune with us; if by stealth anyone does, we spare not his life. But we are persecuted just as severely as we persecute, ourselves. * * This sect (Donatist) and others, lasted for a long time, and made Asia and Africa a hornet's nest,--a blood-stained arena, of feud and riot and massacre, until Mohammedanism put an end, in these parts of the world, not only to these sects, but to Christianity itself. As the sun was setting, fatigued with the holy Sabbath's religious duties, I started to go home. On my way back, I saw even wilder, bloodier scenes, between rival ecclesiastical factions, streets even redder with blood, if possible, yea, certain sections of the city seemed as if a storm of hail, or tongues of flame had swept over them. Churches were on fire, cowled monks attacking bishops' residences, rival prelates holding uproarious debates, which almost always terminated in bloodshed, and, to cap the day of many vicissitudes, I saw a bear on exhibition which had been given its freedom by the ruler, as a reward for his faithful services in devouring heretics. The Christian ruler kept two fierce bears by his own chamber, to which those who did not hold the orthodox faith were thrown in his presence while he listened with delight to their groans. When I reached home, I was panting for breath. I had lived through another Sabbath day. * * If the reader will take the pains to read Dean Milman's History of Christianity, and his History of Latin Christianity; also Gibbon's Downfall of the Roman Empire, and Mosheim's History of Christianity, he will see that we have exaggerated nothing. The Athanasian and the Arian, the Donatist and Sabellian, the Nestorian and Alexandrian factions converted the early centuries into a long reign of terror. I feel like covering my face for telling you so grewsome a tale. But if this were the fourth or the fifth century, instead of the twentieth, and this were Constantinople, or Alexandria, or Antioch, instead of Chicago, I would have spent just such a Sunday as I have described to you. In giving you this concentrated view of human society in the great capitals of Christendom in the year 400, I have restrained, rather than spurred, my imagination. Remember, also, that I have confined my remarks to a specific and short period in history, and have excluded from my generalization all reference to the centuries of religious wars which tore Europe limb from limb,--the wholesale exterminations, the crusades, which represented one of the maddest spells of misguided and costly zeal which ever struck our earth, the persecution of the Huguenots, the extermination of the Albigenses and of the Waldenses,--the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Inquisition with its red hand upon the intellect of Europe, the Anabaptist outrages in Germany, the Smithfield fires in England, the religious outrages in Scotland, the Puritan excesses in America,--the reign of witchcraft and superstition throughout the twenty centuries--I have not touched my picture with any colors borrowed from these terrible chapters in the history of our unfortunate earth. I have also left out all reference to Papal Rome, with its dungeons, its stakes, its massacres and its burnings. I have said nothing of Galileo, Vanini, Campanella or Bruno. I have passed over all this in silence. You can imagine, now, how much more repellant and appalling this representation of the Roman world under Christianity would have been had I stretched my canvas to include also these later centuries. But I tremble to be one-sided or unjust, and so I hasten to say that during the twenty centuries' reign of our religion, the world has also seen some of the fairest flowers spring out of the soil of our earth. During the past twenty centuries there have been men and women, calling themselves Christians, who have been as generous, as heroic and as deeply consecrated to high ideals as any the world has ever produced. Christianity has, in many instances, softened the manners of barbarians and elevated the moral tone of primitive peoples. It gives us more pleasure to speak of the good which religions have accomplished than to call attention to the evil they have caused. But this raises a very important question. "Why do you not confine yourself," we are often asked, "to the virtues you find in Christianity or Mohammedanism, instead of discussing so frequently their short-comings? Is it not better to praise than to blame, to recommend than to find fault?" This is a fair question, and we may just as well meet it now as at any other time. Such is the economy of nature that no man, or institution or religion, can be altogether evil. The poet spoke the truth when he said: "There is a soul of goodness in things evil." Evil, in a large sense, is the raw material of the good. All things contribute to the education of man. The question, then, whether an institution is helpful or hurtful, is a relative one. The character of an institution, as that of an individual, is determined by its ruling passion. Despotism, for instance, is generally considered to be an evil. And yet, a hundred good things can be said of despotism. The French people, over a hundred years ago, overthrew the monarchy. And yet the monarchy had rendered a thousand services to France. It was the monarchy that created France, that extended her territory, developed her commerce, built her great cities, defended her frontiers against foreign invasion, and gave her a place among the first-class nations of Europe. Was it just, then, to pull down an institution that had done so much for France? Why did the Americans overthrow British rule in this country? Had not England rendered innumerable services to the colony? Was she not one of the most progressive, most civilizing influences in the modern world? Was it just, then, that we should have beaten out of the land a government that had performed for us so many friendly acts? Referring once more to the case of Russia: Why do the awakened people in that country demand the overthrow of the autocracy? Is there nothing good to be said of Russian autocracy? Have not the Czars loved their country and fought for her prosperity? Have they not brought Russia up to her present size, population and political influence in Europe? Have they not beautified her cities and enacted laws for the protection of their subjects? Is it right, then, in spite of all these things that autocracy has done for Russia, to seek to overthrow it? Once more: Why do the missionaries go into India and China and Japan trying to replace the ancestral religion of these people with the Christian faith? Why does the missionary labor to overthrow the worship of Buddha, Confucius and Zoroaster? Have not these great teachers helped humanity? Have they not rendered any services to their countrymen? Are there no truths in their teachings? Are there no virtues in their lives? Is it right, then, that the missionary should criticise these ancient faiths? [Illustration: 182 Conception of Trinity, Ninth Century.] Let us take an example from nearer home. We were talking some years ago with a gentleman who had just returned from Dowie's Zion. He was surprised to find there a clean, orderly and well-behaved people, apparently quite happy. He said that after his experiences there, he would rather do business with Dowie and his men than with the average member of other religious bodies. He found the Dowieites honest, reliable and peaceful. Now, all this may be true, and I hope it is; but what of it? Dowieism is an evil, notwithstanding this recital of its virtues. It is an evil, because it arrests the intellectual development of man, because it makes dwarfs of the people it converts, because it pinches the forehead of each convert into that of either a charlatan or an idiot. We regret to have to use these harsh terms. But Dowieism is denounced, because it brings up human beings as if they were sheep, because it robs them of the most glorious gift of life, the freedom to grow, Dowieism is an evil, because it makes the human race mediocre by contracting its intellect down to the measure of a creed. We would much rather that the Dowieites smoked and drank and swore, than that they should fear to think. There is hope for a bad man. There is no hope for the stupid. In the case of an institution or a religion, then, it is not by adding up the debit and credit columns and striking a balance sheet that the question whether it has helped or hurt mankind is to be determined. We cannot, for instance, place ninety-nine vices in one column, and a hundred virtues in another, and conclude therefrom that the institution or the religion should be preserved. Nor, conversely speaking, can we place a hundred vices against ninety-nine virtues, and, therefore, condemn, the institution. Even as a man is hanged for one act in his life, in spite of the thousand good acts which may be quoted against the one evil deed, so an institution or a religion is honored or condemned, as we said above, for its _ruling passion_. Mohammedanism, Judaism and Christianity have done much good, just as other religions have, but they are condemned today by modern thought, because they are a conspiracy against reason--because they combat progress, as if it were a crime! Another criticism frequently advanced against us is that we fail to realize that all the evil of which Christianity is said to have been the cause, is only the result of human ignorance and passion. When attention is called, for instance, to the intolerance and stubborn opposition to science, of Christianity, the answer given is, that this conduct is not only not inspired by the spirit of Christianity, but that it is in direct contradiction to its teachings. The Christians claim that all the luminous chapters in history have been inspired by their religion, all its sorrowful and black pages have been written by the passions of men. But this apology, which, we regret to say, is in every preacher's mouth, is not an honest one. In our opinion, both Mohammedanism and Christianity, as also Judaism, are responsible for the evil as well as the good they have accomplished in the world. They are responsible for the lives they have destroyed, as for the lives they have saved. They are responsible for the passions they have aroused,--for the hatred, the persecutions and the religious wars of the centuries, as for the piety and charity they have encouraged. The central idea in all the three religions mentioned above, is that God has revealed his will to man. There is, we say frankly, the root of all the evil which religion has inflicted upon our unfortunate earth. The poison is in both the flower and the fruit which that idea brings forth. If it be true that God has revealed his will, that he has told us, for instance, to believe in the Trinity, the atonement, the fall of man, and the dogma of eternal punishment, and we refuse to do so, will we not, then, be regarded as the most odious, the most heinous, the most rebellious, the most sacrilegious, the most stiff-necked, the most criminal people in the world? Think of refusing to believe as God has dictated to us! Think of saying _no!_ to one's Creator and Father in Heaven! Think of the consequences of differing with God, and tempting others to do the same! Is it at all strange that during the early centuries of Christianity, the people who hesitated to agree with the deity, or to believe as he wanted them to, were looked upon as incarnate fiends, as the accomplices of the devil and the enemies of the human race, and were treated accordingly? The doctrine of salvation by faith makes persecution inevitable. If to refuse to believe in the Trinity, or in the divinity of Christ, is a crime against God and will be punished by an eternity of hell in the next world, and if such a man endangers the eternal salvation of his fellows, is it not the duty of all religious people to endeavor to exterminate him and his race, now and here? How can Christian people tolerate the rebel against their God, when God himself has pronounced sentence of death against him? Why not follow the example of the deity, as set forth in the persecutions of the Old Testament? When we have a God for a teacher, the highest and surest virtue is unconditional acquiescence. Judaism, Mohammedanism and Christianity, in giving us a God for a teacher, have taken away from us the liberty to think for ourselves. Each one of these three religions makes unconditional obedience the price of the salvation it offers, but do you know what other word in the English language unconditional obedience is a synonym of?--Silence! A dumb world, a tongue-tied humanity alone can be saved! The good man is the man on his knees with his mouth in the dust. But silence is sterility! Silence is slavery! Think, then, of the character of a religion which makes free speech, free thought, a crime--which hurls hell against the Protestant! There is a third question to be answered: It is true, they say to us, that there are many things in the Koran, the Old Testament and the New, which are really injurious, and which ought to be discarded, but there are also many beautiful principles, noble sentiments and high educational maxims in these scriptures. Why not, then, dwell upon these, and pass in silence over the objectionable teachings of these religions? It is not necessary to repeat again that in all so-called sacred scriptures, there are glorious truths. It could not have been otherwise. All literature, whether secular or religious, is the voice of man and sweeps the whole compass of human love and hope. We have no objection to quoting from the Veddas, the Avestas, the Koran or the Bible; nor do we hesitate to admire and enjoy and praise generously the ravishingly beautiful utterances of the poets and prophets of all times and climes. Nevertheless, it remains true that the modern world finds more practical help and inspiration in secular authors, in the books of science and philosophy, than in these so-called inspired scriptures. Jesus, who is popularly believed to have preached the Sermon on the Mount, has said little or nothing which can help the modern world as much as the scientific revelations of a student like Darwin, or of a philosopher like Herbert Spencer, or of a poet like Goethe or Shakespeare. We know this will sound like blasphemy to the believer, but a moment's honest and fearless reflection will convince everyone of the fact that neither Mohammed nor Jesus had in view modern conditions when they delivered their sermons. Jesus could have had no idea of a world outside of his little Palestine. The thought of the many races of the world mingling together in one country could never have occurred to him. His vision did not embrace the vista of two thousand years, nor did his mind rise to the level of the problems which today tax the brain and heart of man. Jesus believed implicitly that the world would speedily come to an end, that the sun and the moon would soon fall from the face of the sky, and that people living then in Palestine would not taste of death before they saw "the Son of Man return upon the clouds." Jesus had no idea of a progressive evolution of humanity. It was beyond him to conceive the consolidation of the nations into one fellowship, the new resources which science would tap, or the new energies which human industry would challenge. Jesus was in peaceful ignorance of the social and international problems which confront the world of today. The Sermon on the Mount, then, which is said to be the best in our gospels, can be of little help to us, for it could not have been meant for us. And it is very easy to show that the modern world ignores, not out of disrespect to Jesus, but by the force of circumstances and the evolution of society, the principles contained in that renowned sermon. I was waiting for transportation at the corner of one of the principal streets of Chicago, the other day, when, looking about me, I saw the tremendous buildings which commerce and wealth have reared in our midst. On one hand was a savings bank, on the other a colossal national bank, and up and down the street a thousand equally solid and substantial buildings, devoted to the interests of commerce and civilization. To bring out and emphasize the wide breach between the man who preached the Sermon on the Mount, and progressive and aggressive, busy and wealthy, modern Chicago, I took the words of Jesus and mentally inscribed them upon the walls of these buildings. Upon the savings bank--and a savings bank represents economy, frugality, self-sacrifice, self-restraint,--the desire of the people to provide for the uncertainties of the future, to lay by something for the education of their children, for the maintenance of their families when they themselves have ceased to live,--I printed upon the facade of this institution, figuratively speaking, these words of the Oriental Jesus: "Take no thought of the morrow, for the morrow will take care of itself." And upon the imposing front of the national bank, I wrote: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth." If we followed these teachings, would not our industrial and social life sink at once to the level of the stagnating Asiatics? Pursuing this comparison between Jesus and modern life, I inscribed upon the handsome churches whose pews bring enormous incomes, and on the palatial residences of Bishops, with salaries of from twenty-five to a hundred thousand dollars, these words: "How hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of Heaven," and, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven." In plain words, the gospel condemns wealth, and cries, "Woe unto you rich," and "Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor," which, by the way, would only be shifting the temptation of wealth from one class to another. Buckle was nearer the truth, and more modern in spirit, when he ascribed the progress of man to the pursuit of truth and the acquisition of wealth. But let us apply the teachings of Jesus to still other phases of modern life. Some years ago our Cuban neighbors appealed to the United States for protection against the cruelty and tyranny of Spanish rule. We sent soldiers over to aid the oppressed and down-trodden people in the Island. Now, suppose, instead of sending iron-clads and admirals,--Schley, Sampson and Dewey,--we had advised the Cubans to "resist not evil," and to "_submit_ to the powers that be," or suppose the General of our army, or the Secretary of our navy, had counseled seriously our soldiers to remember the words of Jesus when fighting the Spaniards: "If a man smite thee on one cheek," etc. Write upon our halls of justice and courthouses and statute books, and on every lawyer's desk, these solemn words of Jesus: "He that taketh away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." Introduce into our Constitution, the pride and bulwark of our liberties, guaranteeing religious freedom unto all,--these words of Paul: "If any man preach any other gospel than that which I have preached unto you, let him be accursed." Think of placing nearly fifty millions of our American population under a curse! Tell this to the workers in organized charities: "Give to every man that asketh of thee," which, if followed, would make a science of charity impossible. To the workingmen, or the oppressed seeking redress and protesting against evil, tell this: "Blessed are they that are persecuted," which is equivalent to encouraging them to submit to, rather than to resist, oppression. Or upon our colleges and universities, our libraries and laboratories consecrated to science, write the words: "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God," and "God has chosen the foolish to confound the wise." Ah, yes, the foolish of Asia, it is true, succeeded in confounding the philosophers of Europe. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Jesus, did replace Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Cicero, Caesar and the Antonines! But it was a trance, a spell, a delirium only, and it did not last,--it could not last. The charm is at last broken. Europe is forever free from the exorcism of Asia. I believe the health and sanity and virtue of our Europe would increase a hundred fold, if we could, from this day forth, cease to pretend professing by word of mouth what in our own hearts and lives we have completely outgrown. If we could be sincere and brave; if our leaders and teachers would only be honest with themselves and honest with the modern world, there would, indeed, be a new earth and a new humanity. But the past is past. It is for us to sow the seeds which in the day of their fruition shall emancipate humanity from the pressing yoke of a stubborn Asiatic superstition, and push the future even beyond the beauty and liberty of the old Pagan world! [Illustration: 195 Figures on a Phoenician Vase, Showing the Use of the Cross, Evidently in Some Ceremony of a Religious Nature.] CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM Christianity as an Asiatic cult is not suitable to European races. To prove this, let us make a careful comparison between Paganism and Christianity. There are many foolish things, and many excellent things, in both the Pagan and the Christian religions. We are not concerned with particular beliefs and rites; it is Paganism as a philosophy of life, and Christianity as a philosophy of life, that we desire to investigate. And at the threshold of our investigation we must bear in mind that Paganism was born and grew into maturity in Europe, while Asia was the cradle of Christianity. It would be superfluous to undertake to prove that in politics, in government, in literature, in art, in science, in the general culture of the people, Europe was always in advance of Asia. Do we know of any good reason, when it comes to religion, why Asia should be incomparably superior to anything Europe has produced in that line? Unless we believe in miracles, the natural inference would be that a people who were better educated in every way than the Asiatics should have also possessed the better religion. I admit that this is only inferential, or _a priori_ reasoning, and that it still remains to be shown by the recital of facts, that Europe not only ought to have produced a better religion than Asia, but that she did. In my opinion, between the Pagan and Christian view of life there is the same difference that there is between a European and an Asiatic. What makes a Roman a Roman, a Greek a Greek, and a Persian a Persian? That is a very interesting, but also a very difficult question. Why are not all nations alike? Why is the oak more robust than the spruce? What are the subtle influences which operate in the womb of nature, where "the embryos of races are nourished into form and individuality?" I cannot answer that question satisfactorily, and I am not going to attempt to answer it at all. We know there is a radical difference between the European and the Asiatic; we know that Oriental and Occidental culture are the antitheses of each other, and nowhere else is this seen more clearly than in their interpretations of the universe, that is to say, in their religions. In order to understand the Oriental races, we must discover the standpoint from which they take their observations. But first, it is admitted, of course, that there are Europeans who are more Asiatic in their habits of life and thought than the Asiatics themselves, and, conversely, there are Asiatics who in spirit, energy and progressiveness are abreast of the most advanced representatives of European culture. Nor has Asia been altogether barren; she has blossomed in many spots, and she nursed the flame of civilization at a time when Europe was not yet even cradled. To show the intellectual point of view of the Asiatic, let me quote a passage from the Book of Job, which certainly is an Oriental composition, and one of the finest: "How, then, can man be justified with God, or how can he be clean that is born of a woman? _Man that is a worm, and the son of man, which is a worm_." This, then, is the standpoint of the Oriental. He believes he is a poor little worm. His philosophy must necessarily _trail_ in the dust. A worm cannot have the thoughts of an eagle; a worm cannot have the imagination of a _Titan_; a worm sees the world only as a worm may. This is the angle of vision of the Asiatic. He calls himself a worm, and naturally his view of life shrinks to the limits of his standpoint. To be perfectly fair, however, we must admit there are passages in all the bibles of the Orient which are as daring as those found in any European book, but they represent only the strayings of the Oriental mind, not its normal pulse. The habitual accent of the Oriental is that man, calling a woman his mother, is a worm. In the Psalms of David, or whoever wrote the book, we read these words: "_I am a worm, and not a man_." What did the Oriental see in the worm, which induced him to select it out of all things as the original, so to speak, of man? The worm _crawls_ and _creeps_ and _writhes_. Nothing is so distressing as to see its helpless wiggling--and its home is in the dust; dirt is its daily food. Moreover, it is in danger of being stamped or trampled into annihilation at any instant. A worm _represents the minimum_ of worth,--the dregs in the cup of existence; it is the scum or the froth of life, which one may blow into the air. It is impossible to descend lower than this in self-abasement. When the Oriental, therefore, says that man is a worm or "I am a worm," he is just as much _obeying the cumulative_ pressure of his Asiatic ancestry, and voicing the inherited submission of the Oriental mind, as Prometheus, with the vulture at his breast, and shaking his hand in the face of the gods, expresses the revolt of the European mind. The normal state for the Asiatic is submission; for the European it is independence. Slavery has a fascination for the children of the east. The air of independence is too sharp for them. They crave a master, a Sultan or a Czar, who shall own them body and soul. Through long practice, they have acquired the art of servility and flattery, of salaams and prostrations--an art in which they have become so efficient that it would be to them like throwing away so much capital to abandon its practice. They expect to go to Heaven on their knees. This is not said to hurt the feelings of the races of the Orient. We are explaining the influence of absolutism upon the products and tendencies of the human mind. The religion of the Orient, then, notwithstanding its many beautiful features like its politics, is a _product of the suppressed_ mind, which finds in the creeping worm of the dust the measure of its own worth. How different is the European from the Asiatic in this respect! The latter crawls upon the stage of this magnificent universe with the timidity, hesitancy and tremblings of a worm. True to his bringing up, he falls prostrate, overwhelmed by the marvelous immensities opening before him and the abysses yawning at his feet. He contracts and dwindles in size, imploring with outstretched hands to be spared because he is a poor worm. It is a part of his religion or philosophy that if he admits he is nothing but a worm, the dread powers will not consider him a rival or a rebel, but will look upon him as a confirmed subject, and permit him to live. This is his art, the strategy by which he hopes to secure his salvation. There has never been a republic in Asia, which is another way of saying that the Asiatic mind has never asserted its independence. Hence its thought smacks of slavery. In politics, as in religion, the Asiatic has always been passive. He has never been an actor, but only a spectator. It is his to nod the head, fold the arms and bend the knee. On earth he must have a king and a pope, and in heaven an Allah or a Jehovah. He has not been created for himself, but for the glory of his earthly and heavenly Lords. This radical difference between European self-appreciation and Asiatic self-depreciation furnishes the key to the problem under discussion. Paganism is the religion of a self-governing race. Buddhism, Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity are religions born on a soil where man is owned by another. It will be impossible to imagine Marcus Aurelius, for instance, crawling upon his knees before any being, or calling himself a worm. One must have in his blood the taint of a thousand years of slavery, before he can stoop so low. Marcus Aurelius was a gentleman. The European conception of a gentleman implies self-respect and independence; the Oriental conception of a gentleman implies self-abasement and acquiescence. The Oriental gentleman is a man who serves his king as though he were his slave. But observe now how the Oriental proceeds to pull down his mind to the level of his body, which he has likened to a worm. When I was still a Presbyterian minister, I was invited to address a Sunday-school camp-meeting at Asbury Park in New Jersey. There were other speakers besides myself; one of them, known as a Sunday-school leader, had brought with him a chart of the human heart, which, when he arose to address the children, he spread on a blackboard before them: "This is a picture of your heart before you have accepted Jesus. What do you think of it?" he asked the school. "It is all black," was the answer; and it was. He had drawn a totally black picture to represent the heart of the child before conversion. In all the literature of Pagandom, there is not the least intimation of so fearful an idea as the total depravity of human nature. The Pagans never thought, spoke, or heard of such a thing. It was inconceivable to them; they would have recoiled from it as from a species of barbarism. How radically different, then, must European culture have been from the Asiatic. There is a gulf well-nigh impassible between the thought of a free-born citizen and that of the oppressed and enslaved Oriental. But let us continue. Not satisfied with thinking of himself as a worm, and of his intellectual and moral nature as totally degraded, the Oriental strikes with the same paralyzing stroke, at _the world in which he lives_, until it, too, withers and becomes an ugly and heinous thing. He calls the world a "vale of tears," ruled by the powers of darkness, and groaning under a primeval curse. "The world, the flesh and the devil" become a trio of iniquity and sin. Some of you in your earlier days must have sung that Methodist hymn which represents the world as a snare and a delusion: "The world is a fleeting show For man's illusion given." Given! Think of believing that the world has been purposely given us to lead us astray. The thought staggers the mind. It suggests a terrible conspiracy against man. For his ruin, sun, moon and stars co-operate with the devil. Help! we cry, as we realize our inability to cope with the tremendous powers hurling themselves against us like billows of the raging sea, and taking our breath away. It suggests that we are placed in a world which has been made purposely beautiful, in order to tempt us into sin. Think of such a belief! It is that of a slave. It is Asiatic; it is not European. Neither you nor I, in all our readings, have ever come across any such attitude toward nature in Pagan literature. The Greeks and the Romans loved nature and made lovely gods out of every running brook, caressing zephyr, dancing wave, glistening dew, sailing cloud, beaming star, beautiful woman, or brave man. The Oriental suspects nature and regards her smiles--the shining of the sun, the perfume of the meadows, the swell of the sea, the fluttering of the branches tipped with blossoms, the emerald grass, the sapphire sky--looks upon all these as the seductive advances of a prostitute in whose embrace lurks death! But, once more; not satisfied with dragging the world down to the plane of his totally depraved nature, and that again to the level of the worm, the Asiatic projects his fatal thought into the next world and, crossing the grave, that silent and painless home of a tired race, he crowds the beyond with a thousand thousand pains and aches and horrors and fires--with sulphur and brimstone and burning hells. His frightened imagination invokes dark and infernal beings without number, fanning with their dark wings the very air he breathes. This is too revolting to think of. Poor slave! Inured to suffering,--to the lash, to oppression's crushing heel,--he dare not dream of a painless future, of a quiet, peaceful sleep at life's end, nor has he the divine audacity to invent a new world wherein the misery and slavery of his present existence will be impossible,--where all his tyrants will be dead, where he shall taste of sweet freedom and become himself a god. In his timidity and shrinking submission, with the spring of his heart broken, his spirit crushed, all independence strangled in his soul,--he puts in the biggest corner of his heaven even,--a _hell_! Nor does he pause there, but, stinging his slave imagination once more, he declares that this future of torture and hell-fire is _everlasting_. He cannot improve upon that. Deeper in degradation he cannot descend. That is the darkest thought he can have, and, strange to say, he hugs it to his bosom as a mother would her child. The doctrine of hell is the thought of a slave and of a coward. No free-horn man, no brave soul could ever have invented so abhorrent an idea. Only under a regime of absolutism, only under an Oriental Sultan whose caprice is law, whose vengeance is terrible, whose favors are fickle, whose power is crushing, whose greed is insatiable, whose torture instruments are without number, and whose dark dungeons always resound with the rattling of chains and the groans of martyrs--only under such a regime could man have invented an unending hell. But we were mistaken when we said that hell was the darkest that the Asiatic was capable of. He has grafted upon the European mind a belief which is darker still. Is there anything more precious in human life than children? The sternest heart melts, the fiercest features relax, at the sight of an innocent, sweet, laughing, frolicking babe in its mother's arms. Look at its glorious eyes, so full of surprises, so deep, so appealing! Look at the soft round hands, the little feet, the exquisite mouth, opening like a bud! Hear its prattle, which is nothing but the mind beginning to stir! Watch its gestures, the first language of the child! See it with its tiny arms about its mother's neck. Mark its joy when it is kissed. What else in our human world is more beautiful, more divine? And yet, and yet, the slave creed of Asia has drawn into its burning net of damnation even the cradle. John Burroughs describes how in a Catholic cemetery near where he lives he was shown a neglected, unkept corner, used for the burial of unbaptized children. Consecrated ground is denied to them, and so their poor bodies are huddled together in this profane plot, unblessed and unsaved. I do not wish to live in a world where such absurdities are not only countenanced, but where they are exalted even to the dignity of a religion! O holy children! O sweet children! huddled together in unconsecrated ground, and thus exposed to the cruelty of indescribable demons! Can you hear me? I am a man of compassion. I can forgive the murderer. I can pardon and pity the meanest wretch and take him into my arms, but I confess that even if I had a heart as big as the ocean, I could not, I would not, forgive the creed that can be guilty of such inhumanity against you,--dear, innocent ones, who were born to breathe but for a moment the harsh air of this world! When such gloom overpowers me and wrings from my lips such hard words, I find some little respite in contemplating the old Pagan world in its best days. I hasten for consolation to my Pagan friends, and in their sanity find healing for my bruised heart. In one of his letters, the Greek Plutarch says this about children, which I want you to compare with what St. Augustine, the representative of the Asiatic creed, says on the same subject. "It is irreligious," writes Plutarch, "to lament for those pure souls (the children) who have passed into a better life and a happier dwelling place." * Compare this Pagan tenderness for children with the Asiatic doctrine of infant damnation but recently thrown out of the Presbyterian creed. Yet, if St. Augustine is to be believed, it is a heresy to reject the damnation of unbaptized infants: "Whosoever shall tell," writes this Father of the church, "that infants shall be quickened in Christ who died without partaking in his sacrament, does both contradict the apostles' teaching and condemn the whole church." ** It is infinitely more religious to disagree with the apostles and the church, if that is their teaching. The Pagan view of children is the holier view. The doctrine of the damnation of children could only find lodgment in the brain of a slave or a madman. It is Asiatic and altogether foreign to the culture of Europe. * Plutarch Ad Uxorem. Comp. Lecky's History of European Morals. Vol. I. ** St. Augustine Epist. 166. All that we have advanced thus far may be summed up in one phrase: Asia invented the idea that man is a _fallen_ being. This idea, which is the _dors espinal_,--the backbone--of Christianity, never for once entered the mind of the European. We have already quoted from Job and the Psalms; the following is from the book of Jeremiah: "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked." This is one of the texts upon which the doctrine of the fall of man is based. We repeat that only under a religion of slavery, where one slave vies with another to abase himself before his lords and masters, could such an idea have been invented. There is not a man in all our sacred scriptures who could stand before the deity erect and unabashed, or who could speak in the accents of a Cicero who said, "We boast justly of our own virtue, which we could not do if we derived it from the deity and not from ourselves," or this from Epictetus, "It is characteristic of a wise man that he looks for all his good and evil from himself." Such independence was foreign to a race that believed itself _fallen_. In further confirmation of our position, it may be said that the models which the Pagans set up for emulation were men like themselves, only nobler. The models which the Orientals set up for imitation, on the other hand, were supernatural beings, or men who were supposed to possess supernatural powers. The great men for the Oriental are men who can work miracles, who possess magical powers, who possess secrets and can know how to influence the deity,--Moses, Joshua, David, Joseph, Isaiah, Jesus, Paul,--all demi-divinities. The Pagans, on the other hand, selected natural men, men like themselves, who had earned the admiration of their fellows. Let me quote to you Plutarch's eloquent sentence relative to this subject: "Whenever we begin an enterprise or take possession of a charge, or experience a calamity, we place before our eyes the examples of the greatest men of our own or of bygone ages, and we ask ourselves how Plato, or Epaminondas, or Lycurgus, or Agesilaus, would have acted. Looking into these personages, as into a faithful mirror, we can remedy our defects in word or deed." The Westminster Catechism, which in its essentials is a resume of our Asiatic religion, emphasizes the doctrine of the fall of man, of which the Pagan world knew nothing, and refused to believe it until priests succeeded in dominating the mind of Europe: "The catechism following the Scripture teaches that...we are not only a disinherited family, but we are personally depraved and demoralized." * Goodness! the Oriental imagination, abused by slavery, cannot rid itself of the idea of being disinherited, turned out into the cold, orphaned and smitten with moral sores from head to foot. To the Pagan, such a description of man would have been the acme of absurdity. Again: "It (the fall) affirms that he (man) is all wrong, in all things and all the time." ** If this was comforting news to the Asiatic, the Pagan world would have rejected the idea as unworthy of men in their senses. Once more: "All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life and to the pains of hell forever." *** And this is the Gospel we have imported from Asia! * Westminster Catechism, Comments. ** Westminster Catechism, Comments. *** Westminster Catechism, Comments. Is it not pathetic? Could slavery ever strike a deeper bottom than that? Standing before his owner, the Asiatic, of his own choice, hands himself over to be degraded, to be placed in chains and delivered up to the torments of hell forever. I despair of man. I would cry my heart out if I permitted myself to dwell upon the folly and stupidity and slavery of which man voluntarily makes himself the victim. Think of it! A man and a woman, nobody knows where or when, are supposed to have tasted of the fruit of a tree; the Oriental mind, with its crouching imagination, pounces upon this flimsy, fanciful tale with the appetite of a carrion crow, and exalts it to the dignity of an excuse for the eternal damnation of a whole world. I am dazed! I can say no more! Let us recapitulate. The Oriental distrust of the natural man, born of self-depreciation, which is the fruit of prolonged slavery, develops into a sort of mental canker spreading at a raging pace until the whole universe, with its glorious sun and stars, becomes an object of horror and loathing. Not satisfied with thinking of himself as a worm, of his intellectual and moral nature as totally depraved, he communicates his disease to the world in which he lives until it, too, shrinks and wastes away. Then the disease, finding no more on this side of the grave to feed upon, leaps over the grave and converts the beyond, the virgin worlds, into an _inferno_ with which to satiate its fear. Indeed frightful are the thoughts of a slave people! Let me now, in conclusion, call your attention to another difference between the Occidental and the Oriental mind. When the body is feeble or ill-nourished, it is less liable to resist disease; likewise when the mind is alarmed, cowed, or pinched with fear, it becomes more exposed to superstition. Superstition is the disease of the mind. It will keep away from robust minds, as physical disease from a body in health. Now, the Asiatic mind, scared into silence and subjection,--starved to a mere shadow of what it should be, falls an easy prey to all the maladies that mind is heir to. The European mind, on the other hand, with room and air to move and grow in, develops a vitality which offers resistance to all attacks of mental disease. That explains why superstition thrives with ignorance and slavery, and expires when science and liberty gain the ascendency. Sanitary precautions prevent physical disease; knowledge and liberty constitute the therapeutics of the mind. Why is the Oriental so prone or partial to miracle and mystery? His mind is sick. To believe is easier to him than to reason. He follows the line of the least resistance: he has invented faith that he may not have to think. The mental cells in his brain are so starved, so devitalized, that they have to be whipped into movement. Only the bizarre, the monstrous, the supernatural,--demons, ghosts, dream worlds, miracles and mysteries,--can hold his attention. Not science, but metaphysics, barren speculation,--is the product of the Oriental mind. The philosopher Bacon describes the Asiatic when he speaks of men who "have hitherto dwelt but little, or rather only slightly touched upon experience, whilst they have wasted much time on theories and fictions of the imagination." Again: I sometimes think that if it be true that monotheism, the idea of one God, was first discovered in Asia, it must have been suggested to them by the regime of Absolutism, under which they lived. Unlike Asia, democratic Europe believed in a republic of gods. Polytheism is more consonant with the republican idea, than monotheism. If we would let the American President rule the land without the aid of the two houses of congress or his cabinet ministers, his power would be infinitely more than it is now, but his gain would be the people's loss. His increased power would only represent so much more power taken away from the people. One God means not only more slaves, but more abject, more helpless ones. One God is a centralization which reduces man's liberty to a minimum. With more gods, and gods at times disagreeing among themselves, and all bidding for man's support, man would count for more. The Greeks could not tolerate a Jehovah, or an Allah, before whom the Oriental rabble bent the knee. "Allah knows," exclaims the Moslem; that is why the Mohammedans continue in ignorance. "Allah is great," cries again the Turk. That is why he himself is small. The more powerful the sovereign, the smaller the subject. Now this leads us to a final reflection upon the difference between the mind brought up under restraint,--in slavery,--and the mind of the free. "The Pagan," to quote Lecky, "believed that to become acceptable to the deity, one must be virtuous;" the Asiatic doctrine, on the contrary, taught that "the most heroic efforts of human virtue are insufficient to avert a sentence of eternal condemnation, unless united with an implicit belief" in the dogmas of religion. In other words, the noblest of men cannot be saved by his own merits of character alone, for even when we have done our best, we are but "unprofitable slaves," quoting a Bible text. Only by the merits of Christ, or by the grace of God, can any man be saved. Have you ever paused to think of the purport of this piece of Orientalism? It wipes out every imaginable claim or right of man. Even when he is just and great and good, he has no rights, he is as vile as the vilest. Only the favor of the king can save,--only the grace of God, who can save the thief on the cross if he so pleases. Is he not absolute? If he extends his scepter, you live; if he smiles you are spared; if he patronizes you, you are fortunate. He says, live! you live. He says, die! you die. This is the apotheosis of despotism exalted into a revelation. What, then, is our creed, but the thoughts of an eastern slave population, cringing before the throne of a Sultan, and one by one signing away their liberties? "The foundation of all real grandeur is a spirit of proud and lofty independence," says Buckle; but that is not the spirit of Asia, or of its religion. It is, and we ought to try to keep it, the spirit of the Western world. I cannot imagine how we in this country, born of sturdy parents, born of the freedom-loving Pagans of Rome and Greece, born of men who shook their hands in the face of heaven, and pulled the gods off their thrones when they violated the rights of man,--I cannot understand how we have thrown overboard the proud, lofty spirit of independence of the Pagans,--our forefathers, and taken upon our necks the strangling yoke of the slave-thought of Asia! [Illustration: 218 Christ, Half Woman, at Baptism in Jordan. Cathedral of Chartres, France.] PART III. SOME MODERN OPINIONS ABOUT JESUS. _Christianity "dwells with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus."_--Emerson. Christmas is the season in the year when pulpit and press dwell, with what Emerson calls "noxious exaggeration," about the work and life, as well as the person of Jesus. We have, lying before us, the Christmas sermon of so progressive a teacher as the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones. * Here is his text: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father."--John 1:14. How our educated neighbor can find food for sober reflection in so mystical and metaphysical an effusion, is more than we can tell. Who is the _Word_ that became flesh? And when did the event take place? What does it mean to be the "only begotten from the Father?" We know what it means in the orthodox sense, but what does it mean from the Unitarian standpoint of Mr. Jones? But the text faithfully reflects the discourse which follows. It is replete with unlimited compliments to this _Word_ which became flesh and assumed the name of Jesus. The following is a fair sample: "I am compelled to think of Jesus of Nazareth as an epoch-making soul, an era-forming spirit, a character in whom the light of an illustrious race and a holy ancestry was focalized, a personality from which radiated that subtle, creative power of the spirit which defies all analysis, which baffles definition, which overflows all words." * Unitarian-Independent preacher of All Souls Church, Chicago. Goodness! this is strong rhetoric, and we regret that the evidence justifying so sweeping an appreciation has been withheld from us. Although the doctor says that Jesus "defies all analysis, baffles definition and overflows all words," he nevertheless proceeds to devote fifteen pages to the impossible task. "I am compelled to think of him as one who won the right of preeminence in the world's history," continues Mr. Jones, as if he had not said enough. That is a definite claim, and personally, we would be glad to see it made good. But truth compels us to state that the claim is unjust. Without entering into the question of the authenticity of the gospels, a question which we have discussed at some length in our pamphlet on the "Worship of Jesus," we beg to submit that there is nothing in the gospels,--the only records which speak of him,--to entitle him to the "right of preeminence in the world's history." No one knows better than Mr. Jones that the sayings attributed to Jesus--the finest of them--are to be found in the writings of Jewish and Pagan teachers antedating the birth of Jesus by many centuries. Was it, then, for his "works," if not for his "words," that Jesus "won the right of preeminence in the world's history"? What did he do that was not done by his predecessors? Was he the only one who worked miracles? Had the dead never been raised before? Had the blind, and the lame, and the deaf, remained altogether neglected before Jesus took compassion upon them? Moreover, what credit is there in opening the eyes of the blind or in raising the dead by miracle? Did it cost Jesus any effort to perform miracles? Did it imply a sacrifice on his part to utilize a small measure of his _infinite_ power for the good of man? Who, if he could by miracle feed the hungry, clothe the naked and give light and sound to the blind and deaf, would be selfish enough not to do so? If Mr. Jones does not believe in miracles, then Jesus contributed even less than many a doctor contributes today to the welfare of the world. More poor and diseased people are visited and medicined gratuitously by a modern physician in one month, than Jesus cured miraculously in the two or three years of his career. Jesus, if he was "the only begotten of God," as Mr. Jones' text states, was not in any danger of contracting disease himself, which is not the case with the doctors and nurses who extend their services to people afflicted with contagious and abhorrent diseases. Moreover, Jesus' power must have come to him divinely, while we have to study, labor, and conquer with the sweat of our brow any power for good that we may possess. If Jesus as a God opened the eyes of the blind, would it not have been kinder if he had prevented blindness altogether? If Jesus can open the eyes of the blind, then, why is there blindness in the world? How many of the world's multitude of sufferers did Jesus help? Which of us, if he had the divine power, would not have extended it unto every suffering child of man? Of what benefit is it to open the eyes of a few blind people, two thousand years ago, in one country, when he could, by his unique divinity, have done so much more? Mr. Jones falls into the orthodox habit of not applying to Jesus the same canons of criticism by which _human_ beings are judged. But perhaps the "preeminence of Jesus" lay in his willingness to give his life for us. Noble is every soul who prefers truth and duty to life. But was Jesus the only one, or even the first to offer himself as a sacrifice upon the altar of humanity? If Jesus died for us, how many thousands have died for him--and by infinitely more cruel deaths? It is easier for an "only begotten" of God, himself a God--who knows death can have no power over him--who sees a throne prepared for him in heaven--who is sure of rising from the dead on the third day--to face death, than for an ordinary mortal. Yet Jesus showed less courage, if his reporters are reliable, than almost any martyr whose name shines upon memory's golden page. The European churches are full of pictures showing Jesus suffering indescribable agonies as the critical hour draws nigh. We saw, in Paris, a painting called "The Holy Face," _La Sainte Face_, which was, truly, too horrible to look upon; big tears of blood trickling down his cheeks, his head almost drooping over his chest, an expression of excruciating pain upon his features, his eyes fairly imploring for help,--he is really breaking down under the weight of his cross. Compare this picture with the serenity of Socrates drinking the hemlock in prison! Nor would it do to say that this is only the Catholic way of representing Jesus in his passion. The picture is in the gospels, it may be seen in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross with all its realism. Far be it from us to withhold from Jesus, if he really suffered as the gospels report, one iota of the love and sympathy he deserves, but why convert the whole world into a black canvas upon which to throw the sole figure of Jesus? Which of us, poor, weak, sinful though we are, would not be glad to give his life, if thereby he could save a world? Do you think we would mourn and groan and weep tears of blood, or collapse, just when we should be the bravest, if we thought that by our death we would become the divine Savior of all mankind? Would we stammer, "Let this cup pass from me, if it be possible," or tear our hearts with a cry of despair: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me," if we knew that the eternal welfare of the human race depended upon our death? If the Russian or Japanese soldier can take his home and wife and children,--his hopes and loves, his life,--his all,--and throw them into the mouth of the cannon, dying with a shout upon his lips,--who would hesitate to do the same, when not the salvation of one country alone, but of the whole world, depended upon it? There are examples of heroism in the annals of man which would bring the blush to the cheeks of Jesus, if his biographers have not abused his memory. Wherein, then, was the "preeminence" of Jesus? Upon what grounds does Mr. Jones claim, with "unlimited rhetoric," to use his own expression, for Jesus "the right of preeminence in the world's history?" While there is neither a commendable saying nor an act attributed to Jesus in our gospels which teachers older than himself had not already said or done, there are some things in which his seniors clearly outshine him. King Asoka, for instance, the Buddhist sovereign of India, 250 years before Jesus, in one of his edicts chiseled on the rocks of India, declared against human slavery and offered the sweet gift of liberty to all in captivity. Jesus used the word slave in one of his parables (improperly translated servant), without expressing himself on the subject, except to intimate that when a slave does all his duty faithfully, even then he is only an "unprofitable slave," unworthy of the thanks of his master. There was slavery of the worst kind in the world of Jesus, and yet he never opened his mouth to denounce the awful curse. It is claimed that Jesus' doctrine of love was indirectly a condemnation of slavery. Even then, inasmuch as other and earlier teachers did more than strike only indirectly at the ancient evil,--for they not only taught the brotherhood of man, too, but expressed themselves, besides, positively on the subject of slavery,--they have a prior claim to the "right of preeminence" in the world's history, if they cared anything about ranks and titles. The doctrine of humanity to animals, our dumb neighbors, is a positive tenet in Buddhism; is it in Christianity? Two and a half centuries before Jesus, under the influence of Buddha's teaching, King Asoka convened a religious Parliament, offering to each and every representative of other religions, absolute religious liberty. Is there any trace of such tolerance in any of the sayings of Jesus? On the contrary, the claim of Jesus that he is the light, the way, the truth, and that no man can come to the father except through him, leaves no room for the greatest of all boons--liberty, without which every promise of religion is only a mockery and a cheat. Not even heaven and eternal life can be accepted as a consideration for the loss of liberty. The liberty of teaching is alien to a teacher who claims, as Jesus did, that he alone is infallible, and that all who came before him were "thieves and robbers." Of course, Mr. Jones will deny that Jesus ever said any of the things ascribed to him which spoil his ideal picture of him. But he finds his ideal Jesus, whose personality "defies analysis, baffles definition and overflows all words," in the gospels; if these are not reliable, what becomes of his argument? If the writers of our gospels bear false witness against Jesus when they represent him as "cursing the fig tree," as calling his enemies liars and devils, as calling the Gentiles dogs, as claiming equality with God, as menacing with damnation all who disagree with him,--what security have we that they speak truthfully when they put the beatitudes in his mouth? We have no more reliable authority for attributing to Jesus the beatitudes than we have for holding him responsible for the curses attributed to him in the gospels. To return to our comparison between Jesus and his illustrious colleagues. It is with cheerful praise and generous pleasure that we express our admiration for many of the sayings, parables, and precepts attributed to Jesus. The fact that they are much older than Jesus, more universal than Christianity, only enhances their value and reflects glory upon the human race, a glory of which Jesus, too, as a brother, if he ever existed, has his share. We love and admire every teacher who has a message for humanity; we feel our indebtedness to them and would deem ourselves fortunate if we could contribute to the advancement of their noble influence; but we have no idols, and in our pantheon, truth is above all. We have no hesitation to sacrifice even Jesus to the Truth. If we were in India, and some Hindoo preacher spoke of Buddha, as Mr. Jones does of Jesus, as a "personality defying all analysis, baffling definition and overflowing all words"--one who has "won the right to preeminence in the world's history,"--we would protest against it, in the interest of Jesus and other teachers, as we now protest against Mr. Jones' Jesus, in the interest of truth. We have a suspicion, however, that if Mr. Jones, or preachers of his style, were Hindoos, they would speak of Buddha, as they now, being Christians, speak of Jesus--echoing in both instances the _popular_ opinion. The best way to illustrate Mr. Jones' style of reasoning is to quote a few examples from his sermon: "The story of the Good Samaritan has had a power beyond the story of the senseless blighting of the fig tree; the ages have loved to think of Jesus talking with the woman at the well more than they have loved to think of him as manufacturing wine at Cana. No man is so orthodox but that he reads more often the Sermon on the Mount than he does the story of the drowning of the pigs." But if he did not "drown the pigs," the reporter who says he did might have also collected from ancient sources the texts in the Sermon on the Mount and put them in Jesus' mouth. Again: "The dauntless crusaders who now in physical armament and again in the more invulnerable armament of the spirit, went forth, reckless of danger, regardless of cost, to rescue the world from heathen hands or to gather souls into the fold of Christ." We can hardly believe Mr. Jones speaking of "rescuing the world from _heathen_ hands," etc. Who were the heathen? And think of countenancing the craze of the crusades, which cost a million lives to possess the empty sepulchre of a mythical Savior! Is it one of the merits of Christianity that it calls other people "heathen," or that it kills them and lays waste their lands for an empty grave? Once more: "Jesus had tremendous expectations....He believed mightily in the future, not as some glory-rimmed heaven after death, but as a conquering kingdom of love and justice. Jesus took large stock in tomorrow; he laughed at the prudence that never dares, the mock righteousness of the ledger that presumes to balance the books and pay all accounts up to date. He knew that the prudence of commerce, the thrift of trade, the exclusive pride of the synagogue, must be broken through with a larger hope and a diviner enterprise. He believed there was to be a day after today and recognized his obligation to it; he acknowledged the debt which can never be paid to the past and which is paid only by enlarging the resources of the future. Life, to Jesus, was an open account; he was a forward looker; he was honest enough to recognize his obligations to the unborn. Perhaps this adventurous spirit in the realms of morals, even more than his heart of love, has made him the superlative leader of men." We sincerely wish all this were true, and would be glad to have Mr. Jones furnish us with the texts or evidences which have led him to his conclusions. Would not his adjectives be equally appropriate in describing any other teacher he admires? "Jesus had tremendous expectations." Well, though this is somewhat vague as a tribute to Jesus, we presume the preacher means that Jesus was an optimist. The reports, unfortunately, flatly contradict Mr. Jones. Jesus was a "man of sorrows." He expressly declared that this earth belonged to the devil, that the road which led to destruction was crowded, while few would enter the narrow gates of life. He said: "Many are called but few are chosen;" he told his disciples to confine their good work to the lost sheep of the House of Israel, and intimated that it were not wise to take the bread of children (his people) and give it to the dogs (other people). The "Go ye into all the world" is a post-resurrection interpolation, and Mr. Jones does not believe in the miracle of the resurrection. Jesus looked forward to the speedy ending and destruction of the world, "when the sun and moon would turn black, and the stars would fall;" and he doubted whether he would find any faith in the world when "the son of man cometh"; and it was Jesus who expected to say to the people on his left, "depart from me, ye cursed, into _everlasting_ punishment." This is the teacher, whose pessimism is generally admitted, of whom Mr. Jones says that, he had "tremendous expectations." "He believed there was to be a day after today, and recognized his obligation to it," writes Mr. Jones in his indiscriminate laudation of Jesus. Is that why he said "Take no thought of the morrow," and predicted the speedy destruction of the world? "He acknowledged the debt which can never be paid to the past." A sentence like this has all the ear-marks of a glittering generality. Did Jesus show gratitude to the past when he denounced all who had preceded him in the field of love and labor as "thieves and robbers?" Equally uncertain is the following: "He was honest enough to recognize his obligations to the unborn." How does our clerical neighbor arrive at such a conclusion? From what teaching or saying of Jesus does he infer his respect for the rights of posterity? Indeed, how could a teacher who said, "He that believeth not shall be damned," he described as recognizing the rights of future generations? To menace with damnation the future inquirer or doubter is to seek to enslave as well as to insult the generations yet to be born, instead of "recognizing his obligations" to them. The Jesus Mr. Jones is writing about is not in the gospels. "Do you ask me if I am a 'Christian'?" writes Mr. Jones, and he answers the question thus: "I do not know. Are you? If anyone is inclined to give me that high name, with the spiritual and ethical connotation in mind, I am complimented and will try to merit it." As our excellent neighbor is still in the dark, and does not know whether or not, or in what sense he is a Christian--unless he is allowed to define the word himself,--and as he also intimates that he would like to be a _Jesus_ Christian, but not a Church Christian, we humbly beg to express this opinion: The American churches of today, notwithstanding all their shortcomings, are, on every question of ethics and science, of charity and the humanities, far in advance of Jesus, and that in these churches there are men and women who in breadth of mind and nobility of spirit are as good, and even better than Jesus. Does our neighbor grasp our meaning? Charging all the bad in a religion to the account of man, and attributing all the good to God, or to a demi-god, is, after all, only a dodge. Had not the disciples of Jesus been braver than their master, his religion would not have come down to us. And had the Christian church lived up to the letter of this Semitic teacher, Europe would never have embraced Christianity. By modernizing Jesus, by selecting his more essential teachings, and relegating his eccentricities to the background, by making his name synonymous with the best aspirations of humanity, by idealizing his character and enclosing it with a human halo, the churches have saved Jesus from oblivion. Jesus was a tribal teacher, the church universalized him; Jesus had no gospel for women, the church has after much hesitation and wavering converted him to the European attitude toward women; Jesus was silent on the question of slavery, the churches have urged him with success to champion the cause of the bondsman; Jesus denounced liberty of conscience when he threatened with hell-fire the unbeliever; but the churches have won him over to the modern secular principle of religious tolerance; Jesus believed only in the salvation of the elect, but the church to a certain extent has succeeded in reconciling him to the larger hope; Jesus was an ascetic, preferring the single life to the joys of the home, and fasting and praying to the duty and privilege of labor, but the church in America and Protestant Europe at least has made Jesus a lover and a seeker of wealth and knowledge, the two great forces of civilization. No longer does Jesus say, "hate your father and mother;" no longer does he cry in our great thoroughfares, "blessed are the poor;" no longer is his voice heard denouncing this world as belonging to the devil. The modern church, modernized by science, has in turn modernized the gospels. And yet Mr. Jones prefers to be a Christian such as Jesus was. He is repeating one of those phrases which apologists use when they give God all the praise and man all the blame. In conclusion: Mr. Jones admits that Christianity is not unique, that Buddha conquered greater tyrannies than Christ; that "humility and self-sacrifice...have world-wide foundations;" but he draws no conclusions from these important facts, but returns in a hurry to say that Jesus is the "finest and dearest stream swelling the mighty tide of history." The only objection we have to Mr. Jones' Jesus is that he is not real. ANOTHER RHETORICAL JESUS The Rev. W. H. H. Boyle, of St. Paul, improves even on Mr. Jones' superlative tribute to Jesus. He says: "Can you imagine such a thing as a black sun, or the reversal of creation or the annihilation of primal light? Then, give rest to imagination and soberly think what it would mean to have the spiritual processes of two millenniums reversed, to have the light of life in the unique personally of Jesus forever eclipsed." Here is an idolator, indeed. To make an idol of his Jesus he takes a sponge, and without a twinge of conscience, wipes out all the beauty and grandeur of the ancient world. Has this gentleman never heard of Greece? During a short existence, in only two centuries and a half, that little land of Greece achieved triumphs in the life of the mind so unparalleled as to bring all the subsequent centuries upon their knees before it. In philosophy, in poetry,--lyrical, epical, dramatic,--in sculpture, in statesmanship, in ethics, in literature, in civilization,--where is there another Greece? Oh, land of Sophocles! whose poetry is the most perfect flower the earth has ever borne,--of Phidias and Praxiteles! whose immortal children time cannot destroy, though the gods are dead--whose masterpieces the earth wears as the best gem upon her brow,--of Aristotle! the intellect of the world,--of Socrates! the _parens philosophiae_, and its first martyr!--of Aristides! the Just--of Phocion and Epaminondas!--of Chillon and Anarcharchis! whose devotion to duty and beauty have perfumed the centuries! O, Athens, the bloom of the world! Hear this sectarian clergyman, in his black Sunday robes, closing his eyes upon all thine immortal contributions, pulling down like a vandal, as did the early Christians, the libraries and temples, the culture and civilization of the ancient world--the monuments of thy unfading glory--to build therewith a pedestal for his mythical Christ! I can imagine the reverend advocate saying: "But there was slavery in Greece, and immorality, too,"--of course, and is the Christian world free from them? Has Christ after two thousand years abolished war? Indeed, he came to bring, as he says, "not peace, but a sword!" Has Jesus healed the world of the maladies for which we blame the Pagan world? Has he made humanity free? Has he saved the world from the fear of hell? Has he redeemed man from the blight of ignorance? Has he broken the yoke of superstition and priest-craft? Has he even succeeded in uniting into one loving fold his own disciples? How, then, can this clergyman, with any conscience for truth, compare a world deprived of the god of his sect, to a tomb--to a blind man groping under a blackened sun? Must a man rob the long past in order to provide clothing for his idol? Must he close his eyes upon all history before he can behold the beauty of his own cult? But let us quote again: "To efface from the statute books of Christendom every law which has its basal principle in Christian ethics; to abolish every institution which ministers to human need and misfortune in the name of Him whose sympathy is the heart of the divine; to lower every sense of moral obligation between man and man to the old level of Paganism to silence the great oratorios which have made music the echo of the divine; to take down from the galleries of the world the sacred canvases with which genius has sanctified them; to obliterate from memorial symbolism the cross of sublime renunciation which has been the rebuke of human selfishness; to disband every organization which makes prayer, through the merit of one great name, the hand of man upon the arm of God--you may be able to think of an ocean without a harbor, of a sky without a sun, of a garden without a flower, of a face without a smile, of a home without a mother; but, can you think of a world with holiness and happiness in it and Jesus gone out of it? You cannot, 'Then, come, let us adore him,'" etc., etc. Observe how this special pleader avoids breathing so much as a word about any of the many evils which may be laid at the door of his religion with as much show of reason as the benefits he enumerates. What about the dark ages which held all Europe for the space of a thousand years in the clutches of an ignorance the like of which no other religion in the world had known? What about the atrocious inquisition to which no other religion in the world had ever been able to give the swing that Christianity did? What about the persecution and burning of helpless women as witches? Is there anything as infamous as that in any religion outside of ours? What about the wholesale massacres in the name of the true faith? What about the centuries of religious wars, the most imbecile as well as the most bloody, from the effects of which Germany, France, Italy and England are still suffering today? And need we also call attention to that obstinate resistance to science and progress, which rewarded every discoverer of a new power for man, with the halter or the stake, which filled the dungeons with the _elite_ of Europe,--which even dug open graves to punish the bones of the dead savants and illuminators of man? The Pagans, in their gladitorial games, sacrificed the lives of slaves: Christianity made a holocaust of the noblest intellects of Europe. And shall we speak of the bigotry, the fanaticism, the bitter sectarian prejudices which to this day embitter the life of the world? Are not these, too, the fruits of Christianity? We know the answer which the reverend gentleman would make to this: "All the evils you speak of are chargeable, not to Christianity, but to its abuse." But we have already shown that that argument won't do. We might as well say that all the evil of Paganism was due to its abuse. The mere fact that Christianity lent itself to such fearful distortions, and was capable of arousing the worst passions in man on such a fearful scale, is condemnation enough. It shows that there was in it a potentiality for evil beyond compare. Moreover, wherein does a "divine" religion differ from a man-made cult, if it is equally powerless to protect itself against perversion? In what sense is Jesus a god, while all his rivals were "mere men," if he is as helpless to prevent the abuse of his teachings as they were? But it would not be difficult to show that the characteristic crimes we have scheduled are the direct inspiration of a religion claiming exclusiveness and infallibility. Such texts as, "there is no other named given under heaven by which men can be saved;" "Let such an one (the man who will not be converted) be like a heathen and a publican to you;" John's advice to refrain from saying "God speed" to the alien in faith; the bible command not to "suffer a witch to live;" and many of the dogmas which might be cited,--corrupted the sympathies, perverted the judgment of the noblest, while at the same time they stung the evil- minded into something like madness. The world knew nothing of the tyranny of dogma, or religious oppression and persecution, comparatively speaking, until the advent of the Jewish-Christian Church. "Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and of Gomorrah, in the day of judgment, than for that city," said Jesus, speaking of the people who might not accept his teachings. How can Christianity be a religion of love, and how can it believe in tolerance, when it threatens the unbeliever with a fate worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah? The benefits which the Rev. Boyle parades as the direct fruit of his cult, did not appear until after the Renaissance, that is to say,--the return to Pagan culture and ideals. The art and science and the humanities which he praises, followed upon the gradual decline of the Jewish-Christian religion which had already destroyed two civilizations. But Greece and Rome triumphed. To this day, if we need models in poetry, in art, in philosophy, in literature, in politics, in patriotism, in service to the public, in heroism and devotion to ideals--we must go to the Greeks and the Romans. Not that these nations were by any means perfect, but because they have not been surpassed. In our colleges and schools, when we wish to bring up our children in the ways of wisdom and beauty, we do not give them the Christian fathers to read, we give them the Pagan classics. We ask this St. Paul clergyman to read Gibbons' tribute to Pagan Rome: "If a man was called upon to fix a period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without hesitation name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus." This period included such men and rulers as Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, Antoninus Pius, and above all, the greatest of them all--the greatest ruler our earth has ever owned--Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Let the Rev. W. H. H. Boyle look over the names of the kings of Israel and of Christian France, Spain, Italy and England, and find among them any one that can come up to the stature of these Pagan monarchs. "WE OWE EVERYTHING TO JESUS" But, behold! another clergyman with the claim that the modern world owes all its joy and cheer, during the Christmas season, "to the babe in Bethlehem." "What was it that brought about such a condition that crowds the stores, that overflows the mails, and loads the express with packages of every description? The little babe in Bethlehem set all this in motion,--the wreath, the holly, are all from him." When we read the above and more to the same effect, we wrote to the Rev. W. A. Bartlett, * the author of the words quoted, asking him if he was correctly reported. We reproduce herewith a copy of our letter: * Pastor First Congregational Church, Chicago DEC, 20, 1904. _Rev. W. A. Bartlett, Washington Boul. and Ann St., Chicago_. DEAR MR. BARTLETT: In the report of your sermon of last Sunday you are represented as claiming that it is to the "babe in Bethlehem" we owe the Christmas festival, the giving of presents, etc., etc. I write to ascertain whether this report has stated your position correctly? I am sure you know that Christmas is only a recomposition of an old Pagan festival, and that "giving presents" at this season is a much older practice than Christianity. Of course, you do not believe that Christmas is celebrated in December and on the 25th of the month because Jesus was born on that day. You know as well as I do of the Pagan festivals celebrated in the month of December throughout the Roman Empire--celebrations which were accompanied with the giving and receiving of presents. Moreover, you know also, as every student does, that in the Latin countries of Europe it is not on Christmas day, but on New Year's day, that presents are exchanged. Surely you would not claim that for New Year's day, too, the world is indebted to the Bethlehem babe. You must also have known that the use of the evergreen and the holy was in vogue among the Druids of Pagan times. Be kind enough, therefore, to give me, if I am not asking too much, the facts which led you to make the statement to which I have called your attention, and believe me, with great respect, etc. To this neighborly letter the reverend gentleman did not condescend to send an acknowledgment. We knocked at his door, as it were, and he, a minister of the Gospel, declined to open it unto us. Clergymen, as a rule, say that they are happy when people will let them preach the gospel to them. In our case, we saved the clergyman from calling upon us, we called upon him--that is to say, we wrote and gave him an opportunity to enlighten us, to bring his influence to bear upon us, to open our eyes to the error of our ways,--and he would have nothing to do with us. Was not our soul worth saving? Did the Rev. W. A. Bartlett consider us beyond hope? We ask this clergyman to place his hand upon his conscience and ask himself whether he did the brotherly thing in not returning a friendly and kindly answer to our honest inquiry for truth. But he did not answer us, because he had no real faith in his gospel. It was not good enough for an inquirer. But the clergyman, according to reports, made an attempt on the Sunday following the receipt of our letter, before his congregation, to answer indirectly our question. He denied that "Christmas was a recomposition of an old Pagan festival," and said that the early Christians "fasted and wept" because of these Pagan festivals, and that as early as the second century, the birth of Jesus was commemorated. In short, he pronounced it "a distortion of history" to assign to the Christmas festival a Pagan origin. In his great work on the _History of Civilization,_ Buckle says this, to which we call Dr. Bartlett's attention: "As soon as eminent men grown unwilling to enter any profession, the luster of that profession will be tarnished; first its reputation will be lessened, then its power abridged." We fear this is true of Mr. Bartlett's profession. How can Christian ministers hope to engage the interest of the reading public if they themselves abstain from reading? Ask a secular newspaper about the origin of the Christmas celebration, and _it_ will tell you the truth. On the very Sunday that Dr. Bartlett was denouncing, in his church, our claim that the Pagans gave us the December season of joy and merry-making, as "a distortion of history," and editorial in the _Chicago Tribune_ said this: But the festive character of the celebration, the giving of presents, the feasting and merriment, the use of evergreen and holly and mistletoe, are all remnants of Pagan rites. Continuing, the same editorial called attention to the antiquity of the institution: Long before the shepherds on the Judean plains saw the star rise in the east and heard the tidings of "Peace on earth, good will to man," the Roman populace surged through the streets at the feast of Saturn, giving themselves up to wild license and boisterous merry making. They exchanged presents, they decorated their dwellings and temples with green boughs; slaves were given special privileges, and the spirit of good will was abroad among men. This Roman Saturnalia came at the winter solstice, the same as does our Christmas day, while the birth of Christ is widely believed to have taken place at some other season of the year. But Dr. Bartlett may have had in mind the quotation from Anastasius: "Our Lord, Jesus Christ, was born of the Holy Virgin, Mary, in Bethlehem, at one o'clock in the afternoon of December 25th,"--appearing to quote from some old manuscript which, unfortunately, is not to be found anywhere. But Clement of Alexandria, in the year 210 A. D., dismisses all guesses as to when Jesus was born,--the 18th of April, 19th of May, etc.,--as products of reckless speculation. March 28th is given as Jesus' birthday in _De Pascha Computius_, in the year 243. Jan. 5th is the date defended by Epiphanius. Baradaens, Bishop of Odessa, says: "No one knows exactly the day of the nativity of our Lord: this only is certain from what Luke writes, that he was born in the night." Poor Dr. Bartlett, his December 25th does not receive support from the Fathers. For our clerical brother's sake, we quote some more from the _Tribune_ editorial: Primeval man looked upon the sun as the revelation of divinity. When the shortest day of the year was passed, when the sun began his march northward, the primitive man rejoiced in the thought of the coming seedtime and summer, and he made feasts and revelry the mode of expressing the gladness of his heart. Among the sun worshipers of Persia, among the Druids of the far north, among the Phoenicians, among the Romans, and among the ancient Goths and Saxons the winter solstice was the occasion of festivities. Many of them were rude and barbarous, but they were all distinguished by hearty and profuse hospitality. And yet our neighbor calls it "distortion of history" to connect Christmas with the Pagan festival, celebrated about this time. We quote once more from the Secular press: The Christian church did not abolish these heathen ceremonies, but grafted upon them a deeper spiritual meaning. For this reason Christmas is an institution which memorializes the best there was in Pagan man. Its good cheer, its charity, its sports, its feasting, and the features which most endear it to children are all the heritage of our Pagan ancestors. How refreshing this, compared with the clergyman's silence, or cry of "distortion." But in one thing the doctor is correct. The early Christians did bewail the Pagan festivals, as they did everything else that was Pagan. But it did not help them at all; they were compelled to acquiesce. The Christians have "fasted and prayed" also against science, progress, and modern thought, but what good has it done? They asked God to hook Theodore Parker's tongue; to overthrow Darwin, and to confound the wisdom of this world, but the prayer remains unanswered. Yes, the doctor is right, the church has "fasted and prayed" against religious tolerance, against the use of Sunday as a day of recreation,--the opening of galleries and libraries on that day, the advancement of women, the emancipation of the negro, the secularization of education, the revision of old creeds, and a thousand other things. But their opposition has only damaged their own cause. They did try to suppress the Pagan festival, which we call Christmas, and the Puritans in this country, until recently, abstained from all recognition of the day, and called it "Popery," and "Paganism," but their efforts bore no fruit. Dr. Bartlett, if he will read, will learn that for many years, in England and in this country, the observance of Christmas was forbidden by law under severe penalties. As to our being indebted for the cheer and merriment of the December festival to the "Bethlehem babe," the doctor must inform himself of those acts of Parliament which, under the Puritan regime, compelled people to mourn on Christmas day and to abstain from merrymaking. In Christian Connecticut, for a man to have a sprig of holly in his house on Christmas day was a finable crime. In Massachusetts, any Christian detected celebrating Christmas was fined five shillings and costs. But, see, having failed to suppress these good institutions, they now turn about and claim that they have always believed in them, and that, in fact, we would not now be enjoying any one of these benefits but for the Christian Church. In conclusion, we have one other word to say to the three clerical teachers from whose writings we have quoted. Against them we are constrained to bring the charge of looseness in thought. They seem to have little conscience for evidence. Mr. Jones says, for instance: "In short, I am compelled to think that this Light of Souls, this saving and redeeming spirit, was the loved and loving child of Joseph, the carpenter, and the loyal wife Mary. I believe this, notwithstanding the stories of immaculate conceptions, star-guided magi, choiring angels and adoring shepards that gathered around the birth-night." Which is another way of saying that he is "compelled to believe" against the evidence, merely because it is his pleasure or interest to do so. This is not very edifying, to be sure. Mr. Jones takes all his information about Joseph and Mary and Jesus from the gospels, and yet the gospels clearly contradict his conclusions. Mary, the mother of Jesus, gives her word of honor that Joseph was not the father of her child, and Joseph himself testifies that he is not Jesus' father, but Mr. Jones pays no attention to their testimony; he wishes Joseph to be the father of Jesus, and that ought to be sufficient evidence, he thinks. We quote from the gospel: "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. And Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But when he thought on these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife; for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost." Now, if Joseph admits he was not Jesus' father, and Mary corroborates his testimony (See Luke, 1st chapter), Jesus was, if he ever lived, and the records which give Mr. Jones his ideal Jesus are reliable, the son of a man who has succeeded in concealing his identity, unless, of course, we believe in the virgin birth. If the real father of Jesus had come forth and owned his son, and Mary had acknowledged that he was the father of her child, what would have become of Christianity? We hope these clergymen who have dwelt, as Emerson says, "with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus," will reflect upon this, and while doing so, will they not also remember this other saying of the Concord philosopher: "The vice of our theology is seen in the claim...that Jesus was something different from a man." We take our leave of the three clergymen, assuring them that in what we have said we have not been actuated, in the least, by any personal motive whatever, and that we have only done to them what we would have them do to us. [Illustration: 255 Head of a God with Horns. Museum of St. Germain.] A LIBERAL JEW ON JESUS FELIX ADLER, PRAISES JESUS That it is very easy for scholars to follow the people instead of leading them, and to side with the view that commands the majority, receives fresh confirmation from the recent utterances of the founder of the Ethical Culture Society in New York. Professor Adler, the son of a rabbi, and at one time a freethinker, has slowly drifted into orthodox waters, after having tried for a period of years the open seas, and has become a more enthusiastic champion of the god of the Christians than many a Christian scholar whom we could name. The pendulum in the Adler case has swung clear to the opposite side. We do not find fault with a man because he changes his views, we only ask for reasons for the change. It will be seen by the following extracts from Adler's printed lectures that he has made absolutely no critical study of the sources of the Jesus story, but has merely, and hurriedly at that, accepted the conventional estimate of Jesus and enlarged upon it. Jesus is entitled to all the praise which is due him, but it must first be shown that in praising him we are not sacrificing the truth. Praising any man at such a cost is merely flattering the masses and bowing to the fashion of the day. Let us hear what Professor Adler has to say about Jesus. He writes: It has been said that if Christ came to New York or Chicago, they would stone him in the very churches. It is not so! If Christ came to New York or Chicago, the publicans and sinners would sit at his feet! For they would know that he cared for them better than they in their darkness knew how to care for themselves, and they would love him as they loved him in the days of yore. This would sound pious in the mouth of a Moody or a Torrey, but, we confess, it sounds like affectation in the mouth of the free thinking son of a rabbi. That Prof. Adler enters here into a field for which his early Jewish training has not fitted him, is apparent from the hasty way in which he has put his sentences together. "It has been said," he writes, "that if Christ came to New York or Chicago, they would stone him in the very churches. It is not so." Why is it not so? And he answers: "If Christ came to New York or Chicago, the publicans and sinners would sit at his feet." But what has the reception which publicans and sinners might give Jesus to do with how _the churches_ would receive him? He proves that Jesus would not be stoned in the churches of New York and Chicago by saying that the "publicans and sinners would sit at his feet." Does he mean that "New York and Chicago churches" and "publicans and sinners" are the same thing? "Publicans and sinners" might welcome him, and still the churches might stone him, which in fact, according to Adler's own admission, was the case in Jerusalem, where the synagogues conspired against Jesus, while Mary Magdalene sat at his feet. Nor are his words about "the publicans and sinners loving Jesus as they loved him in the days of yore" edifying. Who does he mean by the "publicans and sinners," and how many of them loved Jesus in the days of yore, and why should this class of people have felt a special love for him? On the question of the resurrection of Jesus, Prof. Adler says this: "It is sometimes insinuated that the entire Christian doctrine depends on the accounts contained in the New Testament, purporting that Jesus actually rose on the third day and was seen by his followers; and that if these reports are found to be contradictory, unsupported by sufficient evidence, and in themselves incredible, then the bottom falls out of the belief in immortality as represented by Christianity." It was the Apostle Paul himself who said that "if Jesus has not risen from the dead, then is our faith in vain,--and we are, of all men, most miserable." So, you see, friend Adler, it is not "sometimes insinuated," as you say, but it is openly, and to our thinking, logically asserted, that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, the whole fabric of Christian eschatology falls to the ground. But we must remember that Prof. Adler has not been brought up a Christian. He has acquired his Christian predilections only recently, so to speak, hence his unfamiliarity with its Scriptures. Continuing, the Professor says: "But similar reports have arisen in the world time and again, apparitions of the dead have been seen and have been taken for real; and yet such stories, after being current for a time, invariably have passed into oblivion. Why did this particular story persist, despite the paucity and the insufficiency of the evidence? Why did it get itself believed and take root?" What shall we think of such reasoning from the platform of a presumable rationalist movement? Does not the Professor know that the story of the resurrection of Jesus is not original, but a repetition of older stories of the kind? Had the world never heard of such after-death apparitions before Jesus' day, it would never have invented the story of his resurrection. And how does the Professor know that the story of Jesus' resurrection is not going to meet the same fate which has overtaken all other similar stories? Is it not already passing into the shade of neglect? Are not the intelligent among the Christians themselves beginning to explain the resurrection of Jesus allegorically, denying altogether that he rose from the dead in a literal sense? Moreover, the pre-Christian stories of similar resurrections lived to an old age,--two or three thousand years--before they died, and the story of Jesus' resurrection has yet to prove its ability to live longer. All miraculous beliefs are disappearing, and the story of the Christian resurrection will not be an exception. But Prof. Adler's motive in believing that the story of the resurrection of Jesus shall live, is to offer it as an argument for immortality, and in so doing he strains the English language in lauding Jesus. He says: "In my opinion, people believed in the resurrection of Jesus because of the precedent conviction in the minds of the disciples that such a man as Jesus could not die, because of the conviction that a personality of such superlative excellence, so radiant, so incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse with others, could not pass away like a forgotten wind, that such a star could not be quenched." We regret to say that there are as many assumptions in the above sentence as there are lines in it. Of course, if we are for emotionalism and not for exact and accurate conclusions, Adler's estimate of Jesus is as rhetorical as that of Jones or Boyle, but if we have any love for historical truth, there is not even the shadow of evidence, for instance, that the disciples could not believe "that such a man as Jesus could die." On the contrary, the disciples left him at the cross and fled, and believed him dead, until it was reported to them that he had been seen alive, and even then "some doubted," and one wished to feel the flesh with his fingers before he would credit his eyes. Jesus had to eat and drink with them, he had to "open their eyes," and perform various miracles before they would believe that he was not dead. The text which says that the apostles hesitated to believe in the resurrection because "as yet they knew not the scripture, that he would rise from the dead," shows conclusively how imaginary is the idea that there was a "precedent conviction" in the minds of the disciples that such a man as Jesus could not die. Apparently it was all a matter of prophecy, not of moral character at all. Yet in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, Prof. Adler tells his Carnegie Hall audience, who unfortunately are even less informed in Christian doctrine than their leader, that "there was a precedent conviction in the minds of the disciples that such a man as Jesus could not die." And what gave the disciples this supposed "precedent conviction?" "That a personality of such superlative excellence, so radiant, so incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse with others, could not pass away like a forgotten wind, that such a star could not be quenched." We are simply astonished, and grieved as well, to see the use which so enlightened a man as Prof. Adler makes of his gifts. Will this Jewish admirer of the god of Christendom kindly tell us wherein Jesus was superlatively excellent, or incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse with others? Was there a weakness found in men like Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, etc., from which Jesus was free? That Jesus created no such ideal impression upon his disciples, is shown by the fact that they represented him as a sectarian and an egotist who denounced all who had preceded him as unworthy of respect and to be despised. And how could a man whose public life did not cover more than two or three years of time, and who lived as a celibate and a monk, returning every night to his cave in the Mount of Olives, taking no active part in the business life--supporting no family or parents, assuming no civil or social duties--how can such a man, we ask, be held up as a model for the men and women of today? Jesus, according to his biographers, believed he could raise the dead, and announced himself the equal of God. "I and my father are one," he is reported to have said; and one of his apostles writes: "He (Jesus) thought it no robbery to be equal to God." Either this report is true, or it is not. If it is, what shall we think of a man who thought he was a god and could raise the dead? If the report is not true, what reliance can we place in his biographers when the things which they affirm with the greatest confidence are to be rejected? Yet Prof. Adler, swept off his feet by the popular and conventional enthusiasm about Jesus, describes him as "a personality of such superlative excellence, so radiant, so incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse with others," that his followers could not believe he was a mere mortal. But where is the Jesus to correspond to this rhetorical language? He is not in the anonymous gospels. There we find only a fragmentary character patched or pieced together, as it were, by various contributors--a character made up of the most contradictory elements, as we have tried to show in the preceding pages. The Jesus of Adler is not in history, he is not even in mythology. There is no one of that name and answering that description in the four gospels. That a loose way of speaking grows upon one if one is not careful, and that sounding phrases and honest historical criticism are not the same thing, will be seen by Prof. Adler's lavish praise of John Calvin. He speaks of him in terms almost as glowing as he does of Jesus. He calls Calvin "that mighty and noble man." That Calvin ruled Geneva like a Russian autocrat; that he was "mighty" in a community in which Jacques Gruet was beheaded because he had "danced," and also because he had committed the grave offense of saying that "Moses was only a man and no one knows what God said to him," and in which Michael Servetus was burned alive for holding opinions contrary to those which the Genevan pope was interested in,--is readily conceded. But was Calvin "mighty" in a beneficent sense? Did his power save people from the Protestant inquisition? Was not the Geneva of his day called _the Protestant Rome?_ And if he did not use his powerful influence to further religious tolerance and intellectual honesty; if he did not use his position to save men from the grip of superstition and the fear of hell, how can Prof. Adler refer to him as "that mighty and noble man--John Calvin?" It is not our purpose to grudge Calvin any compliments which Felix Adler wishes to pay him. What we grieve to see is, that he should, indirectly at least, recommend to the admiration of his readers a man who, if he existed today and acted as he did in the Geneva of the sixteenth century, would be regarded by every morally and intellectually awakened man, as a criminal. Has not Felix Adler examined the evidence which incriminates Calvin and proves him beyond doubt as the murderer of Servetus? "If he (Servetus) comes to Geneva, I shall see that he does not escape alive," wrote John Calvin to Theodore Beza. And he carried out his fearful menace; Servetus was put to death by the most horrible punishment ever invented--he was burned alive in a smoking fire. What did this mighty and noble man do to save a stranger and a scholar from so atrocious a fate? Let his eulogist, Prof. Adler, answer. It will not do to say that those were different times. A thousand voices were raised against the wanton and cruel murder of Servetus, but Calvin's was not among them. In fact, when Calvin himself was a fugitive and a wanderer, he had written in favor of religious tolerance, but no sooner did he become the Protestant pope of Geneva, than he developed into an exterminator of heresy by fire. Such is the "mighty and noble man" held up for our admiration. "Mighty" he was, but we ask again, was he mighty in a noble sense? Had Calvin been considered a "mighty and noble man" by the reformers who preceded Prof. Adler, there would have been no Ethical Culture societies in America today. Prof. Adler is indebted for the liberties which he enjoys in New York to the Voltaires and the Condorcets, who regarded Calvin and his "isms" as pernicious to the intellectual life of Europe, and did all they could to lead the people away from them. Think of the leader of the Ethical Societies exalting a persecutor, to say nothing of his abominable theology, or of his five _aliases,_ as "that mighty and noble man;--John Calvin!" We feel grateful to Prof. Adler for organizing the Ethical Societies in American, but we would be pleased to have him explain in what sense a man of Calvin's small sympathies and terrible deeds could be called both "noble and mighty." * * See "The Kingdom of God in Geneva Under Calvin."--M. M. Mangasarian. It was predicted some years ago that the founder of the Ethical Societies will before long return to the Jewish faith of his fathers. However this may be, we have seen, in his estimate of Jesus and John Calvin, evidences of his estrangement from rationalism, of which in his younger days he was so able a champion. In his criticism of the Russian scientist, Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, Prof. Adler, endorsing the popular estimate of Jesus, accepts also the popular attitude toward science. He appears to prefer the doctrine of special creation to the theory of evolution. We would not have believed this of Felix Adler if we did not have the evidence before us. We speak of this to show the relation between an exaggerated praise of a popular idol, and a denial of the conclusions of modern science. It is the popular view which Prof. Adler champions in both instances. In his criticism of Metchnikoff's able book, _The Nature of Man,_ Prof. Adler writes: And to account for the reason in man, this divine spark that has been set ablaze in him, it is not sufficient to point to an ape as our ancestor. If we are descended from an anthropoid ape on the physical side, we are not descended from him in any strict sense of the word on our rational side; for as life is born of life, so reason is born of reason, and if the anthropoid ape does not possess reason as we possess it, it cannot be said that on our rational side we are his progeny. If the above had been written fifty years ago, when the doctrine of evolution was a heresy, or by an orthodox clergyman of today, we would have taken no note of it. But coming as it does from the worthy founder of the Ethical Movement in America, it deserves attention. "If," says Dr. Adler, "we are descended from an anthropoid ape on the physical side, we are not descended from him in any strict sense of the word on our rational side." He is not sure, evidently, that even physically man is the successor of the anthropoid ape, but he is sure that "we are not descended from him...on our rational side." Is Dr. Adler, then, a dualist? Does he believe that there are two eternal sources, from one of which we get our bodies, and from the other our "rational side?" And why cannot Dr. Adler be a monist? He answers, "for as life is born of life, so reason is born of reason, and if the anthropoid ape does not possess reason as we possess it, it cannot be said that on our rational side we are his progeny." Not so, good doctor! There is no life without reason. Do we mean to say that the jelly-fish, the creeping worm, or the bud on the tree has reason? Yes; not as much reason as a horse or a dog, and certainly not as much as a Metchnikoff or an Adler, but these lower forms of life could not have survived but for the element of rationality in them. We may call this instinct, sensation, promptings of nature, but what's in a name? The difference between a pump and a watch is only a difference of mechanism. The stone and the soul represent different stages of progression, not different substances. If a charcoal can be transformed into a diamond, why may not nature, with the resources of infinity at her command, refine a stone into a soul? Let us not marvel at this; it is not less thinkable than the proposition of two independent sources of life, the one physical, the other rational. If "life is born of life," where did the first life come from? Let us have an answer to that question. And if, as the professor says, "reason is born of reason," how did the first reason come? Is it not very much simpler to think in monistic terms, than to separate life from reason, and mind from matter, as Prof. Adler does in the words quoted above? Why cannot mind be a state of matter? What objection is there to thinking that matter, refined, elevated, ripened, cultured, becomes both sentient and rational? If matter can feel, can see, can hear, can it not also think? Does not the horse see, hear and think? There is no lowering of the dignity of man to say that he tastes with his palate, sees with his eyes, hears with his ears, and thinks with the gray matter in his brain. Remove his optic nerve and he becomes blind, destroy the ganglia in his brain, and he becomes mindless. Gold is as much matter as the dust, but it is very much more precious; so is mind infinitely more precious than the matter which can only feel, see, taste or hear. "If the anthropoid ape does not possess reason as we possess it, it cannot be said that on our rational side we are his progeny," says Dr. Adler: But, suppose we were to say that if our remote African or Australian savage ancestors did not possess reason as we possess it, "it cannot be said that on our rational side we are their progeny," The child in the cradle does not possess reason "as we do," any more than does the anthropoid ape, but the beginnings of reason are in both. Let the worm climb and he will overtake man. This is a most hopeful, a most beautiful gospel. Its spirit is not one of isolation and exclusiveness from the rest of nature, but one of fellowship and sympathy. We are all--plants, trees, birds, bugs, animals--all members of one family, children at various ages and stages of growth of the same great mother,--Nature. We quote again: "When I ask him (Metchnikoff) whence do I come, he points to the simian stage which we have left behind; but I would look beyond that stage to some ultimate fount of being, to which all that is highest in me and in the world around me can be traced, a source of things equal to the best that I can conceive." But if there is "some ultimate fount of being," to which our "highest" nature "can be traced," whence did our lower nature come? Is Prof. Adler trying to say God? We do not object to the word, we only ask that he give the word a more intelligible meaning than has yet been given. If God is the "ultimate fount of being to which all that is highest in us can be traced," who or what is the ultimate fount to which all that is lowest in us can be traced? Let us have the names of the two ultimate founts of being, and also to what still more ultimate founts _these_ founts may be traced. In our opinion Dr. Adler has failed to do justice to Prof. Metchnikoff. It is no answer to the Darwinian Theory, which the Russian scientist accepts in earnest, and in all its fullness,--not fractionally, as Adler seems to do--to say that it does not explain everything. No one claims that it does. Not all the mystery of life has been cleared. Evolution has offered us only a new key, so to speak, with which to attempt the doors which have not yielded to metaphysics. And if the key has not opened all the doors, it has opened many. Prof. Adler seems to think that the doctrine of evolution explains only the physical descent of man; for the genesis of the spiritual man, he looks for some supernatural "fount" in the skies. Well, that is not science; that is theology, and Adler's estimate of Jesus is just as theological as his criticism of evolution. APPENDIX The argument in this volume will be better understood if we give to our readers the comments and criticisms which our little pamphlet, _Jesus a Myth,_ and _The Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate on the Historicity of Jesus,_ * called forth from orthodox and liberal clergymen. We shall present these together with our reply as they appeared on the Sunday Programs of the Independent Religious Society. * Price, 25c. Independent Religious Society, Orchestra Hall, Chicago. Criticism is welcome. If the criticism is just, it prevents us from making the same mistake twice; if it is unjust, it gives us an opportunity to correct the error our critic has fallen into. No one's knowledge is perfect. But the question is, does a teacher suppress the facts? Does he insist on remaining ignorant of the facts? FROM THE SUNDAY PROGRAMS I Now that the debate on one of the most vital questions of modern religious thought--The Historicity of Jesus--is in print, a few further reflections on some minor points in Dr. Crapsey's argument may add to the value of the published copy. REV. DR. CRAPSEY: "Now, I say this is the great law of religious variation, that in almost every instance, indeed, I think, in every single instance in history, all such movements begin with a _single_ personality." (p. 5, _Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate._) ANSWER: The only way this question can be settled is by appealing to history. Mithraism is a variant religion, which at one time spread over the Roman Empire and came near outclassing Christianity. Yet, Mithra, represented as a young man, and worshiped as a god, is a myth. How, then, did Mithraism arise? Religions, as well as their variations, appear as new branches do upon an old tree. The new branch is quite as much the product of the soil and climate as the parent tree. Like Brahmanism, Judaism, Shinto and the Babylonian and Egyptian Cults, which had no _single_ founders, Christianity is a _deposit_ to which Hellenic, Judaic and Latin tendencies have each contributed its quota. But the popular imagination craves a Maker for the Universe, a founder for Rome, a first man for the human race, and a great chief as the starter of the tribe. In the same way it fancies a divine, or semi-divine being as the author of its _credo._ Because Mohammed is historical, it does not follow that Moses is also historical. That argument would prove too much. REV. DR. CRAPSEY: "We would be in the same position that the astronomers were when they discovered the great planet Uranus--from their knowledge of the movements of these bodies they were convinced that these perturbations could be occasioned by nothing less than a great planet lying outside of the then view of mankind." (p. 6, _Ibid._) ANSWER: But the astronomers did not rest until they converted the _probability_ of a near-by planet into _demonstration._ Jesus is still a probability. REV. DR. CRAPSEY: "We have of Jesus a very distinctly outlined history. There is nothing vague about him." (p. 12, _Ibid_.) ANSWER: But in the same sentence the doctor takes all this back by adding: "There are a great many things in his history that are not historical." If so, then we do not possess "a very distinctly outlined history," but at best a mixture of fact and fiction. REV. DR. CRAPSEY: "We can follow Jesus' history from the time that he entered upon his public career until the time that career closed, just as easily as we can follow Caesar, etc." (p. 12, _Ibid_.) ANSWER: How long was "the time from the opening of Jesus' public career until the time that it closed?"--One year!--according to the three gospels. It sounds quite a period to speak of "following his public career" from beginning to end, especially when compared with Caesar's, until it is remembered that the entire public career of Jesus covers the space of only one year. This is a most decisive argument against the historicity of Jesus. With the exception of one year, his whole life is hid in impenetrable darkness. We know nothing of his childhood, nothing of his old age, if he lived to be old, and of his youth, we know just enough to fill up a year. Under the circumstances, there is no comparison between the public career of a Caesar or a Socrates covering from fifty to seventy years of time, and that of a Jesus of whose life only one brief year is thrown upon the canvas. An historical Jesus who lived only a year! REV. DR. CRAPSEY: The Christ I admit to be purely mythological....the word Christ, you know, means the anointed one....they (the Hebrews) expected the coming of that Christ....But that is purely a mythical title. (_The Debate_--p. 35.) ANSWER: Did the Hebrews then expect the coming of a _title?_ Were they looking forward to seeing the ancient throne of David restored by a _title?_ By Messiah or Christ the Jews did not mean a _name,_ but a man--a real flesh and bone savior, anointed or appointed by heaven. But if the 'Christ' which the Hebrews expected was "purely mythical," what makes the same 'Christ' in the supposed Tacitus passage historical? The New Testament Jesus is Jesus Christ, and the apostle John speaks of those "who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh"--mark his words--not Christ, but _Jesus Christ._ The apostle does not separate the two names. There were those, then, in the early church who denied the historicity, not of a _title_,--for what meaning would there be in denying that a _title_ "is come in the flesh,"--but of a person, known as _Jesus Christ._ And what could the doctor mean when he speaks of a _title_ being "mythological?" There are no mythological titles. Titles are words, and we do not speak of the historicity or the non-historicity of words. We cannot say of words as we do of men, that some are historical and others are mythical. William Tell is a myth--not the name, but the man the name stands for. _William_ is the name of many real people, and so is _Tell._ There were many anointed kings, who are historical, and the question is, Is Jesus Christ--or Jesus the Anointed--also historical? To answer that Jesus is historical, but The Anointed is not, is to evade the question. When Mosheim declares that "The prevalent opinion among early Christians was that Christ existed in appearance only," he could not have meant by 'Christ' only a title. There is no meaning in saying that a man's title "existed in appearance only?" We do not speak of a title being born, or crucified; and when some early Christians denied that Jesus Christ was ever born or ever crucified, they had in mind not a _title_ but a _person._ In conclusion: If the 'Christ' by whom the Hebrews meant, not a mere name, but a man, was "purely mythological," as the reverend debater plainly admits (see pages 35, 36 of _The Debate_)--that is, if when the Hebrews said: "Christ _is_ coming," they were under the influence of an illusion,--why may not the Christians when they say that 'Christ' _has_ come, be also under the influence of an illusion? The Hebrew illusion said, Christ was coming; the Christian illusion says, Christ has come. The Hebrews had no evidence that 'Christ' was coming, although that expectation was a great factor in their religion; and the Christians have no more evidence for saying 'Christ' has come, although that belief is a great factor in _their_ religion. II The minister of the South Congregational Church, who heard the debate, has publicly called your lecturer an "unscrupulous sophist," who "practices imposition upon a popular audience" and who "put forth sentence after sentence which every scholar present knew to be a perversion of the facts so outrageous as to be laughable." As one of the leading morning papers said, the above "is not a reply to arguments made by Mr. Mangasarian." Invited by several people to prove these charges, the Reverend replies: "In the absence of any full report of what he (M. M. Mangasarian) said, or of any notes taken at the time, I am unable to furnish you with quotations." When the Reverend gentleman was addressing the public his memory was strong enough to enable him to say, "sentence after sentence was put forth by Mr. Mangasarian which every scholar present knew to be a perversion of the facts." But when called upon to mention a few of them, his memory forsakes him. Our critic is not careful to make his statements agree with the fact. One instance, however, he is able to remember which "when it fell upon my ears," he writes, "it struck me with such amazement, that it completely drove from my mind a series of most astonishing statements of various sorts which had just preceded it." We refrain from commenting on the excuse given to explain so significant a failure of memory. The instance referred to was about the denial of some in apostolic times that "Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." But as Mr. Mangasarian had hardly spoken more than twenty minutes when he touched upon this point, it is not likely that it could have been "preceded by a series of most astonishing statements of various sorts." And what was the statement which, while it crippled his memory, it did not moderate his zeal? We will let him present it himself; "I refer to the use he made of one or two passages in the New Testament, mentioning some who deny 'that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.' 'So that,' he went on to say, 'there were those even among the early Christians themselves who denied that Jesus had come in the flesh. Of course, they were cast out as heretics.' _Here came an impressive pause,_ and then without further explanation or qualification, he proceeded to something else." This is his most serious complaint. Does it justify hasty language? St. John writes of those who "confessed not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." The natural meaning of the words is that even in apostolic times some denied the flesh and bone Jesus, and regarded him as an idea or an apparition--something like the Holy Ghost. All church historians admit the existence of sects that denied the New Testament Jesus--the Gnostics, the Essenes, the Ebionites, the Marcionites, the Cerinthians, etc. As the debate is now in print, further comment on this would not be necessary. Incidents like the above, however, should change every lukewarm rationalist into a devoted soldier of truth and honor. To us, more important than anything presented on this subject, is this evidence of the existence of a very early dispute among the first disciples of Jesus on the question of whether he was real or merely an apparition. The Apostle John, in his epistle, clearly states that even among the faithful there were those _who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh._ This is very important. As early as John's time, if he is the writer of the epistle, Jesus' historicity was questioned. The gospel of John also hints at the existence in the primitive church of Christians who did not accept the reality of Jesus. When doubting Thomas is told of the resurrection, he answers that he must feel the prints of the nails with his fingers before he will believe, and Jesus not only grants the wishes of this skeptical apostle, but he also eats in the presence of them all, which story is told evidently to silence the critics who maintained that Jesus was only a spirit, "the Wisdom of God," an emanation, a light, and not real flesh and bones. III The same clergyman, to whom a copy of the _Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate_ was sent, has written a five page criticism of it. The strength of a given criticism is determined by asking: Does it in any way impair the soundness of the argument against which it is directed? Critics have discovered mistakes in Darwin and Haeckel, but are these mistakes of such a nature as to prove fatal to the theory of evolution? To be effective, criticism must be aimed at the _heart_ of an argument. A man's life is not in his hat, which could be knocked off, or in his clothes--which could be torn in places by his assailant without in the least weakening his opponent's position. It is the blow that disables which counts. To charge that we have said 'Gospel,' where we should have said 'Epistle,' or 'Trullum' instead of 'Trullo'; that it was not Barnabas, but Nicholas who denied the Gospel Jesus, and that there were variations of this denial, does not at all disprove the fact that, according to the Christian scriptures themselves, among the apostolic followers there were those to whom Jesus Christ was only a phantom. Milman, the Christian historian, states that the belief about Jesus Christ "adopted by almost all the Gnostic sects," was that Jesus Christ _was but an apparent human being, an impassive phantom,_ (_History of Christianity._ Vol. 2, p. 61). Was ever such a view entertained of Caesar, Socrates or of any other historical character? On page 28 of _The Debate_ we say: "The Apostle John complains of those who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." To this the clergyman replies: "The Apostle John never made any such complaint. Critical scholarship is pretty well agreed that he did not write the epistles ascribed to him." We have a lecture on "How the Bible was Invented," and this clergyman's admission that at least parts of the bible _are_ invented is very gratifying. In a former communication, this same clergyman tried to prove that the Apostle John's complaint does not at all imply a denial of the historical Jesus. In his recent letter he denies that the apostle ever made such a complaint. John did not write the epistles, then, which the Christian church for two thousand years, and at a cost of millions of dollars, and at the greater sacrifice of truth and progress has been proclaiming to the world as the work of the inspired John! The strenuous efforts to get around this terrible text in the "Holy Bible," show what a decisive argument it is. Every exertion to meet it only tightens the text, like a rope, around the neck of the belief in the historical Jesus. Our desire, in engaging in this argument, is to turn the thought and love of the world from a mythical being, to humanity, which is both real and present. On page 22 of _The Debate,_ we say: "St. Paul tells us that he lived in Jerusalem at a time when Jesus must have been holding the attention of the city; yet he never met him." To this the clergyman replies: "Paul tells us nothing of the kind. In a speech which is put into the mouth of Paul"--_put into the mouth of Paul!_ Is this another instance of forgery? John did not write the epistles, and Paul's speech in the Book of Acts was put into his mouth! Will the clergyman tell us which parts of the bible are _not_ invented? Let us make a remark: The church people blame us for not believing in the trustworthiness of the bible; but when we reply that if the bible is trustworthy, then Paul must have been in Jerusalem with Jesus, and John admits that some denied the historical Jesus, we are blamed for not knowing better than to prove anything by quoting Paul and John as if everything they said was trustworthy. In other words, only those passages in the bible are authentic which the clergy quote; those which the rationalists quote are spurious. In the meantime, the authentic as well as the spurious passages together compose the churches' _Word of God_. IV In a letter of protest to Mr. Mangasarian, Rabbi Hirsch, of this city, asks: "Was it right for you to assume that I was correctly reported by the _News?"_ After stating what he had said in his interview with the reporter, the Rabbi continues: "But said I to the reporter all these possible allusions do not prove that Jesus existed....You see in reality I agreed with you. I personally believe Jesus lived. But I have no proof for this beyond my feeling that the movement with which the name is associated could even for Paul not have taken its nomenclature without a personal substratum. But, and this I told the reporter also, this does not prove that the Jesus of the Gospels is historical." Rabbi Hirsch writes in this same letter that he did not say Jesus was mentioned in the Rabbinical Books. The News reports the Rabbi as saying, "But we know through the Rabbinical Books that Jesus lived." A committee from our Society waited on the editor of the _Daily News_ for an explanation. The editor promised to locate the responsibility for the contradiction. As the report in the _News_ was allowed to stand for four days without correction, and as Rabbi Hirsch did not even privately, by letter or by phone, disclaim responsibility for the article, to Mr. Mangasarian, the latter claims he was justified in assuming that the published report was reliable. But it is with pleasure that the Independent Religious Society gives Rabbi Hirsch this opportunity to explain his position. We hope he will also let us know whether he said to the reporter: "I do not believe in Mr. Mangasarian's argument that Christianity has inspired massacres, wars and inquisitions. It is a stock argument and not to the point." This is extraordinary; and as the Rabbi does not question the statement, we infer that it is a correct report of what he said. Though we have room for only one quotation from the Jewish-Christian Scriptures, it will be enough to show the relation of religion to persecution: "And thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord, thy God, shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them." Why were women put to death as witches? Why were Quakers hanged? For what "economic and political reasons," which the Rabbi thinks are responsible for persecution, was the blind Derby girl who doubted the Real Presence, burned alive at the age of twenty-two? V The Rev. W. E. Barton, of Oak Park, is one of the ablest Congregational ministers in the West. He has recently expressed himself on the Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate. Let us hear what he has to say on the historicity of Jesus. The Reverend gentleman begins by an uncompromising denial of our statements, and ends by virtually admitting all that we contend for. This morning we will write of his denials; next Sunday, of his admissions. "Mr. Mangasarian," says Dr. Barton, "has not given evidence of his skill as a logician or of his accuracy in the use of history." Then he proceeds to apologize, in a way, for the character of his reply to our argument, by saying that "Mr. Mangasarian's arguments, fortunately, do not require to be taken very seriously, for they are not in themselves serious." Notwithstanding this protest, Dr. Barton proceeds to do his best to reply to our position. In _The Debate_ we call attention to the fact that according to the New Testament, Paul was in Jerusalem when Jesus was teaching and performing his miracles there. Yet Paul never seems to have met Jesus, or to have heard of his teachings or miracles. To this Dr. Barton replies: "We cannot know and are not bound to explain where Paul was on the few occasions when Jesus publicly visited Jerusalem." The above reply, we are compelled to say, much to our regret, is not even honest. Without actually telling any untruths, it suggests indirectly two falsehoods: First, that Jesus was not much in Jerusalem--that he was there only on a few occasions; and that, therefore, it is not strange that Paul did not see him or hear of his preaching or miracles; and second, that Paul was absent from the city when Jesus was there. The question is not how often Jesus visited Jerusalem, but how conspicuous was the part he played there. He may have visited Jerusalem only once in all his life, yet if he preached there daily in the synagogues; if he performed great miracles there; if he marched through the streets followed by the palm-waving multitude shouting _Hosanna,_ etc.; if he attacked the high-priest and the pharisees there, to which latter class Paul belonged; and if he was arrested, tried and publicly executed there; and if his teaching stirred the city from center to circumference,--it would not be honest to intimate that the "few" times Jesus visited Jerusalem, Paul was engaged elsewhere. The Reverend debater attempts to belittle the Jerusalem career of Jesus, by suggesting that he was not there much, when according to the Gospels, it was in that city that his ministry began and culminated. Again, to our argument that Paul never refers to any of the teachings of Jesus, the Reverend replies: "Nor is it of consequence that Paul _seldom_ quotes the words of Jesus." _"Seldom"_---would imply that Paul quotes Jesus sometimes. We say Paul gives not a single quotation to prove that he knew of a teaching Jesus. He had heard of a crucified, risen, Christ--one who had also instituted a bread and wine supper, but of Jesus as a _teacher_ and of his _teaching,_ Paul is absolutely ignorant. But by saying "Paul _seldom_ quotes Jesus," Dr. Barton tries to produce the impression that Paul quotes Jesus, though not very often, which is not true. There is not a single miracle, parable or moral teaching attributed to Jesus in the Gospels of which Paul seems to possess any knowledge whatever. Nor is it true that it is of no consequence that "Paul seldom quotes the words of Jesus." For it proves that the Gospel Jesus was unknown to Paul, and that he was created at a later date. Once more; we say that the only Jesus Paul knew was the one he met in a trance on his way to Damascus. To this the pastor of the First Congregational Church of Oak Park replies in the same we-do-not-care-to-explain style. He says: "Nor is it of consequence that Paul values comparatively lightly, having known him in the flesh." The words "Paul valued comparatively lightly" are as misleading as the words "Paul _seldom_ quotes Jesus." Paul _never_ quotes Jesus' teachings, and he _never_ met Jesus in the flesh. The clergyman's words, however, convey the impression that Paul knew Jesus in the flesh, but he valued that, knowledge "comparatively lightly," that is to say, he did not think much of it. And Dr. Barton is one of the foremost divines of the country. And now about his admissions: VI I. "The Gospels, by whomever written," says the clergyman, "are reliable." By _whomever_ written! After two thousand years, it is still uncertain to whom we are indebted for the story of Jesus. What, in Dr. Barton's opinion, could have influenced the framers of the life of Jesus to suppress their identity? And why does not the church instead of printing the words, "The Gospel according to Matthew or John," which is _not true,_--print, "The Gospel by _whomever_ written"? II. "At the very least, four of Paul's epistles are genuine," says the same clergyman. Only four? Paul has thirteen epistles in the bible, and of only four of them is Dr. Barton certain. What are the remaining nine doing in the Holy Bible? And which 'four' does the clergyman accept as doubtlessly "genuine?" Only yesterday all thirteen of Paul's letters were infallible, and they are so still wherever no questions are asked about them. It is only where there is intelligence and inquiry that "four of them" at least are reliable. As honesty and culture increase, the number of inspired epistles decreases. What the Americans are too enlightened to accept, the church sends to the _heathen_. III. "It is true that early a sect grew up which....held that Jesus could not have had a body of carnal flesh; but they did not question that he had really lived." According to Dr. Barton, these early Christians did not deny that Jesus had really lived,--they only denied that _Jesus could have had a body of carnal flesh_. We wonder how many kinds of flesh there are according to Dr. Barton. Moreover, does not the bible teach that Jesus was tempted in all things, and was a man of like passions, as ourselves? The good man controls his appetites and passions, but his flesh is not any different from anybody else's. If Jesus did not have a body like ours, then he did not exist as a human being. Our point is, that if the New Testament is reliable, in the time of the apostles themselves, the Gnostics, an influential body of Christians, denied that Jesus was any more than an imaginary existence. "But," pleads the clergyman, "these sects believed that Jesus was real, though not carnal flesh." What kind of flesh was he then? If by _carnal_ the Gnostics meant 'sensual,' then, the apostles in denouncing them for rejecting a carnal Jesus, must have held that Jesus was carnal or sensual. How does the Reverend Barton like the conclusion to which his own reasoning leads him? IV. "It is true that there were literary fictions in the age following the apostles." This admission is in answer to the charge that even in the first centuries the Christians were compelled to resort to forgery to prove the historicity of Jesus. The doctor admits the charge, except that he calls it by another name. The difference between fiction and forgery is this: the former is, what it claims to be; the latter is a lie parading as a truth. Fiction is honest because it does not try to deceive. Forgery is dishonest because its object is to deceive. If the Gospel was a novel, no one would object to its mythology, but pretending to be historical, it must square its claims with the facts, or be branded as a forgery. V. "We may not have the precise words Jesus uttered; the portrait may be colored;....tradition may have had its influence; but Jesus was real." A most remarkable admission from a clerical! It concedes all that higher criticism contends for. We are not sure either of Jesus' words or of his character, intimates the Reverend preacher. Precisely. In commenting on our remark that in the eighth century "Pope Hadrian called upon the Christian world to think of Jesus as a man," Dr. Barton replies with considerable temper: "To date people's right to think of Jesus as a man from that decree is not to be characterized by any polite term." Our neighbor, in the first place, misquotes us in his haste. We never presumed to deny anyone the right to think of Jesus what he pleased, before or after the eighth century. (_The Debate,_ p. 28.) We were calling attention to Pope Hadrian's order to replace the lamb on the cross by the figure of a man. But by what _polite_ language is the conduct of the Christian church--which to this day prints in its bibles "Translated from the Original Greek," when no _original_ manuscripts are in existence--to be characterized? Dr. Barton's efforts to save his creed remind us of the Japanese proverb: "It is no use mending the lid, if the pot be broken." VII The most remarkable clerical effort thus far, which _The Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate_ has called forth, is that of the Rev. E. V. Shayler, rector of Grace Episcopal Church of Oak Park. "In answer to your query, which I received, I beg to give the following statement. Facts, not theories. The date of your own letter 1908 tells what? 1908 years after what? The looking forward of the world to Him." Rev. Shayler has an original way of proving the historicity of Jesus. Every time we date our letters, suggests the clergyman, we prove that Jesus lived. The ancient Greeks reckoned time by the Olympiads, which fact, according to this interesting clergyman, ought to prove that the Olympic games were instituted by the God Heracles or Hercules, son of Zeus; the Roman Chronology began with the building of Rome by Romulus, which by the same reasoning would prove that Romulus and Remus, born of Mars, and nursed by a she-wolf, are historical. Rev. Shayler has forgotten that the Christian era was not introduced into Europe until the sixth century, and Dionysius, the monkish author of the era, did not compute time from the birth of Jesus, but from the day on which the Virgin Mary met an angel from heaven. This date prevailed in many countries until 1745. Would the date on a letter prove that an angel appeared to Mary and hailed her as the future Mother of God? According to this clergyman, scientists, instead of studying the crust of the earth and making geological investigations to ascertain the probable age of the earth, ought to look at the date in the margin of the bible which tells exactly the world's age. Rev. Shayler continues: "The places where he was born, labored and died are still extant, and have no value apart from such testimony." While this is amusing, we are going to deny ourselves the pleasure of laughing at it; we will do our best to give it a serious answer. If the existence of such a country as Palestine proves that Jesus is real, the existence of Switzerland must prove that William Tell is historical; and the existence of an Athens must prove that Athene and Apollo really lived; and from the fact that there is an England, Rev. Shayler would prove that Robin Hood and his band really lived in 1160. The Reverend knows of another 'fact' which he thinks proves Jesus without a doubt: "A line of apostles and bishops coming right down from him by his appointment to Anderson of Chicago," shows that Jesus is historical. It does, but only to Episcopalians. The Catholics and the other sects do not believe that Anderson is a descendant of Jesus. Did the priests of Baal or Moloch prove that these beings existed? The Reverend has another argument: "The Christian Church--when, why and how did it begin?" Which Christian church, brother? Your own church began with Henry the Eighth in 1534, with persecution and murder, when the king, his hands wet with the blood of his own wives and ministers, made himself the supreme head of the church in England. The Methodist church began with John Wesley not much over a hundred years ago; the Presbyterian church began with John Calvin who burned his guest on a slow fire in Geneva about three hundred years ago; and the Lutheran church began with Martin Luther in the sixteenth century, the man who said over his own signature: "It was I, Martin Luther, who slew all the peasants in the Peasants War, for I commanded them to be slaughtered....But I throw the responsibility on our Lord God who instructed me to give this order;" and the Roman Catholic church, the parent of the smaller churches--all chips from the same block--began its real career with the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, who hanged his father-in-law, strangled his brother-in-law, murdered his nephew, beheaded his eldest son, and killed his wife. Gibbon writes of Constantine that "the same year of his reign in which he convened the council of Nice was polluted by the execution, or rather murder, of his eldest son." But our clerical neighbor from Oak Park has one more argument: "Why is Sunday observed instead of Saturday?" Well, why? Sun-day is the day of the Sun, whose glorious existence in the lovely heavens over our heads has never been doubted; it was the day which the Pagans dedicated to the Sun. _Sunday_ existed before the Jesus story was known,--the anniversary of whose supposed resurrection falls in March one year, and in April another. If Jesus rose at all, he rose on a certain day, and the apostles must have known the date. Why then is there a different date every year? Rev. Shayler concludes: "Haven't time to go deeper now," and he intimates that to deny his 'facts' is either to be a fool or a "liar." We will not comment on this. We are interested in arguments, not in epithets. VIII One of our Sunday programs, the other day, found its way into a church. It went farther; it made its appearance in the pulpit. "In my hand I hold the notice of a publication bearing the title _Is Jesus a Myth?"_ said Dr. Boyle. "This, too, just as though Paul never bore testimony." This gave the clergyman a splendid opportunity to present in clear and convincing form the evidence for the reality of Jesus. But one thing prevented him:--the lack of evidence. Therefore, after announcing the subject, he dismissed it, by remarking that Paul's testimony was enough. The Rev. Morton Culver Hartzell, in a letter, offers the same argument. "Let Mr. Mangasarian first disprove Paul," he writes. The argument in a nutshell is this: Jesus is historical because he is guaranteed by Paul. But _who_ guarantees Paul? Aside from the fact that the Jesus of Paul is essentially a different Jesus from the gospel Jesus there still remains the question, Who is Paul? Let us see how much the church scholars themselves know about Paul: "The place and manner and occasion of his death are not _less uncertain_ than the facts of his later life...The chronology of the rest of his life is as uncertain...We have no means of knowing when he was born, or how long he lived, or at what dates the several events of his life took place." Referring to the epistles of Paul, the same authority says: "The chief of these preliminary questions is the genuineness of the epistles bearing Paul's name, which _if they be his_"--yes, IF-- The Christian scholar whose article on Paul is printed in the _Britannica_, and from which we are now quoting, gives further expression to this uncertainty by adding that certain of Paul's epistles "have given rise to disputes which cannot easily be settled in the absence of collateral evidence...The pastoral epistles...have given rise to still graver questions, and are probably even _less_ defensible." Let the reader remember that the above is not from a rationalist, but from the Rev. Edwin Hatch, D. D., Vice-Principal, St. Mary Hall, Oxford, England. Were we disposed to quote rationalist authorities, the argument against Paul would be far more decisive. But we are satisfied to rest the case on orthodox admissions alone. The strongest argument then of clergymen who have attempted an answer to our position is something like this: Jesus is historical because a man by the name of Paul says so, though we do not know much about Paul. It is just such evidence as the above that led Prof. Goldwin Smith to exclaim: "Jesus has flown. I believe the legend of Jesus was made by many minds working under a great religious impulse--one man adding a parable, another an exhortation, another a miracle story;"--and George Eliot to write: "The materials for a real life of Christ do not exist." In the effort to untie the Jesus-knot by Paul, the church has increased the number of knots to two. In other words, the church has proceeded on the theory that two uncertainties make a certainty. We promised to square also with the facts of history our statement that the chief concern of the church, Jewish, Christian, or Mohammedan, is not righteousness, but orthodoxy. IX Speaking in this city, Rev. W. H. Wray Boyle of Lake Forest, declared that unbelief was responsible for the worst crimes in history. He mentioned the placing. --"of a nude woman on a pedestal in the city of Paris. --"the assassination of William McKinley. --"The same unbelief sent a murderer down the isle of a church in Denver to pluck the symbol of the sacrament from the hands of a priest and slay him at the altar." The story of a "nude woman," etc., is pure fiction, and that the two murders were caused by unbelief is mere assumption. To help his creed, the preacher resorts to fable. We shall prove our position by quoting _facts_: I. HYPATIA * was dragged into a Christian church by monks in Alexandria, and before the altar she was stripped of her clothing and cut in pieces with oyster shells, and murdered. Her innocent blood stained the hands of the clergy, who also handle the Holy Sacraments. She was murdered not by a crazed individual but by the orders of the bishop of Alexandria. How does the true story of Hypatia compare with the fable of "a nude woman placed on a pedestal in the city of Paris?" The Reverend must answer, or never tell an untruth again. * See Author's, The Martyrdom of Hypatia. Hypatia was murdered in church, and by the clergy, because she was not orthodox. II. POLTROT, the Protestant, in the 16th century assassinated Francois, the Catholic duke of Guise, in France, and the leaders of the church, instead of disclaiming responsibility for the act, publicly praised the assassin, and Theodore Beza, the colleague of Calvin, promised him a crown in heaven. (_De l'etat etc, p. 82._ Quoted by Jules Simon.) III. JAMES CLEMENT, a Catholic, assassinated Henry III. For this act the clergy placed his portrait on the altar in the churches between two great lighted candle-sticks. Because he had killed a heretic prince, the Catholics presented the assassin's mother with a purse. (_Esprit de la Ligue I. III. p. 14._) If it was unbelief that inspired the murder of McKinley, what inspired the assassins of Hypatia and Henry III? We read in the Bible that Gen. Sisera, a heathen, having lost a battle, begged for shelter at the tent of Jael, a friendly woman, but of the Bible faith. Jael assured the unfortunate stranger that he was safe in her tent. The tired warrior fell asleep from great weariness. Then Jael picked up a tent-peg and with a hammer in her hand "walked softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground... So he died." The BIBLE calls this assassin "blessed above women." (_Judge IV. 18, etc._) She had killed a heretic. In each of the instances given above, the assassin is honored because he committed murder in the interest of the faith. We ask this clergyman and his colleagues who are only too anxious to charge every act of violence to unbelief in their creeds--What about the crimes of _believers_? 
50715	----	DE TRIBUS IMPOSTORIBUS, A. D. 1230. THE THREE IMPOSTORS TRANSLATED (with Notes and Comments) FROM A FRENCH MANUSCRIPT OF THE WORK WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1716, WITH A DISSERTATION ON THE ORIGINAL TREATISE AND A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE VARIOUS EDITIONS BY ALCOFRIBAS NASIER, THE LATER. PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR THE SUBSCRIBERS. 1904. AN INDEX EXPURGATORIUS. The man who marks or leaves with pages bent The volume that some trusting friend has lent, Or keeps it over long, or scruples not To let its due returning be forgot; The man who guards his books with miser's care, And does not joy to lend them, and to share; The man whose shelves are dust begrimed and few, Who reads when he has nothing else to do; The man who raves of classic writers, but Is found to keep them with their leaves uncut; The man who looks on literature as news, And gets his culture from the book reviews; Who loves not fair, clean type, and margins wide-- Or loves these better than the thought inside; Who buys his books to decorate the shelf, Or gives a book he has not read himself; Who reads from priggish motives, or for looks, Or any reason save the love of books-- Great Lord, who judgest sins of all degrees, Is there no little private hell for these? Edition 352 copies. 12 on large paper. INTRODUCTION. This pamphlet in its present form is the result of an inquiry into the characters represented in a historical grade of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, and the probability of their having existed at the date mentioned in the said grade. Few appeared to have any very clear notion of the relation of the characters to the period--Frederick II. being confounded with his grand-father, Frederick Barbarossa--and the date of the supposed foundation of the Order of Teutonic Knights, 1190, being placed as the date of the papacy of Oronata, otherwise Honorius III. Inquiry being made of one in authority as to the facts in the case--he being supposed to know--elicited the reply that the matter had been called to his attention some months previous by an investigator--now deceased--but the matter had been dropped. It was also surmised by the same authority that an error might have been made by one of the committee having ritualistic matter in charge--but he, having also been gathered to his fathers, was not available for evidence. It is stated that the action took place when Frederick II. was Emperor of Germany, and Honorius III. presided over spiritual conditions; but this Pope, according to Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, reigned 1216-1227, and the dissertation on the pamphlet names Gregory IX., successor to Honorius, (1227-1241) as the Pope against whom the treatise was written. The infamous book mentioned in the representation no one seemed to have any knowledge of. Inquiry made concerning the treatise at various libraries supposed to possess it, and of various individuals who might know something of it, elicited but the information that it was purely "legendary," that, "it had no existence except by title," and that "it was an item of literature entirely lost." Having been a book collector and a close reader of book catalogs for over twenty-five years, I had never noted any copy offered for sale, but a friend with the same mania for books, had seen a copy mentioned in a German catalog, and being interested in "de tribus Impostoribus" for reasons herein mentioned, had sent for and procured the same--an edition of a Latin version compiled from a Ms. 1598, with a foreword in German. The German was familiar to him, but the Latin was not available. About the same time I found in a catalog of a correspondent of mine at London, a book entitled "Les Trois Imposteurs. De Tribus Impostoribus et dissertation sur le livre des Trois Imposteurs, sm. 4to. Saec. XVIII.," and succeeded in purchasing it. The manuscript is well written, and apparently by two different hands, which would be probable from the facts set forth in the "Dissertation." A copy of the translation from the Latin is probably deposited in the library of Duke Eugene de Subaudio as set forth in the colophon at end of the manuscript. The manuscript is written in the French of the period, and is dated in the colophon as 1716. The discovery of the original Latin document is mentioned in the "Dissertation" as about 1706. It has been annotated by another hand, as shown by foot notes, and several inserted sheets containing notes in still another hand, were written evidently about 1746, as one of the sheets is a portion of a letter postmarked 4e Aout in latter year. I append a bibliography from Weller's Latin reprint of 1598 which will show that the pamphlet has "been done before"; but it will be noted that English versions are not so plenty as those in other tongues, and but one is known to have been printed in the United States. I must acknowledge my indebtedness to Doctissimus vir Harpocrates, Col. F. Montrose, and Maj. Otto Kay for valued assistance in languages with which I am not thoroughly familiar, and also to Mr. David Hutcheson, of the Library of Congress, for favors granted. Ample apologies will be found for the treatise in the several introductions quoted from various editions, and those fond of literary curiosities will certainly be gratified by its appearance in the twentieth century. A. N. BIBLIOGRAPHY. In 1846, Emil Weller published "De Tribus Impostoribus," and also a later edition in 1876, at Heilbronn, from a Latin copy of one of the only four known to be in existence and printed in 1598. The copy from which it was taken, consisting of title and forty-six leaves, quarto, is at the Royal Library at Dresden, and was purchased for one hundred gulden. The other three, according to Ebert in his "Bibliographical Lexicon," are as follows: one in the Royal Library at Paris, one in the Crevanna Library and the other in the library of Renouard. An edition was published at Rackau, in Germany, in 1598, and Thomas Campanella (1636), in his "Atheismus Triumphatus," gives the year of its first publication as 1538. Florimond Raimond (otherwise Louis Richeome,) claims to have seen a copy owned by his teacher, Peter Ramus, who died in 1572. All the talk of theological critics that the booklet was first printed in the seventeenth century, is made out of whole cloth. There is nothing modern about the edition of 1598. It may be compared, for example, with Martin Wittel's print of the last decade of the sixteenth century, by which it is claimed that it could not have been printed then, as the paper and printing of that period closely resembles that of the eighteenth century. With the exception of the religious myths, few writings of the dark ages have had as many hypotheses advanced in regard to origin as there have been regarding this one. According to John Brand it had been printed at Krakau, according to others, in Italy or Hungary as a translation of an Arabic original existing somewhere in France. William Postel mentions a tract "de Tribus Prophetis," and gives Michael Servetus, a Spanish doctor, as the author. The Capuchin Monk Joly, in Vol. III of his "Conference of Mysteries," assures us that the Huguenot, Nic. Barnaud, in 1612, on account of an issue of "de Tribus Impostoribus," was excommunicated as its author. Johann Mueller, in his "Besiegten Atheismus," (Conquered Atheism), mentions a certain Nachtigal who published at Hague, in 1614, "De Trib. Imp.," and was therefore exiled. Mosheim and Rousset accuse Frederick II as the author with the assistance of his Chancellor, Petrus de Vineis. Vineis, however, declares himself opposed even to the fundamental principles of the book, and in his "Epist. Lib. 1, ch. 31, p. 211," says he never had any idea of it. Others place the authorship with Averroes, Peter Arretin and Petrus Pomponatius. Heinrich Ernst accuses the above mentioned Postel. Postel attributes it to Servetus, who, in turn, places it at the door of the Huguenot Barnaud. The instigator of the treatise, it is claimed, should have been Julius Cesar Vanini, who was burned at Toulouse in 1619, or Ryswick, who suffered at the stake in Rome in 1612. Other persons accused of the authorship are Macchiavelli, Rabelais, Erasmus, Milton (John, born 1608,) a Mahometan named Merula, Dolet, and Giordano Bruno. According to Campanella, to whom the authorship was attributed occasionally, Muret, or Joh. Franz. Poggio, were responsible. Browne says it was Bernhard Ochini, and Maresius lays it to Johann Boccaccio. The "three cheats" are Moses, Jesus and Mahomet, but the tracts of each of the latter alleged authors treat only of Moses, of whom they say that his assertions in Genesis will not hold water, and cannot be proved. Weller, in his edition of 1876, speaking of the copy of 1598, says that this issue should never be compared with any of the foregoing. Many authors have written "de Tribus Impostoribus" because they had some special object in view; for instance, John Bapt. Morinus, when he edited, under the name of Vincentius Panurgius, in Paris, 1654, an argument against Gassendi, Neure, and Bernier. Joh. Evelyn with a "Historia de tribus hujus seculi famosis Impostoribus," Padre Ottomano, Mahomed Bei, otherwise Joh. Mich. Cigala, and Sabbatai Sevi (English 1680, German 1669,) [1] Christian Kortholt "de Tribus Impostoribus Magnus," (Kiel 1680 and Hamburg 1701,) against Herbert, Hobbes and Spinosa, Hadrian Beverland, Perini del Vago, Equitis de Malta, "Epistolium ad Batavum in Brittania hospitem de tribus Impostoribus," (Latin and English 1709.) Finally, Michael Alberti, under the name of Andronicus, published a "Tractatus Medico-historicus de tribus Impostoribus," which he named the three great Tempters of Humanity: 1. Tea and Coffee. 2. Laziness. 3. Home apothecaries. Cosmopoli Bey (Peter Martin Roman), issued at Russworn in Rostock in 1731, and a new edition of same treatise--De Trib. Imp.--1738 and 1756. For a long time scholars confused the genuine Latin treatise with a later one. De la Monnoye fabricated a long dissertation in which he denied the existence of the original Latin edition, but received a well merited refutation at the hands of P. F. Arpe. The false book is French--"La vie et l'esprit de Mr. Benoit Spinoza." [2] The author of the first part was Hofrath Vroes, in Hague, and the second was written by Dr. Lucas. It made its first appearance at Hague 1719, and later in 1721, under the title "de Tribus Impostoribus," des Trois Imposteurs. Frankfort-on-the-Main at the expense of the Translator (i. e. Rotterdam.) Richard la Selve prepared a third edition under the original title of "The Life of Spinoza," by one of his Disciples. Hamburgh (really in Holland,) 1735. In 1768 there was printed by M. M. Rey, at Amsterdam, a new edition called a "Treatise of the Three Impostors;" immediately after another edition appeared at Yverdoner 1768, another in Holland 1775, and a later one in Germany 1777. The contents of "L'esprit de Spinoza" (German) by Spinoza II, or Subiroth Sopim--Rome, by Widow Bona Spes 5770--(Vieweg in Berlin 1787,) are briefly Chap. I, Concerning God. Chap. II, Reasons why men have created an invisible Being which is commonly called God. Chap. III, What the word Religion signifies, and how and why so many of these Religions have crept into the world. Chap. IV, Evident truths. Chap. V, Of the Soul. Chap. VI, Of Ghosts, Demons, etc. Then follows fifteen chapters which are not in the treatise (? Edition 1598.) The following became known by reason of peculiarities of their diction: 1. Ridiculum et imposturae in omni hominum religione, scriptio paradoxa, quam ex autographo gallico Victoris Amadei Verimontii ob summam rei dignitatem in latinum sermonem transtulit ��� 1746. Which according to Masch consists of from five to six sheets and follows the general contents, but not in the order of the original edition. 2. A second. Quaedam deficiunt, s. fragmentum de libro de tribus impostoribus. Fifty-one pages is a fragment. 3. One mentioned by Gottsched. De impostoris religionum breve. Compendium descriptum ab exemplari MSto. quod in Bibliotheca Jo. Fried. Mayeri, Berolini Ao. 1716, publice distracta deprehensum et a Principe Eugenio de Sabaudio 80 Imperialibus redemptum fuit. (forty-three pages.) The greater part of the real book in thirty-one paragraphs, the ending of which is Communes namque demonstrationes, quae publicantur, nec certae, nec evidentes, sunt, et res dubias per alias saepe magias dubias probant, adeo ut exemplo eorum, qui circulum currunt, ad terminum semper redeant, a quo currere inceperunt. Finis. [3] A German translation of this is said to be in existence. 4. According to a newspaper report of 1716, there also should exist an edition which begins: Quamvis omnium hominem intersit nosse veritatem, rari tamen boni illi qui eam norunt, etc., [4] and ends, Qui veritatis amantes sunt, multum solatii inde capient, et hi sunt, quibus placere gestimus, nil curantes mancipia, quae praejudicia oraculorum--infallibilium loco venerantur. 5. Straube in Vienna made a reprint of the edition of 1598 in 1753. 6. A new reprint is contained in a pamphlet edited by C. C. E. Schmid and almost entirely confiscated, entitled: Zwei seltene antisupernaturalistische manuscripte. Two rare anti-supernaturalistic manuscripts. (Berlin, Krieger in Giessen, 1792.) 7. There recently appeared through W. F. Genthe an edition, De impostura religionum compendium s. liber de tribus impostoribus, Leipsic, 1833. 8. Finally, through Gustav Brunet of Bordeaux an edition founded upon the text of the 1598 edition was produced with the title, de Tribus Impostoribus, MDIIC. Latin text collated from the copy of the Duke de la Valliere, now in the Imperial Library; [5] enlarged with different readings from several manuscripts, etc., and philologic and bibliographical notes by Philomneste Junior, Paris, 1861 (?1867). Only 237 copies printed, and is out of print and rare. 9. An Italian translation of the same appeared in 1864 by Daelli in Milan with title as above. 10. A Spanish edition also exists taken from the same source and under the same title. London (Burdeos) 1823. Note. All the preceding Bibliography is from the edition of Emil Weller, Heilbronn 1876.--A. N. The only edition known to have been printed in the United States was entitled "The Three Impostors." Translated (with notes and illustrations) from the French edition of the work, published at Amsterdam, 1776. Republished by G. Vale, Beacon Office, 3 Franklin Square, New York, 1846, 84pp. 12o. A copy is in the Congressional Library at Washington. From this I transcribe the following notes: NOTE BY THE AMERICAN PUBLISHER. We publish this valuable work, for the reasons contained in the following Note, of which we approve: NOTE BY THE BRITISH PUBLISHER. The following little book I present to the reader without any remarks on the different opinions relative to its antiquity; as the subject is amply discussed in the body of the work, and constitutes one of its most interesting and attractive features. The Edition from which the present is translated was brought me from Paris by a distinguished defender of Civil and Religious Liberty: and as my friend had an anxiety from a thorough conviction of its interest and value, to see it published in the English Language, I have from like feelings brought it before the public, and I am convinced that it is eminently calculated to promote the cause of Freedom, Justice and Morality. J. Myles. PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR. The Translator of the following little treatise deems it necessary to say a few words as to the object of its publication. It is given to the world, neither with a view to advocate Scepticism, nor to spread Infidelity, but simply to vindicate the right of private judgment. No human being is in a position to look into the heart, or to decide correctly as to the creed or conduct of his fellow mortals; and the attributes of the Deity are so far beyond the grasp of limited reason, that man must become a God himself before he can comprehend them. Such being the case, surely all harsh censure of each other's opinions and actions ought to be abandoned; and every one should so train himself as to be enabled to declare with the humane and manly philosopher "Homo sum, nihil humani me alienum puto." Dundee, September 1844. The Vale production is evidently translated from an edition derived from the Latin manuscript which is the basis of the translation given in this volume. The variations in the text of each not being important, but simply due to the different modes of expression of the translators--the ideas conveyed being the same. The Treatise in Vale's edition concludes with the following: "Happy the man who, studying Nature's laws, Through known effects can trace the secret cause; His mind possessing in a quiet state, Fearless of Fortune, and resigned to Fate." --Dryden's Virgil. Georgics Book II, l. 700. There is also in the Library of Congress a volume entitled "Traité des Trois Imposteurs." En Suisse de l'imprimerie philosophique--1793. Boards 3 1/2 × 5 3/4 inches, containing the Treatise proper 112 pp. Sentimens sur le traite des trois imposteurs, (De la Monnaye) 32 pp. Response a la dissertation de M. de la Monnaye 19 pp. signed J. L. R. L. and dated at Leyden 1 Jan., 1716, to which this note is appended: "This letter is from Sieur Pierre Frederic Arpe, of Kiel, in Holstein, author of the apology of Vanini, printed at Rotterdam in 8o, 1712." The letter contains the account of the discovery of the original Latin manuscript at Frankfort-on-the-Main, in substance much the same as the translation given in this edition. In the copy at the Congressional Library, I find the following manuscript notes which may be rendered as follows: "Voltaire doubted the existence of this work, this was in 1767. See his letter to his Highness Monseigneur The Prince of ----. Letter V, Vol. 48 of his works, p. 312." See Barbier Dict. des ouv. anon. Nos. 18250, 19060, 21612. De Tribus Impostoribus. Anon. L'esprit de Spinosa trad. du latin par Vroes. In connection with this latter note, and observing the name written at end of the colophon of the manuscript from which the present edition is translated, it is probable that this same Vroese was the author of another translation. Another remarkable copy is contained in the Library of Congress, the title page of which is displayed as follows: TRAITÉ DES TROIS IMPOSTEURS DES RELIGIONS DOMINANTES ET DU CULTE d'apres l'analyse conforme à l'histoire. CONTENANT nombre d'observations morales, analogues à celles mises à l'ordre du jour, pour l'affermissement de la République, sa gloire, et l'édification des peuples de tous les pays. ORNÉ DE TROIS GRAVURES. À PHILADELPHIE sous l'auspices du général WASHINGTHON ET SE TROUVE A PARIS chez le citoyen MERCIER, homme de lettres, rue du Cocq Honoré, No. 120, LONDON, at M. Miller, libryre, Boon Street, PICCADELLY. M.DCC.XCVI. Note.--This edition has undoubtedly been translated from the original Latin manuscript.--A. N. Translation. Treatise of the Three Impostors of the governing Religions and worship, after an examination conformable to history, containing a number of moral observations, analogous to those placed in the order of the day for the support of the republic, its glory, and the edification of the people of all countries. Ornamented with three engravings. At Philadelphia under the auspices of General Washington, and may be found at Paris at the house of Citizen Mercier (Claude Francois Xavier [6]), man of letters, 120 Cocq Honoré street, and at London at Mr. Miller's, bookseller, Boon street, Piccadelly, 1796. On the following page may be found the following: LE PEUPLE FRANÇAIS RECONNANT L'ÊTRE SUPRÊME L'IMMORTALITÉ DE L'AME ET LA LIBERTÉ DES CULTES ---- [7] TRAITÉ DES Religions Dominantes [8] Chapter I. Concerning God, 6 paragraphs. Chapter II. Reasons, etc., 11 paragraphs. Chapter III. Religious, 9 paragraphs. "Les prêtres ne sont pas ce qu'un vain peuple pense Notre crédulité fait toute leur science." Priests are not what vain people think, Our credulity makes all their science. Chapter IV. Moses, 2 paragraphs. Chapter V. Jesus Christ, 10 paragraphs. Paragraph 2. Politics; paragraph 6. Morals. Chapter VI. Mahomet, 2 paragraphs. Chapter VII. Evident Truths, 6 paragraphs. Chapter VIII. The Soul, 7 paragraphs. Chapter IX. Demons, 7 paragraphs. Facing page twenty-seven is a medallion copper plate of Moses, around which are these words (translated): "Moses saw God in the burning bush," and beneath the following from Voltaire's Pucelle (translated): Alone on the summit of the mysterious mount As he desired, he closed his fortieth year. Then suddenly he appeared upon the plain With buck's horns [9] shining on his forehead. Which brilliant miracle in the mind of the philosopher Created a prompt effect." In a note to par. II. occur the following lines which translated read: "How many changes a revolution makes: Heaven has brought us forth in happy time To see the world----Here the weak Italian Is frightened at the sight of a stole: The proud Frenchman astonished at nothing Boldly goes to defy the Pope at his capital And the grand Turk in turban, like a good Christian, Recites the prayers of his faith And prays to God for the pagan Arab, Having no thought of any kind of expedient Nor means to destroy altars and idol worship. The Supreme Being his only and sole support, Does not exact for offering a single coin From any sect, from Jew nor plebeian: What need has He of Temple or archbishop? The heart of the just and the general good Shines like a brilliant sun on the halo of glory." Then follows a "Bouquet for the Pope": "Thou whom flatterers have invested with a vain title, Shalt thou at this late day become the arbiter of Europe? Charitable pontiff, and friend of humanity, Having so many sovereigns as fathers of families, The successors of Christ, in the midst of the sanctuary Have they not placed unblushingly, incest and adultery? Be this the last of imposture and thy last sigh. Do thyself more honor, esteem and pleasure, Than all the monuments erected to the glory Of thy predecessors in the temple of memory. Let them read on thy tomb 'he was worthy of love, The father of the Church and oracle of the day.'" On the following page is a copper plate profile portrait of Pius VI. surrounded by the words "Senatus Populus Que Romanus." At the side Principis Ecclesiae dotes vis Cernere Magni. (Senate and People of Rome--Prince of the Church endowed with power and great wisdom.) Beneath: "The talents of the learned and the virtues of the wise, A noble and beneficent manner with which all are charmed, Depict much better than this image The true portrait of Pius VI." Facing page fifty-one is a copper plate portrait of Mahomet, and beneath this tribute: "Know you not yet, weak and superb man, That the humble insect hidden beneath a leaf And the imperious eagle who flies to heaven's dome, Amount to nothing in the eyes of the Eternal. All men are equal: not birth but virtue Distinguishes them apart." Then there are inserted a number of verses, some of the titles reading: "Homage to the Supreme Being." "Voltaire Admitted to Heaven." "Homage to the Eternal Father." "Bouquet to the Archbishop of Paris." "Infinite Mercy--Consolation for Sinners." "Lots of Room in Heaven." "The Holy Spirit Absent from Heaven," etc. Concluding with "A Picture of France at the Time of the Revolution." "Nobility without souls, a fanatical clergy. Frightful tax gatherers gnawing a plucked people. Faith and customs a prey to designing persons. A price set upon the head of the Chancellor (Maupeou). The skeleton of a perfidious Senate. Not daring to punish a parricidal conspiracy. O, my country! O, France! Thy miseries Have even drawn tears from Rome. [10] If you have no Republic, and no pure legislators Like exist in America, to deliver you from the oppression Of a tyrannous empire of knaves, brigands and robbers; Like the British cabinet and the skillful Pitt, chief of flatterers, Who with his magic lantern fascinates even the wise ones. This clique will soon be seen to fall, if the French become the conquerors Of this ancient slavery, and show themselves the proud protectors Of their musical Carmagnole. In the name of kings and emperors, how much iniquity and horror Which are recorded in history, cause the reader to shudder with fright. The entrance of friends in Belgium, to the eyes of those who know, Is it not an unique epoch? And this most flattering tie, sustained by a heroic compact, Will be the desire of all hearts." À BOSTON under the protection of Congress. Bound in this volume is a pamphlet entitled "La Fable de Christ devoilée." Paris: Franklin Press. 75 Rue de Clery. 2nd year of the Republic. Also, "Éloge non-funèbre de Jesus et du Christianisme. Printed on the débris of the Bastille, and the funeral pile of the Inquisition. 2nd year of Liberty, and of Christ 1791." Another closes the volume: "Lettres Philosophique sur St. Paul: sur sa doctrine, politique, morale, & réligieuse, & sur plusieurs points de la réligion chrétienne considerées politiquement." (J. P. Brissot de Warville.) Translated from the English by the philosopher de Ferney and found in the portfolio of M. V. his ancient secretary. Neuchatel en Suisse 1783. Note translated from the edition "En Suisse, de l'imprimerie philosophique," 1793. In a response to M. de la Monnoye, who laboriously endeavored to refute the existence of the treatise entitled "The Three Impostors," and which reply in addition to M. de la Monnoye's arguments appear in connection with some of the translations of the treatise, occurs the following introduction to the account of the discovery of the original manuscript: "I have by me a more certain means of overturning this dissertation of M. de la Monnoye, when I inform him that I have read this celebrated little work and that I have it in my library. I will give you and the public an account of the manner in which I discovered it, and as it is in my possession I will subjoin a short but faithful description of it." Here follows a summary of the contents and the Dissertation, in substance the same as our manuscript; the response concluding as follows: "Such is the anatomy of this celebrated work. I might have given it in a manner more extended and more minute; but besides that this letter is already too long, I think that enough has been said to give insight into the nature of its contents. A thousand other reasons which you will well enough understand, have prevented me from entering upon it to so great length as I could have done; "Est modus in rebus." [11] "Now although this book were ready to be printed [12] with the preface in which I have given its history, and its discovery, with some conjectures as to its origin, and a few remarks which may be placed at its conclusion, yet I do not believe that it will live to see the day when men will be compelled all at once to quit their opinions and their imaginations, as they have quitted their syllogisms, their canons, and their other antiquated modes. As for me I will not expose myself to the Theological stylus [13]--which I fear as much as Fra-Poula feared the Roman stylus--to afford to a few learned men the pleasure of reading this little treatise; but neither will I be so superstitious, on my death bed, as to cause it to be thrown into the flames, which we are informed was done by Salvius, the Swedish ambassador, at the peace of Munster. Those who come after me may do what seems to them good--they can not disturb me in the tomb. Before I descend to that, I remain with much respect, your most obedient servant, J. L. R. L. "Leyden, 1st January, 1716." This letter was written by Mr. Pierre Frederick Arpe, of Kiel, in Holstein; the author of an apology for Vanini, printed in octavo at Rotterdam, 1712. DISSERTATION ON THE BOOK OF THE THREE IMPOSTORS. More than four hundred years have elapsed since this little treatise was first mentioned, the title of which has always caused it to be qualified as impious, profane and worthy of the fire. I am convinced that none of those who have mentioned it have read it, and after having examined it carefully, it can only be said that it is written with as much discretion as the matter would allow to a man persuaded of the falsehood of the things which he attacked, and protected by a powerful prince, under whose direction he wrote. There have been but few scholars whose religious beliefs were dubious, who have not been credited with the authorship of this treatise. Averroes, a famous Arabian commentator on Aristotle's works, and celebrated for his learning, was the first to whom this production was attributed. He lived about the middle of the twelfth century when the "three impostors" were first spoken of. He was not a Christian, as he treated their religion as "the Impossible," nor a Jew, whose law he called "a Religion for Children," nor a Mahometan, for he denominated their belief "a Religion for Hogs." He finally died a Philosopher, that is to say, without having subscribed to the opinions of the vulgar, and that was sufficient to publish him as the enemy of the law makers of the three Religions that he had scorned. Jean Bocala, an Italian scholar of a happy disposition, and consequently not much imbued with bigotry, flourished in the middle of the fourteenth century. A fable that he ventured in one of his works, concerning "Three Rings," has been regarded as evidence of this execrable book whose author was looked for, and this was considered sufficient to attribute the authorship to him long after his death. Michael Servetus, burned at Geneva (1553) by the pitiless persecution of Mr. John Calvin, he not having subscribed to either the Trinity or the Redeemer, it became proper to attribute to him the production of this impious volume. Etienne Dolit, a printer at Paris, and who ranked among the learned, was led to the stake--to which he had been condemned as a Calvinist in 1543--with a courage comparable to that of the first martyrs. He therefore merited to be treated as an atheist, and was honored as the author of the pamphlet against the "Three Impostors." Lucilio Vanini, a Neapolitan, and the most noted atheist of his time, if his enemies may be believed, fairly proved before his judges--however he may have been convinced--the truth of a Providence, and consequently a God. It sufficed however for the persecution of his enemies, the Parliament of Toulouse, who condemned him to be burned as an atheist, and also to merit the distinction of having composed, or at least having revived, the book in question. I am not sure but what Ochini and Postel, Pomponiac and Poggio the Florentine, and Campanella, all celebrated for some particular opinion condemned by the Church of their time, were for that reason accused as atheists, and also adjudged without trouble, the authors of the little truth for whom a parent was sought. All that famous critics have published from time to time of this book has excited the curiosity of the great and wise to determine the author, but without avail. I believe that several treatises printed with the title "de Tribus Impostoribus," such as that of Kortholt against Spinosa, Hobbes and the Baron Cherbourg; that of the false Panurge against Messieurs Gastardi, de Neure and Bernier have furnished many opportunities for an infinity of half-scholars who only speak from hearsay, and who often judge a book by the first line of the title. I have, like many others who have examined this work, done so in a superficial manner. Though I am a delver in antiquities, and a decipherer of manuscript, chance having caused the pamphlet to fall into my hands at one time, I avow that I gave neither thought to the production nor to its author. Some business affairs having taken me to Frankfort-on-the-Main about the month of April, (1706), that is about fifteen days after the Fair, I called on a friend named Frecht, a Lutheran theological student, whom I had known in Paris. One day I went to his house to ask him to take me to a bookseller where he could serve me as interpreter. We called on the way on a Jew who furnished me with money and who accompanied us. Being engaged in looking over a catalog at the book store, a German officer entered the shop, and said to the bookseller without any form of compliment, "If among all the devils I could find one to agree with you, I would still go and look for another dealer." The bookseller replied that "500 Rix dollars was an excessive price, and that he ought to be satisfied with the 450 that he offered." The officer told him to "go to the Devil," as he would do nothing of the sort, and was about to leave. Frecht, who recognized him as a friend, stopped him and having renewed his acquaintance, was curious to know what bargain he had concluded with the bookseller. The officer carelessly drew from his pocket a packet of parchment tied by a cord of yellow silk. "I wanted," said he, "500 Rix dollars to satisfy me for three manuscripts which are in this package, but Mr. Bookseller does not wish to give but 450." Frecht asked if he might see the curiosities. The officer took them from his pocket, and the Jew and myself who had been merely spectators now became interested, and approached Frecht, who held the three books. The first which Frecht opened was an Italian imprint of which the title was missing, and was supplied by another written by hand which read "Specchia della Bestia Triomphante." The book did not appear of ancient date, and had on the title neither year nor name of printer. We passed to the second, which was a manuscript without title, the first page of which commenced "OTHONI illustrissimo amico meo charissimo. F. I. s. d." This embraced but two lines, after which followed a letter of which the commencement was "Quod de tribus famosissimis Nationum Deceptoribus in ordinem. Justu. meo digesti Doctissimus ille vir, que cum Sermonem de illa re in Museo meo habuisti exscribi curavi atque codicem illum stilo aeque, vero ac puro scriptum ad te ut primum mitto, etenim ipsius per legendi te accipio cupidissimum." The other manuscript was also Latin, and without title like the other. It commenced with these words--from Cicero if I am not mistaken: "An. I. liber de Nat. Deor. Qui Deos esse dixerunt tantu sunt in Varietate et dissentione constituti ut eorum molestum sit dinumerare sententias. Altidum freri profecto potest ut eorum nulla, alterum certi non potest ut plus unum vera fit. Summi quos in Republica obtinnerat honores orator ille Romanus, ea que quam servare famam Studiote curabat, in causa fuere quod in Concione Deos non ansus sit negare quamquam in contesta Philosophorum, etc." We paid but little attention to the Italian production, which only interested our Jew, who assured us that it was an invective against Religion. We examined several phrases of the latter by which we mutually agreed that it was a system of Demonstrated Atheism. The second, which we have mentioned, attracted our entire attention, and Frecht having persuaded his friend, whose name was Tausendorff, not to take less than 500 Rix dollars, we left the bookseller's shop, and Frecht, who had his own ideas, took us to his inn, where he proposed to his friend to empty a bottle of good wine together. Never did a German decline a like proposition, so Frecht immediately ordered the wine, and asked Tausendorff to tell us how these manuscripts fell into his possession. After enjoying his portion of six bottles of old Moselle, he told us that after the victory at Hochstadt [14] and the flight of the Elector of Bavaria, he was one of those who entered Munich, and in the palace of His Highness, he went from room to room until he reached the library. Here his eyes fell by chance on the package of parchments with the silk cord, and believing them to be important papers or curiosities, he could not resist the temptation of putting them in his pocket. He was not deceived when he opened the package and convinced himself. This recital was accompanied by many soldier-like digressions, as the wine had a little disarranged the judgment of Tausendorff. Frecht, who, during the story, perused the manuscript, took the chance of a refusal by asking his friend to allow him to take the book until the next day. Tausendorff, whom the wine had made generous, consented to the request of Frecht, but he exacted a terrible oath that he would neither copy it or cause it to be done, promising to come for it on Sunday and empty some more bottles of wine, which he found to his taste. This obliging officer had no sooner left than we commenced to decipher it. The writing was so small, full of abbreviations, and without punctuation, that we were nearly two hours in reading the first page, but as soon as we were accustomed to the method we commenced to read it more easily. I found it so accurate and written with so much care, that I proposed to Frecht an equivocal method of making a copy without violating the oath which he had taken: which method was to make a translation. The conscience of a theologian did not but find difficulties in such proposal, but I removed them as I could, assuming the sin myself, and in the end he consented to work on the translation which was finished before the time fixed by Tausendorff. This is the way in which this book came into our hands. Many would have desired to possess the original but we were not rich enough to buy it. The bookseller had a commission from a Prince of the House of Saxony, who knew that it had been taken from the library at Munich, and he was to spare no effort to secure it, if he found it, by paying the 500 Rix dollars to Tausendorff who went away several days after, having regaled us in his turn. Passing to the origin of the book, and its author, one can hardly give an account of either only by consulting the book itself in which but little is found except for the base of conjecture. There is only a letter at the beginning, and which is written in another character from the rest of the book, which gives any light. We find it addressed OTHONI, Illustrissimo. The place where the manuscript was found, and the name OTHO put together warrants the belief that it was addressed to the Illustrious Otho, lord of Bavaria. This prince was grandson of Otho, the Great; Count of Schiren and Witelspach from whom the House of Bavaria and the Palatine had their origin. The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa [15] had given him Bavaria for his fidelity, after having taken it from Henry the Lion to punish him for his inconsistency in taking the part of his enemies. Louis I. succeeded his father, Otho the Great, and left Bavaria--in the possession of which he had been disturbed by Henry the Lion--to his son Otho, surnamed the Illustrious, who assured his possession by wedding the daughter of Henry. This happened about the year 1230, when Frederick II., Emperor of Germany, returned from Jerusalem, where, at the solicitation of Pope Gregory IX., he had pursued the war against the Saracens, and from whence he returned irritated to excess against the Holy Father who had incensed his army against him, as well as the Templars and the Patriarch of Jerusalem, until the Emperor refused to obey the Pope. Otho the Illustrious recognizing the obligations that his family were under to the family of the Emperor, took his part and remained firmly attached to him, notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of fortune of Frederick. Why these historical reminiscences? To sustain the conjecture that it was to this Otho the Illustrious that this copy of the pamphlet of the Three Impostors was addressed. By whom? This is why we are led to believe that the F. I. s. d. which follows L'amico meo carissimo, and which we interpret FREDERICUS. Imperator salutem Domino. Thus this would be by The Emperor Frederick II., son of Henry IV. and grandson of Frederick Barbarossa, who, succeeding to their Empire, had at the same time inherited the hatred of the Roman Pontiffs. [16] Those who have read the history of the Church and that of the Empire, will recall with what pride and arrogance the indolent Alexander III. placed his foot on the neck of Frederick Barbarossa, who came to him to sue for peace. Who does not know the evil that the Holy See did to his son Henry VI., against whom his own wife took up arms at the persuasion of the Pope? At last Frederick II. uniting in himself all the resolution which was wanting in his father and grandfather, saw the purpose of Gregory IX., who seemed to have marshalled on his side all the hatred of Alexander, Innocent and Honorius against his Imperial Majesty. One brought the steel of persecution, and the other the lightning of excommunication, and furiously they vied with each other in circulating infamous libels. This, it seems to me, is warrant sufficient to apply these happenings to the belief that this book was by order of the Emperor, who was incensed against religion by the vices of its Chief, and written by the Doctissimus vir, who is mentioned in the letter as having composed this treatise, and which consequently owes its existence not so much to a search for truth, as to a spirit of hatred and implacable animosity. This conjecture may be further confirmed by remarking that this book was never mentioned only since the régime of that Emperor, and even during his reign it was attributed him, since Pierre des Vignes, his secretary, endeavored to cast this false impression on the enemies of his master, saying that they circulated it to render him odious. Now to determine the Doctissimus vir who is the author of the book in question. First, it is certain that the epoch of the book was that which we have endeavored to prove. Second, that it was encouraged by those accused of its authorship, possibly excepting Averroes, who died before the birth of Frederick II. All the others lived a long time, even entire centuries after the composition of this work. I admit that it is difficult to determine the author only by marking the period when the book first made its appearance, and in whatever direction I turn, I find no one to whom it could more probably be attributed than Pierre des Vignes whom I have mentioned. If we had not his tract "De poteste Imperiali," his other epistles suffice to show with what zeal he entered into the resentment of Frederick II. (whose Secretary he was) against the Holy See. Those who have spoken of him, Ligonius, Trithemus and Rainaldi, furnish such an accurate description of him, his condition and his spirit, that after considering this I cannot remark but that this evidence favors my conjecture. Again, as I have remarked, he himself spoke of this book in his epistles, and he endeavored to accuse the enemies of his master to lessen the clamor made to encourage the belief that this Prince was the author. As he had taken the greater part, he did not greatly exert himself to lessen the injurious noise, so that if the accusation was strengthened by passing for a long time from mouth to mouth it would not fall from the Master on his Secretary, who was probably more capable of the production than a great Emperor, always occupied with the clamors of war and always in fear of the thunders of the Vatican. In one word, the Emperor, however valiant and resolute, had no time to become a scholar like Pierre des Vignes, who had given all the necessary attention to his studies, and who owed his position and the affection of his Master entirely to his learning. I believe that we can conclude from all this, that this little book Tribus famosissimus Nationum Deceptoribus, for that is its true title, was composed after the year 1230 by command of the Emperor Frederick II. in hatred of the Court of Rome: and it is quite apparent that Pierre des Vignes, Secretary to the Emperor, was the author. [17] This is all that I deem proper for a preface to this little treatise, and as it contains many naughty allusions, to prevent that in the future, it may not be again attributed to those who perhaps never entertained such ideas. Frederick Emperor to the very Illustrious Otho my very faithful Friend, Greeting: I have taken the trouble to have copied the Treatise which was made concerning the Three Famous Impostors, by the learned man by whom you were entertained on this subject, in my study, and though you have not requested it, I send you the manuscript entire, in which the purity of style equals the truth of the matter, for I know with what interest you desired to read it, and also I am persuaded that nothing could please you more. It is not the first time that I have overcome my cruel enemies, and placed my foot on the neck of the Roman Hydra whose skin is not more red than the blood of the millions of men that its fury has sacrificed to its abominable arrogance. Be assured that I will neglect nothing to have you understand that I will either triumph or perish in the attempt; for whatever reverses may happen to me, I will not, like my predecessors, bend my knee before them. I hope that my sword, and the fidelity of the members of the Empire; your advice and your assistance will contribute not a little. But nothing would add more if all Germany could be inspired with the sentiments of the Doctor--the author of this book. This is much to be desired, but where are those capable of accomplishing such a project? I recommend to you our common interests, live happy. I shall always be your friend. F. I. TREATISE OF THE THREE IMPOSTORS. [18] CHAPTER I. Of God. I. However important it may be for all men to know the Truth, very few, nevertheless, are acquainted with it, because the majority are incapable of searching it themselves, or perhaps, do not wish the trouble. Thus we must not be astonished if the world is filled with vain and ridiculous opinions, and nothing is more capable of making them current than ignorance, which is the sole source of the false ideas that exist regarding the Divinity, the soul, and the spirit, and all the errors depending thereon. The custom of being satisfied with born prejudice has prevailed, and by following this custom, mankind agrees in all things with persons interested in supporting stubbornly the opinions thus received, and who would speak otherwise did they not fear to destroy themselves. II. What renders the evil without remedy, is, that after having established these silly ideas of God, they teach the people to receive them without examination. They take great care to impress them with aversion for philosophers, fearing that the Truth which they teach will alienate them. The errors in which the partisans of these absurdities have been plunged, have thrived so well that it is dangerous to combat them. It is too important for these impostors that the people remain in this gross and culpable ignorance than to allow them to be disabused. Thus they are constrained to disguise the truth, or to be sacrificed to the rage of false prophets and selfish souls. III. If the people could comprehend the abyss in which this ignorance casts them, they would doubtless throw off the yoke of these venal minds, since it is impossible for Reason to act without immediately discovering the Truth. It is to prevent the good effects that would certainly follow, that they depict it as a monster incapable of inspiring any good sentiment, and however we may censure in general those who are not reasonable, we must nevertheless be persuaded that Truth is quite perverted. These enemies of Truth fall also into such perpetual contradictions that it is difficult to perceive what their real pretensions are. In the meanwhile it is true that Common Sense is the only rule that men should follow, and the world should not be prevented from making use of it. We may try to persuade, but those who are appointed to instruct, should endeavor to rectify false reasoning and efface prejudices, then will the people open their eyes gradually until they become susceptible of Truth, and learn that God is not all that they imagine. IV. To accomplish this, wild speculation is not necessary, neither is it required to deeply penetrate the secrets of Nature. Only a little good sense is needed to see that God is neither passionate nor jealous, that justice and mercy are false titles attributed to him, and that nothing of what the Prophets and Apostles have said constitutes his nature nor his essence. In effect, to speak without disguise and to state the case properly, it is certain that these doctors were neither more clever or better informed than the rest of mankind, but far from that, what they say is so gross that it must be the people only who would believe them. The matter is self-evident, but to make it more clear, let us see if they are differently constituted than other men. V. As to their birth and the ordinary functions of life, it is agreed that they possessed nothing above the human; that they were born of man and woman and lived the same as ourselves. But for mind, it must be that God favored them more than other men, for they claimed an understanding more brilliant than others. We must admit that mankind has a leaning toward blindness, because it is said that God loved the prophets more than the rest of mankind, that he frequently communicated with them, and he believed them also of good faith. Now if this condition was sensible, and without considering that all men resembled each other, and that they each had a principle equal in all, it was pretended that these prophets were of extraordinary attainments and were created expressly to utter the oracles of God. But further, if they had more wit than common, and more perfect understanding, what do we find in their writings to oblige us to have this opinion of them? The greater part of their writings is so obscure that it is not understood, and put together in such a poor manner that we can hardly believe that they comprehended it themselves, and that they must have been very ignorant impostors. That which causes this belief of them is that they boasted of receiving directly from God all that they announced to the people--an absurd and ridiculous belief--and avowing that God only spoke to them in dreams. Dreams are quite natural, and a person must be quite vain or senseless to boast that God speaks to him at such a time, and when faith is added, he must be quite credulous since there is no evidence that dreams are oracles. Suppose even that God manifested himself by dreams, by visions, or in any other way, are we obliged to believe a man who may deceive himself, and which is worse, who is inclined to lie? Now we see that under the ancient law they had for prophets none more esteemed than at the present day. Then when the people were tired of their sophistry, which often tended to turn them from obedience to their legitimate Ruler, they restrained them by various punishments, just as Jesus was overwhelmed because he had not, like Moses, [19] an army at his back to sustain his opinions. Added to that, the Prophets were so in the habit of contradicting each other that among four hundred not one reliable one was to be found. [20] It is even certain that the aim of their prophecies, as well as the laws of the celebrated legislators were to perpetuate their memories by causing mankind to believe that they had private conference with God. Most political objects have been projected in such manner. However, such tricks have not always been successful for those, who--with the exception of Moses--had not the means of providing for their safety. VI. This being determined, let us examine the ideas which the Prophets had of God, and we will smile at their grossness and contradictions. To believe them, God is a purely corporeal being. Micah sees him seated. Daniel clothed in white and in the form of an old man, and Ezekiel like a fire. So much for the Old Testament, now for the New. The disciples of J. C. imagined the Holy Spirit in the figure of a dove; the apostles, in the form of tongues of fire, and St. Paul, as a light which dazzled the sight unto blindness. To show their contradictory opinions, Samuel, (I. ch. 15, v. 29), believed that God never repented of his own resolution. Again, Jeremiah, (ch. 18, v. 10), says that God repented of a resolve he had taken. Joel, (ch. 2, v. 13), says that he only repents of the evil he has done to mankind. Genesis, (ch. 4, v. 7), informs us that man is prone to evil, but that He has nothing for him but blessings. On the contrary, St. Paul, (Romans, ch. 9, v. 10), says that men have no command of concupiscence except by the grace and particular calling of God. These are the noble sentiments that these good people have of God, and what they would have us believe. Sentiments, however, entirely sensible, and quite material as we see, and yet they say that God has nothing in common with matter, is a sensible and material being, and that he is something incomprehensible to our understanding. I should like to be informed how these contradictions may be harmonized, and how, under such visible and palpable conditions it is proper to believe them. Again, how can we accept the testimony of a people so clownish that they, notwithstanding all the artifices of Moses, should imagine a calf to be their God! But not considering the dreams of a race raised in servitude, and among the superstitious, we can agree that ignorance has produced credulity, and credulity falsehood, from whence arises all the errors which exist today. CHAPTER II. Reasons which have caused mankind to Create for themselves an Invisible Being which has been commonly Called God. I. Those who ignore physical causes have a natural fear born of doubt. Where there exists a power which to them is dark or unseen, from thence comes a desire to pretend the existence of invisible Beings, that is to say their own phantoms which they invoke in adversity, whom they praise in prosperity, and of whom in the end they make Gods. And as the visions of men go to extremes, must we be astonished if there are created an innumerable quantity of Divinities? It is the same perceptible fear of invisible powers which has been the origin of Religions, that each forms to his fashion. Many individuals to whom it was important that mankind should possess such fancies, have not scrupled to encourage mankind in such beliefs, and they have made it their law until they have prevailed upon the people to blindly obey them by the fear of the future. II. The Gods having thus been invented, it is easy to imagine that they resembled man, and who, like them, created everything for some purpose, for they unanimously agree that God has made nothing except for man, and reciprocally that man is made only for God. [21] This conclusion being general, we can see why man has so thoroughly accepted it, and know for that reason that they have taken occasion to create false ideas of good and evil, merit and sin, praise and blame, order and confusion, beauty and deformity--and similar qualities. III. It should be agreed that all men are born in profound ignorance, and that the only thing natural to them is a desire to discover what may be useful and proper, and evade what may be inexpedient to them. Thence it follows first, that we believe that to be free it suffices to feel personally that one can wish and desire without being annoyed by the causes which dispose us to wish and desire, because we do not know them. Second, it consequently occurs that men are contented to do nothing but for one object, that is to say, for that object which is preferable above all, and that is why they have a desire only to know the final result of their action, imagining that after discovering this they have no reason to doubt anything. Now as they find in and about themselves many means of procuring what they desire: having, for example, ears to hear, eyes to see, animals to nourish, a sun to give light, they have formed this reasoning, that there is nothing in nature which was not made for them, and of which they may dispose and enjoy. Then reflecting that they did not make this world, they believe it to be a well-founded proposition to imagine a Supreme Being who has made it for them such as it is, for after satisfying themselves that they could not have made it, they conclude that it was the work of one or several Gods who intended it for the use and pleasure of man alone. On the other hand, the nature of the Gods whom man has admitted, being unknown, they have concluded in their own minds that these Gods susceptible of the same passions as men, have made the earth only for them, and that man to them was extremely precious. But as each one has different inclinations it became proper to adore God according to the humor of each, to attract his blessings and to cause Him to make all Nature subject to his desires. IV. By this method this precedent becomes Superstition, and it is implanted so that the grossest natures are believed capable of penetrating the doctrine of final causes as if they had perfect knowledge. Thus in place of showing that nature has made nothing in vain, they show that God and Nature dream as well as men, and that they may not be accused of doubting things, let us see how they have put forth their false reasoning on this subject. Experience causing them to see a myriad of inconveniences marring the pleasure of life, such as storms, earthquakes, sickness, famine and thirst, they draw the conclusion that nature has not been made for them alone. They attribute all these evils to the wrath of the Gods, who are vexed by the offences of man, and they cannot be disabused of these ideas by the daily instances which should prove to them that blessings and evils have been always common to the wicked and the good, and they will not agree to a proposition so plain and perceptible. The reason for that is, it is more easy to remain in ignorance than to abolish a belief established for many centuries and introduce something more probable. V. This precedent has caused another, which is the belief that the judgments of God were incomprehensible, and that for this reason, the knowledge of truth is beyond the human mind; and mankind would still dwell in error were it not that mathematics and several other sciences had destroyed these prejudices. VI. By this it may be seen that Nature or God does not propose any end, and that all final causes are but human fictions. A long lecture is not necessary since this doctrine takes away from God the perfection ascribed to him, and this is how it may be proved. If God acted for a result, either for himself or another, he desires what he has not, and we must allow that there are times when God has not the wherewith to act; he has merely desired it and that only creates an impotent God. To omit nothing that may be applied to this reasoning, let us oppose it with those of a contrary nature. If, for example, a stone falls on a person and kills him, it is well known they say, that the stone fell with the design of killing the man, and that could only happen by the will of God. If you reply that the wind caused the stone to drop at the moment the man passed, they will ask why the man should have passed precisely at the time when the wind moved the stone. If you say that the wind was so severe that the sea was also troubled since the day before while there appeared to be no agitation in the air, and the man having been invited to dine with a friend, went to keep his appointment. Again they ask, for the man never got there, why he should be the guest of his friend at this time more than another, adding questions after questions, finally avowing that it was but the will of God, (which is a true "asses bridge") and the cause of this misfortune. Again when they note the symmetry of the human body, they stand in admiration and conclude how ignorant they are of the causes of a thing which to them appears so marvelous, that it is a supernatural work, in which the causes known to us could have no part. Thence it comes that those who desire to know the real cause of supposed miracles and penetrate like true scholars into their natural causes without amusing themselves with the prejudice of the ignorant, it happens that the true scholar passes for impious and heretical by the malice of those whom the vulgar recognize as the expounders of Nature and of God. These mercenary individuals do not question the ignorance which holds the people in astonishment, upon whom they subsist and who preserve their credit. VII. Mankind being thus of the ridiculous opinion that all they see is made for themselves, have made it a religious duty to apply it to their interest, and of judging the price of things by the profit they gain. Thence proceed the ideas they have formed of good, and evil, of order and confusion, of heat and cold, of beauty and ugliness, which serve to explain to them the nature of things, which in the end are not what they imagine. Because they pride themselves in having free will they judge themselves capable of deciding between praise and blame, sin and merit, calling everything good which redounds to their profit and which concerns divine worship, and to the contrary denominate as evil that which agrees with neither. Because the ignorant are not capable of judging what may be a little abstruse, and having no idea of things only by the aid of imagination which they consider understanding, these folk who know not what represents Order in the world believe all that they imagine. Man being inclined in such a manner that they think things well or ill ordered as they have the facility or trouble to conclude when good sense would teach differently. Some are more pleased to be weary of the means of investigation, being satisfied to remain as they are, preferring order to confusion, as if order was another thing than a pure effect of the imagination of man, so that when it is said that God has made everything in order, it is recognizing that he has that faculty of imagination as well as man. If it was not so, perhaps to favor human imagination they pretend that God created this world in the easiest manner imaginable, although there are an hundred things far above the force of imagination, and an infinity which may be thrown into disorder by reason of weakness. VIII. For other ideas, they are purely the effect of the same imagination, which have nothing real, and which are but the different modes of which this power is capable. For example, if the movement which objects impress upon the nerves by the means of the eyes is agreeable to the senses, we say that these objects are beautiful, that odors are good or bad, that tastes are sweet or bitter, that which we touch hard or soft, sounds, harsh or agreeable. According as odors, tastes or sounds strike and penetrate the senses, just so we find a belief that God is capable of taking pleasure in melody, that the celestial movements are a harmonious concert, proof evident that each one believes that things are such as they are imagined, or that the world is purely imaginary. That is why we should not be surprised if we rarely found two men of the same opinion, and some who glorify themselves in doubting everything. For while men have bodies which resemble each other in many particulars, they differ in some others, and it should not astonish us that what seems good to one appears bad to another: what pleases this one displeases the other, from which we may infer that opinions only differ by fancy, that understanding passes for little, and to conclude, things which happen every day are purely the effects of imagination. If one should consult the lights of understanding of philosophers he would have faith that everybody would agree to the truth, and that judgments would be more uniform and reasonable than they are. IX. It is then evident that all the reasons of which men are accustomed to avail themselves when they endeavor to explain Nature, are only methods of imagination which prove nothing less than they pretend, and because they have given to these reasons names so real that if they existed otherwise than in imagination I would not call them reasonable beings, but purely chimerical, seeing nothing more easy than to respond to arguments founded on these vulgar notions and which we oppose as follows. If it was true that the universe was a chance happening, and a necessary sequel of divine nature, whence come the imperfections and faults which we remark? For example, corruption which fills the air with bad odor, many disagreeable objects, so many disorders, so much evil, so many crimes and other like occurrences. Nothing is more easy than to refute these objections, for one cannot judge of the perfection of ancient existence only by knowing its essence and nature, and we deceive ourselves in thinking that a thing is more or less perfect, as it pleases or displeases, is useful or useless to human nature; and to close the mouths of those who ask why God has not created all men without exception that they might be guided by the light of reason, it is enough to say that it was because the material was not sufficient to give each being the degree of perfection that was most suitable for him, or to speak more proper, because the laws of nature were so ample and extensive that they could suffice for the production of all things of which an infinite understanding is capable. CHAPTER III. What God Is. I. Until now we have fought the popular idea concerning the Divinity, but we have not yet said what God is, and if we were asked, we should say that the word represents to us an Infinite Being, of whom one of his attributes is to be a substance of extent and consequently eternal and infinite. The extent or the quantity not being finite or divisible, it may be imagined that the matter was everywhere the same, our understanding not distinguishing parts. For example, water, as much as water is imagined, is divisible, and its parts separable from one another, though as much as a corporeal substance it is neither separable nor divisible. [22] Thus neither matter or quantity have anything unworthy of God, for if all is God, and all comes surely from his essence, it follows quite absolutely that He is all that he contains, since it is incomprehensible that Beings quite material should be contained in a Being who is not. That we may not think that this is a new opinion, Tertullian, one of the foremost men among the Christians, has pronounced against Apelles, that, "that which is not matter is nothing," and against Praxias, that "all substance is matter," without having this doctrine condemned in the four first Councils of the Christian Church, oecumenical and general. [23] II. These sentiments are plain and the only ones that good and sound judgment can form of God. However, there are but few who are satisfied with such simplicity. Boorish people, who are accustomed to adulation of opinion, demand a God who resembles earthly kings. The pomp and circumstance surrounding them so fascinates, that to take away all hope of going after death to increase the number of heavenly courtiers enjoying the same pleasure which attaches to the Court of Kings, is to take away the consolation and the only things which prevent them from going to despair over the miseries of life. They want a just and avenging God, who rewards and punishes after the manner of kings, a God susceptible of all human passions and weaknesses. They give him feet, hands, and ears, and yet they do not regard a God so constituted as material. They say that man is his masterpiece, and even his own image, but do not allow that the copy is like the original. In a word, the God of the people of today is subject to as many forms as Jupiter of the Pagans, and what is still more strange, these follies contradict each other and shock good sense. The vulgar reverence them because they firmly believe what the Prophets have said, although these visionaries among the Hebrews, were the same as the augurs and the diviners among the pagans. [24] They consult the Bible as if God or nature was therein expounded to them in a special manner, however this book is only a rhapsody of fragments, gathered at various times, selected by several persons, and given to the people according to the fancy of the Rabbins, who did not publish them until after approving some, and rejecting others, and seeing if they were conformable or opposed to the Law of Moses. [25] Yes, such is the malice and stupidity of men that they prefer to pass their lives disputing with one another, and worshipping a book received from ignorant people; a book with little order or method, which everyone admits as confused and badly conceived, only serving to foment divisions. Christians would rather adore this phantom than listen to the law of Nature which God--that is to say, Nature, which is the active principle--has written in the heart of man. All other laws are but human fictions, and pure illusions forged, not by Demons or evil spirits, which are fanciful ideas, but by the skill of Princes and Ecclesiastics to give the former more warrant for their authority, and to enrich the latter by the traffic in an infinity of chimeras which sell to the ignorant at a good price. All other laws are not supported save on the authority of the Bible, in the original of which appear a thousand instances of extraordinary and impossible things, [26] and which speaks only of recompenses or punishments for good or bad actions, but which are wisely deferred for a future life, relying that the trick will not be discovered in this, no one having returned from the other to tell the news. Thus, men kept ever wavering between hope and fear, are held to their duty by the belief they aver that God has created man only to render him eternally happy or unhappy, and which has given rise to the infinity of religions which we are about to discuss. CHAPTER IV. What the word Religion signifies, and how and why such a great number have been introduced in the world. I. Before the word Religion was introduced in the world mankind was only obliged to follow natural laws and to conform to common sense. This instinct alone was the tie by which men were united, and so very simple was this bond of unity, that nothing among them was more rare than dissensions. But when fear created a suspicion that there were Gods, and invisible powers, they raised altars to these imaginary beings, so that in putting off the yoke of Nature and Reason, which are the sources of true life, they subjected themselves by vain ceremonies and superstitious worship to frivolous phantoms of the imagination, and that is whence arose this word Religion which makes so much noise in the world. Men having admitted invisible forces which were all-powerful over them, they worshipped them to appease them, and further imagined that Nature was a being subordinate to this power, thence they had the idea that it was a great mace that threatened, or a slave that acted only by the order that such power gave him. Since this false idea had broken their will they had only scorn for Nature, and respect only for those pretended beings that they called their Gods. Thence came the ignorance in which mankind was plunged, and from which the well-informed, however deep the abyss, could have rescued them, if their zeal had not been extinguished by those who led them blindly, and who lived by imposture. But though there was but little appearance of success in the enterprise, it was not necessary to abandon the party of truth, and only in consideration of those who were afflicted with the symptoms of so great an evil, were generous souls available to represent matters as they were. II. Fear which created Gods, made also Religion, and when men imbibed the notion that there were invisible agencies which were the cause of their good and bad fortune, they lost their good sense and reason substituting for their chimeras so many Divinities who had care of their conduct. After having forged these Gods they were curious to know of what matter they consisted, and finally imagined that they should be of the same substance as the soul. Then being persuaded that the latter resembled the shadows which appear in a mirror, or during sleep, they believed that some Gods were real substances but so thin and subtile that to distinguish them from bodies they called them Spirits. So that bodies and spirits were in effect the same thing, and differed neither more nor less, and to be both corporeal and incorporeal is a most incomprehensible thing. The reason given is that each spirit has a proper form, and is included within some limit, that is to say that it has some boundaries, and consequently must be a body however thin and subtile it might be. [27] III. The ignorant, that is, the greater part of mankind having settled in this manner the substance of their Gods, tried also to determine by what methods these invisible powers produced their effects. Not being able to do this definitely by reason of their ignorance, they put faith in their conjectures, blindly judging the future by the past, while seeing neither cohesion nor dependence. In all that they undertook they saw but the past, and foretold good or evil for the future according as the same enterprise had at another time turned out either good or bad. Phormion having defeated the Lacedaemonians at the battle of Naupacte, the Athenians, after his death, chose another general of the same name: Hannibal having succumbed to the arms of Scipio Africanus, the Romans, remembering this great success, sent another Scipio to the same country against Cesar, which acts gained nothing for either the Athenians or the Romans. So after two or three experiences, good or bad fortune is made synonymous with certain names or places; others make use of certain words called enchantments, which they believe to be efficacious; some cause trees to speak, create man from a morsel of bread, and transform anything that may appear before them. (Hobbes' Leviathan de homine. Cap. 12, p. 56-57.) IV. Invisible powers being established in this way, straightway men revere them only as they do their rulers, that is to say, by tokens of submission and respect, as witness offerings, prayers, and similar things, I say at first, for nature has not yet learned to use on such occasions sacrifices of blood, which have only been instituted for the benefit of the sacrificers and the ministers called to the service of these beautiful Gods. V. These causes of Religion, that is, Hope and Fear, leaving out the passions, judgments and various resolutions of mankind, have produced the great number of extravagant beliefs which have caused so much evil, and the many revolutions which have convulsed the nations. The honor and revenue which attaches to the priesthood, and which has since been accorded to the ministry of the Gods, and those having ecclesiastical charges, inflame the ambition and the avarice of cunning individuals who profit by the stupidity of the people, who readily submit in their weakness, and we know how insensibly is caused the easy habit of encouraging falsehood and hating truth. VI. The empire of falsehood being established, and the ambitious ones encouraged by the advantage of being above their fellows, the latter endeavor to gain repute by a pretense of being friendly with the invisible Gods whom the vulgar fear. For better success, each schemes in his own way, and multiplies deities so that they are met at every turn. VII. The formless matter of the world they term the god Chaos, and the same honor is accorded to heaven, earth, the sea, the wind, and the planets, and they are made both male and female. Further on we find birds, reptiles, the crocodile, the calf, the dog, the lamb, the serpent, the hog, and in fact all kinds of animals and plants constitute the better part. Each river and fountain bears the name of a God, each house had its own, each man his genius; in fact all space above and beneath the earth was occupied by spirits, shades and demons. It was not sufficient to maintain a Divinity in all imaginable places, but they feared to offend time, day, night, concord, love, peace, victory, contention, mildew, honor, virtue, fever, and health, or to insult these charming divinities whom they always imagined ready to discharge lightning on the heads of men, provided temples and altars were not erected to them. As a sequel, man commenced to fear his own special genius, whom some invoked under the name of Muses, and others under the name of Fortune adored their own ignorance. The latter sanctified their debauches in the name of Cupid, their rage in the name of Furies, and their natural parts under the name of Priapus, in a word, there was nothing which did not bear the name of a God or a Demon. (Hobbes' de homine, Chap. 12, p. 58.) VIII. The founders of Religion having based their impostures on the ignorance of the people, took great care to maintain them by the adoration of images which they pretended were inhabited by the Gods, and this caused a flood of gold and benefactions called holy things, to pour into the coffers of the priests. These gifts were regarded as sacred, and designed for the use of these holy ministers, and none were so audacious as to pretend to their office, or even to touch them. To allure the people more successfully, these priests made prophecies and pretended to penetrate the future by the commerce which they boasted of having with the Gods. There is nothing so natural as to know destiny. These impostors were too well informed to omit any circumstance so advantageous for their designs. Some were established at Delos, others at Delphos and elsewhere, where by ambiguous oracles they replied to the demands made of them. Women even were engaged in these impostures, and the Romans in their great Calamities had recourse to the Sybilline books; fools and lunatics passed for enthusiasts, and those who pretended to converse with the dead were called necromancers. Others read the future by the flight of birds, or by the entrails of beasts. Indeed the eyes, the hands, the face, or an extraordinary object, all seemed to them to possess a good or bad omen, so it is true that the ignorant will receive any desired impression when the secret of their wish is found. (Hobbes' de homine, Chap. 12, pp. 58-59.) CHAPTER V. Of Moses. I. The ambitious, who have always been grand masters of the art of trickery, have always followed this method in expounding their laws, and to oblige the people to submit to them they have persuaded them that they had received them either from a God or a Goddess. Although there was a multitude of Divinities, those who worshipped them called Pagans had no general system of Religion. Each republic, each state and city, each particular place had its own rites and thought of the Divinity as fancy dictated. Following this came legislators more cunning than these first tricksters, and who employed methods more studied and more certain for the propagation and perpetuity of their laws, as well as the culture of such ceremonies and fanaticism as they deemed proper to establish. Among the great number Arabia and its frontiers has given birth to three who have been distinguished as much by the kind of laws and worship which they established, as by the idea they have given of a Divinity to their followers, and the means they have taken to cause this idea to be received and their laws to be approved. Moses is the most ancient; Jesus coming after labored after his manner in preserving the foundation of his laws while abolishing the remainder; and Mahomet appearing later on the scene has taken from one and the other religion to compose his own, and therefore he is declared the enemy of all the Gods. Let us see the character of these three Legislators, examine their conduct, and then judge afterwards who are the best founded: those who revered them as Holy men and Gods, or those who treated them as schemers and impostors. II. The celebrated Moses, grandson of a great magician, [28] by the account of Justin Martyr, had all the advantages proper for what he afterwards became. It is well known that the Hebrews, of whom he became the Chief, were a nation of shepherds whom King Pharaoh Orus I. received in his country in consideration of services that he had received from one of them in the time of a great famine. He gave them some lands in the east of Egypt in a country fertile in pasturage, and consequently adapted for their flocks. During 200 years they rapidly increased, because, being considered foreigners they were not required to serve in the armies of Pharaoh, and because of the natural advantages of the lands which Orus had granted them. Some bands of Arabs came to join them as brothers, for they were of a similar race, and they increased so astonishingly that the land of Goshen not being able to contain them they spread all over Egypt, giving Pharaoh Memnon II. good reason to fear that they might be capable of some dangerous attempt in case Egypt was attacked (as happened soon after) by their active enemies, the Ethiopians. Thus a policy of state compelled this Prince to curtail their privileges, and to seek means to weaken and enslave them. Pharaoh Orus II. surnamed Busiris because of his cruelty, and who succeeded Memnon, followed his plan regarding the Jews. Wishing to perpetuate his memory by the erection of the Pyramids and building the city of Thebes, he condemned the Hebrews to labor at making bricks, the material in the earth of their country being adapted for this purpose. During this servitude the celebrated Moses was born, in the same year that the King issued an edict to cast all the male Hebrew children into the Nile, seeing that he had no surer means of exterminating this rabble of foreigners. Moses was exposed to perish in the waters in a basket covered with pitch, which his mother placed in the rushes on the banks of the river. It chanced that Thermitis, daughter of Orus, was walking near the shore and hearing the cries of the child, the natural compassion of her sex inspired her to save it. Orus having died, Thermitis succeeded him, and Moses having been presented to her, she caused him to be educated in a manner befitting the son of a Queen of the wisest and most polished nation of the universe. In a word he was tutored in all the science of the Egyptians, and it is admitted, and they have represented Moses to us as the greatest politician, the wisest philosopher and the most famous magician of his time. It followed that he was admitted to the order of Priesthood, which was in Egypt what the Druids were in Gaul, that is to say--everything. Those who are not familiar with what the government of Egypt was, will be pleased to know that the famous dynasties having come to an end, the entire country was dependent upon one Sovereign who divided it into several provinces of no great extent. The governors of these countries were called monarchs, and they were ordinarily of the powerful order of Priests, who possessed nearly one-third of Egypt. The king named these monarchs, and if we can believe the authors who have written of Moses and compare what they have said with what Moses himself has written, we may conclude that he was monarch of the land of Goshen, and that he owed his elevation to Thermitis, who had also saved his life. We see what Moses was in Egypt, where he had both time and means to study the manners of the Egyptians, and those of his nation: their governing passions, their inclinations, and all that would be of service to him in his effort to excite the revolution of which he was the promoter. Thermitis having died, her successor renewed the persecution against the Hebrews, and Moses having lost his previous favor, and fearing that he could not justify several homicides that he had committed, took the precaution to flee. He retired to Arabia Petrea, on the confines of Egypt, and chance brought him to the home of a tribal chief of the country. His services, and the talents that his master remarked in him, merited his good graces and one of his daughters in marriage. It is here to be noted that Moses was such a bad Jew, and knew so little of the redoubtable God whom he invented later, that he wedded an idolatress, and did not even think of having his children circumcised. It was in the Arabian deserts, while guarding the flocks of his father-in-law and brother-in-law, he conceived the design of avenging the injustice which had been done him by the King of Egypt, by bringing trouble and sedition in the court of his states; and he flattered himself that he could easily succeed in this by reason of his talents, as by the disposition which he knew he would find in his nation already incensed against the government by reason of the bad treatment that they had been caused to suffer. It appears by the history which he has told of this revolution, or at least by the author of the books attributed to Moses, that Jethro, his brother-in-law, was in the conspiracy, as well as his brother Aaron and his sister Mary, who had remained in Egypt, and with whom he could arrange to hold correspondence. As may be seen by the sequel he had formed a vast plan in good politics, and he could put in service against Egypt all the science he had learned there, and the pretended Magic in which he was more subtle and skillful than all those at the Court of Pharaoh who possessed the same accomplishments. It was by these pretended miracles that he gained the confidence of those of his nation that he caused to rebel. He joined to them thousands of mutinous Egyptians, Ethiopians and Arabs. Boasting the power of his Divinity and the frequent interviews he held with Him, and causing Him to intervene in all the measures he took with the chiefs of the revolt, he persuaded them so well that they followed him to the number of 600,000 combatants--besides the women and children--across the deserts of Arabia, of which he knew all the windings. After a six days march on a laborious retreat, he commanded his followers to consecrate the seventh to his God by a public rest, to make them believe that this God favored him, that he approved his sway, and that no one could have the audacity to contradict him. There were never any people more ignorant than the Hebrews, and consequently none more credulous. To be convinced of this profound ignorance, it is only necessary to recall the condition of these people in Egypt when Moses made them revolt. They were hated by the Egyptians because of their pastoral life, persecuted by the Sovereign and employed in the vilest labor. Among such a populace it was not very difficult for Moses to avail himself of his talents. He made them believe that his God (whom he sometimes simply called an angel)--the God of their Fathers--appeared to him, that it was by his order that he took care to lead them, that he had chosen him for Governor, and that they would be the favored people of this God, provided they believed what he said on his part. He added to his exhortations on the part of his God, the adroit use of his prestige, and the knowledge that he had of nature. He confirmed what he said to them by what might be called miracles, always easy to perform, and which made a great impression on an imbecile populace. It may be remarked above all, that he believed he had found a sure method for holding this people submissive to his orders, in making accessory of the statement that God himself was their leader: by night a column of fire and a cloud by day. But it can be proved that this was the grossest trick of this impostor, and that it might serve him for a long time. He had learned during his travels that he had made in Arabia, a country vast and uninhabited, that it was the custom of those who traveled in companies to take guides who conducted them in the night by means of a brazier, the flame of which they followed, and in the day time by the smoke of the same brazier which all the members of the caravan could see, and consequently not go astray. This custom prevailed among the Medes and Assyrians, and it is quite natural that Moses used it, and made it pass for a miracle, and a mark of the protection of his God. If I may not be believed when I say that this was a trick, let Moses himself be believed, who in Numbers, Chap. x. v. 29-33, asks his brother-in-law, Hobab, to come with the Israelites, that he may show them the roads, because he knew the country. This is demonstrative, for if it was God who marched before Israel night and day in the cloud and the column of fire could they have a better guide? Meanwhile here is Moses exhorting his brother-in-law by the most pressing motives of interest to serve him as Guide. Then the cloud and the column of fire was God only for the people, and not for Moses, who knew what it was. These poor unfortunates thus seduced, charmed at being adopted by the Master of God, as they were told, emerging from a hard and cruel bondage, applauded Moses and swore to obey him. His authority was thus confirmed. He sought to perpetuate it, and under pretext of establishing divine worship, or of a supreme God of whom he said he was the lieutenant, he made his brother and his children chiefs of the Royal Palace, that is to say, of the place where miracles were performed out of the sight and presence of the people. So he continued these pretended miracles, at which the simple were amazed and others stupefied, but which caused those who were wise and who saw through these impostures to pity them. However skillful Moses was, and how many clever tricks he knew how to do, he would have had much trouble to secure obedience if he had not a strong army. [29] Deceit without force has rarely succeeded. It was in order to have assured means to maintain obedience against the discerning that he continued to place in his own faction those of his tribe, giving them all the important charges and exempting them from the greater part of the labors. He knew how to create jealousies among the other tribes, some of whom took his part against the others. Finally assuring adroitly to his interest those who appeared the most enlightened, by placing them in his confidence, he secured them by giving them employment of distinction. After that he found some of these idiots had the courage to reproach his bad faith; that under his false pretense of justice and equity he was seizing everything. As the sovereign authority was vested in his blood in such manner that no one had a right to aspire to it, they considered finally that he was less their father than their tyrant. On such occasions Moses by cunning policy confounded these free-thinkers and spared none who censured his government. With such precautions, and cloaking his punishments under the name of Divine vengeance, he continued absolute, and to finish in the same way he began, that is to say by deceit and imposture, he chose an extraordinary death. He cast himself in an abyss in a lonely place where he retired from time to time under pretext of conferring with God, and which he had long designed for his tomb. His body never having been found, it was believed that his God had taken him, and that he had become like Him. He knew that the memories of the patriarchs who preceded him were held in great veneration when their sepulchres were found, but that was not sufficient for an ambition like his. He must be revered as a God for whom death had no terrors, and to this end all his efforts were directed since the beginning of his reign when he said that he was established of God--to be the God of Pharaoh. Elijah [30] gave his example, also Romulus [31], Empedocles [32] and all those who from a desire to immortalize their names, have concealed the time and place of their death so that they would be deemed immortal. CHAPTER VI. Of Numa Pompilius. To return to the law-givers, there were none who, having attributed their laws to Divinity, did not endeavor to encourage the belief that they themselves were more than human. Numa, having tasted the delights of solitude, did not wish to leave it for the throne of Rome, but being forced by public acclamation, he profited by the devotion of the Romans. He informed them that he had talked with God, and if they desired him for King they must observe the Divine laws and institutions which had been dictated to him by the nymph Egeria. [33] Alexander wished to be considered a son of Jupiter. Perseus pretended to be a son of the same God and the virgin Danae; Plato, of Apollo, and a virgin, which, perhaps, is the cause of the belief among the Egyptians that the Spirit of God Lne [34] could get a woman with child as the wind did the Iberian mares. [35] CHAPTER VII. Of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, who was not unacquainted with the maxims and science of the Egyptians, among whom he dwelt several years, availed himself of this knowledge, deeming it proper for the design which he meditated. Considering that Moses was renowned because he commanded an ignorant people, he undertook to build on a similar foundation, and his followers were only some idiots whom he persuaded that the Holy Spirit was his Father, and his Mother a Virgin. [36] These good people being accustomed to be satisfied with dreams and fancies, adopted this fable, believed all that he wished, and even more willingly that a birth out of the natural order was not so marvelous a circumstance for them to believe. To be born of a Virgin by the operation of the Holy Spirit [37] was, in their estimation, as wonderful as what the Romans said of their founder, Romulus, who owed his birth to a Vestal and a God. This happened at a time when the Jews were tired of their God, as they had been of their Judges, [38] and wished to have a visible God like other nations. As the number of fools is infinite, he found followers everywhere, but his extreme poverty was an invincible obstacle to his elevation. The Pharisees, delighted with the boldness of a man of their sect, [39] while startled at his audacity, elevated or depressed him according to the fickle humor of the populace, so that when it became noised about concerning his Divinity, it was impossible--he being possessed of no power--that his design could succeed. No matter how many sick he cured, nor how many dead he raised, having no money and no army, he could not fail to perish, and with that outlook it appears that he had less chance of success than Moses, Mahomet, and all those who were ambitious to elevate themselves above others. If he was more unfortunate, he was no less adroit, and several places in his history give evidence that the greatest fault in his policy was not to have sufficiently provided for his own safety. So it may be seen that he did not manage his affairs any better than those two other legislators, of whose memory exists but the remains of the belief that they established among the different nations. CHAPTER VIII. Of the Policy of Jesus Christ. I. Is there anything, for example, more dextrous than the manner in which he treated the subject of the woman taken in adultery? (St. John, c. viii.) The Jews having asked if they should stone this unfortunate, instead of replying definitely, yes or no, by which he would fall in the trap set by his enemies: the negative being directly against the law, and the affirmative proving him severe and cruel, which would have alienated the saints. Instead of replying as any ordinary person but him would have done, he said, "whoever is without sin, let him cast the first stone," a skillful response, which shows us his presence of mind. II. Another time being asked if it was lawful to [40] pay tribute to Cesar, and seeing the image of the Prince on the coin that they showed him, he evades the difficulty by replying that they should "render unto Cesar what belongs to Cesar, and unto God what belongs to God." The difficulty consisted in that he would be guilty of lèse majesté if he had said it was not permitted, and by saying that it was, he would reverse the law of Moses which he always protested he would not do, because he felt that he was either too weak, or that he would be worsted in the endeavor. So he made himself more popular, by acting with impunity after the manner of Princes, who allowed the privileges of their subjects to be confirmed while their power was not well established, but who scorned their promises when they were well enthroned. III. He again skillfully avoided a trap that the Pharisees had set for him. They asked him--having in their minds thoughts which would only tend to convict him of lying--by what authority he pretended to instruct and catechise the people. Whether he replied that it was by human authority because he was not of the sacred body of Levites, or whether he boasted of preaching by the express command of God, his doctrine was contrary to the Mosaic law. To relieve this embarrassment, he availed himself of the questioners themselves by asking them in the name of whom they thought John baptized? The Pharisees, who for policy opposed the baptism by John, would be condemned themselves in avowing that it was of God. If they had not admitted it they would have been exposed to the rage of the populace, who believed the contrary. To get out of this dilemma, they replied that they knew nothing of it, to which Jesus answered that he was neither obliged to tell them why, nor in the name of whom he preached. IV. Such were the skillful and witty evasions of the destroyer of the ancient law and the founder of the new. Such were the origins of the new religion which was built on the ruins of the old, or to speak disinterestedly, there was nothing more divine in this than in the other sects which preceded it. Its founder, who was not quite ignorant, seeing the extreme corruption of the Jewish republic, judged it as nearing its end, and believed that another should be revived from its ashes. The fear of being prevented by one more ambitious than himself, made him haste to establish it by methods quite opposed to those of Moses. The latter commenced by making himself formidable to other nations. Jesus, on the contrary, attracted them to him by the hope of the advantages of another life, which he said could be obtained by believing in him, while Moses only promised temporal benefits as a recompense for the observation of his law. Jesus Christ held out a hope which never was realized. The laws of one only regarded the exterior, while those of the other aimed at the inner man, influencing even the thoughts, and entirely the reverse of the law of Moses. Whence it follows that Jesus believed with Aristotle that it is with Religion and States, as with individuals who are begotten and die, and as nothing is made except subject to dissolution, there is no law which can follow which is entirely opposed to it. Now as it is difficult to decide to change from one law to another, and as the great majority is difficult to move in matters of Religion, Jesus, in imitation of the other innovators had recourse to miracles, which have always been the peril of the ignorant, and the sanctuary of the ambitious. V. Christianity was founded by this method, and Jesus profiting by the faults of the Mosaic policy, never succeeded so happily anywhere, as in the measures which he took to render his law eternal. The Hebrew prophets thought to do honor to Moses by predicting a successor who resembled him. That is to say, a Messiah, grand in virtue, powerful in wealth, and terrible to his enemies; and while their prophecies have produced the contrary effect, many ambitious ones have taken occasion to proclaim themselves the promised Messiah, which has caused revolts that have endured until the entire destruction of their republic. Jesus Christ, more adroit than the Mosaic prophets, to defeat the purpose of those who rose up against him predicted (Matthew xxiv. 4-5-24-25-26. II. Thessalonians ii. 3-10. John ii. 11-18) that such a man would be a great enemy of God, the delight of the Devil, the sink of all iniquity and the desolation of the world. After these fine declarations there was, to my mind, no person who would dare to call himself Anti-Christ, and I do not think he could have found a better way to perpetuate his law. There was nothing more fabulous than the rumors that were spread concerning this pretended Anti-Christ. St. Paul said (II. Thessalonians xi. 7) of his existence, that "he was already born," consequently was present on the eve of the coming of Jesus Christ while more than twelve hundred years have expired since the prediction of this prophet was uttered, and he has not yet appeared. I admit that these words have been credited to Cherintus and Ebion, two great enemies of Jesus Christ, because they denied his pretended divinity, but it also may be said that if this interpretation conforms to the view of the apostle, which is not credible; these words for all time designate an infinity of Anti-Christ, there being no reputable scholar who would offend by saying that the [41]history of Jesus Christ is a fable, and that his law is but a tissue of idle fancies that ignorance has put in vogue and that interest preserves. VI. Nevertheless it is pretended that a Religion which rests on such frail foundations is quite divine and supernatural, as if we did not know that there were never persons more convenient to give currency to the most absurd opinions than women and idiots. It is not strange, then, that Jesus did not choose Philosophers and Scholars for his Apostles. He knew that his law and good sense were diametrically opposed. [42] That is the reason why he declaims in so many places against the wise, and excludes them from his kingdom, where were to be admitted the poor in spirit, the silly and the crazy. Again, rational individuals did not think it unfortunate to have nothing in common with visionaries. CHAPTER IX. Of the Morals of Jesus Christ. I. As for his Morals, we see nothing more divine therein than in the writings of the ancients, or rather we find only what are only extracts or imitations. St. Augustin (ch. 9 and v. 20 of the Confessions, Book 7,) even admits that he has found in some of their works nearly all of the beginning of the Gospel according to St. John. As far as may be seen, that Apostle is believed, in many places, to have stolen from other authors, and that it was not difficult to rob the Prophets of their enigmas and visions to make his Apocalypse. Whence comes the conformity which we find between the doctrine of the Old Testament and that of Plato? to say nothing of what the Rabbins have done, and those who have fabricated the Holy Writings from a mass of fragments stolen from this Grand Philosopher. Certainly the birth of the world has a thousand times more probability in his Timaeus than in Genesis, and it cannot be said that that comes from what Plato had read in the books of the Jews during his travels in Egypt, for according to St. Augustin himself, (Confessions, Book 7, ch. 9, v. 20,) Ptolemy had not yet translated them. The description of the country of which Socrates speaks to Simias in the Phaedon (?) has infinitely more grace than the Terrestrial Paradise (of Eden) and the Androgynus [43] is without comparison, better conceived than what Genesis says of the extraction of Eve from one of the sides of Adam. Is there anything that more resembles the two accidents of Sodom and Gomorrah than that which happened to Phaeton? Is there anything more alike than the fall of Lucifer and that of Vulcan, or that of the giants cast down by the lightnings of Jupiter? Anything more similar than Samson and Hercules, Elijah and Phaeton, Joseph and Hippolitus, Nebuchadnezzar and Lycaon, Tantalus and the tormented rich man (Luke xvi, 24), the manna of the Israelites and the ambrosia of the Gods? St. Augustin--quoted from God, Book 6, chap. 14,--St. Cyrile and Theophylactus compare Jonah with Hercules, surnamed Trinsitium (?Trinoctius), because he had dwelt three days and three nights in the belly of a whale. The river of Daniel, spoken of in the Prophets, ch. vii, is a visible imitation of Periphlegeton, which is mentioned by Plato in the Dialogue on the "Immortality of the Soul." Original sin has been taken from Pandora's box, the sacrifice of Isaac and Jephthah from the story of Iphigenia, although in the latter a hind was substituted. What is said of Lot and his wife is quite like the tale which is told of Baucis and Philemon. In short, it is unquestionable that the authors of the Scriptures have transcribed word for word the works of Hesiod and Homer. II. But it seems that I have made quite a digression which, however, may not be unprofitable. Let us return then to Jesus, or rather, to his Morals. Celsus proves, by the account of Origen (Book VI, against Celsus), that he had taken from Plato his finest sentiments, such as that which says (Luke, c. xviii, v. 25), that a camel might sooner pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man should enter the Kingdom of God. It was the sect of Pharisees of which he was, and who believed in him, which gave birth to this. What is said of the Immortality of the Soul, of the Resurrection, of Hell, and the greater part of his Morals, I see nothing more admirable than in the works of Epictetus, Epicurus and many others. In fact, the latter was cited by St. Jerome (Book VIII, against Jovian, ch. viii), as a man whose virtue puts to the blush better Christians, observing that all his works were filled with but herbs, fruits and abstinence, and whose delights were so temperate that his finest repasts were but a little cheese, bread and water. With a life so frugal, this Philosopher, pagan as he was, said that it was better to be unlucky and rational, than rich and opulent without having good sense, adding, that it is rare that fortune and wisdom are found in the same individual, and that one could have no knowledge of happiness nor live with pleasure unless felicity was accompanied by prudence, justice and honesty, which are qualifications of a true and lasting delight. As for Epictetus I do not believe that any man, not excepting Jesus himself, was more austere, more firm, more equitable, or more moral. I say nothing but what is easy to prove, and not to pass my prescribed limit I will not mention all the exemplary acts of his life, but give one single example of constancy which puts to shame the weakness and cowardice of Jesus in the sight of death. Being a slave to a freeman named Epaphroditus, captain of the guards of Nero, it took the fancy of this brute to twist the leg of Epictetus. Epictetus perceiving that it gave him pleasure said to him, smiling, that he was well convinced that the game would not end until he had broken his leg; in fact, this crisis happened. "Well," said Epictetus with an even smiling face, "did I not say that you would break my leg?" Was there ever courage equal to that? and could it have been said of Jesus Christ had he been the victim? He who wept and trembled with fear at the least alarm, and who evinced at his death a lack of spirit that never was witnessed in the majority of his martyrs. I doubt not but what it might be said of this action of Epictetus what the ignorant remark of the virtues of the Philosophers, that vanity was their principle, and that they were not what they seemed. But I say also that those who use such language are people who, in the pulpit, say all that comes into their heads--either good or evil--and they want the privilege of telling it all. I know also that when these babblers, sellers of air, wind and smoke, have vented all their strength against the champions of common sense they think they have well earned the revenues of their livings: that they have not merited a call to instruct the people unless they have declared against those who know what common sense and true virtue is. So it is true that nothing in the world approaches so little to the manners of true scholars as the actions of the ignorant who decry them and who appear to have studied only to procure preferment which gives them bread; and which preferment they worship and magnify when this height is attained, as if they had reached a condition of perfection, which, to those who succeed, is a condition of self-love, ease, pride and pleasure, following nothing less than the maxims of the religion which they profess. But let us leave these people who know not what virtue is, and examine the divinity of their Master. CHAPTER X. Of the Divinity of Jesus Christ. I. After having examined his policy and morals we have seen nothing more Divine than in the writings and conduct of the ancients. Let us see if the reputation which followed him after his death is an evidence that he was God. Mankind is so accustomed to false reasoning that I am astonished that any one can reach a sane conclusion from their conduct. Experience shows that there is nothing they followed that is in any wise true, and that nothing has been done or said by them which gives any evidence of stability. In the meanwhile it is certain that common opinions are continually surrounded with chimeras notwithstanding the efforts of the learned, which have always opposed them. Whatever care has been taken to extirpate follies the people have never abandoned them only after having been surfeited with them. Moses was proud to boast himself the Lieutenant of the Lord of Lords, and to prove his mission by extraordinary signs. If ever so little he absented himself (which he did from time to time to confer, as he said, with his God, as Numa and other lawgivers also did) he only found on his return traces of the worship of the Gods which the Israelites had seen in Egypt. He successfully held them forty years in the wilderness that they might lose the idea of those they had abandoned, and not being yet satisfied they obeyed him who led them, and bore firmly whatever hardship they were caused to suffer in this regard. Only the hatred which they had conceived for other nations, by an arrogance of which most idiots are susceptible, made them insensibly forget the Gods of Egypt and attach themselves to those of Moses whom they adored, and sometimes with all the circumstance marked in the laws. But when they quitted these conditions little by little to follow those of Jesus Christ, I cannot see what inconstancy caused them to run after the novelty and change. II. The most ignorant Hebrews having given the most vogue to the law of Moses were the first to run after Jesus, and as their number was infinite and they encouraged each other, it is not marvellous that these errors spread so easily. It is not that novelty does not always beget suffering, but it is the glory that is expected that one hopes will smooth the difficulties. Thus the Disciples of Jesus, miserable as they were, reduced at times to nourish themselves with grains of corn which they gathered from the fields (Luke vi., 1), and seeing themselves shamefully excluded from places where they thought to enter to ease their fatigue (Luke ix., 52-53) they began to be discouraged with living; their Master being without the pale of the law and unable to give them the benefits, glory and grandeur which he had promised them. After his death his disciples, in despair at seeing their hopes frustrated, and pursued by the Jews who wished to treat them as they had treated their Master, made a virtue of necessity and scattered over the country, where by the report of some women (John xx, 18) they told of his resurrection, his divine affiliation and the rest of the fables with which the Gospels are filled. [44] The trouble which they had to make progress among the Jews made them resolve to pass among the Gentiles, and try to serve themselves better among them; but as it was necessary to have more learning for that than they possessed--the Gentiles being philosophers and too much in love with truth to resort to trifles--they gained over a young man (Saul or St. Paul) of an active and eager mind and a little better informed than the simple fishermen or than the greater babblers who associated with them. A stroke from Heaven made him blind, as is said (without this the trick would have been useless) and this incident for a time attracted some weak souls. [45] By the fear of Hell, taken from some of the fables of the ancient poets, and by the hope of a glorious Resurrection and a Paradise which is hardly more supportable than that of Mahomet; all these procured for their Master the honor of passing for a God, which he himself was unable to obtain while living. In which this kind of Jesus was no better than Homer: six cities which had driven the latter out with contempt and scorn during his life, disputed with each other after his death to determine with whom remained the honor of having been his birth-place. By this it may be seen that Christianity depends, like all other things, on the caprice of men, in whose opinion all passes either for good or bad, according as the notion strikes them. Further, if Jesus was God, nothing could resist him, for St. Paul (Romans, v. 19), is witness that nothing could overcome his will. Yet this passage is directly opposed to another in Genesis (iv, 7), where it is said that as the desires and appetites of man belong to him, who is the Master, so it is agreed to accord free-will to the master of animals, that is to say, man, for whom it is said God has created the universe. But without wandering in a maze of errors and positive contradictions, of which we have discoursed sufficiently, let us say something of Mahomet, who founded a law upon maxims totally opposed to those of Jesus Christ. CHAPTER XI. Of Mahomet. I. Hardly had the Disciples of Jesus abandoned the Mosaic law to introduce the Christian, than mankind, with their usual caprice and ordinary inconstancy, suddenly changed their sentiments, and all the East was seen embracing the sentiments of the celebrated Arius, who had the boldness to oppose the fable of Jesus, and prove that he was no more a God than any other man. Thus Christianity was almost abolished, and there appeared a new law-giver, who, in less than ten years time, formed a considerable sect. This was Mahomet. [46] To be well acquainted with him, it must be known that the part of Arabia where he was born, was commonly called "the Happy," by reason of its fertility, and being inhabited by people who formed several Republics, each Republic being a family called a "tribe," and having for its head the chief of the principal family, among those which composed the "tribe." That in which Mahomet was born was named the Tribe of Koreish, of which the principal family was that of Hashem, of which the chief was then a certain Abdul Motallab, [47] grandfather of Mahomet, whose father, eldest son of Abdul Motallab, was named Abdallah. [47] This tribe inhabited the shores of the Red sea, and Abdul Motallab was High Priest of the Temple of Mecca where were worshipped the Idols of the country. As Chief of his Tribe he was Prince of this country in which quality he had sustained the war against the King of Persia and the Emperor of Ethiopia, which shows that Mahomet was not of the riff-raff of the people. His father dying before his grandfather, his tender years caused him to lose the rights he had to the Sovereignty, which one of his uncles usurped. It was for this reason, not being able to succeed to the title of Prince, that he was reduced to the humble condition of shop-boy in the employ of a wealthy widow for whom he became afterwards factor. Having found him to her liking she married him and made him one of the richest citizens of Mecca. He was then about 30 years of age, and seeing at hand the means to enforce his rights, his ambitions awakened, and he meditated in what manner he could re-establish himself in the dignity of his grandfather. The correspondence that he had had with Christians in Egypt and Jews in Judea, where he had traded a long time for his wife while he was only her factor, gave him an opportunity of knowing who Moses was and also Jesus Christ. He also had remarked into how many different sects their Religion was divided, and which produced such diversity of opinions, and the zeal of each sect. By this he profited, and he believed he could better succeed in the interest of establishing a new Religion. The conditions of the time when he formed this design were very favorable to him, for nearly all of the Arabs, disgusted with the worship of their Idols, were fallen into a species of Atheism. Thus Mahomet began by leading a retired life, being exemplary, seeking solitude, and passing the greater part of the day in prayers and meditations. He caused himself to be admired for his modest demeanor, and commenced to speak of revelations and visions. By such action is gained the credence of the populace, and by such methods Moses and Jesus commenced. He called himself a prophet and an envoy of God, and having as much skill as his predecessors in working miracles, he soon gained attention, then admiration, and soon after the confidence of the people. A Jew and a Christian monk who were in his conspiracy aided him in his dextrous moves, and he soon became powerful enough to resist a vigorous man named Corais, a learned Arab, who endeavored to expose his imposture. During this time his uncle, the governor of Mecca, died, and not being yet strong enough to assume the authority of sovereign, he was obliged to yield to one of his kinsmen who, penetrating his designs, obliged him to flee from Mecca and take refuge at Medina, where one party in the city who were Arian Christians joined him. Then he ceased to support his authority by argument, and persuaded his disciples to plant the Mussulman faith at the point of the sword. Having strengthened his party by alliances, marrying his daughters to four of the principal citizens of Medina, he was in condition to place armies in the field who subjugated the various tribes, one after the other, and with whom he finally seized Mecca. He did not die until after he had accomplished his purpose by his hypocrisy and imposture, which elevated him to the dignity of sovereign, which he transmitted to his successors, and his faith so well established that there has been no evidence of its failure for six hundred years, and yet it may be upon the eve of its destruction. II. Thus Mahomet was more fortunate than Jesus Christ. After having labored during twenty-three years in the establishment of his Law and Religion, he saw its progress before his death, and having an assurance which Jesus Christ had not, that it would exist a long time after his death, since he prudently accommodated the genius and passions of his followers. Such was the last of these three impostors. Moses threw himself into an abyss by an excess of ambition to cause himself to be believed immortal. Jesus Christ was ignominiously hung up between two thieves, being covered with shame as a recompense for his imposture, and lastly, Mahomet died in reality in his own bed, and in the midst of grandeur, but with his bowels consumed by poison given him by a young Jewess, to determine if he really was a prophet. This is all that can be said of these four [48] celebrated impostors. They were just as we have painted them after nature, and without giving any false shading to their portraits, that it may be judged if they merited any confidence, and if it is excusable to be led by these guides, whom ambition and trickery have elevated, and whom ignorance has destroyed. SENSIBLE AND OBVIOUS TRUTHS. I. It is not sufficient to have discovered the disease if we do not apply a remedy. It would be better to leave the sick man in ignorance. Error can only be cured by Truth, and since Moses, Jesus and Mahomet were what we have represented them, we should not seek in their writings for the veritable idea of the Divinity. The apparitions and the divine conformation of the former and the latter, and the divine filiation of the second, are sufficient to convince us that all is but imposture. II. God is either a natural being or one of infinite extent who resembles what he contains, that is to say, that he is material without being, nevertheless, neither just nor merciful, nor jealous, nor a God in any way as may be imagined, and as a consequence is neither a punisher nor a remunerator. This idea of punishment and recompense only exists in the minds of the ignorant who only conceive that simple being called God, under images which by no means represent him. Those who use their understanding without confounding its operations with those of the imagination, and who are powerful enough to abandon the prejudice of a limited education, are the only ones who have sound, clear and distinct ideas. They consider him as the source of all beings which are produced without distinction: one being no more than another in His regard, and man no more difficult to produce than a worm or a flower. III. That is why it is not to be believed that this natural and infinite being which is commonly called God, esteems man more than an ant, or a lion more than a stone, or any other being more than a phantasy, or who has any regard for beauty or ugliness, for good or bad, for the perfect or imperfect. Or that he desires to be praised, prayed, sought for or caressed, or that he cares what men are, or say, whether susceptible of love or hate, or in a word that he thinks more of man than of any other creatures of whatever nature they be. All these distinctions are only the invention of a narrow mind, that is to say, ignorance has created them and interest keeps them alive. IV. Thus there is no good sensible man who can be convinced of hell, a soul, spirits or devils, in the manner of which they are commonly spoken. All these great senseless words have only been contrived to delude or intimidate the people. Let those then who wish to know the truth read what follows, with a liberal spirit and an intention to only give their judgment with deliberation. V. The myriads of stars that we see above us are allowed to be so many solid bodies which move, and among which there is not one designed as the Court Divine where God is like a King in the midst of his courtiers; which is the abode of the blest, and where all good souls fly after leaving this body and world. But without burdening ourselves with such a rude and ill-conceived opinion, and that it may not be entertained by any man of good sense, it is certain that what is called Heaven is nothing but the continuation of our atmosphere, more subtile and more refined, where the stars move without being sustained by any solid mass more than the Earth on which we live, and which like the stars is suspended in the midst of space. VI. As may be imagined, a Heaven intended for the eternal abode of the happy and of God, was the same among the Pagans. Gods and goddesses were also represented in the same way, also a Hell or a subterranean place where it was pretended that the wicked souls descended to be tormented. But this word "hell" taken in its proper and natural signification means nothing but a "lower place," which poets have invented to oppose the dwelling of the celestial inhabitants, who are said to be very sublime and exalted. That is what the Latin word Infernus or inferi signifies, and also the Greek word admc"> [49], that is to say, an obscure place like the sepulchre, or any other low and hidden place. All the rest of what has been said is only pure fiction and the invention of poets whose symbolical discourses are taken literally by feeble, timid and melancholy minds, as well as by those who are interested in sustaining this opinion. OF THE SOUL. I. The Soul is something more delicate and more difficult to treat of than either Heaven or Hell. That is why it is proper to satisfy Your Majesty's curiosity, to speak of it a little more at length. Before saying what I desire on this subject, I will recall in a few words what the most celebrated Philosophers have thought of it. II. Some have said that the Soul is a spirit or an immaterial substance; others, a kind of divinity; some, a very subtile air, and others a harmony of all parts of the body. Again, others have remarked that it is the most subtile and fine part of the blood, which is separated from it in the brain and is distributed by the nerves: so that the source of the Soul is the heart where it is produced, and the place where it performs its noblest function is the Brain, because there it is well purified from the grosser parts of the blood. These are the principal opinions which have been held concerning the Soul, but to render them more perceptible let us divide them into material and spiritual, and name the supporters of each theory that we may not err. III. Pythagoras and Plato have said that the soul is spiritual, that is to say, a being capable of existence without the aid of the body, and can move itself: that all the particular souls of animals are portions of the universal soul of the world: that these portions are spiritual and immortal, and of the same nature, as we may conceive that one hundred little fires are of the same nature as the great fire at which they have been kindled. IV. These philosophers believed the animated universe a substance, spiritual, immortal and invisible, pursuing always that which attracts, which is the source of all movements, and of all Souls which are small particles of it. Now, as Souls are very pure, and infinitely superior to the body, they do not unite immediately, but by means of a subtile body, such as flame, or that subtile and extensive air which the vulgar take for heaven. Afterwards they take a body less subtile, then another a little more impure, and always thus by degrees, until they can unite with the sensible bodies of animals, whence (sic) they descend like into dungeons or sepulchres. The death of the body, they say, is the life of the soul wherein it was buried, and where it exercises but weakly its most beautiful functions. Thus at the death of the body the soul comes out of its prison untrammelled by matter, and reunites with the soul of the universe, from whence it came. Thus, following this thought, all the Souls of animals are of the same nature, and the diversity of their functions comes only from the difference in the bodies that they enter. Aristotle admits further, a universal understanding common to all beings, and which acts in regard to particular intelligences as light does in regard to the eyes; and as light makes objects visible, the universal understanding makes objects intelligible. This philosopher defines the Soul as that which makes us live, feel, think and move, but he does not say what the Being is that is the source and principle of these noble functions, and consequently we must not look to him to dispel the doubt which exists concerning the Nature of the Soul. V. Dicearchus, Asclesiade (? Esculapius), and in some ways Galen, have also believed the soul to be incorporeal, but in another manner, for they have said that it is nothing more than the harmony of all parts of the body, that is to say, that which results in an exact blending and disposition of the humors and spirits. Thus, they say, health is not a part of him who is well, however it be his condition, so that, however, the soul be in the animal, it is not one of its parts, but a mutual accord of all of which it is composed. On which it is remarked that these authors believe the soul to be incorporeal, on a principle quite opposed to their intent, by saying that it is not a body, but only something inseparably attached to a body, that is to say, in good reasoning, that it is quite corporeal, since corporeality is not only that which is a body, but all which is form or accident that cannot be separated from matter. These are the philosophers who have believed the soul incorporeal or immaterial, who, as you see, are not in accord with themselves, and consequently do not merit any belief. Let us now consider those who have avowed it to be a body. VI. Diogenes believed that it was formed of air, from which he has inferred the necessity of breathing, and defines it as an air which passes from the mouth through the lungs to the heart, where it is warmed, and from whence it is distributed through the entire body. Leucippus and Democritus have claimed that it was Fire, as that element is composed of atoms which easily penetrate all parts of the body, and makes it move. Hippocrates has said that it is a composition of water and fire. Empedocles says that it includes the four elements. Epicurus believed like Democritus, that the soul is composed of fire, but he adds that in that composition there enters some air, a vapor, and another nameless substance of which is formed a very subtile spirit, which spreads through the body and and which is called the soul. VII. Not to shuffle, as all these philosophers have done, and to have as perfect an idea as is possible of the souls of animals, let us admit that in all, without excepting man, it is of the same nature, and has no different functions, but by reason of the diversity of organs and humors; hence we must believe what follows. It is certain that there is in the universe a very subtile spirit, or a very delicate matter, and always in motion, the source of which is in the Sun, and the remainder is spread in all the other bodies, more or less, according to Nature or their consistency. That is the Soul of the Universe which governs and vivifies it, and of which some portion is distributed among all the parts that compose it. This Soul, and the most pure Fire which is in the universe does not burn of itself, but by the different movements that it gives to the particles of other bodies where it enters, it burns and reflects its heat. The visible fire has more of this spirit than air, the latter more than water, and the earth much less than the latter. Among the mixed bodies, plants have more than minerals, and animals more than either. To conclude, this fire being enclosed in the body, it is rendered capable of thought, and that is what is called the soul, or what is called animal spirits, which are spread in all parts of the body. Now, it is certain that this soul being of the same nature in all animals, disperses at the death of man in the same manner as in other animals, from whence it follows that what Poets and Theologians sing or preach of the other world, is a chimera which they have invented, and which they narrate for reasons that are easy to guess. OF SPIRITS WHICH ARE CALLED DEMONS. I. We have fully commented on how the belief in Spirits was introduced among men, and how these Spirits were but phantoms which existed in their imagination. The ancient Philosophers were not sufficiently clear to explain to the people what these phantoms were, and did not allow themselves to say that they could raise them. Some seeing that these phantoms dissolved and had no consistency, called them immaterial, incorporeal, forms without matter, or colors and figures, without being, nevertheless, bodies either colored or defined, adding that they could cover themselves with air like a mantle when they wished to render themselves visible to the eyes of men. Others said that they were animated bodies, but were composed of air, or some other more subtile matter which condensed at their will when they wished to appear. II. These two kinds of Philosophers being opposed in the opinion which they had of phantoms, agreed in the name which they gave them, for all called them Demons, in which they were but little more enlightened than those who believed they saw in their sleep the souls of the dead, and that it is their soul which they see when they look in a mirror, and who also believed that they saw (reflected) in the water the souls of the stars. After this foolish fancy they fell into an error which is hardly less supportable, that is, the current idea that these phantoms had infinite power. An absurd but ordinary belief with the ignorant who imagined that whatever they did not understand was an infinite power. III. This ridiculous opinion was no sooner published than the Sovereigns began to use it to support their power. They established a belief concerning spirits which they called Religion, so that the fear which the people possessed for invisible powers would hold them to their obedience. To have it carry more influence they distinguished the demons as good and bad. The latter to encourage men to obey their laws, and the former to restrain and prevent them from infringing them. Now to learn what these demons were it is only necessary to read the Greek poets and their histories, and above all what Hesiod says in his Theogony where he fully treats of the origin and propagation of the Gods. IV. The Greeks were the first who invented them, and by them they were propagated through the medium of their colonies, and their conquests in Asia, Egypt and Italy. The Jews who were dispersed in Alexandria and elsewhere got their acquaintance with them from the Greeks. They used them as effectively as the other peoples but with this difference, they did not call them Demons like the Greeks, but good and bad spirits; reserving for the good Demons the name of Spirit of God, and calling those Prophets who were said to possess this good spirit called the Divine, which they held as responsible for great blessings, and cacodaemons or Evil spirits on the contrary those which were provocative of great Evil. V. This distinction of good and evil made them name as Demoniacs those whom we call lunatics, visionaries, madmen and epileptics, and those who spoke to them in an unknown tongue. A man ill-shaped and of evil look was to their notion possessed of an unclean spirit, and a mute of a dumb spirit. Now, these words spirit and demon became so familiar to them that they spoke of them on all occasions, so that it is evident that the Jews believed like the Greeks, that these phantoms were not mere chimeras and visions, but real beings that existed independent of imagination. VI. So it happens that the Bible is quite filled with these words Spirits, Demons and Fiends, but nowhere is it said when they were first known, nor the time of their creation, which is hardly pardonable in Moses, who is earnest in depicting the Creation of Heaven, Earth and Man. No more then is Jesus Christ who had such close intimacy with them, who commanded them so absolutely according to the Gospel, and who spoke so often of angels and good and bad spirits, but without saying whether they were corporeal or spiritual; which makes it plain that he knew no more than the Greeks had taught other nations, in which he is not less culpable than for denying to all men the virtue of faith and piety which he professed to be able to give them. But to return to the Spirits. It is certain that the words Demon, Satan and Devil, are not proper names which designated any individual, and which never have any credence but among the ignorant; as much among the Greeks who invented them, as among the Jews where they were tolerated. So the latter being overrun by them gave them names--which signified enemy, accuser, inquisitor,--as well to invisible powers as to their own adversaries, the Gentiles, whom they said inhabited the Kingdom of Satan; there being none but themselves, in their own opinion, who dwelt in that of God. VII. As Jesus Christ was a Jew, and consequently imbued with these silly opinions, we read everywhere in the Gospels, and in the writings of his Disciples, of the Devil, of Satan and Hell as if they were something real and effective. While it is true, as we have shown, that there is nothing more imaginary, and when what we have said is not sufficient to prove it, but two words will suffice to convince the most obstinate. All Christians agree unanimously that God is the first principle and the foundation of all things, that he has created and preserves them, and without his support they would fall into nothingness. Following this principle it is certain that God must have created what is called the Devil, and Satan, as well as the rest, and if he has created both good and evil, why not all the balance, and if by this principle all evil exists, it can only be by the intervention of God. Now can one conceive that God would maintain a creature, not only who curses him unceasingly, and who mortally hates him, but even who endeavors to corrupt his friends, to have the pleasure of being cursed by a multitude of mouths. How can we comprehend that God should preserve the Devil to have him do his worst to dethrone him if he could, and to alienate from his service his elect and his favorites? What would be the object of God in such conduct? Now what can we say in speaking of the Devil and Hell. If God does all, and nothing can be done without him how does it happen that the Devil hates him, curses him, and takes away his friends? Now he is either agreeable, or he is not. If he is agreeable, it is certain that the Devil in cursing him only does what he should, since he can only do what God wills. Consequently, it is not the Devil, but God in person who curses himself; a situation to my idea more absurd than ever. If it is not in accord with his will then it is not true that he is all powerful. Thus there are two principles, one of Good, the other of Evil, one which causes one thing and the other that does quite the contrary. To what does this reasoning lead us? To avow without contradiction that there is no God such as is conceived, nor Devil, nor Soul, nor Paradise, such as has been depicted, and that the Theologians, that is to say, those who relate fables for truth, are persons of bad faith who maliciously abuse the credulity of the ignorant by telling them what they please, as if the people were capable of nothing but chimera or who should be fed with insipid food in which is found only emptiness, nothingness and folly, and not a grain of the salt of truth and wisdom. Centuries have passed, one after the other, in which mankind has been infatuated by these absurd imaginations which have been combatted; but during all the period there have also been found sincere minds who have written against the injustice of the Doctors in Tiaras, Mitres and Gowns, who have kept mankind in such deplorable blindness which seems to increase every day. FINIS. By permission of the Lord Baron de Hohendorf I have compiled this epitome out of the manuscript Library of his Most August Highness, Duke Eugene of Sabaudio, in the year 1716. APPENDICITIS. A DISEASE COMMON TO NEARLY ALL WORKS OF THIS CHARACTER, AND WHICH CONDITION IS PAST ALL SURGERY. Another sketch of Mahomet translated from the "Edition en Suisse," 1793, and which may interest worshippers of Arabian mysteries evolved from imaginative brains, tinctured with extracts from "Thory's Ada Latomorum," and similar works, and embellished with effects from "Michael Strogoff." XXII. Of Mahomet. Hardly had the disciples of Christ abolished the Mosaic law to introduce the Christian dispensation, than mankind, carried away by force, and by their ordinary inconstancy, followed a new law-giver, who advanced himself by the same methods as Moses. He assumed, like him, the title of prophet, and envoy of God, like him he performed miracles and knew how to profit by the passions of the people. First he was accompanied by an ignorant rabble, to whom he explained the new oracles of heaven. These unfortunates, seduced by the promises and fables of this new impostor, spread his renown and exalted him to a height that eclipsed his predecessors. Mahomet was not a man who appeared capable of founding an empire, as he excelled neither in politics [50] nor philosophy; in fact, could neither read nor write. He had so little firmness that he would often have abandoned his enterprise had he not been forced to persist in his undertaking by the skill of one of his followers. From that time he commenced to rise and become celebrated. Corais, a powerful Arab, jealous that a man of his birth should have the audacity to deceive the people, declared himself his enemy, and attempted to cross his enterprise, but the people persuaded that Mahomet had continual conferences with God and his angels caused him to prevail over his enemy. The tribe of Corais were at a disadvantage and Mahomet seeing himself followed by a crazy crowd who thought him a divine man, thought he would have no need of a companion, but fearing that the latter (Corais) might expose his impostures he tried to prevent it, and to do it more certainly he overwhelmed him with promises, and swore to him that he wished only to become great by sharing the power to which he had contributed. "We have reached," said he, "the moment of our elevation, we are sure of the great multitude we have gained, and we must now assure ourselves by the artifice you have so happily conceived." At the same time he induced him to hide himself in the cave of oracles. There was a dried-up well from which he made the people believe that the voice of God declared himself for Mahomet, who was in the midst of his proselytes. Deceived by the caresses of this traitor, his associate went into the well to counterfeit the oracle as usual; Mahomet then passing by at the head of an infatuated multitude a voice was heard saying: "I who am your God, declare that I have established Mahomet as the prophet of all nations: from him you will learn my true law which has been changed by the Jews and the Christians." For a long time this man played this game, but in the end he was paid by the greatest and blackest ingratitude. Mahomet hearing the voice which proclaimed him a divine being, turned towards the people and commanded them in the name of the God who recognized him as his prophet, to fill with stones the ditch from whence had issued such authentic testimony in his favor, in memory of the stone which Jacob raised to mark the place where God appeared to him. [51] Thus perished the unfortunate person who had contributed to the elevation of Mahomet; it was on this heap of stones that the last of the celebrated prophets established his law. This foundation is so stable and founded in such a way that after a thousand years of reign it has no appearance of being overthrown. A LITERAL TRANSLATION DE TRIBUS IMPOSTORIBUS. ANNO MDIIC. ZWEITE MIT EINEM NEUEN VORWORT VERSEHENE AUFLAGE VON EMIL WELLER. HEILBRONN VERLAG VON GEBR. HENNINGER. 1876 Many maintain that there is a God, and that he should be worshipped, before they understand either what a God is, or what it is to be, as far as being is common to bodies and spirits, according to the distinction they make; and what it is to worship God, although they regard the worship of God according to the standard of the honor given to ruling men. What God is, they describe according to the confession of their own ignorance. For it is inevitable that they declare how he differs from other things by the denial of former conceptions. They cannot comprehend that there is an infinite being; that is, one of whose limits they are ignorant. There is a creator of heaven and earth, they say, but who is his creator they do not say, because they do not know; because they do not understand. Some say that he is the origin of himself and maintain that he comes from nothing but himself. We do not understand his origin they say, therefore he has none (why so? if we do not understand God himself, is there, therefore, no God?) And this is the first principle of their ignorance. There is no progression into infinity; why not? because the human intellect must have some foundation? because it is accustomed to this belief? because it cannot imagine anything beyond its own limits? As if, indeed, it followed, that if I do not comprehend infinity, therefore there is no infinity. And nevertheless as is known from experience, some among the members of the sects of Christ, think there is an infinite progression of divine properties or persons, concerning the limitations of which, however, there has hitherto been dispute, and so indeed they think that there is a progression into infinity. For the son is begotten from infinity, and the holy spirit is breathed from infinity. This begetting and this procession goes on to infinity. For if that begetting or that breathing of the spirit had begun or should once have ceased, the conception of eternity would be destroyed. But if you should agree with them on this point also, that the creation of man can not be prolonged to infinity, which they infer, however, on account of their finite minds, it will not yet be evident whether other beings have not been begotten among the higher powers, in a peculiar manner and in great number, as well as among men on earth; and who of this great number should especially be accepted as God. For every religion admits that there are Gods who are mediators, although they are not all under equal limitations, whence that principle, that there must be one being only, raised above men by his own nature, is evidently demolished. And so it will be possible to say that from a diversity of Gods as creators, a diversity of religions, and a variety of kinds of worship afterwards arose: which the religious feeling of the heathen especially employed. But as to the objection which is raised about the murders and the concubinage of the Pagan Gods, aside from the fact that the Pagans have long since shown that these things must be understood as mysteries, similar things will be found in other religions. The slaughter of many tribes was perpetrated by Moses and Joshua at the command of God. Even human sacrifice the God of Israel demanded of Abraham, but it was not carried into effect in this remarkable case. But he could either not have given a command, or Abraham could not have believed that it had been given in earnest, which would have been in itself utterly at variance with the nature of God. Mahomet promises the whole world as the reward offered by his religion, and Christians talk about the universal slaughter of their enemies and the subjugation of the foes of the church, which indeed has not been insignificant, from the fact that the church had the entire control of public affairs. Was not polygamy also permitted by (Mohammed) Moses, and as some maintain, even in the New Testament, by Christ? Did not the Holy Spirit beget the son of God by a peculiar union with a betrothed virgin? As for other objections which are made to the pagans about their ridiculous idols, and their misuse of worship, they are not so weighty that similar ones can not be made to the members of other sects; nevertheless it can easily be proved that these abuses have proceeded from the subordinates rather than from the leaders, from the disciples, rather than from the masters of religions. But to return to the former argument. This being,--since the intellect limits its extent,--is what some call Nature and others God. On these points some agree, others disagree. Some fancy that the worlds have existed from eternity, and call the connection of things God; certain ones call God an individual being, which can be neither seen or known, although among these disputes are not infrequent. Religion, as far as it concerns worship, some attribute to the fear, some to the love, of invisible powers. But if the invisible powers are false, idolatry is just as the principles of each worshipper demand. They will have it that love springs from kindness and refer it to gratitude; although nevertheless it chiefly arises from the sympathy of humors. The kind deeds of enemies inspire especially violent hatred although no one of the hypocrites has dared to confess it. But who would suppose that love arises from the kindness of him who gave to man the characteristics of a lion, a bear and other wild beasts that he might assume a nature contrary to the will of the creator? Who, well knowing the weakness of human nature, placed before [our progenitors] a tree, by which he was sure they would bring a fatal sentence upon themselves and their descendants (as some will have it)? And yet the latter are bound to worship and to perform deeds of gratitude, as if for a great favor, Forsooth! So the Ithacan may have it, etc. Take deadly arms, a sword for instance, and if you had the most certain foreknowledge (which some claim for God also in this very case, inasmuch as there can be no chance with God) of the very purpose that he, before whose eyes you place it, will seize it and inflict on himself and all his descendants the most dreadful death. (He who has still one drop of the milk of human kindness will shudder to do such a deed). Take, I say, a sword, you who are a father, for instance, or you who are a friend; and if you are a father, if you are a real friend, present it to your friend, or your children, with the command that they should not run upon it, you foreseeing beyond all doubt, nevertheless, that he will run upon it, and inflict on his children and those hitherto innocent, the most dreadful death. Consider, you who are a father, would you do such a thing? What is it to make a command a mockery, if this is not? And nevertheless God must have given such a command. But they maintain that God should be worshipped for his kindness, saying: If God is, he must be worshipped; just as they make this inference, the Great Mogul is, therefore he must be worshipped. His own people do indeed worship him, but why? assuredly that his unbridled pride and that of all great men may be gratified, and for no other reason. For he is worshipped chiefly on account of the fear of his visible power (hence at his death the worship ceases), and then too on account of the hope of rewards. This same reason exists for the reverence shown parents and other people in power; and since invisible powers are considered more important and greater than visible ones, therefore, they will have it that still more should they be worshipped. And this God should be worshipped on account of his love, they say. And what kind of love is it to expose innocent posterity to infinite suffering on account of the fall of one man, certainly foreseen and therefore foreordained (foreordained as far at least as being permitted). But, you say, they are to be redeemed. But how? The father exposes his only son to extreme suffering, that he may deliver the other man from tortures no greater, because of the redemption offered by the former. The Barbarians had no such silly idea. But why should God be loved, why worshipped? because he created us? But to what end? that we should fall! because assuredly he had foreknowledge that [our progenitors] would fall, and set before them the medium of the forbidden fruit, without which they could not have fallen. Granted, however, that he should be worshipped because on him all things depend for their creation; some, nevertheless, add, for their continued existence also, and their preservation. Why should God be worshipped? Does he himself delight in worship? Certainly. Parents and benefactors are honored among us. But why is this honor given? Human nature has regard for mutual wants and, the bestowal of honor is due to the idea that we can be aided by a greater and more enduring power. No one wishes to aid another unless his own wants are satisfied in turn. That is called a person's recognition of kindness and gratitude, which demands a greater recognition of his own kindness; and in order that his reputation may be spread abroad, it demands that the other be ready, as a handmaid, so to speak, to inspire in others an idea of his fame and nobility. Doubtless the idea others may entertain of our ability to be of service to general or individual needs, tickles us, and raises plumes for us like those of a peacock, wherefore generosity is found among the virtues. But who does not see the imperfection of our nature? Who, however, would say that God, the most perfect of all beings, wants anything? Or that he wishes for any such thing if he is perfect and already self-sufficient and honored without any external honors. Who would say that he wants honor except those who persist in honoring him? The desire for honor is a sign of imperfection and lack of power. The consensus of opinion among all races on this subject, is urged by those who have talked with scarcely all even of their own friends, or have examined three or four books treating of the testimony of the world, not even carefully considering how far the authors had knowledge of the customs of the world; but those excellent authors were not familiar with all customs. Notice, however, that when one is considering the matter, the objection here arises, that the fundamental reasons for worship are connected with God himself and his works, and not with the elementary constitution of any society. For there is no one who is not aware that worship is due to the custom, prevalent among the ruling and rich classes especially, of maintaining some external form of religion in order to calm the passions of the people. But if you are concerned about the former reason, who would believe that in the principal seat of the Christian religion,--Italy,--there are so many free-thinkers, or to speak more meaningly, Atheists, and if he should believe it, would say that there is a consensus of opinion among all races. God is, therefore should he be worshipped? Because, forsooth, the wiser men at least say so? Who, pray, are the wiser? The high priest, the augurs, the soothsayers of the ancients, Cicero, Caesar, the leading men and their priestly adherents, etc. Would they let it be known that such practices were to their interests? Doubtless those in control of public affairs, deriving their profits from the credulity of the people, told fear-inspiring stories of the power and vengeance of the invisible gods, and lied about their own occasional meetings and association with them; and demanded in proportion to their own luxury beings suitable for or even surpassing themselves. For it is not to be wondered at that priests promulgate such teachings, since this is their method of maintaining their own lives. And such are the teachings of the wiser men. This world may depend on the control of a prime mover; this is certainly the fact--that the dependence will be only at the start. For why might there not have been a first command of God, such that everything would go in a foreordained course to a fixed end, if he wished to fix one. There would no longer be need of new care, dependence or support, but he might at first have endowed every one with sufficient powers. And why should it not be said that he did this? For it is not to be supposed that he visits all the elements and parts of the universe as a physician does a sick man. What then is to be said of the testimony of conscience? and whence would come those fears of the mind because of wrong-doing, were it not evident that there is near us a higher power who sees and punishes us, whom wrong-doing displeases just as it is altogether at variance with worship of him? It is not now my purpose to inquire more deeply into the nature of good and evil nor the dangers of prejudice and the folly of great fear which springs from preconceived ideas. This merely I say. Whence did they arise? especially since all evil-doing depends on the corruption and destruction of the harmony resulting from the interchange of services in the wants to which the human race is subject, and since the idea about one who wishes to increase rather than to be of aid in those wants, renders him an object of hatred. Whence it happens that he himself may fear lest he may incur the hatred and contempt of others, or a like refusal to satisfy his wants; or may lose his power of being of service not only to others but to himself, in so far indeed as he needs to fear any harm from being wronged by others. And so, they say, those who do not have the light of Holy Scriptures, follow the natural light in accordance with the dictates of their consciences, which proves to be sure, that God has endowed the intellect of all men with some sparks of his own knowledge and will, and if they act according to these it must be said that they have done right. For what reason of theirs can be a command to worship God if this is not? But it is maintained on many grounds that beasts act according to the guide of reason, and this matter has not yet been decided; nevertheless I do not urge this. Who has said anything to you to prove that this does not occur, or that a trained animal does not at times surpass an ignorant and uneducated man in intellect and powers of judgment? But to speak to the point, the majority of men of leisure who have had time to consider subtile ideas and those beyond the comprehension of the ordinary intellect, in order to gratify their own pride and promote their own advantage, have devised many subtile principles for which Alexis and Thyrsis, prevented by their pastoral and rustic duties, could have had no leisure. Wherefore, the latter have placed confidence in the philosophers of leisure, as if they were wiser, while they are more fitted to impose on the foolish. Hence, good Alexis, go to, worship the sylvan Pans, Satyrs and Dianas, etc. For the great philosophers will tell you about the dream of Numa Pompilius, and narrate to you the story of his concubinage with the nymph Aegeria, and they will wish by this very account to bind you to his worship, and as a reward for this pious work, because of the reconciliation and favor of those invisible powers, they will demand for their own support, the flower of your flock and your labor as a sacrifice. And hence, since Titius worshipped Pan, Alexis, the Fauns, Rome, the Gods of War, Athens, the unknown Gods, is it to be supposed that those good men learned from the light of reason certain tales which were the idle inventions and ideas of philosophers? not to attack too harshly the religion of others. And why did not this reason also tell that they were mistaken in their worship, in foolishly worshipping statues and stones, as if they were the dwelling places of their Gods? But is it indeed to be supposed that since good women bestowed such worship on Francis, Ignatius and Dominicus and such men, reason teaches that at least some one among holy men should be worshipped? That they learn from the light of nature the worship of some superior power no longer visible, although, nevertheless, such are the fabrications of our priests of leisure for the more splendid increase of their own means of support. Therefore, there is no God? Suppose there is (a God.) Therefore, should he be worshipped? But this does not follow, because he desires worship as far as he has inscribed it in the heart. What more then? We should then follow the guide of our nature. But this is known to be imperfect. In what respects? For is it sufficient enough to maintain the society of men peacefully? Because other religious people, following revelation, do not pass more tranquil lives? But is it rather because God demands of us especially a more precise idea of God? But nevertheless you who promise this of any religion whatsoever, do not supply it. For any revelation of what God is, is far more unintelligible than before. And how will you make this clearer by the conception of the intellect, since he limits every intellect? What do you think of these things? No one, I say, has a knowledge of God, moreover eye has not seen him, and he dwells in unapproachable light, and from the time of revelation till now, in allegory. But I suppose every one knows how clear an allegory is. Wherefore do you indeed believe that God makes such demands? or is it from the desire of the intellect to surmount the limitations of its own capacity in order to comprehend everything more perfectly than it does, or from something else? Who of you is there who speaks from special revelation? Good God! what a hodge-podge of revelations. Do you point to the oracles of the heathen? Antiquity has already held them up to ridicule. To the testimony of your priests? I can show you priests who will contradict them. You may protest in your turn, but who will be the judge? Who will put an end to these disputes? Do you call attention to the writings of Moses, the Prophets and Apostles? I bring to your notice the Koran, which says that, according to a new revelation, these are corrupt and its author boasts of having settled by the sword the corruptions and altercations of Christians as did Moses those of the heathen. For by the sword Mahomet and Moses subjugated Palestine, each instructed by great miracles. And the writings of the Sectarians as well as of the Vedas and the Brahmins 1300 years back, are in opposition, to say nothing of the Sinenses. [52] You, who in some remote spot in Europe are disputing about such things disregard or deny these writings. You yourself should see very clearly that with equal ease they deny your writings. And what proofs not miraculous, would be sufficient to convince the inhabitants of the world, if it were evident from the first three books of Veda, that the world was contained in and came from an egg of a scorpion, and that the earth and first elements of things was placed on the head of a bull, if some envious son of the Gods had not stolen these first three volumes. In our times this would be laughed at; and among those people there would not be this strange argument to establish their religion if it did not have its origin in the brains of these priests. And whence else came those many immense volumes concerning the gods of the pagans and those wagon loads of lies? Moses acted very wisely in first becoming skilled in the arts of the Egyptians, that is in the mastery of astrology and magic, and then by cruel war driving from their homes the petty kings of Palestine, and pretending a conference like that of Numa Pompilius. Leading his army, confident of their fortunes, into the possessions of peaceful men; in order that he, forsooth, might be a great general and his brother high priest, and that he himself might be a leader and dictator. But of what a people! Others by milder means and by pulling the wool over the eyes of the people under cover of profound sanctity (I am afraid to mention other things,) and by the pious deceits of members of their sect in secret assemblies, first got control of the ignorant country people and then, because of the growing strength of the new religion, they got control of those who feared for themselves, and hated a leader of the people. At length another eager for war, by feigning miracles attached to himself the more ferocious people of Asia, who had suffered ill treatment at the hands of commanders of the Christians, and who, like Moses, with the promise of many victories and favors, he subjugated the warring and peaceful leaders of Asia, and established his religion by the sword. The first is considered the reformer of the heathen, the second of Judaism and the third the reformer of both. It remains to be seen who will be the reformer of Mahomet and Mahometanism. Doubtless then, the credulity of men is likely to be imposed on, and to take advantage of this under the pretense of some gain to be derived, is rightly called imposture. It would be too long and tedious to show more at length in this place, the nature and forms of what goes under the name of imposture, but we must observe, that, even if natural religion is granted and the worship of God is right as far as it is said to be commanded by nature; that up to this time the leader of every new religion has been suspected of imposture, especially since it is evident to all and is obvious from what has been said or can be said, how many deceptions have been used in propagating any religion. It remains then unanswerable according to the previous argument, that religion and the worship of God according to the promptings of natural light, is consistent with truth and justice; but if any one wishes to establish any new principles in religion, either new or displeasing, and that by the authority of invisible powers, it will evidently be necessary for him to show his power of reforming, unless he wishes to be considered by all an impostor. Since, not under the conclusions of natural religion, nor under the authority of special revelation, he offers opposition to the ideas of all. Moreover he should be so upright in life and character that the people may believe him worthy of being associated with so high and holy a power, who does not approve of anything impure. Nor can merely his own confession, nor the holiness of a past life, nor any miracles--that is extraordinary deeds--prove this; for this is common rather among the skillful and the deceivers of men, lying hypocrites who pursue their own advantage and glory in this way. For it is not worth considering that some reached such a degree of madness that they voluntarily sought death, in order that it might be supposed that they despised and conquered everything, like different ones among the ancient philosophers. Nor is it to be supposed that they were upheld by special divine powers in that which they did because of foolish fancies and fond hopes of mountains of gold, rising from a defective judgment. For they did not give the matter the proper consideration, nor did the real teachers, for in order that you may come to a fair decision about them, I have said not only is their own testimony not sufficient, but in order to reach the truth of the matter, they must be compared with one another; and other witnesses with them, and then their acquaintances and friends, and then strangers, then friends and enemies; and then after the testimony is all gathered in, that of each teacher concerning himself, and then that of others must be compared. And if we do not know the witnesses, we must consult the witnesses of the witnesses, and so on; besides instituting an investigation as to your powers of distinguishing from the true and the false involved in such or other circumstances. Especially in similar ones, inquiring, moreover, whence you desired data to learn the truth, for this purpose comparing the judgment of others, as to what they infer from such an investigation or from the testimony of witnesses. And from these data it will be permissible to infer whether he who makes this claim, is a true messenger of the revelation of divine will and whether his teachings should be gradually adopted. But at this point we must be very careful not to get into a circle. Whenever the nature of important religions may be such that one supplants another, as that of Moses, Paganism, that of Mahomet, Christianity,--the later one may not always nor in every particular cast aside the earlier, but only in certain parts, to such an extent that the latter is founded on the former, it will be necessary to investigate carefully not only either the last, or the middle, or the first, but all, especially since the charge of imposture is brought by every sect. So the ancients were charged with it by Christ, because they corrupted the law; the Christians by Mahomet, because they corrupted the gospels, a fact not to be wondered at, inasmuch as one sect of Christians charges the other with corrupting texts of the New Testament, so that it can [not] be ascertained whether he who is offered as an example is a teacher of a true religion or how far those who claim to have been given authority, should be listened to. For in an investigation no sect must be overlooked, but each must be compared with the rest without any prejudice. For if one is overlooked, that perhaps, is the very one which is nearer the truth. Thus, those who followed Moses, have followed the truth according to the Christians also, but they ought not to have paused at that point, but should examine the truth of the Christian religion also. Each sect maintains that its own teachers are the best and that it has had and is daily having proof of this, and that there are no better ones, so that either every one must believe it, which would be absurd, or no one, which is the safer plan, until the true way is known, though no sect should be disregarded in a comparison. There is no need of presenting the objection that it is known that all mathematicians agree that twice two is four. For it is not a similar case, since no one has been known to doubt whether twice two is four, while on the contrary religions agree neither in end, beginning nor middle. Suppose that I do not know the true way of salvation; I follow, however, the Brahmins or the Koran. Will not Moses and the rest say: What wrong have we done you that you thus reject us, though we are better and nearer the truth? What reply shall we make? I believed in Mahomet or the Gymnosophistes [53], in whose teachings I was born and brought up, and from them I learned that your religion and that of the Christians which followed, have long since decayed and grown corrupt, and are still misleading. Will they not reply that they do not know anything about the others and that these do not know anything about the true guide to salvation, since they know that those who are corruptors of the people are impostors, feigning miracles, or by lies pulling the wool over the eyes of the people. Nor should faith be thus simply given to one man or one sect, rejecting all others without a complete and proper investigation. For with equal right the Ethiopian, who has not left his own land, says that there are no men under the sun except those of a black color. Moreover, this precaution also should be taken in the investigation of other sects, that equal care should be used in an investigation of all, and while one is explained with great pains, the other should not be slighted, because one claim or another at first sight seems to be wrong, or because of the evil reports of gossip concerning the leader of that sect, while other reports are cast aside. For that should not be set down as doctrine or indubitable testimony, which the first vagabond that comes along asserts about a hostile religion. Indeed, with equal right on account of common gossip and the mere mention of a name, the Christian religion was to some an object of horror, and to others an object of scorn. With the latter because the Christians worshipped the head of an ass, and with the former because they ate and drank their God, so that at length the report became current that to be a Christian was to be a deadly enemy of God and men; when, nevertheless, such tales were either things which had been misunderstood or skillfully told lies, which were then confirmed, and having some foundation, spread abroad because an enemy of that religion had absolutely no intercourse, or no proper intercourse, with the Christians themselves, or the more learned among them, but believed the first ignorant person or deserter or enemy of that religion. Such a method of investigation being decided upon, it would always be a matter of great difficulty. What shall we say about women, what about children, what about the majority of the masses of the people? All children will be excluded from a feeling of security in regard to their religion, and the majority of women to whom even those matters which have been most clearly explained by the leaders of any religion, as far as can be done, are obscure: also from their manner of life you rightly perceive that with the exception of a very few superior ones, they have no accurate powers of comprehending mysteries of such a character, to say nothing of the countless numbers of insignificant persons and country people for whom the question of their own support is the most important subject for the exercise of their powers of reason, while other matters they accept or reject in good faith. Doubtless there is only a very small part of the world, who weigh all religions, compare their own carefully with others and correctly distinguish true reasons from false, in details in which deception may creep in; but the majority rather adopt the faith of others, of teachers of sacred matters especially, whose knowledge and powers of judgment in sacred matters are considered noteworthy. And so in any religion this is done, especially by those who can not read and write or do not have anything to read. But it should have been observed that in this matter it is not sufficient that the teachers of any religion should have the power, because of very exact powers of judgment and avowed experience, of distinguishing the true from the false. Indeed it ought to be very certain to others, with powers of judgment no less exact, that those teachers have not only the ability to distinguish the true from the false, but the desire as well, and indeed we ought to be especially certain that he who professes such a knowledge and desire is neither deceived nor wishes to be. And what choice shall we make here among so many teachers so much at variance in even one eminent sect? For when we look at our comrades and associates, who disagree on many subjects, although they are most friendly in other respects, one of the two disputants will maintain his opinion on account of some defect, either because he has not a correct understanding of the matter, and lacks the power of judgment, or because he does not wish to give up, and so does not desire to confess the truth. But although it might be matters of secondary importance in which this happened, nevertheless the result will be that they will be mistrusted in other matters also. Each doubtless is in possession of one truth, and he who gives this up in one place, either from a defect of judgment or a wrong desire is deservedly mistrusted of doing the same thing in other cases. Therefore, that you may judge of the ability and honesty of any teacher in religion, first, it is necessary for you to be just as able as he; for otherwise he will be able to impose on you very easily, and, moreover, if he is unknown to you, he will need the testimony of others, and these again of others, and so on indefinitely; not only in regard to his truthfulness, that he really taught such doctrines, but in regard to his honesty, that he did this without deceit. And the same method must at once be employed in regard to the witnesses of his honesty and his teachings. But where will you place an end to this? It is not enough that such discussions have already taken place among others; you must consider how well this has been done. For the ordinary proofs which are set forth are neither conclusive nor manifest, and prove doubtful matters by others more doubtful, so that, like those who run in a circle, you return to the starting point. In order that it may be manifest whether any one is a teacher of a true religion or an impostor, there is need either of personal knowledge, which we can not have in the case of the three great founders of the religions of Judaism, Christianity and Mahometanism, inasmuch as they lived in far distant places and died long before our time; or of the knowledge of others, which, if any one imparts it to you, we call testimony. Between these, there is still another way of knowing any one, namely through his own writings, which may be called one's own testimony concerning himself. And concerning Christ, there is no such testimony; concerning Moses, it is doubtful whether there is; concerning Mahomet, there is the Koran. The testimony of others is of two classes--that of friends and that of enemies. Between these extremes there is no third class, according to the saying, "who is not with me is against me." Mahomet in his writings assumes and attributes to himself the same divine qualities as did Moses and another. Moreover the friends of Mahomet and members of his sect wrote the same things concerning him as did the members of the sects of the others concerning their masters, and the enemies of the others wrote just as disparagingly of them as their friends did of Mahomet. As for the rest, the testimony of any one concerning himself is too unreliable to inspire implicit confidence, and is of no consequence except, perchance, to perplex a thoughtless hearer. The assertions of friends, who doubtless unanimously repeat the sayings of their masters, are of the same nature. Nor should the enemies of any one be heeded on account of their prejudices. But as it is, in spite of these facts, it is for such trivial reasons, which are confirmed only by the master's own boasts, the assertions of friends, or the calumnies of enemies, that every follower of any one of the three assumes that the claims of his enemy are based wholly on imposture, while the teachings of his master are founded wholly on truth. Nevertheless Mahomet is undoubtedly considered an impostor among us; but why? Not from his own testimony or that of his friends but from that of his enemies. Then, on the contrary, among the Mahometans he is considered a most holy prophet; but why? From his own testimony, but especially from that of his friends. Whoever considers Moses an impostor or a holy teacher employs the same method of reasoning. And there is equal reason in the case of Mahomet as in the case of the others, either for charging him with imposture or for answering that charge, although, nevertheless, the former are considered holy, while he is considered a scoundrel, contrary to all the demands of justice. To put it in the scholastic manner, then, the following conclusions are most firmly established: Whenever there is the same reason as in the case of Mahomet for charging any person with imposture or for answering that charge, they should be placed in the same category. And for example, in the case of Moses, there is the same reason, therefore justice should be demanded just as in the case of Mahomet, nor should he be considered an impostor. PROOF OF MINOR PREMISE. (a.) In regard to the rebuttal of the charge of imposture: this is based on the above-mentioned testimony not only of Mahomet concerning himself in his well-known writings, but on that of every one of his friends concerning their master, and hence, it logically follows: (I.) Whatever value the testimony of Moses' friends has in defending him on the charge of imposture, the testimony of Mahomet's friends ought to have the same value. And whatever the value of the acquittal, though their favorable testimony, etc., etc. Therefore, etc. (II.) And whatever value the books of Moses have for this purpose, the same value the Koran has also. And so, etc. Therefore, etc. Moreover, the Mussulmen, from the very books of the New Testament (although according to these very persons, these books have been much corrupted in other respects,) draw various arguments even in support of their Mahomet, and especially that prediction of Christ concerning the future Paraclete. [54] They maintain that he came and exposed the corruption of the Christians, and established a new covenant. And although at other times the Koran is charged with many silly, nay impious tales, all these nevertheless, can be explained in a spiritual sense or smoothed over in other ways, since the rest of the teachings insist on nothing but extreme sanctity and a stringent mode of morals, but especially on temperance and abstinence from wine. And to the objection frequently raised that wine is the gift of God, the reply can be made that so also are poisons, and yet we are not supposed to drink them. The further objection often made that the spirit of the Koran is too carnal, and fills eternal life with pleasures of the world and the flesh, polygamy moreover being so indiscriminately permitted, it is not of such weight that it can not be confuted, since Moses also permitted polygamy and in the New Testament life eternal admits of banquets, e. g., you will sit down with Abraham and Isaac, etc., etc. Again, I shall not taste wine except in the Kingdom of my Father. It is said that all those pleasures mentioned in the Song of Solomon, which is, of course, also instanced, are not wrong, and when explained in a spiritual sense imply no wrong, although the same thing is not said of the Koran. And if we are too severely critical of the words of the Koran, we ought to employ the same severity of criticism against the writings of Moses and others. Moreover the arguments which are offered from Moses himself in answer to the charge of imposture, do not seem reasonable nor of sufficient weight. (I.) Our knowledge of the intercourse Moses had with God depends on his own testimony and that of his friends, and hence such evidence can have no more weight than similar arguments of the Mussulmen concerning the conference that Mahomet had with Gabriel; and what is more, this intercourse of Moses, according to Moses himself (if all those sayings are Moses', which are commonly attributed to him) is open to the suspicion of imposture, as is to be shown below. (II.) No one indeed who is acquainted with the many very grave crimes of Moses, will be able to say easily or at least justly, that his holiness of life can not easily be matched. His crimes then are the following: (a.) Fraud, which none but his friends have palliated, but they are not impartial judges of the matter; nor does that commendatory passage of Luke in the Acts of the Apostles form any apology, for there is dispute as to the honesty and veracity of that witness. (b.) The stirring up of rebellion; for it can not be proved that this was due to a command of God, nay, the contrary is clear, since elsewhere Moses is urged to forbid resistance to tyrants. (c.) Wars, although murder is contrary to the V. and VII. (?VI.) [55] commandments of Moses himself, unrestrained plunder, etc., etc.; just as the high priest in India, or Mahomet in his land, offering the command of God as a pretext, drove from their territory the former possessors. Moses slew thousands and gave them over to slaughter in order to insure salvation to himself and his people. (d.) The teaching concerning the taking of the property of others under the pretense of a loan. (e.) The prayer to God in which Moses desired to die eternally for his people, although this petition asked of God such things as would destroy his essence. See Exodus xxxii, 31, 32. [56] (f.) Neglect of the commands of God in regard to circumcision (Exodus iv, 24, 25, 26,) [57] and finally, (g.) The chief of Moses' crimes, the extreme and stupid incredulity of one who was chosen to perform so many miracles by the power of God, and who nevertheless on account of his wavering faith was censured by God himself severely and with the threat of punishment. (Numbers xx, 12). [58] As to (b.) The proof of the other argument, namely, the charge of imposture, it can be said: We believe that Mahomet was an impostor, not from our personal knowledge, as was pointed out above, but from the testimony, not of his friends, but of his enemies. But all such are anti-Mahometans, according to the saying "Who is not with me is against me," etc., etc.: hence follows the conclusion: Whatever weight the testimony of enemies has in the case of one, that it ought to have in the case of the other also. Otherwise we shall be unjust in condemning one from the testimony of enemies and not the other; if this were done, all justice would be at an end. And in the case of Mahomet, the testimony of enemies has such weight, that he is considered an Impostor, therefore, etc., etc. Furthermore, I say that reasons for suspecting Moses of imposture can be elicited not only from external, but from internal evidence, whereby imposture can be proved by his own testimony as well as by that of others, albeit, his followers, although there is still dispute. (I.) Whether the books, which are said to be those of Moses, are his or (II.) those of compilers, (III.) or those of Esdras, especially, and (IV.) whether they were written in the Samaritan, or (V.) the real Hebrew language; and (VI.) if the latter, whether we can understand that language. All these matters are doubtful for many reasons, and especially it can be shown from the first chapters of Genesis that we can not correctly interpret that language. I confess I am unwilling to concern myself with these points, but I wish to discuss the man. I. From Moses' own testimony and indeed (a.) concerning his life and character which we have considered above, and which, if any blame is attached to Mahomet on account of the fierce wars he waged, especially against the innocent, is equally blamable, and in other respects does not seem at all different from Mahomet's. (b.) Concerning the authority of his own teaching. And here applies what was said above about Moses' intercourse with God, which Moses indeed boasted of but evidently with too great exaggeration. For if any one boasts of intercourse with God of an impossible nature, his intercourse is properly doubted and Moses, etc. Therefore, etc. It is proved because he boasts of having seen that of which in the Old and in the New Testament afterward, it is very often said that no eye has seen (namely) God face to face. Exodus xxxii. 11. Numbers xii. 8. [59] Thus he saw God (1) in his own form, not in a vision nor in a dream (2), but face to face as friend to friend when he spoke directly to him. But any vision, which (1) is like that of friends speaking face to face, directly to one another, (2) like that of the blessed in the other life, is properly called and considered a vision of God. And Moses, etc. Therefore, etc. The Minor premise is proved from the passages previously cited and from the words of the Apostle: then indeed face to face, etc., and there is the same argument in the passages of Moses and in that of the Apostle. And yet among Christians the belief is most firmly established that no unjust person can see God in this life. And in the above passage of Exodus xxxiii. 20, [60] it is expressly added: you will not be able to see my face. These words God addressed to Moses and they are in direct contradiction to the passages previously cited, so that these claims can be explained in no other way than by saying that they were added by a thoughtless compiler, but by so doing the whole is rendered doubtful. (c.) Concerning the teachings of Moses, which relate either to the laws or the gospel. Among the laws, all of which for the sake of brevity I can not now consider, the decalogue is most important, being called the special work of God and said to have been written on Mount Horeb. But it is evident it was devised by Moses before it was written by God, because these commands are not in themselves characterized by the perfection of God, since (1) they are either superfluous, namely the last three, arguing from the words of Christ in Math. v, [61] undoubtedly relating to the former, while the IX should not be separated from the X, and they will likewise be superfluous (2) or they are defective. For where are these commandments: thou shalt not desire to have other Gods, nor desire to curse God, nor desire to desecrate the Sabbath, nor to injure thy parents, and similar ones? And is it to be presumed that God would forbid the lesser sins of coveting a neighbor's house, land and property especially, and in an order so extraordinary, and not the greater? As to the teaching of Moses concerning the gospel, he establishes a very foolish and untrustworthy sign of the future great prophet, or Christ. Deut. xviii, 21, 22, [62] since this sign makes faith impossible for a long time. From this dictum it follows that Christ, having predicted the fall of Jerusalem, ought not to have been considered a true prophet while that prophecy was as yet unfulfilled (nor should Daniel, until his prophecy had been fulfilled), and so those who lived in the interval between the time of Christ and the overthrow of Judea, can not be blamed for not believing in him, although Paul hurled anathemas at those who did not attach themselves to Christ before the fall. Whatever sign, then, permits people for a long time to believe what they please with impunity, can not proceed from God, but is justly subject to suspicion. And this sign was given, etc., therefore, etc. What is said concerning the fulfillment of other prophecies is no objection. For it is the special and genuine sign of that great prophet, that his predictions are fulfilled. Wherefore, naturally, previous to this fulfillment he could not have been considered such a prophet. The other absurd conclusion which evidently follows from this passage, is this: that although this sign ought to have been the proof of the divine inspiration of all prophets, in the case of certain prophets who made predictions, indefinite indeed, but in words not admitting a moral interpretation (such as soon, swiftly, near, etc.,) that sign can by no means be found, e. g. Many predict the last day of the world and Peter said that that day was at hand; therefore, so far, until it comes it will be impossible to consider him a true prophet. For such is the express requirement Moses makes in the passage cited. (d.) Concerning the histories of Moses. But if the Koran is charged with containing many fables, doubtless in Genesis there are many stories to arouse the suspicions of the thoughtful reader: as the creation of man from the dust of the earth, the inspiration of the breath of life, the creation of Eve from the rib of the man, serpents speaking and seducing human beings, who were very wise and well aware that the serpent was possessed by the father of lies, the eating of an apple which was to bring punishment upon the whole world, which would make finite one of the attributes of God, namely his clemency (the attributes of God being identical with his essence), as the redemption of the fallen would make finite the wrath of God, and so God himself: for the wrath of God is God himself; men eight or nine hundred years old; the passage of the animals into the ark of Noah, the tower of Babel, the confusion of tongues, etc., etc. These and a thousand other stories can not fail to impress the investigating freethinker as being similar to the fables, especially of the Rabbins since the Jewish race is very much addicted to the use of fables; nor at all inconsistent with other works, to mention those of Ovid, the Vedas, those of the Sinenses and the Brahmins of India, who tell that a beautiful daughter born from an egg bore the world, and similar absurdities. But Moses especially seems to arrest our attention because he represents God as contradicting himself, namely, saying that all things were good and yet that it was not good for Adam to be alone. Whence it follows that there was something apart from Adam that was not good and so could injure the good condition of Adam, while, nevertheless, the solitude of Adam itself was the work of God, since he had created goodness not only of the essences but also of the qualities. For all things were good in that quality in which God had created them. I adduce as proof: It is impossible for any work created by God not to be good. And the solitude of Adam, etc., etc. Therefore, etc. Whoever enters upon the study of the genealogies of the Old Testament finds many difficulties in Moses. I shall not now cite all, contenting myself with merely this one example, since Paul, I. Tim. i., 4, [63] has taught that genealogies are useless, and the study of them unprofitable, nay, to be avoided. Of what use were so many separate, nay, so oft times repeated, genealogies? And there is a remarkable example to arouse suspicion at least of the corruption of the text or of the carelessness of compilers, in the case of the wives of Esau and the different things said of them. WIVES OF ESAU. [64]Genesis xxvi, 34: Judith, daughter of Berit, the Hittite. Basnath, daughter of Elon, the Hittite. Genesis xxviii, 9: Mahalaad, daughter of Ishmael, sister of Nabajoth, who is mentioned after the two former. Genesis xxxvi, 2: Ada, daughter of Elon, the Hittite. Akalibama, C. I. Basnath, daughter of Ishmael, sister of Nabajoth. The one who is called Ada in Genesis xxxvi, is called Basnath in Gen. xxvi, namely, the daughter of Elon, the Hittite, and the one who is called Basnath in Gen. xxxvi, is called Mahalaad in Gen. xxviii, namely, the sister of Nabajoth, although, nevertheless, Mahalaad, in the passage cited in Gen. xxviii, is said to have been married after Judith and Basnath, previously mentioned in Gen. xxvi. I do not yet see how these names are to be reconciled. And these and similar passages increase the suspicion that the writings of Moses which we have, have been put together by compilers and that errors in writing have crept in at some time. Finally the most conclusive argument against the authenticity of Moses is the excessive tautology and useless repetition, with always the same amount of difference, as if different passages had been collected from different authors. (II.) To prove that Moses is subject to suspicion from the testimony, not of his enemies only, but from that of those who openly professed to be his followers and disciples. And this testimony is (g.) Of Peter, Acts xv. 10, [65] calling the yoke of Moses insupportable: and hence either God must be a tyrant, which would be inconsistent with his nature, or Peter speaks falsely, or the laws of Moses are not divine. (h.) Of Paul always speaking slightingly of the laws of Moses, which he would not do if he considered them divine. Thus Gal. iv. [66] he calls them (a.) Bondage v. 3, 4, but who would have so called the laws of God. (b.) Beggarly commands v. 9. [67] (c.) V. 30, [67] he writes: Cast out the bondwoman and her son. Hagar, the bondwoman, is the covenant of Mount Sinai, which is the law of Moses according to v. 24. [67] But who would tolerate the saying, cast out the law of God and its children, and followers, although Paul himself, as he asserts here and in the following chapter Gal. iv. 2, 3, [67] does not permit Timothy to be circumcised. Act xvi. [68] (d.) He calls the law a dead letter, and what else does he not call it? II. Cor. iii., 6-10 [67] and following. Likewise he did not consider its glory worth considering. c. v., 10. Who would say such things of the most holy law of God? If it is just as divine as the gospel it ought to have equal glory, etc., etc. The testimony of those who are outside of the Jewish or Christian church, is etc., etc. TANTUM. CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY. In the library of Cornell University, at Ithaca, N. Y., is a large collection of Spinoza manuscripts and printed books by the same author. The collection was left to the library, and is known as the "Strauss Collection." In the collection is a manuscript copy of "La vie et l'esprit de M. Benoit de Spinosa," which includes "Le traité des trois Imposteurs." This particular manuscript is much longer than any of the printed editions of Traité des Trois Imposteurs, and includes several more chapters than another manuscript which is in same library. The printed editions usually contain six chapters, although the edition à Philadelphie, 1796, alluded to on pages 18-19, contains nine chapters. None of the printed editions that I have seen contains a chapter entitled Numa Pompilius. The manuscript in Cornell library has six additional chapters more than our manuscript, 1716, which chapters are entitled: 1. Religions. 2. Of the Diversity of Religions. 3. Divisions of Christians. 4. The Superstitious,--of the superstition and credulity of the people. 5. Of the Origin of Monarchies. 6. Of Legislators and Politicians, and how they serve themselves with Religion. These chapters being but an elaboration of the matters and ideas contained in our English translation.--A. N. TRANSLATIONS OF LATIN FOUND IN THE TEXT. P. 8, paragraph 3, "Atheismus Triumphatus." Atheism destroyed. P. 10, paragraph 1, "Perini del Vago, Equitis de Malta, Epistolium ad Batavum in Brittania hospitem de tribus Impostoribus," (3 Greek words omitted). Epistle to Batavus, a friend in Britain, about the Three Impostors (the Pamphleteers, Sycophants and so-called Doctors). P. 12, line 2, "Ridiculum et imposturae in omni hominum religione, scriptio paradoxa, quam ex autographo gallico Victoris Amadeo Verimontii ob summam rei dignitatem in latinum sermonem transtulit." What is ridiculous, and the impostures in every religion of mankind, a strange writing, which he translated into Latin from the original French of Victor Amadeus Verimontius, on account of the great worth of the subject matter. P. 12, line 9, "Quaedam deficiunt s. fragmentum de libro de tribus impostoribus." Certain things are missing. His fragment of the book about the three impostors. P. 12, line 12, "De imposturis religionum breve. Compendium descriptum ab exemplari manuscripto quod in bibliotheca J. Fred. Mayeri, Berolini, publice distracta deprehensum et a Principe Eugenio de Sabaudio, 80 Imperialibus redemtum fuit." An abstract about the impostures of religions. An abridgment copied from the original manuscript which, at the dispersal of the library of J. Fred. Mayer of Berlin, was discovered and repurchased by Prince Eugene de Sabaudio for 80 imperials. P. 12, line 18, "Communes namque demonstrationes, quae publicantur, nec certae, nec evidentes, sunt, et res dubias per alias saepe magias dubias probant, adeo ut exemplo eorum, qui circulum currunt, ad terminum semper redeant, a quo currere inceperant. Finis." For the ordinary arguments which are set forth, are not established, nor are they evident, and prove doubtful matters by others often much more doubtful, just like those who run in a circle, and always return to the starting point. End. P. 12, last 7 lines, "Quamvis omnium hominem intersit nosse veritatem, rari tamen boni illi qui eam norunt," etc. Although it is to the interest of all men to know the truth, nevertheless those few good men who know it, etc. "Qui veritates amantes sunt, multum solatii inde capient, et hi sunt, quibus placere gestimus, nil curantes mancipia, quae prejudicia oraculorum--infallibilium loco venerantur." Those who are lovers of the truth will derive much comfort from this, and those are the ones whom we are anxious to please, not caring for those servile persons who reverence prejudices as infallible oracles. P. 13, paragraph 7, "De impostura religionum compendium s. liber de tribus impostoribus." Treatise about the imposture of religions. His book about the three impostors. P. 15, paragraph 2, "Homo sum, nihil humania me alienum puto." I am a man, I consider nothing human alien to me. Page 29, 4th paragraph. Latin orthography corrected: "Quod de tribus famosissimis Nationum Deceptoribus in ordinem. Jussu. meo digessit Doctissimus ille vir, quocum Sermonem de illa re in Museo meo habuisti exscribi curavi atque codicem illum stilo aeque, vero ac puro scriptum ad te ut primum mitto, etenim ipsius perlegendi te accipio cupidissimum." This treatise about the three most famous impostors of the world, in accordance with my instructions was put in order by that scholar with whom you had the conversation concerning that matter in my library, I had it copied, and that MS. written in a style equally genuine and simple. I send you as soon as possible, for I am sure you are very eager to read it. P. 29-30, last paragraph, (Latin orthography corrected), "I. liber de Nat. Deor. Qui Deos esse dixerunt tanta sunt in Varietate et dissentione constituti ut eorum molestum sit dinumerare sententias. Alterum fieri profecto potest ut eorum nulla, alterum certe non potest ut plus unum vera fit. Summi quos in Republica obtinuerat honores orator ille Romanus, eaque quam servare famam Studiote curabat, in causa fuere quod in Condone Deos non ausus sit negare quamquam in contesta Philosophorum, etc." I. Book about the nature of the Gods. "Those who have said that there are Gods, are characterized by such a variety of ideas and difference of belief, that it would be difficult to enumerate their opinions. "On the one hand it might indeed happen that not one of their opinions was true, but on the other hand, certainly not more than one can be true." The great honors which that famous Roman orator had gained in the state, and that reputation, which he took the most zealous care to maintain, were the reason why in a public speech he dared not deny the Gods, although in a discussion of philosophers, etc. P. 35, last paragraph, "De poteste Imperiali,"--Of the Imperial power. P. 144, TANTUM--So Far. QUIXOTISM. Did you ever attend a meeting of the society for the--perhaps I had better not mention the name of the society, lest I tread on your favorite Quixotism. Suffice it to say that it has a noble purpose. It aims at nothing less than the complete transformation of human society, by the use of means which, to say the least, seem quite inadequate. After the minutes of the last meeting have been read, and the objects of the society have been once more stated with much detail, there is an opportunity for discussion from the floor. "Perhaps there is some one who may give some new suggestions, or who may desire to ask a question." You have observed what happens to the unfortunate questioner. What a sorry exhibition he makes of himself! No sooner does he open his mouth than every one recognizes his intellectual feebleness. He seems unable to grasp the simplest ideas. He stumbles at the first premise, and lies sprawling at the very threshold of the argument. "If what I have taken for granted be true," says the chairman, "do not all the fine things I have been telling you about follow necessarily?" "But," murmurs the questioner, "the things you take for granted are just what trouble me. They don't correspond to my experience." "Poor, feeble minded questioner!" cry the members of the society, "to think that he is not able to take things for granted! And then to set up his experience against our constitution and by-laws!" The Gentle Reader--Quixotism--Samuel M. Crothers. CONTENTS. PAGE. Introduction 3 Bibliography 7 Dissertation 26 Letter of Frederic the Emperor, to Otho, the Illustrious 37 TREATISE. God, of 38 (Originally Secs. 1-6, later, Chap. I.) Reasons which have caused mankind to create for themselves an Invisible Being which has been commonly called God 44 (Originally Secs. 1-9 and x-xi, later Chap. II.) God, what is 52 (Originally Secs. x-xi, later, Secs. 1-2, Chap. III.) Religions, what the word signifies, and how and why such a great number have been introduced in the world 56 (Originally Secs. i-xxiii, later, Secs. 1-8, Chap. IV.) Moses, of 62 (Originally Secs. ix-x, later, Secs. 1-2, Chap. V.) Numa Pompilius, of 71 (Originally Secs. xi, later, Chap. VI.) Jesus Christ, of 72 (Originally Secs. xii, later, Chap. VII.) Jesus Christ, of the Policy of 75 (Originally Secs. xiii-xvi, later, Secs. 1-6, Chap. VIII.) Jesus Christ, of the Morals of 80 (Originally Secs. xvii-xviii, later, Secs. 1-3, Chap. IX.) Jesus Christ, of the Divinity of 84 (Originally Secs, xix-xxi, later, Secs. 1-3, Chap. X.) Mahomet 88 (Originally Secs. xxii-xxiii, later, Secs. 1-3, Chap. XI.) Truths, sensible and obvious 93 (Original Secs. i-vi.) Soul, of the 96 (Original Secs. i-vii.) Demons, of Spirits called 101 (Original Secs. i-vii.) Appendicitis 107 Mahomet, Edition "En Suisse," 1793 107 De Tribus Impostoribus, Edition MDIIC 111 (A literal translation of Latin reprint by E. Weller, 1876.) Cornell University 145 Translations of Latin in the Text 146 The Gentle Reader--Quixotism 149 ERRATA. P. 5, 2d paragraph, 1st line, Werner should read Weller. P. 12, line 5, sermonen should read sermonem. Original Mss., A. D. 1716, Contains-- Dissertation, pp. 26-36, 3300 words French. Treatise, pp. 37-101, 19800 words French. ----- Total, 23100 words. Weller's reprint, 1876, Edition, 1598 contains 5800 words Latin. NOTES [1] The History of the Three Infamous Impostors of this Age. 1. Padre Ottomano, a pretended son of the Sultan of Turkey who flourished about 1650, and who latterly, under the above title, became a Dominican Friar. 2. Mahomed Bei, alias Joannes Michael Cigala, who masqueraded as a Prince of the Ottoman family, a descendant of the Emperor Solyman the Magnificent, and in other characters about 1660. 3. Sabbatai Sevi, the pretended Messiah of the Jews, "the Only and First-borne Son of God," who amused the Jews and Turks about 1666. [2] La vie et l'esprit de M. Benoit de Spinosa was published without the author's name, in Amsterdam 1719. In the "Preface du Copiste" it is stated that the author of it is not known, but that if a conjecture might be permitted it might be said, perhaps with certitude, that the book is the work of the late Mr. Lucas, so famous for his Quintessences and for his manners and way of living. Kuno Fischer, in his Descartes und seine Schule. Zweiter Theil, Heidelberg, 1889, p. 101, says: "The real author of the work is not known with entire certainty; probably the author was Lucas, a physician at the Hague, notorious in his own day; others name as author a certain Vroese." Freudenthal, in his Die Lebensgeschichte Spinoza's. Leipzig, 1899, writing of the various conjectures as to the authorship of the book, states that W. Meyer has lately sought to prove that Johan Louckers, a Hague attorney, was the author, but that the authorship had not been settled. Oettinger in his Bibliographie Biographie Universelle, Bruxelles 1854, p. 1707, gives Lucas Vroese as the author. It has also been suggested that Lucas and Vroese were two men and together wrote the book. The authority for ascribing the book to Vroese, of whose life no particulars seem to have been recorded, appears to be the following passage in the Dictionnaire Historique, par Prosper Marchand, à la Haye, 1758, v. 1., p. 352: "A la fin d'une copie manuscrit de ce Traité que j'ai vûe et lûe, on lui donne pour véritable Auteur a Mr. Vroese, conseiller de la cour de Brabant à la Haie, dont Aymon et Rousset retouchèrent le langage; et que ce dernier y ajouta la Dissertation ou Réponse depuis imprimée chez Scheurleer." The name "Vroese" appears at the side of the colophon at end of our translation, but probably as a reference only. [3] This is probably a Latin edition of the original manuscript from which our translation was made.--Ed. [4] See translation Chap. 1 "Of God," first two lines. [5] DISRAELI'S CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE. Title, "Literary Forgeries." "The Duc de la Valliere and the Abbe de St. Leger, once concerted together to supply the eager purchaser of literary rarities with a copy of "De Tribus Impostoribus," a book, by the date, pretended to have been printed in 1598, though probably a modern forgery of 1698. The title of such a book had long existed by rumor, but never was a copy seen by man. Works printed with this title have all been proved to be modern fabrications--a copy however of the 'introuvable' original was sold at the Duc de la Valliere's sale. The history of this volume is curious. The Duc and the Abbe having manufactured a text had it printed in the old Gothic character, under the title 'De Tribus Impostoribus.' They proposed to put the great bibliopobet, De Bure, in good humor, whose agency would sanction the imposition. They were afterwards to dole out copies at 25 louis each, which would have been a reasonable price for a book which no one ever saw! They invited De Bure to dinner, flattered and cajoled him, and, as they imagined at the moment they had wound him up to their pitch, they exhibited their manufacture--the keen-eyed glance of the renowned cataloguer of the 'Bibliographie Instructive' instantly shot like lightning over it, and like lightning, destroyed the whole edition. He not only discovered the forgery but reprobated it! He refused his sanction; and the forging Duc and Abbe, in confusion suppressed the 'livre introuvable'; but they owed a grudge to the honest bibliographer and attempted to write down the work whence the De Bures derive their fame." [6] The names are noted on title page in pencil. [7] The French nation recognize the Supreme Being, the Immortality of the Soul, and the Freedom of Worship. [8] Treatise of the Dominant Religions. [9] In old prints Moses is always depicted with horns on his forehead. [10] When they weep at Rome, they do not laugh in Paris. [11] There is a measure in everything. [12] As to the printing of the book they can bring forward no proof whatever of its having being done prior to this date (1716) and it is impossible to conceive that Frederick, surrounded as he was by enemies, would have circulated a work which gave a fair opportunity of proclaiming his infidelity. It is probable therefore that there were only two copies, the original one and that sent to Otho of Bavaria. J. L. R. L. [13] This phrase is frequently employed to express ecclesiastical criticism. Its first application however had a more pungent meaning. The individual here alluded to having boldly assailed the errors of the Church was attacked one evening by an assassin. Fortunately the blow did not prove fatal; but the weapon (a stylus, or dagger, which is also the Latin name for a pen) having been left in the wound, on his recovery he wore it in his girdle labelled, "The Theological Stylus," or Pen of the Church. The trenchant powers of this instrument have more frequently been employed to repress truth, than to refute argument. [14] Sep. 20, 1703. [15] Frederick Barbarossa was Emperor of Germany in 1152 and was drowned during Crusade in Syria June 10, 1190. He created Henry the Lion (? Henry VI.) Duke of Bavaria in 1154, expelled him in 1180, and Henry died 1195. Otho the Great, Count of Witelspach, was made Duke of Bavaria 1180, and died 1183. He was the grandfather of Otho the Illustrious, who gained the Palatinate and was assassinated in 1231. He married the daughter of Henry the Lion about 1230. Henry VI succeeded to the Empire on death of his father, Frederick Barbarossa, 1190, and died 1195--that is if Henry the Lion and Henry VI are identical. Frederick II, son of Henry VI, began to reign (?) 1195, and was living 1243. The succession of Popes during the period 1152-1254 (Haydn's Dict. of Dates), was as follows: Anastasius IV, 1153, Adrian IV, 1154, (Nicholas Brakespeare, the only Englishman elected Pope. Frederick I. prostrated himself before him, kissed his foot, held his stirrup, and led the white palfrey on which he rode.) Alexander III. 1159, (Canonized Thomas à Becket and resisted Frederick I.) Victor V. 1159, Pascal III. 1164, Calixtus III. 1168, Lucius III. 1181. Urban III. 1185, (opposed Frederick I.) Gregory VIII. (2 months) 1187. Clement III. 1187, proclaimed third Crusade. Celestin III. 1191. Innocent III. 1198, excommunicated John, King of England. Honorius III. 1216, learned and pious. Gregory IX. 1227, preached new Crusade. Celestine IV. 1241. Innocent IV. 1243-1254 (opposed Frederick II.). If Frederick II. caused pamphlet to be written about 1230, it could not have been burned by Honorius III., who reigned as Pope 1216-1227, but by Gregory IX., who reigned 1227-1241, who sent Frederick II. to the Crusades, upset his affairs while he was gone, and against whom the "Dissertation" says the pamphlet was written. [16] Carlyle, in his "History of Frederick II. of Prussia, called Frederick the Great," mentions Hermann von der Saltza, a new sagacious Teutschmeister or Hochmeister (so they call the head of the Order) of the Teutonic Knights, a far-seeing, negotiating man, who during his long Mastership (A. D. 1210-1239,) is mostly to be found at Venice and not at Acre or Jerusalem. He is very great with the busy Kaiser, Frederick II., Barbarossa's grandson, who has the usual quarrels with the Pope, and is glad of such a negotiator, statesman as well as armed monk. A Kaiser not gone on the Crusade, as he had vowed: Kaiser at last suspected of free thinking even:--in which matters Hermann much serves the Kaiser.--People's Edition, Boston, 1885, Vol. 1, p. 92. [17] Pierre des Vignes, suspected of having conspired against the life of the Emperor, was condemned to lose his eyes, and was handed over to the inhabitants of Pisa, his cruel enemies: and where despair hastened his death in an infamous dungeon where he could hold intercourse with no one. [18] In "Volney's Lectures on History," it is said: "If a work be translated it always receives a colouring which is more or less faint or is vivid according to the opinions and ability of the Translator." From an examination of other translations of this Treatise, I am assured that Volney's statement above has actuated and governed all who have been previously engaged with this work. I can assure the readers hereof, that the Treatise contained herein is a literal translation of the manuscript and the notes found therein, and no liberties have been taken with the text. Any additional notes from other sources are so marked. A. N. [19] Moses killed at one time 24,000 men for opposing his law. [20] It is written in the First Book of Kings, ch. 22, v. 6, that Ahab, King of Israel, consulted 400 prophets, and found them entirely false in the success of their predictions. [21] Man is the noblest work of God--but nobody ever said so but man.--Fra Elbertus. [22] So of water, however, it may be subject to generation and corruption, as long as it is substance it is not subject to separation and division. [23] The four first Councils were 1. That of Nice in the year 345, under the Emperor Constantine the Great, and under Pope Sylvester I.; 2. That of Constantinople in the year 381, under the Emperors Gratian, Valentinian and Theodore and the Pope Damase I.; 3. That of Ephesus in the year 431, under the Emperor Theodore, the younger, and Valentinian and under the Pope Celestin; 4. That of Chalcedon in the year 451, under Valentinian and Martian, and under Pope Leo I. [24] These, among us, are the Astrologers and Fanatics. [25] The Talmud remarks that the Rabbins deliberated whether they should omit the Book of Proverbs and that of Ecclesiastes from the number of canonicals, and would have done so had they not found in several places that they eulogized the Mosaic law. They would have done the same with the prophecies of Ezekiel had not a certain Chananias undertook to harmonize them with the same law. [26] The versions that we have differ greatly in a thousand places, one with another, until the end of the book. [27] See Tertullian ante, also Hobbes' Leviathan, C. 12, p. 56. [28] This word must not be taken in the ordinary sense, for what is called a magician among learned people means an adroit man, a skillful charlatan, and a subtle juggler whose entire art consists in dexterity and skill, and not in any compact with the devil as the common people believe. [29] He remained from time to time in a solitary place under pretext of privately conferring with God, and by this pretended intercourse with the Divinity he taught them a respect and obedience which was, in the meanwhile, unlimited. [30] See Book of Kings, Chapter II. [31] Romulus drowned himself in the morass of Cherres, and his body not being found, it was believed that he was raised to heaven and deified. When Romulus was reviewing his forces in the plain of Caprae there suddenly arose a thunderstorm during which he was enveloped in so thick a cloud that he was lost to the view of his army: nor thereafter on this earth was Romulus seen. Livy I. 1, c. 16. [32] Empedocles, a celebrated philosopher, threw himself into the crater of Mount Etna, to cause the belief that, like Romulus, he was raised to heaven. [33] It is recorded by Livy (liber II., c. 21,) that there is a grove through which flowed a perennial stream, taking its origin in a dark cave, in which Numa was accustomed to meet the goddess, and to receive instructions as to his political and religious institutions. [34] Breath or inspiration of the Gods. [35] The Tartars assert that Genghis Khan was born of a virgin, and that Foh, according to the Chinese belief, derived his origin from a virgin rendered pregnant by the rays of the sun. Since the introduction of the umbrella or sun-shade into the Central Flowery Kingdom occurrences like the latter have been infrequent. [36] Celsus says, in Origen, that Jesus Christ was a native of a little hamlet in Judea, and that his mother was a poor villager who only existed by her labor. Having been convicted of adultery with a soldier named Pandira, she was induced to flee by her betrothed, who was a carpenter by trade, who condoned their offence, and they wandered miserably from place to place. She was secretly delivered of Jesus, and finding themselves in want, they were constrained to flee to Egypt. After several years, his services being of no value to the Egyptians, he returned to his own country, where, quite proud of the miracles he knew how to perform, he proclaimed himself God. Human nature was at those times not fundamentally different from what it is now, and we need, therefore, not be surprised to hear that one of the stalwart Roman warriors, whose name was Pandira, fell in love with one of the dark-eyed daughters of Nazareth, and that the fruit of their "illegitimate" union was a son whom they called Jehoshua, and who inherited from his father the manly pride of the Roman, and from his Jewish mother his almost feminine beauty and modesty. Of Jehoshua's mother, little is to be said. * * * * * Ignorant, innocent, and of modest manners, uneducated but kind, sympathetic and beautiful, Stada, like many others of her sex, was guided more by the decision of her heart than by the calculations of her intellect. Her heart yearned for love and she hoped to find in Pandira the realization of her ideal.--Life of Jehoshua, The Prophet of Nazareth, an Occult Study and a Key to the Bible. Franz Hartmann, M. D., Boston, 1889. [37] A beautiful dove overshadowed a virgin; there is nothing surprising in that. It happened frequently in Lydia, and the swan of Leda is the counterpart of the dove of Mary. Qu'un beau Pigeon a tire d'aile When a pretty dove under her wing Vienne abombrer une Pucelle, Happens to conceal a Virgin, Rien n'est suprenant en cela; There is nothing surprising in that. L'on en vit autant en Lydie. The same thing is known in Lydia, Et le beau Cygne de Leda For the beautiful swan of Leda Vaut bien le Pigeon de Marie. Is just as good as Mary's pigeon. [38] In the book of Samuel, chap. vii, it is related that the Israelites being discontented with the sons of Samuel who judged them, demanded a King, the same as other nations, with whom they wished to conform. [39] Jesus Christ was of the sect of the Pharisees, or the poor, who were opposed to the Sadducees, who formed the sect of the rich. [40] By this Norman reply he eluded the question. A Norman never says yes, or no. Blason populaire de la Normandie. [41] Vide Boniface VIII. (1294) and Leo X. (1513) Boniface said that men had the same souls as beasts, and that these human and bestial souls lived no longer than each other. The Gospel also says that all other laws teach several virtues and several lies; for example, a Trinity which is false, the child-birth of a Virgin which is impossible, and the incarnation and transubstantiation which are ridiculous. I do not believe, continued he, other than that the Virgin was a she-ass, and her son the issue of a she-ass. Leo X. went one day to a room where his treasures were kept, and exclaimed "we must admit that this fable of Jesus Christ has been quite profitable to us." [42] The belief in the Christian doctrine is strange and wild to reason and human judgment. It is contrary to all Philosophy and discourse of Truth, as may be seen in all the articles of faith which can neither be comprehended nor understood by human intellect, for they appear impossible and quite strange. Mankind, in order to believe and receive them, must control and subject his reason, submitting his understanding to the obedience of the faith. St. Paul says that if man considers and hears philosophy and measures things by the compass of Truth, he will forsake all, and ridicule it as folly. That is the avowal made by Charron in a book entitled "The Three Truths," page 180. Edition of Bordeaux, 1593. (This inserted note is written on the back of a portion of a letter addressed to "Prince graaft by de Spiegelstraat. A Amsterdam," postmarked "Ce 4e. Aout. 1746.") [43] Hermaphrodites. [44] Which determined the Emperor Julian to abandon the sect of Nazarenes whose faith he regarded as a vulgar fiction of the human mind, which he found based solely on a simple tale of Perdiccas. [45] Also his belief in visions and the legend of his translation to Heaven. [46] A friend of the celebrated Golius having asked what the Mahometans said of their prophet, this wise professor sent him the following extract which contains an abridgement of the life of that Impostor taken from a manuscript in the Turkish language: "The Lord Mahomet Mustapha, of glorious memory, the greatest of the Prophets, was born in the fortieth year of the Empire of Anal Schirwan, the Just. His holy nativity happened the twelfth day in the second third of the month Rabia. Now, after the fortieth year of his age had passed, he was divinely inspired, received the crown of prophecy and the robe of Legation, which were brought him from God by the faithful messenger Gabriel, with instructions to call mankind to Islamism. After this inspiration from God was received, he dwelt at Mecca for thirteen years. He left there aged fifty-three years the eighth day of the month Rabia, which was a Friday, and took refuge at Medina. Now, it was there, after his retreat the twentieth day of the eleventh month, and the sixty-third year of his blessed life, he succeeded to the enjoyment of the divine presence. Some say that he was born while Abelaka, [47] his father, was yet living, others say after his death. Lady Amina, a daughter of the Wahabees, gave him for nurse lady Halima, of the tribe of Beni-Saad. Abdo Imutalib, [47] his grandfather, gave him the blessed name of Mahomet. He had four sons and four daughters. The sons were Kasim, Ibrahim, Thajib and Thahir, and the daughters, Fatima, Omokeltum, Rakia and Zeineb. The companions of this august envoy of God were Abulekir, Omar, Osman and Ali, all of sacred memory. [47] These names, Abdul-Motallab and Abdallah, in Arabic, seem to be rendered Abdo-Imutalib and Abelaka in the Turkish language.--A. N. [48] This includes Numa Pompilius.--A. N. [49] Hades. [50] "Mahomet," says the Count de Boulainvilliers, "was ignorant of common knowledge, as I believe, but he assuredly knew much of what a great traveler might acquire with much native wit, when he employed it usefully. He was not ignorant of his own language, the use of which, and not by reading, taught him its nicety and beauty. He was not ignorant of the art of knowing how to render odious what was truly culpable, and to portray the truth with simple and lively colors in a manner which could not be forgotten. In fact, all that he has said is true in comparison with the essential dogmas of religion, but he has not said all that is true. It is in that particular alone that our Religion differs from his." He adds further on, "that Mahomet was neither rude nor barbarous, that he conducted his enterprise with all the art, delicacy, constancy, intrepidity, and all the other great qualities which would have actuated Alexander or Cesar were they in his place." Life of Mahomet, by Count de Boulainvilliers. Book II., pp. 266-7-8. Amsterdam Edition, 1731. [51] Genesis ch. xxviii., v. 18. [52] (?)Those holding sinecures. [53] A sect of East Indian philosophers who went about almost naked, ate no flesh, renounced all bodily pleasures, and simply contemplated nature. The "Pre-Adamite doctrine," similar to the above, was published by Isaac de Peyrere about 1655. These fanatics believed that mankind lost none of their innocence by the fall of Adam. Both men and women made their appearance in the streets of Munster, France, in puris naturalibus, as did our first parents in the Garden of Eden, before the fruit incident, which brought so much trouble into the world. The magistrates failed to put them down, and the military had some difficulty in abolishing this absurdity.--A. N. [54] An Intercessor, applied to the Holy Spirit. [55] Average seems to indicate the VI. Commandment.--A. N. [56] Exodus xxxii, 31, 32. And Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin, and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written. [57] Exodus iv, 24, 25, 26. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his (?the Lord's) feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me. So he (the Lord) let him (Moses) go: then she said, a bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision. [58] Numbers xx, 12. And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them. [59] Exodus xxxii. 11. And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt, with great power, and with a mighty hand? Numbers xii. 8. With him (Moses) will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparent and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? [60] Exodus xxxiii. 20. Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee in the place which I have prepared. [61] Matthew V. Sermon on the Mount, 17. Think not that I am come to destroy the law, etc. Matt. x, 2? names Apostles. [62] Deuteronomy xviii, 21, 22. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him. [63] Paul to Timothy (I.) I. 4. Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, etc. [64] Genesis xxvi, 34, 35. And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri, the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon, the Hittite, which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and Rebekah. Genesis xxviii, 9. Then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had, Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the sister of Nabajoth, to be his wife. Genesis xxxvi, 2, 3. Esau took his wives of the daughters of Canaan, Adah, the daughter of Elon, the Hittite, and Aholibamah, the daughter of Anah, the daughter of Zibeon, the Hivite, and Bashemath, Ishmael's daughter, sister of Nabajoth. [65] Acts xv. 10. Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? [66] Galatians 3, 4. Even so we when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: but when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law. v. 9. But now after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage. v. 30. Nevertheless what saith the Scripture? cast out the bond-woman and her son: for the son of the bond-woman shall not be heir with the son of the free-woman. v. 24. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount of Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. Galatians v. 2, 3. Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that is a debtor to do the whole law. [67] II. Cor. iii., 6-10. Who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth. II. Cor. v. 10. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that everyone may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. [68] Acts xvi, 1, 2, 3. Then came he to Derbe and Lystra, and behold, a certain disciple was there, named Timotheus, the son of a certain woman which was a Jewess, and believed, but his father was a Greek; which was well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium. Him would Paul have to go forth with him, and took and circumcised him, because of the Jews which were in those quarters, for they knew all that his father was a Greek. 
37694	----	REASON, THE ONLY ORACLE OF MAN; OR A COMPENDIUS SYSTEM OF NATURAL RELIGION. By Col. Ethan Allen. Boston: J. P. Mendum, Cornhill. 1854. REASON INTRODUCTION. Colonel Ethan Allen, the author of Oracles of Reason, was the son of Joseph Allen, a native of Coventry, Connecticut, a farmer in moderate circumstances. He afterwards resided in Litchfield, where Ethan was born in the year 1739. The family consisted of eight children, of whom our author was the eldest. But few incidents connected with his early life are known. We are apprised, however, that notwithstanding his education was very limited, his ambition to prove himself worthy of that attention which superior intellect ever commands, induced him diligently to explore every subject that came under his notice. A stranger to fear, his opinions were ever given without disguise or hesitation; and an enemy to oppression, he sought every opportunity to redress the wrongs of the oppressed. At the breaking out of the Revolutionary War, he raised in Vermont, where he had resided, a company of volunteers, consisting of two hundred and thirty, with which he surprised the fortress of Ticonderoga, May 10, 1775, containing about forty men, and one hundred pieces of cannon. He was unfortunately taken prisoner in September following, in an attempt on Montreal, and sufferred a cruel imprisonment for several years. For an account of which, the reader is referred to his narrative, contained in a memoir of the author, by Mr. Hugh Moore, Plattsburg, 1834. Soon after the close of the revolution, Col. Allen composed the following work; which, on account of the bold and unusual manner, particularly in this country, that the subject of religion is treated, he had great difficulty to get published. It lay a long time in the hands of a printer at Hartford, who had not the moral courage to print it. It was finally printed by a Mr. Haswell, of Bennington, Vt. in 1784. Not long after its publication, a part of the edition, comprising the entire of several signatures, was accidentally consumed by fire. Whether Mr. H. deemed this fire a judgment upon him for having printed the work or not, is unknown--but, the fact is, he soon after committed the remainder of the edition to the flames, and joined the Methodist Connection; so that but few copies were circulated. Col. Allen died in the town of Burlington, Vt., on the 12th of February, 1789, of apoplexy. PREFACE. An apology appears to me to be impertinent in writers who venture their works to public inspection, for this obvious reason, that if they need it, they should have been stifled in the birth, and not permitted a public existence. I therefore offer my composition to the candid judgment of the impartial world without it, taking it for granted that I have as good a natural right to expose myself to public censure, by endeavouring to subserve mankind, as any of the species who have published their productions since the creation; and I ask no favor at the hands of philosophers, divines or critics, but hope and expect they will severely chastise me for my errors and mistakes, least they may have a share in perverting the truth, which is very far from my intention. In the circle of my acquaintance, (which has not been small,) I have generally been denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious I am no Christian, except mere infant baptism make me one; and as to being a Deist, I know not, strictly speaking, whether I am one or not, for I have never read their writings; mine will therefore determine the matter; for I have not in the least disguised my sentiments, but have written freely without any conscious knowledge of prejudice for, or against any man, sectary or party whatever; but wish that good sense, truth and virtue may be promoted and flourish in the world, to the detection of delusion, superstition, and false religion; and therefore my errors in the succeeding treatise, which may be rationally pointed out, will be readily rescinded. By the public's most obedient and humble servant. ETHAN ALLEN. ORACLES OF REASON, CHAPTER I. SECTON I. THE DUTY OF REFORMING MANKIND FROM SUPERSTITION AND ERROR... AND THE GOOD CONSEQUENCES OF IT The desire of knowledge has engaged the attention of the wise and curious among mankind in all ages which has been productive of extending the arts and sciences far and wide in the several quarters of the globe, and excited the contemplative to explore nature's laws in a gradual series of improvement, until philosophy, astronomy, geography, and history, with many other branches of science, have arrived to a great degree of perfection. It is nevertheless to be regretted, that the bulk of mankind, even in those nations which are most celebrated for learning and wisdom, are still carried down the torrent of superstition, and entertain very unworthy apprehensions of the being, perfections, creation, and providence of God, and their duty to him, which lays an indispensable obligation on the philosophic friends of human nature, unanimously to exert themselves in every lawful, wise, and prudent method, to endeavor to reclaim mankind from their ignorance and delusion, by enlightening their minds in those great and sublime truths concerning God and his providence, and their obligations to moral rectitude which in this world, and that which is to come, cannot fail greatly to affect their happiness and well being. Though "none by searching can find out God, or the Almighty to perfection," yet I am persuaded, that if mankind would dare to exercise their reason as freely on those divine topics as they do in the common concerns of life, they would, in a great measure, rid themselves of their blindness and superstition, gain more exalted ideas of God and their obligations to him and one another, and be proportionally delighted and blessed with the views of his moral government, make better members of society, and acquire many powerful incentives to the practice of morality, which is the last and greatest perfection that human nature is capable of. SECTON II. OF THE BEING OF A GOD The laws of nature having subjected mankind to a state of absolute dependence on something out of it, and manifestly beyond themselves, or the compound exertion of their natural powers, gave them the first conception of a superior principle existing; otherwise they could have had no possible conception of a superintending power. But this sense of dependency, which results from experience and reasoning on the facts, which every day cannot fail to produce, has uniformly established the knowledge of our dependence to every individual of the species who are rational, which necessarily involves, or contains in it, the idea of a ruling power, or that there is a God, which ideas are synonymous. The globe with its productions, the planets in their motions, and the starry heavens in their magnitudes, surprise our senses and confound our reason, in their munificent lessons of instruction concerning God, by means whereof, we are apt to be more or less lost in our ideas of the object of divine adoration, though at the same time every one is truly sensible that their being and preservation is from God. We are too apt to confound our ideas of God with his works, and take the latter for the former. Thus barbarous and unlearned nations have imagined, that inasmuch as the sun in its influence is beneficial to them in bringing forward the spring of the year, causing the production of vegetation, and food for their subsistence, that therefore it is their God: while others have located other parts of creation, and ascribe to them prerogatives of God; and mere creatures and images have been substituted for Gods by the wickedness or weakness of man, or both together. It seems that mankind in most ages and parts of the world have been fond of corporeal Deities with whom their outward senses might be gratified, or as fantastically diverted from the just apprehension of the true God, by a supposed supernatural intercourse with invisible and mere spiritual beings, to whom they ascribe divinity, so that through one means or other, the character of the true God has been much neglected, to the great detriment of truth, justice, and morality in the world; nor is it possible that mankind can be uniform in their religious opinions, or worship God according to knowledge, except they can form a consistent arrangement of ideas of the Divine character. Although we extend our ideas retrospectively ever so far upon the succession, yet no one cause in the extended order of succession, which depends upon another prior to itself, can be the independent cause of all things: nor is it possible to trace the order of the succession of causes back to that self-existent cause, inasmuch as it is eternal and infinite, and cannot therefore be traced out by succession, which operates according to the order of time, consequently can bear no more proportion to the eternity of God, than time itself may be supposed to do, which has no proportion at all; as the succeeding arguments respecting the eternity and infinity of God will evince. But notwithstanding the series of the succession of causes cannot be followed in a retrospective succession up to the self-existent or eternal cause, it is nevertheless a perpetual and conclusive evidence of a God.--For a succession of causes considered collectively, can be nothing more than effects of the independent cause, and as much dependent on it as those dependent causes are upon one another; so that we may with certainty conclude that the system of nature, which we call by the name of natural causes, is as much dependent on a self-existent cause, as an individual of the species in the order of generation is dependent on its progenitors for existence. Such part of the series of nature's operations, which we understand, has a regular and necessary connection with, and dependence on its parts, which we denominate by the names of cause and effect. From hence we are authorised from reason to conclude, that the vast system of causes and effects are thus necessarily connected, (speaking of the natural world only,) and the whole regularly and necessarily dependent on a self-existent cause: so that we are obliged to admit an independent cause, and ascribe self-existence to it, otherwise it could not be independent, and consequently not a God. But the eternity or manner of the existence of a self-existent and independent being is to all finite capacities utterly incomprehensible; yet this is so far from an objection against the reality of such a being, that it is essentially necessary to support the evidence of it; for if we could comprehend that being whom we call God, he would not be God, but must have been finite and that in the same degree as those may be supposed to be who could comprehend him; therefore so certain that God is, we cannot comprehend his essence, eternity, or manner of existence. This should always be premised, when we assay to reason on the being, perfection, eternity, and infinity of God, or of his creation and providence. As far as we understand nature, we are become acquainted with the character of God, for the knowledge of nature is the revelation of God. If we form in our imagination a compendious idea of the harmony of the universe, it is the same as calling God by the name of harmony, for there could be no harmony without regulation, and no regulation without a regulator, which is expressive of the idea of a God. Nor could it be possible, that there could be order or disorder, except we admit of such a thing as creation, and creation contains in it the idea of a creator, which is another appellation for the Divine Being, distinguishing God from his creation. Furthermore, there could be no proportion, figure, or motion, without wisdom and power; wisdom to plan, and power to execute, and these are perfections, when applied to the works of nature, which signify the agency or superintendency of God. If we consider nature to be matter, figure, and motion, we include the idea of God in that of motion; for motion implies a mover as much as creation does a creator. If from the composition, texture, and tendency of the universe in general, we form a complex idea of general good resulting therefrom to mankind, we implicitly admit a God by the name of good, including the idea of his providence to man. And from hence arises our obligations to love and adore God, because he provides for, and is beneficent to us. Abstract the idea of goodness from the character of God, and it would cancel all our obligations to him, and excite us to hate and detest him as a tyrant: hence it is, that ignorant people are superstitiously misled into a conceit that they hate God, when at the same time it is only the idol of their own imagination, which they truly ought to hate and be ashamed of; but were such persons to connect the ideas of power, wisdom, goodness, and all possible perfection in the character of God, their hatred towards him would be turned into love and adoration. By extending our ideas in a larger circle, we shall perceive our dependence on the earth and waters of the globe which we inhabit, and from which we are bountifully fed and gorgeously arrayed; and next extend our ideas to the sun, whose fiery mass darts its brilliant rays of light to our terraqueous ball with amazing velocity, and whose region of inexhaustible fire supplies it with fervent heat, which causes vegetation, and gilds the various seasons of the year with ten thousand charms: this is not the achievement of man, but the workmanship and providence of God. But how the sun is supplied with materials, thus to perpetuate its kind influences, we know not. But will any one deny the reality of those beneficial influences, because we do not understand the manner of the perpetuality of that fiery world, or how it became such a body of fire? or will any one deny the reality of nutrition by food, because we do not understand the secret operation of the digesting powers of animal nature, or the minute particulars of its cherishing influence? None will be so stupid as to do it. Equally absurd would it be for us to deny the providence of God, by "whom we live, move, and have our being," because we cannot comprehend it. We know that earth, water, fire and air, in their various compositions subserve us, and we also know that these elements are devoid of reflection, reason, or design; from whence we may easily infer, that a wise, understanding, and designing being has ordained them to be thus subservient. Could blind chance constitute order and decorum, and consequently a providence? That wisdom, order, and design should be the production of nonentity, or of chaos, confusion, and old night, is too absurd to deserve a serious confutation, for it supposeth that there may be effects without a cause, viz.: produced by nonentity, or that chaos and confusion could produce the effects of power, wisdom, and goodness. Such absurdities as these we must assent to, or subscribe to the doctrine of a self-existent and providential being. SECTON III. THE MANNER OF DISCOVERING THE MORAL PERFECTIONS... AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD Having in a concise manner offered a variety of indisputable reasons to evince the certainty of the being and providence of God, and of his goodness to man through the intervention of the series of nature's operations, which are commonly described by the name of natural causes, we come now more particularly to the consideration of his moral perfections; and though all finite beings fall as much short of an adequate knowledge thereof as they do of perfection itself, nevertheless through the intelligence of our own souls we may have something of a prospective idea of the divine perfections. For though the human mind bears no proportion to the divine, yet there is undoubtedly a resemblance between them. For instance, God knows all things, and we know some things, and in the things which we do understand, our knowledge agrees with that of the divine, and cannot fail necessarily corresponding with it. To more than know a thing, speaking of that thing only, is impossible even to omniscience itself; for knowledge is but the same in both the infinite and finite minds. To know a thing is the same as to have right ideas of it, or ideas according to truth, and truth is uniform in all rational minds, the divine mind not excepted. It will not be disputed but that mankind in plain and common matters understand justice from injustice, truth from falsehood, right from wrong, virtue from vice, and praise-worthiness from blame-worthiness, for other wise they could not be accountable creatures. This being admitted, we are capable of forming a complex idea of a moral character, which when done in the most deliberate, the wisest, and most rational manner in our power, we are certain bears a resemblance to the divine perfections. For as we learn from the worlds of nature an idea of the power and wisdom of God, so from our own rational nature we learn an idea of his moral perfections. From what has been observed on the moral perfections of God, we infer that all rational beings, who have an idea of justice, goodness, and truth, have at the same time either a greater or less idea of the moral perfections of God. It is by reason that we are able to compound an idea of a moral character, whether applied to God or man; it is that which gives us the supremacy over the irrational part of the creation. SECTON IV. THE CAUSE OF IDOLATRY, AND THE REMEDY OF IT Inasmuch as God is not corporeal, and consequently does not and cannot come within the notice of our bodily sensations, we are therefore obliged to deduce inferences from his providence, and particularly from our own rational nature, in order to form our conceptions of the divine character, which through inattention, want of learning, or through the natural imbecility of mankind, or through the artifice of designing men, or all together, they have been greatly divided and subdivided in their notions of a God. Many have so groped in the dark as wholly to mistake the proper object of divine worship, and not distinguishing the creator from his creation, have paid adoration to "four footed beasts and creeping things." And some have ascribed divine honors to the sun, moon, or stars; while others have been infatuated to worship dumb, senseless, and unintelligent idols, which derived their existence as Gods, partly from mechanics, who gave them their figure, proportion, and beauty, and partly from their priests, who gave them their attributes; whose believers, it appears, were so wrought upon, that they cried out in the ecstasy of their deluded zeal, "Great is Diana." Whatever delusions have taken place in the world relative to the object of divine worship, or respecting the indecencies or immoralities of the respective superstitions themselves, or by what means soever introduced or perpetuated, whether by designing men whose interest it has always been to impose on the weakness of the great mass of the vulgar; or as it is probable, that part of those delusions took place in consequence of the weakness of uncultivated reason, in deducing a visible instead of an invisible God from the works of nature. Be that as it will, mankind are generally possessed of an idea that there is a God, however they may have been mistaken or misled as to the object. This notion of a God, as has been before observed, must have originated from a universal sense of dependence, which mankind have on something that is more wise, powerful, and beneficent than themselves, or they could have had no apprehensions of any superintending principle in the universe, and consequently would never have sought after a God, or have had any conception of his existence, nor could designing men have imposed on their credulity by obtruding false Gods upon them; but taking advantage of the common belief that there is a God, they artfully deceive their adherents with regard to the object to be adored. There are other sorts of idols which have no existence but in the mere imagination of the human mind; and these are vastly the most numerous, and universally (either in the greater or less degree) dispersed over the world; the wisest of mankind are not and cannot be wholly exempt from them, inasmuch as every wrong conception of God is (as far as the error takes place in the mind) idolatrous. To give a sample, an idea of a jealous God is of this sort. Jealousy is the offspring of finite minds, proceeding from the want of knowledge; which in dubious matters makes us suspicious and distrustful; but in matters which we clearly understand, there can be no jealousy, for knowledge excludes it, so that to ascribe it to God is a manifest infringement on his omniscience.* * "The Lord thy God is a jealous God." The idea of a revengeful God is likewise one of that sort, but this idea of divinity being borrowed from a savage nature, needs no further confutation. The representation of a God, who (as we are told by certain divines) from all eternity elected an inconsiderable part of mankind to eternal life, and reprobated the rest to eternal damnation, merely from his own sovereignty, adds another to the number;--this representation of the Deity undoubtedly took its rise from that which we discovered in great, powerful, and wicked tyrants among men, however tradition may since have contributed to its support, though I am apprehensive that a belief in those who adhere to that doctrine, that they themselves constitute that blessed elect number, has been a greater inducement to them to close with it, than all other motives added together. It is a selfish and inferior notion of a God void of justice, goodness, and truth, and has a natural tendency to impede the cause of true religion and morality in the world, and diametrically repugnant to the truth of the divine character, and which, if admitted to be true, overturns all religion, wholly precluding the agency of mankind in either their salvation or damnation, resolving the whole into the sovereign disposal of a tyrannical and unjust being, which is offensive to reason and common sense, and subversive of moral rectitude in general. But as it was not my design so much to confute the multiplicity of false representations of a God, as to represent just and consistent ideas of the true God, I shall therefore omit any further observation on them in this place, with this remark, that all unjust representations, or ideas of God, are so many detractions from his character among mankind. To remedy these idolatrous notions of a God, it is requisite to form right and consistent ideas in their stead. The discovery of truth necessarily excludes error from the mind, which nothing else can possibly do; for some sort of God or other will crowd itself into the conceptions of dependent creatures, and if they are not so happy as to form just ones, they will substitute erroneous and delusive ones in their stead; so that it serves no valuable purpose to mankind, to confute their idolatrous opinions concerning God, without communicating to them just notions concerning the true one, for if this is not effected, nothing is done to the purpose. For, as has been before observed, mankind will form to themselves, or receive from others, an idea of Divinity either right or wrong: this is the universal voice of intelligent nature, from whence a weighty and conclusive argument may be drawn of the reality of a God, however inconsistent most, of their conceptions of him may be. The fact is, mankind readily perceives that there is a God, by feeling their dependence on him, and as they explore his works, and observe his providence, which is too sublime for finite capacities to understand but in part, they have been more or less confounded in their discoveries of a just idea of a God and of his moral government. Therefore we should exercise great applications and care whenever we assay to speculate upon the Divine character, accompanied with a sincere desire after truth, and not ascribe anything to his perfections of government which is inconsistent with reason or the best information which we are able to apprehend of moral rectitude, and be at least wise enough not to charge God with injustice and contradictions which we should scorn to be charged with ourselves. No king, governor, or parent would like to be accused of partiality in their respective governments, "Is it fit to say unto Princes, ye are ungodly, how much less to him that regardeth not the persons of princes, or the rich more than the poor, for they are all the work of his hands." CHAPTER II. SECTON I. OF THE ETERNITY OF CREATION As creation was the result of eternal and infinite wisdom, justice, goodness, and truth, and effected by infinite power, it is like its great author, mysterious to us. How it could be accomplished, or in what manner performed, can never be comprehended by any capacity. Eternal, whether applied to duration, existence, action, or creation, is incomprehensible to us, but implies no contradiction in either of them; for that which is above comprehension we cannot perceive to be contradictory, nor on the other hand can we perceive its rationality or consistency. We are certain that God is a rational, wise, understanding Being, because he has in degree made us so, and his wisdom power, and goodness is visible to us in his creation, and government of the world. From these facts we are rationally induced to acknowledge him, and not because we can comprehend his being, perfections, creation, or providence. Could we comprehend God, he would cease to be what he is. The ignorant among men cannot comprehend the understanding of the wise among their own species, much less the perfection of a God; nevertheless, in our ratiocination upon the works and harmony of nature, we are obliged to concede to a self-existent and eternal cause of all things, as has been sufficiently argued, though at the same time it is mysterious to us, that there should be such a being as a self-existent and eternally independent one;--thus we believe in God, although we cannot comprehend anything of the how, why or wherefore it was possible for him to be; and as creation was the exertion of such an incomprehensible and perfect being, it must of necessary consequence be, in a great measure, mysterious to us. We can nevertheless be certain, that it has been of an equal eternity and infinitude of extension with God. Immensity being replete with creation, the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, eternal, and infinite exertion of God in creation, is incomprehensible to the understanding or the weakness of man, and will eternally remain the prerogative of infinite penetration, sagacity, and uncreated intelligence to understand. SECTON II. OBSERVATIONS OF MOSES'S ACCOUNT OF CREATION The foregoing theory of creation and providence will probably be rejected by most people in this country, inasmuch as they are prepossessed with the theology of Moses, which represents creation to have a beginning. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." In the preceding part of this chapter it has been evinced that creation and providence could not have had a beginning, and that they are not circumscribed, but unlimited; yet it seems that Moses limited creation by a prospective view of the heavens, or firmament from this globe, and if creation was thus limited, it would consequently have circumscribed the dominion and display of the divine providence or perfection; but if Moses's idea of the creation of "the heavens and the earth," was immense, ever so many days of progressive work could never have finished such a boundless creation; for a progressive creation is the same as a limited one; as each progressive day's work would be bounded by a successive admeasurement, and the whole six days' work added together could be but local, and bear no manner of proportion to infinitude, but would limit the dominion, and consequently the display of the divine perfections or providence, which is incompatible with a just idea of eternity and infinity of God, as has been argued in the foregoing pages. There are a variety of other blunders in Moses's description of creation, one of which I shall mention, which is to be found in his history of the first and fourth day's work of God: "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light; and God called the light day, and the darkness he called night: and the evening and the morning were the first day." Then he proceeds to the second and third day's work, and so on to the sixth; but in his chronicle of the fourth day's work, he says that "God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night." This appears to be an inconsistent history of the origin of light. Day and night were ordained the first day, and on the fourth day the greater and less lights were made to serve the same purposes; but it is likely that many errors have crept into his writings, through the vicissitudes of learning, and particularly from the corruptions of translations, of his as well as the writings of other ancient authors; besides, it must be acknowledged that those ancient writers labored under great difficulties in writing to posterity, merely from the consideration of the infant state of learning and knowledge then in the world, and consequently we should not act the part of severe critics, with their writings, any further than to prevent their obtrusion on the world as being infallible. SECTON III. OF THE ETERNITY AND INFINITUDE OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE When we consider our solar system, attracted by its fiery centre, and moving in its several orbits, with regular, majestic, and periodical revolutions, we are charmed at the prospect and contemplation of those worlds of motions, and adore the wisdom and power by which they are attracted, and their velocity regulated and perpetuated. And when we reflect that the blessings of life are derived from, and dependent on, the properties, qualities, constructions, proportions and movements, of that stupendous machine, we gratefully acknowledge the divine beneficence. When we extend our thoughts (through our external sensations) to the vast regions of the starry heavens, we are lost in the immensity of God's works. Some stars appear fair and luminous, and others scarcely discernible to the eye, which by the help of glasses make a brilliant appearance, bringing the knowledge of others far remote, within the verge of our feeble discoveries, which merely by the eye could not have been discerned or distinguished. These discoveries of the works of God naturally prompt the inquisitive mind to conclude that the author of this astonishing part of creation which is displayed to our view, has still extended his creation; so that if it were possible that any of us could be transported to the farthest extended star, which is perceptible to us here, we should from thence survey worlds as distant from that as that is from this, and so on _ad infinitum_. Furthermore, it is altogether reasonable to conclude that the heavenly bodies, _alias_ worlds, which move or are situate within the circle of our knowledge, as well all others throughout immensity, are each and every one of them possessed or inhabited by some intelligent agents or other, however different their sensations or manners of receiving or communicating their ideas may be from ours, or however different from each other. For why would it not have been as wise or as consistent with the perfections which we adore in God, to have neglected giving being to intelligence in this world as in those other worlds, interspersed with aether of various qualities in his immense creation? And inasmuch as this world is thus replenished, we may, with the highest rational certainty infer, that as God has given us to rejoice, and adore him for our being, he has acted consistent with his goodness, in the display of his providence throughout the university of worlds. To suppose that God Almighty has confined his goodness to this world, to the exclusion of all others, is much similar to the idle fancies of some individuals in this world, that they, and those of their communion or faith, are the favorites of heaven exclusively; but these are narrow and bigoted conceptions, which are degrading to a rational nature, and utterly unworthy of God, of whom we should form the most exalted ideas. It may be objected that a man cannot subsist in the sun; but does it follow from thence, that God cannot or has not constituted a nature peculiar to that fiery region, and caused it to be as natural and necessary for it to suck in and breathe out flames of fire, as it is for us to do the like in air. Numerous are the kinds of fishy animals which can no other way subsist but in the water, in which other animals would perish, (amphibious ones excepted,) while other animals, in a variety of forms, either swifter or slower move on the surface of the earth, or wing the air. Of these there are sundry kinds, which during the season of winter live without food; and many of the insects which are really possessed of animal life, remain frozen, and as soon as they are let loose by the kind influence of the sun, they again assume their wonted animal life; and if animal life may differ so much in the same world, what inconceivable variety may be possible in worlds innumerable, as applicable to mental, cogitative, and organized beings. Certain it is, that any supposed obstructions, concerning the quality or temperature of any or every one of those worlds, could not have been any bar in the way of God Almighty, with regard to his replenishing his universal creation with moral agents. The unlimited perfection of God could perfectly well adapt every part of his creation to the design of whatever rank or species of constituted beings, his Godlike wisdom and goodness saw fit? to impart existence to; so that as there is no deficiency of absolute perfection in God, it is rationally demonstrative that the immense creation is replenished with rational agents, and that it has been eternally so, and that the display of divine goodness must have been as perfect and complete, in the antecedent, as it is possible to be in the subsequent eternity. From this theological way of arguing on the creation and providence of God, it appears that the whole, which we denominate by the term _nature_, which is the same as creation perfectly regulated, was eternally connected together by the creator to answer the same all glorious purpose, _to wit_: the display of the divine nature, the consequences of which are existence and happiness to beings in general, so that creation, with all its productions operates according to the laws of nature, and is sustained by the self-existent eternal cause, in perfect older and decorum, agreeable to the eternal wisdom, unalterable rectitude, impartial justice, and immense goodness of the divine nature, which is a summary of God's providence. It is from the established order of nature, that summer and winter, rainy and fair seasons, moonshine, refreshing breezes, seed time and harvest, day and night, interchangeably succeed each other, and diffuse their extensive blessings to man. Every enjoyment and support of life is from God, delivered to his creatures in and by the tendency, aptitude, disposition, and operation of those laws. Nature is the medium, or intermediate instrument through which God dispenses his benignity to mankind. The air we breathe in, the light of the sun, and the waters of the murmuring rills, evince his providence: and well it is, that they are given in so great profusion, that they cannot by the monopoly of the rich be engrossed from the poor. When we copiously pursue the study of nature, we are certain to be lost in the immensity of the works and wisdom of God; we may nevertheless, in a variety of things discern their fitness, happifying tendency and sustaining quality to us ward, from all which, as rational and contemplative beings we are prompted to infer, that God is universally uniform and consistent in his infinitude of creation and providence, although we cannot comprehend all that consistency, by reason of infirmity; yet we are morally sure, of all possible plans, infinite wisdom must have eternally adopted the best, and infinite goodness have approved it, and infinite power have perfected it. And as the good of beings in general must have been the ultimate end of God in his creation and government of his creatures, his omniscience could not fail to have it always present in his view. Universal nature must therefore be ultimately attracted to this single point, and infinite perfection must have eternally displayed itself in creation and providence. From hence we infer, that God is as eternal and infinite in his goodness, as his self-existent and perfect nature is omnipotently great. SECTON IV. THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD DOES NOT INTERFERE... WITH THE AGENCY OF MAN. The doctrine of Fate has been made use of in armies as a policy to induce soldiers to face danger. Mahomet taught his army that the "term of every man's life was fixed by God, and that none could shorten it, by any hazard that he might seem to be exposed to in battle or otherwise," but that it should be introduced into peaceable and civil life, and be patronized by any teachers of religion, is quite strange, as it subverts religion in general, and renders the teaching of it unnecessary, except among other necessary events it may be premised that it is necessary they teach that doctrine, and that I oppose it from the influence of the same law of fate upon which thesis we are all disputing and acting in certain necessary circles, and if so, I make another necessary movement, which is, to discharge the public teachers of this doctrine, and expend. their salaries in an economical manner, which might better answer the purposes of our happiness, or lay it out in good wine or old spirits to make the heart glad, and laugh at the stupidity or cunning of those who would have made us mere machines. Some advocates for the doctrine of fate will also maintain that we are free agents, notwithstanding they tell us there has been a concatenation of causes and events which has reached from God down to this time, and which will eternally be continued--that has and will control, and bring about every action of our lives, though there is not anything in nature more certain than that we cannot act necessarily and freely in the same action, and at the same time; yet it is hard for such persons, who have verily believed that they are elected, (and thus by a predetermination of God become his special favorites.) to give up their notions of a predetermination of all events, upon which system their election and everlasting happiness is nonsensically founded; and on the other hand, it is also hard for them to go so evidently against the law of nature (or dictates of conscience) which intuitively evinces the certainty of human liberty, as to reject such evidence; and therefore hold to both parts of the contradiction, _to wit_, that they act necessarily, and freely, upon which contradictory principle they endeavored to maintain the dictates of natural conscience, and also their darling folly of being electedly and exclusively favorites of God. CHAPTER III. SECTON I. THE DOCTRINE OF THE INFINITY OF EVIL AND OF SIN CONSIDERED That God is infinitely good in the eternal displays of his providence, has been argued in the third section of the second chapter, from which we infer that there cannot be an infinite evil in the universe, inasmuch as it would be incompatible with infinite good; yet there are many who imbibe the doctrine of the infinite evil of sin, and the maxim on which they predicate their arguments in its support, are, that the greatness of sin, or adequateness of its punishment, is not to be measured, or its viciousness ascertained by the capacity and circumstances of the offender, but by the capacity and dignity of the being against whom the offence is committed; and as every transgression is against the authority and law of God, it is therefore against God; and as God is infinite, therefore, sin is an infinite evil, and from hence infer the infinite and vindictive wrath of God against sinners, and of his justice in dooming them, as some say to infinite, and others say to eternal misery; the one without degree or measure, and the other without end or duration. Admitting this maxim for truth, that the transgressions or sins of mankind are to be estimated by their heinousness, by the dignity and infinity of the divine nature, then it will follow that all sins would be equal, which would confound all our notions of the degrees or aggravations of sin; so that the sin would be the same to kill my neighbor as it would be to kill his horse. For the divine nature, by this maxim, being the rule by which man's sin is to be estimated, and always the same, there could therefore be no degrees in sin or guilt, any more than there are degrees of perfection in God, whom we all admit to be infinite, and who for that reason only cannot admit of any degrees or enlargement. Therefore as certain as there are degrees in sin, the infinity of the divine nature cannot be the standard whereby it is to be ascertained, which single consideration is a sufficient confutation of the doctrine of the infinite evil of sin, as predicated on that maxim, inasmuch as none are so stupid as not to discern that there are degrees and aggravations in sin. I recollect a discourse of a learned Ecclesiastic, who was laboring in support of this doctrine. His first proposition was, "That moral rectitude was infinitely pleasing to God;" from which he deduced this inference, viz., "That a contrariety to moral rectitude was consequently infinitely displeasing to God and infinitely evil." That the absolute moral rectitude of the divine nature is infinitely well pleasing to God, will not be disputed; for this is none other but perfect and infinite rectitude; but there cannot in nature be an infinite contrariety thereto, or any being infinitely evil, or infinite in any respect whatever, except we admit a self-existent and infinite diabolical nature, which is too absurd to deserve argumentative confutation. Therefore, as all possible moral evil must result from the agency of finite beings, consisting in their sinful deviations from the rules of eternal unerring order and reason, which is moral rectitude in the abstract, we infer that, provided _all finite beings in the universe_ had not done anything else but sin and rebel against God, reason and moral rectitude in general; all possible moral evil would fall as much short of being infinite, as all finite capacities, complexly considered, would fail of being infinite, which will bear no proportion at all. For though _finite minds_, as has been before argued, bear a _resemblance to God_, yet they bear _no proportion to his infinity_; and therefore there is not and cannot be any being, beings or agency of being or beings, complexly considered or otherwise, which are infinite in capacity, or which are infinitely evil and detestable in the sight of God, in that unlimited sense; for the actions or agency of limited beings, are also limited, which is the same as finite: so that both the virtues and vices of man are finite; they are not virtuous or vicious but in degree; therefore moral evil is finite and bounded. Though there is one, and but one infinite good, which is God, and there can be no dispute, but that God judges, and approves or disapproves of all things and beings, and agencies of beings, as in truth they are, or in other words judges of every thing as being what it is; but to judge a finite evil to be infinite, would be infinitely erroneous and disproportionate; for so certain as there is a distinction between, infinity and infinitude, so certain finite sinful agency cannot be infinitely evil; or in other words finite offences cannot be infinite. Nor is it possible that the greatest of sinners should in justice deserve infinite punishment, or their nature sustain it; finite beings may as well be supposed to be capable of infinite happiness as of infinite misery, but the rank which they hold in the universe exempts them from either; it nevertheless admits them to a state of agency, probation or trial, consequently to interchangeable progressions in moral good and evil, and of course to alternate happiness or misery. We will dismiss the doctrine of the infinite evil of sin with this observation, that as no mere creature can suffer an infinitude of misery or of punishment, it is therefore incompatible with the wisdom of God, so far to capacitate creatures to sin, as in his constitution of things to foreclose himself from adequately punishing them for it. SECTON II. THE MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD AS INCOMPATIBLE... WITH ETERNAL PUNISHMENT We may for certain conclude, that such a punishment will never have the divine approbation, or be inflicted on any intelligent being or beings in the infinitude of the government of God. For an endless punishment defeats the very end of its institution, which in all wise and good governments is as well to reclaim offenders, as to be examples to others; but a government which does not admit of reformation and repentance, must unavoidably involve its subjects in misery; for the weakness of creatures will always be a source of error and inconstancy, and a wise Governor, as we must admit God to be, would suit his government to the capacity and all other circumstances of the governed; and instead of inflicting eternal damnation on his offending children, would rather interchangeably extend his beneficence with his vindictive punishments, so as to alienate them from sin and wickedness, and incline them to morality; convincing them from experimental suffering, that sin and vanity are their greatest enemies, and that in God and moral rectitude their dependence and true happiness consists, and by reclaiming them from wickedness and error, to the truth, and to the love and practice of virtue, give them occasion to glorify God for the wisdom and goodness of his government, and to be ultimately happy under it. But we are told that the eternal damnation of a part of mankind greatly augments the happiness of the elect, who are represented as being vastly the less numerous, (a diabolical temper of mind in the elect:) besides, how narrow and contractive must such notions of infinite justice and goodness be? Who would imagine that the Deity conducts his providence similar to the detestable despots of this world? Oh horrible? most horrible impeachment of Divine Goodness! Rather let us exaltedly suppose that God eternally had the ultimate best good of beings generally and individually in his view, with the reward of the virtuous and the punishment of the vicious, and that no other punishment will ever be inflicted, merely by the divine administration, but that will finally terminate in the best good of the punished, and thereby subserve the great and important ends of the divine government, and be productive of the restoration and felicity of all finite rational nature. The most weighty arguments deducible from the divine nature have been already offered, _to wit_, ultimate end of God, in creation and providence, to do the greatest possible good and benignity to beings in general, and consequently, that the great end and design of punishment, in the divine government, must be to reclaim, restore, and bring revolters from original rectitude back to embrace it and to be ultimately happy; as also, that an eternal punishment, would defeat the very end and design of punishment itself; and that no good consequences to the punished could arise out of a never ending destruction; but that a total, everlasting, and irreparable evil would take place on such part of the moral creation, as may be thus sentenced to eternal and remediless perdition; which would argue imperfection either in the creation, or moral government of God, or in both. SECTON III. HUMAN LIBERTY, AGENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY, CANNOT... BE ATTENDED WITH ETERNAL CONSEQUENCES, EITHER GOOD OR EVIL From what has been argued in the foregoing section, it appears that mankind in this life are not agents of trial for eternity, but that they will eternally remain agents of trial! To suppose that our eternal circumstances will be unalterably fixed in happiness or misery, in consequence of the agency or transactions of this temporary life, is inconsistent with the moral government of God, and the progressive and retrospective knowledge of the human mind. God has not put it into our power to plunge ourselves into eternal woe and perdition; human liberty is not so extensive, for the term of human life bears no proportion to eternity succeeding it; so that there could be no proportion between a momentary agency, (which is liberty of action,) or probation, and any supposed eternal consequences of happiness or misery resulting from it. Our liberty consists in our power of agency, and cannot fall short of, or exceed it, for liberty is agency itself, or is that by which agency or action is exerted; it may be that the curious would define it, that agency is the effect of liberty, and that liberty is the cause which produces it; making a distinction between action and the power of action; be it so, yet agency cannot surpass its liberty; to suppose otherwise, would be the same as to suppose agency without the power of agency, or an effect without a cause; therefore, as our agency does not extend to consequences of eternal happiness or misery, the power of that agency, which is liberty, does not. Sufficient it is for virtuous minds, while in this life, that they keep "Consciences void of offence towards God and towards man." And that in their commencement in the succeeding state, they have a retrospective knowledge of their agency in this, and retain a consciousness of a well spent life. Beings thus possessed of a habit of virtue, would enjoy a rational felicity beyond the reach of physical evils which terminate with life; and in all rational probability would be advanced in the order of nature, to a more exalted and sublime manner of being, knowledge and action, than at present we can conceive of, where no joys or pains can approach, but of the mental kind; in which elevated state virtuous minds will be able, in a clearer and more copious manner in this life, to contemplate the superlative beauties of moral fitness; and with ecstatic satisfaction enjoy it, notwithstanding imperfection and consequently agency, proficiency and trial, of some kind or other, must everlastingly continue with finite minds. And as to the vicious, who have violated the laws of reason and morality, lived a life of sin and wickedness, and are at as great a remove from a rational happiness as from moral rectitude; such incorrigible sinners, at their commencing existence in the world of spirits, will undoubtedly have opened to them a tremendous scene of horror, self-condemnation and guilt, with an anguish of mind; the more so, as no sensual delights can there, (as in this world,) divert the mind from its conscious guilt; the clear sense of which will be the more pungent, as the mind in that state will be greatly enlarged, and consequently more capaciously susceptible of sorrow, grief, and conscious woe, from a retrospective reflection of a wicked life. SECTON IV. OF PHYSICAL EVILS. Physical evils are in nature inseparable from animal life, they commenced existence with it, and are its concomitants through life; so that the same nature which gives being to the one, gives birth to the other also; the one is not before or after the other, but they are coexistent together, and cotemporaries; and as they began existence in a necessary dependence on each other, so they terminate together in death and dissolution. This is the original order to which animal nature is subjected, as applied to every species of it. The beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, with reptiles, and all manner of beings, which are possessed with animal life; nor is pain, sickness, or mortality any part of God's punishment for sin. On the other hand sensual happiness is no part of the reward of virtue: to reward moral actions with a glass of wine or a shoulder of mutton, would be as inadequate, as to measure a triangle with sound, for virtue and vice pertain to the mind, and their merits or demerits have their just effects on the conscience, as has been before evinced: but animal gratifications are common to the human race indiscriminately, and also, to the beasts of the field: and physical evils as promiscuously and universally extend to the whole, so "_That there is no knowing good or evil by all that is before us, for all is vanity_." It was not among the number of possibles, that animal life should be exempted from mortality: omnipotence itself could not have made it capable of eternalization and indissolubility; for the self same nature which constitutes animal life, subjects it to decay and dissolution; so that the one cannot be without the other, any more than there could be a compact number of mountains without vallies, or that I could exist and not exist at the same time, or that God should effect any other contradiction in nature; all contradictions being equally impossible, inasmuch as they imply an absolute incompatibility with nature and truth; for nature is predicated on truth, and the same truth which constitutes mountains, made the vallies at the same time; nor is it possible that they could have a separate existence. And the same truth which affirms my existence, denies its negative; so also the same law of nature, which in truth produceth an animal life and supports it for a season, wears it out, and in its natural course reduces it to its original elements again. The vegetable world also presents us with a constant aspect of productions and dissolutions; and the bustle of elements is beyond all conception; but the dissolution of forms is not the dissolution of matter, or the annihilation of it, nor of the creation, which exists in all possible forms and fluxilities; and it is from such physical alterations of the particles of matter, that animal or vegetable life is produced and destroyed. Elements afford them nutrition, and time brings them to maturity, decay and dissolution; and in all the prolific production of animal life, or the productions of those of a vegetative nature, throughout all their growth, decay and dissolution, make no addition or diminution of creation; but eternal nature continues its never ceasing operations, (which in most respects are mysterious to us) under the unerring guidance of the providence of God. Animal nature consists of a regular constitution of a variety of organic parts, which have a particular and necessary dependance on each other, by the mutual assistance whereof the whole are animated. Blood seems to be the source of life, and it is requisite that it have a proper circulation from the heart to the extreme parts of the body, and from thence to the heart again, that it may repeat its temporary rounds through certain arteries and veins, which replenish every minutia part with blood and vital heat; but the brain is evidently the seat of sensation, which through the nervous system conveys the animal spirits to every part of the body, imparting to it sensation and motion, constituting it a living machine-, which could never have been produced, or exercised its respective functions in any other sort of world but this; which is in a constant series of fluxilities, and which causeth it to produce food for its inhabitants. An unchangeable world could not admit of production or dissolution, but would be identically the same, which would preclude the existence and nutriment of such sensitive creatures as we are. The nutrition extracted from food by the secret aptitudes of the digesting powers (by which mysterious operation it becomes incorporated with the circulating juices, supplying the animal functions with vital heat, strength and vigor) demands a constant flux and reflux of the particles of matter, which is perpetually incorporating with the body, and supplying the place of the superfluous particles that are constantly discharging themselves by insensible perspiration; supporting, and at the same time, in its ultimate tendency, destroying animal life. Thus it manifestly appears, that the laws of the world in which we live, and the constitution of the animal nature of man, are all but one uniform arrangement of cause and effect; and as by the course of those laws, animal life is propagated and sustained for a season, so by the operation of the same laws, decay and mortality are the necessary consequences. CHAPTER IV. SECTON I. SPECULATION ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE DEPRAVITY... OF HUMAN REASON. In the course of our speculation on Divine Providence we proceed next to the consideration of the doctrine of the depravity of human reason: a doctrine derogatory to the nature of man, and the rank and character of being which he holds in the universe, and which, if admitted to be true overturns knowledge and science and renders learning, instruction and books useless and impertinent; inasmuch as reason, depraved or spoiled, would cease to be reason; as much as the mind of a raving madman would of course cease to be rational: admitting the depravity of reason, the consequence would unavoidably follow, that as far as it may be supposed to have taken place in the midst of mankind, there could be no judges of it, in consequence of their supposed depravity; for without the exercise of reason, we could not understand what reason is, which would be necessary for us previously to understand, in order to understand what it is not; or to distinguish it from that which is its reverse. But for us to have the knowledge of what reason is, and the ability to distinguish it from that which is depraved, or is irrational, is incompatible with the doctrine of the depravity of our reason. Inasmuch as to understand what reason is, and to distinguish it from that which is marred or spoiled, is the same to all intents and purposes, as to have, exercise and enjoy, the principle of reason itself, which precludes its supposed depravity: so that it is impossible for us to understand what reason is, and at the same time determine that our reason is depraved; for this would be the same as when we know that we are in possession and exercise of reason, to determine that we are not in possession or exercise of it. It may be, that some who embrace the doctrine of the depravity of human reason, will not admit that it is wholly and totally depraved, but that it is in a great measure marred or spoiled. But the foregoing arguments are equally applicable to a supposed depravity in parts, as in the whole; for in order to judge whether reason be depraved in part or not, it would be requisite to have an understanding of what reason may be supposed to have been, previous to its premised depravity; and to have such a knowledge of it, would be the same as to exercise and enjoy it in its lustre and purity, which would preclude the notion of a depravity in part, as well as in the whole; for it would be utterly impossible for us to judge of reason undepraved and depraved, but by comparing them together. But for depraved reason to make such a comparison, is contradictory and impossible; so that, if our reason had been depraved, we could not have had any conception of it any more than a beast. Men of small faculties in reasoning cannot comprehend the extensive reasonings of their superiors, how then can a supposed depraved reason comprehend that reason which is uncorrupted and pure? To suppose that it could, is the same as to suppose that depraved and undepraved reason is alike, and if so, there needs no further dispute about it. There is a manifest contradiction in applying the term _depraved_ to that of reason, the ideas contained in their respective definitions will not admit of their association together, as the terms convey heterogeneous ideas; for reason spoiled, marred, or robbed of its perfection, ceaseth to be rational, and should not be called reason; inasmuch as it is premised to be depraved, or degenerated from a rational nature; and in consequence of the deprivation of its nature, should also be deprived of its name, and called subterfuge, or some such like name, which might better define its real character. Those who invalidate reason, ought seriously to consider, "_whether they argue against reason, with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle, that they are laboring to dethrone:_" but if they argue without reason, (which, in order to be consistent with themselves, they must do,) they are out of the reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument. We are told that the knowledge of the depravity of reason, was first communicated to mankind by the immediate inspiration of God. But inasmuch as reason is supposed to be depraved, what principle could there be in the human irrational soul, which could receive or understand the inspiration, or on which it could operate so as to represent to those whom it may be supposed were inspired, the knowledge of the depravity of (their own and mankind's) reason (in general:) for a rational inspiration must consist of rational ideas, which pre-sup-poses that the minds of those who were inspired, were rational previous to such inspiration, which would be a downright contradiction to the inspiration itself; the import of which was to teach the knowledge of the depravity of human reason, which without reason could not be understood, and with reason it would be understood, that the inspiration was false. Will any advocates for the depravity of reason suppose, that inspiration ingrafts or superadds the essence of reason itself to the human mind? Admitting it to be so, yet such inspired persons could not understand any thing of reason, before the reception of such supposed inspiration; nor would such a premised inspiration prove to its possessors or receivers, that their reason had ever been depraved. All that such premised inspired persons could understand, or be conscious of, respecting reason, would be after the inspiration may be supposed to have taken effect, and made them rational beings, and then instead of being taught by inspiration, that their reason had been previously depraved, they could have had no manner of consciousness of the existence or exercise of it, until the impairing the principle of it by the supposed energy of inspiration; nor could such supposed inspired persons communicate the knowledge of such a premised revelation to others of the species, who for want of a rational nature, could not be supposed, on this position, to be able to receive the impressions of reason. That there are degrees in the knowledge of rational beings, and also in their capacities to acquire it, cannot be disputed, as it is so very obvious among mankind. But in all the retrospect gradations from the exalted reasonings of a Locke or a Newton, down to the lowest exercise of it among the species, still it is reason, and not depraved; for a less degree of reason by no means implies a depravity of it, nor does the imparting of reason argue its depravity, for what remains of reason, or rather of the exercise of it, is reason still. But there is not, and cannot be such a thing as depraved reason, for that which is rational is so, and for that reason cannot be depraved, whatever its degree of exercise may be supposed to be. A blow on the head, or fracture of the cranium, as also palsies and many other casualties that await our sensorium, retard, and in some cases wholly prevent the exercise of reason for a longer or shorter period; and sometimes through the stage of human life; but in such instances as these, reason is not depraved, but ceases in a greater or less degree, or perhaps wholly ceases its rational exertions or operations; by reason of the breaches or disorders of the organs of sense, but in such instances, wherein the organs become rectified, and the senses recover their usefulness, the exercise of reason returns, free from any blemish or depravity. For the cessation of the exercise of reason, by no means depraves it. From what has been argued on this subject, in this and the preceding chapters, it appears that reason is not and cannot be depraved, but that it bears a likeness to divine reason, is of the same kind, and in its own nature as uniform as truth, which is the test of it; though in the divine essence, it is eternal and infinite, but in man it is eternal only as it respects their immortality, and finite as it respects capaciousness. Such people as can be prevailed upon to believe, that their reason is depraved, may easily be led by the nose, and duped into superstition at the pleasure of those in whom they confide, and there remain from generation to generation: for when they throw by the law of reason _the only one_ which God gave them to direct them in their speculations and duty, they are exposed to ignorant or insidious teachers, and also to their own irregular passions, and to the folly and enthusiasm of those about them, which nothing but reason can prevent or restrain: nor is it a rational supposition that the commonality of mankind would ever have mistrusted that their reason was depraved, had they not been told so, and it is whispered about, that the first insinuation of it was from the Priests; (though the Armenian Clergymen in the circle of my acquaintance have exploded the doctrine.) Should we admit the depravity of reason, it would equally affect the priesthood, or any other teachers of that doctrine, with the rest of mankind; but for depraved creatures to receive and give credit to a depraved doctrine, started and taught by depraved creatures, is the greatest weakness and folly imaginable, and comes nearer a proof of the doctrine of total depravity, than any arguments which have been advanced in support of it. SECTON II. CONTAINING A DISQUISITION OF THE LAW OF NATURE... AS IT RESPECTS THE MORAL SYSTEM, INTERSPERSED WITH OBSERVATIONS ON SUBSEQUENT RELIGIONS That mankind are by nature endowed with sensation and reflection, from which results the power of reason and understanding, will not be disputed. The senses are well calculated to make discoveries of external objects and to communicate those notices, or simple images of things to the mind, with all the magnificent simplicity of nature, which opens an extensive field of contemplation to the understanding, enabling the mind to examine into the natural causes and consequences of things, and to investigate the knowledge of moral good and evil, from which, together with the power of agency, results the human conscience. This is the original of moral obligation and accountability, which is called natural religion; for without the understanding of truth from falsehood, and right from wrong, which is the same as justice from injustice, and a liberty of agency, which is the same as a power of proficiency in either moral good or evil: mankind would not be rational or accountable creatures. Undoubtedly it was the ultimate design of our Creator, in giving us being, and furnishing us with those noble compositions of mental powers and sensitive aptitudes, that we should, in, by, and with that nature, serve and honor him; and with those united capacities, search out and understand our duty to him, and to one another, with the ability of practising the same as far as may be necessary for us in this life. To object against the sufficiency of natural religion, to effect the best ultimate good of mankind, would be derogating from the wisdom, goodness, and justice of God, who in the course of his providence to us, has adopted it: besides, if natural religion may be supposed to be deficient, what security can we have that any subsequently revealed religion should not be so also? For why might not a second religion from God be as insufficient or defective as a first religion may be supposed to be? From hence we infer that if natural religion be insufficient to dictate mankind in the way of their duty and make them ultimately happy, there is an end to religion in general. But as certain as God is perfect in wisdom and goodness, natural religion is sufficient and complete; and having had the divine approbation, and naturally resulting from a rational nature, is as universally promulgated to mankind as reason itself. But to the disadvantage of the claim of all subsequent religions, _called revelations, whether denominated inspired, external, supernatural, or what not_, they came too late into the world to be essential to the well being of mankind, or to point out to them the only way to heaven and everlasting blessedness: inasmuch as for the greatest part of mankind who have ever lived in this world, have departed this life previous to the eras and promulgations of such revelations. Besides, those subsequent revelations to the law of nature, began as human traditions have ever done in very small circumferences, in the respective parts of the world where they have been inculcated, and made their progress, as time, chance, and opportunity presented. Does this look like the contrivance of heaven, and the only way of salvation? Or is it not more like this world and the contrivance of man? Undoubtedly the great parent of mankind laid a just and sufficient foundation of salvation for every one of them; for otherwise such of them, who may be supposed not to be thus provided for would not have whereof to glorify God for their being, but on the contrary would have just matter of complaint against his providence or moral government for involuntarily necessitating them into a wretched and miserable existence, and that without end or remedy: which would be ascribing to God a more extensive injustice than is possible to be charged on the most barbarous despots that ever were among mankind. But to return to our speculations on the law of nature. That this divine Law surpasses all positive institutions, that have ever been ushered into the world since its creation as much as the wisdom and goodness of God exceeds that of man, is beautifully illustrated in the following quotation: "But it may be said what is virtue? It is the faithful discharge of those obligations which reason dictates. And what is wisdom itself, but a portion of intelligence? with which the creator has furnished us, in order to direct us in our duty? It may be further asked, what is this duty? whence does it result? and by what law is it prescribed? I answer that the law which prescribed it is the immutable will of God; to which right reason obliges us to conform ourselves, and in this conformity virtue consists. No law which has commenced since the creation, or which may ever cease to be in force, can constitute virtue; for before the existence of such a law, mankind could not be bound to observe it; but they were certainly under an obligation to be virtuous from the beginning. Princes may make laws and repeal them, but they can neither make nor destroy virtue, and how indeed should they be able to do what is impossible to the Deity himself? Virtue being as immutable in its nature as the divine will which is the ground of it.* * Virtue did not derive its nature merely from the omnipotent will of God, but also from the eternal truth and moral fitness of things; which was the eternal reason why they were eternally approved of by God, and immutably established by him, to be what they are; and so far as our duty is connected with those eternal measures of moral fitness, or we are able to act on them, we give such actions or habits the name of virtue or morality. But when we, in writing or conversation, say that virtue is grounded on the divine will, we should at the same time include in the complex idea of it, that the divine will which constituted virtue, was eternally and infinitely reasonable. A Prince may command his subjects to pay taxes or subsidies, may forbid them to export certain commodities, or to introduce those of a foreign country. The faithful observance of these laws make obedient subjects, but does not make virtuous men; and would any one seriously think himself possessed of a virtue the more for not having dealt in painted calico; or if the Prince should by his authority abrogate these laws, would any one say he had abrogated virtue? It is thus with all positive laws; they all had a beginning--are all liable to exceptions, and may be dispensed with and even abolished. That law alone which is engraven on our hearts by the hand of our creator, is unchangeable and of universal and eternal obligation. The law, says Cicero, is not a human invention, nor an arbitrary political institution, it is in its nature eternal and of universal obligation. The violence Tarquin offered to Lucretia, was a breach of that eternal law, and though the Romans at that time might have no written law which condemned such kind of crimes, his offence was not the less heinous; for this law of reason did not then begin, when it was first committed to writing; its original is as ancient as the divine mind. For the true, primitive and supreme law, is no other than the unerring reason of the great Jupiter. And in another place he says, this law is founded in nature, it is universal, immutable, and eternal, it is subject to no change from any difference of place, or time, it extends invariably to all ages and nations, like the sovereign dominion of that Being, who is author of it." The promulgation of this supreme law to creatures, is co-extensive and co-existent with reason, and binding on all intelligent beings in the universe; and is that eternal rule of fitness, as applicable to God, by which the creator of all things conducts his infinitude of providence, and by which he governs the moral system of being, according to the absolute perfection of his nature. From hence we infer, that admitting those subsequent revelations, which have more or less obtained credit in the world, as the inspired laws of God, to be consonant to the laws of nature, yet they could be considered as none other but mere transcripts therefrom, promulgated to certain favorite nations, when at the same time all mankind was favored with the original. The moral precepts contained in Moses' decalogue to the people of Israel, was previously known to every nation under heaven, and in all probability by them as much practised as by the tribes of Israel. Their keeping the seventh day of the week as a sabbath was an arbitrary imposition of Moses, (as many other of his edicts were) and not included in the law of nature. But as to such laws of his, or those of any other legislator, which are morally fit, agree with, and are a part of the natural law, as for instance; "Thou shalt not covet," or "kill." These positive injunctions cannot add anything to the law of nature, inasmuch as it contains an entire and perfect system of morality; nor can any positive injunctions or commands enforce the authority of it, or confer any additional moral obligation on those to whom they are given to obey; the previous obligation of natural religion, having ever been as binding as reason can possibly conceive of, or the order and constitution of the moral rectitude of things, as resulting from God, can make it to be. To illustrate the argument of the obligatory nature of the natural law let us reverse the commandments of the decalogue, by premising that Moses had said thou shalt covet; thou shalt steal and murder; would any one conclude, that the injunctions would have been obligatory? surely they would not, for a positive command to violate the law of nature could not be binding on any rational being. How then came the injunctions of Moses, or any others, to be binding in such cases, in which they coincide with the law of nature? We answer, merely in consequence of the obligatory sanctions of the natural law, which does not at all depend on the authority of Moses or of any other legislator, short of him who is eternal and infinite; nor is it possible that the Jews, who adhere to the law of Moses, should be under greater obligation to the moral law, than the Japanese; or the Christians than the Chinese; for the same God extends the same moral government over universal rational nature, independent of Popes, Priests and Levites. But with respect to all mere positive institutions, injunctions, rites and ceremonies, that do not come within the jurisdiction of the law of nature, they are political matters, and may be enacted, perpetuated, dispensed with, abolished, re-enacted, compounded or diversified, as conveniency, power, opportunity, inclination, or interest, or all together may dictate; inasmuch as they are not founded on any stable or universal principle of reason, but change with the customs, fashions, traditions and revolutions of the world; having no centre of attraction, but interest, power and advantages of a temporary nature. Was the creator and governor of the universe to erect a particular academy of arts and sciences in this world, under his immediate inspection, with tutors rightly organized, and intellectually qualified to carry on the business of teaching, it might like other colleges, (and possibly in a superior manner,) instruct its scholars. But that God should have given a revelation of his will to mankind, as his law, and to be continued to the latest posterity as such, which is premised to be above the capacity of their understanding, is contradictory and in its' own nature impossible. Nor could a revelation to mankind, which comes within the circle of their knowledge, be edifying or instructing to them, for it is a contradiction to call that which is above my comprehension, or that which I already, (from natural sagacity) understand, a revelation to me: to tell me, or inspire me, with the knowledge of that which I knew before, would reveal nothing to me, and to reveal that to me which is supernatural or above my comprehension, is contradictory and impossible. But the truth of the matter is, that mankind are restricted by the law of nature to acquire knowledge or science progressively, as before argued. From which we infer the impropriety, and consequently the impossibility of God's having ever given us any manuscript copy of his eternal law: for that to reveal it at first would bring it on a level with the infancy of knowledge then in the world, or (fishermen, shepherds, and illiterate people could not have understood it,) which would have brought it so low that it could not be instructive or beneficial to after generations in their progressive advances in science and wisdom. CHAPTER V. SECTON I. ARGUMENTATIVE REFLECTIONS ON SUPERNATURAL... AND MYSTERIOUS REVELATION IN GENERAL. There is not anything which has contributed so much to delude mankind in religious matters, as mistaken apprehensions concerning supernatural inspiration or revelation; not considering that all true religion originates from reason, and can no otherwise be understood but by the exercise and improvement of it; therefore they are apt to confuse their minds with such inconsistencies. In the subsequent reasonings on this subject, we shall argue against supernatural revelation in general, which will comprehend the doctrine of inspiration or immediate illumination of the mind. And first--we will premise, that a revelation consists of an assemblage of rational ideas, intelligibly arranged and understood by those to whom it may be supposed to be revealed, for otherwise it could not exist in their minds as such. To suppose a revelation, void of rationality or understanding, or of communicating rational intelligence to those, to whom it maybe supposed to be given, would be a contradiction; for that it could contain nothing except it were unintelligibleness which would be the same as to reveal and not to reveal; therefore, a revelation must consist of an assemblage of rational ideas, intelligibly communicated to those who are supposed to have been the partakers or receivers of it from the first supposed inspiration, down to this or any other period of time. But such a revelation as this, could be nothing more or less than a transcript of the law of nature, predicated on reason, and would be no more supernatural, than the reason of man may be supposed to be. The simple definition of supernatural is, that which is "beyond or above the powers of nature," which never was or can be understood by mankind; the first promulgators of revelation not excepted; for such revelation, doctrine, precept or instruction only, as comes within the powers of our nature, is capable of being apprehended, contemplated or understood by us, and such as does not, is to us incomprehensible and unknown, and consequently cannot for us compose any part of revelation. The author of human nature impressed it with certain sensitive aptitudes and mental powers, so that apprehension, reflection or understanding could no otherwise be exerted or produced in the compound nature of man, but in the order prescribed by the creator. It would therefore be a contradiction in nature, and consequently impossible for God to inspire, infuse, or communicate the apprehension, reflection or understanding of any thing whatever into human nature, out of, above, or beyond the natural aptitudes, and mental powers of that nature, which was of his own production and constitution; for it would be the same as to inspire, infuse, or reveal apprehension, reflection or understanding, to that which is not; inasmuch as out of, beyond or above the powers of nature, there could be nothing to operate upon, as a prerequisite principle to receive the inspiration or infusion of the revelation, which might therefore as well be inspired into, or revealed to nonentity, as to man. For the essence of man is that, which we denominate to be his nature, out of or above which he is as void of sensation, apprehension, reflection and understanding, as nonentity may be supposed to be; therefore such revelation as is adapted to the nature and capacity of man, and comes within his powers of perception and understanding, is the only revelation, which he is able to receive from God or man. Supernatural revelation is as applicable to beasts, birds and fishes, as it is to us; for neither we nor they are capable of being acted upon supernaturally, as all the possible exertions and operations of nature, which respect the natural or moral world, are truly natural. Nor does God deviate from his rectitude of nature in matters of inspiration, revelation or instruction to the moral world, any more than in that of his government of the natural. The infinitude of the wisdom of God's creation, providence and moral government will eternally remain supernatural to all finite capacities, and for that very reason we can never arrive to the comprehension of it, in any state of being and improvement whatever; inasmuch as progression can never attain to that which is infinite, so that an eternal proficiency in knowledge could not be supernatural, but on the other hand would come within the limits and powers of our nature, for otherwise such proficiency would be impossible to us; nor is this infinite knowledge of God supernatural to him, for that his perfection is also infinite. But if we could break over the limits of our capacity, so as to understand any one supernatural thing, which is above or beyond the power of our natures, we might by that rule as well understand all things, and thus by breaking over the confines of finite nature and the rank of being which we hold in the universe, comprehend the knowledge of infinity. From hence we infer, that every kind and degree ef apprehension, reflection and understanding, which we can attain to in any state of improvement whatever, is no more supernatural than the nature of man, from whence perception and understanding is produced, may be supposed to be so: nor has or could God Almighty ever have revealed himself to mankind in any other way or manner, but what is truly natural. SECTON II. CONTAINING OBSERVATIONS ON THE PROVIDENCE... AND AGENCY OF GOD, AS IT RESPECTS THE NATURAL AND MORAL WORLD, WITH STRICTURES ON REVELATION IN GENERAL. The idea of a God we infer from our experimental dependence on something superior to ourselves in wisdom, power and goodness, which we call God; our senses discover to us the works of God which we call nature, and which is a manifest demonstration of his invisible essence. Thus it is from the works of nature that we deduce the knowledge of a God, and not because we have, or can have any immediate knowledge of, or revelation from him. But on the other hand, all our understanding of, or intelligence from God, is communicated to us by the intervention of natural causes, (which is not of the divine essence;) this we denominate to be natural revelation, for that it is mediately made known to Us by our senses, and from our sensations of external objects in general, so that all and every part of the universe, of which we have any conception, is exterior from the nature or essence of God; nor is it in the nature of things possible for us to receive, or for God to communicate any inspiration or revelation to us, but by the instrumentality of intermediate causes, as has been before observed. Therefore all our notions of the immediate interposition of divine illuminations, inspiration, or infusion of ideas or revelations into our minds, is mere enthusiasm and deception; for that neither the divine mind, nor those of any finite intelligences can make any representation to, or impression on our external senses without the assistance of some adequate, intermediate cause. The same is the case between man and man, or with mankind in general; we can no otherwise hold a correspondence but by the aptitude, and through the medium of our senses. Since this is the only possible way in nature by which we can receive any notices, perceptions, or intelligence from God or man. Nothing can be more unreasonable than to suppose, because God is infinitely powerful, that he can therefore inspire or infuse perception, reflection or revelation into the mind of man in such a way or manner as is incompatible with the aptitudes and powers of their nature: such a revelation would be as impossible to be revealed by God, as by a mere creature. For though it is a maxim of truth, "That with God all things are possible," yet it should be considered, that contradictions, and consequently impossibilities are not comprehended in the definition of things, but are diametrically the reverse of them, as may be seen in the definition of the word things, to wit: "whatever is." There is no contradiction in nature or truth, which comprehends or contains all things, therefore the maxim is just, "That with God all things are possible," viz: all things in nature are possible with God; but contradictions are falsehoods which have no positive existence, but are the negatives to things, or to nature, which comprehends, "Whatever is;" so that contradictions are opposed to nature and truth, and are no things, but the chimeras of weak, unintelligent minds who make false application of things to persons, or ascribe such powers, qualities, dispositions and aptitudes to things as nature never invested them with; such are our deluded notions of the immediate operations of the holy spirit, or of any mere spirit, on our minds independent of the intervention of some adequate, natural or intermediate cause. To make a triangle four square, or to make a variety of mountains contiguously situated, without vallies, or to give existence to a thing and not to give existence to it at the same time, or to reveal anything to us incompatible with our capacity of receiving the perception of it, pertains to those negatives to nature and truth, and are not things revealed, nor have they any positive existence as has been before argued; for they are inconsistent with themselves, and the relations and effects which they are supposed to have upon and with each other. It derogates nothing from the power and absolute perfection of God that he cannot make both parts of a contradiction to be true. But let us reverse the position concerning revelation, and premise that it is accommodated to our capacity of receiving and understanding it, and in this case it would be natural, and therefore possible for us to receive and understand it; for the same truth which is predicated on the sufficiency of our capacity to receive and understand a revelation, affirms at the same time the possibility of our receiving and understanding it. But to suppose that God can make both parts of a contradiction to be true, to reveal and not reveal, would be the same as ascribing a falsehood to him and to call it by the name of power. That God can do anything and everything, that is consonant to his moral perfections, and which does not imply a contradiction to the nature of the things themselves, and the essential relation which they bear to each other, none will dispute. But to suppose, that inasmuch as God is all-powerful, he can therefore do everything, which we in our ignorance of nature or of moral fitness may ascribe to him, without understanding, whether it is either consonant to moral rectitude, or to the nature of the things themselves, and the immutable relations and connections which they bear to each other, or not, is great weakness and folly. That God cannot in the exercise of his providence or moral government, counteract the perfections of his nature, or do any manner of injustice, is manifestly certain; nor is it possible for God to effect a contradiction in the natural world, any more than in the moral. The impossibility of the one results from the moral perfections of God, and the impossibility of the other from the immutable properties, qualities, relations and nature of the things themselves, as in the instances of the mountains, vallies, &c., before alluded to, and in numberless other such like cases. Admitting a revelation to be from God, it must be allowed to be infallible, therefore those to whom it may be supposed to have been first revealed from God, must have had an infallible certainty of their inspiration: so likewise the rest of mankind, to whom it is proposed as a Divine Law, or rule of duty, should have an infallible certainty, that its first promulgators were thus truly inspired by the immediate interposition of the spirit of God, and that the revelation has been preserved through all the changes and revolutions of the world to their time, and that the copies extant present them with its original inspiration and unerring composure, or are perfectly agreeable to it. All this we must have an infallible certainty of, or we fail of an infallible certainty of revelation, and are liable to be imposed upon by impostors, or by ignorant and insidious teachers, whose interest it may be to obtrude their own systems on the world for infallible truth, as in the instance of Mahomet. But let us consult our own constitutions and the world in which we live, and we shall find that inspiration is, in the very nature of things, impossible to be understood by us, and of consequence not in fact true. What certainty can we have of the agency of the divine mind on ours? Or how can we distinguish the supposed divine illuminations or ideas from those of our own which are natural to us? In order for us to be certain of the interposition of immediate divine inspiration in our minds we must be able to analyze, distinguish, and distinctly separate the premised divine reflections, illuminations or inspiration from our own natural cogitations, for otherwise we should be liable to mistake our reflections and reasonings for God's inspiration, as is the case with enthusiasts, or fanatics, and thus impose on ourselves, and obtrude our romantic notions on mankind, as God's revelation. None will, it is presumed, pretend that the natural reflections of our minds are dictated by the immediate agency of the divine spirit; for if they were thus dictated, they would be of equal authority with any supposed inspired revelation. How then shall we be able to distinguish or understand our natural perceptions, reflections or reasonings, from any premised immediately inspired ones? Should God make known to us, or to any of us, a revelation by a voice, and that in a language which we understand, and admitting that the propositions, doctrines, or subject matter of it, should not exceed our capacity, we could understand it the same as we do in conversation with one another; but this would be an external and natural revelation, in which God is supposed to make use of language, grammar, logic and sound, alias of intermediate causes, in order to communicate or reveal it, which would differ as much from an immediately inspired revelation, as this book may be supposed to do; for the very definition of immediate inspiration precludes all natural or immediate causes. That God is eternally perfect in knowledge, and therefore knows all things, not by succession or by parts, as we understand things by degrees, has been already evinced; nevertheless all truth, which we arrive at the understanding of, accords with the divine omniscience, but we do not come at the comprehension of things by immediate infusion, or inspiration, but from reasoning; for we cannot see or hear God think or reason any more than man, nor are our senses susceptible of a mere mental communion with him, nor is it in nature possible for the human mind to receive any instantaneous or immediate illuminations or ideas from the divine spirit (as before argued,) but we must illuminate and improve our minds by a close application to the study of nature, through the series whereof God has been pleased to reveal himself to man, so that we may truly say, that the knowledge of nature is the revelation of God. In this there can be no delusion, it is natural, and could come from none other but God. Unless we could do this, we should compound them together at a venture, and form a revelation like Nebuchadnezzar's idol, "partly iron and partly clay," alias partly divine and partly human. The Apostle Paul informs us, that sometimes he "spake, and not the Lord," and at other times speaks doubtfully about the matter, saying, "and I think also that I have the spirit of God," and if he was at a loss about his inspiration, well may we be distrustful of it. From the foregoing speculations on the subject of supernatural inspiration, it appears, that there are insuperable difficulties in a mere mental discourse with the divine spirit; it is what we are unacquainted with, and the law of our nature forbids it. Our method of conversation is vocal, or by writing, or by some sort of external symbols which are the mediate ground of it, and we are liable to errors and mistakes in this natural and external way of correspondence; but when we have the vanity to rely on dreams and visions to inform ourselves of things, or attempt to commune with invisible finite beings, or with the holy spirit, our deceptions, blunders and confusions are increased to fanaticism itself; as the diverse supposed influence of the spirit, on the respective sectaries, even among Christians, may witness, as it manifestly, in their empty conceit of it, conforms to every of their traditions. Which evinces, that the whole bustle of it is mere enthusiasm, for was it dictated by the spirit of truth and uniformity itself, it would influence all alike, however zealots persuade themselves and one another that they have supernatural communion with the Holy Ghost, from whence they tell us they derive their notions of religion, and in their frenzy are proof against reason and argument, which if we tender them, they tell us, that it is carnal and depraved reasoning, but that their teachings are immediately from God, and then proceed to vent upon us all the curses and punishments, which are written in the book of the law. There has in the different parts and ages of the world, been a multiplicity of immediate and wonderful discoveries, said to have been made to godly men of old by the special illumination or supernatural inspiration of God, every of which have, in doctrine, precept and instruction, been essentially different from each other, which are consequently as repugnant to truth, as the diversity of the influence of the spirit on the multiplicity of sectaries has been represented to be. These facts, together with the premises and inferences as already deduced, are too evident to be denied, and operate conclusively against immediate or supernatural revelation in general; nor will such revelation hold good in theory any more than in practice. Was a revelation to be made known to us, it must be accommodated to our external senses, and also to our reason, so that we could come at the perception and understanding of it, the same as we do to that of things in general. We must perceive by our senses, before we can reflect with the mind. Our sensorium is that essential medium between the divine and human mind, through which God reveals to man the knowledge of nature, and is our only door of correspondence with God or with man. A premised revelation, adapted to our external senses, would enable our mental powers to reflect upon, examine into, and understand it. Always provided nevertheless, that the subject matter of such revelation, or that of the doctrines, precepts or injunctions therein contained, do not exceed our reason, but are adapted to it as well as to our external senses. To suppose that God, merely from his omnipotence, without the intervention of some adequate intermediate cause could make use of sound, or grammatical and logical language, or of writing, so as to correspond with us, or to reveal any thing to us, would run into the same sort of absurdity, which we have already confuted; for it is the same as to suppose an effect without a suitable or a proportionable cause, or an effect without a cause; whereas, effects must have adequate causes or they could not be produced. God is the self-existent and eternal cause of all things, but the eternal cause can no otherwise operate on the eternal succession of causes and effects, but by the mutual operation of those causes on each other, according to the fixed laws of nature. For as we have frequently observed before that of all possible systems, infinite wisdom comprehended the best; and infinite goodness and power must have adopted and perfected it; and being once established into an ordinance of nature, it could not be deviated from by God: for that it would necessarily imply a manifest imperfection in God, either in its eternal establishment, or in its premised subsequent alteration, which will be more particularly considered in the next chapter. To suppose that Almighty power could produce a voice, language, grammar, or logic, so as to communicate a revelation to us, without some sort of organic or instrumentated machine or intermediate vehicle, or adequate constituted external cause, would imply a contradiction to the order of nature and consequently to the perfection of God, who established it; therefore, provided God has ever given us any particular revelation, we must suppose, that he has made use of a regular and natural constituted and mediate cause, comprehended in the external order of nature, rightly fitted and abilitated to make use of the vocal power of language, which comprises that of characters, orthography, grammar and logic, all which must have been made use of, in communicating a supposed revelation to mankind, which forecloses inspiration. Furthermore, this heavenly dictating voice should have been accommodated to all languages, grammars and logical ways of speaking, in which a revelation may have been divulged, as it would be needful to have been continued from the beginning to every receiver, compiler, translator, printer, commentator on and teacher of such revelation, in order to have informed mankind in every instance, wherein at any time they may have been imposed upon by any spurious adulterations or interpolations, and how it was in the original. These, with the refinements of languages and translations, are a summary of the many ways, wherein we may have been deceived by giving credit to antiquated written revelation, which would need a series of miracles to promulgate and perpetuate it in the world free from mistakes and frauds of one kind or other, and which leads me to the consideration of the doctrine of miracles. CHAPTER VI. SECTON I. OF MIRACLES Previous to the arguments concerning miracles, it is requisite that we give a definition of them, that the arguments may be clearly opposed to the doctrine of miracles, the reality of which we mean to negative; so that we do not dispute about matters in which we are all agreed, but that we may direct our speculations to the subject matter or essence of the controversy. We will therefore premise, that miracles are opposed to, and counteract the laws of nature, or that they imply an absolute alteration in either a greater or less degree, the eternal order, disposition and tendency of it; this, we conclude, is a just definition of miraculousness, and is that for which the advocates for miracles contend, in their defining of miracles. For if they were supposed to make no alteration in the natural order of things, they could have no positive existence, but the laws of nature would produce their effects, which would preclude their reality, and render them altogether fictitious, inasmuch as their very existence is premised to consist in their opposition to, and alteration of the laws of nature: so that if this is not effected, miracles can have no positive existence, any more than nonentity itself; therefore, if in the course of the succeeding arguments, we should evince that the laws of nature have not and cannot be perverted, altered or suspended, it will foreclose miracles by making all things natural. Having thus defined miracles, and stated the dispute, we proceed to the arguments. Should there ever have been a miraculous suspension and alteration of the laws of nature, God must have been the immediate author of it, as no finite beings may be supposed to be able to alter those laws or regulations, which were established by omnipotent power and infinite perfection, and which nothing short of such power and perfection can perpetuate. This then is the single point at issue, viz: whether God has, or can, consistent with his nature as God, in any instance whatever, alter or deviate from the laws, with which he has eternally impressed the universe, or not. To suppose that God should subvert his laws, (which is the same as changing them) would be to suppose him to be mutable; for that it would necessarily imply, either that their eternal establishment was imperfect, or that a premised alteration thereof is so. To alter or change that which is absolutely perfect, would necessarily make it cease to be perfect, inasmuch as perfection could not be altered for the better, but for the worse, and consequently an alteration could not meet with the divine approbation; which terminates the issue of the matter in question against miracles, and authorizes us to deduce the following conclusive inference, to wit: that Almighty God, having eternally impressed the universe with a certain system of laws, for the same eternal reason that they were infinitely perfect and best, they could never admit of the least alteration, but are as unchangeable, in their nature, as God their immutable author. To form the foregoing argument into syllogisms, it would be thus:-- God is perfect--the laws of nature were established by God; therefore, the laws of nature are perfect. But admitting miracles, the syllogism should be thus:-- The laws of nature were in their eternal establishment perfect;--the laws of nature have been altered; therefore, the alteration of the laws of nature is imperfect. Or thus: the laws of nature have been altered;--the alteration has been for the better; therefore, the eternal establishment thereof was imperfect. Thus it appears, from a syllogistical as well as other methods of reasoning, that provided we admit of miracles, which are synonymous to the alterations of nature, we by so doing derogate from the perfection of God, either in his eternal constitution of nature, or in a supposed subsequent miraculous alteration of it, so that take the argument either way, and it preponderates against miracles. Furthermore, was it possible, that the eternal order of nature should have been imperfect, there would be an end to all perfection. For God might be as imperfect in any supposed miraculous works, as in those of nature; nor could we ever have any security under his natural or moral government, if they were liable to change; for mutability is but another term for imperfection, or is inseparably connected with it. God, the great architect of nature, has so constructed its machinery, that it never needs to be altered or rectified. In vain* we endeavor to search out the hidden mystery of a perpetual motion, in order to copy nature, for after all our researches we must be contented with such mechanism as will run down, and need rectification again; but the machine of the universe admits of no rectification, but continues its never ceasing operations, under the unerring guidance of the providence of God. Human architects make and unmake things, and alter them as their invention may dictate, and experience may determine to be most convenient and best. But that mind, which is infinitely perfect, gains nothing by experience, but surveys the immense universality of things, with all their possible relations, fitnesses and unfitnesses, of both a natural or moral kind, with one comprehensive view. SECTON II. A SUCCESSION OF KNOWLEDGE, OR OF THE EXERTION OF POWER... IN GOD, INCOMPATIBLE WITH HIS OMNISCIENCE OR OMNIPOTENCE, AND THE ETERNAL AND INFINITE DISPLAY OF DIVINE POWER FORECLOSES ANY SUBSEQUENT EXERTION OF IT MIRACULOUSLY That creation is as eternal and infinite as God, has been argued in chapter second; and that there could be no succession in creation, or the exertion of the power of God, in perfecting the boundless work, and in impressing the universe with harmonious laws, perfectly well adapted to their design, use and end. First. These arguments may be further illustrated, and the evidence of the being of a God more fully exhibited, from the following considerations, to wit: dependent beings and existences must be dependent on some being or cause that is independent, for dependent beings, or existences, could not exist independently; and, in as much as by retrospectively tracing the order of the succession of causes, we cannot include in our numeration the independent cause, as the several successive causes still depend on their preceding cause, and that preceding cause on the cause preceding it, and so on beyond numerical calculations, we are therefore obliged (as rational beings) to admit an independent cause of all things, for that a mere succession of dependent causes cannot constitute an independent cause; and from hence we are obliged to admit a self-existent and sufficient cause of all things, for otherwise it would be dependent and insufficient to have given existence to itself, or to have been the efficient cause of all things. Having thus established the doctrine of a self-sufficient, self-existent, and consequently all-powerful cause of all things, we ascribe an eternal existence to this cause of all causes and effects, whom we call God. And, inasmuch, as from the works of nature it is manifest, that God is possessed of almighty power, we from hence infer his eternal existence. Since his premised existence at (and not before) any given era, would be a conclusive objection to the omnipotency of his power, that he had not existed before, or eternally. For as God is a being self-sufficient, self-existent, and almighty, (as before argued) his power must apply to his own existence as well as to the existence of things in general, and therefore, if he did not eternally exist, it must be because he had not the almighty power of existence in himself, and if so, he never could have existed at all; so that God must have eternally existed or not have existed at all; and inasmuch as the works of nature evince his positive existence, and as he could not be dependent on the power, will, or pleasure of any other being but himself for his existence, and as an existence, in time would be a contradiction to his almighty power of self-existency, that he had not eternally existed; therefore, his existence must have been (in truth) eternal. Although it is to us incomprehensible that any being could be self-existent or eternal (which is synonymous,) yet we can comprehend, that any being that is not self-existent and eternal and dependent and finite, and consequently not a God. Hence we infer, that though we cannot comprehend the true God (by reason of our own finiteness,) yet we can negatively comprehend that an imperfect being cannot be God. A dependent being is finite, and therefore imperfect, and consequently not a God. A being that has existed at a certain era (and not before) is a limited one, for beyond his era he was not, and therefore finite, and consequently not a God. Therefore, that being only who is self-existent, infinitely perfect and eternal, is the true God: and if eternally and infinitely perfect, there must have been an eternal and infinite display, and if an eternal and infinite display, it could be nothing short of an eternal and infinite creation and providence. As to the existence of a God, previous to Moses's era of the first day's work, he does not inform us. The first notice he gives us of a God was of his laborious working by the day, a theory of creation (as I should think) better calculated for the servile Israelitish Brick-makers, than for men of learning and science in these modern times. SECTON III. RARE AND WONDERFUL PHENOMENA NO EVIDENCE OF MIRACLES... NOR ARE DIABOLICAL SPIRITS ABLE TO EFFECT THEM, OR SUPERSTITIOUS TRADITIONS TO CONFIRM THEM, NOR CAN ANCIENT MIRACLES PROVE RECENT REVELATIONS. Comets, earthquakes, volcanoes, and northern lights (in the night,) with many other extraordinary phenomena or appearances intimidate weak minds, and are by them thought to be miraculous, although they undoubtedly have their proper natural causes, which have been in a great measure discovered. Jack-with-a-lantern is a frightful appearance to some people, but not so much as the imaginary spectre. But of all the scarecrows which have made human nature tremble, the devil has been chief; his family is said to be very numerous, consisting of "legions," with which he has kept our world in a terrible uproar. To tell of all the feats and diabolical tricks, which this infernal family is said to have played upon our race, would compose a volume of an enormous size. All the magicians, necromancers, wizards, witches, conjurors, gypsies, sybils, hobgoblins, apparitions and the like, are supposed to be under their diabolical government: old Belzebub rules them all. Men will face destructive cannon and mortars, engage each other in the clashing of arms, and meet the horrors of war undaunted, but the devil and his banditti of fiends and emissaries fright them out of their wits, and have a powerful influence in plunging them into superstition, and also in continuing them therein. This supposed intercourse between mankind and those infernal beings, is by some thought to be miraculous or supernatural; while others laugh at all the stories of their existence, concluding them to be mere juggle and deception, craftily imposed on the credulous, who are always gaping after something marvellous, miraculous, or supernatural, or after that which they do not understand: and are awkward and unskilful in their examination into nature, or into the truth or reality of things, which is occasioned partly by natural imbecility, and partly by indolence and inattention to nature and reason. That any magical intercourse or correspondence of mere spirits with mankind, is contradictory to nature, and consequently impossible, has been argued in chapter sixth. And that nothing short of the omnipotent power of God, countermanding his eternal order of nature, and impressing it with new and contrary law, can constitute a miracle has been argued in this, and is an effect surpassing the power of mere creatures, the diabolical nature not excepted. From hence we infer, that devils cannot work miracles. Inattention to reason, and ignorance of the nature of things makes many of mankind give credit to miracles. It seems that by this marvellous way of accounting for things, they think to come off with reputation in their ignorance; for if nature was nothing but a supernatural whirligig, or an inconstant and irregular piece of mechanism, it would reduce all learning and science to a level with the fanaticism and superstition of the weak and credulous, and put the wise and unwise on a level in point of knowledge, as there would not, on this thesis, be any regular standard in nature, whereby to ascertain the truth and reality of things. What is called sleight-of-hand, is by some people thought to be miraculous. Astrological calculations of nativities, lucky and unlucky days and seasons, are by some, regarded, and even moles on the surface of the skin are thought to be portentive of good or bad fortune. "The Swedish Laplanders, the most ignorant mortals in Europe," are "charged with being conjurors, and are said to have done such feats, by the magic art, as do not at all fall far short of miracles; that they will give the sailors such winds as they want in any part of their voyage; that they can inflict and cure diseases at any distance; and insure people of success in their undertakings; and yet they are just such poor miserable wretches as used to be charged with witchcraft here," viz: in England and in New England, "and cannot command so much as the necessaries of life: and indeed, none but very credulous and ignorant people give credit to such fables at this day, though the whole world seems to have been bewitched in believing them formerly." "The 24th of March, 1735, an act passed in the Parliament of Great Britain to repeal the statute of I _Jac's_, entitled an act against conjuration, witchcraft, and dealing with evil and wicked spirits, and to repeal an act in Scotland entitled Amentis Witchcraft." It is but forty-six years since the supreme legislature became apprized of the natural impossibility of any magical intercourse between mankind and evil and wicked spirits; in consequence whereof they repealed their statute laws against it, as they were naturally void, unnecessary, and unworthy of their legislative restriction. For that such a crime had no possible existence in nature, and therefore could not be acted by mankind; though previous to the repeal of those laws, more or less of that island had fallen a sacrifice to them; and the relations of those imaginary criminals were stamped with infamy by such executions, which had the sanction of law, alias of the legislature and the judges, and in which many learned attorneys have demonstrated the turpitude of such capital offences, and the just sanction of those laws in extirpating such pests of society from the earth; to which the clergy have likewise given their approbation, for that those capital transgressors made too free with their devils. Furthermore, the repeal of those laws, as far as the wisdom and authority of the British Parliament may be supposed to go, abrogated that command of the law of Moses, which saith, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," and not only so, but the doctrine of the impossibility of intercourse, or of dealing with wicked spirits, forecloses the supposed miraculous casting out of devils, of which we have sundry chronicles in the New Testament. But to return to the annals of my own country, it will present us with a scene of superstition in the magical way, which will probably equal any that is to be met with in history, to wit: the Salem witchcraft in New England; great numbers of the inhabitants of both sexes were judicially convicted of being wizards and witches, and executed accordingly; some of whom were so infatuated with the delusion, that at their execution they confessed themselves guilty of the sorcery for which they were indicted; nor did the fanaticism meet with a check until some of the first families were accused with it, who made such an opposition to the prosecutions, as finally to put an end to any further execution of the Salemites. Those capital offenders suffered in consequence of certain laws, which, by way of derision, have since been called the _Blue Laws_, in consequence of the multiplicity of superstition, with which they abounded, most of which are repealed; but those that respect sorcery have had favorite legislators enough to keep them alive and in force to this day. I recollect an account of prodigies said to have been carried on by the Romish Clergy in France, upon which his most Christian Majesty sent one of his officers to them with the following prohibition, to wit: "by the command of the king, God is forbid to work any more miracles in this place;" upon which the marvellous work ceased. There has been so much detection of the artifice, juggle and imposture of the pretenders to miracles, in the world, especially in such parts where learning and science have prevailed, that it should prompt us to be very suspicious of the reality of them, even without entering into any lengthy arguments from the reason and nature of things to evince the utter impossibility of their existence in the creation and providence of God. We are told, that the first occasion and introduction of miracles into the world, was to prove the divine authority of revelation, and the mission of its first teachers; be it so. Upon this plan of evincing the divinity of revelation, it would be necessary that its teachers should always be vested with the power of working miracles; so that when their authority or the infallibility of the revelation which they should teach, should at any time be questioned, they might work a miracle; or that in such a case God would do it; which would end the dispute, provided mankind were supposed to be judges of miracles, which may be controverted. However, admitting that they are possible, and mankind in the several generations of the world to be adequate judges of them, and also, that they were necessary to support the divine mission of the first promulgators of revelation, and the divinity which they taught; from the same parity of reasoning, miracles ought to be continued to the succeeding generations of mankind, co-extensive with its divine authority, or that of its teachers. For why should we in this age of the world be under obligation to believe the infallibility of revelation, or the heavenly mission of its teachers, upon less evidence than those of mankind who lived in the generations before us? For that which may be supposed to be a rational evidence, and worthy to gain the belief and assent of mankind at one period of time, must be so at another; so that it appears, from the sequel of the arguments on this subject, that provided miracles were requisite to establish the divine authority of revelation originally, it is equally requisite that they be continued to the latest posterity, to whom the divine legislator may be supposed to continue such revelation as his law to mankind. Nothing is more evident to the understanding part of mankind, than that in those parts of the world where learning and science has prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in such parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue; which is of itself a strong presumption that in the infancy of letters, learning and science, or in the world's non-age, those who confided in miracles, as a proof of the divine mission of the first promulgators of revelation, were imposed upon by fictitious appearances instead of miracles. Furthermore, the author of Christianity warns us against the impositions of false teachers, and ascribes the signs of the true believers, saying, "And, these signs shall follow them that believe, in my name shall they cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them, they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover." These are the express words of the founder of Christianity, and are contained in the very commission, which he gave to his eleven Apostles, who were to promulgate his gospel in the world; so that from their very institution it appears that when the miraculous signs, therein spoken of, failed, they were considered as unbelievers, and consequently no faith or trust to be any longer reposed in them or their successors. For these signs were those which were to perpetuate their mission, and were to be continued as the only evidences of the validity and authenticity of it, and as long as these signs followed, mankind could not be deceived in adhering to the doctrines which the Apostles and their successors taught; but when these signs failed, their divine authority ended. Now if any of them will drink a dose of deadly poison, which I could prepare, and it does not "hurt them," I will subscribe to their divine authority, and end the dispute; not that I have a disposition to poison anyone, nor do I suppose that they would dare to take such a dose as I could prepare for them, which, if so, would evince that they were unbelievers themselves, though they are extremely apt to censure others for unbelief, which according to their scheme is a damnable sin. SECTON IV. PRAYER CANNOT BE ATTENDED WITH MIRACULOUS CONSEQUENCES Prayer to God is no part of a rational religion, nor did reason ever dictate it; but, was it duly attended to, it would teach us the contrary. To make known our wants to God by prayer, or to communicate any intelligence concerning ourselves or the universe to him, is impossible, since his omniscient mind has a perfect knowledge of all things, and therefore is beholden to none of our correspondency to inform himself of our circumstances, or of what would be wisest and best to do for us in all possible conditions and modes of existence, in our never ending duration of being. These, with the infinitude of things, have been eternally deliberated by the omniscient mind, who can admit of no additional intelligence, whether by prayer or otherwise, which renders it nugatory. We ought to act up to the dignity of our nature, and demean ourselves, as creatures of our rank and capacity, and not presume to dictate any thing, less or more, to the governor of the universe; who rules not by our proscriptions, but by eternal and infinite reason. To pray to God, or to make supplication to him, requesting certain favors for ourselves, or from any, or all the species, is inconsistent with the relation which subsists between God and man. Whoever has a just sense of the absolute perfection of God, and of their own imperfection, and natural subjection to his providence, cannot but from thence infer the impropriety of praying or supplicating to God, for this, that, or the other thing; or of remonstrating against his providence: inasmuch, as "known to God are all our wants;" and as we know, that we ourselves are inadequate judges of what would be best for us, all things considered. God looks through the immensity of things, and understands the harmony, moral beauty and decorum of the whole, and will by no means change his purposes, or alter the nature of the things themselves for any of our entreaties or threats. To pray, entreat, or make supplication to God, is neither more nor less than dictating to eternal reason, and entering into the province and prerogative of the Almighty; if this is not the meaning and import of prayer, it has none at all, that extends to the final events and consequences of things. To pray to God with a sense, that the prayer we are making will not be granted any more for our making it, or that our prayer will make no alteration in the state, order or disposal of things at all, or that the requests, which we make, will be no more likely to be granted, or the things themselves conferred upon us by God, than as though we had not prayed for them, would be stupidity or outright mockery, or "to be seen of men," in order to procure from them some temporary advantages. But on the other hand for us to suppose, that our prayers or praises do in any one instance or more alter the eternal constitution of things, or of the providence of God, is the same as to suppose ourselves so far forth to hold a share in the divine government, for our prayers must be supposed to effect something or nothing, if they effect nothing they are good for nothing; but that they should effect any alteration in the nature of things, or providence of God, is inadmissible: for if they did, we should interfere with the providence of God in a certain degree, by arrogating it to ourselves. For if there are any particulars in providence, which God does not govern by his order of nature, they do not belong to the providence of God, but of man; for if in any instance, God is moved by the prayers, entreaties, or supplications of his creatures, to alter his providence, or to do that in conformity thereto, which otherwise, in the course of his providence, he would not have done; then it would necessarily follow, that as far as such alteration may be supposed to take place, God does not govern by eternal and infinite reason, but on the contrary is governed himself by the prayer of man. Our great proficients in prayer must need think themselves to be of great importance in the scale of being, otherwise they would not indulge themselves in the notion, that the God of nature would subvert his laws, or bend his providence in conformity to their prayers. But it may be objected, that they pray conditionally, to wit: that God would answer their prayers, provided they are agreeable to his providential order or disposal of things; but to consider prayer in such a sense renders it, not only useless, but impertinent; for the laws of nature would produce their natural effects as well without it, as with it The sum total of such conditional prayer could amount to no more than this, viz: that God would not regard them at all, but that he would conduct the kingdom of his providence agreeable to the absolute perfections of his nature; and who in the exercise of common sense would imagine that God would do otherwise? The nature of the immense universality of things having been eternally adjusted, constituted and settled, by the profound thought, perfect wisdom, impartial justice, immense goodness, and omnipotent power of God, it is the greatest arrogance in us to attempt an alteration thereof. If we demean ourselves worthy of a rational happiness, the laws of the moral system, already established, will afford it to us; and as to physical evils, prudent economy may make them tolerable, or ward most of them off for a season, though they will unavoidably bring about the separation of a soul and body, and terminate with animal life, whether we pray for or against it. To pray for any thing, which we can obtain by the due application of our natural powers, and neglect the means of procuring it, is impertinence and laziness in the abstract; and to pray for that which God in the course of his providence, has put out of our power to obtain, is only murmuring against God, and finding fault with his providence, or acting the inconsiderate part of a child; for example, to pray for more wisdom, understanding, grace or faith; for a more robust constitution--handsomer figure, or more of a gigantic size, would be the same as telling God, that we are dissatisfied with our inferiority in the order of being; that neither our souls nor bodies suit us; that he has been too sparing of his beneficence; that we want more wisdom, and organs better fitted for show, agility and superiority. But we ought to consider, that "_we cannot add one cubit to our stature_," or alter the construction of our organic frame; and that our mental talents are finite; and that in a vast variety of proportions and disproportions, as our Heavenly Father in his order of nature, and scale of being saw fit; who has nevertheless for the encouragement of intelligent nature ordained, that it shall be capable of improvement, and consequently of enlargement; therefore, "_whosoever lacketh wisdom_" instead of "_asking it of God_," let him improve what he has, that he may enlarge the original stock; this is all the possible way of gaining in wisdom and knowledge, a competency of which will regulate our faith. But it is too common for great faith and little knowledge to unite in the same person; such persons are beyond the reach of argument and their faith immovable, though it cannot remove mountains. The only way to procure food, raiment, or the necessaries or conveniences of life, is by natural means; we do not get them by wishing or praying for, but by actual exertion; and the only way to obtain virtue or morality is to practice and habituate ourselves to it, and not to pray to God for it: he has naturally furnished us with talents or faculties suitable for the exercise and enjoyment of religion, and it is our business to improve them aright, or we must suffer the consequences of it. We should conform ourselves to reason, the path of moral rectitude, and in so doing, we cannot fail of recommending ourselves to God, and to our own consciences. This is all the religion which reason knows or can ever approve of. Moses, the celebrated prophet and legislator of the Israelites, ingratiated himself into their esteem, by the stratagem of prayer, and pretended intimacy with God; he acquaints us, that he was once admitted to a sight of his back-parts! and that "_no man can see" his "face and live_;" and at other times we are told that he "_talked with God, face to face, as a man talketh with his friend_;" and also that at times God waxed, wroth with Israel, and how Moses prayed for them; and at other times, that he ordered Aaron to offer sweet incense to God, which _appeased his wrath_, and prevented his destroying Israel in his _hot displeasure!_ These are the footsteps, by which we may trace sacerdotal dominion to its source, and explore its progress in the world. "_And the Lord said unto Moses, how long will this people provoke me? I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and I will make of thee a great nation, and mightier than they_," but Moses advertises God of the injury, which so rash a procedure would do to his character among the nations; and also reminds him of his promise to Israel, saying, "_Now if thou shall kill all this people as one man, then the nations, which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying, because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land, which he swear unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness_." That Moses should thus advise the omniscient God, of dishonorable consequences which would attend a breach of promise, which he tells us, that God was unadvisedly about to make with the tribes of Israel, had not his remonstrance prevented it, is very extraordinary and repugnant to reason; yet to an eye of faith it would exalt the man Moses, "and make him very great;" for if we may credit his history of the matter, he not only averted God's judgment against Israel, and prevented them from being cut off as a nation, but by the same prayer procured for them a pardon of their sin. "_Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people_," and in the next verse follows the answer, "_and the Lord said I have pardoned according to thy word_." It seems that God had the power, but Moses had the dictation of it, and saved Israel from the wrath and pestilential fury of a jealous God; and that he procured them a pardon of their sin, "_for the Lord thy God is a jealous God_." Jealousy can have no existence in that mind, which possesses perfect knowledge, and consequently cannot, without the greatest impropriety, he ascribed to God, who knows all things, and needed none of the admonitions, advice or intelligence of Moses, or any of his dictatorial prayers. "_And the Lard hearkened unto me at that time also_;" intimating that it was a common thing for him to do the like. When teachers can once make the people believe that God answers their prayers, and that their eternal interest is dependent on them, they soon raise themselves to opulency, rule and high sounding titles; as that of _His Holiness--the Reverend Father in God--The Holy Poker--Bishop of Souls_--and a variety of other such like appellations, derogatory to the honor or just prerogative of God; as is Joshua's history concerning the Lord's hearkening unto him at the battle of the Amorites, wherein he informs us, that he ordered the sun to stand still, saying, "_Sun stand thou still upon Gidaen, and thou Moon in the valley of Ajalon, so the Sun stood still and the Moon stayed until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies;" so the Sun stood still in the midst of Heaven, "and hasted not to go down about a whole day;_" and then adds, by way of supremacy to Himself above all others, and in direct contradiction to the before recited passages of Moses concerning the Lord's hearkening unto him, or to any other man but himself, saying, "_And there was no day like that before it, or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man_." There is not any thing more evident than that if the representation given by Joshua, as matter of fact, is true, those exhibited by Moses concerning the Lord's hearkening unto him are not: though the representations of fact by Moses and by Joshua, are allowed to be both canonical, yet it is impossible that both can be true. However, astronomy being but little understood in the age in which Joshua lived, and the earth being in his days thought to be at rest, and the sun to revolve round it, makes it in no way strange, that he caught himself by ordering the sun to stand still, which having since been discovered to have been the original fixed position of that luminous body, eclipses the miraculous interposition of Joshua. Furthermore, if we but reflect that on that very day Israel vanquished the Amorites with a great slaughter, "_and chased them along the way that goeth to Bethoron, and smote them to Azekah, and unto Makkedah_," in so great a hurry of war, clashing of arms, exasperation and elevation of mind, in consequence of such triumphant victory, they could make but a partial observation on the length of the day; and being greatly elated with such an extraordinary day's work, Joshua took the advantage of it, and told them that it was an uncommon day for duration; that he had interposed in the system and prescribed to the sun to stand still about a whole day; and that they had two days' time to accomplish those great feats. The belief of such a miraculous event to have taken place in the solar system, in consequence of the influence which Joshua insinuated that he had with God, would most effectually establish his authority among the people; for if God would hearken to his voice well might man. This is the cause why the bulk of mankind in all ages and countries of the world, have been so much infatuated by their ghostly teachers, whom they have ever, imagined to have had a special influence with God Almighty. CHAPTER VII. SECTON I. THE VAGUENESS AND UNINTELLIGIBLENESS OF THE PROPHECIES... RENDER THEM INCAPABLE OF PROVING REVELATION. Prophecy is by some thought to be miraculous, and by others to be supernatural, and there are others, who indulge themselves in an opinion, that they amount to no more than mere political conjectures. Some nations have feigned an intercourse with good spirits by the art of divination; and others with evil ones by the art of magic; and most nations have pretended to an intercourse with the world of spirits both ways. The Romans trusted much to their sibylline oracles and soothsayers; the Babylonians to their magicians and astrologers; the Egyptians and Persians to their magicians; and the Jews to their seers or prophets; and all nations and individuals, discover an anxiety for an intercourse with the world of spirits; which lays a foundation for artful and designing men, to impose upon them. But if the foregoing arguments in chapter sixth, respecting the natural impossibility of an intercourse of any unbodied or imperceptible mental beings with mankind, are true, then the foretelling of future events can amount to nothing more. than political illusion. For prophecy as well as all other sorts of prognostication must be super-naturally inspired, or it could be no more than judging of future events from mere probability or guess-work, as the astronomers ingenuously confess in their calculations, by saying: "Judgment of the weather," &c. So also respecting astrology, provided there is any such thing as futurity to be learned from it, it would be altogether a natural discovery; for neither astronomy nor astrology claim anything of a miraculous or supernatural kind, but their calculations are meant to be predicated on the order and course of nature, with which our senses are conversant, and with which inspiration or the mere cooperation of spirits is not intended to act as part. So also concerning prophecy, if it be considered to be merely natural, (we will not at present dispute whether it is true or false) upon this position it stands on the footing of probability or mere conjecture and uncertainty. But as to the doctrine of any supernatural agency of the divine mind on ours, which is commonly called inspiration, it has been sufficiently confuted in chapter sixth; which arguments need not be repeated, nor does it concern my system to settle the question, whether prophecy should be denominated miraculous or supernatural, inasmuch as both these doctrines have been confuted; though it is my opinion, that were we to trace the notion of supernatural to its source, it would finally terminate in that which is denominated miraculous; for that which is above or beyond nature, if it has any positive existence, must be miraculous. The writings of the prophets are most generally so loose, vague and indeterminate in their meaning, or in the grammar of their present translation, that the prophecies will as well answer to events in one period of time, as in another; and are equally applicable to a variety of events, which have and are still taking place in the world, and are liable to so many different interpretations, that they are incapable of being understood or explained, except upon arbitrary principles, and therefore cannot be admitted as a proof of revelation; as for instance, "it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God." Who can understand the accomplishment of the prophecies, that are expressed after this sort? for every day in its turn has been, and will in its succession be the last day; and if we advert to the express words of the prophecy, to wit, "_the last days_," there will be an uncertain plurality "_of last days_," which must be understood to be short of a month, or a year; or it should have been expressed thus, and it shall come to pass in the last months or years, instead of days: and if it had mentioned last years, it would be a just construction to suppose, that it included a less number of years than a century; but as the prophecy mentions "_last days_" we are at a loss, which among the plurality of them to assign for the fulfilling of the prophecy. Furthermore, we cannot learn from the prophecy, in what month, year, or any other part of duration those last days belong; so that we can never tell when such vague prophecies are to take place, they therefore remain the arbitrary prerogative of fanatics to prescribe their events in any age or period of time, when their distempered fancies may think most eligible: there are other prophecies still more abstruse; to wit, "_And one said unto the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, how long shall it be to the end of these wonders? and I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto Heaven, and sware by him that liveth forever, that it should be for an time, times and an half_." The question, in the prophecy is asked "how long shall it be to the end of these wonders?" and the answer is given with the solemnity of an oath, "_it shall be for a time, times and a half_." A time is an indefinite part of duration, and so are times, and the third description of time is as indefinite as either of the former descriptions of it; to wit, "and an half;" that is to say, half a time. There is no certain term given in any or either of the three descriptions of the end of the wonders alluded to, whereby any or all of them together are capable of computation, as there is no certain period marked out to begin or end a calculation. To compute an indefinite time in the single number or quantity of duration is impossible, and to compute an uncertain plurality of such indefinite times is equally perplexing and impracticable; and lastly, to define half a time by any possible succession of its parts, is a contradiction, for half a time includes no time at all; inasmuch as the smallest conception or possible moment or criterion of duration, is a time, or otherwise, by the addition of ever so many of those parts together, they would not prolong a period; so that there is not, and cannot be such a part of time, as half a time, for be it supposed to be ever so momentous, yet if includes any part of duration, it is a time, and not half a time. Had the prophet said half a year, half a day, or half a minute, he would have spoken intelligibly; but half a time has no existence at all, and consequently no period could ever possibly arrive in the succession or order of time, when there could be an end to the wonders alluded to; and in this sense only, the prophecy is intelligible; to wit, that it will never come to pass. The revelation of St. John the divine, involves the subject of time, if possible, in still greater inconsistencies, viz: "_And to the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place: Where she is nourished for a time, and times and half a time." "And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hands to heaven, and sware by him that liveth forever and ever, who created heaven and the things that therein are, and the earth and the things that therein are, and the sea and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer._" Had this tremendous oath been verified there could have been no farther disputations on the calculation of "_time and times and half a time_," (or about any thing else) for its succession would have reached its last and final period at that important crisis when time should have been "no longer." The solar system must have ceased its motions, from which we compute the succession of time, and the race of man would have been extinct; for as long as they may be supposed to exist, time must of necessary consequence have existed also; and since the course of nature, including the generations of mankind, has been continued from the time of the positive denunciation of the angel to this day, we may safely conclude, that his interference in the system of nature, was perfectly romantic. The apostle Peter, at the first Christian pentecost, objecting to the accusation of their being drunk with new wine, explains the prophecy of the prophet Joel, who prophesied of the events which were to take place in the last days, as coming to pass at that early period; his words are handed down to us as follows: "_But this is that which is spoken by the prophet Joel, and it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophecy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams_." The history of the out-pouring of the spirit at the Pentecost, admitting it to have been a fact, would have been very inadequate to the prophetical prediction, viz: I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; the most favorable construction is that the prophet meant human flesh, _i. e._ all human flesh; but instead of a universal effusion of the spirit, it appears to have been restricted to a select number, who were collected together at Jerusalem, and the concourse of spectators thought them to be delirious; It may however be supposed, that St. Peter was a better judge of the accomplishment of the prophecy than I am: well then, admitting his application of the prophecy of the last days to take place at the first pentecost; it being now more than seventeen hundred years ago, they consequently could not have been the last days. Still a query arises, whether every of the prophecies, which were predicted to be fulfilled in the last days, must not have been accomplished at that time; or whether any of the prophecies thus expressed are still to be completed by any events which may in future take place; or by any which have taken place since those last days called pentecost; or whether any prophecy whatever can be fulfilled more than once; and if so, how many times; or how is it possible for us, out of the vast variety of events (in which there is so great a similarity) which one in particular to ascribe to its right prediction among the numerous prophecies? Furthermore, provided some of the prophecies should point out some particular events, which have since taken place, there might have been previous grounds of probability, that such or such events would in the ordinary course of things come to pass; for instance, it is no ways extraordinary, that the prophet Jeremiah should be able to predict that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, should take Jerusalem, when we consider the power of the Babylonish empire at that time, and the feebleness of the Jews. "_The word, which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, when Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and all his army, and all the kingdoms of the earth of his dominion, and all the people fought against Jerusalem, and against all the cities thereof, saying, thus saith the Lord the God of Israel, go and speak unto Zedekiah king of Judah, and tell him thus saith the Lord, behold, I will give this city of Jerusalem into the hand of the king of Babylon._" No politicians could at the time of the prediction be much at a loss respecting the fate of Jerusalem. Nor would it be at all evidential to any candid and ingenious enquirer, that God had any manner of agency in fabricating the prophecies, though, some of them should seem to decypher future events, as they might, to human appearance, turn out right, merely from accident or contingency. It is very improbable, or rather incompatible with human nature, that the prophecy of Micah will ever come to pass, who predicts that "they," speaking of mankind, "_shall beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more_." Some of the prophecies are so apparently contradictory, that they contain their own confutation; as for instance, the prophecy of Micaiah contained in the book of Chronicles, which probably is as absurd as any thing that is to be met with in story: "And when he was come unto the king, the king said unto him, Micaiah, shall we go to Ramoth Gilead to battle, or shall I forbear? and he said go ye up and prosper, and they shall be delivered into your hand, and the king said unto him, how many times shall I adjure thee, that thou shalt tell me nothing, but that which is true in the name of the Lord? then he said I did see all Israel scattered upon the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd, and the Lord said, these have no master, let them return, therefore, every man to his house in peace: and the king said unto Jehoshaphat, did not I tell thee, that he would prophecy no good concerning me, but evil?" "Again he said, therefore, hear the word of the Lord--I saw the Lord sitting upon his throne, and all the host of Heaven standing on his right hand and on his left, and the Lord said who shall entice Ahab, King of Israel, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead, and one spake saying after this manner, and another saying after that manner; then there came out a spirit and stood before the Lord, and said I will entice him, and the Lord said unto him wherewith? And he said I will go forth and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets, and the Lord said thou shalt entice him and thou shalt prevail; go out and do even so. Now therefore, behold the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets and the Lord hath spoken evil against thee." It is observable that the prophet at first predicted the prosperity of Ahab, saying, "go ye up and prosper, and they shall be delivered into your hand," but after a little adjurement by the king, he alters his prediction and prophecies diametrically the reverse. What is more certain than that the event of the expedition against Ramoth Gilead must have comported with the one or the other of his prophecies? Certain it was, that Ahab would take it or not take it, he must either prosper or not prosper, as there would be no third way or means between these two; and it appears that the prophet was determined to be in the right of it by his prophecy both ways. It further appears from his prophecy, that there was a great consultation in Heaven to entice Ahab King of Israel to his destruction, and that a certain lying spirit came and stood before the Lord, and proposed to him to go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of the king's prophets. But what is the most incredible is, that God should countenance it, and give him positive orders to falsify the truth to the other prophets. It appears that Micaiah in his first prophecy, viz: "Go up to Ramoth Gilead and prosper, and they shall be delivered into your hand," acted in concert with the lying spirit which stood before the Lord, but afterwards acted the treacherous part by prophecying the truth, which, if we may credit his account, was in direct opposition to the scheme of Heaven. SECTON II. THE CONTENTIONS WHICH SUBSISTED BETWEEN THE PROPHETS... RESPECTING THEIR VERACITY, AND THEIR INCONSISTENCIES WITH ONE ANOTHER, AND WITH THE NATURE OF THINGS, AND THEIR OMISSION IN TEACHING THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY, PRECLUDES THE DIVINITY OF THEIR PROPHECIES. Whoever examines the writings of the prophets will discover a spirit of strife and contention among them; they would charge each other with fallacy and deception; disputations of this kind are plentifully interspersed through the writings of the prophets; we will transcribe a few of those passages out of many: "Thus saith the Lord to the foolish prophets that follow their own spirit, and have found nothing, they have seen vanity and lying divination, saying the Lord saith, and the Lord hath, not sent them, and they have made others to hope that they would confirm the word." And in another place, "I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran; I have not spoken unto them, yet they prophecy." Again, "I have heard what the prophets said, that prophecy lies in my name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed, yet they are the prophets of the deceit of their own hearts." And again, "Yea, they are greedy dogs, which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand; they all look to their own way, every one for his gain from his quarter." It being the case that there was such a strife among the prophets to recommend themselves to the people, and every art and dissimulation having been practised by them to gain power and superiority, all which artifice was to be judged of by the great vulgar, or in some instances by the political views of the Jewish Sanhedrim, how could those who were cotemporaries with the several prophets, distinguish the premised true prophets from the false? Much less, how can we, who live more than seventeen hundred years since the last of them, be able to distinguish them apart? And yet, without the knowledge of this distinction, we cannot with propriety give credit to any of them, even admitting there were some true prophets among them. Nor is it possible for us to know but that their very institution was merely a reach of policy of the Israelitish and Judaic governments, the more easily, implicitly and effectually to keep their people in subordination, by inculcating a belief that they were ruled with special directions from heaven, which in fact originated from the Sanhedrim. Many other nations have made use of much the same kind of policy. In the 22d chapter of Genesis, we have a history of a very extraordinary command from God to Abraham, and of a very unnatural attempt of his to obey it. "And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham, and he said unto him, Abraham, and he said behold here I am, and he said take now thy son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee to the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of;" "And they came to the place which God had told him of, and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood; and Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son." Shocking attempt! Murder is allowed by mankind in general to be the most capital crime that is possible to be acted among men; it would therefore be incompatible with the divine nature to have enjoined it by a positive command to Abraham to have killed his son; a murder of all others the most unnatural and cruel and attended with the most aggravating circumstances, not merely from a prescribed breach of the ties of parental affection, but from the consideration that the child was to be (if we may credit the command,) offered to God as a religious sacrifice. What could have been a more complicated wickedness than the obedience of this command would have been? and what can be more absurd than to suppose that it came from God? It is argued, in vindication of the injunction to Abraham to kill his son, that it was merely for a trial of his obedience, and that God never designed to have him do it; to prevent which an angel from heaven called to him and gave him counter orders, not to slay his son; but to suppose that God needed such an experiment, or any other, in order to know whether Abraham would be obedient to his commands, is utterly incompatible with his omniscience, who without public exhibitions understands all things; so that had the injunction been in itself, fit and reasonable, and also from God, the compliance or non-compliance of Abraham thereto, could not have communicated any new idea to the divine mind. Every part of the conduct of mankind is a trial of their obedience and is known to God, as well as the particular conduct of Abraham; besides in the canonical writings, we read that "_God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man_." How then can it be, "_that God did tempt Abraham?_" a sort of employment which, in scripture, is commonly ascribed to the devil. It is a very common thing to hear Abraham extolled for attempting to comply with the supposed command of sacrificing his son; but it appears to me, that it had been wiser and more becoming the character of a virtuous man, for Abraham to have replied in answer to the injunction as follows, to wit, that it could not possibly have come from God; who was the fountain of goodness and perfection, and unchangeable in his nature, who had endowed him with reason and understanding, whereby he knew his duty to God, his son, and to himself, better than to kill his only son, and offer him as a religious sacrifice to God, for God would never have implanted in his mind such a strong affection towards him, nor such a conscious sense of duty to provide for, protect and succor him in all duties, and to promote his happiness and well being, provided he had designed that he should have laid violent hands on his life. And inasmuch as the command was, in itself, morally speaking, unfit, and altogether unworthy of God, he presumed that it never originated from him, but from some inhuman, cruel and destructive being, who delighted in wo, and pungent grief; for God could not have been the author of so base an injunction, nor could he be pleased with so inhuman and sinful a sacrifice. Moses in his last chapter of Deuteronomy crowns his history with the particular account of his own death and burial. "So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there, in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord, and he buried him in a valley, in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor, but no man knew of his sepulchre unto this day; and Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died, his eyes were not dim, nor his natural force abated, and the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days." This is the only historian in the circle of my reading, who has ever given the public a particular account of his own death, and how old he was at that decisive period, where he died, who buried him, and where he was buried, and withal of the number of days his friends and acquaintances mourned and wept for him. I must confess I do not expect to be able to advise the public of the term of my life, nor the circumstances of my death and burial, nor of the days of the weeping or laughing of my survivors. Part of the laws of Moses were arbitrary impositions upon the tribes of Israel, and have no foundation in the reason and fitness of things, particularly that in which he inculcates punishing the children for the iniquities of the father; "visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children unto the third and fourth generation." There is no reason to be given, why the iniquity of the father might not as well have involved the fifth, sixth and seventh generations, and so on to the latest posterity in guilt and punishment, as the first four generations; for if it was possible, that the iniquity of the father could be justly visited upon any of his posterity, who were not accomplices with him in the iniquity, or were not some way or other aiding or accessary in it, then the iniquity might as justly be visited upon any one of the succeeding generations as upon another, or upon the generation of any indifferent person: for arbitrary imputations of iniquity are equally absurd in all supposable cases; so that if we once admit the possibility of visiting iniquity upon any others than the perpetrators, be they who they will, we overturn our natural and scientifical notions of a personal retribution of justice among mankind. It is, in plain English, punishing the innocent for the sin of the guilty. But virtue or vice cannot be thus visited or imputed from the fathers to the unoffending children, or to children's children; or which is the same thing, from the guilty to the innocent; for moral good or evil is mental and personal, which cannot be transferred, changed or altered from one person to another, but is inherently connected with its respective personal actors, and constitutes a quality or habit, and is the merit or demerit of the respective agents or proficients in moral good or evil, and is by nature inalienable, "The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." But as we shall have occasion to argue this matter at large in the twelfth chapter of this treatise, where we shall treat of the imputed sin of Adam to his posterity, and of imputative righteousness, we will discuss the subject of imputation no farther in this place. However, the unjust practice of punishing the children for the iniquity of the father having been an ordinance of Moses, was more or less continued by the Israelites, as in the case of Achan and his children. "And Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan the son of Zorah, and the silver and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had, and brought them to the valley of Achor, and all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones, and they raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day; so the Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger." "_Fierce anger_" is incompatible with the divine perfection, nor is the cruel extirpation of the innocent family, and live stock of Achan, to be accounted for on principles of reason. This flagrant injustice of punishing the children for the iniquity of the father had introduced a proverb in Israel, viz: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge." But the prophet Ezekiel in the 18th chapter of his prophecies, has confuted Moses's statutes of visiting the iniquities of the father upon the children, and repealed them with the authority of thus saith the Lord, which was the manner of expression by which they were promulgated. But the prophet Ezekiel did not repeal those statutes of Moses merely by the authority of thus saith the Lord, but over and above gives the reason for it, otherwise he could not have repealed them; for Moses enacted them as he relates, from as high authority as Ezekiel could pretend to in nullifying them; so that had he not produced reason and argument, it would have been "thus saith the Lord," against "thus saith the Lord." But Ezekiel reasons conclusively, viz: "The word of the Lord came unto me again, saying, what meat ye that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge; as I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel. Behold all souls are mine, as the soul of the father so also the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sinneth it shall die, the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son, the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him, therefore, I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to their ways saith the Lord God." It is observable, that the prophet ingeniously says, "Ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel," implicitly acknowledging that the law of Moses had given occasion to that proverb, nor was it possible to remove that proverb or grievance to which the Israelites were liable on account of visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, but by the repeal of the statute of Moses in that case made and provided; which was effectually done by Ezekiel: in consequence whereof the administration of justice became disencumbered of the embarrassments under which it had labored for many centuries. Thus it appears, that those laws, denominated the laws of God, are not infallible, but have their exceptions and may be dispensed with. Under the dispensation of the law a breach of the Sabbath was a capital offence. "And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks on the Sabbath day, and the Lord said unto Moses, the man shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp; and all the congregation brought him without the camp and stoned him with stones, and he died, as the Lord commanded Moses." The very institution of the Sabbath was in itself arbitrary, otherwise it would not have been changed from the last to the first day of the week. For those ordinances which are predicated on the reason and fitness of things can never change: as that which is once morally fit, always remains so, and is immutable, nor could the same crime, in justice, deserve death in Moses's time (as in the instance of the Israelite's gathering sticks), and but a pecuniary fine in ours; as in the instance of the breach of Sabbath in these times. Furthermore, the order of nature respecting day and night, or the succession of time, is such, as renders it impossible that any identical part of time, which constitutes one day, can do it to all the inhabitants of the globe at the same time, or in the same period. Day is perpetually dawning, and night commencing to some or other of the inhabitants of the terraqueous ball without intermission. At the distance of fifteen degrees of longitude to the east of us, the day begins an hour sooner than it does with us here in Vermont, and with us an hour sooner than it does fifteen degrees to the westward, and thus it continues in succession round the globe, and night as regularly revolving after it, succeeding each other in their alternate rounds; so that when it is mid-day with us, it is mid-night with our species, denominated the Periaeci, who live under the same parallel of latitude with us, but under a directly opposite meridian; so likewise, when it is mid-day with them, it is mid-night with us. Thus it appears that the same identical part of time, which composes our days, compose their nights, and while we are keeping Sunday, they are in their midnight dreams; nor is it possible in nature, that the same identical part of time, which makes the first day of the week with us, should make the first day of the week with the inhabitants on the opposite side of the globe. The apostle James speaks candidly on this subject, saying, "Some esteem one day above another, others esteem every day alike, let every one be fully persuaded in his own mind," and keep the laws of the land. It was unfortunate for the Israelite who was accused of gathering sticks on the Israelitish Sabbath, that he was convicted of it; for though by the law of his people he must have died, yet the act for which he suffered was no breach of the law of nature. Supposing that very delinquent should come to this world again, and gather sticks on Saturday in this country, he might as an hireling receive his wages for it, without being exposed to a similar prosecution of that of Moses; and provided he should gather sticks on our Sunday, his wages would atone for his crime instead of his life, since modern legislators have abated the rigor of the law for which he died. The barbarous zeal of the prophet Samuel in hewing Agag to pieces after he was made prisoner by Saul, king of Israel, could not proceed from a good spirit, nor would such cruelty be permitted towards a prisoner in any civilized nation at this day. "And Samuel hewed Agag to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal." The unmanly deed seems to be mentioned with a phiz of religion, viz: that it was done before the Lord; but that cannot alter the nature of the act itself, for every act of mankind, whether good or evil, is done before the Lord, as much as Samuel's hewing Agag to pieces. The orders which Samuel gave unto Saul, (as he says by the word of the Lord) to cut off the posterity of the Amalekites, and to destroy them utterly, together with the cause of God's displeasure with them, are unworthy of God as may be seen at large in the 15th chapter of the Book of Samuel, "Spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." The ostensible reason for all this, was, because the ancestors of the Amalekites, as long before the days of Samuel as when the children of Israel came out of Egypt, which was near five hundred years, had ambushed and fought against Israel, in their passage from thence to the land which they afterwards inhabited. Although it appears from the history of Moses and Joshua, that Israel was going to disposess them of their country, which is thought to be a sufficient cause of war in these days. It is true they insinuate that the Lord had given the land to the children of Israel, yet it appears that they had to fight for it and get it by the hardest, notwithstanding, as is the case with nations in these days, and ever has been since the knowledge of history. But be the old quarrel between Israel and Amalek as it will, it cannot on any principle be supposed, the successors of those Amalekites, in the days of Samuel, could be guilty of any premised transgressions of their predecessors. The sanguinary laws of Moses did not admit of visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children in the line of succession, farther than to the fourth generation, but the Amalekites against whom Samuel had denounced the wrath of God, by the hand of Saul, were at a much greater remove from those their progenitors, who were charged with the crime for which they were cut off as a nation. Nor is it compatible with reason to suppose, that God ever directed either Moses or Joshua to extirpate the Canaanitish nations. "And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men and the women, and the little ones of every city, we left none to remain." There is not more propriety in ascribing these cruelties to God, than those that were perpetrated by the Spaniards against the Mexican and Peruvian Indians or natives of America. Every one who dares to exercise his reason, free from bias, will readily discern, that the inhumanities exercised towards the Canaanites and Amorites, Mexicans and Peruvians, were detestably wicked, and could not be approbated by God, or by rational and good men. Undoubtedly avarice and domination were the causes of those abounding cruelties, in which religion had as little to do as in the crusades of the holy land (so called.) The writings of the prophets abound with prodigies, strange and unnatural events. The walls of Jericho are represented to have fallen to the ground in consequence of a blast of ram's horns; Balaam's ass to speak to his master, and the prophet Elijah is said to have been carried off bodily into heaven by a chariot, in a whirlwind. Strange stories! But other scriptures tell us, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." The history of the affront, which the little children of Bethel gave the prophet Elisha, his cursing them, and their destruction by the bears, has the appearance of a fable. That Elisha should be so exasperated at the children for calling him _bald head_, and telling him to _go up_, was rather a sample of ill breeding; most gentlemen would have laughed at the joke, instead of cursing them, or being instrumental in their destruction, by merciless, wild and voracious beasts. Though the children were saucy, yet a man of any considerable candor, would have made allowance for their non-age, "for childhood and youth are vanity." "And he went up from thence unto Bethel, and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city and mocked him, and said unto him, go up thou bald-head, go up thou bald-head, and he turned back and looked on them, and he cursed them in the name of the Lord, and there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them." It seems by the children's address to Elisha, that he was an old bald-headed man, and that they had heard, that his mate, Elijah, had gone up a little before; and as it was an uncommon thing for men to kite away into the air, and leave the world after that sort, it is likely that it excited a curiosity in the children to see Elisha go off with himself in the same manner, which occasioned their particular mode of speech to him, saying, "go up bald head." The writings of Solomon, Song of Israel, must needs have been foisted into the canonical volume by some means or other, for no one passage therein gives the least intimation of inspiration, or that he had any immediate dictation from God in his compositions, but oh the contrary, he informs us, that he acquired his knowledge by applying himself to wisdom, "to seek and to search out concerning all things that are done under the sun. This sore travail," says he, "has God given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith." And since Solomon never pretended to inspiration, others cannot justly claim his writings to have been anything more than natural reasonings, for who can, with propriety stamp his writings with divine authority, when he pretended no such thing, but the contrary? His song of songs appears to be rather of the amorous kind, and is supposed to have been written at the time he was making love to the daughter of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, who is said to have been a princess of exquisite beauty and exceeding coy, and so captivated his affections that it made him light headed and sing about the "_joints of her thighs_," and her "_belly_." The divine legation of Moses and the prophets is rendered questionable from the consideration that they never taught the doctrine of immortality, their rewards and punishments are altogether temporary, terminating at death; they have not so much as exhibited any speculation of surviving the grave; to this is ascribed the unbelief of the Sadducees of the resurrection of the dead, or of an angel or spirit, as they strenuously adhered to the law of Moses, for they could not imagine, but that their great prophet and law giver would have apprised them of a state of immortality had it been true; and in this the Sadducees seem to argue with force on their position of the divine legation of Moses. For admitting the reality of man's immortality, it appears incredible to suppose, that God should have specially commissioned Moses, as his prophet and instructor to the tribes of Israel, and not withal to have instructed them in the important doctrine of a future existence. SECTON III. DREAMS OR VISIONS UNCERTAIN AND CHIMERICAL CHANNEL... FOR THE CONVEYANCE OF REVELATION; WITH REMARKS ON THE COMMUNICATION OF THE HOLY GHOST TO THE DISCIPLES, BY THE PRAYERS AND LAYING ON OF THE APOSTLES HANDS, WITH OBSERVATIONS ON THE DIVINE DICTATIONS OF THE FIRST PROMULGATORS OF THE GOSPEL, AND AN ACCOUNT OF THE ELECT LADY, AND HER NEW SECTARY OF SHAKERS. It appears from the writings of the prophets and apostles, that part of their revelations were communicated to them by dreams and visions, which have no other existence but in the imagination, and are defined to be "the images which appear to the mind during sleep, figuratively, a chimera, a groundless fancy or conceit, without reason." Our experience agrees with this definition, and evinces that there is no trust to be reposed in them. They are fictitious images of the mind, not under the control of the understanding, and therefore not regarded at this day except by the credulous and superstitious, who still retain a veneration for them. But that a revelation from God to man, to be continued to the latest posterity as a divine and perfect rule of duty or law, should be communicated through such a fictitious and chimerical channel, carries with it the evident marks of deception itself, or of unintelligibleness, as appears from the vision of St. Paul. "It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory, I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord; I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, whether in the body I cannot tell, or whether out of the body I cannot tell, God knoweth such an one caught up to the third heavens. And I knew such a man, whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell, God knoweth how that he was caught up into Paradise and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter." That God knoweth the whole affair, will not be disputed, but that we should understand it is impossible, for the apostle's account of his vision is unintelligible; it appears that he was rather in a delirium or a stupor, so that he knew not that whether he was in or out of the body: he says he heard "_unspeakable words,_" but this communicates no intelligence of the subject-matter of them to us; and that they "_were not lawful for a man to utter_," but what they were, or wherein their unlawfulness to be uttered by man consisted, he does not inform us. His revelation from his own story was unspeakable and unlawful, and so he told us nothing what it was, nor does it compose any part of revelation, which is to make known. He is explicit as to his being caught up to the third heaven, but how he could understand that is incredible, when at the same time he knew not whether he was in the body or out of the body; and if he was in such a delirium that he did not know so domestic a matter as that, it is not to be supposed that he could be a competent judge whether he was at the first, second, third, or fourth heaven, or whether he was advanced above the surface of the earth, or not. That the apostles in their ministry were dictated by the Holy Ghost, in the settlement of disputable doctrines, is highly questionable. "Forasmuch as we have heard that certain, which went out from us have troubled you with words, subverting your souls, saying, ye must be circumcised and keep the law, to whom we gave no such commandment, for it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no other burden than these necessary things." Acts 15. And after having given a history of the disputations concerning circumcision, and of keeping the law of Moses, and of the result of the council, the same chapter informs us, that a contention happened so sharp between Paul and Barnabas, "that they parted asunder the one from the other." Had the Holy Ghost been the dictator of the first teachers of Christianity, as individuals, there could have been no disputable doctrines or controversies, respecting the religion which they were promulgating in the world or in the manner of doing it, to be referred to a general council of the apostles and elders held at Jerusalem, for had they been directed by the Holy Ghost, there could have been no controversies among them to have referred to the council. And inasmuch as the Holy Ghost neglected them as individuals, why is it not as likely that it neglected to dictate the council held at Jerusalem or elsewhere? It seems that the Holy Ghost no otherwise directed them in their plan of religion, than by the general council of the apostles and elders, the same as all other communities are governed. "Paul having passed through the upper coasts came to Ephesus, and finding certain disciples, he said unto them have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? and they said unto him we have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost; and when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied." The spirit of God is that which constitutes the divine essence, and makes him to be what he is, but that he should be dictated, or his spirit be communicated by any acts or ceremonies of the apostles, is by no means admissible; for such exertions of the apostles, so far as they may be supposed to communicate the holy spirit to their disciples, would have made God passive in the premised act of the gift of the spirit; for it must have been either the immediate act of God or of the apostles, and if it was the immediate act of the one, it could not have been the immediate act of the other. To suppose that the act of the gift of the spirit was the mere act of God, and at the same time the mere act of the apostles, are propositions diametrically opposed to each other, and cannot both be true. But it may be supposed that the gift of the spirit was partly the act of God and partly the act of the apostles; admitting this to have been the case the consequences would follow, that the act of the gift of the spirit was partly divine and partly human, and therefore the beneficence and glory of the grant of the gift of the spirit unto the disciples, would belong partly to God and partly to the apostles, and in an exact proportion to that which God and they may be supposed to have respectively contributed towards the marvellous act of the gift of the spirit. But that God should act in partnership with man, or share his providence and glory with him, is too absurd to demand argumentative confutation, especially in an act which immediately respects the display or exertion of the divine spirit on the spirits of men. Such delusions have taken place in every age of the world since history has attained to any considerable degree of intelligence; nor is there at present a nation on earth, but what is more or less infatuated with delusory notions of the immediate influence of good or evil spirits on their minds. A recent instance of it appears in the Elect Lady (as she has seen fit to style herself) and her followers, called Shakers; this pretended holy woman began her religious scheme at Connestaguna; in the northwestardly part of the State of New York, about the year 1769, and has added a new sectary to the religious catalogue. After having instilled her tenets among the Connestagunites, and the adjacent inhabitants, she rambled into several parts of the country, promulgating her religion, and has gained a considerable number of scattering proselytes, not only in the State of New York, but some in the New England States. She has so wrought on the minds of her female devotees, respecting the fading nature, vanity and tempting allurements of their ornaments (which by the by are not plenty among her followers,) and the deceitfulness of riches, that she has procured from them a considerable number of strings of gold beads and jewels, and amassed a small treasure; and like most sectaries engrosses the kingdom of heaven to herself and her followers, to the seclusion of all others. She gives out that her mission is immediately from heaven, that she travails in pain for her elect, and pretends to talk in seventy-two unknown languages, in which she converses with those who have departed this life, and says, that there has, not been a true church on earth since the apostles days until she had erected hers. That both the living and the dead must be saved in, by, and through her, and that they must confess their sins unto her and procure her pardon, or cannot be saved. That every of the human race who have died since the apostle's time, until her church was set up has been damned, and that they are continually making intercession to her for salvation, which is the occasion of her talking to them in those unknown tongues; and that she gathers her elect from earth and hell. She wholly refuses to give a reason for what she does or says: but says that it is the duty of mankind to believe in her, and receive her instructions, for they are infallible. For a time she prohibited her disciples from propagating their species, but soon after gave them ample license, restricting them, indiscriminately, to the pale of her sanctified church, for that she needed more souls to complete the number of her elect. Among other things, she instructs those who are young and sprightly among her pupils, to practise the most wild, freakish, wanton and romantic gestures, as to that of indecently stripping themselves, twirling round, extorting their features, shaking and twitching their bodies and limbs into a variety of odd and unusual ways, and many other extravagancies of external behavior, in the practice of which they are said to be very alert even to the astonishment of spectators, having by use acquired an uncommon agility in such twirling, freakish and romantic practices. The old Lady having such an ascendancy over them as to make them believe that those extravagant actions were occasioned by the immediate power of God, it serves among them as a proof of the divinity of her doctrines. A more particular account of this new sectary has been lately published in a pamphlet by a Mr. Rathburn, who, as he relates, was for a time, one of her deluded disciples, but after a while apostatised from the faith, and has since announced to the world the particulars of their doctrine and conduct. Probably there never was any people or country, since the era of historical knowledge, who were more confident than they that they are acted upon by the immediate agency of the divine spirit; and as there are facts now existing in a considerable tract of country, and are notoriously known in this part of America, I take the liberty to mention them, as a knowledge of these facts, together with the concurrent testimony of the history of such deceptions in all ages and nations, might induce my countrymen to examine strictly into the claim and reality of ghostly intelligence in general. CHAPTER VIII. SECTON I. OF THE NATURE OF FAITH AND WHEREIN IT CONSISTS Faith in Jesus Christ and in his Gospel throughout the New Testament, is represented to be an essential condition of the eternal salvation of mankind. "Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law, for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." Again, "If thou shalt confess the Lord Jesus Christ, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou mayst be saved." And again, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned." Faith is the last result of the understanding, or the same which we call the conclusion, it is the consequence of a greater or less deduction of reasoning from certain premises previously laid down; it is the same as believing or Judging of any matter of fact, or assenting to or dissenting from the truth of any doctrine, system or position; so that to form a judgment, or to come to a determination in one's own mind, or to believe, or to have faith, is in reality the same thing, and is synonymously applied both in writing and speaking, for example, "Abraham believed in God." Again, "for he," speaking of Abraham, "judged him faithful who had promised," and again "his faith was counted unto him for righteousness." It is not only in scripture that we meet with examples of the three words, to wit, belief, judgment, and faith, to stand for the marks of our ideas for the same thing, but also all intelligible writers and speakers apply these phrases synonymously, and it would be good grammar and sense, for us to say that we have faith in a universal providence, or that we judge that there is a universal providence. These three different phrases, in communicating our ideas of providence, do every one of them exhibit the same idea, to all persons of common understanding, who are acquainted with the English language. In fine, every one's experience may convince them that they cannot assent to, or dissent from the truth of any matter of fact, doctrine or proposition whatever, contrary to their judgment; for the act of the mind in assenting to or dissenting from any position, or in having faith or belief in favor of, or against any doctrine, system, or proposition, could not amount to anything more or less, than the act of the judgment, or last dictate of the understanding, whether the understanding be supposed to be rightly informed or not: so that our faith in all cases is as liable to err, as our reason is to misjudge of the truth; and our minds act faith in disbelieving any doctrine or system of religion to be true, as much as in believing it to be so. From hence it appears, that the mind cannot act faith in opposition to its judgment, but that it is the resolution of the understanding itself committed to memory or writing, and can never be considered distinct from it. And inasmuch as faith necessarily results from reasoning, forcing itself upon our minds by the evidence of truth, or the mistaken apprehension of it, without any act of choice of ours, there cannot be any thing, which pertains to, or partakes of the nature of moral good or evil in it. For us to believe such doctrines, or systems of religion, as appears to be credibly recommended to our reason, can no more partake of the nature of goodness or morality, than our natural eyes may be supposed to partake of it in their perception of colors; for the faith of the mind, and the sight of the eye are both of them necessary consequences, the one results from the reasonings of the mind, and the other from the perception of the eye. To suppose a rational mind without the exercise of faith would be as absurd as to suppose a proper and complete eye without sight, or the perception of the common objects of that sense. The short of the matter is this, that without reason we could not have faith, and without the eye or eyes we could not see, but once admitting that we are rational, faith follows of course, naturally resulting from the dictates of reason. SECTON II. OF THE TRADITIONS OF OUR FOREFATHERS It may be objected, that the far greater part of mankind believe according to the tradition of their forefathers, without examining into the grounds of it, and that argumentative deductions from the reason and nature of things, have, with the bulk of them, but little or no influence on their faith. Admitting this to have been too much the case, and that many of them have been blameable for the omission of cultivating or improving their reason, and for not forming a better judgment concerning their respective traditions, or a juster and more exalted faith; yet this does not at all invalidate the foregoing arguments respecting the nature of faith: for though it be admitted that most of the human race do not, or will not reason, with any considerable degree of propriety, on the traditions of their forefathers, but receive them implicitly, they nevertheless establish this one proposition in their minds, right or wrong, that their respective traditions are right, for none could believe in them were they possessed of the knowledge that they were wrong. And as we have a natural bias in favor of our progenitors, to whose memory a tribute of regard is justly due, and whose care in handing down from father to son such notions of religion and manners, as they supposed would be for the well being and happiness of their posterity in this and the coming world, naturally endears tradition to us, and prompts us to receive and venerate it. Add to this, that the priests of every denomination are "_instant in season and out of season,_" in inculcating and instilling the same tenets, which, with the foregoing considerations, induces mankind in general to give at least a tacit consent to their respective traditions, and without a thorough investigation thereof, believe them to be right and very commonly infallible, although their examinations are not attended with argumentative reasonings, from the nature of things; and in the same proportion as they may be supposed to fall short of conclusive arguing on their respective traditions they cannot fail to be deceived in the rationality of their faith. But after all it may be that some of the human race may have been traditionally or accidentally right, in many or most respects. Admitting it to be so, yet they cannot have any rational enjoyment of it, or understand wherein the truth of the premised right tradition consists, or deduce any more satisfaction from it, than others whose traditions may be supposed to be wrong; for it is the knowledge of the discovery of truth alone, which is gratifying to that mind who contemplates its superlative beauty. That tradition has had a powerful influence on the human mind is universally admitted, even by those who are governed by it in the articles or discipline of their faith; for though they are blind with respect to their own superstition, yet they can perceive and despise it in others. Protestants very readily discern and expose the weak side of Popery, and Papists are as ready and acute in discovering the errors of heretics. With equal facility do Christians and Mahometans spy out each others inconsistencies and both have an admirable sagacity to descry the superstition of the heathen nations. Nor are the Jews; wholly silent in this matter; "O God the heathen are come into thine inheritance, thy holy temple have they defiled." What abomination must this have been in the opinion of a nation who had monopolized all religion to themselves! Monstrous vile heathen, that they should presume to approach the sanctum sanctorum! The Christians call the Mahometans by the odious name of infidels, but the Musslemen, in their opinion, cannot call the Christians by a worse name than that which they have given themselves, they therefore call them Christians. What has been already observed upon tradition, is sufficient to admonish us of its errors and superstitions, and the prejudices to which a bigoted attachment thereto exposes us, which is abundantly sufficient to excite us to a careful examination of our respective traditions, and not to rest satisfied until we have regulated our faith by reason. SECTON III. OUR FAITH IS GOVERNED BY OUR REASONINGS... WHETHER THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE CONCLUSIVE OR INCONCLUSIVE, AND NOT MERELY BY OUR OWN CHOICE It is written that "Faith is the gift of God." Be it so, but is faith any more the gift of God than reflection, memory or reason are his gifts? Was it not for memory, we could not retain in our minds the judgment which we have passed upon things; and was it not for reasoning, in either a regular or irregular manner, or partly both, there could be no such thing as judging or believing; so that God could not bestow the gift of faith separate from the gift of reason, faith being the mere consequence of reasoning, either right or wrong, or in a greater or less degree, as has been previously argued. Still there is a knotty text of scripture to surmount, viz: "He that believeth shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned." This text is considered as crowding hard upon unbelievers in Christianity; but when it is critically examined, it will be found not to militate at all against them, but is merely a Jesuitical fetch to overawe some and make others wonder. We will premise, that an unbeliever is destitute of faith, which is the cause of his being thus denominated. The Christian believes the gospel to be true and of divine authority, the Deist believes that it is not true and not of divine authority; so that the Christian and Deist are both of them believers, and according to the express words of the text, "shall be saved," and a Deist may as well retort upon a Christian and call him an infidel, because he differs in faith from him, as a Christian may upon the Deist; for there is the same impropriety in applying the cant of infidelity to either, as both are believers; and it is impossible for us to believe contrary to our judgments or the dictates of understanding, whether it be rightly informed or not. Why then may there not in both denominations be honest men, who are seeking after the truth, and who may have an equal right to expect the favor and salvation of God. CHAPTER IX. SECTON I. A TRINITY OF PERSONS CANNOT EXIST IN THE DIVINE ESSENCE... WHETHER THE PERSONS BE SUPPOSED TO BE FINITE OR INFINITE: WITH REMARKS ON ST. ATHENASIUS'S CREED Of all errors which have taken place in religion, none have been so fatal to it as those that immediately respect the divine nature. Wrong notions of a God, or of his providence, sap its very foundation in theory and practice, as is evident from the superstition discoverable among the major part of mankind; who, instead of worshipping the true God, have been by some means or other infatuated to pay divine homage to mere creatures, or to idols made with hands, or to such as have no existence but in their own fertile imaginations. God being incomprehensible to us, we cannot understand all that perfection in which the divine essence consists, we can nevertheless (negatively) comprehend many things, in which (positively) the divine essence does not and cannot consist. That it does not consist of three persons, or of any other number of persons, is as easily demonstrated, as that the whole is bigger than a part, or any other proposition in mathematics. We will premise, that the three persons in the supposed Trinity are either finite or infinite; for there cannot in the scale of being be a third sort of beings between these two; for ever so many and exalted degrees in finiteness is still finite, and that being who is infinite admits of no degrees of enlargement; and as all beings whatever must be limited or unlimited, perfect or imperfect, they must therefore be denominated to be finite or infinite: we will therefore premise the three persons in the Trinity to be merely finite, considered personally and individually from each other, and the question would arise whether the supposed Trinity of finites though united in one essence, could be more than finite still. Inasmuch as three imperfect and circumscribed beings united together could not constitute a being perfect or infinite, any more than absolute perfection could consist of three imperfections; which would be the same as to suppose that infinity could be made up or compounded of finiteness; or that absolute, uncreated and infinite perfection, could consist of three personal and imperfect natures. But on the other hand, to consider every of the three persons in the supposed Trinity as being absolutely infinite, it would be a downright contradiction to one infinite and all comprehending essence. Admitting that God the Father is infinite, it would necessarily preclude the supposed God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost from the god-head, or essence of God; one infinite essence comprehending every power, excellency and perfection, which can possibly exist in the divine nature. Was it possible that three absolute infinites, which is the same as three Gods, could be contained in one and the self-same essence, why not as well any other number of infinites? But as certain as infinity cannot admit of addition, so certain a plurality of infinites cannot exist in the same essence; for real infinity is strict and absolute infinity, and only that, and cannot be compounded of infinities or of parts, but forecloses all addition. A personal or circumscribed God, implies as great and manifest a contradiction as the mind of man can conceive of; it is the same as a limited omnipresence, a weak Almighty, or a finite God. From the foregoing arguments on the Trinity, we infer, that the divine essence cannot consist of a Trinity of persons, whether they are supposed to be either finite or infinite. The creed-mongers have exhibited the doctrine of the Trinity in an alarming point of light, viz.: "Whoever would be saved before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith, which faith, except every one doth keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly." We next proceed to the doctrine, "The Father is eternal, the Son is eternal, and the Holy Ghost is eternal, and yet there are not three eternals but one eternal." The plain English is, that the three persons in the Trinity are three eternals, individually considered, and yet they are not three eternals but one eternal. To say that there are three eternals in the Trinity, and yet that there are not three eternals therein, is a contradiction in terms, as much as to say, that there are three persons in the Trinity and yet there are not three persons in the Trinity. The first proposition in the creed affirms, that "the Father is eternal," the second affirms that "the Son is eternal," the third affirms that "the Holy Ghost is eternal," the fourth affirms that "there are not three eternals," and the fifth that there is "but one eternal." The reader will observe, that the three first propositions are denied by the fourth, which denies that there are three eternals, though the three first propositions affirmed, that there were three eternals by name, viz. the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The fifth proposition is unconnected with either of the former, and is undoubtedly true, viz. "but there is one eternal." "The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God." Here again we have three Gods by name, affirmed to have an existence by the three first propositions, by the fourth they are negatived, and the fifth affirms the truth again, viz. that there is "but one God." Admitting the three first propositions to be true, to wit, that there are three Gods, the three could not be one and the same God, any more than Diana, Dagan and Moloch may be supposed to be the same; and if three Gods, their essences and providences would interfere and make universal confusion and disorder. "The Father is Almighty, the Son is Almighty, and the Holy Ghost is Almighty, and yet there are not three Almighties but one Almighty." Here we have three Almighties and at the same time but one Almighty. So that the point at issue is brought to this simple question, viz. whether three units can be one, or one unit three or not? Which is submitted to the curious to determine. Our creed further informs us, that the three persons in the Trinity are co-eternal together and co-equal, but in its sequel we are told that one was begotten of the other; and when we advert to the history of that transaction, we find it to be not quite eighteen hundred years ago, and took place in the reign of Herod, the King of Judea, which faith except "we keep whole and undefined," we have a threat, that "without doubt we shall perish everlastingly." SECTON IX. ESSENCE BEING THE CAUSE OF IDENTITY... IS INCONSISTENT WITH PERSONALITY IN THE DIVINE NATURE One God can have but one essence, which must have been eternal and infinite, and for that reason precludes all others from a participation of his nature, glory, and universal and absolute perfection. When we speak of any being who by nature is capable of being rightfully denominated an individual, we conceive of it to exist but in one essence; so that essence as applied to God, denominates the divine nature; and as applied to man, it denotes an individual: for although the human race is with propriety denominated the race of man, and though every male of the species, is with equal propriety called man, for that they partake of one common sort of nature and likeness, yet the respective individuals are not one and the same. The person of A is not the person of B, nor are they conscious of each other's consciousness, and therefore the joy or grief of A, is not and cannot be the joy or grief of B; this is what we know to be a fact from our own experience. The reason of this personal distinction is founded in nature, for though we partake of one common nature and likeness, yet we do not partake of one and the same essence. Essence is therefore, in the order of nature, the primary cause of identity or sameness and cannot be divided. From hence we infer, that the doctrine of the Trinity is destitute of foundation, and tends manifestly to superstition and idolatry. SECTON III. THE IMPERFECTION OF KNOWLEDGE... IN THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST, INCOMPATIBLE WITH HIS DIVINITY That Jesus Christ was not God is evident from his own words, where, speaking of the day of judgment, he says, "Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which are in Heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." This is giving up all pretention to divinity, acknowledging in the most explicit manner, that he did not know all things, but compares his understanding to that of man and angels; "of that day and hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son." Thus he ranks himself with finite beings, and with them acknowledges, that he did not know the day and hour of judgment, and at the same time ascribes a superiority of knowledge to the lather, for that he knew the day and hour of judgment. That he was a mere creature is further evident from his prayer to the father, saying, "father if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not my will but thine be done." These expressions speak forth the most humble submission to his father's will, authority and government, and however becoming so submissive a disposition to the divine government would be, in a creature, it is utterly inconsistent and unworthy of a God, or of the person of Jesus Christ, admitting him to have been a divine person, or of the essence of God. CHAPTER X. SECTON I. OBSERVATIONS ON THE STATE OF MAN, IN MOSES'S PARADISE... ON THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL, AND ON THE TREE OF LIFE: WITH SPECULATIONS ON THE DIVINE PROHIBITION TO MAN, NOT TO EAT OF THE FRUIT OF THE FORMER OF THOSE TREES, INTERSPERSED WITH REMARKS ON THE MORTALITY OF INNOCENT MAN. The mortality of animal life, and the dissolution of that of the vegetable, has been particularly considered in chapter three, section four, treating on physical evils. We now proceed to make an application of those arguments, in the case of our reputed first parents, whose mortality is represented by Moses to have taken place in consequence of their eating of the forbidden fruit. Moses in his description of the garden of Eden acquaints us with two chimerical kinds of fruit trees, which, among others, he tells us were planted by God in the place appointed for the residence of the new made couple; the one he calls by the name of "the tree of knowledge of good and evil," and the other by the name of "the tree of life." And previous to his account of the apostacy, he informs us, that God expressly commanded the man and woman, saying, "be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth; and God said, behold I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon, the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed, to you it shall be for meat." Again, "and the Lord commanded the man saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." "And the Lord said, it is not good for man to be alone, I will make him an help meet for him; and the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, and he took out one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof, and the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman." Thus it appears from Moses's representation of the state of man's innocency, that he was commanded by God to labor, and to replenish the earth; and that to him was given the dominion over the creatures, and that at two several times he was licensed by God himself to eat of every of the fruit of the trees, and of the herbage, except of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; and because it was not good that the man should be alone, but that he might multiply and replenish the earth, our amorous mother Eve, it seems, was formed, who I dare say well compensated father Adam for the loss of his rib. This short description of man's state and condition in innocency, agrees with the state and circumstances of human nature at present. Innocent man was required to labor and subdue the earth, out of which he was to be subsisted; had a license to eat of the fruit of the trees, or herbage of the garden, which pre-supposeth that his nature needed refreshment the same as ours does; for otherwise it would have been impertinent to have granted him a privilege incompatible with his nature, as it would have been no privilege at all, but an outright mockery, except we admit, that innocent human nature was liable to decay, needed nutrition by food, and had the quality of digestion and perspiration; or in fine, had the same sort of nature as we have; for otherwise he could eat but one belly-full, which without digestion would remain the same, and is too romantic to have been the original end and design of eating. And though there is nothing mentioned by Moses concerning his drinking, yet it is altogether probable, that he had wit enough to drink when he was thirsty. That he consisted of animal nature is manifest, not only from his being subjected to subdue the earth, out of which he was to be subsisted, and from his eating and drinking, or his susceptibility of nutrition by food, but also from his propensity to propagate his kind; for which purpose a helpmate was made for him. Nothing could more fully evince, that Moses's innocent progenitors of mankind, in that state, were of a similar nature to ours, than their susceptibility of propagating the species; and as they required nutrition, their nature must have had the quality or aptitude of digestion and perspiration, and every property that at present we ascribe to an animal nature; from hence we infer, that death, or mortality, must have been the necessary consequence. What would have prevented them from having been crushed to death by a fall from a precipice, or from suffering death by any other casualty, to which human nature is at present liable? will any suppose that the bodies of those premised innocent progenitors of the human race were invulnerable; were they not flesh and blood? surely they were, for otherwise they could not have been male and female; as it was written, "male and female created he them:" and inasmuch as animal life has, from its original, consisted of the same sort of nature, and been propagated and supported in the same manner, and obnoxious to the same fate, it would undoubtedly, in the premised day of Adam, required the same order in the external system of nature, which it does at present, to answer the purposes of animal life. Was it possible that the laws of nature, which merely respect gravitation, could be and were suspended, so as not to be influential on matter, our world would be immediately disjointed and out of order, and confusion would succeed its present regularity; in the convulsions whereof animal life could not subsist. So that not only the laws which immediately respect animal nature in particular, but the laws which respect our solar system, must have been the same in man's innocency, as in his whimsically supposed state of apostacy; and consequently, his mortality the same. From hence we infer, that the curses, which Moses informs us of in chapter three: as being by God pronounced upon man, saying, "dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return," could not have been any punishment, inflicted as a penalty for eating the forbidden fruit; for turn to dust he must have done, whether he eat of it or not; for that death and dissolution was the inevitable and irreversible condition of the law of nature, which wholly precludes the curse, of which Moses informs us, from having any effect on mankind. The story of the "tree of life" is unnatural. And there being but one of the kind, it may be called an only tree, the world not having produced another of the sort; the fruit of which, according to Moses, had such an efficacious quality, that had Adam and Eve but eaten thereof, they would have lived forever. "And now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever." To prevent which, they are said to be driven out of the garden, that the eating thereof might not have reversed the sentence of God, which he had previously pronounced against them, denouncing their mortality. "So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden, cherubims, and a flaming sword, which turneth every way to keep the way of the tree of life." A bite of this fruit it seems would have reinstated mankind, and spoiled priestcraft. Yet it is observable, that there are no travellers or historians, who have given any accounts of such a tree, or of the cherubims or flaming sword, which renders its existence disputable, and the reality of it doubtful and improbable; the more so, as that part of the country, in which it is said to have been planted, has for a long secession of ages been populously inhabited. Yet it may be objected, that the tree may have rotted down and consumed by time. But such conjectures derogate from the character of the quality of the tree. It seems, that so marvellous a tree, the fruit of which would have preserved animal life eternally, would have laughed at time, and bid defiance to decay and dissolution, and eternally have remained in its pristine state under the protection of the flaming sword, as a perpetual evidence of the divine legation of Moses, and the reality of man's apostacy for ever. But alas! it is no where to be found, it is perished from off the face of the earth, and such a marvellous fruit is no more, and consequently no remedy against mortality remains. SECTON II. POINTING OUT THE NATURAL IMPOSSIBILITY OF ALL AND EVERY... OF THE DIVERSE SPECIES OF BIPED ANIMALS, COMMONLY TERMED MAN, TO HAVE LINEALLY DESCENDED FROM ADAM AND EVE, OR FROM THE SAME ORIGINAL PROGENITORS. It is altogether improbable and manifestly contradictory to suppose, that the various and diverse nations and tribes of the earth, who walk upon two legs, and are included under the term man, have or possibly could have descended by ordinary generation, from the same parents, be they supposed to be who they will. Those adventurers,-who have sailed or travelled to the several parts of the globe, inform us, in their respective histories, that they find the habitable part of it more or less populated by one kind or other of rational animals, and that considered as tribes or nations, there is evidently a gradation of intellectual capacity among them, some more exalted and others lower in the scale of being; and that they are specially diverse from each other with respect to their several animal natures, though in most respects they appear to have one sort of nature with us, viz: more like us that like the brute creation; as they walk erect, speak with man's voice, and make use of language of one sort or other, though many of them are more or less inarticulate in their manner of speaking: and in many other particulars bear a general likeness to us. They are nevertheless considered as distinct tribes or nations, are of different sizes, and as to complexion, they vary from the two extremes of white and black, in a variety of tawny mediums. The learned nations can trace their genealogies, (though somewhat incorrect) for a considerable time, but are certain to be sooner or later lost in the retrospect thereon, and those that are of an inferior kind, or destitute of learning or science have no other knowledge of their genealogies, than they retain by their respective traditions, which are very inconsiderable. They are likewise diverse from each other in their features and in the shape of their bodies and limbs, and some are distinguished from others by their rank smell and the difference in their hair, eyes and visage, but to point out the distinctions would exceed my design. The Ethiopians, though of a shining black complexion, have regular and beautiful features, and long black hair (one of those female beauties captivated the affections of Moses) they differ very materially from the negro blacks, so that it appears impossible that they should have descended in a lineal succession from the same ancestors. They are uniformly in their respective generations essentially diverse from each other, so that an issue from a male and female of the two nations would be a mongrel, partaking partly of the kind of both nations. So also concerning the difference which subsists between us and the negroes; their black skin is but one of the particulars in which they are different from us; their many and very essential differences fully evince, that the white nations, and they, could not according to the law of their respective generations, have had one and the same lineal original, but that they have had their diverse kind of original progenitors. It is true that the several nations and tribes of the earth, comprehended under the general term man, notwithstanding their diversity to each other in bodily shape and mental powers, bear a nearer resemblance to one another than the brute kind, for which reason they are known by one common appellation: though it is manifest that they could never have lineally descended from the same first parents, whether their names were Adam and Eve, or what not. But inasmuch as our genealogies are wholly insufficient for the purpose of explaining our respective originals or any or either of them, or to give us or any of us, considered as individuals or nations, who fall under the denomination of the term man, any manner of insight or knowledge from whom we are lineally descended, or who were our respective original ancestors, or what their names were: we must therefore reason on this subject from the facts and causes now existing, which abundantly evince, that we are of different kinds, and consequently are not of the same lineage. The acquaintance, which we have had with the negro nation in particular, fully evinces the absurdity of supposing them to be of the same blood and kindred with ourselves. But that there are some original intrinsic and hereditary diversity or essential difference between us and them, which cannot be ascribed to time, climate, or to mere contingence. For that we and they are in nature inherently and uniformly diverse from each other in our respective constitutions and generations, and have been so time immemorial. So that the negroes are of a different species of rational beings from us, and consequently must have had their distinct lineal original; was it not so, there could be no such thing as a mongrel or a mulatto, who is occasioned by a copulation between the males and the females of the respective diverse species, the issue partaking of both natures. Had all the nations and tribes of the world, who are denominated rational, been lineally descended from the same progenitors, mongrelism could never have taken place among them, as in this case they would have been all of the same kind: from hence we infer, that they have had their respective original progenitors. The Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope have enacted laws to punish with death such of their Dutch subjects as may be convicted of copulating with the Hottentots: for that their nature is adjusted to be of an inferior species to theirs, so that mixing their nature with them would essentially degenerate and debase their own. SECTON III. OF THE ORIGIN OF THE DEVIL OR OF MORAL EVIL... AND OF THE DEVIL'S TALKING WITH EVE; WITH A REMARK THAT THE DOCTRINE OF APOSTACY IS THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY Inasmuch as the devil is represented to have had so great and undue an influence in bringing about the apostacy of Adam, and still to continue his temptations to mankind, it may be worth our while to examine into the nature and manner of his being and the mode of his exhibiting his temptations. John's gospel, verse 1 and 3, the Christian's God is the creator of the devil and consequently the original cause of evil in heaven--and among men he planted the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and knew at the time he planted it of the awful consequences that would follow. But if it be admitted, that the creature called the devil (who must be supposed to be under the divine government, as much as any other creature) could become inflexible, and perpetually rebellious and wicked, incapable of a restoration, and consequently subjected to eternal punishment (which to me appears to be inconsistent with the wisdom and goodness of the divine government, and the nature, end and design of a probationary agent) yet it would by no means follow from hence, that so stubbornly wicked and incorrigible a creature would have been permitted, by the providence of God, to tempt, ensnare or seduce mankind, by plying his temptations to their weak side. One thing we are certain of, viz. that the devil does not visit our world in a bodily or organized shape, and there is not in nature a second way, in which it is possible for him to make known himself to us, or that he could have done it to our progenitors, nor could he ever have communicated to them or to us, any temptations or ideas whatever, any otherwise than by making a proper application to our external senses, so that we could understand him, or receive the ideas of his temptations in a natural way. For supernatural intercourse with the world of spirits or invisible beings has been shown to be contradictory and impossible in the arguments contained in the sixth chapter, to which the reader is referred. Those arguments will hold equally good as applied to either good or evil spirits, and are demonstrative of the utter impossibility of mankind's holding any manner of intercourse or intelligence with them. But should we premise, that, according to the history of Moses, it was in the power of the devil to assume a bodily shape, and that he did in very deed transform himself into the figure, likeness and organization of a snake, yet by and with that organ he could not have spoken or uttered the following articulate words, which Moses charged him with, to wit, "And the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die, for God doth know, that in the day ye eat thereof, that your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as Gods knowing good and evil." Who speaks the truth in the above passages, the devil, for neither the man nor the woman died for many years after they are said to have eaten of the forbidden fruit, for death is the annihilation of life, and they did not die on the day they eat. As the serpent is by nature incapable of speech, it must have put the devil into the same predicament; admitting that he transformed himself into the same figure or likeness, and consequently for want of the proper and adequate organs of speech, he must necessarily have been incapable of any other language than that of rattling his tail, and therefore could never have spoken those recited words unto Eve, or communicated any of his temptations unto her by language, while in that similitude. However, admitting that the first parents of mankind were beguiled by the wiles of the devil to transgress the divine law, yet of all transgressions it would have been the most trivial (considered under all the particular circumstances of it) that the mind of man can conceive of. Who in the exercise of reason can believe, that Adam and Eve by eating of such a spontaneous fruit could have incurred the eternal displeasure of God, as individuals? Or that the divine vindictive justice should extend to their unoffending offspring then unborn? And sentence the human progeny to the latest posterity to everlasting destruction? As chimerical as Moses's representation of the apostacy of man manifestly appears to be, yet it is the very basis, on which Christianity is founded, and is announced in the New Testament to be the very cause why Jesus Christ came into this world, "that he might destroy the works of the devil," and redeem fallen man, alias, the elect, from the condemnation of the apostacy; which leads me to the consideration of the doctrine of imputation. CHAPTER XI. SECTON I. IMPUTATION CANNOT CHANGE, ALIENATE OR TRANSFER... THE PERSONAL DEMERIT OF SIN; AND PERSONAL MERIT OF VIRTUE TO OTHERS, WHO WERE NOT ACTIVE THEREIN, ALTHOUGH THIS DOCTRINE SUPPOSES AN ALIENATION THEREOF The doctrine of imputation according to the Christian scheme, consists of two parts; first, of imputation of the apostacy of Adam and Eve to their posterity, commonly called original sin; and secondly, of the imputation of the merits or righteousness of Christ, who in scripture is called the second Adam, to mankind, or to the elect. This is a concise definition of the doctrine, and which will undoubtedly be admitted to be a just one by every denomination of men, who are acquainted with Christianity, whether they adhere to it or not I therefore proceed to illustrate and explain the doctrine by transcribing a short, but very pertinent conversation, which in the early years of my manhood, I had with a Calvinistical divine: but previously remark, that I was educated in what is commonly called the Armenian principles, and among other tenets to reject the doctrine of original sin, this was the point at issue between the clergyman and me. In my turn I opposed the doctrine of original sin with philosophical reasonings, and as I thought had confuted the doctrine. The reverend gentleman heard me through patiently, and with candor replied, "your metaphysical reasonings are not to the purpose; inasmuch as you are a Christian, and hope and expect to be saved by the imputed righteousness of Christ to you; for you may as well be imputedly sinful as imputedly righteous. Nay, said he, if you hold to the doctrine of satisfaction and atonement by Christ, by so doing you pre-suppose the doctrine of apostacy or original sin to be in fact true; for said he, if mankind were not in a ruined and condemned state by nature, there could have been no need of a redeemer, but each individual would have been accountable to his creator and judge, upon the basis of his own moral agency. Further observing, that upon philosophical principles it was difficult to account for the doctrine of original sin, or original righteousness, yet as they were plain fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith, we ought to assent to the truth of them, and that from the divine authority of revelation. Notwithstanding, said he, if you will give me a philosophical explanation of original imputed righteousness, which you profess to believe, and expect salvation by, then I will return you a philosophical explanation of the doctrine of original sin; for it is plain, said he, that your objections lie with equal weight against original imputed righteousness, as against original imputed sin." Upon which I had the candor to acknowledge to the worthy ecclesiastic, that upon the Christian plan, I perceived that the argument had fairly terminated against me. For at that time I dared not distrust the infallibility of revelation, much more to dispute it. However, this conversation was uppermost in my mind for several months after, and after many painful searches and researches after the truth respecting the doctrine of imputation, resolved at all events to abide the decision of rational argument in the premises, and on a full examination of both parts of the doctrine, rejected the whole; for on a fair scrutiny I found, that I must concede to it entirely or not at all, or else believe inconsistently as the clergyman had argued. Having opened and explained the doctrine, we proceed argumentatively to consider it. Imputation of sin or righteousness includes an alteration or transferring of the personal merits or demerits of sin or righteousness, from those who may be supposed to have been active in the one or the other, to others, who are premised not to have been active therein, otherwise it would not answer the Bible notion of imputation. For if sin or righteousness, vice or virtue, are imputable only to their respective personal proficients or actors, in this case original sin must have been imputed to Adam and Eve, to the exclusion of their posterity, and the righteousness of Christ as exclusively imputed to himself, precluding all others therefrom; so that both the sin of the first Adam and the righteousness of the second, would, on this stating of imputation, have been matters which respect merely the agency, of the demerits or merits of the two respective Adams themselves, and in which we could have had no blame, reward or concern, any more than in the building of Babel. This then is the question that determines the sequel of the dispute for or against the doctrine of imputation, viz. whether the personal merit or demerit of mankind, that is to say, their virtue or vice, righteousness or wickedness can be alienated, imputed to, or transferred from one person to another, or not? If any should object against this stating of the question now in dispute, it would be the same in reality as disputing against the doctrine of imputation itself, for imputation must transfer or change the personal merit or demerit of the sin or righteousness of mankind or not do it; if it does not do it, the whole notion of original sin or of righteousness, as being imputed from the first and second Adams to mankind, is without foundation, consequently, if there is any reality in the doctrine of imputation, it must needs transfer or change the guilt of original sin, or of the apostacy of Adam and Eve, to their posterity, or otherwise they could need no atonement or imputative righteousness, as a remedy therefrom, but every individual of "mankind would have stood accountable to their creator and judge on the basis of their own moral agency," which is undoubted the true state of the case, respecting all rational and accountable beings; so that if the transferring of the individual merits or demerits of one person to another, is not contained in the act or doctrine of imputation, it contains nothing at all, but is a sound without a meaning, and after all the talk which has been in the world about it, we must finally adopt to old proverb, viz. "every tub stands upon its own bottom." SECTON II. THE MORAL RECTITUDE OF THINGS FORECLOSES... THE ACT OF IMPUTATION. Imputation confounds virtue and vice, and saps the very foundation of moral government, both divine and human. Abstract the idea of personal merit and demerit, from the individuals of mankind, justice would be totally blind, and truth would be nullified, or at least excluded from any share in the administration of government. Admitting that moral good and evil has taken place in the system of rational agents, yet, on the position of imputation, it would be impossible, that a retribution of justice should be made to them by God or by man, except it be according to their respective personal merits and demerits; which would fix upon the basis of our own moral agency and accountability, and preclude the imputation of righteousnes. Truth respects the reality of things, as they are in their various complicated and distinct natures, and necessarily conforms to all facts and realities. It exists in, by and with every thing that does exist, and that which does not and cannot exist, is fictitious and void of truth, as is the doctrine of imputation. It is a truth that some of the individuals of mankind are virtuous, and that others are vicious, and it is a truth, that the former merit peace of conscience and praise, and the latter horror of conscience and blame; for God has so constituted the nature of things, that moral goodness, naturally and necessarily tends to happiness in a moral sense, and moral evil as necessarily tends to the contrary; and as truth respects every thing, as being what it is, it respects nature, as God has constituted it, with its tendencies, dispositions, aptitudes and laws; and as the tendency of virtue is to mental happiness, and vice the contrary, they fall under the cognizance of truth, as all other facts necessarily do; which tendencies will for ever preclude imputation, by making us morally happy or miserable according to our works. Truth respects the eternal rules of unalterable rectitude and fitness, which comprehends all virtue, goodness and true happiness; and as sin and wickedness is no other but a deviation from the rules of eternal unerring order and reason, so truth respects it as unreasonable, unfit, unrighteous and unhappy deviation from moral rectitude, naturally tending to misery. This order of nature, comprehended under the terms of truth, must have been of all others the wisest and best; in fine it must have been absolutely perfect; for this order and harmony of things, could not have resulted from anything short of infinite wisdom, goodness and power, by which it is also upheld; and all just ideas of equity, or of natural and moral fitness must be learned from nature, and predicated on it; and nature predicated on the immutable perfection of a God; and to suppose that imputation, in any one instance has taken place, is the same as to suppose, that the eternal order, truth, justice, equity and fitness of things has been changed, and if so, the God of nature must needs have been a changeable being, and liable to alter his justice or order of nature, which is the same thing; for without the alteration of nature, and the tendency of it, there could be no such thing as imputation, but every of the individuals of mankind would be ultimately happy or miserable, according as their respective proficiencies may be supposed to be either good or evil, agreeable to the order and tendency of nature before alluded to. For all rational and accountable agents must stand or fall upon the principles of the law of nature, except imputation alters the nature and tendency of things; of which the immutability of a God cannot admit. From what has been already argued on this subject, we infer, that as certain as the individuals of mankind are the proprietors of their own virtues or vices, so certain, the doctrine of imputation cannot be true. Furthermore, the supposed act or agency of imputing or transferring the personal merit or demerit of moral good or evil, _alias_, the sin of the first Adam, or the righteousness of the second Adam, to others of mankind, cannot be the act or exertion of either the first or second Adam, from whom original sin and righteousness is said to have been imputed. Nor can it be the act or doings of those individuals, to whom the supposed merit or demerit of original sin or righteous is premised to be imputed; so that both Adam and each individual of mankind are wholly excluded from acting any part in the premised act of imputation; and are supposed to be altogether passive in the matter, and consequently it necessarily follows, that if there ever was such an act as that of imputation, it must have been the immediate and sovereign act of God, to the preclusion of the praise or blame of man But to suppose, that God can impute the virtue or vice of the person of A, to be the virtue or vice of the person of B, is the same as to suppose that God can impute or change truth into falsehood, or falsehood into truth, or that he can reverse the nature of moral rectitude itself, which is inadmissable. But admitting, that imputation was in the power and at the option of man, it is altogether probable that they would have been very sparing in imputing merit and happiness, but might nevertheless have been vastly liberal in imputing demerit and misery, from one to another, which is too farcical. SECTON III. CONTAINING REMARKS ON THE ATONEMENT... AND SATISFACTION FOR ORIGINAL SIN The doctrine of imputation is in every point of view incompatible with the moral perfections of God. We will premise, that the race of Adam in their respective generations was guilty of the apostacy, and obnoxious to the vindictive justice and punishment of God, and accordingly doomed to either an eternal or temporary punishment therefore, which is the Bible representation of the matter. What possibility could there have been of reversing the divine decree? It must be supposed to have been just, or it could not have had the divine sanction, and if so, a reversal of it would be unjust. But it would be still a greater injustice to lay the blame and vindictive punishment of a guilty race of condemned sinners upon an innocent and inoffensive being, for in this case the guilty would be exempted from their just punishment, and the innocent unjustly suffer for it, which holds up to view two manifest injustices; the first consists in not doing justice to the guilty, and the second in actually punishing the innocent, which instead of atoning for sin, would add sin to sin, or injustice to injustice; and after all, if it was ever just, that the race of Adam should have been punished for the imputed sin of their premised original ancestor, be that punishment what it will, it is so still, notwithstanding the atonement, for the eternal justice and reason of things can never, be altered. This justice always defeats the possibility of satisfaction for sin by way of a mediator. That physical evils may and have been propagated by natural generation, none can dispute, for that the facts themselves are obvious. But that moral evil can be thus propagated, is altogether chimerical, for we are not born criminals. SECTON IV. REMARKS ON REDEMPTION, WROUGHT OUT BY INFLICTING... THE DEMERITS OF SIN UPON THE INNOCENT, WOULD BE UNJUST, AND THAT IT COULD CONTAIN NO MERCY OR GOODNESS TO THE UNIVERSALITY OF BEING The practice of imputing one person's crime to another, in capital offences among men, so that the innocent should suffer for the guilty, has never yet been introduced into any court of judicature in the world, or so much as practised in any civilized country; and the manifest reason in this, as in all other cases of imputation, is the same, viz. it confounds personal merit and demerit. The murderer ought to suffer for the demerit of his crime, but if the court exclude the idea of personal demerit (guilt being always the inherent property of the guilty and of them only) they might as well sentence one person to death for the murder as another: for justice would be wholly blind was it not predicated on the idea of the fact of a personal demerit, on the identical person who was guilty of the murder: nor is it possible to reward merit abstractly considered from its personal agents. These are facts that universally hold good in human government. The same reasons cannot fail to hold good in the divine mind as in that of the human, for the rules of justice are essentially the same whether applied to the one or to the other, having their uniformity in the eternal truth and reason of things. But it is frequently objected, that inasmuch as one person can pay, satisfy and discharge a cash debt for another, redeem him from prison and set him at liberty, therefore Jesus Christ might become responsible for the sins of mankind, or of the elect, and by suffering their punishments atone for them and free them from their condemnation. But it should be considered, that comparisons darken or reflect light upon an argument according as they are either pertinent or impertinent thereto; we will therefore examine the comparison, and see if it will with propriety apply to the atonement. Upon the Christian scheme, Christ the Son was God, and equal with God the Father, or with God the Holy Ghost, and therefore original sin must be considered to be an offence equally against each of the persons of the premised Trinity, and being of a criminal nature could not be discharged or satisfied by cash or produce, as debts of a civil contract are, but by suffering; and it has already been proved to be inconsistent with the divine or human government, to inflict the punishment of the guilty upon the innocent, though one man may discharge another's debt in cases where lands, chattels or cash are adequate to it; but what capital offender was ever discharged by such commodities? Still there remains a difficulty on the part of Christianity, in accounting for one of the persons in the premised Trinity satisfying a debt due to the impartial justice of the unity of the three persons. For God the Son to suffer the condemnation of guilt in behalf of man, would not only be unjust in itself, but incompatible with his divinity, and the retribution of the justice of the premised Trinity of persons in the god-head (of whom God the Son must be admitted to be one) toward mankind; for this would be the same as to suppose God to be judge, criminal and executioner, which is inadmissible. But should we admit for argument's sake, that God suffered for original sin, yet taking into one complex idea the whole mental system of beings, universally, both finite and infinite, there could have been no display of grace, mercy, or goodness to being in general, in such a supposed redemption of mankind; inasmuch as the same quantity or degree of evil is supposed to have taken place upon being, universally considered, as would have taken place, had finite individuals, or the race of Adam, suffered according to their respective demerits. Should we admit that there is a Trinity of persons in the divine essence, yet the one could not suffer without the other, for essence cannot be divided in suffering, any more than in enjoyment. The essence of God is that which includes the divine nature, and the same identical nature must necessarily partake of the same glory, honor, power, wisdom, goodness and absolute uncreated and unlimited perfection, and is equally exempted from weakness and suffering. Therefore, as certain as Christ suffered he was not God, but whether he is supposed to be God or man, or both, he could not in justice have suffered for original sin, which must have been the demerit of its perpetrators as before argued. Supposing Christ to have been both God and man, he must have existed in two distinct essences, viz. the essence of God and the essence of man. And if he existed in two distinct and separate essences, there could be no union between the divine and human natures. But if there is any such thing as an hypostatical union between the divine and human natures, it must unite both in one essence, which is impossible: for the divine nature being infinite, could admit of no addition or enlargement and consequently cannot allow of a union with any nature whatever. Was such an union possible in itself, yet, for a superior nature to unite with an inferior one in the same essence, would be degrading to the former, as it would put both natures on a level by constituting an identity of nature: the consequences whereof would either deify man, or divest God of his divinity, and reduce him to the rank and condition of a creature; inasmuch as the united essence must be denominated either divine or human. CHAPTER XII. SECTON I. OF THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF TRANSLATING AN INFALLIBLE... REVELATION FROM ITS ORIGINAL COPIES, AND PRESERVING IT ENTIRE THROUGH ALL THE REVOLUTIONS OF THE WORLD, AND VICISSITUDES OF HUMAN LEARNING TO OUR TIME Admitting for argument sake that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament were originally of divine supernatural inspiration, and that their first manuscript copies were the infallible institutions of God, yet to trace them from their respective ancient dead languages, and different and diverse translations, from the obscure hieroglyphical pictures of characters, in which they were first written, through all the vicissitudes and alterations of human learning, prejudices, superstitions, enthusiasms and diversities of interests and manners, to our time, so as to present us with a perfect edition from its premised infallible original manuscript copies would be impossible. The various and progressive methods of learning, with the insurmountable difficulties of translating any supposed antiquated written revelation would not admit of it, as the succeeding observations on language and grammar will fully evince. In those early ages of learning, hieroglyphics were expressive of ideas; for instance, a snake quirled (a position common to that venomous reptile) was an emblem of eternity, and the picture of a lion, a representation of power, and so every beast, bird, reptile, insect and fish, had in their respective pictures, particular ideas annexed to them, which varied with the arbitrary custom and common consent of the several separate nations, among whom this way of communicating ideas was practised, in some sense analogous to what is practised at this day by different nations, in connecting particular ideas to certain sounds or words written in characters, which according to certain rules of grammar constitute the several languages. But the hieroglyphical manner of writing by living emblems, and perhaps in some instances by other pictures, was very abstruse, and inadequate to communicate that multiplicity and diversity of ideas which are requisite for the purpose of history, argumentation or general knowledge in any of the sciences or concerns of life; which mystical way of communicating ideas underwent a variety of alterations and improvements, though not so much as that of characters and grammar has done; for in the hieroglyphical way of communicating their ideas, there was no such thing as spelling, or what is now called orthography, which has been perpetually refining and altering, ever since characters, syllables, words or grammar have been brought into use, and which will admit of correction and improvement as long as mankind continue in the world. For which reason the original of all languages is absorbed and lost in the multiplicity of alterations and refinements, which have in all ages taken place, so that it is out of the power of all Etymologists and Lexieonists now living, to explain the ideas, which were anciently connected with those hieroglyphical figures or words, and which may have composed the original of any language, written in characters, in those obsolete and antiquated ages, when learning and science were in their infancy: since the beneficial, art of printing has arrived to any considerable degree of perfection, the etymology of words, in the scientifical and learned languages, has been considerably well understood: though imperfectly, as the various opinions of the learned concerning it may witness. But since the era of printing, the knowledge of the ancient learning has been in a great measure, or in most respects, wholly lost; and inasmuch as the modern substitute is much better, it is no loss at all. Some of the old English authors are at this day quite unintelligible, and others in their respective latter publications, more or less so. The last century and a half has done more towards the perfecting of grammar, and purifying the languages than the world had ever done before. I do not understand Latin, Greek or Hebrew, in which languages, it is said, that the several original manuscripts of the Scriptures were written; but I am informed by the learned therein, that, the other languages, they have gone through their respective alterations and refinements, which must have been the case, except they reached their greatest perfection in their first composition; of which the progressive condition of man could not admit. So that the learned in those languages, at this day, know but little or nothing how they were spoken or written when the first manuscript copies of the Scriptures were composed; and consequently, are not able to inform us, whether their present translations do, any of them, perfectly agree with their respective original premised infallible manuscript copies or not. And inasmuch as the several English translations of the Bible do materially differ from each other, it evinces the confused and blundering condition in which it has been handed down to us. The clergy often informs us from the desk, that the translation of the Bible, which is now in use in this country, is erroneous, after having read such and such a passage of it, in either Latin, Greek or Hebrew, they frequently give us to understand, that instead of the present translation, it should have been rendered thus and thus in English, but never represent to us how it was read and understood in the antiquated and mystical figures or characters of those languages, when the manuscripts of Scripture were first written, or how it has been preserved and handed down entire, through every refinement of those languages, to the present condition of Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Probably this is too abstruse a series of retrospective learning for their scholarship, and near or quite as foreign from their knowledge as from that of their hearers.* It is not to be supposed that all the alterations which have taken place in language, have been merely by improving it. In many instances, ignorance, accident or custom has varied it to its disadvantage, but it has nevertheless been subject to correction, and generally speaking has been altered for the better, yet, by one means or other has been so fluctuating and unstable, as that an infallible revelation could not have been genuinely preserved, through all the vicissitudes and revolutions of learning, for more than seventeen hundred years last past to this day. The diversity of the English language is represented with great accuracy by Mr. Samuel Johnson, the celebrated lexicographer, in the samples of different ages, in his history of the English language, subjoined to the preface of the dictionary, to which the curious are referred for the observance of the various specimens. SECTON II. THE VARIETY OF ANNOTATIONS AND EXPOSITIONS... OF THE SCRIPTURES, TOGETHER WITH THE DIVERSITY OF SECTARIES EVINCES THEIR FALLIBILITY. Every commentary and annotation on the Bible, implicitly declares its fallibility; for if the Scriptures remained genuine and entire, they would not stand in need of commentaries and expositions, but would shine in their infallible lustre and purity without them. What an idle phantom it is for mortals to assay to illustrate and explain to mankind, that which God may be supposed to have undertaken to do, by the immediate inspiration of his spirit? Do they understand how to define or explain it better than God may be supposed to have done? This is not supposable; upon what ground then do these multiplicity of comments arise, except it be pre-supposed that the present translations of the Bible have, by some means or other, become fallible and imperfect, and therefore need to be rectified and explained? and if so, it has lost the stamp of divine authority; provided in its original composition it may be supposed to have been possessed of it. To construe or spiritualize tie Bible is the same as to inspire it over again, by the judgment, fancy or enthusiasm of men; and thus the common people, by receiving God's supposed revelation at secondary hands (whether at the thousandth or ten thousandth remove from its first premised inspiration they know not) cannot in fact be taught by the revelation of God. Add to this the diverse and clashing expositions of the Bible, among which are so many flagrant proofs of the fallibility and uncertainty of such teachings, as must convince even bigots, that every one of these expositions are erroneous, _except their own!_ It has been owing to different comments on the Scriptures, that Christians have been divided into sectaries. Every commentator, who could influence a party to embrace his comment, put himself, at the head of a division of Christians; as Luther, Calvin, and Arminius, laid the foundation of the sectaries who bear their names; and the Socinians were called after the Scismatical Socinius; the same may be said of each of the sectaries. Thus it is that different commentaries or acceptations of the original meaning of the Scriptures, have divided the Christian world into divisions and subdivisions of which it consists at present. Nor was there ever a division or subdivision among Jews, Christians or Mahometans, respecting their notions or opinions of religion, but what was occasioned by commentating on the Scriptures, or else by latter pretended inspired revelations from God in addition thereto. The law of Moses was the first pretended immediate revelation from God, which respects the Bible, and after that in succession the several revelations of the prophets, and last of all (in the Christian system) the revelations of Jesus Christ and apostles, who challenged a right of abolishing the priesthood of Moses; Christ claiming to be the antitype of which the institution of sacrifices and ceremonial part of the law of Moses was emblematical; but this infringement of the prerogative of the Levitical priests gave such offence, not only to them, but to the Jews as a nation, that they rejected Christianity, and have not subscribed to the divine authority of it to this day, holding to the law of Moses and the prophets. However Christianity made a great progress in the world, and has been very much divided into sectaries, by the causes previously assigned. "Mahomet taking notice of the numerous sects and divisions among Christians, in his journies to Palestine, &c, thought it would not be difficult to introduce a new religion, and make himself high priest and sovereign of the people." This he finally effected, prosecuting his scheme so far, that he new modelled the Scriptures, presenting them, (as he said,) in their original purity, and called his disciples after his own name. He gained great numbers of proselytes and became their sovereign in civil, military and spiritual matters, instituted the order of mystical priesthood, and gave the world a new Bible by the name of the Alcoran; which he gives us to understand was communicated to him from God, by the intermediate agency of the angel Gabriel, chapter by chapter. "His disciples at this day inhabit a great part of the richest countries in the world, and are supposed to be more numerous than the Christians," and are as much, if not more, divided into sectaries, from causes similar to those which produced the division of Christians, viz.: the different commentators on, and expositions of the Alcoran. The Mufti, or priests, represented the doctrines and precepts of the Alcoran in a variety of lights different from each other, each of them claiming the purity of the original and infallible truths prescribed to the world by Mahomet, their great reformer of Christianity. For though the several sectaries of Mahometans differ, respecting the meaning of their Alcoran, yet they all hold to the truth and divine authority thereof, the same as the Christian sectaries do concerning their Bible: so that all the different opinions which ever did, or at present do subsist, between Jews, Christians and Mahometans, may be resolved into one consideration, viz.: the want of a right understanding of the original of the Scriptures. All sat out at first, as they imagined, from the truth of God's word, (except the impostors,) concluded that they had an infallible guide, and have, by one means or other, been guided into as many opposite faiths as human Invention has been capa-ble of fabricating; each sect among the whole, exulting in their happy ignorance, believing that they are favored with an infallible revelation for their direction. It alters not the present argument, whether the Scriptures were originally true or not; for though they be supposed to have been either true or false, or a mixture of both, yet they could never have been handed down entire and uncorrupted to the present time, through the various changes and perpetual refinements of learning and language; this is not merely a matter of speculative and argumentative demonstration, the palpable certainty of it stands confessed in every Jewish, Christian and Mahometan sectary. SECTON III. ON THE COMPILING OP THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE SCRIPTURES... INTO ONE VOLUME, AND OF ITS SEVERAL TRANSLATIONS. THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPES, AND OF THEIR CHARTERED RIGHTS TO REMIT OR RETAIN SINS, AND OF THE IMPROPRIETY OF THEIR BEING TRUSTED WITH A REVELATION FROM GOD. The manuscripts of Scripture, which are said to have been originally written on scrolls of bark, long before the invention of paper or printing, and are said to compose our present Bible, were in a loose and confused condition, scattered about in the world, deposited nobody knows how or where, and at different times were compiled into one volume. The four gospels are by the learned generally admitted to have been wrote many years after Christ, particularly that of St. John: and sundry other gospels in the primitive ages of Christianity were received as divine by some of its then sectaries, which have unfortunately not met with approbation in subsequent eras of the despotism of the church. The translation of the Scriptures by Ptolemy Phila-delphus, king of Egypt, was before Christ, and therefore could not include the writings of the New Testament in his translation, and "whether by seventy-two interpreters, and in the manner as is commonly related, is justly questioned." But where, at what time, and by whom, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament were first compiled into one volume, is what I do not understand: but was it a longer or shorter period after Christ, it alters not the present argument materially, since the scattered manuscripts were in a loose and confused condition for a long time; and the grand query is, when the compilers of those manuscripts collected them together in order to form them into one volume, how they could have understood the supposed divine writings, or symbolical figures, with the ideas originally connected with them, and distinguish them from those which were merely human, and in comparison of the others are called profane. To understand this distinction would require a new revelation, as much as may be supposed necessary for composing the original manuscripts themselves; but it is not pretended that the compilers or translators of the Bible were inspired by the divine spirit in the doing and completing their respective business; so that human reason, fancy, or some latent design, must needs have been substituted, in distinguishing the supposed divine and human writings apart, and in giving a perfect transcript of the original manuscripts. Now admitting that the compilers were really honest principled men, (which is more than we are certain of,) it would follow, that they would be obliged to cull out of the mixed mass of premised divine and human writings, such as to them appeared to be divine, which would make them to be the sole arbitrators of the divinity that they were compiling to be handed down to posterity as the infallible word of God, which is a great stretch of prerogative for mortal and fallible man to undertake, and as great a weakness in others to subscribe to it, as of divine authority. Mr. Fenning, in his dictionary definition of the word Bible, subjoins the following history of its translations: "The translation of this sacred volume was begun very early in this kingdom," [England,] "and some part of it was done by King Alfred. Adelmus translated the Psalms into Saxon in 709, other parts were done by Edfrid or Ecbert in 730, the whole by Bede in 731 Trevisa published the whole in English in 1357. Tindal's was brought higher in 1534, revised and altered in 1538, published with a preface of Cranmers in 1549. In 1551, another translation was published, which was revised by several bishops, was printed with their alterations in 1560. In 1607, a new translation was published by authority, which is that in present use." From this account it appears, that from the first translation of the Bible by Trevisa, into English, in 1357, it has been revised altered, and passed through six different publications, the last of which is said to have been done by authority, which I conclude means that of the king, whose prerogative in giving us a divine revelation, can no more be esteemed valid than that of other men, though he may be possessed of an arbitrary power within the limits of his realm to prevent any further correction and publication of it. As to the changes it underwent previous to Trevisa's translation, in which time it was most exposed to corruptions of every kind, we, will not at present particularly consider, but only observe that those translations could not, every one of them, be perfect, since they were diverse from each other, in consequence of their respective revisions and corrections; nor is it possible that the Bible, in any of its various editions could be perfect, any more than all and every one of those persons who have acted a part in transmitting them down to our time may be supposed to be so: for perfection does not pertain to man, but is the essential prerogative of God. The Roman Catholics, to avoid the evils of imperfection, fallibility and imposture of man, have set up the Pope to be infallible; this is their security against being misguided in their faith, and by ascribing holiness to him, secure themselves from imposture; a deception which is incompatible with holiness. So that in matters of faith, they have nothing more to do, but to believe as their church believes. Their authority for absolving or retaining sins is very extraordinary; however, their charter is from Christ, (admitting them to be his vicars, and the successors of St. Peter,) and the present English translation of the Bible warrants it. The commission is in these words: "And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven. Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." That St. Peter or his successors should have a power of binding and determining the state and condition of mankind in the world to come by remitting or retaining sins, is too great a power to be intrusted to men, as it interferes with the providence and prerogative of God, who on this position would be exempted from judging the world, (as it would interfere with the chartered prerogative of the Popes in their remitting or retaining of sins, admitting it to have been genuine,) precluding the divine retribution of justice; we may, therefore, from the authority of reason, conclude it to be spurious. It was a long succession of ages that all Christendom were dupes to the See of Rome, in which time it is too evident to be denied, that the holy fathers obtruded a great deal of pious fraud on their devotees; all public worship was real to the people in unknown languages, as it is to this day in Roman Catholic countries. Nor has the Bible, in those countries, to this time, been permitted to be published in any but the learned languages, which affords great opportunity to the Romish church to fix it to answer their lucrative purposes. Nor is it to be supposed that they want the inclination to do it. The before recited grant of the power of the absolution of sin, to St Peter in particular, was undoubtedly of their contrivance. In short, reason would prompt us to conclude, that had God, in very deed, made a revelation of his mind and will to mankind, as a rule of duty and practice to them, and to be continued as such to the latest posterity, he would in the course of his providence have ordered matters so that it should have been deposited, translated, and kept, in the hands of men of a more unexceptionable character than those holy cheats can pretend to. Witchcraft and priestcraft, were introduced into this world together, in its non-age; and has gone on, hand in hand together, until about half a century past, when witchcraft began to be discredited, and is at present almost exploded, both in Europe and America. This discovery has depreciated priestcraft, on the scale of at least fifty per cent, per annum, and rendered it highly probable that the improvement of succeeding generations, in the knowledge of nature and science, will exalt the reason of mankind, above the tricks and impostures of priests, and bring them back to the religion of nature and truth; ennoble their minds, and be the means of cultivating concord, and mutual love in society, and of extending charity, and good will to all intelligent beings throughout the universe; exalt the divine character, and lay a permanent foundation for truth and reliance on providence; establish our hopes and prospects of immortality, and be condusive to every desirable consequence, in this world, and that which is to come; which will crown the scene of human felicity in this sublunary state of being and probation; 'which can never be completed while we are under the power and tyranny of priests, since as it ever has, it ever will be their interest, to invalidate the law of nature and reason, in order to establish systems incompatible therewith. CHAPTER XIII. SECTON I. MORALITY DERIVED FROM NATURAL FITNESS... AND NOT FROM TRADITION. Such parts or passages of the Scriptures as inculcate morality, have a tendency to subserve mankind, the same as all other public investigations or teachings of it, may be supposed to have; but are neither better or worse for having a place in the volume of those writings denominated canonical; for morality does not derive its nature from books, but from the fitness of things; and though it may be more or less, interspersed through the pages of the Alcoran, its purity and rectitude would remain the same; for it is founded in eternal right; and whatever writings, books or oral speculations, best illustrate or teach this moral science, should have the preference. The knowledge of this as well as all other sciences, is acquired from reason and experience, and (as it is progressively obtained) may with propriety be called, the revelation of God, which he has revealed to us in the constitution of our rational natures; and as it is congenial with reason and truth, cannot (like other revelations) partake of imposture. This is natural religion, and could be derived from none other but God. I have endeavored, in this treatise, to prune this religion from those excrescences, with which craft on the one hand, and ignorance on the other, have loaded it; and to hold it up to view in its native simplicity, free from alloy; and have throughout the contents of the volume, addressed the reason of mankind, and not their passions, traditions or prejudices; for which cause, it is noways probable that it will meet with any considerable approbation. Most of the human race, by one means or other are prepossessed with principles opposed to the religion of reason. In these parts of America, they are most generally taught, that they are born into the world in a state of enmity to God and moral good, and are under his wrath and curse, that the way to heaven and future blessedness is out of their power to pursue, and that it is incumbered with mysteries which none but the priests can unfold, that we must "be born again," have a special kind of faith, and be regenerated; or in fine, that human nature, which they call "the old man," must be destroyed, perverted, or changed by them, and by them new modelled, before it can be admitted into the heavenly kingdom. Such a plan of superstition, as far as it obtains credit in the world, subjects mankind to sacerdotal empire; which is erected on the imbecility of human nature. Such of mankind, as break the fetters of their education, remove such other obstacles as are in their way, and have the confidence publicly to talk rational, exalt reason to its just supremacy, and vindicate truth and the ways of God's providence to men, are sure to be stamped with the epithet of irreligious, infidel, profane, and the like. But it is often observed of such a man, that he is morally honest, and as often replied, what of that? Morality will carry no man to heaven. So that all the satisfaction the honest man can have while the superstitious are squibbling hell fire at him, is to retort back upon them that they are priest ridden. The manner of the existence, and intercourse of human souls, after the dissolution of their bodies by death, being inconceiveable to us in this life, and fill manner of intelligence between us and departed souls impracticable, the priests have it in their power to amuse us with a great variety of visionary apprehensions of things in the world to come, which, while in this life, we cannot contradict from experience, the test of great part of our certainty (especially to those of ordinary understandings) and having introduced mysteries into their religion, make it as incomprehensible to us, (in this natural state) as the manner of our future existence; and from Scripture authority, having invalidated reason as being carnal and depraved, they proceed further to teach us from the same authority, that, "the natural man knoweth not the-things of the spirit, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them for they are spiritually discerned." A spiritualizing teacher is nearly as well acquainted with the kingdom of heaven, as a man can be with his home lot. He knows the road to heaven and eternal blessedness, to which happy regions, with the greatest assurance, he presumes to pilot his dear disciples and unfold to them the mysteries of the canonical writings, and of the world to come; they catch the enthusiasm and see with the same sort of spiritual eyes, with which they can pierce religion through and through, and understand the spiritual meaning of the Scriptures, which before had been "a dead letter" to them, particularly the revelations of St. John the divine, and the allusion of the horns therein mentioned. The most obscure and unintelligible passages of the Bible, come within the compass of their spiritual discerning as apparently as figures do to a mathmetician: then they can sing songs out of the Canticles, saying, "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine;" and being at a loose from the government of reason, please themselves with any fanaticisms they like best, as that of their being "snatched as brands out of the burning, to enjoy the special and eternal favor of God, not from any worthiness or merit in them, but merely from the sovereign will and pleasure of God, while millions of millions, as good by nature and practice as they, were left to welter eternally, under the scalding drops of divine vengeance;" not considering, that if it was consistent with the perfections of God to save them, his salvation could not fail to have been uniformly extended to all others, whose circumstances may be supposed to be similar to, or more deserving than theirs, for equal justice cannot fail to apply in all cases in which equal justice demands it. But these deluded people resolve the divine government altogether into sovereignty: "even so Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight." And as they exclude reason and justice from their imaginary notions of religion, they also exclude it from the providence or moral government of God. Nothing is more common, in the part of the country where I was educated, than to hear those infatuated people, in their public and private addresses, acknowledge to their creator, from the desk and elsewhere, "hadst thou, O Lord, laid judgment to the line and righteousness to the plummet, we had been in the grave with the dead and in hell with the damned, long before this time." Such expressions from the creature to the creator are profane, and utterly incompatible with the divine character. Undoubtedly, (all things complexly considered) the providence of God to man is just, inasmuch as it has the divine approbation. The superstitious thus set up a spiritual discerning, independent of, and in opposition to reason, and their mere imaginations pass with each other, and with themselves, for infallible truth. Hence it is, that they despise the progressive and wearisome reasonings of philosophers (which must be admitted to be a painful method of arriving at truth) but as it is the only way in which we can acquire it, I have pursued the old natural road of ratiocination, concluding, that as this spiritual discerning is altogether inadequate to the management of any of the concerns of life, or of contributing any assistance or knowledge towards the perfecting of the arts and sciences, it is equally unintelligible and insignificant in matters of religion: and therefore conclude, that if the human race in general, could be prevailed upon to exercise common sense in religious concerns, those spiritual fictions would cease, and be succeeded by reason and truth. SECTON II. OF THE IMPORTANCE OF THE EXERCISE OF REASON... AND PRACTICE OF MORALITY, IN ORDER TO THE HAPPINESS OF MANKIND. The period of life is very uncertain, and at the longest is but short; a few years bring us from infancy to manhood, a few more to a dissolution; pain, sickness and death are the necessary consequences of animal life. Through life we struggle with physical evils, which eventually are certain to destroy our earthly composition; and well would it be for us did evils end here; but alas! moral evil has been more or less predominant in our agency, and though natural evil is unavoidable, yet moral evil may be prevented or remedied by the exercise of virtue. Morality is therefore of more importance to us than any or all other attainments; as it is a habit of mind, which, from a retrospective consciousness of our agency in this life, we should carry with us into our succeeding state of existence, as an acquired appendage of our rational nature, and as the necessary means of our mental happiness. Virtue and vice are the only things in this world, which, with our souls, are capable of surviving death; the former is the rational and only procuring cause of all intellectual happiness, and the latter of conscious guilt and misery; and therefore, our indispensable duty and ultimate interest is, to love, cultivate and improve the one, as the means of our greatest good, and to hate and abstain from the other, as productive of our greatest evil. And in order thereto, we should so far divest ourselves of the incumbrances of this world, (which are too apt to engross our attention) as to inquire a consistent system of the knowledge of religious duty, and make it our constant endeavor in life to act conformably to it. The knowledge of the being, perfections, creation and providence of God, and of the immortality of our souls, is the foundation of religion; which has been particularly illustrated in the four first chapters of this discourse. And as the Pagan, Jewish, Christian and Mahometan countries of the world have been overwhelmed with a multiplicity of revelations diverse from each other, and which, by their respective promulgators, are said to have been immediately inspired into their souls by the spirit of God, or immediately communicated to them by the intervening agency of angels (as in the instance of the invisible Gabriel to Mahomet) and as those revelations have been received and credited, by afar the greater part of the inhabitants of the several countries of the world (on whom they have been obtruded) as super-naturally revealed by God or angels, and which, in doctrine and discipline, are in most respects repugnant to each other, it fully evinces their imposture, and authorizes us, without a lengthy course of arguing, to determine with certainty, that not one of them had their original from God; as they clash with each other, which is ground of high probability against the authenticity of each of them. A revelation, that may be supposed to be really of the institution of God, must also be supposed to be perfectly consistent or uniform, and to be able to stand the test of truth; therefore such pretended revelations, as are tendered to us as the contrivance of heaven, which do not tear that test, we may be morally certain, was either originally a deception, or has since, by adulteration become spurious. Reason therefore must be the standard by which we determine the respective claims of revelation; for otherwise we may as well subscribe to the divinity of the one as of the other, or to the whole of them, or to none at all. So likewise on this thesis, if reason rejects the whole of those revelations, we ought to return to the religion of nature and reason. Undoubtedly it is our duty, and for our best good, that we occupy and improve the faculties, with which our creator has endowed us, but so far as prejudice, or prepossession of opinion prevails over our minds, in the same proportion, reason is excluded from our theory or practice. Therefore if we would acquire useful knowledge, we must first divest ourselves of those impediments; and sincerely endeavor to search out the truth: and draw our conclusions from reason and just argument, which will never conform to our inclination, interest or fancy; but we must conform to that if we would judge rightly. As certain as we determine contrary to reason, we make a wrong conclusion; therefore, our wisdom is, to conform to the nature and reason of things, as well in religious matters, as in other sciences. Preposterously absurd would it be, to negative the exercise of reason in religious concerns, and yet, be actuated by it in all other and less occurrences of life. All our knowledge of things is derived from God, in and by the order of nature, out of which we cannot perceive, reflect or understand any thing whatsoever; our external senses are natural; and those objects are also natural; so that ourselves, and all things about us, and our knowledge collected therefrom, is natural, and not supernatural; as argued in the fifth chapter. An unjust composition never fails to contain error and falsehood. Therefore an unjust connection of ideas is not derived from nature, but from the imperfect composition of man. Misconnection of ideas is the same as misjudging, and has no positive existence, being merely a creature of the imagination; but nature and truth are real and uniform; and the rational mind by reasoning, discerns the uniformity, and is thereby enabled to make a just composition of ideas, which will stand the test of truth. But the fantastical illuminations of the credulous and superstitious part of mankind, proceed from weakness, and as far as they take place in the world subvert the religion of reason, nature and truth. Ethan Allen. 
30900	----	Transcribers Note: Original Text in bold is represented by "=", italic text by "_". In paragraph XII, line 4 "myraids" has been replaced by "myriads". "THE TYRANNY of GOD" By JOSEPH LEWIS The new and daring book on the Philosophy of Atheism CLARENCE DARROW =eminent lawyer, noted philosopher, and humanitarian, says=: "Your book, 'The Tyranny of God,' is well done. It is a very clear statement of the question, bold and true beyond dispute. I am glad that you wrote it. It is as plain as the multiplication table, which doesn't mean that everyone will believe it. I thank you for writing it. I wish I were the author." [Illustration: JOSEPH LEWIS] _A special edition of "The Tyranny of God," consists of two hundred and fifty copies, printed on Utopian paper, bound in limp leather, gilt top, stamped in gold. Each copy is autographed and numbered by the author._ Second edition, May, 1921 Third edition, April, 1922 Fourth edition, January, 1928 Fifth edition, April, 1930 Sixth edition, October, 1939 Seventh edition, November, 1943 THE TYRANNY OF GOD THE TYRANNY OF GOD BY JOSEPH LEWIS THE FREETHOUGHT PRESS ASSOCIATION NEW YORK COPYRIGHTED, 1921, BY FREETHOUGHT PRESS ASSOCIATION _All Rights Reserved_ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA DEDICATED TO FAY MY DEAR WIFE AND COMRADE, WHOSE LOYAL AND DEVOTED COMPANIONSHIP HAS MADE LIFE LIVABLE. FOREWORD Go forth, little book, to destroy fear, prejudice and superstition, and help to install Reason in the minds of the human race to be its guide in the affairs of life and its living. PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION The most eloquent testimony given this little book is the fact that a second edition is made necessary only a few months after the publication of the first edition. Favorable comments and letters of recommendation from men and women eminent in literary and scientific realms, and commendatory reviews in periodicals of high standard are, I think, sufficient cause for the belief that "The Tyranny of God" forms a necessary cog in the machinery of intellectual thought and progress. Even those who bitterly oppose the book admit that it possesses the power to make its readers think. Of the many opposing reviews and adverse criticism of "The Tyranny of God," not a single one offers an argument in answer to it. For the most part, their characterization has been that it is "pessimistic." As if by calling it "pessimistic," they refute its claims! If to tell a man the true nature of a disease from which he is suffering, with the hope that he will seek a cure for his malady, is pessimism, then I am a pessimist. Is the use of a danger signal at a hazardous crossing, for the purpose of preventing disaster, pessimism? If to literally "hold the mirror up to Nature," disclosing Nature's utter disregard for the life and feelings of man, as a warning against the extravagant and useless propagating of life, is pessimism, then surely I am a pessimist. If a fervent desire to help Man, instead of wasting time in prayer to "God," is pessimism, I am a pessimist. If to think, to investigate, to express one's thoughts courageously in the face of centuries old dogma is pessimism, then I must confess I am a pessimist. If to expose sham, hypocrisy and fraud; if to open the mind and free it from fear; if to stimulate the intellect, and work for the Here instead of the "Hereafter"--if all these are classified as pessimism, then truly may I be called an arch pessimist. "The Tyranny of God" was written to express the truth as I see it--to portray life, not as we would like to have it, but as it actually is. Millions are still like frightened children, afraid of their own shadows. Fear of the truth is the greatest deterrent to its acceptance. JOSEPH LEWIS _April 14, 1922_ PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION I am indeed gratified to send forth the fourth edition of "The Tyranny of God." I wish, however, to say to the reader that my book deals with life philosophically and not individually. It was from the viewpoint of life in general and the universe as a whole that the sentiments herein were expressed. To love God is not the duty of man and one of the most important tasks to be accomplished for the human race is to destroy the Theistic conception of Life and the Universe. The sentiments I expressed at a memorial meeting in honor of Luther Burbank last May best illustrate my convictions. I said: "The religious person loves God so vehemently that he has no love left for Man." May "The Tyranny of God" do much to accomplish the purpose of its author. JOSEPH LEWIS _January 10, 1928_ INTRODUCTION _Where did we come from? What are we doing here? Whither are we going?_ These questions have puzzled thinking people since consciousness first dawned in the brain. Many have sought to answer them, so why not I?--with the hope that the reading of this book will arouse in the minds of the readers thoughts that will enable them to answer these questions for themselves. Were you suddenly to find yourself living on another planet, and you were a thinking being, one anxious for knowledge, you would naturally investigate the conditions under which you found yourself, and seek, if possible, a solution for your existence there. Surely it is equally appropriate, situated as we are on this earth, endowed with brains and possessing senses and nerves, to inquire into and investigate the conditions under which we live, and the purpose, if any, of our existence here. The peculiarity of this existence warrants such analysis. It is certain, from our understanding as well as from all visible scientific facts, that we did not make ourselves, and that we never had a former existence; and we are led to conclude, in view of lack of credible evidence to the contrary, from those who have passed on, that the future, so far as our individual life is concerned, is an eternal void. It is also certain, as science has indubitably shown, that we do not make our offspring, that we are not creators, but are instruments merely in producing life. Furthermore, we did not make any portion of the globe which we inhabit and of which we are a part, and, so far as we are able to determine, all the natural conditions and "raw materials" of our environment are something separate and distinct from anything which we ourselves possess sufficient power to accomplish. Therefore, since among the organs of my body, there is a _thinking_ portion, I am within the bounds of sanity when I investigate and express such thoughts, opinions and findings as my reason and understanding dictate. No one can truthfully say that he possesses sufficient knowledge to account for or to explain the peculiar and mystifying rules, conditions and surroundings which we are _forced_ to accept, abide by and live under. And, therefore, the result of one person's findings is worthy the same consideration as those of another. Upon such basis I submit an honest attempt to express logically my convictions upon this vital and puzzling condition of our existence, and shall endeavor to aid those who read this book to see conditions in what I believe to be their true light, and to stimulate the readers to think for themselves. It is only through the exchange of the results of investigations, and of honest opinions, that we have been able to add improvement to improvement, and make easier the routine of our lives. The conditions and elements that compose Nature, for the sake of clearness, I will ofttimes call "God." I shall be more easily understood, and at times the term "God" will express more succinctly the thoughts or ideas I wish to express. THE TYRANNY OF GOD I Lest I be misunderstood, I will say at the outset that I do not believe in a God. The belief in a God is still generally accepted, not because of the existence of one, but for the reason that it is the easiest way to account for our condition. But in the light of scientific discoveries and demonstrations, such a belief is unfounded and utterly untenable to-day. Yet the word "God," and even the word "Nature," must often be used to describe that condition which the brain of man has not yet been able to analyze fully and scientifically. One ridiculous conception of God that is believed by a multitude of people, is that of a massive being, sitting in a marble chamber studded with gold and lighted with glistening crystals. Do those who believe in such a creature ever consider him taking a bath--and in what? Or of eating his breakfast--and of what it consists? If there were a God, and the world were governed with stern justice, tempered to our feeble intelligence, existence might become tolerable, but as it is, with a so-called God "ruling above," the earth is an abominable place and life a long series of terrifying torments. If I were to advocate a belief, or faith, in a God, I would seek the embodiment of those things diametrically opposite to the attributes of the popular God of to-day. Such a creature is not worthy the sacrifice of ourselves and our thoughts. Let us examine and investigate the system and arrangement of the world--that is, that portion of which we are a part and which so vitally concerns us. The result of our most extensive study and labor shows us that the earth, after an illimitable duration of time, has gradually attained its present peculiar development. In other words, Nature has taken millions of years to produce the earth as it is now formed; and if it were made particularly for human beings it is not yet completed, for we still find spots, aye, vast areas, where human life is incapable of subsisting. The climate is either too hot or too cold; there is too much water or too little moisture; the means of cultivation are too meager or utterly unobtainable. In short, after eons of labor, Nature has failed to be able to present to every one of us, for our habitation, a parcel of earth commodious and comfortable enough to be perfectly desirable for life and its living. Surely, if the earth were made for our benefit, Nature has been not only a very poor provider, but a very thoughtless parent. Some say that man is Nature's best product, that the earth was made for us, that we are particularly selected by God, and that a certain race is his chosen people. But that is not true. The Jews are no more God's chosen people than the jay is his chosen bird, or the mosquito his chosen insect. It is not true that Nature particularly works for us--facts prove the contrary. Facts prove that we are nothing but an undesirable by-product, to make our way and to live our life as best we can within a cruelly turbulent space, imprisoned by invisible, impenetrable walls of limitation. No, it is not true that our life is favored by Nature. After we build our homes, make our cities and add improvements, what happens? Nature, with her forceful winds, blows them down; her cruel storms and rising floods wash them away as so much refuse, and a tremor of the earth destroys not only our homes but ourselves also, leaving no traces of our efforts, treasures and sacred ties. Even as individuals we "curse God" for the shortcomings with which we are afflicted. The exceedingly stout person, one who is "in his own way" curses God for making him so stout. The thin person has a similar grievance. Those who are too large and those who are too small are equally dissatisfied. The shape of an eye, the curve of the mouth, a blemish here, an impediment there, is the direct cause of poignant embarrassment. Organs or dimensions too unsightly and unsatisfactory are productive of continual worry and torment throughout our lives. The blind, the deaf, the dumb and the crippled have forever a curse for God upon their lips. We inhabit the air, with a density of fifteen pounds to the square inch, a mixture of dirt and water, in the same manner that the fish inhabits the water and the worm the earth. Were we beings of a superior type, Nature would have made us so versatile that we should be able to accustom ourselves to any condition, and survive in any climate. But despite all our improvements, despite all man's efforts to avoid and escape the conditions of Nature, many of us freeze to death in winter and become prostrate from the heat of summer. If it were true that the earth were purposely made and existing for us there would be "no flowers born to blush unseen and waste their sweetness on the desert air." We, ourselves, scientists tell us, are the result of a long series of evolutionary development. They tell us that Nature started with a single cell of protoplasm, a single cell of living organism, and produced the present human species after the life and death of an illimitable number of forms through the stages of countless ages, not exempting those lives from the fear, torture and misery that are still so essential a part of the scheme of life. Why impose so cruel and wasteful a condition upon those numberless billions that have lived before us, since nothing but eternal death was gained by their existence? Surely, Nature is a poor architect and builder, after taking so much material and so much time, to make such an incomplete place for such an outlandish form to rule and occupy. If we were given the same opportunity (that is, you and I), with all the power and resources of Nature, to build a habitable place, and mold a living something to inhabit it, our results would be ten thousand times better than that which circles the scope and boundary of our lives, with the incomprehensible physical form with which we breathe and manifest life. Truthfully, and without the slightest element of egotism, I should be ashamed of my efforts were I to present as my handiwork nothing better than the level and plane which Nature has attained. II We come into this world a tiny bundle and mass of helpless, feeble flesh, utterly unprepared to meet the requirements and fearful conditions that lie in wait for us. We are in need of immediate, urgent and constant help from those who were responsible for our birth, imperatively so from our mother. The child does not ask to come, and knows absolutely nothing about its welfare. And the mother often does not want to bear it, as she knows absolutely nothing about maternal cares. And yet that mother must go through the "shadow of the valley of death" before she can deliver this tiny bundle and helpless mass of feeble flesh. And how often, aye, only too often, does the mother _enter_ the valley of death when making delivery of this living form, never to see the face of the child that Nature imposed upon her to bear! What a despicable arrangement! What an unfair bargain! Can you imagine a more outlandish, ridiculous, awkward, complicated, cruel and fearful system of reproduction than that which we are under yoke to pursue? Without the elaborate details of the perilous stages of life's development, this is the method of incubation Nature imposes upon us. Before the birth of a human being, one male and one female--that is, one man and one woman--must have sexual intercourse. Whether this intercourse is prompted by all the finer impulses of life or is accomplished by the savageness of rape makes no difference to Nature's purpose. To Nature the end justifies the means, and she continues to go about her business. The male--that is, the man of this pair--can strut and parade with the utmost freedom from his responsibility for the result of his act that Nature has made to be pre-eminent among his desires. But the female--that is, the woman of this pair--_must for nine months_ (just think of it!) carry and develop the germ of this child in the fertile field of her womb, and be subjected to the innumerable terrifying dangers accompanying such a carriage, and then suffer a superhuman torture to make the delivery, through a very meager channel of her body, of this living plant which she has never seen, does not know and quite often does not want, _but must absolutely bear_! Provided Nature has not made the creature too deformed and mutilated and unable to survive, the mother must, during a period of constant care and _outward carriage_, bear this feeble infant for another period of nine months or more!--suckling at her breast for _food_! So you see that woman is not only a human being, but a fertile ground and pasture. I have not gone into the misery of child bearing and caring, nor of the ingratitude that is so often received. I ask for what reason has Nature imposed this terrible penalty upon woman? _Why?_ Would you, reader, were it in your power, formulate such a method of reproduction? I'll answer for you: No! But that is not all. For years to come, this child that for nine months was carried inwardly and for a much longer period outwardly, by its mother, must now be fed, washed and clothed for an indefinite number of _years_, and guided through a thousand perils and dangers that Nature has set before it, with disease as Nature's agent, crouching and ready to destroy the child's life, not in open combat, but invisibly concealed by the limitation of our senses. This is one of Nature's unspeakable crimes; one of God's despicable impositions. It is not sufficient that a mother should subject herself to such a dangerous and perilous mission, but she must also withstand the cruel savageness, the cold, callous death piercings, of Nature's invisible tyrants and destroyers. Life holds but one real attraction, one instance that can be classified above all others. Without this attraction it would be a blessing to choke the life breath from us all. With it we are helped to bear the _Tyranny of God_. There comes a time to some of us when the heart of the one man beats for the one woman, and there alights and resides in their breasts that spark of devotion that we call "love." When there is born to that union a child, even though in Nature's stupid way, then a bond is created more precious than anything else in this world. Without this little circle of loving joy, the earth is a prison and life a grave injustice for those who must bear it. But think of the damnable rule of Nature that strives and delights in working destruction of the only condition worthy of life's living! Oh, if only the life of our offspring were more stable, more secure! If only the bosom of our family were guaranteed to us! Just think! The child the parents would not harm, Nature tortures and God kills! Looking back upon the path we have trodden, with its continual fight against disease, its manifold combats with obstacles of life, and with its inevitable portion of sorrow we all must bear, we should think seriously and consider the result of our act before we deliberately bring another human being into this life. You, yourself, do not consider your life worthy of reliving, so why bring a human being here to go through the same, if not more, suffering and misery than you have borne with no resultant good? III Up to this point I have been speaking of human beings only, living under improved conditions that man has made. What must be the horror, darkness and emptiness of those living substances that are "inferior" to us? Do you know and realize the suffering that we endure? Then let me, in passing, urge this: Be also kind and considerate to our less fortunate inhabitants of this earth, the "dumb" animals. Their feelings are quite similar to ours. They have gone through the rougher parts of evolution that gave to us our more useful organs and limbs. They are allied to us in much the same manner as the members of our own species. They have their painful aches and periods, their hardships and tortures, their broken family ties and fearful abhorrence of death; their flesh is tender and their skin is as delicate to them as ours is to us. So let us "think twice," dear readers, before we deliberately harm any of our humbler brothers and sisters that must inhabit this cold and callous earth and live their lives under a great deal more tyranny and injustice than we live ours. We deliberately enslave and brutally treat the gentle horse. We tyrannically imprison birds and fishes as "pets." We keep, breed, kill and eat a variety of animals for our own selfish purposes, and yet some persons still have the audacity to say that we are "chosen people," "God's children," "divine beings." Bah! You know what painful inconvenience there is in losing an arm or a leg. Well, the winged and footed beings that must bear this life suffer a great deal more than we do when one of their limbs becomes dismembered. Man has to a degree remedied or replaced his crippled limbs, but I do not think any other of the higher animals have advanced so far, and as a result these creatures must endure their pain and distressing annoyance to the end. Recently I watched a common house fly caught upon "fly paper," and studied intently every visible movement of it. Immediately upon alighting upon the sticky substance, its first thought, almost instantaneously, was to make an effort to free itself. At once I thought of the fly's instinct of "self-preservation," and contrasted it with the human's. The fly must have had intelligence, since it knew that its life was in danger. And, since Nature does not deal in "fly paper," the fly's reasoning power told it of its peril. With unabated determination it vibrated its wings with lightning-like rapidity, and worked its legs unceasingly, _breaking them in the attempt_, in its efforts to pull itself away to freedom! As I watched this fly in its labor, this thought came to me: Is the fly unlike the human being in its desire to live? Is it afraid of death and of the mystery of dissolution? Has it, too, all the agony of fear of passing to the "Great Beyond"? Has it, too, an imaginary God in the form of a Big Fly? And is it also afraid of that God's supposed wrath? If the fly's desire to live is so great, what interest does it have in life? Does it love? Does it derive happiness when it is able to labor to make happy its fly Juliet? Does it want to live because it is ambitious and is trying to excel other flies? Does it really think to better its species and solve the problem of its kind? Is there a fly family to mourn its death? While watching that fly and asking myself these questions, I was convinced of the following _truths_: That the force that we call life is the same that animates the fly. That it, too, has control of its muscles and nerves in the same proportion as we have control of ours. That it, too, possesses the five senses and adds to its tiny brain more intelligence through its experiences. Within the movements and actions of that fly was wrapped up the secret of "Whence did I come, and whither am I going?" As I released my attention from that fly, I muttered to myself: "The more I look at insects, the more I think I am one." For what purpose do _we_ arise in the morning, fill our stomachs with food, till the fields, and perform labor in exchange for nourishment, in the evening fall into a sleep from exertion, arise the next day, and perform the same routine, day in and day out, week in and week out, year in and year out, and at the age and in the heyday of physical development seek an outlet in the opposite sex for the strongest impulse that Nature has implanted in us? This impulse forces us to commit rape and murder, robbery and assault, and to violate every principle of honor that man has tried to establish for the betterment and advancement of the race. With the dissipation of this mighty sex force, we subside and decline into weakness and decay, only to pass into death and oblivion. What a fearful, wasted effort is this life! IV The system of nourishment that Nature has imposed upon the world is not only stupid and malicious, but also of a cannibalistic character. We, as frail human beings, are horrified and shocked to think that our ancestors trafficked in and delighted in eating the flesh of their race, and even to-day we are making a strenuous effort to discourage the barbarous custom of killing animals to eat their flesh, yet it seems a dictate of Nature that forces us to uphold that custom. Just think of it! Nourishment and life-sustaining forces are derived from eating the cooked flesh of a dead animal, the unborn fowl, the bowels of the lamb, and the eggs of the fish! Can you imagine the wildness of life in such a jungle of cannibalism? No wonder the savage instinct is so deeply implanted in us. To get a fair idea of the food we eat to sustain life and to please and satisfy our palates, we need but take a casual glance at any of our modern butcher shops. Although to-day you will not see human limbs on display and for sale, as they were years ago, you will be impressed with the following morsels put there to tempt your appetite: In our modern butcher shops you will find pigs' feet, calves' brains, ox tongues, breasts and legs of lamb, chicken livers, dogs ground to bits and sold as sausages, live and dead fish of all kinds and varieties and innumerable other portions of animal flesh. Fortunately we have got beyond the point where we eat the entrails of these animals, although we use their hoofs to make glue, their bones for powder, and we string our delicate musical instruments with their vitals. The things we consume, in turn consume the living forms that they capture and subdue. The lion, the tiger and the leopard will devour us more quickly, and with less ceremony and with more delight, than we devour other animals. We, being "civilized," boil the animal's flesh and season it with weeds that Nature allows to grow, to give it zest and flavor, while our wilder brothers eat us in the raw, natural manner, only removing our civilized clothes. Really, if getting nearer to God is getting back to Nature, the beasts of the fields have an advantage over us. And we know to-day that even the living things in the vegetable kingdom suffer alike from the fearful tortures and penalties of the world. They follow almost the identical routine of life that we follow. Birth, life, reproduction, and death are their lot as well as ours; so that, if man were only to practice the idealism of his cramped and feeble brain he would starve to death! V If the world is the result of an established plan, as some say, it must be the conception of a hideous monster whose three cardinal principles are Disease, Despair and Death. But this much we can say: Though God created us a savage, fortunately man is civilizing Nature's brute and is making him a Man. Disease is one of Nature's cardinal forces. So, to attain health, we struggle against disease; but health only means the guarding of it through fear. "With all the ills the flesh is heir to," true health is a chimera, an existing state unknown to man. To be "well" is such a precious condition, that Nature cautions us against expecting to retain health too long, by instructing us, through experience, to prepare for a siege of illness. Thus, disease and illness would seem to be the natural states, and health the artificial condition under which Nature permits us to live. No one goes to his grave without suffering the tortures of some disease and paying the penalty of living. No one is exempt from the inflictions Nature imposes. The greater portion of our life consists in devising means and medication to relieve us of our states of ill health and disease. Sanitation and all the methods we are capable of discovering and inventing are becoming universally applied to kill and to destroy the menacing germs that God causes to inhabit the air, and that breed and multiply in the fertile flesh of our bodies. And finally, we are so utterly ignorant of how even to eat, sleep, walk, breathe, stand or sit, that the slightest infringement of the simplest rules of life can, and does, cause us irreparable harm. If we did not move to help ourselves, Nature would have us live in filth and stagnation. We seek, discover, or invent all kinds of methods to build health and to remain perfectly strong throughout our lives, and yet, despite it all, we are puny and sickly beings. In fact, I do not think there is such a thing as perfect health. What we may do to correct, insure or perfect our healthy tissues will have a detrimental effect upon some other part of our body. What we do to build up must also tear down. What we do to produce health will, after a certain point, produce disease. This, it seems, is the law not only of life, but also of the universe. It is regrettable that God did not possess the magnanimity of an Ingersoll and make health contagious instead of disease. Physical pain and mental suffering are the mysterious sorrows that we must experience and pay to a tyrant God for the existence we bear. It is incontrovertible that no realization is given us by Nature of the fearful pains and tortures that we are capable of suffering and still sustain ourselves, only to repeat over and over again the unending torment in exchange for the consciousness of a worthless life. We, with our limited intellects, with our puny strength, with our inability to utilize all the materials in our possession, are still superior to the workmanship and the justice of God. Tyrant is no name for such a God, who creates a living organism purposely and maliciously to torment and torture it. A poor creature is a God who makes his suffering playthings more powerful than "he," and compels them to bear their existence under the lash of inexorable laws of sorrow and suffering, pain and penalty. And yet we are satisfied with so little. We ask for a crumb only. We are pleased with the slightest favor. A toy delights us; a little trinket elicits from us warm gratitude; a breath of balmy air is drunken with keen and pleasurable delight; a "fine" day is celebrated with exultation! But what a mockery is life! We writhe in pain and bear the brunt of an arrogant tyranny from whatever force that created and controls us. We must daily bathe our bodies, wash our hair, brush our teeth, change our clothes and perform other necessary physical functions to feel freedom from the filthy conditions that Nature imposes upon us and surrounds us with. If Nature saw fit to give us eyes, she should have given us perfect ones; not those which, upon the slightest contact with a minute foreign substance, cause unutterable pain and possible loss of sight, in a world where sight is so imperative! If Nature saw fit to give us ears, she should have given us perfect ones; not those which are capable of such frightful pain, with the possibility of becoming totally deaf, when it is so necessary to hear! If Nature saw fit to give us a nose, she should have given us a perfect one; not one that causes such miserable torture and unbearable suffering from the slightest defect! If Nature saw fit to give us a mouth, she should have given us a perfect one; one that would perform all the functions of perfect speech; not one that is so liable to harm and so susceptible to dumbness, when speech is of such paramount importance to Life! If Nature saw fit to give us teeth, she should have given us perfect ones; not those which ache and pain with such fearful intensity that the mind is almost distracted! If Nature saw fit to give us arms, legs, and organs, she should have given us perfect ones; not a body whose tenderness makes it an instrument of such menacing torture; not a body of crippled bones and crippled joints, where suffering results from everything it does! If Nature saw fit to give us a brain, she should have given us one strong enough to withstand all the rebuffs of life, and one capable enough to utilize all the forces under command. Each person should be a mental Hercules capable of solving his own problems and directing all matter to its greatest material uses. Instead of the human body being the marvelously constructed instrument we are wont to believe it, we now find it to be nothing but a common machine, imperfectly made, and subject to innumerable changes and radical improvements. Every person acquainted with the anatomy of the body can give you a list of imperative improvements that it needs, and without which it will continue to function imperfectly and continue to cause pain and suffering to its possessor. It were a great deal better, after a full summary of life, were we to be created utterly devoid of feeling, equally impervious to joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. We should be manifestly benefited, for the greater part of our life is now full of sorrow, anxiety, fear, pain, disappointment and worry. A small portion of our life is a matter of indifference. A portion might be termed satisfaction, and a minute balance, an infinitesimal part, termed--if there is such a thing in life--joy. And yet, the joy we may experience to-day will not be present to-morrow to cheer and comfort us, but the pain that we feel to-day will pinch us more strongly to-morrow, and will remain as an ever-poignant memory. Joy and pleasure are of a transitory nature only, while pain and sorrow are of a permanent and accumulative character. Is _all_ of life worth the sorrow, the agony and fear of death? Just think of giving a life so full of grief that those who have it do not want it and quite often destroy it! No wonder that drugs more powerful than our minds, used to numb the pains of life, are so much in demand and so universally used. What a ridiculous assumption it is to think that a soul, separate and distinct from the body, would imprison itself in such a miserable confinement! Instead of life's being a privilege, it is a prison, wherein we must suffer fearful pains and still more fearful thoughts. Physical pain registers a high degree of intense feverish suffering, but mental torture is fired with the scorch of hell. VI Human life is the cheapest thing that God makes! No consideration is given to the feelings, pains and sorrows it must bear and endure. No wonder that ridicule, shame, hatred and other forms of mental suffering cannot be withstood by some frail minds, and cause them to seek relief from their torment. Under the red-hot brand of mental torture, the jealous husband sees his wife violate every rule and principle and vow of virtue. He sees her reveling in the arms and embrace of him that he despises, committing trespass upon the one he so loves. The husband suffers more mentally in a few moments of these imaginings, than the actual performance, with his full knowledge, could cause him to suffer. Losses, mistakes, discouragements and disappointments scorch with burning blisters the lining of our lives. I once thought it was cowardly to make destruction of oneself, but I must say that more mature thought, supported by actual scenes and experiences, has caused me to alter my view. But before I go farther, let me make my thought clear so as to avoid any misunderstanding. I do not mean that a person should shirk his or her duty in the face of hardship, discouragement or rebuke. On the contrary, the mettle of the man is best tested by such adverse forces, and some of the most inspiring moments of life lie in overcoming these conditions and triumphing over unjust, undue and seemingly impossible odds. What I do mean is, when life no longer holds any attraction, when the ravages of disease have torn and mutilated your body, when pain and torture are raking your mind, and your daily companions are these miseries, with no possible hope of their relief or change, then by all means, by whatever agency you desire to accomplish it, save yourself the terrible agony of living, and defeat one of the tyrant impositions of God. VII The child suffers the sharpest pains, the crudest poignancy that could possibly be inflicted upon its body, through the stupid, frightening and monstrous tales that are continually told to it to make it "good," to make it "obey." To think that a child cannot bear to enter the dark, cannot bear to be alone, cannot bear to be separated from its loving and protecting parents, and yet must suffer in a few moments from a fatal disease--the agony of all this, in the face of death, is the crime of crimes, too damnable and horrible for words. I remember once seeing a little lost child. It cried for its mother. Hot tears were streaming down its burning cheeks. Its face portrayed the severest form of suffering that life is capable of experiencing. If Nature ever made a frail article, it is our tender offspring, so bewildered, so utterly helpless, so agonizingly delusioned, so pitifully searching for some familiar face; something to make it discover its lost self. Oh, what power ever made us so tender, so incapable of self-help, as to have us undergo and feel such terrific suffering! It is injustice enough when adults are made to suffer mental and physical ills, without inflicting such a painful decree upon mere infants. At least an adult has some conception of his suffering. He can make provision for some remedy. He can seek others to ask them to render help. He knows, he feels, he understands the situation, and can adjust himself as best he can to obtain some relief. But not so with the child. Its mind is not capable of comprehending the condition which makes its suffering so sharp. Its little brain is too feeble, hardly strong enough to direct its awkward and bulky body, much less to solve such an incredible predicament as being utterly destitute of help, in a world fashioned upon such an unsatisfactory plan. There is not, nor can there be, a sadder, more distressing sight, than to see a little lost child overcome with fright. If it were in my power to abolish any of Nature's cruel laws, I would take from the little child its feeling of pain. Let me ask, would man, were it in his power, send a helpless creature, utterly unable to sustain itself, without power of thought, understanding or expression, so dependent upon loving care, kindness, help and comprehension, into a world that is a wilderness, a world reeking with pestilence and populated with shrieking beasts and brutal and savage people? As a passing word regarding the child, let me say this: Do not judge your child as an ordinary mechanical instrument, as if he could be wound up to a certain degree and gradually, as if by clockwork, tick away each moment of the day. The child is a combustible force, and, although there are certain rules by which you may obtain the greatest degree of improvement, you cannot rigidly adhere to them. There are numberless instances when the propensity or inclination of the child may appear to you to be aggravating and annoying; nevertheless, you must not let _your_ irritability interfere with the development of that trait preëminent to the child's character. Look upon your child, encourage your boy or girl, to be a pioneer and a soldier in the march of progress. Instruct it with the knowledge of the miserable conditions of our past history, and bring it forcibly to understand that efforts only are repaid, and that we must work in order to accomplish. Prayers are only wasted words on the desert air. The greatest mental crime ever committed is that of teaching a child, "while still upon its mother's knee," its duty and obedience to God. It would appear that for the amount of suffering it must endure, and in the face of its unconsulted coming, we should at least disregard God for his insolence, and impress upon the child the peculiar conditions of life. We should instruct it, that from time immemorial, Nature has been laboring through the most awkward process of reproduction, and has finally brought the child into existence, not to enjoy the benefits, or eat of the fruits of the earth, but to bear a life of continual strife and suffering. Not of God should we speak to our child, but of the importance of being prepared to do all in its power to help others to escape the torture, misery and hardships it must so painfully overcome. Is it any wonder that we grow up to be serfs and slaves? Before we are able to know or understand the very rudest fundamentals of life, our entire mental machinery is corrupted by unshakable fears and dedicated to the vilest and most sickening submission. Would that we were left alone, and free to follow the thoughts of our own minds, regarding the great problems of life. What a mighty, unhampered power we would possess to find the proper course of action, and possibly the real solution to the mystery of the _Tyranny of God_! To love and to reverence our tormentor is repulsive and despicable, and since we refuse to allow man to tyrannize over man, what degradation it is for the human race to cringe and bow down unconditionally to the imagination in the great realm of uncertainty! Do not hurt your child. Do not strike it. Do not cause it any unnecessary pain. Before it is able to walk, before it is able to talk, before it is old enough to tell of its pain and suffering, Nature makes it endure enough. Remember, the only language of the babe is the cry of pain. Imagine yourself under the lash of suffering, utterly speechless and incapable of conveying your wants and feelings to an absolutely strange surrounding, and you will have a slight picture of the growing child in your household. Did you ever stop to consider that the child, when born, does not know that you are its parent? It does not know that you are its father, or that you are its mother. It does not know what prompted its birth, or why it must live--and above all, what it has done to be sent to such a miserable prison place as the planet upon which we live. We must demonstrate all this as well as we can to the child. This much we can be sure of: kindness, tenderness and love should forever be our guide in our dealings and contact with children. The child is brought into this world from the insuppressible passion of two people, and surely without its consent, and it is absolute tyranny and barbarity to torment its mind or to punish its body, regardless of the result its action may have upon us. To the little children that have suffered the horrible punishment so generally followed in that cruel and false book--the Bible--my heart goes out in pity, since words fail me to describe those savage characters that visit inhuman, tormenting and torturous treatment upon their unwelcome offspring. If we were forced to perform the thousand tyrannies that are directed against the child during the day by cruel and thoughtless parents, the lunatic asylum would soon be our place of refuge. Such trivial things as a spot on the shoe, a speck of dirt upon the clothes, a mere tip of the hat, a slight turn of the scarf often give rise to such violent reprimand, and very often brutal punishment, that the savageness of barbarians is mild compared to such displays of temper. My heart again goes out to you, little children, when and wherever you are, that must bear the brunt of brutal actions from stupid and thoughtless parents and guardians. These people seem to classify children in the matter of discipline as grown ups, thinking (or, rather, not thinking) that children's undeveloped minds should be as strong as theirs, when they themselves are unable to practice the self-denial that they expect from mere infants. How often does a child receive a slap in the face from a parent for the asking of only a simple question, when the parent is not in the "humor" to "bother" with him? What a painful and terrifying beating does a child often get for disobeying some arbitrary command uttered by the one over him. To the child, "Don't do this," "Don't go there," "Stand up straight," and "Say this" are commands that carry with them court martial and its severe and unrelenting punishment. Remember this: The child will respond to kindness and love more readily and directly than to force and unwarranted discipline. It is purely a question of whether your feelings are actuated by these impulses. If you have become mentally strong enough to restrain your impulses to strike your child, do not substitute other means to "punish" him. Changing the method of brutally inflicting physical pain upon your child to some other means, though less repulsive, is still obnoxious and harmful. If you are unable to convince your child, by persuasion, example or otherwise, that you are right and that the child should follow your instruction, then by all means, let it become the victor in the contest. Fear--fear of pain, fear in every form--controls our lives, and shapes the courses of our puny destinies. VIII The mind, through fear of death, is capable of suffering, within a few moments, the tortures of an eternity, although to accomplish death, Nature may require only a few minutes. The extent of the mind's capability for suffering is beyond compare. Nature has been distinctly conspicuous in imbuing us not only with grave doubts and uncertainties, but also with an unshakable fear regarding death. In the deepest moments of despair, when living has absolutely no attraction and life becomes a burden and a menace, we fight desperately, and without abatement, for this narrow, worthless thread of existence. Possibly the fear that we have in the face of death is caused by the fact that we must suffer pain before death is accomplished. And a great deal of the theory of "self-preservation" is due merely to our great horror of pain. The indisputable fact that thousands "take their lives" by choosing the least possible painful method demonstrates, with a firm conviction, my thought that it is the avoidance of pain, rather than the retaining of life, that prompts our efforts to live. It is only too true, and heard from the lips of thousands, that if they "could only lie down and never awake, what a blessing it would be." We speak in terms of "having lived too long," "being tired of living," "life not worth living," etc., as if life were a prison sentence, and, often, rather than continue the servitude, we surmount and overcome the deterrent of pain and destroy the life. Very often our desire to keep on living is prompted by our baser impulses. We "live" sometimes to "get even" with someone--to spite someone. We "live" sometimes to be able to "show" what we can or cannot do. Were it not for these baser impulses, what an unlimited number of people would refuse to continue this monotonous, painful and non-paying life! The foregoing expressions of life, at one time or another, represent the feelings of all humanity. In the United States alone during the year 1920 it has been conservatively estimated that more than twelve thousand persons committed suicide. These persons were engaged in all kinds of pursuits and came from ALL walks of life. They ranged from social outcasts to society leaders; from poverty stricken unfortunates to persons of great wealth; from illiterate men and women to editors and college professors; from laborers and layman to physicians and ministers. The youngest suicide was a mere infant of five years, the oldest, a centenarian of 106! Among the suicides of last year were two evangelists and twelve clergymen. It would appear that those who had devoted their thoughts and services to God would at least be spared the agony of such suffering as to force them to prefer death and to take their lives. I say with Ingersoll, it is a wonder God does not at least protect his friends and defenders. The reluctance we have to die is due in a large degree to the possibility of securing a few more moments of joy from an already too much troubled world, with the hope that a little compensation will be derived from the pain and sorrow we have endured. And yet those things that we may live to enjoy to-day and to-morrow may likewise be present to thrill us at some future date, away and beyond the limitation we are capable of surviving. It is from this desire that we unconsciously "feel" that we would like to "live" always, to get our full measure of return; and since such is neither the lot nor the privilege of our possession, it really makes no difference when we die as far as personal satisfaction is concerned. The fear that possesses us now in the matter of death will likewise and with equal force possess us later, when we actually and without ceremony must submit to the inevitable. The desire that possesses a person to live now will, with equal attraction, obsess him later. Our desires and aspirations are never satisfied. What we may cherish to accomplish to-day may be consummated and achieved, yet to-morrow another something will demand our energies to be spent for further desires to be accomplished. When we are babies we desire to walk; when we walk, we desire to talk; when we talk, we desire to grow; after we grow, we want to learn; after we learn, we want to do and to expand--and our performance and expansion are only curtailed by insolent death! IX The only justification there is to live, once conscious of the damnable scheme of life, is the burning desire to do something to help mankind bear the conditions and to make easier the burden of life for those who are here and for those who are to come; for very often the greatest benefactors of the race are so maligned and persecuted in their day that only the future can render a just appreciation of their labor and their value. For without the improvement bestowed on life by the world's benefactors, over the crudity of Nature, it were better that we remain in the bosom of our wilder brothers, and hang from the trees by the length and the strength of our tails. Aye, back and back and back, down every degree of life until the time before the first cell of protoplasm from an inanimate into an animate state started. Why must we be made to suffer such dreadful torment before death, since by eternal decree it is the common lot all must endure? Death, puzzling, eternal death, is Nature's final stamp upon our fearful struggle through life. And the agony of death is more poignantly mental than physical, since the mind, reviewing the acts of the past, anticipates with anxiety and with picturesque vividness the wrongs, scandals, terrors, fears and injustice of the future. Since life is so replete with physical pains, no wonder our picture of death is so horrible. We see upon the lifeless form the cast of its agonizing pain, and augur from that an eternity of sorrow. But fortunately, in reality we can only feel pain as long as we possess "life." In a sense, therefore, death is a blessing. After all, the severest pains of death lie in the brains of the living. The mind is capable of suffering in one moment all that a lifetime can repay with pleasure, and no joy is sufficient in value to compensate you for enduring an irreparable loss. The conditions that existed before our birth are identical with the conditions that will exist at our death. As we knew no life and felt no pain before our birth, we shall know no life and feel no pain after our death. Death is no longer the enigma of life. Living is its problem. The sting of death has been removed. We know death's destiny, and no longer fear its consequences. The only suffering attached to death now is the injustice of its time of coming, the reluctance of parting with loved ones, and the loss of the opportunity to attain. Well might I say with Shakespeare, that: "Cowards die many times before their death; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come." The most despicable characters of human life are those who prey upon credulous persons when in the face of death and shrouded with the fear of its uncertainty, picturing to those persons horrible and frightening tales of an eternity of torture. What unspeakable misery must those whose religious conviction has so terrified death and its aftermath, especially when it is intensified and horrified through the mouthpiece of ignorant priests, suffer in consequence of death. Oh, what a fearful sting must be there! Just think what this poor, vast, credulous multitude pay, with the sweat of their brows and the bend of their backs, to enrich these moral beasts in exchange for their ignorant and terrifying mumblings, that rob the deluded ones of every fiber of courage and every thought of perfect peace and rest. It is while living that death possesses its sting and anguish. Anyone that seeks tribute from the dying, or from the living for services on behalf of the dead, is a damnable moral scoundrel and a cunning rascal. To those whose minds have been poisoned from childhood with this religious conviction, this most awful of beliefs, I cry: "Throw off these tyrants of the mind. Emancipate yourselves from this fearful ignorance and mental bondage!" What a burden will be lifted from their lives and what a glorious freedom they will experience! If we are to die, let us die in perfect calmness and in perfect peace. Let us become firmly convinced that, once we are dead, no thought, no act, can possibly harm us. We are beyond the pale of Nature's pangs. We, the individuals that we were, are free from everything. We are at rest, and forever. X But after this life with all our pains and sorrows, what then? What is there to repay us for living? I answer: _Nothing!_ I have no misgivings about the "future." I am firmly convinced that there is no "after life," that when we "breathe our last" we arrive at our eternity. We are "one with yesterday's seven thousand years." We are like the flower which, "once blown, forever dies." I firmly believe that life as now manifested in our bodies is a combustible force identical with that of any other form of life. No less so than the "seed" of the flower is different from the "germ" of the wheat. Both are forces! So are we! They may be different manifestations, but fundamentally they are the same. In fact, the very force that manifests itself in a mechanical instrument made by man is the identical substance that rules the organs, and charges the brain of our being. In the same manner that the force dissipates itself in the mechanical instrument made by man, and no longer gives motion to its parts, so the force that animates our being dissipates itself and is no longer capable of giving motion to our parts and organs. As man's instruments are dependent upon many channels for their complete performance, so the human brain and body have their many dependencies that must fully and properly be nourished to maintain their power. Each day science draws another veil from the mystery of life. Our eye is but a chemical camera, that we have not only reproduced, but even improved upon. Our voice is nothing but a vibration, that we have not only reproduced and improved upon, but whose minutest modulations we have recorded in innumerable duplications. Our ear is but a drum, that carries and conveys to the brain the vibrations of our voice, and that function we have reproduced and even improved upon by the instrument we call the telephone. The telegraphic system of the human body that communicates to the brain the conditions that the senses perceive, is no other than that which man has even improved upon by the transmission of an intelligible message to a far-distant land without the use of any apparent conductor. With the marvelous instrument, the telephone, man sends his voice around the world. Man's greatest inventions, the phonograph, the camera and the telephone, both wire and wireless, make the work of Nature, as manifested in our bodies, a simple, childish affair, fit only for the kindergarten of things. When Edison invented the incandescent light and reproduced the human voice in the phonograph he pulled aside the veil of secrecy and penetrated the infinite. _He proved and demonstrated man to be greater than God._ Our limbs carry our bodies in the direction our brains dictate, and _that_ function we have reproduced and even improved upon in all the means of locomotion that we daily use and which we now consider as a "matter of fact" among the ordinary things of life. "Comparisons are odious" when we compare the awkward motion of Nature with the rapid locomotion of man. Man progresses far too rapidly for the accommodation of Nature, and as a result adapts for his use and benefit vital essentials that Nature in her laziness has either failed to utilize, or will not utilize. Although we have not yet completely discovered all the material and mechanical elements that compose life, we are sure and certain of their origin. We hear ourselves talk; we decide upon our destination and direct our motion; we eat when we are hungry; sleep when we are tired; cry when we are in pain; and laugh when we are tickled. Our whole being from start to finish is mechanical, and the element of something "spiritual," something separate and distinct from a purely material sense, is absolutely illogical and ill-founded in view of the illimitable illustrations that are being demonstrated every day. It is a thing easily understood, if we logically, and intelligently, without blindness, preference or prejudice, analyze the problem. It may sound better and more desirable to say that we possess a "soul"--that this life is but a "stepping stone to a higher plane"--but it is not true. We cannot observe the true, actual facts of life by coloring our subject. If we want to determine the _truth_ we must be mentally prepared to accept the _truth_. A painted face, brightened eyes, blackened eyelids, Marcelled hair, and a form draped in all the splendor of the finest silks do not make a woman possess the sweetness and charm that all this "dope" is intended to make us believe. As much as man wants to have the end of this life attain certain benefits and destinations, this desire does not make them real. The implicit confidence in a faithless wife does not make her loyal and virtuous. A wife's confidence in a profligate husband does not make him stanch and true. Life calls for a cold analysis. It must be stripped of all its artificial colorings and superfluities. It must be measured and weighed for what it actually is, not for what we would like it to be. It must be determined in the unwavering scales of science. The proper study of mankind is not the man in the white starched collar, with trimmed hair, shaven face and polished shoes, but the man recently from the forest, with coarse, grizzly hair upon his back, brutal and violent passion dominating his body, and savageness and hatred in his startled and terrifying eyes. The sooner we come to the realization of this vital fact, the sooner we become acquainted with the basic origin of life, the sooner we shall understand life, with its achievements, with its aspirations and hopes. XI It is an absolute fact and certainty, impossible of refutation, that when animation ceases in the body and no effort is made to revive it, life ceases and the processes of decay and decomposition set in. Yet it is permanently established and has been successfully demonstrated innumerable times, that certain methods of artificial stimulation have revivified and resuscitated the delicate organs that cause the heartbeat and give consciousness to the brain. Recently my local newspaper contained the following item: "DEAD" BUT SAW NO SPIRITS _Oklahoma City, Okla._, February 7th--Neal Dillingham doesn't believe in after-death communication with the living. Dillingham was "dead" for twenty minutes recently, and he says he ought to know. Doctors said Dillingham's blood circulation was stopped by a clot of blood. His heart stopped beating, and he did not breathe. Insertion of a saline solution into his artery just above the heart caused the clot to dissolve, and Dillingham came back to life. "I did not return to earth after I left it," said Dillingham. "I had no knowledge of anything that took place, but I must have been pretty dead, as I do know I didn't recognize several persons I had known all my life, after I was myself again. If I had any talks with anybody while I was 'dead' I don't remember anything about them." Believing that the publicity that this case received would make the party known to the postal authorities, I sat down and wrote him a letter, hoping that, if fortunate enough to have a letter delivered to him, he might be kind enough to write me personally of his experience. After a lapse of several days I received from him a letter substantiating in detail all that was mentioned in the newspaper clipping quoted above. In the instance of this man Dillingham, he was "dead," so to speak, and as far as his "soul" was concerned it had "left" the body; yet the injection of a material solution, compounded by man, in conjunction with artificial respiration, caused the beating of the heart and gave back to the brain its power of consciousness. If it is the "soul" that causes the functioning of the body, where is it when such an action takes place? If it is the "soul" that gives us "life," how is it that we can materially and mechanically destroy it? We are born and nourished by material means. We live our life by material means. We reproduce our kind by material means. And we can destroy ourselves by material means. Everything that touches and concerns our life is purely material, and it should be incumbent upon those who believe in the "Soul" or the "Spiritual Element" of man to produce the proof of their contention. We are nothing but a continual propagating instrument, without spiritual, moral, lasting or ultimate value. We are here to reproduce our kind and for nothing more. What man secures for himself within the narrow circle of his existence here is all that he gains for the life that Nature forces him to live. Everything man has, man has made. Nothing has been given to him by Nature. God has been a miser! If man possessed a "soul" the thousand deformities of the brain would not exist. Insanity would be impossible, and all the forms of petty vices that so miserably afflict us would be totally unknown. That which gives us the power of life is a combination of the material forces of Nature, and the elements that compose the brain are of a chemical substance. The difference between a "live" person and a "dead" one can be summarized by a great many instances about us, and because of their commonplaceness, we do not observe them. There are many apples falling to the ground, but we are not inspired with the knowledge that the actuating force is gravity. One of the best illustrations, to show the difference between a "live" and a "dead" person, can be had from that excellent invention called the "film" or "plate," and which is so remarkably used in the camera. When that sensitive composition of chemicals that forms the "film" and which produces such a vivid and lasting likeness of ourselves is freshly made, it possesses that vital something we call "life." But allow this film to remain unused for a period of time, and it will no longer be able to perform its remarkable work. It will not possess the "life" to take a picture or to record an impression. If a premature "exposure" of the film is made, it loses its vital quality because of the mixture with other elements, or because of the evaporation of its constituent parts. It is not necessary to analyze all the properties of that film to show the principle whereby it performs its wonderful work. The general principle, showing its marvelous use while intact and its utter uselessness when its composition is no longer the same, should be sufficient to illustrate the comparison. This illustration can with force and conviction be applied to the peculiar quality and nature of our "soul" and brain. As long as the brain is incased within our skull, and fully protected from contact with any other substance to alter or to change its integrity, it will perform all that is warranted of it. In the case of our brain, though, besides the importance of keeping it protected from outside chemical action, the vital element concerned in its continuity of life lies in the importance of keeping it constantly nourished and supplied with the remarkable qualities of the vital substance of blood. The moment the blood supply to the brain is stopped, our brain loses its most important constituent, with the ultimate and inevitable result of inertia, decomposition and decay. When this condition happens we are then "dead" and, like the proverbial egg, "all the King's horses and all the King's men cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again." If we possessed a soul, and it were of a permanent and special quality, it would maintain its impressions and remember its existence. It could pass through innumerable periods and know its many and varied journeys. Even memory, so unreliable in our short life, bespeaks the utter impossibility of such a thing as a soul with a permanent and lasting existence. That which we call the "soul" is nothing but a chemical composition, that can and _does_ lose its permanency while we are still alive. We are acquainted with a number of chemical compositions that must remain in a pacific state to maintain their identity, so those chemical forces that compose our "soul" must perforce maintain their equilibrium. If we are stunned, or suffer any of the many conditions that upset chemical compounds and compositions, we, for the time being, suffer either "unconsciousness" or some other form of mental disability. If we are shocked too severely, we become totally and permanently impaired, and suffer violent fits and fearful rages, insanity or imbecility. Different shocks, and even forms of disease, result in certain action upon our chemical brain, which causes it to lose only part of its ability. Extreme high fever is only one form of illness which causes the brain to lose its stability and run rampant and unbridled. If I were fully cognizant of all forms and degrees of disease, I could recite exactly how they act and in what degree they harm the delicate organism of our brain. In many instances shocks or diseases too powerful for our brain to withstand, cause that portion of our brain that may control our speech, our sight, our hearing, our limbs or other organs to lose its power, with the consequence that we must suffer and be handicapped with what is properly called "a great affliction." Science to-day has discovered that great truth, and has not only catalogued the different portions of the brain in their individual departments or capacities, but, by a master stroke of surgery, can correct and remedy those impaired parts, and give back to the human being the use of those valuable organs that the invisible agents of Nature had taken away. So, instead of the brain's possessing a "soul," we find it, only in a more delicate degree, a mechanical formation such as we discovered our body to be. But if we possess a soul and it is capable of passing through the many and varied stages that life suffers, what becomes of its impressions? What and where are the benefits of its retention? Where is the soul when we are in a state of unconsciousness? Surely, if the soul were ever present to guard and maintain life, it would be standing by and using its power when it is most needed. We have no occasion for help when we are not in danger. It is when power can be used and exercised that it should be manifested. Even love, the great compelling force of our life, is subject to the variations of our chemical "soul," its attractions and repulsions. If two form the unit of reproduction, and love is the great mating medium of Nature, then once it is animated, once it is brought into existence, it should endure permanently, and the possessors should at least enjoy their blissful companionship until the end. But no. Nature would entice, and then destroy, this most consuming feeling of life. Two persons can start life with the most irresistible attraction and irrepressible love and within a very short time, unless they guard their love with every means and weapon of advanced thought and reason, Nature, through her duplicity, will provide searching eyes to alienate their affection, causing a wretchedness unparalleled in the mental miseries of mankind's life. The saddest state of all is when two persons, with the sacred devotion of love, cohabit and the happy result is loving children, and yet while this happy family, free from Nature's pitfalls and snares, are living in a peaceful and blissful state, there exists the ever-menacing "devil" who tempts the loving wife and mother to follow the will-o'-the-wisp--and thereby undoes and destroys the greatest kingdom of life. The devoted husband and father, by the flash of an eye, and the charm of a face, can forsake his sacred ties of devotion and become a degenerate and outcast, with death as his only salvation. In either case Nature stands by with a sneer upon her lips, and God forgets his obligation to his children. But the final analysis proves beyond doubt that the physical attraction is responsible for this action; and who can deny that it is the chemical attraction of two forces that produced this irresistible desire? XII If the life we live be a kindergarten or infancy of a larger and better life somewhere else, Nature defeats her own ends, because myriads pass on, leave here, with the most dwarfed intellects, utterly unprepared to live here, and much less prepared to live in a higher state and on a more lofty plane. Were such a condition true, that this is but a transitory existence, we should all have to go through the same schooling of life, and be indelibly impressed with its lesson, with conviction and understanding that the same mistakes would never be repeated, or the acquired knowledge would be constantly and forever used. There would be no deaths in infancy, as each child born would be purposely sent here; neither would there be premature deaths, as no one could leave without "learning his lesson." There would be a fixed standard of knowledge and development that we would be required to attain. Knowledge, or whatever condition Nature imposed, would be our destiny, and we would devote our entire life to its acquirement. As it is, we bend our efforts and use our strength to avoid and to escape the acquisition of knowledge. If our life were given to us in order to pass through a school of experience, the simplest truths would immediately manifest themselves to our minds, and conviction would be instant and permanent. But how sadly untrue is this premise! For thousands, aye, for millions of years, the people have been stupefied with the most ignorant and foolish superstition. An instance that will present with great force an illustration of the utter folly of the contention that we are living on this planet as a lesson in school, lies in the fact that for thousands of years people not only believed but religiously guarded the belief that the earth was flat. Even to-day, with irrefutable demonstrations of the truth, there are some people who either cannot, or will not, accept it. As desirable as this theory of a transitory state may be, it is even contrary to Nature herself. The entire scheme of Nature seems to be fashioned upon the same principle as our life. The fearful struggle of the elements involved squares identically with our own existence. Even the gigantic constellations, flying with an incalculable velocity, leaving destruction and desolation in their tracks, meet in their ignorant and blind journey the same fate as we meet. Recent astronomical discoveries speak of a struggle constantly taking place in those areas. The belief of an existence after death is so untenable in the face of many scientific discoveries of to-day, and of the irrefutable facts that are constantly staring us in the face, that an instance or two are all that are necessary to prove the fallacy of such a belief. Under many circumstances we are unable to recognize our own blood relations after a lapse of a certain length of time. Parents fail to know their children; and children their parents. This is equally true in every comparison and degree of relationship. Features and characteristics undergo such a decided change and transformation that recognition is ofttimes even impossible. Even the law courts are continually called upon to determine the proper identity of persons, to establish the ownership of property by other means than by personal identification. Most remarkable of all, under new conditions, we do not recognize ourselves within the interval of only a few seconds! Try this if you would seek proof, and convince yourself that recognition of your own personality is momentarily impossible, and that you must resort to other senses than that of sight to identify yourself. Put a wig upon your head, blacken your face, "make up" your features, and when you have finished and are completely unaware of your changed appearance, look into the mirror for your reflection and feel the sensation of the startling fact that you know not yourself. We speak of changes so radical in a person's appearance that we often say we could not recognize him "in a thousand years." What a ridiculous presumption it is, then, to maintain that we live after death when _all_ senses are gone and perception is dead! Again, how anyone can say that when we die we go to "heaven" is too childish to consider, because when we die, instead of going up and to heaven, we are put deep into the ground to moulder and to rot away. What a far-fetched conclusion it is to assume that we live after death, minus all the physical characteristics and under conditions utterly incomprehensible to our minds! Even if, at death, the body turned into invisible gases it would mean and prove absolutely nothing. If we live after death, by what means can one person communicate with another? We cannot feel, because we have no hands. We cannot see, because we have no eyes. We cannot smell, because we have no nose. We cannot hear, because we have no ears. We cannot taste, because we have no mouth, no stomach. But, with it all, these five mediums of sense are dependent upon a _living brain_. The fact that we suffer the loss of our senses even before death, because of the complications in the make-up of our body, should be sufficient proof of the nonexistence of a soul and the utter impossibility of a life after death. Unless we retain and maintain our sacred ties after death, another life is valueless and void, useless and unnecessary. It is a fearful sadness to think that the ones you love are to pass away into nothingness and be no more; that the sparkling eyes will be dim forever; that the rosy cheeks will no longer glow with radiant health; that the ruby lips will fade into a deathly blue, motionless and forever still; that dimpled hands and loving arms will never encircle you again, and the supremacy and tenderness of your love must be crushed with a cold and callous ferocity. But, sad and mournful as it is, with the human heart beating hopelessly against hope for only one more chance to kiss and caress and love the one you so dearly cherish, it is nevertheless only too poignantly true that death ends all. Death means nothing to the affairs of the world. To be taken from amid the world in such an ever-living condition as now exists, is like taking a cup of water from an ever-full pail. The gap is immediately filled, and the level of the water simultaneously adjusted, leaving absolutely no trace of what has been withdrawn. Only the individual suffers. What a mighty burst of heart there would be if we all could feel and suffer at the same time! Nature makes no difference and knows no distinction between the living and the dead. The warm and tender rays of the sun, and its blistering heat, fall alike upon the crying, innocent babe and the lifeless, unfeeling corpse. The sun does not shine to give us its necessary heat, without also bringing to light some new problem and pain for our over-troubled hearts to bear. Murder, rape and greed look no different to Nature than goodness, virtue and unselfishness. Tears were made for the things that God causes, laughter is the result of man's efforts. XIII It is man's labor, man's work, man's achievement, that gives us the little desire that we have to live. How often do we prefer _death_ to living life in our former condition, after our efforts have brought us to a point of vantage and comfort! Death is always preferable to the living of a "dog's life!" And yet, with it all, the little improvement we have to-day, with the still remaining cruel conditions of Nature left to endure and fight, has not been worth the struggle through the black and bleak past. The price has been entirely too severe for the little that has been gained. God gives man nothing; man gives man everything! What sublime courage it was that made the pathfinders of the past sacrifice their lives, in order that their principles of truth might triumph, so that another link might be made in the chain of progress that is endeavoring to break the spell of a tyrant power. You must be made to know that for whatever desirable condition we have to-day we are indebted to heroic men and women of the past, who, in the days of infant progress, achieved a moral, physical and intellectual triumph. The chair you sit on, the cup you drink from, the fork you eat with, the light you read by, the bed you sleep in, the heat that warms you, the shoes on your feet, the clothes upon your back, the hat upon your head, and every part and particle of improvement that has enriched the world with a little touch of human comfort are the result of the heroic labors of the men and women of the past, who victoriously fought the accursed and chaotic forces of Nature, so as to make life and living a little better. But at every step and stage of progress the dogmatists have exerted their influence toward retardation. What these dogmatists were unable to accomplish through fear and suppression, they accomplished through ostracism, and death. Human advancement and progress are foreign to the "believing" mind. The dogmatists are concerned only with the "supernatural." They want not the comforts of life here if they can secure those benefits "hereafter." It is the attitude of the religious to belittle anything that is designed for human betterment. Their philosophy is, the more you suffer here, the less you will suffer "hereafter." Their humility to and fear of this "unseen" power is the most degrading trait in human beings. It is a frame of mind not only despicable and a hindrance in the face of progress, but even antagonistic to and destructive of all things worth while. To them, the insanity of belief is of paramount importance, and is more sacred and holy than human life. Aye, human life has been so subordinated to this superstitious belief that it meant death in the past to those who rejected it. Rather observe some "holy day" than perform "work" to help some fellow human being in distress. Murder, rather than eat meat on a "forbidden day"! This frame of mind is one of the mental mysteries that science has yet to solve. XIV The rotundity of the earth was discussed and its circumference scientifically measured hundreds of years before the supposed birth of Christ, and had not the "God believers" been so persistent in forcing their belief upon others, and had not Christianity been born, I can see how the discovery of America would have been accomplished about a thousand years before the discovery by Columbus; and the incalculable progress which would have been the consequence would have carried mankind beyond the boldest imagination of to-day, and placed us a thousand years nearer civilization. Hero, a mathematician, who lived at the time when the Greek minds were the marvel of the world, invented a steam engine, which was used in experiments and was rapidly nearing completion and perfection, when, unfortunately, ignorant and destructive Religion, that was madly trampling upon everything of value, destroyed the famous Alexandrian Library wherein was kept a model of this engine. It also swept away the incalculable wealth of knowledge that had required ages to accumulate, and thereby completely annihilated the most priceless possessions that the human race ever owned. But that is not all; it is only a fragment. For history at every stage of life shows the continual strife between the forces of progress and the religious fanatic and God believer. What is that strange form of insanity that prompts people to torture and to destroy those who seek to emancipate them from the _Tyranny of God_ and from the deluded belief in a hereafter? The attitude of all, each and every one of us, should ever be the desire and willingness to greet a new idea, to support a new thought, to try a new proposal, to do all in our power to uphold the forces of progress, to lend our help and to devote our energies in any direction that will ultimately lead us from the cruel forces and narrow limitations that are our lot to share. To those who have no thought for these things, who care not what forces and conditions man must face, who take without thought and give only through compulsion, whose self-satisfied condition (made possible only by the heroic work of the martyrs of progress) make of them personal heroes, whose life is wrapped within the flicker of a day, who do not know, do not realize, and do not care about the fearful suffering of the world--I say to them to strut their intoxicated hour and pass away. The sooner they live their lives and the sooner they die, the better for the earth. It needs fertilization. Were we as mentally progressive as we are materially advanced, what a wonderful and magnificent improvement over the present living conditions we would be enjoying! Every new invention, every new improvement, would be immediately and universally installed, and every old and antiquated instrument and method would be discarded and destroyed. That which now seems only within the command of the households of the immensely wealthy, would be as popularly used and enjoyed as the now commonly used articles in the poorest households. Think of existing to-day in a predominant percentage of dwellings for human beings where there is not found the essential bathtub, or the still more essential toilet room! Governments are instituted for the people's benefit, and shame upon such a government, in an enlightened age like to-day, that tolerates such a condition, when that government possesses the men, the means, the intellect and the materials to electrify the world! The first and foremost essential in higher development is the comfort and conveniences in a home. These are some of the conditions that the progressive minds of the world are trying to solve and remedy. It is only a question of how much longer the majority of people will pay homage to an imaginary God for imaginary benefits in an imaginary life after death. XV It is the antagonism of the dogmatic world, and the apathy of the rest, that is the cause of the mental progress of the world's not keeping pace with the material progress. Better still, the universal application of the material progress has been far in advance of the universal acceptance of mental achievement. The automobile, the gigantic ocean liner, the talking machine, the electric fan, the elevator, the telephone and the other marvelous achievements of man are being used by the greater portion of the people, whose mental status belongs to the wheelbarrow, the simple chair, the ox cart and the tallow candle. Slight is the realization by the users and beneficiaries of science's modern methods, of the heroic struggles and battles that the great men and women of the past suffered to make possible these accomplishments. Oh, how many suffered torture and death at the hands of the very people they were striving to benefit! This same fate has been met by all the brave and courageous, during the past, who have made any attempt to broaden the life and to ease the pain of the troubled heart of humanity. The unselfish endeavors of man have made it possible to take the dumb matter of earth and mold it so the voices of the present can be heard by the ears of the future; so that several generations may hear and know, with a touch of human affection, the traits, features and characteristics of their ancestors. Language gives us their thoughts, the camera gives us their natural, life-like features and the phonograph their actual, living voices! Nature never did so much. As far as Nature is concerned, bastardy may rule the world! One of the comforts of life is that we live again in actions and scenes, which, although they are apart from our own lives, really belong to the past or future races. But Nature sees to it that the births and deaths, the knowledge and acquaintance of each and every generation, are so closely allied that none of us is allowed to escape the suffering of the world and the agony of life and death. No person can avoid the pain and the terrible fear that all must endure. No one person can live, move about and possess the varied improvements of the earth's materials all by himself. He is indebted to others for their accomplishments, and they in turn are indebted to him for the improvements he renders. In short, we are all so closely allied with the actions and lives of one another that there should be a mutual appreciation and a common understanding among all. The farmer may know nothing about manufacturing; the manufacturer may know nothing about farming; the artist, the explorer, the thinker, the inventor and the scientist may know nothing about any field of endeavor other than his own, yet all are inter-dependent. With such a condition existing, and with the uncertainty of life forever staring us in the face, and _no one exempt_ from its terrible enactment, it is a _marvelous_ wonder to me why there exist so tenaciously in the human heart all the petty and aggravating tempers, prejudices and jealousies. What man has done with the forces of Nature are inspiring deeds. What progress has been made in opposing the forces of Nature is marvelous. What man will accomplish in the future with the arrogant forces of Nature stimulates our hearts with the sweet satisfaction of a victory of the first magnitude. But in the final analysis, what does it avail us? Geologists tell us that the greater portion of the materials that we have taken from the field of Nature consists of the buried bones and bodies of our ancient ancestors, who passed through greater periods of agony, torment, disease and death than we are finally and eventually to meet! What sort of crust in the earth's formation are we to make? What will be the product of the future living forces that will utilize the materials that our bodies will make? What will be the future living forces? It is fearfully sad to contemplate that life must continue and be subject to the miserable laws that now govern it. Insect man, with his almost tireless industry, makes clothes to cover his ugly and awkward body; builds houses to shelter him from the winds and the torrents of Nature; fashions glittering palaces of amusement to cheer his troubled heart; compounds anæsthetics to ease his pain; carves wood to replace his broken limbs; molds metal to take the place of those things that Nature has made inadequate for his use. In short, man has improved upon Nature to uphold his frail body, to strengthen his weak bones, and to soothe his tender heart. That man, fighting the forces of Nature, has been able to accomplish so much is simply glorious, and this progress is an achievement of such wonderful magnitude that we are thrilled at the thought, and bow in grateful recognition for the benefits derived and the relief enjoyed. But why did not God institute all the benefits for the immediate use of man, so they could be enjoyed upon the first manifestation of his understanding? Why was it necessary to go through the fearful period of past history and gain, only after a most gigantic struggle, the few things that we now use for our comfort? That these things could have been done is proved by the fact that man has done them. Fundamentally they always existed. Man has only discovered and applied them. And these things that we have gained to-day, from the struggles of the past, would have been equally enjoyed by those who lived before us, with the same degree of benefit, just as the future will find, use and enjoy those things that we do not possess, and without which we shall be pinched, and pained, through the helter-skelter of this troublesome life. I brand as brutal tyranny this scheme of life, that forces us to be a link in a long series of lives to produce something for the benefit of the far-distant future, that we, ourselves, imperatively need but shall not possess. I cry and denounce and plead, in behalf of future humanity, to circumvent and to defeat this "sorry scheme of life," that uses us as an instrument to produce something that we cannot use, do not know about and have not the understanding to comprehend. XVI "In God We Trust," on coins that represent our labor and our endeavor, is an insult to the intelligence, courage and independence of the people, and a stinging rebuke to those responsible for our progress. A motto that more truthfully represents our material progress and intellectual development would be: "In Science We Trust;" or, "Humanity and Justice Our Aim." The more we eliminate God from us, the more we are _one without him_, the better for us all, the better for humanity, the better for all the world. The less we "know" of God, the less God that is "in us," the more _human_ we become. The greatest, most frightful and destructive wars of all time have been those which were started in "defense" of God, as if "he" cared what man says or does. The most frightful and torturous instruments ever conceived by man are those that were made to force people to "believe in" God. The history of religious persecution and torture is the horror of the world. May I ask, where was God, and what did he do, to stop this frightful nightmare of torture committed in "his" name? And may I answer for you, that he was where Moses was when the light went out? Remember this: There will never be a solution to any of our fundamental problems, and mankind will never, in the full sense of the word, be free, as long as there exists in the human mind the insanity of religious belief. As long as God occupies a portion of our thoughts, mankind must be content to suffer the hatred and antagonism of man. Let us make up our minds now, let us resolve now, to stop fighting one another, and fight God by helping one another. Let us stop fighting our fellow prisoners and fellow sufferers, and fight God. Let us help our fellow prisoners and fellow sufferers. Let us cleanse our minds of this superstitious poison of an "after life," and work and labor for the good and welfare of Here and Now. We possess the knowledge and the means and, within the span of only one day, could bring about the much-longed-for "Brotherhood of Man." We could eliminate hatred from our hearts, and instill Justice as our guide. We could eradicate poverty from our midst and bring happiness to sorrowing mankind. We could blot out tyranny among men and exchange it for the priceless legacy of freedom and make the relation between man and man bear some semblance of humanity. But--and I say this with redoubled conviction, and with all the power, force, energy and vehemence that I possess--if we are Nature's best endeavor, if man is Nature's best product, if the Natural world is incapable of any improvement, and life will forever be made to submit to the tyrannical conditions of Nature, then it were better ten thousand times over, that life were never called into existence, and that the universe were null and void! THE END EDISON LETTER TO JOSEPH LEWIS * * * * * _From the Laboratory of Thomas A. Edison, Orange, N.J._ August 18, 1921. Mr. Joseph Lewis, c/o The Truth Publishing Co., 1400 Broadway, New York City. Dear Sir:-- I received your book--"The Tyranny of God"--and have read it through. I think as you do that death ends all, yet I do not feel certain, because there are many facts that seem to show that the real units of life are not the animal mechanism itself, but groups of millions of small entities living in the visible cells. The animal being their mechanism for navigating the environment, and when the mechanism fails to function, i.e. die, the groups go out into space to go thru another cycle. The entities are each highly organized and perform their allotted task. If there is anything like this we still have a fighting chance. You have doubtless read interviews I have given lately on this subject. They appeared in the Scientific Monthly for October 30, 1920 and the Cosmopolitan for May, 1920. Yours very truly, Thos A Edison Famous Inventor Gives Views of Death and Immortality in Correspondence with Author of "The Tyranny of God." 
38107	----	THE GODS By Robert G. Ingersoll Give Me The Storm And Tempest Of Thought And Action, Rather Than The Dead Calm Of Ignorance And Faith. Banish Me From Eden When You Will; But First Let Me Eat Of The Fruit Of The Tree Of Knowledge. 1878. TO EVA A. INGERSOLL MY WIFE, A WOMAN WITHOUT SUPERSTITION, THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED. THE GODS AN HONEST GOD IS THE NOBLEST WORK OF MAN. EACH nation has created a god, and the god has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved, and he was invariably found on the side of those in power. Each god was intensely patriotic, and detested all nations but his own. All these gods demanded praise, flattery, worship. Most of them were pleased with sacrifice, and the smell of innocent blood has ever been considered a divine perfume. All these gods have insisted upon having a vast number of priests, and the priests have always insisted upon being supported by the people, and the principal business of these priests has been to boast about their god, and to insist that he could easily vanquish all the other gods put together. These gods have been manufactured after numberless models, and according to the most grotesque fashions. Some have a thousand arms, some a hundred heads, some are adorned with necklaces of living snakes, some are armed with clubs, some with sword and shield, some with bucklers, and some have wings as a cherub; some were invisible, some would show themselves entire, and some would only show their backs; some were jealous, some were foolish, some turned themselves into men, some into swans, some into bulls, some into doves, and some into Holy Ghosts, and made love to the beautiful daughters of men. Some were married--all ought to have been--and some were considered as old bachelors from all eternity. Some had children, and the children were turned into gods and worshiped as their fathers had been. Most of these gods were revengeful, savage, lustful, and ignorant. As they generally depended upon their priests for information, their ignorance can hardly excite our astonishment. These gods did not even know the shape of the worlds they had created, but supposed them perfectly flat Some thought the day could be lengthened by stopping the sun, that the blowing of horns could throw down the walls of a city, and all knew so little of the real nature of the people they had created, that they commanded the people to love them. Some were so ignorant as to suppose that man could believe just as he might desire, or as they might command, and that to be governed by observation, reason, and experience was a most foul and damning sin. None of these gods could give a true account of the creation of this little earth. All were wofully deficient in geology and astronomy. As a rule, they were most miserable legislators, and as executives, they were far inferior to the average of American presidents. These deities have demanded the most abject and degrading obedience. In order to please them, man must lay his very face in the dust. Of course, they have always been partial to the people who created them, and have generally shown their partiality by assisting those people to rob and destroy others, and to ravish their wives and daughters. Nothing is so pleasing to these gods as the butchery of unbelievers. Nothing so enrages them, even now, as to have some one deny their existence. Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted, and heaven crammed with these phantoms. These gods not only attended to the skies, but were supposed to interfere in all the affairs of men. They presided over everybody and everything. They attended to every department. All was supposed to be under their immediate control. Nothing was too small--nothing too large; the falling of sparrows and the motions of the planets were alike attended to by these industrious and observing deities. From their starry thrones they frequently came to the earth for the purpose of imparting information to man. It is related of one that he came amid thunderings and lightnings in order to tell the people that they should not cook a kid in its mother's milk. Some left their shining abodes to tell women that they should, or should not, have children, to inform a priest how to cut and wear his apron, and to give directions as to the proper manner of cleaning the intestines of a bird. When the people failed to worship one of these gods, or failed to feed and clothe his priests, (which was much the same thing,) he generally visited them with pestilence and famine. Sometimes he allowed some other nation to drag them into slavery--to sell their wives and children; but generally he glutted his vengeance by murdering their first-born. The priests always did their whole duty, not only in predicting these calamities, but in proving, when they did happen, that they were brought upon the people because they had not given quite enough to them. These gods differed just as the nations differed; the greatest and most powerful had the most powerful gods, while the weaker ones were obliged to content themselves with the very off-scourings of the heavens. Each of these gods promised happiness here and hereafter to all his slaves, and threatened to eternally punish all who either disbelieved in his existence or suspected that some other god might be his superior; but to deny the existence of all gods was, and is, the crime of crimes. Redden your hands with human blood; blast by slander the fair fame of the innocent; strangle the smiling child upon its mother's knees; deceive, ruin and desert the beautiful girl who loves and trusts you, and your case is not hopeless. For all this, and for all these you may be forgiven. For all this, and for all these, that bankrupt court established by the gospel, will give you a discharge; but deny the existence of these divine ghosts, of these gods, and the sweet and tearful face of Mercy becomes livid with eternal hate. Heaven's golden gates are shut, and you, with an infinite curse ringing in your ears, with the brand of infamy upon your brow, commence your endless wanderings in the lurid gloom of hell--an immortal vagrant--an eternal outcast--a deathless convict. One of these gods, and one who demands our love, our admiration and our worship, and one who is worshiped, if mere heartless ceremony is worship, gave to his chosen people for their guidance, the following laws of war: "When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, _then proclaim peace unto it_. And it shall be if it make thee answer, of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it. "And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thy hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword. But the women and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself, and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies which the Lord thy God hath given thee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. But of the cities of these people which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, _thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth?_" Is it possible for man to conceive of anything more perfectly infamous? Can you believe that such directions were given by any being except an infinite fiend? Remember that the army receiving these instructions was one of invasion. Peace was offered upon condition that the people submitting should be the slaves of the invader; but if any should have the courage to defend their homes, to fight for the love of wife and child, then the sword was to spare none--not even the prattling, dimpled babe. And we are called upon to worship such a god; to get upon our knees and tell him that he is good, that he is merciful, that he is just, that he is love. We are asked to stifle every noble sentiment of the soul, and to trample under foot all the sweet charities of the heart Because we refuse to stultify ourselves--refuse to become liars--we are denounced, hated, traduced and ostracized here, and this same god threatens to torment us in eternal fire the moment death allows him to fiercely clutch our naked helpless souls. Let the people hate, let the god threaten--we will educate them, and we will despise and defy him. The book, called the bible, is filled with passages equally horrible, unjust and atrocious. This is the book to be read in schools in order to make our children loving, kind and gentle! This is the book to be recognized in our Constitution as the source of all authority and justice! Strange! that no one has ever been persecuted by the church for believing God bad, while hundreds of millions have been destroyed for thinking him good. The orthodox church never will forgive the Universalist for saying "God is love." It has always been considered as one of the very highest evidences of true and undefined religion to insist that all men, women and children deserve eternal damnation. It has always been heresy to say, "God will at last save all." We are asked to justify these frightful passages, these infamous laws of war, because the bible is the word of God. As a matter of fact, there never was, and there never can be, an argument, even tending to prove the inspiration of any book whatever. In the absence of positive evidence, analogy and experience, argument is simply impossible, and at the very best, can amount only to a useless agitation of the air. The instant we admit that a book is too sacred to be doubted, or even reasoned about, we are mental serfs. It is infinitely absurd to suppose that a god would address a communication to intelligent beings, and yet make it a crime, to be punished in eternal flames, for them to use their intelligence for the purpose of understanding his communication. If we have the right to use our reason, we certainly have the right to act in accordance with it, and no god can have the right to punish us for such action. The doctrine that future happiness depends upon belief is monstrous. It is the infamy of infamies. The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called "faith." What man, who ever thinks, can believe that blood can appease God? And yet, our entire system of religion is based upon that belief. The Jews pacified Jehovah with the blood of animals, and according to the Christian system, the blood of Jesus softened the heart of God a little, and rendered possible the salvation of a fortunate few. It is hard to conceive how the human mind can give assent to such terrible ideas, or how any sane man can read the bible and still believe in the doctrine of inspiration. Whether the bible is true or false, is of no consequence in comparison with the mental freedom of the race. Salvation through slavery is worthless. Salvation from slavery is inestimable. As long as man believes the bible to be infallible, that book is his master. The civilization of this century is not the child of faith, but of unbelief--the result of free thought. All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the bible is simply and purely of human invention--of barbarian invention--is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would of any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the cowled form of superstition--then read the holy bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity. Our ancestors not only had their god-factories, but they made devils as well. These devils were generally disgraced and fallen gods. Some had headed unsuccessful revolts; some had been caught sweetly reclining in the shadowy folds of some fleecy cloud, kissing the wife of the god of gods. These devils generally sympathized with man. There is in regard to them a most wonderful fact: In nearly all the theologies, mythologies and religions, the devils have been much more humane and merciful than the gods. No devil ever gave one of his generals an order to kill children and to rip open the bodies of pregnant women. Such barbarities were always ordered by the good gods. The pestilences were sent by the most merciful gods. The frightful famine, during which the dying child with pallid lips sucked the withered bosom of a dead mother, was sent by the loving gods. No devil was ever charged with such fiendish brutality. One of these gods, according to the account, drowned an entire world, with the exception of eight persons. The old, the young, the beautiful and the helpless were remorsely devoured by the shoreless sea. This, the most fearful tragedy that the imagination of ignorant priests ever conceived, was the act, not of a devil, but of a god, so-called, whom men ignorantly worship unto this day. What a stain such an act would leave upon the character of a devil! One of the prophets of one of these gods, having in his power a captured king, hewed him in pieces in the sight of all the people. Was ever any imp of any devil guilty of such savagery? One of these gods is reported to have given the following directions concerning human slavery: "If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years shall he serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife and my children; I will not go out free. Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him unto the door, or unto the door-post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him forever." According to this, a man was given liberty upon condition that he would desert forever his wife and children. Did any devil ever force upon a husband, upon a father, so cruel and so heartless an alternative? Who can worship such a god? Who can bend the knee to such a monster? Who can pray to such a fiend? All these gods threatened to torment forever the souls of their enemies. Did any devil ever make so infamous a threat? The basest thing recorded of the devil, is what he did concerning Job and his family, and that was done by the express permission of one of these gods, and to decide a little difference of opinion between their serene highnesses as to the character of "my servant Job." The first account we have of the devil is found in that purely scientific book called Genesis, and is as follows: "Now the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made, and he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. * * And the Lord God said, Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword, which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life." According to this account the promise of the devil was fulfilled to the very letter. Adam and Eve did not die, and they did become as gods, knowing good and evil. The account shows, however, that the gods dreaded education and knowledge then just as they do now. The church still faithfully guards the dangerous tree of knowledge, and has exerted in all ages her utmost power to keep mankind from eating the fruit thereof. The priests have never ceased repeating the old falsehood and the old threat: "Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." From every pulpit comes the same cry, born of the same fear: "Lest they eat and become as gods, knowing good and evil." For this reason, religion hates science, faith detests reason, theology is the sworn enemy of philosophy, and the church with its flaming sword still guards the hated tree, and like its supposed founder, curses to the lowest depths the brave thinkers who eat and become as gods. If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization. Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge! Some nations have borrowed their gods; of this number, we are compelled to say, is our own. The Jews having ceased to exist as a nation, and having no further use for a god, our ancestors appropriated him and adopted their devil at the same time. This borrowed god is still an object of some adoration, and this adopted devil still excites the apprehensions of our people. He is still supposed to be setting his traps and snares for the purpose of catching our unwary souls, and is still, with reasonable success, waging the old war against our god. To me, it seems easy to account for these ideas concerning gods and devils. They are a perfectly natural production. Man has created them all, and under the same circumstances would create them again. Man has not only created all these gods, but he has created them out of the materials by which he has been surrounded. Generally he has modeled them after himself, and has given them hands, heads, feet, eyes, ears, and organs of speech. Each nation, made its gods and devils speak its language not only, but put in their mouths the same mistakes in history, geography, astronomy, and in all matters of fact, generally made by the people. No god was ever in advance of the nation that created him. The negroes represented their deities with black skins and curly hair. The Mongolian gave to his a yellow complexion and dark almond-shaped eyes. The Jews were not allowed to paint theirs, or we should have seen Jehovah with a full beard, an oval face, and an aquiline nose. Zeus was a perfect Greek, and Jove looked as though a member of the Roman senate. The gods of Egypt had the patient face and placid look of the loving people who made them. The gods of northern countries were represented warmly clad in robes of fur; those of the tropics were naked. The gods of India were often mounted upon elephants; those of some islanders were great swimmers, and the deities of the Arctic zone were passionately fond of whale's blubber. Nearly all people have carved or painted representations of their gods, and these representations were, by the lower classes, generally treated as the real gods, and to these images and idols they addressed prayers and offered sacrifice. "In some countries, even at this day, if the people after long praying do not obtain their desires, they turn their images off as impotent gods, or upbraid them in a most reproachful manner, loading them with blows and curses. 'How now, dog of a spirit,' they say, 'we give you lodging in a magnificent temple, we gild you with gold, feed you with the choicest food, and offer incense to you; yet, after all this care, you are so ungrateful as to refuse us what we ask.' "Hereupon they will pull the god down and drag him through the filth of the street. If, in the meantime, it happens that they obtain their request, then, with a great deal of ceremony, they wash him clean, carry him back and place him in his temple again, where they fall down and make excuses for what they have done. 'Of a truth,' they say, 'we were a little too hasty, and you were a little too long in your grant. Why should you bring this beating on yourself. But what is done cannot be undone. Let us not think of it any more. If you will forget what is past, we will gild you over brighter again than before.'" Man has never been at a loss for gods. He has worshiped almost everything, including the vilest and most disgusting beasts. He has worshiped fire, earth, air, water, light, stars, and for hundreds of ages prostrated himself before enormous snakes. Savage tribes often make gods of articles they get from civilized people. The To-das worship a cow-bell. The Kotas worship two silver plates, which they regard as husband and wife, and another tribe manufactured a god out of a king of hearts. Man, having always been the physical superior of woman, accounts for the fact that most of the high gods have been males. Had woman been the physical superior, the powers supposed to be the rulers of Nature would have been women, and instead of being represented in the apparel of man, they would have luxuriated in trains, low-necked dresses, laces and back-hair. Nothing can be plainer than that each nation gives to its god its peculiar characteristics, and that every individual gives to his god his personal peculiarities. Man has no ideas, and can have none, except those suggested by his surroundings. He cannot conceive of anything utterly unlike what he has seen or felt. He can exaggerate, diminish, combine, separate, deform, beautify, improve, multiply and compare what he sees, what he feels, what he hears, and all of which he takes cognizance through the medium of the senses; but he cannot create. Having seen exhibitions of power, he can say, omnipotent. Having lived, he can say, immortality. Knowing something of time, he can say, eternity. Conceiving something of intelligence, he can say, God Having seen exhibitions of malice, he can say, devil. A few gleams of happiness having fallen athwart the gloom of his life, he can say, heaven. Pain, in its numberless forms, having been experienced, he can say, hell. Yet all these ideas have a foundation in fact, and only a foundation. The superstructure has been reared by exaggerating, diminishing, combining, separating, deforming, beautifying, improving or multiplying realities, so that the edifice or fabric is but the incongruous grouping of what man has perceived through the medium of the senses. It is as though we should give to a lion the wings of an eagle, the hoofs of a bison, the tail of a horse, the pouch of a kangaroo, and the trunk of an elephant. We have in imagination created an impossible monster. And yet the various parts of this monster really exist. So it is with all the gods that man has made. Beyond nature man cannot go even in thought--above nature he cannot rise--below nature he cannot fall. Man, in his# ignorance, supposed that all phenomena were produced by some intelligent powers, and with direct reference to him. To preserve friendly relations with these powers was, and still is, the object of all religions. Man knelt through fear and to implore assistance, or through gratitude for some favor which he supposed had been rendered. He endeavored by supplication to appease some being who, for some reason, had, as he believed, become enraged. The lightning and thunder terrified him. In the presence of the volcano he sank upon his knees. The great forests filled with wild and ferocious beasts, the monstrous serpents crawling in mysterious depths, the boundless sea, the flaming comets, the sinister eclipses, the awful calmness of the stars, and, more than all, the perpetual presence of death, convinced him that he was the sport and prey of unseen and malignant powers. The strange and frightful diseases to which he was subject, the freezings and burnings of fever, the contortions of epilepsy, the sudden palsies, the darkness of night, and the wild, terrible and fantastic dreams that filled his brain, satisfied him that he was haunted and pursued by countless spirits of evil. For some reason he supposed that these spirits differed in power--that they were not all alike malevolent--that the higher controlled the lower, and that his very existence depended upon gaining the assistance of the more powerful. For this purpose he resorted to prayer, to flattery, to worship and to sacrifice. These ideas appear to have been almost universal in savage man. For ages all nations supposed that the sick and insane were possessed by evil spirits. For thousands of years the practice of medicine consisted in frightening these spirits away. Usually the priests would make the loudest and most discordant noises possible. They would blow horns, beat upon rude drums, clash cymbals, and in the meantime utter the most unearthly yells. If the noise-remedy failed, they would implore the aid of some more powerful spirit. To pacify these spirits was considered of infinite importance. The poor barbarian, knowing that men could be softened by gifts, gave to these spirits that which to him seemed of the most value. With bursting heart he would offer the blood of his dearest child. It was impossible for him to conceive of a god utterly unlike himself, and he naturally supposed that these powers of the air would be affected a little at the sight of so great and so deep a sorrow. It was with the barbarian then as with the civilized now--one class lived upon and made merchandise of the fears of another. Certain persons took it upon themselves to appease the gods, and to instruct the people in their duties to these unseen powers. This was the origin of the priesthood. The priest pretended to stand between the wrath of the gods and the helplessness of man. He was man's attorney at the court of heaven. He carried to the invisible world a flag of truce, a protest and a request. He came back with a command, with authority and with power. Man fell upon his knees before his own servant, and the priest, taking advantage of the awe inspired by his supposed influence with the gods, made of his fellow-man a cringing hypocrite and slave. Even Christ, the supposed son of God, taught that persons were possessed of evil spirits, and frequently, according to the account, gave proof of his divine origin and mission by frightening droves of devils out of his unfortunate countrymen. Casting out devils was his principal employment, and the devils thus banished generally took occasion to acknowledge him as the true Messiah; which was not only very kind of them, but quite fortunate for him. The religious people have always regarded the testimony of these devils as perfectly conclusive, and the writers of the New Testament quote the words of these imps of darkness with great satisfaction. The fact that Christ could withstand the temptations of the devil was considered as conclusive evidence that he was assisted by some god, or at least by some being superior to man. St. Matthew gives an account of an attempt made by the devil to tempt the supposed son of God; and it has always excited the wonder of Christians that the temptation was so nobly and heroically withstood. The account to which I refer is as follows: "Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when the tempter came to him, he said: 'If thou be the son of God, command that these stones be made bread.' But he answered, and said: 'It is written: man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.' Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city and setteth him upon a pinnacle of the temple and saith unto him: 'If thou be the son of God, cast thyself down, for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee, lest at any time thou shalt dash thy foot against a stone.' Jesus said unto him: 'It is written again, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.' Again the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and saith unto him: 'All these will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me.'" The Christians now claim that Jesus was God. If he was God, of course the devil knew that fact, and yet, according to this account, the devil took the omnipotent God and placed him upon a pinnacle of the temple, and endeavored to induce him to dash himself against the earth. Failing in that, he took the creator, owner and governor of the universe up into an exceeding high mountain, and offered him this world--this grain of sand--if he, the God of all the worlds, would fall down and worship him, a poor devil, without even a tax title to one foot of dirt! Is it possible the devil was such an idiot? Should any great credit be given to this deity for not being caught with such chaff? Think of it! The devil--the prince of sharpers--the king of cunning--the master of finesse, trying to bribe God with a grain of sand that belonged to God! Is there in all the religious literature of the world anything more grossly absurd than this? These devils, according to the bible, were of various kinds--some could speak and hear, others were deaf and dumb. All could not be cast out in the same way. The deaf and dumb spirits were quite difficult to deal with. St. Mark tells of a gentleman who brought his son to Christ The boy, it seems, was possessed of a dumb spirit, over which the disciples had no control. "Jesus said unto the spirit: 'Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee come out of him, and enter no more into him.'" Whereupon, the deaf spirit (having heard what was said) cried out (being dumb) and immediately vacated the premises. The ease with which Christ controlled this deaf and dumb spirit excited the wonder of his disciples, and they asked him privately why they could not cast that spirit out. To whom he replied: "This kind can come forth by nothing but prayer and fasting." Is there a Christian in the whole world who would believe such a story if found in any other book? The trouble is, these pious people shut up their reason, and then open their bible. In the olden times the existence of devils was universally admitted. The people had no doubt upon that subject, and from such belief it followed as a matter of course, that a person, in order to vanquish these devils, had either to be a god, or to be assisted by one. All founders of religions have established their claims to divine origin by controlling evil spirits and suspending the laws of nature. Casting out devils was a certificate of divinity. A prophet, unable to cope with the powers of darkness was regarded with contempt The utterance of the highest and noblest sentiments, the most blameless and holy life, commanded but little respect, unless accompanied by power to work miracles and command spirits. This belief in good and evil powers had its origin in the fact that man was surrounded by what he was pleased to call good and evil phenomena. Phenomena affecting man pleasantly were ascribed to good spirits, while those affecting him unpleasantly or injuriously, were ascribed to evil spirits. It being admitted that all phenomena were produced by spirits, the spirits were divided according to the phenomena, and the phenomena were good or bad as they affected man. Good spirits were supposed to be the authors of good phenomena, and evil spirits of the evil--so that the idea of a devil has been as universal as the idea of a god. Many writers maintain that an idea to become universal must be true; that all universal ideas are innate, and that innate ideas cannot be false. If the fact that an idea has been universal proves that it is innate, and if the fact that an idea is innate proves that it is correct, then the believers in innate ideas must admit that the evidence of a god superior to nature, and of a devil superior to nature, is exactly the same, and that the existence of such a devil must be as self-evident as the existence of such a god. The truth is, a god was inferred from good; and a devil from bad, phenomena. And it is just as natural and logical to suppose that a devil would cause happiness as to suppose that a god would produce misery. Consequently, if an intelligence, infinite and supreme, is the immediate author of all phenomena, it is difficult to determine whether such intelligence is the friend or enemy of man. If phenomena were all good, we might say they were all produced by a perfectly beneficent being. If they were all bad, we might say they were produced by a perfectly malevolent power; but, as phenomena are, as they affect man, both good and bad, they must be produced by different and antagonistic spirits; by one who is sometimes actuated by kindness, and sometimes by malice; or all must be produced of necessity, and without reference to their consequences upon man. The foolish doctrine that all phenomena can be traced to the interference of good and evil spirits, has been, and still is, almost universal. That most people still believe in some spirit that can change the natural order of events, is proven by the fact that nearly all resort to prayer. Thousands, at this very moment, are probably imploring some supposed power to interfere in their behalf. Some want health restored; some ask that the loved and absent be watched over and protected, some pray for riches, some for rain, some want diseases stayed, some vainly ask for food, some ask for revivals, a few ask for more wisdom, and now and then one tells the Lord to do as he may think best. Thousands ask to be protected from the devil; some, like David, pray for revenge, and some implore, even God, not to lead them into temptation. All these prayers rest upon, and are produced by, the idea that some power not only can, but probably will, change the order of the universe. This belief has been among the great majority of tribes and nations. All sacred books are filled with the accounts of such interferences, and our own bible is no exception to this rule. If we believe in a power superior to nature, it is perfectly natural to suppose that such power can and will interfere in the affairs of this world. If there is no interference, of what practical use can such power be? The scriptures give us the most wonderful accounts of divine interference: Animals talk like men; springs gurgle from dry bones; the sun and moon stop in the heavens in order that General Joshua may have more time to murder; the shadow on a dial goes back ten degrees to convince a petty king of a barbarous people that he is not going to die of a boil; fire refuses to burn; water positively declines to seek its level, but stands up like a wall; grains of sand become lice; common walking-sticks, to gratify a mere freak, twist themselves into serpents, and then swallow each other by way of exercise; murmuring streams, laughing at the attraction of gravitation, run up hill for years, following wandering tribes from a pure love of frolic; prophecy becomes altogether easier than history; the sons of God become enamored of the world's girls; women are changed into salt for the purpose of keeping a great event fresh in the minds of men; an excellent article of brimstone is imported from heaven free of duty; clothes refuse to wear out for forty years; birds keep restaurants and feed wandering prophets free of expense; bears tear children in pieces for laughing at old men without wigs; muscular development depends upon the length of one's hair; dead people come to life, simply to get a joke on their enemies and heirs; witches and wizards converse freely with the souls of the departed, and God himself becomes a stone-cutter and engraver, after having been a tailor and dressmaker. The veil between heaven and earth was always rent or lifted. The shadows of this world, the radiance of heaven, and the glare of hell mixed and mingled until man became uncertain as to which country he really inhabited. Man dwelt in an unreal world. He mistook his ideas, his dreams, for real things. His fears became terrible and malicious monsters. He lived in the midst of furies and fairies, nymphs and naiads, goblins and ghosts, witches and wizards, sprites and spooks, deities and devils. The obscure and gloomy depths were filled with claw and wing--with beak and hoof--with leering looks and sneering mouths--with the malice of deformity--with the cunning of hatred, and with all the slimy forms that fear can draw and paint upon the shadowy canvas of the dark. It is enough to make one almost insane with pity to think what man in the long night has suffered; of the tortures he has endured, surrounded, as he supposed, by malignant powers and clutched by the fierce phantoms of the air. No wonder that he fell upon his trembling knees--that he built altars and reddened them even with his own blood. No wonder that he implored ignorant priests and impudent magicians for aid. No wonder that he crawled groveling in the dust to the temple's door, and there, in the insanity of despair, besought the deaf gods to hear his bitter cry of agony and fear. The savage, as he emerges from a state of barbarism, gradually loses faith in his idols of wood and stone, and in their place puts a multitude of spirits. As he advances in knowledge, he generally discards the petty spirits, and in their stead believes in one, whom he supposes to be infinite and supreme. Supposing this great spirit to be superior to nature, he offers worship or flattery in exchange for assistance. At last, finding that he obtains no aid from this supposed deity--finding that every search after the absolute must of necessity end in failure--finding that man cannot by any possibility conceive of the conditionless--he begins to investigate the facts by which he is surrounded, and to depend upon himself The people are beginning to think, to reason and to investigate. Slowly, painfully, but surely, the gods are being driven from the earth. Only upon rare occasions are they, even by the most religious, supposed to interfere in the affairs of men. In most matters we are at last supposed to be free. Since the invention of steamships and railways, so that the products of all countries can be easily interchanged, the gods have quit the business of producing famine. Now and then they kill a child because it is idolized by its parents. As a rule they have given up causing accidents on railroads, exploding boilers, and bursting kerosene lamps. Cholera, yellow fever, and small-pox are still considered heavenly weapons; but measles, itch and ague are now attributed to natural causes. As a general thing, the gods have stopped drowning children, except as a punishment for violating the Sabbath. They still pay some attention to the affairs of kings, men of genius and persons of great wealth; but ordinary people are left to shirk for themselves as best they may. In wars between great nations, the gods still interfere; but in prize fights, the best man with an honest referee, is almost sure to win. The church cannot abandon the idea of special providence. To give up that doctrine is to give up all. The church must insist that prayer is answered--that some power superior to nature hears and grants the request of the sincere and humble Christian, and that this same power in some mysterious way provides for all. A devout clergyman sought every opportunity to impress upon the mind of his son the fact, that God takes care of all his creatures; that the falling sparrow attracts his attention, and that his loving kindness is over all his works. Happening, one day, to see a crane wading in quest of food, the good man pointed out to his son the perfect adaptation of the crane to get his living in that manner. "See," said he, "how his legs are formed for wading! What a long slender bill he has! Observe how nicely he folds his feet when putting them in or drawing them out of the water! He does not cause the slightest ripple. He is thus enabled to approach the fish without giving them any notice of his arrival." "My son," said he, "it is impossible to look at that bird without recognizing the design, as well as the goodness of God, in thus providing the means of subsistence." "Yes," replied the boy, "I think I see the goodness of God, at least so far as the crane is concerned; but after all, father, don't you think the arrangement a little tough on the fish?" Even the advanced religionist, although disbelieving in any great amount of interference by the gods in this age of the world, still thinks, that in the beginning, some god made the laws governing the universe. He believes that in consequence of these laws a man can lift a greater weight with, than without, a lever; that this god so made matter, and so established the order of things, that two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time; so that a body once put in motion will keep moving until it is stopped; so that it is a greater distance around, than across a circle; so that a perfect square has four equal sides, instead of five or seven. He insists that it took a direct interposition of providence to make the whole greater than a part, and that had it not been for this power superior to nature, twice one might have been more than twice two, and sticks and strings might have had only one end apiece. Like the old Scotch divine, he thanks God that Sunday comes at the end instead of in the middle of the week, and that death comes at the close instead of at the commencement of life, thereby giving us time to prepare for that holy day and that most solemn event These religious people see nothing but design everywhere, and personal, intelligent interference in everything. They insist that the universe has been created, and that the adaptation of means to ends is perfectly apparent. They point us to the sunshine, to the flowers, to the April rain, and to all there is of beauty and of use in the world. Did it ever occur to them that a cancer is as beautiful in its development as is the reddest rose? That what they are pleased to call the adaptation of means to ends, is as apparent in the cancer as in the April rain? How beautiful the process of digestion! By what ingenious methods the blood is poisoned so that the cancer shall have food! By what wonderful contrivances the entire system of man is made to pay tribute to this divine and charming cancer! See by what admirable instrumentalities it feeds itself from the surrounding quivering, dainty flesh! See how it gradually but surely expands and grows! By what marvelous mechanism it is supplied with long and slender roots that reach out to the most secret nerves of pain for sustenance and life! What beautiful colors it presents! Seen through the microscope it is a miracle of order and beauty. All the ingenuity of man cannot stop its growth. Think of the amount of thought it must have required to invent a way by which the life of one man might be given to produce one cancer? Is it possible to look upon it and doubt that there is design in the universe, and that the inventor of this wonderful cancer must be infinitely powerful, ingenious and good? We are told that the universe was designed and created, and that it is absurd to suppose that matter has existed from eternity, but that it is perfectly self-evident that a god has. If a god created the universe, then, there must have been a time when he commenced to create. Back of that time there must have been an eternity, during which there had existed nothing--absolutely nothing--except this supposed god. According to this theory, this god spent an eternity, so to speak, in an infinite vacuum, and in perfect idleness. Admitting that a god did create the universe, the question then arises, of what did he create it? It certainly was not made of nothing. Nothing, considered in the light of a raw material, is a most decided failure. It follows, then, that the god must have made the universe out of himself, he being the only existence. The universe is material, and if it was made of god, the god must have been material. With this very thought in his mind, Anaximander of Miletus said: "Creation is the decomposition of the infinite." It has been demonstrated that the earth would fall to the sun, only for the fact, that it is attracted by other worlds, and those worlds must be attracted by other worlds still beyond them, and so on, without end. This proves the material universe to be infinite. If an infinite universe has been made out of an infinite god, how much of the god is left? The idea of a creative deity is gradually being abandoned, and nearly all truly scientific minds admit that matter must have existed from eternity. It is indestructible, and the indestructible cannot be created. It is the crowning glory of our century to have demonstrated the indestructibility and the eternal persistence of force. Neither matter nor force can be increased nor diminished. Force cannot exist apart from matter. Matter exists only in connection with force, and consequently, a force apart from matter, and superior to nature, is a demonstrated impossibility. Force, then, must have also existed from eternity, and could not have been created. Matter in its countless forms, from dead earth to the eyes of those we love, and force, in all its manifestations, from simple motion to the grandest thought, deny creation and defy control. Thought is a form of force. We walk with the same force with which we think. Man is an organism, that changes several forms of force into thought-force. Man is a machine into which we put what we call food, and produce what we call thought. Think of that wonderful chemistry by which bread was changed into the divine tragedy of Hamlet! A god must not only be material, but he must be an organism, capable of changing other forms of force into thought-force. This is what we call eating. Therefore, if the god thinks, he must eat, that is to say, he must of necessity have some means of supplying the force with which to think. It is impossible to conceive of a being who can eternally impart force to matter, and yet have no means of supplying the force thus imparted. If neither matter nor force were created, what evidence have we, then, of the existence of a power superior to nature? The theologian will probably reply, "We have law and order, cause and effect, and beside all this, matter could not have put itself in motion." Suppose, for the sake of the argument, that there is no being superior to nature, and that matter and force have existed from eternity. Now suppose that two atoms should come together, would there be an effect? Yes. Suppose they came in exactly opposite directions with equal force, they would be stopped, to say the least. This would be an effect. If this is so, then you have matter, force and effect without a being superior to nature. Now suppose that two other atoms, just like the first two, should come together under precisely the same circumstances, would not the effect be exactly the same? Yes. Like causes, producing like effects, is what we mean by law and order. Then we have matter, force, effect, law and order without a being superior to nature. Now, we know that every effect must also be a cause, and that every cause must be an effect. The atoms coming together did produce an effect, and as every effect must also be a cause, the effect produced by the collision of the atoms, must as to something else have been a cause. Then we have matter, force, law, order, cause and effect without a being superior to-nature. Nothing is left for the supernatural but empty space. His throne is a void, and his boasted realm is without matter, without force without law, without cause, and without effect. But what put all this matter in motion? If matter and force have existed from eternity, then matter must have always been in motion. There can be no force without motion. Force is forever active, and there is, and there can be no cessation. If, therefore, matter and force have existed from eternity, so has motion. In the whole universe there is not even one atom in a state of rest. A deity outside of nature exists in nothing, and is nothing. Nature embraces with infinite arms all matter and all force. That which is beyond her grasp is destitute of both, and can hardly be worth the worship and adoration even of a man. There is but one way to demonstrate the existence of a power independent of and superior to nature, and that is by breaking, if only for one moment, the continuity of cause and effect Pluck from the endless chain of existence one little link; stop for one instant the grand procession, and you have shown beyond all contradiction that nature has a master. Change the fact, just for one second, that matter attracts matter, and a god appears. The rudest savage has always known this fact, and for that reason always demanded the evidence of miracle. The founder of a religion must be able to turn water into wine--cure with a word the blind and lame, and raise with a simple touch the dead to life. It was necessary for him to demonstrate to the satisfaction of his barbarian disciple, that he was superior to nature. In times of ignorance this was easy to do. The credulity of the savage was almost boundless. To him the marvelous was the beautiful, the mysterious was the sublime. Consequently, every religion has for its foundation a miracle--that is to say, a violation of nature--that is to say, a falsehood. No one, in the world's whole history, ever attempted to substantiate a truth by a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of miracle. Nothing but falsehood ever attested itself by signs and wonders. No miracle ever was performed, and no sane man ever thought he had performed one, and until one is performed, there can be no evidence of the existence of any power superior to, and independent of nature. The church wishes us to believe. Let the church, or one of its intellectual saints, perform a miracle, and we will believe. We are told that nature has a superior, Let this superior, for # one single instant, control nature, and we will admit the truth of your assertions. We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact We know all about your mouldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a this year's fact We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years. Their reputation for "truth and veracity" in the neighborhood where they resided is wholly unknown to us. Give us a new miracle, and substantiate it by witnesses who still have the cheerful habit of living in this world. Do not send us to Jericho to hear the winding horns, nor put us in the fire with Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego. Do not compel us to navigate the sea with Captain Jonah, nor dine with Mr. Ezekiel. There is no sort of use in sending us fox-hunting with Samson. We have positively lost all interest in that little speech so eloquently delivered by Balaam's inspired donkey. It is worse than useless to show us fishes with money in their mouths, and call our attention to vast multitudes stuffing themselves with five crackers and two sardines. We demand a new miracle, and we demand it now. Let the church furnish at least one, or forever after hold her peace. In the olden time, the church, by violating the order of nature, proved the existence of her God. At that time miracles were performed with the most astonishing ease. They became so common that the church ordered her priests to desist. And now this same church--the people having found some little sense--admits, not only, that she cannot perform a miracle, but insists that the absence of miracle--the steady, unbroken march of cause and effect, proves the existence of a power superior to nature. The fact is, however, that the indissoluble chain of cause and effect proves exactly the contrary. Sir William Hamilton, one of the pillars of modern theology, in discussing this very subject, uses the following language: "The phenomena of matter taken by themselves, so far from warranting any inference to the existence of a god, would on the contrary ground even an argument to his negation. The phenomena of the material world are subjected to immutable laws; are produced and reproduced in the same invariable succession, and manifest only the blind force of a mechanical necessity." Nature is but an endless series of efficient causes. She cannot create, but she eternally transforms. There was no beginning, and there can be no end. The best minds, even in the religious world, admit that in material nature there is no evidence of what they are pleased to call a god. They find their evidence in the phenomena of intelligence, and very innocently assert that intelligence is above, and in fact, opposed to nature. They insist that man, at least, is a special creation; that he has somewhere in his brain a divine spark, a little portion of the "Great First Cause." They say that matter cannot produce thought; but that thought can produce matter. They tell us that man has intelligence, and therefore there must be an intelligence greater than his. Why not say, God has intelligence, therefore there must be an intelligence greater than his? So far as we know, there is no intelligence apart from matter. We cannot conceive of thought, except as produced within a brain. The science, by means of which they demonstrate the existence of an impossible intelligence, and an incomprehensible power is called, metaphysics or theology. The theologians admit that the phenomena of matter tend, at least, to disprove the existence of any power superior to nature, because in such phenomena we see nothing but an endless chain of efficient causes--nothing but the force of a mechanical necessity. They therefore appeal to what they denominate the phenomena of mind to establish this superior power. The trouble is, that in the phenomena of mind we find the same endless chain of efficient causes; the same mechanical necessity. Every thought must have had an efficient cause. Every motive, every desire, every fear, hope and dream must have been necessarily produced. There is no room in the mind of man for providence or chance. The facts and forces governing thought are as absolute as those governing the motions of the planets. A poem is produced by the forces of nature, and is as necessarily and naturally produced as mountains and seas. You will seek in vain for a thought in man's brain without its efficient cause. Every mental operation is the necessary result of certain facts and conditions. Mental phenomena are considered more complicated than those of matter, and consequently more mysterious. Being more mysterious, they are considered better evidence of the existence of a god. No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science. When we abandon the doctrine that some infinite being created matter and force, and enacted a code of laws for their government, the idea of interference will be lost. The real priest will then be, not the mouth-piece of some pretended deity, but the interpreter of nature. From that moment the church ceases to exist The tapers will die out upon the dusty altar; the moths will eat the fading velvet of pulpit and pew; the Bible will take its place with the Shastras, Puranas, Vedas, Eddas, Sagas and Korans, and the fetters of a degrading faith will fall from the minds of men. "But," says the religionist, "you cannot explain everything; you cannot understand everything; and that which you cannot explain, that which you do not comprehend, is my God." We are explaining more every day. We are understanding more every day; consequently your God is growing smaller every day. Nothing daunted, the religionist then insists that nothing can exist without a cause, except cause, and that this uncaused cause is God. To this we again reply: Every cause must produce an effect, because until it does produce an effect, it is not a cause. Every effect must in its turn become a cause. Therefore, in the nature of things, there cannot be a last cause, for the reason that a so-called last cause would necessarily produce an effect, and that effect must of necessity become a cause. The converse of these propositions must be true. Every effect must have had a cause, and every cause must have been an effect. Therefore, there could have been no first cause. A first cause is just as impossible as a last effect Beyond the universe there is nothing, and within the universe the supernatural does not and cannot exist The moment these great truths are understood and admitted, a belief in general or special providence becomes impossible. From that instant men will cease their vain efforts to please an imaginary being, and will give their time and attention to the affairs of this world. They will abandon the idea of attaining any object by prayer and supplication. The element of uncertainty will, in a great measure, be removed from the domain of the future, and man, gathering courage from a succession of victories over the obstructions of nature, will attain a serene grandeur unknown to the disciples of any superstition. The plans of mankind will no longer be interfered with by the finger of a supposed omnipotence, and no one will believe that nations or individuals are protected or destroyed by any deity whatever. Science, freed from the chains of pious custom and evangelical prejudice, will, within her sphere, be supreme. The mind will investigate without reverence, and publish its conclusions without fear. Agassiz will no longer hesitate to declare the Mosaic cosmogony utterly inconsistent with the demonstrated truths of geology, and will cease pretending any reverence for the Jewish scriptures. The moment science succeeds in rendering the church powerless for evil, the real thinkers will be outspoken. The little flags of truce carried by timid philosophers will disappear, and the cowardly parley will give place to victory--lasting and universal. If we admit that some infinite being has controlled the destinies of persons and peoples, history becomes a most cruel and bloody farce. Age after age, the strong have trampled upon the weak; the crafty and heartless have ensnared and enslaved the simple and innocent, and nowhere, in all the annals of mankind, has any god succored the oppressed. Man should cease to expect aid from on high. By this time he should know that heaven has no ear to hear, and no hand to help. The present is the necessary child of all the past. There has been no chance, and there can be no interference. If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected, and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone. Nature, so far as we can discern, without passion and without intention, forms, transforms, and retransforms forever. She neither weeps nor rejoices. She produces man without purpose, and obliterates him without regret. She knows no distinction between the beneficial and the hurtful. Poison and nutrition, pain and joy, life and death, smiles and tears are alike to her. She is neither merciful nor cruel. She cannot be flattered by worship nor melted by tears. She does not know even the attitude of prayer. She appreciates no difference between poison in the fangs of snakes and mercy in the hearts of men. Only through man does nature take cognizance of the good, the true, and the beautiful; and, so far as we know, man is the highest intelligence. And yet man continues to believe that there is some power independent of and superior to nature, and still endeavors, by form, ceremony, supplication, hypocrisy and sacrifice, to obtain its aid. His best energies have been wasted in the service of this phantom. The horrors of witchcraft were all born of an ignorant belief in the existence of a totally depraved being superior to nature, acting in perfect independence of her laws; and all religious superstition has had for its basis a belief in at least two beings, one good and the other bad, both of whom could arbitrarily change the order of the universe. The history of religion is simply the story of man's efforts in all ages to avoid one of these powers, and to pacify the other. Both powers have inspired little else than, abject fear. The cold, calculating sneer of the devil, and the frown of, God, were equally terrible. In any event, man's fate was to be arbitrarily fixed forever by an unknown power superior to all law, and to all fact. Until this belief is thrown aside, man must consider himself the slave of phantom masters--neither of whom promise liberty in this world nor in the next. Man must learn to rely upon himself. Reading bibles will not protect him from the blasts of winter, but houses, fires, and clothing will. To prevent famine, one plow is worth a million sermons, and even patent medicines will cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered since the beginning of the world. Although many eminent men have endeavored to harmonize necessity and free will, the existence of evil, and the infinite power and goodness of God, they have succeeded only in producing learned and ingenious failures. Immense efforts have been made to reconcile ideas utterly inconsistent with the facts by which we are surrounded, and all persons who have failed to perceive the pretended reconciliation, have been denounced as infidels, atheists and scoffers. The whole power of the church has been brought to bear against philosophers and scientists in order to compel a denial of the authority of demonstration, and to induce some Judas to betray Reason, one of the saviors of mankind. During that frightful period known as the "Dark Ages" Faith reigned, with scarcely a rebellious subject. Her temples were "carpeted with knees," and the wealth of nations adorned her countless shrines. The great painters prostituted their genius to immortalize her vagaries, while the poets enshrined them in song. At her bidding, man covered the earth with blood. The scales of Justice were turned with her gold, and for her use were invented all the cunning instruments of pain. She built cathedrals for God, and dungeons for men. She peopled the clouds with angels and the earth with slaves. For centuries the world was retracing its steps--going steadily back towards barbaric night! A few infidels--a few heretics cried, "Halt!" to the great rabble of ignorant devotion, and made it possible for the genius of the nineteenth century to revolutionize the cruel creeds and superstitions of mankind. The thoughts of man, in order to be of any real worth, must be free. Under the influence of fear the brain is paralyzed, and instead of bravely solving a problem for itself, tremblingly adopts the solution of another. As long as a majority of men will cringe to the very earth before some petty prince or king, what must be the infinite abjectness of their little souls in the presence of their supposed creator and God? Under such circumstances, what can their thoughts be worth? The originality of repetition, and the mental vigor of acquiescence, are all that we have any right to expect from the Christian world. As long as every question is answered by the word "god," scientific inquiry is simply impossible. As fast as phenomena are satisfactorily explained the domain of the power, supposed to be superior to nature must decrease, while the horizon of the known must as constantly continue to enlarge. It is no longer satisfactory to account for the fall and rise of nations by saying, "It is the will of God." Such an explanation puts ignorance and education upon an exact equality, and does away with the idea of really accounting for anything whatever. Will the religionist pretend that the real end of science is to ascertain how and why God acts? Science, from such a standpoint would consist in investigating the law of arbitrary action, and in a grand endeavor to ascertain the rules necessarily obeyed by infinite caprice. From a philosophical point of view, science is knowledge of the laws of life; of the conditions of happiness; of the facts by which we are surrounded, and the relations we sustain to men and things--by means of which, man, so to speak, subjugates nature and bends the elemental powers to his will, making blind force the servant of his brain. A belief in special providence does away with the spirit of investigation, and is inconsistent with personal effort Why should man endeavor to thwart the designs of God? Which of your by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature? Under the influence of this belief, man, basking in the sunshine of a delusion, considers the lilies of the field and refuses to take any-thought for the morrow. Believing himself in the power of an infinite being, who can, at any moment, dash him to the lowest hell or raise him to the highest heaven, he necessarily abandons the idea of accomplishing anything by his own efforts. As long as this belief was general, the world was filled with ignorance, superstition and misery. The energies of man were wasted in a vain effort to obtain the aid of this power, supposed to be superior to nature. For countless ages, even men were sacrificed upon the altar of this impossible god. To please him, mothers have shed the blood of their own babes; martyrs have chanted triumphant songs in the midst of flame; priests have gorged themselves with blood; nuns have forsworn the ecstacies of love; old men have tremblingly implored; women have sobbed and entreated; every pain has been endured, and every horror has been perpetrated. Through the dim long years that have fled, humanity has suffered more than can be conceived Most of the misery has been endured by the weak, the loving and the innocent Women have been treated like poisonous beasts, and little children trampled upon as though they had been vermin. Numberless altars have been reddened, even with the blood of babes; beautiful girls have been given to slimy serpents; whole races of men doomed to centuries of slavery, and everywhere there has been outrage beyond the power of genius to express. During all these years the suffering have supplicated; the withered lips of famine have prayed; the pale victims have implored, and Heaven has been deaf and blind. Of what use have the gods been to man? It is no answer to say that some god created the world, established certain laws, and then turned his attention to other matters, leaving his children weak, ignorant and unaided, to fight the battle of life alone. It is no solution to declare that in some other world this god will render a few, or even all, his subjects happy. What right have we to expect that a perfectly wise, good and powerful being will ever do better than he has done, and is doing? The world is filled with imperfections. If it was made by an infinite being, what reason have we for saying that he will render it nearer perfect than it now is? If the infinite "Father" allows a majority of his children to live in ignorance and wretchedness now, what evidence is there that he will ever improve their condition? Will God have more power? Will he become more merciful? Will his love for his poor creatures increase? Can the conduct of infinite wisdom, power and love ever change? Is the infinite capable of any improvement whatever? We are informed by the clergy that this world is a kind of school; that the evils by which we are surrounded are for the purpose of developing our souls, and that only by suffering can men become pure, strong, virtuous and grand. Supposing this to be true, what is to become of those who die in infancy? The little children, according to this philosophy, can never be developed. They were so unfortunate as to escape the ennobling influences of pain and misery, and as a consequence, are doomed to an eternity of mental inferiority. If the clergy are right on this question, none are so unfortunate as the happy, and we should envy only the suffering and distressed. If evil is necessary to the development of man, in this life, how is it possible for the soul to improve in the perfect joy of paradise? Since Paley found his watch, the argument of "design" has been relied upon as unanswerable. The Church teaches that this world, and all that it contains, were created substantially as we now see them; that the grasses, the flowers, the trees, and all animals, including man, were special creations, and that they sustain no necessary relation to each other. The most orthodox will admit that some earth has been washed into the sea; that the sea has encroached a little upon the land, and that some mountains may be a trifle lower than in the morning of creation. The theory of gradual development was unknown to our fathers; the idea of evolution did not occur to them. Our fathers looked upon the then arrangement of things as the primal arrangement The earth appeared to them fresh from the hands of a deity. They knew nothing of the slow evolutions of countless years, but supposed that the almost infinite variety of vegetable and animal forms had existed from the first. Suppose that upon some island we should find a man a million years of age, and suppose that we should find him in the possession of a most beautiful carriage, constructed upon the most perfect model. And suppose, further, that he should tell us that it was the result of several hundred thousand years of labor and of thought; that for fifty thousand years he used as flat a log as he could find, before it occurred to him, that by splitting the log, he could have the same surface with only half the weight; that it took him many thousand years to invent wheels for this log; that the wheels he first used were solid, and that fifty thousand years of thought suggested the use of spokes and tire; that for many centuries he used the wheels without linch-pins; that it took a hundred thousand years more to think of using four wheels, instead of two; that for ages he walked behind the carriage, when going down hill, in order to hold it back, and that only by a lucky chance he invented the tongue; would we conclude that this man, from the very first, had been an infinitely ingenious and perfect mechanic? Suppose we found him living in an elegant mansion, and he should inform us that he lived in that house for five hundred thousand years before he thought of putting on a roof, and that he had but recently invented windows and doors; would we say that from the beginning he had been an infinitely accomplished and scientific architect? Does not an improvement in the things created, show a corresponding improvement in the creator? Would an infinitely wise, good and powerful God, intending to produce man, commence with the lowest possible forms of life; with the simplest organism that can be imagined, and during immeasurable periods of time, slowly and almost imperceptibly improve upon the rude beginning, until man was evolved? Would countless ages thus be wasted in the production of awkward forms, afterwards abandoned? Can the intelligence of man discover the least wisdom in covering the earth with crawling, creeping horrors, that live only upon the agonies and pangs of others? Can we see the propriety of so constructing the earth, that only an insignificant portion of its surface is capable of producing an intelligent man? Who can appreciate the mercy of so making the world that all animals devour animals; so that every mouth is a slaughterhouse, and every stomach a tomb? Is it possible to discover infinite intelligence and love in universal and eternal carnage? What would we think of a father, who should give a farm to his children, and before giving them possession should plant upon it thousands of deadly shrubs and vines; should stock it with ferocious beasts, and poisonous reptiles; should take pains to put a few swamps in the neighborhood to breed malaria; should so arrange matters, that the ground would occasionally open and swallow a few of his darlings, and besides all this, should establish a few volcanoes in the immediate vicinity, that might at any moment overwhelm his children with rivers of fire? Suppose that this father neglected to tell his children which of the plants were deadly; that the reptiles were poisonous; failed to say anything about the earthquakes, and kept the volcano business a profound secret; would we pronounce him angel or fiend? And yet this is exactly what the orthodox God has done. According to the theologians, God prepared this globe expressly for the habitation of his loved children, and yet he filled the forests with ferocious beasts; placed serpents in every path; stuffed the world with earthquakes, and adorned its surface with mountains of flame. Notwithstanding all this, we are told that the world is perfect; that it was created by a perfect being, and is therefore necessarily perfect. The next moment, these same persons will tell us that the world was cursed; covered with brambles, thistles and thorns, and that man was doomed to disease and death, simply because our poor, dear mother ate an apple contrary to the command of an arbitrary God. A very pious friend of mine, having heard that I had said the world was full of imperfections, asked me if the report was true. Upon being informed that it was, he expressed great surprise that any one could be guilty of such presumption. He said that, in his judgment, it was impossible to point out an imperfection. "Be kind enough," said he, "to name even one improvement that you could make, if you had the power." "Well," said I, "I would make good health catching, instead of disease." The truth is, it is impossible to harmonize all the ills, and pains, and agonies of this world with the idea that we were created by, and are watched over and protected by an infinitely wise, powerful and beneficent God, who is superior to and independent of nature. The clergy, however, balance all the real ills of this life with the expected joys of the next We are assured that all is perfection in heaven--there the skies are cloudless--there all is serenity and peace. Here empires may be overthrown; dynasties may be extinguished in blood; millions of slaves may toil 'neath the fierce rays of the sun, and the cruel strokes of the lash; yet all is happiness in heaven. Pestilences may strew the earth with corpses of the loved; the survivors may bend above them in agony--yet the placid bosom of heaven is unruffled. Children may expire vainly asking for bread; babes may be devoured by serpents, while the gods sit smiling in the clouds. The innocent may languish unto death in the obscurity of dungeons; brave men and heroic women may be changed to ashes at the bigot's stake, while heaven is filled with song and joy. Out on the wide sea, in darkness and in storm, the shipwrecked struggle with the cruel waves while the angels play upon their golden harps. The streets of the world are filled with the diseased, the deformed and the helpless; the chambers of pain are crowded with the pale forms of the suffering, while the angels float and fly in the happy realms of day. In heaven they are too happy to have sympathy; too busy singing to aid the imploring and distressed. Their eyes are blinded; their ears are stopped and their hearts are turned to stone by the infinite selfishness of joy. The saved mariner is too happy when he touches the shore to give a moment's thought to his drowning brothers. With the indifference of happiness, with the contempt of bliss, heaven barely glances at the miseries of earth. Cities are devoured by the rushing lava; the earth opens and thousands perish; women raise their clasped hands towards heaven, but the gods are too happy to aid their children. The smiles of the deities are unacquainted with the tears of men. The shouts of heaven drown the sobs of earth. Having shown how man created gods, and how he became the trembling slave of his own creation, the questions naturally arise: How did he free himself even a little, from these monarchs of the sky, from these despots of the clouds, from this aristocracy of the air? How did he, even to the extent that he has, outgrow his ignorant, abject terror, and throw off the yoke of superstition? Probably, the first thing that tended to disabuse his mind was the discovery of order, of regularity, of periodicity in the universe. From this he began to suspect that everything did not happen purely with reference to him. He noticed, that whatever he might do, the motions of the planets were always the same; that eclipses were periodical, and that even comets came at certain intervals. This convinced him that eclipses and comets had nothing to do with him, and that his conduct had nothing to do with them. He perceived that they were not caused for his benefit or injury. He thus learned to regard them with admiration instead of fear. He began to suspect that famine was not sent by some enraged and revengeful deity, but resulted often from the neglect and ignorance of man. He learned that diseases were not produced by evil spirits. He found that sickness was occasioned by natural causes, and could be cured by natural means. He demonstrated, to his own satisfaction at least, that prayer is not a medicine. He found by sad experience that his gods were of no practical use, as they never assisted him, except when he was perfectly able to help himself. At last, he began to discover that his individual action had nothing whatever to do with strange appearances in the heavens; that it was impossible for him to be bad enough to cause a whirlwind, or good enough to stop one. After many centuries of thought, he about half concluded that making mouths at a priest would not necessarily cause an earthquake. He noticed, and no doubt with considerable astonishment, that very good men were occasionally struck by lightning, while very bad ones escaped. He was frequently forced to the painful conclusion (and it is the most painful to which any human being ever was forced) that the right did not always prevail. He noticed that the gods did not interfere in behalf of the weak and innocent. He was now and then astonished by seeing an unbeliever in the enjoyment of most excellent health. He finally ascertained that, there could be no possible connection between an unusually severe winter and his failure to give a sheep to a priest. He began to suspect that the order of the universe was not constantly being changed to assist him because he repeated a creed. He observed that some children would steal after having been regularly baptized. He noticed a vast difference between religion and justice, and that the worshipers of the same God, took delight in cutting each other's throats. He saw that these religious disputes filled the world with hatred and slavery. At last he had the courage to suspect, that no God at any time interferes with the order of events. He learned a few facts, and these facts positively refused to harmonize with the ignorant superstitions of his fathers. Finding his sacred books incorrect and false in some particulars, his faith in their authenticity began to be shaken; finding his priests ignorant upon some points, he began to lose respect for the cloth. This was the commencement of intellectual freedom. The civilization of man has increased just to the same extent that religious power has decreased. The intellectual advancement of man depends upon how often he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth. The Church never enabled a human being to make even one of these exchanges; on the contrary, all her power has been used to prevent them. In spite, however, of the Church, man found that some of his religious conceptions were wrong. By reading his bible, he found that the ideas of his God were more cruel and brutal than those of the most depraved savage. He also discovered that this holy book was filled with ignorance, and that it must have been written by persons wholly unacquainted with the nature of the phenomena by which we are surrounded; and now and then, some man had the goodness and courage to speak his honest thoughts. In every age some thinker, some doubter, some investigator, some hater of hypocrisy, some despiser of sham, some brave lover of the right, has gladly, proudly and heroically braved the ignorant fury of superstition for the sake of man and truth. These divine men were generally torn in pieces by the worshipers of the gods. Socrates was poisoned because he lacked reverence for some of the deities. Christ was crucified by a religious rabble for the crime of blasphemy. Nothing is more gratifying to a religionist than to destroy his enemies at the command of God. Religious persecution springs from a due admixture of love towards God and hatred towards man. The terrible religious wars that inundated the world with blood tended at least to bring all religion into disgrace and hatred. Thoughtful people began to question the divine origin of a religion that made its believers hold the rights of others in absolute contempt. A few began to compare Christianity with the religions of heathen people, and were forced to admit that the difference was hardly worth dying for. They also found that other nations were even happier and more prosperous than their own. They began to suspect that their religion, after all, was not of much real value. For three hundred years the Christian world endeavored to rescue from the "Infidel" the empty sepulchre of Christ For three hundred years the armies of the cross were baffled and beaten by the victorious hosts of an impudent impostor. This immense fact sowed the seeds of distrust throughout all Christendom, and millions began to lose confidence in a God who had been vanquished by-Mohammed. The people also found that commerce made friends where religion made enemies, and that religious zeal was utterly incompatible with peace between nations or individuals. They discovered that those who loved the gods most were apt to love men least; that the arrogance of universal forgiveness was amazing; that the most malicious had the effrontery to pray for their enemies, and that humility and tyranny were the fruit of the same tree. For ages, a deadly conflict has been waged between a few brave men and women of thought and genius upon the one side, and the great ignorant religious mass on the other. This is the war between Science and Faith. The few have appealed to reason, to honor, to law, to freedom to the known, and to happiness here in this world. The many have appealed to prejudice, to fear, to miracle, to slavery, to the unknown, and to misery hereafter. The few have said, "Think!" The many have said, "Believe!" The first doubt was the womb and cradle of progress, and from the first doubt, man has continued to advance. Men began to investigate, and the church began to oppose. The astronomer scanned the heavens, while the church branded his grand forehead with the word, "Infidel;" and now, not a glittering star in all the vast expanse bears a Christian name. In spite of all religion, the geologist penetrated the earth, read her history in books of stone, and found, hidden within her bosom, souvenirs of all the ages. Old ideas perished in the retort of the chemist, and useful truths took their places. One by one religious conceptions have been placed in the crucible of science, and thus far, nothing but dross has been found. A new world has been discovered by the microscope; everywhere has been found the infinite; in every direction man has investigated and explored, and nowhere, in earth or stars, has been found the footstep of any being superior to or independent of nature. Nowhere has been discovered the slightest evidence of any interference from without. These are the sublime truths that enabled man to throw off the yoke of superstition. These are the splendid facts that snatched the sceptre of authority from the hands of priests. In that vast cemetery, called the past, are most of the religions of men, and there, too, are nearly all their gods. The sacred temples of India were ruins long ago. Over column and cornice; over the painted and pictured walls, cling and creep the trailing vines. Brahma, the golden, with four heads and four arms; Vishnu, the sombre, the punisher of the wicked, with his three eyes, his crescent, and his necklace of skulls; Siva, the destroyer, red with seas of blood; Kali, the goddess; Draupadi, the white-armed, and Chrishna, the Christ, all passed away and left the thrones of heaven desolate. Along the banks of the sacred Nile, Isis no longer wandering weeps, searching for the dead Osiris. The shadow of Typhon's scowl falls no more upon the waves. The sun rises as of yore, and his golden beams still smite the lips of Memnon, but Mem-non is as voiceless as the Sphinx. The sacred fanes are lost in desert sands; the dusty mummies are still waiting for the resurrection promised by their priests, and the old beliefs, wrought in curiously sculptured stone, sleep in the mystery of a language lost and dead. Odin, the author of life and soul, Vili and Ve, and the mighty giant Ymir, strode long ago from the icy halls of the North; and Thor, with iron glove and glittering hammer, dashes mountains to the earth no more. Broken are the circles and cromlechs of the ancient Druids; fallen upon the summits of the hills, and covered with the centuries' moss, are the sacred cairns. The divine fires of Persia and of the Aztecs, have died out in the ashes of the past, and there is none to rekindle, and none to feed the holy flames. The harp of Orpheus is still; the drained cup of Bacchus has been thrown aside; Venus lies dead in stone, and her white bosom heaves no more with love. The streams still murmur, but no naiads bathe; the trees still wave, but in the forest aisles no dryads dance. The gods have flown from high Olympus. Not even the beautiful women can lure them back, and Danse lies unnoticed, naked to the stars. Hushed forever are the thunders of Sinai; lost are the voices of the prophets, and the land once flowing with milk and honey, is but a desert waste. One by one, the myths have faded from the clouds; one by one, the phantom host has disappeared, and one by one, facts, truths and realities have taken their places. The supernatural has almost gone, but the natural remains. The gods have fled, but man is here. Nations, like individuals, have their periods of youth, of manhood and decay. Religions are the same. The same inexorable destiny awaits them all. The gods created by the nations must perish with their creators. They were created by men, and like men, they must pass away. The deities of one age are the by-words of the next. The religion of our day, and country, is no more exempt from the sneer of the future than the others have been. When India was supreme, Brahma sat upon the world's throne. When the sceptre passed to Egypt, Isis and Osiris received the homage of mankind. Greece, with her fierce valor, swept to empire, and Zeus put on the purple of authority. The earth trembled with the tread of Rome's intrepid sons, and Jove grasped with mailed hand the thunderbolts of heaven. Rome fell, and Christians from her territory, with the red sword of war, carved out the ruling nations of the world, and now Christ sits upon the old throne. Who will be his successor? Day by day, religious conceptions grow less and less intense. Day by day, the old spirit dies out of book and creed. The burning enthusiasm, the quenchless zeal of the early church have gone, never, never to return. The ceremonies remain, but the ancient faith is fading out of the human heart. The worn-out arguments fail to convince, and denunciations that once blanched the faces of a race, excite in us only derision and disgust. As time rolls on, the miracles grow mean and small, and the evidences our fathers thought conclusive utterly fail to satisfy us. There is an "irrepressible conflict" between religion and science, and they cannot peaceably occupy the same brain nor the same world. While utterly discarding all creeds, and denying the truth of all religions, there is neither in my heart nor upon my lips a sneer for the hopeful, loving and tender souls who believe that from all this discord will result a perfect harmony; that every evil will in some mysterious way become a good, and that above and over all there is a being who, in some way, will reclaim and glorify every one of the children of men; but for those who heartlessly try to prove that salvation is almost impossible; that damnation is almost certain; that the highway of the universe leads to hell; who fill life with fear and death with horror; who curse the cradle and mock the tomb, it is impossible to entertain other than feelings of pity, contempt and scorn. Reason, Observation and Experience--the Holy Trinity of Science--have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us. In this belief we are content to live and die. If by any possibility the existence of a power superior to, and independent of, nature shall be demonstrated, there will then be time enough to kneel. Until then, let us stand erect. Notwithstanding the fact that infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have at all times been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice, we are constantly charged by the Church with tearing down without building again. The Church should by this time know that it is utterly impossible to rob men of their opinions. The history of religious persecution fully establishes the fact that the mind necessarily resists and defies every attempt to control it by violence. The mind necessarily clings to old ideas until prepared for the new. The moment we comprehend the truth, all erroneous ideas are of necessity cast aside. A surgeon once called upon a poor cripple and kindly offered to render him any assistance in his power. The surgeon began to discourse very learnedly upon the nature and origin of disease; of the curative properties of certain medicines; of the advantages of exercise, air and light, and of the various ways in which health and strength could be restored. These remarks were so full of good sense, and discovered so much profound thought and accurate knowledge, that the cripple, becoming thoroughly alarmed, cried out, "Do not, I pray you, take away my crutches. They are my only support, and without them I should be miserable indeed!" "I am not going," said the surgeon, "to take away your crutches. I am going to cure you, and then you will throw the crutches away yourself." For the vagaries of the clouds the infidels propose to substitute the realities of earth; for superstition, the splendid demonstrations and achievements of science; and for theological tyranny, the chainless liberty of thought. We do not say that we have discovered all; that our doctrines are the all in all of truth. We know of no end to the development of man. We cannot unravel the infinite complications of matter and force. The history of one monad is as unknown as that of the universe; one drop of water is as wonderful as all the seas; one leaf, as all the forests; and one grain of sand, as all the stars. We are not endeavoring to chain the future, but to free the present. We are not forging fetters for our children, but we are breaking those our fathers made for us. We are the advocates of inquiry, of investigation and thought. This of itself, is an admission that we are not perfectly satisfied with all our conclusions. Philosophy has not the egotism of faith. While superstition builds walls and creates obstructions, science opens all the highways of thought. We do not pretend to have circumnavigated everything, and to have solved all difficulties, but we do believe that it is better to love men than to fear gods; that it is grander and nobler to think and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed. We are satisfied that there can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven. We do not expect to accomplish everything in our day; but we want to do what good we can, and to render all the service possible in the holy cause of human progress. We know that doing away with gods and supernatural persons and powers is not an end. It is a means to an end: the real end being the happiness of man. Felling forests is not the end of agriculture. Driving pirates from the sea is not all there is of commerce. We are laying the foundations of the grand temple of the future--not the temple of all the gods, but of all the people--wherein, with appropriate rites, will be celebrated the religion of Humanity. We are doing what little we can to hasten the coming of the day when society shall cease producing millionaires and mendicants--gorged indolence and famished industry--truth in rags, and superstition robed and crowned. We are looking for the time when the useful shall be the honorable; and when Reason, throned upon the world's brain, shall be the King of Kings, and God of Gods. 
45053	----	Gutenberg THE CHURCHES AND MODERN THOUGHT AN INQUIRY INTO THE GROUNDS OF UNBELIEF AND AN APPEAL FOR CANDOUR BY PHILIP VIVIAN "Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely." --Macaulay. London: WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET. E.C. 1911 TO MY WIFE AND CHILDREN CONTENTS Preface to First Edition Preface to Second Edition Preface to Third Edition Chapter I. THE GRAVITY OF THE PRESENT SITUATION § 1. The Truth of the Matter § 2. The Attitude of the Laity § 3. Christianity and Science not Reconciled § 4. The Genesis and Character of the New Outburst § 5. Apologetics "Found Wanting" § 6. More Things Which Confuse the Issue Chapter II. THE EXTRAORDINARY STATE OF APOLOGETICS WITH REGARD TO MIRACLES § 1. Preliminary Remarks The View of Science Why Have Miracles Ceased? Belief in Miracles Essential § 2. Miracle Apologetics § 3. The Fundamental Miracles The Resurrection The Ascension The Incarnation Concluding Remarks Chapter III. THE DESTRUCTIVE CHARACTER OF MODERN BIBLE CRITICISM § 1. Clashing Views on Bible Criticism § 2. A Summary of the Results of Bible Criticism § 3. By Whom the "Higher Criticism" is Accepted § 4. Admissions by Orthodox Apologists § 5. Some Remaining Difficulties We Must Accept the Whole or Reject the Whole Silence of Historians Thoughts on "Tradition" As God's Method for The Transmission of Truth To Posterity The Alleged Sinlessness of Jesus Christ The Ignorance of Jesus Christ Chapter IV. THE GRAVE SUSPICIONS AROUSED BY THE STUDY OF ANCIENT BELIEFS § 1. The New Theological Theory of a Progressive Revelation § 2. Parallels in Ancient Religions, and Some Remarks Upon Them Krishna and Buddha Parallels Other Than Krishna and Buddha Are the Krishna and Buddha Legends Borrowed from Christianity? § 3. Parallels in the Beliefs of Primitive Man, And Some Remarks Upon Them The Religions of Ancient America Vegetation Gods Why Men Eat Their God § 4. The Solar Myth Jonah and the Whale Anticipations of Christianity in Solar Myths The Christian Theory Ignored by Science The Sun As a Symbol § 5. Concluding Remarks on Christian and Anti-Christian Theories Argument from Essenism Argument from Mithraism Chapter V. IRRECONCILABLE DIFFICULTIES CONNECTED WITH EVOLUTION § 1. Preliminary Remarks The Doctrine of Evolution Darwinism The Average Person's Ideas on the Evolution of Man The Attitude of the Church § 2. "Nature Red in Tooth and Claw" § 3. The Bible Account of Creation Irreconcilable with Science in Each and Every Respect § 4. Proofs of our Animal Origin The Extraordinary Affinity of Bodily Structure The Revelations of Embryology The Tale Told by the Useless Rudimentary Organs § 5. The Overthrow of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin The Importance of the Question An Instructive Criticism The Bishop of Worcester's Theory The Archdeacon of Manchester's Theory The Rationalist's Theory Conclusions Chapter VI. THE FAILURE OF THEISTIC ARGUMENTS § 1. Preliminary Remarks Theism, and Who Are Theists § 2. The Existence of a First Cause--An Uncaused Cause § 3. The First Cause an Intelligence Design and Directivity Directivity Design Differences of Opinion Among Theistic Apologists § 4. The First Cause a Beneficent Intelligence A Personal God Divine Immanence in Nature A Fact in History The Past and Present Position of the Ethical Argument Evil for which Man is not Held Responsible Evil for which Man is Held Responsible Conscience Free-will § 5. Religious Experience Mysticism and Conversion The Psychology of Prayer The Religious (?) Experiences of Intoxication Music and the Emotions Sexual Love Revivalism § 6. The Inevitable Conclusion Note on Religion and Philosophy Chapter VII. FALLACIES IN POPULAR ARGUMENTS § 1. Preliminary Remarks--The Power of Christianity for Good § 2. Christianity Woman's Best Friend § 3. The Overthrow of Christianity Would Endanger Society and the Nation § 4. The Spread of Christianity a Proof of its Truth § 5. The Noble Army of Martyrs § 6. The Universality of the Religious Instinct The Hypothesis Stated The Rationalist's Contention The Apologist's Views concerning Superstition and the Religious Instinct Beliefs of Savage Man Magic and Religion Religion in Modern China Apostates in Christendom Religion in Modern Japan Classical History Note on Human Sentiment as to a Future Life Chapter VIII. CONCLUSION § 1. A Summary § 2. Why Lead a Moral Life? Preliminary Remarks The Necessity for Morality Uselessness of Vague Threats The Need for an Early Education in Ethical Principles The Object-Lesson Furnished by the Japanese Criminality Our Aids The Importance of a Knowledge of the Origin of Morality Opinions of Ethicists Note on Systematic Moral Instruction § 3. Should the Truth be Told? (a) "Magna est veritas et prævalebit" (b) Obscurantism has had its Day (c) The Effect on Morality (d) The Real Danger (e) The Consolations of Belief, and the Distress we may Cause by our Candour (f) Can we Alter People's Beliefs? (g) Can Beliefs be Useful though False? (h) Is a New Religion Required? (i) Why be so Impatient of Error? § 4. The Outlook § 5. Concluding Remarks Appendix Index An edition of this book is issued in cloth at 1s. 6d. net, and another on superior paper, gilt lettered, at 3s. 6d. net. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION What does a man seek when he examines his religious creed? To this question Canon Liddon replies as follows:--"He seeks intellectual satisfaction and moral support. His intellect asks for reliable information upon certain subjects of the most momentous importance. How does he come here? Whither is he going? What is the purpose and drift of the various forms of existence around him? Above all, what is the nature, what are the attributes and dispositions, of that Being to whom the highest yearnings of his inmost self constantly point as the true object of his existence? In asking that the answers to these questions shall be definite, that what is certain shall be affirmed as certain, what is doubtful as doubtful, what is false as false, he is only asking that his religious information shall be presented in as clear and practical a shape as his information on other subjects. In no department of human knowledge is haziness deemed a merit; by nothing is an educated mind more distinguished than by a resolute effort to mark the exact frontiers of its knowledge and its ignorance; to hesitate only when hesitation is necessary; to despair of knowledge only when knowledge is ascertainably out of reach. Surely on the highest and most momentous of all subjects this same precision may be asked for with reverence and in reason; surely the human mind is not bound to forget its noblest instincts when it approaches the throne and presence of its Maker?" (Some Elements of Religion, p. 24). Again, in his New Year's message for 1905, the Archbishop of Canterbury condemns indifference to truth as a vice, and "drifting along the current of popular opinion" as a sin. He invites and persuades us to use "the sadly-neglected powers and privileges of rational thought and common sense." The duty of thinking, therefore, is now recognised by the Church--it was not formerly. But what will be the result of this thinking? In his book, The Hearts of Men, Mr. Fielding tells us that "no man has ever sat down calmly unbiassed to reason out his religion, and not ended by rejecting it." Mr. Fielding adds: "The great men, who have been always religious, do not invalidate what I say.... There is no assumption more fallacious than that, because a man is a keen reasoner on one subject, he is also on another. Men who are strictly religious, who believe in their faith, whatever their faith may be, consider it above proof, beyond argument.... It is emotion, not reason; feeling, not induction." (The Hearts of Men, pp. 142-3.) Does not this deep and sympathetic writer furnish us with a true picture of men's hearts? What if, after exercising their privileges of rational thought and common sense, the majority of men find that Christianity no longer gives them either intellectual satisfaction or moral support? What if they finally arrive at the conclusion that Christianity and all supernatural beliefs are but the survival of primitive superstitions which can no longer bear the light of modern knowledge? These are the grave questions which now confront us. A man may enter, and generally does enter, upon his inquiry biassed in favour of religious belief of some kind. He approaches the subject in a reverent frame of mind. In his private prayers to his God he does not neglect to ask for heavenly guidance. He evinces precisely the spirit which a divine would consider becoming. But as his inquiry proceeds there comes a time when his religious bias disappears--when he can no longer feel what he could honestly call reverence. He discovers that what he thought was known, and had actually been revealed, is unknown. How can he believe in and worship the Unknown? More than ever he feels his own insignificance and ignorance; but the feeling thus excited, while akin to awe, is divested of reverence. Pursuing his search far enough, he succeeds in extricating himself from a quagmire of demonstrably false superstitions. Finally he reaches solid ground, and builds his life upon it. Unfortunately, many never pursue their inquiry up to this stage; they become fearful, or they give it up as a hopeless entanglement, or they find they have not the requisite leisure. Perhaps, therefore, the information gained by one of the more fortunate may be of some little service to others. It will be my endeavour to set forth in this book not only the destructive, but also the constructive, results of a search for truth. P. V. January, 1906. PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION "This book," writes one of its clerical critics, [1] "is evidently the honest, outspoken opinion of one who, having been brought up in an unquestioning acceptance of the orthodox doctrines of Christianity, has gradually drifted into the extreme of Rationalism." Up to a certain point my friend is right. I was indeed brought up in an unquestioning acceptance of the orthodox teachings of Christianity; but, while my conversion to Rationalism has certainly been gradual, I may fairly claim that the process has been something very different from merely drifting. Long and careful study, the reluctant abandonment of a cherished belief, the adoption of an attitude which is unpopular and which distresses many who are near and dear to me, the practical application of the principles of Rationalism to daily life, involving as it does the serious step of bringing up my children in strict accordance with my firm convictions--these are surely not the ways of one who has permitted himself to drift. A man might--he often does--drift into indifferentism, or, now that theology is so liberal and heterodoxy so rife, into latitudinarianism, but hardly into "the extreme of Rationalism." I take this opportunity of cordially thanking all who have assisted me, and specially I have to thank Mr. Joseph McCabe and Dr. H. D. R. Kingston for reading the MS. and the proofs in all their stages, and for pointing out verbal inaccuracies and suggesting improvements both in the matter and in the manner of presenting it. I am also much indebted to a lady, who does not wish her name to appear, for lightening the task of proof correction. P. V. January, 1907. PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION The present edition consists of 10,000 copies, bringing the total issue to 31,000. Apart from a few alterations in the chapter dealing with ancient beliefs, the work is unchanged. P. V. April, 1911. THE SITUATION Chapter I. THE GRAVITY OF THE PRESENT SITUATION § 1. The Truth of the Matter. Before entering upon an inquiry into religious unbelief, we need to form a correct estimate of its prevalence. If, as many would have us think, there is nothing unusual in the present situation--if the age of faith is returning, [2] it is hardly worth while to enter upon this inquiry at all. If, on the other hand, the forces hostile to the Christian faith differ essentially from those that stirred up waves of scepticism in the past--if there is overwhelming evidence that belief among educated men is fast decaying, it is surely high time to investigate the grounds of unbelief, and to welcome the fullest discussion concerning the best means of dealing with an entirely new and extremely grave situation. It is only the shortest-sighted policy that would shelve a disagreeable question until mischief had occurred. It is better to face the facts. From every point of view, concealment regarding a question of such vital importance as the truth of Christianity is to be deplored; while an attitude of indifference on a subject that should be of surpassing interest to us all can only be characterised as amazing--unless, indeed, the real explanation be that men have ceased to believe. We must, then, determine, in the first place, whether we are witnessing simply a wave of scepticism that will shortly subside again, or whether the present situation in the religious world is altogether unprecedented. The truth of the matter will best be learnt from the lips of those to whom pessimistic admissions must be peculiarly distressing, and who would therefore be the last either to raise a false alarm or to be guilty of an exaggeration. The Bishop of London has warned us [3] that "the truth of the matter really is that all over Europe a great conflict is being fought between the old faith in a supernatural revelation and a growing disbelief in it." The Bishop of Salisbury lately [4] said: "There has been revealed to us the terrible and painful fact that a great many are giving up public worship, and that a large proportion of the people of England pay little attention to religion at all." Not long ago Lord Hugh Cecil expressed [5] the same opinion in the following words: "On all sides there are signs of the decay of the Faith. People do not go to church, or, if they go, it is for the sake of the music, or for some non-religious motive. The evidence is overwhelming that the doctrines of Christianity have passed into the region of doubt." From Dr. Horton we learn that "vast numbers of people in England to-day have forsaken the best and highest ideal of life known to them before they have found a better and higher.... While Professor Haeckel and Professor Ray Lankester do in their way offer an alternative, and present to us the solution of the great enigma according to their light, the bulk of people in our day surrender the old and tried ideal, fling it aside, assume that it is discredited, live without it, and make no serious attempt to find a better ideal." [6] Are there not indications, moreover, everywhere in the literature of the day? The works of some of our greatest scholars are either covertly or openly agnostic. The more thoughtful of our magazines, such as the Nineteenth Century, Fortnightly Review, Hibbert Journal, Independent Review, etc., are continually publishing articles which teem with heterodoxy. The "Do We Believe?" correspondence in the Daily Telegraph (not to mention the more recent controversies in the Standard, Daily Mail, and Daily News) was without precedent, and highly significant of the present state of religious unrest. In a lecture reported in the Tablet, Father Gerard voiced the growing feeling of apprehension when he referred to the "Do We Believe?" controversy and the "amazing success" of the Rationalist Press Association as indicating a situation of "the utmost gravity, as gravely disquieting as any with which in her long career the Church has ever been confronted." Also it may be noticed that organised efforts have commenced all over England to answer inquiries concerning the truth of Christianity by means of apologetic literature and lectures. What do these inquiries portend? The reply is given in the warning of the Rev. Mark Pattison in his essay on "Tendencies of Religious Thought in England." "When an age," he says, "is found occupied in proving its creed, this is but a token that the age has ceased to have a proper belief in it." Whichever way we turn the same spectacle confronts us. In France especially, and also in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Spain, the United States, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Brazil, and Argentina (where the men are practically all agnostics), freethought is making rapid progress. Only in Russia, where ninety per cent. of the population are uneducated, is the growth small and confined to the "intellectuals." Never in the world's history has there been so much disbelief in the "supernatural"; and, with the advance of science and education, this disbelief appears likely to be one day almost universal. Militant Rationalism is jubilant; while the pastor of the Theistic Church [7] proclaims: "I see a battle coming. I do not, like Froude, predict that it will be fought once more, as of old, in blood and tears; but I am as certain as I am of to-morrow's dawn that a mighty conflict is at hand which will revolutionise the religious thought and feeling of Christendom." It is sheer folly for the Church to comfort herself with the reflection that this is not the first time in the history of Christianity that disbelief has manifested itself. In the early days of the Church the heretic was not in possession of the knowledge that we have since acquired. He could not support his views, as he can now, with the facts of science. At every step he could be met by arguments which he had no adequate means of refuting, and if he dared to deny the "supernatural" there was an enormous preponderance of public opinion against him. Indeed, he himself generally believed in the "supernatural," though he was sceptical of the particular evidence of it on which Christianity had been founded. Retarded by Christianity itself--or, shall we say, by its interpreters?--knowledge was unable to advance; it receded, and the clock was put back in scientific research. Darkness reigned supreme for over a thousand years. At last the dawn began to break. What was the result? The children of light suffered for their temerity; but their ideas were eventually absorbed, and beliefs were suitably reformed. Thus the Copernican system was gradually accepted, and so were the discoveries which followed, up to fifty years ago. Then, however, the established beliefs received shock after shock in rapid succession--shocks from which they do not yet show any promise of recovering. The myriads of worlds in the processes of birth and death; the vast antiquity of the earth; the long history of man and his animal origin; the reign of natural law, and the consequent discredit of the supernatural; the suspicions aroused by the study of comparative mythology; the difficulties of "literal inspiration"; the doubt thrown by the Higher Criticism on many cherished beliefs--these and the like have shaken the very foundations of our faith, and are the cause of agnosticism among the vast majority of our leaders of thought and science. Ecclesiastics, however, with certain notable exceptions, appear to be labouring under the delusion that a reconciliation has taken place of late between Religion and Science, and that the voice of the Higher Criticism has been hushed--at least, they are continually assuring us to this effect. They remain under this delusion for two reasons. First, because they are more or less ignorant of science and of the preponderating opinion of the scientific world concerning the truth of Christianity. Secondly, because they are lulled into a feeling of security through misconceptions regarding the attitude of the laity. There appears to be the same, or nearly the same, average of religious conformity as heretofore, and the consensus of opinion seems to be all on the side of church and chapel. Any falling off in religious fervour is attributed to sheer carelessness rather than to unbelief. From the days of Huxley until quite lately there have been no attacks upon Christianity worth mentioning. The Churches fail to realise that this religious conformity and goodwill towards the Christian faith has generally no connection whatever with a conviction of the truth of Christianity, and that, where there is this conviction, it is usually among those who are ignorant of the chief causes for suspicion. I propose, therefore, in the first instance, to examine some of the more usual types among the laity. Obviously, in doing so I shall be omitting a great many shades of thought. I shall say very little about the opinions of the genuine believer or of the hopelessly thoughtless, and nothing of the opinions of evil-livers. My object is to set forth the types which are most likely to have been misunderstood by the clergy. § 2. The Attitude of the Laity. Let us commence, then, with the sceptical. They are not inclined, for the present at least, to propagate their views. Rightly or wrongly, they still hold the popular opinion that, while they themselves can dispense with belief, the masses cannot. All that is asked of a "cultured" man is that he keep his opinion to himself. He may be an agnostic or--whether he realises it or not--practically an atheist; but he must not think of calling himself by such ugly names. "The uneducated freethinker," our modern philosopher will say, "manifests a Philistine Voltaireanism--a spirit now disapproved by scholars and philosophers, who regard with serious consideration all the manifestations and products of human thought, from the earliest fetichism to the most recent developments of that religious tendency which appears to be a constitutional element in man." Such high thoughts, according to this philosopher, are not for the common herd, who must continue to wallow in their ignorance, feeding on husks, which, however unsuitable for his own refined digestion, will serve well enough to nourish the religious instincts of the masses. If of a mystical turn of mind, he will tell you that Christianity, like all other religions, may be but a symbol of a great Reality; and this person, though sceptical regarding the Christian dogmas, will possibly consider himself a Christian. Or, again, he may be without any leaning towards mysticism, and merely hold that religion, if sincere, is better for the mind than scepticism. "Better a belated and imperfect religion," he will say, "than none at all. The heart has its claims on our consideration as well as the intellect. Study Comte's General View of Positivism." Many agnostics are just as firmly convinced as believers that their country's prosperity is bound up with the Christian belief. This is largely due to their still clinging to the Church's teaching concerning belief and morals. It is well to remember, however, that the feeling on this point of the average cultured Frenchman or Italian is quite the opposite. The measures now being taken by the French Government against the clergy are based upon the contention that the Church's influence is injurious to the State's welfare; and this feeling has reached such a pitch that Republican employees hardly dare admit their attendance at divine worship. During September, 1904, the Italian Government extended a cordial welcome to a Freethought Congress, and the proceedings were opened by the Minister of Public Instruction. But the average Englishman, be he ever so sure of the falsity of the Christian dogmas, can foresee nothing but immorality and anarchy as the result of the overthrow of Christianity. "Cui bono?" "Quo vadis?" he cries. "Leave well alone!" "It is easy enough to show that Christianity is false, but what have you to put in its place? What we want now is construction, not criticism and the flogging of a dying creed." He forgets, it seems to me, that people cannot be hoodwinked for ever, and that, as Mr. Froude tells us, the Reformation was brought about by people refusing any longer to believe a lie. In addition to this concern for the public weal, the sceptic is influenced by motives of expediency. He is well aware of the odium he would incur should he proclaim his heterodox views concerning the popular religion. Such publicity might spoil his professional career, be the death-blow of his ambitions, cause him considerable pecuniary loss, alienate the friends he most values, and, worst of all, destroy the happiness of his home life. For these and similar reasons we find, in the case of the half-believer, that he does not care to verify his doubts, but prefers to leave his opinions vague enough to be able to call himself a broad-minded Christian. Whether half-believing or distinctly agnostic, he usually holds that very common opinion regarding women, children, and religion--that, however little store a man may set by belief, it is wise to encourage it in the women folk, and also to hand over the children to them for their religious instruction. Besides, militant agnosticism is not the fashion. It is looked upon as "bad form," or as smacking of socialism. Indifference is much the easier attitude. Or, again, the average man is disposed to trust to the progress of science and the ultimate triumph of truth, and sees no reason why he should make any effort towards shortening the period of transition. In his contempt for the efforts of the "lowly born" and indigent secularists, he forgets that the greatest changes in the world's history have been brought about from the smallest beginnings by these very "lower orders" he affects to despise. In our own times, was it not working men who first set in motion a revolution that will eventually reform Russia? Perhaps the commonest attitude of "the man in the street," whatever his manner of belief may be, is one of good-natured indifference--an acquiescence in things as they are. Absence of the critical spirit or of anxious-mindedness, or of both, renders it easy for him to take things as he finds them, much after the manner of his primeval ancestors. His mind will not occupy itself with aught but the present. Naturally, too, he feels very strongly that what appears to make others happy should not be disturbed. In all this he makes various questionable assumptions, which I am considering in subsequent chapters of this book. It is unnecessary to refer to the opinions of the militant agnostic, as this type could never be accused of deceiving the Church. However, it maybe noted that Mr. Blatchford says, in the Clarion of February 3rd, 1905: "So far as I am concerned, I attacked religion because I believe it to be untrue, and because it seems to me to bar the way to liberty and happiness. The attack upon religion is a part of a task I have set myself." There are statesmen and other persons of influence who are as incredulous as Mr. Blatchford regarding the truth of Christianity; but they do not, apparently, hold that Christianity bars the way to liberty and happiness (I give them credit for being ruled by the highest motives), and so the Church has their support. It is a weird arrangement between Unbelief and Belief, which cannot possibly last much longer; meanwhile, it tends to confuse and delay the answer to that gravest of questions: "Is Christianity true?" Leaving the sceptic, let us examine another extremely common type--the man who is under the impression that he is a Christian, without either being particularly devout or having inquired at all deeply into the grounds of his faith. He is ignorant of the causes for doubt, because he has not had, or has not cared to afford, any time for such matters. I do not refer so much to the masses, who obviously have very little leisure, but to the more leisured and influential classes. Such a man's scientific education, if he ever had any, was broken off early in life. A large proportion of those all-important years of his boyhood were devoted probably to an unwilling study of the "humanities." His faith is decidedly vague, and according to his own peculiar interpretation, an adjustment between his heavenly aspirations and his earthly inclinations. It has never been thought out, and is not the result of a thorough study of its tenets. He was born and bred a Christian, and all the nicest people he knows are Christians, or he thinks they are. He is, all unconsciously, a social chameleon taking his colour from the conditions in the midst of which he happens to live. He, too, like his heterodox brother, sneers at organised Freethought in this country, because it owes its inception and conduct chiefly to poor and lowly men, forgetting that it was from such a source that the mighty creed of Christendom itself arose. He forgets that the first Christian apostles were mostly working men. If he has heard or read anything of a sceptical nature, he has never stopped to inquire any further into it. He has no idea that the central features of the Bible have been attacked by men of the greatest learning and integrity, with the result that even the defenders of the faith ask for a reverent agnosticism as to the historical circumstances out of which, in the first instance, belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ arose. [8] Not knowing that the essentials are called in question, he sees no reason to trouble himself about mere details. It is enough for him that he feels sure that there must be some object in our existence, and that there must be a First Cause. It never occurs to him to consider whether his and the Christian conception of God can be reconciled. For him the truth of the Christian dogma is proved sufficiently by the unsatisfying nature of materialism. Has he not been taught that he must have faith, and that faith is a feeling of trust divinely implanted, and not needing to be fed on evidences? Is not Christianity the civilising agent of the world, and the origin of all morality and all good works? Does not scepticism lead to atheism? If thought only leads to disbelief in God, he for one is not going to think. In addition to the now fast dwindling band of sincere and thoughtful Christians there are, of course, many professing religionists who do think a little, a very little, on religious subjects; but the bulk of the male element are absolutely indifferent to the question of religion at all. The average subaltern is as good a sample of the latter type as any other. Speak to him about religion, and he is unutterably bored. A certain amount of church-going forms part of his ordinary round of duties. This is the sum-total of his "religious experiences." For the rest, religion, or any question as to its truth in this or that particular, is, so far as he is concerned, a matter of supreme indifference. People are usually (though less so now perhaps than formerly) so careful to keep their thoughts about religion to themselves that it is no wonder the Church is ignorant of the extent to which heterodoxy is rife. The colossal hypocrisy which speaks of "the reserve of Englishmen about their religion" needs exposure. Why should there be this dislike to talk upon religion--a religion which, if true, should make all worldly affairs sink into infinitesimal insignificance? Is it from a spirit of reverence, or is it not rather because the interpretations of God's alleged revelation differ so widely that people neither wish to "give themselves away" by stating their own interpretations, nor to hear the distasteful interpretations of others? If they were perfectly straightforward, they would run the danger both of hurting the feelings and falling in the estimation of their friends. Sometimes there is a dread of appearing ridiculous, sometimes a dislike of appearing to cant. Yet surely, if we believe what we profess, there is nothing to be ashamed of, and we ought openly to testify to our faith. I can speak from personal experience when I say that the believing heathen of India, whether Hindoos, Mussulmans, or Parsees, have no qualms on this score. They see no necessity for "reserve" in the profession of their faith. They testify to it openly at all times and in all places. It forms, as it ought, an integral part of their every-day life. This so-called "reserve" is also occasioned by the inability to live up to the ethical ideals demanded by our creed. Men wish neither to be hypocrites nor to be thought hypocrites. It is an inherent fault in Christian ethics that certain portions are not practicable. They are too much dominated by a belief in the near approach of the end of the world. "If we mechanically applied, as rules of conduct, Christ's ideals of temper, we are certain, from common sense, that universal pauperism, lawlessness, and national extinction would follow." [9] Then, again, there is too much of the presumption that all men have an equal chance in the battle against temptations, and too little acknowledgment of the part played by heredity and environment; and thus the root of the evil is overlooked. Also, if we have a strong "conviction of sin," which, according to our spiritual advisers, is essential, and if we cannot hope to shake off the burden of sin by our own unaided endeavours, our moral fibre is liable to be weakened, and we may cease to cultivate the all-important qualities of self-reliance and self-respect. Emerson's advice is far healthier: "The less we have to do with our sins the better." Whatever the many causes of this "proud reserve" may be, one of the consequences is that we remain in ignorance of our neighbour's beliefs. If people discussed religious matters among themselves, they would make some surprising discoveries. The agnostic would find that "believers" are not the hypocrites he sometimes puts them down to be, for he would learn, to his surprise, that they are supremely ignorant of much that he assumed they would be sure to know. The believer would find that there are many more agnostics than he had ever dreamt there were, and he would also learn that their reason for abandoning belief was of a very different nature from what he had supposed. When agnostics read the lessons in church, as they frequently do, and when, with their aid and the aid of others in various stages of heterodoxy, congregations in church and chapel on Sunday only amount to twenty-two per cent. [10] of the population, and these chiefly women, [11] what must not be the sum-total of agnosticism, heterodoxy, and indifference among men in this most Christian of nations? The extent of unavowed or unconscious scepticism far exceeds that which is openly avowed or consciously felt. Laxity in keeping the Sabbath is now notoriously on the increase. Nothing can be more sensible than that people who have slaved for six days in the atmosphere of the office, etc., should go off for their "week end's" golf, etc.; but for the clergy to attribute the consequent falling-off in church attendance solely to the extra facilities of travel tempting people to carelessness about religion is to adopt the method of the proverbial ostrich in the desert at the approach of a dreaded enemy. Unbelief and the advance of rationalism are really at the bottom of this new development; for all the carelessness, all the temptations in the world, would not persuade sane people to throw away their claims to eternal happiness by neglecting to worship their God--a God that demands this worship. How little do the clergy really know, or attempt to know, of the beliefs of the cultured portion of their congregations! As I write these words I receive, curiously enough, a letter which shows how unusual it is for the pastor to question his flock. The writer of the letter, a lady, says: "Isn't Mr. X (the rector of a certain country parish) a gauche man? Mr. Z (an influential parishioner) didn't go to Holy Communion, and so Mr. X asked him if he had been confirmed. Since then Mr. Z goes elsewhere to church." Now, personally, I admire X's courage. What he did would not be done by the ordinary run of parsons. If they did that sort of thing, they would soon become exceedingly unpopular in the neighbourhood, and lose most of their fashionable and opulent congregation. But they would begin to learn the true state of affairs. They would learn, for instance, that some of the most regular and respectable of the male portion of their congregations were agnostic or heterodox, and that their attendance at divine worship was merely to set a good example to the "lower orders," or to please their women-folk, or for some cause or other utterly unconnected with any desire to worship or any belief in the efficacy of so doing. There is doubtless a great deal to be said in favour of a spirit of toleration which inculcates non-interference with a man's belief; but it all helps to hide the true state of affairs, and is surely overdone when it encourages men to attend a service where they are acting a part and making solemn declarations untruthfully. There is one more type of person I should include among the many strange buttresses of the Church--namely, the person who refuses point blank to be enlightened. The Churches have been lulled into a sense of security by many causes, but chief among them, perhaps, there stands out the fact that people not only will not take the trouble to inquire into the grounds of their faith, but consider that it would be positively wicked to do any such thing. To such I can only repeat the words of the Rev. J. W. Diggle, now Bishop of Carlisle. "There are," he says, "perhaps, few things, and certainly nothing of similar moment, about which men give themselves so little trouble, and take such little pains, as the ascertainment, by strict examination, of the foundations and the evidences of their religion. Hence so many religious persons are like children who have not learned things accurately. They are fearful of being questioned, and are out of temper in an examination." However, as an excuse for this timidity--for it is often nothing else--it must be conceded that a deep study of the evidences does, more often than not, end in agnosticism. This gives rise to the serious question: "If it is God who assists us to remain staunch to our creed, why does He so often forsake us, just when we are trying to lead more thoughtful lives and, consequently, study more deeply the faith we profess?" On the one hand, we find that modern agnosticism is not the result of carelessness, but of thoughtfulness. On the other hand, we observe that the Church numbers among some of its firmest adherents not only those who are ignorant through circumstances over which they have no control, or through thoughtlessness, but also those who remain ignorant through fear to inquire. § 3. Christianity and Science not Reconciled. Has the Church, then, been deceived in her impression that a reconciliation has taken place between Christianity and Science? Most certainly. I grant that to some extent there exists a patched-up peace. The modern apologist no longer adopts the unwise course of maintaining every strange phenomenon to be miraculous as long as it is unexplained, whereby each advance of physical science used necessarily to be hostile to theology. He even goes further, and says that the Resurrection and all the miracles may be only the manifestation of some law which is as yet beyond the analysis of our short experience. But, as I shall show later on, the new interpretations tone down hostility in one respect only to raise fresh and greater difficulties in another. The manner in which misunderstandings occur on the subject of a reconciliation is well seen when we look into one of the Church's most popular arguments in its favour--the appeal to the pronouncement by Lord Kelvin in support of a Creative Power. Lord Kelvin assured the world that modern biologists were "coming to the belief in the existence of a vital principle." [12] That this pronouncement raised a perfect storm of protest in the world of science is wholly ignored by the world of religion. Suppose, however, that the consensus of opinion had been otherwise, what conclusion could we draw? We simply obtain an argument for some form of Theism. The probability of the existence of a Creative Power would not in itself prove the truth of the Christian dogmas, although it would be a very necessary link in the chain of evidence. It is extremely doubtful whether any scientist or philosopher really holds the doctrine of a personal God, certainly not of the anthropomorphic God of Christianity. Let us take Sir Oliver Lodge, for example. He is continually being held up to us by the Church as an instance of a man of science who finds himself able to believe in the supernatural; but does the Church claim him as one of her fold? In the Hibbert Journal for April, 1904, he makes out a strong case for the entire re-interpretation of the Christian doctrine, in which, among other dogmas, the Atonement and Virgin-birth are completely surrendered. He has never yet professed belief in a personal God, and seems to question His omnipotence. [13] Again, in a paper which he contributed lately to a book of essays entitled Ideals of Science, he owns that science is a long way from actively supporting religion. In spite of this, no name is, or used to be, more frequently quoted than his, in support of the Church's contention that a reconciliation has taken place. The admissions of Sir Oliver Lodge are, in a certain sense, all the more important because he undoubtedly is one of the few men of science who still retain a strong belief in a spiritual world. In the Hibbert Journal for January, 1905, he informs us that he is opposed to a materialistic monism, such as Haeckel's, and that "the progress of thought has left him [Haeckel], as well as his great English exemplar, Herbert Spencer, somewhat high and dry, belated and stranded by the tide of opinion which has now begun to flow in another direction." [14] This is the sort of statement which is eagerly seized upon by the Church; but it neither witnesses to the truth of Christianity, nor does it voice the opinion of the scientific world. It is the opinion of a scientist who believes that he has had "communication with spirits." [15] Professor Ray Lankester, one of our leading biologists in England, indignantly refutes Sir Oliver's strictures on Professor Haeckel. [16] Now, it is, of course, quite true that there are schools of thought opposed to Haeckel's. There is, for instance, the school which considers that science has no business to concern herself with theology; and there are the metaphysicians. But the point I wish to make clear is that all these schools are heterodox. They do not accept the Christian dogmas. It is so easy for false impressions on such matters to get about, and, I regret to add, this does not occur altogether by chance. When Haeckel, one of our greatest living biologists, was caught tripping in his knowledge of theology by a professor of that subject, the Church explained to the laity that the great Dr. Loofs had shown that Haeckel had forfeited his claim to consideration as a reliable man of science; and, on this basis, his Riddle of the Universe was held up to obloquy and derision. The Church, however, did not mention at the same time that Haeckel had expressly said that he was not skilled in theology, and that it was only in his own branch of knowledge that he spoke with authority. Nor did the Church mention that their champion, the learned theologian, Dr. Loofs, himself discredits the notion of the Virgin-birth, and that the chief bone of contention between the two professors was simply the question of the parentage of Jesus. It is just because science and religion are in conflict that the religious naturally wish to discredit science. They will, if they are sufficiently ignorant, go so far as Lady Blount, [17] and hold that the earth is flat and without motion. But such persons should note that in the Church itself there are a few--the few best qualified to form an opinion--who accept all the main facts of science, and do not think, or pretend that they think, that there has been any reconciliation. The Rev. P. N. Waggett is one of these. He is an apologist of unusual scientific competence, and his new handbook for the clergy, Religion and Science, simply bristles with problems which he confesses have yet to be solved. However, he does not allow himself to be disturbed. Conclusions adverse to theology are to be resisted. In other words, we must possess our souls in patience until we can see a way out of our difficulties. He remarks: "There are conclusions which are to be dissolved, and conclusions which are to be avoided; but there are also conclusions which have to be resisted, held at bay--'held up,' I think some adventurous Western people call it--until we can see our way to destroy them. Such a resistance is not irrational." He personally prefers "the positive or scientific treatment and pursuit of religion," and he goes on to say that "this positive pursuit of the facts of the spirit must be maintained in spite of difficulties. It must be maintained in spite of outstanding discrepancies with science." To my mind, the position here taken up by Mr. Waggett is the only possible one for a convinced Christian who has a real knowledge of science. He avoids the snares into which so many of his fellow clerics have fallen. For he does not jump at the conclusion that every "gap" in our knowledge of life's mysteries is a proof of the supernatural. Nor does he attempt to show, as many other apologists are wont to do, that there is no direct connection between science and religion. He does not try to escape the criticism of metaphysical conclusions which a scientific habit of thought engenders. But, while his position may appear at first sight a tenable one, whether it be so or not depends entirely upon the correctness of the assumption on which his argument is really based--the true witness of the heart, as against the false witness of the reason. It is interesting to compare Mr. Waggett's position with that of another of the progressives. The Rev. John Kelman writes in Ideals of Science and Faith [18]: "So far as we have gone, the history of the past, viewed by the light in which the newer conceptions of the Bible have placed it, shows that, at the present moment in the progress of thought, science and religion are not in the least degree at strife. They need no reconciliation." Suppose the Rev. J. Kelman to be right and the Rev. P. N. Waggett to be wrong, what then? It is the newer conceptions of the Bible which make it possible for Mr. Kelman to speak of a reconciliation--the very conceptions which the orthodox cannot and will not accept. The orthodox believer is told that religion and science are reconciled; but he is not told by what means. Thus the orthodox, who would never think of accepting the "terribly heterodox" ideas of the advanced school, are all the time accepting a result which could only be arrived at by the help of those self-same ideas. In fact, it was the very necessity for a reconciliation which originated their invention. So much is said about "scientific doubt" in these days that it is well to remember that doubts as to the truth of the Christian belief are not caused alone by purely scientific difficulties of faith. Carlyle refused to accept Darwin's theories. His temperament was strongly inclined to a stern Puritanical piety, and his whole nature was antipathetic to science. Yet he did not think it possible that "educated honest men could profess much longer to believe in historical Christianity." Renan, a profound scholar in Oriental languages, shows, in his famous work, The Life of Jesus, that, while keenly appreciative of all that was beautiful in the life and teaching of Jesus, he was forced, by his study of the Scriptures [19] in the original, to the conclusion that the miraculous part of the narrative had no historical foundation. Leo Tolstoi, the helper of the helpless, whose voice is ever raised in the cause of universal love and peace, vainly sought an answer to religious doubts, and finally renounced Christian dogmas, building up a religion of his own. Numerous instances could be given showing that well-known and pious-minded thinkers have rejected Christianity on grounds other than scientific. And this diversity in the reasons for negation further tends to strengthen those suspicions regarding our faith which it is now the apologist's task to dispel. A significant circumstance is the far more tolerant attitude of the better-informed clergy towards the unbeliever. There still remain persons of the Dr. Torrey and the Rev. J. Morgan Gibbon [20] type, ready to vilify the agnostic; but their number is rapidly on the decrease. The clergy, as a whole, are more tolerant now than many of the pious laity. Why is this? Is it not because they are beginning to appreciate the perplexities of faith, and to learn that agnostics as a body can be, and are, good men? Under certain conditions they themselves have severe wrestlings with the dictates of reason, and it is only by prayer [21] and occupying their minds in their work that they are able to dispel dark doubts. They will tell you that a faith such as theirs, and such as they hope you will attain after emergence from doubt, is a real faith, with which the faith of the ordinary person, accepting everything on trust, is not to be compared. It is all very well to talk glibly, as so many do nowadays, of an age of tolerance. How can man be tolerant in matters concerning which God is alleged to have distinctly told us that He is not tolerant? It has often occurred to me that, were there such a person as the Devil, he must be much puzzled over the case of the high-minded agnostic, and more especially so if the latter conceived it his duty to propagate his views. In other words, if he were a militant agnostic--a Huxley or a Holyoake. For, on the one hand, if the Devil could persuade the agnostic to adopt religious conformity at the expense of self-respect, he would ruin the agnostic's character, and so drag one more soul into perdition; but he would at the same time be rendering the whole Christian community a service by saving them from the dangerous advice of the agnostic. On the other hand, if Satan aided the agnostic in the line of conduct which he was at present conscientiously pursuing, the soul of the latter would slip from Satan's grasp (for I presume there can be no punishment for honesty); but, as Anti-Christ, Satan would reap a grand harvest from the seeds of unbelief sown by the agnostic. And the purer and more unselfish the life of the agnostic, the more the latter would influence people to share his opinions. How does God view this perplexing situation? We are told from the pulpit nowadays, by the broader-minded parson, not only that agnostics may be good men, but that they "exhibit the very temper which Christ blesses." [22] This curious truce between Believer and Unbeliever, each still holding fast to his belief or unbelief, only serves to demonstrate with added force that there is not, and cannot be, a reconciliation between Faith and Knowledge. § 4. The Genesis and Character of the New Outburst. It is imperative that the Churches should appreciate the real character of the new outburst of scepticism. The controversy with rationalism has entered upon another phase--a phase far more dangerous to the security of Christendom. As was inevitable, the suspicions regarding the faith have filtered down to classes that are not content to be duped because, forsooth, it is said to be for their good. They have none of the reasons of the upper-class agnostic for "lying low." The enlightenment of the working man has been accelerated during the past year or so by the issue of cheap reprints from the books of our great scientists and thinkers, and by a direct attack upon religion by the well-known editor of the Clarion, Robert Blatchford. That the Churches are already partly alive to the new danger is evinced by their present anxious attitude towards the spread of knowledge likely to be damaging to the Faith. It was one of the subjects discussed at the Canterbury Diocesan Conference in June, 1904, and will, doubtless, be earnestly discussed at the next Church Congress, together with the whole question of the rapid increase in unbelief. While, however, the Church inveighs against the "reprints," she gives out, also, that "Christianity is always strengthened by being attacked." This is hardly consistent. For why not, then, allow the process of strengthening to continue by these means? Certainly, if Christianity be true, the Church ought to be strengthened. How could it be otherwise? It might compel her to discard some of her dogmas; but that would only be if they were false, and, in such case, she is better without them. Nothing but good should arise from a thorough examination of her tenets. She would be enabled to find out where her weakness lies, and thus to emerge from the ordeal stronger than ever. Those who wish, as I do, to learn the whole truth concerning Christianity, hope that she will no longer postpone a complete and unbiassed investigation of the whole of the anti-Christian arguments. Doubtless we shall get our wish in time; but meanwhile we deplore the delay, for reasons I have more particularly set forth in the concluding chapter of this book. If the honest truth be that she is not confident of the security of her position, are we to understand that the cause of Untruth is thought to be more likely to prosper than the cause of Truth? Of the two conflicting views regarding the effect of anti-Christian attacks--the pessimistic and the optimistic--it is the former which appears to me the more likely to be correct. For consider what would occur should attacks of far greater severity be delivered--a contingency by no means impossible in the near future. Suppose the "rational" propagandists, instead of being hampered by the want of funds and influential support, were to become endowed with a fraction of the wealth of the Church, and were thus in a position to popularise their views by spending money in extensive advertisement of every description, by subsidising platform orators who would propound rationalism and non-theological ethics in every town and village, by relieving distress, and so on, would the Christian Faith be strengthened? Has it not already suffered since the sixpenny reprints began to bring knowledge within the reach of the people--the people who have, many of them, little or nothing to fear from an expression of their agnosticism? If militant rationalists were sufficiently possessed of this world's goods to start an adequate fund for the lucrative employment of clergymen who find they can no longer subscribe to the articles of the Christian Faith, and who would leave the Church if they could do so without having to face absolute ruin, would not the secessions increase in direct proportion to the increase of the fund and the consequent means of support? [23] If those men of note who are even now agnostics at heart were to proclaim the fact and assist in propagandism, would not the flock follow the bell-wethers? Whether hastened or not by the action of the propagandist, the masses, in these days of universal education, are bound to hear sooner or later of these grave doubts. The questioners of the Faith are no longer only the philosophers, scientists, and those who join hands with the Churches in prescribing a dietary of fairy tales for the preservation of the moral health of the masses. Many of the working class [24] are far more thoughtful and intelligent regarding questions of science as it affects religion than is generally supposed. Hitherto they have been under two very considerable disadvantages--the costliness of the books and the want of leisure to read them. The leisure disability still holds good, though less so now that temperance is on the increase; but the books are to-day offered at popular prices, and are also finding their way into public libraries. The Church can, perhaps, depend for some time to come upon the non-interference and even active support of the upper classes, however sceptical they may be; but it is the proletariat which she will in future have to deal with more and more. She is in a dilemma; her hand is forced. She realises that discussion will cause the unsettlement of minds hitherto unclouded by doubt, and yet matters have reached a stage when silence is impossible. It is doubtful whether she has yet fully realised the gravity of the task before her. I have explained how she seems to have been deceived as to the real meaning of the apparent suspension of hostilities during the past few years. She has also to learn how impossible it will be for the ordinary mind to accept the unconvincing and contradictory expositions of the Faith which are now offered to us under the title of Christian apologetics. § 5. Apologetics "Found Wanting." The time, then, has arrived when the pastor can no longer ignore or gloze over the thoughts that are stirring the minds of the intelligent portion of his flock. The cheap literature problem cannot be solved by applying disparaging adjectives, such as "shallow," to writings emanating from the pens of Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, S. Laing, Matthew Arnold, Sir Leslie Stephen, Renan, Haeckel, etc., easy though it be to excite prejudice by the use of a condemnatory adjective. Books that are still costly will some day be available at popular prices, and increase the perplexities of the people. I refer to books of the type of Lecky's Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe, Buckle's History of Civilisation in England, Frazer's Golden Bough, Forlong's Short Studies of the Science of Comparative Religions, Doane's Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions, J. M. Robertson's Christianity and Mythology and Pagan Christs, Spencer's Principles of Sociology (Vol. I., Part I., giving the Data of Sociology), Metchnikoff's The Nature of Man, Haeckel's The Evolution of Man, [25] etc. Will not the Encyclopædia Biblica, with a title so innocent, and with an editor and many of its contributors in Holy Orders, soon find its way into our public libraries and be a thorn in the side of the orthodox? Think how a book such as Nunquam's (Robert Blatchford) God and My Neighbour must already have been read by and have affected the convictions of thousands of the working class. And the grave doubts of a hard-headed artisan are not in the least likely to be dispelled by Anti-Nunquam, [26] or any of the literature so far published as a panacea "in relief of doubt." [27] Indeed, some apologetic works are enough in themselves to create mistrust, though the reader had not read a single anti-Christian work! The extraordinary divergence in the views of the authors, to say nothing of the transparency of some of their arguments, prevents all chance of apologetics convincing any but those already determined to be convinced. The writer in one stage of thought absolutely contradicts a writer in another stage. Compare Goulburn and Pusey in their awful assertions of everlasting punishment with Allin's Universalism Asserted and Larger Hope leaflets, or the views of a Wace regarding Evolution with the views of a Waggett. If we confine ourselves to making comparisons only between the advanced thinkers themselves, compare the opinions of Dr. Gore, Bishop of Birmingham (late of Worcester), with those of Canons Henson and Cheyne. The deplorable state of religious apologetics is becoming notorious, and articles bearing on the subject are now appearing from time to time in our leading magazines. [28] In defending the Faith the advanced school of the Church now frankly admit the difficulties of the old belief, and ask us to accept their new interpretations of Christianity. The older school of theologians, the school who can bring themselves neither to assert the truth of evolution nor to give a decided opinion on the verbal inspiration of the Bible, are unwillingly, very unwillingly, beginning to follow in their wake. The views of the two schools being in conflict on many vital points, it is impossible that they can ever be brought into agreement. Yet, unless concerted measures are soon taken, confusion will be worse confounded. To add to the perplexity of the situation, there are also the various views of the Nonconformists to be taken into account. Then there are the Scottish Churches, having on the one side the law-supported minority, standing for an infallible Bible and all the doctrines of John Calvin; and, on the other, the majority standing for a form of Christianity which is really Calvinism with a somewhat unequally-applied veneer of Higher Criticism. Finally there is the Irish Roman Catholic Church still sunk in the gross superstitions of the Dark Ages. The advanced school represent the section which is in close touch with modern thought, so that their new interpretations of the Faith constitute the one and only hope of arresting the advance of agnosticism. On the other hand, the justice of the objections to these new interpretations is borne out by the circumstance that many of the older school would no more think of accepting them than they would of giving up their belief; rather than accept them they prefer to deny the facts of science. Both sides do violence to their reason--the enlightened in using the subtleties of their intellect for interpretations which appear transparently false alike to the orthodox and to the unbeliever; the obscurantist in denying established facts. Consider for a moment what all this means. It means that the modern sceptic has the support of the strictly orthodox when he refutes the only explanations as yet offered to dispel his doubts. It means that the validity of the agnostic's objections to these new-fangled interpretations is fully borne out by the common sense of Christians themselves, and that a denial of the facts of science and of the results of Biblical research is the only way we can escape from unbelief. If a puzzled truth-seeker tried to take a middle course, he would have to believe that black and white were the same colour, and his belief would degenerate into an exceedingly unedifying grey. There is a large proportion of this "grey" belief just now. I cannot too strongly reiterate that this complete divergence in the interpretation of a revelation alleged to have been vouchsafed by God cannot but give rise to the most intense suspicion. The very word "apologetics" is self-condemnatory. How is it that the claims of Christianity require all this vindication? Heresies and schisms and the need for apologetics form the constant note of Christian history from first to last. True there was a lull in the questionings of the Faith; but that was during the Dark Ages, when the priests adopted the policy of keeping the world in ignorance, and of destroying all the evidences against Christianity that they could lay their hands upon. If the events said to have happened really happened, and if God wished the world to know of them, why all this mystery, why the need for all these apologetics concerning them? Which of the conflicting explanations are we to take as correct? The late Bishop of Durham, Dr. Westcott, in a passage in his book, Lessons from Work, says: "It would be easier if we might divest ourselves of the divine prerogative of reason. It would be easier, but would that be the life which Christ came down from heaven to show us and place within our reach?" It is not for me to quarrel with so emphatic a pronouncement in favour of using our reason; but such advice cannot be reconciled with the teaching of Christ or of our own Church--that we should receive God's word as "babes." Remember those strange words attributed to Him: "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them unto babes." From this one would gather that it was God's pleasure to hide Himself from the wise, and therefore that the increase of agnosticism alongside the spread of knowledge was all part of the Divine plan. The Roman Catholic Church is more consistent. She obeys the alleged teaching of Christ in this respect to the letter. The truth is that when Jesus spoke these words, if He ever did speak them, the vast majority of mankind were "babes." His disciples were "babes"; His enemies the more enlightened. He did not foresee the advance of knowledge and the spread of education. Nor did the Church anticipate this increase in "wisdom," or rather, I should say, she employed every possible means to hinder it. If God's revelation may be understood by babes, it must be very simple. How, then, do we find it requiring all this explanation--explanation which no ordinary adult can understand? Who could call modern theology simple? Can we say that of our philosopher-Premier's books, A Defence of Philosophic Doubt and The Foundations of Belief? Is it not because the Church recognises that the masses will never understand all these subtle explanations and pleas for a re-statement of Christianity that she is in no hurry to impart the new ideas from the pulpit? Even the more intellectual truthseeker is constantly recommended to trust less to his reason, and "to come to Christ as a little child." The objections of the more conservative to the new interpretations of Christianity are well expressed in the solemn words of a former Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, himself inveighed against, in his day, as somewhat of a freethinker. "Many," writes Dean Mansell, "who would shrink with horror from the idea of rejecting Christ altogether, will yet speak and act as if they were at liberty to set up for themselves an eclectic Christianity, separating the essential from the superfluous portions of Christ's teaching, deciding for themselves how much is permanent and necessary for all men, and how much is temporary and designed only for a particular age and people. Yet if Christ is indeed God manifest in the Flesh, it is surely not less impious to attempt to improve His teaching than to reject it altogether. Nay, in one respect it is more so, for it is to acknowledge a doctrine as the revelation of God, and, at the same time, to proclaim that it is inferior to the wisdom of man." The Athanasian Creed controversy furnishes some striking examples of both conservative and latitudinarian opinions. Dr. Pusey is related to have said: "If the Athanasian Creed is touched, I see nothing to do but to give up my canonry." Yet we find the present Primate, Dr. Randall Davidson, replying to a deputation of clergymen who desired to be relieved from the obligation of reciting this Creed: "I am in complete sympathy with the object you have at heart." Presumably he is in agreement with Dr. Barnes, Hulsean professor of divinity, who, when lecturing lately at Cambridge on the Athanasian Creed, declared that there was "no authority in Scripture for its minatory clauses." The well-meant attempt of the Dean of Westminster to smooth down the asperities of the Creed by singing instead of saying it, is typical of those pitiful attempts to tide over difficulties which are now so much in evidence. "We make," says one of the old school, "unsuitable persons partakers of the Divine service of the Church, and then it is proposed to alter the Divine service to suit them. Let honest Unbelievers or Half-Believers absent themselves from the Assembly of the Faithful, and let the Faithful worship faithfully." Yet, if this line of conduct were put into practice, if the modern Origens were anathematised and only those laymen admitted to Divine service who held all the articles of the Christian faith without mental reservations of any kind, every single advanced theologian would be degraded from his office, and the present twenty-two per cent. who are church and chapel-goers would be reduced to--what shall we say? Well, the churches having cultured congregations would be almost empty. The modern spirit of toleration, admirable as it is in many ways, assists in preventing the discovery of the real truth of the matter. The Church is grossly deceiving herself if she really thinks that the apparent adherence of the majority of the well-to-do classes indicates that burning suspicions of the Christian dogmas have been quenched by Christian apologetics. § 6. More Things which Confuse the Issue. In the early part of this chapter I have alluded to the real causes for the apparent acquiescence of the majority in the claims of the Christian religion. Among these causes there is a somewhat complex one requiring, special notice, for it tends to confuse the main issue, more perhaps than any other. The Church is now appearing in an altogether novel role. Until quite recently her concern was only for the spiritual welfare of man, and she expected to gain her purpose by supernatural rather than by natural means. This plan, after many centuries of trial, has proved a terrible failure. It has not contributed either to man's spiritual or material improvement. Now, in England, she is emulating the thorough-paced humanitarian in her devotion to the betterment of humanity by natural means. Never before has there been that interest in the material condition of the people which is now evinced by such institutions as the Church Temperance Society and Homes for Inebriates, the Church Army, the Church Lads Brigade, the Church Rescue Societies, Homes for Waifs and Strays, etc. The Church, too, is now concerning herself with the better housing of the poor, the improvement of our jail system, and other rational methods for raising the social condition of the people and creating an environment likely to improve the moral atmosphere. All such measures, in fact, as have long ago been advocated by rationalists and social reformers are now taken up vigorously by the Churches. "Better late than never," you will say. Quite so; but that is not the point. Far be it from me to decry these excellent results of "modern thought"; still, the fact remains that the issue is thereby confused, and will continue to be thus confused for some time to come. People will only look at what the Churches, in Protestant countries at least, are now doing, and see in it another proof of Christianity's power for good. They will not trouble their heads to consider why it should have taken nearly 2,000 years before the Christian Church recognised such an essential portion of her duties towards her poorer neighbours. [29] Nor is it only this increase of zeal for "raising humanity out of the gutter" which has confused the issue. Numerous are the ways in which Christianity obtains a prestige sometimes partly deserved, sometimes wholly undeserved. Good works belong to the former class. The Churches of all denominations have always occupied the position of grand almoners, and, in that they have carried out that trust conscientiously, they have fully earned the confidence of the rich and the gratitude of the poor. But people are liable to forget that the huge donations given during their lifetime, and left in their wills by charitably disposed persons, are given usually from true humanitarian principles, and that kind hearts are to be found all over the world, quite apart from belief or unbelief. These gifts to the needy are not, let it be said to the credit of mankind, a mere soul-insurance, like the donations given, and often extorted, in the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches, for "Masses," "Indulgences," etc. All this charitable work, for which the Church is the agent employed, is usually put down entirely to the credit of the Church and Christianity. It does not seem to be realised that the "Golden Rule" is far older than Christianity, and is practised in other than Christian countries; and that the Church, in being entrusted very largely with the dispensation of charity, obtains credit for a service for which she is after all well paid, and which any properly selected body of laymen would perform quite as well, and possibly with more discrimination. If all the good and none of the bad works performed in Christendom are to be attributed to the working of the Christian faith, the same argument must hold good of the Hindu or Buddhist faith, when the people are Hindoos or Buddhists. The code of ethics attached to a religion does, of course, make a difference; but it neither proves that the belief is correct, nor that it is impossible to have the ethics without the belief. Confucianism is an agnostic ethical system which the educated classes of Japan have adopted for centuries, and its splendid results are just now much in evidence. Only a few days ago I received a letter from an agnostic supporter of Christianity who said: "Look at the good that Christianity does, look at its endless charitable organisations"; and he asked, "Could the Clarion people do anything of this kind?" It never occurred to him, and it never occurs to many of his way of thinking, that the "Clarion people" have very slender funds at present; and the charitable work that they do, though proportionately large, is not likely to come to his notice unless he takes the trouble to inquire. The vast majority of English people are professing Christians, and if any charitable work is to be done agnostics give their support to it, although the agents for it are Christians. However, I have not received a brief from the "Clarionettes." My object is to show how the issue becomes confused, and, if my agnostic friend is correct in considering Christianity false and yet indispensable, the future is indeed full of alarms. What will happen, for instance, when the knowledge of this falsehood becomes common property? I am fully aware that my friend voices the opinion of many fairly thoughtful Englishmen; but this is because they are in the habit of hearing every useful advance in civilisation accredited to Christianity:--hospitals, though they existed long before Christianity, and only fell out of use after its introduction--the raised status of women, though it was on the introduction of Christianity that the status was lowered--abolition of slavery, though among the most strenuous advocates for the abolition were such well-known freethinkers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Stuart Mill, and Moncure Conway, while the whole of Tory England shouted its approval when General Lee drew his sword on behalf of the rights of "Old Virginia," and while Gladstone, in his first Newark address, 1832, owned that slavery was justified by the Bible--efforts for superseding the horrors and clumsiness of war, though freethinkers to a man are supporters of the movement, while Bishops from the pulpit offer up prayers for peace and in the same breath expatiate on the ennobling effects of war upon the race, and while the head of a mighty theocratic-autocratic Christian Government calls the nations to a peace conference, and then takes the first opportunity to prosecute the most unnecessary and bloody war the world has ever known. It is erroneous assertions such as these which tend, perhaps, more than anything else, to confuse the simple question before us--the truth of Christianity. They are therefore discussed at greater length in a separate chapter devoted to popular fallacies. Meanwhile, in the present chapter I hope I have succeeded in giving some insight into the true nature of the present situation. MIRACLES Chapter II. THE EXTRAORDINARY STATE OF APOLOGETICS WITH REGARD TO MIRACLES § 1. Preliminary Remarks. In this and the following chapters I hope to show how matters stand with reference to the more important points at issue between the Christian apologist and the Rationalist. The truth or otherwise of the Bible miracles being of supreme importance, I begin with an examination of the position of apologetics with regard to them. THE VIEW OF SCIENCE. Professor Huxley once made the following remark: "The miracles of the Church are child's play to the miracles I see in nature." This has been hailed by the apologist as a satisfactory admission that science concedes the possibility of miracles. It is continually being quoted in apologetic works and from the pulpit, and is apparently considered as a conclusive piece of evidence that science has nothing to say against miracles. But, Professor Huxley went on to explain: "On the strength of an undeniable improbability, however, we not only have a right to demand, but are morally bound to require, strong evidence in favour of a miracle before we even take it into serious consideration. But when, instead of such evidence, nothing is produced but stories originating nobody knows how or when, among persons who could firmly believe in devils which enter pigs, I confess that my feeling is one of astonishment that anyone should expect a reasonable man to take such testimony seriously." [30] We never hear of this from the pulpit! Possibly Professor Huxley would not have been thus misrepresented--or shall we say misunderstood?--if he had spoken of the wonders of nature, and had not used a word popularly understood to signify that break in nature's laws which it has yet to be proved has ever occurred, or can ever occur. The wonders of nature take place in accordance with natural laws; miracles do not. WHY HAVE MIRACLES CEASED? An obvious objection to miracles is the one often propounded by an inquiring child, "Why do we no longer have miracles?" The rationalist's reply, of course, is that, so soon as nature's laws were better understood, trustworthy evidence was demanded and miracles ceased. Paley tries to parry the question by saying: "To expect, concerning a miracle, that it should succeed upon repetition is to expect that which would make it cease to be a miracle; which is contrary to its nature as such, and would totally destroy the use and purpose for which it was wrought." [31] But, as Cotter Morison remarks: [32] "Assuming that a miracle reveals the presence of a supernatural power, why should its repetition destroy its miraculous character? Above all, why should it destroy its use? If miracles are intended to convert the stiff-necked and hard-of-heart, what more likely way of bringing them to submission than the repetition of miracles? And, according to Scripture, this was precisely the way in which Pharaoh, king of Egypt, was humbled. He resisted the miracles wrought by Moses and Aaron with stubbornness all through the first nine plagues; but the universal slaying of the first-born broke even his spirit.... It may suit Paley to say that repetition of miracles would destroy their use; but he must be a luke-warm theologian who does not at times wish from the depth of his heart that an authentic miracle could be produced. Yet it is at this momentous crisis in the religious affairs of the world, when the enemy is carrying one position after another, and has all but penetrated to the citadel of belief, that no miracles occur, that no miracles are claimed, except, indeed, of the compromising species made at Lourdes.... When no one doubted the possibility of the frequency of miracles they abounded, we are told--that is, when, by reason of their number and the ready credit accorded to them, their effect was the least startling, then they were lavished on a believing world. Now, when they are denied and insulted as the figments of a barbarous age; when the faith they might support is in such jeopardy as it never was before; when a tithe of the wonders wasted in the deserts of Sinai and the 'parts beyond Jordan' would shake the nations with astonishment and surprise--when, in short, the least expenditure of miracle would produce the maximum of result, then miracles mysteriously cease. This fact, which is beyond contest, has borne fruit, and will yet bear more." Some pious Christians, feeling the force of arguments such as these, contend that Christ's promises to believers do indeed apply to all time; that supernatural manifestations have not ceased; and that, when there is no exercise of the supernatural in the visible Church of Christendom, it is owing to lack of faith. "Can you give me," asks Father Ignatius, [33] "one single text in Holy Scripture to prove that miracles and visions are to cease with the apostles? When we hear, in all directions, of the supernatural being manifested, we need not wonder, for we are living in a day which demands supernatural manifestations more than any other epoch in the Christian Church." BELIEF IN MIRACLES ESSENTIAL. The old argument in support of miracles and inspiration was clearly vitiated by its circular nature, for it was to the effect that miracles were true because asserted to be so in the Bible, which was the inspired word of God, and that the Bible was inspired because the miracles proved it to be so. This argument is gradually being dropped, and I have only alluded to it to show how much importance used to be, and, for the matter of that, still is, attached to miracles, as proving the truth of the Bible. Butler, Paley, Mansel, Mozley, Farrar, Westcott, Liddon, and a host of other authorities, could not conceive that revelation could be made in any other way than by miracles, and felt that without them Christianity would be proved false and overthrown. Such also appears to be the opinion of the majority of our living dignitaries. On the other hand, the minority, which we may take to be represented by the able writers in Contentio Veritatis and elsewhere, maintain that "the time is past when Christianity could be presented as a revelation attested by miracles.... We must accept Christianity, not on the ground of the miracles, but in spite of them.... There has been no special intervention of the Divine Will contrary to the natural order of things." That is, by ruling miracles to be out of court, the new school are able to reconcile the facts of science with the Christian faith. "Our belief in Jesus Christ must be based upon moral conviction; not upon physical wonder." [34] The old school, on the other hand, consider Christianity to be untrue without miracles. "The miraculous element," they say, "cannot be weeded out of the Gospel narratives without altogether impugning the historical value of these documents." [35] They are able to maintain this position, and yet remain believers, by disallowing the facts of science. It is an extraordinary state of affairs, and who can wonder that many of the laity who know of these things are meanwhile fast lapsing into agnosticism? As a matter of fact, no bishop, no clerk in Holy Orders, can honestly retain his preferment unless he believes in miracles. He would have to follow the example of the late Sir Leslie Stephen, and resign. § 2. Miracle Apologetics. The question arises, "How, then, do the majority of our spiritual guides regard the accounts of miracles in the Bible?" Broadly speaking, miracles are divided by them into three classes--(1) mythical, but containing spiritual truths; (2) explicable naturally; (3) historical and vital. Should their views be of a very advanced type, all the miracles will be relegated to the first two classes. If advanced, but not quite so much advanced, the fundamental miracles of the Incarnation, Resurrection, and Ascension will be taken into the third class; the miracles deemed to be not indispensable, or not serving a useful purpose, being explained away. Continuing to descend the scale of enlightenment, more and more miracles will find their way into the third class, until no miracles alleged to have been performed by Christ himself will be discredited--except, perhaps, those that appear particularly incredible or useless, such as sending devils into swine, turning water into wine, or withering a fig tree. Regarding the miracles alleged to have been performed by the Apostles we hear very little. Concerning the Old Testament miracles, however, opinions are freely expressed, and range between those of the Broad Church, who consider the miracles all belong to the first two classes, and those of the strictly orthodox, who maintain all the miraculous events to be facts, on the principle that, whether the whale swallowed Jonah or Jonah swallowed the whale, they must be true because they are related in the Holy Scriptures--the Scriptures that were accepted as historical by their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. People who are the children of Christian parents have been brought up from childhood to a literal acceptance of the miracles, and now they are not only asked to give up the convictions so sedulously implanted while their minds were most receptive, but to choose between the conflicting views of the expounders of God's word. Let us consider some examples of the latest interpretations, and see if they appeal to our hearts and minds. "In John v. (the authenticity of the passage is of no moment to this argument) we read that the stirring of the waters and the consequent healing virtue was attributed to the presence of an angel. The modern would speak of the pool as a medicinal spring. The fact is the same. The mode of description is different. The ancient knew little of what are called natural causes." [36] The explanation is sensible enough; but, while incidentally showing that the Evangelists were just as credulous and ignorant as other people of their times, it is a dangerous concession. For directly a natural explanation of this kind is allowed in one case, it must also be allowed as possible in another, and thus the fundamental miracles might be shorn of all that renders them of any value for substantiating our faith. Regarding the particular explanation under consideration, one may be permitted to ask, How is it the water has lost its medicinal qualities? Also, How is it the ancient's belief is still foisted on the credulous modern? When visiting the traditional Pool of Bethesda, now in the custody of the Greek Church, I saw documents exposed in the gateway giving the words from the fifth chapter of St. John in fifty-six different languages! The healing miracles performed by Jesus are now frequently attributed to the use of the same power as that by which faith-cures are effected at the present time--a power upon which the science of psychology is shedding a new light, and which mental therapeutics will one day place at the disposal of the human race. Apart from this disappointing alteration in the character of the "mighty works" which were supposed to betoken the divinity of Christ, is there not something abhorrent in the thought that He should take advantage of a secret knowledge of the powers of nature, in order to impose upon the credulity of the age in which He lived, and thus secure the worship of His disciples? At least, if we are Christians, let us assume that Christ, as man, believed He was using supernatural powers, and that His disciples, if they had faith enough, could remove mountains, just as He undoubtedly believed, according to such an eminent authority as Dr. Sanday, that He really was casting out devils when He cured "the epileptic," etc. It is certainly difficult to understand this ignorance of the Son of God; but, when apologists attempt to extricate Christian dogmas from the quagmire of doubt by such methods, they only succeed in causing them to disappear into it beyond all hope of recovery. As I have alluded to the subject of Christ's belief in "devil-possession," I should mention here that there are still many cultured ecclesiastics, especially among those who still believe that there is such a personage as the Devil, who argue that there was such a malady as devil-possession in those days. Some even hold that it still exists. On the other hand, the Rev. David Smith, in his book, The Days of His Flesh, which professes to bring the Gospels "up to date," holds that Jesus, "after his wont, fell in with the delusion," and that in the case in which the Gadarene swine play so important a part, He, "like a wise physician, humanised the madman's fancy, and feigned acquiescence in his lunatic craze." Exorcism, it may be remarked, has been practised, in all times, wherever a belief has existed in literal demoniacal possession. In the Latin and Greek Churches it is used in the baptism of both adults and infants, in the consecration of water, salt, oil, etc., and in specific cases of individuals supposed to be possessed by evil spirits. Exorcism in baptism is still retained also in some Lutheran Churches. In Jerusalem, at the present time, there are three dissenting sects, whose ministers practise the exorcism of spirits. Opinions differ widely as to whether certain miracles actually occurred, or whether they admit of a natural explanation. Take the miracle of "the Feeding of the Five Thousand." The school, of which the Bishop of Birmingham, late of Worcester, and the learned Dr. Sanday are the mouthpieces, consider that, "whatever may have actually occurred, a nineteenth-century observer would have given, if he had been present, a different account from that which has come down to us." On the other hand, the Bishop of London believes this miracle to have occurred "because of the very humble, unimaginative [?], and truthful men who reported it." [37] Could any two views be more diametrically opposite? Obviously, as has already been pointed out, destructive admissions concerning any one of the miracles tend to invalidate the truth of all the rest; and, therefore, we find that apologists of a less advanced stamp are still inclined to the view that the miracles connected with the life of Christ are miracles pure and simple. Godet, in his Defence of the Christian Faith, explains that "It will become easy to understand why the prodigies which signalised the advent of Jesus Christ upon earth do not occur in our day.... The appearance of the perfectly Holy Man was so trenchant a break in the life of humanity up to that moment that from the shock it produced there resulted consequences which have not repeated themselves at any other period.... One condition was requisite--viz., that there should exist a Man fit to be associated with the exercise of the Creative Omnipotence." Many doubters may be prepared to admit the necessity of miracles as explained by the learned Professor; but they contend that, up to the present time, there is no instance of a miracle having been proved, not even the alleged sinlessness of Jesus Christ, and they ask why, if God graciously furnished proofs to one generation, He did not, in His infinite wisdom, ordain that these proofs should be established for all time, beyond all possibility of cavil? Passing on to the miracles of the Old Testament, we often find that those who still maintain that only the first chapters of the Bible are legendary will adopt a variation of the second class of interpretation--they will say that the events were of an ordinary character, but occurred in answer to prayer. Joshua is for them an historical character. However, Joshua x. 12-14 must not be taken literally, but allowance should be made for poetical licence. Joshua, it is explained, never really committed himself to the extent of commanding the sun and the moon to stand still, but only "besought God that the black clouds of the storm driving up the pass from the sea might not be allowed to blot out the sun and bring night prematurely before his victory was complete." [38] This prayer, be it remembered, was for the sake of a work of butchery which God was supposed to have sanctioned! Besides, as the sun is said to have obeyed Joshua, and, further, it is said that "there was no day like that before it or after it," at least we are to infer that something very unusual happened at Joshua's request. The explanation we meet with in what are considered by some to be the "best" apologetics is that the language used is purely figurative, just as one might say, "I hope the sun won't set too soon," or "We never had such a day." Similarly there is the north-east wind theory as a possible explanation of what might have happened, if the "crossing of the Red Sea" ever took place, and if Moses be not as mythical as the rod with which he divided the waters. Perhaps the most unsatisfactory explanation of all is that regarding the rainbow. It is agreed, there being no other alternative, that "it is not meant that the rainbow appeared for the first time to Noah [another purely legendary character] after the Flood [although this is certainly what the Bible leads one to suppose], but that it was adopted then as a visible sign of God's covenant, as water is adopted for a somewhat similar covenant in the New Testament." [39] It is now known for a fact that, if there are any historical data for the story, the Flood could only have been local; but let that pass. Has the rainbow-covenant prevented millions of people perishing since then in many a mighty flood? Looking at God's promise as a token of His pity for suffering humanity, are not deaths occurring every moment, accompanied by agony so prolonged and supreme that, compared with them, a death by drowning would be a happy release? If Jews and Christians still really believe in this story, how is it that the rainbow attracts not the slightest devout attention? I have never yet heard this beautiful spectacle alluded to with any particular reverence. The reason is obvious. We know that the bow consists of all the prismatic colours produced in the atmosphere by the refraction and reflection of the sun's light from the rain drops, and no one regards the Bible story seriously. Yet our divines try to save the credit of the Bible by interpretations which are obviously "catching at straws." Such methods are as harmful as they are pitiful. In all these examples the explanations offered to us seem to come to this--the phenomena were purely natural from start to finish, only they occurred opportunely and were afterwards poetically embellished; or they contain a spiritual meaning. Perhaps the most extraordinary argument ever brought forward concerning the "sun standing still" is that urged by the learned Bishop Westcott in his Gospel of the Resurrection. He says (pp. 38-9): "It would be positively immoral for us now to pray that the tides or the sun should not rise on a particular day; but, as long as the idea of the physical law which ruled them was unformed or indistinct, the prayer would have been reasonable, and (may we not suppose?) the fulfilment also." It is difficult to believe that these can really be the words of one of the Church's greatest scholars. To what extent will not bias influence the brain to use its powers perversely? It is far-fetched arguments of this kind that increase rather than dispel doubt in the normal mind, and especially when they are brought forward in all seriousness by the very pillars of the Church. We are sometimes asked to banish our doubts and "craving for intellectualism," as it is called, and "to come to Christ as little children and in Him to find rest." Certainly it is only by letting our minds sink to the level of a little child's, or, what is the same thing, to the level of a primeval man's, that we could bring ourselves to accept such childish nonsense. A child asks for the moon, but does not know the physical impossibility of obtaining his desire. His prayer is therefore reasonable, and (may we not suppose?) the fulfilment also. This unconscious trifling with the truth--for in reality it is nothing else--reminds me of a passage in Dr. Smith's orthodox, but somewhat out of date, Dictionary of the Bible, where an attempt is made to reconcile the Mosaic narrative of Creation with the discoveries of modern science. It runs as follows: "The very act of creation must have been the introducing of laws; but, when the work was finished, those laws may have suffered some modification." [40] We have seen that, while one section of apologists contend that belief in the miraculous is essential, other advocates of Christianity try to get rid of all difficulties by suggesting that such words as "miracles" and "supernatural" ought not to be used. In a paper on "The Effect of Science upon Christianity," which he has contributed to the Christian Commonwealth, the Rev. R. F. Horton, M.A., D.D., affirms that "the word 'supernatural' is ill-chosen," and he adds that "it is unknown in the New Testament, and introduces ideas which are alien to those of Christ." The word "miracles," [41] he holds, is equally unfortunate, and represents a notion which is not contained in the New Testament terms "signs" and "mighty works." If this be not word-spinning, then what is? Does it matter whether we call the raising of Lazarus a "miracle" or a "sign"? Is the miraculous feeding of the multitudes rendered more credible if we call it a natural instead of a supernatural occurrence? Is not the whole point of the sign lost, too, if it be no longer supernatural--if it becomes a sort of juggling feat? Dr. Horton leaves us in no doubt as to the object of his play upon words. He aims at disposing of the difficulties connected with Christian miracles by affirming that everything in nature is miraculous. He observes: "There is no miracle in the New Testament so amazing as the fact that from protoplasm has developed the spiritual life of the saint." He is voicing one of the latest pleas of the "advanced" apologists--a plea which is transparently vain and futile. Development from protoplasm, like all the other wonders of the universe, takes place in accordance with natural laws more or less perfectly understood; and these things have no sort of connection with the "signs" and "mighty works" of the New Testament. Miracles are rejected not because they are amazing, but because they are contradictory to experience and at variance with the laws of nature. So far the scientist considers the "reign of law" to be an established scientific fact, and he is naturally loth to conclude, without the strongest evidence, that, after all, he has been deceived. Much less would he come to such a conclusion when there is not even a particle of trustworthy evidence. There is the significant circumstance, too, that the laws now discovered were unknown at the time of the alleged performance of miracles, and that the belief in miracles, and in the supposed continuance of miracles, varies in inverse proportion to knowledge. § 3. The Fundamental Miracles. The above samples of apologetics fairly represent the various ways in which miracles are now explained. Even if the reasoning were sound, it would hardly serve to strengthen the arguments for those miracles which cannot and must not be explained away--the miracles on which are based the central doctrines of the Christian Faith. Christianity stands or falls according as the Resurrection and Ascension are facts or not. The Rationalist's criticisms have been presented in many articles and books, but perhaps nowhere more clearly and forcibly than in the well-known work, Supernatural Religion; and it is worthy of note that these criticisms have been further strengthened by the latest "Higher Criticism," as set forth in the articles on the Resurrection and Ascension narratives in the Encyclopædia Biblica. I have specially referred to Supernatural Religion, because this book created a considerable stir in theological circles when it first appeared, some years ago, and also because its arguments are popularly supposed to have been completely demolished by Bishop Lightfoot in his Essays on the Work Called "Supernatural Religion." But--and here is a good instance of the ease with which the laity can be deceived--if anyone will take the trouble only to glance at these two works, he will find, to his astonishment, that the whole of the overwhelmingly important portion of the book under review, such as the chapters on miracles, on the Resurrection, on the Incarnation, and on the Ascension, has received no attention! Besides, there is A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays [42] which completely demolishes the Bishop's arguments. THE RESURRECTION. Advanced modern criticism shows that the Resurrection can no longer be regarded as a historical fact, the evidence being unreliable. This is the sober opinion of professors of theology formed on the results of the most careful research, and with no preconceived opinion as to its scientific impossibility. What have the apologists to say to this? While the obvious discrepancies and deficiencies in the accounts of the Resurrection are left practically unexplained, the old argument from the "empty tomb" [43] is being discarded as worthless by the best scholars. Again, the new science of psychology robs "the appearances," supposing that they ever occurred, of any meaning that could be construed into a proof of the Resurrection. Only one argument of any account is left, and on this the apologist chiefly pins his faith, more than on anything else. A certain contemporary of Christ wrote some letters in which he shows a firm belief in the Resurrection: his name was Paul. The evidence of this one man is considered sufficient to substantiate a miracle, which is contrary to all human experience, and upon the truth of which depend the Christian Faith and our hope of immortality! Moreover, St. Paul was not present himself on any of the occasions of the alleged appearances; and, except with regard to his own particular "religious experience," his evidence is therefore hearsay. The statement that Jesus was seen by 500 brethren at once is of little value, and St. Paul omits to mention what steps he took to ascertain the accuracy of his information--who the individuals were, what the various impressions made upon them were, etc. The appearance to 500 brethren is not mentioned in any of the Gospels. That St. Paul heard such a report does not prove that the report was true, or, if true, that the 500 had clear and unmistakable evidence of Christ's presence. There are critics who could not accept the evidence of St. Paul, for the simple reason that they conclude that we possess no Epistles of St. Paul; that the writings which bear his name are pseudepigrapha, containing seemingly historical data from the life and labours of the Apostle borrowed from Acts of Paul--a work containing, so far as is known to us, both truth and fiction. [44] Less advanced criticism lays down the broad thesis that all the Pauline epistles are real letters written by him, but that "Paul, who reckoned the future of this present world not by millennia or centuries, but by a few short years, had not the faintest surmise of the part his letters were destined to play in the providential ordering of the world." [45] Accepting the genuineness of the Epistles, and therefore of the passage in 1 Cor. xv. 3-8, let us pause and think over the chief features of the argument. In the first place, it seems to me that the fact of St. Paul having been a contemporary of the Messiah really only adds to our perplexities. When there were so many who were eye-witnesses of His life, why should God single out one who was not thus favoured as His chief witness for all posterity? He was living at the same time and in the same country as Christ, and yet never knew Him. Surely it stands to reason that an eye-witness is of more value than a mere visionary who wrote letters revealing a remarkable ignorance of the greater part of the narrative of the Gospels, and indeed of the whole body of teachings there ascribed to Jesus. That St. Paul would believe in the Resurrection before he took up the Christian cause goes without saying; but that he believed everything he heard from the followers of Christ, and everything he thought he heard when in a trance, does not, I fear, amount to much in the way of evidence--and especially so when we know that this was an age when the resurrection of any great prophet was taken to be a normal event. How often, I wonder, in the world's history have not the disciples of great teachers attributed miraculous powers to their beloved master, even when with them alive, and still further magnified these powers after his death? How often has it not occurred that these same stories have been further exaggerated in the course of their transmission to succeeding generations? Nothing is more conceivable than that the Bible story may spuriously embellish the real life of Jesus as much as the mythical accounts of Buddha, for instance, spuriously embellish the real life of Prince Siddârtha. Of all old-world legends, the death and resurrection of a virgin-born or in some way divinely-born Saviour was the most widespread. Saul, the Pharisee, would have been imbued with this prevalent notion, and so could never get away from the thought that some kind of propitiation had to be made for the sins of men. Time after time a terrible suspicion must have crossed his mind--what if he were committing a heinous crime in persecuting the Christians? What if, after all, the Crucified One were the real Saviour of mankind? Doubts such as these may well have deeply agitated him. The living figure so often described to him by the Christians must have stood out before him. On his own testimony, as well as that of the Acts, he was prone to visions and other ecstatic conditions (2 Cor. xii. 1-4; 1 Cor. xiv. 18; Acts ix. 12, xvi. 9, xxii. 17, xxvii. 23). What more natural than that after his "religious experience" near Damascus he should be convinced that he had been specially favoured by an interview with the Saviour? So many "spiritual experiences" of a like nature are on record that it is difficult to know which is the best to select for comparison. Professor Huxley, in his essay on "The Value of Witness to the Miraculous," takes the cases of Eginhard (born about A.D. 770), who wrote The History of the Translation of the Blessed Martyrs of Christ, S.S. Marcellinus and Petrus; and George Fox, who, about the year 1647, heard voices and saw visions which assured him that "there is a living God who made all things." Perhaps the case of Emanuel Swedenborg [46] may be worth a moment's consideration. He was the son of a bishop, and was carefully educated. Endowed with unusual intellectual powers and an iron constitution, he acquired vast stores of learning. From early childhood he evinced a serious turn of mind, combined with a remarkable tendency to indulge in religious speculations. Eventually he received an extraordinary "call" in the shape of a vision. This converted the scientific inquirer into a supernatural prophet. He was now the mouthpiece of God. "The Lord Himself hath called me, who was graciously pleased to manifest Himself to me, His unworthy servant, in a personal experience in the year 1745." "I have never," he says in his work on True Christian Religion, "received anything appertaining to the doctrines of that Church from any angel, but from the Lord alone, while I was reading the Word." Swedenborg was a man who won the respect, confidence, and love of all who came in contact with him. He had a peculiarly abstract metaphysical character of mind, and was firmly convinced that he had "conversed with spirits" and "seen the Lord." So was Martin Luther perfectly convinced that he had seen the Devil when he threw his ink-pot at him. So was the peasant girl of Lourdes convinced that she had seen the Virgin Mary. So is Evan Roberts convinced that he has seen his Saviour. So have many good Christians from time to time been convinced that they have seen Christ, the Virgin Mary, saints, and angels. Father Ignatius, the Evangelist monk, may be, as I have heard him called, an emotional wreck; but he is also a most earnest Christian, and he is quite sure that he has seen the Virgin Mary. [47] John Wesley, whose followers throughout the world to-day number 30,000,000, was also a visionary. Thousands and thousands of heathens as well as Christians have had visions of their saviours; but such experiences could scarcely be brought forward seriously as a proof of the existence of the divinities believed to have been seen, or of their ascension after a life upon earth. Visual and auditory hallucinations are now the subject of a searching inquiry by the Society for Psychical Research, and, willing as some of its members are to explain metapsychical phenomena by the simple theory of the spiritists, the growing opinion is that these apparitions and voices are purely hallucinatory and due to causes which are not extra-human. As Mr. Lowes Dickinson pertinently remarks when speaking of "Conversions" in his article on Revelations, in the Independent Review: "The important question is whether the belief of the recipient in the evidential value of the experience is justified; and I think that a little consideration will show that it is not so, for it is noticeable that the truth supposed to be revealed in the moment of conversion is commonly, if not invariably, the reflection of the doctrine or theory with which the subject, whether or no he has accepted it, has hitherto been most familiar. I have never heard, for example, of a case in which a Mohammedan or a Hindoo, without having ever heard of Christianity, has had a revelation of Christian truth. Conversion, in fact, it would seem, is not the communication of a new truth; it is the presentation of ideas already familiar in such a way that they are accompanied by an irresistible certainty that they are true.... A religious revelation cannot be distinguished from what would be admitted to be the hallucinations of disease. A man may be convinced, with equal assurance, that he is a poached egg or a saint; that he has a mission to assassinate the king or redeem the world; that he is eternally damned or eternally saved; that he has had a vision of the Virgin Mary or a vision of Nirvana." Another argument for considering the Resurrection as an historical fact is that brought forward by the Rev. D. S. Margoliouth. The learned Professor argues in the Expositor that the Gospel narrative is located within historic times. So are the narratives of King Arthur (the Celtic Messiah), or William Tell, or Robin Hood; but historians are silent about all these narratives, sacred and profane alike. There was probably a real Arthur, however different from the hero of the trouvères, and a real Robin Hood, however now enlarged and disguised by the accretion of legend. Similarly there was a real Jesus Christ; but the marvellous event of His resurrection is unrecorded by any of the celebrated historians of the period. The final argument is that "the Resurrection is, so to speak, of a piece with the whole character and the claims of Christ.... Even had we no Testament at all, we should be obliged to postulate something very much like either the Resurrection or the belief in the Resurrection in order to account for Christianity." No one disputes, I should think, this necessity for the Resurrection, if we are to remain Christians; but it is of the fact of the Resurrection that unfortunate doubters wish to be assured. The Bishop of Ripon argues that the miraculous accessories connected with the birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ find a place only in the group of secondary witnesses, and adds significantly: "Our belief in Jesus Christ must be based upon moral conviction, not upon physical wonder." The meaning of this, in plain English, is clear enough, and I leave it for the honest-minded reader to decide whether this is a satisfactory foundation for the Christian dogmas. Is this what he was taught, or what his children are now being taught? Will it suffice? Can he remain a Christian? Will his children, when they grow up and begin to think for themselves, remain Christians? The Dean of Westminster writes to the Archbishop of Canterbury: "Students of natural science find themselves left with St. Luke as the strongest historical evidence within the New Testament." Now, the author of St. Luke is also the author of the Acts, and his propensity for miraculous decoration is by no means reassuring. Besides, he was not an eye-witness. Then, too, we have Canon Henson, in the Hibbert Journal for April, 1904, informing us that "Any candid Christian reading through the accounts of the New Testament evidences ... cannot escape the inference that the evidence for the quasi-historical statements of the Creed is of a highly complicated, dubious, and even contradictory character." He then asks us: "Is an honest belief in the Resurrection really inconsistent with a reverent agnosticism as to the historical circumstances out of which in the first instance that belief arose?" The reply of an ordinary candid layman is, I think, sufficiently obvious. Similarly, Abbé Loisy, the champion of advanced theology in the Roman Catholic Church, considers the Resurrection to be a spiritual fact only, and not a fact of the historical order. "La Résurrection n'est pas proprement un fait d'ordre historique." The powerful article in the Encyclopædia Biblica also leads us to the same conclusion. Those who believe in the fact of the Resurrection, and have not Canon Henson's reverent agnosticism concerning the event, must believe also in all the facts related in connection with it, including the account of Jesus having eaten and having been touched, and of his bodily ascent up into the clouds. If any one portion of the story be considered incredible or untrustworthy, the whole collapses. It may be useful, therefore, to put to ourselves some questions concerning any one of the many marvellous accessories of the Resurrection. How few of us have ever had our belief tested by searching questions such as a cultured heathen would put if we tried to convert him? For instance, what would you reply if you were asked by an intelligent native of India, China, or Japan: "Who were the saints of whom Matthew speaks as having risen from their graves? To whom did they appear? And how was it that their graves were opened as Jesus died, while their bodies did not come out till after His Resurrection? What also became of them afterwards?" To this the only candid reply possible would be: "I am unable to give you any information on this subject. Their not appearing till after Jesus rose from death would seem to have been introduced so as not to give them the precedence over Him in the exercise of the privilege of resurrection. He is said to be 'the first that should rise from the dead' (Acts xxvi. 23), 'the first fruits of them that slept' (1 Cor. xv. 20), 'the first-born from the dead' (Col. i. 18)." This, however, would hardly satisfy your questioner, who would reply: "Your inability to give me this information excites my suspicions, and your further statements seem to me to be very clumsy. To mark and enhance the death of the Messiah, nature is said to be convulsed, and graves thrown open; but the exit of the saints who were to come out of them is restrained till He should first have made His egress from the tomb three days later. And, after all, He had no such precedence in resurrection, for several persons are said to have been raised from the dead by the prophets of old and by Himself; two passed into heaven without ever being in their graves, and one of them--namely, Elias--appeared to Him with Moses in risen life at the time of His transfiguration. May I ask, Are the disturbances of nature which are said to have occurred at the crucifixion--namely, the preternatural darkness for three hours and the earthquake--mentioned by historians of the time?" You would have to confess, "They are not." Thus you would fail to convert your heathen interlocutor, whose final fling at you would be: "That seems to demonstrate that nothing of the kind could really have occurred. Moreover, had there been such phenomena, the other evangelists would not have failed to support their position with these divine manifestations." THE ASCENSION. If apologetics dealing with the Resurrection are unconvincing, still more so are those regarding the Ascension. There is little or no attempt to explain the meagreness of the Gospel narratives, how all mention of it is omitted in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John; and one vague sentence is all we are given in St. Mark and St. Luke--sentences which, according to the Higher Critics, were never penned by these persons. In "The Acts" the "St. Luke" writer furnishes the detail that "a cloud received him out of their sight," and that, "as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." In these days "ascending up" has no meaning for us. Candidly, if the writer had had our astronomical knowledge, would these words ever have been written? Certainly they would not. Then is the Ascension a fact or is it not? How is it possible that St. Matthew and St. John could have remained silent regarding such an event if they had really witnessed it? Or granting, in the case of the writer of "St. John," that he was not St. John the Apostle, though he distinctly says he was, it is still astounding that he should have omitted to record such important evidence of Christ's divinity, if it was an accepted fact at the time he wrote. Archdeacon Wilson, in a paper read at the Diocesan Conference at Manchester, October 22nd, 1903, asks: "What do we mean in our Creed when we say: 'He came down from heaven'? We explain away 'down,' we explain away 'heaven' in the sense in which the word was originally used. What do we mean by 'descended into Hell'? by 'Sitteth on the right hand of God'?... Spiritual truths are spiritually discerned, and do not admit of final intellectual definitions. We can only avert the rejection of theology by recognising its limitations." Is it possible for the bulk of humanity, I ask, to possess the requisite spiritual discernment? Is it not far more likely that, with the spread of education, they will finally reject theology? The Rev. David Smith, in his book, The Days of His Flesh, [48] dismisses the Ascension with the words: "When Jesus parted from the eleven on Olivet, He did not forsake the earth and migrate to a distant Heaven. He ceased to manifest Himself; but He is here at this hour no otherwise than during those forty days." One can but wonder how Ascension Day is kept in Mr. Smith's church, and how he brings himself to repeat the Apostles' Creed. Leaving aside the thoroughly unreliable nature of the Bible accounts of the Ascension, consider how easy it is for the superstitious, through optical illusions or subjective visions (or whatever name it may please the neologist to give to these "experiences"), to be honestly convinced of the occurrence of a supernatural event, and to take care that it should lose nothing of its marvellous character in the telling. Only the other day the good people of Sudja saw a mighty iris-coloured cross appear over the cathedral during divine service, and regarded the phenomenon as a sign of heaven's resolve to bestow victory upon Christian Russia. This "miracle" was witnessed by all the notabilities of the city, who forwarded a description to General Kuropatkin in a document duly attested with their signatures. For the stupendous and absurdly impossible miracle of the Ascension we have not even got a satisfactory description, much less an attested document. Is it not time that we should ask ourselves the plain question, Do we really believe that an extraordinary levitation occurred, and that Jesus Christ was seen to be rising in the air until some passing clouds concealed Him from view? If we do not so believe, why do we say we do when we repeat the Creed? Why do we pretend we do when we sit in church and listen to the account of the Ascension, and perhaps to a sermon on it? Why do we allow our friends to think that we do so believe? Why is Ascension Day one of our Holy Days? And, finally, why do we teach, or allow others to teach, our children what we know to be untrue? Surely these are serious questions to ask ourselves. THE INCARNATION. There remains the miracle of the Virgin-birth. That this is under dispute among Christian theologians is notorious, and the controversy has but served to show with ever-increasing clearness how untrustworthy is the evidence for this miracle. Christian Biblical experts inform us that it belongs to the latest strata of the New Testament tradition, and that no trace of the story can be found before 120 A.D. In other words, that it is an obvious interpolation in St. Matthew and St. Luke. Adolf Harnack, the learned Professor of Church History in the University of Berlin, is looked upon, even by the orthodox, as one of our greatest living Biblical scholars, and we learn from him that we must disregard the history of Jesus' birth given in these two Gospels; for not only is it untrustworthy, but "the evangelists themselves never refer to it, nor make Jesus Himself refer to His antecedents. On the contrary, they tell us that Jesus' mother and His brethren were completely surprised at His coming forward, and did not know what to make of it. Paul, too, is silent; so that we can be sure that the oldest tradition knew nothing of any stories of Jesus' birth." [49] "Moral fitness" appears to be the only argument that we can fall back upon, and this is now the apologists' last stronghold. If they belong to the Church of England, they should remember that it was this identical line of reasoning that gave rise to the "pious opinion" that the Mother of Christ had herself been miraculously preserved from all taint of original sin from the first moment of her conception in the womb of her mother. As Bernard of Clairvaux vigorously argued (in 1140 A.D.): "On the same principle you would be obliged to hold that the conception of her ancestors, in an ascending line, was also a holy one, since otherwise she would not have descended from them worthily." Yet, in spite of the absurdity, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was formally defined, as a dogma binding on the acceptance of all the faithful, by the bull Ineffabilis Deus (December 8th, 1854). Certainly there is a moral fitness in the Virgin-birth of the Son of God, and it is also fit that His mother should have been immaculately conceived; and those who hold to the one doctrine may well hold to the other. Some apologists appear almost in despair of a continuance of belief in this dogma. The learned Dr. Sanday says we ought to regard the Virgin-birth "as one of those hidden mysteries which, whether or not God wills that we should believe them now, He has, at all events, willed that men should believe in times past." Is not this tantamount to giving up belief in the Virgin-birth? CONCLUDING REMARKS. Because God once willed that men should have all kinds of absurd superstitions, and now wills that they should acknowledge their absurdity, are we, as Dr. Sanday appears to recommend, to keep up the pretence of believing in them on the ground that they are hidden mysteries? Surely not; but, speaking of mysteries, there is one which ought to be cleared, or at least receive a much fuller investigation than it has yet received at the hands of the Church. I refer to the fact that, ages before the Christian era, certain miracles were believed to have taken place, and that these were of precisely the same nature as those recorded in the Bible. For instance, numerous saviours were believed to have been born of virgins, to have died for the sins of mankind, to have risen again from the dead, and to have ascended into heaven. Thus not only are the Bible miracles scientifically impossible; not only are they unsupported by anything approaching adequate evidence; not only do the specious explanations of apologists serve but to confirm our scepticism concerning them; but we find that they are not even original--that they form part of ancient superstitions. That these fresh grounds for suspecting the truth of Christianity are of the gravest character will be shown in the chapter on Comparative Mythology. BIBLE CRITICISM Chapter III. THE DESTRUCTIVE CHARACTER OF MODERN BIBLE CRITICISM § 1. Clashing Views on Bible Criticism. Such, then, is an outline of the state of apologetics on the subject of Miracles in general, and of those connected with the central doctrines of the Church in particular. Nothing could be more unsatisfactory, nothing more calculated to arouse suspicion of the Faith; and now, if we turn our attention to the "Higher Criticism," and to the apologetics it has called forth, we shall find these suspicions still further strengthened. On the one hand a considerable proportion of these criticisms are accepted by the more enlightened divines, and, on the other hand, those who refuse to accept any of them urge that they undermine Christianity. The Dean of Canterbury, Dr. Wace, is one of the latter class. Speaking at a men's service (at St. Mary Bredin's Church, Canterbury, on December 4th, 1904), he justly twits the critics for describing a considerable part of the Bible, and particularly the early part, as "not historical," when "what they mean is that it is not true." No subtle theories are required to support Dr. Wace's belief in Christianity, for even the first chapter of Genesis is, in his opinion, a "substantially accurate" account of "that which happened on earth before there were any men upon it," and "is the best proof that the Bible proceeded from God." He remains among the dwindling number of those who, in these days of Christian storm and stress, still cling to the old ideas about the Bible. His reasons for doing so are apparently similar to those given by "Roger" in a little pamphlet entitled Roger's Reasons (by John Urquhart), where it is sought to reconcile the Bible and Science at the expense of accuracy, logic, and common sense. For the obscurantist, belief is made easy, and the apologies for the Faith can be comparatively straightforward. For the "enlightened" the conditions are reversed. An example of the advanced views of a Church of England divine, and of the objections to these views of a strictly orthodox Churchman, may prove instructive. Reviewing the Bishop of Winchester's book, On Holy Scripture and Criticism, the Church Times (of February 10th, 1905) pertinently observes: "Attacks upon the Gospel narratives of the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection, made with such persistence from within the Church, are ugly developments which were not anticipated in 1890. Yet, strange to say, there is no recognition of the new situation in the Bishop of Winchester's book." This silence regarding points especially requiring explanation is, I fear, a common feature in religious apologetics. Look again at the reviewer's next remark: "The Bishop forgets that the truth of the message is intimately connected with the authenticity of the record, and a critical theory which assails the one assails the other." Here, then, we have an elementary truth frankly recognised; and, in plain English, it means that, if the Bishop's criticisms be true, Christianity is untrue. Entering into more detail, the writer goes on to say: "For example, the Bible record of the Fall and the truth of our Lord's 'atoning death on the Cross' are closely connected with each other. Modern criticism discards the former as a myth, and indications abound on every side that the denial of the Fall leads to a denial of the Atonement. It is not too much to say that the new method of interpreting the Bible has helped to overthrow belief in Christ as a Divine Redeemer. His redemptive work and mediatorial office have been thrust into the background." The situation could not be put more lucidly. There is no hair-splitting or glozing here. The reviewer characterises this silence on crucial points as "grave omissions," and he might have added that such omissions are calculated to arouse suspicions of the Faith. He continues: "Again the Bishop says:-- Think of the use made of the Hebrew Scriptures by the Apostles in the Acts, or by St. Paul in his Epistles. It is ever the spiritual and moral lesson. It is by no means 'ever' the spiritual and moral lesson only. Both in the Book of the Acts and St. Paul's Epistles the historical and predictive portions of the Jewish Scriptures are constantly appealed to, and used as the basis of argument. The suggestion that the Apostles attached little importance to the latter is far from being borne out by the evidence. One of the chief things in which they differ from writers of the modern school is their use of Old Testament history and prediction. Compare the place which prophecy occupies in the Epistle to the Romans with the place it holds in the Bishop of Winchester's book, where no more than sixteen lines in 187 pages are allotted to it. "Each of the Synoptic Gospels describes the scene at the Transfiguration, when Moses and Elias talked with our Lord in the sight of three of His disciples. St. Luke mentions that they talked about His approaching death. In the face of that narrative, those who say that our Lord knew no more of Moses than any Jew of the period are bound to explain how they reconcile the statement with the Evangelists' account of the Transfiguration. No Jewish scribe of the first century a.d. could pretend to have seen or conversed with either Elijah or Moses. Bishop Ryle says of our Lord:-- In His incidental references to Moses, He adopts the language of the Scribes.... He never displayed knowledge of facts which could not be possessed by those of his own time.... To His intellectual powers in His humanity there seem to have been assigned the natural barriers of the time in which he lived. "The Bishop does not perceive apparently that these arguments cut both ways, so that they tell against our Lord's claim to foreknow the future quite as much as against His knowledge of the past. And we are entitled to ask how they can possibly be made to agree with the express testimony of the Evangelists that Moses and Elijah were seen in Christ's company, and 'spake of the decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.'" I have quoted these apposite remarks at length because they will come with more force from the mouth of an orthodox believer than from anyone in doubt like myself. One cannot help wondering what the Bishop could have to urge in reply; for the ground is cut from under him by his own acceptance of so much of modern criticism. As he is a high dignitary of the Church, it is all the more puzzling. Referring to the remarks concerning Moses, it may be mentioned that, according to the critics, Moses is not a historical personage. [50] Whether the Bishop accepts this or not it is difficult to say; but apparently he does, from his desire to explain that, "in His references to Moses," Christ "adopts the language of the Scribes." Dr. Driver's new book on Genesis has also called forth some adverse criticisms from the less advanced. For example, Dr. Lock, the Warden of Keble, enumerates several considerations in support of the general trustworthiness of the patriarchal narratives, and observes that the fact of inspiration, once admitted on the higher level of a moral and spiritual tone, may "well carry its influence over into details of fact, and turn the balance when otherwise uncertain." Personally, I very much doubt whether the general public, once informed of the truth, will ever be induced to look at facts through Dr. Lock's spiritual spectacles. Dr. Driver, it should be added, informs us that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were presumably monotheists, though their monotheism is rudimentary, and the terms in which they express themselves "suggest much riper spiritual capacities and experiences," being, "in some cases, borrowed evidently from the phraseology of a much later age." Can we depend upon such narrators to furnish us with true history? Commenting on Dr. Driver's "impossible interpretations" of the words, "it shall bruise thy head," and of "the story of the Fall," his reviewer in the Church Times asks: "Was it, or was it not, a promise made by God? This is the plain question which Dr. Driver's readers are forced to ask." Sceptical truthseekers, also, are asking the same question. When will they receive a "straight" answer? § 2. A Summary of the Results of Bible Criticism. The general public know little or nothing of the results of Bible criticism. Why should they? Not only do they deem it a dull subject, but those who attend church are being informed from the pulpit that "the Gospels have been battered by years of criticism, but have come out of it stronger than ever." [51] It is easy enough to make statements of this kind, and, doubtless, they serve temporarily to quiet the fears of a congregation who know very little of the subject, and are only too glad to believe what they are told so authoritatively; but, unfortunately, such statements are, to put it mildly, misleading. The ordinary man is wofully ignorant of the "Higher Criticism." His ideas of Bible difficulties are mostly confined to common sense. He knows, perhaps, that scoffers of the London parks freethinking type gibe at Holy Writ, and he may himself have made fun of some passages that appear absurd; but here his knowledge of Bible criticism ceases. He is not aware that the critics are a body of the most erudite experts in theology, whose only motive for offering their opinion is to give to the world the result of their arduous research--the motives, in fact, of a Bruno, a Darwin, or a Pasteur. In view of this widespread ignorance, I propose to enumerate briefly a few of the results of modern criticism, and, in giving these results, I shall omit those arising from a study of comparative mythology and of evolution, as I have devoted separate chapters to that purpose. A work has been issued lately which sums up the conclusions of Bible criticism--higher, [52] lower or textual, and historical. It is called the Encyclopædia Biblica. Its four massive volumes set forth the new views, and support them by a mass of learning which deserves our serious consideration. [53] Space permits of my giving only a few notes of its conclusions, and but meagre details of the wealth of evidence in support of them. The Creation Story a Myth.--The story of the Creation as given in Genesis originated in a stock of primitive myths common to the Semitic races. Its coincidences with the Babylonian myth are so numerous that it is impossible to doubt the existence of a real historical connection between them. Many indications show that not till after the Exile in the sixth century B.C. did the story take its present shape. The Patriarchs Unhistorical Figures.--Then, again, all the stories of the Patriarchs are legendary; they may contain some truth, though how much will probably never be known; to suppose them entirely true is to throw historical criticism altogether overboard. Dr. Peters is the Episcopal rector of a large parish in New York, who has done good service in the past, both as Professor of Biblical Literature in the Episcopal Seminary at Philadelphia and as the first leader of the expedition to Babylonia sent out in 1888 by the University of Pennsylvania. He has lately written a book called The Early Hebrew Story: Its Historical Background. Canon Cheyne, reviewing this book in the Hibbert Journal for January, 1905, remarks: "It will be granted that Dr. Peters's view of the origination of the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and, to some extent, of Joseph, in myths, legends, and traditions of sanctuaries, is a sound one." Book of Genesis Legendary.--The book of Genesis is a composite narrative based on older records long since lost. It appears to have been compiled in the seventh century b.c., and to have been added to again later. The story of the Deluge is a Hebrew version of the Babylonian epic. Book of Exodus Legendary.--The book of Exodus, too, is another composite legend which has long been mistaken for history. Sober history gives no warrant for supposing that the signs and wonders wrought by Moses ever occurred, that the first-born of Egypt were ever slain, or that Pharaoh was ever drowned in the Red Sea. Moses a Legendary Character.--The historical character of Moses has not been established, and it is doubtful whether the name is that of an individual or that of a clan. The alleged origin of the Ten Commandments is purely legendary; it is probable that they were framed not earlier than the time of Amos. It is admitted even by conservative critics that the original worship of the Israelites was not of an ethical character. One of the first suspicions that ever crossed my mind was with regard to the sudden and complete disappearance of the "two tables of testimony, tables of stone written with the finger of God." [54] Later on, when I knew of the Moabite stone [55] and the Rosetta stone, [56] and especially when I learnt that there were inscriptions on bricks and cylinders of a far earlier date than that ascribed to the giving of the Ten Commandments, the old perplexity returned with added force. I remember, too, the same feeling of dissatisfaction and suspicion as I gazed on the clearly-cut Pali inscriptions in the Buddhist caves near Poona, and thought of those lost tables said to have been inscribed by the finger of God. I once put the question to a well-read clerical friend of mine: "How can these tables, written by the finger of God or by His direct inspiration, have been lost? How is it that they have simply disappeared without a word of explanatory comment in the Bible? It is inconceivably strange. What a witness would they not have been to the truth of the Old Testament account, and to the Divine authority for the Commandments!" His reply was: "It would never have done for these stones to have been preserved, for they would have become objects of worship." Granted that they might have become objects of adoration, which is worse--to worship faked relics such as the water in which Joseph of Arimathea washed the blood-stained body of Jesus, portions of wood from the true Cross, bits from the crown of thorns, and thousands of odd pieces of bone from the anatomy of the Saints; or to venerate stones that would at least have had the merit of being genuine? Why are we left without any reliable evidences of God's miraculous revelation of Himself to men, while we have abundant evidence for occurrences of trifling importance to mankind that happened thousands of years before the alleged revelation? Hammurabi (a Babylonian monarch who flourished two thousand years or more before the Christian era) inscribed a very excellent, if somewhat drastic, code of laws upon a pillar of black diorite, and we have now got the stone and read the inscriptions; but the stone inscribed by God is lost! The Book of Deuteronomy.--Evidence of every kind concurs to prove that in its original form it was a product of the seventh, not of the fifteenth, century B.C. In its present form, Deuteronomy is a composite and considerably modified version of the older work. Originally it may have consisted merely of the long speech attributed to Moses, and this may have been the book which was "found" in the temple in the reign of Josiah, the rest of the work being added shortly afterwards. As it is difficult to believe that such a work would have remained in the temple undiscovered for eight hundred years, is it not reasonable to conclude that the book was placed there by men who thought the time ripe for religious reforms--in fact, that a "pious fraud" was perpetrated? The Psalms a Composite Book.--The fond delusion that all the Psalms were written by David (though why we should be anxious to ascribe what is really of much ethical value to a person confessedly immoral I never could understand) has been entirely dispelled. It is doubtful whether David wrote any of the Psalms. Poetry and Prophetic Literature.--The book of Job is not a literary unity, nor was it written with any particular purpose; it is not a manufacture, but a growth. Jonah is a Jewish midrash, or tradition, like the histories of Tobit and Susanna, and was certainly written after the Exile. Even orthodox clergymen now admit (in private) that the Jonah story is a fairy tale. The great book of Isaiah is the work of several authors. The book of Daniel was once assumed to be the most definitely prophetical of the Old Testament writings--a notion which is seriously discounted by the discovery that it was beyond question written in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, after or during the happening of the events which were supposed to be foretold, and nearly 500 years after the time of its supposed author. It is questionable whether such a person as Daniel ever existed; but it is certain that his adventure in the den of lions, and that of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego in the fiery furnace, are as fabulous as any in the collection of Æsop. "As a rule," says Canon Cheyne, "the prophets directly connect the final restoration with the removal of the sins of their own age, and with the accomplishment of such a work of judgment as lies within their own horizon; to Isaiah the last troubles are those of the Assyrian invasion; to Jeremiah the restoration follows on the exile to Babylon; Daniel connects the future glory with the overthrow of the Greek monarchy." [57] Referring to non-Christian parallels to the belief in a Messiah, Canon Cheyne draws special attention to a Babylonian parallel, and concludes that "it is historically very conceivable that a Babylonian belief may be the real parent both of this and of all other Messianic beliefs within the sphere of Babylonian influence." [58] The manner in which these so-called prophets can be looked upon as foretelling is explained elsewhere [59] as follows: "The prophets in the Old Testament, being inspired to interpret human needs, became unconscious prophets of the Christ.... It is quite true that prophecy explained in this way is no longer available for the truth of Christianity to the same extent that it once was--at any rate, for the convincing of unbelievers." New Testament Chronology.--We do not know exactly when or where [60] Jesus was born, when He died, or how long He ministered. As to the birth of Jesus, the only account which claims to give indications of date rests on a series of mistakes. No census was possible under Herod, and none took place under "Cyrenius" until A.D. 7. The only results which have a high degree of probability are the date A.D. 30 for the death of Jesus, and the period of about one year--conservative opinion estimates it to be three years--for the length of His public ministry. The Virgin Birth.--The Gospels themselves afford the amplest justification for a criticism of their narratives. Jesus Himself made no appeal to His supposed miraculous birth. The only two verses in the first chapter of St. Luke which clearly express the idea of a supernatural birth so disturb the connection that we are impelled to regard them as an interpolation. It is Joseph, and not Mary, whose descent is traced from the son of Jesse. The genealogy of Joseph, given in the first Gospel, is prior in date to the story of the Virgin Birth, and could have been drawn up only while he was regarded as the real father of Jesus. Also St. Paul's statement that Jesus was born of the seed of David according to the flesh cannot be reconciled with the account of his having been born of a virgin. There is no recorded adoration of the Virgin by St. Paul, or, for the matter of that, by any of the Apostles or disciples. Apologists point out that among the Jews, generally, the notion of supernatural birth did not attach to their conception of the Messiah. This is true; but in the school of thought of which Philo was head there were traditions that every child of promise was born of a virgin. Now Philo, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, was a contemporary of Christ, and the influence of his school is not disputed. Speaking of him in the article on Alexandria in his Dictionary of the Bible, Dr. Smith says: "It is impossible not to feel the important office which the mystic philosophy, of which Philo is the representative, fulfilled in preparing for the apprehension of the highest Christian truth." In the next chapter we shall see that this "mystic philosophy" sprang from a heathen source, and that for the whole birth and childhood story of St. Matthew, in its every detail, it is possible to trace a pagan substratum. Jesus.--Professor A. B. Bruce, [61] writer of the article on "Jesus," points out that, while the Gospels may be regarded as, in the main, a trustworthy tradition, they are unreliable in many of their details. Those details turn out to be the all-important ones, for he goes on to show that: The Temptation is a symbolic representation of a spiritual experience; the story of the Crucifixion is not pure truth, but truth mixed with doubtful legend; the night trial, the mocking, the incident of Barabbas, the two thieves, and the preternatural concomitants of the death are picturesque accessories of doubtful authenticity; Christ's conceptions of Messiahship were greatly influenced by the later Isaiah; while His spiritual intuitions are pure truth valid for all ages, His language concerning the Father shows limitation of vision; His acts of healing are considered to be real, though it does not follow that they were miraculous. Referring to the strange statement that Jesus declined to expound His parables to the people, lest they should be converted, we are assured that "it is not credible that Jesus would either cherish or avow such an inhuman intention, though it is possible that in His disappointment He may have expressed Himself in such a way as to be misunderstood." This is all very well; but, if this be granted, we are naturally anxious to know in how many more matters Jesus may not have been misunderstood. What is the use of a revelation which can be misunderstood in this way? What can be the motive of the Omnipotent Revealer in allowing Himself to be misunderstood? Were not His hearers who misunderstood Him His own selected expositors? We even find suspicion thrown on the supposed early belief in the divinity of Jesus. For the writer points out that, while in the Gospel of St. Luke Jesus is called "the Lord" about a dozen times, the earlier Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark refer to Him simply as "Jesus"--"a fact which seems to indicate the gradual evolution of the belief in His divinity." The conclusions of Professor Schmiedel, D.D., of Zürich, one of the writers of the article on the Gospels, are still more destructive. He admits [62] that his criticisms "may have sometimes raised a doubt whether any credible elements were to be found in the Gospels at all," and that there are only nine passages which "might be called the foundation-pillars for a truly scientific life of Jesus." He admits also "the meagreness of the historical testimony regarding Jesus," as well "in canonical writings outside of the Gospels" as "in profane writers such as Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny." The Resurrection.--The all-important subject of the "Resurrection" is treated by Professor Schmiedel, who tells us that the Gospel accounts "exhibit contradictions of the most glaring kind." The actuality of the Resurrection depends for its establishment upon these very narratives, and in such a case unimpeachable witnesses are naturally demanded. Such witnesses do not exist. The reality of the appearances has ever been in dispute. The account of the watch at the sepulchre and the sealing of the tomb is now given up as unhistorical even by those who accept the story as a whole. "The statements as to the empty tomb are to be rejected." [63] The silence of St. Paul with regard to these details is unaccountable, if the story of the Resurrection be true. For him nothing less than the truth of Christianity rested on the actuality of the Resurrection of Jesus. During his visit to Jerusalem he had had opportunities of acquiring knowledge relating to it, and it may naturally be assumed that, when endeavouring to prove to the Corinthians the truth of the Resurrection, he would state fully and clearly all that he knew about it. It is admitted on all hands that the appearance recorded by him was in the nature of a vision--a purely subjective experience. And it is well known that St. Paul uses the same Greek word to describe both the appearance to himself and the appearances to the original disciples, thereby implying the possibility that the latter also were of a visionary or subjective character. An apologetic tendency is perceptible in the Gospel account, and this may help to explain the rise of unhistorical elements. It is probable that, in the absence of knowledge, conjectures were freely made, and many questions asked, the replies to which were afterwards assumed to be facts. The Gospels.--The article on the Gospels by Dr. E. A. Abbott [64] and Professor Schmiedel is crowded with damaging criticism. The view hitherto current that the four Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and appeared thirty or forty years after the death of Jesus, can, it is stated, no longer be maintained. The four Gospels were compiled from earlier materials which have perished, and the dates when they first appeared in their present form are given as follows:--Mark, certainly after the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 [65]; Matthew, about 119 A.D.; Luke, between 100 and 110; and John, between 132 and 140. But, even if we accept more conservative opinions which place the earliest Gospel about 65 A.D., that would not, of course, make any material difference, nor affect the conclusions of criticism as to their contents. Some of their statements of fact are quite erroneous, and the data are often in direct contradiction to one another. The evangelists made it clear that they wrote with a "lack of concern for historical precision." The imperfection of the Gospel accounts is everywhere manifest. Even if His ministry lasted only a few months, He must have said a thousandfold more, and repeated His sayings with many variations. The text must not be taken as a trustworthy guide to His original meaning. It merely shows us what the evangelists or their predecessors believed him to mean. The situations in which the words of Jesus are said to have been spoken cannot be implicitly accepted. Both St. Matthew and St. Mark seem to have read into the utterances of Jesus details borrowed from subsequent facts or controversies. The historical value of the third Gospel is lowered by evidence of the writer's errors and misunderstandings. It has been widely assumed that it was written by the physician Luke, and that Luke was a companion of Paul. This view of its Pauline character, however, can now be maintained only in a very limited sense. It is clear that the third Gospel and the Acts are by the same author, but that author was not Luke. In the fourth Gospel we find more ambiguities than in all the other three together. The story of the raising of Lazarus cannot be considered historical. The common-sense view of the Synoptic omission of the raising of Lazarus is that earlier authors omitted the tradition because they did not accept it, and probably had never heard of it. "Is, then, the record of the raising of Lazarus a fiction?" asks Dr. Abbott. "Not a fiction, for it is a development. But it is non-historical, like the history of the Creation in Genesis, and like the records of the other miracles in the fourth Gospel, all of which are poetic developments." [66] Lastly, we are plainly warned that "it is vain to look to the Church fathers for trustworthy information on the subject of the origin of the Gospels." [67] This is an exceedingly grave admission when we remember that these same untrustworthy fathers of the Church did the work of sifting the wheat from the chaff--settling what was and what was not canonical. It need hardly be said that these general conclusions, which are supported by evidence that has satisfied numerous Christian scholars, entirely do away with the idea that the Gospels are credible and trustworthy narratives. The Acts of the Apostles.--The sections of this book in which the narrative is written in the first person plural (says Professor Schmiedel) can be implicitly accepted; but it is equally certain that they are not by the same hand as the rest of the book. Apart from the "we" sections, no statement merits immediate acceptance on the mere ground of its presence in the book. The speeches are constructed by the author in accordance with his own conceptions. This book does not come from a companion of St. Paul; its date may be set down as between A.D. 105 and 130. The Epistles of St. Paul.--The genuineness of the Pauline Epistles does not appear to be so clear as was once universally supposed. Advanced criticism, Professor van Manen [68] tells us, in his elaborate article on "Paul," has learned to recognise that none of these Epistles is by him, not even the four generally regarded as unassailable. Van Manen's position, however, is exceptional. In the article on "Epistolary Literature" the Epistle to Philemon and the Epistles to the Philippians, Thessalonians, Galatians, Colossians, Ephesians, and even the Epistle to the Romans, are recognised as real letters written by St. Paul. The genuineness of four of the Epistles is, in any case, generally accepted. As these include the first Epistle to the Corinthians, this conclusion is of the greatest importance. The Bishop of London is "content to rest his case, for not being intellectually ashamed of the documentary evidence, on the four undisputed Epistles of St. Paul." [69] The Apocalypse.--Criticism has clearly shown that the Book of Revelation can no longer be regarded as a literary unit, but is an admixture of Jewish with Christian ideas and speculations. Ancient testimony, that of Papias in particular, assumed the Presbyter John, and not the Apostle, to be its author. This completes a summary of conclusions, arrived at by eminent Christian scholars of the more advanced school. Though they, or the majority of them, would be the last to make any such admission, the net result amounts practically to a surrender of the Christian dogmas. § 3. By Whom the "Higher Criticism" is Accepted. These criticisms are, I repeat, the work not of anti-Christians, but of Christians, who have devoted themselves to Biblical research, and who are among the greatest living experts in that sphere of knowledge. Canon Cheyne, one of the two editors of the Encyclopædia Biblica, has now written a volume on Bible Problems and the New Material for their Solution, in which he appeals to Churchmen and scholars and all who are interested in Bible criticism for thoroughness of investigation. There can be no doubt that there is a crying need for this thorough investigation, which at present is being shirked. While the main results arrived at by the Higher Criticism are, it is true, largely accepted by enlightened divines, the usual policy so far has been not to disseminate such knowledge. On this I shall have more to say in the concluding chapter of this book. Dr. Harnack in Germany, and M. Loisy in France, may be cited as types of liberal theologians who proclaim their acceptance of the Higher Criticism. They both detach Christianity from mere narrative, and seek to appreciate it as a spiritual reality, which appeals to the imagination, the emotions, and the soul. Dr. Harnack is the Professor of Church History in the University of Berlin, and member of the Royal Prussian Academy, and a book called What is Christianity? is an English translation of sixteen lectures delivered by him in the University of Berlin, 1899-1900. In this book the effort to prove that the Gospels though unhistorical are yet historical, that Christianity though untrue is yet true, is strongly in evidence to any impartial reader. Take his remark on the "Miraculous Element" in Lecture II.; we find the same kind of specious argument on which I have already animadverted in the chapter on Miracles. He says: "Miracles, it is true, do not happen; but of the marvellous and the inexplicable there is no lack--that the earth in its course stood still, that a she-ass spoke, that a storm was quieted by a word, [70] we do not believe, and we shall never again believe; but that the lame walked, the blind saw, and the deaf heard, will not be so summarily dismissed as an illusion." Why? Because, after all, these may have been accomplished by the operation of a natural law with which we are as yet unacquainted! "Although the order of Nature be inviolable, we are not yet by any means acquainted with all the forces working in it and acting reciprocally with other forces. Our acquaintance even with the forces inherent in matter, and with the field of their action, is incomplete; while of psychic forces we know very much less." He gives the whole situation away, however, by making excuses for the Evangelists, such as "we know that the Gospels come from a time in which the marvellous may be said to have been something of almost daily occurrence," and "we now know that eminent persons have not to wait until they have been long dead, or even for several years, to have miracles reported of them; they are reported at once, often the very next day." Again, speaking of the first three Gospels, he says: "These Gospels are not, it is true, historical works any more than the fourth; they were not written with the simple object of giving the facts as they were; they were books composed for the work of evangelisation." Such reasoning serves only to confirm one's suspicions. Here is the unedifying spectacle of an erudite scholar using his intellectual powers to make out a case for a Faith built upon foundations which he has himself destroyed. We do not wish to be told that there is a substratum of truth in the Gospel narratives. The ordinary man feels strongly that the whole should be true if it be God's Word. That this is, and always will be, the common-sense view of mankind is proved by the fact that it is held by the vast majority of the strictly orthodox, as well as by every Agnostic and every cultured heathen. M. Loisy writes in much the same strain as Dr. Harnack, and finds adherents in both English and Roman Catholic Churches, as may be seen from the correspondence in the Church Times during April, 1904. In the Hibbert Journal (January, 1905) an Oxfordshire rector, the Rev. C. J. Shebbeare, presents the same aspect of liberal theology by means of various illustrations. He remarks: "It is evident that the lesson taught by our new teachers must have an important bearing upon popular religious conceptions and upon religious practice. Its chief effect will be to deliver us from the error of identifying religion with belief in the supernatural--an error of which it is not difficult to see the pernicious consequences" (italics are mine). This is all very well for those who can divest the Christian religion of its supernatural element, and yet remain honest believers. To my mind, this is simply non-Christian Theism, and the Theistic Church, Swallow Street, is the place where such persons should perform their devotions. I crave the reader's patience while I give one more example of advanced apologetics. The Rev. Arthur Moorhouse, M.A., B.D., Tutor in Old Testament Languages and Literature at Didsbury College, offers, in a lecture [71] delivered at Manchester on "The Inspiration of the Old Testament," "an unhesitating and emphatic denial" to the statement that there is any "untruth in the Old Testament." Yet he tells us that "the early chapters of Genesis are not historical in our modern and scientific sense," and asks us to remember that, "in the nature of things, it could not be history, for it deals with facts which are, of necessity, prehistoric"! Such pitiful shifts and evasions seem to many of us wholly unworthy of earnest men. "Our fathers," says Mr. Moorhouse, "may have thought that this was history miraculously dictated, but the Bible does not say so." No, and the Bible does not say that it is speaking the truth, but "our fathers" were simple-minded enough to forget that such a guarantee was necessary on the part of a book which they, like Mr. Moorhouse, believed to be the inspired Word of God. § 4. Admissions by Orthodox Apologists. I cannot conclude this review of Bible criticism without an allusion to the opinions of those theologians who agree with the "Higher Critics" to an extent far exceeding anything the pious layman suspects. I shall omit, as being too advanced, the views of Dr. Driver, given in his "Genesis," or of Canon Henson, as expressed in the Contemporary Review and in his book, The Value of the Bible and Other Sermons, or of Archdeacon Wilson, shown in his various interesting books and pamphlets; and will confine myself to comparatively conservative theology. I select, as representative of this type, The Divine Library of the Old Testament, by Dr. A. F. Kirkpatrick (Master of Selwyn College, Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge, and Canon of Ely Cathedral), and The Study of the Gospels, being a "Handbook for the Clergy," by Dr. J. Armitage Robinson (Dean of Westminster). In the former, which is among the books selected by the Christian Evidence Society for their Examination in March, 1907, we read: "The lectures do not attempt to deal with many of the graver questions which are being raised as to the Old Testament." But it is just the more difficult questions, such as those examined with such destructive effect by the Higher Criticism, which specially require to be answered. Why are they neglected? The author goes on to confess that "the books were constructed out of earlier narratives; some were formed by the union of previous collections of poetry or prophecies; some betray marks of a reviser's hand; and even books which bear the names of well-known authors in some cases contain matter which must be attributed to other writers." Also we find the following significant admissions. Referring to the important last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah, he accepts Dr. Driver's criticisms, and says: "I do not see how we can resist the conclusion that these chapters were not written by Isaiah, but by an unknown prophet towards the close of the Babylonian Exile"; and he owns that "it will inevitably seem to many students of the Bible that, in assigning the prophecy to a date so near to the events which it foretells, we are detracting from its truly predictive character and diminishing its value." However, he considers that "Isaiah is great enough to share his glory with this disciple, in whom, being dead, he yet spoke; and, paradox as it may seem, the truly prophetic character of the work gains by being referred to the time of the Exile." By what process of reasoning he arrives at this astonishing conclusion it is exceedingly difficult to comprehend. Further admissions by Dr. Kirkpatrick must be noticed more briefly. They are: "The first chapter of Genesis is not, as we now know, a scientifically exact account of Creation." "The account of the Fall is, it may be, an allegory rather than a history in the strict sense of the term." "The Deluge was not universal in the sense that the waters covered the whole surface of the entire globe." "The Psalms, like the Proverbs, have a long literary history. They are poems by different authors, and David may be one of them." "Modern criticism claims, and claims with justice, that the Hexateuch, like so many of the other books, is composite in its origin, and has a long literary history." "That the Pentateuch was entirely written by Moses is merely a Jewish tradition, which passed into the Christian Church and was commonly accepted until modern times. [Yet how much hangs upon the trustworthiness of this same Jewish tradition, and how much else may not the Church have wrongfully accepted?] Some of the variations of the LXX. [72] from the Hebrew text are due, no doubt, to errors and interpolations and deliberate alterations; but after all allowance has been made for these, I do not see how any candid critic can resist the conclusion that many of them represent variations existing in the Hebrew text from which the translation was made." "It was probably at the very beginning of this period [from the Fall of Jerusalem to the end of the fifth century], towards the close of the first century a.d., that the final settlement of an authoritative text took place.... How came it that all the copies containing other readings have disappeared?... Copies differing from it [the standard text] would die out or be deliberately destroyed." "The oldest Hebrew MS. in existence of which the date is known was written in 916 A.D.--i.e., separated by more than a thousand years from the latest of the works included in the Canon." Finally, the following crucial questions are offered (pp. 88-9) and left unanswered: "In what sense, it is asked, can this legislation, which is now said to be Mosaic in elemental germ and idea only, and to represent not the inspired deliverance of a supremely great individual, but the painful efforts of many generations of law-makers; these histories which have been compiled from primitive traditions, and chronicles, and annals, and what not; these books of prophecy which are not the authentic autographs of the prophets, but posthumous collections of such writings (if any) as they left behind them, eked out by the recollections of their disciples; these Proverbs and Psalms which have been handed down by tradition and altered and edited and re-edited; these histories which contain errors of date and fact, and have been, perhaps, 'idealised' by the reflection of the circumstances and ideas of the writer's own times upon a distant past; these seeming narratives which may be allegories; and these would-be prophecies which may be histories; in what sense can these be said to be inspired? The problems raised are grave." My own thoughts, and the thoughts of many like myself, are here candidly expressed. I have nothing to add, and can only echo this learned divine's solemn words--the problems raised are grave! Turning now to the Study of the Gospels, we learn from Dr. Robinson as follows: There is no proof that St. Matthew is the author of the first Gospel. He is unable to fix the date himself, but quotes Dr. Harnack, who says "probably 70-75," and who also adds the important reservation, "except certain later additions." St. Mark's authorship, he thinks, is practically certain, and the year 65 is the probable date. "It is," he says, "exceedingly probable that St. Peter would not write or preach, even if he could speak at all, in any language but his mother tongue, the Aramaic of Galilee, a local dialect akin to Hebrew. When he wrote or preached to Greek-speaking people, he would use Mark or some other disciple as his interpreter." What, then, may I ask, had become of the "gifts at Pentecost"? St. Luke is, according to Dr. Robinson, the fellow-traveller of St. Paul, and the date of his Gospel shortly after 70. Regarding St. John's, we are informed that Dr. Harnack fixes the date between 80 and 110, and thinks that it was written by another person of the same name--John the presbyter, or elder, of Ephesus. Dr. Robinson, however, in a chapter he devotes to the subject of the fourth Gospel, attempts to show its apostolic authorship. Dr. Robinson admits that the authorship of all four Gospels is doubtful, but thinks that, regarding the second Gospel, we may accept the second-century tradition that it was written by St. Mark, and that St. Mark was the "interpreter" of St. Peter and wrote the Gospel in Rome from information derived from that Apostle. Very good; let us accept this conclusion. We have it, then, that one of the Gospels is from the mouth of an eye-witness. This eye-witness, however, was, after all, an eye-witness of only one year (or, according to conservative criticism, three years) of Christ's life; he was an illiterate person, and the information he imparted after thirty or forty years had to be written down by another person in another language, and there is no telling how faithful or unfaithful the translation may have been. Besides, as Dr. Robinson points out in his chapters on "The Great Sermon" and "The Non-Marcan Document," there are very important omissions in St. Mark's Gospel. Referring to a supposed source for the information furnished by other evangelists, but omitted by St. Mark, he says: "You may gain some general idea of the scope of this document (the Non-Marcan [73]) by underlining in St. Luke's Gospel all those portions which are to be found in St. Matthew, but are not to be found in St. Mark." Now, what are these omissions in St. Mark? Are they trivial? Let us judge for ourselves by taking a few selections. There is no mention whatever of the story of Christ's miraculous birth, nor of the other incidents of His childhood which are said to be in fulfilment of prophecy, and there is no mention of the great Sermon on the Mount. The story of the Resurrection is told in a few sentences, and the Ascension in one sentence. Unfortunately, too, these very sentences are admittedly interpolations, and St. Mark really ends at xvi. 8. [74] So there is no account of either the Incarnation, Resurrection, or Ascension, and we are left with oral traditions, "lost" documents, and unknown copyists, as the only source from which to obtain any detailed information concerning the very groundwork of our Creed! Could anything be more unsatisfactory, more calculated to arouse suspicion of the "Christian Verities"--the Gospel truths? I am completely at a loss to understand how the Bishop of Gloucester [75] can say that the "Higher Criticism" has been a "gain to the Church," or the Bishop of London1 that "the New Testament stands ten times as strong as it did fifty years ago." It would seem to be a case of "where ignorance is bliss," etc., or else of the wish being father to the thought. There is much more that I should wish to call attention to, did space permit, but I have now, I think, given some insight into modern Bible criticism, and the extent to which it is accepted by Christians. It only remains, in conclusion, to ask for earnest thought on this new aspect of "the Word of God." In doing so the following additional considerations may be borne in mind. § 5. Some Remaining Difficulties. WE MUST ACCEPT THE WHOLE OR REJECT THE WHOLE. The orthodox and traditional view of the Old Testament is preserved in the unrepealed "Blasphemy Act," 9 and 10, William III., cap. 32, which enacts that any person who shall deny the "Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament" to be of "divine authority" shall be incapable of holding any public office or employment, and shall, on a second conviction, also suffer imprisonment for a space of three years. The Vatican Council of 1870, "speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost," declared that the books of the Old and New Testament "have God for their author, and, as such, have been delivered to the Church." The Council, therefore, ordained that the man should be anathema who refused "to receive, for sacred and canonical, the books of the Holy Scripture in their integrity, with all their parts." Dr. Bayley expressed the opinion of his day when he wrote [76]: "The Bible cannot be less than verbally inspired. Every word, every syllable, every letter, is just what it would be had God spoken from heaven without any human intervention. Every scientific statement is infallibly correct; all its history and narratives of every kind are without any inaccuracy." Listen, again, to the words of a well-known divine of our own Church, spoken but yesterday: "The whole of the teaching of the New Testament is based upon the supposition that God made a covenant with Abraham." [77] "You have our Lord Jesus Christ building His whole life on the Scriptures, and submitting to death in obedience to them." [78] This is the strictly orthodox opinion, and it is consistent with Christian doctrine. Yet, for obvious reasons, the Old Testament is now regarded as an incubus by an increasing number of earnest Christians. In the New Testament there are many cruel sayings attributed to Jesus. Only the few are to be saved from the eternal torments of the damned (St. Matt. xiii. 10-13, xxii. 14, xxv. 41; St. Mark iv. 11-12, xvi. 16, etc.). Happily, owing to the rise of Rationalism and the consequent subjection of the Bible to criticism, the dogma of eternal torment is disputed on all sides, and the Athanasian Creed will soon no longer be forced upon us. The principle of the "chosen few" is so clearly Christ's teaching, and furnishes such a convenient explanation for the attitude of the many, that it is commonly adhered to; but liberal theologians no longer hold that "he that believeth not shall be damned," or that the punishment of the sinner is to be excruciating torture for all eternity. Unbelievers and sinners may all ultimately be saved, or at the worst their existence will end with this life. Good, very good; such views appeal to us as being more humane and rational; but are they compatible with the truth of the Bible? Mark the words of the late Bishop of Manchester: "The very foundation of our Faith, the very basis of our hopes, are taken from us when one line of that sacred volume, on which we base everything, is declared to be untruthful and untrustworthy." Thus it is that there are many who would still retain the inhuman doctrines ascribed to the Master. Fearful of losing the basis of their hopes, and unconscious, apparently, of their sublime egoism, they reason, and reason with logic: We must accept the whole or reject the whole. SILENCE OF HISTORIANS. That the Bible should be open to criticism at all seems to me inconceivable if it really be God's gift to mankind. How could God, having determined after æons of time to make a definite revelation of Himself to His human creatures, permit the account of this revelation to be handed down in such a haphazard fashion that future generations cannot be sure that they possess a reliable record? This, too, when a trustworthy record was the more essential on account of the miraculous nature of the narrative. As Professor Schmiedel remarks, the meagreness of the historical testimony regarding Jesus, whether in canonical writings outside of the Gospels or in profane writers such as Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny, is most pronounced. Not a single passage can be produced from the writings of the great historians and philosophers who flourished between A.D. 40 and A.D. 140 which makes the slightest allusion to the astounding phenomena connected with the birth, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth. It was at one time claimed that Josephus spoke of Jesus. That this has been given up by theologians may be verified by a reference to Canon Farrar's Life of Christ, vol. i., p. 63 (and p. 31 of the cheap edition), where we read that "The single passage in which he (Josephus) alludes to Him is interpolated, if not wholly spurious." There is also a disputed passage [79] in Tacitus, where he speaks of Christians having "their denomination from Christus, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to death as a criminal by the procurator, Pontius Pilate." And that is all! Could anything be more disappointing than this must be to thoughtful Christians who wish to establish the historical accuracy of the miraculous story of God's life on earth? Eusebius (A.D. 315-340), the celebrated ecclesiastical historian, is apparently reduced to appealing to a Pagan oracle for a proof of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, for he says to the heathen: "But thou at least listen to thine own gods, to thy oracular deities themselves, who have borne witness, and ascribed to our Saviour (Jesus Christ) not imposture, but piety and wisdom, and ascent into heaven." The silence of secular historians is accounted for, by certain divines, by falling back on a theory of hostility or contempt. Thus Dean Farrar thinks that Josephus's silence on the subject of Jesus and Christianity was as deliberate as it was dishonest (see his Life of Christ, vol. i., p. 63). Except that this offers a much-needed explanation, I am not cognisant of any reason for suspecting the famous secular historian, although, of course, the untrustworthiness of the Christian historians is notorious. Eusebius, for example, the gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, confesses, with commendable frankness: "We have decided to relate nothing concerning them [the early Christians] except the things in which we can vindicate the divine judgment." [80] With regard to the prodigy of the darkness, etc., that occurred at the death of Jesus, Gibbon informs us as follows: "It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature--earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses--which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. But the one and the other has omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe." [81] Any attempt to explain this away by supposing that the darkness of three hours was local only detracts from the magnitude of the miracle, which was intended, by its very magnitude, to be one of the proofs of the death of a God. THOUGHTS ON "TRADITION" AS GOD'S METHOD FOR THE TRANSMISSION OF TRUTH TO POSTERITY. Have you ever, in the days of your early youth, played the game of "gossip"? It is an amusing game, and also points a moral. A number of persons put themselves in a long row, and the first will think of some little incident, which he will carefully whisper to his neighbour, who will then pass it on, and so on, and so on, till it reaches the last person, who will proceed to repeat out loud the story he has heard. The original story will then be divulged, and much amusement is caused by the differences that are found between the two stories. This illustration of what occurs in "gossip" came back to my mind with much misgiving when I first heard how the story of my Saviour's life on earth was handed down for a long period "by tradition." Apparently, Christian theologians look quite complacently, and without any misgiving, upon this process for the transmission of the Christian verities; but, for myself, whether it were a century, or whether it were only a matter of thirty or forty years, before the final committal to writing, it was a heartrending discovery, and all my confidence in the truth of the Bible story was shaken. My dismay was not diminished when I learnt also that it was extremely doubtful whether the authors were eye-witnesses of the events, or especially inspired by God for their task; also, that there had been subsequent interpolations by equally unknown and uninspired writers, who, to speak plainly, were nothing more nor less than forgers, actuated, possibly, by pious motives. That the writers of the Gospels were vouchsafed any unusual facilities through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is discredited by the remarks of the apologists themselves. Thus, Dr. Robinson, in his book already referred to, alludes to St. Peter's illiteracy, St. Mark's poor literary attainments, and the limitations to which all the evangelists in ancient times were subjected. We find ourselves asking the questions, "Did not God know that a time would come when we should discover that nature's laws were not of the fragile or elastic character which our forefathers had supposed? Did He not know that we should therefore require absolute proof before we could believe that they had been broken in a bygone and credulous age?" Instead of this, the only proofs afforded us are copies of documents concocted from hearsay--we are not sure when or by whom--and from time to time fraudulently manipulated by interested though "pious" forgers. Did He, in His Omniscience, purposely allow events to take their course, and intend the story of His Son's life upon earth to be handed down to us by the same unsatisfactory process as that of many another ancient tradition now known to be historically worthless? If ever special interference with the course of nature were necessary, surely it would be here--a miracle to prove the miracle on which our hopes are staked. Or, if this be asking too much, if it be argued that it is no longer God's pleasure to break the laws which He has made, and that He now accomplishes His purposes by means of these laws only, how comes it that, for the safeguarding of this great truth, the most ordinary precautions have been neglected? We are often asked to consider the yearnings of man as a proof that the thing yearned for is a reality. His yearnings, therefore, are not a negligible quantity. Do not, then, the yearnings of millions of Christians in the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches for miraculous proofs of God's residence once upon earth count for something? Are not all the "miraculous" relics and "wonder-working" ikons a proof that man feels that God's revelation ought to be assured to us by the continuance of miracles? In our own Church, Holman Hunt's painting of "The Light of the World" is being sent round our colonies, to strengthen people's belief in Jesus Christ. Why, oh why, have we not the real picture of our Saviour, bringing our God nearer to us, and enabling us to focus our thoughts on Him? I once mentioned my feeling on this subject to a clergyman, a doctor of divinity, well versed in Church history. He replied by suggesting that there was a tradition which indicated that the true likeness of our Lord had been miraculously transmitted, and that from this the great Italian painters had caught their inspiration. [82] It seems hardly necessary to have recourse to the supernatural when there were natural sources available in the shape of representations of pagan gods. Thus Mercury, attired as a shepherd, with a lamb upon his shoulders, was no infrequent object in ancient art, and this has, in some cases, led to a difficulty in distinguishing between Mercury and Jesus Christ. Similarly we know that the pictures and sculptures wherein Isis is represented in the act of suckling her child Horus formed the foundation for the Christian figures and paintings of the Madonna and child. THE ALLEGED SINLESSNESS OF JESUS CHRIST. It may be urged that we have, what is of far more importance, the picture of His character. Have we? The absolute sinlessness of Christ is one of the chief proofs held out to us of His divinity. It is described as being in itself a miracle so great that it furnishes us with sufficient grounds for belief in other miracles. Many pious and learned theists feel that the character of Christ as portrayed in the Gospels betrays imperfections. But let this pass. What do we know of His life? Let us assume that in the Gospel of St. Mark we are put in possession of the impressions of an eye-witness. St. Peter's personal knowledge of the private life of Jesus was confined to his recollections concerning a beloved Master during the period of His public ministry. And that ministry extended over one year, or at most three years. Have not the disciples of great teachers in the past invariably extolled the perfections of their masters? Have they ever dwelt upon their imperfections? Has not the picture handed down by tradition, and afterwards committed to writing, often been that of a perfect man? That the writers of the Gospels recognised the need for Christ to appear sinless, and adopted questionable methods for their purpose, is only too evident. Dr. Robinson explains [83] the disappearance from the other Gospels of St. Mark's references to "anger," "grief," "groaning," "vehemence," etc., as being "the result of a kind of reverence which belonged to a slightly later stage of reflection, when certain traits might even seem derogatory to the dignity of the sacred character." Comment is superfluous. THE IGNORANCE OF JESUS CHRIST. There is another difficulty of belief in the divinity of Christ, which it is all the more essential to bring into prominence because it usually receives but scant notice from the pulpit. I refer to the "ignorance" of Jesus Christ. In a review of Le Réalisme Chrétien et l'Idéalisme Grec, par L. Laberthonnière, the Church Times praises the Abbé's conception of Christian realism, and then goes on to say: "Here is found the key to the mystery of the ignorance of Jesus Christ, and of the other limitations attributed to Him in the Gospels. There are two untenable theories--the one that He deliberately kept things back from His disciples; the other that He was Himself ignorant of His own true nature, which afterwards became known to the Church. The truth is that He had to reveal Himself by living among men, and not by giving them an abstract doctrine about Himself--a doctrine which must have been either inadequate because adjusted to their comprehension, or else incomprehensible because adjusted to a reality which was beyond them." The plain question, however, is--Had He, or had He not, the attribute of Omniscience? Did He, or did He not, know what we now know? Are we to suppose that He pretended to be ignorant? Was He God or was He man? The usual answer is that, as Very Man, He had only the knowledge of His age (or, should we not say, of the very restricted environment selected by Himself for His activities upon earth?), but that as Very God he performed miracles, taught spiritually, as never man taught, and was sinless. This answer, however, would not be accepted by the Venerable W. M. Sinclair, Archdeacon of London, who conjectures that "when our Lord said, 'Greater works than these shall ye do,' He was perhaps thinking of the marvellous discoveries of surgeons and physicians in times of advanced science" [!]. [84] Nor would it be accepted by the Rev. David Smith, who holds that Jesus accommodated Himself to the popular idea, and "after His wont fell in with the delusion" [!]. [85] Surely an Omniscient God must have known that grave doubts would arise in the future from the real or apparent ignorance of His Son, and, vice versa, that any prescience shown by Him would be hailed with delight as a proof of His divinity. If it be urged that such trials of faith are useful, why should it be the thoughtful of future generations who are chiefly to be so tried? If Christ had chosen His disciples from among the "wise men of the East" (or West), instead of from among men of the lowest order of intelligence and education, there would then have been no necessity for the doctrine to "have been either inadequate because adjusted to their comprehension, or else incomprehensible because adjusted to a reality which was beyond them." Only a very small and remote corner of the world was favoured by the presence of God when revealing Himself in human form for the benefit of mankind. Only the most ignorant, for the most part, heard His personal teaching. Had He revealed Himself to all, or to a far greater number of persons then living, and satisfied the ardent longings of the wise men and philosophers of those times, would this not have conduced to the rapid recognition of Christianity and to its firm establishment over the whole world for all ages? The tiny Sea of Galilee, the birthplace of the Gospel, is only about twelve miles long and seven miles in its widest part, and Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum were all situated close together at the northern end. Here Jesus made his permanent home after His fellow-townsmen at Nazareth had rejected Him; here He preached, and here He performed many mighty works. Not till I had visited the spot did I fully realise the insignificance of the area to which the Saviour of mankind confined His ministry. Round the lake stood such important cities as Tiberias and Taricheæ. They were studiously avoided by Jesus. (This would account, perhaps, for their great men hearing nothing of the new teaching, though hardly for their hearing nothing of stupendous miracles performed at their very door.) The cities of the Decapolis were also flourishing in this neighbourhood at the time of Christ's ministry, and were the centre of great literary activity. Gadara produced Philodemus the Epicurean, a contemporary of Cicero; Meleager the epigrammatist; Menippus the satirist; Theodorus the rhetorician, the tutor of Tiberius; and others. Gerasa, also, was a mother of great teachers. In the words of George Adam Smith: "Philodemus, Meleager, Menippus, Theodorus, were names of which one end of the Lake of Galilee was proud, when Matthew, Peter, James, and John were working at the other end." [86] If it be argued that for some inscrutable reason God sent His Son only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and intended His preaching to reach the Gentiles through the medium of His chosen people, why was such a learned and pious Jew as Philo left out in the cold? Apologists do not explain at all convincingly why the Almighty could not, or preferred not to, make Himself understood. If He could say "Let there be light," He could also have said "Let there be knowledge." Besides, after all, what is there in the broad facts of modern science which could not be explained to an intelligent savage to-day? The shape and movements of the earth are explained in the most elementary geography books, and the theory of Evolution can be made quite clear to comparative children (I speak from personal experience). Recent discoveries have revealed to us that ancient nations must have reached an extraordinarily high state of civilisation. Six thousand years ago, in the valley of the Nile, there existed a standard of civilisation incomparably higher than that of the Jews at the time when God is alleged to have selected them as His chosen people. "The Old Testament," says Canon C. H. Robinson, "is the history of a people insignificant in number, occupying a country about the same size as the county of Yorkshire; remarkable neither for their superior learning, civilisation, nor military power; remarkable, if for anything, for their obstinate, grasping, usurious character; who, nevertheless, were chosen out of all the nations of the ancient world to be the recipients of peculiar blessings and favours." [87] This incomprehensible selection of ignorant Jews to be the special recipients of Revelation only emphasises the contention that we have no right to assume that learned men of two thousand years ago could not have understood plain facts, or that it was necessary for them to believe in purely imaginary explanations of the cosmos, in a flat, stationary earth, in a blue-basin sky, in an "Adam and Eve" origin, in devil-possession, in absurd miracles, etc. Their ignorance, which was natural enough considering their opportunities, could easily have been dispelled when God graciously condescended to come and live among them. What a proof would that not have been of His Divinity! In any case, we are to understand that the Apostles were inspired by the Holy Ghost, so that they might be able to work miracles and be witnesses unto Christ, even to the utmost parts of the earth. Surely, then, they could and should have been enlightened for their mission work up to the level, say, of some of our twentieth-century theologians? The miracle of an intelligence and knowledge equal to that of the average modern apologist is not, after all, so very inconceivable, and it would, at least, have been more useful than miracle-working in a miracle-believing age. Christians, who glibly admit that Jesus had only the knowledge of His age, cannot, I think, fully realise the force of such an admission. One reason for this may be that their own knowledge is not completely up to date. That Jesus had no knowledge of nature's inviolable laws and shared many of the gross superstitions prevalent around Him; that He accepted the Scriptures as literally true, and not in the sense now attributed to them by the Higher Critics; that He believed that He would come again "in the clouds of heaven with power and great might," and that the generation in which He lived would not pass away till this had been fulfilled--of all this they may be dimly conscious; but what remain still to be studied by them are the startling disclosures of Comparative Mythology, and of the now fully-established theory of Evolution, and their bearing upon the Christian Faith. The matter is one of the utmost importance, as will be seen by a perusal of the following chapters. COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY Chapter IV. THE GRAVE SUSPICIONS AROUSED BY THE STUDY OF ANCIENT BELIEFS § 1. The New Theological Theory of a Progressive Revelation. The facts and truths established by Science are no longer made the subject of attacks by Christian apologists in the manner that they used to be; they are now considered by them to be the unfolding, through God's Providence, of pieces of information hitherto concealed from us. A scientific discovery (by men who are more often than not Agnostics) simply means that God wills to reveal another detail of His eternal methods. There must be, we are told, a frank modification, or even the abandonment, of certain preconceived ideas which, faulty as they were, had sufficed for man in an earlier stage of his development, and had come to be regarded as integral parts of his religious faith. This is the substance of the modern apologist's argument which is intended to reconcile all outlying discrepancies between our new knowledge and our old beliefs. The new explanation, based upon the assumption that revelation is progressive, will come as a surprise to the rank and file of Christendom, who have hitherto been given to understand that the Bible contained the one, only, and sufficient revelation of God to man. However, there is no alternative. If accepted, many grave difficulties of faith are swept away. Nay, more; the reasonableness of our faith is immensely strengthened, and the facts of science and research become a valuable adjunct to the armour of the Christian apologist. On the other hand, a refusal to accept spells disaster to the Christian faith. The truth of progressive revelation is, therefore, a matter of life or death for the Christian religion; and, of all branches of modern research, it is Comparative Mythology which absolutely demands the complete establishment of this theory. If true, our belief is further verified by the startling discoveries of the ethnologist; if untrue, it is irrevocably shattered. Accordingly, in this chapter I am giving a prominent place to the discussion of this theory. I think I may safely say that there is no department of knowledge about which so little is known by the ordinary man, and even, I regret to say, by the majority of ecclesiastics, as Comparative Mythology. Yet it is the study of this science perhaps more than of any other which is causing well-informed men and women to lose faith in Christianity. Ask Christian professors in our universities who are in touch with the thought around them, and you will hear that their sceptical friends are all telling them the same thing; they cannot get over anthropology, and especially that branch of it which concerns itself with the traditions and beliefs of primitive peoples. Recent ethnological research has thrown an entirely new light upon old problems. The discoveries of science, including the animal origin of man, may, by a stretch of imagination and faith, be reconciled with belief; so also the disclosures of the Higher Criticism; but the very origin of Christianity is exposed by the study of Comparative Mythology. "It is indeed a melancholy and in some respects thankless task to strike at the foundations of beliefs in which, as in a strong tower, the hopes and aspirations of humanity through long ages have sought a refuge from the storm and stress of life. Yet sooner or later it is inevitable that the battery of the comparative method should breach these venerable walls, mantled over with the ivy and mosses and wild flowers of a thousand tender and sacred associations." [88] Some years ago there were ecclesiastics who took a lively interest in Comparative Mythology. Students of Pagan religions as well as Christian missionaries were bent on discovering more striking and more startling coincidences in order to use them in confirmation of their favourite theory that some rays of a primeval revelation, or some reflection of the Jewish religion, had reached the uttermost ends of the world. Subsequently the study of comparative mythology seems to have lost much of its charm. Why? "The theory that there was a primeval preternatural revelation granted to the fathers of the human race, and that the grains of truth which catch our eye when exploring the temples of heathen gods are the scattered fragments of that sacred heirloom--the seeds that fell by the wayside or upon stony places--would find but few supporters at present; no more, in fact, than the theory that there was in the beginning one complete and perfect primeval language, broken up in later times into the numberless languages of the world." "The opinion," again, "that the Pagan religions were mere corruptions of the religion of the Old Testament, once supported by men of high authority and great learning, is now as completely surrendered as the attempts to explain Greek and Latin as corruptions of Hebrew." [89] It will be as well, in the first place, to see exactly what the Church herself now says on the matter; how far she recognises that gigantic strides have been made in a study formerly pursued in a manner necessarily elementary by the Alexandrian schools; how far she concedes the conclusions of the modern ethnologist; and how far she approves of progressive revelation as the explanation for the whole enigma of the parallels between ancient beliefs and our own. For this purpose I think I cannot do better than quote from two striking articles on the subject in the Church Times. They were contributed by the editor of The Treasury magazine. "The study," he says, "of folk-lore, of anthropology, of primitive myth and ritual, has made enormous strides within the last quarter of a century, and the fruits of that study are now forced, for the first time, [90] upon the attention of the general public. Presented in outline, the situation is as follows: We have been accustomed to consider Christianity apart from all other religions. We have recognised, indeed, the historical preparation for it so far as that is described in the pages of the Old Testament; but we have thought of that preparation as conducted among a single people, and by means of a unique revelation. Of pagan religions we have known practically nothing. The mythology of the Greeks and Romans, which some of us had to learn at school, seemed to be a collection of pointless fairy tales. And as regards other and more primitive races, both ancient and modern, the statement that 'the heathen, in his blindness, bows down to wood and stone' comprised accurately the sum of our knowledge. That there could be any but the vaguest likeness between them and our own beliefs was unimaginable. Possibly there was a belief in the Fatherhood of some supreme being, some vague conception of a future life; while sacrificial rites, as we knew, were not peculiar to the Jews. But the other doctrines of our Creed we regarded as exclusively our own. The ideas of a Triune God-head, of an Incarnate Saviour, of the Virgin Birth, of the Second Advent, of the Sacraments, of the Communion of Saints--these seemed to be the distinctive possessions of Christianity; these were marks clearly dividing it from any form of paganism. So, at least, we imagined. [Had we not every reason thus to imagine on the authority of Holy Scripture?] But it proves that we were completely mistaken. The modern study of primitive religion shows that every one of these beliefs is, or has been, held in some part or other of the pagan world quite independently of Christian influence, and that, while we are bound to speak of these beliefs as, in a sense, distinctly Christian, to term them exclusively Christian is no longer possible.... In these early mythologies we can discern the longing for a personal God, capable of direct communication with man, and for some sort of union between the divine and human natures. Whence did these instincts themselves originate? The one tenable reply seems to be that they were God-implanted.... The Zoroastrian anticipates the advent of a 'Saviour' (Saoshyas), who will end the strife between good and evil, personified as Ormuzd and Ahriman, by sweeping away evil from the earth. In the ancient Vedic and Scandinavian religions, in the Old-World creeds of Egypt and Babylon, in the legends of Mexico and Polynesia, is found, in a variety of guises, the same fundamental idea. Always there is a sense of a supremely righteous Power; of a world tainted with evil, and out of harmony with the Power above it; of the coming of some Deliverer, who will establish a kingdom of righteousness. Once more, in many mythologies the idea of a Virgin Birth is associated with that of a Divine Incarnation. Men felt instinctively that the entrance of a Divine Being into the human race must take place in a miraculous way. And thus the Spirit of God, working by means of what we may term the instinctive feelings of mankind, prepared the human race throughout the world for the coming of the Son of God, to be born of a pure Virgin, to take our nature upon Him for evermore, and to redeem us from the power of sin.... We find conceptions, such as that of the Hindu Trimurti, which seem to remember the doctrine of the Trinity. In the sacramental meals of totem-worship, when a sacred animal is killed, and partaken of by the worshippers in order that its power may be communicated to them [not to mention "sacred" men killed with the same idea], there seems a dim anticipation of the highest Christian rite. Baptism as a cleansing and symbolical ceremony was known centuries before the Christian era.... These rites and beliefs, obscured by superstition and insufficient to satisfy the longing which brought them into existence, were designed to serve as the schoolmasters who would lead the heathen at length to Christ" (cf. Galatians iii. 24). These remarks, by a clergyman of the Church of England, will enable the ordinary person, who for the most part knows nothing whatever about these things, to realise the immense importance of the questions raised by Comparative Mythology. § 2. Parallels in Ancient Religions, and Some Remarks Upon Them. Before proceeding any further, it will be advisable to consider some concrete examples of the parallels between the beliefs and teachings of ancient religions and those of the Christian religion. KRISHNA AND BUDDHA. Krishna.--Krishna was a miraculous incarnation of Vishnu in the womb of Devaki. A chorus of angels exclaimed: "In the delivery of this favoured woman nature shall have cause to exult." The birth was indicated in the heavens by a star. On the morning of his birth the spirits of heaven danced and sang, and the clouds emitted low, pleasing sounds. Though royally descended, he was actually born in a cave. [91] The divine child was recognised and adored by cowherds. He was presented with gifts of sandalwood and perfumes. The holy Indian prophet, Nared, paid him a visit, consulted the stars and declared him to be of celestial descent. His birth was beset by peril, and his foster father was warned by a heavenly voice to fly with the child, as the reigning monarch, King Kansa, might take his life. The king ordered the massacre in all his States of all the male children born during the night of the birth of Krishna. One of the first miracles performed by Krishna, when mature, was the curing of a leper. A lame woman came with a vessel filled with spices and sweet oil, and anointed his head. Krishna was slain. At his death a black circle surrounded the moon, and the sun was darkened at noonday. Spirits were to be seen on all sides. Krishna descended into hell, rose again from the dead, and ascended bodily into heaven, many persons witnessing his ascent. He is to come again on earth in the latter days. He will appear as an armed warrior riding a white horse. At his approach the sun and moon will be darkened, the earth will tremble, and the stars fall from the firmament (compare Rev. vi. 2, 12, 13). He is to judge the dead at the last day. Krishna is the Creator of all things visible and invisible, and is the beginning, middle, and end of all things. Krishna was transfigured before his beloved disciple, Arjuna. Krishna was the meekest of beings. He preached sublimely. According to the purer Vaishnava faith, he was pure and chaste in reality; any amorousness related of him is to be explained allegorically, as symbolising the longing of the human soul for the Supreme; just as the amorous "Song of Solomon" is said to be allegorical, and to mean "Christ's love for his Church." Krishna even condescended to wash the feet of the Brahmins. He is the incarnation of Vishnu, the second person in the Hindoo Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva; and Vishnu in his incarnations is a saviour, protector, and friend. Krishna said: "Let a man, if seeking God by deep abstraction, abandon his possessions and his hopes, betake himself to some secluded spot, and fix his heart and thoughts on God alone." And, again: "Then be not sorrowful; from all thy sins I will deliver thee." Many other such remarkable passages might be adduced from the Bhagavad-gita. Justice, humanity, good faith, compassion, disinterestedness--in fact, all the virtues--are said to have been taught by Krishna, both by precept and example; but we must remember, as Monier Williams informs us in his Hinduism, that Krishna, in the ancient epic poems, is simply a great hero, and it is not until about the fourth century B.C. that he is deified and declared to be an incarnation of Vishnu. In conclusion, the accounts of Krishna's childhood agree very closely with the apocryphal accounts of Christ's childhood. Buddha.--If the similarity between the histories of Krishna and Jesus is remarkable, what shall we say of that between the mythological [92] portions of the history of Gautama Buddha and the history of Jesus? Looked upon as a confirmation of Progressive Revelation, it is nothing short of marvellous, whether we regard the similarity in events, characters, actions, or sayings. From Buddha's divine incarnation until his ascension into the celestial regions, almost every important episode of the life of Christ appears to be paralleled. Attendant miraculous events, spotless character, wonderful doings, cherished sayings--all are here. Buddha was miraculously [93] born of the pure and holy Maya. He descended into her womb from heaven in a spiritual manner. There was joy in heaven, the Devas singing: "To-day Bodhisatwa is born on earth, to give joy and peace to men and Devas." He was recognised by the aged and devout Asita as the perfect Buddha come to the world for its salvation. His life was threatened by the King Bimbisara, who was advised to destroy the child. He was presented in the temple. When still a mere child he was found to be as proficient as his masters, and he disputed with learned doctors. His ancestry was traced from his father to Maha Sammata, the first monarch of the world. He bathed in water, the spirits making their presence known as he did so. When about to adopt a religious life, he fasted for a long time, and was tempted by Mara, the author of Evil; but he heeded not the words of the Evil One, and bade him depart from him. The heavens showed their appreciation of this defeat by raining flowers. Towards the end of his life he was transfigured when on a mountain in India called Pandava. He performed great miracles. For instance, on one occasion he floated through the air across a river; and, on another, he caused a tempest to cease, and so saved a disciple, who was in imminent danger of shipwreck. Shortly before his death a weeping woman embraced his feet. When Buddha died many miracles occurred. The coffin was opened, and the body uncovered, supernaturally. He promised that another Buddha would be sent to them. He foretold his departure, and after death entered Nirvana. He was very early regarded as omniscient and absolutely sinless. Earth and heaven did homage to him at birth and death. A great earthquake occurred at his Temptation. He is represented as saying: "Let all the sins that are committed in the world fall upon me, that the world may be delivered"; and again: "Hide your good deeds, and confess before the world the sins you have committed"; and again: "Though the great world be swallowed up and pass away, yet be assured the words of Buddha are true"; and again: "Beware of fixing your eyes upon women"; "A wise man should avoid unchaste life, as if it were a burning pit of live coals"; "One who is not able to live in a state of celibacy should not commit adultery." According to Buddha, the motives of all our actions should be pity, or love for our neighbour. Those who became his disciples were told they must renounce the world, give up their riches, and take the vow of poverty. Finally, we should note that Buddha aimed to establish a "Kingdom of Heaven" (Dharmachakra); that the account given by St. Peter (Ep. ii., ch. 3) of the earth once destroyed by water, and about to be destroyed by fire, is in agreement with the Buddhist story; and that the Jews believed in the pre-existence of souls and a modified form of metempsychosis (transmigration of the soul). It is difficult to separate fiction from fact; but the generally accepted records show that, together with superior natural endowments, Gautama Buddha attained to an exceptional purity of life and integrity of purpose. Probably he never arrogated to himself any higher authority than that of a teacher; but his followers, turning for consolation to the theory that he still lived, exalted him, within a quarter of a century of his death, to a place among their deities. As already mentioned, he was very early regarded as omniscient and absolutely sinless. [94] All sorts of legends, borrowed from current myths, attach themselves to the story of his life, while his teaching as a simple-hearted, truth-seeking philanthropist became encrusted with the superstitions and religious speculations that were current. As with Krishna, so here there are stories of Buddha's childhood of which the apocryphal stories of Christ's childhood are an almost exact reproduction. PARALLELS OTHER THAN KRISHNA AND BUDDHA. In the case of Krishna and Buddha it is contended by some Christian writers that the stories must have been borrowed from Christian sources both canonical and apocryphal. This contention, founded on the lateness of the mythical stories in literary form, will be considered in due course; but first let us have clearly before our minds those parallels concerning which there is no such contention, for the simple reason that there is no getting away from the fact that the beliefs existed long before the advent of Christ. In ancient religions other than Hindooism and Buddhism, there are, among many others, distinct parallels to--the Virgin Birth; the Heavenly Choir; the Epiphany; the Slaughter of the Innocents; the Temptation and Forty Days' Fast; the Miracles; the Crucifixion Darkness, and Descent into Hell; the Resurrection and Ascension; the Second Coming and Day of Judgment. The Virgin Birth.--According to Chinese legends, the sages Fohi (? 3468 B.C.) and Lao-Kiun (about 600 B.C.) were born of virgins. Dean Milman mentions in his History of Christianity that the first Jesuit missionaries who went to China were appalled at finding in the mythology of that country a counterpart of the story of the Virgin. In Persia, Zoroaster, [95] the founder of the Perso-Iranian national religion, was miraculously conceived. All attempts to connect him with Hebrew influences are groundless. In Egypt, Horus, who had the epithet of Saviour, was born of the virgin Isis. The Egyptian Bible, remember, is the oldest in the world! Plutarch mentions the notion of the Egyptians that a woman might conceive by the approach of some divine spirit. Egyptian monuments represent the infant saviour in the arms of his virgin mother, or sitting on her knee. The image of the child was worshipped just as the Bambino is worshipped in Rome to-day. Women then, as now, believed in its efficacy for their relief in time of nature's sorrows. In Grecian and Roman mythology the "Sons of Jove"--Hercules, Bacchus, Amphion, Perseus, Mercury, Æolus, Apollo, and others--have mortal mothers. Speaking of this, the Christian Father, Justin Martyr, declared that the myths regarding the multitude of sons of gods, and especially the myth regarding the virgin's son Perseus, had been invented by the demons in order to rob the manifestation of Jesus, the true Son of God, of its importance. He also insisted that, with their doctrine of the Virgin-birth of Jesus, of His passion, and of His ascension, the Christians were affirming nothing new as compared with what was alleged of the so-called sons of Zeus. [96] Even regarding Plato there was a legend that his mother, Perictione, had experienced a miraculous conception through the influences of the God Apollo, and that the God had declared to Aris, to whom she was betrothed, the parentage of the child (compare St. Matthew i. 20). This was believed in by the disciples of Plato centuries before the Christian era. Among northern nations the sons of Odin take the place of the sons of Jove. Thus "Baldur the Good," the Beneficent Saviour, was the son of Odin and Friga. The worship of Friga was continued until that of the Virgin Mary took its place. In Mexico, the "Saviour" Quetzalcoatl was born of a pure virgin, who was called the "Queen of Heaven." An ambassador from heaven announced to the virgin Sochiquetzal, mother of Quetzalcoatl, that it was the will of God that she should conceive a son without connection with man. Here we have an exact parallel to the annunciation of the Virgin Mary (St. Luke i. 26-35), in a part of the globe that was not discovered by Christians till nearly 1,500 years after the birth of Christ! Similar traditions of Saviours are found among various tribes of North and South America. Regarding the tendency to believe in incarnations, Dr. Illingworth [97] explains that "a general tendency in the human mind to expect a thing cannot possibly be twisted into a presumption against its occurrence.... The fact of the expectation does not logically make invention a likelier alternative than occurrence, except upon one hypothesis--namely, that the occurrence is impossible." This argument skims over--or, I might almost say, neglects--the real contention of the Rationalist. Let us assume that incarnation is not ruled out of court as being à priori impossible; the virgin-birth of Jesus was subsequently invented by the Christian Church because its eminent suitability necessitated its invention. Only thus could the divinity and sinlessness of Jesus Christ be firmly established. More especially would this be the case in an age when everyone was familiar with the notion of virgin-born Saviours. The minds of men were deeply imbued with the idea of miraculous birth in the case of anyone claiming to be of divine origin. Only on this understanding would the heathen, already believing in their own virgin-born Saviours, have accepted Christianity. The Heavenly Choir.--Even Confucius, the celebrated philosopher (born 551 B.C.), was ushered into the world with dragons and angels hovering about the couch, and with the sound of heavenly music in the air. At the birth of Osiris, the father of Horus, another Egyptian "Saviour," a voice was heard proclaiming that the "Ruler of all the earth is born." There was joy in Olympus when Apollo was born, and at the time of the birth of Hercules his father Zeus spake from heaven, and said: "This day shall a child be born of the race of Perseus, who shall be the mightiest of the sons of men." The Epiphany.--Legends of the coming of wise men to see an infant grew up in various places. Krishna was visited by sages who brought perfumes. Confucius has a somewhat similar legend, and one occurs even in connection with the birth of Plato. The Slaughter of the Innocents.--The story of the "dangerous child" is almost universal. Horus, Zoroaster, and Bacchus, for example, were "dangerous" children. The Forty Days' Fast and the Temptation.--According to Pliny, Zoroaster lived for thirty years in the wilderness upon cheese. The Devil made Zoroaster magnificent promises; but the temptations were in vain. The ancient Persians had a religious festival, which they annually celebrated, called the "Salutation of Mithras (the sun-god)," and during it forty days were set apart for sacrifice and thanksgiving. Among the ancient Egyptians the priest submitted to abstinence of the most severe description. "The priests in Heliopolis," says Plutarch, "have many fasts, during which they meditate upon divine things." Fasting and self-denial were observances required of the Greeks who desired initiation into the mysteries. The same practice was found among the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians. The Mexicans had a forty days' fast, in memory of Quetzalcoatl, who was tempted and fasted forty days on a mountain. Lord Kingsborough says: "The temptation of Quetzalcoatl and the fast of forty days ... are very curious and mysterious." [98] Mr. Bonwick says: "The Spaniards were surprised to see the Mexicans keep the vernal forty days' fast." [99] Turning to the Old Testament, we may remind ourselves that Moses went up into a mountain to receive certain instructions from God, and "was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights, and he did neither eat bread nor drink water." On a second occasion, when he received the Ten Commandments, he was again with the Lord forty days and forty nights, and did neither eat bread nor drink water. Elijah fled to the desert, where an angel gave him cake and water, and in the strength of that meat he went for forty days without food. The number "forty" occurs over and over again in that portion of the Old Testament which the Higher Criticism has shown to be unhistorical. The Rationalist avers that the number "forty" is mythological, and that we have this story of the Forty Days' Fast and the Temptation in the New Testament because the writer wishes to show that Jesus Christ was proof against all temptation; that He, too, as well as other Christs, could resist the powers of the Prince of Evil. It may be urged that in all these cases the number is quite immaterial. Are we not, then, to take the author of "The Acts" literally when he informs us that Christ spent forty days on earth after His resurrection? The Miracles.--Not only Krishna and Buddha, but all leaders of religious movements, had the reputation of having performed miracles. Religions were established as much by the miracles as by the preachings. Miracles were needed in those days on all special occasions. Many of them are attested in the gravest manner by the gravest writers, and were firmly believed at the time by the people. Healing miracles, such as those performed by Jesus, were the commonest of all. The Gospel miracles are in no respect singular or more wonderful. Horus, as well as Krishna, raised the dead to life. Bacchus changed water into wine. Æsculapius not only cured the sick, but raised the dead. Pausanias, the eminent Greek geographer and historian, writes that in the temple of Æsculapius at Epidaurus there was an old pillar dedicated to the memory of Hippolytus, who had been raised from the dead. [100] Apollonius of Tyana was celebrated for the wonderful miracles he performed. He caused a devil to depart out of a youth, and he restored a dead maiden to life. The Christian Fathers inform us that Simon Magus, with the Devil's aid, could make his appearance wherever he pleased at any moment; could poise himself in the air; produce trees from the earth suddenly [the mango tree trick?]; fling himself from high precipices unhurt [the very feat suggested by the Devil in the Temptation]; and walk through the streets accompanied by spirits of the dead. Tacitus, the celebrated Roman historian, tells us that the Emperor Vespasian (born 9 A.D.) performed wonderful miracles for the good of mankind, and among others he describes the cure of a blind man with the emperor's spittle. The Atonement.--In China the Holy One (Tien) dies to save the world. "The sufferings and death of Osiris were the great mystery of the Egyptian religion. His being the divine goodness, and the abstract idea of 'good,' his manifestation upon earth (like an Indian god), his death and resurrection, and his office as judge of the dead in a future life, look like the early revelation of a future manifestation of the deity converted into a mythological fable." [101] While Osiris is the judge, Horus, his son, is the mediator. In the Judgment scene in the Book of the Dead, Horus, the son of Isis, leads the deceased, after his heart has been weighed, into the presence of Osiris (see Papyrus of Ani, plates 3 & 4). Mithras, the sun-god of the Persians, was a "Mediator" between God and men--the "Saviour," who, by his laborious conflicts, worked their salvation. He was also called the "Word." Attys, called the "Only Begotten Son" and the "Saviour," was worshipped by the Phrygians, and represented by them as a man tied or nailed to a tree. Adonis was another virgin-born "Saviour" who suffered for mankind. The yearly festival of Adonis in the spring was a special favourite with women. In the Old Testament reference is made to the weeping of the women over Tammuz, the Babylonian equivalent of Adonis (Ezekiel viii. 14). According to the Rev. Sir G. W. Cox, [102] he was the crucified Tao (divine love personified). The Rev. Dr. Parkhurst, in the chapter on the Resurrection in his Hebrew lexicon, says: "I find myself obliged to refer Tammuz to that class of idols which were originally designed to represent the promised Saviour, the desire of all nations." Prometheus was a Saviour who suffered the most fearful tortures as the friend of the human race. Æschylus's tragedy, Prometheus Vinctus, was acted in Athens five hundred years before the Christian era. Even Bacchus, whom most of us think of as the rollicking wine-god of classical mythology, was a slain Saviour. When we turn to the New World we find the worship of a crucified Saviour among the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians. Lord Kingsborough tells us that, according to the belief of the ancient Mexicans, "the death of Quetzalcoatl upon the cross" was "an atonement for the sins of mankind." [103] Dr. Daniel Brinton relates how the Aztecs had a feast which they celebrated in the early spring, when "victims were nailed to a cross and shot with an arrow." [104] Alexander von Humboldt, in his American Researches, also speaks of a feast, at which the Mexicans crucified a man and pierced him with an arrow. The Rev. J. P. Lundy, speaking of this, says: "Here is the old story of Prometheus crucified on the Caucasus, and of all other pagan crucifixions of the young incarnate divinities of India, Persia, Asia Minor, and Egypt." [105] Moral Teaching.--There is not only an extraordinary similarity in beliefs, but also in moral teachings. The teachings of Confucius, Mencius, and Wang Yang Ming might, as Professor Nitobe points out, [106] just as well be considered plagiarisms from the Divine library, for they furnish numerous remarkable parallels to the New Testament teaching. Taoism, the philosophy of Laotze, for a long time successfully rivalled the more utilitarian system of Confucius, and its close agreement with many of the teachings of Christ is most noticeable. The morals of the ancient Egyptians are clearly set forth in the Book of the Dead, which came into use after 2000 B.C. They indicate a far higher standard than existed in Israel in David's time. "Yet," as Dr. Callaway remarks, [107] "in traditions which still linger among us, the law under which David lived and reigned was perfect and divine; while the name of Egypt stands for darkness and sin." With regard to the parallels in the moral teaching, Dean Farrar, in his work, Seekers after God, has clearly shown that "to say that pagan morality kindled its faded taper at the Gospel light, whether furtively or unconsciously, that it dissembled the obligation and made a boast of the splendour, as if it were originally her own, is to make an assertion wholly untenable." He points out that the attempts of the Christian Fathers to make out Pythagoras a debtor to Hebraic wisdom, Plato an "Atticising Moses," Aristotle a learner of ethics from a Jew, Seneca a correspondent of St. Paul, were due "in some cases to ignorance, in some to a want of perfect honesty in controversial dealing." Apocryphal Gospels.--We are assured by Christian writers that the parallels between the accounts of Krishna's and Buddha's childhood and those in the apocryphal gospels of Christ's childhood are due to the Hindoos having borrowed legends current among the early Christians. Dr. Wallis Budge, the keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum, informs us, however, that "several of the incidents of the wanderings of the Virgin with the child in Egypt, as recorded in the Apocryphal Gospels, reflect scenes in the life of Isis as described in the texts found on the Metternich Stele." [108] And, again, he says: "In the apocryphal literature of the first six centuries which followed the evangelisation of Egypt, several of the legends about Isis and her sorrowful wanderings were made to centre round the mother of Christ." [109] The evidence is conclusive that certain legends prevalent among the early Christians were borrowed from the ancient Egyptian religion; yet we are to believe that where the Krishna and Buddha parallels are concerned the borrowing process was the other way! So be it. Let us suppose that certain Egyptian superstitions reached the Hindoo through the medium of the Christian; the fact remains that beliefs once held by devout but unlettered Christians have a heathen origin. This is of serious import, for it lends weight to the suspicion that the marvellous tales in the canonical gospels have been similarly derived from heathen legends--legends from which some of the more glaring absurdities and all that would mar the ethical ideals of the Christian religion were eclectically expunged. ARE THE KRISHNA AND BUDDHA LEGENDS BORROWED FROM CHRISTIANITY? I have indicated a few of the more striking parallels in other religions besides Krishnaism and Buddhism. Did space permit, it could be shown that there are also parallels to the teaching of Christ, the darkness at the Crucifixion, the descent into Hell, the Resurrection, the claim of Jesus Christ to be "Alpha and Omega" (according to the Revelation of St. John), the prophecy of the Second Coming, the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the doctrine of the Trinity, the worship of the Blessed Virgin, the Christian symbols (cross, triangle, I.H.S., fish, serpent, dove, and lamb). I cannot understand what the Christian cause can gain by ascribing the parallels in Hindoo mythology to Christian sources, when there is all this mass of evidence for parallels that are quite as extraordinary (though less numerous) in those ancient religions where the priority to Christianity cannot reasonably be denied. Certainly the Krishna and Buddha parallels are extremely numerous and strikingly exact; but a policy which seeks to explain them in a different manner from that adopted in the case of the same phenomena in other religions, while it serves to confirm the suspicions of the sceptic, is doomed eventually to failure. This being so, it is unnecessary, I think, to enter at any great length into the controversy. In Mr. J. M. Robertson's book, Christianity and Mythology, there is a scholarly investigation from which I extract the following leading points [110]:--Hindoos, as Professor Tiele urges, could perfectly well have borrowed, if they did borrow, from Egypt before Christianity was heard of. There is hardly a leading detail in the Krishna birth legend which is not variously paralleled in other early non-Christian mythology. The more we collate the main Christian myth-notions with those of Krishnaism, the more clearly does it appear that, instead of the latter being borrowed from the former, they are, not indeed the originals from which Christianity borrowed, but always presumptively the more ancient, and in one or two cases they do appear to be the actual sources of Gospel stories. The lateness of the Purânic stories in literary form is no argument against their antiquity. Scholars are agreed that late documents often preserve extremely old myth-material. The leading elements in the Krishna myth are inexplicable save on the view that the cultus is ancient. The close coincidences in the legends of Krishna and Buddha are to be explained in terms of borrowing by the latter from the former, and not vice versa. I should add here that the denial of the "Christian accretions" theory does not convey also the implication that the Bible story was borrowed from the Krishna and Buddha myths. On the contrary, the strong probability is that there has been little or no borrowing either way--that there is a common source for both in earlier Aryan and Semitic myths. In the Introduction to his standard work, The Romantic History of Buddha, [111] Mr. Beal refers to the legends concerning the pre-existence of Buddha in heaven--his miraculous incarnation--salutation by angels--recognition by Asita (Simeon)--presentation in the Temple--baptism by fire and water--disputation with doctors--temptation in the wilderness--life passed in preaching and working miracles, etc.--and frankly admits that, "if we could prove that they were unknown in the East for some centuries after Christ, the explanation would be easy; but all the evidence we have goes to prove the contrary." Regarding the parallelisms with the Apocryphal Gospels, he says: "It would be a natural inference that many of the events in the legend of Buddha were borrowed from the Apocryphal Gospels (compare, for example, the Gospel of the Infancy, chap. xx.: 'Our Lord learning his alphabet,' with the account given in chap. xi. of this volume), if we were quite certain that these Apocryphal Gospels had not borrowed from it." In his later work, Buddhist Literature, Mr. Beal modifies his position. Neither Max Müller in his Introduction to the Science of Religion, nor Forlong in his Short Studies of the Science of Comparative Religions, nor Senart in his learned work, La Légende du Buddha, nor Seydel in his Evangelium von Jesu and his Buddha Legends, nor Pfleiderer in his Urchristentum, supports the theory of Christian accretions. Bunsen, in his Angel-Messiah, maintains (p. 18) "that, according to Sanscrit and Chinese scriptures and the stone-cut edicts of Asoka and the Senchi Tope, certain legends about Buddha circulated in India and China, not only before the apostolic age, but more than three centuries earlier," and that "among these legends the most ancient are those which refer to the incarnation of Buddha as the Angel Messiah." On page 10 of Rhys Davids' well-known little work, Buddhism (published under the direction of the S.P.C.K.), we read: "There is every reason to believe that the Pitakas now extant in Ceylon are substantially identical with the books of the Orthodox Canon, as settled at the Council of Patna about the year 250 B.C. As no works would have been received into the canon which were not then believed to be very old, the Pitakas may be approximately placed in the fourth century B.C., and parts of them possibly read back very nearly, if not quite, to the time of Gautama himself." On page 15 it is explained that, when the statements in the Sanscrit and Pali texts agree, the greatest reliance may be placed upon them, "not indeed as to the actual facts of Gautama's life, but as to the belief of the early Buddhists concerning it." Professor Rhys Davids enumerates the more important of these early beliefs, and they include many of the startling coincidences which I have noticed. The later beliefs he passes over for the most part in silence; but, speaking generally, he is of opinion that the greater portion, if not all, of the legends could be explained by hero-worship, mere poetical imagery, misapprehension, the desire to edify, applications to Gautama of previously existing stories or sun-myths, and so on. Nowhere does he state or imply that in any of the legends, early or late, there can be any application to Gautama of the Gospel stories of the life of Christ; while he considers M. Senart's theory of the almost complete dependence of the Buddha legends on solar myths "most interesting." Now, it is just those very ideas of virgin-birth, resurrection, and ascension appearing in the later legends which were nothing more nor less than solar myths. In any case, whatever their origin, they were world-wide very many centuries before the Christian era; so any argument from the lateness of these legends is founded upon sand. In his Buddhism, as also in his article on Buddhism in the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Professor steers clear of the question of the parallels; but in his Buddhist Suttas, translated by him from the Pali and appearing in the "Sacred Books of the East" series, we read (in the Introduction, p. 165) that while he "ventures to disagree with writers who argue that the resemblances in the Pali Pitakas and passages in the New Testament indicate that the New Testament as the later must be borrowed," he holds that the resemblance is due not to any borrowing on the one side or the other, but "solely to the similarity of the conditions under which the two movements grew" [and, the Rationalist would add, a similarity in the myths afloat is a part, and a very essential part, of the similarity of the conditions]. So also with regard to the lateness of the Krishna legends in literary form, it is futile to argue that they are, to use a familiar term, cribbed from the canonical and apocryphal gospels, when most of them are obviously plagiarisms of the ancient sun-myths. The Rev. Sir G. W. Cox, speaking on this subject in his Aryan Mythology, says: "There is no more room for inferring foreign influence in the growth of any of these myths than, as Bunsen rightly insists, there is room for tracing Christian influence in the early epical literature of the Teutonic tribes. Practically the myths of Krishna seem to have been fully developed in the days of Megasthenes (fourth century B.C.), who identifies him with the Greek Hercules." [Megasthenes wrote a work on India, which was the chief source of the later Greek information on the subject.] Professor Monier Williams, the accepted authority on Hinduism, writing for the S.P.G., in his book, Indian Wisdom, and speaking of the Bhagavad-gita, says: "It may reasonably be questioned whether there could have been any actual contact of the Hindoo system with Christianity without a more satisfactory result in the modification of Pantheistic and anti-Christian ideas." Again, he says: "The religious creeds, rites, customs, and habits of thought of the Hindoos generally had altered little since the days of Menu, 500 years B.C." In his Hinduism (p. 19) he shows that "we may be justified in assuming that the hymns of the Veda were probably composed by a succession of poets at different dates between 1500 and 1000 years B.C." This is an important concession, because the ancient hymns of the Veda furnish the germs of those sun-myths which tell of the death, resurrection, and ascension of a virgin-born saviour. Whatever may be thought of the conclusions of the highest authorities regarding Krishnaistic and Buddhistic beliefs, I hope I may have so far carried the reader with me that he will be prepared to admit that there are very many striking resemblances to the Gospel stories in those ancient beliefs whose priority to Christianity is not disputed. Now that these resemblances are no longer attributed to a device of the Evil One, an explanation for them is urgently required. The explanation from the Christian side is the theory of a Progressive Revelation; and, apparently, there can be no other, if Christianity be true. The reader has been put in possession of a few details of the remarkable parallels, and he should apply this theory for himself to each and all of them, and see whether it furnishes a fair working hypothesis, whether his mind can accept the explanation now offered to him, and, I might almost add, whether he can honestly continue to call himself a Christian believer. Let him ask himself which is the more probable, that in the common mythos we have marvellous anticipations of the Bible stories, or that in the latter we have reproductions of the former? § 3. Parallels in the Beliefs of Primitive Man, and some Remarks Upon Them. I must ask the reader's patience if I postpone my final remarks on Progressive Revelation until I have adduced some illustrations of the beliefs and customs of primitive man, as here also this same theory has to apply. Thus far the pagan beliefs have appeared to be of a comparatively harmless character; but this can by no means be said of the beliefs of savage man. He does not confine himself, like his more civilised brother, to mystical beliefs in Saviours who once upon a time suffered for him, and whose body and blood are to be symbolically assimilated; but, being of a realistic (or shall we say materialistic?) turn of mind, he prefers (the inevitable result of a restricted intellectual development) [112] to satisfy his religious emotions with the spectacle of a real human-divine sufferer, and by a sacrificial feast of real flesh and blood. Can this be God's method of revealing Himself? True, the religious convictions of civilised man have been a fruitful source of human agony, both physical and mental, in many a bloody fight and massacre, in cruel and relentless persecutions, in every refinement of excruciating torture and pitiable distress to body and mind; but it is possible to gloze over all this with various specious arguments. It is not so easy to do so with examples drawn from the history of savage races. The only thing is that so few have ever had these examples brought before them, or, at least, have ever thought of connecting them with anything that has to do with the truth of Christianity. I shall, therefore, now give some illustrations of the beliefs and customs of primitive man. A vivid description may succeed in convincing the reader of the absurdity of the new theory, where mere vague ideas of savage ritual would fail. "Of the human sacrifices of rude peoples, those of the Mexicans are perhaps the most instructive, for in them the theanthropic character of the victim comes out most clearly." [113] "When we go to the records of the cultures and creeds of Mexico and Peru, records wonderfully preserved in the teeth of the fanaticism which would have destroyed them all if it could, we stand clear of the frauds and prejudices alike of Jew and Christian.... We are faced by a civilisation and a religion that reached wealth and complexity by normal evolution from the stages of early savagery and barbarism without ever coming in contact with those of Europe till the moment of collision and destruction." [114] We shall begin, therefore, with the ancient American. THE RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT AMERICA. "Terrible was the prestige of the priesthood of Mexico. The greater the State grew, the larger were the hecatombs of human victims. Almost every god had to be propitiated in the same way; but above all must the war-god be for ever glutted with the smoking hearts of slain captives. Scarcely any historian, says Prescott, estimates the number of human beings sacrificed yearly throughout the Empire at less than 20,000, and some make it 50,000. The Franciscan monks computed that 2,500 victims were annually sacrificed in the town and district of Mexico alone. Of this doomed host, Huitzilopochtli had the lion's share; and it is recorded that at the dedication of his great new temple A.D. 1486 [that is to say, nearly 1,500 years after God was pleased to reveal Himself definitely to mankind] there were slain in his honour 70,000 prisoners of war, who had been reserved for the purpose for years throughout the Empire. They formed a train two miles long, and the work of priestly butchery went on for several days." [115] "At every festival of the God there was a new hecatomb of victims, and we may conceive how the chronic spectacle burnt itself in on the imagination of the people.... And then the horror of the sacrificial act! In the great majority of the sacrifices the victim was laid living on the convex stone and held by the limbs, while the slayer cut open his breast with the sacred flint (or rather obsidian) knife--the ancient knife used before men had the use of metals, and therefore most truly religious--and tore out the palpitating heart, which was held on high to the all-seeing sun, before being set to burn in incense in front of the idol, whose lips, and the walls of whose shrines, were devoutly daubed with blood." "In connection with one annual festival of Tezcatlipoca, the Creator and 'soul of the world,' who combined the attributes of perpetual youthful beauty with the function of the God of Justice and Retribution, as the Winter Sun, there was selected for immolation a young male captive of especial beauty, who was treated with great reverence for a whole year before being sacrificed.... When all was over the priests piously improved the occasion, preaching that all this had been typical of human destiny, while the aristocracy sacramentally ate the victim's roasted limbs." "They [Christians] mystically eat the body of the slain God. Now, this very act was performed by the Mexicans, not only literally as we have seen, but in the symbolic way also; and they connected their sacraments with the symbol of the cross." "That the Mexicans were no longer cannibals by taste is shown by the fact that in the great siege by Cortez they died of starvation by thousands. They never ate fellow citizens: only the sacrificially slain captive." "The strangest thing of all is that their frightful system of sacrifice was bound up not only with a strict and ascetic sexual morality, but with an emphatic humanitarian doctrine. If asceticism be virtue, they cultivated virtue zealously. There was a Mexican Goddess of Love, and there was of course plenty of vice; but nowhere could men win a higher reputation for sanctity by living in celibacy. Their saints were numerous. They had nearly all the formulas of Christian morality, so-called. The priests themselves mostly lived in strict celibacy; and they educated children with the greatest vigilance in their temple schools and higher colleges. They taught the people to be peaceful, to bear injuries with meekness, to rely on God's mercy and not on their own merits; they taught, like Jesus and the Pagans, that adultery could be committed by the eyes and the heart; and, above all, they exhorted men to feed the poor. The public hospitals were carefully attended to, at a time when some Christian countries had none. They had the practice of confession and absolution, and in the regular exhortation of the confessor there was this formula: Clothe the naked and feed the hungry, whatever privations it may cost thee; for remember their flesh is like thine, and they are men like thee; cherish the sick, for they are the image of God. And in this very same exhortation there was further urged on the penitent the special duty of instantly procuring a slave for sacrifice to the deity." The Mexican believed in the resurrection of the Man-God. Dr. Frazer relates how "the idea that the God thus slain in the person of his representative comes to life again immediately was graphically represented in the Mexican ritual by skinning the slain man-god, and clothing in his skin a living man, who thus became the new representative of the god-head." [116] It is civilisation that determines the tone of religion. In Peru, where the civilisation was higher and the priesthood less powerful, the sacrificial system was less burdensome and less terrible. Thus human sacrifices were practically extinct. The Peruvians had the institution of a Holy Communion, in which they ate of a sacred bread, sancu, sprinkled with the blood of a sacrificed sheep, the priest pronouncing this formula: "Take heed how ye eat this sancu; for he who eats it in sin and with a double will and heart is seen by our Father, the Sun, who will punish him with grievous troubles." The Spaniards themselves recognised that the Mexicans ate the mystical body of the God with every sign of devotion and contrition; and they were so far from depreciating the Peruvian Communion that they supposed St. Bartholomew had established it. [117] With these facts confronting us, it is nothing short of marvellous to find many learned divines completely ignoring them in their apologetic efforts. I say marvellous, for I assume they possess honesty of purpose and some acquaintance with ancient beliefs; but perhaps I am wrong in the latter assumption. The continuance of the celebration of the Holy Eucharist until the present day is held to be one of the evidences for the Christian faith, and this on the ground that the rite could not have survived if Christ had not founded it. For some reason, best known to the apologist, the almost universal observance of the same ceremony, ages before the Christian era, and its survival among the nations who finally adopted Christianity, are entirely overlooked. Thus Dr. Maclear, in his book, The Evidential Value of the Holy Eucharist, says: "The singular rite has survived all the vicissitudes of more than 1,000 years.... The early Christian would inform a supposed questioner that the meal was a sacrificial feast, instituted by Him from Whom we are called Christians, and Who died for us on the Cross. Here, then, we are on solid ground. The rite, so unique and so unprecedented, rests on an objective historical fact." One would think that Dr. Maclear had entirely neglected the study of ancient and even modern non-Christian [118] beliefs. VEGETATION GODS. There is another class of primitive sacrificial custom which claims our careful attention, in order that we may see whether it manifests the beginning of a revelation from God. Even if we could agree that all these gruesome details represent a savage's glimmerings of the truth, we must allow that the theory collapses when the object of the custom can be shown to have little or nothing to do with religion in any true sense of the word. Subtle intellects are capable of maintaining that the worship of ancestors, or of the Sun, or of imaginary devils, betokens a dim perception of God; but when it comes to the propitiation of a vegetation-god solely for the sake of the material benefits expected to be derived from his cult, surely it is time to dismiss the theory as worthless. "All the world over, savages and semi-civilised people are in the habit of sacrificing human victims, whose bodies are buried in the field with the seed of corn, or other bread stuffs. Often enough the victim's blood is mixed with grain in order to fertilise it. The most famous instance is that of the Khonds of Orissa, who chose special victims, known as Meriahs, and offered them up to ensure good harvests. The Meriah was often kept years before being sacrificed. He was regarded as a consecrated being, and treated with extreme affection, mingled with deference." [119] "The periodical sacrifices," says Dr. Frazer, in The Golden Bough, "were generally so arranged by tribes and divisions of tribes that each head of a family was enabled, at least once a year, to procure a shred of flesh for his fields, generally about the time when his chief crop was laid down." Khonds in distress often sold their children as Meriahs, "considering the beatification of their souls certain, and their death, for the benefit of mankind, the most honourable possible." Their children were representatives of the Deity. With advancing civilisation we have the substitution of an animal in place of the human representative of the God. In some cases the worshippers tore the living animal to pieces with their teeth. The rending and devouring of live bulls, calves, and goats seems to have been a regular feature of the Dionysiac rites, the participators in the orgy fancying that they were devouring the actual body and blood of the god. With the further advance of civilisation (or, according to the latest Christian theory, with the further advance of God's revelation), as in the Mediterranean region, the bodies of the gods of agriculture were eaten by their votaries in the shape of cakes of bread, or other food stuffs, and their blood was drunk in the form of wine. [120] If Dr. Frazer be right as to the priority of the idea of a vegetation-god in cults commonly associated with the Sun, then Krishna, Osiris, Dionysus or Bacchus, Adonis, Attis, and other Saviours whose deaths and resurrections were annually celebrated at the spring equinox (our Easter), may have been primarily vegetation-victims, the abstract ideas which identified the death and resurrection of the god with the annual winter sleep and spring revival being finally fathered upon the worship. Whatever explanation may be the correct one for the phenomenon of a common mythos over the greater portion of the globe, it is certainly not that of a Progressive Revelation. Such an explanation has never been mooted by anyone but the Christian apologist. "Among early men and savages every act of life has a sacred significance, and agriculture especially is everywhere and always invested with a special sanctity. To us it would seem natural that the act of sowing seed should be regarded as purely practical and physiological; that the seed should be looked upon merely as the part of the plant intended for reproduction, and that its germination should be accepted as a natural and normal process. Savages and early men, however, had no such conceptions. To them the whole thing is a piece of natural magic." [121] Are we, then, to regard this working of primitive thought as the working of the Holy Spirit? Surely we may dismiss such a preposterous theory? It will serve the Church no good purpose; for, while thinking men will be further than ever estranged, it will furnish the militant agnostic with a fresh weapon for his attacks upon her. WHY MEN EAT THEIR GOD. Whatever may have been the ultimate origin of the idea of God, and of the belief in His expiatory death and subsequent resurrection, the origin of the custom of eating Him sacramentally permits of a very simple explanation. "Du Chaillu notes that some of his West African followers, when going on an expedition, brought out the skulls of their ancestors (which they religiously preserved) and scraped off small portions of the bone, which they mixed with the water and drank, giving as a reason for this conduct that their ancestors were brave, and that by drinking a portion of them they too became brave and fearless. Here we have a simple and early case of that habit of 'eating the god' to whose universality and importance Dr. Frazer has called attention." [122] It is a common early belief, which may still be met with, that by eating a certain animal the consumer will become possessed of its qualities. It is notorious, for instance, that the Miris of Northern India prize tiger's flesh for men, because it gives them strength and courage. And apparently the same belief exists also in Southern India, for I remember our Madrassi ayah--a Christian by the bye--begging for the hind leg of a panther (shot by my wife), and explaining that she wanted to eat it in order to make her muzbut (strong). I may mention also that certain religious rites still in vogue among the Hindoos--disgusting as they are, not only to our ideas, but in fact--arise from a similar notion. Herbert Spencer discusses this primitive idea in his Principles of Sociology. He explains how "attributes or properties, as we understand them, are not recognisable by the savage--are abstractions which neither his faculties can grasp nor his language express. Hence certain beliefs, everywhere conspicuous among the uncivilised. A special potency which some object or part of an object displays belongs to it in such a wise that it may be acquired by consuming or possessing this object or part. The powers of a conquered antagonist are supposed to be gained by devouring him. The Dakotah eats the heart of a slain foe to increase his own courage; the New Zealander swallows his dead enemy's eyes that he may see further; the Abipone consumes tiger's flesh thinking so to gain the tiger's strength and ferocity--cases which recall the legend about Zeus devouring Metis that he might become possessed of her wisdom. Clearly the implied mode of thought, shown even in the medical prescriptions of past ages, is a mode of thought necessarily persisting until analysis has disclosed the complexities of causal relations." [123] "The belief that the qualities of any individual are appropriated by eating him is illustrated by the statement of Stanbridge, that when Australians kill an infant they feed an older child with it, believing 'that by its eating as much as possible of the roasted infant it will possess the strength of both.' Elsewhere dead relations are consumed in pursuance of an allied belief. We read of the Cucamas that, 'as soon as a relation died, these people assembled and ate him roasted or boiled, according as he was thin or fat!'" [124] It is easy, then, to understand why a savage should desire to partake of the flesh of an animal or man whom he regards as divine. By eating the body of the god he shares in the god's attributes and powers. "And when," as Dr. Frazer points out, [125] "the god is a corn-god, the corn is his proper body; when he is a vine-god, the juice of the grape is his blood; and so by eating the bread and drinking the wine the worshipper partakes of the real body and blood of the god." If the apologist, nothing daunted, maintains that there is a religious germ in these primitive superstitions, it is practically tantamount to saying that every superstition contains such a germ; that superstition and religion are, in fact, often synonymous terms. I thought it was only the sceptic who said that. Before committing himself any further to a supernatural theory which is so obviously untenable, I do entreat the average apologist to read carefully the works of great thinkers who have made primitive man their especial study. Let him read, for instance, Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology, where he will find a natural and mind-satisfying explanation of primitive ideas concerning supernatural agents, ghosts, spirits, demons, gods, resurrection, another life, inspiration, divination, sacrifices, fasting, propitiation, and prayer. He will learn, also, much that he ought to know concerning ancestor-worship, idol-worship, fetish-worship, animal-worship, plant-worship, nature-worship, and the heathen deities generally. He should also read Frazer's Golden Bough, J. M. Robertson's Pagan Christs and Christianity and Mythology, and other scholarly and informing works of this description, instead of confining his studies to works of an apologetic character, where everything incompatible with existing Christian theories is carefully omitted, or coloured out of all recognition. § 4. The Solar Myth. JONAH AND THE WHALE. The resemblances to ancient myths are not confined to the principal incidents in the life of Christ. Many of the most noteworthy events related in the Old Testament have their counterpart in widespread legends. That the stories of the Creation, Fall, and Deluge are legends is well known--a visit to the British Museum should convince the most captious critic on this point--but it is not so well known that ancient folk-lore contains stories similar to those of the Tower of Babel, the trial of Abraham's faith, Jacob's vision of the ladder between earth and heaven, the finding of Moses in an ark, the transformation of Moses' rod into a serpent, the Israelites' passage through the Red Sea on dry land, Moses smiting the rock and thus producing water, the reception by Moses of the Ten Commandments from God, Balaam's expostulating ass, Joshua's command to the sun and the sun's obedience, Samson and his exploits, Elijah's ascent to heaven, and Jonah's sojourn for three days and three nights in the belly of a fish. This Jonah episode has an important bearing on the subject under discussion, as it is a typical case of an absorption of the universal mythos. Among other authorities, Godfrey Higgins tells us: "The story of Jonas swallowed up by a whale is nothing but part of the fiction of Hercules, described in the Heracleid or Labours of Hercules, of whom the same story was told, and who was swallowed up at the very same place, Joppa, and for the same period of time, three days." [126] Again, with the exception of those who refuse to acknowledge anything damaging to the literal truth of Holy Writ, all professors of theology are agreed that the miracle recorded in the book of Jonah is not a historical fact. This in spite of the alleged personal interviews with God as there recounted; while the plea that we must make allowance for oriental imagery serves only to throw discredit upon historians on whom we are relying for facts upon which the scheme of Christianity depends. Now, the story of the three days' sojourn of Hercules and other heroes in the bowels of the earth, or the belly of a fish, is only a different version of the myth concerning the death and resurrection of a god which we find to be prevalent over nearly the whole world. And, according to the new Christian theory, this shows an intuition of Christ's death and resurrection! ANTICIPATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY IN SOLAR MYTHS. The advanced theologians, who are presenting us with this theory, have to explain, among other things, how it was that Christ himself took the "Jonah and whale" story seriously, treating it as sober history. He spoke of no mere allegory when He said: "For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." [127] Neither Christ himself nor the Apostles spoke of any revelation embodied in heathen beliefs. Very much the reverse. Yet the Bishop of Birmingham (late of Worcester), speaking to the adversaries of Christianity, informs them: "You say that we find in Christianity the relics of paganism. On the contrary, we find in paganism, intermingled with much that is false, superstitious, and horrible, the anticipations of Christianity." Is that why we have paid them the compliment of adopting their dates for the birth and death of their Saviours? [128] Canon P. H. Robinson goes so far as to say that Christianity has benefited by the addition of heathen thought [N.B. He owns there has been this addition], and that it is yet to benefit by further contact with heathen thought! His actual words are: "If Greek and Roman thought were needed for a full appreciation of the meaning of the Incarnation, why may we not say the same of Indian and Chinese thought? Surely we are justified in believing that every country and every people have something to contribute to Christianity and that the completion of the Christian revelation awaits the contribution of each. We believe that there are many important aspects of the Christian truth which have never been understood, simply because Christianity has not yet been reflected in the experience of those nations of the world which are still heathen." [129] THE CHRISTIAN THEORY IGNORED BY SCIENCE. The earliest attempts at a crude science of mythology were efforts to reconcile the legends of the gods and heroes with the religious sentiment which recognised in these beings objects of worship and respect. When the Christians first approached the problem of heathen mythology, they agreed with St. Augustine that the gods were real persons--but diabolical, not divine. "Some later philosophers, especially of the seventeenth century, misled by the resemblance between Biblical narratives and ancient myths, came to the conclusion that the Bible contains a pure, the myths a distorted, form of an original revelation." [130] Now, however, in tracing myths and legends to their probable origins, the modern mythologist never dreams of calling to his aid any supernatural theory. Myths present, I take it, two main problems--first as to their origin, and second as to their resemblances to Biblical narratives. Some mythologists, while no longer allowing orthodox tradition to hamper them, only profess to answer the first question. They disclaim the obligation of entering the arena of theological controversy. It is important that the Church should thoroughly realise this, and that any disagreement there may be among mythologists as to the solution of the first problem--the origin of myths--has little or no bearing upon the solution of the second problem--the Bible parallels. What does it matter whether the gods had a vegetable or a solar origin, or arose, as Max Müller thought, from "a disease of language"? The all-important question for Christians is: Can any of these possible origins point to a Progressive Revelation, and, if not, how are we to account for the Bible parallels? THE SUN AS A SYMBOL. Suppose that, whatever the ultimate origin may have been, certain myths containing the parallels are, as we know them, solar myths (and on this point mythologists are now in complete accord); how can a belief be, at one and the same time, a solar myth and also an allegory expressing a spiritual truth? The sun is the object of worship, and its apparent movements give rise to myths concerning the birth, death, and resurrection of a Saviour. [131] Can we call this Progressive Revelation? "Certainly," the apologists may reply; "is there no bright Sun of Righteousness--no personal and loving Son of God, of whom the material sun has been the type or symbol, in all ages and among all nations? What power is it that comes from the sun to give light and heat to all created things? If the symbolical sun leads such a great and heavenly flock, what must be said of the true and only begotten Son of God? If Apollo was adopted by early Christian art as a type of the Good Shepherd of the New Testament, this interpretation of the sun-god among all nations must be the solution of the universal mythos. What other solution can it have? To what other historical personage but Christ can it apply? If this mythos has no spiritual meaning, all religion becomes mere idolatry, or the worship of material things." [132] Will this sort of reasoning satisfy the average man? To begin with, the sun-worshippers themselves had no idea that the sun was, as is now alleged, the symbol of a great Truth. The sun, or their conception of the sun as a divine person in a blazing car, was the object of their worship. What a waste of worship for thousands upon thousands of years!--worship that might have been centred upon the true God. Even now, nigh on 2,000 years after God was pleased at last to reveal Himself, as we are told, to all mankind, the greater portion do not know Him, or they deny Him. If God intended the sun to be a symbol of Christ, why have we never been told this before? Why even now is it only put forward by a certain school of apologists in costly books that few will ever set their eyes upon? It is noteworthy, too, that the horrors that accompanied the worship of this same "bright Sun" are discreetly kept in the background by these advocates of the "symbol" theory. § 5. Concluding Remarks on Christian and Anti-Christian Theories. If Progressive Revelation be true, it is the most marvellous proof of the truth of Christianity--far the greatest proof that has ever yet been presented to us. Far greater, for instance, than the prophecies of those so-called prophets of the Old Testament, who, it now transpires, were only anticipating or describing events of their own times. It is such a proof as Christianity is in dire need of just now--a proof that will save her from a peril which every hour brings nearer. Why, then, do we hear so little of this great discovery from the pulpit? [133] How comes it that it is discovered so many years after the fulfilment of these unconscious prophecies of the pagans? Why is it produced merely to confute the sceptic and restore confidence to that infinitesimally small number who happen to have studied, and therefore to have had their suspicions aroused by, Comparative Mythology? We are to believe that God revealed Himself by an exceedingly slow and painful process, extending over thousands upon thousands of years, and entailing the most horrible customs among savages. This process, mark you, not only led to the establishment of Christianity as the world became more civilised, but to the establishment of those other great religions which to this day are hostile to the reception of Christianity! Simple-minded people will never be induced to agree that revelation can be progressive in the manner now indicated to us by the apologist. Rather they will agree with the nationalist, who denies the originality of Christianity, contending that it is a cult which adopted, step by step, the mysteries, the miracles, and the myths of the popular Gentile religions. Some freethinkers, indeed, go so far as to say that the whole Gospel story is nothing more than a myth; but the greater number consider that there is a substratum of truth, and that round this have slowly gathered the religious ideas and doctrines that were current in the old pagan world. The precise manner in which, they conjecture, the transformation actually took place is a large subject, and there are differences of opinion--e.g., some are inclined to think that Essenism, others that Mithraism, played a leading part; but the point to be borne in mind is that there is no difficulty whatever in understanding how the absorption of myths could have taken place, or how the Christian cult could have arisen and prospered. I especially mention this, as some apologists argue that there was not sufficient time for heathen accretions between the death of Jesus and the writing of the Gospels. I can only reiterate the remark of the well-known professor of Church history, Dr. Harnack: "We know that the Gospels come from a time in which the marvellous may be said to have been something of almost daily occurrence. We now know that eminent persons have not to wait until they have been long dead, or even for several years, to have miracles reported of them; they are reported at once, often the very next day." Also, I should call attention to the notes on Essenism and Mithraism at the close of this chapter, as they contain the answer to this final objection. But, personally, I fail to see how the "time" objection can in any case be maintained when we remember that the whole world had already been conversant for ages past with stories of suffering Saviours, similar in all essentials to the Gospel narratives. Besides, we know that documents have been tampered with more or less (the sceptic says "more," the apologist "less"), and that the composition of the Gospels took place many years after the events they purport to describe; while the age was one when men were extremely credulous, and when, consciously and unconsciously, imposing upon this credulity was the ordinary method of propagating a Faith. ARGUMENT FROM ESSENISM. Regarding the difficulty of supposing that Jesus or the Evangelists could have been imbued with any sun-myth ideas, we must take into consideration the existence at that time of the Jewish sect, the Essenes. It seems quite possible that they considered Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah they were expecting, and that they came over to Christianity in a body. This monastic brotherhood, living in settlements in the desert west of the Dead Sea--i.e., within a day's journey of Bethlehem and Jerusalem--not only placed love of God, of goodness, and of man as articles in their programme, but also sought with wonderful energy, according to their lights, to realise them in their life. Bunsen assures us (p. 158 of his Angel-Messiah), and furnishes strong grounds for his opinion, that the Essenes introduced the new doctrine of an Angel-Messiah, and with it the doctrine of the atoning death of the Messiah, into Judaism and Christianity. Canon Cheyne likewise places them among the number of those who prepared the way for the new world-religion. This seems to have been the very reason of their disappearance in the second century A.D.--Christianity dissolved them. So much so that the Essenes (often called Therapeutæ or healers) are identified by Eusebius with the Christian monks, and this opinion was generally adopted by the Fathers (see chap, xvii., bk. ii., p. 117, of The Church History of Eusebius, translated by the Rev. A. C. McGiffert, under the editorial supervision of Henry Wace, D.D., and Philip Schaff, D.D.). From a perusal of the article on the "Essenes" in the Encyclopædia Biblica, it will be seen that Essenism is not a purely Jewish product, but that "Persian and Babylonian influence may reasonably be admitted." "Oriental influences were," Canon Cheyne informs us, "so to speak, in the air, and it is probable that the belief in the resurrection was not the only great debt which Jewish religionists owed to Zoroastrians." Bishop Lightfoot describes the Essenes as sun-worshippers. Is there, then, no likelihood of Jesus and His disciples being familiar with the ideas of sun-worshippers? But, it may be urged, the teaching of Jesus Christ was opposed to Essenic doctrines in the matter of asceticism. True; but, in one way, this makes the case for the absorption of Essenic ideas all the stronger, for it would account for the strange fact that the Christians approved of asceticism in spite of their own Master's example to the contrary. I do not wish to press this anti-Christian theory further than to say that it appears to me that, among others, it is one deserving of consideration. Presuming that in Jesus the Apostles were confronted with a personality of overwhelming attractiveness and power of appeal to themselves, their language can be interpreted throughout as their attempt to expound and pass on their experience to the world. In this attempt they were naturally driven to employ such conceptions as were current in their day, and notably those of Messianic anticipations and Greek philosophy. Assuming that the Gospels are without any important interpolations, and that the authors are the Evangelists, even then the partial insertion of solar-myths would not necessarily be tantamount to any conscious dishonesty on the part of the Evangelists; it only points to their impregnation with the Jewish beliefs, such as those of the Essenes, that were around them. If this theory be correct, the difficulty arising from the shortness of the time between the Resurrection and the writing of the Gospels vanishes, since accretions of a later date would no longer be the sole cause for the events recorded by the Evangelists becoming inextricably entwined with mythical beliefs. ARGUMENT FROM MITHRAISM. This argument is fully developed in Part III. of Mr. J. M. Robertson's book, Pagan Christs, from which the following are quotations: "Mithraism was in point of range the most nearly universal religion of the Western world in the early centuries of the Christian era. As to this students are agreed. [Here Mr. Robertson gives in a footnote a formidable array of authorities.] To the early Fathers, we shall see. Mithraism was a most serious thorn in the flesh; and the monumental remains of the Roman period, in almost all parts of the empire, show its extraordinary extension." Mr. Robertson points out that there are a number of monuments in honour of Mithra in England, France, Italy, Germany, and in many Mediterranean ports. He then proceeds to give us some exceedingly important information regarding Mithraism, out of which I select the following extracts for the more particular attention of Christians:-- "We have the culture of Mithra as the Sun-god, the deity of light and truth, created by, and yet co-equal with, the Supreme Deity, and fighting on the side of the good against the evil power, Angra-Mainyu (Ahriman)--this at a period long before the Christian era.... Mithra comes to occupy a singular position as between the two great powers of good and evil, Ormuzd and Ahriman, being actually named the Mediator, and figuring to the devout eye as a humane and beneficent God, nearer to man than the Great Spirit of Good, a Saviour, a Redeemer, eternally young, son of the Most High, and preserver of mankind from the Evil One.... The first day of the week, Sunday, was apparently from time immemorial consecrated to Mithra by the Mithraists; and as the Sun-god was pre-eminently 'the Lord,' Sunday was the 'Lord's Day' long before the Christian era.... We have some exact information as to the two chief Mithraic ceremonies or festivals, those of Christmas and Easter, the winter solstice and the vernal equinox, the birthday of the Sun-god, and the period of his sacrifice and his triumph.... There were in antiquity, we know from Porphyry, several elaborate treatises setting forth the religion of Mithra; and every one of these has been destroyed by the care of the Church.... Of course, we are told that the Mithraic rites and mysteries are borrowed and imitated from Christianity. The refutation of this notion, as has been pointed out by M. Havet, lies in the language of those Christian fathers who spoke of Mithraism. Three of them, as we have seen, speak of the Mithraic resemblances to Christian rites as being the work of devils. Now, if the Mithraists had simply imitated the historic Christians, the obvious course for the latter would be simply to say so.... The Mithraic mysteries, then, of the burial and resurrection of the Lord, the Mediator, the Saviour; burial in a rock tomb and resurrection from the tomb; the sacrament of bread and water, the marking on the forehead with a mystic mark--all these were in practice before the publication of the Christian Gospel.... Nor was this all. Firmicus informs us that the devil, in order to leave nothing undone for the destruction of souls, had beforehand resorted to deceptive imitations of the Cross of Christ.... Still further does the parallel hold. It is well known that, whereas in the Gospels Jesus is said to have been born in an inn-stable, early Christian writers, as Justin Martyr and Origen, explicitly say he was born in a cave. Now, in the Mithra myth, Mithra is both rock-born and born in a cave; and the monuments show the new-born babe adored by shepherds who offer first-fruits.... Now, however, arises the great question. How came such a cultus to die out of the Roman and Byzantine Empire after making its way so far, and holding its ground so long? The answer to that question has never, I think, been fully given, and is for the most part utterly evaded, though part of it has been suggested often enough. The truth is Mithraism was not overthrown; it was merely transformed.... Though Mithraism had many attractions, Christianity had more, having sedulously copied every one of its rivals and developed special features of its own.... In the Christian legend the God was humanised in the most literal way; and for the multitude the concrete deity must needs replace the abstract. The Gospels gave a literal story: The Divine Man was a carpenter, and ate and drank with the poorest of the poor.... Gradually the very idea of allegory died out of the Christian intelligence; and priests as well as people came to take everything literally and concretely.... This was the religion for the Dark Ages.... Byzantines and barbarians alike were held by literalism, not by the unintelligible: for both alike the symbol had to become a fetish; and for the Dark Ages the symbol of the cross was much more plausibly appealing than that of the god slaying the zodiacal bull.... A Mithraist could turn to the Christian worship and find his main rites unimpaired, lightened only of the burden of initiative austerities, stripped of the old obscure mysticism, and with all things turned to the literal and the concrete, in sympathy with the waning of knowledge and philosophy throughout the world." But I must now close these quotations, apologising to Mr. Robertson for making such a free use of his book, and advising my readers to study it. They will find that his facts are reliable; they are all backed by the highest authorities, however much the conclusions drawn from them may, at present, be a matter of opinion. Suffice it to say here that the coincidences between Mithraism and Christianity are indescribably marvellous, and require further explanation, if Mr. Robertson's theory of the absorption of the former by the latter be not very largely true. Whatever the substratum of real history may be, there is no doubt that there was every opportunity for an early absorption of Mithraism, and every probability that it took place to an extent which throws a new flood of light upon many Christian doctrines. "The first six centuries were characterised by fierce controversies as to the most fundamental verities of the Christian faith, by the wholesale introduction of adult converts, who brought with them heathen and Jewish habits of thought, and who were in many cases of a low type of civilisation; and the adulteration of the Gospel was further facilitated by the purely nominal adhesion of persons anxious to stand well with the first Christian Emperors. The period was one of incessant fermentation and of rapid and continuous change." These are not the words of Mr. Robertson, nor of any other freethinker, but are an extract from the resolution adopted by the Church Association in connection with the appeal by Dean Wace and others to the authority of the First Six Centuries. What a period to appeal to! When we know what we do of the credulity and the methods of those "Fathers" of the Church, how can any rational being place in them any confidence whatsoever? What steps do the Churches propose to take concerning these disclosures? Will they proclaim from the pulpit their new theory of a Progressive Revelation, or will they by their silence evince their own want of faith in this precious theory, and allow the storm of unbelief slowly to gather force until it bursts and overwhelms the Christian belief? Knowledge of the facts, so ably discussed by Mr. Robertson, will soon be widely disseminated. Let there be no mistake on this point. Here, for instance, are some instructive passages appearing on page 496 of the Nineteenth Century, September, 1905:-- "It has been truly observed that the recovery, only partial as it is, of the history of this religion [the Mithraic] is one of the most remarkable triumphs of historical and antiquarian research. Originating in Persia, it was spread through the Roman Empire by poor and humble converts, who were at first mainly soldiers; but gradually, like Christianity, it permeated all ranks, and its temples are found scattered over the whole civilised world, from Babylon to the hills of Scotland. Just as the religion of Isis did, it resembled that of Christ in being a religion of inward holiness, of austere self-discipline and purity; but the details of its resemblance are incomparably more close and curious. The briefest sketch of the matter is all that can be attempted here. According to Mithraic theology, God considered in His totality is a Being so infinite and so transcendent that His direct connection with man and the universe is inconceivable. In order to become the father of man and creator, He manifested Himself in a second personality--namely, Mithra, who was in his cosmic character identified with the 'unconquered sun,' and, as a moral and intellectual Being, was the Divine Word or Reason, and, in more senses than one, 'the mediator' between man and the Most High. Life on earth, according to the Mithraic doctrine, is for man a time of trial. The Spirit of Evil, his adversary, is always seeking to destroy him--to crush him with pain and sorrow, or to stain his soul with concupiscence; but in all his struggles Mithra is at hand to aid him, and will at the last day be at once his judge and advocate, when the graves give up their dead, when the just are separated from the unjust, when the saved are welcomed like children into eternal bliss, and the lost are consumed in the fire prepared for the Devil and his angels. This Divine Saviour came into the world as an infant. His first worshippers were shepherds; and the day of His nativity was December 25th. His followers preached a severe and rigid morality, chief among their virtues being temperance, chastity, renunciation, and self-control. They kept the seventh day holy, and the middle day of each month was a special feast of Mithra, which symbolised his function of Mediator. They had seven sacraments, of which the most important were baptism, confirmation, and a Eucharistic supper, at which the communicants partook of the divine nature of Mithra under the species of bread and wine." EVOLUTION Chapter V. IRRECONCILABLE DIFFICULTIES CONNECTED WITH EVOLUTION § 1. Preliminary Remarks. THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. General views of the development or evolution of the visible order of nature have been entertained by philosophers from the earliest historical times. There were pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Lucretius (600 B.C.-50 A.D.). The inquiry was then arrested for nearly sixteen hundred years--that is, until the renascence of Science. As knowledge, in spite of ecclesiastical discouragement, again slowly advanced, the science of biology gained in strength, and the work of Linnæus, Buffon, Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, and others, paved the way for that modern theory of Evolution which Darwin, Wallace, Spencer, Huxley, and Haeckel have demonstrated to us. This doctrine of Evolution is no longer a mere speculative theory, possibly or probably true, but an established fact accepted by the whole scientific world with hardly a single dissentient voice. We know that everything as it now exists is the product of Evolution--the solar system, the earth, all lower forms of life, and lastly man, together with his languages, arts, sciences, theology, social habits, instincts, and, according to many high authorities, morals, conscience, and consciousness. Yes, "man, perfect as he may appear to us, is still not a being apart in nature, but by his whole organisation is continuous with the other zoological species." "Anthropology, properly so-called, is, in fact, merely a chapter of zoology." "The homological structure of man, his embryological development, and the rudiments which he still retains, all declare in the plainest possible manner that he is descended from some lower form." He "derives his moral sense from the social feelings which are instinctive or innate in the lower animals." [134] It is in the special sense of explaining how living things came into being, and how they have acquired their present characters, that the teaching of Evolution appears to be most in conflict with that of the Churches and the Bible. It is, therefore, this aspect of Evolution with which we are here chiefly concerned, and we may remember that, since Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871), his main conclusions have been confirmed by every branch of anthropological research--by palæontology, zoology, comparative anatomy, physiology, pathology, teratology, psychology, and more especially by embryology, a science in which there has been a remarkable progress during the past thirty years. Professor Haeckel points out on page 24 of his important work, The Evolution of Man (translated by Joseph McCabe), that "even when human anatomy began to stir itself once more in the sixteenth century, and independent research into the structure of the developed body was resumed, anatomists did not dare to extend their inquiries to the unformed body, the embryo, and its development. There were many reasons for the prevailing horror of such studies. It is natural enough, when we remember that a Bull of Boniface VIII. excommunicated every man who ventured to dissect a human corpse. If the dissection of a developed body were a crime to be thus punished, how much more dreadful must it have seemed to deal with the embryonic body still enclosed in the womb, which the Creator Himself had decently veiled from the curiosity of the scientist." Palæontology is another very young science that has contributed greatly towards the evidence of our origin. Professor Huxley informs us, in his essay on "The Rise and Progress of Palæontology," that the first adequate investigation of the fossil remains of any large group of vertebrated animals dates from 1822, and that in the last fifty years the number of known fossil remains of invertebrated animals has been trebled or quadrupled. Fossils were at one time believed to have been sown by the devil, whose fell purpose was to throw discredit upon the Bible story of Creation. Perhaps this pious opinion may have had something to do with the slow progress of palæontology? DARWINISM. To prevent the chance of any misunderstanding, some explanation may be necessary for the benefit of those who are not in touch with scientific thought, and who hear that "Darwinism" is out of date. They should understand that, although the doctrine of Evolution as applied to organic life used to be widely spoken of by the term "Darwinism," the latter is now only used by scientists in a special sense, to designate the belief in the gradual origin of species by natural selection. There are some who deem this hypothesis to be untenable. But there is no dispute whatever concerning the doctrine of the derivation or descent, with modification, of all existing species, genera, orders, classes, etc., of animals and plants, from a few simple forms of life, if not from one. Modern evolutionary theories, however, are more particularly concerned with the question of the ways and means by which living organisms have assumed their actual characters or forms, and on these points there are many shades of individual opinion. Ignorance of the gist of the Darwinian theory, "natural selection," [135] has been fruitful in misunderstandings and objections regarding it, so that it is advisable to mention here that the author of the theory states explicitly that it does not account for the origin of variations in individuals, still less in species; but that, given the origination and existence of variations, it shows that some of these are preserved, while others are not--that favourable variations tend to be perpetuated, and unfavourable variations to become extinct; that those variations which best adapt an organisation to its environment are most favourable to its preservation, and, consequently, that the theory of natural selection is adequate to explain the observed fact of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence. "Natural selection ... implies that the individuals which are best fitted for the complex and changing conditions to which, in the course of ages, they are exposed, generally survive and procreate their kind." [136] Natural selection does not, it may be added, imply conscious selection. It would be equally true to call it natural murder, or natural weeding-out. But, whether Darwin and Weismann be right or wrong in attributing so much to natural selection, what I wish particularly to point out is that the hypothesis of Evolution is nowise invalidated because, out of the various causes at work, we are not quite sure as yet which is the most efficient. It is necessary to make this clear, for, hearing that "Darwinism" is under dispute, the uninitiated might come to the conclusion that the animal origin of man is discredited. THE AVERAGE PERSON'S IDEAS ON THE EVOLUTION OF MAN. With but very few exceptions, every biological student admits our animal origin. The ideas of most people, however, on this subject are hazy in the extreme, and no wonder, when the study of Evolution has never been included in their school curriculum. Men (and in very rare cases women) pick up a few crumbs of knowledge concerning the scientific theory of their origin, and then, from want of leisure or from religious motives, or from various causes, they drop the subject. Often they are put off by the dry details of the evidence and the technical phrases before they have obtained a real grip of the subject. They do not even know some of the more simple and obvious proofs which alone would have sufficed to convince them. One finds that men's views concerning Evolution are coloured by the opinion prevailing at the time when they themselves were once faintly interested in the subject; and thus there is, at present, an inertia of ignorance, due to the misconceptions and prejudices of older generations. The opinions of our elders, being formed on a riper experience, very properly enlist our respect; but, unfortunately, in this instance they are based upon false premises, and so lead us astray. People who remember when Darwin first propounded his theory, and the violent, not to say virulent, opposition with which it was received by the Church, only too often remain in blissful ignorance of all that has since transpired. It is quite enough for them that they are erect, tailless, speaking, reflecting bipeds. With attributes such as these, they fondly imagine that they are separated from the beast by a gulf that neither Evolution nor any other theory could possibly bridge. Whatever the reasons may be--and there are many--the vast majority of Christians not only remain woefully ignorant of Evolution, but have no desire to learn anything more about it. They know it is opposed to Bible teaching. They prefer, as it has been well said, to consider themselves fallen angels rather than elevated apes. We are not, however, concerned here with likes and dislikes, but only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. Moreover, if it be objected that we can take no pride in an animal ancestry, surely we may say the same of our savage ancestry. "He who has seen a savage in his native land will not feel much shame if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some more humble creature flows in his veins. For my own part, I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs, as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practises infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions." [137] "We must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man, with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men, but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect, which has penetrated into the movement and constitution of the solar system--with all these exalted powers--man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin." [138] THE ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH. Now let us consider the opinions of our spiritual guides. At the Shrewsbury Church Conference, in 1896, Archbishop Temple said that, "in his opinion, the full acceptance of the doctrine of Evolution would prove a great help to Christian thought and Christian life." In his book, The Relations between Religion and Science, he states that "the doctrine of Evolution leaves the argument for an intelligent and beneficent Creator and Governor of the world stronger than it was before." A decade has passed, and still how few Christians know of this "help," of this "stronger argument"! In the course of his address at the Weymouth Church Conference in 1905, the Bishop of Gloucester admitted that "Darwin's teaching on evolution and development" had "revolutionised our ideas of God's action in nature." If this be so, how comes it that such a vast number of the pious still adhere to the old ideas? Is it not the duty of the pastor to educate his flock? What "ideas of God's action in nature" are missionaries even now putting into the heads of their converts? If we inquired of the average religionist, should we find that his or her ideas had been revolutionised? Not only are worshippers in the House of God kept in ignorance, but theological students are distinctly warned against the full acceptance of the doctrine of Evolution. For instance, Dr. Orr, a professor of apologetics, delivered a course of lectures before the professors and students of the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1903, the object of which was to show the dangers that must accrue to the Faith if the theories of Darwin were accepted in their entirety. He stoutly denied that man and woman were an evolution by slow stages from creatures that had gone before, and asserted that the first man came into being, as did the first woman, by a special act of creation. Unfortunately for the validity of his assertion he labours under the delusion that science concedes that man, or anything like man, cannot be traced further back than the post-glacial period, and that the brain capacity and physical characteristics of primeval man stood on as high a level as the average man of to-day! [139] In a recently-published letter, [140] written by Charles Kingsley to a correspondent, we read: "My own belief in the general truth of my friend Darwin's views--which deepen day by day as I verify them--has only given me wider and deeper and nobler notions of God's works in the material universe." He then proceeds to illustrate his own thoughts by a charming little story of a certain old heathen Khan, who was delighted with the idea of a God so wise that he made all things make themselves. This old Khan and Charles Kingsley overlook an objection which to myself, and to many others, seems quite insuperable--namely, that a God so wise and merciful would have seen his way to prevent that frightful wastefulness and cruelty which is part and parcel of the evolutionary process. But more of this difficulty anon. To give another example of a clerical evolutionist: the Rev. G. S. Streatfield, vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead, on May 22nd, 1901, read a paper at the Southport Conference on "Questions that Must be Faced," in which he conceded that "the fact of Evolution is now hardly questioned in the scientific world--one might almost say in the world of thought." He, too, is charmed with the new theory, for he says: "It is, I suppose, generally agreed that the evolutionist has worthier, more rational, more truly philosophical views of the Divine Will and Action than those who hold the traditional theory." Clerics of his stamp and school are now becoming more outspoken, and admit their convictions in public instead of in writings that are likely to be seen only by a select few. Only lately the Dean of Westminster, addressing a large gathering of Sunday-school teachers, told them that the idea that the human species was separately created was given up, and the fact of man's descent from lower organisms accepted. While admiring his candour, one cannot help calling to mind that in 1860 Professor Huxley was utterly ridiculed by erudite scholars of the Church for making a precisely similar statement. Between those who accept and those who entirely reject Evolution there are various shades of opinion. There are those who accept everything short of the evolution of certain mental faculties; although students of comparative psychology now admit that the intellectual faculties of animals differ from those in man in degree only, not in their essence. There are those like the Rev. John Urquhart, author of a brochure called Roger's Reasons, who seek to reconcile the Bible story of creation with the Evolution theory, although any such interpretation was put out of court long ago by Professor Huxley's reply to Mr. Gladstone. [141] There are those who, like Dr. Torrey, [142] persist in altogether denying our animal origin, although there is hardly a single scientist, hardly a single thoughtful man, who has studied the subject without bias, who believes anything else. The number of clergymen who openly admit the truth of Evolution is as yet comparatively small. The few who do express their opinion openly, profess to be delighted with the new light that has now been shed upon God's methods. The question arises, How is it, then, that we hear so little about Evolution from the pulpit, and that, consequently, the faithful are kept in ignorance of this fresh revelation? The answer is obvious: It is because the advanced divines have yet to educate their congregations up to their way of thinking, and the process has, for many reasons, to be conducted with extreme caution. They know full well that they have a difficult and dangerous task before them; that those who accept Evolution, but are unable to accept their opinions concerning its spiritual helpfulness, will lapse into agnosticism. They also know that their views are not popular with conservative believers. The chief reason, perhaps, for pulpit reticence is that the enormous majority in the Church still remain hostile to this new doctrine. They consider it to be dangerous, and likely to unsettle people's minds. Possibly in their inmost souls, if they have studied Evolution at all, they agree with a certain distinguished essayist who says: "A God who could have been deliberately guilty of them (the Evolutionary processes) would be a God too absurd, too monstrous, too mad to be credible." [143] The cruelty of the law of prey and struggle for existence, and the wastefulness of Nature's arrangements for the reproduction of life (plant and animal alike), do, indeed, appear sufficient warrant for some such painful impression; while, as if this were not enough, there is for the Christian the additional difficulty of reconciling Evolution with the Bible story of the Creation and Fall of man. These various difficulties must now be carefully investigated. § 2. "Nature Red in Tooth and Claw." Darwin tells us that "there is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at such a high rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate in less than a thousand years there would literally not be standing room for his progeny." [144] [I commend this passage to the notice of President Roosevelt and others who are so anxious that we should obey God's command to Noah, and "be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth."] "If all the offspring of the elephant, the slowest breeder known, survived, there would be, in seven hundred and fifty years, nearly nineteen million elephants, descended from the first pair. If the eight or nine million eggs which the roe of a cod is said to contain, developed into adult codfishes, the sea would quickly become a solid mass of them. It is the same with the plants. The lower organisms multiply with an astonishing rapidity, some minute fungi increasing a billion-fold in a few hours. But we need not give further examples of this fecundity whereby Nature, 'so careless of the single life,' secures the race against extinction. The result is obvious--a ceaseless struggle for food and place. In that struggle the race is to the swift, and the battle to the strong; the weaker, be it in brain or body, going to the wall; the vast majority never reaching maturity, or, if they do, attaining it only to be starved or slain. As among men competition is sharper between those of the same trade, so throughout the organic world the struggle is less severe between different species than between members of the same species, because these compete more fiercely for their common needs--plants for the same soil, carnivora for the same prey." [145] The problem of evil has exercised the mind of man from all time, and has never yet been solved. In our own time the solution by theology seems farther off than ever, now that the existence of the Devil is denied, while the law of prey and struggle for existence is admitted to be the Creator's own handiwork--to be His Divine plan for the evolution of all living things. Surely we must admit the inherent cruelty of the process? Professor Huxley, in an article on the "Struggle for Existence," concludes that, "since thousands of times a minute, were our ears sharp enough, we should hear sighs and groans of pain like those heard by Dante at the gate of hell [not to mention what we should not hear--the anguish and terror borne in silence], the world cannot be governed by what we call benevolence." [146] Winwood Reade, in his striking book, The Martyrdom of Man, says: "But it is when we open the Book of Nature, that book inscribed in blood and tears; it is when we study the laws regulating life, the laws productive of development, that we see plainly how illusive is this theory that God is Love. In all things there is cruel, profligate, and abandoned waste. Of all the animals that are born a few only can survive; and it is owing to this law that development takes place. The law of murder is the law of growth. Life is one long tragedy; creation is one great crime. Is it the law of a kind Creator that no animal shall rise to excellence except by being fatal to the life of others? It is useless to say that pain has its benevolence, that massacre has its mercy. Why is it so ordained that bad should be the raw material of good? Pain is not less pain because it is useful; murder is not less murder because it is conducive to development. There is blood upon the hand still, and all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten it." [147] Robert Blatchford (Nunquam), in his book, God and My Neighbour, which has caused no little stir of late in certain quarters, speaks to the same effect: "On land and in sea the animal creation chase and maim and slay and devour each other. The beautiful swallow on the wing devours the equally beautiful gnat. The graceful flying fish, like a fair white bird, goes glancing above the blue magnificence of the tropical seas. His flight is one of terror; he is pursued by the ravenous dolphin. The ichneumon-fly lays eggs under the skin of the caterpillar. The eggs are hatched by the warmth of the caterpillar's blood. They produce a brood of larvæ which devour the caterpillar alive.... A germ flies from a stagnant pool, and the laughing child, its mother's darling, dies dreadfully of diphtheria. A tidal wave rolls land-ward, and twenty thousand human beings are drowned or crushed to death. A volcano bursts suddenly into eruption, and the beautiful city is a heap of ruins, and its inhabitants are charred or mangled corpses. And the Heavenly Father, who is Love and has power to save, makes no sign.... Only man helps man. Only man pities; only man tries to save." "But," it may be said, "you are giving only the one side--the freethinker's side--of the question. What are the Christian evolutionist's replies to these terrible attacks upon our Heavenly Father?" You shall hear them, and judge for yourself whether they are likely to convince the multitude. In the second chapter of his book on Darwinism, Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace lays himself out to say all that can be said, and a great deal that cannot reasonably be said, in extenuation of God's plan. He owns that, "to many persons, Nature appears calm, orderly, and peaceful. They see the birds singing in the trees, the insects hovering over the flowers, and all living things in the possession of health and in the enjoyment of a sunny existence. But they do not see, and hardly ever think of, the means by which this beauty and harmony and enjoyment is brought about. They do not see the constant and daily search after food, the failure to obtain which means weakness or death; the constant effort to escape enemies; the ever-recurring struggle against the forces of Nature. This daily and hourly struggle, this incessant warfare, is, nevertheless, the very means by which much of the beauty and harmony and enjoyment in Nature is produced, and also affords one of the most important elements in bringing about the origin of the species." After showing that the struggle for existence has proved a stumbling-block in the way of those who would fain believe in the all-wise and benevolent Ruler of the universe, he goes on to say that "all this is greatly exaggerated"; that "the supposed torments and miseries of animals have little real existence, but are the reflection of the imagined sensations of cultivated men and women under similar circumstances"; and that "the amount of actual suffering caused by the struggle for existence among animals is altogether insignificant." Space, and a consideration for a possibly impatient reader, prevent my wading through the paltry reasons he proceeds to bring forward in order to try to prove that pain is not pain, and that the less degree of pain suffered by an animal or a savage is an excuse for its infliction. The Rev. Professor Flint's book on Theism [148] is much patronised by the Church as an apologetic book of the highest order. The Professor tries to show (p. 204) that, although the process of development involves privation, pain, and conflict, it is subservient to the noblest end, because the final result is, as he alleges, order and beauty. All the perfections of sentient creatures are, he owns, due to this painful process. "Through it the lion has gained its strength, the deer its speed, the dog its sagacity. The suffering which the conflict involves may indicate that God has made even animals for some higher end than happiness--that He cares for animals' perfection as well as for animals' enjoyment. The ends are eminently worthy of a Divine intelligence." The Professor does not explain why, to paraphrase one of Mr. Lowes Dickenson's sage remarks, the less perfectly evolved generations should be sacrificed in order that future generations may be heirs of an unearned increment. Myself, I fail to see that even the ends, whatever they may happen to be--and they appear distinctly nebulous--can ever justify the cruel means; and I feel sure that our dumb fellow-creatures, the principal parties concerned, would agree with me, had they the power of reflection and speech. How can they, how can we, profess to approve of a plan that brings only unhappiness in its train? Suppose it were necessary in order to give more happiness in an after-life, the creature might meekly wonder why he or she had first to suffer pain, but could imagine, as the pious imagine, that it must be for some good purpose. Does Dr. Flint mean to say that there is an after-life for all living things? The learned Professor tries to explain pain away by describing its preservative use. He says (p. 246): "Were animals insusceptible of pain, they would be in continual peril." That would certainly spoil the evolutionary Creator's plans; but it hardly excuses His methods. Professor Flint, however, argues that, though pain is not an end in itself, it is a means to an end, and "its end is a benevolent one." How, I ask does it profit the creature itself to become ever so graceful in appearance, ever so perfect in mind and body, if it is only to gratify its Maker, who has an end in view with which it is in no wise itself concerned, and to attain which infinite pain has to be endured? Which would you or I rather be--lovely and unhappy, or ugly and happy? There is another of these attempts to relieve doubt which I should like to bring to notice. The little book entitled In Relief of Doubt, by the Rev. E. Welsh, highly recommended by the Bishop of London, and one of the books selected by the Christian Evidence Society for their examination in March, 1907, is quoted from by Dr. Warschauer [149] when refuting Mr. Blatchford's remarks on the cruelty of Nature. Dr. Warschauer selects the passage where Mr. Welsh says (p. 103): "We probably overstate the actual anguish of the lower creatures, imagining that they are bundles of sensitive nerves and quick brains like our own, and that they therefore have our sensibility to pain. A trodden worm writhes, and we credit it with all the pain that the foot of a Brobdingnag would inflict on a delicate child under his heel." Now, I am quite sure we credit no such thing. If we did, we, and especially the Isaak Waltons among us, would be perfect monsters of cruelty. Mark, too, how Messrs. Welsh and Warschauer carefully select for their illustration a worm--one of the lowly organised invertebrates! I may mention that Dr. Warschauer's book was particularly recommended to me by a well-read cleric, who thought that it was an admirable and complete refutation of Mr. Blatchford's arguments. Dr. Warschauer will hardly advance his cause by transparently omitting all mention of the higher animals, or of that bundle of nerves called man. Nor will the average man agree with Professor Wallace that "it is difficult even to imagine a system by which a greater balance of happiness could have been secured." Was it, for example, impossible for God to have decreed that sentient life should feed only on non-sentient life? Could He not have brought about development without all this terrible struggle? One would think that Messrs. Warschauer and Wallace must not only have had a particularly good time themselves in this world, but must have purposely shut their eyes to the misery all round them. If they had to change places with a wounded Russian or Japanese writhing in agony on the battlefield, I wonder whether their optimism would stand the test? The bravest of us shudder at the idea of being buried alive, and yet this was just the very fate of many a poor fellow in that truly terrible war. Not that man did not do his utmost. "One by one the dead and injured were carefully and tenderly taken out," relates an eye-witness, "and many a tear was shed by strong men at the terrible sights we had to witness. The worst part of our work was to have to endure the agonising cries of the men who were suffering terrible torture; but everyone helped so willingly that we felt that we were not doing enough." Please note, on the one hand, the cruel torture, and, on the other, the sympathy of man. I will not weary or distress you further, gentle reader, with harrowing details of the pain that is endured alike by man and beast. It is all so well known. I shall only ask you to listen to a little story from the leaves of a naturalist's note-book, and to put to yourself a few questions. "A sparrow-hawk suddenly dashed under the branches of a hedgerow oak, and seized a linnet. But the bird of prey had not calculated upon the missel-thrush whose nest was in the oak, and who made it his business to have no suspicious strangers loitering in the neighbourhood. With an angry 'jarr,' and a swoop that would have done credit to the hawk himself, the plucky missel-thrush was upon the marauder almost at the same instant that the linnet was seized; a feather--a hawk's feather--floated in the air, and the astonished bird of prey flung himself sideways, and spread his talons to meet the next assault. This action released the linnet, who sped away into the next parish like a bullet, while the missel-thrush, perched in the oak tree again, noisily threatened to repeat the attack. So the sparrow-hawk departed in the opposite direction to the linnet, and in two minutes all birddom was twittering and squabbling as before on the site of what was so very nearly a sudden tragedy." Is not your sympathy, humane reader, all with the linnet and its gallant rescuer, although the hawk was but carrying out the behests of its Maker! Does it not give us a thrill of pleasure when the lion is baulked of his prey--when the pet lamb is rescued from the butcher? Are we, then, more merciful than God? Was it Jesus or was it the gentle Gautama that marked "How lizard fed on ant, and snake on him, And kite on both; and how the fish-hawk robbed The fish-tiger of that which it had seized; The shrike chasing the bulbul, which did hunt The jewelled butterflies; till everywhere Each slew a slayer, and in turn was slain, Life living upon death. So the fair show, Veiled one vast, savage, grim conspiracy Of mutual murder, from the worm to man, Who himself kills his fellow"? [150] § 3. The Bible Account of Creation Irreconcilable with Science in Each and Every Respect. The hypothesis respecting the past history of Nature, which was formerly, and is still very largely, accepted by Christians, is the doctrine fully and clearly stated in the immortal poem of John Milton--the English Divina Commedia--Paradise Lost. There is the best of reasons for the popularity of this doctrine. It agrees literally with the plain words of the Bible. The hypothesis is briefly this: "That this visible universe of ours came into existence at no great distance of time from the present, and that the parts of which it is composed made their appearance, in a certain definite order, in the space of six natural days, in such a manner that on the first of these days light appeared; that on the second the firmament or sky separated the waters above from the waters beneath the firmament; that on the third day the waters drew away from the dry land, and upon it a varied vegetable life, similar to that which now exists, made its appearance; that the fourth day was signalised by the apparition of the sun, the stars, the moon, and the planets; that on the fifth day aquatic animals originated within the waters; that on the sixth day the earth gave rise to our four-footed terrestrial creatures, and to all variations of terrestrial animals except birds, which had appeared on the preceding day; and, finally, that man appeared upon the earth, and the emergence of the universe from chaos was finished." [151] This interpretation is that which has been instilled into most of us in our childhood; but, "if we are to listen to many expositors of no mean authority, we must believe that what seems so clearly defined in Genesis--as if very great pains had been taken that there should be no possibility of mistake--is not the meaning of the text at all. The account is divided into periods that we may make just as long or as short as convenience requires. We are also to understand that it is consistent with the original text to believe that the most complex plants and animals may have been evolved by natural processes, lasting for millions of years, out of structureless rudiments. A person who is not a Hebrew scholar can only stand aside and admire the marvellous flexibility of a language which admits of such diverse interpretations." [152] Furthermore, we are to understand that there is no disagreement between theology and science in the sequence of the six acts of creation. Here at least we are not asked to twist words round so that one may mean a million. We have a definite statement which science either supports or it does not. The reader who knows that the verdict of science is negative may ask: "What is the use of wasting my time over a Christian argument which has long since been exploded?" I crave his pardon and patience; but, however true it may be that Mr. Gladstone's position was shown to be untenable, it is equally true that an enormous number of persons still persist in maintaining that there is a remarkable coincidence of the Pentateuchal story with the result of modern investigation, and that science supports them in this conclusion. The Very Rev. Henry Wace, D.D., Dean of Canterbury, in his address before the Christian Association of University College, London, on May 7th, 1903, reminded his hearers that a President of the British Association (Sir William Dawson) had stated that "it would not be easy even now to construct a statement of the development of the world in popular terms so concise and so accurate" as the first chapter of Genesis. And Dr. Wace asks: "From whence could have come this marvellous approximation, to say the least, to the facts which science has been slowly revealing but from the Divine wisdom which alone was cognizant of them, and could alone make them known to mankind?" A short time ago a lady very kindly sent me a little pamphlet, entitled Roger's Reasons; or, The Bible and Science, written by the Rev. John Urquhart. In this there is a resurrection pie of the old, old arguments, dished up again in such a guise as to take in the unwary and ill-informed, who would have no suspicion that the food thus given them for their refection was not only stale, but had been condemned as unfit for mental consumption by the whole of the scientific faculty. The lady above mentioned considered the reasoning perfectly convincing, and so possibly would ninety-nine Christian ladies out of a hundred. Mr. Urquhart is now much in evidence as a Christian apologist, and his pamphlet is being distributed broadcast (81,000 have already been issued), so that it does seem worth while taking some notice of the attempts that are still being made to treat the Creation myth as a Divine revelation. That modern science does not support either the interpretation put upon the Bible story of the Creation by Mr. Urquhart or by Mr. Gladstone, or any interpretation which is compatible with the general sense of the narrative, can be ascertained by anyone who will read Professor Huxley's essays, "The Interpreters of Genesis" and "Mr. Gladstone and Genesis." A few quotations from these essays may enable the reader to form a slight idea of the decisive manner in which the assertion that modern science supports the Bible narrative is controverted by science herself. Speaking of Mr. Gladstone's contention that the statements in the first two verses of Genesis are supported by the nebular hypothesis, Professor Huxley remarks: "But science knows nothing of any stage in which the universe could be said, in other than a metaphorical and popular sense, to be formless or empty; or in any respect less the seat of law and order than it is now. One might as well talk of a fresh-laid hen's egg being 'without form and void' because the chick therein is potential and not actual, as apply such terms to the nebulous mass which contains a potential solar system." In a note at the end of the second essay, "Mr. Gladstone and Genesis," there is an excellent exposition of the "Proper Sense of the 'Mosaic' Narrative of the Creation." Among other points, Huxley, of course, notices how the stars are, as it were, thrown in--"He made the stars also." These words have always struck me as making it peculiarly clear that the "Mosaic" narrative originated from man, and not from God. The unknown authors of the Hexateuchal compilation were almost as ignorant of the nature of the stars and of their unthinkable distance away from us as a camel-driver in Sind, who gravely informed a friend of mine that the stars were once quite close to the earth, until one fine day a certain woman (it is always the woman who causes the mischief) grabbed hold of one and used it for cleaning her child, whereupon the gods, much annoyed at such presumption on the part of mankind, moved them far enough off to be safe from further desecration. That the order of Creation as given in the Bible cannot be maintained will be clearly seen if we take the particular case of the birds and creeping things. Science does not affirm that the birds were made before "everything that creepeth upon the earth." Mr. Gladstone tries to get over the difficulty by excluding reptiles, lizards, etc., from the category of creeping things. This will appear in the course of the following quotations from Professor Huxley's essay on "Mr. Gladstone and Genesis":-- "Mr. Gladstone's views as to the proper method of dealing with grave and difficult scientific and religious problems had permitted him to base a solemn 'plea for a revelation of truth from God' upon an error as to a matter of fact, from which the intelligent perusal of a manual of palæontology would have saved him.... He does, indeed, make a great parade of authorities, and I have the greatest respect for those authorities whom Mr. Gladstone mentions. If he will get them to sign a joint memorial to the effect that our present palæontological evidence proves that birds appeared before the 'land population' of terrestrial reptiles, I shall think it my duty to reconsider my position--but not till then.... I have every respect for the singer of the Song of the Three Children (whoever he may have been); I desire to cast no shadow of doubt upon, but, on the contrary, marvel at, the exactness of Mr. Gladstone's information as to the considerations which 'affected the method of the Mosaic writer'; nor do I venture to doubt that the inconvenient intrusion of these contemptible reptiles--'a family fallen from greatness,' a miserable, decayed aristocracy reduced to mere 'skulkers about the earth,' in consequence, apparently, of difficulties about the occupation of land arising out of the earth-hunger of their former serfs, the mammals--into an apologetic argument, which would otherwise run quite smoothly, is in every way to be deprecated. Still, the wretched creatures stand there, importunately demanding notice; and, however different may be the practice in that contentious atmosphere with which Mr. Gladstone expresses and laments his familiarity, in the atmosphere of science it really is of no avail whatever to shut one's eyes to facts, or to try and bury them out of sight under a tumulus of rhetoric.... However reprehensible, and, indeed, contemptible, terrestrial reptiles may be, the only question which appears to me to be relevant to my argument is whether these creatures are or are not comprised under the denomination of 'everything that creepeth upon the ground.'... Hence I commend the following extract from the eleventh chapter of Leviticus to Mr. Gladstone's serious attention:-- And these are they which are unclean unto you among the creeping things that creep upon the earth: the weasel, and the mouse, and the great lizard after its kind, and the gecko, and the land-crocodile, and the sand-lizard, and the chameleon. These are they which are unclean to you among all that creep (v. 29-31). The merest Sunday-school exegesis, therefore, suffices to prove that, when the Mosaic writer in Genesis 1. 24 speaks of 'creeping things,' he means to include lizards among them. This being so, it is agreed on all hands that terrestrial lizards and other reptiles allied to lizards occur in the Permian strata. It is further agreed that the Triassic strata were deposited after these. Moreover, it is well known that, even if certain footprints are to be taken as unquestionable evidence of the existence of birds, they are not known to occur in rocks earlier than the Trias, while indubitable remains of birds are not to be met with till much later. Hence it follows that natural science does not 'affirm' the statement that birds were made on the fifth day, and 'everything that creepeth on the ground' on the sixth, on which Mr. Gladstone rests his order; for, as is shown by Leviticus, the 'Mosaic writer' includes lizards among his creeping things." [153] The crust of the earth is a book having for its pages strata that have, fortunately, been upturned for our perusal, and the story it tells must be true. The series of fossiliferous deposits which contain the remains of the animals which have lived on the earth in past ages of its history afford the evidence required concerning the order of appearance of the different species. As Professor Huxley says elsewhere [154]: "When we consider these simple facts, we see how absolutely futile are the attempts that have been made to draw a parallel between the story told by so much of the crust of the earth as is known to us and the story which Milton tells." Still, the story which Milton tells is in accord with the story which the Bible tells to those who are not given to playing conjuring tricks with the plain meaning of words. Finally, we must remember that "hundreds of thousands of animal species, as distinct as those which now compose our water, land, and air populations, have come into existence and died out again." "If the species of animals have all been separately created, then it follows that hundreds of thousands of acts of creative energy have occurred, at intervals throughout the whole time recorded by the fossiliferous rocks; and, during the greater part of that time, the 'creation' of the members of the water, land, and air populations must have gone on contemporaneously." [155] The common-sense view of the Creation story, and one that is now widely accepted even by orthodox Christians, is that it is a myth. Many of us will, therefore, agree with Professor Huxley when he says: "I suppose it to be an hypothesis respecting the origin of the universe which some ancient thinker found himself able to reconcile with his knowledge, or what he thought was knowledge, of the nature of things, and therefore assumed to be true. As such, I hold it to be not merely an interesting, but a venerable, monument of a stage in the mental progress of mankind; and I find it difficult to suppose that any one who is acquainted with the cosmogonies of other nations--and especially with those of the Egyptians and the Babylonians, with whom the Israelites were in such frequent and intimate communication--should consider it to possess either more or less scientific importance than may be allotted to these." [156] It may not be inappropriate to conclude this section with Milton's conception of the last act of creation, so charmingly simple and so strictly according to the Bible and what Christ Himself believed, and yet so completely untrue:-- The sixth, and of creation last, arose With ev'ning harps and matin, when God said, Let the earth bring forth soul living in her kind: Cattle and creeping things, and beast of the earth, Each in their kind. The earth obey'd, and straight Op'ning her fertile womb teem'd at a birth Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms, Limb'd and full grown.... There waited yet the master-work, the end Of all yet done; a creature who, not prone And brute as other creatures, but indu'd With sanctity of reason, might erect His stature, and upright with front serene Govern the rest, self knowing:... ... Therefore the omnipotent Eternal Father--for where is not he Present?--thus to his Son audibly spake: Let us make now man in our image, man In our similitude, and let them rule Over the fish and fowl of sea and air, Beast of the field, and over all the earth, And every creeping thing that creeps the ground. Thus said, he form'd thee, Adam, thee, O man, Dust of the ground, and in thy nostrils breath'd The breath of life: in his own image he Created thee, in the image of God Express, and thou becam'st a living soul. --Paradise Lost, Book VII., 449-456, 505-510, 516-528. § 4. Proofs of Our Animal Origin. The third and last of the Evolution stumbling-blocks is that connected with the dogma of the Fall and Atonement. Before considering this, it will be better, I think, to summarise as briefly and simply as possible some of the chief proofs of our animal origin. The well-informed can skip this section, which is intended for the benefit of that vast majority--the ill-informed. Space will not permit me to do much more than allude to the proofs; but anyone really desirous of convincing himself or herself of the truth of the doctrine, and at the same time wishing to avoid details that might possibly prove wearisome, will find it popularly treated in Huxley's work on Man's Place in Nature (Macmillan); in Dennis Hird's An Easy Outline of Evolution (Watts & Co.; 2s. 6d.); in Edward Clodd's The Story of Creation (Watts & Co.; 6d.); in S. Laing's Modern Science and Modern Thought (Watts & Co.; 6d.); in Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe (Watts & Co.; 6d.), though this can hardly, perhaps, be described as popular; and in Metchnikoff's The Nature of Man (Heinemann, 1903; 12s. 6d.). The most complete work on the subject is Haeckel's The Evolution of Man (Watts & Co., 1905; 42s.; abridged edition, 2s.). This is in two volumes, copiously illustrated, of which the first is entirely devoted to human embryology or ontogeny, a branch of science which furnishes the most overwhelming evidence. The proofs may, roughly speaking, be grouped under three heads--the extraordinary affinity of bodily structure, the revelations of embryology, and the tale told by the useless rudimentary organs. We will commence with THE EXTRAORDINARY AFFINITY OF BODILY STRUCTURE. "It is notorious that man is constructed on the same general type or model with other mammals. All the bones in his skeleton can be compared with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or seal. So it is with his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, and viscera. The brain, the most important of all the organs, follows the same law, as shown by Huxley and other anatomists." [157] Man's nearest animal relations are the tailless anthropoid or man-like apes--namely, the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the orang, and the gibbon. "Now that all the details of the human organisation have been studied, and the anatomical structures of man and large monkeys without tails have been compared, bone with bone, and muscle with muscle, a truly astonishing analogy between these organisms is made manifest--an analogy apparent in every detail." [158] The following are some of the points more particularly calling for notice:-- Dentition.--In the natural history of mammals the teeth play an important part as a means of determining differences and relationships. "Everyone knows the milk teeth and the permanent teeth of man. The anthropoid apes bear in this respect an astonishing likeness to man. The number (thirty-two in the adult), the form and general arrangement of the crown, are identical in man and anthropoid apes. The differences are to be found only in minor details." [159] "But the fact must not be lost sight of that all these differences are less pronounced than those which exist between the dentition of anthropoid apes and that of all other monkeys." [160] The Foot.--Anti-evolutionists have laid great stress on the difference between the foot of a man and that of an anthropoid ape. But it is clearly shown by Huxley that in all essential respects the hinder limb of the gorilla terminates in as true a foot as that of man, [161] and "that, be the differences between the hand and foot of man and those of the gorilla what they may, the differences between those of the gorilla and those of the lower apes are much greater." [162] The Sacrum.--"In monkeys, as a whole, the sacrum is composed of three, or rarely four, vertebræ, while in anthropoid apes it contains five--that is to say, just as many as in man." [163] The Skull.--Here the differences are more marked; but again we must remind ourselves that, as regards the osteology, Professor Huxley tells us that "for the skull, no less than for the skeleton in general, the proposition holds good that the differences between man and the gorilla are of smaller value than those between the gorilla and some other apes." [164] The Brain.--Several distinguished zoologists at one time insisted on the absence in all monkeys of certain parts of the brain peculiarly characteristic of man, but now it is unanimously accepted that the parts of the brain in question are "precisely those structures which are the most marked cerebral characters common to man with the apes. They are among the most distinctly simian peculiarities which the human organism exhibits." [165] The difference between the brain of the orang and that of man is a mere difference of degree, and not of kind; and most students of comparative psychology now admit that the intellectual faculties of animals differ from those in man in degree only, not in their essence. Replying to his opponents, Professor Huxley compares the brain of man and that of ape with two watches, one of which will, and the other will not, keep accurate time. He exclaims: "A hair in the balance-wheel, a little rust on a pinion, a bend in a tooth of the escapement, a something so slight that only the practised eye of the watchmaker can discover it, may be the source of all the difference." [166] The late Sir Charles Lyell mentions in his Antiquity of Man how Dr. Sumner, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, brought out in strong relief fifty years ago, in his Records of Creation, one essential character separating man from the brute. As the same argument is still being "brought out," and is, on the face of it, exceedingly plausible, and as the answer to it has to do with the brain, it cannot be passed over. Dr. Sumner said: "It has been sometimes alleged, and may be founded on fact, that there is less difference between the highest brute animal and the lowest savage than between the savage and the most improved man. But, in order to warrant the pretended analogy, it ought to be also true that this lowest savage is no more capable of improvement than the chimpanzee or orang-outang." This objection is met by some such consideration as the following:--When you examine the enormous difference in the formation of the skull in man and ape (look, for instance, at plate xvii., vol. ii. of Haeckel's Evolution of Man), and when you remember that this sets hard at an early date, you surely have a good reason for limited improvability. Further, the brain of even the lowest savage represents a development of some half a million years above the ape along the line of intelligence. How, then, can we dream of making this up in one or a few generations by artificial training of the ape? Lastly, we have the enormous leverage of language, the inherited wealth of thousands of speaking generations, and an incalculable aid to thought. How much is the intelligence of the Microcephalæ, the clucking "small heads" lately on show at the Hippodrome, capable of rapid improvement? Our experiments do not show that the ape is not improvable, but only that we cannot, in a single generation, lift it over a gulf representing 500,000 years of human development. How can we expect it? The Blood.--In the last few years an astonishing confirmation of our relationship to the anthropoid ape has been discovered. We are blood relations. Elie Metchnikoff, Professor at the Pasteur Institute, shows this clearly in his book, The Nature of Man. [167] Until quite recently it was not known how to distinguish human blood from that of other mammals. A method giving conclusive results has now been discovered, and is used in forensic medicine. The same method has been employed in comparing the blood of man and the anthropoid apes, resulting in the discovery [168] that, in their case, there is practically no blood difference whatever! THE REVELATIONS OF EMBRYOLOGY. The opponents of Evolution used to appeal to the special features of human embryology, which were supposed to distinguish man from all the other mammals; but in 1890 Emil Selenka proved that the same features are found in anthropoid apes, especially in the orang, while the lower apes are without them. "When Huxley wrote, the embryological history of anthropoid apes was practically unknown. Darwin, Vogt, and Haeckel, in their attempts to support the theory of the animal origin of man, had not sufficient knowledge of the embryology of monkeys. It is only recently that important work on this subject has been published.... The placenta often gives information of great importance in the classification of mammals. It is sufficient to glance at the zonary placenta of dogs and seals to be convinced of the relationship of these two species which at first sight seem so different. Now, the placentas of all the anthropoid apes examined up to the present are of the same discoid type as that of man. The arrangement of the umbilical cord of man, which was formerly considered as quite peculiar to him, is found in anthropoid apes, as has been established by Deniker and Selenka. It is striking that the anthropoids resemble man rather than the lower monkeys in the relation of the foetus to the foetal membranes. With regard to the embryos themselves, the similarity between those of monkeys and man is very great.... The youngest stages of human development that have been obtained can hardly be distinguished from those of the lower monkeys either in position or shape. More advanced stages exhibit greater differentiation, and the later embryos of man resemble those of anthropoids much more closely than those of the lower monkeys. The resemblance between the nearly mature foetus of anthropoids and human embryos of about the sixth month is evident enough." [169] We are thus bound, in all honesty, to own up to our ape-like progenitors. But this is only a small portion of the wonderful tale told by Embryology. "Man is developed from an ovule about 125th of an inch in diameter, which differs in no respect from the ovules of other animals," [170] and, marvellous to relate, from that stage upwards the embryo is one continuous epitome of the history of man's evolution from lower forms of life. [171] Up to a certain point the germs, not only of all mammals, but of all vertebrate animals, fishes, reptiles, and birds, are scarcely distinguishable. A sceptic may convince himself by studying the plates given in Haeckel's The Evolution of Man, and especially plates ix. to xiv., where the embryos of various animals are compared. At the more advanced stage, where the embryo has already passed the reptilian form, we find that for a considerable time the line of development remains the same as that of other mammalia. The resemblance, for example, after the first four weeks' growth, between the embryo of a man and that of a dog is such that it is scarcely possible to distinguish the one from the other. Even at the age of eight weeks the embryo man is an animal with a tail, hardly to be distinguished from an embryo puppy. [172] After this period the embryo emerges from the general mammalian type into the special order of primates to which man belongs. Thus does the growth of the egg from which man springs compress into a few weeks the results of millions of years, and set before us the history of his development from fish-like and reptilian forms (which, as we have seen, p. 211, Mr. Gladstone deemed so contemptible and "fallen from greatness"), and of his more immediate descent from a hairy, tailed quadruped, the extinct common ancestor of man and monkey. As evolution proceeds the embryo rises up to man, and the differences specialising the human infant at its birth, such as the largeness and more complex convolutions of the brain, become more and more accentuated as its growth proceeds. Regarding the question of "gaps," we have to bear in mind that it is part of the evolutionary theory that the active processes of evolution have very largely ceased, that existing forms are but a surviving remnant with enormous gaps, and that the survivors are so fitted at present to their surroundings that evolutionary forces are causative of equilibrium rather than change. We have already seen, too, that in the struggle for existence it is among the closely-allied species that the contest is more strenuous, and that the weakest, or least fitted to survive, has to go to the wall--to be wiped out. Thus it is that there is a tendency for species to become extinct, and for the gaps to be widened. The extraordinary thing is not that we have so little direct evidence of descent, but that we have so much. That there are not more links missing is due principally to the discovery of fossil remains. When an animal dies, the probabilities are, of course, enormously against geological preservation of its bones, yet the gaps are continually being filled up by geological finds, and, though the remaining gaps may be great, they are not unaccountable. I must now pass on to the remaining set of proofs of our origin. THE TALE TOLD BY THE USELESS RUDIMENTARY ORGANS. Perhaps nothing furnishes a more conclusive proof of our animal origin than the study of rudimentary structures--muscles, sense-organs, hair, bones, reproductive organs, etc. There are some which are "either absolutely useless, such as the mammæ of the male quadrupeds or the incisor teeth of ruminants which never cut through the gums; or they are of such slight service to their present possessors that we cannot suppose that they were developed under the conditions which now exist." [173] Of useless rudimentary organs, or parts of organs, there are not less than one hundred and seven in man. [174] To this category belong the coccyx--the vestige of a tail--the muscles of the ear, the vermiform appendage, etc. "The os coccyx in man, though functionless as a tail, plainly represents this part in other vertebrate animals. At an early embryonic period it is free, and, as we have seen, projects beyond the lower extremities." [175] It sometimes happens that we find external relics of a tail. Professor Haeckel, in Fig. 195, vol. i. of The Evolution of Man (library edition), shows the tail of a six months' old boy, which Granville Harrison removed by operation. The anthropoid ape, like man, has only the rudiment of a tail. The ear muscles are rudimentary in man. "It is well known how readily domestic animals--horses, cows, dogs, hares, etc.--point their ears and move them in different directions. Most of the apes do the same, and our earlier ape ancestors were also able to do it. But our later simian ancestors, which we have in common with the anthropoid apes, abandoned the use of these muscles, and they gradually became rudimentary and useless. However, we possess them still. In fact, some men can still move their ears a little backward and forward by means of the drawing and withdrawing muscles; and with practice this faculty can be much improved. But no man can now lift up his ears by the raising muscle, or change the shape of them by the small inner muscles. These muscles were very useful to our ancestors, but are of no consequence to us. This applies to most of the anthropoid apes as well." [176] The vermiform appendage of the coecum is not only practically useless, but the source of that extremely dangerous complaint, appendicitis. It is remarkable that this organ is practically identical with the vermiform appendage of anthropoid apes, yet none of the other monkeys present any such resemblance with men. Professor Haeckel, speaking of the vermiform appendage, says: "The only significance of it in man is that not infrequently a cherry-stone or some other hard and indigestible matter penetrates into its narrow cavity, and by setting up inflammation and suppuration causes the death of otherwise sound men. Teleology has great difficulty in giving a rational explanation of, and attributing to a beneficent Providence, this dreaded appendicitis. In our plant-eating ancestors this rudimentary organ was much larger, and had a useful function." [177] "In order to understand the existence of rudimentary organs, we have only to suppose that a former progenitor possessed the parts in question in a perfect state, and that under changed habits of life they became greatly reduced, either from simple disuse or through the natural selection of those individuals which were least encumbered with a superfluous part, aided by the other means previously indicated." [178] Whatever the precise explanation may be, can we bring ourselves to suppose that God created us with a number of useless organs, or that He placed them there as a snare to entrap our judgment? Again, "rudimentary organs, for the most part, display a congenital lack of the power of resistance, and, as Darwin suggested, for this reason they are frequently the seats of disease." [179] Can anyone imagine his Maker arranging all this on purpose? I can not. We are assured by pious apologists that God has instituted pain in order to save us from injuring ourselves; how can He, then, have specially provided us with organs whose only function is to be a source of danger? Many other examples might be given bearing on this line of argument; but enough has been said, I hope, to convince the reader that in these rudimentary organs there is overpowering evidence against separate acts of creation, and in favour of an animal origin of the human race. Besides this, we have also the evidence derived from the study of our bodily structure and embryonic development. The bearing of these three great classes of fact is, as Charles Darwin remarks, unmistakeable. "It is only our natural prejudice, and that arrogance which made our own forefathers declare that they were descended from demi-gods, which lead us to demur to this conclusion." [180] § 5. The Overthrow of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE QUESTION. No Biblical standpoint is more directly opposed to modern evolutionary views than the doctrine of the Fall and Atonement. We have seen, in the chapters on the Higher Criticism and on Comparative Mythology, that the Bible story of Creation is nothing but a borrowed legend; and we have now seen that it could not in any case be true. If it were, Evolution would be untrue. Now, the account of the fall of man is an exceedingly important portion of the Bible, the whole fabric of the Christian faith being constructed upon it; and there is no doubt whatever that the average Christian realises this, and continues to believe in the "Fall." He may accept the doctrine of the evolution of the physical nature of man; but he flatly denies that his intellect and moral attributes were a part of the process, although such authorities as Darwin, Huxley, and Romanes clearly point out that man's intellect and moral sense have arisen from lower stages of the same faculties in his primate ancestors. The conservative Christian believes that man was originally endowed with a lofty moral nature; that he succumbed to temptation; that he became a degraded being; that he has been working out his punishment ever since; and that his hope of escape from the curse laid upon all mankind lies in the atonement made by Jesus Christ. Even if inclined to have views less strictly in accord with the Christian teaching of the past eighteen hundred years, he still believes that all this is true in some sort of allegorical sense which cannot be exactly defined. Lastly, there is an ever-swelling host of perplexed Christians who, in their heart of hearts, feel much as Mr. Blatchford does when he says: "God is all-powerful. He could have made Adam strong enough to resist Eve. He could have made Eve strong enough to resist the serpent. He need not have made the serpent at all. God is all-knowing. Therefore, when He made Adam and Eve and the serpent He knew that Adam and Eve must fall. And if God knew they must fall, how could Adam help falling, and how could he justly be blamed for doing what he must do? God made a bridge--built it Himself, of His own materials, to His own design, and knew what the bearing strain of the bridge was. If, then, God put upon the bridge a weight equal to double the bearing strain, how could God justly blame the bridge for falling?" [181] The average divine, whatever his denomination, is usually in no hurry to accept Evolutionist theories of the Fall, or, if he does, he keeps it to himself. Dean Wace thinks the tale of Eden and the Fall is partly historical, partly allegorical, and, in any case, true to Christian experience; and Cardinal Newman considered that the whole orthodox Christian scheme stood or fell with a belief in some great "aboriginal catastrophe." Progressive divines teach, on the contrary, that the narrative of the Fall is not to be understood as literal history, any more than the visions of the Apocalypse are to be understood as a literal description of heaven. "For us," they say, "the underlying truth, and not the outward form in which that truth is clothed, is the essential thing." [As our first parents are represented as being in a state of guileless simplicity, and subsequently falling in with the tempting serpent, who, in obvious contrast with their untried innocence, is described as a being of special subtilty, the "underlying truth" appears to be that, with God's cognisance, man is continually being taken advantage of by a crafty spirit of evil; or, to keep more closely to the religious evolutionist's idea, man's better nature, implanted by God, is being continually got the better of by animal instincts implanted by ----?] These enlightened clerics are in a somewhat delicate position, and none probably recognise this more than they do themselves, as testified lately by the fact of over a hundred of their number distributing a manifesto to all the clergy of the Church of England, in which they express a desire to receive authoritative encouragement to face critical problems with entire candour. [182] AN INSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM. The gravity of the situation and the divergence of the new from the old teaching are summed up by the Church Times in the following pertinent remarks:--"It is impossible for Christians to affect nonchalance as to the result of the controversy between anthropologists like Lubbock, Lyell, Huxley, Haeckel, and Fiske, who assert the human race to have continuously (with whatever relapses) progressed out of brutish and squalid barbarism, and those who, like the late Duke of Argyll, Lang, Tylor, Hartmann, [183] Renouf, and most missionaries, maintain that savagery is a declension from higher things, and that 'man's natural state is civilisation'--not, of course, the civilisation of Paris and London, of trousers and half-penny papers, nor yet Rousseau's anarchic golden age, but creation in God's image after His likeness. It is said that we need believe no more about our first parents than that they were innocent--i.e., had not yet made trial of good and evil; that the 'former Adam,' even after he had ceased to be a pithecoid hanging by his tail from boughs, and long after his mollusc [184] stage of existence, was still as primus homo, a demi-witted creature, burrowing in holes, gnawing roots, grunting, grimacing, snarling, shuddering; not even a noble savage, but bestial and grovelling. As moral consciousness slowly woke in him, he misused his powers; but such a 'fall' was really an advance. Such is the latest version of Paradise lost--of that great disinheritance, that moral and spiritual catastrophe, which, St. Paul avers, was the entrance of death into the world by one man, and which, he seems to say, dragged down the lower creation when the son of God, 'paragon of animals, noble in reason, infinite in faculty,' fell in Eden. We do not urge that the two teachings cannot be reconciled; but it is clear that the immense difficulty is not to be dismissed by saying that the Bible is a mosaic, not Mosaic, or that it does not profess to instruct us in anthropology." [185] There is a downrightness and lucidity about this criticism of advanced theology which one cannot but admire, although one may not be able to share its optimism as to the chance of the two teachings ever becoming reconciled. How can they? Consider the unsatisfactory nature of the following speculations by means of which the clerical evolutionist hopes to surmount the stumbling-block of the Fall. THE BISHOP OF WORCESTER'S THEORY. Dr. Gore, Bishop of Worcester, now of Birmingham, who is an adherent of Evolution, speaks mysteriously of a "fall from without." [186] As the question is of enormous importance to the truth of Christianity, I propose to examine Dr. Gore's thesis at some length. He grants that the idea of special creation is inconceivable, and that our race has an animal ancestry, and then gives us the following description of primeval man, which (shades of our forefathers!) he assures us is according to the Bible and the enlightened ideas of early Christianity: "Man began at the bottom, immature, in the fullest sense of immaturity, totally undeveloped, but with a capacity for development." A correspondent of Dr. Gore's, anxious possibly to be let down gently in the matter of his ancestor, suggested "immature, but not deformed." This Dr. Gore accepted as a good phrase. Most of us would think that when our ancestor was at the stage, say, of the ape-like man he would be deformed according to existing notions of the human form divine, while, if only at the protoplasm stage, the question of form would hardly matter. It has been explained to me by a clerical biologist that the Bishop meant that the Fall was not a fall from a completely developed form to one less developed, but that there was perversion of the development, so that a rudimentary life which might have been developed one way has developed along a less favourable path--a common occurrence in ontogeny. However that may be, and whatever the physical or mental state of this creature at the time he "fell," was his previous state one of beautiful innocence and purity? What about those inherited animal instincts? Dr. Gore goes on to say that "humanity might have, with infinitely more rapidity, developed upward; it has been delayed, retarded by sin." Granted; but at what stage of development did this poor wretch ever get a proper chance? The Christian faith inculcates that there is no chance for him without belief. What belief did this immature man have to guide him? However, let us see what more Dr. Gore may have to tell us on the Fall and Atonement. The words already quoted are from his second lecture to the Birmingham working men. In his third and last lecture he says: "He (God) appointed that man alone of creatures should have a twofold nature--that he should have fellowship with physical nature, but also that he should have fellowship with God. He (man) fell through a suggestion from without, and preferred wilfulness to obedience; he thus fell into sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Note that, if sin is said to have caused death, Christ is said to have abolished death. 'He that believeth on Me shall never die.' It is death as men have known it, the end of their hopes, that sin introduced and Christ abolished." Here, then, is the Bishop's answer regarding the "Fall" question. There has been a "fall through a suggestion from without," whatever that may happen to mean. I should have thought that, if there was a fall at all, it was through a suggestion from within, much as Canon Wilson puts it. [187] Bishop Gore, however, probably feels that it has to be from without to agree with the Bible story of the temptation. We are told nothing further about this mysterious "without," and I ask: "Could anything be more vague and unsatisfactory than this explanation of the Fall?" Assuming that determinists are wrong, and that the Creator is not responsible for the shortcomings of His creatures, the only fault for which primeval man could possibly be held to be answerable is that of not controlling his animal instincts so soon as he commenced to be conscious and could no longer claim the excuse of innocence. Probably he did his best, and began to improve himself ever so little. In that case, as the Church Times sapiently remarks, there was no Fall, but an advance. Or, adopting a compromise suggested by an American divine, he fell upward! If he did not strive as much as he might have done, there was, at all events, no sudden leap over a precipice; for the gift of increased consciousness, such as the human being now possesses, must have evolved very gradually. However, the creation of the world and all that therein is was also exceedingly gradual, and yet the pious find themselves able to consider the Bible account to be an accurate though allegorical representation of the process; so there is really nothing to prevent them from considering the account of a remarkable incident in a certain garden during a hot summer's day, shortly after man put in his appearance on this globe, to be a true representation of the perverse conduct of their ancestors through countless ages. For this so-called "Fall" we are to be visited with a death which will be the end of our hopes if we do not believe in Christ. This, then, is the new threat held over the unbeliever: he will forfeit his right to immortality. As it is in place of the old-fashioned consignment to hell, we may hope, for the sake of the human race as a whole, past and present, that the new Christian dogma is nearer the truth than the old. Most of us, however, will, I think, come to the conclusion that there has never been a "Fall" at all in any sense. Dr. Gore in one breath asks us to think man so much above the ape that his spiritual powers cannot have been evolved; yet, when science points out that they were evolved--that man rose so much above his relations--he still speaks of a fall! It is an outrage to our common sense. And, if there were a Fall, may we not say with the Persian poet?-- Oh Thou who didst with Pitfall and with Gin Beset the Path I was to travel in, Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin. THE ARCHDEACON OF MANCHESTER'S THEORY. Archdeacon J. M. Wilson tells us [188] that "We are taking our part in the long struggle of good against evil. This has been often pictured to us as the struggle of God against some Personal Power of Evil which we call Satan, the fact of struggle suggesting two rival powers. But the evolutionary way of regarding it presents the struggle as one of the divine element in man struggling to overcome the purely animal inheritance of lust and passion inherited from a far by-gone stage." Dr. Wilson, therefore, believes, as every thorough evolutionist must believe, that we have to look to an animal and not a human ancestor for the ultimate origin of what we call sin. But we want to know where the "Fall" comes in, and this he has explained elsewhere, [189] in what seems to me to be the only possible way open to an evolutionist. He says: "Man fell, according to science, when he first became conscious of the conflict of freedom and conscience; and each individual man falls as his ancestor fell." Dr. Wilson does not attempt to make out that there was any particular "fall" at any particular period in man's history, such as Dr. Gore apparently still clings to; but he plainly tells us: "I do not mean to say that there is a particular moment at which men fell: it is not so. It is a continuous struggle of good and evil." He continues: "I see in this nothing to conflict with a legitimate interpretation of the story of the Fall in the third chapter of Genesis. Such a narrative is not an illusion, still less a mere fiction; it is, as all teaching of spiritual truth must be, a temporary and figurative mode of expression." In other words, Dr. Wilson considers these early chapters of Genesis, and probably a great deal more of the Old Testament and some of the New, to be only an allegory. With regard to the Atonement difficulty, Dr. Wilson's argument is simply that "We need only to look at the world as it is to see the struggle of the two-fold nature in man; to see that it has need of a Redemption, of a Saviour." Few, I fear, will accept this latest explanation by a learned and earnest believer. Theologians, in Dr. Wilson's opinion, have made a grievous mistake when they say: "If the story of the Fall is not literally true, then it is literally false, and with it goes the need of a Redemption, of a Saviour." Yet most people--and these will include the whole body both of the old-fashioned orthodox and of the unbelievers--will certainly side with those "grievously mistaken" theologians. THE RATIONALIST'S THEORY. To many of us there seems no need whatever to have recourse to the supernatural in order to account for the origin of sin. It is not one of the mysteries of life. When we know who our ancestors were, and hence why we possess certain instincts, it is quite unnecessary to predicate a "Fall." Details of the Rationalist's view of sin (and of the reasons for morality) will be found in the last chapter of this book. CONCLUSIONS. These, then, are the difficulties created by the doctrine of Evolution. They are difficulties which appear completely to impugn the very nature of God, the veracity of the Bible, and the dogmas of sin and its atonement. We have already seen, by our study of Bible criticism and comparative mythology, how grave are the grounds for distrusting the Faith, and Evolution seems to be just the finishing stroke that was required for confirming our suspicions. We must now see whether there are any other arguments for belief of sufficient weight to warrant us in over-stepping the boundaries of reason by an act of faith. THEISM Chapter VI. THE FAILURE OF THEISTIC ARGUMENTS § 1. Preliminary Remarks. Our next task is to study the arguments for theism. Under these may be ranged--the cosmological argument, which concludes that there must be one eternal, unconditioned, self-existent cause; the teleological [190] argument, which concludes that nature's first cause must be an intelligence; and the ethical argument--the proof from the moral order and conscience--which concludes that the supreme intelligence must be a moral, a beneficent being. To these may be added the argument from religious experience. THEISM, AND WHO ARE THEISTS. First a word about theism. Theism is belief in the existence of a God as the creator and ruler of the universe. It assumes a living relation of God to his creatures, but does not define it. Although Theos and Deus are equivalent, theism has come to be distinguished from deism. The latter, according to some theologians, while equally opposed to atheism, denies or ignores the personality of God, and therefore denies [191] Christianity. Theism, on the contrary, underlies Christianity. Accordingly, in considering the truth or untruth of Christianity, we are concerned only with theism. However, it should be borne in mind that, although a man cannot be a Christian without being a Theist, he may be, and very often is in these days, a Theist without being a Christian. Of the cultured men who think they can still lay claim to the name of Christian, the bulk are, in point of fact, non-Christian Theists. Some of these quiet their conscience by the thought that they are still preserving a "reverent agnosticism" with regard to Christian dogmas; while certain anti-Haeckelites of the type of Professor E. Armitage (who urges scientific men to "remember that we only know appearances, and that whenever we affirm anything about what lies behind appearances we are making hazardous inferences" [192]) do not seem to be aware that they are adherents of one of the fundamental principles of agnosticism. Theism in its modern Unitarian form is the creed of many of the most cultured and most religious minds of our time, alike in Europe and America; and it has also signally shown its power in contemporary India. Before I left the latter country a few years ago, I had an interesting discussion with one of the leading spirits of the Brahmo Samaj movement, and, in answer to my queries, he replied that it was with the Unitarians that he and his fellow thinkers were most in sympathy, and that they were never likely to turn Christians. This Unitarian theism, it may be remarked, is often seen to approximate to, or become absorbed into, pantheism or agnosticism. But it is not of Unitarians that I would speak so much as of the man who calls and often thinks himself a Christian proper, notwithstanding the admission that the Christian dogmas may be partially or wholly false. This misconception of "What it is to be a Christian" [193] is one of the many that tend to confuse and delay a straight reply to the question, "Is Christianity true?" Having digested these prefatory remarks, let us now proceed to consider the Theistic arguments. § 2. The Existence of a First Cause--An Uncaused Cause. [194] The hypothesis of modern science is that everything as it now exists in the universe is the result of an infinite series of causes and effects; everything that happens is the result of something else that happened previously, and so on backwards to all eternity. The agnostic scientist says that we know nothing about this Infinite Cause, and that the idea of a First Cause is absurd. The Theist affirms that there is an Eternal Infinite Being who is the First Cause. He says that it is absurd not to believe in a First Cause, that materialistic theories are so absurd compared with his that for this reason alone he would remain a Theist. He appears entirely to lose sight of the fact that by predicating a First Cause he only removes the mystery a stage further back. He tells us nothing about the origin of the First Cause or the state of things that preceded it. The appearance of a First Cause upon the scene only increases the great mystery. Certainly it does not solve it. We are no forwarder. The creation of a mystery to explain a mystery is a very ancient custom, but it is a custom that has not met with the approbation of science. The Theist apparently thinks, however, that he has science on his side. Thus, in the Baird Lectures of 1876, Dr. Flint stated that "the progress of science has not more convincingly and completely dispersed the once prevalent notion that the universe was created about 6,000 years ago than it has convincingly and completely established that everything of which our senses inform us has had a commencement in time." [195] This opinion is still proclaimed by the Church to be the opinion of science. But modern science does not point to a beginning of the scheme of things. The consensus of opinion is entirely the other way. So far as we know, the ultimate cause recedes for ever and ever beyond the time when there was no distinction of earth and sea and atmosphere, all being mingled together in nebulous matter. Where would the Theist fix the "commencement"? The gaps on which theology at one time relied are rapidly disappearing. The apparent chasm between the organic and inorganic, between the lifeless and that which lives, according to the latest conceptions of science, no longer exists. Man may even succeed in manufacturing life, so that yet another teleological argument may collapse. § 3. The First Cause an Intelligence. DESIGN AND DIRECTIVITY. The argument from design is one which appeals perhaps more than any other to the average man. As he looks around and reflects, he feels that there must be design, and, therefore, a Designer. He feels also that God must be constantly present directing the carrying out of His design. He is in accord with the Theist who maintains that purpose and plan are manifest throughout the cosmos, and that, although it might be conceded that every step of the process has been achieved by the forces of Evolution, it is impossible to exclude the presiding activity of a mind which has planned the whole and predetermined the movements of every portion. We are to believe, then, that the Designer Himself put the forces in motion for the first time, that He knew exactly what would be the product of those forces down to the minutest detail and for all time, and yet, in face of the undeviating law-regulated cosmos which He has created, He in some way continues to guide these forces. From the very first step, the making of the electron and thence the atom, to the last, the making of man's brain, the Theist sees the finger of God. The mystery of life is thus taken to be explained or diminished by asserting that it is produced and controlled by some other mystery. The only alternative to this belief, so he maintains, is a universe of random chance and capricious disorder. But "Haeckel and his colleagues hold that the direction which the evolutionary agencies take is not 'fortuitous'; that they never could take but the one direction which they have actually taken." [196] While "the Theist says the ultimate object must have been foreseen and the forces must have been guided, or they would never have worked steadily in this definite direction, the Monist says that these forces no more needed guiding than does a tramcar; there was only one direction possible for them." [197] To refute this the apologist gravely replies that, "if you cast to the ground an infinite (or a finite) number of letters, they might after infinite gyrations make a word here and there; but we should think the man an enthusiast who expected even a short sentence, and a fool if he ever expected them to make a poem." We are expected, it seems, to regard it as a miracle that natural forces should not lose their uniform character, and act miraculously! Evidently, either the question is begged or the analogy is absurd. An argument of this kind is worse than useless, for it only serves to demonstrate the hopelessness of the teleologist's position. Spinoza's position is more reasonable; for he conceives that all is the outcome of inexorable necessity--that neither chance nor purpose governs the eternal and the infinite. DIRECTIVITY. Directivity has hitherto been insisted upon by Theists. It would not conform with our ideas of God that He should remain a passive observer so soon as He had invented a machine that would never stop, and had started it going. Yet interference with the machinery is inconceivable, the universe being ruled by eternal, immutable, and irrefragable laws. "The only possible conception of telic [purposeful] action on a cosmic scale is that, from the start, the matter-force reality was of such a nature that it would infallibly evolve into the cosmos we form part of to-day. Any other conception of 'guidance' and 'control' is totally unthinkable. And, as a fact, Theists are settling down to formulate their position in that way. The interference, as Ward says, took place before the process began." [198] A Law Maker can be postulated, but there is not a particle of evidence that He is also a Law Breaker. Attempts are still made, however, by clerical scientists to prove that there is directivity. The Rev. Professor George Henslow, in his book, Present-Day Rationalism Critically Examined, argues that the tendency which living organisms show to develop in one direction rather than another, and their capacity to respond to environment, betoken a directing Mind. Granting, for the moment, that the doctrine of Natural Selection is false or inadequate, it seems to me that the acknowledged facts of the "struggle for existence" and "survival of the fittest" sufficiently dispose of this new apology. Organisms do not all adapt themselves to environment, and their fate, in consequence, is first one of increasing misery, and finally of extinction. Only those that do adapt themselves survive. It appears that a scientist when he turns apologist is conveniently able to forget all but the more fortunate organisms. DESIGN. If the evidence for a directing Mind has to be given up, the difficulties of a Theist are certainly increased. There would be difficulties, for instance, regarding the utility of prayer. Still, he could think with Father Waggett that "the interaction of forces inherent in the whole produces the infinite variety of living beauty which we see." [199] And he can still join with Dr. Flint in exclaiming: "Every atom, every molecule, must, even in what is ultimate in it, bear the impress of a Supernatural Power and Wisdom; must reflect the glory of God, and proclaim its dependence upon Him." [200] To remain a Theist, however, one must have not only evidence of design, but of the benevolent intention of the Designer. Before considering the latter question, I venture to offer a few further remarks about the former. Is there consistent evidence of design? Beauty.--As a proof of design we are asked by the Theist to contemplate the beauty and sublimity which the universe exhibits. Let us contemplate, then, the beauty of the Bay of Naples. Is it not purely accidental, purely the outcome of natural agencies, of effects produced by position, distance, etc.? Again, "the beauty of the diatoms that are brought from the lowest depths of the ocean, the beauty of the radiolaria that swarm about the coast, and the beauty of a thousand minute animal structures, are obviously not designed and purposed beauties. They were unknown until the microscope was invented; the polariscope reveals yet further beauties; the telescope yet more. The idea of these being designed for our, or for God's, entertainment belongs, as Mr. Mallock says, 'to a pre-scientific age.'" [201] It is sometimes urged that the tendency of evolution is towards greater beauty. Is it? That all depends upon what your idea of beauty may be--whether you will consider the structure best suited to its environment beautiful or otherwise. We are told that there are signs that the human race will one day be toothless. At present we admire pretty teeth; perhaps our descendants will go into raptures over a toothless gum. That their sense of beauty may not be outraged, let us hope it may be so. The hideous pigmies of Central Africa probably think themselves beautiful, and in the distant future, when the conditions of existence on this globe have radically changed, and when its inhabitants have adapted themselves to those conditions, the new "beauties" may possibly be quite as ugly as "missing links." After all, beauty is a matter of taste. The sufficient objection to the "beauty" argument is, to my mind, contained in a very few words: "Look at the ugliness! Who designed that?" Harmony.--But, it will be urged, if beauty is a poor argument, at least you must grant that the general harmony in Nature still remains to be accounted for. Beauty is only one of its countless harmonies. The objection to this argument is a very simple one. Nature is full of discords. Ugliness is by no means the only discord. It is because this is so little realised that M. Elie Metchnikoff has devoted nearly the whole of his book, The Nature of Man, to the discussion of the disharmonies in man's nature alone. There are disharmonies in the organisation of the digestive system, in the organisation and activities of the reproductive apparatus, in the family and social instincts, and in the instinct of self-preservation, etc. For instance, in the human body there are disharmonies of the wisdom teeth, the bête-noire of dentistry; of the useless vermiform appendage, the seat of the disease appendicitis; of the large intestine, which could very well be dispensed with, and is the seat of many grave diseases, such as dysentery, and so on. The perversions of instinct among human beings (another disharmony) are likely to be attributed by the conservative Theist to the Devil, and by the liberal to Dr. Gore's "Fall from Without," so it will be better to take an example from the animal world. Darwin informs us that the "female of one of the emus (Dromoeus irroratus), as soon as she catches sight of her progeny, becomes violently agitated, and, notwithstanding the resistance of the father, appears to use her utmost endeavours to destroy them" (Descent of Man, vol. ii., chap, xvi., pp. 204-205). To those who still hold by this argument I can only recommend a perusal of Professor Metchnikoff's book of disharmonies, and would beg them to remember that it has been written by a man whose profession and attainments entitle his opinions on such a subject to the highest consideration. The cruelty attending the process by which harmony is attained has already been commented upon by me in § 2 of the previous chapter. DIFFERENCES OF OPINION AMONG THEISTIC APOLOGISTS. I have finally to call attention to the fact that even among the apologists themselves there is considerable difference of opinion as to the value of these arguments for Theism. Dr. Flint exclaims: "Strange as it may seem, there are many Theists at the present day who represent it [revelation of God in the whole of nature external to us] as insufficient, or even worthless, and who join the Atheists in denying that God's existence can be proved, and in affirming that all the arguments for His existence are inconclusive and sophistical. Such Theists seem to me not only the best allies of Atheists, but even more effective labourers in the cause of unbelief than Atheists themselves." [202] Since Dr. Flint wrote these words the number of "such Theists" has vastly increased. It is owned on all sides by the advanced school of apologists that God's existence cannot be proved by an appeal to the reasoning faculties; and, among other arguments, that from design is gradually being discarded. Father Waggett offers us interesting information regarding this argument in his little book, Religion and Science. [203] He considers that Paley and others of the old teleologists were wrong in leaning upon a narrow argument from design. "It need not here be repeated," he says, "that the evidence of such workmanship cannot prove God in the true sense of an infinite and all-wise Cause; but only a cause possessed of immense wisdom and immense though limited power, a Demiurgus of the greatest force and the most minute care, but not a Creator in the sense of theology." [204] Father Waggett, who is a biologist, and, therefore, necessarily an Evolutionist, would not be disconcerted if living things were manufactured in the laboratory to-morrow. In his opinion, "If anywhere we catch nature in the making, if we surprise the sequence by which even man himself gained his difference from other things, we shall not by this find reverence lowered.... It is a theological readjustment which is required, and not one in 'natural science.'" [205] The position here taken up is wise, and one that all who remain Theists will eventually have to adopt. But for most of us these theological readjustments are no easy matter. We reason that Paley's Evidences have in their time assisted men to be Theists, and now his arguments are condemned by the better informed. How do we know that the same fate may not await the new arguments of the Christian evolutionist? How is it that God allowed earnest and learned divines to commit themselves to arguments in proof of His existence, the subsequent overthrow of which has been a potent cause for unbelief? § 4. The First Cause a Beneficent Intelligence. A PERSONAL GOD. As ages roll on, God's attributes--or rather, we should say, the attributes given Him by man--are continually altering. All that the early gods demanded was fear and worship. Even the Jehovah of the Jews asked at first little else than this. Anthropomorphic conceptions of God are now admitted by the cultured to be a thing of the past. Do they not, however, still survive when human emotions, such as love and anger, happiness and sorrow, are attributed to the Deity? We acknowledge God to be infinite, and, consequently, incomprehensible by finite minds; yet we imagine and attempt to argue that He possesses the same qualities--those we most admire--as ourselves! "How can we believe in a personal God?" asks the Rationalist. "A person must have limitations, or he ceases to be a person." However, we must not forget that in philosophy and theology the word "person" simply implies "a nature endowed with consciousness," and does not involve limits. Demurring to this definition, there still remains another difficulty. In all our experience and knowledge, emotions and intelligence are connected with nerve structures; how, then, can we attribute these qualities to a Being who is described to us as devoid of any nerve structure? I know of no answer that could be called satisfactory from a Theistic standpoint. In the previous section we considered the doctrine of final causes. This doctrine, as Spinoza points out, [206] "does away with the perfection of God; for, if God acts for an object, He necessarily desires something which He lacks." The Theist goes a step further than the mere teleologist, and insists on a benevolent purpose throughout nature. Is he, then, oblivious to Spinoza's objection? No, he is not; and therefore it is that he struggles to save his personal God by an infinite extension of the limits of His personality. In fine, Theism, in the hands of its modern advocates, and in spite of the seeming orthodoxy of the phrase, "Divine Immanence," is often nothing less than another form of Pantheism. DIVINE IMMANENCE IN NATURE. The Church's great philosopher to-day, the Rev. J. R. Illingworth, D.D., argues [207] that "Divine Immanence in Nature" excludes Pantheism--the belief that God is merely immanent in nature--as well as Deism and Monism, while it harmonises with Trinitarianism. We are to "conceive of God as at once transcending and immanent in nature." [208] He admits that "this relationship may be incomprehensible," [209] but states that "we know it in our own case to be a fact." [210] Afterwards he puts the question, "Is the universe His body or His work?" [211] and proceeds to explain that the Trinitarian conception of God furnishes, or helps to furnish, an answer to this question. "It is," he maintains, "intellectually the most satisfactory." [212] It apparently is so to certain subtle and biassed intellects; but the question is, Is it so, will it ever be so, to the average mortal? A FACT IN HISTORY. In another place, [213] when speaking again of the doctrine of the Trinity, he says: "Men forget that it supports and is supported by the whole weight of a fact in history, with which nothing else in the wide world can even for a moment be compared. That fact is the age-long empire of Jesus Christ over the hearts of men." This, then, is the final argument in support of the Christian dogmas, including this the most incomprehensible of them all. Why should not the Buddhist claim the same authority for the dogmas of his faith? The evidential value is precisely the same. Turn to any well-known work bearing on this phase of the question. Read, we will say, Edwin Arnold's poem, The Light of Asia; or, better still, read Mr. Fielding's books, The Soul of a People and The Hearts of Men, and hear the words of one who has lived for years among Buddhists and studied their hearts. That an ideal should reign over the hearts of men is no new thing; much less is this a cause for marvel when "One has come, claiming to be God made manifest--manifest in order to attract our love." [214] Christian apologists urge that He has not only attracted the hearts of men in the past, but still retains His hold upon their affections, and that therein lies an essential difference between Christianity and all other religions. Christianity, say they, in this respect at least, stands pre-eminently alone. Is not Buddhism, then, one of the great living religions of the present day? Has it not existed during twenty-four centuries? Does it not at the present time surpass, in the number of its followers and the area of its prevalence, any other form of creed? Is not Gautama Buddha worthy of men's love, if we are to credit the best authenticated records of his life? "Discordant in frequent particulars," writes [215] Sir Edwin Arnold, "and sorely overlaid by corruptions, inventions, and misconceptions, the Buddhistical books yet agree in the one point of recording nothing--no single act or word--which mars the perfect purity and tenderness of this Indian teacher, who united the truest princely qualities with the intellect of a sage and the passionate devotion of a martyr." Loving disciples, living in an age of ignorance and superstition, piously ascribed to him divine powers, and, disobeying his mandate, gave him fervent worship. That worship, that adoration, still persists. So likewise the adoration of Jesus Christ still persists. This is certainly a fact in history; but can we safely build upon it the metaphysical theories of the Christian Faith? THE PAST AND PRESENT POSITION OF THE ETHICAL ARGUMENT. In my comments upon Dr. Illingworth's views regarding "Divine Immanence" I fear I have digressed somewhat from the subject at present under consideration--the Theistic argument from a Beneficent Intelligence. "The ethical argument held a very subordinate place in the estimation of writers on natural theology until Kant rested on it almost the whole weight of Theism. It has ever since been prominent, and has been the argument most relied upon to produce practical conviction." [216] What was once the weakest argument has now become the strongest. Why? Not, I take it, because anything has occurred to make the weaker any stronger, but because what was thought to be the strongest is now found to be weaker than the weakest! How can the ethical argument be maintained in face of objections which continue to become ever graver as our knowledge increases? Theists contend [217] that there must be a future life if only because the glaring wrongs of this world have to be righted. What is this but a naïve admission that the proofs of the Deity's benevolence are sadly wanting? EVIL FOR WHICH MAN IS NOT HELD RESPONSIBLE. The problem of pain, and of evil generally, has been partially discussed in the chapter on "Evolution." The importance of this problem is very great, for, by the universal consent of Christendom (not of mankind, as we shall see later on), the very name of God carries with it the sense of goodness, the highest and best that we know of or can imagine. For this reason it is customary for the pious to regard every calamity reverently as a punishment from God, or as serving some good purpose. Thus the German Emperor, imbued from childhood with this pious theory, warned his people that the Japanese had been sent as a scourge from God, and Father Bernard Vaughan (preaching at Lancaster on August 26th, 1906) declared that God had uttered warnings to England by the eruption of Vesuvius and the San Franciscan and Chilian earthquakes. Can this supposition be maintained when the catastrophe occurs in the wrong place, when tornadoes and earthquakes destroy God's own temples, and when the innocent suffer for the guilty? With the opinion of the scientist we are, or ought to be by now, familiar. "The fundamental axiom of scientific thought is that there is not, never has been, and never will be, any disorder in Nature. The admission of the occurrence of any event which was not the logical consequence of the immediately antecedent events, according to those definite, ascertained, or unascertained rules which we call the 'laws of Nature,' would be an act of self-destruction on the part of science" (Huxley on Catastrophes, p. 247 of his Essays on Controverted Questions). I remember, at the time of the terrible catastrophe in Martinique, due to the eruption of Mont Pelée, asking a lady: "Do you think this wholesale slaughter and awful suffering has any connection with the wickedness of the afflicted people?" "Certainly," she replied; "they must have been very wicked people." It just so happened that the only man who escaped scatheless was a murderer who had been imprisoned in a cell below ground. So the theory she and I had been brought up to believe in would not work, whichever way you looked at it. The apologist has usually a number of strings to his bow; and, as the Old Testament teaching concerning bad men descending "quick into the pit" would not suit, he might argue that the criminal was given an opportunity for repentance. In that case, we must suppose that all the others who perished had no need of repentance. Again, with regard to the terrible tortures that many endured, it could be argued that those "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth"; but what possible object could there be in this chastening during the last moments of their life upon earth? The agony of the death-struggle, suffered by the good and the bad alike, has yet to be shown to be in accord with the theory of a benevolent Deity. The old-fashioned idea that catastrophes, plagues, famines, etc., were sent as punishments for our misdoings is gradually being modified. Dr. Flint says distinctly: "I cannot agree with those who think there is no mystery in mere pain--that it is sufficiently accounted for by moral evil." [218] It seems a pity that his advocacy for benevolence in the Deity should lead him afterwards to qualify this sensible statement by an amazing assertion which begs the whole question. "The character of pain itself," he says, "is such as to indicate that its author must be a benevolent being--one who does not afflict for his own pleasure, but for his creatures' profit." [219] The profit consists, we are told, in the fact that we are prevented through fear of pain from running into danger. How peculiarly appropriate and consolatory such a view of pain must be to, let us say, a person crippled with rheumatoid arthritis! Man's highly sensitive and delicate organisation inevitably entails pain when no useful purpose of this kind can possibly be served; yet we are to suppose that an Omnipotent Being devised this crude and cruel method for teaching us to avoid the perils with which He Himself has surrounded us! One of our greatest living surgeons, Sir Frederick Treves, assures us [220] that "the symptoms of disease are marked by purpose, and the purpose is beneficent." "The processes of disease," he goes on to explain, "aim not at the destruction of life, but at the saving of it." Here, indeed, is more grist for the mill of the apologist. But what does this special pleading amount to? To this: Because through suffering we may survive a dangerous disease, we should be grateful to the Supreme Intelligence who created the preservative as well as the destructive microbes; we should be grateful to the Almighty who has fashioned friend and foe, and who, much to our discomfort, has selected our interior economy for the battlefield! Surely, if the surmise of benevolence is to be entertained at all, it must be at the sacrifice of the surmise of omnipotence. The Supreme Intelligence cannot be an "Almighty God" if He be the "Father of all mercies." There are Theists who candidly admit the perplexities of the situation. On the horns of a dilemma they have no option but to fall back upon the primitive theory: All unaccountable evil is the work of a hostile and evil power which seeks continually to frustrate the benevolent intentions of the Creator. "Speaking for myself," says the author of Pro Fide, [221] "I am unable to believe that hideous and excruciating diseases, such as cancer, which affect both men and animals, and which cannot, in the case of animals at least, be explained as a moral discipline, are the work of a good and benevolent God. I endorse absolutely the words of Dr. E. A. Abbott. 'I cannot think,' he says, 'of diseases and pain, and the conflict in the animal world for life and death, as being, so to speak, part of God's first intention.'" Disease, suffering, the struggle for existence, and the law of prey are then, after all, the Devil's handiwork, and so is also, presumably, the law of the survival of the fittest. (Christian evolutionists, take note! In exonerating and extolling the evolutionary processes, you are exonerating and extolling the works of the Devil!) "The Zoroastrian view," he continues, "must be rejected because it postulates two first principles, which is a plain metaphysical impossibility." The view which is not open to this or any other objection, and which he calls the Theistic view, "supposes that a large share of the government of the material universe was committed, at the creation, to a personal spirit, of great, but not unlimited, power and intelligence, who, having been originally created good, subsequently fell, and introduced evil and disorder into the world.... This hypothesis of a personal devil has many advantages. It explains the whole of the facts; it avoids the postulation of two first causes; it vindicates the moral perfection of the Deity; and it allows the optimistic hope to be entertained that in the end good will triumph over evil." All this is highly instructive. For it means that, in the opinion of an erudite apologist of the Church of England, flourishing a.d. 1906, the moral perfection of the Deity can only be vindicated on the hypothesis of a personal devil! Doubtless this hypothesis--and, remember, it is nothing more than a hypothesis, and one that is now generally discredited--fits in admirably; but the question is, Are we to accept it, however imaginary and opposed to the facts of science, just because it is so suitable? There remains the usual retort of the religionist when closely cornered: "The finite mind cannot expect to understand the Infinite." He appears to forget entirely that when he advances proofs of the God of his heart he himself is using his finite mind, and that his opponents therefore have an equal right to use theirs when criticising his "proofs." This by the way. The particular point we have to notice is that the appeal to this negative argument amounts to an admission that the proofs do indeed appear all the other way. Thus in the question now before us, "Is the First Cause a beneficent intelligence?" we find that a statement confidently proclaimed by the pious is not only unsupported by evidence, but in spite of it--a mere assertion suggested by the emotions. With more modesty and (may I add?) with more common sense, the agnostic disclaims any knowledge of God, holding that human knowledge is limited to experience, and that, since the absolute and unconditioned, if it exists at all, cannot fall within experience, we have no right to assert anything whatever with regard to it. EVIL FOR WHICH MAN IS HELD RESPONSIBLE. The very existence of the God of our hearts depends upon the proof of His morality. The argument from moral order seems at first sight a strong one. Morality, even adopting the naturalist's explanation that it is only a social instinct, can be regarded as the result of a divine spark. Its beneficial influence on the happiness of the individual and the well-being of the race cannot be too strongly insisted upon as a well-ascertained fact. "Virtue is self-rewarding, and vice is self-punishing." [222] But the Rationalist asks: "Why design man's nature so that he is more likely to go wrong, when he gets the chance, than to go right; and this in despite of the moral or social instinct?" The usual answer of the religionist is that, if we could not do wrong, we should be mere machines. "No doubt," says the author of Pro Fide, "if God had made us what Mr. Huxley says we are, conscious automata, we should have been incapable of sin; but it is better to be men, with all the glorious possibilities of freedom and virtue, than to be machines, however excellent." Now, do we allow our children to choose for themselves when we know they will choose wrongly? Do we not guard them against the inglorious possibilities--the slavery of vice? If we fail in our duty to them and they fall, should we add to our guilt by perpetrating on them unimaginable cruelties? Again, do we not prefer the fellowship of the good-natured? Yet these, according to the religionist, are the veriest automata compared with those who have inherited vicious or disagreeable characteristics, and do their best to fight against them. Be this as it may, the fact remains that the less fortunately endowed are seldom able to raise themselves up to the level of the more fortunately endowed--environment may, of course, elevate the one, as it may also degrade the other--and there is no doubt whose society we prefer. Why should it be better for men to be capable of--or, rather, may we not say prone to--sin? Why should their Maker grant them "glorious possibilities" which He has denied to Himself? Why should He alone be a machine that cannot go wrong? Surely there is something amiss in an argument that furnishes such inadequate excuses in order to explain why the Designer gave us natures infinitely inferior to His own. Oh, Thou who man from basest clay didst make, And e'en for Paradise devised the snake, For all the sin wherewith the face of man Is blackened, man's forgiveness give--and take! Some of Nature's plans would appear to be specially designed to bring out the worst side of the diverse nature implanted in man. The plan of the struggle for existence is a palpable instance. Take another--take the plan for the reproduction of life. Could any Omnipotent Being be proud of it? Let alone the unfair division of pain, which the discredited Eden story can now no longer account for, is it helpful to man in his struggle to improve his nature? The plan being God's plan, it is enjoined upon us that the procreation of children is a sacred duty; but it is also plainly intimated that to abstain from marriage altogether is yet more meritorious. Similarly in Mithraism, Buddhism, the religions of ancient America and other pre-Christian cults, the sanctity of the celibate life is upheld. If man is not doing his best in obeying the behests of his Maker, how can he do right? Has he been given a fair chance when an instinct so hurtful is implanted in him that even its natural gratification in the divinely appointed manner is likely to hinder him in the cultivation of his spiritual nature; this although matrimony was ordained--so our prayer-book tells us--for a remedy against sin? The truth is that this necessary instinct, quite apart from its responsibility for much sorrow and strife and quite apart from its terrible tendency to perversion, is innately prejudicial to our moral elevation, and, in order to preserve a healthy, happy mind, the less we allow our thoughts to dwell upon its fulfilment the better. Again, "a very little disorder in the organisation of the brain suffices to cause hallucinations of the senses, to shake the intellect from its throne, to paralyse the will, and to corrupt the sentiments and affections." [223] "How precise and skilful," remarks Dr. Flint, lost in admiration of the Designer, "must be the adjustment between the sound brain and the sane mind!" "How fiend-like," says the horrified Rationalist, "would be the Intellect which could have exercised its ingenuity to devise a mechanism inherently liable to get out of order, and thereby to transform its unhappy possessor into a fool or villain." In the event of the latter result, moreover, man, according to Christ's teaching (if honestly interpreted), is to suffer eternal torment! CONSCIENCE. Regarding theories of the origin of conscience such as those of J. S. Mill, Bain, Darwin, and Spencer, Dr. Flint remarks: "It does not matter whether conscience be primary or derivative; it exists." [224] That it does matter is shown by the fact that the bulk of the apologists still stoutly maintain that conscience is a special attribute of man--a divine instinct--and is not derived from the lower animals. We have, I think, gone into this sufficiently in the previous chapter, and I shall confine my remarks to another aspect of the question--the fallibility of the moral consciousness. "The existence," it is urged, "of a moral principle within us, of a conscience which witnesses against sin and on behalf of holiness, is of itself evidence that God must be a moral being, one who hates sin and loves holiness." [225] Given the existence of a personal God, this argument is plausible enough till we examine it more closely. The liability of conscience to err is, or should be, a platitude. Its two components--the reason and the emotions--both being fallible, it necessarily follows that conscience must have the same quality. We have only to think for a moment to discover innumerable examples in proof of this. An illustration which occurs to me, and which will hurt no one's susceptibilities, is that of the Wa Daruma. This is an East African tribe practising a strict morality which is all the more remarkable on account of the gross immorality of the neighbouring tribes. Nevertheless, the conscience of the Wa Daruma bids them kill their twin offspring. If conscience, then, be fallible, how is it a Theistic proof? Because, though it may make a mistake through an untutored reason, or through a reason clouded by deceptive emotions, the consciousness that there is a right or wrong at all is sufficient proof of a moral intelligence? So be it; but it is passing strange that God should allow conscience to deceive us. John Locke well said, many years ago: "Children are travellers newly arrived in a strange country: we should therefore make conscience not to deceive them." Are we not children of God in a strange country? We would not deceive our children. The acquittal of conscience gives pleasure, as the condemnation gives pain--remorse--and every man must obey his conscience if he would be happy. What a thousand pities it seems that it should ever lead him into error! Should it not be a divine intuition of the right both in our religious beliefs and in our conduct? It is an intuition of the right, the believer will say, when it tells you to believe in Christ and God. I would gladly think so; but every believer of every creed on the face of the earth says the same about his belief, and hence the amazing persistence of erroneous beliefs. When the voice of conscience is composed of a blind reliance on intuition (i.e., on the emotions) and a distrust of reason, how can the result be otherwise? The whole question of the truth of beliefs hinges upon whether intuition can or cannot be relied upon. We know that mistakes do occur through trusting to intuition, especially in the matter of beliefs; how, then, can we assume that it is infallible? Strange as the freaks of faith among cultured persons may appear, they are perfectly intelligible. They are the result of reliance on intuition rather than on reason. I will give an example. Who more logical, apparently, than John Henry Newman, the coadjutor of Whately in his popular work on logic? His illogical conduct is, therefore, particularly instructive. In 1832, after a visit to Rome, he wrote describing the Roman Catholic religion as polytheistic, degrading, and idolatrous, [226] and then, after all, entered the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. He did so because he found that the difficulties of the creed and of the canon of Scripture were insurmountable unless over-ridden by the authority of the Church. To escape becoming an agnostic he elected to join a Church calling herself infallible. He was able to come to this decision although, to his own knowledge, her infallibility was belied by her conduct! Further, so eloquent was his reasoning on the subject, so apparently logical, that some hundreds of clergymen joined him in making their submission to the Church of Rome. Underlying all this apparent inconsistency is the assertion, so eloquently pleaded by Cardinal Newman, of the supremacy of conscience and the correctness of intuition. So also have asserted the followers of every religion from all time, and to what have their consciences and intuitions led them--to truth, or to a pot-pourri of absurd and conflicting beliefs? We have the testimony of all history to prove the extreme fallibility of conscience. Conscience possesses no divine spark to keep a man from acting wrongly through ignorance. Even when knowledge is present we see, as in Cardinal Newman's case, that the voice of conscience may still speak incorrectly; for reason is swamped when emotion's flood-gate is left ajar. Cardinal Newman's opinions have a special interest for us at the present time. He held that, "apart from an interior and unreasoned conviction, there is no cogent proof of the existence of God"; that "the man who has not this interior conviction has no choice but to remain an agnostic, while the man who has it is bound sooner or later to become a Roman Catholic." [227] So inexplicable did his motives appear that Charles Kingsley accused him of saying that "truth for its own sake need not be, and, on the whole, ought not to be, a virtue of the Roman clergy." Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua, however, leaves no doubt of the author's own personal rectitude. His premises--the infallibility of conscience and intuition--were false. But that is not an unusual feature of Christian apologetics. The keen intellects of the two pious brothers, John Henry and Francis William, were really buried beneath a mass of preconceptions. That of the latter, however, being less submissive, proceeded to a slow and sure upheaval, and finally Francis Newman rejected Christianity altogether. [228] In the Apologia pro Vita Sua we find, I think, the key to Cardinal Newman's convictions. He was intensely superstitious, and inclined also to be timid. On the opening page, where he gives the recollections of his boyhood, we read: "I used to wish the Arabian tales were true." And again: "I was very superstitious, and for some time previous to my conversion (when I was fifteen) used constantly to cross myself on going into the dark." FREEWILL. In my remarks on the "evil for which man is held responsible," I have alluded to the Rationalist's contention that man cannot be justly blamed for his actions, and that, if there be a God, He alone is to blame. This opens up the question of Freewill v. Determinism--a thorny question, which I should prefer, if only for considerations of space and my readers' patience, to leave severely alone. A whole volume would be necessary to present the case for Determinism adequately, and I am fully aware that a few brief words will fail to convince; but, if I can remove a single iota of the misconceptions on this subject, I shall feel rewarded. Kant defines an act of volition as an act which is determined by the anticipatory idea of the result of the act. Although he maintains that there must be a moral God, he fully admits that the forecast or anticipatory idea is the inevitable effect of precedent conditions, such as temperament (heredity), education (environment), and the like; and in a well-known passage he says that, if the whole history of the subject could be known, the voluntary acts of a man might be predicted with the same certainty as an eclipse. The tendency of modern psychology is in the same direction. All voluntary acts, we are told, depend on the memory of involuntary acts of the same sort previously performed. It is true that a few Christian psychologists leave room for a "sheer heave" of the will by means of which an idea naturally feeble is fortified and held in place; but when they speak in this wise they speak as metaphysicians. No metaphysical argument, it seems to me, can reconcile this inflexible causality with true freedom of will. How can the will be at one and the same time fettered and free? There is, I grant, every appearance of freewill; but it belongs to the category of appearances which deceive. If we accept the Christian contention, we have to believe that a benevolent God gives us a free will, the power to choose between Him and the Devil, knowing, as in His omniscience He must, that the vast majority will make a sad use of their gift! The modern Christian admits that heredity and environment have their say also. Thus there are, in all, four forces struggling for the mastery--God, the Devil, heredity and environment; and it is the duty of the divinely-implanted free will to choose between them. Rather, is it not that there are two forces, and two forces only--heredity and environment--acting upon our brain, and our choice is the resultant of them? Undoubtedly man, as a self-conscious and reflecting animal, has what may be called the power of choice; but the way this power will be used would be a foregone conclusion did we know the sum-total of the effect of heredity and environment up to the moment of its use. "But," it may be objected, "surely there is such a thing as will-power. We can overcome our heredity and environment by the exercise of our will. Temptations to which the weak-willed succumb do not affect the strong-willed. Here, at least, we have a distinct instance in which heredity and environment are overcome." Yes, it is true, of course, that heredity and environment are continually being overcome by the happy possessor of sufficient will-power; but what we have to bear in mind is that it is not a portion, but the whole, of a man's heredity and environment which must be taken into consideration. In the case of the man with the strong will, it is still his heredity and environment which have in the first instance settled the line of conduct to which, once resolved upon, he adheres so tenaciously. And, again, this particular quality of the mind which enables him to keep to his resolution is, like all other qualities of the mind, itself the product of heredity and environment. The Determinism of science and the Freewill of metaphysics are essentially antagonistic. Determinism is completely subversive of Christian teaching. It is directly opposed to the Thirty-nine Articles of religion. Not only does it imply that man is not to blame for his actions, but that, if there be a God, He, and He alone, is to blame. Christian theologists are therefore its strenuous opponents. In their apologetic efforts one finds the strangest misconceptions of what is meant in a broad sense by heredity and environment. The best apology I have seen so far is by the Rev. P. N. Waggett, in a tractate called Science and Conduct. [229] Father Waggett seems to realise better than most of his fellow-clerics the enormous influence of heredity and environment. Still he comes to the conclusion that "when, under given circumstances," a man "does what, under those circumstances, and with his given constitution, he usually does not do," he is exercising "some inward spring." The fallacy in this argument is the common one. The effect of environment up to the moment of action has not been considered. The obscurity of the expression "given constitution" is doubtless unintentional, but it is none the less misleading. Father Waggett would be the first to admit that something must have occurred meanwhile to account for the new frame of mind. It is for him to show that an alteration in environment is not all that has occurred, and that there is room for this "inward spring." Will not the acceptance of this doctrine have a paralysing effect upon us? On the contrary. We shall be better able to discern where our salvation lies. We shall pay far more attention to the real forces which determine conduct. We shall devote our energies to combating bad heredity with good environment; and we shall do this with the knowledge that not only ourselves and our associates, but our descendants also, will reap the benefit. We shall fly from unhealthy thoughts, and avoid the surroundings likely to give rise to them. We shall welcome healthy thoughts and seek helpful surroundings. The doctrine of determinism is thought likely to corrupt our moral character, but, in reality, it compares favourably with religious doctrines. The belief in God's omniscience leads the Mohammedan to fatalism, and the Christian to the doctrine of predestination. If a Christian really believed as he professes, if he could honestly subscribe to the seventeenth article of his Creed--in which it is stated that "before the foundations of the world were laid God hath constantly decreed by His counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom He hath chosen [the italics are mine, of course] in Christ out of mankind"--God's Predestination would indeed be "a dangerous downfall," "thrusting men into desperation." The doctrine of predestination, therefore, appears, without doubt, to be ethically mischievous. The doctrine of Determinism, on the other hand, teaches a man to fight pernicious hereditary instincts with the weapon of environment, and to keep a tender place in his heart for unfortunates who succumb. [230] Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. § 5. Religious Experience. MYSTICISM AND CONVERSION. Of late, the argument from "Religious Experience" has been much to the front, and nothing written on the subject has created a deeper impression, or been more cordially welcomed by the supernaturalist, than Professor W. James's book, The Varieties of Religious Experience. Professor James is a prominent member of the Society for Psychical Research, and no one is better able than he to give descriptions of psychic phenomena; but the conclusions he comes to as to the spiritual signification of some of them will strike the normal man as too absurd to be taken seriously. More than this. Indirectly he furnishes one of the very best weapons for attacking supernaturalism that has ever yet been put in the hands of the naturalist. I have already given some examples of so-called religious experiences (in Chap. II., pp. 59-61). These are still regarded by the superstitious as spiritual manifestations; but Professor James discovers a spiritual interpretation in still more palpable hallucinations. Unwittingly he spoils the case for religious experience by trying to prove too much. I will give an instance. He describes how an intimate friend of his kept experiencing a "horrible sensation" of the presence of something, which he "did not recognise as any individual being or person." Professor James admits that "such an experience as this does not connect itself with the religious sphere." [Why not? It might have been the Devil that time.] Later on his friend had a pleasanter experience. "There was not a mere consciousness of something there, but, fused in the central happiness of it, a startling awareness of some ineffable good. Not vague either--not like the emotional effect of some poem or scent or blossom or music, but the sure knowledge of the close presence of a sort of mighty person; and, after it went, the memory persisted as the one perception of reality. Everything else might be a dream, but not that." Professor James then remarks: "My friend, as it oddly happens, does not interpret these later experiences theistically, as signifying the presence of God." Why oddly? The explanation seems simple enough. It was just because his friend was not odd, but a normal individual of modern times. Perhaps, after all, the secret lay in the well-known reply to the question, "Is life worth living?"--It all depends on the liver. One may also recall the words of the celebrated clerical wit who said: "They think they are pious when they are only bilious." Professor James then relates various experiences of other persons who, unlike his friend, were positive they had felt "the presence of God." And he tells us: "Nothing is more common in the pages of religious biography than the way in which seasons of lively and of difficult faith are described as alternating. Probably every religious person has the recollection of particular crises in which a direct vision of the truth, a direct perception, perhaps, of a living God's existence, swept in and overwhelmed the languor of the more ordinary belief." If this sort of thing accounts for the faith of every religious person, the mystery (in these days) of the great faith of the few and the little faith of the many is completely solved. So few, relatively speaking, have this experience; so few are by nature mystics. Also it helps to explain the prevalence of supernatural belief in bygone ages. Thoughtful unbelievers have long ago come to the conclusion that some such psychical experiences largely account for religious superstitions, and now an eminent psychologist and religious apologist confirms their theories. Professor James argues that "the neurotic temperament naturally introduces one to regions of religious truth which are hidden from the robust Philistine type of nervous system, that thanks heaven it hasn't a single morbid fibre in its composition." This kind of "robust Philistine" is, one is glad to think, a very common type. I hope I am a fairly robust Philistine myself. The Rationalist may, or may not, be emotional, but he certainly prefers to be without morbid fibres. Why, of all the most undesirable states of mind, should morbidity assist the human being to have faith in God? Why should spirituality and strong faith be possible only for a person of nervous instability whose intellectual canon (unacknowledged no doubt) is "Credo quia impossibile"? Why, in the name of all that is reasonable, should spiritual experiences be the prerogative of exceptional temperaments only? Why, in all fairness, if there be any spiritual meaning in hallucinations, should not the Agnostic be at least vouchsafed the consciousness of the Devil's presence to cure him of his unbelief? Professor James thinks "there can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life, exclusively pursued, does tend to make the person exceptional and eccentric." He refers to "geniuses in the religious line," who, "like many other geniuses ... have often shown symptoms of nervous instability." "Even more perhaps," he says, "than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations ... often, moreover, these pathological features in their career have helped to give them their religious authority and influence." All this is exceedingly instructive, coming as it does from the mouth of an earnest champion of religion [231] specially suited, by his researches in psychical phenomena, to speak with authority on the psychology of religion. His belief in the interference in human life of spiritual agencies, and the whole tenour of his book, render it certain that he is not consciously bringing any arguments to bear against supernaturalism, but, on the contrary, intends to adduce new arguments in its favour. Have we not here a satisfactory and perfectly natural explanation of the phenomena of conversion? The religionist is apt, I think, to lose sight of the fact that conversion is not confined to any one particular creed; that it cannot witness to the truth of the one and not of the other. "The mystical feeling," remarks Professor James (pp. 425-6), "of enlargement, union, and emancipation ... is capable of forming matrimonial alliances with material furnished by the most diverse philosophies and theologies, provided only they can find a place in their framework for its peculiar emotional mood." The most striking examples of conversion are those of the instantaneous kind, of which St. Paul's is held out to us as the most eminent. I have already outlined the probable explanation in St. Paul's case, and other cases may be similarly explained. The supernaturalist's interpretation of conversion cannot be considered seriously until proofs are forthcoming of an instance in which nothing was known previously of the truth alleged to have been revealed. Like Mr. Lowes Dickinson, I have never, for example, discovered a case in which a Mohammedan or a Hindoo, without having heard of Christianity, has had a revelation of Christian "truth." Of all visions, those of the death-bed especially invite our attention, for they are looked upon by many pious persons as sure evidence in favour of the truth of their Faith. Will this argument bear analysis? We know that good men and women have had heavenly visions during their last moments. We know also that others of equally blameless lives have been terrified at the last by the sight of some supreme horror. How can any argument be based upon the phantasms of a disordered brain? Do not these visions, too, usually take their form from the teaching with which the mind has been imbued? The Mohammedan sees a heaven peopled with houris; do we on that account accept the Koran as our guide? A dying Hindoo may have a vision of a heathen deity of questionable character, and derive comfort from it. I have myself stood by the bedside of a dying Mahratta whose ravings during the delirium of fever indicated such a vision. There are, it is true, cases where the visions of the dying may seem utterly unlike those we should expect. But the brain retains impressions of things of which the conscious memory has long ago passed away, and, if the early history of the ecstatic could be fully known, we should, as Proctor points out, [232] find nearly every circumstance of his vision explained, or at least an explanation suggested. It may be said again of death-bed visions, as of visions generally, that there has never yet been a case of a Mohammedan or a Hindoo or any other non-Christian who has had a revelation of Christian "truth." Professor James is not the only person having the curious notion that an abnormal state of mind admits the nearer presence of God. To take a people possessing a marvellous self-control over their emotions, and, therefore, the last among whom you would expect to find such ideas, I may mention that the more ignorant and superstitious among the Japanese throw themselves into hypnotic trances, and then fondly imagine that a god is present in their body, and is making use of them as a mouthpiece. [233] Again, no superstition is commoner among the ignorant natives of India, Mohammedan and Hindoo alike, than that people of unsound mind have some sort of special means of communication with God; but that educated persons, having fairly normal minds themselves, should hold such an opinion is yet another example of the hallucinations to which religious enthusiasts are liable. The folly of attributing any spiritual significance to these experiences will be better understood if we compare them with cases where there is no religious element whatsoever. A lady, a friend of mine, is continually subject to a curious experience, which may serve to illustrate this point. I give the account of it in her own words:-- As a child I was always a bad sleeper, and got into the habit of making up stories to amuse myself when lying awake in bed. This habit continued as I grew older; but, after a time, the stories ceased to be connected in any way with myself. Years ago I began a story which has grown gradually through three generations, and there are signs of the coming of a fourth. The old house has remained as the centre of the story for years; most of the characters are men, and no one of either sex bears any possible relationship to me. They have all become far more real to me than my own relations; at bed-time, on long railway journeys (sometimes), or when I am walking or doing needlework, they are there. If I get to the house at bed-time, I sleep well. If I am there when travelling, I don't get tired, and the characters grow and develop quite naturally. It is my inner life, and, if I were given that way, it might become a series of visions. I can quite understand men having ecstasies in which the ideals they have always before them become apparently materialised. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PRAYER. I cannot too strongly insist that all this is extremely instructive. It explains so many things that still have to be explained, if religion be untrue. The new science of psychology has already accounted for many abnormal phenomena that were formerly considered miraculous--"faith cures," [234] for instance. Does it not account for the effects of prayer? We know nothing of the efficacy of prayer in securing material benefits--there is no proof either way; but we do know that it has often an ethical value, and is also a means of strengthening faith. Does it necessarily follow that a Supernatural Being hears and answers the suppliant's prayers? I think not. Suggestion, it is now known, exercises an extraordinary influence over the subjective mind. In prayer auto-suggestion undoubtedly plays its subtle rôle. Let me give an example of the benign results that may be effected by suggestion without any appeal to the supernatural. Often a moral change for the worse in a most estimable person is distinctly traceable to causes over which he or she had no control, and the physician or surgeon, having diagnosed the case, proceeds to do his best to bring about a cure. Where it is some nervous malady, mental therapeutics or psychic healing is sometimes extremely efficacious. [235] Vices and weaknesses are now looked upon by many in the light of diseases and ailments--curable, ameliorable, or incurable, as the case may be. Disease or Devil, the fact remains that medical treatment may effect a cure even where the patient's disorder has been brought on by, as we say, his own fault. Dipsomania, morphinomania, kleptomania, nymphomania, satyriasis, and various moral perversions may yield to a purely natural treatment, whether it be the method of a Milne Bramwell (by suggestion) or of Keeley. When denouncing Mariolatry (in his sermon at the opening of the Church Congress, October, 1905), the Bishop of London said: "It is not revealed that the cry to any saint or to the Virgin Mary ever reaches them at all." Apparently, therefore, the Bishop admits that appeals to the supernatural may be wasted, and this in spite of the suppliant being very much in earnest. Yet who would be prepared to say that the Roman Catholic who prays to the Virgin Mary and to innumerable saints does not derive quite as much benefit from the process as the Protestant who directs his worship solely to the Holy Trinity, or the Shintoist who invokes the benign spirits of his ancestors? [236] The effect of the suggestion is the same in each case, and has all the appearance of an answer to prayer. Again, putting aside abnormal phases of the mind, is it not, as Ralph Waldo Trine puts it (in his little book, Character Building: Thought Power), a simple psychological law that any type of thought, if entertained for a sufficient length of time, will, by and by, reach the motor tracts of the brain, and finally burst forth into action? There seems no need for the introduction of a supernatural hypothesis to explain the moral effect of prayer. So, also, with regard to faith, it is only natural that the believer, racked with doubt, should find reassurance in prayer. The Theist who lays store by the evidence from "religious experience" will do well to ponder over the following words of one of Professor James's critics: "Instead of producing anything that would strengthen the belief in extra-human spirit agents influencing human destinies, psychology has made intelligible, conformably to the rest of our organised knowledge, most, if not all, of the striking phenomena which have been the empirical props of the popular faith in spiritism, whether Christian or not. We refer to anæsthesias, analgesias, hallucinations, monitions, trances, the sense of illumination in ecstasy, etc., including the facts considered in Professor James' lectures. In making this statement, I do not forget the work of the Society for Psychical Research. Its achievements may be declared to have been so far, and without prejudice of the future, absolutely inconclusive with regard to spiritism." [237] In other words, psychical research, if conducted by the experimental method and without bias, may be pregnant with consequences hardly in accord with the hopes of either the spiritist or spiritualist (in its religious sense). For, should abnormal phenomena of all kinds admit of a natural explanation, their present obscurity will no longer furnish grounds for supernatural speculation. THE RELIGIOUS (?) EXPERIENCES OF INTOXICATION. According to Professor James's theory, it is the person who chances to have a well-developed subliminal life who is predestined to be saved, for then God will be able to reach him. As Professor James informs us that "nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide, when sufficiently diluted with air, stimulate the mystical consciousness in an extraordinary degree," so that "depth beyond depth of truth seems revealed to the inhaler," the unbelieving Philistine ought to be recommended to inhale this truth-revealing, and therefore faith-producing, gas. Like music, it must be meant as an aid to worship. The new beatitude will then be, as Mr. Leuba remarks, "Blessed are the intoxicated, for to them the kingdom of spirits is revealed!" I can quite understand the interest aroused by Professor James's remarkable book; but that Theists and would-be Theists should take its chief conclusion seriously is beyond me--or, rather, I should say it is one more proof to me that the inherited capacity for superstition is still strong within us. We can understand why supernatural beliefs die hard. MUSIC AND THE EMOTIONS. [238] Are our emotions reliable guides, or are they not? Though the motive-power in our nature, though they go to make up that heart upon which Mr. Fielding so eloquently discourses in his Hearts of Men, do they not need to be carefully controlled by reason? Are they not the very same emotions which, in all but religious matters, are admittedly a fruitful source of self-deception? Take the emotion excited by music. I know many good people who think they possess considerable religious feeling, and have had a religious experience, because they are peculiarly affected by music, and especially by fine sacred music. [239] Similarly, Dr. Torrey's "Glory Song" appeals to the untrained ear of his emotional audiences, and the Salvation band, all out of tune, elevates the soul of the Salvationist. Yet lower down the scale of musical culture we find a clash of discordant sounds exciting the religious emotions of the savage. Is it too much to say that these "experiences" differ only in degree from those of the dog who howls as certain notes affect him? Granted that music, suited to the taste of the worshipper, is an aid to worship, we have to remember that there are those whose temperaments are so constituted that they are more or less unaffected by music--good, bad, or indifferent--and, if the religious feeling evoked be from God, may we not ask in all reverence: "Why should the unmusical be debarred from this means of feeling His presence? Why should the man without a note of music in his composition have this much less chance of eternal salvation?" Surely we are not to take seriously and literally the words of our great philosopher-poet when he says: "Let no such man be trusted"? SEXUAL LOVE. Again, there is the religious feeling evoked by that strongest emotion of all--sexual love; the one excites the other, and the effect produced may be beneficial or may be mischievous. But sexual love appears to me a strange aid to the worship of God; and persons who really imagine they are nearer Him when in this state of emotion most certainly deceive themselves. The ascetic who is debarred from this particular "religious" experience should agree with me. REVIVALISM. An examination of religious experiences, however brief, cannot well omit all mention of the question of revivalism. Has it an ethical value? Has it a spiritual meaning? To the latter question the answer of the Church is for the most part in the affirmative. In his Pentecostal message for Whitsuntide, 1905, the Archbishop of Canterbury refers, without directly naming them, to the extraordinary movement of which the young Evan Roberts has been the leader, and to the preaching of Messrs. Torrey and Alexander in London. "To whatever cause or combination of causes we may attribute it," he says, "the fact appears to be certain that expression has this year been given in an unusual degree to a desire for increased spiritual earnestness in the Christian life." I shall not embark upon the question of the spiritual signification of revivalism. My remarks on other religious experiences may be taken to apply here also. Regarding its ethical value, I fancy most thoughtful onlookers will be with me when I say that it is unadvisable to stir up hysteria in hysterical people just for the sake of effects, the usefulness of which is extremely problematical--effects which, if they benefit a few, are harmful to the majority, and, in any case, are unlikely to be of a permanent nature. We have it on excellent authority that "emotional appeals and revivals do not destroy carnal sin in schools, and it is well known how often they seem to stimulate, to increase, immorality." [240] § 6. The Inevitable Conclusion. A candid and unbiassed examination of the so-called theistic proofs can but lead to the one conclusion: they are worthless. Even if the cosmological and teleological arguments were satisfactory, and even if "religious" experiences proved the existence of a spirit world, the ethical argument undoubtedly breaks down, carrying along with it all that fragile structure of which the theist's theories are composed. Yes, the problem of evil is insoluble. "We have not," says John Stuart Mill, [241] "to attempt the impossible problem of reconciling infinite benevolence and justice with infinite power in the Creator of such a world as this. To attempt to do so not only involves absolute contradiction in an intellectual point of view, but exhibits to excess the revolting spectacle of a Jesuitical defence of moral enormities." The latest defence by an approved apologist of the Church of England will be found in chap. xiv. of Pro Fide. It has been conducted with conspicuous candour, and such harsh terms as "Jesuitical" and "revolting" are no longer applicable. Whether, however, this is likely to prove any more successful than previous attempts, and to serve as an antidote to scepticism, may be seen by a glance at the following summary of the line of argument. The author relies, to begin with, upon the theological assumption that moral evil arises from the abuse of God's gift to man of a free will. He also argues that the transmission of a tendency to sin is not unjust, because a remedy for it has been provided. As for physical evil, this, he maintains, subserves important moral purposes in the case of man, and in the case of animals it is more than compensated for by physical good. In the end, however, he is forced, as we have seen, to fall back upon the hypothesis of a personal devil. In other words, he presents us with those sophistical arguments of theistic apologists which we have been investigating, and then, finding, as a perfectly honest mind must find, that these are inadequate, he has, after all, to rely upon those ancient theological dogmas which owe their origin to the insolubility of the problem. Let those accept his special pleading who can. There are many who read an apologetic work with minds already made up to be persuaded by it, and where there is this bias there cannot be straight thinking. For those who keep an open mind the conclusion is inevitable: apart from the revelation which has been called in question there is no proof, there never can be any proof, of the existence of the God of the Christian. If there be a First Cause, if there be a Supreme Intelligence, if there be a Deity at all, we know nothing of His nature and nothing of His intentions with regard to us. NOTE ON RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY. An examination of the development of philosophy leads to conclusions of considerable import. Our present inquiry can be only an exceedingly rapid one; but anyone wishing to study the subject a little more fully will find it concisely treated in a book called Science and Faith, by Dr. Paul Topinard, late General Secretary of the Anthropological Society of Paris. From Chapter VIII. I cull the following:-- "Animals, in the presence of phenomena which they do not understand, retire confounded. Savage man does the same. But he, at least, hazards the attempt of an explanation by investing the objects or phenomena in question with life and sentiments similar to his own. Later this same savage, discovering or believing to discover in himself a double being, the one corporeal and the other spiritual, transfers the new notions regarding himself to objects without himself, to stones, plants, animals, or stars.... Religions, at first more or less elementary, with their founders and priests, do not appear until later.... For a long time the sorcerer--that is to say, a man less credulous than the rest, and adroit in the sense of knowing how to reap personal advantage from the beliefs of his fellows--stood alone in his class. Sorcerer and medicine man at once, he distributed amulets, drove out spirits from the bodies of the deceased, and caused the rains to fall.... The sacerdotal caste arose, at times recruiting itself from the outside and at times hereditary. More intelligent than the others, more disposed to reflect, the priests were naturally inclined to seek more satisfactory explanations from the phenomena of nature, to distinguish general causes from particular causes, to reduce the number of the spirits, to champion the most important of these, and even to symbolise many of them. The cult of heroes, of personages in the tribe who had rendered it valuable services, and of ancestors, was mingled with the preceding beliefs. Having to speak to simple people, for whom it was necessary to materialise things, they were obliged to recast their ideas and to expound them by the help of fables and myths, which soon essayed to explain in a tangible form the origin of things, the existing phenomena of nature, and often to guide the conduct of men. These were the first attempts of philosophy, already as utilitarian as they were mystical." "Religions consecrated a multitude of usages and ceremonies from which the sacerdotal class lived, and which greatly augmented its power; and they also exerted a strong political influence. Again, they led up to genuine moral codes, such as those of Brahma and Buddha in India, and Confucius in China.... The utilitarian idea appears to have dominated among the Phoenician and Canaanite peoples. It gave rise to the doctrine of a personal national God, who had created man and the people whom he had chosen and whose destinies he directed. He exacted from them blind and exclusive worship and obedience to the laws which he promulgated. In return he protected them, reserving his right of terrestrial punishment.... The Egyptians are related to the Hindus by their belief in metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls from animal to animal.... The conception of a judgment after death passed through these peoples [the Egyptians] to the polytheism of Greece and Rome.... Greek philosophy rose audaciously to the loftiest and boldest conceptions, not conceptions crowning an intellectual edifice, but conceptions which dominate it in imaginary realms of space. Aristotle belongs apart. He is at once scientist and philosopher. He observes nature. He is the founder of natural history, of anthropology, of political science, and of political economy. According to Graef, he is also the founder of political philosophy, because he was the first to introduce positive facts into philosophy.... In the general run, they [the Greek philosophers] were dialecticians, sophists, and intellectual gymnasts only. But, such as they were, they founded free inquiry, disintegrated the national polytheistic beliefs, and prepared the way for the revolution which was on the verge of accomplishment." "In an unknown [?] corner of Judæa, on the banks of a lake, the glad tidings burst forth of a coming regeneration, and a voice was heard pleading the cause of the feeble, the humble, and the oppressed, and saying: 'Love ye one another!' The doctrine, at first local and inculcated by a small number of apostles, soon extended with St. Paul to the Gentiles, and thenceforward its progress was rapid [?]. Philosophy was not indifferent to it.... Christianity, in effect, instead of conquering the pagan world, was conquered by it, as Huxley has remarked.... During the Middle Ages science had disappeared from the West. Philosophy, hemmed in between metaphysics and theology, became scholasticism, which sought to reconcile Plato, Plotinus, and Aristotle with the needs of orthodoxy, and split hairs over subtle essences and entities.... Then a concourse of circumstances occurred which, as fifteen centuries before, was to transform the Western world, although differently, and which inaugurated modern times, to wit: The return to the West of the knowledge that had taken refuge among the Arabs; the discovery of printing, which spread everywhere trustworthy texts; the discovery of the New World, which quadrupled the surface of the earth to be observed and studied; the awakening of science, with Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Rondelet, Vesalius, Harvey; and, finally, the Reformation." "On the downfall of scholasticism the first care of philosophy was not the renouncing of what had been its essence, the search for the absolute by intuition [italics are mine] and reason, but the overhauling of its methods, which it sought to render more precise.... The subsequent divergencies were rooted less in the varying intellectual and logical make-up of each philosopher and in their method of applying their faculties than in their individual ways of feeling and conceiving. Philosophy in effect is simply a struggle between these elements.... Nevertheless, the conquests of science began to make themselves felt. There was now less insistence on God and more on the world, man, morals, and the conditions of social life. The over-hanging metaphysical cloud is still more or less heavy, but at spots it suffers the light to pass through. There are two streams: the one continues Descartes--in France with Pascal, Bossuet, Fénélon, and Malebranche, in Germany with Spinoza and Leibnitz; the other, in England, is represented by Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke.... Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke are the inaugurators of a school which is characterised by its practical spirit, its observation and analysis of psychological facts, and by its disposition to refer the conduct of man to the advantages which he draws therefrom. It led to Adam Smith, who discovers the sanction of morality in the public approbation of what is right; to Bentham, who sees it in interest rationally understood; to Hume and the Scottish school; and finally to the existing school of John Stuart Mill, Darwin, and Herbert Spencer. Locke, on the other hand, is also the starting-point of the French school of the eighteenth century, which is characterised by a tendency at once anti-clerical, altruistic, and sentimental." "We shall say nothing of the philosophy of the nineteenth century of the German school, which represents speculative philosophy, and the English, which is physiological in bent, and of which we have the highest opinion. In France the most notable achievement is the attempt which was made by Auguste Comte. For Comte metaphysics must be entirely eliminated. The day of intuitions, à priori conceptions, entities, innate ideas, is past. If a problem cannot be solved, it is to be let alone. Psychology is only a branch of physiology, and the latter a division of biology. Morals rest not upon any imperative obligation, but upon the altruism which education developes. There are no rights besides those which society confers. Human knowledge has passed through three stages: one of faith or theology, one of conceptions or metaphysics, and one of observation or science. These, in turn, are the basal principles of science, and would be perfect if the positivist school were faithful to them. But in its own bosom even there are refractory spirits who suffer themselves unconsciously to be ruled by their sentiments rather than by observation, and who are constantly lapsing back into the old methods.... For me there is but one method of knowing what is, and of inducing therefrom what has been and what will be--and that is observation; all suggestions which transgress this method are void." From his examination of the evolution of philosophy Dr. Topinard draws, by way of résumé, the following conclusions:-- a. Philosophy, like religion, is the outcome of the belief in the supernatural held by man in his more or less primitive state. b. The philosophic spirit and the spirit which created the arts and letters have as common characters their subjectivity, their need of imagining and of constructing, and their firm belief in the reality of their conceptions. c. Philosophy is opposed to science. It answers to the impatient need of man to explain at once things which elude his comprehension. d. At the present day philosophy still lives, but is losing its initial character and sees itself obliged more and more to reckon with science and practice. e. We are obliged to admit that the group of human faculties which has given birth to philosophy has a less prolonged future than the group which has given rise to science. f. Philosophy, although on the wane, and apparently in disaccord with the end of the nineteenth century, has nevertheless a beautiful domain to exploit. These conclusions concerning the past and present of philosophy cannot be disseminated too widely. So many refuse point-blank to inquire into their belief, because they have been led to think that this will entail their wading through a mass of philosophical writings, and because they expect to find these either incomprehensible or unconvincing. Properly speaking, Christians should be the first to admit that apologists who attempt to defend their Faith by abstruse arguments are sadly inconsistent. For it is written, Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Let the humble truth-seeker take heart. Whatever the value or present tendency of philosophy may or may not be, the truth about the Christian religion can be ascertained without a knowledge of metaphysics. Metaphysics does not, and never will, appeal to the average man. He agrees with the scoffer, who says: "When the man who is speaking no longer knows what he is talking about, and the man who is listening never knew what he was talking about, that is metaphysics!" The obscurity inherent in profound and abstract philosophy may well be objected to, not only as painful and fatiguing, but as the inevitable source of uncertainty and error. "Here, indeed," exclaims Hume, in his essay on The Different Species of Philosophy, "lies the justest and most plausible objection against a considerable part of metaphysics, that they are not properly a science, but arise either from the fruitless efforts of human vanity, which would penetrate into subjects utterly inaccessible to the understanding, or from the craft of popular superstitions, which, being unable to defend themselves on fair ground, raise these intangling brambles to cover and protect their weakness." It is accurate and just reasoning like that of Hume, in his Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, which, to quote his words again, "is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons and all dispositions; and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon which, being mixed up with popular superstition, renders it in a manner impenetrable to careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom." It may be urged that the famous Scottish philosopher and historian has been unduly severe in his sceptical views concerning speculative philosophy, or that he would have been less severe upon the later metaphysical thinking which was affected by his criticisms. There still remains, in any case, one feature common to all philosophies: their difficulty. Philosophy is only studied, and, indeed, can only be thoroughly understood, by the few. Take, for example, that intellectual phenomenon, Hegelianism, the spirit and method of which have leavened the whole mass of philosophical thought in Germany. It is confessedly one of the most difficult of all philosophies. One has heard what Hegel himself is supposed to have said: "Only one man ever understood me, and even he couldn't." This difficulty of comprehension has an important bearing on the argument for Agnosticism. Granting that there is such a God as Hegel would have us accept, how can anyone suppose for a moment that a Deity wrapping Himself up in such obscurity would be unreasonable enough to expect all mankind to believe in Him? He must not only pardon, but approve of, Agnosticism. A God, whose existence can only be proved, if it can be proved at all, by the abstruse arguments of a Hegel, is not a God anxious to reveal Himself to His creatures. POPULAR ARGUMENTS Chapter VII. FALLACIES IN POPULAR ARGUMENTS § 1. Preliminary Remarks. The Power of Christianity for Good. Finally we have to consider some arguments that have often quite as much weight with the believer as Bible apologetics or Theistic proofs. They are: (1) The power of Christianity for good; (2) the marvellous spread of Christianity; (3) the witness of the Christian martyrs; and (4) the universality of the religious instinct. The first of these--the power of Christianity for good--opens up a large question, and I have thought it advisable, therefore, to select for special investigation two popular beliefs springing from this source--namely, the belief that woman owes her present position to Christianity, and the belief that the overthrow of Christianity would endanger society and the nation. The point now under consideration is not whether Christianity ought to have been, but whether it has been, a power for good. Although the apologist, when hard pressed as to this or that evidence of failure, attributes it to the fault of man, he nevertheless continues stoutly to maintain that Christianity has indeed worked wonders for mankind. This we should certainly expect of it, if it be a true belief, and it is a claim therefore which cannot be too closely investigated. It would be a comparatively easy, though lengthy, task to make out an exceedingly strong case against Christianity by enlarging upon the inhumanity and immorality of the Dark Ages, and comparing this with the far more humane and moral conduct of men in pre-Christian civilisations. One could point to the rock-graven edicts of King Asoka (263-226 B.C.), and show that in the matter of discountenancing slavery, of humanity to prisoners, of denouncing war, of founding hospitals, of abolishing blood sacrifices, of inculcating religious toleration, and of teaching purity of life, all that is now so complacently claimed for Christianity was anticipated. Or again, one might dwell on the dark side of Christendom, even in this year of grace 1907, and draw some very odious comparisons, especially as we have so recently been presented with the object-lesson of a heathen race which excels many, and equals any, of the Christian races in nearly all those virtues we prize and call Christian. But I have no intention of embarking upon such a wide sea of controversy. One controversial subject, however, I feel bound to notice, because the disputed point is at the root of the whole matter. We are so accustomed to hear every humane or unselfish deed, and every moral act, described as Christian that "good" and "Christian" have almost become synonymous terms. It never occurs to us to ask, or we never give a second thought to the question, how much the humane principles now accepted among civilised nations may be due to education, experience, and evolution, and how much to Christian influence. The Rationalist attributes the improvement chiefly to the former, and, in any case, to the working of natural forces; the Christian chiefly to the latter, and, in any case, to the working of supernatural forces. All that is beneficial in civilisation, both on its material and on what is called its spiritual side, is placed by the Christian to the credit of Christianity, and the hand of God is traced with becoming reverence in every discovery which ameliorates our lot. This, although the promoters and discoverers are often non-Christians, and although it is well known that it is the Church that has chiefly delayed the advance of science. Whatever may be the case now, the education of the masses never concerned her in olden times. Rather her concern was then that the people should not be educated, much as it is in Russia at the present time. Such education as she did encourage was of the type imparted in the Mohammedan University at Cairo to-day--the three R's and the Koran--and for similar reasons. As late as 1846 Cobden writes to a friend on the subject of national education: "I took the repeal of the Corn Laws as light amusement compared with the difficult task of inducing the priests of all denominations to agree to suffer the people to be educated." Again, Lord Macaulay, speaking of the Roman Catholic Church, in the first chapter of his History of England, says that "during the last three centuries to stunt the growth of the human mind has been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in intellectual torpor." So long as organisms are adapted to their environment, neither progressive nor retrogressive development will occur. Because, after the Dark Ages, Europe progressed while Asia stagnated and Africa retrogressed, is modern civilisation to be placed to the credit of the Christian religion? As rationally might any one of the ancient civilisations be credited to the popular superstition of the country then in the van of progress. To such absurd lengths are these pretensions carried that we find persons ignorant enough and fanatical enough to attribute the present predominance of Christian nations to their religion. For a reply to such I cannot better that given by a learned Buddhist monk to a missionary who had told him that nations of the West had become powerful because of their Christianity. "The fact is," retorted the monk, "that nations have become powerful in the degree to which they have rejected the precepts of Christianity, in the extent to which they have substituted for the Christian maxim of 'Love thy neighbour as thyself' that other maxim which shoots 300 bullets a minute." Returning to the only contention really worth considering, let us assume that there has been moral progress in Christendom, and let us assume also that this has nothing to do with the advance of Humanitarianism in the present, or with pre-Christian (Buddhist, for instance) teaching in the past. Are we to conclude that this is a proof of the divine origin of Christianity? I must confess I fail to see how any improvement which there may be in the matter of coarse vice among the proletariat, of dishonesty among the commercial classes, of corruptness among the professional, and of sensuality among the leisured classes, can be any proof that Jesus, one of the world's reformers, was God Incarnate. Christian teaching embodies precepts of the greatest ethical value, borrowed, as we now know, from the doctrines of ancient moralists and religious teachers. Would it not indeed be strange if this teaching had done no good whatever--if the leaven had had no elevating influences at all, whereas the teachings of Confucius and Buddha have produced those admirable results which even Christians are at last prepared to admit? Dr. Warschauer explains in Anti-Nunquam, p. 72, that Agnostics are good men, "because, willingly or unwillingly, they have taken in Christian ideas through every pore." How, then, does he explain the virtues of the Japanese? Let us now leave generalisation, and investigate in some detail an important Christian argument which has the contention of Christianity's power for good as its source. It forms a striking illustration of the way fallacies may arise from a hard-and-fast adhesion to convictions that are justified rather by the heart than by history. § 2. Christianity Woman's Best Friend. [242] The majority of women still remain true believers. There appear to be numerous reasons, psychological and educational, for their attitude. Woman is more imaginative, more emotional, and more sensitive to external suggestion than man. As to her education, men, even those who have no religious belief whatever, prefer to keep her in ignorance of their views, partly under a vague notion that unbelief would undermine her virtue and lessen her amiability, and partly because they deem her religious influence an essential element in the upbringing of their children. In addition to all this, woman is taught by the Church that Christianity is her best friend. Prominent prelates of the Church proclaim that "the Gospel has given woman the position she holds to-day." [243] Nothing could very well be more contrary to fact. One can only suppose that these expounders of the truth are speaking according to the dictates of their hearts, and without having really studied the question, or else that they believe their cause is served by deliberately closing their eyes to inconvenient facts. The question is one of supreme importance, as it is chiefly women who are now the mainstay of the Faith. People with little or no knowledge of those portions of history that specially bear upon the question are easily deceived. The average woman's ideas concerning the pre-Christian civilisations are decidedly vague. Her ideas may also be further confused by lurid accounts from the pulpit of the licentiousness prevalent among the upper classes during the earlier and also the last years of the Roman Empire; while nothing is told her about the unrestrained licence of the aristocracy during the Middle Ages, and the degraded condition of the masses during, say, the eighteenth century, "when," says Sir Walter Besant, "for drunkenness, brutality, and ignorance, the Englishman of the baser kind reached the lowest depth ever reached by civilised man." Clerics who unconsciously mislead their congregations with this argument cannot be aware of those hard facts of history which render it untenable. For their benefit, and for the benefit of their dupes, let us glance at a few of these facts. The status of women among the "barbarians" is vouched for by the Romans, their enemies, and therefore unexceptionable witnesses. Nothing impressed the Romans more than the equality of the sexes among the northern nations, the man's reverence for womanhood, the woman's sympathy with manhood, and the high code of morality that was the natural outcome of this well-balanced state of society. At a time when the men of the "Chosen People" were insulting and unjust to their women, heathen women enjoyed a position which their Christian, not to mention their Mohammedan, descendants might well envy. "Polygamy only began to disappear among the Jews in the fifth century B.C., and so curious was the influence of the Old Testament on the early Christian Church that several of the Fathers could not bring themselves to condemn it, and it was not officially suppressed by the Church until A.D. 1060. Luther and the Reformers allowed it even later. Yet polygamy was one of the surest signs of a contempt of woman, and it had been rejected by Greeks, Romans, and barbarians long before the Hebrews began to perceive its enormity." [244] "The part women played in old Japan," writes the founder of the first university for women in Japan, [245] "was very remarkable, especially before the arrival of Buddhism and Confucianism. Men and women were almost equal in their social position. There was then no shadow of the barbarous idea that men were everything and women nothing. Women's power even in politics was great, and history tells us that there were nine women who ascended the throne in olden times. Women in general were not inferior to men physically, mentally, or morally. They were noted for their bravery, and distinguished themselves on the field of battle. In the literary world they were not less noted for their brilliant productions. Their moral conduct was most blameless, and commanded universal respect. Their natural temperament was cheerful and optimistic, and charmed the sterner sex. Such being the attainments and characteristics of women in olden times, we can fairly believe that they were as well educated as men were, although there were not existing any institutions of instruction for women. This was the springtime of Japanese womanhood, when it blossomed undisturbed, and exerted a strong and beneficial influence on the life of old Japan. The introduction of Buddhism and Confucianism, however, began to create great changes in the position of women. And yet so powerful were women in society when these two religions came to Japan that their rapid spread in our country was due to the earnest endeavours of women." Speaking of the feudal age, he remarks: "The social environment of the age and the prevalence of Buddhism and Confucianism worked hand in hand to bring about the subjection of women." The analogy between the experiences of the Japanese lady and her European sister is a striking one. (There is an analogy, too, between the conduct of the Buddhist priests and that of the Roman Catholic priests in the Middle Ages, or even in Southern Italy to-day. "The sins of the present generation of priests," said Count Okuma in the course of an interview, "are many, and the hells about which they preach are prepared for the like of them." [246] "The majority of the priests are utterly degenerate and hopelessly ignorant." [247]) Look on these pictures, one of 2000 B.C. and the other of A.D. 1850:-- Picture I.--Two thousand years before the Christian era "woman was more free and more honoured in Egypt than she is in any country of the world to-day. She was the mistress of the house. [248]... She inherited equally with her brothers, and had full control of her property. She could go where she liked, or speak with whom she liked. She was 'juridically the equal of man,' says M. Paturet, 'having the same rights and being treated in the same fashion'; and the same authority observes that it was not as mother, but as woman, as a being equal in dignity, that she was thus honoured. There was polygamy in theory, but the first wife was generally able to exact conditions in her marriage contract which effectually prevented it. The inscriptions show, says Maspéro, that she remained to the end of her life 'the beloved of her husband and the mistress of the house.'" [249] Picture II.--In enlightened Boston, about 1850 (under the English Common Law), woman could not hold any property, either inherited or earned. A woman, either married or unmarried, could hold no office of trust or power. She was not recognised as a citizen. The status of a married woman was little better than that of a domestic servant. By the English Common Law her husband was her lord and master. He had the sole custody of her person, and of her children while minors. He could punish her "with a stick no thicker than his thumb," and she could not complain against him. He was the owner of all her real estate and of her earnings. She had no personal rights, and could hardly call her soul her own. Her husband could steal her children, rob her of her clothing, neglect to support the family: she had no legal redress. [250] Not until near the middle of the nineteenth century did that movement commence which has radically improved, and will continue to improve, the position of women. And who took the chief, and, in the initial stage, the only, part in this reform movement? Freethinkers. Who were silent when they were not active opponents? The clergy. "It was just those who most radically abandoned Christianity--Owen, Holyoake, and Mill--that were the most logical and ungrudging in their plea for woman. It was the Mary Wollstonecrafts, Harriet Martineaus, Frances Wrights, George Eliots, Helen Taylors, and Annie Besants that distinguished themselves by fearlessness and unselfishness... The clergy never discovered any injustice to woman; and only one in a thousand could see it when it was pointed out.... All honour to the memory of those clergymen who, like Kingsley and Farrar, protested against the injustice to the full extent of their idea of womanhood.... On the Continent there has been the same story of general clerical opposition and general heterodox support." [251] "Mr. Pinchwife," [252] too, has undoubtedly had a hand in the subjection of woman; but we are investigating the grounds for the contention that Christianity has laid on woman a burden of gratitude, and that, if Christianity were overthrown, women would sink into unknown depths of degradation. Do the above-stated facts bear out that contention? The question arises: Why has Christianity stood in the way of woman's cause? The answer is simple enough: Christianity, in adopting the Old Testament, adopted with it the Hebrew conception of woman. Her inferiority to man was established by her origin from his rib and the leading part she took in his fall. The Vicar of Crantock tabulates [253] the reasons why a Christian woman should cover her head in church, as follows:-- (1) Man's priority of creation. Adam was first formed, then Eve. (2) The manner of creation. The man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. (3) The purport of creation. The man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man. (4) Results in creation. The man is the image of the Glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. (5) Woman's priority in the Fall. Adam was not deceived; but the woman, being deceived, was in the transgression. (6) The marriage relation. As the Church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands. (7) The headship of man and woman. The head of every man is Christ, but the head of the woman is man. The Jews' idea of a woman was sanctioned by no less an authority than Jehovah; nor did the Christ of the Gospels give one word of clear guidance on this or any other social problem, or enter one word of explicit protest against the injustice of the Judaic treatment of women. Again, the teaching of St. Paul was based on the Old Testament, and the teaching of the Fathers was based on the Old Testament and St. Paul. A few quotations from the sayings of some of these Fathers, whose contempt of marriage became one of the great errors of the Church, may prove instructive:-- Fornication is a lapse from one marriage into many.--Clement of Alexandria. Digamists (widowers who re-marry) are saved in the name of Christ, but are by no means crowned by him.--Origen. Second marriage is "a decent sort of adultery."--Athenagoras. It was no part of God's primitive design that the race should be continued by sexual union. Marriage is the outcome of sin.--St. Gregory of Nyssa (a married bishop). Blessed is the one who leads a celibate life, and soils not the divine image within him with the filth of concupiscence. Fierce is the dragon, and cunning the asp; But woman has the malice of both. --St. Gregory of Nazianzum. Why was woman created at all?--St. Augustine. Thou art the devil's gate, the betrayer of the tree, the first deserter of the divine law! Marriage is not far removed from fornication.--Tertullian. She is more fitted for bodily work.... Remember that God took a rib out of Adam's body, not a part of his soul, to make her. She was not made to the image of God, like man.--St. Ambrose. Woman is the root of all evil.--St. Jerome. At the Council of Auxerre, in 578, the bishops forbade women, on account of their "impurity," to take the sacrament in their hands as men did. If women only knew of these sayings, would they approve of the "appeal to the first six centuries"? Bad as the position of woman was under the influence of the early Church teaching, it was, in many respects, still worse during the Middle Ages. "Life-long seclusion in the inner apartments of the house of a man she has not chosen, or internment in a nunnery--that is, either degraded or unnatural--is the choice (within limits) of the daughter of the wealthy. Life-long drudgery, with few and coarse pleasures, with a long vista of sticks and whips, and scold's bridles, and ducking stools--with, perhaps, the brutal 'ordeal' on the slightest suspicion, or the ghastly death of the witch, is the prospect of the daughter of the poor." [254] Even the Reformation altered more than it improved the condition of woman. How could it be otherwise when the Reformers were nothing if not Bibliolaters? Of the movement for the betterment of woman's position that eventually took place, not by the aid, but in spite, of the Church, I have already spoken. All the evidence we possess regarding the history of Heathendom and Christendom conclusively shows that Christianity has done much to lower, and but little to elevate, the position of women. Should I have succeeded in arousing the interest of my gentle readers, or should they wish to verify my statements, I implore them to read well-known works of competent authorities on this subject. The astounding but apparently prevalent idea, that woman is only secured by Christianity from the brutal assaults of man, will appear in the next argument we are about to consider. § 3. The Overthrow of Christianity would Endanger Society and the Nation. I have elsewhere commented on the opinion prevalent in England (and in some other, but not all other, Christian countries) that, to quote Canon Henson, "the real elements of the Christian Faith are those that have made European nations the most powerful in the world," [255] and that the overthrow of Christianity would endanger the nation. Many go still farther, and prophesy absolute chaos. People who have been imbued with the Church's teaching, and who have spent their lives in Christian surroundings, are naturally convinced that belief and morality are indissoluble partners--that Christianity is a power for good in this respect above all others. Therefore, when Professor Flint says, "It [the Christian Faith] could not be displaced without shaking society from top to bottom," [256] he expresses a very popular opinion among believers and semi-believers. Even among Agnostics there are many who, while recognising the fallacy so far as they themselves are concerned, still seem to consider that society would be insufficiently protected from criminals by its own instinct of self-preservation, and that, to maintain order among the masses, the hand of the law must, for the present, be strengthened by appeals to a supernatural sanction of conduct. Both Herbert Spencer and Matthew Arnold, for example, thought the world at large stood in peril of a moral collapse, while, as the latter puts it, "the old (theologically-derived) sanction of conduct is out of date, and the new is not yet born." "Few things can happen more disastrous," writes Herbert Spencer, "than the decay and death of a regulative system no longer fit, before another and fitter regulative system has grown up to replace it" (see Preface, dated July, 1879, to The Data of Ethics). It is for reasons such as these that so many Agnostics still lend their moral support to the Churches; for men rightly uphold what they deem essential to the common weal, whether it be Christ-worship in England or ancestor-worship in Japan. This deeply-rooted conviction regarding belief and conduct has been partially considered in the first section of this chapter, and, the subject being one of the greatest importance, I am also devoting to its consideration a portion of the concluding chapter of this book. I shall confine myself here to the warning given to us by the Church and the pious laity--that we must expect nothing less than chaos should the Resurrection, and along with it, of course, the whole fabric of Christianity, be ultimately disproved. This view has been illustrated in Mr. Guy Thorne's book, When it was Dark. The book may be seen on every bookstall, has had an extraordinary sale, [257] and has been much appreciated by many pious-minded persons (especially by those of the High Church persuasion, the book being written by a partisan of that cult). The anti-Christian propagandist is here represented as knowing that Christ is God; but, for some unexplained and exceedingly mysterious reason, utilising a huge fortune and a powerful intellect in unscrupulous endeavours to spread disbelief. He is a deceiver of mankind, a genuine Satan in human shape. He leads the life of an ascetic, so the usual grounds given for disbelief are removed. With the assistance of another man (a real villain, this time, of the lowest type), one of the greatest savants of the day, a gigantic fraud is perpetrated, and the Resurrection thereby definitely disproved. Immediately an epidemic of crime breaks out among quondam Christians, which nothing can quell. The restraints of order are paralysed, and the criminal element is rampant. The violence and viciousness of men were, please to note, specially directed against the weaker sex, who had to keep at home and bar the door. Not only Agnostics, but any who happened to differ in their views from this champion of Christianity, come in for a share of Mr. Thorne's invective. The wonder is how an author of his ability could be capable of penning such an effusion; and that it can be read and appreciated, as it undoubtedly has been by many excellent persons of his way of thinking, only shows how easily bias may cloud the intellect. It requires an effort, too, to understand how this book can appeal to one of the chief dignitaries of the Church; but there, conspicuously printed on the cover, we are treated to an extract from his sermon in praise of the book. I submit that there is not a Rationalist in the world, however militant, who would descend to forgery to promote his cause. He would not hold the pious opinion that the end justifies the means. On the contrary, the curtain has but now fallen upon a scene where a Christian Church ranged herself on the side of forgers while freethinkers like Zola and Clémenceau fought the battle of truth. According to Mr. Guy Thorne and the admirers of his book, the Christian races are innately far worse than Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics--far worse, indeed, than savages and animals--for they are only held in check from the commission of the vilest excesses by their belief in the Resurrection. Chaos and crime are rife in certain cities in Russia and Poland to-day. What is the cause? Unbelief? Is it not rather the result of the cruel laws and despicable methods of a Christian government, aided by Christian butchers, calling themselves soldiers, and by a Christian hooligan element such as it would be hard to find outside a Christian city? This chaos occurs, mind you, under a powerful Christian theocratic government; and the head of the Holy Synod, Pobiedonostseff, was, before his removal, one of the prime movers. The terrible atrocities of which the unfortunate Jews have been the victims were undoubtedly connived at by the authorities, and inhuman crimes have been perpetrated by Christians that would be impossible in humane Japan. The policy of keeping the masses steeped in the grossest superstitions of the orthodox Church is now bearing fruit, adding to the chaos and bloodshed and hindering the work of reform. It is belief, not unbelief, that has played a leading part in creating this chaos, and in stirring up man's cruellest passions. As to the safety of women (in the event of the Resurrection being discredited), where in civilised Christendom, may I ask, could a lady be left for days and nights alone in a tent or open house? She can be, in the Indian jungle or in the Australian bush. For such protection as may there be necessary (and the open house testifies how little it is required) she relies upon her heathen servants. Almost the only danger in India is from religious fanatics, and in Australia from Christian criminals. In what Christian country would it be safe to have paper windows and walls, as in Japan? My wife and I slept in strange, out-of-the-way native hotels in Japan in perfect security, though a would-be criminal had only to tear through a thin piece of paper! Belief in the Resurrection is rapidly decaying in France to-day. Are cases of assault on women any the more prevalent on that account? If belief in the Resurrection is so essential, how comes it that we have allied ourselves to a heathen nation, and made friends with another that is fast giving up this belief? How comes it that in our own Government two of the most responsible posts are now occupied by declared Agnostics? § 4. The Spread of Christianity a Proof of its Truth. "What, then," asks the Rev. Prebendary W. A. Whitworth, [258] "was the original gospel of power which overran the world with such astonishing success?" The spread of Christianity is thought by nearly all good Christians to have been marvellous. Was it? That is the question we have next to consider. In the first place, let us see what we are told on this point by recognised theologians. In his book, The Bible in the Church, we are reminded by the learned Dr. Westcott, the late Bishop of Durham, that the dispersion of the Jews exercised a great influence upon the spread of Christianity. "The pagans got the idea of monotheism, while the Jews themselves dropped the idea of a 'kingdom' and substituted a 'faith.'" He also reminds us of the broad unity of the Roman Empire, and of the dispersion of the Jews being co-extensive with its limits, and concludes that "during the lifetime of St. Paul every condition was realised for proclaiming the Gospel to the world." "Without such preparation," he says, "the spread of Christianity would be historically inconceivable, and it is a remarkable example of Divine Providence." Here, then, we have an admission of purely natural causes, and, although the believer may be able to look upon them with reverence, as Providential, he can hardly claim them to be at the same time a witness to the power of the Gospel. Also, we shall see that there were many other natural causes at work, and that among them were some which the pious would be the last to connect with a Divine Providence. Historians find that the rapidity of the spread has been much exaggerated, and that it was not until the Emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicæa in A.D. 325 that the spread commenced to emerge from insignificance. Even then the adhesion to the new Faith was for a long period of a purely nominal character, the unwilling converts remaining, to all intents, pagans after they were baptised. The spread of Christianity was for a long time confined to cosmopolitan trading towns only, the villagers remaining pagans--hence the name. (Mutatis mutandis, it is the villagers who are now the last to be touched by the spread of "paganism.") What were the "Providential" methods of conversion? The prevailing ignorance and superstition were taken advantage of by the propagators of the Gospel and frauds freely perpetrated, while "edicts of toleration removed the temporal disadvantages which had hitherto retarded the progress of Christianity." [259] After the Emperor Constantine had been converted, "the cities which signalised a forward zeal, by the voluntary destruction of their temples, were distinguished by municipal privileges, and rewarded with popular donations." [260] When these measures failed, Church and State had recourse to persecution, quite as cruel as, and on a scale that far exceeded, the persecution of the early Christians by the heathen. For instance, the Emperor Theodosius, at the suggestion of the ecclesiastics who governed his conscience, promulgated, in the space of fifteen years (A.D. 380-394), "at least fifteen severe edicts against the heretics, more especially against those who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity." [261] Buddhism, on the contrary, unlike Christianity and Mohammedanism, was promulgated without persecution or religious wars, and spread far more rapidly than Christianity. In his apologetic work, Anti-Theistic Theories, Dr. Flint refers to Buddhism thus: "The very marvellous system of thought called Buddhism, which originated in India about 500 years B.C., has spread over a greater area of the earth and gained more adherents than even Christianity, and by peaceful means--by the power of persuasion--not by the force of arms, not by persecution." Why did the Emperor Constantine embrace Christianity? Was it not mainly because he believed that it had a power to wipe away his own heinous crimes? [262] Even his old age "was disgraced by the opposite, yet reconcilable, vices of rapaciousness and prodigality." [263] Although he acknowledged the Faith, he put off his baptism till he was on his death-bed, in order that he might continue to lead a wicked life as long as possible. [264] As an instrument for spreading God's word he is even worse than that royal adulterer and murderer whom we are asked to look upon as a prototype of Christ and His prime ancestor. On all these matters of history the learned Bishop Westcott is silent, although, as examples of Divine Providence, they would appear sufficiently remarkable. Lest Gibbon's testimony be deemed untrustworthy on account of his anti-Christian bias, the following extract from a prize essay in Christian apologetics may be noted. Not only does it bear out some of the historian's statements concerning the causes of the spread of Christianity, but it discloses the significant fact that the clergy increased their power and influence by working upon the emotions of wealthy women, and that £.s.d. and its female contributors were then, as now, a sine qua non. [265]--"Nine years after the conversion of Constantine to the Christian faith he promulgated that great edict which, more than any other enactment, may be said to have lain at the foundation of clerical power during the ensuing centuries, and relieved the Christian Church from that restriction under which, in common with the Jews, they had so long laboured--the incapacity of profiting by the testamentary liberality of their wealthy proselytes. To convince us of the abundance in which the stream of wealth flowed into the newly opened channel, and of the influence obtained by the clergy, in those days as in the present, over the piety and pliability of the weaker sex, more especially at Rome, we possess not only the testimony of a Pagan historian, [266] but the less suspicious evidence of an edict published by the Emperor Valentinian [267] fifty years after that of Constantine, addressed to Damasus, Bishop of that city, and imposing a limit to the extravagant donations of females. The clergy, moreover, might look for an increase of worldly substance not only from the prosperity of their friends, but from the downfall of their enemies; for the Theodosian code contains a series of stringent enactments by the Emperor Honorius, [268] in terms of which not only the deserted temples of Paganism, but even the meeting-houses and possessions of Donatists, Manichæan, and other heretical corporations, were made over to the Catholic Church." [269] There was yet another, and possibly the chief, cause for the ultimate spread of Christianity. In the chapter on comparative mythology I have described and commented upon the various rationalistic theories concerning the origins of Christian beliefs and ceremonies. As a matter of fact, Mithraism spread just as much, or more, until Christianity obtained the necessary political power to suppress it. Not only from these anti-Christian theories, but also from the admissions of apologists concerning them, it appears that Christianity gained ground, not so much because there was something new either in its dogma or in its promise, but rather because these were so closely paralleled in many pagan cults. Let us take, for example, the spread of Christianity in Egypt. "The Egyptians who embraced Christianity found that the moral system of the old cult and that of the new religion were so similar, and the promises of resurrection and immortality in each so alike, that they transferred their allegiance from Osiris to Jesus of Nazareth without difficulty. Moreover, Isis and the child Horus were straightway identified with Mary the Virgin and her Son." [270] "The knowledge of the ancient Egyptian religion which we now possess fully justifies the assertion that the rapid growth and progress of Christianity in Egypt were due mainly to the fact that the new religion, which was preached there by St. Mark and his immediate followers, in all its essentials so closely resembled that which was the outcome of Osiris, Isis, and Horus that popular opposition was entirely disarmed." [271] We have, then, here one of the main factors in the growth of Christianity. I cannot find that Bishop Westcott recognises this as a part of the preparation in which the hand of God can be traced; but advanced apologists very largely do so now, and hence the precious theory of progressive revelation. We may now pass on to another very popular argument. § 5. The Noble Army of Martyrs. My allusions to religious persecutions may remind some of my readers of the experiences of the early Christians, and of the witness to the truth of Christianity furnished by the "noble army of martyrs"; and they may say: "Admitting that there be nothing extraordinary in the mere fact of Christianity's spread, you must allow that its power over men's minds is little, if at all, short of miraculous. Men could not have given their lives for a falsehood." This argument will not bear the slightest scrutiny. "Steadfastness under persecution says much for the sincerity, and still more for the tenacity, of the believer, but very little for the objective truth of that which he believes." [272] Supposing the noble army were a historical fact, the argument based upon it would be adequately met by pointing to the last Ghazi who ran amok in the hope of a speedy delivery from a dirty and ugly spouse on earth, and of reaping the reward of a clean and lovely houri in heaven. But the noble army is not altogether a historical fact. The truth is that martyr-making became an ecclesiastical industry. The historian Gibbon estimates that at most about two thousand Christians fell in the Diocletian persecution--which was the only general persecution--and this estimate is now commonly accepted. "Since," says Gibbon, "it cannot be doubted that the Christians were more numerous, and their enemies more exasperated, in the time of Diocletian than they had ever been in any former persecution, this probable and moderate computation may teach us to estimate the number of primitive saints and martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the important purpose of introducing Christianity into the world." [273] Compare these figures with the numbers who have suffered death in modern times for the sake of introducing a non-Christian faith. The Bab Abbas Effendi suffered martyrdom for his zeal in 1850, and between that date and now the most conservative opinion on the Babi martyrdoms puts them at ten thousand. (N.B.--No hopes of wealth and honours, no imperial edicts, have assisted the really remarkable spread of Babism.) As a matter of fact, a considerable portion of the history of man is a history of his martyrdom. "Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies of the past." [274] If religious ladies could spare the time (from the absorbing occupation of reading the very latest works of fiction or the lives of the "grandes amoureuses") to read Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man, a book none the less interesting because it treats of historical facts, they would begin to realise that martyrs are not a Christian monopoly. § 6. The Universality of the Religious Instinct. THE HYPOTHESIS STATED. The fact that a large proportion of the human race, including some of the greatest [275] in thought and action, continue, or appear to continue, to believe in God and immortality, is considered by many to furnish the best proof for the truth of the belief. The Church naturally encourages this opinion, and proceeds to strengthen it further by asserting that the religious instinct is, and always has been, universal. This assertion must now be examined, and, to avoid any misconceptions, it will be advisable in the first place to have some specimens of it before us. Canon Liddon informs us that "man is ever feeling after God," and that "the thought of God is always latent in the mind of man." "Cicero's statement that there is no nation so barbarous and wild as not to have believed in some divinity is still, notwithstanding certain apparent exceptions, true. A nation of pure Atheists has yet to be discovered." [276] Dr. Flint devotes the seventh of his Lectures on Anti-Theistic theories to the discussion of the question, "Are there tribes of Atheists?" and he comes to the conclusion that "an impartial examination of the relevant facts shows that religion is virtually universal." [277] The Bishop of London is of opinion that "man is a praying animal. He always has prayed throughout his history. It is a human instinct. This instinct of prayer points to the existence of God." [278] Dr. Warschauer affirms that the spiritual faculty--a consciousness of "the existence of spiritual realities, of a world beyond the senses"--"constitutes a universal human endowment." [279] Bishop Diggle bids us remember that "human nature is ineradicably religious." [280] THE RATIONALIST'S CONTENTION. The Rationalist asks: What grounds have we for assuming that the existence of religious belief points to the existence of a religious instinct? Is not a man's religion determined by the geographical accident of his birth? Has not his religion to be diligently instilled into him from the cradle? How, then, can it be said that man is by nature religious? How can it be said that the craving for a deity is instinctive? To this the Christian apologist may reply that, however much the precise form of the religious belief may be due to education, no belief of any kind could be engendered without a predisposition to accept it. Have we not seen, however, that primitive beliefs were the natural offspring of fear and wonder? Inability to account for phenomena, ignorance of the laws of nature, and those abnormal psychical experiences concerning which science has but now commenced to furnish natural explanations, all combined to turn primitive men into staunch supernaturalists. For the same reasons, children in years as well as children in knowledge have always been predisposed to belief in the supernatural. This predisposition (it can hardly be called an instinct) may be universal, but it does not lead necessarily to belief in a deity. For that there must be education. If it be an instinct, it is not a religious instinct, although a soil eminently suitable for the sowing of supernatural dogmas. Admitting, for the sake of argument, that the origin of religious beliefs and the process by which ancestral beliefs have been assimilated can be left out of consideration--in other words, that the ethnologist's theories of the evolution of the idea of God and the educational factor may be disregarded--the supposition that there is a universal religious instinct must be relinquished if, as the Rationalist contends, religious belief itself is not universal. Is such a contention warranted by acknowledged facts? Into this we shall now inquire. THE APOLOGIST'S VIEWS CONCERNING SUPERSTITION AND THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT. At the outset of the inquiry we at once experience a difficulty. It is not at all clear what the apologist includes under the category of religious beliefs. If it be taken as an axiom that the grossest superstition, the mere belief in the supernatural, is the germ of a religious belief, and therefore that all ignorant or superstitious persons have the religious instinct, then the proposition will be true for practically the whole of mankind in the remote past, and for a very large proportion in the present. Whether it be primeval man who frequently believed only in magic, usually in devils, and rarely in divinities, or whether it be the twentieth-century lady of fashion who wears a white elephant amulet to bring her luck at "Bridge," both are imbued with the religious instinct. The absurdity of the supposition is fully apparent if we only carry it far enough. It is by no means easy to understand where the apologist draws the line. He may not say so, but his contention really does seem to point to the absurdity that almost any crude superstition springs from a divine spark. The neo-apologist, however, will do well to reflect that the establishment of any connection between superstition and religion only plays into the hands of the Rationalist, who maintains that there is certainly the closest connection between the two. I am compelled to enter into these details, for, among the facts which I am about to bring forward in contradiction of the assertion of universality, some relate to instances of pure superstitions which might nevertheless be construed into signs of the religious instinct. If the apologist does not go quite so far as this, my task will be rendered much easier. Perhaps, as Dr. Flint is recognised as one of the most eminent of the Christian apologists, the conclusions to which he comes will represent the unspoken opinion of others. He says that, "if savage tribes have some sort of superstitious belief, it would only be in accord with modern theories regarding the evolution of the idea of God.... The presence of false religion is as good evidence of the existence of religion as the presence of true religion.... Perhaps, if we may say that religion is man's belief in a being or beings mightier than himself and inaccessible to his senses, but not indifferent to his sentiment and actions, with the feelings and practices which flow from such belief, we have a definition of the kind required, one excluding nothing which can be called religion, and including nothing which is only partially present in religion." [281] This definition would not, one may presume, include mere belief in magic, but might be taken to include a man's belief in devils. As there are many who would not agree that devil-worship and the like can have any connection with god-worship, I shall follow the ethnologist in citing examples of the absence of god-worship as evidence of the absence of the religious instinct; but I shall also give examples in which there is no appearance of worship either of god or devil. These will chiefly be drawn from present-day beliefs and customs, because now, if ever, the contention of the religionist should hold good, and also because it has been incidentally examined with reference to ancient beliefs in a previous chapter. BELIEFS OF SAVAGE MAN. Among the concluding remarks of Darwin's Descent of Man we read: "The belief in God has often been advanced as not only the greatest, but the most complete, of all the distinctions between man and the lower animals. It is, however, impossible, as we have seen, to maintain that this belief is innate or instinctive in man. On the other hand, a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal, and apparently follows from a considerable advance in the reasoning powers of man, and from a still greater advance in his faculties of imagination, curiosity, and wonder. I am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for His existence; but this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the existence of many cruel and malignant spirits, possessing only a little more power than man; for the belief in them is far more general than the belief in a beneficent Deity." [282] Again, in Huxley's essay on "The Evolution of Theology" we read: "In its simplest condition, such as may be met with among the Australian savages, theology is a mere belief in the existence, powers, and disposition (usually malignant) of ghost-like entities who may be propitiated or scared away; but no cult can properly be said to exist. And in this stage theology is wholly independent of ethics." Sir John Lubbock, now Lord Avebury, states the argument against the universality of religion in his Prehistoric Times. He asks: "How can a people who are unable to count their own fingers possibly raise their minds so far as to admit even the rudiments of religion?" And he sums up his observations on various tribes by saying: "Indeed, the first idea of God is almost always an evil spirit." [283] "The idea that the northern tribes [of America] venerated one supreme and all-powerful 'great spirit,' by whom man and the world were created, is based on erroneous interpretation; Wakanda of the Dakotas, and Manito of the Algonquins, in no wise coming under such a designation." [284] "These terms," writes Mr. W. J. McGee, "cannot justly be rendered into Spirit, much less into Great Spirit." [285] "Their religion," writes another well-known ethnologist, Mr. G. Mooney, "is zootheism, or animal-worship, with the survival of a still earlier stage, which included the worship of all tangible objects, combined with the beginnings of a higher system in which the elements and the great powers of nature are deified." [286] Zootheism, the religion that has survived, does not embrace a belief in a Mightier Being, nor does this deterioration in "religion" suit the theory of a progressive revelation. We may also note that the belief of the North American in witchcraft has led to terrible slaughter, human life being sacrificed on an enormous and frightful scale. Andrew Lang (in the third chapter of his book, Magic and Religion) instances Australian tribes, and says: "Nobody dreams of propitiating gods or spirits by prayer [compare Bishop Ingram's statement that man is a praying animal!] while magic is universally practised." There is, as Mr. Lang observes, "no room for a God, nor for an idea of a future life, except the life of successive re-incarnations." "I do not think," writes [287] Professor Baldwin Spencer, "that there is really any direct evidence of any Australian native belief in a 'Supreme Being' in our sense of the term." Similarly among the Fuegians (another of the lowest races of mankind) "almost every old man is a magician, who is supposed to have the power of life and death, and to be able to control the weather. But the members of the French scientific expedition to Cape Horn could detect nothing worthy of the name of religion among these savages." [288] Here, then, even if we adopt Dr. Flint's broad definition, we surely have examples of the absence of the religious instinct. There is a fundamental distinction, and even opposition of principle, between magic and religion, as we shall see by a study of the opinions of those best qualified to offer them. MAGIC AND RELIGION. "Wherever sympathetic magic occurs," says Dr. Frazer, "in its pure unadulterated form, it assumes that in nature one event follows another necessarily and invariably without the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency" [289] (the italics are mine). "The magician supplicates no higher power; he sues the favour of no fickle and wayward being; he abases himself before no awful deity." [290] "I have," says Dr. Frazer, [291] "come to agree with Sir A. C. Lyall and Mr. F. B. Jevons in recognising a fundamental distinction, and even opposition, of principle between magic and religion." This opinion must be shared by every unbiassed mind, and it is curious, and not without importance, to observe, with Dr. Frazer, that the "fundamental conception" of sympathetic magic "is identical with that of modern science." [292] "Underlying the whole system is a faith--implicit, but real and firm--in the order and uniformity of nature." [293] The belief in the efficacy of magic, it should be remembered, is exceedingly widespread, even at the present time. According to Mr. Haddon [294] (citing Dr. Jevons), "four-fifths of mankind, probably, believe in sympathetic magic." Dr. Frazer, too, reminds us that among the ignorant and superstitious classes of modern Europe it is very much what it was thousands of years ago in Egypt and India, and what it now is among the lowest savages surviving in the remotest corners of the world. "If the test of truth," exclaims Dr. Frazer, "lay in a show of hands or a counting of heads, the system of magic might appeal, with far more reason than the Catholic Church, to the proud motto, 'Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus,' as the sure and certain credential of its own infallibility." [295] Not only is there an opposition of principle between magic and religion, not only is belief in the former a universal faith, a truly catholic creed, but it is now generally recognised by ethnologists that "in the evolution of thought, magic, as representing a lower intellectual stratum, has [as 'has been plainly suggested, if not definitely formulated, by Professor H. Oldenberg in his able book, Die Religion des Veda'] probably everywhere preceded religion." [296] The popular notion that the religious instinct is universal is perhaps natural enough, but it is not borne out by these significant facts and conclusions. Indeed, it would be far more correct to say that an instinct, the very antithesis of what the Church would mean by the religious instinct, was at one time, and even now is, well-nigh universal. RELIGION IN MODERN CHINA. So far we have seen that the opponents of the "Universal" theory presume in their argument that devil-worship has no relation to true god-worship, and we may note that it never even entered the heads of such men as Darwin and Lubbock that it would ever be held that these are essentially identical. Nor is this peculiar opinion held by clerics who have studied devil-worship on the spot. Thus the Rev. Arthur H. Smith, D.D., twenty-two years a missionary in China, describes [297] the fear of goblins and devils which figures so largely in Taoism; but, far from suggesting the presence of the religious instinct, he laments its total absence. Among his many pertinent observations I commend the following to the serious consideration of those who believe in a universal religious instinct and in a progressive revelation: "If the Chinese ever did recognise the true God, that knowledge has certainly been most effectually lost, like an inscription on an ancient coin now covered with the accumulated rust of millenniums. [298]... Sir Thomas Wade, whose long familiarity with China and the Chinese might be supposed to entitle him to speak with authority on so plain a question as whether the Chinese have or have not a religion, has recently published his opinion as follows: 'If religion is held to mean more than mere ethics, I deny that the Chinese have a religion.'" [299] Speaking of Chinese nature-worship, Dr. Smith says: "No prayer is uttered.... What is it that at such times the people worship? Sometimes they affirm that the object of worship is heaven and earth. Sometimes they say that it is heaven, and again they call it 'the old man of the sky.' The latter term often leads to an impression that the Chinese do have a real perception of a personal Deity. But when it is ascertained that this supposed person is frequently matched by another called 'grandmother earth,' the value of the inference is open to serious question." [300] As to there being no such thing as an atheistic people, are we to take no account of the cultured classes? Mark the following: "The polytheism and pantheism of the lower classes of Chinese are matched in the upper classes by what appears to be pure atheism.... There never was on this earth a body of educated and cultured men so thoroughly agnostic and atheistic as the mass of Confucian scholars. [301]... Its absolute indifference to the profoundest spiritual truths in the nature of man is the most melancholy characteristic of the Chinese mind--its ready acceptance of a body without a soul, of a soul without a spirit, of a spirit without life, of a cosmos without a cause, a universe without a God." [302] Alluding to the mixture of Confucianism with Taoism and Buddhism, he remarks: "Any kind of a divinity which seems adapted to exert a favourable influence in any given direction will be patronised, just as a man who happens to need a new umbrella goes to some shop where they keep such goods for sale. To inquire into the antecedents of the divinity who is thus worshipped no more occurs to a Chinese than it would occur to an Englishman who wanted the umbrella to satisfy himself as to the origin of umbrellas, and when they first came into general use.... The Chinaman has carried 'intellectual hospitality' to the point of logical suicide, but he does not know it, and cannot be made to understand it when he is told." [303] Three questions suggest themselves. If the pious lady who contributes towards mission work in China only knew of this, would she be pleased? [304] Are there not many English people strangely like the Chinese in an umbrella-patronage of Christianity? Finally, does not the modern apologist (with his theory of Progressive Revelation and his idea that Christianity has yet much to learn from, and will be improved by contact with, the faiths of the East) carry "intellectual hospitality" to the point of logical suicide? The advice of Confucius was to reverence the gods as if they existed, [305] but in any case to keep them at a distance, and have as little to do with them as possible; and his advice has been followed. Dr. Smith tells us that the popular instinct has taken at its true value the uncertainty conveyed in the words "as if," and has embodied them in current sayings which accurately express the state of mind of the mass of the people. Thus:-- Call on the gods as if they came; But, if you don't, it's all the same. And again:-- Worship the gods as if the gods were there; But, if you worship not, the gods don't care. [306] The absence of the instinct of reverence may be judged by the following episode related by Dr. Smith: "A District Magistrate tried a case which involved a priest, and, by implication, the Buddha which was the occupant of the temple. This god was summoned to appear before the magistrate and told to kneel, which he failed to do, whereupon the magistrate ordered him to be given five hundred blows, by which time the god was reduced to a heap of dust, and judgment was pronounced against him by default." [307] (Of their manner of treating devils I had, not long ago, a personal experience. Standing on the quay at Shanghai, I was deafened by the bang, bang, bang of ear-splitting bombs exploded by a crowd of Chinamen. However crude their method, their intentions were excellent. They wished to scare away the devils who might have elected to accompany their friends on the voyage to England.) Finally, as a commentary on the oft-repeated assertion that the great difference between the sacred books of the East and of the Bible is the low plane of morality in the former, the following words quoted by Dr. Smith are of considerable interest: "No people," says Mr. Meadows, "whether of ancient or modern times, has possessed a sacred literature so completely exempt as the Chinese from licentious descriptions, and from every offensive expression. There is not a single sentence in the whole of the Sacred Books and their annotations that may not be read aloud in any family circle in England." [308] Can this be said of our Bible? APOSTATES IN CHRISTENDOM. If I have given the religious attitude of the modern Chinese the largest share of attention, it must be remembered that they far outnumber any other nation in the world. Also I think the fallacies regarding the religious instinct will perhaps stand out more clearly if we consider the present twentieth century, instead of millenniums B.C. I have said nothing as yet of the apostates in Christendom--the Darwins, the Huxleys, and the Spencers--who declare that they are without the religious instinct. We must consider them ruled out of court, for are we not told [309] that "there are men with faculties of insight amounting to genius in other regions of mental activity who have never developed the spiritual faculty, and are thus debarred the privileges of spiritual geniuses--geniuses in the region in which man holds communion with God"? Lately much capital has been made out of the following statement appearing in Darwin's Autobiography: "Up to the age of thirty or beyond it, poetry such as Milton, Byron, Wordsworth, etc., gave me great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. I have lost my taste for pictures and music. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts." This loss of certain tastes indicated--so the pulpit would have the pew suppose--that that portion of Darwin's mind which was competent to understand spiritual things had atrophied. Does God reveal Himself, then, only or especially to the æsthetic? The artist--and here I include the poet, painter, sculptor, musician, artistic novelist, and also the man who has created nothing, but who has the artistic temperament--will, if he has a religion, have one of a sort harmonising with his artist soul. It must be a religion which allows scope for the cultivation of the beautiful, without being necessarily too closely associated with a rigid code of ethics. Is the æsthetic mind always perfectly balanced? How does it compare on an average with that of the moral philosopher guiding his life by the light of reason and living up to the standard of his professions? Darwin has assisted in establishing a great truth concerning the development of the world. He has been, according to the Christian evolutionist, the chosen instrument for a fresh revelation of God's majesty. Yet, in spiritual endowments, every pious Christian, however ignorant and unintellectual, ranks before him! Strange, passing strange. The very qualifications necessary for accomplishing God's purpose debarred Darwin from fellowship with Him! For such an argument to be worth a moment's consideration it should at least apply generally. This it most distinctly does not. Preachers, who find Darwin's candid remark about himself a convenient one upon which to base a homily, have neglected to acquaint themselves with the statements of other agnostic scientists--of Huxley, for instance. "I have yet," he declared, "to meet with any form of art in which it has not been possible for me to take as acute a pleasure as, I believe, it is possible for men to take." [310] RELIGION IN MODERN JAPAN. At the risk of increasing the citation of examples ad nauseam, I cannot omit a passing reference to the Japanese. I shall reserve for the last chapter my remarks on the "phenomenon" of their non-theological moral training, and confine myself to the present condition of their faith as given by a clergyman, the Rev. Herbert Moore, who was for some years a missionary in Japan. Mr. Moore tells us: "We are all Shintoists to a certain extent, for Shinto is the non-Christian version of the Communion of Saints. And we recognise the truth that Buddhism contains when we read Ecclesiastes in church.... But these old faiths are fast perishing from the hearts of the Japanese, leaving behind them blank godlessness, indifference, and materialism.... Out of 942 students in Tokyo who recently gave an account of their religious position, 555 declared themselves unbelievers in any religion, 68 were Christians, 18 Shintoists, and most of the remaining 319 Buddhists." [311] Mr. Moore, in chapter xiv. of his book, quotes a summary of the situation by the Japan Times, which all who are interested in the question whether Japan is likely to adopt Christianity would do well to read. As bearing on the particular point we are now discussing, the following may be noted: "We cannot believe that it [Christianity] will ever succeed in getting a firm hold upon the minds of the educated classes. Men of these classes have for centuries lived and died under a system of morality which inculcates virtue for virtue's sake, and entirely dispenses with supernatural sanctions of any sort.... We cannot agree with those who, like Mr. Toyama and Mr. Fukuzawa, recommend it to their countrymen, while they themselves refuse to believe in it, except as a collection of useful superstitions." [312] How many Toyamas and Fukuzawas are there not in modern Christendom? CLASSICAL HISTORY. It matters not where you direct your searchlight, you cannot fail to discover instance upon instance confuting the pious assertion of a universal religious instinct. Take the case of the great Roman poet and philosopher, Lucretius, whose unique poem, De Rerum Natura, has acquired a new interest in the present day. He set before himself the task of finally crushing that fear of the gods, and that fear of death resulting from it, which he regarded as the source of all human ills. He denied the two bases of all religion (as we understand it)--the doctrines of a supernatural Governor of the world, and of a future life. I will not continue to multiply examples. It is surely clear that the religious instinct is not universal. NOTE ON HUMAN SENTIMENT AS TO A FUTURE LIFE. What is the Rationalistic explanation of that essence of the "religious instinct," belief in an after life? It may, I think, be summed up briefly in some such words as these: "The conception of non-existence is an effort beyond the power of human intellect. As long as man thinks, his ego is fully conscious of its existence, and not able to grasp the idea of non-existence. Thus religion is a functional weakness." [313] The instinct of self-preservation does the rest; it transforms the speculation into an ardent desire. "The theory of a continued existence after death is nothing more than a certain manifestation of the impulse for self-preservation, as the instinct for self-preservation itself is nothing more than the form under which our vital energies, that have their seat in every cell of our organism, manifest themselves to our consciousness." [314] Is not this a perfectly natural explanation of the craving for immortality? This craving, as we have seen, is not universal; while, in Buddhism, it is assumed that man ought to strive for extinction. Even among Western nations the craving is not so common as it is generally supposed to be, and as the Church confidently takes for granted. In support of this conclusion, I should mention that my readers will find a startling confirmation in an article on "Human Sentiment with regard to a Future Life," which appears in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research for October, 1904. The article is written by a well-known psychologist, Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, Fellow and tutor of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and author of various well-known works on the mind (Riddles of the Sphinx, 1891; Humanism, 1903, etc.). He reviews the results of a laborious inquiry by the American branch of the S. P. R., and comes to the conclusion that "the returns show a hitherto hardly suspected weakness of the desire for knowledge of a future life," [315] and that, "amid all the various phenomena of human psychology, distress due to uncertainty about one's fate after death seems to be one of the rarest." [316] Mr. Schiller, the apostle of Professor W. James in this country, shows that he himself possesses the craving for an after life in no ordinary degree, and this adds all the more force to his statement that the instinct is in nowise universal. I, too, once had a craving so intense that hell itself seemed less awful than total annihilation. To those who have built up high hopes their destruction must come as a terrible shock--a shock eventually relieved by a feeling of resignation to the inevitable. What we, as anxious parents, have to ask ourselves is: Do we not agree with St. Paul when he says, "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain"; and are we not aware that, with the advance of knowledge, the present widespread disbelief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ will become more and more general? Even now how many disbelieve or preserve an agnosticism regarding the chief dogmas of the Christian creed? How many are sceptical concerning the continuance of consciousness after death? Does either science or common sense support a belief in the survival of personality? Are we right, then, in permitting our children's minds to be imbued with a "sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life"? Is it a kind act to expose our children to the pain of a rude awakening by instilling hopes that are destined to be ultimately shattered? Is it a wise act to allow their morality to be based upon foundations that are doomed to destruction? It is not as if we were forced into telling fairy stories because we shrink from negative teaching. It is not as if there were no natural incentives to right conduct, no positive teaching possible, without an admixture of theological speculations. Non-theological moral instruction is not only possible, but is urgently wanted and will be extremely beneficial. This will appear more fully in the following chapter. Chapter VIII. CONCLUSION § 1. A Summary. The hostile evidence appears to be overwhelming. Christianity cannot be true. Provided that we see things as they really are, and not as we wish them to be, we cannot but come to this conclusion. Let me recall to the reader's mind the more salient points. Chapter I.: The Situation.--All over Christendom a great conflict has commenced between naturalists and supernaturalists. The real attitude of the laity, and especially of the cultured portion of it, is far more sceptical than the clergy imagine, or, at any rate, are prepared to admit. They do not realise that agnostics and semi-believers have, not deliberately perhaps, but none the less really, joined in a conspiracy of silence, either on account of their conviction of the need for Christianity as a restraint during the prevalence of ignorance, or on account of their regard for public and private opinion and vested interests, or last but not least, on account of sheer indifference. To put it frankly, the Churches have for their chief ally nowadays the trinity of ignorance, insincerity, and indifference. Not only is this alliance one which they ought to be the first to repudiate, but it cannot be depended upon in the near future. Though a mind be built, as it were, in water-tight compartments, a flood of truth that is strong enough will burst them open. Christianity and science are not reconciled. The character of the present wave of scepticism differs from that of all others in the history of Christianity or of mankind, in that it has the support of modern knowledge. It has all the appearance of a wave that will increase in strength, and finally destroy all the present faiths of the world. Plenty of "cheap" agnosticism, of a priori "infidelity," is still to be met with, and of this, as Professor Huxley once remarked, a man of the calibre of Butler, of the "Analogy," can easily make short work; but the scepticism of the modern scientist is of another kind. It arises from a mastery of the laws of Nature. The Christian apologies to meet this scepticism are unsatisfactory to the last degree. Often they are based on premises the truth of which is open to the gravest doubt, or they betray ignorance of established facts. They are also conflicting, so that the arguments of the advanced and the arguments of the conservative are mutually destructive, the latter frequently bearing out the contentions of the rationalist regarding the former. For these reasons they are totally unconvincing. Meanwhile the main issue of the conflict is confused and delayed by various side issues, which have nothing really to do with the question of Christianity's truth. There is further delay through the currency of a number of popular fallacies. Chapter II.: Miracles.--Belief in miracles is necessary if Christianity be true. The various attempts to explain miracles are evasions, not solutions of a difficulty, and are as specious as they are conflicting. Few thinkers could bring themselves to agree with Canon Mason that miracles are no longer needed because "the Holy Spirit, with His eternal freshness of life, does not cramp Himself by obsolete and antiquated methods of action." [317] The fundamental miracles are not historical facts. The evidence for all miracles is totally inadequate. No miracle has ever occurred. Chapter III.: Modern Bible Criticism.--All non-Christian and some Christian theologians accept the conclusions of the Higher Criticism in their entirety, while many learned divines accept much that is destructive of beliefs that have been held for nearly two millenniums. The critics show that the Bible is not historically true, and explain that "we must turn from external details to the great spiritual truths which underlie them." As observed by the Dean of Canterbury, [318] "they only say that they are not historical; what they mean is that they are not true." The strictly orthodox and the rationalist are at one in agreeing that historic truth is essential to Christianity; that Christianity claims to be built not on ideas, but on facts; and that the far-fetched explanations of the advanced school cannot be accepted. The rationalist, however, finds himself forced to admit the validity of the destructive criticisms, and also finds further grounds for unbelief in the silence of historians, in the manner in which the alleged revelation was transmitted, and in those sober facts which so completely impugn the divinity of Jesus. Chapter IV.: Comparative Mythology.--The similarity of beliefs, customs, and teachings in ancient religions with those in the Christian religion are as numerous as they are remarkable. These parallels deprive Christianity of any claim to originality, and furnish an explanation of its origin which completely destroys our belief in its truth. The theory of a progressive revelation is the outcome of dire necessity, for the survival of Christianity depends upon its acceptance. This theory is for many and cogent reasons quite untenable. It is not, and cannot be, accepted by the strictly orthodox. The latter endeavour, therefore, to disprove the closeness of the parallels, or, failing this, to prove that they are Christian accretions. Enlightened divines, on the other hand, acknowledge the parallels, and rely upon the theory of progressive revelation to explain them. Chapter V.: Evolution.--For the benefit of those who may be ill-informed on the subject, the theory of evolution is explained, and convincing proofs of our animal origin are submitted. The theory is generally accepted by the cultured, though much ignorance and prejudice concerning it still prevail. The evolutionary processes are completely at variance with the Bible and with our ideas of God. The Churches as a body do not accept evolution willingly, and are chary in acknowledging its truth in their public utterances. Many of their most distinguished members are, however, evolutionists, and these profess that evolution is helpful to belief. Their arguments are singularly unconvincing. The doctrine of the Fall is untenable. Chapter VI.: Theistic Proofs.--Many, honestly deeming themselves to be Christians, are in reality either deists or non-Christian theists. The recognised arguments for Theism are the evidences of a First Cause, of design and directivity, and of benevolence. Not one of these is accepted by more than a very small minority of scientific men. The evidence of design and directivity is more apparent than real, while, with regard to benevolence, it would be easier to demonstrate the very reverse. The evidence from religious experience is another argument, which has recently been submitted to the cultured, as a final proof of the existence of the spiritual world. This argument is shown not only to be full of absurdities, but indirectly to furnish natural explanations for much that has hitherto puzzled mankind, and led to belief in the supernatural. Chapter VII.: Popular Arguments.--Finally, there are certain popular arguments which help to confirm the believer, and to determine the friendly attitude of the average unbeliever. Broadly speaking, they are all comprised under two main assertions--Christianity's power for good, and the universality of the religious instinct. So long as we confine ourselves to a shallow and biassed examination, the flaws in these assumptions will pass unnoticed; but when we submit them to a closer examination, with open minds, we find that they cannot be substantiated by the facts of either ancient or modern history. I may be permitted to add that I attach the greatest importance to the object-lesson now presented to us by Russia and Japan. Not only have we here an excellent illustration of the fallacies concerning the power of Christianity and the connection between conduct and belief, but this illustration has been given to the whole world. Among the millions who have watched events, thousands upon thousands must have some inkling of the place that religion holds in the minds of these two peoples, and, therefore, must have found much that will cause them to modify their opinions concerning these popular arguments. I cannot imagine any other conjunction of circumstances which could have resulted in such a broadcast sowing of the seeds of scepticism. The Main Conclusion.--It is customary in Christian apologetics to palliate the inadequacy of any one particular argument or set of arguments for belief by reminding us that we must take into consideration the combined weight of all the other (equally inadequate) arguments. The apologist of unbelief has no need to ask this of his readers. On the contrary, he is able to point out a number of arguments, each of which is, of itself, fully sufficient to warrant their joining the ranks of the unbelievers. For instance, he can point to any one of the following as fairly conclusive evidence:--The dismal failure [319] of Christianity after nearly two thousand years' trial; the apparent impossibility of and complete want of evidence for the miracles on which Christianity is founded; the destructive criticism of the Bible, which cannot be gainsaid; the intensely grave suspicions thrown upon the originality of Christianity by the revelations of comparative mythology; the various dilemmas arising from the accepted doctrine of evolution; the inadequacy and conflicting character of the so-called Theistic proofs (proofs of a personal Deity); and, finally, the fallacies in arguments hitherto so popular and faith-producing. We cannot get away from facts. Modern knowledge forces us to admit that the Christian Faith cannot be true. Having arrived at this main conclusion, the unbeliever is at once confronted with many burning questions. I shall endeavour to outline the answers to those that seem the more pressing; but the subject is a large one, and cannot be adequately treated in a few short paragraphs. The main difficulty is, of course, the morality problem, and, if that admits of a favourable solution, we shall be in a better position to consider the next question: Should the unbeliever keep his unbelief to himself, or should he speak out? § 2. Why Lead a Moral Life? PRELIMINARY REMARKS. Let me say at once that if, after the elimination of all untruths from Christianity, we could build a belief in God and immortality on the residue, we should then have a far more powerful incentive to right conduct than anything that I am about to urge. I fully admit that to tell the ordinary mortal brought up in the Christian faith to do right for right's sake will often be futile, inspiring though the sentiment may be for some few of us. I admit also the fact that morality always tends to the well-being of the individual and the race. It is the one and only sound argument for the working of any ethical purpose in nature, and, if we can feel that in leading the moral life we are helping to carry out some high purpose in which we are personally concerned, such a belief will certainly be of great ethical value. In the following argument, however, I hope to show that, even without a religious incentive, we have all-sufficient reasons for leading the moral life. At present our morality is bound up with a belief which is false, and which people are beginning to feel and know to be false. Therefore it is more than ever necessary that we should learn more of those reasons for morality which do not depend upon this or that belief. THE NECESSITY FOR MORALITY. The man who does not realise that any such cogent reasons exist will argue: "I quite understand that the welfare of society depends upon the moral conduct of its members; but why should I care for the good of society? There are many immoral things which I can do without being found out--without any harm coming to me, directly or indirectly. Neither do I believe in the familiar adage, 'Follow nature, and you cannot go wrong.' Civilisation is continually wrestling with nature; we go against nature a thousand times a day. Why should I not follow nature just so far as I can get out of my nerves a maximum of pleasure at the expense of a minimum of pain? Tell me, then, you who do not believe in hell or heaven, you who think we can live under a system of morality which entirely dispenses with supernatural sanctions, why should I lead a moral life?" To this question I would reply by another: "Have you no self-respect, the commonest and most universal incentive to right conduct, and one which necessarily includes respect for others? Even if your body had health, would your mind have peace without morality?" The essence of happiness is a contented mind. Bodily ailments and other misfortunes, not of your own making, may often mar your efforts to obtain this desirable frame of mind; but the nearest approach to it that is possible will be gained by leading the moral life. Righteousness contributes usually to success and invariably to happiness, because it is in harmony with the needs and laws of health and social life. Note, please, that I say "contributes." We are not speaking now of circumstances beyond man's control--the calamities and catastrophes, daily and hourly occurring, in accordance with nature's inexorable laws, which would not be affected either way by man's conduct. Also, as there are conditions under which the body may not be affected by immorality discreetly pursued, it will be better to confine our attention to that which is always affected--the mind. This will be recognised more clearly when we grasp the fact that the true origin of the guide to conduct lies in the instincts inherited from our animal ancestors. [320] Man is a social animal, and in his relations with his fellow-men his moral instinct is largely a development of the social instinct. To secure the happiness of the individual as well as of the community, this instinct demands satisfaction. There is nothing which depresses the mind of man or beast more than a thwarted instinct. Life, as Aristotle has well said, is energy which each individual exercises on those subjects in which he most delights. Man's proper and natural pleasures must consist in the operations by which his work is done and his task accomplished. But various circumstances will often prevent a man or woman from exercising his or her special aptitudes. Thus a natural instinct is disappointed, and complete happiness is out of the question. In the case of the social instinct, its satisfaction, so far as possible, is a supreme necessity, if there is to be any approach to contentment of mind. To attain it there is only one course open--the moral life. Should the individual choose the immoral life, and should he even succeed in following it without suffering social ostracism, he will certainly injure not only the happiness of the community, but also his own chances of such real and permanent happiness as this world might otherwise have afforded him. USELESSNESS OF VAGUE THREATS. But, it may be objected, the average man will not be deterred from wrong-doing by the fear of vague consequences; he is only concerned to snatch the immediate pleasure (or what seems to him to be a pleasure), to satisfy a momentary lust, to secure the gratification of his senses on the "bird-in-the-hand" principle. That is all very true, of course, and incidentally it accounts for the failure of Christianity or any other belief that relies for its ethical effect on a system of vague threats and promises. But once get rid of the nebulosity, and all is changed--so long, that is, as the brain is healthy, and the supremacy of reason acknowledged. Emotions of hate, cupidity, sensuality, and the like, are always liable, as are all other emotions, to cloud the reason--to derange the brain temporarily; how much more so when there is no clear perception of disagreeable consequences? No man in his senses will act with entire disregard of consequences; it is only when they are not sufficiently clear that they are disregarded. It is absurd to suppose that the ordinary man is such an unthinking animal that he never studies ultimate consequences. The most selfish men and women--and the religious world is not without its fair share of them--think of the morrow. No one more so. It is the exceptional individual of the happy-go-lucky sort, with no enemy but himself, on whom it is difficult to impress the need of thinking ahead. THE NEED FOR AN EARLY EDUCATION IN ETHICAL PRINCIPLES. My contention, then, is that a feeling of certainty regarding ultimate consequences is, above all others, the most powerful factor in influencing conduct. This certainty will be attained through, and only through, the medium of education. Knowing this, it is the duty of parents and teachers to be continually implanting in the minds of the young the objects of right-doing and the consequences of wrong-doing, wholly apart from questions of belief, not only because such teaching enshrines a great truth, but because this truth is liable to be lost sight of in the mists of theological dogmas and metaphysical theories. Children, it is true, adopt moral principles out of regard for social and parental authority, and not as the result of reasoned conviction, so that at first the scientific reasons for right conduct will doubtless be to some extent unappreciated. But, meanwhile, a habit of mind will be forming, and, as the new teaching will appeal to the common sense of the growing mind, and not to its credulity, a reasoned conviction will shortly follow. Conduct developed in this manner, free from theological speculations, is based on a firm foundation, which no later experiences in life will be able to upset. It is not nebulous. It is not susceptible of change through an alteration in religious views. It is true. The future generation, so brought up, will regard the consequences of immorality with complete certitude, and will do so without having to extricate themselves, as the present generation must, from objectionable habits of thought and conduct engendered by erroneous teaching. THE OBJECT-LESSON FURNISHED BY THE JAPANESE. This is no abstract theory. We have a concrete and magnificent example before us in a nation whose character is formed entirely by non-theological instruction. I refer, of course, to the Japanese. There are no people more refined, courteous, gentle, amiable, and innately æsthetic than these Latins of the Orient; no people more brave, hardy, and self-controlled; none more cleanly and healthy in body and happy in mind. The Japanese army, by its perfection of transport, commissariat, and equipment, its surgical and sanitary work, its discipline and dash, its passionate patriotism and its humanity to the conquered, surpasses the armies of the Christian nations who send their missionaries to Japan. With regard to sexual morality, "it must be remembered," as Professor Inazo Nitobe remarks, "that, whatever charges may be made against the Japanese people, the same charge can be, and is, actually made against every country, England not excluded, by travellers, since it is usually the worst, the lax, side of life to which a foreigner is first introduced." [321] Personally, I should say that the charge could be met by pointing to the acknowledged virtues and physical condition of the Japanese, and asking, "Can these be the result of vicious habits?" There are certain significant circumstances in connection with the present moral condition in Japan which we must not omit to take into consideration. "Untruthfulness, dishonesty, and brutal crime," says Lafcadio Hearn, speaking of Old Japan, "were rarer then than now, as official statistics show; the percentage of crime having been for some years steadily on the increase--which proves, among other things, that the struggle for existence has been intensified. The virtue of Japanese wives was generally in all ages above suspicion." [322] "If there has been a serious relapse among us," says another writer, "it has been the result of the shock occasioned by our contact with the new civilisation, and fortunately not the consequence of the abandoning of a belief in future punishment by an offended God." [323] (What food for thought--falling off in morality attributed to over-population and contact with a Christian civilisation!) How do the Japanese hope to solve this new problem? By Christianity? Not at all. "Men are beginning to see," continues the same writer, "that in the domain of morality the excellent precepts and propositions by which their fathers were guided under the old régime, but which have since fallen into disrepute, are fundamentally correct, and that, with slight adaptations in the light of the new civilisation, the old code of morality will serve their purpose under the altered circumstances of the new era." Only the charge of lack of commercial morality has any foundation in fact, and, with regard to this, here is the true explanation, given, not by a Japanese apologist, but by a Christian missionary: "The Japanese are often charged, and with good reason, with a lack of commercial morality. In days when the military virtues reigned supreme, the handling of trade was deemed an employment which no gentleman would take up; hence the commerce of the country is largely in the hands of men who do not represent her best traditions. Again, certain restrictions of mercy were always granted in the undertaking of a contract, whereas foreigners naturally regard a contract as binding unconditionally. But, in both respects, methods of trade are improving, and in the excellent commercial schools it is taught that 'Honesty is the best policy.' Among members of the humblest ranks of life the most striking instances of honesty will be met with; a jinrikisha man will run after you with the parcel you have forgotten, a shopkeeper will walk to your house to bring you a few cents he accidentally overcharged you." [324] As to their purely secular education and the severance of belief from conduct, Baron Suyematsu remarks that, "to the outsiders who have not grown up in an atmosphere of this kind, it may appear somewhat difficult to comprehend how boys and girls could be thoroughly imbued with moral sentiments without connecting them in some way with religion; but when these are taught with thoroughness, basing their systematic exposition on the duties of human beings towards one another and to the State, and on the noble tradition of their [the children's] own community and the characteristic virtues of their forefathers in which they ought to rejoice, and when appeals are made to the honour and pride which one should feel and value, and, above all, to the conscience of individuals, one's thoughts appear to become imbued with the lessons conveyed, and moral notions thus taught seem to become, per se, a kind of undefined, but nevertheless potent and serviceable, religion." [325] Again, Baron Suyematsu tells us elsewhere that "the educated classes consider that he who does what is good for good's sake, and not for a fear of anything exterior, is the most courageous man, and to be courageous is the most important feature of Bushido. The probability is that, were a Japanese gentleman a devout adherent of any particular form of religion, he would rather conceal it than make a display of it." [326] The words of other than Japanese writers may not be without some interest. A Christian friend of mine, once an English professor in a Japanese college, wrote to me lately: "I must admit that the Japanese do seem to have attained without Christianity a higher status than most Christian nations. Indeed, they appear to attain personal and national excellence without religion at all." Again, another Englishman, who has spent a lifetime and occupies a high position in Japan, remarks (in the course of a letter replying to my queries): "There is not the remotest chance of Christianity becoming the religion of the State. For the last two centuries and a half the educated class have adopted the Agnostic ethical system of Confucius, which, once understood and embraced, can never be dislodged by the Christian or any other variety of theologian." Yet Dr. Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, closes his book, The Witness of the Influence of Christ, with the familiar assertion of the inseparability of religion and ethics. It is an assertion which, now more than ever, the Churches are reiterating. Why? Is it not because they find that many are beginning to doubt its truth? I fear reiteration will not make it any truer. Only facts will appeal to the man who looks below the surface, and these all tend the other way. In the Hibbert Journal for October, 1905, there is an article contributed by the editor which deserves the earnest attention of all thoughtful men. It is entitled "Moral Supremacy of Christendom." The following quotations from it will suffice to show the far-reaching importance of the questions it raises: "Christendom, as a whole, long accustomed to treat all pagan races as morally inferior to herself, now stands confronted by a non-Christian civilisation, of vast power and splendid promise, whose claim to moral equality, at least, cannot be disregarded, except by those who are morally blind.... The hold of Christianity upon the peoples of the Western world is rooted in the conviction that this is the religion which produces the best men. To a greater degree than is commonly recognised, each Church or sect of Christendom thus derives its confidence from the final court of ethical appeal. Whatever ground be alleged for a given doctrine, whether of Scripture, authority, or reason, the argument would instantly lose its force if it were to appear that the ethical result of denying the doctrine was superior to that which followed its acceptance." CRIMINALITY. To return to the arguments of rational morality. A man may say: "I don't care a bit about this social instinct you tell me of; I don't know that I possess it. It is no use your prating to me about my happiness of mind, and the necessity of my being in harmony with my surroundings. I prefer to gratify the instinct--the passion--that I do feel, regardless of the consequences to others. Of course, I shouldn't like everybody else to do the same. That is the beauty of my scheme, and I am not going to miss my opportunity in the short space of existence you tell me is all that lies before me. If it pleases me to make a beast of myself, I shall do so." All I can say is that a man who really means that this is what he would do, if not deterred by belief, is an unfortunate, with criminal tendencies--is, in fact, of unsound mind. His reasoning, too, is unsound. He must expect others to follow his example, as his argument is that the whole world would become immoral and lawless without belief. He would suffer, therefore, with the rest, and then would be the first, if sane, to co-operate with his fellow-sufferers in putting down lawlessness. The most savage tribe looks after its own interests according to its lights. A man who disregards the interest of all but himself becomes an Ishmael, an outlaw, a criminal; and, in the approaching Rationalistic age, he will be specially "taken care of," and treated as any other insane person. What are the causes of criminality? The Devil--man's sinful nature--the Religionist will reply. What does Science reply? Dr. McEwen, of Glasgow, relates in the Lancet how a labourer, after falling on his head from a scaffolding, developed immoral tendencies. A tumour had formed on his brain. This was successfully removed by trepanning, and the immoral tendencies disappeared. Again, Dr. Lydston tells us that Flesch examined the brains of fifty criminals, and found imperfections in all. "Vice and crime," says Dr. Lydston, "will one day be shown more definitely than ever to be a matter to be dealt with by medical science rather than by law." [327] When brain defects (whether inherited or caused by environment) affecting the moral faculties, are universally recognised as the real source of criminal tendencies; when disease of the brain is no longer regarded as a disease of the soul--then, and not till then, will criminality materially diminish. Science will triumphantly succeed where Religion has dismally failed. The sooner, therefore, criminality is looked upon as a disease of the brain, and dealt with accordingly, the better it will be for the human race. A day will surely come when, as Mr. Wells predicts, [328] "crime and bad lives will be the measure of a State's failure." The modern Theist now admits that it is God's pleasure to employ law, and not the suspension of law, to work out His purposes. Why, then, whether we are Theists or Agnostics, should we not study and apply those laws for our moral improvement? Even now we are doing so. Rationalism has taught us that prevention is better than cure, and its great ally, Science, is helping both in the prevention and the cure. But the process will be considerably accelerated when our energies and our fortunes are spent altogether in this direction, instead of being frittered away in futile attempts to obtain the same results by "spiritual" methods. OUR AIDS. Again the supernaturalist may say: "I grant you, for the sake of argument, that, setting aside the ills of 'outrageous fortune,' the secret of happiness lies in obeying the social instinct; but human nature is weak, and requires assistance. How do you propose to replace the aid derived from belief? I am not a Japanese. I am not an Oriental, with an extraordinary power of self-abnegation for the sake of an idea. I am a phlegmatic Englishman, and I am not at all sure that, even if I had had this Bushido instilled into me, my character would have been any stronger than it is now after a Christian education." Here let me again repeat that I do not for one moment contend that, if Christianity were true as now interpreted by liberal theology, or, again, if Theism, with its assurance of a benevolent God, were true, that, as Neo-Christians or Theists, we should not find belief helpful in our efforts to lead a moral and therefore innocently happy life; but an agnosticism regarding all supernatural beliefs appears to be the only possible attitude for an enlightened world, and it is this situation that we have now to face. Is there anything, then, that can in any way take the place of the ethical assistance [329] afforded by belief in God and an after-life? The answer of Rationalism has already been indicated--it is to the force of environment (in its broadest sense) that we must look in our struggle with hereditary weaknesses. We cannot get rid of our inherited qualities; but we can modify them by changing our environment. If our early education, our early environment, has been neglected, we still have it in our power to remedy, or partly remedy, this unfortunate circumstance by our choice of present environment. The hard case is that of a man so situated that to change his evil environment seems well-nigh impossible. Therefore it is that the reduction of pernicious environments is of paramount importance to the race, and this truth the rationalistic spirit of the age is now forcing to the front. Also, if the individual takes no interest in posterity, and refuses to study the question of heredity, the day will come when the law of the land will see to it that the sins or diseases of the fathers shall not be visited upon the children "unto the third and fourth generation." It is the quality, not the quantity, of our children that we have to keep to the forefront. [330] The methods will be simple, if somewhat drastic; but the need to apply them will continue to lessen in proportion as the laws of heredity and environment are better kept in view. "Over the past, represented by our own heredity, we have no control. We cannot change the facts which have made the degenerate, the neurotic, the hysterical, and the criminal; but these are only names for human beings who, by a certain train of causation, have had certain impulses developed and others left fallow or suppressed. A different train of causation will awaken the capabilities to hold these impulses in due check. This future, now represented by the environment, is greatly within our power. Heredity being but the transmitted effects of past environments, we have to make a suitable environment for growing organisms if we wish to mould them to our ideals; and this is the meaning of education." [331] THE IMPORTANCE OF A KNOWLEDGE OF THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY. Finally, it is very necessary that the origin of morality (as indicated by Spencer in his Data of Ethics, by Darwin in his Descent of Man, by Prince Kropotkin in his Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, and by Dr. C. W. Saleeby in his Evolution: The Master-Key) should be better understood. Hitherto the question of morality has been dealt with on wrong lines, [332] and this applies to the teaching not only of Christian but also of non-Christian religionists. It applies to the works of those speculative philosophers who have denied the empirical origin of man's moral feeling, and who have had recourse to subtle and unconvincing theories in order to assign a supernatural origin to the moral senses. These thinkers, in attempting to explain the "distinction of man," the "why of existence," and the "aim of nature," set themselves the hopeless task of explaining a process which entails untold suffering upon sentient beings, and in which the modern Rationalist is unable to discover any ethical principle whatsoever. Too much prominence cannot be given to the later conclusions of modern thought so eloquently set forth by Prince Kropotkin. Much as I appreciate all Mr. S. Laing's writings, and especially, perhaps, the chapter on "Practical Life" with which he closes his admirable work, Modern Science and Modern Thought, I cannot agree with him when he says (p. 113 of the R. P. A. Cheap Reprint): "For practical purposes it is comparatively unimportant how this [the moral] standard got there." It is, in my humble opinion, very important, for the reasons that are clearly demonstrated by Prince Kropotkin and other modern ethicists. So soon as the Darwinian theory of the origin of morals is fully accepted, great strides in the development of an improved morality will surely follow. In fine, "science, far from destroying the foundations of ethics, as it is so often accused of doing, gives to evolutionist ethics a philosophical certitude where the transcendental thinker had only a vague intuition to rely upon." [333] OPINIONS OF ETHICISTS. Let me now quote some instructive utterances by Rationalists [334]:-- "The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge. She [Science] knows that the safety of morality lies neither in the adoption of this or that philosophical speculation, nor this or that theological creed, but in a real and living belief in that fixed order of nature which sends social disorganisation upon the track of immorality, as surely as it sends physical disease after physical trespasses. And of that firm and lively faith it is her mission to be priestess." [335] "Theological apologists, who insist that morality will vanish if their dogmas are exploded, would do well to consider the fact that, in the matter of intellectual veracity, science is already a long way ahead of the Churches; and that, in this particular, it is exerting an educational influence on mankind of which the Churches have shown themselves utterly incapable." [336]--Huxley. "A moral life is that form of existence which is based upon obedience to natural and social law.... By long transmission and inheritance of mental and physical qualities a certain moral sense, so to say, has been developed, now called 'conscience,' which suggests acts often amounting to self-sacrifice, and condemns and represses others, pleasant and even profitable to the individual, because detrimental to the race. Altruism and Utilitarianism have come to be so insensibly blended that it is difficult to detect where the one ends and the other begins.... We have attained a natural and instinctive preference for what is good and noble in conduct, irrespective of self-interest, just as we have risen to an instinctive appreciation of fine music and delicate perfume.... The moral life is derived from the universal experience of mankind, approved by the wisdom of the wise, and justified by the fate of the foolish." [337] ["We needs must love the noblest when we see it."]--The Author of "Supernatural Religion." "The Supernaturalists charge the system of the Rationalists with a lack of any effective motive that can constrain ordinary and average men to live a moral life. 'It is all very well,' they say, 'for your Spinozas, your Stuart Mills, and such like, to affect independence of supernatural sanctions, because they are exceptional men, and have powers of discernment and will, by which they appropriate to themselves the moral doctrine and practice of Christianity, while they refuse to acknowledge their debt.'... I daresay I might, with some success, retort the argument of Supernaturalism. 'It is all very well,' I might say, 'for your apostles and saints, for your Augustines and Luthers and Bunyans, to depend on supernatural sanctions, because they are exceptional men, and have powers of imagination which turn shadows into substance.'... There is such a thing as self-respect; no man likes to feel ashamed of himself. There are very few who are not strongly moved by a desire to see wife and children or parents happy. Such influences as these have far more to do with moulding human life and resisting selfish passion than any fear of hell or desire of heaven, or any philosophical principles. And such influences as these will survive even when open denial of supernatural sanction becomes as general as tacit disbelief is now." [338]--J. Allanson Picton. "For the mass of mankind two motives serve to direct the main course of ethics. These are Prudence and Sympathy.... Prudence is the first step in morality.... Sympathy did not wait to be called into life by religion. It was born among the brutes.... In the case of man the sympathy which issues first through the natural emotions of family and sex is spread over an ever-widening area by the power of imagination. A greater faculty of entering into the feelings of others goes along with a deeper sensitiveness to their pains and joys. Their experience becomes ours. Our self is blended with theirs. We pity their actual sufferings, and, calling up in imagination the suffering our conduct might entail, we shrink from committing a wrong.... Pity is the characteristic mark of the later ethics." [339]--F. J. Gould. "One can say without exaggeration that the most religious times and the most religious peoples, or those in which or among whom the power of the Church has been the strongest, have, generally speaking, been the most immoral. One has evidence enough in the horrors of the Middle Ages, and, if to-day it be otherwise, it is not to religion we owe the change, but to the spread of education and the progress of intelligence.... It is one of the fatalest and most widespread of errors that morality without religion is impossible. It has long been scientifically acknowledged that morality, as such, is far older than religion.... Morality comes only as the consequence and result of the inevitable necessities of social intercourse." [340]--Ludwig Büchner. "The religion of the lower orders of Welshmen may be said to be high in the scale, while their morality is decidedly low.... What savage nations have been raised out of their degradation by Christianity?... I look upon the doctrine of future rewards and punishments as radically bad, and as bad for savages as for civilised men."--Alfred Russel Wallace. [341] "Heaven and hell have no more relation to the question than any other punishments. The hell which a thoroughly bad man dreads can only be a hell of physical suffering; and, if he abstains from crime through fear of fire, he is not a good man, but a bad man in chains." [342]--Leslie Stephen. "Where is the seat of authority for what is moral? This is a very old question. Manu, the Indian law-giver, answers it in four ways: It rests on revelation (scuti); it rests on tradition (smriti); it rests on the behaviour of good people; and, lastly, it rests on inward satisfaction. I believe that, in the end, the last is the supreme authority." [343]--F. Max Müller. "Whatever power the threats of punishment and the promises of reward in an after-life may have had in lawless and superstitious ages, they have now but the smallest effect on conduct; their remoteness exhausts their power, and, moreover, the belief in them is slowly decaying.... All the law and commandments are in the Golden Rule; all ethics in the teaching that, if man be true to himself, he cannot be false to his fellows." [344]--Edward Clodd. "The first step towards the elaboration of a morality which should exercise a lasting influence is to base it upon an ascertained truth.... The function of ethics is not so much even to insist upon the defects of man, and to reproach him with his 'sins,' as to act in the positive direction by appealing to man's best instincts.... It tells to man that, if he desires to live a life in which all forces--physical, intellectual, and emotional--should find a full exercise, he must, once and for all, abandon the idea that such a life is attainable on the path of disregard for others.... What is wanted now is a new comprehension of morality in its methods, which must be freed from both the transcendental survivals and the narrow conceptions of Philistine utilitarianism. The importance of mutual aid in the evolution of the animal world and human history may be taken as a positive established scientific truth.... Mutual aid, justice, morality, are thus the consecutive steps of an ascending series, revealed to us by the study of the animal world and man. It is not something imposed from the outside: it is an organic necessity which carries in itself its own justification." [345]--Prince Kropotkin. "We do not see any convincing reason why morals should be based upon the teaching of a special denomination, in face of the fact that we can be upright and brave without the help of a creed with a God or deities at its other end." [346]--Professor Okakura. "I regard religion itself as quite unnecessary for a nation's life; science is far above superstition; and what is religion, Buddhism or Christianity, but superstition, and therefore a possible source of weakness to a nation? I do not regret the tendency to freethought and atheism, which is almost universal in Japan, because I do not regard it as a source of danger to the community." [347]--Marquis Ito. "Cardinal Newman once said: 'Give me the children of England, and England shall be Roman Catholic.' We say: 'Put the children of England under the best moral influences, and England shall be righteous.'" [348]--The Moral Instruction League. NOTE ON SYSTEMATIC MORAL INSTRUCTION. A Memorial was lately addressed to the Local Education Authorities of the country. Among the signatories are Lord Rosebery, Lord Roberts, Lord Wolseley, Lord Kelvin, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, a number of bishops, "General" Booth, Dr. Horton, Dr. Campbell, the Vice-Chancellors of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, etc. They recommend that the eight or ten years of school life should provide the opportunity, not only for imparting knowledge, but for inculcating those habits of self-restraint, conscientiousness, fidelity, honour, and kindness which are needful alike for individual self-respect and national well-being. (The Code of Regulations for Public Elementary Schools [1906] has since appeared. It states emphatically: "Moral Instruction should form an important part of every elementary school curriculum.") Sir Oliver Lodge has urged the same thing in the Nineteenth Century. At last, then, it has been influentially recognised that these things are not taught in schools, or, if so, are taught in an indifferent and unsystematic manner. What a reflection upon Christian methods of upbringing hitherto! Unfortunately, coupled with this desire for effective moral training, the signatories of the Memorial express a hope that Bible teaching will be continued. I say "unfortunately," because the ethical value of the Bible is inextricably intertwined with supernatural beliefs that are demonstrably false. Any temporary success of such teaching, while the children are still uninformed of the real nature of the Bible, will be heavily discounted in after years--at a time, too, when assistance from the ethical teaching of childhood will be most needed. It is an unfortunate circumstance that the Church must necessarily be fearful regarding the separation of belief and morality--must set her face against non-theological moral instruction. It is no use disguising the fact. Her fears are perfectly well founded--such teaching would tend to the further spread of unbelief. On the other hand, it is equally clear that, if any temporary harm comes of this spread--a spread which, in any case, cannot be stopped, though it can be delayed--it will be because our children have been taught that religious belief is the chief, if not the only, sanction for the moral life. The Church, in fact, will be directly responsible for the evil. Is it not time, then, for all thoughtful men and women to be up and doing? Is it not time the truth should be told? In the following sections we shall see that this course is advisable on every ground. § 3. Should the Truth be Told? "Wise and prudent conduct demands before all things that we should see the facts as they are; and those are not least among England's helpers who, regardless of consequences, in all ages have taught her children, by using their reason, to distinguish what is false from what is true." [349] Presuming that we have come to the conclusion that Christianity is not true, are we to say so, or are we to be silent? A believer, with ideas so advanced that his belief amounts to little more than "a reverent agnosticism" concerning the fundamental dogmas of Christianity, is still able to speak out, because while he destroys he also constructs. He has new interpretations of Christianity to offer us. The unbeliever can offer no such interpretations. He simply believes Christianity to be untrue, and, should he give his reasons, he knows he may persuade others to think so also. He must, therefore, it seems, keep his unbelief to himself, unless he is prepared to show that the destruction of belief will be beneficial. In considering this question of frank avowal of our unbelief, we must not forget that, try as we may to avoid it, we are bound from time to time to find ourselves in a position where we have to choose between telling the truth or telling a lie; while our silence, or any manoeuvre with intent to deceive, is one continual evasion of the truth. Is it not time, as John Morley urges, [350] to abandon "those habits of hypocritical conformity and compliance which have filled the air of the England of to-day with gross and obscure mists"? In moral life truth is our guide, so that the arguments for its repression must be irrefutable. Now, if it can be shown that the objections to candour are more imaginary than real, not only are we robbed of the excuse for further concealment, but we are morally bound to fly our true colours openly. Nor is this all. Should it become plain to us that actual good will come of truth-telling, or that the probable good far outweighs the possible evil, it behoves us to take an active part in, or at least to lend our support to, the spread of truth. (a) "MAGNA EST VERITAS ET PRÆVALEBIT." One very natural objection of unbelievers, who are not actually disbelievers, is that there may be, after all, some truth in Christianity. We find here every shade of opinion, from that of the man who still hopes that Christianity may be proved true in all essentials, to that of the man who thinks that Christianity may be the symbol of a truth. But, I ask, Will not Christianity, if true in any shape or form, benefit by truth-telling? Will it not thereby assume its true form, whatever that may eventually prove to be, and is not that a consummation to be desired? Many believers stoutly maintain that Christianity can be only strengthened by attack; so that, on the face of this assertion, it would appear both justifiable and desirable to take them at their word, and, without more ado, proceed to attack Christianity. Certain it is that, so far, Rationalistic attacks have done inestimable good in disclosing its errors in doctrine and practice. As Mr. Morley caustically remarks, the efforts of the heterodox have taught the Church to be better Christians than they were a hundred years ago. If Christianity, purified in the cleansing fire of modern criticism, be the true faith, and the theory of progressive revelation can be accepted, are not this truer faith and this peculiarly rapid progress of revelation during late years the product of scepticism? It is the sceptics who have succeeded in forcing the Church to reconsider her doctrines and discover new truths, and, wonderful as it may appear, they have thus been God's special instruments in this more perfect revelation of Himself. Why, then, should you hesitate to speak out? Christianity evidently has to be re-stated if it is to survive, and this re-statement must be complete, for on it rests the only chance of reclaiming the unbeliever, of arresting the further spread of infidelity, and of converting the cultured heathen--the only chance of a universal belief in God and Immortality. Of the result you have no cause for fear. If there be a God, He is a God of Truth, and the Truth will prevail. (b) OBSCURANTISM HAS HAD ITS DAY. The Rev. V. F. Storr, at the Liverpool Church Congress (1904), advocated telling the truth regarding established facts, and asked: "In how many pulpits are the opening chapters of Genesis frankly treated as legendary? How many teachers in schools, if called upon to give a lesson on the Fall, would make plain to the children that the framework of the story is imaginative? Are not the teachers creating for them the very difficulties which, when they come to mature years, will make shipwreck of their faith?" These remarks were received in dead silence by the audience, and the President was vociferously cheered when he asked: "Are we to tell the children that these narratives are mere fables, with a moral teaching, or, as Dr. Wace says, that they are true and historical, only clothed in an Eastern symbolism? I prefer to stand with Dr. Wace." On the other hand, Dean Farrar advocated a diametrically opposite course. "We must," he said, [351] "vaccinate them [the children] with criticism to save them from the small-pox of scepticism." His successor at Canterbury has, it would appear, a "conscientious objection" to this vaccination; and well he may, for it would be far more likely to promote the disease than to bestow immunity from it. I should mention that Dr. Wace also said, at the same Church Congress: "If I were on Mr. Blatchford's side, and wanted to attack Christianity, I should desire nothing better than that the results of criticism concerning Genesis, as these results predominate even in the most sober critical circles, should be adopted by the Christian Church, because this would afford a means of attacking Christianity with greater force than anything else, since it would enable me to start with this vantage-ground, that all the Jews and all the apostles--I dare not speak of our Lord--were mistaken in their view of God's relation to His own people." Obscurantism is therefore recommended because the purpose is a pious one--namely, to confute the unbeliever and to maintain the Faith. The anti-Christian must be deprived of his vantage-ground by the denial of truth. It is the old, old story of "pious fraud," the mainstay of the Christian Faith. We are to imitate (though in a lesser degree) the practices of the Latin and Greek Churches, and continue to play upon people's credulity and ignorance. We are to understand that pious frauds are still considered legitimate weapons to employ in the defence of Christianity. Surely such weapons should be allowed to fall into disuse for the simple reason--if on no higher grounds--that the spread of education is rendering them obsolete. The days of obscurantism are numbered. "Many a man in the workshop to-day knows more about the Bible and Church history than many a monk and bishop a few generations ago." [352] The Church of England cannot "shut herself in behind walls of tottering traditions." [353] Christian Fathers can no longer publish their own writings in the names of disciples and apostles in order to insure their acceptance. Evidence against the truth of Christianity can no longer be destroyed or suppressed by persecution. "Miracles" can no longer be worked, except where people are still grossly credulous or ignorant. True it is that passages of the Bible can still be read in church which every educated man knows to be (to use a mild term) unhistorical, and which, to console his conscience, he calls allegorical. True, in our churches, with but few exceptions, the white lie of silence is daily told. But even mild pious frauds of this nature will soon be a thing of the past. The Higher Critics and the advanced school of the Church will see to it. They are beginning to speak out--why should not you? The obscurantist would do well to take to heart the answer of Bishop Colenso to the clergyman who reproached him with depraving one of his parishioners by criticisms of the Pentateuch. "The blame," he replied, "would be more fittingly attached to the teachers who lead people to rest their faith in God and duty on a foundation of falsehood which every new wave of thought is sweeping away." [354] Shall we, to give a glaring instance of pious obstruction, revert to the time--not many years ago--when the use of anæsthetics in surgery was denounced from the pulpit, on the ground of impiety? I think not. Nowadays one can hardly keep one's countenance in recalling the words of those who seriously, and, as they thought, piously, said that they would rather suffer any pain than "enter the presence of their Maker in a state of intoxication." We no longer listen to those who would forbid us either to taste the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge or to give it to others. Obscurantism, dogma's best friend, is breathing its last. It can therefore no longer be depended upon. (c) THE EFFECT ON MORALITY. Anxiety with regard to the effect on morality, private and public, chiefly accounts, no doubt, for the present conspiracy of silence. I have already gone into this question in some detail, [355] and we have seen that belief and morality are not necessarily Siamese twins, and that, when the belief is false, and still more, of course, when it is suspected or known to be false, it is no longer of any possible ethical value, but quite the reverse. Should you demur, I have a question to ask, which is this: Now that, whether we wish it or no, the truth about Christianity is fast leaking out, and, consequently, disbelief is rapidly spreading, how is it that you, how is it that the State, how is it that the majority outside the Church, display so peculiarly little anxiety? I confess I am at a loss to understand, unless it be that you and they have realised that morality is a thing apart from belief, and therefore feel that there is little cause for uneasiness. There is, however, an element of danger, and, temporary though it may be, it is sure, if disregarded, to affect the private and public morality of our own times. (d) THE REAL DANGER. The real danger lurks, where least suspected, in the very method which you advocate as the safest--the method of a gradual infiltration. In many matters such a method is undoubtedly sound. A reformation involving a complete revolution in opinions is best carried out gradually and tentatively, and, in this respect, nature's slow processes of evolution provide a useful lesson for the too ardent reformer. I do not suggest a cataclysm, or suppose it possible. But I do say that your infiltration process must be carefully watched and tended, although a policy of masterly inactivity and laissez-faire may appeal to you as the easiest; I do say with Mr. Trevelyan that "true opinions do not spread always, and of their own force; but sometimes, and only by dint of courageous avowal"; [356] I do say that in this particular instance it is absolutely necessary that, side by side with a knowledge of the untruth of the Christian religion, there should be inculcated a knowledge of the true origin and need of morality; I do say that the infiltration process need not and ought not to be prolonged indefinitely, and that insincerity of any kind affects character banefully; I do say that you should not allow your children to be taught a false belief and a false basis of morality. This conspiracy of silence is as mistaken and mischievous as that by which boys and girls are allowed to find out for themselves what they should have had properly put to them by their parents and guardians. When the Church teaching, when the dogmas contained in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, are removed, the rational teaching must take its place at once. (e) THE CONSOLATIONS OF BELIEF, AND THE DISTRESS WE MAY CAUSE BY OUR CANDOUR. We cannot stop to inquire how this or that private interest will suffer when the theological mist has been dispelled. When machinery was invented--or, again, when slavery was abolished--enormous interests were affected. Such things will always adjust themselves. There is one difficulty, however, which we all feel very strongly, and which cannot be passed over lightly. We have to consider the distress of mind which the truth will cause to those who still firmly believe, and for whom their religion is so great a consolation that to be robbed of it would make life objectless--a dreary desert of despair. Have we, then, any right to disturb people's belief, and to lacerate their feelings? It would almost appear, as Mr. Winwood Reade remarks, that "we can do nothing that is exclusively and absolutely good. Le genre humain n'est pas placé entre le bien et le mal, mais entre le mal et le pire." Just as multitudes of martyrs are now suffering in unhappy Russia for the sake of its eventual reform, just as throughout history mankind owe their elevation to misfortune and their happiness to misery, so here, also, it seems as if the elevation and happiness in store for mankind after their liberation from superstition can only be achieved through suffering. The revolution will be bloodless, but it cannot be altogether tearless. Let us see whether the mental anguish will be as great as we imagine, and also whether it is not in the power of each one of us to adopt a line of conduct which will tend towards a vast reduction in the number of those who must pass through the vale of tears. Are you and I any unhappier than the believer? Many of us have gone through an ordeal more or less severe before finally relinquishing our cherished beliefs. I will speak of that presently. But are we now any less happy than our fellows who are believers? Except for the unhappiness which our outspoken confession of belief may have brought upon us, surrounded as we are by believers and professing believers, I think we can, with confidence, say we are not; while this possible cause of unhappiness is precisely the one which will disappear as soon as the vast multitude of unbelievers agree to tell the truth. No longer then shall we seem, as now, to be in a minority. Very good. We are, or should be, quite as happy as believers; may we not suppose that, after the effect of a rude awakening from a beautiful dream has passed off, the convert to unbelief will settle down into the same condition of mind as ourselves? We are free from anxiety regarding the terrible fate that some of our Christian brethren still see fit to hold over us; but in place of their anxiety concerning an eternal after-life, which may be blissful or may be gruesome, the worst we expect is an eternal peace--an undisturbed sleep, such as we hope for every night when we retire to rest. After life's fitful fever he sleeps well. We are Agnostics, and, though some may preserve an agnosticism concerning the continuance of consciousness after death, we are all of us resigned to the inevitable. And if there be no meeting past the grave, If all is darkness, silence, yet 'tis rest; Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep, For God still "giveth his belovèd sleep," And if an endless sleep He wills, so best. [357] Can we state it as our honest opinion that the consolations of belief enter into the every-day life of the average man, influencing thereby his happiness? We cannot. Only on rare occasions, in times of bereavement, or in time of his own approaching death, will he turn to his belief for consolation. Does he obtain then the consolation he looks for? Again the answer must be in the negative. Here and there we come across examples of a happy resignation such as we should expect to find; but usually it is far otherwise. No one nurses his grief longer than the average Christian; no one is more unwilling to die--he is really more anxious to live than Hindoo, Parsee, Mohammedan, or Buddhist believer, or Japanese Agnostic. Whether it be that Agnosticism engenders a spirit of resignation, it is difficult to say; but the fact remains that no one accepts the ills of life more cheerfully, no one meets his death more bravely, than the average Agnostic. How often one hears of the deaths of unbelievers quite as beautiful in their serene calm as those of devout believers. To give examples recently before the public, we have the heart-stirring accounts of the last moments of two well-known Agnostics, the late Sir Leslie Stephen, the author of An Agnostic's Apology, and the late George Jacob Holyoake, the founder of Secularism. These may be exceptional cases; but such are exceptional, also, among believers. According as a man is possessed of self-control, or is naturally fearless or resigned, so will his conduct or feelings be affected. We are speaking, mind you, of averages; and I maintain that bereavements and death are met by the average Agnostic with as much resignation as by the average Christian who has religious consolation to fall back upon. The fear of death supplies the chief motive for religion. Even the emotion called forth by the death of a friend is not solely the feeling of the loss. It is partly because death has been brought very near to us. Now, as the consolation afforded by religion in our last hours is continually held up to us by the priest as a reward for belief, one would expect to find that occasions where this consolation was unnecessary would be few and far between. It is, however, quite the reverse. Eliminating the cases of sudden death, how seldom are these consolations of utility? Inquire, if you doubt, from any medical man what are his experiences among the dying; how many are not even aware that they are dying; how many are too much taken up with their physical sufferings, and too anxious to be relieved from them, to think of anything else; how many die in a space of time so brief, reckoning from the moment when they are first made aware of their dying condition, that the case is practically one of sudden death; how many are unconscious from the time when their life is first in danger; how many have the knowledge of their approaching death carefully concealed from them by kind-hearted doctors and relations, albeit both the patient and his attendants say they believe in a supremely happy existence after death? Far more often than not the religious consolation so frequently and solemnly held up to us by the priest as an inducement to believe is never enjoyed. Does it not furnish a damaging commentary on one of the strongest arguments for belief--the argument from religious consolation? Taking these facts into consideration, we find ourselves able to approach the question of disturbing belief with a somewhat lighter heart. Still, we have to remember that these hopes and fears, sedulously implanted by the Church, have taken deep root. Could we be sure of impressing believers with our own convictions concerning the consolations of religion, all would be well; but we cannot be sure. Here lies the crux. The idea that they are deriving, and will derive, consolation when the dread moment is at hand has become far too fixed for painless extraction. You may only succeed in partially divesting them of their belief, making them thoroughly miserable to no purpose; or, if you do succeed, it may only be after you have put them to considerable mental distress. What is to be done, then? It is a hard question. Feeling this, we give the matter up in despair, and remain silent. And so the truth which we might have spread, each one of us in his own circle, remains unspoken. Worse still, the untruth is perpetuated by permitting our children to be brought up in the false beliefs of our believing friends. This, at least, should make us pause and reflect. Are we justified in keeping silence? Are we justified in making no effort to save the future generation from mental distress, or from what is far worse, a demoralising indifference? The dilemma is great, but that is no reason for shirking it. It must be faced, and the pros and cons carefully weighed. Is there, haply, no middle course that we may steer? We should not unnecessarily cause distress to the aged who have, all their days, cherished this belief, who have arrived at a time of life when ideas are not easily changed, and who feel that that life is now drawing to a close, and that they now more than ever require the consolation they have built their hopes upon. We should spare their feelings all we can; but we must, so it seems to me, put both them and ourselves to such distress as may arise from telling them plainly, when absolutely necessary, that we do not believe in the truth of Christianity, and do not think it right to bring up our children to what we consider is a false belief. We have seen that religious tolerance is the growing spirit of the age, that some of our greatest divines extol [358] the virtues of the Agnostic, and condemn [359] obscurantism and the odium theologicum. Shall we then, after all, in these days, cause so very much distress by our confessions of unbelief? As a rule, I think we shall not. (f) CAN WE ALTER PEOPLE'S BELIEFS? Another objection to "speaking out" is that we can never alter people's beliefs. Many well-known Agnostics still hold this opinion. In his essay, "The Religion of All Sensible Men," Sir Leslie Stephen expresses this opinion in the following words: "I do not wish to underrate modern progress; but surely there is something grotesque in the hypothesis that the average shopkeeper or artisan of the present day is too clever to believe in the creeds of his forefathers. I fancy that no one has yet ascertained that the brain of to-day is more capacious than the brains of the contemporaries of Cæsar or St. Paul.... Can you pierce his [the intelligent citizen's] armour of stolid indifference by arguments about the principle of evolution and the survival of the fittest?... The improbability that ancient creeds should simply survive must, therefore, depend upon other conditions than the increase of the average intelligence.... I would not conceal my own views, but neither would I feel anxious to thrust them upon others; and for the very simple reason that conversion appears to me to be an absurdity. You cannot change a man's thoughts about things as you can change the books in his library." [360] With all due respect to the late Sir Leslie Stephen, I contend that there is one gigantic fallacy underlying this argument. He forgets, or appears to forget, that beliefs are built upon premises, the errors in which one may be able to demonstrate absolutely without having to enter into learned dissertations on the principle of evolution. He declares that he does not wish to underrate, but he certainly does underrate, modern progress. Surely the average shopkeeper or artisan of the present day is capable of understanding that practically nothing is left of the foundations upon which his forefathers built their beliefs; that they have crumbled away under the influence of a knowledge that was not in the possession of the contemporaries of Cæsar or St. Paul? "The laws of thought," as Herbert Spencer says, "are everywhere the same, and the ideas of a rational being are, under the conditions in which they occur, rational." [361] It is ignorance, coupled with superstition, that is at the root of all the different beliefs of mankind. Superstition may remain, though even this may be questioned, considering that people brought up from their childhood as Agnostics are wholly devoid of any superstitious or so-called religious instinct. Ignorance can in any case be dispelled, and if this does not actually destroy supernatural beliefs, it will at least modify them. Even the working man will not remain satisfied with a theology which maintains the necessity for a foundation of facts, and yet is unable to prove them. Therefore, confident of the utility, let us unravel all that is clearly false in belief, and disseminate the result of our investigations among our fellows. In this way, men who are in all essentials seeking the same goal may be led to pursue, if not the same path, yet at least convergent paths. The common sophisms that it is useless to inquire too deeply into beliefs, since you will never arrive at the absolute truth, and that you will never get two men to think alike, account for much of the prevalent indifference. Absolute truth may always remain beyond the ken of man; but that is no reason why he should not go on trying to get as near it as possible, and the first step is the elimination of untruth. (g) CAN BELIEFS BE USEFUL THOUGH FALSE? It is strange to find non-Christians arguing that the persistence of the Christian belief is a sign of its utility; it is no more so than it is of its truth. Christianity did not make good men what they are, but good men have made Christianity what it is. Besides, a false belief cannot possibly serve a good purpose after its real character has become known. Mr. Fielding urges [362] that whatever exists, whatever persists, does so because it fills a want, because it is of use. He points his argument by alluding to the fact that when anything is useless it atrophies, and he instances how the snake and the whale have lost their legs, human kind their hairy skin and keener sense of smell, and so on. In this simile he is making an assertion which begs the question. He assumes that supernatural belief is not an atrophied organ; the Rationalist contends that it is, and that it has been proved to be so. Belief, indeed, is strikingly analogous to an organ which, owing to its having no further useful purpose, has atrophied and become rudimentary. It may have served some purpose in bygone ages; but now, in its present state, it is a source of weakness, like the splint bone of a horse--or rather of danger, like the vermiform appendage of man. The analogy, fortunately, does not hold good in every respect, for a false belief is an appendage of human nature which can be safely, though perhaps not always painlessly, removed. Indeed, it is an open question whether all religion (in its theological sense) is not "an unessential quality which has been mechanically attached to it, and which, consequently, it may at any time throw off without experiencing any serious loss." [363] (h) IS A NEW RELIGION [364] REQUIRED? If the latter be a correct estimate of the place religion occupies in man's nature, it furnishes a reply to one of the objections to Agnostic propaganda--the objection that, before we discard an existing belief, we must be prepared to substitute a new belief in its place. It is this objection that has given rise to those speculative philosophies which the common sense of the vast majority has rightly decided are unsatisfactory; a decision that the Church has not unnaturally seized upon as a triumphant vindication of the truth of Christianity. Against this objection to militant Rationalism, this plea for silence, I may be permitted to enter my protest in the weighty words of a well-known writer. "It is alleged," says the author of Supernatural Religion, "that, before existing belief is disturbed, the iconoclast is bound to provide a substitute for the shattered idol. To this we may reply that speech or silence does not alter the reality of things. The recognition of truth cannot be made dependent on consequences, or be trammelled by considerations of spurious expediency. Its declaration in a serious and suitable manner to those who are capable of judging can never be premature. Its suppression cannot be effectual, and is only a humiliating compromise with conscious imposture. In so far as morality is concerned, belief in a system of future rewards and punishments, although of an intensely degraded character, may, to a certain extent, have promoted observance of the letter of the law in darker ages, and even in our own times; but it may, we think, be shown that education and civilisation have done infinitely more to enforce its spirit. How far Christianity has promoted education and civilisation we shall not here venture adequately to discuss. We may emphatically assert, however, that whatever beneficial effect Christianity has produced has been due, not to its supernatural dogmas, but to its simple morality. Dogmatic theology, on the contrary, has retarded education and impeded science.... Even now the friction of theological resistance is a constant waste of intellectual power.... The choice of a noble life is no longer a theological question, and ecclesiastical patents of truth and uprightness have finally expired. Morality, which has ever changed its complexion and modified its injunctions according to social requirements, will necessarily be enforced as part of human evolution, and is not dependent on religious terrorism or superstitious persuasion. If we are disposed to say: Cui bono? and only practise morality, or be ruled by right principles, to gain a heaven or escape a hell, there is nothing lost, for such a grudging and calculated morality is merely a spurious imitation which can as well be produced by social compulsion." [365] "If," as George Eliot once pithily remarked, "you feel no motive to common morality but a criminal bar in heaven, you are decidedly a man for the police on earth to keep their eye upon." (i) WHY BE SO IMPATIENT OF ERROR? There is one more argument against militant Rationalism which demands our attention. "Why should we be so impatient of error?" asks Sir Leslie Stephen. "The enormous majority of the race has, on any hypothesis, been plunged in superstitions of various kinds, and, on the whole, it has found that it could thrive and be decently happy and contented in its ignorance. Science declines to accept catastrophes; and no catastrophe would be more startling than a sudden dispersal of the mists that have obscured the human intelligence for so many ages. If they grow a little thinner in our time, we may well be content; but is it not childish to be impatient about the rate of development of these vast secular [age-long] processes? Why be in such a hurry to 'change the errors of the Church of Rome for those of the Church of the Future'?" [366] I hope I have already answered this question to the satisfaction of some at least of my readers. I have shown that there is a very real danger in further concealment--in keeping up the farce. But let this pass. The reason why we should be impatient of error--why the truth should be told--is that the elimination of error will usher in an era of greater happiness. In order that we may the more clearly perceive this, I shall now conclude this book with a rapid survey of the arguments for Rationalism. § 4. The Outlook. When Rationalism reigns supreme,-- 1. Morality will be founded on a firm basis. Its origin and necessity being better understood, it will also be better practised, whether in commerce, in politics, or in our social relations--i.e., both in our public and in our private conduct. Also the present atmosphere of religious insincerity will be cleared. Relieved of this temptation to deceive our neighbour and even ourselves, our moral fibre will be strengthened, and we shall be far less likely to be hypocrites in other matters. 2. Social evils will stand a better chance of being redressed. 3. All religious intolerance will disappear once and for all. 4. An era of peace and happiness may at last be realised, because the methods of its attainment will be scientific and rational. We shall have recognised the fact that a gospel which proclaims a sword and eternal damnation cannot at the same time be a gospel of good tidings, cannot bring "Peace on earth, goodwill towards men." It may be said that such optimism is absurd, but is it really so? Morality.--Have we not seen [367] that morality can be taught apart from belief, and, indeed, that it is better so taught? May we not reasonably expect, therefore, that morality will advance side by side with Rationalism? In the famous words of Kant, "The death of dogma is the birth of morals." Our moral progress has not been checked by the machinations of devils, but rather by our belief in such personages. Also by our ignorance--ignorance of the origin and purpose of morality, ignorance of the true causes of immorality, ignorance of the laws of heredity and environment. Science is the good fairy who will assist moral weaklings, and reduce their numbers in succeeding generations. Supernatural religion was perhaps a phase through which humanity had to grope towards the light of reason and knowledge. "But we are now facing the dawn of that better and happier day when piety shall be confined within the sphere of the natural, when morals shall be looked upon and cultivated as essential conditions of a truly blessed social life, and when all mankind shall aim, not at imaginary happiness in a purely imaginary realm, but at real prosperity in a profoundly real world. This would be the exaltation, not destruction, of morality; the glorification, not annihilation, of the sense of responsibility; the enthronement, not repudiation, of the joy of altruistic service." [368] Social Problems.--Broad-minded divines are now exalting the service of man as it has never before been exalted. "Serve men," they say, "and you will find God. Help men, and Christ is here." [369] "The test of Christianity is," Canon Wilson informs us, "the resolve and the power of Christians to solve social problems. If the Bible inspires Christians with the zeal and the wisdom and the love needed for this task, no one will dispute its claims to be verily 'the Word of God.'" [370] This inspiration to improve the lot of our fellow-creatures furnishes, we are told, the final test of the Bible's truth. We are entitled to ask, therefore, How comes it that the inspiration has hitherto so signally failed to manifest itself, and that it only appears now when the aspirations of the democracy can no longer be disregarded? To give an example from history, did not slavery flourish side by side with the Christian Church? [371] Was it not abolished only when the further development of humanitarian principles caused men's hearts to rebel against its cruelty and injustice? The Church is at last devoting more attention to social evils and to the removal of their causes. What has taught her this duty if it be not the growing spirit of nationalism? [372] The Church has been forced, as it were, to keep pace with the rise of Rationalism. It is her only chance of prolonging her existence. Her new attitude in this respect will undoubtedly be the means of confusing the issue--the truth of Christianity--for some years to come. Therefore it is that, while thankful for the improvement, it is our bounden duty to expose the real truth of the matter--to see that Rationalism is not robbed of its due meed of praise, that the merit of the improvement is ascribed to its proper source. Also we are to see that the process of improvement is not delayed. Undoubtedly the progress of Rationalism will ultimately involve important changes in political institutions and philosophic theories; but it is the cure of social evils which cannot be wrought too soon. In proportion as we accept the natural and reject the supernatural diagnosis of social diseases so shall we alleviate and possibly cure them. Religious Tolerance.--Have we not seen that religious intolerance has been the evil genius which throughout the history of Christianity has been an enemy of progress and a lively cause of strife and misery? "The Christian Church has been more cruel and shed more human blood than any other Church or institution in the world. Let the Jew alone bear witness among the crowd of victims." [373] Also, Christians, in the course of their intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater severities on each other than they have ever experienced from the zeal of infidels. [374] Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded That all the Apostles would have done as they did. To-day, despite the rise and influence of Rationalism in Europe, "racial and religious prejudice are certainly present among us, and they form a latent source of cruelty and injustice which can at any time, if we are weak enough or wicked enough to give it free play, stain the land with the most amazing oppressions." [375] Religious animus, even in a country priding itself on its tolerant spirit, has by no means burnt itself out. Do we not see it flaring up again in the "War of the Kirks," the Education controversy, and the arguments for the retention of the Athanasian Creed? It is necessary, as Buckle observes, [376] that men should learn to doubt, before they begin to tolerate; and that they should recognise the fallibility of their own opinions, before they respect the opinions of their opponents. We may never entirely agree on questions that are for the present at least shrouded in mystery; but, though the old adage, "Quot homines, tot sententiæ," may remain true for all time, wide differences of opinion will disappear, and with them the odium theologicum. There can only be intolerance where belief is dogmatic, and that the religion of the future will never be. The uncertainty, the reasons why others may not be able to accept this or that philosophic speculation, will be recognised. If any discoveries await us, we are sure, at all events, that they will not confirm a dogma that would consign the greater portion of the human race to unspeakable and eternal torment; they will not confirm Christ's description of the Last Judgment, when the Son of Man is to say: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels." It is the fashion nowadays for Latitudinarians to explain away everything that appears too incongruous or vindictive, and the word "everlasting" is said to be a mistranslation; but the meaning of one at least of the sayings attributed to Jesus is only too clear: "Many are called, but few are chosen" (Matt. xxii. 14.) What, then, is to become of the many? If we are to believe the "Word of God," their awful fate, temporary or otherwise, is certain--"Whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire" (Rev. xx. 15); or again, "And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. xiii. 42). It is cruel doctrines of this kind that have arrested the growth of love and pity, and Rationalism is therefore the sworn enemy of such doctrines, as well as of the religious intolerance which springs from them. Peace. [377]--In an address by the late Archbishop of Canterbury, when Bishop of London, delivered at the Polytechnic, Regent Street, [378] we are presented with an argument of Christian apologetics, the weight of which rests upon the presumption that Christ did not wish the Church to begin with any bloodshed! "It is sometimes questioned," said Dr. Temple, "by those who would throw discredit upon the narrative, that our Lord tells them [the disciples] to go into Galilee, and yet He intended to see them that evening. But the whole thing is perfectly clear to those who consider the circumstances. Our Lord appeared to them in the evening, and there can be no doubt that He intended to do so even when He told these women that they were to desire all the disciples to go down into Galilee. But it was of great importance that there should be no gathering of the disciples in Jerusalem, because the inevitable result would have been an alarm on the part of the Jews, and Pontius Pilate would have been compelled, in order to keep the city perfectly quiet, to disperse such an assembly by force; and it is likely enough that the Church would have begun with bloodshed. But our Lord did not choose to have any such beginning. He told them all to go into Galilee." Are there any grounds for this presumption, any grounds for presuming that God ever wishes to prevent bloodshed? None whatever from a study of history. None whatever from a study of the Bible. None whatever from a study of Christ's own words: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword." Look at the present day! "We live in a time," exclaims the Kaiser, [379] "in which every young German capable of bearing arms must be ready to step forward for his Fatherland." "The signs of the times make it the duty of the nation to strengthen its defences against unrighteous attacks." [380] "History, viewed as a whole," says Major Stewart Murray, [381] warningly, "is nothing but a succession of struggles for existence among rival nations, in which, in the long run, only the strong armed survive." Similar notes of warning are echoing and re-echoing through the length and breadth of Christendom. Is this no reflection upon Christianity's power for good? Look at the picture! Christian nations all armed to the teeth, with their "powder dry" and their "swords keen," each distrustful of the other, each ready to spring at the other's throat. What has the Rationalist to say to this state of things? What remedy does he propose to apply? The prophets foretell that we can look forward to the abolition of war only when the engines of destruction--flying ships armed with weapons of death, for example--are of so fearful a nature that it will at last be brought home to mortals that this clumsy and barbarous machine for settling disputes is too absurd, too suicidal for further employment. But need we wait long weary years, burdened with the thousand and one curses of war and militarism, [382] till this supreme horror has been invented? In the resolution adopted at the Fourteenth Peace Congress [383] we find the following stirring appeal: "We are beginning to understand that the rights of the citizen within the State can only be fully respected when, by the establishment of international juridical order, absolute security shall be obtained for all nations. The demand for this international security is becoming daily more urgent, on the one hand because modern progress binds together millions of the most diverse interests, on the other hand because the stream of democracy, or what it would be more proper to call the aspirations of the masses of the people after happiness, is rising continually in an immense and irresistible flood. International security can only be assured by federation; so federation will come about, for it is indispensable as liberty to the citizen, as air to the lungs. But it behoves us to see that it comes before we are laid in the tomb. What we ought to labour for with an unresting ardour is that federation should be accomplished while we are yet alive, so that we may not be thwarted of the legitimate share of happiness that belongs to us here below." Yes, this strikes the right chord; but before the hopes of these peace enthusiasts can be fulfilled Rationalism must have advanced considerably further than it has up to the present. At the third National Peace Congress held at Birmingham on June 13th and 14th, 1906, the opinion was expressed that the King and the working classes were already on the side of peace, and it only remained, therefore, to convert the Church and the middle classes. How are we to set about their conversion? Even if we could persuade the Church that war was not an essential to the welfare of nations, we could hardly expect her to agree with us at present either as to the cause or the cure of the evil. The prime cause of war is Nature's cruel law, the "struggle for existence"; and the Rationalist's proposals for its alleviation run counter to the teachings of the Church. For this among other cogent reasons, I conceive that it behoves us to see that the truth about Christianity be known "before we are laid in the tomb," and that "what we ought to labour for with an unresting ardour" is that this "should be accomplished while we are yet alive, so that we may not be thwarted of the legitimate share of happiness that belongs to us here below." The close association of war and religion has never ceased to act for the injury of mankind. The "Lord of Hosts," the "Lord mighty in battle," is expected to take interest in bloodshed rather than in the pursuits of peace, and to be always ready to join in the fray--to fight for His People; both sides, be it remembered, claiming His assistance. True Christianity owns as its Master a Prince of Peace; but in no particular has its failure in practice been more marked than in its impotency to carry out this, one of its chief missions. Why? Apart from religion being frequently the actual occasion of the strife, [384] is it not because it has always meddled in politics, always supported rulers in their ambitions, in their land-hunger? Is it not because religion has too often submitted to be "a 'kept' priest to bless or ban as the passion or self-interest of its employer dictated?" [385] It is as futile as it is insincere for a Tsar [386] to preach peace, when he, or rather his counsellors, are imbued with a hunger for other people's property, and, hypocrites that they are, hide their real motives under the cloak of religion, calling it, forsooth, the spreading of a Christian civilisation. Every Rationalist, every Freethinker, is an honest advocate of peace. [387] He is not so irrational, so immoral I might say, as to propose the settlement of disputes by arbitration, and at the same time to entertain nefarious projects calculated to render this method impracticable. So long as Christian nations remain unmindful of the Tenth Commandment, he acknowledges with sorrow that we must continue armed and ready to do battle; but he looks forward with confidence to the day when there will be such an overwhelming body of men earnestly and sincerely desirous of peace that war will be impossible, simply because the preponderating voice of each and every nation will be against it--will "seek peace and ensue it." He anticipates a time when men will realise that they are not only citizens of this or that country, but fellow citizens also on the same planet. § 5. Concluding Remarks. An eminent theologian tells us: "Reason is the only faculty we have wherewith to judge concerning anything, even Revelation itself." [388] How is it, then, that Religionist and Rationalist arrive at such contrary conclusions? The explanation is simple enough: the Religionist trusts, the Rationalist distrusts, his emotions. Which is in the right? The survival of religious belief will largely depend upon the view men may ultimately take upon this question. Whether religion be no more than "morality touched by emotion," as Matthew Arnold defines it, [389] or whether all religions are only different ways of expressing a reality which transcends experience and correct expression, we cannot, on that account, accept dogmas that are untrue; we cannot pretend that a supernatural revelation has been vouchsafed to us. We may surmise, as Sir Henry Thompson supposed, that the "eternal and infinite energy behind phenomena" is what we call "God"; but we have to admit that this God is an unknown God, and that all attempts to unravel the mystery that surrounds our own fate are the merest guesses in the dark. Does a surmise--a belief if you will have it so--of this kind afford any religious satisfaction? If this Eternal Energy possesses what we should call a mind, can we worship a Supreme Intelligence "Which stoops not either to bless or ban, Weaving the woof of an endless plan"? Can we worship the Unknown? Can we, like the Athenians of old, erect altars to the Unknown God? I trow not. The age of ignorance and superstition is slowly, but none the less surely, passing away, never again to return. Sir Oliver Lodge believes [390] in "the ultimate intelligibility of the universe," and with this opinion many of us will agree. Perhaps our present brains may require considerable improvement before we can grasp the deepest things by their aid, or perhaps they will suffice as they are, and only a further acquisition of knowledge may be required. In any case, one sees no reason why, because we have no acceptable theory of life or of death now, we must therefore be equally ignorant many centuries, or even a single century, hence. On the other hand, it is, of course, quite possible that these mysteries may remain for ever unexplained. It may transpire that Haeckel's assumption of a monism in the physical world, and his identification of vital force with ordinary physical and chemical forces, are incorrect. It may transpire that Professor le Conte was wrong in regarding vital force as just so much withdrawn from the general fund of chemical and physical forces. Radio-activity and the cyanic theory [391] may not furnish a satisfactory solution of the problem of the first appearance of life upon this globe. But one thing, at all events, our present knowledge seems clearly to indicate: the solution of the problem cannot be in accord with the Christian dogmas. Should the secrets of our existence still lie concealed in the womb of time, their birth will be the death, not the renascence, of the dying creeds of to-day. Meanwhile our present course is clearly defined: we should search out and expose all false premises of belief. Only in this way can we hope to arrive a little nearer to the ultimate truth. Also, what is of much greater consequence, when all that is demonstrably untrue in the world's beliefs has been pointed out and acknowledged, believers and unbelievers will be in far better accord concerning all that is vital to the well-being of the human race. "We cannot," as Mr. Trevelyan pertinently remarks, [392] "alter the nature of the Unknown by conceiving it to be other than that which it is; but we can get a wrong basis for ethics, and a false sentimental outlook on everything, by reason of false beliefs." By all means let those who can, continue to cherish the "larger hope"--why should they not, while all is unknown?--and let the metaphysicians continue to translate their wishes and aspirations into philosophical language; but the guiding spirit in human affairs should be, and one day will be, a scientific humanitarianism working on rational principles for the peace and happiness of all mankind. "Ring out the grief that saps the mind For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease, Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace." APPENDIX Chapter I. P. 5, lines 12-14.--The Copernican system was gradually accepted, and so were the discoveries which followed up to fifty years ago. Copernicus's book, The Revolution of the Celestial Bodies, was printed a few days before his death, in 1543. The system was condemned by a decree of Pope Paul V., in 1616, which was not revoked till 1818 by Pius VII. The great Kepler (d. 1630) was an astrologer as well as astronomer, and thought the stars were guided by angels. While his mind had a strong grasp of positive scientific truth, it also had an irresistible tendency towards mystical speculation. In those days Science and Religion were easily reconciled. It was fortunate for Newton that he made his discovery of the law of gravitation in a rather more enlightened age and country, otherwise he would inevitably have shared the terrible fate of Giordano Bruno at the hands of the Church's emissaries. Even in the early eighteenth century the light of science had hardly got beyond the first glimmering of dawn. Mathematics and astronomy were the only sciences which had passed into the positive and final stage. Chemistry, geology, biology, historical criticism, were not yet in a position to speak with authority even on subjects in their own province. Read a popular apologetic work of the eighteenth century; read Truth and Certainty of Christian Revelation, edition 1724, and you will find that a defender of the faith had in those days a comparatively easy task. Science being still in its infancy, Dr. Samuel Clarke gave reasons for the truth of Christian dogmas, which, though they could not be controverted then, would now be considered the most abject nonsense. Bead also Mr. S. Laing's remarks on p. 13 of A Modern Zoroastrian, where he tells us that when he was "a student at Cambridge, little more than fifty years ago, astronomy was the only branch of natural science which could be said to be definitely brought within the domain of natural law, and that only as regards the law of gravity and the motions of the heavenly bodies, for little or nothing was known as to their constitution." P. 5, lines 18-19.--The vast antiquity of the earth. "It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that 500 to 1,000 million years may have elapsed since the birth of the moon" (see Professor Darwin's Presidential address at the meeting of the British Association in Johannesburg on August 30th, 1905). P. 8, lines 27-9.--He is well aware of the odium he would incur should he proclaim his heterodox views concerning the popular religion. Nor is it easy for even a well-known man to get his heterodox views published where they will be widely read. Sir Hiram Maxim wrote lately to the Literary Guide concerning his letter in the "Do We Believe?" correspondence, saying "it was necessary for my letter to have a slight coating of ecclesiastical sugar, otherwise it would not have been published." Does the Church realise the extent to which men of science coat their popular writings with "ecclesiastical sugar"? The retail bookselling trade in England is still largely in the hands of persons belonging to the various sects, and, even where this is not so, few dare to push the works of glaringly heterodox writers. As an example of the difficulties which beset the way of a too truth-loving author, we may notice that it took three years before 2,000 copies of Mr. Samuel Laing's Modern Science and Modern Thought could be sold, and its sale brought him no pecuniary profit. P. 19, lines 2-3.--He [Sir Oliver Lodge] has never yet professed belief in a personal God. He has now done so. In an article entitled "First Principles of Faith," appearing in the Hibbert Journal for July, 1906, he has drawn up a new formula of faith, which commences: "I believe in one Infinite and Eternal Being, a guiding and loving Father, in whom all things consist." He continues: "I believe that the Divine Nature is specially revealed to man through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lived and taught and suffered in Palestine 1,900 years ago, and has since been worshipped by the Christian Church as the immortal Son of God, the Saviour of the world." This reconstructed Christian (?) creed has been deftly worded; but this, at least, is clear--the Virgin-birth, Resurrection, and Ascension form no part of the religious belief of Sir Oliver Lodge. The full text of the "Catechism" which he has designed for the use of teachers and others interested in the education of the young appears in the Standard of December 14th, 1906. P. 20, line 31.--The religious naturally wish to discredit science. It is a common assertion of the pious that modern science has continually to retrace its steps, and admit that it was mistaken in its facts and theories. The following pronouncement by Professor Ray Lankester, in his Presidential Address at the annual meeting of the British Association (held at York in 1906), should disillusion them: "During the last few years an idea has spread abroad that some of the more recent discoveries of science have revolutionised scientific ideas--have upset former theories, or have reversed them. Nothing is further from the truth." P. 25, lines 19-20.--They [Agnostics] "exhibit the very temper which Christ blesses." Canon Scott Holland's precise words were: "It is no petulant boy making his petulant repudiation, but a man with steady and deliberate judgment, weighing, examining, testing, and still, at last to his own sorrow, to his own confessed cost, bravely facing what he deems to be the fact, and pronouncing, 'I am not of the Body; I cannot share the life of the Christian community.' And yet, if we look at him, we recognise in every detail of his character the lines that lead to Christ. He illustrates and exhibits the very temper which Christ blesses; he is pure, unselfish, humble, and good.... He may say what he pleases, but Christ has not forsworn him." Subsequently he acknowledges in moving terms that, as the populations are emerging from out of their darkness, so they are repudiating the name of Christ. But he gives no explanation for a circumstance so perplexing to a Christian. Let me not be misunderstood to say that this extremely lenient view towards the Agnostic is the usual one at present. On the contrary, the Bishop of Moray voices the opinion of the majority of the orthodox when (at the Diocesan Synod held at Inverness Cathedral in the autumn of 1904) he challenges the wisdom of this sympathetic attitude, and asks: "Is this a time to banish into silence, or relegate to an inferior position, the great bulwark of the Faith--the Athanasian Creed?" We are to understand that the curses of the Creed are reserved, not for the man who is born of heathen parents, but for the man who, often with much uprooting of his dearest hopes, and at the cost of losing many friends and even his original means of livelihood, decides that he must forsake the Faith. It seems to me that, before converting the heathen, it would be only fair that the terrible fate they will incur by any subsequent recantation should be distinctly explained to them. Again, the Rev. J. Morgan Gibbon, in his pamphlet, Atheism and Faith, represents the Atheist in the guise of the Tempter "holding out the bribe of free indulgence of all the passions to our youth, our working classes, our governing classes, and our capitalists." Clergymen who speak with such bitterness and make such sweeping assertions really betray the weakness of their own case. For it is a psychological fact that men are always angriest when they know they are not quite in the right. It is also a statistical fact (so far as statistics can be relied upon for facts) that crime among disbelievers is proportionately small, while among the staunchest believers, the Roman Catholics, it is proportionately large. P. 29, line 23.--Excite prejudice by the use of a condemnatory adjective. The Riddle of the Universe was described as a "book of rubbish" by Father Gerard, a member of the "Society of Jesus." He has not the least authority for such an indictment. On the contrary, every single biologist would tell him that he was himself talking rubbish. The Turin Academy crowned it as the best book written in the last four years of the nineteenth century. Clergymen seem to prefer to get their science from apologetic works only. How many, I wonder, have ever read the masterly exposition of the case for Haeckel--Haeckel's Critics Answered, by Joseph McCabe? P. 30, lines 13-14.--"In relief of doubt." A work entitled In Relief of Doubt, by the Rev. R. E. Welsh, a Presbyterian minister, is an attempt by an exceedingly earnest man to remove doubts concerning the Bible. There is an introductory note by the Bishop of London. The book is written in what the Bishop terms a "racy" style, and has the merit of much straightforwardness; but few well-informed, and at the same time open-minded, readers would agree with the conclusions of the author. The argument that St. Paul was a contemporary of Christ is one of the principal features; but see Chap. II., § 3, and Chap. III., § 2. P. 31, lines 27-8.--The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. In Priests and People in Ireland, by Michael McCarthy, there is a complete exposé of the methods and results of Christian teaching in this portion of the British Isles, and a portrait of a typical Roman Catholic priest which demonstrates his elevating (?) influence. Also see Twelve Years in a Monastery and Life in a Modern Monastery, by Joseph McCabe. P. 33, lines 32-3.--The Roman Catholic Church is more consistent. "The Papal Church, founded, to a large extent, on superstition and ignorance, has ever been afraid of knowledge, of study, and education; hence she only consulted her own life's interests when, in the Middle Ages, she decreed knowledge to be identical with heresy, and heresy to be punishable by death." These words are quoted from The Roman Catholic Church in Italy, by the Rev. Alexander Robertson, D.D., a book accorded a flattering reception by the King of Italy in 1903. Again, Lord Macaulay, speaking of the Roman Catholic Church in the first chapter of his History of England, says that, "during the last three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind has been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been made in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in intellectual torpor." P. 38, line 7.--Gifts for the needy. The exhortation to "give to the poor" is a precept of all the great religions. Indiscriminate giving was inculcated by the disciples of Christ, who were the poor, and Asiatic poor at that. The pity of it is that often more harm than good is done because the "Divine" command does not specify the deserving poor. Hence that wholesale pauperisation of which the evil effects are especially apparent among the Jews and in Oriental countries. Chapter II. P. 44, lines 22-3.--Mansel, Mozley, Farrar, Westcott, on Miracles. Dean Mansel said: "If there be one fact recorded in Scripture which is entitled, in the fullest sense of the word, to the name of a miracle, the Resurrection of Christ is that fact. Here, at least, is an instance in which the entire Christian faith must stand or fall with our belief in the supernatural.... A superhuman authority needs to be substantiated by superhuman evidence, and what is superhuman is miraculous" (pp. 3 and 35 of Aids to Faith, 4th ed.). Canon Mozley said: "Miracles and the supernatural contents of Christianity must stand or fall together" (Bampton Lectures, 1865). Dean Farrar said: "However skilfully the modern ingenuity of semi-belief may have tampered with supernatural interpositions, it is clear to every honest and unsophisticated mind that, if miracles be incredible, Christianity is false" (The Witness of History to Christ, Hulsean Lectures for 1870, 2nd ed., p. 25). Bishop Westcott said: "The essence of Christianity lies in a miracle, and, if it can be shown that a miracle is either impossible or incredible, all further inquiry into the details of its history is superfluous from a religious point of view" (The Gospel of the Resurrection, 3rd ed., 1874, p. 34). See also Archbishop Trench's Notes on Miracles. P. 44, lines 28-9.--The opinion of the majority of our living dignitaries. This has been made abundantly clear by the unanimous reply of a large number of Bishops to a correspondent of the Record, who had written letters to them stating that he had heard that "not a single Bishop on the bench to-day believed in the miraculous in religion" (reported in the daily papers towards the close of January, 1905). P. 48, lines 25-6.--Some even hold that it [devil-possession] still exists. Thus, in the introduction to Pastor Hsi (a book of which 24,000 copies were printed between 1903 and 1905), the Rev. D. E. Hoste, General Director of the China Inland Mission, not only expresses this belief, but seeks to explain why devil-possession should now be chiefly confined to heathen lands. "Careful observation and study of the subject have," he says, "led many to conclude that, although in lands where Christianity has long held sway the special manifestations we are now considering are comparatively unknown, the conditions among the heathen being more akin to those prevailing when and where the Gospel was first propagated, it is not surprising that a corresponding energy of the powers of evil should be met with in missionary work to-day." He would have us believe, apparently, that the atmosphere of holiness in Christendom is so overpowering that the Devil and his crew are rendered less active! Taking him seriously, can he also explain how it is that God permits devils to perform such pranks? Not only is the house "swept and garnished" that they may "enter in, and dwell there"; but in the case of Saul we are told that they were purposely sent by God! (See Luke xi. 25, 26, and 1 Sam. xviii. 10 and xix. 9.) The importance of this question is brought home to us by Mr. Benn in his History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, where he says (p. 454): "The witness of Jesus to the Fatherhood of God as a personal spirit amounts to no more than his witness to personal devils as authors of disease; and the witness of the Evangelists to their Master's authorship of the Sermon on the Mount is less unanimous than their witness to the destruction by diabolical agency of the Gadarene swine." P. 49, lines 13-14.--The feeding of the five thousand. Bishop Ingram attaches the utmost importance to the truth of this miracle. In a sermon published in the Church Times of October 7th, 1904, he is reported to have said: "It is the worst policy of defence to throw over the miracle of feeding the five thousand, or our Lord's power over disease and death, and then expect to keep the faith of the world in His incarnation, His Virgin-birth, and His resurrection." P. 61, line 14.--The simple theory of the spiritists. Dr. Moncure Conway relates, in his Autobiography, how it was a spiritualist séance which made him realise the kind of frenzy that took possession of those early Christians who really believed that a dead man had returned to life. See also Professor Lombroso on "spiritualistic" phenomena, p. 396. P. 64, lines 20-1.--Few of us have ever had our belief tested. Persons who have never spent their lives, or a portion of their lives, among the heathen, have never had their faith put to the fullest test, for in such an environment they would find faith's difficulties considerably enhanced. I remember, a few days after my arrival in India, a certain Bishop looking me in the face and, with a kindly hand upon my shoulder, saying: "You will find life much more difficult in India." He referred, of course, to the religious life, and was quite right, although, probably, he was thinking chiefly of the example that I should find set me by my fellow Christians; while, as mine was largely a camp life, it was more the insight into the belief of my native companions which affected me. There, all around you, are simple folk believing in what you know to be absurd; you are brought face to face with ignorance and superstition; you see how faith can be misplaced, and how trusting natures can be deceived. It sets you thinking whether, after all, you too may not be deceived; whether the possession of an unlimited capacity for faith has the virtue in it which the priest tells you it has, whether, in fact, faith is a reliable guide. Should you attempt to convert an educated native, you not only find that the task is hopeless, but that you are asking him to accept a belief which is as unfounded and unproven as the one he already holds. Anyone wishing to form some idea of an experience of this sort should read The Bible: Is it the Word of God? by Thomas Lumsden Strange, formerly a judge of the High Court of Madras. The way the observations are cast in the shape of a conversation between a student of the Bible and a cultured native of India brings home many Bible difficulties which largely escape the notice and consideration of the devout. I have taken my illustration from this book. Chapter III. P. 77, lines 11-12.--Encyclopædia Biblica. (My best thanks are due to Mr. C. T. Gorham for permitting me to make a free use of his notes on the Enc. Bib.) In case the reader may jump to the conclusion that this is a work compiled by collecting the most heretical views from all parts of the globe (as I was informed by the librarian when I inquired for the book in a Cathedral library), let me call attention to the list of contributors, among whom will be found many English ministers of the Gospel. For instance:-- The Rev. Archibald R. S. Kennedy, D.D., Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages, Edinburgh. The Rev. C. F. Burney, M.A., Lecturer in Hebrew, and Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford. The Rev. Claude Hermann Walter Johns, M.A., Hon. Sec. Camb. Pupil Teachers' Centre. The Rev. George Adam Smith, M.A., D.D., LL.D., Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis, Free Church College, Glasgow. The Very Rev. J. A. Robinson, D.D., Dean of Westminster. The Rev. Owen Charles Whitehouse, M.A., Principal and Professor of Biblical Exegesis and Theology in the Countess of Huntingdon's College, Cheshunt, Herts. The Rev. R. H. Charles, M.A., D.D., Professor of Biblical Greek, Trinity College, Dublin. The Rev. Samuel Rolles Driver, D.D., Regius Professor of Hebrew, Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. The Rev. T. K. Cheyne, M.A., D.D., Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oxford, Canon of Rochester. The Rev. T. Witton Davies, B.A., Ph.D., Professor of Old Testament Literature, North Wales Baptist College, Bangor; Lecturer in Semitic Languages, University College. The Rev. William E. Addis, M.A., Lecturer in Old Testament Criticism, Manchester College, Oxford. The Rev. William Henry Bennett, Litt.D., D.D., Professor of Biblical Languages and Literature, Hackney College, London, and Professor of Old Testament Exegesis, New College, London. The Rev. William Sanday, D.D., LL.D., Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. The Rev. A. B. Davidson, D.D., Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis, United Free Church New College, Edinburgh. The Rev. George Buchanan Gray, M.A., Professor of Hebrew, Mansfield College, Oxford. The rapid advance of Bible criticism in late years is well seen by comparing articles in Dr. W. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible (1860), in the Encyclopædia Britannica, signed W. R. S. (between 1875 and 1888), and in the Encyclopædia Biblica (1899 to 1903). Even the comparatively conservative Hastings's Dictionary (1898-1902, with extra volume 1904) contains articles which would have been condemned as heretical half a century ago. Speaking of the Enc. Bib. and Hasting's Dictionary, Mr. Benn remarks (in his History of Rationalism) that, "as regards the Old Testament, their respective attitudes do not essentially differ, Wellhausen's theory being accepted by both." P. 80, line 18.--We have note got the stone and read the inscriptions. For a popular account of this interesting discovery (upon the site of Susa, the ancient city of the Persian kings, in December, 1901) see The Hammurabi Code, by Chilperic Edwards. P. 103, line 16-17.--A disputed passage in Tacitus. The sceptical theory is that, had it been genuine, the passage would not have been overlooked by all the early Christian writers in the various disputations with objectors, and especially by Tertullian, who quoted largely from his works, and the ecclesiastical historian Eusebius, who was zealous in his defence of the Faith and greedy of materials with which to support it. (An important French student of Tacitus holds that the whole Annals is medieval!) On the other hand, the style is thoroughly Tacitean, containing a number of words and expressions elsewhere used by the author, and more or less characteristic of him, yet without any such elaborate over-imitation as we should expect to find even in a skilful forgery. Nor is the subject-matter perhaps less characteristic, while the MS. evidence is in favour of the passage being genuine. Taking it to be so, what, after all, does it amount to? Merely this. Christ was put to death by Pontius Pilate, and a very large number of Christians were put to death in a horrible manner by Nero. The passage occurs in Tacitus, Annals, XV., 44, and runs as follows: "Consequently, to get rid of the accusation, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called by the populace 'Christians.' Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred of mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt to serve as a nightly illumination when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle." P. 107, lines 19-20.--The true likeness of our Lord had been miraculously transmitted. Presumably my informant was referring to the legend of St. Veronica, since the equally absurd History of the Likeness of Christ (translated by E. A. Wallis Budge) closes with these words: "And the angel took the likeness from where it was standing, and he removed it; and no man hath ever seen it since." Chapter IV. P. 121, line 22.--Born in a cave. "Justin Martyr the Apologist, who, from his birth at Shechem, was familiar with Palestine, and who lived less than a century after the time of our Lord, places the scene of the nativity in a cave. This is, indeed, the ancient and constant tradition both of the Eastern and the Western Churches, and it is one of the few to which, though unrecorded in Gospel history, we may attach a reasonable probability" (see p. 20 of the cheap edition [1906] of Farrar's Life of Christ). The grotto of the manger in the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem is certainly a cave. Embedded in the rock is a much-kissed silver star bearing the inscription: "Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est." P. 122, line 6.--Krishna was slain. The Vishnu Purâna speaks of his being shot in the foot with an arrow. Other accounts state that he was suspended on a tree. "On raconte fort diversement la mort de Crishna. Une tradition remarquable et avérée le fait périr sur un bois fatal (un arbre), ou il fut cloué d'un coup de flèche" (quoted from Mons. Guigniaut's Religion de l'Antiquité, by Higgins; Anacalypsis, vol. i., p. 144). In the accounts given in the Mahâbhârata, Vishnu Purâna, and Bhagavat Purâna, the slaying is unintentional, but predestined. There appears to have been a crucifixion myth in ancient India; but Godfrey Higgins' assumption that Krishna was crucified rests mainly on an oversight of the archæologist Moor (see J. M. Robertson's Christianity and Mythology, pp. 294-9). P. 123, lines 24-5.--Almost every important episode of the life of Christ. "With the remarkable exception of the death of Jesus on the cross and of the doctrine of atonement by vicarious suffering, which is absolutely excluded by Buddhism, the most ancient of the Buddhistic records known to us contain statements about the life and the doctrines of Gautama Buddha which correspond in a remarkable manner, and impossibly by mere chance, with the traditions recorded in the Gospels about the life and doctrine of Jesus Christ" (quoted from p. 50 of Bunsen's Angel Messiah). P. 124, line 1.--Buddha was miraculously born. Maya dreams that she is carried by archangels to heaven, and that there the future Buddha enters her right side in the form of a superb white elephant. Rhys Davids relates this legend on p. 183 of his Buddhism, and in a footnote he says: "Csoma Korösi refers in a distant way to a belief of the later Mongol Buddhists that Maya was a virgin (As. Res. xx. 299); but this has not been confirmed. St. Jerome says (Adversus Jovin., bk. 1): 'It is handed down as a tradition among the Gymnosophists of India that Buddha, the founder of their system, was brought forth by a virgin from her side.'" In Samuel Beal's Romantic History of Buddha (from the Chinese version) we read of Buddha's miraculous birth, and that there is ground to assume the prevalence of this belief for centuries before Christ. Bunsen, again (p. x. of his Angel-Messiah), speaks of the "Virgin Maya, on whom, according to Chinese tradition, the Holy Ghost had descended"; and elsewhere (e.g., pp. 10 and 25) he adopts this version of the legend. Dr. Knowling, in his apologetic work, Our Lord's Virgin Birth and the Criticism of Today, pp. 53-4, lays stress upon the grotesqueness of the idea that a man should enter his mother's womb in the form of a white elephant. But, as Dr. Rhys Davids explains (p. 184 of Buddhism), there is nothing bizarre when the origin of the poetical figure has been ascertained. The belief was borrowed from the older sun-worship, "the white elephant, like the white horse [cf. Rev. vi. 2 and xix. 11, 14], being an emblem of the sun, the universal monarch of the sky." P. 126, lines 1-2.--He was very early regarded as omniscient and absolutely sinless. Dr. Rhys Davids's remarks on the early growth of myths concerning Buddha, coming as they do from a champion of the Christian cause, are full of significance for anyone who permits himself to think and who keeps an open mind. He says (p. 182 of Buddhism): "The belief soon sprang up that he could not have been, that he was not, born as ordinary men are; that he had no earthly father; that he descended of his own accord into his mother's womb from his throne in heaven; and that he gave unmistakeable signs, immediately after his birth, of his high character and of his future greatness." We have a perfect illustration of the possibility and rapidity of the legend-making process in the nineteenth century. The Bab (or "gateway") was a Persian reformer who suffered martyrdom at the hands of the authorities in 1850. Within forty years an evidently mythical version of his life was current among his followers in the form of a Gospel. Babism inculcates a high morality, and there is a likelihood of its becoming paramount in Persia. For further information on this new religion see Life and Teachings of Abbas Effendi, by Myron H. Phelps (Putnam). P. 127, line 10.--Born of the Virgin Isis. It is true, as Dr. Knowling points out (p. 56 of The Virgin Birth), and as I have personally seen, that in the inscriptions and scenes in the temple of Luxor "we have at least some elements of the glorifying of sensual desire which is so far removed from the chaste restraint and simplicity of the Evangelists." But the parallel is not a whit the less admissible because the same story appears in a fresh garb to suit the higher ideals of a new religion. P. 130, note 1.--Mexican Antiquities. Most of Viscount Kingsborough's life and fortune was devoted to his illustrated work, Antiquities of Mexico (nine volumes and a portion of a tenth volume, imperial folio, London, 1830-48). No anti-Christian spirit inspired his labours; on the contrary, he attempted to prove a Jewish migration to Mexico. Though the attempt failed, he bequeathed to posterity an invaluable work on the ancient religion of Mexico. P. 131, line 26.--Healing miracles, such as those performed by Jesus. Conyers Middleton, formerly principal librarian of Cambridge University, tells us that in the temples of Æsculapius all kinds of diseases were believed to be publicly cured, by the pretended help of the Deity, in proof of which there were erected in each temple columns of brass or marble, on which a distinct narrative of each particular cure was described. There is a remarkable fragment of one of these tables still extant, and exhibited by Gruter in his collection (just as it was found in the ruins of the temple of Æsculapius in the Tiber island), which gives an account of two blind men restored to sight by Æsculapius, in the open view, and with the loud acclamation of the people, acknowledging the manifest power of the god. Compare St. Matthew ix. 27-30. Is it not truly marvellous to think that exactly the same sort of thing is going on at the various miracle-working shrines of Christendom at the present moment? Is it not also surprising to hear certain divines in our own country speak of the alleged miracles of the early Church as if they were real, and as if it were a sort of lost art due to our poorer faith in modern times? I am referring to sermons preached lately from various pulpits on the subject of Christian Science and Faith-cures. P. 133, line 20.--Acted in Athens five hundred years before the Christian era. In the Nineteenth Century for March, 1905, Mr. Slade Butler points out, in his article on "The Greek Mysteries and the Gospel Narrative," that in the first century after Christ these mysteries, in one form or another, had become the recognised religion of the Greek world. Mr. Butler takes in turn all the main features of the Gospel narratives, and shows their close resemblance to incidents of the Greek mystery-dramas. The baptism of John, the triumphal procession in honour of Jesus, His clearing of the temple, the cursing of the fig tree, the Last Supper, the mocking of Jesus in His death-agony, are shown to have striking parallels in the sacred mysteries of the Greeks. P. 133, line 23.--Even Bacchus ... was a slain Saviour. Dupuis, The Origin of all Religious Worship, pp. 135 and 258; Higgins, Anacalypsis, vol. ii., p. 102; Knight, The Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology, p. xxii., note, and p. 98, note. P. 134, lines 7-8.--Pagan crucifixions of the young incarnate divinities of India, Persia, Asia Minor, and Egypt. We have it on the authority of a Christian Father that the Pagans adored crosses; for Tertullian, a Christian Father of the second and third centuries, writing to the Pagans, says: "The origin of your god is derived from figures moulded on a cross" (Apol., chap. xvi.; Ad Nationes, chap. xii.). At the present moment, both in Europe and America, the Egyptian cross or "life" sign is a fashionable ornament, under the name of crux ansata (or cross with a handle). Its pious wearers are, of course, quite unaware that it is the phallic emblem! Could anything more conclusively demonstrate the prevailing ignorance of comparative mythology? [393] P. 138, note.--The probable date of the origin of the story [of Buddha, Chinese version]. "A very valuable date, later than which we cannot place the origin of the story, may be derived from the colophon at the end of the last chapter of the book. It is there stated that the Abhinish Kramana Sûtra is called by the school of the Dharmaguptas Fo-pen-hing-king.... We know from the 'Chinese Encyclopædia,' Kai-yuen-shi-kian-mu-lu, that the Fo-pen-hing was translated into Chinese from the Sanscrit (the ancient language of Hindostan) so early as the eleventh year of the reign of Wing-ping (Ming-ti), of the Han dynasty--i e., 69 or 70 A.D. We may therefore safely suppose that the original work was in circulation in India for some time previous to that date." (Quoted from the Introduction to Mr. S. Beal's Romantic History of Buddha.) Thus, as the writer of the article on the Gospels in the Enc. Bib. observes, when referring to the parallels: "The proof that the Buddhistic sources are older than the Christian must be regarded as irrefragable." P. 148, line 21.--Modern non-Christian beliefs, Parallels in the rites of. Very similar ceremonies are to be found among the heathen to-day. For instance, something very like our Eucharistical rite is performed in modern Japan. Looking on at a service in a Shinto temple, I was much struck by the extraordinary similarity of the whole ceremony. It was a sort of High Mass with Gregorian music. The blessed wafers are not eaten on the premises, but are taken away by the worshippers to be used in time of sickness. The worshippers, I may mention, were all of the poorer and more ignorant classes. P. 150, line 10.--Their blood was drunk in the form of wine. Regarding this, Mr. Grant Allen remarks: When Dionysus became the annual or biennial vine-god victim, "it was inevitable that his worshippers should have seen his resurrection and embodiment in the vine, and should have regarded the wine it yielded as the blood of the god." P. 156, lines 19-20.--Adopting their dates for the birth and death [and resurrection] of their Saviours. At the winter solstice the sun seemed to the ancients to be commencing its annual journey round the heavens. Accordingly, December 25th was considered to be the sun's birthday, which was annually celebrated by a great festival in many parts of the heathen world--in China, India, Persia, Egypt, and also in ancient Greece, Rome, Germany, Scandinavia, Great Britain, Ireland, and America. Similarly, at the vernal equinox, the sun, which has been below the equator, suddenly appears to rise above it, and so, usually upon a date calculated by the pagan astronomers (and corresponding roughly to our Easter), we find that throughout a considerable portion of the ancient world, after mourning the sun's death (sometimes for a period of three days), the Resurrection was celebrated with great rejoicings. Primitive man regarded all sensible objects as instinct with a conscious life. He noted the changes of days and years, and the objects which so changed were to him as living things. The rising and setting sun, the return of summer and winter, became a drama in which the actors were his friends or enemies. It was no allegory, but, strange as it appears to us now, all an absolute reality. Christ's birth was ultimately placed at the winter solstice, the birthday of the sun-god in the most popular cults; and, while that is fixed as an anniversary, the date of the Crucifixion is made to vary from year to year in order to conform to the astronomical principle on which the Jews, following the sun-worshippers, had fixed their Passover. This ignorance of the early Church concerning the dates of the Jesus' birth, death, and "resurrection," is an exceedingly suspicious circumstance. If the fundamental verities were an objective fact to the early Christians, how could the dates have been so utterly forgotten that dates belonging to idolatrous superstitions had to be adopted? It is perplexing enough that God should have allowed the memory of His Son's life on earth to be handed down for a considerable time by tradition only; but that He should have permitted such lapses of memory and the substitution of the dates of pagan festivals is to me altogether inconceivable. It could not but raise suspicion concerning His revelation in future thinking generations. We have a certain knowledge of the dates of comparatively unimportant events in the world's history, ages before the Christian era. If these important dates could be forgotten, what else may not have been forgotten; what else may not have been substituted in the place of forgotten incidents? Again, did not the disciples and their converts celebrate the anniversaries of these great events? And, if so, on what dates? The question is of more importance than perhaps at first sight it appears to be. The public will soon be asking the Church for a satisfactory explanation, and she must be prepared to furnish it. In the Daily Telegraph, during the Christmas of 1904, the public were informed that "the most erudite archæologists and professors of Church history confess that there is not a particle of evidence, either Biblical or traditional, for the claim of December 25th to be the birthday of Christ, and that everything goes to prove that our existing festival of the Nativity was introduced to replace the heathen festival of the 'sol invictus' in Southern Italy, and of the Yule or Winter solstice festival among the ancient Teutons." Again, in the Daily Graphic during the Easter of 1905, the public will have read that "there is no particular sanctity in the 'Table to Find Easter,' based as it is upon the calculations of a pagan astronomer who lived four hundred years before Christ." In France the Christian names of the four statutory holidays have been abolished by law. Christmas is called the Festival of the Family, and so on. The time is coming, and is even now at hand, when the English public will discover ugly facts about Christianity without having to read books published by freethinking firms--books which the parson advises us to leave severely alone. P. 160, lines 3-4.--Why do we hear so little of this great discovery from the pulpit? The following from a sermon by the Bishop of Manchester, preached in Manchester Cathedral on Sunday, September 4th, 1887, forms a striking exception to the rule. "The sufficient answer," says the Bishop, "to ninety out of a hundred of the ordinary objections to the Bible, as the record of a divine education of our race, is given in that one word--development. And to what are we indebted for that potent word, which, as with the wand of a magician, has at the same moment so completely transformed our knowledge and dispelled our difficulties? To modern science, resolutely pursuing its search for truth in spite of popular obloquy and--alas that one should have to say it--in spite too often of theological denunciation!" (Quoted by Professor Huxley in his essay on "An Episcopal Trilogy.") Would that there were equal candour all round! But this indebtedness of theology to science in spite of itself is certainly one of the many workings of the Holy Spirit which are quite inexplicable. All the more so when we remember that truth-seeking scientists are, nowadays, usually Agnostics. P. 165, lines 38-9.--A Mithraist could turn to the Christian worship and find his main rites unimpaired. We have the witness of the Christian Fathers. Justin Martyr, after describing the institution of the Lord's Supper (1 Apol., chap. 66), goes on to say: "Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithra, commanding the same thing to be done. For that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of the one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn." Tertullian intimates that "the devil, by the mysteries of his idols, imitates even the main parts of the divine mysteries. He also baptises his worshippers in water, and makes them believe that this purifies them of their crimes. There Mithra sets his mark on the forehead of his soldiers; he celebrates the oblation of bread; he offers an image of the resurrection, and presents at once the crown and sword; he limits his chief priest to a single marriage; he even has virgins and his ascetics (continentes)." (Præscr. c. 40. Cp. De Bapt. c. 5; De Corona, c. 15. Quoted on p. 322 of J. M. Robertson's Pagan Christs.) We have also the witness of modern discoveries. For example, Professor Franz Cumont, in his work, Les Mystères de Mithra, gives a photograph of a recently-discovered bas-relief, representing a Mithraic communion. On a small tripod is the bread, in the form of wafers, each marked with a cross. Chapter V. P. 172, lines 14-15.--Ignorance of the gist of the Darwinian theory, "natural selection," has been fruitful in misunderstandings. It is very necessary to understand exactly what the theory of natural selection is and is not; because champions of the Faith, even when believing in Evolution, base some of their arguments on the alleged collapse of the Darwinian theory. Thus, in Present-day Rationalism Critically Examined, the Rev. Professor George Henslow affirms that, while the theory of Evolution stands on an impregnable basis, Haeckel's Monism and Rationalistic agnosticism are based on Darwin's doctrine of natural selection, and he enters upon an elaborate argument--covering sixty pages of his book--to show that the origin of species by means of natural selection is false, and that the primary cause of Evolution is the definite action of the environment, combined with the adaptive powers of the living organism. Such arguments, coming from a clergyman having scientific attainments, are likely to impress the average Christian reader and confuse the main issue. Natural selection is "the action of the environment" (see The Origin of Species, chap. iv.), and even if it were not, and if natural selection (or elimination) were not the primary cause, the doctrine of the action of environment will suit the Monist just as well. Regarding the minor, but not unimportant, part played by sexual selection, Darwin writes: "For my own part, I conclude that of all the causes which have led to the differences in external appearance between the races of men, and to a certain extent between man and the lower animals, sexual selection has been by far the most efficient" (Descent of Man, ed. 1871, ii., 367). Scientists who are advocates of the Christian cause are not always as candid as one could wish. While the Church cited Sir Richard Owen "as an authority against the Darwinian theory, especially in its application to man's descent, there remained in the memory of his brother savants his lack of candour in never withdrawing the statement made by him, and demonstrated by Huxley as untrue, that the hippocampus minor in the human brain is absent from the brain of the ape." (See p. 172 of Mr. Clodd's Pioneers of Evolution. See also remarks by Sir Charles Lyell, pp. 485 and 486 of his work, Antiquity of Man. On p. 290 he further tells us that "we may consider the attempt to distinguish the brain of man from that of the ape on the ground of newly-discovered cerebral characters, presenting differences in kind, as virtually abandoned by its originator.") P. 205, lines 18-20.--That there are not more links missing is due principally to the discovery of fossil remains. The greatest importance has been attached to a discovery in Java, made in 1894 by Eugene Dubois. The remains consisted of the crown of the skull, two teeth, and a femur belonging to a creature for which the name Pithecanthropus erectus has been invented. This pithecanthropus excited the liveliest interest as the long-sought transitional form between man and the ape. Professor Haeckel writes concerning this in his book, The Evolution of Man, vol. ii., p. 633: "There were very interesting scientific discussions on it at the last three International Congresses of Zoology (Leyden, 1895; Cambridge, 1898; and Berlin, 1901). I took an active part in the discussion at Cambridge, and may refer the reader to the paper I read there." (It has been translated by Dr. Gadow, under the title of The Last Link.) Since then we have Professor Keasbey writing in 1901 that the remains have been "pronounced genuine," and Professor Packard, in 1902, that it is now "generally recognised." Again, to give a still more recent "find," Dr. Andrews, who accompanied the Geological Survey of Egypt, has (as mentioned by Professor Ray Lankester in his lecture at the London Institution on November 2nd, 1906) discovered a remarkable skull (now in the Natural History Museum) which is the connecting link between elephants, ancient and modern, and other mammals. There have also been discoveries of missing links among the living. The duck-bill, a four-footed animal which lays eggs, is an important link between reptiles and mammals. Cuvier, the celebrated French naturalist, a persistent opponent of the evolutionary doctrines advanced by Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, did not believe it possible that any four-footed animal could lay eggs, and it was not till long after his time, and, indeed, only quite lately, that the statements of the natives were verified, and the eggs of the duck-bill actually found. P. 208, lines 14-18.--Enough has been said, I hope, to convince the reader that ... there is overpowering evidence against separate acts of creation, and in favour of an animal origin of the human race. This Family Tree of Life will enable him to form a brain-picture of the various steps in the evolutionary process:-- [Note.--It is now generally admitted that man goes back at least 200,000 years.] [Illustration: Protoplasm plus Chlorophyll] This diagram of development is taken from Edwards Clodd's work, The Story of Creation, by the kind permission of Mr. Clodd and Messrs. Longmans. Note by Mr. Clodd.--The ascent of the higher life-forms from the lower is more lateral than the lines indicate, but the diagram is only a rough attempt to show the relative places of the leading groups. P. 218, lines 14-15.--The dogmas of sin and its atonement. "Astronomers tell us that there are some 500,000,000 suns visible from our earth, many if not most of them larger than our sun, and all of them presumably surrounded by planets at least as important as our earth; and to maintain the old theological view of the supreme value of this little insignificant planet in the eyes of the 'Almighty Ruler' of such a universe, or to suppose that He would send His 'Only Son' to die for us little cosmic microbes, is presumption which, when one thinks of it, really seems to amount to insanity" (quoted from p. 108 of Richard Harte's Lay Religion). Chapter VI. P. 220, line 1.--Deism denies Christianity. "God," says Canon Liddon, "is banished from the world by deism, which puts nature in His place" (Some Elements of Religion, pp. 56-7). The seventeenth and eighteenth-century deists, however, did not deny the personality of God, but the fact of revelation. "In recent theology deism has generally come to be regarded as, in common with theism, holding in opposition to atheism that there is a God, and in opposition to pantheism that God is distinct from the world, but as differing from theism in maintaining that God is separate from the world, having endowed it with self-sustaining and self-acting powers, and then abandoned it to itself" (Enc. Brit., art. "Theism"). P. 221, line 8.--"What it is to be a Christian." Archdeacon Wilson avers that "We dare not deny the name of Christian to such as live in Christ's spirit and do His will, though they know not for certain how God manifested himself in Christ, and will not profess a certainty they do not feel." Again, he argues that "We rest on the broad ground of the vast experience of the world, and the testimony of our own conscience, that Christ has lifted mankind up, and shown man what is good; and this we may describe as bringing man to God, and revealing God to man. This redemption, salvation, we acknowledge as a fact. He who has this faith in Christ, and lets it work its natural result in making him more like Christ, deserves to be called a Christian." This does, indeed, give plenty of latitude--far more, in fact, than the Church as a body seems likely to give for some time to come. It, and the Rev. R. J. Campbell's "New Theology," will certainly enable many who are in reality non-Christian theists to continue calling themselves Christians. P. 224, note.--"Haeckel's Critics Answered." In the chapter on "God" there is a striking exposition of the very latest arguments for and against Theism. The opinions of Messrs. Ward, Newman, Smythe, Le Conte, Fiske, W. N. Clarke, Croll, Aubrey Moore, Iverach, Dallinger, Ballard, Rhondda Williams, Profeit, Kennedy, W. James, and Royce are all considered. Many pious Christians may have read the apologists' criticisms of Haeckel's well-known work, The Riddle of the Universe, but few will have studied the work itself, and still fewer these clear and convincing replies to the criticisms. It cannot be on account of the cost, as a copy of the cheap edition of either of these works can be obtained for 4 1/2d. P. 253, lines 25-6.--Some such psychical experiences largely account for religious superstitions. With regard to phenomena at present popularly known as spiritualistic, but for which scientists have now adopted the term "metapsychical," the following declaration by Professor Lombroso (appearing in the review La Lettura, November, 1906) is of considerable interest. "As the result," he writes, "of our researches, I have been bound to admit the conviction that these phenomena are of colossal importance, and that it is the plain duty of science to direct attention towards them without delay." N.B.--The Professor, when interviewed subsequently by the Turin correspondent of the Standard, repudiated any suggestion of supernatural agency, and said: "All spiritualistic phenomena can be understood and explained without any reference to the intervention of the supernatural. Spiritualists affirm that the soul is an emanation from God, while I contend that it is an emanation of the brain. This is the whole thing in a nutshell. You therefore see how, from this point of view, I cannot be called a spiritualist--at least, in the sense in which the term is generally understood. Almost all spiritualistic phenomena can be classed among those positive facts which science can explain." However, in an article contributed by him to the Grand Magazine for January, 1907, and entitled "Why I became a Spiritualist," Professor Lombroso admits that he has felt himself "compelled to yield to the conviction that spiritualistic phenomena, if due in great part to the influence of the medium, are likewise attributable to the influence of extra-terrestrial existences, which may, perhaps, be compared to the radio-activity which still persists in tubes after the radium which originated them has disappeared." Professor Cesare Lombroso, it may be mentioned, is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Turin, and the author of standard works on criminology, hypnotism, and psychology, as well as of a number of valuable treatises relating to cerebral study. Two of his publications, Man of Genius (1891) and Female Offender (1895), have been issued in English. The phenomena Professor Lombroso refers to are those which have induced such eminent scientists as Wallace, Lodge, Hyslop, Barrett, and Crookes to remain or to become supernaturalists. One, and to my mind the chief, reason why these metapsychical phenomena are, as Professor Lombroso tells us, of colossal importance--why science should direct attention towards them without delay--is that, so soon as they are universally acknowledged to be manifestations occurring in obedience to one of Nature's laws--a law as yet not fully understood--the last excuse for belief in the supernatural will have vanished. Supernaturalism will receive its death-blow, and Rationalism be infused with fresh life. P. 254, line 28.--Professor James--an earnest champion of religion. In defining his philosophic position he admits his own "inability to accept either popular Christianity or scholastic Theism" (see his Postscript, p. 521). He is of opinion that both the metaphysical argument for God's existence and the arguments for a God with moral attributes must be rejected, and "the man who is sincere with himself and the facts, but who remains religious still," must soothe "his perplexed and baffled intellect" with "a trustful sense of presence" (ibid, pp. 445-8). A careful perusal of his book, however, makes it tolerably clear that this feeling of the presence of Spiritual Beings is simply a hallucination. P. 256, lines 22-26.--There has never yet been a case of a Mohammedan or a Hindoo, or any other non-Christian, who, without having heard of Christianity, has had a revelation of Christian "truth." Chet Ram, the founder of a sect whose numbers, according to the last Indian census, "are increasing day by day," began by being a Hindu, and then became the disciple of a Mohammedan fakir in the Punjab. After following him for some years he had what he described as a vision of Christ, who revealed Himself as the author of salvation, and commanded him (Chet Ram) to build a church and to place within it the Bible. He was himself illiterate, but immediately began to proclaim the divinity of Christ, and was soon followed by disciples recruited alike from the Hindus and the Moslems. It is "religious" experiences such as these which continue to deceive even educated men and women, and hinder the growth of Rationalism. Chapter VII. P. 285, lines 10-11.--The ghastly death of the witch. "It is impossible to leave the history of witchcraft without reflecting how vast an amount of suffering has, in this respect at least, been removed by the progress of rationalistic civilisation.... It is probable that no class of victims endured sufferings so unalloyed and so intense.... All these sufferings were the result of a single superstition, which the spirit of Rationalism has destroyed." (See pp. 137-8 of Lecky's Rationalism in Europe, Longmans, Green, & Co., 1904.) Pp. 290-96, and p. 294, note 4. The following are some further notes on the spread of Christianity:-- When, after more than three centuries, the spread became fairly rapid, owing, as we have seen, to circumstances of a distinctly mundane character, what was the effect on public morality? The Roman Empire passed its zenith in the first half of the second century--under Stoics. Historians agree that it was declining all through the third century. On the other hand, it was making fresh progress morally in the fourth century. It deteriorated morally after A.D. 380-90, the date of the triumph of Christianity! Do these facts bear out the Christian contention that Christianity purifies empire? If we continue the history of Christianity's spread, we find similar samples of Divine Providence and similar samples of moral progress. Take, for instance, the facts connected with the conversion of the barbarians, as related by the author of the apologetic work, Beneficial Influence of the Ancient Clergy. We learn that "Many a deviation from primitive simplicity, dangerous though it might justly seem to the integrity of the Roman faith, was productive of consequences the most momentous to tribes who reverenced principally the pomp and mysterious ceremony attendant on the faith which they embraced, and would have scorned to bow down before priests or altars whose faultless humility merely recalled the rude shrines of their native forests." Also we learn that "the lavish piety of barbarian sovereigns" directed "the plunder of suffering lands into the capacious coffers of the Church." Although this led to "the most fatal period of clerical corruption," our apologist is yet able to see in it the guiding hand of Providence establishing "the constant grandeur of the ecclesiastical edifice"! In Central Europe it was by force of arms that Charlemagne succeeded in spreading Christianity. "It cannot be doubted," we are told, "that the conquering hosts of the Franks were far more effective in the conversion of Central Europe than could have been the most self-denying of missionaries, or the most undoubtedly miraculous of Italian relics." This fresh spread took place towards the close of the eighth century. After a hundred years or so for the leaven to work, we should expect to see a distinct advance in morality among both the clergy and the laity. We find, on the contrary, that during the whole of the tenth century the spectacle presented by society was "revolting." "Not only did the clerical body present sure tokens of that gigantic cancer which was wasting the energies of the Church, but their degeneracy was relieved by nothing that was noble or praiseworthy among the laity." P. 315, lines 3-4.--The Rationalistic explanation of that essence of the "religious instinct," belief in an after-life. "Eternity is at best but an artificial idea; in reality, it is no true idea at all, since we cannot conceive it; it is only the negation of an idea, being, in fact, the negation of that which passes away. When we begin discussing eternity we see that, from the point of view of natural science, nothing is eternal except the ultimate particles of matter and their forces; for no one of the thousandfold phenomena and combinations under which matter and force present themselves to us can be eternal" (Weismann on Heredity, vol. ii., p. 74 [Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1892]). Chapter VIII. P. 331, lines 15-16.--A kind of undefined, but nevertheless potent and serviceable, religion. The Rev. Henry Scott Jeffreys, of Sendai, contributed a paper, entitled "Some of the Native Virtues of the Japanese People," to the Japan Evangelist. The following are some, out of many, exceedingly significant admissions:--"After seven years' residence among this people, I wish to place on record my humble testimony to their native virtues. I refer to virtues that belong to the Japanese people without reference to their faith. In this connection it may be said that perhaps the most remarkable part is their devotion to ethics alone, utterly divorced from religion. They love virtue for its own sake, and not from fear of punishment or hope of reward.... They have eliminated from their system of ethics not only heaven and hell, but God also.... To be sure, there are religions (so-called), both native and foreign; but they have little effect upon the popular conscience.... The conversion of this people to the Christian faith is a most complex and perplexing problem; not because they are so bad, but because they are so good." P. 334, lines 29-31.--Crime and bad lives will be the measure of a State's failure. It is customary to scout the idea of State control as the panacea for social evils. One is warned against grandmotherly legislation, interference with the liberty of the private individual, etc. I may be permitted, therefore, to give an illustration of its beneficial effect. The Gothenburg system, by which the liquor traffic is judiciously controlled, has, in spite of all opposition, fought its way victoriously, and is now adopted, although partly modified, in most towns in Sweden, and also in Norway and Finland. Thus the evil effects of drink have been considerably mitigated; intemperance, pauperism, and vice have been reduced. Would not legislation of this nature for the removal of England's greatest curse be far better than half-hearted measures that are palliative rather than remedial? Now that the Church has taken up the temperance cause, could she not bring her great influence to bear towards the introduction of some such system, pitting herself against vested interests? Remarkable work is being carried on by the Danish temperance societies on the basis of allowing their members to regard beer of low alcoholic strength as a temperance beverage. Australia has been watching New Zealand in the matter of drink reform, and the Government of New South Wales, at any rate, has found it necessary to fulfil pledges given at the last general election, with the result that, among a certain class, there is an immense diminution in the temptation to drink. Where the nature of the case demands it, more drastic remedies must be applied. Thus Belgium has forbidden the very presence of absinthe within her borders, and in Switzerland--in some of the cantons, at all events--the authorities have made up their minds to prohibit the manufacture and sale of absinthe. Even in China an edict has now been promulgated for the abolition of the use of opium, and an anti-opium movement is spreading which bids fair to embarrass the interested abettor of the vice--a Christian Government. In their volume, The Making of the Criminal (Macmillan & Co.), Messrs. C. E. B. Russell and L. M. Rigby confirm the now generally accepted view that it is, as a rule, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one that the habitual criminal is made, and show that juvenile crime is a product of the wretched economic, social, and family condition in which so many unhappy children are born and have to live. The criminal is also recruited, as Dr. W. D. Morrison points out (in a review of their book appearing in the Tribune, December 12th, 1906), from those whose home and social antecedents may be good enough, but who are themselves either mentally or physically below the average of the general community, and who, therefore, when times are bad, drift insensibly into crime. When to all this unfavourable environment we add an unfavourable heredity, we get a conjunction of circumstances against which it is quite impossible for the unfortunate to contend, even though he be aided by the "gift of freewill" and by all the intercessory prayers of the Churches. The Borstal system and other remedies recommended in The Making of the Criminal are excellent in their way, but can be regarded only as palliatives. They deal with the criminal after he has been made. What is wanted is, to quote Dr. Morrison, "a wise and progressive statesmanship which will cut off crime at its roots--a statesmanship which will devote itself with care and foresight to ameliorating the whole material and moral conditions of existence of the workman, the woman, and the child." And this statesmanship will take an enlightened view of the population question, recognising that it is in the diminution of the struggle for existence, not in the rise of the birth-rate, that the material and moral condition of the people can be ameliorated. P. 336, note.--Psychical research will lead to the discovery of a complete and scientific method for the toughening of our moral fibres. A quarter of a century ago Proctor remarked (see pp. 203-4 of his essays, Rough Ways Made Smooth) that the phenomena of hypnotism "promise to afford valuable means of curing certain ailments, and of influencing in useful ways certain powers and functions of the body." He recognised "possibilities which, duly developed, might be found of extreme value to the human race." Since these words were uttered this branch of science has not stood still, and there seems every prospect that his prophecy will be fulfilled in the near future. There are now cliniques for hypnotic treatment in France (Dr. Bérillon's in Paris, for example), Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Holland, Switzerland, and America. "The commencement of the present revival of hypnotism in England, from its medical side, was apparently due to Dr. Lloyd Tuckey, who happened to be in the neighbourhood of Nancy in August, 1888, and visited Liébeault out of curiosity" (see p. 35 of Dr. Milne Bramwell's Hypnotism: Its History, Practice, and Theory [Alexander Moring, Hanover Square, London; 2nd ed., 1906]). The following are some of the facts about the matter which should be clearly understood and widely made known:-- (1) "The object of all hypnotic treatment ought to be the development of the patient's control of his own organism" (see p. 436 of Hypnotism: Its History, Practice, and Theory). (2) The hypnotic control may be obtained without any effort on the part of the operator, the effort formerly supposed to be required being purely imaginary, and the hypnotic state being, in fact, obtained without any operation whatever. Indeed, it has now been found that for curative purposes the "suggestion" may be conveyed without throwing the patient into the hypnotic condition, and that anyone not absolutely an idiot or insane may be amenable to the treatment. (3) "Both 'Scientist' [the author is speaking of Christian Scientists] and Suggestionist also use the same method for creating belief--namely, Assertion.... Assertions are not made clumsily, ignorantly, and at random, as assertions are in our daily intercourse, but are made skilfully, with a purpose, and with a knowledge of the effects they will produce" (see p. 9 of the late Richard Harte's The New Psychology; or, The Secret of Happiness [Fowler & Co., London and New York]). Is this one of the reasons why the believer is able to continue a believer in spite of all disproof? Certainly he is constantly repeating assertions, and sometimes these must get through to his subliminal consciousness--his subjective mind. (4) Auto-suggestion. The suggestion should be made when you are composing yourself to sleep. Dr. Bramwell tells me that the best time is on first waking in the morning, before dozing off again. (5) "Many cases of functional nervous disorder have recovered under hypnotic treatment after the continued failure of other methods.... Further, the diseases which frequently respond to hypnotic treatment are often those in which drugs are of little or no avail. For example, what medicine would one prescribe for a man who, in the midst of mental and physical health, had suddenly become the prey of an obsession?" (see p. 435 of Hypnotism: Its History, Practice, and Theory). (6) "The volition is increased and the moral standard raised" (see p. 437 of Hypnotism, etc.). "Experience proves that 'principles' instilled into anyone while in the hypnotic condition become irrevocably [?] fixed in the mind" (p. 3 of Richard Harte's Hypnotism and the Doctors). Thus degenerates, dipsomaniacs, morphinomaniacs, kleptomaniacs, sexual perverts, and other unfortunates, may be reclaimed. (7) "'Suggestion' is of universal application, and of incalculable power for good in almost every department of human life.... The three principal ways in which suggestion (which has been called 'the active principle' of hypnotism) affects human beings beneficially, in addition to curing diseases, are: By facilitating education; by preventing crime, and reforming the criminal; and by raising the general standard of manliness--of courage, of independence of character, and of respect for self and others" (ibid, pp. 2-4). Note.--"The Medical Society for the Study of Suggestive Therapeutics" was constituted at the close of 1906. Let us hope that it will soon rival the flourishing French Société d'Hypnotisme et de Psychologie. P. 337, lines 5-6.--It is the quality, not the quantity, of our children that we have to keep to the forefront. "This is the great problem in a nutshell: to improve the quality and diminish the quantity of mankind--that is, in proportion to the means of securing for each a truly human life." "Is not the quality rather than the quantity of children the thing to be aimed at?" (Mona Caird and Lady Grove on "The Position of Women," see pp. 118 and 128 of the Fortnightly Review for July, 1905). Besides, "if we continued to maintain the high birth-rate of the mid-Victorian epoch, it is certain that, in the course of a few generations, there would be no elbow-room left in our little islands. Already, indeed, Great Britain is, from many points of view, over-populated. If all the people who are now crowded together in the slums of our great towns were scattered over the country, there would be practically no country left. England would have become a vast suburb. That is not an ideal to which any patriotic Englishman would care to look forward. Space and quiet are essential for the development of some of the best qualities of human beings, and those persons who too hastily regret a decline in the birth-rate must explain how they propose to reconcile these essentials with an unlimited increase of our present population" (The Daily Graphic, August 7th, 1905, art. "A Declining Birth-rate"). Over-population spells strife, squalor, vice, crime--misery. Dr. Barnardos and "General" Booths may get over the "unemployed" difficulty by schemes for emigration to Canada and elsewhere; but this is, at best, only a very temporary remedy. As it is, thousands of white men are living and dying in climates for which they are unadapted; while in some cases--in certain portions of Africa, for example--they are ousting and making life a burthen to the races that are adapted. We have only to look far enough ahead to discover that the time must come when the world would so teem with human-kind that even a Bishop of London or a President Roosevelt would have to cry "Hold! Enough!" At the present moment this problem presses for a very early solution in India. For many months in the year, as I have again and again seen with my own eyes, masses of the agricultural population are entirely without employment. Hence the constantly recurring famines, or partial famines, in years of bad or indifferent rainfall. The population problem, being intimately connected with many another problem, is one of the utmost gravity; but, so long as men hold that to increase and multiply is the command of God and a duty we owe to the State, it will never be rightly, never be sensibly, solved. P.S.--Millions are starving in China now (February, 1907). P. 345, line 3.--The Moral Instruction League. The object of the Moral Instruction League (19, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, W.C.) is to introduce systematic non-theological moral instruction into all schools, and to make the formation of character the chief aim of school life. Their contention is--and it seems a wise one--that ethical principles on which we all agree should not be associated in the schools of the State with theological principles on which we all differ. Already certain education authorities are providing for systematic moral instruction of a purely secular nature. In the West Riding scheme it is expressly stated that it is to be "part of the secular instruction," while the Cheshire scheme emphatically lays down that the moral instruction must be non-theological. The authorities of Groton, Blackpool, Norwich, York, and elsewhere, have supplied all the teachers of their schools with copies of the Moral Instruction League's Graduated Syllabus of Moral Instruction for Elementary Schools. The West Riding Education Authority has adopted the Syllabus, and it is now in use in the 1,270 schools, Provided and Non-Provided, of that authority. In addition to these, numerous education authorities have decided to make provision for moral instruction a part of the secular instruction in their schools. So much that is untrue has been said about the results of a purely secular education by its strenuous opponents that it is high time for the real truth to be known. This my readers will find in Mr. Joseph McCabe's tractate, The Truth About Secular Education: Its History and Results (Watts & Co., 1906, paper covers, 6d.). Among some excellent works intended to assist parents and teachers in the non-theological character-training of children, I may mention F. J. Gould's The Children's Book of Moral Lessons, in three series (Watts & Co.), Hackwood's Notes of Lessons on Moral Subjects, Alice Chesterton's The Garden of Childhood (Sonnenschein), Dr. Felix Adler's The Moral Instruction of Children (Edward Arnold), the Moral Instruction League and also the Leicester Syllabus, and A. J. Waldegrave's A Teacher's Handbook of Moral Lessons (Sonnenschein). Dr. F. H. Hayward's Secret of Herbart, a powerful appeal to the teacher on the scope and urgency of his moral mission, is now re-issued at 6d. (Watts). The translation of Dr. F. W. Förster's Lebenskunde, a book replete with illustrative matter for the teacher, has been undertaken by the Moral Instruction League. Mr. W. M. Salter's essay, "Why Live a Moral Life?" is of exceptional merit. This and other ethical essays may be obtained from the Secretary of the Union of Ethical Societies, 19, Buckingham Street, Strand, W.C.; price one penny each. One of the most important contributions to ethical sociology that has appeared for many years is a work in two vols. entitled Morals in Evolution (Chapman & Hall; 1906), by Mr. L. T. Hobhouse. I venture to predict that it will ere long be recognised as the standard work on the subject. Mr. Hobhouse, it should be noted, never wavers in his assertion of the supremacy of ethics over all phases of religion. P. 350, line 15.--The practices of the Latin and Greek Churches. Diaries recounting the sights seen by a lord of high degree in 1465 were published in 1851 by the Literary Society of Stuttgart. They include an interesting account of all the shrines and relics seen during his travels through Western Europe. The account of the relics which he saw in our own Canterbury Cathedral admits of no curtailment: "First we saw the head-band of the Blessed Virgin, a piece of Christ's garment, and three thorns from His Crown; then we saw the bedstead of St. Thomas and his brain, and the blood of St. Thomas and of St. John the Apostles. We saw also the sword with which St. Thomas of Canterbury was beheaded; the hair of the Mother of God, and a part of the Sepulchre. There was also shown to us a part of the shoulder of the Blessed Simeon, who bore Christ in his arms; the head of the blessed Lustrabena; one leg of St. George; a piece of the body and the bones of St. Lawrence; a leg of the Bishop of St. Romanus; a cup of St. Thomas, which he had been accustomed to use in administering the Sacrament at Canterbury; a leg of the Virgin Milda; a leg of the Virgin Eduarda. We also saw a tooth and a finger of St. Stephen the Martyr; bones of the Virgin Catherine, and oil from her sepulchre, which is said to flow to this day; hair of the blessed Virgin [sic!] Magdalene; a tooth of St. Benedict; a finger of St. Urban; the lips of one of the infants slain by Herod; bones of the blessed Clement; bones of St. Vincent. Very many other things were also shown to us, which are not set down by me in this place." Very many other things have also been shown to me during my travels abroad (from St. Anne de Beaupré in Quebec to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem) which are not set down by me in this place, and I may say that the grotesqueness of the frauds that are perpetrated is only equalled by the gross ignorance and credulity of the worshippers. The number of these "relics" scattered over Christendom must amount to thousands upon thousands. To stop the traffic in them, there is now a regulation that if you buy a relic you commit mortal sin. The relics are still sold, however; only the price is said to be for the frame or for the trouble, or something to that effect. For a description of La Bottega del Papa (the Pope's shop) or La Santa Bottega (the Holy Shop) see Dr. Robertson's book, The Roman Catholic Church in Italy. Regarding the early Church, see Bible Myths, pp. 434-40. P. 359, lines 7-10.--Some of our greatest divines ... condemn obscurantism and the odium theologicum. We have a striking example of this in Dean Farrar's tractate, The Bible and the Child (James Clarke & Co., 1897). The passage runs as follows: "There are a certain number of persons who, when their minds have become stereotyped in foregone conclusions, are simply incapable of grasping new truths. They become obstructionists, and not infrequently bigoted obstructionists. As convinced as the Pope of their own personal infallibility, their attitude towards those who see that the old views are no longer tenable is an attitude of anger and alarm. This is the usual temper of the odium theologicum. It would, if it could, grasp the thumbscrew and the rack of mediæval Inquisitors, and would, in the last resource, hand over all opponents to the scaffold or the stake. Those whose intellects have been thus petrified by custom and advancing years are, of all others, the most hopeless to deal with. They have made themselves incapable of fair and rational examination of the truths which they impugn. They think they can, by mere assertion, overthrow results arrived at by the life-long inquiries of the ablest student, while they have not given a day's serious or impartial study to them. They fancy that even the ignorant, if only they be what is called orthodox, are justified in strong denunciation of men quite as truthful, and often incomparably more able than themselves. Off-hand dogmatists of this stamp, who usually abound among professional religionists, think that they can refute any number of scholars, however profound and however pious, if only they shout 'Infidel' with sufficient loudness." P. 367, lines 21-2.--Did not slavery flourish side by side with the Christian Church? Serfdom in England was fully extinguished only in 1600, and the Act for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Colonies was passed only in 1833. For eighteen long centuries Christianity countenanced the atrocious inhumanities of the slave trade. The very irons used by the native chiefs for shackling the prisoners when handing them over to the Christian traders were made in Birmingham, and the greatest horrors of slavery have been exhibited only under the rule of the Christian slave-owner. We can form some idea of the inhumanity then displayed from the treatment of the coloured races by the white man in Africa to-day. Read, for instance, the accounts of the Congo atrocities, or of the German Colonial scandals. Read, again, some home-truths about our own Colonies in Labour and other Questions in South Africa, by Medicus (T. Fisher Unwin, 1903). The white man has indeed a burden to bear--the burden of his own iniquity. Regarding negro slavery, Dr. Westermarck clearly shows (in his work, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas) that "this system of slavery, which, at least in the British Colonies and the slave States, surpassed in cruelty the slavery of any pagan country, ancient or modern, was not only recognised by Christian Governments, but was supported by the large bulk of the clergy, Catholic and Protestant alike." P. 368, lines 25-8.--The Christian Church has been more cruel and shed more human blood than any other Church or institution in the world. Let the Jew bear witness among the crowd of victims. History is repeating itself to-day, and my previous allusions to the present situation in Russia are all too brief. I would ask my readers kindly to put to themselves the following crucial questions: To what party do the religious bigots and their partisans belong? Is it not to the reactionary party, the party that sets its face against reform? On what do the reactionaries chiefly rely for the retention of their hold upon the bulk of the people? Is it not on a peasantry wallowing in ignorance and steeped in superstition? What are the actual instruments employed for maintaining their power? Do they not consist of corrupt officials and cruel Cossacks? Who are responsible for shameless acts of persecution, and, indeed, very largely for all the bloodshed, strife, and anarchy? Is it not the orthodox Church and her supporters? Is it too much to say, with the Rev. J. Lawson-Forster, that "the Russian Church has become the tool of murderers"? (Mr. Lawson-Forster expressed himself in these words when presiding at the great public meeting held at the Brondesbury Synagogue to protest against the recent outrages in Russia.) To what party do the Freethinkers belong? Are they not all, everyone of them, adherents of the party desirous of reform and of religious toleration? With regard to religious persecution generally, Christians might study with advantage Buckle's History of Civilisation in England, or Lecky's History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, or C. T. Gorham's Faith: Its Freaks and Follies (Rationalist Press Association), or the latest work on the subject, Religious Persecution, by E. S. P. Haynes (Duckworth; a revised edition has now been issued by the R. P. A. at 6d.). Few realise that the favourite method for overcoming the scruples of the heretic--torture--was used in England so late as 1640. Pp. 371-2, lines 31 and 1-3.--History, viewed as a whole, is nothing but a succession of struggles for existence among rival nations. If Major Murray had stopped short at offering us a somewhat highly coloured picture of the past and present conditions ruling among Christian nations, and at inculcating the necessity of our being in readiness to face the inevitable, few of us would be found to quarrel, in the main, with his conclusions. But when he tells us that "Peace never has been, and never will be [italics are mine], as long as the passions of mankind endure, more than a lull between the storms of war," then the better-informed and peace-loving Rationalist will beg to differ with him. He feels that this gospel of universal hatred is being carried too far. Never is a very long time. Major Murray says: "No great nation will ever submit to arbitration any interest that it regards as absolutely vital." Did not our British forefathers think, and with more reason, that "men of honour" could settle their disputes only by the duel? May we not trust that the decisions of learned and unbiassed judges will be equitable, and therefore that their acceptance will redound to the honour of the great nations concerned? Natural selection, or, as we have elsewhere called it, natural murder, ceased to have full power over men on the day that man commenced to control his environment. Since then he has been constantly engaged in making nature do some work for him, in altering the environment in which he finds himself instead of letting it alter him. Now that he is equipped, better than ever before in his history, for this task, now that he has learnt more of the secrets of Nature--of her crude and cruel processes--is he going to acquiesce tamely, and make no use of his knowledge? Now the nature of the malady has been diagnosed, and now the proper remedies have been discovered, will he not set about the cure? Is the struggle for existence, with all its attendant horrors, to be perpetuated? Does the end--the survival of the fittest--justify the means--over-production and murder? Cannot the same and better results be attained by a process less crude, less cruel? Nature procures adaptation to existing environment by methods fraught with untold suffering for the sentient, and the obvious course is for man to reverse the process, bringing the environment into harmony with his existing constitution. Of a truth, nature is, as Major Murray reminds us, red in tooth and claw; but science is both able and willing to tame the shrew. P. 374, lines 15-19.--The "Lord mighty in battle" is expected to take interest in bloodshed ... to fight for his people. A parody appearing in an evening paper on November 29th, 1901, conveys a wholesome lesson on this subject. "Lest we forget," I quote it at length:-- PROCESSIONAL. Lord God of Battles, whom we seek On clouds and tempests throned afar, When tired of being tamely weak, We Maffick into deadly war; If it should chance to be a sin, At least enable us to win. Give to the Churches faith to pray For what they know they shouldn't ask, And such abounding grace that they May cheerfully perform the task; Wave flags and loyally discount That fatal Sermon on the Mount. Give to the people strength to be Convinced all happens for the best, To see the thing they wish to see, And prudently ignore the rest; So priest and people shall combine To gain their ends, and call them Thine. P. 374, lines 23-4.--Its [Christianity's] impotency to carry out this, one of its chief missions. "In no field of its work," exclaims Mr. Andrew Carnegie, "does the Christian Church throughout the whole world--with outstanding individual exceptions--so conspicuously fail as in its attitude to war. Its silence when outspoken speech might avert war, its silence during war's sway, its failure during days of peace to proclaim the true Christian doctrines regarding the killing of men, give point to the recent arraignment of the Prime Minister, who declared that the Church to-day busied itself with questions [e.g., of vestments and candles] which did not weigh even as dust in the balance compared with the vital problems with which it was called upon to deal." (See reports of the ceremony at which Mr. Carnegie was installed as Rector of St. Andrew's University.) P. 374, lines 24-5.--Religion being frequently the actual occasion of, the strife. From the Crusades to the Crimea, religion has continually been either directly or indirectly the cause of war. Protestants, who may be ready to excuse the wars undertaken to drive the infidels from the "Holy Land," will do well to remember that Pope Innocent III., besides proclaiming the fifth of these crusades, proclaimed also the infamous crusade against the Albigenses (who opposed the corruptions of the Church of Rome), when Simon de Montfort and the Pope's legate, at the head of half a million of men, put to the sword friend and foe, men and women, saying, "God will find his own." In the case of that mischievous and unnecessary blunder, the Crimean War, the great masses of the Russian people saw but a spirited defence of the Cross against the Crescent, wherein, from their point of view, the infidel was being supported by renegade Christians. It was an appeal to the religious emotions of the Russian peasants--an insincere appeal, as history has discovered--that lent to the last Russo-Turkish war a fictitious popularity. P. 375, lines 6-7.--Every Rationalist, every Freethinker, is an honest advocate of peace. Note these lines by an eminent divine and great dignitary of the Church, Archbishop Alexander, of Armagh:-- And when I know how noble natures form under the red rain of war, I deem it true That He who made the earthquakes and the storm perchance made battle too. And these by the gentle Wordsworth, the poet of sweet simplicity:-- But Thy most dreaded instrument In working out a pure intent Is man--array'd for mutual slaughter; Yea, Carnage is Thy daughter! And compare: "The very ideas and efforts which have led men to struggle against the Papal Church are exactly those which are exorcising the demon of militarism from the soul of France" (Contemporary Review for January, 1905, art. "France and Rome"). Or again the following, reported in the daily papers: "A petition to stop the war between Russia and Japan owes its inception to Signor Carlo Romissi, Deputy and editor of the Secolo of Milan. The petition has penetrated into every workshop, household, and school, and roused the people to a passionate desire for peace, not only between the belligerents in the Far East, but between all nations." The Secolo is the most widely-read Freethought paper in Italy. Though it may be a long time before our efforts are rewarded, is that any reason for not making a commencement in the right direction? Let me give an instance. The effort now being made to popularise the international language "Esperanto" is one such commencement. Could not the Church spare a little of her military ardour (exhibited in the arm-chair and pulpit) for supporting peaceful projects of this nature? This one, at any rate, among the many to be found on the Rationalist programme, is not contrary to her teaching; but I have not as yet heard of any ecclesiastical support to a scheme that will undoubtedly conduce to a better acquaintance between the peoples of different nationalities. It is Rationalist and liberal-minded philanthropists (Mr. W. T. Stead, e.g.) who are at present chiefly interested in the movement. During the Boer War one was continually hearing declamations from the pulpit to the effect that war is a necessary evil. For instance, the late Bishop of Calcutta, Dr. Welldon, actually advocated war on the ground that it was a means of keeping a nation virile. Has the Boer War made us more virile? Whatever Imperial necessity there may have been for it, owing to blunders in the past and the existing condition of affairs, the certain effects of it, so far as we can see, have been the untimely destruction of some of the flower of our race, sorrow spread throughout the length and breadth of the land by many bereavements, the burden of a great debt, and the unemployed question rendered more acute than ever. "The brotherhood of man is a long way off--it may never be reached; but as an ideal it is better worth having than that of half-a-dozen sullen empires, trading only within their own boundaries, and shut up behind high tariff walls over which they peer suspiciously, scanning one another's exports and imports with jealous eyes, and making from time to time fawning alliances with one rival, while harbouring enmity with another, maintaining millions of men under arms and spending millions of pounds in armaments, and all the time waiting, waiting, waiting for an affrighted sun to rise upon the day of Armageddon.... But nobler things lie before us and a brighter dawn." (See Mr. Birrell's article, "Patriotism and Christianity," in the Contemporary Review for February, 1905.) SELECTIONS FROM A FEW (OF MANY) PRESS OPINIONS ON EARLIER EDITIONS. "Written in a temperate spirit."--Times. "A well-presented and interesting survey."--Daily Telegraph. "A freshly thought-out discussion of the whole subject. A temperate and well-reasoned study."--Scotsman. "A comprehensive survey of many perplexing problems ... full of cogent criticism and stimulating suggestion."--Tribune. "An absolutely sincere and sympathetic contribution to the controversy of our time."--Morning Post. "There is much in this work that deserves close study."--Daily Mail. "It is a very full, lucid, and candid work."--Morning Leader. "Evidence on both sides is lucidly set forth."--Daily Graphic. "By an able critic ... is written with moderation and in a spirit of reverent inquiry ... is manifestly honest, and the tone is dignified and courteous."--Yorkshire Post. "There is considerable novelty in his presentation of his case. He writes without bitterness or acrimony, exhibiting, indeed, in his treatment a scholarly mind."--Academy. "I am glad to see a second and revised edition."--T. P.'s Weekly. "Mr. Vivian's excellent book."--Observer. "Deserves attentive consideration."--John Bull. "A careful and thorough perusal of this book has led us to admire the industry, carefulness, and lucidity of the writer."--London Argus. "All we can do is to commend this book to the serious attention of all who have the welfare of Christianity--not mere dogma--at heart."--Public Opinion. "A clever and lucid statement of Rationalism."--Review of Reviews. "Every competent critic seems to have recognised the book as one of the few which immediately command recognition, and which are unhesitatingly added to our classics."--Westminster Review. "Illusions must be grappled with and exhibited as such before people can be got to discard them. And as a guide to the performance of that office Mr. Vivian's book is the best that can be named."--Albany Review. "Candid and conscientious."--London Quarterly Review. "The arguments of Agnosticism very clearly put."--Guardian. "Mr. Vivian does not aim at bespattering his opponents with mud."--Christian Commonwealth. "Ought to be carefully studied by preachers."--Christian World. "Is well worth reading by all who have to do with unbelief."--Methodist Times. "It is a frank and full inquiry into the grounds of modern unbelief, and a masterly plea for candour in Christian thought."--Christian Advocate. "Calmly-reasoned criticism.... Writes in excellent style."--Clarion. "Mr. Vivian's book is an admirable reply to When it Was Dark."--New Age. "An interesting and instructive book."--Positivist Review. "This book does much to show where rationalism can rightly influence both our creed and our conduct."--Light (devoted to the interests of psychical research). "I am recommending it to everybody who is interested in the religious problems of the hour."--The Reader. "Comprehensive in scope, judiciously written, and embodying an admirable selection of facts."--Literary Guide. "The book is written with marked ability."--Teacher. "Philip Vivian is a clear thinker, who has made a special study both of Christian evidences and of comparative religions."--Journal of Education. "Comprehensive, systematic, and strenuous ... based on much knowledge ... very capable."--Educational Times. "Exhaustive ... up-to-date ... claims the respect of thinking people, and demands the prayerful attention of all Christian teachers."--Bombay Gazette. "Any earnest, thoughtful man may read the volume with considerable profit."--Daily Mail, Brisbane. "Thoughtful and evidently earnest work."--Herald, Melbourne. "Clear, forceful, fair, and temperate."--Register, Adelaide. "Well arranged and well written, and adding to-day's conclusions to the polemics of the past."--Bulletin, Sydney. "A reliable and useful guide."--Otago Times, New Zealand. "A healthy tonic for parsons and Churches."--Cape Times. "A very stirring book."--Star, Johannesburg. "Many of its chapters are of great interest."--African Monthly. "Mr. Vivian has brought to his task wide reading and a clear, judicial mind; nor has he feared to follow his investigation to a logical end."--World, Toronto. "A clever and frank writer."--World, Vancouver. "From first to last most interesting and instructive."--Japan Chronicle. "It contains in little space a summary of modern knowledge."--Chicago Daily News. "A work of unusual clearness, dealing with the entire question of the so-called conflict between religion and science."--American Review of Reviews. "Will appeal to the widest possible range of readers."--New York Herald. NOTES [1] In the June (1906) number of Review of Theology and Philosophy, edited by Professor Allan Menzies, D.D. [2] As the Rev. John A. Hutton attempts to show in the Hibbert Journal, July, 1905. [3] In his address at the London Diocesan Conference in April, 1904. [4] When addressing a conference of clergy and church-workers at Blandford on September 7th, 1905. [5] In the course of one of those remarkable orations of his which always command the thoughtful attention of the House. The speech was reported in the newspapers of March 15th, 1904. [6] See Dr. Horton's letter to the Daily News, August 23rd, 1905. [7] The Rev. Charles Voysey, in a sermon preached at the Theistic Church, Swallow Street, on February 5th, 1905. [8] See pp. 63-4. [9] Quoted from What it is to be a Christian, a pamphlet written by the Ven. J. M. Wilson, D.D. [10] Eighteen per cent. was the figure given by Bishop Ingram, speaking of "Londoners," in his speech at the annual meeting of the Bishop of London's Fund in 1904; but, according to the strict results of the census, the figure for London is twenty-two or twenty-three per cent. of the total population. [11] As Mr. Fielding remarks in his book, The Hearts of Men (pp. 217-8): "To one coming to Europe after years in the East and visiting churches, nothing is more striking than the enormous preponderance of women there. It is immaterial whether the church be in England or France, whether it be Anglican or Roman Catholic or Dissenter. The result is always the same--women outnumber the men as two to one, as three to one, sometimes as ten to one." [12] As a matter of fact, no distinguished leader among modern biologists has come to any such conclusion. People are apt to forget that, while Lord Kelvin is undoubtedly one of the most distinguished living physicists, he is not himself a biologist. [13] See Nature, April 23rd, 1903; also Appendix to this work. [14] This assertion is severely criticised by Mr. Joseph McCabe in the Hibbert for July, 1905. Mr. McCabe holds that "Sir Oliver Lodge's own conception of life may, with a far greater show of reason, be described as a modified survival of an older doctrine" (p. 746). [15] Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, the distinguished naturalist and evolutionist, is another scientist with spiritist convictions, and his concern for supernatural religion led him to step outside his own domain and make that remarkable attack upon current scientific opinions in astronomical matters which met with such unanimous condemnation (see the Fortnightly Review for March and September, 1903). [16] In the Times, October, 1904. [17] At Exeter Hall, in March, 1905, Lady Blount developed her "flat-earth" theory, and accused Newton of want of logic. [18] A book, edited by the Rev. J. E. Hand (George Allen), which gives, perhaps, the best that can be said by able and fair-minded men, writing in the light of the latest knowledge and criticism, in favour of a reconciliation between religion and science. The book contains essays by various authors--Sir O. Lodge, Professors Thomson, Geddes, and Muirhead, the Rev. P. N. Waggett, the Rev. John Kelman, and others. [19] Dr. W. Barry, in his Ernest Renan, is content to attribute the change mainly to Renan's study of Kant. But such a theory is inconsistent with Renan's own statement in his Reminiscences, where he expressly declares that questions of history, not metaphysics, shook his faith. [20] Author of a vituperative libel on agnostics, called Atheism and Faith. [21] The psychical aspect of the belief of such persons is discussed in Chap. VI., § 5. [22] Canon Scott Holland, in a sermon preached in St. Paul's Cathedral on the first Sunday after Epiphany, 1905. See also Appendix. [23] The Secretary of the Rationalist Press Association has received several private letters from clergymen expressing their desire to leave the Church if they could find some employment. They usually have large families dependent upon them for support. [24] I omit all mention of the trading or domestic classes who often depend directly for their support on strict religionists. The way in which "their bread is buttered" is bound to enter considerably into their calculations, and also they have often even less leisure for the study of modern thought than a steady (temperate) working man. [25] A cheap edition has since been published by the R. P. A. [26] Anti-Nunquam, by Dr. Warschauer, with prefatory note by J. Estlin Carpenter, is considered by many Churchmen to be an admirable refutation of God and My Neighbour. I have seldom read anything less likely to convince. Sentence after sentence is open to the gravest exception. [27] See Appendix. [28] E.g., in the Nineteenth Century and After, see the article on "The Present Position of Religious Apologetics," appearing in the issue for October, 1903; or on "Freethought in the Church of England" in the issues for September and December, 1904. The answers in the same journal are most unsatisfactory, and only serve to show how very little, apparently, can be said in reply. [29] Although the Church has ever been charitable, she has made no effort to cure poverty. She is, she must be, the ally of those to whom she chiefly owes her power and prestige. Jeremy Taylor is not the only eminent divine who has systematically courted the favour of the influential and rich. [30] Essay on "Possibilities and Impossibilities," appearing in the Agnostic Annual for 1892. [31] Paley's Evidences--Preparatory Considerations. [32] In his book, The Service of Man. [33] In his notable oration upon the apparitions of Llanthony. [34] See p. 132 of An Introduction to the Study of the Scriptures, by the Right Rev. W. Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon. [35] See p. 222 of Some Elements of Religion, Liddon. [36] See p. 51 of An Introduction to the Study of the Scriptures. [37] Extract from a sermon preached in St. Paul's, Finsbury, on November 23rd, 1904. [38] This explanation has been given by the Rev. Samuel Cox, and it is quoted with approval by the Bishop of London on p. 63 of his little work, Old Testament Difficulties (S.P.C.K.). [39] See p. 41 of Old Testament Difficulties. [40] Article "Genesis." [41] Miraculum means merely a wonderful thing. It is certainly a proper translation of simeia (signs) and terata (wonders), as used by New Testament writers. [42] By the author of Supernatural Religion. (Longmans, Green, and Co.; 1889.) [43] See Encyclopædia Biblica, article "Gospels," paragraph 138 (e). [44] See article "Paul" in the Encyclopædia Biblica. Four of the Pauline Epistles are, however, pretty generally accepted. Five are hotly disputed; Professor Loofs, for example, rejects them. [45] See article "Epistolary Literature" in the Encyclopædia Biblica. [46] Swedenborgians (the New Jerusalem Church) are to be found scattered throughout almost every part of Christendom. In England, principally in Lancashire and Yorkshire, there are seventy-five societies with 6,063 registered members. [47] Eight persons in all testify to the apparition of the Virgin Mary in the Abbot's meadow at Llanthony on September 15th, 1880. [48] Hodder & Stoughton, 1906. [49] See p. 31 of What is Christianity? (Williams & Norgate, 1904). [50] See, for instance, art. "Moses," Encyclopædia Biblica. [51] Quoted from a sermon by the Bishop of London in Fulham parish, Christmas Day, 1904. Compare this with Dr. Kirkpatrick's remark, p. 2 of his book, The Divine Library of the Old Testament: "It is true that the critical investigation of the Bible raises not a few questions of grave difficulty." [52] "The adjective 'higher' (the sense of which is often misunderstood) has reference simply to the higher and more difficult class of problems, with which, as opposed to textual criticism, the 'higher' criticism has to deal" (see Preface to The Higher Criticism, being three papers by S. R. Driver, D.D., and A. F. Kirkpatrick, D.D.). [53] See Appendix. [54] Exodus xxxi. 18 and xxxii. 16. Or, to be precise, these having been broken and their fragments considered of no value at the time, the duplicates carefully prepared and inscribed to the dictation of God Himself (Exodus xxxix.). [55] Believed to date from about 853 B.C. The inscription records the victories of King Mesha over the Israelites. [56] Erected in honour of Ptolemy Epiphanes, 106 B.C. Famous as having furnished the first key for the interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics. [57] Encyclopædia Biblica, art. "Messiah," p. 3058, par. 2. [58] Ibid, p. 3063, par 10. [59] In Studies in the Character of Christ, by Rev. C. H. Robinson, Hon. Canon of Ripon and Editorial Secretary to the S.P.G. [60] Enc. Bib., art. "Nativity," par. 10, 11, 12. [61] The late Rev. A. B. Bruce, D.D., Professor of Apologetics and New Testament Exegesis, Free Church College, Glasgow. [62] See Enc. Bib., art. "Gospels," par. 139. [63] See Enc. Bib., art. "Gospels," par. 138, where the reasons for this conclusion are explained. See also par. 108. [64] Author of various theological works, Hulsean Lecturer, Cambridge, 1876; Select Preacher, Oxford, 1877. [65] The interpolation in the last chapter of St. Mark goes back far into the second century. It is important to bear in mind that none of the dates given by Dr. Harnack and other authorities applies to the Gospels exactly as we now have them. Accounts of miracles have been added subsequently! [66] Enc. Bib., art. "Lazarus." [67] Ibid, art. "Gospels," par. 147. [68] W. C. van Manen, D.D., Professor of Old-Christian Literature and New Testament Exegesis, Leyden. [69] Spoken in an address to the St. Paul's Lecture Society, at the opening of a new session in 1904. [70] The italics in these quotations from Dr. Harnack are mine. [71] Fully reported in the Methodist Times. [72] The Greek version, known as the Septuagint (LXX.), made in Egypt in the third and second centuries B.C. for the use of the numerous body of Greek-speaking Jews and proselytes in that country. [73] A Greek document which is supposed to have existed and then to have been entirely lost (imagine God's Word lost!), and to contain some of the matter related by St. Matthew and St. Luke, while omitted by St. Mark. N.B.--While the evangelist St. Mark is relegated to the position of a translator only, St. Matthew and St. Luke are taken by orthodox theologians to be mere copyists of St. Mark and a "lost" document! [74] See art. "Gospels," in the Enc. Bib., and Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek. [75] In his address at the Church Congress held at Weymouth in 1905. [76] In his work, Verbal Inspiration. Quoted by Bishop Colenso in The Pentateuch Examined. [77] The Dean of Canterbury, speaking on the Bishop of Winchester's paper at the Church Congress, 1903. [78] The Dean of Canterbury, speaking in St. Mary Bredin's Church, Canterbury, December 4th, 1904. [79] See Appendix. [80] See Bk. VIII., chap. ii., par. 2, on p. 324, vol. i. Eusebius (Oxford: Parker & Co.). His candour here is deserving of all praise; but his methods can hardly be termed scientific; while an impartial perusal of his Vita Constantini, a panegyric on the Emperor Constantine, should be enough to shake the confidence of all but the blindest of his admirers. [81] See p. 179, chap. xv., of Gibbon's Rome (Oddy, 1809). [82] See Appendix. [83] In note A, pp. 42-3, of his book, The Study of the Gospels. [84] At the discussion on Christian Science during the London Diocesan Conference, May, 1906. [85] See his book, The Days of His Flesh; Hodder & Stoughton, 1906. [86] See chap. xxviii. of The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, by the Rev. George Adam Smith, M.A., D.D., LL.D.; Professor of O. T. Lang., Liter., and Theology, etc. [87] The quotation is from Canon C. H. Robinson's book, Studies in the Character of Christ. [88] J. G. Frazer (Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; Hon. D.C.L. Oxford; Hon. LL.D. Glasgow; Hon. Litt. D. Durham, etc.), in his Preface to the second edition of The Golden Bough. [89] Professor Max Müller, in The Science of Religion, p. 40. [90] The italics are mine throughout this quotation; also words within brackets [ ]. [91] See Appendix. [92] "We are accustomed to find the legendary and the miraculous gathering, like a halo, around the early history of religious leaders, until the sober truth runs the risk of being altogether neglected for the glittering and edifying falsehood" (Enc. Brit., vol. iv., art. "Buddhism," p. 424). This process is recognised as a universal rule. What grounds have we for assuming that Christianity is exempt from it? [93] See Appendix. [94] See Appendix. [95] Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, was possibly a historical person. We are quite in the dark as to the precise date of Zoroaster. Duncker places him about the year 1000 B.C. [96] Apol. I. 54 and I. 21. Quoted in the Enc. Bib., art. "Mary." [97] Pp. 78-9 of his important work, Divine Immanence. [98] Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi., pp. 197-200. [99] Egyptian Belief, p. 370. [100] Middleton's Works, vol. i., pp. 63, 64. [101] Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. ii., p. 260, note 3. [102] See his work, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, vol. ii., p. 113. [103] Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi., p. 95. [104] Myths of the New World, p. 166. [105] P. 393 of Monumental Christianity, or the Art and Symbolism of the Primitive Church as Witness and Teachers of the One Catholic Faith and Practice. [106] In his book, Bushido, pp. 15-19 and 24. [107] P. 152 of his book, King David of Israel (Watts, 1905). [108] The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. ii., p. 220. [109] Ibid., vol. i., Preface, p. xv. [110] They appear in Part II., pp. 171, 183, 188, 300, and 302. [111] A translation of the Chinese version of the "Abbinishkramana Sûtra." For the probable date, see Appendix. [112] See Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology, Vol. I., Part I., chapter on "The Primitive Man--Emotional." [113] Professor Robertson Smith, in The Religion of the Semites, p. 347. Dr. W. R. Smith was a distinguished Scottish Biblical scholar and Orientalist. From 1881 he was associated as joint editor of the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica with Professor Spencer Baynes, after whose death in 1887 he was sole editor. [114] J. M. Robertson, in his book, Pagan Christs, pp. 373-4. [115] For this and the following graphic accounts I am indebted to Mr. J. M. Robertson's book, Pagan Christs, Part IV.--"The Religion of Ancient America." [116] Quoted from his celebrated book, The Golden Bough. [117] See p. 145, note. [118] See Appendix. [119] See "Gods of Cultivation" in Grant Allen's Evolution of the Idea of God. [120] See Appendix. [121] The Evolution of the Idea of God (chapter on "The Gods of Cultivation"). [122] Ibid (chapter on "The Origin of Gods"). [123] Principles of Sociology, vol. i. (chapter on "Primitive Ideas," p. 102). [124] Principles of Sociology (chapter on "Inspiration, Divination, Exorcism, and Sorcery," p. 241). [125] P. 366, vol. ii. of The Golden Bough. [126] Anacalypsis, vol. 1., p. 638. [127] St. Matthew xii. 40. [128] See Appendix. [129] Studies in the Character of Christ, vi. 102. [130] Encyc. Brit., art. "Mythology." [131] See Appendix. [132] See p. 117 of Monumental Christianity. [133] See Appendix. [134] Quoted from Darwin's Descent of Man. [135] "The preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations I call natural selection" (Darwin, Origin of Species, ed. 1860, iv.). [136] Darwin, Varieties of Animals and Plants, xx., 178. [137] Concluding remarks in Darwin's Descent of Man. [138] Ibid. [139] See his book containing the aforesaid lectures, and called God's Image in Man and its Defacement in the Light of Modern Denials. (Hodder and Stoughton; 1905.) [140] Lent by Mr. Reginald Blunt to the Chelsea Public Library. [141] See Professor Huxley's essays, "The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature" and "Mr. Gladstone and Genesis," appearing in the Nineteenth Century for December, 1885, and February, 1886, respectively, and also in the collection of Huxley's essays entitled Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions. [142] Dr. Torrey informed a huge audience in the Albert Hall recently that he had given up the theory of Evolution for scientific reasons. "People speak of the missing link; why, they are all missing!" cried Dr. Torrey. Now, this is nothing more nor less than an untruth, and Dr. Torrey must know that it is, if he has studied Evolution, as he assures us that he has. Here is an example of the way Christians are misinformed by their spiritual teachers on the subject of Evolution. But what can you expect of an evangelist who thinks that he is serving God's cause by slandering the dead, as he did in the case of Colonel Ingersoll and Thomas Paine? [143] See Mr. W. H. Mallock's Religion as a Credible Doctrine, p. 177. [144] Origin of Species, p. 65. [145] From The Story of Creation, by Edward Clodd. Chapter on "The Origin of Species," p. 95 of the cheap edition. [146] The Nineteenth Century, February, 1888, pp. 162, 163. [147] Pp. 519-20. [148] Theism, by the Rev. Robert Flint, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E., Professor of Moral Philosophy, Divinity, etc., being the Baird Lectures for 1877. [149] On p. 39 of his own work, Anti-Nunquam. [150] The Light of Asia, Book the First. [151] Quoted from Huxley's Lectures on Evolution. [152] Quoted from Huxley's Lectures on Evolution. [153] Controverted Questions, pp. 100, 102, 103, 104. [154] In Lectures on Evolution. [155] Quoted from "The Interpreters of Genesis," in the essays on Controverted Questions, p. 91. [156] "Mr. Gladstone and Genesis," pp. 112-3 of Controverted Questions. [157] The Descent of Man, p. 10. [158] The Nature of Man, by Metchnikoff, p. 41. [159] The Descent of Man, p. 10. [160] The Nature of Man, p. 42. [161] Man's Place in Nature, p. 126. [162] Ibid, p. 127. [163] The Nature of Man, p. 42. [164] Man's Place in Nature, p. 111. [165] Ibid, p. 139. [166] Ibid, p. 102, note. [167] Pp. 49-54. At the late International Congress on Tuberculosis, Professor Behring paid the highest tribute to Metchnikoff's labours on phagocytosis. Strange indeed are the instruments chosen by God for conferring His benefits on mankind; for the author of The Nature of Man denies His existence! [168] Described in the Lancet, January 18th, 1902. [169] The Nature of Man, pp. 45-48. [170] The Descent of Man, vol. i., p. 14. According to the latest authorities, however, the human ovum (when mature) differs in many respects from other (especially non-mammal) ova. [171] See the "Family Tree" of Life in the Appendix. [172] "It is," says Professor Huxley (in Man's Place in Nature, 1863, p. 67, and quoted by Darwin in his Descent of Man, p. 14), "quite in the later steps of development that the young human being presents marked differences from the young ape, while the latter departs as much from the dog in its developments as the man does. Startling as this last assertion may appear to be, it is demonstrably true." [173] The Descent of Man, vol. i., pp. 17-18. [174] See The Nature of Man, p. 60. [175] The Descent of Man, vol. i., p. 29. [176] The Evolution of Man, vol. ii., p. 708. [177] Ibid, 774. [178] The Descent of Man, vol. ii., p. 32. [179] The Nature of Man, p. 67. [180] The Descent of Man, vol. i., pp. 32-33. [181] God and My Neighbour, p. 134. [182] The document and the hostile criticisms concerning it in religious papers are highly instructive. Except for the correspondence on the subject in the Standard during May, 1905, under the title of "Faith and Religion," the general public are not likely to know of the matter. [183] Tylor and Hartmann, however, believe in the animal descent of man, and therefore in a rise from primitive civilisation. [184] Our ancestors were never "molluscs"; "worm" would be an appropriate word here. [185] Review in the Church Times of May 31st, 1905, of the Dean of Westminster's book, Some Thoughts on Inspiration. [186] This and the following quotations are from "Advent Lectures on Sin," delivered by Dr. Gore, then Bishop of Worcester, in St. Philip's Church, Birmingham. They were reported in the Church Times of December 4th, 11th, and 18th, 1903. [187] See pp. 234-5. [188] In an address to the Students' Christian Union of Owens College, Manchester, on January 8th, 1904. [189] In his interesting book, Problems of Religion and Science, p. 70. [190] Teleology is the name given to the doctrine of final causes; the theory of tendency to an end, or the arrangement of things as they are for a purpose. [191] See Appendix. [192] Contemporary Review for May, art. "The Scientists and Common Sense." [193] Under this title there is a pamphlet (Charles H. Kelly, Paternoster Row) by the Ven. J. M. Wilson, Archdeacon of Manchester, in which the latitudinarian views to which I refer are openly expressed. See Appendix. [194] Flint's Theism, pp. 133-4. [195] Theism, p. 102. This book is a standard apologetic work on Theism. Dr. Flint is also the writer of the article on "Theism" in the Encyclopædia Britannica. [196] See p. 73 of Haeckel's Critics Answered, by Joseph McCabe. [197] Ibid, p. 73. [198] Haeckel's Critics Answered, p. 74. [199] Religion and Science, pp. 89-90. [200] Theism, Lecture IV. [201] See p. 76 of Haeckel's Critics Answered. [202] Theism, p. 79. [203] Chapter on "Theism and Natural Selection." [204] Religion and Science, p. 83. [205] Religion and Science, pp. 89, 90. [206] In The Ethics, Part i., appendix. [207] In his work, Divine Immanence. [208] Divine Immanence, pp. 71-2. [209] Ibid, pp. 71-2. [210] Ibid, pp. 71-2. [211] Ibid, pp. 71-2. [212] Ibid, p. 73. [213] Ibid, p. 161. [214] Divine Immanence, p. 161. [215] In the preface to his poem. [216] Art. "Theism" in the Encyclopædia Britannica. [217] E.g., see p. 15 of The Three Superstitions, by Dr. Keeling, an ex-professor of gynecology. [218] Theism, p. 245. [219] Theism, p. 246. [220] In an address at the inaugural meeting of the session of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, held on October 31st, 1905. [221] A Text-Book of Apologetics, by Charles Harris, B.D., Lecturer in Theology and Parochialia, St. David's College, Lampeter; Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Llandaff. (London: John Murray, 1905.) A noticeable point about this latest contribution to apologetic literature is that, though it purposes to deal with all the chief arguments which have been urged against religion, it leaves the weightiest argument of all--the argument from Comparative Mythology--practically untouched. Why is this? [222] Theism, p. 228. [223] Theism, "The Argument from Order." [224] Theism, p. 226. [225] Ibid., p. 67. [226] This description is borne out by the Rev. A. R. Robertson, D.D., in The Roman Catholic Church in Italy (Morgan & Scott), a book which was accorded a flattering reception in January, 1903, by the King of Italy. In Southern Italy the Church's methods remind one of what Paschal tells us concerning the Jesuits--how they kept men wicked, lest, if they became virtuous, the priests should lose their hold upon them. [227] Encyclopædia Britannica, art. "Newman, John Henry." [228] See art. "Francis William Newman," by Francis Gribble, The Fortnightly, July, 1905. [229] Being an address given at the Pusey House, Oxford. [230] Their guiltlessness is made abundantly clear in Robert Blatchford's Not Guilty, a book containing a lucid presentment of the case for Determinism which may be understood of all. There are copious illustrations of heredity and environment--terms the wide application of which must be thoroughly realised. [231] Regarding his philosophic position, however, see Appendix. [232] In his book, Rough Ways Made Smooth, chapter on "Bodily Illness as a Mental Stimulant." [233] In Occult Japan, by Percival Lowell (Riverside Press), there is an interesting account of these practices. [234] The delusions of the "Christian Scientists" in mixing up religion with psychic healing can only be attributed to their ignorance of modern psychology. Those who know better, and are making money out of it, are as shamefully imposing upon the credulity of religious folk as is the Roman Catholic Church with her shrines of healing. [235] In the December (1904) Journal of the Society for Psychical Research a lady gives a vivid description of how she cured herself completely of certain nervous complaints by auto-suggestion. It is interesting to note that she says: "I did not believe in the efficacy of this treatment one bit; I just made myself do it; but I felt, most of the time, that it was extremely ridiculous." See also Appendix. [236] The following is from the Mikado's Rescript issued on the conclusion of peace:--"The result is due in a large measure to the benign spirits of our ancestors, as well as to the devotion and duty of our civil and military officials and the self-denying patriotism of all our people.... We are happy to invoke the blessing of the benign spirits of our ancestors." N.B.--The word "God" is conspicuous by its absence; "ancestors' spirits" take its place. [237] International Journal of Ethics, April, 1904, p. 338, art. "Professor William James's Interpretation of Religious Experience," by James H. Leuba. [238] An instructive treatise on this subject will be found in Vol. II., ch. x., of Weismann on Heredity. (Clarendon Press Series.) [239] Do you know a hymn tune by Lord Crofton, set to the words, "Bless'd are the pure in heart"? When I first heard that tune played I shook with emotion. I did not know at that time the words that the tune had been set to; so it could only have been the music that affected me. At one time I confess that I myself used to mistake this hysterical element in my nature for religious fervour. [240] The Ven. Archdeacon J. M. Wilson, D.D., late headmaster of Clifton College--in the Journal of Education, 1881. [241] In Three Essays on Religion, p. 80 of the Cheap Reprint issued for the Rationalist Press Association. [242] As remarked by the Bishop of London in a sermon at Westminster Abbey. See cover of Mr. Guy Thorne's book, When it was Dark. [243] Quoted from an address delivered by the Bishop of London at St. Paul's, as reported in the Church Times of October 7th, 1904. [244] See footnote p. 37 of The Religion of Woman, by Joseph McCabe. [245] Professor Jinzo Naruse. For the quotation see chap. xxi. on "The Position of Women" in Mr. Alfred Stead's recent publication, Japan by the Japanese. [246] See p. 31 of the Rev. Herbert Moore's The Christian Faith in Japan. [247] Ibid., p. 129. [248] We learn this from reliable sources--for example, from W. M. Flinders Petrie and Gaston Camille Charles Maspéro, the celebrated English and French Egyptologists. [249] The Religion of Woman. [250] These remarks are quoted on p. 15 of The Religion of Woman from vol. iii., p. 290, of Mrs. Cady Stanton's History of Women's Suffrage. [251] The Religion of Woman, pp. 105, 107, 111. [252] Pinchwife, it will be remembered, is the anxious husband (in Wycherley's comedy, The Country Wife) who held that a woman is innocent in proportion to her lack of knowledge. There are, of course, other reasons why a wife's ignorance is deemed desirable. Cf. "And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate." [253] In his sermon at St. Crantock's on August 27th, 1905. [254] The Religion of Woman, p. 78. This work embodies a complete refutation of the assertion which we have cursorily examined. The truth-seeker desirous of studying other aspects of the Christian contention is strongly recommended to peruse also Mr. McCabe's brilliant essay, The Bible in Europe (Watts, 1907). [255] See his Notes on Popular Rationalism. [256] Anti-Theistic Theories, Lecture 5, on Comte's Positivist Philosophy. [257] Approximately 300,000 copies by the end of January, 1907. [258] In the Nineteenth Century and After, November, 1904. [259] See Gibbon's Rome, vol. iii., p. 27 (ed. 1809). [260] Ibid., vol. iii., p. 27. [261] Ibid., vol. iv., p. 21. [262] Among his victims were: his father-in-law (A.D. 310); sister's husband (314); nephew (319); wife (320); former friend (321); sister's husband (325); own son (326). [263] Gibbon's Rome, vol. ii., p. 337 (ed. 1809). [264] The death-bed baptism of Constantine is described by Eusebius, the Bishop of Cæsarea, in his Life of Constantine, bk. iv., chaps. 61, 62, 63, and 64. The Bishop assumes the salvation of Constantine with the utmost confidence, and says: "He was removed about mid-day to the presence of his God, leaving his mortal remains to his fellow-mortals, and carrying into fellowship with God that part of his being which was capable of understanding and loving Him." [265] It has been urged upon me by my Christian friends that the enormous funds at the disposal of the various Christian propagandist societies testify to the growth, not the decay, of the Christian faith. If these funds were chiefly derived from the small donations of the many, there would be something in this argument. Such, however, is not the case. [266] Ammian. Marcell. 1. xxvii. c. 3. [267] Cod. Theodos., Lib. xvi. tit. ii. 1. 20. [268] Lib. xvi. tit. x. 1. 20, and tit. v. legg. 43, 52, 57, 65. [269] See pp. 58-9 of the Beneficial Influence of the Ancient Clergy (the title under which the Hulsean Prize Essay for 1850 was subsequently published in book form), by the late Henry Mackenzie, B.A., scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. Other quotations are given in the Appendix. [270] The Gods of the Egyptians, Preface, p. xv. [271] Ibid. [272] Huxley's Essays on Controverted Questions, p. 9, Prologue. [273] Gibbon's Rome, vol. ii., p. 257 (ed. 1809). In 1638, forty thousand Japanese Christians were put to death in the great Castle of Hara, the Dutch traders at Nagasaki supplying cannon and gunpowder to be used against their fellow-Christians. (Mentioned in The Christian Faith in Japan, p. 19, a book published by the S.P.G.) This wholesale butchery, however, marked the destruction, not the introduction, of Christianity. [274] Quoted from page 543 of The Martyrdom of Man, seventeenth edition (1903). [275] Are we not liable to forget that the most brilliant geniuses may make mistakes sometimes, either from want of knowledge of facts, or from a psychological unwillingness to accept them? May not the very subtlety of their intellects aid the work of their own self-deception? [276] Liddon's Some Elements of Religion, p. 48. [277] Flint's Anti-Theistic Theories. [278] See address to the Royal Naval Volunteers by their hon. chaplain, the Bishop of London, reported in the Church Times for June 23rd, 1905. [279] Anti-Nunquam, p. 80. [280] See his inaugural address at the Church Congress, October, 1906. [281] See Anti-Theistic Theories, Lecture vii., "Are there Tribes of Atheists?" [282] The Descent of Man, pp. 394-5. [283] Quoted by Dr. Flint in the lecture above referred to. [284] See The Living Races of Mankind, pp. 721-3. [285] The Living Races of Mankind, pp. 721-3. [286] Ibid. [287] In a letter to Dr. Frazer. See the Fortnightly Review, July, 1905, p. 171. [288] The Golden Bough, p. 73, note 1. See also (as there noted) Mission Scientifique du Cap Horn, vii., "Anthropologie, Ethnographie," par P. Hyades et J. Deniker (Paris, 1891), pp. 253-257. [289] The Golden Bough, p. 61. [290] Ibid. [291] In the Preface to the second edition of The Golden Bough. [292] The Golden Bough, p. 61. [293] Ibid. [294] In his little book called Magic and Fetishism (Constable, 1906). [295] The Golden Bough, p. 74. [296] See Preface to the second edition of The Golden Bough. [297] In his interesting and standard work, Chinese Characteristics, ch. xxvi. [298] Chinese Characteristics, p. 289. [299] Ibid., p. 306. [300] Chinese Characteristics, p. 291. [301] Ibid., pp. 292-3. [302] Ibid., p. 313. [303] Chinese Characteristics, pp. 294 and 295. [304] Also if she heard of General Chaffee's remarks to an American Methodist audience in New York not long ago. While praising the work of the missionaries, he told his audience that he met many of the most prominent Chinamen while at Pekin, and he was obliged to say that he did not meet a single intelligent Chinaman who expressed a desire to embrace the Christian religion. (Reported in the Hong Kong Daily Press of May 9th, 1903.) [305] The classical quotation commonly seen over the door of a temple is: "Worship the gods as if they were present." [306] Chinese Characteristics, pp. 299-300. [307] Ibid., p. 305. [308] Chinese Characteristics, p. 288. [309] See p. 78 of Anti-Nunquam. [310] See p. 164 of Science and Education Essays, by T. H. Huxley (Macmillan & Co.; 1895). [311] The Christian Faith in Japan, pp. 42, 43. [312] The Christian Faith in Japan, pp. 128-9. [313] See chapter ii. of Conventional Lies of our Civilisation, by Max Nordau. [314] Ibid. [315] P. 439 of the Proceedings of the S. P. R. [316] P. 441 of the Proceedings of the S. P. R. [317] See p. 477 of The Relation of Confirmation to Baptism, by A. J. Mason, D.D. (Longmans.) [318] At a men's service held in St. Mary Bredin's Church, Canterbury, on December 4th, 1904. [319] One phase of this failure was well shown by "Oxoniensis," in his letters which started and ended the "Do We Believe?" correspondence in the Daily Telegraph. On the other hand, we find pronounced unbelievers taking a leading part in wise reforms, and devoting their lives to researches that will benefit humanity. [320] This statement is made on the authority of Darwin and of all our modern naturalists. The theory is established, and its important message to the human race elaborated, in such works as Darwin's Descent of Man (see vol. i., chap. v., "The Development of the Intellect and Moral Faculties"), Huxley's Ethical Lectures ("Science and Morals," 1886; "Evolution and Ethics," the Romanes' lecture for 1893, etc.), Clodd's Story of Creation (chap. xi., on "Social Evolution"), Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man, and Prince Kropotkin's Mutual Aid. [321] P. 264 of Japan by the Japanese, edited by Alfred Stead. [322] Pp. 147-8 of Lafcadio Hearn's book, Kokoro. [323] In the Japan Times. Quoted by Mr. Moore in his book, The Christian Faith in Japan, p. 131. [324] The Christian Faith in Japan, pp. 53-4. Explanations regarding the shortcomings of the Japanese in the matter of commercial morality will be found in Professor Nitobe's Bushido, pp. 64-70, and also, as there mentioned, in Knapp, Feudal and Moral Japan, and in Ransome, Japan in Transition, ch. viii. [325] The Nineteenth Century and After, February, 1905, art. "Moral Teaching in Japan." Regarding their native virtues, see Appendix. [326] The Independent Review, December, 1905, art. "The Religions of Japan." [327] See p. 221 of Dr. Lydston's book, The Diseases of Society. [328] In his book, A Modern Utopia, p. 144. See also Appendix to this work. [329] It may not be out of place to mention here that various Ethical Societies in England (and her Colonies), Europe, and America are doing all they can to meet the ethical needs of Agnostics, and their efforts deserve far greater support than they have yet received from the wealthy. For this want of sympathy there are many obvious reasons--reasons, fortunately, that will disappear in the near future. It will be urged that the truly pious and honest believer finds prayer of the greatest help towards right conduct, while the unbelieving ethicist is destitute of this aid. I do not propose now to discuss the ethical value of prayer, or consider the causes of its success and failure; but I would ask the reader to refer to my remarks in Chapter VI. on the psychology of prayer. Personally, I am of opinion that the practice of auto-suggestion may prove useful to those in need of such assistance, and that one day (let us hope at no distant date) psychical research will lead to the discovery of a complete and scientific method for the toughening of our moral fibres. See also further note in the Appendix. [330] Mr. H. G. Wells furnishes us with some novel ideas on this point in his book, A Modern Utopia, chap. vii., §§ 2-5. If we cannot prevent degenerates from marrying, at least we can abolish an environment that assists heredity in their production. See also Appendix. [331] See pp. 25-6 of Stanley de Brath's The Foundations of Success. [332] See Prince Kropotkin's articles in The Nineteenth Century and After (August, 1904, and March, 1905), entitled "The Ethical Need of the Present Day" and "The Morality of Nature." Anyone wishing to know why we must lead the moral life should not fail to read these instructive articles, and also Dr. Saleeby's Evolution: The Master-Key. [333] Prince Kropotkin in The Nineteenth Century and After. [334] "Rationalism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a system of philosophy and ethics verifiable by experience and independent of all arbitrary assumptions or authority" (from the Memorandum of the Aims and Objects of the Rationalist Press Association). [335] Closing words of Professor Huxley's essay, Science and Morals. [336] Essay entitled "An Episcopal Trilogy," p. 312 of Essays on Controverted Questions (Macmillan & Co.). [337] Art. "Why Live a Moral Life?" in the Agnostic Annual, 1895. [338] Art. "Why Live a Moral Life?" in the Agnostic Annual, 1905. [339] Art. "Why Live a Moral Life?" in the Agnostic Annual, 1895. [340] Ibid. [341] Quoted from his Autobiography, entitled My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions (Chapman & Hall). [342] Art. "Why Live a Moral Life?" in the Agnostic Annual, 1895. [343] Ibid. [344] P. 121 of The Story of Creation (R. P. A. Cheap Reprint). [345] The Nineteenth Century and After, August, 1904, art. "The Ethical Need of the Present Day." [346] Quoted from a little volume recently published, entitled The Japanese Spirit. (Constable.) [347] Cited by Mr. L. Gulick, an American missionary organiser, in his work on The Evolution of the Japanese. [348] Quoted from a leaflet of the Moral Instruction League. (See Appendix.) [349] Quoted from p. 507, Vol. II., of The History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, by A. W. Benn (Longmans, Green, and Co., 1906). [350] In his masterly work, On Compromise. [351] See p. 55 of The Bible and the Child. [352] Bishop Diggle, the President of the Church Congress of 1906, in his opening address. [353] Ibid. [354] Recorded in The Life of Frances Power Cobbe, as Told by Herself. (Sonnenschein.) [355] See § 3 of the last Chapter and § 2 of the present. [356] P. 392 of The Independent Review, December, 1904. [357] Browning's Funeral, a poem by Mrs. Huxley. The last three lines were inscribed, at Prof. Huxley's request, upon his grave-stone (in St. Marylebone Cemetery, East Finchley). [358] See Chapter I., p. 30. [359] See Appendix. [360] An Agnostic's Apology, pp. 131, 133, 138, of the R. P. A. Reprint. [361] Spencer's Principles of Sociology, p. 98, "The Data of Sociology." [362] In his book, The Hearts of Men. [363] See art. "Is Man by Nature Religious?" by H. Dundas, in The Agnostic Annual for 1906. [364] We are speaking now, remember, of a religion such as the Christian faith, one involving a belief in the supernatural, and not of religion as Professor Huxley defined it--"a reverence and love for the ethical ideal, and the desire to realise that ideal in life." We are not speaking of a mere ethical "binding" between man and man, of a religion free from all theology, such as Comte's "Positivism." [365] Quoted from pp. 169-171 of A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays. [366] An Agnostic's Apology, p. 137. [367] In Chap. VII., pp. 311, 315-16, and in Chap. VIII., § 2 and § 3 (3) and (4). [368] Quoted from p. 27 of The Agnostic Annual for 1906. [369] Canon Scott Holland, in a sermon preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, May, 1906. [370] These are the concluding words of a lecture delivered in the Central Hall, Manchester. The lecture is incorporated with others in a book entitled Is Christianity True? (Charles H. Kelly, 26, Paternoster Row, E.C.; 6d.). [371] See Appendix. [372] This view is confirmed by such standard works as Lecky's Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe, Buckle's History of Civilisation in England, Robertson's Short History of Freethought, and Benn's History of Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century. [373] Quoted from a sermon preached by the Rev. Charles Voysey at the Theistic Church, October 22nd, 1905. See also Appendix. [374] See Gibbon's Rome, p. 257, vol. ii. (ed. 1809). [375] This warning was pronounced by Canon Henson on November 16th, 1905, when commenting, in St. Paul's Cathedral, upon the Russian atrocities. [376] P. 352, Vol. I., of his History of Civilisation in England (Longmans, Green, & Co.; 1891). [377] See also Chap. VII., p. 281, note. [378] On Sunday, April 13th, 1890. [379] At a gala banquet at Dresden, October 25th, 1905. [380] Taken from the emperor's speech at the opening of the Reichstag, November 28th, 1905. N.B.--Christian nations distrust one another's righteousness even when the State and the Church are united and the rulers are defenders of the Faith. It may be noted also that at the swearing-in of the recruits of the Potsdam garrison on November 14th, 1905, they were told to make the Crucifix their Generalissimo! [381] In his book, The Peace of the Anglo-Saxons, with an Introduction by Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, K.G. (Watts & Co.) Observations suggested by this warning will be found in the Appendix. [382] Apart from the extra burden on the workers, does the Church, I wonder, ever thoroughly realise the inevitable effect on public morality of keeping a large body of men from living a normal domestic life? Does she realise that diseases hurtful to the race are more prevalent than ever, and that nowadays prostitution has spread from the garrison towns to the villages? Does she realise that her "purity" campaigns fail to strike at the root of the evil? [383] Held in Lucerne on September 19th-23rd, 1905. [384] See Appendix. [385] See Mr. (now the Right Hon.) Augustine Birrell's suggestive article, "Patriotism and Christianity," in the Contemporary Review, February, 1905. [386] The Tsar is probably sincere in his professions, and is the helpless tool of his advisers. Can we make the same excuse for another potentate--for him of the "mailed fist"? [387] See Appendix. [388] Butler, Analogy, pt. ii., 3. [389] In Literature and Dogma. See p. 21 of the R. P. A. Reprint. [390] See p. 183 of The Hibbert Journal, October, 1905. [391] Compounds of cyanogen have a close resemblance to living matter. As cyanogen is only produced at an intense heat, it is surmised that the living substance may have been produced once and for all when the earth was incandescent. [392] P. 387 of The Independent Review, December, 1904. [393] To those willing to be instructed I suggest a perusal of Doane's Bible Myths and their Parallels in Other Religions (New York: The Commonwealth Company), where they will find some intensely interesting information which has been laboriously gathered from innumerable volumes, ancient and modern. The few inaccuracies occurring in it are of a trivial nature; besides, as the author invariably quotes his authorities, his statements can be verified and the trustworthiness of his authority for them ascertained. I may add that I found this work of considerable assistance at the commencement of my study of Comparative Mythology. 
40978	----	WATSON REFUTED BEING AN ANSWER TO THE APOLOGY FOR THE BIBLE. IN A SERIES OF LETTERS TO THE BISHOP OF LLANDAFF. By Samuel Francis, M.D. Pudet me humani generis, cujus mentes et aures talia fern potuerunt. --Div. Augustin. LONDON: PRINTED and PUBLISHED BY R. CARLILE, 55, FLEET STREET ADVERTISEMENT. I had written a considerable part of another work, containing strictures on religion. The appearance of the Bishop of Llandaff's pamphlet, and the number of editions that have been published for the purpose of encouraging its sale among the poorer classes, induced me to take up the pen expressly in answer to this publication, that I might undeceive the multitude, and show that, under the imposing title of a Bishop, Dr. Watson has been guilty of the most gross misrepresentations, and, whether intentionally or from ignorance, has deceived his readers, while, under the pretence of meekness, he triumphs in the detection of a few errors, committed by a man who does not pretend to be a Theologian, or to be possessed of any great learning. He has uniformly passed over the weighty arguments of the Age of Reason, and stopped at a few immaterial inaccuracies. I hope, in the following sheets, to show, that the learned Professor of Divinity has committed errors in the Natural Sciences and History, which would be inexcusable in any author; but, when coming from a dignified Clergyman, who wishes to dictate to the nation, their detection cannot fail to show to the public, how necessary it is for men to employ their faculty of reason, and not to yield it to those whose profession is to teach things they acknowledge to be above reason, and incomprehensible. I shall, as soon as my other avocations permit, give the world a tract upon religion in general, with strictures on the Jewish and Christian systems. For this reason, I shall not, in the present pamphlet, enter deeply into any abstract reasoning, but confine myself chiefly to the detection of the errors contained in the Apology for the Bible. S. F. London, Aug. 15, 1790, WATSON REFUTED LETTER I. MY LORD, You have thought it not inconsistent with your dignity as a Bishop, to oppose the _Age of Reason by Thomas Paine_, and I, as a member of the community, find myself called upon to expose your reasoning, and stop the career of error. You disclaim controversy; but if your candour is any thing more than a vain boast, I entertain hopes of seeing the defender of Christianity again step forward to answer my arguments, if he deems them of sufficient weight to disturb his quiet. I am sincerely glad to find a dignified churchman begin a dispute with men, whom formerly the pious members of the Church would have deemed fit victims for the fire or the gallows; at the same time, I feel deep regret, that the Bishop has not yet altogether laid aside the clerical passion for the extermination of the heterodox. I hope, says Dr. Watson, that there is no want of charity in wishing, that Mr. Paine's life had been terminated long before his publication. This may be consistent with Christian charity, but nature and reason teach us ugly unbelievers another doctrine: and, however inveterate I may be against those of the clergy who persecute and deceive the multitude, I confess, that the death of a person, whom I conceive to be acting for what he thinks the public good, would give me no pleasure; and the Bishop allows the purity of Mr. Paine's motives. The wish of the philosopher is, let reason guide us, and all parties have freedom of debate. No dogmatical dictates of bigotted priests, no passive obedience to the mandates of inquisitors, nor to the persecutions so often fomented by churchmen. To the progress of letters, during this century, we owe the mildness and condescension of clergymen: till philosophy taught us, the clergy never discovered, that persecutions for heresy and witchcraft, or inquisitions and popery, were horrid institutions. Dares Dr. Watson affirm, that freedom of inquiry was ever suffered on religious subjects? that people were allowed to examine the grounds of the doctrines taught by the Church? No, Sir, your predecessors of all beliefs have ever persecuted philosophers and inquirers into truth, both in science and in religion. Neither Galileus nor Rousseau escaped the malevolence of the opposers of science; and in the Bible they found authorities for their inveterate opposition to the progress of truth and knowledge. The New Testament informs us, that the wisdom of God is foolishness to man, that human learning produces nothing but pride 1, and that the poor in spirit gain the kingdom of heaven. 1 "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." Colos. ii. 5, 8. "Cum sit nobis divinis literis traditum cognitiones philosophorum stultas esse, ad ipsum re et argumentis docendum et; ne quit bouesto sapieutiæ nomine inductus, aut inanis eloquentiæ splendore deceptus, humanis malet quam divinis credere." Lactantius, Inst. lib. i. chap. 2. Under these and other similar pretences, have barbarous priests led their credulous followers to massacres in the name of their God; by means of that touchstone word, _Faith_, they made the multitude forget that their leaders were but men. Now, Sir, we have grown bolder: knowledge being no longer confined to clerical seminaries, priests are not kings. The church totters; and a single pamphlet, you say, "has unsettled the faith of thousands." Now, that you cannot stifle reason, you pretend to liberality of sentiment. The natural historian, or the astronomer, fears not the publication of opinions contrary to his own, except from a scholastic habit, learned in the clerical seminaries, which still disgrace almost every country. The chemist eagerly peruses all theories; the divine alone refuses to argue with his opponents, and trembles at the very name of reason. I differ in my philosophical opinions from Mr. Paine; my principles extend so much farther than his, that I suspect I come under the class which you are pleased to call madmen, and every clergyman would affect to despise, but dare not argue with, before an unprejudiced tribunal. These, Sir, are the effects of superstition, and the cunning policy of the Church. The Bible is hardly suffered to be read in Catholic countries. The English reformers could not go so far; their revolution sprung from a dawn of philosophy. The English clergy, however, would confine us to the reading of that unintelligible farrago, and the still more insufferable commentaries upon it. So did the scholastics with Aristotle; their bigotted partiality to this author was nearly of the same force with the priestly attachment to the Bible. They retarded science; but the motives of the clergy are stronger. By the Bible they live; and it is not uncommon to hear the parson deride in private what he preaches from the pulpit. But to your first letter. After the pious wish for Thomas Paine's death, you proceed to state how miserable the adoption of his doctrines would render the "unhappy virtuous." Fear not such a dire event: the _pious_ are few in number, and of those, few have the courage to open a book controverting their opinions, and which, they are taught to believe, contains nothing but blasphemies But, should chance lead them to a detection of their errors, they would only become less devout, and more useful citizens. Freed from the prospect of hell and heaven, they will have leisure to think of this world, in which they live somewhat like hermits, loving only their priests, and ready to sacrifice victims to credulity. You say, that guillotine massacres were not the effect of the Popish religion, but of the disbelief of this system. This deserves some consideration. It is not true, that the majority of the people of Paris were unbelievers. No, Sir, they swore to the miracles of Abbe Paris, and were as ready to give testimony to the wonderful cures and prodigies operated by his intercession, as the Jews or Christians have been to vouch for theirs. The fact is this: the lively disposition of the French, the unintelligibility of their religion, and the shameful conduct of the priests, turned their attention to the more serious object of politics; but this event could not immediately change the nature of the murderers of the Protestants on St. Bartholomew's day. Does your Lordship imagine, that the peasants of La Vendee are models of morality? If you think so, I must undeceive you. Nothing but ignorance prevails in that district; like the ancient crusaders, they are led solely by their priests, who, by means of certain words which early habits and superstition have made their followers respect, and, together with want of communication with the rest of France, have inflamed them, and driven them to slaughter: even miracles have not been wanting in that part of the country; but in this, as in many other instances, they have disappeared, on the arrival of incredulous troops, whose hearts are perhaps hardened by God, like the Egyptians of old. Since God diminishes men's faith in proportion as he gives them human wisdom, let us not endeavour to controvert this heavenly will, by endeavouring to make the enlightened people of the eighteenth century so credulous as in the former days of ignorance. The Bishop allows, that the higher classes of every country all lean towards infidelity; they are more guided by reason, and reason is the avowed enemy of faith, it being the criterion of faith, that it contains natural impossibilities. It is unfortunate that so many sects pretend to faith, and differ so much among themselves; and that to explain their faiths, they use the weapons of reason against one another. This of itself proves, that faith is but a cant word, since the faithful argue about what comes not under human knowledge. Thus all religious sectaries, whether Christians, Jews, Mahometans, Boodzoists, or Bramins, as staunchly believe contradictory doctrines, while, in the inquiries that depend on their reason, we find that, wherever men have long been civilized, they have, in astronomy, in physics, or ethics, come in general to the same conclusions. The language of the philosopher is understood in Pekin as well as in Rome; but the religious fanatics of every country differ in their opinions, and consider all but themselves as dreamers and impostors. The Bramin laughs at the story of Noah and the ark, the stopping of the sun, and the incarnation of God; while the Christian shows the same contempt for the incarnation of Vishnu, and other articles of the Braminical faith. The exercise of reason alone shows us the true limits of our intellectual faculties. Ignorance of this is the cause of all reveries in science, as in religion; it is only superstition that incites men to launch beyond their conceptions. You accuse of infidelity all those who commit crimes against society. When we answer, that the Jewish and Christian religions have deluged the world with blood, you reply, that it is not as being Jews and Christians, but because they were wicked. At the same time, I hope you allow, that the Spartans, the Athenians, the Romans, the Chinese, did not commit half the atrocities which disgrace Jewish history, the aera of the crusades and the Christian persecutions, of the invasion of America, the massacres of heretics, &c. The candid observer must therefore conclude, that right and wrong is not confined to sects; that the Christian religion, whatever its precepts may be, has not been able to prevent crimes, while nations who knew not so much as the name of Moses or Christ, produced a Confucius, an Aristides, a Socrates, an Epaminondas, a Cincinnatus. Among these nations, who knew not the Lord Jehovah, we find Archimedes, Epicurus, Demosthenes, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, while the chosen people of God, and their successors, the Christians, borrowed their language, the very names of their gods, and the little science they knew, from these despised infidels. It was not the oracle of Delphos, the augurs, or the sybils, that enlightened the Greeks and Romans. The rabble credited them, as the ignorant Jews and Christians did their prophets and apostles. In short, morals cannot be invented; there cannot be two systems of morality. The precepts must be directed to principles existing in the heart of man. Ignorance conceals from nations the rule of conduct, in the same manner that it prevents them from knowing geometry; the moment they study either, they are put in the road of truth. No wonder, then, that in the times of the greatest oppression, when frightened into certain doctrines by the stories of nurses and parents, many learned men should not have been able to conquer their first prejudices. You certainly know the time when astrology and the philosopher's stone were in fashion; the believers in these reveries were men of science. Van Helmont, Stahl, Boyle, and innumerable others were possessed of this madness. You can be no stranger to the numerous wretches that suffered for witchcraft and necromancy, and, upon the very brink of death, confessed they were guilty. The next reflection the Doctor makes, is respecting gospel moderation, for which purpose he quotes, "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth." Yet has this been done by all Christian rulers; and the clergy are at this moment, in express defiance of this maxim, about to send missionaries to disseminate principles that have ever produced internal dissensions, and without which infidels have lived in perfect happiness. It is, perhaps, an excess of piety; but cool observers pretend, that it is the high priest, not the High God, that they are going to preach: to fill their knapsacks is the first object of these pilgrims, and their God is made subservient. Unluckily for the Bishop, he could not adduce a more detestable maxim, to show his charity, than that which I have just quoted: it is the pivot of Oriental despotism; it teaches passive obedience to all classes; the father is the tyrant of his children, the nabob of his subjects, the emperor of all: it is a maxim whose tendency is to root in men's minds, that we are the property of one another, and may be inherited as cattle. To those of my readers who are pleased with it, I wish a thorough experience of its effects. The remainder of your first letter contains observations to which I perfectly accede. Your conclusion against Thomas Paine is perfectly fair. Any apparent deviation from moral justice in the world must prove as much against the goodness of God, as a similar inconsistency in his immediate actions and commands proves against revealed religion. My Lord, we are in the abyss of error; your question with Thomas Paine is about the comparative absurdity of the two Opinions. The deistical notions of your adversary do not agree with his reasonable tenets; but I readily grant, that, to a religious person, nothing is incredible; and that the greater the inconsistencies, the more sublime the system. But let me ask your Lordship, what you conclude against one, who, like myself, is not a Deist? and repeats, with the first philosopher of the age, that there are only four possible hypotheses upon the causes of the universe: 1st. That they are purely good. 2dly. That they are malicious. 3dly. That they are a mixture of good and evil. And, lastly, That they neither possess benevolence, nor any other passions. The two first hypotheses are equally contradicted by daily experience, the mixture of good and evil is too apparent: the third is denied, by the steadiness of the laws of nature: the last, then, only is admissible. You next proceed to justify several actions of the Jews, which you and the Bible are pleased to call God's commands. I must decline following your reasoning; for the very existence of such crimes as the Jews ascribe to their enemies, and which, they say, were so repugnant to God, would of themselves prove against the goodness of that Being. His frequent threats, and the extermination of so many miserable nations, is a poor expedient; like that of a man, who, attempting to make a machine, and foiled in his endeavours, gloried in breaking it in a thousand pieces. How much more ridiculous is that sublime Artificer, who employs the same means which impotence or malevolence give rise to in his wretched children. I am glad you have no recourse to the silly causes of atheism, as given by that illustrious dreamer, Plato. The world has too long been imposed upon by ridiculous attempts to vilify atheists, and show their nonexistence. That name has been a cant word, like Jacobin in France, and Whig and Tory in England, which every person applies to his neighbour as it best suits him. In Catholic countries, all who dare think are heretics; among Protestants, they are atheists. Being a word of opprobrium, it has ever been used as a powerful engine in the hands of the clergy. The question is upon the truth of systems, not upon the character of those who profess them. If this were the discrimination, and the palm given to that religion that has had the greatest number of honest men, the Christian system would certainly lose the contest. The Bishop seems to think, that savages have not so perfect a notion of God as we imagine: religion, he supposes, begins as it were in express revelation. This is but the fancy of a clergyman, unsupported by any proofs; but at least it shows, that the Bishop involuntarily acknowledges, that reason alone can hardly give us the idea of a ruling Being. The savage, it is true, does not discourse in a metaphysical jargon; he wants expressions: but I wish the Doctor would inform me in what our Catechism definition of God is clearer than the notions of the rudest savage, who, trembling at the approach of thunder and violent convulsions of nature, or enjoying the genial sun and fertilizing inundations, imagines all the world to be animated with his own passions. The thunder is a mark of wrath, while the blessings are signs of a propitious genius. To conciliate these imaginary beings, to avert their wrath, is the grand object of superstition. Schoolmen conceal, under their mystical jargon, the real materials which their gods are made of; they conceal that the Supreme Artificer is the offspring of fancy, the figurative and unphilosophical symbol of nature, to which they give human dispositions: in all religious systems men are the type of their gods. Your letter concludes with a remark sufficiently extraordinary, that most Deists of your acquaintance disbelieve the mysterious conversations of God, his miracles, and such other stories, because they are too wonderful, and against the order of nature. Your reply is curious: because we never have seen the like of them, does it follow that they are untrue? Give me leave to tell you, my Lord, that you have forgotten the rules of logic: you know, that in all cases, but of demonstration, the philosopher does nothing but weigh probabilities. Any thing that is conceivable is possible: but are we therefore to believe in the existence of witches or necromancers? Are we to give credit to the world having sprung from an egg? That Mahomet divided the moon? That the sun stood still? That astrology is a science? Yet what reason have we to disbelieve them? The respective supporters of these opinions may say with the Doctor, that nothing can be too wonderful, and that, because these things have not happened in our time, it does not follow they should be untrue. I acknowledge, with the Doctor, that many Deists admit a Being as inconceivable as any religious mystery; therefore it may seem ridiculous in them to stop their credulity; since we call God just, when nothing but a concatenation of causes and effects can be perceived in the world; when we proclaim him benevolent, while the world is full of vice, while millions perish in misery, and continual calamities befal mankind; while, in short, most men have the gloomy prospect of damnation before them. These are greater miracles than an universal deluge, making a woman from a rib, or God's countenancing the atrocious murders of Jews. He that will believe one wonder, has no plea for doubting the rest. LETTER II. MY LORD, Your second letter begins with some nice distinctions between authenticity and genuineness. The whole reasoning seems to amount to this, that a book may be authentic, although not genuine, and _vice versa_. To this proposition we were no strangers; but piety makes your Lordship forget some other considerations. When the proofs of authenticity depend in a great measure upon the genuineness of a book, then the authenticity falls to the ground the moment we prove it spurious. Thus the Jews strenuously maintained, that the Pentateuch had been written by an inspired man at a particular time. But if Moses is shown not to have written these books, I trust you will not declare them authentic, without other very solid proofs. When a whole nation is proved to be mistaken respecting the author of a work, we ought not hastily to credit their legends. Moreover, logic teaches us, that in proportion as events are incredible, they require a stronger testimony to prove that they have actually taken place. A battle may have been fought, a city may have been destroyed, but miracles being against the order of nature, no testimony can be strong enough to prove them, we must again appeal to faith. It is so much easier for men to be deceived or imposed upon, or for persons designedly to mislead their credulous followers, that unless it were more miraculous that a man should be mistaken, than that the miracle happened, we ought not to give credit to such fables. If we drop this rule of logic, we shall readily believe prodigies of all sorts, whether wrought by Moses, Jesus Christ, Mahomet, St. Antony of Padua, or any modern wonder-workers, witches, magicians, astrologers, or magnetisers. Mr. Paine no where asserts, that because a book is not genuine, it must be false; but certainly he might assert this of the Bible. You say, that if the works of Titus Livius had been ascribed to another, they would nevertheless be true; how would you ascertain it? If the whole Roman nation supposed them to have been written by a particular author at a certain time, and should we be enabled to point out many passages evidently written in a posterior age, would you, without any other proofs, join in the assent to the authenticity of the history, upon a tradition so vague, and already proved false in so material a point? Although I am no Bishop, I would only imagine, that as to probable events contained in such spurious books, there might have been some grounds for them; but I would receive them with great caution; and, at any rate, never would I establish a system of history, much less of religion, upon the productions of an ignorant people: in all cases, events related against the order of nature are to be considered as the reveries of dark ages. To elucidate your principles, you mention Anson's voyage, written by Robins, under the name of Walter, to prove that a spurious work may contain a true history; but, my Lord, do you forget, that this was written at a time when the whole nation knew that Lord Anson had made such a voyage, and every man in his fleet could testify the particulars of it? But if our posterity, four or five centuries hence, should discover a book purporting to be written by a Mr. Walters, detailing the voyage of Admiral Anson, and if in that book they should meet a passage speaking of the late revolution in France, or of the author's death and burial, would not that strike at the authenticity of the whole? Would any part be believed that was not corroborated by the evidence of respectable contemporary authors? All that could be inferred would be from the nature of the events related, such as the accurate description of countries, and such other particulars as marked either the period of the observations, or their truth: in the first case, they might suspect the work to be interpolated; in the second, they would value it only for the accuracy of information. It is different with scientifical and historical works: a spurious book of science may contain truths, they stand for themselves, they are the same at all times and places. Not so in history: the truth here depends on the universal consent of nations, on the testimony of authors of credibility confronted with each other, and in all cases relating things probable. When we read in a Chinese history, that the goddess Amida peopled the world by bearing male children from under one arm, and females under another, or, in the Mahometan writers, that the trees spoke to the founder of that sect, would a man credit any circumstance, however probable, related in such histories, without the strongest collateral proofs? And should we further discover, that these histories detailed events posterior to their author's death, would not this make the whole still more improbable? Your remark upon this subject is singular: you say, that if Joshua, Samuel, or Moses, declared themselves the authors of the works ascribed to them, then to prove these books spurious would at once destroy their genuineness and authenticity. I would reason thus: Moses does not say, that he was the author of the Pentateuch; why then do we believe that he wrote it? You would, no doubt, answer, that the tradition of the Jews proclaims him such. I retort, that if the genuineness of a book may be proved by tradition, we ought as much to argue against the authenticity of a work, from having proved the general belief of its genuineness to be founded on error, as if the author had said, I am the author of this book. This we shall, in the sequel, prove to be the case with the books of the Old Testament. The addition of an express declaration of Moses would add no authenticity to the Pentateuch, since it is as easy to forge a work where the author speaks in the first as in the third person. Your next remark is concerning miracles. I have already observed, that no testimony can give them belief. You maintain, that the degree and kind of evidence for the prodigies recorded in the Bible exceeds that for any other wonders. How this happens I am unable to comprehend. I know they are contained in a book composed by the priests of the most credulous and ignorant nation that perhaps ever existed; and the authority of these unknown and obscure persons, is all the evidence we have for crediting their stories. An English Bishop tells his countrymen, that the miracle of the sun standing still is better supported than the prodigies of Abbe Paris, Mesmer, and the late Labre at Rome, than the numerous Indian, Chinese, and Popish miracles, of which a great part are attested by magistrates, divines, physicians, and the most enlightened classes of society; while the wonderful repast of the angels with Abraham, or the marvellous tale of Jonah's three days' residence in the belly of a fish, depends upon the authority of a book which we shall prove to be spurious, to have been lost for several ages, and to be compiled, if not altogether composed, by some Jewish scribes, who were, as they themselves acknowledge, the only men versed in the scriptures of the nation. I thought you would have known sacred history better than at the present day to make such unsupported assertions. Have you forgotten the wonders of the magicians of Pharaoh? Do you not recollect the express acknowledgment of Moses himself, that there may be miracles and prophecies performed by men who adored not the Lord Jehovah? Does he not say, in chap. xiii. of Deuteronomy, "If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, &c.--that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death, _because he hath spoken to you to turn away from the Lord your God_." It is not because he is a false prophet, but because he is not a prophet of Jehovah. Does not this at once show the grossness of the conceptions of the Jews, and the sophistical mode of arguing of their legislator? For I would ask, How did Moses prove himself the oracle of God? Or how did Jesus Christ show himself the Son of God, but by their pretended miracles? Why then believe the testimony of a miracle in one instance, and not in another? But the Jews certainly imagined, that there were several gods, and that they quarrelled with each other, as kings are used to do; therefore it was natural that one set of prophets should try to exterminate another, and be as inveterate against them as the Lord Jehovah was against Baal, or other rival gods. If the reader imagines I speak at random when I say, the Jews believed in other gods, I refer him to Judges, chap. xi. ver. 23, 34, where it is said, "So now the Lord God of Israel hath dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel, and shouldst thou not possess it? Wilt thou not possess that which _Chemosh thy god_ giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever the Lord our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess." There cannot be a fairer parallel. I can hardly imagine a Bishop ignorant of the augurs, oracles, and sybils of the Greeks and Romans, and of the implicit belief these nations had in them; the truth of their prophecies was fully as well established as the prophecies of the Jews. Neither were miracles uncommon among the heathens. You have, no doubt, read St. Ambrose and Origen, and have found in the works of these and other fathers, that the only difference between the miracles of the Christians and infidels, was, that the former were operated by God, and the latter by the devil; and could I be satisfied that Satan took up Jesus Christ to the top of that high mountain, (now unknown to geographers) from whose pinnacle all the world could be seen, this would surprise me as much as to see Jesus Christ, or any other wonder-worker, bringing a dead man to life. I am ashamed to have inveighed so long against silly prejudices; but I could not avoid calling upon your Lordship, to point out the difference between gospel-miracles and the ridiculous tales believed in all dark ages, and of which we find so copious collections in the works of the first fathers. The axiom of philosophers, that no human testimony can establish the credibility, of miracles, you have left unanswered. You say it has been confuted an hundred times: had you given the confutation of it, we would have been able to ascertain the truth of your assertion. You are writing for the multitude, and being a dignitary of the church, ought to furnish the people with arms to oppose reason. Perhaps the unsuccessful attempt of Dr. Campbell has deterred you from at least recapitulating the principal answers to this proposition. Till you can prove that the great mass of mankind are not very fallible and easily deceived by any impostor, or that they are disposed and capable to examine the truth of reports spread about prodigies, you will never be able to persuade men of sense, that events impossible are to be believed upon the testimony of those who not only are, but have constantly been, the slaves of credulity in all countries. You then show, that Mr. Paine's objections to the genuineness are not new. This is true; and I am surprised you have quoted so few supporters of his opinions. Your attempt to prove the genuineness of the Pentateuch, by direct evidence, is ridiculous. What! Maimonides, ten centuries after the destruction of the Jews, a Jew himself, and writing at a period so remote from the supposed date of the books of the Old Testament, is, by Dr. Watson, called a direct evidence of the genuineness of the Pentateuch. Juvenal, a poet, who in more than one place ridicules the credulity of the Jews, says, that they believe in Moses--so do the Europeans allow that the Indians believe in Brama.--We question not the general traditions of the Jews, but the credit they deserve; and I shall next proceed to show, that the books of the Pentateuch are spurious, and undeserving of credit. The name of Moses and the Jews were unknown to the famous Phoenician historian Sanchoniato, of whom Eusebius has preserved us some extracts; he has never mentioned a word about this famous legislator: had he done so, Eusebius was too strenuous an advocate _for_ Christianity not to have recorded it. The books of the Jews were concealed from all the world before the famous Greek translation made at the instance of Ptolemy Philadelphia. Josephus himself acknowledges, that no heathen knew the Jewish books, which he endeavours to explain, by some miraculous interference of God to keep them from the impious. It is evident, that the insignificance and ignorance of the Jews were sufficient to screen them for a long time from the search of philosophers. Upon the early history of the Jewish nation, however, we have the testimony of several of the ancient writers. Manetho, and Chaeremon, Egyptian historians, give the most unfavourable account of this nation. Lisimachus does not favour them any more; and, although he differs about the name of the king who expelled them from Egypt, yet he agrees in calling them a set of men infected with leprosy, and the meanest of the subjects of the king of Egypt. Diodorus Siculus is as hard upon these wretched Jews. In short, the opinion of their being the vilest and most ignorant of men, has prevailed among all antiquity. All the writers about them agree in stating that they never produced any work in science; indeed, that they never improved any branch of useful knowledge. Many of these authors mention Moses as a priest of Heliopolis, who led them out of Egypt, and gave them a religion. Diodorus Siculus informs us, that the God of Moses was Jau, or Jahouh, which is the true pronunciation of Jehovah; and Plutarch (de Iside) says, that the Thebans adored this God, and had not images in their temples, because Jau signified the general principle of life, the soul of the world. Strabo, in his Geography, book 16, informs us, that Moses, who was an Egyptian priest, taught his followers to worship the God Jahouh, without representing it by emblems. This was the God of the Thebans, the soul of the world. The Jews have even preserved the name of Tsour, or giver of forms, and commonly translated by the word creator in chap. xxxii. of Deuteronomy. Herodotus affirms, that the Jews or Syrians of Palestine borrowed circumcision from the Egyptians. Diodorus says the same; and even Philo and Josephus do not deny it. A great many other rites were copied by the Jews from this nation. It is, therefore, of great consequence to ascertain the age in which the Jewish books were written; for if we can prove that all the fundamental points of their religion were copied from their masters the Egyptians, or borrowed from the Babylonians during the captivities, then the reader will judge of the truth of the clerical opinion, that a handful of hordes were the favourite people of God; that a set of ignorant and credulous vagabonds taught science to the Chinese, Indians, and Egyptians, and preserved nothing among themselves but some ridiculous accounts of their origin, and a collection of absurd prodigies. If we succeed in pointing out from what sources Jewish mythology is derived, there will be but little difficulty in unravelling the principal fables contained in the Pentateuch and other Jewish books. We are pretty well acquainted with the allegories of the heathen mythologies. I am ready to grant that several of Mr. Paine's objections are not valid, and often trifling; but I declare, once for all, that I do not think myself bound to follow Mr. Paine in every instance. I shall direct my remarks, rather to disprove your reasoning, than to defend every objection of your opponent; at the same time, I shall avoid repeating what he has advanced, and you have not disproved. The chief proofs against the genuineness of the Pentateuch have been overlooked by Mr. Paine. I shall state them briefly. First. It was believed, by all the best informed old fathers of the church, that the Jewish books had been absolutely lost during the captivity, and that Esdras had written them from inspiration; or, that he collected the Pentateuch, and all other canonical books, out of whatever records he could find, and put them together. 1 In either case, their authority is greatly invalidated; and the more so, as the fourth book of Esdras, adopted by the Greek church, and generally deemed authentic, says expressly, that Esdras dictated the holy books during forty successive days and nights, to five scribes, who were continually writing. This tale shows sufficiently the general belief that he was the restorer of the long lost books of the law. In our second book of Nehemiah, or, properly speaking, Esdras, it is said, that Ezra, or Esdras the scribe, who was above all the people, brought the book of the law to the people, and then the people rejoiced much in being instructed in the law of God, that when they found there the commandment of the Lord ordering the Jews to perform the feast of the booths, there was great gladness, "and all the congregation of them that were come again out of the captivity made booths, and sat under booths: for, since the days of Joshua the son of Nun, unto that day, had not the children of Israel done so.". If the Jews had even forgotten a feast, the memory of which every father would transmit to his son, is this not an evident proof that they had no books in the captivity? Again, in chap. vii. of the 1 book of Esdras, it is said, that Esdras "had very great skill, so that he omitted nothing of the law and commandments of the Lord, but taught all Israel the ordinances and judgments." 1 Porro Esdram sancti patres docent iostanratorem suisse sacrorum librorum, quod non ita intelligendum est, quasi scripturæ sacræ omnes perierint in eversione civitatis, et templi Nabuchodonosor, et ab Esdra divinitas inspirato reparatæ fuerint, ut fabulatur auctor, L, IV. Esdræ C. XIV. Sed quod Scripturas Mosis, et prophetarum in varia volimina descriptas, et in varia loca dispenreas, et tempore captivitatis non diligenter conservatas, Esdras summa diligentia collectas ordinaverit, et in unum quasi corpus redigerit. Bellarmin de Script. Ecclesiast. page 22. Can any man, after this, doubt that Esdras is the compiler of all the books which the Jews had not known for many centuries? And are we, who laugh at the Catholic councils, to trust to the word of a Jewish scribe? it is further stated in 2 Chronicles, chap. xxiv. ver. 15, that Hilkiah the priest found a book of the law of God _given_ by Moses, and sent it by Saphan to king Josias, who heard it read, which shows that it must have been very short; and, by the context, it would appear to have been the law strictly speaking; another proof that these records were altogether scattered, and are all without authority, since it was so easy to forge them among a people who seemed to preserve no more than a traditional law. Again, although, in the older Jewish books, such as Kings and Chronicles, we find the name of Moses often mentioned, yet no word answering to the five books of Pentateuch is to be found. The Code of laws of Moses seems to have been forgotten; for Solomon ornamented the temple with calves, in express contempt of that law, and this while he was the favourite of God, and the wisest man in the world. The very confusion that pervades the books ascribed to Moses, shows them to have been compilations. Jerome, who was one of the most learned of the fathers, confesses that he dares not affirm that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch; he even adds, that he has no objection to allow that Esdras wrote the books in question. 1 1 Sive Mosen dicere volueris auctorem Pentateuchi, sive Esdram ejuadem iustauratorem operis, non recuso. Hieronim. Op. Tom. IV. p. 134. Apud Edit. Paris 1706, Secondly. We know that no canon of books ever existed among the Jew's till the time of the synagogue under the Maccabees. Before their reign, there had never existed among the Jews any such council; and, if the word occurs in the Pentateuch, it is a fault of the transcribers and composers, who lived when there was a synagogue, and is not to be understood in any other acceptation than a collection of priests. The Pharisees of the second temple chose the books they thought best among a multitude of forgeries. The Talmud relates, that this synagogue were about to reject the Book of Proverbs, Ezekiel's prophecies, and Ecclesiastes, because they imagined these writings contradictory to the law of God; but a certain Rabbin having undertaken to reconcile them, they were preserved as canonical. A prodigious number of forged Books of Daniel, Esdras, and of the Prophets, were then in circulation; and to distinguish the genuine from the false works became absolutely necessary. This doubt and uncertainty conspires to render the decision of the synagogue very doubtful; particularly, as we shall show in the sequel, that many passages of the Prophecies are written evidently about the time of this choice of sacred books, and inserted in them, probably by some cunning priest, as the oracles of Sybil were forged to suit Cæsar. Thirdly. The similarity of the mysteries of the Jews to those of the Babylonians, is too glaring not to let us see the origin of Genesis in particular. The creation in six days is a perfect copy of the Gahans, or Gahan-bars, of Zoroaster; the particulars of each day's work are literally the same. The serpent was famous among the Babylonians. The mythological deluge of Ogyges and Xissuthrus, are symbols of changes arising on earth, as they imagined, from the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. These, a little ornamented by the historical narration of Deucalion's inundation related by Berosus, is the pattern of Noah's flood; the ark of Osiris and emblematical dove and raven were Egyptian hieroglyphics. The man and the woman in Paradise is a mere copy of Zoroaster's first pair. The original sin is Pandora's box. The Talmud of Jerusalem says expressly that the Jews borrowed the names of the angels, and even of their months, from the Babylonians. The Elohim, or Gods, (not God), are said in Genesis to have created the world. It was not Jehovah, but the genii or gods that are in the Hebrew called makers of the world. And these are the very genii, who according to Sanchoniatho, were by Mercury excited against Saturn. Fourthly. We ask, in what language was the Pentateuch written, if it really was the work of Moses? It is known that Hebrew is a dialect of the Phenician, and that the Jews spoke Egyptian for a very long time before they adopted the language of the people among whom they dwelt. In Psalm lxxxi. we learn that the Jews were surprised to hear the language of the people beyond the Bed Sea. If, therefore, Moses, or any person of that age, is the author of the Pentateuch, it is evident that the Hebrew books are mere translations. What degree of credit does a nation deserve, who have been able to take for originals books that were in the face of them translations? Is it right to persecute men, as priests have done while they had power, for refusing to give credit to this tissue of contradictory and absurd fables? Fifthly. In the books of the Old Testament, we find abundant proofs that they have been written in an age greatly posterior to that of Moses. In Genesis, chap. xii. ver. 6, we find these words, "And the Canaanite was then in land." This implies another period when the Canaanite was not in the land, which, we learn from the Bible, did not happen till after David, and could not therefore be written by Moses. The beginning of Deuteronomy is certainly not written by him; for he never passed the Jordan; he died upon Mount Nebo, to the eastward of it. The English translation has in chap. i. v. 5, of this book, said, "on this side of the Jordan," for "on that side," which is in the original. The translator has taken similar liberties very often. In chap. xxxiii. we find this expression, "There never was in Judea so great a prophet as Moses," and such could be pointed out in many places. Here needs no comment to show that such passages could only be written in a posterior age, and when there had been several prophets after Moses. Thomas Paine mentions many other passages, which I shall consider when I come to your next letter. The above considerations would be sufficient to invalidate the genuineness and authenticity of any historical book: but here we find that the credulity of bigots requires less proof for the authority of a work, which, according to them, is the fountain of faith, than for Ossian's poems, or any other book of no consequence. If a common historical work contains fables, impossible events, and anachronisms; if its age is not ascertained; if we are certain that it was unknown for many centuries; if we are even ignorant whether it is an original or a translation, who would give the slightest credit to such a book? Yet are enlightened nations led by the testimony of the Jews, a people credulous beyond measure, extremely ignorant, almost continually in slavery, and dispersed. This is the nation that pretends to give an account of the creation, and, with a vanity peculiar to an insignificant people, to assume the supremacy among nations, and arrogate to themselves the exclusive protection of Jehovah, and dare make their Adam the common stock of mankind. You allow, my Lord, that several passages have been interpolated in the Pentateuch. No person in the least acquainted with the history can deny that it has suffered great alterations; 1 and I have already noticed the opinion of the best informed fathers of the church upon the non-existence of the Pentateuch, several centuries prior to Esdras. I now beg to be informed, how we are to decide, if Hilkiah, in the reign of Josias, collected from tradition, or some old book he found in a chest, the precepts of the law? and whether the other famous scribe, Esdras, did not compile from hearsay, and some imperfect and scattered manuscripts of no authority, together with a great many Babylonish traditions, those venerable five books of Moses? We are informed, in one of the books that bears his name, that Esdras was the wisest of his cotemporaries, and therefore a very fit and probable person to write books out of old legends. 1 Multa in Hebraicis et Græcis codicibus vitia esse ostendimus. Malta mendacia in rebus minutis, eorum pars uliqua non exigua nostra editione vulgata extat.---Marian pr. edit. vulg. cap. 21. If the books of the Old Testament were composed at so late a period, no wonder then that we find all the mysterious part of them so much like the religion of the ancients, and particularly of the Babylonians, and the historical part made up of heterogeneous matters, which in our days, unassisted by any profane writer of that age, we can make nothing of. I shall mention a few of the most striking points of resemblance between the Jewish and other mysteries. Abraham, the most famous of their patriarchs, has ever been celebrated in India. This they seem to have brought from their native country, Arabia. We have already noticed, that their account of the creation is exactly copied from Zoroaster, who says, that the world was made in six periods of time, called by him the thousands of God and of light, meaning the six summer months; in the first, God made the heavens; in the second, the waters; in the third, the earth; in the fourth, trees; in the fifth, animals; and in the sixth, man. The Etrurians and the Hindoos have very similar traditions of the highest antiquity, which, though they were emblems at first perfectly understood, astronomers afterwards converted them into periods, comprehending as many years as was required for different revolutions of the planetary system. Thus, while the Hindoos and Persians called the days or ages of the world, each of many thousands of years; the Jews, ignorant of astronomy, and fond of the marvellous, comprised all within six common days. Their firmament or heaven of crystal, and its windows, are absurdities not peculiar to them; the feast of the Pascha, which signifies passage, is of Egyptian origin, and was in reverence for the passage of the sun at the vernal equinox: the sacrifices of calves or oxen, the ceremony of the scape-goat, are Egyptian and Indian; the latter, in particular, have a ceremony altogether the same with that of the scapegoat. It is too long to insert here, but I refer my readers to Mr. Halhed's introduction to the code of Gentoo laws for information on this head. The distinction between pure and impure animals was first made by the Egyptians; the ladder seen in Jacob's vision, is exactly a copy of that with seven steps in the cave of Milthra, representing the seven spheres of the planets, by means of which souls ascended and descended. It is also the mythology of the Hindoos, whose antiquity no man at the present day can venture to deny. The seven candlesticks, and the twelve stones are Egyptian, and were emblems of the seven planets, and twelve signs of the Zodiac. The serpent is the most famous Egyptian hieroglyphic; it signifies eternity, or the sum of all things. The fasts before feasts are also derived from this nation. The Jewish high-priest, like the Egyptian, wore an image of sapphire, being the emblematic picture of truth, upon, his breast: in short, the Egyptians, their masters, gave them the first ideas of mysteries, which, in the course of time, they mingled with the Chaldaic; and Manetho informs us, in the extract given by Josephus in his first book against Appian, that, in authors of great authority, he found the Jews to have been distinguished in Egypt by the name of captive pastors, which Josephus artfully enough has attempted to convert into captive kings. These are the men whom sacred historians pretend to have taught the Egyptians all their arts. These wretches, despised of all nations, were themselves the emphatical admirers of the wisdom of the East. Their legislator was an Egyptian priest, and learned all that he knew from them; and you would persuade us that a set of Arabian hordes had founded the Egyptian empire, simply because they, like the Irish, are pleased to say that they were antedeluvians. I pardon the Jews for their credulity; but Europeans in the 18th century ought not to think as the inhabitants of Palestine. If we give credit to all the reports of the origin of nations, we may give up all pretensions to common sense. The immortality of the soul is shown, by the learned but superstitious Warburton, never to have been mentioned in the Pentateuch; nor the notion of hell, or of future rewards and punishments. There is nothing more certain, however, than that the Pharisees, long before Christ, strenuously maintained the immortality of the soul, and in some measure adopted the doctrine of transmigration of souls, which they had got from the Greeks and other nations. The Sadducees, founding themselves upon the Bible, fervently denied a future life. The Essenians, according to Philostratus, were Pythagoreans, both in their morals, belief, and mode of life, except that a few of the Jewish articles of faith, such as the necessity of circumcision, were mingled with their creed. Josephus himself acknowledges the similarity between the Essenians and the Plisti among the Thracians, to whom Zamolxis, the disciple of Pythagoras, taught his doctrines: The Therapeutes, the pattern and ori--gin of Christian morals, were reckoned amongst the Jews to be the most holy among the Essenians. They sacrificed their passions to God; they never swore, but made simple affirmations; they lived, as it were, in convents; they despised bodily pain: when they entered their state of perfection, they abandoned their property, wives, children, and all earthly concerns; they lived upon bread and water and salt; and spent the six days of the week in interpreting the allegorical sense of the Bible. They revered the Sabbath with a most scrupulous exactness; then they assembled in places set apart for religion, the men ranged on one side, and the women on the other, separated by a division four feet high, to prevent temptation. Then they sung praises to God, and preached; they obeyed all the laws of their country, but never would execute any order to hurt another person. They, like the Pythagoreans, thought themselves possessed of the gift of prophecy; they, like the Pythagoreans, believed in the great year, whence arose the famous millennium of the Christians. The three sects of Jews--Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenians, lived all in perfect harmony; the incredulous Sadducees not being considered as heretics, but often attaining the dignity of high-priests. This suffices to show, that the Jews borrowed from other nations those very mysteries which the ignorance of writers has misled mankind to consider as the special revelations of Jesus Christ. I have insisted so much upon this circumstance, because there is not a single article of Christian morals, nor one religious tenet, contained in the New Testament, that was not known before Jesus Christ was born. And the Christian religion, like that of the Jews, is a corruption of the mythologies of the nations they brand with the name of infidels. I return to your book. It is now needless to answer your logical inference, that if Esdras is the compiler of the books of the Pentateuch, they may still be true. I have already said, that we are not to sacrifice our reason to the compilations or works of a Jewish scribe, who borrowed evidently so much, and who pretended to divine inspiration and conversations with the angels. When I began to read your book, I was impressed with the idea of your candour; sorry am I to see the malevolence with which you treat Mr. Paine, and how much you misrepresent his just aspersions on the conduct of Moses. Your language almost persuades me that you do not differ from the gentlemen of your profession. Could Moses affirm, as you pretend he might, that he never persecuted any man? What! that monster, who, although married with a Midianite, ordered thousands of his credulous followers to be murdered, because one of them had slept with a Midianite, whom Josephus states was his wife! What! when his brother and coadjutor makes a golden calf to the people, this impostor, instead of punishing him, orders 3,000 men to be murdered, and appoints Aaron his successor! Because Korah, Da-than, and Abiram, could not suffer to see him usurping all the power, he murders them, although Korab was the descendant of Levi. This is Moses, who says, like Bishop Watson, that he "was a very meek man!" Were these continual murders necessary to instruct ignorant idolaters who followed the example of their priests? Have not the founders of our faith been the most cruel murderers? But all this we are told was the immediate orders of the Lord Jehovah, a merciful God. How feeble appears the power of this great God! He is continually repenting, and always obliged to renew his covenants with a set of wretches, who, although they enjoyed his special protection, always forsook him, and only fulfilled his commands strictly when they were ordered to massacre. They might have been the favourite people of God, but I am sure they were the disgrace of men. You talk of idolatrous nations sunk in vice. I know of none so barbarous as the Jews, whose legislator was obliged to fly from Egypt for murder, a perfect assassin. The laws concerning paternal power, which you support, are horrid. Their having been adopted by many nations, is a proof of the general prevalence of superstition, ignorance, and despotism. I have nothing to answer to your discourses on tythes. The Bible is preached up, because it teaches passive obedience, donations to the church, and such other acts of _public utility_. LETTER III. After what I have observed above, it will be useless to say much as to your third letter, in which you examine minutely the passages Thomas Paine has pointed out to prove the Pentateuch not genuine. First, As to the objection taken from the name of Dan, I never thought it specious. This is not the case with the very next one, which is of very great weight. The writer, after enumerating a number of Arabian names, concludes in these words, "These are the kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel." Contrary to my expectations, you acknowledge this to have been written after the Jews had kings. Many of your brethren have attempted to deny it by quibbles! but you say that this does not invalidate the authority of the book: wonderful! if your _alma-mater_ taught you, that an evident lie or contradiction in any book, particularly of remote antiquity, and relating histories unsupported by impartial authors, does not create a suspicion, which approaches to certainty, that the book is not authentic; if you think so, I must give up arguing with you. It may be an interpolation, you observe. How did you learn this? You will at least leave, me the right to suppose, and you cannot deny that the presumption is against you, an absurdity in a book is a reason for distrusting the rest. I have probability on my side; for the Jew who forged this passage, either from piety or ignorance, might have forged the whole book, or so interpolated it, as to destroy its credibility. At any rate, the detection of falsehood in a history, is not a motive to suppose it true. It requires an excess of piety to break through all the rules of logic and common sense. How does it happen, that the Lord Jahovah does not provide better against such mistakes creeping into the book of the law of his favourite people? It could seem as if he had done it on purpose to create incredulity, and enjoy the pleasure of punishing unbelievers, as of old, he hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he might have a pretext to inflict calamities on him and his people. My Lord, what credit would we give to a history of William the Conqueror that had the following sentence, after naming different persons, _And these were the names of the Kings of England before George the Third came to the throne_; for what purpose could any person insert such a passage? He must have been absolutely mad. It could only get into the work from its being compiled during the reign of George the Third, and arising from a forgetfulness of the writer, or ignorance of the transcriber: in no case could it be inserted in a book, which you say was kept in the public records, and over whose purity the whole Jewish learned men would watch; you must either give up your argument from the public records of this people, and no longer deem them great authority; or, if you persist in it, I leave you to reconcile the most palpable interpolations and forgeries with the scrupulous attention with which you suppose the Jews preserved the word of God. But what is most curious in this passage is, that we find it verbatim in 2 Chronicles, chap. i. ver. 43, and you seem to glory in discovering this similarity of the passages. "Why might not," you say at the end of your fourth letter, "the author of the book of Chronicles have taken them, (meaning the names of the kings of Edom, &c.), as he has taken many other genealogies, supposing them to have been written in the book of Genesis by Samuel?" Another acknowledgment of more interpolations in Genesis. But, Sir, who gave you the right, you who exclaim so much against the unsupported assertions of Thomas Paine, to suppose that the author of Chronicles copied an interpolation from Genesis, knowing, as he must have done, that it was interpolated by Samuel? Would he not rather, to make the book consistent, expunge it? Could he be so ignorant as not to see the contradiction? What is more strange, how came Samuel to introduce such a passage? The tendency of it could only be to weaken the authority of Genesis; but, allowing all your groundless suppositions to be true, do you not see that they only prove the ignorance of Samuel and of the Jewish history writers, and at once destroy the superstructure you have in your following letters raised upon the supposed accurate records of the Jews? The supposition of Samuel being the author of the interpolation, is like an historian, who, to the history of Charles the First, should add some accounts, concluding with observing, that all this took place before George the Second, or should even venture further, and instruct us in some prominent features of the French revolution: yet this is the case with the passage in question; for it is unquestionable that the Jews had never a king till the time of Saul; that, under Moses and the Judges, they held kings in detestation. The fact is very plain. In Chronicles, the passage has an obvious and clear sense; for there an account of the kings of Israel is given, and the sentence now under consideration precedes it. Indeed, the whole chapter xxxvi. of Genesis is almost literally the same with chapter first of Chronicles; and every unbiassed man will conclude, that the former is copied from the latter. That little concluding expression, before _there reigned any king over Israel_, certainly marks its date; and there is nothing more probable, than that when Esdras and the scribes compiled these books, they should insert in Genesis the posterity of Esau, as far as the history of Genesis went, and that this unlucky passage should by mistake be copied too. I acknowledge, that an interpolation, when we can prove the period of its insertion, does not destroy the validity of a book, if the rest of the facts are consistent, and supported by collateral proofs; but the Bible is an unconnected rhapsody, written by we know not whom, without order, arrangement, or a shadow of method. Besides, it is the word of God; and what, in a profane writer, would be a slight error, is here a most material fault; if our future happiness depends, as you suppose, on our believing this book, which certainly can never take place while such reasons for scepticism remain. In proportion to the importance of an event, so we must be careful in examining the grounds upon which it stands, or else we must be like those whimsical men, who will require the best evidence for the truth of a trifling report, but find no repugnance in crediting the most marvellous events upon trust. Mr. Paine properly concludes, that Genesis is a book of stories, fables, traditions, or invented absurdities, or downright lies; and this I not only affirm with him, but will prove to my readers, that it is in no respect deserving of more credit than the fabulous and early history of all nations. Next follows your rhapsody upon the beauty of the Bible and the truth of it. Pardon me if I think it like a madman's reveries. Even the men of your profession have long ago given up such a ridiculous conceit. Whoever has read eastern literature, or the late translation from the Shanscrit, will find that the same style with that of the Bible pervades all eastern compositions. In all of them we find the frequent use of allegory, and a quaint and formal manner of expression. Divest the Bible of its Oriental garb, and put it into common language, you will find, except the episode of Joseph, and two or three other passages, it is absolutely illegible. I have already shown the Pentateuch to have been a very modern work, and the Jews to have borrowed every thing from other nations. No wonder then that the _Abram_ should resemble the _Brama_ of the Hindoos, or that a few names in the supposed genealogies of the Jews should be like those of the Assyrians, Medes, &c. Genesis gives a description of creation truly beautiful! We did not spring from grasshoppers, nor the world from an egg; but the wise Moses informs us, that we were made of clay and a little breath. This may be sublime to you; but the philosopher is never elated by fables so absurd. It is not true that Genesis is the oldest, nor a very old book. Sanchoniato, the Hindoo books, those of the Egyptians and Chinese, are of much higher antiquity than Moses. In vain has Mr. Maurice struggled to dazzle our understandings with his incoherent suppositions, to prove that the Hindoos borrowed their religion from the Jews, from a set of Arabian hordes, from the slaves of the Egyptians, from a petty nation, who, as Julian says, never produced a single work, and whose credulity has ever been proverbial. The astronomical records of the Chinese prove, that there were men and astronomers in that country at the time when the wretched Jews would make us believe the world was inundated from the windows of heaven, and no creatures existing but Noah, his family, and the beasts in the ark. Further, Souciet mentions an eclipse of the sun recorded in the Chinese history, which happened 2155 years before Christ, which is but 236 years after the Deluge; a time when, the Bible informs us, the earth was only inhabited by the sons of Noah, while Egypt was then so peopled, that 90,000 cities could not contain the inhabitants, and China was not less so. The Hindoo astronomical observations, as far as they have been examined by the most learned astronomers of the age, such as Baillie, Le Gentil, and others, carry their antiquity between four and five thousands beyond our æra; for a proof of which, I refer you to Mr. Playfair's excellent paper, in the second volume of the Edinburgh Philosophical Transactions. The Hindoo religious books contain, besides, a great many of the ideas afterwards adopted by the Jews. The long lives of antedeluvians, in particular, are the exact copy of the Iogues of the Indians. The Dwapaar Iogue, the latter part of which answers to the period of Noah, was when men's lives were limited to a thousand years; and Methuselah we know did not live so long. They have, too, their mythological deluge, or the incarnation of Vishnu into a fish. For an account of which I refer my readers to Volney, and to Mr. Maurice himself. The former gentleman is a good judge of ancient literature; he pretends that he can prove, that most of the chapters of Genesis, supposed to contain names of persons, are mythological: the posterity of Noah is, according to Volney, no more than a geography of the world as known to the Jews. I have not read Mr. Volney's memoir which I understand he has published on this subject; but, when I consider the late period when Genesis and the other books were composed, and how much the Jews borrowed from the Egyptians and Babylonians, how much the deluge of Noah and his ark resemble the emblems of Osiris; in short, when I reflect on the unintelligibility and apparent absurdity of Genesis, on the impossibility of the Deluge, and of the not less absurdity of the population of the world so soon after that calamity, I confess I am much inclined to despise the whole performance. There have been various suppositions upon the meaning of the names mentioned in Genesis. Adam has been said to signify, in many parts of Asia, the first day of the week; and Enoch, the seventh successor of Adam, to be the same with Saturn, or the seventh day. Thus Assur, Elam, Lud, Madai, Javan, and Tiras, which are said to be the founders of the Assyrians, the Elamites, the Lydians, the Medes, the Ionians, and the Thracians, may very probably be nothing else than the enunciation of the names of these countries; for, between Assur and Assyria, or Lud and Lydia, there is not a very great difference. We know that Egypt is by the Arabs called _Masr_, which has the same consonants with the Hebrew _Misraim_, whose plural termination implies properly the inhabitants of Egypt. In the Bible, _Misraim_ is called the founder of that kingdom. We also know, that Syria is called _Barr-el-sham_, or the country to the left. The inhabitants of Thebaid are called the sons of Cush. Again, we find several names of towns very much resembling those of the supposed founders of these monarchies; Sur, or Tyre, is not unlike Assur. These are conjectures; I pretend to found nothing upon them; but, at least, they are probable. Your Genesis, on the contrary, as it is commonly explained, contains palpable lies. It supposes a deluge, which neither did nor could take place; it destroys the human race, when we know that nations were then in existence. Lastly, it talks of the founders of nations, which existed long before that period. But, even had Genesis been written at the time of Moses, it might be worth while to inquire into the import of his genealogies; but, being a very modern compilation, collected by an ignorant people, partly from tradition, partly from scattered and mutilated records, it does not deserve the serious attention of the philosopher. You next attempt to justify the conduct of God towards the Canaanites, whose great crime was to defend their own country, and to adore their own gods instead of the God of the Jews. When a man makes an apology for such conduct, we only can answer by an appeal to the feelings of men, from which alone we derive notions of humanity. It was natural for the adorers of a Phenician Jehovah to be the enemies of the Babylonish Baal: both these gods sprang from the wild fancies of men. The jealous God of the Jews, the all-wise, omnipotent, and benevolent, could not convert the worshippers of another god, without exterminating whole nations, even to the little children; but this barbarous mandate came from the priests, who have in all countries, and all systems of Religion, adopted this method of conversion. You state, that Moses "gave an order that the boys and women should be put to death; but, that the young maidens should be kept alive for themselves;" and, that you "see nothing in the proceeding, but good policy combined with mercy. The young men might have become dangerous avengers of what they would esteem their country's wrongs; the mothers might have again allured the Israelites to the love of licentious pleasures, and the practice of idolatry, and brought another plague upon the congregation; but the young maidens, not being polluted by the flagitious habits of their mothers, not likely to create disturbance by rebellion, were kept alive:" and you add, that "the women children were not reserved for the purposes of debauchery, but of slavery; a custom (you acknowledge) abhorrent from our manners, but every where practised in former times, and still preserved in countries where the benignity of the Christian religion has not softened the ferocity of human nature." Is extermination an example of the mercy of priests and their gods, "whose justice is subservient to mercy," "whose punishments originate in his abhorrence to sin,"--and whose commands to massacre, to butcher, and to exterminate, "are only benevolent warnings?"--You dare Mr. Paine to prove, that the young women were kept for debauchery; and you triumphantly add, "that if he does, you will allow Moses to be the horrid monster he describes him, and the Bible a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy." Do you think, that consigning to slavery thirty-two thousand maids, is consistent with the benignity of God? I do not hesitate to consider this worse than merely making them the partners of licentious pleasures. But, in what consisted the wonted wisdom of a God, whom you describe as ever solicitous to lessen the influence of sin? Let me ask you, if the young women were not as liable to incite the passions of the Jews as their mothers, and whether their slavery would not increase the opportunities for debauchery? Could it be consistent with humanity, much less with the mercy of an all powerful God, to put to death all the boys of a nation, merely because they might in time revenge the insolent invaders of their country? Were all the male children already polluted from their birth? It would have been easy for them to convert them to another religion, but to your God it was impossible. The bloody invaders of America pursued not another plan, even after "the benignity of the Christian religion softened the ferocity of human nature." Have these Christian invaders any where respected the chastity of women when they made them slaves? And have the Jews, God's chosen nation, at any period, either while under his protection, or since he abandoned them, shown themselves more virtuously inclined than other people; were they ever prevented by the striking manifestations of his mercy, his power, and his justice, from going away to adore other gods, and falling into all sorts of wickedness? In short, if the Bishop rests his defence of Moses and the Bible upon this passage, I am willing to appeal to the judgement of all mankind. If any person can believe it consistent with the benevolence of omnipotence, to sacrifice whole nations to be massacred and plundered by a few hordes of bloody Jews; if he can think this to be part of a grand scheme for the good of mankind, he must give up all pretensions to reason, common sense, and humanity. But it is time the world should see, that this holy book the Bible, "which, in weight of authority, and extent of utility, exceeds all the libraries of the philosophers," contains pretences for all bad actions, and stifles the laws of humanity and morality. Upon this book have inquisitors, crusaders, and religious men, founded pretences for the most diabolical persecutions, avowedly undertaken for the express purpose of unrooting infidelity, and for the glory of the Lord. Every man who reads the word of God is warranted to reason thus: God has ordered murder and robbery; he has instigated his favourite people to exterminate whole nations; therefore I can do no better than to imitate the Almighty; and every crusader may pretend to have the same authority from God as Moses; and miracles are never wanting to prove it. Because Abraham was a pimp, and his wife a prostitute, so may any person be, without losing the patronage of the God of Abraham. Every man, in short, may imitate the meek Moses, the humane David, without fearing to incur the displeasure of the Almighty. Thus Ravaillac thought he was doing as holy a deed, when he attempted the life of Henry; as Dominic, or Torquemada, when butchering the wretched heretics, who had the misfortune to fall a prey to their bloody zeal. The whole Old Testament is so filled with barbarous stories, that if they did not excite laughter by their improbability, they would freeze the blood in, the veins of any man endowed with humanity. What an irksome task have those undertaken, who have attempted to reconcile the horrible crimes of the Jews with the mercy and wisdom of the Creator? Has ferocity forsaken Christians as you insinuate? Have the modern religious fanatics yielded in cruelty to the Jews? Those two religions have successively inundated the earth with the blood of innocent victims. Have not the followers of Christ constantly preached passive obedience to the church, have they not frequently relieved the people of their oaths, and have they not fomented most of the civil wars that laid waste all Europe? It is well that priests have not been able to persuade mankind of late, that the minister was the oracle of God. The pride and foolishness of science has put this out of their power; they cannot lead nations as they did the Jews; we are not so easily persuaded of the immediate manifestations of God's commands to the priest. We know science too well to believe that the pillar of fire that went before the Israelites was God himself. We might have shown the people, that a pan with red-hot substances would have the appearance of a fire by night, and a cloud of smoke by day, a custom practised, from time immemorial, by the caravans. Although, my Lord, the wisdom of God may be foolishness to man, I acknowledge I am neither fond of crediting absurdities, nor have I so much faith as to take the work of priests for supernatural mandates of Providence; when they speak in their usual senseless and unintelligible language, I conclude that it is either to dazzle the ignorant multitude, or I look upon their dreams as the consequence of dire superstition, the first effect of which is to make us unacquainted with ourselves, under the imposing aspect of familiarising us with imaginary beings. At the conclusion of my remarks upon the Old Testament, I shall give a few extracts from those books, wherein my readers may see the character of the Jews and their God in glaring colours, and judge whether any honest man would not tremble at the thoughts of having done as much injustice, and committed such atrocities as this Jehovah. LETTER IV. You enter again upon your favourite topic, genuineness and authenticity. I shall not repeat what I have already said. I confess my great surprise at your laying such stress upon the most trifling and false of your arguments. You now strive to prove, that a book may contain a true history, although it should be anonymous. Pray, my Lord, do you think, that to prove a book spurious, when it is believed to be genuine, is a demonstration of the truth of the contents? You thus leave us uncertain whether Joshua be a genuine book. You have sadly confused yourself in the maze you have created. To put it beyond a doubt that the sun stood still, you appeal to the book of Jasher, which Joshua mentions in the following words, "Is not this written in the book of Jasher?" And in like manner, you refer to other books frequently quoted as authorities in the Bible. Does your zeal blind you so far as not to let you perceive, that this very argument may with redoubled strength be retorted against you? for if an author, who is said to write his own history, appeals to another book for a proof of his actions, that book must be of much greater authority than his own: we cannot avoid believing the writer of the work alluded to had better information. In short, the book appealed to contains the only authentic testimony. Now, permit me to ask you, who could be better authority than Joshua himself, writing at a time when we must suppose many of his soldiers who had witnessed the miracle were alive? What is this anterior book which Joshua respects so much? Was it written by himself, then it would be idle to quote it; and, at any rate, whoever had written it, it is evident that the author of the book of Joshua has no proofs of his own, but rests solely upon the book of the Holy, or of Jasher. This circumstance proves clearly, that the writer of the Book of Joshua composed his book out of some more ancient memoirs, which being lost, we can say no more of their authority than for that of any old tales. You talk of the public records of the Jews as confidently as a Member of Parliament speaks of the papers in the Tower. Do you know at what period the Jews began to keep written records, and do you also know, whether those that were kept existed when the books of the Old Testament were compiled? Had you been instructed in these particulars, and had you been not altogether divested of candour, you might have informed your readers, that, previous to the time of kings, we have not a shadow of proof of the existence of any historical records among the Jews. We, no doubt, read, that there was a book of the law of Moses, in which Joshua wrote something too respecting the renewal of a covenant. This seems to be the only written record among the Jews, and it contained nothing but religious precepts, or the law, strictly speaking. In Joshua, chap. viii. ver. 31, we read, "As Moses the servant of the Lord commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses and ver. 32, He wrote there upon the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he wrote in the presence of the children of Israel and ver. 35, He read all the words of the law, the blessings, and curses, according to all that is written in the book of the law of the Lord, and there was not a word of all that Moses commanded which Joshua read not before the congregation of Israel." We know, likewise, that this law was written in the circumference of an altar composed of twelve stones. This is the only book either Moses or Joshua were ever said to have written; the writers of the Pentateuch, and of the other books, certainly never meant to inscribe them to Moses, Joshua, &c.; they bore the names of books of Moses, of Joshua, Judges, &c. because they treated of these personages. What then do you infer from the quotation of books by the Bible authors, except that they all wrote in very modern times, when they wanted the corroboration of more ancient books, whose date and authority we are equally strangers to? This book of the law, which you so triumphantly mention as a book written and existing a few years after Moses, turns out to be nothing more than what is contained in Exodus, chap. xx. to chap. xxiv. to which Joshua added some detail about the third covenant of God. I beg the reader will observe, that the writer of the Book of Joshua does not mention the second, third, or any other book of Moses, but simply notices the book of the law of God. Now this great book was written upon twelve stones, and in Exodus we find the precise commandment of Moses to build the altar, and to read the commandments at the feast of tabernacles; so that it contained not one line of history, and could have no authority. It was a law written upon stones, which Moses, in Exod. chap. xxiv. v. 7, is said to have read to the people: "And he took the book of the covenant, and read it in the audience of the people." This covenant, and particularly the repetition of it after the disobedience of the Jews, is the only part of the Scriptures that Moses ordered to be preserved with a religious care. Nothing of the most important parts of Genesis or the other five books is ever mentioned in the commandments of the law of God: the writer of the law certainly knew not that the Pentateuch existed. Had Moses written such a work, would he have failed to recommend to the Levites to keep the precious records of mankind, the sublime account of the creation? Did not the whole of the faith of the Jews depend on their being acquainted with the history of their forefathers, who were under the immediate protection of God? The ten commandments every person knows from the light of nature; no nation has ever mistaken them; but the origin of mankind is a subject of great darkness, and which the Jews ought to have preserved most carefully. Certain, however, it is, that excepting a few rites, the Jews lost not only their books, but even the recollection of their feasts, during their captivity. The other books referred to in the Bible prove, that those left are mere collections of borrowed stories, and pretended abridgements of books of greater authority, which are unfortunately lost, and leave a wide field for scepticism, particularly upon improbable or contradictory accounts. As to the belief that the books of the Old Testament are inspired, it is a tale, which, after what we have stated, even a child would laugh at. You next seriously endeavour to corroborate the ridiculous miracle of the sun and moon standing still. You are as unsuccessful in historical as in scientifical arguments. The story in question is so stupid, that the bare mention of it marks a man's credulity, so as to render him the object of compassion. That an ignorant fanatic should attempt to defend such absurdities, would be a matter of no surprise; but to witness a Regius Professor of Divinity, a natural philosopher, bring forward facts from profane history to prove the truth of so bare-faced a lie, denotes at least your want of prudence. I cannot persuade myself that you seriously believed what you wrote; I cannot think you capable of falling at once into the most gross astronomical and historical error. I shall state the matter briefly. There was a tradition in all antiquity, and particularly among the Egyptians, relating to that motion of the earth's axis which has been observed by astronomers, and whose complete revolution round the four cardinal points takes up no less than 9,160,000 years. In the course of this revolution, it necessarily happens, that the sun will rise where it sets, that north will be south, and so on. The Egyptian priests pretended that this revolution had taken place in their country without changing the climate, while the Babylonians maintained, in the time of Alexander, that 140,000 years had elapsed since their first astronomical observations. This, no doubt, was the time that must have elapsed since the earth moved north and south. The Egyptian priests, long before Herodotus, had lost their knowledge of astronomy, which accounts for their mistake. It is evident, that the displacement of the earth's axis must be accompanied by the heaviest gravitating matter, and, therefore, what is now land, has been and will, in the course of ages, become sea. Now, my Lord, what has the Egyptian tradition to do with the sun stopped by the robber Joshua? What connection has the stoppage of the sun, or rather the earth's motion, with the sun rising where it sets? Were the thing possible, the sun would nevertheless rise in the east. Besides, does Joshua say the sun changed its course? Had this been the case, (I am ashamed even of the supposition), how could the earth change its axis in an hour, without shattering the whole globe, without inundating vast tracts of country, and tearing others asunder to reestablish the equilibrium of gravity? Study and consider; do not attempt to ridicule the little learning of Thomas Paine, when you fall into such absurdities. Read Chinese history, and you will find that their careful astronomers did not perceive the long day and night. It was probably the sun of Judea only that altered its course; they did not seem to be enlightened by the same luminary. Those who believed that heaven was made of crystal, could find no difficulty in crediting this silly story. I have insisted so much upon this, because you ought to know the common principles of astronomy, and somewhat of history. Here again you appeal to the book of Jasher: it deserves no more consideration. To deem an appeal to a lost book evidence of a prodigy, because the author affirms it, is a degree of credulity which may gain the kingdom of heaven; but, in the republic of letters, such believer will pass for a very contemptible reasoner. These are the miracles, and the histories, better attested than the History of the Twelve Knights Of Charles the Great, and such other foolish tales. Surely, none can believe that 19,000 men fought against the Midianites, and murdered a prodigious number, without having lost a man, and disbelieve the famous battles of the knights, in many of which six men fought several thousands; the conversation of the devil with Cromwell, or the miraculous appearance of God to almost all the knights and warriors among the Catholics. The sacred phial of Rheims, and the chapel of Loretto, were both conveyed in a manner you know well, and which few men in the two countries dare controvert. They too appeal to their books of Jasher. The tale of making the sun stand still has not even the merit of novelty; this luminary had long before stopt his career, out of respect to Bacchus. Neither is the shower of hail-stones new, for Jupiter of old sent a shower of hail upon the rebellious sons of Neptune. As to Joshua having written the book that goes under his name, we have, besides what has been stated, the strongest evidence against the genuineness of this performance. The death of Joshua is recorded in chap. xxiv. and it is related exactly in the same style as what precedes it. The writer even mentions several events posterior to the death of the son of Nun. You have passed over the arguments of Thomas Paine drawn from this passage, "The Jebusites dwelt with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day." It was natural for you to overlook a passage, which demonstrates that the book of Joshua was not written until after David, when, and not before, the conquest of the Jebusites took place. It is beyond a doubt, that they never dwelt with the Jews in the time of Joshua, since, in the first part of the above quoted passage, he says, "As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out." How then did the Jews inhabit Jerusalem in the days of Joshua? I refer the reader to the Age of Reason, and to an answer to it by Mr. David Wilson, for further information, on this head. In the latter, he will be amazed at the weak subterfuges used by the author to evade the strength of the objection by Mr. Paine. But this is not the only event related in Joshua, which did not take place till some time after his death. Almost the whole of chap. xvii. contains facts of this nature. Where the portion of Manasseh is described, it is said, in ver. 12, "Yet the children of Manasseh could not drive out the inhabitants of those cities, but the inhabitants would dwell in that land." It is added, "And it came to pass, when the children of Israel waxed strong, that they put the Canaanites to tribute; but did not utterly drive them out." Now this certainly did not take place during the life of Joshua, for in the very same chapter, he promises those of the tribe of Manasseh success against the Canaanites. In the preceding chapter, v. 10, there is a passage of the same kind, "And they (the Ephraimites) drove not out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer; but the Canaanites dwelt among the Ephraimites unto this day, and some under tribute." This needs no comment: let any person ask himself when this came to pass, and they will at once find out the credit due to books containing such shameful anachronisms and falsehoods. In chapter first of Judges, purporting to contain the history of the Jews after Joshua, the reader will find a faithful copy of the passages quoted, not excepting the taking of Jerusalem. Let himc ompare ver. 8, 27, 28, 29, and following, with the detail of distribution of lots to the tribes, in chap. xvi. and xvii. of Joshua the same events are told in the very words, and apply to two different periods. This is a strong instance of the disorder that pervades the whole of these books, and how undeserving of credit, even in the most probable events, is what you call sacred writ. We are constantly reading over accounts of the same events, sometimes said to be written by dead men, and never marking time; for _it came to pass_, which is the Bible phrase, does not fix the period when the event took place. These books bear all the marks of being the productions of some persons at a very late period, and to have suffered great interpolations. Joshua is, in the face of it, a continuation of Deuteronomy, Judges of Joshua, and so on through the remainder. You pass on to Judges. It requires neither great knowledge nor ingenuity to discover, that this book is an unconnected farrago put together by some unknown person. You do not attempt to say any thing in its favour. Sad falling off from the paths of faith! Formerly it would have been a heresy to assert that Judges was a book of no authority: now, even a Bishop has nothing to say in its defence. You then proceed to Ruth, and endeavour to blot out the apparent infamy of her conduct, with what success, I leave the reader to judge, after he has perused her history. Next follow your subtle distinctions between the inspired and non-inspired part of the Bible, which may be very intelligible to an inspired Bishop, but cannot fail to appear a mere dream to a man in his senses. Notwithstanding Austin and your other brethren, this distinction rests upon nothing but fancy. Your request is very moderate. "Receive the Bible," you say, "as composed by upright and well-informed, though in some points, fallible men, (for I exclude all fallibility _when they profess to deliver_ the word of God), and you must receive it as a book revealed to you in many parts by the express will of God, and, in other parts, relating to you the ordinary history of the times." Bravo! A Catholic is as reasonable in his demands. He only asks a little credulity to believe the inspired when _they profess to be so_. It is truly a childish request, begging the question at every word. To believe the Bible to be inspired is the grand point. The reasoning you employ is in perfect consonance with the absurdity of your wishes. You disbelieve a history if you find it inconsistent, but revere it, and swear by the author, if he wrote by inspiration. Swedenburgh could not wish more faith in his adherents. You say _receive it_, as the inquisitors said _imprimatur_; but philosophers weigh the ground of their belief; they detect the Bible writers, prophets, and inspired men, in palpable contradictions in history; and you will obstinately insist on our believing the most improbable of all their stories, because their absurdity persuades the faithful that they were revealed by their God in dreams.----You have acknowledged yourself, in a subsequent letter, that the history and mystery of the Bible are so interwoven, that if one falls the other cannot be maintained. Why did God mingle his important and sublime precepts with such ridiculous trash, so as to induce mankind to disbelieve them both? Suppose I should meet a peasant coming from a fair, pretending he had seen the king with his guards, and if I should find this to be untrue, would I not deserve to be laughed at, if I credited that he had wrestled with a spirit, or that he was carried up to heaven? This, however, is the case with the Bible. Here we are told that the sun stood Still to protract the bloodshed of that villain Joshua, while, in another place, we read that a city was taken 370 years before that event. Your vaunted prophets were soothsayers, psalmists, and orators, who were generally employed in writing the public records. It is a word applied in the Bible to holy men. These prophets, like the augurs of the heathen, were often detected in falsehoods, and, in the time of Samuel, it would appear, by the Bible itself, that to raise ghosts was a trade as common as that of tailors in our days. You now come to Samuel. You are candid enough to acknowledge with Hartley, that he could not have been the author of the second book, nor of most of the first that go under his name, yet this has been the opinion of the church; and I know of no direct proofs that he wrote the remainder: by what logic do you or Hartley conclude, that Samuel wrote any part of the books ascribed to him? An author is proved not to have written most part of a work ascribed to him, who then would, without direct proofs, proclaim him the writer of some small passage, or any particular part of the work? Who but a clergyman would build a system upon a mutilated, spurious, and insignificant collection of absurdities and wonders? It is, I allow, probable that Samuel wrote something: your quotations prove no more; but what this was, we are, I presume, equally unacquainted with. That the scribes also composed some records of the lives of their kings, I will not deny. The question is, what degree of credit does the mutilated, contradictory, and fabulous collection, said to be made out of these records, deserve? In the time of Charles the Great, some persons probably recorded his actions. Is this a reason for any man to believe the fabulous legends we have of him, written in the dark centuries? The legends of the Egyptian and Greek gods, and their collection of oracles, were not only credited by whole nations, but proclaimed true by councils much wiser than the synagogue. The records of the saints were undoubtedly made few years after their death, in ages far more enlightened, after the invention of the press, written by the then most learned men of society, (the monks), who certainly were not inferior to the Jewish scribes, yet these legends contain often nothing but collections of absurdities and miracles. Read the _Flores Sanctorum_ of the Romish church, and you there will find miracles in every page, and the lives of saints a tissue of prodigies. I need not add, that very few learned men among the Papists give credit to the absurdities contained in these books. It is even the opinion of the best informed men, that the monks have written lives of saints who never existed. You acknowledge the wickedness of the kings of Israel and Judah; but you take care to observe, that this was not owing to their religion. Impertinent assertion! Was not Saul dethroned because he was humane enough not to cut Agag in pieces? Did not the Lord Jehovah love the man after his own heart, who put the miserable inhabitants of Rabah under saws, axes, and arrows of iron; who made them pass through the brick-kiln? Did not this Jehovah approve the base murder of Adonias? Was it the same Jehovah who said to Jonah, that he was not so unjust as to sacrifice the whole city of Nineveh for their sins, because there were thousands in it who did not know between good and evil; and who yet, the Jews tell us, commanded the extermination of whole nations, without even sparing the little children? Did not the plagues which he sent to Pharaoh and David fall upon thousands of innocent individuals? At least, do not the Jewish books affirm it? Such horrors could only be respected by the Jews; such absurd miracles could only be credited by the most ignorant of men. You pretend, that the partiality of God to the Jews proceeded from their being the only nation that believed in the unity of God, and who have preserved their belief on this head unshaken till the present day. Are you in earnest, can you assert this before men of common information? Do you take Englishmen for idiots to be deceived by your assertions? Are you ignorant of the adoration of the Ethiopians? Do you forget that the wise men among the heathens said, _Colitur forma pro Jove?_ Did you never peruse any account, of the Chinese, or of the Hindoos? Do they not admit one supreme agent, an all-wise, intelligent, &c. being, and whose inferior agents they represent by symbols? The Hindoos have even all the metaphysical refinement of our divines; and their definition of God is fully as perspicuous as that given in our Catechism. I have avoided to give long extracts in this pamphlet; but, that the authority of an English Bishop may not be a presumption to many that I am making false assertions, I shall transcribe a passage from a commentary upon the Reig Beid, a book unquestionably of the remotest antiquity. "Glory be to Goneish! that which is exempt from all desires of the senses, the same is the mighty Lord. He is simple, and than him there is nothing greater. Brehm, (the spirit of God), is absorbed in self-contemplation; the same is the mighty Lord who is present in every part of space. Brehm is one, and to him there is no second; such is truly Brehm. His omniscience is self-inspired, and its comprehension includes all possible species," &c. It is true, we are not here told that God is a jealous God, that he visiteth the iniquities of the father even unto the fourth generation. I could adduce fifty passages from the Greeks and others to prove my position, but it is needless. The point is still to know whether these notions make men better, whether they are founded on truth, and, indeed, whether all gods are not the work of the fancy of man, nature allegorised. _Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor_, says the philosopher; can you disprove it? I suspect not, and that all the subtle reasoning of divines destroy themselves. The world is the ultimate of human reason. We adore the idols either of our hands or of the brain, and mistake them for existences. The region of chimeras exists beyond the universe; our prattling upon it is but a play of words. Jehovah himself, when he said, I am that I am, called himself pretty plainly Pan, or the great whole. But if the unity of God be the only gracious belief in the eyes of the Creator, I do not see that Christians are entitled to his favour, because they make him three. What was the belief of the Jews? Had they any very refined ideas of their God? They thought him corporeal, incessantly speaking and moving among men, jealous, revengeful, powerful, whose angels ate with Abraham, who himself strove to kill Moses in a public house; they imagined him repenting of his deeds; and, in all respects, a poor contemptible being, the offspring of Jewish fancy. He is throughout the Bible an Asiatic Sultan, who, like the merciful God of Mahomet, puts to the sword, and smites with plagues thousands, as a tribute to his infinite mercy. I refer the reader to the collection of extracts from the Bible, in a subsequent letter, for proofs of my assertions. The Jews admitted, besides other gods, such as Chemosh, several beings subordinate to God, but superior to man, as the serpent which tempted the mother of mankind. They had exterminating angels and cherubims, the Elohim or Genii that made the world, &c. But why dwell upon such topics, when it is evident that all the Jewish mythology is of Chaldean origin, and our theology a copy of that of Plato? You proceed in your attempt to reconcile the justice of God with his goodness, and, in the height of your reverie, you imagine that the sufferings of the Jews were parts of a grand scheme for the general good of mankind. What, and when are we to see the good effects of their barbarities? We may see reason counteracting the evil of superstition, rendering men humane; but I apprehend, that, if your reasoning was generally adopted, every highwayman would be much inclined to think himself sent by Providence for good and wise purposes, and if chance should bring about a happy event at the end of his career, which he thought the consequence of his deeds, he would triumph in his crimes, and, like Moor in the Robbers, exclaim, "If for ten I have destroyed, you make but one man blest, my soul may yet be saved!" This has been the language of persecutors. They destroy mankind to make them happy in the next world--tortures, burning, and beheading, are but purifications. The worst is, that the famous divine scheme of general good, has never been one jot more advanced than when the Jews were enduring the greatest calamities, and committing atrocities. I count not the effects of reason, for faith is alone the godly faculty; reason destroys it. I close my observations upon this subject with repeating the old question of Epicurus, which your brethren have as yet left unanswered; either God can prevent evil and does not choose it, or he chooses it and wants power to avert calamities from his creatures. In the first instance, he is a malevolent despot, a character we ought to abhor; in the second, we see him an impotent and secondary being, which raises our contempt. Reconcile this with his infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, and show us that he is not formed after the image of man, or else let unbelievers hold their opinions in peace. LETTER V. Your fifth letter begins with stating the importance of the concession of Thomas Paine, that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are genuine. You triumph, and think it a silent acknowledgment of the reality of the prophecies mentioned in those books. Stop, my Lord, your _alma-mater_ surely has not taught you to draw such conclusions. In a genuine book there may be contained incredible events, as in Tacitus, Suetonius, and almost all existent histories. It is your duty to prove that the prophecies there related are not among those popular stories which are apt to gain general credit, whether they are or are not forgeries written after the events. Before we know when Jeremiah wrote, and what is the meaning of the writings under his name, no man is warranted to triumph at the testimony of the Jews after the captivity; since it is a point, in which all parties agree; that their canon and books were compiled at that period, and nobody ever questioned the credulity of the Jews. You proceed to state your notions of the history of the Old Testament; it is all a matter of opinion; and, as you do not support it by any proofs, we must still continue to regard the contradictions and impostures contained in the Old Testament as proofs of its having been the work of ignorant fanatics. I pass over your effusions: that metaphysical disquisitions teach us the limits of our faculties, I strenuously maintain; and if you mean nothing else, we are agreed. That our notions of time and place are not the bugbears which the scholastics would persuade us, is to me unquestionable; that both in science and religion we affix no ideas to many words, I grant; that certainty in philosophical disquisitions is not easily found, I also allow; but, that a man tired with the arduous task of reasoning, of discerning between truth and falsehood, should seek in polemics or superstition a consolation for his ignorance, I consider as a proof of the impaired state of his faculties; he is like the thirsty traveller, who, burnt by the scorching sun, seeks to relieve his distress by drinking of the first water he meets, without regarding its purity. Your acknowledgment that it is possible even for a Bishop to err in matters of religion, gives me real pleasure. To consider our creed as a matter that admits of doubt, is a great step in the road of truth. You say, "May God forgive him that is in an error." Your wish is humane; but, if God be the Creator of mankind, he cannot be offended at the conclusions we may draw, after having employed the faculties he has given us. I wish too that mankind should forgive them that are in an error; but, I hope, they will recollect the long sway of superstition, and its danger to mankind; may they decide in favour of that system which is conformable to reason, and has the greatest tendency to improve society! You next proceed to show the propriety of the angel ordering Moses to pull off his shoes, which you say is a mark of reverence to God. Is it then by such ridiculous customs that you reconcile your omnipotent and all-wise God? Too long have men substituted rites for morality. O superstition! that makes the Asiatics eat the excrements of the lama, the Papists devour their God; that persuades all Christians that water washeth away sin; and, that if a child happens to die before his face is sprinkled, he must inevitably suffer everlasting torments: led by this, men despise society, and tremble at ceremonies invented by their priests. I shall not go at great length into the particular contradictions which are found in the enumeration of the families that returned from Babylon. There certainly are great mistakes in the sums; and where precision was to be expected more than in any thing preserved in the record of the people of God, we find them committing the most gross errors, even when they attempt to be peculiarly exact. It is curious, that the individual sums are altogether different in the different accounts, and, therefore, that there must have been a much greater number of errors than you would persuade your readers. You come to the book of Job; and confine your remarks to disprove the objection of Mr. Paine, drawn from the name Satan, which, he says, is there for the first and only time mentioned in the Bible. Your answer, that it is repeatedly to be found elsewhere in the Old Testament, is just but it certainly does not prove Job to be a Jewish book. We know that _Sathan_, as well as the names of all the angels, are Chaldean; and as I have already shown, that the Scriptures are compilations written after the captivity, it is not wonderful that this name, together with many others, should be found in the Hebrew Bible. As you say nothing in favour of the book of Job, I shall only observe, that it is not only the opinion of Abenezra, but even of Jerome, the author of the Vulgate, that it is not a Hebrew book, the idiom being in many instances altogether different from the style of that language, and very frequently bearing marks of its Arabic and Syriac origin, as the reader may see in his preface to Job in the Vulgate edition of the Bible. The resemblance between Job's Satan and Momus is so striking, that we cannot help recognising the author to have been a Gentile; and thus are the Jews deprived of a book, which, at least, contains no murders, and shows more knowledge than that nation ever possessed. Your remark as to the generality of the belief of a benevolent and a malevolent being, certainly does not prove that the Gentiles borrowed this notion from the Jews; you ought to have known history better, and that the wars of the Gods and angels formed part of the creed of many nations, not only before a book of the Bible existed, but even before the birth of Moses. Dionysius and Osiris had already fought against the evil genii: the famous Vishnu has been from the highest antiquity the enemy of Chiven. That the numerous mythological systems which have ever existed, sprang from the report of the fathers of the Jewish nation, may appear probable to a clergyman; it is but a pious whim; to me it is a proof, that all religious systems have sprung from the fancy of men. The philosophers among the heathens understood by the evil and bad genii nothing more than the influence of the good or bad seasons, which, personified by ignorant or cunning priests, have by the vulgar been deemed real personages. Besides, where do you find in the Pentateuch any accounts of the Devil? I only see the serpent, an emblem I have already said, copied from the Egyptians, but by the Jews considered a real snake, which talked and walked upright. It was but a poor imitation of the Ahrimanes of Zoroaster. Concerning the utility of prayers, and the tendency of those of the Jews, I shall say nothing. It is a certain fact, that Solomon, the wisest of men, and who made excellent prayers, killed his brother; while many of those heathen tribes, abhorred by the Jews, had no other crime than to adore images; and, if superstition among them sometimes produced the abominable practice of human sacrifices, they never carried their piety so far as to exterminate whole nations. Besides, the Jews had not even a pretence to despise their neighbours for offering human sacrifices. The case of Jephtha shows plainly that this barbarity was common among God's people. I am utterly surprised at your misplaced exclamations upon the morality of the heathens. Far be it from me to stand forward as the patron of heathenish superstition; it is the mother of ours, and I abhor the common stock; but, my Lord, you ought not to confound the rites of the Greeks with their morals. The Athenians possessed virtues which we in vain look for among the despicable Jews. They possessed knowledge, and their philosophers had more sense than to believe the tales of the priests. Epicurus taught peaceably, and was revered by all, while the vulgar of his country firmly believed their mythology. Such an instance never happened among the Jews. Jehovah would quickly have sent a plague among Epicurus and his followers, or ordered his priests "to kill every one his neighbour and his friend, and hang them up before the sun." Your holy brethren would think nothing of a burning match on the occasion; if it were in your power, atheists would not exist long. But you talk so confidently of the adoration of images among the Gentiles, that we would imagine the Jews were all philosophers. Do you forget their reverence to the holy of holies, which none could approach; the ark of the covenant, and the calves? Or has the story of the five golden mice, for looking at which fifty thousand and three score and ten Israelites were smote by the Lord, escaped you? Your rhapsody upon the sublimity of Bible composition, and its superiority to all profane writers, is a proof of the strength of early imbibed prejudice. I lament to see a man of your learning think so much like an old woman. The proverbs, to be sure, are wonderful compositions, and prove the great gift of wisdom bestowed by God upon Solomon! What indeed can be more sublime than the following, which I beg leave to add to the specimens given by your Lordship! "The horse leech hath two daughters, crying, Give, give. There are three things that are never satisfied, yea four things say not it is enough; the grave, and the barren womb, the earth that is not filled with water, and the fire that saith not it is enough."--"There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea four which I know not; the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon the rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid."--"There be three things which go well, a greyhound, an he-goat also, and a king."--"It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honour of kings is to search out a matter."--"When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee, and put a knife to thy throat if thou be a man given to appetite."--"Buy the truth, and sell it not."--"A whore is a deep ditch, and a strange woman is a narrow pit."--Excellent Solomon! Hear also this wise king in Song of Songs. "How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! The joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman; thy-navel is like a round goblet which wanteth not liquor; thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies; thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins; thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fish pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim; thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon, which looketh towards Damascus." Whether this alludes to one of Solomon's concubines, or our mother, the church of Jesus Christ, the expressions are equally applicable, beautiful, and simple; they are worthy of a man "wiser than Ethan the Ezrehite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mehol," who, I dare say, were wise men. Upon the whole, I agree with you, that Solomon, the illustrious offspring of the man after God's own heart and the virtuous Bathsheba, was not "a witty jester." As to what you call his "sins and debaucheries," these holy books were certainly not written with a view to make us avoid them. Solomon is set before us as a pattern of wisdom and goodness; and the number of his wives and concubines is exultingly recorded as a proof of his greatness, as much as his treasures, which exceed all conception, and the number of his horses, which exceed all belief. Your pious belief in the inspired prophecies of Isaiah, is natural to a superstitious and credulous mind. The philosopher who doubts before he gazes, sees in what you call prophecies nothing else but scraps of history or legend. He receives with diffidence all predictions. He is aware of the great ease with which forgeries may be passed among the vulgar for prophecies. When pretended predictions are made, they are altogether overlooked; even the ignorant think not of them till they are said to be accomplished; the learned despise them in both instances; and it is not till after their authenticity has gained a sort of general belief, that the philosopher thinks of enquiring when and how they were made. At this period he can find no evidence of their history, but from the credulous who have been imposed upon by them. Besides, no prophecy is ever direct, it always has an equivocal meaning, and is explained to suit the events which have happened. Religious enthusiasts write in such a mystic language upon the sins of mankind, and the judgements that are to come upon them, and in so general and ambiguous terms, that it is easy for a subtle interpreter, or a visionary fanatic, to explain them according to his own system. Have not the bears of the Apocalypse been made to signify by turns, the Pope and the Devil? Has not the New Jerusalem been sometimes taken for a real flying town, seen in the air by the first fathers of the church, as Tertullean informs us? Do not other divines tell us that it means the kingdom of heaven? Have not scripture divines, even in the first ages of the church, pretended that the verses of Virgil, _Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Sa-tumia regna, jam nova progenies ccelo demittitur alto;--natte mets vires, mea magna potentia solus, and talia perstabat memorans, fixusque manebat_, were clear prophecies of the Virgin Mary, and Jesus Christ? It might be worth enquiring at this time, whether the Roman Bard was inspired by the Holy Ghost? Lastly, I may ask, does your Lordship believe in the many prophecies that have of late appeared of the French revolution? But we have more reasons to declare the pretended clear prophecies of the Bible to be fables. In many instances they are so accurate, and so unlike these passages which we know to have been written previous to the events to which they are applied, or those which are not yet fulfilled, that no philosopher can pronounce them to have been written historically. Thus, we find Jacob announce to his twelve sons, the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel, the fate of their posterity; the situation of the district to be occupied by the Israelites in the land of Canaan, two hundred years before Joshua parcelled out this land in lots to the Israelites; the kind of life the different tribes would lead; the small number of the posterity of Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, as well as the power of Judah; all which are related as exactly as if the patriarch had seen the throne of David and Solomon with his own eyes. Some of the supposed predictions of Isaiah and Daniel, are even more minutely correct. You have treated the question of the genuineness and date of works very lightly; you think it is of no great consequence to ascertain the genuineness of the different books of the Bible. Let us for a moment suppose, that by some accident, the age of Virgil had been forgotten, or the sixth book of his Æneid been ascribed to a writer of the age of Æneas; would not the Romans be entitled to regard, as a most wonderful prophecy, the lively representation given by Anchises of the future heroes of the republic, the two Cæsars, and the young Marcellus? To resume our subject: I remind you of the passage already quoted from Bellarminus, that it was the opinion of the fathers of the church, that the Prophets, among other books, had been collected and arranged by Esdras. I have also stated the selection of genuine works by the synagogue, during the reign of the Maccabees, when the Talmud says that the forgeries of Daniel, Esdras, &c. were prodigious. The destruction by Antiochus Epiphanus of the already broken Jewish books, written by Esdras, may be collected from what is said in Maccabees, chap. i. ver. 56 and 57. "And when they had rent in pieces the books of the law which they found, they burnt them with fire, and whosoever was found with any of the books of the Testament, or if any consented to the law, the king's commandment was, that they should put him to death." It is without reason that you triumph at the application which Thomas Paine makes of the prophecy of Isaiah, in chapters xliv. and xlv. No man that reads the passage can hesitate for a moment to declare it a narrative of the deliverance of the Jews by Cyrus, after the seventy years captivity. Cyrus is mentioned by name, as well as his command to rebuild Jerusalem, and his victories over the nations, above one hundred years before the event. Will you then, without any proofs of Isaiah having written this book, insist upon calling it a prophecy? And have not sceptics been justified in their disbelief of the genuineness of such books? Mr. Paine, however, has overlooked a more remarkable prophecy in this book, which has been tortured into an application to Christ. This is contained in chapter lxiii. ver. 1. "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength? I that speak in. righteousness, mighty to save." And again, in chap. ii. (talking of the supposed Christ) Isaiah says, "And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into plough-shares."--"And the idols he shall totally abolish." Can this possibly allude to Christ? Did he come from Edom in mighty power, in rich garments? Was his march so terrible? Was he the man who trampled all in his fury; who with his own arm brought salvation to himself, and was upheld by his fury; as also mentioned in chap. lxiii.? Do not these pretended prophecies also apply to Judas Maccabeus, who delivered the Jews from the tyranny of Antiochus Epi-phanus? And is it not also a proof of the mutilated state of the works of the prophets to see details about Cyrus intermingled with others applying to Judas Maccabeus? I say nothing of Daniel, for his _prophecy_ I shall consider particularly afterwards, and show its true meaning; at present, it may be sufficient to say, that the similarity between the book of Ezra and Daniel proclaim them to be from the same hand; but both have evident marks of having been considerably mutilated. When philosophers cannot ascertain the age of pretended predictions, they consider their clearness as a demonstration of their being histories. Who tells you that the books which the synagogue, like the Nicene council, chose, were not either altogether written, or considerably interpolated, to adopt them to the times? The great question is always, what authority had the synagogue to decide, and whether their decision ought to influence men of sense, any more than the determination of the Popish councils. As a proof of the absurdity of the application of prophecies, I shall here quote one, which is apparently clearer than any in the whole Bible, and is adduced by the most famous divines as an unquestionable prediction of Christ. It is in Micah, chap. v. ver. I. "Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us; they shall smite the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek. But thou Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me, that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." Here even the birth-place of Christ is mentioned, the insults offered to him, his existence from everlasting, and his coming to save Israel. And Matthew, chap. ii. ver. 6, and John, chap. vii. ver. 43, both expressly refer to that passage as a prophecy. Hear now what follows in ver. 5, of the same chapter of Micah: "And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrians shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men." Can this apply to Jesus Christ? Were the Syrians in the land when he came? Were not the Romans masters of Judea? Your rules of belief are admirable: a little faith, wherever you meet contradictions, absurdities, or wonders, is an invaluable prescription, common to the Bramin, the Musselman, and the Christian. Do but believe that Mahomet is a prophet, that he went up to heaven and saw the eternal Father, and you will go through the other articles of the Mahometan faith without difficulty. Do but admit the gospel of Barnabas where Mahomet is predicted, and we have no reason to say that it is less authentic than our gospel, and the work is done; but, I may say with you, "Proof, proof is what I require, and not assertion." We will not relinquish our reason in obedience to the despotic mandates of the credulous. You allow that the miracles of the Jews fall to the ground, if the history of that nation is proved false. I beg you to observe, that if it is true, it does not follow that the miracles are. If you can believe that the history of the Jews is well authenticated, and without numerous contradictions, and if you can exculpate the writers from bad motives, and a desire to deceive, and if you can rely upon their wisdom, you then will really prove yourself a Christian, a man of uncommon faith. The history of the Jews, every where confused, containing prodigies, deserves no more credit than their antedeluvian tale. Even Chinese history, supported by astronomical observations, is beyond a certain period rejected by all men, from the fables it contains. If you are disposed to believe, I advise you to read the fabulous history of China and of Hindostan, in the holy books of the respective nations, which are adopted by whole nations, and are, at least, more beautiful than the Jews. I have purposely omitted to speak of Ecclesiastes. I find here several Epicurean notions, a disbelief of a future life, the propriety of enjoying themselves in this life, and other sensible remarks; which prove that the writer enjoyed more common sense than most of his countrymen. LETTER VI. You begin your sixth letter by attempting to disprove the arguments of Thomas Paine upon Jeremiah. You acknowledge the disorder that prevails in the writings of this prophet; and you modestly assure us, that you do not know the cause; no more do I: and whatever incidents might have occasioned it, I am certain that, as it stands, it deserves no degree of credit. In a former part of your pamphlet you grant, that the history of the Jews is so connected with the prophetical part, that if the former was done away the latter could not stand; and now you inform us, "that prophecy differs from history, in not being subject to an accurate observance of time and order." This you think a matter of no importance, but, in my opinion, it is very material to know if a prophecy is written after the events it alludes to. I shall not follow far, either your Lordship or Mr. Paine, in proving several of the prophecies of the Bible false; but if they are not prophecies, why should we trouble ourselves with disproving them. If they are scraps of history, we know that of the Jews to be so contradictory, imperfect, so completely without order, that one historical extract, of prophecy, will often contradict another; but much more generally these prophecies are strict enough, being copied from history, and embellished with a little of the figurative style of prophecy. As to Jeremiah, the works that go under his name, as well as those of Isaiah, appear on the face of them to be a collection of extracts from different historians. While we know so little of the history and genuineness of these writings, we cannot possibly draw any conclusion concerning them, except that they are in the utmost disorder, and that when writers intermingle history with prophecy, we are at a loss to know which is which. I cannot forbear to mention the ludicrous story of Elisha, the children, the bears that devoured the children of men, as you are pleased to call them. Whether Elisha did this as a prophet, I cannot but declare my abhorrence at your approbation of such abominable cruelty, to murder individuals because they bestowed the appellation of Baldhead on another. According to the laudable custom of the church, you appeal to a miracle, and conclude, that if God wrought a miracle it must have been just. I suppose this comparatively as when he destroys whole cities for the sins of a few; but this is the very ground on which every crusader supported his massacres; and every man may imitate the conduct of Ahod, the treacherous murderer, patronised by Jehovah, without incurring the blame of a Bishop. Whether the ridiculous tale which you take for a sign of God, most probably of his cruelty, converted any person, is not known; but as the event most undoubtedly never happened, you may suppose what you please. To murder them is not the way to ingratiate ourselves with our fellow-citizens. If any person set a few bull-dogs on some children, and pretended to do so by authority from heaven, he would most undoubtedly be taken up by our officers of justice. In what respect do these brutal prophets differ from Mahomet, who decided all disputes by the sword? Their business was to exterminate and murder by the direct commands of God. The writings of Ezekiel are considerably truncated. The very beginning of his prophecies shows it. The conjunction and texture of the whole work refers to something that ought to have preceded it. He begins saying, "That in the 30th year the heavens opened, and he saw visions of God." And in ver. 5, he adds, "That the Lord had inspired him often in Chaldea," which refers to some prophecies written in that period. Besides, Josephus's work, book 10, chap. ix. of the Jewish antiquities, says, "That Ezekiel had prophecied that Zedekiah should never see Babylon." This is no where found in Ezekiel, but, on the contrary, in chap. xi. and xii. he says, "That the king would be carried a prisoner to Babylon." As to Daniel, I have already noticed the great similarity between the first book of Esdras and his, and the probability that they came from the same author. The seven first chapters, except the first, were written in Chaldean, and are by the most learned thought to be taken from Chaldean chronologists. It is also thought by men of great learning, that the books of Esdras, Daniel, and Esther, were altered a long time after Judas Maccabeus, because it appears evident that Esdras could not have written the whole of them, since Nehemiah carries the genealogy of Jesuhga, the sovereign Pontiff till Jaddua, the sixteenth in number, who after the defeat of Darius went to meet Alexander. And Nehemiah, ver. 22, "The Levites, in the days of Eliashib, Joiadah, and Johanan, and Jaddua, were recorded chief of the fathers; also the priests, to the reign of Darius the Persian." We have no reason to believe that Esdras or Nehemiah could survive fourteen kings of Persia, Cyrus having been the first who gave the Jews permission to rebuild the temple, from whom to Darius there are 230 years. I now come to the famous prophecy of the seventy weeks of Daniel, which you exultingly mention as the most wonderful, and, at the same time, the most incontrovertible prediction in existence, one which never can fail to confound the most perverse unbeliever. If I prove, that so far from being the surprising prophecy you pretend, it has altogether a different meaning, and can nowise apply to the coming of Christ, I shall think myself fully excused, if I do not go through every individual prediction in the Bible. The passage alluded to is in Daniel, chap. ix. ver. 24, to 27, as follows: "Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision, and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy. Know, therefore, and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem, unto the Messiah, the prince, there shall be seven weeks; and threescore and two weeks the streets shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself; and the people of the prince that shall come, shall destroy the city, and the sanctuary, and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. And he shall confirm the covenant with many, for one week; and, in the midst of the week, he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease; and for the overspreading of abominations, he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate." This passage is generally applied to the coming of Christ. The seventy weeks are supposed to mean weeks of years, or seven years each. Now it is evident, that it cannot apply to Jesus Christ; for if from going forth of the commandment in the time of Artaxerxes Longimanus, until the coming of the Messiah, there were to be seven weeks or forty-nine years, how does this agree with what follows? "After threescore and two weeks (or three hundred and seventy-four years) shall Messiah be cut off." And again, "He shall confirm the covenant with many for a week." Did then Jesus Christ live four hundred and twenty-three years, or are there two Messiahs predicted? Dr. Frideaux acknowledges that some parts of this prophecy are so injudiciously printed in the English translation of the Bible, that they are quite unintelligible; his alteration is in the punctuation, and according to it we read, that, _from the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem, to the Messiah, the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks_; and in verse 27, he puts the half of the week, instead of the midst. The explanation of the prophecy as thus altered, he gives as follows. From the commandment given to Ezra by Ar-taxerxes Longimanus, to the accomplishment of it by Nebemiah forty-nine years, or the first seven weeks; from this accomplishment to the time of Christ's messenger John the Baptist sixty-two weeks, or four hundred and thirty-four years; from thence to the beginning of Christ's public ministry, half a week, or three years and a half; and from thence to the death of Christ, half a week, or three years and a half; in which half week he preached and confirmed the gospel with many; in all, from the going forth of the commandment, till the death of Christ, seventy weeks, or four hundred and ninety years. In the first place, we confidently assert that Dr. Prideaux followed his fancy, not the original Hebrew, when he altered the punctuation. He is, however, justified in the alteration of half of a week; but, granting all, let us see how it applies. Did the Messiah come after seven weeks from the commandment of Ar-taxerxes Longimanus? The explanation only says, that Nehemiah finished the work which Ezra began. What has this to do with the Messiah coming at the end of the first seven weeks? The prophet says, that after threescore and two weeks, the street and the wall shall be built. Again, and previously, that after the commandment for the city to be built, the Messiah shall come in seven weeks. The learned divine, on the contrary, makes Daniel say, that John the Baptist began to preach the kingdom of the Messiah sixty-nine weeks after the commandment, and in the first seven weeks he talks of nothing but building the temple. Again, how does the oblation cease in half a week? In fact, the same objection occurs here, as to the passage as it is written in our Bibles. Daniel speaks quite clear, when he says, that "from the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem, unto the Messiah, the Prince, shall be seven weeks." If we find, in whatever explanation of the prophecy, that Christ did not come forty-nine years after this commandment, and that he did not live four hundred and thirty-four years afterwards, the whole must be an untruth. And, if the first period of seven weeks is united with that of threescore and two, that is, if the period of rebuilding the city, and of the coming of the Messiah be the same, then let divines inform us whether this really came to pass, and reconcile it with what follows, in ver. 26, that the city is to be destroyed at the same time. Did Christ confirm any covenant with many for seven years? Let us attempt to unriddle this enigma. The passage evidently talks of two Messiahs, or makes one live upwards of four hundred years; and is altogether unintelligible as it stands. For the better understanding of it, I shall quote some previous part of the same chapter, ver. 1. "In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, which was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans. 2. In the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood by books, the number of the years whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem. 3. And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayers and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes. 4. And I prayed unto the Lord my God, and made my confession, and said." After this follows his prayer, until the 20th verse; and, in the 21st the angel began to unfold a prophecy to Daniel, which begins in verse 24, and he promises to explain the mystery that had so much grieved Daniel, that is, the prophecy of Jeremiah; then follows the passage I have quoted: the alterations I conceive ought be made in the reading of which, I now proceed to mention. In verse 25, the sentence stops after the seven weeks, as it is in the English Bible, because in the original we find here the stop Atnach. In verse 26, instead of, _shall Messiah be cut off?_ we ought to read, _the oblation shall cease_. This is the real meaning of the expression in the original, according to Tertullian, Eusebius, and Theodoretus. Eusebius says, _Unctum (vel Christum) nihil aliud esse quam successionem Pontificum, quos unctos nominare S. Literae consueverunt._ The Hebrew properly signifies _perdetur unctio_. Theodoretus understands by this word, the same as _sacerdotes uncti. Excidetur unctus,_ signifies the same as the _oblation shall be abolished_; for the verb _excido_ does not always signify to kill, but is applied to whatever falls into disuse that was once in practice, or any thing that perishes. It is in this sense used in many parts of Kings and Chronicles. Samuel says, _excidi de altare_. In Jeremiah, chapter xxxvii. ver. 18, the verb is used in the same sense, _non de sacerdotibus Levitis excidet ur homo coram me_, which is given in English, "neither shall the priests, the Levites, _want a man_ (or cease to have a man) before me." In verse 27, "and he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week," means no more than the exemption of calamities, and is tantamount to, _he shall let many remain in peace_, as in Genesis, chap. vi. ver. 18, it is used in this sense. To understand the real meaning of this pretended prophecy, the reader will remember, that Daniel mourned for the 70 weeks of captivity prophesied by Jeremiah; the vision of Daniel took place in the first year of Darius, King of Chaldea, that is, in the year 162 of Nebuchadnezzar; but, in chap. x. of Daniel we learn, that he ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh and wine into his mouth, till three whole weeks were fulfilled. Now, the term weeks is used in the Bible indiscriminately for weeks of years, or of days; here it appears clear it signifies the former, particularly as the whole relates to the 70 years of Jeremiah; and the angel, in chap. x. ver. 14, tells Daniel, in the same figurative style, "Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days, for yet the vision is for many days." If then Daniel wept three weeks of years, or 21 years, from the destruction of the temple, in the year 141 to the time of the vision in 162, (the angel, chap. x. ver. 13, says, that the prince of Persia withstood him 21 days, or years), it is easy to see what Daniel means. Jeremiah had prophesied a captivity of 70 years, of these, three weeks or 21 years were past; therefore Daniel, after entreating God to tell him "how many more years were wanting," received for an answer what follows, "At the beginning of thy supplications, the commandment came forth, and I am come to show thee."--"Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people to seal up the vision and prophecy," that is to complete the prophecy of Jeremiah; and we find,-therefore, that from the issuing the commandment to restore the Jews, and to build Jerusalem, or more properly from the revelation of the angel, (exitu Verbi), promising that Jerusalem should be rebuilt, ver. 23, to the coming of the Messiah, the prince, or Cyrus, who freed the Jews from the captivity, there were to be seven weeks, or 49 years, which, added to the three weeks already past, made the 70 years of Jeremiah. Cyrus is by Isaiah called the Lord's anointed: "Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him for Jacob my servant's sake." Cyrus gave, at that time, liberty to the Jews, as the reader may see in Ezra. It is evident, that the word commandment cannot mean any express order to build Jerusalem, for the angel says, just before he reveals the prophecy, "at the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth we know that Daniel began to address prayers unto heaven, at a time when there was no order to build the temple, on the contrary, the Jews were in captivity. This is the most difficult part of the pretended prophecy, the remainder is plain. There shall be 62 weeks till the rebuilding of the wall. The writer alludes here to the building of the first temple under Zerubbabel and Jeshua, and then to the rebuilding of the wall, and restoration of the temple by Judas Maccabeus, after its profanation by Antiochus Epiphanes. The period of this last event is by the prophecy made to extend to 63 1/2 weeks, or 444 years. Let us see if chronology confirms this supposition. The temple was destroyed in the 141st year of Nabuch, or 4107 of the Julian period; add to this 444 years, or 63 weeks and a half, and we have the year 4551, or the second year of Judas Maccabeus, according to Josephus; who also informs us, that having conquered his enemies, he then built a wall about Sion, which is clearly meant in the words, "the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times," 1 Maccab. chap. iv. ver. 60. At that time also "they builded up the mount Sion with high walls," &c. Troublous the times certainly were; the Jews were fighting against the cruelty of Antiochtis Epiphanes. It is certain then, that after 343 years, or 69 weeks, the wall should be built, and although it was not really completed till about ten years after, it is presumable that the loose historian, or prophet, did not choose to alter the beautiful idea of 70 Weeks. We know how superstitiously the Jews respected not only the number 7, but all its different affections. We are besides informed, in the first book of Maccabees, that after the first depredation of Antiochus, the people rebuilt the city of David, and made walls and forts; this happened some years before the building of the wall by Judas, and brings the prediction nearer to historical accuracy. The next part of the prophecy is, "And after threescore and two weeks shall sacrifices cease;" this means in the course of the week that succeeds the 62. And, no doubt, Antiochus Epiphanes abolished them in the seventh year of his reign, as we read in I Maccab. chap. i. "And the people of the prince that shall come, shall destroy the city and the sanctuary." This Antiochus most certainly did, "and went up (Antiochus) against Israel and Jerusalem with a great multitude, and entered proudly into the sanctuary, and took away the golden altars, also he took the hidden treasures, and there was great mourning in Israel," 1 Maccab. J. "And the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined." The coming of Antiochus into Jerusalem is pompously detailed in the first book of Maccabees: the Jews compared a great calamity, or an invading and irresistible army, to a flood. Let us proceed with the remainder: "And he shall confirm the covenant with many for a week," this alludes to the first seven years of the reign of Antiochus, during which he did not interfere with the worship of the Jews, although he gave liberty to those who chose to be heathens to follow their respective worship: it was in the end of the sixth, and in the beginning of his seventh year that he attacked the Jews, destroyed the temple, plundered it of its riches, and made himself the tyrant of Judea. The last part of the passage is as follows: "And in the half of a week he shall cause the oblation and sacrifice to cease," and, I have only to observe, that, from the taking of the city by Antiochus, to the absolute forbidding Jewish worship, there elapsed about three years and a half, or half a week, for he came to Jerusalem in the 143d year of the kingdom of the Greeks, and the erecting of idols was in the year 145; after which, he continued to persecute the Jews, and promote idolatry, until the year 148. Now Antiothus attacked Jerusalem at the end of his sixth year, to which, if we add two years and three months, we have pretty exactly the period of half a week, or three years and a half. The expression, "the spreading of abominations," evidently alludes to what is said in Maccabees, chap. i. ver. 34. "Now the fifteenth day of the month Casleu, in the 145th year, they (the followers of Antiochus) set up the abomination of desolation upon the altar, and builded idol altars throughout the cities of Judah, on every side." Daniel says, chap. xii. ver. 11, speaking of his vision, "and from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that: maketh desolate set up, there shall be (that is between the first interdict of Antiochus, and the setting up of idols) 1290 days;" which is a little more than three years and a half. The wonderful prophecy is then unriddled, it becomes a contemptible piece of history in an affected style. I trust the explanation which I have given, after Marsham, will appear satisfactory. I challenge Bishop Watson to produce a plausible explanation of the passage according to the sense of the church. It may not be improper to observe, that Clemens Alexandrinus, many of the fathers, Calmet, and other persons of great knowledge, have flatly denied the application of the weeks of Daniel to Jesus. Those who espouse your cause lose sight of the context of Daniel, they forget chronology, and evince to what a pitch of delusion their minds have arrived. This is the famous prophecy that silenced the Jewish rabbins of Venice; it is of a pattern with Daniel's four beasts; the fourth is also a story of Antiochus Epiphanes and Judas who slays the beast. Judas is the son of man coming in clouds; he is the person of whom the prophets speak, and who has most ridiculously been distorted to Jesus Christ. This farrago of prophecies seems to have been the production of Esdras or some very late writer; and I am not sure, but the doctrine of the Pythagorean millennium gave rise to some of the expressions in both writers, about the beasts: they seem to have sprung from the same origin with those of the Apocalypse; and with the four Indian horses, they crept among the Jews, together with many other Chaldean mythological ideas: the Ancient of Ancients appears in his fiery car as Osiris triumphant, or Chreeshna conquering Chiven; the books are opened before him, as his kingdom is everlasting, like that of Vishnu with the Vedams. But visions so ridiculous as that of Daniel deserve not our consideration; whatever be their source they are but reveries, and may serve to amuse idle people in their ridiculous speculations about the world's end. Like Swedenburgh, men may dream, and interpret their own dreams, and like him have the mortification to be laughed at for the non-accomplishment of their predictions. We have had of late another Daniel in Mr. Brothers; he too saw beasts, and, what is more, he understood their meaning; but unfortunately we are not Jews, and he is cruelly imprisoned in a madhouse. I have now followed your animadversions on the objections of Thomas Paine upon the Old Testament; and I trust I have shown that you have in no degree been a more successful labourer in the cause of Judaism than your predecessors; even your wonderful prophecy of Daniel is converted into a mere historical tale, and the application Jesus Christ makes of it to himself is accordingly proved to be ridiculous, the more so, as it comes from the Son of God. I have a few more observations to make, before I leave this book. I cannot pass in silence the gross blunder you have committed, when you refer Mr. Paine to Ferguson for an astronomical proof of the miracle of the total darkness at the crucifixion of Jesus. An odd conceit, upon my word! You might know that the event is omitted by all the authors of eminence who wrote at that time; that even Pliny passes it unnoticed. Lest you should mislead the reader with your groundless assertions, I shall state the matter as it stands in reality. You avoid learned disquisitions to be intelligible, but you ought not to have been so deficient of authority, where it is most needed. Besides the gospels, the darkness is not mentioned in any author; but divines have attempted to prove the event from a supposed passage of Phlegon, related by Eusebius; it is in the following words: "In the fourth year of the two hundred and second Olympiad, there was the greatest eclipse ever seen; it was night at six, and even the stars could be seen." This passage has long been disregarded by men of knowledge; it alludes to an eclipse, not to a miraculous darkness. Both Mr. Ferguson and you have blundered in chronology and astronomy. It is certain, in the year of Christ's crucifixion, according to the common chronology, there could have been no eclipse of the sun visible at that time at Jerusalem; Ferguson, therefore, concludes it a miracle. But you ought to have known, that the fourth year of the two hundred and second Olympiad, is not the year of the crucifixion in any system of chronology; that there was an eclipse of the sun, in the year mentioned by Phlegon, in the month of November, which, however, was not central; and you know that Jesus is said to have died at the time of the full moon in March, or in the beginning of April. Besides, had even such a darkness taken place, are you ignorant of the existence of comets, and would not one passing between the earth and the sun eclipse that luminary? Have not such miracles taken place if we credit historians? The death of Caesar was preceded by wonderful prodigies, and a comet made its appearance immediately after. The supposed miraculous influence of comets, and their being prophetic signs, was once an article of faith throughout all Europe, and the ancient history of every country records many events which the authors maintain arose from comets. Your reflections on prophets I cannot pass unnoticed. You pretend to make a distinction between dreamers, and impostors, and true prophets. You acknowledge the number of soothsayers and fortunetellers among the Jews; but you maintain that they were altogether distinct from the true prophets, and appeal to Jeremiah, who puts the Jews on their guard against false prophets. Does not every quack, every impostor, do the same, and caution the world to beware of counterfeits? You might have saved a great deal of trouble, had you condescended to produce your proofs of the genuineness of the writings of the prophets; and then we might enquire concerning the works of these augurs. You pretend that a sure mark of the reality of a prophet is his predicting bad things, for a fortune-teller always prophecies good. Pardon me if I suppose you a follower of Mr. Brothers. For surely the destruction of London was not a most desirable event. It is in vain you attempt to turn Mr. Paine into ridicule for his definition of a prophet. He most justly calls them strolling-poets, fortune-tellers; being in Judea what the gipsies, the augurs, and the astrologers have been in other nations. The Hebrew word _Navi_ signifies nothing but an orator, a public speaker, and is by the Jews applied, in a forced way, to soothsayers and diviners. It is incontrovertible that they existed among the Jews in colleges, and were brought up to the business. Their chief employment was to write the chronicles of the times. The name prophet is given in the Bible indiscriminately with that of holy man. Among the Hebrews, the first book of Kings was called the prophecy of Samuel. Abel is called repeatedly in the New Testament a prophet, (see Matth. chap. xxiii. ver. 31 and 35, and Luke chap. xi. ver. 50 and 51), although we have no account of his having predicted any. Among the Jews there certainly were fortune-tellers, necromancers, and witches, all of which you rank among the impostors. But had not the witch of Endor a real power of incantation? Did she not most wonderfully raise up the spirit of Samuel? Or are we to look upon the story of the witch of Endor in the same light as those of modern witches? That the prophets of the Jews were repeatedly deceived, we cannot have the smallest doubt when 400 of these gentlemen told a downright lie to Ahaz. But you have a very easy expedient in all these cases. When a prophet tells a lie, you may, as was done in this particular case, attribute it to a design of God to cheat the person who consults his oracles, just as Jupiter did of old to Agamemnon when he sent him the false dream. You reproach Thomas Paine for want of candour. He has not, you say, examined the general design of the Old Testament There he would find the benevolence of the God of the Jews, and his infinite goodness in selecting them from among the nations, in preserving them from idolatry. If he chose this people he has certainly exposed them to continual sufferings, and all for no other purpose than to teach mankind that idolatry is the greatest of crimes; that to avoid it, murder, plunder, the crusades, the inquisition, persecution, may all be laudable means for the preservation of the faith of nations. Thus, the cherished people, who were most intimate with their God, committed the most enormous crimes, under the pretence of preserving pure their adoration of the implacable God Jehovah. Did not all the endeavours of Jehovah to rescue nations from idolatry prove fruitless? This despicable creature man has been able to effect what mighty Jehovah never accomplished. Science is the only antidote against all kinds of superstition. Did Cicero adore stocks or stones? Or did ever any learned man among the heathens humble himself before idols? Has not the principal branch of the church of Christ been notorious idolaters? But what avails all this? Have you proved that the Heathens "emulated in the transcendent flagitiousness of their lives, the impure morals of their gods?" You assert it; but unluckily it is one of the many unsupported and assumed propositions in your pamphlet. Did nations necessarily imitate the conduct of their gods, I would tremble at being among the followers of the bloody Jehovah. The heathens were certainly dreamers in their adoration of the planets; we are taught by science, that these bodies resemble our earth in the general laws that govern them. It was natural for rude men to gaze at the sublimity of the stupendous fabric, the refulgency of the sun; the blessings derived from his genial influence could not be contemplated without admiration by the amazed and fearful savage. Idolatry is ridiculous: but have you proved that Jehovah deserves more to be revered than the Great Whole of nature, whether called Pan, or otherwise disguised in emblems, than the harmony of the planets designed by symbols, the generative powers by Venus, or the vivifying light emanating from the bright orb of Apollo? Confess at least, that the allegorical adoration of nature could only deceive the multitude who were kept in ignorance by their priests. If you are candid, you must acknowledge, that the Polytheists were tolerant, that the Atheists or Deists lectured close, to the temple. They did not exterminate nations, establish inquisitions, murder unbelievers as the Jews, and the Christians; although, as you observe, they received the gift of God through Jesus Christ, and were made alive by the covenant of grace. In what consists the superiority of the Jewish or Christian notions of God? Jehovah is a being incomprehensible; he is a jealous and a revengeful God, he hardens men's hearts, and sacrifices whole nations to a particular people, who, in their turn, are sacrificed for the boasted scheme of general good, which is never the nearer being accomplished. He must be adored and revered, and yet he does not make himself known to man. He does not even show himself face to face to any but Moses. You pay no great compliment to his omnipotence, when you observe, that "probably he could not give to such a being as man a full manifestation of the end for which he designs him, nor of the means requisite for that end;"--and, "that it may not be possible for the Father of the universe to explain to us, infants in apprehension, the goodness and the wisdom of his dealings with the sons of man." Jehovah, in short, equally the offspring of fancy with the Heathen Jupiter, is as cruel as Moloch, and, like other productions of the brain, an invisible phantom, to which priests give the passions of a tyrant; and, in their desire that he should reign alone, that men should not worship other deities, his ministers have preached up this God, and the multitude, eager to admire what they cannot comprehend, have followed the mandates of the pretended interpreters of his will. Still, however, the greatest number of ignorant men are, and will ever be, idolaters; in vain their spiritual guides preach up incomprehensible and ideal beings in an unintelligible jargon; man will always seek to satisfy his senses. Even the immediate presence of Jehovah, and his horrid massacres, could not prevent the favourite nation from following other gods. Even the inspired, the wise, the royal Solomon forsook "the God of Israel, holy, just, and good," for "the impure rabble of heathen Baalim." According to your nations, according to the doctrines of the Jewish and the Christian churches, the sole aim of God has been to be exclusively adored, and jealousy is his prominent feature. It is not in the pursuit of knowledge, or in the practice of morality that he delights. The precepts of social virtue occasionally scattered through the Old, as well as the New Testament, can make little impression when contrasted with the vindictive cruelty of the Deity. The Jewish Jehovah requires nothing of his followers but their compliance in executing his bloody commands against nations whom he calls impious, because he has not revealed himself to them. The man after his own heart, is the murderer of thousands of innocent people. Christ orders his followers to despise the reason he has given them, to avoid pleasure, to hate the world, and to love pain, to pray, and to spend their lives in continual mortification, and in gazing over unintelligible mysteries to acquire his kingdom. If they fail to believe in him, whether from ignorance or from conviction, he punishes them with eternal damnation, or as _Saint_ Athanasius emphatically expresses it in his celebrated creed, "Whosoever believeth in these things shall be saved; and whosoever believeth not shall be damned." LETTER VII. I now bring under review a few passages from _Holy Writ_, which I leave to your Lordship to explain, and which scoffers pretend to say are undeniable proofs of the stupidity of the Jews, and gross ideas they had of God. I shall follow the order of the books without attempting an arrangement. Genesis, chap. iii. ver. 1. "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord had made; and he said unto the woman, yea hath God said," &c. This Mr. Serpent would make a fine figure in Æsop's fables. They say it means the Devil, but how does that appear? In ver. 22. and 23. "And behold the Lord said, the man is become one of us, (i. e. one of us Gods), to know good and evil, And now lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever; therefore, the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken." This shows strongly that boasted attribute of God, Jealousy. Is it consistent with a Deity to punish this pair, and all their progeny, for their attempt to know good from evil? We here find that the priests have made God expressly after their own image. God's selfishness prevented men from eating of the other tree, which would make him live for ever. _Queritur,_ then, at what period of the world did the soul of man become immortal? Was it not till Jesus Christ came? And was this tree a type of him, as the bread and wine are at this day? It appears also, that it was not one, but two trees, that were prohibited! Ib. chap. xxxii. ver. 24. "And Jacob was left alone, and there wrestled a man with him, until the breaking of the day; (this shows the antiquity and high authority of sparring); and when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh (Mendoza like): and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, unless thou bless me. And he said unto him, what is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; (which, in Chaldee signifies seeing God); for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. (Or, as the Vulgate more correctly translates, for if thou hast been to oppose the Lord, how much more shall thou prevail against men). And Jacob called the name of the place Penial: for I have seen God face to face." This passage requires no comment. Exodus, chap. iii. ver. 4. "And when the Lord saw that he (Moses) turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, here am I." This is a pretty play at bo-peep. Ib. ver. 14. "And God said unto Moses, I am that I am; and he said, thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you." Divines hold this passage to be a great instance of sublimity!!! Ib. ver. 21. "And I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, and it shall come to pass, that when ye go away, ye shall not go empty, but every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and your daughters, and ye shall spoil the Egyptians." Here the Jews made God after their own image; and the dealings of that nation in silver, gold, and clothes, at this day, show that they have not forgotten their God. It is not easy for divines to reconcile this with God's other precept in the eighth commandment. Ib. chap. iv. ver. 24. "And it came to pass by the way in the inn, (by the way, were there inns then in Egypt?) that the Lord met him (Moses) and sought to kill him!!! Then Zepporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet." This business of the circumcision is brought in rather by the head and the shoulders, and the cause of it is not quite clear; but it is very evident that the Lord could not kill Moses. Ib. chap. xxxii. ver. 27. "And he (Moses learning that the Jews had made a golden calf), said unto them, (the sons of Levi, i.e. the priests,) thus saith the Lord God of Israel, put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour; and the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses, and there fell of the people that day about three thousand." Ib. chap. xxxiii. ver. 9. "And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord (who was in the pillar) talked with Moses." In this manner modern goddesses stop their carriages at shop-keepers' doors at this day. Ib. ver. 90. "And he (God) said, thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live." God must here have forgotten his dialogue with Adam and Eve, his wrestling with Jacob, and conversations with Moses. In Numbers, chap. xii. ver. 6 and 8, he says, "Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I, the Lord, will make myself known to him in a vision, and will speak to him in a dream," but, "with thee (Moses) will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches, and the similitude of the Lord shall you behold." Ib. chap. xxi. ver..5. "And the people spoke against God, and against Moses, wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness, for there is no bread, neither is there any water, and our soul loatheth this light bread." No wonder the Jews tired of living upon manna without water, but the Lord taught them not to grumble. "And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, and much people of Israel died." When God was tired of making his serpents bite the poor devils, he said unto Moses, "Make thee, a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole, and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten when he looketh upon it shall live." This is below all the tricks of necromancers. Ib. chap. xxv. "And the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab. And Israel joined himself unto Baal-peor: and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. And the Lord said unto Moses, take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel. And Moses said unto the judges, slay every one of these men who were joined unto Baal-peor. And behold one of the children of Israel came, and brought unto his brethren a Midianitish woman, in the sight of Moses, &c. And when Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose from among the congregation, and took a javelin in his hand; and he went after the man of Israel into the tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her belly, so the plague was stopped from the children of Israel, and these that died in the plague were 24,000." As a reward for this, the Lord gave Phinehas the everlasting priesthood, "because he was zealous for his God, and made an atonement for the children of Israel." Ib. chap. xxvi. Dathan, Korah, and Abirim strove against Moses and Aaron, and the earth swallowed them up, and the fire devoured 250 men. lb. chap. xxxi. ver. 16, there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord, on account of the tres pass against the Lord, when he ordered thus, "Now, therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him; but all the women children that hath not known man by lying with him, keep for yourselves." For the observation on this passage, I refer my reader to Bishop Watson, and the former part of this work. The following ought to be the fate of all idolatrous people, and has been happily practised in the discoveries made by most European nations. Deuteronomy chap. xiii. ver. 13. "Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword." Joshua, chap. vi. v. 21. "And they utterly de-, stroyed all that was in the city, (Jericho), both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword. And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein: only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass, and of iron, they put it into the treasury of the house of the Lord." Chap. x. Joshua being attacked by five kings, and they having taken shelter in a cave, he caused great stones to be rolled to the mouth of the cave, till he followed and destroyed the people, then he ordered the five kings to be brought out from the cave, "And it came to pass, that when they brought out those five kings unto Joshua, that Joshua called for all the men in Israel, and said unto the men of war, come near, put your feet upon the necks of these kings, and they came near, and put their feet upon the necks of them. And afterwards Joshua smote them, and slew them, Joshua took Makdekah, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and the king thereof he utterly destroyed, them, and all the souls that were therein; he let none remain." And so he did in all to 31 kings, as related in this and the following chapters, and all this by the express command of God, who made the sun and the moon both stand still to witness these unprovoked atrocities. But this was just; God having given that country to his chosen people the Jews, as in latter times his vicegerent the Pope gave America to the Portuguese and Spaniards, who, Joshua-like, exterminated the kings and people, because they were not Christians. This, as you say, serves the general scheme of God's benevolence towards mankind. Judges, chap.i. ver. 4. And the Lord having delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into the hands of Judah, "They slew of them in Bezek 1000 men. But Adonibezek fled, and they pursued after him, and caught him, and cut off his thumbs, and his great toes." lb. ver. 19- "And the Lord was with Judah, and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain, but _could not_ drive out the inhabitants of the valley!" Why? "Because they had chariots of iron." Chap. iv. recounts the manner in which Deborah and Barak delivered Israel from Jabin and Si-aera. Ver. 21. Then Jael, Hebber's wife, (to whose tent Sisera had fled), "took a nail of the tent, and a hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground, (_a goodly nail_), for he was fast asleep and weary, so he died." Chap. 5, contains the _beautiful_ song of Deborah and Barak, which I particularly request my reader to peruse, as a finished piece of scripture praise of good words. Chap. xxi. relates, that the Israelites having sworn not to give their daughters to the Benjamites, and the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead not having come up to Minzeh, "the congregation sent 19,000 men of the valiantest, and commanded them, saying, go and smite the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the children: utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man;" but, having found 400 young virgins that had known no man by lying with any male," they gave them to the sons of Benjamin, "and yet so they sufficed them not." So as they had sworn not to give them wives of their own daughters, "therefore, they commanded the children of Benjamin, saying, go and lie in wait in the vineyards, and see, and behold, if the daughters of Shiloch come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife." First Samuel, chap. vi. The ark of the Lord having been among the Philistines seven months, they, unwilling to send it back empty, asked the priests and diviners, what they should send in it as a trespass offering? "they answered, five golden emerods, and five golden mice,---and ye shall give glory unto the God of Israel,--and make a new cart, and take two milch kine, and take the ark of the Lord and lay it on the cart;" and they did so, "and they of Beth-shemesh lifted up their eyes, and saw the ark, and rejoiced to see it,--and the men of Beth-shemesh offered burnt-offerings, and sacrificed sacrifices the same day unto the Lord,--and he smote the men of Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the Lord, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men." Gracious God! Blessed Jews! Second Samuel, chap. xxiv. ver. 1. "And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, go number Israel and Judah." (In first Chronicles, chap. xxi. ver. 1, it stated, "and Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.") And having thus instigated David to do what is good policy in a king, God, of his infinite mercy, said unto David by his prophet Grad, David's seer, (an officer of the household in those days), "I offer thee three things: shall seven years of famine come unto thee in thy land, or wilt thou flee three months before thine enemies, or that there be three days pestilence in thy land?" And David having chosen the latter, "the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel, and there died of the people 70,000 men but the Lord is ever merciful, for, "when the angel stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord _repented_ him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed the people, it is enough, stay thou thine hand," _Delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi_. 1 Kings, chap. ii. David being upon his death-bed, having made peace with God, and purified his heart, called Solomon to him and gave him his last charge. As to Joab, the son of Zeruiah, he said, "do according to thy wisdom, and let not his hoar head go down to the grave in peace,--and behold thou hast with thee Shimei the son of Gera, which cursed me, but he came down to meet me at Jordan, and I sware to him by the Lord, saying, I will not put thee to death by the sword; now, therefore, (_proceeds the man after God's own heart_), hold him not guiltless; for thou art a wise man, and knowest what thou oughtest to do unto him, but his hoar head bring thou down to the grave with blood." Solomon having succeeded his father, the first act of his reign was to put to death his brother Adonijah. 1 Kings, chap. xi. ver. 4, "Solomon's heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father, for it came to pass, that, when he was old, his wives turned his heart after other gods." But why go through such barbarous details? All along we find imprecations against those who despise the prophets, and praises lavished upon murderers, traitors, and assassins. This is the people "selected by the wisdom of God, that they might witness to the whole world in successive ages his existence and attributes, that they might be an instrument of subverting idolatry, of declaring the name of the God of Israel throughout the whole earth a people, who are to us witnesses of the existence, and of the moral government of God."--This is the Old Testament, which you presume to say afforded matter for the laws of Solon, and a foundation for the philosophy of Plato,--which has been admired and venerated for its piety, its sublimity, its veracity, by all who _are able to read and understand it!!!_ This is the God who maketh the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, who is all perfection, all wise, and all powerful, and whose mercy is above all his other attributes." THE END. 
19879	----	FIVE PEBBLES From THE BROOK. A Reply TO "A DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY" WRITTEN BY EDWARD EVERETT, GREEK PROFESSOR OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY IN ANSWER TO "THE GROUNDS OF CHRISTIANITY EXAMINED BY COMPARING THE NEW TESTAMENT WITH THE OLD" BY GEORGE BETHUNE ENGLISH. "Should a wise man utter vain knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind?" "Should he reason with unprofitable talk? or with speeches wherewith he can do no good?--Thou chooseth[fn1] the tongue of the crafty. Thy own mouth condemneth thee, and not I: yea, thine own lips testify against thee." "Behold I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth." PHILADELPHIA: PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR. 1824. [PG Editor's Note: Many printer's errors in this text have been retained as found in the original--in particular the will be found a large number of mismatched and wrongspace quotation marks.] ADVERTISEMENT. WHEN I left America, I had no intention of giving Mr. Everett's book a formal answer: but having learned since my arrival in the Old World, that: the controversy in which I had engaged myself had attracted some attention, and had been reviewed by a distinguished member of a German university, my hopes of being serviceable to the cause of truth and philanthrophy are revived, and I have therefore determined to give a reply to Mr. Everett's publication. In this Work, as in my prior writings, I have taken for granted the Divine Authority of the Old Testament, and I have argued upon the principle that every book, claiming to be considered as a Divine revelation and building itself upon the Old Testament as upon a foundation, must agree with it, otherwise the superstructure cannot stand. The New Testament, the Talmud, and the Koran are all placed by their authors upon the Law and the Prophets, as an edifice is upon its foundation; and if it be true that any or all of them be found to be irreconcileable with the primitive Revelation to which they all refer themselves, the question as to their Divine Authority is decided against them, most obviously and completely. This work was written in Egypt and forwarded to the U. States, while I was preparing to accompany Ismael Pacha to the conquest of Ethiopia; an expedition in which I expected to perish, and therefore felt it to be my duty to leave behind me, something from which my countrymen might learn what were my real sentiments upon a most important and interesting subject; and as I hoped would learn too, how grossly they had been deluded into building their faith and hope upon a demonstrated error. On my arrival from Egypt I found that the MS. had not been published, and I was advised by several, of my friends to abandon the struggle and to imitate their example; in submitting to the despotism of popular opinion, which, they said, it was imprudent to oppose. I was so far influenced by these representations-- extraordinary indeed in a country which boasts that here freedom of opinion and of speech is established by law--that I intended to confine myself to sending the MS. to Mr. Everett; in the belief that when he should have the weakness of his arguments in behalf of what he defended and the injustice of his aspersions upon me, fairly and evidently laid before him, that he would make me at least a private apology. He chose to preserve a sullen silence, probably believing that he is so securely seated in the saddle which his brethren have girthed upon the back of "a strong ass" that; there is no danger that the animal will give him a fall. Not a little moved at this, I determined to do my myself justice, and to publish the pages following. This book is not the work of an Infidel. I am not an infidel; what I have learned and seen in Europe, Asia and Africa, while it has confirmed my reasons for rejecting the New Testament, has rooted in my mind the conviction that the ancient Bible does contain a revelation from the God of Nature, as firmly as my belief in the first proposition of Euclid. The whole analogy of Nature, while it is in many respects opposed to the characteristics ascribed to the Divinity by the metaphysicians, yet bears witness in my opinion, that this world was made and is governed by just such a Being as the Jehovah of the Old Testament; while the palpable fulfillment of predictions contained in that book, and which is so strikingly manifest in the Old World, leaves in my mind no doubt whatever, of the ultimate fulfillment of all that it promises, and all that it threatens. I cannot do better than to conclude these observations with the manly declaration of the celebrated Christian orator Dr. Chalmers, "We are ready, (says he,) to admit that as the object of the inquiry is not the character, but the Truth of Christianity, the philosopher should be careful to protect his mind from the delusions of its charms. He should separate the exercises of the understanding from the tendencies of the fancy or of the heart. He should be prepared to follow the light of evidence, though it should lead him to conclusions the most painful and melancholy. He should train his mind to all the hardihood of abstract and unfeeling intelligence. He should give up every thing to the supremacy of argument and he able to renounce without a sigh all the tenderest possessions[fn 2] of infancy, the moment that TRUTH demands of him the sacrifice." (Dr. Chalmers on the Evidence and Authority of the Christian Religion. Ch. I.) Finally, let the Reader remember, that "there is one thing in the world more contemptible than the slave of a tyrant--it is the dupe of a SOPHIST." G. B. E. PEBBLE I And David "chose him five smooth stones out of the brook, and put them in a shepherd's bag which he had, even in a scrip: and his sling was in his hand: and he drew near to the Philistine." Mr. Everett commences his work with the following remarks. "Was Jesus Christ the person foretold by the prophets, as the Messiah of the Jews?; one method, and a very obvious one, of examining his claims to this character, is to compare his person, life, actions, and doctrine, with the supposed predictions of them. But if it also appear that this Jesus wrought such works, as evinced that he enjoyed the supernatural assistance and cooperation of God, this certainly is a fact of great importance. For we cannot say, that in estimating the validity of our Lord's claims to the character of Messiah, it is of no consequence whether, while he advanced those claims, he wrought such works as proved his intimacy with the God of truth. While he professed himself the Messiah, is it indifferent whether he was showing himself to be as being beyond delusion, and above imposture?--Let us make the case our own. Suppose that we were witnesses of the miraculous works of a personage of pretensions like our Lord's, should we think it necessary or reasonable to resort to long courses of argument, or indeed to any process of the understanding, except what was requisite to establish the fact of the miracles? Should we, while he was opening the eyes of the blind, and raising the dead from their graves, feel it necessary to be deciphering prophecies, and weighing these[fn 3] difficulties? Now we may transfer this case to that of Christianity. The miracles of our Lord are either true or false. The infidel if he maintain the latter must prove it; and if the former can be made to appear, they are beyond all comparison the most direct and convincing testimony that can be devised," p. 1, 2. of Mr. Everett's work. To this statement I would reply--that I do not know what right Mr. Everett has to call upon his opponent, to prove a negative. It was his business to prove the affirmative of his question, and to show that these miracles actually were performed, before he proceeded to argue upon the strength of them. It is, I conceive, impossible to demonstrate that miracles said to have been wrought 1800 years ago, were not performed; but it is, I believe, quite possible to show that there is no sufficient proof that they were. One of the reasons given, in the 2d, ch. as I think, of the grounds of Christianity examined, for throwing out of consideration the miracles recorded in the New Testament in examining the question of the Messiahship of Jesus, was, that the New Testament itself, was not a sufficient proof that these miracles were actually wrought; and this, with the reader's indulgence, I think I can plainly show. Mr. Everett allows p. 450 of his work, what indeed he cannot deny, that the four Gospels do sometimes contradict each other in their narratives; and he refers with approbation, in a note to p. 458, to a work of Lessing's, which he says, "ought to be read by every one who is overfond of Harmonies." This work of Lessing's, if I recollect right, maintains, that all hopes of harmonizing the evangelists, of reconciling their contradictions, must be given up. [See Lessings Sammliche, Schriften, ch. v. S. 150, as quoted by Mr. Everett, p. 458.] Now these contradictions, if they do exist, unquestionably argue one of two things; either fraud, or want of accurate information in their authors, as no man who wishes to be considered "compos mentis" will deny, because, accurate information excludes the possibility of contradiction in authors willing to tell the truth, and much more in inspired authors, who must be incapable of writing anything but the truth. The Christian, therefore, must, it seems to me, on account of these contradictions, allow one of two things; either, that the evangelists were fraudulent men, or else that the Gospels were not written by the Apostles and immediate followers of Jesus: because want of accurate information, cannot be supposed of the Apostles and immediate followers of Jesus; as having been constantly with him, from the beginning, to the end of his ministery, they must have been perfectly acquainted with his actions and doctrines. Neither can lapse of memory be urged; because the Gospels represent Jesus as saying, John ch. xvi. 26, that they should have the aid of inspiration, which "should, bring all things, to remembrance;" and in Acts ch. iv. 31, all the followers of Jesus are represented as having actually received the effusion of the Holy Ghost: of course want of accurate information, and lapse or memory in them cannot be supposed. The Christian, therefore, must allow, since contradictions do exist, if he would avoid accusing the Apostles and disciples of Jesus of fraud, that the Gospels were not written by the Apostles and first followers of Jesus, but that they were written by men, who had no accurate information about the events they record. It is therefore plain, that the miracles recorded in the Gospels, are incapable of proof. For what Christian in his senses can ask another man to believe accounts of miracles, which accounts, he must at the same time allow, were written by fraudulent men, or by men who had no accurate information upon the subjects about which they write. The edge of this, as I think, smites right through the neck of Mr. Everett's argument on which his work depends, and leaves his book--"a gasping head---a quivering trunk." Sic transit gloria mundi. But in order to make Mr. Everett still farther Sensible how easily his argument can be "overturned, overturned and overturned," I will suppose a reasonable and reasoning man, desirous to verify the claims of the books of the New Testament as containing a Revelation from God, to set down to scrutinize with anxious solicitude every argument of internal and external evidence, in favour of their authenticity, and authority, in the hope of becoming satisfied of the truth of their claims. But in the course of his examination, such a man will assuredly find, that almost every step in his inquiry, is an occasion of doubt and of difficulty. Books containing Revelations from the Supreme, must be consistent with themselves. But he will observe on a careful perusal of the evangelists, that the contradictions, particularly in the narratives of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, are numerous; and that all the ingenuity of Christian writers, has been exhausted in vain in the attempt to reconcile them; for example, the Gospel called of Matthew says, ch. iii. 14, that John the Baptist, knew Jesus when he came to him to be baptised, (which was very probable on account of the relationship and intimacy subsisting between Mary the mother of Jesus, and: Elizabeth the mother of John, as mentioned in the Gospel called of Luke, ch. i. 18, it could hardly have been otherwise) but the author of the Gospel called of John says, ch. i. 31, that John knew him not, until he was designated by the descent of the Holy Ghost upon him. Again, it is said in the Gospel called of John, ch. ii. 14. that Jesus, on his first visit to Jerusalem after he had commenced his preaching, cast the buyers and sellers out of the Temple, whereas the Gospel called of Matthew, and also those called of Mark and Luke, represent this to have been done by Jesus at his last visit to Jerusalem. See Matt. ch. xxi. 12. Mark ch. xi. 15. Luke ch. xix. 45. Again, the author of the Gospel called of John, represents the last supper or Jesus with his Apostles, to have taken place (See ch. xiii. 1. and ch. xviii. 28.) on the eve before the feast of the passover, and that Jesus was crucified on the feast day itself, while the authors of the other Gospels represent the first event to have taken place, on the evening of the passover itself, and that Jesus was crucified the day after. See Matt. Ch. xxvi. 18. Mark xiv. 12. Luke ch. xxii. 7. Now Matthew and John must, according to the Gospels themselves, have been present with Jesus when he drove the buyers and sellers out of the Temple, and at his last supper, and when he was seized in the garden of Gethsemane; they must therefore have known perfectly whether Jesus drove the buyers; and sellers out of the Temple, at his first visit to Jerusalem in their company; or at his last, and whether his last supper, and his seizure in the garden of Gethsemane took place on the eve before this passover their great national festival, or on the evening of the passover itself. They could not forget the time and place of events, so affecting and important as the last mentioned, and when we add to these considerations, that the Gospels represent Jesus as saying, (John ch. xiv.;26.) that they should be inspired by the Holy Spirit, which "should bring all things to remembrance," the supposition that the real Matthew and John could contradict each other in this manner, becomes quite inadmissable. In the account of the resurrection of Jesus, the most important fact of Christianity, we also find several contradictions; for instance, the Gospel called of Matthew says, that the first appearance of Jesus to his disciples after his resurrection, was in Galillee, (See Matt. ch.xxxviii. 7,) while the other evangelists assert, that his first appearance to them after that event was at Jerusalem. See Mark ch. xvi., Luke ch. xxiv. John ch.xx. The Gospel called of John says, that he afterwards appeared to them in Galilee: but according to that of Luke, the disciples did not go to Galilee to meet Jesus; for that Gospel says, that Jesus expressly ordered his disciples to tarry at Jerusalem, where they should receive the effusion of the Holy Ghost, and that after giving that order he was taken up to Heaven. See Luke ch. xxiv. 49, 50, also, the first ch. of Acts. [fn 4] This greatly invalidates the credibility of these accounts; for as much as that the historical testimony in attestation of supernatural events, ought, because such events are out of the common course of nature, to be strong and unexceptionable. He will observe too that these writers, supposed to have been the inspired followers of Jesus Christ, have applied many passages of the Old Testament as prophecies of Jesus, when it is most certain, (and is at the present day allowed by Christian Biblical Critics of the highest standing) from examining those passages in their context in the Old Testament, that they are not prophecies of Jesus; and that some of the passages cited are in fact no prophecies at all, but are merely historical. Nor is this all, these authors have cited as prophecies and proof texts, passages which do not exist in the Old Testament. From which it seems to follow that they must have forged those passages, or quoted them from some Apocryphal book; which they believed to be inspired. If they were capable of the first, they were not the honest and inspired followers and disciples of Jesus Christ; if they were capable of the last, they were not Jews but Gentiles, ignorant that the Jews in the time of Jesus, acknowledged no books as inspired scripture but the books of the Old Testament. See Appendix, A. A reasonable and reasoning man, such as I have supposed, may ask himself if it be possible that men filled with the Holy Ghost, and whose minds were supernaturally opened to understand the scriptures, could make mistakes such as these. Lastly, he will recollect, on discovering what is about to be stated, that the Apostles and followers of Jesus Christ were Jews, and consequently could not be ignorant of what was notorious to the whole nation, for instance, that the Jewish Sabbath begins at sunset on Friday evening, and ends at sunset on Saturday evening. Nevertheless the author of the Gospel called of Matthew makes ch. xxviii. 1. the Sabbath to end at dawn of day on Sunday morning: while the author of that called of John apparently reckons, ch. xx. 19. the evening of the first day of the week as a part of the first day of the week; whereas it is in fact, according to the law and customs of the Jews, who then and now reckon their days from sunset to sunset, the beginning and a part of the second day of the week. Such mistakes appear to me to indicate that the writers of those Gospels were Gentiles not perfectly acquainted with Jewish customs, and therefore not Matthew and John.[fn 6] There are other traces of ignorance of Jewish customs, to be found in the Gospel called of Matthew, which betray the Gentilism of the author of it. For instance, he says ch. xxvi. 24[fn7], that Jesus told Peter, that "before the cock crew he should deny him thrice;" the same is also found in Mark ch. xiv. 30. in Luke ch. xxii. 54[fn8], and in John ch. xiii. 38. Now it is asserted in the Mishna (i. e the oral law of the Jews.) in the Bava Kama according to Mr. Everett p. 448. of his work, that cocks were not permitted in Jerusalem where Peter's denial took place; [probably because that bird is constantly scratching up the ground with his feet, and was thereby liable to turn up impurities, by touching which in passing by, a Jew would be ceremonially defiled, and rendered incapable of visiting the Temple to perform his devotions, till after the evening of the day on which the defilement took place], therefore all the four Gospels which all contain, this story, must have been written by Gentiles ignorant of the custom which belies the story. Some Christian writers have endeavoured to get rid of this objection, by attempting to prove "that the crowing of the cock here mentioned, does not mean actually the crowing of a cock, but 'the sound of a trumpet!'" while others, blushing at the hardihood of their brethren, think it more prudent to maintain, that the author of the Mishna was ignorant of Jewish customs, and that the writers of the Gospels were perfectly acquainted with them; and that therefore every good Christian was bound in conscience not to regard the objection. But the prohibition of cocks from entering the Holy city is so perfectly of a piece with many other cautions against defilement observed by the Jews, and is so perfectly in the taste of the times of the Pharisees, "the careful washers of plates and platters,"--the "tithers of mint, anise, and cummin," not to mention the reason above expressed, which perhaps was, to say truth, according to the regulations against defilement contained in the Pentateuch a sufficient reason for excluding that bird from the city, where stood the Temple, that the reader will probably believe that such a custom might have existed. Again, it is said Matt. xxvii. 62, that the Chief Priests and Pharisees went to Pilate; demanded a guard; went to the Sepulchre of Jesus, sealed the door, and set watch. Now Jesus is said to have arisen on the day after this, on the first day of the week, i.e. Sunday, of course the day before was Saturday of the Jewish Sabbath. I maintain that the Chief Priests and Pharisees, who objected to Jesus curing the sick and rubbing corn from the ear, in order to satisfy his hunger on the Sabbath day; I maintain that it is utterly incredible, that these men should have gone to Pilate on public business, and transacted all this on their Sabbath. For such an action would have come completely within the spirit, and the letter of the Laws against breaking the Sabbath contained in the-Pentateuch, which makes the penalty of such actions as are here ascribed to the Chief Priests and rigorous Pharisees, nothing less than stoning to death. I infer therefore, that the author of the Gospel of Matthew was ignorant of this, and of course not a Jew, and consequently not Matthew. I would observe further, in connection with this subject, that Jesus is represented, Matt. xxiii. 35, as saying, that upon the Jews of this time should come "the blood of Zecharias the son of Barachias whom ye slew between the Temple and the altar." Now, I believe that it is recorded in Josephus' history, that the Jews slew this Zecharias in the time of the Jewish war, about forty years after Jesus is represented as saying, that they had killed him already. Of course Jesus never could have said this, nor would a Jew acquainted with the times, as Matthew must have been, have been guilty of such an anachronism. The writer of that Gospel must therefore, have been a Gentile, and not Matthew. The same mistake is made by Luke xi. 51. On turning his attention to the external evidence in favour of the authenticity of the Gospels, the difficulties and objections accumulate. He will find, that they are not mentioned by any writer earlier than the latter half of the second century, after the birth of Jesus. The first writers who name the four Gospels, were Irenaeus, and Tertullian.[fn9] The competency of the testimony of these Fathers of the church, as to the genuineness of these books, is invalidated by the fact, (See Middleton's Free Enquiry) that they admitted the principle of the lawfulness of pious frauds, and from their having acted upon this principle, in having asserted in their writings, as from their personal knowledge, things which were certainly false; (See the work above referred to) while their capability to distinguish the genuine writings of the Apostles, from the numerous forgeries in their names that appeared about the same time that the four Gospels begin to be mentioned, is rendered suspicious by the fact, that they also give their sanction as Divine Scriptures, to books notoriously apocryphal; for instance the book of Enoch and the Sybilline Oracles.[fn11] The testimony of the Fathers who succeeded them is liable to the same objections, with this aggravation that its value diminishes more and more, as the distance of the ages in which they flourished increases, from that of Jesus Christ. Thirdly, He will find that these Gospels were never received by the Mother Church of Jerusalem and Judea, founded by the Apostles. The Jewish Christians, the countrymen of Jesus, who one would think had the best means of knowing the real history, and real doctrines of Jesus and his Apostles, uniformly rejected not only these Gospels, but all the other books of the New Testament.[fn12] They were also rejected, by several sects of Christians who flourished in the early ages of Christianity. Fourthly, he will learn too that the Christians most distinguished for their learning on this subject, for instance, Michaelis, Semler, Lessing, Eichorn, and the erudite Bishop Marsh, do allow and maintain in their works, that the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark and Luke were compiled from accounts of the life and doctrines of Jesus which became, after different additions, revisions and translations, the BASIS of our present Gospels; from such separate materials, which had gone through different hands, and had acquired a variety of text and context, from the different transcripts and translations in which they circulated, though for the most part they were copied verbatim from one another, several Gospels, among which were our three first Matthew Mark and Luke, were composed AFTER [fn13] the destruction of Jerusalem, and designated some by the names of the readers for whom they were designed, and others by the names of their authors and compilers. (See the life of Semler in Eichorn's Universal Library, as quoted by Mr. E. p. 465. of his work.) These Gospels then, in the opinion of these learned Christians, were originally compiled from anonymous writings, which had gone through different hands and been variously altered, and added to in the passage, before they became the BASIS,!! of our present Gospels.[fn14] Lastly, he will discover, that since their construction from such nameless materials, they have been further altered and interpolated. Celsus accuses the Christians of his time (the latter part of the 2nd century) of "continually altering their Gospels;" and the ancient Christian sects accuse each other of the same fact. That these accusations were well founded, is evident from Griesbach's edition of the Greek Testament, where besides the notice of some hundred thousands of various readings, we find not only single words, but whole phrases, and verses, and even entire paragraphs rejected as corruptions and interpolations. Neither have all these corruptions been accidental; for as much as the strongest text in the New Testament, in support of the doctrine of the Trinity and the Divinity of Jesus Christ, which is to be found in the first Epistle, called of John ch. v. 7, "there are three that bear witness in Heaven. The Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost and these three are one," has been struck out of the text by Griesbach, himself a Trinitarian, as a pious fraud, and is now I believe universally acknowledged as such by learned Christians. There are also, two other passages which for ages have been cited as proofs of the Divinity of Jesus (viz. "The Church of God which he has redeemed with his own blood," Acts ch. xx. 28. and "God was manifested in the flesh," in the first Epistle to Timothy, ch. iii. 16.) which the same Critic has proved to have been altered from their original reading to favour the same doctrine, and it is impossible to say how many more frauds of a similar nature might be detected, if the learned and candid Christians before- mentioned were in possession of the primitive manuscripts of the New Testament.[fn15] All these enormities Mr. Everett, who has a light hand in writing upon some subjects, comprizes with great tenderness in the following expressions, "our copies of the New Testament by the lapse of time, have suffered some literal alterations, which may have fallen occasionally on the quoted texts (he is trying to justify the writers of the New Testament, for quoting the Old Testament otherwise than it is written) and thus made them to differ from the reading of the Old Testament," p. 279. I have supposed that a reasonable and reasoning man, desirous to ascertain the truth of the religion of the Christians, and in the hope of finding it well founded, in the course of his examination of the testimony for the authenticity and authority of the books of the New Testament, comes to the knowledge of all these circumstances. If the reader be such a man, I would ask him, if he can rationally rest his belief in the moral attributes of God and his faith in a future life, upon a foundation composed of such materials? Mr. Everett observes "that as prophecy and miracle are equally divine works, it is impossible that they should contradict each other. They are equally the works of the God of truth, and whatever contradiction there appears to be between them, must be but apparent. If a person of whatever pretensions proposes to work miracles in support of those pretensions, in which nevertheless he is contradicted by express prophecy, one of these things is certain--that the prophecy is a forged one--or that we have mistaken the meaning of it--or that the miracles are not real," p. 3. of Mr. Everett's work. Granted--upon this ground I think that Mr. Everett can fairly be brought to issue. I presume that he will hardly persist in maintaining that the Gospels are a sufficient proof of the miracles they record, in the face of the objections to their authenticity and authority already stated--and as neither he nor myself maintain that the prophecies, with regard to the Messiah, contained in the Old Testament were forged, it remains only to be considered, whether he or I have mistaken the meaning of them. So that, as I have repeatedly said in my former publications, the prophets, after all, are the only criterion which can be appealed to certainly most important to the great interests of humanity, were it only on this account, that the dispute has occasioned the most unparalleled degradation, misery, and oppression to one of the parties to it.[fn16] PEBBLE II. "The Messiah expected by the Jews," says Mr. Everett, at the beginning of the second chapter of his book, "and which Mr. English supposes to be predicted in the Old Testament, is 'a temporal prince, and a conquering pacificator.' The Christians on the other hand maintain, that the prophets foretold not a political, but a religious institution, not a temporal prince, but a moral teacher, and spiritual Saviour. Which of these opposite views of the predicted character of the Messiah is correct, must be decided of course by an appeal to particular predictions. But it is also a matter of reason, and we have a right to argue upon the question from the character of God, and the nature of man. Which of these views the Jewish or the Christian doth most commend itself to the sincere believer in the moral government of God, and the rational and accountable nature of man?" This statement, I cannot help considering as both artful and unfair. That I have represented the Messiah as predicted to be "a temporal Prince and a conquering pacificator," is true, but it is not the whole truth; Mr. Everett would have it to be understood, that I maintained that the Messiah was to be merely "a temporal Prince;" whereas, those who will take the trouble to refer to the prior chapters of "the grounds of Christianity examined," will find that I have endeavoured to prove that the prophets predict, that he was also to be "a just, beneficient, wise, and mighty monarch, under whose government righteousness was to flourish, and mankind be made happy:" and I believe that there is not a single passage from the prophets quoted in Mr. Everett's 2d. chapter to prove his views of the Messiah, that I have not also myself quoted to prove the beneficent character of him I suppose to be predicted. Mr. Everett unwarily betrays his own unfairness in the following passage of his work, p. 63.---"Mr. English objects, that whereas the first characteristic of the Messiah was, that he was to be the Prince of Peace, in whose time righteousness was to flourish and mankind be made happy," &c.[fn17] How is it possible, I might ask Mr. Everett that I could have maintained that the Messiah was to be merely "a temporal Prince, and a conquering pacificator," when it is also true, as Mr. Everett confesses, that I maintain that "the first characteristic of the Messiah was that he was to be the Prince of Peace, in whose time righteousness was to flourish and mankind be made happy?" I confess, that I feel both contempt and indignation at such an artful mis-representation of my opinions, in order to attack them with more hopes of success, and as I do not profess to be a Christian, I may be excused for expressing what in this case I certainly have a right so feel.[fn18] The prophets, literally understood represent (as Mr. Everett will not deny) that the Messiah is to be a mighty Monarch, enthroned at Jerusalem under whose reign the Jews should be restored to their country and converted from their sins and errors, and established in the most perfect and endless happiness; that he will put down all opposition to his authority, and exterminate the wicked out of the earth, and unite the pious and good of all the human race under his government, making them participators of the eternal happiness of the favoured descendants of Abraham, that all sin, sorrow, and error shall be no more, and the earth become all Paradise. "Far more bless'd than that of Eden, And far happier days." [fn19] The difference between Mr. Everett's and my view of this representation is, that I understand the prophets to mean that the whole will be literally fulfilled; and Mr. Everett maintains that, that part which accords with the Christian view of the Messiah is to be literally understood, but that that part which is opposed to it must be taken figuratively. Who is so blind as not to perceive the motives for such an incoherent system, of interpretation! The passages which represent the Messiah as a Monarch reigning at Jerusalem, and whose temporal authority should extend over all the earth, Mr. Everett would interpret to signify, (by a figure) "a preacher of righteousness, and a spiritual Saviour of the souls of men;" because Jesus had no temporal authority whatever, and therefore to understand them literally would exclude the claims set up for him. The earth's being restored to a Paradisiacal state, and the extinction of all sin, violence, and misery throughout its circumference, Mr. Everett would interpret to signify, (by. a figure) "the blessed events," which have occurred, and the "changes that have taken place," since the promulgation of Christianity!! [fn20] Mr. Everett, in support of his system of interpretation, shows us, that the Supreme Being is frequently spoken of in the Old Testament, as a King and as a victorious warrior; and therefore infers, because such passages must be understood figuratively, that the passages in the prophets which speak of the Messiah in similar terms, must be also understood figuratively. To this it seems to me to be a sufficient answer to observe, that men who speak of the Deity, are obliged to employ human language and human ideas; because: "What can we reason but from what we know?" and therefore a great part of such language will be necessarily figurative; but it by no means follows from this, that the writers who are obliged to use this figurative language when speaking of the Deity, intend to be understood in the same sense when they apply the same expressions to describe men and their actions. On the contrary, as they were writing to men and for men, it is natural to presume, that they meant to be understood in the way that such expressions are universally understood by all men, when they relate to men and their actions. Such a system, of interpretation as this of Mr. Everett's, turns the Bible into a Babel of confusion: a man proceeding upon this system, might with equal plausibility turn all the good and prosperous kings of Israel and Judah into "Spiritual Saviours."[fn21] "What, says Mr. Everett, p. 63. would be thought of one, who after making a collection of passages which ascribe these attributes of royalty and conquest to God, such as Mr. English has made of those which ascribe such attributes to the Messiah, should infer as he does, that God is a just, beneficent; wise and mighty monarch reigning on a throne in Jerusalem?" To this I answer by asking in my turn, what should we think of one, who after making a collection, of passages which ascribe these attributes of royalty and conquest to God, as Mr. Everett has done, should therefore think himself authorised to infer, that the history of David the son of Jesse, contained in the Bible, (which, as all the world knows, is an oriental book abounding in figurative expressions) was not to be understood literally, but that it was very possible that this supposed monarch of Israel, who is represented as having "saved it from its enemies on every side," was after all, probably only a spiritual saviour of the souls of the Israelites, by having distinguished himself as a prophet, a preacher of righteousness, and a composer of Psalms!! [fn22] As Mr. Everett says, I "cheerfully leave this part of the controversy, with the answer to this question which every rational inquirer will give;" p. 63. Mr. Everett, however, in maintaining that the Messiah, was to be merely a preacher of righteousness, a founder of a new religion, and a. spiritual saviour of the souls of men, not only opposes dicta of the prophets of the Old Testament, but is expressly contradicted by the doctrine of the New, which maintains the same ideas of the Messiah that the prophets teach and the Jews believe; and this with the indulgence of the reader's patience I will plainly show. The angel is recorded, Luke, ch. i. 31, to have told Mary, concerning Jesus whom the author of that Gospel supposes to have been the Messiah, that "the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end." Now this is precisely the doctrine, concerning the Messiah, believed by the Jews from that time to the present; for we see that Luke represents that the Messiah was not to be merely a spiritual saviour of the souls of men, but was actually to set upon the throne of David, and reign over the house of Jacob for ever; which is precisely what the prophets teach and the Jews believe. Again, in the same ch. 68, the writer of that Gospel represents Zecharias, when filled with the Holy Ghost, as predicting concerning Jesus as follows. "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people, and hath raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David: as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets which have been since the world began: that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us: to perform the mercy promised to our Fathers, and to remember his holy covenant: the oath which he swore to our father Abraham, that he would grant unto us, that we being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life." Here we see again that in Luke's opinion the Messiah was not to be merely "a spiritual saviour of the souls of men," but that he was to "save Israel from their enemies and from the hand of all that hated them," and this too is precisely what the prophets teach and the Jews believe. Again, from the first ch. of Acts 6. it is evident, that the primitive Christians did not believe that the Messiah was to be merely a spiritual saviour of the souls of men, but that he would perform for Israel what was promised by the prophets. For the Apostles are represented there as asking Jesus, previous to his ascension, saying "Lord wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" The way the writers of the New Testament, get over the objection to the Messiahship of Jesus, founded on the nonfulfillment by him of the splended visions of the prophets relative to the restoration of the dispersion, the punishment of their oppressors, and the diffusion of universal happiness to the tribes and of the world, (which they represent as the consequence of the coming of the Messiah) is, not by maintaining that the Messiah was to be merely "a spiritual Saviour of the souls of men," but by affirming that Jesus would shortly come again into the world to fulfill them. "The Lord Jesus," says the writer of the second Epistle to the Thessalonians ch. i. 7, "shall be revealed from Heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of our Lord, and from the glory of his power: when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired of all them that believe."[fn23] Again, in the xii. ch. of the Revelations, Jesus is apparently spoken of as destined "to rule all nations with a rod of iron." And in the ii. ch. Jesus is represented as saying, that "he that overcometh and keepeth my words unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers even as I received of my Father," v: 26, and lastly, not to be tedious, there is a passage in the xix. ch. of Revelations, which proves decisively against Mr. Everett, that the primitive Christians had even more sanguinary ideas of the vengeance of the Messiah upon the wicked of the earth, than are even entertained by the Jews. Jesus is there, described thus, "I saw Heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that set upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war, and out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, and he treadeth the wine press of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God," v. 11, 15. Some idea of the slaughter meant by the writer of the Revelations by "treading the wine press of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God," may be understood from ch. xiv. 20, where it is represented that the blood of men came out of this wine press "by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs!!" I suppose that the reader is quite satisfied by what has been adduced, that Mr. Everett's idea of the Messiah's being merely "a spiritual saviour of the souls of men," is equally rejected by the Old Testament and the New, and since Mr. Everett does not and cannot pretend, that Jesus during the long space of 1800 years has fulfilled the predictions relating to the Messiah in a literal sense, which is the sense in which they must be fulfilled in order to be made good, Mr. Everett is left without better proof of the Messiahship of Jesus than bare opinion only, which attaineth not to any certainty. Mr. Everett supposes that a mere "Preacher of righteousness," is capable of fulfilling all the predictions of the Messiah, which represent him as putting an end to all wickedness and misery throughout the World. How absurd!! there never was,[fn24] a better or greater "Preacher of righteousness," than Jesus Christ himself, and what did he effect among the people of his age? the Gospels say, that they whipped him, and nailed him to a cross. There has been since his time, for eighteen hundred years, I know not how many millions of "preachers of righteousness," and what have they effected? look at the history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire: look at the histories of mankind for the last 400 years. What scenes do they for the most part, present to the shocked contemplation! are they not generally a complication of folly, madness, and devilism, worthy of being recorded in triumph by the evil one himself, in letters of blood and infernal fire? What success have the "Preachers of righteousness," of the present day? Do not these pious and good men, and pious and good they generally speaking undoubtedly are, do they not feel themselves obliged to tell you, that such is the depravity of human nature, that "teaching and preaching are all in vain;" that they are wearying themselves in "throwing pearls before swine," who receive them with a grunt, and "trample them under their feet?" Does not Mr. Everett himself tell us p. 80, that "it is too true that the mighty passions, which agitate the public intercourse of the world, are almost beyond the direct reach of moral means," i. e. of the "Preachers of righteousness." How then can he expect that a mere "Preacher of righteousness," is capable of subduing these "mighty passions," whose existence is incompatible with peace and happiness, and fulfilling the predictions relating to the Messiah? No, all history and experience testify that no merely human power can put an end to them. It must be done by the strong and armed hand of Heaven. Then, and not till then, shall exiled "justice look down from Heaven, and righteousness and peace shall kiss each other." Then, and not till then, shall "the wicked cease from troubling;" and the afflicted enjoy happiness. "These be the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the Messiah of the God of Jacob, (See the Heb.) and the sweet Psalmist of Israel; The spirit of Jehovah spake by me, and his word is in my tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, he that ruleth over mankind (see the Heb.) shall be just, ruling in the fear of God: And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain. But the sons of Belial shall be all of them as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken with hands. But the man that shall touch them must be fenced with iron, and the staff of a spear; and they shall be utterly burned with fire in the same place." 2 Sam. ch. xxiii. PEBBLE III Let us, however, follow Mr. Everett in the consideration of those prophecies, which he says p. 83, "are really to be regarded as proofs of the (Christian) religion." It is not necessary for me to say any thing further, in defence of the interpretation of the prophecy in Deut. xviii. 15, contained in my first publication, where I consider it as referring to a succession of inspired messengers from God to the Israelites; because Mr. Everett allows, that "in granting that this interpretation is correct, we should only follow the example of the most learned and judicious Christian interpreters," p. 84. I will pass therefore to the passage in the Psalm xvi. 10. "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, (i. e. the place of the departed,) nor suffer thy Saints (or thy pious ones[fn25]) to see destruction," as I have translated it. Mr. Everett maintains that the word translated by me in this place "destruction," sometimes means "corruption." Granted, but Mr. Everett will not deny that the original word sometimes signifies "destruction," and assuredly therefore I have as good a right to translate it my way, as he has to interpret it to signify "corruption."[fn26] I maintain, moreover, that I have a better right in this place to translate it "destruction," than he has to render it "corruption;" if the whole psalm manifestly relates to David, as is I think evident from the context, whose body underwent the natural decomposition occasioned by death; which therefore necessitates the translation I have given if the psalm relates to David which I think is evident. "I have set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth, my flesh shall also rest in hope: for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor suffer thy saints (or thy pious one) to see destruction. Thou wilt show me the path of life, in thy presence is fulness of joy, and at thy right hand there are pleasures for ever more." Since therefore the psalm evidently relates to David, I do not see how it is a prophecy of Jesus' rising from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion, as it is said to have been applied to prove, by Peter in the book of Acts ch. ii. I would observe also, that the modern German Theological scholars, who as Mr. Everett says (p. 247. of his work.) "are supposed to excell in Critical learning," do allow and maintain, by the confession of Mr. Everett himself p. 247 of his work, that this passage in the psalms is not a prophecy of Jesus, no more than any of the others adduced in the New Testament from the Old, but that it is quoted merely by way of accommodation or allusion. I presume therefore that Mr. Everett will cease to regard this passage as one of "the prophecies," which are really to be regarded as proofs of the Christian religion. The next passage of the Old Testament, which Mr. Everett relies on as a prophetical proof of the Christian religion, is the 2nd. psalm; "why did the nations (according to the Heb.) rage, and the peoples (ac. to the Heb.) imagine a vain thing. The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against Jehovah, and against his Messiah saving, let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us," &c. To the application of this prophecy to Jesus, I objected in my first publication, on account of these reasons, 1st. That "the nations," as it is in the original, did not assemble to crucify Jesus, as this was done by a few soldiers. To this Mr. Everett replies, p. 90. of his work, that "the Apostle (Peter in Acts ch. iv. 45,[fn27]) does not say, they assembled to "crucify him," their joint opposition was not limited to this single act, they were gathered together against him. And it is certainly true, that Jesus was an object of the united persecution of the nation of the Jews, by means of their bigotted priests and furious multitudes, and of the Romans, by means of their tributary sovereign, Herod, and their Proconsul Pilate." In reply to this I would observe, that the words "nations," and "peoples," in the original of the passage never signified the Jewish nation, but are used in the Hebrew Bible to signify all other nations but the Jews, or what is expressed by the word "Gentiles." Now it is said in the psalm, that "the nations and peoples," (exclusive of the Jews for the reason above-mentioned) should rage and that "the kings of the earth should stand up, and the rulers (of the earth,) take counsel against Jehovah, and against his Messiah." I do not see, therefore, how this passage could have been fulfilled by the Romans, who were but one nation, by means of their Proconsul Pilate and his soldiers: who (the Romans) were so far too from being enraged against Jesus, that it is certain, that all the Romans out of Jerusalem, did not even know what was doing against him, and Pilate himself was so far from being "enraged," and "taking counsel," against Jesus, that he befriended him as far as he dared, and made great exertions to save his life. Moreover, in the psalm, these "nations and peoples, and kings and rulers," are represented as saving "let us break their bands in sunder, and cast away their cords from us." This passage refers to the Messiah and the Jewish nation taken together, whom the Old Testament represents as to have "dominion over all peoples, nations and languages," and that "the nation and people that will not serve them shall perish, yea those nations shall be utterly wasted." Is. lx. [fn28] Therefore, these refractory nations and kings could not, and actually never have said this of Jesus, who was but an individual, to whom the expression "their bands and their cords," cannot apply; and finally, since Mr. Everett maintains that Jesus was "merely a spiritual saviour of the souls of men," I do not see how he can consider him as a character pretending to impose "bands and cords," upon any body. 2. I had also objected to the application of this prophecy to Jesus, because "God has not set Jesus as his king upon the holy hill of Sion, (as the psalm imports) nor given him the nations for his inheritance, nor the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession." To this Mr. Everett, p. 91, replies in the usual way, i.e. after interpreting as much of the psalm, as he thinks he can make accord with the history of Jesus, in a literal sense, he interprets this passage of the Messiah's being enthroned on Mount Sion, which he cannot make accord with it, in a figurative one. The reader must judge whether this be fair or reasonable. The latter part of the psalm, Mr. Everett contends, was fulfilled by the rapid spread of Christianity, and he quotes, in proof of this, some passages of the Fathers. To this I would reply, that those passages of the Fathers are notorious exaggerations, and convicted of falsehood by Middleton in his Free Inquiry. And lastly, I would observe, that even those nations who have embraced Christianity, can by no means be called the inheritance or subjects of Jesus, since they have since the days of Constantine and the Counsel of Nice renounced his doctrines, and perverted his religion into "a fabulous, irrational and blasphemous superstition,"[fn29] for as much as all of them, except a handful of Unitarian Christians, are worshippers of three Divine Beings united by an ineffable union; and by far the greater part of them are adorers of idols, images, and pictures.[fn30] And if I may, without offence, be allowed to express the sincere opinion of my heart upon this subject, I would say, that it is my serious belief, that if Jesus the son of Mary could return into the world, and learn, that his professed followers had placed him between the Cherubim, at the right hand of the Almighty, worshipping him as "God equal to the Father," as, "God of God, very God of every God:" and that by far the greater part had also placed Mary his mother on the other side of the Deity, worshipping her as "the mother of God!"[fn31] he would in my opinion renounce and denounce them as impious heathens, and possibly believe that they were possessed with devils. The next passage which Mr. Everett quotes as a prophecy of Jesus, is the 2d verse of the 5th chapter of Micah, "and thou Bethlehem Ephratah, it is little to be among the thousands of Judah; out of thee shall come forth unto me, him who is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been of old, from the days of ancient years:" [according to the Hebrew.] This I interpreted to signify, not that the birth of the Messiah should be in Bethlehem, but the descent of the Messiah should be derived from Bethlehem, i.e. from Jesse the father of David; (and that therefore a future Messiah who should be derived from this family, would fulfill the prophecy;) and this interpretation, I represent as being known and acknowledged by Hebrew scholars. "But the truth is, says Mr. Everett p. 94, that the original word, [translated by me "shall come forth,"] is familiarly used of the birth of a man, as "Mizraim begat Pathrusim, and Casluhim out of whom came Philistim,"" Gen. x. 13, 14. This is a very awkward quotation on the part of Mr. Everett, as it says nothing in favour of his views, but directly favours mine: for Philistim is a word in the plural number, and is used in the Hebrew Bible, to express "the Philistines;" and the word translated "come"[fn33] is also in the plural number, see Simon's Hebrew Bible. The passage therefore in Genesis x. 13. 14. imports that the Philistines were derived or descended from Mizraim. "Who the Hebrew scholars are, says Mr. Everett, who acknowledge this turn of the passage [in Micah] know not," p. 94 of Mr. Everett's work. If I were writing in Europe or America, I think that I could point them out; but if my memory does not deceive me, Grotius interprets the passage of the derivation of the Messiah from Bethlehem: and Mr. Everett will not deny that the modern Christian Hebrew scholars of Germany, disallow that this passage has any reference to Jesus, and affirm that it is quoted in the New Testament, Matthew ii. 5., only by way of allusion or accommodation. I had however, in order to show that this prophecy could not be insisted on by the Christians, said by way of argument, that allowing "that Bethlehem was to be the birth place of the Messiah, what then? will a man's being born in Bethlehem, be sufficient to make him the Messiah foretold by the Hebrew prophets!" This Mr. Everett seizes hold on in the following Way, p. 95. "Now if we were willing to be consistent, and cling to our principles wherever they carry us, it would almost seem that this concession might decide the controversy. The Messiah is to be of Bethlehem. This reduces to a little span, the number of those among whom he can be found. Moreover, Bethlehem is now in ruins, to all moral purposes its identity is gone.[fn34] It is the habitation of Turks, of Arabs, of Christians, and if there be any Jews there, none will pretend that the divisions of the tribes are preserved among them, so that the tribe of David, from whom the Messiah is to arise, is known in Bethlehem, from the rest. Neither can it be argued that hereafter when the Jews are restored, Bethlehem will be repeopled with Jews, the family of David be discriminated, and the prophecy admit of fulfillment, because Mr. English himself allows it to be the sense of prophecy, that the Messiah shall be born before the restoration. It only remains therefore to look back, and to see, of all that have appeared in Bethlehem, which has the greatest claim to this character." On this reasoning I would observe, 1st, that my concession on which it is founded is merely gratuitous; as the words "shall come forth" signify merely derivation; 2nd, that Mr. Everett is mistaken in supposing that Bethlehem is now in ruins. It is at present probably nearly as large and populous as it ever was. 3d, Mr. Everett is mistaken, in supposing that the family of David cannot be traced among the Jews. There are at this moment in the world, many families allowed by their bretheren to be descended from David. Should any of the Jews go to Bethlehem at any time to come, and have a male child born to him in that place, for aught that can be known beforehand, that child may be the Messiah and the prophecy be fulfilled in Mr. Everett's sense of it; which I repeat cannot be insisted on, as "come forth" certainly may signify, and in the case unluckily quoted by Mr. Everett, (Gen. x, 13. 14.) certainly does import, derivation.[fn35] The next passage, adduced by Mr. Everett, is the 10th v. of the ix. ch of Zechariah, "Rejoice greatly O! daughter of Zion, shout O! daughter of Jerusalem: behold thy king cometh unto thee: he is just and saved, lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass." Mr. Everett, after allowing that the Hebrew reads "saved" or "preserved" instead of "having salvation," as in the English version, observes, that many ancient versions read as in the English Bible. Whether the true reading be mine or his, is not of any consequence to the question to which this book relates. I maintain that a man's riding upon an ass into Jerusalem, is not sufficient to prove him the Messiah. I also repeat that the event predicted, is spoken of by the prophet as contemporaneous with the restoration of the division, [fn37] and of course could not have been fulfilled eighteen hundred years ago. "Mr. Everett tries to shove out this objection, by taking for granted, p. 98 of his work, that the chapter of Zechariah in which this prophecy is found, is a series of chronological predictions. But I must remind Mr. Everett that this pretention is inadmissible. None of the predictions of the prophets, except some in Daniel, are arranged in chronological order; they were delivered by parcels, and at intervals, frequently of some years; and these parcels generally have no connexion with each other. Mr.. Everett's reasoning upon the assumption here contradicted, is therefore inadmissible. Finally, the German Biblical Scholars so frequently mentioned, deny that this was a prediction of Jesus, and affirm that it is quoted by the Evangelists merely by way of accommodation. The next passage adduced is Zechariah xii. 10., "And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplications, and they shall look upon [or towards] me[fn38] whom they have blasphemed, [or pierced,] and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for an only son." The meaning of this prophecy is obscure. The word translated "pierced" in the English version, may also in the opinion of Grotius, and I add of Rosenmuller too, as quoted by Mr. Everett in the 104. p. of his book, be best rendered "blasphemed or reproached." It may refer to the time when, according to the Old Testament, the hearts of the house of Israel shall be cleansed from sin, and they shall turn to God "with their whole heart and with all their souls," as predicted by Moses. I conclude with observing, that this passage, quoted in the New Testament; John ch. xix. has long since ceased to be considered as a prophecy of Jesus by the German Critics, and is believed by them, to have been adduced in the gospel merely by way of allusion. (See Rosenmuller's observations in his notes on the passage.) I am afraid that the reader has found these discussions rather tedious, and am therefore happy to be at liberty to proceed to the consideration of the three famous prophecies of Jacob, Isaiah, and Daniel. "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a Law-giver from between his feet for ever; for Shilo shall come, and to him shall the obedience of the peoples be ." Gen. xlix. 10. So I maintain the passage should be translated. On this prediction I observed, (Grounds of Christianity Examined p.40. as quoted by Mr. Everett.) "That though this prophecy is allowed by the Jews to refer to their Messiah, yet it does not define, nor limit the time of his coming. For that it is perfectly evident to all who will look at the place in the Hebrew Bible, that it is pointed to read, not "the sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a Lawgiver from between his feet until Shilo come;" but "the sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a Lawgiver from between his feet for ever; for Shilo shall come, and to him shall the gathering of the peoples be." So that the prophecy does not intimate that the Messiah should come before the sceptre be departed from Judah: but that it should not depart for ever, but shall be restored when Shilo comes." On this Mr. Everett remarks, "now the points, commonly so called, have nothing to do with the division of a sentence into its members, or with what we call punctuation; but Mr. English intended to intimate, that according to the accents, the verse should be divided as he proposes." (p. 110, of Mr. Everett's work.) In return for this friendly attempt to set me right, I would beg of Mr. Everett to peruse the following extract from the celebrated Alting's Treatise on Hebrew punctuation, which he will probably look over with blushing cheeks. "Punctorum appellatione venit, quicquid in Hebraea Scriptura occurrit praeter literas. Sunt vero punctorum genera tria; unum eorum quae sonum moderantur; alterum illorum, quae tonum regunt, tertium mere criticorum est quae ad crisin masoretharum solummodo pertinent."' p, 9. edit. Septima. I do not think it necessary, to enter with Mr. Everett into the intricate dispute about the Hebrew accents, since he represents that they are of no authority in deciding the question between him and me, and because I think he will therefore not deny, that disregarding their authority, the passage will bear the rendering I have given it. I shall therefore proceed to establish the interpretation I have given of the passage in Genesis, 1st. by endeavouring to show, that Mr. Everett's interpretation would convict the prophecy, of falsehood; and 2dly. by showing that the interpretation I have given, is confirmed by the express declaration of God himself. This prophecy was delivered by Jacob before there was any king in Judah. The sceptre did depart from Judah, and with a vengeance too, at the dethronement and captivity of Zedekiah, and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans: consequently, if the sceptre was not to depart from Judah till Shilo came, the Messiah ought to have appeared before the dethronement of Zedekiah; as he certainly did not appear before that event, the prophecy, according to Mr. Everett's sensible interpretation, would be falsified. 2. The sceptre never has been restored to Judah since the dethronement of Zedekiah; because the tribe of Judah, since that period, have been in subjection to the Babylonians, the Persians, the Syrians, the Romans, and all the world. Mr. Everett maintains that the sceptre of Judah was in the hands of that tribe during the time that it was held by the Romans[fn42] who were of the tribe of Levi and the Herods who were Idumaeans. This idea appears to me absurd, but I shall not give myself the trouble to oppose it by argument, as it can be set aside by the express declaration of God, as reported by Ezekiel, ch. xxi. 26. Speaking of Zedekiah and his dethronement, the prophet represented the Deity, as saying, "thus saith the Lord God, remove the diadem, take off the crown; this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, (i. e. the crown or sceptre of Judah,) and it shall be no more until he comes whose right it is, and I will give it him." Here the Deity expressly declares, that from the dethronement of Zedekiah; the crown of Judah should be no more till the coming of the Messiah to whom he would give it. The Asmonaeans and the Herods cannot therefore be considered as having held it, as Mr. Everett supposes.[fn41] But this is not all, the original Hebrew of this emphatic declaration has a singular force, the idea it expresses is as follows, "I will make it (or "place it," the crown of Judah, i. e. the Messiahship) an occasion of perversion, of perversion, of perversion, and it shall be-no more till he come whose right it is, and I will give it him." Viewed in this light, who will deny that this declaration has been most strangely fulfilled? The Christians reproach the Jews with "perverse and mad delusion" in having successively believed a hundred: different impostors to have been the Messiah, while the Jews in their turn say that the Christians have been as mad as themselves, in believing that Jesus of Nazareth was this personage. I suppose therefore that Mr. Everett, after coolly viewing what I have stated with regard to this prophecy of the Shilo, will be sensible that he may as well discharge the unfortunate Rabbies he has seized upon and lugged into court as reluctant witnesses of the truth of Christianity, as their further attendance can be no longer necessary: and I would leave him to consider whether the liberal appellation of "dogmatical blunderer," which he has bestowed upon me, p. 114 of his work, relative to my arguments upon this prophecy, may not better apply to another than myself.[fn43] Let us now proceed to the consideration of the famous prophecy of Isaiah, which Mr. Everett styles, p. 144, the "carinficina Rabbinorum."[fn44] In order to be enabled to give a fair interpretation of it, it is first of all necessary to give a fair translation of it from the original Hebrew, which is what has not been done in the English version; forasmuch as there are therein not less than thirteen mistranslations. The following, I believe, will be considered as a just representation of the original as it stands in the Hebrew Bible. "Behold my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted, and extolled, and be very high. As many as were astonished at thee; his visage was so marred more than any other man, and his form more than the sons of man, (or Adam,) so shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him; for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider.[fn45] "Who hath believed what we heard? (or what was reported to us) and to whom was the arm of Jehovah revealed? For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground. He had no form nor comeliness; and when we saw him there was no beauty that we should desire him, He was despised and the outcast of men; a man of sorrows and familiar with grief;[fn46] and we hid as it were our faces from him, (or, as one that hid his face from us,) he was despised and esteemed not. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried (away) our sorrows.[fn47] Yet did we esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But he was wounded through our transgression, he was bruised through our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with[fn48] his stripes we are healed. ("healing is to us," Hebr.) All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath caused to light (or "meet") upon him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he would not open his mouth; he was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he would not open his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who would meditate [or consider sufficiently] his generation? [or who shall declare his generation;] For he was cut off out of the land of the living: through the transgression of my people was he smitten: ["smiting was to him," Hebr.] and he appointed his grave with the wicked, and with the rich[fn49] in his deaths.[fn50] Although he hath done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth, yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him: he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days,[fn51] and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand. He shall see [the fruit] of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant make many righteous, for he shall bear [away] their iniquities.[fn52] Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great: and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he hath made naked his life unto death; and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." Is. from the 13th. v. of the 52d. ch. to the end of the 53d. It is an acknowledged principle of sound criticism, that the same expressions in the same author, are to be-understood always, in the same sense, unless the context makes it plainly evident that another sense is intended. Let us, therefore, first of all, examine the chapters of Isaiah preceding the extract, in order to understand who he means by "God's servant." In the 49th. of Isaiah, v 3. it is said, "Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified." In ch. xlviii. 20. "The Lord hath redeemed his servant Jacob." In ch. xlv. 4. "For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect." In ch. xliv, 1. "Yet hear now, O Jacob my servant, and Israel whom I have chosen: fear not O Jacob, my servant." v. 2. "Remember these O Jacob and Israel, for thou art my servant. I have formed thee, thou art my servant O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of me." v. 21. "Ye are my witnesses saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen." ch. xliii. 10. See also the whole of ch. xlii. "Thou Israel art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend." ch. xli. 8. There can be no doubt therefore, that by "my servant," mentioned in the first part of the prophecy quoted from Isaiah, and by "my righteous servant," in the latter part of it, that "God's servant Israel" must be understood to be meant, provided there be nothing in the context to make it necessary to resort to some other interpretation. Mr. Everett says that there is something in the context, which forbids the application of this prophecy to "God's servant Israel." Let us then examine the reasons on which this assertion is founded. He says 1st, p. 136 of his work, that the subject of this prophecy is spoken of as "passive and unresisting," and he exclaims, "The Jews passive and unresisting! They are the most obstinate and unyielding of the tribes of the earth, and have resisted the arm of power, and the lapse of time, which have crushed all other nations into oblivion." The prophecy speaks of their non-resistance to oppression, and Mr. Everett tells us, to contradict this, that "they have resisted the arm of power, and the lapse of time, which have crushed all other nations into oblivion." This seems to me to be irrelevant. "They afflicted and complained not! their complaints have been fiercer than their sufferings have been cruel." Is this true? Does Mr. Everett really believe it to be true? Does not all the world know it to be false?[fn53] "They have done no iniquity? When no iniquity? Not in the days of Isaiah their own prophet, who cries, "Ah! sinful nation, people laden with iniquity, seed of evil doers." Not in the days of Josephus their own historian, who sets forth scenes of depravity which turn common wickedness into virtue, and declares "that the earth would have swallowed them, if the Romans had not swept them from its face?" No iniquity in the ages since; throughout the cities of the dispersion, where they are proverbially dishonest, and professedly unfaithful." &c.. &c. Now all this eloquent invective can be set aside so far as it affects my application of this prophecy by this simple remark; that this prophecy neither relates to the wicked Jews of the time of Isaiah, nor of Josephus, nor the ages since, but refers to "God's servant Israel" i. e., not to the rebellious and reprobate of the Jewish nation, but to those of the house of Jacob, who have, who do, and who shall adhere to God's law, and obey his commandments; for no others of them will God acknowledge as "his servants."[fn54] I would also observe, that the stress which Mr. Everett lays upon the phrase "no iniquity," shows either great carelessness, or great ignorance of the idiom of the Hebrew Scriptures; because every man, familiar with those writings, knows that this expression is one of those called Hebreisms, which must be understood in a restrained sense. In proof of which, and a decisive one too, I would refer him to the prophecy of Balaam, recorded, Num. ch. xxii. 21. where Balaam exclaims in his prophetic enthusiasm, "He [i.e. God] hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel." Now I suppose that the 53rd. of Isaiah, is a representation of what may be the reflections of the nations, who have despised and persecuted "God's servant Israel," through the influence of the prejudices of their mistaken religion, but who had become sensible of their error by seeing the tremendous interference of God himself in their behalf, predicted over and over again by the prophets as to happen. The natural consequence of this conviction in the minds of those nations, would be a revulsion of the feelings to the opposite extreme. They would exaggerate the merits, and extenuate the demerits of "God's servant." They would reflect with astonishment and commiseration on their past sufferings. "We considered them," they might exclaim, "as a God- abandoned race, and devoted to wretchedness by him for having crucified their king. But instead of being the victims of God's wrath, they were wounded through our cruelty, they were bruised through our iniquitous treatment. It is we who have sinned more than they. We having gone astray in our ignorance, being without the knowledge of God and his law. How passive and unresisting were they! They were oppressed, they were afflicted, and complained not: when through false accusations and mistaken cruelty, they were plundered and condemned to die, they went like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before the shearer is dumb, so they opened not their mouth. They were taken from the dungeon to be slain; they were wantonly massacred, and every man was their foe; and the cause of the sufferers who condescended to examine? They had done no iniquity to merit this: for their adherence to their faith, which we charged upon them as a crime, we now see to be approved of by their God, as an acceptable instance of unexampled perseverance in the cause of truth."[fn55] Mr. Everett proceeds, p. 145, "If any thing needs be added, the following observation is important, viz. that there is one passage so clearly inapplicable to the Jewish nation, and so totally incongruous with the rest of the interpretation, that Mr. English passes it over without even the attempt of an explanation. It is this: in a part of the prophecy which he puts into the mouth of the Gentiles we read, "for [the Hebrew I must remind Mr. Everett reads "by or through,"] the transgressions of MY PEOPLE was he stricken," This Mr. English paraphrases "for [it should have been "by or through"] the thoughtless crimes of my people he suffered. But what the Gentiles could mean by "MY PEOPLE" he does not say, and this difficulty is fatal to the whole interpretation."" I will presently show Mr. Everett, that this formidable objection, so emphatically announced, is after all a mere man in buckram; and I am almost sorry that in doing this, I shall be obliged to expose one more proof of Mr. Everett's having neglected the study of "the beggarly elements," in order to devote himself, without distraction, to the understanding of the delectable types and allegories of the New Testament. Mr. Everett certainly is a scholar and a man of talents, but he does not perfectly know, nor will [fn56] understand, the contents of the Old Testament; and the above objection is a proof of it. He maintains, that the expression "my people," could not be used by a Gentile, and that therefore my whole interpretation of the prophecy in Isaiah, is fatally affected by his objection. I request Mr. Everett to have the goodness to turn to the book of Ruth ch i. 16., where he will find this Gentile, "this Moabitish damsel" saying to her mother in-law "thy people shall be my people." Will Mr. Everett look a little farther to the 1 Sam. ch. v. 10. in the Hebrew, (not in a translation,) where he will find the Gentile Philistines saying, "They have brought about the ark of the God of Israel to slay me and my people?" (ac. to the Hebr.) again, v. 11. "Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it go to his own place, that it slay me not and my people." (ac. to the Hebr.)[fn57] Mr. Everett, therefore, may understand from these examples, why I passed over this phrase "without even the attempt of an explanation;" because, truly, I never dreamed, that this formidable objection, would have been made: or that any man would write, upon the Jewish controversy, who did not first inform himself of the contents and phraseology of the Hebrew Bible. Having, as I believe, shewn that the 53d. chapter of Isiah can be understood of "God's servant Israel," I will now attempt to shew the reasons why I think that it cannot relate to Jesus of Nazareth. 1st. Of the subject of this prophecy it is said v. 9. "and he appointed his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his deaths," in the plural. Now of Jesus we read in the gospels the direct contrary: for the gospels represent that his death was with the wicked, and his grave with the rich.[fn58] 2. The use of the word deaths, in the plural, appears to me to necessitate the application of the prophecy to a people, not to an individual. The same is evident distinctly from the Hebrew of v. 8. at the end of the verse, in the word "lamoo." 3. The subject of this prophecy is said to have been "oppressed", i. e. by pecuniary exactions: for that is the radical idea of the Hebrew word, as is shown and asserted in the lexicons of the Hebrew language.[fn59] This is peculiarly true of the Jewish nation, but was not true at all with regard to Jesus. And to conclude, this prophecy is quoted repeatedly in the New Testament. Now, that none of the quotations in the New Testament from the Old can be maintained as prophecies fulfilled by Jesus, is the opinion of the learned Christians Michaelis, Eichorn; Semler, Eckerman, Lessing, &c. as is allowed by Mr. Everett: of course the 53d ch. of Isaiah in their opinions cannot be adduced as a prophetic proof of Christianity: and Mr. Everett, in maintaining the contrary, has to struggle not only against argument, but the strongest Christian authority that can be produced on any question of Biblical Criticism. Mr. Everett, in several passages of his book, has thought proper to charge me with errors; but in the course of his discussion of my interpretation of the 53d. of Isaiah, has directly accused me of falsehood and of fraud, p. 148. of his work. With regard to many of these errors, the situation and circumstances I am in at present, put it out of my power to defend myself, because I cannot get the books he refers to in order to test his statements;[fn60] but of the latter imputations, the work of Mr. Everett itself not only enables me to justify myself, but to fix those charges upon him. He says in the 148 page of his work, remarking upon my assertion in "The Grounds of Christianity Examined."--"In a word the literal application of this prophecy [the 53d. of Isaiah] to Jesus is now given up by the most learned Hebrew scholars, who allow that the literal sense of the original can never be understood of him,"- "Why does not Mr. English name these Hebrew scholars? Simply because his assertion is not true." Indeed! Does not Mr. Everett himself say in the 247 p. of his work, that Eichorn in a view of a work of Dr. Ekerman says, that "the principle of accommodation, which the better interpreters had already applied to many violations [fn62] in the New Testament, is by this author extended to all." "Though this opinion of Dr. Ekerman," says Mr. Everett, must be allowed to savour a little of the extravagance of theory, Eichorn adopts it. As the work alluded to, the "Theological Contributions" has become a classical book with one class of the German divines, who are thought to excel in critical learning, there is no doubt that this doctrine is generally received among them. MICHAELIS we all know admits it; and Marsh is the only famous critic of the present day who does not embrace it. Now the 53d. ch. of Isaiah is quoted in the New Testament,[fn63] of course, therefore, according to Mr. Everett's own representations of the opinions of these learned critics, they must deny that the prophecy of Isaiah has any reference to Jesus, and hold that it is quoted merely by way of accommodation. And if so how has Mr. Everett dared to accuse me of falsehood in representing, that "the literal application of this prophecy to Jesus is now given up by the most learned Hebrew scholars, who allow that the literal sense of the original can never be understood of him"?! There is undoubtedly a falsehood told in this affair, and a conscious suppression of truth, but it is not I who tell the first, or conceal the latter. Mr. Everett then proceeds. "Priestley and Grotius are all he claims, [the reader may see by the above that I might have claimed more,] Priestley was a learned man, but he has no pretentions as a Hebrew scholar, and though Mr. English quotes Grotius, he does it incorrectly." He declares that "Grotius has applied it to Jeremiah, and says, that Jesus Christ has nothing to do with it except in a secondary sense, but that the whole of it from beginning to end refers to Jeremiah." "There are but few to whom I need say" continues Mr. Everett, "that the words of Grotius in his commentary are, "These marks have their first fulfillment in Jeremiah, but a more especial, sublime, and often indeed more literal fulfillment in Christ." Mr. Everett's work p. 148. I do not see how this passage of Grotius contradicts my representation of his opinion. The passage from Grotius quoted by Mr. Everett declares, "that these marks [i. e. the 53d. of Isaiah] have their first fulfillment in Jeremiah;" of course they could not be fulfilled by any other except in a secondary sense, as I have asserted. As for the "more especial, sublime, and often indeed more literal fulfillment in Christ," I have always supposed that this and similar expressions in other parts of Grotius' Commentary, were understood, by all who were acquainted with Grotius' history and the times in which he wrote, to be intended for a mere salvo, as a tub thrown out to that great whale the vulgar; to contradict directly whose opinions with regard to the prophecies, was in the time of Grotius very dangerous, as he himself, notwithstanding all his precaution and truckling, seriously experienced.[fn64] "Also, [Mr. Everett goes on to say,] in adducing the authority of Priestley for his interpretation without reference or qualification, Mr. English gives cause to think, that he did not know, or knowing forbore to state, that Priestley pronounces it impossible, in one of his works, to explain this prophecy of any but Jesus Christ. What Hebrew scholars are to be named with Lowth and MICHAELIS, who both assert the literal application to Christ, Mr. English may one day learn, that asseverations like these whatever immediate effect they produce, will finally stand in the way of his character for veracity." p.149. This has been to me the most irritating passage in Mr. Everett's book, because it is a tissue of impudent ignorance or impudent fraud, and as such I will prove it.[fn65] I have always supposed, that in quoting the opinion of an author as authority, it is the fairest way to quote his last avowed opinions. Now the work of Priestley's which I refer to as applying the prophecy of Isaiah to the Jewish nation, as I do, is entitled "Priestley's Notes on Scripture," and was published after arrival in America, several years AFTER the work to which Mr. Everett. refers, wherein Priestley, maintained that it was impossible to explain this prophecy of any but Jesus Christ." Therefore this fact "gives cause to think, that Mr. Everett did not know, or knowing forbore to state (which I believe in my conscience is the truth) this circumstance" which completely acquits me at least of a suppressio veri.[fn66] "What Hebrew scholars are to be named with Lowth and Michaelis!" Several--among whom Eichorn stands pre-eminent. Moreover, how has it happened that "the keen detector of dissonances" has contradicted himself in quoting Michaelis? Here, because he chooses to cling to the 53d. of Isaiah as favouring his cause, he quotes the name of MICHAELIS as asserting "its literal application to Christ." In another place, (p. 247.) where it is necessary to defend the New Testament from the charge of false application of the prophecies of the Old Testament to Jesus, he quotes again the great name of MICHAELIS as the patron of the system of accommodation, which system maintains that the 53d. of Isaiah has no application to Christ at all! but is quoted by the writers of the New Testament merely by way of allusion. Mr. Everett himself may live to learn, that such double dealing attempts to slander his opponent, and impose upon his readers, "whatever immediate effect they may produce, will finally stand in the way of his character for veracity," or at least for fairness and candour. These are not the only instances in which Mr. Everett has calumniated me, and abused the good nature of his readers. For example-- I had maintained in my first work, that the gospel called of Matthew was a forgery, and not a translation from the ancient Hebrew gospel of Matthew, and had supported my opinion by saying, that learned Christians allowed that "it had not the air of a translation." This Mr. Everett contradicts as follows: "But Mr. English is aware that MICHAELIS, the highest authority on these subjects, pronounces that it is a translation, and maintains his proposition not less from the unanimous testimony of the ancients than from internal evidence." p. 472, of Mr. Everett's work. I beg the reader after reading this to attend carefully to what is said by Mr. Everett in p. 464. "Semler's opinion of the origin and composition of the three first gospels, was the same as that of Le Clerc, MICHAELIS, Lessing, and Eichorn, and which has been illustrated and maintained by professor" Marsh. This opinion is that they were compiled from documents [not one document or gospel, but several] of our Lord's preaching and life, which had been committed to writing during his life, or immediately after, and which became after different additions, revisions and translations, the BASIS of our present gospels." Here the reader sees that when it is necessary to oppose my statements, in one place Mr. Everett avers that Michaelis maintained that the Greek gospel according to Matthew, was a translation of Matthew's Hebrew; in another place, where it is also necessary to oppose me, he avers that Michaelis believed that the gospel according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke were compiled compositions, and of course none of them were translations from any one work. "I would, says Mr. Everett, answer Mr. English fairly, or not at all." If this and the other instances quoted be specimens of Mr. Everett's fairness, what would be his conduct upon the very impossible supposition that he could be guilty of duplicity? 2. Mr. Everett tells his readers, that the Jewish Rabbies "are the most contemptible critics that have appeared;" that "they are so silly that he is almost ashamed to quote them;" that they were in short idiots. If so, of what value can their opinions be on controverted points, which must after all be settled by reason and scripture, and not by any bare human authority.[fn67] Nevertheless Mr. Everett is continually calling upon his reader to believe his arguments and statements upon the authority of these said Rabbies. If I were one of his Christian readers, I should consider myself insulted by such a procedure. It is almost tantamount to saying, "'it is true, my arguments are built upon the authority of fools, but yet they may serve to convince you." 3. I had accused the writers of the New Testament in my first publication, of having blundered in applying passages of the Old Testament as prophecies of Jesus Christ. Mr. Everett justifies them by maintaining in the 5th. chapter of his work, that it is true that these quotations cannot be supported as prophecies, but that they are excusable for the following reasons. The writers of the. New Testament were Jews; the Jews of their times believed that every text of Scripture had seventy-two faces, and that each one regarded the Messiah, and that the resurrection of the dead was also taught in every chapter of Scripture, though we might not be able to perceive it, and that the writers of the New Testament had been brought up in these silly prejudices, and therefore argued on these principles, i. e. that, notwithstanding their being inspired men and full of the spirit of the Almighty, they continued in this respect as silly as ever. Now if there be a pious and sincere Christian in the world, and should have this hypothesis laid before him for his acceptance as the best means of defending the writers of the New Testament, from the charge of fraud or blundering in their application of the prophecies, I venture to say that that pious and sincere Christian would, without hesitation, believe the proposer of such an hypothesis to be ruining the cause he professed to defend. "What! he might say, are the quotations in the New Testament from the Old, indeed founded on folly, and alledged through stupidity? Have the writers of the New Testament, who are allowed to have been inspired by the Most High God with a perfect knowledge and understanding of the Christian religion, who are representing continually that Jesus Christ was foretold by the prophets, and that their own minds were opened by the Holy Ghost to understand the Scriptures, have they indeed though continually quoting the Old Testament, after all never quoted for us even one of the predictions on which they say their religion is founded? and have they spent all the time they devoted to writing for the salvation of the souls of men, in fooling with the Old Testament in the manner you aver? 'Tis false! 'Tis monstrous! Either your hypothesis is a fable, or Christianity, itself is like the dreams of the Rabbies."[fn68] When I see such principles, and other like principles avowed in Mr. Everett's work, I feel myself authorized to propose to him the following questions, by which I hope he will not consider himself as put to the torture. What, Mr. Everett, were your motives for quitting, so abruptly and unexpectedly, the most respectable society who had done you the honour to elect you their pastor, believing you to be the only man worthy to succeed the learned, eloquent and lamented Buckminster? This abandonment of your station took place after you had engaged yourself in the examination of the question between me, Mr. Cary, and Mr. Channing. If you felt doubts of the validity of the Christian religion, and were therefore scrupulous about going into your pulpit every Sunday to preach Christianity in the name of the God of Truth, and therefore resigned your post, your conduct thus far does you honour and not shame. But if, after this, you have allowed yourself to be overcome by the solicitations of interested friends (who might have been anxious that you should publish something, that would allay the suspicions and silence the rumours your conduct had occasioned) to give to the world your very singular book, you have acted a part unjust towards me, and injurious to yourself, for you now see the consequence. You are taken in the snare you had laid for me, and your violent dealing has come down on your own head. I come now to the examination of the celebrated prophecy of the seventy weeks. This prophecy has always run [fn69] the crux Criticorum. It is unquestionably a very ambiguous one, since Mr. Everett himself informs us in a note, p. 167 of his work, that "Calovius whose day has passed a century ago, in a dissertation upon the mysteries of the seventy weeks, numbers twenty-five different Christian hypotheses," to which may be added at least two more, those of Michaelis and Blayney. If so, I would ask what stress a reasonable man can lay upon a simple [fn70] prophecy which is allowedly so ambiguous, as to have led Christians, sincerely disposed to make a prophecy of Jesus Christ out of this passage, to interpret it at least twenty- seven different ways? There appears to me to be a mistranslation at the root of the prophecy, which vitiates and confounds all the systems of interpretation; applied to it that I know of. I conceive that the prophecy should be translated thus. "Seventy times seven [fn71] are determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, to finish transgression and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteoussness, and to seal [up] the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy things." "Know therefore, and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore, and to build Jerusalem, unto the anointed Prince, shall be seven weeks; and [in] [fn72] threescore and two weeks the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times." [fn73] "And after threescore and two weeks shall the anointed one be cut off, and have no successor; and the people of the Prince that shall come, shall destroy the city, and the sanctuary: and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end desolations are determined." "And he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week, and in the midst of the [or, a] week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease; and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined be poured upon the desolate." Dan., ch. ix. 24, 27. Whatever may be the true sigification of this prophecy, it is not, I conceive, favourable to the purpose to which Mr. Everett applies it, for the following reasons. 1. That in supposing what is commonly translated "seventy week's," to signify four hundred and ninety years, the prophecy would be falsified; for certainly the expiration of this period did not "finish transgression," nor "make an end of sins," nor "make reconciliation for iniquity," nor "bring in everlasting righteous," nor "anoint the most holy things," i.e. as I understand it, the new and eternal temple and its altar, predicted by Ezekiel in the last chapters of his prophecies. On the contrary, the Jews became more wicked than ever, and the temple then standing was destroyed to its foundations. 2. It follows from what is allowed by Mr. Everett himself, p. 159 of his work, that from the going forth of the word to restore and build Jerusalem, to the birth of Jesus Christ, was not seven weeks and sixty and two weeks, i. e. sixty-nine weeks, but EIGHTY-FOUR weeks, for he says there, that the duration of the second temple was "NINETY-FOUR weeks," i. e. six hundred and fifty-nine years. Now if my memory does not deceive me, Jerusalem was taken and the temple destroyed by Titus about the year seventy after the birth of Christ, which is equal to the prophetic weeks; therefore take ten weeks from the ninety-four weeks, (the time Mr. Everett states to have elapsed from the building of the second temple, to its destruction) and there remains EIGHTY-FOUR weeks, and not SIXTY-NINE. Which circumstance, appears to me to vitiate entirely the interpretation of Mr. Everett, who supposes the annointed one," spoken of as to be cut off after the sixty-nine weeks, to be Jesus Christ. As to who the "annointed ones" were, the first I think entirely refers to Cyrus, and the last who was to be "cut off" and have no successor, may either mean the pious and good Onias mentioned in the book of Maccabees, who was the last I think of the legitimate Jewish High Priests, [for after his time History testifies that several, who had not the right of primogeniture as descendants of Aaron, obtained the priesthood by force, by intrigue, and by bribery;] or the last Jewish High Priest, Joshua [fn74] who perished during the siege of Jerusalem, according to Josephus. At any rate the anointed one who was to be cut off, cannot mean Jesus of Nazareth; because this anointed one was to be cut off in that same week of seven years, in which the city was destroyed, whereas Jesus was crucified forty years before that event; a circumstance I insist which excludes any application of this prophecy to Jesus. The claims set up for Jesus of Nazareth are moreover evidently rejected by Daniel's prophecy, even according to Mr. Everett's interpretation, forasmuch as he did not appear at the expiration of sixty-nine weeks, but of EIGHTY-FOUR. And to conclude this discussion, I would observe that Daniel, ch. iii, in his account of the image [seen in a vision by Nebuchadnezzar] whose head was of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly of brass, legs of iron, and feet and toes of iron and clay, is predicting the empires which have most influenced the fate of the Hebrew nation; i. e. the Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman, the last represented by "the iron legs," which did indeed bestride the world; these "iron legs" are represented as terminating in feet and toes part of iron and part of clay, which have no natural coherence; i. e. the Roman empire shall be divided into several kingdoms, partly strong and partly weak: a prophecy remarkably fulfilled in the history and condition of the kingdoms of Europe. The prophet goes on to say in ch. ii, that in the latter days of those kings or kingdoms, [which are yet subsisting] "the God of Heaven, would set up a kingdom which should never be destroyed," that of the Messiah. Of course the kingdom of the Messiah was not to be--not only not till after the destruction of the Roman empire--but not till the latter days of the kingdoms which grew up out of the ruins; whereas Jesus Christ was born in the time of Augustus, i. e. when the Roman empire itself was in the height of its splendour and vigour. Mr. Everett in p. 201, endeavours to escape the strong gripe of the prophet Daniel, by maintaining that these strong and weak parts, into which the Roman empire was to be divided, meant that it should be divided into "strong and weak institutions." Now to turn this sensible interpretation head over heels, [fn75] it appears to me to be only necessary to observe, that these strong and weak parts into which the Roman empire was to be divided, were, according to the prophet, ch. ii. 4.3. of Daniel, to "mingle themselves with the seed of men," i. e. make intermarriages; which, it appears to me to be a thing that "strong and weak institutions" cannot do. This, however has remarkably, been the case among the royal families of Europe, who intermarry too with the avowed design of cementing union and promoting peace and harmony. Nevertheless, agreeable to the prophet's prediction, they have not "cleaved together, but on the contrary have been almost constantly at war with each other. PEBBLE IV. "The children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim; afterwards shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days." Hos. iii, 4, 5. "I will set up one shepherd over them, even my servant David, he shall feed [or govern] them, and he shall be their shepherd: and I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David, a prince among them." Ezech, ch. xxxiv. 23. "David my servant shall be king over them, and there shall be one shepherd,"------" my servant David shall be their Prince for ever." Ezek. ch, xxxvii. 24, 25. "They shall serve Jehovah their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto [or for] them." Jer. xxx. 9. "Incline your ear and come unto me: hear and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. Behold I have given him for a witness, to the peoples, a leader and commander to the peoples." Is. Iv. 3, 4. From such passages I inferred, in my first publication, that the name of the true Messiah, was to be DAVID, and not Jesus. To avoid the force of these passages Mr. Everett has recourse to allegory and analogy. Jesus is prophecied of in these passages, says he, by the name of DAVID, because "there was an analogy between these two distinguished servants of God. David, from a low and humble estate, was raised to be the founder of the temporal glories of his kingdom; and Christ, not less humble in his origin, was the author of the spiritual distinction of Israel; David was the most illustrious political and Christ the most distinguished moral instrument of the Lord. David was commanded to entrust to his successor the election of the famous temple, which was the centre of the Jewish worship; and Christ has founded through the agency of his apostles that CHURCH by which his religion has been preserved, and diffused in the world." "To laugh, were want of dignity, or grace, "And to be grave exceeds all power of face." I assure Mr. Everett, that the days of Type and FIGURE are gone by, and have been succeeded among Biblical Critics by a stricter style of reasoning, and are now considered as "pious whims."[fn76] In the present advanced state of sacred Criticism even the beautiful allegory in Paul's Epistle to the Gal. ch. iv. which makes Hagar, Abraham's maid, nothing less than "Mount Sinai in Arabia;" and Sarah, Abraham's wife, to be the "Jerusalem, that is above the mother of us all!" has come to be regarded as "rather queer." I had also objected that the coming of the true Messiah, was according to the Old Testament, to be preceded by the appearance of Elijah the prophet on earth; and that he had not appeared before the era of Jesus, nor ever since. In answer to this, Mr. Everett endeavours to show 173. & seq., that a man named John the Baptist--a righteous person,--whose raiment was of camels hair,--and whose meat was locusts and wild honey, who lived in the age of Jesus of Nazareth, was Elijah, and had a right to be so considered--by a figure. To this I answer, that the prophecy of Malachi does not say "Behold I will send you one like Elijah, or "an Elijah,"---but it says explicitly, and expressly, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the Prophet, before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord; and he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers." Mal. iv. 5,6. Now who is "Elijah the Prophet?" undoubtedly the great prophet of Israel, who called down fire from heaven--who raised the dead to life--and who ascended alive to heaven in a chariot of fire; God by such a translation sufficiently intimating that he had in reserve for him, some extraordinary commission. Moreover the coming of this Elijah the prophet, was to be followed by. "the great and terrible day of Jehovah," by which name the prophets call the personal descent of Jehovah upon the earth, to take vengeance on the wicked, and to punish the oppressors and persecutors of his people.[fn77] Was the appearing of John the Baptist followed by this event? or has it yet occurred, though that man lived eighteen hundred years ago? His appearance, instead of being followed by the interposition of God to avenge Israel of its enemies, was on the contrary, followed by giving Israel into the hand of its enemies, who, "for the overspreading of abominations," made Jerusalem a desolation, and delivered over its sinful population to the chains of slavery, and the bands of Death. Elijah the Prophet is to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers." Did John the Baptist do this? On the contrary, the morals of his countrymen, in His age, instead of growing from bad to better, went on from bad to worse, till there was no remedy, and the Sword of God did his work. Indeed, and indeed Mr. Everett you are wrong; And your superannuated allies, TYPE and FIGURE, whom I disdain to combat, cannot aid you to defend what is indefensible. PEBBLE V. The Law of the Pentateuch, is pronounced by the Old Testament to be intended for a permanent and eternal Code for the Jewish nation. Mr. Everett denies this. Let us see nevertheless, if it cannot be proved. The promulgation of the ordinance imposing circumcision on the descendants of Abraham, is in these words. "And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant which ye shall keep, between me and you, and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised.--He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised; and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant." Gen. ch. xvii. 9.-- 14. The ordinance of the Passover is also declared to be everlasting, "and this day [i. e. the feast of the Passover] shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast unto the Lord throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever." Ex.ch.xii. 14. see also v. 15.--in v. 17. it is said "ye shall observe this day in your generations by an ordinance for ever." The ordinance of the day of atonement, is declared to be a perpetual institution, "It shall be a statute for ever unto you," Lev. ch. xvi. 29. "It shall be a Sabbath of rest unto you, and ye shall afflict your souls, by a statute for ever." v. 31. "and this shall be an everlasting statute unto you." v. 34. The feast of offering the first fruits of the year, is declared Lev. ch. xxiii. 14. "to be a statute for ever throughout your generations, in all your dwellings." The feast of the Pentecost, is also declared in the same ch. of Lev. 21. to "be a statute for ever, in all your dwellings throughout your generations." See also v. 41. The ordinance of the Sabbath is pronounced a perpetual institution, "Verily my sabbath ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you, throughout your generations--Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations for a perpetual covenant: It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever." Ex. xxxi. 13--17. As it is clearly evident from such passages as the above, that the law of Moses was intended to be a perpetual rule for the Israelites "throughout all their generations," as long as they should exist, Mr. Everett, in order to get rid of their force, has thought proper to annihilate the Jewish nation with a stroke of his pen. He maintains p. 350. of his work, that no such nation exists as the Jewish nation! This unexpected stroke was to me a confounding one--not on account of its force--but on account of its amazing effrontery. The Jews not a nation! ask the histories of mankind; ask all writers who give an account of the different nations and peoples into which the race of Adam is divided! and Mr. Everett will find that they all consider the Jews as "a distinct and peculiar people." "But, says Mr. Everett, p. 350, if they are a nation, we can be told whereabouts they dwell, and what cities they inhabit." Undoubtedly Mr. Everett can be told all this if he will take the trouble to ask their chiefs; and if he does he will be surprised to learn that the Jews, in cities and countries that can be named and pointed out, amount probably to ten millions of people, governed by their own law, so far as relates to their religion and intercourse with each other, and yet Mr. Everett maintains that the Jewish nation does not exist. [fn79] But I have a solemn answer from immortal lips to give to Mr. Everett's assertion, which he may possibly, if he be a religious man, hearken to, and tremble. "Thus saith Jehovah, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night; which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; JEHOVAH OF HOSTS is his name; if those ordinances depart from before me saith Jehovah, then the seed of Israel shall cease being A NATION before me FOR EVER. Thus saith Jehovah, if heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I also will cast off all the seed of Israel, for all that they have done saith Jehovah." Jer. ch. xxxi. 35, 36, 37. But, says Mr. Everett, p. 352, "above all, the Jews have no national existence in respect of their religion; which is really the principal point to be urged. The tribe of Levi which was separated to the service of the temple, and the family of Aaron, exonerated [fn80] to the priesthood, and ordained to be "a perpetual duration" have both been long extinct, At least have long since ceased to be traced." This is incorrect. The tribe of Levi is not extinct, neither has the family of Aaron ceased to be traced. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of Jews at present existing, are recognized by their brethren as of the tribe of Levi, and the descendants of Aaron to this day have the privilege of blessing the people in the Synagogues on solemn days, in a peculiar form which no other Jews are allowed to employ. This marvellous fact, that the descendants of David and Aaron should yet be discriminated amidst the general confusion of the tribes, is an illustrious verification of the following promise of Him whose word never fails, which I now oppose to the last rash assertion of his creature who has denied it. "Thus saith Jehovah, David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel, neither shall the priests the Levites want a man before me [fn81] to offer burnt offerings, and to kindle meat offerings, and to do sacrifice continually. Thus saith Jehovah: if ye can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season; then may also my covenant be broken with David my servant, that he should not have a son to reign upon his throne, and with the Levites the priests my ministers. As the host of heaven cannot be numbered neither the sand of the sea measured, so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites the priests that minister unto me." "Considerest thou. not what this people have spoken, saying, the two families which Jehovah hath chosen, he hath even cast them off? Thus have they despised my people that they should be no more A NATION before them. Thus saith Jehovah, If my covenant be not with day and night, and I have appointed, the ordinances of heaven and earth; then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David my servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, FOR I WILL CAUSE THEIR CAPTIVITY TO RETURN AND HAVE MERCY UPON THEM." Jer. xxxiii. 17--26. I presume that the CHRISTIAN CLERGYMAN who has contradicted his BIBLE and his GOD, is ready to exclaim like humbled Job; "I have uttered what I understood not; things too wonderful for me which I knew not; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Job ch. xlii. See Appendix. H. Shall I proceed to the consideration of some little arguments of Mr. Everett against the intended perpetuity of the Mosaic law derived from some expressions in the Psalms and the Prophets? Is it possible that Mr. Everett the scholar and the clergyman, is ignorant, that according to the idiom of the Hebrew language all such passages are merely expressive that God lays no stress upon sacrifice, and burnt offering, if unsanctified by righteousness and good works: Mr. Everett has blindly recommended a passage to my serious attention, p. 358, which ought to have made him sensible of this. "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, put your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh thereof. For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day I brought them out of Egypt concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this thing commanded I them saying, obey my voice." Jer. ch. vii. 23, 24. What! might a critic of the cast of Mr. Everett exclaim, did not God indeed command the children of Israel, when he brought them out of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices? are not the books of Leviticus and Numbers filled with regulations concerning them? Very true, might a rational scholar reply to him, but this and several other expressions in the Psalms and Isaiah are Hebraeisms, i. e. peculiar idioms of the language, expressing comparison not rejection; this passage in Jeremiah implying that when God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, in giving his law to them he laid no stress upon burnt offerings and sacrifices, in comparison with moral duties. Finally, I would ask Mr. Everett, whether he believes it was the intention of David, of Isaiah, and Jeremiah, to declare to the Jews of their times that God would no more accept of burnt offerings and sacrifices! and that the ceremonial law was ipso facto abolished; because, if such passages do signify the abolishment of the Mosaic law, it must be considered as having been a dead letter ever since David, Isaiah., and Jeremiah uttered these expressions. But, says Mr. Everett, p. 357, "the positive declaration of God, puts the matter [the repeal of the Mosaic law] beyond a doubt." "Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel; and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand, to lead them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was a husband unto them, saith the Lord: but this shall be my covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." Jer. xxxi. 31, &c. I would observe first, that Mr. Everett in applying this passage to the purpose for which he has adduced it, has against him the opinions of all those Christian critics whom he allows to excel in critical learning; viz. Michaelis, Ekerman, Lessing, Eichorn, &c. For this passage is quoted to the same purpose in the Epistle to the Hebrews, ch. viii. 8. and all the critics above mentioned maintain, as Mr. Everett allows, that none of the passages of the Old Testament quoted in the New, can be supported as prophecies of the things to which they are applied, but hold that they were quoted merely by way of accommodation or allusion. 2. I would observe, that this passage is one out of several more in the prophets, which represent that after the general restoration of Israel to their country, God will put a new spirit in them, and cause them to obey his voice, (which was not done at the giving of the law, the Israelites being left to obey it or not; after being given to understand what should be the rewards of obedience and the curses of disobedience,)' this very chapter of Jeremiah, from which this quotation is taken, expressly representing, that this new covenant is to be made AFTER the Israelites are restored to their own land: which completely excludes the idea that this new covenant can relate to a new religion, fabricated seventeen hundred years ago; and renders the solemnity with which Mr. Everett has introduced it, somewhat ridiculous. This new covenant also, is not to put the old law out of remembrance, but is to "write it on their hearts." "Behold, I will gather them out of all countries whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them again into this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: and I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for the good of them and their children after them. And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear into their hearts, that they shall not depart from me. Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land with my whole heart and with my whole soul." Jer. xxxii. 37--41. [fn82] In order to manifest that the prophecy of the new covenant, quoted from Jeremiah by Mr. Everett, had no reference to the promulgation of the new [fn83] law, I had said in my first publication, "that though the prophet speaks of a "new covenant" he says nothing of a new law. On which Mr. Everett labours greatly to prove, See p. 357 &c. of his book, that the expression "making a new covenant," must signify making a new law, and cannot signify reimposition of the old. There is a history in the Bible which convicts this opinion of mistake, which I propose in my turn to Mr. Everett's serious attention. "These are the words of the covenant, which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which he made with them in Horeb. And Moses called unto all Israel, and said unto them; ye stand this day all of you before the Lord your God, your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel; your little ones, your wives, and the stranger that is in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood to the drawer of thy water; that thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord thy God, &c. Deut. ch. xxix. And what was the covenant? why, as the reader may find by perusing the rest of this piece of history in the Pentateuch, it was the reimposition of the Law of Moses upon the new generation of Israelites, who were children when their fathers came out of Egypt. So that Mr. Everett must see, that God's making a new covenant, can be accompanied with a reimposition of the law, since in the instance considered, he has actually done it once before. I have, however, another passage in reserve, which must compel Mr. Everett to resign his unfounded opinions on this subject. Moses, the giver of the law, after predicting most exactly what should befall the Jewish nation for disobedience to it, in the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy, proceeds in the 30th ch. to inform them, that the time would come, when "the Lord their God will turn their captivity and have compassion upon them, and will return and gather them from all the nations whither the Lord their God hath scattered them." "If thy dispersion,[fn84] (says the lawgiver) shall be unto the utmost parts of heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee. And the Lord thy God will bring thee unto the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good and multiply thee above thy fathers, and the Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. And the Lord thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them that hate thee, and which persecuted thee. And thou shall return, and obey the voice of the Lord, AND DO ALL HIS COMMANDMENTS WHICH I COMMANDED ON THAT DAY." Deut. ch. XXX. [fn85] In accordance with this express prediction of Moses, that when the Israelites should be gathered out of all countries into their own land, God would give them a heart and disposition to love the Lord their God, and to do all his commandments which Moses was then delivering to them are the prophecies of Ezekiel; who in his last chapters, after giving a prophecy of the general return of the descendants of Jacob to their own land, proceeds to predict the division of the country, between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates, among the restored tribes; and minutely describes the plan, parts, offices, and ceremonies, of a new and eternal temple to be raised upon the ancient site of that of Solomon, that is to be consecrated by the re-establishment of the magnificent ritual of Moses, with augmented splendour. That the prophecy of Moses, and those of Ezekiel, referred to, have never yet been fulfilled, is undeniable; and that they will be fulfilled, will not be doubted by a Christian; and can hardly be disbelieved by a Sceptic, who will take the trouble to compare the history of "the eternal people,"[fn86] with the predictions concerning it which have been fulfilled to the letter. Mr. Everett, in the 449 page of his work, speaks rather contemptuously of the law of Moses. It is somewhat unusual to see a descendant of savage wanderers of the woods, who painted themselves blue in order to look handsome,[fn87] and whose posterity, and among them Mr. Everett himself, might so far as religion and morals is concerned, but for the instruction originally derived from the law of Moses, be still in the same respectable state, speaking lightly of a Book to which every nation on the Globe, who have any rational ideas of God or futurity, are absolutely indebted for that invaluable knowledge. The Jewish, Christian, and Mohammedan religions, by which so many of our unfortunate race have been brought to a knowledge of God, and made candidates for an eternity of bliss, are all founded on, and derived from the Pentateuch. If that Book had never existed, those religions could not have existed. All that part of mankind who have any claims to reason in their Religion, are therefore indebted to this Jew Book for the benefit. Nor is this all the wonder. The sublime and fundamental Doctrine of the Pentateuch--One God--Eternal and Supreme---the Almighty Creator and tremendous Avenger--can be traced up to Abraham, that wandering shepherd who at the command of God left his country and his father's house, to go to a foreign land., where he lived and died a stranger and a pilgrim. What ideas should we entertain of a man whose tent was frequented by angels, and with whom the Supreme "conversed face to face, as a man talketh with his friend!" of a man who lived and died a shepherd, yet to whom it was predicted four thousand years ago, by Him whose word never fails that "his name should be great, that it should be a blessing, and that in his seed should all the nations of the earth be blessed." Sceptic! has not this prophecy been fulfilled? Is not the name of Abraham a theme of blessing to the Jew--the Christian--the Magian--and the Musselman? Is not his name pronounced with reverence throughout the four continents of the Globe. Has not the earth been blessed in his seed? Is there a nation or people upon it, who have any rational ideas of God or futurity, who have not derived them from Moses, Jesus, or Mohammed? Are we not indebted to these descendants of this wonderful man,[fn89] for the consolations which support the soul under the trials of life, and for the faith and hope that smooth the bed of death? assuredly-- assuredly. The events of past ages have verified the divine origin of the prediction, and ages to come will still farther confirm it. Mr. Everett objects to the law of Moses, its multiplied forms and ceremonies; but these were mostly not obligatory upon the whole nation, but upon one tribe set apart to this duty, and who had nothing else to do.[fn90] The influence of these rights [fn91] and ceremonies--and no religion can perpetually exist without them, for after all the [fn92] man is the slave of his senses, and powerfully affected by the impressions made upon them--cannot be doubted by one who attentively considers their amazing magnificence. A temple blazing with the most precious productions of the mine,[fn93] and inaccessible to all but the consecrated descendants of one man, standing at the extremity of an immense area covered with variegated marble, and surrounded by magnificent corridors and porticos; a gorgeous host of nearly forty thousand priests,[fn94]: to minister at the ever smoking altar, and to nourish the eternal fire; the golden ewer containing the hallowed blood of atonement, and the censer streaming [fn95] clouds of fragrance, in the hands of the trembling descendant of Aaron approaching the inner sanctuary of the INVISIBLE AND ALMIGHTY; three hundred sons of song, accompanied with psaltery and cymbal, and "the harp with a solemn sound," resounding the attributes of HIM WHO IS, AND EVER SHALL BE;[fn96] and hundreds of thousands of worshippers prostrating their foreheads on the pavement in awe and extacy, as the temple shines forth with the Shechinah, streaming its rainbow glories into the heart of heaven, and covering the earth with its effulgence, plainly showing that GOD IS THERE! This, all this Mr. Everett pronounces, "all calculated to occupy the attention of a simple and unfeeling [fn97] people." p. 344.[fn98] There is, not however, a philosopher on earth that would [fn99] walk barefoot over its whole circumference to witness such a sight. With this terminates my reply to Mr. Everett. I leave it to his consideration, whether he has fulfilled the magnificent promises held out to the public in the splendid table of contents prefixed to his book, from which it should seem as if I were actually crushed into the dust; and I leave it to the consideration of my abused and deluded countrymen, whether the heavy artillery of the law and the prophets, which I have wheeled but from the Old Testament, has not fairly blown the old board fences behind which a crazy superstition is ensconced, and which Mr. Everett has painted up to look like real fortifications, and mounted with quaker guns, to splinters and fragments. THE SLING. WHAT was the real history and character of Jesus Christ? Mr. Everett had a right to consider my expressions, relative to this subject contained in my first work, as "far from being explicit;" for in fact I hardly knew what to think of the unparalelled son of Mary. That he was a pious and blameless man, I conceived that no man of good heart could doubt, while the supposition that he claimed to be the Messiah, I believed and still believe to be incompatible with such a character as his. With the reader's permission, I will now state what I conceive may have been the real truth with regard to him. I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was certainly a righteous man, and probably one who wished to bring back his countrymen, to a rational observance of the law, and to abandon their traditions. He appeared in an age when the religious part of the Jewish nation had made the law in many respects of none effect by those traditions, and had rendered their religion a stumbling block to the Gentiles, by reason of the puerile superstitions they had added to it: thus counteracting the express design, for which they had been set apart from other nations, viz. to bring them to the knowledge and acknowledgement of the unity and supremacy of God;) and violating the command of Moses, "ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people." Deut. ch. iv.-- and when the irreligious part of the nation, had become dreadfully corrupt. The Jewish people at that time were oppressed and despised; the prophets of the Old Testament had taught them to believe that at a time when their oppressions should be at their height, their Messiah should appear. Of consequence the appearance of such a man as Jesus Christ, at that time when they considered themselves as crushed under the Roman yoke, possibly led them or some of them to believe that he might be their expected deliverer. But the Jewish nation at that time were unworthy of such a deliverance. They longed for their Messiah, not for righteousness, but for vengeance sake; not to hail him as the benefactor of the human race, but as the avenger of their wrongs upon all the world who had crushed and despised them. Such a people were not the lawful candidates for the happiness of the eternal kingdom; and they afterwards learned, by the event of their struggle with the Romans, that they must not expect deliverance till they had become less unworthy of it. Jesus, by preaching against the traditions of the elders, by not observing the Sabbath day so rigidly as the Pharisees, by denouncing them as hypocrites, tithers of mint anise and cummin, washers of plates and platters, and neglecters of the weightier matters of the law, justice, judgment, and mercy, as serpents, a generation of vipers, whited sepulchres, and what not, had enraged these superstitious fanatics to the last degree. But they could not wreak their vengeance, because he was protected, by the people whom the gospels represent as expecting with the most anxious impatience, that he would announce himself as their deliverer.[fn100] But when repeated importunity, accompanied by an attempt to seize upon him and by compulsion oblige him to head them, terminated only in causing Jesus to escape and withdraw himself from their wishes [fn101] the people were disgusted, and abandoned him. The Chief Priests and Pharisees took advantage of this abandonment, to seize him and deliver him to the Roman governor as a dangerous man, who either was willing to head the people against the Romans, or who might be made the pretext of an insurrection, as the people had shown a disposition to recognize him as the Messiah. [fn102] Such I believe to be as near an approximation to the true history of Jesus Christ, as can be made at this day. Let us now review the points I have endeavoured to establish in this work. 1. I have endeavoured to show that the miracles, supposed by Mr. Everett to have been wrought by Jesus in proof of his Messiahship, cannot be proved; because that the New Testament is not to be depended on as competent testimony for the real history and real doctrines of Jesus of Nazareth; and therefore, that the question of his Messiahship must in all events be decided by an appeal to the Old Testament. 2. It has been shown, that the prophecies of the Messiah contained in the Old Testament, have not been fulfilled in Jesus; and that those prophecies which Mr. Everett regards as proofs of the Christian religion, were also not fulfilled in Jesus. 3. It has been shown that the law of Moses was intended for a perpetual law for the Jewish nation, "through all their generations forever;" and of course that it is, and must be perpetually obligatory upon them; and consequently whether JESUS BE THE MESSIAH, OR NOT, the Jews are bound to adhere to the law of Moses.[fn104] 4. It has been shown, that [fn105] it is absolutely impossible to know the real history of Jesus with certainty; the Jews and Christians ought for the future to consider his character, not as a subject of dispute, nor an occasion of quarrel, much less as a cause of mutual aversion, but merely as a matter of speculation. Should these positions ever be recognised by the Jews and Christians as reasonable and true, let us consider what, may be the consequence. 1. The Christians become sensible, that the New Testament is not to be depended on, would cease to hate, to persecute, and to annoy the unfortunate Jews, on account of their rejecting its doctrines. 2. The Christians would themselves adhere to the Old Testament, as the rock and rule of faith and morals; and would worship with the Jews the One Jehovah, without equal or companion, and obey the moral law of the Old Testament, leaving the observance of its ceremonial institutions to the nation for whom they were intended:[fn106] like the "devout Gentiles" in the time of Josephus and Christ. 3. The Jews, seeing the Christians Unitarians as well as themselves, would cease to regard the Christians as impious idolaters, and cruel enemies. 4. Both parties would worship and serve God as brethren, and children of the same father; and await in faith and hope the appearance of the GREAT PERSONAGE, who is to make them and all the good part of mankind, perfectly happy. Should what I have written have any tendency to promote union and friendly feelings, between the parties to a dispute which has for nearly eighteen hundred years occasioned such cruel oppressions and bloody persecutions to the side which is in the right, I shall not have lived in vain; and though the cause in which I have exerted myself has occasioned me much detriment and distress,[fn107] and may possibly ultimately oblige me to die in a foreign land, without a friend to close my eyes; I comfort my heart with the hope, that I may have done somewhat for the great cause of truth, justice, and humanity, and for the promotion of mutual regard and friendly feelings, among a very large portion of the human race. APPENDIX. A For instance, it is said in the 2d. ch. of the Gospel called of Mathew, that Jesus, when brought out of Egypt by his parents, "came and dwelt in the city called Nazereth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet. "He shall be called a Nazerene." Now there is no such passage as this throughout the Old Testament: the author of the Gospel called of Mathew must therefore, it seems to me, have forged this supposed prophecy out of his own head, or must have mistaken the sense of some passage in the Old Testament: if he was capable of either, he was not the honest and inspired Mathew, the Apostle of Jesus Christ. There is a passage in the Old Testament, which might have led a Gentile, ignorant of the Jewish Scriptures into this mistake, but could not have misled a Jew. In the history of Sampson Judges xiii. 5. it is said, "that he should be a Nazarite unto God from the womb." But a Nazerite was one thing and a Nazarene another: the first was a man who had a peculiar vow upon him, described Numbers. 7. ch., but a Nazarene was a man belonging the city of Nazereth in Palestine. The quotation is a proof with me, that the author of the Gospel ascribed to Matthew was a Gentile, of course not Matthew who was a Jew, and incapable of making such a blunder.[fn108] Again, in the Gospel called of Matthew ch. xxvii. a passage is quoted as a prophetic proof text from Jeremiah, says the author. "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet saying, and they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value; and gave them for the Potters field, as the Lord appointed me." There is no such passage as this in "Jeremy the prophet," nor in any of the Books of the Old Testament. But Jerom asserts, that it was taken from an Apocryphal Book ascribed to Jeremiah; he says that he saw the apocryphal book from whence this is taken. See Jerom's Commentary upon Matthew tom. iv. p. 1. p. 134, See also Marsh's Michaelis Vol. I. p. 490. as quoted by Mr. Everett. It appears to me, that an honest man would not quote, as prophetical authority, a forged book ascribed to Jeremiah: and an inspired man as the Christians suppose Matthew to have been, still less. In short the quotations in the New testament from the Old, adduced as prophecies of Jesus and the Religion of the New Testament, are so very inapplicable to that purpose, that the most celebrated of the Christian. Theologians of the present day, have found themselves obliged to abandon all attempts to support them as prophecies fulfilled in the events to which they are applied. They maintain, as will appear hereafter in the course of this work, that not one of the passages, quoted in the New Testament from the Old, was quoted as a prophecy, but merely by way of accommodation or allusion. If so, it may be replied, that it is very extraordinary, that the authors of the books of the New Testament who are almost continually representing that Jesus was predicted by the prophets, should after all never have adduced one of those predictions, although they are perpetually quoting the Old Testament. But the truth of the matter probably is, that the writers of the New Testament, did firmly believe that the passages they have quoted, were really predictions of the events and doctrines to which they refer them. This is clear from the Epistle to the Hebrews for instance, it is a deliberate and formal defence of the Doctrines of Christianity, addressed to the Jews, or Jewish Christians, in which the author attempts to show from the Old Testament, allowed by the Jews as oracular, that the Pre- existence, Divinity, Priesthood, and Atonement of Jesus Christ, as supposed by the Christians, were predicted in the Old Testament, and proved by his citations.[fn109] Who is so blind as not to see, that this system of Defence is merely one of the last resort, adopted in circumstances of distress for want of a better? Sure I am, that the believing part of the Christian Laity will never adopt this System, (though the unbelieving part probably gladly will) but would be extremely shocked on being told by their Clergy, that the passages quoted from the Old Testament by the writers of the New, which they and their predecessors from the 2nd century downwards have been accustomed to regard as veritable predictions of Jesus, and introduced too by such solemn prefaces as the following, "all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying" &c, or, "in this was fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophet saying" &c--were not after all adduced as prophecies, but merely by way of allusion.[fn110] PASSAGES FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT REFERRING TO THE MESSIAH AND THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF HIS KINGDOM. "Shiloh shall come, and to him shall the obedience of the peoples be." Ac. to the Hebr. Gen. xlix. 10. "The adversaries of Jehovah shall be broken in pieces; out of Heaven shall He thunder upon them; Jehovah shall judge the ends of the earth; and he shall give strength unto his king, and exalt the horn of his Messiah." I Sam. ch. il. 10. "These be the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was exalted on high, the Messiah of the God of Jacob, [See the Hebr.] and the sweet Psalmist of Israel. The Spirit of Jehovah spake by me, and his word was [fn111] in my tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me. He that ruleth over mankind [or the human race. See the Hebr.] shall be just, ruling in the fear of God, And he shall be as the light of the morning when the sun ariseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.--But the sons of Belial shall be all of them as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken with hands; but the man that shall touch them must be fenced with iron, and the staff of a spear; and they shall be utterly burned with fire in the same place." 2. Sam. ch. xxiii, 1.--7. " I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion, I will declare the decree, Jehovah hath said unto me. Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee; ask of me, and I shall give thee the nations for thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron: thou shall dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." Ps. 2. See also Ps. 21. "He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment. The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills by righteousness. He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure throughout all generations. He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth, [compare 2. Sam. ch. xxi. [fn112] 3. 4.] In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace as long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. [" his dominions shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even unto the ends of the earth." Zech. ix: 10.] they that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him, and his enemies shall lick the dust, The kings of Tarshish and of the isles [i. e. of Europe and the west,] shall bring presents; the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. All kings shall fall down before him: all nations shall serve him. For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and precious shall their blood be in his sight. And he shall live, and to him shall be given of the gold of Sheba; prayer also shall be made for him continually; and daily shall he be praised--His name shall endure for ever: his name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him blessed. Blessed be Jehovah God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. And blessed be his glorious name for ever; and let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen, and Amen.[fn113] Ps. 72. "Thou speakest in vision of thy holy [or pious] one, and saidst, I have laid help upon one that is mighty: I have exalted one chosen out of the people. I have found David my servant; with my holy oil have I anointed him: with whom my hand shall be established: mine arm also shall strengthen him. The enemy shall not exact upon him: nor the sin of wickedness afflict him. And I will beat down his foes before his face, and plague them that hate him. But my faithfulness and my mercy shall be with him: and in my name shall his horn be exalted. I will set his hand also in the sea, and his right hand In the rivers. He shall cry unto me thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation. Also I will make him my first born, higher than the kings of the earth, My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant shall stand fast with him. ["although my house be not so with God: yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure." 2. Sam. ch. xxiii. 5.] His seed also will I make to endure forever, and his throne as the days of heaven.--My covenant will I not break,-nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. Once have I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David. His seed shall endure for ever, and HIS THRONE AS THE SUN BEFORE ME. It shall be established for ever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in the heaven." Ps. 89. "Jehovah said unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand, until I make thy enemies thy footstool. Jehovah shall send the rod of thy power out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies.-- Jehovah at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge among the nations; he shall fill the places with the dead bodies: he shall wound the heads over many countries." Ps. 110. "It shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of Jehovah's house shall be established in the tops of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all the nations shall flow unto it. And many peoples shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many peoples: and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Is. ch. ii. " Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the Principality shall be upon his shoulder; and the Wonderful Counsellor, The Mighty God, The everlasting Father shall call his name the Prince of Peace.[fn114] [See. the Heb.] Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of Jehovah of Hosts will perform this."' Is. ix: 6, 7. "There shall come forth a rod out of the stem (or stump, i. e. the roots of a tree cut down) of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots, and the spirit of Jehovah shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of Jehovah, and shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of Jehovah; and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid: and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed: their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. [fn115] And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrices den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the peoples; to it shall the Gentiles seek; and his seat shall be glory." [See the Hebr.] Is. ch. xi. "And it shall come to pass in that day, that Jehovah shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth." Is. ch. xi. "And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast aver all the peoples, (i. e. their ignorance of God's dispensations) and the vail that is spread over all the nations. He will swallow up death in victory, (or to eternity), and Jehovah God will wipe away tears from off all faces: and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for Jehovah hath spoken it, and it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us; thus saith [fn116] Jehovah; we have waited for him, we will be glad, and rejoice in his salvation." Is. xxv. 7--9. "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of Jehovah, and the excellency of our God. Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees, Say to them that are of a fearful heart. Be strong, fear not, behold your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense, he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams, in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons where each lay, shall be grass, with reeds and rushes. And the ransomed of Jehovah shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." Is. xxxv. "Comfort ye, comfort, ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received of Jehovah's hand, double for all her sins. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of Jehovah, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. And the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it. The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; because the spirit of Jehovah bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; BUT THE WORD OF OUR GOD SHALL STAND FOR, EVER." Is. xl. "My people shall know my name: therefore shall they know in that day, that I am He that doth speak; behold it is I. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation, that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth! Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice, with the voice together shall they sing; for they shall see eye to eye, when Jehovah shall bring again Zion. Break forth into joy, sing together ye waste places of Jerusalem; for Jehovah hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem, Jehovah hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God." Is. lii. G. G. The good Christians of the United States, I do nut use the term in sarcasm, for they are good, speak in their books and sermons of the Christian religion as if it were every where the same as in the grand, free, and liberal republic. But the Fact is not so. An American who reads the poems of Homer, or Ovid's Metamorphoses, laughs at the religion of the ancient Greeks and Romans as a ridiculous folly; but when he visits those countries in Christendom which are not Protestant, he will be inclined to regard their religion as a blasphemy against the Most High. Go where you will in those countries, if you look into their churches, you invariably nod "a molten image, or picture, and a teacher of lies." [fn117] The prophets of the Old Testament reproached the idolatrous Jews, that "according to the number of their cities were their gods." But in the countries I speak of, the number of gods is according to the number of churches, and even houses; for every house contains an image or picture of some saint or other, who is considered as the tutelary guardian of the family. H Mr. Everett observes upon this prophecy of Jeremiah p. 75. of his work, "as it is near two thousand years since David has failed of a temporal prince up on his throne, and a temporal successor of Levites, and since it is declared that it shall NEVER fail of these, we must suppose that a spiritual secession and a spiritual service were intended: or else the solemn promise.-of God has been for two thousand years, without fulfillment." "Ut semper!"------ Sternhold and Hopklns had great qualms, When they did quaver David's Psalms; "Which made their hearts full glad. But had the prophet back been sent, To hear them SING,--and you COMMENT, They surely had run mad." I PASSAGES FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT PREDICTING THE RESTORATION OF THE DISPERSION. "Behold the former things are come to pass, and new things do I DECLARE: BEFORE THEY SPRING FORTH I TELL you them." "I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west: I will say to the north, give up; and to the south keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth. Every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea I have made him. Is. xliii: 3, 6, 7. "Thus saith the Lord God, behold I will lift up my hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the peoples; and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers; they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and shall lick up the dust of thy feet: and thou shalt know that I am Jehovah, for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me. Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the lawful captive delivered. But thus saith Jehovah. Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee; and I will save thy children. And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh: and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine: and all flesh shall know that I Jehovah am thy Saviour, and thy Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob." Is. xlix. " Jehovah shall comfort Zion, he will comfort all her waste places: and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of Jehovah; joy and gladness shall be found therein; thanksgiving and the voice of melody. Hearken unto me my people, and give ear unto me O, my nation: for a law shall proceed from me, and I will make my judgment to rest for alight of the peoples. My righteousness, is near, my salvation is gone forth, and mine arms shall judge the peoples: the isles shall wait upon me, and on mine arm shall they lean." [See the Heb.] Is. li. "Fear not, for thou shalt not be ashamed; neither be thou confounded: for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, [i. e. thy ancient Idolatry] and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhoods [i. e. thy two dispersions] any more. For thy Maker is thy Husband, Jehovah of hosts is his name, and thy Redeemer the Holy one of Israel; the God of the whole earth shall he be called. For Jehovah hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou hadst been refused saith thy God. For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy upon thee, saith Jehovah thy Redeemer. For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I will not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed: but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith Jehovah that hath mercy on thee. O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted: behold I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires, and I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones, and thy children shall be taught of Jehovah, and great shall be the peace of thy children. In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far from oppression: for thou shalt not fear, and from terror, for it shall not come near thee." Is. liv. "Behold thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee, because of Jehovah thy God: and for the Holy one of Israel; for he hath glorified thee," Is. lv. 5. "Behold the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples; but Jehovah shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Lift up thine eyes round about and see; all they gather themselves together, they come to thee: thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side. Then thou shalt see and flow together, and thine heart shall fear and be enlarged; because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces [or wealth] of the Gentiles shall come unto thee. The multitude of camels shall cover thee; the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah: all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense: and they shall show forth the praises of Jehovah. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee, the rams of Nebaioth [i. e. the chiefs of the Arabs Nebaioth was the eldest son of Ishmael] shall minister unto thee: they shall come up with acceptance to mine altar, [doubtless, because they have been worshippers of one sole God of Abraham and the prophets since, the days of Mohammed] and I will beautify the house of my glory. "Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows? Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver, and their gold with them; unto the name of Jehovah thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel because He hath glorified thee. And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee, for in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour have I had mercy on thee. Therefore thy gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night: that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea those nations shall be utterly wasted. The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir-tree, the pine-tree, and the box-tree together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary: and I will make the place of my feet glorious. The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee: and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee the city of Jehovah, The Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Whereas thou hast been forsaken, and hated, that no man went through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of endless [ac. to the Heb.] generations. Thou shalt suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breast of kings: and thou shalt know that I Jehovah am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob. For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver; and for wood brass, and for stones iron: I will also make thy officers peace, and thine exactors righteousness. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders: but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise. The sun shall be no more thy light by day: neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but Jehovah shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy Glory. Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; for Jehovah shall be thy everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. Thy people also shall be all righteous: they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified."' Is ch. Ix. "Thou shalt be a crown of glory in the hand of Jehovah, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God. Thou shalt be no more termed forsaken: neither shall thy laud any more be termed desolate--For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and, as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride so shall thy God rejoice over thee." Is. ch. Ixii. "Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her all ye that mourn for her: that ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations: that ye may milk and be delighted with the abundance of her glory. For thus saith Jehovah. Behold I will extend Peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like an overflowing stream: then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and be dandled upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforted so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem." Is. Ixvi. "Thus saith Jehovah, keep ye judgment, and do justice: for my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold of it, that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil. Neither let the son of the stranger who hath joined himself unto Jehovah, speak, saying, Jehovah hath utterly separated me from his people--the sons of the stranger that join themselves to Jehovah, to serve him, and to love the name of Jehovah, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant: even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer: their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted on mine altar; for mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Jehovah God which gathereth the outcasts of Israel saith, yet will I gather others to him beside those that are gathered to him." Is. ch. Ivi. "Tell ye and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that time: Have not I Jehovah? and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour, there is none beside me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the Earth: for I am God and, there is none else. I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto me: every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. Surely, shall one say, in Jehovah have I righteousness and strength: even to Him, shall men come: and all that are incensed against Him shall be ashamed. In Jehovah shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory." [fn119] Is. xlv. 21. &c. ERRATA. (The manuscript of this book was written in little more than three weeks at Cairo, amidst the hurry and bustle of my preparations to accompany Ismael Pasha to the Upper Nile. It has been printed without my having had it in my power to correct any of the proofs. In consequence of one or both of these circumstances the following. Errata almost entirely literal have been committed. I believe however that the Scholar will not find any misstatement of facts, nor the Logician any flaw in the arguments; the book lays before the Public. On these two points I feel quite secure in this respect: I calmly and firmly lay my gage at the feet of all Christendom. Let him who dares to take it up, do it.) [fn1 for "chooseth," read "chusest."] [fn2 for "possessions," read "prepossessions"] [fn3 for "these," read "their"] [fn 4. Mr. Everett appears willing to allow, as said before, the existence of these contradictions in the narratives of the Evangelists, particularly in their accounts of the resurrection of Jesus, [See p.456. of his work.] but maintains their credibility nevertheless, and in justification of this opinion, he quotes p. 457, the contradictions of the historians of the execution of the Marquis of Argyle; a fact nevertheless not doubted. But the cases are by no means parallel; that a rebel should be decapitated is a fact of notorious frequency in British history and very probable in itself, and as it is a fact without consequence, no man will be inclined to doubt it, if it be affirmed by history, notwithstanding some contradictions in the accounts of the circumstances of his execution. But I would ask Mr. Everett--if the same historians who report the execution of the Marquis of Argyle; had also affirmed that three days after he had his head cut off, he appeared again alive to his particular friends with his head on, talking and dining with them; and that one of these historians represent this to have taken place at London--another at Edinburgh--and a third at Stirling, would Mr. Everett, or any man in his senses, hesitate to consider these contradictions in the accounts of such a supernatural event as of no weight? Let us add to this another consideration.--Suppose that the Marquis of Argyle was a man of irreproachable and admirable character, and enthusiastically beloved by his friends, and that these friends believed in certain ancient prophecies which predicted that a Scotchman should arise, who should make Scotland supreme over all the earth, and live himself for ever; and that these friends believed the Marquis of Argyle to be the man: but that disappointed in their expectations by seeing him suffer his head to be cut off, they had their hopes revived by the appearance of this story of his having been seen alive by twelve of his most intimate friends, who were the heads of the party who had believed that the Marquis of Argyle would fulfill the prophecies aforesaid, and not content with receiving this contradictory story with avidity themselves, (which after all might have been invented as a salvo for his non-fulfillment or postponing the fulfillment of these prophecies, by submitting to be decapitated) insisted that every body else should believe it too, on pain of eternal damnation!--Would not Mr. Everett be inclined to suspect that these friends of the Marquis of Argyle were deluded men, and possibly noncompos mentis; and suppose that these friends of the Marquis of Argyle had told their party that he had been taken up to Heaven, for a time, but would return again into the World, before that generation had passed away, and would then fulfill the prophecies aforesaid; and that this party, notwithstanding, that the Marquis of Argyle did not come again before that generation had passed away nor for eighteen hundred years afterwards, still retained their belief in the aforesaid circumstances, and still insisted that everybody else should believe them too on pain of eternal damnation; would not Mr. Everett consider these men as certainly distracted? "Mulata[fn5] nomine de te fabula narratur," Mr. Everett.] [fn5 for "mulata" read "mulatto"] [fn6 Dr. Campbell in his notes to his translation of the Evangelists in loco. tries to prove that the Greek words in the Gospel of Matthew, which undoubtedly strictly and literally Signify "in the evening of the Sabbath," or "at the end of the Sabbath," may mean "the Sabbath being ended,"; which, if it could be established, would set aside the objection I have mentioned.] [fn7 for 24 read 36] [fn8 for 54 read 34] [fn9 Of lrenaeus and. Tertullian Mr. Everett remarks, that "Tertullian was a very shrewd writer, [yes indeed, and of his fraudulent shrewdness Middleton gives some notable instances in his true inquiry] and Irenaeus less fool than knave," p. 471. of Mr. Everett's work. I would observe to Mr. Everett, that this Irenaeus is the first writer who mentions the four Gospels, and that the Fathers of the Church who came after him in affirming the genuineness of the four Gospels appeal to this Irenaeus this "half fool, half knave," as the authority and voucher for their authenticity; the evidence for their authenticity stops short with him. Justin Martyr who flourished about the year 140 of the Christian Era, in his apology quotes, indeed, Memoirs of Jesus Christ which he says, were written by Apostles and Apostolick men. But it is, acknowledged by Bishop Marsh in his notes to Michaelis Introduction, to the New Testament, that the quotations of Justin Martyr are so unlike the expressions in the received Evangelists to which they appear to refer, that one of two things must be true; either that Justin does not quote our present Gospels; or else, that they were in his time in a very different state, than what they now are. Papias who wrote about 116 of the Christian Era says, that Matthew wrote a Gospel "in Hebrew which every one interpreted as he was able," but says nothing of a Gospel of Matthew in Greek; and that the present Greek Gospel called of Matthew could not be a translation from Matthew's Hebrew, appears from Bishops Marsh's Dissertation on the origin of these[fn10] first Gospels; where he proves that it is not a translation of one work, but a compilation from several. The same is maintained by the German Theologians to be presently mentioned. [fn10 for "these," "the three"] [fn11 These Sybiline oracles so often, and so confidently appealed to by the Fathers of the Church, are now universally allowed to have been forged by the Christians themselves: of them Scaliger speaks as follows. "Quid pseudo--Sybilina oracula quae Christiani gentibus objiciebant, quum tamen e Christianorum officina prodiissent in Gentium autem Bibliothecis non reperirentur? Adeo verbum Dei inefficax esse censuerunt, ut regnum Christi sine mendaciis promoveri posse diffiderent? atque utinam illi firimi mentiri coepissent," apud La Roche Mem. Lit. 7. 331. as quoted by Mr. Everett, p. 228. of his work. If the reader will consult Toland's Amyntor, he will find appended to that work, a list of the names of I think about a hundred Gospels, Epistles, and Revelations, forged by the Gentile Christians in the first centuries of the Christian Era. The Celebrated Semler, so distinguished for his knowledge in Biblical criticism and ecclesiastical antiquities, has said, as Mr. Everett allows, p. 464 of his work, that the general Epistles of James, Peter, and John and Jude, and the book of Revelations, contained in the New Testament at present, must be also placed upon the long list of pious frauds, fabricated in the first ages of Christianity.] [fn12 It is an allowed principle of liberal criticism, that when the expressions of an author are capable of two senses, one of which would make him contradict himself, and the other would leave him consistent, it is but fair to suppose that he meant to be consistent, and therefore should be interpreted in the sense which would exclude self contradiction. How has the liberal Mr. Everett acted on an occasion of this kind? I had said in my first work "the Jewish Christians, the disciples of the twelve Apostles, NEVER received, but rejected every individual book of the present New Testament." I had also maintained, that the Gospels were forged after the middle of the second century. Now any reasonable man would I believe understand me as using the expressions, "Jewish Christians, the disciples of the twelve Apostles," in the same sense as when we speak of the followers of Plato, Whitfield, or Wesley, by the name of Disciples of Plato, Whitfield, or Wesley, without confining the expression to signify their immediate disciples; the insertion of the words, "never received," also suggests that this must have been my meaning. Nevertheless Mr. Everett, in order to bring me in contradiction with myself in order to serve a turn of his own, remarks upon my words, "without presuming to decide upon the opinions of a writer, so keen in detecting dissonances as Mr. English, I do presume to think, that if every individual book, of the present New Testament, was rejected, by the disciples of the twelve Apostles, that they must have been in being at the time they were rejected, and therefore could not have been forged, a century after that period. I am not conscious of any wish to weaken the force of Mr. English's arguments, by affecting to speak of them in contemptuous terms, I would, as I have, answered them fairly, or not at all." p.445.] [fn13 If so, what becomes of all Mr. Everett's laboured argument upon Jesus' prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem contained in p. 401 et seq. of his work; if it be true that the prophecy was written, after the events predicted took place!] [fn14 If this opinion be true, and Bishop Marsh may be considered as having almost demonstrated it to be so in his dissertation upon the origin of the three first Gospels, it follows, that these Gospels could not have been written by the Apostles, and immediate followers of Jesus Christ; for certainly, men personally and intimately acquainted with all his actions, and all his doctrines, (as were his Apostles and all his immediate followers, and influenced too by the Holy Ghost, as they are all represented to have been in the book of Acts, ch. iv. 31,) in setting about writing Memoirs of Jesus, would write from their own complete, inspired and personal knowledge; and would not compile from "books which had gone through various hands, and been variously altered and added to in the passage." No! such a procedure would be that of men who had no personal knowledge of the events they undertook to record; and who were therefore obliged to consult books for information. In order to place in a fair light the absurdity of supposing the four Gospels to have been written by the Apostles and first followers of Jesus, I will suppose, a case. Suppose there should appear in the world, four different Lives of Napoleon pretending to have been written by four of his aids de camp, who had constantly been near his person, from the time that he commanded the troops in Paris till his dethronement; and that one of them represented that the expedition to Egypt took place when he was General of the troops in Paris, another that it took place when he was first Consul, and the others that it took place when he was Emperor. Would any man believe, that ALL these books were written by aids de-camp of Napoleon, who had been constantly near his person from the time that he commanded the troops of Paris till his dethronement?] [fn15 The New Testament, is I believe unparalleled among all the ancient books that have come down to us for the number, and importance of the corruptions, and alterations, it has undergone. What! can learned Christians tell us of several hundred thousands of various readings, in copies of a small book like the New Testament--that almost every, perhaps every verse has been altered, interpolated, or retrenched in some copy or other--and then add in the same breath that the book is nevertheless to be received, as containing the uncorrupted doctrines of the founders of Christianity? If we did not know the inconsistency, and blindness of prejudice, one might be tempted to suspect that these learned men were hardly sincere. What! is it to be insisted on that a book which Providence has evidently abandoned to carelessness, or to roguery, or to both, was nevertheless intended by the Supreme, as a credible record of an ultimate, permanent and universal religion for all mankind!!-- The insane effrontery of such a supposition deserves to be hooted out of countenance. Mr. Everett says, p. 243. of his work "that not one of the books of the New Testament, nor all of them together, were intended to be a forensic defence of Christianity. On the contrary, the historical books are brief, and imperfect memoirs, which were not designed, nor supposed to contain all the faces, and which do not set forth, nor profess to set forth the evidences of the religion. The Epistolary parts are the counsels, instructions and affectionate sentiments which the occasions of the infant churches, drew from their founders. Now from these we expect, to collect the whole of Christianity, of its doctrines, its precepts, and its sanctions." Can Mr. Everett confidently believe, that God Almighty, who descended to the earth, to deliver a Code to one nation would have left the world to collect as they could a complete, universal, and permanent code of religion and, morals from "brief and imperfect," interpolated and corrupted memoirs, and a few occasional letters?] [fn16 Mr. Everett recommends to me to adopt as an appropriate motto for the second edition of my first work, a passage from Celsus which speaks of the dispute, between the Jews and Christians as a "quarrel about the shadow of an ass." p. 327. of Mr. Everett's work. Is it so indeed! How then has it happened that Mr. Everett's Coreligionists have for fifteen hundred years persecuted, despised, oppressed, trampled underfoot millions, plundered and massacred hundreds of thousands, tortured, racked, and roasted alive thousands of the Jewish nation; and all in a quarrel about "the shadow of an ass!" O shame, where is thy blush. O meek eye'd humanity, how hast thou been outraged and trampled on! For my own part I do not consider it as a quarrel about "the shadow of an ass," I rather think it has a much greater resemblance to a quarrel about an ass in the Lion's skin; in which quarrel the Christians have shown themselves to be every thing but the Fox in the Fable upon that subject.] [fn17 Mr. Everett, also quotes my words in another place into the 211 page of his work. "The Jews had certainly good reason from their prophecies, to expect no Messiah but one who should set on the Throne of David, and confer Liberty and happiness on them, and spread peace and happiness throughout the earth, and communicate the knowledge of God and virtue, and the love of their fellow men to every people." Is this a character "whose laurel is to be watered by tears," the leaves of which is to "grow green in an atmosphere filled with sighs and groans?" I would ask Mr. Everett.] [fn18 Mr. Everett says page, 107. with great gravity, "to hear the Evangelists charged in vulgar terms with misquoting and changing words, by one, who could himself fall into the errors and the misrepresentations we have just exposed, has moved me to a warmth of language, which I did not think to have used. But, I beg pardon: it is the New Testament which teaches us, that we "beware lest we condemn ourselves, in what we judge another." And Mr. English has let us know that the New Testament morality is pernicious to society. Justly, most Justly, does Dr. Leland observe, that "it would be hard to produce any persons whatever, who are chargeable with more unfair, and fraudulent management in their quotations, in curtailing, adding to, and altering the passages they cite, or taking them out of their connexion, and making them speak directly contrary to the sentiments of their authors than the Deistical Writers!!" They are indeed sad dogs, it must be allowed, Mr. Everett.] [fn19 See Appendix B] [fn20 Mr. Everett considers the happy reign of the Messiah as having actually commenced with the era of Jesus Christ, and that we are actually enjoying its blessings. Of course he must consider his being whipped, and gibbetted by his own subjects, and leaving the world in the hands of those holy men, Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, Domitian, and Heliogabalus, kingdom rising against kingdom, and nation against nation; (though the prophets declare that in the reign of the Messiah "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,") famines, earthquakes, and pestilences in divers places, (though the prophets declare that in the reign of the Messiah, the earth shall become a Paradise, and that God shall wipe all tears from off all faces, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away,) that horrid Jewish war in which perished more than eleven hundred thousand of the Jewish nation, while the rest were dispersed and enslaved, (though the prophets say, that in the reign of the Messiah the Jews should enjoy the most perfect and endless happiness,) the theological quarrels, frauds, forgeries. Councils, and Excommunications, and an endless detail of Battle and Murder, the irruptions and devastations of the Goths Huns and Vandals, the rise and establishment of "these venerable institutions," the Popedom and the Inquisition, the persecutions and wars excited by St. Dominic, the wars of Charlemagne, and the Teutonic Knights upon the Germans, giving them no alternative but the Gospel or the Sword, the Crusades, the pious exploits of Cortez and Pizarro in America, the comfortable state of things during the dark ages, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the wars carried on by the Catholicks against the Protestants, and the wars since carried on by the Protestants and Catholicks, indiscriminately with each other, as among those "blessed events, and happy changes," I use Mr. Everett's words, intended by "the highly figurative language," of the Old Testament prophets predictive of the reign of the Messiah! If the reader will pursue those predictions contained in Appendix, B, or that beautiful compend of them in Pope's "Messiah" he will I believe allow, that if it were possible for such things as the above mentioned, to be really intended by those prophecies, they would be the greatest hoax, and the most flagrant and enormous verification of the old proverb "parturiunt montes nascitur ridiculus mus," on record. [fn21 It is worth notice that when the term "Saviour," is applied in the Old Testament to men, it invariably signifies a temporal deliverer, for instance, Judges iii. 9.15, in the Hebrew.] [fn22 The writers of the Old Testament frequently speak of the head, hands, ears, eyes, and even nostrils of the Deity. Will Mr. Everett infer that because these expressions must be understood, figuratively, that whenever the sacred writers speak of heads, hands, ears, eyes, and noses of men, that said heads, hands, ears, eyes, and noses had no physical existence, but must be interpreted figuratively? If so, I do not despair of seeing Mr. Everett publish a dissertation, crowded by numerous quotations from the Rabbies, in order to prove, that the history of David's cutting off the head of Goliath, was in all probability merely a figurative account, in the oriental style, of the success of the prophet David in a controversy he had with a certain Philistine Heathen Priest of the God Dagon, ("strange sea monster, upward man, and downward fish:") who had written a book in order to prove against the Israelites) that their law was "a dead letter," and they themselves no "nation."] [fn23 Paul in the first Epistle to the Thessalonians appears to say, as he affirms "by the word of the Lord," that the second coming of Jesus to do all this, should take place during the life time of the generation to whom he was writing, for he says 1 Thess. ch. iv, 15, speaking of the Christians who had died before he wrote, "this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God; and the dead in Christ should rise first. Then we which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord." The Gospels represent Jesus as saying, that there were some of that generation who should not taste of death till they saw him come in the manner that Paul describes. For Mark, in the xiii. ch. of his Gospel, after representing Jesus as prophecying the destruction of Jerusalem, says that his discourse at that time went on as follows. "But in those days after that tribulation, (i. e. after the siege and destruction of Jerusalem) the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light. And, the stars of Heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in Heaven shall be shaken. "And then shall they see the son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory, and then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part the earth to the uttermost part of Heaven. Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass till all these things be done. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." Mark, xiii. 24, &c.] [fn24 after "was" insert "according to Mr. Everett,"] [fn25 Mr. Everett has produced some authorities which make it doubtful whether the genuine reading in this place was "thy saints or thy pious ones," in the plural, or thy "saint, or thy pious one;" in the singular. The matter is not worth disputing about, if it be made evident that the Psalm refers to David.] [fn26 Mr. Everett p. 87. of his work: in trying to prove that the original word signifies "corruption," has unhappily produced a passage which not only proves nothing in his favour, but a great deal in mine. "Therefore, says Daniel, I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me, for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption ("the word here in the original is from the same root as that, in the 16 Psalm translated by me destruction?") and I retained no strength." Dan. x. 8. Most commentators on this passage, I believe, suppose that Daniel meant to signify that he was petrified at the sight of the angel; and that his physical faculties were suspended through terror. Does Mr. Everett suppose, that the prophet meant to; signify that he was actually putrified at the sight of Gabriel?] [fn27 for "Acts 4. 45" read "Acts 4:25"] [fn28 "Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two edged sword in their hand. To execute vengeance upon the nations, and punishments upon the peoples: To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute upon them the judgment written; this honour have all his saints. Praise ye Jehovah. Ps. cxlix. This passage alludes to the same doctrine: there are many in the psalms and prophets of the same import. It is but justice however to the Hebrew prophets to add, that they hold the balance of justice between Jew and Gentile very fairly, in representing that on account of the superior light vouchsafed to the former, God would punish them "double for all their sins;" and that before they shall be advanced to the eternal supremacy promised them, the most terrible trials and severities shall exterminate the wicked and worthless from the nation.] [fn29 Which is of the same family as the religion of Thibet. The Christians believe that God became incarnate in the infant Jesus. The Thibetians and Chinese believe that God is incarnate in the person of the Grand Lama. And each of them considers the other as "ignorant and deluded idolaters."] [fn30 All the Christians throughout the world, except the Protestants who do not constitute more than a fifth of the Christian world, kneel and pray before the crucifix, images, and pictures of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints. Their churches are crowded with images and pictures, before which they burn lamps, tapers, and incense. The great toe of the right foot of an ancient bronze statue of Jupiter, christened St. Peter, in the magnificent Church of St. Peter at Rome, is nearly worn off by the devout kisses and rubbings of the worshippers of that Saint, If the spirit of the Unitarian Jew Peter, could animate that statue, I believe that the foot of it would have long since kicked the teeth down the throat of some of his worshippers. See Appendix, G. G.] [fn31 That Mary is "the Mother of God!" is the creed of all the Christian sects except the Protestants, and Nestorians. The European and Asiatic Christian churches, except a precious handful of Unitarians, appear to act upon the principles of the old Samaritans. So these nations feared Jehovah, and served their graven images, both their children, and their children's children; as did their Fathers, so do they unto this day." 2 Kings xvii 41. Their religion is as inconsistent and inconsequent as the conduct of Nebuchadnezzar; who "answered unto Daniel, and said, of a truth it is that your God is a God of Gods, and a Lord of Lords," Dan. ch. ii. 47. And who, notwithstanding, set up an idol of gold, and commanded all peoples, nations, and languages to fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up: and threatened that whoso falleth not down; and worshippeth should be cast into a burning fiery furnace." ch. iii, and who on another occasion "acknowledged and blessed the most high, and praised and honoured him that liveth forever and ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom from generation to generation:" ch. iv. and who notwithstanding destroyed his Temple, and lodged its sacred vessels in the treasure house of his idol. The service of the Christian churches not Protestant resembles Bellshazzar's feast. They drink out of the golden, and silver vessels, which they have "taken out of the Temple of the house of God which was in Jerusalem," and praise the Gods of gold, of silver, of brass, of wood, and of stone,[fn32] which see not, nor hear, nor know. And the result of the business, if the Old Testament predict the truth, will be, that the mysterious menaces written by the figures of God, will be fulfilled in confusion, wo, and destruction] [fn32 I allude to the crucifixes, images, and pictures of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the Saints, with which all Christian churches, not protestant are filled.] [fn33 for "come" read "came"] [fn34 This is incorrect, Bethlehem is at present one of most populous cities in Palestine.] [fn35 I request the reader to look at the Hebrew of Gen. x 14. which Mr. Everett must have neglected to do: as otherwise I cannot account for his having referred to a passage which directly establishes my interpretation of the passage in Micah against his own. I trust that this little circumstance will induce Mr. Everett to have a fellow feeling for some errors which he says exists [fn36] in my first publication. He will find some further proofs adduced from his book in the course of this work, of the truth of the old adage, "humanium est errare."] [fn36 for "exists" read "exist"] [fn37 v. 10. of the ix. Ch. Of Zechariah, "and I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battlebow shall be cut off; [i.e. there shall be war no more]; and he [i.e. the Messiah,] shall speak peace unto the nations: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth." Has this been yet fulfilled or have the nations called Christians, for the last 180 years, been more peaceable than others? on the contrary, is it not they who have perfectionated the arts of war and destruction!] [fn38 "I render me," says Mr. Everett, "because I cheerfully allow" with Eichorn and De Rossi in loco, that it is supported by most authorities." Why then does Mr. Everett abuse and insult me, p. 103, 104., for neglecting to notice the other reading he mentions, which he considers not to be the true one! If it be erroneous, what is it good for and if it be false, how has the inspired Evangelist quoted a false reading, (Gospel according to John ch. xix. 34. &c.,) in order to make out a prophecy? I had objected in my first publication that the assertion of Stephen, when filled with the Holy Ghost, that "When Abraham went out of the land of the Chaldees, he dwelt in Haran, from thence, after his father was dead, God led him unto this land in which ye dwell." Acts vii. 4., directly contradicts the chapter in Genesis, where the Story of Abraham's leaving Haran is related, for it is certain from thence, that Abraham left his father Zerah[fn39] in Haran alive when he departed, and that he did not die till many ' years afterwards." On this Mr. Everett observes, "The difficulty is this, that Zerah is said in Genesis ch. 11. to have been seventy years old when Abraham was born, and to have lived two hundred and five years. But Abraham is also said to have left Haran when he was aged seventy-five years [Genesis xii. 14.]; at which time of course; his Father was one hundred and forty-five years old, and therefore must have lived sixty years after his son Abraham left Haran. But Stephen in the passage in question says, that Abraham left Haran after his Father was dead. Now this direct contradiction is quite cleared up by the Samaritan copies of the Pentateuch, which give the whole age of Zerah exactly 145 years: and confirm the account of Stephen, that Abraham waited till the decease of his father, and then immediately left Haran. Had Mr. English no light upon this subject, but what he derived from his unlettered Rabbi, or even from the Commentators whose "troubles" he finds or feigns, one could not blame him for passing over this fact in silence. But I remember well the time, when Mr. English collected[fn40] the text of the Samaritan copy as it stands in Kennicott's Bible, for the express purpose of ascertaining the diversity of the Hebrew and Samaritan texts. To suppress now a reading from this copy, which entirely removes his objection, argues a deplorable forgetfulness, or a willful fraud; and it would be a piece of affectation in me to speak of it in milder terms," p. 340. of Mr. Everett's work. To put this courteous language to the blush, it is only necessary to observe, that the most distinguished Hebrew Critics [I think, if my memory does not deceive me, I may name De Rossi, for instance,] adhere to the reading of the Hebrew bible as the true one, and have not suffered themselves to be swayed by the strong Christian motives which have biassed Mr. Everett in this instance. Stephen, who was a Jew, would also never have given the preference to a reading-of the Pentateuch of the Samaritan's, which also abounds with blunders. The Gentile author of the Book of Acts probably fabricated the speech.] [fn39 for "Zerah" read "Terah"] [fn40 for "collected" read "collated"] [fn41 Mr. Everett, in. a note to p. 194 of his work, speaks of Salathiel and Zorobabel as succeeding to the "throne of Judah after the Babylonish captivity. Any one who will read the books of Ezra and Nehemiah with attention, will be satisfied that this language is quite ridiculous: forasmuch as that Salathiel was a captive slave at Babylon, and Zorobabel was but at best the Governor of Judea for the King of Persia, and all the Jews under his command were subject to the orders of Tabnai[fn42] and Shether Boznia. "Governors beyond the river" for the Persian King. See Ezra ch. ix. 8, 9. Neh. ch. vi. 6, 7. and ch. ix. 37. In this and in many other instances, Mr. Everett in order to gain his cause, has been obliged to forget the command recorded in "the beggarly elements," to have been given from Mount Sinai, "thou shalt not speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment." Exod. xxiii, 2. There are, however, cases in which lawyers allow that this precept may be dispensed with, particularly if the cause be of great importance: and more particularly still when the client pays well.] [fn42 for "Romans" read "Asmonaeans" for "Tabnai" read "Tatnai"] [fn43 The Jewish Rabbies have been treated, by the Christian controversial writers, in the same manner as the foolish King of Israel was treated, by the messengers of the defeated Benhadad. "Now the men [the messengers of Benhadad] did diligently observe whether any thing would come from him, and did hastily catch at it." 1 Kings, ch. xx 33. The famous work of Dr. Allix, exposed by Nye, where Allix tries to show by quotations from Jewish writings, that the ancient Jews were Trinitarians, is a notable instance of this. Mr. Everett's work itself, enables me to lay before the reader one at least, which will verify my observation. Mr. Cary in his refutation of my first work, quoted with great solemnity, one Rabbi Alshek as maintaining that the 53d. of Isaiah referred to the Messiah. Every one of Mr. Cary's lay readers, undoubtedly have supposed that this was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But it was not. The whole truth leaks out in Mr. Everett's work, in a note to p. 143, where Mr. Everett says, that this famous Rabbi "having acknowledged that the prophet had the Messiah in view [in the 53d. of Isaiah,], he afterwards applied the oracle to some other person, and finally to Moses!" Now in the name of common sense I would, ask, of what value can the testimony and authority of a man be, who could be capable of such contradictory nonsense as this. The Jewish Rabbies, in general, have verified completely the prediction of the prophet. "Jehovah said, Forasmuch as this people draw near to me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precepts of men, [possibly alluding to the traditions of the elders,] therefore, behold I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder; for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid," Is. ch. Xxix. 13, 14. Mr. Everett says, that it is notorious that the Rabbies the most contemptible critics on the sacred writings that have appeared, p. 49. and in another part of his work, says that they are so silly that he is almost ashamed to quote them, 229. Notwithstanding all this, he is continually justifying his own follies by appealing to theirs: such is Mr. Everett's respect for the understandings of his readers, that he is continually hauling the poor Rabbies to the bar of the public; he makes them "hold up their culprit paws," and pinches their ears to make them say what he pleases. His pages are crowded with their names; unutterable names; names which reduce "arms! and George! and Brunswick!" into tameness and insignificance. If such means of defending Christianity are successful, I shall no longer doubt that it was possible for the Devil Asmodus to have been corked up in a bottle by the hard words of a conjurer.] [fn44 for "carinficina," read "carnificina"] [fn45 Or "soliloquize upon" the original word in the Hebrew is used in this sense in Is. ch. xiv. 16] [fn46 "Thou hast made us the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the peoples," says Jer. Lam. ch. iii. 45.] [fn47 The prophet here compares Israel to the scape goat, who had the sins of the people-laid upon him, and was banished into the wilderness.] [fn48 for "with" read "through"] [fn49 Or "fierce oppressor." See Eichorn's Lex. In loc.] [fn50 "In deaths often" says Paul, meaning terrible dangers or sufferings.] [fn51 Mr. Everett in his zeal to catch me at a fault with regard to this prophecy of Isaiah, has himself stumbled and fallen. I had maintained in my first work, in reference to this passage, that of the subject of this prophecy it is; said, "He shall see his seed and shall prolong his days," and that therefore it could not relate to Jesus who had no posterity. Mr. Everett in his remarks upon this p. 147 of his work, spiritualises the word "seed," and says it relates to the church, and he exclaims against me as follows, p. 147. "What indolent carelessness it is to say that the word seed shall not be spiritualized here, when the very next verse says, he shall see the travail of his soul." "What poor mortals we are," says Sir Hugh! If Mr. Everett will look at the Hebrew, he will find that the "indolent carelessness" he speaks of, was not mine but his; for the Hebrew word translated travail, has no reference whatever to childbearing, but signifies fearful toil, or painful distress. The English word travail, in the time of the translators of the Bible had this signification. They have employed it in this signification in the passages following: "And Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord had done unto Pharoah and to the Egyptians for Israel's sake, and all the travail that had come upon them by the way." Ex. ch. xviii. 8. Again, "this sore travail hath God given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith." Eccles. i. 13. As Mr. Everett says, p.114 of his work, "It is good to be positive but better to be correct; and the reader I doubt not will agree with me, that such dogmatical blundering as this is prevent-. ed from being offensive only as it is ludicrous."] [fn52 The prophet represents here, that Israel should be to the nations what Aaron was to the Jews. Aaron was considered as bearing away the sins of the Jews on the day of atonement. "Ye shall be named the priests of Jehovah, and in men shall call you the ministers of our God." Is. ch. lxi. 6.] [fn53 Have their complaints been "fiercer" than the flames of the piles of Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, Italy, Germany, and England, in which thousands of them have been burnt to ashes? For shame! Mr. Everett. The recording angel may drop a tear upon what you have written, not to blot it out, but in compassion for the miseries for which you seem to think words of "complaint" are an equivalent.] [fn54 Mr. Everett, after having poured forth what is quoted above, very consistently adds in a note to p. 137, "I cheerfully agree with one of the most active benefactors of the Jewish nation, who while he acknowledges these facts, changes the blame of them to the Christians." Very true, and truly I do not know, what right one man has to trample another into the mire, and then abuse him for being dirty. Mr. Everett remarks upon the same subject, p. 210, "Bowed down with universal scorn, they have been called secret and sullen; cut off from pity and charity, they have been thought selfish and unfeeling, and are summoned to believe on the Prince of Peace by ministers clothed with terror and death." What an unconscious comment from the pen of a Christian on the words of the prophet. "He was despised and the outcast of men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering, and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised and we esteemed him not."] [fn55 I have had the satisfaction to find, since my return to America, that the distinguished Christian Hebraeist, Rosenmuller, in his notes on the Old Testament, maintains as I do, that the 53d. of Isaiah, refers not to Christ, but to the Hebrew nation, of which the following extract from the work referred to may serve as proof, "In tot. V. T. locis Messias tam variis modis describatur, tamen ne unicum quidem vestigium deprehenditur unde collegere jure posset existimasse veteres Haebreos Messiam quem expectabant talia esse perpessurum quae ministrum divinum hac pericopa, [Is. 53.] descriptum perpessum esse legimus. Ubicunque vel in Psalmis vel in prophaetarum libris de Messia agitur semper nobis proponitur imago potentissimi regis, felicissimi herois, gloriossissimi reipublicae statoris, coloribus ab imperii Davidici aut Salomonei flore, regumque orientalium pompa sumptis depicta." Rosenmuller's notes on the 53d. of Isaiah.] [fn56 for "will" read "well"] [fn57 "Thou hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people." says Sampson's Philistine wife to him, Judges ch. xiv. 16.] [fn58 I had made the same objection in my first publication. Mr. Everett, in his elaborate view of my arguments upon the 53d. of Isaiah, has not thought proper to notice this objection: possibly he thought it a trivial one.] [fn59 Buxtorf's remark upon the very word in Is. 53. ch. is "arctatus, coarctatus, oppressus, oppressus tuit, propria exactiquibus." Buxtorf's Heb. Lex. Mr. Everett p. 146 of his work says, that Robertson declares that the radical idea of the word which Mr. English insists upon rendering "he was oppressed by pecuniary exactions", to be "fearful distress." To this I answer, that Robertson was a Christian and had a reason for saying so.] [fn60 The only works I have had to aid me in the composition of this book, are Mr. Everett's work, a Hebrew Bible, [fn61] and Lexicon, and the English Bible. I have not been able to procure any thing beyond this in Egypt, and think myself fortunate in having so much.] [fn61 before "and" insert "Grammar"] [fn62 for "violations" read "quotations"] [fn63 Gospel ac. to John. xii, 38. Rom. x. 16. Acts viii.,32, 33.] [fn64 That Grotius would sometimes prevaricate to serve a turn is certain. There is an anecdote on record, contained in the notes to Gibbon's account of Mohammed in his Roman History, which proves this. In Grotius' famous book on the truth of the Christian Religion, there is a story that Mohammed had a tame pidgeon which he taught to come and peck in his ear, in order to make his followers believe that the bird was the organ by whom he received revelations from God. This story is not believed, nor was ever heard of among the Musselmen. On the publication of Grotius' book, a friend learned in Oriental Literature, came to him and asked him for his authority for this story, Grotius frankly owned that he had none, in other words that the story was a pious fraud in order to stigmatize Mohammedanism. "This story" Gibbon says, "was accordingly left out of the Arabic version of Grotius' Book, intended to circulate among the-Musselmen, for fear that they should laugh at such a piece of ignorance or effrontery: but it still maintains an edifying place in those copies printed for the perusal of Christians."! I quote from memory. It is really a pity that the Protestant Church, which like a Magdalen professes to repent other errors committed during her former connection with "the mother of abominations," should yet retain so many of the bad habits contracted during their past intimacy. Some folks have even pretended to have observed, that notwithstanding their old quarrel, they seem to have recommenced a "nodding acquaintance." I hope the report is untrue.] [fn65 Mr. Everett will probably say, that he made these deadly stabs at my character upon the same principle that the New England Cobbler killed the Indian Hogan Mogan. "Not out of malice, but mere zeal Because he was an infidel."] [fn66 I have a right to believe so, for Mr. Everett quotes Priestley's notes, p. 339 of his work. Dr. Priestley united in his character, the rare concurrence of a keen controversial writer, with great fairness and candour. He seems always to have been willingly disposed to resign an untenable opinion, when convinced by the arguments of his opponent. His conduct in regard to the question between the Jews and Christians, may be considered as a proof of this. He wrote letters to the Jews in defence of Christianity, which were replied to by Levi. In this controversy Levi had evidently the better of Priestley. Priestley seems to have been sensible of this, which occasioned him to examine the question more minutely. The result of his examination led him to avow, in a Dissertation in the Theological Repository published in England, I believe in the very one which Mr. Everett refers to [Theol. Rep. vol. 5.] that the prophets clearly justify the Jews for expecting as their Messiah, a glorious monarch of the house and name of David, who should reign over them and all the human race; but he also maintained as I think in the same Dissertation, that Jesus Christ is nevertheless predicted by the 53d. of Isaiah. Several years afterwards, when Priestley resided in America, he published his notes on Scripture, wherein he abandons the Christian interpretation, of the 53d. of Isaiah, and applies it as I do to the Jewish nation.] [fn67 If all that Mr. Everett has said upon this subject were true, it would amount after all only to an argument ad prejudicium, for the Jews of past times, who believed the dreams of the Rabbies, but is of no weight whatever with those who reject them, as do all the Biblical critics of the present day.] [fn68 There occurs to me an instance of carelessness or something worse on the part of Mr. Everett in p. 342 of his work. I had said in my first publication, that "there is in the speech of James, Arts xv. a quotation from Amos in which, to make it fit the subject, (which after all it does not fit) is the substitution of the words "the remnant of men," for "the remnant of Edom," as it is in the original." On this Mr. Everett remarks with astonishing' composure, "There are few of my readers to whom I need say, that the same Hebrew word means 'men,' and 'Edom,' according' as it is pronounced, and St. James has as fair a right to pronounce it men,' as Mr. English has to pronounce it 'Edom.'" The only way by which Mr. Everett can escape the charge of fraud in this affair, is by allowing that he did not take the trouble to look at the passage quoted from Amos, ix. 12. in the Hebrew Bible, from which it will appear that neither St. James, nor any other Saint, has a right to read the passage "the remnant of men" (or Adam;) because the Hebrew word contains a letter (vau,) which the word Adam does not contain, and which limits its signification to Edom. I would observe by the. way, that the passage in Amos "that they, (i. e. Israel,) may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen (or nations) which are called by my name, appears to contain an allusion to the Christians and Mohammedans, who are the only nations besides the Jews who invoke, the name of Jehovah, and profess faith in his prophets. There are not a few passages in the prophets, which have a significance at present, which they could not have had at the time the predictions were uttered.] [fn69 for "sun" read "been"] [fn70 for "simple" read "single"] [fn71 In the beginning of the 9th. ch. of Daniel, the prophet says; "I Daniel, understood by books the number of years whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem. And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications with fasting, sackcloth and ashes." It appears from his prayer, that he supposed the Babylonish captivity of seventy years, would terminate the chastisement of his nation. Upon which the angel Gabriel was sent to "give him skill and understanding," and to inform him, that their chastisement would not be terminated by the captivity of seventy years, but by one of "seventy times seven," i. e. a long and undefined period. The words "seven," and "seventy," were frequently used by the Hebrews to signify an indefinite number, and "seventy times seven" is a Hebreism used to signify a great and indefinite number. Thus one of the disciples of Jesus is represented as asking him, "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him; until seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, until seven times, but until seventy times seven." Mat. ch. xviii. 21, 22.] [fn72 In my first work I had alleged this prophecy of Daniel, and had inserted this word "in" enclosed in a parenthesis, in order to signify, that it was not in the original, but was suggested by it as necessary to the sense of the original. This "in," in a parenthesis, the zealous Mr. Everett, who loves to find fault, pronounces to be "an absolute interpolation," "and a shameless one too." p. 157 of his work.] [fn73 The reader will see that I suppose the original to make one period of seven weeks, and one of sixty-two. "The English translation renders it "seven weeks and threescore and two weeks," making one period of the two. This appears to me to be inadmissible: because if the prophet meant to signify but one period, he would, as I think, have said, according to the analogy of the Hebrew language, not "seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks," but "nine weeks and threescore, weeks," In the Hebrew the clauses of the seven weeks, and sixty and two weeks, are separated by a character which frequently, in the Hebrew Bible, performs the function of a full stop.] [fn74 delete "Joshua] [fn75 read "heels over head"] [fn76 Mr. Everett appear; himself to have been somewhat embarrassed by the gravity he is obliged to maintain in holding forth this antithetical "analogy." For he says, that he forbears "to pursue analogies like these, which though they abound in the writings of the Old Testament, [I challenge him to point out a single such instance] and are familiar to all the nations of the East, have long been succeeded among us by a stricter style of reasoning" p. 178. They have indeed been long since exploded by the Modern Biblical Critics: and I doubt not that if this curious analogy should ever be subject to the notice of Eichorn or Lessing, they would in their closets peruse it "with a smile or a sigh."] [fn77 "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength?--I that speak in righteousness mighty to save. Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the winefat--I have trodden the wine press alone; and of the peoples there vas none with me: for I trode them in mine anger, and trampled them in my fury, and Their blood sprinkled upon my garments, and I have stained all my raiment. For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come. And I looked, and there was none to help: and I wondered there was none to uphold, therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me; and my fury it upheld me, and I trode down the peoples in mine anger, and made them drunk in my fury, and I brought down their strength to the earth." See Is. ch. lxiii. in the Hebrew. This passage relates to the "Great and Terrible Day of Jehovah." mentioned in Malachi. The Psalms of the Prophets abound with descriptions of [fn78] it both terrible and magnificent. See for example Ezekiel xxxviii: & xv-xix chapters. Joel ch. iii. and Zech. ch. xiv.] [fn78 for "of" read "and"] [fn79 The enumerations given by the Jews themselves are always below the truth. They conceal the real amount for particular reasons. In Spain and Portugal, where it is dangerous for a man to be known to be a Jew, there are notwithstanding, many thousands; probably one third of the population of Portugal is of Jewish descent. I have seen a Jew at Paris, who had resided several years in Spain, who has told me, that the number of his nation in Spain is great and unsuspected. I believe him, for Orobio and Acosta, both Jews of the Peninsula, affirm that Jews disguised as Christians, were to be found not only among the populace of the Peninsula, but among the nobles and bishops. In those countries (Spain and Portugal,) where the Inquisition obliged every body to be educated as Christians, the fathers who were secretly Jews, were accustomed, when their children came to the years of discretion, to inform them of their descent, and to engage them secretly to conform to the religion of their fathers. If they found their conversion impracticable, these wretched parents were accustomed to poison such children, to prevent their communicating the dangerous secret to the Inquisition, which would occasion the whole family to be burned alive. See the Biography of Orobio and Acosta for some interesting information upon this subject.] [fn80 for "exonerated" read "consecrated"] [fn81 "David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel, neither shall the priests the Levites want a man before me," i. e. the house of David and the tribe of Levi shall never be extinct, when called upon to fulfil the prophecies of the kingdom of the Messiah, and the re-establishment of the ritual of the temple, David will not want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel, neither will the priests the Levites want a man to do sacrifice. And how was this to be secured, because says God, "as the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured, so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites the priests that minister unto me." That this is the sense of the phrase "shall not want a. man," is evident from the employment of the same expression by Jeremiah in xxxv. of his Prophecies: "Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts, the God of Israel: Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me for ever, ch. xxxv. 19. i. e. not that a particular descendant of Jonadab the son of Rechab should always be standing in the presence of the Lord for ever: but that he should never want a representative, his posterity should never be cut off. It is a singular fact that the descendants of Jonadab the son of Rechab still exist in Arabia, preserving' the customs of their fathers; they are called "Beni al Khaib," i. e. descendants of Heber. See Jud. ch. iv. 11. To these considerations it may be added, that Jeremiah himself predicts the dethronement of the house of David, the destruction of the temple, and the captivity of the priests, and the whole Jewish nation, and as it is an allowed principle of sound criticism that if the expressions of a writer are capable of two significations, one of which would make him contradict himself; and the other would leave him consistent: it is but fair to suppose that he meant to be consistent, and should be interpreted in the sense which excludes self contradiction.] [fn82 Ezekiel gives a. prophecy of the same events spoken of by Jeremiah, and in these words. "Thus saith Jehovah God; I will even gather you from the peoples, and assemble you out of the countries where ye have been scattered; and I will give you the land of Israel. And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God." Ezek. x. xi. 17, 18, 19, 20. Now what is meant in the Old Testament by "God's statutes, and God's ordinances," is not the Mosaic law always signified by these expressions? Again, Ezek. says, ch. xxxvi. 23, &c. "I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the nations, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the nations shall know that I am Jehovah, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the nations, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land; then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness and from all your idols will I release you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them." See also Ezekiel, ch. xxxvii. from verse 20 to the end.] [fn83 for "the" read "a"] [fn84 Ac. to the Hebrew.] [fn85 In my first publication I had maintained, that Jesus Christ had not taught the abolishment of the Law, and alleged in proof the passages following. "Think not I am come to destroy the law or the Prophets; I am not come to destroy but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you. Till heaven and earth pass, one jot [i. e. the smallest letter of it] or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled." (or consummated) Mat. v. 17. 18. "It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail." Luke. xvi. 17. Mr. Everett has a device by which he thinks he can evade the gripe of these passages: perhaps the following may satisfy him that there is no way of escape. Luke reports, Acts xxi. 20. that James the bishop of the mother church of Jerusalem, said to Paul, "Thou seest brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe: [i. e. are Christians] and they are all zealous of the Law." Now if Jesus Christ had taught the abolishment of the Law, it appears to me that, his followers would not have been zealous in adhering to it: as to do so would be giving the lie to their master's doctrine.] [fn86 So called, in Is. Ch. lxvi. 22.] [fn87 The ancient Britons were savages and painted themselves blue when wishing to appear in full dress. In truth it is hardly three hundred years since the bears of Europe have learned to walk up on their hinder legs, and had "a man's heart given unto them." And it is only about two hundred years since "the wild boar out of the forest" [fn88] has become a learned pig. It is not much more than a hundred years since the people of Boston, have left off hanging their fellow creatures for being witches and Quakers.] [fn88 after "forest" insert "of the North"] [fn89 Mohammed was descended from Abraham through Ishmael.] [fn90 The numerous regulations concerning defilement, and the ritual of purification, contained in the Pentateuch, were very proper in reference to the immediate and personal presence of the Divinity among the Israelites, which therefore rendered the most perfect cleanliness a duty. These regulations were also adopted to the peculiar circumstance of the Jewish nation, which, was separated from all the rest of mankind and not obliged to go over their frontier to mingle with other people. But it is very true that such regulations are "not calculated for us" Gentiles; because men who are obliged constantly to mingle with other men, cannot observe them.] [fn91 for "rights" read "rites"] [fn92 delete "the"] [fn93 According to 1 Chron. ch. xxix, 3, &c. the gold employed in adorning the Temple, amounted to at least 8000 talents, and the silver to 17000 talents. This vast mass of treasure was given by David and his princes: how much was added to it by Solomon is not said.] [fn94 The number of the males of the tribe of Levi in the time of Moses, is said, Numbers, ch. xxvi. 62. to have been twenty three thousand. But in the reign of Solomon the number of males of the tribe of Levi from thirty years and upwards, was thirtyeight thousand. See 1 Chron. ch. xxiii, 3.] [fn95 for "streaming" read "steaming"] [fn96 The name of the Deity "JEHOVAH," is a compound of two Hebrew words, the first of which signifies "HE IS," and the second "HE SHALL BE." The word JEHOVAH expresses these two sublime ideas in three syllables.] [fn97 for "unfeeling" read "unreflecting"] [fn98 Mr. Everett represents me as supposing (because I maintain that it is the sense of the prophets that the temple of Jerusalem will oneday be the house of prayer for all mankind) that all nations must come and worship at the temple three times a year as the Jews were required to do. See Mr. Everett's work, p. 207. But if Mr. Everett were more familiar with the Bible, he would learn that the prophets represent that this visit to the future temple, from other nations than the Jews, will be required only once a year. "And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem, shall even go up from year to year to worship the King Jehovah of Hosts, and to keep the feast of Tabernacles." Zech. ch. xiv. 16. Now supposing that the Old Testament predicts the truth in affirming that the earth is to be restored to its primitive state, as it was at the beginning, when God viewed every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good. If the earth is spontaneously to produce the delicious nourishment which we may suppose that Adam enjoyed, a journey once a year through an ever varied paradise to the temple of Jehovah, can surely be no toil. If a person will look at the situation of Jerusalem on a map of the world, he will be sensible, that no spot on earth is as eligible to be chosen for a common centre of worship for mankind as that city. It stands about sixty miles from the Mediterranean, which communicates with the Atlantic, and not many days Journey from the Red Sea, which communicates with the Indian Ocean. And when the winds and waves shall cease to be dangerous, who would not desire to visit as often as possible, the land which is said to be "the glory of all lands," and illuminated by the ineffable symbol of the immediate presence of the Lord of the Universe, at whose effulgence "the sun shall be ashamed, and the moon confounded." Neither is it necessary to suppose, that I know of, that every man of the human race should be annually present; if some come from all nations, all nations may be said to come. See Appendix, I.] [fn99 after "would" insert "not"] [fn100 "And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch. Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, how long dost thou draw our souls asunder? If thou be the Messiah, tell us plainly." John x, 23, 24. See the original Greek.] [fn101 When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come, and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain, himself alone." John vi. 15.] [fn102 It is remarkable that the gospels represent Jesus as refusing to acknowledge himself to the Jews as the Messiah. The gospels say, that Jesus confided his Messiahship to the disciples as a secret, with express injunctions not to betray it. "Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was the Messiah." Mat. xvi. 20. See also Mark viii. 29. and Luke ix. 21. This makes it possible that he never did claim that character, and that the glory [fn103] in the gospels that he had told it as a secret to his disciples, was invented in order to furnish a reply to the Jews, who might have told the first Christians, that Jesus had never told them so, and of course never pretended to be considered as such, and that the Christians could not justly blame them for rejecting pretensions which Jesus never made to them, to whom especially he ought to have plainly declared them if he wished them to be received. The truth of the matter appears to be, that the notion of the Messiahship of Jesus, had originally no better foundation than the mistaken enthusiasm of his followers.] [fn103 for "glory" read "story"] [fn104 The case of the Jews and Christians is parallel to that of "the prophet of Judah," and "the prophet of Bethel." The Christians allow that God himself gave the law to the Jews, but they say to the Jews that Jesus was ordered by God to repeal it. "It was said unto me (says the prophet of Judah) by the word of Jehovah, Thou shalt eat no bread, nor drink water there, (at Bethel the chapel of the golden calf,) nor turn to go by the way that thou camest. He (i. e. the prophet of Bethel) said unto him, I am a. prophet also as thou art; and an angel spake unto me by the word of Jehovah, saying; Bring him back with thee into thine house, that he may eat bread, and drink water. But he lied unto him. So he went back with him, and did eat bread in his house, and drink water." "And. it came to pass, as they sat at the table, that the word of Jehovah came unto the prophet that brought him back: and he cried unto the man of God that came from Judah, saying, Thus saith. Jehovah, forasmuch as thou hast disobeyed the mouth of Jehovah, and hast not kept the commandment which Jehovah thy God commanded thee, but camest back, and hast eaten bread and drunk water in the place, of the which Jehovah did say unto thee, eat no bread, and drink no water, thy carcase shall not come unto the sepulchre of thy fathers." 1 Kings, ch. xiii.] [fn105 after "that" insert "as"] [fn106 1. If the Christians should do this, the fundamental articles of their creed, would be, to love the Lord their God with all their heart, and with all their mind, and soul, and strength, and to love their neighbours as themselves: for on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. 2. If the Christians should do this, they would have precisely the same Scriptures which the apostles and first Christians had, and which they considered as sufficient. Even Paul himself pronounces, that the Old Testament was "given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." 2 Tim. ch. iii. 16. 3. If the Christians should do this, all the endless and rancourous disputes about the trinity, incarnation, atonement, transubstantiation, worship of the Virgin Mary, the saints, their images and relics, the supremacy of the Pope, et id genus omne, would be quietly laid upon the shelf, and torment mankind no more. 4. The hundred sects into which Christians are divided, would coalesce; for it is the New Testament which keeps them asunder. So long as that book is believed to contain a Revelation from God, there can be no peace. For pious and good men who believe that it is of divine authority, and who are zealously disposed to discover from its contents "what is the mind of the spirit," must necessarily be divided in their opinions; BECAUSE the New Testament is not only inconsistent with the Old, but is also inconsistent with itself too; and must therefore necessarily create a diversity of opinions in those who reverence it as the word of God. This is the grand secret, and everacting cause, which has made scisms in the church.] [fn107 Mr. Everett, p. 427 of his work, alluding to my anticipations in one of my publications, in which I expressed myself as aware of what I should have to encounter, in consequence of my undertaking on behalf of the oppressed, and slandered Jews; says with something like "the charity of a monk, and the meekness of an inquisitor," that "the affecting allusion he (Mr. English,) has made to his prospects in the world, has many a time restrained me, when I ought to have used the language of indignation." If a man had told me, that in consequence of my enterprise I should encounter great misfortunes, I should have answered, I expected, and was prepared to meet them. But if he had told me, a native of the New World discovered a few centuries ago, that the time would come when I should write upon this subject, in the very land, and almost on the very spot that gave birth to Moses and the Pharoahs, I should have thought him amusing himself with a jest; nevertheless such is the fact. I write this book; on the banks of old Nile, and in sight of the pyramids.] [fn108 I have read in a Magazine, of an itinerant Methodist preacher, not perfectly acquainted with the sublime arts of reading and writing, who, in a sermon of his in praise of Industry, alledged as a proof of God's aversion to idleness, that God commanded Moses, when he built the Tabernacle in the wilderness, to cover it with "BEGGAR'S SKINS." The English Translation says Ex. ch. xxvi 14. with BADGER'S SKINS." Now I suppose that if such a quotation from the Old. Testament was found in a work whose title page represented it to have been written by Bishop Marsh, that there is not a scholar, in. Christendom, who would not pronounce the book to be a forgery.] [fn109 Mr. Everett says p. 243, of his work that "not one of the books of the New Testament, nor all of them together, were intended to be a forensic defence of Christianity." The-Epistle to the Hebrews, at least, convicts this opinion of mistake. He says also p. 273., "As to what Mr. English, after Collins, proceeds to say, that the authors of the books of the New Testament always argue absolutely from the quotations they cite as prophecies out of the books of the old Testament, it is so far from being correct, that it is highly notorious, that they do not argue from them at all." Mr. Everett must have felt very desperate to venture upon such an assertion in the face of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Mr. Everett may succeed with some in facing down argument, but he is mistaken if he thinks, that "Stubborn facts must still give place "To his unpenetrable face, "Which-makes its way through all affairs, &c. &c."'] [fn110 Bishop Marsh does honour to his English honesty and common sense, in refusing to allow that such strong expressions can signify a mere accommodation of a passage in the Old Testament. See his Notes to Michaelis' Introduction to the New Testament.] [fn111 For "was" read "is"] [fn112 For 21 read 23] [fn113 This Psalm is entitled in the English version "a prayer for Solomon," It should have been translated "a Psalm of Solomon."] [fn114 Mr. Everett says p. 51. that "the Septuagint discountenances this rendering." What is that to me? I chose to abide by the original Hebrew, and not to follow a blundering, garbled, and interpolated version, which frequently imposes a false sense upon the original, and not unfrequently no sense at all. more Christiano.] [fn115 Mr. Everett, p. 52. considers this expression as a decisive proof that the prophecies of the Messiah's kingdom, must be understood figuratively. Is Mr. Everett so ignorant of his Bible as not to know, that it represents that at the beginning animals did not prey upon each other, and if it was so once, which Mr. Everett will not deny, it may be so again. See Gen. ch. i. 30.] [fn116 for "thus saith" read "this is"] [fn117 The Greeks, Russians, and Copts will not worship images, for that they say is flagrant idolatry; but they say there is no harm in praying before a picture. Their churches and houses are full of them. I have heard of a Greek bishop who employed a famous Italian painter to make a picture of the bishop's patron, Isaiah [fn118]: when it was finished he refused to take it, and expressed himself much shocked, by its appearance. The painter asked why? "your picture, said the bishop is scandalous, the figure stands out from the canvass absolutely as if it were a statue; it would be idolatry in me to pray before such a picture." [fn118 for "patron Isaiah" read "patron saint"] [fn119 "In the mountain of the height of Israel will I plant it: and it shall bring forth boughs and bear fruit, and be a glorious cedar and under it shall dwell all fowl of every wing; in the shadow (if the branches thereof shall they dwell. And all the trees of the field shall know, that I Jehovah have brought down the high tree, have exalted the low tree, have dried up the green tree, and made the dry tree to flourish, I Jehovah have spoken it and I will do it." Ezech. xvii. 23.] 
45823	----	ESSAYS IN RATIONALISM BY CHARLES ROBERT NEWMAN (Brother of Cardinal Newman.) WITH PREFACE BY GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY J. M. WHEELER. LONDON: PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 28 Stonecutter Street, E.C. 1891 LONDON: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY G. W. FOOTE, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C. ESSAYS IN RATIONALISM. PUBLISHER'S NOTE. Whether this little volume will find sufficient patrons to defray the cost of its production is at least doubtful. The writer whose essays it contains lived in obscurity and will never be popular. But he possessed a fine intellect, however frustrated by circumstances; he belonged to an illustrious family; and it is well to let the public have access to the opinions of a brother of Cardinal Newman and of Professor Newman, a brother who took his own course, as they did, and thought out for himself an independent philosophy. All Charles Robert Newman's writings that are known to have been printed, appeared in the Reasoner, edited by Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, at various dates during 1860-61. With trifling exceptions they are all reprinted in this collection. Mr. Holyoake has kindly supplied a brief account of the atheistic Newman, and Mr. J. M. Wheeler has gathered all the information that is obtainable as to his life and personality. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Of Charles Robert Newman, until the death of his brother, the Cardinal, almost nothing was known. Some reminiscences of him by Mr. Thomas Purnell and Precentor Edmund Venables appeared in the Athenæum at the time of his death in 1884, and these remain the chief sources of information concerning him. Mr. G. J. Holyoake also, in his paper The Present Day, wrote: "If the public come to know more of Charles R. Newman, it will be seen that all the brothers, John Henry, Francis William, and Charles R. Newman, were men of unusual distinction of character, and that while each held diverse views, all had the family qualities of perspicacity, candor and conscience." But these notes attracted little attention. Most people were under the impression there were only two brothers, who had long figured in the public eye as types of the opposite courses of modern thought towards Romanism and Rationalism. Yet the real type of antagonism to Rome was to be found in Charles Robert, who is dismissed by the Rev. Thomas Mozley with the words: "There was also another brother, not without his share in the heritage of natural gifts." In a notable passage on change of religion, in his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, chap. vii., Cardinal Newman seems to allude to the career of himself and his brothers. He says: "Thus of three Protestants, one becomes a Catholic, a second a Unitarian, and a third an unbeliever: how is this? The first becomes a Catholic, because he assented, as a Protestant, to the doctrine of our Lord's divinity, with a real assent and a genuine conviction, and because this certitude, taking possession of his mind, led him on to welcome the Catholic doctrines of the Real Presence and of the Theotocos, till his Protestantism fell off from him, and he submitted himself to the Church. The second became a Unitarian, because, proceeding on the principle that Scripture was the rule of faith, and that a man's private judgment was its rule of interpretation, and finding that the doctrine of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds did not follow by logical necessity from the text of Scripture, he said to himself, 'The word of God has been made of none effect by the traditions of men,' and therefore nothing was left for him but to profess what he considered primitive Christianity and to become a Humanitarian. The third gradually subsided into infidelity, because he started with the Protestant dogma, cherished in the depths of his nature, that a priesthood was a corruption of the simplicity of the Gospel. First, then, he would protest against the sacrifice of the Mass; next he gave up baptismal regeneration and the sacramental principle; then he asked himself whether dogmas were not a restraint on Christian liberty as well as Sacraments; then came the question, What after all was the use of teachers of religion? Why should any one stand between him and his Maker? After a time it struck him that this obvious question had to be answered by the Apostles, as well as by the Anglican clergy; so he came to the conclusion that the true and only revelation of God to man is that which is written on the heart. This did for a time, and he remained a Deist. But then it occurred to him, that this inward moral law was there within the breast, whether there was a God or not, and that it was a roundabout way of enforcing that law, to say that it came from God and simply unnecessary, considering it carried with it its own sacred and sovereign authority, as our feelings instinctively testified, and when he turned to look at the physical world around him, he really did not see what scientific proof there was of the Being of God at all, and it seemed to him as if all things would go quite as well as at present without that hypothesis as with it; so he dropped it, and became a purus putus Atheist." I have transcribed this lengthy, but remarkable passage, not because I think it correctly describes the process of thought in his two brothers, but rather as an illustration that his own imaginative synthesis of their position derives its life and force from the fact that he had before him concrete instances in the person of his own nearest relatives. Charles Robert Newman, younger brother of the Cardinal and elder brother of the Professor, was born on June 16, 1802, being one year and four months the junior of the former, and three years the senior of the latter. [1] Their father, a London man, and friend of Capel the eminent stockbroker, from having been clerk in a bank, became a partner, though he afterwards failed at a time of great commercial depression, both in this business and as a brewer. He was a Freemason, a musician, and had schemes of social improvement by reclaiming waste land and planting with trees. In religion his views appear to have been of a broad cast approximating to those of Benjamin Franklin. The mother, whose maiden name was Jemima Fourdrinier, was of Hugenot family, and of religious cast of mind. There were six children, equally divided as to sex. Harriet, the eldest girl, married the Rev. Thomas Mozley; Jemima, the second, married Mr. John Mozley; while Mary, the youngest, died unmarried. Charles Robert was educated at the same school as his two brothers, John Henry and Francis William, that of Dr. George Nicholas at Ealing, Middlesex. Of the influences which moulded his mind we can only speak from what is known of his brothers. John Henry has told how, in youth, he read Paine's tracts against the Old Testament--we presume he means the Age of Reason--and also boasted of reading Hume, though, as he says, this was possibly but by way of brag. Evidently, though the family was brought up in the habit of Bible reading, there was considerable freedom allowed as to the direction of their studies. While the father lived family prayer was unknown, nor was there any inculcation of dogma. "We read," says Francis William, "the Psalms appointed by the church every day, and went to the parish church on Sunday." Francis William Newman, in his "Contributions, Chiefly to the Early History of Cardinal Newman," says: "In opening life, my brother C. R. N. became a convert to Robert Owen, the philanthropic Socialist, who was then an Atheist. [2] But soon breaking loose from him, Charles tried to originate a 'New Moral World' of his own, which seemed to others absurd and immoral, as well as very unamiable. He disowned us all, on my father's death, as 'too religious for him.' To keep a friend, or to act under a superior, seemed alike impossible to him. His brother (the late Cardinal) humbled himself to beg a clerkship for him in the Bank of England; but Charles thought it 'his duty' to write to the Directors letters of advice, so they could not keep him. Nor could he keep any place long. He said he ought to take a literary degree at Bonn: his two brothers managed it for him, but he came away without seeking the degree. His brother-in-law, the Rev. Thomas Mozley, then took him up very liberally; but after my sister Harriet's death, J. H. N. and I bore his expenses to his dying day. His meanness seemed to me like that of an old cynic; yet his moderation was exemplary, and at last he undoubtedly won the respect of the mother and daughter who waited on him." In this, which is nearly all he has to say of this elder brother, it appears to me Professor Newman has either said too little or too much. The title of his work did not necessitate any reference to Charles Robert; but having said so much he should at least have explained further. For instance, in reference to the visit to Bonn, it was exceedingly natural in the second brother seeking to take a degree, since both his senior and junior had a college education. That he did not share in this advantage may have well tended to sour his life. Mr. Meynell explains why he returned without seeking the degree. He says: "But he came away without even offering himself for examination, a step he explained by saying that the judges would not grant him a degree because he had given offence by his treatment of faith and morals [it is a Catholic who writes] in an essay which they call teterrima." Charles may have acted with extreme imprudence, both in regard to the bank directors and the Bonn examiners; but we should need to know the cases before we can determine whether he was actuated by wilful waywardness or by adherence to a higher than common standard of conduct. Each of the brothers had evidently exquisite sensitiveness of conscience, though, as proved by the Professor's last book--that unique criticism of a brother who died at ninety by another aged eighty-five--they could not always enter into sympathy with each other. Of this we may be quite sure. The life of one who had thought himself into Atheism, yet contemplated becoming a tutor, must have been a most uncomfortable one. The treatment he was likely to receive could not be calculated to evoke his better qualities. Finding everywhere his Atheism a bar to his advancement, whose is the fault if it resulted in a character of petulance and cynicism, and in--what it evidently did result in--a largely wasted life? The Rev. Edward Venables, Precentor of Lincoln, speaks of him as having been, between 1834 and 1844, usher in a large school for farmers' sons, kept by a Mr. Allfree at Windmill Hill, in the parish of Herstmonceaux, Sussex, where Julius Charles Hare, Archdeacon of Lewes, was rector, and John Sterling for a short while curate. Mr. Venables says Newman "interested Archdeacon Hare very much, and I have often heard him speak of the long conversations he had had with him on literary and philosophical subjects, and of the remarkable mental power he displayed. At that time the future Cardinal's brother had entirely discarded the Christian faith, and declared himself an unbeliever in revelation." There can be no doubt the tribute from Hare, a man of very superior culture, was deserved, though the archdeacon also expressed the opinion "there was a screw loose somewhere." The task of teaching the Sussex rustics was, as Precentor Venables remarks, intolerably irksome to a man of Newman's high intellectual power. It was like chopping logs with a fine-edged razor. His relations with his principal became strained, and a tussle between the usher and his class led to his dismissal. At this time he was miserably poor. Precentor Venables says: "To Hare he lamented the narrow-mindedness of his brothers John and Francis, who, as he asserted, had entirely cast him off, and left him to fight his way in the world unaided, because of his professed infidelity, in which the younger of the two, then an ardent Evangelical, was before very long to follow him." No reproach whatever is due to the younger brother on this account, and the elder is probably as little blameworthy. John Henry could not be expected to recommend as tutor one whose views upon faith and morals he considered unsound. Francis William had gone to Bagdad with the object of assisting in a Christian mission, and intercourse with Mohammedans and other studies were but gradually loosening his orthodoxy. After his return, and when his works and professorship at London University assured his position, he put himself into regular monthly communication with his brother. In the meantime he had been assisted by his sister Harriet's husband. But the iron had already entered his soul; he was an Atheist and an outcast. Forced to receive the bounty of relatives who deplored his opinions, he seems to have resented their kindness as an attempt to bribe his intellectual conscience. The world rang with the fame--as theologian, historian, poet, and preacher--of the elder, whose creed he had outgrown and despised; while his convictions, to the full as honest, everywhere stood in his way, and were contemned as an offence against faith and morals. He had no contact with minds congenial to his own, and doomed himself to the life of a recluse. Each of the brothers was of a retiring, meditative disposition. Reading the Apologia Pro Vita Sua of the eldest, one may see how this contributed towards his seeking a refuge in the Catholic Church. The same disposition of mind may be traced in the Phases of Faith of the youngest, equally impelling him from the evangelicalism of his surroundings and leading to the rejection of historic Christianity, and finally to the surrender of all belief in revelation. In Charles Robert Newman the same qualities were seen to excess, removing him from contact with his fellows to the life of a solitary thinker in a quiet Welsh watering-place. From about 1853, he had a room in a small cottage on the Marsh road, Tenby. Mr. Thomas Purnell, who says he had for years "the inestimable privilege of enjoying his close intimacy," remarks, "never before or since have I met a man endowed with as rare an intellectual equipment." Mr. Purnell thus describes his own first visit to the recluse: "He stood at the top of the topmost stair. I cannot imagine a more distinguished head and face. There was a touch of Mephistopheles in him. There was also a touch of Jupiter Olympius. Although dressed in ill-fitting clothes, and with a sort of blanket over his shoulders, he appeared to me to be the ideal of courtly grace. He bowed me without a word into his apartments. This was in the roof of the building, and the only light came from a window which opened with a notched iron bar. The room was as meagrely furnished as Goethe's study in Weimar. A bed, a chest of drawers, a table and two or three chairs, with a few books, constituted the whole goods and chattels." Mr. Purnell says "his health, means and inclination made him averse to society. The rector called on him, but was not admitted; visitors to the town who had known his brothers would send in their cards, but they received no response; local medical men, when they heard he was ill, volunteered their services, but they were declined with courteous thanks conveyed by letter." It appears he but seldom left his house, and when he went out he did not often enter the town, but took his exercise in the road which led into the country. Dressed in a pea-jacket, with a shawl or a rug thrown across his shoulders, and with a sou'-wester over his head, he marched erect, looking neither to left nor right. He wore shoes, and, as his trousers were short, displayed an interval of white socks. The lads and lasses were apt to regard such a figure with derision. It was through Mr. Purnell that he communicated the papers here reprinted to the Reasoner. Although but of the character of fragments, they bespeak an original mind. The secret of the Cardinal's great influence and strength was that what he spoke and wrote came not from books, but forthright out of his own head and heart. The topics with which his brother deals were those only needing the mind, and his treatment shows they were viewed in the dry light of an original intellect. The Reasoner ceased soon after the appearance of these papers, and thus closed the one opening for his literary activity. Francis William Newman was, at least till the present year, unaware that his arguments for Theism were challenged by his own brother under the signature of "A Recluse." He informs me that he had never heard that anyone would publish anything from his pen, and that he heard that at his death, in March, 1884, he left a box full of manuscripts, which were destroyed as useless. Whether this was done by order of his relatives, whether the landlady decided the question, or whether the vicar or neighbors were called in, will perhaps remain as unknown as the worth of the manuscripts. The following specimens are all by which the latter question can be judged. Mr. Meynell says that two years before he died he had a short visit from his eldest brother. It must have been a strange meeting, and one worthy the brush of a great artist. Surely in all England there were not two men of eighty whose thoughts were so divergent or two brothers whose lives were so diversified. The one a saintly cardinal, called by the Pope the Light of England, who, by his rare urbanity, had gained the respect of all, replete with all that should accompany old age--as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends: the other, fallen, too, into the sere and yellow leaf, and without them all--poor, solitary, unknown and despised, a scorn and wonderment to his nearest neighbors. And all from following his own thought that had made him a purus putus Atheist. J. M. Wheeler. CHARACTER OF CHARLES NEWMAN. There is little to say and less need to add anything to what Mr. Wheeler writes, whose industry and discernment collect together all the accessible facts of his subject. My knowledge of Charles Robert Newman is confined to his correspondence, which, with my present engagements, I could not refer to and examine without delaying the printer longer than would be convenient to you, as Mr. Wheeler's article is in type. The impression Mr. C. R. Newman conveyed to me by his letters is, I judge, sufficient for the purpose in hand. Charles Newman had an intermittent mind. He would write with great force and clearness, and in another letter, which was confused in parts, he would frankly say that his mind was leaving him, as was its wont as I understood him, and after a few months less or more, it would return to him, when he would write again. In this manly frankness and strong self-consciousness he resembled his two eminent brothers Francis and John. I trusted to his friend Mr. Purnell, who was the medium in communicating with me, to send me further letters when Mr. Charles was able or disposed to write them. I expected to hear from him again. Much occupied with debates and otherwise at the time, I neglected writing further to him myself. Afterwards thinking his disablement might have grown upon him with years, disinclined me from asking him to resume his letters. Mr. Wheeler seems ignorant of Charles Newman's mental peculiarity, and does not recognise what may be generous delicacy on the part of his brothers in not referring to it. To do so would have subjected them to the imputation, very frequent formerly, of imputing difference of opinion to want of saneness. Even so liberal a preacher as W. J. Fox accounted, in 1841, for my disbelief in Theism by conjecturing the existence of some mental deficiency. No doubt many persons with whom Charles Newman had dealings in offices he held, would regard his Atheism--which it was contrary to his nature to conceal--as a personal disqualification. He avowed his opinions as naturally and as boldly as Professor Newman and the Cardinal avowed theirs. It is not conceivable that Cardinal Newman ever intermitted his aid--or Professor Newman either--on this account. They were both incapable of personal intolerance. They might deplore that their brother Charles's opinions were so alien, so contrary to theirs; but this they would never make matter of reproach. It was doubtless a great trial to them that their brother, having fine powers like their own, making no persistent effort for his own maintenance, although he knew it must render independence impossible. Possibly the solitariness which he chose caused his tendency to unusualness of conduct, not to say eccentricity, to grow upon him--which they could not control or mitigate without an interference, which might subject them to resentment and reproach. Charles no doubt inherited his father's sympathy for social improvement, which led to his sharing Robert Owen's sociologic views. But he did not acquire his Atheism from Robert Owen--as Professor Newman has said--for Robert Owen was not an Atheist--always believing in some Great Power. Professor Newman has told me that in any further edition of his little book upon his brother, the Cardinal, he will, on my authority, correct his description of Robert Owen as an Atheist. Charles owed his Atheism to himself, as his brothers owed their opinions to their own conclusions and reflections. Charles not taking a degree was less likely to be owing to means not being furnished to him than to his intermittent indecision of mind and his strong discernment, which produced satisfaction with the world, with others, and with himself. George Jacob Holyoake. TWO PRINCIPLES OF ORDER. In my proof of the invalidity of that argument--it being indeed what is called "the Argument from Design"--I point out that our experience simultaneously informs us of two modes of producing order, otherwise called arrangement, relation of parts to each other and to the whole direction of means towards some recognisable end; or, to describe the phenomenon in the most summary, as well as the most practical, way--two modes of producing effects identical with those that proceed from design. I explain that, of these two principles of order, the one is Design itself, a modus operandi of intelligence (such as we find it here below, of which the human mind affords the best examples), while the other is something to which no name has been assigned, and which, consequently, we can only shortly describe by saying that it is not design. It becomes necessary, therefore, to give a farther periphrastic account of it as follows:-- This nameless principle of order, considered as a vague popular surmise, is as familiar to our experience as design. We all see, for instance, that water has a tendency to form a perfectly level and horizontal surface, that heavy bodies fall to the earth perpendicularly, that the plummet performs a straight line in just the same direction, that dew-drops and soap-bubbles assume a globular shape, that crystallisation observes similar artist-like rules, and so on. We are accustomed to say, "It is the nature of things," and we ground our daily actions on a confidence in this regularity of proceeding, without generally attempting to explain it. Science comes to our help, and shows us that this orderly action of things around us may be traced to, and is the necessary result of, the operation of certain powers or properties inherent in these natural things. Grant that the property called gravitation belongs to moving bodies, and an innumerable quantity of orderly phenomena may be predicated as springing of their own accord by inevitable consequence from this datum; which same phenomena, moreover, intelligence is able coincidently to reproduce in its own special mental way. Here, then, is a principle of order, less popularly appreciated, but not less certainly evidenced and known, than design. It is, no doubt, a principle infinitely inferior in dignity, for it is blind and unintelligent, while design sees and understands, but this is not the question. The question, superseded by an answer derived from human experience, is to this effect--that nature and natural things are, with no less propriety, assignable as the doers of a certain non-designing kind of order, than man is assignable as the doer of the designing kind; that we just as truly perceive that nature, in the exercise of certain powers that we find to be inherent in her, produces order in a dew-drop or in a crystal, as that man, in the exercise of certain powers that we find to be inherent in him, produces order in a poem or in a cathedral, and that, consequently, the argument from design, based as it is on the assertion that our experience assures us of only one principle of order, is invalid. Mr. F. W. Newman's argument is one of this erroneous class. He points to "Animal Instincts" as an effect, which, owing to our knowing of no other agency by which it could have been produced, can alone be accounted for by reference to a designer, and consequently as manifesting the objective existence of that designer, who could only be the theistic God. The question that Mr. F. Newman's adduced instance required him to consider was, whether the non-designing principle of order, which, we are aware, is in many cases able to produce the same effects as the other, could have been thus operative here, and he had got to prove that it could not have been so, that there was something in the nature of the case that forced us exclusively to have recourse to the intelligent principle of order, and resisted any solution from the other principle. The result of a proof so conducted would have been, that Mr. F. Newman was entitled to conclude that (granting our earthly experience was a sufficient test of the matter) Design must have been the sole worker of the debated phenomenon. He would then have established his theistic argument. Instead of doing this, he simplifies his proceeding by being incognisant of a notorious fact, and ignoring the non-designing principle altogether. 1. The fact is, that there is not one way only of producing the phenomena of design (I am here using an ordinary elliptical mode of speaking, since literal metaphysical correctness is sometimes cumbrous)--but there are two ways: one, the mind of a designer, and the other (whatever may be its nature, which the present question does not call upon me to define) not the mind of a designer. 2. The shortest way of proving this theorem, is to state that there are two ways of your obtaining a facsimile of your own person. One is to have your portrait taken, and the other is to stand before a looking-glass, and that of these two ways the former is that of design, and the latter confessedly not design, being the well-known necessary effect of certain so-called second causes, whose operation in this instance is familiar to modern science. 3. Consequently, S. D. Collet is incorrect in the principle which she makes the foundation of her argument at p. 27, where it is said, "What the Theist maintains is this, that when we see the exercise of Force in the direction of a purpose, we, by an inevitable inference, attribute the phenomenon to some conscious agent." 4. Force is seen to be exercised in the direction of a purpose--the purpose being that of producing similitude--with equal evidence in the two cases just compared; for though the force exercised in said direction is less in the case of the painter than it is in that of the looking-glass (for the resemblance produced by the former is in less degree a resemblance than that produced by the latter), the evidence cannot be said to be less, since it is no less able to convince. We are as perfectly sure that the painter could not have produced that lesser similitude of a man, and a particular man, by chance (the alternative of this supposition, according to our experience, being that he must have used design) as we are that the looking-glass could not have produced that greater similitude of a man, and a particular man, by chance (the alternative of this supposition, according to our experience, being that it must have used certain so-called laws of nature); this collective experience of ours, equally assuring us on the one hand, that the only way of the painter's achieving these effects is by design, and on the other, that the only way of the looking-glass's doing so, is by the natural agencies referred to. 5. The human experience on which the decision of this question must be founded--though not at the present era essentially different--may yet be said to be considerably so from what it was in certain former periods. In no times could mankind think and observe without becoming aware of these two principles of order--whether you call them facts or inferences--as a portion of their familiar experience. And so far as they might have compared them, they must have abundantly seen that the natural one is more powerful than the artificial one, and that the straight line or the circle must seek its perfection much rather from the plummet or the revolving radius, than from the pencil of Apelles. 6. Thus the essential point of the existence of the two principles has always been known, but the idea of their respective spheres and limits, of the efficient prevalence of each within our experience, has fluctuated in society. Art and handicraft are, of course, peculiarly competent to appreciate the artificial principle of order, while physical science is especially conversant with the natural one. As the ancients were equal to the moderns in the former pursuits, but vastly inferior to them in the latter, they must so far have had a tendency to think more of the designing principle, and less of the other principle than we do. But it must be remembered, that one or other of these two principles, or at least the arbitrament between them, is the animating basis of all religion, and of all religious sects and persuasions; and further, that of these two principles, the religion founded on the artificial one, which is the one traditionally derived to us, is liable to be, and is wont to be, a far more powerful religion (because it deals far more intensely in personification, having reference singly to some supposed artist) than either the religion that is constituted by the natural principle, or that which results from a mixture of the two principles. And indeed, I will incidentally say that this last kind of religion seems to me to have much analogy on its side, and that the old idea of "the two principles" might, on several grounds besides the present one, and in several respects, perhaps, be found to shadow forth a certain amount of most important truth and applicability. 7. To return. By considering the state of religion and of religious belief in the times of Socrates and Cicero, in connection with the state of art, handicraft, and science, in the same time, and coincidently taking care not to forget that religious sentiment (that at least of the kind which had in their era already been, and much more since has been, communicated from the east to the west) is an incomparably more vigorous impeller of opinion, than reason and argument; we shall have some of the principal data, and in a main matter shall be prepared to use them judiciously in any inquiry we might make, why it was that Socrates and Cicero, having their attention arrested by the artificial principle of order and arrangement, seemed absolutely to forget the existence of the natural one, and why in consequence it was, that the latter wrote to this effect: "He who can look up to the heavenly vault, and doubt the existence of a one personal God, the designer and governor of all things, is equivalent to a madman"; and why, further, we, spite of our vast physical science, are prone to the same fallacy. 8. Having thus proved that the argument of the Theist generally, as well as the particular one advanced by S. D. C. at p. 27, is, by being based on the erroneous statement that there is only one means known to human experience, of producing phenomena identical with those that are the product of design, and that this one is design itself; there being, on the contrary, two such means, one of which is not design; having, I say, proved that your argument, by being so based, is invalid, I find I must fully agree with you, that there is evidence of "an unmistakable cosmical unity." 9. The true inquiry, therefore, is, which of those two principles of order is, in the agency inquired into, the agent under these circumstances, and whether both, and how far, under our ignorance of what may be (a most important point that is carefully to be considered) we are entitled to affirm as indubitable, to denounce as contradictory, to advance as probable, to conjecture, to surmise, or to speculate on this question. THE TRUTH OF FIRST PRINCIPLES. 1. You ask "my idea on the impossibility of proving the truth of First Principles?" By "truth" you mean the ascertained existence of any idea or thing, and the ascertained consistency of any statement with some such idea or thing. By "principles" you mean not simply cardinal propositions, but cardinal propositions that we have ascertained to be true. By "first principles" you mean the indubitably true but unprovable elementary principles of all our knowledge. You mean that these principles are the ground whereon we build in our reasonings; all that we build upon them must, in consequence of being so built, admit of being "proved" whether we have built rightly--that is, admit of being subjected to the test whether the reasoning is correct; but these "first principles" are confessedly exempted from this test, and yet are received as true, no less than the others that have sustained this ordeal. You ask the meaning of this privilege, whether it is right; and, if so, to what propriety or necessity of the case it is due? 2. You ask, "How is truth ascertained to be truth?" or, in other words, "What is the criterion of truth?" With respect to the first query--In accordance with the definition I have above given of truth, it would seem that it must have two sources, experience and reason, experience who notifies the existence of certain ideas or things, and reason, who forms propositions suggested by them. Experience, therefore, acts the simple part of supplying all the materials of truth; while reason, besides his acknowledged office of judge of all truth, exercises the quite different function of being himself the purveyor of a portion of it. So indubitable is it that truth can have these two sources only, that even fanaticism would be found confessing the principle; while it appeals to the experience of those who agree with it, as well as professes to be reasonable. First principles must, accordingly, be of two kinds. Of those that are based upon experience, I will give the following instances:--I hear the chirping of a bird, and I see an inkstand before me. That I have the sensation of hearing and seeing in these two cases, are facts of which it is impossible I can doubt. Reason perceives that these are primary facts or first principles, neither admitting nor requiring any proof, testified by consciousness, and self-evidently verified on that testimony. By reason, of course is meant the reason of all mankind--that is, of all who are presumably competent to judge on the subject. So that any just or reasonable confidence in the verdict of my own reason--in this or in any other matter, presupposes a due comparison of my own reason with that of others, nay, in some cases, a consideration of the supposably more enlightened reason of future times. I discriminate first principles from derived ones thus:--"I see the sun," is a first principle to me; "you see it," is a first principle to you; by comparing these two ideas, each attains the derived principle that the other sees what he does, and the further derived principle that the sun is an existence independent of both. His own existence is, indeed, to every one the first principle, by means of which he infers the existence of other things and beings. In coming now to the other kind of first principles, consisting of propositions formed by reason, we perceive that these show symptoms of still further difference from the above, than that which results from the difference of their source, of difference that affects their philosophical character, and their technical right to the name under which they present themselves to us. In short, the primary philosophy has not yet settled their title. They are perceived by us to be true by an act of reason called intuition. Not similarly, however, does our reason inform us that they really are first principles, and our science is hitherto unequal to this inquiry. Take, for instance, the following celebrated thesis, so often cited as the most fundamental of all the propositions of reason, insomuch as to be tacitly implied in all our reasonings; which yet we are not sure is a first principle, all that can be said in favor of its pretensions being that we can find no one who is able to reduce it to more primary elements:-- It is impossible for a thing at the same time to be and not to be. Any one agreeing, as every one must, that this is true, might still justly put the query, Why is it impossible? thereby calling its assertion in question, demanding its credentials of proof, seeking some ground for its truth other than its own testimony, and hypothesising some other proposition more fundamental than it of which it would be a derivative, and by all and each of these proceedings, rejecting its claim to be a first principle. Its resisting our analysis is a good subjective ground for our ranking this and other similar propositions among our first principles. But they could only have the true claim by its being made clear that the inability results from the nature of the case, and not from our own incompetency. This test is borne by the former description of first principles; we are able to see that the instances I adduced, such as the statements, "I see the sun," "I see an inkstand," "I hear a bird," "I am conscious that I exist," evade our power of ordinary proving, because they do not admit of such proof. When we perceive that no one can answer this query, we are prompted to another. Why cannot we answer it? whence our inability? what prevents us? But here also we find ourselves completely in the dark, which is somewhat strange, considering that in every human pursuit, whether of science or any other, when we wish to do a thing and cannot do it, we are generally able to specify some particular, either of self-defect or outward impediment that is supposed to be in fault. But I imagine, if the reader were to experiment on the specimen I have given, he would not only find himself to fail in solving the problem, Why is it that a thing cannot at once be and not be? but would not have a word to advance in the way of accounting for his failure. These remarks apply to all other propositions of the sort. Euclid's axioms, which undoubtedly aim to be as elementary as possible, and therefore may be said to aim to be first principles, are confessedly, under this aspect, unsatisfactory to the learned. "Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other." Every one is inclined to ask, Why? "A straight line is the shortest distance between two points." Again, Why? The sum of the above strictures on this kind of so-called first principles, is--1. That they have not made good their title, and therefore are not to be accredited with it. 2. That there is a decided presumption against that title from the doubt and dissatisfaction with which it is met, where want of candor and intelligence cannot be imputed, especially when it is considered that the other, the sensuous experimental kind of first principles, have so frank an acceptance. 3. It seems to be absolutely provable, and I suppose I have above incidentally proved it, that they are not first principles. 4. The task is set to metaphysics of supplying the most satisfactory proof of all by bringing to light such propositions as would be perceived to underlie these so-called first principles, and to be the real first principles to which the others would give precedence. As regards their name, it being so much in point, excuses the old remark that the elements of our knowledge stand in a reversed order in respect to this knowledge to what they assume in our process of acquiring it. A first principle, therefore, means also a last one; it is the last in whatsoever endeavors to descend to the bottom or to penetrate to the source of our knowledge, but it becomes the first when we trace it from this source through its derivative ideas. The investigating act should not be confounded with the prospecting one. The sensible horizon of subjective vision can, by no mediation, be exalted into the real horizon of truth, wherein the genuine first principles that bound human capability are exclusively to be found. It may be asked, apart from the inquiry what first principles there are, Is there a necessity that some first principles should be? So it seems from the data of the case. It is patent to common observation that the mind of man is recipient of ideas from the things that surround it. The contact of its apprehending faculty with the things it apprehends, must, it would seem, constitute first principles. After it has got them it might conceivably elicit from them derived principles, but the original ones cannot be thus derived, since there are none earlier from which to derive them. Again, it is to be inquired, Does the mind, in receiving its ideas, possess and exercise in reference to the things on which it operates, a copying faculty or a transforming faculty? Does it import them simply in their native character, in the way a mirror does the object it reflects, or does it manufacture, cook, and assimilate them, so as to change them into something partaking of its own? And, if it changes them, what is the extent of the change? Does it go so far only as the semi-idealism of Locke, or extend into the absolute idealism of the German school? Because these questions have been wont to puzzle either the learned, or the public, or both, it does not follow that they are difficult. I suppose them to admit of decided answers before a supposed competent audience. As I am unprovided with proof, although I suppose it is to be provable, that first principles of reason must needs be, I must speculate for a moment on the possibility of a proposition of the form of "two and two make four," being derived from one of the form of "I scent the rose," for this seems to be the alternative of there being no first principles of reason. Evidently I must confess to having no grounds for pronouncing such a derivation impossible, though I must grant it to be paradoxical. Our mal-cultivation of non-material science, and the imperfection of our metaphysics, is probably the only cause of the strange predicament. No doubt M. Cousin, and several other eminent teachers of youth, to whose office it belongs to expound received metaphysics, have comprised First Principles in their course of philosophy; but as I have barely met with any of their writings, I must confess such an ignorance of them, as not even to know how far I am either adopting, or evading their phraseology, in discussing the same subjects. Mine, however, cannot be wrong, since the term "first principles," that I have chosen, is one of familiar popular use; so that were this mode of speech, as indeed it is, peculiarly liable to ambiguity, it would, for that very reason, be preferable to any other, till such time as that ambiguity should have been explained, and the wrong thinking, of which it might have been the source, exposed and obviated. Not till this had been done would it be time to inquire whether the current metaphysics had invented any intrinsically better ways of speaking on these topics, for though the veriest tyro in such investigations would be justified in objecting to some of its technicalities, such as the invention of the word free-will, for instance, for the same reason that a beginner in zoology might object, were such an attempt ever made, to the introduction of the word sphynx or griffin into that branch of inquiry, there can be no doubt that other of its speculations are more happily conceived. Hence I suppose it would be a decided mistake to imagine, for example, that no trouve whatever is to be elicited from the obscurities of Kant, but on the other hand, one must as much take care to entertain sober conjectures of the possible value of such unsunned treasures, as to keep in mind that quackery may be not unqualified with some merit, and I might surmise that it was perhaps in virtue of his fabulous expectations in this direction, that Coleridge could not execute his long-meditated plan of elucidating that writer; or rather, perhaps--to speak more curtly--a spirit more differing from that which compounded the amalgam, was necessary to resolve and detect it. According to this estimate of the value of our achieved studies, it would be expectable, in regard to my present topic, that almost all the materials for right conclusions on it must be extant somewhere or other in our books, no great amount of ability being required to turn them to proper account: an easily suppliable desideratum being thus left unsupplied, the public indifference manifested thereby would seem to bear the ascription of our unsatisfactory metaphysics to the fault, however apportioned between the many and the few, not of the intellect, but of the reason. Indeed, it is held as a pretty general rule, that where there is want of reform, there is want of reason; and Bacon, by implication, thought the rule here applicable, when, in defending his "new philosophy" from the charge of arrogance, he apologised by saying that a "cripple in the right road would make better progress than a racehorse in the wrong." That is, he claimed for himself, as he was bound logically to do, the plain good sense of directing his supposably humble faculties with an obvious regard to the end he proposed and professed, and he was ready to concede to his competitors all kinds of superiority but this. The same simplicity characterises the reforming animus of the other great patriarch of "the new philosophy," in its sister branch. The still debated point between the school of Locke and the old philosophy was, and is, of such a form as may be figured by the following hypothetical, and it may be, well-founded statement. Locke seems to have battled mainly for the principle that ideas that every one allows to be inferences, should be acknowledged by philosophy to be such, while the adherents of the old ideas maintained, in opposition to him, that ideas that every one allows to be inferences, should not be acknowledged by philosophy to be such. Or, in other words, Locke aimed to realise a certain first principle of reason, which I shall have hereafter to consider, which stands thus:--"That which it is," while his opponents withstood this innovating pretension, finding it fatal to their doctrine. If the reader is somewhat startled at the statement I have just made, I will remind him that it amounts to nothing more than saying that in the contest between the new and the old philosophy, reason is entirely and absolutely on the side of the former, an assertion which, of course, I must both think admits of being substantiated, and must take myself, in some degree, to be able to aid in its being so. The existing quarrel between the two philosophies might, perhaps, be personified through the medium of a principal champion on each side. For the new ideas I could only choose Locke, since he is admitted to have had no equally eminent successor; for the old I would choose M. Cousin, both on account of his superior merit and popularity, and also of his having made Locke the subject of some elaborate strictures that I happen to have read. On these, when they come again to hand, I should perhaps have something to remark; meanwhile I must content myself with addressing myself to one of them in the following manner:-- In antiquity and the middle ages, the schoolmaster and the philosopher were one and the same individual. The new philosophy was the first to separate these two departments; perceiving that the communication of truth is a distinct office from its investigation, and that that difference of office in each case necessitates a corresponding difference in the public, that is the proper object of its exercise. Since, moreover, society may be discriminated into two sorts of mind, admitting of being pictured as the childish and the adults, it is evident that the instructor must find his audience more especially in the former, while the investigator of truth must appeal exclusively to the latter. This he must needs do, to whichever of the sciences he ministers; and not only so, but he must more particularly address himself to a small and select portion of this itself selecter class, constitute them the witnesses and judges of his proceedings, and perceive that both his success in philosophy and the acknowledgment of it can only be founded first and foremost on their approbation. As even in jockeyism and prize-fighting, there are "the knowing ones," similar referees are, by the nature of things, required for the flourishing estate of any science; and evidently in proportion as they might be incompetent to such an office, false or imperfect science must be the result. Locke, acting on this instinctive view, communicated to the public certain observations he had made in mental philosophy, and entitled his work, An Essay on the Human Understanding. He properly called it an essay, because a person who simply aims to investigate truth, undertakes to do his best in the way of trial, endeavor, and experiment, in such sort as to make the word essay appropriate to what he does. The word moreover implies that the thing done, though it is the writer's best, is liable to be incomplete, comparatively imperfect, and, indeed, in the more difficult questions of philosophy, as well as in the less advanced stages of philosophising, is sure to be so. Locke accordingly, having had his attention struck with certain phenomena of the human mind, told the public just what he had observed, and nothing else. Among the observations that he thus imparted, was the process through which the mind seems to go in arriving at the sum of its ideas, and especially the points from which it seems to start in this process. M. Cousin, having apparently no conception of a way of acting so proper to legitimate inquiry, and having himself written a Course of Philosophy, evidently thinks Locke ought to have done the same; for he says that Locke is erroneous in the method of his philosophy, that he begins at the wrong end, that instead of having told us as he has how the ideas arise in the mind, he ought to have told us what the ideas are, instead of describing their origin to have described their actuality, to have given a list of the faculties of the mind, and so on. Which is just the same thing as saying that a traveller who publishes his explorations in America, ought instead to have gone to China. I shall have to make some objections to Locke, but they will be of a nature exactly contrary to those of which he is usually made the subject. Instead of accusing his principles I shall have to impute to him the not sufficiently carrying them out; a fault due to his position as an early reformer, and perfectly consistent with his high character as such. I have the more reason to note this distinction between M. Cousin's department and the function exercised by Locke, because I am forced myself to take the benefit of it. Want of erudition would form very vulnerable points, were I to be judged by the former standard. In the little I have yet put forth on the subject of First Principles, I already find two or three errors of that sort, which a greater amount of reading would no doubt have enabled me to escape. My present letter may close with some correction of one of these. Preliminary, I will venture to call "That which is is," a first principle of reason, and "Two and two make four," one of its derivatives, leaving this topic for future explanation, and then proceed thus:--When in my last letter I represented first principles as bounding the horizon of human knowledge, I left it to be inferred that both the kinds of "first principles" I had mentioned were thus describable in common. I find, however, that this metaphysical character belongs exclusively to first principles of sensuous experience, and no more belongs to first principles of reason than to first principles of grammar, or to first principles of rhetoric. That is, first principles of reason are merely the result of one of those analytical inquiries in which we arrive at something absolutely simple, and must there stop, just as in the science of numbers we may thus arrive at unity. Having long ago defined First Principles of sensuous experience, I find there is a difficulty attached to the other kind of first principles derived from the various use of the word reason--which I will say betrayed me into a wrong inference in the concluding paragraph of my last letter. Locke, in the 17th chapter of his fourth book, confesses that this word, in the proper use of the English language, is liable to bear several senses. Due discrimination in such a case, and a cautious avoidance of the dangers to which philosophy is exposed, and has so amply incurred, from this kind of source might, above all, have been, expected from Locke, since he was the first who inculcated it, and is generally remarkable for the observance of his own precepts in this matter. Hence the charge I have now got to bring against him is a little surprising. Indeed, it might be asserted that his position and circumstances do not seem very readily to bear the entire responsibility of some of his proceedings. Perhaps he might be characterised as a writer of somewhat humorous idiosyncracy in respect to tendency to fixed ideas. His lapses, indeed, are not many, but they are highly significant, as I shall have occasion in more than one instance to show, and among these must evidently be reckoned that I am now going to notice, since it imports the wrong definition of a word of such cardinal meaning. In defining the word reason, in its proper and specific sense wherein it is used to denote a certain well-known quality of the human mind--that is, as approvedly ascertained and appreciated under this name, as are certain weights and measures under those of pound, gallon, or mile, he assigns a meaning to it that comes short of the proportions thus justly prefigured as belonging to it. He confounds reason with reasoning--that is, he emerges the entire faculty or modus operandi, to which we give the name of reason, in that partial exercise of its function to which we give the name of reasoning. He says that, in matters of certainty, such as the proof of any of Euclid's theorems, the acts by which the mind ascertains the fit coherence of the several links in the chain of reasoning are acts of reason. Granted. Also, that in weighing probabilities, a similar coherence is similarly verified by reason. Granted--with liberty of comment that these arts of reason, in either of the two cases have, by the approved practice of language, received the name of reasoning. But he further signifies--that is, he does not expressly affirm, but, with equivalent certification, he implicitly asserts, and inferentially states that, in examining such a proposition as the following:--"What is, is" (an examination to which confessedly no reasoning is attached), the act by which the mind assents to the truth of this statement is not to be described as an act of reason. He adopts a different phraseology, and calls it intuition. Observe, my objection is not that he invests the idea with this new name, but that he disparages its old one. I do not object to your calling a spade a shovel, under a certain view of its use, but it remains still necessary that you should admit that a spade is, in the full sense of the word, a spade. Indeed, I will incidentally remark that I suspect the word "intuition" has been a very good addition to our vocabulary, and I suppose its proper import might be represented as follows:--Reason has two modes of his exercise, the one is called reasoning, and the other intuition. Intuition is the decision of reason on one single point; reasoning--a word proper to demonstrative truth--seems to be nothing more than intuition looking not merely at one point, but at several points successively. So that intuition and reasoning would constitute the self-same function of reason, and the difference in their meanings would be solely owing to the difference in the circumstances under which that function is exercised. Observe, that I am here only venturing to speculate, and am now returning from that digression. Whether or not Locke is herein psychologically consistent with himself; whether, indeed, his real theory is not that which I have just conjecturally intimated, is another question, which I shall defer to a future occasion; but whether or not he herein opposes the ordinary, prevailing, and inveterate use of language, which is what I am charging him with doing, and whether or not he has justifiable ground for this innovation which I am denying that he has, are points that must be tried by the ordeal of these three considerations. How are we accustomed to speak? How are we accustomed to write? and what sort of a call for changing our customs in either of these particulars is that which constitutes a genuine call to do so? In regard to the first of these tests, the literature of all sects and parties has been accustomed to assert that, both in matters of science and of worldly business, reason is the judge of all truth whatever, without exception. Locke, on the other hand, informs us that reason is the judge of demonstrative truth, of logical truth, of casuistical truth, and of lawyers' truth, and of these kinds of truth alone, but is not the judge of intuitive or self-evident truth. Our writers would tell us that to deny "what is, is" to be a true statement, would be an offence against reason; but we learn from Locke that reason has no cognisance in this matter, but intuition only has, and consequently that the wrong committed would not be against reason, but against intuition. Our current speech accords with our literature in this view of the meaning of the word reason; whose efficiency, moreover, it endeavors to amplify, by surrounding it with satellites of adjectives formed from it, the principal of which are "reasonable" and "unreasonable." Provided with this vocabulary, we pronounce it to be unreasonable to deny any truth whatever that can be well and clearly ascertained; and so far are we from reserving these adjectives for the occasion of demonstrative truth, and holding them inapplicable where self-evident or intuitive truth comes on the carpet, that we account it, if possible, still more unreasonable to deny the latter than the former. But if the nomenclature adopted by Locke be the right one, there ought to be a change in these current modes of speaking and writing. One who should reject the proofs of Euclid, would be unreasonable; one who should maintain that Thurtel or Greenacre were innocent of murder, would be unreasonable; but, one who should deny the truth of any self-evident proposition, would not be unreasonable; for to say this, would be to say that reason has cognisance of such propositions, whereas, according to him, it is expressly not reason, but intuition that takes this office. The words "intuitional" and "unintuitional," must be invented to supply the obvious need which the apparent gap discovers; there seems no other way of supplying it. Lest I should be suspected of somewhat making up a case; of having, perhaps, represented not so much what Locke really means, as what he seems to mean, I will remind the reader that Locke is undertaking the formal definition of a word, and that on such a critical occasion, it is proper to give him credit for not meaning otherwise than he seems to mean. The passage which is my text, will be found in the earlier part of the seventeenth chapter of the fourth book. Indeed, I could at once prove my indictment by citing a few words from it, accompanied by a comment of my own, had I any right to impose on the reader a belief in the discriminating fairness and matter-of-fact accuracy, both of my extracts and my comment. I will, however, venture on such a step; I will suppose myself commenting on this passage, and proceed thus: Locke, it will be seen in this, his foremost and professed definition of the word reason, contrasts it with "sense and intuition." Whether he holds these to be identical with what he calls "the outward and the inward sense," is not quite clear. That, however, is not the question. He says, that these two faculties "reach but a very little way"; for that "the greatest part of our knowledge depends upon deductions and intermediate ideas." Now, reason, he says, may be defined to be that faculty, whose specific office it is "to find out and apply" those intermediate ideas and deductions by which we obtain knowledge that consists of two kinds, one that which exalts us into "certainty," the other that which, though less generous diet for the mind, we have constantly good ground for gladly acquiescing in, and which we call "probability." So that, says Locke, if you ask, "What room is there for the exercise of any other faculty but outward sense and inward perception?" I can abundantly reply, "Very much." I have shown you that without this "demonstrative" faculty, our knowledge would be but a skeleton; it would, indeed, not be properly speaking knowledge, but mere rudiments of knowledge. Such is my interpretation of Locke's definition of reason, in the proper and specific sense of this word. If it is strictly correct, as I believe the intelligent reader will find by reference, then it is Locke confounds reason with reasoning, mistakes a part for the whole, and the whole for a part, and acts similarly--to borrow his own way of illustration--to the representing a gallon to be a quart, or a half-sovereign to be a sovereign. It is to be observed, too, that it is entirely in behalf of the more showy kind of knowledge, that the mistake is made. The respected name of reason is given exclusively to logic and demonstrating. Good sense, good feeling, just instinct, if they stand alone, have no claim to it; they are put on an inferior footing; true, they are intuition; but what then? they are not reason. Now, the century introduced by Locke is accused by the present, and it is generally admitted, with some degree of justice, of having "materialistic" tendencies. We may see, then, how Locke's doctrine, as just described, founded though it is only on nomenclature, hinging merely on definition, incurring whatever wrongness it implicates from no other lapse than that of confounding a word with its derivative, doing nothing, in short, but annul the difference of meaning between the two words, reason and reasoning; we may see how this apparently harmless experiment might tend to supplying these materialistic tendencies with a ground, a rationale, a principle, and thus to exalt their authority, and how, indeed! it just smacks of their spirit. It may be seen, too, how, from a few slips, such as this on the part of the champion of the "new philosophy," competing schools of the present age might be able to make up a case, specious enough to gain the acquiescence of a portion of the public against both--with how great futility, I believe, would appear, if the accusations were weighed by a competent tribunal. And, finally, it might be expected, that the undue exaltation of the demonstrative department of reason, should issue in a reaction into a contrary extreme, and that some Mr. Carlyle might be found to inveigh against "logic," to sneer at "analysis," to denounce "cause and effect philosophy" and to praise "mysticism." I have already assumed that the third test that I promised, goes against Locke, and requires no examination, simply because he has not advanced it in his behalf. He has assigned no ground for changing the meaning of the word reason, and it is presumable that none is assignable. The question, What is the Criterion of Truth?--that is, What are the proper means of distinguishing whether anything that is asserted to be true is so or not? claims immediate notice, because such a criterion exists, and the new philosophy necessarily appeals to it when it comes before the public, while it has shown with what effect it can do so, in the case of those of its branches--namely, the purely material and the mathematical, that flourish in society. Premising that it is a way of certifying truth that has been immemorially used by mankind in their daily affairs, and which they have always, to some extent, instinctively transferred to their judgments in philosophy, and that it is the only possible general and summary criterion of truth, I may describe it as consisting in the unanimous assent to some idea or assertion of all who are thought competent to pronounce concerning it. Viewed in connection with the thing it verifies, and the parties who use it, the criterion may be thus represented: Any idea, assertion, or opinion, must, by any inquirer, be found true, when he perceives it to be such as would be unanimously assented to by all presumably competent judges of the kind of truth to which it refers. So that those who use this criterion, and are convinced of the truth of anything through its medium--a proceeding which I have represented as common and habitual to mankind--in thereby pronouncing certain supposed persons to be judges of truth in the said matter, claim themselves to be also judges of it in the matter of so pronouncing. The acts of judgment they thus tacitly challenge to themselves may be said to be to the following effect:--1. They assign the qualifications that constitute competency for a certain function. 2. They decide that there are persons in the community answering to this character. 3. They opine that the view such persons take or would take, imports an assertion of the truth of the idea in question. 4. They accredit that view with being strictly one, supposing that all qualified to arbitrate would acquiesce and agree in the same. 5. They attribute to themselves a similar unanimity. 6. They assume the sufficiency of their own judgment to make all the above conclusions. These assumptions on their part, so complicated in description, are simple enough in performance. It is plain that mankind--more properly here to be called the public--simply attach themselves to some opinion which they find current in society; while, however, the assumptions I have just described are, in their full measure, but a necessary consequence of their so doing, doubtless their so doing must itself have been dictated by some kind of anticipation of them, but this may, to any degree, have been vague, undetermined, partial, and imperfect. The rationale of this double bench of judges is thus explained. In reference to almost every kind of truth there is always a certain portion of the community better able to judge than the rest. Hence it becomes clearly the part of the latter, if they wish to be rightly informed, to defer to the opinion of those confessedly better judges--confessed to be such from the general opinion to that effect. Thus a second set of judges perforce, in addition to those that were originally conceived by choice, is implicated in this transaction. For the primary sort I must seek a name from the French language, which calls them "experts," the English supplying, I believe, none, except a very vernacular one, the "knowing ones"; the others have already got a well-known name--the public. The public, in deciding on the occasions in question, what are the qualifications that constitute "experts" may be said to choose them, thereby, however, choosing persons in idea, and not bodily. The relation of the public to these conceptions of theirs is the same as that of the constituencies to the members of Parliament, in the point of one being the choosers and the others the chosen, with a common object in view. I suppose, to stop the current of my discourse, and adjourn its topic, for the sake of at once bringing the general principle discussed to the test of exemplification, would have its want of logical harmony excused by its being desiderated by the reader. I had undertaken to prove that this principle--which, for distinction's sake, I will call the unanimity principle--is the proper and only criterion of scientific truth to the great non-scientific world, and consequently that modern philosophy necessarily appeals to it when it comes before the public. What I had thus taken upon myself to do, obviously was--first, to display and explicate the principle by definition, and this I had already done; and next--to describe it theoretically by showing its manner of existing, and this I was engaged in doing. Leaving this inquiry in the midst, I am now going to deviate into the practical phase of its description, by showing, not how it is, but how it acts. This seems necessary for the satisfaction of the reader, as being the only way of securing him from any, even were it but temporary, misapprehension as to the working value of the principle for which his attention is demanded. I therefore select the six following examples, the two first homely, and the four last philosophical, of its ordinary use by the public. They will be at once seen to justify my assertion of its having for its main characteristics the two facts--first, that mankind habitually use it, and have always done so; and next, that propositions thus warranted are universally accepted as established truth, and that no one thinks of calling them in question. 1. Thus no one doubts, when coming to the intersection of two roads, he sees a sign-post, on one of whose pointers is written "To London," and on the other "To Windsor," no one hesitates to believe that the information thus conveyed to him is true; because he is aware that those who give it are competent to do so, and that none similarly competent will gainsay it. 2. Again, no one doubts that the sun rises and sets once in every twenty-four hours; no one doubts that he so rose and set yesterday. Every one is ready to affirm the certainty of these two facts, but very few can do so, in any great degree, from their own experience; but they help the lack of this by that of their neighbors. Neither is it necessary that they should have any near, nor even the most remote, idea of the personality of those on whose testimony they thus implicitly rely; it suffices they are sure, whoever they may be, they have the right qualifications for testifying in the way they do, and that no one so qualified can contradict their evidence, or dream of doing so. The above are examples of the criterion of truth, applied to the ideas and proceedings of ordinary life. It will be seen therefrom, first that mankind have in all ages been educated in an acceptance of its principle, according to my definition of it, the principle, namely, of an indubitable certainty of truth, resulting from the unanimous assent to some idea of all who are thought by self and neighbors competent to pronounce thereon; possibly too they may be said to have been educated in some imperfect theoretical appreciation of this principle. It will secondly be seen therefrom, that the two kinds of unanimity which I have predicated as essential to the proper use and results of this criterion, an unanimity, namely, on the part of the supposed good judges of certain descriptions of truth, who may be called the adepts or knowing ones imagined by the public; and again an unanimity on the part of the public itself in interpreting and adopting their opinion; it will be seen, I say, that this double unanimity is perfectly attainable, nay, perfectly attained, and that too so extensively, as to constitute a common and familiar occurrence on all manner of occasions of daily life. I will now give instances of their similar use of it in directing their judgments on philosophical questions. 3. Very few of the public are able to examine the proof of any of the theorems of Euclid, yet there is none of them who would think of seriously doubting the truth of anything contained in that book, the ground of their confidence being solely their knowledge of the fact, that the learned in these matters have unanimously so decided. Every one, again, believes in certain facts that are asserted by navigators, explorers, and geographers, respecting the existence, position, and products of various countries of the globe. Every one, further, believes in certain deductions derived from these facts by naturalists, geologists, astronomers, and so forth. The belief is owing to the unanimous testimony of all these confessedly competent authorities; but whenever they are seen to differ among themselves, the public withholds its entire belief, and either doubts or disbelieves the things asserted. Thus the public is at this day doubtful and divided whether there is such a creature as the sea-serpent. Similarly the public is dubious--for it must needs be so if any section of it is so--whether a certain explorer who was authoritatively sent out about a dozen years ago conjointly by the French Government and Institute, was, in any degree, justified in bringing home the account he did of there being a tribe of men in the interior of Africa having tails, whether this unexpected information is, in any important particular, true. The two last examples have been furnished by material science. I will now draw one from the other department, with the view of indicating that in non-material science also, numerous propositions circulate among the public that are franked by the same principle to pass as undoubted truth. Such is the maxim of heathen philosophy, recorded by Cicero in his "Officiis": "Do not to another what you would not he should do to you"; or the same maxim, in its modified form, as given in the New Testament, with the characteristic omission of the negative. The truth of this moral maxim is universally admitted, because it is supposed that no person of presumable moral judgment has ever been known to call it in question. It would seem, then, that this criterion of truth is--what confessedly, or from easy proof, it is predicable that no other criterion of truth is--a general criterion of truth. I will, however, restrict this pretension to the statement--to be hereafter more largely explained--that it is a general criterion of truth to the public as such, to the public considered as a public; for, indeed, it is not properly usable at all by anyone except in the character of a member of the public. This means that it is a general criterion of truth in the following way: it is applicable to the verification of all truth, so far as it admits of being verified before the public, and made the common property of the community. 6. For even where at first sight you might think it most out of place, I mean in relation to that kind of truth whose primary evidence is the consciousness of the individual, so that the competent witness of truth is necessarily but one person, there is oneness of opinion, there is unanimity, and the testimony of the one competent witness is not contradicted or doubted by that of any other presumably competent. When, for instance, I am conscious of the sensation of seeing an inkstand before me, no one seeing reason to doubt my assertion to that effect, all presumably competent testimony on the subject must needs be concentrated in myself; and the fact of my seeing an inkstand, though for my own conviction verified in a way independent of any such argument, is, for the conviction of others, only pronounceable as true, because all presumably competent authority is of one mind in alleging its truth. In thus far exemplifying the use of this principle, I have exhibited it in the exercise of its primary office only, which, however, is not that which, on behalf of philosophy, I am here demanding from it. I have shown it, namely, as used by the public to establish truth positively, and not in the way wherein it may be used to distinguish truth comparatively. But it is solely in this latter office that it becomes a criterion of truth, an arbiter between the true and the false, an indicator of both, and more especially of what has the character of ascertained truth, and what has not; and this, it will be remembered, was the office I sought from it, and constituted the ultimate purpose of my taking up the consideration of the subject. Having with as much brevity as just suffices for that purpose, explained the nature of the principle in question, and its use by society at large, it now only remains that I should explain that purpose itself, by theory and example. What I am doing in tracing the unanimity principle from its first instinctive use by the public to its secondary and meditated one by philosophy, is a purely critical act, comparable to that of the rhetorician who appreciates the character of certain modes of thinking which have long since been practised by mankind, and shows what therein is approvable--all the rest being liable to censure. It was the universal conviction of European Christendom, during many centuries, that the Church, which was popularly supposed to be represented by the Pope, enjoyed peculiarly a divine guidance which made it an infallible judge of truth. This idea was thought to be warranted by the unanimous assent of all right-minded persons, and the denial of it to be the mark of a reprobate spirit, as well as contrary to common sense. We now know the entire futility of this assumption, and that the heretics were not inferior to the orthodox in the power of judging such subjects. Hence in discussing the unanimity principle the question presents itself, How came the public thus wrongly to apply it? What error did they commit in so doing? When the revival of learning and the consequent rise of Protestantism had exposed the error in that form of it, it was still continued under the new social regimes; so that even Locke, the boldest advocate of the rights of man that was tolerated even in his time, stigmatised the dissentients from certain Protestant tenets in the same unjust way that Popery had done to the dissentients from certain Popish ones; speaking of them in two or three places of his essay as persons at once notoriously disreputable in character and weak in intellect; consistently with which estimate he came to the conclusion that the reigning theology was established truth, as being accredited by all those whose opinion was worth taking account of. Later times have again manifested the futility of the assumption against the new race of dissentients. No one will say that Goethe and Neibuhr (to mention only two) must count for nothing on questions wherein they were as likely to be well informed as their opponents. So that Locke's side, instead of being warranted by the decisive verdict he imagines, is but one of two suitors in an undetermined cause, neither having yet attracted the votes of the whole jury, and neither consequently yet occupying the position of ascertained truth. Giving everyone a fair hearing is that trial and test of competency which yields the only means of learning who said competent judges are. A little consideration, even in Locke's time of less advanced thought, might have informed an intelligent mind, if free from prejudice, that mere prohibitory laws must be of themselves less adverse to the free expression of people's sentiments than that averted state of the public mind of which they are one of the symptoms. Both from theory and experience we may collect that very much the same laws of supply and demand obtain in matters of opinion as in those of food and raiment; the tongue and the pen, and the previous thought by which these are instructed, must evidently hold back from offering to the public, nay, in a great measure from suggesting to the agent himself, any such ideas as they know the public will not, and must confine themselves to putting forth such only as they suppose it will understand, appreciate, and regard. THE RIGHTS OF REASON. To the two queries you put to me, "What are first principles?" and "What is the criterion of truth?" I find it suitable to append some preliminary remarks on "The Rights of Reason." The solution you expect is, I presume, a reasonable one. You do not wish me to take into account any opinions that cannot bear the test of reason. Your queries derive their greatest pertinency from the state of non-material philosophy; and, possibly, might have been, in some measure, prompted by this consideration. That double-minded way of inquiring into truth, which only in part reasons, while it in part dogmatises, imagines, and assumes, is, it is obvious, in morals, metaphysics, and religion, one of our inheritances from former times. The battle has been won in the material department, but is still undecided on the other wing. What, then, is Reason, and what are its Rights? Every human inquiry that asks, What is right, proper, or correct? necessarily, in doing so, asks, What is it reasonable to think, believe, or do? in the points inquired into. The faculty--whatever may be its nature--whereby we find ourselves able, under certain circumstances, to answer this question, we call reason. The rights of reason may be said to consist in the concession to it of a certain absolute power in the decision of truth, divisible under two heads thus--a power of deciding what are the questions whereon it is able to decide, and a power of deciding those questions. One of the many ways of disparaging the rights of reason is--openly or covertly to doubt or deny that morals, metaphysics, and religion, are--in the full sense of the word--sciences. This is to withdraw them from the empire of reason, and to hand them over to some rival pretender. No science can flourish while it is understood that its discussion must be made palatable to the public. In any supposable code of the rights of reason, one primary article would limit and define the functions of the public in the investigation of truth--a topic which, together with the kindred inquiry, Who are the public? is suggested by your second query. Mankind have naturally a degree of antipathy for reason. They have found Reason, in the work he affects, dull, in the help he furnishes, deficient, in the truth he unveils, ugly, in the rule he arrogates, imperious. Barbarism, in all its stages, may be said to be founded, not merely on ignorance, but on a state of the inclinations that revolts from reason. Two competitors have always disputed the rights of reason; authority or precedent, and faith or conscience. Conscience, early or late, must receive almost all his light from authority; and, therefore, in respect to opinion, may generally be called the creature of authority. Yet, in a moral aspect, authority is confessedly of no account, and conscience has a sole jurisdiction. A large portion of mankind have, in our times, outgrown the error of resting their sense of duty on the mere dictate of other men. The only legitimate directors of human conduct are now generally admitted to be conscience and reason; the conscience must be exclusively one's own, but the reason need not entirely--and, indeed, cannot in any great proportion--be one's own, but may be partly that of one's neighbor. The question of the division of power between these two potentates, though not yet understood by the public, does not seem to be more complicated than that analogous one just alluded to, and of which they evidently understand the gist. For authority, as above intimated, though the venerable instructor of conscience, is yet morally subjected to him; and, not dissimilarly, have conscience and reason reciprocal claims of precedence on each other. Reason is the judge, but he is bound, under conscience, to give a sufficient and attentive hearing to any pleadings that conscience may have to offer, and conscience is the pleader, but he is bound, under reason, to conform to whatever verdicts reason declares himself competent to render. If history in this particular can be considered as having disclosed a necessary sequence, civilisation progresses in the following order:--The general mind, in becoming acquainted with its own powers, first learns an evolution of conscience (and this can only take place through the medium of religion), and last learns to appreciate reason (and this can only happen through the medium of science). While the prerogatives of conscience were insufficiently known, authority usurped them, and while the prerogatives of reason are insufficiently known, authority and conscience conjointly usurp them. The word conscience I here use in its proper sense, wherein it means either an individual conscience, or the united consciences of more than one supposed to be in accord together, so as to make the acts resulting from this accord constitute single acts of conscience. But the word has taken an improper enlargement of meaning in being often used to signify one conscience claiming something in contravention of another conscience. These two, so different meanings of the word conscience, are seldom duly discriminated by those who use them. To the rights of reason belongs a certain degree of power, both in regulating the individual conscience, and in solving the differences between opposing ones. Under what conditions, and how far, reason can exercise this office, and what rule he is to follow in so doing, would be an inquiry suggested by my answer to your second query. Having above mentioned religion and science as the two prime ministers respectively of conscience and reason, I will pursue the subject a little further. Religion has aimed to have a moral animus by means of a free conscience. Religion has not yet immediately aimed at moral conduct; but, indeed, has been wont, by the mouth of her most strenuous ministers, to assume that the aim at this is already included in that other aim. But a moral animus is but one ingredient in moral conduct, involving the intent only to act morally, without having of itself the least power to realise that intent. Knowledge,--that is, science, exclusively keeps the keys of this power. Such knowledge religion has not yet made one of her aims and ends either directly, or by any coalition with those who have so aimed. Accordingly religion cannot be said hitherto to have been an advocate of the rights of reason. Whatever good things she may have achieved in this cause have been incidental to her advocacy of the Rights of Conscience. Here reason was her weapon (sharpened for this use, and so far valued and treasured), against authority. Her tendency meanwhile, is to impel conscience to infringe on the rights of reason. Science alone has hitherto been the immediate champion of these rights. But it seems he cannot expect to make that advocacy complete and effectual till he allies himself with religion. This alliance, since it is persuaded by reason, and not by passion, can have science alone for its real mover. The Rights of Reason may at present be said to be in such a germ of their acknowledgment as were the rights of conscience three centuries ago. Mankind have not hitherto come to acquiesce in the idea of that parsimony of guidance vouchsafed to man, which is found to be the result of claiming for reason the power of calling all human thoughts before his tribunal, and seeing whether he has anything to object to them. Their idea has been that not only suggesting inspiration--(which it does not seem necessary that the advocate of the rights of reason should deny)--but guiding inspiration is given, given too to some rather than to others, and given in such a quality, as to dispense with the supervision of reason. A generation successive to many among whom this doctrine has been taught and believed, will not be prone to any decided rejection of it. Pride of species inclining to exaggerated human pretensions above other earthly creatures, and party pride inclining to exalt self and an associated confraternity into a superiority over the rest of mankind, and supplied with a traditional store of modes of thought and practice adapted to such exclusive pretensions, and other native tendencies of the human mind, persuade in the same direction. I have thought it suitable to premise this short sketch of the Rights of Reason, and the opponents of them, to an endeavor to answer your queries in a thoroughly reasonable way, a way which cannot be said to be the more fashionable one in the treatment of metaphysical questions. NOTES [1] Wilfrid Meynell, in his John Henry Newman, erroneously speaks of Charles Robert as the "youngest son." [2] This is a mistake. Owen in 1817 renounced the religions of the world, and proclaimed that man's character was formed for him not by him. But he was not an Atheist. 
6107	----	Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. THE TRUTH ABOUT JESUS IS HE A MYTH? ILLUSTRATED _M. M. Mangasarian_ [Illustration: Woman Crucified. In the Church of St. Etienne, France. For a Long Time This Bearded Woman Was Supposed to be the Christ] _If it is not historically true that such and such things happened in Palestine eighteen centuries ago, what becomes of Christianity? --Thomas Huxley._ CONTENTS PART I A PARABLE IN CONFIDENCE IS JESUS A MYTH? THE PROBLEM STATED THE CHRISTIAN DOCUMENTS VIRGIN BIRTHS THE ORIGIN OF THE CROSS SILENCE OF CONTEMPORARY WRITERS THE STORY OF JESUS A RELIGIOUS DRAMA THE JESUS OF PAUL NOT THE JESUS OF THE GOSPELS IS CHRISTIANITY REAL? PART II IS THE WORLD INDEBTED TO CHRISTIANITY? PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY, OR CHRISTIANITY NOT SUITED TO WESTERN RACES PART III SOME MODERN OPINIONS OF JESUS A RHETORICAL JESUS "WE OWE EVERYTHING TO JESUS" A LIBERAL JEW PRAISES JESUS APPENDIX--REPLIES TO CLERICAL CRITICS _By education most have been misled, So they believe because they were so bred; The priest continues what the nurse began, And thus the child imposes on the man_. DRYDEN. PREFACE The following work offers in book form the series of studies on the question of the historicity of Jesus, presented from time to time before the Independent Religious Society in Orchestra Hall. No effort has been made to change the manner of the spoken, into the more regular form of the written, word. M. M. MANGASARIAN. ORCHESTRA HALL CHICAGO [Illustration: Picture in Herculaneum, of the Days of Pompeii, Showing Cupid Crowned with a Cross.] PART I. A PARABLE I am today twenty-five hundred years old. I have been dead for nearly as many years. My place of birth was Athens; my grave was not far from those of Xenophon and Plato, within view of the white glory of Athens and the shimmering waters of the Aegean sea. After sleeping in my grave for many centuries I awoke suddenly--I cannot tell how nor why--and was transported by a force beyond my control to this new day and this new city. I arrived here at daybreak, when the sky was still dull and drowsy. As I approached the city I heard bells ringing, and a little later I found the streets astir with throngs of well dressed people in family groups wending their way hither and thither. Evidently they were not going to work, for they were accompanied by their children in their best clothes, and a pleasant expression was upon their faces. "This must be a day of festival and worship, devoted to one of their gods," I murmured to myself. Looking about me I saw a gentleman in a neat black dress, smiling, and his hand extended to me with great cordiality. He must have realized I was a stranger and wished to tender his hospitality to me. I accepted it gratefully. I clasped his hand. He pressed mine. We gazed for a moment silently into each other's eyes. He understood my bewilderment amid my novel surroundings, and offered to enlighten me. He explained to me the ringing of the bells and the meaning of the holiday crowds moving in the streets. It was Sunday--Sunday before Christmas, and the people were going to "the House of God." "Of course you are going there, too," I said to my friendly guide. "Yes," he answered, "I conduct the worship. I am a priest." "A priest of Apollo?" I interrogated. "No, no," he replied, raising his hand to command silence, "Apollo is not a god; he was only an idol." "An idol?" I whispered, taken by surprise. "I perceive you are a Greek," he said to me, "and the Greeks," he continued, "notwithstanding their distinguished accomplishments, were an idolatrous people. They worshipped gods that did not exist. They built temples to divinities which were merely empty names--empty names," he repeated. "Apollo and Athene--and the entire Olympian lot were no more than inventions of the fancy." "But the Greeks loved their gods," I protested, my heart clamoring in my breast. "They were not gods, they were idols, and the difference between a god and an idol is this: an idol is a thing; God is a living being. When you cannot prove the existence of your god, when you have never seen him, nor heard his voice, nor touched him--when you have nothing provable about him, he is an idol. Have you seen Apollo? Have you heard him? Have you touched him?" "No," I said, in a low voice. "Do you know of any one who has?" I had to admit that I did not. "He was an idol, then, and not a god." "But many of us Greeks," I said, "have felt Apollo in our hearts and have been inspired by him." "You imagine you have," returned my guide. "If he were really divine he would be living to this day." "Is he, then, dead?" I asked. "He never lived; and for the last two thousand years or more his temple has been a heap of ruins." I wept to hear that Apollo, the god of light and music, was no more--that his fair temple had fallen into ruins and the fire upon his altar had been extinguished; then, wiping a tear from my eyes, I said, "Oh, but our gods were fair and beautiful; our religion was rich and picturesque. It made the Greeks a nation of poets, orators, artists, warriors, thinkers. It made Athens a city of light; it created the beautiful, the true, the good--yes, our religion was divine." "It had only one fault," interrupted my guide. "What was that?" I inquired, without knowing what his answer would be. "It was not true." "But I still believe in Apollo," I exclaimed; "he is not dead, I know he is alive." "Prove it," he said to me; then, pausing for a moment, "if you produce him," he said, "we shall all fall down and worship him. Produce Apollo and he shall be our god." "Produce him!" I whispered to myself. "What blasphemy!" Then, taking heart, I told my guide how more than once I had felt Apollo's radiant presence in my heart, and told him of the immortal lines of Homer concerning the divine Apollo. "Do you doubt Homer?" I said to him; "Homer, the inspired bard? Homer, whose inkwell was as big as the sea; whose imperishable page was Time? Homer, whose every word was a drop of light?" Then I proceeded to quote from Homer's _Iliad_, the Greek Bible, worshipped by all the Hellenes as the rarest Manuscript between heaven and earth. I quoted his description of Apollo, than whose lyre nothing is more musical, than whose speech even honey is not sweeter. I recited how his mother went from town to town to select a worthy place to give birth to the young god, son of Zeus, the Supreme Being, and how he was born and cradled amid the ministrations of all the goddesses, who bathed him in the running stream and fed him with nectar and ambrosia from Olympus. Then I recited the lines which picture Apollo bursting his bands, leaping forth from his cradle, and spreading his wings like a swan, soaring sunward, declaring that he had come to announce to mortals the will of God. "Is it possible," I asked, "that all this is pure fabrication, a fantasy of the brain, as unsubstantial as the air? No, no, Apollo is not an idol. He is a god, and the son of a god. The whole Greek world will bear me witness that I am telling the truth." Then I looked at my guide to see what impression this outburst of sincere enthusiasm had produced upon him, and I saw a cold smile upon his lips that cut me to the heart. It seemed as if he wished to say to me, "You poor deluded pagan! You are not intelligent enough to know that Homer was only a mortal after all, and that he was writing a play in which he manufactured the gods of whom he sang--that these gods existed only in his imagination, and that today they are as dead as is their inventor--the poet." By this time we stood at the entrance of a large edifice which my guide said was "the House of God." As we walked in I saw innumerable little lights blinking and winking all over the spacious interior. There were, besides, pictures, altars and images all around me. The air was heavy with incense; a number of men in gorgeous vestments were passing to and fro, bowing and kneeling before the various lights and images. The audience was upon its knees enveloped in silence--a silence so solemn that it awed me. Observing my anxiety to understand the meaning of all this, my guide took me aside and in a whisper told me that the people were celebrating the anniversary of the birthday of their beautiful Savior--Jesus, the Son of God. "So was Apollo the son of God," I replied, thinking perhaps that after all we might find ourselves in agreement with one another. "Forget Apollo," he said, with a suggestion of severity in his voice. "There is no such person. He was only an idol. If you were to search for Apollo in all the universe you would never find any one answering to his name or description. Jesus," he resumed, "is the Son of God. He came to our earth and was born of a virgin." Again I was tempted to tell my guide that that was how Apollo became incarnate; but I restrained myself. "Then Jesus grew up to be a man," continued my guide, "performing unheard-of wonders, such as treading the seas, giving sight, hearing and speech to the blind, the deaf and the dumb, converting water into wine, feeding the multitudes miraculously, predicting coming events and resurrecting the dead." "Of course, of your gods, too," he added, "it is claimed that they performed miracles, and of your oracles that they foretold the future, but there is this difference--the things related of your gods are a fiction, the things told of Jesus are a fact, and the difference between Paganism and Christianity is the difference between fiction and fact." Just then I heard a wave of murmur, like the rustling of leaves in a forest, sweep over the bowed audience. I turned about and unconsciously, my Greek curiosity impelling me, I pushed forward toward where the greater candle lights were blazing. I felt that perhaps the commotion in the house was the announcement that the God Jesus was about to make his appearance, and I wanted to see him. I wanted to touch him, or, if the crowd were too large to allow me that privilege, I wanted, at least, to hear his voice. I, who had never seen a god, never touched one, never heard one speak, I who had believed in Apollo without ever having known anything provable about him, I wanted to see the real God, Jesus. But my guide placed his hand quickly upon my shoulder, and held me back. "I want to see Jesus," I hastened, turning toward him. I said this reverently and in good faith. "Will he not be here this morning? Will he not speak to his worshippers?" I asked again. "Will he not permit them to touch him, to caress his hand, to clasp his divine feet, to inhale the ambrosial fragrance of his breath, to bask in the golden light of his eyes, to hear the music of his immaculate accents? Let me, too, see Jesus," I pleaded. "You cannot see him," answered my guide, with a trace of embarrassment in his voice. "He does not show himself any more." I was too much surprised at this to make any immediate reply. "For the last two thousand years," my guide continued, "it has not pleased Jesus to show himself to any one; neither has he been heard from for the same number of years." "For two thousand years no one has either seen or heard Jesus?" I asked, my eyes filled with wonder and my voice quivering with excitement. "No," he answered. "Would not that, then," I ventured to ask, impatiently, "make Jesus as much of an idol as Apollo? And are not these people on their knees before a god of whose existence they are as much in the dark as were the Greeks of fair Apollo, and of whose past they have only rumors such as Homer reports of our Olympian gods--as idolatrous as the Athenians? What would you say," I asked my guide, "if I were to demand that you should produce Jesus and prove him to my eyes and ears as you have asked me to produce and prove Apollo? What is the difference between a ceremony performed in honor of Apollo and one performed in honor of Jesus, since it is as impossible to give oracular demonstration of the existence of the one as of the other? If Jesus is alive and a god, and Apollo is an idol and dead, what is the evidence, since the one is as invisible, as inaccessible, and as unproducible as the other? And, if faith that Jesus is a god proves him a god, why will not faith in Apollo make him a god? But if worshipping Jesus, whom for the best part of the last two thousand years no man has seen, heard or touched; if building temples to him, burning incense upon his altars, bowing at his shrine and calling him "God," is not idolatry, neither is it idolatry to kindle fire upon the luminous altars of the Greek Apollo,--God of the dawn, master of the enchanted lyre--he with the bow and arrow tipped with fire! I am not denying," I said, "that Jesus ever lived. He may have been alive two thousand years ago, but if he has not been heard from since, if the same thing that happened to the people living at the time he lived has happened to him, namely--if he is dead, then you are worshipping the dead, which fact stamps your religion as idolatrous." And, then, remembering what he had said to me about the Greek mythology being beautiful but not true, I said to him: "Your temples are indeed gorgeous and costly; your music is grand; your altars are superb; your litany is exquisite; your chants are melting; your incense, and bells and flowers, your gold and silver vessels are all in rare taste, and I dare say your dogmas are subtle and your preachers eloquent, but your religion has one fault--_it is not true_." [Illustration: Swastika. Earlier Form of the Cross. ] [Illustration: The Lamb in the Holy Sepulchre, Mosaic of the IV Century, Sarcophagus of Luc de Bearn. Showing the Lamb on the Cross.] IN CONFIDENCE I shall speak in a straightforward way, and shall say today what perhaps I should say tomorrow, or ten years from now,--but shall say it today, because I cannot keep it back, because I have nothing better to say than the truth, or what I hold to be the truth. But why seek truths that are not pleasant? We cannot help it. No man can suppress the truth. Truth finds a crack or crevice to crop out of; it bobs up to the surface and all the volume and weight of waters can not keep it down. Truth prevails! Life, death, truth--behold, these three no power can keep back. And since we are doomed to know the truth, let us cultivate a love for it. It is of no avail to cry over lost illusions, to long for vanished dreams, or to call to the departing gods to come back. It may be pleasant to play with toys and dolls all our life, but evidently we are not meant to remain children always. The time comes when we must put away childish things and obey the summons of truth, stern and high. A people who fear the truth can never he a free people. If what I will say is the truth, do you know of any good reason why I should not say it? And if for prudential reasons I should sometimes hold back the truth, how would you know _when_ I am telling what I believe to be the truth, and when I am holding it back for reasons of policy? The truth, however unwelcome, is not injurious; it is error which raises false hopes, which destroys, degrades and pollutes, and which, sooner or later, must be abandoned. Was it not Spencer, whom Darwin called "our great philosopher," who said, "Repulsive as is its aspect, the hard fact which dissipates a cherished illusion is presently found to contain the germ of a more salutary belief?" Spain is decaying today because her teachers, for policy's sake, are withholding the disagreeable truth from the people. Holy water and sainted bones can give a nation illusions and dreams, but never,--strength. A difficult subject is in the nature of a challenge to the mind. One difficult task attempted is worth a thousand commonplace efforts completed. The majority of people avoid the difficult and fear danger. But he who would progress must even court danger. Political and religious liberty were discovered through peril and struggle. The world owes its emancipation to human daring. Had Columbus feared danger, America might have slept for another thousand years. I have a difficult subject in hand. It is also a delicate one. But I am determined not only to know, if it is possible, the whole truth about Jesus, but also to communicate that truth to others. Some people can keep their minds shut. I cannot; I must share my intellectual life with the world. If I lived a thousand years ago, I might have collapsed at the sight of the burning stake, but I feel sure I would have deserved the stake. People say to me, sometimes, "Why do you not confine yourself to moral and religious exhortation, such as, 'Be kind, do good, love one another, etc.'?" But there is more of a moral tonic in the open and candid discussion of a subject like the one in hand, than in a multitude of platitudes. We feel our moral fiber stiffen into force and purpose under the inspiration of a peril dared for the advancement of truth. "Tell us what you believe," is one of the requests frequently addressed to me. I never deliver a lecture in which I do not, either directly or indirectly, give full and free expression to my faith in everything that is worthy of faith. If I do not believe in dogma, it is because I believe in freedom. If I do not believe in one inspired book, it is because I believe that all truth and only truth is inspired. If I do not ask the gods to help us, it is because I believe in human help, so much more real than supernatural help. If I do not believe in standing still, it is because I believe in progress. If I am not attracted by the vision of a distant heaven, it is because I believe in human happiness, now and here. If I do not say "Lord, Lord!" to Jesus, it is because I bow my head to a greater Power than Jesus, to a more efficient Savior than he has ever been--Science! "Oh, he tears down, but does not build up," is another criticism about my work. It is not true. No preacher or priest is more constructive. To build up their churches and maintain their creeds the priests pulled down and destroyed the magnificent civilization of Greece and Rome, plunging Europe into the dark and sterile ages which lasted over a thousand years. When Galileo waved his hands for joy because he believed he had enriched humanity with a new truth and extended the sphere of knowledge, what did the church do to him? It conspired to destroy him. It shut him up in a dungeon! Clapping truth into jail; gagging the mouth of the student--is that building up or tearing down? When Bruno lighted a new torch to increase the light of the world, what was his reward? The stake! During all the ages that the church had the power to police the world, every time a thinker raised his head he was clubbed to death. Do you think it is kind of us--does it square with our sense of justice to call the priest constructive, and the scientists and philosophers who have helped people to their feet--helped them to self-government in politics, and to self-help in life,--destructive? Count your rights--political, religious, social, intellectual--and tell me which of them was conquered for you by the priest. "He is irreverent," is still another hasty criticism I have heard advanced against the rationalist. I wish to tell you something. But first let us be impersonal. The epithets "irreverent," "blasphemer," "atheist," and "infidel," are flung at a man, not from pity, but from envy. Not having the courage or the industry of our neighbor who works like a busy bee in the world of men and books, searching with the sweat of his brow for the real bread of life, wetting the open page before him with his tears, pushing into the "wee" hours of the night his quest, animated by the fairest of all loves, "the love of truth",--we ease our own indolent conscience by calling him names. We pretend that it is not because we are too lazy or too selfish to work as hard or think as freely as he does, but because we do not want to be as irreverent as he is that we keep the windows of our minds shut. To excuse our own mediocrity we call the man who tries to get out of the rut a "blasphemer." And so we ask the world to praise our indifference as a great virtue, and to denounce the conscientious toil and thought of another, as "blasphemy." [Illustration: The Lamb Standing Upon the Gospels. VIII Century.] IS JESUS A MYTH? What is a myth? A myth is a fanciful explanation of a given phenomenon. Observing the sun, the moon, and the stars overhead, the primitive man wished to account for them. This was natural. The mind craves for knowledge. The child asks questions because of an inborn desire to know. Man feels ill at ease with a sense of a mental vacuum, until his questions are answered. Before the days of science, a fanciful answer was all that could be given to man's questions about the physical world. The primitive man guessed where knowledge failed him--what else could he do? A myth, then, is a guess, a story, a speculation, or a fanciful explanation of a phenomenon, in the absence of accurate information. Many are the myths about the heavenly bodies, which, while we call them myths, because we know better, were to the ancients truths. The Sun and Moon were once brother and sister, thought the child-man; but there arose a dispute between them; the woman ran away, and the man ran after her, until they came to the end of the earth where land and sky met. The woman jumped into the sky, and the man after her, where they kept chasing each other forever, as Sun and Moon. Now and then they came close enough to snap at each other. That was their explanation of an eclipse. (Childhood of the World.--Edward Clodd.) With this mythus, the primitive man was satisfied, until his developing intelligence realized its inadequacy. Science was born of that realization. During the middle ages it was believed by Europeans that in certain parts of the world, in India, for instance, there were people who had only one eye in the middle of their foreheads, and were more like monsters than humans. This was imaginary knowledge, which travel and research have corrected. The myth of a one-eyed people living in India has been replaced by accurate information concerning the Hindoos. Likewise, before the science of ancient languages was perfected--before archaeology had dug up buried cities and deciphered the hieroglyphics on the monuments of antiquity, most of our knowledge concerning the earlier ages was mythical, that is to say, it was knowledge not based on investigation, but made to order. Just as the theologians still speculate about the other world, primitive man speculated about this world. Even we moderns, not very long ago, believed, for instance, that the land of Egypt was visited by ten fantastic plagues; that in one bloody night every first born in the land was slain; that the angel of a tribal-god dipped his hand in blood and printed a red mark upon the doors of the houses of the Jews to protect them from harm; that Pharaoh and his armies were drowned in the Red Sea; that the children of Israel wandered for forty years around Mount Sinai; and so forth, and so forth. But now that we can read the inscriptions on the stone pages dug out of ancient ruins; now that we can compel a buried world to reveal its secret and to tell us its story, we do not have to go on making myths about the ancients. Myths die when history is born. It will be seen from these examples that there is no harm in myth- making if the myth is called a myth. It is when we use our fanciful knowledge to deny or to shut out real and scientific knowledge that the myth becomes a stumbling block. And this is precisely the use to which myths have been put. The king with his sword and the priest with his curses, have supported the myth against science. When a man _pretends_ to believe that the _Santa Claus_ of his childhood is real, and tries to compel also others to play a part, he becomes positively immoral. There is no harm in believing in _Santa Claus_ as a myth, but there is in pretending that he is real, because such an attitude of mind makes a mere trifle of truth. Is Jesus a myth? There is in man a faculty for fiction. Before history was born, there was myth; before men could think, they dreamed. It was with the human race in its infancy as it is with the child. The child's imagination is more active than its reason. It is easier for it to fancy even than to see. It thinks less than it guesses. This wild flight of fancy is checked only by experience. It is reflection which introduces a bit into the mouth of imagination, curbing its pace and subduing its restless spirit. It is, then, as we grow older, and, if I may use the word, riper, that we learn to distinguish between fact and fiction, between history and myth. In childhood we need playthings, and the more fantastic and _bizarre_ they are, the better we are pleased with them. We dream, for instance, of castles in the air--gorgeous and clothed with the azure hue of the skies. We fill the space about and over us with spirits, fairies, gods, and other invisible and airy beings. We covet the rainbow. We reach out for the moon. Our feet do not really begin to touch the firm ground until we have reached the years of discretion. I know there are those who wish they could always remain children,--living in dreamland. But even if this were desirable, it is not possible. Evolution is our destiny; of what use is it, then, to take up arms against destiny? Let it be borne in mind that all the religions of the world were born in the childhood of the race. Science was not born until man had matured. There is in this thought a world of meaning. Children make religions. Grown up people create science. The cradle is the womb of all the fairies and faiths of mankind. The school is the birthplace of science. Religion is the science of the child. Science is the religion of the matured man. In the discussion of this subject, I appeal to the mature, not to the child mind. I appeal to those who have cultivated a taste for truth--who are not easily scared, but who can "screw their courage to the sticking point" and follow to the end truth's leading. The multitude is ever joined to its idols; let them alone. I speak to the discerning few. There is an important difference between a lecturer and an ordained preacher. The latter can command a hearing in the name of God, or in the name of the Bible. He does not have to satisfy his hearers about the reasonableness of what he preaches. He is God's mouthpiece, and no one may disagree with him. He can also invoke the authority of the church and of the Christian world to enforce acceptance of his teaching. The only way I may command your respect is to be reasonable. You will not listen to me for God's sake, nor for the Bible's sake, nor yet for the love of heaven, or the fear of hell. My only protection is to be rational--to be truthful. In other words, the preacher can afford to ignore common sense in the name of Revelation. But if I depart from it in the least, or am caught once playing fast and loose with the facts, I will irretrievably lose my standing. [Illustration: In Use Upon Heathen Altars Centuries Before Christianity.] Our answer to the question, Is Jesus a Myth? must depend more or less upon original research, as there is very little written on the subject. The majority of writers assume that a person answering to the description of Jesus lived some two thousand years ago. Even the few who entertain doubts on the subject, seem to hold that while there is a large mythical element in the Jesus story, nevertheless there is a historical nucleus round which has clustered the elaborate legend of the Christ. In all probability, they argue, there was a man called Jesus, who said many helpful things, and led an exemplary life, and all the miracles and wonders represent the accretions of fond and pious ages. Let us place ourselves entirely in the hands of the evidence. As far as possible, let us be passive, showing no predisposition one way or another. We can afford to be independent. If the evidence proves the historicity of Jesus, well and good; if the evidence is not sufficient to prove it, there is no reason why we should fear to say so; besides, it is our duty to inform ourselves on this question. As intelligent beings we desire to know whether this Jesus, whose worship is not only costing the world millions of the people's money, but which is also drawing to his service the time, the energies, the affection, the devotion, and the labor of humanity,--is a myth, or a reality. We believe that all religious persecutions, all sectarian wars, hatreds and intolerance, which still cramp and embitter our humanity, would be replaced by love and brotherhood, if the sects could be made to see that the God-Jesus they are quarreling over is a myth, a shadow to which credulity alone gives substance. Like people who have been fighting in the dark, fearing some danger, the sects, once relieved of the thraldom of a tradition which has been handed down to them by a childish age and country, will turn around and embrace one another. In every sense, the subject is an all-absorbing one. It goes to the root of things; it touches the vital parts, and it means life or death to the Christian religion. [Illustration: Ascension of Jesus, Ninth Century.] [Illustration: Juno Nursing Her Divine Child, Mars.] THE PROBLEM STATED Let me now give an idea of the method I propose to follow in the study of this subject. Let us suppose that a student living in the year 3000 desired to make sure that such a man as Abraham Lincoln really lived and did the things attributed to him. How would he go about it? A man must have a birthplace and a birthday. All the records agree as to where and when Lincoln was born. This is not enough to prove his historicity, but it is an important link in the chain. Neither the place nor the time of Jesus' birth is known. There has never been any unanimity about this matter. There has been considerable confusion and contradiction about it. It cannot be proved that the twenty-fifth of December is his birthday. A number of other dates were observed by the Christian church at various times as the birthday of Jesus. The Gospels give no date, and appear to be quite uncertain--really ignorant about it. When it is remembered that the Gospels purport to have been written by Jesus' intimate companions, and during the lifetime of his brothers and mother, their silence on this matter becomes significant. The selection of the twenty-fifth of December as his birthday is not only an arbitrary one, but that date, having been from time immemorial dedicated to the Sun, the inference is that the Son of God and the Sun of heaven enjoying the same birthday, were at one time identical beings. The fact that Jesus' death was accompanied with the darkening of the Sun, and that the date of his resurrection is also associated with the position of the Sun at the time of the vernal equinox, is a further intimation that we have in the story of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, an ancient and nearly universal Sun-myth, instead of verifiable historical events. The story of Jesus for three days in the heart of the earth; of Jonah, three days in the belly of a fish; of Hercules, three days in the belly of a whale, and of Little Red Riding Hood, sleeping in the belly of a great black wolf, represent the attempt of primitive man to explain the phenomenon of Day and Night. The Sun is swallowed by a dragon, a wolf, or a whale, which plunges the world into darkness; but the dragon is killed, and the Sun rises triumphant to make another Day. This ancient Sun myth is the starting point of nearly all miraculous religions, from the days of Egypt to the twentieth century. [Illustration: The Persian God, Mithra. All the Gods Have the Solar Disc Around Their Heads, Showing That Sun-Worship Was One of the Earliest Forms of Religion.] The story which Mathew relates about a remarkable star, which sailing in the air pointed out to some unnamed magicians the cradle or cave in which the wonder-child was born, helps further to identify Jesus with the Sun. What became of this "performing" star, or of the magicians, and their costly gifts, the records do not say. It is more likely that it was the astrological predilections of the gospel writer which led him to assign to his God-child a star in the heavens. The belief that the stars determine human destinies is a very ancient one. Such expressions in our language as "ill-starred," "a lucky star," "disaster," "lunacy," and so on, indicate the hold which astrology once enjoyed upon the human mind. We still call a melancholy man, _Saturnine_; a cheerful man, _Jovial_; a quick-tempered man, _Mercurial_; showing how closely our ancestors associated the movements of celestial bodies with human affairs. [Footnote: Childhood of the World.--Edward Clodd.] The prominence, therefore, of the sun and stars in the Gospel story tends to show that Jesus is an astrological rather than a historical character. That the time of his birth, his death, and supposed resurrection is _not_ verifiable is generally admitted. This uncertainty robs the story of Jesus, to an extent at least, of the atmosphere of reality. The twenty-fifth of December is celebrated as his birthday. Yet there is no evidence that he was born on that day. Although the Gospels are silent as to the date on which Jesus was born, there is circumstantial evidence in the accounts given of the event to show that the twenty- fifth of December could not have been his birthday. It snows in Palestine, though a warmer country, and we know that in December there are no shepherds tending their flocks in the night time in that country. Often at this time of the year the fields and hills are covered with snow. Hence, if the shepherds sleeping in the fields really saw the heavens open and heard the angel-song, in all probability it was in some other month of the year, and not late in December. We know, also, that early in the history of Christianity the months of May and June enjoyed the honor of containing the day of Jesus' birth. [Illustration: Isis Nursing Her Divine Child, 3000 B. C.] Of course, it is immaterial on which day Jesus was born, but why is it not known? Yet not only is the date of his birth a matter of conjecture, but also the year in which he was born. Matthew, one of the Evangelists, suggests that Jesus was born in King Herod's time, for it was this king who, hearing from the Magi that a King of the Jews was born, decided to destroy him; but Luke, another Evangelist, intimates that Jesus was born when Quirinus was ruler of Judea, which makes the date of Jesus' birth about fourteen years later than the date given by Matthew. Why this discrepancy in a historical document, to say nothing about inspiration? The theologian might say that this little difficulty was introduced purposely into the scriptures to establish its infallibility, but it is only religious books that are pronounced infallible on the strength of the contradictions they contain. Again, Matthew says that to escape the evil designs of Herod, Mary and Joseph, with the infant Jesus, fled into Egypt, Luke says nothing about this hurried flight, nor of Herod's intention to kill the infant Messiah. On the contrary he tells us that after the forty days of purification were over Jesus was publicly presented at the temple, where Herod, if he really, as Matthew relates, wished to seize him, could have done so without difficulty. It is impossible to reconcile the flight to Egypt with the presentation in the temple, and this inconsistency is certainly insurmountable and makes it look as if the narrative had no value whatever as history. When we come to the more important chapters about Jesus, we meet with greater difficulties. Have you ever noticed that the day on which Jesus is supposed to have died falls invariably on a Friday? What is the reason for this? It is evident that nobody knows, and nobody ever knew the date on which the Crucifixion took place, if it ever took place. It is so obscure and so mythical that an artificial day has been fixed by the Ecclesiastical councils. While it is always on a Friday that the Crucifixion is commemorated, the week in which the day occurs varies from year to year. "Good Friday" falls not before the spring equinox, but as soon after the spring equinox as the full moon allows, thus making the calculation to depend upon the position of the sun in the Zodiac and the phases of the moon. But that was precisely the way the day for the festival of the pagan goddess Oestera was determined. The Pagan Oestera has become the Christian Easter. Does not this fact, as well as those already touched upon, make the story of Jesus to read very much like the stories of the Pagan deities. The early Christians, Origin, for instance, in his reply to the rationalist Celsus who questioned the reality of Jesus, instead of producing evidence of a historical nature, appealed to the mythology of the pagans to prove that the story of Jesus was no more incredible than those of the Greek and Roman gods. This is so important that we refer our readers to Origin's own words on the subject. "Before replying to Celsus, it is necessary to admit that in the matter of history, however true it might be," writes this Christian Father, "it is often very difficult and sometimes quite impossible to establish its truth by evidence which shall be considered sufficient." [Footnote: Origin _Contre Celse._ 1. 58 et Suiv. Ibid.] This is a plain admission that as early as the second and third centuries the claims put forth about Jesus did not admit of positive historical demonstration. But in the absence of evidence Origin offers the following metaphysical arguments against the sceptical Celsus: 1. Such stories as are told of Jesus are admitted to be true when told of pagan divinities, why can they not also be true when told of the Christian Messiah? 2. They must be true because they are the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. In other words, the only proofs Origin can bring forth against the rationalistic criticism of Celsus is, that to deny Jesus would be equivalent to denying both the Pagan and Jewish mythologies. If Jesus is not real, says Origin, then Apollo was not real, and the Old Testament prophecies have not been fulfilled. If we are to have any mythology at all, he seems to argue, why object to adding to it the mythus of Jesus? There could not be a more damaging admission than this from one of the most conspicuous defenders of Jesus' story against early criticism. Justin Martyr, another early Father, offers the following argument against unbelievers in the Christian legend: "When we say also that the Word, which is the first birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified, died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter." [Footnote: First Apology, Chapter xxi (Anti-Nicene Library).] Which is another way of saying that the Christian mythus is very similar to the pagan, and should therefore be equally true. Pressing his argument further, this interesting Father discovers many resemblances between what he himself is preaching and what the pagans have always believed: "For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribe to Jupiter. Mercury, the interpreting word (he spells this word with a small _w_ while in the above quotation he uses a capital _w_ to denote the Christian incarnation) and teacher of all; Aesculapius...who ascended to heaven; one Hercules...and Perseus;...and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horses of Pegasus." [Footnote: Ibid.] If Jupiter can have, Justin Martyr seems to reason, half a dozen divine sons, why cannot Jehovah have at least one? [Illustration: The Unsexed Christ, Naked In the Church of St. Antoine, Tours, France.] Instead of producing historical evidence or appealing to creditable documents, as one would to prove the existence of a Caesar or an Alexander, Justin Martyr draws upon pagan mythology in his reply to the critics of Christianity. All he seems to ask for is that Jesus be given a higher place among the divinities of the ancient world. To help their cause the Christian apologists not infrequently also changed the sense of certain Old Testament passages to make them support the miraculous stories in the New Testament. For example, having borrowed from Oriental books the story of the god in a manger, surrounded by staring animals, the Christian fathers introduced a prediction of this event into the following text from the book of Habakkuk in the Bible: "Accomplish thy work in the midst of the _years_, in the midst of the years make known, etc." [Footnote: Hab. iii. 2.] This Old Testament text appeared in the Greek translation as follows: "Thou shalt manifest thyself in the midst of _two animals_" which was fulfilled of course when Jesus was born in a stable. How weak must be one's case to resort to such tactics in order to command a following! And when it is remembered that these follies were deemed necessary to prove the reality of what has been claimed as the most stupendous event in all history, one can readily see upon how fragile a foundation is built the story of the Christian God-man. Let us continue: Abraham Lincoln's associates and contemporaries are all known to history. The immediate companions of Jesus appear to be, on the other hand, as mythical as he is himself. Who was Matthew? Who was Mark? Who were John, Peter, Judas, and Mary? There is absolutely no evidence that they ever existed. They are not mentioned except in the New Testament books, which, as we shall see, are "supposed" copies of "supposed" originals. If Peter ever went to Rome with a new doctrine, how is it that no historian has taken note of him? If Paul visited Athens and preached from Mars Hill, how is it that there is no mention of him or of his strange Gospel in the Athenian chronicles? For all we know, both Peter and Paul may have really existed, but it is only a guess, as we have no means of ascertaining. The uncertainty about the apostles of Jesus is quite in keeping with the uncertainty about Jesus himself. The report that Jesus had twelve apostles seems also mythical. The number twelve, like the number seven, or three, or forty, plays an important role in all Sun-myths, and points to the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Jacob had twelve sons; there were twelve tribes of Israel; twelve months in the year; twelve gates or pillars of heaven, etc. In many of the religions of the world, the number twelve is sacred. There have been few god-saviors who did not have twelve apostles or messengers. In one or two places, in the New Testament, Jesus is made to send out "the seventy" to evangelize the world. Here again we see the presence of a myth. It was believed that there were seventy different nations in the world--to each nation an apostle. Seventy wise men are supposed to have translated the Old Testament, sitting in seventy different cells. That is why their translation is called "_the Septuagint_" But it is all a legend, as there is no evidence of seventy scholars working in seventy individual cells on the Hebrew Bible. One of the Church Fathers declares that he saw these seventy cells with his own eyes. He was the only one who saw them. That the "Twelve Apostles" are fanciful may he inferred from the obscurity in which the greater number of them have remained. Peter, Paul, John, James, Judas, occupy the stage almost exclusively. If Paul was an apostle, we have fourteen, instead of twelve. Leaving out Judas, and counting Matthias, who was elected in his place, we have thirteen apostles. The number forty figures also in many primitive myths. The Jews were in the wilderness for forty years; Jesus fasted for forty days; from the resurrection to the ascension were forty days; Moses was on the mountain with God for forty days. An account in which such scrupulous attention is shown to supposed sacred numbers is apt to be more artificial than real. The biographers of Lincoln or of Socrates do not seem to be interested in numbers. They write history, not stories. Again, many of the contemporaries of Lincoln bear written witness to his existence. The historians of the time, the statesmen, the publicists, the chroniclers--all seem to be acquainted with him, or to have heard of him. It is impossible to explain why the contemporaries of Jesus, the authors and historians of his time, do not take notice of him. If Abraham Lincoln was important enough to have attracted the attention of his contemporaries, how much more Jesus. Is it reasonable to suppose that these Pagan and Jewish writers knew of Jesus,--had heard of his incomparably great works and sayings,--but omitted to give him a page or a line? Could they have been in a conspiracy against him? How else is this unanimous silence to be accounted for? Is it not more likely that the wonder-working Jesus was unknown to them? And he was unknown to them because no such Jesus existed in their day. Should the student, looking into Abraham Lincoln's history, discover that no one of his biographers knew positively just when he lived or where he was born, he would have reason to conclude that because of this uncertainty on the part of the biographers, he must be more exacting than he otherwise would have been. That is precisely our position. Of course, there are in history great men of whose birthplaces or birthdays we are equally uncertain. But we believe in their existence, not because no one seems to know exactly when and where they were born, but because there is overwhelming evidence corroborating the other reports about them, and which is sufficient to remove the suspicion suggested by the darkness hanging over their nativity. Is there any evidence strong enough to prove the historicity of Jesus, in spite of the fact that not even his supposed companions, writing during the lifetime of Jesus' mother, have any definite information to give. But let us continue. The reports current about a man like Lincoln are verifiable, while many of those about Jesus are of a nature that no amount of evidence can confirm. That Lincoln was President of these United States, that he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and that he was assassinated, can be readily authenticated. But how can any amount of evidence satisfy one's self that Jesus was born of a virgin, for instance? Such a report or rumor can never even be examined; it does not lend itself to evidence; it is beyond the sphere of history; it is not a legitimate question for investigation. It belongs to mythology. Indeed, to put forth a report of that nature is to forbid the use of evidence, and to command forcible acquiescence, which, to say the least, is a very suspicious circumstance, calculated to hurt rather than to help the Jesus story. The report that Jesus was God is equally impossible of verification. How are we to prove whether or not a certain person was God? Jesus may have been a wonderful man, but is every wonderful man a God? Jesus may have claimed to have been a God, but is every one who puts forth such a claim a God? How, then, are we to decide which of the numerous candidates for divine honors should be given our votes? And can we by voting for Jesus make him a God? Observe to what confusion the mere attempt to follow such a report leads us. A human Jesus may or may not have existed, but we are as sure as we can be of anything, that a virgin-born God, named Jesus, such as we must believe in or be eternally lost, is an impossibility--except to credulity. But credulity is no evidence at all, even when it is dignified by the name of _faith_. Let us pause for a moment to reflect: The final argument for the existence of the miraculous Jesus, preached in church and Sunday-school, these two thousand years, as the sole savior of the world, is an appeal to faith--the same to which Mohammed resorts to establish his claims, and Brigham Young to prove his revelation. There is no other possible way by which the virgin- birth or the _godhood_ of a man can be established. And such a faith is never free, it is always maintained by the sword now, and by hell-fire hereafter. Once more, if it had been reported of Abraham Lincoln that he predicted his own assassination; that he promised some of his friends they would not die until they saw him coming again upon the clouds of heaven; that he would give them thrones to sit upon; that they could safely drink deadly poisons in his name, or that he would grant them any request which they might make, provided they asked it for his sake, we would be justified in concluding that such a Lincoln never existed. Yet the most impossible utterances are put in Jesus' mouth. He is made to say: "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name that will I do." No man who makes such a promise can keep it. It is not sayings like the above that can prove a man a God. Has Jesus kept his promise? Does he give his people everything, or "whatsoever" they ask of him? But, it is answered, "Jesus only meant to say that he would give whatever he himself considered good for his friends to have." Indeed! Is that the way to crawl out of a contract? If that is what he meant, why did he say something else? Could he not have _said_ just what he _meant_, in the first place? Would it not have been fairer not to have given his friends any occasion for false expectations? Better to promise a little and do more, than to promise everything and do nothing. But to say that Jesus really entered into any such agreement is to throw doubt upon his existence. Such a character is too wild to be real. Only a mythical Jesus could virtually hand over the government of the universe to courtiers who have petitions to press upon his attention. Moreover, if Jesus could keep his promise, there would be today no misery in the world, no orphans, no childless mothers, no shipwrecks, no floods, no famines, no disease, no crippled children, no insanity, no wars, no crime, no wrong! Have not a thousand, thousand prayers been offered in Jesus' name against every evil which has ploughed the face of our earth? Have these prayers been answered? Then why is there discontent in the world? Can the followers of Jesus move mountains, drink deadly poisons, touch serpents, or work greater miracles than are ascribed to Jesus, as it was promised that they would do? How many self-deluded prophets these extravagant claims have produced! And who can number the bitter disappointments caused by such impossible promises? George Jacob Holyoake, of England, tells how in the days of utter poverty, his believing mother asked the Lord, again and again--on her knees, with tears streaming from her eyes, and with absolute faith in Jesus' ability to keep His promise,--to give her starving children their daily bread. But the more fervently she prayed the heavier grew the burden of her life. A stone or wooden idol could not have been more indifferent to a mother's tears. "My mind aches as I think of those days," writes Mr. Holyoake. One day he went to see the Rev. Mr. Cribbace, who had invited inquirers to his house. "Do you really believe," asked young Holyoake to the clergyman, "that what we ask in faith we shall receive?" "It never struck me," continues Mr. Holyoake, "that the preacher's threadbare dress, his half-famished look, and necessity of taking up a collection the previous night to pay expenses showed that faith was not a source of income to him. It never struck me that if help could be obtained by prayer no church would be needy, no believer would be poor." What answer did the preacher give to Holyoake's earnest question? The same which the preachers of today give: "He parried his answer with many words, and at length said that the promise was to be taken with the provision that what we asked for would be given, _if God thought it for our good."_ Why then, did not Jesus explain that important _proviso_ when he made the promise? Was Jesus only making a half statement, the other half of which he would reveal later to protect himself against disappointed petitioners. But he said: "If ye ask anything in my name, I will do it," and "If it were not so, I would have told you." Did he not mean just what he said? The truth is that no historical person in his senses ever made such extraordinary, such impossible promises, and the report that Jesus made them only goes to confirm that their author is only a legendary being. When this truth dawned upon Mr. Holyoake he ceased to petition Heaven, which was like "dropping a bucket into an empty well," and began to look _elsewhere_ for help. [Footnote: Bygones Worth Remembering.--George Jacob Holyoake] The world owes its advancement to the fact that men no longer look to Heaven for help, but help themselves. Self-effort, and not prayer, is the remedy against ignorance, slavery, poverty, and moral degradation. Fortunately, by holding up before us an impossible Jesus, with his impossible promises, the churches have succeeded only in postponing, but not in preventing, the progress of man. This is a compliment to human nature, and it is well earned. It is also a promise that in time humanity will be completely emancipated from every phantom which in the past has scared it into silence or submission, and "A loftier race than e'er the world Hath known shall rise With flame of liberty in their souls, And light of science in their eyes." [Illustration: Portion of Manuscript Supposed to Be Copy of Lost Originals.] THE CHRISTIAN DOCUMENTS The documents containing the story of Jesus are so unlike those about Lincoln or any other historical character, that we must be doubly vigilant in our investigation. The Christians rely mainly on the four Gospels for the historicity of Jesus. But the original documents of which the books in the New Testament are claimed to be faithful copies are not in existence. _There is absolutely no evidence that they ever were in existence_. This is a statement which can not be controverted. Is it conceivable that the early believers lost through carelessness or purposely _every_ document written by an apostle, while guarding with all protecting jealousy and zeal the writings of anonymous persons? Is there any valid reason why the contributions to Christian literature of an inspired apostle should perish while those of a nameless scribe are preserved, why the original Gospel of Matthew should drop quietly out of sight, no one knows how, while a supposed copy of it in an alien language is preserved for many centuries? Jesus himself, it is admitted, did not write a single line. He had come, according to popular belief, to reveal the will of God--a most important mission indeed, and yet he not only did not put this revelation in writing during his lifetime, and with his own hand, which it is natural to suppose that a divine teacher, expressly come from heaven, would have done, but he left this all-important duty to anonymous chroniclers, who, naturally, made enough mistakes to split up Christendom into innumerable factions. It is worth a moment's pause to think of the persecutions, the cruel wars, and the centuries of hatred and bitterness which would have been spared our unfortunate humanity, if Jesus himself had written down his message in the clearest and plainest manner, instead of leaving it to his supposed disciples to publish it to the world, when he could no longer correct their mistakes. Moreover, not only did Jesus not write himself, but he has not even taken any pains to preserve the writings of his "apostles," It is well known that the original manuscripts, if there were any, are nowhere to be found. This is a grave matter. We have only supposed copies of supposed original manuscripts. Who copied them? When were they copied? How can we be sure that these copies are reliable? And why are there thousands upon thousands of various readings in these, numerous supposed copies? What means have we of deciding which version or reading to accept? Is it possible that as the result of Jesus' advent into our world, we have only a basketful of nameless and dateless copies and documents? Is it conceivable, I ask, that a God would send his Son to us, and then leave us to wander through a pile of dusty manuscripts to find out why He sent His Son, and what He taught when on earth? The only answer the Christian church can give to this question is that the original writings were purposely allowed to perish. When a precious document containing the testament of Almighty God, and inscribed for an eternal purpose by the Holy Ghost, disappears altogether there is absolutely no other way of accounting for its disappearance than by saying, as we have suggested, that its divine author must have intentionally withdrawn it from circulation. "God moves in a mysterious way" is the last resort of the believer. This is the one argument which is left to theology to fight science with. Unfortunately it is an argument which would prove every cult and "ism" under the heavens true. The Mohammedan, the Mazdaian, and the Pagan may also fall back upon faith. There is nothing which faith can not cover up from the light. But if a faith which ignores evidence be not a superstition, what then is superstition? I wonder if the Catholic Church, which pretends to believe--and which derives quite an income from the belief--that God has miraculously preserved the wood of the cross, the Holy Sepulchre, in Jerusalem, the coat of Jesus, and quite a number of other mementos, can explain why the original manuscripts were lost. I have a suspicion that there were no "original" manuscripts. I am not sure of this, of course, but if nails, bones and holy places could be miraculously preserved, why not also manuscripts? It is reasonable to suppose that the Deity would not have permitted the most important documents containing His Revelation to drop into some hole and disappear, or to be gnawed into dust by the insects, after having had them written by special inspiration. Again, when these documents, such as we find them, are examined, it will be observed that, even in the most elementary intelligence which they pretend to furnish, they are hopelessly at variance with one another. It is, for example, utterly impossible to reconcile Matthew's genealogy of Jesus with the one given by Luke. In copying the names of the supposed ancestors of Jesus, they tamper with the list as given in the book of Chronicles, in the Old Testament, and thereby justly expose themselves to the charge of bad faith. One evangelist says Jesus was descended from Solomon, born of "her that had been the wife of Urias." It will be remembered that David ordered Urias killed in a cowardly manner, that he may marry his widow, whom he coveted. According to Matthew, Jesus is one of the offspring of this adulterous relation. According to Luke, it is not through Solomon, but through Nathan, that Jesus is connected with the house of David. Again, Luke tells us that the name of the father of Joseph was _Heli;_ Matthew says it was _Jacob_. If the writers of the gospels were contemporaries of Joseph they could have easily learned the exact name of his father. Again, why do these biographers of Jesus give us the genealogy of Joseph if he was not the father of Jesus? It is the genealogy of Mary which they should have given to prove the descent of Jesus from the house of David, and not that of Joseph. These irreconcilable differences between Luke, Matthew and the other evangelists, go to prove that these authors possessed no reliable information concerning the subjects they were writing about. For if Jesus is a historical character, and these biographers were really his immediate associates, and were inspired besides, how are we to explain their blunders and contradictions about his genealogy? A good illustration of the mythical or unhistorical character of the New Testament is furnished by the story of John the Baptist. He is first represented as confessing publicly that Jesus is the Christ; that he himself is not worthy to unloose the latchet of his shoes; and that Jesus is the Lamb of God, "who taketh away the sins of the world." John was also present, the gospels say, when the heavens opened and a dove descended on Jesus' head, and he heard the voice from the skies, crying: "He is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Is it possible that, a few chapters later, this same John forgets his public confession,--the dove and the voice from heaven,--and actually sends two of his disciples to find out who this Jesus is, [Footnote: Matthew xi.] The only way we can account for such strange conduct is that the compiler or editor in question had two different myths or stories before him, and he wished to use them both. A further proof of the loose and extravagant style of the Gospel writers is furnished by the concluding verse of the Fourth Gospel: "There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written, every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." This is more like the language of a myth-maker than of a historian. How much reliance can we put in a reporter who is given to such exaggeration? To say that the world itself would be too small to contain the unreported sayings and doings of a teacher whose public life possibly did not last longer than a year, and whose reported words and deeds fill only a few pages, is to prove one's statements unworthy of serious consideration. And it is worth our while to note also that the documents which have come down to our time and which purport to be the biographies of Jesus, are not only written in an alien language, that is to say, in a language which was not that of Jesus and his disciples, but neither are they dated or signed. Jesus and his twelve apostles were Jews; why are all the four Gospels written in Greek? If they were originally written in Hebrew, how can we tell that the Greek translation is accurate, since we can not compare it with the originals? And why are these Gospels anonymous? Why are they not dated? But as we shall say something more on this subject in the present volume, we confine ourselves at this point to reproducing a fragment of the manuscript pages from which our Greek Translations have been made.[Footnote: See page 57.] It is admitted by scholars that owing to the difficulty of reading these ancient and imperfect and also conflicting texts, an accurate translation is impossible. But this is another way of saying that what the churches call the Word of God is not only the word of man, but a very imperfect word, at that. The belief in Jesus, then, is founded on secondary documents, altered and edited by various hands; on lost originals, and on anonymous manuscripts of an age considerably later than the events therein related--manuscripts which contradict each other as well as themselves. Such is clearly and undeniably the basis for the belief in a historical Jesus. It was this sense of the insufficiency of the evidence which drove the missionaries of Christianity to commit forgeries. If there was ample evidence for the historicity of Jesus, why did his biographers resort to forgery? The following admissions by Christian writers themselves show the helplessness of the early preachers in the presence of inquirers who asked for proofs. The church historian, Mosheim, writes that, "The Christian Fathers deemed it a pious act to employ deception and fraud." [Footnote: Ecclesiastical Hist., Vol. I, P. 247.] Again, he says: "The greatest and most pious teachers were nearly all of them infected with this leprosy." Will not some believer tell us why forgery and fraud were necessary to prove the historicity of Jesus. Another historian, Milman, writes that, "Pious fraud was admitted and avowed" by the early missionaries of Jesus. "It was an age of literary frauds," writes Bishop Ellicott, speaking of the times immediately following the alleged crucifixion of Jesus. Dr. Giles declares that, "There can be no doubt that great numbers of books were written with no other purpose than to deceive." And it is the opinion of Dr. Robertson Smith that, "There was an enormous floating mass of spurious literature created to suit party views." Books which are now rejected as apochryphal were at one time received as inspired, and books which are now believed to be infallible were at one time regarded as of no authority in the Christian world. It certainly is puzzling that there should be a whole literature of fraud and forgery in the name of a historical person. But if Jesus was a myth, we can easily explain the legends and traditions springing up in his name. The early followers of Jesus, then, realizing the force of this objection, did actually resort to interpolation and forgery in order to prove that Jesus was a historical character. One of the oldest critics of the Christian religion was a Pagan, known to history under the name of Porphyry; yet, the early Fathers did not hesitate to tamper even with the writings of an avowed opponent of their religion. After issuing an edict to destroy, among others, the writings of this philosopher, a work, called _Philosophy of Oracles,_ was produced, in which the author is made to write almost as a Christian; and the name of Porphyry was signed to it as its author. St. Augustine was one of the first to reject it as a forgery. [Footnote: Geo. W. Foote. Crimes of Christianity.] A more astounding invention than this alleged work of a heathen bearing witness to Christ is difficult to produce. Do these forgeries, these apocryphal writings, these interpolations, freely admitted to have been the prevailing practice of the early Christians, help to prove the existence of Jesus? And when to this wholesale manufacture of doubtful evidence is added the terrible vandalism which nearly destroyed every great Pagan classic, we can form an idea of the desperate means to which the early Christians resorted to prove that Jesus was not a myth. It all goes to show how difficult it is to make a man out of a myth. [Illustration: The Goddess Mother in the Grecian Pantheon.] VIRGIN BIRTHS Stories of gods born of virgins are to be found in nearly every age and country. There have been many virgin mothers, and Mary with her child is but a recent version of a very old and universal myth. In China and India, in Babylonia and Egypt, in Greece and Rome, "divine" beings selected from among the daughters of men the purest and most beautiful to serve them as a means of entrance into the world of mortals. Wishing to take upon themselves the human form, while retaining at the same time their "divinity," this compromise--of an earthly mother with a "divine" father--was effected. In the form of a swan Jupiter approached Leda, as in the guise of a dove, or a _Paracletus,_ Jehovah "overshadowed" Mary. A nymph bathing in a river in China is touched by a lotus plant, and the divine Fohi is born. In Siam, a wandering sunbeam caresses a girl in her teens, and the great and wonderful deliverer, Codom, is born. In the life of Buddha we read that he descended on his mother Maya, "in likeness as the heavenly queen, and entered her womb," and was "born from her right side, to save the world." [Footnote: Stories of Virgin Births. Reference: Lord Macartney. Voyage dans 'interview de la Chine et en Tartarie. Vol. I, P. 48. See also Les Vierges Meres et les Naissance Miraculeuse. P. Saintyves. P. 19, etc.] In Greece, the young god Apollo visits a fair maid of Athens, and a Plato is ushered into the world. In ancient Mexico, as well as in Babylonia, and in modern Corea, as in modern Palestine, as in the legends of all lands, virgins gave birth and became divine mothers. [Footnote: Stories of Virgin Births. Reference: Lord Macartney. Voyage dans 'interview de la Chine et en Tartarie. Vol. I, P. 48. See also Les Vierges Meres et les Naissance Miraculeuse. P. Saintyves. P. 19, etc.] But the real home of virgin births is the land of the Nile. Eighteen hundred years before Christ, we find carved on one of the walls of the great temple of Luxor a picture of the _annunciation, conception and birth_ of King Amunothph III, an almost exact copy of the annunciation, conception and birth of the Christian God. Of course no one will think of maintaining that the Egyptians borrowed the idea from the Catholics nearly two thousand years before the Christian era. "The story in the Gospel of Luke, the first and second chapters is, "says Malvert, "a reproduction, 'point by point,' of the story in stone of the miraculous birth of Amunothph." [Footnote: Science and Religion P. 96.] [Illustration: The Annunciation, Birth, and Adoration of Amenophis of Egypt, Nearly 2000 Years Before Christ.] Sharpe in his Egyptian Mythology, page 19, gives the following description of the Luxor picture, quoted by G. W. Foote in his _Bible Romances,_ page 126: "In this picture we have the annunciation, the conception, the birth and the adoration, as described in the first and second chapters of Luke's Gospel." Massey gives a more minute description of the Luxor picture. "The first scene on the left hand shows the god Taht, the divine Word or Loges, in the act of hailing the virgin queen, announcing to her that she is to give birth to a son. In the second scene the god Kneph (assisted by Hathor) gives life to her. This is the Holy Ghost, or Spirit that causes conception....Next the mother is seated on the midwife's stool, and the child is supported in the hands of one of the nurses. The fourth scene is that of the adoration. Here the child is enthroned, receiving homage from the gods and gifts from men." [Footnote: Natural Genesis. Massey, Vol. II, P. 398.] The picture on the wall of the Luxor temple, then, is one of the sources to which the anonymous writers of the Gospels went for their miraculous story. It is no wonder they suppressed their own identity as well as the source from which they borrowed their material. Not only the idea of a virgin mother, but all the other miraculous events, such as the stable cradle, the guiding star, the massacre of the children, the flight to Egypt, and the resurrection and bodily ascension toward the clouds, have not only been borrowed, but are even scarcely altered in the New Testament story of Jesus. [Illustration: The Nativity of the God Dionysius, Museum of Naples. ] That the early Christians borrowed the legend of Jesus from earthly sources is too evident to be even questioned. Gerald Massey in his great work on Egyptian origins demonstrates the identity of Mary, the mother of Jesus, with Isis, the mother of Horus. He says: "The most ancient, gold-bedizened, smoke-stained Byzantine pictures of the virgin and child represent the mythical mother as Isis, and not as a human mother of Nazareth." [Footnote: Vol. ii, P. 487.] Science and research have made this fact so certain that, on the one hand ignorance, and on the other, interest only, can continue to claim inspiration for the authors of the undated and unsigned fragmentary documents which pass for the Word of God. If, then, Jesus is stripped of all the borrowed legends and miracles of which he is the subject; and if we also take away from him all the teachings which collected from Jewish and Pagan sources have been attributed to him--what will be left of him? That the ideas put in his mouth have been culled and compiled from other sources is as demonstrable as the Pagan origin of the legends related of him. Nearly every one of the dogmas and ceremonies in the Christian cult were borrowed from other and older religions. The resurrection myth, the ascension, the eucharisty, baptism, worship by kneeling or prostration, the folding of the hands on the breast, the ringing of bells and the burning of incense, the vestments and vessels used in church, the candles, "holy" water,--even the word _Mass_ were all adopted and adapted by the Christians from the religions of the ancients. The Trinity is as much Pagan, as much Indian or Buddhist, as it is Christian. The idea of a Son of God is as old as the oldest cult. The sun is the son of heaven in all primitive faiths. The physical sun becomes in the course of evolution, the Son of Righteousness, or the Son of God, and heaven is personified as the Father on High. The halo around the head of Jesus, the horns of the older deities, the rays of light radiating from the heads of Hindu and Pagan gods are incontrovertible evidence that all gods were at one time--the sun in heaven. [Illustration: Prehistoric Crosses Discovered in Pagan Sepulchres (Italy).] THE ORIGIN OF THE CROSS Only the uninformed, of whom, we regret to say, there are a great many, and who are the main support of the old religions, still believe that the cross originated with Christianity. Like the dogmas of the Trinity, the virgin birth, and the resurrection, the sign of the cross or the cross as an emblem or a symbol was borrowed from the more ancient faiths of Asia. Perhaps one of the most important discoveries which primitive man felt obliged never to be ungrateful enough to forget, was the production of fire by the friction of two sticks placed across each other in the form of a cross. As early as the stone age we find the cross carved on monuments which have been dug out of the earth and which can be seen in the museums of Europe. On the coins of later generations as well as on the altars of prehistoric times we find the "sacred" symbol of the cross. The dead in ancient cemeteries slept under the cross as they do in our day in Catholic churchyards. [Illustration: House of Goodness, with Cross. Egyptian, 2000 B. C.] In ancient Egypt, as in modern China, India, Corea, the cross is venerated by the masses as a charm of great power. In the Musee Guimet, in Paris, we have seen specimens of pre-Christian crosses. In the Louvre Museum one of the "heathen" gods carries a cross on his head. During his second journey to New Zealand, Cook was surprised to find the natives marking the graves of their dead with the cross. We saw, in the Museum of St. Germain, an ancient divinity of Gaul, before the conquest of the country by Julius Caesar, wearing a garment on which was woven a cross. In the same museum an ancient altar of Gaul under Paganism, had a cross carved upon it. That the cross was not adopted by the followers of Jesus until a later date may be inferred from the silence of the earlier gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, on the details of the crucifixion, which is more fully developed in the later gospel of John. The first three evangelists say nothing about the nails or the blood, and give the impression that he was hanged. Writing of the two thieves who were sentenced to receive the same punishment, Luke says, "One of the malefactors that was _hanged_ with him." The idea of a bleeding Christ, such as we see on crosses in Catholic churches, is not present in these earlier descriptions of the crucifixion; the Christians of the time of Origin were called "the followers of the god who was hanged." In the fourth gospel we see the beginnings of the legend of the cross, of Jesus carrying or falling under the weight of the cross, of the nail prints in his hands and feet, of the spear drawing the blood from his side and smearing his body. Of all this, the first three evangelists are quite ignorant. [Illustration: Pagan Priest of Herculaneum Wearing the Cross.] [Illustration: Cross of the Chinese Emperor Fou-Hi,2953 Years Before Christ.] [Illustration: Discovered in Newgrange, Ireland. An Ancient Pagan Cross.] Let it be further noted that it was not until eight hundred years after the supposed crucifixion that Jesus is seen in the form of a human being on the cross. Not in any of the paintings on the ancient catacombs is found a crucified Christ. The earliest cross bearing a human being is of the eighth century. For a long time a lamb with a cross, or on a cross, was the Christian symbol, and it is a lamb which we see entombed in the "holy sepulchre." In more than one mosaic of early Christian times, it is not Jesus, but a lamb, which is bleeding for the salvation of the world. How a lamb came to play so important a role in Christianity is variously explained. The similarity between the name of the Hindu god, _Agni_ and the meaning of the same word in Latin, which is a lamb, is one theory. Another is that a ram, one of the signs of the zodiac, often confounded by the ancients with a lamb, is the origin of the popular reverence for the lamb as a symbol--a reverence which all religions based on sun-worship shared. The lamb in Christianity takes away the sins of the people, just as the paschal lamb did in the Old Testament, and earlier still, just as it did in Babylonia. [Illustration: Used by a Priest of Bacchus, Showing the Cross.] [Illustration: Engraving of the XI Century.] [Illustration: Lamb on Cross.] [Illustration: From a Picture in the Church of Genest. A Lamb Carrying the Cross.] [Illustration: The Lamb and the Cross, IX Century.] To the same effect is the following letter of the bishop of Mende, in France, bearing date of the year 800 A. D.: "Because the darkness has disappeared, and because also Christ is a real man, Pope Adrian commands us to paint him under the form of a man. The lamb of God must not any longer be painted on a cross, but after a human form has been placed on the cross, there is no objection to have a lamb also represented with it, either at the foot of the cross or on the opposite side." [Footnote: Translated from the French of Didron. Quoted by Malvert.] We leave it to our readers to draw the necessary conclusions from the above letter. How did a lamb hold its place on the cross for eight hundred years? If Jesus was really crucified, and that fact was a matter of history, why did it take eight hundred years for a Christian bishop to write, "now that Christ is a real man," etc.? Today, it would be considered a blasphemy to place a lamb on a cross. On the tombstones of Christians of the fourth century are pictures representing, not Jesus, but a lamb, working the miracles mentioned in the gospels, such as multiplying the loaves and fishes, and raising Lazarus from the dead. [Illustration: Mosaic of St. Praxedes, V Century, Showing the Lamb Christ.] [Illustration: The Lamb Slowly Becoming Human.] [Illustration: The Lamb Multiplying the Loaves and Fishes, IV Century Sarcophagus.] The first representations of a human form on the cross differ considerably from those which prevail at the present time. [Illustration: The Lamb Resurrecting Lazarus, IV Century Sarcophagus.] While the figure on the modern cross is almost naked, those on the earlier ones are clothed and completely covered. Wearing a flowing tunic, Jesus is standing straight against the cross with his arms outstretched, as though in the act of delivering an address. Frequently, at his feet, on the cross, there is still painted the figure of a lamb, which by and by, he is going to replace altogether. Gradually the robe disappears from the crucified one, until we see him crucified, as in the adjoining picture, with hardly any clothes on, and wearing an expression of great agony. [Illustration: Modern Christ.] [Illustration: Christ and the Twelve Apostles, Carrying Swastikas and Solar Discs Instead of the Cross. Sarcophagus, Milan.] THE SILENCE OF PROFANE WRITERS In all historical matters, we cannot ask for more than a _reasonable_ assurance concerning any question. In fact, absolute certainty in any branch of human knowledge, with the exception of mathematics, perhaps, is impossible. We are finite beings, limited in all our powers, and, hence, our conclusions are not only relative, but they should ever be held subject to correction. When our law courts send a man to the gallows, they can have no more than a reasonable assurance that he is guilty; when they acquit him, they can have no more than a reasonable assurance that he is innocent. Positive assurance is unattainable. The dogmatist is the only one who claims to possess absolute certainty. But his claim is no more than a groundless assumption. When, therefore, we learn that Josephus, for instance, who lived in the same country and about the same time as Jesus, and wrote an extensive history of the men and events of his day and country, does not mention Jesus, except by interpolation, which even a Christian clergyman, Bishop Warburton, calls "a rank forgery, and a very stupid one, too," we can be reasonably sure that no such Jesus as is described in the New Testament, lived about the same time and in the same country with Josephus. The failure of such a historian as Josephus to mention Jesus tends to make the existence of Jesus at least reasonably doubtful. Few Christians now place any reliance upon the evidence from Josephus. The early Fathers made this Jew admit that Jesus was the Son of God. Of course, the admission was a forgery. De Quincey says the passage is known to be "a forgery by all men not lunatics." Of one other supposed reference in Josephus, Canon Farrar says: "This passage was early tampered with by the Christians." The same writer says this of a third passage: "Respecting the third passage in Josephus, the only question is whether it be partly or entirely spurious." Lardner, the great English theologian, was the first man to prove that Josephus was a poor witness for Christ. In examining the evidence from profane writers we must remember that the silence of one contemporary author is more important than the supposed testimony of another. There was living in the same time with Jesus a great Jewish scholar by the name of Philo. He was an Alexandrian Jew, and he visited Jerusalem while Jesus was teaching and working miracles in the holy city. Yet Philo in all his works never once mentions Jesus. He does not seem to have heard of him. He could not have helped mentioning him if he had really seen him or heard of him. In one place in his works Philo is describing the difference between two Jewish names, Hosea and Jesus. Jesus, he says, means saviour of the people. What a fine opportunity for him to have added that, at that very time, there was living in Jerusalem a saviour by the name of Jesus, or one supposed to be, or claiming to be, a saviour. He could not have helped mentioning Jesus if he had ever seen or heard of him. We have elsewhere referred to the significant silence of the Pagan historians and miscellaneous writers on the wonderful events narrated in the New Testament. But a few remarks may be added here in explanation of the supposed testimony of Tacitus. The quotation from Tacitus is an important one. That part of the passage which concerns us is something like this:--"They have their denomination from _Chrestus,_ put to death as a criminal by Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius." I wish to say in the first place that this passage is not in the _History_ of Tacitus, known to the ancients, but in his _Annals,_ which is not quoted by any ancient writer. The _Annals_ of Tacitus were not known to be in existence until the year 1468. An English writer, Mr. Ross, has undertaken, in an interesting volume, to show that the _Annals_ were forged by an Italian, Bracciolini. I am not competent to say whether or not Mr. Ross proves his point. But is it conceivable that the early Christians would have ignored so valuable a testimony had they known of its existence, and would they not have known of it had it really existed? The Christian Fathers, who not only collected assiduously all that they could use to establish the reality of Jesus--but who did not hesitate even to forge passages, to invent documents, and also to destroy the testimony of witnesses unfavorable to their cause--would have certainly used the Tacitus passage had it been in existence in their day. _Not one of the Christian Fathers_ in his controversy with the unbelievers has quoted the passage from Tacitus, which passage is the church's strongest proof of the historicity of Jesus, outside the gospels. But, to begin with, this passage has the appearance, at least, of being penned by a Christian. It speaks of such persecutions of the Christians in Rome which contradict all that we know of Roman civilization. The abuse of Christians in the same passage may have been introduced purposely to cover up the identity of the writer. The terrible outrages against the Christians mentioned in the text from Tacitus are supposed to have taken place in the year 64 A. D. According to the New Testament, Paul was in Rome from the year 63 to the year 65, and must, therefore, have been an eye-witness of the persecution under Nero. Let me quote from the Bible to show that there could have been no such persecution as the Tacitus passage describes. The last verse in the book of Acts reads: "And he (Paul) abode two whole years in his own hired dwelling, and received all that went in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness, _none forbidding him_." How is this picture of peace and tranquility to be reconciled with the charge that the Romans rolled up the Christians in straw mats and burned them to illuminate the streets at night, and also that the lions were let loose upon the disciples of Jesus? Moreover, it is generally known that the Romans were indifferent to religious propaganda, and never persecuted any sect or party in the name of religion. In Rome, the Jews were free to be Jews; why should the Jewish Christians--and the early Christians were Jews--have been thrown to the lions? In all probability the persecutions were much milder than the Tacitus passage describes, and politics was the real cause. Until not very long ago, it was universally believed that William Tell was a historical character. But it is now proven beyond any reasonable doubt, that Tell and his apple are altogether mythical. Notwithstanding that a great poet has made him the theme of a powerful drama, and a great composer devoted one of his operas to his heroic achievements; notwithstanding also that the Swiss show the crossbow with which he is supposed to have shot at the apple on his son's head--he is now admitted to be only a legendary hero. The principal arguments which have led the educated world to revise its views concerning William Tell are that, the Swiss historians, Faber and Hamurbin, who lived shortly after the "hero," and who wrote the history of their country, as Josephus did that of his, do not mention Tell. Had such a man existed before their time, they could not have failed to refer to him. Their complete silence is damaging beyond help to the historicity of Tell. Neither does the historian, who was an eye witness of the battle of Morgarten in 1315, mention the name of Tell. The Zurich Chronicle of 1497, also omits to refer to his story. In the accounts of the struggle of the Swiss against Austria, which drove the former into rebellion and ultimate independence, Tell's name cannot be found. Yet all these arguments are not half so damaging to the William Tell story, as the silence of Josephus is to the Jesus story. Jesus was supposed to have worked greater wonders and to have created a wider sensation than Tell; therefore, it is more difficult to explain the silence of historians like Josephus, Pliny and Quintilian; or of philosophers like Philo, Seneca and Epictetus, concerning Jesus, than to explain the silence of the Swiss chroniclers concerning Tell. THE JESUS STORY A RELIGIOUS DRAMA We have now progressed far enough in our investigation to pause a moment for reflection before we proceed any further. I am conscious of no intentional misrepresentation or suppression of the facts relating to the question in hand. If I have erred through ignorance, I shall correct any mistake I may have made, if some good reader will take the trouble to enlighten me. I am also satisfied that I have not commanded the evidence, but have allowed the evidence to command me. I am not interested in either proving or disproving the existence of the New- Testament Jesus. I am not an advocate, I am rather an umpire, who hears the evidence and pronounces his decision accordingly. Let the lawyers or the advocates argue _pro_ and _con_. I only weigh,--and I am sure, impartially,--the evidence which the witnesses offer. We have heard and examined quite a number of these, and, I, at least, am compelled to say, that unless stronger evidence be forthcoming, a historical Jesus has not been proven by the evidence thus far taken in. This does not mean that there is no evidence whatever that Jesus was a real existence, but that the evidence is not enough to prove it. To condemn or to acquit a man in a court of law, there must not only be evidence, but enough of it to justify a decision. There is some evidence for almost any imaginable proposition; but that is not enough. Not only does the evidence offered to prove Jesus' historicity, already examined, fail to give this assurance, but, on the contrary, it lends much support to the opposite supposition, namely, that in all probability, Jesus was a myth--even as Mithra, Osiris, Isis, Hercules, Sampson, Adonis, Moses, Attis, Hermes, Heracles, Apollo of Tyanna, Chrishna, and Indra, were myths. The story of Jesus, we are constrained to say, possesses all the characteristics of the religious drama, full of startling episodes, thrilling situations, dramatic action and _denouement_. It reads more like a play than plain history. From such evidence as the gospels themselves furnish, the conclusion that he was no more than the principal character in a religious play receives much support. Mystery and morality plays are of a very ancient origin. In earlier times, almost all popular instruction was by means of _Tableaux vivant_. As a great scenic or dramatic performance, with Jesus as the hero, Judas as the villain--with conspiracy as its plot, and the trial, the resurrection and ascension as its _finale_, the story is intelligent enough. For instance, as the curtain rises, it discloses upon the stage shepherds tending their flocks in the green fields under the moonlit sky; again, as the scene shifts, the clouds break, the heavens open, and voices are heard from above, with a white-winged chorus chanting an anthem. The next scene suggests a stable with the cattle in their stalls, munching hay. In a corner of the stable, close to a manger, imagine a young woman, stooping to kiss a newly born babe. Anon appear three bearded and richly costumed men, with presents in their hands, bowing their heads in ecstatic adoration. Surely enough this is not history: It does not read like history. The element of fiction runs through the entire Gospels, and is its warp and woof. A careful analysis of the various incidents in this _ensemble_ will not fail to convince the unprejudiced reader that while they possess all the essentials for dramatic presentation, they lack the requirements of real history. The "opened-heavens," "angel-choirs," "grazing flocks," "watchful shepherds," "worshiping magicians," "the stable crib," "the mother and child," "the wonderful star," "the presents," "the anthem"--all these, while they fit admirably as stage setting, are questionable material for history. No historical person was ever born in so spectacular a manner. The Gospel account of Jesus is an embellished, ornamental, even sensationally dramatic creation to serve as an introduction for a legendary hero. Similar theatrical furniture has been used thousands of times to introduce other legendary characters. All the Savior Gods were born supernaturally. They were all half god, half man. They were all of royal descent. Miracles and wonders attended their birth. Jesus was not an exception. We reject as mythical the birth-stories about Mithra, and Apollo. Why accept as history those about Jesus? It rests with the preachers of Christianity to show that while the god-man of Persia, or of Greece, for example, was a myth, the god-man of Palestine is historical. The dramatic element is again plainly seen in the account of the betrayal of Jesus. Jesus, who preaches daily in the temples, and in the public places; who talks to the multitude on the mountain and at the seaside; who feeds thousands by miracle; the report of whose wonderful cures has reached the ends of the earth, and who is often followed by such a crush that to reach him an opening has to be made in the ceiling of the house where he is stopping; who goes in and out before the people and is constantly disputing with the elders and leaders of the nation--is, nevertheless, represented as being so unknown that his enemies have to resort to the device of bribing with thirty silver coins one of his disciples to point him out to them, and which is to be done by a kiss. This might make a great scene upon the stage, but it is not the way things happen in life. Then read how Jesus is carried before Pilate the Roman governor, and how while he is being tried a courier rushes in with a letter from Pilate's wife which is dramatically torn open and read aloud in the presence of the crowded court. The letter, it is said, was about a dream of Pilate's wife, in which some ghost tells her that Jesus is innocent, and that her husband should not proceed against him. Is this history? Roman jurisprudence had not degenerated to that extent as to permit the dreams of a woman or of a man to influence the course of justice. But this letter episode was invented by the playwright--if I may use the phrase--to prolong the dramatic suspense, to complicate the situation, to twist the plot, and thereby render the impression produced by his "piece" more lasting. The letter and the dream did not save Jesus. Pilate was not influenced by his dreaming wife. She dreamed in vain. In the next place we hear Pilate pronouncing Jesus guiltless; but, forthwith, he hands him over to the Jews to be killed. Does this read like history? Did ever a Roman court witness such a trial? To pronounce a man innocent and then to say to his prosecutors: "If you wish to kill him, you may do so," is extraordinary conduct. Then, proceeding, Pilate takes water and ostentatiously washes his hands, a proceeding introduced by a Greek or Latin scribe, who wished, in all probability, to throw the blame of the crucifixion entirely upon the Jews. Pilate, representing the Gentile world, washes his hands of the responsibility for the death of Jesus, while the Jews are made to say, "His blood be upon us and our children." Imagine the clamoring, howling Jews, trampling on one another, gesticulating furiously, gnashing their teeth, foaming at the mouth, and spitting in one another's face as they shout, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" A very powerful stage setting, to be sure--but it is impossible to imagine that such disorder, such anarchy could be permitted in any court of justice. But think once more of those terrible words placed in the mouths of the Jews, "His blood be upon us and our children." Think of a people openly cursing themselves and asking the whole Christian world to persecute them forever--"His blood be upon _us and our children_." Next, the composers of the gospels conduct us to the Garden of Gethsemane, that we may see there the hero of the play in his agony, fighting the great battle of his life alone, with neither help nor sympathy from his distracted followers. He is shown to us there, on his knees, crying tears of blood--sobbing and groaning under the shadow of an almost crushing fear. Tremblingly he prays, "Let this cup pass from me--if it be possible;" and then, yielding to the terror crowding in upon him, he sighs in the hearing of all the ages, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak," precisely the excuse given by everybody for not doing what they would do if they could. Now, we ask in all seriousness, is it likely that a God who had come down from heaven purposely to drink that cup and to be the martyr-Savior of humanity--would seek to be spared the fate for which he was ordained from all eternity? The objection that Jesus' hesitation on the eve of the crucifixion, as well as his cry of despair on the cross, were meant to show that he was as human as he was divine, does not solve the difficulty. In that event Jesus, then, was merely acting--feigning a fear which he did not feel, and pretending to dread a death which he knew could not hurt him. If, however, Jesus really felt alarmed at the approach of death, how much braver, then, were many of his followers who afterwards faced dangers and tortures far more cruel than his own! We honestly think that to have put in Jesus' mouth the words above quoted, and also to have represented him as closing his public career with a shriek on the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" was tantamount to an admission by the writers that they were dealing with a symbolic Christ, an ideal figure, the hero of a play, and not a historical character. It is highly dramatic, to be sure, to see the sun darkened, to feel the whole earth quaking, to behold the graves ripped open and the dead reappear in their shrouds--to hear the hero himself tearing his own heart with that cry of shuddering anguish, "My God! my God!"--but it is not history. If such a man as Jesus really lived, then his biographers have only given us a caricature of him. However beautiful some of the sayings attributed to Jesus, and whatever the source they may have been borrowed from, they are not enough to prove his historicity. But even as the Ten Commandments do not prove Moses to have been a historical personage or the author of the books and deeds attributed to him, neither do the parables and miracles of Jesus prove him to have once visited this earth as a god, or to have even existed as a man. Socrates and Jesus! Compare the quite natural behavior of Socrates in prison with that of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Greek sage is serene. Jesus is alarmed. The night agony of his soul, his tears of _blood_, his pitiful collapse when he prays, "if it be possible let this cup pass from me,"--all this would be very impressive on the boards, but they seem incredible of a real man engaged in saving a world. Once more we say that the defense that it was the man in Jesus and not the god in him that broke down, would be unjust to the memory of thousands of martyrs who died by a more terrible death than that of Jesus. As elsewhere stated, but which cannot be too often emphasized, what man would not have embraced death with enthusiasm,--without a moment's misgiving, did he think that by his death, death and sin would be no more! Who would shrink from a cross which is going to save millions to millions added from eternal burnings. He must be a phantom, indeed, who trembles and cries like a frightened child because he cannot have the crown without the cross! What a spectacle for the real heroes crowding the galleries of history! It is difficult to see the shrinking and shuddering Savior of the world, his face bathed in perspiration, blood oozing out of his forehead, his lips pale, his voice breaking into a shriek, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!"--it is difficult to witness all this and not to pity him. Poor Jesus! he is going to save the world, but who is going to save _him?_ If we compare the trial of Jesus with that of Socrates, the fictitious nature of the former cannot possibly escape detection. Socrates was so well known in Athens, that it was not necessary for his accusers to bribe one of his disciples to betray him. Jesus should have been even better known in Jerusalem than Socrates was in Athens. He was daily preaching in the synagogues, and his miracles had given him an _eclat_ which Socrates did not enjoy. Socrates is not taken to court at night, bound hand and feet. Jesus is arrested in the glare of torchlights, after he is betrayed by Judas with a kiss; then he is bound and forced into the high priest's presence. All this is admirable setting for a stage, but they are no more than that. The disciples of Socrates behave like real men, those of Jesus are actors. They run away; they hide and follow at a distance. One of them curses him. The cock crows, the apostate repents. This reads like a play. In the presence of his judges, Socrates makes his own defense. One by one he meets the charges. Jesus refused, according to two of the evangelists, to open his mouth at his trial. This is dramatic, but it is not history. It is not conceivable that a real person accused as Jesus was, would have refused a great opportunity to disprove the charges against him. Socrates' defense of himself is one of the classics. Jesus' silence is a conundrum. "But he answered nothing," "But Jesus as yet answered nothing," "And he answered him never a word," is the report of two of his biographers. The other two evangelists, as is usual, contradict the former and produce the following dialogues between Jesus and his judges, which from beginning to end possess all the marks of unreality: _Pilate_.--"Art thou the King of the Jews?" _Jesus_.--"Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?" _Pilate_--"Art thou a King?" _Jesus_.--"Thou sayest that I am a King." Is it possible that a real man, not to say the Savior of the world, would give such unmeaning and evasive replies to straightforward questions? Does it not read like a page from fiction? In the presence of the priests of his own race Jesus is as indefinite and sophistical as he is before the Roman Pilate. _The Priests_--"Art thou the Christ--tell us?" _Jesus._--"If I tell you ye will not believe me." _The Priests_.--"Art thou the Son of God?" _Jesus_.--"Ye say that I am." In the first answer he refuses to reveal himself because he does not think he can command belief in himself; in his second answer he either blames them for saying he was the Son of God, or quotes their own testimony to prove that he is the Son of God. But if they believed he was God, would they try to kill him? Is it not unthinkable? He intimates that the priests believe he is the Son of God--"Ye say that I am." Surely, it is more probable that these dialogues were invented by his anonymous biographers than that they really represent an actual conversation between Jesus and his judges. Compare in the next place the manner in which the public trials of Socrates and Jesus are conducted. There is order in the Athenian court; there is anarchy in the Jerusalem court. Witnesses and accusers walk up to Jesus and slap him on the face, and the judge does not reprove them for it. The court is in the hands of rowdies and hoodlums, who shout "Crucify him," and again, "Crucify him." A Roman judge, while admitting that he finds no guilt in Jesus deserving of death, is nevertheless represented as handing him over to the mob to be killed, after he has himself scourged him. No Roman judge could have behaved as this Pilate is reported to have behaved toward an accused person on trial for his life. All that we know of civilized government, all that we know of the jurisprudence of Rome, contradicts this "inspired" account of a pretended historical event. If Jesus was ever tried and condemned to death in a Roman court, an account of it that can command belief has yet to be written. Again, when we come to consider the random, disconnected and fragmentary form in which the teachings of Jesus are presented, we cannot avoid the conclusion that he is a _dramatis persona_ brought upon the stage to give expression not to a consistent, connected and carefully worked-out thought, but to voice with many breaks and interruptions, the ideas of his changing managers. He is made to play a number of contradictory roles, and appears in the same story in totally different characters. One editor or compiler of the Gospel describes Jesus as an ascetic and a mendicant, wandering from place to place, without a roof over his head, and crawling at eventide into his cave in the Mount of Olives. He introduces him as the "Man of Sorrows," fasting in the wilderness, counseling people to part with their riches, and promising the Kingdom of Heaven to Lazarus, the beggar. Another redactor announces him as "eating and drinking" at the banquets of "publicans and sinners,"--a "wine-bibbing" Son of Man. "John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, but the Son of Man came both eating and drinking," which, if it means anything, means that Jesus was the very opposite of the ascetic John. A partisan of the doctrine of non-resistance puts in Jesus' mouth the words: "Resist not evil;" "The meek shall inherit the earth," etc., and counsels that he who smites us on the one cheek should be permitted to strike us also on the other, and that to him who robs us of an undergarment, we should also hand over our outer garments. Another draws the picture of a militant Jesus who could never endorse such precepts of indolence and resignation. "The kingdom of heaven is taken by _violence_," cries this new Jesus, and intimates that no such beggar like Lazarus, sitting all day long with the dogs and his sores, can ever earn so great a prize. With a scourge in his hands this Jesus rushes upon the traders in the temple-court, upturns their tables and whips their owners into the streets. Surely this was resistance of the most pronounced type. The right to use physical force could not have been given a better endorsement than by this example of Jesus. It will not help matters to say that these money-changers were violating a divine law, and needed chastisement with a whip. Is not the man who smites us upon the cheek, or robs us of our clothing, equally guilty? Moreover, these traders in the outer courts of the synagogue were rendering the worshipers a useful service. Just as candles, rosaries, images and literature are sold in church vestibules for the accommodation of Catholics, so were doves, pigeons and Hebrew coins, necessary to the Jewish sacrifices, sold in the temple-courts for the Jewish worshiper. The money changer who supplied the pious Jew with the only sacred coin which the priests would accept was not very much less important to the Jewish religion than the rabbi. To have fallen upon these traders with a weapon, and to have caused them the loss of their property, was certainly the most inconsistent thing that a "meek" and "lowly" Jesus preaching non-resistance could have done. Again; one writer makes Jesus the teacher _par excellence_ of peace. He counsels forgiveness of injuries not seven times, but seventy times that number--meaning unlimited love and charity. "Love your enemies," "Bless them that curse you," is his unusual advice. But another hand retouches this picture, and we have a Jesus who breaks his own golden rule. This other Jesus heaps abuse upon the people who displease him; calls his enemies "vipers," "serpents," "devils," and predicts for them eternal burnings in sulphur and brimstone. How could he who said, "Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden," say also, "Depart from me ye _cursed_?" Who curses them? How can there be an everlasting hell in a universe whose author advises us to love our enemies, to bless them that curse us, and to forgive seventy times seven? How could the same Jesus who said, "Blessed are the peacemakers," say also, "I came not to bring peace, but a sword?" Is it possible that the same Jesus who commands us to love our _enemies_, commands us also to "hate" father, mother, wife and child, for "his name's sake?" Yes! the same Jesus who said, "Put up thy sword in its sheath," also commands us to sell our effects and "buy a sword." Once more: A believer in the divinity of Jesus--I am going to say--invents the following text: "The Father and I are _one_." An opponent to this Trinitarian dogma introduces a correction which robs the above text of its authority: "The Father is greater than I," and makes Jesus admit openly that there are some things known to the father only. It is difficult not to see in these passages the beginnings of the terrible controversies which, starting with Peter and Paul, have come down to our day, _and which will not end_ until Jesus shall take his place among the mythical saviors of the world. To harmonize these many and different Jesuses into something like unity or consistency a thousand books have been written by the clergy. They have not succeeded. How can a Jesus represented at one time as the image of divine perfection, and at another as protesting against being called "good," for "none is good, save one, God,"--how can these two conceptions be reconciled except by a resort to artificial and arbitrary interpretations? If such insurmountable contradictions in the teachings and character of another would weaken our faith in his historicity, then we are justified in inferring that in all probability Jesus was only a name--the name of an imaginary stage hero, uttering the conflicting thoughts of his prompters. Again, such phrases as, "and he was caught up in a cloud,"--describing the ascension and consequent disappearance of Jesus, betray the anxiety of the authors of the Gospels to bring their marvelous story to a close. Not knowing how to terminate the career of an imaginary Messiah, his creators invented the above method of dispatching him. "He was caught up in a cloud,"--but for that, the narrators would have been obliged to continue their story indefinitely. In tragedy the play ends with the death of the hero, but if the biographers of Jesus had given a similar excuse for bringing their narrative to a _finale_, there would have been the danger of their being asked to point out his grave. "He was caught up in a cloud," relieved them of all responsibility to produce his remains if called upon to do so, and, at the same time, furnished them with an excuse to bring their story to a close. It would hardly be necessary, were we all unbiased, to look for any further proofs of the mythical and fanciful nature of the Gospel narratives than this expedient to which the writers resorted. To questions, "Where is Jesus?" "What became of his body?" etc., they could answer, "He was caught up in a cloud." But a career that ends in the clouds was never begun on the earth. [Illustration: Coin of the XII Century, Showing Halo Around Lamb's Head.] Let us imagine ourselves in Jerusalem in the year One, of the Christian era, when the apostles, as it is claimed, were proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah, crucified and risen. Desiring to be convinced before believing in the strange story, let us suppose the following conversation between the apostles and ourselves. We ask: How long have you known Jesus? I have known him for one year. And I for two. And I for three. Has any of you known him for more than three years? No. Was he with his apostles for one year or for three? For one. No, for three. You are not certain, then, how long Jesus was with his apostles. No. How old was Jesus when crucified? About thirty-one. No, about thirty-three. No, he was much older, about fifty. You cannot tell with any certainty, then, his age at the time of his death. No. You say he was tried and crucified in Jerusalem before your own eyes, can you remember the date of this great event? We cannot. Were you present when Jesus was taken down from the cross? We were not. You cannot tell, then, whether he was dead when taken down. We have no personal knowledge. Were you present when he was buried? We were not, because we were in hiding for our lives. You do not know, therefore, whether he was actually buried, or where he was buried. We do not. Were any of you present when Jesus came forth from the grave? Not one of us was present, Then, you were not with him when he was taken down from the cross; you were not with him when he was interred, and you were not present when he rose from the grave. We were not. When, therefore, you say, he was dead, buried and rose again, you are relying upon the testimony of others? We are. Will you mention the names of some of the witnesses who saw Jesus come forth from the tomb? Mary Magdalene, and she is here and may be questioned. Were you present, Mary, when the angels rolled away the stone, and when Jesus came forth from the dead? No, when I reached the burying place early in the morning, the grave had already been vacated, and there was no one sleeping in it. You saw him, then, as the apostles did, _after_ he had risen? Yes. But you did not see anybody rise out of the grave. I did not. Are there any witnesses who saw the resurrection? There are many who saw him after the resurrection. But if neither they nor you saw him dead, and buried, and did not see him rise, either, how can you tell that a most astounding and supposedly impossible miracle had taken place between the time you saw him last and when you saw him again two or three days after? Is it not more natural to suppose that, being in a hurry on account of the approaching Sabbath, Jesus, if ever crucified, was taken down from the cross before he had really died, and that he was not buried, as rumor states, but remained in hiding; and his showing himself to you under cover of darkness and in secluded spots and in the dead of night only, would seem to confirm this explanation. You admit also that the risen Jesus did not present himself at the synagogues of the people, in the public streets, or at the palace of the High Priest to convince them of his Messiahship. Do you not think that if he had done this, it would then have been impossible to deny his resurrection? Why, then, did Jesus hide himself after he came out of the grave? Why did he not show himself also to his enemies? Was he still afraid of them, or did he not care whether they believed or not? If so, why are _you_ trying to convert them? The question waits for a reasonable answer; Why did not Jesus challenge the whole world with the evidence of his resurrection? You say you saw him occasionally, a few moments at a time, now here, and now there, and finally on the top of a mountain whence he was caught up in a cloud and disappeared altogether. But that "cloud" has melted away, the sky is clear, and there is no Jesus visible there. The cloud, then, had nothing to hide. It was unnecessary to call in a cloud to close the career of your Christ. The grave is empty, the cloud has vanished. Where is Christ? In heaven! Ah, you have at last removed him to a world unknown, to the undiscovered country. Leave him there! Criticism, doubt, investigation, the light of day, cannot cross its shores. Leave him there! [Illustration: St. Margaret of the Catholic Church, Westminster, England.] [Illustration: The Goddess Astarte Carrying a Cross, British Museum.] THE JESUS OF PAUL The central figure of the New Testament is Jesus, and the question we are trying to answer is, whether we have sufficient evidence to prove to the unbiased mind that he is historical. An idea of the intellectual caliber of the average churchman may be had by the nature of the evidence he offers to justify his faith in the historical Jesus. "The whole world celebrates annually the nativity of Jesus; how could there be a Christmas celebration if there never was a Christ?" asks a Chicago clergyman. The simplicity of this plea would be touching were it not that it calls attention to the painful inefficiency of the pulpit as an educator. The church goer is trained to believe, not to think. The truth is withheld from him under the pious pretense that faith, and not knowledge, is the essential thing. A habit of untruthfulness is cultivated by systematically sacrificing everything to orthodoxy. This habit in the end destroys one's conscience for any truths which are prejudicial to one's interest. But is it true that the Christmas celebration proves a historical Jesus? We can only offer a few additional remarks to what we have already said elsewhere in these pages on the Pagan origin of Christmas. It will make us grateful to remember that just as we have to go to the Pagans for the origins of our civilized institutions--our courts of justice, our art and literature, and our political and religious liberties--we must thank them also for our merry festivals, such as Christmas and Easter. The ignorant, of course, do not know anything about the value and wealth of the legacy bequeathed to us by our glorious ancestors of Greek and Roman times, but the educated can have no excuse for any failure to own their everlasting indebtedness to the Pagans. It will be impossible today to write the history of civilization without giving to the classical world the leading role. But while accepting the gifts of the Pagan peoples we have abused the givers. A beneficiary who will defame a bounteous benefactor is unworthy of his good fortune. I regret to say that the Christian church, notwithstanding that it owes many of its most precious privileges to the Pagans, has returned for service rendered insolence and vituperation. No generous or just institution would treat a rival as Christianity has treated Paganism. Both Christmas and Easter are Pagan festivals. We do not know, no one knows, when Jesus was born; but we know the time of the winter solstice when the sun begins to retrace his steps, turning his radiant face toward our earth once more. It was this event, a natural, demonstrable, universal, event, that our European ancestors celebrated with song and dance--with green branches, through which twinkled a thousand lighted candles, and with the exchange of good wishes and gifts. Has the church had the courage to tell its people that Christmas is a Pagan festival which was adopted and adapted by the Christian world, reluctantly at first, and in the end as a measure of compromise only? The Protestants, especially, conveniently forget the severe Puritanic legislation against the observance of this Pagan festival, both in England and America. It is the return to Paganism which has given to Christmas and Easter their great popularity, as it is the revival of Paganism which is everywhere replacing the Bible ideas of monarchic government with republicanism. And yet, repeatedly, and without any scruples of conscience, preacher and people claim these festivals as the gifts of their creed to humanity, and quote them further to prove the historical existence of their god-man, Jesus. It was this open and persistent perversion of history by the church, the manufacture of evidence on the one hand, the suppression of witnesses prejudiced to her interests on the other, and the deliberate forging of documents, which provoked Carlyle into referring to one of its branches as _the great lying Church_. We have said enough to show that, in all probability--for let us not be dogmatic--the story of Jesus,--his birth and betrayal by one of his own disciples, his trial in a Roman court, his crucifixion, resurrection and ascension,--belongs to the order of imaginative literature. Conceived at first as a religious drama, it received many new accretions as it traveled from country to country and from age to age. The "piece" shows signs of having been touched and retouched to make it acceptable to the different countries in which it was played. The hand of the adapter, the interpolator and the reviser is unmistakably present. As an allegory, or as a dramatic composition, meant for the religious stage, it proved one of the strongest productions of Pagan or Christian times. But as real history, it lacks the fundamental requisite--probability. As a play, it is stirring and strong; as history, it lacks naturalness and consistency. The miraculous is ever outside the province of history. Jesus was a miracle, and as such, at least, we are safe in declaring him un- historical. We pass on now to the presentation of evidence which we venture to think demonstrates with an almost mathematic precision, that the Jesus of the four gospels is a legendary hero, as unhistorical as William Tell of Switzerland. This evidence is furnished by the epistles bearing the signature of Paul. He has been accepted as not only the greatest apostle of Christianity, but in a sense also the author of its theology. It is generally admitted that the epistles bearing the name of Paul are among the oldest apostolical writings. They are older than the gospels. This is very important information. When Paul was preaching, the four gospels had not yet been written. From the epistles of Paul, of which there are about thirteen in the Bible--making the New Testament largely the work of this one apostle--we learn that there were in different parts of Asia, a number of Christian churches already established. Not only Paul, then, but also the Christian church was in existence before the gospels were composed. It would be natural to infer that it was not the gospels which created the church, but the church which produced the gospels. Do not lose sight of the fact that when Paul was preaching to the Christians there was no written biography of Jesus in existence. There was a church without a book. In comparing the Jesus of Paul with the Jesus whose portrait is drawn for us in the gospels, we find that they are not the same persons at all. This is decisive. Paul knows nothing about a miraculously born savior. He does not mention a single time, in all his thirteen epistles, that Jesus was born of a virgin, or that his birth was accompanied with heavenly signs and wonders. He knew nothing of a Jesus born after the manner of the gospel writers. It is not imaginable that he knew the facts, but suppressed them, or that he considered them unimportant, or that he forgot to refer to them in any of his public utterances. Today, a preacher is expelled from his denomination if he suppresses or ignores the miraculous conception of the Son of God; but Paul was guilty of that very heresy. How explain it? It is quite simple: The virgin-born Jesus was not yet _invented_ when Paul was preaching Christianity. Neither he, nor the churches he had organized, had ever heard of such a person. The virgin-born Jesus was of later origin than the Apostle Paul. Let the meaning of this discrepancy between the Jesus of Paul, that is to say, the earliest portrait of Jesus, and the Jesus of the four evangelists, be fully grasped by the student, and it should prove beyond a doubt that in Paul's time the story of Jesus' birth from the virgin-mother and the Holy Ghost, which has since become a cardinal dogma of the Christian church, was not yet in circulation. Jesus had not yet been Hellenized; he was still a Jewish Messiah whose coming was foretold in the Old Testament, and who was to be a prophet like unto Moses, without the remotest suggestion of a supernatural origin. No proposition in Euclid is safer from contradiction than that, if Paul knew what the gospels tell about Jesus, he would have, at least once or twice during his long ministry, given evidence of his knowledge of it. The conclusion is inevitable that the gospel Jesus is later than Paul and his churches. Paul stood nearest to the time of Jesus. Of those whose writings are supposed to have come down to us, he is the most representative, and his epistles are the _first_ literature of the new religion. And yet there is absolutely not a single hint or suggestion in them of such a Jesus as is depicted in the gospels. The gospel Jesus was not yet put together or compiled, when Paul was preaching. Once more; if we peruse carefully and critically the writings of Paul, the earliest and greatest Christian apostle and missionary, we find that he is not only ignorant of the gospel stories about the birth and miracles of Jesus, but he is equally and just as innocently ignorant of the _teachings_ of Jesus. In the gospels Jesus is the author of the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Story of Dives, the Good Samaritan, etc. Is it conceivable that a preacher of Jesus could go throughout the world to convert people to the teachings of Jesus, as Paul did, without ever quoting a single one of his sayings? Had Paul known that Jesus had preached a sermon, or formulated a prayer, or said many inspired things about the here and the hereafter, he could not have helped quoting, now and then, from the words of his master. If Christianity could have been established without a knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, why, then, did Jesus come to teach, and why were his teachings preserved by divine inspiration? But if a knowledge of these teachings of Jesus is indispensable to making converts, Paul gives not the least evidence that he possessed such knowledge. But the Apostle Paul, judging from his many epistles to the earliest converts to Christianity, which are really his testimony, supposed to have been sealed by his blood, appears to be quite as ignorant of a Jesus who went about working miracles,--opening the eyes of the blind, giving health to the sick, hearing to the deaf, and life to the dead,--as he is of a Jesus born of a virgin woman and the Holy Ghost. Is not this remarkable? Does it not lend strong confirmation to the idea that the miracle-working Jesus of the gospels was not known in Paul's time, that is to say, the earliest Jesus known to the churches was a person altogether different from his namesake in the four evangelists. If Paul knew of a miracle-working Jesus, one who could feed the multitude with a few loaves and fishes--who could command the grave to open, who could cast out devils, and cleanse the land of the foulest disease of leprosy, who could, and did, perform many other wonderful works to convince the unbelieving generation of his divinity,--is it conceivable that either intentionally or inadvertently he would have never once referred to them in all his preaching? Is it not almost certain that, if the earliest Christians knew of the miracles of Jesus, they would have been greatly surprised at the failure of Paul to refer to them a single time? And would not Paul have told them of the promise of Jesus to give them power to work even greater miracles than his own, had he known of such a promise. Could Paul really have left out of his ministry so essential a chapter from the life of Jesus, had he been acquainted with it? The miraculous fills up the greater portion of the four gospels, and if these documents were dictated by the Holy Ghost, it means that they were too important to be left out. Why, then, does not Paul speak of them at all? There is only one reasonable answer: A miracle-working Jesus was unknown to Paul. What would we say of a disciple of Tolstoi, for example, who came to America to make converts to Count Tolstoi and never once quoted anything that Tolstoi had said? Or what would we think of the Christian missionaries who go to India, China, Japan and Africa to preach the gospel, if they never mentioned to the people of these countries the Sermon on the Mount, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Lord's Prayer--nor quoted a single text from the gospels? Yet Paul, the first missionary, did the very thing which would be inexplicable in a modern missionary. There is only one rational explanation for this: The Jesus of Paul was not born of a virgin; he did not work miracles; and he was not a teacher. It was after his day that such a Jesus was--I have to use again a strong word--_invented_. It has been hinted by certain professional defenders of Christianity that Paul's specific mission was to introduce Christianity among the Gentiles, and not to call attention to the miraculous element in the life of his Master. But this is a very lame defense. What is Christianity, but the life and teachings of Jesus? And how can it be introduced among the Gentiles without a knowledge of the doctrines and works of its founder? Paul gives no evidence of possessing any knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, how could he, then, be a missionary of Christianity to the heathen? There is no other answer which can be given than that the Christianity of Paul was something radically different from the Christianity of the later gospel writers, who in all probability were Greeks and not Jews. Moreover, it is known that Paul was reprimanded by his fellow-apostles for carrying Christianity to the Gentiles. What better defense could Paul have given for his conduct than to have quoted the commandment of Jesus-- "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." And he would have quoted the "divine" text had he been familiar with it. Nay, the other apostles would not have taken him to task for obeying the commandment of Jesus had they been familiar with such a commandment. It all goes to support the proposition that the gospel Jesus was of a date later than the apostolic times. That the authorities of the church realize how damaging to the reality of the gospel Jesus is the inexplicable silence of Paul concerning him, may be seen in their vain effort to find in a passage put in Paul's mouth by the unknown author of the book of _Acts_, evidence that Paul does quote the sayings of Jesus. The passage referred to is the following: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Paul is made to state that this was a saying of Jesus. In the first place, this quotation is not in the epistles of Paul, but in the _Acts_, of which Paul was not the author; in the second place, there is no such quotation in the gospels. The position, then, that there is not a single saying of Jesus in the gospels which is quoted by Paul in his many epistles is unassailable, and certainly fatal to the historicity of the gospel Jesus. Again, from Paul himself we learn that he was a zealous Hebrew, a Pharisee of Pharisees, studying with Gamaliel in Jerusalem, presumably to become a rabbi. Is it possible that such a man could remain totally ignorant of a miracle worker and teacher like Jesus, living in the same city with him? If Jesus really raised Lazarus from the grave, and entered Jerusalem at the head of a procession, waving branches and shouting, "hosanna"--if he was really crucified in Jerusalem, and ascended from one of its environs--is it possible that Paul neither saw Jesus nor heard anything about these miracles? But if he knew all these things about Jesus, is it possible that he could go through the world preaching Christ without ever once referring to them? It is more likely that when Paul was studying in Jerusalem there was no miraculous Jesus living or teaching in any part of Judea. If men make their gods they also make their Christs. [Footnote: Christianity and Mythology. J. M. Robertson, to whom the author acknowledges his indebtedness, for the difference between Paul's Jesus and that of the Gospels.] It is frequently urged that it was impossible for a band of illiterate fishermen to have created out of their own fancy so glorious a character as that of Jesus, and that it would be more miraculous to suppose that the unique sayings of Jesus and his incomparably perfect life were invented by a few plain people than to believe in his actual existence. But it is not honest to throw the question into that form. We do not know who were the authors of the gospels. It is pure assumption that they were written by plain fishermen. The authors of the gospels do not disclose their identity. The words, _according_ to Matthew, Mark, etc., represent only the guesses or opinions of translators and copyists. Both in the gospels and in Christian history the apostles are represented as illiterate men. But if they spoke Greek, and could also write in Greek, they could not have been just plain fishermen. That they were Greeks, not Jews, and more or less educated, may be safely inferred from the fact that they all write in Greek, and one of them at least seems to be acquainted with the Alexandrian school of philosophy. Jesus was supposedly a Jew, his twelve apostles all Jews--how is it, then, that the only biographies of him extant are all in Greek? If his fishermen disciples were capable of composition in Greek, they could not have been illiterate men, if they could not have written in Greek--which was a rare accomplishment for a Jew, according to what Josephus says--then the gospels were not written by the apostles of Jesus. But the fact that though these documents are in a language alien both to Jesus and his disciples, they are unsigned and undated, goes to prove, we think, that their editors or authors wished to conceal their identity that they may be taken for the apostles themselves. In the next place it is equally an assumption that the portrait of Jesus is incomparable. It is now proven beyond a doubt that there is not a single saying of Jesus, I say this deliberately, which had not already been known both among the Jews and Pagans. [Footnote: Sometimes it is urged by pettifogging clergymen that, while it is true that Confucius gave the Golden Rule six hundred years before Jesus, it was in a negative form. Confucius said, "Do not unto another what you would not another to do unto you." Jesus said, "Do unto others," etc. But every negative has its corresponding affirmation. Moreover, are not the Ten Commandments in the negative? But the Greek sages gave the Golden Rule in as positive a form as we find it in the Gospels. "And may I do to others as I would that others should do to me," said Plato.--Jowett Trans., V.--483. P. Besides, if the only difference between Jesus and Confucius, the one a God, the other a mere man, was that they both said the same thing, the one in the negative, the other in the positive, it is not enough to prove Jesus infinitely superior to Confucius. Many of Jesus' own commandments are in the negative: "Resist not evil," for instance.] And as to his life; it is in no sense superior or even as large and as many sided as that of Socrates. I know some consider it blasphemy to compare Jesus with Socrates, but that must be attributed to prejudice rather than to reason. And to the question that if Jesus be mythical, we cannot account for the rise and progress of the Christian church, we answer that the Pagan gods who occupied Mount Olympus were all mythical beings--mere shadows, and yet Paganism was the religion of the most advanced and cultured nations of antiquity. How could an imaginary Zeus, or Jupiter, draw to his temple the elite of Greece and Rome? And if there is nothing strange in the rise and spread of the Pagan church; in the rapid progress of the worship of Osiris, who never existed; in the wonderful success of the religion of Mithra, who is but a name; if the worship of Adonis, of Attis, of Isis, and the legends of Heracles, Prometheus, Hercules, and the Hindoo trinity,--Brahma, Shiva, Chrishna,--with their rock-hewn temples, can be explained without believing in the actual existence of these gods--why not Christianity? Religions, like everything else, are born, they grow old and die. They show the handiwork of whole races, and of different epochs, rather than of one man or of one age. Time gives them birth, and changing environments determine their career. Just as the portrait of Jesus we see in shops and churches is an invention, so is his character. The artist gave him his features, the theologian his attributes. What are the elements out of which the Jesus story was evolved? The Jewish people were in constant expectation of a Messiah. The belief prevailed that his name would be Joshua, which in English is Jesus. The meaning of the word is _savior_. In ancient Syrian mythology, Joshua was a Sun God. The Old-Testament Joshua, who "stopped the Sun," was in all probability this same Syrian divinity. According to tradition this Joshua, or Jesus, was the son of Mary, a name which with slight variations is found in nearly all the old mythologies. Greek and Hindoo divinities were mothered by either a Mary, Meriam, Myrrah, or Merri. Maria or Mares is the oldest word for sea--the earliest source of life. The ancients looked upon the sea-water as the mother of every living thing. "Joshua (or Jesus), son of Mary," was already a part of the religious outfit of the Asiatic world when Paul began his missionary tours. His Jesus, or anointed one, crucified or slain, did in no sense represent a new or original message. It is no more strange that Paul's mythological "savior" should loom into prominence and cast a spell over all the world, than that a mythical Apollo or Jupiter should rule for thousands of years over the fairest portions of the earth. It is also well known that there is in the Talmud the story of a Jesus, Ben, or son, of Pandira, who lived about a hundred years before the Gospel Jesus, and who was hanged from a tree. I believe this Jesus is quite as legendary as the Syrian Hesous, or Joshua. But may it not be that such a legend accepted as true--to the ancients all legends were true--contributed its share toward marking the outlines of the later Jesus, hanged on a cross? My idea has been to show that the materials for a Jesus myth were at hand, and that, therefore, to account for the rise and progress of the Christian cult is no more difficult than to explain the widely spread religion of the Indian Chrishna, or of the Persian Mithra. [Footnote: For a fuller discussion of the various "christs" in mythology read Robertson's Christianity and Mythology and his Pagan Christs.] Now, why have I given these conclusions to the world? Would I not have made more friends--provoked a warmer response from the public at large--had I repeated in pleasant accents the familiar phrases about the glory and beauty and sweetness of the Savior God, the Virgin-born Christ? Instead of that, I have run the risk of alienating the sympathies of my fellows by intimating that this Jesus whom Christendom worships today as a god, this Jesus at whose altar the Christian world bends its knees and bows its head, is as much of an idol as was Apollo of the Greeks; and that we--we Americans of the twentieth century--are an idolatrous people, inasmuch as we worship a name, or at most, a man of whom we know nothing provable. [Illustration: Italian Sculpture of the X Century.] IS CHRISTIANITY REAL? It is assumed, without foundation, as I hope to show, that the religion of Jesus alone can save the world. We are not surprised at the claim, because there has never been a religion which has been too modest to make a similar claim. No religion has ever been satisfied to be _one_ of the saviors of man. Each religion wants to be the _only_ savior of man. There is no monopoly like religious monopoly. The industrial corporations with all their greed are less exacting than the Catholic church, for instance, which keeps heaven itself under lock and key. But what is meant by salvation? Let us consider its religious meaning first. An unbiased investigation of the dogmas and their supposed historical foundations will prove that the salvation which Christianity offers, and the means by which it proposes to effect the world's salvation, are extremely fanciful in nature. If this point could be made clear, there will be less reluctance on the part of the public to listen to the evidence on the un-historicity of the founder of Christianity. We are told that God, who is perfect, created this world about half a hundred centuries ago. Of course, being perfect himself the world which he created was perfect, too. But the world did not stay perfect very long. Nay, from the heights it fell, not slowly, but suddenly, into the lowest depths of degradation. How a world which God had created perfect, could in the twinkling of an eye become so vile as to be cursed by the same being who a moment before had pronounced it "good," and besides be handed over to the devil as fuel for eternal burnings, only credulity can explain. I am giving the story of what is called the "plan of salvation," in order to show its mythical nature. In the preceding pages we have discussed the question, Is Jesus a Myth, but I believe that when we have reflected upon the story of man's fall and his supposed subsequent salvation by the blood of Jesus, we shall conclude that the function, or the office, which Jesus is said to perform, is as mythical as his person. The story of Eden possesses all the marks of an allegory. Adam and Eve, and a perfect world _suddenly_ plunged from a snowy whiteness into the blackness of hell, are the thoughts of a child who exaggerates because of an as yet undisciplined fancy. Yet, if Adam and Eve are unreal, theologically speaking, Jesus is unreal. If they are allegory and myth, so is Jesus. It is claimed that it was the fall of Adam which necessitated the death of Jesus, but if Adam's fall be a fiction, as we know it is, Jesus' death as an atonement must also be a fiction. In the fall of Adam, we are told, humanity itself fell. Could anything be more fanciful than that? And what was Adam's sin? He coveted knowledge. He wished to improve his mind. He experimented with forbidden things. He dared to take the initiative. And for that imaginary crime, even the generations not yet born are to be forever blighted. Even the animals, the flowers and vegetables were cursed for it. Can you conceive of anything more mythical than that? One of the English divines of the age of Calvin declared that original sin,--Adam's sin imputed to us,--was so awful, that "if a man had never been born he would yet have been damned for it." It is from this mythical sin that a mythical Savior saves us. And how does he do it? In a very mythical way, as we shall see. When the world fell, it fell into the devil's hands. To redeem a part of it, at least, the deity concludes to give up his only son for a ransom. This is interesting. God is represented as being greatly offended, because the world which he had created perfect was all in a heap before him. To placate himself he sacrificed his son--not himself. But, as intimated above, he does not intend to restore the whole world to its pristine purity, but only a part of it. This is alarming. He creates the whole world perfect, but now he is satisfied to have only a portion of it redeemed from the devil. If he can save at all, pray, why not save all? This is not an irrelevant question when it is remembered that the whole world was created perfect in the first place. The refusal of the deity to save all of his world from the devil would lead one to believe that even when God created the world perfect he did not mean to keep all of it to himself, but meant that some of it, the greater part of it, as some theologians contend, should go to the devil! Surely this is nothing but myth. Let us hope for the sake of our ideals that all this is no more than the childish prattle of primitive man. But let us return to the story of the fall of man; God decides to save a part of his ruined perfect world by the sacrifice of his son. The latter is supposed to have said to his father: "Punish me, kill me, accept my blood, and let it pay for the sins of man." He thus interceded for the _elect_, and the deity was mollified. As Jesus is also God, it follows that one God tried to pacify another, which is pure myth. Some theologians have another theory--there is room here for many theories. According to these, God gave up his son as a ransom, not to himself, but to the devil, who now claimed the world as his own. I heard a distinguished minister explain this in the following manner: A poor man whose house is mortgaged hears that some philanthropist has redeemed the property by paying off the mortgage. The soul of man was by the fall of Adam mortgaged to the devil. God has raised the mortgage by abandoning his son to be killed to satisfy the devil who held the mortgage. The debt which we owed has been paid by Jesus. By this arrangement the devil loses his legal right to our souls and we are saved. All we need to do is to believe in this story and we'll be sure to go to heaven. And to think that intelligent Americans not only accept all this as inspired, but denounce the man who ventures to intimate modestly that it might be a myth, as a blasphemer! "O, judgment!" cries Shakespeare, "thou hast fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason." The morality which the Christian church teaches is of as mythical a nature as the story of the fall, and the blood-atonement. It is not natural morality, but something quite unintelligible and fictitious. For instance, we are told that we cannot of ourselves be righteous. We must first have the grace of God. Then we are told that we cannot have the grace of God unless he gives it to us. And he will not give it to us unless we ask for it. But we cannot ask for it, unless he moves us to ask for it. And there we are. We shall be damned if we do not come to God, and we cannot come to God unless he calls us. Besides, could anything be more mythical than a righteousness which can only be imputed to us,--any righteousness of our own being but "filthy rags?" The Christian religion has the appearance of being one great myth, constructed out of many minor myths. It is the same with Mohammedanism, or Judaism, which latter is the mischievous parent of both the Mohammedan and the Christian faiths. It is the same with all supernatural creeds. Myth is the dominating element in them all. Compared with these Asiatic religions how glorious is science! How wholesome, helpful, and luminous, are her commandments! If I were to command you to believe that Mount Olympus was once tenanted by blue-eyed gods and their consorts,--sipping nectar and ambrosia the live-long day,--you will answer, "Oh, that is only mythology." If I were to tell you that you cannot be saved unless you believe that Minerva was born full-fledged from the brain of Jupiter, you will laugh at me. If I were to tell you that you must punish your innocent sons for the guilt of their brothers and sisters, you will answer that I insult your moral sense. And yet, every Sunday, the preacher repeats the myth of Adam and Eve, and how God killed his innocent son to please himself, or to satisfy the devil, and with bated breath, and on your knees, you whisper, _Amen._ How is it that when you read the literature of the Greeks, the literature of the Persians, the literature of Hindoostan, or of the Mohammedan world, you discriminate between fact and fiction, between history and myth, but when it comes to the literature of the Jews, you stammer, you stutter, you bite your lips, you turn pale, and fall upon your face before it as the savage before his fetish? You would consider it unreasonable to believe that everything a Greek, or a Roman, or an Arab ever said was inspired. And yet, men have been hounded to death for not believing that everything that a Jew ever said in olden times was inspired. I do not have to use arguments, I hope, to prove to an intelligent public that an infallible book is as much a myth as the Garden of Eden, or the Star of Bethlehem. A mythical Savior, a mythical Bible, a mythical plan of salvation! When we subject what are called religious truths to the same tests by which we determine scientific or historical truths, we discover that they are not truths at all; they are only opinions. Any statement which snaps under the strain of reason is unworthy of credence. But it is claimed that religious truth is discovered by intuition and not by investigation. The believer, it is claimed, feels in his own soul--he has the witness of the spirit, that the Bible is infallible, and that Jesus is the Savior of man. The Christian does not have to look into the arguments for or against his religion, it is said, before he makes up his mind; he knows by an inward assurance; he has proved it to his own deepermost being that Jesus is real and that he is the only Savior. But what is that but another kind of argument? The argument is quite inadequate to inspire assurance, as you will presently see, but it is an argument nevertheless. To say that we must believe and not reason is a kind of reasoning, This device of reasoning against reasoning is resorted to by people who have been compelled by modern thought to give up, one after another, the strongholds of their position. They run under shelter of what they call faith, or the "inward witness of the spirit," or the intuitive argument, hoping thereby to escape the enemy's fire, if I may use so objectionable a phrase. What is called faith, then, or an intuitive spiritual assurance, is a species of reasoning; let its worth be tested honestly. In the first place, faith or the intuitive argument would prove too much. If Jesus is real, notwithstanding that there is no reliable historical data to warrant the belief, because the believer feels in his own soul that He is real and divine, I answer that, the same mode of reasoning--and let us not forget, it is a kind of _reasoning_--would prove Mohammed a divine savior, and the wooden idol of the savage a god. The African Bushman trembles before an image, because he feels in his own soul that the thing is real. Does that make it real? The Moslem cries unto Mohammed, because he believes in his innermost heart that Mohammed is near and can hear him. He will risk his life on that assurance. To quote to him history and science to prove that Mohammed is dead and unable to save, would be of no avail, for he has the witness of the spirit in him, an intuitive assurance, that the great prophet sits on the right hand of Allah. An argument which proves too much, proves nothing. In the second place, an intuition is not communicable. I may have an intuition that I see spirits all about me this morning. They come, they go, they nod, they brush my forehead with their wings. But do _you_ see them, too, because I see them? There is the difference between a scientific demonstration and a purely metaphysical assumption. I could go to the blackboard and assure you, as I am myself assured, that two parallel lines running in the same direction will not and cannot meet. That is demonstration. A fever patient when in a state of delirium, and a frightened child in the dark, see things. We do not deny that they do, but their testimony does not prove that the things they see are real. "What is this I see before me?" cries Macbeth, the murderer, and he shrieks and shakes from head to foot--he draws his sword and rushes upon Banquo's ghost, which he sees coldly staring at him. But is that any proof that what he saw we could see also? Yes, we could, if we were in the same frenzy! And it is the revivalist's aim, by creating a general excitement, to make everybody _see things_. "Doctor, Doctor, help! they are coming to kill me; there they are--the assassins,--one, two, three--oh, help," and the patient jumps out of bed to escape the banditti crowding in upon him. But is that any reason why the attending physician, his pulse normal and his brow cool, should believe that the room is filling up with assassins? I observe people jump up and down, as they do in holiness meetings; I hear them say they see angels, they see Jesus, they feel his presence. But is that any evidence for you or me? An intuitive argument is not communicable, and, therefore, it is no argument at all. Our orthodox friends are finally driven by modern thought, which is growing bolder every day, to the only refuge left for them. It is the one already mentioned. Granted that Jesus was an imaginary character, even then, as an ideal, they argue, he is an inspiration, and the most effective moral force the world has ever known. We do not care, they say, whether the story of his birth, trial, death, and resurrection is myth or actual history; such a man as Jesus may never have existed, the things he is reported as saying may have been put in his mouth by others, but what of that--is not the picture of his character perfect? Are not the Beatitudes beautiful--no matter who said them? To strengthen this position they call our attention to Shakespeare's creations, the majority of whom--Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Portia, Imogen, Desdemona, are fictitious. Yet where are there grander men, or finer women? These children of Shakespeare may never have lived, but, surely, they will never die. In the same sense, Jesus may be just as ideal a character as those of Shakespeare, they say, and still be "the light of the world." A New York preacher is reported as saying that if Christianity is a lie, it is a "glorious lie." My answer to the above is that such an argument evades instead of facing the question. It is receding from a position under cover of a rhetorical manoeuvre. It is a retreat in disguise. If Christianity is a "glorious lie," then call it such. The question under discussion is, Is Jesus Historical? To answer that it is immaterial whether or not he is historical, is to admit that there is no evidence that he is historical. To urge that, unhistorical though he be, he is, nevertheless, the only savior of the world, is, I regret to say, not only evasive,--not only does it beg the question, but it is also clearly dishonest. How long will the tremendous ecclesiastical machinery last, if it were candidly avowed that it is doubtful whether there ever was such a historical character as Jesus, or that in all probability he is no more real than one of Shakespeare's creations? What! all these prayers, these churches, these denominations, these sectarian wars which have shed oceans of human blood--these unfortunate persecutions which have blackened the face of man--the fear of hell and the devil which has blasted millions of lives--all these for a Christ who may, after all, be only a picture! Neither is it true that this pictorial Jesus saved the world. He has had two thousand years to do it in, but as missionaries are still being sent out, it follows that the world is yet to be saved. The argument presented elsewhere in these pages may here be recapitulated. There was war before Christianity; has Jesus abolished war? There was poverty and misery in the world before Christianity; has Jesus removed these evils? There was ignorance in the world before Christianity; has Jesus destroyed ignorance? There were disease, crime, persecution, oppression, slavery, massacres, and bloodshed in the world before Christianity; alas, are they not still with us? _When Jesus shall succeed in pacifying his own disciples; in healing the sectarian world of its endless and bitter quarrels, then it will be time to ask what else Jesus has done for humanity._ If the world is improving at all, and we believe it is, the progress is due to the fact that man pays now more attention to _this_ life than formerly. He is thinking less of the other world and more of this. He no longer sings with the believer: The world is all a fleeting show For man's delusion given. Its smiles of joy, its tears of woe, Deceitful shine, deceitful flow, There's nothing true but heaven. How could people with such feelings labor to improve a world they hated? How could they be in the least interested in social or political reforms when they were constantly repeating to themselves-- I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger-- I can tarry, I can tarry, but a night. That these same people should now claim not only a part of the credit for the many improvements, but all of it--saying that, but for their religion the "world would now have been a hell," [Footnote: Rev. Frank Gunsaulus, of the Central Church, Chicago. See A New Catechism.--M. M. Mangasarian.] is really a little too much for even the most serene temperament. Which of the religions has persecuted as long and as relentlessly as Christianity? Which of the many faiths of the world has opposed Science as stubbornly and as bitterly as Christianity? In the name of what other prophets have more people been burned at the stake than in the names of Jesus and Moses? What other revelation has given rise to so many sects, hostile and irreconcilable, as the Christian? Which religion has furnished as many effective texts for political oppression, polygamy, slavery, and the subjection of woman as the religion of Jesus and Paul? Is there,--has there ever been another creed which makes salvation dependent on belief,--thereby encouraging hypocrisy, and making honest inquiry a crime? To send a thief to heaven from the gallows because he believes, and an honest man to hell because he doubts, is that the virtue which is going to save the world? The claim that Jesus has saved the world is another myth. A _pictorial_ Christ, then, has not done anything for humanity to deserve the tremendous expenditure of time, energy, love, and devotion, which has for two thousand years taxed the resources of civilization. The passing away of this imaginary savior will relieve the world of an unproductive investment. We conclude: Honesty, like charity, must begin at home. Unless we can tell the truth in our churches we will never tell the truth in our shops. Unless our teachers, the ministers of God, are honest, our insurance companies and corporations will have to be watched. Permit sham in your religious life, and the disease will spread to every member of the social body. If you may keep religion in the dark, and cry "hush," "hush," when people ask that it be brought out into the light, why may not politics or business cultivate a similar partiality for darkness? If the king cries, "rebel," when a citizen asks for justice, it is because he has heard the priest cry, "infidel," when a member of his church asked for evidence. Religious hypocrisy is the mother of all hypocrisies. Cure a man of that, and the human world will recover its health. Not so long ago, nearly everybody believed in the existence of a personal devil. People saw him, heard him, described him, danced with him, and claimed, besides, to have whipped him. Luther hurled his inkstand at him, and American women accused as witches were put to death in the name of the devil. Yet all this "evidence" has not saved the devil from passing out of existence. What has happened to the devil will happen to the gods. Man is the only real savior. If he is not a savior, there is no other. [Illustration: The Hindu Trinity.] PART II. IS THE WORLD INDEBTED TO CHRISTIANITY? "But," says the believer, again, as a last resort, "Jesus, whether real or mythical, has certainly saved the world, and is its only hope." If this assertion can be supported with facts, then surely it would matter very little whether Jesus really lived and taught, or whether he is a mere picture. Although even then it would be more truthful to say we have no satisfactory evidence that such a teacher as Jesus ever lived, than to affirm dogmatically his existence, as it is now done. Whatever Jesus may have done for the world, he has certainly not freed us from the obligation of telling the truth. I call special attention to this point. Because Jesus has saved the world, granting for the moment that he has, is no reason why we should be indifferent to the truth. Nay, it would show that Jesus has not saved the world, if we can go on and speak of him as an actual existence, born of a virgin and risen from the dead, and in his name persecute one another--oppose the advance of science, deny freedom of thought, terrorize children and women with pictures of hell-fire and seek to establish a spiritual monopoly in the world, when the evidence in hand seems clearly to indicate that such a person never existed. We shall quote a chapter from Christian history to give our readers an idea of how much the religion of Jesus, when implicitly believed in, can do for the world. We have gone to the earliest centuries for our examples of the influence exerted by Christianity upon the ambitions and passions of human nature, because it is generally supposed that Christianity was then at its best. Let us, then, present a picture of the world, strictly speaking, of the Roman Empire, during the first four or five hundred years after its conversion to Christianity. We select this specific period, because Christianity was at this time fifteen hundred years nearer to its source, and was more virile and aggressive than it has ever been since. Shakespeare speaks of the uses of adversity; but the uses of prosperity are even greater. The proverb says that "adversity tries a man." While there is considerable truth in this, the fact is that prosperity is a much surer criterion of character. It is impossible to tell, for instance, what a man will do who has neither the power nor the opportunity to do anything. "Opportunity," says a French writer, "is the cleverest devil." Both our good and bad qualities wait upon opportunity to show themselves. It is quite easy to be virtuous when the opportunity to do evil is lacking. Behind the prison bars, every criminal is a penitent, but the credit belongs to the iron bars and not to the criminal. To be good when one cannot be bad, is an indifferent virtue. It is with institutions and religions as with individuals--they should be judged not by what they pretend in their weakness, but by what they do when they are strong. Christianity, Mohammedanism and Judaism, the three kindred religions--we call them kindred because they are related in blood and are the offspring of the same soil and climate--these three kindred religions must be interpreted not by what they profess today, but by what they did when they had both the power and the opportunity to do as they wished. When Christianity, or Mohammedanism, was professed only by a small handful of men--twelve fishermen, or a dozen camel-drivers of the desert--neither party advocated persecution. The worst punishment which either religion held out was a distant and a future punishment; but as soon as Christianity converted an Emperor, or Mohammed became the victorious warrior,--that is to say, as soon as, springing forth, they picked up the sword and felt their grip sure upon its hilt, this future and distant punishment materialized into a present and persistent persecution of their opponents. Is not that suggestive? Then, again, when in the course of human evolution, both Christianity and Mohammedanism lost the secular support--the throne, the favor of the courts, the imperial treasury--they fell back once more upon future penalties as the sole menace against an unbelieving world. As religion grows, secularly speaking, weaker, and is more completely divorced from the temporal, even the future penalties, from being both literal and frightful, pale into harmless figures of speech. It was but a short time after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, that the following edict was published throughout the provinces of the Roman Empire: "O ye enemies of truth, authors and counsellors of death--we enact by this law that none of you dare hereafter to meet at your conventicles...nor keep any meetings either in public buildings or private houses. We have commanded that all your places of meeting--your temples--be pulled down or confiscated to the Catholic Church." The man who affixed his signature to this edict was a monarch, that is to say, a man who had the power to do as he liked. The man and monarch, then, who affixed his imperial signature to this _first_ document of persecution in Europe--the first, because, as Renan has beautifully remarked, "We may search in vain the whole Roman law before Constantine for a single passage against freedom of thought, and the history of the imperial government furnishes no instance of a prosecution for entertaining an abstract doctrine,"--this is glory enough for the civilization 'which we call _Pagan_ and which was replaced by the Asiatic religion--the man and the monarch who fathered the first instrument of persecution in our Europe, who introduced into our midst the crazed hounds of religious wars, unknown either in Greece or Rome, Constantine, has been held up by Cardinal Newman as "a pattern to all succeeding monarchs." Only an Englishman, a European, infected with the malady of the East, could hold up the author of such an edict,--an edict which prostitutes the State to the service of a fad--as "a pattern." If we asked for a modern illustration of what a church will do when it has the power, there is the example of Russia. Russia is today centuries behind the other European nations. She is the most unfortunate, the most ignorant, the most poverty-pinched country, with the most orthodox type of Christianity. What is the difference between Greek Christianity, such as prevails in Russia, and American Christianity! Only this: The Christian Church in Russia has both the power and the opportunity to do things, while the Christian church in America or in France has not. We must judge Christianity as a religion by what it does in Russia, more than by what it does not do in France or America. There was a time when the church did in France and in England what it is doing now in Russia, which is a further confirmation of the fact that a religion must be judged not by what it pretends in its weakness, but by what it does when it can. In Russia, the priest can tie a man's hands and feet and deliver him up to the government; and it does so. In Protestant countries, the church, being deprived of all its badges and prerogatives, is more modest and humble. The poet Heine gives eloquent expression to this idea when he says: "Religion comes begging to us, when it can no longer burn us." There will be no revolution in Russia, nor even any radical improvement of existing conditions, so long as the Greek Church has the education of the masses in charge. To become politically free, men must first be intellectually emancipated. If a Russian is not permitted to choose his own religion, will he be permitted to choose his own form of government? If he will allow a priest to impose his religion upon him, why may he not permit the Czar to impose despotism upon him? If it is wrong for him to question the tenets of his religion, is it not equally wrong for him to discuss the laws of his government? If a slave of the church, why may he not be also a slave of the state? If there is room upon his neck for the yoke of the church, there will be room, also, for the yoke of the autocracy. If he is in the habit of bending his knees, what difference does it make to how many or to whom he bends them? Not until Russia has become religiously emancipated, will she conquer political freedom. She must first cast out of her mind the fear of the church, before she can enter into the glorious fellowship of the free. In Turkey, all the misery of the people will not so much as cause a ripple of discontent, because the Moslem has been brought up to submit to the Sultan as to the shadow on earth of Allah. Both in Russia and Turkey, the protestants are the heretics. The orthodox Turk and the orthodox Christian permit without a murmur both the priest and the king to impose upon them at the point of a bayonet, the one his religion, and the other his government. It is only by taking the education of the masses out of the hands of the clergy that either country can enjoy any prosperity. Orthodoxy and autocracy are twins. Let me now try to present to you a picture of the world under Christianity about the year 400 of the present era. Let us discuss this phase of the subject in a liberal spirit, extenuating nothing, nor setting down aught in malice. Please interpret what I say in the next few minutes metaphorically, and pardon me if my picture is a repellant one. We are in the year of our Lord, 400: I rose up early this morning to go to church. As I approached the building, I saw there a great multitude of people unable to secure admission into the edifice. The huge iron doors were closed, and upon them was affixed a notice from the authorities, to the effect that all who worshiped in this church would, by the authority of the state, be known and treated hereafter as "infamous heretics," and be exposed to the extreme penalty of the law if they persisted in holding services there. But the party to which I belonged heeded not the prohibition, but beat against the doors furiously and effected an entrance into the church. The excitement ran high; men and leaders shouted, gesticulated and came to blows. The Archbishop was urged to ascend his episcopal throne and officiate at the altar in spite of the formal interdiction against him. He consented. But he had not proceeded far when soldiers, with a wild rush, poured into the building and began to discharge arrows at the panic-stricken people. Instantly pandemonium was let loose. The officers commanding the soldiers demanded the head of the offending Archbishop. The worshipers made an attempt to resist; then blood was shed, the sight of which reeled people's heads, and, in an instant, the sanctuary was turned into a house of murder. Taking advantage of the uproar, the Archbishop, assisted by his secretaries, escaped through a secret door behind the altar. [Illustration: Engraving of XV Century Representing the Trinity.] On my way home from this terrible scene, I fell upon a procession of monks. They were carrying images and relics, and a banner upon which were inscribed these words: "The Virgin Mary, Mother of God." As they marched on, their number increased by new additions. But suddenly they encountered another band of monks, carrying a different banner, bearing the same words which were on the other party's banner, but instead of "The Virgin Mary, Mother of God," their banner read: "The Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ." The two processions clashed, and a bloody encounter followed; in an instant images, relics and banners were all in an indiscriminate heap. The troops were called out again, but such was the zeal of the conflicting parties that not until the majority of them were disabled and exhausted, was tranquility restored. Looking about me, I saw the spire of a neighboring church. My curiosity prompted me to wend my steps thither. As soon as I entered, I was recognized as belonging to the forbidden sect, and in an instant a hundred fists rained down blows upon my head. "He has polluted the sanctuary," they cried. "He has committed sacrilege." "No quarter to the enemies of the true church," cried others, and it was a miracle that, beaten, bruised, my clothes torn from my back, I regained the street. A few seconds later, looking up the streets, I saw another troop of soldiers, rushing down toward this church at full speed. It seems that while I was being beaten in the main auditorium, in the baptistry of the church they were killing, in cold blood, the Archbishop, who was suspected of a predilection for the opposite party, and who had refused to retract or resign from his office. The next day I heard that one hundred and thirty-seven bodies were taken out of this building. Seized with terror, I now began to run, but, alas, I had worse experiences in store for me. I was compelled to pass the principal square in the center of the city before I could reach a place of safety. When I reached this square, it had the appearance of a veritable battlefield. It was Sunday morning, and the partisans of rival bishops, differing in their interpretation of theological doctrines, were fighting each other like maddened, malignant creatures. One could hear, over the babel of discordant yells, scriptural phrases. The words, "The Son is equal to the Father," "The Father is greater than the Son," "He is begotten of the same substance as the Father," "He is of like substance, but not of the same substance," "You are a heretic," "You are an atheist," were invariably accompanied with blows, stabs and sword thrusts, until, as an eye- witness, I can take an oath that I saw the streets leading out of the square deluged with palpitating human blood. Suddenly the commander of the cavalry, Hermogenes, rode upon the scene of feud and bloodshed. He ordered the followers of the rival bishops to disperse, but instead of minding his authority, the zealots of both sides rushed upon his horse, tore the rider from the saddle and began to beat him with clubs and stones which they picked up from the street. He managed to escape into a house close by, but the religious rabble surrounded the house and set fire to it. Hermogenes appeared at the window, begging for his life. He was attacked again, and killed, and his mangled body dragged through the streets and rushed into a ditch. The spectacle inflamed me, being a sectarian myself. I felt ashamed that I was not showing an equal zeal for _my_ party. I, too, longed to fight, to kill, to be killed, for my religion. And, anon! the opportunity presented itself. I saw, looking up the street to my right, a group of my fellow-believers, who, like myself, shut out of their own church by the orthodox authorities, armed with whips loaded with lead and with clubs, were entering a house. I followed them. As we went in, we commanded the head of the family and his wife to appear. When they did, we asked them if it was true that in their prayers to Mary they had refrained from the use of the words, "The mother of God." They hesitated to give a direct answer, whereupon we used the club, and then, the scourge. Then they said they believed in and revered the blessed virgin, but would not, even if we killed them, say that she was the mother of God. This obstinacy exasperated us and we felt it to be our religious duty, for the honor of our divine Queen, to perpetrate such cruelties upon them as would shock your gentle ears to hear. We held them over slowly burning fires, flung lime into their eyes, applied roasted eggs and hot irons to the sensitive parts of their bodies, and even gagged them to force the sacrament into their mouths.....As we went from house to house, bent upon our mission, I remember an expression of one of the party who said to the poor woman who was begging for mercy: "What! shall I be guilty of defrauding the vengeance of God of its victims?" A sudden chill ran down my back. I felt my flesh creep. Like a drop of poison the thought embodied in those words perverted whatever of pity or humanity was left in me, and I felt that I was only helping to secure victims with which to feed the vengeance of God! [Illustration: Trinity in XIII Century.] I was willing to be a monster for the glory of God! The Christian sect to which I belonged was one of the oldest in Christendom. Our ancestors were called the Puritans of the fourth and fifth centuries. We believe that no one can be saved outside of our communion. When a Christian of another church joins us, we re-baptize him, for we do not believe in the validity of other baptisms. We are so particular that we deny our cemeteries to any other Christians than our own members. If we find that we have, by mistake, buried a member of another church in our cemetery, we dig up his bones, that he may not pollute the soil. When one of the churches of another denomination falls into our hands, we first fumigate the building, and with a sharp knife we scrape the wood off the altars upon which other Christian priests have offered prayers. We will, under no consideration, allow a brother Christian from another church to commune with us; if by stealth anyone does, we spare not his life. But we are persecuted just as severely as we persecute, ourselves. [Footnote: This sect (Donatist) and others, lasted for a long time, and made Asia and Africa a hornet's nest,--a blood-stained arena, of feud and riot and massacre, until Mohammedanism put an end, in these parts of the world, not only to these sects, but to Christianity itself.] As the sun was setting, fatigued with the holy Sabbath's religious duties, I started to go home. On my way back, I saw even wilder, bloodier scenes, between rival ecclesiastical factions, streets even redder with blood, if possible, yea, certain sections of the city seemed as if a storm of hail, or tongues of flame had swept over them. Churches were on fire, cowled monks attacking bishops' residences, rival prelates holding uproarious debates, which almost always terminated in bloodshed, and, to cap the day of many vicissitudes, I saw a bear on exhibition which had been given its freedom by the ruler, as a reward for his faithful services in devouring heretics. The Christian ruler kept two fierce bears by his own chamber, to which those who did not hold the orthodox faith were thrown in his presence while he listened with delight to their groans. When I reached home, I was panting for breath. I had lived through another Sabbath day. [Footnote: If the reader will take the pains to read Dean Milman's History of Christianity, and his History of Latin Christianity; also Gibbon's Downfall of the Roman Empire, and Mosheim's History of Christianity, he will see that we have exaggerated nothing. The Athanasian and the Arian, the Donatist and Sabellian, the Nestorian and Alexandrian factions converted the early centuries into a long reign of terror.] I feel like covering my face for telling you so grewsome a tale. But if this were the fourth or the fifth century, instead of the twentieth, and this were Constantinople, or Alexandria, or Antioch, instead of Chicago, I would have spent just such a Sunday as I have described to you. In giving you this concentrated view of human society in the great capitals of Christendom in the year 400, I have restrained, rather than spurred, my imagination. Remember, also, that I have confined my remarks to a specific and short period in history, and have excluded from my generalization all reference to the centuries of religious wars which tore Europe limb from limb,--the wholesale exterminations, the crusades, which represented one of the maddest spells of misguided and costly zeal which ever struck our earth, the persecution of the Huguenots, the extermination of the Albigenses and of the Waldenses,--the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Inquisition with its red hand upon the intellect of Europe, the Anabaptist outrages in Germany, the Smithfield fires in England, the religious outrages in Scotland, the Puritan excesses in America,--the reign of witchcraft and superstition throughout the twenty centuries--I have not touched my picture with any colors borrowed from these terrible chapters in the history of our unfortunate earth. I have also left out all reference to Papal Rome, with its dungeons, its stakes, its massacres and its burnings. I have said nothing of Galileo, Vanini, Campanella or Bruno. I have passed over all this in silence. You can imagine, now, how much more repellant and appalling this representation of the Roman world under Christianity would have been had I stretched my canvas to include also these later centuries. But I tremble to be one-sided or unjust, and so I hasten to say that during the twenty centuries' reign of our religion, the world has also seen some of the fairest flowers spring out of the soil of our earth. During the past twenty centuries there have been men and women, calling themselves Christians, who have been as generous, as heroic and as deeply consecrated to high ideals as any the world has ever produced. Christianity has, in many instances, softened the manners of barbarians and elevated the moral tone of primitive peoples. It gives us more pleasure to speak of the good which religions have accomplished than to call attention to the evil they have caused. But this raises a very important question. "Why do you not confine yourself," we are often asked, "to the virtues you find in Christianity or Mohammedanism, instead of discussing so frequently their short-comings? Is it not better to praise than to blame, to recommend than to find fault?" This is a fair question, and we may just as well meet it now as at any other time. Such is the economy of nature that no man, or institution or religion, can be altogether evil. The poet spoke the truth when he said: "There is a soul of goodness in things evil." Evil, in a large sense, is the raw material of the good. All things contribute to the education of man. The question, then, whether an institution is helpful or hurtful, is a relative one. The character of an institution, as that of an individual, is determined by its ruling passion. Despotism, for instance, is generally considered to be an evil. And yet, a hundred good things can be said of despotism. The French people, over a hundred years ago, overthrew the monarchy. And yet the monarchy had rendered a thousand services to France. It was the monarchy that created France, that extended her territory, developed her commerce, built her great cities, defended her frontiers against foreign invasion, and gave her a place among the first-class nations of Europe. Was it just, then, to pull down an institution that had done so much for France? Why did the Americans overthrow British rule in this country? Had not England rendered innumerable services to the colony? Was she not one of the most progressive, most civilizing influences in the modern world? Was it just, then, that we should have beaten out of the land a government that had performed for us so many friendly acts? Referring once more to the case of Russia: Why do the awakened people in that country demand the overthrow of the autocracy? Is there nothing good to be said of Russian autocracy? Have not the Czars loved their country and fought for her prosperity? Have they not brought Russia up to her present size, population and political influence in Europe? Have they not beautified her cities and enacted laws for the protection of their subjects? Is it right, then, in spite of all these things that autocracy has done for Russia, to seek to overthrow it? Once more: Why do the missionaries go into India and China and Japan trying to replace the ancestral religion of these people with the Christian faith? Why does the missionary labor to overthrow the worship of Buddha, Confucius and Zoroaster? Have not these great teachers helped humanity? Have they not rendered any services to their countrymen? Are there no truths in their teachings? Are there no virtues in their lives? Is it right, then, that the missionary should criticise these ancient faiths? [Illustration: Conception of Trinity, Ninth Century.] Let us take an example from nearer home. We were talking some years ago with a gentleman who had just returned from Dowie's Zion. He was surprised to find there a clean, orderly and well-behaved people, apparently quite happy. He said that after his experiences there, he would rather do business with Dowie and his men than with the average member of other religious bodies. He found the Dowieites honest, reliable and peaceful. Now, all this may be true, and I hope it is; but what of it? Dowieism is an evil, notwithstanding this recital of its virtues. It is an evil, because it arrests the intellectual development of man, because it makes dwarfs of the people it converts, because it pinches the forehead of each convert into that of either a charlatan or an idiot. We regret to have to use these harsh terms. But Dowieism is denounced, because it brings up human beings as if they were sheep, because it robs them of the most glorious gift of life, the freedom to grow, Dowieism is an evil, because it makes the human race mediocre by contracting its intellect down to the measure of a creed. We would much rather that the Dowieites smoked and drank and swore, than that they should fear to think. There is hope for a bad man. There is no hope for the stupid. In the case of an institution or a religion, then, it is not by adding up the debit and credit columns and striking a balance sheet that the question whether it has helped or hurt mankind is to be determined. We cannot, for instance, place ninety-nine vices in one column, and a hundred virtues in another, and conclude therefrom that the institution or the religion should be preserved. Nor, conversely speaking, can we place a hundred vices against ninety-nine virtues, and, therefore, condemn, the institution. Even as a man is hanged for one act in his life, in spite of the thousand good acts which may be quoted against the one evil deed, so an institution or a religion is honored or condemned, as we said above, for its _ruling passion_. Mohammedanism, Judaism and Christianity have done much good, just as other religions have, but they are condemned today by modern thought, because they are a conspiracy against reason--because they combat progress, as if it were a crime! Another criticism frequently advanced against us is that we fail to realize that all the evil of which Christianity is said to have been the cause, is only the result of human ignorance and passion. When attention is called, for instance, to the intolerance and stubborn opposition to science, of Christianity, the answer given is, that this conduct is not only not inspired by the spirit of Christianity, but that it is in direct contradiction to its teachings. The Christians claim that all the luminous chapters in history have been inspired by their religion, all its sorrowful and black pages have been written by the passions of men. But this apology, which, we regret to say, is in every preacher's mouth, is not an honest one. In our opinion, both Mohammedanism and Christianity, as also Judaism, are responsible for the evil as well as the good they have accomplished in the world. They are responsible for the lives they have destroyed, as for the lives they have saved. They are responsible for the passions they have aroused,--for the hatred, the persecutions and the religious wars of the centuries, as for the piety and charity they have encouraged. The central idea in all the three religions mentioned above, is that God has revealed his will to man. There is, we say frankly, the root of all the evil which religion has inflicted upon our unfortunate earth. The poison is in both the flower and the fruit which that idea brings forth. If it be true that God has revealed his will, that he has told us, for instance, to believe in the Trinity, the atonement, the fall of man, and the dogma of eternal punishment, and we refuse to do so, will we not, then, be regarded as the most odious, the most heinous, the most rebellious, the most sacrilegious, the most stiff- necked, the most criminal people in the world? Think of refusing to believe as God has dictated to us! Think of saying _no!_ to one's Creator and Father in Heaven! Think of the consequences of differing with God, and tempting others to do the same! Is it at all strange that during the early centuries of Christianity, the people who hesitated to agree with the deity, or to believe as he wanted them to, were looked upon as incarnate fiends, as the accomplices of the devil and the enemies of the human race, and were treated accordingly? The doctrine of salvation by faith makes persecution inevitable. If to refuse to believe in the Trinity, or in the divinity of Christ, is a crime against God and will be punished by an eternity of hell in the next world, and if such a man endangers the eternal salvation of his fellows, is it not the duty of all religious people to endeavor to exterminate him and his race, now arid here? How can Christian people tolerate the rebel against their God, when God himself has pronounced sentence of death against him? Why not follow the example of the deity, as set forth in the persecutions of the Old Testament? When we have a God for a teacher, the highest and surest virtue is unconditional acquiescence. Judaism, Mohammedanism and Christianity, in giving us a God for a teacher, have taken away from us the liberty to think for ourselves. Each one of these three religions makes unconditional obedience the price of the salvation it offers, but do you know what other word in the English language unconditional obedience is a synonym of?--Silence! A dumb world, a tongue-tied humanity alone can be saved! The good man is the man on his knees with his mouth in the dust. But silence is sterility! Silence is slavery! Think, then, of the character of a religion which makes free speech, free thought, a crime--which hurls hell against the Protestant! There is a third question to be answered: It is true, they say to us, that there are many things in the Koran, the Old Testament and the New, which are really injurious, and which ought to be discarded, but there are also many beautiful principles, noble sentiments and high educational maxims in these scriptures. Why not, then, dwell upon these, and pass in silence over the objectionable teachings of these religions? It is not necessary to repeat again that in all so-called sacred scriptures, there are glorious truths. It could not have been otherwise. All literature, whether secular or religious, is the voice of man and sweeps the whole compass of human love and hope. We have no objection to quoting from the Veddas, the Avestas, the Koran or the Bible; nor do we hesitate to admire and enjoy and praise generously the ravishingly beautiful utterances of the poets and prophets of all times and climes. Nevertheless, it remains true that the modern world finds more practical help and inspiration in secular authors, in the books of science and philosophy, than in these so-called inspired scriptures. Jesus, who is popularly believed to have preached the Sermon on the Mount, has said little or nothing which can help the modern world as much as the scientific revelations of a student like Darwin, or of a philosopher like Herbert Spencer, or of a poet like Goethe or Shakespeare. We know this will sound like blasphemy to the believer, but a moment's honest and fearless reflection will convince everyone of the fact that neither Mohammed nor Jesus had in view modern conditions when they delivered their sermons. Jesus could have had no idea of a world outside of his little Palestine. The thought of the many races of the world mingling together in one country could never have occurred to him. His vision did not embrace the vista of two thousand years, nor did his mind rise to the level of the problems which today tax the brain and heart of man. Jesus believed implicitly that the world would speedily come to an end, that the sun and the moon would soon fall from the face of the sky, and that people living then in Palestine would not taste of death before they saw "the Son of Man return upon the clouds." Jesus had no idea of a progressive evolution of humanity. It was beyond him to conceive the consolidation of the nations into one fellowship, the new resources which science would tap, or the new energies which human industry would challenge. Jesus was in peaceful ignorance of the social and international problems which confront the world of today. The Sermon on the Mount, then, which is said to be the best in our gospels, can be of little help to us, for it could not have been meant for us. And it is very easy to show that the modern world ignores, not out of disrespect to Jesus, but by the force of circumstances and the evolution of society, the principles contained in that renowned sermon. I was waiting for transportation at the corner of one of the principal streets of Chicago, the other day, when, looking about me, I saw the tremendous buildings which commerce and wealth have reared in our midst. On one hand was a savings bank, on the other a colossal national bank, and up and down the street a thousand equally solid and substantial buildings, devoted to the interests of commerce and civilization. To bring out and emphasize the wide breach between the man who preached the Sermon on the Mount, and progressive and aggressive, busy and wealthy, modern Chicago, I took the words of Jesus and mentally inscribed them upon the walls of these buildings. Upon the savings bank--and a savings bank represents economy, frugality, self-sacrifice, self-restraint,--the desire of the people to provide for the uncertainties of the future, to lay by something for the education of their children, for the maintenance of their families when they themselves have ceased to live,--I printed upon the facade of this institution, figuratively speaking, these words of the Oriental Jesus: "Take no thought of the morrow, for the morrow will take care of itself." And upon the imposing front of the national bank, I wrote: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth." If we followed these teachings, would not our industrial and social life sink at once to the level of the stagnating Asiatics? Pursuing this comparison between Jesus and modern life, I inscribed upon the handsome churches whose pews bring enormous incomes, and on the palatial residences of Bishops, with salaries of from twenty-five to a hundred thousand dollars, these words: "How hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of Heaven," and, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven." In plain words, the gospel condemns wealth, and cries, "Woe unto you rich," and "Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor," which, by the way, would only be shifting the temptation of wealth from one class to another. Buckle was nearer the truth, and more modern in spirit, when he ascribed the progress of man to the pursuit of truth and the acquisition of wealth. But let us apply the teachings of Jesus to still other phases of modern life. Some years ago our Cuban neighbors appealed to the United States for protection against the cruelty and tyranny of Spanish rule. We sent soldiers over to aid the oppressed and down-trodden people in the Island. Now, suppose, instead of sending iron-clads and admirals,--Schley, Sampson and Dewey,--we had advised the Cubans to "resist not evil," and to "_submit_ to the powers that be," or suppose the General of our army, or the Secretary of our navy, had counseled seriously our soldiers to remember the words of Jesus when fighting the Spaniards: "If a man smite thee on one cheek," etc. Write upon our halls of justice and courthouses and statute books, and on every lawyer's desk, these solemn words of Jesus: "He that taketh away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." Introduce into our Constitution, the pride and bulwark of our liberties, guaranteeing religious freedom unto all,--these words of Paul: "If any man preach any other gospel than that which I have preached unto you, let him be accursed." Think of placing nearly fifty millions of our American population under a curse! Tell this to the workers in organized charities: "Give to every man that asketh of thee," which, if followed, would make a science of charity impossible. To the workingmen, or the oppressed seeking redress and protesting against evil, tell this: "Blessed are they that are persecuted," which is equivalent to encouraging them to submit to, rather than to resist, oppression. Or upon our colleges and universities, our libraries and laboratories consecrated to science, write the words: "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God," and "God has chosen the foolish to confound the wise." Ah, yes, the foolish of Asia, it is true, succeeded in confounding the philosophers of Europe. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Jesus, did replace Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Cicero, Caesar and the Antonines! But it was a trance, a spell, a delirium only, and it did not last,--it could not last. The charm is at last broken. Europe is forever free from the exorcism of Asia. I believe the health and sanity and virtue of our Europe would increase a hundred fold, if we could, from this day forth, cease to pretend professing by word of mouth what in our own hearts and lives we have completely outgrown. If we could be sincere and brave; if our leaders and teachers would only be honest with themselves and honest with the modern world, there would, indeed, be a new earth and a new humanity. But the past is past. It is for us to sow the seeds which in the day of their fruition shall emancipate humanity from the pressing yoke of a stubborn Asiatic superstition, and push the future even beyond the beauty and liberty of the old Pagan world! [Illustration: Figures on a Phoenician Vase, Showing the Use of the Cross, Evidently in Some Ceremony of a Religious Nature.] CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM Christianity as an Asiatic cult is not suitable to European races. To prove this, let us make a careful comparison between Paganism and Christianity. There are many foolish things, and many excellent things, in both the Pagan and the Christian religions. We are not concerned with particular beliefs and rites; it is Paganism as a philosophy of life, and Christianity as a philosophy of life, that we desire to investigate. And at the threshold of our investigation we must bear in mind that Paganism was born and grew into maturity in Europe, while Asia was the cradle of Christianity. It would be superfluous to undertake to prove that in politics, in government, in literature, in art, in science, in the general culture of the people, Europe was always in advance of Asia. Do we know of any good reason, when it comes to religion, why Asia should be incomparably superior to anything Europe has produced in that line? Unless we believe in miracles, the natural inference would be that a people who were better educated in every way than the Asiatics should have also possessed the better religion. I admit that this is only inferential, or _a priori_ reasoning, and that it still remains to be shown by the recital of facts, that Europe not only ought to have produced a better religion than Asia, but that she did. In my opinion, between the Pagan and Christian view of life there is the same difference that there is between a European and an Asiatic. What makes a Roman a Roman, a Greek a Greek, and a Persian a Persian? That is a very interesting, but also a very difficult question. Why are not all nations alike? Why is the oak more robust than the spruce? What are the subtle influences which operate in the womb of nature, where "the embryos of races are nourished into form and individuality?" I cannot answer that question satisfactorily, and I am not going to attempt to answer it at all. We know there is a radical difference between the European and the Asiatic; we know that Oriental and Occidental culture are the antitheses of each other, and nowhere else is this seen more clearly than in their interpretations of the universe, that is to say, in their religions. In order to understand the Oriental races, we must discover the standpoint from which they take their observations. But first, it is admitted, of course, that there are Europeans who are more Asiatic in their habits of life and thought than the Asiatics themselves, and, conversely, there are Asiatics who in spirit, energy and progressiveness are abreast of the most advanced representatives of European culture. Nor has Asia been altogether barren; she has blossomed in many spots, and she nursed the flame of civilization at a time when Europe was not yet even cradled. To show the intellectual point of view of the Asiatic, let me quote a passage from the Book of Job, which certainly is an Oriental composition, and one of the finest: "How, then, can man be justified with God, or how can he be clean that is born of a woman? _Man that is a worm, and the son of man, which is a worm_." This, then, is the standpoint of the Oriental. He believes he is a poor little worm. His philosophy must necessarily _trail_ in the dust. A worm cannot have the thoughts of an eagle; a worm cannot have the imagination of a _Titan_; a worm sees the world only as a worm may. This is the angle of vision of the Asiatic. He calls himself a worm, and naturally his view of life shrinks to the limits of his standpoint. To he perfectly fair, however, we must admit there are passages in all the bibles of the Orient which are as daring as those found in any European book, but they represent only the strayings of the Oriental mind, not its normal pulse. The habitual accent of the Oriental is that man, calling a woman his mother, is a worm. In the Psalms of David, or whoever wrote the book, we read these words: "_I am a worm, and not a man_." What did the Oriental see in the worm, which induced him to select it out of all things as the original, so to speak, of man? The worm _crawls_ and _creeps_ and _writhes_. Nothing is so distressing as to see its helpless wiggling--and its home is in the dust; dirt is its daily food. Moreover, it is in danger of being stamped or trampled into annihilation at any instant. A worm _represents the minimum_ of worth,--the dregs in the cup of existence; it is the scum or the froth of life, which one may blow into the air. It is impossible to descend lower than this in self-abasement. When the Oriental, therefore, says that man is a worm or "I am a worm," he is just as much _obeying the cumulative_ pressure of his Asiatic ancestry, and voicing the inherited submission of the Oriental mind, as Prometheus, with the vulture at his breast, and shaking his hand in the face of the gods, expresses the revolt of the European mind. The normal state for the Asiatic is submission; for the European it is independence. Slavery has a fascination for the children of the east. The air of independence is too sharp for them. They crave a master, a Sultan or a Czar, who shall own them body and soul. Through long practice, they have acquired the art of servility and flattery, of salaams and prostrations--an art in which they have become so efficient that it would be to them like throwing away so much capital to abandon its practice. They expect to go to Heaven on their knees. This is not said to hurt the feelings of the races of the Orient. We are explaining the influence of absolutism upon the products and tendencies of the human mind. The religion of the Orient, then, notwithstanding its many beautiful features like its politics, is a _product of the suppressed_ mind, which finds in the creeping worm of the dust the measure of its own worth. How different is the European from the Asiatic in this respect! The latter crawls upon the stage of this magnificent universe with the timidity, hesitancy and tremblings of a worm. True to his bringing up, he falls prostrate, overwhelmed by the marvelous immensities opening before him and the abysses yawning at his feet. He contracts and dwindles in size, imploring with outstretched hands to be spared because he is a poor worm. It is a part of his religion or philosophy that if he admits he is nothing but a worm, the dread powers will not consider him a rival or a rebel, but will look upon him as a confirmed subject, and permit him to live. This is his art, the strategy by which he hopes to secure his salvation. There has never been a republic in Asia, which is another way of saying that the Asiatic mind has never asserted its independence. Hence its thought smacks of slavery. In politics, as in religion, the Asiatic has always been passive. He has never been an actor, but only a spectator. It is his to nod the head, fold the arms and bend the knee. On earth he must have a king and a pope, and in heaven an Allah or a Jehovah. He has not been created for himself, but for the glory of his earthly and heavenly Lords. This radical difference between European self-appreciation and Asiatic self-depreciation furnishes the key to the problem under discussion. Paganism is the religion of a self-governing race. Buddhism, Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity are religions born on a soil where man is owned by another. It will be impossible to imagine Marcus Aurelius, for instance, crawling upon his knees before any being, or calling himself a worm. One must have in his blood the taint of a thousand years of slavery, before he can stoop so low. Marcus Aurelius was a gentleman. The European conception of a gentleman implies self-respect and independence; the Oriental conception of a gentleman implies self- abasement and acquiescence. The Oriental gentleman is a man who serves his king as though he were his slave. But observe now how the Oriental proceeds to pull down his mind to the level of his body, which he has likened to a worm. When I was still a Presbyterian minister, I was invited to address a Sunday-school camp- meeting at Asbury Park in New Jersey. There were other speakers besides myself; one of them, known as a Sunday-school leader, had brought with him a chart of the human heart, which, when he arose to address the children, he spread on a blackboard before them: "This is a picture of your heart before you have accepted Jesus. What do you think of it?" he asked the school. "It is all black," was the answer; and it was. He had drawn a totally black picture to represent the heart of the child before conversion. In all the literature of Pagandom, there is not the least intimation of so fearful an idea as the total depravity of human nature. The Pagans never thought, spoke, or heard of such a thing. It was inconceivable to them; they would have recoiled from it as from a species of barbarism. How radically different, then, must European culture have been from the Asiatic. There is a gulf well-nigh impassible between the thought of a free-born citizen and that of the oppressed and enslaved Oriental. But let us continue. Not satisfied with thinking of himself as a worm, and of his intellectual and moral nature as totally degraded, the Oriental strikes with the same paralyzing stroke, at _the world in which he lives_, until it, too, withers and becomes an ugly and heinous thing. He calls the world a "vale of tears," ruled by the powers of darkness, and groaning under a primeval curse. "The world, the flesh and the devil" become a trio of iniquity and sin. Some of you in your earlier days must have sung that Methodist hymn which represents the world as a snare and a delusion: "The world is a fleeting show For man's illusion given." Given! Think of believing that the world has been purposely given us to lead us astray. The thought staggers the mind. It suggests a terrible conspiracy against man. For his ruin, sun, moon and stars co- operate with the devil. Help! we cry, as we realize our inability to cope with the tremendous powers hurling themselves against us like billows of the raging sea, and taking our breath away. It suggests that we are placed in a world which has been made purposely beautiful, in order to tempt us into sin. Think of such a belief! It is that of a slave. It is Asiatic; it is not European. Neither you nor I, in all our readings, have ever come across any such attitude toward nature in Pagan literature. The Greeks and the Romans loved nature and made lovely gods out of. every running brook, caressing zephyr, dancing wave, glistening dew, sailing cloud, beaming star, beautiful woman, or brave man. The Oriental suspects nature and regards her smiles--the shining of the sun, the perfume of the meadows, the swell of the sea, the fluttering of the branches tipped with blossoms, the emerald grass, the sapphire sky--looks upon all these as the seductive advances of a prostitute in whose embrace lurks death! But, once more; not satisfied with dragging the world down to the plane of his totally depraved nature, and that again to the level of the worm, the Asiatic projects his fatal thought into the next world and, crossing the grave, that silent and painless home of a tired race, he crowds the beyond with a thousand thousand pains and aches and horrors and fires--with sulphur and brimstone and burning hells. His frightened imagination invokes dark and infernal beings without number, fanning with their dark wings the very air he breathes. This is too revolting to think of. Poor slave! Inured to suffering,--to the lash, to oppression's crushing heel,--he dare not dream of a painless future, of a quiet, peaceful sleep at life's end, nor has he the divine audacity to invent a new world wherein the misery and slavery of his present existence will be impossible,--where all his tyrants will be dead, where he shall taste of sweet freedom and become himself a god. In his timidity and shrinking submission, with the spring of his heart broken, his spirit crushed, all independence strangled in his soul,--he puts in the biggest corner of his heaven even,--a _hell_! Nor does he pause there, but, stinging his slave imagination once more, he declares that this future of torture and hell-fire is _everlasting_. He cannot improve upon that. Deeper in degradation he cannot descend. That is the darkest thought he can have, and, strange to say, he hugs it to his bosom as a mother would her child. The doctrine of hell is the thought of a slave and of a coward. No free-horn man, no brave soul could ever have invented so abhorrent an idea. Only under a regime of absolutism, only under an Oriental Sultan whose caprice is law, whose vengeance is terrible, whose favors are fickle, whose power is crushing, whose greed is insatiable, whose torture instruments are without number, and whose dark dungeons always resound with the rattling of chains and the groans of martyrs--only under such a regime could man have invented an unending hell. But we were mistaken when we said that hell was the darkest that the Asiatic was capable of. He has grafted upon the European mind a belief which is darker still. Is there anything more precious in human life than children? The sternest heart melts, the fiercest features relax, at the sight of an innocent, sweet, laughing, frolicking babe in its mother's arms. Look at its glorious eyes, so full of surprises, so deep, so appealing! Look at the soft round hands, the little feet, the exquisite mouth, opening like a bud! Hear its prattle, which is nothing but the mind beginning to stir! Watch its gestures, the first language of the child! See it with its tiny arms about its mother's neck. Mark its joy when it is kissed. What else in our human world is more beautiful, more divine? And yet, and yet, the slave creed of Asia has drawn into its burning net of damnation even the cradle. John Burroughs describes how in a Catholic cemetery near where he lives he was shown a neglected, unkept corner, used for the burial of unbaptized children. Consecrated ground is denied to them, and so their poor bodies are huddled together in this profane plot, unblessed and unsaved. I do not wish to live in a world where such absurdities are not only countenanced, but where they are exalted even to the dignity of a religion! O holy children! O sweet children! huddled together in unconsecrated ground, and thus exposed to the cruelty of indescribable demons! Can you hear me? I am a man of compassion. I can forgive the murderer. I can pardon and pity the meanest wretch and take him into my arms, but I confess that even if I had a heart as big as the ocean, I could not, I would not, forgive the creed that can be guilty of such inhumanity against you,--dear, innocent ones, who were born to breathe but for a moment the harsh air of this world! When such gloom overpowers me and wrings from my lips such hard words, I find some little respite in contemplating the old Pagan world in its best days. I hasten for consolation to my Pagan friends, and in their sanity find healing for my bruised heart. In one of his letters, the Greek Plutarch says this about children, which I want you to compare with what St. Augustine, the representative of the Asiatic creed, says on the same subject. "It is irreligious," writes Plutarch, "to lament for those pure souls (the children) who have passed into a better life and a happier dwelling place." [Footnote: Plutarch Ad Uxorem. Comp. Lecky's History of European Morals. Vol. I.] Compare this Pagan tenderness for children with the Asiatic doctrine of infant damnation but recently thrown out of the Presbyterian creed. Yet, if St. Augustine is to be believed, it is a heresy to reject the damnation of unbaptized infants: "Whosoever shall tell," writes this Father of the church, "that infants shall be quickened in Christ who died without partaking in his sacrament, does both contradict the apostles' teaching and condemn the whole church." [Footnote: St. Augustine Epist. 166.] It is infinitely more religious to disagree with the apostles and the church, if that is their teaching. The Pagan view of children is the holier view. The doctrine of the damnation of children could only find lodgment in the brain of a slave or a madman. It is Asiatic and altogether foreign to the culture of Europe. All that we have advanced thus far may be summed up in one phrase: Asia invented the idea that man is a _fallen_ being. This idea, which is the _dors espinal_,--the backbone--of Christianity, never for once entered the mind of the European. We have already quoted from Job and the Psalms; the following is from the book of Jeremiah: "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked." This is one of the texts upon which the doctrine of the fall of man is based. We repeat that only under a religion of slavery, where one slave vies with another to abase himself before his lords and masters, could such an idea have been invented. There is not a man in all our sacred scriptures who could stand before the deity erect and unabashed, or who could speak in the accents of a Cicero who said, "We boast justly of our own virtue, which we could not do if we derived it from the deity and not from ourselves," or this from Epictetus, "It is characteristic of a wise man that he looks for all his good and evil from himself." Such independence was foreign to a race that believed itself _fallen_. In further confirmation of our position, it may be said that the models which the Pagans set up for emulation were men like themselves, only nobler. The models which the Orientals set up for imitation, on the other hand, were supernatural beings, or men who were supposed to possess supernatural powers. The great men for the Oriental are men who can work miracles, who possess magical powers, who possess secrets and can know how to influence the deity,--Moses, Joshua, David, Joseph, Isaiah, Jesus, Paul,--all demi-divinities. The Pagans, on the other hand, selected natural men, men like themselves, who had earned the admiration of their fellows. Let me quote to you Plutarch's eloquent sentence relative to this subject: "Whenever we begin an enterprise or take possession of a charge, or experience a calamity, we place before our eyes the examples of the greatest men of our own or of bygone ages, and we ask ourselves how Plato, or Epaminondas, or Lycurgus, or Agesilaus, would have acted. Looking into these personages, as into a faithful mirror, we can remedy our defects in word or deed." The Westminster Catechism, which in its essentials is a resume of our Asiatic religion, emphasizes the doctrine of the fall of man, of which the Pagan world knew nothing, and refused to believe it until priests succeeded in dominating the mind of Europe: "The catechism following the Scripture teaches that...we are not only a disinherited family, but we are personally depraved and demoralized." [Footnote: Westminster Catechism, Comments.] Goodness! the Oriental imagination, abused by slavery, cannot rid itself of the idea of being disinherited, turned out into the cold, orphaned and smitten with moral sores from head to foot. To the Pagan, such a description of man would have been the acme of absurdity. Again: "It (the fall) affirms that he (man) is all wrong, in all things and all the time." [Footnote: Westminster Catechism, Comments.] If this was comforting news to the Asiatic, the Pagan world would have rejected the idea as unworthy of men in their senses. Once more: "All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life and to the pains of hell forever." [Footnote: Westminster Catechism, Comments.] And this is the Gospel we have imported from Asia! Is it not pathetic? Could slavery ever strike a deeper bottom than that? Standing before his owner, the Asiatic, of his own choice, hands himself over to be degraded, to be placed in chains and delivered up to the torments of hell forever. I despair of man. I would cry my heart out if I permitted myself to dwell upon the folly and stupidity and slavery of which man voluntarily makes himself the victim. Think of it! A man and a woman, nobody knows where or when, are supposed to have tasted of the fruit of a tree; the Oriental mind, with its crouching imagination, pounces upon this flimsy, fanciful tale with the appetite of a carrion crow, and exalts it to the dignity of an excuse for the eternal damnation of a whole world. I am dazed! I can say no more! Let us recapitulate. The Oriental distrust of the natural man, born of self-depreciation, which is the fruit of prolonged slavery, develops into a sort of mental canker spreading at a raging pace until the whole universe, with its glorious sun and stars, becomes an object of horror and loathing. Not satisfied with thinking of himself as a worm, of his intellectual and moral nature as totally depraved, he communicates his disease to the world in which he lives until it, too, shrinks and wastes away. Then the disease, finding no more on this side of the grave to feed upon, leaps over the grave and converts the beyond, the virgin worlds, into an _inferno_ with which to satiate its fear. Indeed frightful are the thoughts of a slave people! Let me now, in conclusion, call your attention to another difference between the Occidental and the Oriental mind. When the body is feeble or ill-nourished, it is less liable to resist disease; likewise when the mind is alarmed, cowed, or pinched with fear, it becomes more exposed to superstition. Superstition is the disease of the mind. It will keep away from robust minds, as physical disease from a body in health. Now, the Asiatic mind, scared into silence and subjection,--starved to a mere shadow of what it should be, falls an easy prey to all the maladies that mind is heir to. The European mind, on the other hand, with room and air to move and grow in, develops a vitality which offers resistance to all attacks of mental disease. That explains why superstition thrives with ignorance and slavery, and expires when science and liberty gain the ascendency. Sanitary precautions prevent physical disease; knowledge and liberty constitute the therapeutics of the mind. Why is the Oriental so prone or partial to miracle and mystery? His mind is sick. To believe is easier to him than to reason. He follows the line of the least resistance: he has invented faith that he may not have to think. The mental cells in his brain are so starved, so devitalized, that they have to be whipped into movement. Only the bizarre, the monstrous, the supernatural,--demons, ghosts, dream worlds, miracles and mysteries,--can hold his attention. Not science, but metaphysics, barren speculation,--is the product of the Oriental mind. The philosopher Bacon describes the Asiatic when he speaks of men who "have hitherto dwelt but little, or rather only slightly touched upon experience, whilst they have wasted much time on theories and fictions of the imagination." Again: I sometimes think that if it be true that monotheism, the idea of one God, was first discovered in Asia, it must have been suggested to them by the regime of Absolutism, under which they lived. Unlike Asia, democratic Europe believed in a republic of gods. Polytheism is more consonant with the republican idea, than monotheism. If we would let the American President rule the land without the aid of the two houses of congress or his cabinet ministers, his power would be infinitely more than it is now, but his gain would be the people's loss. His increased power would only represent so much more power taken away from the people. One God means not only more slaves, but more abject, more helpless ones. One God is a centralization which reduces man's liberty to a minimum. With more gods, and gods at times disagreeing among themselves, and all bidding for man's support, man would count for more. The Greeks could not tolerate a Jehovah, or an Allah, before whom the Oriental rabble bent the knee. "Allah knows," exclaims the Moslem; that is why the Mohammedans continue in ignorance. "Allah is great," cries again the Turk. That is why he himself is small. The more powerful the sovereign, the smaller the subject. Now this leads us to a final reflection upon the difference between the mind brought up under restraint,--in slavery,--and the mind of the free. "The Pagan," to quote Lecky, "believed that to become acceptable to the deity, one must be virtuous;" the Asiatic doctrine, on the contrary, taught that "the most heroic efforts of human virtue are insufficient to avert a sentence of eternal condemnation, unless united with an implicit belief" in the dogmas of religion. In other words, the noblest of men cannot be saved by his own merits of character alone, for even when we have done our best, we are but "unprofitable slaves," quoting a Bible text. Only by the merits of Christ, or by the grace of God, can any man be saved. Have you ever paused to think of the purport of this piece of Orientalism? It wipes out every imaginable claim or right of man. Even when he is just and great and good, he has no rights, he is as vile as the vilest. Only the favor of the king can save,--only the grace of God, who can save the thief on the cross if he so pleases. Is he not absolute? If he extends his scepter, you live; if he smiles you are spared; if he patronizes you, you are fortunate. He says, live! you live. He says, die! you die. This is the apotheosis of despotism exalted into a revelation. What, then, is our creed, but the thoughts of an eastern slave population, cringing before the throne of a Sultan, and one by one signing away their liberties? "The foundation of all real grandeur is a spirit of proud and lofty independence," says Buckle; but that is not the spirit of Asia, or of its religion. It is, and we ought to try to keep it, the spirit of the Western world. I cannot imagine how we in this country, born of sturdy parents, born of the freedom-loving Pagans of Rome and Greece, born of men who shook their hands in the face of heaven, and pulled the gods off their thrones when they violated the rights of man,--I cannot understand how we have thrown overboard the proud, lofty spirit of independence of the Pagans,--our forefathers, and taken upon our necks the strangling yoke of the slave-thought of Asia! [Illustration: Christ, Half Woman, at Baptism in Jordan. Cathedral of Chartres, France.] PART III. SOME MODERN OPINIONS ABOUT JESUS. _Christianity "dwells with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus."_--Emerson. Christmas is the season in the year when pulpit and press dwell, with what Emerson calls "noxious exaggeration," about the work and life, as well as the person of Jesus. We have, lying before us, the Christmas sermon of so progressive a teacher as the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones. [Footnote: Unitarian-Independent preacher of All Souls Church, Chicago.] Here is his text: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father."--John 1:14. How our educated neighbor can find food for sober reflection in so mystical and metaphysical an effusion, is more than we can tell. Who is the _Word_ that became flesh? And when did the event take place? What does it mean to be the "only begotten from the Father?" We know what it means in the orthodox sense, but what does it mean from the Unitarian standpoint of Mr. Jones? But the text faithfully reflects the discourse which follows. It is replete with unlimited compliments to this _Word_ which became flesh and assumed the name of Jesus. The following is a fair sample: "I am compelled to think of Jesus of Nazareth as an epoch-making soul, an era-forming spirit, a character in whom the light of an illustrious race and a holy ancestry was focalized, a personality from which radiated that subtle, creative power of the spirit which defies all analysis, which baffles definition, which overflows all words." Goodness! this is strong rhetoric, and we regret that the evidence justifying so sweeping an appreciation has been withheld from us. Although the doctor says that Jesus "defies all analysis, baffles definition and overflows all words," he nevertheless proceeds to devote fifteen pages to the impossible task. "I am compelled to think of him as one who won the right of preeminence in the world's history," continues Mr. Jones, as if he had not said enough. That is a definite claim, and personally, we would be glad to see it made good. But truth compels us to state that the claim is unjust. Without entering into the question of the authenticity of the gospels, a question which we have discussed at some length in our pamphlet on the "Worship of Jesus," we beg to submit that there is nothing in the gospels,--the only records which speak of him,--to entitle him to the "right of preeminence in the world's history." No one knows better than Mr. Jones that the sayings attributed to Jesus--the finest of them--are to be found in the writings of Jewish and Pagan teachers antedating the birth of Jesus by many centuries. Was it, then, for his "works," if not for his "words," that Jesus "won the right of preeminence in the world's history"? What did he do that was not done by his predecessors? Was he the only one who worked miracles? Had the dead never been raised before? Had the blind, and the lame, and the deaf, remained altogether neglected before Jesus took compassion upon them? Moreover, what credit is there in opening the eyes of the blind or in raising the dead by miracle? Did it cost Jesus any effort to perform miracles? Did it imply a sacrifice on his part to utilize a small measure of his _infinite_ power for the good of man? Who, if he could by miracle feed the hungry, clothe the naked and give light and sound to the blind and deaf, would be selfish enough not to do so? If Mr. Jones does not believe in miracles, then Jesus contributed even less than many a doctor contributes today to the welfare of the world. More poor and diseased people are visited and medicined gratuitously by a modern physician in one month, than Jesus cured miraculously in the two or three years of his career. Jesus, if he was "the only begotten of God," as Mr. Jones' text states, was not in any danger of contracting disease himself, which is not the case with the doctors and nurses who extend their services to people afflicted with contagious and abhorrent diseases. Moreover, Jesus' power must have come to him divinely, while we have to study, labor, and conquer with the sweat of our brow any power for good that we may possess. If Jesus as a God opened the eyes of the blind, would it not have been kinder if he had prevented blindness altogether? If Jesus can open the eyes of the blind, then, why is there blindness in the world? How many of the world's multitude of sufferers did Jesus help? Which of us, if he had the divine power, would not have extended it unto every suffering child of man? Of what benefit is it to open the eyes of a few blind people, two thousand years ago, in one country, when he could, by his unique divinity, have done so much more? Mr. Jones falls into the orthodox habit of not applying to Jesus the same canons of criticism by which _human_ beings are judged. But perhaps the "preeminence of Jesus" lay in his willingness to give his life for us. Noble is every soul who prefers truth and duty to life. But was Jesus the only one, or even the first to offer himself as a sacrifice upon the altar of humanity? If Jesus died for us, how many thousands have died for him--and by infinitely more cruel deaths? It is easier for an "only begotten" of God, himself a God--who knows death can have no power over him--who sees a throne prepared for him in heaven--who is sure of rising from the dead on the third day--to face death, than for an ordinary mortal. Yet Jesus showed less courage, if his reporters are reliable, than almost any martyr whose name shines upon memory's golden page. The European churches are full of pictures showing Jesus suffering indescribable agonies as the critical hour draws nigh. We saw, in Paris, a painting called "The Holy Face," _La Sainte Face_, which was, truly, too horrible to look upon; big tears of blood trickling down his cheeks, his head almost drooping over his chest, an expression of excruciating pain upon his features, his eyes fairly imploring for help,--he is really breaking down under the weight of his cross. Compare this picture with the serenity of Socrates drinking the hemlock in prison! Nor would it do to say that this is only the Catholic way of representing Jesus in his passion. The picture is in the gospels, it may be seen in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross with all its realism. Far be it from us to withhold from Jesus, if he really suffered as the gospels report, one iota of the love and sympathy he deserves, but why convert the whole world into a black canvas upon which to throw the sole figure of Jesus? Which of us, poor, weak, sinful though we are, would not be glad to give his life, if thereby he could save a world? Do you think we would mourn and groan and weep tears of blood, or collapse, just when we should be the bravest, if we thought that by our death we would become the divine Savior of all mankind? Would we stammer, "Let this cup pass from me, if it be possible," or tear our hearts with a cry of despair: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me," if we knew that the eternal welfare of the human race depended upon our death? If the Russian or Japanese soldier can take his home and wife and children,--his hopes and loves, his life,--his all,--and throw them into the mouth of the cannon, dying with a shout upon his lips,--who would hesitate to do the same, when not the salvation of one country alone, but of the whole world, depended upon it? There are examples of heroism in the annals of man which would bring the blush to the cheeks of Jesus, if his biographers have not abused his memory. Wherein, then, was the "preeminence" of Jesus? Upon what grounds does Mr. Jones claim, with "unlimited rhetoric," to use his own expression, for Jesus "the right of preeminence in the world's history?" While there is neither a commendable saying nor an act attributed to Jesus in our gospels which teachers older than himself had not already said or done, there are some things in which his seniors clearly outshine him. King Asoka, for instance, the Buddhist sovereign of India, 250 years before Jesus, in one of his edicts chiseled on the rocks of India, declared against human slavery and offered the sweet gift of liberty to all in captivity. Jesus used the word slave in one of his parables (improperly translated servant), without expressing himself on the subject, except to intimate that when a slave does all his duty faithfully, even then he is only an "unprofitable slave," unworthy of the thanks of his master. There was slavery of the worst kind in the world of Jesus, and yet he never opened his mouth to denounce the awful curse. It is claimed that Jesus' doctrine of love was indirectly a condemnation of slavery. Even then, inasmuch as other and earlier teachers did more than strike only indirectly at the ancient evil,--for they not only taught the brotherhood of man, too, but expressed themselves, besides, positively on the subject of slavery,--they have a prior claim to the "right of preeminence" in the world's history, if they cared anything about ranks and titles. The doctrine of humanity to animals, our dumb neighbors, is a positive tenet in Buddhism; is it in Christianity? Two and a half centuries before Jesus, under the influence of Buddha's teaching, King Asoka convened a religious Parliament, offering to each and every representative of other religions, absolute religious liberty. Is there any trace of such tolerance in any of the sayings of Jesus? On the contrary, the claim of Jesus that he is the light, the way, the truth, and that no man can come to the father except through him, leaves no room for the greatest of all boons--liberty, without which every promise of religion is only a mockery and a cheat. Not even heaven and eternal life can be accepted as a consideration for the loss of liberty. The liberty of teaching is alien to a teacher who claims, as Jesus did, that he alone is infallible, and that all who came before him were "thieves and robbers." Of course, Mr. Jones will deny that Jesus ever said any of the things ascribed to him which spoil his ideal picture of him. But he finds his ideal Jesus, whose personality "defies analysis, baffles definition and overflows all words," in the gospels; if these are not reliable, what becomes of his argument? If the writers of our gospels bear false witness against Jesus when they represent him as "cursing the fig tree," as calling his enemies liars and devils, as calling the Gentiles dogs, as claiming equality with God, as menacing with damnation all who disagree with him,--what security have we that they speak truthfully when they put the beatitudes in his mouth? We have no more reliable authority for attributing to Jesus the beatitudes than we have for holding him responsible for the curses attributed to him in the gospels. To return to our comparison between Jesus and his illustrious colleagues. It is with cheerful praise and generous pleasure that we express our admiration for many of the sayings, parables, and precepts attributed to Jesus. The fact that they are much older than Jesus, more universal than Christianity, only enhances their value and reflects glory upon the human race, a glory of which Jesus, too, as a brother, if he ever existed, has his share. We love and admire every teacher who has a message for humanity; we feel our indebtedness to them and would deem ourselves fortunate if we could contribute to the advancement of their noble influence; but we have no idols, and in our pantheon, truth is above all. We have no hesitation to sacrifice even Jesus to the Truth. If we were in India, and some Hindoo preacher spoke of Buddha, as Mr. Jones does of Jesus, as a "personality defying all analysis, baffling definition and overflowing all words"--one who has "won the right to preeminence in the world's history,"--we would protest against it, in the interest of Jesus and other teachers, as we now protest against Mr. Jones' Jesus, in the interest of truth. We have a suspicion, however, that if Mr. Jones, or preachers of his style, were Hindoos, they would speak of Buddha, as they now, being Christians, speak of Jesus--echoing in both instances the _popular_ opinion. The best way to illustrate Mr. Jones' style of reasoning is to quote a few examples from his sermon: "The story of the Good Samaritan has had a power beyond the story of the senseless blighting of the fig tree; the ages have loved to think of Jesus talking with the woman at the well more than they have loved to think of him as manufacturing wine at Cana. No man is so orthodox but that he reads more often the Sermon on the Mount than he does the story of the drowning of the pigs." But if he did not "drown the pigs," the reporter who says he did might have also collected from ancient sources the texts in the Sermon on the Mount and put them in Jesus' mouth. Again: "The dauntless crusaders who now in physical armament and again in the more invulnerable armament of the spirit, went forth, reckless of danger, regardless of cost, to rescue the world from heathen hands or to gather souls into the fold of Christ." We can hardly believe Mr. Jones speaking of "rescuing the world from _heathen_ hands," etc. Who were the heathen? And think of countenancing the craze of the crusades, which cost a million lives to possess the empty sepulchre of a mythical Savior! Is it one of the merits of Christianity that it calls other people "heathen," or that it kills them and lays waste their lands for an empty grave? Once more: "Jesus had tremendous expectations....He believed mightily in the future, not as some glory-rimmed heaven after death, but as a conquering kingdom of love and justice. Jesus took large stock in tomorrow; he laughed at the prudence that never dares, the mock righteousness of the ledger that presumes to balance the books and pay all accounts up to date. He knew that the prudence of commerce, the thrift of trade, the exclusive pride of the synagogue, must be broken through with a larger hope and a diviner enterprise. He believed there was to be a day after today and recognized his obligation to it; he acknowledged the debt which can never be paid to the past and which is paid only by enlarging the resources of the future. Life, to Jesus, was an open account; he was a forward looker; he was honest enough to recognize his obligations to the unborn. Perhaps this adventurous spirit in the realms of morals, even more than his heart of love, has made him the superlative leader of men." We sincerely wish all this were true, and would be glad to have Mr. Jones furnish us with the texts or evidences which have led him to his conclusions. Would not his adjectives be equally appropriate in describing any other teacher he admires? "Jesus had tremendous expectations." Well, though this is somewhat vague as a tribute to Jesus, we presume the preacher means that Jesus was an optimist. The reports, unfortunately, flatly contradict Mr. Jones. Jesus was a "man of sorrows." He expressly declared that this earth belonged to the devil, that the road which led to destruction was crowded, while few would enter the narrow gates of life. He said: "Many are called but few are chosen;" he told his disciples to confine their good work to the lost sheep of the House of Israel, and intimated that it were not wise to take the bread of children (his people) and give it to the dogs (other people). The "Go ye into all the world" is a post- resurrection interpolation, and Mr. Jones does not believe in the miracle of the resurrection. Jesus looked forward to the speedy ending and destruction of the world, "when the sun and moon would turn black, and the stars would fall;" and he doubted whether he would find any faith in the world when "the son of man cometh"; and it was Jesus who expected to say to the people on his left, "depart from me, ye cursed, into _everlasting_ punishment." This is the teacher, whose pessimism is generally admitted, of whom Mr. Jones says that, he had "tremendous expectations." "He believed there was to be a day after today, and recognized his obligation to it," writes Mr. Jones in his indiscriminate laudation of Jesus. Is that why he said "Take no thought of the morrow," and predicted the speedy destruction of the world? "He acknowledged the debt which can never be paid to the past." A sentence like this has all the ear-marks of a glittering generality. Did Jesus show gratitude to the past when he denounced all who had preceded him in the field of love and labor as "thieves and robbers?" Equally uncertain is the following: "He was honest enough to recognize his obligations to the unborn." How does our clerical neighbor arrive at such a conclusion? From what teaching or saying of Jesus does he infer his respect for the rights of posterity? Indeed, how could a teacher who said, "He that believeth not shall be damned," he described as recognizing the rights of future generations? To menace with damnation the future inquirer or doubter is to seek to enslave as well as to insult the generations yet to be born, instead of "recognizing his obligations" to them. The Jesus Mr. Jones is writing about is not in the gospels. "Do you ask me if I am a 'Christian'?" writes Mr. Jones, and he answers the question thus: "I do not know. Are you? If anyone is inclined to give me that high name, with the spiritual and ethical connotation in mind, I am complimented and will try to merit it." As our excellent neighbor is still in the dark, and does not know whether or not, or in what sense he is a Christian--unless he is allowed to define the word himself,--and as he also intimates that he would like to be a _Jesus_ Christian, but not a Church Christian, we humbly beg to express this opinion: The American churches of today, notwithstanding all their shortcomings, are, on every question of ethics and science, of charity and the humanities, far in advance of Jesus, and that in these churches there are men and women who in breadth of mind and nobility of spirit are as good, and even better than Jesus. Does our neighbor grasp our meaning? Charging all the bad in a religion to the account of man, and attributing all the good to God, or to a demi-god, is, after all, only a dodge. Had not the disciples of Jesus been braver than their master, his religion would not have come down to us. And had the Christian church lived up to the letter of this Semitic teacher, Europe would never have embraced Christianity. By modernizing Jesus, by selecting his more essential teachings, and relegating his eccentricities to the background, by making his name synonymous with the best aspirations of humanity, by idealizing his character and enclosing it with a human halo, the churches have saved Jesus from oblivion. Jesus was a tribal teacher, the church universalized him; Jesus had no gospel for women, the church has after much hesitation and wavering converted him to the European attitude toward women; Jesus was silent on the question of slavery, the churches have urged him with success to champion the cause of the bondsman; Jesus denounced liberty of conscience when he threatened with hell-fire the unbeliever; but the churches have won him over to the modern secular principle of religious tolerance; Jesus believed only in the salvation of the elect, but the church to a certain extent has succeeded in reconciling him to the larger hope; Jesus was an ascetic, preferring the single life to the joys of the home, and fasting and praying to the duty and privilege of labor, but the church in America and Protestant Europe at least has made Jesus a lover and a seeker of wealth and knowledge, the two great forces of civilization. No longer does Jesus say, "hate your father and mother;" no longer does he cry in our great thoroughfares, "blessed are the poor;" no longer is his voice heard denouncing this world as belonging to the devil. The modern church, modernized by science, has in turn modernized the gospels. And yet Mr. Jones prefers to be a Christian such as Jesus was. He is repeating one of those phrases which apologists use when they give God all the praise and man all the blame. In conclusion: Mr. Jones admits that Christianity is not unique, that Buddha conquered greater tyrannies than Christ; that "humility and self-sacrifice...have world-wide foundations;" but he draws no conclusions from these important facts, but returns in a hurry to say that Jesus is the "finest and dearest stream swelling the mighty tide of history." The only objection we have to Mr. Jones' Jesus is that he is not real. ANOTHER RHETORICAL JESUS The Rev. W. H. H. Boyle, of St. Paul, improves even on Mr. Jones' superlative tribute to Jesus. He says: "Can you imagine such a thing as a black sun, or the reversal of creation or the annihilation of primal light? Then, give rest to imagination and soberly think what it would mean to have the spiritual processes of two millenniums reversed, to have the light of life in the unique personally of Jesus forever eclipsed." Here is an idolator, indeed. To make an idol of his Jesus he takes a sponge, and without a twinge of conscience, wipes out all the beauty and grandeur of the ancient world. Has this gentleman never heard of Greece? During a short existence, in only two centuries and a half, that little land of Greece achieved triumphs in the life of the mind so unparalleled as to bring all the subsequent centuries upon their knees before it. In philosophy, in poetry,--lyrical, epical, dramatic,--in sculpture, in statesmanship, in ethics, in literature, in civilization,--where is there another Greece? Oh, land of Sophocles! whose poetry is the most perfect flower the earth has ever borne,--of Phidias and Praxiteles! whose immortal children time cannot destroy, though the gods are dead--whose masterpieces the earth wears as the best gem upon her brow,--of Aristotle! the intellect of the world,--of Socrates! the _parens philosophiae_, and its first martyr!--of Aristides! the Just--of Phocion and Epaminondas!--of Chillon and Anarcharchis! whose devotion to duty and beauty have perfumed the centuries! O, Athens, the bloom of the world! Hear this sectarian clergyman, in his black Sunday robes, closing his eyes upon all thine immortal contributions, pulling down like a vandal, as did the early Christians, the libraries and temples, the culture and civilization of the ancient world--the monuments of thy unfading glory--to build therewith a pedestal for his mythical Christ! I can imagine the reverend advocate saying: "But there was slavery in Greece, and immorality, too,"--of course, and is the Christian world free from them? Has Christ after two thousand years abolished war? Indeed, he came to bring, as he says, "not peace, but a sword!" Has Jesus healed the world of the maladies for which we blame the Pagan world? Has he made humanity free? Has he saved the world from the fear of hell? Has he redeemed man from the blight of ignorance? Has he broken the yoke of superstition and priest-craft? Has he even succeeded in uniting into one loving fold his own disciples? How, then, can this clergyman, with any conscience for truth, compare a world deprived of the god of his sect, to a tomb--to a blind man groping under a blackened sun? Must a man rob the long past in order to provide clothing for his idol? Must he close his eyes upon all history before he can behold the beauty of his own cult? But let us quote again: "To efface from the statute books of Christendom every law which has its basal principle in Christian ethics; to abolish every institution which ministers to human need and misfortune in the name of Him whose sympathy is the heart of the divine; to lower every sense of moral obligation between man and man to the old level of Paganism to silence the great oratorios which have made music the echo of the divine; to take down from the galleries of the world the sacred canvases with which genius has sanctified them; to obliterate from memorial symbolism the cross of sublime renunciation which has been the rebuke of human selfishness; to disband every organization which makes prayer, through the merit of one great name, the hand of man upon the arm of God--you may be able to think of an ocean without a harbor, of a sky without a sun, of a garden without a flower, of a face without a smile, of a home without a mother; but, can you think of a world with holiness and happiness in it and Jesus gone out of it? You cannot, 'Then, come, let us adore him,'" etc., etc. Observe how this special pleader avoids breathing so much as a word about any of the many evils which may be laid at the door of his religion with as much show of reason as the benefits he enumerates. What about the dark ages which held all Europe for the space of a thousand years in the clutches of an ignorance the like of which no other religion in the world had known? What about the atrocious inquisition to which no other religion in the world had ever been able to give the swing that Christianity did? What about the persecution and burning of helpless women as witches? Is there anything as infamous as that in any religion outside of ours? What about the wholesale massacres in the name of the true faith? What about the centuries of religious wars, the most imbecile as well as the most bloody, from the effects of which Germany, France, Italy and England are still suffering today? And need we also call attention to that obstinate resistance to science and progress, which rewarded every discoverer of a new power for man, with the halter or the stake, which filled the dungeons with the _elite_ of Europe,--which even dug open graves to punish the bones of the dead savants and illuminators of man? The Pagans, in their gladitorial games, sacrificed the lives of slaves: Christianity made a holocaust of the noblest intellects of Europe. And shall we speak of the bigotry, the fanaticism, the bitter sectarian prejudices which to this day embitter the life of the world? Are not these, too, the fruits of Christianity? We know the answer which the reverend gentleman would make to this: "All the evils you speak of are chargeable, not to Christianity, but to its abuse." But we have already shown that that argument won't do. We might as well say that all the evil of Paganism was due to its abuse. The mere fact that Christianity lent itself to such fearful distortions, and was capable of arousing the worst passions in man on such a fearful scale, is condemnation enough. It shows that there was in it a potentiality for evil beyond compare. Moreover, wherein does a "divine" religion differ from a man-made cult, if it is equally powerless to protect itself against perversion? In what sense is Jesus a god, while all his rivals were "mere men," if he is as helpless to prevent the abuse of his teachings as they were? But it would not be difficult to show that the characteristic crimes we have scheduled are the direct inspiration of a religion claiming exclusiveness and infallibility. Such texts as, "there is no other named given under heaven by which men can be saved;" "Let such an one (the man who will not be converted) be like a heathen and a publican to you;" John's advice to refrain from saying "God speed" to the alien in faith; the bible command not to "suffer a witch to live;" and many of the dogmas which might be cited,--corrupted the sympathies, perverted the judgment of the noblest, while at the same time they stung the evil- minded into something like madness. The world knew nothing of the tyranny of dogma, or religious oppression and persecution, comparatively speaking, until the advent of the Jewish-Christian Church. "Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and of Gomorrah, in the day of judgment, than for that city," said Jesus, speaking of the people who might not accept his teachings. How can Christianity be a religion of love, and how can it believe in tolerance, when it threatens the unbeliever with a fate worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah? The benefits which the Rev. Boyle parades as the direct fruit of his cult, did not appear until after the Renaissance, that is to say,--the return to Pagan culture and ideals. The art and science and the humanities which he praises, followed upon the gradual decline of the Jewish-Christian religion which had already destroyed two civilizations. But Greece and Rome triumphed. To this day, if we need models in poetry, in art, in philosophy, in literature, in politics, in patriotism, in service to the public, in heroism and devotion to ideals--we must go to the Greeks and the Romans. Not that these nations were by any means perfect, but because they have not been surpassed. In our colleges and schools, when we wish to bring up our children in the ways of wisdom and beauty, we do not give them the Christian fathers to read, we give them the Pagan classics. We ask this St. Paul clergyman to read Gibbons' tribute to Pagan Rome: "If a man was called upon to fix a period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without hesitation name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus." This period included such men and rulers as Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, Antoninus Pius, and above all, the greatest of them all--the greatest ruler our earth has ever owned--Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Let the Rev. W. H. H. Boyle look over the names of the kings of Israel and of Christian France, Spain, Italy and England, and find among them any one that can come up to the stature of these Pagan monarchs. "WE OWE EVERYTHING TO JESUS" But, behold! another clergyman with the claim that the modern world owes all its joy and cheer, during the Christmas season, "to the babe in Bethlehem." "What was it that brought about such a condition that crowds the stores, that overflows the mails, and loads the express with packages of every description? The little babe in Bethlehem set all this in motion,--the wreath, the holly, are all from him." When we read the above and more to the same effect, we wrote to the Rev. W. A. Bartlett, [Footnote: Pastor First Congregational Church, Chicago.] the author of the words quoted, asking him if he was correctly reported. We reproduce herewith a copy of our letter: DEC, 20, 1904. _Rev. W. A. Bartlett, Washington Boul. and Ann St., Chicago_ DEAR MR. BARTLETT: In the report of your sermon of last Sunday you are represented as claiming that it is to the "babe in Bethlehem" we owe the Christmas festival, the giving of presents, etc., etc. I write to ascertain whether this report has stated your position correctly? I am sure you know that Christmas is only a recomposition of an old Pagan festival, and that "giving presents" at this season is a much older practice than Christianity. Of course, you do not believe that Christmas is celebrated in December and on the 25th of the month because Jesus was born on that day. You know as well as I do of the Pagan festivals celebrated in the month of December throughout the Roman Empire--celebrations which were accompanied with the giving and receiving of presents. Moreover, you know also, as every student does, that in the Latin countries of Europe it is not on Christmas day, but on New Year's day, that presents are exchanged. Surely you would not claim that for New Year's day, too, the world is indebted to the Bethlehem babe. You must also have known that the use of the evergreen and the holy was in vogue among the Druids of Pagan times. Be kind enough, therefore, to give me, if I am not asking too much, the facts which led you to make the statement to which I have called your attention, and believe me, with great respect, etc. To this neighborly letter the reverend gentleman did not condescend to send an acknowledgment. We knocked at his door, as it were, and he, a minister of the Gospel, declined to open it unto us. Clergymen, as a rule, say that they are happy when people will let them preach the gospel to them. In our case, we saved the clergyman from calling upon us, we called upon him--that is to say, we wrote and gave him an opportunity to enlighten us, to bring his influence to bear upon us, to open our eyes to the error of our ways,--and he would have nothing to do with us. Was not our soul worth saving? Did the Rev. W. A. Bartlett consider us beyond hope? We ask this clergyman to place his hand upon his conscience and ask himself whether he did the brotherly thing in not returning a friendly and kindly answer to our honest inquiry for truth. But he did not answer us, because he had no real faith in his gospel. It was not good enough for an inquirer. But the clergyman, according to reports, made an attempt on the Sunday following the receipt of our letter, before his congregation, to answer indirectly our question. He denied that "Christmas was a recomposition of an old Pagan festival," and said that the early Christians "fasted and wept" because of these Pagan festivals, and that as early as the second century, the birth of Jesus was commemorated. In short, he pronounced it "a distortion of history" to assign to the Christmas festival a Pagan origin. In his great work on the _History of Civilization,_ Buckle says this, to which we call Dr. Bartlett's attention: "As soon as eminent men grown unwilling to enter any profession, the luster of that profession will be tarnished; first its reputation will be lessened, then its power abridged." We fear this is true of Mr. Bartlett's profession. How can Christian ministers hope to engage the interest of the reading public if they themselves abstain from reading? Ask a secular newspaper about the origin of the Christmas celebration, and _it_ will tell you the truth. On the very Sunday that Dr. Bartlett was denouncing, in his church, our claim that the Pagans gave us the December season of joy and merry-making, as "a distortion of history," and editorial in the _Chicago Tribune_ said this: But the festive character of the celebration, the giving of presents, the feasting and merriment, the use of evergreen and holly and mistletoe, are all remnants of Pagan rites. Continuing, the same editorial called attention to the antiquity of the institution: Long before the shepherds on the Judean plains saw the star rise in the east and heard the tidings of "Peace on earth, good will to man," the Roman populace surged through the streets at the feast of Saturn, giving themselves up to wild license and boisterous merry making. They exchanged presents, they decorated their dwellings and temples with green boughs; slaves were given special privileges, and the spirit of good will was abroad among men. This Roman Saturnalia came at the winter solstice, the same as does our Christmas day, while the birth of Christ is widely believed to have taken place at some other season of the year. But Dr. Bartlett may have had in mind the quotation from Anastasius: "Our Lord, Jesus Christ, was born of the Holy Virgin, Mary, in Bethlehem, at one o'clock in the afternoon of December 25th,"--appearing to quote from some old manuscript which, unfortunately, is not to be found anywhere. But Clement of Alexandria, in the year 210 A. D., dismisses all guesses as to when Jesus was born,--the 18th of April, 19th of May, etc.,--as products of reckless speculation. March 28th is given as Jesus' birthday in _De Pascha Computius_, in the year 243. Jan. 5th is the date defended by Epiphanius. Baradaens, Bishop of Odessa, says: "No one knows exactly the day of the nativity of our Lord: this only is certain from what Luke writes, that he was born in the night." Poor Dr. Bartlett, his December 25th does not receive support from the Fathers. For our clerical brother's sake, we quote some more from the _Tribune_ editorial: Primeval man looked upon the sun as the revelation of divinity. When the shortest day of the year was passed, when the sun began his march northward, the primitive man rejoiced in the thought of the coming seedtime and summer, and he made feasts and revelry the mode of expressing the gladness of his heart. Among the sun worshipers of Persia, among the Druids of the far north, among the Phoenicians, among the Romans, and among the ancient Goths and Saxons the winter solstice was the occasion of festivities. Many of them were rude and barbarous, but they were all distinguished by hearty and profuse hospitality. And yet our neighbor calls it "distortion of history" to connect Christmas with the Pagan festival, celebrated about this time. We quote once more from the Secular press: The Christian church did not abolish these heathen ceremonies, but grafted upon them a deeper spiritual meaning. For this reason Christmas is an institution which memorializes the best there was in Pagan man. Its good cheer, its charity, its sports, its feasting, and the features which most endear it to children are all the heritage of our Pagan ancestors. How refreshing this, compared with the clergyman's silence, or cry of "distortion." But in one thing the doctor is correct. The early Christians did bewail the Pagan festivals, as they did everything else that was Pagan. But it did not help them at all; they were compelled to acquiesce. The Christians have "fasted and prayed" also against science, progress, and modern thought, but what good has it done? They asked God to hook Theodore Parker's tongue; to overthrow Darwin, and to confound the wisdom of this world, but the prayer remains unanswered. Yes, the doctor is right, the church has "fasted and prayed" against religious tolerance, against the use of Sunday as a day of recreation,--the opening of galleries and libraries on that day, the advancement of women, the emancipation of the negro, the secularization of education, the revision of old creeds, and a thousand other things. But their opposition has only damaged their own cause. They did try to suppress the Pagan festival, which we call Christmas, and the Puritans in this country, until recently, abstained from all recognition of the day, and called it "Popery," and "Paganism," but their efforts bore no fruit. Dr. Bartlett, if he will read, will learn that for many years, in England and in this country, the observance of Christmas was forbidden by law under severe penalties. As to our being indebted for the cheer and merriment of the December festival to the "Bethlehem babe," the doctor must inform himself of those acts of Parliament which, under the Puritan regime, compelled people to mourn on Christmas day and to abstain from merrymaking. In Christian Connecticut, for a man to have a sprig of holly in his house on Christmas day was a finable crime. In Massachusetts, any Christian detected celebrating Christmas was fined five shillings and costs. But, see, having failed to suppress these good institutions, they now turn about and claim that they have always believed in them, and that, in fact, we would not now be enjoying any one of these benefits but for the Christian Church. In conclusion, we have one other word to say to the three clerical teachers from whose writings we have quoted. Against them we are constrained to bring the charge of looseness in thought. They seem to have little conscience for evidence. Mr. Jones says, for instance: "In short, I am compelled to think that this Light of Souls, this saving and redeeming spirit, was the loved and loving child of Joseph, the carpenter, and the loyal wife Mary. I believe this, notwithstanding the stories of immaculate conceptions, star-guided magi, choiring angels and adoring shepards that gathered around the birth-night." Which is another way of saying that he is "compelled to believe" against the evidence, merely because it is his pleasure or interest to do so. This is not very edifying, to be sure. Mr. Jones takes all his information about Joseph and Mary and Jesus from the gospels, and yet the gospels clearly contradict his conclusions. Mary, the mother of Jesus, gives her word of honor that Joseph was not the father of her child, and Joseph himself testifies that he is not Jesus' father, but Mr. Jones pays no attention to their testimony; he wishes Joseph to be the father of Jesus, and that ought to be sufficient evidence, he thinks. We quote from the gospel: "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. And Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But when he thought on these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife; for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost." Now, if Joseph admits he was not Jesus' father, and Mary corroborates his testimony (See Luke, 1st chapter), Jesus was, if he ever lived, and the records which give Mr. Jones his ideal Jesus are reliable, the son of a man who has succeeded in concealing his identity, unless, of course, we believe in the virgin birth. If the real father of Jesus had come forth and owned his son, and Mary had acknowledged that he was the father of her child, what would have become of Christianity? We hope these clergymen who have dwelt, as Emerson says, "with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus," will reflect upon this, and while doing so, will they not also remember this other saying of the Concord philosopher: "The vice of our theology is seen in the claim...that Jesus was something different from a man." We take our leave of the three clergymen, assuring them that in what we have said we have not been actuated, in the least, by any personal motive whatever, and that we have only done to them what we would have them do to us. [Illustration: Head of a God with Horns. Museum of St. Germain.] A LIBERAL JEW ON JESUS FELIX ADLER, PRAISES JESUS That it is very easy for scholars to follow the people instead of leading them, and to side with the view that commands the majority, receives fresh confirmation from the recent utterances of the founder of the Ethical Culture Society in New York. Professor Adler, the son of a rabbi, and at one time a freethinker, has slowly drifted into orthodox waters, after having tried for a period of years the open seas, and has become a more enthusiastic champion of the god of the Christians than many a Christian scholar whom we could name. The pendulum in the Adler case has swung clear to the opposite side. We do not find fault with a man because he changes his views, we only ask for reasons for the change. It will be seen by the following extracts from Adler's printed lectures that he has made absolutely no critical study of the sources of the Jesus story, but has merely, and hurriedly at that, accepted the conventional estimate of Jesus and enlarged upon it. Jesus is entitled to all the praise which is due him, but it must first be shown that in praising him we are not sacrificing the truth. Praising any man at such a cost is merely flattering the masses and bowing to the fashion of the day. Let us hear what Professor Adler has to say about Jesus. He writes: It has been said that if Christ came to New York or Chicago, they would stone him in the very churches. It is not so! If Christ came to New York or Chicago, the publicans and sinners would sit at his feet! For they would know that he cared for them better than they in their darkness knew how to care for themselves, and they would love him as they loved him in the days of yore. This would sound pious in the mouth of a Moody or a Torrey, but, we confess, it sounds like affectation in the mouth of the free thinking son of a rabbi. That Prof. Adler enters here into a field for which his early Jewish training has not fitted him, is apparent from the hasty way in which he has put his sentences together. "It has been said," he writes, "that if Christ came to New York or Chicago, they would stone him in the very churches. It is not so." Why is it not so? And he answers: "If Christ came to New York or Chicago, the publicans and sinners would sit at his feet." But what has the reception which publicans and sinners might give Jesus to do with how _the churches_ would receive him? He proves that Jesus would not be stoned in the churches of New York and Chicago by saying that the "publicans and sinners would sit at his feet." Does he mean that "New York and Chicago churches" and "publicans and sinners" are the same thing? "Publicans and sinners" might welcome him, and still the churches might stone him, which in fact, according to Adler's own admission, was the case in Jerusalem, where the synagogues conspired against Jesus, while Mary Magdalene sat at his feet. Nor are his words about "the publicans and sinners loving Jesus as they loved him in the days of yore" edifying. Who does he mean by the "publicans and sinners," and how many of them loved Jesus in the days of yore, and why should this class of people have felt a special love for him? On the question of the resurrection of Jesus, Prof. Adler says this: "It is sometimes insinuated that the entire Christian doctrine depends on the accounts contained in the New Testament, purporting that Jesus actually rose on the third day and was seen by his followers; and that if these reports are found to be contradictory, unsupported by sufficient evidence, and in themselves incredible, then the bottom falls out of the belief in immortality as represented by Christianity." It was the Apostle Paul himself who said that "if Jesus has not risen from the dead, then is our faith in vain,--and we are, of all men, most miserable." So, you see, friend Adler, it is not "sometimes insinuated," as you say, but it is openly, and to our thinking, logically asserted, that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, the whole fabric of Christian eschatology falls to the ground. But we must remember that Prof. Adler has not been brought up a Christian. He has acquired his Christian predilections only recently, so to speak, hence his unfamiliarity with its Scriptures. Continuing, the Professor says: "But similar reports have arisen in the world time and again, apparitions of the dead have been seen and have been taken for real; and yet such stories, after being current for a time, invariably have passed into oblivion. Why did this particular story persist, despite the paucity and the insufficiency of the evidence? Why did it get itself believed and take root?" What shall we think of such reasoning from the platform of a presumable rationalist movement? Does not the Professor know that the story of the resurrection of Jesus is not original, but a repetition of older stories of the kind? Had the world never heard of such after- death apparitions before Jesus' day, it would never have invented the story of his resurrection. And how does the Professor know that the story of Jesus' resurrection is not going to meet the same fate which has overtaken all other similar stories? Is it not already passing into the shade of neglect? Are not the intelligent among the Christians themselves beginning to explain the resurrection of Jesus allegorically, denying altogether that he rose from the dead in a literal sense? Moreover, the pre-Christian stories of similar resurrections lived to an old age,--two or three thousand years--before they died, and the story of Jesus' resurrection has yet to prove its ability to live longer. All miraculous beliefs are disappearing, and the story of the Christian resurrection will not be an exception. But Prof. Adler's motive in believing that the story of the resurrection of Jesus shall live, is to offer it as an argument for immortality, and in so doing he strains the English language in lauding Jesus. He says: "In my opinion, people believed in the resurrection of Jesus because of the precedent conviction in the minds of the disciples that such a man as Jesus could not die, because of the conviction that a personality of such superlative excellence, so radiant, so incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse with others, could not pass away like a forgotten wind, that such a star could not be quenched." We regret to say that there are as many assumptions in the above sentence as there are lines in it. Of course, if we are for emotionalism and not for exact and accurate conclusions, Adler's estimate of Jesus is as rhetorical as that of Jones or Boyle, but if we have any love for historical truth, there is not even the shadow of evidence, for instance, that the disciples could not believe "that such a man as Jesus could die." On the contrary, the disciples left him at the cross and fled, and believed him dead, until it was reported to them that he had been seen alive, and even then "some doubted," and one wished to feel the flesh with his fingers before he would credit his eyes. Jesus had to eat and drink with them, he had to "open their eyes," and perform various miracles before they would believe that he was not dead. The text which says that the apostles hesitated to believe in the resurrection because "as yet they knew not the scripture, that he would rise from the dead," shows conclusively how imaginary is the idea that there was a "precedent conviction" in the minds of the disciples that such a man as Jesus could not die. Apparently it was all a matter of prophecy, not of moral character at all. Yet in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, Prof. Adler tells his Carnegie Hall audience, who unfortunately are even less informed in Christian doctrine than their leader, that "there was a precedent conviction in the minds of the disciples that such a man as Jesus could not die." And what gave the disciples this supposed "precedent conviction?" "That a personality of such superlative excellence, so radiant, so incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse with others, could not pass away like a forgotten wind, that such a star could not be quenched." We are simply astonished, and grieved as well, to see the use which so enlightened a man as Prof. Adler makes of his gifts. Will this Jewish admirer of the god of Christendom kindly tell us wherein Jesus was superlatively excellent, or incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse with others? Was there a weakness found in men like Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, etc., from which Jesus was free? That Jesus created no such ideal impression upon his disciples, is shown by the fact that they represented him as a sectarian and an egotist who denounced all who had preceded him as unworthy of respect and to be despised. And how could a man whose public life did not cover more than two or three years of time, and who lived as a celibate and a monk, returning every night to his cave in the Mount of Olives, taking no active part in the business life--supporting no family or parents, assuming no civil or social duties--how can such a man, we ask, be held up as a model for the men and women of today? Jesus, according to his biographers, believed he could raise the dead, and announced himself the equal of God. "I and my father are one," he is reported to have said; and one of his apostles writes: "He (Jesus) thought it no robbery to be equal to God." Either this report is true, or it is not. If it is, what shall we think of a man who thought he was a god and could raise the dead? If the report is not true, what reliance can we place in his biographers when the things which they affirm with the greatest confidence are to be rejected? Yet Prof. Adler, swept off his feet by the popular and conventional enthusiasm about Jesus, describes him as "a personality of such superlative excellence, so radiant, so incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse with others," that his followers could not believe he was a mere mortal. But where is the Jesus to correspond to this rhetorical language? He is not in the anonymous gospels. There we find only a fragmentary character patched or pieced together, as it were, by various contributors--a character made up of the most contradictory elements, as we have tried to show in the preceding pages. The Jesus of Adler is not in history, he is not even in mythology. There is no one of that name and answering that description in the four gospels. That a loose way of speaking grows upon one if one is not careful, and that sounding phrases and honest historical criticism are not the same thing, will be seen by Prof. Adler's lavish praise of John Calvin. He speaks of him in terms almost as glowing as he does of Jesus. He calls Calvin "that mighty and noble man." That Calvin ruled Geneva like a Russian autocrat; that he was "mighty" in a community in which Jacques Gruet was beheaded because he had "danced," and also because he had committed the grave offense of saying that "Moses was only a man and no one knows what God said to him," and in which Michael Servetus was burned alive for holding opinions contrary to those which the Genevan pope was interested in,--is readily conceded. But was Calvin "mighty" in a beneficent sense? Did his power save people from the Protestant inquisition? Was not the Geneva of his day called _the Protestant Rome?_ And if he did not use his powerful influence to further religious tolerance and intellectual honesty; if he did not use his position to save men from the grip of superstition and the fear of hell, how can Prof. Adler refer to him as "that mighty and noble man--John Calvin?" It is not our purpose to grudge Calvin any compliments which Felix Adler wishes to pay him. What we grieve to see is, that he should, indirectly at least, recommend to the admiration of his readers a man who, if he existed today and acted as he did in the Geneva of the sixteenth century, would be regarded by every morally and intellectually awakened man, as a criminal. Has not Felix Adler examined the evidence which incriminates Calvin and proves him beyond doubt as the murderer of Servetus? "If he (Servetus) comes to Geneva, I shall see that he does not escape alive," wrote John Calvin to Theodore Beza. And he carried out his fearful menace; Servetus was put to death by the most horrible punishment ever invented--he was burned alive in a smoking fire. What did this mighty and noble man do to save a stranger and a scholar from so atrocious a fate? Let his eulogist, Prof. Adler, answer. It will not do to say that those were different times. A thousand voices were raised against the wanton and cruel murder of Servetus, but Calvin's was not among them. In fact, when Calvin himself was a fugitive and a wanderer, he had written in favor of religious tolerance, but no sooner did he become the Protestant pope of Geneva, than he developed into an exterminator of heresy by fire. Such is the "mighty and noble man" held up for our admiration. "Mighty" he was, but we ask again, was he mighty in a noble sense? Had Calvin been considered a "mighty and noble man" by the reformers who preceded Prof. Adler, there would have been no Ethical Culture societies in America today. Prof. Adler is indebted for the liberties which he enjoys in New York to the Voltaires and the Condorcets, who regarded Calvin and his "isms" as pernicious to the intellectual life of Europe, and did all they could to lead the people away from them. Think of the leader of the Ethical Societies exalting a persecutor, to say nothing of his abominable theology, or of his five _aliases,_ as "that mighty and noble man;--John Calvin!" We feel grateful to Prof. Adler for organizing the Ethical Societies in American, but we would be pleased to have him explain in what sense a man of Calvin's small sympathies and terrible deeds could be called both "noble and mighty." [Footnote: See "The Kingdom of God in Geneva Under Calvin."--M. M. Mangasarian.] It was predicted some years ago that the founder of the Ethical Societies will before long return to the Jewish faith of his fathers. However this may be, we have seen, in his estimate of Jesus and John Calvin, evidences of his estrangement from rationalism, of which in his younger days he was so able a champion. In his criticism of the Russian scientist, Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, Prof. Adler, endorsing the popular estimate of Jesus, accepts also the popular attitude toward science. He appears to prefer the doctrine of special creation to the theory of evolution. We would not have believed this of Felix Adler if we did not have the evidence before us. We speak of this to show the relation between an exaggerated praise of a popular idol, and a denial of the conclusions of modern science. It is the popular view which Prof. Adler champions in both instances. In his criticism of Metchnikoff's able book, _The Nature of Man,_ Prof. Adler writes: And to account for the reason in man, this divine spark that has been set ablaze in him, it is not sufficient to point to an ape as our ancestor. If we are descended from an anthropoid ape on the physical side, we are not descended from him in any strict sense of the word on our rational side; for as life is born of life, so reason is born of reason, and if the anthropoid ape does not possess reason as we possess it, it cannot be said that on our rational side we are his progeny. If the above had been written fifty years ago, when the doctrine of evolution was a heresy, or by an orthodox clergyman of today, we would have taken no note of it. But coming as it does from the worthy founder of the Ethical Movement in America, it deserves attention. "If," says Dr. Adler, "we are descended from an anthropoid ape on the physical side, we are not descended from him in any strict sense of the word on our rational side." He is not sure, evidently, that even physically man is the successor of the anthropoid ape, but he is sure that "we are not descended from him...on our rational side." Is Dr. Adler, then, a dualist? Does he believe that there are two eternal sources, from one of which we get our bodies, and from the other our "rational side?" And why cannot Dr. Adler be a monist? He answers, "for as life is born of life, so reason is born of reason, and if the anthropoid ape does not possess reason as we possess it, it cannot be said that on our rational side we are his progeny." Not so, good doctor! There is no life without reason. Do we mean to say that the jelly-fish, the creeping worm, or the bud on the tree has reason? Yes; not as much reason as a horse or a dog, and certainly not as much as a Metchnikoff or an Adler, but these lower forms of life could not have survived but for the element of rationality in them. We may call this instinct, sensation, promptings of nature, but what's in a name? The difference between a pump and a watch is only a difference of mechanism. The stone and the soul represent different stages of progression, not different substances. If a charcoal can be transformed into a diamond, why may not nature, with the resources of infinity at her command, refine a stone into a soul? Let us not marvel at this; it is not less thinkable than the proposition of two independent sources of life, the one physical, the other rational. If "life is born of life," where did the first life come from? Let us have an answer to that question. And if, as the professor says, "reason is born of reason," how did the first reason come? Is it not very much simpler to think in monistic terms, than to separate life from reason, and mind from matter, as Prof. Adler does in the words quoted above? Why cannot mind be a state of matter? What objection is there to thinking that matter, refined, elevated, ripened, cultured, becomes both sentient and rational? If matter can feel, can see, can hear, can it not also think? Does not the horse see, hear and think? There is no lowering of the dignity of man to say that he tastes with his palate, sees with his eyes, hears with his ears, and thinks with the gray matter in his brain. Remove his optic nerve and he becomes blind, destroy the ganglia in his brain, and he becomes mindless. Gold is as much matter as the dust, but it is very much more precious; so is mind infinitely more precious than the matter which can only feel, see, taste or hear. "If the anthropoid ape does not possess reason as we possess it, it cannot be said that on our rational side we are his progeny," says Dr. Adler: But, suppose we were to say that if our remote African or Australian savage ancestors did not possess reason as we possess it, "it cannot be said that on our rational side we are their progeny," The child in the cradle does not possess reason "as we do," any more than does the anthropoid ape, but the beginnings of reason are in both. Let the worm climb and he will overtake man. This is a most hopeful, a most beautiful gospel. Its spirit is not one of isolation and exclusiveness from the rest of nature, but one of fellowship and sympathy. We are all--plants, trees, birds, bugs, animals--all members of one family, children at various ages and stages of growth of the same great mother,--Nature. We quote again: "When I ask him (Metchnikoff) whence do I come, he points to the simian stage which we have left behind; but I would look beyond that stage to some ultimate fount of being, to which all that is highest in me and in the world around me can be traced, a source of things equal to the best that I can conceive." But if there is "some ultimate fount of being," to which our "highest" nature "can be traced," whence did our lower nature come? Is Prof. Adler trying to say God? We do not object to the word, we only ask that he give the word a more intelligible meaning than has yet been given. If God is the "ultimate fount of being to which all that is highest in us can be traced," who or what is the ultimate fount to which all that is lowest in us can be traced? Let us have the names of the two ultimate founts of being, and also to what still more ultimate founts _these_ founts may be traced. In our opinion Dr. Adler has failed to do justice to Prof. Metchnikoff. It is no answer to the Darwinian Theory, which the Russian scientist accepts in earnest, and in all its fullness,--not fractionally, as Adler seems to do--to say that it does not explain everything. No one claims that it does. Not all the mystery of life has been cleared. Evolution has offered us only a new key, so to speak, with which to attempt the doors which have not yielded to metaphysics. And if the key has not opened all the doors, it has opened many. Prof. Adler seems to think that the doctrine of evolution explains only the physical descent of man; for the genesis of the spiritual man, he looks for some supernatural "fount" in the skies. Well, that is not science; that is theology, and Adler's estimate of Jesus is just as theological as his criticism of evolution. APPENDIX The argument in this volume will be better understood if we give to our readers the comments and criticisms which our little pamphlet, _Jesus a Myth,_ and _The Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate on the Historicity of Jesus, _[Footnote: Price, 25c. Independent Religious Society, Orchestra Hall, Chicago.] called forth from orthodox and liberal clergymen. We shall present these together with our reply as they appeared on the Sunday Programs of the Independent Religious Society. Criticism is welcome. If the criticism is just, it prevents us from making the same mistake twice; if it is unjust, it gives us an opportunity to correct the error our critic has fallen into. No one's knowledge is perfect. But the question is, does a teacher suppress the facts? Does he insist on remaining ignorant of the facts? FROM THE SUNDAY PROGRAMS I Now that the debate on one of the most vital questions of modern religious thought--The Historicity of Jesus--is in print, a few further reflections on some minor points in Dr. Crapsey's argument may add to the value of the published copy. REV. DR. CRAPSEY: "Now, I say this is the great law of religious variation, that in almost every instance, indeed, I think, in every single instance in history, all such movements begin with a _single_ personality." (P. 5, _Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate._) ANSWER: The only way this question can be settled is by appealing to history. Mithraism is a variant religion, which at one time spread over the Roman Empire and came near outclassing Christianity. Yet, Mithra, represented as a young man, and worshiped as a god, is a myth. How, then, did Mithraism arise? Religions, as well as their variations, appear as new branches do upon an old tree. The new branch is quite as much the product of the soil and climate as the parent tree. Like Brahmanism, Judaism, Shinto and the Babylonian and Egyptian Cults, which had no _single_ founders, Christianity is a _deposit_ to which Hellenic, Judaic and Latin tendencies have each contributed its quota. But the popular imagination craves a Maker for the Universe, a founder for Rome, a first man for the human race, and a great chief as the starter of the tribe. In the same way it fancies a divine, or semi- divine being as the author of its _credo._ Because Mohammed is historical, it does not follow that Moses is also historical. That argument would prove too much. REV. DR. CRAPSEY: "We would be in the same position that the astronomers were when they discovered the great planet Uranus--from their knowledge of the movements of these bodies they were convinced that these perturbations could be occasioned by nothing less than a great planet lying outside of the then view of mankind."(P. 6, _Ibid._) ANSWER: But the astronomers did not rest until they converted the _probability_ of a near-by planet into _demonstration._ Jesus is still a probability. REV. DR. CRAPSEY: "We have of Jesus a very distinctly outlined history. There is nothing vague about him." (P. 12, _Ibid_.) ANSWER: But in the same sentence the doctor takes all this back by adding: "There are a great many things in his history that are not historical." If so, then we do not possess "a very distinctly outlined history," but at best a mixture of fact and fiction. REV. DR. CRAPSEY: "We can follow Jesus' history from the time that he entered upon his public career until the time that career closed, just as easily as we can follow Caesar, etc." (P. 12, _Ibid_.) ANSWER: How long was "the time from the opening of Jesus' public career until the time that it closed?"--One year!--according to the three gospels. It sounds quite a period to speak of "following his public career" from beginning to end, especially when compared with Caesar's, until it is remembered that the entire public career of Jesus covers the space of only one year. This is a most decisive argument against the historicity of Jesus. With the exception of one year, his whole life is hid in impenetrable darkness. We know nothing of his childhood, nothing of his old age, if he lived to be old, and of his youth, we know just enough to fill up a year. Under the circumstances, there is no comparison between the public career of a Caesar or a Socrates covering from fifty to seventy years of time, and that of a Jesus of whose life only one brief year is thrown upon the canvas. An historical Jesus who lived only a year! REV. DR. CRAPSEY: The Christ I admit to be purely mythological....the word Christ, you know, means the anointed one....they (the Hebrews) expected the coming of that Christ....But that is purely a mythical title. (_The Debate_--P. 35.) ANSWER: Did the Hebrews then expect the coming of a _title?_ Were they looking forward to seeing the ancient throne of David restored by a _title?_ By Messiah or Christ the Jews did not mean a _name,_ but a man--a real flesh and bone savior, anointed or appointed by heaven. But if the 'Christ' which the Hebrews expected was "purely mythical," what makes the same 'Christ' in the supposed Tacitus passage historical? The New Testament Jesus is Jesus Christ, and the apostle John speaks of those "who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh"--mark his words--not Christ, but _Jesus Christ._ The apostle does not separate the two names. There were those, then, in the early church who denied the historicity, not of a _title_,--for what meaning would there be in denying that a _title_ "is come in the flesh,"--but of a person, known as _Jesus Christ._ And what could the doctor mean when he speaks of a _title_ being "mythological?" There are no mythological titles. Titles are words, and we do not speak of the historicity or the non-historicity of words. We cannot say of words as we do of men, that some are historical and others are mythical. William Tell is a myth--not the name, but the man the name stands for. _William_ is the name of many real people, and so is _Tell._ There were many anointed kings, who are historical, and the question is, Is Jesus Christ--or Jesus the Anointed--also historical? To answer that Jesus is historical, but The Anointed is not, is to evade the question. When Mosheim declares that "The prevalent opinion among early Christians was that Christ existed in appearance only," he could not have meant by 'Christ' only a title. There is no meaning in saying that a man's title "existed in appearance only?" We do not speak of a title being born, or crucified; and when some early Christians denied that Jesus Christ was ever born or ever crucified, they had in mind not a _title_ but a _person._ In conclusion: If the 'Christ' by whom the Hebrews meant, not a mere name, but a man, was "purely mythological," as the reverend debater plainly admits (see pages 35, 36 of _The Debate_)--that is, if when the Hebrews said: "Christ _is_ coming," they were under the influence of an illusion,--why may not the Christians when they say that 'Christ' _has_ come, be also under the influence of an illusion? The Hebrew illusion said, Christ was coming; the Christian illusion says, Christ has come. The Hebrews had no evidence that 'Christ' was coming, although that expectation was a great factor in their religion; and the Christians have no more evidence for saying 'Christ' has come, although that belief is a great factor in _their_ religion. II The minister of the South Congregational Church, who heard the debate, has publicly called your lecturer an "unscrupulous sophist," who "practices imposition upon a popular audience" and who "put forth sentence after sentence which every scholar present knew to be a perversion of the facts so outrageous as to be laughable." As one of the leading morning papers said, the above "is not a reply to arguments made by Mr. Mangasarian." Invited by several people to prove these charges, the Reverend replies: "In the absence of any full report of what he (M. M. Mangasarian) said, or of any notes taken at the time, I am unable to furnish you with quotations." When the Reverend gentleman was addressing the public his memory was strong enough to enable him to say, "sentence after sentence was put forth by Mr. Mangasarian which every scholar present knew to be a perversion of the facts." But when called upon to mention a few of them, his memory forsakes him. Our critic is not careful to make his statements agree with the fact. One instance, however, he is able to remember which "when it fell upon my ears," he writes, "it struck me with such amazement, that it completely drove from my mind a series of most astonishing statements of various sorts which had just preceded it." We refrain from commenting on the excuse given to explain so significant a failure of memory. The instance referred to was about the denial of some in apostolic times that "Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." But as Mr. Mangasarian had hardly spoken more than twenty minutes when he touched upon this point, it is not likely that it could have been "preceded by a series of most astonishing statements of various sorts." And what was the statement which, while it crippled his memory, it did not moderate his zeal? We will let him present it himself; "I refer to the use he made of one or two passages in the New Testament, mentioning some who deny 'that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.' 'So that,' he went on to say, 'there were those even among the early Christians themselves who denied that Jesus had come in the flesh. Of course, they were cast out as heretics.' _Here came an impressive pause,_ and then without further explanation or qualification, he proceeded to something else." This is his most serious complaint. Does it justify hasty language? St. John writes of those who "confessed not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." The natural meaning of the words is that even in apostolic times some denied the flesh and bone Jesus, and regarded him as an idea or an apparition--something like the Holy Ghost. All church historians admit the existence of sects that denied the New Testament Jesus--the Gnostics, the Essenes, the Ebionites, the Marcionites, the Cerinthians, etc. As the debate is now in print, further comment on this would not be necessary. Incidents like the above, however, should change every lukewarm rationalist into a devoted soldier of truth and honor. To us, more important than anything presented on this subject, is this evidence of the existence of a very early dispute among the first disciples of Jesus on the question of whether he was real or merely an apparition. The Apostle John, in his epistle, clearly states that even among the faithful there were those _who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh._ This is very important. As early as John's time, if he is the writer of the epistle, Jesus' historicity was questioned. The gospel of John also hints at the existence in the primitive church of Christians who did not accept the reality of Jesus. When doubting Thomas is told of the resurrection, he answers that he must feel the prints of the nails with his fingers before he will believe, and Jesus not only grants the wishes of this skeptical apostle, but he also eats in the presence of them all, which story is told evidently to silence the critics who maintained that Jesus was only a spirit, "the Wisdom of God," an emanation, a light, and not real flesh and bones. III The same clergyman, to whom a copy of the _Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate_ was sent, has written a five page criticism of it. The strength of a given criticism is determined by asking: Does it in any way impair the soundness of the argument against which it is directed? Critics have discovered mistakes in Darwin and Haeckel, but are these mistakes of such a nature as to prove fatal to the theory of evolution? To be effective, criticism must be aimed at the _heart_ of an argument. A man's life is not in his hat, which could be knocked off, or in his clothes--which could be torn in places by his assailant without in the least weakening his opponent's position. It is the blow that disables which counts. To charge that we have said 'Gospel,' where we should have said 'Epistle,' or 'Trullum' instead of 'Trullo'; that it was not Barnabas, but Nicholas who denied the Gospel Jesus, and that there were variations of this denial, does not at all disprove the fact that, according to the Christian scriptures themselves, among the apostolic followers there were those to whom Jesus Christ was only a phantom. Milman, the Christian historian, states that the belief about Jesus Christ "adopted by almost all the Gnostic sects," was that Jesus Christ _was but an apparent human being, an impassive phantom,_ (_History of Christianity._ Vol. 2, P. 61). Was ever such a view entertained of Caesar, Socrates or of any other historical character? On page 28 of _The Debate_ we say: "The Apostle John complains of those....who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." To this the clergyman replies: "The Apostle John never made any such complaint. Critical scholarship is pretty well agreed that he did not write the epistles ascribed to him." We have a lecture on "How the Bible was Invented," and this clergyman's admission that at least parts of the bible _are_ invented is very gratifying. In a former communication, this same clergyman tried to prove that the Apostle John's complaint does not at all imply a denial of the historical Jesus. In his recent letter he denies that the apostle ever made such a complaint. John did not write the epistles, then, which the Christian church for two thousand years, and at a cost of millions of dollars, and at the greater sacrifice of truth and progress has been proclaiming to the world as the work of the inspired John! The strenuous efforts to get around this terrible text in the "Holy Bible," show what a decisive argument it is. Every exertion to meet it only tightens the text, like a rope, around the neck of the belief in the historical Jesus. Our desire, in engaging in this argument, is to turn the thought and love of the world from a mythical being, to humanity, which is both real and present. On page 22 of _The Debate,_ we say: "St. Paul tells us that he lived in Jerusalem at a time when Jesus must have been holding the attention of the city; yet he never met him." To this the clergyman replies: "Paul tells us nothing of the kind. In a speech which is put into the mouth of Paul"--_put into the mouth of Paul!_ Is this another instance of forgery? John did not write the epistles, and Paul's speech in the Book of Acts was put into his mouth! Will the clergyman tell us which parts of the bible are _not_ invented? Let us make a remark: The church people blame us for not believing in the trustworthiness of the bible; but when we reply that if the bible is trustworthy, then Paul must have been in Jerusalem with Jesus, and John admits that some denied the historical Jesus, we are blamed for not knowing better than to prove anything by quoting Paul and John as if everything they said was trustworthy. In other words, only those passages in the bible are authentic which the clergy quote; those which the rationalists quote are spurious. In the meantime, the authentic as well as the spurious passages together compose the churches' _Word of God_. IV In a letter of protest to Mr. Mangasarian, Rabbi Hirsch, of this city, asks: "Was it right for you to assume that I was correctly reported by the _News?"_ After stating what he had said in his interview with the reporter, the Rabbi continues: "But said I to the reporter all these possible allusions do not prove that Jesus existed....You see in reality I agreed with you. I personally believe Jesus lived. But I have no proof for this beyond my feeling that the movement with which the name is associated could even for Paul not have taken its nomenclature without a personal substratum. But, and this I told the reporter also, this does not prove that the Jesus of the Gospels is historical." Rabbi Hirsch writes in this same letter that he did not say Jesus was mentioned in the Rabbinical Books. The News reports the Rabbi as saying, "But we know through the Rabbinical Books that Jesus lived." A committee from our Society waited on the editor of the _Daily News_ for an explanation. The editor promised to locate the responsibility for the contradiction. As the report in the _News_ was allowed to stand for four days without correction, and as Rabbi Hirsch did not even privately, by letter or by phone, disclaim responsibility for the article, to Mr. Mangasarian, the latter claims he was justified in assuming that the published report was reliable. But it is with pleasure that the Independent Religious Society gives Rabbi Hirsch this opportunity to explain his position. We hope he will also let us know whether he said to the reporter: "I do not believe in Mr. Mangasarian's argument that Christianity has inspired massacres, wars and inquisitions. It is a stock argument and not to the point." This is extraordinary; and as the Rabbi does not question the statement, we infer that it is a correct report of what he said. Though we have room for only one quotation from the Jewish-Christian Scriptures, it will be enough to show the relation of religion to persecution: "And thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord, thy God, shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them." Why were women put to death as witches? Why were Quakers hanged? For what "economic and political reasons," which the Rabbi thinks are responsible for persecution, was the blind Derby girl who doubted the Real Presence, burned alive at the age of twenty-two? V The Rev. W. E. Barton, of Oak Park, is one of the ablest Congregational ministers in the West. He has recently expressed himself on the Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate. Let us hear what he has to say on the historicity of Jesus. The Reverend gentleman begins by an uncompromising denial of our statements, and ends by virtually admitting all that we contend for. This morning we will write of his denials; next Sunday, of his admissions. "Mr. Mangasarian," says Dr. Barton, "has not given evidence of his skill as a logician or of his accuracy in the use of history." Then he proceeds to apologize, in a way, for the character of his reply to our argument, by saying that "Mr. Mangasarian's arguments, fortunately, do not require to be taken very seriously, for they are not in themselves serious." Notwithstanding this protest, Dr. Barton proceeds to do his best to reply to our position. In _The Debate_ we call attention to the fact that according to the New Testament, Paul was in Jerusalem when Jesus was teaching and performing his miracles there. Yet Paul never seems to have met Jesus, or to have heard of his teachings or miracles. To this Dr. Barton replies: "We cannot know and are not bound to explain where Paul was on the few occasions when Jesus publicly visited Jerusalem." The above reply, we are compelled to say, much to our regret, is not even honest. Without actually telling any untruths, it suggests indirectly two falsehoods: First, that Jesus was not much in Jerusalem--that he was there only on a few occasions; and that, therefore, it is not strange that Paul did not see him or hear of his preaching or miracles; and second, that Paul was absent from the city when Jesus was there. The question is not how often Jesus visited Jerusalem, but how conspicuous was the part he played there. He may have visited Jerusalem only once in all his life, yet if he preached there daily in the synagogues; if he performed great miracles there; if he marched through the streets followed by the palm-waving multitude shouting _Hosanna,_ etc.; if he attacked the high-priest and the pharisees there, to which latter class Paul belonged; and if he was arrested, tried and publicly executed there; and if his teaching stirred the city from center to circumference,--it would not be honest to intimate that the "few" times Jesus visited Jerusalem, Paul was engaged elsewhere. The Reverend debater attempts to belittle the Jerusalem career of Jesus, by suggesting that he was not there much, when according to the Gospels, it was in that city that his ministry began and culminated. Again, to our argument that Paul never refers to any of the teachings of Jesus, the Reverend replies: "Nor is it of consequence that Paul _seldom_ quotes the words of Jesus." _"Seldom"_---would imply that Paul quotes Jesus sometimes. We say Paul gives not a single quotation to prove that he knew of a teaching Jesus. He had heard of a crucified, risen, Christ--one who had also instituted a bread and wine supper, but of Jesus as a _teacher_ and of his _teaching,_ Paul is absolutely ignorant. But by saying "Paul _seldom_ quotes Jesus," Dr. Barton tries to produce the impression that Paul quotes Jesus, though not very often, which is not true. There is not a single miracle, parable or moral teaching attributed to Jesus in the Gospels of which Paul seems to possess any knowledge whatever. Nor is it true that it is of no consequence that "Paul seldom quotes the words of Jesus." For it proves that the Gospel Jesus was unknown to Paul, and that he was created at a later date. Once more; we say that the only Jesus Paul knew was the one he met in a trance on his way to Damascus. To this the pastor of the First Congregational Church of Oak Park replies in the same we-do-not-care- to-explain style. He says: "Nor is it of consequence that Paul values comparatively lightly, having known him in the flesh." The words "Paul valued comparatively lightly" are as misleading as the words "Paul _seldom_ quotes Jesus." Paul _never_ quotes Jesus' teachings, and he _never_ met Jesus in the flesh. The clergyman's words, however, convey the impression that Paul knew Jesus in the flesh, but he valued that, knowledge "comparatively lightly," that is to say, he did not think much of it. And Dr. Barton is one of the foremost divines of the country. And now about his admissions: VI I. "The Gospels, by whomever written," says the clergyman, "are reliable." By _whomever_ written! After two thousand years, it is still uncertain to whom we are indebted for the story of Jesus. What, in Dr. Barton's opinion, could have influenced the framers of the life of Jesus to suppress their identity? And why does not the church instead of printing the words, "The Gospel according to Matthew or John," which is _not true,_--print, "The Gospel by _whomever_ written"? II. "At the very least, four of Paul's epistles are genuine," says the same clergyman. Only four? Paul has thirteen epistles in the bible, and of only four of them is Dr. Barton certain. What are the remaining nine doing in the Holy Bible? And which 'four' does the clergyman accept as doubtlessly "genuine?" Only yesterday all thirteen of Paul's letters were infallible, and they are so still wherever no questions are asked about them. It is only where there is intelligence and inquiry that "four of them" at least are reliable. As honesty and culture increase, the number of inspired epistles decreases. What the Americans are too enlightened to accept, the church sends to the _heathen_. III. "It is true that early a sect grew up which....held that Jesus could not have had a body of carnal flesh; but they did not question that he had really lived." According to Dr. Barton, these early Christians did not deny that Jesus had really lived,--they only denied that _Jesus could have had a body of carnal flesh_. We wonder how many kinds of flesh there are according to Dr. Barton. Moreover, does not the bible teach that Jesus was tempted in all things, and was a man of like passions, as ourselves? The good man controls his appetites and passions, but his flesh is not any different from anybody else's. If Jesus did not have a body like ours, then he did not exist as a human being. Our point is, that if the New Testament is reliable, in the time of the apostles themselves, the Gnostics, an influential body of Christians, denied that Jesus was any more than an imaginary existence. "But," pleads the clergyman, "these sects believed that Jesus was real, though not carnal flesh." What kind of flesh was he then? If by _carnal_ the Gnostics meant 'sensual,' then, the apostles in denouncing them for rejecting a carnal Jesus, must have held that Jesus was carnal or sensual. How does the Reverend Barton like the conclusion to which his own reasoning leads him? IV. "It is true that there were literary fictions in the age following the apostles." This admission is in answer to the charge that even in the first centuries the Christians were compelled to resort to forgery to prove the historicity of Jesus. The doctor admits the charge, except that he calls it by another name. The difference between fiction and forgery is this: the former is, what it claims to be; the latter is a lie parading as a truth. Fiction is honest because it does not try to deceive. Forgery is dishonest because its object is to deceive. If the Gospel was a novel, no one would object to its mythology, but pretending to be historical, it must square its claims with the facts, or be branded as a forgery. V. "We may not have the precise words Jesus uttered; the portrait may be colored;....tradition may have had its influence; but Jesus was real." A most remarkable admission from a clerical! It concedes all that higher criticism contends for. We are not sure either of Jesus' words or of his character, intimates the Reverend preacher. Precisely. In commenting on our remark that in the eighth century "Pope Hadrian called upon the Christian world to think of Jesus as a man," Dr. Barton replies with considerable temper: "To date people's right to think of Jesus as a man from that decree is not to be characterized by any polite term." Our neighbor, in the first place, misquotes us in his haste. We never presumed to deny anyone the right to think of Jesus what he pleased, before or after the eighth century. (_The Debate,_ p. 28.) We were calling attention to Pope Hadrian's order to replace the lamb on the cross by the figure of a man. But by what _polite_ language is the conduct of the Christian church--which to this day prints in its bibles "Translated from the Original Greek," when no _original_ manuscripts are in existence--to be characterized? Dr. Barton's efforts to save his creed remind us of the Japanese proverb: "It is no use mending the lid, if the pot be broken." VII The most remarkable clerical effort thus far, which _The Mangasarian- Crapsey Debate_ has called forth, is that of the Rev. E. V. Shayler, rector of Grace Episcopal Church of Oak Park. "In answer to your query, which I received, I beg to give the following statement. Facts, not theories. The date of your own letter 1908 tells what? 1908 years after what? The looking forward of the world to Him." Rev. Shayler has an original way of proving the historicity of Jesus. Every time we date our letters, suggests the clergyman, we prove that Jesus lived. The ancient Greeks reckoned time by the Olympiads, which fact, according to this interesting clergyman, ought to prove that the Olympic games were instituted by the God Heracles or Hercules, son of Zeus; the Roman Chronology began with the building of Rome by Romulus, which by the same reasoning would prove that Romulus and Remus, born of Mars, and nursed by a she-wolf, are historical. Rev. Shayler has forgotten that the Christian era was not introduced into Europe until the sixth century, and Dionysius, the monkish author of the era, did not compute time from the birth of Jesus, but from the day on which the Virgin Mary met an angel from heaven. This date prevailed in many countries until 1745. Would the date on a letter prove that an angel appeared to Mary and hailed her as the future Mother of God? According to this clergyman, scientists, instead of studying the crust of the earth and making geological investigations to ascertain the probable age of the earth, ought to look at the date in the margin of the bible which tells exactly the world's age. Rev. Shayler continues: "The places where he was born, labored and died are still extant, and have no value apart from such testimony." While this is amusing, we are going to deny ourselves the pleasure of laughing at it; we will do our best to give it a serious answer. If the existence of such a country as Palestine proves that Jesus is real, the existence of Switzerland must prove that William Tell is historical; and the existence of an Athens must prove that Athene and Apollo really lived; and from the fact that there is an England, Rev. Shayler would prove that Robin Hood and his band really lived in 1160. The Reverend knows of another 'fact' which he thinks proves Jesus without a doubt: "A line of apostles and bishops coming right down from him by his appointment to Anderson of Chicago," shows that Jesus is historical. It does, but only to Episcopalians. The Catholics and the other sects do not believe that Anderson is a descendant of Jesus. Did the priests of Baal or Moloch prove that these beings existed? The Reverend has another argument: "The Christian Church--when, why and how did it begin?" Which Christian church, brother? Your own church began with Henry the Eighth in 1534, with persecution and murder, when the king, his hands wet with the blood of his own wives and ministers, made himself the supreme head of the church in England. The Methodist church began with John Wesley not much over a hundred years ago; the Presbyterian church began with John Calvin who burned his guest on a slow fire in Geneva about three hundred years ago; and the Lutheran church began with Martin Luther in the sixteenth century, the man who said over his own signature: "It was I, Martin Luther, who slew all the peasants in the Peasants War, for I commanded them to be slaughtered....But I throw the responsibility on our Lord God who instructed me to give this order;" and the Roman Catholic church, the parent of the smaller churches--all chips from the same block--began its real career with the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, who hanged his father-in- law, strangled his brother-in-law, murdered his nephew, beheaded his eldest son, and killed his wife. Gibbon writes of Constantine that "the same year of his reign in which he convened the council of Nice was polluted by the execution, or rather murder, of his eldest son." But our clerical neighbor from Oak Park has one more argument: "Why is Sunday observed instead of Saturday?" Well, why? Sun-day is the day of the Sun, whose glorious existence in the lovely heavens over our heads has never been doubted; it was the day which the Pagans dedicated to the Sun. _Sunday_ existed before the Jesus story was known,--the anniversary of whose supposed resurrection falls in March one year, and in April another. If Jesus rose at all, he rose on a certain day, and the apostles must have known the date. Why then is there a different date every year? Rev. Shayler concludes: "Haven't time to go deeper now," and he intimates that to deny his 'facts' is either to be a fool or a "liar." We will not comment on this. We are interested in arguments, not in epithets. VIII One of our Sunday programs, the other day, found its way into a church. It went farther; it made its appearance in the pulpit. "In my hand I hold the notice of a publication bearing the title _Is Jesus a Myth?"_ said Dr. Boyle. "This, too, just as though Paul never bore testimony." This gave the clergyman a splendid opportunity to present in clear and convincing form the evidence for the reality of Jesus. But one thing prevented him:--the lack of evidence. Therefore, after announcing the subject, he dismissed it, by remarking that Paul's testimony was enough. The Rev. Morton Culver Hartzell, in a letter, offers the same argument. "Let Mr. Mangasarian first disprove Paul," he writes. The argument in a nutshell is this: Jesus is historical because he is guaranteed by Paul. But _who_ guarantees Paul? Aside from the fact that the Jesus of Paul is essentially a different Jesus from the gospel Jesus there still remains the question, Who is Paul? Let us see how much the church scholars themselves know about Paul: "The place and manner and occasion of his death are not _less uncertain_ than the facts of his later life...The chronology of the rest of his life is as uncertain...We have no means of knowing when he was born, or how long he lived, or at what dates the several events of his life took place." Referring to the epistles of Paul, the same authority says: "The chief of these preliminary questions is the genuineness of the epistles bearing Paul's name, which _if they be his_"--yes, IF-- The Christian scholar whose article on Paul is printed in the _Britannica_, and from which we are now quoting, gives further expression to this uncertainty by adding that certain of Paul's epistles "have given rise to disputes which cannot easily be settled in the absence of collateral evidence...The pastoral epistles...have given rise to still graver questions, and are probably even _less_ defensible." Let the reader remember that the above is not from a rationalist, but from the Rev. Edwin Hatch, D. D., Vice-Principal, St. Mary Hall, Oxford, England. Were we disposed to quote rationalist authorities, the argument against Paul would be far more decisive. But we are satisfied to rest the case on orthodox admissions alone. The strongest argument then of clergymen who have attempted an answer to our position is something like this: Jesus is historical because a man by the name of Paul says so, though we do not know much about Paul. It is just such evidence as the above that led Prof. Goldwin Smith to exclaim: "Jesus has flown. I believe the legend of Jesus was made by many minds working under a great religious impulse--one man adding a parable, another an exhortation, another a miracle story;"--and George Eliot to write: "The materials for a real life of Christ do not exist." In the effort to untie the Jesus-knot by Paul, the church has increased the number of knots to two. In other words, the church has proceeded on the theory that two uncertainties make a certainty. We promised to square also with the facts of history our statement that the chief concern of the church, Jewish, Christian, or Mohammedan, is not righteousness, but orthodoxy. IX Speaking in this city, Rev. W. H. Wray Boyle of Lake Forest, declared that unbelief was responsible for the worst crimes in history. He mentioned the placing. --"of a nude woman on a pedestal in the city of Paris. --"the assassination of William McKinley. --"The same unbelief sent a murderer down the isle of a church in Denver to pluck the symbol of the sacrament from the hands of a priest and slay him at the altar." The story of a "nude woman," etc., is pure fiction, and that the two murders were caused by unbelief is mere assumption. To help his creed, the preacher resorts to fable. We shall prove our position by quoting _facts_: I. HYPATIA [Footnote: See Author's, The Martyrdom of Hypatia.] was dragged into a Christian church by monks in Alexandria, and before the altar she was stripped of her clothing and cut in pieces with oyster shells, and murdered. Her innocent blood stained the hands of the clergy, who also handle the Holy Sacraments. She was murdered not by a crazed individual but by the orders of the bishop of Alexandria. How does the true story of Hypatia compare with the fable of "a nude woman placed on a pedestal in the city of Paris?" The Reverend must answer, or never tell an untruth again. Hypatia was murdered in church, and by the clergy, because she was not orthodox. II. POLTROT, the Protestant, in the 16th century assassinated Francois, the Catholic duke of Guise, in France, and the leaders of the church, instead of disclaiming responsibility for the act, publicly praised the assassin, and Theodore Beza, the colleague of Calvin, promised him a crown in heaven. (_De l'etat etc, P. 82._ Quoted by Jules Simon.) III. JAMES CLEMENT, a Catholic, assassinated Henry III. For this act the clergy placed his portrait on the altar in the churches between two great lighted candle-sticks. Because he had killed a heretic prince, the Catholics presented the assassin's mother with a purse. (_Esprit de la Ligue I. III. P. 14._) If it was unbelief that inspired the murder of McKinley, what inspired the assassins of Hypatia and Henry III? We read in the Bible that Gen. Sisera, a heathen, having lost a battle, begged for shelter at the tent of Jael, a friendly woman, but of the Bible faith. Jael assured the unfortunate stranger that he was safe in her tent. The tired warrior fell asleep from great weariness. Then Jael picked a tent-peg and with a hammer in her hand "walked softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground...So he died." The BIBLE calls this assassin "blessed above women." (_Judge IV. 18, etc._) She had killed a heretic. In each of the instances given above, the assassin is honored because he committed murder in the interest of the faith. We ask this clergyman and his colleagues who are only too anxious to charge every act of violence to unbelief in their creeds--What about the crimes of _believers_? 
19397	----	public domain works from the University of Michigan Digital Libraries.) [TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Greek words in this text have been transliterated and placed between +marks+. A complete list of changes follows the text.] HISTORY OF RATIONALISM EMBRACING A SURVEY OF THE PRESENT STATE OF PROTESTANT THEOLOGY. BY JOHN F. HURST, D. D. With Appendix of Literature. THIRD EDITION, REVISED. New York: PUBLISHED BY CARLTON & PORTER, 200 MULBERRY-STREET. 1867. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1865, by CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. The Rationalists are like the spiders, they spin all out of their own bowels. But give me a philosopher who, like the bee, hath a middle faculty, gathering from abroad, but digesting that which is gathered by its own virtue.--LORD BACON. * * * * * The Bible, I say the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants.... There is no safe certaintie but of Scripture only, for any considering man to build upon. This therefore, and this only I have reason to beleeve; this I will professe; according to this I will live, and for this I will not only willingly, but even gladly loose my life, though I should be sorry that Christians should take it from me. Propose me anything out of this book, and require whether I believe it or no, and secure it never so incomprehensible to humane reason, I will subscribe it hand and heart, as knowing no demonstration can be stronger than this, God hath said so, therefore it is true. In other things I will take no man's libertie of judgment from him; neither shall any man take mine from me. I will think no man the worse man nor the worse Christian. I will love no man the lesse for differing in opinion with me. And what measure I meet to others I expect from them againe. I am fully assured that God does not, and therefore that men out not to require any more of any man, than this: to believe the Scripture to be God's word, to endeavor to finde the true sense of it, and to live according to it.--CHILLINGWORTH. * * * * * Are those enthusiasts who profess to follow reason? Yes, undoubtedly, if by reason they mean only conceits. Therefore such persons are now commonly called _Reasonists_ or _Rationalists_ to distinguish them from true reasoners or rational inquirers.--WATERLAND. PREFACE. There were no prefatory remarks to the first and second editions of the following work. It was thought, when the printer made his final call for copy, that a preface might be written with more propriety if the public should indicate sufficient interest in the book to make its improvement and enlargement necessary. That interest, owing to the theme rather than the treatment, has not been withheld. The investigation of the subject was pursued in the midst of varied and pressing pastoral duties, with a pleasure which no reader of the result of the labor can enjoy; for, first, the author felt that Rationalism was soon to be the chief topic of theological inquiry in the Anglo-Saxon lands; and, second, he regarded the doubt, not less than the faith, of his fellow men as entitled to far more respect and patient investigation than it had usually received at the hands of orthodox inquirers. The author would probably never have studied the genetic development of Rationalism in Germany, and its varied forms in other countries, if he had not been a personal witness to the ruin it had wrought in the land of Luther, Spener, and Zinzendorf. In compliance with the instruction of a trusted medical adviser, he sailed for Germany in the summer of 1856, as a final resort for relief from serious pulmonary disease. But, through the mercy of God, he regained health so rapidly that he was enabled to matriculate in the University of Halle in the following autumn, and to be a daily attendant upon the lectures of such men as Tholuck, Julius Müller, Jacobi, and Roediger. From some theologians he heard Rationalism defended with an energy worthy of Wolff and Semler; from others with a devotion worthy of the beloved Neander. In the railroad car, the stage, the counting-room, the workshop, the parlor, and the peasant-hut, Rationalism was found still lingering with a strong, though relaxing grasp. The evangelical churches were attended by only a few listless hearers. His prayer to God was, "May the American Church never be reduced to this sad fate." The history of that movement, resulting in such actual disaster to some lands and threatened ruin to others, took a deep hold upon his mind; and if he has failed in any respect to trace it with an impartial pen, his hope is that his failure will not cause any bright color of the truth to be obscured for a moment. For no man and no cause can ultimately triumph by giving an undue prominence to favorite party or principles; it is only by justice to all that the truth can win its unfading laurels. Criticism was to have been expected, from the very nature of the topic of investigation. But the author has endeavored, as a student at the feet of his judges, to derive the largest possible benefit from criticism. No word of censure, however wide of the mark, has been unwelcome to him, whether from the sceptical or orthodox press. To all questioned passages he has given a careful re-examination, in some instances finding cause for alteration, but in others seeing his ground more strongly sustained than was at first imagined. He has, for example, been informed by many esteemed persons that his representation of Coleridge was hardly just; and, in obedience to that suggestion, he has given that author's works a more careful study than ever, having previously resolved to completely reverse his judgment of that profound thinker's faith, if he found his own utterances would justify him in that course. The result was, as far as he can now recall, that he could alter but one adjective in the entire section relating to Coleridge. Of course, the author finds no fault with those who differ from him on Coleridge, or on any other writer who has come under treatment; but he must be granted by others what he concedes to them. For the criticism, as a whole, which he has received both through the press and private sources, he owes a debt of gratitude which he cannot hope to pay. It gives him profound pleasure to know, that the highest theological journals in the United States which wage open war against orthodoxy, have conceded, with marked unanimity, the general correctness of his statements, though they naturally take issue with his conclusions. Every effort has been bestowed on the present edition to make it as free from blemishes as possible. The appendix of literature has been slightly enlarged, many typographical errors--occurring in consequence of the too rapid passage of the work through the press, and the abundance of words of different languages with which the printer was not always well acquainted--have disappeared; and, in many cases, the narrative has been brought down to the present time. In the prosecution of revision, a large number of the stereotype plates have been cancelled; and no labor has been wanting to make this edition worthy of the goodwill expressed toward the two editions which have preceded it. Through a strange providence the author is now about to commence a term of theological instruction in Germany, where Rationalism first excited his attention, and where his apprehensions were first raised that Great Britain and the United States might be seriously invaded by it. His presence at its old hearthstone leads him to indulge the hope that, in some future though distant day, if life be spared, he may be able to enlarge this history greatly, and thus to render it better adapted to its purpose, more approximative to his first ideal, and more commensurate with the present universal interest in religious and theological themes. BREMEN, GERMANY, _November 5, 1866_. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. PAGE Systematic History of Infidelity, 2-3 Best Method of refuting Rationalism, 3-4 Rationalism not an unmixed Evil, 4-6 Definitions of Rationalism: Wegscheider, 8 Stäudlin, 11 Hahn, 12 Rose, 13 Bretschneider, 14 McCaul, 16 Saintes, 19 Lecky, 22 Classes of Rationalists, 24-26 Causes of the success of Rationalism, 26-32 Four Considerations in Reference to Rationalism, 32-35 CHAPTER I. CONTROVERSIAL PERIOD SUCCEEDING THE REFORMATION. Causes of the Controversial Spirit, 38 The Controversies described, 39, 40 George Calixtus, 40-45 Jacob Boehme, 46-49 John Arndt, 49-51 John Gerhard, 51-53 John Valentine Andreä, 53-55 CHAPTER II. RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE PROTESTANT CHURCH AT THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA. Description of the Thirty Years' War, 56-59 Religious Decline of the Church, 59-61 Neglect of Children, 62-65 Defects of Theological Literature, 66-68 Low State of Theological Instruction, 68, 69 Imperfect Preaching of the Time, 69-73 Immorality of the Clergy and Theological Professors, 73-77 Religious Indifference of the Upper Classes, 77-80 CHAPTER III. PIETISM AND ITS MISSION. Philosophy of the Period, 82 Improvement dependent on Individuals, 84, 85 What Pietism proposed to do, 85-88 Principles of Pietism, 88, 89 Philip Jacob Spener, the Founder of Pietism, 89-93 University of Halle, 93 Augustus Hermann Francke, 93-95 The Orphan House at Halle, 95-97 Influence of the University of Halle, 97, 98 Arnold and Thomasius, 98, 99 New Generation of Professors in Halle, 99, 100 Cause of the Decline of Pietism, 102 CHAPTER IV. THE POPULAR PHILOSOPHY OF WOLFF.--SKEPTICAL TENDENCIES FROM ABROAD. Leibnitz, Founder of the Wolffian Philosophy, 103, 104 Wolff and the Popular Philosophy, 104-111 The School of Wolff, 111 Töllner, 112 English Deism in Germany, 113-117 English Deism in France 117, 118 Voltaire and Frederic the Great, 119-123 Frederic's Regret at Skepticism in Prussia, 123, 124 CHAPTER V. SEMLER AND THE DESTRUCTIVE SCHOOL.--1750-1810. Influence of Foreign Skepticism on the German Church, 125, 126 Semler and the Accommodation-Theory, 126-131 Semler's Private Life, 135-137 Influence of Semler's destructive Criticism, 137, 138 Edelmann, 138, 139 Bahrdt,--his Writings, and depraved Character, 139-143 CHAPTER VI. CONTRIBUTIONS OF LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY. Prevalence of Semler's Opinions, 144, 145 Mental Activity of the Times, 145 Adherents to the Accommodation-Theory, 147, 148 Literary Agencies: Nicolai's Universal German Library, 147, 148 Rationalistic Spirit in Berlin, 148 Wolfenbüttel Fragments, 149-156 Philosophical Agencies: Kant and his System, 156-162 Service rendered by Kant, 162 Jacobi, 162, 163 Fichte, 163 Schelling, 164 Hegel, 164, 165 Grouping of the Philosophical Schools, 165-167 CHAPTER VII. THE REIGN OF THE WEIMAR CIRCLE.--REVOLUTION IN EDUCATION AND HYMNOLOGY. Harmony of the prevalent philosophical Systems, 169 Karl August of Weimar and his literary Circle, 169-171 John Gottfried Herder, 171-179 Schiller, 179-182 Goethe, 182, 183 Deleterious Change in Education, 184 Basedow, and his Philanthropium, 184-187 Campe and Salzmann, 187, 188 Rationalistic Elementary Books, 189-193 Alteration of the German Hymns, 194, 195 Decline of Church Music, 195 Inability of Orthodox Theologians to resist Rationalism, 195, 196 CHAPTER VIII. DOCTRINES OF RATIONALISM IN THE DAY OF ITS STRENGTH. Desolate Condition of the Church, 197, 198 Rationalism without a Common System, 198, 199 Opinions of the Rationalists: Religion, 199 Existence of God, 199, 200 Doctrine of Inspiration, 200-202 Credibility of the Scriptures, 203-206 Fall of Man, 206, 207 Miracles, 207-211 Prophecy, 211-214 Person of Christ, 214-218 CHAPTER IX. RENOVATION INAUGURATED BY SCHLEIERMACHER. Protestant Germany at the Commencement of the Nineteenth Century, 220-222 Fichte, and his Popular Appeal, 222-224 Schleiermacher, 224-229 The Romantic School, 230 Ecclesiastical Reconstruction inaugurated by Frederic William III., 230, 231 The Union of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches, 231, 232 Claus Harms--his 95 Theses, 232-236 CHAPTER X. RELATIONS OF RATIONALISM AND SUPERNATURALISM.--1810-1835. The Task before the New Church, 237 Rationalism strengthened by Röhr and Wegscheider, 238 The terms, Rationalism and Supernaturalism, 239 Tittmann, 239, 240 Tzschirner, 240 Schott, 241 Schleiermacher's _System of Doctrines_, 241-244 Effect of Schleiermacher's Teaching, 245, 246 De Wette, 246-249 Neander, 249-253 His personal Appearance, 253-254 CHAPTER XI. THE REACTION PRODUCED BY STRAUSS' LIFE OF JESUS.--1835-1848. Hyper-criticism of the Rationalists, 255, 256 Influence of Schleiermacher and Hegel, 256, 257 The threefold Division of the Hegelian School, 257, 258 David Frederic Strauss, and his _Life of Jesus_, 258-269 Replies to the _Life of Jesus_: Harless, 271 Hoffman, 271 Neander, 272 Ullmann, 273 Schweizer, 273 Wilke, 273 Schaller, 273 Dorner, 273, 274 Literature occasioned by Strauss' _Life of Jesus_, 274, 275 Strauss' _New Life of Jesus for the People_, 275-278 The Tübingen School, conducted by Ferdinand Christian Baur, 278-280 The Influence of the French Revolution, 280, 281 Strauss' _System of Doctrine_, 281, 282 Feuerbach, 282 The Halle Year-Books, 282, 283 The "Friends of Light," 283, 284 The "Free Congregations," 284, 285 Rationalistic Leaders of the Revolution of 1848, 285, 286 Their Failure, and its Cause, 286, 287 CHAPTER XII. THE EVANGELICAL SCHOOL: ITS OPINIONS AND PRESENT PROSPECTS. The Mediation Theologians, or Evangelical School, grouped: Ullmann, 288, 289 Dorner, 289-292 Tholuck, 292-295 Lange, 295, 296 Twesten, 297 Nitzsch, 297-299 Rothe, 299-303 Schenkel--his recent Adoption of Rationalism, 303-305 Hengstenberg, 305-307 Theological Journals, 307 Improved Theological Instruction, 307-310 CHAPTER XIII. PRACTICAL MOVEMENTS INDICATING NEW LIFE. Charities of German Protestantism, 311 Relation of Philanthropy to Religious Life, 312 John Falk, 312-316 Theodore Fliedner, 316-318 Evangelical Church Diet, 318-323 Immanuel Wichern, 324-329 Louis Harms, 329, 330 The Gustavus Adolphus Union, 330, 331 CHAPTER XIV. HOLLAND: THEOLOGY AND RELIGION FROM THE SYNOD OF DORT TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE PRESENT CENTURY. Former Political Influence of Holland, 332, 333 Rise of Rationalism in Holland, 333 Influence of the Synod of Dort, 334 Corruption of Ethics, 335 Low state of Homiletic Literature, 335, 336 Cocceius, 336-339 Voetius, 339, 340 Controversy between the Cocceians and Voetians, 340-343 Favorable Influence of the Huguenot Immigrants, 343, 344 Popular Acquaintance with Theology, 345, 346 Bekker, 347, 348 Roell, 348, 349 Van Os, 349 Influence of English Deism, 350-353 Influence of French Skepticism, 353, 354 Napoleon Bonaparte's domination, 354, 355 CHAPTER XV. HOLLAND CONTINUED: THE NEW THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS, AND THE GREAT CONTROVERSY NOW PENDING BETWEEN ORTHODOXY AND RATIONALISM. The Political Subjugation of Holland, 356 Inactivity of Orthodoxy, 356, 357 Rupture produced by the New Hymn-Book, 357, 358 The Revival and the Secession: Bilderdyk, Da Costa, Capadose, Groen Van Prinsterer, 359-361 De Cock, the Leader of the Secession 362, 363 Failure of the Secession, 363, 364 The Groningen School: 364 Its Characteristic, 364 Hofstede de Groot, and Pareau, 365, 366 Doctrines of the Groningens, 366, 367 The School of Leyden: 367 Scholten, 368-371 The School of Empirical-Modern Theology: Opzoomer, 371 Pierson, 371-374 Doctrines of this School, 374, 375 The Ethical Irenical School: 375 Chantepie de la Saussaye, 375-377 Van Oosterzee, 377-379 The Present Crisis and its Causes, 381-383 Increase of Evangelizing Agencies, 383-385 CHAPTER XVI. FRANCE: RATIONALISM IN THE PROTESTANT CHURCH--THE CRITICAL SCHOOL. Present Activity of Religious Thought in France, 386, 387 Coldness of Orthodoxy at the Commencement of the Nineteenth Century, 387, 388 Influence of Wesleyan Missionaries, 388, 389 Cartesianism and the Positive Philosophy, 390 Light French Literature, 391 The Critical School of Theology: 391-394 Réville, 394-396 Scherer, 396-400 Larroque, 400 Rougemont, 400, 401 Colani 401, 402 Pecaut, 402, 403 Grotz, 403 Renan, and his _Life of Jesus_, 403-406 A. Coquerel, jr., 406-409 Influence of French Skepticism upon the Young, 409, 410 CHAPTER XVII. FRANCE CONTINUED: EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY OPPOSING RATIONALISM. Agencies Opposing Rationalism, 411 De Pressensé, 411-416 Guizot, 416-419 Success of the Evangelical School, 419-421 Improvement of the French Protestant Church, 422, 423 Charitable and Evangelizing Societies, 423, 424 CHAPTER XVIII. SWITZERLAND: ORTHODOXY IN GENEVA, AND THE NEW SPECULATIVE RATIONALISM IN ZÜRICH. Prostration of the Swiss Church at the Commencement of the Nineteenth Century, 425, 426 Neglect of Theological Instruction, 426, 427 The Theological Academy in Geneva, 428 The Evangelical Dissenting Church, 428 Gaussen, 428, 429 Vinet, 429 Present Religious Condition of Geneva, 429, 430 Lectures in the Genevan Theological Academy, 431, 432 Religious Declension of Zürich, 432 Zürich the Centre of Swiss Rationalism: 433-435 The Speculative Rationalism: The Holy Scriptures, 435 Christ, 435-437 Sin, 438 Faith, 438, 439 German Switzerland influenced by German Theology, 439 CHAPTER XIX. ENGLAND: THE SOIL PREPARED FOR THE INTRODUCTION OF RATIONALISM. English Deism and German Rationalism Contrasted, 440 Literature of England in the Eighteenth Century, 440, 441 The Writers of that Period, 441 Influence of the French Spirit, 441, 442 Bolingbroke, 442, 443 Hume, 444-447 Gibbon, 447, 448 The moral Prostration of the Church, 448-450 Influence of the Wesleyan Movement, 450-452 CHAPTER XX. ENGLAND CONTINUED: PHILOSOPHICAL AND LITERARY RATIONALISM.--COLERIDGE AND CARLYLE. Compensations of History, 453 Rise of a Disposition in England to consult German Theology and Philosophy, 453, 454 Philosophical Rationalism: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 455-462 Julius Charles Hare, 462-465 F. D. Maurice, 465-468 Charles Kingsley, 468-471 Literary Rationalism: Influence of Philosophy on Literature, 472 Thomas Carlyle, 473-477 The _Westminster Review_, 477-480 Necessity of active Protestantism, 480 CHAPTER XXI. ENGLAND CONTINUED: CRITICAL RATIONALISM--JOWETT, THE ESSAYS AND REVIEWS, AND COLENSO. Relation of the Bible to Christianity, 481 Critical Rationalism: Professor Jowett, 481 The "Essays and Reviews," 482-497 Judicial Proceedings against the Writers of that Work, 497-499 Criticism of Bishop Colenso, 499-503 Judicial Proceedings against Colenso, 503-505 CHAPTER XXII. ENGLAND CONTINUED: SURVEY OF CHURCH PARTIES. Unity of the Church of England, 507 The Evangelical and Sacramentalist Parties, 507 The Low Church: Cambridge University, 508 Activity of the Founders of the Low Church, 508, 509 Missionary Zeal, 509, 510 Parties in the Low Church, 510 The High Church: Rise of the Tractarian Movement, 511, 512 Doctrines of the High Church, 512-515 Service rendered by the High Church, 515 John H. Newman, 516, 517 Francis William Newman, 517-519 The First Broad Church: Indefiniteness of Creed, 519, 520 Thomas Arnold, 520-523 Arthur P. Stanley, 523-529 Doctrines of the First Broad Church, 529, 530 The Second Broad Church: Difference between the First and Second Broad Churches, 530, 531 Classification of Church Parties, 531, 532 Skepticism in various Sects, 532, 533 CHAPTER XXIII. THE UNITED STATES: THE UNITARIAN CHURCH.--THE UNIVERSALISTS. Novelty in American History, 534 Separation of Church and State, 534-536 Relations between the Old World and the United States, 536, 537 The Unitarian Church: The Venerable Stoddard, 537, 538 Jonathan Edwards, 538 The Half-Way Covenant, 538 James Freeman, 538, 539 Early Unitarian Publications, 539, 540 Unitarianism in Harvard University, 540 Andover Theological Seminary, 540, 541 Controversy between Channing and Worcester, 541 William Ellery Channing, 541-544 The Unitarian Creed, 544-553 The _Christian Examiner_, 553 The Young Men's Christian Union, 553-558 The Unitarian National Convention, 558-560 Present state of the Unitarian Church, 560 Universalism: Rise in America, 560, 561 Doctrines of Universalism, 561, 562 Present state of Universalism, 562, 563 CHAPTER XXIV. THE UNITED STATES CONTINUED: THEODORE PARKER AND HIS SCHOOL. Early Attachment of the Unitarians to the Doctrine of Miracles, 564 Theodore Parker: His Personal History, 564, 565 His Course toward Orthodoxy, 566 His Opinions, 566-571 Influence of American Skepticism, 571, 572 Frothingham's juvenile Work, 572, 573 "Liberal Christianity," 573-575 Duty of the American Church, 575, 576 CHAPTER XXV. INDIRECT SERVICE OF SKEPTICISM--PRESENT OUTLOOK. Great Success the Result of strong Opposition, 577-579 Biblical Study indirectly benefited by the Attacks of Rationalism, 580, 581 Improvement of Church History, 581-583 Estimate of the Life of Christ, 583-586 The Evangelical Church: Necessity of an impartial View of Science, 586, 587 The proper Way to combat Skepticism, 587, 588 Unity a Requisite of Success, 588, 589 APPENDIX. Literature of Rationalism: Germany, Holland, Switzerland, 590-595 Rationalistic Periodicals in Germany, 595 France, 595-598 Rationalistic Periodicals in France, 598 Great Britain and the United States, 599-606 Literature of Unitarianism and Universalism: 606-609 Unitarian Periodicals, 609 Universalist Periodicals, 609-610 INDEX, 611-623 HISTORY OF RATIONALISM. INTRODUCTION. RATIONALISM DEFINED--ITS CHARACTER AS A SKEPTICAL DEVELOPMENT. Rationalism is the most recent, but not the least violent and insidious, of all the developments of skepticism. We purpose to show its historical position, and to present, as faithfully as possible, its antagonism to evangelical Christianity. The guardians of the interests of the church cannot excuse themselves from effort toward the eradication of this error by saying that it is one which will soon decay by the force of its natural autumn. Posterity will not hesitate to charge us with gross negligence if we fail to appreciate the magnitude of Rationalism, and only deal with it as the growth of a day. We have half conquered an enemy when we have gained a full knowledge of his strength. There was a time when Rationalism was a theme of interest to the Protestant church of Germany alone. But that day is now past. Having well nigh run its race in the land of Luther, it has crossed the Rhine into France and the Netherlands, invaded England, and now threatens the integrity of the domain of Anglo-Saxon theology. Thus it has assumed an importance which should not be overlooked by British and American thinkers who love those dearly-bought treasures of truth that they have received as a sacred legacy from the martyrs and reformers of the English church. The recent writings of the exegetical Rationalists of England are sufficient to induce us to gather up our armor and adjust it for immediate defence. Delay will entail evil. The reason why skepticism has wrought such fearful ravages at various stages during the career of the church has been the tardiness of the church in watching the sure and steady approach, and then in underrating the real strength of her adversary. The present History will be written for the specific purpose of awakening an interest in the danger that now threatens us. We have no ambition to deal with the past, further than to enable it to minister to the immediate demands of the present. We all belong to this generation; it calls for our energies; it has its great wants; and we shall be held justly responsible if we neglect to contribute our share toward the progress of our contemporaries. The three principles which have influenced us to undertake a discussion of the present theme--and of the truth of which we are profoundly convinced--are the following: I. THAT INFIDELITY PRESENTS A SYSTEMATIC AND HARMONIOUS HISTORY. Our customary view of error is, that its history is disjointed, rendered so by the ardent, but unsteady, labors of the doubters of all periods since the origin of Christianity. We have ignored the historical movement of skepticism. Even the storms have their mysterious laws. The work of Satan is never planless. He adapts his measures to the new dangers that arise to threaten his dominion. The analogy between the Rationalism of to-day and the infidelity of past ages is so striking that we can with difficulty recognize the interval of centuries. We see the new faces, but the foes are old. Rationalism has repeatedly varied its method of attack; but if we follow the marches of its whole campaign we shall find that the enemy which stands at our fortress-gate with the _Essays and Reviews_ and _Notes on Pentateuch and Joshua_ in hand, is the same one that assailed Protestant Germany with the Accommodation-theory and the _Wolfenbüttel Fragments_. II. A HISTORY OF A MISCHIEVOUS TENDENCY IS THE VERY BEST METHOD FOR ITS REFUTATION AND EXTIRPATION. We can learn the full character of the good or evil of any abstract principle only by seeing its practical workings. The tree is known by its fruits. Rationalism may be of evil character, but we must see the results it has produced,--the great overthrow of faith it has effected, and its influence upon the pulpit and press of the countries invaded by it, before we can comprehend the vastness of our danger. An enumeration of the evil doings of a public enemy is the best plan to forestall his future misdeeds. We are not to judge Rationalism by its professions. The question is not, What does it wish? At what does it aim? or, What is its creed? But the true way to measure, understand, and judge it, is by answering the inquiry, _What has it done?_ Its work must determine its character. This work has been most injurious to the faith and life of the church, and its deeds must therefore be its condemnation. There are those who say, "Tell us nothing about skepticism; we know too much about it already." Would it be a prudent request, if, before penetrating the jungles of Asia, we should say, "Tell us nothing of the habits of the lion"; or, before visiting a malarious region of Africa, we should beg of the physician not to inform us of the prevalent fever and its appropriate remedy? Forewarned is forearmed. We are surrounded by Rationalism in many phases; it comes to us in the periodical and the closely-printed volume. Even children are reading it in some shape or other. Shall we know its danger; then we must know its deeds. III. OF RATIONALISM IT MAY BE AFFIRMED, AS OF ALL THE PHASES OF INFIDELITY, THAT IT IS NOT IN ITS RESULTS AN UNMIXED EVIL, SINCE GOD OVERRULES ITS WORK FOR THE PURIFICATION AND PROGRESS OF HIS CHURCH. A nation is never so pure as when emerging from the sevenfold-heated furnace. It was not before Manasseh was caught among thorns, bound with fetters, and carried to Babylon, that he "besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers;" nor was it before this humiliation that the Lord "brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom." The whole history of religious error shows that the church is cold, formal, and controversial before the visitation of skepticism. When every power is in full exercise, infidelity stands aloof. God has so provided for his people that he has even caused the delusion by which they have suffered to contribute great benefits but little anticipated by the deluded or the deluders themselves. The intellectual labors of the German Rationalists have already shed an incalculable degree of light on the sacred books, and upon almost every branch of theology. But thus has God ever caused the wrath of man to praise him. Taking this view of the indirect benefits resulting from skepticism, we cannot lament, without an admixture of solace, that the path of Truth has always been rough. The Master, who declared himself "The Truth," premonished us by his own life that his doctrines were not destined to pervade the mind and heart of our race without encountering violent blows, and passing through whole winters of frost and storm. Many things attending the origin and planting of Christianity gave omen of antagonism to its claims in coming generations. Nor could it be expected that the unsanctified reason of man would accept as the only worthy guide of faith and life what Judaism, Paganism, and Philosophy had long since decidedly rejected. But the spirit of Christianity is so totally at variance with that of the world that it is vain to expect harmony between them. Truth, however, will not suffer on that account; and when the issues appear it will shine all the brighter for the fires through which it has passed. The country where Rationalism has exerted its first and chief influence is Germany, than which no nation of modern times has been more prospered or passed through deeper affliction. At one time she was the leader of religious liberty and truth, not only in Europe, but throughout the world. She was thirty years fighting the battles of Protestantism, but the end of the long conflict found her victorious. Since that day, however, she has lost her prestige of adherence to evangelical Christianity; and her representative theologians and thinkers have distorted the Bible which she was the very first to unseal. We rejoice that her condition is more hopeful to-day than it was twenty-five years ago; but recovery is not easy from a century-night of cold, repulsive Rationalism. As a large number of those stupendous battles that have decided the political and territorial condition of Europe have been fought on the narrow soil of Belgium, so has Germany been for ages the contested field on which were determined the great doctrinal and ecclesiastical questions of the European continent and of the world. Happily, the result has generally been favorable; and let no friend of evangelical truth fear that Rationalism will not meet its merited fate. We must not imagine that, because the term Rationalism has been frequently employed within the last few years, it is of very recent origin either as a word or skeptical type. The Aristotelian Humanists of Helmstedt were called _Rationalists_ in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and Comenius applied the same epithet to the Socinians in 1688.[1] It was a common word in England two hundred years ago. Nor was it imported into the English language from the German, either in a theological or a philosophical sense. There was a sect of Rationalists, in the time of the Commonwealth, who called themselves such exactly on the same grounds as their successors have done in recent years. Some one writing the news from London under date of October 14, 1646, says: "There is a new sect sprung up among them [the Presbyterians and Independents], and these are the _Rationalists, and what their reason dictates them in church or state stands for good until they be convinced with better_."[2] But Rationalists, in fact if not in name, existed on the Continent long anterior to this date. The Anti-Trinitarians, and Bodin, and Pucci were rigid disciples of Reason; and their tenets harmonize with those of a later day.[3] In order to arrive at a proper definition of Rationalism we should consult those authors who have given no little attention to this department of theological inquiry. Nor would we be impartial if we adduced the language of one class to the exclusion of the other. We shall hear alike from the friends and adversaries of the whole movement, and endeavor to draw a proper conclusion from their united testimony. It was Selden's advice to the students of ecclesiastical history, "to study the exaggerated statements of Baronius on the one side, and of the Magdeburg Centuriators on the other, and be their own judges." Fortunately enough for a proper understanding of Rationalism, there is no such diversity of statement presented by our authorities. On the contrary, we shall perceive an unexpected and gratifying harmony. In Wegscheider's _Institutiones Dogmaticæ_, a work which for nearly half a century has stood as an acknowledged and highly respected authority on the systematic theology of the Rationalists, we read language to this effect: "Since that doctrine (of supernaturalism) is encumbered with various difficulties, every day made more manifest by the advances of learning, especially historical, physical, and philosophical, there have been amongst more recent theologians and philosophers not a few who, in various ways, departing from it, thought it right to admit, even in the investigation and explanation of divine things, not only that formal use of human reason which regards only the method of expounding dogmas, but also the material use, by which the subject-matter of the particular doctrines is submitted to inquiry. "Thus arose that of which the generic name is Rationalism, or that law or rule of thinking, intimately united with the cultivation of talent and mind, by which we think that as well in examining and judging of all things presented to us in life and the range of universal learning, as in those matters of most grave importance which relate to religion and morals, we must follow strenuously the norm of reason rightly applied, as of the highest faculty of the mind; which law of thinking and perceiving, if it be applied to prove any positive religion (theological Rationalism) lays it down as an axiom that religion is revealed to men in no other manner than that which is agreeable both to the nature of things and to reason, as the witness and interpreter of divine providence; and teaches that the subject-matter of every supposed supernatural revelation, is to be examined and judged according to the ideas regarding religion and morality, which we have formed in the mind by the help of reason.... Whosoever, therefore, despising that supremacy of human reason, maintains that the authority of a revelation, said to have been communicated to certain men in a supernatural manner, is such that it must be obeyed by all means, without any doubt,--that man takes away and overturns from the foundation the true nature and dignity of man, at the same time cherishes the most pernicious laziness and sloth, or stirs up the depraved errors of fanaticism.... As to that which is said to be above reason, the truth of which can by no means be understood, there is no possible way open to the human mind to demonstrate or affirm it; wherefore to acknowledge or affirm that which is thought to be above reason is rightly said to be against reason and contrary to it. "The persuasion concerning the supernatural and miraculous, and at the same time immediate, revelation of God, cannot be reconciled with the idea of God eternal, always consistent with himself, omnipotent, omniscient, and most wise, by whose power, operative through all eternity and exerted in perfect harmony with the highest wisdom, we rightly teach that the whole nature of things exists and is preserved.... This being so, it seems that the natural revelation or manifestation of God, made by the works of nature, is the only one which can be rightly defended, and this may be divided into universal or common, and particular or singular. The universal indeed is affected by the natural faculties of the mind, and other helps of the universal nature of things, by which man is led to conceive and cultivate the knowledge of divine things. That we call _particular_ and _mediate_, in a sense different from the elder writers, which is contained in the compass of things happening according to nature, by which, God being the author, some men are excited above others to attain the principles of true religion, and to impart with signal success those things, accommodated indeed to the desires of their countrymen, and sanctioned by some particular form of religious instruction. A revelation of this kind consists as well in singular gifts of genius and mind, with which the messenger, and, as it were, its interpreter, is perceived to be furnished, as in illustrious proofs of divine providence, conspicuous in his external life. But the more agreeably to the will of that same God he uses these helps to be ascribed to God, and full of a certain divine fervor, and excelling in zeal for virtue and piety, the more he scatters the seeds of a doctrine truly divine, _i. e._, true in itself, and worthy of God, and to be propagated by suitable institutions, the more truly will he flourish amongst other men with the authority of a divine teacher or ambassador. For as our mind partakes of the divine nature and disposition (2 Peter i. 4), so without the favor and help of the Deity it is not carried out to a more true species of religion. "But whatever narrations especially accommodated to a certain age, and relating miracles and mysteries, are united with the history and subject-matter of revelation of this kind, these ought to be referred to the natural sources and true nature of human knowledge. By how much the more clearly the author of the Christian religion, not without the help of Deity, exhibited to men the idea of reason imbued with true religion, so as to represent as it were an _apaugasma_ of the divine reason, or the divine spirit, by so much the more diligently ought man to strive to approach as nearly as possible to form that archetype in the mind, and to study to imitate it in life and manners to the utmost of his ability. Behold here the intimate and eternal union and agreement of Christianity with Rationalism." Stäudlin, at first a Rationalist, but in later life more inclined to supernaturalism, says: "I do not now look to the various meanings in which the word Rationalism has been used. I understand by it here only generally the opinion that mankind are led by their reason and especially by the natural powers of their mind and soul, and by the observation of nature which surrounds them, to a true knowledge of divine and sensible things, and that reason has the highest authority and right of decision in matters of faith and morality, so that an edifice of faith and morals built on this foundation shall be called Rationalism. It still remains undecided whether this system declares that a supernatural revelation is impossible and ought to be rejected. That notion rather lies in the word Naturalism, which however is sometimes used as synonymous with Rationalism. It has been well said that Naturalism is distinguished from Rationalism by rejecting all and every revelation of God, especially any extraordinary one through certain men. This, however, is not the case with many persons called Naturalists both by themselves and others. Supernaturalism consists in general in the conviction that God has revealed himself supernaturally and immediately. What is revealed might perhaps be discovered by natural methods, but either not at all or very late by those to whom it is revealed. It may also be something which man could never have known by natural methods; and then arises the question, whether man is capable of such a revelation. The notion of a miracle cannot well be separated from such a revelation, whether it happens out of, on, or in men. What is revealed may belong to the order of nature, but an order higher and unknown to us, which we could never have known without miracles, and cannot bring under the law of nature."[4] Professor Hahn, in speaking of the work just referred to, and of the subject in general, makes the following remarks: "In very recent times, during which Rationalism has excited so much attention, two persons especially, Bretschneider and Stäudlin, have endeavored to point out the historical use of the word, but both have failed. It is therefore worth while to examine the matter afresh. With respect to the Rationalists, they give out Rationalism as a very different matter from Naturalism. Röhr, the author of the _Letters on Rationalism_, chooses to understand by Naturalism only Materialism; and Wegscheider, only Pantheism. In this way those persons who have been usually reckoned the heads of the Naturalists; namely, Herbert, Tindal, and others; will be entirely separated from them, for they were far removed from Pantheism or Materialism. Bretschneider, who has set on foot the best inquiry on this point, says that the word Rationalism has been confused with the word Naturalism since the appearance of the Kantian philosophy, and that it was introduced into theology by Reinhard and Gabler. An accurate examination respecting these words gives the following results: The word Naturalism arose first in the sixteenth century, and was spread in the seventeenth. It was understood to include those who allowed no other knowledge of religion except the natural, which man could shape out of his own strength, and consequently excluded all supernatural revelation. As to the different forms of Naturalism, theologians say there are three; the first, which they call Pelagianism, and which considers human dispositions and notions as perfectly pure and clear by themselves, and the religious knowledge derived from them as sufficiently explicit. A grosser kind denies all particular revelation; and the grossest of all considers the world as God. As to Rationalism, this word was used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by those who considered reason as the source and norm of faith. Amos Comenius seems first to have used this word in 1661, and it never had a good sense. In the eighteenth century it was applied to those who were in earlier times called by the name of Naturalist."[5] Of all writers on the subject of Rationalism we give the palm of excellence to the devout and learned Hugh James Rose, of Cambridge University. As far as we know he was the first to expose to the English-speaking world the sad state to which this form of skepticism had reduced Germany. Having visited that country in 1824, he delivered four discourses on the subject before the university, which were afterward published under the title of _The State of Protestantism in Germany_. Thus far, in spite of the new works which may have appeared, this account of Rationalism has not been superseded. We shall have occasion more than once to refer to its interesting pages. Of Rationalism he says: "The word has been used in Germany in various senses, and has been made to embrace alike those who positively reject all revelation and those who profess to receive it. I am inclined, however, to believe that the distinction between Naturalists and Rationalists is not quite so wide, either, as it would appear to be at first sight, or as one of them assuredly wishes it to appear. For if I receive a system, be it of religion, of morals, or of politics, only so far as it approve itself to my reason, whatever be the authority that presents it to me, it is idle to say that I receive the system out of any respect to that authority. I receive it _only_ because my reason approves it, and I should of course do so if an authority of far inferior value were to present the system to me. This is what that division of Rationalists, which professes to receive Christianity and at the same time to make reason the supreme arbiter in matters of faith, has done. _Their_ system, in a word, is this: they assume certain general principles, which they 'maintain to be the necessary deductions of reason from an extended and unprejudiced contemplation of the natural and moral order of things, and to be in themselves immutable and universal. Consequently anything which, on however good authority, may be advanced in apparent opposition to them must either be rejected as unworthy of rational belief, or at least explained away, till it is made to accord with the assumed principles,--and the truth or falsehood of all doctrines proposed is to be decided according to their agreement or disagreement with those principles.' When Christianity, then, is presented to them, they inquire what there is in it which agrees with their assumed principles, and whatsoever does so agree, they receive as _true_. But whatever is _true_ comes from God, and consequently all of Christianity which they admit to be true, they hold to be _divine_. "'Those who are generally termed Rationalists,' says Dr. Bretschneider, 'admit universally, in Christianity, a divine, benevolent, and positive appointment for the good of mankind, and Jesus as a Messenger of divine Providence, believing that the true and everlasting word of God is contained in the Holy Scripture, and that by the same the welfare of mankind will be obtained and extended. But they deny therein a supernatural and miraculous working of God, and consider the object of Christianity to be that of introducing into the world such a religion as reason can comprehend; and they distinguish the essential from the unessential, and what is local and temporary from that which is universal and permanent in Christianity.' There is, however, a third class of divines, which in fact differs very little from this, though very widely in profession. They affect to allow 'a revealing operation of God,' but establish on internal proofs rather than on miracles the divine nature of Christianity. They allow that revelation _may_ contain much out of the power of reason to explain, but say that it should assert nothing contrary to reason, but rather what may be proved by it. This sounds better, but they who are acquainted with the writings of the persons thus described, know that by establishing Christianity on internal proofs, they only mean the accepting those doctrines which they like, and which seem to them _reasonable_, and that though they allow in theory that revelation may contain what are technically called much above reason, yet in practice they reject the positive doctrines of Christianity (I mean especially the doctrines of the Trinity, the Atonement, the Mediation and Intercession of our Lord, Original Sin, and Justification by Faith), because they allege that those doctrines are contrary to reason. The difference between them and the others is therefore simply this, that while the others set no limits at all to the powers of reason in matters of faith, they set such a limit in theory but not in practice, and consequently cannot justly demand to be separated from the others."[6] One of the ablest advocates of Supernaturalism among English divines is the late Dr. A. McCaul, of London. He joins issue successfully with the Rationalists. We quote a specimen of his method of argument. His definition of Rationalism is beautifully lucid and logical. He says: "This doctrine then plainly denies the existence and the possibility of a supernatural and immediate revelation from the Almighty, and maintains that to claim supreme authority for any supposed supernatural religion is degrading to the dignity and the nature of man. It enters into direct conflict with the statements of the Old Testament writers, who clearly and unmistakably assert the existence of a divine communication which is called 'The law of the Lord,' 'The law of his mouth,' 'The testimony of God,' 'The saying of God,' 'The word of the Lord,' 'The word that goeth forth out of his mouth,' 'The judgment of the Lord,' 'The commandment of the Lord.' "Now it is not intended to strain the allusion to the mouth or lips of the Lord beyond that which the figure may fairly bear. But the expression does certainly mean that there is some direct, immediate, and therefore supernatural communication from the great Creator of all things. The writers who used these expressions did not mean that as reason is given by God, so whatever reason may excogitate is the word of God. They would not have used these expressions concerning Truth that may be found in heathen writers. They believed and recorded that God had manifested himself audibly to the ears, and visibly to the eyes of men. They did not therefore hold the doctrine that supernatural revelation is impossible, or derogatory to reason or inconsistent with the nature and attributes of Him who is eternal. "It is almost needless to refer to instances. God spake with Adam, with Cain, with Noah. In the latter case the communication led to such actions, and was followed by such results, that without rejecting the history altogether, there can be no doubt of a miraculous communication. Noah knew of the coming flood--built an ark for himself and a multitude of animals--prepared food--was saved with his family, while the world perished--floated for months on the waters, and when he came out, had again a manifestation of the Deity. So Abraham, so Moses, not now to recount any more. Indeed the writer referred to does not deny this. He admits that in Scripture the knowledge of divine things is referred immediately to the Revelation of God, and that though the modes of this Revelation are various, they appear often to overstep the laws and course of nature. He enumerates as modes of revelation, Epiphanies of God himself, of angels--heavenly voices--dreams--afflatus, or the Holy Spirit. "How then does he reconcile this with his denial of all supernatural revelation, or show that these Epiphanies of God and angels, were mere developments of reason? He does not try to reconcile them at all. He simply rejects them as false. He comes directly into collision with the credibility and veracity of the Scripture narratives, and therefore leaves us no alternative but to disbelieve the Bible as fabulous, or to reject Rationalism as inconsistent with our rule of faith. This system not only generally denies the possibility of supernatural revelation, but asserts that all the particular narratives of all such communications from God are incredible; nothing better than ghost stories or fairy tales; equally unworthy of God and man, the offspring of an ignorant and unenlightened age and nation, and therefore rejected by these men of reason and science. How this differs from the doctrine of Deists and open opposers of Christianity, it is difficult to conceive, except that it seems to be rather worse. Even Bolingbroke admits supernatural Revelation to be possible. Tom Paine himself says, 'Revelation when applied to religion means something immediately communicated from God to man. No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication if he pleases.' Spinoza asserts that the 'Israelites heard a true voice at the delivery of the ten commandments; that God spoke face to face with Moses; and generally, that God can communicate immediately with men, and that though natural science is divine, yet its propagators cannot be called prophets.' That the Rationalist view of revelation is contrary to the popular belief of Christians generally, and of Christian churches and divines particularly, there can be no doubt. It is intended so to be.... "The Rationalist professes to believe that all the knowledge of truth at which man arrives is owing to the original wisdom, will, and power of the Almighty in giving man a certain intellectual constitution, to be unfolded by the circumstances of human history and necessities--that therefore moral and religious truth, such as the Rationalists acknowledge, is still to be ascribed to the purposes and power and efficacy of the Great Spirit, acting upon that which is material and compound. "Why, then, should it be impossible for the Creator to shorten the process, to help man in his painful and often unsuccessful search after truth, and to make known that which exists in the Divine mind and purpose? To say that he cannot, is in fact to depose him from the throne of omnipotence, and to bring us back either to two eternal independent principles, incapable of all communication, or to drive us to Pantheism. If there ever was a period in duration in which God could act upon matter, or endue infinite intelligences with the means and capability of knowledge, he can do so still."[7] M. Saintes, who has investigated the history of this subject more thoroughly than any other writer, says of the significations and limits of Rationalism: "I myself at first imagined that it signified the wise and constant exercise of reason on religious subjects, but in studying the matter historically I soon found that it is the same with this word as with many others which, having lost their original meaning, now express an idea directly contrary to that which their etymology seems to indicate. It is indisputably true that God, in granting reason to man, has not forbidden its exercise. As religion, the queen of all minds, possesses indestructible rights over them, so has human reason also rights which cannot be disputed. Kant has justly said, the faith which should oppose itself to reason could not longer exist. With this view we form an idea of Rationalism similar to that conceived by the great Leibnitz, which, with our present ideas of truth, we cannot regard as unreasonable. But this right of human reason to examine and discuss differs widely from its self-constitution as supreme judge on religious matters, and from the wish to submit God and conscience to its own tribunal, which it declares to be infallible. This, however, has been the case in modern times when Philosophy has openly avowed itself the enemy of Christianity, and when those who were terrified by its rash demands have sought to confound them by the devices of Rationalism--thus hastening to ruin the edifice which they aspired to restore.... Rationalism must not, therefore, be understood to signify the use which theologians have made of reason in matters of faith. Did the reader thus interpret it he would mistake our aim. He would be deceived as to the character of the labors which it is our wish to describe. He would attribute to the author of this history intentions which he could not entertain, and religious opinions which his respect for human reason would compel him to disavow. The apostles of the gospel continually appeal to the reason of their hearers, and Christ himself argues the increasing exercise of the _eye of the soul_, as he calls conscience, in judging of the truth which he announces--Matt. vi. 23. For a good conscience is always better disposed to rise to the knowledge of the truth; while one heavy laden and harassed is exceedingly prone to receive dogmas without properly understanding their import, because it feels their truth through the consolations which they offer. In no age of Christianity has there arisen a serious discussion on this subject, though the extravagant pretensions of Rationalism have provoked some exaggerations which can never prevail over the ancient Christian system. That system by no means forbade the exercise of human intelligence in religious matters, though it employed a superior and only infallible reason--the divine reason, the doctrinal expression of which is found in the books which all Christians have hitherto considered divine, and whose authenticity and truth cannot be disputed without overturning that Christianity, which has been professed during eighteen centuries. But modern Rationalism has done more than assert the right of exercising reason; it has pretended that to this faculty alone belongs the privilege of deciding on man's religious belief and his moral duty; and that if, from long custom, any respect is still due to revelation, it should only receive it when it is not opposed to the judgments of reason. But if this reason were sufficient for mankind, why should divine revelation be in any case opposed to it? "Rationalism is not a systematic incredulity as to religious truths. Far from being so, it makes pretensions of developing the religious feelings to the highest degree; and there is in the writings of its most distinguished disciples something which arouses even the most lethargic minds. But it is far from attaining its end; for although it constitutes itself the supreme judge of Christianity, it does not really adopt one of the leading doctrines of that religion which alone has power over the moral nature of man. Its influence, if we observe it closely, extends only over his feelings; it fails to penetrate into the depths of his being; and can we forget that one of its essential characteristics is to wage deadly war against the supernatural element which abounds in the Bible, and which Rationalism would wholly eradicate? An enlightened Supernaturalist will then very willingly confess that Naturalism may be professed with a semblance of reason and in good faith, and he can even consider it as a system of philosophy wherein are to be found fewer philosophical elements than in any other. But simple good sense forbids him to imagine it possible to profess Rationalism and at the same time to retain the name of Christian."[8] The most recent defence of Rationalism is by Mr. Lecky.[9] He has written in great calmness, taken great pains to generalize his investigations, and followed closely in the steps of the late Mr. Buckle, in his fragment of the _History of Civilization_. But his argument is false. According to Mr. Lecky, human reason is the only factor of history. The agency of the Holy Spirit is ignored. Elaborate creeds and liturgical services are a barrier to the mind's progress, because they shackle the intellect by impure traditions. Rationalism is the only relief of these later times. "Its central conception," says our author, "is the elevation of conscience into a position of supreme authority as the religious organ, a verifying faculty discriminating between truth and error. It regards Christianity as designed to preside over the moral development of mankind, as a conception which was to become more and more sublimated and spiritualized as the human mind passed into new phases, and was able to bear the splendor of a more unclouded light. Religion it believes to be no exception to the general law of progress, but rather the highest form of its manifestation, and its earlier systems but the necessary steps of an imperfect development. In its eyes the moral element of Christianity is as the sun in heaven, and dogmatic systems are as the clouds that intercept and temper the exceeding brightness of its rays. The insect, whose existence is but for a moment, might well imagine that these were indeed eternal, that their majestic columns could never fail, and that their luminous folds were the very source and centre of light. And yet they shift and vary with each changing breeze; they blend and separate; they assume new forms and exhibit new dimensions; as the sun that is above them waxes more glorious in its power, they are permeated and at last absorbed by its increasing splendor; they recede, and wither, and disappear, and the eye ranges far beyond the sphere they had occupied into the infinity of glory that is before them.... Rationalism is a system which would unite in one sublime synthesis all the past forms of human belief, which accepts with triumphant alacrity each new development of science, having no stereotyped standard to defend, and which represents the human mind as pursuing on the highest subjects a path of continual progress toward the fullest and most transcendent knowledge of the Deity.... It clusters around a series of essentially Christian conceptions--equality, fraternity, the suppression of war, the elevation of the poor, the love of truth, and the diffusion of liberty. _It revolves around the ideal of Christianity, and represents its spirit without its dogmatic system and its supernatural narratives. From both of these it unhesitatingly recoils, while deriving all its strength and nourishment from Christian ethics._"[10] The present age, if we hearken to Mr. Lecky, is purely Rationalistic, because purely progressive. The world has emerged from its blindness and ignorance by the innate force of the mind. Reason, the great magician, has uplifted its wand; and lo, the creatures of night disappear! It has dispelled the foolish old notions of magic, witchcraft, and miracles. It has overcome the spirit of persecution, the childish conception of original sin, and the doctrine of eternal punishment. It has put an end to bull-baiting, cock-fighting, and all the lower forms of vicious pleasure. It has secularized politics, overthrown the notion of the divine right of kings, and now creates and fosters all the industrial developments of the age. Protestantism is excellent when allied to Rationalism; but when opposed to it, it is no better than any other conglomeration of creeds and liturgies. There is no such thing as a fixed notion of God and Providence. The conceptions of man on these subjects will change with the progress of the race. Human reason, therefore, and not revelation, is the sole arbiter of truth. Thus Mr. Lecky places himself beside his predecessors in ignoring the agency of the Holy Spirit, either in giving inspired truth to the world, or in educating the church. From the foregoing authorities it is very apparent that the Rationalists do not deny the special features of skepticism with which their opponents charge them. They admit frankly that they give the precedence to Reason, when the alternative is Reason or Revelation, instead of adopting a positive creed from the principle, that, if we would ascertain the character of Revelation, we must begin our inquiry by examining the doctrines it contains, and then by comparing them with our notions of what a Revelation ought to be. Thus the capricious dictates of reason are made to decide the quality of revealed truth. Besides, wherever a mysterious account is contained in a book which in the main is accepted, such mystery is cast out as altogether unlikely, probably the poetic version of some early legend. A miracle is recounted; one of the best attested of all. "It could never have happened," the Rationalists say, "for Nature has made it impossible." There have been several classes of Rationalists. Some were men of very worthy character; and, save in their opinions, were entitled to the high respect of their generation. Semler lived a beautiful life; and his glowing utterance on his daughter's death exhibited not only a father's love, but a Christian's faith. Bretschneider, himself a Rationalist, gives the following classification of his confreres: The _first_ class consider Revelation a superstition, and Jesus either an enthusiast or a deceiver. To this class belong Wünsch and Paalzow, but no divine. The second class do not allow that there was any divine operation in Christianity in any way, and refer the origin of Christianity to mere natural causes. They make the life of Christ a mere romance, and himself a member of secret associations; and consider the Scriptures as only human writings in which the word of God is not to be found. To this class belong Bahrdt, Reimarus, and Venturini (the last two not divines), and Brennecke. The third class comprise the persons usually called Rationalists. They acknowledge in Christianity an institution divine, beneficent, and for the good of the world; and Jesus as a messenger of God; and they think that in Scripture is found a true and eternal word of God,--only they deny _any supernatural and miraculous_ working of God, and make the object of Christianity to be the introduction of religion into the world, its preservation, and extension. They distinguish between what is essential and non-essential in Christianity, between what is local and temporal, and what is universal. That is to say, they allow that there is good in Christianity--that all that is good comes from God; but miracles, inspiration, everything _immediately_ coming from God, they wholly disbelieve. Among this class are Kant, Steinbart, Krug, as philosophers; and, as divines, W. A. Teller, Löffler, Thiess, Henke, J. E. C. Schmidt, De Wette, Paulus, Wegscheider, and Röhr. The _fourth_ class go a little higher. They consider the Bible and Christianity as a divine revelation in a higher sense than the Rationalists. They assume a revealing operation of God distinguishable from his common providence; carefully distinguish the periods of this divine direction; found the divinity of Christianity more on its internal evidence than on miracles; but especially separate church belief from the doctrines of Scripture; reform it according to the sentiments of the Divine Word; and require that Reason should try Revelation, and that Revelation should contain nothing against, though it may well have much above, Reason. Döderlein, Morus, Reinhard, Ammon, Schott, Niemeyer, Bretschneider, and others, belong to this class. The only objection to this classification is the one urged by Rose; namely, that only a few of the theological writers would appear to have been violent Rationalists, while the larger class would seem to have held the moderate opinions which Bretschneider himself professes to adopt. The contrary is the fact, as any one at all acquainted with the number of theological writers of the period in question can determine. The spirit of the Rationalistic literature of the time was decidedly violent and destructive. In glancing at some of the general causes which have made Rationalism so successful in its hold upon the popular mind, we find that it has possessed many advantages over almost any other form of skepticism that has appeared during the history of the church. Prominent among these causes were its multiplied affiliations with the church. It had thus a fine vantage-ground on which to wage deadly war against the text and doctrines of the Bible. The first antagonists of Christianity came from without; and they dealt their heaviest blows with a deep and thorough conviction that the whole system they were combating was absolutely false, absurd, and base. And, in fact, many later enemies of Revelation have come from without the pale of Christianity. But the great Coryphæi of Rationalism have sprung from the very bosom of the church, were educated under her maternal care; and, at the same time that they were endeavoring to demolish the superstructure of divine inspiration, they were, in the eyes of the people, its strongest pillars, the accredited spiritual guides of the land, teaching in the most famed universities of the Continent, and preaching in churches which had been hallowed by the struggles and triumphs of the Reformation. German Protestantism cannot complain that Rationalism was the work of acknowledged foes; but is bound to confess, with confusion of face, that it has been produced by her own sons; and that English Deism and French Atheism were welcomed, and transmuted into far more insidious and destructive agencies than they had ever been at home. The Rationalists did not discard the Bible, but professed the strongest attachment to it. They ever boasted that their sole object was the defence and elevation of it. "Because we love it," they said, "we are putting ourselves to all this trouble of elucidating it. It grieves us beyond measure to see how it has been suffering from the vagaries of weak minds. We are going to place it in the hands of impartial Reason; so that, for once at least, it may become plain to the masses. We will call in all the languages and sciences to aid us in exhuming its long-buried treasures, in order that the wayfaring man, though a fool, may appropriate them. And as to the church, who would say aught against our venerable mother? We love her dearly. We confess, indeed, that we love the green fields and gray mountain-rocks better than her Sabbath services; nor do we have much respect for her Sabbath at all. But we cherish her memories, and are proud of her glory. Yet the people do not understand her mysteries well enough. They do not love her as much as we do. Therefore we will stir them up to the performance of long-neglected duties. They ignorantly cling too proudly to her forms and confessions. But we will aid them to behold her in a better light. We know the true path of her prosperity, for do you not see that we have been born and bred within her dear fold? Let everybody follow us. We will bring you into light." Had outspoken enemies of the church and inspiration, though doubly gifted and multiplied in number, set themselves to the same destructive work that engaged the labors of these so-called friends, they could not have inflicted half the injury. They had razed to the ground tower after tower of the popular faith before their designs were discovered. And yet we must do them the credit to say that they did not intend to do the harm that they eventually accomplished. But human agencies achieve their legitimate results without regard to the motives that give them impulse. No doubt, many a Rationalist, as he looked back from his death-bed on the ruin to which he had contributed, trembled with astonishment at the poisonous fruit of his labors. Christ beheld a broader field than we can see, when he said, "A man's foes shall be they of his own household." This religious exterior has been a powerful auxiliary to the growth of Rationalism. In the earlier stages of its history, every utterance regarding the authenticity of any books of Scripture was carefully guarded. The boldest stroke that this species of skepticism has made has been a recent one, Strauss' _Life of Jesus_; but that work was only the outgrowth of long doubt, and the honest, frank expression of what a certain class of Rationalists had been burning to say for a century. Parents who sent their sons to the university to listen to such men as Semler, Thomasius, and Paulus, had not the remotest idea that institutions of such renown for learning and religion were at that very time the hotbeds of rank infidelity. Even the State cabinets that controlled the professorial chairs could not believe for a long time that men who had been chosen to teach theology were spending all their power in corrupting the religious sentiment of the land. Large congregations were sometimes startled with strange announcements from their pastors, to the effect that the supposed miraculous dividing of the Red Sea was only occasioned by certain natural forces of wind and tide; that all the rest of the Old Testament miracles were pure myths; and that many parts of the New Testament were written at a later time and by other authors than those whose names are usually associated with them. "Heterodoxy," was whispered. But the reply was, "Better have heterodoxy than these miserable disputes on Election and the Lord's Supper, to which we have been compelled to listen almost ever since Luther laid his body down to die." Fledgling theologians would come home from the university, and read aloud to the family-group the notes of lectures which they had heard during the last semester. The aged pair, looking up in wonder, would say, "The good and great doctors of our Reformation never taught such things as these." But their sons would answer, "Oh, the world has grown much wiser since their day. New discoveries in philosophy and science have opened new avenues of truth, and our eyes are blessed that we see, and our ears that we hear. Just wait until we get into the pulpit, and we will set the people to thinking in a new way." Thus the enemy was sowing tares while the church was dreaming of a plenteous harvest. Rationalism was very adroit in its initial steps. Its method of betrayal was, Judas-like, to sit in friendly intercourse beside its victim, and afterwards, when the fulness of malevolent inspiration had come, to give the fatal kiss in the presence of enemies. The people did not know the ills they were about to suffer until deliverance was well-nigh hopeless. Had Rationalism begun by laying down its platform and planning the work of proof, the forces of the opposition might have been organized. But it commenced without a platform, and worked long without one. The systematic theology of Bretschneider would by no means be accepted by the entire class of Rationalistic divines. To get a fair conception of what has been the aggregate sentiment of the whole class, one must wander through hundreds of volumes of exegesis, history, philosophy, and romance; and these covering a space of many years. Even when you hold up your treasure, and cry "Eureka!" your shrewd opponent will coolly say that you have given a false interpretation, and have drawn wrong conclusions,--that his masters never claimed such an absurdity. Rationalism looked upon Revelation as a tottering edifice, and set itself busily at work to destroy the entire superstructure. But sometimes it is the surrounding vines and trees that shake in the autumn storm, and not the building itself; and often beneath the worm-eaten bark there is a great oaken heart, which no arm is strong enough and no axe sufficiently keen to cleave. Rationalism has been striving to destroy a house which was built upon a rock; and if it fell not, the fault lay not in the absence of ingenuity and strength of attack, but in the undecayed material and deeply-grounded solidity of the structure. We are not blind to the extenuating circumstances that are adduced for Rationalism. The motives of its founders seemed pure enough, for these men held their life-task to be the purification of faith from the misconceptions of inspiration, and the deliverance of the church from the thraldom of stiff formularies. Some of their successors held that their labors were only philosophical, and hence could not affect theology. They all claimed relationship with the Reformers, and with the good and great of all ages. Bretschneider says that Luther talked of miracles as only fit for the ignorant and vulgar, as apples and pears are for children. Paulus tries to prove the great Saxon a Rationalist by the following circumstance. The Elector of Brandenburg having asked Luther if it were true that he had said he should not stop unless convinced from Scripture, received this reply: "Yes, my lord, unless I am convinced by clear and evident reasons!" It was a favorite view of the Rationalists that the Reformation had been produced by Reason asserting her rights; and it was then an easy step to take, when they claimed as much right to use Reason within the domain of Protestantism as their fathers possessed when within the pale of Catholicism. But there were wide points of difference between the Reformers and Rationalists. The former would return to the spirit and letter of the Word of God, while the latter did not hesitate to depart from both. The former accepted the Bible as it is, making Faith its interpreter; the latter would only construe its utterances as Reason would dictate. With the Reformers there was a conflict between the Bible and the Roman church, but harmony between Reason and the Bible; hence these two homogeneous elements should be united and the rebellious one forever discarded. But with the Rationalists there was an irreconcilable difference between Reason and Revelation, and the latter must be moulded into whatever shape the former chose to mark out. The Reformers celebrated the reunion of both; but the Rationalists never rested as long as there was any hope of putting asunder those whom they believed God had never joined together. But the later Rationalists, least of all, could claim consanguinity with the Reformers. How could they who banished miracles from the Scriptures and reduced Christ to a much lower personality than even the Ebionites declared him to be, dare to range themselves in the circle of the honored ones who had unsealed the long-locked treasures of inspiration, and declared that Christ, instead of being an inferior Socrates, was divine, and the only worthy mediator between God and man? After we accept every reasonable apology for this destructive skepticism there will still be found a large balance against it. There are four considerations which must always be borne in mind when we would decide on the character of any development of religious doubt and innovation. 1. _The necessity for its origin and development_; 2. _Its point of attack_; 3. _The spirit with which it conducts its warfare_; and 4. _The success which it achieves_. Let us see how Rationalism stands the test of these criteria. It must be confessed that the German Protestant church, both the Lutheran and Reformed, called loudly for reinvigoration. But it was Faith, not Reason, that could furnish the remedy. The Pietistic influence was gaining ground and fast achieving a good work; but it was reprobated by the idolaters of Reason, and the tender plant was touched by the fatal frost. Had Pietism, with all its extravagances, been fostered by the intellect of the pulpits and universities it would have accomplished the same work for Germany in the seventeenth that the Wesleys and Whitefield wrought in England in the eighteenth century. There was no call for Rationalism, though its literary contributions to the church and the times will eventually be highly useful; but they were ill-timed in that season of remarkable religious doubt. It was the warmth of the heart, and not the cold logic of the intellect that could rejuvenate the church. Nor do we find the position of Rationalism to be any better when we call to mind that it really acknowledges no hallowed ground. It attacked the most endeared doctrines of our faith, and applied its enginery to those very parts of our citadel which we would be most likely to defend the longest. Had it contented itself with the mere discussion of minor points, with here and there a quibble about a miracle or a prophecy, we could excuse many of its vagaries on the score of enthusiasm. But its premiss was, "We will accept nothing between the two lids of this Book if our Reason cannot fathom it." Hence, all truth, every book of the Bible, even the sacraments of the church, came in for their share of discussion and pruning. In this respect Rationalism takes rank as one of the most corrupt tendencies of infidelity which appears anywhere upon the page of ecclesiastical history. But do we find its spirit mild and amiable? Some of the Rationalists were naturally men of admirable temperament, but this was no effect of their faith. The most lamentable feature of this whole system was the ruthless character of its warfare. The professions of love for the Scriptures and the church, which we so often meet with in the writings of the early Rationalistic divines, were soon laid aside. The demon of destruction presided over the storm. And the work of ruin was rapid, by forced marches and through devious paths,--in the true military style. When the hour of fight came there was no swerving. Men full of the spirit of a bad cause will sometimes fight as valiantly as others for a good one; but it is then that God determines the victor. The evangelical Christians of Protestant Germany saw their banner captured by their foes. And it was their foes who gave the first fire; but they will not be so fortunate in the last encounter. We challenge Deism and even Atheism itself, to furnish proof of a more malignant antipathy to some of the cardinal doctrines of the common faith of Christendom than Rationalism has produced in certain ones of its exponents, and which we shall strive to expose in future pages of this work. Some of the Rationalists were John-like in all they did, save when they discussed the holy truths of inspiration. Then they were possessed by the evil spirit. Nowhere can we find a more deplorable example of the disastrous effects of a false creed on the human character. It is an infallible law of our nature that the mind, not less than the body, becomes depraved by an impure diet. Many persons have been permanently injured by reading the _Briefe über den Rationalismus_, and other works which Rationalism has published against the doctrines of Revelation. As far as the completeness and speed of the work of Rationalism are concerned we shall find that it ranks with the most rapid and destructive errors that have ever risen in conflict with the church. Instead of striving to build up a land that had so long been cursed with the blight of Papacy, and had not yet been redeemed a full century, this evil brought its quota of poison into the university, the pulpit, and the household circle. Nor did it cease, as we shall see, until it corrupted nearly all the land for several generations. To-day the humblest peasant who steps on our shore at Castle Garden will stare in wonder as you speak of the final judgment, the immortality of the soul, and the authenticity of the Scriptures. Naturalism could not live thus long in Italy, nor Deism in England, nor the blind Atheism of the Encyclopædists in France; neither in either land was the work of destruction so complete. But the church has proved herself able to depose many _corruptions of her faith_; yet this _attack upon her faith_ she has still to vanquish thoroughly. It is not works on the evidences of Christianity that she needs for the consummation of her great aim; and we trust that, by the divine blessing, the inquiry into the vagaries of Reason upon which we are now entering will not be without its effect upon the young mind of America. Our task is simply to lift the finger of warning against the increasing influx of Rationalistic tendencies from France and England; which lands had first received them from Germany. One of our great dangers lies in permitting Reason to take our premises and build her own conclusions upon them. There is an intimate union between theology and philosophy; and anything less than the pursuit and cultivation of a sound philosophy will endanger our theology. Tennyson gives a beautiful word of advice when he says: "Hold thou the good: define it well: For fear divine Philosophy Should push beyond her mark, and be Procuress to the Lords of Hell." FOOTNOTES: [1] Tholuck, Herzog's _Real-Encyclopædie_. Art. _Rationalismus_. [2] Trench, _Study of Words_, p. 147. [3] As a fair specimen of the extent to which philological criticism is often carried by some of our German friends, when advocating a doubtful cause, we quote a paragraph in point from Dr. Rückert's work, _Der Rationalismus_, one of the latest and feeblest apologies for neological thought: "What is Rationalism? We must try to get the meaning from the term itself. And what sort of a term is it? Barbarous enough! Its root is _ratio_, but it is directly from _rationalis_ that the word in question is derived. Now this word is good enough in itself, for it signifies _what is conformable to reason, that which possesses the attributes and methods of reason_. Man is a _rational_ animal, and it is his rationality that distinguishes him from all other animals. So much for this part of the word Rationalism. Now for the barbarous part of it, the -ism. This termination belongs to another language, the Greek +-ismos+, and is derived from a verbal ending which cannot be expressed in Latin, namely--+izein+. Now if we examine certain intransitive verbs, such as +mêdizein+, +lakônizein+, +rhômaizein+, +attikizein+, we shall find their common peculiarity is that the persons meant are not the real persons which the words seem to signify, but only act in their capacity. Not a real Mede +mêdizei+; no true Spartan +lakônizei+; and so of all the rest. But those Greeks who would rather belong to the Medes than be freemen, _act like Medes, would prefer to be under Median rule_--+mêdizousin+. This +-ismos+ is a termination from this class of verbs, and is employed in reproach and not in praise. Hence _Rationalist_ is a term of contempt, and means _not one who is really reasonable, but would like to pass for such_." Of course the Doctor concludes that the word is a most flagrant and unrighteous misnomer; but we accept his philology and return him our thanks for his etymological _study_. [4] _Geschichte des Rationalismus und Supernaturalismus_, pp. 3-4. [5] _De Rationalismi_: A Disputation at Leipzig. [6] _State of Protestantism in Germany._ pp. XXII-XXVI. [7] _Thoughts on Rationalism._ pp. 23-32. [8] _Histoire du Rationalisme._ pp. 1-6. [9] _History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe._ By W. E. H. Lecky, M. A. 2 vols. Longmans, London, 1865. [10] _History of the Rise and Spirit of Rationalism in Europe_, vol. I., pp. 183-185. CHAPTER I. CONTROVERSIAL PERIOD SUCCEEDING THE REFORMATION. A work of such magnitude as the Reformation could not easily be consummated in one generation. The real severance from the Roman Catholic church was effected by Luther and Melanchthon; but these men did not live long enough to give the symmetry and polish to their work which it really needed. Unfortunately, their successors failed to perform the necessary task. But lofty as our ideas of the Reformation should be, we must not be blind to the fact that German Protestantism bears sad evidences of early mismanagement. To-day, the Sabbath in Prussia, Baden, and all the Protestant nationalities is hardly distinguishable from that of Bavaria, Austria, Belgium, or France. But a few bold words from Martin Luther on the sanctity of that day, as the Scriptures declare it, would have made it as holy in Germany as it now is in England and the United States. Another error, not so great in itself as in the evils it induced, was the concessions which Protestantism granted to the civil magistrate. The friendly and heroic part which the Elector of Saxony took in the labors of the Reformers, made it a matter of deference to vest much ecclesiastical authority in the civil head. But when, in later years, this confidence was abused, it was not so easy to alter the conditions of power. We see in this very fact one of the underlying causes of the great Rationalistic defection. The individual conscience was allowed almost no freedom at certain periods. The slightest deviation from the mere expression of doctrine was visited with severe penalty. Strigel was imprisoned; Hardenberg was deposed and banished; Peucer doomed to ten years' imprisonment; Cracau put to death on the slightest pretenses; and Huber was deposed and expatriated for a mere variation in stating the Lutheran doctrine that none are excluded from salvation.[11] There were several causes which contributed to the intemperate controversies that sprang up immediately after the Reformation. The Reformers were involved in serious disputes among themselves. Had Luther and Zwinglius never uttered the word _Consubstantiation_ they would have gained multitudes to the cause they both loved so dearly. Many other questions, which unfortunately occupied so much public attention, caused minute divisions among those who should have stood firm and united in that plastic period of the great movement. But it is to the numerous confessions of faith that we must attribute most of these controversies. Perhaps the grave character of the master-points at issue with Romanism demanded these closely-succeeding expressions of doctrinal opinion; but we question if the advantage was not much less than the outlay. First of all came Melanchthon's celebrated _Augsburg Confession_, in 1530. The Roman Catholics replied by their _Confutation_, which, in turn, was answered by Melanchthon in the _Apology of the Confession_. Luther followed in 1536-'37 with his _Articles of Smalcald_, and still later by his two _Catechisms_. In 1577 came the _Formula Concordiæ_, and in 1580 the symbolical canon entitled _Liber Concordiæ_. Amid this mass of doctrinal opinion in which many conflicting points were easy enough to find, it was no small task to know what to accept. The air was filled with the sounds of strife. Those who had fought so steadfastly against Papacy were now turning their weapons in deadly strife against each other. The very names by which Church History has recorded the memory of these strifes indicate the real littleness of many of the points in question. The _Antinomian Controversy_ originated with John Agricola during Luther's life-time. Agricola, in many severe expressions, contended against the utility of the Law; though Mosheim thinks he intended to say nothing more than that the ten laws of Moses were intended chiefly for the Jews, and that Christians are warranted in laying them aside. The _Adiaphoristic Controversy_ was caused by the difference between the moderate views of Melanchthon and the more rigid doctrines of the orthodox Lutherans. We have next the controversy between George Major and Nicolas Amsdorf, as to whether good works are necessary to salvation, or whether they possess a dangerous tendency. The _Synergistic Controversy_ considered the relations of divine grace and human liberty. The dispute between Victorin Strigel and Matthias Flacius was on the nature of Original Sin. Then we have the _Osiandric Controversy_, on the relation of justification to sanctification; and the _Crypto-Calvinistic Controversy_, concerning the Lord's Supper, which extended through the Palatinate to Bremen and through Saxony. The _Formula Concordiæ_ thus sums up the Lutheran controversies: 1. Against the Antinomians insisting on the preaching of the law. 2. Justification as a declarative act, against Osiander; good works are its fruits. 3. Synergism is disavowed, but the difficulty left indefinite. 4. Adiaphora are admitted, but in times of trial declared to be important. 5. Consubstantiation, and ubiquity of Christ's body. The Reformed or Calvinistic church was likewise engaged in doctrinal disputation, but there was more internal unity. Hence, while Calvinism was rooting itself in England, Scotland, and Holland, Lutheranism was spending itself in internal strife. The _Syncretistic Controversy_ was remarkable on account of the great men who engaged in it and the noble purpose which caused it. It arose from an attempt to reconcile all the disputants under the Apostles' Creed. George Calixtus was the chief actor in the movement. He was a most cultivated theologian. But, like so many of his fellow countrymen, whose merits have not yet been appreciated by the English-speaking people, he is little known to our readers of ecclesiastical history. He applied himself first to the study of the Church Fathers, poring over their voluminous productions with all the zeal of an enthusiast. He was eager to gain an insight into contemporaneous theology as it was believed and practised by all the sects. He concluded that he could gain his object only by travel and personal observation. Consequently, he commenced a tour through Belgium, England, France, and various parts of Germany. Nor did he hasten from one place to another, but continued a length of time, in order to become imbued with the local spirit, make the acquaintance of the most illustrious men, hold conversations with them, and commit his thoughts to writing. On his return he commenced the labors of a professor of theology at Helmstedt. Thus, few men ever brought to their aid more extensive acquirements than Calixtus. Besides the advantages he derived from his travels, he was possessed of strong and brilliant natural talents. He was bold and striking in his style; had great originality of conception, and remarkable logical acuteness. Yet he received but little justice from his generation; for almost everything he wrote was made the theme of mad disputes and violent abuse. The controversies of the period made a profound impression on the mind of Calixtus. The anger and personality with which they were conducted were sufficient proof to him of the little service they were able to contribute to either the improvement of theology or the religious growth of the people. To reconcile the various sects was the dream of his whole life. Referring to his early desires in this direction, he thus wrote in later years: "I was cogitating methods, even at that early age, for mitigating the feuds and dissensions of Christians.... One thing, however, is clear, that if men's minds were not bound by prejudices, they would remit a great deal of rigor."[12] Those were sincere words, too, which he said on beholding the rancor of sectarianism: "If I may but help towards the healing of our schisms, I will shrink from no cares and no night-watchings; no effort and no dangers; ... nay, I will never spare either my life or my blood, if so be I may purchase the peace of the church. For nothing can ever be laid upon me so heavy but that I would undertake it, not only with readiness, but also with gladness." The abuses of preaching, then prevalent, were also a theme of intense sorrow to him. What some of them were may be easily gathered from a passage in his course of lectures on the Four Evangelists to the students of Helmstedt. "It is evident," he says, "that in every interpretation the chief heed is to be given to the _literal sense_. In every address to the people this must be made the principal point--so to explain the text of Scripture that men may understand what the Holy Spirit chiefly and primarily intends to teach by it. Inasmuch, too, as the language is addressed to the people, it is the part of prudence to decide what words may suit their capacity. We should strive to state the fact on the doctrine itself in words as fitting and simple as possible, and (omitting all controversial subtleties) to prove the truth as far as it is necessary for salvation to be known, by a few words of Scripture:--few, that they may not escape the memory of the hearers; evident and convincing, lest the proofs seem doubtful, and the minds of the more intelligent be left in suspense and be disturbed to their very exceeding harm. The words of the Fathers (if used by way of evidence) should be used sparingly and with caution; lest the ignorant should confound the Apostles and Prophets with the Fathers, and persuade themselves that all have equal authority. For it is to be borne in mind that sermons are preached not so much for the benefit of the learned as for the sake of the people generally; that they may be rightly instructed in the doctrine of salvation and of Christian morals. In the meantime we must do our best to satisfy _all_; that the simple be not left without needful teaching; the more acute find no want of force and argument; nor the learned charge the preacher with a pride of knowledge foreign to the occasion and not always thorough."[13] In his first controversial work, _Chief Points of the Christian Religion_, Calixtus gave expression to many solid thoughts, which subsequently produced an abundant harvest. His _Theological Apparatus_ was written for young ministers, and designed to meet the immediate necessities of the times. But it is to his great work, the _Desire and Effort for Ecclesiastical Concord_, that we must turn to find the true man spending his greatest power toward the unification of Christians. In terms of communion, he contends, we must distinguish between what is, and what is not, essential to salvation. In all that relates to the Christian mysteries we must content ourselves with the _quod_ and not dispute about the _quo modo_. In stating these mysteries we should use the simplest language. There is a natural brotherhood of men, and this should bind them together in matters of religion. We must love all men, even idolaters, in order to save them. The Jews and Mohammedans stand nearer to us than they, and we should cherish affection also for them. Those who are most closely united to us are all who believe that they can be saved only by the merits of Christ. All who thus recognize the saving power of Christ are members of his body, brothers and sisters with him. We should live, therefore, as members of one family, though adhering to different sects. But we must not be neutral. Every one should join the church to which his own conscientious convictions would lead him. Yet when we do this, we must love all who think differently. Those who have been martyrs for the Christian faith were in the right path; we cannot do better than to follow them in love and doctrine. The outpouring of the Spirit would be meagre indeed if the church existed for the stringent Lutherans alone.[14] But the intense desire of Calixtus to unite the various Christian bodies was poorly rewarded by the sympathy of his contemporaries. He was charged with religious indifference because he looked with mildness on those who differed from him. Though a strict Lutheran, he was accused of secretly favoring the Reformed church; and Arianism and Judaism were imputed to him, because he thought that the doctrine of the Trinity was not revealed with equal clearness in the Old and New Testaments! When he affirmed that the epithets Lutheran, Reformed, and Romanist should not destroy the idea of Christian in each, he was foully vilified for opening the gate of heaven to the abandoned of all the earth. A friendly man said that he was "a good and venerable theologian," and for this utterance the offender was subjected to a heavy fine. The friends of Calixtus were termed by one individual "bloodhounds and perjurers." Another declared that "he tuned his lyre to Judaizers and Arianizers and Romanizers and Calvinizers, and that he showed a spirit so coarse and shameless that never the like had been before." Still another compared him to Julian the Apostate. But previous controversies and the ever-increasing points of divergence had so estranged the different churches that the labors of Calixtus to unite them proved unavailing. His influence was lessened because of the disputes into which his bold undertaking led him. But he quickened national thought, turned theologians to looking deeper into the Scriptures than had been the practice since the Reformation, and established the difference between the essential and non-essential in matters of faith. The cause of his failure to unite the discordant church was his fearless attack on popular error. But his disappointment detracts nothing from the grandeur of his work; and his name is one which will not be denied its meed of praise when theological peace is once more restored to Germany. No generation can duly value a character whose life is not in consonance with the prevailing spirit of that generation. As the military hero must not expect his greenest laurels in time of peace, and as the sage must not dream of praise in an uncultivated period, so must such men as George Calixtus wait for a coming day whose untainted atmosphere will be in harmony with their own pure life and thoughts. The spirituality of the German church having suffered materially from the controversies of which we have spoken, the beneficial results of the Reformation were greatly endangered by them. The German version of the Bible had been an incalculable blessing to the masses; and the commentaries written by the Reformers and their immediate successors gave promise of a wide-spread Scriptural knowledge. But the religious disputes distracted the mind from this necessary department of thought, and neutralized much of the good which would otherwise have been lasting. The danger in which the Protestant church now stood was great. Sectarian strife, formalism, neglect of the high functions of the pastorate, and other flagrant evils of the day, made the devout and far-seeing tremble for the cause which had engaged the great minds of the Reformation era. What could be done? A steady and gigantic effort was necessary to be made or the great Reformation would die by its own hand. Happily there were men, though somewhat removed at first from public observation, whom God was intending to employ as conservative agents. Often in the history of the church, when there has been no prospect of success and progress, and when the votaries of error seemed everywhere triumphant, God was secretly preparing the instrumentality which, Joseph-like, would in due time perform the work of preservation and restoration. There have been pessimists who were ever ready to cry: "Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life." But when the hour of crisis came, God's answer was heard: "I have reserved to myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal." This was true at the present period, for there were a few men whose services were destined to be of great value to the Protestantism of Europe. We mention first of all the prince of mystics, Jacob Boehme, shoemaker of Gorlitz. Gieseler chooses to stigmatize him with "contempt of all Christianity of the letter and of all scientific theology;" but men can only be measured by the standard of their age. Did they serve their generation well? If so, we grant them all honor for their work. Let Boehme be tested by this method, and we do not fear the result. We are not unmindful of many of his absurd notions, of the fanaticism of his followers--for which he is not in the least chargeable--and of the many extravagances scattered through his twenty-eight treatises. But that he intended well, served his church and his Master, led thousands to self-examination, taught his nation that controversy was not the path to success or immortality, his whole career proves beyond confutation. His life, from beginning to end, is a marvel. He was born of poor peasant parentage in 1575; and, after being taught to read and write, was apprenticed to a shoemaker. His time was divided between reading his Bible, going to church, making shoes, and taking care of the cow. But in that boy's heart there were as deep a conscientiousness, imperturbable patience, purity of soul, and love of God as can be found in a like period of spiritual dearth. Having reproved his master one day, he was dispatched on his apprentice-pilgrimage somewhat sooner than he had anticipated. It has been truthfully said of him that his characteristic lay in his pneumatic realism. His was ecstacy of the loftiest type; but with him it was something almost tangible, real, and akin to actual life. A late author, the lamented Vaughan, thus fancies him: "Behold him early in his study, with bolted door. The boy must see to the shop to-day, no sublunary care of awl or leather, customers and groschen, must check the rushing flood of thought. The sunshine streams in emblem, to his high-raised phantasy, of a more glorious light. As he writes, the thin cheeks are flushed, the gray eye kindles, the whole frame is damp, and trembling with excitement. Sheet after sheet is covered. The headlong pen, too precipitate for calligraphy, for punctuation, for spelling, for syntax, dashes on. The lines which darken down the waiting page are, to the writer, furrows, into which heaven is raining a driven shower of celestial seed. On the chapters thus fiercely written the eye of the modern student rests, cool and critical, wearily scanning paragraphs, digressive as Juliet's nurse, and protesting, with contracting eyebrow, that this easy writing is abominably hard to read."[15] He was four times in ecstacy. He writes of himself: "I have never desired to know anything of divine mystery; much less have I wished to seek or find it. I sought only the heart of Jesus Christ, that there I might hide myself from the anger of God and the grasp of the devil. And I have besought God to grant me his grace and Holy Spirit, that he would lead me and take from me everything that would tend to alienate me from him; that I might lose my own will in his, and that I might be his child in his son Jesus Christ. While in this earnest seeking and longing, the door has opened before me, so that I have seen and learned more in a quarter of an hour than I could have gained in many years at great schools.... When I think why it is that I write as I do, I learn that my spirit is set on fire of this spirit about which I write. If I would set down other things, I cannot do it: a living fire seems to be kindled up within me. I have prayed God many hundreds of times, weeping, that if my knowledge did not contribute to his honor and the improvement of my brethren, he would take it away from me, and hold me only in his love. But I found that my weeping only made the inner fire burn all the more; and it has been in such ecstacy and knowledge that I have composed my works." The _Aurora_ was his greatest production. His extreme modesty forbade the publication of it; and it was first discovered accidentally in manuscript by a nobleman who was visiting him. Of the literary character of his works Schlegel says: "If we consider him merely as a poet, and in comparison with other Christian poets who have attempted the same supernatural themes--such as Klopstock, Milton, or even Dante,--we shall find that in fulness of emotion and depth of imagination he almost surpasses them. And in poetic expression and single beauties he does not stand a whit behind them. The great intellectual wealth of the German language has rarely been revealed to such an extent in any age as in this writer. His power of imagery flowed from an inexhaustible fountain." His last words declared the inward life of the man, "O Lord of Sabaoth save me according to thy pleasure! O thou crucified Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, and take me to thy kingdom! Now I am going into Paradise!" John Arndt was not the subtle mystic that Boehme was, and his writings are subjected to fewer misapprehensions. The service he rendered the church and the cause of truth was important; and his influence is still felt upon the practical life of the German people. While yet young he no sooner became awakened to his spiritual condition then he saw the great religious defects of his day. He first yielded to the prevalent passion for the study of chemistry and medicine; but, through a severe illness, he was subsequently led to give himself to the service of God. But few works have obtained the celebrity which his _True Christianity_ has enjoyed, not only while its author lived, but at every period since that time. He was induced to write it on account of the controversial and formal spirit which petrified the church. In a letter to Duke Augustus, in 1621, he thus explained his motives: "I have first endeavored to withdraw the minds of students and preachers from this disputation and contentious theology which threatens to bring upon us once more the evil of a scholastic theology. Another reason that has impelled me to this course is my strong desire to incline dead Christians to become fruitful. A third one is to lead people from the study of human theory and science to the real exercise of faith and devotion. A fourth reason is to show what that true Christian life is which harmonizes with vital faith--and what that is which Paul meant when he said, 'I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'" Immediately after the publication of the _True Christianity_ it found a hearty welcome. The learned and ignorant took equal pleasure in its living thoughts. Next to the Bible and Kempis' _Imitation of Christ_, it has been circulated more widely on the Continent than any other book. It was translated into all the European languages, and missionaries rendered it into heathen tongues. The Roman Catholics received it, and claimed it as one of their treasures. When Professor Anton visited the Jesuit Library at Madrid, in 1687, he inquired for the best ascetical writer. The librarian produced a copy of Arndt's _True Christianity_, which, though without preface or introduction, had this simple expression on the first page: "_This book is more edifying than all others._" The spirit with which Arndt wrote all his works was calm and heavenly. He possessed that beautiful Moravian type of character which defied persecution by its submission, love, tenderness, and energy. In referring to his many enemies he wrote on one occasion, "I am delighted to suffer, and I would endure a thousand times more, sooner than bury my talent." He was somewhat ascetical in temperament, but he differed from all that class of thinkers by the clearness of his appreciation of the wants of his time and his unwearied efforts to meet them successfully. He did not escape the censure of mysticism; for that was more than any devout spirit in that age could expect. Some of the most learned took umbrage at his ardent sentiments and bitter complaint at the impiety of his times. The opposition to him was well organized, and continued long after his death. Even at the end of the seventeenth century we find various writers replying to his celebrated work. But all the blows of his adversaries have only tended to deepen the love of the people for his name and writings. It is not an unfrequent occurrence for minds in Germany, even at the present day, to be led to accept the truths of the Gospel by the reading of the _True Christianity_. What Thomas à Kempis was to the pre-Reformation age, Fenelon to France, and Jeremy Taylor to England, John Arndt has been to the Protestant countries of the Continent for the last three centuries. Superintendent Wagner only gave expression to the world's real conviction when he wrote of him: "_Vir placidus, candidus, pius et doctus._" A personal friend and spiritual son of Arndt, John Gerhard, followed closely in his footsteps. He was possessed of the same general characteristics which we have traced in connection with the two preceding names. His love was boundless, his spirit unruffled, his piety deep and lasting. He was more serviceable in some respects to the interests of the orthodox church than any other theologian of that time. Like Arndt he had been inclined to the study of medicine, but a dangerous sickness turned his mind to religious contemplation and to the study of theology. His mental capacities had been cast in a great mould. He grasped whatever he undertook with gigantic comprehension. His attainments were so rapid that at the age of twenty-four he received the degree of doctor of divinity; and, somewhat later, was the most famous and admired of all the professors of the university of Jena. His influence was such that princes placed themselves before him for his counsel, and the highest ecclesiastical tribunals deemed themselves honored in receiving a share of his attention. His works embrace the departments of exegesis, doctrine, and practical religion. But it was chiefly the two former branches of theology that engaged his attention. In his _Exegetical Explication of Particular Passages_ he accomplished an important service for the church. He introduced all the leading doctrines of inspiration into this work, and discussed the merits of contemporary controversy in connection with them. He explained those almost indefinable terms which had been so variously employed by the schoolmen, and summed up the literature on the points in question. His style was prolix but his conclusions carried great weight with them. As a specimen of his tedious method, he begins his discussion of original sin with the questions, "Is there such a thing as original sin? Then, what is it? What is its subject? How is it continued?" Many other inquiries are made in the same manner, but it is only after a hundred pages have been passed over that he gives his own definition of it. But we should not smile at such latitude of style when we remember the literary standard of those times. The German language was then in its plastic state; and by far the greater portion of writers had been much more interested in gaining points than rounding periods. It is almost a hopeless task to wade through the ridiculously lengthy terms of the seventeenth century. But it may be said, in their defence, that the method of verbose composition was not without some appearance of utility. The intelligence of the reader could not be relied upon to such an extent as now, and the eager eyes of so many opponents made it necessary to guard every word of importance with a wall of sentences. We have now to mention a fourth actor in the great drama of these dangerous times, John Valentine Andreä. His mind was not of the serious tone that marked the other writers of whom we have spoken. That he looked deeply, calmly, and wisely into the surrounding evils no one can doubt. Every work he wrote established this fact. But the method which he adopted to cure them was of a totally different order from that employed by others. His personal history bears all the evidences of romance. He was the son of a poor widow, who, having spent all her property to give him an education, found her boy at the conclusion of his studies desirous of making the usual academic tour. She has but a pittance left, so she puts into his hand twelve kreutzer, and a rusty old coin, as a pocketpiece. Her eyes follow him until they are blinded in a flood of tears. Years pass on and Valentine comes home, having travelled, by dint of self-denial and perseverance, over the most interesting portions of the Continent. He returns to the fatherland and settles quietly down as an orthodox Lutheran pastor. It is now that the evils of his generation loom up before him in terrible blackness. He attacks them by satire. He sits down and writes a little book, dedicated to all the great men of Europe, and entitled, _The Discovery of the Brotherhood of the Honorable Order of the Holy Cross_. This work aims to show that there had once lived a certain Christian Rosenkranz. He was a man of remarkable learning, and communicated his knowledge to eight disciples, who lived with him, in a house called the Temple of the Holy Ghost. This building has come to light, and behold the uncorrupted body of Rosenkranz, who has been dead a hundred and twenty years! The various disciples whom he left, and who are scattered throughout Germany, claim to be true Protestants, and call upon all men to help them in their efforts to promote learning and religion. They possess great secrets and the world ought to know them. They are perfectly at home in bottling the elixir of life, and have been in possession of the philosopher's stone a long time. Their great object is to benefit their fellow creatures. Who will follow them? Such was the burden of Andreä's little book. The consequence was, it set all Germany on fire. People never dreamed for a moment that it was a burlesque on the times. Thousands left their labor to follow the advice of the earnest disciples of Rosenkranz. On seeing that he had caused some mischief, Andreä wrote book after book affirming that his previous one on Christian Rosenkranz was a pure fiction intended to teach a useful lesson. But nobody believed him; the people were sure that they could not be so sadly deceived. His first work was the only one that was heartily received; and multitudes ran mad after the fabulous knowledge of the famous master and his imaginary disciples. But when the land awoke to the real idea of Andreä, the reaction was tremendous. Perhaps no satire, not even the _Laus Stultitiæ_ of Erasmus, created such a fury of excitement as this; seldom has one been followed with more astounding and beneficial results. We say _beneficial_ from purpose; for _Andreä succeeded in attracting the popular mind from its old habits of controversy_. This was his great service. As a man he was of unexceptionable life and ardent sympathies. He passed peacefully to his rest after uttering the words, "It is our joy that our names are written in the Book of Life." Thus were these devoted men performing their great mission of improving the life of the Church. We shall soon see how low the current of that life was, and how great the burden placed upon them. Each one had his special endowment, and was eminently qualified to contribute to a more healthy religious tone throughout the Protestant lands. But, after all, their work was only preparative. The culmination of their labors was, in later years, the great Pietistic Reform; and they marked out the path along which Spener subsequently passed. Theirs was a great part in the drama of providence; but their achievements would have accomplished no permanent advantage had they not been succeeded by the triumphs of the Father of Pietism. It has sometimes been a noticeable part of the divine plan in our great struggles with the powers of darkness, that, when the heroes of truth fall at their post, the contest does not need to rage long before others, with hearts of equal fervor and weapons more brightly polished, take their places in the advancing lines. What wonder, then, that, by and by, the mountains echo back the shouts of victory! FOOTNOTES: [11] Pusey, _Historical Inquiry_, pp. 16, 17. [12] _Responsum Moguntinis Theologis_, p. 129. [13] _Conc. Evang._, in Henke, vol. I. p. 274, note. [14] Dowding, _Life and Correspondence of Calixtus_, pp. 313-315. [15] _Hours with the Mystics_, vol. 2, p. 67. CHAPTER II. RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE PROTESTANT CHURCH AT THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA--1648. Theological strife was the precursor of the all-devastating Thirty Years' War. The forces had been long at work before the fearful carnage began. The principles involved were of such moment that, whatever power took part in the struggle, did so with all the energy with which it was endowed. The Emperor Rudolph II. had, in 1609, guaranteed to Bohemia the liberty of Protestantism, but his successor, Matthias, violated the pledge by preventing the erection of a Protestant church edifice. The imperial councillors were cast out of the window; the priests driven off; and the Elector Frederick V. of the Palatinate, chosen King of Bohemia. But the Protestants were overcome. Ferdinand II. tore up the imperial pledge; led back the priests into authority, and expelled the Protestant clergy. Certain concessions having been previously made to the Protestants, Ferdinand II. issued in 1629 his infamous _Edict of Restitution_, by which the Protestants were to deliver up all the monasteries confiscated after the Treaty of Passau. Calvinists were excluded from the Peace; and the Catholic States were granted unconditional liberty to suppress Protestantism in their hereditary countries.[16] The fearful carnage commenced in bitter earnestness. No war was ever carried on with more desperation; none can be found more repulsive in brutality, or more beautiful in fortitude and sublime in bravery. Great sanguinary contests often receive their appellation from the influences that produce them, or the nations conducting them; but this one, extending from 1618 to 1648, combined all these elements to such an extent that the historian finds it most convenient to denominate it by the period of its duration. It was the bloody mould in which the continent of Europe received its modern shape. It extended, with but slight exceptions, over the entire extent of Germany. Some portions of that singularly picturesque country were permitted to hope for immunity from its devastations; but, by and by, they too were visited; and all that remained were a decimated population and smoking ruins. Pastoral work was necessarily neglected. Large sections of the country were deprived of all spiritual cultivation and oversight. The children were deprived of both their natural protectors and those guardians whom the church had provided for them. Out of ten hundred and forty-six pastors in Würtemberg, for example, only three hundred and thirty were left by the ravages of war. Food could hardly be provided for the Seminary students, few as these were; for nearly all the young men had been compelled to yield to the repeated conscriptions. The princes themselves were in many cases driven from their jurisdiction; and when the prince was gone the church was usually disorganized. Duke Eberhard of Würtemberg and many of the Rhenish rulers were compelled to seek an asylum in Strasburg. The Margrave of Baden-Durlach was a refugee to Switzerland; Dukes Adolph Frederic I. and John II. of Mecklenburg fled to Lübeck.[17] The desolation caused by this protracted war baffles all description. No writer has been competent for it. Schiller found it a task to which even his fervid imagination and glowing diction could not measure. Wherever it went it left destruction in its path. The population of Bohemia was reduced from three millions to seven hundred and eighty thousand. Only a fiftieth part of the inhabitants of the Rhine-lands were left alive. Saxony lost nine hundred thousand of her citizens within the brief space of two years. The city of Augsburg could number only eighteen thousand out of her enterprising population of eighty thousand. In 1646 alone, Bavaria saw more than one hundred of her thriving towns laid in ashes; while little Hesse lost seventeen cities, forty-seven castles, and four hundred towns. The cruelty which characterized some of the participants in this war may be conceived from the awful scene of the siege of Magdeburg; a picture for which, says Schiller, "History has no speech, and Poetry no pencil." "Neither childhood, nor age," another author affirms, "nor sex, nor rank, nor beauty were able to disarm the conqueror's wrath. Wives were mishandled in the arms of their husbands, daughters at the feet of their fathers. Women were found beheaded in a church, whilst the troopers amused themselves by throwing infants into the flames, or by spearing sucklings at their mothers' breasts. 'Come again in an hour,' was Tilly's only reply when some of his officers (utterly horrified at what they saw) besought him to put a hand upon this bath of blood:--'Come again in an hour and I will see what I can do. The soldier must have something for his labor and risk.' With unchecked fury did these horrors go forward, till smoke and flame set bounds to plunder. The city had been fired in several places; and a gale spread the flames with rampant speed. In less than twelve hours the town lay in ashes; two churches, and some few huts excepted. Scarcely had the rage of the fire slackened, when the troops returned again to grope for plunder. Horrible was the scene which now presented itself. Living men crept out from under corpses; lost children, shrieking, sought their parents; infants were sucking the dead breasts of their mothers. More than six thousand bodies were thrown into the Elbe, before the streets could be made passable; whilst an infinitely larger number were consumed by the fire. Thirty thousand persons are supposed to have perished."[18] At the outset of the war, and at many times during its continuance, the Protestants fought with but little apparent prospect of success. But their heroic zeal continued unabated until it was crowned with triumph. The peace of Westphalia, which concluded the protracted struggle, secured the abolition of the oppressive Decree of 1635; granted legal rights to the Protestant churches; established Lutheranism in Central Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Livonia; recognized the Swiss and Dutch Republics; and, under certain conditions, allowed future changes of religion by princes and people.[19] The religious effect of the first few years of this sanguinary period was beneficial. There were indications of more seriousness in common life, and a deeper love of truth among the thinking circles. The people manifested a disposition to trust in the Divine arm for deliverance from their sorrows; and this new confidence developed itself particularly in benefactions for the impoverished and young. But as the war progressed and peace seemed farther off with every new year, the heart of the people relaxed into coldness, distrust, and desperation. Thus, dark as was the picture of religious life before the outbreak of hostilities, it was darker still during their progress and at their close. So literally was this the case that Kahnis declares its termination to have been the beginning of the reign of secularism. He says: "Up to the period of the Thirty Years' War religion was the chief moving power of the time. The question regarding the confession prevailed over everything, and even secular questions, that they might excite interest and be carried, were compelled to clothe themselves in the garb of religion. But the result of the Thirty Years' War was indifference, not only to the confession, but to religion in general. Ever since that period secular interests decidedly occupy the foreground, and the leading power of Europe is France."[20] It shall now be our business to inquire into that dwarfed vitality which Kahnis elevates so high as to denominate "religion." We believe that, in all the course of ecclesiastical history on the Continent, no period of equal intelligence is marked by the same degree of religious coldness and petrifaction. Theology was a special sufferer. The most useful departments were neglected, while the least essential were raised to superlative importance. Andreä places the following language on the neglect of the study of church history, in the mouth of Truth: "History, since she is exiled with me, readily consents to be silent and laughs at the experience of those who, because they can but relate their exploits from the A. B. C. school to the Professor's chair, that is, from the rod to the sceptre, dream that they are in possession of a compendium of the whole world. Hence their city is to them a compendium of the world, their class book a library, their school a monarchy, their doctor's cap a diadem, their rod of office a lictor's staff, each scholastic rule an anathema: in short everything appears to them exaggerated. Oh! the hapless human learning that is shut up in these scholastic Athens, that whatever offences may everywhere besides be committed by ignorance, all the severest punishments are in store for these alone to overwhelm it." Again, in his _Christianopolis_, or ideal Christian state, he says: "Since the inhabitants of Christianopolis value the church above everything else in this world, they are occupied in her history more than in any other. For since this is the ark which contains those who are to be saved, they prefer to busy themselves about it more than about all the waters of the deluge. They relate then by what immense mercy of God this soul flock was brought together, received into covenant, formed by laws enforced by his word; by what weak instruments it was extended, by what mighty engines attacked, by what manifest aid defended; what blood and prayers its safety had cost; amid what anger of Satan the standard of the Cross triumphed; how easily the tares spring up; how often its light is contracted to a narrow space; what great eclipses, and how very great and thick an one it suffered under Antichrist; how it has sometimes emerged from desperate circumstances, and especially in this our age under the mighty Luther; with what defilement and spots it is often stained; how much it is conversant with the flesh. Many other such things they have in store; as also its periodical changes, and the harmonious vicissitudes of its seasons. They diligently impress them on the youth that they may learn to trust in God, to mistrust the flesh, to despise the threats of the world, to endure the darkness of this age. And this is right, however others may not even dissemble their neglect of ecclesiastical history; for how little any knowledge of it is now required even from ecclesiastics, or how, where it is found, it is sold cheap in comparison with a syllogism or two--it does not belong to this place to discuss more at length." The existing state of impiety may be inferred from the low estimate of childhood. The Roman Catholic Church of that day was not so careful of the indoctrination of the young as she is at the present time. Mathesius says that in the twenty-five years he spent within her fold he had seen no case in which the catechism had been elucidated, and that he had not once heard it explained from the pulpit. Luther took great pains to have children and the lowest classes trained in the elements of religious knowledge. His express language, in reference to the catechetical instruction of the young and ignorant was, "It is not merely enough that they should be taught and counselled, but care must be taken that, in the answers returned, every sentence must be evidently understood." But like so many other lessons of the great Reformer, this was not remembered by his successors; and in course of time all that the youth and laboring classes could boast in favor of their doctrinal training was a smattering of contemporary controversy. There were sermons and expository lectures intended for children; but they were often at unseasonable hours, and of such insufferable dryness as to tax the mind and patience of maturity. A certain author, in a catalogue of this class of literature, enumerates _fifteen hundred and ninety catechetical sermons for the young that were directed solely against the Calvinists_! No one is better able to inform us, however, of the low state of religious training than he who labored most for its improvement. Spener's language, though written in reference to the melancholy prostration which his own eyes beheld, applies equally well to the very time of which we speak: "If one were to say that catechizing and the Christian instruction of youth is one of the principal, most important, and most necessary of our duties, and not of less value than preaching, would he not be contradicted or even laughed at by many uninstructed preachers, or by others ignorant of their duty, who seek only their own honor; as if such care were too small and contemptible for an office instituted for more important employment? Yet such is but the real truth. Meantime this duty is by many considered so ridiculous that there are preachers who think it degrading to their dignity to undertake it, or even see that it is diligently and faithfully performed by those appointed to it. It is no credit to our evangelical churches that catechetical instruction has been so little or not at all thought of in so many places; though even Luther recommended it so strongly, and gave us so many admirable writings to promote it. But now it either does not exist at all, or is performed negligently, and thrown almost entirely upon schools and schoolmasters. "These duties should not have been left to schoolmasters; for these are almost wholly unfit to discharge them on account of their own meagre attainments. But preachers should recollect that the souls of the _youth_ are intrusted to them, and that they must give an account of them. They should therefore submit to this as well as to the other duties of their office. It is not indeed anywhere prescribed who among them should perform these duties. In places where there are several clergymen, and the pastors and superintendents are laden with so many other occupations that they cannot perform this duty, we cannot object to its being left for the deacons, or for others who may have more time for it. In large churches able catechists might be appointed. Superintendents, however, and theologians in high office would not do amiss if they would sometimes countenance this exercise by their presence, and even now and then perform it themselves in order to encourage others. If there were some who would voluntarily commence it themselves, _it would not be interpreted ill, or thought below their dignity_. "I have become acquainted with the character of most instructors of youth, and I find that their real aim is not to lead the soul of youth to God, but their pay also, that they are chiefly not fit to impart a correct knowledge of God since they do not possess it themselves. And indeed there are very many who have not a knowledge even of the _letter_ of that which is or is not to be believed; much less do they comprehend thoroughly and spiritually what is the will of God in faith and its fruits. Catechizing is as necessary to the church as any other religious agency can be." We have also the important authority of Calixtus on the sad condition of the education of the young. "The chief cause and origin of the decay of learning," says he, "now tending to extinction, (which may God avert!) I hold for my own part, to be this:--that the younger children are not well grounded in the minor schools. Foundations ought to be laid there, which might afterwards support the whole weight of solid learning and true erudition. The children ought to learn from genuine authors the Greek and Latin languages; the Keys (as they are) of those treasures which preceding ages have laid up for our use. And they ought so to learn, as to be able to appreciate the thoughts of others (specially of the best authors), and to express their own in suitable and perspicuous words.... But now, in many places, we see the reverse of all this. Before they can speak (passing by preposterously, the matters essential to ultimate success), the boys are made to proceed, or rather leap, to higher subjects; 'real' subjects, as we have learned to call them. Pedagogues of this stamp seem to themselves learned, whilst they are teaching what they have never themselves mastered; and what their scholars neither understand, nor at their age _can_ understand. In the mean time the writings of those good authors, who, by all past ages, have been recognized as masters of literature and style, are struck out of their hands, and they (the schoolmasters) substitute their own comments; disputing in a circle of children about Anti-Christ and the doctrine of predestination."[21] The theological literature of these times was voluminous and confused. A work on an unimportant subject would occupy a dozen volumes, and then the writer would give his finishing touches with the apology that he had not done justice to his theme. No nation publishes to such an extent as Protestant Germany in the nineteenth century; but one cannot be adequately convinced of the extent of the literary activity of her theologians of the former half of the seventeenth century without loitering among the alcoves of her antiquarian bookstores of the present day. The dusty tomes testify, by their multitude and care, to the character of the ecclesiastical age that gave them birth. The Germans do not sell their old books to the paper merchants because they are old. It is sacrilege to convert the printed sheet back again to pulp. The libraries of the universities are located in those portions of the city where land is cheap; the catalogue is a small library of itself. The Leipzig Fair keeps much of this long-printed literature before the world. It changes hands, migrates to Tübingen, Halle, or some other book-loving place; passes through a generation of owners, and turns up in some other spot, but little the worse for wear. The peasant is found at the book auction; the professor considers it a white day when a replenished purse and the sale of an old library are simultaneous facts. And when the hour arrives, the preparations are sometimes of the most comfortable and leisure-inviting character. We once attended an auction in picturesque old Brunswick which continued three days; and coffee, beer, sandwiches and other refreshments were freely enjoyed at frequent intervals by nearly all present. Every one had a long breathing spell when the auctioneer, or any one of his numerous secretaries, sipped his coffee and replenished his pipe. We cannot affirm that there was as much a deficiency of talent or learning at the time of which we speak, as there was of an humble, subdued religious spirit, and of clearness of conception, all of which are equally necessary to give a high tone to theological writing and thinking. Dr. Pusey says of the theologians, that "they were highly learned but deficient in scientific spirit, freedom from prejudice, destitute of comprehensive and discriminating views, without which mere knowledge is useless." An illustration is furnished in Calov's mammoth production, entitled, _Systema locorum Theologicorum e sacra potissimum scriptura et antiquitate, nec non adversariorum confessione doctrinam, praxia et controversiarum fidei, cum veterum tum inprimis recentiorum pertractationem luculentam exhibens_. The author tried faithfully to redeem his pledge; and though he asserted that he had aimed at conciseness, his work only terminated with the twelfth quarto volume! The subject of the first part was the nature of Theology, Religion, Divine Inspiration, Holy Scriptures, and the articles of Faith. He defined Theology to be, that practical skill in the knowledge of true religion, as drawn from divine revelation, which is calculated to lead man after the fall through faith to eternal life. One of the important questions propounded is: "Are the Calvinists to be considered heretics, and do they not teach very dangerous errors?" Of course an affirmative reply is returned with cogent reasons therefor. At the end of this part there is a prolix recital of the many errors of George Calixtus and his followers. Calov conformed to the _causal_ method of composition. There were two systems of arrangement in vogue, the _causal_ and _defining_. Under the former were grouped the _causæ principales, et minus principales, instrumentales, efficientes, materiales, formales, finales_. Under the latter, a definition was prefixed to each article, which comprised the whole doctrine of the church and all the opposed heresies. This was then redundantly illustrated until the subject was supposed to be exhausted. Schertzer, in his doctrinal work, begins with a definition of Christ, and occupies three quarto pages with one sentence. We venture only its commencement: "Christ is God-man; God and man, born of his heavenly Father and his virgin mother; and Christ is according to his humanity the natural son of God, constant in his unity to one person, his divine and human nature impeccable." The favorite class-book of those times was Koenig's _Theologia positiva acroamatica synoptice tractata_; and it does but partial justice to this work to say that in dryness and meagreness it almost defies a parallel. There was a lamentable decrease of exegetical works and lectures toward the middle of the seventeenth century. The Reformation was the signal for Scriptural study; and the Reformers declared the word of God to be the origin of their gigantic movement. All the ordinances of the early Lutheran Church were in strict keeping with this principle. The Elector Augustus, in his church order of 1580, established professors _solely for the elucidation_ of the Scriptures. He appointed two to lecture on the Old Testament, one on the Pentateuch and the other on the prophets; and two on the New Testament. His command was, that they should all read the Scriptures, as far as they could, in the same languages in which the prophets and apostles had written. Many of the universities had no other professors of theology than exegetical lecturers. The languages of the Bible were diligently studied, and great progress was made in their scientific understanding. But after the rise of the long and exciting controversies of which we have spoken, the death-blow was given to Scriptural interpretation. The method of theological study was to spend the first year in learning what is orthodox. The second was occupied in obtaining a knowledge of controversies; the third was devoted to the Scriptures, a more intimate knowledge of controversial literature, and the scholastics. One day in the week was spent with the Fathers, Church Councils, and moral theology. The later years were chiefly consumed in controversial practice, as a preparation for the great arena. Francke as truthfully described these times as his own when he said: "Youths are sent to the universities with a moderate knowledge of Latin; but of Greek and especially of Hebrew they have next to none. And it would even then have been well, if what had been neglected before had been made up in the universities. There, however, most are borne, as by a torrent, with the multitude; they flock to logical, metaphysical, ethical, polemical, physical, pneumatical lectures and what not; treating least of all those things whose benefit is most permanent in their future office, especially deferring, and at last neglecting, the study of the sacred languages." But while there were many evidences of religious torpor there were none more marked and unmistakable than the preaching of that time. The pulpit being an invariable index of the state of the national heart, it was not less the case during the present period. The preaching was of the most formal and methodical texture. It assumed a rhetorical and poetical appearance; the people calling it the _Italian style_. Petrarch had given shape to Italian thought, and through his influence Germany became sated with poetic imagery and overwrought fancy. Sagittarius founded a stipend for the preaching of a yearly sermon in the University Church "which should be more a practical illustration of Christian doctrine than of _lofty speech_." Emblematical sermons were sometimes delivered in lengthy series. Christopher Sunday descanted on the _Perpetual Heart-Calendar_, treating of genera and species, and dividing his themes into "Remarkable, Historical, and Annual events, Particular numbers, and the amounts of Roman currency, the Four Seasons, the Seven Planets, the Twelve Heavenly signs, and many aspects and useful directions." All these, this divine claimed, are to be found in the Gospel as in a perpetual calendar of the heart. Another preacher adopted as his theme for a funeral sermon, _The Secret of Roses and Flowers_. Daniel Keck preached a discourse in 1642 from Romans viii. 18, calling his subject "The Apostolic Syllogism," dividing it into _subject_, _predicate_, and _conclusion_. The subject, _suffering_, was again divided into _wicked_, _voluntary_, _stolid_ and _righteous_; and these further classed into _natural_, _civil_ and _spiritual_ suffering. A sermon on Zaccheus from the words, _He was little of stature_, claims for its theme, "The stature and size of Zaccheus." The first division is, _he_; the second, _was_; third, _small stature_. Application _first_, The text teaches us the variety of God's works; _second_, it consoles the poor; _third_, it teaches us to make amends for our personal defects by virtue. Tholuck well asks, who would imagine that the author of this sermon was the minstrel of "When the early sun arises," "Oh Jesus, all thy bleeding wounds," and so many other deeply earnest Christian songs which have touched the hearts of many generations,--the immortal Hermann von Köben? A pastor of Wernigerode preached from Matthew x. 30. His divisions were, 1: Our hair--its origin, style, form and natural circumstances. 2: On the right use of the human hair. 3: The memories, admonition, warning and consolation that have come from the human hair. 4: How hair can be used in a Christian way! A Brunswick pastor commenced his Sabbath discourse on one occasion with the words, "A preacher must have three things; a _good conscience_, a _good bite_, and a _good kiss_;" wherefore his transition was made to the theme under consideration: "_an increase of my salary_." But it is needless to continue illustrations of the almost universal dearth of preaching. One hardly knows whether to laugh at its absurdity or weep over its prostitution. Andreä's caustic pen revelled in satire at the depreciation of this important agency of good. Some of his ideas are by no means ill-timed in the present century. In the Dialogue of the Pulpit Orator he thus speaks:[22] A. Tell me earnestly, I pray you, what you find wanting in my present sermon. B. One thing only, but that a main point. A. It cannot be in the arrangement? B. It was, I believe, according to all the rules of the methods. A. Then the pronunciation was defective? B. You must speak as God has made you; only you must not be an imitator. A. Then the action was wrong? B. About that I am indifferent, if it be only quiet and not gesticulatory. A. My sermon must have been much too long? B. _If a sermon be good it can't be too long: a bad one always is._ A. Certainly I did not produce illustrations enough? B. You could not have meant to empty a basket of quotations. A. Then I spoke too slow? B. Ha! In the pulpit we must teach, not talk too volubly. A. I should have spoken louder too? B. I like the voice of man, not the braying of an ass. A. Should I not have used more subtle distinctions? B. You were there to instruct the ignorant, not to dispute with heretics. A. Do then explain yourself more fully. B. Hear me: you said, "I think much, very much," which was good, but it only flowed through you as through a pipe. A. Indeed! B. Thus, much contracted the taste of the pipe and savored accordingly. A. No good compliment, this. B. It is the best I can make. For when you only cast forth good and wholesome doctrines, and show nothing of them expressed in your life and manners, are you not placed out of yourself to speak one thing and think another? You make us believe that your holy words are only practised solemn words, without any real feeling, just as poets make bridal songs and funeral dirges whenever called upon. You have many passages of Scripture in readiness; but they do not exhort, strengthen and instruct you, though others die with joy at hearing the divine word. A. You are severe upon me. B. It is not often the case that the worst men preach the best. I wish but one thing: that for the future you should say nothing but what you express in action by your example, or at least realize by serious endeavors after obedience to God. A. This is harsh enough. B. It is incomparably harsher, however, to openly contradict oneself before God both in words and works, and to convert the divine service into an empty clatter of words. A. You speak truly. B. And it is just as true, believe me, that a simple, plain sermon, exhibited and sealed by your life, is more valuable than a thousand clever declamations. This want of consistency between the profession of the clergy and their daily life is indeed a dark picture. While we would not forget that there were noble exceptions to all the examples of declension that we have adduced, and that there were also exemplary illustrations of ministerial devotion amid all the deformity of these times, we must maintain that the ministerial spirit which characterized this period was not merely cold and indifferent, but wicked, and to a great extent abandoned. The scenes of clerical immorality are enough to chill one's blood even at the distance of more than two centuries. The preachers were not licensed to preach until they had been graduated through a course of study extending from five to ten years. According to the judgment of the Lutheran Church, they must be fitted intellectually for exercising the functions of their office. But after settlement over the churches of the land, their conduct furnishes a sad proof that their intellectual qualifications were utterly barren without the more important adjunct of spiritual regeneration. They were not converted men, as the sequel will plainly show. The salary allowed them was usually small; and this is the apology pleaded for them by their friends; but scanty salaries are the outgrowth of scanty ministerial piety. The people, in no age of the world, have refused a proper and sufficient support to a zealous, God-fearing ministry. A Church Order of 1600 reads thus: "Since we have received information that servants of the church (clergy) and schoolmasters, the parochial teachers, are guilty of whoredom and fornication, we command that if they are _notoriously_ guilty they shall be suspended. We learn, too, that some of the village pastors do not possess the Bible. We command that they shall get a Bible and Concordance. Those whom we formerly suspended shall remain so until they give proof of a reformation." A pastor Pfeifer of Neukirchen and Lassau lived five unhappy years with his congregation; and from mere private prejudice refused the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to the sick and dying. On communion-day he overturned the baskets of the fish-venders; was wounded for his conduct; and then went into his church to the performance of his ministerial duties. He did not scruple to administer the elements with his bloody hands. Pastor Johansen of Detzböll wrote in his Church Record in 1647, the following: "The persons whom I will name have persecuted me in my office, but God delivered me miraculously out of their hands. J. Dirksen struck me down with a pitchfork: I was taken home as dead but recovered again; some years afterwards he was struck dead, and died in the street. J. Volkwartsen struck me with my own spade. Subsequently he was killed by his brother. Where his soul went, God only knows. P. Peusen was on the point of stabbing me through, but M. Payens saved me. A. Frese committed adultery with my wife, and followed me with a loaded rifle. D. Momsen broke two of my right ribs: he apologized afterwards for his offence. I forgave him. O Jesus, protect me and thy poor Christianity, that I may praise thee in eternity!" A church made the following charges against its pastor: I. He called certain people "scoundrels" from the pulpit; to which the offender pleaded "guilty." II. He had grown so angry in his sermon that he afterwards forgot the Lord's Prayer. He urged that "this had happened some time ago." III. When some women went out after the sermon, he called after them, and told them that if they would not stop to receive the blessing they would have his curse; "not guilty." IV. He had cohabited with a servant girl, and an illegitimate child was born; "others do the same thing." V. He forgot the cup at the communion; "that happened long ago." VI. He said to the officer, "All are devils who want me to go to Messing;" "that is true." There were sad evidences of the same immorality in University life. Melanchthon's prophecy had proved too true: "We have seen already how religion has been put in peril by the irruption of barbarism, _and I am very much afraid that this will happen again_." At a Disputation in the University of Wittenberg, the Chancellor addressed a disputant with such epithets as "Hear, thou hog! thou hound! thou fool! or whatever thou art, thou stolid ass!" Another prominent personage of Wittenberg, in a Disputation, became so enraged at hearing Melanchthon addressed as authority against him, that he pulled down the great Reformer's picture which hung near him, and trampled it under his feet. One Professor was so deeply in debt that he could not pay his creditors, "if every hair on his head were a ducat." Another was "in bed with seven wounds received in a fall when he was coming home drunk." Some read their newspapers at church-service. Nor did the wives and daughters of the Professors lead any better life. They were guilty of deeds of the grossest immorality, such indeed as would disgrace a less enlightened people than the Germans at that period.[23] The great moral decline of the clergy was confined chiefly to the Lutheran church. The Reformed was earnest, pious, and aggressive. At this very time it was endeavoring to spread the leaven of the Gospel through other lands. It was, during the whole period, the conservative power of Protestantism. As might be expected, it suffered somewhat from the declension of Lutheranism; but it stood manfully up to the crisis, and met the issues with an heroic spirit. When the Roman Catholics saw these excesses of the Lutherans, and witnessed the return to their fold of many Protestants who had become disgusted with the vices of their brethren, they rejoiced greatly, and used every available means to bring back more of their erring friends. We must remember, however, that it was the clergy and not the laity, who were the agents of the great declension. The theologians had submerged the land in fruitless controversy; they hesitated not to commit open sin when occasion demanded it; they neglected the youth of the whole country; the ignorant peasantry were not blessed with even the crumbs of truth; the pulpit was perverted to a cathedra for the declamation of the hyperbolical rhetoric that a corrupt taste had imported from Spain and Italy: the Apocrypha was the all-important part of the Bible; and the private life of the clergy was corrupt and odious to the Christian conscience. "What wonder that the piety of the people suffered a similar decline? Let the ministry be steadfast, and the masses will never swerve." The result in the present case was, that the latter gradually became imbued with the same impiety that they had learned, to their sorrow, of the former. Glancing first at the cultivated circles, we find a practical indifference well nigh akin to skepticism beginning to prevail among the noble and wealthy. The deference which the Reformers paid to the princes led the latter to a too free exercise of their power, and there are numberless instances of their despotic usurpations. They claimed supreme control over the religious interests of their jurisdiction, and came into frequent conflict with the ecclesiastical tribunals. They maintained a tolerable show of religion, however, considering it a matter of prime importance to have the services of chaplains, and to give due public prominence to doctrinal questions. Their courts were most generally irreligious, and sometimes notoriously corrupt. Walther, the court chaplain of Ulrich II. of East Friesland, wrote in 1637 a letter from which we take the following words: "I would much rather be silent concerning my sore misfortune, which I am here undergoing than, by speaking, to make the wounds of my heart break out afresh. These infernal courtiers, among whom I am compelled to live against my will, doubt those truths which even the heathen have learned to believe." A writer of 1630 describes three classes of skeptics among the nobility of Hamburg; _first_, those who believe that religion is nothing but a mere fiction, invented to keep the masses within restraint; _second_, those who give preference to no faith, but think that all religions have a germ of truth; and _third_, those confessing that there must be one true religion, are unable to decide whether it is papal, Calvinist, or Lutheran; and consequently believe nothing at all. This classification might be applied to the whole of Protestant Germany, as far as the higher classes are concerned. They exhibited a growing taste for antiquity; and, with them, there was but a slight difference between the sublime utterances of inspiration and the masterpieces of pagan genius. We find in a catechism of that time that the proverbs of Cato and the _Mimi Publiani_ constitute an authorized appendix. A practical infidelity, bearing the name of Epicureanism, prevailed even before the war; and it became more decided and injurious as the war progressed. The highest idea of religion was adherence to creed. Princes who even thought themselves devoted and earnest, had no experimental knowledge of regeneration; and in this, as we have shown, they were but little surpassed by the clergy themselves. Orthodoxy was the aim and pride of those religionists. Hear the dying testimony of John Christian Koenig, in 1664: "My dear Confessor, since I observe that the good Lord is about to take me out of this world, I want it understood that I remain unchanged and firm to the Augsburg Confession; I will live by it and die true to it. It is well known that I have directed my teaching according to its truths. _I die the avowed enemy of all innovation and Syncretistic error!_" The licentiousness of life, not less than of faith, was deplorable in the German courts. Dancing was carried to great excess and indecorum; and though there were edicts issued against it during the Thirty Years' War, the custom seems to have undergone but little abatement. Drunkenness was very common, and even the highest dignitaries set but a sorry example in this respect. The Court of Ludwig of Würtemberg established six glasses of wine as the minimum evidence of good breeding; one to quench the thirst; the second for the King's health; the third for those present; the fourth for the feast-giver and his wife; the fifth for the permanence of the government, and the last for absent friends. The example of all nations proves that when the nobility thus indulge themselves, and become the devotees of passion and luxury, they do not need to wait long for imitators among the lower and poorer classes. The poor looked to the rich and their rulers as standards of fashion and religion. They esteemed it not less an honor than a privilege to follow in the footsteps of their acknowledged chiefs. The governing and the governed stood but a short distance from each other, both in faith and in morals. There was great display and extravagance in the ordinary ceremonies of matrimony and baptism. It was quite common for the wedding festival to last three days, and the baptismal feast two days. The expenses were not at all justified by the means of the feast-makers; for the humblest mechanics indulged themselves to an excessive extent. Even funeral occasions were made to subserve the dissipating spirit of these times; they were the signal for hilarity and feasting. Distant friends were invited to be present; and the whole scene was at once repulsive to a healthy taste and pure religion. A writer from the very midst of the Thirty Years' War gives us the following item: "The number of courses served at funerals frequently amounted to as many as two hundred and thirty-four. The tables were furnished with expensive luxuries and costly wines, and the people gave themselves up to feasting and rioting until far into the night." The common people became more habituated to drinking strong liquors. New breweries arose in various localities, and drunkenness became a wide-spread evil. In 1600, the city of Zwickau numbered only ten thousand inhabitants; but it could claim thirty-four breweries to supply them with beer. During the war, in 1631, that number rose to seventy. But it is needless to particularize the phases of popular immorality as they existed in the time of which we speak. It is enough to say that all classes betrayed a growing disgust at religion and a gradual decline in morals. The danger was imminent that the great work of the Reformation would be in vain, and that it would soon come to ruin. Every department of ecclesiastical authority having become disarranged and weakened, there must now be a reäwakening, or the labors of Luther and his coadjutors will be swept away. The popular mind should be deflected from controversy, and become united, at least on some points of faith and theory. The pulpit needs a thorough regeneration, and the Gospel should reach the masses by a natural and earnest method. The university system calls for reorganization, and a rigid censorship exercised upon the teachings of the professors. Childhood must be no longer neglected, and the illiterate must become indoctrinated into the elements of Scriptural truth. The prevalent social evils should receive severe rebuke from the private Christian and the public teacher. Calixtus, Boehme, Arndt and Gerhard have done nobly, but they have pursued paths so totally divergent that their labors have not produced all the good effects of a _united_ work. Their efforts were preparatory, but not homogeneous; and what is now needed to make their writings and example permanently effective, is a plan for infusing new life into the church. Then there must be inflexible system and heroic determination for the consummation of such a plan. When the demand became most imperative, the great want was supplied. Let all the records of providential supply and guidance be studiously searched, and we believe that Pietism--the great movement which we are now about to trace--will take its place among them as one of the clearest, most decided, and most triumphant. FOOTNOTES: [16] Kurtz, _Church History_, vol. 11, p. 177. [17] Tholuck, _Das Kirchliche Leben des Siebzehnten Jahrhunderts. Erste Abtheilung._ For much information in the present chapter we are greatly indebted to this valuable repository. [18] Dowding, _Life and Correspondence of Calixtus_, pp. 153-154. [19] _H. B. Smith, D. D., History of Church of Christ in Chronological Tables_, pp. 56-61. [20] _History of German Protestantism_, p. 21. [21] _Orationes Selectæ_, Henke, vol. 1, pp. 285-286. [22] We use Dr. E. B. Pusey's version of Andreä's words. [23] 1602: Der Frau Gerlach (Prof. Theol.) Tochter ist in Geschrei, dass sie mit einem kinde gelie. 1613: Dr. Happrecht's Tochter hat ihre Jungfrauschaft verloren. 1622: Dr. Magirus klagt dass seine Frau die Dienstboten ihm nicht zur Disposition stelle, mit den _Alimentis_ nicht zufrieden sei, immer Gäste einlade, und viel herum laufe. Frau Magirus klagt ihren Ebemann des Ehebruchs an. Tholuck, _Deutsche Universitäten_. Vol. 1, pp. 145-148. Also Dowding, _Life and Correspondence of Calixtus_, pp. 132-133. CHAPTER III. PIETISM AND ITS MISSION. If any apology can be offered in defence of the ecclesiastical evils already recounted, it will be, that the fearful devastations of the long warfare had wrought the public mind into a feverish and unnatural state. We must not, therefore, pass that cold criticism upon the Church and her representatives to which they would be justly entitled, had they been guilty of the same vices during a time of profound peace and material prosperity. The philosophy of this whole period of ecclesiastical history may be summed up in a sentence: The numerous theological controversies, and the pastoral neglect of the people, before the war, had unfitted both the clergy and the masses for deriving from it that deep penitence and thorough reconsecration which a season of great national affliction should have engendered. The moral excesses apparent during this time had been produced by causes long anterior to it. Hence, when the protracted time of carnage and the destruction of property did come, there was no preparation of mind or heart to derive improvement from it. Had some provision been made, had theology not abounded in idle disputes, and had the moral education of the masses been faithfully cared for, instead of the evils which have been so reluctantly related, there would have been a lengthy succession of glowing instances of devout piety. And Protestantism, instead of emerging from the conflict with only equal rights before the law, would have possessed a sanctified heart, and a vigorous, truth-seeking mind. Time was now needed to gather up the instruction taught by those pillaged towns, slain citizens, and broken social and ecclesiastical systems. A few years passed by, when the lessons began to be learned, and signs of rejuvenation appeared. After Spener had commenced his reformatory labors, he expressly and repeatedly declared that he did not originate, but only gave expression to, a spirit of religious earnestness that had already arisen in various quarters. To him belongs the honor of cultivating and guiding these reassured hearts who had derived most improvement from the Thirty Years' War. Pietism, the fruit of their union, became a triumph under the leadership of Spener. But who were these persons who became aroused to a sense of the exigencies of the times, and saw that the danger which threatened the kingdom of God in Germany was now scarcely less than when Tilly was leading his maddened hordes through the fair fields and over the ruins of those once happy towns? Some of the clergy were the first to indicate new life. They preached with more unction, and addressed themselves to the immediate demands of the parish, especially to provide for the orphans and widows of those who had fallen in battle. Certain ministers who had spent their youth in vain theological wrangling, preached sermons which contained better matter than redundant metaphor and classical quotations. Müller and Scriver serve as fitting illustrations of the improvement. They avoided the extended analytical and rhetorical methods long in use, and adopted the more practical system of earnest appeal and exhortation. The clergy needed not to wait long before beholding the fruit of their labors. For a better spirit manifested itself also among the lower classes. A singular interest arose in sacred music. Not only in those venerable Gothic Cathedrals, so long the glory of the Roman Catholic Church, but in the field and the workshop there could be heard the melodies of Luther, Sachs, and Paul Gerhard. Young men appeared in numbers, offering themselves as candidates for the ministry. But let it not be supposed that these encouraging signs were universal. While the eye of faith could read the most decided lessons of hope, the religious dearth was still wide-spread. Nor was it unlikely that in a short time it would triumph over all the efforts for new life. When Spener rose to a position of prominence and influence, he saw, as no one else was able to see, the real danger to the cause of truth; and those affecting descriptions which we find among his writings, revealing the real wants of the latter half of the seventeenth century, show how keenly his own heart had become impressed by them. It was very evident that the Lutheran Church would require a long period for self-purification, if indeed she could achieve it at all. The shorter and more effectual way would be to operate _individually_ upon the popular mind. And does not the entire history of the Church prove that reform has originated from no concerted action of the body needing reformation, but from the solemn conviction and persevering efforts of some single mind, which, working first alone, has afterward won to its assistance many others? Its work then reacted upon the parent organization in such way that the latter became animated with new power. The enemies of Pietism made the same objection to it that all the opponents of reform have ever made: "This is very good in itself, but do you not see that it is not the Church that is working? We would love to see the cause of truth advanced and our torpid Church invigorated with the old Reformation-life; but we would rather see the whole matter done in a perfectly systematic and legitimate way. Now this Pietism has some good features about it, but it acts in its own name. We do not like this absurd fancy of _ecclesiolæ in ecclesia_; but we prefer the Church to act as the Church, and for its own purposes." Thus reasoned the enemies of Pietism, who claimed as heartily as any of their contemporaries that they were strict adherents of truth and warm supporters of spiritual life. But their reasoning, however baseless, found favor; and the Church gradually came to look upon Pietism not as a handmaid, but as an adversary. But we must first learn what Pietism proposed to do before we can appreciate its historical importance. Dorner holds, with a large number of others, that this new tendency was a necessary stage in the development of Protestantism,--a supplement of the Reformation. Though laughed at for two centuries by the Churchists on the one hand, and by the Rationalists on the other, it has to-day a firmer hold upon the respect of those who know its history best than at any former period. What if Arnold, and Petersen and his wife, did indulge in great extravagances? Have not the same unpleasant things occurred in the Church at other times? Yet, because not classed under any sectarian name, there has been but a transient estimate placed upon them, and criticism has been merciless. Is not every good institution subject to perversion at any time? We believe Dorner to be correct, and that Spener was the veritable successor of Luther and Melanchthon. A recent author, who has shown a singular facility in grouping historical periods and discovering their great significance, says: "Pietism went back from the cold faith of the seventeenth century to the living faith of the Reformation. But just because this return was vital and produced by the agency of the Holy Spirit, it could not be termed a literal return. We must not forget that the orthodoxy of the seventeenth century was only the extreme elaboration of an error, the beginning of which we find as far back as Luther's time, and which became more and more a power in the Church through the influence of Melanchthon. It was this: Mistaking the faith by which we believe for the faith which is believed. The principle of the Reformation was justification by faith, not the doctrine of faith _and_ justification. In reply to the Catholics it was deemed sufficient to show that this was the true doctrine which points out the way of salvation to man. And the great danger lay in mistaking faith itself for the doctrine of faith. Therefore, in the controversies concerning justifying faith, we find that faith gradually came to be considered in relation to its doctrinal aspects more than in connection with the personal, practical, and experimental knowledge of men. In this view Pietism is an _elaboration_ of the faith of the sixteenth century.... Without being heterodox, Spener even expressed himself in the most decided manner in favor of the doctrines of the Church. He would make faith consist less in the dogmatism of the head than in the motions of the heart; he would bring the doctrine away from the angry disputes of the schools and incorporate it into practical life. He was thoroughly united with the Reformers as to the real signification of justifying faith, but these contraries which were sought to be reëstablished he rejected.... From Spener's view a new phase of spiritual life began to pervade the heart. The orthodoxy of the State Church had been accustomed to consider all baptized persons as true believers if only they had been educated in wholesome doctrines. There was a general denial of that living, conscious, self-faith which was vital in Luther, and had transformed the world. The land, because it was furnished with the gospel and the sacraments, was considered an evangelical country. The contrast between mere worldly and spiritual life, between the living and dead members of the Church, was practically abolished, though there still remained a theoretical distinction between the visible and invisible Church. As to the world outside the pale of the Church, the Jews and Heathen, there was no thought whatever. Men believed they had done their whole duty when they had roundly combated the other Christian Churches. Thus lived the State Church in quiet confidence of its own safety and pure doctrine at the time when the nation was recovering from the devastations of the Thirty Years' War. 'In the times succeeding the Reformation,' says a Würtemberg pastor of the past century, 'the greater portion of the common people trusted that they would certainly be saved if they believed correct doctrines; if one is neither a Roman Catholic, nor a Calvinist, and confesses his opposition, he cannot possibly miss heaven; holiness is not so necessary after all.'"[24] The enemies of Pietism have confounded it with Mysticism. There are undoubted points in common, but Pietism was aggressive instead of contemplative; it was practical rather than theoretical. Both systems made purity of life essential, but Mysticism could not guard against mental disease, while Pietism enjoyed a long season of healthful life. The latter was far too much engaged in relieving immediate and pressing wants to fall into the gross errors which mark almost the entire career of the former. Pietism was mystical in so far as it made purity of heart essential to salvation; but it was the very antipodes of Mysticism when organized and operating against a languid and torpid Church with such weapons as Spener and his coadjutors employed. Boehme and Spener were world-wide apart in many respects; but in purity of heart they were beautifully in unison. Pietism commenced upon the principle that the Church was corrupt; that the ministry were generally guilty of gross neglect; and that the people were cursed with spiritual death. It proposed as a theological means of improvement: I. That the scholastic theology, which reigned in the academies, and was composed of the intricate and disputable doctrines and obscure and unusual forms of expression, should be totally abolished. II. That polemical divinity, which comprehended the controversies subsisting between Christians of different communions, should be less eagerly studied and less frequently treated, though not entirely neglected. III. That all mixture of philosophy and human science with divine wisdom was to be most carefully avoided; that is, that pagan philosophy and classical learning should be kept distinct from, and by no means supersede, Biblical theology. But, IV. That, on the contrary, all those students who were designed for the ministry should be kept accustomed from their early youth to the perusal and study of the Holy Scriptures, and be taught a plain system of theology drawn from these unerring sources of truth. V. That the whole course of their education should be so directed as to render them useful in life, by the practical power of their doctrine, and the commanding influence of their example.[25] The founder of Pietism, Philip Jacob Spener, was in many respects the most remarkable man of his century. He was only thirteen years old at the close of the Thirty Years' War. His educational advantages were great; and after completing his theological studies at Strasburg, where he enjoyed the society and instruction of the younger Buxtorf, he made the customary tour of the universities. He visited Basle, Tübingen, Freiburg, Geneva, and Lyons; spending three years before his return home. From a child he was noted for his taciturn, peaceful, confiding disposition; and when he reached manhood these same qualities increased in strength and beauty. His studies had led him somewhat from the course of theology--at least certain branches of it--and he became greatly fascinated with heraldry. But gradually he identified himself with pastoral life, and into its wants and duties he entered with great enthusiasm. He was for a short time public preacher in Strasburg, but on removing from that city he assumed the same office in Frankfort-on-the-Main. Here the field opened fairly before him, and, confident of success, he began the work of reform. The instruction of children in the doctrines of Christianity, as we have already said, had been sadly neglected, because the pastors of the church had committed the task to less competent hands. Spener determined that he would assume complete control of the matter himself, and, if possible, teach the children during the week without any coöperation. His labors proved a great success; and his reform in catechetical instruction, not only in Frankfort, but thence into many parts of Germany, eventuated in one of the chief triumphs of his life. But he had further noticed that the customary preaching was much above the capacity, and unsuited to the wants, of the masses. He resolved upon a simple and perspicuous style of discourse, such as the common mind could comprehend. But, seeing that this was not enough, he organized weekly meetings of his hearers, to which they were cordially invited. There he introduced the themes of the previous Sabbath, explained any difficult points that were not fully understood, and enlarged on the plain themes of the gospel. These meetings were the _Collegia Pietatis_, or _Schools of Devotion_, which gave the first occasion for the reproachful epithet of Pietism. They brought upon their founder much opposition and odium, but were destined to produce an abundant harvest throughout the land. Spener entertained young men at his own house, and prepared them, by careful instruction and his own godly example, for great ministerial usefulness. These, too, were nurtured in the _collegia_, and there they learned how to deal with the uneducated mind and to meet the great wants of the people. The meetings were, at the outset, scantily attended, but they increased so much in interest that, first his own dwelling, and then his church, became crowded to their utmost capacity. In 1675 Spener published his great work, _Pia Desideria_. Here he laid down his platform: _That the word of God should be brought home to the popular heart; that laymen, when capable and pious, should act as preachers, thus becoming a valuable ally of the ministry; that deep love and practical piety are a necessity to every preacher; that kindness, moderation, and an effort to convince should be observed toward theological opponents; that great efforts should be made to have worthy and divinely-called young men properly instructed for the ministry; and that all preachers should urge upon the people the importance of faith and its fruits._ This book was the foundation of Spener's greatest influence and also of the strongest opposition with which he met. As long as he taught in private he escaped all general antagonism; but on the publication of his work he became the mark of envy, formalism, and high-churchism. After he was invited to Dresden in 1686, the state church indicated a decided disapprobation of his measures. He incurred the displeasure of the Elector by his fearless preaching and novel course of educating the young. His teaching of the masses drew upon him the charge that "a court-preacher was invited to Dresden, but behold, nothing but a school teacher!" He deemed it his duty to accept the invitation of Frederic of Brandenburg to make Berlin his residence, where, in 1705, he ended his days, after a life of remarkable usefulness but of unusual strife. It would be a pleasure to linger a while in the beautiful scenes which Spener's life affords us. Endowed with the most childlike nature, he was nevertheless a lion in contest. And yet who will find any bitterness in his words; where does he wax angry against his opponent? He did not shun controversy, because his mission demanded it; but no man loved peace more than Spener. His mind was always calm; and it was his lifelong aim to "do no sin." His enemies,--among whom we must not forget that he had a Schelwig, a Carpzov, an Alberti, and a whole Wittenberg Faculty,--never denied his amiable disposition; and it was one of his expressions in late life that "all the attacks of his enemies had never afflicted him with but one sleepless night." It was his personal character that went almost as far as his various writings to infuse practical piety into the church. He was respected by the great and good throughout the land. Crowned heads from distant parts of the Continent wrote to him, asking his advice on ecclesiastical questions. He was one of those men who, like Luther, Wesley, and others, was not blind to the great service of an extensive correspondence. He answered six hundred and twenty-two letters during one year, and at the end of that time there lay three hundred unanswered upon his table. His activity in composition knew no bounds. For many years of his life he was a member of the Consistory, and was engaged in its sessions from eight o'clock in the morning until seven in the evening. But still he found time, according to Canstein, to publish seven folio volumes, sixty-three quartos, seven octavos, and forty-six duodecimos; besides very many introductions and prefaces to the works of friends and admirers, and republications of practical books suited to the times and the cause he was serving. After his death his enemies did all in their power to cast reproach upon his name. They even maligned his moral character, which had hitherto stood above reproach. It was a grave question at the hostile universities whether the term _Beatus Spener_ could be used of him. Professor Teck, of Rostock, published a work _On the Happiness of those who die in the Lord_, in which he decided that heaven will open its gates sometimes to the extremely impious who die without any external mark of repentance, and also to those who die in gross sin; but not to such a man as Spener. The University of Halle was founded for the avowed purpose of promoting personal piety, Scriptural knowledge, and practical preaching throughout the land. It had already been a place of instruction, but not of theological training. The theological faculty was composed of Francke, Anton, and Breithaupt. These men were deeply imbued with the fervid zeal of Spener, and set themselves to work to improve and continue what he had inaugurated. The field was ample, but the task was arduous. While Spener lived at Dresden, Francke, who taught at Leipsic, enjoyed a brief personal intercourse with him, and became thoroughly animated with his spirit. On his return to Leipsic, he commenced exegetical lectures on various parts of the Bible, and instituted _Collegia Pietatis_ for such students as felt disposed to attend them. So great was the increase of attendance, both at the lectures and also at the meetings, that Francke was suspended and Pietism forbidden. It was, therefore, with a wounded and injured spirit that he availed himself of the privilege afforded in the new seat of learning. Francke was naturally an impulsive man, and his ardent temperament led him sometimes into unintended vagaries. An extravagance of his once caused Spener to remark, that "his friends gave him more trouble than all his enemies." But he was not more erroneous than most men of the same type of character; and there is not a real moral or intellectual blemish upon his reputation. His aim was fixed when he commenced to teach at Halle; and he prosecuted it with undivided assiduity until the close of his useful life. The story of his conversion is beautifully told in his own language. Like Chalmers, he was a minister to others before his own heart was changed. He was about to preach from the words, "But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name." He says: "My whole former life came before my eyes just as one sees a whole city from a lofty spire. At first it seemed as if I could number all my sins; but soon there opened the great fountain of them--my own blind unbelief, which had so long deceived me; I was terrified with my lost condition, and wondered if God were merciful enough to bless me. I kneeled down and prayed. All doubt vanished; I was assured in my own heart of the grace of God in Christ. Now I know him, not alone as my God but as my Father. All melancholy and unrest vanished, and I was so overcome with joy, that from the fullness of my heart I could praise my Saviour. With great sorrow I had kneeled; but with wonderful ecstacy I had risen up. It seemed to me as if my whole previous life had been a deep sleep, as if I had only been dreaming, and now for the first time had waked up. I was convinced that the whole world, with all its temporal joy, could not kindle up such pleasure in my breast." A few days afterwards he preached from the same text as before. The sermon was the first real one that he had preached. Henceforth his heart was in the work for which God had chosen him. He preached in Halle statedly, for, in addition to the duties of the professor's chair, he was pastor of a church. His ministrations in the pulpit became extremely popular and attractive. Naturally eloquent, he won the masses to his ministry; and by his forcible presentation of truth he molded them into his own methods of faith and thought. Nor was he less zealous or successful in his theological lectures. He commenced them in 1698, by a course on the _Introduction to the Old Testament_, concluding with a second one on the New Testament. In 1712, he published his _Hermeneutical Lectures_, containing his comments on sections and books of Scripture, particularly on the Psalms and the Gospel of John. In his early life he had observed the dearth of lectures on the Scriptures; and he accordingly applied himself to remedy the evil. His principles of instruction were, _first_, that the student be converted before he be trained for the ministry, otherwise his theology would be merely a sacred philosophy--_philosophia de rebus sacris_; _second_, that he be thoroughly taught in the Bible, for "a theologian is born in the Scriptures." His _Method of Theological Study_ produced a profound impression, and was the means of regenerating the prevailing system of theological instruction at the universities. But Francke is chiefly known to the present generation by his foundation of the Orphan House at Halle. This institution was the outgrowth of his truly practical and beneficent character; and from his day to the present, it has stood a monument of his strong faith and great humanity. Its origin was entirely providential. It was already a custom in Halle for the poor to convene every week at a stated time, and receive the alms which had been contributed for their support. Francke saw their weekly gatherings, and resolved to improve the occasion by religious teaching. But their children were also ignorant, and there was no hope that the parents would be able to educate them. So he resolved to do something also in this direction, and secured some money for this purpose. But yet the parents did not thus apply it; whereupon he placed a box in his own dwelling, that all who visited him might contribute. He knew that then he would have the personal distribution of such funds. During three months one person deposited four thalers and sixteen groschen; when Francke exclaimed, "That is a noble thing--something good must be established--with this money I will found a school." Two thalers were spent for twenty-seven books; but the children brought back only four out of the whole number that they had taken home. New books were bought, and henceforth it was required that they be left in the room. At first Francke's own study was the book depository and school-room; but in a short time his pupils so greatly increased that he hired adjacent accommodations. Voluntary contributions came in freely; new buildings were erected, and teachers provided; and before the death of the founder, the enterprise had grown into a mammoth institution, celebrated throughout Europe, and scattering the seeds of truth into all lands.[26] It became a living proof that Pietism was not only able to combat the religious errors of the times but also to grapple with the grave wants of common life. Is not that a good and safe theology, which, in addition to teaching truth, can also clothe the naked and feed the hungry? Francke's prayer, so often offered in some secluded corner of the field or the woods, was answered even before his departure from labor to reward; "Lord, give me children as plenteous as the dew of the morning; as the sand upon the sea-shore; as the stars in the heavens; so numerous that I cannot number them!" The theological instruction of Francke and his coadjutors in the University of Halle was very influential. During the first thirty years of its history six thousand and thirty-four theologians were trained within its walls, not to speak of the multitudes who received a thorough academic and religious instruction in the Orphan House. The Oriental Theological College, established in connection with the University, promoted the study of Biblical languages, and originated the first critical edition of the Hebrew Bible. Moreover, it founded missions to the Jews and Mohammedans. From Halle streams of the new life flowed out until there were traces of reawakening throughout Europe. First, the larger cities gave signs of returning faith; and the universities which were most bitter against Spener were influenced by the power of the teachings of his immediate successors. Switzerland was one of the first countries to adopt Pietism. Zürich, Basle, Berne, and all the larger towns received it with gladness. It penetrated as far east as the provinces bordering on the Baltic Sea, and as far North as Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Many of the Continental courts welcomed it, and Orphan Houses, after the model of Francke's, became the fashion of the day. The Reformed church was influenced and impelled by it, and even England and the Netherlands indicated a strong sympathy for its practical and evangelical features. No higher tribute can be paid it than that of Tholuck, who avers, "_that the Protestant church of Germany has never possessed so many zealous Christian ministers and laymen as in the first forty years of the eighteenth century_." There are two names intimately connected with Pietism in its better days, which it would be improper to pass over. Arnold, the historian of Pietism, and Thomasius, the eminent jurist. They were both alike dangerous to the very cause they sought to befriend. The former, in his _History of Churches and Heretics_, took such decided ground against the existing church system that he was fairly charged with being a Separatist. He attached but little importance to dogmatics, despised orthodoxy, and inveighed against the church as if she were the veriest pest in the land. While a student at Wittenberg he applied himself to the study of Mysticism, and now claimed that its incorporation with Pietism was the only salvation of Christianity. He held that great sins had existed in the church ever since the days of the Apostles, the first century being the only period when it enjoyed comparative purity. Thomasius, very naturally, held Arnold in high esteem, and lauded his services in the following language: "He is the only man, or at least the first, who has avoided the follies into which others have fallen, and discovered and fully exposed the errors which have been especially committed by the Englishman Cave; he has maintained that the Church of Christ, with respect to life and conduct, had begun to fall into decay immediately after the ascension of our Saviour, and still more after the death of the Apostles, and that this degeneracy had enormously increased since the age of Constantine the Great."[27] Thomasius, though not personally connected with Pietism, gave it all his influence. He was Director of the University of Halle, and defended the Pietists from the standpoint of statesmanship. He believed Pietism the only means of uprooting the long-existing corruptions of education, society, and religion. He opposed the custom of teaching and lecturing in Latin, warmly advocating the use of French, and subsequently of German. He wished to cultivate the German spirit, and spared no pains to accomplish his purpose. While yet a teacher at Leipzig he announced a course of lectures to be delivered in the German language. The outcry was great against him; but he persevered, and henceforth delivered all his lectures in his mother tongue. Since his time the use of Latin, as a colloquial, has gradually decreased, and at the present day the German is the chief language employed at the universities. Thomasius was also the first to combat the system of prosecutions for witchcraft, and the application of torture in criminal trials. He was a thorough and indefatigable reformer. His name was a tower of strength in his generation; and he left a vivid impress upon the German mind of the eighteenth century. He published many works, some of which were directed against the ministry because of their neglect of duty. A new generation of professors arose in Halle. C. B. Michaelis, the younger Francke, Freilinghausen, the elder Knapp, Callenberg, and Baumgarten, took the place of their more vigorous predecessors. It is deplorable to see how Pietism now began to lose its first power and earnest spirit. The persistent inquiry into scriptural truth passed over into a tacit acquiescence of the understanding. Reliance was placed on the convictions, more than on the fruits of study. Spener had blended the emotions of the mind and heart, reason and faith, harmoniously; but the later Pietists cast off the former and blindly followed the latter. Hence they soon found themselves indulging in superstition, and repeating many of the errors of some of the most deluded Mystics. Science was frowned upon, because of its supposed conflict with the letter of Scripture. The language of Spener and Francke, which was full of practical earnestness, came into disuse. Definitions became loose and vague. The _Collegia_, which had done so much good, now grew formal, cold, and disputatious. The missions, which had begun very auspiciously, dwindled from want of means and men. External life became pharisaical. Great weight was attached to long prayers. A Duke of Coburg required the masters of schools to utter a long prayer in his presence, as a test of fitness for advancement. Pietism grew mystical, ascetic, and superstitious. Some of its advocates and votaries made great pretensions to holiness and unusual gifts. This had a tendency to bring the system into disrepute in certain quarters, though the good influences that it had exerted still existed and increased. It might disappear, but the good achieved by it would live after it. But a strong effort was made by Frederic William I. to maintain its prominence and weight. From 1729 to 1736, he continued his edict that no Lutheran theologian should be appointed in a Prussian pulpit who had not studied at least two years in Halle, and received from the faculty a testimonial of his state of grace. But when he was succeeded by Frederic II., commonly called Frederic the Great, that University no longer enjoyed the royal patronage, and Halle, instead of being the school of practical piety and scriptural study, degenerated into a seminary of Rationalism. It was charged against the Pietists that they wrote but little. Writing was not their mission. It was theirs to act, to reform the practical life and faith of the people, not to waste all their strength in a war of books. They wrote what they needed to carry out their lofty aim; and this was, perhaps, sufficient. They did lack profundity of thought; but, let it be remembered that their work was restorative, not initial. Pietism, though it ceased its aggressive power after Francke and Thomasius, was destined to exert a reproductive power long afterwards. From their day to the present, whenever there has arisen a great religious want, the heart of the people has been directed towards this same agency as a ground of hope. Whatever be said against it, it cannot be denied that it has succeeded in finding a safe lodgment in the affections of the evangelical portion of the German church. Witness Bengel, who was a Pietist of the Spener school. He was warmly devoted to the spread of practical truth and a correct understanding of the Bible. Kahnis says of him: "We might indeed call conscientiousness the fundamental virtue of Bengel. Whatever he utters, be it in science, or life, is more mature, more well-weighed, more pithy, more consecrated than most of what his verbose age has uttered. In the great he saw the little, in the little the great." In the present century the church has had recourse to Pietism as its only relief from a devastating Rationalism. Not the Pietism of Spener and Francke, we acknowledge, but the same general current belonging to both. Its organ was the _Evangelical Church Gazette_, in 1827, and among the celebrities who attached themselves to it we find the names of Heinroth, von Meyer, Schubert, von Raumer, Steffens, Schnorr, and Olivier. Pietism lacked a homogeneous race of teachers. Here lay the secret of its overthrow. Had the founders been succeeded by men of much the same spirit, and equally strong intellect, its existence would have been guaranteed, as far as anything religious can be promised in a country where there is a state church to control the individual conscience. The great mistake of Lutheranism was in failing to adopt it as its child. The skeptical germ which soon afterwards took root, gave evidence that it could prove its overthrow for a time, at least; but the evils of Rationalism were partially anticipated by the practical teachings of the Pietists. Rationalism in Germany, without Pietism as its forerunner, would have been fatal for centuries. But the relation of these tendencies, so plainly seen in the ecclesiastical history of Germany, is one of long standing. From the days of Neo-Platonism to the present they have existed, the good to balance the evil, Faith to limit Reason. They have been called by different names; but Christianity could little afford to do without it or its equivalent, in the past; and the Church of the Future will still cling as tenaciously and fondly to it or to its representative. FOOTNOTES: [24] Auberlen: _Die Göttliche Offenbarung_, vol. I., pp. 278-281. The second volume of this important work has been completed, but the gifted author has just died. His book must therefore take its place in the catalogue of brilliant but hopeless fragments. [25] Watson, _Theolog. Dict._ Art. _Protestant Pietists_. [26] Schmid, _Geschichte des Pietismus_, pp. 290-293. How greatly this movement was favored by Providence, may be seen from the Report presented to King Frederick William I, shortly after Francke's death:--1. The Normal School with 82 scholars and 70 teachers; 2. The Latin School of the Orphan House, with 3 Inspectors, 32 teachers, 400 scholars, and 10 servants; 3. The German Citizens' school, with 4 Inspectors, 102 Teachers, 1725 Boys and Girls; 4. Orphan Children, 134, and 10 overseers; 5. Number accommodated at the tables, 251 students, 3600 poor children; 6. Furniture, Apothecary, Bookstore, employing 53 persons; 7. Institution for women unable to work. [27] Schmid, _Geschichte des Pietismus_, pp. 475-486. CHAPTER IV. THE POPULAR PHILOSOPHY OF WOLFF--SKEPTICAL TENDENCIES FROM ABROAD. The struggle between the Pietists and the Orthodox subsided on the appearance of Wolff's demonstrative philosophy. The church was glad enough to offer the friendly hand to Pietism when she saw her faith threatened by this ruthless foe; and if the followers of Spener had refused to accept it, their success would have been far more probable. Leibnitz was the father of Wolff's system. Descartes had protested against any external authority for the first principles of belief. Leibnitz and Spinoza followed him, though in different directions.[28] Leibnitz had no system in reality, and it is only from certain well-known views on particular points that we can infer his general direction of opinion. He sought to prove the conformity of reason with a belief in revelation on the principle that two truths cannot contradict each other. His doctrine of monads and preëstablished harmony was opposed to the scriptural and ecclesiastical doctrine of creation, inasmuch as by the assumption of the existence of atoms the Creator was thrown too much in the shade.[29] He wrote his _Théodicée_ for the benefit of learned and theological circles, and both as a statesman and author he acquired great celebrity for his vast acquirements and discriminating mind. But the philosophy of Leibnitz was confined to the learned; and had it been left solely to itself, it is probable that it would never have attracted great attention or possessed much importance in the history of thought. But Wolff, who studied all his works with the greatest care, deduced from them certain summaries of argument, which, with such others of his own as he felt disposed to incorporate with them, he published and taught. Whatever censure we may cast upon Wolff, we cannot ignore his good intentions. Even before his birth, he had been consecrated by his father to the service of God; and when he was old enough to manifest his own taste, he showed a strong predilection for theological study. He says of himself: "Having been devoted to the study of theology by a vow, I also had chosen it for myself; and my intention has all along been to serve God in the ministry, even when I was already professor at Halle, until at length against my will I was led away from it, God having arranged circumstances in such a manner that I could not carry out this intention. But having lived in my native place, Breslau, among the Catholics, and having perceived from my very childhood the zeal of the Lutherans and Roman Catholics against one another, the idea was always agitating my mind, whether it would not be possible so distinctly to show the truth in theology that it would not admit of any contradiction. When afterwards I learned that the mathematicians were so sure of their ground that every one must acknowledge it to be true, I was anxious to study mathematics, for the sake of the method, in order to give diligence to reduce theology to incontrovertible certainty." These words explain Wolff's whole system. He would make doctrine so plain by mathematical demonstration that it must be accepted. But the poison of his theory lay in the assumption that what could not be mathematically demonstrated was either not true or not fit to be taught. He sets out with the principle that the human intellect is capable of knowing truth. He divides his philosophy into two parts: _first_, the _theoretical_: _second_, the _practical_. The former he subdivides into logic, metaphysics, and physics; the latter into morals, natural right, and politics. He admits a revelation, and proves its possibility by maintaining that God can do whatever he wishes. But this revelation must have signs in itself, by which it may be known. _First._ It must contain something necessary for man to know, which he cannot learn in any other way. _Second._ The things revealed must not be opposed to the divine perfections, and they must not be self-contradictory: a thing is above reason and contrary to reason when opposed to these principles. _Third._ A divine revelation can contain neither anything which contradicts reason and experience, nor anything which may be learned from them, for God is omniscient,--he knows the general as well as the particular, and he cannot be deceived. Necessary truths are those the contrary of which is impossible; accidental truths, those of which the contrary is impossible only under certain conditions. Now, revelation could not contradict necessary truths; but it may appear to contradict those which are accidental. Geometrical truths are necessary; and therefore revelation could not oppose them; but as accidental truths refer to the changes of natural things, it follows that these may be apparently contradicted by revelation; though if we search minutely, we shall at last be able to lift the veil from the contradictions. _Fourth._ Revelation cannot command anything contrary to the laws of the nature of existence and of the mind, for whatever is opposed to the laws of nature is equally opposed to those of reason. _Fifth._ When it can be proved that he who declares that he has received a divine revelation has arrived at his knowledge by the natural use of his mental powers, then his declaration cannot be considered true. _Sixth._ In a revelation all things ought to be expressed in such words, or by such signs, that he who is the object of it can clearly recognize the divine action. For God knows all possible symbolical means of knowledge, and does nothing without a purpose. These views Wolff taught from his university-chair in Halle, and disseminated throughout the land in publications under various titles. He aimed to reach not only the young theologians and all who were likely to wield a great public influence, but to so popularize his system that the unthinking masses might become his followers. He succeeded. Even Roman Catholics embraced his tenets, and he was accustomed to say, with evident satisfaction, that his text-books were used at Ingolstadt, Vienna, and Rome. The glaring defect of his philosophy was his application of the formal logical process to theology. He reduced the examination of truth to a purely mechanical operation. The effect was soon seen. When his students began to fill the pulpits the people heard cold and stately logic, extended definitions, and frequent mathematical phrases. Think of the clergy feeding their flocks on such food as the following: "_God--a being who supports all the world at one time_;" "_Preëstablished harmony--the eternal union of things_;" "_Ratio sufficiens--the sufficient ground_;" with many other arid definitions of the same class. One preacher, in explaining the eighth chapter of Matthew, thought it necessary, when noticing the fact of Jesus descending the mountain, to define the term mountain by declaring it to be "a very elevated place;" and, when discoursing on Jesus stretching forth his hand and touching the leper, to affirm that "the hand is one of the members of the body." It is astonishing how quickly the popular principles and teachings of the followers of Wolff began to supplant Pietism. In the university and the pulpit there were sad and numerous evidences of decline. Perhaps no system of philosophy has ever penetrated the masses as did this of Wolff; for no one has been more favored with champions who aimed to indoctrinate the unthinking. Old terms, which had been used by the first Lutherans and Reformed in common, and by the Pietists with such effectiveness, were now abandoned for the modern ones of these innovators. Everything that had age on its side was rejected because of its age. Even the titles of books were fraught with copious definitions. The Wertheim translation of the Old Testament was published under the extended name of "_The Divine Writings before the time of Jesus, the Messiah. The First Part, containing the Laws of the Israels._" The Wolffian adepts wrote for Moabites, _Moabs_; for the Apostle Peter, _Peter the Ambassador_. Wolff's life was full of incident. The first publications he issued after his appointment to the mathematical professorship were on subjects within his appropriate sphere of instruction. Here he first acquired his fundamental principle of mathematical demonstration applied to theology, and henceforth his mind was bent on philosophical and theological themes. We are reminded of the same process of mental action in Bishop Colenso. In a late catalogue of his works, we have counted twelve mathematical text-books. These are at least an index of his attachment to mathematical demonstration; and it is not surprising that an ill-regulated mind should fall into Wolff's error of applying the same method to the Scriptures. The Bishop's works find their exact prototype in the "_Reasonable Thoughts of God_," "_Natural Theology_," and "_Moral Philosophy_," of Christian Wolff. The mathematical professor at Halle was not long in exposing his views; and on more than one occasion gave umbrage to his Pietistic associates. His offence reached its climax when he delivered a public discourse on the Morals of Confucius, which he applauded most enthusiastically. The Rector of the university, Francke, requested the use of the manuscript, which the author refused to grant. Influence was brought to bear against Wolff at court; and when it was represented that if his teachings were propagated any further they would produce defection in the army, Frederic William I. issued a decree of deposition from his chair, and banishment from his dominions within forty-eight hours, on penalty of death. This occurred in 1723. After Frederic the Great ascended the throne, and began to countenance the increasing skeptical tendencies of the day, he recalled him, in 1740, to his former position. He was received, it is true, with some enthusiasm, but his success as a lecturer and preacher had passed its zenith. Of his reception at Halle after his long absence he thus writes, with no little sense of self-gratulation: "A great multitude of students rode out of the city to meet me, in order to invite me formally. They were attended by six glittering postillions. All the villagers along the roadside came out of their towns, and anxiously awaited my arrival. When we reached Halle, all the streets and market-places were filled with an immense concourse of people, and I celebrated my jubilee amidst a universal jubilee. In the street, opposite the house which I had rented as my place of residence, there was gathered a band of music, which received me and my attendants with joyous strains. The press of the multitude was so great that I could hardly descend from my carriage and find my way to my rooms. My arrival was announced on the same evening to the professors and all the dignitaries of the city. On the following day they called upon me, and gave me warm greetings of welcome and esteem. Among all the rest I was received and welcomed by Dr. Lange, who wished me the greatest success, and assured me of his friendship; of course I promised to visit him in return." Verily this was an epoch in theological history. It proves how thoroughly the Wolffian philosophy had impregnated the common classes. They had learned its principles thoroughly, and the lapse of more than a century has not fully disabused them of its errors. The philosophy of Kant was the first to supplant the Wolffian in learned circles; but Kant has had no such popular interpreter as Wolff was of Leibnitz, and hence his influence, though deep where prevalent, was felt in a more limited sphere. Wolff cannot be termed a Rationalist in the common acceptation of the term, though his doctrines contributed to the growth of neological thinking. Had he been theologian alone, and applied his principles to the interpretation of Scripture, he would have done much of Semler's work. It was, therefore, the latter and not the former whom we would denominate the father of Rationalism. Moreover, Wolff manifested a strict observance of the ecclesiastical institutions of his day, and always professed the warmest attachment to the church,--which was anything but the fact, as far as the followers of Semler are concerned. Wolff wrote on a circular announcing some university celebration the following words, which indicate the habit of his life: "I see, and would like to be present. Yet as I have purposed to partake of the Lord's Supper on the same day I do not know whether I shall be able to be present, inasmuch as I should not like to change my intention; yet I will consider the matter with my minister. Signed, Christian Wolff, 1717." Of the relations of the Wolffian philosophy to the theology of one century ago, and of its general Rationalistic bearing, Mr. Farrar says, "The system soon became universally dominant. Its orderly method possessed the fascination which belongs to any encyclopædic view of human knowledge. It coincided, too, with the tone of the age. Really opposed, as Cartesianism has been in France, to the scholasticism which still reigned, its dogmatic form nevertheless bore such external similarity to it that it fell in with the old literary tastes. The evil effects which it subsequently produced in reference to religion were due only to the point of view which it ultimately induced. Like Locke's work on the reasonableness of Christianity, it stimulated intellectual speculation concerning revelation. By suggesting attempts to deduce _à priori_ the necessary character of religious truths, it turned men's attention more than ever away from spiritual religion to theology. The attempt to demonstrate everything caused dogmas to be viewed apart from their practical aspect; and men being compelled to discard the previous method of drawing philosophy out of Scripture, an independent philosophy was created, and Scripture compared with its discoveries. Philosophy no longer relied on Scripture, but Scripture rested on philosophy. Dogmatic theology was made a part of metaphysical philosophy. This was the mode in which Wolff's philosophy ministered indirectly to the creation of the disposition to make scriptural dogmas submit to reason, which was denominated Rationalism. The empire of it was undisputed during the whole of the middle part of the century, until it was expelled, toward the close, by the partial introduction of Locke's philosophy, and of the system of Kant, as well as by the growth of classical erudition, and of a native literature."[30] Wolff was succeeded by a school of no ordinary ability. But his disciples did not strictly follow him; they went not only the length that he did, but much farther. Their thinking and literary labor circled about inspiration. It was evident that they were intent upon solving the problem and handing the doctrine over to the world as entitled to respect and unalterable. Baumgarten was the connecting link between the Pietism of Spener and the Rationalism of Semler. He was the successor of Wolff in the university-chair of Halle, and, as such, the eyes of the people were turned toward him. His acquirements were versatile, for he studied every subject of theology with poetic enthusiasm. Nor was he a superficial student merely; and his opponents well knew that in him they had found no mean adept in philosophy, theology, hermeneutics and ecclesiastical history. His writings bear a strong impress of Illuminism, but he contributed most to the formation of Rationalistic theology by training Semler for his great destructive mission. He acknowledged the presence of the Holy Spirit in Scripture, but reduced inspiration to an influence which God exercises over the mental faculties. Both he and Töllner declared that the Spirit had permitted each writer to compose according to the peculiar powers of his mind, and to arrange facts according to his own comprehension of them. Töllner was a follower of Baumgarten. He was not intent upon any innovating theories as much as he was desirous to harmonize the old ecclesiastical system with the new philosophy. He had some views in common with Wolff; but he totally differed from him in his conception of mathematical demonstration of theology, and maintained that theology cannot be mathematically demonstrated, but that its integrity and worth depend solely upon historical testimony. Does the Christian system have the authority of history for its defence? If so, it will stand the test of universal opposition; but, if not, it will fall of its own weight. The tendency of his deductions was negative, and hence we rank him as no ordinary agent toward the growth of historic doubt. Here we behold the germ of such thinking as developed in Strauss' _Life of Jesus_ in the present century. Töllner held that Scripture is composed of two senses, the _natural_ and _revealed_. That which is natural is subject to criticism; but the revealed or spiritual light is always clearer, and does not call for much inquiry. There may be differences between the two, but there can be no contradiction. "The revelation in Scripture," he says, "is a greater and more perfect means of salvation. Both the natural light and revelation lead the man who follows them to salvation. _Scripture only more so._" The historian cannot fail to observe a systematic and steadfast development of skepticism in the lands south and west of Germany. Many causes contributed to its growth in Italy, whose prestige in war, extensive and still increasing commerce, and ambitious and gifted rulers, were a powerful stimulus to vigorous thought. The classics became the favorite study, and all the writings of the ancients were seized with avidity, to yield, as far as they might, their treasure of philosophy, history and poetry. Leo X. was notoriously skeptical, and, as much from sympathy as pride, surrounded himself with the leading spirits of the literature of the times. With him morality was no recommendation. Two tendencies took positive form, as the result of the literary tastes of the court and thinking classes: _first_, a return to heathenism, produced by the study of the classics; and _second_, a species of pantheism, produced by philosophy. We now come to the Deism of England, which not only succeeded in corrupting the spiritual life of France, but became directly incorporated into the theology of Germany. It was the so-called philosophy of common sense. The most thorough German writer on the subject, Lechler, has well defined it, "The elevation of natural religion to be the standard and rule of all positive religion, an elevation which is supported by free examination by means of thinking." It started on the principle that reason is the source and measure of truth; and therefore discarded, as its Rationalistic offspring in Germany, whatever was miraculous or supernatural in Christianity. There was much earnestness in some of its champions; nor was there any absence of warm attachment to the morality and religious influence of the Scriptures. Thus it differed widely from the flippancy and frivolity of the Deists of France. We cannot, however, consider Lord Herbert's serious reflections on the publication of his chief work as a fair specimen of the tone of his coadjutors. They were mostly inferior to him in this respect, though it would not be safe to say that their influence on the public mind of England was less baneful than his. Having finished his book, _Tractatus de Veritate_, he hesitated before committing it to the press. "Thus filled," he says, "with doubts, I was on a bright summer day sitting in my room; my window to the south was open; the sun shone brightly; not a breeze was stirring. I took my book on Truth into my hand, threw myself on my knees, and prayed devoutly in the words, 'O thou one God, thou Author of this light which now shines upon me, thou Giver of all inward light, I implore thee, according to thine infinite mercy to pardon my request, which is greater than a sinner should make. I am not sufficiently convinced whether I may publish this book or not. If its publication shall be for thy glory, I beseech thee to give me a sign from Heaven. If not, I will suppress it.' I had scarcely finished these words when a loud, and yet at the same time a gentle sound came from heaven, not like any sound on earth. This comforted me in such a manner, and gave me such a satisfaction, that I considered my prayer as having been heard." Deism in England began with the predominance given to nature by Bacon. Locke contributed greatly to its formation by discarding the proof of Christianity by miracles and supernatural observations, but claimed that nature is of itself sufficient to teach it. Hence, man can draw all necessary faith from nature. Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, held that education is inconsistent with true religion, since the earliest pagan times manifested a higher state of morality than later periods of culture and refinement. Hobbes considered religion only a sort of police force, useful solely as an agent of the State to keep the people within bounds. Shaftesbury, the disciple and follower of Locke, addressed himself by his style to the higher classes. He cultivated the acquaintance of the rising leaders of skepticism in France and Holland, and continued through life on terms of cordial intimacy with Bayle, Le Clerc, and others of kindred spirit. He was relentless in his attacks on revealed religion. His hostility may be inferred from the fact that Voltaire termed him even too bitter an opponent of Christianity. Warburton says, "Mr. Pope told me that, to his knowledge, _The Characteristics_ have done more harm to revealed religion in England than all the other works of infidelity together." Collins contributed more than any other author to the rise of Deism in France. He applied himself to the overthrow of all faith. Ignoring prophecy, he held that nothing in the Old Testament has any other than a typical or allegorical bearing upon the New Testament. Wollaston's creed was the pursuit of happiness by the practice of reason and truth. He was the epicurean of the system which he adopted, and sought to prove that religion is wholly independent of faith. He first published a brief outline of his views in a limited number of copies, but afterwards prepared a new and enlarged edition. Twenty thousand copies were sold, and six other editions found a ready sale between 1724 and 1738. Woolston strove to bring the miracles of Christ into contempt. Mandeville and Morgan, contemporaries of Woolston, wrote against the state religion. Of Chubb's views we can gather sufficiently from his three principles: _First._ That Christ requires of men that, with all their heart and all their soul, they should follow the eternal and unchangeable precepts of natural morality. _Second._ That men, if they transgress the laws of morality, must give proofs of true and genuine repentance, because without such repentance, forgiveness or pardon is impossible. _Third._ In order more deeply to impress these principles upon the minds of men, and give them a greater influence upon their course of action, Jesus Christ has announced to mankind, that God hath appointed a day wherein he will judge the world in righteousness, and acquit and condemn, reward or punish, according as their conduct has been guided by the precepts which he has laid down. With Bolingbroke's name closes the succession of the elder school of English Deists. He wrote against the antiquity of faith, showing bitter hostility to the Old Testament. His aim, in addition to this antagonism to revelation, was to found a selfish philosophy. Many of the works by these writers were ill-written and lacked depth of thought. Some were, however, masterpieces of original thinking and writing. The style of Mandeville, for example, has been eulogized extravagantly both by Hazlitt and Lord Macaulay. It cannot be expected that a movement so extensive as this, and participated in by the leading literary men of the day would be without its influence abroad. Its first effect was to elicit great opposition; and numerous replies poured in from every quarter. Toland's _Christianity Not Mysterious_ was combated in the year 1760 by fifty-four rejoinders in England, France and Germany. Up to the same period, Tindal's _Christianity as Old as the World_ was greeted with one hundred and six opponents. The Germans repulsed these tendencies bravely at first, and among others was the gifted and versatile Mosheim, who delivered public lectures against the influx of Deistical speculations. But gradually translations were made, and the Germans were soon able to read those works for themselves. All the Deists were rendered into their language, and some were honored with many translators. True, there were replies from the theologians of England immediately upon the appearance of the works of the leading Deists; but many of them were very feeble, the puny blows doing more harm than good. When these rejoinders came to be translated they had almost as deleterious an influence as if they had been panegyrics instead of well-meant thrusts. John Pye Smith says, "Translations were made of our Deistical writers of that time, and of a large number of vindications of Christianity which were published by some English divines of note in reply to Collins, Tindal, Morgan and their tribe; and which, in addition to their insipid and unimpassioned character, involved so much of timid apology and unchristian concession that they rather aided than obstructed the progress of infidelity." Through the influence of Baumgarten and others Deism now gained great favor in Germany. Toland was personally welcomed, flattered and honored at the very court--that of Frederic William I.--which had banished Wolf, and made adherence to his doctrines a bar to all preferment. There was a speedy adoption of English Deism by France, though the French had manifested strong attachment to skepticism as far back as the illustrious reign of Louis XIV., whose court had dictated religion and literature to Europe. It was in 1688 that Le Vasser wrote: "People only speak of reason, good taste, the force of intellect, of the advantage of those who put themselves above the prejudices of education and of the society in which they were born. Pyrrhonism is now the fashion above everything else. People think that the legitimate exercise of the mind consists in not believing rashly, and in knowing how to doubt many things. What can be more intolerable and humiliating than to see our pretended great men boast themselves of believing nothing, and of calling those people simple and credulous who have not perhaps examined the first proofs of religion?" The condition of things was no better in the reign of Louis XV., nor indeed at any time during the eighteenth century. It could not be expected that Rousseau would overpaint the picture; yet in his _La Nouvelle Héloïse_ we find this language: "No disputing is here heard--that is, in the literary coteries--no epigrams are made; they reason, but not in the stiff professional tone; you find fine jokes without puns, wit with reason, principles with freaks, sharp satire and delicate flattery with serious rules of morality. They speak of everything in order that every one may have to say something, but they never exhaust the questions raised; from the dread of getting tedious they bring them forth only occasionally, shorten them hastily, and never allow a dispute to arise. Every one informs himself, enjoys himself, and departs from the others pleased. But what is it that is learned from these interesting conversations? _One learns to defend with spirit the cause of untruth, to shake with philosophy all the principles of virtue, to gloss over with fine syllogisms one's passions and prejudices in order to give a modern shape to error._ When any one speaks, it is to a certain extent his dress, not himself, that has an opinion; and the speaker will change it as often as he will change his profession. Give him a tie-wig to-day, to-morrow a uniform, and the day after a mitre, and you will have him defend, in succession, the laws, despotism, and the Inquisition. There is one kind of reason for the lawyer, another for the financier, and a third for the soldier. Thus, no one ever says what he thinks, but what, on account of his interest, he would make others believe; and his zeal for truth is only a mask for selfishness." This was the basis upon which Voltaire and Rousseau built in France. What wonder that the one with his pungent sarcasm, popular style and display of philosophy, and the other with his morbid sentimentalism, should become the real monarchs not only of their own land, but of cultivated circles throughout the Continent? There was not the slightest sympathy between these two men, for they hated each other cordially, and each was jealous of the other's fame and genius. Voltaire said one day to Rousseau, who was showing him an _Ode Addressed to Posterity_, "This is a letter which will never reach the place of its address." At another time, Voltaire having read a satire of his own composition to Rousseau, the latter advised him to "suppress it lest it should be imagined that he had lost his abilities and preserved only his virulence." But Voltaire was inordinately ambitious; he longed to rise to fame, as on the wings of the eagle. "How unworthy, and how dull of appreciation is sluggish France," thought he. For her rewards he had toiled, and thought, and racked his brain for years. But she was stern, and would not honor him. He therefore became disgusted with his native land, and set out for England, whose scientific and theological literature had already fired his mind. George I. and the Princess of Wales, afterward Queen Caroline, distinguished him by their attentions, and relieved his poverty by securing large subscriptions to his works. It was here that he commenced to lay up a princely fortune; but it was not until the close of his long and stirring life that he forswore his miserly habits. He found in the deistical literature of England everything that could suit his taste and ambition. "Here," reasoned he to himself, "I find what I never dreamed of before. France would not tolerate these thoughts if her own sons had given birth to them; but this is England, and we Frenchmen respect the thinking of the English mind. I will not translate much, but I will go to work with hearty earnestness, and reproduce in French literature what I find worthy of it in these free-thinking masters. May be, after all, I shall become a great man." The plan succeeded. Voltaire, on his return, became more outspoken in his infidelity. His star ascended; and he ruled, not by original but by borrowed lustre. Frederic the Great of Prussia was captivated by the skeptical and literary celebrity of Voltaire. The latter was not long back again in France before his selfish sensitiveness imagined that all the literary men of his country had entered into a cabal to deprive him of his fame and hurl him from the throne of his literary authority. He was therefore ready to be caught by the most tempting bait; and when Frederic offered him a pension of twenty-two thousand livres, it was more than the miserly plagiarist could resist. Of his reception by the king he thus speaks in his usual style: "I set out for Potsdam in June, 1750. Astolpha did not meet a kinder reception in the palace of Alcuia. To be lodged in the same apartments that Marshal Saxe had occupied, to have the royal cooks at my command when I chose to dine alone, and the royal coachman when I had an inclination to ride, were trifling favors. Our suppers were very agreeable. If I am not deceived I think we had much wit. The king was witty, and gave occasion of wit to others; and what is still more extraordinary, I never found myself so much at my ease; I worked two hours a day with his majesty; corrected his works; and never failed highly to praise whatever was worthy of praise, though I rejected the dross. I gave him details of all that was necessary in rhetoric and criticism for his use: he profited by my advice, and his genius assisted him more effectually than my lessons." But matters did not move on a great while thus harmoniously, for Voltaire, becoming complicated in personal difficulties with greater favorites of Frederic, received the frown of the man he had so much flattered, and whose purse had been enriching his coffers. The skeptic returned to France, wrote other works, settled near the romantic shore of Lake Geneva, and returned honored, great, and feasted to Paris. Indulging in unaccustomed excesses, his frail and aged body sank beneath the weight. But Frederic and Voltaire maintained a correspondence many years after the flatterer's disgrace. Full of trouble, haunted by dreams of conspiracy and of poverty, successful in achieving more evil than usually falls to the lot of a single mind, Voltaire passed from the society of men to the presence of God. It has been truthfully said of him in proof of his inconsistency, that he was a free thinker at London, a Cartesian at Versailles, a Christian at Nancy, and an infidel at Berlin. Rousseau sought to establish the proposition that the progress of scientific education has always involved the decay of moral education. With Lord Herbert he held that barbarism has ever been the condition of greatest moral power. A sentiment from his _Émile_ furnishes the key to his creed: "Everything is good when it comes forth from the hand of the Creator; everything degenerates under man's hand. In the state in which things now are, a man who from the moment of his birth would live among others, would, if left to himself, be most disfigured. Prejudices, authority, constraint, example, all social institutions which now depress us, would choke nature in him, and nothing would be put in its stead. He would resemble a young tree which, growing up accidentally in the street, would soon pine away in consequence of the passers-by pushing it from all sides, and bending it in all directions." Rousseau wrote with great earnestness, and possessed the faculty of inspiring his readers with an enthusiastic admiration of his theories. His romances misled many thousands, and were the most popular productions of his times. Though he and Voltaire were the exponents of French Deism, they were greatly aided in the dissemination of skeptical doctrines by Diderot, d'Alembert, Helvetius, d'Argent, de la Mettrie, and others. Bayle, in his Dictionary, appealed to the learned circles; and, not content to give only historical facts, he ventured upon the origination or reproduction of those new skeptical opinions which captivated unthinking multitudes. The Deism of France was now a coadjutor with that of England in the devastation of Germany. The throne of Frederic II. was the exponent and defender of the hollow creed. The military successes of that king gave him an authority that few monarchs have been able to wield, while his well-known literary taste and capacity enlisted the admiration of men of culture throughout the Continent. Born to bear the sword, he surprised his subjects by the same felicity in the use of the pen; and the man who could leave to his successors a treasury with a surplus of seventy-two millions of thalers, an army of two hundred and twenty thousand men, a kingdom increased by twenty-nine thousand square miles, and a people grown since his accession from two millions to thrice that number, was not a king who could be without great moral weight among his own subjects. And it was known that he was a skeptic, for he made no secret of it. No traces of the old Pietism of his harsh father were visible in the son. Gathering around him such men as Voltaire, La Mettrie, Maupertuis, and others whom his gold could attach to him, he was the same king in faith and literature that he was in politics. Claiming to be a Deist, it is probable that he was a very liberal one. It is more than likely that he was truthful in his description of himself when he wrote to d'Alembert that he had never lived under the same roof with religion. He claimed for his meanest subjects the right to serve God in their own way; but all the power of his example was at work in drawing the people from the old faith. He hesitated not to supplant evangelical professors and pastors by free-thinkers, and at any time to bring ridicule on any religious fact or custom. That thin-visaged man in top boots and cocked hat, surrounded by his infidels and his dogs at Sans Souci, dictated faith to Berlin and to Europe. He would have no one within the sunshine of royalty whom he could not use as he wished; and just as soon as Voltaire would be himself he became disgraced. But Frederic lived to see the day when insubordination sprang up in his army, and in many departments of public life. It came from the abnegation of evangelical faith. And it is no wonder that when the old king saw the disastrous effects of his own theories upon his subjects, he said he would willingly give his best battle to place his people where he found them at his father's death. But the seed had been sown, and Prussia was destined to be only a part of the harvest-field of tares. FOOTNOTES: [28] Farrar, _Critical History of Free Thought_, p. 214. [29] Hagenbach, _History of Doctrines_, vol. 2, p. 340. [30] _Critical History of Free Thought_, pp. 215-216. CHAPTER V. SEMLER AND THE DESTRUCTIVE SCHOOL. 1750-1810. The foreign influences being fairly introduced, it now remained to be seen what course the German church would adopt respecting them. The process of incorporation was rapid. A remarkable activity of mind was observable in the theological world, and men of great learning and keen intellect began to apply the deductions of foreign naturalism to the sacred oracles. No one can claim that the interpretation of the Scriptures rested at this time on a pure and solid basis; and it is therefore not remarkable that those men who had no special predilection for the doctrine of inspiration should silently submit to the views of the orthodox believers of their time. The divine origin of Hebrew points and accents was rigidly contended for; and Michaelis only fell in with the accustomed current when, in his early life, he wrote a work in their defence. The theory that errors of transcription might possibly have crept into the text, was totally rejected. No such thing could, by any contingency, occur. The fable of Aristeas was still considered worthy a place in the canon. The sanctity of the Hebrew language, and other Rabbinical notions, were defended. Christ was discovered in every book of the Old Testament; the perfect purity of the Greek of the New Testament was held; and fabulous accounts of early martyrs and miraculous legends were elevated to the same standard of authority with the gospels. What wonder, then, that when such absurdities were entertained by the evangelical portion of the church the temptation of others to skepticism was so great? Men like Ernesti could not resist the enticement to combat such a state of criticism; and he gave himself to the task with all the ardor of his nature. He was the classic scholar of his day. The purity of his diction and the fertility of his authorship gained him a hearing among the educated and refined. His word became law. In his case, as with many others of his countrymen both before and after him, his theological tastes gave him far more authority than his merely linguistic and literary attainments could have gained for him. He was distinguished as a preacher not less than as a scholar. Enamored with the old classic times, the atmosphere of Greece in her glory of taste and culture, and of Rome in her lustre of victory and law made him impatient of the dull theology of his day. He lived not in Germany, but in the temples and bowers of paganism. His Latinity was scarcely inferior to the flowing utterances of his heathen masters. He edited many classical works, and succeeded in regenerating the humanistic studies of Europe. For this all honor be given him; but he did not rest here. He examined the New Testament with the critic's scalpel, and applied the principles of ordinary interpretation to the word of God. He held that Moses should receive no better treatment than Cicero or Tacitus. Logos was _reason_ and _wisdom_ in the Greek writings; why should it mean Christ or the Word when we find it in the gospel of John? Regeneration need not be surrounded with a saintly halo; it is absurd to suppose that it can mean any more than reception into a religious society. The Holy Spirit does not communicate divine influences, but certain praiseworthy qualities. Unity with the Father is mere unity of disposition or will. The Old Testament is very good in its way, but it certainly cannot be intended for all mankind; since many parts can have no salutary influence whatever on the heart and life. It might be of some use to the Jews, but since we are so far beyond them it is quite out of place for us. Both Grotius and Wetstein had been the forerunners of Ernesti in this method of interpretation. What he wrought against the New Testament had its counterpart in the mischief effected by John David Michaelis against the Old. This theologian was profoundly learned in the Oriental languages, but he was a reckless and irreverent critic. He made light of many of the occurrences of the Old Testament, and whenever the students applauded one of his obscene jokes, he was tickled into childishness. He made no claim to an experimental acquaintance with the operations of the Holy Spirit, and used his position as theological professor and lecturer only as the stepping-stone to money and fame. He would make Moses a very good sort of statesman, but took care to cast censure upon him whenever the feeblest occasion was offered. Still he did not go so far as to cause great offense to his Jewish readers, who were very numerous at that time, for that would have endangered the pecuniary profits from his books. He lectured on every subject that came in his way, and discussed from his chair natural science, politics, agriculture, and horse-breeding, with as much respect and reverence as the song of Moses or the utterances of Isaiah. He carried Ernesti's principles a step farther than that scholar had done. He held that it is necessary not only to understand the situation and circumstances of the writer and people at the time and place in which the books were written, and the language and history of the time, but all things connected with their moral and physical character. The critic must also be conversant with everything relating to those nations with whom the Jews associated, and know just how far the latter received their opinions and customs from abroad. There have been few men who have shown greater boldness in assaulting the Christian faith than Semler, the father of the destructive school of Rationalism. Reared in the lap of the sternest Pietism, he found himself a student at Halle pursuing his theological curriculum. He was one of the charmed disciples at Baumgarten's feet, but it was reserved for the pupil to accomplish far more than the master had ever anticipated. Gradually the old faith claimed him only by a slight hold; and when, while yet a student, he drew the subtle distinction between theology and religion, he, in that act, gave the parting hand to evangelical faith. Then step by step he descended, until he looked at the oracles of God with no more credence in their inspiration and divine claims than his master before him. In his turn he became professor; and that was a dark day for Germany and Protestantism when he read his first lecture to his auditory. He studied the Scriptures while laboring under the conviction that people worship the Bible instead of the universal Father; and he seemed to say within himself: "I will destroy this vain idolatry, if it take bread from my wife and children: if life be lost in the effort." So he set himself to work with a will. He was in a difficulty concerning the want of understanding as to the number of sacred books. He consulted the Jews of Palestine, and they replied "twenty-four;" he went to the Alexandrians, and they answered "a greater number than that;" and to the Samaritans, who stoutly held "that only the five books of Moses have a just claim to divine authority." With such difference of opinion among those who ought to know all about the Holy Scriptures, Semler, confounded and defiant, esteemed himself a judge on his individual responsibility. He consequently began to examine the merits of each part. And first of all, he must determine what is the proof of the inspiration of a book. This he decided to be the inward conviction of our mind that what it conveys to us is truth. Certainly, reason cannot be sunk so low as to discard its functions of judgment. And did not Christ use his natural faculties? Letting reason, therefore, be umpire, he concluded that the books of Chronicles, Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and the Song of Solomon must be rejected; that Joshua, Judges, the books of Samuel, Kings, and Daniel, are doubtful at best; that the Proverbs of Solomon may be _his_ or the joint production of a number of tolerably gifted men; and that the Pentateuch, and especially Genesis, is a mere collection of legendary fragments. The New Testament has some good qualities, which are wanting in the Old; but there are parts of it positively injurious to the church. The Apocalypse of John, for example, can only be held by every calm critic as the work of a wild fanatic. As to the gospels, their authenticity and integrity are very doubtful, and that of John is the only one in any wise adapted to the present state of the world; since he alone is free from the Jewish spirit. The general epistles were written solely for the unification of the struggling parties into which the early church had unfortunately split. We now come to the famous _Accommodation-Theory_. Christ and his apostles taught doctrines of such nature and by such method as were compatible with the peculiarities of their condition. They adapted themselves to the barbarism and coëxistent prejudices of the people; and hence we can only reconcile much that they taught by their disposition to cater to the corrupt taste of their time. The Jews already possessed many notions which it would not be policy in Christ to annihilate; hence, said Semler, he reclothed them, and gave them a slight admixture of truth. Thus he reduced Christ's utterances concerning angels, the second coming of the Messiah, the last Judgment, demons, resurrection of the dead, and inspiration of the Scripture, to so many _accommodations_ to prevailing errors. Semler had some indistinct faith in these revealed truths, but the stress which Christ laid upon them was, in his opinion, a mere stroke of policy. This theory he had been maturing for some time, and he first made it public in the preface to his _Paraphrase of the Epistle to the Romans_. Another distinction which Semler drew in connection with his new method of criticism, and somewhat allied to the details of his accommodation-theory, was between the local and temporary, the permanent and eternal, in the Scriptures. A large portion of the Bible, he held, is only ephemeral, and was never intended to be anything else. There was a local interest in the accounts of the writers; but after the change of government, or the lapse of a generation or two, they had no further application to mankind. Nor do they now meet the wants of the world; they are only the obsolete machinery of a superseded civilization. Semler bitterly complained of Ernesti by charging him with failing to fix the time and locality of the circumstances of the Scriptures. A few specimens will show how the latter strove to meet the great want. The coming of our Lord Jesus, 1 Cor. i. 7, is only the dawn of a temporal kingdom; "Christ is a stumbling-block to the Jews," because he would not throw off the Roman yoke as his countrymen had fondly hoped; the Apostle's determination "to know nothing but Jesus Christ crucified," meant that he knew nothing whatever of the second coming of Christ; "the Spirit searching the deep things of God" leads us to know that we can understand the dark things of the Prophets; "the creature which is made subject to vanity" is the Roman world still pursuing its idolatry; the demoniacs are mad men whom it was only necessary to bind in order to render perfectly harmless. With such a system of interpretation as this, no one who adopted it could pretend to assign for himself a limit to his skepticism. Whatever defied the critic's acumen or the believer's spiritual grasp was unraveled on the principle that it was local and temporary. Surely Rationalism was making a bold stroke for supremacy, and it had the rare fortune of possessing a man of Semler's versatile taste and boldness of utterance. In one aspect he came into harmony with the English Deists, though his praise of them was extremely moderate. He maintained that they had done more good than harm; but it was only the best of them whom he really admired. He silently repudiated the volatile French school, the learned Bayle being the only one of the number whom he mentioned with any degree of satisfaction. The view by which he came into nearest relation to the free-thinkers of England was, that the Bible is but the republication of the religion of nature. He held that the world had been taught religion long before the Scriptures were written; though he confessed that in them we find it more clearly stated and more rigidly enjoined than anywhere else. Among the mass of natural teachings in the Bible we occasionally come across a modicum of eternal truth; but the seeker is very seldom rewarded with a real gem of permanent value. The Jews were grossly ignorant of all important spiritual light. Their chief idea of Jehovah was that he was their national God; and their religion was purely one of circumstances and ceremonies. Moses had some idea of the soul's immortality, but his countrymen were not so highly favored as himself. The Messiah of the Old Testament was a very vague personage; and indistinct indeed must have been the Jewish idea of a coming Redeemer. But it was not here that Semler won his greatest victories. His chief triumph was against the history and doctrinal authority of the church. His mind had been thoroughly imbued with a disgust at what was ancient and revered. He appeared to despise the antiquities of the church simply because they were antiquities. What was new and fresh, was, with him, worthy of unbounded admiration and speedy adoption. His prejudice against the Fathers may have been imbibed in part from the Reformers; but, however derived, his distaste and censure knew no bounds. All the early Christian writers, he believed, were brimful of imperfections. Tertullian was fanciful, and Augustine captious. So persistent were his efforts against the traditional authority of the church that they endangered the very foundations of German Protestantism. One would have thought him at times exhausted of strength; but no sooner did the thinking public recover from one surprise than it was startled by another attack. The church reeled beneath his invasion of her doctrinal and historical authority. But there was a limit to her patience. To call those heroic standard-bearers of her early faith fanatics and visionaries was quite too much for her to endure. It now remained to be seen whether Semler's boldness would overleap itself, or prove the ruin of the religious spirit of the Continent for generations. The result, whatever it might be, was soon to be decided. For such views as he was propagating throughout the Protestant church of Germany could not fail to determine speedily the drift of the public sentiment of his day. His work, though destructive, was in conflict with the pure beauty of his private life. And here we look at him as one of the enigmas of human biography. True to his tenet that a man's public teachings need not influence his personal living, he was at once a teacher of skepticism and an example of piety. His Moravian origin and Pietistic training he could never forget; nor do we believe he attempted it. No doubt the asperity that he witnessed at Halle did much to repel him from the harsher side of Pietism. When he heard his room-mate praying aloud three hours a day upon his knees; and when he was advised to lay aside all extensive studies, because he would never be converted while pursuing them, he began to question whether intellectual progress were compatible with deep piety. The conclusion at which he arrived was against the intellectuality of the creed of Spener, but in favor of the spiritual purity of the life of his disciples. Through Semler's entire career we can find traces of that devoted spirit which had shined so brightly in his early youth, and which, in late life, he was not ashamed to confess. "There was no corner in the whole house," said he, "where I did not kneel, and pray, and weep alone that God might, out of his infinite mercy, pardon my sins. I felt that I was under the bondage of the law. Moravian songs seemed to be of very little help to me. I examined myself carefully to see whether or not I clung to any sin either consciously or ignorantly. I reproached myself several times for only giving one penny to the poor-collection when I had several pence in my pocket. My father would give me more the next time to make up my deficiency, and this was a great delight to me. It is now one of the pleasantest memories of my university-life that I used to give pieces of money to the poor." His domestic life was very beautiful. He did not remain alone in his study, where most literary men love to be. But wherever his children were playing, or his wife knitting or spinning, he was most happy to pursue his studies and write his books. He gives the following picture: "We had the children continually about us, when they were not under the care of their teachers. Then we would have them read, or in turn sing a Psalm or a hymn, or learn some passage from a good book. We sang with them, and asked them questions in what they had been studying. They knew Gellert's songs by rote. There was nothing but peace and contentment in our circle. The servants never saw or heard anything unpleasant. Every little disturbance was hushed at once; and all the family felt the power of my wife in our household arrangements; and our reciprocal love was apparent to every one. I put all the money matters into her hands; she paid the debts and received the revenue. Thus passed on twenty years of beautiful uniformity; and parents and children felt that we were dearer to each other than was all the world besides. We all met faithfully our duties to each other. But little had then been written on domestic training, yet we created our ideas from the pure fountain of religion; and though we were deprived of much of the glitter of human life, we enjoyed its necessities and its beauty." When such ties unite a family we are not surprised at the spirit with which death is met by a carefully nurtured child. The account is from Semler's own pen. His daughter, then twenty-one years of age, was on her death-bed, hastening to join her mother, who but shortly before had been borne from the threshold. "About nine o'clock," wrote the bereaved father, "I again pronounced the benediction upon her. With a breaking heart I lay down to sleep a little. She sent for me, and addressed me thus: 'Pardon me, my dear father, I am so needy; and do help me to die with that faith and determination which your Christian daughter should possess.' My heart took courage, and I spoke to her of the glories of the heavenly world which would soon break upon her. She sang snatches of sweet songs, following which I said but little. When I addressed her, 'My dear daughter, you will soon rejoin your noble mother,' she answered, 'Oh, yes, and what rapture will I enjoy!' I fell down at her bedside, and again committed her soul to the almighty and enduring care of God. Then just before I went to my lecture I went to see her again: I asked her if she still remembered the hymn, 'Thou art mine, because I hold thee;' when she said, 'Oh yes,' and repeated the verse, 'O Lord my refuge, Fountain of my Joys.' 'Yes, eternal,' I added. I left her, thinking that she might last considerably longer. But I was suddenly called from my lecture, when I again committed her grand spirit to God who gave it, and closed her eyes myself. My bitter grief now subsided into calm affliction, and a sweet acquiescence with the wise will of God. Now I know what the real joy is of having seen a child die so calmly, and of feeling that I had some share in the training that could end so triumphantly. And I still publicly thank those of her teachers who have contributed to the formation of her character. Therefore, when some would in our days advocate an unchristian education, I can speak with the light of experience, when I earnestly recommend to all pious and provident parents to give their children a good Christian training. Thus Christian-like and beautifully have Christian-trained people been dying these many centuries." It is astonishing that a man could live as purely and devotedly as Semler, and yet make the gulf so wide between private faith and public instruction. We attribute no evil intention to him in his theological labors; these were the result of his own mental defects. He was a careless writer, and not a close thinker. He read history loosely, and the philosophy of the Christian system was unperceived and unappreciated by him. He looked at single defects, and magnified them to such an extent that they obscured whole mines of truth and virtue. Having conceived a vague idea of his theme, he wrote hurriedly upon it. He was impelled by his previous notions and the excitement of the hour. He had a very retentive memory, but it was no aid to correct reasoning. When he saw one evil of the Fathers, a mistake of the church, or a defect in her doctrine, he generalized it until he believed error to be the rule instead of the exception. It has been said that, toward the close of his life, he regretted his theological instructions; but in a conversation two days before his death he betrayed the same skeptical views that had distinguished his life. His method of skeptical-historical criticism was the poison which, having been once introduced into the literature and pulpits of the church, produced wide-spread and long-seated disease. Semler was not the founder of a school, for he advanced no elaborate system and possessed no organizing power. Great as were the results of his labors, no one was more surprised at them than himself. Two or three immediate disciples, who had heard him lecture, were enamored of his theories, but as they were men of moderate capacity their activity produced no permanent effect upon the public mind. It was in another respect that he was mighty. Some of his contemporaries who taught in other universities seized upon his tenets and began to propagate them vigorously. They made great capital out of them for themselves. Semler invaded and overthrew what was left of the popular faith in inspiration after the labors of Wolf, but here he stopped. His adherents and imitators commenced with his abnegation of inspiration, and made it the preparatory step for their attempted annihilation of revelation itself. Soon the theological press teemed with blasphemous publications against the Scriptures; and men of all the schools of learning gave themselves to the work of instruction. Göttingen, Jena, Helmstedt, and Frankfort-on-the-Oder were no longer schools of prophets, but of Rationalists and Illuminists. Griesbach pursued his skeptical investigations for the establishment of natural religion and others aided him in his undertaking. But the men of this class were not the principal agents of the complete ruin of the religious vitality of the people. We turn to Edelmann and Bahrdt, two of the most decided enemies of Christianity who have appeared in these later centuries. The former was the better man, but his career brought discredit on private virtue and public morality. In the early part of his life he was blameless, but he subsequently betrayed all the personal weakness which his skepticism tended to engender. We get a fair portrait of him from the pen of one of his countrymen, Kahnis: "What Edelmann wished was nothing new," writes this author; "after the manner of all adherents of Illuminism, he wished to reduce all positive religions to natural religion. The positive heathenish religions stand, to him, on a level with Judaism and Christianity. He is more just toward heathenism than toward Judaism, and more just toward Judaism than toward Christianity. Everything positive in religion is, as such, superstition. Christ was a mere man, whose chief merit consists in the struggle against superstition. What he taught, and what he was anxious for, no one, however, may attempt to learn from the New Testament writings, inasmuch as these were forged as late as the time of Constantine. All which the church teaches of his divinity, of his merits, of the gracious influence of the Holy Spirit, is absurd. There is no rule of truth but reason, and it manifests its truths directly by a peculiar sense. Whatever this sense says is true. It is this sense which perceives the world. The reality of everything which exists is God. In the proper sense there can, therefore, not exist any atheist, because every one who admits the reality of the world admits also the reality of God. God is not a person--least of all are there three persons in God. If God be the substance in all the phenomena, then it follows of itself that God cannot be thought of without the world, and hence that the world has no more had an origin than it will have an end. One may call the world the body of God, the shadow of God, the son of God. The spirit of God is in all that exists. It is ridiculous to ascribe inspiration to special persons only; every one ought to be a Christ, a prophet, an inspired man. The human spirit, being a breath of God, does not perish; our spirit, separated from its body by death, enters into a connection with some other body. Thus Edelmann taught a kind of metempsychosis. What he taught had been thoroughly and ingeniously said in France and England; but from a German theologian, and that with such eloquent coarseness, with such a mastery in expatiating in blasphemy, such things were unheard of. But as yet the faith of the church was a power in Germany!" From Edelmann the transition is easy to the reckless and vicious Bahrdt. This man stands among the first of those who have brought dishonor upon the sacred vocation. What Jeffreys is to the judicial history of England, Bahrdt is to the religious history of German Protestantism. Whatever he touched was disgraced by the vileness of his heart and the satanic daring of his mind. He heard theological lectures. Thinking that in this field he could infuse most venom and reap a greater harvest of gold than in any other, he stripped for the undertaking. While a mere youth he gained, by his tricky management, a professor's chair. He blasphemed to his auditors by day, while at night he surrendered himself to the corruptions of the gambling-room, the beer-cellar and the house of prostitution. The slave of passion and of doubt, he was, of all his contemporaries, the most loud-spoken against the claims of God's truth, and adherence to the canons of the church. His mind was quick, active, and penetrating. Seizing the pen, he invaded the sanctity of every doctrine that stood in the way of his corrupt theories. He took up the Bible with sacrilegious purpose, and made it the plaything of his vicious heart. He sneered at what was revered by the church and the good men of past ages, with the kind of levity that should greet the recital of the stories of _Sinbad the Sailor_ and the _Wonderful Lamp_. He published many works, the aim of all being to infuse into the masses a contempt of the received Scriptures. He issued a travesty of the New Testament under the title of _The New Testament_, or _The Newest Instructions from God through Jesus and his Apostles_. He did just what he pleased with the miracles and words of Christ. He would convert dialogue into parable, and make any passage, however grave in import, minister to his unsanctified purpose. He banished such expressions as 'kingdom of God,' 'holiness,' 'sanctification,' 'Saviour,' 'Redeemer,' 'way of salvation,' 'Holy Ghost,' 'name of Jesus,' and all other terms that could leave the impression of inspiration and divine presence. But corrupt as the church was, it was not ready for this fearful leap; therefore Bahrdt received a torrent of abuse. Banished and hunted by opposition, he gained many adherents from the force of the very arrows discharged against him. He had fallen from the height of faith which he occupied when he went to Giessen, a fact which he refers to in his autobiography: "I came to Giessen," says he, "as yet very orthodox. My belief in the divinity of the Scriptures, in the direct mission of Jesus, in his miraculous history, in the Trinity, in the gifts of grace, in natural corruption, in justification of the sinner by laying hold of the merits of Christ, and especially in the whole theory of satisfaction, seemed to be immovable. It was only the manner in which three persons were to be in one God, which had engaged my reason. I had only explained to myself a little better the work of the Holy Spirit, so as not to exclude man's activity. I had limited a little the idea of original sin; and in the doctrine of the atonement and justification, I had endeavored to uphold the value of virtue, and had cleared myself from the error that God, in his grace, should not pay any regard at all to human virtuous zeal. That in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper I was more Reformed than Lutheran, will be supposed as a matter of course." But in due time he dropped these points of belief, one by one, until he indulged in all the illicit extravagances of the radical skeptics of France. The opposition he met with was a sore rebuke, but it failed to cure him. He set out for a journey to England and Holland with but three florins in his purse, and he suffered much by the way. He came home again only to find new edicts against him. On arriving at Halle, where he had once been honored, he was met with the following repulse from the faculty, at whose head stood Semler, the father of his doubt: "Our vocation demands not only that we should prevent the dissemination of directly irreligious opinions, but also that we should watch over the doctrines which are contained in Holy Scripture, and, in conformity with it, in the _Augsburg Confession of Faith_." He labored as an educator, preacher, professor, and author. He made all his enterprises subservient to the dearest object of his life,--money. He wrote plain books for the masses, and his writings were perused alike in palace and cottage. While a resident in Halle he established an inn in the suburbs of the city where his depraved nature was permitted to indulge in those nameless liberties unbecoming, not only the theologian, but the rational man. His _liaison_ with the servant-girl in his employ made his wife an object of public pity, and we can easily understand his injustice to the latter when he tells us himself that he had never loved with passion. His death was of a piece with his life. Having been a public frequenter of brothels and the associate of the loosest company, he died like the libertine. He was taken off by syphilis. It is not necessary to enlarge upon the lesson of Bahrdt's life. He was the German crystallization of all the worst elements of French skepticism. He began his work with an evil purpose, and never sought the wisdom of God who promises to give liberally to all who ask him. The infamy of his life was soon forgotten, and only his teachings remained to corrupt the young and injure the mature of the land. While his love of money controlled his matrimonial alliances and literary labors, his hatred of revealed religion distorted his whole moral and intellectual nature. He is illustrative of the certain doom which awaits the man who commits himself to the sole guidance of his doubts. Semler's moral life was _in spite_ of erroneous opinions; Bahrdt's was in _conformity_ with them. And what the latter was in his career and death is the best comment that can be written on the natural effect of Rationalism. Would that he had been the only warning; but he had his followers when his creed became the fashion of the German church. The depth of his infamy is only aggravated by the holy sphere in which he wrought fearful havoc upon the succeeding generation. The Old Play says truly: "That sin does ten times aggravate itself, That is committed in an holy place; An evil deed done by authority Is sin and subornation; deck an ape In tissue, and the beauty of the robe Adds but the greater scorn unto the beast; The poison shows worst in a golden cup; Dark night seems darker by the lightning's flash; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds; And every glory that inclines to sin, The shame is trebled by the opposite." CHAPTER VI. CONTRIBUTIONS OF LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY. The views of Semler, possessing great power of fascination, soon gained popular strength. As a result, the strictly literary tastes of the people took a theological turn and the Bible became the theme of every aspirant to authorship. As no system had yet been advanced by the Rationalists, there was wide range for doctrinal and exegetical discussion. The devoted Pietists, who were now in the background, looked on in amazement as they trembled for the pillars of faith. They knew not what to do. Many of their number had proved themselves fanatics and brought odium upon the revered names of Spener and Francke. Their enemies were traveling in foreign lands, ransacking the libraries of other tongues to bring home the poisonous seeds of doubt. At home, the University was the training school of ungoverned criticism. History, science, literature, and philology were only prized according to the measure of strength they possessed to combat the great claims of the orthodox church. Besides, the Rationalists seemed to be impartial inquirers. They set themselves to understand the Scriptural lands and languages, while their progress in recent Biblical literature gained for them the respect of many who, though less learned, were more evangelical. The masses have always paid homage to learning, and in this case, it was the attainments of the Illuminists which gave them a standing denied to the friends of the Bible. The times were all astir with the evidences of mental progression. There was now a resurrection of European activity. Look whither you will, there was nowhere either the spirit of sleep or of sloth. The science of government, the beauties of æsthetic culture, the discoveries of the material world, and the long-sealed mysteries of philology, were each the centre of a host of admirers and votaries. As in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Europe arose from the torpidity of the Middle Ages, so did the eighteenth century witness a new revival from the darkness and sluggishness of Continental Protestantism. There appeared to be a universal repudiation of old methods, and a new civilization was now the aim of every class of literary adventurers. Semler had struck the key-note of human pride. He had so flattered his race by saying that the Bible was not so sacred as to be exempt from criticism, that his contemporaries would not willingly let his words fall to the ground. The temptation was too strong to be resisted, and soon the Scriptures became a carcass around which the vultures of Germany gathered to satisfy the cravings of their wanton hunger. We do not say that the destructionists desired to injure the faith of the people, or to cast odium upon the pages that Luther and Melanchthon had unfolded to the German heart. But believing as they did that the popular respect for the Bible was sheer Bibliolatry, and that therefore the dignity of reason was compromised, they bestirred themselves to show every weak point in the faith of the church. They hastened to expose the defects of the Scriptures with as much frankness as they would brand a sentence in Cicero or Seneca to be the interpolation of an impostor. In no nation has theology, as a science, absorbed more literary talent and labor than in Germany. In America and Great Britain the theologian is the patron of his own department of thought. But in Germany, poets, romancists, and scientific men write almost as many works connected with religious questions as on topics within their own chosen vocation. The Teuton considers himself a born theologian. So it was after the announcement of the destructive theories of Semler. All classes of thinkers invited themselves to discuss the Scriptures and their claims with as much freedom as if God had told them it was the true aim of their life. What was the consequence? Semler, having left so much room for doubt, and having rather indicated a direction than supplied a plan, a great number of men adopted the accommodation-theory and each one built his own edifice upon it. But the conclusions arrived at by them were very unlike, and generally incongruous. And such a result was very natural; for, all claiming the unrestricted use of reason, the issue of their thinking was the work of the individual mind. No two intellects are perfectly similar. Set a number of men to write upon a given subject and they will employ a different style, give expression to diverse thoughts, and perhaps reach antipodal conclusions. So when these writers against inspiration plied the pen, and burdened the press with their prolix effusions, there was no harmony in their thoughts. In one opinion they were firmly united, _that the Bible is a human book_. But how much of it was authentic; what was history and what myth; what poetry and what incident; these and a thousand kindred points divided the Rationalists into almost as many classes as there were individuals. There were two principal tendencies which gave a permanence and efficiency to Rationalism quite beyond the expectation of its most sanguine friends and admirers. One was _literary_, and inaugurated by Lessing; the other purely _philosophical_, and conducted by Kant. The literary despotism at Berlin was one of the most remarkable in the annals of periodical literature. We refer to the _Universal German Library_, under the control of Nicolai. Its avowed aim was to laud every Rationalistic book to the skies, but to reproach every evangelical publication as unworthy the support, or even the notice, of rational beings. Its appliances for gaining knowledge were extensive, and it commanded a survey of the literature of England, Holland, France, and Italy. Whatever appeared in these lands received its immediate attention, and was reproached or magnified according to its relations to the skeptical creed of Nicolai and his co-laborers. Commencing in 1765, it ran a career of power and prosperity such as but few serials have ever enjoyed. It terminated its existence in 1792, having inflicted incalculable evil upon the popular estimate of the vital doctrines of Christianity. Being the great organ of the Rationalists, it sat in judgment upon the sublime truths of our holy faith. With all the rage of an infuriated lion it pounced upon every literary production or practical movement that had a tendency to restore the old landmarks. Its influence was felt throughout Germany and the Continent. Every university and gymnasium listened to it as an oracle, while its power was felt even in the pot-houses and humblest cottages. Berlin was completely under its sway, and _Berliner_ was a synonym of _Rationalist_. Oetinger wrote a curious passage in a volume of sermons, published in 1777, in which he descants _On those things of which the people of Berlin know nothing_: "They know nothing of the Lord of glory; they are sick of these shallow-pated Liebnitzians; they wish to know nothing of the promises of God; they have nothing to do with the salutations of the seven spirits; they form a mechanical divinity after their own notion. The Berliners know nothing of man so far as he is a subject of divine grace; nothing of angels or devils, nothing of what sin is, nothing of eating and drinking the flesh and blood of Christ, and still less of the communion of saints, and that the spirit can be communicated by the laying on of hands. They know nothing of the truth that baptism and the Lord's Supper are agents for a spiritual union with Christ; they know nothing of heaven and hell; nothing of the interval before the resurrection. Neither do they wish to know anything save what may harmonize with their own depraved views. But the time will come when Jesus will show them how they should have confessed him before the world." This was Berlin, and Berlin was Germany. The position of Rationalism during the last quarter of the eighteenth century was surrounded with circumstances of the most conflicting nature. Had it been advocated by a few more such ribald characters as Bahrdt its career would soon have been terminated from the mere want of respectability. But had it assumed a more serious phase and become the protegé of such pious men as Semler was at heart, there would have been no limit to the damage it might inflict upon the cause of Protestantism. And there were indications favorable to either result. However, by some plan of fiendish malice, skepticism received all the support it could ask from the learned, the powerful, and the ambitious. Here and there around the horizon could be seen some rising literary star that, for the hour, excited universal attention. His labor was to impugn the contents of the Scriptures and insinuate against the moral purity of the writers themselves. Another candidate for theological glory appeared, and reproached the style of the inspired record. A third came vauntingly forward with his geographical discoveries and scientific data, and reared the accommodation-theory so many more stories higher than Semler had left it that it almost threatened to fall of its own weight. Strange that the poetic Muse should lend her inspiration to such unholy purposes; but in the poetry of that day there was but little of the Christian element, and he need not be greatly skilled in classic verse who concludes that the loftiest poetry of Rationalism was as thoroughly heathen as the dramas of Euripides or Plautus. Immediately before the appearance of the _Wolfenbüttel Fragments_ by Lessing, there was the significant lull before the storm. A single editorial in some religious periodical might decide the fate of Rationalism. In a few years more it might lie outside the lecture-halls and renowned churches as thoroughly discarded as a cast-off garment. Or it might rise to new power and bend all opposition before it. Every one seemed to be waiting to see what would come next. Would it be the hoarse thunder and the glare of lightning; or would the clouds be rent and the clear sky be seen through the widening rifts? Lessing touched a chord which vibrated throughout the land. While in charge of the celebrated Library at Wolfenbüttel he met with a manuscript production of Reimarus, bearing the title of _Vindication of the Rational Worshipers of God_. It can still be found in the Town Library of Hamburg. Between 1774 and 1778, Lessing issued seven _Fragments_ from this work; and the result was, that Germany was electrified by the boldness and importance of the views there advanced. They cannot be considered the private opinions of Lessing, for in many places he appends notes stating his opposition to them. But he heartily approved the substance of the work, though his object in the publication of the _Fragments_ was more to feel the public pulse than to instill theological doctrines into the minds of the people. Reimarus had been a doubter like many others of his countrymen. He committed his mental phases to paper, though he thought that it was not yet time to issue them for public notice. The _Fragments_ published by Lessing contain the gist of his entire work, and contributed far more to the growth of skepticism than a larger production would probably have done. The historical evidences of Christianity and of the doctrine of inspiration, according to the _Fragments_, are clad in such a garb of superstition that they do not merit the credence of sensible men. The confessions framed at different periods of the history of the church have savored far more of human weakness than of divine knowledge. They bear but slight traces of Biblical truth. The Trinity is incomprehensible, and the heart should not feel bound to lean upon what Reason cannot fathom. Nearly all the Old Testament history is a string of legends and myths which an advanced age should indignantly reject. Christ never really intended to establish a permanent religion; the work of his apostles was something unanticipated by himself. His design was to restore Judaism to its former state, throw off the Roman yoke, and declare himself king. His public entry into Jerusalem was designed to be his installation as a temporal king; but he failed in his dependence upon popular support, and, instead of attaining a throne, he died on the cross. Belief in Scriptural records is perfectly natural to the Christian, for he has imbibed it from education and training. Reason is forestalled in the ordinary education of children; they are baptized before they are old enough to exercise their own reasoning faculties. Faith in Scripture testimony is really of no greater value than the belief of the Mohammedan or Jew in their oracles, unless Reason be permitted to occupy the seat of judgment. We have said that the excitement raised by the publication of the _Fragments_ was intense. There was in them more calmness of expression, and more apparent effort for truthful conclusions than many of the previously published works of the Rationalists had indicated. By and by, there sprang up a decided opposition to the work of Lessing; and from all quarters of the German church there came earnest and vigorous replies. It was surprising that there remained so much tenacity for the old faith. Lessing received the censure of many of the best and wisest men of his time; his publication of the _Fragments_ was claimed to be a curse to the cause of truth. But he had accomplished what he wished, while his success was far beyond his expectation. He found that a large portion of his countrymen were not willing to cast loose from the old moorings of the Protestant teachings, and that, whatever the previous indications were, there was yet a deep undercurrent of attachment to the time-honored confessions of the church. The movement employed by Lessing to find out what the people really believed is one of the shrewdest literary tricks on record. Without committing himself to what he issued, and watching carefully the effect of the _Fragments_, he began to publish his own views with no little assurance that he would prove successful. He learned that the Wolffian philosophy was becoming effete, and so he raised the cry, loud and clear, against its longer existence. He violently opposed the obliteration of all dependence upon the historical proofs of Christianity, and claimed that, in the matter of religion, the heart has a work not less than the reason. His principle was: overthrow this historical basis, and you endanger the whole edifice. He inflicted great injury upon the inflated, pompous Popular Philosophy, for he exposed its emptiness as but few were able to do. He opposed, with all the force of his rare satirical and logical power, the attempt of the Rationalists to substitute the intuitions of Reason for the dictates of the heart and for the promptings of faith. "What else," he asks, "is this modern theology when compared with orthodoxy, than filthy water with clear water? With orthodoxy we had, thanks to God, pretty much settled; between it and philosophy a barrier had been erected, behind which each of these could walk in its own way without molesting the other. But what is it that they are now doing? They pull down this barrier, and, under the pretext of making us _rational Christians_, they make us most _irrational philosophers_. In this we agree that our old religious system is false, but I should not like to say with you [he is writing to his brother] that it is a patch-work, got up by jugglers and semi-philosophers. I do not know of anything in the world in which human ingenuity had more shown and exercised itself than in it. A patch-work by jugglers and semi-philosophers is that religious system which they would put in the place of the old one, and, in doing so, would pretend to more rational philosophy than the old one claims." It was difficult to tell what Lessing believed. His publication of the views of a doubter was of itself a proof that he agreed, to some extent at least, with them. This we must grant as a concession to his honesty and common sense. And when assailed by Götze and others for thus attacking the faith of the church, he replied that, even if the Fragmentists were right, Christianity was not thereby endangered.[31] He rejected the letter, but reserved the spirit of the Scriptures. With him, the letter is not the spirit and the Bible is not religion. Consequently, objections against the letter, as well as against the Bible, are not precisely objections against the spirit and religion. For the Bible evidently contains more than belongs to religion, and it is a mere supposition, that, in this additional matter which it contains, it must be equally infallible. Moreover, religion existed before there was a Bible. Christianity existed before evangelists and apostles had written. However much, therefore, may depend upon those Scriptures, it is not possible that the whole truth of the Christian religion should depend upon them. Since there existed a period in which it was so far spread, in which it had already taken hold of so many souls, and in which, nevertheless, not one letter was written of that which has come down to us, it must be possible also that everything which evangelists and prophets have written might be lost again, and yet the religion taught by them, stand. The Christian religion is not true because Evangelists and apostles taught it; _but they taught it because it was true_. It is from their internal truth that all written documents must be explained, and all these written documents cannot give it internal truth when it has none. The Christian religion is distinguished from the religion of Christ; the latter, being a life immediately implanted and maintained in our heart, manifests itself in love, and can neither stand nor fall with the Gospel. The truths of religion have nothing to do with the facts of history. With such opinions as these, expressed in great clearness and conciseness, who can fail to perceive that their tendency was to overthrow the traditional faith of the church in large portions of the Bible? Who is to be the judge of what is to be retained and what rejected? Indeed, if Lessing be right, the entire Scripture record might be abolished without doing violence to religion. The effect of his writings was decidedly skeptical. His view of Christianity was merely æsthetical, and only so far as the Bible was an agent of popular elevation, did he seem to consider it valuable. He did not dispute the facts of Scripture history because of the various accounts given of them by the inspired writers. Variety of testimony was no ground for the total overthrow of the thing testified. He retained the history of the resurrection in spite of the different versions of it. "Who," he asks, "has ever ventured to draw the same inference in profane history? If Livy, Polybius, Dionysius, and Tacitus relate the very same event, it may be the very same battle, the very same siege, each one differing so much in the details that those of the one completely give the lie to those of the other, has any one, for that reason, ever denied the event itself in which they agree?" We may examine the entire circle of Lessing's literary productions, and we shall see, scattered here and there through them, sentiments which, taken singly, would have a very beneficial effect upon the popular faith in inspiration and the historical testimony of the Scriptures. But, unhappily, these were overshadowed by others of a conflicting nature, and though he did not array himself as a champion of Rationalism, he proved himself one of the strongest promoters of its reign. He considered his age torpid and sluggish. It was his desire to awaken it. And he did succeed in giving to the chaotic times in which he lived that literary direction which we now look back upon as the starting-point of recent German literature. The chief evil that he inflicted was due to the position in which he placed himself as the combatant of the avowed friends of inspiration. He was honest in his love of truth, but he loved the search for it more than the attainment. The key to his whole life may be found in his own words: "If God should hold in his right hand all truth, and in his left the ever-active impulse and love of search after truth, although accompanied with the condition that I should ever err, and should say, 'Choose!' I would choose the left with humility, and say, 'Give, Father! Pure truth belongs to thee alone!'" The revolution which Lessing wrought in literature was only equaled by that achieved by Kant in the domain of philosophy. It has been one of the historical features of German theology that it has ever affiliated with philosophy. The mathematical method of Wolf has been a severe blow to orthodoxy, and it was but partially counteracted by the work of Pietism. But the influence of that copyist of Leibnitz is only of a piece with the impression made upon theology and faith by every respectable innovation in philosophy. But Kant threw all others in the shade. He was the agent of a change in philosophical thinking, which was destined not only to reform the old systems of Germany, but to wield a universal power over modern thought. He had looked to England for his masters, and succeeded in gaining a thorough acquaintance with the grave skepticism of Hume and kindred minds. He shut himself up in his native Königsberg, and, in all his life, never traveled more than thirty miles therefrom. He had the memory of a pious Christian mother ever present to him, and no one can conjecture the probable influence that her example exerted upon his mental processes. The astute philosopher wrote of her with the deepest feeling of his nature when he said, "My mother was an amiable, sensitive, pious, and devoted woman, who taught her children the fear of God by her godly teachings and spotless life. She often led me outside the city, and showed me the works of God; she pointed me with devout feelings to the omnipotence, wisdom, and goodness of God; and inspired my heart with a deep reverence for the Creator of all things. I shall never forget my mother, for it was she who planted and strengthened my first germ of goodness; she opened my heart to the impressions of nature; she awakened and advanced my conceptions; and it has been her instructions that have exerted a permanent and wholesome influence upon my life." First an undergraduate and afterward a professor in the University of Königsberg, Kant quietly matured his principles, and was in no haste to communicate them to the world. He delivered his philosophy to his students in the form of lectures, and was extremely careful not to publish it until he was sure that his mind had arrived at its final conclusions. A student named Hippel, who had enjoyed his intimacy, was the first to give publicity to his opinions. He employed the medium of a novel. He forestalled their real author, and Kant was compelled to explain the matter openly as a breach of faith. Gradually the lecture-hall at Königsberg became full of hearers, who, in a little time, could gain admittance only with difficulty. The professor of philosophy was a magnet that drew to that bleak northern city students from all parts of the Continent. Finally the opportune moment arrived. Having written, rewritten, altered, and abridged until he looked upon his work as beyond his power of improvement, he now deemed his convictions permanently formed. So the _Critique of Pure Reason_ entered upon its career of victory. The literary and thinking world had learned but a little of it in Hippel's book; and now there seemed to be no inclination to probe the concise language of the master's work, for the task appeared greater than the fruits would justify. This hesitancy was a glaring testimony to the loose thinking and careless literary habits of those days. But the haste with which Kant prosecuted the authorship of his work, apart from the thoughts employed in its elaboration into a system, furnishes some ground of apology for the failure of the public to fathom it. "I wrote," he says in a letter to Moses Mendelssohn, "this product of at least twelve years of diligent reflection within a period of from four to five months, paying indeed the greatest attention to the contents, but unable, borne away, as it were, upon the wings of thought, to bestow that care upon the style which might have promoted a readier insight into my meaning on the part of the reader." Several years now pass by, and the great work is still neglected. Perhaps it is false, or mayhap it is ill-timed. Finally Schulze hits upon the difficulty when he conjectures that, if men only knew what was in the book they would not only read it, but be ravished with its contents. Thereupon he issues his _Elucidations of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason_. Now people begin to open their eyes. The work of Schulze is read by everybody, and in turn it serves as an introduction to the work of Kant. Soon the universities and reading circles demand it, and the whole land is suddenly transformed into a race of philosophers. The popularity of the work is boundless. It is written in a style adapted only to systematic thinkers; but no matter, it becomes a fashion to read it. It is the topic in stagecoaches and drawing rooms. Failure to have perused Kant's book is a mark of ignorance which receives rebuke on every hand. In self-defense every one feels bound to read it, if the continued respect of friends can reasonably be expected. The work itself is interlarded with new terminology and pruned expressions that betray the constant impress of the author's mind. So, in a short time, writers on the various sciences employ these very terms as at once the best vehicle for the conveyance of their thoughts and for accession to popularity. It has its opponents in Hamann, Jacobi, Reimarus, Tiedemann, and others; yet he is a bold spirit who dares to attack this object of universal favor. But the opposition is insufficient, and the _Critique of Pure Reason_ is too strong for these hastily-conceived rejoinders. Every department of inquiry is powerfully affected by it. Religion, logic, metaphysics, law, psychology, æsthetics, and education are alike molded by its plastic touch. Holland and all the north of Europe are vocal with its praises. And now we may ask, why such favor shown toward this new apparition? Let us delay a moment and examine the hard-wrought thoughts of this bachelor-son of an obscure saddler. Kant had been profoundly disgusted with the want of harmony in philosophical speculations. The disagreements that he saw in his own time were but the continuation of what, he had learned from history, was the fact in the days of the heathen sages. Following close upon the footsteps of Hume, he asked: "How far can human reason go? Where is its limit?" His _Critique_ was the answer. He showed that, if the loose methods of thought were to be continued, philosophy, instead of being the hand-maid of religion, would be unworthy the attention of the most unlettered man. Hence he would recall reason from its lofty flights, and direct its attention solely to self-consciousness. Only by studying the powers of the mind as a datum, he held, can any positive results be gained. Using his own illustration of his work, he would do for philosophy what Copernicus had done for astronomy--reverse metaphysics by referring classes of ideas to inner, which before had been referred to outer, causes. He granted that, for some things, man's reason is sufficient. The existence of God, the doctrine of original sin, and the soul's immortality need no Scripture to reveal them. They are intuitive subjects of knowledge. But these truths are extremely limited; man needs what nature has not given him. Kant's distinction between practical and speculative reason was in favor of the former, since its aim was wisdom. But speculative reason is often exerted for its own gratification. Hence its results are frequently useless and ephemeral. His grand conclusion is, that no object can be known to us except in proportion as it is apprehended by our perceptions, and definable by our faculties of cognition; consequently we know nothing, _per se_, but only by appearances. Our knowledge of real objects is limited by experience. With regard to the general character of the critical system of Kant, an acute author says: "It confined itself to a contemplation of the phenomena of consciousness, and attempted to ascertain by analysis, not of our conceptions but of the faculties of the soul, certain invariable and necessary principles of knowledge; proceeding to define their usage, and to form an estimate of them collectively with reference to their _formal_ character; in which investigation the distinctions and definitions of those faculties adopted by the school of Wolf were presumed to be valid. It exalted the human mind by making it the centre of its system; but at the same time confined and restricted it by means of the consequences deduced. It discouraged also the spirit of dogmatic speculation, and the ambition of demonstrating all things by means of mere intellectual ideas, making the faculties of acquiring knowledge the measure of things capable of being known, and assigning the preeminence to practical Reason rather than to speculation, in virtue of its end--wisdom; which is the highest that reason can aspire to, because to act virtuously is a universal and unlimited, but to acquire knowledge only a conditional, duty. It had the effect of mitigating the dogmatical and speculative tendencies of the mind, and the extravagant attempt to prove everything by means of conceptions of the understanding. It proscribed mysticism and circumscribed the provinces of science and belief. It taught men to discriminate and appreciate the grounds, the tendency, the defects, and partial views, as well as the excellencies of other systems; at the same time that it embodied a lively principle for awakening and strengthening the interest attaching to genuine philosophical research. It afforded to philosophy a firm and steady centre of action in the unchangeable nature of the human mind. In general it may be observed that the theory of Kant _constructed_ little; and rather tended to destroy the structures of an empty dogmatism of the understanding and prepare, by means of self-knowledge, the way for a better state of philosophical science; seeking in reason itself the principles on which to distinguish the several parts of the philosophy."[32] Kant had but little to say concerning the positive truths of Christianity. He respected the character of Christ, and spoke reverently of the church and her doctrines. Morality, with him, was developed into religion, not religion into morality. The so-called revelation was only the mythical copy of the moral law already implanted in our nature. He believed in a universal religion. Everything peculiar and won by struggle should be given up; all strife of opinions should cease at once. Kant designed, in the main, to curb the illicit exercise of Reason, but his failure to indorse the great doctrines of our faith, because revealed, threw him on the side of the Rationalists. His adoption of God's existence, the soul's immortality, human freedom, and original sin, was not due to his belief in these doctrines as revealed, but as intuitive. He gradually became a devotee to his own method of thinking, and it was his aim not to teach _what_ but _how_ to think. He often told his students that he had no intention or desire to teach them philosophy, but how to philosophize. It was through Kant that the terms _Rationalist_,--one who declares natural religion alone to be morally necessary, though he may admit revelation,--_Naturalist_--one who denies the reality of a supernatural divine revelation,--and _Supernaturalist_--one who considers the belief in revelation a necessary element in religion, came into use, and Rationalism and Supernaturalism became the principal division of theological schools.[33] As Descartes had broken up the scholastic philosophy by considering man apart from his experience, so Kant now gave the death-blow to the philosophy of Protestant Germany by looking at the mind apart from its speculations. "The moral effect of his philosophy," says Mr. Farrar, "was to expel the French Materialism and Illuminism, and to give depth to the moral perceptions; its religious effect was to strengthen the appeal to reason and the moral judgment as the test of religious truth; to render miraculous communication of moral instruction useless, if not absurd; and to reäwaken the attempt which had been laid aside since the Wolffian philosophy of endeavoring to find a philosophy of religion."[34] Among the antagonists of Kant, Jacobi was perhaps the most powerful. He was not content that, in these metaphysical speculations, reason should reign supreme. His belief was that feeling was of as much importance as the deductions of the intellect. He mastered the various systems of philosophy and rejected them, Kant's among the rest, as unfit for the acceptance and pursuit of responsible beings. The two principles which furnish the key to his views were that religion lies in the feeling, and that this feeling, which exists in every man's heart, is not reflected, but original. His dissatisfaction with all systems induced him to term himself the _Unphilosophical_, and it was with utter disgust that he was led to declare the foundation of all speculative philosophy to be only a great cavity, in which we look in vain, as down into an awful abyss. With him, as with Coleridge, Faith begins where Reason ends. The two bright stars after Kant were Fichte and Schelling. The former commenced with the system of the great Königsberg teacher, and developed it on the negative side, contending that the whole material world has no existence apart from ourselves, and that it only appears to us in conformity with certain laws of our mind. He aimed to found a system which might illustrate, by a single principle, the material and formal properties of all science; establish the unity of plan which the critical system had failed to maintain; and solve that most difficult of all problems regarding the connection between our conceptions and their objects. His views of God are the most glaring defect of his system. He contended that we cannot attribute to the Deity intelligence or personality without making him a finite being like ourselves; that it is a species of profanation to conceive of him as a separate essence, since such a conception implies the existence of a sensible being limited by space and time; that we cannot impute to him even existence without compounding him with sensible natures; that no satisfactory explanation has yet been given of the manner in which the creation of the world could be effected by God; that the idea and expectation of happiness is a delusion; and that, when we form our notions of the Deity in accordance with such imaginations, we only worship the idol of our own passions,--the prince of this world.[35] Schelling was a man of ardent, sanguine temperament, and it was his natural proclivities that gave rise to his system of philosophy. He attributes a real existence to the material as well as to the immaterial world, but permits it a different mode of existence. He makes history a necessity. This natural philosophy conveys to us no knowledge of God, and the little it does reveal appears opposed to religion. What God performs takes place because it _must be_. Schelling created two opposite and parallel philosophic sciences, the transcendental philosophy and the philosophy of Nature. He was a pantheist in identifying the Deity with nature, and in making Him subject to laws. He clothed his ideas in the beautiful fancies of his own vivid imagination, and in him we find the poet, not giving forth verses from his lyre, but delivering philosophical oracles. What Schleiermacher was to theology Hegel became to philosophy. He was the turning-point from doubt and fruitless theories to a more positive and settled system of thinking. He was, when young, a decided Rationalist; and his _Life of Christ_, though yet unpublished, is said by one who has seen it to be a representation of the Messiah as a divine man, in whom all is pure and sublime, and who made himself remarkable chiefly by his triumphs over vice, falsehood, hatred and the servile spirit of his age. He endeavored to explain the reason for Christianity in the world. He longed for a positive religion. His philosophy is reducible to a philosophy of nature, which has quite a different meaning from that of Schelling, for, with Hegel, it is only the expression of the passage to another being; and to the philosophy of the mind, which considers thought reflecting itself on itself, and showing itself by the mind in the sciences of law and morality, in the state, history, religion, and the arts. The religion which is deduced from this system may be said to consist of the objective existence of the infinite mind in the finite, for mind is only for mind; consequently God exists only in being thought of and in thinking. In the philosophy of nature intelligence and God are lost in objective nature. Hegel allows them a distinct and separate existence, but refers them to a common principle which, according to him, is the absolute idea, or God. In this case, objective nature is only the absolute idea going out of itself, individualizing itself, and giving itself limits, though it is infinite. Thus the intelligence of all men, and external nature, are only manifestations of the _absolute idea_. It is a mournful tribute that M. Saintes pays to his memory when he says, as the sum of his labors, that "he perverted all the Christian opinions which he attempted to restore." As little flattering is M. Quinet's testimony, that "he saw in Christianity no more than an idea, the religious worth of which is independent of the testimonies of history." This was indeed a race of thinkers who have been equaled in strength in but few periods of history. Coming in regular succession, their systems sprang from Kant's philosophy, and constituted the growth of his wonderful achievement. They tended to withdraw the flippant spirit of criticism to a more serious and modest path of inquiry, and to make men look more at their own weakness than at their greatness. But what a mass of subtleties do we have to pass through to get at the substance of their speculations! There is something so unsatisfactory in the study of them, that we find relief only in the knowledge that the Bible contains the true basis of all sound thinking on the great themes connected with the well-being and destiny of man. The plainest statements of the word of God are more valuable than all these vaporings about the non-_Ego_, the _Ideal_, and _Self-hood_. Simplicity is bliss. "Yon cottager who weaves at her own door Pillow and bobbins, all her little store, Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay, Shuffling her threads about the live-long day, Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light; She for her humble sphere by nature fit, Has little understanding and no wit; Receives no praise, but though her lot be such, Toilsome and indigent, she renders much; Just knows and knows no more, her Bible true; And in that charter reads with sparkling eyes Her title to a treasure in the skies." But yet we grant to these men the meed of having meant well, and of reforming the philosophy and literature of their times. The immediate effect of their views was decidedly in favor of Rationalism, because they almost uniformly deny the absolute authority of the Scriptures. They grant too much to reason. While Kant would drive the truant mind back to self-contemplation, he terminates by giving to reason a value and dignity so great that it becomes entitled to decide upon matters of faith. Their theories, spun out at such length and concluding in so little satisfaction, make us rejoice that we have not to depend upon philosophy for guidance in matters of either the intellect or heart. They thought independently of the Bible, and here lies the ground of all failure to obtain positive results in metaphysics. The Scriptures furnish everything noble and real, and when philosophy aims to supply a substitute for them it always labors in vain. We wonder at the tropic luxuriance of Schelling's thoughts, but we are soon convinced of their little practical purpose when we recall the fact that he considered the revelation of the gospel as no more than one of the accidents of the eternal revelation of God in nature and in history. If Schelling and all these strong minds had commenced their investigations with the word of God as their basis, there is no telling how far they might have ministered to an immediate and thorough revival of faith. But failing to do this, their work has been more doubtful and tardy. It is a very plain fact that the church cannot look to any other than to a Christian philosophy for the conservation or regeneration of her torpid powers. Never has she been thoroughly benefited by the immediate agency of any other system. There is one way, however, in which speculative philosophy has indirectly proved the aid of religion. It has strengthened and quickened the mental action of the people, and they have through its agency, been able to look with clearer ken upon the truths of Scripture. However, after it has reached the goal of its task, we see so little that is truly valuable and worth preserving, that we are compelled to fall back upon the Christian revelation as our only chart on the troubled sea of metaphysical discussion. When we look at the field opened for thought in the word of God we find it ample and safe. It would be well for every young mind about entering upon the uncertain mazes of philosophical speculation, to ponder deeply over these golden words from Isaac Taylor's _Saturday Evening_: "That portion of Heavenly Wisdom which, under such circumstances, survives and is cherished, will be just the first articles of belief,--the Saving Rudiments of Spiritual Life. Of these the Head of the church himself takes care lest faith should utterly disappear from the earth. But beside the inestimable jewel of elementary knowledge--the price of which can never be told--does there not rest within the folds of the Inspired Book an inexhaustible store, which the industry of man, piously directed, ought to elicit; but which if men neglect it, the Lord will not force upon their notice? It is this hidden treasure which should animate the ambition of vigorous and devout minds. From such at second hand, the body of the faithful are to receive it, if at all; and if not so obtained for them, and dealt out by their teachers, nothing will be more meager, unfixed, almost infantile, than the faith of Christians." FOOTNOTES: [31] Kahnis: _History of German Protestantism_, pp. 145-165. [32] Tennemann, _Manual of History of Philosophy_, pp. 407-408. [33] Appleton's _Am. Cyclopædia_--Article _German Theology_. [34] _Critical History of Free Thought_, p. 280. [35] Tennemann, _Manual of History of Philosophy_, pp. 429-430. CHAPTER VII. THE REIGN OF THE WEIMAR CIRCLE--REVOLUTION IN EDUCATION AND HYMNOLOGY. The systems of the great philosophical minds whom we have contemplated were remarkable for their harmony. As we now look back upon them we do not see shapeless and unfitting fragments, but a superstructure of rare symmetry and grace. Jacobi was the leaven of improvement, and it was the mission of that devout man to continue to some extent the habit of respectful regard for God's word among intelligent circles of society. All who were unwilling to become votaries of reason were his careful readers and enthusiastic admirers. What we thus see developed in philosophy was equally manifest in regard to literature. There arose, as if by the enchanter's wand, a group of literary giants at Weimar, an insignificant town on the outskirts of the Thuringian Forest, who wielded an influence which was destined to be felt in coming ages. Through a combination of circumstances, Weimar became their common home. It grew into a modern Parnassus, and to this day bears the name of the German Athens. Karl August, imitating the example of Augustus Cæsar, gathered around him as numerous and powerful a cluster of literary men as his scanty revenue would allow. He paid but little regard to their theological differences; all that he cared for was their possession of the truly literary spirit. His little principality, of which this was the capital, could not possibly be elevated into either a second or third rate power. All hope of great influence being cut off in this direction, he secured the presence of those chiefs of letters who gave him a name and a power secured to but few in any age. The town of Weimar possesses a calm rustic beauty by which the traveler cannot fail to be impressed. You see only a few traces of architectural taste, but the memory of the departed worthies who once walked the winding streets is now the glory of the place. There, the church where Herder preached now stands; near by, the slab that covers the dust of Wieland; yonder, the humble cottage of Schiller, with the room just as it was when the mute minstrel was borne from it to his home in the earth; across the brook is Goethe's country villa; and back in the grove, the table whereon he wrote. There is a quiet sadness in the whole town, as if nothing were left but the mere recollection of what it once was. How different the picture sixty years ago, when all the literary world looked thither for the last oracle from one of these high-priests of poesy! Book-publishers went there to make proposals for the editorship of magazines, or for some other new literary enterprise. Napoleon himself craved an audience with Goethe, and it is the strongest grudge held by the Germans against the master of their literature that the oppressor of the fatherland was not denied his request. Young men went to Weimar from all parts of Europe to kiss the hand of these great transformers of æsthetic taste. There was not a sovereign within the pale of civilization who did not envy Karl August's treasures. The story of the literary achievements, of the Platonic friendships, and of the evening entertainments of Weimar, forms one of the most remarkable chapters in the whole history of letters. The name of Herder demands our prominent notice because of its intimate connection with the theological movement we have been tracing. He was eminently adapted to his times. Perfectly at home with his generation, he looked upon his contemporaries as brethren, and aroused himself manfully to serve them in every interest. We notice in all his works a careful study to meet the emergency then pressing upon society. We will not say that Herder wrote every work just as it should have been, and that he was evangelical throughout. This he was not, but he was greatly in advance of his predecessors. Amid the labyrinth of philosophical speculations it is interesting and refreshing to meet with an author who, though endowed with the mind of a philosopher, was content to pass for a poet, or even for an essayist. His was a mind of rare versatility. What he was not capable of putting his hand to scarcely deserved the name of study. In philosophy, practical religion, literature, church history, education and exegesis he labored with almost equal success. He was the instrument of God, not to raise each of the crushed elements of Christian power to a lofty vitality, but to contribute to the moderate elevation of nearly every one of them. It might be expected that his later writings would not abound in such hearty tributes to devout religious life as we find so glowingly expressed in his earlier productions. The atmosphere of Weimar favored a perverted growth. The personal acquaintance of the men who surrounded him increased his literary power but did not make his religion more fervent and powerful. His training had been in the old purifying furnace of Pietism. His father had been a rare specimen of that class of devout householders, who, back in the days of Spener and Francke, were the real glory of the German people. Young Herder was accustomed to family worship every day, when the hard duties of temporal life were forgotten by those engaged in singing, in the leisurely reading of the Scriptures, and in prayer. One of the first books that had fallen under his notice was Arndt's "_True Christianity_." It was this work that inspired him with that respect for religion which never left him in subsequent life. Herder's creed was the improvement of man. He expressed it in one word, _humanity_. But by this term he meant more than most men conceive in whole volumes. With him, it was that development and elevation of the race for which every true man should labor. We do not come into this life with a perfect humanity; but we have the germ of it, and therefore we should contribute to its growth with unceasing energy. We are born with a divine element within us, and it is for the maturity of this personal gift that all great and good men, such as lawgivers, discoverers, philosophers, poets, artists and every truly noble friend of his race, have striven, in the education of children, by the various institutions designed to foster their individual taste. To beautify humanity is the great problem of humanity. It must be done; man must be elevated by one long and unwearied effort, or he will relax into barbarism. Christianity presents us, in the purest way, with the purest humanity. Herder was greatly interested in the poetic features of the Bible. His work on _Hebrew Poesy_ is full of his warm attachment to the inspired pictures of early oriental life and history. Whatever divested the Scriptures of this eastern glow received his outright indignation. He censured Michaelis for having criticised all the heart out of the time-honored and God-given record. He compared the critical labors of the Rationalists to squeezing a lemon; and the Bible that they would give, he said, "was nothing save a juiceless rind." He totally rejected the scientific reading of the Bible for common purposes; and maintained, with great ardor, that the more simple and human our reading of God's word is, the nearer do we approach God's will. We must make use of our own thoughts, and we must imagine living scenes, with the inspired words as our thought-outlines. The whole policy of the new class of critics, he believed, was a thoroughly mistaken one. Instead of discarding the pictorial Biblical beauties, as they did with a few hasty dashes of the pen, he would elevate them to a loftier status, and lead the rising generation to imbibe their spirit as a useful element for later life. In his opinion, many of the Rationalists had not the keen insight into the marvelous beauty of the Bible which all should possess who would undertake to elucidate its language and doctrines. They were, therefore, not competent to decide upon it. The only proper method of studying the Scriptures for the instruction of others is by the exercise of a fine poetic sentiment. Hence the best poet makes the best exegete. This reminds us of Schiller's idea of historiography. Schiller said that, in his writing of history, he did not intend to feel continually hampered by the sequence of events, but that he would write as his own imagination approved. High above facts would he place æsthetic taste. A beautiful fancy! But heaven be praised that all historians are not Schillers, and that all commentators are not Herders. From this representation of Herder's tenacity for the records of inspiration, and particularly for the Mosaic accounts, one would be led to infer that his attachment was due solely to his lofty views of the supernatural origin of these revelations. But we cannot think this was the fact. A careful estimate of his underlying sympathies leads us to conclude that he loved the Bible, not because it was inspired, as much as because it was the highest, earliest, and simplest embodiment of poetry,--for it traces out those things in our history which we are most interested in knowing. The poetic beauty of the Scriptures entranced him. Had each chapter of our canon been written in stately prose, Herder would have been one of its coldest admirers. He ransacked the myths and legends of various nations, and dwelt upon the stories of giants and demi-gods with scarcely less enthusiasm than if discoursing on the building of Babel or on the gift of the law on Sinai. Herder disliked the theories of Kant with cordial aversion. Of course the Königsberg sage had nothing in common with the Weimar rhapsodist. Had Herder only given a prominence to his belief in the _fact_ of inspiration equally with an admiration of the _method_ of it, his service to the cause of practical religion would have been incalculable. Yet, in his views of the person of Christ, he was far in advance of the times. He conceived Christ not as a mere innovating teacher, but as the great centre of faith. His belief in the sufficiency of the atonement stands out in bold contrast with the barren faith of his Weimar associates, who had such lofty ideas of human excellence that they thought man needed only one thing more to complete his perfection,--his emergence from ignorance into taste and knowledge. But Herder could see an abyss of depravity in the heart along with the germ of excellence. He held that Christ alone was able to annihilate the former and develop the latter. He believed that the first three evangelists gave the human side of Christ's character, and that it was John who revealed his divinity. With these four accounts before us we cannot be at a loss to form a sound opinion on the mission of the Messiah. He came to seek and save the lost. What he accomplished could have been effected by no other agency. Herder's own words are: "Jesus must be looked upon as the first real fountain of purity, freedom, and salvation to the world." Of the Lord's Supper he said, on his entrance upon his pastoral duties at Weimar, "The Lord's Supper should not be a mere word and picture, but a fact and truth. We should taste and see what joys God has prepared for us in Jesus Christ when we have intercourse with him at his own table. In every event and accident of life we should feel that we are his brethren and are sitting at one table, and that, when we refresh ourselves at the festival of our Saviour, we are resting in the will and love of the great King of the world as in the bosom of the Father. The high, still joy of Christ, and the spirit which prevails in the eternal kingdom of heaven should speak out from ourselves, influence others, and testify of our own love." It is a lamentable reflection, however, that Herder's lofty views of the mission of Christ, which had been formed in the paternal home, were, in common with many other evangelical views, doomed to an unhappy obscuration upon the advance of his later years by frequent intercourse with more skeptical minds. One of the chief services rendered the church by Herder was his persistent attempt to elevate the pastoral office to its original and proper dignity. He held that the pastor of the church should not be solely a learned critic but the minister of the common people. In his day, the pastor was considered the mere instrument of the state, a sort of theological policeman;--a degradation which Herder could hardly permit himself to think of without violent indignation. In his _Letters on the Study of Theology_, published in 1780, and in subsequent smaller works, he sought to evoke a generation of theologians who, being imbued with his own ideas of humanity, would betake themselves to the edification of the humble mind. He would eject scholasticism from the study of the Bible, and show to his readers that simplicity of inquiry is the safest way to happy results. He would place the modern pastor, both in his relations to the cause of humanity and in the respect awarded him by the world, close beside the patriarch and prophet of other days. And that man, in his opinion, was not worthy the name of pastor who could neglect the individual requirements of the soul. According to Herder, the theologian should be trained from childhood into the knowledge of the Bible and of practical religion. Youths should have ever before them the example of pious parents, who were bringing them up with a profound conviction of the doctrines of divine truth. To choose theology for a profession from mercenary aims would preclude all possibility of pastoral usefulness. "Let prayer and reading the Bible be your morning and evening food," was his advice to a young preacher. Some of the most eloquent words from his pen were written against the customary moral preaching which so much afflicted him. "Why don't you come down from your pulpits," he asks, "for they cannot be of any advantage to you in preaching such things? What is the use of all these Gothic churches, altars, and such matters? No, indeed! Religion, true religion, must return to the exercise of its original functions, or a preacher will become the most indefinite, idle, and indifferent thing on earth. Teachers of religion, true servants of God's word, what have you to do in our century? The harvest is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray the Lord of the harvest that he will send out laborers who will be something more than bare teachers of wisdom and virtue. More than this, Help yourselves!" The counsel given by Herder to others was practised first by himself. He lived among critical minds, who spurned humble pastoral work, but he felt it his duty, and therefore discharged it to the best of his ability. His preaching was richly lucid, and not directed to the most intelligent portion of his auditors. He took up a plain truth and strove to make it plainer. Yet, while the masses were most benefited by his simplicity of pulpit conversation, those gifted men who thought with him arose from their seats profoundly impressed with the dignity and value of the gospel. A witty writer of the time, Sturz, gives an account of Herder's preaching that throws some light upon the manner in which the plain, earnest exposition of God's word always affected the indifferent auditor. "You should have seen," says this man, "how every rustling sound was hushed and each curious glance was chained upon him in a very few minutes. We were as still as a Moravian congregation. All hearts opened themselves spontaneously; every eye hung upon him and wept unwonted tears. Deep sighs escaped from every breast. My dear friend, nobody preaches like him. Else religion would be to every one just what it should be, the most valuable and reliable friend of men. He explained the gospel of the day without fanaticism, yet with a grand simplicity which needed not to ransack the world for its wisdom, its figures of speech, or its scholastic arts. It was no religious study, hurled in its three divisions at the heart of stony sinners; nor was it what some would call a current article of pulpit manufacture. It was no cold, heathen, moral lecture, which sought nothing but Socrates in the Bible, and would therefore teach that we can do without both Christ and the Scriptures. But he preached the faith which works by love, the same which was first preached by the God of love, the kind which teaches to suffer and bear and hope, and which, by its rest and contentment, rewards bountifully and independently of all the joys and sorrows of the world. It seems to me that the scholars of the apostles must have preached thus, for they did not tie themselves down to the hard dogmatics of their faith, and therefore did not play with technical terms, as children with their counting pennies." William von Humboldt said of Herder's sermons that they were "very attractive: one always found them too short, and wished them of double length." Schiller spoke of his sermons as plain, natural, and adapted to the common life, and adds that Herder's preaching was "more pleasing to him than any other pulpit exercise to which he had ever listened." Herder was the great theological writer of Weimar, and as such, his impression upon theology and religion in general was decided. Though he opposed the Kantian philosophy, because of its petrifying tendency, his antagonism was counteracted by others of the Weimar celebrities. Goethe and Schiller eclipsed all other names in their department of thought, and were the culmination of the new type of literature. Herder might preach, but it was only to a comparatively small world. Goethe and Schiller were, on all points of literature, the oracles of Europe. Like Kant, they stamped their own impress upon theology, which at that day was plastic and weak beyond all conception. Under the Königsberg thinker it became a great philosophical system as cold as Mont Blanc. Then came Poetry and Romance, which, though they could give a fresh glow to the face, had no power to breathe life into the prostrate form. Schiller shares with Goethe the loftiest niche in the pantheon of German literature. But the former is more beloved than the latter, for the reason that his countrymen think that he had more soul. Schiller endeared himself to his land because of his ardent aspirations to political freedom. The poet of freedom is long-lived, and France will no sooner forget her Béranger, nor America her Whittier, than the German fatherland will become oblivious of Schiller. Like Herder, Schiller had been trained carefully in household religion. In his earliest outbursts of religious feeling there prevailed that ardent and devout spirit which, had it been fostered by a healthy popular taste, might have matured into something so transcendentally brilliant and useful, that the writer of _The Robbers_ would have proved one of the reformers of his people. If his education had reaped its appropriate harvest, his probable bearing upon the regeneration of Germany can be but faintly imagined by the aid of Klopstock's example. These were the sincere thoughts of Schiller's over-burdened soul when, one Sabbath in 1777, he addressed himself to the Deity: "God of truth, Father of light. I look to thee with the first rays of the morning sun, and I bow before thee. Thou seest me, O God! Thou seest from afar every pulsation of my praying heart. Thou knowest well my earnest desire for truth. Heavy doubt often veils my soul in night; thou knowest how anxious my heart is within me, and how it goes out for heavenly light. Oh yes! A friendly ray has often fallen from thee upon my shadowed soul. I saw the awful abyss on whose brink I was trembling, and I have thanked the kind hand that drew me back in safety. Still be with me, my God and Father, for these are days when fools stalk about and say, 'there is no God.' Thou hast given me my birth, O my Creator, in these days when superstition rages at my right hand and skepticism scoffs at my left. So I often stand and quake in the storm; and oh, how often would the bending reed break if thou didst not prevent it; thou, the mighty Preserver of all thy creatures and Father of all who seek thee. "What am I without truth, without her leadership through life's labyrinths? A wanderer through the wilderness, overtaken by the night, with no friendly hand to lead me and no guiding star to show me the path. Doubt, uncertainty, skepticism! You begin with anguish and you end with despair. But Truth, thou leadest us safely through life, bearest the torch before us in the dark vale of death, and bringest us home to heaven, where thou wast born. O my God, keep my heart in peace, in that holy rest during which Truth loves best to visit us. The sun refuses to reflect itself in the stormy sea, but it is down into its calm mirror-like flood that it beams its face. Even thus keep my heart at peace, O God, that it may be fit to know thee and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent; for this alone is the truth which strengthens the heart and elevates the soul. If I have truth then I have Christ; if I have Christ, then have I God; and if I have God, then I have everything. And could I ever permit myself to be robbed of this precious gem, this heaven-reaching blessing by the wisdom of this world, which is foolishness in thy sight? No. He who hates truth I will call my enemy, but he who seeks it with simple heart I will embrace as my brother and my friend. "The bell rings that calls me to the sanctuary. I hasten thither to make good my confession, to strengthen myself in the truth, and to prepare myself for death and eternity. O lead me in such a path, my Father, and so open my heart to the impressions of truth that I may be strong enough to make it known to my fellow men. They know that thou art their God and Father, and that thou didst send Jesus thy Son, and the Holy Spirit who was to testify of the truth. They can therefore have strength for every grief of this life, and for the sorrows of death a bright hope of a happy immortality. "Now, my God, thou canst take everything from me, yea every earthly joy and blessing; but leave me truth, and I have joy and blessing enough!" It was the young Schiller who wrote these ecstatic words at a time when he contemplated entering the ministry. A few years passed by, and all was changed. He grew into a sincere admirer, we might say worshiper, of the heathen faith. He complained that all the life and spirit were taken out of the Bible by the Rationalists, but he did nothing to remedy their error. He became absorbed in the spirit of classic times. The antiquity of Greece was far dearer to him than that of Palestine, and his poetic fancy was excited to a greater tension by the tales of heathen deities than by the histories of the Bible. He was a devotee of Kant, and his poetry was largely made up of that philosopher's metaphysics. Yet, in Schiller's hand, abstractions became living pictures. He knew how to speak clearly, and his popularity is evidence to the fact that his generations of readers have plainly understood him. While Schiller represented Kant in verse, Goethe did the same thing with Schelling's philosophy. The influence of the latter poet on religion was very pernicious. He expressed himself favorably of the Bible, but he claimed that it could only educate the people up to a little higher stage of intelligence and taste. He was intensely egotistic, and totally indifferent to all religious belief. His false idolatry of art and his enthusiasm arrayed for heathendom, in all the beautiful charms of the most seductive poetry, had a tendency fatal to the cause of Christianity and to all public and private virtue.[36] He expressed himself sometimes as very favorable toward the Roman Catholic worship, and the adherents of that faith quote his words of approbation with evident pride. In his _Autobiography_ he pays some high compliments to the seven sacraments of the Romanists. He made several visits to the beautiful little Catholic church dedicated to St. Roch, situated just above Bingen on the Rhine. He presented it with an altar-piece, and on one occasion said, "Whenever I enter this church I always wish I were a Catholic priest." But Goethe's love and admiration of Catholicism were due rather to his attachment to the old works of art than to that particular system of faith and worship. The Romish church was the conservator of the art-triumphs of the Middle Ages. She laid great store by her paintings and statuary, and had been the patroness of the arts ever since the wealth of noblemen and kings began to be poured into her lap. Goethe loved her because she loved art. The key to this only evidence of religious principle lies in his own words, as he once expressed himself on contemplating a painting of the old German school. "Down to the period of the Reformation," he said, "a spirit of indescribable sweetness, solace, and hope seems to live and breathe in all these paintings--everything in them seems to announce the kingdom of heaven. _But since the Reformation, something painful, desolate, almost evil characterizes works of art; and, instead of faith, skepticism, is often transparent._" Our plan precludes an estimate of Goethe's literary achievements. But the influence of his productions on theology was, in the main, as destructive as if he had written nothing but uncompromising Rationalism. He was the head of the Weimar family. He had a cool, careful judgment. Schiller was excitable and impulsive; but Goethe was always stoical, regarding holy things as convenient for the more rapid advance of civilization, but not absolutely necessary for the salvation of the soul. He directed the literature of Europe. In popularity Schiller was his peer, yet in real power over the minds and lives of others no one was a match for Goethe. Other men at Weimar, such as Wieland, Knebel, and Jean Paul, were admired, but Goethe was the cynosure of all eyes. He was always thinking what next to write, and when he issued a new play, poem, or romance, a sensation was made wherever the German and French tongues were spoken. Contemporaneously with these literary influences, which greatly increased the power and prestige of Rationalism, there was a gradual transformation of the training and instruction of the children of Germany. A thorough infusion of doubt into the minds of the youth of the land was all that was now needed to complete the sovereignty of skepticism. It cannot be disputed that there were serious defects in the educational system already prevalent. The Latin schools instituted by Melanchthon were still in existence, but they had become mere machines. Children were compelled to commit the dryest details to memory. The most useless exercises were elevated to great importance, and years were spent in the study of many branches that could be of no possible benefit in either the professions or the trades. The primary schools were equally defective. There was no such thing as the pleasant, developing influence of the mature over the young mind. The same defect had already contributed to the spread of Rationalism, but the Rationalists were now shrewd enough to seize upon this very evil and use it as an instrument of strength and expansion. Basedow was the first innovator in education, and, glaring as his faults were, he succeeded in effecting radical changes in the entire circle of youthful training. Sprung from a degraded class, addicted to vulgar habits, and dissipated beyond the countenance of good society, this man educated himself, and then set himself up as a fit agent for the reformation of German education.[37] He undertook, by his publication of the _Philalethy_, and of the _Theoretical System of Sound Reason_, to infuse new spirit into the university method of instruction. But he had taken too large a measure of his own powers, and therefore made but little impression upon the circle to which he had addressed himself. But, with that restless determination which distinguished him through life, he began to appeal to the younger mind, and contended boldly for the freedom of children from their common and long-standing restraints. From 1763 to 1770 Basedow deluged the whole land with his books on education; and, uniting his appeals for educational reform with strictures upon the validity of the Scriptures, he incurred the sore displeasure of Götze, Winkler and others of their class. They replied to him, but he was always ready-witted, and the press groaned under his repeated and sometimes ribald rejoinders. He told the nation, in an _Address to the Friends of Humanity_, that the old excesses would soon be done away with, since he was about to publish a work and commence an educational institution which would rid the children of the shackles of customary instruction. He solicited subscriptions for the issue of his elementary book, as it would require numerous plates, and be attended with other unusual expenses. His manifesto was freely circulated. Replies soon came to him, with liberal subscriptions from all parts of Europe. Princes and people became infatuated with his great plans and wrote him their warm approval. They remitted large contributions for his assistance. A specimen of his _Child's Book_ appeared, and all classes were pleased with it. Whatever he promised was accepted with avidity, because his promises were at once so flattering and exaggerated. Schlegel and other educators tried in vain to make the multitude believe that the vulgar mountebank could never fulfill their expectations. Basedow proposed to parents, that if they would observe his system, all languages and subjects,--grammar, history, and every other study--could be learned, not in the tread-mill style, but as an amusement; that morality and religion, both Jewish and Christian, Catholic as well as Protestant, could be easily taught; that all the old bonds of education were henceforth to be broken; and that every great difficulty would hereafter be a pastime. Finally a part of the elementary work appeared. But one plan creating the necessity for another, he soon found himself immersed in the conception of a great philosophical school, in which not only children but also teachers were to be trained for the application of his new system to the appalling wants of the people. Every family became possessor of the elementary book, and all eyes were turned toward the _Philanthropium_ in Dessau. Compared with Basedow's wishes, this was but a fragment of an institution. But upon its existence depended the solution of his lauded problems. Just at this time Germany was stirred by the reading of Rousseau's works on popular education. Neither in Switzerland nor France had they effected the purpose for which they were written, but among the Germans their success was complete. Many persons, earnestly favoring Rousseau's doctrine of freedom from all conventional restraints in families, desired even his _Idyls of Life_ to be introduced into the schools. Basedow and Rousseau thought in harmony; recommended that nature, not discipline, should be our guide in education; and that only those stories should be taught, of the utility of which the children are themselves conscious. Subscriptions came in profusely, and the _Philanthropium_ in Dessau commenced its existence. It was opened without pupils on the twenty-seventh of December, 1774, and in the following year it was attended by only fifteen. It threatened to decline, but rallied again; and in 1776 a great public examination was held. Then Basedow retired from its curatorship; but, returning once more, his institution suffered under his care, and finally met with total extinction. The great bubble of his plans burst. People awoke to their mistake, and many of his dupes began to confess that, after all, the old system of education was the best that had been devised. But there were men who had lighted their torches at Basedow's flame. Some who had been temporary inmates of his _Philanthropium_ went to work with great perseverance to write juvenile books. Though the institution had tumbled to ruin, and public notice began to be turned from it, the excitement of the popular mind on the training of youth had been so intense that the subject could not soon cease to receive attention. For this reason, the writers of books for children found a large circle to read them, and become impressed by them. Herder had called attention to the subject of education in some of his most eloquent periods. He contended zealously for the development of the young mind. His own words were, "that it should be the chief aim of the teacher to imbue the child with living ideas of everything that he sees, says, or enjoys, in order to give him a proper position in his world, and continue the enjoyment of it through every day of his life." Jean Paul, in his _Levana, or the Doctrine of Education_, called attention to the necessity of the personal training of children by their parents in opposition to the old stiff method which, instead of quickening, only stupefied the intellect. Campe and Salzmann had been students in Basedow's _Philanthropium_, and subsequently each of them commenced a similar institution, but of more humble pretensions. Yet it was not so much as practical educators as by their writings, that they were instrumental in effecting a powerful impression upon the young mind of Germany. Campe's _Children's Library_ had a fascinating influence upon children. It encouraged their literary taste to the exclusion of religious development. The author advocated morality, but only that which is taught by the common dictates of nature. He stoutly rejected the old _Catechism_ of Luther as unfit to be drilled into a youthful mind, and, unhappily, he found many sympathizers. His _Robinson the Younger_ was to the Germans what _Robinson Crusoe_ was, and still is, to the English-speaking world, and from the time that the children read its wonderful stories they looked with disgust upon the less exciting histories of the Bible. From 1775 to 1785 it captivated every boy and girl who could collect groschen enough to buy a copy. When they had ceased reading it they were filled with the idea that they were naturally perfect. Pestalozzi belongs rather to the present than to the last century, but he stands highest in the catalogue of the educational reformers who arose during the meridian strength of Rationalism. He was a Swiss by birth. In 1798 he went to Stanz and labored for the amelioration of the orphan children whose parents had fallen in the French wars.[38] His idea was, to make the school an educating family, into which the ease and pleasure of home should be introduced. He, too, believed in man's natural goodness, and held that true education is not so much the infusion of what is foreign to, as the educing of what is native in the child. But he warmly encouraged youthful acquaintance with the Bible, and said that the history of Christ is an indispensable ingredient in the education of every young mind. But while these few men, both by their active life and facile pen, contributed their share to the improvement of the youth of Germany, there was a large class of writers for the young, whose productions became as plentiful as autumn leaves. Some were sentimental, having imbibed their spirit from _Siegwart, La Nouvelle Héloïse_, and similar works. Young men and women became dreamers, and children of every social condition were converted into premature thinkers on love, romance, and suicide. Whoever could wield a pen thought himself fit to write a book for children. There has never been a period in the whole current of history when the youthful mind was more thoroughly and suddenly revolutionized. The result was very disastrous. Education, in its true import, was no longer pursued, and the books most read were of such nature as to destroy all fondness for the study of the Bible, all careful preparation for meeting the great duties of coming maturity, and every impression of man's incapacity for the achievement of his own salvation. The teachers in the common institutions of learning having now become imbued with serious doubts concerning the divine authority of the Scriptures, their pupils suffered keenly from the same blight. In many schools and gymnasia miracles were treated with contempt. Epitomes of the Scriptures on a philosophical plan were introduced. Ammon, in one of his works, tells the young people that the books of the Old Testament have no divine worth or character for us, except so far as they agree with the spirit of the gospel. As to the New Testament, much must be figuratively understood, since many things have no immediate relation to our times. Christ is a mere man. Dinter was a voluminous writer on theological subjects, and in his books tells children of imperfect notions of former times as to God, angels, and miracles. He gives teachers directions how to conduct themselves cleverly in such matters, and afterwards, in agreement with the principles he recommends, he lays down plans of catechizing. For example, there are to be two ways of catechizing about Jonah; one before an audience not sufficiently enlightened, and where all remains in its old state; another for places which have more light. In the prophecies concerning the Messiah a double explanation is given for the same reason. One is the old orthodox way, the other a more probable neological plan. A clever teacher is to choose for himself; a dull one may ask the parish clergyman how far he may go. As a fair specimen of the kind of Biblical instruction then imparted to the children of Germany, we may adduce the example of Becker's _Universal History for the Young_. A second edition was issued in Berlin in 1806. Speaking of the person and character of Christ, the author says, "Jesus probably got the first notion of his undertaking from being a friend of John, and going often to his father's, who was a priest; and from the Gospel it appears that the sight of feasts and of the crowd of worshipers had a great effect upon him. It is doubtful whether Jesus and John were sent into Egypt for their education, or were taught by the Essenes, and then sent into Palestine as ambassadors of that sect, with secret support and according to arranged plan.... The indications of the Messiah in the Old Testament had produced great effect on Jesus and John who were both hot-heads, such as destiny raises for some great purpose. We are in danger, therefore, of judging them unjustly, especially from the great mixture of high and low, clear and obscure in them." Becker had the modesty to say that he would not undertake to fix the character of Jesus, but merely collect the fragments of it from his _wretched_ biographers. The friends had great mutual esteem, but John saw in Jesus a higher spirit than his own. Both had the same hatred of the priests, their pride and hypocrisy; both thought the Mosaic law no longer fit for the time, and that the notion of a national God was the source of all the evil in Judea. After long meditation they decided that Jesus must be the Messiah; and John found the part of a precursor fixed for himself. Christ, partly from his power of attraction, and partly from the hope of future power, made his disciples depend blindly on him. It was only with great caution that he could undertake his great work of destroying the priests. The people were divided into sects; and the characteristics of his plan were, his choice of the lowest people, and his withdrawing himself frequently from public view, that the priests might not nip his plan in the bud. As all the prophets had worked miracles, and many were expected from the Messiah, he too was obliged, according to Becker, to undertake them or renounce his hopes. No doubt he performed miracles; for the power of the mind on the body is such that we need not doubt his curing the melancholy and the nervous. As to the miraculous meals, raising the dead, curing the blind and deaf, these things must be attributed to the calculation of his historians; and we need not hesitate to do so after observing such tangible fabrications as Christ's walking on the sea, his blasting the fig tree, devils driven into the swine, and virtue going out of himself. In the story of Lazarus we cannot help suspecting some secret concert. Christ did perform some uncontested miracles, however and there was in his manner that inexpressible something which makes greatness irresistible. The mystic obscurity thrown over his future kingdom, the many parables he used, and his assured manner of speaking of future things, begot reverence. The prudence of his judgment and the strictness of his life are praiseworthy. He could pursue the destruction of old usages but very slowly; first he allowed the neglect of the Sabbath, and at last made open war with the priests, "_on whom, he lanced all the thunder of a Ciceronian eloquence_." "John's death," continues this model writer for youth, "made Christ very timid. He got away into the desert and ordered his followers not to call him Messiah in public. In his last journey to Jerusalem, the multitude protected him by day, and he escaped by night. His answers, made to several questions at this time, for example, John viii. 3, are still admired. He had always suspected Judas; and as he had a presentiment that he would come to a bad end, he became very uneasy, and yet was able to exhort his disciples. He did not really die on the cross. Whenever recognized by his disciples afterwards, he went away directly, and came back unexpectedly and for a short time. At last he disappeared quickly, and let himself be seen no more. This end, like that of Lycurgus, produced many followers. By degrees all the tales of the crucifixion were extended and a Christian mythology erected."[39] Becker was not more extreme in his inculcation of doctrine than many others. Even Gesenius, in the preface to his _Hebrew Reading Book_, tells the students of the Bible that Gen. i. 2, 3, contains the description of the origin of the earth by a sage of antiquity; that the narrator has a very imperfect knowledge of nature, though his description is sublime, that he can hardly be the first inventor of the description, as the principal outlines of it and even the six works of creation are to be found in other religions of the East; and that probably he only accommodates the general tradition of the East to the national opinions of the Hebrews,--a remark which applies especially to his ascribing a mystic origin to the Sabbath, a festival peculiar to the Jews. Such was the kind of theology in which the German youth were trained during a period extending through the latter part of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. It is no matter of astonishment, then, that when those children became adults they were rigid Rationalists from the mere force of training. We now come to one of the most inexcusable deeds with which Rationalism stands charged. We refer to the general destruction or alteration of the time-honored German hymns. Both the great branches of the Protestant church had always highly prized their rich hymns, of which there were eighty thousand in existence. Some of the finest lyrics of any tongue were among the number. The sacred songs now used in our American churches are not solely of English origin, or of our own production; but many of the sweetest of them are free versions from the German hymnists. The Rationalists, not being content with their present laurels, began in great earnestness to despoil the hymn-books of the Protestant church of everything savoring of inspiration or of any of the vital doctrines already rejected. They looked upon those songs of devotion as composed during the iron age of truth, and therefore unfit to be sung by the congregations whose lot had been cast in the golden period. Should these verses continue to be sung by the church, they would remain a strong tie holding the masses to the pitiable days of effete orthodoxy. The Rationalists reasoned correctly, for, in Germany, music is a power which has at times defied the authority of popes and kings. It was, therefore, with a sort of savage satisfaction that these destroyers of truth began the work of denuding those earnest and evangelical hymns of all their vigor and nationality for the purpose of placing in their stead cold and heartless moral verses. Klopstock commenced the work of alteration, though with a good intention, by remodeling twenty-nine old church hymns. Cramer and Schlegel followed in his steps. Soon the devout and animating songs of Gellert, Bach, and their brother minstrels were despoiled of the spirit that had ever made them dear to the popular heart and familiar to the common ear. By and by, everybody who could make a tolerable rhyme seized some of the master-pieces of hymnology, and set them up on stiff philosophical stilts. New hymn books were introduced into many of the churches, and the people sang Rationalism. General superintendents, consistorial counselors, and court preachers, rivaled each other in preparing a new volume of religious songs for the territory under their charge. Individual towns and churches had their own selections. Some portions of Germany, especially Würtemberg, refused awhile to give up the old hymns, and certain writers of the sterling character of the poet Schubert, raised a loud and indignant voice against the wretched vandalism. But they could accomplish nothing, and the old hymns suffered that fearful mortality which the Rationalists had by this time become so able to inflict on almost everything of value. It is a lamentable scene to see those reckless doubters sit down with scalpel in hand to dissect as pure and inspiring hymns as are to be found in the devotional literature of any nation. For a good sacred song is only complete just as its author finishes it. If an authorized hymn committee attempt to alter it, they fill it at once with icicles. They can no more improve it by emendations than they can improve a rose by the use of a penknife. Each clipping or puncture destroys some natural charm. But the music accompanying the hymns was doomed to a like fate. The old chorals, which had been lingering in those renowned gothic temples ever since the days of Luther, were so altered as to stand upon the same footing with the hymns themselves. All sentiment was extracted, as quite out of place, and sublimity was made to give way to a more temperate and stoical standard. In due time the Rationalists effected their purpose. Secular music was introduced into the sanctuary; an operatic overture generally welcomed the people into church, and a march or a waltz dismissed them. Sacred music was no longer cultivated as an element of devotion. The oratorios and cantata of the theatre and beer-garden were the Sabbath accompaniments of the sermon. The masses consequently began to sing less; and the period of coldest skepticism in Germany, like similar conditions in other lands, was the season when the congregations, the common people, and the children sang least and most drowsily. We now behold Protestant Germany in the full possession of a shrewd, powerful, and aggressive system of infidelity. The most thorough student of church history must conclude that no other kind of skepticism has received more aid from external sources. Everything that appeared on the surface of the times contributed its mite toward the spiritual petrification of the masses. Hamann, Oetinger, Reinhard, Lavater, and Storr were insufficient for the great task of counteraction, while Rationalism could count its strong men by the score and hundred. Literature, philosophy, history, education, and sacred music were so influenced by increasing indifference and doubt that when the people awoke to their condition they found themselves in a strange latitude and on a dangerous coast. But they thought themselves safe. They could not see how each new feature in politics, literature, and theology was affecting them in a remarkable manner; and how so many influences from opposite quarters could contribute to the same terrible result,--the total overthrow of evangelical faith. FOOTNOTES: [36] Möhler's _Symbolism_: Memoir of Author. [37] Schlosser, _History of the Eighteenth Century_, vol. 2, pp. 33-41. [38] Kahnis: _German Protestantism_, p. 216. [39] Rose, _State of Protestantism in Germany_, pp. 178-181. CHAPTER VIII. DOCTRINES OF RATIONALISM IN THE DAY OF ITS STRENGTH. The church now presented a most deplorable aspect. Philosophy had come, with its high-sounding terminology, and invaded the hallowed precincts of Scriptural truth. Literature, with its captivating notes, had well-nigh destroyed what was left of the old Pietistic fervor. The songs of the church were no longer images of beauty, but ghastly, repulsive skeletons. The professor's chair was but little better than a heathen tripod. The pulpit became the rostrum where the shepherdless masses were entertained with vague essays on such general terms as righteousness, human dignity, light, progress, truth, and right. The peasantry received frequent and labored instructions on the raising of cattle, bees, and fruit. The poets of the day were publicly recited in the temples where the Reformers had preached. Wieland, Herder, Schiller, and Goethe became more familiar to the popular congregations than Moses, David, Paul, or even Christ. By this time we might reasonably expect the harvest from Semler's favorite theories. There was no school as yet by which he worked upon the public mind, but the greater portion of theologians caught up scrap-thoughts from his opinions and now dealt them out in magnified proportions to the masses who, like their Athenian predecessors, were ever anxious to learn what was new. That so many influences as we have seen in force should completely subdue orthodoxy is not wonderful, when we consider first the minds that originated them, and then the dull and frigid condition of the church. But, as the fruit of these influences, there was no common system of theology adopted by the Rationalists. The reason is obvious. Rationalism was not an organism, and therefore it could have no acknowledged creed. Its adherents were powerful and numerous scouting-parties, whose aim was to harass the flanks of the enemy, and who were at liberty, when occasion required, to divide, subdivide, take any road, or attack at any point likely to contribute to the common victory. One writer came before the public, and threw doubt on some portions of the Scriptures. He was followed by another who, while conceding the orthodox view of those very passages, would discard other parts, even whole books, as plainly incredible. A third discussed the character and mission of Christ, and imputed a certain class of motives to him. A fourth attributed to him totally different, if not contradictory, impulses. There is no one book, therefore, in which we find an undisputed Rationalistic system, for the work that may represent one circle will give but a meagre and false view of another. Besides, what the most of the Rationalists might agree upon at one stage of the development of their skepticism, would be rejected by others, living a few years after them. The only means, therefore, by which we are enabled to arrive at some understanding concerning their opinions is to fix upon the time of their meridian strength, and then to hear what their representative men of that period say of the truths of revelation. Now it cannot be doubted that Rationalism was most powerful after the decided impression made upon theology by the philosophical direction commenced by Kant, and by that of literature inaugurated by Lessing and followed by the Weimar poets. We are consequently under the necessity of hearing the statements of acknowledged Rationalists who flourished during this time, and, out of the chaos, arrive at the most probable and general views entertained by the people. We shall see that the scene of spiritual desolation was repulsive enough to make every servant of Christ wish, with Wordsworth,-- "I'd rather be A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn; So might I standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn-- Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." RELIGION. All religion was held by the Rationalists to be mere morality. As to any such thing as conversion, they were agreed that it could be only a work of the imagination. All the regeneration at which we may reasonably expect to arrive is an inclination to obey the dictates of reason. He who follows the teachings of his own intellect cannot go astray, for this is the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. The Scriptures give a high coloring to religion, and represent it as necessary; but those writings are not as reliable as the innate revelation which every son of Reason enjoys. EXISTENCE OF GOD. With this view of religion in general, all the other vital doctrines of Christianity suffered an equal depreciation. The existence of God is conceded, but the proof is impossible. His personality cannot be affirmed; it is confounded with the soul of the world. Of course, the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be accepted; for reason sheds no light sufficiently clear to establish it. A high dignitary of the church, Cannabich, wrote a book in positive denial of the Trinity, original sin, justification, satisfaction of Christ, baptism, and the Lord's Supper. As for the Trinity, the early Christians had no such tenet, and it was never concocted until after the lapse of several centuries of the Christian era. Both philosophy and nature are as capable of establishing the evidence of God's existence as the Scriptures themselves. The idea we have of God is due to prejudice and education. The mass of the Rationalists said, with Lichtenberg, that instead of God making man after his image, man had made God after his human image. DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. The Rationalists were fond of reasoning by analogy, and they used that method of argument freely in their discussions on the inspiration of the Scriptures. God never pursues the plan of operating immediately upon nature. His laws are the mediate measures by which he communicates with man. Gravitation is an instrument he employs for the control of the material world. Thus, in some way, does God impress upon man's mind all that he wishes to reveal, without any necessity of direct inspiration. The doctrine was, therefore, rejected because there was no need of it, and from this step it was easy to assume the position that there is no inspiration. This the Rationalists did assume. "Grant inspiration," said they, "and you bind us down to the belief that all the contents of the Scriptures are true. You force us to believe what our reason does not comprehend. The doctrine of inspiration opens the floodgate for the belief of a mass of mythical stuff which we will no more grant to be historically true than Niebuhr will admit the validity of the legends of early Rome." The poets of every land have enjoyed a sort of rhapsody when in their highest flights. This rhapsody or ecstasy is all that these idolaters of reason will concede. Doederlein's views of inspiration were much more elevated than those held by many of his _confrères_; but he too speaks of poetical excitement, and draws a line of distinction between the inspired and uninspired parts of Scripture. But Ammon represents this subject better than Döderlein. It was his opinion that the idea of a mediate divine instruction is applicable to all human knowledge. He rejects the notion peculiar to revelation. Inspiration cannot for a moment be accepted as an immediate divine impression, because it would compromise the supremacy of reason, and destroy man's intellectual and moral liberty. The diversity of style perceptible in the writers of the Scriptures is a proof that they were not influenced by immediate inspiration. "These writers themselves," say the Rationalists, "never claimed such extraordinary functions as those with which orthodox believers would now clothe them." Töllner, a theological professor in Frankfort-on-the-Oder, wrote very fully on inspiration, and his work was held in great repute by many of the Rationalists who were inclined to supernaturalism. He held that the will, the matter, the words, and the order of both the matter and the words, might be objects of inspiration. But there are several degrees of inspiration. Some books were written without inspiration of any kind, and were only confirmed by God. In the Old Testament, Moses might have been directed to a choice of subjects, and his memory might have been strengthened. So of the Psalms and Prophecies. There is no such thing as inspiration of the historical books. It cannot be determined what degree was employed in the New Testament. In the Acts there was nothing more than natural inspiration. Luke and Mark were approved by the apostles, hence their writings may be received. Morus held that inspiration was sometimes only the inducing to write; sometimes an admonition to do so; sometimes revelation; and sometimes only a guarding from error.[40] Granting the Rationalistic denial of inspiration, we have no solid ground for any portion of the Bible. We find, therefore, that after this view had become prevalent the popular mind attached no importance to God's revealed will. Interpolations were imagined at every point of difficulty. Schröckh gives a sketch of the deplorable state of opinion on inspiration, when he says, "Inspiration was given up--interpolations in Scripture were believed to exist. In the oldest and partly in more recent history, instead of historical facts these writers saw only allegories, myth, philosophical principles, and national history. Where appearances of God and the angels, or their immediate agency, are related, nothing was seen but Jewish images or dreams. The explanation of all biblical books was pursued on new principles. The _Song of Solomon_ was not mystical. The _Revelations_ contained no prophecy of the fortunes of the church." Bitter indeed must have been the emotions of the devout Christian on seeing the departure of inspiration from the opinions of the theological leaders of that day. Infinitely more exquisite must have been his pain than was that of the poet, who, sighing for the haunted and credulous days of olden time, said: "The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religions, The power, the beauty, and the majesty, That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain, Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and watery depths: all these have vanished." CREDIBILITY OF THE SCRIPTURES. Schenkel affirms that Rationalism consists in giving up all the historical characteristics of Christianity and of Christian truths, and in the reduction of religion to the universal conclusions of reason and morality. The accuracy of this definition is very perceptible when we consider the wantonness of the assaults of the Rationalists upon the Scriptures as the canon of faith and practice. This period was marked by desperate attempts to overthrow the early history of all countries, and to convict historians of stating as fact what was only vague tradition. As the Bible was alleged by the supernaturalists to be the oldest historic record, great pains were taken to dissipate the mist from its accounts of supposed verities. The writers of the Scriptures, the friends of Rationalism held, were only men like ourselves. They had our prejudices and as great infirmities as we have. They were as subject to deception and trickery, and as full of political and sectarian rancor as partisans in these times. All through the Old Testament we find traces of biased judgment, Jewish national pride, sectional enmity, sectarian superstition, and rabbinical ignorance. It is but little better in the New Testament, for the disciples of Christ and the writers of the gospels were as susceptible of error and bigotry as their predecessors.[41] The writers of the Scriptures were utterly destitute of any such great designs as the orthodox attribute to them. They had no intention of writing for posterity, and were the mere chroniclers of what they had heard from others and seen for themselves. The Bible is, like the essays of Seneca, an excellent book for elevating the people by its moral tone. As a revelation of God's will it only takes its place beside others which God had previously made, and has been making in a natural way, ever since.[42] All ages and nations have their communications of knowledge, and the setting forth of any truth in a clearer light is a revelation.[43] There are many steps necessary for the education of the race and for its intellectual and moral development. The Scriptures are a very good aid to such a great consummation.[44] But they are full of errors, which we must leave for the supremacy of pure Reason to dissipate forever.[45] We cannot forbear to give Wegscheider's testimony on the scanty measure of Scriptural credibility and authority in his own words. "But whatever narrations," he says, "especially accommodated to a certain age and relating miracles and mysteries, are united with the history and subject-matter of revelation of this kind, these ought to be referred to the natural sources and true nature of human knowledge. By how much the more clearly the author of the Christian religion, not without the help of Deity, exhibited to men the ideas of reason imbued with true religion, so as to represent, as it were, a reflection of the divine reason, or the divine spirit, by so much the more diligently ought man to strive to approach as nearly as possible to form that archetype in the mind, and to study to imitate it in life and manners to the utmost of his ability. Behold here the intimate and eternal union and agreement of Christianity with Rationalism.... The various modes of supernatural revelation mentioned in many places of the sacred books, are to be referred altogether to the notions and mythical narrations of every civilized people; and this following the suggestion of the Holy Scripture itself, and therefore to be attributed, as any events in the nature of things, to the laws of nature known to us. As to theophanies, the sight of the infinite Deity is expressly denied: John i. 18--1 John iv. 12--1 Tim. vi. 16. Angelophanies, which the Jews of a later date substituted for the appearances of God himself, like the narrations of the appearances of demons found amongst many nations, are plainly destitute of certain historic proofs; and the names, species, and commissions attributed to angels in the sacred books, plainly betray their Jewish origin. The business transacted by angels on earth is little worthy of such ministers.... The persuasion concerning the truth of that supernatural revelation, which rests on the testimony of the sacred volume of the Old and New Testaments, like every opinion of the kind, labors under what is commonly called a _petitio principii_." The Bible is, in fact, of no more authority and entitled to no further credence than any other book. It is not worth more, as an historical record, than an old chronicle of Indian, Greek, or Roman legends.[46] The evangelists did not get their accounts of the doings of Christ from observation, but from a primitive document written in the Aramaic language. The gospels were not intentional deceptions; but that they are as well the work of error as of wisdom, no candid interpreter can deny. The life of Christ which they contain is but an innocent supplement to the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid.[47] Tittmann went so far as to affirm that the Scripture writers were so ignorant that they could not represent things as they really happened. Of course he excludes their capacity for inspiration. DOCTRINE OF THE FALL OF MAN. While some Rationalistic writers conceded that Moses was the author of the whole or parts of the Pentateuch, his version of the origin of sin was universally rejected. The temptation by the serpent was, with them, one of the most improbable myths ever drawn up from the earliest traditions of nations. Whether Moses wrote much or little of the books attributed to him, his sources of knowledge were monuments and tales which he saw and heard about him. It is likely that he derived his idea of the fall of man from some hieroglyphic representation which he happened somewhere to see. As for the entrance of the serpent into Paradise, it is just as improbable as the rabbinical notion that the serpent of Eden had many feet. In the opinion of some, the whole narrative is only an allegory, or "a poetical description of the transition of man from a more brutish creature into humanity, from the baby-wagon of instinct into the government of reason, from the guardianship of nature into the condition of freedom."[48] Kindred to this theory is Ammon's; that at first man obeyed instinct only, and that his desire to eat the forbidden fruit was the longing of his mind to understand truth. But the great injury which these men thought they had visited on this doctrine was their assumption that man had not fallen, and that instead of being worse than he once was, he is every year growing purer and holier than at any previous stage of his history. This was flattering to their inflated pride, and their wish became father to their creed. With Eichhorn, the narrative of the fall was only a description of Adam's thoughts. MIRACLES. It was no surprise to the wise disciples of Reason that there should be found numerous records of miracles in the Bible. It was just what might be expected from such writers in that gray morning of antiquity. The first chroniclers seized upon tradition; and their successors, seeing how well their fathers had succeeded, merely imitated them by catching up new ones, or enlarging upon the old account. By a sort of infection, therefore, we find what purports to be a revelation. Whatever harmony there is, was the result of an aim which was not lost sight of for a moment. Nature was the first teacher; and though she was competent, we have been poor disciples. She is instructing us all the time, though we have listened less to her than to the other auditors who sit about us. Lichtenberg says in poetical language, that "When man considers Nature the teacher, and poor men the pupils, we listen to a lecture and we have the principles and the knowledge to understand it. But we listen far more to the applause of our fellow-students than to the discourse of the teacher. We interlard the lecture by speeches to the one who sits next us; we supply what has been poorly heard by us; and enlarge it by our own mistakes of orthography and sentiment." No branch of Scriptural faith attracted more of the wrath and irony of the Rationalists than miracles. They saw how important their service was to the authority of the Bible, and therefore bent all their energies for their overthrow. They denied their possibility in the strongest terms, averring that they degrade the character of God, and violate that noble nature of the human mind, which is necessarily bound to the most certain laws of experience, and can discern no positive marks of supernatural agency.[49] The miracles of the New Testament receive no better treatment than those of the Old. In every case they have no foundation in history. Various reasons are assigned for their presence in the Bible; in some cases they are only legends of mythologic days; in others, the pure fancy of the writer; and in others, hyperbolical descriptions of natural occurrences. Thus, while there was a diversity of opinion concerning the narratives, there was perfect union as to the purely natural character of the events. We may particularize, in order to present more clearly the Rationalistic method of interpreting miracles. When Korah, Dathan and Abiram, with their fellow-unfortunates, were swallowed up, they only suffered what many others have done since,--destruction by a natural earthquake. This was the opinion of Michaelis. Others, more ingenious, thought that Moses had taken care to undermine privately the whole of the ground on which the tents of the sinners were; and, therefore, it was not surprising, either that they fell into the cavity, or that Moses should know this would be their fate. Eichhorn held that the three offenders, with their property, were burned by the order of Moses. Dinter explained Jacob's struggle with an angel by relating a recent dream. His brother having lately died, Dinter dreamed soon after that a man, with a little peep-show, presented to his view all sorts of pictures, and at length showed him his dead brother. The vision said, "To show you that I am really your brother, I will print a blue mark on your finger." The dreamer awoke and found not a blue mark but a pain which lasted some days. This profound exegete then asks, "Could not something similar have happened in Jacob's case? Even the less lively occidentalist sometimes relates as real what only happened in his mind. Why should we be surprised at a similar occurrence in the warmer fancy of the Eastern man?" But of all the critics of miracles we must give the palm to Paulus. Let us hear how he accounts for the tribute-money in the mouth of the fish. "What sort of a miracle," he asks, "is that we find here? I will not say a miracle of about sixteen or twenty groschen, for the greatness of the value does not make the greatness of the miracle. But it may be observed, that, as Jesus generally received support from many persons, in the same way as the Rabbis frequently lived from such donations; as so many pious women provided for the wants of Jesus; and as the claim did not occur at any remote place, but at Capernaum, where Christ had friends; a miracle for about a thaler would certainly have been superfluous. But it would not only have been superfluous and paltry,--it would have taught this principle; that Peter, even when he could have remedied his necessities easily in other ways, might and ought to reckon on a miraculous interference of the Deity,--a notion which would entirely contradict the fundamental principle of Jesus, or the interference of the Deity. There is nothing of a miraculous appearance in this narrative, nor was there to Peter himself. Had there been, the fiery Peter would not have been cold-blooded at such a miracle, but would have expressed himself as in Luke v. 8. There is nothing more meant here, than that Christ designed to give a moral lesson; namely, that we should not give offence to our brethren, if we can avoid it by trifling circumstances. Hence, Christ said to him in substance, 'Though there is no real occasion for us to pay the tribute, yet as we may be reckoned enemies of the temple, and may not be attended to when we wish to teach what is good, why should not you, who are a fisherman, and can easily do it, go and get enough to pay the demand? Go then to the sea, cast your hook and take up the first and best fish. Peter must, therefore, have caught either so many fish as would be worth a _stater_ at Capernaum, or one large and fine enough to have been valued at that sum. The opening of the fish's mouth might have different objects, which must be fixed by the context. Certainly, if it hang long, it will be less salable. Therefore the sooner it is taken to market, the more probable will be a good price for it." Paulus and Ammon coincide in the following interpretation of one of the miracles of the loaves and fishes. There were always large caravans traveling near the time of the feasts, and they carried a plenty of meat and drinks on camels and in baskets. Now it is not according to Eastern hospitality to see your friends near you when you are eating, without asking them to join you. All that Jesus meant by saying they were without food was, that they had not a regular meal; and that therefore he collected them, arranged them in parties, and set those who had food the example of giving to those who had none, by doing so himself, with the small portion which he had. As long as eating was going on, Christ made the twelve go about with their baskets and give what they had to all who wished it. The baskets were not entirely emptied, nor was any one left hungry; otherwise the needy would have applied to the stock of the Apostles. Jesus, pleased to have done so much with so little, desired them to collect what there was in the different baskets into one. Our wise critic, the daring Paulus, finds as little difficulty in explaining away the miracle of Christ walking on the sea. When Christ saw that the wind was contrary, he did not wish to sustain the inconvenience of such a voyage; but walked along the shore and resolved to pass the disciples, as the wind was against them. From the state of the weather they coasted slowly along, and when they saw him walking on the land they were frightened. On their calling out, Christ desired Peter, who was a good swimmer, to swim to the shore and ascertain that it was he. Peter ran around to the proper side of the ship and jumped into the sea. When he was frightened by the violence of the waves, Christ who was standing on the shore, put out his hand and caught him. The boat put to land and they both got in! Such was the common method of explaining miracles. The Rationalists were so opposed to the idea of the supernatural, that each was accounted for in some other than the Scriptural way. Many volumes were written on this subject alone, until the people became thoroughly imbued with the opinion that the Scriptures are nothing more than a well-intended and exhaustive Jewish mythology. It became a mark of superstition to credit a miraculous event, and the few who still adhered to this pillar of the Christian faith found themselves pitied by the learned and derided by their equals. PROPHECY. The adventurous men who could deal thus with miracles would not be supposed to be more lenient to the prophecies of the Scriptures. We, therefore, observe the same skeptical rejection of the prophets. We have not dwelt at length upon the particular books which received their thrusts, for this would be quite too lengthy a task for the present volume. It is probable, however, that there is not a book of Scripture, or even a chapter, which these men would have remain just as we find it in the canon. "Something must be done with it," they argued, "no matter what it is. It is older or later than we have been accustomed to think. It was, of course, written by some one else than the accredited author." A large share of these criticisms centered on the works of the prophets, for it was one of the most persistent efforts of Rationalism to destroy popular faith in them. Ammon discoursed boldly against them and attempted to convert every prophetic expression into a natural remark. He held that Christ himself directly renounced the power to prophesy, Mat. xxiv. 36; Acts i. 7; and that there are no prophecies of his in the New Testament. Prophecies are recorded in the Bible as uttered by men of doubtful character. Many of them are obscure, and were never fulfilled. Others were made after the events, and all were reckoned imperfect by the Apostles. These accusations apply to all the prophecies of the Old and New Testaments. The argument for them needs whatever excuse it can find, in the delirium of the prophets who were transported out of their sobriety, in the double sense in which they are quoted in the New Testament, or in the remarkable variety of interpretation. In fact, there is a moral objection to them, to say nothing of their historical character. They would favor fatalism, take away human freedom, and be irreconcilable with the Divine perfection. What Christ said concerning the destruction of Jerusalem is not a prophecy, because not stated with sufficient clearness. Jesus followed the style of interpretation found in the Talmudic and Rabbinical writings, and transferred to himself many things in the Old Testament, which really referred to future changes in the state of the Jews. He used the Jewish ideas of a Messiah to further his own notions of founding a spiritual kingdom. The prophecies in the Old Testament merely give a poetical dress to affairs occurring in the prophet's or the poet's life time.[50] Even the prophets made but little if any claim to the great gift ascribed to them. They were good politicians who had made a study of their subject; and, from the mere force of natural shrewdness and long experience, could see coming events. Paulus argued at length against Christ's prophecy of his own resurrection. His first proof is that the apostles did not so understand him, as is clear from the women seeking to embalm him; and from the apostles not believing at first the story of his resurrection. Then Christ had no notion of returning shortly. He would not have thought it necessary to cheer his disciples as he did before his death if he could have prophesied that in three days he should join them again. All the promises of meeting again refer to his joining them in a future life. Wegscheider adds that Christ, though he reproaches his disciples with their want of faith, does not allude to their distrust of any prophecy of his; and that the phrase _three days_ is often used of what will soon happen. Scherer, a clergyman of Hesse-Darmstadt, represented the prophets of the Old Testament as so many Indian jugglers, who made use of the pretended inspiration of Moses and of the revelations of the prophets to deceive the people. He treated those who still have any regard for the prophecies of the New Testament as enthusiasts and simpletons; called all the predictions respecting the person of the Messiah, nonsense; accused the prophets of being cunning deceivers; and said that the belief of those prophets has preserved incredulity on the earth. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. The historical method of interpretation was applied by the disciples of Reason to the Gospel narratives of the character and atonement of Christ. The various circumstances surrounding the writers, the prejudices probably actuating them, the customs they witnessed, and their ignorance and consequent impressibility by a stronger mind, were all taken into the account. The Rationalists, therefore, place Christ before us as we would naturally expect him to appear after taking everything into consideration. They do not show him to us as he is, but as the nature of the case would lead us to expect him to be. There were many who charged him with unworthy motives and national prejudices. Reimarus accused him of rebellious, ambitious, and political views. "Afterward," says Stäudlin, "came out writings enough in Germany in which Christ was said to have performed his miracles by secret arts or by delusions. All proofs of the truth and divinity of his religion were taken away. He was exhibited either as a deceiver or self-deceiving enthusiast; and every possible objection to Christian morality as well as to the form of Christian worship was violently urged. Among the writers of these works were even theologians and preachers! What could be the consequence, except that they who still held somewhat to Christianity should set it forth as pure Rationalism, and that others should endeavor to extinguish it, and to introduce a pure religion of reason quite independent of Christianity and separated from it." An anonymous publication appeared in 1825, entitled _Vindiciæ Sacræ Novi Testamenti Scriptuarum_, in which Christ was declared to have deceived himself! Thereupon the Christians were obliged to elevate their founder's mean condition by wonderful stories. The first myth is concerning John the Baptist. Then follow the wonderful stories of Christ's birth, the advent of the wise men, the baptism, temptation, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ. There are doubts and difficulties connected with the resurrection, and though the apostles constantly assert its truth, the probable story is that the followers of Jesus, enraged at his death, gave it out that, being taken from the power of the wicked, he lived with God and enjoyed the reward of his virtue. They represented the life of their master to themselves and others in the most glowing colors, and so by degrees, said that he was still living, raised from the dead, and rewarded. Then all these things were told and believed, and it was not easy to contradict them or even examine their value. Paulus affirmed that Christ did not really die but suffered a fainting fit. Bahrdt conjectured that he retreated after his supposed death to some place known only to his disciples. According to Henke, Christ was a remarkable teacher, distinguished and instructed by God. Inspiration was what Cicero ascribes to the poets; the doctrine of the Trinity came from Platonism; the name "Son of God" is metaphorical, and describes not the nature but the qualities of Christ; and personality is ascribed to the Holy Ghost through a prosopopoeia not uncommon in the New Testament. The chief service of Christ was his doctrine. As a Divine Messenger it was his business to bring forward new and pure religion adapted to the wants of all mankind, and to give an example of it. His death was necessary to prove his confidence in his own doctrines, and to present an illustration of perfected virtue. Wegscheider took the position that Christ was one of those characters raised up by God at various periods of history to repress vice and encourage virtue. All notions of his glorification, however, are groundless, and the atonement is a mere speculation of the orthodox. One of the most popular and direct of all the writers on the opinions of the Rationalists was Röhr, the author of the _Briefe über den Rationalismus_. He dwells at length upon nearly all the opinions we have mentioned, but his portrait of Christ demands more than a passing notice. He assumes a position, not very lofty, it is true, but yet much more favorable than some of the authorities to which we have referred. Christ had a great mission, and he felt that a heavy burden was upon him. Still he was only a great genius, the blossom of his age and generation, and unsurpassed in wisdom by any one before or after him. His origin, culture, deeds and experience, are yet veiled, and the accounts we have of him are so distorted by rhapsody that we cannot reach a clear conception of him. He had a rare acquaintance with mankind, and studied the Old Testament carefully. He possessed a large measure of tact, imagination, judgment, wisdom, and power. His wisdom was the product of unbiased reason, a sound heart, and freedom from scholastic prejudices. He knew how to seize upon the best means for the attainment of his human purposes. He embraced in his plan a universal religion, and to this he made all things minister. All his doctrines were borrowed from the Old Testament; and the most admirable can be found as far back as the time of Moses. He performed no miracles; but they seemed miracles to the eye-witnesses. He uttered no real prophecies, but his mind was so full of the future that some of his predictions came to pass because of the natural foresight possessed by him. His cures are all attributable to his skill as a physician, for every Jew of that day had some medical knowledge. His apostles propagated Christianity because of the influence wrought upon them by their master. Fortunately for his fame, Paul published him far and wide. Had it not been for that apostle, Christianity would never have gone further than Palestine. There is nothing more remarkable in the spread of this religion than in that of Mohammedanism, which has made such great inroads upon Arabia, Egypt, Northern Africa, and Spain. Röhr, however, reaches the climax of skeptical praise when he says of Christ that he was a "Rationalist of pure, clear, sound reason; free from prejudice, of ready perceptions, great love of truth, and warm sympathies,--an exalted picture of intellectual and moral greatness. Who would not bow before thee?" The Rationalists made each act of Christ the subject of extended remark. Whenever they came to a serious difficulty they boldly attempted its solution by a few dashes of their unscrupulous pen. We may take the temptation in the wilderness as an example. One writer says that Christ, after his baptism, went into the wilderness full of the conviction that he had been called to a great work. He was hungry; and the thought came to him whether or not he was able to change the stones into bread. Then the conviction arose that his authority was not great enough to enchain the affections of the people. He wondered if God would not support him if he fell; but Reason answered, "God will not sustain you if you disobey the laws of nature." Then, standing on the top of a mountain, he conceived the idea of possessing the surrounding lands, and of placing himself at the head of the people to overthrow the Roman power. The whole affair was a mere individual conflict. From what we have now said, the opinions of the Rationalists on all points of Christian doctrine become apparent. The sacraments are only symbols of an invisible truth. Baptism is merely a sign of the purity with which a Christian ought to live. The Lord's Supper is but a memorial of the death of Jesus, and unites us with him only morally. The church is a human institution, whose teachings may be very distinct from the will of God. It gives therefore only relative aid. The future judgment is only a Rabbinical vision. Every one receives retribution for his faults in this life; and there is no eternity save that of God, in whom all beings are absorbed.[51] By this barren creed all foundation for a holy life was taken away. The people, believing such absurdities, were transported from a period which is declared by the word of God to be blessed by the "dispensation of the Spirit" to a cold age in which the excellence of the intellect was measured by the ingenuity of its thrusts at the Scriptures, and in which the highest piety was the strictest obedience to the dictates of natural reason. The inspired advice given to the seekers of wisdom was travestied and made to read, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of _Reason_ that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." The Christian of that day had but little to minister to his spiritual growth. All the endeared institutions of his church were palsied by the strong arm of the Rationalists, who had nothing to put in their place. Their time was spent in destruction. They would pull all things down and erect nothing positive and useful. The doctrines which they professed to believe were mere negatives,--the sheer denial of some thing already in existence. FOOTNOTES: [40] Rose, _State of Protestantism in Germany_. Notes on Ch. iv. [41] Von Ammon: _Biblische Theologie_. [42] Daub. [43] Herder. [44] Lessing: _Menschengeschlect_. Rosenmüller: _Stufenfolge der Göttlichen Offenbarungen_. [45] Wegscheider: _Institutiones Dogmaticæ_. [46] Eichhorn: _Einleitung_. [47] Paulus: _Kritische Commentar über das Neue Testament_. [48] Kant. [49] Wegscheider: _Institutiones Dogmaticæ_. [50] Eichhorn: _Die Hebräischen Propheten_. [51] Von Ammon. Quoted from his _Magazine_ in Saintes' _Histoire du Rationalisme_. CHAPTER IX. RENOVATION INAUGURATED BY SCHLEIERMACHER. The commencement of the nineteenth century found the German people in a state of almost hopeless depression. They saw their territory laid waste by the victorious Napoleon, and their thrones occupied by rulers of Gallic or Italian preferences. They had striven very sluggishly to stem the current of national subjection and humiliation. The star of France being in the ascendant, the Rhine was no longer their friendly ally and western limit. No stage in the history of a people is more gloomy and calls more loudly for sympathy than when national prestige is gone, and dignities usurped by foreign conquerors. Though the apathy of despair is a theme more becoming the poet than the historian, we find a vivid description of the sadness and desolation produced by the French domination given by one who deeply felt the disgrace of his country. This writer says: "The Divine Nemesis now stretched forth her hand against devoted Germany, and chastened her rulers and her people for the sins and transgressions of many generations. Like those wild sons of the desert, whom in the seventh century, heaven let loose to punish the degenerate Christians of the East, the new Islamite hordes of revolutionary France were permitted by Divine Providence to spread through Germany, as through almost every country in Europe, terror and desolation. "What shall I say of the endless evils that accompanied and followed the march of her armies, the desolation of provinces, the plunder of cities, the spoliation of church property, the desecration of altars, the proscription of the virtuous, the exaltation of the unworthy members of society, the horrid mummeries of irreligion practised in many of the conquered cities, the degradation of life and the profanation of death. Such were the calamities that marked the course of these devastating hosts. And yet the evils inflicted by Jacobin France were less intense and less permanent than those exercised by her legislation. In politics the expulsion of the ecclesiastical electors, who, though they had sometimes given in to the false spirit of the age, had ever been the mildest and most benevolent of rulers; the proscription of a nobility that had ever lived in the kindliest relations with its tenantry; and on the ruins of old aristocratic and municipal institutions that had long guarded and sustained popular freedom, a coarse, leveling tyranny, sometimes democratic, sometimes imperial, established; in the church the oppression of the priesthood, a heartless religious indifferentism, undignified even by attempts at philosophic speculation, propagated and encouraged; and through the poisoned channels of education the taint of infidelity transmitted to generations yet unborn. Such were the evils that followed the establishment of the French domination in the conquered provinces of Germany. Doubtless, through the all-wise dispensations of that Providence who bringeth good out of evil, this fearful revolution has partly become, and will yet further become, the occasion of the moral and social regeneration of Europe."[52] The patriot saw his country degraded; but the Christian wept for his absent faith. Rationalism was strongest when national humiliation was deepest. These formed a fitting twinship. It is a scathing comment on the influence of skepticism upon a people that, in general, the highest feeling of nationality is coexistent with the devoutest piety. It is the very nature of infidelity to deaden the emotions of patriotism, and that country can hardly expect to prove successful if it engage in war while its citizens are imbued with religious doubt. If lands are conquered, it knows not how to govern them; if defeated, skepticism affords but little comfort in the night of disaster. We do not attach a fictitious importance to Rationalism when we say that it was the prime agent which prevented the Germans from the struggle of self-liberation, and that the victory of Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna would never have been needed had those people remained faithful to the precedents furnished by the Reformers. When Fichte was in his old age, and had completed his system of philosophy, he published his _Addresses to the German People_. Political writing was a new field for him, and yet, whoever will take the pains to study the fruits of his thinking, will easily perceive that the spirit animating the _Addresses_ was the same which pervaded his entire philosophy. He saw the degradation of his country. Though at a time of life when youthful fervor is supposed to have passed away, he became inflamed with indignation at the insolence of the conqueror and the apathy of his countrymen, and addressed himself to the consciousness of the people by calling upon them to arise, and reclothe themselves with their old historic strength. His voice was not disregarded. The result proved that those who had thought him in his dotage, and only indulging its loquacity, were much mistaken. He wrote that enthusiastic appeal with a great aim. He had spent the most of his life in other fields, but posterity will never fail to honor those who, whatever their habits of thinking may have been, for once at least have the sagacity to see the wants of their times, and possess the still higher wisdom of meeting them. Fichte died in 1814; but it was at a time when, Simeon-like, he could congratulate himself upon the prospects of humanity. He still felt the rich glow of youth when, in his last days, he could say: "The morning light has broken, and already gilds the mountain-tops, and gives promise of the great coming day." After independence had been achieved and the downfall of Napoleon had become a fact, there appeared evidences of new evangelical life. When the German soldiers recrossed the river which their ancestors had loved to call "Father Rhine," and felt themselves the proud possessors of free soil, not only they, but all their countrymen living in the Protestant principalities, manifested a decided dissatisfaction with that skepticism which had paralyzed them. Moreover, the memory that France had been the chief agent in introducing Rationalism was not likely to diminish their hatred of all infidelity. The masses breathed more freely, but they were still imbued with serious error. Restoration was the watchword in politics; but it was soon transferred to the domain of religion and theology. But great as was the influence of the wars of freedom in bringing back the German heart to an intense desire for a more elevated nationality, we must not be unmindful of the great theological forces which were preparing for a thorough religious renovation. They met in Schleiermacher. When quite young he was placed, first at Niesky and afterward at Barby, in the care of the Moravians. It was among these devout people that he became inspired with that enthusiastic love of inner religious feeling which characterized his entire career. The traces of Moravian piety are perceptible in all his writings. His own words concerning his early training are very touching. "Piety," says he, "was the maternal bosom, in the sacred shade of which my youth was passed, and which prepared me for the yet unknown scenes of the world. In piety my spirit breathed before I found my peculiar station in science and the affairs of life; it aided me when I began to examine into the faith of my fathers, and to purify my thoughts and feelings from all alloy; it remained with me when the God and immortality of my childhood disappeared from my doubting sight; it guided me in active life; it enabled me to keep my character duly balanced between my faults and virtues; through its means I have experienced friendship and love." He became a student at Halle, and thence removed to Berlin, where he was appointed chaplain to the _House of Charity_. While in that metropolis he had rare opportunities for the study of his times. He saw that the indifference and doubt which centered in the court and the university, controlled the leaders of theology, literature, and statesmanship. He drew his philosophy largely from Jacobi, exhibiting with that thinker his dissatisfaction at the existing condition of metaphysics and theology. Schleiermacher could not look upon the dearth around him without the deepest emotion. He asked himself if there was no remedy for the wide-spread evil. The seat of the disease appeared to him to be the false deification of reason in particular; and the general mistake of making religion dependent upon external bases instead of upon the heart and consciousness of man. His conclusion was that both the friends and enemies of Rationalism were mistaken, and that religion consists not in knowledge but in feeling. It was in 1799 that he wrote his _Discourses on Religion addressed to its Cultivated Despisers_. Striking at the principal existing evil, which was indifference, he aimed to show the only method for the eradication of them all. The late Mr. Vaughan, in speaking of the position of this work, says: "In these essays Schleiermacher meets the Rationalist objector on his own ground. In what aspect, he asks, have you considered religion that you so despise it? Have you looked on its outward manifestations only? These the peculiarities of an age or a nation may modify. You should have looked deeper. That which constitutes the religious _life_ has escaped you. Your criticism has dissected a dead creed. That scalpel will never detect a soul. Or will you aver that you have indeed looked upon religion in its inward reality? Then you must acknowledge that the idea of religion is inherent in human nature, that it is a great necessity of our kind. Your quarrel lies in this case, not with religion itself, but with the corruptions of it. In the name of humanity you are called on to examine closely, to appreciate duly what has been already done towards the emancipation of the true and eternal which lies beneath these forms,--to assist in what may yet remain. Schleiermacher separates the province of religion from those of action and of knowledge. Religion is not morality, it is not science. Its seat is found accordingly in the third element of our nature--the feeling. Its essential is a right state of the heart. To degrade religion to the position of a mere purveyor of motive to morality is not more dishonorable to the ethics which must ask than to the religion which will render such assistance.... The feeling Schleiermacher advocates, is not the fanaticism of the ignorant or the visionary emotion of the idle. It is not an aimless reverie shrinking morbidly from the light of clear and definite thought. Feeling, in its sound condition, affects both our conception and our will, leads to knowledge and to action. Neither knowledge nor morality are in themselves the measure of a man's religiousness. Yet religion is requisite to true wisdom and morality inseparable from true religion. He points out the hurtfulness of a union between church and state. With indignant eloquence he descants on the evils which have befallen the church since first the hem of the priestly robe swept the marble of the imperial palace."[53] Religion being subjective, according to Schleiermacher, there can be interminable varieties of it. As we look at the universe in numerous lights, and thereby derive different impressions, so do we acquire a diversity of conceptions of religion. Hence it has had many forms among the nations of the earth. There is in each breast a religion derived from the object of intellectual or spiritual vision. Christianity is the great sum resulting from the antagonism of the finite and the infinite, the human and divine. The fall and redemption, separation and reunion, are the great elements from which we behold Christianity arise. Of all kinds of religion this alone can claim universal adaptation and rightful supremacy. Christ was the revelator of a system more advanced than Polytheism or Judaism. Only by viewing his religion in the simple light in which he places it can the mind find safety in its attempts to seek for a basis of faith. But, important as Christianity is, it will avail but little unless it become the heart-property of the theoretical believer. The _Discourses_ produced a deep impression. They inspired the class to whom they had been directed with what it needed most of all, _a sense of dependence_. One could not read them and close the volume without wondering how reason could be deified and the feeling of the heart ignored. There were multitudes of the educated and cultivated throughout the land who, having become unfriendly to Christianity through the persistence of the Rationalists, were equally indisposed to be satisfied with a mere destructive theology. Something positive was what they wanted; hence the great service of Schleiermacher in directing them to Christianity as the great sun in the heavens, and then to the heart as the organ able to behold the light. His labor was inestimably valuable. His utterances were full of the enthusiasm of youth, and, years later, he became so dissatisfied with the work, that he said it had grown strange even to himself. As if over-careful of his reputation, to a subsequent edition he appended large explanatory notes in order to harmonize his recent with his former views. It would have been more becoming the mature man to leave those earnest appeals to reap their own reward. The times had changed; and the necessity which had first called forth his appeal to the idolaters of doubt was sufficient apology. Schleiermacher wrote other works, of which he and his disciples were much prouder; but we doubt if he ever issued one more befitting the class addressed, or followed with more beneficial results. Since his pen has been stopped by death, those very discourses have led many a skeptic in from the cold storm which beat about him, and given him a place at the warm, cheerful fireside of Christian faith. Severe censure has been cast upon them because of their traces of Spinoza. It is enough to reply that their author, in the fourth edition, repudiated every word savoring of Pantheism. Of books, as of men, it is best to form an estimate according to the purpose creating them, and the moral results following them. Neander, who could well observe the influence of the _Discourses_, gives his testimony in the following language: "Those who at that time belonged to the rising generation will remember with what power this book influenced the minds of the young, being written in all the vigor of youthful enthusiasm, and bearing witness to the neglected, undeniable religious element in human nature. That which constitutes the peculiar characteristic of religion, namely, that it is an independent element in human nature, had fallen into oblivion by a one-sided rational or speculative tendency, or a one-sided disposition to absorb it in ethics. Schleiermacher had touched a note which, especially in the minds of youth, was sure to send forth its melody over the land. Men were led back into the depth of their heart, to perceive here a divine drawing which, when once called forth, might lead them beyond that which the author of this impulse had expressed with distinct consciousness." In the year following the publication of the _Discourses on Religion_, Schleiermacher issued his _Monologues_. Here he gave the keynote to the century. While, only the year before, he would cultivate the feeling of dependence and turn the mind inward, in the _Monologues_ he would lead man to a knowledge of his own power, and show how far his individuality can go upon its mission of success. Here he lauds independence. Hence the latter work exerted the same kind of influence which attended Fichte's _Addresses_, and it had no small share in the reäwakening of the people to their innate power. There might appear an antagonism between these two works of Schleiermacher, but, while the _Discourses_ were the exposition of his religious views, the _Monologues_ were merely the annunciation of his moral opinions subsequently developed in his _System of Christian Ethics_. The latter production was not destitute of enthusiasm. In fact, the _Monologues_, cultivating the spirit of independence, were far more capable of arousing and invigorating the mind and heart. The author would have no one blind to the native strength secreted in every breast, nor fail to cultivate sympathy and love through every period of life. The consciousness should be a world in itself; not even seeking an external support, but satisfied with its own introspection; not watching the storm without, but satisfied with surveying the gilded halls of its own castle-home. Thus there becomes, instead of old age, continuous youth. This was his own pure experience. "For," said he, "to the consciousness of inner freedom, and acting in accordance with it, correspond eternal youth and joy. This I have got hold of, and shall never give it up again; and with a smile I thus see vanishing the light of mine eyes, and white hairs springing up among my fair locks. Whatever may happen, nothing shall grieve my heart; the pulse of my inner life shall remain fresh until I die." A strong evidence that the German people were learning well the lessons now impressed upon them, was the increasing fondness for the institutions of purer times and a growing taste for history. The mind found no comfort in the present, and it was therefore driven back upon the past for solace. Poets began to start up, clothed with the spirit of independence, and singing of bygone days in such a way that they were understood as saying, "Now you see what our fathers did; how they believed and fought; go you and do likewise." This new race sprang from the Romantic School, led by Tieck, Schlegel, and others; but while it possessed that enthusiastic admiration of the past which these men indulged, their literary offspring exhibited a more earnest Christian faith. It was in that day of distress that Uhland first poured forth his notes of awakening; that Körner sounded the bugle-call of freedom; that Rückert molded sonnets stronger than bullets; and Kerner sighed for a world where there is no war, and no rumors of war. Thus, when liberation came, no one class could claim to be the sole agent of its accomplishment. But it is certain that if the religious spirit of the people had not been appealed to and aroused, all literary and æsthetic efforts would have been in vain. It was the religious consciousness of the masses east of the Rhine which, being thoroughly awakened, drew the sword, and gained the victory of Waterloo. If we view that great crisis in European history in any light whatever, we cannot resist the conviction that its importance in the sphere of religion was equally great with its political magnitude. The King of Prussia, Frederic William III., began the work of ecclesiastical reconstruction. There were three questions of great delicacy, but of prime importance, which he attempted to solve; the constitution of the Protestant church; the improvement of liturgical forms; and the union of the two Protestant confessions. Whatever course the king might adopt could not fail to make many enemies. But he belonged to a line of princes who had been aiming at the unity of the church for more than two centuries, and who, with the single exception of Frederic II., had endeavored to preserve popular faith in the Scriptures. Preparations were being made for the three hundredth anniversary jubilee of the Reformation. The land being now redeemed, it was hoped that the occasion would inspire all hearts with confidence in the future of both state and church. The king deemed it a most favorable opportunity to bring the two branches of the Protestant church together, not by one coming over to the territory of the other, but by mutual compromise, by the rejection of the terms Lutheran and Reformed, and by the assumption of a new denominational name. There was really no reason why the two confessions should not be united, for it was very plain that the adherents of both were not rigid in their attachment. The Calvinists were no longer tenaciously devoted to their founder's views of absolute predestination, while the Lutherans, having departed from the doctrine of the real presence in the Lord's Supper, had adopted the Zwinglian theory. The rigid authority of the symbolical books was but loosely held by Lutherans and Calvinists. Frederic William III., seeing that the separation was more imaginary than real, wrote a letter on the second of May, 1817, to Bishop Sack and Provost Hanstein, in which he said: "I expect proposals from you concerning the union of the two confessions, which are in fact so similar; and as to the easiest method of effecting the same." On the twenty-seventh day of the same month he addressed a circular to all ecclesiastical functionaries within his dominions, calling upon them to exert their influence for the union of the two churches, and to give notice that the approaching jubilee would be the signal for it to take place. The thirty-first of October was the anniversary, and the plan was so far successful that in many places the people and ministry of both confessions met on that day for divine worship and partook of the Lord's Supper together. The fruit of the movement was highly satisfactory to the Prussian King. Very soon after the anniversary of the Reformation, the terms _Lutheran_ and _Reformed_ were stricken from official documents, and the united State Church was henceforth known as the Evangelical Church. Beyond the limits of Prussia the Union gave rise to animated discussion; but within the space of five years it was effected in Nassau, Rhenish Bavaria, the Palatinate, Rhenish Hesse, and Dessau. It encountered the most decided opposition in the person of Harms, a pastor of the city of Kiel. He was not opposed to any movement which he thought would conduce to the advantage of Christ's kingdom, but it was his opinion that a return to the old Lutheran orthodoxy was more needed than the union of the two churches. The faith of the fathers, and not the union of Rationalistic divines, was, in his view, the only method of deliverance. Harms was little known outside his own province until the publication of his ninety-five _Theses_ in connection with the original ninety-five nailed by Luther to the door of the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg. He was the son of a plain Holstein miller, and had been indoctrinated into the Lutheran catechism during his early youth. His first lessons in Latin and Greek were received at the hands of a Rationalistic pastor in his native town, but he assisted his father in the mill until he was nineteen years of age. He then visited the university of Kiel, and in due time entered upon the pastoral work. He scorned the customary dry method of preaching, and aimed to reach the hearts of his hearers by any praiseworthy method within his power. He made use of popular illustrations and ordinary incidents. His congregations increased, not only in the attendance of the middle and lower classes, but of the gentry and wealthy. His earnest plainness was so novel and unexpected that those who had long absented themselves from the sanctuary were rejoiced to attend the ministrations of a preacher who seemed to believe something positive and Scriptural, and who had the boldness to say what he did believe. This was the man who came forth on the occasion of the anniversary of the Reformation as the champion for a return to the spirit of the olden time. He held that reason had totally supplanted revelation in the pulpits, universities, and lower schools, and that, until faith was crowned with supremacy, there was no hope of relief. The _Theses_ exhibited great directness and clearness of appeal, and a keen insight into the methods of popular address. As a specimen of their style we introduce the following extracts: "III. With the idea of a progressing Reformation, in the manner in which this idea is at present understood, and especially in the manner in which we are reminded of it, Lutheranism will be reformed back into heathenism, and Christianity out of the world. IX. In matters of faith, reason; and as regards the life, conscience, may be called the Popes of our age. XI. Conscience cannot pardon sins. XXI. In the sixteenth century the pardon of sins cost money, after all; in the nineteenth it may be had without money, for people help themselves to it. XXIV. In an old hymn-book it was said, 'Two places, O man, thou hast before thee;' but in modern times they have slain the devil and dammed up hell. XXXII. The so-called religion of reason is destitute either of reason or religion, or both. XLVII. If in matters of religion, reason claims to be more than a layman, it becomes a heretic; that avoid, Titus iii. 10. LXIV. Christians should be taught that they have the right not to tolerate any unchristian and un-Lutheran doctrine in the pulpits, hymn-books, and school-books. LXVII. It is a strange claim that it must be permitted to teach a new faith from a chair which the old faith had set up, and from a mouth to which the old faith gives food. LXXI. Reason, turned head, goes about in the Lutheran church: it tears Christianity from the altar, casts God's works out of the pulpit, throws dirt into the baptismal water, receives all kinds of people as godfathers, hisses the priests; and all the people follow its example, and have done so for a long time. And yet it is not bound. On the contrary, this is thought to be the genuine doctrine of Luther, and not of Carlstadt. LXXIV. The assertion that we are more advanced and enlightened can surely not be proved by the present ignorance as regards true Christianity. Many thousands can declare, as did once the disciples of John, 'We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.' LXXV. Like a poor maid, they would not enrich the Lutheran church by a marriage. Do not perform it over Luther's bones! He will thereby be recalled to life, and then--wo to you! LXXVII. To say that time has taken away the wall of separation between Lutherans and Reformed is not a clear speech. LXXXII. Just as reason has prevented the Reformed from finishing their church and reducing it to unity, so the reception of reason into the Lutheran church would cause nothing but confusion and destruction. XCII. The Evangelical Catholic church is a glorious church; she holds and forms herself preëminently by the Sacrament. XCIII. The Evangelical Reformed church is a glorious church; she holds and forms herself by the Word of God. XCIV. More glorious than either is the Evangelical Lutheran church; she holds and forms herself both by the Sacrament and the Word of God."[54] The appearance of the _Theses_ of Harms created a great sensation. At a time when the union of the two churches became so desirable to many, they seemed to be a firebrand of destruction. Plainly, it would be best to return to the faith of the Reformers, but some of the most evangelical men claimed that the speediest method of return was through the Union. There appeared replies to the _Theses_ from all quarters of the country, almost every theologian of distinction assuming the character of the controversialist. As many as two hundred works appeared on the subject, the most of them bearing strongly against Harms. In Kiel and Holstein, where he was best known, the excitement was intense. Even churches and clubs were divided, and the rancor went so far as to invade private families, and create domestic divisions and heart-burnings. Seldom has a theological topic caused such a blaze of tumult. Harms was declared guilty of heinous offenses. He was charged with Catholicism, and reminded that attention to the mill would be much better employment than wielding the pen. He was accused of aiming at the protracted division of the sects, and ministering in all possible ways to the devices of Satan. His was the fate of the partisan. He did a great work, for the controversy arising from his _Theses_ hastened the settlement of those points which the times required should be solved as speedily as possible. Indeed, this very discussion was a hopeful indication; for it proved that, long and terrible as the sway of Rationalism had been, there was still some interest felt among the people on the themes most intimately connected with faith and practice. It was a bright ray of the morning of renovation when the mere fact of vital religion was powerful enough to enlist public attention. FOOTNOTES: [52] Möhler's _Symbolism_, Memoir of Author. [53] _Essays and Remains._ Vol. 1, pp. 61-62. [54] Quoted from Kahnis, _History of German Protestantism_, pp. 224-225. CHAPTER X. RELATIONS OF RATIONALISM AND SUPERNATURALISM. 1810-1835. The task imposed upon the new state church taxed its powers to their utmost tension. Much that had been achieved was now no longer useful, for the stand-point of parties was totally changed. The Calvinist had written against Rationalism with one eye upon heresy and the other upon Lutheranism. The Lutheran had betrayed more spleen toward his Reformed brethren than toward the disciples of Semler and Ernesti. But when the union was effected there occurred the immediate necessity of new methods of attack upon the enemies of orthodoxy, and a steadfast cultivation of friendly feelings between newly-formed friends. As the adherents of the two confessions were now united, why might not their conjoined strength be wielded for the overthrow of skepticism? What was there, then, to prevent these great branches of the church from coming forward in perfect unison, and dealing strong blows against the system which had well nigh been the ruin of them both? The devotees of reason saw their danger, for the day of the union was an evil one for them. But they did not become so alarmed as to take to flight and give up the contest. On the other hand, they no sooner perceived the awakening of the German people to a sense of patriotism and independence, than they predicted a similar disposition to return to the old faith; and being thus convinced of their danger, they wrote very vigorously, and attempted to be fully prepared for the onset. We therefore behold the anomaly of a system which had almost run its race before arriving at a formal exposition. Rationalism never attained to the dignity of a clear and cogent elucidation until the publication of Röhr's _Letters on Rationalism_, and of Wegscheider's _Institutes_. It had reached the acme of its prosperity at the beginning of the century, yet the former work was not written until 1813, and the latter not until 1817. There was power in both these productions. The former was bold, popular, startling, and not without a show of learning. It was intended for the masses. The latter was a complement of the former; more heavy, but by virtue of its weight adapted to that class of people, everywhere abundant, who suspect either danger or puerility in every earnest sentence. The author held that it was the province of Protestantism to develop Christianity and Christian theology to a pure faith of reason. Issuing his work in the year of the Reformation jubilee, he dedicated it to the shades of Luther. But Röhr and Wegscheider, as far as their capacity to injure Christian faith was concerned, stood at the wrong term of the history of Rationalism. Had they written a half century earlier their works would have been much more injurious to the Christian Church. But the system they would now strengthen and propagate was beginning to decay, and it was beyond their power to save it from ruin. They built a house for an occupant who was too old to enjoy either the fascinating symmetry of its architecture or the gorgeous splendor of its furniture. It was at the time of which we speak that we first find frequent use of the terms _Rationalism_ and _Supernaturalism_. The more zealous friends of each school marshaled themselves for the final struggle. The conflict became hand to hand, and quick and direct blows were dealt by both combatants. One of the foremost among the champions of the old faith was Reinhard, who declared that there was an irrepressible difference between reason and revelation, Rationalism and Supernaturalism; that there was no possible point of compromise; that they had nothing in common; and that either the one or the other must exercise authority. Reinhard avowed himself in favor of the undivided supremacy of faith, and would have reason subordinate. The key-note of his active life and inspiring writings is found in his own language--words which, had he written nothing else, are sufficient to render him memorable. "While yet a boy," said he, "when I read the Bible I considered it the word of God to man, and never have I ceased to hold this view; so that now it is so holy to me and its utterances so decisive that a single sentence which would reproach its sanctity fills me with horror, just as an immoral sentiment would rouse my conviction of virtue." Tittmann entered the lists with a work directed at the very heart of Rationalism. He charged it with being unimprovable, and merely temporary and unsatisfactory. His book, entitled _Supernaturalism, Rationalism, and Atheism_, went still further; for it aimed to show that if the Rationalists believe what they say, they are nothing less than atheists. Granting their premises, the conclusion must be that there is no God, and that if God be not the author of revelation, there is also no God of nature. But while this war of books was going on with great bitterness on both sides, there arose a powerful band of mediators, who believed that no advantage could be gained for either combatant by continuing the strife, and that some point of union would have to be adopted before there could be peace and prosperity. Tzschirner differed from Reinhard in his view of the antagonism between Rationalism and Supernaturalism. He contended that there were features of sympathy between the two systems, and that the work of harmonizing reason and revelation was not impossible. He therefore attempted, in the present case, what Calixtus had formerly tried in behalf of the Calvinists and Lutherans. But the syncretism of Tzschirner was equally difficult of accomplishment. He conceded too much to the Rationalists: for he would unite them and their enemies on the ground that the aim of revelation is only to found a moral and religious institution through the personal agency of a Divine Ambassador; to strengthen the truths of the religion of reason; and to bring them so near to the consciences of men that the authority of reason to prove the origin and contents of revelation cannot be doubted. But Tzschirner's influence did not consist so much in the particular plan he would execute as in the tendency toward union which he was the chief agent in creating. There were numbers who, having read his works on this subject, were loud in their demand for the union of reason and revelation on some basis that would compromise neither the value of the former nor the sanctity of the latter. Many books appeared whose sole theme was the possible harmonization of these elements, which heretofore had been deemed utterly incongruous.[55] Schott's _Letters on Religion and the Faith of the Christian Revelation_ was directed to the same mark, and received great attention at the hands of both parties. According to their author, there was no opposition between the religion of reason and revelation, for Christianity is the mere expression of the highest reason. Both are derived from the same fountain, which is Divine reason. Nor is there any real difference between the purpose of Christianity and that of the religion of reason. Each one aims at the highest good. But it soon became very evident that the Rationalists and Supernaturalists were unable to harmonize. The points of difference were so decided that it was vain to expect a union. Reinhard was correct in his opinion that one or the other would have to yield. Just at the crisis when these two systems were attracting greatest attention, Schleiermacher published his _System of Doctrines_, 1821. In this work he proved what had not been conceived by any writer save himself, that there was another road to progress. As soon as it gained a hearing the disputants saw that their arguments were no longer of value, that the ground of the discussion was altogether changed, and that the cause of faith must eventually triumph. The book was a complete surprise to all parties. It was a stroke of genius, destined alike to recast existing theology and to create a new public sentiment for the future. The leading ideas developed in this master-piece of theology are Christ, Religion, and the Church. The Rationalists had ever held that reason is the criterion of truth, but Schleiermacher elevates Christian consciousness to the throne. They had reduced religion to a mere formal morality; yet he shows that religion and morality are very different, and that the former consists neither in knowledge or action, but in the sentiment or feeling of the heart. Thus he develops the opinion first published in the _Discourses on Religion_. He uses the term "piety" to designate religion. This piety should become the great spring of our life and the inspiring power of faith. There is no real inconsistency between knowledge and piety; they can harmonize beautifully when carried to their loftiest extent. The religious feeling, which judges truth, is characterized by absolute dependence. This is not degrading to man, but his true dignity consists in it. We have different conceptions of God, derived from the feeling of dependence, which is varied according to the nature of outward circumstances. Christ must be judged by us not so much according to the received accounts of his life as by his great relations to us as Redeemer and Saviour. Our view of him must be deeper than his mere incarnation. He was concerned in creation just so far as it was not completed until redeemed. If we would have communion with God we can enjoy it only through the medium of Christ. The peculiar value of redemption lies in its applicability to our necessity for salvation. The very sinlessness of Christ can be in a measure incorporated with our humanity, and we should aim after the mind that was in Christ. We are never fully united with Christ until we have a perfect spirit of dependence. When this occurs, the soul is passing into the glorious condition of the new birth. The church is the depository of that spirit of Christ which every believer must enjoy in order to inherit eternal life. The church, however, is not self-existent. Like the heavenly bodies, whose motions are constantly maintained by infinite power, the church is ever dependent upon Christ's agency for its very life. Christ is the spirit moving in history and controlling all things for the greatest good. The church is in some sense an organism of which Christ is the head. This fact is the central point of theology, for without Christ our faith is vain.[56] Such teaching was what the times needed. The mind required to be directed to Christ as the only remedy for skepticism. But we must confess that, in the midst of some of the most evangelical expositions of divine truth, Schleiermacher gave expression to serious doubts. He disclaimed any great authority inherent in the Old Testament in the following style: "The Old Testament Scriptures are indebted for their place in our Bible partly to the appeals made to them by the New Testament Scriptures, and partly to the historic connection of Christian worship and the Jewish synagogue, without participating, on that account, in the normal dignity, or inspiration, of those of the New Testament."[57] As far as the inspiration of the Old Testament is concerned, there must be a distinction observed between the law and the prophets. The law cannot be inspired, for the spirit that could inspire it would be in conflict with that which God sends into the heart by virtue of our connection with Christ. Upon the law depend all the subsequent historical books; and both are, therefore, uninspired, according to the standard by which we judge the New Testament. The prominent portions of the prophetic writings proceed principally from the material spirit of the people, which is not the Christian spirit. It is plain that Schleiermacher's views concerning the Trinity were defective. He despatches it thus: "The church doctrine of the Trinity demands that we should think each of the three persons equal to the Divine Being, and _vice versa_; and each of the three persons equal to the others. We are unable to do either the one or the other, but can only conceive the persons in a gradation; and in like manner the unity of the substance either less than the persons, or the contrary." He discourses eloquently of the Spirit; but, after all, he teaches that the Holy Ghost is only the common spirit of the Christian church as a corporate body striving after unity. The term "common spirit," which he employs, he understands to be the same that is used in worldly polity; that is, the common tendency in all, who form one moral person, toward the welfare of the whole. This beneficial sentiment is, in each, the peculiar love to every individual. The Holy Ghost is the union of the Divine Being with human nature, in the form of the common spirit animating the corporate life of the faithful. Schleiermacher did not reject miracles altogether as historical facts, but cast doubt upon their character by holding that, if they did occur, it was only in conformity with a higher nature of which we know nothing. His opinion concerning the doctrine of angels was not orthodox; for he rejected the existence of the devil, and the supposition of the fall of angels from heaven. Some of the most important events in connection with Christ were discarded by him as unnecessary to saving faith, namely, the miraculous conception, the resurrection, ascension, and return of Christ to judgment. In his opinion sin was hurtfulness, not guilt. It is astonishing that we find so much truth and error concentrated in the same man. But Neander was nevertheless correct in the words in which he announced Schleiermacher's death: "We have now lost a man from whom will be dated henceforth a new era in the history of theology." In reading closely some of his false positions, we soon meet with something so deep and spiritually earnest that we are forgetful of the doubt, being attracted by the greater glow of the living truth. As life advanced he improved in his appreciation of doctrine, and his latest works are hardly recognizable as written by the same hand. He published several books, of which we have made no mention, but in all the fruits of his pen he revealed an unfailing love of a personal Redeemer. His sermons were the outflow of his genial nature, kindled by his stern view of Christ's communion with his living disciples. Mr. Farrar eloquently sums up his work, though it must be acknowledged that the present generation stands too near the time of Schleiermacher's activity to bestow an impartial estimate upon either the theological position of the man or the influence resulting from him. "We have seen," says this author, "how completely he caught the influences of his time, absorbed them and transmitted them. If his teaching was defective in its constructive side; if he did not attain the firm grasp of objective verity which is implied in perfect doctrinal, not to say critical, orthodoxy, he at least gave the death-blow to the old Rationalism, which either from an empirical or a rational point of view, proposed to gain such a philosophy of religion as reduced it to morality. He rekindled spiritual apprehensions; he, above all, drew attention to the peculiar character of Christianity, as something more than the republication of natural religion, in the same manner that the Christian consciousness offered something more than merely moral experience. He set forth, however imperfectly, the idea of redemption, and the personality of the Redeemer; and awakened religious aspirations, which led his successors to a deeper appreciation of the truth as it is in Jesus. Much of his theology and some part of his philosophy had only a temporary interest relatively to the times; but his influence was perpetual. The faults were those of his age; the excellencies were his own. Men caught his deep love to a personal Christ without imbibing his doctrinal opinions. His own views became more evangelical as his life went on, and the views of his disciples more deeply Scriptural than those of their master. Thus the light kindled by him waxed purer and purer. The mantle remained after the prophet's spirit had ascended to the God that gave it."[58] De Wette was, like Schleiermacher his friend and colleague at Berlin, a man in whom can be seen all the marks of a transition-character. There are two sides to his theological views, one bearing upon the old Rationalism and in sympathy with it, the other directly tending to revive faith and religion. Even before Schleiermacher became generally known, De Wette had openly declared that religion can be based upon feeling alone, and that a personal Saviour is the necessary centre of Christian faith. The entire theology of De Wette was the outgrowth of the cold, critical philosophy of Kant and the more earnest and living system of Fries. He was, therefore, a two-fold personage, and it is not an easy task to harmonize his theories. One set of his opinions was based upon truth, the other on beauty. Religion has two elements, faith and feeling; doctrines and æsthetics. Religion may exist æsthetically, but it can only become vital in the feeling, or self-consciousness. Religious feeling embraces three shades: enthusiasm or inspiration, resignation, and devotion. Every history is, in a certain sense, symbolical. It is the mere reflection or copy of the human mind in its activity. So are the appearance of Christ, his life, and death, in some degree symbolical. In this symbolism consists the character of the Christian revelation. Here have appeared the eternal ideas of reason in their greatest purity and fullness; and Rationalism is nothing more than a philosophical view of the Christian revelation of faith, or the knowledge of the relations in which idea and symbol stand to each other in Christianity. Therefore, we must judge the miraculous accounts of the evangelists as symbols of the ideas existing in the early history of Christianity. De Wette reflects somewhat on the moral character of John, perhaps without intention, when he supposes him to have written late in life--a time when his faith would naturally predominate over his love of facts. Strauss couples De Wette with Vater, as having placed upon a solid foundation the mythical explication of the history of the Bible.[59] According to De Wette, the narrator may intend to write history, but he obviously does it in a poetic way. The first three evangelists betray a legendary and even a mythical character. This explains the discrepancies in their histories, and also in the discourses and doctrines of Jesus. The miracle that took place at the baptism of Christ was a pure myth; and the resurrection and reappearance of Christ have their existence more in the mind than in history. With this view of the New Testament, it is not surprising that the Old should receive even more rigorous usage. The larger part of the Pentateuch was supposed to be taken from two old documents, the Elohistic and Jehovistic, and was compiled somewhere near the close of the legal period. The five books, purporting to have been written by Moses, are the Hebrew epic, and contain no more truth than the great epic of the Greeks. As the Iliad and Odyssey are the production of the rhapsodists, so is the Pentateuch, with the exception of the Decalogue, the continuous and anonymous work of the priesthood. Abraham and Isaac are equally fabulous with Ulysses and Agamemnon. A Canaanitish Homer could have invented nothing better than the journeys of Jacob and the marriage of Rebecca. The departure from Egypt, the forty years in the wilderness, the seventy elders at the head of the tribes, and the complaints of Aaron are each an independent myth. The character of myths is varied in different books; poetic in Genesis, juridical in Exodus, priestly in Leviticus, political in Numbers, etymological, diplomatical, and genealogical, but seldom historical, in Deuteronomy. De Wette's theological novel, _Theodore, or the Doubter's Consecration_, 1822, was designed to banish the doubts of the skeptic by seeking refuge in the theology of feeling. Tholuck replied to it in his _Guido and Julius_, in which he proves that a deep appreciation and acceptance of Christ by the soul is the only remedy for infidelity. "We perceive in De Wette a continual conflict between the longings of his heart and the theological creed to which he attached himself. The lines written by him just before his death touchingly declare the great failure of his life: "I lived in times of doubt and strife, When child-like faith was forced to yield: I struggled to the end of life, Alas! I did not gain the field." With the name of the lamented Neander we hail the morning light of reviving faith. He was one of the purest characters in the history of the modern church. His influence was so great as to lead very many of the young men of Germany to embrace the vital doctrines of Christianity. His father was a Jewish peddler, Emanuel Mendel, and the boy was named David at circumcision. Various forces co-operated in directing his mind toward the Christian religion; of which we might mention the philosophy of Plato, the Romantic School, and above all, Schleiermacher's _Discourses on Religion_. When seventeen years of age he was baptized and received the combined name of his sponsors, John Augustus William Neander. In 1810 he began to lecture in the University of Heidelberg, and in 1813, owing to the publication of his _Julian the Apostate_, he received a call to Berlin. He was there brought into the society of Schleiermacher, Marheineke, De Wette, Fichte, Hegel, Ritter, Ranke and other celebrated men. It was very significant of the new life now beginning to be felt, that his lectures were numerously attended. Even Schleiermacher, his co-laborer for twenty years in the theological faculty, had a limited circle of auditors compared with the throngs who went to hear Neander. His theological views were more positive and evangelical than those entertained by any of his associates. He shared, with the most orthodox of them, the opinion that religion is based upon feeling. The Christian consciousness was the sum of his theology. "By this term," said he, "is designated the power of the Christian faith in the subjective life of the single individual, in the congregation, and in the church generally; a power independent and ruling according to its own law,--that which, according to the word of our Lord, must first form the leaven of every other historical development of mankind." Neander was not a man of very strong prejudices; yet his disapprobation of the destructive nature of Rationalism was very decided. The reduction of religion to intellectualism received severe rebukes at his hand on more than one occasion. "I shall never cease," he declared, "to protest against the one-sided intellectualism, that fanaticism of the understanding, which is spreading more and more, and which threatens to change man into an intelligent, over-wise beast. But at the same time I must protest against that tendency which would put a stop to the process of development of theology; which, in impatient haste, would anticipate its aim and goal, although with an enthusiasm for that which is raised above the change of the days,--an enthusiasm which commands all respect, and in which the hackneyed newspaper categories of Progress and Retrogression are out of the question." Neander's motto, "Pectus est, quod theologum facit," unfolds his whole theological system and life-career. The Germans call his creed "Pectoralism," in view of the inner basis of his faith. With him, religion amounts to nothing without Christ. Nor must Christ be the mere subject of study; the soul and its manifold affections must embrace him. The barrenness of Judaism is done away in him, and the emptiness of Rationalistic criticism is successfully met by the fullness found in Christianity. Sin is not merely hurtful and prejudicial, but it induces guilt and danger. It can be pardoned only through the death and mediation of Christ. The illustrations of devout service to be found in the history of the church should serve as examples for succeeding times. Neander spent much of the careful labor of his life in portraying prominent characters; for it was his opinion that individuals sometimes combine the features of their times, the virtues or the vices prevalent; and that if these individualities be clearly defined the church is furnished with valuable lessons for centuries. The work published when but twenty-two years of age, _Julian the Apostate_, was the beginning of a series of similar monographs designed to show the importance of the individual in history, and to point out great crises in the religious life of man. He subsequently produced works entitled _St. Bernard_, _Gnosticism_, _St. Chrysostom_, _Tertullian_, _History of the Apostolic Age_, _Life of Christ_, and _Memorials of Christian Life_. To these may be added a few practical commentaries, essays, and a _History of Doctrines_. But the great achievement of Neander was his _General History of the Christian Religion and Church_, embracing the period from the close of the apostolic age to the Council of Basle in 1430. Christianity is, in his conception, not simply a growth or development of man; it is a new power, a creation of God, a divine gift to the world. Therefore the history of the Church of Christ is the clear exhibition of the divine strength of Christianity; it is a school of Christian experience, a voice of warning and instruction for all who will hear it as it echoes down through the grand march of centuries.[60] The history of the church, far from being the scholar's theme alone, furnishes nutritious food for the practical life of all the disciples of the Lord. If its history be permitted to exert its due influence upon the world, we shall behold a gratifying and widespread improvement in all things that increase happiness and lead heavenward. It is quite too late to answer the charge against Neander's profundity. His achievements are his best defense, and the pen of censure is fast beginning to lose its bitterness. It is not time for him to be fully appreciated at home; for, as the beauty of the landscape is dependent on the sun to make it apparent, so Neander's character and labors must wait for an honorable and universal recognition until new evangelical light shall have overspread the land. A century hence he will be loved as dearly by the German people as he was by those weeping students who gathered around his grave to see his face for the last time. What Krummacher said on the occasion of his burial will yet be the testimony of the church, whose history was Neander's earthly Eden: "One of the noblest of the noble in the Kingdom of God, a prince in Zion, the youngest of the church Fathers, has departed from us." Neander's relation to his times was most important. The various influences hitherto employed against Rationalism had proceeded as far toward its extinction as it was possible for them to go. Philosophy and doctrinal theology had spent their efforts. The history of the church having always been treated mechanically, it was now necessary that the continued presence and agency of Christ with his people should be carefully portrayed. The progress of his church needed to be represented as more than growth from natural causes, such as the force of civilization and education. It was necessary to show that a high superintending Wisdom is directing its path, overcoming its difficulties, and leading it through persecution and blood to ultimate triumph. Neander rendered this important service. He directed the vision of the theologian to a new field, and became the father of the best church historians of the nineteenth century. The child-like simplicity of his character was beautiful. Everything like vanity and pretense was as foreign to him as if he dwelt on a different planet. A recent German writer calls him a "Protestant monk or saint, whose world was the cloister of the inner man, out of which he worked and taught for the good of the church." Of his remarkable personal appearance, Dr. Schaff, who enjoyed his friendship, says: "In his outward appearance Neander was a real curiosity, especially in the lecture-room. Think of a man of middle size, slender frame, homely but interesting and benevolent face, dark and strongly Jewish complexion, deep-seated, sparkling eyes, overshadowed by an unusually strong, bushy pair of eyebrows, black hair flowing in uncombed profusion over the forehead, an old-fashioned coat, a white cravat carelessly tied, as often behind or on one side of the neck as in front, a shabby hat set aslant, jack-boots reaching above the knee; think of him thus either as sitting at home, surrounded by books on the shelves, on the table, on the few chairs, and all over the floor; or as walking _unter den Linden_, and in the Thiergarten of Berlin, leaning on the arm of his sister Hannchen, or a faithful student, his eyes shut or looking up to heaven, talking theology in the midst of the noise and fashion of the city, and presenting altogether a most singular contrast to the teeming life around him, stared at, smiled at, wondered at, yet respectfully greeted by all who knew him; or as finally standing on the rostrum, playing with a goose-quill which his amanuensis had always to provide; constantly crossing and recrossing his feet, bent forward, frequently sinking his head to discharge a morbid flow of spittle, and then again suddenly throwing it on high, especially when aroused to polemic zeal against pantheism and dead formalism; at times fairly threatening to overturn the desk, and yet all the while pouring forth with the greatest earnestness and enthusiasm, without any other help than that of some illegible notes, an uninterrupted flow of learning and thought from the deep and pure fountain of the inner life; and thus with all the oddity of the outside, at once commanding the veneration and confidence of every hearer; imagine all this, and you have a picture of Neander, the most original phenomenon in the literary world of this nineteenth century."[61] FOOTNOTES: [55] Baur, _Kirchengeschichte d. 19 Jahrhunderts_, pp. 180-181. [56] For summaries of Schleiermacher's views, see Herzog, _Encyclopædie_; Baur, _Kirchengeschichte, des 19 Jahrhunderts_; Vaughan, _Essays and Remains_; Gieseler, _Kirchengeschichte_, vol. vi.; Kurtz, _Church History_, vol. ii.; Saintes, _Histoire du Rationalisme_; Farrar, _History of Free Thought_; and Auberlen, _Göttliche Offenbarung_, vol. i. [57] _Die Glaubenslehre._ [58] _Critical History of Free Thought_, p. 249. [59] _Life of Jesus--Introduction._ [60] _History of the Christian Religion and Church._ _Preface to First Edition._ [61] _Germany--Its Universities, Theology, and Religion_, pp. 269-270. CHAPTER XI. THE REACTION PRODUCED BY STRAUSS' LIFE OF JESUS. 1835-1848. It is related of Apelles, that, after finishing his pictures, he was in the habit of hanging them in front of his studio and then of concealing himself in order to hear unseen the criticisms of the passers-by. On one occasion, when a new picture was thus exposed to public inspection, a shoemaker stopped before it and observed that something was wrong about a sandal. After he had gone Apelles saw the justice of the objection and corrected the fault. The next day, when the shoemaker was passing again and saw that much importance had been attached to his opinion, he ventured to criticise a leg, but Apelles rushed out from behind the curtain, and, charging him with being hypercritical, told him that for the future he would do better to keep to his trade. The circumstance gave rise to the Roman proverb--"Ne sutor ultra crepidam." The day was now near at hand when the criticism of the Scriptures, as conducted by the Rationalists, would go quite beyond the province of their authority and the bounds of moderation. When we read the cold, deliberate chapters of Ammon, Eichhorn, and Michaelis, we unconsciously identify ourselves with their generation, and exclaim, "Surely there will never be a step beyond this; the knife can have no edge for a deeper incision." As Neander toiled in his study, digging up the buried treasures of the past and enriching them with the John-like purity of his own heart in order that he might faithfully interpret the divine guidance of the church, he no doubt rejoiced in the conviction that the Rationalists had achieved their last great success, and that the work before him and those who believed as he did was to be henceforth more constructive than controversial. His co-workers were few in number, but they had pleasing indications in many quarters that their labors would have a triumphant issue. It was very evident that, though there was a general rejection of the doctrine of inspiration in that elevated sense which it is the glory of the American church to entertain, there were great numbers who had become as captivated with Schleiermacher's word, _feeling_, as if it had been a harp-note from heaven. The people had thought so little about their own hearts within the last half century that they seemed to have forgotten their stewardship of the treasure. The whole land had been converted into a colossal thinking machine. And when the German people were told by a stentorian voice that man is emotional as well as intellectual they arose as from a long stupefaction. So, when Schleiermacher died in 1834, there were many who said with unfeigned gratitude, "He is gone, but sweet be his sleep, for he has told us that we have heart and soul." Three years before Schleiermacher's death the spirit of Hegel had taken its departure. These were the two men who, though dead, were now speaking more authoritatively to the German mind than all others. Schleiermacher was represented by men more orthodox than himself, who gave every assurance of leaving the world far better than they had found it. Hegel had taught too long and thoroughly to be without influence after his eyes had ceased to look upon his entranced auditors at Berlin. It was not long after his death that his favorite theory of antagonisms had a literal fulfillment in the course adopted by the adherents to his opinions. His most ardent disciples found it difficult to tell what he had believed definitely, so varied are the expressions of his views in the eighteen volumes of his works. Even the same book was interpreted differently. His _Philosophy of Religion_ was twice edited, first in a conservative sense by Marheineke, and afterward in a revolutionary light by Bruno Bauer.[62] Some passages in his _History of Philosophy_ were written in defense of pantheism, while his later views have been brought forth in proof of his opposition to that error. Thus variously interpreted, and yet powerful in his hold upon the intellectual classes of Germany, it was impossible for his disciples to live in harmony. The chief points at issue were the personality of God, the immortality of the soul, and the person of Christ. Either side might be taken and the position defended by the master's own words. The result of this diversity of interpretation was a schism. Hegel's school was divided, after the model of the French Chambers, into three sections--the Right, the Centre, the Left. The Right asserted the orthodoxy of the Hegelian philosophy; the Centre held a position corresponding to their name; and the Left were unmitigated Rationalists. The last group were true to the skepticism inherited from their predecessors, and were radicals in church and state. They rejected the personality of God, a future life, and the credibility of the Gospel narratives. Strauss was a Left Hegelian, and his _Life of Jesus_ became the creed of his brethren in doubt. He was not in perfect harmony with all their extremes, but he co-operated with them, and gave them their chief glory. The world has seldom seen a literary venture more remarkable in contents or in history than this meteor across the firmament of German theology. To say that it was unexpected is but a faint expression of the universal surprise occasioned by it. The Left Hegelians were a limited school and the current of theological thought had been against them. Therefore, when the _Life of Jesus_ appeared, it was a bold thrust from an arm thought to possess but little strength. The author, David Frederic Strauss, was a young lecturer on theology in the University of Tübingen. He had experienced the several shades of opinion prevalent during his student life. Beginning with the Romantic School, lingering awhile with Schleiermacher, and finally passing through the gate Beautiful of Hegel's system, he tarried with that master as "lord of the hill." His stay was not brief, like that of Bunyan's pilgrim. But satisfied only by making greater progress, the philosophy of the great thinker became his Delectable Mountains, "beautiful with woods, vineyards, fruits of all sorts, flowers also, with springs and fountains, very delectable to behold." Strauss was but twenty-eight years old when his cold, passionless, and pungent piece of skeptical mechanism was presented to the world. Who would suspect that quiet young man of possessing so much power over the minds of his countrymen? M. Quinet, speaking of a visit to him, said, "Beneath this mask of fatalism I find in him a young man full of candor, of sweetness and modesty; of a spirit almost mystical, and apparently saddened by the disturbance which he had occasioned." His book produced a universal impression in Europe. It was, to the moral sentiment of Christendom, the earthquake shock of the nineteenth century. Having been multiplied in cheap editions, it was read by students in every university and gymnasium, by passengers on the Rhine boats and in the mountain stages, and by a great number of private families. Even school children, imitating the example of their seniors, spent their leisure hours in its perusal. The most obscure provincial papers contained copious extracts from it, and vied with each other in defending or opposing its positions. Crossing the German frontier, it was published in complete and abridged forms in all the principal languages of Europe. Even staid Scotland, unable to escape the contagion, issued a popular edition of the exciting work. Nor were the views advanced by Strauss in his _Life of Jesus_ less extraordinary than its very flattering reception. He was diametrically opposed to Neander in the latter's estimate of the ideal and historical. According to Strauss the idea is the very soul of all that is valuable in the past; and history is the gross crust which envelops it. What is history in its early stages but so many faint legends? Happy are we if, within them, we can discover the seed-truth. The same neglect of the movements of history in their outward form led Strauss into still another tendency which proved to be in direct conflict with Neander. The latter, as we have seen, was devoted to his theory of the importance and power of personality in history. But Strauss rejected it as of small moment. He attached great importance to the issue involved, but regarded the persons engaged in bringing it to pass as mere machinery. This contempt of the historical and the personal is the key to Strauss' work. The church, when it continued faithful, had always looked to the Gospels as the Holy Sepulchre of its faith, and was ever ready to make a crusade against the power which would wrest it from her grasp. But, amid the conflicts occasioned by the growth of the destructive criticism, the Gospels had received at its hands a treatment no less severe than had been inflicted upon the history of the Old Testament. Many theories had already been propounded by the Rationalists in order to account for them, but there was no general harmony among these men either on this or any subject of speculation. Wetstein, Michaelis, and Eichhorn were agreed that the Gospels were more human than divine, and the fate to which all the inspired records were consigned by those critics and their sympathizers has its analogy in the treatment bestowed by vultures upon the carcass of the exhausted beast that has fallen by the wayside. But, after all, the accounts of the Evangelists had suffered less severely than any other part of the Scriptures, and the injury they had sustained was owing more to the attacks made on the historical and prophetical portions of the Old Testament than to any immediate invasion. For the Bible is a unity. If but one book be mutilated the whole organism is disturbed. The contest having been hitherto connected with other features of revelation more than with the person of Christ, it was no part of the design of the Rationalists to submit without staking a great battle upon the incarnation of the Messiah. Let them succeed here, and they can rebuild more firmly all they have lost, but if they fail, they will only bring to a more speedy ruin an edifice already in decay. Strauss undertook the work; and having written for the learned alone, no one was more surprised than himself at the popular success of the _Life of Jesus_. According to him, the explanation of the mysterious accounts of Jesus of Nazareth can be found in the theory of the myth. Strauss held that the Holy Land was full of notions concerning his speedy appearance. The people were waiting for him, and were ready to hail his incarnation with rapture. Their opinions concerning him were already formed, owing to the expectations they had inherited from their fathers. Therefore, any one who answered their views would be the Messiah. There was much in both the character and life of Christ which approached their crude notions of the promised one. For this reason their hearts went out toward him, and they called him "Jesus." The world was already prepared, and since Christ best fitted it, he was entitled to all the honor of being waited for and accepted. All the prophecies of his incarnation were purely historical events. But the Jewish mind is very visionary and prone to allegory. Consequently, when Christ appeared among the Jews, it was not difficult to trace a resemblance between him and other marked personages in history. Thus Christ did not organize the Church as much as the church created him. He existed and lived on earth, but very different was the real Jesus from that wonderful character described in the Gospels. The veritable Messiah was born of humble parentage, was baptized by John, collected a few disciples, inveighed against the Pharisees and all others who placed themselves in antagonism to him, and finally fell a victim to the cruelty of his foes. Years passed by after his death, and the popular imagination went wild with reports and exaggerations of the once obscure Nazarene. Great as the ideas of the people were before Christ appeared, they were infinitely magnified during the lapse of the thirty years between his death and the composition of the Gospels. These narratives are consequently not a representation of history, but of morbid popular fancies. The evangelists did not intend to deceive their readers; their picturesque sketches were only designed to clothe the ideal in the garb of the real. "Be not so unkind," Strauss says in effect, "as to charge these poor uneducated men with evil purposes. They were very unsophisticated, and did not know enough to have any extended plan of trickery. They heard wonderful stories floating about, just such as one meets with in all countries after a prominent man has died; and, as they had a little capacity for using the pen, they wrote them down to the best of their ability. Their writings are curious but very defective, since the authors were too unpractised in literary work to perfect a master-piece. How little they dreamed of the reverence which future generations would pay them! Poor souls, they hardly knew what they were doing. One caught one story, and his friend another; and it is a nice bit of mosaic which we find in their school-boy productions. No wonder their defenders are unable to harmonize their accounts. Let any four men who live among a legend-loving people transcribe the traditions they hear from the lips of childhood and garrulous old age, or read in the popular romances of the day, and it will surprise no one that they do not agree. How can they tell the same things in the same way, since the sources of each are so different? Nor, with only myths for warp and woof, is it at all surprising that we have nothing more than Homeric exaggerations when the fanciful fabric is once woven." The introduction to the _Life of Jesus_ consists of an essay on the historical development of the mythical theory. Having stated its present shape and great value, it is then applied to the life of Christ in the body of the work. This is the climax of destructive criticism. Everything which Christ is reported by the Evangelists to have said or done shares the natural explanations of Strauss. From his very birth to his ascension, his life is no more remarkable than that of many others who have taken part in the public events of their times. Beginning with the annunciation and birth of John the Baptist, Strauss considers the apparition to Zacharias and his consequent dumbness as actual external circumstances, susceptible of a natural interpretation. Zacharias had a waking vision or ecstasy. Such a thing is not common, but in the present instance, many circumstances combined to produce an unusual state of mind. The exciting causes were, _first_, the long-cherished desire to have a posterity; _second_, the exalted vocation of administering in the Holy Place and offering up with the incense the prayers of the people to the throne of Jehovah, which seemed to Zacharias to foretoken the acceptance of his own prayer; and _third_, perhaps an exhortation from his wife as he left his house, similar to that of Rachel to Jacob. Gen. xxx. 1. In this highly excited state of mind, as he prays in the dimly-lighted sanctuary, he thinks of his most ardent wish, and expecting that now or never his prayer shall be heard, he is prepared to discern a sign of its acceptance in the slightest occurrence. As the glimmer of the lamp falls upon the ascending cloud of incense, and shapes it into varying forms, the priest imagines that he perceives the figure of an angel. The apparition at first alarms him, but he soon regards it as an assurance from God that his prayer is heard. No sooner does a transient doubt cross his mind, than the sensitively pious priest looks upon himself as sinful and believes himself reproved by the angel. Now, either an apoplectic seizure actually deprives him of speech, which he receives as the just punishment of his incredulity, until the excessive joy he experiences at the circumcision of his son restores the power of utterance--so that dumbness is retained as an external, physical, though not miraculous occurrence--or the proceeding is psychologically understood; namely, that Zacharias, in accordance with a Jewish superstition, for a time denied himself the use of the offending member. Reanimated in other respects by the extraordinary event, the priest returns home to his wife, and she becomes a second Sarah.[63] The original histories are adduced, and the parallels fully drawn between them and the gospel narratives in order to show the mythical character of the latter. The birth of John the Baptist is the mongrel product of the Old Testament stories of the birth of Isaac, of Samson, and of Samuel. Every event related by the evangelists is so strained as to make it analogous to other occurrences in Jewish history. The murder of the innocents by Herod is only a poetic plagiarism of the cruelty of Nimrod and Pharaoh; the star which guided the shepherds, a memory of the star promised in the prophecy of Balaam; Christ explaining the Bible when twelve years old, a gloss upon the precocity of Moses, Samuel, and Solomon; the increase of the loaves, a union of the manna in the wilderness and the twenty loaves with which Elisha fed the people; water changed into wine, a new version of the bitter waters made sweet; the cross, a reminder of the brazen serpent; the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane, the bloody sweat and the agony on the cross, poor copies from the Lamentations of Jeremiah; and the two thieves, the nailed hands and feet, the pierced side, the thirst, and the last words of Jesus, are borrowed narratives from the sixty-ninth and twenty-second Psalms.[64] The same mythical explanation is applied to the conception and divine character of Jesus. By entertaining such notions of him as we find in the gospels we display a superstition worthy of the dim days of pagan legendry. In the world of mythology many great men had extraordinary births, and were sons of the gods. Jesus himself spoke of his heavenly origin, and called God his Father; besides, his title as Messiah was "Son of God." From Matt. i. 22, it is further evident that the passage of Isaiah vii. 14, was referred to Jesus by the early Christian church. In conformity with this passage the belief prevailed that Jesus, as the Messiah, should be born of a virgin by means of divine agency. It was therefore taken for granted that what was to be actually did occur; and thus originated a philosophical, dogmatical myth concerning the birth of Jesus. But according to historical truth, Jesus was the offspring of an ordinary marriage, between Joseph and Mary, which maintains at once the dignity of Jesus and the respect due to his mother. The transfiguration illustrates both the natural and mythical methods of interpretation. It is a reflection of the scene which transpired on Sinai at the giving of the law. The gospel account is an Ossianic fancy. Something merely objective presented itself to the disciples, and this explains how an object was perceived by several at once. They deceived themselves, when awake, as to what they saw. That was natural, because they were all born within the same circle of ideas, were in the same frame of mind, and in the same situation. According to this opinion, the essential fact in the scene on the mountain is a secret interview which Jesus had concerted, and, with a view to which, he took with him the three most confidential of his disciples. Paulus does not venture to determine who the two men were with whom Jesus held this interview; Kuinöl conjectures that they were secret adherents of the same kind as Nicodemus; and according to Venturini, they were Essenes, secret allies of Jesus. Jesus prayed before these arrived, and the disciples, not being invited to join, slept. For the sleep noticed by Luke, though it were dreamless, is gladly retained in this interpretation, since a delusion appears more probable in the case of persons just awaking. On hearing strange voices talking with Jesus, they awake, and see him--who probably stood on a higher point of the mountain than they--enveloped in an unwonted brilliancy, caused by the reflection of the sun's rays from a sheet of snow. This light falling on Jesus is mistaken by them in the surprise of the moment for a supernatural illumination. They perceive the two men whom, for some unknown reasons, the drowsy Peter and the rest take for Moses and Elias. Their astonishment increases when they see the two strange individuals disappear in a bright morning cloud--which descends as they are in the act of departing--and hear one of them pronounce out of the cloud the words, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him." Under these circumstances they unavoidably regard this as a voice from heaven. The resurrection of Christ is regarded by Strauss as a psychological necessity placed upon the disciples, first to solve the contradiction between the ultimate fate of Jesus and their earlier opinion of him, and second to adopt into their idea of the Messiah the characteristics of suffering and death. "When once the idea of a resurrection of Jesus had been formed in this manner," says Strauss, "the great event could not have been allowed to happen so simply, but must be surrounded and embellished with all the pomp which the Jewish imagination furnished. The chief ornaments which stood at command for this purpose were angels; hence these must open the grave of Jesus; must, after he had come forth from it, keep watch in the empty place, and deliver to the women,--who, because without doubt women had the first visions, must be the first to go to the grave,--the tidings of what had happened. As it was Galilee where Jesus subsequently appeared to them, the journey of the disciples thither, which was nothing else than their return home, somewhat hastened by fear, was derived from the direction of an angel; nay, Jesus himself must already before his death, and as Matthew too zealously adds, once more after the resurrection also, have enjoined this journey on the disciples. But the farther these narratives were propagated by tradition, the more must the difference between the locality of the resurrection itself and that of the appearance of the risen one be allowed to fall out of sight as inconvenient; and since the locality of the death was not transferable, the appearances were gradually placed in the same locality as the resurrection,--in Jerusalem, which, as the more brilliant theatre and the seat of the first Christian church, was especially appropriate for them."[65] The ascension is claimed as a myth founded upon the Old Testament precedents of the translation of Enoch and the ascension of Elijah, and the pagan apotheosis of Hercules and Romulus. The last part of Strauss' work is a dissertation on the dogmatic import of the life of Jesus. Here this merciless critic tries to prove that, though the belief of the church concerning Christ be thus uprooted by the theory of myths, nothing truly valuable is destroyed. He declares it his purpose "to re-establish dogmatically that which has been destroyed critically." He holds that all his criticism is purely independent of Christian faith; for, "The supernatural birth of Christ, his miracles, his resurrection and ascension, remain eternal truths, whatever doubts may be cast on their reality as historical facts." Thus, reliance is placed upon a difference between the import of criticism and christian faith--which subterfuge proved a broken reed when the masses read this mythical interpretation of the life of the Founder of Christianity. In vain did Strauss say, in the preface to his work, that it was not designed for the laity, and that if they read it, it must be at their own hazard. It was published--and therefore the public had a right to demand an examination. Let him who writes an evil thought never be deceived by the opinion that only those will read it who cannot be injured by it. "What is writ, is writ;" and then it is too late to wish it "worthier." But the most remarkable feature of the work of Strauss yet remains to be traced. It was a compilation, and nothing more. Having ransacked every skeptical writer on the gospel history, he published their views at length in his _Life of Jesus_. He did not make many quotations. But the references at the foot of almost every page declare plainly enough the pains he took to put in force the incantation he had pronounced to all skeptical sprites, "Black spirits and white, red spirits and gray, Mingle, mingle, mingle; ye that mingle may." No Rationalist escaped his notice. The English Naturalists reappeared with all their original pretensions. Bolingbroke, Voltaire, Lessing, Kant, De Maistre, and all the representatives of skeptical thought communed in friendly society, regardless alike of disparity in particular opinions and of difference in the time when they flourished. On this very account M. Quinet infers the great popularity of the enterprise. Because it was a grouping of all heterodox doctrines of the person of Christ, the adherents of Rationalism saw whither their principles were leading them, and their opponents learned more of the desperate character of their foe than they had ever acquired from all other sources. It was a crystallization of the imputations and insults cast upon the gospels for more than seventy-five years. Then, for the first time, did the votaries of error, mass themselves. It was then, too, that the evangelical school were first able to count the number of their opponents. The scene before the publication of the _Life of Jesus_ was quite different from the one presented subsequently. Formerly the Rationalists said what they chose about Christ, and they suffered little from their rashness. But immediately after Strauss had issued his book, the attention of the church was profoundly attracted toward the consideration of the themes therein treated. The church seemed to say, "Strange, that I have given so little attention to this great pillar of Christian faith; now I see what reward I am receiving for my neglect. The like shall never happen again. No, I will not only quench this firebrand, but I will hurl back upon my enemies enough destructive missiles to reduce them to a disorganized band of homeless fugitives." This resolution was not the work of idle excitement, and soon to be forgotten. The replies to the _Life of Jesus_ constitute a theological literature. They were very numerous, and written from as many points of view as there had been theological schools since the dawn of the Reformation. The first rejoinder came from the most distinguished theologian of Würtemberg, Steudel of Tübingen. He was superintendent of the very school where Strauss was tutor, and his work was written but a few weeks after the issue of the first volume of the _Life of Jesus_. It discussed the question whether Christ's life rested on a historical or mythical basis. The conclusion was an uncompromising decision in favor of the former view. Steudel represented the old Lutheran orthodoxy. We now meet with the name of Hengstenberg, whom Providence designed to be an instrument of much good to the theology of the present day. He proved himself an unflinching hero when he dealt his first blows from his professor's chair in Berlin. His utterances soon acquired great importance wherever the current controversies attracted attention. He was the leader of the young orthodox school, and in his newly-founded _Evangelical Church Gazette_, he pictured his times in the language of desolation. His words were worthy of the dark days of Jeremiah. Adopting the exclamation of that prophet, he cried aloud, "Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!" Theologians, philosophers, and tradesmen seemed to him to be overwhelmed in skepticism. But he had a lion's heart, and fought steadily for the growth of the pure faith of the olden time. Nor has he grown tired of the warfare. He appears to have been born upon the battle-field, within sound of drum and cannon. He is as much the warrior to-day as when he entered the lists against Strauss nearly thirty years ago. His opinion of his great antagonist may be summed up in his own language. He says of him that, "He has the heart of a leviathan, which is as hard as a stone and as firm as the nether millstone; he assails the Lord's Anointed with composure and cold-bloodedness; and not a tear of pity flows from his eyes." Harless and Hoffman followed in spirited criticisms on the _Life of Jesus_. Tholuck next appeared upon the arena in his _Credibility of the Gospel History_. This production was somewhat declamatory in style, but that was no barrier to its utility. It attacked Strauss in the weakest spot, namely, in his deductions against the authenticity and apostolic origin of the gospels. Tholuck defines a miracle to be an event which appears contrary to the course of nature, and has a religious origin and aim. He allows that inspiration is not total but partial, and that it is but fair to concede to his opponent the presence of Scriptural defects, such as mistakes of memory, and errors in historical, chronological, and astronomical details. We must be content to know and feel that, in the Bible, we find a basis of inspiration which is none the less substantial though surrounded by intruding weeds, or fragments of stone and mortar. But Tholuck's work is not a fair specimen of his writings. Besides its literary defects, the author concedes much more to the Rationalists here than he is accustomed to do in his many superior publications. Again we meet with the revered name of Neander. His _Life of Christ_ appeared in 1837. He published it not only as a reply to Strauss, but as an independent treatise upon the person of the Messiah. He announced himself as the mediator between those bitter partisans who, on the one side, would grant no rights to reason, and on the other, would leave no space for the exercise of feeling and faith. His work stands in the same relation to criticism which Schleiermacher's _Discourses_ occupies to dogmas, and as the latter appears sometimes to lean toward Rationalism, so do we find in the former traces of concession to the destructive method of criticism. Neander's work, despite everything which he grants to his enemies, was the transition-agent toward a purer comprehension of the life of Christ. While we lament that he interprets the early life of Christ as a fragment derived from an evangelical tradition; that he believes the influence of demons in the gospel period susceptible of a psychological explanation, that the miraculous feeding of the five thousand is but the multiplication and potentialization of substances already at hand, that the feeding of the four thousand is a mistaken account of the former, and that the changing of the water into wine at Cana of Galilee was nothing more than an increase of power in the water, as we find sometimes in mineral fluids,--granting these and all the other interpretations which Neander makes on the score of nature or myths, we must attach an importance to his _Life of Christ_ second only to his _History of the Christian Church_. One closes the reading of his account of the Messiah with a profound impression that the author had a true conception of the divinity and authority of the Founder of Christianity. We cannot doubt his sympathy with those words of Pascal which he quoted frequently with exquisite pleasure: "En Jesus Christ toutes les contradictions sont accordées." Ullmann, in his treatise _Historical or Mythical_, will not accept the alternative that the life of Christ is all mythical or all historical. He enumerates the philosophical myth, the historical myth, mythical history, and history with traditional parts. It is to the last of these that he assigns the gospel history. He propounds the dilemma, whether the church has conceived a poetical Christ, or whether Christ is the real founder of the church? He accepts the latter, and invokes all history in proof of his argument. Weisse, in his _Gospel History treated Philosophically and Critically_, dwells upon the relative claims of the four gospels. At least one of the gospels is original and the authority for the rest. This is Mark's; and it is not mythical, but historical and worthy of credence. Matthew is a compilation of a later day; and Luke and John are of still less importance. But the miracles related by Mark are purely natural events. Christ's miraculous cures were owing to his physical powers. His body was a strong electric battery, which, in his later life, lost its power of healing. Else he would have saved himself from death. His early life is unadulterated allegory. But there were numerous writers against Strauss, among whom may be mentioned Schweizer, Wilke, Schaller, and Dorner. Dorner's _History of the Person of Christ_, 1839, was an attempt to show the totality of Christ as a universal character. The human conception of species is of a world of fragments, but in Christ we find them completely united. All single, individual prototypes coalesced in him. He is the World-Personality. Bruno Bauer wrote his _Criticism of the Synoptical Gospels_ in reply to Strauss, though a few years afterward he changed his ground entirely. His position in this work was as mediator between reason and revelation. He brought into the conflict concerning Strauss' _Life of Jesus_ an element of heated argument, and egotism, which ripened into his subsequent antagonism to the supernatural school. His entrance upon this field of strife may be comprehended by Schwartz's comparison of him with Carlstadt and Thomas Munzer, who had lived in the exciting period of the Reformation. An enumeration of the titles of the works which appeared at frequent intervals during the ten years succeeding the issue of Strauss' _Life of Jesus_, indicates that toward the close of this period the controversy was directed more to the particular gospels than to the life of Christ as a unit. The many theories advanced exceeded all the ordinary illustrations of literary fecundity and extravagance in the department of theology. There was no theologian of note who did not take part in the contest. Pastors of obscure provincial churches, who did not venture upon a complete life of the Messiah, felt themselves competent either to originate a new view of one or more of the gospels, or to elaborate a borrowed one. The excitement was intense. There was no evidence of system in the rapid movement. But now that the battle is over we read the philosophy of the whole conflict. Strauss, without any intention on his part, had shown the church of the present century, its weakness in failing to comprehend the importance of the evangelical history. The numerous replies indicated a hopeful attention to the neglected compendium of divine truth. The friends who rushed to his aid declared by their impetuosity that their cause would have been better served had Strauss never penned a word about Christ. They saw their stronghold in ruins, and looked with tearful eyes upon the future of their creed. The language which Strauss had applied to his excited opponents upon the appearance of his work became severely appropriate to his own adherents, after that production had been faithfully answered. "Their alarm," said he, "was like the screaming of frightened women on seeing one of their cooking utensils fall upon the floor." Granting the appositeness of the illustration, we must add that the alarm mentioned by the critic was of brief duration; while that of the Rationalists and their adherents is like the long-standing despair of a circle of chemists, whose laboratory has been entered through a door left open by themselves, their carefully prepared combinations destroyed, and all their retorts and crucibles shattered into irreparable fragments. After a long absence of twenty-nine years, Strauss has again appeared as the biographer of Christ. In his former work he wrote for the theological public, but we are now assured that he had ever kept in mind a purpose to do for the masses what he had achieved for critical minds. The last fruit of his pen is his _Life of Jesus Popularly Treated_, which, following close upon the issue of M. Renan's work, appeared in 1864, in the form of a large octavo volume of more than six hundred pages. Strauss was induced to make his second work more popular than the first, because of the gross injustice which the clergy had meted out to him in consequence of his former labors to establish the historical position of Christ. The "guild" of professional theologians are interested, he avers, in maintaining their own cause; of course, they would not loose their hold very willingly. The only italicized sentence in his preface is a thrust against this class, whom time has in nowise led him to esteem: "_He who wants to clear the parsons out of the church must first clear miracles out of religion._" The spirit of the introduction, in which the German writer is always expected to announce his opinions and give the historical reasons therefor, is not materially different from the lengthy one in his _Life of Jesus_. It is divided into three parts. The _first_ contains the important attempts which have been made to write the life of Jesus and represent it in its true light. They have all been failures. Hess, Herder, Paulus, Schleiermacher, Hase, Neander, Ebrard, Weisse, Ewald, Keim, and Renan must be content to lie in oblivion. Renan has done very well for a Frenchman; and as a work for France his book has some merit. The _second_ treats of the gospels as sources of the life of Jesus. These accounts, not being authentic, are not of sufficient weight to be relied on. The _third_ part contains certain explanations necessary to a proper appreciation of the remaining portion of the work. The following language indicates the author's unchanged opinion on the mythical character of Christ: "We now know for a certainty at least, what Jesus was _not_ and what he did _not_ do, namely, nothing superhuman, nothing supernatural; it will, therefore, now be the more possible for us to so far trace out the suggestions of the Gospels touching the human and natural in him as shall enable us to give at least some outline of what he was and what he wanted to do." The body of the book is substantially an attempt to show that Christ, as represented by the Evangelists, is a mythical personage. Such a man lived; but his life is not remarkable; it is not what they described it; and not very different from the common life of ordinary men. We have _first_, an historical outline of the life of Jesus. Here Strauss makes himself, and not the Gospel narrators, the biographer of Christ. _Secondly_, we are furnished with the mythical history of Jesus in its origin and growth. The people were expecting some remarkable character, and they seized upon the first one who best answered their notions. John is as bad as his compeers. He is utterly untrustworthy. The only work of the New Testament from an immediate disciple is the Apocalypse of John. But this, too, is wholly unhistorical. Adopting the opinion of the radical Rationalists, Strauss holds that miracles are impossible, and that if God were to operate against natural laws he would be operating against himself. As a specimen of the method of criticism adopted to divest Christ's career of everything miraculous, we may instance Strauss' disposition of the resurrection of Christ. He confesses that if he cannot show that this is mythological, his whole work has been written in vain. Christ did really die, but his resurrection was a vision. His disciples were excited, and believed they saw their Master reappear. But it was a great mistake on their part. It was only an hallucination. Paul had his visions; so did Peter and John; and so did Mary Magdalene, who was subject to nervous disorders.[66] The second life of Jesus has met with a cold reception. The "People of the Reformation," to whom it was flatteringly addressed, prefer a more substantial theology. The tide has turned since 1835, and no man feels the power of the new current more keenly than David Frederic Strauss. The Rationalists, who gained nothing in the controversy concerning the first _Life of Jesus_ by the tutor of Tübingen, were unfortunate in their organized, systematic, and well-sustained effort to regain lost ground. We have reference to the labors of the Tübingen school. Ferdinand Christian Baur was its founder. His works are numerous, and may be divided into two classes: _doctrinal_ and _critical_. But there is consistency in all,--and, varied as his subjects of investigation are, they centre in a common focus. Baur sought the solution of the agitated question in the apostolic history rather than in the life of Christ. The Christianity about which so much discussion is elicited, is, according to him, not a perfect and divine production, but only a vital force in process of development. This is the principle which underlies the multifarious theories of the Tübingen school. In order to have a place where to stand and eliminate the theory, the epistles of Paul are chosen. But these are not all authentic. Hence a selection must be made, and, of course, only those must be chosen which are in harmony with the supposition that Christianity is but a dormant germ. Consequently, the Epistles to the Galatians, the Romans, and the Corinthians are favorites. They are made to dispel the darkness, and settle the question. In them Paul exposes the fact that there were two parties in the early church, the Pauline and the Petrine. They struggled for supremacy, and the conflict was a long one. Peter was a thorough Jew,--and his side predominated even after the death of the principal combatants. Judaism was the cradle of Christianity; and the latter was only an earnest, restless, and reformatory branch of the former. But it was not an offshoot as yet, for Christianity was essentially Jewish all through its first historic period. The canonical writings of the New Testament, which constitute the chief literature of the first two centuries, are the literary monument of Christianity while it was yet undeveloped, and undetached from Judaism. These writings are the _mediating theology_ of those distant days. The Petrine party was very strong, until the middle of the second century, when it was obliged to yield to, or rather harmonize with, the Pauline. Many causes contributed to bring the two factions together. There was an absence of growth quite incompatible with their respective strength. Alone, they were almost unable to brave the storm of persecution. Finally, for the sake of security and propagation, they laid down their weapons, and united under one banner. From this union came the subsequent growth of Christianity. The canonical works so much revered by the church had been written in the interest of one or the other of the parties. Since the enmity has been destroyed, their literary productions must be considered in the light of history. The church is, therefore, much mistaken in attaching importance to the Scriptures, for they were written for a time-serving end, and are quite unworthy of the worth which we attach to them. A numerous circle of disciples clustered around Baur, and they enjoyed his leadership until his recent death. But the writings of both the master and his school were answered by the best theologians of Germany. Some of the greenest laurels worn by Thiersch, Dorner, Lechler, Lange, Schaff, Bleek, Hase, and Bunsen, were won in the contest with the Tübingen school; and their united labors constitute a compendium of arguments which will not cease for centuries to be of inestimable value in the controversies of the church concerning Christ and the divine origin of Christianity. The labors of the Tübingen school and of Strauss are two parts of the same effort to destroy the divine basis of Christian faith. We do not impugn the private opinions of the contestants, but we must judge them by their fruits. They wrote and taught against those departments of truth which it is necessary to preserve intact if we would have Christianity continue a vital power of the soul and an aggressive principle in the world. Objections will still be urged against the Gospel history, but it will still be blessed by the ceaseless oversight and unfailing ministrations of the Holy Spirit. Supposing the evangelical accounts to be purely human, we have even then the highest embodiment of truth in the history of man. Herder says, "Have the fishermen of Galilee founded such a history? Then blessed be their memory that they have founded it!" With the conviction that the writers of the Scriptures throughout were inspired men, and spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, we have a power demanded alike by the cravings of the soul and the aspirations of the intellect. Blessed with this sentiment, the individual and the church are thoroughly furnished unto every good work. From Germany we turn to France. The latter country has been the traditional purveyor of revolutionary material for the rest of the Continent. No great popular movement west of the Rhine has been without its influence upon the eastern side. The July Revolution of 1830, which effected the overthrow of the Restoration represented by Charles X., set the German masses in commotion. They were henceforth restless, and ready, whenever occasion offered, to overturn the government and establish a national constitutional basis. The Rationalists were insurrectionary, and, the more rapid their decline in all religious sentiment the more decided was their opposition to constituted authorities. Strauss' _Life of Jesus_, great in its influence upon theology, was equally powerful over the political mind. Every new publication which befriended infidelity was not without its support of faction and discontent. In connection with the revolutionary tendency, Rationalism assumed also a more pantheistic, and subsequently a more atheistic form. The second important work of Strauss, his _System of Doctrine_, was even more adapted than his first to sap the foundations of faith and social security. It was the embodiment of all the worst features of the Hegelian philosophy. It was frank and bold in all its statements. No man could mistake a single utterance. In it doctrines are traced to their genetic development, and held to be the luxuriant growth of the seeds of error. The truths of Christianity are surrounded by a halo to which it is no more entitled than the sagas of the Northmen. The old dogma was born of prejudice and error, hence the modern conception of it is sheer illusion. Faith and science are irreconcilable foes, for faith is the perversion, and science the development of human nature. Believing and knowing, religion and philosophy, are born antagonists, and man can make no rapid progress if he grovel in the errors of faith. The personality of God is not that of the individual but of the universal. The pantheism of Spinoza is the best solution of God's existence; "for," says Strauss, "God is not the personal, but the infinite personifying of himself." The oracular responses of Feuerbach[67] were a step beyond even this skeptical usurpation. Religion is man's conduct to himself. Man, from time immemorial, has been buried in self-love, and become so far carried away by it that his religion is now one monstrous hallucination. Religion springs not from his intellect but from his imagination. He wishes to get to heaven; he desires to be comfortable; therefore he believes. He will put himself to no little trouble to propitiate the favor of one whom he considers divine. Here is the mystery of all sacrifices. They are offered by all people from the mere inner force of abject egotism. God has no absolute existence whatever. Christianity needs to be attacked historically. Its chief elements are Judaism and paganism. That it is a collection of absurdities, corruptions, and prejudices, can be perceived on its very face. But still man needs religion, though he can only gain it either by rejecting Christianity altogether or purifying it from its thick envelope of dross. The _Halle Year-Books_, published 1838-'42, were the principal organ of the new atheistic doctrines. They commenced with the laudation of Strauss, then passed over into the service of Feuerbach, and finally served the cause of Bruno Baur and his fanatical adherents. They were under the chief editorship of Ruge; and, being popular and youthful in style, they wielded an unbounded influence on the dissatisfied and skeptical classes. They broke through all the restraints of religion, and propagated the wildest perversions of Hegel's opinions. Though short-lived, they gained an authority not often enjoyed by a periodical. They were factious in the extreme, and became one of the principal agents in effecting the Revolution of 1848. They breathed mildew on everything stable in government and sacred in religion. But, Samson-like, they fell amid the ruin which they inflicted upon others. Quite a new form of Rationalism was then presented in the popular conventions of the Protestant Friends. These individuals held that by a return to the spirit of the Reformation, Germany would be endowed with a new and living energy. But it must not be the Reformation as the church would have us understand it. It must be an impulse and spirit, not an outward attachment to form and compulsory authority. They were popularly called Friends of Light, and embraced all the schools of Rationalists throughout the land. Their convocation was the parliament of German infidelity. Professing adherence to some of the doctrines of Christianity, they so glossed them that even the atheist could be a member without violating his principles. Their founder was Pastor Uhlich, who, in company with sixteen friends, held the first meeting at Gnadau, in July, 1841. The second convention met at Halle, and was numerously attended by clergymen, professors, and laymen of every class of society. The session at Köthen, in 1844, was a great popular assembly. It was addressed by Pastor Wislicenus, of Halle, whose lecture was subsequently issued as a reply to his antagonists, under the title of _Whether Scriptures or Spirit?_ Not the letter, but the spirit, is the ground of true religion. The spirit permeates humanity, and hence there is no occasion for the observance of the law. The spirit comes with its own law; it is a law in itself. The Evangelical church stands safe only when resting upon freedom. The glory of the church is the absolute freedom of its members. The Scriptures are very good in their way. They are a witness of the faith of the first times, but were never intended for these cultivated days. The church is freed from the exterior law and elevated to the inner law of freedom. Guericke, the church historian, called attention to Wislicenus in the _Evangelical Church Gazette_. Great surprise was manifested at once, and the sober mind of the nation became aroused to a sense of the danger now threatening the foundations of faith. In a short time the Saxon decree was issued against all assemblies which called in question the Augsburg Confession. The following month, August, 1845, the Prussian cabinet-order appeared, prohibiting all convocations of the Friends of Light. Protests appeared against Wislicenus and his followers, which were followed by counter-protests signed indiscriminately by all classes. Another popular development of Rationalism occurred in Königsberg, in 1845. Pastor Rupp attacked the Athanasian symbol in his own pulpit, whereupon he was ejected by the consistory. He collected an independent congregation; and thus arose those Free Congregations, which contributed equally to the Rationalistic and revolutionary movements. Appearing in other parts of Germany, they became a formidable opponent of the church. While they held that the Scriptures were their rule of faith in the unity of God, they threw off their authority and that of all symbols. They adopted baptism and the Lord's Supper, and professed allegiance to the civil power. But their influence was against the government, and their two sacraments were odious corruptions. Their form of baptism is enough to determine their religious sentiment: "I baptize thee after the manner of the old apostolic baptism, that Jesus is the Christ; I anoint thy head with water as a sign that thy soul remains pure, pure as the water that runs down the mountain side; and as the water rises to heaven and then returns to the earth, so may you be continually mindful of your heavenly home." Their convocations were finally restricted by the civil authority. The supreme church council issued an excommunicatory order against them; the police broke up their meetings; and forty of the Free Congregations were closed in Prussia alone. The leaders of the Revolution of 1848 were the organizers of these popular independent movements. When the people had gained the upper hand of their rulers, their very first action was to select the destroyers of their faith as their political champions and representatives. It was, therefore, a great triumph for those fanatical humanists to find themselves seated in the national parliaments of Frankfort and Berlin, and, wherever the revolution extended, to be the leaders of the excited masses. What could be expected from a revolution conducted by such men as Wislicenus, Blum, Uhlich, Baltzer, Carl Schwartz and their adherents? It was a total failure. And when the restoration was completed in 1849, the reaction against Rationalism became so decided that the leaders had reason to tremble for their lives. The people were profoundly disgusted with a skepticism which could produce no better fruits than this one had matured. The indignation was even more intense than that toward French infidelity during the supremacy of Napoleon over the German States. In the latter case the people were disgusted with the efforts of foreign skepticism, but in the former, they saw and felt the sore evils of domestic Rationalism. Religious error had led them from peace and quiet into a dream-land. When the waking moment came, and the deception became apparent, the surprise at the delusion was overwhelming. The doctrinal form of Rationalism had been arrested by Schleiermacher and his noble band of followers. Its exegetical prestige had been destroyed by the replies to the _Life of Jesus_. And, as if to make its defeat as humiliating as possible, the last blow was self-inflicted. It was the Revolution of 1848, and its consequent failure, which annihilated the political strength of German Rationalism. There is a God in history. And though one generation may fail to perceive the brightness of his presence, the following one may be favored with the vision. No skeptic should forget that the real philosophy of history is the march of Providence through the ages. But the infidel is the worst reader of history. The light shines, but he turns away from it. Or, as Coleridge expresses it: "The owlet Atheism, Sailing on obscure wings across the noon, Drops his blue-fringed lids, and shuts them close; And, hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven, Cries out, 'Where is it?'" There is a deep principle underlying not only the miscarriage of the Revolution of 1848, but of all the popular movements toward independence which occur at a time when the people are involved in religious doubt. It is the spiritual status of a nation which commonly determines its love of law and order. A population adhering to an evangelical interpretation of the Scriptures can be forced to revolution only by evil and ambitious leaders, or by persistent oppression on the part of their rulers. The tardy movement of the American Colonies toward their revolt against the British Government betrayed a great unwillingness to inaugurate the struggle. At the beginning, the conflict was not designed to be a revolution but only a judicious expedient for the improvement of the colonial laws.[68] Wise rulers, governing for the best interests of their country, have generally found that the most discontented of their subjects are the most skeptical. Infidelity and error have systematically arrayed themselves against civil authority. This infidelity does not always assume the same type; for, while in Germany it was a general disbelief in the authenticity of the Scriptures, in France it was the rejection of the existence of God and of the immortality of the soul. Even Robespierre testified before the French National Convention of 1794, that "the idea of a supreme Being and of the immortality of the soul, was a continual call to justice, and that no nation could succeed without the recognition of these truths." A revolution in Christendom, which has its basis in the skeptical nature of man, or in an anti-scriptural idea, may succeed for a while, but it must eventually fail; because, like a vessel without compass, chart, or star, it lacks the cardinal elements and safeguards of progress and security. FOOTNOTES: [62] Appleton's _New Am. Cyclopædia; Art. Hegel_. [63] _Life of Jesus._ Ch. I. American Edition. [64] Cf. _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Vol. 16. [65] _Life of Jesus_, 852-3. [66] _New York Independent_ and _New York Christian Advocate and Journal_--1864. [67] In _Wesen des Christenthums_, Leipsic, 1841. [68] The hesitation to become independent was very decided, even as late as July, 1775.--Bancroft, _History of the United States_. Vol. 8: pp. 55-6. CHAPTER XII. THE EVANGELICAL SCHOOL. ITS OPINIONS AND PRESENT PROSPECTS. There is a group of theologians who deserve to stand side by side with the immediate opponents of Strauss and his disciples. We mean the Mediation or Evangelical School. They represent the advance of German theology from Rationalism to positive orthodoxy. Beginning with able and irrefutable arguments for the Evangelists, they have extended their discussions to other important branches of Scriptural defence. As a consequence, they have built up a valuable apologetic literature which will occupy a prominent place in the theology of the church. But, in order to portray the character of the Evangelical School, we shall need to dwell upon certain members in particular.[69] Not least in honor and achievement is the late Karl Ullmann. He contributed to the _Studien und Kritiken_, a quarterly established by himself and Umbreit, an article on the sinlessness of Christ, which he subsequently elaborated into a volume. One of the most original of his productions is his _Essence of Christianity_, which placed "him in the centre of the Mediation theology." He holds with Schleiermacher, that Christianity is not as much doctrine as vitality, and that it possesses the creative and organizing power of religion. Christianity is both divine and human; divine in its origin and essence, but human in its development and fulfillment. Without the person of Christ to stand in the very focus of Christianity, the latter becomes void and no more than any moral religion. We can have no proper conception of Christianity apart from its founder, for its whole essence exists in him. Christianity is Christ developing himself in humanity. Christ is God-man in so far as he represents in his own person the perfect unity and interpenetration of the human and divine. Christianity is that religion which neither deifies nor destroys nature. Without considering it essential to prove the facts of Christ's life, Ullmann showed that Christ, in the divine character which we attach to him, was necessary to Christianity just as the pillars are to the superincumbent edifice. The effect of this argument was most salutary, for it was so well timed that it could not be otherwise. There were two things to be established concerning Christ. One was the verity of the Gospel accounts of him; the other was Christ as a necessity for man's faith, the world's progress, and human salvation. The former having been treated by other hands, Ullmann undertook the latter and triumphed. He is one of the most pleasing of the German theologians. Partaking of the warm southern temperament--for he was a Bavarian by birth--he wrote in that easy, natural, and earnest style which renders him a popular writer not only in his own language but when translated into foreign tongues. We find in Dorner one of the most acute speculative theologians produced by the later Protestant church. His style is as complex as Ullmann's is simple. It is amusing that, in one place, he even enters into a justification of his technical and abstruse writing. Applying himself to dogmatic investigations, the fruit of his labor is his _Doctrine of the Person of Christ_. Christianity was the world's great want, and all the religions of the natural man could not supply its place. But Christianity is vague unless the question be settled concerning the person of Christ. Here is the battle-ground where Christianity and reason must meet and decide the great issue. Hence Dorner passes by the personal ministry and history of Christ on earth and attempts the proper mode of construing his person. The Person of Christ is, in the trials and triumphs of individuals and the church, the central point of the Christian religion. He is the perfect Lawgiver, and also the Judge of the world. He controls the universe. Here he communicates the forgiveness of sins and the Holy Ghost, and in heaven, eternal felicity. The happiness of heaven is formed by perfect fellowship with his person. He has left his followers only in appearance, for, wherever two or three are assembled in his name, there he is in the midst of them. He is with his own always, even to the end of the world. To know Christ in his nearness belongs to the Christian worship; and this institution is appointed for the church as the highest means for the enjoyment of his nearness.[70] According to Dorner, heathendom longed for the apotheosis of human nature. Judaism sought the fulfillment of the revelation not completed by the law, and strained after the love of God as the consummation of the holy law. All these wants are met in Christ. He is the innermost revelation of the mystery, and the fullest condescension of God. For God has in Christ become man. Here is the point of unity between God and the world. But Christ did not appear in order to be the Son of God, as if this were the ultimate end; but the ultimate end was the glorifying of man, and therewith of God, in and through him. He is officially God's son.[71] Was Christ possessed of sinless perfection? In both a physical and ethical point of view he was not absolutely complete from the first. He learned obedience. He _grew_ in favor, not only with men but with God. Growth points backward to previous deficiency, or, what is the same thing, forward to the absolute goal which the reality approaches only by degrees. But deficiency in entire perfection is not sinfulness, for then all real humanity and sinfulness would be identical. Christ's temptations are explainable on this wise: he had a real moral task, not only external to himself, but in himself, which could not be solved at the beginning if he was to be like us. There was no disorder in him, but there were disorder and sin without him, which occasioned him the contests, temptations, and sufferings that filled his official life. These later conflicts were only assigned him because he remained the pure One, and had become morally harmonious in the midst of moral anarchy. But they were still inward and personal struggles; for he was to introduce the power of his harmony and of his sufferings, in order to overcome the disharmony in the world. He, the righteous one, must, by suffering, take upon himself disorder and disharmony, must live through it and taste it, in order to establish a power which is not only harmonious in itself, but so potent in harmony as to take the disharmony into itself, master it, and transform it into harmony. Christ was perfect man in growth and progress, in his temptations and conflicts, but without any historical trace of a flaw or blemish in his life. He was in all points made like us, without being necessitated to become like us as sinners. For, sin is the negation of the truly human. He laid claim to no exceptional law for himself as a privileged individual, but subjected himself to the universal human moral law. With this he was satisfied, and he fulfilled it in its purity, depth, and completeness. He knew nothing of a super-moral religious genius, and would have nothing to do with it. His religion is moral; his morality, religion.[72] The name with which we are most familiar is the devout and laborious Tholuck. He generally takes higher ground than many of the Mediation-theologians. But he is sometimes at variance with evangelical sentiment. Inspiration, according to him, is not real and total, but only partial, and is to be determined in reference to the truths necessary to salvation. While there are many mistakes of memory, false citations, errors in historical, chronological, geographical, and astronomical detail, these need not depreciate our general estimate of inspiration. The Scriptures have a kernel and a shell. Upon the former there is the positive and direct impress of the Holy Spirit; but upon the latter it is indirect and relative. In merely stating Tholuck's definitions, however, we do not measure out justice to him. He must not be tested by any special department of labor, but by the spirit and totality of his service. In this light he is a remarkable personage, and his work is entitled to our highest eulogium. With him, Christ is not merely a person to be apprehended by the mind, but a Saviour to be received into the heart and henceforth to be a living power of the soul. He must be accepted by Christian faith, and the heart must undergo the transforming power of his Spirit. Without this preparation, all progress in science is but the worship of nature, and man, at the close of life, looks back upon a path of error and forth into a world of darkness. "Tholuck has this characteristic," says one of his countrymen, "he cannot be classified; he belongs to no particular theological direction, because he belongs to all." This estimate is strictly true. He has gained his greenest laurels in exegesis; and his commentaries on Psalms, the Sermon on the Mount, Gospel of John, and Epistles to the Romans and Hebrews, have already taken their places in the theological libraries of English and American divines. But he has asked himself the question, "What can I do to lessen the hold which Rationalism has upon my country?" And he has given the answer by his life-career. All his productions centre in that thought, and it is not the least of his service that he has written sketches of the old Reformation theologians, as an incentive to the restoration of their spirit. It is not easy to estimate the benefit which his _Sin and Redemption_ has conferred upon the young men of Germany. The Baron von Kottwitz is the real personage represented by the patriarch. Let us hear this venerable saint as he stands upon the border of the grave and anticipates a bright future for his loved church and country. His words are the key to Tholuck's life, and reveal the bright hope which burned within him ever since the day when he was welcomed to Halle by the hisses and threats of the Rationalists. The aged man says: "The greater the crisis the more needful is it to unite the wisdom of the serpent with the simplicity of the dove. I therefore address you as such an one who, perhaps, will soon be engaged at the university as one of the instruments employed by God in that important period. The work of God's spirit is greater than either you or the majority can estimate. A great resurrection morning has dawned. Hundreds of youths on all sides have been awakened by the Spirit of God. Everywhere true believers are coming into closer union. Science herself is becoming again the handmaid and friend of the Crucified. Civil governments, also, though in part still hostile to this great moral revolution from a dread of its producing political commotions, are many of them favorable; and where they are not, the conflicting energy of the light is so much the stronger. Many enlightened preachers already proclaim the gospel in its power; many who are still in obscurity will come forward. I see the dawn; the day itself I shall behold not here, but from a higher place. You will live to witness it below. Despise not the words of a gray-headed old man, who would give you, with true affection, a few hints relative to this great day. "The more divine a power is, the more to be deprecated is its perversion. When those last times are spoken of in Scripture, in which the gospel shall be spread over the whole world, it is declared that the truth will not only have to contend with the proportionably more violent counterworking of the enemy, but also with a great measure of delusion and error within the kingdom of light. Such is the course of things that every truth has its shadow; and the greatest truth is attended by the greatest shadow. Above all things take care that the tempter do not introduce his craft into the congregation of the faithful. There will be those for whom the simple gospel will not suffice. When a man has experienced the forgiveness of his sins, and has for a little while enjoyed the happiness of that mercy, it not unfrequently appears to his evil and inconstant heart too humiliating a condition to be constantly receiving grace for grace. There is no other radical cure for a proud, self-willed heart than every day and every hour to repeat that act by which we first came to Christ. Pray that you may have more of that childlike spirit which regards the grace of your Lord as a perennial fountain of life. Especially avoid the error of those who seek life for the sake of light, who would make religion a mere stepping-stone to intellectual superiority. Such persons will never attain to a vital apprehension of divine things; for our God is a jealous God, and will be loved by us for his own sake. The intellectual power, the mental enlargement arising from converse with the great objects of faith is always to be regarded as a secondary and supplementary benefit to that which it is the immediate object of the gospel to bestow. Despise not human greatness or talent or ability of any kind, but beware lest you overvalue it. I see a time coming--indeed it is already at hand--in which gifted men will lift up their voices for the truth; but woe to the times in which admiration and applause of the speaker shall be substituted for laying to heart the truth which he delivers! Perhaps in the next generation there will be no one in some parts of Germany who will not wish to be called a Christian. Learn to distinguish the spirits. The sum of my exhortations is humility and love!" The most poetical and not the least penetrating of the evangelical school is Lange, once a farmer, but now a laborious professor at Bonn. How deeply he has imbibed the spirit of the Scriptures may be seen in the _Bible Work_, which Dr. Schaff is now editing for the use of the American public. Religion, according to Lange, is subjectively a life-emotion of the human nature, and objectively a revelation of God. In the former case it may be termed natural, in the latter, revealed. The world is not a mere world, but a self-revelation of God in its fullest import. Creation is not simply creation, but a divine testimony. Nature is not nature alone, but a seed of life proceeding from the spirit and returning to the spirit. The proof of the true human conception of God, as well as of man, is their harmonious union in the conception of the God-man. This is the centre of all doctrine. The world is a progressive succession, developing the divine germ. History unites itself to revelation as a second creation, elevating man to continuous growth. God's providential changes unite with the active faith of man, and they do not constitute an isolated act of God, but a great historical combination of revelations. They rise gradually and find their completion in the God-man. Miracles are the penetration of the absolute or new human-divine life principle into the sphere of the old natural human life. The revelation of the divine-human in Christ is the absolute miracle which manifests itself in a succession of single miracles. A miracle is supernatural and contrary to nature only in reference to the old life, and, in its highest meaning, is in conformity to a higher law. Therefore, miracles are the natural law of all natural laws taken together. Inspiration is in consonance with miracle; and there is a dissimilarity of inspiration observable in the Scriptures. The Old and New Testaments are very different, so also are the canonical and hagiographical writings. The word of God is contained in the Scriptures, and is there brought into living unity and operation with the mind of man. This union does not exclude human imperfections. But such imperfections are of a superficial character, and in no wise affect the kernel and religious centre of the Bible.[73] The two most prominent divines in the department of dogmatical theology are Nitzsch and Twesten. The latter was Schleiermacher's successor at Berlin. Bright hopes were placed on him, but he has been a tardy author, and does not possess the brilliant gifts of his great prototype. Yet he is a clear and profound thinker, and, with a few points of exception, thoroughly evangelical. He is an ardent admirer of the old Lutheran theology, and, like his predecessor, places religion in feeling and dependence instead of in knowledge. Nitzsch is also a disciple of Schleiermacher, and his doctrinal system bears distinct traces of the master's instructions. But it is a bold work, and has inflicted great mischief upon the doctrinal claims of the later Rationalists, who betook themselves to theory after their exegesis and history had failed them. The scope of his system is broad and clear. He commences by assigning Christian doctrine its proper place in theological study, a definition of the general idea of Christianity, a statement of the laws by which a knowledge of Christianity is acquired, and a history of the Christian system and its exhibition in the purest form. The three parts constituting the substance of Nitzsch's opinions, are _The Good, the Bad, and Salvation_. Christianity is a determinate mode of man's life, and is so determined by conscious dependence on God, but in no wise by knowledge, conception, action, or the will. Religion does not arise from experience and sensation, but from an original self-consciousness. There is an intimate connection between doctrine and practice, truth and holiness. Redemption is not merely a restoration, nor a mere perfected creation, but one _through_ the other. It is related to an original good, apart from which the bad itself would have no place, opportunity for existence, or continuance; since redemption is so closely connected with evil. Moreover, the good--in which evil has found opportunities for manifestation--cannot be the same which caused redemption. Hence, we safely presume the existence of an eternal God. This being is the foundation of Christian faith and life. A belief in the Redeemer cannot be separated from that in the Creator. But it is through a knowledge of the Redeemer that the Creator, with all his work, first becomes known in his perfect goodness and truth. The doctrine of salvation is more closely related to the degenerated condition of the world than to the original good, or to the right conduct of the creature towards God. Evil became possible with the creation of personality, though without being necessary. But it has become so very real that the heavenly Adam must needs come into the world to destroy the works of the devil,--which are sin and death,--and to renew the communion of the creation with the Creator. The effectuating cause of man's permitting himself to be seduced into sin, was not any fixed purpose or predestination of God, but man's perfect moral freedom. He chose the evil, and hence he inherits sin with all its dire results. Since then, sin has become a bias and righteousness requires an effort for its performance. But man is accessible to divine legislation by being the subject of fear, shame, and punishment. The church is an abiding testimony and a continued means for the redemptive ministry of Christ. It is the congregation of the sanctified.[74] From these two useful professors in Berlin we pass southward to Heidelberg, and delay a moment with the celebrated Rothe. In his work on the _Primitive Church_ he endeavors to explain the philosophy of the whole ecclesiastical system. He views the elements of the church in solution, and thence tries to deduce general principles. He advances the view, with Coleridge and Arnold, that the church will not be complete until absorbed in the state. Its present separate condition is provisional, and can only last during the time that Christianity is being developed. This period may be of long duration, but the development of our race is ever progressing. The church must exist on its own basis during the interval. Human deeds of righteousness tend toward the perfection of the church. Then will religion permeate the world. Yet it will not exist as something separate, but all-penetrative. It will not be absolutely divine, but superlatively human. Thus will the dualism of the human and divine, the religious and the moral, be destroyed. When the day of ecclesiastical perfection--which is really civil perfection--arrives, the state will perform the functions of the church. It will exercise church discipline for the purpose of religious and moral training. The divergence between religious and worldly science will be abrogated, and there will be no longer any conflict between the worship of God and nature. It is plain that these views are based upon those of Hegel, who said of the state, that "it is the totality of moral purposes."[75] The ethical system of Rothe is one of the most original and profound pieces of devout and reverent speculation in the entire range of theological literature. It has been termed "a work of art as well as of science; and the several stones of the ethical system are reared up here into a magnificent gothic cathedral by the skill of a master architect." It is based on the unity and identity of religion and morality. Here, as in the theory of the relations of church and state, the Hegelian philosophy is very perceptible. God's love is manifested in creation, and there existed the necessity of his creative activity in order to communicate himself to others. Hence, God's love is not a mere attribute, but one of the necessary conditions of his being. Creation is a necessary act of God. God is as truly creator as he is benevolent. There is, therefore, a correlation of God and the world. There is no God without also the world. God's creative activity is still continued by his providential movements, and these are the steps of man's development. Man's complete character is in some measure dependent on his discipline, and sin is the necessary ordeal or process through which he must pass in order to arrive at the highest development.[76] Rothe has very recently published a volume of his essays, entitled _A Contribution to Dogmatic Theology_. It is occupied mostly with the consideration of the Scriptures. The author thus states his opinion: "The matters I handle in this volume inevitably place me in a most unfavorable position. The question is one in which I find myself in direct conflict with both the leading parties in the theology of the present day. My mode of regarding Holy Scripture runs directly counter to modern orthodoxy. My supernaturalism and firm belief in revelation are no less opposed to theological liberalism. This very antagonism encourages me to hope that I may be found to have spoken a word in season. On the one hand, it is my belief that the consciousness of the age will never thoroughly reässimilate Christianity till it can take courage to believe again in miracle and supernatural influence. I am no less firmly convinced, on the other hand, that miracle and supernatural influence will never find their way into the conscious belief of Christians in the form in which church-theology has allowed those ideas to be inoculated into it. That which is passed can never be recalled to life after history has once buried it. But there are not a few persons who long for the reconciliation of the old and the new. These are the persons to whom I would gladly be useful according to my small measure."[77] Rothe regards the supernatural interference of the Deity in the stream of human history as a part of that history. It is not enough that the divine interposition has incorporated itself with the traditions of the race; it must be fixed in a written narrative. Not only must there be a book or writing, but that book must be of a historical character. As the revelation did not consist in doctrines, so the doctrine we require is not a creed or compend of doctrines. Besides vouching the facts, the doctrines must represent them in a vivid manner; that is, the writing must be such as can stand for long posterior generations in the place of the original revelation, and place us in the immediate personal experience of revelation. It is part of the extraordinary operation of the Deity to provide such a writing. The document itself, as well as the facts it relates, are supernaturally produced. What the divine influences in the world are to its moral and human laws, the record of those influences is to ordinary narrative. The Bible is therefore what the old Protestant theology styled it, "The Word of God": but in a very different sense. It was meant by that phrase that the books, as we have them, were dictated by God in such a way that the sacred penmen contributed nothing but the letter-marks upon the paper. The dogma of inspiration current in the sixteenth century is not accepted. The inspiration which Rothe attributes to the Bible is the same by which he explains that peculiar impression received by the pious soul from its study of the book. It is the constant experience of the evangelical Christian, that, in his Bible, he possesses a direct means of grace. Scripture is to him an active medium of the saving work of God in his soul, and supernatural forces move within it. The Bible stands alone in all literature as this incarnation of a fresh, full, life-giving religious spirit. But the peculiar influence which it exercises upon minds indicates not merely a divine element in its pages, but a whole, complex, and sound human spirit side by side with that divine element; the two not crossing or interfering with each other, but forming together a unity of living truth. The books of the Bible must be regarded as the general product of the minds of their human authors. These authors have had their moments of inspiration, to which they owe much of the religious experience they have embalmed in their writings. But inspiration was not the normal condition of their minds, nor were their books written during the moments of such inspiration. Again, not every part of the Bible is an equally full and intense expression of this spiritual mind of the writer. We must assume degrees of inspiration according with the nature of the contents, and with their nearer or remoter bearing on the proper matter of the prophetical utterances.[78] Passing over the names of Julius Müller, Ebrard, Hävernick, Hundeshagen, Umbreit, Gieseler, Olshausen, Hagenbach, and Jacobi, we pause at Schenkel and Hengstenberg. Schenkel has been, until lately, a recognized evangelical theologian. The author of the _Essence of Protestantism_, he took his stand as an able defender of orthodoxy; and there was every reason to hope that he would be one of the chief agents in the final overthrow of Rationalism. As a proof of the high estimate placed upon his opinions, when the Baden government and church consistory were calling their strongest orthodox theologians into the various posts of prominence, after the Revolution of 1848, Schenkel was declared counselor, and director of the theological seminary of Heidelberg. From that time almost to the present his evangelical sentiments had not been questioned. But, when his _Picture of the Character of Jesus_ appeared, the surprise was great throughout Germany. It seemed incredible that he could write a work in such direct antagonism to all his previous views. People were unwilling to censure it at first; the Rationalists rejoicing at the great accession, and the orthodox retaining too much respect for the author's past services to bestow harsh criticism upon him. But a book of importance need not wait long in Germany upon the publisher's shelf before it is weighed and assigned its proper position in literature. In due time the critics came forward, sifted its contents, and decided it to be skeptical. The theological periodicals abounded in lengthy reviews of it. Schenkel seemed as much astounded as any one else at the public judgment. He answered the charges against his orthodoxy by stoutly denying that he had turned Rationalist. He held that his critics were so obtuse that they could not understand him; and that if he were accused of heterodoxy it was their blunder and not his guilt. But it is needless to say that Schenkel makes a poor case for himself. His book stands against him. The miracles of Christ receive his severe comment. They are, in his opinion, the dark shade which has been cast upon the bright splendor of the public activity of Jesus. It was a matter of course that the idea of a life like that of the Redeemer should, soon after his death, be veiled by a multitude of tales. His disciples endeavored to represent his internal wonderful power of personal glory and greatness by the external miraculous occurrences which they ascribed to him. Their deeply excited imagination magnified the great hero whom they had loved and admired. Their enthusiastic religious fancy did him homage by ascribing to him the performance of miracles. The gift of working miracles was merely the endowment of nature. For Jesus was favored with the highest ability and rarest moral power, by which he worked beneficially upon sufferers and took them by surprise. Schenkel further rejects and denies the faith in Christ's personal and bodily resurrection from the dead, and his continuation of life in the glory of the Father. But he holds that Christ lives in his community, in which are his home and temple. The living Christ is the spirit of his community. After the position of Schenkel's work had been fairly decided, numerous remonstrances appeared against it from the orthodox theologians. One hundred and eighteen clergymen sent in a formal protest to the consistory for his removal from his important office as director of the seminary. But the ecclesiastical council decided in favor of his continuance in discharge of his functions. They extenuated themselves by saying that the free examination of the Scriptures is the privilege of Protestant Christians. The Rationalists claim the result as one of the most signal of their recent victories. Hengstenberg, the strongest and most heroic of the later opponents of Rationalism, commenced very early in life as both author and professor. It is now more than thirty years since he was elected professor of Old Testament exegesis at Berlin. He was chosen to that important position with a view to counteract the prevailing Rationalism, and, if possible, to raise up a new school of earnest evangelical men. He has not been without success. Having never swerved from his first avowed position, his antipathy to all kinds of skepticism is so sincere and active that he combats it without any regard to moderation or consequences. Of all the members of the Evangelical school he takes the highest rank as controversialist, and defender of the Old Testament. He saw that it was the Old Testament which the Rationalists had assailed most vigorously, and that unless they were met upon their own ground they would claim the mastery of the field. Hence, he made the Pentateuch, Daniel, and the second part of the prophecy of Isaiah the theme of his defence[79]--for it was these that the Rationalists had long claimed as their collateral evidence. At that very time there was almost no orthodox theologian in Germany who had confidence enough to contend for them. But the greatest apologetic achievement of Hengstenberg was his christological work.[80] Here he develops his theory that the Messianic prophecies extend through the entire Old Testament; that they can be traced in Genesis; that they increase in clearness as the scriptural history advances; that they become perfectly lucid in the later prophets; and that they are finally fulfilled in the Messiah himself. But it was not by theological lectures or books that Hengstenberg achieved his greatest triumphs over Rationalism and Pantheism. Clearly perceiving the power of the periodical press, he commenced the publication of the _Evangelical Church Gazette_, which by its fearless spirit and marked talent, soon became the chief theological journal of Germany. Its aim was not only to overthrow skepticism but everything which ministered to its support. Its contributors have been among the leading men of the country, among whom we find such names as Otto von Gerlach, Professors Leo and Huber, and Doctors Göschel, Vilmar, Stahl, Tholuck and Lange. The _Gazette_ has changed its tone according to the new demands of the times, but it has never abated its deadly antagonism to Rationalism. It has betrayed an increasing High Church tendency, especially since 1840. The editor, true to his earnest nature, believed that no moderate and conciliatory spirit was capable of successfully resisting the great enemies of the church. The relief which he relied upon was in fighting them with the heroic ardor of a crusader. Hence he claimed that an elevation of ecclesiastical power was necessary to meet the demand; and therefore he stands to-day as the High Church champion of Protestant Germany. For this course he has received quite as many maledictions as have been visited upon Pusey of England, but he is one of those men who care as little for the curses of foes as for the adulations of friends. There have been other theological journals which have contributed greatly to the spread of vital Christianity in Germany.[81] They do not possess, on the one hand, the popular character of many of our religious papers, nor, on the other, do they deal so much in abstruse theological questions as to preclude them from large circles of readers. They possess popular adaptation without yielding to the demand for light religious reading. Many of their contributions having been written by far-sighted laymen, they have gained access to minds usually occupied in the absorbing interests of commercial and political life. The whole Protestant church owes a debt of profound gratitude to the men who commenced these enterprises and have zealously sustained them through the social changes which have convulsed Germany. But in our estimate of renewed religious life we must not overlook the improved condition of the instruction now imparted in the gymnasia and universities.[82] Besides the names we have already mentioned there are professors and instructors of all grades who have drunk deeply of the spirit of the Gospel, and, having been taught and encouraged by such men as Hengstenberg and Tholuck, are now strengthening themselves for future victory. Young men have passed through their student life in Halle, Heidelberg, and Berlin, and are now scattered throughout the land, sowing the seeds of truth, and urging the people to espouse the good cause. Others are preparing to take their places when these are no more. The spirit of theological instruction has undergone such a thorough transformation that the old Rationalism which had so long prevailed is now taught by only a few gray-haired veterans, who, many years ago, listened to the lectures of Wegscheider and Gesenius. They are now bringing their days to a close in the midst of a narrow circle of auditors who hear from curiosity or indolence, and never expect to use their information to any future advantage. Devotional services are becoming more common among the students. The Scriptures are studied with a feeling of devout reverence, and are no longer subjected to that profane ridicule which has given an unenviable fame to many of the Rationalists. Much of this improved evangelical spirit observable in the students of all the Protestant Universities,--for even Tübingen has been obliged to yield,--is due to the kindly intercourse between the professors and the students. In no country is education so much a matter of friendship as in Germany. The professors cultivate social and even intimate relations with the undergraduates, nor do they consider it beneath their dignity to invite them frequently to their homes, draw out their minds by discussing some important point, loan them books or periodicals, suggest subjects for essays or books, employ their service as amanuenses, and recommend them in due time for proper vacancies. Who would suspect that half-bent, sallow little man, wrapped up in his blue coat, and walking briskly a mile or two from Halle through the wintry storm, of being the patient and devout Tholuck? But he is not alone. Beside him is a youthful stripling who opens his heart to the professor, catches every word of response as if it were a priceless diamond, and treasures each utterance for future use. To-morrow, the same kindly teacher will be attended by one or two other young men, whom he is desirous to encourage, direct, and instruct. Such intimacy does not lead to any disrespect toward the professors, but rather increases the reverence for their age and talents. The hours of profitable communion naturally become a fund of pleasant memories to the student in his subsequent life. Knowledge thus imparted is deeper-rooted than that conveyed in the lecture-room, and hence, in the literary and theological history of Protestant Germany, we find many illustrations of the consistent and steady prosecution, by a disciple, of a tendency or system which the master commenced but died too soon to finish. One of the prime agents in the rise of Pietism was Spener's child-like intimacy with young men. They imbibed his spirit and knowledge, and the fire burned after his departure. As to the future, there is no room for discouragement. The leaven of faith has been penetrating the entire mass of German theology, and the prospect is to-day brighter than ever before. The bold and continued defense of Christianity, in all its vital relations, has accomplished great good during the entire interval between Schleiermacher's period of activity and the present time. The recuperation of German Protestantism from the polar frigidity of skepticism to the faith and spirit of the Gospel, is one of the most beautiful and forcible of all the illustrations of the indestructible and regenerating power of Christianity. The instruction imparted in the high-schools has long since lost its Rationalistic puerilities. The candidates for the pastoral office are not asked such questions as were propounded to their fathers and predecessors. Church history, written in clear and natural style, is no longer a collection of pointless anecdotes. Exegesis has ceased to be a word-play, and the companion of classical annotations. The sermons of the present ministry partake of Reinhard's earnestness and faith. Gallicisms and technical terminology are no longer proclaimed to the peasants, while the artisan is no more entertained with grandiloquent descriptions of the last night of Socrates, or with Ciceronian laudations of the Schoolmen.[83] The popular attendance at the public services is greatly on the increase, and the congregations are expressing in no doubtful terms their desire for the restoration of the thrilling evangelical hymns of other days.[84] The masses, having tasted the word of God in its simplicity, will not be satisfied without deep draughts for many future years. The Protestant Church will yet be "fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners." Then will Germany be what she was in the heroic age of the Reformation,--the instructor of the ignorant, the friend of the helpless, the dread of Romanism, and the mother of giants. The evil days are nearly numbered. "Good Friday is the precursor of a joyous Easter Morning." FOOTNOTES: [69] For accounts of the later theologians of Germany, consult Schaff, _Germany: Its Universities, Theology and Religion_. Phila., 1857. Also, Schwarz, _Geschichte der Neuesten Theologie_, _Leipzig_, _Dritte Ausgabe_, 1864. [70] _Doctrine of Person of Christ_ (Clark's Foreign Theological Library, VI-VIII). [71] _Doctrine of Person of Christ_, Vol. I, pp 80-81. [72] _American Presb. and Theolog. Review_, January, 1863. [73] _Dogmatik_, 1849. [74] _System of Christian Doctrine._ Translated by Montgomery and Hennen. Clark's Library, Edinburgh, 1849. [75] _Die Anfänge der Christlichen Kirche und ihrer Verfassung_, 1837. [76] _Ethik_--1845-1848. [77] _Ethik_, _Preface_, p. 6. [78] _Westminster Review_, July, 1863. [79] _Beiträge zur Einleitung in das alte Testamente._ Drei Bände, 1831-39. [80] _Christologie._ Drei Bände, 1829-35. [81] Besides the _Evangelical Church Gazette_, semi-weekly, by Hengstenberg, established 1827, are the _Studien und Kritiken_, by Ullmann and Umbreit, 1828; the _Deutsche Zeitschrift für christliche Wissenschaft_, &c., by Neander, Nitzsch, and Müller, 1850; and the _Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theologie_, by Liebner, Dorner, and others, 1856. [82] An invaluable account of the common and higher Schools of Germany is furnished in Horace Mann's _Seventh Annual Report_, published in the _Common School Journal of Boston_, under the title of _Education in Europe_, 1844. [83] Hagenbach, _Kirchengeschichte d. 18 und 19 Jahrhunderts_, Vol. II., pp. 384-388. [84] An instance of the new tendency is seen in the recent action of the Heilbronn Clergy, supported by the Stuttgart Consistory. For account of which, see _Christian Work_, Sept. 1863. CHAPTER XIII. PRACTICAL MOVEMENTS INDICATING NEW LIFE. Jean Paul has wittily said of the providential distribution of the earth that the land was assigned to the French, the sea to the English, and the air to the Germans. Popular opinion is not much at variance with this sentiment as far as the last proprietorship is concerned. But Germany has been practical withal. Shade of Jean Paul! What if thy countrymen do live in the air; they have not therefore flown so far away from the gross nether earth as to lose sight of its misery, nor become deaf to its wail of sorrow. German Protestantism has given birth to some of the greatest charities of the present age, whether we take into the account the number of the beneficiaries or the faith and self-sacrifice of the founders and their successors. Even during the period of religious indifference there were here and there celebrated institutions designed for the amelioration of the suffering classes. They contended against great opposition, but like a few stars amid surrounding clouds, their light appeared to all the greater advantage. Modern philanthropy has received a great impulse by the labors of Howard and Wilberforce. But the charitable institutions we speak of were in progress east of the Rhine years before the former commenced "his voyage of discovery, his circumnavigation of charity, to collate distresses, to gauge wretchedness, to take dimensions of human misery;" or before the latter could write in 1807, after so many labors for the extinction of the Slave Trade, "Oh what thanks do I owe to the Giver of all good for bringing me in his gracious providence to this great cause, which at length, after almost nineteen years, labor, is successful." Philanthropy stands in intimate relations to revived christian faith. Sometimes it is its forerunner, at others its co-operator, and always its follower. Whenever a land is morally prostrate and helpless, the ministry skeptical or indifferent, and the sects arrayed against each other, if humane efforts can be discovered, there is hope of better times. Love of the body of man is the unfailing Baptist-herald announcing the speedy care of his soul. The only indications of evangelical faith in Germany at the closing period of the eighteenth century were the quiet labors of such devoted friends of humanity as Oberlin, Hamann, Lavater, and Claudius. And philanthropy assumed a more stalwart form in the same ratio as religion gained strength over the popular mind. We have already spoken of the celebrities of Weimar. Students and aspirants to fame from all parts of the Continent went thither, hoping to enjoy at least a few conversations or perhaps a subsequent correspondence with one of the ruling literary divinities. To have a word of advice from Goethe, and to hear Schiller read an ode in his own study was a memory of life-long value. Among the most venturesome of this class was John Falk, once the humble son of a poor wig-maker of Dantzic, but afterwards the Halle student, the novelist, satirist, and poet.[85] He received high compliments from Wieland, and was admitted into an intimacy with Goethe which resulted in his publication of the latter's _Conversations_. He gradually gained public favor, and his elevation to the society and attention of the literary regency of Weimar was no ordinary testimonial to capacity and prospects. By and by the sound of war was heard in that town, and with war came its many evils. Napoleon having proved victorious at Jena, his legions were quartered on the poor and rich through all the surrounding country. The Duchy of Weimar, with its population of only one hundred thousand, were required to support for five months nine hundred thousand of the enemy's soldiers, and five hundred thousand horses. The air was rent with the cries of orphans and poverty-stricken widows. Sorrow reigned in every household, and the town of Weimar became a prominent part of the funeral scene. But, unaccountable as it may appear, the resident literati were not much disturbed. Living so near the top of Parnassus, they would not listen to the storms below. Goethe, the acknowledged prince, wrote as zealously as ever in his villa-garden, and it will be a lasting stigma on his fame in his own fatherland that he chose "the moment of his country's deepest ruin to write an exquisite classic story." But Falk was touched by what he saw. He could not be contented with literary dreams while widows were dying around him of starvation, and children were growing up in wickedness. He remembered some words said to him by the burgomasters of Dantzic when they met one day in the town hall, and an old member arose and told him that they had concluded to send him to the University and pay his own expenses, adding at the close of his remarks: "One thing only, if a poor child should ever knock at your door, think it is we, the dead, the old, gray-headed burgomasters and councilors of Dantzic, and do not turn us away." At last the poor child was at his door. Henceforth Falk's life was spent in reforming criminal youth. "Come in," said he to the vagrants, "come in; God has taken my four angels, and spared me that I might be your father." Falk established his Reformatory from a pure love of humanity, and of Him who came to seek and save the lost. His method was simple. The lads whom he sought out and who came to him were desperately wicked. No sooner were they within his institute than he treated them as his own children. The two words so often on his lips reveal the principle of his discipline: "Love overcometh." He used no harshness, and would have no locks on his doors. He said, "We forge all our chains on the heart, and scorn those that are laid on the body; for it is written 'If the Son shall make you free ye shall be free indeed.'" "His mind was hung all around with pictures," says Mr. Stevenson, who has furnished us with the following beautiful specimen of Falk's picturesque manner of teaching great truths to those who fell under his care. When one of the boys, on a certain evening, had invoked this divine blessing on their supper, "Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and bless what thou hast provided," another boy looked up and asked, "Do tell me why the Lord Jesus never comes? We ask Him every day to sit with us, and he never comes." "Dear child," replied Father Falk, "only believe and you may be sure he will come, for he does not despise our invitation." "I shall set him a seat," said the boy; and just then, a knock being heard at the door, a poor apprentice came for admission. He was received, and invited to take the vacant chair at the table. Then said the inquiring boy again, "Jesus could not come, and so he sent this poor man in his place: is that it?" "Yes, dear child, that is just it. Every piece of bread and every drink of water that we give to the poor, or the sick, or the prisoners, for Jesus' sake, we give to Him. 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.'" Falk's benefactions were of varied character. He organized a system for the cessation of beggary in Weimar; established a training institute, the _Johanneum_, for instructors of the youth under his charge; sent forth many hundreds of the inmates of his _Reformatory_ to become useful members of society; wrote earnest religious songs which the people will sing for generations; died uttering the words, "God,--popular,--faith,--short,--Christ,--end;" and was borne to the grave by the children whom he had blessed. His resting-place is now marked by words which his own pen had written: "Underneath this linden tree Lies John Falk; a sinner he, Saved by Christ's blood and mercy. Born upon the East Sea strand, Yet he left home, friends, and land, Led to Weimar by God's hand. When the little children round Stand beside this grassy mound, Asking, who lies underground?-- Heavenly Father, let them say, Thou hast taken him away; In the grave is only clay." Other philanthropists followed in the footsteps of Falk. What he did for children has been succeeded by greater humanitarian movements in behalf of the criminal youth, and abandoned and helpless adults. Theodore Fliedner was pastor of a congregation of operatives in Kaiserswerth, in 1826. Very soon after his installation they were reduced almost to beggary by the bankruptcy of their employers. He refused to leave them in their distress, and devised plans for their relief. One step led to another. He became the friend of not only the poor of that town, but of all the adjacent country. To become more useful at home he traveled through foreign countries. He described his visit to London in the following brief but characteristic words, "_I have seen Newgate and many other prisons._" At last he matured a settled plan. It was the amelioration of the sick poor. The largest house in the town being for sale, he secured its possession, and on the 13th October, 1836, opened his _Deaconess Institute_. The enemies of Fliedner called it a hospital, and looked with aversion upon it. The beginning was very unpromising. But the founder never hesitated, and the close of the first year of the history of the _Institute_ revealed the fact that it had received forty sick persons, and that these were nursed by seven deaconesses. Every day gave new strength to the enterprise; and soon there were more of a similar character springing up in Holland, Switzerland, France, and other countries, but all dependent upon the parent at Kaiserswerth for properly trained nurses and instructors. The organization of new institutes at a great distance, imposed severe labor on Fliedner, but it was cheerfully undergone for the sake of the great cause so dear to him. It was to advance its interests that he came to America, and afterwards went to Jerusalem, to superintend the establishment of branch Institutes of Deaconesses. They are now in prosperous existence in Constantinople, Smyrna, Alexandria, Bucharest, and Florence,--not to mention many more in the Protestant lands of the Continent. But it is in Kaiserswerth that the Deaconesses are trained for their humanitarian life-work. Of this institution Mr. Stevenson says: "It consists of an Hospital for men, women, and children; a Lunatic Asylum for females; an Orphanage for girls; a Refuge for discharged female convicts; a Magdalen Asylum; a Normal Seminary for governesses; an Infant School; a Chapel; two shops; a publishing office; a museum; residence for the Deaconesses; and a Home for the infirm. Besides, as the property of the Institution, there are a home for maid-servants in Berlin; an Orphanage at Altdorf; the Deaconess Home at Jerusalem; the Seminary at Smyrna; the Hospital at Alexandria; and the Seminary at Bucharest. The number of these Christian women is about three hundred and twenty, of whom upwards of one hundred are at Kaiserswerth, or at private service, and the rest scattered over seventy-four stations in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. Upwards of eight hundred teachers have been sent out to educate many thousand children. The number annually in hospital is over six hundred, and upwards of fifty families are supplied with sick-nurses; in the Asylum there are twenty-four; in the Orphanage, thirty; in the Infant School, fifty; in the Refuge, twenty; in the Seminary, fifty. The number dependent on the Institution for daily bread is between seven and eight hundred."[86] In addition to the enterprises of Falk and Fliedner there has recently arisen another, which, by virtue of the character of its organization and the number of its supporters, has not only promoted humanitarian movements, but has contributed largely to the restoration of a vigorous evangelical faith, the suppression of sectarian hostility, the stability of the civil government, and the decrease of the power of the state over the church. We refer to the Evangelical Church Diet which held its first session in 1848, and now occupies a wide field of operations. While political revolution was imminent and no one knew when or where it would burst in violence, and while the atheistic and socialistic views of the living generation of skeptics were imbuing the minds of many of the young and gifted, it became a matter of serious concern whether or not the tide of religious and political destruction could be stayed. The prospect was forbidding. The state had its full burden in watching its own vitality; the church was already sore with the stripes of skepticism. The crisis was upon the land. The work of written apologies for Christianity had been faithfully discharged, and no one could find fault with those heroes who had rushed to the rescue of the evangelical and apostolic oracles. But the time for writing books was now past, and important concerted practical measures were necessary to be taken, or the day would be lost and generations might be required to repair the damage. For a number of years the Pastoral Conferences, composed of small circles of devoted ministers and laymen, had been in existence, and kept their attention carefully directed to the necessities of the times. The increased danger made the members doubly watchful. In view of the exigency, some of the leaders arrived at the conclusion to call a church assembly of all the leading evangelical sects, to take such action as the peculiar condition of theology, religion, and politics might require. During the first six months of the revolutionary year of 1848, three of these pastoral conferences held their sessions, during which the propriety of convening a general assembly was discussed. The conference at Sandhof, on the 21st June, was the occasion of serious embarrassment. It was well nigh concluded that the whole enterprise would prove a failure, but Dr. Bethmann-Hollweg arose, and by a few stirring words infused hope and zeal into every member. "It is the Lord, my friends," he said, "who builds the church. Never forget this. Whether the assembly spoken of will accomplish what we desire and hope, no one can tell. Our resolution must be an act of faith. Like Peter, we shall have to walk on the sea; but we know also that the Lord does not suffer any one to perish who trusts in him. If we look merely upon ourselves and upon the scattered, distracted, and weak members of the church, we would have indeed to despair. But if we raise our eyes in faith to him who is the Lord, we will venture it." The conference yielded to this earnest appeal, and a general assembly was called, to convene at Wittenberg, in the following autumn. On the 21st of September, the appointed day, five hundred of the leading evangelical theologians and laymen of Germany were present, to adopt whatever measures might be thought best to avert existing and impending evils. They met in the same old gothic temple on whose door, three centuries previously, Luther had nailed his ninety-five theses. The exercises opened with prayer, and the singing of Luther's hymn, "Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott," which has been thus translated by Carlyle: "A safe stronghold our God is still, A trusty shield and weapon; He'll help us clear from all the ill That hath us now o'ertaken. The ancient Prince of Hell Hath risen with purpose fell; Strong mail of craft and power He weareth in this hour,-- On earth is not his fellow. With force of arms we nothing can, Full soon were we down-ridden; But for us fights the proper man, Whom God himself hath bidden. Ask ye, Who is this same? _Christ Jesus_ is his name, The Lord Zebaoth's Son; He, and no other one, Shall conquer in the battle. And were the world all devils o'er And watching to devour us, We lay it not to heart so sore, Not they can overpow'r us. And let the prince of ill Look grim as e'er he will, He harms us not a whit, For why? His doom is writ-- A word shall quickly slay him. God's word for all their craft and force, One moment will not linger, But spite of hell shall have its course, 'Tis written by His finger. And though they take our life, Goods, honor, children, wife, Yet is their profit small; These things shall vanish all, The Church of God remaineth." The Church Diet, now in its first session, was in direct contrast with the revolutionary outbreaks in Frankfort and other cities. True and firm hearts were within the walls of the Schlosskirche. Earnestness, seriousness, humility, and faith were depicted on the countenances of the members. Those men had been steadfast in the past, and were now intent upon the immediate and utter destruction of the worship of reason. Doctrinal differences were laid aside and apparently forgotten. Men who had been contending with pen and paper for many years now grasped each other's hand in friendship, and, burying their doctrinal animosities, stood close together in a common effort to reconstruct the temple of evangelical faith for the benefit of their countrymen. The Lutheran could not be distinguished from his Reformed brother, nor the member of the United Church from the Moravian. That denominational union and fraternal intercourse which had been foreshadowed in 1817, were now thoroughly consummated for the first time. Without, the heavens were dark with the portents of impending social convulsions. The signs were unmistakable. The masses were intoxicated with a wild frenzy seldom, if ever, surpassed. They were intent upon the destruction of all constitutional authority. Freedom from the restraints of law and religion, the ruling thought of the Continent during 1848, was their sole object. It was clear that if the populace could overthrow the governments they would not be long in putting an end to all the outward and traditional observances of religion. For the middle and lower classes had not as yet become permeated by the healthful leaven which had been introduced into the theological circles by the apologetic antagonists of Strauss and his compeers. The wisest statesman could not foresee one day's deeds of that skeptical, revolutionary rabble, which had already lost its self-control. Blood had actually been shed. Barricades had been reared in the streets of the larger cities. The universities were pouring forth their hundreds of students and professors, to take part in the conflict. The revolutionary crowds were choosing their leaders; the royalist forces were everywhere fortifying; princes were concealing their plate and strengthening their hiding-places. This was the social and political scene while the five hundred were praying, singing, counseling, and comforting each other over the sleeping dust of Luther and Melanchthon. In the days of the imprisoned Peter, fetters were strong, prison doors well-barred, and the four quaternions of soldier guards faithful; but all these safeguards could not resist the force which lay in the unceasing prayers of the church. So with the revolutionary movements of the people in 1848, as opposed to the Christian faith of the members of the Church Diet. That assembly contributed more than all other human agencies to save the German states from utter political and social ruin, and the German church from a longer night and a fiercer storm than any through which it had passed. The practical result of the session was an invitation to all the Protestant churches of Germany to observe the fifth of the coming November, the Sunday following the anniversary of the Reformation, as a day of humiliation for past unfaithfulness and prayer for the revival of true religion throughout the land. It was resolved to form a confederation of all the German churches adhering to the confessions of the Reformation, in order to promote denominational unity, be a mutual defense against Rationalism and indifference, advance social reforms, protect the rights of the church against the encroachments of civil authority, and secure a more intimate fellowship with evangelical bodies outside of Germany. The Church Diet has steadily enlarged its sphere of operation and gathered strength and influence. Besides attracting great throngs of spectators from the surrounding states, its members have attained to the number of two thousand on more than one occasion. The providential prosperity which has attended its history is the best proof of the real demand for its institution and for the valuable purposes it has already served. At every session the most important questions of the day are discussed with freedom and always with great ability. Among other themes which have come up for careful attention, we may mention the relation of church and state, the sanctity of the Sabbath, divorce and the oath, the relations of Protestantism to Romanism, all forms of skepticism, and the inner organization of the church,--such as the renewal of the diaconate, the possession of church estates, and the abrogation or retainment of ecclesiastical discipline.[87] During the first session of the Church Diet a man arose to speak, who indicated by his earnest manner that he had been thinking deeply, and that the subject of his remarks was a matter of no ordinary importance. It was John Henry Wichern, founder of the Rough House, near Hamburg. He had just returned from his laborious tour through the districts of Silesia, which, in addition to the demoralizing revolutionary excitement, were stricken by famine and fever. Whole villages were depopulated, not enough inhabitants being left alive to bury the dead. Grief and despair reigned everywhere. The number of orphans had grown so large that Wichern and his few assistants, with all their experience and organizing power, were unable to remedy their immediate wants. The scene having made a profound impression upon his mind, he unburdened his heart to the assembly. He described what he had witnessed, pictured the evils of his people in their true light, and declared that the church must either do more Christian missionary work at home, or God's curse would rest upon it. He therefore called upon the Diet to incorporate the Inner Mission into its system as a necessary measure to improve the religious and social prosperity of the country. He spoke as one sent from God. The assembly was mastered, and the reformer's plan adopted. In all the subsequent meetings of the Diet, about one half of its session, or two whole days, have been occupied in the management of the Inner Mission, and in discussions on the best means to secure its increased effectiveness. But Wichern was not a stranger to the members of the assembly. The beneficial results of his labors at the Rough House had already been felt throughout Europe. An old thatched cottage, about three miles from Hamburg, was the nucleus of his work. He sought out wild, abandoned boys, and aimed to bring them within the fold of domestic Christian influence. He solicited no contributions, but, adopting the method of Müller, of Bristol, England, prayed to God that funds necessary for his great purpose might be forthcoming by voluntary benefactions. An associate was so struck with the repeated bestowal of the needed supply that he exclaimed, "Just look! We no sooner make our purchase in faith, than the Lord stands behind us with the purse to pay the bill." Gradually the Rough House was surrounded with other buildings, while the managers and those under their care became very numerous. The institution was no longer a local but a national charity. It was a centre of light for the abandoned of all lands. In 1856 there were two hundred and sixty of its reformatories in existence, and the work of establishing new ones was going on rapidly in Europe and other parts of the world. Of the gratifying results of the training at the Rough House, Wichern says: "A glance round the circle of those who were children of the House carries us into every region of the world, even into the heart of Australia. We find them in every grade and social position; one is a clergyman, another a student of theology, and a third a student of law; others are, or were, teaching. We find among them officers in our German armies, agriculturists, merchants in Germany, and at least in two other European countries, partners in honorable firms. They are presidents of industrial institutions, skillful landscape-gardeners, lithographists, and xylographists; artisans scattered through many towns, and wandering apprentices in every conceivable craft. One is a sea captain, some are pilots, others sailors who have taken one voyage after another and seen all the seas of the world. They are colonists in America and Australia, and both there and at home there are happy fathers and mothers, training their children righteously, and building up their family life after the fashion they have learned here. And there are men-servants and women-servants and day laborers; and, besides those who are better off, there are also the poorer, and such as are burdened by care either with or without their own fault. Besides, a considerable number have died at home and abroad (very many, in proportion, of its earlier girls); and some of those who went out to sea have never returned; probably many have found a sea-grave; some have disappeared; some suddenly turn up after long years have passed. I recall one who left this House twenty years ago, and of whom I heard nothing for the last ten years, until he has now notified himself as a well-doing master-artisan, and a happy father, in a distant town." The Inner Mission, of which the Rough House was the origin, is not simply a philanthropic institution. Wichern distinctly discards this limitation, by saying that its object is to do within the sphere of Christendom what the church is endeavoring to accomplish in heathen lands, "the propagation of pure evangelical faith and the relief of physical suffering,"[88] as far as it may be possible to reach these ends. "It aims at a relief of all kinds of spiritual and temporal misery by works of faith and charity; at a revival of nominal Christendom and a general reform of society on the basis of the gospel and the creed of the Reformation. It is Christian philanthropy and charity applied to the various deep-rooted evils of society, as they were brought to light so fearfully in Germany by the revolutionary outbreaks of 1848. It comprises the care of the poor, the sick, the captive, and prisoner, the laboring classes, the traveling journeyman, the emigrants, the temperance movement, the efforts for the promotion of a better observance of the Lord's day, and similar reforms, so greatly needed in the churches of Europe." But while the German church has been attentive to its work at home, it has not been negligent of its duty toward those beyond the pale of Christendom. As long ago as the beginning of the present century there was a missionary school organized by Janicke at Berlin. Others have been established at brief intervals since that time, while missionary societies under the auspices of both the Lutheran and Reformed churches have arisen in a number of the cities and larger towns. One of the pioneers of the foreign mission enterprise was Gossner, whose life, at first full of reverses and disappointment, has lately come to a triumphant and brilliant close. He was originally a Roman Catholic priest, but his Pietistic inclination precluded him from the favor of his less devout brethren. He went from one city to another, tarrying only a few years in each. From St. Petersburg he went to Berlin, thence to Hamburg, and afterwards to Leipzig. While in the last city he quietly left the Romish fold and took orders in the Protestant church. He became pastor of the Bethlehem chapel in Munich. His effective life began there, though he was then fifty-six years of age. His ministrations were fascinating, and the people came from all sides to hear him preach. On a certain occasion a few young men, who were animated by a missionary spirit, went to him for counsel. They had been turned away from the missionary seminary as unfit for the service. He declined to encourage them in their views. Still they came in increasing numbers. Finally he asked them, "What shall I do with you? Where shall I send you? I don't know; I can do nothing for you." Their reply was, "Only pray with us; that can do no harm; if we can't go we must even stay. But if it is God's work, and his holy will that we go, he will open the door in his time." Gossner yielded, and instructed them. But their number enlarged so rapidly that he was compelled to secure teachers for them. Though he was then at that time of life when most men think of bringing their labors to a close, he laid his plans as if he were exempt from death for centuries. He founded his first mission when sixty-five years of age. In 1838 he sent out eleven missionaries to Australia. The following year some were despatched to India; since which time this zealous servant of God has established missions among the Germans in the American Western States; on the islands of the Southern seas; in Central India; on Chatham Island near New Zealand; among the wild Kohls at Chota Nagpore; on the Gold Coast; and in Java, Macassar, and New Guinea. He employed no agencies; was his own corresponding secretary; superintended the instruction of all his missionaries; and died at the age of eighty-five, as full of youthful feeling and perseverance as when a student at Augsburg. The instructions he gave to his missionaries declare the sources of his own success. "Believe," said he, "hope, love, pray, burn, waken the dead! Hold fast by prayer. Wrestle like Jacob! Up, up, my brethren! The Lord is coming, and to every one he will say, 'Where hast thou left the souls of these heathen? with the devil?' Oh, swiftly seek these souls, and enter not without them into the presence of the Lord." Gossner's beautiful motto, found in his diary, was, "Pereat Adam! Vivat Jesus!" The missionary labors of Louis Harms, of Hermannsburg, kingdom of Hanover, demand the serious attention of every friend of humanity. The small beginning of his enterprise, the unexpected and unsolicited means placed at his disposal, the zeal with which a plain rural parish has devoted itself to the missionary work, and the remarkable fruits attending every new step, prove both the power of a single heart when imbued with a great thought, and the sad truth that the church has hitherto buried in a napkin some of the most valuable talents committed to her keeping. Harms labored among his own congregation until every family became earnest and active in the service of God. By and by their awakened fervor craved new avenues of usefulness. In 1849 twelve men presented themselves to their pastor for the missionary work. This was the beginning, and God has so provided for every emergency that the entire enterprise has been favored with marked prosperity. Missionaries having been sent out from time to time,--all previously trained under the careful superintendence of Harms himself,--it was at last suggested that a missionary ship be built by the Hermannsburg congregation. The timbers were soon on the stocks, the vessel completed, and its charge on board. That boat has since become a messenger of light to many heathen minds. The missionary work of Harms has cost nearly one hundred and nineteen thousand crowns. It is still in vigorous prosecution, the parish increasing every year both in its gifts and in its capacity to give. The stations established in heathen lands, especially New Hermannsburg in Africa, have been judiciously selected, successfully conducted, and are now centres of truth to large areas of unevangelized territory. The return of spiritual life to the German church is indicated by other useful agencies than those immediately connected with humanitarian and missionary work. Societies for the distribution of Bibles and cheap religious literature have been organized in Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfort-on-the-Main, and all the larger cities. The Gustavus Adolphus Union was instituted for the extension of Protestantism without regard to sectarian differences. Deriving its name from the illustrious Swedish champion of Protestantism, who died on the victorious plain of Lützen, its constant object has been to continue what he began. Its principal scene of labor has been among the dispersed Protestants who are living in abject poverty and wretchedness throughout Roman Catholic countries. The Union seeks them out, brings them to the light, and supplies their necessities. Then it bands them into a congregation, and, whenever the laws permit, supplies them with the gospel and religious literature. It goes into every open door, contributing the renewal of religious vitality both by forming new churches and strengthening feeble ones. For a time it was seriously impeded by the participation of radical Rationalists; but they having been judiciously sifted out, it has since pursued a steady career of usefulness. Prelate Zimmermann became superintendent in 1849, since which time its receipts have increased and its field of operation widened. Its twenty-second session was held in 1865, in Dresden, Saxony. The receipts of the previous year amounted to one hundred and ninety-five thousand thalers, which were expended for the relief of seven hundred and twenty-three churches or communities. One of the late reports shows that of the societies benefited by its agency, one was in Portugal, two in Italy, one in Algiers, four in the United States, four in Switzerland, sixteen in France, thirty-four in Poland, fifty-six in Hungary, one hundred and nine in the upper provinces of Austria, and the remainder in the other German states. These enterprises do not interfere with each other. Every one has its own path of duty and its individual attractions. But the amount of good effected, not only by those we have mentioned, but by others which are every year taking form, is of incalculable influence upon indifference and Rationalism. Their ministry is beautiful in the extreme, for they are restoring what has been nearly destroyed. One night, while John Huss was awaiting martyrdom in the dungeon at Constance, he dreamed that he had painted pictures of Christ around the walls of his little Bethlehem oratory in Prague. By and by he saw them all erased by the violent hands of the angry pope and his bishops. While in great distress at his ill fortune, he dreamed again. But this time there entered a large number of accomplished artists, who restored all the pictures to more than their original beauty. Then there came a great concourse of people, who, having surrounded the painters, cried out: "Now let the popes and bishops come; they shall never efface them more!" The German church is now using its artist-hand in reproducing the long-erased images of beauty and faith. Every believer within her own fold and throughout Christendom should unite in the solemn protest that no bright color shall be erased again. FOOTNOTES: [85] _Praying and Working._ By Rev. W. F. Stevenson, of Dublin. This is by far the best source of information on the leading charities of Germany. Our high appreciation of its value is indicated by the use made of its contents in the preparation of our account of Falk and other humanitarians treated in this chapter. [86] _Praying and Working_, pp. 212-213. [87] Schaff; _Germany, &c._, pp. 200-212. [88] Herzog's _Real Encyclopædie_. Art. _Inner Mission_. CHAPTER XIV. HOLLAND: THEOLOGY AND RELIGION FROM THE SYNOD OF DORT TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE PRESENT CENTURY. The only country whose national existence and independence are due to the Reformation is Holland. To be the first to break the triumphant power of the Spanish army would have been glory enough for any ordinary ambition, but no sooner was her independence declared than she gave signs of great commercial and intellectual activity. Her Hudsons navigated every sea and planted the Dutch flag on shores not then traced on any map of the world; her manufacturers supplied all markets with the fruit of their labor and ingenuity; her soldiers were a match for any European force; her De Ruyters and Van Tromps knew how to contend with the Blakes of England; her William of Orange, whom she gave to her British neighbor, made as good a ruler as ever lived in Whitehall; her scientific men founded the systems which have continued in use to the present time; her philosophers revolutionized the thinking of the civilized world; her universities were the seat of the most thorough humanistic researches of the age; her painters founded new schools of art, and vied with the Italian masters; her theologians gave rise to controversies which brought all churches and their champions within the scene of conflict; and her pulpit orators acquired a celebrity which, in spite of the inflexibility of the language, was second only to that enjoyed by the most renowned preachers of France and Great Britain. After Holland had fallen a victim to her political partisanship, she gradually disappeared from public observation. Her greatness in the past would have been well nigh forgotten if Prescott and Motley had not recalled it. But the judgment of the world concerning her, in her present state, is not more flattering than that of the author of _Hudibras_, who, in addition to venting his spleen against the people, employs his wit upon the irrational land, calling it, "A country that draws fifty feet of water, In which men live as in the hold of nature; And when the sea does in upon them break, And drowns a province, does but spring a leak." But while the political status of Holland has been inferior and unobserved during the last century and a half, her important theological and religious career,--covering a much longer period than that,--is a theme of deep interest to every student of the history of the church. Rationalism arose in Holland by means of some agencies similar to those which had produced it in Germany. The previous disputes and barren ministrations of the clergy made the soil ready for any theological error that might urge its claims with force. But the repulsive technicalities of Germany were not equally prevalent in Holland, and scholasticism refused to affiliate with the Reformed much longer than with the Lutheran church. But when the synod of Dort, which held its sessions in 1618-1619, pronounced those dogmas by which the Arminians were excluded from the Dutch church, it established a standard of orthodoxy. In proportion as the synod gained the favor of the people, the Bible came into use, but more to serve the cause of polemics than of edification. Hugo Grotius, Erasmus, and other exegetical writers who had manifested independence in their interpretation of the Scriptures, were regarded with great suspicion and distrust. The door for the entrance of scholasticism was thrown wide open. To use the language of a writer of that day, "The doctrines were cut after the fashions of Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and Scotus; while the power of the word of God was denied, and the language of Babel was heard in the streets of Jerusalem." Theologians made an idle display of learning. Imaginary distinctions, definitions, and divisions became the food of the youth in schools of every grade, and of the congregations in all the churches. The books which have come down to us from that period are weapons against Atheism, Deism, Socinianism, and every other heresy that had arisen during the history of Christianity. Whether light was created on the first day; whether it was an attribute or a substance; whether Adam, after the formation of Eve, was a rib the worse; whether the knowledge of the unconverted may be called spiritual knowledge;--these were some of the topics of labored sermons. It was announced as a most gratifying result of accurate research that the soul of a boy was created forty days after conception, while that of a girl required eighty. There were exceptions to the general sterility of the pulpit and lecture-room. Alting, professor at Groningen, enjoyed the sobriquet of "Biblical Theologian," because he made the Scriptures, and not scholasticism, the basis of his inquiries. Students from foreign lands flocked to his auditorium, and received the leaven of his earnest and reverent spirit. Yet his candidates were distrusted, and he had great trouble in defending himself against repeated charges of heresy. But another important feature of the prevalent theology was the corruption of ethics. The doctrines of grace, of which the church of Holland had always been the defender, left no room for an ethical system. What the unconverted man does is nothing but sin; all are equally guilty; and all that we have of good is from God. If we be disposed to ask, "Does not this view make men careless and impious?" the answer comes back from the Catechism, "No; for it is impossible that those who are planted in Christ should be without the fruits of gratitude." This opinion had a strong tendency to isolate theology still more than scholasticism had done, from all practical interests. "What shall we do?" was an idle question, for, as a matter of course, man could do nothing. But "what must I be?" was the all-important and searching inquiry. Thus ethics glided into radical casuistry, and, in this form, became united with the scholastic theology. The homiletic literature of that day indicates the unification very clearly. Besides being a tirade against schismatics of all classes, the discourse was often a discussion of grammatical principles, accompanied with a description of the spiritual condition of every hearer. After the singing of the hymn in the middle of its delivery, the people adjusted themselves to hear the application in which their cases were to be stated. There was _first_, an enumeration of "heretical sinners," divided into numerous groups; _second_, the "unconverted," separated into many subdivisions; and _third_, the many flocks of Christians. It was in this part of the sermon that the casuistry of the preacher had full play, and he who could subdivide his congregation in such a way that every auditor could not mistake his own proper position, received great honor from his brethren. The hearer waited until he "heard his name called," after which he might sink back again to his dreams. Even to this day, on leaving a Dutch church, it is a common question among the separating members to inquire of each other, "Have you heard the dominie call your name?" They mean by this, "Have you heard the pastor so describe people that you could not mistake the class to which you belong?" We have now stated the two sources from which many of the troubles and defections of the Church of Holland have sprung. On the one hand was dogmatism, with its endless distinctions, begotten and fostered by Scholasticism. On the other, practical mysticism, cherished into strength by a disgusting system of casuistic ethics. The reaction against those prevalent errors was Rationalism. They were the domestic fountains of that species of error. But there were men who, when they saw the evils their venerated Church was suffering, threw themselves into the breach, and contended for her deliverance. Cocceius, the celebrated opponent of Scholasticism, was born in Bremen, in 1603. He studied all branches of theology; but having been instructed in Hebrew by a learned Rabbi of Hamburg, he applied himself especially to the Scripture languages. In 1629 he visited the Dutch University of Franeker, and wrote tracts on the Talmud, with extracts therefrom in German. He also composed Greek verses with great ability. Returning the same year to Bremen, he there became Professor of Sacred Philology. In 1636 he was called to Franeker, to take the Hebrew first, and afterward the Greek chair. Still later he taught theology. His exegetical works, being far in advance of any which had appeared at that time, acquired great renown for their author. In 1649 he was invited by the Curators of the University of Leyden to take charge of the department of theology in that seat of learning. His long-cherished antipathy to Scholasticism was well known, but he pursued his course in quiet until 1658, when he was daringly assailed. Having developed his opinion that the Sabbath had not been instituted in Paradise, but in the desert, and was not therefore binding upon Christians, Cocceius was buffeted by a host of writings, in which he was charged with every imaginable species of skepticism. The literature of the Cocceian controversy abounds in as violent and harsh expressions as have disgraced theological history at any time. Yet Cocceius was not without ardent disciples and friends, who knew as well how to give as to receive severe thrusts. As an illustration of the method of the discussion, we mention the title of a book written in favor of Cocceius: "Satan's Defense of himself, on being questioned why he had instigated some persons to distort and vilify the orthodox, wise, and edifying Writings of the Blessed Professor Cocceius, &c., &c." In this work Satan, on being questioned whom he fears most, replies that "no one has done more harm to the power of darkness than Cocceius,--not even Calvin." The States of Holland wrote to the Synod not to discuss the Sabbatarian question, and to forbid the combatants from further controversy. There were other charges brought against Cocceius, however, one of which was his distinction between +aphesis hamartiôn+ and +paresis hamartiôn+, by which he held that the former was a complete pardon, but the latter incomplete, and only in force under the old dispensation. He placed the whole system of theology under the figure of a covenant. There were two covenants, one of works, and the other of grace. The latter had a threefold economy: before the law; after the law; and under the Gospel. The institutions under the first economy were symbolical of the second; and these again of the third. Everything was a shadow of some higher and future good. Forgiveness was no exception to the rule. That of the Old Testament was +paresis+ preparing the way for the complete +aphesis+ of the New. There was one point of agreement between Cocceius and Des Cartes: their common aim of emancipation from Scholasticism. But the former strove by revelation, the latter by philosophy to secure the result. It has been charged that Des Cartes influenced Cocceius, since the school of that philosopher was growing into power at the very period of the Cocceian tendencies. But the charge is groundless. Des Cartes stood on the ground of reason alone, while Cocceius planted himself upon the Scriptures. Thus there was a world-wide difference between the two men at the very starting-point of their systems; a difference which becomes more apparent at every additional step in the study of their sentiments. If Cocceius was opposed when he arrayed the Bible against Scholasticism, Descartes might be expected to meet with increased resistance when he used only the weapon of philosophy. "Aristotle," said the theological world of Holland, "was a heathen, it is true, but then he afterwards became soundly converted to Catholicism. In due time he was transformed into a most exemplary Protestant. Yet this Des Cartes is a downright Jesuit, and a very demon let loose from the infernal world. His whole system commences with doubt and is pervaded by it. How dangerous then to our orthodoxy is the attack of this Catholic Arminian! If his assumption concerning skepticism be correct our whole theology becomes overturned; for then the elect would have ground for doubting their own salvation, which would be opposed to the infallible doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints. And to crown the scene of this Des Cartes' audacity, he holds that the earth and not the sun turns round, which, as good father Brakel says, 'is a sure sign that the man's head is turned.'" Voetius was the leader of the forces against the pretentious philosophy. A book, issued anonymously by a friend of Spinoza, applying a little more logic to the Cartesian idea of substance, caused him to obtain additional ground. For the new school which he was combating already rested under the imputation of Crypto-Atheism. The hand of the government interfered, and Cartesianism appeared to be extinguished. But it had its secret admirers, especially in the academies of Northern France, where its adherents occupied almost every chair of instruction. Its last representative was Ruard Andala, 1701, at whose death Newton and Leibnitz came into power. The place assigned to reason by Cocceius led his foes to accuse him of Cartesianism. He made the intellect the interpreter of Scripture in this sense; that, since the words of the Bible are capable of many meanings, reason must decide which are proper and which improper, and not be forgetful to derive as much thought as possible from the sacred text; "for," said he, "the Scripture is so rich that an able expositor will bring more than one sense out of it." He aimed to find Christ and his church in each biblical book; but he interpreted every statement as allegorical, typical or prophetical. Reason as applied by him, became a light to expose many sides of truth which had never been perceived by the reigning dogmatism. The result of his labors was the overthrow, in many minds, of philosophical Scholasticism, but the enthroning of biblical Scholasticism in its stead. His allegorical method of exposition led his followers into gross aberrations. The Cocceians and Voetians were now the two great theological parties which attracted to their standards nearly every man of promise or note throughout Holland. The former were the Progressives, the latter the Conservatives. The Cocceians favored the entrance of new ideas, and effected the junction of philosophy and theology. The Voetians professed to desire a reform, but their conduct was not in harmony with their avowal. While they agreed with their antagonists in calling the Bible the fountain of light and truth, they held that the fathers of Dort and the Reformers had digested its contents and explained its meaning in most excellent summaries, and that "it was for us to light our candles at those great lights of the church." They were very properly called "Traditionarians," a name of which they were proud. One of their writers said, "We have caught up the last voices and words of our ancestors, those Fathers of whom we are now glad to call ourselves the echo."[89] The Cocceians studied the original text, and took leave to differ often from the authority of the translators. Their opponents attached great value to the translation, and sometimes called it "inspired." The former delayed not to appropriate the fruits of the latest researches in science and criticism, in certain cases laying aside fragments of the text in favor of the suggestions of the most recent editions of Cocceius. To the Voetians this conduct was not much better than atheism. They hurled all the curses and plagues of the Bible against every one who whispered that there could be a mistake in the transcription of a word or even of a Hebrew vowel-point. The Cocceian brought all his questions into the pulpit, where he preached them in a manner more adapted to addle the heads of his hearers than to edify their hearts. Hebrew grammars were published for the laity. Even women,--among whom was Anna Maria Schurmann, the adherent and friend of Voetius,--were able to read the Bible in the original tongues. Nor did they hesitate to take part in the angry disputes of theologians. The Cocceians ran wild with their principles of fanciful interpretation. Every prophecy was, in their view, a treasury of allegorical facts yet to come to pass, and to be heartily endorsed. The Voetians prided themselves on their literalism, and named Hugo Grotius as their master. Yet they held that they never could swallow his abominable Arminianism. The history of hermeneutics in all times shows that there is but one step from the literal to the allegorical. So with the Voetians. They indicated a disposition to yield, and at length became more fanciful and allegorical than their adversaries had been. They sought the interior sense of the text, but would be limited by no rules. They spiritualized the entire contents of the Bible. He who could draw most profit and instruction from a word was the best teacher, for a scribe must bring forth from his "heart" both new things and old. Not reason, nor logic, but experience and feeling must explain every word of God. The Bible literally became all things to all men. The "inner light" was its great interpreter. Many people despised scientific students of the truths of revelation, calling them "slaves of the letter,"--a term which, singularly enough, is still in common use among the uneducated members of the church of Holland. The Bible, taken in its real character, was banished and an artificial volume placed in its stead. Practical mysticism was now fairly inaugurated. Even conventicles spread throughout the country, and ignorant men who knew how "to speak to the hearts of the people" were infinitely preferred to any educated minister. The strife ran very high. While there was an assimilation of the Voetians to the Cocceians in the application of the allegorical principle of interpretation, there was a moral retrogression of the latter which greatly reduced their strength. This arose from the defective views of Cocceius on the sanctity of the Sabbath. His disciples carried his unfortunate opinion far enough to gain the favor of the worldly and immoral classes. The freest customs and gayest fashions were imported from France, and Cocceian ministers made it their boast that they designed to keep up with the times. More spiritual adherents became disaffected by the growing impiety. Koelman, a layman, and Lodensteyn, a clergyman, gave the alarm that the kingdom of Christ had become secularized and corrupt. The latter would not baptize the children of unbelievers nor hold any communion with them. De Labadie, formerly a Jesuit but afterward a French minister, blew the clarion of reform. The watchword on all sides was, "Separate ye my people." Nothing but the stringency of his rules and the counter-efforts of the government prevented the pious masses from joining the reformer. Mystical sects, influenced by Jacob Boehme and Spinoza, appeared here and there. Chiliastic ideas spread abroad in proportion as men despaired of the speedy regeneration of the church through natural instrumentalities. All was commotion and disruption, and, for a time, everything seemed to be on the downward course to ruin. But the imminence of the danger brought a speedy and violent reaction. The persecution of the French Huguenots drove them across the boundary line. The Dutch true to their traditional hospitality, received them with open arms. The guests returned their welcome by diffusing new spiritual life through the hospitable country. The Cocceians laid off their worldly habits. Days of fasting and prayer were appointed by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, while an increasing love for the church, as bequeathed by the fathers, was overspreading the land. The attachment to what was old and time-honored became a glowing enthusiasm. Sharp distinctions between parties disappeared. Men who had formerly been violently arrayed against each other now expressed a disposition to unite in one common effort to restore the church to her former purity. Brokel, Imytegeld, Groenewegen, Lampe, and Vitringa, representing different and opposing forces, united in a harmonious effort to reform the heritage of Christ. Their labors were fruitful, for the people greatly honored them and earnestly followed their good advice. The theological candidate had previously been asked two questions, which had an important bearing upon his subsequent life. One was, "Do you fear God?" The other was, "To what party do you belong?" The latter inquiry was now abolished. In every university the long-prevalent partisanship subsided. But under the improved state of religion, a Voetian was invariably placed in the chair of dogmatic theology, a Cocceian in that of exegesis, and a follower of Lampe in charge of practical theology. The pulpits were likewise supplied with an equal number of ministers from the ruling parties. After 1738 the religious progress of the church of Holland became more tardy. Attention to spiritual life decreased, while more care was bestowed upon the improvement of theological training. The department receiving greatest favor was the linguistic study of the sacred text. Professor Schultens was the first to apply himself to the Hebrew cognate languages, especially to the Arabic. The critical works of Mill and of Bengel found their way, in 1707 and 1734, into the Dutch universities. John Alberti, inaugurated professor at Leyden in 1740, made the Arabic his special branch, and in five years' time that study became so popular that Valkenaer found it necessary to warn young men against yielding too freely to its fascinations. The direction of theological taste to another department of inquiry increased the indifference to party distinctions. Henceforth the terms Voetian and Cocceian became more unfrequent and unimportant. The theological tendency toward the study of the languages of the Bible had the single unfortunate result of increasing that puerile literalism which had appeared in only sporadic forms during several preceding centuries. It was the element antagonistic to the allegorical and spiritual interpretation of the text. Peter Abrest, the Dutch Ernesti, taught in Groningen in 1773. His work on _Sacred Criticism as the best Safeguard of Theology_, showed the value he attached to a thorough grammatical and historical study of the Scriptures. His labors were in harmony with the long-standing literal interpretation of the text, though he would elucidate scientifically what had previously been treated mystically. Even before the Reformation, the Dutch theologians were preëminently textual in their habits of study, and in subsequent times, they built up their systematic and polemical theology by the stress laid upon the "words" of the inspired volume. Nowhere was the proverb "Every heretic has his letter"[90] so common and yet so true as in Holland. The old quartos we have received from the seventeenth and former half of the eighteenth centuries will ever remain marvels of literalism gone mad. They were gotten up like a geometry, with theorems and propositions, followed by a lengthy array of texts transcribed without one word of comment. The sermons published at that time were divided and subdivided, their appearance being similar to a page of a dictionary. They were interlarded with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew letters and figures of various sizes, all being literal quotations from the Bible, and proving nothing except that the preacher had made free use of his Concordance. The consequence of so much textual citation in books and sermons was the increased popularity of theology. The systematic works of the seventeenth century were familiar to the masses. What was said of the theological disputes of the third century, that bakers' and shoemakers' shops reëchoed the words '_homoousian_' and '_homoiousian_' might be applied to the period of which we speak. Even now, there exists in Holland a remarkably popular acquaintance with theology. "I have seen," says a clergyman, "fishermen who could pass examination for licentiate's orders at one of your American schools, and beat the best of the candidates in the handy use of texts and definitions."[91] The descendants of the Dutch settlers in the United States are still familiar with Brokel; while if you ask any Hollander what he thinks of John á Marck's _Marrow of Divinity_, he will probably indicate very soon that he has committed nearly the whole of it to memory. Francken's _Kernel of Divinity_ is equally well-known to the masses, for he belonged to the Voetian party. He was eminently practical and ascetical. He was not without a vein of mysticism, as may be inferred by the title of one of his works: "_Earnest Request of the Bridegroom Jesus Christ to the Church of Laodicea to celebrate the Royal Marriage Feast with Him_." During the entire period, dating back to the Synod of Dort, there was an undercurrent of Rationalism, which, though sometimes daring to make its appearance, observed in general the strictest secrecy. Cartesianism made it bolder for a time, and in party struggles it ventured to take sides. But the keen eye which the church ever turned toward heresy made it timid. Yet it was a power which was only waiting for a strong ally in order to make open war upon the institutions which the heroes of Holland had wrested from Philip II. of Spain. Balthazer Bekker, "a man who feared neither man nor devil," was the first Rationalist in the Dutch church. He was a disciple of Des Cartes, and an ardent lover of natural science, particularly of astronomy. He published a work on Comets, in which he combated the old notions, prevalent among his countrymen, that a comet was always the precursor of heresies and all manner of evils, and that it should be made the occasion for a general call to prayer and fasting. Bayle, of Rotterdam, a reputed atheist, harmonized with Bekker. Bekker separated between the sphere of reason and that of religion. Whenever they meet each other it should be as friends and co-workers. Religion has greater dignity, but that gives it no right to disregard the authority of reason. When the Scriptures speak in an unnatural way of natural things, it is high time for the operation of reason. This idea led to the accommodation-theory, which, applied to the doctrine of spirits in his book, _The World Bewitched_ (1691), resulted in Bekker's excommunication. His Cartesianism, which had taught him to distinguish so rigidly between the two "substances," matter and spirit, as to deny all action of the one upon the other, led him to assert that spirits, whether good or bad, have no influence upon the bodies of men. The Jews ascribed all exertion of power to angels, through whom God worked mediately. Jesus adapted himself to these ideas of his times. Bekker loved to trace all spirit-stories to some plausible origin, and then to hold them up to the ridicule of the masses. To give substantial proof of his disbelief in all spiritual influence, he passed many nights in graveyards, on which occasions he manifested a sacrilegious hardihood, which, besides making him the wonder of his time, could only be accounted for by supposing that he kept up secret correspondence with the devil. "For," reasoned the Dutch theologians, "is not all this one of Satan's tricks to make us believe that he does not exist, so that he may capture us unawares?" On account of Bekker's acknowledged merit, the government took his part, and at his death, paid his salary to his family. Voltaire said of him: "He was a very good man, a great enemy of the devil and of an eternal hell.... I am persuaded that if there ever existed a devil, and he had read Bekker's _World Bewitched_, he would never have forgiven the author for having so prodigiously insulted him." In the library at Utrecht there are ten quarto volumes containing reviews of this book, in which Bekker's personal appearance, said to have been very unprepossessing, receives a goodly portion of the censure. His body was believed by his contemporaries to be a most excellent portrait of the devil himself. Professor Roell, of Franeker University, started from the Cocceian principle of freedom of thought. In his inaugural address, he announced it as his opinion, that Scriptures cannot be interpreted in any safe way except by the dictates of reason; that reason is the grand instrument by which we arrive at a knowledge of all truth; and that it is the great authority for the determination of all theoretical and practical religion. This author is best known to theologians by his ideas on the sonship of Christ. He held that Christ could not be a son, for then there would be a time when he came into being from nonentity. The term "son" could not signify unity of essence with the Father. "Brother" would be a more correct word. The only sense in which Christ could be son was as the divine ambassador. These assumptions brought upon Roell the charge that he was a Socinian and an Arminian. His principal opponent was Vitringa. Rationalistic tendencies increased in both number and force in proportion as the church decreased in the zeal which it had possessed at the close of the Cocceian and Voetian controversy by virtue of the immigration of the exiled Huguenots of France. Van Os, of Zwolle, attacked the accepted covenantal theory, and the doctrine of immediate imputation. The latter was a mere scholastic opinion, not accepted among the doctrines of the church, but yet maintained by the people as a requisite of orthodoxy. Having gone thus far, Van Os proceeded to deny a form of infralapsarianism, which was termed "justification from eternity." Many prominent but bigoted minds, having long entertained these ultra ideas he was endeavoring to refute, and some having gone so far as to attempt their introduction into a revised edition of the confession of faith, Van Os was censured for heresy. But he took the first opportunity to preach the Protestant doctrine that every one had the right to test the church-creed by the word of God. In the opinion of the people this course amounted to a total renunciation of the creed, and he was accordingly dismissed. Another dispute, which created attention and attracted the suspicion of the watchful church, was on toleration. All who dared to defend even the word, were stigmatized as unpardonable heretics, for Voltaire had just written in its favor. Pastor De Cock placed himself in danger of excommunication because he was so rash as to advocate it. He was only rescued by the interference of the government, and by luckily publishing that he distinguished between Christian and ecclesiastical toleration. There were controversies concerning minor points of doctrine, but amid them all, it was very perceptible that there was a well-organized disposition to break through the stringent rules of order, and escape from the control of the vigilant guardians of the church. But whoever departed a hair's breadth from the doctrinal system laid down in the confession of faith was charged with skepticism. Van der Marck's employment of a single term cost him his professorship. But he was afterwards restored, and died in 1800. Kleman wrote a book, in 1774, on the _Connection between Grace and Duty_, in which he held that the right use of those intellectual and spiritual gifts which God has imparted to us is the condition of his further blessings. He was compelled to retract his heresy. Ten Broek, of Rotterdam, considered only the death of Christ expiatory, while his colleagues wished the same to be said of every act of his life. Because that rash theologian ventured to use the word "world," in John iii. 16, in its broadest sense instead of circumscribing it to "the world of the elect," he had the choice either to recant or give up his office. The government interfered and saved him. But while all these influences were at work in the church of Holland, a still stronger current was setting in from England. The impolitic ecclesiastical rigor became an enemy to truth, and contributed powerfully to the development of Rationalism. Never have church and state presented a more complete contrast. The government of Holland was the most liberal in the world, but the ecclesiastical authorities have not been surpassed in bigotry during the whole history of Protestantism. Holland was the refuge and home of the exile of every land who could succeed in planting his feet upon her dyke-shores. But the church of that country was so illiberal that the use of a term in any other than the accepted sense was a sufficient ground of excommunication. The intimate relations in which Holland stood to England by the accession of William and Mary to the British throne afforded an opportunity for the importation of English Deism. Nowhere on the Continent was that system of skepticism so extensively propagated as among the Dutch. The Deists took particular pains to visit Holland, and were never prouder than when told that their works were read by their friends across the North Sea. On the other hand, Holland supplied England with the best editions of the classics then published in Europe, some of which are still unsurpassed specimens of typography. The works of Hobbes appeared in Amsterdam in 1668, his _De Cive_ having been issued as early as 1647. Locke's _Epistle on Toleration_ was translated into Dutch in 1689, while his _Essay on the Human Understanding_ was rendered not only into that language, but also into the French. Collins and Chubb were read scarcely less by the Hollander than by the Englishman. Locke spent seven years in Holland, and Toland studied two years in Leyden. Shaftesbury resided among the Dutch during the year 1691, and made a second visit in 1699. The adversaries of the Deists enjoyed the same privilege, and did not hesitate to improve it. Burnet became a great favorite in Holland. Lardner, who spent three years there, was well known to the reading circles, for his works were translated into their tongue. Lyttleton, Clarke, Sherlock, and Bentley received no less favor. Leland enjoyed a cordial introduction by the pen of Professor Bonnet, while Tillotson had his readers and admirers among even the boatmen in the sluggish canals of Leyden, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam. But the Deists of England gained more favor in Holland than their opponents were able to acquire. The former were bold, while the latter were timid and compromising. Consequently a brood of domestic Deists sprang up, who borrowed all their capital from their English fathers. Patot, a follower of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, referred to Christ by asking, "What do we trouble ourselves about the words of a carpenter?" He wrote his _Fable of the Bees_, to ridicule the doctrines of the atonement and resurrection. But as English Deism was reinforced by the atheism of France before the invasion of Germany by either, so did the same copartnership take place in reference to Holland. The works of the French skeptics were as copiously distributed in Holland as at home. Many of them were issued by Dutch publishing houses. Des Sandes published his _Reflections on Great Men_, in Amsterdam; Toussaint's _Morals_ gained the honor of more than one edition in the same city; and De Prades, who had been condemned by the Sorbonne on account of the thesis by which he tried to gain his baccalaureate, published his _Defense_ in Amsterdam in 1753. It was in this work that he compared the miracles of Jesus to those of Æsculapius. Hase says that it was in Holland, and not in London, that the _Système de la Nature_ first came to light. Rousseau's _Émile_, which had been burned by the sheriffs in France, had the largest liberty afforded it beyond the northern frontier. The Dutch would not be sated with Volney until they had published and read three editions of his works. Voltaire was very popular throughout the country. A number of periodicals arose, having the avowed object of disseminating the views of himself and his friends wherever the Dutch language was spoken. La Mettrie, driven from France, here found a home. Voltaire barely escaped the Bastille by fleeing thither, though when he left the land which had given him shelter, he bade it the graceful farewell: "Adieu canals, ducks, and common people! I have seen nothing among you that is worth a fig!" But Voltaire had cause to cherish no very pleasant feelings toward Holland. Her great men had received him coldly. His excessive vanity was never so deeply wounded as by the sober Dutchmen. Desiring to make the acquaintance of Boerhaave, the most celebrated physician in Europe, he called upon him, stating that he "wished to see him." Instead of becoming rapturous at the Frenchman's compliment, the plain old Leyden burgher coolly replied: "Oh, sit as long as you please, sir, and look at me; but excuse me if I go on with my writing." On offering one of his philosophical books to Professor Gravesande, the latter returned it to Voltaire in a few days with only this comment: "You are a poet, sir; a very good poet, indeed!" The chief disaster resulting from the French skeptical writings was not so much the skeptical indoctrination of the people as the general diffusion of a light and frivolous indifference to all religion. Through the influence of France the Dutch became enslaved to vicious customs, taste, modes of thought, and conversation. The etiquette of the Parisians was domesticated among their northern imitators. The works published in Holland were mere reproductions from the French, and many of them were written in that language. The simplicity, truthfulness, and attachment to old forms, which had so long existed, gave place to a general spirit of innovation. The reverential and determined spirit that had enabled their forefathers to gain their independence was no longer apparent in the children. Liberal to a fault, Holland was now paying the penalty of her excessive hospitality. Sensuality and superficial epicureanism were at once the taste and the destruction of many of the young minds of the country. When the people of Holland began to awaken to their condition, they were seized with a spirit akin to despair. The coldness of the church amid all the attempts to destroy the basis of her faith appeared as the chill of death. When the learned societies offered a prize in 1804 for the best work on _The Cause and Cure of Religious Apathy_, they could not find one to crown with their medal. Holland, finding herself unable to keep pace with the quick step of French recklessness and irreligion, bethought herself of finding refuge in Gallic politics. "Our people," says Bronsveld, "then became a second-hand on the great dial of the French nation." Old men are now living who have not forgotten those days when all distinctions vanished, when the only name heard was "burgher," and when the skeptical and daring favorites of the people obtained seats in the national assembly. Religion was driven from the elementary schools and also from the universities. The chairs of philosophy and theology were united, for it was enjoined that no doctrine should be taught in future but natural theology and ethics. The Sabbath was abolished. Then came Napoleon Bonaparte. He presented his plea, was received with open arms, and returned his thanks by draining the country of its treasures. It was only when the people felt the physical sting of his wars, and saw the indescribable moral dearth pervading their country, that they resolved to go back to the old paths and the good way, and to abandon all deference to French examples. On the occasion of the great jubilee of 1863, which commemorated deliverance from the yoke of France, there was heard throughout Holland but one note of joy: "Thanks be unto the Lord who hath delivered the nation from the ruin which it had prepared for itself, and into which infidelity had thrust it!" FOOTNOTES: [89] Owenusters. [90] "Jedere Ketter heeft zyn Letter." [91] Extract from a letter of Rev. P. J. Hoedemaker, dated September, 1864. The correspondence of this accomplished scholar, who has been some time in connection with the University of Utrecht and in intimate relations with the best minds of Holland, has been invaluable to us in the preparation of the Chapters on Dutch Theology. CHAPTER XV. HOLLAND CONTINUED: THE NEW THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS, AND THE GREAT CONTROVERSY NOW PENDING BETWEEN ORTHODOXY AND RATIONALISM. The commencement of the new era in the religion and politics of Europe was the restoration of peace after the battle of Waterloo. Wherever the French bayonet had won territory to the sceptre of Napoleon, it opened a new and unobstructed sway for the propagation of the skepticism taught by the followers of Voltaire. But the same blow that repulsed the armies of France produced an equally disastrous effect upon her infidelity. A sincere desire began to animate many persons living in the subjugated countries that, with the restoration of their nationality, there should also be the return of the pure faith of their fathers. Holland had passed through nineteen years of humiliating subjugation, and she did not possess religious vitality enough to take full advantage of the rare opportunity presented by the peace of 1814. The people turned from France to Germany, and thought they found relief in the Rationalism of Semler and Paulus. Orthodoxy was inactive. The Mennonites had become so mystical that they rather aided than arrested the incoming error. All the Socinian elements gained strength. The discipline of the church was exercised with such laxity that immorality was unrebuked. The Constitution of 1816, by its reunion of church and state, threw a great weight in the balance with Rationalism. William of Orange wielded a power over the church which he dared not exercise upon any other corporation. The Synods and Classes were driven back to forms, and allowed almost no freedom. Then came the notorious Pastoral Declaration, established by the Synod of the Hague in 1816, which no longer required of candidates for the ministry an unqualified subscription to the ancient Confessions. Their adherence to them was to be "in so far as" these formularies of faith agree with the word of God, not "because" they thus agree. That little change--_quatenus_ substituted for _quia_--cast off all restrictions from the future preaching of the Dutch clergy. The orthodox preachers became very indignant at the official measure, and a bitter theological controversy arose. Previous to this outbreak, a rupture had occurred upon the introduction of the new hymns, ordered by the Synod of North Holland in 1796. When presented for approval in 1807, they were violently rejected by the orthodox, who held that the version of Psalms which they had been singing many years was all that was needed. Besides, there was a perceptible Rationalism in many of the new hymns. They were foreign to the Dutch heart. Such a one as "Yonder will I praise the Friend, Who here has shown me truth," was not likely to elicit a response from those who desired an improved religious spirit. To fill up the cup of their misfortunes, the use of the hymns was made obligatory. But they hoped that when the Prince of Orange came back, he would restore the venerated Psalms. Yet on his return he not only issued an official recognition of the new Hymn-Book, but expressed his warm approval of it. The congregation had no choice left but to refuse to sing altogether, or to use but one and the same hymn from one Sabbath to another. THE REVIVAL AND THE SECESSION. There was an under-current of deep religious feeling among the masses which was unsupported by theological education. The lectures in the universities were similar to those delivered by the old school of German Supernaturalists. The prevalent orthodoxy was moderate and equivocal at best. Not much hope of awakening could be derived from it. The Bible was held to be the supreme authority; the historical character of its accounts was confessed; and the infallibility of its communications was maintained. Miracles, and prophetical and apostolical inspiration were accepted. But there was a neglect of the nature of this authority, together with a manifest indifference to the paramount value of all the great doctrinal possessions of the church. There was no scientific defense of the pillars of faith, and no attempt to discuss the true ground of miracles, and their inherent accordance with divine laws. Christian philosophy was totally ignored. Such natural theology as had been produced by the school of Leibnitz and Wolf, and more recently improved by the moral arguments of Kant, was the chief object of study, and had been made obligatory since the restoration of the Dutch universities in 1816. There was a general compromise between revelation and the old philosophy.[92] Supernaturalism was stagnant, and gave no promise of future progress. While the church of Holland was in this deplorable condition, God raised up a few men to be the instruments of new life. They were endowed with great talents, moral heroism, and a steady purpose to elevate every department of ecclesiastical organization. The Holy Spirit accompanied their labors. The leaders of the group were Bilderdyk, Da Costa, Dr. Capadose, and subsequently Groen Van Prinsterer. The first stood at the head of the modern school of Dutch poetry, and was one of the greatest poets ever produced by Holland. His conceptions were vivid, his style impassioned, his diction unequaled by any of his predecessors, and his moral life irreproachable. Having a conservative mind, he opposed each indication of revolution with every weapon at command. He was profoundly learned in the classics, history, and jurisprudence. Apart from all his efforts for the religious awakening of the people, he was the representative of the old Holland nationality. An ardent despiser of the French spirit, imparted by the fatal principles of 1789, he was equally opposed to the Rationalism of Germany. He believed that if new life were kindled in the Dutch heart, it could not be derived from without, but by a return to the pure teachings of the fathers of the Reformation in Holland. Da Costa and Dr. Capadose were Jews. The former looked upon the condition of the country from the Israelitish standpoint developed in his _Israel and the Nations_. He believed in the millennium, and saw in it the divine cheerfulness of history, and the relief from surrounding evils. He is well described by one of his countrymen as "the Israelite who raised himself above the church of the Gentiles; the Israelite who testifies against this church; the Israelite who announces the glory of this church." He was a popular and spirited poet, excelling even his friend Bilderdyk in the lyrical character of his verses. He hated Rationalism in every form, and resisted whatever would interpose any authority between the conscience of man and the word of God. His Israelitish view made him reject the secondary authority of the confessions of faith, and did not permit him to attribute anything more than a relative value to the church of the Gentiles, "the church before the millennium." Groen Van Prinsterer appeared at a time when the revival had taken definite shape, but he attached himself to its interests and contributed more than any one else to its development. He is one of those decided characters who are mentioned by friends and enemies with great animation. Studiously rejecting the individuality taught him by the school of Vinet, and reticent of his personal opinions, he has incurred the animadversions of some of his warmest admirers. Being a man of continual literary and political activity, he has taken part in all the important movements of his times. He is the Guizot of Holland. Though banished for a time from his seat in the States General by the Catholics, Revolutionists, and Rationalists, he did not intermit his labors to lead back the masses to evangelical piety. His powerful influence has been in favor of home missions and similar agencies. He has comprehended the revival, in all its scope, more clearly than any one else. He says of it that "it was neither Calvinistic, nor Lutheran, nor Mennonite, but Christian. It did not raise for its standard the orthodoxy of Dort, but the flag of the Reformation, the word of God. And though it found the doctrine of salvation admirably expressed in our symbolical books, appreciated a rule of education so conformable to the Holy Scriptures, and opposed the doctrines of the church and the duty of her ministers to the usurpations of Rationalism, it never thought of accepting and imposing the absurd and literal yoke of formularies with an absurd and puerile anxiety. A spirit of Christian fraternity predominated over the old desires." The direct associated result of the revival was the Reunion of Christian Friends. It was presided over by Groen Van Prinsterer, and held semi-annual sessions in Amsterdam from 1845 to 1854. Its monthly journal, _The Union, or Christian Voices_, was conducted by Pastor Heldring, a warm-hearted man who has made himself illustrious in the annals of beneficence by his labors for home missions, by his foundation of an asylum for little neglected girls, and by similar charitable works. Other pastoral associations sprang up in consequence of the new life, but some of them failed in a few years because of the want of a common symbol of faith. Groen Van Prinsterer hailed with joy every indication of Christian unity. He hoped that by this unity the church might be built up in its holy faith. From 1850 to 1855 he edited _The Netherlander_, a political and ecclesiastical review. It was in this periodical that he eulogized the revivals of other countries, and ranked the leaders of them among the greatest ornaments of history. The labors of the French and Swiss theologians, MM. Bost, Malan, Merle d'Aubigné, Gaussen, Grandpierre, and Monod find in him a most appreciative admirer.[93] The movement inaugurated by Bilderdyk, Da Costa, and Capadose led to an important secession from the Church of Holland. There were men who saw the necessity of revival on a large scale, but in their zeal for Confessionalism, they went far ahead of their leaders. Their cry was, "Let us leave Babel, and build up a new Church." De Cock and Scholte were the first to sound the note of secession. They were joined by such men as Brummelkamp, Van Reeh, Gezelle, and Van Velsen. This party rallied around the old Calvinistic symbols, and De Cock stood in their van. As early as 1829, when he became preacher in the little village of Ulrum, he distinguished himself for his zealous ministry. People came from a distance of eighteen miles to hear his sermons. He soon indoctrinated them so thoroughly that they would no longer permit their children to be baptized by "unbelievers." This brought him immediately into conflict with the rules of the Church. Two pamphlets appeared against him, which he answered in his _Defense of the True Reformed Doctrine, and of the True Reformed; or, the Sheepcot of Christ attacked by two Wolves_. Another pamphlet appeared with his approval, in which the new hymns were called "_Siren's Songs_." The result was that he was suspended, and in 1835 excommunicated. In the same year he published his curious book, entitled "The so-called Evangelical Hymns, the Eyeball of the misguided and deceived Multitude in the Synodical-Reformed Church: Yes, of some Children of God, in their blindness, and while they have become drunk by the wine of their whoredom, tested, weighed, and found wanting: Yes, opposed to all our forms and doctrines, and the word of God; by H. De Cock, under the Cross because of Christ." The expulsion of De Cock attracted many new friends to his standard. At the close of 1834 a Separation Act was devised at Ulrum, by which all his adherents dissolved connection with the Church. They were said to number eighty thousand, but it is probable that the estimate was an exaggeration. By request of the Synod, the Separatists were prosecuted by the government, who used as a pretext an article in the _Code Napoléon_, which forbade the assembly of more than twenty persons for worship without the consent of the civil authorities. They were defended by many lawyers of the school of Bilderdyk. Foremost of the number was Groen Van Prinsterer, "the conscience of the Legislative Assembly, the right arm of religion in the State, and the defender of the principle of religion in the school." They were assailed by mobs who called them the "New Lights." The schism was not a success. What promised to be a great and honorable Church, like the Free Church of Scotland, with which it now stands connected, carried with it much of the prejudice and bigotry of the land. It did not identify itself with scientific progress, and paid little regard to education. Any man of piety and utterance could become a preacher in one of its pulpits. It has at present a Seminary at Kampen, with a small faculty of three professors. Its course of study will compare favorably with that of any institution in the United States. The young men of talent, who now grow up in its fold, are prejudiced against its ultraism, and stand ready at any moment to unite with some new movement which will combine the piety of their fathers and the scientific demands of the present day. The radical defects of its initial steps were narrow-mindedness and fanaticism. The Separatists utterly ignored the elements of good in the mother-church. They could have done infinitely better service by casting all their influence with Bilderdyk and his followers in the Church, instead of arraying themselves against it, and becoming an enemy from without. Some of the leaders have organized colonies, which greatly weakened the power and prestige of those who remained at home. The emigrants came to America and settled, for the most part, in the Western States. THE GRONINGEN SCHOOL. Each of the two tendencies prevalent in the Church of Holland had its decided defects. While one was zealous for theological training, it was nevertheless cold, indifferent and Rationalistic. While the other was burning with religious fervor and a practical evangelism, it was deficient in culture, scientific grasp, and a capacity to meet the wants of the time. There was a call for a third party, which would unite the best features of the two others, and develop them into a new progressive power. Hence arose the Groningen School. Its immediate origin was the attempt of Professor Van Heusde to modernize Platonism and adapt it to the nineteenth century. Hofstede de Groot, Pareau, and Muurling have been its leaders. Its organ is the periodical entitled, _Truth in Love_. The characteristic of this school is, that there is in human nature a divine element which needs development in order to enable humanity to reach its destination. This destination is conformity to God. All religions have aimed and worked at the same problem, but Christianity has solved it in the highest and purest manner. Still, there is only a difference in degree between that and other religions. This is the germ of what the Groningens call the "Evangelical Catholic Theology." Conformity to God, they say, has been reached in Jesus Christ; but Plato, Zoroaster, and Confucius strove to attain to it. They failed because their task was too great for the means at command. God has fulfilled the desire of man, whom he had prepared for salvation by sending perfection embodied in Christ. We may not attach ourselves to any system or effort as absolutely true or good, nor condemn any as utterly false. All knowledge and arts are related to religion. They refine man and aid him in his emancipation from whatever is sinful and sensual. The correspondence of ideas between Hofstede de Groot and Pareau was so intimate that they published a joint work on dogmatic theology, which contains a complete exposition of the principles of the Groningen School. Jesus Christ constitutes the centre of religion. In him we see what is God, what is man, the relations of one to the other, and how we can be so delivered from sin and its power as to become God's children by faith and love. In Christ's death we find love even for sinners, and learn that suffering is not an evil. In his glorification we perceive the aims and results of suffering. In him is the Theanthropos, not God _and_ man, but God _in_ man. There is but one nature in Christ, the divine-human. Jesus being the focal point of the interests of man, we must know, _first_, what he is outside of us, objectively; _second_, how he appears within us, subjectively. To know Christ we need the exegetical study of that preparation of man for Christ, which is furnished by the Old Testament. The New Testament is the fulfillment. The latter contains the sayings of Jesus and the conclusions of the Apostles. The writers of the Scriptures were not infallible, though they did not often err. Revelation is continued in the history of the church, which is the third principle of development. Augustine stood higher and went further than Paul, Luther than Augustine. If our development be partial and imperfect we must go back and begin anew. The Groningen School is distinguished for its ethical system. How does Christ live in us? This is the question it proposes to answer. There is a distinction between the nature of man, which is divine, and his condition, which is sinful. Sin is the point where man, misusing his liberty, surrenders himself to his sensuous nature, which is not sinful in itself. God educates man by Jesus Christ in three ways; _first_, by revelation of truth; _second_, by manifestation of love; _third_, by education of the church. The high aim of the Church is to lead man to a consciousness of the unity of his origin and destiny, and to bring all to a knowledge and love of Christ, and of God in Christ. Christ was educated before his life on earth for the work designed for him, and he established the church by leaving his glory and leading a life full of love and truth. His death was the highest manifestation of his love and truth, for by it he showed God to man, and man to himself. His resurrection makes our hope of eternal life a certainty. In the Groningen system there is no place for the doctrine of the Trinity. The influence of the sacraments is merely external, while Calvinism and the "blood-theology," are subjects of abhorrence. It would be unjust to place the Groningens beside the German Rationalists, though the influence of both has been similar. The former class, like the latter, have one fatal defect; they consider sin a mere inconvenience. They hold that man needs a Teacher but not a Redeemer, since all sinners will be eventually holy and happy. The Groningen tendency, as related to Dutch theology, is similar to that applied by Channing to the orthodoxy of the American church. Human nature is declared worthy of our attention and development. True humanity is pure piety. God can be found everywhere, even in the heart of man. The philosophical theology of Schleiermacher has stamped the Groningen system with its own signet. They both proceed from the same starting-point,--not reason, but the heart. Theirs is the religion of feeling. The Groningens have done important service to the Dutch church. Their elevation of ethics to a proper position in theological instruction has been a national boon, while their unwavering zeal for the education of the masses and of children will always remain a monument to their honor. While they were the first to establish Sunday Schools in Holland, they have given a new impulse to missions. They defend religion against skepticism, and picture the latter in all its deformity. But the Groningen system has almost totally failed of its object. It did not unite the zeal of the fathers with the science of the present day. Though opposed to Rationalism, it is more negative than positive, and is less distinguished for its doctrines than for its absence of them. It claims that the Church neither possesses nor needs doctrines. Therefore, it destroys the line of demarcation between the various confessions and that confessional Latitudinarianism, which is the direct offspring of the destructive principles of the Rationalism and Liberalism of the eighteenth century. THE SCHOOL OF LEYDEN. In no theological system had any satisfaction been afforded to the joint feeling of attachment to the old confessions and of a desire to develop them in conformity with the requirements of the age. Many rejected the Groningen school because it depreciated the formularies of the church, and did not know how to value their scope or to elaborate them for immediate usefulness. The Leyden school filled the vacancy. Taking its origin in a disposition to establish a connection between the faith of the Reformers and our own, its aim has been to unite the old traditions with the new opinions. The father and expounder of the School of Leyden is Professor Scholten, formerly of Franeker, but now of Leyden. He is well known as the author of historico-critical introductions, and of a _History of Philosophy_, but his reputation has been acquired mainly by his _Doctrines of the Reformed Church_, a work of great clearness, profound erudition, and romantic interest. As the reader peruses its fascinating pages he is bound by a spell which he cannot easily break. The remark of Dugald Stewart, on reading Edwards _On the Will_, occurs to him with peculiar appositeness, "There is a fallacy somewhere, but the devil only can find it." There is, according to Scholten, a distinction between the principles and dogmas of a Church. The former are the norm and touch-stone of the latter. The Reformers were not always logical in their reasonings, and have left an unfinished task for the present day. Man arrives at a knowledge of the truth by the Holy Scriptures, but they must not be understood as containing the only revelation from God; He also reveals himself to the world through the hearts of all believers. The Bible is the source of the original religion. There is a difference between the Scriptures and the word of God. The latter is what God reveals in the human spirit concerning his will and himself. The writing down of the communication is purely human; therefore, the Bible cannot be called a revelation. We know, by the testimony of the Spirit, that God's word in the Scriptures is truth. But Scriptural authority must not be accepted,--a liberty which would apply to a Jewish but not to a Christian age. Jesus and the apostles did not compel men to accept truth by a proclamation of authority, but by an irresistible moral power. Even in times when the liberty and individuality of faith have been lost in the Church, there were men who did not answer the question, "Why do you believe?" by saying, "Because the Church has spoken;" but by appealing to their interior consciousness. Historical criticism must be called in, Scholten further holds, to prove the certainty of the facts of revelation. But the truth of the Christian religion cannot be established on this plan. With Rousseau, Lessing, and others, he opposes any attempt to make the best historical grounds the basis of a religious conviction. The truth of Scripture is testified by human nature itself, which, educated by Christianity, recognizes freely and personally the truth of the gospel. The natural faculty that performs this high office is reason, not feeling. Scripture is the touchstone of the Christianity of a conviction, but not of its truth. The Reformers very properly distinguished between a first and secondary authority, and allowed themselves complete liberty in their search after the origin of the books of Scripture. This was not a dangerous experiment, for he who has once come to know Christianity as the highest form of religion, can never fall into a negative criticism. If the religious contents of the Bible find their justification in the interior consciousness of man, then the question arises, "Can human reason attain to the supersensual, or is it limited to the sensuous experience?" The organ of all natural knowledge of God is reason; while its fountain is the physical, intellectual, and moral world. The first Adam did not possess that knowledge of God which was thoroughly enjoyed by the second. But can man attain to the knowledge of God while in a sinful condition, and while the light of his reason is darkened? Assuredly he may, for sin does not belong to the essence, but to the condition of man. The Reformed theologians built on the acknowledgment that Religion has her seat in the being of man, and sees in the Christian the expression of the reasonable religion. The material principle of the Reformed church is the doctrine of God's sovereignty and free grace. The weakness of the Reformation lay in its inconsistency, for it substituted the authority of the letter for that of the Church. Scholten's abhorrence of authority has led him to a denial of miracles. From this point of view he can freely join hands with the Rationalists. In his latest work, the _Gospel of John_, he takes occasion to retract the favorable opinions formerly expressed concerning that portion of the New Testament. He has been fearlessly assailed by Oosterzee, La Saussaye, Da Costa, and other leading theologians. Unfortunately, he exerts more influence over the young theologians of Holland than any other Dutch theologian. He is ardently supported by Knenen, the exegete, his colleague at Leyden; and by Rauenhoff, the ecclesiastical historian. We close our estimate of Scholten with a word on his opinions of Christianity in general. It is neither superhuman nor supernatural. It is the highest point of the development of human nature itself, and, in this sense, it is natural and human in the highest acceptation of those terms. It is the mission of science to put man in a condition to comprehend the divine volume presented by Christianity.[94] THE SCHOOL OF EMPIRICAL-MODERN THEOLOGY. The two leading representatives of this important branch of contemporary Dutch theology are Opzoomer and Pierson. The former, a professor in the University of Utrecht, left the sphere of theological instruction for a time, and took a prominent part in political debates in order to combat the claims of the anti-revolutionary party. He exerted little influence during the first years of his professorship in Utrecht, but since his publication of a manual of logic, _The Road of Science_, he has had a large share in founding the school with which he is now identified. In this work he maintains that observation is the only means of arriving at certainty, and that everything which cannot be proved by experience is uncertain, and has no right within the domain of science. This is the central thought of his whole system. Pierson stands related to Opzoomer as Mansel does to Sir William Hamilton. The son of religious parents, he was at first rigidly orthodox. He is now pastor of the Walloon Church at Rotterdam. His early writings were touchingly beautiful and attractive, for it was in them that he laid open his inner life. But in his later works he assumes the air of the censor and scoffer. He was long the personal friend of La Saussaye, but, owing to doctrinal differences, they have parted and now pursue different paths. He is an orator of the American type. His opinions are elaborated in his two works, _The Origin of the Modern Tendency_, and the _Tendency and Life._ In the latter treatise we learn not merely the personal views of Pierson, but the creed advocated by all the adherents of the empirical-modern theology. The New Theology, he holds, has an indisputable right to assume the epithet "modern," in distinction from "liberal." The latter term is borne by the Groningen school, which always opposes the church-creed. The principle of reform has not been fully carried out by the Protestants. The Protestant builds his faith on the Bible, but on what does he build his faith in the Bible? Is it not the testimony of the Holy Spirit? He has this support only through the Bible. Certain liberal theologians, like the orthodox, are extremely illogical in their conclusions concerning the word of God. The former will not accept of verbal inspiration, yet they call the Bible a divine book, which, fortunately, could be no better. Though they laugh at the story of Jonah and the whale, they accept every word of Christ, who quotes the story. They will not hear of present miraculous interpositions of providence, but accept some of the miracles of the Bible. There are Catholic priests who are affability itself, while there are orthodox Protestants possessed of ultra views. In contrast with all these classes stand the heroes of the _Modern Theology_, who possess the "passion for reality," and are endowed with the new cosmology of Galileo. All true knowledge, argues Pierson, is self-knowledge. Reality comes to us in the impressions we receive of it. I see, I hear; and whether there is a reality outside corresponding to the impression, is a question never asked by a reasonable man. One who has a fever on a July day complains of cold. The bystanders deny his right to say it is cold. Now do they obtain their right from a comparison of their impressions with something objective? No. His knowledge is subjective in this sense; that it arises from sources which are in him alone, while theirs is objective, because they compare their impressions. Error is not in the impression but in the explanation. Man has more than sensual impressions. We have a faculty which brings us into contact with a spiritual world. The religious man is by necessity an anthropomorphist. He claims a personal God, a Father, a Redeemer, an Ideal. We need a sharp analysis to see the reflections of the contents of our religious feeling. Our mind seeks a conception of God, the basis of which must be the idea of the Absolute, Infinite Being. The Scriptures must be criticised by our reason. The first three gospels, which tell us what Christ said and did, are not authority for us. Their writers are unknown, in the main, and by no means original. But exact criticism may succeed in giving us a portrait of the Prophet of Galilee. He lived a life according to the spirit, and proclaimed a religion such as no one before or after him has been able to do. Is it not enough that he has glorified humanity, and made himself adored as king of humanity, even with a crown of thorns upon his brow? The hearts of men have been disclosed to him, and he has caused to well up therefrom streams of love, which none can turn aside. Is his name not glorious when we think that the penitence of a Magdalene, and the sorrow of a Peter, are flowers which have permanently sprung up from earth only after that earth had been drenched by his blood and tears? But the Church has made a mythological character of Christ. It has contemned the real Jesus who stood in opposition to authority and tradition. In his name the Church has enthroned and glorified this authority. It was not from a system but from a principle that he expected the regeneration of man. We have a safe revelation in the world about us. It is God's work in and around ourselves. Explore it; study yourself and man; but do it with such a spirit and purpose as Christ possessed. As a specimen of Pierson's style, we give his portrait of a good preacher: "All elements are concentrated in him in such a way that men will, can, and must listen, for attention is as much a state as love. You cannot command, but you may deserve it. Paint for humanity, which, though despised by the formalists, terrified by the moralists, and condemned by the Pharisees, is yet the image of him who spoke not of its guilt, but of its sickness and sorrow; not of a judgment-seat, but of the open arms of the Father; not of damnation, but of regeneration. A Holland painter came from a foreign land, and painted a Dutch landscape. But everybody who saw it, said: 'He has been in Italy.' So let it be said of every Christian minister, 'He has been in Galilee, it is the color of Jesus.'" The opinions entertained by the defenders of the Empirical-Modern Theology have few points of sympathy with evangelical Christianity. They stand above Rationalism, but not opposed to it. The system attempts a purification-process of Christian faith. It does not break with tradition and doctrine, but claiming the privilege of using its own eyes, it rejects the authority of both. It does not admit a supernatural origin of the Scriptures, but looks with suspicion upon many of the accounts contained therein. Taught by the philosophy of experience that everything has a natural source, even in the world of mind, it finds no room for free will. It cherishes a high regard for the individuality of man, and esteems it wrong to let the particular be lost in the universal. It discards any system of morals which does not do justice to this individuality. Its ethics are deterministic, but not fatalistic. It holds that the mysteries of orthodoxy are mystifications which insult the thinking man. It claims that its doubts are not sinful, for it says: "I have not doubted from a wish to doubt." But it furnishes nothing to take the place of that which it destroys by its negative criticism. This is its fatal weakness. With its principle, "no authority," it attacks the Bible, and finds it written neither by the supposed authors nor at the alleged dates. It destroys the sanctity of that which has become hallowed by our inner experience. It takes away Christ, in all his essential attributes, from the believer. THE ETHICAL-IRENICAL SCHOOL. We have thus far seen, in the present state of theology in Holland, few indications of the vigorous progress of evangelical truth. But the Ethical-Irenical School, combining the principal orthodox minds, stands in manly and prosperous opposition to all parties which possess Rationalistic affinities. Chantepie de la Saussaye and Professor Van Oosterzee are its leaders. These men differ on minor points, but, in general, they are harmonious co-workers against skepticism in every form. They stand in the front rank of Dutch theologians, the former having no superior as a thinker, and the latter none as an orator. La Saussaye is not a popular writer. His style is compact and his arguments intricate. He is sometimes eloquent, however, and a close thinker takes pleasure in reading his pages. He does not like the term "orthodoxy," for he thinks it too loud a profession. He has been charged with Hegelianism because of some expressions in his _Commentary on the Hebrews_. But the allegation is false, for he only applauded Hegel and Schelling as thinkers, without giving any sanction to their opinions. His views are as yet but little known to the people, only a few being willing to study his weighty thoughts. He is thoroughly imbuing his congregation in Rotterdam with his own spirit, and has now many followers, who are giving his ideas to the public in an attractive form. In 1851 he had a long and serious illness, after which he deemed it his duty to limit himself no longer to the functions of the pastoral office, but to raise his voice in ecclesiastical debates. In 1852 he took part in the formation of a society called "Seriousness and Peace" and was associated with Beets and Doedes in the editorship of their organ bearing the same name. The principle of the new organization consisted in the prominence given to science and its service in theology, in opposition to the school of Bilderdyk. It held that the Scriptures are of divine authority; that they are properly expressed in the confessions of the Reformed church of Holland; and that science must be subsidized for their explanation.[95] Soon after the appearance of Renan's _Life of Jesus_, the Dutch theologians were surprised by a pamphlet entitled _History or Romance_, which, besides giving an admirable criticism on the new work, defined very clearly the points at issue, and lifted out of its poetic frame the picture deserving more serious study. The style was recognized as that of Professor Van Oosterzee. Like everything coming from his pen, it was easily read and as easily digested. It sounded the alarm, and warned the public mind against accepting Renan's romance as history. A few sentences in Professor Van Oosterzee's little work reveal his position in the present conflict with Rationalism. "Modern Naturalism," says he, "can be conquered only by a Christian philosophic belief in revelation, and by a powerful development of modern supernaturalism.... To some, nothing is easier than to lay all supernaturalism under condemnation, especially when it is opposed only in that form in which it appeared against the worn-out Rationalism of the past century, without attending to its further development, or taking the trouble to add to Renan's critical anathema a clear and intelligible exposition of his own point of view. Renan's _Life of Jesus_ shows us what becomes of Christianity when we regard only the ethical-religious side of revelation, and not its supernatural character. You can hope for no victory as long as you know none but a subjective ground of faith, and do not meet Satan, coming as an angel of light, with a perspicuous and powerful, 'Thus it is Written.'" Professor Van Oosterzee was called four years ago to the chair of Scriptural Interpretation in the University of Utrecht, now the centre of evangelical theology in Holland. He had been pastor of a church in Rotterdam, and his new appointment, made at the instance of the King and his ministers, was a great triumph of the orthodox party. He had already distinguished himself by his _Life of Christ and Christology_, in six volumes, and by his exegetical labors in connection with Lange's _Bible Work_. But the oration he delivered on his assumption of office in the University added largely to his reputation, and obliterated any doubt which may have existed concerning his firm attachment to the faith of the fathers. Bearing the title, _The Skepticism which is anxiously to be avoided by the Theologians of our Day_,[96] it discusses the character, origin, rights, fruits, and remedy of the infidelity of the present time. The cardinal characteristic of this skepticism is, according to Professor Van Oosterzee, a denial of the great revelation of grace and truth in Jesus Christ, as the Son of God and of man, by whom salvation is made possible to us and to all the world. There are three fountains of the modern infidelity; a scholastic dogmatism, which has laid more stress on the formularies of the church than on the Gospel itself; a wild, revolutionary spirit in politics, not of native growth, but imported from abroad, which only satisfied itself by the overthrow of thrones, by the transgression of all established limits, and by its declaration of the supreme rights of reason and will; and a false philosophy, with its unholy brood of Empiricism, Idealism, Materialism, Rationalism, and Naturalism. The skepticism of the present day asserts rights to which it has no claim whatever, for it holds that the so-called mysteries of Christianity have no divine basis, and that there can be nothing supernatural in revelation. Neither can the labors of the skeptics produce substantial and permanent good in any department of theology. The only way to combat them is not by reviewing the opinions of departed thinkers and teachers, so much as by going directly back to the Bible itself, and looking at it with the aid of every new step in science. Such a weapon is a sound system. It may be termed the _Evangelical-Biblical, historical-philosophical, Irenical-practical theology_. If it be developed, all the shafts of infidelity will fall harmless at its feet. Immediately after the appearance of Professor Van Oosterzee's reply to Renan, La Saussaye published his work entitled, _How must Modern Naturalism be attacked?_ While he opposes Naturalism, he also takes exception to the usual orthodox method of assailing it. In this work, together with other treatises by the same vigorous writer, we find the Ethical-Irenical theology stated and defended. The term _Ethical_ is not, according to La Saussaye, the same as _moral_,--for morality, conscience, duty, and virtue are terms which find their home in the Kantian philosophy, and are now appropriated by the Groningen School. _Ethical_ has application to the receptivities,--the inner wants, and states of the heart. It differs from _religion_ just as want differs from supply. The Christian knows that religious truth, life, and action, are not the fruits of his subjective state of feeling, but of revelation, and of the communication of God to his spirit. The _ethical_ is the natural, and the _religious_ is the supernatural state of the heart. The Ethical theologians differ from the Supernaturalists on the following psychological ground: the former believe that the supernatural is communicated with human nature, and is so inseparable from it that a denial of it is a rejection of all that is most human in man. The latter hold that the supernatural, since it is an essential part of religion, is not necessary merely to accredit revelation, but to establish it. While La Saussaye agrees with Van Oosterzee in application of the term _ethical_, he does not hold with him that the "_Thus it is written_" is an adequate reply to the Rationalist. Neither will his view of miracles harmonize with that of the professor, or with Vinet and De Pressensé, of whom he forcibly reminds us in many of his opinions. The supernaturalistic theory, La Saussaye contends, is incorrect. The Church has paid too much attention to the exterior features of miracles, but far too little to their ethical import, and to the connection between nature and spirit. Miracles can be defended only on the ground that the power to work them is still in the church over which Christ presides and to which he communicates his energy. The Naturalist who opposes the present power of miracles can be convicted by an appeal to his own personality; for he is not merely _nature_, but also supernatural, free, spiritual. He feels himself responsible; he has a conscience. Renan, in his picture of Christ and his apostles, places salvation on an equality with deliverance from sickness, and makes it mere socialism. If we would rebuke the skepticism of the present day we must return to first principles; not to the doctrines, but to the facts on which they rest. Revelation presupposes the ideas of God, law, responsibility, sin and judgment. We must recognize Israel's law, though national in form, as written on the hearts of all men. When you prove the ethical idea in religion you show at once its necessary factor. The life of the Church is a spiritual, supernatural, and therefore wonderful life. It is the great standing miracle which proves the truth of God. The first and all-important thing to be done by us is not to fight the naturalism outside of us, but that which is in us. Above all, let the church feel and show the power of the resurrection. The true method of gaining "the world" is by the awakening of the Church to a consciousness of those elements of truth in her possession. The enemy we fight is not men but a spirit,--the spirit of negation, destruction, and Satan. Let us believe in that Saviour who makes the soul at peace with God, reconciles man to the Infinite, and leads and encourages us to attempt to appropriate by our thoughts the undeveloped in our souls. On what then depends the future of the Church? We hear La Saussaye describe in eloquent words the conditions of her success: "I do not hesitate to declare," he says, "that the future of a nation depends on a revival, in the very bosom of the Protestant Church, of a profound and enlightened piety, of an alliance of faith with science, an alliance which constituted the strength of our illustrious wise men, and to which we ought to devote whatever greatness there is yet left us. It is only by the payment of this price that the Netherland Church can reconquer that place which she once occupied among Christian people. But since she does not fill this position, since we are afraid of majestic science, and only employ our resources to treat of questions in detail, since the stream of our piety runs through a narrow channel, and since science only moves in the direction of a foolish liberalism, European Protestantism must suffer from the unhappy vacancy that is now left in the ranks of the Church of the Netherlands."[97] The Church of Holland is now passing through the most important crisis in its history since the Arminian controversy. The orthodox party is vigorous, and many strong men are attaching themselves to it. But their foes are vigilant and bold, and the result cannot yet be seen. The crisis is a necessity created by the evil elements of the eighteenth century. When the mineral was in a state of fusion in the bowels of the earth, it became mixed with foreign and gross elements. But we cannot now disengage the impure accessory by breaking the mass with a hammer. If it be put into the crucible just as it is, the elements will separate of themselves. The theology of Holland, like that of every other Protestant country, is now in the crucible. The heat is intense, but the intensity guarantees the destruction of the dross which has gathered about the truth. There are many good men in the Church who cannot see the connection and bearing of the gigantic efforts now making for the overthrow of faith in Holland. Looking upon them as abnormal, they become discouraged. Therefore they have cherished a warm attachment to the doctrine of the speedy coming of Christ. It is now a more common expression than ever before in that country, "Christ cometh!" Next to the philosophical and religious causes of the present momentous crisis, stands the absence of popular thought and of Christian work. There had been a reliance on the symbols without proper meditation upon them, or a disposition to trace them back to their Biblical fountain. Men believed what their fathers had told them, or, as the French say, "_Parceque tout le monde le disait._" The teachers of the young thought in the old routine. But the Rationalistic theologians are driving every friend of the Church and every firm believer in Scripture to reason for himself, with the Bible for his basis; and in no country is religion more rapidly christianizing science than in Holland. Young theologians preach more earnestly than their predecessors had done for a century. La Saussaye is an illustration of how an individual is influencing the tendency of the theological mind. He has never published a complete system, though his friends are anxiously awaiting the appearance of his _Psychology_. It is the man himself who has done so much for emancipating the individual, and placing him upon the immovable truth of the Bible. Very recently the Church of Holland has applied herself to earnest, practical work. Her evangelizing efforts will now compare favorably with those of French Protestantism. In no country have the congregations been more attached to the clergy than in Holland. But the intimacy has diminished the development of individual labor and responsibility. Everything was left to the pastor. Religion consisted in being preached to and edified. Prayer meetings, and humanitarian and evangelizing associations were unknown. But, of late, many Sunday Schools have been organized; religious societies have been established; and missions have attracted profound attention. The first missionary society ever formed in Holland was the Moravian Mission to Zeist, in 1732. Sixty-five years elapsed before a second one came into being. Not one was instituted from 1797 to 1851. Since that date twelve foreign missionary organizations have been established, and the religious people of the country are devoting a large portion of their means and labor to their prosecution. So great is the popular interest in missions that an Evangelical National Missionary Festival, held in the open air in July, 1864, attracted many from the surrounding country to take part in the exercises. It was a Christian Feast of Tabernacles. The assembly met in a large pine wood. Carriages, horses, and the rude vehicles of the peasantry lined all the roads leading thither. The singing of the old Dutch Psalms could be heard at a great distance. The assembly, numbering from ten to twelve thousand, gathered around the pulpits erected in various places, where returned missionaries and celebrated preachers from different cities were speaking on topics adapted to the occasion. The scene was deeply solemn, and highly calculated to awaken and quicken the conscience of every hearer. Two Home Missions are contributing important service to the religious and physical improvement of the poor and neglected. One is the Society for National Christian Education, founded five years ago, and now under the presidency of that tireless Christian statesman, Groen van Prinsterer. Its centre is the Hague, but it has agents scattered throughout the country to seek out any locality that may need a school. It has normal schools in Rotterdam, Utrecht, Groningen, and Nymegen. It is educating many thousands of children who would otherwise go through life without any religious instruction. The other Home Mission, the Society for the Propagation of Christian Truth in Amsterdam, is more local in its character. Though very young, it has founded sixteen Sunday Schools, attended by two thousand children; a Christian lodging or boarding-house at the cheapest rate for homeless females; a room where the members of the society can regularly meet to attend Bible lectures, or to hear reports about home or foreign missions; an infant school; a drawing-school for boys; and knitting and sewing-schools for girls. A large popular religious library has been formed, which is constantly increased by the current useful literature. All of these institutions are under careful Christian direction.[98] The leaven of Christian faith is at work. The masses are beginning to feel its permeating and purifying power. La Saussaye has despondingly said that "what the church of Holland is now wanting is faith in itself, in the genius which has distinguished it, in the mission which is confided to it,--faith in its future." She must have faith in God before she can have faith in herself. The one leads to the other. God's strength is never perfected except in weakness. It is from without that we receive new power. The disciples who met in the upper room of the temple were visited by an energy to which they had been total strangers. The Spirit came not from their own hearts, but descended from heaven. Yet their hearts were immediately illuminated, and they felt the force of the promise, "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." Real strength is not self-development alone, but reliance on that Love and Power which, now, as long ago, can save the burning bush from destruction. FOOTNOTES: [92] D. Chantepie de la Saussaye. _La Crise Religieuse en Hollande, Souvenirs et Impressions_, pp. 24-29. [93] Da Costa, in his biography of Bilderdyk, enumerates other participants in the revival in the Dutch Church; among whom were the two brothers Van Hogendorp, Nicolaas Carbasius, J. T. Bodel, Nyenhuis, Brugmans, Elout, Ran Van Gameren, Baron Van Wassanaer, Willem de Clercq, the poet, and author of a work on the _Influence of Southern Literature on that of Holland_; Van der Kemp, author of an admirable _Biography of Maurice of Nassau_; and Koenen, author of an historical work on the _Refugees in Holland_. [94] An article by Scholten on _Modern Materialism and its Causes_, may be found in the _Progress of Religious Thought in the Protestant Church of France_. London: 1861, pp. 10-48. [95] _La Crise Religieuse en Hollande_, pp. 12-107. [96] _Oratio de Scepticismo, Hodiernis Theologis Caute Vitando_, quam habuit Johannes Jacobus Van Oosterzee Theologis Doctor: Roterodami, 1863. [97] _La Crise Religieuse en Hollande_, p. 200. [98] _Christian Work_, Sept. 1863, and July and August, 1864. CHAPTER XVI. FRANCE: RATIONALISM IN THE PROTESTANT CHURCH--THE CRITICAL SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY. Some French clergymen, who were sojourning in Berlin in 1842, asked Neander, "What ought to be done to arouse the Protestants of France to thinking upon theological subjects?" "Give yourselves no trouble on that score," replied the professor; "Theology will yet have its good day among you. You have in France the soil in which true theology loves to germinate and grow--I mean Christian life. This has brought you your great theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it is sure to do the same thing in the nineteenth." The present century has not yet run two-thirds of its course, and yet the prophecy has been literally fulfilled. The spectacle presented to-day in France is highly interesting. The period of indifference has already terminated. The first step toward new vitality has therefore been taken. French theology is displaying an animation and seriousness which may well excite the notice of the whole civilized world. The great minds are bestowing upon sacred subjects an attention nowhere surpassed in vigor and acuteness. Important religious questions are taking their place beside political themes, and the circle of theological readers and thinkers is constantly enlarging. Each class is deeply engaged in the discussion of all the new phases of opinion. Every man chooses his party, cherishes his own convictions, and preaches them boldly. The traveler who may make only a brief stay in Paris will find the representatives of all the professions spending the whole evening in the criticism of the last books from the Liberal Party, and of the rejoinders of their orthodox opponents. Now, for the first time since the seventeenth century, a state of general religious inquiry and earnestness exists. It is not difficult to interpret this quickening of national thought on theological questions. It means that France will have no small share in the decision of the great points at issue between evangelical believers and their critical, destructive antagonists. A half century ago the Reformed and Lutheran churches were sunk in skeptical formalism. They were divided into two parties, neither of which possessed spirit enough to defend its position, or grace enough to ask God for his blessing. One adhered to the cold Supernaturalism of the eighteenth century, the other to a system of philosophical Deism. The reduced state of piety was largely due to the oppression suffered at the hand of the state. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which deprived Protestants of both religious and civil liberty, occurred in October, 1685, and it was not until 1808 that the law of the 18th Germinal once more recognized their rights, and placed Catholicism and Protestantism on an equal basis. The whole interval was marked by a stagnation of fearful character. At the time of the Revocation, the Reformed church had eight hundred edifices and six hundred and forty pastors, but when the restoration occurred it had but one hundred and ninety churches and the same number of pastors. The apostasy of the Protestants went to a fearful extent. For example, at the very time of the infamous worship of the Goddess of Reason, a pastor and his elders carried their communion plate and the baptismal vessels to the mayor, to have them melted down for the nation. Improvement began about 1820. There were but three Protestant chapels in Paris, and the services were dull and unattractive. To the late Frederic Monod belongs the imperishable honor of commencing the renovation by means of his little Sunday school. "Never will the traces of his labors be effaced," says M. de Pressensé, "for he it is to whom we owe the first furrows in the vast field which now we rejoice to see white unto the harvest." A domestic evangelical spirit, embracing the most distant provinces, began to be apparent in the ministrations of the clergy and in the popular attendance at the services. A foreign agency also contributed to the awakening. In 1785 a Wesleyan mission was commenced in the Norman isle of Guernsey, and in the following year Adam Clarke was sent to Jersey. It was designed to make the Channel Islands the beginning of French missions. Wesley predicted that they would be outposts for evangelizing efforts all over the Continent. In a short time Jean de Quetteville and John Angel went over into Normandy, and preached the gospel in many villages. Dr. Coke, the superintendent of the Methodist missions, went with the former preacher to Paris, where they organized a short-lived mission. But the labors of Mahy, who had been ordained by Coke, were very successful. Large numbers came to his ministry, and many were converted through his instrumentality. When peace was declared after the battle of Waterloo, three men, Toase, Robarts, and Frankland, sailed for Normandy. In 1817 Charles Cook joined them. He went from town to town, stirring up the sluggish conscience of French Protestantism. He terminated his arduous toils in 1858, leaving behind him a French branch of the Methodist church, which embraces one hundred and fifty-two houses of worship, one hundred ministers, lay and clerical, and fifteen hundred members. Merle d'Aubigné has said of Dr. Cook that "the work which John Wesley did in Great Britain Charles Cook has done, though on a smaller scale, on the Continent." His death was lamented by all the leaders of French Protestantism. Professor G. De Félice, of Montauban, has affirmed that, of the instruments of the French awakening, "Dr. Charles Cook was not the least influential."[99] The new religious interest arising from the native and imported influences was so fatal to the prevalent skepticism that Voltaire and his school have now but few adherents. Skeptics of France consider that type effete, and unworthy of their support. "The present disciples of Voltaire," says Pastor Fisch, "are compelled to deny his language if they would remain true to the spirit of their master. For, to deride Jesus Christ would manifest an inexcusable want of respectability." But infidelity has only changed its position. Des Cartes, the apostle of Rationalism in France, had taught that God was only a God-Idea, or human thought continuing itself in divine thought and in infinity. He would make no greater admission than that God had put the world in motion. The principles of Des Cartes, clustering around this opinion, have never lost their hold upon the French mind, and are now influencing it to a remarkable degree. Cartesianism gained new power by the agency of the Eclectic School, whose champions were Royer-Collard, Maine de Biran, Cousin, and Jouffroy. Their great achievement was the unification of the philosophical systems of Germany and Scotland. But the Eclectics are now in a state of dissolution. Positivism, as a subordinate system, is the work of Comte alone. This, too, is every year losing its hold upon the land of its birth. Its fundamental principle is, that in virtue of an inner law of development of the mind, the whole human race will gradually emancipate itself from all religion and metaphysics, and substitute for the worship of God that of love of humanity, or a mundane religion. The law of development consists in the psychological experience that all the ideas and cognitions of the human mind have necessarily to pass through the three stages of theology, metaphysics, and positivism. It is only when it arrives at the stand-point of absolutely positive, or mathematically exact knowledge, that human thought attains its goal of perfection. The religion of mankind is divided into three stages; fetichism, polytheism, and monotheism. Its representatives are Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity. Catholicism is better suited than any other form of religion to the perfect development of human society. The Christian world is now in the transitory stage of metaphysics, which, by and by, will lead to the golden age of Positivism. This is the absolute religion, or the worship of humanity, which needs no God or revelation. While Comte has so deeply impressed the thinking circles of France that his opinions are still perceptible in the doctrines of the Liberal Party, another great agent has been operating upon the young, uneducated, and laboring classes. We refer to the light French novel, or _feuilleton_ literature. Such writers as Sue, George Sand, and Dumas, father and son, have published many volumes which were issued in cheap style, and afterward scattered profusely over the land. These works have been extensively read, not only in France, but in all parts of the Continent, Great Britain, and the United States. A recent traveler has averred that he found many persons perusing them in the reading-rooms of Athens. But the public mind sometimes needs a path by which it can effect a transition from a skeptical to an evangelical condition. May it not be that, as far as France is concerned, the minds of the masses have, by this agency, been deflected to such an extent from the infidelity of Encyclopædism that popular evangelical literature will now find a readier entrance than it could otherwise have effected? If a taste for reading be once created, it may be won, under judicious management and by the aid of God's Spirit, to a purer cause than that which first excited it. The tendency of the works in question is indisputably pernicious, but, if we may think they will serve as a medium of passage for the French masses to the reading and adoption of the great truths of the Gospel, let us not be too slow to accept the consolation. Such are some of the agencies which have been operating upon the French mind. It now becomes necessary to take a survey of the present theological movements, and to show in what relations the Rationalistic and evangelical thinkers stand to each other. The Critical School of Theology is beyond all comparison the greatest foe of orthodoxy in France. The English Rationalists exhibit but little scholarly depth, having borrowed their principal thoughts from Germany. The Dutch are too speculative to be successful at present, and the Germans have already grown weary of their long warfare. But the French School, claiming such writers as Scherer, Colani, Pecaut, Réville, Reuss, Coquerel, and Renan, is not to be disregarded, nor are its arguments to be met with indifference. It is, however, most gratifying to state that those ardent friends of the Gospel who resist the attacks of this school manifest a zeal, learning, and skill, quite equal to their ill-armed opponents. By virtue of that principle of centralization which has long been in force in France, the Critical School of Theology makes Paris the chief seat of its influence. Availing itself of the advantage of the press, it now publishes an organ adapted to every class of readers.[100] The members of the Critical School are connected with the Protestant Church, yet they claim to teach whatever views they may see proper to entertain. They profess deep attachment to the Church, and in their journals advise every one to unite himself with the fold of Christ. If the Reformed Church, in which the most of the Rationalists are found, were not bound to the State by the Concordat and Budget it is probable that it would be divided. One branch would be the Reformed Church of France, founded in 1559, with a clearly determined creed, which none but a General Synod would have power to modify. The other would be the Church of the Future, which would proclaim the admission of no dogmas, no liturgy, and no discipline, and would give power to every one to preach contradictory and negative doctrines in its pulpits.[101] The association of Rationalists in Paris is called the Liberal Protestant Union. It claims that Protestantism, as represented by the churches, has ceased to be progressive and civilizing. According to its platform, there is no religious authority but free examination; while hostility to all common symbols, and to all profession of faith, is a duty. The Union was immediately opposed. Among other indications of the ill-favor with which it was received was a Remonstrance, signed by some of the most distinguished laymen of Paris. Their language in defense of the Bible as authority for faith was unequivocal. "We do not believe," they said, "that righteousness is indifference; nor do we believe that there is, or can be, a church without a doctrine, a religious doctrine, which unites believers and forms the bond of the Church." The opinions of the French Critical School of Theology, at which the Remonstrance was aimed, may be briefly stated. No system is adopted. It professes none, and studiously avoids the embarrassment consequent upon any obligation. Colani says, "We do not present to our readers any fixed system; we have none; we are _asking for_ one conscientiously, patiently; with all our contemporaries, we are in the midst of an epoch of transition. We call around us those who, dissatisfied with the forms of an antiquated system of dogma, and fully admitting salvation by Christ alone, desire to labor in raising the new edifice which is to be built on the solid basis of Him who is at once the son of man and the Son of God.... Not a school, not a system, but a tendency is that which we represent. The device on our banner is 'The True Development of Christian Thought.'"[102] It is difficult to arrive at a knowledge of what this leader is so modest as to call only a "tendency." It claims to have the right of judgment concerning all the truths of the Bible; holds that the _Rochelle Confession_ is a very good monument of the faith of the fathers, but should not now be imposed; that the Bible has no more authority than the books of Plato or Aristotle; that each man has a revelation in himself, free from the imperfections of the Mosaic and Christian revelations; that science, criticism, and examination open the only path to truth; that miracles should be discarded; that Protestantism has lost sight of its mission; and that a second Reformation, embodied in the Church of the Future, is needed to complete the first.[103] An acknowledged leader of the liberal party has made some statements which more nearly approach the enunciation of a system than we have been able to find in any other authority of French Rationalism. M. Réville says, "The modern Protestant theology [Rationalism] aspires not to deny the doctrines of the Reformation absolutely, but to preserve the truth that is in them by filtering them through a medium more conformed to our science and our reason. The dogmas of original sin, the trinity, the incarnation, justification by faith, future rewards, and the inspiration of the sacred writings, may serve as examples. On the first of these dogmas, renouncing the idea of an original perfection, the reality of which is contrary to reason, and to all our historical analogies, modern theology would insist on the evil influence which determines to evil an individual plunged in society where sin reigns, on the necessary passage from a state of innocence to a state of moral consciousness and struggle, on the fall which man endures when he sinks from his higher nature to his lower, and renounces God's will to serve his own. As to the trinity, avoiding the scholastic and contradictory tritheism of the old creeds, intent on vigorously preserving God's essential unity, and at the same time his conscious or personal life, this theology attaches itself to the grand idea of the Divine Word pervading the world, as the uttered thought, the objective revelation of God, conceived as manifesting himself to himself in his works. In humanity this eternal word becomes the Holy Spirit, the light which lightens every man coming into the world, but which shines in all its splendor in Jesus Christ. In this series of ideas the incarnation loses that stamp of absolute contradiction which it takes from the orthodox idea of one and the same person, who is at the same time God and man, finite and infinite, localized and omnipresent, praying and prayed to, knowing and not knowing all things, and impeccable, yet tempted. The pure and real humanity of Christ is the basis of the system, and the system may be summed up in these words: The Son of Man is the Son of God. Man is justified by faith, not as the old orthodoxy taught, that is, because he believes that satisfaction was given to God in his place and on his behalf, but because he has confidence in the eternal love of God, and in his own destination for good, as evidenced by Christ in his life and in his death. "The eternity of future sufferings gives place to an idea more in conformity with sound philosophy, and the revelation of infinite love, according to which, pain resulting from sin, can have for its object only the amelioration of the sinner, and special stress is laid on the spiritual truth that heaven and hell are much less different places than different states of the soul. The inspiration of the Scriptures, that dogma the truth of which consisted in the scriptural value of the Biblical books, as giving a sure basis for faith, as supplying aliment to piety, and elevating the heart, more and more loses its miraculous character to approach analogous phenomena drawn from religions in general, or from other fields where the mind of man reveals itself as inspired. The change of views, however, does not take from the Bible its character as a truly divine book; still does it remain in religion the Book of Books."[104] It is unsafe to adduce the testimony of any member of this school as an absolute standard of the theological position of all the rest. There is a wide diversity of opinion among them, as any one will perceive who has attempted the comparison. But after examining the individual opinions of some of these men, it will not be difficult to form a correct judgment of their intellectual position as a whole. One of the most laborious of the number is Edmond Scherer, formerly Professor of Theology in the University of Geneva. His first point of departure from orthodoxy was on the inspiration and authority of the Bible. He became absorbed in German Rationalistic criticism, and adopted its leading principles. His skeptical views caused such offense that he was led to resign his position, when he soon commenced the publication of his views in the new _Revue de Théologie_ at Strasburg. He has subsequently kept aloof from all participation in the State Church and confined himself mostly to writing essays. Some of them have recently been collected into a volume, entitled _Miscellanies of Religious Criticism_.[105] Protestantism, according to Scherer, has a right to free inquiry. Once give it the Bible as authority, and you drive it back to Catholicism. This is what has already been done by Protestants, whose religion has numbered its days. Authority has been its ruin, and now it has no liberty. The Evangelists contradict each other in many instances. The Apostles failed to quote the Old Testament correctly. Their gross errors are sufficient of themselves to overthrow all the claims of Scripture to authority. It is not certain that the Gospel of John is authentic; that the discourses of Jesus are correctly reported; that Jesus taught his consubstantiality with the Father; that the divinity of Christ involves his omniscience; that Christ had any intention to decide questions of criticism and canonicity; that he believed in the inspiration of the Old Testament; that he acknowledged the divinity of the Canticles and Ecclesiastes; or that, if he sanctioned the inspiration of the Old Testament, he did the same thing concerning the New. The New Testament, says Scherer, is full of errata. It contains different records of the same facts. Take as an example the conversion of Saul, of which there are three accounts in the Acts. The discourses of Christ are described in different contexts; the same discourses are not related in similar words; and there is no exactness in the narratives. There are differences in the Gospels, affecting the ideas and actions of Jesus, which sometimes amount to positive contradictions. They exist also between the first three Gospels and that of John. The last Evangelist gives a very different account of many points in the history of the passion and resurrection of Christ, especially in respect to the last Supper and the chronology of the whole passion-week. Christ announced his second coming as near at hand. Hence he, or the Evangelists in reporting him, were grossly in error. There are, in a word, serious objections to accepting the New Testament as authoritative; because we find in it the use of the Septuagint; quotations from the Old Testament in a sense not intended in the original; influence of Jewish traditions; Rabbinical arguments; uncertainty in reports of the discourses of Christ; contradictions between different accounts of the same facts; errors in chronology and history; and Messianic hopes and expectations not in accordance with external events. What right have we, therefore, to accept as infallible that in which we find such an admixture of error? It is the duty of religious science to reconcile revelation with the growing requirements of human thought, and to smooth over the transition from the dogma of the past to that of the future. Dogmatic exegesis does this by separating the substance from the form, faith from formulas, and by distinguishing and pointing out the religious element under the temporary expression which reveals it. What then is the Bible which Scherer's exegesis presents to us? Faith in it rests on two bases; _first_, the inspiration and canon of Scripture; and _second_, the subjects or organs of inspiration. The first is untenable and false, for the stand-point of authority has already spoiled everything in our theology. Authority determines beforehand what we must believe, whereas reason alone should perform that office. There is a communicated revelation to our own minds which should claim the high office of authority. The Bible, in an objective sense, is a divine book, because it contains the remembrance of the most important events in the religious history of the world. Judaism and Christianity are there in their completeness. The Bible is therefore more than a book; it presents us with the living personality of those who founded Christ's Kingdom on earth. Inspiration, such as we find in the Scriptures, is not confined to them, for it is immanent wherever there is intelligence. The spirit of the Bible is the eternal spirit of God; but it is the same spirit which has inspired all good men in past Scriptural periods,--the Augustines, St. Bernards, Arndts, and Vinets. It is a falsehood of theology against faith to deny these men the same kind of inspiration which we find in the Scriptures. Biblical inspiration differs in different writers. They wrote from diverse stand-points. The chroniclers of Scripture told all they knew, but not much could be expected of them. Who would dare to speak of the inspiration of the books of Samuel, Ruth, Kings, and Chronicles? But let us hear what Scherer says of the miracles of Christ. No evangelical facts should be taken as points of departure in testing Christianity. It is absurd to speak of Christ's miracles as being designed for manifestations of his divinity. Conceding them to be prodigies, they are far below those of Moses and Elijah. Christ did not work miracles in attestation of his power. He performed them in connection with his own words or expressions of other persons. When he gave miraculous power to his disciples, he simply did it as a means of beneficence. Miracles, in their true sense, are opposed to both the Jewish and Christian notions of them. Those of Christ are not the attestation and recommendation of his ministry; they are acts of that ministry; acts which have not their value exterior to themselves; whose value is not in their argumentative character, but in their own intrinsic nature. They constitute an integral part of the gospel, but nothing more. Christ's cures are not solely the symbol, they are the counterpart of the spiritual redemption brought by him unto the world. The authenticity of miracles is another question, and belongs altogether to exegesis.[106] Taking the Scripture narrative as a whole, we greatly err in attaching any authority to it. Mohammed and the false prophets should be placed side by side with Moses and Jesus Christ; for the religion of Christ is a purely human one, like that of Buddha and the Arabian prophet. The Mosaic account of creation is evidently absurd; for man was at first a monkey. M. Larroque contends that the time has now come for a total departure from the last pagan tradition. Christianity has passed its allotted time, and is now in its death-pangs. Material interests claim minute attention. All we want is the assertion of a pure, rational religion. It was a great misfortune that Marcus Aurelius did not popularize the theism which he expressed in his writings. It would not then have been possible for Constantine to establish the Christian religion, and the world would have been spared the irruption of the barbarians, and the many subsequent periods of darkness.[107] M. Rougemont adheres to the accommodation-theory. It is the only method of relief in this day of darkness. God, in revelation, has only addressed himself to the physical man. He communicated his spirit--not the Holy Spirit--to the prophets. But that was exterior action. The sacred volume is the historic witness of revelation, and is merely a relative necessity. The Church has existed before the Scriptures, and could still live if they were extinguished.[108] M. Colani is prominent both as preacher and writer. A pastor of Strasburg being sick, he was urged to supply the pulpit for a few Sabbaths. Though he accepted with great reluctance, he was successful in pleasing the congregation. He was chosen permanent pastor, and has continued the functions of his office, together with the chief editorship of the _Revue de Théologie_. His opinions are to be found in that periodical, and in several successful volumes of sermons. He professes to be neither satisfied with Rationalism in its destructive sense, nor with orthodoxy. He is confessedly one of the champions of the Critical School. Skepticism, he contends, is perfectly legitimate. We are authorized to doubt; our opinions are fallible; we must be prepared to change them whenever we think we can find better ones. The Bible is intended to reveal to us a life, not a dogma. We find in it no effort to describe dogmas; no theological criticisms; no system of morality.[109] Religious inspiration is nothing but an extraordinary kindling of the divine spirit inherent in human nature. The Scripture writers are imperfect and limited by their own intelligence. The only way to reconcile religion and science is by history. We must study man not as an individual or nation, but as to his human nature. By doing this we will not take a characteristic for the man himself. Man is, by the testimony of history, a religious being, and history reveals his destiny. Immortality is accepted. We have a personal life going into the infinite. Humanity develops itself by the action of the individual genius, and the individual only successfully unfolds himself by not breaking the bond which unites him to the general development of his species. We must consider the Bible as a collection of documents, over which criticism has absolute rights. We must distinguish between the thought of Christ and that of his historians. They insisted on what seemed to them miracles. Christ is in open conflict with the principle which would make miracles the necessary sign of a true revelation. He has taught the world to recognize God in the regular operation of natural laws. He never lays down any dogmatic conditions, and does not make religious character dependent on the reception of any class of doctrines. We must have faith in him alone, and not in his words. To be a Christian is to participate in the general life of the Christian church, and to take part with others in the labor of the Christian mind.[110] M. Pecaut affirms that the present position of the French Protestant church is no longer tenable, for its principle of doctrinal faith restrains free examination. It is, however, in a transition-period, and there is an indication of progress in the present interest in great questions of theology. For the doctrines of Protestantism we should substitute a pure, simple Deism; we should substitute philanthropism for morality. The Bible is not entitled to authority, for it has no trace of inspiration. There is no such thing as mediation. We must not attach too much importance to the Messianic idea, for this would imply a special revelation. The Gospels rest on a very insecure basis. The theses of Paul betray a continued oscillation between the mystic and Jewish conceptions. As a whole, the Bible is not divine, and we should at once discard faith in its authoritative character. The only way by which Christ now acts upon persons is by the force of his example and ideas, just as Moses, Mohammed, and Socrates now influence men. Religious faith is not necessarily faith in Christ. He was not free from sin in a moral sense; he had a natural sinfulness by virtue of his humanity.[111] M. Grotz, pastor at Nismes, was once under the influence of A. Monod, but owing to the withdrawal of Scherer from orthodoxy, he joined the Rationalists. He holds that revelation is not peculiar to the Scriptures. There are many kinds of revelation, and we find them continually in history. Every manifestation of God is a revelation. We must always examine freely and critically; nowhere does Christ enjoin the contrary. We need to use our intellectual faculties and conscience. The greatest revelation is Christ,--not his doctrines, but himself. We should always keep prophecy and miracles in the background, for they are minor questions and should occupy an humble position.[112] Of all the members of the Critical School, Renan is the best known to the English and American public. He has written a number of works on various topics,[113] but it is by his _Life of Jesus_ that he has gained greatest celebrity. God, Providence, and immortality are, with him, dull words about which philosophy has long played and finally interpreted in the most refined sense. There is no reason why a pappoose should be immortal. Religion is a part of man's nature, and, in return, he is benefited and elevated by it. God's revelation is in man's innate consciousness. There is no necessity for miracles; all that we need in this life is the mere result of the operation of natural forces. The present age is one in which we should freely criticise whatever comes up for acceptance; but it is wrong to assume the propagandist. Let men have their own views; we have no right to force others upon them. Man is very much attached to the theories contained in the world's first religion. He has given it symbolical expression, for it is thus that religion will always embody itself. Man wants some way by which to tell how and what he thinks of God.[114] The Gospels were all written, Renan contends, in the first century. The Jews were anticipating somebody who would prove a means of their improvement. Christ fitted the ideal, and the way was smoothed for his success by their visions, dreams, and hopes. The beautiful scenery of lake, valley, mountain, and river developed his poetic temperament. Then the Old Testament made a deep impression on him, for he imagined it was full of voices pointing him out as the great future reformer. He was unacquainted with Hellenic culture, and hence it was his misfortune not to know that miracles had been wisely rejected by the schools which had received the Greek wisdom. In course of time a period of intoxication came upon him. He imagined that he was to bring about a new church which he everywhere calls the Kingdom of God. His views were Utopian; he lived in a dream life, and his idealism elevated him above all other agitators. He founded a sect, and his disciples became intoxicated with his own dreams. But he did not sanction all their excesses: for instance, he did not believe the inexact and contradictory genealogies which we find in his historians. Yet he was a thorough thaumaturgist and sometimes indulged a gloomy feeling of resentment. His miracles are greatly exaggerated. He probably did some things which, to ignorant minds, appeared prodigies, but they were very few in number. He never rose from the dead; he had never raised Lazarus. By and by, the love of his disciples created him into a divinity, clothed him with wonderful powers, made him greater than he had ever pretended to be. Hence Christianity arose. It was love like that of Mary Magdalene, "a hallucinated woman, whose passion gave to the world a resurrected God."[115] Renan's position will explain all that he says of Christ. He looks at him from the stand-point of naturalism. Christ is no mediator. As an American writer has well said: "From this life of Christ no one would ever infer that there was sin in the world and that Christ came to save sinners." The reception of the _Life of Jesus_ was most hearty throughout France. Criticism from every side was employed upon it. Over a hundred thousand copies were soon sold, and translations were made into all the European tongues. Its greatest success was in Roman Catholic countries. In France, Italy, Austria, Belgium, and Spain it has found a warm reception, but in the north of Europe, Protestant Germany, and England, it has had less success. As to the ultimate effect of the work, we have every reason to value the opinion of M. de Pressensé, who has surveyed the whole ground, and also written the best criticism upon Renan that has appeared in any country. He says: "I am persuaded that the results accomplished by it will be, in the main, good; that it will not shake the faith of any true believer; that it will produce, with many of those who were wavering, a good reaction, which will bring them back to a positive faith; and that the common sense of the people will not fail to see that it is not thus that history is written, and that the problem of the origin of Christianity still remains unexplained in its grandeur." It is likely that an advantage will accrue to Renan from the recent action of the Government. He occupied the chair of Oriental Languages in the College of France, but was deposed by the Minister of Public Instruction. Boasting that he would still retain his title, he continued to teach in his private house. He lost his salary, but claimed the martyr-crown. When last heard from, he was traveling in the countries described in the New Testament as the scene of the labors of the apostles. His avowed purpose is to publish an attack upon the apostolic history. Athanase Coquerel, jr., editor of the _Lien_, and a celebrated preacher, justly takes rank among the leaders of the Critical School. He has recently been the subject of an excitement of little less absorbing interest than the sensation occasioned by Renan. Fourteen years ago, Martin Paschoud, one of the Rationalistic Reformed pastors of Paris, selected him as his suffragan or assistant. The Consistory ratified the appointment. In the Reformed church the assistant pastors do not hold their office by the same title as the titular or regular pastors. The continuance of the former is subject to renewal every two or three years by the Presbyterial Council. But the regular pastors, when first nominated by the Consistory, are afterwards confirmed by the Government. They cannot be removed except by the action of the state. This is the reason why so many Rationalistic pastors are now in full possession of prominent Protestant pulpits in France. No synod, consistory, or presbytery has power to try them for heresy. In fact, there is no standard of doctrine by which heresy can be tested. There being no General Assembly, with power either to establish new standards of doctrine or to give vitality to the old ones, the pulpits of the Reformed church are open to every form of teaching that may profess to be Christian.[116] Coquerel's last renewal expired about the end of 1863, when his re-appointment became necessary. But his decline into Rationalism had been so rapid that the Presbyterial Council refused to renew the mandate, and he lost his position as suffragan by a vote of twelve against three. He subsequently published a confession of his faith, addressed to his former catechumens, in which the only point of real defense which he substantiates is the charge of Pantheism. He strongly affirms his belief in the personality of God. From M. Coquerel's essays we can derive a correct view of his Rationalistic principles. He affirms that his opinions on the trinity, original sin, the atonement, inspiration of the Scriptures, and other doctrines, called fundamental, are not a little, but _altogether_ different from the orthodox views. He does not consider the Bible inspired, and has therefore written a work in defense of Renan, his "dear and learned friend." As for the Gospels, he finds in them the sublimest of all histories on the one hand, and traces of legends on the other; doctrines and precepts of eternal validity in one place, and stains of the errors of the age in which the books were written, in another. Reason has the right of judging all the truths of revelation. The Confession of Faith of the sixteenth century is a very good monument of the faith of our fathers, but should not now be imposed. The Apostles and Evangelists never made any claim to infallibility. There are two groups of views concerning Christ in the New Testament: _First_, that contained in Paul's epistles, especially in Hebrews. Paul did not identify Christ with God, nor did he misconceive the humanity of Christ, and attribute preëxistence to him. _Second._ All the second group, consisting of the epistles of James and Peter, the Acts, and the Apocalypse, rest on a purely historical view. To the writers of the latter, Jesus seemed the Messiah; hence we have from them all that is extraordinary in his history. Christ meant in Matt. xi. 27, that he had received his knowledge from God. He did not refer to his own essence. Literal interpretation of Scripture does not bring us to a knowledge of Christ. His humanity, being all that is valuable in his character, contains the mystery that belongs more or less to every individual. His commission from God does not differ from that of other men. That which distinguishes him from his species was his knowledge of humanity and of the future. He had not omniscience, nor infallibility; nothing but superior knowledge. He had his gross defects; for example, his belief in the power of evil spirits. Yet Christ was not a real sinner, and he represented and realized progress without any arrest. Thus he is the ideal and model of humanity. That which distinguishes Coquerel's views from Socinianism is his Christology. Contending for the moral purity of Christ, he holds that he was the second Adam. But Christ was not the Son of God. He was so denominated just as we term a hero the Son of Mars. We must look at the Scriptures in the light of reason; then we shall behold the fabulous element. Many parts differ in quality, while some are not authentic. The Second Epistle of Peter, for example, was neither written by that apostle nor was it a product of his age. But authority does not rest in the letter, or in the leaves of Scripture. The divine spirit acts in the soul freely and independently of the letter. It is high time that we renounce the puerile, disrespectful, and contradictory worship of the letter. The letter killeth. The French Critical School numbers among its adherents many young and talented theologians, some of whom are already distinguished for profound learning and literary activity. But the history of Skepticism discloses the fact that religious error has always attracted the young to its embrace. One half of the triumphs of infidelity are attributable to the flattering promises which it makes to those who have not lived long enough to know that infidelity is nothing but a colossal structure of egotism. The deluding voice says to the young man, "You live in a progressive age, and why are you not progressive yourself? Your fathers believed the old Confessions, imagined Christ to be divine, and the Scriptures inspired. We do not blame them much, for they knew no better. But, if you follow in their footsteps, the world will never give you any credit for originality; your slow chariot will move on in the old rut; you will never accomplish anything; your generation will be in advance of you. Be a man! The field of usefulness, prominence, and honor, opens before you. Think for yourself! The Bible is a book of the past, and you should have more manliness and independence than to be guided by its declarations." It is not surprising that the temptation to fall into this snare is, for many, too great to be resisted. This is true not only of many young Frenchmen, but also of large numbers of Englishmen and Americans, who are casting about for a permanent creed. When they yield, they little dream of the unhappiness in store for them. They never have the consolation derived from settled opinions; life passes without a fixed faith; old age becomes miserable; and death, however much it may appear to be a relief, is a step into darkness and uncertainty. FOOTNOTES: [99] Stevens, _History of Methodism_, Vol. 2, pp. 331-339. [100] For thinking circles, it issues the _Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie Chrétienne_, founded fifteen years ago by Scherer and Colani. It influences the general public by the daily political paper, _Le Temps_, and the _Revue Germanique_. The Strasburg _Revue_ and Paris _Lien_, are for the special benefit of Protestants in general; while the _Disciple de Jesus Christ_ and _Piété-Charité_ are designed for children and uneducated persons. [101] M. De Coninck, _Christian Work_, April, 1863. [102] _Progress of Religious Thought in the Protestant Church of France_, pp. 8-9. [103] _L'Église Réformée de France et la Théologie Nouvelle_, pp. 5-7. [104] _Progress of Religious Thought in the Protestant Church of France_, pp. 89-90. [105] _Progress of Religious Thought in the Protestant Church of France._ _Biographical Notices_, pp. iii.-iv. [106] Essays: _Theological Conversations_; _Errata of the New Testament_; _What the Bible is_; _The Miracles of Christ_. [107] _Examen Critique des Doctrines de la Religion Chrétienne_; _Renovation Religieuse_. [108] _Christ et ses Témoins._ [109] _Revue de Théologie._ Oct. 1853. [110] Essay: _Views and Aim_. Sermons: _What there is in the Bible_; _The Simplicity of the Gospel_. [111] _Le Christ et la Conscience._ [112] Essay: _What is Revelation?_ [113] _Studies of Religious History_; _On the Origin of Language_; _Averroes and Averroism_; _History and comparative System of the Semitic Languages_; _Book of Job_; _Essays on Morals and Criticism_; _Solomon's Song_. [114] _Miscellanies._ [115] _Life of Jesus._ American Edition. [116] McClintock, Letter of March, 1864, in _New York Methodist_. CHAPTER XVII. FRANCE CONTINUED: EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY OPPOSING RATIONALISM. The influences operating against the integrity and progress of the Protestant church of France are opposed by vigorous agencies. From the clergy and laity men of eminent endowments have arisen who, in ecclesiastical councils, and through the press, have defended evangelical Christianity with a spirit worthy of their Huguenot ancestors. Their task has been herculean. At every point of the horizon infidelity has appeared, and sought to gain a hearing in Paris. Romanism has crippled the advance of truth among the masses. The priesthood enjoy the favor of the government. But the faithful and learned adherents to orthodoxy in all parts of the empire are able to cope with their antagonists. Inspired by such men as Vinet and Monod, they do not stand merely on the defensive, but are constantly aggressive. Foremost of the modern reformers of France stands the name of M. Edmond de Pressensé. He is a vigorous writer, takes an active part in public religious movements, and edits the _Revue Chrétienne_, a theological monthly, which, in both the ability and orthodoxy exhibited in its contents, has no superior in the world. Through this medium M. de Pressensé is able to keep up a constant attack upon his adversaries, and to discover all their subterfuges as fast as they may appear. We do not look to this theologian for a system, because he publishes his views mostly as replies to the assaults of Rationalism. Yet, by an analysis of his writings, we shall find him entertaining such opinions as do equal honor to his devout spirit and gigantic intellect. M. de Pressensé believes that it is the duty of the Church not to create a moderate Rationalism to take the place of the bolder system, but to engage anew in a vigorous warfare against a school that would contest the divine basis on which Christianity rests. Such, he holds, is the task of the Christian philosophy of the present day. Evangelical Protestantism is everywhere manifesting a necessity of reorganization. And it has need to do so. The Church of the present day is engaged in an inner crisis, which, in one respect, is legitimate; for it has the great burden of expurgation and reconstruction upon it. The burden consists in separating the immortal truth of the gospel from human imperfections, and in finding in it a more complete expression. The present crisis has dangers and temptations which, in our day, render moral and intellectual life very difficult, and multiply shipwrecks before our eyes. "We wish," M. de Pressensé declares for himself and his co-laborers, "to serve the cause of evangelical theology, and nothing else. We do not lift a standard which would summon all opinions and systems without distinction. We stand upon the position that there is a positive revelation, which is not the most distinguished product of human reason, but a divine work of redemption by him whom we appeal to as the Son of Man and the Son of God, who 'died for our sins and rose again for our justification.' It is in the Holy Scriptures that we find the revelation which supplies the immortal wants of our conscience. Apostolical Christianity does not come to us as the first theological elaboration, the first system in a series. It is Christianity itself, and consequently the primitive type, from which we ought never to wander. It is the norm and rule of theology. Within these limits we freely admit the liberty of thought. Variety of opinions has nothing which frightens us; and we would regard uniformity and unanimity on secondary points as a fearful evil."[117] The purity of the Protestant theology of France is an aim constantly before M. de Pressensé. He holds that, notwithstanding the diversity of its formulæ, this theology is distinguished by two features: _first_, it accepts the authority of the Holy Scriptures, and considers them alone as containing the normal type of Christian thought; _second_, it believes firmly in redemption, and that is in the salvation of ruined humanity brought about by the sacrifice of the Man-God. Though the fall of man was great, it was not absolute. Man was ruined by apostasy, but he was not left destitute of all higher life. He retained some vestige of his primal nature. A sense of the divine, a religious aptitude, and the longing to return to God, subsist in his heart. These render his redemption possible; for the moral law, which had been vindicated by the terrible consequences of the fall, is maintained in all its integrity in the restoration of the fallen creature. A certain harmony was necessary between man and God in order to salvation. Had our nature been thoroughly perverted, no contact would have been possible. We would not have had the capacity to receive from God that great gift which was the only mode of repairing the fall of beings created in his image and formed to possess him.[118] This being the condition of man, M. de Pressensé maintains that the result of this divine teaching was to convince him of his weakness and evoke the desire of salvation. Therefore Christianity comes in to supply a felt want of human nature. Here is the first point of contact between conscience and revelation. The Cross is not simply a testimony to the Father's love, like the flowers at our feet, or the starry sky above our head. It is the altar of the great sacrifice which restores man to God and God to man. Christ is for us a Saviour as well as a Revealer.[119] There is one perfection which can be perceived by neither the eye of the body nor by that of the soul, unless it be revealed by a supernatural fact. We mean the mercy of God. Pardon does not consist in the pure and simple abrogation of condemnation; nor can it restore guilty humanity to communion with God while the state of revolt lasts. Humanity can only be saved by returning to God, and it will not return to God until the divine law has been perfectly filled by it. Christ alone is capable of completely carrying out the divine law. The obedience must go as far as sacrifice, for the fall of man demands it. By coming here, Christ took upon himself the wrath of God. He who was without sin was treated like a sinner. He suffered and died, but his sufferings and death rose to the height of a free sacrifice of love and obedience. Condemnation, thus accepted, is no longer condemnation. It is an act of union with God, _un acte réparateur_,--a redemption. The Bible, according to M. de Pressensé, is not a metaphysical geometry, but a description of the struggle of Divine love with human liberty. This great Bible history, if we consider it at the time when the Redeemer accomplished our salvation, stands before us as the most striking consecration of the moral idea. Redemption is the painfully reëstablished agreement between the human and the divine will by a mysterious sacrifice. It is the most perfect reciprocal penetration of the divine and human by means of liberty. If the moral idea be consecrated by Christ, it will lead to the Gospel. No one will become a Christian unless he has determined to listen to his conscience, and never question concerning moral certainty. We know of no other corner-stone in morality or in religion. But, in order to bring the truths of the Gospel home to the heart, there must be religious liberty. Christianity is the religion of love, but to what could a reconciliation amount which is not free? It is the religion of freedom; and God, in order to save us, has need of freedom. M. de Pressensé, in his recent discussion on the religious bearings of the French Revolution, proves from an historical stand-point the absolute necessity of the separation of Church and State. His excellent work is entitled, _The Church and the French Revolution; a History of the Relations of Church and State from 1789 to 1802_. The motto upon the title-page, derived jointly from Mirabeau and Cavour, will indicate the spirit of the book: "Remember that God is as necessary as liberty to the French people--The Free Church in the Free State." We trust the day is distant when M. de Pressensé will be compelled to lay aside the pen. He is engaged in a contest of momentous issues. That he has violent enemies might be expected; yet he has also the sympathy and prayers of many warm supporters. Hopeful and ardent, he sees indications of success where others imagine darkness and failure. And why not? He has God and truth on his side. The Evangelical School has an able defender from the laity, the distinguished scholar and statesman, M. Guizot. No one has taken a deeper interest in the present controversy from its inception to the present time than that venerable man. It had been supposed for some time that he was meditating a reply to Renan's _Life of Jesus_. We now have, as the latest fruit of his graceful and prolific pen, the first instalment of the _Meditations upon the Christian Religion_, a work which will prove not only a fitting answer to his countryman's attack on the Gospels, but will serve equally well as an antidote to the present skeptical tendencies of French theology. According to M. Guizot, there is a great intellectual and social revolution now in progress. Its characteristics and tendencies are the scientific spirit, and the preponderance of the democratic principle and of political liberty. Christianity has submitted to tests and trials, and it must pass through those of the present day. It has surmounted all others, and so it will overcome this. Its essence and origin would not be divine if it did not adapt itself to all the different forms of human institutions. Christian people must not deceive themselves as to the nature of the present struggle, the perils which it threatens, and the legitimate arms with which to oppose infidelity. Skeptics attack the Christian religion with brutal fanaticism and dexterous learning. They appeal to sincere convictions, and the worst passions. Some contest Christianity as false, others reject it as too exacting and imposing excessive restraint. Concerning the Church and its relations to the enemies of evangelical faith, M. Guizot asks, "Does it comprehend properly and carry on suitably the warfare in which it is engaged? Does it tend to reëstablish a real peace, and active harmonious relations between itself and that general society in the midst of which it is living? In order to answer these inquiries, he defines the church. It is not one branch, but the whole body of Christ on earth. Therefore, when men deny the supernatural world, the inspiration of the Scriptures, and the divinity of Jesus Christ, they really assail the whole body of Christians--Romanists, Protestants, or Greeks. They are virtually attempting to destroy the foundations of faith in all the belief of Christians, whatever their particular differences of religious opinion, or forms of ecclesiastical government. All Christian churches live by faith. No form of government, monarchical or republican, concentrated or diffused, suffices to maintain a church. There is no authority so strong, and no liberty so broad, as to be able in a religious society to dispense with the necessity of faith. What is it that unites in a church if it is not faith? Faith is the bond of souls. When the foundations of their common faith are attacked, the differences existing between Christian churches upon special questions, or the diversities of their organization or government, become secondary interests. It is from a common peril that they have to defend themselves, or they must be content to see dried up the common source from which they all derive sustenance and life.[120]" In the _Meditation_ already published, M. Guizot discusses the essence of Christianity, creation, revelation, inspiration of the Scriptures, God according to the Biblical account, and Jesus according to the Gospel narrative. In order to complete his work, the author designs to write three more parts. In the second, he will examine the authenticity of the Scriptures, the primary causes of the foundation of Christianity, the great religious crisis in the sixteenth century which divided the Church and Europe between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, and finally those different anti-Christian crises which at different periods and in different countries have set in question and imperiled Christianity itself, but which dangers it has ever surmounted. The third _Meditation_ will be a survey of the present internal and external condition of the Christian religion. The regeneration of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches at the commencement of the nineteenth century will be exhibited. The author will then describe the impulse imparted by the Spiritualistic Philosophy, and the opposition it met with in Materialism, Pantheism, and Skepticism. He will conclude by exposing the fundamental error of these systems as the avowed and active enemies of Christianity. In the _fourth_ series there will be a characterization of the future destiny of the Christian religion, and an indication of the course by which it is called upon to conquer completely the earth and then to sway it morally. M. Guizot, having spent his life in political excitement, now resolves to occupy his remaining years in aiding the cause of religion. "I have passed," says he, "thirty-five years of my life in struggling, on a bustling arena, for the establishment of political liberty, and the maintenance of order as established by law. I have learned, in the labors and trials of this struggle, the real worth of Christian faith and of Christian liberty. God permits me, in the repose of my retreat, to consecrate to their cause what remains to me of life and of strength. It is the most salutary favor and the greatest honor that I can receive from his goodness." We may now ask, What is the fruit of the labors of MM. de Pressensé, Guizot, and their heroic coadjutors? Is the spirit of French Protestantism against them, and are the majority of the clergy yielding to the insinuating arguments of the skeptical school? These questions are satisfactorily answered by the recent action of the French Protestant Conferences. The Conferences are not composed of members formally admitted, but of the pastors and elders who attend the spring anniversaries, and choose to participate in them. The General Conference includes all denominations of Protestants; the special, only the ministers of the Lutheran and Reformed churches who constitute together the National Protestant Church. Whatever action may be adopted by either body is a safe index of the sentiment pervading the entire mass of French Protestantism. In the General Conference which convened in Paris in the spring of 1863, there was a violent debate between the Rationalistic and Evangelical members. M. de Pressensé presided. Pastor Bersier made a remarkable speech, in which he declared that true science, light, liberty, and progress are on the side of earnest faith in revelation, the atonement, and the other great doctrines of Christian truth. At the conclusion of the discussion, the following protest was carried by an overwhelming majority: "The Conference, considering that the faithful may be troubled by systems of the present day, attacking the very basis of Christianity and the Church; that these negations are produced in the name of science, and given as the definitive results of the elaboration of modern thought,--protests in the name of Christian faith, of Christian conscience, of Christian experience, of Christian science, against every doctrine which tends to overturn the existence of supernatural order, of the divine authority of the Scriptures, of the divinity of Jesus Christ, and all that touches the very essence of Christianity; such as it has been professed in all times, by all churches, marked with the seal of religious power and faithfulness. The Conference invites the faithful to beware of these systems of science, a thousand times contradicted by the incessant transformations of the human mind; and exhorts the different churches to make efforts and sacrifices to favor the development and progress of Christian science." The Rationalists hoped that by spending a year in the industrious promulgation of their opinions, they would gain some official recognition or power in the ensuing Conference. Accordingly, when the General Conference of 1864 convened, they demanded the passage of a resolution by which ministers would be freed from all authority, and permitted to preach any doctrine, no doctrine, or a denial of all Christianity, as they might choose. The debate was very animated, and lasted three days. But the result was all that the most sanguine friends of orthodoxy could desire. The Conference adopted the following declaration, by a large majority: "_Whereas_, For some years, pastors and professors of theology have expressed opinions which affect not only the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures, but also the most elementary doctrines of Christianity; the Conferences declare that it is an abuse of power and a spiritual tyranny for a minister of Jesus Christ to take advantage of his position to propagate directly or indirectly, ideas contrary to the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, such as the authority of the Bible, the divinity and redemption of Jesus Christ, which are contained in all the Protestant liturgies." M. Guizot, who is an elder in the Reformed church, took a prominent part in the session of the special Conference in 1864. He introduced a declaration of principles, the character of which may be judged by the following extract: "We have full faith, _1st._ In the supernatural power of God in the government of the world, and especially in the establishment of the Christian religion; _2d._ In the divine and supernatural inspiration of the Holy Books, as well as in their sovereign authority in religious matters; _3d._ In the eternal divinity and miraculous birth as well as in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, God-man, Saviour, and Redeemer of men. We are convinced that these articles of the Christian religion are also those of the Reformed church, which has plainly acknowledged them." "Gentlemen," said he, in support of his proposition, "I call your attention to one important fact. Look around you! The attacks against the bases of Christianity are seen everywhere, in Germany, Switzerland, Holland, England, and France. I fear nothing, provided aggression meets with resistance.... I have entire confidence in the cause of Christianity. But man is God's workman; it is by our faith and labor that the Christian religion must be defended. Gentlemen, we have before us a responsible position and great duties. We are the vanguard of all Christianity; we have behind us all the Christian communions. Let us show ourselves equal to this great task, and firmly resolve to accomplish it." The debate resulted in the adoption of the declaration by a vote of one hundred and forty-one against twenty-three. In addition to these proofs of the orthodoxy of French Protestantism, there is another of different character but of not less significance. We mean the successful working of the evangelizing agencies lately inaugurated in France. Forty years ago, A. Monod was in the midst of his small Sunday School in Paris. The government was in the hands of the Jesuits, and Protestantism had neither the political power nor spiritual disposition to labor for the conversion of Romanists. As M. Grandpierre has graphically said: "From 1810 to 1815 you could count on your five fingers those Protestant French pastors who preached faithfully and zealously the true principles of Christianity." But improvement began, and between 1820 and 1830 several important religious societies were organized in Paris. The Methodist and Free Churches vied with the two National Protestant Churches in efforts for the conversion of the masses. In 1830, the Free Church possessed but one place of worship, but it now has a complete establishment for evangelizing purposes in almost every _quartier_ of the great metropolis. In the same year there were but six Protestant pastors and five Churches; but in 1857 there were thirty-nine pastors and fifty-one sanctuaries. Including the whole of France, there are, under Protestant jurisdiction, about one thousand pastors, from fifteen to sixteen hundred churches, and from seventeen to eighteen hundred elementary schools. The official census previous to 1857 gives the total number of Protestants in Paris as thirteen thousand; and seven hundred and seventy thousand throughout the country. M. Grandpierre thinks these numbers are really double; for in Paris alone two pastors are omitted, and if they are left out what must be expected of the members under them? During 1862 twenty new Protestant Churches were opened and consecrated to the worship of God. Twenty-five years ago there was but one Protestant bookstore in Paris, and it was threatened from time to time with bankruptcy. Now there are four, all of which are in a flourishing condition. There is a Sunday School in nearly every Protestant Church of the Empire. Almost every year some new society is organized, having for its avowed object the conversion of souls and the relief of the suffering. Those now in prosperous existence will compare favorably with similar institutions in Great Britain and the United States. We mention the most prominent: The French and Foreign Bible Society, which sold eighty-eight thousand copies of the Bible in 1862; the Protestant Bible Society; the Tract Society; the Paris Missionary Society; the Primary School Society and the Protestant Son Society. Each of these has its well-defined field of labor, one aiming to arouse slumbering Protestants, another to seek out wandering Protestants, and a third to educate homeless children. The Evangelical Society of France, whose secretaryship M. de Pressensé has held for thirty years, founded during the year 1862 nine new Churches; created six additional centres of evangelization; aided twenty churches; supported two Normal Schools; organized many others; cultivated two of the faubourgs of Paris; and expended three millions five hundred and eighty thousand francs for the purposes of evangelization. In addition to these societies, there are Orphan institutions, Schools, Asylums for the unprotected, destitute, fallen, sick, and infirm; some associations for the aid of those near at hand, and others for those at a distance. The press has been active in the same great cause. Weekly and monthly journals have been multiplied, and carry the good news of God not only through France but into all parts of the Continent. The theological schools are in a flourishing condition, and evangelical professors are everywhere in the majority. Of the seven teachers at Montauban, five are outspoken adherents of orthodoxy. The inability of M. Réville to be elected to a chair in that institution indicates the religious status of those in authority of it. Neander said one day to M. de Pressensé, "This period in which we live is indeed a critical one. It is to be a dismal abyss or a rosy morning light. But, depend upon it, it is going to be whatever we have a mind to make it." The Evangelical Protestant clergy of France "have a mind" to do a good and permanent work. We do not apprehend an unfavorable issue from the present conflict, but that the prayers, proscription, and exile of eight hundred thousand Huguenots will yet reap their appropriate harvest, and that the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes will be avenged by the pure faith and permanent triumphs of Protestantism. FOOTNOTES: [117] _Revue Chrétienne_, Feb., 1861. [118] _Religions before Christ_, T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1862. [119] _Le Redempteur_, Paris, 1854. [120] _Meditations on the Essence of Christianity._ Preface, pp. 6-10. CHAPTER XVIII. SWITZERLAND: ORTHODOXY IN GENEVA, AND THE NEW SPECULATIVE RATIONALISM IN ZÜRICH. Switzerland has failed to retain the influence over the theological thought of Europe enjoyed by her in the days of Zwinglius and Calvin. Impressions, instead of being given, have of late only been received. France and Germany have contributed their respective phases of theology, the French Cantons adopting the opinions emanating from the former country, and the German those from the latter. We must not therefore expect to find a very wide difference either respecting theology or practical religion between the Swiss and their two influential neighbors. When the Skepticism of Voltaire and his disciples was penetrating the French mind the Reformed Church of Switzerland did not long remain unaffected by it. While that crafty man was enjoying his romantic retreat at Ferney, he was visited and even flattered by persons who had taken upon themselves the vows of the Christian ministry. The pastors of Geneva were regarded by the Encyclopædists as sympathizers and co-laborers in overthrowing the distinctive doctrines of the Gospel. In the early part of the nineteenth century there was in Switzerland, as in Germany, a strife between the old confessional faith and Rationalism. But in Germany Reason attacked the contents of the Scriptures, while in Switzerland the attempt was made to reduce all revealed truth to a system of natural religion. Rationalism in the Swiss Church was Arianism and Socinianism revived.[121] It swept away the strong Calvinism of the old Genevan theology. The clergy were little better than the English Deists. D'Alembert says, "All the religion that many of the ministers of Geneva have is a complete Socinianism, rejecting everything called mystery, and supposing that the first principle of a true religion is to propose nothing to be received as a matter of faith which strikes against reason." Rousseau declares that those who filled the pulpits of that venerable city had no answer to the question, "Is Christ divine?" Theological training was neglected. The professors, like the pastors, committed themselves to an undisguised system of Rationalistic Unitarianism. M. Bost, writing in 1825, says that, "for more than thirty years the ministers who have gone out of our schools of theology, to serve either the churches of our own land or those of France and other foreign countries, have not received one single lecture on the truths which exclusively belong to revelation, such as the redemption of mankind by the death of Christ, the justification of the Saviour by faith, the corruption of our nature, the divinity of our Saviour, &c. In theology we were taught nothing but what are called the dogmas of natural religion. The extent to which this practical incredulity was carried is clear from the fact, elsewhere unheard of, I suspect, in the annals of the Protestant churches, that, excepting for a lecture in the Hebrew language, when the Bible was used simply as a Hebrew book, and not for anything it contained, the word of God was never used throughout our course; in particular, the New Testament never appeared, either as a language-book or for any other purpose; there was no need of the New Testament, whatever, in order to complete our four years' course in theology; in other words, that book, especially in the original, was not at all among the number of books required in order to accomplish the career of our studies for the sacred ministry."[122] The _Vénérable Compagnie_, comprising the clergymen and theological professors of Geneva, went so far, in 1817, as to impose upon all candidates for ordination to the ministry, the obligation not to preach on the two natures of Christ, original sin, predestination, and other received doctrines of their confession. As might be expected, practical piety was thrown into the background. Children were not instructed in the Scriptures, and the churches were attended by small congregations, who were favored with no better gospel than the combined opinions of Voltaire and the German Rationalists. There were here and there loud protests against this apostasy. The Canton Vaud was benefited by the labors of that excellent woman, Madame de Krüdener, who exchanged a life of Parisian gayety and affluence for humble labors among the poor and uninstructed Swiss. She loved to sit upon a wooden bench and teach all who came to her the truths of the Bible and the necessity of a regenerated heart. Her influence was powerful in Geneva after the commencement of the evangelical movement. Another counteracting agency was a sect of Methodists, nicknamed the "Momiers," who had gone thither from England, and were rebuking the prevalent Rationalism by every available means.[123] From the outset Geneva had been the centre of the great religious decline. The Theological Academy founded by Calvin had become the nursery of as injurious errors as had emanated from Halle in the period of Wolf's triumphant career. Its chairs were occupied by the very teachers described by M. Bost, men in every respect unworthy to prepare students for the Christian pulpit. But, by the providence of Him who watches every juncture with a Father's care, a new influence was brought to bear upon the Academy, and through it upon the whole Protestant Church of Switzerland. Robert Haldane, having sold his large estate in Scotland, directed his attention to the moral dearth at Geneva by endeavoring to imbue the students with his own evangelical opinions and earnest spirit. His labors were eminently successful. Many of the young men became converted, and for the first time had a clear conception of the great work before them. It was through Haldane that Merle d'Aubigné, Adolphe Monod, Malan, and others of their school, were inspired with the spirit of the Gospel. Switzerland can never be too grateful to God for sending such a man at that important crisis. The immediate issue of this awakening was the organization of the Evangelical Dissenting Church. All who had grown dissatisfied with the formalism and Rationalism of the National Church came to the new fold and co-operated in the work of reformation. A school of theology, established in Geneva, was visited by students who came seeking an education that might enable them to relieve the moral wants of the masses. Gaussen, the author of _La Theopneustie_, was one of the professors. The new Church soon found in him its leader. He has recently died, but his long life has been of valuable service to the kingdom of Christ. Besides reviving and reorganizing the Sunday School system in Geneva, and personally superintending the religious instruction of the children, for whom he wrote his inimitable _Catechisms_, he became the author of many theological works adapted to the wants of clergy and laity. In company with a few friends, he published the popular Swiss version of the New Testament. It occasioned him real joy when he witnessed late in life the improvement of the National Church of Switzerland. But it must be confessed that the parent has yet much to learn and accomplish before reaching the high evangelical status now occupied by the earnest daughter. The name of Vinet belongs to the whole of Protestant Europe, and is identified with the revival of religious sentiment in Switzerland, Germany, Holland, and France. His excellent writings have familiarized him to the theological readers of Great Britain and the United States. The separation of Church and State was one of the leading aims of his life, and he eloquently contended for it whenever occasion offered. In 1837 he accepted the invitation of the government of his native canton to take charge of the professorship of Theology in the Seminary in Lausanne. Already profoundly impressed with the opinions of Pascal, he admired the more evangelical portion of Schleiermacher's theology. Combining these, he originated the only native theological system which Switzerland has produced since Calvin's day.[124] In all his works he manifests profound thought and erudition. His _Homiletics_ and _Pastoral Theology_ have already become text-books in many theological seminaries. The spirit now dominant at Geneva clearly indicates the success of the late efforts toward reform. The congregations have largely increased; various humanitarian enterprises have been vigorously prosecuted; societies for the circulation of religious knowledge have been founded; and the laity have come to the assistance of the clergy in labors for the social and moral elevation of the masses. For a quarter of a century young men have been judiciously trained in theology, and Switzerland is now supplying many prominent French pulpits with her graduates. The present sojourner in Geneva finds but few remnants of that skeptical preaching and general religious indifference so lamentably prevalent before the rise of the Evangelical Dissenting Church. M. Levalois, who is an avowed skeptic, looks upon a very different scene from that which once so delighted Rousseau. Coming from the source they do, his words are a valuable testimony to the religious growth of the mother-city of French Protestantism. "I now come," says this traveler, "to the essential characteristics of Geneva. Before being literary and liberal, the Genevan is Christian. In Geneva the free-thinking stranger is _advised_ of Christianity. In the souls of men, instead of meeting with no resistance, no solidity,--as, for instance, among the greater part of our Parisian Catholics,--instead of finding himself in the face of a creed mechanically repeated, of a memory and not of a conscience,--you feel yourself in contact with an individual who will believe, who can believe, who is in full possession of the _why_ of his belief. Nothing in the world is to me so sacred as sincerity in intelligent faith. Just as I despise certain time-serving Catholics, who are converted because they dread socialism, or because they dread the Empire, so much do I respect the man who freely attaches himself to the Gospel, devotes himself to Christ, and prays to Him. Does this imply that I return from Geneva a Protestant? No; I have not been _converted_, but, I repeat, _advised_. I have seen Christianity working, not only in churches, but, which is much more edifying, in individuals. Yes, I have seen it in turns the inspirer of language, the spring of actions, the spur and the discipline, rule and support of the future, impregnating, so to speak, the flesh and the spirit. Such a spectacle excites one to reflection. We have been in too great haste to exclaim, Christianity is dead! An hour's conversation with two or three Genevese, suffices to convince us that if Christianity is dead it is not yet buried."[125] The course of lectures delivered in the Theological Academy of Geneva in the winter of 1862-'63, may be taken as an illustration of the character of the instruction imparted in that influential institution. M. Secretan delivered learned lectures on "Theism." He showed that the objections which can be raised, on the ground of natural religion, against the existence and personality of God, lose all their force on Christian ground; therefore Hegelianism has no base. M. Naville, in his course on "Spiritualism," summoned the resources of his learning and genius to aid him in his heroic combat with every form of current materialism. Pastor Coulin lectured on "Christian Works." It was an eloquent appeal for renewed Christian activity. MM. Bungener, Bret, and Rorich lectured on "Christian Life;" M. Gaberel on the "Part taken by Geneva at the time of the Reformation;" and also on the "Present Literary and Religious state of Germany;" M. Archinard on the "Ancient Religious Edifices of Switzerland;" M. Aug. Bost on the "First Fifteen Centuries of the History of Mankind;" and M. De Gasparin on the "Family Life, its Organization and Duties." In addition to these, there were lectures on detached subjects, such as religious prejudices, the study of the Bible by simple-hearted believers, drunkenness, the religious education of children, the instruction of catechumens, the dissipation of cities, and the duty of evangelization.[126] Of the German cantons, Basle has been the only one which has successfully resisted the encroachments of Rationalism. The University has fully recovered from the influence of De Wette, and the professors now stand in the front rank of evangelical thinkers. The _Mission House_ has been a highly useful agency. Though not a half-century old, it has already trained four hundred missionaries, nearly three hundred of whom are still living and actively engaged in evangelizing the dark places of the earth. The people are unwilling to permit any minister to occupy one of their pulpits whom they have reason to suspect of skeptical opinions. The infidel Rumpf was excluded in 1858 from the list of candidates for the ministry, and all his subsequent efforts for restoration have failed in the chief council. A similar occurrence took place in Berne in 1847, upon the calling of Zeller to the theological professorship. We now turn to a less evangelical part of Switzerland. Zürich is one of the acknowledged centres of European Rationalism. Its spiritual decline has been rapid during the last twenty-five years. In 1839, Strauss, the author of the _Life of Jesus_, was invited by the chief council to take a theological chair in the seminary. But the people arising as one man against the measure, the appointment failed, the council was overthrown by a popular revolution, and the city still pays a pension to the disappointed aspirant. But in lamentable contrast with that event is one of more recent occurrence. As late as 1864, when the little town of Uster was about to elect a pastor, the candidate declared himself "a friend of progress and light." Some religious men, unwilling to see their children placed under the instruction of a skeptic, took upon themselves the task of showing in what the "progress" consisted. They accordingly published a notice to their fellow citizens in which they set forth the avowed opinions of their candidate. The document asserted that he believed the Bible to be a tissue of fictions and fables; Jesus a sinful man like others, neither risen from the dead, nor sitting in the glory of his Father; no one can assert with positiveness a life beyond the grave; and the opinion that we are reconciled to God by Jesus Christ, merely a superstition and a day-dream. The authors of the circular besought the ecclesiastical council to deliver them and their children from the promulgation of such doctrines, and further reminded them that every pastor on entering upon his functions must swear to preach faithfully the word of God, both law and gospel, according to the fundamental principles of the evangelical Reformed church. The council took no notice of the remonstrance, though the candidate did not deny the charges. He was elected by eight hundred and sixty-five votes against one hundred and forty-five. In the church, where the result was proclaimed, the acclamations were so loud that they "shook the windows." In the evening there was a serenade, accompanied by rockets and blue lights.[127] The only representative of evangelical doctrines in the theological faculty of Zürich is a tutor, placed there and supported by a private society. The most effective means by which Rationalism emanates from that city is periodical literature. The leading publications are, _The Church of the Present_, and _Voices of the Times_. The latter journal was commenced in 1859. Its editor, Lang, is a frequent contributor to prominent Rationalistic serials of Germany, particularly the _Protestant Church Gazette_ of Berlin. He has published, besides other works, _A System of Doctrine_, and _A March through the Christian World_. Professor Biedermann, an instructor in Zürich, has embodied his skeptical opinions in a _Manual of Christian Doctrine_, for the use of the youth in Swiss colleges. Dr. Volckmar, another theological professor of the same city, has advanced in his numerous works on primitive Christianity, opinions even more radical than those of Strauss or the Tübingen School. All those men are members, in good standing, of the Reformed church of Switzerland.[128] The Rationalistic works in question are studiously adapted to the common mind. They contain a complete system, which we term the New Speculative Rationalism. It declares a strong attachment to Protestantism, and professes to cultivate a much higher development of Christian life than was aimed at by its German predecessor. Like the Groningen school of Holland, it lays stress on the character of Christ. It proposes to establish a new church, which shall have a wider door for the entrance of Protestant Christians than that opened by the confessions. The present fold is entirely too small; the new Rationalism would organize one of colossal popular dimensions. "Our church," say these teachers of Zürich, "is truth and morality. Whoever thinks upon these things and strives for them shall find a place in it." Their opinions are the direct result of the Hegelian philosophy applied speculatively to the obsolete, destructive Rationalism of Germany. THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. Protestantism mistakes itself in treating the Bible as authority. Though the Scriptures declare our relations to God, they should not escape our free criticism and occasional censure. Every man has a right to interpret them for himself, and on his individual understanding of their contents he should feel bound to act. No man has a right to impose his opinion upon another, nor has any church a guarantee for obliging its members to subscribe to a fixed creed. All deductions from the positive statements of the Scriptures are mere human opinions, and should only receive the credit due to them as such. What are confessions but human opinions? CHRIST. Strauss was wrong in taking his cold view of Jesus. There was a real historical personage whom we properly call Jesus. Nothing is gained, but everything lost by resolving all the statements of the gospels into myths. It is through Christ that salvation is attained, for Christianity is the reconciliation of God and man as revealed to us in the consciousness and life of Christ. He is the end of the law, the second Adam, the fulfilment of prophecy, the head of a renovated humanity. In him we find the revelation of a new religious principle in man, a real unity with God, a filial adoption, freedom from natural corruption, the pardon of sin, and victory over the world. Jesus became the one man who bore in himself the fullness of the godhead. Important concessions to Christianity seem to be made; nevertheless subtle Pantheism underlies their statements. But one of their opinions subverts everything they grant to orthodoxy. Christ was not, according to their view, the Messiah in the sense foretold by the prophets and preached by the apostles. We must judge him apart from all poetry, speculation, and human judgment. The Christ of the present church is the creation of theologians, not the character portrayed by the evangelists. Unfortunately for our correct view of him, Paul speculated entirely too much upon his nature and work. The resurrection of Christ never took place, because there was no necessity for it. It was a good thing for the apostles to believe that such an event took place, for it encouraged them. Christ never showed himself to any one after his death, and the belief that he did appear arose purely from the excited nerves, imaginative temperament, and strong desire of his followers to see him. His spirit did not die with his body, but entered upon another stage of existence. Jesus did not work miracles, for he had not the power. He was eminently a moral man, the very personification of the truly religious character. Religion became flesh in him, and he was the exemplification of love. The salvation we find through him is by virtue of his example and inculcation of moral truths. The spirit of Christ still exists, but it does not live in a purely personal relation, nor does it operate as a personal existence. His spirit and example are with us, but he is not here himself. The good man is favored with the influence imparted to humanity by Christ's exemplary life, but he is nowhere actually present in the world. GOD AND HIS MIRACLES. No miracles, in the orthodox sense of the term, have ever occurred. The scientific examination of the Scriptures banishes them altogether. Neither are miracles possible, otherwise we should see them every day. They would be acts of arbitrary authority on God's part; and if he performed them he would destroy the harmony and connection of natural laws. Christianity was not introduced by miracles. It was inaugurated, and even originated, by underlying causes of a purely natural character. Miracle is only a creation of the imagination, and should be discarded as a human error. The personality of God is freely spoken of, but his self-consciousness, in the strictest sense, is not allowed. Hence God is really deprived by them of all plan, aim, love, and favor. He is a spiritual being, but he is not a spirit. He is spirit, yet not a real, thinking, self-conscious, willing spirit. He is not a personality or individuality. "A person," these men appear to say, "must have a place to stand upon, and surely we would not say this of God? The fact is, we grossly misrepresent the great All-Father. We picture him in our sensuous forms, and almost imagine him to be like one of ourselves." IMMORTALITY. The Speculative Rationalists attach less importance to individual immortality than their predecessors conceded. We might infer this, however, from the Hegelian point of view adopted by the former. They profess adherence to Schleiermacher's dictum: "In the midst of the finite to be one with the infinite, and to be eternal every moment." But they adhere to the doctrine of "eternal life," by which term they mean an existence commencing and terminating with faith. It is a life of such value that it should be called "eternal" life, although it ends with our last breath in this world. It consists in the attainment of the end of our existence and of conquest over sin. Thus, they reduce the eternal life of which the gospel speaks to a mere method and duration of stay in this world. This life, with them, exhausts life; the kingdom of God has not an eternal, but a present and temporal existence; there is, therefore, no new heaven and new earth. SIN. The fall of man did not take place. It is an absurd superstition. Since the world is but a limited and imperfect representation of God, sin came into it immediately upon its origin. We err when we look at sin apart from a correct conception of the world. Sin has its seat in the natural weakness of man, for he is a temporal being, and in process of necessary development from impure naturalness to reason and freedom. It is the condition in which man finds himself before arriving at an idea of what he is or will be. If it be asked, "Why is sin in the world?" the rejoinder is made, "Why is not man, in the outset of his existence, what he is destined to be, and why must he stand in need of development?" Sin, in the beginning, was natural imperfection, but it never becomes a work of the will until man is developed. It is the melancholy result of an awakened consciousness. But, after man is once aroused to self-consciousness and begins his actual, sinful life, he never becomes a lost sinner. FAITH. The gospel is not a compendium of principles. Its only value consists in its description of the moral and religious character of Christ, and every one must derive from it such opinions as seem most plausible and reasonable. But they err who excogitate from it those severe dogmas which express only dreams of the imagination and wishes of the religious spirit. Faith in the gospel is not a condition of salvation. For faith is the inner relation of the spiritual man to God, not the acceptance of fixed traditions. It is such a feeling, emotion, and relation as can exist independently of doctrine. Objective truth is not the measure of faith, and the salvation of man is not conditioned by his theoretical opinions. The human spirit in man is the agent of regeneration. Therefore, man, and not God, is the author of human regeneration. Justification by faith is produced by seeking God's favor, but Christ has nothing at all to do with the matter. We cannot as yet foresee the complete result of the efforts of the New Speculative Rationalism to propagate itself. German Switzerland will be influenced by Germany, and because of the thorough improvement already inaugurated in the latter country no general resurrection of skepticism need be feared. The evangelical professors at Basle are eagerly watching every new movement, and we believe they have sufficient strength to meet every emergency. Christianity is aggressive. Sometimes it is obliged to halt and give battle. The carnage may last long, and the on-looking world may, in its ignorance, decide too speedily that the day is lost. But the victory of error is only temporary. The ark in Dagon's house was still the ark of God. Since good men are a perpetual power to a people, we may reasonably hope that the Swiss reformers will continue to animate the citizens of all the French and German cantons. May the pulpits and theological chairs of Switzerland ever be filled with men who can say what Zwinglius uttered one New Year's Day as his first words to the assembled multitude in the cathedral of Zürich: "To Christ, to Christ will I lead you,--to the source of salvation. His word is the only food I wish to furnish to your hearts and lives!" FOOTNOTES: [121] Hagenbach, _Kirchengeschichte d. 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts_, vol. II., p. 416. [122] Alexander, _Switzerland and the Swiss Churches_, p. 194. [123] Kurtz, _Church History_, vol. ii., p. 334. [124] Farrar, _Critical History of Free Thought_, p. 444. [125] _L'Opinion Nationale_, 1863. [126] _Christian Work_, Aug., 1863. [127] _Semaine Religieuse._ Geneva: 1864. [128] Riggenbach, _Der Heutige Rationalismus besonders in der Deutschen Schweiz_. Basel: 1862. CHAPTER XIX. ENGLAND: THE SOIL PREPARED FOR THE INTRODUCTION OF RATIONALISM. The religious lesson taught by the condition of England during the eighteenth century is this: The inevitable moral prostration to which skepticism reduces a nation, and the utter incapacity of literature to afford relief. English Deism had advantages not possessed by the Rationalism of Germany. Some of its champions were men of great political influence; and in no case was there a parallel to the abandoned Bahrdt. The Deists were steady in the pursuit of their game, for when they struck a path they never permitted themselves to be deflected. But the Rationalists were ever turning into some by-road and weakening their energies by traversing many a fruitless mile. The literature of England, during the most of the last century, presents a picture of literary ostentation. The Deists had toiled to build up a system of natural religion which would not only be a monument to their genius, but serve as an impassable barrier to all such claims as were urged by the zealous and loud-spoken Puritans. But early Deism lacked an indispensable element of strength,--the power of adapting itself to the people. Its best priests could not leave the tripod, though many of the oracular responses were heard some distance from the temple-doors. In time, there arose a group of essayists and poets, who, with a similar coterie of novelists, dictated religion, morals, politics, and literature to the country. Their influence was so great that when they flattered the heads of government, the latter were equally assiduous in playing the Mæcenas to them. The writers of the eighteenth century, viewed in a literary sense alone, have never had their superiors in English literature. The works of Addison, Pope, Gray, Thomson, Goldsmith, and Johnson will continue to be classics wherever the English language is spoken. The British metropolis was pervaded with the atmosphere of Parnassus. It was a time when literature was the El Dorado of youth and old age. Those were the days when clubs convened statedly in the neighborhood of the Strand, and when, every night, the attics of Grub street poured out their throngs of quill-heroes, who were welcomed into the parlors of the nobility as cordially as to their own club-houses. The last new work engaged universal attention. Society was filled with rumors of books commenced, half finished, plagiarized, successful, or defunct. Literary respectability was the "Open Sesame" to social rank. There has never been a season when cultivated society was more imbued with the mania of book-writing and criticism than existed in England during at least three-quarters of the eighteenth century. While many of the publications of that time were prompted by Deism, French society and literature were contributing an equal share toward poisoning the English mind. France and England were so intimately related to each other that the two languages were diligently studied in both countries. If the English adventurer in letters had not spent a few months in Paris, and could not read Corneille almost as readily as Spenser or Shakspeare, he was cashiered by certain Gallicists west of the Channel as a sorry aspirant to their coveted favor.[129] The rise of the French spirit in England was mainly due to Bolingbroke, who was as much at home in Paris as in London. He had numerous friends and admirers in the former metropolis, and at two different times made it his residence. Freely imbibing the skeptical opinions of the court of Louis XIV., he dealt them out unsparingly to his English readers. He was one of the most accomplished wits who frequented the _salon_ of Madame de Croissy, and he developed his skeptical system through the medium of the French language, in a series of letters to M. de Pouilly.[130] Bolingbroke accused the greatest divines and philosophers of leading a great part of mankind into inextricable labyrinths of reasoning and speculation. Natural theology and religion, he held, had become corrupt. In view of these results of mental infirmities, he applied himself to correct all errors. He proposed "to distinguish genuine and pure theism from the profane mixtures of human imagination; and to go to the root of that error which encourages our curiosity, sustains our pride, fortifies our prejudices, and gives pretense to delusion; to discover the true nature of human knowledge, how far it extends, how far it is real, and where and how it begins to be fantastical; that, the gaudy visions of error being dispelled, men may be accustomed to the simplicity of truth."[131] The Scriptures, according to Bolingbroke, are unworthy of our credence. They degrade the Deity to mean and unworthy offices and employments.[132] The New Testament consists of two distinct gospels; one by Christ, the other by St. Paul. The doctrine of future rewards and punishments is absurd, and contrary to the divine attributes.[133] Christianity has been of no advantage to mankind. "The world hath not been effectually reformed, nor any one nation in it, by the promulgation of the gospel, even where Christianity flourished most."[134] There is a supreme All-Perfect Being, but he does not concern himself with human affairs as far as individuals are concerned. The soul is not distinct from the body, and both terminate at death. The law of nature, being sufficient for the purposes of our being, is all that God has proclaimed for our guidance.[135] There were other members of the English nobility who used their influence for the introduction of French infidelity, literature, morals, and fashions. Some did not equal Bolingbroke in repudiating the spirit of the gospel, but nearly all were willing students at the feet of their pretentious Gallic instructors. The house of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, at Wickenham, was the centre whither gravitated that large class of acknowledged chiefs in letters represented by Steele, Pope, and the Walpoles. They thought, spoke, and dressed according to the French standard, which, in respect to religion and morals, was never lower than at that very time. The attempt to rear a Paris on English soil was a complete success. The young were delighted with the result; the aged had been too ill-taught in early life to raise the voice of remonstrance. With the exception of the Puritan opposition, the gratification was universal; and that took place in religion and literature which, had it occurred in warfare, would have kindled a flame of national indignation in every breast: England fell powerless, contented, and doomed into the arms of France. The attacks of Hume and Gibbon on the divine origin of Christianity take rank with the mischievous influences imparted by the elder school of Deists, and by French taste and immorality. Hume was a philosopher who drew his inspiration directly from his own times. Attaching himself to the Encyclopædists, he played the wit in the _salons_ of Paris. He became fraternally intimate with Rousseau, and brought that social dreamer back with him to England as a mark of high appreciation of his talents. He was a metaphysician by nature, but he erred in speculating with theology. That was the mistake of his life. He fell into Bolingbroke's error of excessive egotism. Standing before the superstructure of theology, he carefully surveyed every part of it, and deemed no theme too lofty for his reasonings, and no mystery beyond the reach of his illuminating torch. He lamented the absence of progress in the understanding of that evidence which assures us of any real existence and matter of fact. But this difficulty did not impede him from an attempted solution. He thought himself performing a great service when he addressed himself to the "destruction of that implicit faith and credulity which is the bane of all reasoning and free inquiry."[136] He refused to acknowledge a Supreme Being, in the following words: "While we argue from the course of nature, and infer a particular intelligent cause, which at first bestowed and still preserves order in the universe, we embrace a principle which is both uncertain and useless, because the subject lies entirely beyond the reach of human experience."[137] The miraculous evidences of Christianity were also opposed by Hume. His _Essay on Miracles_ (1747), consists of two parts; the former of which is an attempt to prove that no evidence would be a sufficient ground for believing the truth and existence of miracles. Experience is our only guide in reasoning on matters of fact; but even this guide is far from infallible, and liable at any moment to lead us into errors. In judging how far a testimony is to be depended upon, we must balance the opposite circumstances, which may create any doubt or uncertainty. The evidence from testimony may be destroyed either by the contrariety and opposition of the testimony, or by the consideration of the nature of the facts themselves. When the facts partake of the marvelous there are two opposite experiences with regard to them, and that which is most credible is to be preferred. Now the uniform experience of men is against miracles. We should not, therefore, believe any testimony concerning a miracle, unless the falsehood of that testimony should be more miraculous than the miracle it is designed to establish. Besides, as we cannot know the attributes or actions of God otherwise than by our experience of them, we cannot be sure that he can effect miracles; for they are contrary to our own experience and the course of nature. Therefore, it is impossible to prove miracles by any evidence. The second part of the _Essay on Miracles_ is intended to show that, supposing a miracle capable of being proved by sufficient testimony, no miraculous event in history has ever been established on such evidence. The witnesses of a miracle should be of such unquestionable good sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves. They should also be of such undoubted integrity as to place them beyond all suspicion of design to deceive others. Then they should be of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind as to have a great deal to lose if detected in any falsehood. Last of all, the facts attested by the witnesses should be performed in such a public manner, and in so celebrated a part of the world, as to render detection unavoidable.[138] Now, according to Hume, these requisitions are not met in the supposed witnesses of the miracles of Christ. Consequently, we are no more obliged to believe their accounts than the reports of miracles alleged to have been wrought at the tomb of the Abbé de Paris. All must be rejected together. Hume's _History of England_ met with a cold reception on its first appearance. But he lived to see the day when, as he egotistically said, "it became circulated like the newspapers." Yet he wrote that work not as an end, but as a means. Historical writing was then the medium in which it was common to couch theology or philosophy. Hume had a profound contempt for everything Puritanic on the one hand, and hierarchical and traditional on the other. He would make every trace disappear beneath his scathing pen. He ignored the development of religious life in England, and would subject all events which indicated a deep Christian piety and purpose, to his cold system of philosophy. Writing with an inflexible adherence to his theological opinions, he cast over historical events the drapery of his own interpretation. The question with him was not, "What is the history of England during the period of which I treat?" but "Does not the history of England sustain my philosophy?" And his own answer was, "Yes; I record facts, and draw my own conclusions. Is not that a good philosophy!" Gibbon was even more of a Frenchman than Hume. Sundering his relation to Oxford in his seventeenth year, he embarked upon a course of living and thinking which, whatever advantage it might afford to his purse, was not likely to aid his faith. By a sudden caprice he became a Roman Catholic, and afterwards as unceremoniously denied his adopted creed. In due time he found himself in Paris publishing a book in the French language. He there fell in with the fashionable infidelity, and so far yielded to the flattery of Helvetius and all the frequenters of Holbach's house that he jested at Christianity and assailed its divine character. While residing at Lausanne, Switzerland, he cultivated the florid French style of composition, and applied it in his _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. That work has been severely censured, but despite its defects, it is one of the permanent master-pieces of English literature. In the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters the author gives his opinion of Christianity. He attributes the progress of the Christian religion to the zeal of the Jews, to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as stated by philosophers, to the miraculous powers claimed by the primitive church, to the virtues of the first Christians, and to the activity of the Christians in the government of the church. He attributed to outward agencies what could have been effected only by inward forces. But he did not assume the philosopher's cap, for, not being metaphysical by nature, he never did violence to his own constitution. He has left much less on record against Christianity than Hume, but they must be ranked together as the last of the family of English Deists. Gibbon made loud professions of independence and of an earnest desire for the enlargement of popular liberty. But he was less attached to principle than to expediency. At the very time the first volume of his history appeared, in which he pays lofty tributes to human freedom, he came into Parliament as an avowed abettor of the ministry of George III., in their attempts to subjugate the American colonies. He was doubtless well paid for his votes; for he was at the same time a member of the Board of Trade, a nominal office with a large salary.[139] A verse, attributed to Fox, expresses the popular sentiment concerning him; "King George in a fright Lest Gibbon should write The story of England's disgrace, Thought no way so sure, His pen to secure, As to give the historian a place." In addition to these evidences of religious decay we may add the most unwelcome of all: the moral prostration of the English Church. Instead of being "a city set upon a hill," she was in the valley of humiliation; and few were the faithful watchmen upon her walls. The period commencing with the Restoration, and continuing down to the time of which we speak, was one of ministerial and laic degeneracy. Bishop Burnet, writing of his own generation, said, "I am now in the seventieth year of my age, and as I cannot speak long in the world, in any sort, I cannot hope for a more solemn occasion than this of speaking with all due freedom, both to the present and to the succeeding ages. Therefore I lay hold on it to give a free vent to those sad thoughts that lie on my mind both day and night, and are the subject of many secret mournings. I cannot look on without the deepest concern, when I see the imminent ruin hanging over this church, and, by consequence, over the whole Reformation. The outward state of things is black enough, God knows, but that which heightens my fears rises chiefly from the inward state into which we are unhappily fallen.... Our ember-weeks are the burden and grief of my life. The much greater part of those who come to be ordained are ignorant to a degree not to be apprehended by those who are not obliged to know it. The easiest part of knowledge is that to which they are the greatest strangers. Those who have read some few books, yet never seem to have read the Scriptures. Many cannot give even a tolerable account of the Catechism itself, how short and plain soever. This does often tear my heart. The case is not much better in many who, having got into orders, come for institution, and cannot make it appear that they have read the Scriptures, or any one good book since they were ordained; so that the small measure of knowledge upon which they get into holy orders, not being improved, is in a way to be quite lost; and they think it a great hardship if told they must know the Scriptures and the body of divinity better before they can be trusted with the care of souls."[140] Archbishop Secker, who wrote at a later period, testifies to the same state of religious petrification: "In this we cannot be mistaken, that an open and professed disregard is become, through a variety of unhappy causes, the distinguishing character of the present age; that this evil is grown to a great height in the metropolis of the nation; is daily spreading through every part of it; and, bad in itself as any can be, must of necessity bring in others after it. Indeed it hath already brought in such dissoluteness and contempt of principle in the higher part of the world, and such profligate intemperance, and fearlessness of committing crimes, in the lower, as must, if this impiety stop not, become absolutely fatal. And God knows, far from stopping, it receives, through the ill designs of some persons, and the inconsiderateness of others, a continual increase. Christianity is now ridiculed and railed at, with very little reserve; and the teachers of it, without any at all."[141] The Church had not the moral power or purity to assert her own authority. She had lost the respect of the world because she had no respect for herself. She was therefore enervated at a time when all her power was needed to resist the skeptical and immoral tendencies of the day. But a new religious power, from an unexpected source, began to influence the English mind. We refer to the movement inaugurated by the Wesleys and Whitefield, who were fellow-students in Oxford University. They were appalled at the dissoluteness of the students, the frigid preaching of the day, and the universal religious destitution of the nation. These themes burdened the hearts of the "Holy Club" at Oxford from day to day, and sent them from their cloisters to visit prisons, preach in surrounding towns, and impart religious truth wherever a willing recipient could be found. No sooner had John Wesley returned from his missionary voyage to Georgia than there were unmistakable evidences of the adaptation of the new preaching to the wants of the people. The masses, long affected by a deplorable indifference to religious truths and pious living, heard the earnest preaching of the Methodists with profound attention and in such large numbers that no impartial observer could doubt the peculiar fitness of Methodism to the existing state of society, morals, literature, and philosophy. As a result, the number of converts multiplied. The Established Church was aroused to activity. Dissenters began to hope for the return of the good days of Bunyan and Baxter and Howe. Isaac Taylor says of the new influence, that "it preserved from extinction and reanimated the languishing nonconformity of the last century, which just at the time of the Methodist revival, was rapidly in course to be found nowhere but in books." But the Wesleyan movement made little impression on the literary circles to whom Bolingbroke, Hume, and Gibbon had communicated their gospel of nature. The poets continued to sing, the essayists to write, and the philosophers to speculate, in a world peculiarly their own. They shut themselves quite in from the itinerant "helpers" of Wesley. The large class of English minds which stood aloof from all ecclesiastical organizations, and failed to see any higher cause of the revival than mere enthusiasm, were the persons whom those writers still influenced. But it was plain to both the masters and their disciples that their principles were in process of transition. They were therefore ready for the reception of whatever plausible type of skepticism might present itself for their acceptance. History is the illustration of cause and effect. The fountain springs up in one period, and generations often pass before it finds its natural outlet. The issue of the final efforts of English Deism, of the impure French taste, and of the works of the grosser class of literary men living in the last century, is now manifested in that spirit which welcomes the _Essays and Reviews_, and the criticism of Colenso. It is not true that these and similar publications have created a Rationalistic taste in Great Britain. The taste was already in existence, and has been struggling for satisfaction ever since the closing decades of the eighteenth century. FOOTNOTES: [129] For an excellent view of the relation of France and England in the eighteenth century, vid. _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1 Dec., 1861. [130] Schlosser, _History of the Eighteenth Century_, vol. i., p. 98. [131] _Works_, vol. iii., p. 328. London Edition of 1754. 5 vols., quarto. [132] Ibid. p. 304. [133] Ibid. vol. v., p. 356. [134] Ibid. p. 258. [135] Leland, _View of Deistical Writers of England_, pp. 307-308. London Edition of 1837, with Appendix and Introduction, by Brown and Edmonds. [136] _Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding_, p. 49. London Edition, 1750. [137] _Philosophical Essays, &c._, p. 224. [138] Leland, _View of Deistical Writers_, pp. 230-250. [139] Schlosser, _History of the Eighteenth Century_, vol. ii., p. 85-86. [140] _Pastoral Care._ [141] _Works_, vol. v., p. 306. CHAPTER XX. ENGLAND CONTINUED: PHILOSOPHICAL AND LITERARY RATIONALISM.--COLERIDGE AND CARLYLE. All history betrays the operation of a compensating principle. The payment may be slow, but there is seldom total repudiation. An influence which departs from a country and sets in upon its neighbor, transforming thought, giving new shades to social life, and instilling foreign principles into politics, is sure, in course of time, to return from its wanderings, bearing with it other forces with which to react upon the land whence it originated. Thought, like the tidal wave, visits all latitudes with its ebb and flow. The present condition of Anglican theology is an illustration of intellectual re-payment. Two centuries ago England gave Deism to Germany, and the latter country is now paying back the debt with compound interest. After the Revolution of 1789, and the brilliant ascendency of Napoleon Bonaparte, the French spirit rapidly lost its hold upon the English mind. But there immediately arose a disposition to consult German theology and philosophy. English students frequented the German universities, and the works of the leading thinkers of Berlin, Heidelberg, and Halle, were on sale in the book-stores of London. The intimate relations of the royal family of England to Germany, together with the alliance between the German States and Great Britain for the arrest of French arms, increased the tendency until it assumed importance and power. The fruit was first visible in the application of German Rationalism and philosophy to English theology. When Coleridge came from the Fatherland with a new system of opinions, he felt as proud of his good fortune as Columbus did on laying a continent at his sovereign's feet. Ever since that profound thinker assumed a fixed position, a reaction against orthodoxy has been progressing in the Established Church. There are reasons why the slow but effectual introduction of German Rationalism has been taking place imperceptibly. The war which had agitated England, with the rest of Europe, came to a close in 1815. Immediately afterward domestic polities needed adjustment. "The disabilities were swept away," says a writer, "the House of Commons was reconstituted, the municipalities were reformed, slavery was abolished."[142] In due time the nation became adjusted to peace; the popular mind lost its nervousness; the universities returned to their sober thinking; and the Church took a careful survey to ascertain what had been lost in the recent conflict, what gained, and what new fields lay ready for her enterprise. But very soon fresh political combinations attracted the attention of all classes. The revolutionary changes and counter-changes in France were watched with eager attention lest Waterloo might be avenged in some unexpected manner. At home, church parties were reviving the old antagonisms described by the pen of Macaulay. The popular mind has thus been continually directed toward some exciting theme. England has not had a day of leisure during the whole of the last half-century, when she could come to a judicious conclusion concerning that class of her thinkers who, though they make theology their profession, are so intensely independent as to attach themselves to no creed or ecclesiastical organization. But they have been thinking all the time, and the outgrowth of their thought is now visible. English Rationalism consists of three departments: Philosophical, Literary, and Critical Rationalism. Whenever infidelity has arisen, whether within or without the Church, it has usually developed these forms. Philosophy has furnished undevout reason with a fund of speculative objections to revelation; literature has dazzled and bewildered the young and all lovers of romance; and criticism has seized the deductions of science, language, and ethnology, and by their combined aid aimed at the overthrow of the historical and inspired basis of faith. Each of these three agents is in constant danger of arrogance and error. The first, by a single false assumption, may lose its way; the second, by making too free use of the imagination, can easily forget when it is dealing with faith and facts; and the third, by one act of over-reaching, is liable to become puerile, fanciful, and unreliable. The philosopher, the _littérateur_, and the exegete need to be less observant of the surrounding world than of the purity of their own inner life and the teachings of the Holy Spirit. Philosophical Rationalism in England commenced with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A comprehensive view of that metaphysician produces a painful impression. Though gifted with capacity for any sphere of thought, he did not excel in either so far as to enable us to assign him a fixed place in literature. He is known as poet, theologian, and philosopher. But his own desire was that posterity might regard him as a theologian. In addition to this indeterminateness of position, which always seriously detracts from a great name, Coleridge presents the unfortunate example of a man who, instead of laboring with settled convictions, and achieving success by virtue of their operation, seems to have only striven after them. His indefinite status was the result of that theological difficulty which proved his greatest misfortune. His sentiments never partook of an evangelical character until the latter part of his life. His habits of thought had become confirmed, and it was quite too late to counteract the influence of many views previously expressed. So far as we are able to collect the opinions of Coleridge by fragments from his writings, we discover two elements, which, coming from totally different sources, and originating in different ages, harmonized in his mind and constituted the mass of his speculations. One was Grecian, taking its rise in Plato and afterward becoming assimilated to Christianity at Alexandria. The other was German, derived directly from Kant, and undergoing no improvement by its processes of transformation at the hands of that philosopher's successors. "From the Greek," says Dr. Shedd, "he derived the doctrine of Ideas, and fully sympathized with his warmly-glowing and poetic utterance of philosophic truths. From the German he derived the more strictly scientific part of his system--the fundamental distinctions between the Understanding and the Reason (with the sub-distinction of the latter into Speculative and Practical), and between Nature and Spirit. With him also he sympathized in that deep conviction of the absolute nature and validity of the great ideas of God, Freedom, and Immortality--of the binding obligation of conscience--and generally of the supremacy of the Moral and Practical over the purely Speculative. Indeed, any one who goes to the study of Kant, after having made himself acquainted with the writings of Coleridge, will be impressed by the spontaneous and vital concurrence of the latter with the former--the heartiness and entireness with which the Englishman enters into the method and system of this, in many respects, greatest philosopher of the modern world."[143] The Platonic element in the speculations of Coleridge is of earlier date than the German. It was his reliance until introduced to the captivating opinions of the philosopher of Königsberg. But it never wholly left him,--it was the enchantment of his life. He had severe struggles. His conquest of the habit of opium-eating, contracted to soothe physical suffering, is an index of the persistent purpose of the man. At first an ardent Unitarian, he was once about to assume charge of a congregation at Shrewsbury. But he finally declined the offer, by saying that, "Active zeal for Unitarian Christianity, not indolence or indifference, has been the motive of my declining a local and solid settlement as preacher of it."[144] The media through which he passed in search of light were numerous. He seems to have gone to Germany under the impression that he would there find what he had fruitlessly sought in England. No one will deny that the philosophy of Kant was better than the English empirical system of the eighteenth century, which was the best metaphysical pabulum he had received at home. He applied himself to the assiduous study of Kant's disciples, but the master satisfied him best. Nevertheless, Coleridge was not mentally adapted to the Kantian system. He had a psychical affinity for Schelling. He loved him as a brother. He was charmed with his vivid imagination, warm admiration of all natural forms, and ardent, impulsive temperament. Schelling's philosophy was Spinozism in poetry, and there can be no question of Coleridge's former adoption of some parts of the Hollander's naturalism. But his tenacity to them, as well as his subsequent affiliation with Schelling, was short-lived. When he awoke to the unmistakable stratum of Pantheism underlying Schelling's system, he hastily forsook it, and his diatribes indignantly hurled against one whom he had so enthusiastically admired are the more notable because of his former intense sympathy. From Schelling he returned once more to Kant as the thinker who had more closely approximated the truth. His mind must have undergone a total revolution when he could write such words as these: "Spite of all the superior airs of the _Natur-Philosophie_, I confess that in the perusal of Kant I breathe the air of good sense and logical understanding with the light of reason shining in it and through it; while in the Physics of Schelling I am amused with happy conjectures, and in his Theology I am bewildered by positions which, in their first sense, are transcendental (_überfliegend_), and in their literal sense scandalous."[145] Coleridge became firmly settled in theistic faith. Occupying that as his final position, he is destined to wield a great salutary power over English thought. Dr. Shedd, in estimating the probable future influence of his theistic system, says: "Now as the defender and interpreter of this decidedly and profoundly theistic system of philosophy, we regard the works of Coleridge as of great and growing worth, in the present state of the educated and thinking world. It is not to be disguised that Pantheism is the most formidable opponent which truth has to encounter in the cultivated and reflecting classes. We do not here allude to the formal reception and logical defense of the system, so much as to that pantheistic way of thinking, which is unconsciously stealing into the lighter and more imaginative species of modern literature, and from them is passing over into the principles and opinions of men at large. This popularized Naturalism--this Naturalism of polite literature and of literary society--is seen in the lack of that depth and strength of tone, and that heartiness and robustness of temper, which characterize a mind into which the personality of God, and the responsibility of man cut sharply, and which does not cowardly shrink from a severe and salutary moral consciousness.... The intensely theistic character of the philosophy of Coleridge is rooted and grounded in the Personal and the Spiritual, and not in the least in the Impersonal and the Natural. Drawing in the outset, as we have remarked above, a distinct and broad line between these two realms, it keeps them apart from each other, by affirming a difference in essence, and steadfastly resists any and every attempt to amalgamate them into one sole substance. The doctrine of creation, and not of emanation or of modification, is the doctrine by which it constructs its theory of the Universe, and the doctrine of responsible self-determination, and not of irresponsible natural development, is the doctrine by which it constructs its systems of Philosophy and Religion."[146] The Platonic portion of the views of Coleridge is more apparent in his theology than in his philosophy. In his _Confession of Faith_, written November 3, 1816, he avows his adherence to some of the prime doctrines of revealed truth. He declares his free agency; defines God to be a Being in whom supreme reason and a most holy will are one with infinite power; acknowledges man's fallen nature, that he is "born a child of wrath;" and holds Christ Jesus to be the Word which was with God from all eternity, assumed human nature to redeem man, and by his merits secured for us the descent of the Holy Spirit and the impartation of his free grace. In the Preface to the _Aids to Reflection_ he thus states his object in writing that work: "To exhibit a full and consistent scheme of the Christian Dispensation, and more largely of all the peculiar doctrines of the Christian faith; and to answer all the objections to the same, which do not originate in a corrupt will rather than an erring judgment; and to do this in a manner intelligible for all who, possessing the ordinary advantages of education, do in good earnest desire to form their religious creed in the light of their own convictions, and to have a reason for the faith which they profess. There are indeed mysteries, in evidence of which no reasons can be brought. But it has been my endeavor to show that the true solution of the problem is, that these mysteries are reason, reason in its highest form of self-affirmation."[147] The distinctions and definitions of Coleridge occasion the most serious difficulty in the study of his opinions. His mode of statement more frequently than his conception subjects him to the charge of Rationalism. His life-long error of mistaking theology for metaphysics resulted in his application of philosophical terminology to theological questions; but making every reasonable allowance, we cannot doubt that he had defective views of some of the essential truths of Christianity. He clothes reason with authority to determine what is inspiration, by saying that there can be no revelation "_ab extra_." Therefore, every man should decide for himself the character of the Scriptures. The power which Coleridge thus places in the hand of man is traceable to his distinction between reason and understanding. He makes the latter the logical, and the former the intuitive faculty. Even beasts possess understanding, but reason, the gift of God to no less creature than man, performs the functions of judgment on supersensual matters. "Reason," says he, "is the power of universal and necessary convictions, the source and substance of truths above sense, and having their evidence in themselves."[148] This admission to Rationalism has been eagerly seized by the Coleridgean school, and elaborated in some of their writings. Sin, according to Coleridge, is not guilt in the orthodox sense. When Adam fell he merely turned his back upon the sun; dwelt in the shadow; had God's displeasure; was stripped of his supernatural endowments; and inherited the evils of a sickly body, and a passionate, ignorant, and uninstructed soul. His sin left him to his nature, his posterity is heir to his misfortunes, and what is every man's evil becomes all men's greater evil. Each one has evil enough, and it is hard for a man to live up to the rule of his own reason and conscience.[149] Redemption is not salvation from the curse of a broken law, and Christ did not pay a debt for man, because the payer must have incurred the debt himself.[150] But the fruit of his death is the reconciliation of man to God. Man will have a future life, but it was not the specific object of the Christian dispensation to satisfy his understanding that he will live hereafter; neither is the belief of a future state or the rationality of its belief the exclusive attribute of the Christian religion, but a fundamental article of all religion.[151] All attempts to determine the exact theological position of Coleridge from his own definitions are unsatisfactory. We must derive his real convictions from the spirit and not from the letter of his works. He was devout and reverent, never prosecuting his investigations from a mere love of speculation, but as a sincere inquirer after truth. But his statements have had their natural result in producing a large and vigorous school of thinkers. Never bracing himself to write a philosophical or theological system, but merely stating his views in aphoristic form--as in the _Aids to Reflection_--he scattered his thoughts as a careless sower, and left them to germinate in the public mind. But many of his opinions have been perverted, and speculations have been based upon them by numerous admirers who, proudly claiming him for authority, thrust upon the world those sentiments which bear less the impress of the master than the counterfeit of the weaker disciple. A large cluster of important and familiar names appears in testimony of the deep and immediate impression produced by the opinions of Coleridge. Julius Charles Hare, not the least worthy of the number, has been one of the prominent agents in communicating to the English people the principles of that thinker, who was not superior to him in moral earnestness and profound reverence. When lecturing as Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Hare was attentively heard by John Sterling, Maurice, and Trench. He drank deeply of the spirit of Coleridge, of whom he was ever proud to call himself a "pupil," and who, in connection with Wordsworth, was the instrumentality by which he and others "were preserved from the noxious taint of Byron."[152] From whatever side we view Hare's life, it is full of interest. When very young he traveled on the Continent, and became delighted with the literature of Germany. He informs us that, "in 1811 he saw the mark of Luther's inkstand on the walls of the Castle of Wartburg, and there first learned to throw inkstands at the devil." His view of sacrifice was very superficial, and similar to that of Maurice. The Jewish offerings were typical "of the slaying and offering up of the carnal nature to God.... The lesson of the cross is to draw nigh to God, not by this work or that work, not by the sacrifice of this thing or that, but by the entire sacrifice and resignation of their whole being to the will of God."[153] Christ did not perform his important mission so much by his death as by his entire life, and his sufferings were only the completion of his task. "His great work was to be completed and made perfect, as every truly great work must be, by suffering. For no work can be really great unless it be against the course of the world.... It was by losing his own life in every possible way--by the agony in the garden; by the flight and denial of those whom he had chosen out of the world to be His companions and friends; by the mockery and cruelty of those whom his goodness and purity rendered more bitter against him; by the frantic and murderous cries of the people, whom he had loaded with every earthly benefit, and whom he desired to crown with eternal blessings; and by the closing sufferings on the cross--that Jesus was to gain his own life, and the everlasting life of all who will believe in Him. All this, then, the whole work of the redemption of mankind, does our Lord in the text declare to be finished."[154] Hare declares the necessity of faith to Christian life, but he renders it more passive than active by saying that it is a receptive moral endowment capable of large development. Happy is the man who becomes inured to the exalted "habit of faith." Sin is more a matter of regret than of responsibility; inspiration is a doctrine we should not slight, but the language of the Scriptures must not be regarded too tenaciously; due allowance ought to be made for all verbal inaccuracies and discrepancies; miracles are an adjunct to Christian evidence, but their importance is greatly exaggerated, for they are a beautiful frieze, not one of the great pillars in the temple of our faith. Notwithstanding these evidences of Hare's digression from orthodoxy, we cannot forget that consecration and purity of heart revealed in some of his sermons, and especially in the glowing pages of the _Mission of the Comforter_. His ministerial life was an example of untiring devotion, and we know not which to admire the more, his labor of love in the rustic parish of Herstmonceaux, or those searching rebukes of Romanism contained in the charges to his clergy. Independent as both his friends and enemies acknowledge him to have been, his misfortune was an excessive reliance upon his own imagination and upon the opinions of those whom he admired. Nature made him capable of intimate friendships, both personal and intellectual. No one can examine his life without loving the man, nor read his fervent words without concluding that the Church has been honored by few men of his noble type. That self-sacrifice and sympathy of which he often spoke feelingly in connection with the humiliation of Christ, were the controlling principles of his heart. Let not the veil with which we would conceal his theological defects obscure, in the least, the brightness of his resplendent character and pure purposes. No view of Hare's position can be complete without embracing that of his brother-in-law, Maurice; both of whom were ardently sympathetic with Coleridge. But while the former gave a more evangelical cast to his master's opinions than they originally possessed, the latter perverted them by unwarranted speculations. Maurice is now one of the most influential of the Rationalistic teachers of England. He has not employed himself, like Kingsley and others of the Broad Church, in publishing his theological sentiments in the form of religious novels, but has had the commendable frankness to state his opinions without circumlocution, and to furnish us with his creed in a single volume of essays.[155] Maurice's notion of an ideal creation betrays the media through which he has received it,--from Coleridge to Neo-Platonism, and thence to Plato. The creation of herbs, flowers, beasts, birds, and fishes, as recorded in the first chapter of Genesis, was the bringing forth of kinds and orders, such as they were according to the mind of God, not of actual separate phenomenal existences, such as they present themselves to the senses of man.[156] The creation of man is disposed of in the same ideal way; so that we are inclined to ask the critic if man is not, after all, only a Platonic idea? "What I wish you particularly to notice," says he, "is that the part of the record which speaks of man ideally, according to his place with reference to God, is the part which expressly belongs to the history of CREATION; that the bringing forth of man in _this_ sense, is the work of the sixth day.... Extend this thought, which seems to rise inevitably out of the story of the creation of _man_, as Moses delivers it, to the seat of that universe of which he regards man as the climax, and we are forced to the conclusion that in the one case, as in the other, it is not the visible, material thing of which the historian is speaking, but that which lies below the visible material thing, and constitutes the substance which it shows forth."[157] Maurice assumes also, with Neo-Platonism, that Christ is the archetype of every human being, and that when a man becomes pure, he is only developing the Christ who was within him already. "The Son was really in Saul of Tarsus, and he only became Paul the converted when that Son was revealed in him.... Christ is in every man.... All may call upon God as a reconciled Father. Human beings are redeemed, not in consequence of any act they have done, of any faith they have exercised; their faith is to be grounded on a foregone conclusion; their acts are to be the fruits of a state they already possess."[158] From this premise alone the theological system of Maurice may be accurately determined. Sin is an evil from which we should strive to effect an escape, but it is nothing more, neither guilt nor responsibility, only a condition of our life and not a consequence of actual disobedience of God's law, or the effect of his displeasure. Deep below it there is a righteousness capable of asserting its sovereignty. Job had a righteousness within him, which led him to say, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." Those persons who prate about our miserable condition as sinners, "have a secret reserve of belief that there is that in them which is not sin, which is the very opposite of sin.... Each man has got this sense of righteousness, whether he realizes it distinctly or indistinctly; whether he expresses it courageously, or keeps it to himself."[159] The nature of the atonement, Maurice holds, is a subject of misconception, and the notions of it, as they now obtain in Christendom, darken and bewilder the mind. What Christ has really done for us through suffering was his matchless sympathy; he became our brother, and was not our mediatorial substitute but a natural representative. On this ground, a regeneration is communicated to all, not by virtue of any appropriating faith, but as a result of the sympathetic death of Christ. The justification of humanity has been secured by his incarnation, and the penalty resulting from sin is a mere scar of the healed wound. Natural death is not the separation of soul and body, though both are affected by it, for the body which seems to die is only the corruption resulting from our sins, and the real body does not die. Hence, there can never be any general resurrection or judgment. It is astonishing that a man who unhesitatingly propagated these views, could hold any office within the pale of the Established Church; but Maurice enjoyed high favor a number of years before his displacement. Though commencing life as a Unitarian and Universalist, he was rapidly promoted by the ecclesiastical authorities. He took no pains to conceal his theological opinions, and yet we find him advancing in King's College, London, from the Professorship of English Literature to that of Ecclesiastical History, and thence to the Chair of Divinity. Some time elapsed after the publication of the _Essays_ before Dr. Jelf, Principal of the College, even read them, but having made himself acquainted with their contents, a correspondence took place between him and Maurice. The result was that the Council pronounced "the opinions expressed, and the doubts indicated in the _Essays_, and the correspondence respecting future punishments and the final issues of the day of judgment, to be of dangerous tendency, and likely to unsettle the minds of the theological students; and further decide that his continuance as Professor would be seriously detrimental to the interests of the College."[160] Maurice afterward held the office of Chaplain to Lincoln's Inn, but in 1860 he was appointed by the Queen to the district church of Vere St. Marylebone. The relations of Maurice and Kingsley are most intimate, for besides their leadership of the Broad Church, they are the exponents of the so-called Christian Socialism. Charles Kingsley has made a profound impression upon the present thought and life of England. He betrays his martial lineage in the vigor of his pen, and in that unswerving purpose to counteract what, in his opinion, are serious barriers to the progress of the age. That he should entertain sympathy with Coleridge might be expected from the very cast of his mind, but his adoption of such a large proportion of that thinker's sentiments may be due to his private education under the care of Derwent Coleridge, son of the philosopher. Though only forty-six years old, twenty of which have been passed in the rectorship of Eversley, an enumeration of his works shows him to have written theology, philosophy, poetry, and romance. But his publications betray unity of purpose. Instead of suffering Christianity to be a dead weight upon society, he would adapt it to the wants of the masses. He holds that when the adaptation becomes thorough, when, by any means, the people can be made to grasp Christianity, the reflexive influence will be so great as to elevate them to a point unthought of by the sluggish Church. But what is the Christianity which Kingsley would incorporate into the life of society? Upon the answer to this inquiry depends the difference between him and evangelical theologians. The advocates of orthodoxy maintain that Christianity is a remedial dispensation, introduced to meet an evil which could not be counteracted by any other agency, human or divine; but with Kingsley it is only the outward exhibition of what had ever existed in a concealed state. Man has always been one with the Word, or Son of God, and, by virtue of the nature of each, they are in perfect union. Christ manifested the union first when he appeared on earth in the incarnate state, since he came to declare to men that they were not estranged from him, but had always been, and still were, in harmony with him. Men are not craven enemies of God, which error a harsh theology would make them believe. They are his friends, for Christ regarded them complacently as such; and the atonement must not be deemed the reconciliation of sinful humanity and angry Deity, but as the first manifestation of an ever-existing unity of the two parties. We need not pass through the long ordeal of repentance to be placed in the relation of sons; because we are all by nature "members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven."[161] The Church, according to Kingsley, is the world in a certain aspect. "The world," says an English writer, in stating Kingsley's opinion, "is called the Church when it recognizes its relation to God in Christ, and acts accordingly. The Church is the world lifting itself up into the sunshine; the world is the Church falling into shadow and darkness. When and where the light and life that are in the world break out into bright, or noble, or holy word or deed, then and there the world shows that the nature and glory of the Church live within it. Every man of the world is not only potentially, but virtually a member of Christ's Church, whatever may, for the present, be his character or seeming. Like the colors in shot silk, or on a dove's neck, the difference of hue and denomination depends merely upon the degree of light, and the angle of vision. In conformity with this principle, Mr. Kingsley's theology altogether secularizes the Kingdom of Christ."[162] Kingsley's views of the offices of the Holy Spirit indicate a decided approbation of the pantheistic theory. The third person of the Trinity operates not only upon man, but through him upon the secular and intellectual life of the world. Poetry, romance, and each act of induction, are the work of the Spirit, whose agency secures all the material and scientific growth of the world. Without that power, the car of progress, whether in letters, mechanics, or ethics, must stop. Kingsley would elevate the degraded portion of the race until the lowest member be made to feel the transmuting agency of Christianity. He was first led into sympathy with the poor operatives in the English factories by reading Mayhew's _Sketches of London Labor and London Poor_, and, in connection with Maurice, organized coöperative laboring associations as a check to the crushing system of competitive labor. Their plans succeeded, and many abject working men have been brought into a higher social and moral condition than they had hitherto enjoyed. These humanitarian efforts have attracted large numbers to the reception of the tenets entertained by those putting them forth. "For," the unthinking say, "if the opinions of these men will lead them to labor on this wise for the social elevation of our fellow-beings, they must needs be correct, and if so, worthy of our reception." But if Neo-Platonism can make Maurices, Kingsleys, and a whole school of "Muscular Christians" and "Christian Socialists," nothing less than the pure religion of Christ can raise up Howards, Wilberforces, and Budgetts. * * * * * The philosopher has always exerted a great power upon those who do not philosophize. He is regarded by many as the inhabitant of a sphere which few can enter, and his dictates are heard as fiats of a rightful ruler. Those who cannot understand him fully often congratulate themselves that the few unmistakable grains they have gathered from his opinions are nuggets of pure gold, and entitled to the merit of becoming the world's currency. The philosopher is not his own interpreter. There has seldom been one who knew how to tell his thoughts to the masses. That is the province of the popular writers who have adopted his opinions, and know how to deal them out almost imperceptibly in the form of poetry and fiction. One great philosophical mind has sometimes dictated the literature of generations, and, in earlier periods, of entire centuries. This influence of philosophy on literature is furnished with a new illustration at the present day; some of the most popular and attractive writers of Great Britain have extracted their opinions from one or more of the later philosophers of Germany, and incorporated them into current poetry, finance, and history. The effect has been to furnish the people with a literature which possesses all the weight of vital religious truth in the minds of those readers who prefer to derive their creed from some enchanter in letters to seeking it immediately from the Bible or its most reliable interpreters. The department of literature in question inculcates as its cardinal principle that man is unconscious of his power, he can do what seems impossible, does not worship his fellows enough, is purer than his clerical leaders would have him imagine, and ought, like certain of his predecessors, to arouse to lofty efforts, assert his dignity and divinity, and strive to advance the world to its proper glory and perfection. The authors of these exciting and flattering appeals do not surround their theory with proper safeguards, nor do they tell the world that they have served up a delectable dish of Pantheism for popular deglutition. The case is stated clearly by one who understands the danger of this tendency, and whose pen has already been powerful in exposing its absurdity. "In our general literature," says Bayne, "the principle we have enunciated undergoes modification, and, for the most part, is by no means expressed as pantheism. We refer to that spirit of self-assertion, which lies so deep in what may be called the religion of literature, to that wide-spread tendency to regard all reform of the individual man as being an evolution of some hidden nobleness, or an appeal to a perfect internal light or law, together with what may be called the worship of genius, the habit of nourishing all hope on the manifestation of the divine, by gifted individuals. We care not how this last remarkable characteristic of the time be defined; to us its connection with pantheism, and more or less close dependence on the teaching of that of Germany, seem plain, but it is enough that we discern in it an influence definably antagonistic to the spirit of Christianity."[163] The parentage of literary Rationalism in England is attributable to Thomas Carlyle. Having "found his soul" in the philosophy of Germany, we hear him, in 1827, defending the criticism of Kant as "distinctly the greatest intellectual achievement of the century in which it came to light." But the opinions of Fichte and Richter have subsequently had more weight with Carlyle, and he has elaborated them in many forms. Fichte, in particular, has influenced him to adopt a theory which gives a practical denial to the Scriptural declarations of the fallen state of humanity. Effort being goodness, the exterior world is only tolerable because it furnishes an arena for the contest of work. Man will never receive any prize unless he bestir himself to the exercise of his own omnipotence. Individual life is all the real life possessed by this world, and it is gifted with a spiritual wand capable of calling up wondrous forms of beauty and worth. It matters not so much what man works for, since his effort is the important matter. All ages have had a few true men. The assertion of self-hood constitutes greatness; and Zoroaster, Cromwell, Julius Cæsar, and Frederic the Great; heroes of any creed or no creed, Pagan or Jew, are the world's worthies, its great divinities. Men need not be conscious that they are doing great deeds while in the act, nor, when the work is accomplished, that they have performed anything worthy a school-boy's notice. On the other hand, worth is tested by actual unconsciousness, "which teaches that all self-knowledge is a curse, and introspection a disease; that the true health of a man is to have a soul without being aware of it,--to be disposed of by impulses which he never criticises,--to fling out the products of creative genius without looking at them." Man is the centre of the universe, which is everywhere clothed with life. His is a spiritual power capable of effecting the great transformations needed by his fellows. Let him be earnest, then, and evolve the fruits of his wonderful strength. Since his mission is work, here is Carlyle's gospel which calls him to it: "Work is of a religious nature; all true work is sacred; in all true work, were it but true hand-labor, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven. Sweat of the brow; and up from that to the sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton meditations, all sciences, all spoken epics, all acted heroisms, martyrdoms,--up to that 'Agony of bloody sweat,' which all men have called divine! O brother, if this is not 'worship,' then I say the more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky." Work implies power, and power in the individual is what society needs to keep it within proper bounds. Social life requires the will of the single mind and hand; republicanism is therefore the dream of fanatics, and ought not to be tolerated anywhere. Popular rights are a fiction which the strong hand ought to dissipate at a thrust. The greatest men are the greatest despots, and the exercise of their unlimited authority is what entitles them to our worship. Napoleon III. preaches the pure gospel of politics in his _Life of Julius Cæsar_. Absolute subjection--call it slavery, if you please--is the proper state of large bodies of helpless humanity, who are absolutely dependent upon some master of iron will for guidance and development. Such being Carlyle's view of human rights, it is not surprising that he has applauded the most gigantic effort in history to establish a government upon the system of human bondage. But all slavery will by and by vanish like the tobacco-smoke of "Teufelsdröckh." Part of the world's best work will be the unceasing effort for its universal and perpetual extermination; and posterity will honor those who labor for this consummation as greater benefactors and workers than all the divinities idolized by the author of _Sartor Resartus_ and the _Life of Frederic the Great_. While Carlyle's system does not appear to flatter humanity its effect is of that character. He would make his readers believe that they are pure, great, and capable beings like those deified by him. The adulation being too great for many who peruse his pages, large numbers of readers are led into dangerous vagaries. "The influence of Carlyle's writings," says an essayist, "and especially of his _Sartor Resartus_, has been primarily exerted on classes of men most exposed to temptations of egotism and petulance, and least subjected to anything above them,--academics, artists, _littérateurs_, strong-minded women, 'debating' youths, Scotchmen of the phrenological grade, and Irishmen of the young-Ireland school."[164] There are very many beside this grotesque group, who exclaim, with one of his warmest admirers, "Carlyle is my religion!" There are others again who say gratefully what John Sterling wrote him in his last brief letter, "Towards me it is still more true than towards England that no man has been and done like you."[165] The time has not yet come when men can awake from the spell of a charmer like Carlyle. But the illusion will some day be dissipated, and many of his readers in Great Britain and America will feel deeply and almost despairingly that, in the original fountain of his teaching, there was "a poison-drop which killed the plants it was expected to nourish, and left a sterile waste where men looked for the bloom and the opulence of a garden of God." It behooves those who idolize him to examine the image before which they stand. He is a man of unquestioned boldness and some originality, and no one of the present generation has greater power to dazzle and bewilder the young. Happily, age brings with it the clearing up of much of the obscurity of youth, and on the additional light of increasing years we depend for the illumination of many a mind obscured by his sentiments. The late R. A. Vaughan, a careful observer of the tendencies of English thought, says: "It may not be flattering to Mr. Carlyle, but we believe it to be true that by far the larger portion of the best minds, whose early youth his writings have powerfully influenced, will look back upon the period of such subjection as the most miserably morbid period of their life. On awaking from such delirium to the sane and healthful realities of manful toil, they will discover the hollowness of that sneering, scowling, wailing, declamatory, egotistical, and bombastic misanthropy, which, in the eye of their unripe judgment, wore the air of a philosophy so profound."[166] The time will also come when Carlyle will be revealed to all in his true character: as the theologian preaching a pagan creed; as the philosopher emasculating the German philosophy which he scrupled not to borrow; as the stylist perverting the pure English of Milton and Shakspeare into inflated, oracular Richterisms; and as the arch demagogue who, despising the people at heart, assigned no bounds to his ambition to gain their hearing and cajole them into the reception of his unmixed Pantheism. The periodical press has been a successful agency in the dissemination of literary Rationalism throughout the British Islands. Years before the recent discussions sprang up, the _Westminster Review_ was the ablest and most avowed of all the advocates of the "liberal theology" of the Continent. It still rules without a rival. Emboldened by the late accession of sympathizers, it opposes orthodoxy and the Church with an arrogance equal to that of the _Universal German Library_, whose editor, Nicolai, is reported to have said: "My object is merely to hold up to the laughter and contempt of the public the orthodox and hypocritical clergy of the Protestant church, and to show that they make their own bad cause the cause of their office and of religion, or rather that of Almighty God himself,--to show that when they make an outcry about prevailing errors, infidelity, and blasphemy, they are only speaking of their own ignorance, hypocrisy, and love of persecution, of the wickedness of their own hearts concealed under the mantle of piety."[167] From its character as a quarterly publication, the _Westminster Review_ has the constant opportunity to reply to every new work of Christian apology, and to elaborate each new heresy of the Rationalistic thinkers. Assuming a thoroughly negative position, it repels every tendency toward a higher type of piety, and retards, as far as it can, the popular acceptance of the doctrines of Christianity. Its attacks on the sanctity of the Sabbath are bold, and carefully designed to affect popular sentiment. It gives its support to the fatal theories of Sociology, a system which holds "that so uniform are the operations of motives upon the actions of men that social regulations may be reduced to an exact science, and society be organized to a perfect model." It thus commits itself to the position that all history takes place by force of necessity. The _Westminster Review_ studiously opposes the orthodox view of inspiration, miracles, the atonement, and the Biblical age of the world and of man. It indorses the sentiments of the Tübingen school, and holds with Baur that if we would know the truth of the early Church, its entire apostolic history must be reconstructed. It is compelled to confess the recent advance of evangelical doctrines in the German mind, but sees only evil in the fact, and utters this jeremiade: "This church sentiment, which has seized upon the whole of the _noblesse_ in North Germany is becoming every year the sentiment of the clergy. The theological radicalism of the last period is now quite a thing of the past. The present is an epoch of restoration. Scientific criticism has no longer any interest; it is, who can be most orthodox, and reproduce more precisely the ideas of the sixteenth century. As the scientific and critical school is defunct, the mediation-theology, whose business was to compromise between the results of learning and the principles of orthodoxy, is necessarily in a state of decay. Its occupation is gone. This school of theologians, which numbers in its ranks some of the most respectable names in Germany, and which traces its origin to Schleiermacher, can scarcely be said now to make head against the sweeping current of Pharisaical orthodoxy. Some of its older representatives have been withdrawn from the scene either by age or death; others have followed the multitude, and conformed to the reigning 'churchmanship.' It is the old story enacted in the Catholic revival of the end of the sixteenth century, and at other times before and since. The reactionary clergy have succeeded in getting themselves regarded as the Swiss Guard of the throne. They stand between Royalty and Revolution. All the places in the gift of the crown--and all the places are in the gift of the crown--are filled on party considerations. Learning goes for nothing. Thus inferior men are elevated to a platform from which they deliver their dicta with authority, and ignorance can contradict knowledge at an advantage. The mutual understanding among the party enables them to puff each other's books, and run down their opponents. Only learning can get no hearing."[168] A number of writers have been furnished with a creed by the literature of which we have spoken, and are now endeavoring to teach it to the people. Their system has many names, among which are, Positivism, Secularism, and Socialism. Consummate shrewdness is exhibited in its presentation to the people, "the children of this world" sustaining their old reputation for superior wisdom. The circulating libraries abound in its books, and the newspaper and six-penny pamphlet are used as instruments for its wider dissemination. The Protestant church of Great Britain has no time for idleness, and cannot afford to waste any truth-power while so many enemies are assailing its walls. When the crisis shall have passed it will be seen that not a superfluous hand was lifted in the combat. What British and American Protestantism needs to-day is not a class of discoverers of new truth, but that the defenders of the old truth, availing themselves of every new step of science and criticism, be chivalric in opposing their adversaries, and watchful of the interests which God has placed in their keeping. FOOTNOTES: [142] _National Review_, Oct., 1856. [143] _Introductory Essay to Coleridge's Works._ Vol. i., pp. 21-22. Harper's edition. [144] Letter dated Shrewsbury, Jan. 19th, 1798, to Mr. Isaac Wood, High St., Shrewsbury. [145] _Biographia Literaria._ Appendix III., p. 709. [146] _Introductory Essay to Coleridge's Works_, vol. i., pp. 35-36. [147] _Works_, vol. i., p. 115. [148] _Works_, p. 241. The full argument is contained on pp. 241-253. [149] Ibid. vol. i., pp. 269-271. [150] _Works_, vol. i., p. 308. [151] Ibid, p. 325. [152] _Mission of the Comforter._ Note 8a. [153] _Sermons on the Law of Self-Sacrifice, and the Unity of the Church._ [154] _Sermon on John_, xix., 30. [155] _Theological Essays._ Second Edition. London, 1853. Maurice has published thirty-four works. _Vid._ Low's _English Catalogue_, 1835-1862, pp. 509-510. [156] _Lectures on the Old Testament_, p. 6. [157] Ibid. pp. 3-6. [158] _Unity of the New Testament._ _Introduction_, pp. xxi.-xxvi. [159] _Theological Essays_, p. 61. [160] The date of this Sentence was Oct. 28th, 1853. [161] _Sermons on National Subjects._ First Series, p. 14. London Edition. [162] _Modern Anglican Theology._ By the Rev. J. H. Rigg. Second Edition. London, 1859. The student of contemporary theology will find this work the best summary of the opinions of Coleridge and his school. [163] _Christian Life_, p. 14. American Edition. [164] _National Review_, Oct. 1856. [165] _Life of Sterling_, p. 334. [166] _Essays and Remains_, vol. i., pp. 7-8. [167] _Sebaldus Nothanker._ Second Edition. 1774. [168] October Number, 1863. CHAPTER XXI. ENGLAND CONTINUED: CRITICAL RATIONALISM--JOWETT, THE ESSAYS AND REVIEWS, AND COLENSO. The devout disciple of Christ regards the Scriptures with profound reverence, for they contain the doctrines which show him his path to the pure life of heaven. His theological opponents are not blind to this attachment, nor are they ignorant of the service of the Bible in supporting the entire Christian system. It could not therefore be expected that, while literature and philosophy were affected by Rationalism, the Scriptures should escape with impunity. There lies a deep destructive purpose beneath the brief utterance of Dr. Temple: "The immediate work of our day is the study of the Bible.[169]" The Critical Rationalism of England which is now attracting the attention of the civilized world is of recent growth, but the energy with which it has been cultivated is unsurpassed in the annals of skepticism. Professor Jowett's commentary on the _Epistles to Thessalonians, Galatians, and Romans_, was published in 1855. Coming from a highly respectable source, and assailing the doctrines of revelation boldly, it was a clear indication of what might be expected from the Critical Rationalists as a class. The doctrine of the atonement, according to this writer, is involved in perplexities whose growth is of more than a thousand years. Christ did not die to appease the divine wrath, and "sacrifice" and "atonement" were accommodated terms used by the apostles because they had been reared among the Jewish offerings and were familiar with them. The great advantage we derive from Christ is his life, in which we behold a perfect harmony of nature, absolute self-renunciation, pure love, and resignation. We know nothing of the objective act on God's part by which he reconciled the world to himself, the very description of it being a figure of speech. Conversion is not in accordance with the claims of orthodoxy, for while there were conversions in the early Church, there is no possibility of establishing a harmony between them and those which are now said to occur. The conversions of the first Christians were marked by ecstatic and unusual phenomena, whole multitudes were simultaneously affected, and the changes wrought were permanent; but the subjects were chiefly ignorant people, who no doubt did many things which would have been distasteful to us as men of education.[170] The most noteworthy work of the Critical Rationalists is the _Essays and Reviews_ (1861), a volume which consists of broad generalizations against the authority of the Bible as a standard of faith. I. THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. By Frederic Temple, D. D. There is a radical difference between man and inanimate nature. The latter is passive, and subject to the workings of the vast physical machinery, but man is at no time stationary, for he develops from age to age, and concentrates in his history the results and achievements of all previous history. There is no real difference between the capacity of men now and that of the antediluvian world; the ground of disparity lies in the time of development afforded the present generation. Thus a child of twelve stands at present where once stood the full-grown man. There are three stages in the world's development: Childhood, Youth, Maturity. Childhood requires positive rules, and is made subject to them; youth is governed by the force of example; and manhood, being free from external restraints, must be its own instructor. We have first rules, then examples, and last principles:--the Law, the Son of Man, and the Gift of the Spirit. The world was once a child, under tutors and governors until the time appointed by the Father. Afterwards, when the fit season had arrived, the Example, to which all ages should turn, was sent to teach men what they ought to be; and the human race was left to itself to be guided by the instruction of the Spirit within.[171] The world, before the time of Christ, was in its childhood, when commands were given without explanation. The pre-Christian world, being in its state of discipline and childhood, was divided into four classes: the Roman, the Greek, the Asiatic, and the Hebrew, each of which contributed something toward the world's improvement and its preparation for the age of Example. The Hebrew did the most, though his work was of the same class and aimed at the same result. The Roman gave an iron will; the Greek, a cultivated reason and taste; the Asiatic, the idea of immortality, and spiritual imagination; and the Hebrew, the trained conscience. The whole period from the close of the old Testament to the termination of the New was the time of the world's youth, the age of examples.[172] Christ came just at the right time; if he had waited until the present age his incarnation would have been misplaced, and we could not recognize his divinity; for the faculty of faith has turned inwards, and cannot now accept any outward manifestations of the truth of God.[173] The present age is that of independent reflection and the supremacy of conscience--the world's manhood. Laws and examples are absolute, and should be forgotten, just as we look lightly upon the things of our childhood. The world has arrived at its present exalted state through a severe ordeal, but the grandeur of its position is sufficient to make it forget its trials. "The spirit or conscience [which are terms for reason] comes to full strength and assumes the throne intended for him in the soul. As an accredited judge, invested with full powers, he sits in the tribunal of our inner kingdom, decides upon the past, and legislates upon the future, without appeal except to himself. He decides not by what is beautiful or noble, or soul-inspiring, but by what is right. Gradually he frames his code of laws, revising, adding, abrogating, as a wiser and deeper experience gives him clearer light. He is the third great teacher and the last."[174] In some aspects this essay is the least objectionable in the volume. Yet it contains radical errors which many a reader would accept without suspicion. The agency of the Holy Spirit in revelation is ignored, and the development through which the world has passed is confounded with civilization. This development is alleged to have occurred in a purely natural way, the Hebrew type being no more a divine appointment than that of the Grecian or Roman. The doctrines of Christianity were not clearly stated in the early Church, and the flight of eighteen centuries has been required to lift the curtain from them.[175] Conscience is placed above the Bible, and if the statements of the Scriptures be in conflict with it, allowance must be made for occasional inaccuracies, interpolations, and forgeries.[176] II. $1nd Williams, D. D. We here find the same deference paid to conscience as in the preceding essay. If it differ from revelation, man's own notions of right and wrong must prevail over Scripture. Dr. Williams is contented with arraying Bunsen's skeptical theories before the British public without formally indorsing them himself; yet, as their reviewer, he is evidently in complete harmony with the German author. For he carefully collects the chevalier's extravagant speculations; brings them into juxtaposition; admires the spirit, boldness, and learning which had given birth to them; and in no case refutes, but looks with complacence upon nearly every one. The impression of a candid reader of the essay must be, that the writer indorses almost all of Bunsen's opinions without having the courage to avow his assent. Of his hero he says, "Bunsen's enduring glory is neither to have faltered with his conscience, nor shrunk from the difficulties of the problem, but to have brought a vast erudition, in the light of a Christian conscience, to unroll tangled records; tracing frankly the Spirit of God elsewhere, but borrowing chiefly the traditions of his Hebrew Sanctuary."[177] The absence of that reverence to be expected in all whose vocation enjoins the frequent reading of the sublime liturgy of the Church of England, produces a depressing influence upon any one not in sympathy with the doctrines of Rationalism. The Evangelical theologians are termed "The despairing school, who forbid us to trust in God or in our own conscience, unless we kill our souls with literalism."[178] The inquiries and successes of the German Rationalists are worthy of hearty admiration, for they are so great that the world has seldom, if ever, seen their equal. Bishops Pearson and Butler, and Mr. Mansel are seriously at fault in their notions of prophecy, and even Jerome is guilty of gross puerilities. There is no reason why Bunsen may not be right when he holds that the world must be twenty thousand years old; there is no chronological element in revelation; the avenger who slew the first-born, may have been the Bedouin host; in the passage of the Red Sea, the description may be interpreted with the latitude of poetry; it is right to reject the perversions which make the cursing Psalms evangelically inspired; perhaps one passage in Zechariah and one in Isaiah may be direct prophecies of the Messiah, and possibly a chapter in Deuteronomy may foreshadow the final fall of Jerusalem; the Messianic prophecies are mere contemporaneous history; and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is only a description of the sufferings of Jeremiah. Inspiration is too loftily conceived by "the well-meaning crowd," for whom we should manifest "grave compassion." What is the Bible, continues the essayist, but the written voice of the congregation, and not the written voice of God? Why all this reverence for the sacred writers, since they acknowledge themselves men of like passions with us? Justification by faith is merely peace of mind from trust in a righteous God, and not a fiction of merit by transfer. Regeneration is a correspondent giving of insight or an awakening of the forces of the soul; propitiation is the recovery of peace, and the atonement is our sharing the Saviour's Spirit, but not his purchase of us by his own blood. Throughout the Scriptures we should assume in ourselves a verifying faculty,--conscience, reason, or whatever else we choose to term it. III. ON THE STUDY OF THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. By Baden Powell, M. A. The author of this essay having recently died, he has therefore incurred less censure than he would otherwise have received. The views here expressed, taken in connection with his more elaborate treatise on the _Order of Nature_, do not place him on the same theoretical ground with Hume and Spinoza; but the moral effect of the present attack upon miracles as an evidence of Christianity is not less antagonistic than the theories of either of those authors. Spinoza held that miracles are impossible, because it would be derogatory to God to depart from the established laws of the universe, and one of Hume's objections to them was their incapability of being proved from testimony.[179] Professor Powell objects to them because they bear no analogy to the harmony of God's dealings in the material world; and insists that they are not to be credited, since they are a violation of the laws of matter or an interruption of the course of physical causes. The orthodox portion of the Church are laboring under the egregious error of making them an essential doctrine, when they are really a mere external accessory. Reason, and not "our desires" must come to our aid in all examination of them. The key-note to Professor Powell's opposition is contained in the following statement: "From the nature of our antecedent convictions, the probability of _some_ kind of mistake or deception somewhere, though we know not _where_, is greater than the probability of the event really happening in _the way_ and from the _causes_ assigned."[180] The inductive philosophy, for which great respect must be paid, is enlisted against miracles. If we once know all about those alleged and held as such, we would find them resolved into natural phenomena, just as "the angel at Milan was the aerial reflection of an image on a church; the balls of fire at Plausac were electrical; the sea-serpent was a basking shark on a stem of sea-weed. A committee of the French Academy of Sciences, with Lavoisier at its head, after a grave investigation, pronounced the alleged fall of aërolites to be a superstitious fable."[181] The two theories against the reality of miracles in their received sense, are: _first_, that they are attributable to natural causes; and, _second_, that they may involve more or less of the parabolic or mythic character. These assumptions do away with any real admission of miracles even on religious grounds. The animus of the whole essay may be determined by the following treatment of testimony and reason: "Testimony, after all, is but a second-hand assurance; it is but a blind guide; testimony can avail nothing against reason. The essential question of miracles stands quite apart from any consideration of _testimony_; the question would remain the same, if we had the evidence of our own senses to an alleged miracle; that is, to an extraordinary or inexplicable fact. It is not the _mere fact_, but the _cause_ or _explanation_ of it, which is the point at issue."[182] This means far more than Spinoza, Hume, or any other opponent of miracles, except the radical Rationalists of Germany, has claimed,--that we must not believe a miracle though actually witnessed. IV. SEANCES HISTORIQUES DE GENEVE--THE NATIONAL CHURCH. By Henry Bristow Wilson, B. D. The Multitudinist principle, or Broad Christianity, is advocated by the essayist with earnestness and an array of learning. The difficulty concerning the non-attendance of a large portion of the British population upon the ordinances of the Church is met by the proposition to abrogate subscription to all creeds and articles of faith, and thus convert the whole nation into a Broad Church. The youth of the land are educated into a false and idolatrous view of the Bible. But on the Census-Sunday of 1861, five millions and a quarter of persons, or forty-two per cent. of the whole population, were not present at service. Many of these people do not believe some of the doctrines preached; they have thought seriously, but cannot sympathize with what they are compelled to hear. If we break down all subscription and include them in the great National Church, we will approach the Scriptural ideal. Unless this be done they will fall into Dissenting hands, and die outside the Church of Christ. There are several proofs of the Scriptural indorsement of Nationalism; Christ's lament over Jerusalem declares that he had offered Multitudinism to the inhabitants nationally, while the three thousand souls converted on the day of Pentecost cannot be supposed to have been individual converts, but merely a mass of persons brought in as a body. Some of the converts of the apostolic age did not believe in the resurrection, which fact implies that the early Churches took collective names from the localities where they were situated, and that doubt of the resurrection should now be no bar to communion in the National Church. Even heathenism in its best form proceeded on the Multitudinist principle, for all were included as believers in the faith of the times. The approval of reason and conscience, and not verbal adherence to human interpretation of Scripture, should be the great test of membership. Advice is administered by the essayist to the Church of which he is a clergyman, in this language: "A national church may also find itself in this position; which, perhaps, is our own. Its ministers may become isolated between two other parties,--between those, on the one hand, who draw fanatical inferences from formularies and principles which they themselves are not able or are unwilling to repudiate; and on the other, those who have been tempted, in impatience of old fetters, to follow free thought heedlessly wherever it may lead them. If our own churchmen expect to discourage and repress a fanatical Christianity without a frank appeal to reason, and a frank criticism of Scripture, they will find themselves without any effectual arms for that combat; or if they attempt to check inquiry by the repetition of old forms and denunciations, they will be equally powerless, and run the especial risk of turning into bitterness the sincerity of those who should be their best allies, as friends of truth. They should avail themselves of the aid of all reasonable persons for enlightening the fanatical religionist, making no reserve of any seemingly harmless or apparently serviceable superstitions of their own. They should also endeavor to supply to the negative theologian some positive elements in Christianity, on grounds more sure to him than the assumption of an objective "faith once delivered to the saints," which he cannot identify with the creed of any church as yet known to him."[183] V. ON THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. By C. W. Goodwin, M. A. The assumption is made that the Mosaic account of creation is irreconcilable with the real creation of the earth. We do wrong in elevating that narrative above its proper position, and orthodox geologists have grossly erred in attaching much importance to the language of the first chapter of Genesis. There is nothing poetical or figurative in the whole account; it contains no mystical or symbolical meaning, and is a plain statement of just so much as suited the Jewish mind. All attempts, however, to find any consistency between it and the present state of science are simply absurd. The theory of Chalmers and Buckland, and afterward that of Hugh Miller, are not tenable, for Moses was ignorant of what we now know, and his alleged description is contradicted by scientific inquiry. If then it is plain that God has not thought it needful to communicate to the writer of the Scriptural Cosmogony the knowledge revealed by modern researches, why do we not confess it? We would do so if it did not conflict with a human theory which presumes to point out how God ought to have instructed man.[184] The writer had no authority for what he asserts so solemnly and unhesitatingly, for he was an early speculator who stated as facts what he only conjectured as probabilities. Yet he seized one great truth, in which he anticipated the highest revelation of modern inquiry; namely, the unity of the design of the world, and its subordination to one sole Maker and Law-giver.[185] But no one contends that the Mosaic view can be used as a basis of astronomical or geological teaching; and we must therefore consider the Scriptural cosmogony not as "an authentic utterance of divine knowledge, but a human utterance, which it has pleased Providence to use in a special way for the education of mankind."[186] VI. TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. By Mark Pattison, B. D. We are surrounded with a Babel of religious creeds and theories, and it is all-important that we should know how we have inherited them. If we would understand our times, we must know the productive influences of the past; if we would thread the present mazes of religious pretension, we should not neglect those immediate agencies in their production that had their origin near the beginning of the eighteenth century. These agencies are three in number: 1. The formation and growth of that compromise between church and state which is called Toleration; 2. Methodism without the Church and the evangelical movement within it; 3. The growth and gradual diffusion, through all religious thinking, of the supremacy of reason. The theology of the Deistic age is identical with Rationalism. That Rationalistic period of England is divided into two parts: from 1688 to 1750, and from 1750 to 1830. The second age may be called that of evidences, when the clergy continued to manufacture evidence as an ingenious exercise,--a literature which was avowedly professional, a study which might seem theology without being it, and which could awaken none of the dormant skepticism beneath the surface of society.[187] The defense of the Deists was perhaps as good as the orthodox attack, but they were inquirers after truth, and being guided by reason, they deserve all commendation. Yet they only foreshadowed the glory of the present supremacy of reason. Deism strove eagerly for light; it saw the dawn; the present is the noonday. The human understanding wished to be satisfied, and did not care to believe that of which it could not see the substantial ground. The mind was coming slowly to see that it had duties which it could not devolve upon others, and that a man must think for himself, protect his own rights, and administer his own affairs. Reason was never less extravagant than in this first essay of its strength; for its demands were modest, and it was easily satisfied,--far too easily, we must think, when we look at some of the reasonings which passed as valid.[188] English Deism, a system which paralyzed the religious life and thought of the nation, has never had a more enthusiastic eulogist than the author of this historical plea for Rationalism. If the demands of the Deists were "modest," who shall be able to find a term sufficiently descriptive of the claims of their present successors? VII. ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. By Benjamin Jowett, M. A. Professor Jowett, as commentator on St. Paul's epistles, had already so defined his position on the science of Scriptural exegesis, that we needed no new information to be convinced of his antagonism to evangelical interpretation. The present essay, which is the most formidable and destructive in the volume, commences with a lamentation over the prevailing differences in the exposition of the Bible. The Germans have been far more successful in this respect than the English people, the former having arrived at a tolerable degree of concurrence. The word "inspiration" is a _crux theologorum_, the most of its explanations being widely divergent, and at variance with the original signification of the term. We make it embrace far too much, for there is no foundation for any high or supernatural views of inspiration in either the Gospels or Epistles. There is no appearance in those writings that their authors had any extraordinary gift, or that they were free from error or infirmity; St. Paul hesitated in difficult cases, and more than once corrected himself; one of the gospel historians does not profess to have been an eye-witness of the events described by him; the evangelists do not agree as to the dwelling-place of Christ's parents, nor concerning the circumstances of the crucifixion; they differ about the woman who anointed our Lord's feet; and the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy is not discernible in the New Testament history. To the question, What is inspiration? there are two answers: _first_, That idea of Scripture which we gather from the knowledge of it; and, _second_, that any true doctrine of inspiration must conform to all the ascertained facts of history or of science. The meaning of Scripture has nothing to do with the question of inspiration, for if the word "inspiration" were to become obsolete nothing vital would be lost, since it is but a term of yesterday. The solution of the various difficulties in the gospels is, that the tradition on which the first three are based was preserved orally, and, having been slowly put together, was written in three forms. The writers of the first three gospels were, therefore, not independent witnesses of the history itself. To interpret the Bible properly it must be treated as any other book, "in the same careful and impartial way that we ascertain the meaning of Sophocles or Plato.... Scripture, like other books, has one meaning, which is to be gathered from itself, without reference to the adaptations of fathers or divines, and without regard to _à priori_ notions about its nature and origin. It is to be interpreted also with attention to the character of its authors, and the prevailing state of civilization and knowledge, with allowance for peculiarities of style and language, and modes of thought and figures of speech; yet not without a sense, that, as we read, there grows upon us the witness of God in the word, anticipating in a rude and primitive age the truth that was to be, shining more and more unto the perfect day in the life of Christ, which again is reflected from different points of view in the teachings of his apostles."[189] The old methods of interpretation, Jowett concludes, must give place to this new and perfect system, for the growing state of science, the pressing wants of man, and his elevated reason demand it. If this liberal scheme be inaugurated we shall have a higher idea of truth than is supplied by the opinion of mankind in general, or by the voice of parties in a Church. It is interesting to notice the opinions of the evangelical theologians of Germany, who have long been accustomed to attacks upon Christianity, concerning these English critics. "The authors of the essays," says Hengstenberg, "have been trained in a German school. It is only the echo of German infidelity which we hear from the midst of the English church. They appear to us as parrots, with only this distinction, common among parrots, that they imitate more or less perfectly. The treatise of Temple is in its scientific value about equal to an essay written by the pupils of the middle classes of our colleges.... The essay of Goodwin on the Mosaic cosmogony displays the naïve assurance of one who receives the modern critical science from the second or tenth hand. The editor [Hengstenberg] asked the now deceased Andreas Wagner, a distinguished professor of natural sciences at the University of Munich, to subject this treatise to an examination from the stand-point of natural science. The offer was accepted, and the book given to him. But after some time it was returned with the remark, that he must take back his promise, as the book was beneath all criticism.... All these essays tend toward Atheism. Their subordinate value is seen in the inability of their authors to recognize their goal clearly, and in their want of courage to declare this knowledge. Only Baden Powell forms in this respect an exception. He uses several expressions, in which the grinning spectre makes his appearance almost undisguisedly. He speaks not only sneeringly of the idea of a positive external revelation, which has hitherto formed the basis of all systems of the Christian faith; he even raises himself against the 'Architect of the world,' whom the old English Free Thinkers and Free Masons had not dared to attack."[190] The _Essays and Reviews_ were not long in print before the periodicals called attention to their extraordinary character. Had they not been the _Oxford Essays_, and written by well-known and influential men, they would probably have created but little interest, and passed away with the first or second edition. But their origin and associations gave them weight at the outset. The press soon began to teem with replies written from every possible stand-point. Volumes of all sizes, from small pamphlets to bulky octavos, were spread abroad as an antidote to the poison. From trustworthy statements we are assured that there have been called forth by the _Essays and Reviews_ in England alone nearly four hundred publications. Hardly a newspaper, religious or secular, metropolitan or provincial, has stood aloof from the contest. Every seat of learning has been agitated, the social classes have been aroused, the entire nation has taken part in the strife. Meanwhile, the High Church and Low Church have united in the cordial condemnation of the work. Even some of the First Broad Churchmen have written heartily against its theology and influence. A remarkable feature of the whole controversy is the judicial prosecution of the essayists. Petitions numerously signed were presented to the bishops, praying that some action might be taken against them. One protest contained the signatures of nine thousand clergymen of the Established church; and the bishops, without a single exception, took ground against the theological bearing of the _Essays and Reviews_. The Convocations of Canterbury and York, which possessed the full exercise of their legislative functions for the first time in one hundred and fifty years, declared against it, and pledged their influence to protect the church from the "pernicious doctrines and heretical tendencies of the book." After much deliberation and counsel, Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson were summoned before the court of Arches, the chief ecclesiastical tribunal of England. Finally, June 21, 1864, decision was pronounced that they had departed from the teachings of the Thirty-Nine Articles on the inspiration of Holy Scripture, on the atonement, and on justification. They were therefore suspended for one year, with the further penalty of costs and deprivation of their salary. At the urgent solicitation of friends, in addition to their own strong desire to push their defense as far as possible, their case was brought before the Privy Council, a court of which the Queen is a member, and from which there can be no appeal. Contrary to the general expectation, the decision of the Court of Arches was reversed, and the essayists in question were restored to their functions. The reversal of the decision of the Court of Arches is couched in the following significant language: "On the general tendency of the book called 'Essays and Reviews,' and on the effort or aim of the whole essay of Dr. Williams, or the whole essay of Mr. Wilson, we neither can, nor do, pronounce any opinion. On the short extracts before us, our Judgment is that the charges are not proved. Their Lordships, therefore, will humbly recommend to Her Majesty that the sentences be reversed, and the reformed articles be rejected in like manner as the rest of the original articles; but inasmuch as the Appellants have been obliged to come to this Court, their Lordships think it right that they should have the costs of this Appeal."[191] This action was regarded by every skeptical sympathizer as a great triumph, and we may therefore expect the Rationalistic school to engage in still more important enterprises than any to which they have addressed themselves. The most outspoken and violent attacks of critical Rationalism in England are contained in the exegetical publications of Dr. John William Colenso, who, in 1853, was consecrated Bishop of Natal, South Eastern Africa. He had previously issued a series of mathematical works which obtained a wide circulation; but his first book of scriptural criticism was the _Epistle to the Romans, newly translated and explained from a Missionary Point of View_. Having completed the New Testament and several parts of the Old, he was laboring assiduously on a translation of the Bible into the Zulu tongue, when his former doubts concerning the unhistorical character of the Pentateuch revived with increased force. The intelligent native who was assisting him in his literary work asked, respecting the account of the flood, "Is all that true?" This, with other inquiries propounded to him by the Zulus, led him to a careful reëxamination of the Mosaic record. The fruit of this additional study is the _Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically examined, in Three Parts_. Appearing just at the time when the contest concerning the _Essays and Reviews_ was at fever-heat, the Bishop's work added excitement to all the combatants. Those who are intimately acquainted with the treatment of the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua by the most unsparing of the German Rationalists will at once see the resemblance between their views and those of Colenso. His aim is to overthrow the historical character of the early Scriptural history by exposing the contradictions and impossibilities contained therein; and also to fix the real origin, age and authorship of the so-called narratives of Moses and Joshua. "I have arrived at the conviction," says he, "that the Pentateuch, as a whole, cannot possibly have been written by Moses, or by any one acquainted personally with the facts which it professes to describe, and, further, that the so-called Mosaic narrative, by whomsoever written, and though imparting to us, as I fully believe it does, revelations of the Divine will and character, cannot be regarded as _historically true_.... My reason for no longer receiving the Pentateuch as historically true, is not that I find insuperable difficulties with regard to the _miracles_ or supernatural _revelations_ of Almighty God recorded in it, but solely that I cannot, as a true man, consent any longer to shut my eyes to the absolute, palpable self-contradictions of the narrative. The notion of miraculous or supernatural interferences does not present to my own mind the difficulties which it seems to present to some. I could believe and receive the miracles of Scripture heartily, if only they were authenticated by a veracious history; though, if that is not the case with the Pentateuch, any miracles, which rest on such an unstable support, must necessarily fall to the ground with it."[192] In proof of this assumption the author selects a large number of inexplicable portions from the narratives in question, and uses all the resources of his talents and learning to prove them to be the fruit of "error, infirmity, passion, and ignorance." Hezron and Hanuel, he avers, were certainly born in the land of Canaan; the whole assembly of Israel could not have gathered about the door of the tabernacle; all Israel could not have been heard by Moses, for they numbered about two millions of people, according to the assumption of the Biblical narrative. The Israelites could not have dwelt in tents; they were not armed; the institution of the Passover, as described in the book of Exodus, was an impossibility, the Israelites could not take cattle through the barren country over which they passed; there is an incompatibility between the supposed number of Israel and the predominance of wild beasts in Palestine; the number of the first-born is irreconcilable with the number of male adults; and the number of the priests at the exodus cannot be harmonized with their duties, and with the provision made for them.[193] These, with other difficulties chiefly of a numerical nature, constitute the basis on which the Bishop builds his objections to the historical character of Exodus as an integral part of the Pentateuch. In order to determine the true quality of the Book of Genesis, he brings out the old theory that the work had two writers, the _Elohist_ and the _Jehovist_,--so called because of their separate use of a term for Deity. The Elohist was the older, and his narrative was the ground-work which the Jehovist used and upon which he constructed his own additions.[194] This Elohist account is defined to be "a series of parables, based, as we have said, on legendary facts, though not historically true."[195] The Pentateuch existed originally not as five books, but as one; and it is possible that its quintuple division was made in the time of Ezra. The writer of Chronicles was the same who wrote the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, probably a Levite living after the time of Nehemiah; the Chronicles were therefore written only four hundred years before Christ; but the Chronicler must not be relied on unless there is other evidence in support of his narrative. Exodus could not have been written by Moses or any one of his contemporaries. It is very probable that the Pentateuch generally was composed in a later age than that of Moses or Joshua.[196] Samuel was most likely the author of the Elohistic legends, which he left at his death in an unfinished state, and which naturally fell into the hands of some one of his disciples of the School of the Prophets, such, for instance, as Nathan or Gad.[197] Yet the writer of the Pentateuch must not be reproached for his errors as much as those who would attribute to him infallible accuracy. He had no idea that he was writing truth. "But," says the Bishop, "there is not the slightest reason to suppose that the first writer of the story in the Pentateuch ever professed to be recording _infallible truth_, or even _actual, historical truth_. He wrote certainly a narrative. But what indications are there that he published it at large, even to the people of his own time, as a record of _matter-of-fact, veracious history_? Why may not Samuel, like any other Head of an Institution, have composed this narrative for the instruction and improvement of his pupils, from which it would gradually find its way, no doubt, more or less freely, among the people at large, without ever pretending that it was any other than an historical _experiment_,--an attempt to give them some account of the early annals of their tribes? In _later_ days, it is true, this ancient work of Samuel's came to be regarded as infallibly Divine. But was it so regarded in the writer's days, or in the ages immediately following? On the contrary, we find no sign of the Mosaic Law being venerated, obeyed, or even known, in many of its most remarkable features, till a much later time in history."[198] The excitement occasioned by the publication of these views of Colenso was second only to that produced by the _Essays and Reviews_. There was a decided disposition on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities to deal summarily with him, since he had been intrusted with the Episcopal office, and sent as a missionary to the heathen. Several of the Bishops early took ground against his destructive criticism, and refused to allow him to officiate within their dioceses. The Convocations of York and Canterbury united in condemnation of his work. There was a difference of opinion as to the best method of depriving him of his episcopal authority. In the dilemma it was resolved to appeal to him without any appearance of legal pressure; whereupon the Bishops of England and Ireland, with but three exceptions, Drs. Thirlwall, Fitzgerald, and Griffin, addressed him a letter, in which he was requested to resign his office, since he must see, as well as they, the inconsistency of holding his position as Bishop and believing and publishing such views as were contained in his exegetical works. His reply was a positive refusal, coupled with the statement that he would soon return to his See in Africa, there to continue the discharge of his duties. The Episcopal Bench of England failing to eject him, he was tried and condemned before an Episcopal Synod, which assembled in Cape Town, Southern Africa, on November 27th, 1863. The charges against Colenso were:--his denial of the atonement; belief in man's justification without any knowledge of Christ; belief in natal regeneration; disbelief in the endlessness of future punishment; denial of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, and of the truthfulness of what they profess to describe as facts; denial of the divinity of our blessed Lord; and depraving, impugning, and bringing into disrepute the Book of Common Prayer. Having been adjudged guilty, he was deposed from his office as Bishop of Natal, and thenceforth prohibited from the exercise of all ministerial functions within any part of the metropolitical province of Cape Town. Being absent in England at the time of the trial, Colenso was represented by Dr. Bleek, who protested against the legality of the proceedings and the validity of the judgment, at the same time giving notice of his intention to appeal. But the Metropolitan of Cape Town refused to recognize any appeal, except to the Archbishop of Canterbury, which must be made within fifteen days from sentence. Immediately after the deposition, the Dean of Natal, the Archdeacon, the parochial clergy, and the church-wardens of the diocese, signed a declaration, by which they pledged themselves not to recognize Colenso any longer as their Bishop. Before Colenso was served with a copy of the decree against him, he issued a letter to his diocese, in which he denied the power claimed by the Metropolitan and the other bishops of Cape Town to depose him. He maintained that, of the nine charges brought against him, four had already been disposed of by the late judgment of the Privy Council in the case of the _Essays and Reviews_. In the meanwhile, his friends at home collected a fund of more than two thousand pounds to enable him to plead his cause before the English courts. The first proceeding in Great Britain commenced in 1863, before the judicial committee of the Privy Council. The case has finally been decided in Colenso's favor, the Lord Chancellor declaring the sentence pronounced by the Bishop of Cape Town illegal, in the following words: "As the question can be decided only by the sovereign or head of the Established Church and depositary of appellate jurisdiction, their Lordships will humbly report to Her Majesty their judgment and opinion that the proceedings taken by the Bishop of Cape Town, and the judgment or sentence pronounced by him against the Bishop of Natal, are null and void." But while this judgment of the Privy Council annulled the proceedings against Colenso, it also destroyed his Episcopal authority by pronouncing that the letters patent of the Queen, by which he was made Bishop, had neither been authorized by any Parliamentary statute nor confirmed by the legislative council of Natal. His continuance in authority, therefore, was made dependent on the voluntary recognition of the clergy within the diocese of Natal. But the latest intelligence reveals the important fact that the clergy unanimously refuse to recognize his Episcopal authority, and have asked the Bishop of Cape Town to administer the diocese until a new appointment can be made for the See of Natal. The trustees of the Colonial Bishops' fund have also declared that they will no longer pay the salary of Colenso. He has already set sail for Southern Africa, but on his arrival will find himself without a clergy or a people to recognize his jurisdiction. Dr. Pusey has written an interesting letter, in which he hails the decision of the Privy Council as an indication that the church of South Africa will soon be as free and prosperous as the Scotch Episcopal church and the church of the United States. The remaining parts of the Bishop's _Commentary on the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua_ have met with a tardy and cold reception. We accept this as a hopeful sign that no great portion of the people are willing to adopt his theological views. The first two parts, however, created an excitement which was not confined to Christian lands. Even a Mussulman addressed a letter from the Cape of Good Hope to a Turkish paper at Constantinople, in which he gives an account of the Christians in that colony, together with a description of their multiform dissensions. "Their priests," he writes, "all advocate different creeds; and as to their bishops, one Colenso actually writes books against his own religion." It may be more a gratification of the vanity than flattering to the piety of the late Missionary to the Zulus to be informed that already the Buddhists of India are making free use of his works as an invaluable aid in their controversies with the missionaries from Christian lands. Thus the herald of the cross of Christ in heathen nations must encounter not only the superstition and prejudices of paganism, but the infidelity exported from his own home, where for centuries the battles of the truth have been fought and won. FOOTNOTES: [169] _Essays and Reviews._ Edited, with an Introduction, by Rev. F. H. Hedge, D. D. Boston, 1862. [170] _Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles._--_Noyes' Essays_, pp. 222-276. [171] _Essays and Reviews_, pp. 5-6. [172] _Essays and Reviews_, p. 37. [173] Ibid. p. 39. [174] Ibid. pp. 35-36. [175] For an able refutation of this point, _vid._ Houghton, _Rationalism in the Church of England_, pp. 127-136. [176] _Essays and Reviews_, p. 54. [177] Ibid. p. 60. [178] _Essays and Reviews_, p. 68. [179] _Replies to Essays and Reviews_, p. 135. [180] _Essays and Reviews_, p. 120. [181] Ibid. p. 155. [182] _Essays and Reviews_, p. 159. [183] _Essays and Reviews_, pp. 195-196. [184] Ibid. p. 277. [185] _Essays and Reviews_, pp. 277-278. [186] Ibid. p. 278. [187] _Essays and Reviews_, p. 287. [188] Ibid. pp. 328-329. [189] _Essays and Reviews_, p. 446. [190] _Evangelische Kirchenzeitung_, _Vorwort_, 1862. [191] _Ecclesiastical Judgments of the Privy Council_, p. 289. Edited by Hon. G. C. Brodrick, and the Rev. W. H. Freemantle. London, 1865. The members of the Queen's Privy Council are as follows: Earls Granville and Lonsdale; Duke of Buccleugh; Marquis of Salisbury; Lords Westbury, Brougham, Cranworth, Wensleydale, St. Leonards, Chelmsford, and Kindsdown; and Right Hons. Lushington, Bruce, Wigram, Ryan, Pollock, Romilly, Turner, Cockburn, Coleridge, Erie, and Wylde. [192] _Pentateuch and Book of Joshua_, Part I., pp. 49, 51-52. Am. Edition. [193] _Pentateuch and Book of Joshua_, Part I., pp. 60, 78, 81, 94, 105, 118, 138, 141, 185. [194] _Pentateuch and Book of Joshua_, Part II., p. 60. [195] Ibid. p. 296. [196] _Pentateuch and Book of Joshua_, Part II., pp. 83, 84, 115. [197] Ibid. p. 160. [198] _Pentateuch and Book of Joshua_, Part II., p. 292. CHAPTER XXII. ENGLAND CONTINUED: SURVEY OF CHURCH PARTIES. The Church of England has always been proud of the outward form of unity. Her rigid view of the sin of schism has induced her to submit to great elasticity of opinion and teaching rather than incur the traditional disgrace of open division. But on this very account she has never been free from internal strife. In everything but in name she has been for centuries not one church, but several. Her entire history discloses two tendencies balancing each other, and for the most part reacting to great advantage. The Sacramentalist party represents Romanizing tendencies, and is thoroughly devoted to "the sacramental services and the offices of the church, especially as performed according to the rubric." The Evangelical party is less formal, is in harmony with the Articles, aims to keep up with the accumulating religious wants of society, and lays stress upon the practical evidences of Christian life. Under these two standards may be ranked all those schools within the pale of the Church which have been growing into prominence since the closing years of the eighteenth century. We will only speak of the most influential parties, remembering, however, that each of them is again subdivided into various sections. THE LOW CHURCH. Within a short time after the Church of England gave signs of religious awakening in consequence of the rise of the Wesleyan movement, the triumph of evangelical tendencies was complete. "In less than twenty years," says Conybeare, "the original battle-field was won, and the enemy may be said to have surrendered at discretion. Thenceforward, scarcely a clergyman was to be found in England who preached against the doctrines of the creed. The faith of the church was restored to the level of her formularies."[199] The revival was so thorough that it gave rise to a zealous class which was called by its friends the Evangelical Party, but by its enemies the Low Church. The Low Church had its seat at Cambridge, and was conducted by vigorous theologians, who were encouraged and aided by highly-respected and leading laymen. Attaching new importance to the neglected doctrines, their principal themes were "the universal necessity of conversion," "justification by faith," and "the sole authority of Scripture as the rule of faith." They were worthy successors of the old Evangelical party, represented by Milner, Martyn, and Wilberforce. Through their agency there arose in the popular mind a dislike of ecclesiastical landmarks, the state church fell into disrepute, the broadest catholicity received hearty support, and personal piety was the acknowledged test of true religion. In 1828 Lord Russell, the leader of the Reform party, effected the abrogation of the Test Act,--a law which required all officers, civil and military, to receive the sacrament according to the usage of the Established church, and to take an oath against transubstantiation within six months after their entrance into office. The repeal immediately placed Dissenters and Catholics upon the same footing with members of the Established church, and was in itself sufficient to provoke opposition on the part of all who had not united in the evangelical movement. But the antagonism became still more decided when Parliament passed the Irish Church Property Act, in 1833, in spite of the determined remonstrances of the bishops. One half of the Irish bishoprics were thereby abrogated, Parliament assuming ecclesiastical authority. The people supported the Parliament, and in some instances public indignation was hurled at the bishops themselves. The Low Church has always been on the side of popular reform. Not forgetful of its lineal descent from that evangelical spirit which animated Wilberforce, Stephen, Thornton, and Buxton, in their philanthropic labors, it has sought out the population of the factories and mines of England, and addressed itself to the relief of their cramped and stifled inmates. It has reorganized Ragged-Schools, and endeavored to reach all the suffering classes of the kingdom. Neither has it been found unmindful of the wants of the heathen world, for no sooner did the Low Church commence its public career than it founded the Church Missionary Society, which has established over one hundred and forty-eight missionary stations, sustains two hundred and sixty-six clergymen, and includes about twenty thousand members.[200] These labors have been abundantly successful, for besides the converted towns on the coast of Africa, "whole districts of Southern India have embraced the faith; and the native population of New Zealand (spread over a territory as large as England) has been reclaimed from cannibalism and added to the church." The same party was chiefly instrumental in establishing the British and Foreign Bible Society, which has translated the Scriptures into one hundred and fifty languages, and distributes over two millions of copies annually. The Low Church party was the first to tell England that her population had far outgrown her places of worship, and it accordingly devised means to remedy the evil. Archbishop Sumner founded the first Diocesan Church Building Society, in 1828; and after becoming Bishop of Chester consecrated more than two hundred new churches. Mr. Simeon of Cambridge had previously set the example of caring for the unchurched population by his personal labors and the outlay of his large private fortune. His name is now like "ointment poured forth" among the inhabitants of Bath, Clifton, Bradford, and other places. The Pastoral Aid Society was founded in 1836, and by its lay and clerical employees, is now ministering to the spiritual wants of over three millions of souls. The Low Churchmen have also established, in needy localities, Sunday Schools, Infant Schools, Lending Libraries, Benefit Societies, Clothing Clubs, and Circles of Scripture Readers. From the ranks of this party have arisen devout and zealous preachers, who, without any great natural endowments, have given their hearts to the work of saving souls. Hamilton Forsyth, Spencer Thornton, and Henry Fox,--the follower of Henry Martyn to Southern India,--are names which will ever adorn the history of the Church of England.[201] At the present time the Low Church is leading the van within the Establishment, in all those movements which have the stamp of true piety. It is seeking out the abandoned and homeless wretches in the darkest sinks of London, reading the Bible to them, clothing, finding work, and training them to self-respect. Some of its clergy are among the most gifted and influential in Great Britain, whether at the editor's table, in the pulpit, or on the platform. The lofty position they have lately taken against the inroads of Rationalism entitles them to the thanks and admiration of Christendom. Within the Low Church there are two subdivisions. The first is the Recordite party, so called from its organ. It intensifies the doctrines of the Low Church; on justification by faith it builds its view of the worthlessness of morality; on conversion by grace its predestinarian fatalism; and on the supremacy of Scripture its dogma of verbal inspiration. It holds strong Biblical views on the sanctity of the Sabbath, and both by the pulpit and the press, opposes the secularization of the Lord's day. The other party is sneeringly called the "Low and Slow," and corresponds with a similar faction within the High Church which enjoys the sobriquet of the "High and Dry." After the evangelical movement had fully taken root there arose an antagonistic tendency; it was the old Sacramentalist party re-asserting itself. Oxford arrayed itself against Cambridge. The views of Laud had always found favor in the former seat of learning, and their adherents felt that the time had now come for their vigorous revival. They directed their opposition equally against Parliamentary usurpation and evangelical liberalism. The centre of the counter-movement was Oriel College, which, under Whately, Hampden, and Thomas Arnold, was already celebrated for its new spirit of free scientific inquiry. Keble, Pusey, Froude, and J. H. Newman, were here associated either as fellows or students. Froude recognized the truth of the saying of Vicentius: "_Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est._" He rose above his friends as leader of the whole movement. The Conference which convened at Hadley, was the first organized demonstration against the evangelical portion of the Low Church. Its initiative act was the adoption of a catechism which contained the views of the High Churchmen, and was the first issue of the celebrated series of Tracts which gave to the new movement the name of Tractarianism. It was published in 1833, and the last of the series, the ninetieth, appeared seven years afterward. Newman and Pusey were the chief writers. Pusey preached a sermon in 1843 which avowed, with only slight modifications, the doctrine of transubstantiation; in consequence of which he was deposed from preaching to the university for the space of two years. The Romish church received flattering eulogy from all the High Churchmen or Tractarians. It was represented by them as the embodiment of all that was grand, imposing, and sound in art, poetry, or theology. When Newman went over to its fold, Pusey said of him: "He has been called to labor in another part of the Lord's vineyard." The High Church went so far in its opposition to the Low that many attached to the former felt more attracted to Roman Catholicism than to any form of Protestantism. Accordingly, at the close of 1846, one hundred and fifty clergymen and distinguished laymen had gone over to Popery. The doctrines of the High Church may be divided into two classes: the material, or justification by sacraments; and the formal, or the authority of the church. While it declares that we are justified by faith, it also holds that we are judged by works. Men are converted by grace, but Christians are regenerated by baptism. The Scriptures are supreme authority, but the "church hath authority in controversies of faith," by virtue of its apostolic descent. The watchwords of the High Church are, therefore, judgment by works; baptismal regeneration; church authority; and apostolical succession. Faith, it claims, does not justify us in and of itself, but simply brings us to God, who then justifies us by his free grace. Baptism is regeneration; in the New Testament the new birth is always connected with it; we are not born of faith, or of love, or of prayer, but by water and the Spirit. All Tractarians believe in the real presence of Christ, and only differ as to the mode in which he is present. The consecrated elements become really the body and blood of Christ by virtue of the consecrating word, though the change takes place in a spiritual and inexpressible way. Christ is a kind Saviour to those who partake of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper worthily, but a harsh judge to those who do it unworthily. High Churchmen hold that the Church is a saving institution founded by Christ, and continued by apostolical succession. It is the only mediator of salvation in Christ in so far as it is the only dispenser of the means of grace, the only protectress and witness of the truth, and the highest authority in matters of faith and practice. There are three tests of the true Church: _first_, apostolicity, or the divine origin of the Church and its succession of apostles; _second_, catholicity, or the truth in matters of instruction and life communicated through the succession of the apostles, the truth in matters of faith and life as interpreted by Scripture and tradition; and, _third_, autonomy, or the absolute independence and supreme authority of the Church in faith and practice. Apostolical succession was the first dogma in which all High Churchmen united. Connected with this opinion is the idea that the priesthood is the only mediatorial office between Christ and the congregation. The bishops are the spiritual sons of the apostles, and should be respected for their office' sake; Christ is the Mediator above, but his servant, the bishop, is his image on earth.[202] The Church has authority to forgive sins by the new birth, and to bring souls from hell to heaven.[203] Tradition must be respected not less than the Bible itself; the Old and New Testaments are the fountain of the doctrines, and the catholic fathers the channel through which they flow down to us.[204] The Bible must be explained, not by individual opinion, but by the church; for the Church is its rightful interpreter. It must be said, in justice to the High Church, that while it attaches great weight to these views it does not discard those really important. It does not overlook the doctrines maintained by the majority of evangelical Christians. The moderate members of this party, especially, do not hold them as "the basis of their system, but only as secondary and ornamental details. Even against Dissenters they are not rigidly enforced. The hereditary non-conformist is not excluded from salvation. Foreign Protestants are even owned as brethren, though a mild regret is expressed that they lack the blessing of an authorized church government. Apostolical succession is not practically made essential to the being of a church, but rather cherished as a dignified and ancient pedigree, connecting our English episcopate with primitive antiquity, and binding the present to the past by a chain of filial piety. In the same hands, church authority is reduced to little more than a claim to that deference which is due from the ignorant to the learned, from the taught to the teacher."[205] Of the general service rendered by the High Churchmen, the same writer says, "Their system gives freer scope to the feelings of reverence, awe, and beauty than that of their opponents. They endeavor, and often successfully, to enlist these feelings in the service of piety. Music, painting, and architecture, they consecrate as the handmaids of religion. Thus they attract an order of men chiefly found among the most cultivated classes, whose hearts must be reached through their imagination rather than their understanding.... In the same spirit the writers of this party have contributed to the religious literature of the day many admirable works which under the guise of fiction teach the purest Christianity, and exemplify its bearing in every detail of common life. To the training of childhood especially they have rendered most valuable aid, by thus embodying the precepts of the Gospel. But we need not do more than allude to works so universally known and valued as those of Miss Sewell, Mr. Adams, and Bishop Wilberforce. Again the revival of the High Church party has effected an important improvement among the clergy. Many of these were prejudiced by hereditary dislike against the doctrines and the persons of the Evangelicals, and by this prejudice, were repelled from religion. But under the name of orthodoxy and the banner of High Church, they have willingly received truth against which, had it come to them in another shape, they would have closed their ears and hearts. A better spirit has thus been breathed into hundreds who but for this new movement would have remained as their fathers were before them, mere Nimrods, Ramrods, or Fishing-rods."[206] Of all the men engaged in the Tractarian enterprise there was no one in whose religious and personal history a deeper public interest concentrated than in John Henry Newman. His ardent espousal of the High Church cause collected many friends about him at the same time that it organized numerous enemies. But he did not inquire concerning the number of his friends or foes, for he valued sincerity higher than favor or opposition. His previous history was not without incident. Thirteen years before the _Tracts for the Times_ were published, he had been engaged in a controversy concerning baptismal regeneration, in which he defended the evangelical side.[207] Subject to various inner conflicts, and greatly influenced by the party-spirit which ran high, he finally entered the communion of the Roman Catholic Church. His view of the development of Christian doctrine is very favorable to his adopted faith. Development can be applied to anything which has real vital power; it is the key that unlocks the mystery of all growth; any philosophy or policy, Christianity included, requires time for its comprehension and perfection. The highest truths of inspiration needed only the longer time and deeper thought for their full elucidation, for perfection can be reached only by trials and sore conflicts. A philosophy or sect is purer and stronger when its channel has grown deep and broad by the flow of time. Its vital element needs disengagement from that which is foreign and temporary, and its beginning is no measure of its capabilities or scope. At first no one knows what it is or what it is worth, since it seems in suspense which way to go; but notwithstanding this, it strikes out and develops all its hidden world of force. Surrounding things change, but these changes only contribute to its development. Here below, to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. This is all true of Christianity; the lapse of years, instead of injuring it, has only brought out its power.[208] These hints furnish a specimen of the ideal robe in which Father Newman clothes Romanism. But it will take a stronger intellect than his to show any harmony between his theory of development and the history of the papacy. He has once more assumed the pen of the controversialist. In the January number of _Macmillan's Magazine_, 1864, Kingsley, in a review of Froude's History of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, said, "Truth for its own sake has never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not be, and, on the whole, ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute man's force of the wicked world, which marries and is given in marriage." The venerable Father being thus assailed has given vent to his indignation by a defense of his life, under the title of _Apologia Pro Vita Sua_. It abounds in rare touches of satire; while Kingsley, in his reply, indicates excitement and bitterness. The younger brother, Francis William Newman, has led a sad and changeful life. It has many features in common with Blanco White, both of whom betray the destructive absence of a positive evangelical faith. In some skeptics there is a strength of will which gives a successful appearance to their cause in spite of all their doubts; but when the will is subjected to the domination of opinion; when religion, whether true or false, is not an appendage but the principle of life, the power of mere sentiment is fully manifested. The younger Newman is an illustration of the position in which one is left when he throws himself into the arms of a false creed. He reveals his inner life in the _Phases of Faith_, one of the most touching pieces of biography in the realm of literature. While a student at Oxford, he became enamored with the "Oriel heresy about Sunday." One by one the views of the standard authorities of the Church lost their hold upon him, and he imbibed the opinion that the Old Testament is not really the rule of life, according to the Pauline idea; infant baptism is an excrescence of a post-apostolic age, and Wall's attempt to trace it to the Apostles a decided failure; Episcopacy has been so contemptibly represented by incumbents, some of whom opposed the Missionary and Bible Societies, that it is not entitled to respect; and the Church Fathers are greatly overrated, Clement alone being respectable. Unable to find any theological resting-place, Newman went as a quasi-missionary to Bagdad. He returned to Oxford and gave himself up to his increasing doubts. Finally, becoming a Unitarian, the Scriptures present new difficulties; Christianity has been too highly praised and flattered; and has had the credit of doing a great deal which it has had no share in effecting. The Bible has not been found able to cope with fresh evils; and Romanism became corrupt and vicious with that book in the hands of the priesthood. But dissatisfied as Newman is with the present, he takes a cheerful look upon the future. "The age is ripe," he says, "for something better, for a religion which shall combine the tenderness, humility, and disinterestedness which are the glory of the present Christianity, with that activity of intellect, untiring pursuit of truth, and strict adherence to impartial principle which the schools of modern science embody. When a spiritual church has its senses exercised to discern good and evil, judges of right and wrong by an inward power, proves all things, and holds fast that which is good, fears no truth, but rejoices in being corrected, intellectually as well as morally, it will not be liable to 'be carried to and fro' by shifting wind of doctrine. It will indeed have movement, namely, a steady _onward_ one, as the schools of science have had since they left off to dogmatize, and approached God's world as learners; but it will lay aside disputes of words, eternal vacillations, mutual ill-will and dread of new light, and will be able, without hypocrisy, to proclaim 'peace on earth and good will toward men,' even toward those who reject its beliefs and sentiments concerning God and his glory."[209] THE FIRST BROAD CHURCH. The division of the Broad Church into two parties has been produced by the recent discussion. The First Broad Church corresponds in the main with philosophical Rationalism. It commenced with Coleridge, was interpreted principally by Hare, was defended by the chaste and vigorous pen of Arnold, and is now represented by Maurice, Kingsley, and Stanley. It cannot be said to have a distinct creed. Its members being attached to the Established Church, they are distinguished peculiarly for their method of interpretation of the articles of faith. "The Broad Church teachers give us readings of each dogma of the Atonement and Future Punishment."[210] They avow the main doctrines of the Gospel, but in such a modified sense that, they say, the same were held virtually by all Christians in every age; by Loyola and Xavier, not less than by Latimer and Ridley. They conceive the essence of Popery to consist, not in points of metaphysical theology, but in the ascription of magic virtue to outward acts. All who believe the Scriptures are, in their opinion, members of the household of faith. Salvation does not depend upon the ritual but upon the life; the fruits of the Spirit are the sole criteria of the Spirit's presence. They give prominence to the idea of the visible Church when they hold the Church to be a Society divinely instituted for the purpose of manifesting God's presence, and bearing witness to his attributes, by their reflection in its ordinances and in its members. If its ideal were fully embodied in its actual constitution "it would remind us daily of God, and work upon the habits of our life as insensibly as the air we breathe."[211] For this end, it would revive "daily services, frequent communions, memorials of our Christian calling, presented to our notice in crosses and wayside oratories; commemorations to holy men of all times and countries; religious orders, especially of women, of different kinds and under different rules, delivered only from the snare and sin of perpetual vows."[212] The special defender of these views of the visible Church, the late Dr. Thomas Arnold, of Rugby, was a man of great industry, profound erudition, and extraordinary power and tact in the management of youth. His sermons, delivered to his pupils at Rugby, were short, and usually written just before delivery in the school-chapel on Sabbath afternoons.[213] He interested himself in all questions of reform, education, politics, and literature. But he is best known as one of the leaders of the Broad Church, and in this light his theological opinions may be considered a fair sample of the theology adopted by that party in its earlier and purer days. With him, inspiration is not equivalent to a communication of the divine perfections. Paul expected the world would come to an end in the generation then existing. The Scripture narratives are not only about divine things, but are themselves divinely framed and superintended. Inspiration does not raise a man above his own time, nor make him, even in respect to that which he utters when inspired, perfect in goodness and wisdom; but it so overrules his language that it shall contain a meaning more than his own mind was conscious of, and thus give to it a character of divinity, and a power of perpetual application.[214] According to Arnold, Christ was the sum of the Bible, and the centre of all truth. We cannot come to God directly; Christ is to us in place of God; and he is God, for to hold the contrary would be idolatry. Christ suffered for the Church, not only as a man may suffer for man by being involved in evils through the fault of another, and by his example awakening in others a spirit of like patience and self-devotion, but in a higher and more complete sense, as suffering for them, the just for the unjust, that they, for his sake, should be regarded by God as innocent. In a deep sense of moral evil, more, perhaps, than in anything else, a saving knowledge of God abides. Sin must not be lightly considered. Christ's death shows it to be an exceeding evil; and the actions of whole days and weeks, passed as they are by too many in utter carelessness, are nothing but one mass of sin; and no one thing in them has been sanctified by the thought of God or of Christ. The penalty of sin, according to Arnold, is one of the revelations of Scripture which men are least inclined to hear. It will be true of every one of us, that, unless we turn to Christ, it had been better that we were never born. If we fail of the grace of God there is reserved for us an indescribable misery. Conversion is the development of Christian life. It is growth. We must be changed during the three score and ten years of our life, not in the twinkling of an eye, but through a long period of prayer and watchfulness, laboring slowly and with difficulty to get rid of our evil nature.[215] By constant repentance and faith we ripen for heaven. Justification by faith is a reliance on what God has done for us; faith in Christ is not only faith in his having died for us, but in him as our present Saviour by his life. It is throwing ourselves upon him in all things, as our Redeemer, Saviour, Head, of whom we are members, and desire our life only for Him. Our dependence in Christ is not once only, but perpetual. Arnold attached paramount importance to a proper understanding of the Church and its relations to the State. He held that the work of a Christian Church and State is absolutely one and the same, and that the full development of the former in its perfect form as the Kingdom of God, will be an effectual means for the removal of all evil and the promotion of good. There can be no perfect Church or State without their blending into one.[216] The Church, during her imperfect state, is deficient in power; the State, in the like condition is deficient in knowledge; one judges amiss of man's highest happiness, the other discerns it truly, but has not the power on a large scale to attain it. But when blended into one, the power and knowledge become happily united; the Church has become sovereign, and the State has become Christian.[217] The Church has its living and redeemed members; it may have those who are craving to be admitted within its shelter, being convinced that God is in it of a truth; but beyond these, he who is not with it is against it.[218] In intimate connection with Arnold stands the name of his friend and biographer, Arthur P. Stanley, Dean of Westminster, for some years a writer of celebrity in England. Two late volumes on the _Eastern_ and _Jewish Churches_ have given him a standing occupied by few theologians in the old or the new world. His style is gorgeous and enchanting, and his Rationalistic tendencies so subdued and covert that few would suspect him of sympathy with the Broad Church theology of the last ten years' growth. In his work on _Sinai and Palestine_ he aimed to delineate the outward events of the Old and New Testament in such a way that they should come home with a new power to those who, by long familiarity, had almost ceased to regard them as historical truth; and so to bring out their inward spirit that the more complete realization of their outward form should not degrade but exalt the faith of which they are the vehicle. But in subsequent works, Dean Stanley has clearly departed from an evangelical position, and we now find him in open sympathy with the Broad Church. This tendency was foreshadowed in his _History of the Jewish Church_. He describes miracles as one who prefers to omit, rather than state, his real objections to their reception. He seems to believe in Israel as an inspired people, more than in the Old Testament as a plenarily inspired book. He allows searching criticism into the Hebrew text, and does not seem disturbed by evidences of errors, contradictions, and phantasy. He does not know whether the Israelites were in Egypt two hundred and fifteen, four hundred and thirty, or one thousand years,--thus leaving an important question unsettled. Neither does he decide, with or against Colenso, whether the number of armed Israelites who left Egypt was six hundred or six hundred thousand men. He implies that monotheism was unknown before Abraham, and that the name Jehovah was not known to Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. He cannot tell how the Israelites were supported in their journeyings; and ascribes the priesthood to an Egyptian origin. If we only admit the above arithmetical errors, and give up the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, he thinks we should remove at one stroke some of the main difficulties of the Mosaic narrative.[219] But Stanley has exposed his Broad Church sympathies more in a late review article than in any formal volume.[220] It is a discussion of the judicial proceedings in connection with two authors of the _Essays and Reviews_. His theme permits a wide range, and he therefore dwells at length upon the whole question of ministerial teaching. He considers the final acquittal of the essayists one of the most gratifying events of the day. According to him, the questions raised by the work are, with few exceptions, of a kind altogether beside and beyond the range over which the formularies of the Church extend. No passage in any of the five clerical essayists contradicts any of the formularies of the Church in a degree at all comparable to the direct collision which exists between the High Church party and the Articles, or the Low Church party and the Prayer-Book; on the points debated in the _Essays and Reviews_ the Articles and Prayer-Book are alike silent. Stanley rejoices that of the thirty-two charges presented against Mr. Wilson and Dr. Williams all were dismissed but five, and that for these "there was no heavier penalty than a year's suspension." He is in ecstacy that the judgment in the case of these two men has established the legal position of those who have always claimed the right of free inquiry and latitude of opinion equally for themselves and for both the other sections of the Church. By the issue of the litigation, he claims that great victories have been won, that henceforth ample freedom is left to all detailed criticism of the Sacred Text, so long as the canonicity of no canonical book is denied, and that the questions whether there be "one Isaiah or two, two Zechariahs or three, who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews, and who wrote the Pentateuch, whether Job and Josiah be historical or parabolical, whether the Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah or the Second Psalm be directly or indirectly prophetic, what are the precise limits of the natural and practical, what is the weight of internal and external evidence, whether the Apocalypse refers to the Emperor Nero or to the Pope of Rome; are to be settled according to the individual opinion of every clergyman of the Established Church." Stanley sneers at the Declaration of the Oxford Committee sent to every Clergyman of England and Ireland, "with an adjuration, for the love of God and out of duty to the souls of men, to sign it." That Declaration was a protest against the acquittal of the Essayists; and Stanley rejoices over the fact, that, though "every influence was used to get signatures to it, and was so concealed as to enlist the support of High and Low Church parties," the result was the signature of only one third of the London clergy, nine Professors at Oxford and one at Cambridge, eight out of the thirty English deans, two of the Head Masters of the Public Schools, and only six out of the fifty clerical contributors to Smith's _Dictionary of the Bible_; that more than one half of the rural clergy stood altogether aloof from the document; and that when it was presented at Lambeth only four of the twenty-eight Bishops loaned their countenance to its formal reception. Stanley looks into the future and sees permanent blessings bestowed upon the country by the "timely decision of the highest Court of Appeal" that it has "no jurisdiction or authority to settle matters of faith, or to determine what ought in any particular to be the doctrine of the Church of England, since its duty extends only to the consideration of that which is by law established to be the doctrine of the Church of England, upon the true and legal construction of her Articles and formularies." He is also pleased that the Supreme Court of Appeal has refused to pledge itself and the Church to any popular theory of the mode of justification or of the future punishment of the wicked; and that it now stands declared that it is no doctrine of the Church of England that "every part of the Bible is inspired, or is the word of God." The Dean also looks with complacency upon what he declares to be a fact, and which we are startled to hear; that "the belief in endless punishment is altogether fluctuating, or else expresses itself in forms wholly untenable ... that the doctrine of endless torments, if held, is not practically taught by the vast majority of the Clergymen of England." The First Broad Church will not accept entirely the theology contained in the _Essays and Reviews_, and complains of them that they are "almost entirely negative; hinting at faults in the prevalent religious opinions of the day, but not investigating them; indicating dislike to certain obligations which are imposed upon clergymen, but not stating or considering what those obligations are; leaving an impression upon devout Christians that something in their faith is untenable when they want to find in it what is tenable; suggesting that earnest infidels in this day have much to urge in behalf of their doubts and difficulties; never fairly asking what they have to urge, what are their doubts and difficulties."[221] On the other hand, the First Broad Church will not unite in the organized opposition to that work, because the denunciations and appeals "took an almost entirely negative form; they contradicted and slandered objections; they were not assertions of a belief; they led Christians away from the Bible, from the creeds which they confess to certain notions about the creeds, from practice to disputation. They met no real doubts in the minds of unbelievers; they only called for the suppression of all doubts. They confounded the opinions of the day with the faith once delivered to the saints. They tended to make anonymous journalists the law-givers of the Church. They tended to discourage clergymen from expressing manfully what is in their hearts, lest they should incur the charge of being unfaithful to their vows. They tended to hinder all serious and honest co-operation between men who are not bound together in a sectarian agreement, lest they should make themselves responsible for opinions different from their own."[222] Thus, while the First Broad Church occupies a neutral ground in the controversy now rending the whole structure of English theology, its moral force is all against Evangelical Christianity, and in favor of the usurpations of Rationalism. But the theology maintained by the First Broad Church is little above that contained in the _Essays and Reviews_ and similar Rationalistic publications. With them, the Scriptures are better than any other books of antiquity because they contain the most of God's will, not because they alone contain his will. "These books," says a writer, "have been filtered out, as it were, under his guidance, from many others which, in ages gone by, claimed a place beside them, and are now forgotten, while these have stood for thousands of years, and are not likely to be set aside now."[223] They are indifferent as to their date, authorship, or contents. "Men may satisfy themselves," the same writer continues, "perhaps if I have time to give to the study, they may satisfy me--that the Pentateuch was the work of twenty men; that Baruch wrote a part of Isaiah; that David did not write the Psalms, or the evangelists the gospels; that there are interpolations here and there in the original; that there are numerous and serious errors in our translation. What is all this to me? What do I care who wrote them, what is the date of them, what this or that passage ought to be? They have told me what I wanted to know. Burn every copy in the world to-morrow, you don't and can't take that knowledge from me, or any man."[224] The Mosaic cosmogony is not a matter of great consequence, but on a par with other cosmogonies, none of which are of any intrinsic value. "If all cosmogonies were to disappear to-morrow," says Thomas Hughes, "I should be none the poorer." The various difficulties of Scripture are not of sufficient moment to occupy much time or pains. Let the people be made to understand the liberal interpretations of what the cultivated teachers have to say, and that will be enough to meet the world's wants. Perhaps it is with secret admiration of Bunsen's _Bible Work_, the greatest exegetical triumph of Rationalism, that Kingsley asks: "Who shall write us a people's commentary of the Bible?" Redemption is accepted in the Coleridgean sense. It is a term which does not express a Scriptural fact, but is borrowed from earthly transactions. Christ's work in our behalf is of no special value in itself, its known effects being all that make it of moment to the human family.[225] We should look at the results and not at the cause. The sacrifice which Christ made was one of obedience to his Father's will; it does not free us and elevate us above the curse of a broken law, for, in a certain sense, the law has never been broken to the extent that the evangelicals claim, nor does eternal punishment harmonize with enlightened and liberal notions of Divine mercy. Miracles are in danger of being worshiped by the friends of revelation. They have the misfortune of an improper term; wonders would be a far better word. Why not accept them in the domain of faith, since we meet with them in science?[226] Miracles of this kind, "wonders," are willingly conceded, for they are not suspensions or violations of the order of nature, but natural phenomena, whose laws we may not understand. The miracles of the New Testament are purely natural; but the people did not comprehend the laws which gave them birth, and hence they magnified them. "Where the people believed," says Mr. Davies, "rightly or wrongly, in evil spirits and sorcery, in malignant and disorderly influences proceeding from the spiritual world, there the powers of the true kingdom, the powers of order and freedom and beneficence, were put forth in acts which appealed directly to the minds of the ignorant and superstitious, and which proclaimed an authority stronger than that of demons. The common multitudes of Judea were of the class which thus required to be treated like spoiled and frightened children."[227] THE SECOND BROAD CHURCH. This party maintains the avowed Rationalism of Jowett, the _Essays and Reviews_, and Colenso. Miss Cobbe, in defining the points of difference between it and the First Broad Church, says of the latter, "It holds that the doctrines of the Bible and the church can be perfectly harmonized with the results of modern thought by a new but legitimate exegesis of the Bible and interpretation of church formulæ. The Second Broad Church seems prepared to admit that in many cases they can only be harmonized by the sacrifice of biblical infallibility. The First Broad Church has recourse, to harmonize them, to various logical processes, but principally to the one described in the last chapter, of diverting the student, at all difficult points, from criticism to edification. The Second Broad Church uses no ambiguity, but frankly avows that when the Bible contradicts science, the Bible must be in error. The First Broad Church maintains that the inspiration of the Bible differs in _kind_ as well as in _degree_ from that of other books. The Second Broad Church appears to hold that it differs in degree but not in kind. This last is the crucial point of the differences of the two parties, and of one of the most important controversies of modern times."[228] The First Broad Church has made antagonism to the doctrine of endless punishment one of its great specialties, while the Second Broad Church has made its most violent assaults upon the evangelical view of the inspiration of the Scriptures. The position of the latter is not fully defined. We may suppose, however, that in due time its apologists will assume an organized form, and perhaps produce their systematic theology. We regret that the general opposition on the part of the clergy to the theology of the _Essays and Reviews_, on the first appearance of that work, has not been sustained. The Broad Church has therefore acquired many new adherents within the last two years. It is impossible to classify all the parties according to their exact numerical strength, and their approximate proportions, in round numbers, must answer our purpose. The clergy of the Church of England, exclusive of the Irish, amount at present to about twenty thousand, at home and abroad.[229] Making allowance for two thousand peasant clergy in the mountain districts, and missionaries in foreign lands, the remaining eighteen thousand may be classified as follows: { Normal Type,--Anglican, 3,600 High Church. { Exaggerated Type,--Tractarian, 1,000 { Stagnant Type,--High and Dry, 2,500 { Normal Type,--Evangelical, 3,500 Low Church. { Exaggerated Type,--Recordite, 2,600 { Stagnant Type,--Low and Slow, 700 { Normal Type,--Theoretical and Anti-Theoretical, 3,100 Broad Church. { Exaggerated Type,--Extreme Rationalists, 300 { Stagnant Type, 700 Twelve years ago the twenty-eight Bishops and Archbishops of England stood thus: thirteen belonged to the High Church, ten to the Broad Church, and five to the Low Church. A distribution made at the present time would be much more favorable to the second party.[230] It is a remarkable feature of the activity of theological opinion in England that the same division of parties which exists in the Established Church also obtains in other religious bodies. We do not speak of the Dissenting Churches, all of which have their shades of sentiment, but of the smaller and less influential organizations. The Jews, Roman Catholics, Quakers, and Unitarians have each their old and new schools,--the former adhering to the old and established standards, the latter striving to harmonize with modern science and free inquiry. The Jews have their Mosaic, Talmudic, and Phillipsohnic groups,--the last taking its name from its leader, and corresponding with the First Broad Church within the pale of Christianity.[231] The Rationalistic party in the Roman Catholic Church is now aiming to harmonize Popery and the philosophy of the nineteenth century. It has no distinctive name, but numbers many adherents. The Quakers, besides possessing a strongly conservative wing, have their advocates of the "Inner Light," who are pushing this destructive doctrine "to the full consequences developed by the Second Broad Church party in the National Church." The Unitarians are divided into the staid disciples of Priestley and Belsham, and the New School, who stand on the same ground with Theodore Parker in the United States. These are cordial admirers of the _Essays and Reviews_, and would rejoice to see the land overspread with radical Rationalism. FOOTNOTES: [199] _Essays Ecclesiastical and Social_, pp. 62-63. [200] _Christian Work_, June, 1863. [201] Conybeare, _Essays Ecclesiastical and Social_, pp. 65-71. [202] _Tract No. 10._ [203] Sewel. [204] Pusey, _Preface to 18th vol. Library of Church Fathers_. [205] Conybeare, _Essays Ecclesiastical and Social_, p. 106. [206] _Essays Ecclesiastical and Social_, pp. 106-108. [207] _National Review_, Oct., 1856. [208] _Development of Christian Doctrine._ Second Edition. London, 1846. [209] _Phases of Faith_, pp. 233, 234. American Edition. [210] Miss Cobbe, _Broken Lights_, p. 63. London Edition. [211] Arnold, _Sermons_, vol. iv., p. 307. [212] Ibid. _Introduction_, p. 56. [213] _Bibliotheca Sacra._ Jan. 1858. An excellent summary of the opinions of Dr. Arnold. [214] Stanley, _Life and Correspondence of Arnold_. American Edition, p. 135. [215] _Interpretation of Scripture_, p. 493. [216] Stanley, _Life and Correspondence_, pp. 341, 367. [217] _Fragment on the Church_, p. 226. [218] _Christian Life, its Course, &c._, p. 358. [219] _American Theological Review_, July, 1863. [220] _Edinburgh Review_, July, 1864. [221] Miss Cobbe, _Broken Lights_, p. 63. London Edition. [222] _Tracts for Priests and People._ Preface, pp. 3-5. Am. Edition. [223] Hughes, in _Tracts for Priests and People_, p. 28. [224] Hughes, in _Tracts for Priests and People_, p. 37. [225] Garden, _Tracts for Priests and People_, p. 133. [226] Davies, _Tracts for Priests and People_, p. 167. [227] Ibid. p. 167. [228] _Broken Lights_, pp. 73-74. [229] Appleton's _American Cyclopædia_. Art. _Church of England_. Though the writer of this article says nothing of the Irish clergy, he has not included them, of course; having no doubt used the Clergy List of England and the colonies alone. [230] We have based our division of the English clergy upon the calculation of the late W. J. Conybeare, a Fellow in the University of Cambridge, and joint author with J. S. Howson, of _Life and Epistles of St. Paul_. (_Essays Ecclesiastical and Social_, pp. 157-158.) His figures applied to the year 1853, but we have included the subsequent increase of the clergy, and distributed the additional members according to the best information at command. If it be objected that we have classed too large a portion in the Broad Church, we reply, that if Dean Stanley's intimations concerning the absence of orthodox faith in the English clergy be well founded, we have fallen far short of attributing to that body a sufficient number of members. See his article in _Edinburgh Review_, July, 1864. [231] Phillipsohn, Author of the _Religious Idea in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity_. Translated by Miss Ann Goldschmidt. CHAPTER XXIII. THE UNITED STATES: THE UNITARIAN CHURCH--THE UNIVERSALISTS. The aspect of novelty in the religious and theological history of the United States, is unparalleled in the history of any European nation, and is traceable in part to the peculiarities of our political origin and career. The founders of our government were wise students of the philosophy of history, and it was their opinion that many of the misfortunes which had befallen the countries of the Old World, were produced by the improper association of temporal and spiritual authority. They therefore made provision for the permanent separation of Church and State. Their design, however, was accomplished only by degrees. Previous to the Revolution, but two States, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, permitted religious toleration. It was declared in Maryland in 1776, and in 1786-89 was carried out in Virginia. The general government took the matter in hand in 1791; and, in that year, an amendment to the Constitution of the United States was adopted, which prohibited Congress in future from "passing any law establishing religion, or prohibiting its free exercise."[232] It would seem that our forefathers were almost gifted with prophetic vision when they incorporated this statute with those other laws, which have contributed so much to our prosperity. It would not have been in harmony with their spirit, if, while constituting an independent government, they had made the Church dependent. The principle of the union of church and state presupposes a greater degree of social purity than has existed in any nation. Moreover, the Church is thereby led to assume an authority to which she has no claim and which Christ never intended her to possess. Milton, whose clear and practical views of civil and ecclesiastical relations were only equaled by his lofty poetic conceptions of man's moral nature and history, says: "When the church, without temporal support, is able to do her great works upon the enforced obedience of man, it argues a divinity about her. But when she thinks to credit and better her spiritual efficacy, and to win herself respect and dread by strutting in the false vizard of worldly authority, it is evident that God is not there, but that her apostolic virtue is departed from her, and has left her key-cold; which she perceiving, as in a decayed nature, seeks to the outward fermentations and chafings of worldly help and external flourishes, to fetch, if it be possible, some motion into her extreme parts, or to hatch a counterfeit life with the crafty and artificial heat of jurisdiction. But it is observable that so long as the church, in true imitation of Christ, can be content to ride upon an ass, carrying herself and her government along in a mean and simple guise, she may be as she is a Lion of the tribe of Judah; and in her humility all men, with loud hosannas, will confess her greatness. But when, despising the mighty operation of the Spirit by the weak things of this world, she thinks to make herself bigger and more considerable, by using the way of civil force and jurisdiction, as she sits upon this Lion she changes into an ass, and instead of hosannas, every man pelts her with stones and dirt."[233] The peculiarities which have characterized the history of the American church are well defined, and of the greatest value in all estimates of the theological status of the popular mind. They are grouped by Professor Smith in the following concise terms: "_First._ It is not the history of the conversion of a new people, but of the transplantation of old races, already Christianized, to a new theatre, comparatively untrammeled by institutions and traditions. _Second._ Independence of the civil power. _Third._ The voluntary principle applied to the support of religious institutions. _Fourth._ Moral and ecclesiastical, but not civil power, the means of retaining the members of any communion. _Fifth._ Development of the Christian system in its practical and moral aspects, rather than in its theoretical and theological. _Sixth._ Stricter discipline in the churches than is practicable where church and state are one. _Seventh._ Increase of the churches, to a considerable extent, through _revivals_ of religion, rather than by the natural growth of the children in an establishment. _Eighth._ Excessive multiplication of sects; and divisions on questions of moral reform."[234] When we consider the intimate relations between France and this country during the first stage of our national existence, it becomes a matter of surprise that French infidelity did not acquire greater influence over our people. It was not wholly without power, and the first twenty-five years of our history witnessed greater religious disasters than have appeared at any subsequent time. Still it may be said with truth that skeptical tendencies have never gained a permanent position in the United States, though our immunity from their sway has not been the result of indifference toward the great movements of Europe. The American has never been a cold observer of the hemisphere from which his forefathers came. We appropriate the treasures of the Old World, and love to call them our own. We are as proud of the martyrology and literature of England as if Latimer and Ridley had died for their faith on Boston Common, or Shakspeare and Milton had lived on the banks of the Hudson. The early legislation of our government having left the individual conscience to the exercise of its own convictions, each citizen has been more interested in whatever religious opinions might appear from European sources. What then has been the reception in America of that system of skepticism which has produced ravages on the Continent, and now forbodes evil in our English mother-land? Is Rationalism likely to run its destructive cycle in the United States? Has the American church no antidote for the great theological errors of the present age? The denomination most intimately associated with Rationalistic tendencies is the Unitarian Church. Boston is its centre, and New England the principal sphere of its existence. The Venerable Stoddard, of Northampton, Massachusetts, became convinced that the custom of excluding unregenerate persons from the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was sinful; and in 1708 published a sermon declaring his views on that subject. He held that the participation of unregenerate people in the communion was highly beneficial to them; and that it was in fact a means by which they might become regenerated. He defended his belief so zealously that he soon had the pleasure of seeing many followers gathering about him. The doctrine was termed the Half-Way Covenant System, and was adopted in the church at Northampton. Jonathan Edwards succeeded Stoddard, who was his grandfather; and, a few years after the great revival in which the former took an active part, he adopted the opinion that the Half-Way Covenant was injurious. Edwards refused to practice it, and in his _Treatise on the Qualifications for Full Communion_, he declared the necessity of regeneration. He was accordingly dismissed from his church. This was the germ of American Unitarianism. Stoddard's adherents clung to their loose view of communion, while the friends of Edwards, being more spiritual, and many of them the fruits of the Whitefieldian revival, sustained the orthodox construction with energy. The Half-Way Covenant in due time called a party into existence, which "avoided all solicitude concerning their own spiritual condition or that of others; were repugnant to the revival spirit; must have a system of doctrines which could contain nothing to alarm the fears or disturb the repose of the members of the party. The doctrines of apostasy, dependence on grace for salvation, necessity of atonement, and special influence of the Holy Spirit, were all thought to be alarming doctrines. They were therefore laid aside silently and without controversy. Men were suffered to forget that the Son of God, and the Spirit, have anything to do with man's salvation."[235] King's Chapel, Boston, was the first Episcopal church of New England. Its rector leaving with the British troops upon their evacuation of the town, Rev. James Freeman was chosen in April, 1783, to occupy the vacant position. The services of the church were conducted after the Episcopal form, the Book of Common Prayer being still used. Mr. Freeman's views underwent a change, and he delivered a course of doctrinal sermons in which he indicated decided Unitarian proclivities. Accordingly he introduced a revised liturgy, corresponding with Dr. Samuel Clarke's _Revision of the Liturgy of the Church of England_, from which the doctrines of the Trinity and of the divinity of Christ were excluded. The congregation addressed a letter to Bishop Provost, of New York, in which inquiry was made, "whether ordination of Rev. Mr. Freeman can be obtained on terms agreeable to him and to the proprietors of this church." The bishop proposed to refer the question to the next general convention. But the congregation, disliking such hesitation, determined to ordain their rector themselves. Accordingly, on November 18th, 1787, the senior warden laid his hand on Mr. Freeman's head, and pronounced the declaration of ordination. The people responded "Amen;" and thus was effected the first ordination of a Unitarian minister in the United States.[236] Wide circulation had already been given to Emlyn's _Inquiry into the Scripture Account of Jesus Christ_, which, in 1756, had been republished in Boston from the English edition. Before the close of the century the doctrines peculiar to Unitarianism became widely disseminated in that city and in other portions of the State. Belsham issued in London, 1812, his _Memoir of Lindsey_, which contained startling disclosures of the doings of the Unitarians in America. Belsham's informants were leading Unitarians of Boston, among whom was Dr. Freeman, whose letters covered a period of sixteen years, from 1796 to 1812. He communicated all the secret movements, growth, and dimensions of the party. Only a few copies of Belsham's work came to America, and they were hidden, lest any of the orthodox might see them. Finally, Dr. Morse obtained one, and soon published a pamphlet revealing its astounding contents. It now came to light, for the first time, that Unitarianism was a strong party; that every Congregational church in Boston, except the Park Street and Old South, had become Unitarian; and that there were seventy-five churches in other parts of New England which had adopted the same views. The Unitarians were now compelled to come out of their hiding-place, and the orthodox watched their movements with intense interest. The zeal of the adherents of Unitarianism, however, did not diminish by exposure, and a very important event occurred, which indicated that their labors were successful. Dr. Ware, an avowed anti-Trinitarian, was chosen to the professorship of theology in Harvard College, in place of the deceased Dr. Tappan. The appointment created a profound excitement among the orthodox clergy, who were indignant at the procedure. But remonstrance was useless. Unitarianism was triumphantly domiciled at Cambridge, and many who designed preaching its tenets became attendants upon the lectures of Professors Ware and Andrews Norton. As a probable consequence of the great change in Harvard, the Andover Theological Seminary was established,[237]--an institution which, from its origin to the present time, has shed a beneficent lustre upon the entire country. Its students have never ceased to be ornaments to the American pulpit, while some of the number, proving themselves worthy successors of Carey, Marshman, Coke, and Ward, have labored in heathen lands with apostolic zeal. The celebrated controversy between Drs. Channing and Worcester, occasioned by a pamphlet which appeared in Boston in 1815, under the title of _American Unitarianism_, led to the withdrawal of the Unitarians from the orthodox, and their formation into a distinct organization. Pursuing an aggressive policy, they organized congregations in various parts of New England, and in the cities of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Charleston. This was the heroic age of the Unitarian church of America. Channing became immediately the leader of the new sect. He represents the best type of Unitarianism. Pure in life, ardent in his attachments, and heroic in spirit, he was well adapted to advance the cause which he had espoused. He had no taste for controversy, but the circumstances connected with the prevalent theology made such a deep impression on his mind that he felt it his duty to aid in the revival of what he deemed a more liberal faith. Not indorsing the extreme Unitarianism of Priestley and Belsham, he took a middle ground between it and New England Calvinism. He was attentively heard in his church at Boston, and was listened to by large audiences wherever he preached or lectured. His writings embrace a variety of topics, the chief of which, apart from religious themes proper, are slavery, temperance, education, and war. Within a few years his views have attracted increased attention in Europe. In France, MM. Laboulaye, de Rémusat, and Renan have discussed them at length. Of his mental transitions, an admiring writer says: "From Kant's doctrine of the reason he derived deeper reverence for the essential powers of man; by Schelling's intimations of the Divine Life, everywhere manifested, he was made more devoutly conscious of the universal agency of God; and he was especially delighted with the heroic stoicism of Fichte and his assertion of the grandeur of the human will. But for his greatest pleasure and best discipline he was now indebted to Wordsworth, whom he esteemed next to Shakspeare, and whose '_Excursion_' came to him like a revelation. With Wordsworth's mingled piety and heroism, humanity and earnest aspiration, with his all-vivifying imagination, recognizing greatness under lowliest disguises, and spreading sweet sanctions around every charity of social life, and with his longings to see reverence, loyalty, courtesy, and contentment established on the earth, he most closely sympathized. From this time he began to engage more actively in political and philanthropic movements."[238] Channing believed that orthodoxy was incalculably mischievous in its estimate of Deity and of human depravity. "God, we are told," says he, "must not be limited; nor are his rights to be restrained by any rights in his creatures. These are made to minister to their Maker's glory, not to glorify themselves. They wholly depend on him, and have no power which they can call their own. His sovereignty, awful and omnipotent, is not to be kept in check, or turned from its purposes, by any claims of his subjects. Man's place is the dust. The entire prostration of his faculties is the true homage he is to offer to God. He is not to exalt his reason or his sense of right against the decrees of the Almighty. He has but one lesson to learn, that he is nothing, that God is All in All. Such is the common language of theology."[239] Against these views he asserts man's free agency and moral dignity. His creed is the greatness of Human Nature; such greatness as is seen in the "intellectual energy which discerns absolute, universal truth in the idea of God, in freedom of will and moral power, in disinterestedness and self-sacrifice, in the boundlessness of love, in aspirations after perfection, in desires and affections which time and space cannot confine, and the world cannot fill. The soul, viewed in these lights, should fill us with awe. It is an immortal germ, which may be said to contain now within itself what endless ages are to unfold. It is truly an image of the infinity of God, and no words can do justice to its grandeur."[240] Instead of looking without for a basis of religion, we must commence at home, within ourselves. "We must start in religion from our own souls, for in them is the fountain of all divine truth. An outward revelation is only possible and intelligible on the ground of conceptions and principles previously furnished by the soul. Here is our primitive teacher and light. Let us not disparage it. There are, indeed, philosophical schools of the present day, which tell us that we are to start in all our speculations from the Absolute, the Infinite. But we rise to these conceptions from the contemplation of our own nature; and even if it were not so, of what avail would be the notion of an Absolute, Infinite existence, an Uncaused Unity, if stripped of all those intellectual and moral attributes which we learn only from our own souls? What but a vague shadow, a sounding name, is the metaphysical Deity, the substance without modes, the being without properties, the naked Unity which performs such a part in some of our philosophical systems. The only God whom our thoughts can rest on and our hearts can cling to, and our consciences can recognize is the God whose image dwells in our own souls. The grand ideas of Power, Reason, Wisdom, Love, Rectitude, Holiness, Blessedness, that is, of all God's attributes, come from within, from the action of our own spiritual nature. Many indeed think that they learn God from marks of design and skill in the outward world; but our ideas of design and skill, of a determining cause, of an end or purpose, are derived from consciousness, from our own souls. Thus the soul is the spring of our knowledge of God."[241] The creed of the Unitarians must be studied as one would take soundings at sea. The measurement of one place is no guarantee of the depth in another. What was believed twenty years ago, may not be endorsed by the leaders of to-day. One writer of their fold says: "Unitarianism is loose, vague, general, indeterminate in its elements and formularies."[242] When George Putnam installed Mr. Fosdick over the Hollis Street Church, he said with commendable candor, "There is no other Christian body of which it is so impossible to tell where it begins and where it ends. We have no recognized principles by which any man who chooses to be a Christian disciple, and desires to be numbered with us, whatever he believes or denies, can be excluded." But Unitarianism has ever remained true to a few points. One of them is antagonism to orthodoxy. It was an old cry of the German skeptics, "Away with orthodoxy. It fetters us to forms and creeds, makes us blind devotees to system, converts us into bigots, and dwarfs reason into an invisible pigmy." Yet we frequently meet with language of similar import in the present day. If we did not know its authorship we could easily tell the ecclesiastical fountain whence it flows. "The implications of false and shallow reasoning," says an American Unitarian divine, "partial observation, intellectual grouping, moral obliquity, spiritual ignorance,--in short, of puerility and superstition involved in a large part of the appeals, the preaching, the cant terms, the popular dogmas, the current conversation of Christendom,--are discouraging evidences how backward is the religious thought of our day, as compared with its general thought; how little harmony there is between our schools and our churches, our thinkers and our religious guides, our political and national institutions and our popular theology. It is not Christianity--the rational, thorough, all-embracing Gospel of Christ,--which throws its blessed sanctities over and around our whole humanity,--which owns and consecrates our whole nature and our whole life--which is thus taught. It is a system which is narrower than Judaism, and compared with which Romanism is a princely and magnificent theology. I say advisedly, that if Protestantism endorses the vulgar notions of a God-cursed world,--a fallen race,--a commercial atonement,--a doomed and hell-devoted humanity,--a mysterious conversion,--a Church which is a sort of a life-boat hanging round a wreck that may carry off a few women and selfishly-affrighted men, leaving the bolder, braver, larger portion to go down with the ship; if this be the sum and substance of religion,--if these notions be the grounds of the late religious excitement and the doctrines which gave it power,[243]--then it is not so true to human nature, its wants and woes, its various and manifold tastes, talents, and faculties, as the old Catholic system,--and that, instead of trembling at the growth and prospects of Romanism in this country, we should more reasonably rejoice in its triumphs, as the worthier occupant of the confidence and affection of the people. But this narrow system, with all its arrogant claims to be the only Evangelical faith, is not Protestantism; or, rather, is not mere Protestantism."[244] But the indeterminateness of Unitarian theology does not warrant us in passing over its tenets, as stated by writers held in good repute in that Church. It would be unfair, however, to claim that these are doctrines to which each must inflexibly adhere. The Unitarians neither exact nor desire conformity to authority; in fact they have no authority. Reason is left to place its own construction upon the truths of revelation. What, then, is the general Unitarian sentiment on those subjects whose essential importance is acknowledged by all Evangelical Churches? INSPIRATION AND THE SCRIPTURES. Channing and Dewey have held loftier views of the Bible and its divine origin than their less devout brethren. The latter has said that, "The matter is divine, the miracles real, the promises glorious, the threatenings fearful; enough that all is gloriously and fearfully true to the divine will, true to human nature, true to its wants, anxieties, sorrows, sins, salvation, and destinies; enough that the seal of a divine and miraculous communication is set upon that holy Book."[245] But reverence for the Scriptures is rapidly on the decline among the Unitarians,--the direct result of the influence of the German and English Rationalists. They call all believers in orthodox opinions, "Bibliolaters." They spurn the thought of an infallible Bible. "No wonder," they say, "that the Bibliolaters quail before the iconoclasm of Bishop Colenso, and, in their rage, call aloud for his excision from the Church; for, if a single one of the difficulties he accumulates can be proved a reality, the whole edifice of their faith topples to its fall.... We believe that safety and sense can alone be found in our theory, which regards Scripture as credible though human, as inspired not in its form, but in its substance, of various and, in many cases, of unknown authorship, and representing different stages of culture. We cannot accept all its documents as of co-ordinate authority; nor in every one of its statements can we recognize a product of inspiration. We do not conceive ourselves bound, therefore, to defend the geology of Moses, or to admire the conduct of the Israelites in the extermination of the Canaanites; or to infuse a recondite spiritual meaning into the amatory descriptions and appeals of the Song of Solomon."[246] GOD AND CHRIST. God is the Universal Father. It must be forgotten that he is king; his paternal character alone must be borne in mind. He is a God of one person, not of three, and the doctrine of the Trinity is nowhere hinted at in the Bible, but is of Platonic origin. The Christian Fathers did not contend that it was contained therein. The view of three persons in one God is "self-contradictory, opposed to all right reason, positively absurd."[247] Christ is inferior and subordinate to God. He is God in the same sense as the angels, Moses, Samuel, the Kings and Judges of Israel. They were gods in one respect,--the word of God was spoken to them. Christ is the chief one "to whom the word of God came."[248] In the New Testament, Christ is uniformly kept distinct from the Father, and the attributes which he possessed, wisdom, knowledge, and power, were endowments from God. THE HOLY GHOST. The Holy Ghost is not a person, but is merely sent from the Father, or proceeds from him. The apparent presence of the Holy Ghost in Christ's farewell discourse is only a personification resulting from the peculiar nature of the Greek language, and the necessity of its syntax. Not being a person, the Holy Ghost cannot be God, and is, therefore, not self-existent, underived, and unoriginated. Wherever it is described as a person it is only the writer's striking form of speech; it is solely personification, just as we often find the case with the Law, Wisdom, Scripture, Sin, and Charity.[249] HUMAN DEPRAVITY. The Unitarians have no place in their creed for man's natural sinfulness. It is, they say, a doctrinal innovation, having been propagated by Augustine in the fifth century. That God should create men who are naturally sinners is inconsistent with his parental character. "The doctrine is itself repulsive. The human mind revolts at it. If God our Creator has implanted within us a natural sense of right and wrong, that sense arraigns his character and conduct in creating us thus corrupt."[250] There is no such thing, the Unitarians contend, as the fall of man. Adam was what we are. "Had he not sinned," one of their writers affirms, "our race would have continued perfect and happy without the necessity for progress, or the need of any of those educational and recuperative processes to which Providence has resorted. _Let those who can believe this!_ Let those also who can, call the unfallen Adam and Eve satisfactory patterns and types of our complete humanity. Imagine a world of Adams and Eves, living in a garden, on spontaneous fruits, ignorant of the distinction between good and evil, and without any capacity of moral change or improvement! Can any amount of credulity enable an enlightened and candid mind of the present day to think this world originally made to be occupied by such a race; that unfallen Adams and Eves could ever have developed its resources, or their own powers, and capacities of moral and spiritual happiness? Can any subtlety perceive a true distinction between their condition and that of the innocent but feeble islanders of some few spots in the Pacific?[251] Can any degree of superstition regard a state of unfallen holiness, which allowed our first parents to succumb in the midst of perfect bliss, and under God's own direct care and instructions, before the first temptation, as superior to our present moral condition? If Adam fell, the race rose by his fall; he fell up, and nothing happier for our final fortunes ever occurred than when the innocents of the garden learned their shame, and fled into the hardships and experiences of a disciplinary and growing humanity.... The radical vice of the popular way of thinking about moral evil lies in the supposition that ... a state of spotless innocency is better than a state of moral exposure and moral struggle; and that all our humanity is not entitled to use development and play, in its grand career of being. On the other hand, the true theory of humanity presents us with a race brought into this world for its education, starting with moral and intellectual infancy, and liable to all the mistakes, weaknesses, and follies, which an ungrown and inexperienced nature begets."[252] There is far more virtue in the world than there is vice. We grossly mistake when we make notoriously vicious characters the type of humanity at large. "Man by nature, as born and brought into this world, is innocent, pure; guiltless because sinless; fitted for just that religion which Christ revealed to operate successfully and gloriously upon; not indeed holy, but capable of becoming so." THE ATONEMENT. The orthodox view of the atonement is denied by the Unitarians. Sacrifices are of human origin, those of the Mosaic religion being solely ritual, and symbolical acts of faith and worship. Christ's death did not appease the wrath of God in any sense, nor is anything said in the Scriptures concerning Christ's sufferings as causing or exciting the grace or mercy of God. It is not stated that God is reconciled to us, but we to him. Christ suffered as an example. A writer already quoted says: "Especially were the anguish and patience of his final sufferings and his awful death upon the cross appointed and powerful means of affecting the mind of man."[253] Another author affirms: "Christ saves us, so far as his sufferings and death are concerned, through their moral influence and power upon man; the great appeal which they make being not to God, but to the sinner's conscience and heart; thus aiding in the great work of bringing him into reconciliation with or reconciling him to his Father in heaven.... Reconciliation is accomplished by Christ; by all that he was and is; all that he taught, did, and is doing; and by all that he suffered for our sake. Not by one but by all of these are we saved."[254] Christ's sacrifice was not made to God, for he did not need to be propitiated or rendered merciful, but simply with reference to man alone,--for his good; God's justice needed no pacification. "There can be no greater or more blinding heresy than that which would teach that Christ's sufferings, or any sufferings in behalf of virtue and human sins and sorrows, are strictly substitutional, or literally vicarious. The old theologies, perplexed and darkened with metaphysics and scholastic logic--the fruit of academic pride and the love of ecclesiastical dominion--labored to prove and to teach that Christ, in his short agony upon the cross, really suffered the pains of sin and bore the actual sum of all the anguish from remorse and guilt due to myriads of sinners, through the ages of eternity.... Our sense of justice and goodness so far as God himself is concerned, is vastly more shocked by the proper penalties of sin being placed upon the innocent than had they been left upon the guilty, where they belong.... The truth is, literal substitution of moral penalties is a thing absolutely impossible! Vicarious punishment, in its technical and theological sense, is forbidden by the very laws of our nature and moral constitution."[255] REGENERATION. This is a universal want, but it is entirely consistent with the purity of human nature. The natural birth gives no moral character; it is to be formed, and when formed, is called the "new birth." This is all that Christ meant when he said to Nicodemus, "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." Regeneration must not, therefore, be considered a consequence of human depravity, but a result of human purity. It is the development of that which is already good within us. FUTURE PUNISHMENT. The Unitarians of America have, for the most part, adopted the Restitutional theories of Hartley and Priestley. Mr. Ballou claims "the whole body of Unitarians as Universalists." Punishment may be inflicted after death, but it will be temporary. "The punishments of hell are disciplinarian, and do not forbid the hope of remission and relief."[256] The best method of determining the present spirit of Unitarianism is to observe the reception which it gives to the Rationalism that has grown up luxuriantly of late in England. The welcome has been most cordial. A Unitarian clergyman has become the American editor of the _Essays and Reviews_;[257] and hails the appearance of such a book as representing a new and better era in modern theology. He holds that the real "life of Anglican theology is now represented by such men as Powell and Williams and Maurice and Jowett and Stanley;" that the Broad Church is the only one which fully embodies true progress and conservatism; that Rationalism is the only alternative of Romanism; and that, as a matter of course, the former should be adopted. He expresses the hope that the spirit of Rationalistic criticism, "which is now leavening the Church of England, may find abundant entrance into all the churches of our land," and that the _Essays and Reviews_, "its genuine product, may contribute somewhat thereto."[258] The quarterly organ of the Unitarians, _The Christian Examiner_, has passed an encomium on the same exponent of English Rationalism, in which it manifests no tempered gladness at skepticism within the pale of the church. It says, with undisguised satisfaction, that "either these seven essayists must have been in very close and intimate confidential relations as friends or fellow-students, and have held many precious conferences together in which they were mutually each other's confessors; or, there must be quite a large number of very able and very heretical sinners in the Church of England, within easy hail of each other, and so thick in some neighborhoods that it is the readiest thing in the world to pick out a set of them who, 'without concert or comparison,' will contribute all the parts of a _fresh and unhackneyed system of opinion_." One of the most direct and outspoken of all the organized attacks of American Rationalism upon evangelical Christianity occurred at the first public anniversary of the Young Men's Christian Union, of New York. Its importance was due to the diversity of unevangelical bodies there represented, and to the celebrity of several of the speakers. Unitarianism, Swedenborgianism, and Universalism mingled in happy fraternity. The speakers were Drs. Osgood, Bellows, Sawyer, and Chapin; Rev. Messrs. Barrett, Peters, Mayo, Higginson, Miel, Blanchard, and Frothingham; and Richard Warren and Horace Greeley, Esquires. The Union seems to have been designed as a counterpoise to the large and flourishing Young Men's Christian Association, which is comprised of earnest and active members of all orthodox denominations. The platform of the former may be determined from the following significant language: "The Anniversary of the Young Men's Christian Union was the first instance in which so many of the leading minds in the various branches of the liberal and progressive portion of the Christian church have met on one common platform, for the purpose of discussing the practical bearings of that higher type of Christianity which refuses to be limited by any dogma, or fettered by any creed."[259] One of the speakers, in explaining the relations of the Union to the church, said: "We maintain, then, that we are _in_ the church, _are_ the church--not a part of it, but the whole church,--having _in_ us the heart and soul of orthodoxy itself, the essence of all that gave life to its creed, the utmost significance and vital force of what it taught and still teaches, in what we conceive to be a stuttering and stammering way, in a cumbrous and outworn language, with a circuitous and wearisome phraseology; but meaning really what we mean, and doing for men essentially what we are doing. All that we claim is a better statement of the old and changeless truth, a disembarrassed account of the ever true and identical story.... We have not separated ourselves from the brethren [orthodox]; we hold them in our enclosure; we are always ready to receive them, to welcome them. We are not expecting they will receive us, on account of their providential position. We have an intellectual perception of what the times demand and what the future is to be. We can see clearer than they. We can see why they are wrong; they cannot see why we are right--but they will presently.... The actual presence of God in the world, in all his love and mercy, supplying our deficiencies, helping our infirmities, consecrating and transforming matter, giving sanctity and beauty to life--this is what the _renewing_ of the old faith offers to humanity. "The indistinct perception of this faith and the divine craving to see it clearly, and bring it to the sight of others, has led to the existence and organization of the Liberal churches, and indirectly to the formation of the Young Men's Christian Union. Faith in man as the child of God, his word and residence, authorizing the freest use of thought, the profoundest respect for individual convictions, the firmest confidence in progress and in the triumph of truth; inspiring good will, humane affections, philanthropic activity, and personal holiness; faith in God as the Father of man--man's universal Saviour and inspirer--man's merit consists wholly in being his child and the pupil of his grace in nature, life, the church, and the unseen world--these are the permanent articles of Christian faith, which is not so much faith in Christ, as Christ's faith."[260] It is difficult to conceive how the most of the speakers at the anniversary in question could have better served the interests of a bold and unmitigated system of Rationalism. The great evil of the day is declared to be dogmatism, against which every true friend of progress must deal his most destructive blows. Liberal minds must break loose from the fetters of authority, and give play to their own infallible reason. The Protestant evangelical church is placed upon the same footing with Romanism; both of which organizations unchurch all who do not conform to their creed. "The truth is," says a speaker, "this Protestant evangelical church is in the same chronic delusion as its enemy, the Roman Catholic church; it can propose no plan of Christian union which will include the Christians of the country. Its only idea of union is the conspiracy of a few sects to take the kingdom of heaven by violence; monopolize its honors in this world and the world to come; and either compel the rest of mankind to come into its arrangement, or be turned into everlasting perdition--a proceeding which the American people, with due respect to the undeniable rights of this church, begs leave respectfully to decline,--and further to intimate, that it is not at all alarmed about the eternal consequences of a refusal to accede to the pretensions of an ecclesiasticism that assumes to be God's vicegerent to the United States of America."[261] Great fault is found with the doctrines of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, and the efficacy of Christ's blood for man's salvation. God is in man; and man's moral instincts, intellectual mould, and spiritual senses are infinitely wiser than we conceive them to be. They are infallible in what they say of God, and are the best criteria of truth. How much the world has been given up to the worship of the Bible! "The Bibles will be left here to burn in the general conflagration with the other temporary representations of the Word of God, which is the eternal Reason, the foundation of our being." This Reason is the "elder Scripture of God,--the soul, the inspired child of the heavenly and eternal Father." The answer is given to the question, Why does orthodoxy believe in the efficacy of Christ's blood to save the souls of men? "It is because man distrusts his reason, and invents the infallible church, and then the infallible Scriptures, to supply his necessity of anchorage. He cannot think the God of the universe can be willing to save such a miserable sinner, and he invents a God of the church, who will. He does not believe anything men can do will entitle them to heaven, or that human lives can make them acceptable in the sight of God."[262] From the preceding statements it will not be surprising to find some of the speakers apologizing for outright infidelity. "Mr. President," says one, "you, in the judgment of very many, are an infidel. The members of this Christian association occupy what is regarded an infidel position. And that very admirable constitution, which I have read to-day, if presented at a council of churches, commonly reputed orthodox, would be considered, doubtless, the platform of an infidel association.... Infidels, in all generations of the church, have been _progressive_ in every direction; the believers in the present and the future; the people who had confidence in the improvability of man, and the perennial inspirations of God; the men and women who were persuaded that all the spheres of wisdom and excellence were opened to human powers, and that man was welcomed to all the treasure they contain.... They are a thoughtful, earnest, hopeful people, bent on finding the truth, and doing their duty."[263] Such infidels as these are claimed to have blessed the world. All liberal minds ought to catch their spirit and administer every possible blessing to struggling humanity. But there is a species of narrow-minded infidelity which must be shunned; and it is the only kind of which we need to forebode any evil. "The only infidelity to be feared," says Mr. Frothingham, "the only real infidelity which is a sin in the sight of God, is a disbelief in the primary faculties of the human soul; disbelief in the capability of man's reason to discriminate between truth and error in all departments of knowledge, sacred or profane; disbelief in the heart's instinctive power to distinguish good from evil; disallowance of the claims of conscience to pass a verdict upon matters of right and wrong, whenever and wherever brought up. They are the infidels who are untrue to the light they have; who deny the plenary inspiration of that elder Scripture written by the finger of God upon the human heart; who overlay their reason with heaps of antiquated traditions; who bid their conscience stand dumb before appalling iniquities in obedience to the ill-read letter of an ancient record; who, in the interest of power, wealth, worldliness, not seldom of unrighteousness and inhumanity, plead for a Tract society, a Bible, or a church; who compass sea and land to make a proselyte, and when he is made, are quite indifferent as to his being a practical Christian; who collect vast sums of money annually for the ostensible purpose of saving men's souls, practically to the effect of keeping their souls in subjection and blindness. As I read the New Testament, I find that Jesus charged infidelity upon none but such as these; the people who made religion a cloak for pride, selfishness, and cruelty; the conspicuously saintly people, who could spare an hour to pray at a street corner, but had not a minute for a dying fellow-man lying in his blood in a lonely pass. In the judgment of these, Jesus was the prince of unbelievers. Punctilious adherence to the letter, practical disbelief in the spirit--this is infidelity."[264] The most important event in the history of the American Unitarian Church was the National Convention which met in New York, April 5th, 1865, and was presided over by Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts. Six hundred ministers and laymen, representatives of one hundred and ninety churches, were in attendance. The debates indicated wide diversity of sentiment, but there was no open rupture. The sessions were pervaded by a spirit of devoted loyalty to the civil government, liberality toward all Christian bodies, and zeal in organizing educational and missionary agencies throughout the country. An annual National Conference of Unitarian Churches was appointed for the future. The Convention was unable to arrive at a common system of belief. The following declaration of faith was presented by A. A. Low, Esq.: "_Whereas_, Associate and efficient action can only be expected of those who agree in certain leading doctrinal statements or positions, _Resolved_, That without intending any intolerance of individual opinion, it is the right and duty of this convention to claim of all who take part in its proceedings, an assent to the fundamental doctrines hitherto held by the Unitarian body by reason of which it has acquired its standing in the Christian world, and asserts it lineage in the Christian Church; and, to this end, this convention declares as essentially belonging to the Unitarian faith: 1st. Belief in the Holy Scriptures as containing a revelation from God to man--and, as deduced therefrom, 2d. Belief in one God, the Father; 3d. Belief in one Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour, the Son of God, and his specially appointed Messenger and Representative to our race, gifted with supernatural power, "approved of God by miracles and signs and wonders which God did by him," and thus, by divine authority, commanding the devout and reverential faith of all who claim the Christian name; 4th. Belief in the Holy Ghost, the Comforter; 5th. Belief in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead, and life everlasting." These resolutions were at first laid on the table, but afterward referred to a special committee. The refusal of the Convention to adopt them indicates very clearly the unwillingness of a large portion of the Unitarian clergy of the United States to occupy an evangelical position.[265] Closely allied to the Unitarians in spirit and in doctrine are the Universalists, who date the beginning of their strength in the United States from the arrival of the Rev. John Murray, in 1770. They unite with the Unitarians in rejecting the triune character of God, and hold that their view of the divine unity is as old as the giving of the law on Sinai. The doctrine of the Trinity is nowhere stated in the Scriptures, for God would then have given us a religion enveloped in mystery, which procedure he has studiously avoided. The Trinitarian view entertained by the orthodox is not only a self-contradiction, but would be a violation of the harmony and order everywhere perceptible in nature.[266] Christ is next to God in excellence; he is "God manifest in the flesh;" that is, God has given him more of his glory than any other creature has enjoyed. Christ was simply sent by God to do a certain work, and served only as a delegate when he spoke and acted as one having authority.[267] The Holy Spirit exerts an influence upon the heart by purely natural methods. The new birth is therefore merely the result of ordinary means for human improvement. The most important article of the Universalist creed is the final salvation of all men. The goodness of God is infinite, and therefore he will save all his rational creatures through Christ, his Son and Ambassador. Man suffers in this world the natural consequences of his wayward conduct; but when the penalty is once inflicted, there is no need of vengeance. The chief end of suffering in the present life is man's improvement and restoration to perfect happiness. Pain ordained for its own sake, and perpetuated to all eternity, would be a proof of infinite malignity. By virtue of God's benevolence, man's suffering has a beneficent element, and must therefore be temporary and result in good.[268] When Christ comes to raise the dead, he will relieve from misery all the sons of men, give them a new life, and take them to himself.[269] The adherents of Universalism insist upon philanthropy and the brotherhood of man. They hold that orthodox theology fosters harsh notions of God's character, fills the mind with superstition, and is the source of some of the most flagrant evils of the present age. "We regret," says one of their writers, "that the acknowledged faith and opinions have done no more to elevate the affections, and improve the condition of man. They have utterly failed to correct the heart or the life. They have disturbed his present peace, and darkened his prospects for the future. Thousands of the young and innocent have been induced to relinquish whatever is most beautiful in life--to give up all that renders religion attractive and divine, for a miserable superstition, which, like the Upas, fills the very atmosphere with death. I am reminded that this dark theology, like a great idol, has been rolling its ponderous car over the world for ages--I follow its desolating track, by the wreck of noble minds--by the fearful wail of the lost spirit, and the crushed hopes and affections of those I love! Oh! when I look at this picture, drawn with the pencil of reality, in all its deep shadows and startling colors, the brain is oppressed and the heart is sick; and while I would stifle the inquiry, it finds an utterance:--In the name of reason, of humanity and heaven, is there no hope for man?"[270] This declamatory lament over the theology of the evangelical Christian church is a repetition of an old skeptical charge. It is the expression of a spirit similar to that which animated the German Rationalists, prompted the criticism of Colenso and of the _Essays and Reviews_, and is now ready to welcome any effort that may promise a revolution of the popular religious sentiment in Great Britain and the American Republic. Orthodoxy is unhesitatingly pronounced a public curse. In reply, we would request our skeptical opponents to remember the historical record of their principles, as seen in the social convulsions of Germany, in the immorality and revolutions of France, and in the religious indifference and prostration of England in the eighteenth century. We would remind them, further, that orthodox theology has here been in the ascendant, and that in no land are public morals purer, the laws more just, humanitarian enterprises better supported, material interests more progressive, or education better fostered than in the United States. The American Church laments that her faith has not been stronger and her zeal more fervent, but her history, with all its dark pages of hesitation and inefficiency, is the answer which she returns to the accusations of her Rationalistic opponents. Meanwhile, she proposes to continue her labor for human salvation, by the promulgation of her present system of theology, nor will she consider her mission accomplished until the gospel of Christ has been preached to every creature. FOOTNOTES: [232] Smith, _History of the Church of Christ in Chronological Tables_, p. 74. [233] _The Reason of Church Government against Prelacy._ Ch. II. [234] _History of the Church of Christ, &c._, p. 74. [235] Baird, _Religion in America_, pp. 547-562. [236] _Unitarianism in its Actual Condition._ Edited by Rey. J. R. Beard, D. D. pp. 1-4. London, 1846. [237] Sprague, _Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit_. _Historical Introduction_, p. xii. [238] Appleton's _American Cyclopædia_. Art. _Wm. Ellery Channing_. W. L. Symonds, Esq., is the author of this biography. [239] _Works_, _Introductory Remarks_, p. viii. [240] Ibid. p. vi. [241] _Works_, _Introductory Remarks_, pp. xviii-xix. [242] Ellis, _Half Century of Unitarianism_, p. 34. [243] These words refer to the great Revival in the winter of 1857-58. [244] Bellows, _Restatements of Christian Doctrine_, p. 164-165. [245] _Controversial Sermons_, No. 1. [246] Orr, _Unitarianism in the Present Time_, pp. 54, 58, 59. [247] Farley, _Unitarianism Defined_, p. 24. [248] Farley, _Unitarianism Defined_, p. 26. [249] Ibid. pp. 122, 123, 136. [250] Ibid. pp. 156, 157. [251] Will the Reverend author be kind enough to inform the public of the name and exact locality of these innocent islanders? [252] Bellows, _Restatements of Christian Doctrine_, pp. 228-230. [253] _Works of H. Ware, jr._, vol. iv. p. 91. [254] Farley, _Unitarianism Defined_, pp. 208-210. [255] Bellows, _Restatements of Christian Doctrine_, pp. 306, 307. [256] Orr, _Unitarianism in the Present Time_, p. 8. [257] F. H. Hedge, D. D. [258] _Essays and Reviews, Introduction to Boston Edition._ [259] _Religious Aspects of the Age._ Preface, p. 3. [260] Bellows, in _Religious Aspects of the Age_, pp. 109-111. [261] Mayo, in _Religious Aspects of the Age_, pp. 68, 69. [262] Bellows, in _Religious Aspects of the Age_, pp. 102, 103. [263] Frothingham, Ibid. pp. 121-126. [264] _Religious Aspects of the Age_, pp. 131-132. [265] American Unitarianism is numerically decreasing. The most favorable estimate of its membership (Schem, _Ecclesiastical Year-Book_, p. 78), is thirty thousand. From Dr. Sprague's _Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit_, pp. xx.-xxi., we derive the following statistical account of its present strength: There are in the United States about 263 Societies, of which Massachusetts has 164, and the city of Boston 21; Maine has 16, New Hampshire 15, Vermont 3, Rhode Island 3, Connecticut 2, New York 13, New Jersey 1, Pennsylvania 5, Maryland 2, Ohio 5, Illinois 11, Wisconsin 2, and Missouri, Kentucky, Minnesota, South Carolina, Louisiana, California, and the District of Columbia, each one. There are about 345 ministers. There are two theological schools, one at Cambridge, founded 1816; the other at Meadville, Pa.; first opened in 1844, and incorporated in 1846. The Periodicals are, The Christian Examiner, tri-monthly, Boston; The Monthly Religious Magazine and Independent Journal, Boston; The Sunday School Gazette, semi-monthly, Boston; The Christian Register, weekly, Boston; and the Christian Inquirer, weekly, New York. The missionary and charitable societies are, the American Unitarian Association, founded in 1825, and incorporated in 1847; the Unitarian Association of the State of New York; Annual Conference of Western Unitarian Churches; the Sunday School Society, instituted in 1827, and reorganized in 1854; the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, Piety, and Charity, incorporated in 1805; the Massachusetts Evangelical Missionary Society, instituted in 1807; the Society for Promoting Theological Education, organized in 1816, and incorporated in 1831; the Society for the Relief of Aged and Destitute Clergymen, formed in 1848, and incorporated in 1850; the Ministerial Conference; the Association of Ministers at large in New England, formed in 1850; the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches of Boston, organized in 1834, and incorporated in 1839; the Children's Mission to the Children of the Destitute, Boston, 1849; the Young Men's Christian Union, Boston, organized in 1851, and incorporated in 1852; the Boston Port Society, incorporated in 1829; and the Seamen's Aid Society of Boston, formed in 1832. [266] Williamson, _Exposition and Defense of Universalism_, pp. 11-13. [267] Skinner, _Universalism Illustrated and Defended_, pp. 51-56. [268] Appleton's _American Cyclopædia_, Art. _Universalists_. [269] Williamson, _Exposition and Defense of Universalism_, pp. 140-155. [270] Brittan, _Universalism as an Idea_, pp. 12, 13. We get the following statistics concerning the present condition of the Universalists as a denomination from their Register of 1862: 23 State Conventions; 87 Local Associations; 1,279 Societies and 998 Churches; 724 Preachers; 8 Academies; 3 Colleges; 17 Periodicals. St. Lawrence University, N. Y., has a Library of 5,000 vols; and Tuft's College, Mass., which opened in 1854, one of 10,000 volumes. The Unitarians excel the Universalists in humanitarian efforts, but the latter surpass the former in periodical literature. CHAPTER XXIV. THE UNITED STATES CONTINUED: THEODORE PARKER AND HIS SCHOOL. The early Unitarian Church of America was ardent in its attachment to the doctrine of miracles. An article which appeared in the _Christian Examiner_ less than forty years ago, provoked great opposition because of its severe strictures on this branch of Christian evidence. The writer held that miracles, even if proved to have occurred, can establish nothing in favor of a religion which has not already stood the test of experience; and that the doctrines of Christianity must first be determined reasonable before we are compelled to believe that miracles were wrought in attestation of them. The elder school of Unitarians denounced his statements as open infidelity. A violent controversy ensued, but no schism took place. Theodore Parker stood at the head of the radical movement, and afterward labored unremittingly to disseminate his theological opinions. In him American Rationalism finds its complete personification. He represents the application of German infidelity to the Unitarianism of New England. This celebrated advocate of temperance and freedom was prompted by a deep and unselfish love of his race. He was descended from a soldier of the Revolutionary army, and inherited that indomitable will, strong patriotic impulses, and native talents, which had characterized his ancestry for several generations. His mental qualities were of a lofty type. He was a linguist who, in correctness of speech and facility of acquisition, had few equals on this side of the Atlantic. His eloquence was stirring and popular, while his pen was facile and fruitful. Commencing to preach in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, the unusual character of his pulpit ministrations attracted public attention. On being invited to Boston, he assumed the pastoral relation over a newly-formed church, the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society. In addition to his sermons, he lectured in all parts of the Northern States, and found time to write regularly for periodicals, compose original works, and make translations of German authors with whom his own theological opinions were in sympathy. Though often in feeble health, he seldom allowed physical languor to intermit his work. When threatened with consumption he was induced to spend some time at Santa Cruz, whence he sailed for Italy. He died at Florence in the spring of 1860, not having completed his fiftieth year, and after a pastorate of only fourteen years at the Melodeon. He had often expressed a desire in earlier life that, like Goethe and Channing, he might not be deterred from labor by the prospect of immediate death. Shortly before his decease he addressed to his congregation in Boston a lengthy letter containing his experience as a minister. He now lies in the little cemetery outside the walls of Florence; his tombstone, at his own request, simply recording his name and the dates of his birth and death. He bequeathed his library, containing over thirteen thousand volumes, to the Free Library of Boston. Our chief concern is with Mr. Parker as a theologian. He was a stranger to moderation in every form. Having conceived certain skeptical views, he knew no terms strong enough to condemn the whole evangelical scheme. His chief defects of style are abruptness and occasional vulgarity, which no man more regretted than their author in his calmer hours. But there can be no apology for his dealing with serious subjects in that vein of sarcasm which reminds us of the grossness of the coarser brood of infidels. An English critic, noticing this defect, says: "His vigor of style was deformed by a power of sarcasm, which often invested the most sacred subjects with caricature and vulgarity; a boundless malignity against supposed errors.... He equals Paine in vulgarity and Voltaire in sarcasm."[271] Parker felt that a bold course must be taken or orthodoxy could not be made to yield its position. His biographer informs us that when he was less than seven years of age "he fell out with the doctrines of eternal damnation and a wrathful God."[272] In later life, when striving to find the sources of what he considered the evils of the popular theology, he fixed upon two common idols: "the Bible, which is only a record of men's words and works; and Jesus of Nazareth, a man who only lived divinely some centuries ago. The popular religion is wrong in that it tells man he is an outcast, that he is but a spurious issue of the devil, must not pray in his own name, is only sure of one thing--and that is damnation. Man is declared to be immortal, but it is such immortality as proves a curse instead of a blessing. In fact this whole orthodox theology rests on a lie."[273] His positive faith is comprehended in his own term, "the Absolute Religion." God has created man with an intuitive religious element, the strongest and deepest in human nature, indestructible, and existing everywhere. Its legitimate action is to produce reverence, and ascends into trust, hope, and love, or descends into doubt, fear, and hate. Religion is not confined to one age, or people, or sect. It is the same thing in each man, "not a similar thing--but the same thing." Three forms of religion have existed, and each in turn has ruled the mind,--Fetichism, Polytheism, and Monotheism. The first can be distinctly traced in the mythical stories of Genesis, the second in pagan nations, and the third in these later times. Now, it is a very small matter in which one of these forms man has worshiped or may still worship. If he worship at all, he adores the true God, "the only God, whether he call on Brahma, Jehovah, Pan, or Lord, or by no name at all.... Many a swarthy Indian, who bowed to wood and stone; many a grim-faced Calmuck, who worships the great God of storms; many a Grecian peasant, who did homage to Phoebus-Apollo when the sun rose or went down; yes, many a savage, his hand smeared all over with human sacrifice, shall come from the east and the west, and sit down in the kingdom of God, with Moses and Zoroaster, with Socrates and Jesus,--while men who called daily on the only living God, who paid their tribute and bowed at the name of Christ, shall be cast out because they did no more."[274] Christianity, with Parker, is not the absolute religion, because a better may be developed. The great difference between it and other religions is: _first_, in the point whence it sets out, other religions starting from something external and limited, but Christianity from the spirit of God in the soul of man speaking through reason, conscience, and the religious sentiment; _second_, it is not a system but a method of religion and life; and, _third_, its eminently practical nature. The Deity adored by many people is a pure fabrication, for superstition projects its own divinity, which of course will be after its own impure mould. Men call the phantom God, Moloch, or Jehovah, and then attempt to please the capricious being whom they have conjured up. The true idea of God is his infinite presence in each point of space; this immanence in matter is the basis of his influence; this imposition of a law is the measure of God's relation to matter; and the action of the law is therefore mechanical, not voluntary or self-conscious. The Bible, according to the same method of argumentation, is as much a human book as the _Principia_ of Newton. Some things in it are true, but no reasonable man can accept others. It is full of contradictions; "there are poems which men take as histories; prophecies which have not been and never will be fulfilled; stories of miracles that never happened; stories which make God a man of war, cruel, rapacious, revengeful, hateful, and not to be trusted. We find amatory songs, selfish proverbs, skeptical discourses, and the most awful imprecations human fancy ever clothed in speech." The minds of the writers of the Old Testament were not decided in favor of the exclusive existence of Jehovah, and all the early books betray more of a polytheistic belief than we find in the prophets. The legendary and mythical writings of the Hebrews prove unmistakably that man was first created in the lowest savage life; that his religion was the rudest worship of nature; and that his morality was that of the cannibal. All the civilized races have risen through various forms of developing faith before reaching refinement and true religion. We do not know who are the writers of most of the Scriptural books. Their records are at variance with science. The account of Jehovah's determination that the carcasses of Israel should fall in the wilderness because of disobedience, is a "savage story of some oriental who attributed a blood-thirsty character to his God, and made a deity in his own image, and it is a striking remnant of barbarism that has passed away, not destitute of dramatic interest; not without its melancholy moral."[275] The prophets are claimed to have written nothing in general above the reach of human faculties. The whole of the Old Testament is only a phantom of superstition to scare us in our sleep.[276] The statements of the evangelists have a very low degree of historical credibility. Miracles are not impossible, because God is omnipotent; but our main difficulty is, that we cannot believe the accounts descriptive of them. The testimony and not the miracle is at fault. Inspiration is not at all peculiar to the Scriptures. All nations have had their inspiration; this is a natural result of the perfection of God, for he does not change; and the laws of mind are like himself, unchangeable. Inspiration, being similar to vision, must be everywhere the same thing in kind however much it differs in degree. The quantity of our inspiration depends upon the use we make of our faculties. He who has the most wisdom, goodness, religion, and truth is the most inspired. This inspiration reveals itself in various forms, modified by country, character, education, peculiarity. Minos and Moses were inspired to make laws; David, Pindar, Plato, John the Baptist, Gerson, Luther, Boehme, Fenelon, and Fox were all inspired men. The sacraments of the Church were never designed to be permanent. In illustration of them, Parker sacrilegiously quotes, "Behold the child, by nature's kindly law, Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw; Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite." The Christian Church is held to be a purely human mechanism, and the great defect of Protestantism is its limit of the power of private inspiration. God still inspires men as much as ever, and is immanent in spirit as in space. This doctrine, which is Spiritualism, "relies on no church, tradition, or Scripture, as the last grand and infallible rule; it counts these things teachers, if they teach, not masters; helps, if they help us, not authorities. It relies on the Divine presence in the soul of man; the eternal word of God, which is truth, as it speaks through the faculties he has given. It believes God is near the soul as matter to the sense; thinks the canon of revelation not yet closed, nor God exhausted. It sees him in Nature's perfect work; hears him in all true Scripture, Jewish or Phoenician; stoops at the same fountain with Moses and Jesus, and is filled with living water. It calls God, Father, not King; Christ, brother, not Redeemer; Religion, nature. It loves and trusts, but does not fear. It sees in Jesus a man living manlike, highly gifted, and living with blameless and beautiful fidelity to God, stepping thousands of years before the race of man; the profoundest religious genius God has raised up; whose words and works help us to form and develop the native idea of a complete religious man. But he lived for himself; died for himself; worked out his own salvation, and we must do the same, for one man cannot live for another more than he can eat or sleep for him. It is not the personal Christ but the spirit of Wisdom, Holiness, Love that creates the well-being of man; a life at one with God. The divine incarnation is in all mankind."[277] Such is the faith avowed and enforced by Theodore Parker. It goes but little beyond a belief in God's existence and general participation in human life. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish his views of Deity from Pantheism; but on more than one occasion he expressed his total dissent from the peculiarity of the Hegelian system. He holds that all we see about us and feel within us testifies of God. Neither speculative nor practical atheism can produce good in the world; we must believe in God's existence, else we have no power whatever to explain the harmony in nature, providence in individual and national life, existence and immortality of the soul, and the suffering to which we fall heir.[278] But Theism clears up every difficulty, and sheds its light upon all departments of human life. This alone can overthrow the popular orthodox theology and enthrone the religion of the Absolute, or true Spiritualism in its stead. It is a question of grave importance how far the skepticism of Unitarianism, Universalism, and Pantheism has been influential upon the American Church, and how great is the number of those who have become more or less tinctured with the Rationalism of the last five years' importation. Parker claimed that the liberal or Rationalistic thinkers were largely on the increase; but he also informs us that the translation by himself of _De Wette's Introduction to the Old Testament_, not only proved a financial failure, but that it has had "no recognition nor welcome in America; that it has never had a friendly word said for it in any American journal."[279] Skepticism has been proclaimed principally by public lectures, and, in this form, has made little pretension to logical, exegetical, or metaphysical power. Youths have manifested a decided taste for the works of Carlyle, Emerson, and Parker, while the _Phases of Faith_ is one of the most thumb-worn of all the volumes of our circulating libraries. Yet American Rationalism still lacks consistency and system. The history of Rationalism proves that the evil is of slow and insidious growth. The young are most susceptible of its influence. The Sunday Schools of the various evangelical Churches are usually supplied with large libraries of religious books. But many works of pernicious tendency have been known to find a place upon shelves designed for better service. A recent juvenile publication of skeptical character has probably been read by many children whose parents had taught them that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God.[280] This neat and attractive little volume is worthy of the disciples of Paulus and Semler. It is an advocate, under the most fascinating garb, of the very Rationalism which now threatens the American Church. The author claims that the patriarchal history is made up of little scraps of poetry; the fall of our first parents was their seeing a dark veil one day in their wandering, and they, in consequence thereof, went out of the pleasant place where they had been dwelling; the deluge was simply a metaphorical description of the increase of evil among men; the ark was only a mystical vessel typifying faith, truth, and other correctives of sorrow and sin; "there never was a single man Noah, who put all those creatures into a boat and saved himself;" no sacrifice appeared to Abraham when about to offer Isaac, but "his lifted arm seems to be seized as by the hand of an angel;" the crossing of the Red Sea by Israel, and the destruction of Pharaoh and his host, were the natural results of tide and storm; the bitter waters were sweetened by a friendly weed that grew close at hand; the speaking of Balaam's ass was only the twirling of his long ears and loud braying; and the walls of Jericho fell merely by the natural force of loud, fearless, and honest speaking,--just as West India Slavery tumbled down by the agency of the noble voices that thundered, trumpet-like, in righteous indignation against it. While speaking of Mr. Frothingham's juvenile work, we do not forget that he has lately sounded the alarm of "Liberal Christianity" for those who have passed the age of childhood. Many of his Unitarian brethren will hardly agree with his radical Rationalism. Belonging to the extreme Left Wing, he holds that it is the province of liberal Christians to slough off the absurd doctrines now prevalent,--"not to remould the age,--to recast it, to regenerate it, to cross it or struggle with it, but to penetrate its meaning, enter into its temper, sympathize with its hopes, blend with its endeavors. The life of the time appoints the creed of the time, and modifies the establishment of the time. The great mark of our generation is a deep faith in the soul's power to take care of itself, and a desire that it may exercise that power to the utmost. Away with fears! Away with despairs! Away with devils! Away with perdition! Away with doom! Protestantism has the poison in its heart. From our own liberal theology, the elements of unnaturalism, preternaturalism, supernaturalism, have disappeared almost as completely as they have from the systems of science. The grand achievement of Christianity was the emancipation of human nature from its terrible Jewish thraldom. Its revelation seems to have been, that men could judge for themselves what is right,--could please God by being true to themselves,--could find the blessed life by returning to the simplicity of little children,--and could bring in the kingdom of heaven by yielding to the solicitations of kindness. Man greater than the Sabbath; man greater than the temple; man greater than the priesthood or the law. The religion was a consecration of Nature; the abolishment of the old oppressive hierarchies, and a cordial invitation to the heart to make a religion for itself. Just so far as it was in the deepest and purest sense 'natural' religion,--just so far as it emancipated the moral forces of humanity,--was it quick and quickening.... Human nature, under liberty, will vindicate itself as a divine creation. The freer it is, the more harmonious, orderly, balanced, and beautiful it is.... Nature's seers, running their eye along the line of the moral law, catch vistas in the future brighter than those that now are fading from the Old Testament page; and Nature's prophets, putting their ear to the ground, hear the murmur of nobler revelations than were ever given to the old oracles now moving their stiffened lips in death. Humanity's heresiarchs are lordlier than inhumanity's priests. The soul's image-breaking is diviner than the prelate's worship. Knowledge distances faith. Human solidity more than makes good the Catholic's Communion. The revelation of universal law makes the belief in miracle seem atheistical; and the irresistible grace of the spirit that lives, and moves, and discloses its being in humanity, sweeps past the dispensations of Catholic and Protestant Christendom, as the eagle distances the dove."[281] We would not utter a syllable of needless alarm; but is it not time that the American Church take note of the efforts by which the Rationalists of every grade are striving to take away the cardinal truths of the Christian revelation? Their predecessors in Europe sought to make children ashamed of the old truths by casting sarcasm on the strong faith and evangelical piety of the forefathers. They then aimed to show that the Church and theology are altogether behind the age, and that science and art are advancing with a rapidity which must leave all dogmatism and authority far behind. They afterward examined the Scriptures by the light of Reason alone, and, by this idea, deluded multitudes of the young and inexperienced into the darkness and doubt which were never removed. This last effort may be the next one to which American Rationalism will address itself. The Church in this country has partaken of the pride awakened by our unexampled national prosperity; and many of her noblest sons had well-nigh come to the conclusion, before the outbreak of the late civil war, that she must inevitably prosper, simply because of the remarkable temporal blessings which God had lavishly given. But without faith nothing can be accomplished, and three decades may be sufficient to so change the whole aspect of our religious life that the Church may become thoroughly Rationalistic; her sanctuaries frequented, and her posts of honor occupied, by the worshipers of Reason. The fidelity of the past will not be able to meet the emergency of the present. The Church in the wilderness was not permitted to lay up manna in advance. Our civilization is undergoing a complete revolution. The field is newly ploughed by the events of the last few years, and it becomes the Church to scatter the seeds of truth with an unsparing hand. If this land is to be blessed with pure faith, as in past years, a faith strong enough to repel every blow of Skepticism, to the Church, as an instrument, and not to our natural growth, shall be attributed this popular prosperity. If we would secure for future years an uncorrupted faith, the enaction of pure laws, the introduction of the Gospel into every social class, an increased enthusiasm in missionary labors, the intense union of all parts of our country, and the united progress of piety and theological science, the duty of the present hour must be discharged. FOOTNOTES: [271] Farrar, _Critical History of Free Thought_, p. 324. [272] Weiss, _Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker_, vol. i., p. 30. [273] _Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion_, pp. 5, 6. [274] _Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion_, p. 111. [275] _Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion_, pp. 333, 4. [276] Ibid. p. 350. [277] _Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion_, pp. 477, 478. [278] _Sermons of Theism, Atheism, and Popular Theology_, pp. 51-55. [279] Weiss, _Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker_, vol. i., p. 402. [280] _Stories of the Patriarchs_, by Rev. O. B. Frothingham. Boston, 1864. [281] Sermon on the _New Religion of Nature_, before the Alumni of the Cambridge Divinity School. Published in the _Friend of Progress_, November, 1864. CHAPTER XXV. INDIRECT SERVICE OF SKEPTICISM--PRESENT OUTLOOK. The most important successes of man are born of his severest trials and most persistent struggles. Sometimes principles have required the combats of centuries before they become the possession of a heroic people. The value of the prize may in most cases be accurately estimated by the length of time and the outlay of effort expended for its attainment. "Men of easy faith," says a wise observer of human deeds, "and sanguine hope, have sometimes, after one great commotion and change, joyously assured themselves that this would suffice. The grand evil is removed; we shall now happily and fast advance with a clear scene before us. But after a while, to their surprise and dismay, another commotion and dismay has perhaps carried the whole affair back, apparently, to the same state as before. Recollect the history of the Reformation in this land; begun by Henry VIII., established, it was gladly assumed, by his son. But that youth dies, and then we have the instant return of Popery, in all its triumph, fury, and revenge. After a while Queen Mary departs, and all pious souls exult in liberation and Protestantism. But then again, in Elizabeth's time, there comes a half-papist, severe spiritual tyranny. Later down, after the overthrow of the tyrant Charles, there arose for the first time, a prospect of real religious liberty. But his son resumes the throne, and all such liberty was abolished, and so continued long; and another revolution was required that religious faith and worship might be free."[282] But when the English Reformation did come it was worth all its cost. The Church would not barter it to-day for the commercial value of continents,--no, not if she were told that the refusal would cost her whole centuries of poverty and sorrow, many more martyrdoms, and a second home in the catacombs. The various conflicts with infidelity have been scarcely less terrible than the determined efforts made for the preservation of the faith of the Gospel against the persecutions of the Roman Emperors and the popes of the inquisitorial period. For there are two kinds of suffering in defense of truth; that manifested by endurance of the body when physical pain is inflicted, and that which the mind undergoes when plausible error makes its fascinating appeal. And he who can resist the pretenses of infidelity and remain pure amid the general waste of faith, has moral power enough to attest his love of truth by dying in its behalf. God takes note of all offerings which we bring, whether it be a lacerated body in an age of persecution, or a sorely-tried but yet purely-kept conscience in a period of devastating irreligion. The same benignant Father who welcomed the sacrifice of the unblemished heifer was ready to receive the humbler offering of a pair of turtle doves. One of the general principles on which we based the present historical inquiry, was the undesigned, but real service rendered the cause of truth and the Church by skepticism. It is yet too soon to prove the validity of this position in reference to the present manifestations of Rationalism in England and the United States. They are yet incomplete, and not until a system of doubt has completed its cycle, are we enabled to determine the evil which it has inflicted and the general benefit which it has indirectly accomplished. When we look, therefore, at the developed types of error which have arisen and made their impress on the public mind, we are forced to the conclusion that, as God holds truth in his hand and makes it minister to the good of his cause, so does he possess complete control of error, and sometimes causes its wildest vagaries to contribute to the advancement of those interests which they were designed to subvert. The promoters of the evil are none the less responsible, though their works terminated in an unexpected issue. "It must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." This principle of God's moral government has long been denied a recognition. The purely literary historian has here been in advance of the student of religious events, for he has conceded and defended the principle when tracing the career of military chieftains, who aimed solely at the conquest of nations and the increase of temporal power. He has shown how the devastations of an Alexander, a Hannibal, and a Napoleon have been the unexpected instruments of great popular blessings. Ecclesiastical historians have frequently regarded all skeptical tendencies as evil in all their consequences; but it is a far more exalted view of God's ceaseless care of the interests of his Church, to consider him as the All-powerful and All-loving, causing even "the wrath of man to praise him." A glance at the various departments of theology which have received most attention within the last half century, will prove that Rationalism has been the undesigned means of contributing to their advancement. The faith of the public teacher determines the faith and practice of the masses; and those who are the commissioned expounders of truth for the people have to-day a more substantial basis of theological literature, than their predecessors possessed before Rationalism appeared in Germany. As some of the grandest cathedrals of Europe, originally built by the Roman Catholics, and designed by them for the perpetual dissemination of the doctrines of Popery, are now the shrines of Protestant worship, so have those weapons which were shaped for fierce assaults upon inspiration been wielded in its defense. "Rationalism was not to be simply ignored," says Schaff, "but in the hand of that Providence which allows nothing to take place in vain, must serve the purpose of bringing to a new form the old, which, in its contracted sphere--that of mere understanding--it had profanely demolished. By this means a freer activity and fuller development were secured, and that want which lies at the root of all Rationalism, was supplied; namely, that religious truth shall not be confronted with the subjective spirit in the form of mere outward authority, but, in an inward way, become fully reconciled to it in the form of conviction and certainty."[283] The Rationalists at one time deemed the criticism of the Scriptures their strongest fortress. This is evident from their numerous works on the authenticity of the Biblical books, and on the text itself. They perused the Church Fathers for corroborative opinions, applied themselves to the oriental languages with a zeal worthy of a better purpose, traveled through countries mentioned in the Bible in order to study local customs and popular traditions, and searched the testimony of both ancient and modern writers with an enthusiasm seldom surpassed. Their purpose was, to maintain the human character of the Bible. Now what do we behold? Those researches have been employed by evangelical critics for a higher end, and are powerful auxiliaries in the defense of the divine authority of the Scriptures. The Hebrew learning of Gesenius, for example, is the most available instrument in the hands of the orthodox theologian in his study of the Old Testament. The most critical and accurate of the Rationalists have, in almost every case, told us some truth which the professed friends of revelation had not possessed, and which the Church might have been compelled to seek for centuries without success. Church history was crude and ill-written before the Rationalists expended their toil and learning upon it. They investigated the fountains; made the storm-beaten monuments, old coins, and medals disclose their long-kept secrets; and threaded the labyrinths of secular history, written in almost every European language, in order that nothing serviceable to their cause might be lost. As an illustration of the impetus imparted to this sphere of theological science, we may state that between the years 1839 and 1841, there were published in Germany over five hundred works on church history alone.[284] "Almost every theologian of any name," says Schaff, "has devoted a portion at least of his strength to some department of church history. Besides this, however, it is found to receive the homage of all other departments,--Exegesis, Introduction, Ethics, Practical Theology, etc., in this respect: that for any work to be complete it is felt necessary that it should, in the way of introduction, present a history of the subject with which it is employed, and have also due regard to views different from its own. Let any one look into any of the later commentaries by Bleek, Harless, Tholuck, Steiger, Hengstenberg, Fritzsche, and Rückert; or into the dogmatic works of Twesten, Nitzsch, Hase, and the monograph of Julius Müller on sin, and he will soon learn how entirely the whole present theology is pervaded with historical material from beginning to end."[285] In the conception of church history as a science, the Rationalists also displayed a wisdom which had ever been wanting. "Rationalism," says Schaff again, "has been of undeniable service to church history. In the first place, it exercised the boldest criticism, placing many things in a new light, and opening the way for a more free and unprejudiced judgment. Then again it assisted in bringing out the true conception of history itself, though rather in a mere negative way. Almost all previous historians, Protestant as well as Catholic, had looked upon the history of _heresies_ as essentially motion and change, while they had regarded the church doctrine as something once for all settled and unchangeable; a view which cannot possibly stand the test of impartial inquiry. For though Christianity itself, the saving truth of God, is always the same, and needs no change, yet this can by no means be affirmed of the apprehension of this truth by the human mind in the different ages of the Church, as is at once sufficiently evident from the great difference between Catholicism and Protestantism; and within the latter, from the distinctions of Lutheranism, Zwinglianism, and Calvinism. But Rationalism now discovered fluctuation, motion, change, in the Church, as well as in the sects; thus taking the first step towards the idea of organic development, on which the latest German historiography is founded."[286] We deem this testimony in favor of our position as of no ordinary value, coming as it does from one so intimately acquainted with the issues involved, and yet in no sympathy with the skepticism of any age. The Rationalistic divines have also been the indirect means of a better estimate of the life of Christ. The replies to the work of Strauss present, as we have before intimated, the most complete portrait of the career of the Messiah ever drawn by uninspired authority. The symmetry, scope, power, and sympathy which revealed themselves through his entire ministry are so described by Neander, and those in harmony with him, that their representation of the Messiah must ever perform an invaluable service in theological literature. Had the attack never been made we would not now enjoy the benefit resulting from the counter-blow. "These replies," says Schwarz, "constitute an important literature of themselves, in which scarcely any theological name of importance is absent, and in which many obscure pastors from all parts of Germany have brought the fire-bucket of their knowledge in order to extinguish the flame that threatened to consume them and their village-churches together with the historical basis of Christianity.... Concerning the theological discussion originated by Strauss, our attention is turned toward those works which undertake to answer specifically the critical questions under consideration. His celebrated work was the signal for a totally new gospel criticism. A succession of works appeared at but brief intervals that discussed in a far more thorough method than Strauss had done those important questions concerning the relations of the gospels to each other, their signification, age, and authenticity."[287] So, too, has the criticism of the apostolic age by the Tübingen school aroused the friends of evangelical Christianity to inquire into the same period, and see whether their own ground was really defensible. It was a fortunate day for them when their attention was directed thither. For the church enjoys thereby a much clearer conception of all those great movements that had their origin in the time of the apostles, of the relations in which those men stood to the Divine Founder, of the gradual dissemination of the gospel, of the general condition of the infant church, and of its interpretation of the doctrines promulgated by Christ, than could have been acquired by all the ordinary methods of investigation. Taking the past as a present instructor, we fear no permanent evil results from the recent popular Lives of Jesus by Renan and Strauss. These men have written for the masses, and their appeal is to the plain mind. They would portray Christ in such a light that even the least intelligent mind might be brought into living sympathy with his humanity. Now, when their view of him shall have been faithfully answered by presenting his divine character to the common understanding, who will say that the present generation of Christ's skeptical biographers have written in vain? Those authors, having seen the necessity of a popular understanding of Christ, describe him as a man like ourselves. They have written from a wrong stand-point, but if their labors can suggest to evangelical theologians the immediate necessity of a popular view of Christ as our Redeemer, we will not believe that their labors, though exerted for a different purpose, are without good fruits. The people need to perceive clearly the character of Christ--not to look upon him as far off, but near at hand, not to regard him as the cold, indifferent observer of our conduct, but as that Friend who, being our Elder Brother, enters into sympathy with the humblest of his followers, and suffers not a sparrow to fall without his notice. We are confirmed in our opinion of the ultimate advantages from Renan's representation of Christ by the testimony of M. de Pressensé. This distinguished theologian was recently returning from the Holy Land, whither he had gone "to seek to lay hold of the holy likeness of Christ that he might present it to his countrymen," when he stopped at Altenburg to attend the session of the Evangelical Church Diet of Germany. Speaking of the indirect service of Renan, he used the following earnest language: "I too wish to expose to you the advantages of the recent attacks against our faith, for, in my eyes, they by far outweigh the inconveniences and the perils. Without doubt, this falsification of the holy type which we adore may well deceive the public mind, for it fell into a community of religious ignorance, into a country in which modern Catholicism--I mean to say Italian, or rather Roman Catholicism, which has but too much prevailed over that of our Pascals and our Bossuets--had more and more reduced religion to a servile submission towards the Papacy and superstitious worship of the deified creature, thus preventing the direct intercourse of the soul with the gospel and with him who fills the gospel. And then, M. Renan's book at bottom flattered all the bad contemporaneous instincts; it made the apotheosis of that melancholy and voluptuous skepticism which covers up with a certain distinction and a certain charm the most positive materialism; it flattered our languid wills, substituted the worship of the beautiful for the worship of the holy, and authorized, by the false ideal which it presents to us, a factitious religious sentiment, which demands no sacrifice, no manly act, covers up the cross under flowers, and at last only gives back to humanity its old idol, newly carved and painted. This idol is no other than humanity itself. This mixture of atheism and sensibility was particularly dangerous, because it met preëxistent tendencies, and colored them with a fallacious poesy. The art of the historian, or rather of the romance-writer [Renan], consisted in his hiding the entire absence of all belief under graceful metaphors and an unctuous style, just as the brilliant snow of the Alps covers up the abyss and deprives the traveler of the salutary horror which would save him. You see, my friends, I do not diminish the perils of a book which has had in its two editions a sale of two hundred thousand copies. And yet, I persist in believing that the advantages are greater than its disadvantages." Neither do we apprehend any ultimate disaster from the Skeptical Scientific School. Darwin, Buckle, and others have striven diligently to impress upon the public mind the opinion that there is an antagonism between science and revelation, and that it is of such character as to render Christianity a useless appendage to human society. Now, in order to counteract the influence of their sentiments, the evangelical theologian should take no partial or prejudicial views of science, or of its necessity for the defense of Scriptural truth. The course adopted by the Roman Catholic Church in reference to the discoveries of some of the noblest of her sons was suicidal. When Galileo was forced to recant his theory of the earth's revolution, the advance of papacy was arrested. To all outward appearance there is an incompatibility between the claims of geology and the Mosaic cosmogony. Shall we say that geology is false, and the six days of the Mosaic narrative must be understood in their literal sense? This presents the dilemma either to reject geology as a spurious science, or to discard revelation. We will not accept such an alternative, and rather say, "Geology is a noble science, but it is yet an infant. When it reaches its majority we shall see a harmony,--inexpressibly beautiful and proportionate,--between its discoveries and the inspired word of God." We must not charge the errors of scientific skeptics to the department of inquiry in which they labor. The perversions and errors of science, and not science itself, are at enmity with revelation. Mr. Darwin's theory of development seems to be in outright opposition to the Scriptural account of the animal creation. But there is no occasion of alarm at what he has said, for neither he nor all who think with him can invalidate the truths of Scripture. We should despise no theory that aims at our better comprehension of great truths; for the day will come when science, in its mature glory and strength, shall cast its human lustre on all the pages of divine truth. The true way to meet the writings of skeptics in the Church is by calm replies to their charges, and by immediate ecclesiastical discipline. Every word or act that savors of tyranny or undue exaction creates friends for them, and when for them, for their opinions also. Mere general remarks in reply to their attacks will accomplish nothing. Little advantage would be gained if every preacher in Great Britain and America were only to say, "Bishop Colenso is in error." But it will be a public benefit if he be treated with personal kindness of expression as a brother-man, his arguments examined, and their obnoxious fallacy proved. The Church should deal toward the foes of her own household with the greatest possible caution, else the reaction will be of lasting evil. Neander taught a lesson for all coming time when a royal edict was about to appear forbidding the entrance of Strauss' _Life of Jesus_ within the Prussian dominion. He violently opposed it, and gave it as his opinion, that "the work of Strauss, though not profound, was written with much talent, and that throughout, science predominated over and extinguished sentiment. That, in truth, the writer appeared to be guided by singular good faith, but that his mythical system did nevertheless undermine Christianity; and that if it spread, it might be feared that it might destroy Christian faith; but, yet, that it would be a great mistake to interdict the work; since, when once interdicted, it could not be refuted, and by such a measure it would acquire an undue importance." But whatever precautions are taken in dealing with skepticism, it is essential that the spirit of unity pervade all evangelical denominations. During the Peninsular War, the Duke of Wellington, observing that one of his officers of artillery was serving a gun with remarkable precision against a body of men posted in a wood to the left, rode up to the subaltern, and said: "Well aimed, captain; but no more,--they are our own 99th!" A similar mistake has sometimes been committed by ecclesiastical organizations, which, instead of aiming at the common enemy, have expended too much valuable time and energy in efforts to defend their individual creeds. A more intense harmony of all the friends of orthodoxy is a condition of permanent success. The theological crisis of to-day may be followed by others more severe. But the Faith of the Church teaches the invaluable lesson that God designs, by the ordeal of the earthly crucible, to prepare her for higher honor and perfect service. She does not desire a premature termination of the season of proof. "From darkness here, and weariness, We ask not full repose, Only be Thou at hand.-- * * * * * The wanderer seeks his native bower, And we will look and long for Thee, And thank Thee for each trying hour, Wishing, not struggling, to be free."[288] FOOTNOTES: [282] John Foster, _Broadmead Lectures_, vol. i., p. 309. [283] _What is Church History?_ p. 15. [284] Winer, _Handbuch der Theologischen Wissenschaft_, 1838-1842. [285] _What is Church History?_ p. 17. [286] _History of the Apostolic Church_, p. 80. [287] _Geschichte der Neuesten Theologie._ Second Edition, pp. 105, 152. [288] Keble, _Christian Year_. APPENDIX. LITERATURE OF RATIONALISM. I.--GERMANY--HOLLAND--SWITZERLAND. AUBERLEN, C. A.--Die Göttliche Offenbarung, 2 Bände, Basel, 1861-64. ÄUSERUNGEN üb. Renan, Strauss u. ähnliche Bücher. Anon. Tüb., 1864. BALMES, J.--Briefe an einen Zweifler, Aus d. Span. übersetzt, von F. Loruiser, Regensburg, 1864. BAUR, F. C.--Die Tübingen Schule und ihre Stellung zur Gegenwart. Tübingen, 1859. BEYSCHLAG, W.--Über das "Leben Jesu" v. Renan. Halle a. S. 1864. BOCKSHAMMER, G. F.--Offenbarung und Theologie. Stuttg. 1822. BÖHME, C. F.--Christliches Henotikon. Halle, 1827. ---- Die Sache des rationalen Supranaturalismus, geprüft und erklärt. Neust. 1823. BRETSCHNEIDER, K. G.--Ueber die Grundprincipien der Evang. Theologie. Altenburg, 1832. ---- Zwei Sendschreiben an einem Staatsmann. Leipzig, 1830. BRONSVELD, A. W.--Oorzaken der verbreiding van het rationalisme in ous land, sinds de laaste jaren der vorigen eeuw. Rotterdam, 1862. BRUNNER, S.--Der Atheist Renan u. Sein Evangelium. Regensburg, 1864. BUCHER, J.--Das Leben Jesu v. Dr. Fr. Strauss nach der neuen "f. das Deutsche Volk," beab. Augsburg, 1864. CASSEL, P.--Über Renan's Leben Jesu. Berlin, 1864. CHANTEPIE DE LA SAUSSAYE.--La Crise Religieuse en Hollande. Leyde, 1860. CLAUSEN, PROF.--Katholicismus u. Protestantismus, 3 Bände. Translated by Fries. Latest Edition, 1828. The author, a moderate Rationalist, attempts in vain to identify Protestantism and Rationalism. CLEMEN, C. F. W.--Die Rationalisten sind doch Christen. Altenbg. 1829. CÖLLN, D. G. K. VON, UND SCHULTZ, DAV.--Über Theologische Lehrfreiheit auf den Evangelischen Universitäten. Breslau, 1830. CORNIL, A.--Ludwig Feuerbach u. Seine Stellung zur Religion u. Philosophie d. Gegenwart. Frankfurt a. Main, 1851. DA COSTA.--The Four Witnesses. Holland. This work relates to the Four Evangelists, and is a reply to Strauss. DEUTINGER, M.--Renan u. das Wunder. München, 1864. DE WETTE.--Über der Verfall der Protestantischen Kirche in Deutschland, und die Mittel, ihr wieder aufzuhelfen. Reformationsalm.--1817, S. 296 ff. ---- Religion und Theologie. Berlin, 1817. ---- Theodor oder des Zweifler's Weihe. 2 Bde. Berlin, 1822. DIESTELMANN, TH.--Beleuchtung d. Lebens Jesu f. das Deutsche Volk, v. D. F. Strauss. Hannover, 1864. ENGELHARDT, M.--Schenkel und Strauss. Erlangen, 1864. FELDMANN, T. C.--Der Wahre Christus u. sein rechtes Symbol. Altona, 1865. FEUERBACH. F. L.--Das Wesen d. Glaubens im Sinne Luther's. Leip., 1844. FREI-RELIGIÖSEN (die) in ihrer Blösse. Brandenburg, 1862. FREPPEL, PROF.--Kritische Beleuchtung d. Ernst Renan'schen Schrift: Das Leben Jesu. Wien, 1864. FRICKE, G.--Ueber Renan's Leben Jesu. Heidelberg, 1864. FRITZSCHE, CH. F.--De Rationalismo commentatt. II; in den opuscul. academ. Tur.--1846. FROST, W.--Das Leben d. Anti-Christus nach Ernst Renan. Wien, 1864. GEBHARD, F. H.--Die letzten Gründe des Rationalismus in einer Widerlegung der Briefe Zöllichs. Arnst., 1822. GERBER, J. H.--Supranominalismus, ein neues System der Theologie, oder die endliche Versöhnung zwischen Rationalismus und Supranaturalismus in wissenschaftliche Nothwendigkiet. Leipzig, 1843-44. GERLACH, H.--Gegen Renan, Leben Jesu. Berlin, 1864. GESS UND RIGGENBACH.--Apologetische Beiträge. Basel, 1864. GROEN VAN PRINSTERER, G.--Le parti anti-revolutionaire et confessionel dans l'église réformée des Pays-Bas. Amsterdam, 1860. GURLITT. J. GFR.-Rede zur Empfehlung des Vernunftsgebrauch's bei dem Studium der Theologie. Hamburg, 1822. HAAR, B. TER,--Pictures from the History of the Reformation. 1855. A prize work, written to strengthen the faith of Protestants. ---- Vorlesungen über Renan's "Leben Jesu." 1864. HAFFNER.--Die Deutsche Aufklärung. Mainz, 1864. HAGENBACH, K. R.--Kirchengeschichte d. 18 und 19 Jahrhunderts. 3 Aufl. Leipzig, 1856. ---- Die sogenannte Vermittelungstheologie. Zürich, 1858. ---- History of Doctrines. Revised Edinb. ed., with large additions. By Prof. H. B. Smith. New York, 1862. HAHN, A.--De Rationalismi, qui dicitur, vera indole et qua cum naturalismo contineatur ratione. Lips. 1827. ---- Ueber die Lage des Christenthums unserer Zeit, und das Verhältniss der Christlichen Theologie zur Wissenschaft überhaupt. Leipz. 1832. HANEBERG, D. B.--E. Renan's Leben Jesu beleuchtet. Regensbg. 1864. HANNE, J. W.--Rationalismus und spec. Theologie in Braunschweig. Braunschweig, 1838. HARMS, C.--Thesen Luther's mit andern 95 Sätzen. Kiel, 1817. ---- "Dass es mit der Vernunftreligion nichts ist." Kiel, 1819. HAVET, E.--Kritik üb. "Das Leben Jesu" v. E. Renan. Mannheim, 1863. HEINRICH, J. B.--Christus: Kritik des Rationalismus, des Straussischen Mythicismus u. d. Lebens Jesu v. Renan. Mainz, 1864. HELD, C. F. W.--Jesus der Christ, mit Rücksicht auf d. Rationalismus u. Skepticismus d. Gegenwart. Zürich, 1865. HENHOFER, A.--Der Kampf d. Unglaubens m. Aberglauben u. Glauben. Heidelberg, 1861. HENKE, C. L. TH.--Rationalismus u. Traditionalismus im 19. Jahrhundert. 1864. HERING.--Die Akephaler unserer Zeit. Leipzig, 1825. HERINGA, J. E.--Het gebruiken Misbruik der Kritik. Holland, 1793. HOFSTEDE DE GROOT, P.--Die Gröninger Theologen. Gotha, 1863. HÜFFELL, L.--Friedensvorschläge zur Beendigung des Streits zwischen bibl. Christlichen Theologen und Rationalisten; Zeitschrift für Predigerwissenschaften. Bd. 2. St. 1. HUNDESHAGEN, K. B.--Der Deutsche Protestantismus. 3 Aufl. Frankfort a. Main, 1850. HURTER, H.--Ueber die Rechte der Vernunft und des Glaubens. Innsbruck, 1863. KÄHLER, L. A.--Supranaturalismus und Rationalismus in ihrem gemeinschaft. Ursprunge, ihrer Zwietracht u. höheren Einheit. Leipzig, 1818. KAHNIS, K. F. A.--Der innere Gang des deutschen Protestantismus seit Mitte des vorigen Jahrhunderts. Leipzig, 1854. KAMPE, F.--Geschichte der religiösen Bewegung d. neuern Zeit. 2 Bde. Leipzig, 1852-53. KEIM, I.--Der Geschichtliche Christus. Zürich, 1864. KLEUKER, J. F.--Ueber das Ja und Nein der Bibl. Christl. u. der reinen Vernunfttheologie. Hamburg, 1819. Compare, Ueber die Altonaer Bibel. 1818. ---- Ueber den alten und neuen Protestantismus. Bremen, 1823. KÖHLER, A.--Die niederländisch-reform. Kirche. Erlangen, 1856. KUENEN, A.--The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically examined. Translated from the Dutch by Rt. Rev. J. W. Colenso. London, 1865. LANG, H.--Dogmatik. Berlin, 1858. ---- Ein Gang durch die Christliche Welt. Berlin, 1859. ---- Religiöse Charactere. Winterthur, 1862. LORGION, E. J.--The Pastor of Vliethinzen; or, Conversations about the Groninger School. Capetown, 1865. A novel, translated from the Dutch, for the use of Colonists in Southern Africa. LUTHARDT, C. E.--Die modernen Darstellungen des Lebens Jesu. Eine Besprechung der Schriften von Strauss, Renan, etc. Leipzig, 1864. MEYER, J.--Das Leben Jesu v. Dav. Frdr. Strauss. Leipzig, 1865. MICHELIS, F.--Renan's Roman vom Leben Jesu. Münster, 1864. NEUESTER NACHTRAG zu Renan's Leben Jesu. Berlin, 1864. NICOLAS, A.--Die Gottheit Jesu. Regensburg, 1864. NITZSCH, C. L.--Ueber das Heil der Theologie durch Unterscheidung der Offenbarung und Religion als Mittel und Zweck. 1880. NOACK, L.--Die Freidenker in der Religion. Berne, 1853. OOSTERZEE, J. J. VAN.--Geschichte oder Roman? Das Leben Jesu v. E. Renan beleuchtet. 1863. OPZOOMER, C. W.--De waarheid en hare kenbronnen. Amsterdam, 1882. PAULUS, H. E. G.--Zeitgemässe Beleuchtung des Streites zwischen dem Eingebungsglauben und der Urchristlichen Denkgläubigkeit. Wiesbaden, 1830. PETRENZ, K. A.--Wie hast du Renan's Leben Jesu aufgenommen? Neu-Ruppin, 1864. RAUMER, F.--Schwarz, Strauss, Renan. Leipzig, 1864. RIGGENBACH, C. J.--Der Heutige Rationalismus besonders in der Deutschen Schweiz. Basel, 1862. RITTER, H.--Ernst Renan üb. die Naturwissenschaften u. die Geschichte. Gotha, 1865. RÖHR, J. F.--Briefe über den Rationalismus. Aachen, 1813. ---- Grund-und-Glaubenssätze der Evang.-protest. Kirche. 1832-1834. ROMANG, J. P.--Ueber Unglauben, Pletismus u. Wissenschaft. Zürich, 1859. ROSENKRANZ, K.--Kritik d. Principien d. Strauss'schen Glaubenslehre. Leipzig, 1844. ROYAARDS, H. J.--Geschiedenis van het Christendom. Nederland, 1853. RÜCKERT, L. J.--Der Rationalismus. Leipzig, 1859. RUMPF.--Kirchenglaube und Erfahrung, 1854. ---- Bibel und Christus, 1858. RUTHENUS, K.--Der formale Supernaturalismus oder d. einzig mögliche Weg zur einer Ausgleichung der streitenden theolog. Partheien. Leipzig, 1834. SARTORIUS, C.--Die Religion ausserhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft. Marburg, 1822. ---- Ueber die Unwissenschaftlichkeit und innere Verwandschaft des Rationalismus und Romanismus. Auch u. d. Tit: Beiträge zur Evang. Rechtglaubigkeit. 1 Hft. Heidelberg, 1825. SCHENKEL, D.--Die Religiösen Zeitkämpfe. Hamburg, 1847. ---- Das Characterbild Jesu. Wiesbaden, 1864. ---- Die Protestantische Freiheit in ihrem gegenwartigen Kampfe in der Kirchlichen Reaktion. Wiesbaden, 1865. SCHLOSSER, F. C.--Geschichte d. 18 und 19 Jahrhunderts. (First two vols.) Heidelberg, 1848. SCHOLTEN, J. H.--Oratio de pugna theologiam inter atque philosophiam recto utriusque studio tollenda. Leipzig, 1847. ---- Dogmatices Christianæ Initia. Editio II. Leyden, 1858. SCHOTT, H. A.--Briefe über Religion und Christlichen Offenbarungsglauben. Jena, 1826. SCHRÖTER, W.--Christianismus, Humanismus und Rationalismus in ihrer Identität. Leipzig, 1830. SCHUBERT, F. W.--Die Freien Gemeinde unserer Zeit. Berlin, 1850. SCHUDEROFF, J.--Briefe über den Rationalismus und Supernaturalismus, in Journal für Veredlung des Prediger- und Schullehrerstandes. Jahrg. 1811. Bd. 2. St. 3. SCHULTHESS, J. UND ORELLI, J. K.--Rationalismus und Supernaturalismus, Kanon, Tradition und Scription. Zürich, 1822. SCHULTZE, L.--Die Wunder Jesu Christi mit Beziehung a. d. Leben Jesu v. Renan. Königsberg, 1864. SCHWARTZ, C.--Zur Geschichte d. neuesten Theologie. 3 sehr verm. Auf. Leipzig, 1864. SEPP, DR.--Thaten u. Lehren Jesu; auf die jungsten Werke v. Renan und Strauss. Schaffhausen, 1864. STÄUDLIN, C. F.--Geschichte des Rationalismus und Supranaturalismus. Göttingen, 1826. STEFFENS, H.--Von der falschen Theologie und dem Wahren Glauben. Breslau, 1831. STEIGER, W.--Kritik des Rationalismus in Wegscheider's Dogmatik. Berlin, 1830. STRAUSS, D. F.--Das Leben Jesu. Berlin, 1835. ---- Das Leben Jesu f. das Deutsche Volk bearb. Leipzig, 1864. TAFEL, F. I.--Das Leben Jesu,--gegen die Angriffe d. Dr. Strauss u. d. Unglaubens überhaupt. Basel, 1863. THEILER, C. G. W.--Christus und die Vernunft. Leipzig, 1830. ---- Aphorismen zur Verständigung über den sogenannten alten und neuen Glauben. Leipzig, 1839. THOLUCK, A.--Vermischte Schriften II., "Geschichte der Umwälzung der Theologie seit 1750." Hamburg, 1839. ---- Die Lehre v. der Sünde und vom Versöhnen. 7 Auf. Hamb. 1851. ---- Vorgeschichte des Rationalismus. Zwei Theile. Berlin, 1859-'62. ---- Geschichte d. Rationalismus. Erste Abth. Berlin, 1865. TITTMANN, J. A. H.--Über Supranaturalismus, Rationalismus, u. Atheismus. Leipzig, 1816. ULLMANN, K.--Theologisches Bedenken auf Veranlassung des Angriffs der evangel. Kirchenzeit, auf den Hallischen Rationalismus. Halle, 1830. Together with many other articles of similar character in "Studien und Kritiken." VERANTWORTUNG (zur) des Christlichen Glauben. 10 Vorträge von Riggenbach, Auberlen, Gess, und andere. Basel, 1862. VOIGHTLÄNDER, J. A.--Der Rationalismus nach seinen philosophischen Hauptformen und in seiner historischen Gestalt. Leipzig, 1830. WEGSCHEIDER, J. A. L.--Institutiones Theologiæ Christianæ Dogmaticæ. Halle, 1815. 8th Ed. 1844. WEIDEMANN, K. A.--Die Neuesten Darstellungen d. Lebens Jesu von Renan, Schenkel, Strauss. Gotha, 1864. WIESINGER, A.--Aphorismen gegen Renan's Leben Jesu. Wien, 1864. WIGGERS, J.--Kirchlicher oder rein biblischer Supranaturalismus? Leipzig, 1842. WISLICENUS, G. A.--Die Bibel, für denkende Leser betrachtet. Leipzig, 1864. WÖLLWARTH, F.--Gedanken üb. das characterbild Christi, von Schenkel. Stuttgart, 1865. ZEITFRAGEN RELIGIÖSE, Unparteiisch beurtheilt v. e. Laien. Tüb., 1864. ZÖCKLER, O.--Die Evangelien kritik u. das Lebensbild Christi nach d. Schrift. Darmstadt, 1864. ZÖLLICH, C. F.--Briefe über den Supranaturalismus; eine Gegenschrift zu den Briefen über den Rationalismus. Sondershausen, 1821. RATIONALISTIC PERIODICALS. ALLGEMEINE KIRCHLICHE ZEITSCHRIFT.--Published by D. Schenkel, Elberfeld, 1860-'65. ANNALEN.--Published by Schulthess, 1826-30. DEUTSCHKATHOLISCHES SONNTAGSBLATT.--Wiesb., 1851-'65. FREIES (FÜR) RELIGIÖSES LEBEN.--Breslau, 1848. The Journal of the "Friends of Light." KIRCHE DER GEGENWART.--Biedermann und Fries. Zürich, 1845-'50. KIRCHEN-UND-SCHULBLATT.--Weimar, 1852-'65. PREDIGERBIBLIOTHEK.--Published by Röhr, 1820-'48. Continued by H. Lang, to 1816. PROTESTANTISCHE BLÄTTER, Für das evang. Oesterreich.--Wien, 1863-'65. PROTESTANTISCHE KIRCHENZEITUNG.--H. Eltester und Carl Schwartz. Berlin, 1854-'65. This quarterly is the leading organ of the German Rationalists. SONNTAGSBLATT.--Uhlich. Gotha, 1850. Quarterly. SOPHRONIZEN.--Published by Paulus, 1819-'30. THEOLOGISCHE JAHRBÜCHER.--F. Chr. Baur und E. Zeller. Tübingen, 1842-'56. Not continued. ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR WISSENSCHAFT. THEOLOGIE.--A. Hilgenfeld. Halle, 1858-'65. ZEITSTIMMEN AUS D. REFORMIRTEN KIRCHE DER SCHWEIZ.--H. Lang. Winterthur, 1859-'66. II.--FRANCE. ARNAUD, A.--Les Orthodoxes et le Parti libéral protestant. Paris, 1864. ASTIE, J. F.--Les deux Théologies nouvelles dans le sein du Protestantisme Français. Paris, 1862. BIERMANN, C.--Foi et Raison. Paris, 1860. BOISSONAIS, L.--Doctrine de la nouvelle école d'apres MM. Réville, A. Coquerel fils, et Colani. Paris, 1864. BUISSON, F.--L'orthodoxie et l'Evangile dans l'Eglise réformée. Paris, 1864. CASSAN-FLOYRAC, L'ABBÉ.--Le Rationalisme devant la Raison. Paris, 1858. COLANI, T.--Ma Position dans l'Eglise de la Confession d'Augsbourg. Paris, 1860. ---- Jésus Christ et les Croyances messianiques de son Temps. Paris, 1864. COQUEREL, A.--Christologie. Paris, 1859. COQUEREL, E.--M. Guizot et l'Orthodoxie protestante. Paris, 1864. ---- Libéreaux et orthodoxes. Paris, 1864. DUNAIME, L'ABBÉ J.--De la Raison dans ses Rapports avec la Foi. Paris, 1858. FAYET, A.--Lettres à un rationaliste sur la philosophie et la religion. Paris, 1864. FRANCHI, A.--Le Rationalisme. Bruxelles, 1858. FROSSARD, C. L.--L'orthodoxie de l'Eglise réformée de France. Paris, 1864. GUIZOT, F.--Méditations sur l'Essence de la Religion Chrétienne. Paris, 1864. LARROQUE, P.--Renovation réligieuse. Paris, 1859. ---- Examen Critique des doctrines de la religion Chrétienne. Paris, 1859. LUPS, L'ABBÉ J.--Le Traditionalisme et le Rationalisme. Liege, 1859. NICOLAS, M.--Études Critiques sur la Bible. Paris, 1861. PRESSENSÉ, E. DE.--Le Pays de l'Evangile; Notes d'un voyage en Orient. Paris, 1865. REMUSAT, C. DE.--Philosophie Religieuse. Paris, 1864. RENAN, E.--Études d'histoire Réligieuse. 3d Edition. Paris, 1858. ---- Vie de Jésus. Paris, 1863. LITERATURE ARISING OUT OF THE PUBLICATION OF RENAN'S "LIFE OF JESUS." AUGÉ, L.--Neuf pages décisives sur la Vie de Jésus de M. E. Renan. Paris, 1863. BAUDON, P. L.--M. Ernest Renan, le prophete et le vrai fils de Dieu. Paris, 1863. BLOCH, S.--M. Renan et le Judaïsme. Paris, 1863. BONALD, M. DE.--Mandement portant condamnation du livre intitulé; la Vie de Jésus, par E. Renan. Paris, 1863. BONNETAIN, J.--Le Christ-Dieu devant les Siècles. M. Renan et son roman du jour. Paris, 1863. BOURQUENOUD, A.--Les Distractions de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. BOYLESVE, M. DE.--M. Renan, défenseur de la foi d'apres un procédé nouveau. Paris, 1863. CARLE, H.--Crises des croyances. M. Renan, et l'esprit de système. Paris, 1863. CASTAING, A.--Jésus, M. E. Renan et la science. Paris, 1863. CHAUVELOT, B.--M. Renan. Paris, 1863. CHERET, L'ABBÉ.--Lettres d'un curé de campagne à M. Renan. Paris, 1863. CLABAUT, L'ABBÉ.--E. Renan et l'Evangile. Paris, 1863. COCHIN, A.--Quelques mots sur le Vie de Jésus de M. E. Renan. Paris, 1863. COLANI, T.--Examen de la Vie de Jésus de M. Renan. Strasbourg, 1864. CONSTANT, B.--Les contradictions de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. CORRESPONDANCE APOCRYPHE entre M. E. Renan et sa soeur Ursule. Paris, 1863. DELAPORTE, A.--La Critique et la Tactique, à propos de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. DES GRANGES, F.--Une Échappé sur la Vie de Jésus d'Ernest Renan. Paris, 1863. DESHAIRES, G.--La Vie de Jésus, les Évangiles, et M. Renan. Paris, 1863. EVANGILE (le cinquième) de M. Renan,--par M. H. D. Paris, 1863. FELIX, R. P.--M. Renan et sa Vie de Jésus. ---- Quelques mots sur le livre de la Vie de Jésus. Paris, 1863. FOISSET.--Ernest Renan: Vie de Jésus. Paris, 1863. FREGIER, J. C.--Jésus devant le droit, ou Critique judiciare de la Vie de Jésus de M. E. Renan. Paris, 1863. FREPPEL, L'ABBÉ.--Examen Critique de la Vie de Jésus de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. GINOULIAC.--Lettre à l'un de ses vicaires généraux sur la Vie de Jésus par M. E. Renan. Paris, 1863. GUETTÉE, L'ABBÉ.--Réfutation de la prétendue Vie de Jésus de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. HAVET, E.--Jésus dans l'histoire. Examen de la Vie de Jésus par Renan. Paris, 1863. HELLO, E.--M. Renan et la Vie de Jésus. Paris, 1863. HERVÉ.--Divinité de Jésus. Réponse à M. Renan. Paris, 1863. JOURDAIN, A.--Réfutation rationnelle de la Vie de Jésus. Paris, 1863. LACORDAIRE, R.--Aux Lecteurs de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. LARROQUE, P.--Opinion des Déistes rationalistes sur la Vie de Jésus, selon M. Renan. Paris, 1863. LASSERRE, H.--L'Evangile selon Renan. Paris, 1863. LATOUR.--Une réponse à M. Volusien Pagès. Réfutation d'une Réfutation, de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. LAURENTIE.--Le Livre de M. E. Renan, sur la Vie de Jésus. Paris, 1863. LE PELTIER, E.--Vie de E. Renan. Paris, 1863. LEROY, E.--Réponse d'un poète à M. E. Renan. Paris, 1863. LEVY, LE RABBIN.--La Synagogue et M. Renan. Paris, 1863. LOYSON, J. T.--Une prétendue Vie de Jésus, ou M. E. Renan. Paris, 1863. MACRAKIS, A.--Le Vrai Jésus Christ opposé au Jésus faux imaginé par M. E. Renan, et son Ecole sceptique. Paris, 1863. MAGUÉ, C.--Jésus Christ, ou la Vérité vraie dans la question du moment. Paris, 1863. MARROT, M.--La Vie de M. Renan et le Maudit. Paris, 1863. MAUBERT, H.--Nicodème, étude sur M. Renan. Paris, 1863. MAURETTE, O.--Jésus et la vraie Philosophie. Paris, 1863. MEIGNAN.--M. Renan réfuté par les Rationalistes Allemandes. Paris, 1864. MICHON, J. H.--Deux Leçons à M. Renan. Paris, 1863. MILSAND, PH.--Bibliographie des Publications relatives au livre de M. Renan, Vie de Jésus. Paris, 1864. MIRVILLE, J. E.--Le Vrai Secret de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. MONOT, E.--À propos du livre de M. Renan, la Vie de Jésus. Paris, 1863. MONSIEUR RENAN en face du miracle; par un Croyant. Paris, 1863. OLGO, S.--Reflexions d'un orthodoxe de l'Église grecque sur la Vie de Jésus, de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. ORSINI, L'ABBÉ.--Réfutation du livre de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. ORTH, N. J.--La Vie de Jésus, selon M. Renan. Paris, 1863. PAGÈS, V.--M. Renan et son siècle. Paris, 1863. PARISIS.--Jésus Christ est Dieu: démonstration. Paris, 1863. PASSAGLIA, P. C.--Étude sur la Vie de Jésus de E. Renan. Paris, 1863. PAVY.--Observations sur le roman intitulé Vie de Jésus par E. Renan. Paris, 1863. ---- Conference contre le livre de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. PÉ DE ARROS, J.--Coup d'oeil sur la Vie de Jésus de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. PHILIPS, J. P.--Dieu, les miracles, et la science. Paris, 1863. PINARD, L'ABBÉ.--Notes à l'usage des lecteurs du Jésus de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. PIOGER, L. M.--Divinité de Jésus prouvée par les faits. Réponse à M. Renan. Paris, 1863. PLANTIER.--Un panégyriste de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. ---- Instruction pastorale contre la Vie de Jésus par Renan. Paris, 1863. POTREL, E.--Vie de N. S. Jésus Christ, réponse au livre de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. POUJOULAT.--Examen de la Vie de Jésus de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. PRESSENSÉ, E. DE.--L'École critique et Jésus Christ, à propos de la Vie de Jésus de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. RÉVILLE, A.--La Vie de Jésus de M. Renan devant les orthodoxies et devant la critique. Paris, 1863. ROUSSEL, N.--Le Jésus de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. SAAS, A.--Épitre à M. E. Renan contre la "Vie de Jésus." Paris, 1863. SAINT-SEMMERA.--Ecce homo, critique impartiale de la Vie de Jésus de M. Renan. Paris, 1863. TROGHOFF-KERBIQUET.--La Défense de l'Evangile. Épitre en vers à M. Renan. Paris, 1863. VIE (LA) ET LA MORT DE JÉSUS, SELON RENAN. Havet, et Remusat. Paris, 1864. RÉVILLE, A.--De la Redemption. Paris, 1859. ---- Essais de critique religieuse. Paris, 1860. SAINTES, AMAND.--Histoire Critique du Rationalisme en Allemagne. Paris, 1841. SCHERER, E.--Mélanges des critiques religieuses. Paris, 1860. SECRÉTAN, C.--La Raison et le Bonheur. Paris, 1863. RATIONALISTIC PERIODICALS. DISCIPLE (LE) DE JÉSUS CHRIST, (Monthly.) Redacteur: M. E. Haag. Paris, 1840-65. LE LIEN; Journal des Eglises réformées de France, (Weekly.) Redacteurs: A. Coquerel, fils; et Étienne Coquerel. Paris, 1862-65. NOUVELLE REVUE DE THÉOLOGIE, (Quarterly.) Redacteur: T. Colani. Strasburg, 1858-65. REVUE GERMANIQUE, (Monthly.) Paris, 1858-65. III.--GREAT BRITAIN--UNITED STATES. BANNERMANN, J.--Inspiration, the Infallible Truth and Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures. Edinburgh, 1865. BARKER, T.--Strictures on Maurice's Doctrine of Sacrifice. London, 1858. BAYNE, P.--Testimony of Christ to Christianity. London, 1862. BEARD, T. R.--Voices of the Church in reply to Dr. Strauss. London, 1845. ---- Christ the Interpreter of Scripture. London, 1865. BELLOWS, H. W.--Restatements of Christian Doctrine. New York, 1860. BIRKS, T. R.--Lectures on Modern Rationalism and Inspiration. London, 1853. ---- The Bible and Modern Thought. With Appendix. London, 1863. BLAKE, B.--Infidelity Inexcusable. London, 1855. BÖHM, C. J. T.--Lights and Shadows in the Present Condition of the Church. London, 1860. BRODERICK AND FREEMANTLE.--Judgments of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. London, 1865. CANDLISH, R. S.--Examination of Maurice's "Theological Essays." London, 1854. ---- Reason and Revelation. London, 1859. CHRISTIAN SECTS in the Nineteenth Century. London, 1850. CHRISTIE, T. W.--Rationalism the Last Scourge to the Church. London, 1861. CLOSE, F.--The Footsteps of Error traced through a Period of Twenty-Five Years. London, 1863. COBBE, FRANCES POWER.--Religious Demands of the Age. Boston, 1863. Reprint of the Preface to London Ed. of Theo. Parker's Works, which are edited by this Authoress. ---- An Essay on Intuitive Morals. London, 1864. ---- Broken Lights. London, 1864. A survey of the present condition of Church Parties in England. ---- Religious Duty. London, 1864. COLENSO, BP.--Village Sermons. London, 1853. ---- St. Paul's Epistle to Romans. Newly Translated. London, 1861. ---- Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically examined. London, 1862-64. WORKS CALLED FORTH BY THE ABOVE COMMENTARY. ALPHA.--Bishop Colenso and the Pentateuch. Vindication of the Historical Character of the Old Testament. London, 1863. ANTI-COLENSO.--By Johannes Laicus. London, 1863. ASHPITEL, F.--Increase of the Israelites in Egypt shown to be probable from the Statistics of Modern Population; with an Examination of Bishop Colenso's Calculations on the Subject. London, 1863. BARRISTER (A).--History against Colenso. Dublin, 1863. BARTHOLOMEW, J.--All Scripture given by Inspiration of God. London, 1863. BEKE, C. T.--A Few Words with Bishop Colenso. London, 1862. BENISOH, A.--Bishop Colenso's Objections to the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically examined. London, 1863. BIBER, G. E.--The Integrity of the Holy Scriptures and their Divine Inspiration and Authority vindicated. London, 1863. BIBLE IN THE WORKSHOP.--By two Working Men. London, 1863. BIBLE (THE) IN THE GOSPELS.--By Alpha. London, 1863. BIDEN, J.--Religious Reformation, imperatively demanded. Bishop Colenso's Enquiries answered. London, 1864. BIRKS, T. R.--The Exodus of Israel; a Reply to Recent Objections. London, 1863. BRIGGS, F. W.--The Two Testimonies. Last objections to Rationalism. Being a Reply to Bishop Colenso's Pentateuch and Book of Joshua. London, 1863. BROWNE, G. H.--The Pentateuch and the Elohistic Psalms, in reply to Bishop Colenso. London, 1863. BULLOCK, C.--Bible Inspiration. London, 1863. CANDLISH, R. S.--Lectures on the Book of Genesis, 3 vols. London, 1862. CAREY, C. S.--The Bible or the Bishop? London, 1863. CARYLON, C.--A few more words addressed to the Bishops, &c. London, 1863. CHAMBERLIN, W.--A Plain Reply to Bishop Colenso. London, 1863. COLENSO, BISHOP.--Letter to the Laity of the Diocese of Natal. London, 1864. Written on the subject of the Bishop's prosecution. ---- Trial of the Bishop of Natal for erroneous Teaching. Cape Town, 1864. ---- Foreign Missions and Mosaic Traditions. A Lecture. London, 1865. CUMMING, J.--Moses Right and Bishop Colenso Wrong. Popular Lectures in Weekly Numbers. London, 1863. DAVIDSON, P.--The Pentateuch vindicated from the Objections and Misrepresentations of Bishop Colenso. London, 1863. DREW, G. S.--Bishop Colenso's Examination of the Pentateuch Examined. London, 1863. FAMILY OF JUDAH: a Refutation of Colenso's First Objection to the Pentateuch. By a Layman. London, 1863. FOWLE, W. H.--A Few Remarks on Bishop Colenso on the Pentateuch. London, 1863. FOWLER, F. W.--Vindex Pentateuchi. An Answer to Bishop Colenso on the Pentateuch. London, 1863. GARLAND, G. V.--Plain possible Solutions of the Objections to Bishop Colenso on the Pentateuch. London, 1863. GAUSSEN, L.--The Canon of Holy Scripture. London, 1863. GIBSON, J.--Present Truths in Theology. 2 vols. Glasgow, 1863. GREEN, W. H.--The Pentateuch vindicated from the Aspersions of Bishop Colenso. New York, 1863. GRESSWELL, E.--Objections of Bishop Colenso. Part I. considered. London, 1863. GRIFFIN, J. N.--Dr. Colenso and the Pentateuch. Dublin, 1863. HARE, W. H.--Letter to Bishop Colenso. London, 1863. HAYCROFT, N.--Moses and Colenso; or, the Divine Authority of the Books of Moses and the Objections of Dr. Colenso. London, 1863. HIGGINSON, E.--The Spirit of the Bible. 2 vols. London, 1863. HILL, M.--Christ, or Colenso: a full Reply to Bishop Colenso's Objections. London, 1863. HIRSCHFELDER, J. M.--The Scriptures Defended. Reply to Colenso. Toronto, 1864. HISTORIC (The) Character of the Pentateuch Vindicated; Reply to Part I. of Bishop Colenso's "Critical Examination." Lond., 1863. HOARE, W. H.--Letter to Bishop Colenso. London, 1863. HOUGHTON, W.--Some of Bp. Colenso's objections examined. London, 1863. INGRAM, G. S.--Bishop Colenso answered. London, 1863. JEWISH (A) Reply to Dr. Colenso's Criticism on the Pentateuch. London, 1865. JONES, E. R.--Christ's Testimony to Moses. London, 1863. JONES, SIR W.--Christianity and Common Sense. London, 1863. JUKES, A.--The Types of Genesis considered. London, 1863. KIRKUS, W.--Orthodoxy, Scripture, and Reason. London, 1864. LAYMAN (A) of the Ch. of England. Historical Character of the Pentateuch. Reply to Colenso's "Critical Examination." London, 1863. LAYMAN (A).--New Testament and the Pentateuch. London, 1863. MCCAUL, A.--An Examination of Bishop Colenso's Difficulties with regard to the Pentateuch. London, 1864. MCCAUL, J. B.--Bishop Colenso's Criticism criticised. London, 1863. MCNEILE, H.--Historical Veracity of the Pentateuch. London, 1863. MAHAN, M.--Spiritual Point of View; an Answer to Bishop Colenso. New York, 1863. MANN, J. H.--Moses defended against the Attacks of Dr. Colenso. London, 1863. MARSH, J. B.--Is the Pentateuch Historically True? Lond., 1863. MARSHALL, JUDGE.--Full Review and Exposure of Bishop Colenso's Errors and Miscalculations in his work. London, 1864. MAURICE, F. D.--Claims of the Bible and of Science. Lond., 1864. MOON, R.--The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua considered with Reference to the Objections of the Bishop of Natal. Lond., 1863. MOORE, D.--Divine Authority of the Pentateuch Vindicated. London, 1864. MOREAU, E. B.--Examination of some of Bishop Colenso's Objections. London, 1863. MOSAIC ORIGIN OF THE PENTATEUCH, in connection with Parts 2 and 3 of Bishop Colenso's Critical Examination. London, 1864. MOZLEY, J. B.--Subscription to the Articles. London, 1863. OLLIVANT, A.--A Second Letter to the Clergy of Llandaff. London, 1863. PAGE, J. R.--The Pretensions of Bishop Colenso considered. London, 1863. PALMEE, G.--Scripture Facts and Scientific Doubts. London, 1863. PENTATEUCH (THE) AND ITS OPPONENTS. London, 1863. PHILLPOT, H.--The Textual Witness to the Truth and Divine Authority of the Pentateuch. London, 1863. POSSIBILITIES OF CREATION. London, 1862. POST, J.--The Bible for All. London, 1862. PRESBYTER ANGLICANUS.--Critical Analysis of the Pentateuch. London, 1863. PRITCHARD, C.--Vindiciæ Mosaicæ. London, 1863. RASK, R.--A Short Tractate on the Longevity ascribed to the Patriarchs. London, 1863. RATIONALISM UNPHILOSOPHICAL, AND FAITH THE GIFT OF GOD. London, 1863. REMARKS ON BISHOP COLENSO'S WORK; OR, RATIONALISM SHOWN TO BE IRRATIONAL. London, 1863. ROGERS, B. B.--Free Inquiry into Colenso's Difficulties. Lond., 1863. ROGERS, H.--A Vindication of Bishop Colenso. Edinburgh, 1863. SAVILE, B. W.--Man; or, the Old and New Philosophy. Lond., 1863. The author controverts the views of Darwin, Owen, Huxley, Bunsen, Colenso, and others. SCOTT, W. A.--Moses and the Pentateuch: a Reply to Bishop Colenso. London, 1863. SILVER, A.--The Holy Word in its own Defense: addressed to Bishop Colenso. New York, 1863. SINCLAIR, J.--On Free Thought. London, 1865. SPRY, W. J.--Bishop Colenso and the Descent of Jacob into Egypt. Pt. I. London, 1863. STANLEY, A. P.--A letter to the Lord Bishop of London on the State of Subscription in the Church of England and in the University of Oxford. London, 1863. SWETE, H. B.--What is the Right Method of conducting the Defense of the Old Testament in the Rationalistic Controversy which has come upon the Church? London, 1863. TAYLOR, I.--Considerations on the Pentateuch. London, 1863. THORNTON, T.--Life of Moses. London, 1863. TURNER, J. B.--An Answer to the Difficulties in Bishop Colenso's Book on the Pentateuch. London, 1863. TYLER, T.--Christ the Lord; with a Reply to Bishop Colenso. London, 1863. WHAT IS TRUTH? A Letter to Bishop Colenso. London, 1864. WICKES, W.--Moses or the Zulu? London, 1863. WORDSWORTH, C.--Inspiration of the Bible. London, 1863. DAVIDSON, DR. S.--Treatise on Biblical Criticism. London, 1855. DEWAR, E. H.--Brief History of German Theology. London, 1844. DONALDSON, T. W.--Essay on Christian Orthodoxy. London, 1857. DRAPER, J. W.--Intellectual Development of Europe. New York, 1863. ELLIOTT, W.--Old Theology the True Theology. London, 1861. ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. London, 1861. WORKS ARISING FROM THE ABOVE OXFORD ESSAYS. AIDS TO FAITH, Replies to Essays and Reviews. London, 1863. BAYLAY, C. F. R.--"Essays and Reviews" compared with Reason. London, 1861. BUCHANAN, J.--"Essays and Reviews" Examined. London, 1861. CLOSE, F.--Critical Examination of "Essays and Reviews." London, 1861. DENISON, G. A.--Analysis of "Essays and Reviews." London, 1861. DIALOGUES ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. London, 1862. GIRDLESTONE, E.--Remarks on Essays and Reviews. Lond., 1861. JELF, R. W.--Evidence of Unsoundness in Essays and Reviews. London, 1861. KENNARD, R. B.--Essays and Reviews. Protest addressed to the Bishop of Salisbury. London, 1861. ---- The Essays and Reviews: their Origin, History, General Character and Significance, Persecution, Prosecution, the Judgment of the Arches Court, Review of Judgment. London, 1863. LUSHINGTON, S.--Judgment delivered on Essays and Reviews. London, 1862. MILTON, J.--Prophecy of Essays and Reviews and his Judgment. London, 1861. MOBERLY, G.--Remarks on Essays and Reviews. London, 1861. REPLIES TO ESSAYS AND REVIEWS, by Goulburn, Rose, and others. London, 1862. WORN-OUT NEOLOGY.--Strictures upon Essays and Reviews. London, 1861. FARRAR, A. S.--A Critical History of Free Thought in Reference to the Christian Religion. London, 1863. FISHER, G. P.--Essays on the supernatural Origin of Christianity. With special reference to the Works of Renan, Strauss, and the Tübingen School. New York, 1865. FRANKLAND, B.--Intuitionalism; or, Insufficiency of Pure Reason. London, 1861. FROTHINGHAM, O. B.--Tales from the Patriarchs. Boston, 1864. FURNESS, W. H.--Jesus and his Biographers. Boston, 1838. GAGE, J. A.--The Life of Jesus a Fact, not a Fiction. A Response to M. Renan's Vie de Jésus. London, 1863. GARBETT, E.--Bible and its Critics. Boyle Lectures for 1861. Lond., 1861. GOULBURN, E. M.--Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. London, 1857. GREG, W. R.--The Creed of Christendom. London, 1863. HAMILTON, W. T.--Defense of the Pentateuch against Scepticism. London, 1852. HEBERT, C.--Neology not True and Truth not New. 2d Ed. London, 1861. HEDGE, F. H.--Reason in Religion. Boston, 1865. HEURTLY, C. A.--Inspiration of Holy Scriptures. London, 1861. HOOKER, W.--Philosophy of Unbelief. New York. HUGHES, T.--Religio Laici. London, 1861. IRRATIONALISM OF INFIDELITY, a Reply to Newman's "Phases." London, 1853. JAMES, H.--The Old and New Theology. London, 1861. JELF, W. E.--Supremacy of Scripture, a Letter to Dr. Temple. London, 1861. KINGSLEY, C.--Sermons for the Times. London, 1858. ---- Sermons; Good News of God. London, 1859. LANGFORD, J. A.--Religions Skepticism and Infidelity. London, 1850. LECKY, W. E. H.--History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe. 2 vols. London, 1865. LEE, W.--Recent Forms of Unbelief; Some Account of Renan's Vie de Jésus. London, 1864. MCCAUL, A.--Rationalism and Deistic Infidelity. Three Letters. London, 1861. MCCOMBIE, W.--Modern Civilization in Relation to Christianity. London, 1863. MACKAY, R. W.--The Tübingen School and its Antecedents: a Review of the History and Present Condition of Modern Theology. London. ---- Rise and Progress of Christianity. London, 1854. MALAN, S. C.--Philosophy or Truth? London, 1865. MANSEL, H. L.--Limits of Religious Thought; Bampton Lectures. London, 1859. ---- Examination of Maurice's Stricture on Bampton Lecture. London, 1859. MAURICE, F. D.--Claims of the Bible and of Science. London, 1862. ---- Theological Essays. 2d Ed. London, 1853. ---- What is Revelation? London, 1859. MIALL, E.--Basis of Belief: Examination of Christianity. London, 1861. NELSON, D.--Infidelity; its Cause and Cure. London, 1853. NEWMAN, F. W.--Phases of Faith. London, 1860. ---- Essays towards a Church of the Future. London, 1854. ---- Theism, Doctrinal and Practical. London, 1858. ---- The Soul: its Sorrows and Aspirations. London, 1861. ---- Sermons on Theory of Religious Belief. London, 1844. ---- Development of Christian Doctrine. London, 1846. NOYES, G. N.--Theological Essays. 3d Ed. Boston, 1860. This work contains essays by Rowland Williams, Jowett, Powell, Stanley, and others. It advocates the Broad Church theories. O'CONNOR, W. A.--Miracles not Antecedently Incredible. London, 1861. PALMER, G.--Scripture Facts and Scientific Doubts. Edinburgh, 1863. A Defense of Scripture from the objections of Geologists, Statisticians, and others. PARKER, THEO.--Discourses on Religion. Boston, 1842. ---- Sermons on Theism, Atheism, and Popular Theology. Boston, 1853. ---- Ten Sermons on Religion. Boston, 1853. ---- World of Matter and Mind. Boston, 1865. Extracts from unpublished sermons. PARKINSON, R.--Rationalism and Revelation. London, 1838. PATON, J. B.--A Review of the "Vie de Jésus" of M. Renan. London, 1864. PEABODY, A. P.--Christianity the Religion of Nature. Boston, 1863. PEARSON, T.--Infidelity. Republished from London Ed. in N. Y., 1853. PORTER, J. L.--The Pentateuch and the Gospel. London, 1864. PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT, as illustrated in the Protestant Church of France. Ed. by J. R. Beard. London, 1861. This work contains essays by Messrs. Colani, Scholten, Réville, Scherer, and Renan. PUSEY, E. B.--Historical Inquiry into German Rationalism. London, 1828. ---- Daniel the Prophet. London, 1865. RATIONALISM AND REVELATION.--(Anon.) London, 1865. RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. New York, 1858. RIGG, J. H.--Modern Anglican Theology. London, 1859. RIPLEY.--Latest Forms of Infidelity. Boston, 1840. ROBINS, S.--Defense of the Faith: Forms of Unbelief. London, 1861. ROSE, H. J.--State of Protestantism in Germany. 2d Ed. London, 1829. RYDER, A. G.--Scriptural Doctrine of Acceptance with God, considered in reference to Neologian Hermeneutics. London, 1865. SAWYER, L. A.--Daniel with its Apocryphal Additions. Boston, 1863. SCHAFF, P.--Germany; its Theology, &c. Philada., 1857. ---- The Person of Christ; The Miracle of History, with a Reply to Strauss and Renan. Boston, 1865. One of the best of the recent replies to the Rationalists. SCHAFF AND ROUSSELL.--The Christ of the Gospels, and the Romance of M. Renan. London, 1864. SCHMUCKER, S. M.--Errors of Modern Infidelity Refuted. Phila., 1848. SEAMAN, M.--Christian Armed against Infidelity. London, 1837. SEWELL, W.--On the Inspiration of the Holy Scripture. London, 1861. SMITH, C.--Prize Essays on Infidelity. London, 1861. SMITH, G.--Rational Religion and Objections of Bampton Lectures for '58. London, 1861. SQUIER, M. P.--Reason and the Bible. New York, 1860. STANLEY, A. P.--The Bible: Its Form and Substance. London, 1865. TAYLOR, J. J.--Retrospect of Religious Life in England. 1845. TESTIMONY of Skeptics to the Truth of Christianity. London, 1861. THOMPSON, R. A.--Christian Theism. London, 1863. TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE, by various writers, 1st and 2d series. London, 1862. TUCKER, L.--Lectures on Infidelity. New York, 1837. TULLIDGE, H.--Triumphs of the Bible. New York, 1863. A defense of Scripture against the objections of the Skeptical Scientific School. WALKER, J. B.--Philosophy of Skepticism and Ultraism. New York, 1857. WALTHER, D.--Reply to Newman's Phases of Faith. London, 1851. WHATELY, ABP.--Essays on Dangers to Christian Faith. London, 1857. WESTFIELD, T. C.--Seven Essays on Universal Science, embracing Investigations of the Mosaic Cosmogony, and the Interpretation of the Scriptures. London, 1863. A Defense of the Harmony of Science and Revelation. WILLIAMS, R.--Rational Godliness after the Mind of Christ. Lond., 1855. WOODMAN, W.--Is the Bible a Divine Revelation? London, 1862. WOODSWORTH, C.--Inspiration of the Bible. Five Lectures. London, 1862. YOUNG, J.--Christ of History: an Argument. 3d Ed. London, 1861. ---- Province of Reason; a Criticism on Mansel. London, 1860. YOUNG, J. R.--Modern Skepticism, viewed in Relation to Modern Science. London, 1865. This work is an excellent answer to the doctrines of Colenso, Huxley, Lyell, and Darwin, respecting the Noachian Deluge, the Antiquity of Man, and the Origin of Species. LITERATURE OF UNITARIANISM AND UNIVERSALISM. For the bibliography of the Trinitarian Controversy in England, extending through the former half of the eighteenth century, consult Watts' Bibliotheca Britannica, 4 vols. Edinburgh, 1824; and Biographia Britannica, 7 vols. folio, 1747. Concerning the discussion on 1 John, v. 7, consult Darling, Cyclopædia Bibliographia; London, 1854. For other Unitarian publications, in addition to those mentioned below, see Beard, _Unitarianism in its Actual Condition_, pp. 327-29. The following table of Unitarian and Universalist Literature has reference to only two doctrines: the Trinity and Future Punishment. BAKER, A.--Our God a Consuming Fire. London, 1864. BARCLAY, J.--Socinianism and Irvingism Refuted. London, 1845. BARLING, J.--Review of Trinitarianism. London, 1847. BARLOW, J. W.--Eternal Punishment and Eternal Death. London, 1864. BARRET, B. F.--Letters on the Divine Trinity. New York, 1860. ---- Christ the Interpreter of Scripture. London, 1865. BEARD, J. R.--Historic and Artistic Illustrations of the Trinity. London, 1864. ---- Unitarianism in its Actual Condition. London, 1849. ---- Reasons why I am a Unitarian. London, 1860. BELLOWS, H. W.--Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 1853. Until the middle of the year 1850, this author was the principal writer for the _Christian Inquirer_, New York. BELSHAM, T.--Calm Inquiry into Script. Doctrine concerning the Person of Christ. BROOKS, E. G.--Universalism a Practical Power. New York, 1863. BROTHERS' CONTROVERSY ON UNITARIAN OPINIONS. London, 1835. BURNAP, G. W.--Unitarianism. Boston, 1855. ---- Trinity. Boston, 1845. ---- Evidences. Boston, 1855. CARPENTER, L.--Examination of the Charges against Unitarians. Bristol, 1820. CHANNING, W. E.--Complete Works. 6 vols. Boston, 1841-46. CHANNING, W. H.--Memoir of W. E. Channing. 3 vols, 1843. CLARK, D. W.--Man all Immortal. Cincinnati, 1864. COUTE, J.--Essays on Socinianism. London, 1850. DENISON, H. M.--Review of Unitarian Views. Louisville, Ky., 1855. DEWEY, O.--Discourses; Controv. Theol., etc. 6 vols. 1846-47-63. DEXTER, H. M.--Verdict of Reason on the question of the Impenitent Dead. Boston, 1865. DISNEY, J.--Remarks on Tomline's Charge. London, 1812. ---- Sermons. 4 vols. London, 1793-1818. ELLIS, G. E.--Half Century of the Unitarian Controversy. Boston, 1857. FARLEY, F. A.--Unitarianism Defined. Boston, 1860. FURNESS, W. H.--Jesus and His Biographers. Boston, 1838. ---- History of Jesus. Boston, 1850. ---- Veil Partly Lifted. 1864. The author repudiates the atonement. "The doctrine of the Atonement," says he, "which is especially cherished as the distinguishing idea of Christianity, is only a form of the radical error from which false religion has sprung ever since the world began; the error, namely, of supposing that human guilt is to be expiated, not by change of character, but by offerings and sacrifices." The sacrifice of Christ "is the world-old error, thinly disguised, culminating in its most monstrous form. Even if it were new, it has no place among the teachings of Jesus. He never taught this nor any of its associated dogmas. Not a word of his gives them the slightest color of authority." Pp. 4, 5. Such language comes with an ill grace from one who attacks M. Renan. See Chapter on Christ's "childlikeness." Wherein, we ask, is the Frenchman worse than the Philadelphian? GAGE, W. L.--Trinitarian Sermons to a Unitarian Congregation. Boston, 1860. HARE, E.--Principal Doctrines of Christianity Defended against the Errors of Socinianism. New York. HOVEY, A.--State of Impenitent Dead. Boston, 1859. HUDSON, C. F.--Debt and Grace. Boston, 1857. ---- Human Destiny; a Critique of Universalism. Boston, 1861. JOB THE ABBOT.--Reasons for Abandoning Trinitarian Doctrines. London, 1841. JONES, T.--Immanuel; or, Scriptural views of Jesus Christ. Lond., 1856. KENRICK, T.--Unitarian Exposition of the New Testament. New York. KER, W.--The Popular Views of Immortality, Everlasting Punishment, and the State of Separate Souls, brought to the Test of Scripture. London, 1865. KIDD, W. J.--Reflections on Unitarianism. London, 1835. KOHLMAN, A.--Complete Refutation of Unitarianism. Washington, 1821. LAKE, C. W.--The Inspiration of Scripture and Eternal Punishment. London, 1864. LANDIS, R. W.--Immortality of the Soul, and Final Condition of the wicked. New York, 1859. One of the best arguments in favor of Eternal Punishment. LARDNER, N.--Complete Works. 17 vols. London, 1727-57. LETTERS ON NATURE AND DURATION OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. London, 1835. LINDSEY, T.--Apology. London, 1774. ---- Sequel. London, 1776. ---- Historical View of Unitarian Doctrine from Reformation. London, 1783. ---- Vindiciæ Priestlianæ. London, 1788. MARTINEAU, J.--Rationale of Religious Inquiry. London, 1839. ---- Endeavors after the Christian Life, 2 vols. London, 1843. ---- Studies of Christianity. London, 1858. MATTISON, H.--Immortality of the Soul. Philadelphia, 1865. MELLIS, J.--Lectures on Points of the Unitarian Controversy. London, 1846. MINTON, S.--Lectures on Unitarianism. London, 1847. MITCHELL, E.--The Christian Universalist. New Haven, 1833. MONSELL, C. A.--Sermons: Temporal Punishment of Sin. London, 1845. MOORE, D.--The Age and the Gospel: to which is added a Discourse on Final Retribution. London, 1865. MORSE, J.--True Reasons. Boston, 1805. ---- Appeal to the Public. Boston, 1814. MORTLOCK, E.--Sermons on Doctrine of the Trinity. London, 1844. NEMESIS SACRA.--Inquiries into Scriptural Doctrine of Retribution. London, 1856. NEWTON, SIR I.--Views on Points of Unitarian Doctrine. Republished. London, 1856. NOEL, B. W.--Christianity compared with Unitarianism. London, 1851. NORTON, A.--True and False Religion; in _Christian Disciple_. 1820-'22. ---- Genuineness of the Gospels, 3 vols. Boston, 1851-'54. ---- Tracts concerning Christianity. Cambridge, 1852. ---- Internal Evidences. Boston, 1855. ---- Statement of Reasons. Boston, 1856. ORR.--Unitarianism in the Present Time. Boston, 1863. OSGOOD, S.--Christian Biography. New York, 1851. ---- The Coming Church and its Clergy. 1858. PALFREY, J. G.--Evidences of Christianity. Boston, 1843. PEABODY, A. P.--Christian Doctrine. Boston, 1844. ---- Christianity the Religion of Nature. Boston, 1863. POWER, J. H.--Exposition of Universalism. New York. PRICE, R.--Dissertations on Provid. Christianity. London, 1772. ---- Sermons on Christian Doctrine. London, 1787. PRIESTLEY, J.--Defenses of Unitarianism, 2 vols. London, 1787-89. For full account of this writer's many works, consult Darling, Cyclopædia Bibliographica, pp. 2454-58. SALMON, G.--The Eternity of Future Punishment. London, 1865. SHERLOCK, W.--An Essay on Future Punishment. London, 1865. SHORT REASONS FOR BELIEF IN THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST. London, 1843. SOPER, E.--Doctrine of the Trinity proved from Scripture. London. 1853. SPRAGUE, W. B.--Annals of the American Unit. Pulpit. New York, 1865. STUART, M.--Exegetical Essays on Future Punishment. London, 1848. THAYER.--Theology of Universalism. Boston, 1862. THOMPSON, J. P.--Love and Penalty. New York, 1865. THOMPSON, S.--Scripture Refutation of Unitarianism. London, 1838. TURNER, W.--Lives of eminent Unitarians. London, 1840-3. UNITARIAN, HOW I BECAME A.--By a Clergyman of the Protestant E. Church. Boston, 1852. UNIVERSALISM AGAINST ITSELF.--Cincinnati, O. UNIVERSALISMUS, DEE.--Gott alles in Allen. Stuttgart, 1862. WARE, H.--Complete Works. Boston, 1847. WARE, W.--Letters to Trinitarians and Calvinists. Boston, 1820. ---- American Unitarian Biography. Boston, 1850. WHATELY, A.--Scriptural Revelation respecting Future State. Lond., 1858. WHITMAN, B.--Friendly Letters to a Universalist. Boston, 1850. WHITTEMORE, T.--History of Universalism. New Ed. Vol. I. Boston, 1860. WILLIAMSON, H.--Exposition and Defense of Universalism. New York, 1840. WILSON, J.--Scripture Proofs of Unitarianism. Boston. WOODS, L.--Letters to Unitarians, and Reply to Dr. Ware. New York. WORCESTER, N.--Review of Testimonies, etc., in _Bible News_. Boston, 1810. ---- Address to Trinitarian Clergy. Boston, 1814. YATES.--Vindication of Unitarianism, 4th Ed. London, 1850. UNITARIAN PERIODICALS. CHRISTIAN EXAMINER, Boston. CHRISTIAN INQUIRER, New York. CHRISTIAN REGISTER, Boston. JOURNAL OF AMERICAN UNIT. ASSOC., Boston. MONTHLY CHRISTIAN REGISTER, Boston. MONTHLY RELIGIOUS MAGAZINE, Boston. RELIGIOUS EDUCATOR, Boston. UNIVERSALIST PERIODICALS. BROAD CHURCH PULPIT, New York. CHRISTIAN AMBASSADOR, New York. CHRISTIAN FREEMAN, Boston. CHRISTIAN REPOSITORY, Montpelier, Vt. GOSPEL BANNER, Augusta, Me. HERALD AND ERA, Indianapolis, Ind. MANFORD'S MAGAZINE, St. Louis, Mo. MYRTLE, Boston. LADIES' REPOSITORY, Boston. STAR IN THE WEST, Cincinnati, O. STAR OF THE PACIFIC, Petaluma, Cal. TRUMPET, Boston. UNIVERSALIST HERALD, Montgomery, Ala. UNIVERSALIST QUARTERLY, Boston. YOUNG CHRISTIAN, Cincinnati, O. YOUTHS' FRIEND, Cincinnati, O. * * * * * For full bibliographical accounts of the controversy between the orthodox theologians of New England and the Unitarians, during the present century; and of the discussion on the Person of Christ provoked by the speculations of Horace Bushnell, consult Hagenbach, _History of Doctrines_, Smith's Ed. New York, 1862. INDEX. Abrest, Peter, his exegetical labors, 345. Age, present, declared Rationalistic by Lecky, 23. America, relations between France and, 536. American Church, peculiarities of, 536. Influenced by skeptical denominations, 571. Duty of the American Church to guard against infidelity, 575. American civilization, undergoing a change, 576. Andreä, John Valentine; poverty and early difficulties, 53. His satire on the Church, 53. Excitement produced by it, 54. Service rendered by it, 54. Quotation from Andreä's Christianopolis, 61. Satire on the degenerate preaching of his time, 71-73. Apostolical Succession, a doctrine of the High Church, 514. Arndt, John; his service to the Church; work on _True Christianity_; motives leading him to write, 49. Reception of his work by the people, 50. Arndt's calm spirit, 50. He was charged with mysticism, 50. Opposition to him, 51. Popularity of his book, 51. Arnold, Gottfried, the historian of Pietism, 98. His history of _Churches and Heretics_, 98. Charged with Separatism, 98. He contended for the unification of Mysticism and Pietism, 98. Arnold, Thomas, his Sermons, 521. His opinions, 521-523. Atonement, Unitarian opinion of, 550, 551. Auberlen on mission of Pietism, testimony of, 86-88. Augsburg Confession, 38. August, Karl. His care to secure the society of distinguished literary men around his court, 169, 170. Bahrdt, his deceit and blasphemy, 139. His works, 140. His condition when at Giessen, 140. His rapid decline, 141. He engaged in numerous enterprises, 141. Became an inn-keeper at Halle, 142. His wretched death, 142. He was the climax of French skepticism in Germany, 142. Basedow. An innovation in German education, 184. His publications in favor of a new system, 184. His visionary plans, 185. Popular indorsement of his impracticable plans, 185. His final fall, 186, 187. Baumgarten, the connecting link between Pietism and Rationalism, 111. He succeeded Wolf at Halle, 111. His extensive acquirements, 111, 112. He favored the introduction of English Deism, 117. Baur F. C., his works divided into two classes, 278. His views of the early church, 278-280. Becker, the extreme Rationalism contained in his juvenile publications, 190-192. Bekker, Balthazer, a disciple of Des Cartes, 347. His _World Bewitched_, 347. His excommunication, and personal appearance, 347, 348. Bellows, against orthodoxy, 545, 546. Opposes original sin, 548-550. Belsham, his work on American Unitarianism, 539, 540. Bengel, his purpose to lead the people to a better understanding of the Bible, 101. Kahnis' appreciation of Bengel, 101. Bethmann-Hollweg, influence on the Church Diet, 319. Bilderdyk, at the head of the modern school of Dutch poetry, 359. Boehme, Jacob, shoemaker at Gorlitz; his pure purposes, 46; his mysterious life, 47; method of composition, 47; description by himself of his seasons of ecstasy, 48; his _Aurora_, 48; last words, 49. Bolingbroke, introducing the French spirit into England in the Eighteenth Century, 442. His principles, 442, 443. Broad Church, has lately acquired great influence, 531. First Broad Church corresponds with Philosophical Rationalism, 519. Its tenets, 528, 529, 530. Second Broad Church is thoroughly Rationalistic, 530. Points of difference from the First Broad Church, 531. Bunsen, his Biblical Researches re-reviewed in _Essays and Reviews_, 485-487. Calixtus, George, as a theologian, 40; professor at Helmstedt, 41; travels, and literary style, 41; impression made upon his mind by prevailing controversies, 41; his ardent desire to unite conflicting elements, 41; his sorrow at the abuse of preaching, 41, 42; advice on preaching, 42; his _Chief Points of the Christian Religion_, 43; accusations against him, 44; his fruitless labors, 44. Testimony on neglect of children, 64, 65. Campe's influence upon the youth of Germany, 188. His works, 188. Capadose, an agent in the revival in the Dutch Church, 359. Carlyle, Thomas, parent of Literary Rationalism in England, 473. Derived his system from the German philosophers, 473. Opinions, 473-476. His influence upon the young, 475, 476. Vicious influence of his sentiments, 477. Channing, W. Ellery, leader of American Unitarianism, 541. His works, 541. Mental transitions, 542. Repudiation of orthodoxy, 542. His opinions, 543, 544. Chantepie de la Saussaye, one of the leaders of the Ethical-Irenical School in the Dutch Church, 375. Preaches in Rotterdam, 376. Assisted in forming society called Seriousness and Peace, 376. His work on modern materialism, 379. His opinions, 379, 380. His view of the future of the Church, 380. Charities of Protestant Germany, 311. They do not interfere with each other, 331. Charities of French Protestantism, 423. Christ, opinions of German Rationalists on person of, 214-217. Life of Christ described by numerous replies to Strauss, 274, 275. Christianity, Theo. Parker's view of, 567, 568. Chubb, his three principles, 115, 116. Church and State, union of, presupposes great purity, 535. Church, affiliations of Rationalism with the German, 26, 27. The church has yet to vanquish thoroughly the attacks upon her faith, 35. Condition of the German Church when Rationalism was at its height, 197. Reconstruction of the church by Frederic William III., 230, 231. Church history, improved indirectly by the labors of the Rationalists, 581-583. Church of England, two parties in, 507. Tabular view of the clergy of the Established Church, 532. Classes in Germany, immorality of higher, 77, 78. Clergy, immorality of German, in seventeenth century, 73, 74, 76, _note_[Transcriber's Note: Reference is to Footnote 23]. The clergy were the agents of spiritual declension in Germany, 76. Cocceian Controversy, literature of, 337. The excitement occasioned by the conflict, 343. Cocceians and Voetians, the leading parties in the Dutch Church, 340. Principles of each, 340. Cocceians studied the Scriptures, but differed from the text, 341. Cocceius, opponent of Scholasticism in the Dutch Church, 336. Studies and early writings, 336, 337. Professor in Leyden University, 337. His opinion on the Sabbath, 337. Disciples, 337. Charges against Cocceius, 337, 338. Agreement between him and Descartes, 338. Colani, one of principal theologians of French Critical School. His opinions, 401, 402. Colenso, Bishop John William, resemblance between him and Wolff, 107, 108. His work on the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua, 499. His criticisms, 499-503. Excitement occasioned by his work, 503. Judicial proceedings against Colenso, 503-505. Literature of the Controversy occasioned by him, 599-602, _Appendix_. Colenso's return to Southern Africa without a people or a clergy, 505. Testimony of a Mussulman against him, 506. Coleridge, opinions of, 455-462. His struggles, 457. Definitions and distinctions of Coleridge, 460, 461. His school, 462. Compensations of history, 453. Composition, method of literary, in Germany in 17th century, 67. Comte, 390. Conferences, French Protestant, their recent action in favor of orthodoxy, 419-421. Confessions, union of Lutheran and Reformed, 231. Controversy, Antinomian, Adiaphoristic, Synergistic, Osiandric, Crypto-Calvinistic, 39. Syncretistic controversy, 40. Coquerel, A., Jr., editor of the _Lien_, 406. Refusal of the Presbyterial Council to re-appoint him as suffragan in a Protestant pulpit in Paris, 407. His opinions, 407, 408. His christology, 408, 409. Courts, licentiousness of German, during the Thirty Years' war, 78, 79. Extravagance on matrimonial and baptismal occasions, 79, 80. Da Costa, an agent in the revival in the Dutch Church, 359. De Cock, leader of the secession from the Dutch Church, 362. Results of his expulsion by ecclesiastical authority, 363. Deism, English, defined by Lechler, 113. The principle on which it started, 113. Its superiority to the Deism of France, 113. Its origin due to prominence given to nature by Lord Bacon, 114. German opposition to English Deism, 114. Rapid progress of Deism in Germany, 117. Foreign infidelity hastened by the quibbles of orthodox theologians, 125. English Deism influencing the Dutch Church, 350-352. Did not possess advantages equal to those of German Rationalism, 440. Deism, French, coöperating with English Deism, toward the overthrow of orthodoxy in Germany, 122. Deists, English, translations of their works into the German Language, 117. Translations into Dutch, 351, 352. De Pressensé prophesies good results from Renan's _Life of Jesus_, 406. Leader of evangelical theologians in the French Church, 411. Edits the Revue Chrétienne, 411. His opinions, 412-415. Opposes the union of Church and State, 415. Remarks on the beneficial results of Renan's _Life of Jesus_, 585, 586. Descartes, apostle of French Rationalism, 338, 339, 389. De Wette, twofold character of his opinion, 246, 247. His opinion of John, the Evangelist, 247. View of the Scriptures, 248. His theological novel, 248. Dinter, a skeptical writer for children, 189, 190. Dogmatism, one of the elements of the degeneracy of the Dutch Church, 336. Dorner, his complex style, 290. His work on the Person of Christ, 290-292. Conception of Christianity, 290. Doubt, religious, and innovation, must be estimated by four considerations, 32. Edelmann, Kahnis' testimony concerning him, 138, 139. Education in Germany, defects of, 184. Edwards, Jonathan, successor of Stoddard, at Northampton, 538. Emlyn, his Scripture account of Jesus Christ, 539. Empirical-Modern School in the Dutch Church, 371. It has few points of sympathy with evangelical Christianity, 374. Its principles, 374, 375. English Church in the eighteenth century, low state of, 449-452. Condition of English Church at the Peace of 1815, 454. English literature in the eighteenth century, character of, 440, 441. Brilliant writers, 441. English literature influenced by the French spirit, 441. Epicureanism prevalent in Germany before the Thirty Years' War, 78. Ernesti, the classic scholar of his day, 126, 127. _Essays and Reviews_, theology of, 482-495. Opinions of evangelical German, theologians on the _Essays and Reviews_, 495, 496. Publications called forth by that work, 497, _Appendix_. Judicial proceedings against the authors of the _Essays and Reviews_, 497, 498. Literature arising from the publication of the _Essays and Reviews_, 603, _Appendix_. Ethical-Irenical School in the Dutch Church, 375. Its leaders, 375. Ethics in the Dutch Church, corruption of, 335. Evangelical Church Diet of Germany, 318. Occasion of its organization, 318, 319. First session, 320-322. Practical result of the first session, 322, 323. Enlargement of operations, 323. Evangelical Church Gazette, 101, 102. Evangelical Dissenting Church of Switzerland, rise of, 428. Evangelical French School, 411. Led by E. De Pressensé, 411. Defended by Guizot, 416. Fruits of the labors of the evangelical French theologians, 419. Their success evident in the recent action of the Protestant Conferences, 419-421. Evangelizing agencies in France, 422-424. Falk, at Weimar, 312, 313. He was affected by the havoc of Napoleon's army, 313. Established a Reformatory for children, 314. His various benefactions, 315. Farrar, his description of the Wolffian philosophy, 110, 111. Feuerbach, his radical Skepticism, 282. Fichte, relation to Kant, 163. His system, 163. His _Addresses to the German People_, and influence of that work, 222, 223. Fliedner, established a Deaconess Institute, 316. Its influence in other countries, 316, 317. Formula Concordiæ, 39, 40. France, adoption of English Deism by, 117. Irreligion in France during the reign of Louis XIV., 117, 118. Francke, Augustus Hermann, testimony on neglect of Scriptural studies, 69. His temperament, 93. Purity of his purpose, 94. His account of his conversion, 94. His pulpit ministrations in Halle, 95. His _Introduction to the Old Testament_, _Hermeneutical Lectures_ and _Method of Theological Study_, 95. He founded the Orphan House at Halle, 95. The gradual establishment of that institution, 95, 96. Condition of the Orphan House after Francke's death, 96, _note_[Transcriber's Note: Reference is to Footnote 26]. Theological instruction by Francke and his coadjutors, 96. Prolific power of the Orphan House, 97, 98. Francken, his _Kernel of Divinity_, 346. Frederic the Great, withdrew the royal patronage from Halle, 100, 101. He was captivated by Voltaire, 120. His systematic attempt to destroy orthodoxy in his kingdom, 122. He made no secret of his skepticism, 123. Final regret of his religious course, on seeing the evil effects of infidelity upon his people, 123, 124. Free Congregations, rise and influence of, 284. Freeman, Rev. James, Pastor of King's Chapel, Boston, 539. Installation as the first Unitarian minister in America, 539. French Church, Protestant, 387. Skeptical formalism of French Protestantism in the beginning of the nineteenth century, 387, 388. Opposition to the French Protestant Church, 411. French Critical School of Theology, 391, 392. Opinions, 393, 394. French Literature in Europe, prevalence of, 391. French Skeptics upon the Church of Holland, influence of, 352. French Theology, animation of, 386. Frothingham, O. B., his juvenile work, 572, 573. Lecture on Liberal Christianity, 573-575. Future Punishment, opposition of Unitarians to, 552, 553. Gaussen, leader of the Evangelical Dissenting Church of Switzerland, 428, 429. Geneva, improvement of religious spirit in, 430, 431. Gerhard, John, personal qualities, and rapid attainments, 51. Quotation from his exegetical treatise, 52. German Theology, affiliated to Philosophy, 155. Germany, the country where Rationalism has exerted its chief influence, 5. Condition of Protestant Germany at the commencement of the nineteenth century, 220-222. Gibbon, caprices of, 447. Work on the Roman Empire, 447, 448. Destitution of political character, 448. God, opinion of German Rationalists concerning, 199, 200. Idea of God essential to success of civil government, 287. Unitarian opinion of God, 547, 548. Goethe at Weimar, 179. His attachment to Roman Catholicism, 183. Influence of his writings on theology, 183. Goodwin, C. W., on the Mosaic Cosmogony, in _Essays and Reviews_. His opinions, 491, 492. Gossner, his unsettled life, 327. Providential guidance to Protestantism, and to missionary labors, 327, 328. Griesbach; he aimed to establish a system of natural religion, 137, 138. Groen Van Prinsterer, his influence in favor of home missions, 360. Edited _The Netherlander_, 361. Defended the Secessionists from the Dutch Church, 363. Groningen School. Its origin, organ, and principal tenets, 364, 365. Distinguished for its ethical system, 366. No place for the Trinity in the Groningen Theology, 366. Service of the Groningens, 367. Their failure to reach their object, 367. Grotius, forerunner of Ernesti, 127, 334, 341. Grotz, his opinions, 403. Guericke, called attention to the operations of the "Friends of Light," 284. Guizot, his deep interest in recent French Theology, 416. His late important work on the Christian Religion, 416-419. Gustavus Adolphus Union, its method of operation, 330. Its nineteenth session, 330. Results, 330, 331. Half-Way Covenant, 538. Halle, University of; occasion of its establishment, 93. Its faculty, and the work before it, 93. The new generation of professors in Halle, 99, 100. Edict of Fred. Wil. I., that all theologians must study in that University, 100. Hamann, inability of, and his coadjutors to resist Rationalism in Germany, 196. Hare, Julius Charles, disciple of Coleridge, 462. His life full of incident, 463. View of Sacrifice, 463. Other opinions, 464, 465. Harless, an opponent of Strauss, 271. Harms, opposition of Claus, to union of German Churches, 232. His 95 Theses, 232-235. The excitement occasioned by the publication of that work, 235, 236. Harms, Louis, small beginning of his missionary enterprise, 328, 329. Final success, 329, 330. Hegel, his relation to philosophy, 164. His philosophy reducible to a system of nature, 164. His system, 165. Fulfilment of his theory of antagonisms, 257. The three branches of his school, 257, 258. Hengstenberg, his Evangelical Church Gazette established to oppose the prevalent Rationalism, 270, 271. He takes highest rank in the Evangelical School as a controversialist, and expositor of the Old Testament, 305. Opposition to Pantheism, 306. Contributors to his journal, 306. His opinion of the _Essays and Reviews_, 496. Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury; his reflections on the publication of his _Tractatus de Veritate_, 114. His view of education, 114. Herder, adaptation to his times, 171. His creed, 172. His interest in the poetic features of the Bible, 172, 173. The kind of love which he cherished toward the Bible, 174. View of the person of Christ, 174. Opinion of the Gospels, 175. Herder's great service to the Church, 176. His view of the pastorate, 176. Character of his preaching, 177, 178. Opposition to the Kantian Philosophy, 178. High Church in England, rise of, 511. Its Conference at Hadley, 512. Doctrines of the High Church, 512-515. General service of the High Church, 515, 516. Hobbes; his estimate of religion, 114, 115. His works translated into Dutch, 351. Hofstede de Groot, in conjunction with Pareau, published a work on dogmatic theology, 365. Principles taught therein, 365, 366. Holland, former importance of, 332, 333. Rise of Rationalism in Holland, 333. Theological publications in Holland, 334. Popular acquaintance with theology in Holland, 346. ---- Church of, made slow progress in the eighteenth century, 344. Influenced by English Deism, 350. Affected by French Skepticism, 352. Introduction of new hymn-book into the Dutch Churches, 357, 358. Dutch Church now in an important crisis, 381. Causes of the crisis, 381, 382. Dutch Church applying itself to practical work, 382, 383. Holy Ghost, Unitarian opinion of, 548. Homiletic literature of the Dutch Church, 335. Huguenots of France were received into Holland, and exerted a beneficial influence on the Dutch Church, 343. Humanists, Aristotelian, of seventeenth century, 6. Hume, partook of the prevalent French spirit, 444. His errors, 444. _Essay on Miracles_, 445, 446. _History of England_, 446, 447. Hymns, destruction of German, 193. Churches rivaled each other in adapting their hymn-books to Rationalistic opinions, 194. Indifference, religious, produced in Holland by the French spirit, 353, 354. Infidelity presents a systematic and harmonious history, 2. Infidelity systematically opposed to civil order and authority, 287. Inner Mission of German Protestantism, 326, 327. Inspiration, opinion of German Rationalists on, 200, 202. American Unitarian opinion on inspiration, 546, 547. Instruction in Germany, improved character of religious, 307, 308. Jacobi, the opponent of the Kantian philosophy, 162, 163. Service to evangelical religion, 169. Journals in Germany, theological, 306, 307, and _note_[Transcriber's Note: Reference is to Footnote 81]. Rationalistic Journals, _Appendix_, 595. Rationalistic Journals in France, _Appendix_, 598. Jowett, his commentaries, 481. His view of the Atonement, 482. Writes in _Essays and Reviews_ on the interpretation of Scripture, 493. His opinions, 494, 495. Kant, his superiority to other thinkers of his time, 156. His account of his pious mother, 156. His system published by a student, Hippel, 157. His _Critique of Pure Reason_, 157. That work popularized by Schulze, 158. Opponents of the Kantian system, 158. Kant's statement concerning the limits of reason, 159. General character of Kant's criticism, 160, 161. Kant's silence on the positive truths of Christianity, 161. Moral effect of the Kantian system, 162. Thinkers succeeding Kant, 165. Their service, 166. King's Chapel, Boston, became Unitarian, 538, 539. Kingsley, Charles, on the English mind, influence of, 468. His numerous works, 469. His opinions, 469-471. Controversy with Father Newman, 517. Kleman, work on connection between grace and duty, 350. Klopstock innocently commenced the alteration of the German hymns, 194. Lange, his view of the Church, 296, 297. Larroque, member of the French Critical School, 400. Lechler, his definition of English Deism, 113. Leibnitz, the author of the Wolffian philosophy, 103. His _Theodicy_, 103. Philosophy of Leibnitz confined to the learned, 104. Leo the Tenth, skepticism of, 113. Lessing, his object in publishing the _Wolfenbüttel Fragments_, 152. His opinions in partial harmony, at least, with that work, 153. He found fault with his age, 155. Lesson taught by condition of England in the eighteenth century, 440. Le Vasser, his account of French irreligion during the reign of Louis XIV, 117. Leyden School of Theologians, 367. Its origin, 368. Liberal Catholic School of France. Its founders, 409. Great influence and high position of its members, 410. Liberal Protestant Union, the organization of French Rationalists, 393. Liberation, beneficial effects of German, 223, 224. Literary Rationalism in England, owes its origin to Carlyle, 473. Literature, theological, defective character of, in former part of seventeenth century, 65, 66. Locke, his works translated into Dutch, 351. Low Church, in England, 508. Its seat at Cambridge, 508. Conducted by vigorous minds, 508. Always on the side of popular reform, 509. Missionary labors, 509, 510. Its work at home, 510. Present status, 510, 511. Mandeville, his style complimented by Macaulay, 116. Maurice, disciple of Coleridge, 465. Ideal view of creation, 465, 466. Holds that Christ is the archetype of every human being, 466. His system, 467. His permission to officiate in the Established Church, 468. Mediation-Theologians of Germany, 288. Melanchthon, his _Apology of the Confession_, 38. Milton, on pride of the Church, and ecclesiastical authority, 535, 536. Miracles, the Rationalists deny the possibility of, 24. Opinion of German Rationalists concerning miracles, 207-211. Miracles, Hume on, 445, 446. Missions in the Dutch Church, 383, 384. Monod, A., the pioneer of the reformation of the French Protestant Church, 422. Montague, house of Lady Mary Wortley, the center of a large literary group, 443. Mosheim, his opposition to the introduction of English Deism, 117. Müller and Scriver as illustrations of improved literary style, before the rise of Pietism, 83, 84. Music in the German Churches made to conform to Rationalism, 195. Decline of congregational singing, 195. Neander, first of Mediation Theologians. His youth, and early publications, 249. Theological views, 249, 250. The chief characteristic of his theology, 250. Various writings, 251. Conception of Church history, 251, 252. Valuable service to evangelical theology, 252. Relation to his times, 252. Personal appearance, 253, 254. _Life of Christ_, in reply to Strauss, 272, 273. Newman, F. W., his life resembles Blanco White's, 517. His _Phases of Faith_, 518. Became a Missionary, 518. His opinions, 518, 519. Nicolai, his Universal German Library, 147. Object of that journal to oppose all orthodox publications, 147. Its great influence, 147, 148. Berlin affected by it, 148. Norton, Andrews, professor in Harvard University, 540. Opzoomer, professor at Utrecht, 371. His manual of logic, 371. Orthodoxy, inactivity of, in the Church of Holland, 356. Parker, Theodore, as a reformer, 564. Personal history, 565. His radicalism, 566. His theological opinions, 566-571. Pattison, M., writes in _Essays and Reviews_ on Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750, 492. Paul, Jean, called attention to necessity of parental training of children, 187. Paulus, attempt of, to prove Luther a Rationalist, 31. Pecaut, holds that Deism should be substituted for the doctrines of Protestantism, 402. His opinions, 402, 403. Periodical skeptical press of England, 477. Pestalozzi's labors for the amelioration of orphans, 188. His ideal of a school, 188. Philosophy of the period anterior to rise of Pietism, 82, 83. Service of speculative philosophy in aid of religion, 167. Philosophers do not communicate directly with the people, 471, 472. Pierson, his relation to Opzoomer, 371. His opinions contained in two works, 371, 372. His exposition of the "New Theology," 372. He holds that reason must determine what is revelation, 373. Specimen of Pierson's style, 374. Pietism, agencies leading to rise of, 55. Objection brought against Pietism, 85. What Pietism proposed to do, 85. It was confounded with mysticism, 88. Pietism commenced upon the principle that the Church was corrupt, 88. The means proposed by Pietism to improve the Church, 88, 89. Secret of the fall of Pietism, 102. Mistake of Lutheranism in failing to adopt it in the Church, 102. Relation of Pietism to the German Protestant Church, 102. Pietists, charged with literary barrenness, 101. Positivism, the work of Compte alone, 390. Powell, Baden, on the study of evidences of Christianity, in _Essays and Reviews_, 487. His opinions, 487-489. Preaching, defective, in Germany in seventeenth century, 69, 70. Privy Council of England, 498, _note_[Transcriber's Note: Reference is to Footnote 191]. Professors and students, intimacy between German, 309. Prophecy, opinion of German Rationalists concerning, 211-214. Protestantism, concessions of, to the civil magistrate, 37. Protestant Friends, 283. Pulpit of Holland, low state of preaching in the, 334. Rationalism, danger of failing to appreciate magnitude of, 1. Necessity of immediate defence against infidelity, 2. Rationalism not an unmixed evil in its results, 4. The term _Rationalism_ not of recent origin, 6. Rationalists in England in 1646, 6. Rationalism defined by Rückert, 7, _note_[Transcriber's Note: Reference is to Footnote 3]; by Wegscheider in _Institutiones Dogmaticæ_, 8-11; by Stäudlin, 11, 12; by Professor Hahn, 12, 13; by Hugh James Rose, 13-16; by A. McCaul, 16-19; by M. Saintes, 19-21; by Lecky, 22, 23. Rationalists acknowledge justice of the definitions of their opponents, 24. Several kinds of Rationalists, 24-26. Peculiar advantages of Rationalism over other forms of Skepticism, 26. Rationalists do not discard the Bible, but claim to give a proper interpretation, 27. Shrewdness of Rationalism in its initial steps, 30. Motives of the early Rationalists, 31. Rationalism measured by four things, 32-35. Rationalism acknowledges no hallowed ground, 33. Spirit of Rationalism, bitter, 34. Completeness of destructive work of Rationalism, 35. The term _Rationalism_ came into use in early part of nineteenth century, 239. Rationalism, injured by its excessive demands, 255-256. Rationalism assumed a revolutionary and atheistic form after the publication of Strauss' _Life of Jesus_, 281. Rise of Rationalism in Holland, 333. Undercurrent of Rationalism in Dutch Church, extending back to Synod of Dort, 346. Rationalism in French Protestant Church, 391-409; in Switzerland, 432-439; in England, 455. Three forms of Rationalism in England, 455. Indirect service of Rationalism, 579-586. Philosophical Rationalism in England commenced with Coleridge, 455. Literature of Rationalism, 590-606, _Appendix_. Rationalists among the English Jews, Roman Catholics, Quakers, and Unitarians, 533. Rationalists, German, had no common system, 198. Reason therefore, 198. The principal parts of their system, 200-218. Results of their opinions, 218, 219. Recordite party in the Low Church, 511. Reformation endangered by controversies, 45. Reformed Church, purity and progress of, in seventeenth century, 76. Reformers, difference between, and Rationalists, 31, 32. Faults of the immediate successors of the Reformers, 37. Disputes of the Reformers, 38. Regeneration, Unitarian opinion of, 551, 552. Reinhard avowed himself in favor of subordination of reason to faith, 239. Religion, opinion of German Rationals on, 199. Renan, his greatest celebrity due to his _Life of Jesus_, 403. His opinions, 403, 404. Reception of his _Life of Jesus_, 405. Results of that publication declared by De Pressensé to be beneficial, 406. Literature arising from Renan's _Life of Jesus_, 596-598, _Appendix_. "Reunion of Christian Friends in Holland," result of revival in the Dutch church, 361. Monthly Journal of the organization, 361. Réville, his exposition of the so-called Liberal Theology, 394-396. Revival in the Dutch church, 358. Revue de Théologie, organ of French Critical School, 396. Edited by Scherer, 396. Roell, Professor, declared the necessity of reason for a proper interpretation of the Scriptures, 348, 349. Röhr, his _Briefe über den Rationalismus_, 34. Principles contained therein, 238, 239. Rothe, ethical system, 300. His recent work on Dogmatic Theology, 300. Principles taught therein, 301-303. Rougemont, his opinions, 400, 401. Rousseau, his description of French skepticism during the reign of Louis XV, 118. The proposition which he sought to establish, 121. The key to his creed, 122. His popularity in Germany, 186. Rupp, Pastor, attacked the Athanasian symbol, 284. Sabbath, neglect of, in Germany, 37. Schaff, description of Neander's appearance, 253, 254. Declares the indirect service of Rationalism, 580, 582, 583. Schelling, his natural philosophy, 164. His opposite and parallel sciences, 164. Schenkel, elevation by Baden government, 303. His late skeptical book, _Picture of the Character of Jesus_, 303. Principles taught therein, 304. Clerical protest against his continuance in authority, 305. Scherer, member of the French Critical School. Departure from orthodoxy, 396. His view of Protestantism, 397. Opinion of the New Testament, 397, 398. The Bible, according to his exegesis, 398, 399. His low estimate of Christ's Miracles, 399, 400. Schiller at Weimar, 178, 179. His prayer on Sabbath morning, 179, 180. An admirer of Paganism, 181. Embodies the Kantian philosophy in verse, 182. Schleiermacher, early training of, 224. Residence in Berlin as chaplain, 224. His philosophy derived from Jacobi, 224. His _Discourses_, 225, 226. Purpose of that work, 225, 226. Schleiermacher's conception of religion, 226, 227. His _Monologues_, 228, 229. His _System of Doctrines_, 241. Principles taught therein, 241-243. The great service of that work, 243, 244. Information concerning Schleiermacher, 243, _note_[Transcriber's Note: Reference is to Footnote 56]. His defective view of the Trinity, 244. General character of his theology, 245, 246. His school, 256, 257. Scholasticism, one of the elements of the degeneracy of the Dutch Church, 336. Scholten, founder of the Leyden School, 368. His distinction between the principles and dogmas of a church, 368. His view of historical criticism, 369. Makes human nature the witness of truth of revelation, 369. Defective view of sin, and denial of miracles, 370. Schott, contended for the union of Reason and Revelation, 241. Schurmann, Anna Maria, took part in the Cocceian controversy, 341. Science, necessity of a proper view of, 586, 587. No antagonism between Science and Revelation, 587. Scriptures, study of, neglected in Germany in seventeenth century, 68. Opinion of German Rationalists concerning credibility of Scriptures, 203-206. The Rationalists conscious of importance of the Scriptures, 481. Secession from the Church of Holland, 362. Its failure, 363. Semler, his early training, 128. Difficulty concerning want of understanding of the number of the Biblical books, 129. His celebrated accommodation-theory, 130. His distinction between the local and temporary contents of the Scriptures, 130, 131. His moderate affiliation with the English Deists, 131. His repudiation of the French Skeptical School, 131. His opinion concerning the world's independence of the Bible, 132. He gained his greatest triumph against the history and doctrinal authority of the church, 132. The beauty and purity of his private life, 133, 134. His domestic life, 134. Death of his daughter, 135, 136. Semler's mental defects, 136. His imitators, 137. Fatal results of Semler's doctrines, 146, 147. Seriousness and Peace, society called, 376. Shaftesbury, Lord, cultivated the acquaintance of the leaders of skepticism in France and England, 115. His violent hostility to Christianity, 115. His _Characteristics_, 115. Sin, Unitarian opinion of, 548-550. Skepticism, the result of coldness, formalism, and controversy in the Church, 4. Development of skepticism south and west of Germany, 112, 113. Skepticism received the support of the educated and refined German circles during latter part of the eighteenth century, 149. Historical record of skepticism, 563. Skeptics, spirit of kindness toward, 587, 588. Smith, John Pye, his statement concerning the inferior character of replies to the English Deists, 117. Speculative Rationalism in Zürich, Periodicals favoring, 434. Opinions of the Speculative Rationalists concerning the Scriptures and Christ, 435-437; immortality, 437, 438; sin, 438; faith, 438, 439. Spener, Philip Jacob, his testimony on neglect of children, 63, 64. His University life and pastoral labors, 89, 90. His labors in behalf of children, 90. The _Collegia Pietatis_, 90, 91. Spener's _Pia Desideria_, 91. His childlike nature, 91, 92. His literary activity, 92. Bitterness of his enemies after his death, 92, 93. Spinoza, 103, 281. Stanley, Dean of Westminster, his works, 523. Rationalistic concessions in his _Jewish Church_, 524. His late article in the _Westminster Review_, 524, 525. Stevenson, description of Fliedner's Deaconess Institute, 317, 318. Synod of Dort, 334. Stoddard, Venerable, did not believe in excluding unregenerate persons from the Lord's Supper, 537. Strauss, his _Life of Jesus_ the outgrowth of long-standing doubt, 29. Strauss a Left-Hegelian, 258. Popular reception of his _Life of Jesus_, 259. Extraordinary character of the contents of that work, 259, 260. Strauss had an erroneous view of history, 260. He contended that Christ was a mythical personage, 261-263. Doctrines contained in the _Life of Jesus_, 263-270. Replies to that work, 273, 274. His late work, _Life of Jesus Popularly Treated_, designed for the laity, 275. Contents of that work, 276, 277. Strauss' _System of Doctrine_, an embodiment of Hegelian philosophy, 281. Rejection from professorship in Zürich, 432, 433. Success dependent on strenuous effort, 577, 578. Supernaturalism. This term came into frequent use in early part of nineteenth century, 239. Switzerland, decline in political influence, 425. Low state of Swiss Protestant Church when Voltaire was at Ferney, 425, 426. Temple, author of _Education of the World_, in _Essays and Reviews_, 482. His opinions, 482-485. Tendency, history of a mischievous, best means of resistance, 3. Theologians in early part of seventeenth century, 67. Theological taste, increase of, owing to the propagation of Semler's destructive criticism, 144. Theological training in Geneva, neglect of, 426. M. Bost's testimony, 426, 427. Present elevated state of instruction, 431, 432. Theology, Dutch, literalism of, 345. Theology, union between, and philosophy, 35, 36. The influence of theology as a science, in Germany, 146. Improvement in contemporaneous German theology, 309, 310. Thirty Years' War; principles involved and parties participating, 56. Desperation and devastation of Thirty Years' War, 57. Neglect of pastoral work, 57. Great losses in population and wealth, 58. Religious effect, 60. Neglect of youth, 62. Necessity of a popular reäwakening at the close of Thirty Years' War, 80, 81. Tholuck, reply to De Wette's novel, 248. Reply to Strauss' _Life of Jesus_, 271. View of inspiration, 292. Tholuck cannot be estimated by merely stating his definitions, 292, 293. He cannot be classified, 293. His various writings, 293. Quotation from his work on _Sin and Redemption_, 293-295. Thomasius, an eminent jurist, 98. He gave his influence to Pietism, 99. He defended the Pietists from the stand-point of statesmanship, 99. Cultivated the German spirit, and delivered lectures in the German language, 99. Tilly, his cruelty in warfare, 58, 59. Tindal, his _Christianity as Old as the World_, replies to, 116. Tittmann opposed Rationalism, 239, 240. Toland, replies to his _Christianity not Mysterious_, 116. Töllner; his attempt to harmonize the old German theology with the Wolffian philosophy, 112. His point of difference from Wolff, 112. His twofold conception of Scripture, 112. His opinion of inspiration, 201, 202. Tractarianism, 511-516. Tracts for the Times, 516. Tübingen School, 280. Tzschirner contended for the harmonization of reason and revelation, 240. His influence, 240. Uhlich, Pastor, founder of Friends of Light, 283. Ullmann, reply to Strauss, 273. His Essence of Christianity, 289. Opinions, 289. Union of German Churches, 231, 232. Task imposed upon the new State Church, 237. Unitarian controversy between Channing and Worcester, 541. Unitarians, their indefinite creed, 544. Their general opinions, 546-552. National convention in New York, 559, 560. Unitarianism, opposed to orthodoxy, 544, 545. Table showing its present state, 560, _note_[Transcriber's Note: Reference is to Footnote 265]. Literature of Unitarianism, 606-609, _Appendix_. Unitarian Journals, 609, _Appendix_. United States, Church of, 534. Separation of Church and State by the founders of the republic, 534. Unity of Evangelical Churches, necessary to overcome Rationalism, 588, 589. Universalists in America, 560. Creed of the Universalists, 561, 562. Table showing their present condition, 562, 563, _note_[Transcriber's Note: Reference is to Footnote 270]. Literature of Universalism, 606-609, _Appendix_. Universalist Journals, 609, _Appendix_. Universities, immorality in German, in seventeenth century, 75, 76. Van Oosterzee, his work in reply to Renan's _Life of Jesus_, 376. Quotation from it, 377. Professor in Utrecht, 377. His works, 376, 377. Vaughan, testimony of, concerning Schleiermacher's _Discourses_, 225, 226. Opinion on Carlyle, 477. Vénérable Compagnie of Geneva, prohibited ministerial candidates from preaching on prominent evangelical doctrines, 427. Vinet, his works, and system of theology, 429. Voltaire, relations of, with Rousseau, 119. Voltaire in England, 119. Favorable reception by the English court, 119, 120. Reception at the court of Frederic the Great, 120, 121. Disagreement between Voltaire and Frederic, 121. Return of the former to France, 121. Residence in Ferney, 121. His destitution of religious principles, 121. Popularity in Holland, 353. Cold treatment by Boerhaave, 353. Flattered by the Genevan pastors, 425. Ware, an Anti-Trinitarian, chosen professor in Harvard University, 540. Waterloo, battle of, commencement of a new era in the religion and politics of Europe, 356. Weimar, celebrities of, 169, 170. Wesleyan Missions in the Channel Islands and France, 388, 389. Westminster Review, 477, 478. Its lament over present elevated position of German Protestantism, 479. Westphalia, peace of, its fruits, 59. Wetstein, forerunner of Ernesti, 127. Wichern, John Henry, address before the Church Diet at its first session, 324. His Rough House near Hamburg, 324. Results of training at that Institution, 325, 326. Williams, Rowland, one of the writers in _Essays and Reviews_, 485. His opinions, 485-487. Wilson, H. B., discusses the question of the National Church in _Essays and Reviews_, 489. His opinions, 489-491. Wislicenus, his skeptical work, 283. Wolff, his demonstrative philosophy, 103. His good intentions, 104. His description of his mental progress, 104. Division of his philosophy into theoretical and practical departments, 105. His opinion of what a revelation should contain, 105, 106. He aimed to impress his principles upon the masses, 106. His system destructive to Pietism, 107. His eventful life, 107, 108. Excitement produced by public discourse on Morals of Confucius, 108. His deposition and banishment, 108. Recalled by Frederic the Great, 108. His reception at Halle, 108, 109. The popular reception of the Wolffian system, 109. Relation of Wolff's philosophy to German theology in eighteenth century, 110. The Wolffian School, 111. Wolfenbüttel Fragments, 149. Their origin, 149, 150. Principles contained in them, 150, 151. Opposition to that work, 151. Wollaston, his creed, and popularity of his works, 115. Year-Books, Halle, an organ of Atheism, 282, 283. Young Men's Christian Union of New York, 553-558. Youth, multiplicity of publications for German, 189. Teachers of the young became Rationalists, 189, 190. Zürich, the present seat of Swiss Rationalism, 432. Transcriber's Notes: Variant spellings of the words pappoose and premiss are left as in the original. The names Des Cartes and Descartes refer to the same person. The initials D. D. appear in the original with and without a space. They have been standardized to always have a space between the initials. The following words appear in the original with and without hyphens. book-stores bookstores child-like childlike hand-maid handmaid key-note keynote Law-giver Lawgiver law-giver lawgiver life-long lifelong master-pieces masterpieces Re-statements Restatements stand-point standpoint touch-stone touchstone two-fold twofold under-current undercurrent wide-spread widespread There are variations in the accents used on the following words: coëxistent coexistent confrères confreres Gröninger Groninger Jésus Jesus l'Église l'Eglise reäwakening reawakening Réfutation Refutation Réligieuse Religieuse réligieuse religieuse Rémusat Remusat Réville Reville Révue Revue Secrétan Secretan Théologie Theologie Théologies Theologies Vénérable Venerable The following words used an oe ligature in the original: d'oeil Koenen Phoebus Phoenician prosopopoeia soeur Voetius (only in the Table of Contents) Voetians (only in the Table of Contents) The following corrections have been made to the text. page xvii--Gibbon, 447, 448[original has 447, 447] page 14--'Those who are generally termed Rationalists,'[ending quote missing in original] says Dr. Bretschneider page 16--Spinoza asserts that the '[original has double quote]Israelites heard page 38--Cracau put to death on the slightest pretenses[original has pretences] page 47--The headlong pen, too precipitate for calligraphy[original has caligraphy] page 77--Let the ministry be steadfast, and the masses will never swerve."[original has missing ending quote] page 152--Wolffian[original has Wolfian] philosophy page 152--the intuitions[original has intuitons] of Reason page 162--Wolffian[original has Wolfian] philosophy page 163--glaring defect of his system[original has sytsem] page 171--evening entertainments[original has entertaiments] of Weimar page 192--the narrator has a very imperfect knowledge[original has knowedge] page 245--Christ's communion with his living disciples.[original is missing period] page 254--nineteenth[original has nineteeth] century page 261--Their opinions[original has opinons] concerning him were already formed page 263--climax of destructive criticism[original has crititicism] page 304--therefore he stands to-day[original has to day] as the High Church page 348--the government[original has govvernment] took his part page 390--philosophical systems[original has sytems] of Germany page 397--divinity of Christ involves his omniscience[original has omnisicence] page 400--Christianity has passed its allotted[original has alloted] time page 409--field of usefulness[original has usefulnesss] page 424--inability of M. Réville[original has Reville] to be elected page 464--declare to be finished."[original is missing ending quote] page 465--brightness of his resplendent[original has ressplendent] character page 482--conversions of the first Christians[original has Christains] page 484--development is alleged to have occurred[original has occured] page 496--naïve[original has näive] assurance page 500--fall to the ground with it."[original is missing ending quote] page 520--insensibly as the air we breathe."[original is missing ending quote] page 532--It is a remarkable[original has remakable] feature page 536--comparatively untrammeled[original has untrameled] by institutions page 538--Edwards refused to practice[original has practise] it page 559--presided over by Governor[original has Governer] Andrew page 560--referred to a special committee[original has commitee] page 571--but on more than one occasion he[original has be] expressed his total dissent page 573--destruction of Pharaoh[original has Pharoah] page 590--BALMES, J.--Briefe an einen[original has einem] Zweifler page 590--BAUR, F. C.--Die Tübingen[original has Tübinger] Schule und ihre Stellung zur Gegenwart page 590--CLEMEN, C. F. W.[original is missing period] page 591--HAAR, B. TER[original has B.ter] page 592--HERING.--Die Akephaler unserer[original has unsrer] Zeit. page 592--under KÄHLER, L. A.--Ursprunge, ihrer Zwietracht u. höheren[original has höhern] Einheit. page 593--OOSTERZEE, J. J. VAN.[original has extraneous comma]--Geschichte oder Roman? page 593--PAULUS, H. E. G.--Zeitgemässe Beleuchtung des Streites zwischen dem Eingebungsglauben und der Urchristlichen Denkgläubigkeit[original has Denkglaubigkeit]. page 593--RUTHENUS, K.--Der formale Supernaturalismus oder d. einzig mögliche Weg zur einer Ausgleichung der streitenden[original has stritenden] theolog. Partheien. page 593--entry under SARTORIUS--Ueber die Unwissenschaftlichkeit und innere Verwandschaft des Rationalismus und[original has uud] Romanismus. page 593--SCHENKEL, D.--Die Religiösen[original has Religösen] Zeitkämpfe. page 593--WIGGERS, J.--Kirchlicher oder rein biblischer[original has reinbiblischer] Supranaturalismus? page 595--BUISSON, F.--L'orthodoxie et l'Evangile dans l'Eglise réformée[original has reformée]. page 595--under COLONI, T.--Jésus[original has Jesus] Christ et les Croyances messianiques de son Temps page 597--GUETTÉE, L'ABBÉ.--Réfutation[original has Refutation] de la prétendue Vie de Jésus de M. Renan. page 597--LOYSON, J. T.--Une prétendue Vie de Jésus[original has Jesus], ou M. E. Renan page 598--PÉ DE ARROS, J.--Coup d'oeil sur la Vie de Jésus[original has Jesus] de M. Renan page 598--NOUVELLE REVUE[original has RÉVUE] DE THÉOLOGIE page 599--BELLOWS, H. W.--Restatements[original has Re-statements] of Christian Doctrine. page 602--DAVIDSON, DR. S.[period missing in original] page 603--under GARBETT, E.--Boyle Lectures for 1861. Lond.,[comma missing in original] 1861. page 604--under MACKAY, R. W.--The Tübingen School and its Antecedents: a Review of the History and Present Condition of Modern Theology.[period missing in original] page 604--under MIALL, E.--Basis of Belief: Examination of Christianity. London,[comma missing in original] 1861. page 605--essays by Messrs. Colani, Scholten, Réville[original has Reville], Scherer page 606--Universalism a Practical Power. New York, 1863.[original has two periods] page 608--under NORTON, A.--Genuineness of the Gospels, 3 vols. Boston, 1851-'54[original has '44]. page 609--WARE, W.--Letters[original has Lettters] to Trinitarians page 609--JOURNAL OF AMERICAN UNIT. ASSOC.,[comma missing in original] Boston. page 611--Arnold,[comma missing in original] Gottfried, the historian of Pietism, 98[original has 18]. page 612--Bethmann[original has Bethman]-Hollweg, influence on the Church Diet, 319. page 612--under Broad Church--Its tenets, 528[original has 520], 529, 530 page 613--under Colenso--Literature of the Controversy occasioned by him, 599[original has 600]-602, Appendix. page 613--under Colenso--Testimony of a Mussulman against him, 506[original has 505]. page 613--under Coquerel--Refusal of the Presbyterial Council to re-appoint him as suffragan in a Protestant pulpit in Paris, 407[original has 408]. page 614--Ernesti, the classic scholar of his day, 126[original has 125], 127. page 614--Farrar, his description of the Wolffian[original has Wolfian] philosophy page 614--Fliedner, established a Deaconess Institute, 316[original has 416]. page 614--under <i>Essays and Reviews</i>--Literature arising from the publication of the _Essays and Reviews_, 603,[original has period] _Appendix_. page 615--Freeman, Rev. James, Pastor of King's Chapel, Boston, 539[original has 589]. page 616--Harms, opposition of Claus, to union of German Churches, 232[original has 231]. page 617--under Journals in Germany--Rationalistic Journals, _Appendix_, 595[original has 509]. page 617--under Kant--That work popularized by Schulze[original has Shulze] page 617--under Kant--General character of Kant's criticism, 160[original has 159], 161. page 617--Le Vasser, his account of French irreligion during the reign of Louis XIV,[original has semicolon] 117. page 617--Leibnitz, the author of the Wolffian[original has Wolfian] philosophy page 618--under Miracles--Opinion of German Rationalists concerning miracles, 207-211[original has 207, 211]. page 618--Newman, F. W.,[comma missing in original] his life resembles Blanco White's page 618--Pattison, M., writes in _Essays and Reviews_ on Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750,[original has semicolon] 492. page 619--under Rationalists, German--Reason therefore[original has therefor], 198. page 620--Rousseau, his description of French skepticism during the reign of Louis XV,[original has semicolon] 118. page 620--Schenkel, elevation by Baden government, 303[original has 383]. page 620--under Scherer--His low estimate of Christ's Miracles, 399, 400.[period missing in original] page 620--Schurmann[original has Schuurmann], Anna Maria page 620--Scriptures, study of, neglected in Germany in seventeenth century,[original has period] 68. page 621--under Skepticism--Skepticism received the support of the educated and refined German circles during latter part of the eighteenth century, 149[original has 148]. page 622--under Unitarianism--Literature of Unitarianism, 606[original has 607]-609, _Appendix_. page 622--under Universalists--Literature of Universalism,[original has period] 606-609[original has 607, 609]. page 622--under Van Oosterzee--Professor in Utrecht, 377[original has 376]. page 622--Vénérable[original has Venerable] Compagnie of Geneva page 623--under Voltaire--Cold treatment by Boerhaave, 353[original has 357]. page 623--Youth, multiplicity of publications for German, 189.[original has comma] Footnote 113--System of the Semitic Languages;[original has comma] Footnote 128--Riggenbach, Der Heutige Rationalismus besonders in der Deutschen Schweiz[original has Schweitz]. Footnote 263--Frothingham, Ibid. pp.[original has pp,] 121-126. Footnote 270--St. Lawrence University, N. Y.,[comma missing in original] has a Library 
50534	----	THE THREE IMPOSTORS. TRANSLATED (WITH NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS,) FROM THE FRENCH EDITION OF THE WORK, PUBLISHED AT AMSTERDAM, 1776. RE-PUBLISHED BY G. VALE, "BEACON" OFFICE, 3 FRANKLIN-SQUARE, NEW-YORK: 1846. NOTE BY THE AMERICAN PUBLISHER. We publish this valuable work, for the reasons contained in the following Note, of which we approve:-- NOTE BY THE BRITISH PUBLISHER. The following little book I present to the reader without any remarks on the different opinions relative to its antiquity; as the subject is amply discussed in the body of the work, and constitutes one of its most interesting and attractive features. The Edition from which the present is translated was brought me from Paris by a distinguished defender of Civil and Religious Liberty: and as my friend had an anxiety from a thorough conviction of its interest and value, to see it published in the English Language, I have from like feelings brought it before the public; and I am convinced that it is an excellent antidote to Superstition and Intolerance, and eminently calculated to promote the cause of Freedom, Justice, and Morality. J. MYLES. PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR. The Translator of the following little treatise deems it necessary to say a few words as to the object of its publication. It is given to the world, neither with a view to advocate Scepticism, nor to spread infidelity, but simply to vindicate the right of private judgment. No human being is in a position to look into the heart, or to decide correctly as to the creed or conduct of his fellow mortals; and the attributes of the Deity are so far beyond the grasp of limited reason, that man must become a God himself before he can comprehend them. Such being the case, surely all harsh censure of each other's opinions and actions ought to be abandoned; and every one should so train himself as to be enabled to declare with the humane and manly philosopher "Homo sum, nihil humania me alienum puto." Dundee, September 1844. CONTENTS OF THE PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. DISQUISITIONS on the book entitled "The Three Impostors." ANSWER to the dissertation of M. de la Monnoye on the work entitled "The Three Impostors." COPY of Part 2d, Vol. 1., Article ix. of "Literary Memoirs," published at the Hague by Henry du Sauzet, 1716. DISQUISITIONS ON THE BOOK ENTITLED THE THREE IMPOSTORS. It has long been a disputed point if there was at anytime a book printed and bearing the title of "The Three Impostors." M. de la Monnoye, having been informed that a learned German [1] intended to publish a dissertation the object of which was to prove that this work had really been printed, wrote a letter, in refutation, to one of his friends; this letter was given by M. Bayle to M. Basnage de Bauval, who in February 1694, gave an extract from it in his "History of the works of celebrated and learned men." At a later period M. de la Monnoye entered more fully into the subject, in a letter dated at Paris 16th of June, 1712, and addressed to President Bouhier, in which letter, he says, will be found an abridged but complete account of this remarkable book. He condemns at once the opinion of those who attribute the work to the Emperor Frederick. The false charge, he says, took its rise from a passage in the appendix to a discourse concerning Antichrist, and published by Grotius, wherein he speaks as follows [2]: "Far be it from me to attribute the book called 'The Three Impostors,' either to the Pope, or to the opponents of the Pope; long ago the enemies of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa set abroad the report of such a book, as having been written by his command; but from that period nobody has seen it; for which reason I consider it apocryphal." Colomiez quotes this, page 28 of his "Historical Miscellanies;" but he adds that there are some blunders--that it was not Frederick I. (Barbarossa,) on whom they intended to fix the authorship, but Frederick II. his grandson. This he says, is apparent from the letters of Pierre des Vignes, the secretary and chancellor of the second Frederick, and from Matthew Paris; inasmuch as they record, that this monarch was blamed for having said that the world had been led aside by "Three Impostors;" but by no means that he had written a book having such a title. The Emperor denied in the strongest terms, that he ever made use of any expression to that effect. He detested the blasphemy with which they charged him, and declared that it was an atrocious calumny; more shame to Lipsius and other writers who have condemned him without sufficiently looking into the evidences. Averroes, nearly a century previous, had jeered at the three religions, saying [3]; that "the Jewish religion was a law for children; the Christian religion a law which it was impossible to follow; and the Mahometan religion a law in favor of swine." [4] Since then, many people have written with great freedom on this same subject. We read in the works of Thomas de Catimpre, that M. Simon de Tournay had said that "Three Seducers"--Moses, Jesus Christ, and Mahomet, had "mystified mankind with their doctrines." This is evidently the M. Simon de Churnay, of whom Matthew Paris relates some other improprieties, and the same individual whom Polydore Virgil styles de Turwai, the orthography in both instances having been mismanaged. Amongst the manuscripts of the Abbe Colbert's library, obtained possession of by our sovereign in 1732, there is one numbered 2071, written by Alvaro Pelagius, a Spaniard of the Cordelian order, bishop of Salves and Algarve, and well known on account of his work, "The Lamentation of the Church." He states that an individual named Scotus, of the same order as himself and a Jacobin, was at that time a prisoner at Lisbon on a charge of blasphemy. Scotus, it would appear, had said that he considered Moses, Jesus Christ and Mahomet as "Three Impostors;" for that, the first had deceived the Jews; the second the Christians; and the third the Saracens. [5] Gabriel Barlette, in his sermon upon St. Andrew, alludes to Porphyry in this way; "and therefore the notion of Porphyry is absurd, when he says that there had existed three individuals who had turned over the world to their own opinions; the first being Moses amongst the Jewish people--the second Mahomet, and the third Christ." [6] A strange chronologist to stamp the era of Christ and Porphyry after that of Mahomet! The Manuscripts of the Vatican, quoted by Odomir Rainoldo in the nineteenth volume of his Ecclesiastical Annals, mention one Jeannin de Solcia, a canon at Bergame, a doctor of civil and canon law, known from a decree of Pope Pius II., as Javinus de Solcia. He was condemned on the 14th November 1459 for having maintained this impiety--that Moses, Jesus Christ, and Mahomet had ruled the world at their pleasure. "Mundum pro suarem libito voluntatum rexisse." John Louis Vivaldo de Mondovi, who wrote in 1506, and amongst whose works there is a treatise on "The Twelve persecutions of the Church of God," says, in his chapter upon the sixth persecution, that there were people who dared to dispute, which of the three law-givers had been most followed, Jesus Christ, Moses, or Mahomet. [7] Herman Ristwyk, a Dutchman, burned at the Hague in 1512, sneered at the Jewish and Christian religions. He does not speak of the Mahometan creed; but a man who could regard Moses and Jesus Christ as impostors, could entertain no better opinion of Mahomet. Now we must turn to an author, name unknown, but accused of blasphemy against Jesus Christ. The charge was founded upon some papers discovered at Geneva in 1547, amongst the documents belonging to M. Gruet. An Italian, named Fausto da Longiano, had begun a work which he entitled "The Temple of Truth," in which he undertakes no less than to overturn all religions. "I have," he says, "begun another work entitled 'The Temple of Truth.' It is probable that I may divide it into thirty books. In this work will be found the extinction of all sects--Jews, Christian, Mahometan, and other superstitions; and matters will be brought back to their first principles." Now, amongst the letters of Aretino addressed to Fausto, there is not one to be met with which alludes in any way whatever to this work. Perhaps it had never been written, and although it had been published, it must have been a very different book from the one in question; of which, they pretend that there are some copies in the libraries in Germany, printed in folio, and written in High Dutch. Claude Beauregard, better known under his Latin appellation Berigardus, a professor of philosophy, first at Paris, next at Pisa, and latterly at Padua, quotes or forges a passage from the work, "The Three Impostors," in which the miracles which Moses performed in Egypt are attributed to the superiority of his demon [8] over that of the Magicians of Pharoah. Giordano Bruno who was burned at Rome, 17th Feb. 1600, was accused of having advanced something much to the same effect. But although Beauregard and Bruno have indulged in such reveries, and have thought proper to assert that they quoted from the work in question, is this a certain proof that they had read the book? If so they would doubtless have stated whether it was in manuscript, or in print, and referred to the size and the place where they found it. Tentzelius, trusting to one of his friends, a pretended ocular witness, gives a description of the book, and specifies the number of leaves and sheets; and attempting to prove in chap. III. of his work that the ambition of legislators is the only source of all religions, he gives as examples Moses, Jesus Christ, and Mahomet. Struvius, after Tentzelius, enters into the same subject, but finding nothing but what a clever fabulist might invent, he seems much inclined to disbelieve in the existence of the book. A journalist at Leipsic, in his "acta eruditarum," dated Jan. 1709, pp. 36 and 37, gives the following extract from a letter addressed to him: "Having occasion to be in Saxony I saw, in the Library of M..., a book entitled "The Three Impostors." It is an 8vo volume, in Latin, without the name of the printer or the date of its publication; but to judge from the letter it appears to have been published in Germany. It was to no purpose that I tried to obtain permission to read the whole work. The proprietor of the book, a man of sensitive piety, would not consent to it. I have since learned that a celebrated professor at Stuttgard had offered a great sum of money for the volume. Shortly afterwards I went to Nuremberg, and in talking of this work to M. Andre Mylhdorf, a man respectable alike for his age, and from his learning, he assured me he had read it, and that M. Wolfer a clergyman had lent it to him. From the manner in which he spoke, I thought it might be a copy of the one alluded to above, and I concluded that it was unquestionably the book referred to; but not that it was in octavo, nor of so old a date, nor perhaps so accurate." The writer of the foregoing was able to throw more light upon the subject and ought to have done so; for it is not enough to say that he had seen the book--he must produce evidence that he had seen it, otherwise he ought to be classed with those who promulgate opinions founded on mere report; in which category we must include all the authors to whom reference is made in this disquisition. The first who makes mention of the book as it existed in 1543, is William Postel, in his treatise on the agreement of the Alcoran with the doctrines of the Lutherans or the Evangelists. He calls the work "Anevangelistes," and attempts in it to bring the Lutheran doctrines into utter disrepute by proving that they lead straightway to Atheism. To support his argument he instances three or four productions written, as he says, by Atheists, whom he declares to have been the first disciples of this new Gospel. He adds, "my opinion can be vindicated by reference to an infamous pamphlet written by Villanovanus relative to three works respectively entitled 'The Cymbal of the World,' 'Pantagruel,' and the 'New Islands;' the authors of which works were the standard-bearers of the Atheistical party." This Villanovanus, whom Postel asserts to be the author of the book "The Three Impostors," was Michel Servetus the son of a notary, born in 1509, at Villanueva in Aragon, who assumed the name of Villanovanus, in a preface to a Bible which was printed for him at Lyons, 1542, by Hugues de la Porte. In France his designation was Villeneuve, under which title he was impeached, after he had published at Vienna, in Dauphiny, 1553, (the year before his death) the work entitled "Christianity restored;" a book extremely rare, on account of the trouble which they took at Geneva to find out the copies of the work and get them burned. In the authentic list of the writings of Servetus, however, we do not find mention made of "The Three Impostors." Neither Calvin nor Beza, nor Alexander Morus, nor any other defender of the Huguenot party who wrote against Servetus, and whose interest it was to justify his punishment, and to convict him of having written this work, has laid it to his charge. Postel, an ex-Jesuit, was the first to do so, without grounds. Florimond de Remond, a councillor in the Senate at Bordeaux, writes decidedly that he had seen this book in print. His words are; "James Curio, in his Chronology 1556, asserts that the Palatinate was filled with scoffers at religion, the Lievanistes, viz. a sect who considered the Sacred Writings as fabulous, and more especially those of Moses, the great Lawgiver of God. Is there not a book, 'The Three Impostors,' defaming the three religions which alone acknowledge the true God--the Jewish, the Christian, and the Mahometan?--a book composed in Germany, but printed elsewhere at the exact moment when these heretics are employing this individual to spread abroad their doctrines? The very title shows the character of the age which has dared to publish so impious a treatise. I would have referred to it unless Osius and Genebrard had spoken to me on the subject. I recollect that in my earlier days I saw a copy of this work at the College of Presle. It belonged to Ramus, a man distinguished for his extraordinary learning, and who was then employed in deep researches into the mysteries connected with religious belief; which subject he intended to treat in a philosophical manner. At this time they were circulating this iniquitous work amongst the learned, who were very desirous to see it." A curious inquirer into secrets! Everybody knows Florimond de Remond as an insignificant scribbler. There are three remarkable sayings in currency against him; that "he built without money, that he was a judge without principle, and an author without knowledge. [9]" We know also that he always lent his name to P. Richeaume, a Jesuite much hated by the Protestants, who cloaked his own name by assuming that of the councillor of Bordeaux. Now, if Osius and Genebrard had spoken as decidedly as Florimond de Remond, there might have been somewhat to rest upon; but see what Genebrard says in the thirty-ninth page of his answer to Lambert Danan, printed (octavo) at Paris 1581. [10] "They (his own party) have not driven Blandratus, nor Alciatus, nor Ochinus into Mahometanism; nor have they induced Valleus to profess himself an Atheist; neither have they enticed any one whatever to circulate the work called "The Three Impostors," wherein Christ the Lord is alluded to as the second, the other two being Moses and Mahomet." Is that the way to identify this impious book? and Genebrard, forsooth had seen it! And can it be, that in the present day people will attempt to get up regular proof to show that such a work exists? It is a well known fact that, in all ages, many lies have been palmed off in reference to books which could never be discovered, although individuals declare that they had seen them and even went so far as to mention the places where they had been favoured with their perusal. It has been said that this work was in the library of M. Salvius, the Swedish ambassador, at Munster, and that Queen Christina, unwilling to ask it of him while he lived, immediately sent M. Bourdelet, her chief physician, to entreat his widow to satisfy her curiosity, when he was informed that M. Salvius, having been seized with remorse of conscience on the night of his death, made them burn the work in his presence. A short time afterwards Christiana enquired eagerly after the "Colloquium Heptaplomers" by Bodin, a manuscript, at that period extremely rare; after a long search it was found, but whatever desire the Queen had to see the work in question, and although it was sought after in all the libraries of Europe, she died without having discovered it. Ought we not therefore to conclude that it was never in existence? Without doubt the pains taken by Christina would have led to the discovery of that book which Postel declares was printed in 1543, and which Florimond de Remond says appeared in 1556. Since then different individuals have assigned to it other dates. In 1654, Jean Baptiste Morin, a celebrated doctor and mathematician, wrote a letter under the name of Vincent Panurge, which he addressed to himself in this way, "An epistle to that most eminent physician, John Baptist Morin, concerning the 'Three Impostors'. [11]" The three impostors to whom he refers were Gassendi, Neure, and Bernier, whom he wished to satirize under this title. Christian Kortholt in 1680 employed the same terms in his work against Hebert, Hobbes, and Spinoza. Such has been the use which the learned have made of this work when they wrote against their opponents, and in this way have they drawn upon the credulity of comparatively ignorant people, who, caring little to examine the evidences, have been deceived at once. Is it possible, that if such a work had really existed, it would not have been refuted; just as they refuted the work concerning the Pre-Adamites, [12] written by M. de la Peyrere,--the discourses of Spinoza, and the publications of Bodin? The "Colloquium Heptaplomeres," although in manuscript, has been answered; would "The Three Impostors" have met with more favour? How comes it that it has not been condemned, and placed in the Index Expurgatorius, and how has it escaped cremation by the hands of the common hangman? Books against morality have been sometimes tolerated, but those which strongly attack Religion do not escape with impunity. Florimond de Remond, who says that he had seen the book, asserts that he was at that time a youth, old enough perhaps to write fairy tales; he quotes Ramus who had been dead for thirty years, and could not convict him of falsehood; he quotes Osius and Genebrard, but in in vague terms, and without pointing out the passage in their works. He says that they were circulating this work--a work which if it existed, would unquestionably have been put under lock and key. Our opponents may produce a passage from Sir Thomas Browne, who, in the 19th sec. part I. of his work styled "Religio Medici," translated from English into Latin by a distinguished scholar, uses the following words; "this impious man, the author of this blasphemous work, 'The Three Impostors,' although a stranger to every religion, inasmuch as he was neither a Jew, a Mahometan, nor a Christian, was nevertheless evidently not an Atheist. [13]" From this they would infer that he must have seen the book, when he speaks in such terms of its author. Now, Sir Thomas only says that Bernard Ochinus, who in his opinion was the author of the work, (as he hints in a foot note,) was more of a Deist than an Atheist, and that any Deist of ordinary average intellect and information, was capable of planning and executing such a design. Molikius, in a note upon the passage, denies and justly, that this work was written by Ochinus, for they assert that it was written in Latin, and we know that Ochinus never wrote but in Italian; moreover if he had been suspected of having any connection with this work, his enemies, who made so much clamour against his dialogues concerning the Trinity and Polygamy, would not have spared him. But how can we reconcile Browne and Genebrard who consider Ochinus as a Mahometan, and at the same time declare that he was neither a disciple of Moses, nor of Jesus Christ, nor of Mahomet! Naude, by a strange mistake attributes the work to Villeneuve, a comparatively ignorant writer, and Ernstius declares that at Rome he had learned from Campannelle, that Muret, a polished and accomplished author, had written the work more than two centuries after Villaneuve. Ernstius is mistaken. Campannelle also refutes himself, for in the preface to his work, "Atheism overthrown," and still more explicitly in his discourse, "Paganism indefensible," he affirms that this work came from Germany, but that it was the composition of Muret; a statement entirely opposite to that of Florimond de Remond alluded to before, which holds that the work was written in Germany but published elsewhere. Muret has therefore been falsely accused, and stands in need of no apology. They have judged of his religion from his life. The Huguenot party, vexed that after embracing their doctrines he had abandoned them forever, did not spare him on this occasion, and Beza, in his "Ecclesiastical History," reproaches him with two crimes, the second being Atheism. Julius Scaliger, nettled by a jeu d'esprit of Muret's against him, has been led to do him injustice [14]. "Muret," he says maliciously, "would have been a better Christian if he had believed in God; I am aware that he tried to persuade others to do so." In this way have originated false impressions against Muret. Instead of respecting his exemplary piety, of which he gave striking evidence in the last years of his existence, they set themselves half a century after his death, to blacken his character by accusing him of crimes which were unknown to his most avowed enemies, and with which, in his life-time, we are certain that he never was charged. Some ignorant writers who possess no critical acumen, have impeached without any reason whatever the first individual who occurred to their memory. Stephen Dolet of Orleans, Frances Pucci of Florence, John Milton of London, and Merula, a renegade Mahometan, have done so; they have accused Peter Aretin, merely because he was a fearless and licentious writer, without reflecting that he was an uncultivated man, of no learning and scarcely master of his native tongue. For similar reasons they have blamed Poggio and others, and have even gone so far back as Boccaccio, most likely on account of the third tale in his Decameron, where he recounts the fable of three similar rings, of which he makes a dangerous application to the Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan religions, as if insinuating that they might be embraced indifferently, since it was impossible to decide which of them ought to have the preference. Neither have these writers forgot Machiavel; and Decker impeaches Rabelais. The Dutchman also who translates into French the "Religio Medici" of Sir Thomas Browne, in the notes to his 20th chap. accuses Erasmus as well as Machiavel. With more apparent reason they attack both Pompanacius and Cardan. The former, in his treatise on the immortality of the soul, where he reasons as a philosopher and speaks abstractly of the Catholic faith--in which (at the end of his work) he solemnly professes himself a believer--is bold enough to add that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul had been propounded by the originators of every religious creed in order to keep their followers in thrall, and that therefore the majority of the human race had been duped. "If the Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan religions," he continues, "are all three of them impostures, it follows that the half of mankind are mistaken." This absurd reasoning, in spite of the precautions of Pompanacius, reached Jacques Carpentier, and induced him to exclaim, "Can any thing be conceived of more truly pernicious than this scepticism, coming as it does from a Christian school of theology. [15]" Cardan goes still farther wrong in the eleventh of his discourses "On Sophistry," where, after minutely comparing Paganism, Judaism, Christianity, and Mahometanism, and setting the one to contradict the other, without expressing belief in any of them, he finishes rashly in this way; "his igitur arbitrio victoriæ relictes," that is, he leaves it to chance to decide the victory; an expression however which he himself corrected in the second edition of his work.--This retraction did not save him from being most bitterly attacked three years afterward by Joseph Scaliger, on account of the fearful import of the language he had made use of, and of the indifference it showed on the part of Cardan as to which of the four parties might gain the victory, and as to whether that victory were gained by argument or arms. In the last article of the work "Naudiana," which is a rhapsodical compound of blunders and falsehood, there are some confused references to "The Three Impostors." The author asserts that Ramus had attributed it to Postel; nothing whatever can be found in the writings of Ramus to establish this. Postel was a singular visionary. Henry Stephanus relates that he had been heard to say, that out of the three religions, the Jewish, the Christian, and the Mahometan, a good one might be made. However, in no part of his work does he call in question the mission of Moses, or the divinity of Christ; neither does he venture to maintain in exact terms that the devout Venetian Hospitaller, whom he calls "his mother Jeanne," would be the Redeemer of women, as Christ had been the Redeemer of men. After explaining that in men there is a masculine part, the animus, and a feminine part, the anima, he has the absurdity to add that both parts were corrupted by sin and that "his mother Jeanne" might restore the feminine as Christ had restored the masculine. The book in which he utters this absurdity was printed at Paris in 1553, and is by no means so rare but that copies may easily be found. From it we can gather that he would have published the other works also, if it had been true that he had reached this pitch of blasphemy. So far from this being the case, he writes (1543) that the book was written by Michael Servetus; and long afterwards he does not scruple to avenge himself on his Huguenot calumniators, by accusing them, in a letter addressed to Masius, (1563) of having themselves printed the work at Caen: "this infamous commentary or discourse against Moses, Christ, and Mahomet, was lately printed at Cæn, by those who profess themselves the keenest supporters of the Calvinistic doctrines. [16]" In the same chapter of "Naudiana," mention is made of one Barnaud, but in terms so perplexed that little can be drawn from them except that he had seen an octavo work of 98 pages, printed in 1613, entitled "The Geneva Booby." It did not bear where it had been printed, neither was the author's name given. Perhaps it might have been written by Henri de Sponde, afterwards Bishop of Pamier; who says, that at that period there lived a physician named Barnaud an Arian, who had composed this treatise. Now this would make it of a comparatively recent date. The only sensible article in "Naudiana" is towards its conclusion, where Naude, a man of vast experience as a bibliologist, is made to declare that he had never seen the work alluded to, that he did not believe such a work had ever been printed, and that he considered every thing which had been said on this subject as mere invention and fable. To this list may be added that notable atheist Julius Cæsar Vanini, burned at Toulouse under the name of Lucilius Vaninus, who was accused of having circulated this vile work in France some years before he was put to death. If there are writers so credulous and devoid of common sense as to believe in these incoherencies, asserting that the book was publicly sold in many quarters of Europe, they ought to set the matter at rest by producing a single copy; for it cannot be in the case supposed, that the work is so rarely to be met with. But no person has seen a copy, neither of the edition said to have been published by Christian Wechel at Paris, about the middle of the 16th century, nor of that which they attribute to Nachtegal, as printed at the Hague, 1614 or 1615. Father Theophylus Reynaud states that the former had sunk into extreme poverty from the visitations of heaven; and Muller relates of the latter that he was banished from the Hague with infamy. Bayle in his dictionary (article Wechell) clearly refutes the calumny against this printer; and in regard to Nachtegal, Spizelius informs us that he was a native of Alkmaer, and banished, not for having published this suppositious work, but for having given utterance to other blasphemies. Now, when we look over with attention and patience what Vincent Placcius says in the folio edition of his immense work concerning "Anonymous writers, and authors who write under false names," and what Christian Kertholt says in his work revised by his son Sebastian regarding "The Three Impostors," and finally what Struvius advances in his treatise (1706) on "Learned Impostors," we can find nothing at all to prove that such a work ever existed; and it is astonishing that Struvius, who in spite of the most specious evidence which Tentzelius had offered him to prove its existence, had always maintained the contrary, was at last persuaded to believe that there really was such a work; and that too, for the most frivolous reason which it is possible to conceive. In the preface of "Atheism Overthrown," he discovers that the author of this work, in order to vindicate himself from the crime laid to his charge, declares that "The Three Impostors" had been published thirty years before he was born. This is a strange discovery, but it appeared so satisfactory to Struvius that he ceased to doubt in the existence of such a book, because he knew the year in which Campannelle was born (1568.) and knew also that the book was printed thirty years before this, viz. in 1538. Afterwards in pushing their researches farther, they resolved to consider Boccaccio as the author of the work, from a misinterpreted passage in Chap. 2, No. 6, in the "Atheism Overthrown" where the following words occur; "Hence Boccaccio in his impious fables, contends that there is no distinction between the law of Moses, of Christ and of Mahomet, because they are as like each other as the three similar rings. [17]" But does Campannelle, in this passage intend to say that Boccaccio was the author of "The Three Impostors?" So far is this from being the case, that he answers elsewhere the objections of the Atheists against Boccaccio and the book in question; and Struvius himself, in the 9th paragraph of his dissertation on "Learned Impostors" quotes a passage from Ernstius, which states that Campannelle had told him that the book was written by Muret; now Muret having been born in 1526, and the book been printed in 1538, he could only have been 12 years of age; at which time of life we cannot suppose it possible that he was able to write a work of this description. It follows therefore that this book, said to have been written in Latin and printed in Germany, never existed. At no period has there been a printed work, however rarely to be met with, in reference to which very authentic and circumstantial information could not be found. Although the works of Michael Servetus may never be met with, it has always been well known that they were printed, and moreover where they were printed. Before the publication of the two modern editions of the "Cymbalum Mundi," composed by Bonnaventure de Perrieres, writing under the assumed name of Thomas du Clevier, who says that he had translated it from the Latin, and of which work only two ancient copies remain, the one in the King's library and the other in that of M. Bigot at Rouen;--before the publication of the the modern editions, it was an ascertained fact that the work had been printed, and the date and name of the bookseller were known. The case is exactly the same as regards "The Blessings of Christianity, or the Scourge of the Faith," the author of which, Geoffrey Vallee a native of Orleans, was hanged and burned at Greve, on the 9th February 1573, after having adjured his errors. It is a small octavo work of thirty pages, without date, or the name of the place where it was printed; a trifle, feebly reasoned, and now become so rare that perhaps the copy belonging to Monsieur the Abbe d'Estrees is the only one to be found. But although all these works had absolutely perished, no one could doubt their previous existence, the facts on record concerning them being as true, as those concerning 'The Three Impostors' are apocryphal. ANSWER TO THE DISSERTATION OF MONSIEUR DE LA MONNOYE ON THE WORK ENTITLED "THE THREE IMPOSTORS." An attempt at discussion, which you will find at the end of the new edition of "Menagiana," which has just been published in this country, affords me the opportunity of giving some information to the public on a subject which appears to call into exercise the ingenuity of almost all the learned; and at the same time of vindicating the character of many eminent men, and men of distinguished merit, who have been attacked as the authors of the work which forms the subject of a disquisition attributed to M. de la Monnoye. Without doubt this new book is already in your possession; you will perceive that I allude to "The Three Impostors." The author of the dissertation upholds the non-existence of such a book, and attempts to establish his point by bringing forward conjectures, without advancing any evidence capable in the smallest degree of influencing the opinions of those who are accustomed to examine before they decide. I will not undertake to refute seriatim the articles contained in a dissertation, the substance of which is to be found in a Latin discourse by M. Burkhard Gotthelf Struve, on "Learned Impostors," printed for the second time at Geneva, by Muller in 1706, and which M. de la Monnoye must have seen, because he quotes from it. He will acknowledge that I am quite prepared to overturn his arguments, when I inform him that I have read this celebrated little work, and that I have it in my library. I will give you and the public an account of the way in which I discovered it, and as it is in my possession, I will subjoin a short but faithful description of it. Being at Frankfort on the Main in 1706, I called one day in company with a Jew, and a friend named Frecht, at that time a student in Theology, on an eminent bookseller in whose establishment almost every work was to be met with. We were examining his catalogue when there entered a German officer, who addressed himself to the proprietor in German, and asked him if he was ready to agree to his proposals, or if another merchant should be sought after. Frecht, who formerly was acquainted with the officer, saluted him and was recognised. This gave an opportunity to my friend of asking the officer, whose name was Trawsendorff, what transaction he had with the bookseller. Trawsendorff told him that he had two manuscripts and a very old book in his possession, by the sale of which he expected to raise a sum of money against the approaching campaign, and that the bookseller higgled on 50 Rix-dollars, being unwilling to advance more than 450 for the three works, which he, (the officer), valued at 500. This great sum of money demanded for two manuscripts and a little book excited the curiosity of Frecht, who asked of his friend if he might see the productions which he wished to sell at so dear a rate. Trawsendorff immediately drew from his pocket a parchment envelope, tied with a silk thread, which he opened, and from which he took the three books. We went into the parlour of the bookseller to examine them at our leisure, and the first which Frecht looked at had been printed, but had a title written in Italian instead of its real title, which had been defaced. It ran thus; "Spaccio della Bestia triumphante," and did not appear to be of an ancient date. It struck me as being the same work which Toland translated into English, and printed some years ago, and the copies of which sell very high. The second we looked at was an old Latin manuscript written in a character very difficult to decypher, without any title; but at the top of the first page there were written these words, "Fredric the Emperor wishes health to Otho, his most illustrious and dearest friend. [18]" The work opens with a letter, the first lines of which are as follows; "I will send you as soon as possible a copy of the work on the three most celebrated deceivers of mankind, a work written at my request by a very learned man, and transcribed by my order for my library; and along with it another work written in the same pure and polished style, for, &c." [19] The third was also a Latin manuscript without a title, commencing with a quotation from Cicero. Frecht having glanced over the books in a hurried way, fixed his attention upon the second, of which he had often heard, and in respect to which he had read many conflicting histories; and without looking into the other two, he took Trawsendorff aside and told him that he would easily find purchasers of the three works. He spoke little of the Italian work, and by reading a few passages he showed him that the other was a demonstration of Atheism. As the bookseller still held to his terms, and would not come up to the officer's demand, we went all three to the lodgings of Frecht, who having an object in view called for wine, and while begging Trawsendorff to inform us how he came by the works, he made him swallow so many bumpers that he soon became half intoxicated, so that Frecht had little difficulty in persuading him to leave with him the manuscript of "The Three most celebrated Deceivers of Mankind;" but he made him take a solemn oath that he would not copy it. On this condition, the work was to be left with us from Wednesday till Sunday night, when Trawsendorff was to call again and take his share of a few bottles of Frecht's wine, which seemed to be much to his taste. As I had quite as much desire as Frecht to be acquainted with the book, we sat down immediately to read it over, determining to sleep very little until Sunday night. It was not very large--an octavo work of ten sections, exclusive of the prefatory letter, but in so small a character, and so full of contractions, besides being without points, that we had much difficulty in decyphering the first page in two hours. After this however we read it more easily, which made me suggest to my friend a plan (rather Jesuitical) whereby he might obtain a copy of this celebrated work without breaking his oath which he had taken on compulsion;--that it was likely that Trawsendorff, when he insisted that it should not be copied, only meant that he should not transcribe the words--in short that we were quite at liberty to translate it. To which Frecht consented after some scruples, and we set to work immediately. On Sunday we were in possession of the work a little before midnight. Trawsendorff afterwards got his 500 rix-dollars for the work from a bookseller who had been commissioned by a Prince of the House of Saxe to purchase it. The Prince knew that it had been stolen from the Royal Library at Munich, when the Germans obtained possession of the city after the defeat of the French and Bavarians at Hochstet, and Trawsendorff acknowledged to us that, being alone in the library of the Elector, the parchment envelope with its yellow silk thread attracted his attention, and that he could not resist the temptation to steal it: expecting that it contained some rare production, in which he was not disappointed. To complete the history of this treatise, I will give you the conjectures which Frecht and I made as to its origin. We agreed at once that the "Illustrissimo Otho" to whom it was sent, was "Otho the Illustrious," Duke of Bavaria, son of Louis I. and grandson of "Otho the Great," Count of Schiven and Witelspach, to whom the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had given Bavaria as a reward for his fidelity, after he took it away from "Henry the Lion," as a punishment for his ingratitude. "Otho the Illustrious" succeeded his father Louis I., in 1230, under the reign of Fredrick II., grandson of Frederick Barbarossa, who had at that time quarrelled with the Count of Rome on his return from Jerusalem. This led us to think that the letters F. I. S. D. which followed the "Amico meo carissimo," denoted Fredericus Imperator Salutem Dicit, and that the treatise was written posterior to the year 1230, by the order of this Emperor, inflamed as he was against all Religions in consequence of the bad treatment he had met with from the head of his own, viz. Pope Gregory IX. by whom he had been excommunicated before he set out, and who persecuted him even in Syria by intriguing to such an extent, that the Emperor's army refused to obey his orders. This Prince on his return besieged the Pope at Rome, after having ravaged the neighboring territory, and thereafter made a peace with him which was of no long duration, and which was followed by an animosity so bitter between him and the Holy Pontiff, that it only ceased at the death of the latter, who died heart-broken that Frederick triumphed in spite of his empty fulminations, and that he had unmasked the vices of the Papal Chair in satirical verses which he circulated in every quarter,--in Germany, Italy, and France. But we could not discover who was the "doctissimus vir," with whom Otho appears to have held converse on the subject in the library, and apparently in the company of the Emperor; unless indeed it were the celebrated Pierre des Vignes, the secretary, or as others maintain, the chancellor of Frederick II. His discourse "On Sovereign Power," and his "Letters," give proof of his learning, and the zeal which he had for the interests of his master, and of his own hatred of Pope Gregory IX, and the Ecclesiastics and established Churches of his day. It is true, that in one letter he attempts to exculpate his master from the charges against him as the author of this book: but this strengthens the supposition, and inclines us to think he only pleaded for Frederick, to cloak his own share in so scandalous a work. At all events we must believe that he would have confessed the truth when Frederick, on suspicion that he had conspired against his life, condemned him to lose his eyes, and handed him over to the inhabitants of Pisa, his cruel enemies; and where despair hurried on his death in an infamous dungeon where he could hold intercourse with no one. In this way we can repel the false charges brought against Averroes, Boccaccio, Dolet, Aretino, Servetus, Ochinus, Postel, Pompanacius, Campannelle, Poggio, Pulci, Muret, Vanini, Milton, and many others; the book having been written by a learned man in high repute at the court of this Emperor, and by his order. As to the printing of the book they can bring forward no proof whatever; and it is impossible to conceive that Frederick, surrounded as he was by enemies, would have circulated a work which gave fair opportunity of proclaiming his infidelity. It is probable therefore that there are only two copies, the original one and that sent to Otho of Bavaria. This will suffice as to the discovery of the book, and its date; we come now to what it contains. It is divided into six books or chapters, every one of which contains several paragraphs. The first Chapter has for its title "Of God," and contains six paragraphs in which the author, wishing to appear free from party or educational prejudices, shows that although mankind have a real interest in ascertaining the truth, nevertheless they found upon opinions and imaginations alone; and meeting with people whose interest it is to keep them in this state, they are made to rest, contented in it, although they could easily shake off the yoke by making the slightest use of their reason. He passes next to the ideas which men entertain of the Divinity, and prove that they are injurious, inasmuch as they have led to the creation of the most fearful and imperfect being whom it is possible to conceive of; and he then blames the ignorance of the people, or rather their foolish credulity in putting faith in the visions of Prophets and Apostles, of whom he draws a portrait suited to the ideas which he entertains of them. The second Chapter treats of the reasons which have led men to believe in a divinity. It is divided into eleven paragraphs, where he proves that the ignorance of physical causes has given birth to a fear natural enough at the sight of a thousand terrible accidents, and has led them to believe in the existence of some invisible Power; a doubt, and a fear, of which subtle politicians have taken advantage, for their own interest, and which have given rise to a belief in this Existence, which has been confirmed by others who have found it for their own benefit to maintain it; although it is merely grounded on the folly of the common people, always admirers of the extraordinary, the sublime, and the marvellous. He next inquires into the nature of the Divinity, and overturns the vulgar belief in final causes, as contrary to sound philosophy. In fine, he makes it appear that such ideas of the Divinity are only formed after having decided what is perfect, good, evil, virtue, vice, according to imagination, and often as false as possible. In his tenth paragraph the author explains his own opinion as to the Divinity, which is conformable to the system of the Pantheists, saying that the word God represents an infinite Being, one of whose attributes is that he is of unlimited extension, and consequently that he is infinite and eternal. In the eleventh paragraph he treats with ridicule the popular opinion which is given to the Deity, a resemblance to the kings of the earth; and passing to the sacred books, he speaks of them in a very unfavourable manner. The third Chapter has for its title "The signification of the word Theology, and how, and for what purpose so many religions have been introduced into the world."--This chapter contains twenty-three paragraphs. In the ninth he examines the origin of religions; and brings forward examples and reasonings which, so far from being divine, are altogether the work of politicians. In the tenth paragraph he undertakes to expose the imposture of Moses, showing what he was, and how he managed to establish the Jewish religion. In the eleventh paragraph he inquires into the impostures of several politicians such as Numa, and Alexander the Great. In the twelfth he examines the birth of Jesus Christ; in the thirteenth and following he considers his morality, which he does not think more pure than that of a great number of ancient philosophers; in the nineteenth he inquires whether his reputation after his death is sufficient to warrant his believing in his divinity. Lastly, in the twenty-second and twenty-third paragraphs, he considers the imposture of Mahomet, of whom he does not say so much, because he has not to encounter so many advocates of his doctrine as that of the two others. The fourth Chapter treats of truth evident and obvious to the senses, and consists only of six paragraphs, where he demonstrates what really is the divinity, and what are his attributes: he rejects the belief in a life to come, and the existence of spirits. The fifth Chapter treats "Of the Soul." It consists of seven paragraphs in which, after having exposed the vulgar opinions, he gives those of the Philosophers of antiquity, and concludes by showing the nature of the Soul according to his own system. In the sixth and last Chapter of seven paragraphs, he discourses on the Spirits called Demons, and shows the origin and falsity of the opinions as to their existence.--Such is the anatomy of this celebrated work. I might have given it in a manner more extended and more minute; but besides that this letter is already too long, I think that enough has been said to give insight into the nature of its contents. A thousand other reasons which you will well enough understand, have prevented me from entering upon it to so great a length as I could have done; "Est modus in rebus. [20]" Now although this book were ready to be printed with the preface in which I have given its history, and its discovery, with some conjectures as to its origin, and a few remarks which may be placed at its conclusion, yet I do not believe that it will live to see the day when men will be compelled all at once to quit their opinions and their imaginations, as they have quited their syllogisms, their canons, and their other antiquated modes. As for me I will not expose myself to the Theological stylus [21], which I fear as much as Fra-Poulo feared the Roman stylus, to afford to a few learned men the pleasure of reading this little treatise; but neither will I be so superstitious, on my death bed, as to make it be thrown into the flames, which we are informed was done by Salvius, the Swedish ambassador at the peace of Munster. Those who come after me may do what seems them good--they cannot disturb me in the tomb. Before I descend to that, I remain with much respect, your most obedient servant, J. L. R. L. Leyden, 1st January 1716. [This letter was written by M. Pierre Frederick Arpe, of Kiel in Holstein; the author of an apology for Vanini, printed in octavo at Rotterdam, 1712] COPY OF THE SECOND PART, VOL. I, ARTICLE IX. OF, "LITERARY MEMOIRS." PUBLISHED AT THE HAGUE BY HENRY DU SAUZET, 1716. It is impossible in the present day to doubt the existence of "The Three Impostors," since we find several manuscript copies of it. If M. de la Monnoye had observed the agreement of it with an extract published at Leyden, 1st. Jan. 1716,--the same division into six chapters--the same titles, and the same subjects of which they treat, he would have exclaimed against the forgery of this work, improperly attributed to Pierre des Vignes, the Secretary and Chancellor of Frederick II. This judicious critic long ago observed the difference between the Gothic style of Pierre des Vignes in his Epistles, and that of the letter pretended to be addressed to the Duke of Bavaria, "Otho the illustrious," when they sent him the work. A more important point has not escaped the notice of the learned. This treatise is written and argued in the method and upon the principles of the New Philosophy, which was not introduced until about the middle of the seventeenth century, after Descartes, Gassendi, Bernier, and some others had explained its principles in a juster and clearer way than did the ancient philosophers, who wished to preserve their secrets, as they affected a mysterious obscurity in favor of the initiated. The author himself, in the fifteen chapter of his work, names Descartes, and combats the arguments of this great man on the subject of the soul. Neither Pierre des Vignes, nor any of those whom they have attempted to pass off as the author of this book, could have reasoned according to the principles of the new Philosophy, which was not introduced till after they had written. To whom then must the work be attributed? We must conclude that it cannot be of the same date as the short letter printed at Leyden, 1717. But another difficulty occurs. Tentzelius, who wrote in 1689, also gives an extract from this book upon the credit of a pretended ocular witness. But without attempting to fix the date of this book, which is said to have been composed in Latin and printed; the small French manuscript treatise, whether it had ever been written in that language or whether it is translated from the Latin, (which is difficult to believe,) cannot be of a very ancient date. This is not the only book composed under this title and upon the same subject. A man whose character and profession ought to have led him to engage in matters more decorous, composed a great work (in French) under the same title. In his preface he says that it is long since he had heard of "The Three Impostors," but that he had never found any part of it, whether there had never existed such a work, or whether it be lost; therefore he attempts to restore it by writing on the same subject. His work is very long, very wearisome, and very badly written; with little principles and less argument. It is a confused jumble of all the invectives and calumnies circulated against the Three Legislators. The manuscript was in two volumes folio, thick, and legible enough, although in small characters--the book is divided into a great many chapters. Another similar manuscript was found after the death of a nobleman. This gave rise to an attempt to seize the author who having been informed of it took care that nothing should be found among his papers to convict him. Afterwards he lived in a monastery under penance. In 1733 he recovered his liberty and enjoyed a revenue of 250 livres from the Abbey of St. Liquarie, in addition to a reserved one of 350 livres from his benefice. His name was Guillaume, Cure of Fresne-sur-Berny, and the brother of a labourer in the Netherlands. He was at one time Regent of the College of Montaigu; in his youth he had been a dragoon, and then he became a Capuchin. CONTENTS OF TREATISE. CHAP. I. Of God. The false ideas which men have formed of the Divinity. Instead of consulting reason and common sense, they have had the weakness to believe in the opinions, reveries, and visions of parties whose interest it was to deceive them, and to keep them in ignorance and superstition. CHAP. II. On the reasons which have led men to believe in a Divinity. From the ignorance as to physical causes, and the terror produced by accidents, rational enough but extraordinary or fearful, has arisen the belief in some invisible power; a belief, of which Politicians and Impostors have not failed to take advantage. Enquiry into the nature of God. Belief in final causes refuted as contrary to sound Natural Philosophy. CHAP. III. On the meaning of the word Theology. How, and for what purpose, so many Religions have been introduced into the world. All Religions the work of Politicians. Method which Moses took to establish the Jewish Religion. Enquiry into the Nativity of Jesus Christ. His Politics--his Morality--and his Reputation after his death. Artifices of Mahomet to established his Religion. Success of this impostor greater than that of Christ. CHAP. IV. Truth evident and obvious to the senses. Idea of an universal Being. Attributes ascribed to him in all religious systems, generally incompatible with his essence, and unsuited to the nature of man. Notion of a life to come and of the existence of Spirits, combated and rejected. CHAP. V. On the Soul. Different opinions of the Ancient Philosophers on the nature of the Soul. Arguments of Descartes refuted. Author's exposition on the subject. CHAP. VI. On the Spirits named Demons. Origin and falsity of the opinions as to their existence. A TREATISE ON THE THREE IMPOSTORS. CHAP. I.--OF GOD. § 1. Although it is important that all men should know the truth, there are nevertheless few who enjoy this advantage; some are incapable of finding it out unassisted, and others will not put themselves to the trouble. It is not to be wondered at therefore, if the world is filled with vain and absurd opinions; and nothing is more adapted to spread them than ignorance, which is the sole originator of the false ideas which prevail as to the Divinity, the Soul, the existence of Spirits, and almost all the other subjects which go to make up Theology. Custom is powerful--men rest contented in the prejudices of their birth, and leave the care of the most essential matters to interested parties, who make it a rule to uphold with bigotry the received opinions, and who dare not overturn them lest in so doing they should destroy themselves. § 2. What renders the evil without remedy is this, that, after having established these false ideas of the Divinity, they neglect no plan to compel the people to believe in them, without permitting any one to examine for himself. On the contrary, they have excited a hatred against philosophers--the truly learned, lest the doctrines which they would teach should lead to the exposure of those errors in which they have plunged mankind. The advocates of these foolish notions have succeeded so well, that it is dangerous to combat them. It is too much the interest of those impostors that the people be ignorant, to permit them to become enlightened. Thus the truth must either be kept in abeyance, or its promoters be prepared to be sacrificed at the shrine of a false philosophy, and to suffer from the rage of grovelling and interested minds. § 3. If the people could understand into what an abyss they are sunk by ignorance, they would speedily shake off the yoke of their unworthy leaders, for it is impossible not to discover the truth when reason is left to its unrestrained exercise. These deceivers are so well aware of this, that to prevent the good effects which Truth would infallibly produce, they have painted it as a monster incapable of giving rise to any virtuous sentiment; although, in general terms, they condemn unreasonable people, they would nevertheless be much disconcerted if the truth were heard. Thus these sworn enemies to common sense are perpetually falling into contradictions, and it is difficult to discover at what they are aiming. If it be true that reason is the only light which men ought to follow, and if the people are not so incapable of judging as they wish us to believe, it ought to be the object of those who instruct them to endeavour to rectify the false reasonings, and to uproot their prejudices; then their eyes would be gradually opened and their minds convinced that the Deity is by no means what is generally supposed. § 4. To attain this, there is no need for lofty speculations, nor for penetrating far into the mysteries of nature. It requires only a little common sense to perceive that the Deity is neither choleric nor jealous; that justice and mercy are alike falsely considered as his attributes; and that, all that the Prophets and Apostles have said give us no information either as to his nature, or to his essence. In short to speak plainly and to put the matter on its proper footing, it will be allowed that these teachers were neither more able nor better instructed than the rest of mankind; so far from that being the case, what they advance regarding the Deity is so gross that the people must be altogether ignorant to credit it. Although this is apparent enough we will attempt to explain it more at length, by inquiring, if there is any evidence that the Prophets and Apostles were differently constituted from other men. § 5. It is agreed, that as far as descent, and the common duties of life are implicated, they possessed no quality to mark them out from the rest of mankind. They were begotten by men, they were born of women, and they sustained themselves as we do in the present day. In reference to their minds, people would have us believe that God dealt with these prophets in a way differing from that wherein he deals with ordinary mortals, and that he disclosed himself to them in a manner quite exclusive. Many persons consider this matter as a proved and ascertained fact, without reflecting that every man may meet his counterpart, and that we have one common origin; endeavouring at the same time to persuade us that these men were cast in no common mould and that they were selected by the Deity to proclaim his oracles. Now, apart from the consideration that these inspired people were gifted with only an average intellect, and with an understanding not much above the common, what do we find in their writings to justify us in forming so exalted an opinion of them? The matter of which they treat is for the most part so obscure that no one can comprehend it, and thrown together with so little order that it is easy to perceive they did not understand it themselves; the whole showing that they were both knaves and fools. Their impudence in boasting that whatever they announced to the people came immediately from God, gave rise to the respect which was paid to them. This assertion on their part was equally absurd and ridiculous, seeing that according to their own declaration God only spoke to them in dreams. There is nothing more natural than that a man should dream; but a man must be very impudent, very vain, and very stupid, to say that God speaks to him in this manner, and a poor and credulous fool must he be who should yield credence to such an assertion, and receive the dreams of such visionaries for heavenly oracles. Suppose for a moment that the Deity were to hold intercourse with a man by dreams, or visions, or in any other way we can think of; nobody is obliged to believe this on the mere assertion of a fellow-creature equally subject to error with himself, and moreover, fallible in the way of lying and imposture. Accordingly we find that under the ancient law, the prophets were held in far less repute than they are at the present day. When people got wearied of their babble, which often only tended to spread revolt and to turn aside subjects from obedience to their sovereigns, they silenced them by punishment. Jesus Christ himself did not escape chastisement, for he had not, like Moses [22], an army at his back to defend his opinions. Add to this, that the prophets were so much accustomed to contradict each other, that out of four hundred of them not one true or truth-speaking man could be found. [23] Moreover it is certain that the drift of their prophesies, like that of the laws promulgated by the most celebrated legislators, was to immortalize their memory by persuading people that they had conferences with the Divinity. The most subtle politicians have invariably played the same game, although this ruse has not succeeded with every one as it did with Moses. § 6. This being settled, let us examine for a little the idea which the Prophets have formed of the Deity. According to their account, God is a being purely corporeal. Michael saw him seated; Daniel beheld him clothed in white, and under the form of an Old Man; Ezekiel perceived him as a Fire: so much for the Old Testament. With respect to the New, the disciples of Jesus Christ imagined that they saw him in the form of a Dove; the Apostles, like Tongues of Fire; and finally, St. Paul beheld him as a Light, which dazzled and blinded him. Then as to their contradictory statements; in the Book of Genesis [24] we are informed that man is the master of his own actions, and that it only depends upon himself to do what is right. St. Paul on the other hand asserts that man has no control over his evil propensities without the particular grace of God. Samuel [25] declares that the Deity repented of the evil which he had brought on men: and Jeremiah [26] affirms that he repented, or on certain conditions that he would repent, of the good which he had done them. Such are the false and contradictory ideas which those pretenders to inspiration give us of the divinity; and which they wish us to adopt without reflecting that they represent the Deity as a sensitive Being, material, and subject to like passions with ourselves. Next they inform us that God has nothing in common with matter, and that his nature is altogether incomprehensible by us. It would be important to learn how these manifest and irrational contradictions can be reconciled; and whether we ought to put much faith in the evidence of a people who, in spite of the sermons of Moses, were stupid enough to believe that a calf was their God! Without dwelling on the reveries of a people cradled in bondage and brought up in absurdity, it is sufficient to remark, that ignorance has produced a belief in all the impostures and errors which prevail amongst us at the present day. CHAP. II. ON THE REASONS WHICH HAVE LED MANKIND TO BELIEVE IN A DIVINITY. § 1. Those who are ignorant of physical causes have a natural fear [27], proceeding from a restlessness in their minds, as to whether there exists a Being or an Agency invisible to them, who has the power to injure them or to do them good. Hence the tendency which they have to feign unseen causes, which are only the phantoms of their imagination--whom they deprecate in adversity and thank in prosperity. They make Gods of them for this purpose; and this chimerical fear of invisible Powers is the source of those Religions which every one forms after his own fashion. Those whose interest it is that the people should rest contentedly fettered by such reveries, have fostered their spread--have founded laws upon them--and finally reduced the people by the terrors of futurity to a blind obedience. § 2. The origin of the Gods being discovered, men next imagined that they resembled themselves, and that they invariably acted with a certain end in view. Thus they unanimously said and believed, that God only works for man's behoof; and reciprocally, that man is only created for God. This prejudice is general even in the present day, and when we reflect on the influence which it must necessarily have on the manners and opinions of men we may clearly perceive that from it have arisen those false ideas which men have formed to themselves, of good and evil, of merit and demerit, of praise and blame, of order and confusion, of beauty and deformity, and a thousand other similar matters. § 3. It must be agreed that all men are in a state of profound ignorance at their birth, and that their only natural wish is to seek that which is pleasant and profitable to them.--Hence it follows, 1st, That they believe it sufficient for them that they are free, and that they feel within themselves the power of volition and desire, without troubling themselves as to the causes which effect this volition and this desire; because they know them not. 2dly, As men only aim at one object when they prefer it to all others, they sought to ascertain the final causes of their actions, imagining that after these were discovered there would be little room for doubt; and as they found within themselves and without themselves abundant means of arriving at the end proposed--the eye constructed for vision, the ear for hearing; a sun above them to give them light and heat; they concluded that there was nothing in nature which was not made for them and which they could not enjoy and dispose of; but as they well knew that they were not the creators of these things, they thought that they were justified in imagining a Supreme Being, the author of all; in one word they conceived that everything in existence was the work of one, or of more Divinities. On the other hand, the nature of the Gods whom men acknowledged being unknown to them, they believed that they were susceptible of like passions with themselves; and as the natural dispositions of men are different, every one rendered to his Divinity a worship according to his fancy, with the view of drawing down his blessings, and making universal nature subservient to his own desires. § 4. In this manner prejudice was changed into superstition. It was rooted in such a way that the most ignorant people believed themselves capable of explaining the doctrine of final causes, as if they had an entire knowledge of them.--Thus, instead of proving that Nature did nothing in vain, they imagined that God and Nature thought after the manner of men. Experience taught them that an infinite number of calamities disturbed the pleasures of life--storms, earthquakes, plagues, hunger, thirst, &c. They attributed all these evils to divine wrath, and believed that the Deity was irritated against mankind for their offences; nor could the daily occurring examples which prove that good and evil happen alike to the just and unjust, disabuse them of their prejudices. This error prevailed, because they found it easier to remain in their natural ignorance, than to divest themselves of notions established for so many ages; and to adopt something in their stead, having at least the appearance of truth. § 5. This prejudice conducted them straightway to another, which was, that all the judgments of God were incomprehensible; and that consequently they were beyond the cognizance of truth, and above the strength of human reason; a mistake which would have existed at the present day, if mathematical knowledge, natural philosophy, and other sciences had not extinguished it. § 6. There is no necessity for a long dissertation to prove that nature never aims at any definite end, and that all these final causes are only human fictions. It is sufficient to show that this doctrine deprives the Deity of all the perfections which have been attributed to him; and this we will endeavor to do. If God acts for an end, either for himself or for any other being, he desires that which he does not possess; and it must be granted from these premises that, as there was a time when God had no object for which to act, he wished to have one; that is to say, that he stood in need of something. But not to overlook anything which may strengthen the arguments of those who maintain the opposite opinion, suppose, for a moment, that a stone detached from a battlement fell upon an individual and killed him; it proves, say our opponents, that this stone fell for the purpose of killing this person, because it could not so have happened unless God had wished it. If we reply that it was the wind which caused its fall at the time when the unfortunate individual was passing, they demand at once, how it happened that he was passing exactly at the time when the wind brought down the stone. We answer, that he was on his way to dine with a friend who had invited him; they wish to know why his friend had invited him on that day rather than on any other. They put in this manner an infinitude of absurd questions to force you to confess that the will of God alone (which is the refuge of the ignorant) was the real cause of the fall of this stone. When they examine the structure of the human body, they fall into ecstacies; but because they are ignorant of the causes of those effects which appear to them so marvellous, they conclude that it must be a supernatural effect, when the causes which are known to us account for it. This is the reason why the man who wishes deeply to examine the works of creation, and like a true philosopher to penetrate into their natural causes, irrespective of those prejudices which ignorance has created, is branded as an infidel, or speedily clamoured down by the malice of those whom the vulgar acknowledge as the interpreters of Nature and of the Gods. These mercenary spirits are well aware that the ignorance which holds the people in wonderment, is that which gives them bread, and upholds their credit. § 7. Men being thus imbued with the ridiculous opinion that every thing which they behold is created for themselves, have made it a point of religion to engross every thing, and to judge of its value by the profit which it brings. Accordingly they have invented notions which do them service in explaining the nature of things, and enable them to judge of good and evil, order and disorder, heat and cold, beauty and ugliness, &c. which are by no means what they imagine. Because they are able to frame their ideas in this way, they think that they are in a position to judge of praise and blame; of good and evil. They call that good which respects their divine worship, and turns to their own profit; and that which does neither the one nor the other they denominate evil; and because the ignorant are incapable of judging, and have no conception of any thing save through the medium of their imagination, which they mistake for judgment, they tell us that nothing can be learned from nature, and forthwith invent a particular arrangement of the world. In short they think that matters are ill or well constituted according to the facility or the difficulty which they have in conceiving of them when presented to them through the medium of their senses. People are best pleased with what gives least fatigue to the brain. These individuals have wisely resolved to prefer order to confusion, as if order were any thing else than a pure fiction of the imagination. Thus to say that the Deity has made every thing with order, is to pretend that it is in favour of the human imagination that he has created the world in a manner the most easy for it to form a conception of;--or, which is the same thing, that they know with certainty all the relations and all the designs of whatever exists; an assertion too absurd to merit any serious refutation. § 8. With respect to their other opinions, they are purely the result of this same imagination, having no basis in reality, and being only different modifications of which that faculty is susceptible. Thus, when the impressions made upon the nervous system through the medium of the eyes are agreeable, they pronounce that the objects viewed are beautiful. Smells are good or bad; tastes are sweet or bitter, things touched are hard or soft, according as the sensation produced is unpleasant or otherwise--as scents, and tastes, and contact, and sounds affect the system. Following up these ideas, men have believed that the Deity is pleased with melody, while others have believed that all the movements of the celestial bodies were one harmonious concert; a proof, that these men are persuaded that things are really such as they conceive them to be, or that the world is entirely ideal.--It is not to be wondered at therefore, if we scarcely ever meet with two individuals of the same opinion: indeed some make it their boast to doubt of every thing; for, although all men have a similar bodily conformation, and resemble each other in many respects, there are still as many respects in which they differ. Accordingly it must follow, that what pleases this party displeases that; and what appears good to one man appears evil to another.--We must conclude therefore, that their various opinions must be attributed to their different organizations and the diversity of their co-existences--that reason has little connection with them; and in short, that their conceptions of the material world are the decided results of imagination. § 9. It is therefore evident, that all the reasonings which the generality of mankind are accustomed to employ when they set themselves to explain what nature is, are only their own modes of imagining that which is most uncalculated to make good their own position. They give names to their ideas, as if they existed in any other quarter than in their own prejudiced brain; but instead of calling them mere chimeras, they designate them Beings. There is extremely little difficulty in refuting the arguments grounded on such opinions. If it is true, as they advance, that the universe is nothing more than an emanation from, or simply a necessary consequence to, the Divine nature, whence spring those imperfections and defaults which we perceive in it? This objection is easily answered. It is impossible for men to judge of the perfection or imperfection of any Being, without a thorough knowledge of his nature and essence [28], and it is a strange abuse of terms to assert that any thing is more or less perfect according as it pleases or displeases, or as it is useful or noxious to human nature. To terminate the argument with those who demand why God has not created all men good and happy, it is sufficient to state that every thing is necessarily what it is; and that, in nature there is no imperfection, since all flows from the necessity of things. § 10. This being established, if it is asked, "What then is God?" I answer that the word imports that universal Being "in whom," as St. Paul says, "we live, and move, and have our being. [29]" This opinion conveys no unworthy notions of the Divinity, for if all things are in God, all things must necessarily flow from his essence, and consequently be of such essence as he himself; for it is impossible to conceive that beings entirely material should be maintained and comprehended in a Being who is not so. This opinion is not new. Tertullian, one of the most learned of the Christian fathers, maintained in his discourse against Appelles, that whatever is not corporeal is nothing; and in that against Praxeas that every Existence is a body. He adds, "who will deny that God is a body, although God is a Spirit [30]?" It is of importance to observe that this doctrine was not condemned in any of the four first OEcumenical or General Councils of the Christian Church. [31] § 11. These ideas are clear and simple, and the only ones which an unbiased mind can form of God. However, there are few contented with this simplicity. A gross people accustomed to the gratification of their senses, have conceived that God resembles the kings of the earth. That pomp and splendor which surround the latter have dazzled them so much, that to uproot the idea that God has no resemblance whatever to earthly sovereigns, would be to deprive them of the hope of meeting celestial courtiers, and of enjoying in their company, the same pleasures which they had tasted at regal courts; it would take from them the only consolation which keeps them from despair amidst the miseries of this life. They assert that God must be a just and avenging Being who punishes and recompenses--they represent him as susceptible of every human passion--they depict him with feet, with hands, with eyes and with ears, and yet maintain that he is an immaterial Being. They quote Scripture to prove that man is chief of God's works below, and formed in his own image; and deny that the copy has the slightest resemblance to the original. In short, the God of the people in the present day, as represented by themselves, is subject to more transformations than the Pagan Jupiter. What is still more strange is this, that the more these opinions contradict each other and outrage common sense, the more are they revered by the vulgar, who uphold with bigotry whatever their prophets have enounced, although these visionaries only held the same place among the Hebrews, as did the augurs and soothsayers amongst the pagans. They consult the Bible as if God and Nature had explained it to them exclusively, although it is only a tissue of fragments gathered together at various periods, and by different persons, and published under the censorship of the Rabbis. [32] These, at their pleasure, decided as to what ought to be approved of, and what, rejected; according as they found it agreeable or opposed to the law of Moses. Such is the malice and the folly of mankind. They spend their lives in quibbles, and persist in reverencing a book which has scarcely more arrangement than the Alcoran of Mahomet--a book which from its obscurity nobody understands, and which has only served to foment divisions. The Jew and Christians love far better to consult this legerdemain book, than to listen to that which God, that is to say Nature (inasmuch as it is the origin of all things) has written on their hearts. All other laws are merely human figments--palpable illusions set abroad, not by demons or evil spirits, which are the creations of the fancy, but by the policy of princes, and the craft of priests. The former have striven in this way to add weight to their authority; and the latter have been contented to enrich themselves by the sale of an infinitude of chimerical notions, which they vend at a dear rate to their ignorant followers. No other code of laws which has followed that of Moses, except the Christian, has been based upon that Bible the original of which could never be discovered, which relates to things supernatural and impossible, and which speaks of rewards and punishments for actions good or bad, but wisely postpones them till an after life, lest the imposture should be detected; for no one has ever returned from the grave. Thus the people, kept always fluctuating between hope and fear, are held in bondage by the belief that God has created mankind for no other purpose than that of rendering them eternally happy or everlastingly miserable. This is the origin of the vast number of religions which prevail in the world. CHAP. III. ON THE MEANING OF THE WORD RELIGION; HOW, AND FOR WHAT PURPOSE, SO MANY RELIGIONS HAVE BEEN INTRODUCED INTO THE WORLD. § 1. Before the term Religion was introduced into the world, mankind followed the law of Nature, that is, they lived conformably to Reason. Instinct was the only bond by which men were united; and this bond, simple as it is, was so strong that divisions were rare. But after terror led them to suspect that there were Gods and invisible Powers, they built altars to the imaginary beings, and shaking off the yoke of reason and of Nature, they bended themselves by foolish ceremonies, and by a superstitious worship of the idle phantoms which themselves had imagined. Such was the origin of the word Religion, which has made so much noise in the world. After having admitted the existence of these invisible Agencies, men worshipped them to depreciate their anger, and moreover they believed that nature was under the control of these Powers. Afterwards they came to regard themselves as inert matter, or as slaves who could only act under the commands of these imaginary beings. This false idea having obtained possession of their minds, they began to exhibit more contempt for nature, and more respect for those whom they called their Gods. Hence sprung that ignorance in which so many nations were immersed--an ignorance from which, however profound, the true philosophers might have freed them, if they had not been always thwarted by those who led the blind, and throve by their own impostures. Now, although there were little appearance of success in our undertaking, we must not forsake the cause of truth. A generous mind will speak of things as they really are, out of regard to those who exhibit symptoms of this malady. The truth, whatever its nature may be, can never be injurious; whereas error, although at the time apparently innocent and even useful, must finally terminate in the most disastrous results. § 2. Terror having thus created the Gods, men wished to ascertain their nature, and conceiving that they must be of the same substance as the Soul, which they thought was like the appearances in a mirror, or the phantoms of sleep, they believed that their Gods were real substances, but so thin and subtle that to distinguish them from Bodies they named them Spirits; although Bodies and Spirits are in truth one and the same thing, for it is impossible to imagine an incorporeal Spirit. Every spirit has its proper shape, which is inclosed in some body; that is, it has its limits, and consequently it is a body, however subtle its nature. [33] § 3. The ignorant, that is the majority of mankind, having thus determined the nature and substance of their Gods, endeavoured next to discover the means by which these invisible agents acted; and unable to arrive at this because of their ignorance, they had recourse to their own conjectures, judging blindly of the future from the past. How is it possible to draw rational conclusions from any thing which has formerly happened in a certain way, as to what will happen hereafter, seeing that all the circumstances and all the causes which necessarily influence events and human actions, are so exceedingly different. They persisted however in contemplating the past, and they augured well or ill as to the future, according as any former similar undertaking had been successful or otherwise. On this principle, because Phormis had defeated the Lacedemonians at the battle of Naupactus, the Athenians, after his death appointed another commander of the same name. Hannibal having been conquered by Scipio Africanus, the Romans, on account of his success, sent to the same province, Scipio Cæsar, who was unsuccessful both against the Greeks [34] and the native forces. Thus have many nations, after two or three experiments, only attributed their bad or good fortune to places, to objects, and to names. Others employed certain words which they denominated spells, which they considered efficacious enough to make trees speak, to create a man or a God from a morsel of bread, and in short to metamorphose whatever appeared before their eyes. [35] § 4. The empire of these invisible powers being now established, men at first did homage to them as their sovereigns, by marks of submission and respect; by gifts, prayers, &c. I say, at first, for nature does not enjoin bloody sacrifices for this purpose; these were only instituted for the subsistence of priests, and others set apart for the services of these imaginary Gods. § 5. These originators of Religion, viz. Hope and Fear, aided by the different opinions and passions of men, have given rise to a vast number of phantastical creeds, which have been the cause of so much mischief and of so many revolutions among the nations. The honor and the revenues attached to the priesthood, or to the ministers of the Gods, have encouraged the ambition and avarice of cunning men who knew how to profit by the stupidity of the vulgar, whom they have got so much entangled in their snares that they have led them insensibly into the habit of loving a lie and hating the truth. § 6. A system of falsehood being established, ambitious men, intoxicated with the pleasure of being elevated above their fellow mortals, attempted to add to their reputation by feigning that they were the friends of those invisible Beings whom the common people so much feared. The better to succeed in this every one represented them after his fashion, and they all took the liberty of multiplying them to an extent almost incredible. § 7. The rude unformed matter of the world was called the God Chaos. In the same way they deified the Heavens, the Earth, the Sea, Fire, the Winds and Planets. The same honor was conferred on men and women; birds, reptiles, the crocodile, the calf, the dog, the lamb, the serpent and the swine, in fact, all sorts of plants and animals were worshipped. Every river, every fountain, bore the name of some deity; every house had its lares and penates, and every man his genius--all was filled above and below the earth with Gods, Spirits, Shadows, and Demons. Neither was it enough to feign divinities in every imaginable place. They outrage in the same way, Time, the Day, the Night, Victory, Strife, Honor, Virtue, Health, and Sickness. They invented these Divinities that they might represent them as ready to take vengeance on those who would not be brought up in temples and at altars. Lastly, they took to worshipping their own Genii; some invoked theirs under the name of the Muses, while others, under that of Fortune, worshipped their own ignorance. Some sanctioned their licentiousness under the name of Cupid, their wrath under that of the Furies, their natural parts under the name of Priapus; in one word there was nothing to which they did not give the name of a God or a Demon. § 8. The founders of these Religions, knowing well that their impostures were based upon the ignorance of the people, took care to keep them in it by the adoration of images in which they feigned that the Divinities resided. This rained gold into the coffers of the priesthood, and their benefices were considered as sacred things because they belonged to holy ministers; no one having the rashness or audacity to aspire to them. The better to deceive mankind, the priests pretended to be divinely inspired Prophets, capable of penetrating the mysteries of futurity, boasting that they had intercourse with the Gods; and, as the desire is natural to learn one's destiny, they by no means failed to take advantage of it. Some were established at Delos, others at Delphi, and in various places, where in ambiguous language they answered the questions put to them. Even women took a part in these impostures, and the Romans in their greatest difficulties consulted the Sybilline books. These knaves were really considered inspired. Those who feigned that they had familiar commerce with the dead were called Necromancers; others pretended to ascertain the future from the flight of birds or the entrails of beasts; in short they could draw a good or bad augury from almost every thing, the eyes, the hands, the countenance, or any extraordinary object. So true it is that ignorance will receive any impression, when men know how to take advantage of it. [36] § 9. The ambitious, who have always been great masters in the art of deceiving, have followed this method in promulgating their laws; and to induce mankind to give a voluntary submission to them, they have persuaded them that they received them from some God or Goddess. However great the multitude of Divinities, amongst those who worshipped them, and who were denominated Pagans, there was never any generally established system of religion. Every republic, every kingdom, every city, and every individual had their own proper rites, and conceived of the Divinity after their own phantasy. But afterwards there arose legislatures more subtle than the former, and who employed more skilful and sure plans in giving forth the laws, the worship, and the ceremonies calculated to nourish that fanaticism which it was their object to establish. Amongst a great number, Asia has produced THREE, distinguished as much by their laws and the worship which they established, as by the ideas which they have given of the Divinity, and the methods which they employed to confirm these ideas, and to render their laws sacred.--Moses was the most ancient. After him Jesus Christ appeared, who wrought upon his plan and kept the fundamental portion of his laws, but abolished the remainder. Mahomet, who appeared the last upon the scene, borrowed from each of the Religions in order to compose his own, and thereafter declared himself the sworn enemy of both.--We shall consider the character of the three legislators, and examine their conduct, that afterwards we may be enabled to decide whose opinions are best grounded--those who reverence them as inspired men, or those who regard them as impostors. § 10. MOSES. The celebrated Moses, a grandson of a distinguished Magician, [37] (according to Justin Martyr) possessed every advantage calculated to render him that which he finally became. It is well known that the Hebrews, of whom he became the chief, were a nation of shepherds whom Pharaoh Osiris I. admitted into his kingdom in gratitude for the services which one of them had rendered during a period of severe famine. He assigned them a territory in the East of Egypt, rich in pasturage, and admirably adapted for the rearing of cattle; where, during two centuries, they very much increased in numbers, either, that being regarded as strangers they were not liable to military service, or on account of the other privileges which Osiris had conferred upon them. Many natives of the country joined themselves to them, among others, bands of Arabs who regarded them as brethren and of the same origin. However this may be, they multiplied so exceedingly, that the land of Goshen being unable to contain them, they spread over all the land of Egypt; giving just occasion to Pharaoh to dread that they would undertake some dangerous enterprise if his kingdom were attacked by the Ethiopians, his inveterate enemies, as had frequently happened. Reasons of state, therefore, compelled this monarch to take away their privileges, and to devise some means of weakening them and keeping them in subjection. Pharaoh Orus, surnamed Busirus on account of his cruelty, succeeded Memnon, and followed up his plans with respect to the Hebrews; and wishing to eternalize his memory by building the Pyramids, and fortifying the walls of Thebes, condemned the Hebrews to the task of making bricks, for which purpose the earth of that country was well adapted. During their bondage the celebrated Moses was born, the same year in which the king commanded that all the male Hebrew children should be thrown into the Nile, as the surest method of ridding his country from this host of strangers. Moses was in this way exposed to perish in the waters, his mother having placed him in a wicker basket among the willows on the banks of the stream. It happened that Thesmutis, the daughter of the king, was walking by the river, when, hearing the cries of the infant, that compassion so natural to her sex, inspired her with a wish to save it. Orus being dead she succeeded him, and Moses having been presented to her she commanded that he should receive the highest instruction which could be procured, as a son of the Queen of a people at that time the most learned and civilized in the world. "He was learned in all the learning of the Egyptians." This implies that he was the ablest Politician, the greatest philosopher, and the most distinguished Magician of his time; and besides, it is very evident that he had been initiated into the Egyptian Priesthood, which resembled those of the Druids among the Gauls. Those who are ignorant of the nature of the Egyptian government, must learn that the whole territory was subject to one sole sovereign, but that it was divided into many provinces of but limited extent. The governors of these provinces were designated Monarchs, and were generally of the powerful order of the Priesthood, which in fact possessed almost the third part of Egypt. The king nominated these Monarchs; and if we compare what others have written concerning Moses, and what he has written himself, we must conclude that he was Monarch of the Province of Goshen, and that he owed his appointment to Thesmutis, to whom also he owed his life. Such was the status of Moses amongst the Egyptians, where he had full time and every opportunity of studying their manners and those of his own nation, and of obtaining a knowledge of their dominant inclinations and passions; a knowledge, of which he failed not to avail himself in that revolution of which he was the originator. After the death of Thesmutis, her successor renewed the persecution against the Hebrews, and Moses having fallen from the honor in which he had been formerly held, was afraid that he would find it difficult to justify a homicide of which he had been guilty. He accordingly resolved on flight, and retired into Arabia Petrea. Chance led him to the house of the chief of some native tribe, to whom he rendered so many services, and by whom his talents were so highly appreciated that he gave him one of his daughters in marriage. It must here be remarked that Moses was so little of a Jew, and had so limited a conception of the Deity whom he afterwards imagined, that he married an idolatress, and did not even think of circumcising his children. It was in the Arabian deserts, when watching the flocks of his father-in-law, that he formed the design of taking vengeance upon the King of Egypt for the injuries he had met with. He flattered himself that he would easily succeed in this, as well on account of his own talents, as from the feeling which he knew was general amongst those of his own nation, irritated against the government on account of the cruel treatment which they had experienced. It appears from the history which he has left us of this revolution, or at all events, from the history which the author of the books attributed to Moses, has left us, that Jethro, his father-in-law, was in the plot, as were Aaron his brother, and sister Marion, who remained in Egypt, and with whom, no doubt, he maintained a correspondence. However that may be, we perceive from the result, that he had with the utmost policy schemed out a great design; and that he knew how to bring to bear against the Egyptians that learning which he had acquired amongst them. I allude to magic, in the exhibition of which he showed himself more subtle and expert than all those who attempted the same tricks at the court of Pharaoh. It was by these pretended prodigies that he gained over those of his nation whom he wished to carry off, and to whom disaffected and revolutionary Egyptians, Ethiopians and Arabs joined themselves. By boasting the power of his Divinity, and the frequent communions which he had with him; and by declaring that he had his sanction for all the steps which he took with the leaders of the revolution, he succeeded so well that there followed him 600,000 fighting men, besides women and children, across the Arabian deserts, of which he well knew the localities. After six days painful flight, he ordained to his followers that they should consecrate the seventh day to his God by a general and public rest, for the purpose of persuading them that the Deity favored him and approved of his authority; and to deter any one from having the audacity to dispute his statements. There never existed a more ignorant people than the Hebrews, nor consequently more credulous. To be assured of this we have only to look to their condition in Egypt when Moses caused them to revolt. They were detested by the Egyptians on account of their profession as shepherds, they were persecuted by the sovereign, and employed in the most degrading toil. Amongst a people thus situated it could not be very difficult for a man with the abilities of Moses to exercise a vast influence. He persuaded them that his God, (whom he sometimes merely styles an angel), the God of their fathers, had appeared to him--that it was at his command that he had taken them under his guidance--and that they would be a people highly favored of the Deity, provided they believed in him. The expert employment of deceit, and his knowledge of science, and of human nature, fortified his injunctions; and he strengthened his position by prodigies, which are always sure to make a deep impression on the minds of an imbecile populace. It must here be attended to with especial care, that he thought he had discovered a sure method of keeping the Hebrews in subjection to himself, by persuading them that God himself was their conductor--that he preceded them by night as a pillar of fire, and by day as a cloud. It can be proved that this is perhaps a more gross deceit on the part of this leader than any he had ever practised. During his sojourn in Arabia, he had learned that, as the country was of vast extent and uninhabited, it was the custom of those who travelled in caravans to take guides, who conducted them under night by means of a brasier filled with burning wood, the flame of which they followed; and the smoke of which by day equally prevented the parties of the caravan from straggling. Moses took advantage of this and proclaimed it miraculous, adducing it as an evidence of divine protection. No person is called upon to regard this as cheat, on my authority; let them believe Moses himself, who in the book of Numbers, chap, x, v. 31, is represented as beseeching his brother-in-law Habab to journey with the Israelites and show them the way, because he knew the country. [38] This is proof positive. If it were really God who went before the people of Israel by night and by day, as a pillar of cloud and of fire, could they have desired a better guide? Notwithstanding here is this leader entreating his brother-in-law in the most urgent manner to act as his guide; the pillar of cloud and fire, it would seem, being only a God for the people and not for Moses. The unfortunate dupes being delighted to find themselves adopted by the chief of the Gods on their escape from a cruel bondage, cheerfully put faith in Moses, and swore to obey him blindly. His authority being confirmed, he wished to render it perpetual; and under the specious pretext of establishing the worship of that God whose Viceregent he said he was, he appointed at once his brother and his sons to high authority in the Royal Palace, that is the place whence he thought proper to give forth his oracles; this place being altogether out of the view of the people. Lastly he practised that which is always done at the formation of new institutions; that is, he exhibited prodigies, miracles, whereby some were dazzled, and others confounded, but which only excited pity in those who could see through his impostures. However crafty Moses might have been, he would have had considerable difficulty in securing obedience, without the aid of his armed followers. An impostor without physical force rarely succeeds. But in spite of the great number of dupes who submitted themselves blindly to the will of this clever legislator, there were found people bold enough to reproach him for bad faith; declaring that, under false appearances of justice and equality, he had engrossed the whole--that the sovereign authority was confined to his own family, who had no more right to it than any other individuals--and that he was less the father than the tyrant of his people. But on these occasions Moses, with profound policy, put to death those daring spirits and spared no one who disputed his authority. It was by similar precautions, and by always declaring that his punishments were instances of divine vengeance, that he reigned an absolute despot; and to end as he had begun--that is to say, as a knave and an impostor--he was in the habit of retiring to a cave, which he had caused to be dug in the centre of a waste, under the pretext of having conferences with the Divinity, that he might secure in this way the respect and submission of his followers. His end was like that of other similar impostors. He cast himself from a precipice which he knew of in the remote wilderness, to the end that his body might not be discovered, and that it might be thought the Deity had carried him off. He was not ignorant that the memory of the patriarchs which had preceded him was held in great veneration, although they knew their sepulchres; but this was not enough for an ambition like his--it was necessary that he should be revered as a god, over whom death had no control. This is the explanation of what he said at the commencement of his reign, when he said that God had declared that he was to be a God unto his brother. [39] Elijah in like manner, and Romulus, [40] and Zamolxis, and all those who have had the foolish vanity to wish to eternalize their names, have concealed the time and manner of their death, in order that they might be thought immortal. § 11. But to return to the legislators. There have never been any who did not assert that their laws did not emanate from some divinities [41], and who have not attempted to persuade their followers that they themselves were more than mortal. Numa Pompilius, after having tasted the sweets of retirement, was with difficulty persuaded to leave them, although it was to fill the throne of Romulus; but compelled by the acclamations of the people, he profited by the devotedness of the Romans, and insinuated to them that if they really wished him to be their king, they must be prepared to obey him without enquiry, and to observe religiously the laws and divine institutions which had been communicated to him by the goddess Egeria. [42] Alexander the Great had? no less vanity. Not content with seeing himself master of the world, he wished to persuade mankind that he was the son of Jupiter. Perseus pretended also to have derived his origin from the same god and the virgin Danae. Plato also insisted on a virgin nativity, regarding Apollo as his father. There have been many other personages who have been guilty of the same absurdity. No doubt all these great men believed in the opinion of the Egyptians, who maintained that the Spirit of God was capable of having intercourse with the female sex, and rendering them pregnant. § 12. JESUS CHRIST. Jesus Christ, who was acquainted with the maxims and the science of the Egyptians, gave currency to the belief alluded to above, because he thought it suitable to his purposes. Reflecting how Moses had become renowned by his command of an ignorant people, he undertook to build on this foundation, and got some few imbecile people to follow him, whom he persuaded that the Holy Ghost was his father, and that his mother was a virgin. These simple folks, accustomed to give themselves over to dreams and reveries, adopted his opinions, and believed whatever he wished: indeed, something considerably beyond this miraculous birth would by no means have been too miraculous for them. A beautiful dove overshadowed a virgin: there is nothing surprising in that. It happened frequently in Lydia; and the swan of Leda is the counterpart of the dove of Mary. [43] That a man should be born of a virgin, by the operation of the Holy Spirit, is neither more extraordinary nor more miraculous that that Genghis Khan should be born of a virgin, as the Tartars assert; or that Foh, according to the Chinese belief, derived his origin from a virgin rendered pregnant by the rays of the sun. This prodigy appeared at a time when the Jews, wearied with their God as they had formerly been with their Judges, [44] were desirous to have some visible ruler among them, as was the case with other nations. As the number of fools is infinite, Jesus Christ in a short time had many followers; but as his extreme poverty was an invincible obstacle to his elevation, the Pharisees--at one time his admirers, and at another time startled at his boldness--forwarded or thwarted his interests, according to the inconstant humour of the populace. The report of his divine origin was spread about; but without forces, as he was, it was impossible that he could succeed, although some cures which he performed, and some resurrections from the dead to which he pretended, brought him somewhat into repute. Without money or arms he could not fail to perish: if he had been in possession of these, he would have been no less successful than Moses or Mahomet, and all those who, with like advantages, have elevated themselves above their fellow-men. If he had been more unfortunate, he would not have been less adroit; and several traits in his history prove that the principal defect in his policy was his carelessness in not sufficiently providing for his own security. Otherwise, I do not find that his plans were less skilfully devised than those of the other two: at all events his law has become the rule of faith to people who flatter themselves that they are the wisest in the world. § 13. ON THE POLITICS OF JESUS CHRIST. Can anything be more subtle than the answer of Jesus concerning the woman taken in adultery? The Jews having demanded of him if they should stone her, instead of answering the question directly--a negative answer being directly contrary to the law, and an affirmative convicting him of severity and cruelty, which would have alienated their minds from him--instead, therefore, of replying as an ordinary individual would have done on the occasion--"Let him," said he, "who is without sin amongst you cast the first stone at her." [45] A shrewd reply, and one evincing great presence of mind. On another occasion, being shown a piece of money with the emperor's image and superscription upon it, and asked if it were lawful to pay tribute money unto Cæsar, he eluded the difficulty of answering: "Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's." [46] The false position in which they wished to place him was this: that if he denied that it was lawful, he was guilty of high treason; and if he said that it was, he went directly against the law of Moses, which he always protested that he never intended to do--knowing no doubt that he was too helpless to do so with impunity at that time. Afterwards, when he became more celebrated, he endeavoured to abrogate it almost totally: acting in this way not unlike those princes, who, until their power is thoroughly established, always promise to confirm the privileges of their subjects, but who, after that has been secured, care little for their promises. When the Pharisees asked him by what authority he taught the people and preached to them, he penetrated their intention--which was to convict him of falsehood; whether he answered that it was by human authority--he not being of the order of the priesthood, who alone were charged with the instruction of the people; or whether he preached by the express orders of God--his own doctrine being opposed to the law of Moses; he avoided their snare, and embarrassed themselves, by asking them in what name John baptised. [47] The Pharisees, who from political motives, rejected the baptism of John, would have condemned themselves if they had said that it was in the name of God; and if they had not said so, they would have exposed themselves to the rage of the populace, who maintained the opposite opinion. To get out of this dilemma, they answered that they could not tell: on which Jesus Christ replied, that neither was he obliged to tell them by what name or authority he taught the people. § 14. Such was the character of the destroyer of the ancient law, and the founder of the new religion that was built upon its ruins; in which religion a disinterested mind can perceive nothing more divine than in any of those which preceded it. Its founder, who was not altogether ignorant, having witnessed extreme corruption in the Jewish republic, judged that its end was near, and thought it a favorable opportunity for forwarding his own designs. The fear of being anticipated by men more able than himself, made him hasten to secure his ground by means entirely opposite to those adopted by Moses. The former began by rendering himself terrible to other nations. Jesus Christ, on the contrary, attracted mankind to himself by the hope of blessings in a life beyond the grave, which he said they would obtain by believing in him. Whilst Moses only promised temporal benefits to the observers of his law, Jesus Christ led his followers to hope for those which would never end. The laws of the one only regarded exterior observances; those of the other looked into the heart, influenced the thoughts, and stood on opposite grounds to the law of Moses. Whence it follows, that Jesus Christ believed with Aristotle, that it is the same with religion and nations as with individuals who are born and who die; and as there is nothing which is not subject to dissolution, there is no law which must not in turn give place to another. [48] But as there is difficulty in passing from one law to another, and as the greater part of men are stubborn in religious matters, Jesus Christ, in imitation of other innovators, had recourse to miracles, which have at all times confounded the ignorant, and advanced the projects of ambitious and designing men. § 15. Christianity having been founded in this way, Jesus Christ wisely imagined that he could profit by the errors in the politics of Moses, and render his new law eternal--an undertaking in which he finally succeeded a little perhaps beyond his expectation. The Hebrew prophets intended to do honour to Moses, by predicting a successor who should resemble him--a Messiah great in virtues, powerful in wealth, and terrible to his enemies. These prophecies, however, produced altogether a different effect from what they expected; a number of ambitious demagogues having embraced the opportunity of palming themselves off for the coming Messiah, which led to those insurrections and civil convulsions which lasted until the entire destruction of the ancient republic of the Hebrews. Jesus Christ, more subtle than the prophets who succeeded Moses, predicted that a man of this description would appear--the great enemy of God--the favorite of the demons--the aggregation of all the vices and the cause of all the desolation in the world. After such a splendid eulogy, one would think that nobody could resist the temptation of calling himself Antichrist; and I do not believe that it is possible to discover a secret equal to it for eternalizing a law, although there can be nothing more fabulous than what we read of concerning this pretended Antichrist. St. Paul says that he was a ready born; whence it follows that he must have been on the watch for the coming of Jesus Christ: nevertheless, more than sixteen years rolled on after the prediction of the nativity of this formidable personage, without any one having heard of his appearance. I acknowledge that some have applied the terms to Ebion and Cerinthus, two great adversaries of Jesus Christ, whose pretended divinity they disputed. But if this interpretation be the meaning of the Apostle, which is far from being credible, the words referred to must point out a host of Antichrists in all ages--it being impossible that truly learned men should think of injuring the cause of truth, by declaring that the history of Jesus Christ was a contemptible fable, [49] and that his law was nothing but a series of dreams and reveries, which ignorance had brought in repute, which self-interest had encouraged, and which tyranny had taken under its especial protection. § 16. They pretend, nevertheless, that a religion built upon so weak foundations is divine and supernatural, as if it were not an ascertained fact that there is no class of people more fitted to give currency to the most absurd opinions than women and lunatics. It is not to be wondered at that Jesus Christ reckoned none of the learned amongst his followers. He well knew that his law was inconsistent with common sense; and therefore he always declaimed against the sages, excluding them from that kingdom into which he admitted the poor in spirit, the simple and the imbecile. Rational minds ought to be thankful that they have nothing to do with such insanities. § 17. ON THE MORALITY OF JESUS CHRIST. We find nothing more divine in the morality of Jesus Christ than what can be drawn from the works of ancient authors; for this reason, perhaps every text in his code of morals is either borrowed from their's or is an imitation of it. St. Augustine [50] acknowledges that in one of the so-called heathen writers, he discovered the whole of the commencement of the gospel according to St. John. We must remark also, that this apostle was so much accustomed to plunder others, that he has not scrupled to pillage from the prophets their enigmas and visions, for the purpose of composing his Apocalypse. Again, whence arises that agreement between the doctrines of the Old and New Testament and those of Plato, unless the Rabbis and others who composed the Jewish Scriptures had stolen from that distinguished man. The account of the creation of the world given in his Timaeus, is much more satisfactory than that recorded in the book of Genesis; and it will not do to say that Plato, in his tour through Egypt, had read the books of the Jews, since, by the confession of St. Augustine, king Ptolemy had not ordered them to be translated till long after the philosopher had left the country. The landscape which Socrates describes to Simias (Phæton,) possesses infinitely more beauty than the Paradise of Eden: and the fable of the Hermaphrodites [51] is beyond comparison a better invention than that which we read of in Genesis, where we are told that one of Adam's ribs was taken from him for the purpose of creating a female out of it. Can any more plausible account of the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah be given, than that it was caused by Phaeton? Is there no resemblance between the fall of Lucifer and that of Vulcan, or of the giants struck down by the thunderbolts of Jove. How close the resemblance between Sampson and Hercules; Elijah and Phaeton; Joseph and Hypolitus; Nebuchadnezzar and Lycaon; Tantalus and the rich man in torment; [52] the manna in the wilderness and the ambrosia of the gods! St. Augustine, [53] St. Cyril, and Theophilactus, compare Jonah with Hercules, called Trinoctius, because he had been three days and three nights in the belly of a whale. The river which Daniel speaks of in chap. vii, v. 10, of his Prophecies, is palpably drawn from that Pyriphlegethon to which Plato alludes in his dialogue on the immortality of the soul. The idea of "Original Sin" is taken from the account of Pandora's box; and the interrupted sacrifices of Isaac and of Jephtha's daughter are borrowed from that Iphigenia, in whose room a hind was offered up. What we read of concerning Lot and his wife, is nearly the same as that which fabulous history informs us occurred to Bancis and Philemon. The histories of Perseus and of Bellerophon are the foundation of Michael and the demon whom he vanquished. In short, it is abundantly manifest that the authors of the Scriptures have copied the works of Hesiod, Homer, and some other ancient writers, almost word for word. § 18. With respect to Jesus Christ himself, Celsus, by appealing to his opponent Origen, shows that he had taken some of his most approved apothegms from Plato--Such as this: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." [54] It was owing to the sect of the Pharisees, to which he belonged, that his followers believed in the immortality of the soul, the resurrection, and the torments of hell; and also in the greater part of his morality, [55] the whole of which I find in Epictetus, Epicures, and a few others. This last mentioned philosopher was referred to by St. Jerome, as a man whose virtues ought to put the best Christians to the blush; and whose mode of life was so temperate that a morsel of cheese, with bread and water constituted his highest repast. Leading a life so frugal, this philosopher, heathen as he was, declared that it was far better to be unfortunate and gifted with reason, than to be rich and opulent without it; adding, that wealth and wisdom were rarely found united in the same individual, and that it was impossible to enjoy happiness or contentment unless our conduct were guided by prudence, justice and honesty, which are the qualities whence flow all true and lasting enjoyments. As to Epictetus, I do not believe that there ever existed a man, not even excepting Jesus Christ, more firm, more self-denying, more equable, or who at any time gave forth to the world a more sublime system of morality. Were it not that I should exceed the limits which I have prescribed to myself in this treatise, I could recount many beautiful traits in his character; but the reader must be contented with one example. When a slave to Epaphroditus, a captain of Nero's guards, his master took the brutal fancy to writhe his limbs, Epictetus, perceiving that it gave the monster satisfaction, said with a smile, that he saw clearly that the joke would not end until he had broken one of them, which happened accordingly. The philosopher with the same equanimity and the same smile, merely said, "Did I not tell you that you would certainly break the limb?" Where is there on record another instance of like firmness? How would Jesus Christ have acted in the circumstances?--he who wept and trembled at the least alarm, and who in his last moments exhibited a pusillanimity altogether contemptible, and which was never shown by the martyrs for his faith. If the work which Arian wrote concerning the life and death of our philosopher had been preserved, I have no doubt that we would have been in possession of many more examples of his equanimity than we have at present. I know that the priests will speak of the example which I have instanced, as they speak of the virtues of philosophic minds in general, and assert that it is based on vanity, and that it is by no means what it appears to be; but I know also, that those people are accustomed to speak ex cathedra whatever suits their purpose and to think they sufficiently earn the money which is given them for instructing the people, by declaiming against every man who knows what sober reason and real virtue are. Nothing in the world can be less in congruity with the actions of these superstitious men who decry them, than the manner of the truly learned. The former, having studied for no other end than to obtain a place to give them bread, become vain, and congratulate themselves when they have obtained it, as if they had arrived at the state of perfection; whereas it is nothing else to them than a state of idleness, pride, voluptuousness, and licentiousness,--a condition in which the great majority of them hold in no respect whatever the maxims of that religion which they profess. But we will leave these men, who have not the remotest conception of real virtue, and examine the evidences for the divinity of their master. § 19. Having considered the politics and the morality of Jesus Christ, wherein we find nothing so useful or so sublime as we find in the writings of the ancients, let us now consider if the reputation which he acquired after his death be a proof of his divinity. The generality of mankind are so much accustomed to what is irrational, that it is astonishing to find people endeavouring to draw a rational inference from their conduct. Experience teaches us that they are always running after shadows, and that they neither do nor say anything betokening common sense. These fanatical notions on which they found their belief will always be in vogue, in spite of the efforts of the learned who have invariably set themselves against them. So rooted are their follies that they had rather be crammed with them to repletion than make any effort to be rid of them. It was to no purpose that Moses boasted that he was the interpreter of God, and attempted to prove his mission and his authority by extraordinary signs. If he absented himself for a short time (as he did occasionally, to hold conference with the Divinity, by his account, and as in like manner did Numa Pompilius and many other legislators), it was only to find on his return strong traces of the worship of the gods whom the Hebrew people had seen in Egypt. It was in vain that he had led them for forty years through the desert, that they might lose recollection of the divinities which they had left behind. They had not forgot them, and they always wished for some visible symbol to precede them, which, if they had got, they would have worshipped obstinately, at the risk of being exposed to extreme cruelty. The pride-inspired contempt alone which led them to the hatred of other nations, made them insensibly forget the gods of Egypt, and attach themselves to that of Moses. They worshipped him for some time with all the outward observance of the law; but with that inconstancy which leads the vulgar to run after novelty, they deserted him at last to follow the God of Jesus Christ. § 20. The most ignorant alone of the Hebrews followed Moses--such also were they who ran after Jesus Christ; and their name being legion, and as they mutually supported each other, it is not to be wondered at if this new system of error was widely circulated. The teaching of these novelties was not without danger to those who undertook the task, but the enthusiasm which they excited extinguished every fear. Thus, the disciples of Christ, miserable as they were in his train, and even dying of hunger--(as we learn from the necessity under which they were, together with their leader, of plucking the ears of corn in the fields to sustain their lives)--these disciples never despaired till they saw their master in the hands of his executioners, and totally incapable of gifting them with that wealth, and power, and grandeur, which he had led them to expect. After his death, his disciples being frustrated in their fondest hopes, made a virtue of necessity. Banished as they were from every place, and persecuted by the Jews, who were eager to treat them as they had treated their master, they wandered into the neighboring countries; in which, on the evidence of some women, they set forth the resurrection of Christ, his divinity, and the other fables wherewith the gospels are filled. It was their want of success among the Jewish people which led to the resolution of seeking their fortune among the Gentiles; but as a little more knowledge than they possessed was necessary for the accomplishment of their design--the Gentiles being philosophically trained, and consequently too much the friends of truth and reason to be duped by trifles--the sectaries of Jesus gained over to their cause a young man [56] of ardent temperament and active habits, somewhat better instructed than the illiterate fishermen of Galilee, and more capable of drawing audiences to listen to his talk. He being warned from heaven (miraculously of course), leagued himself with them, and drew over some partizans by the threat of "fabled hell," (a plagiarism from the ancient poets), and by the hope of the joys of paradise, into which blessed abode he was impudent enough to assert that he had at one time been introduced. These disciples then, by strength of delusion and lying, procured for their master the honor of passing for a god--an honor at which, in his life-time, Jesus could never have arrived. His destiny was no better than that of Homer, nor even so good; inasmuch as seven cities which had despised and starved the latter in his lifetime, struggled and fought with each other, in order to ascertain to which was due the merit of having given him birth. § 21. It may be judged now, from what has been advanced, that Christianity, like every other religion, is only a complicated imposture--the success and progress of which would astonish the inventors themselves, could they revisit this world. Without bewildering ourselves, however, in a labyrinth of error and contradiction, such as we have alluded to, we go to Mahomet, who founded his law on maxims entirely opposite to those of Jesus Christ. § 22. MAHOMET. Scarcely had the disciples of Jesus Christ torn down the Mosaic fabric for the purpose of establishing Christianity, when men, led by force of circumstances, and influenced by their usual inconstancy, followed the new legislator, who had elevated himself by means similar, as far as possible, to those which Moses employed. Like the Jewish lawgiver, Christ usurped the title of prophet, and ambassador of God; like him he pretended to perform miracles, and took advantage of the passions of the multitude. He soon found himself escorted by an ignorant populace, to whom he explained the new oracles of heaven. These miserably misled people, from the promises and fables of this new impostor, spread his renown far and wide, as having eclipsed all his predecessors. Mahomet, on the contrary, was a man who did not appear at all competent to lay the foundation of an empire. He was distinguished neither as a politician nor a philosopher: he could neither read nor write. [57] At first he exhibited so little firmness, that he was frequently upon the point of abandoning his enterprise; and he would have done so, had it not been for the address of one his followers. When he was rising into celebrity, Corais, a powerful Arab chief, being irritated that a man of yesterday should have the boldness to mislead the people, declared himself his enemy, and attempted to thwart his designs; but the people, believing that Mahomet had continued intercourse with God and his angels, supported him till he had an opportunity of being avenged upon his adversary. The tribe of Corais was worsted; and Mahomet seeing himself surrounded by a host of fanatics, thought that he stood in no need of a coadjutor. However, lest Corais should expose his impostures, he took the initiative; and to make sure, he loaded him with promises, and swore that he only wished to become great in order to share with him that power, to the establishment of which he might so much contribute. "We can agree," said he, "when we reach our proper elevation; we can depend, in the meantime, on that great multitude whom we have gained over, and it only remains that we make sure of them by the employment of that artifice which you have so happily invented." At the same time he persuaded him to descend into the Cave of Oracles. This was a dried-up sunk well, from the bottom of which Corais spoke, in order that the people might believe that it was the voice of God declaring himself in favour of Mahomet who was in the midst of his proselytes. Deceived by the blandishments of the leader, his associate regularly descended into the well, to counterfeit the oracle. Whilst Mahomet was passing one day at the head of an infatuated multitude, they heard a voice, which said--"I am your God, and I declare that Mahomet is the prophet whom I have appointed for all nations; he will instruct you in my law of truth, which the Jews and Christians have altered." For a long time the accomplice played this game; but at last he met with the blackest ingratitude. The voice being heard, as usual, proclaiming him an inspired personage, Mahomet turned to the people, and commanded them, in the name of that God who had recognised him as his prophet, to fill up the well with stones, that it might be an enduring witness in his favour, like that pillar which Jacob set up to mark the place where God had appeared to him. [58] Thus perished, miserably, the chief who had most contributed to the elevation of Mahomet. It was upon this heap of stones that the last of the three most celebrated impostors established his religion, and so solid and stable is its foundation, that after the lapse of twelve hundred years there is little appearance at present of its being overthrown. § 23. In this way was the power of Mahomet established; and he was more fortunate than Jesus, inasmuch as he lived to see the wide diffusion of his doctrines, which Christ on account of his want of resources, was unable to do. He was even more fortunate in this respect than Moses, who from excess of ambition brought himself to a premature end.--Mahomet died in peace, and loaded with blessings. He had, moreover, a well-grounded hope that his religion would last, because it was accommodated to the nature of a people born and brought up in ignorance; an adaptation in which men more learned than himself, but less accustomed to associate with the lower orders, might have entirely failed. The reader is now in possession of the most remarkable facts concerning the three most celebrated legislators, whose religions have brought into subjection a great part of the human race. They were such as we have represented them; and it is for you to consider if they are worthy of your respect, and if you are justified in allowing yourselves to be led by those whom ambition alone conducted to power, and whose dreams have been perpetuated by ignorance. The following observations, if read with a free and unprejudiced mind, may lead to the discovery of truth, by clearing away those mists wherewith you have been blinded and beguiled. CHAPTER IV. TRUTHS EVIDENT AND OBVIOUS TO THE SENSES. § 1. Moses, Jesus Christ, and Mahomet, being such as we have represented them, it is evident that it would be useless to search in their writings for a new idea of the Divinity. The conferences of Moses and Mahomet with the Deity, and the miraculous conception of Jesus Christ, are the greatest impostures that have ever met the face of day, and you must shun their contemplation as you love the truth. § 2. God, as we have seen, being only Nature, or in other words the combination of all beings, all properties, and all energies, is necessarily the cause from which emanates every thing, and of course not distinct or different from its effects. He cannot be termed good, nor evil, nor just, nor merciful nor jealous: these attributes belong only to mankind. The Deity therefore can neither punish nor reward. The opposite idea may lead aside the ignorant, who, conceiving the Divinity to be an uncompounded essence, represent him to themselves under images altogether unsuited to his nature. Those alone who exercise their judgment without confounding its operations with those of their imaginative faculty, and who have sufficient strength of mind to cast away the prejudices of infancy, can form a clear and distinct conception of the subject. They regard him as the author of every being, producing them without distinction, and giving no preference to one over another, and whose power is such that he created man with as much ease as he did the meanest worm, or the humblest plant. § 3. We must therefore believe that this universal Being whom we generally name God, takes no greater care of a man than of an ant, nor pays more attention to a lion than to a stone; neither regards the beauty or deformity, good or evil, perfection or imperfection. He cares not to be praised, beseeched, sought alter, or flattered; he is not affected by what men say or do; he is not susceptible of love or hatred: [59] in one word he is not more occupied with man than he is with the rest of the other creatures, whatever may be their nature. All these distinctions are merely the inventions of a limited understanding: they originate in ignorance, and self-interest keeps them up. § 4. Thus, therefore, no rational man can believe in God, nor in hell, nor in spirits, nor in devils, in the sense in which the terms are generally understood. These big words have only been coined to intimidate and blind the vulgar. Those who wish to convince themselves of this truth would do well to devote particular attention to what follows, and accustom themselves to suspend their judgment until after mature reflection. § 5. The infinity of stars which we see above us has not escaped the fictions of presumptive credulity. Amongst the glittering hosts, there is one said to have been set apart for the celestial court, where God holds regal state in the midst of his courtiers. This place is the residence of the blessed, wither the souls of the virtuous are conveyed after leaving the body. We need not dwell upon an opinion so frivolous and so contradictory to common sense. It is well enough ascertained that what we denominate the heavens is merely a continuation of the air which surrounds us--a fluid through which the other planets move, like the earth which we inhabit, unsustained and unconnected with any solid mass whatever. § 6. The priests having, like the pagans with their Gods and goddesses, invented a heaven, where God and the blessed might dwell; after the same example next they contrived a hell, or subterranean place, to which, they assure us, the spirits of wicked men go down for the purpose of being everlastingly tormented. Now, the word hell, in its original sense, imports no more than a place dark and deep; and the poets invented it as the opposite to the residence of the blessed, which they represented as high and bright. This is the exact signification of the Latin terms inferus and inferi, and the Greek hades; any dark place such as a sepulchre, or whatever was fearful from its depth and obscurity. The whole sprung from the imagination of the poet and the knavery of the priests--the former knowing how to make an impression in this way, on weak, timid, and melancholy minds; and the latter having rather more substantial reasons for continuing the delusion. CHAP. V.--ON THE SOUL. § 1. This is rather a more delicate subject to handle than the last which we had occasion to treat of, viz: Heaven and Hell. For the reader's sake, therefore, it must be treated at greater length; but before defining it, an exposition of the opinions of the most celebrated philosophers is necessary, which will be given in a few words, in order that the reader may be the better enabled to carry it along with him. § 2. Their opinions are exceedingly varied. Some have pretended that the soul is a spirit or immaterial essence; others have maintained that it is a part of the Divinity; others assert that it is the concord of all parts of the body; and some uphold that it is the most subtle part of the blood, separated into the brain, and thence distributed through the nervous system. If this is established, the soul must take its origin from the heart which creates it; and the place where it exercises its noblest functions must be the brain, as that organ is the most purified from the grosser parts of the blood. Such are a few of the different opinions which have been given to the world in regard to the soul. The better to develop them, we shall divide them into two classes. In the one will be found the statements of those philosophers who considered the soul as material; and in the other those of the opposite party, who maintained the doctrine of its immateriality. § 3. Pythagoras and Plato have both maintained the doctrine that the soul was immaterial in its nature; that is, a being existing without aid from the body, and capable of action uncontrolled by any thing corporeal. They hold that all the individual spirits of animals were emanations from the universal Soul of the World, and that these off-givings were incorporeal, immortal, and of the same nature as the pervading Essence itself. They illustrated their doctrine well, by the analogy of a thousand little lights which are all of the same nature as the great flame at which they were kindled. § 4. These philosophers believed that the universe was animated by an immaterial Essence, immortal and invisible, knowing everything, and acting always; and which is the cause of every movement, and the origin of all spirits, these being merely emanations from it. Then, as spirits are very subtle, they cannot unite (they observe) unless they can find a body subtle as the light, or as that expanded air which the vulgar take for heaven. They therefore assume a body less subtle, then another somewhat gross; and thus by degrees they come to be enabled to unite themselves to the bodies of animals, into which they descend as into dungeons or sepulchres. The death of the body, according to them, is the life of the soul, which was in a manner buried, and could only in a feeble way exercise its noblest functions. At the death of the body, the soul shakes off materiality, comes forth of its prison-house, and unites itself to the Soul of the World from which it emanated. According to this opinion then, all the spirits of animals are of the same nature; and the diversity of their functions and faculties arises solely from the difference of the bodies into which they descend. Aristotle supposes an universal intelligence, acting on particular intelligences, as light acts upon the eye; and that as light renders objects visible, so does this universal intelligence render the others intelligent. This philosopher defines the soul as that whereby we live, feel, think, and move; but he is unsatisfactory as to the nature of that Being which is the source of its noblest functions. It is needless, therefore, to search in his writings for a solution of the difficulties which exist upon this subject. Dicearchus, Asclepiades, and Galienus, have also, to a certain extent, believed that the soul was immaterial, but in a different way from that already alluded to. They suppose that the soul is nothing else than the harmony of all the parts of the body: that is, the result of an exact blending of its elements and disposition of its parts, its humours, and its essences. Thus, they say, as health is not a part of that which is healthy, although it is connected with it, so neither is the soul a part of the animal, although it be within it, but simply the harmony of all those parts which go to form the containing body. On these opinions we must, remark, that their defenders believe in the immateriality of the soul on self-contradictory principles; for to maintain that, the soul is not a body, but merely something inseparably attached to a body, is to say that it is corporeal. We not only term that corporeal which is a body, but everything which has form and accident, and which cannot be separated from matter. Such are the opinions of those philosophers who maintain that the soul is incorporeal or immaterial. We see that they are discordant and contradictory to each other, and consequently little to be heeded as points of faith. We now come to the opposite party, who have upheld the doctrine of its materiality. § 5. Diogenes believed that the soul was composed of air, whence he deduces the necessity of respiration. He defines it as an air which passes through the mouth into the pulmonary vessels, whence it becomes warm, and whence it is distributed to every part of the system. Leucippus and Democritus assert that it is fire, and that, like fire, it is composed of atoms which readily penetrate all parts of the body, and communicate motion to it. Hippocrates said that it was composed of water and of fire. Empedocles thought that it was compounded of the four elements. Epicurus believed with Democritus that the soul is composed of fire, but he adds that there enter into its composition, air, a vapour, and an indescribable substance, which is the principle of thought. Out of these four different substances he makes to himself a very subtle spirit, pervading all the body, and which, he says, we ought to term the soul. Descartes reasons also, but in a very wretched manner, that the soul is not material. I say in a very wretched manner, for never did philosopher reason so badly on this subject as did this great man. Here is his argument. He sets outs by saying that he must doubt in the existence of his own body, believing that there exists no such thing as a body at all, and then he reasons in this fashion: "There exists no body; I exist nevertheless: I am therefore not a body, and consequently I can only be a substance which thinks." Although this fine reasoning destroys itself sufficiently, I will yet take the liberty of giving my opinion of it in two words. 1. The doubt which M. Descartes assumes is indefensible; for although one may sometimes think that he does not think that he has a body, it is true nevertheless that he has a body, since he thinks of it. 2. Whoever believes that there exists no body, ought to be well assured that he is not one himself; for no one can doubt in his own existence. If he is assured in this matter, his doubt is useless. 3. When he says that the soul is a substance which thinks, he tells us nothing new. Every person agrees in this; but the difficulty is to ascertain the nature of that substance which thinks, and in this respect M. Descartes is no wiser than his predecessors. § 6. That we may not go crooked as he has done, and that we may form the soundest conception possible of the soul of all animals, without excepting man, who is of the same nature, and who only exercises different functions from the difference in his organization, it is important to attend to the following remarks. It is certain that there exists in the universe a very subtle fluid, a substance extremely attenuated, whose source is the sun, and which pervades all other bodies, less or more, according to their nature and their consistence. Such is the soul of the world, which governs and vivifies it, and of which some portion is distributed to all the creatures in the universe. [60] This soul is the purest fire. It burns not of itself, but by different movements, which it communicates to the particles of other bodies into which it enters, it burns and makest its warmth be felt. Our visible fire contains more of this matter than air; air, more than water; and earth, considerably less than any of them. Plants have more of it than minerals, and animals more than either. In fine, this fire pervading the body renders it capable of thought, and is that properly termed the soul, although it sometimes receives the appellation of animal spirits, which permeate the whole body. It is certain therefore that this soul being of the same nature as that of animals, is annihilated at the death of man, as it is at that of the other creatures. It follows that whatever poets and divines have told us of a future state, is only the chimerical offspring of their own brain, begotten and nourished by them for purposes which is by no means difficult to fathom. CHAPTER VI ON THE SPIRITS CALLED DEMONS § 1. We have explained in another place how the notion of spirits came to be introduced among men, and proved that they were merely phantoms which existed only in their disordered imagination. The first instructors of mankind were not very explicit in their "lessons to the million" as to the nature of these phantoms, but they could not help saying what they thought of them. One class, reflecting that these shadows melted into thin air and had no consistence, described them as immaterial or incorporeal, having shapes without matter, but coloured and defined. At the same time however, they denied that they were corporeal existences, or that they were coloured or figured; adding that they could clothe themselves with air as with a garment, when they wished to become visible to the eye of men. A second class assert that they were animated bodies, but that they were composed of air, or some still more subtle matter, which they could thicken at their pleasure, when they chose to make their appearance. § 2. If the two sorts of philosophers were opposed to each other in their opinion as to those shadows, they agreed as to their name, viz., Demons; in which respect they were as those who, when dreaming, believe that they see the souls of people departed, and that it is their own soul which they behold when they look into a mirror--or, in short, those who can believe that the reflections of the stars which they see in the water are the souls of the stars themselves. Out of this truly ridiculous belief they wandered into an era no less absurd; believing that these phantoms possessed unlimited power--an idea sufficiently devoid of reason, but current among the ignorant, who suppose that these beings, whom they know not, can exert a fearful influence. § 3. This most absurd creed was invented and promulgated by legislators, in order to support their own authority. They established this belief in spirits under the name of religion, hoping that the dread of these invisible powers which the people would entertain, might keep them to their duty. To give the more weight to their dogma, they classified those spirits or demons as good and bad; the one species being intended to stimulate men to the observance of their laws, and the other to act as a check and prevent their breaking them. To ascertain what these demons really were, it is only necessary to read the works of the Greek poets and historians, and above all, the Theogany of Hesiod, where he dwells at great length on the origin of the gods. § 4. The Greeks invented them. From that people they passed by means of their colonies into Asia, Egypt, and Italy. In this way the Jews, who were dispersed in Alexandria and elsewhere became acquainted with them. They made the same happy use of them as other nations did--with this difference, that, unlike the Greeks, they did not call them demons, or regard them as good and bad spirits indifferently. They considered them all as bad with one single exception, to whom they gave the name of the Spirit, or God; and they termed those men prophets who said that they were inspired by the good Spirit. Farther, they viewed as the operations of this divine Spirit whatever they considered as a great blessing; and on the other hand, they looked upon whatever they thought to be a great evil, as proceeding from some cacodemon or evil spirit. § 5. This distinction between good and evil led them to the use of the appellation demoniacs, which they applied to lunatics, madmen, furious persons, and epileptics, as also to those who made use of "the unknown tongues." A man deformed and somewhat deranged, was said to be possessed of an unclean spirit; and a dumb man by a dumb spirit. These words, spirit and demon, became so familiar to them that they used them on every occasion. It follows that the Jews believed with the Greeks, that these phantoms were neither chimerical nor visionary, but real and substantial agents. § 6. Hence it is that the Bible is filled with tales of spirits, and demons, and demoniacs; but in no place of that book is it said how and when they were created--an omission scarcely pardonable on the part of Moses, who undertakes to give an account of the creation both of the heavens and of the earth. Christ who speaks very frequently of angels and spirits, good and bad, does not inform us whether they are material or immaterial. This makes it evident that both of them were ignorant of the fact that the Greeks had instructed their ancestors in this strange belief. Were the case otherwise, Jesus Christ would be no less culpable for his silence on the subject, than he is for his refusal to grant to the majority of the human race, that grace, that faith, and that piety, which he assures them it is in his power to bestow. But to return to the subject of Spirits. It is certain these words Demons, Satan, Devil, are only proper names intended to apply to any obnoxious individual of our own species; and that, at no period did any but the most ignorant believe in their existence, either amongst the Greeks who invented, or the Jews who adopted the terms. After the latter became infected with such notions, they applied these words which signify enemy, accuser, and destroyer, at one time to invisible Powers, and at another, to those which are visible. Thus, they declared of the Gentiles, that their dwelling was in the kingdom of Satan; there being none other than themselves (by their own account of the matter) who dwelt in the kingdom of God. § 7. Jesus Christ being a Jew, and consequently imbued with these opinions, we need not be surprised when we meet in the gospels and the writing of his disciples the words Devil, Satan, and Hell, as if they were anything real or substantive. We have showed before that there can be nothing more chimerical; but although what was said might suffice to satisfy rational men, we are not the less necessitated to add a few words, in an attempt to convince the bigotted. All Christians agree that God is the source of everything; that he created all things--that he sustains them, and that without his support they would drop into annihilation.--From these principles, it is certain that he created that being whom they call the Devil, or Satan. Whether he were created good or evil is nothing to the argument; he is incontestibly the work of the great Head, and if he continue to exist, all wicked as they represent him to be, it must only be at the good pleasure of God. Now, how is it possible to conceive that God would preserve one of his creatures, who not only hates him mortally, and blasphemes him without end, but who sets himself to seduce the friends of the Almighty for the sole purpose of mortifying him. How is it possible, I repeat, that God can permit this Devil to exist, who turns aside from his worship the favored and the elect, and who would dethrone him were it in his power? This is what we wish to say in speaking of God, or rather in speaking of the Devil and Hell. If God is almighty, and if nothing can happen without his permission, how comes it that the devil hates him, blasphemes him, and seduces his worshippers? The Deity either consents to this or he does not. If he consents to it, the Devil in blaspheming him is only doing his duty, since he can do nothing but what God wishes, and consequently it is not the Devil, but God himself who blasphemes himself,--a fearfully absurd supposition. If he does not consent to it he cannot be omnipotent, and there must be two principles, the one of good, and the other of evil--the one aiming at one thing, and the other at its direct opposite. To what then leads our reasoning? To this; that neither God, nor the Devil, nor Paradise, nor Hell, nor the Soul, are such as religion has represented them to be, and as most reverend divines have maintained. These latter sell their fables for truths, being people of bad faith who abuse the credulity of the ignorant by making them believe whatever they please; as if the vulgar were absolutely unfitted to hear the truth and could be nourished by nothing but those absurdities, in which a rational mind can only discover a vast of nothing, and a waste of folly. The world has been long infected with these most absurd opinions, yet in every age men have been found--truth-loving men--who have striven against the absurdities of their day. This little treatise has been written from like motives, and in it the lovers of truth will doubtless meet with some things satisfactory. It is to them that I appeal, caring little for the opinion of those who substitute their own prejudices in place of infallible oracles. Happy the man, who, studying Nature's laws, Through known effects can trace the secret cause; His mind possessing in a quiet state, Fearless of Fortune, and resigned to Fate. Dryden's Translation of Virgil, Georgics, Book II. l. 700. NOTES [1] Daniel George Morof, who died suddenly on the 30th of June 1691. [2] Librum de tribus impostoribus absit ut Papæ tribuam, aut Papæ oppugnatoribus; jam olim inimici Frederici Barbarossæ Imperatoris famam sparserant libri talis, quasi jussu ipsius scripti, sed ab eo tempore, nemo est qui viderit; quare fabulam esse arbitror. [3] Apud Nevizanum 1. Sylvae nupt. 2. n. 121. [4] Doubtless Averroes here alludes to that law of Mahomet which wisely prohibits the use of pork in a hot and pestilential climate.--Translator's Note. [5] Disseminavit iste impius haereticus in Hispania, [such is the language made use of by Alvaro Pelagius], quod tres deceptores fuerunt in mundo, scilicet, Moises, qui decepterat Judaeos, et Christus, qui decepterat Christianos, et Mahometus, qui decepit Sarrazenos. [6] Et sic falsa est Porphirii sententia, qui dixit tres fuisse garrulatores qui totum mundum ad se converterunt; primus fuit Moises in populo Judaico, secundus Mahometus, tertius Christus. [7] Qui in quæstionem vertere presumunt, dicentes; quis in hec mundo majorem gentium aut populorum sequelam habuit, an Christus, an Moises, an Mahometus? [8] Every classical scholar must have heard of the demon of Socrates. The belief in the existence of such agencies was sufficiently prevalent in the East 2000 years ago, and the Jews were in this respect, as credulous as their neighbors. We read in Acts, c. iv. v. 7, that the leaders of the Sanhedrim enquired of the Apostle Peter, "By what power or by what name, have ye done this;" evidently acknowledging their belief that it was possible to work miracles by the invocation of some mysterious power. The Apostle, himself a Jew, seems to understand their creed; but he answers them in a way for which they were not altogether prepared.--Translator's Note. [9] �deficabat sine pecunia, judicabat sine conscientia, scribebat sine scientia. [10] Non Blandratum, non Alciatum, non Ochinum ad Mahotnetismum impulerunt; non Valleum ad atheismi professionem induxerunt; non alium quemdam ad spargendum libellum de tribus impostoribus, quorum secundus esset Christus Dominus, duo alii Moises et Mahometes, pellexerunt. [11] Vincentii Panurgii epistola tribus impostoribus, ad clarissimum virum Joannem--Baptistam Morinum Medicum. [12] Isaac de Peyrere published his Pre-Adamite doctrine in 1655. This set of fanatics, who were persuaded by their lenders that the general race of mankind had lost nothing of their innocence by the fall of Adam, made their appearance, (both men and women) in the streets of Munster, and elsewhere, in the same robeless condition as our first parents were, when they wandered in the bowers of Paradise before the eating of that forbidden fruit, which "Brought death into the world and all our woe." The magistrates of the city attempted to put them down but failed; and the military had some difficulty in extinguishing this absurdity.--Translator's Note. [13] Monstrum illud hominis, diis inferis a secretis scelus, nefarii illius tractatus de tribus impostoribus author quantumvis ab omni Religione alienus, adeo ut nec Judaeus, nec Turca, nec Christianus fuerit, plane tamen athoeus non erat. [14] Consult Bayle's Dictionary on this subject, article, "Trabea." [15] Quid vel hac sola dubitatione in Christiana schola cogitara potest perniciosius? [16] Nefarium tillud rium impostorum commentum sen liber contra Christum, Moisem et Mahometan Capomi nuper ab illis qui Evangelo Calvini so adductissimos profitentur typis excussus est. [17] Hinc Boccaccius in fabellis probare contendit non posse discerni inter legem Christi, Moisis et Mahometis, quia eadem signa habent uti tres annuli consimiles. [18] F. I. S. D. namely, Fredericus Imperator Salutem Dicit Othoni illustrissimo amico meo carrissimo. [19] Quod de tribus famosissimis nationum deceptoribus in ordinem jussu meo digessit doctissimus ille vir quorum sermonem de illa re in museo meo habustiæ exscribi curavi; atque Codicem illum stylo aeque vero ac puro scriptum ad te quam primum mitto; etenum, &c. [20] There is a measure in every thing. [21] This phrase is frequently employed to express ecclesiastical criticism. Its first application however had a more pungent meaning.--The individual here alluded to having boldly assailed the errors of the Church was attacked one evening by an assassin. Fortunately the blow did not prove fatal; but the weapon (a stylus, or dagger, which is also the Latin name for a pen) having been left in the wound--on his recovery he wore it in his girdle labelled, "The Theological Stylus," or Pen of the Church. The trenchant powers of this instrument have more frequently been employed to repress truth, than to refute argument. [22] Moses put to death in one day 24,000 men, because they resisted his laws. [23] We read in the Book of Kings, chap. xxii, v. 6, that Ahab, the King of Israel consulted 400 prophets who were all false, as the result of their vaticinations showed. [24] Genesis, chap. iv, v. 7. [25] I. Samuel chap. xv, v. 11. [26] Jeremiah, chap. xviii, v. 10. [27] Cætera, quæ fieri in terris, Coeloque tuentur Mortales pavidis cum pendent mentibus sæpe Efficiunt animos humiles formidine Divum, Depressosque premunt ad terram, propterea quod Ignorantia causarum conferre Deorum Cogit ad imperium res, et concedere regnum: et Quorum operum causas nulla ratione videre Possunt hæc fieri Divino numine rentur. Lucret. de Rer. Nat. Lib. VI. v. 49 et seq. [28] "What appears to our limited conceptions to be evil or apparently unjust, is entirely owing to our having no commensurate ideas either of the goodness or the justice of the Deity."--Bolingbroke's Works, Vol. iv, p. 117.--Translator's Note. [29] Acts, chap. xvii, v. 28. [30] "Qui autem negabit Deum esse corpus, etsi Deus Spiritus?" Tertul adv. Prax. cap. vii. [31] These four Councils were, First, that of Nice, (325) under Constantine and Pope Sylvester: Second, that of Constantinople, 381, under Gratian, Valentinian, Theodosius, and Pope Damasus: Third, that of Ephesus, 431, under Theodosius II, Valentinian, and Pope Celestin: and Fourth, that of Chalcedon, 451, under Valentinian, Marcianus, and Pope Leo I. [32] The Talmud informs us that the Rabbis deliberated whether they ought not to strike from the list of Canonical writings the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, and that they only spared them because they made favourable mention of Moses and his law. The prophecies of Ezekiel (which the Jews were not permitted to read until they were thirty years of age) would to a certainty have been expunged from the sacred Catalogue, if a learned Rabbi had not undertaken to reconcile them with the same Law. [33] Consult Hobbes' Leviathan "De Homine," chap. xli, pages 56, 57 and 58. [34] Philip of Macedon had sent auxiliaries and money to Hannibal in Africa. "Infensos Philippo, ob auxilia cum pecunia nuper in Africam missu Annibale." Levy, Book xxxi. chap. 1.--Translator's Note. [35] Hobbe's Leviathan, "De Homine," chap. xii, pp. 56 and 57. [36] Hobbes, ubi supra "De Homine," chap. xii. pages 58 and 59. [37] This word must not be taken in its usual acceptation. What rational men understand by the term is a dexterous man, an able cheat, and a master of jugglery, which requires great readiness and address; and not by any means a person in compact with the Devil as the vulgar suppose. [38] "And he said, Leave us not, I pray thee; for as much as thou knowest how we are to encamp in the wilderness, and thou mayest be to us instead of eyes."--Num. chap. x, v. 31. [39] Exodus iv. 16. [40] When Romulus was reviewing his forces in the plain of Caprae, here suddenly arose a thunder-storm, during which he was enveloped in so thick a cloud that he was lost to the view of his army; nor thereafter on this earth was Romulus seen.--Liv. 1. I. c. 16.--Translator's note. [41] Hobbes' Leviathan; de homine, chap. xii. pp. 59 and 60. [42] It is recorded by Livy, that "there is a grove, through which flowed a perennial stream, taking its origin in a dark cave, in which Numa was accustomed to meet the goddess, and receive instructions as to his political and religions institutions."--Liv. 1. I. c. 21. [43] Qu'un beau Pigeon a tire d'aile Vienne obom brer une Purcelle, Rien n'est sur prenant en cela; L'on en vit autant en Lydie. Et le beau Cygne de Leda Vaut bien le Pigeon de Marie. [44] I. Samuel, chap. viii. vs. 5 and 6. [45] The Gospel according to John, chap. viii. v. 7. [46] Matthew's Gospel, chap. xxii. v. 21. [47] Matthew's Gospel, chap. xxi. v. 27. [48] Saint Paul, Hebrews, chap. viii. v. 13 speaks in these terms: "In that he saith a new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away."--Translator's note. [49] This was the opinion of Pope Leo X. as appears from an expression of his, which, considering that it was made use of at a time when the philosophical spirit of inquiry had made little progress, was remarkably bold. "It has been well known in all ages," he observed to Cardinal Beinbo, "how much this fable of Jesus Christ has been profitable to us and ours." Quantum nobis nostrisque sa de Christo fabula profuerit, satis est omnibus saeculis notum. [50] Confessions, 1. VII. c. ix. v. 28. [51] See the discourse of Aristophanes, in the "Banquet of Plato." [52] Luke's Gospel, chap. xvi. v. 24. [53] "The City of God," book I. chap. xiv. [54] Orig. adv. Cels. 1. VIII. chap. iv. Compare with, Matthew, chap. xix. v. 24. [55] Op. adv. Jorin. 1. II. chap. viii.--"In indication of their refusal to take an oath, the Society of Friends quote the words of Christ, "Swear not at all;" unaware, or overlooking, that this expression is descriptive of a state of social perfection, when the word of a man will be as good as his oath. Many others of Christ's precepts besides this are unobserved by Christians, such as 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth,' 'Give to every one that asketh, and from him that would borrow of you turn not thou away.' The morality of Christ is a beau ideal so far from being realized, that there is not even a similitude of it in the Christian world. The Quakers who vauntingly obey this precept regarding oaths, has no hesitation in breaking the other precepts respecting the hoarding of money, and refusing to give it away."--Translator's Note. [56] St. Paul. [57] "I can believe," observes the Count de Boulainvilliers, "that Mahomet was ignorant of the common elements of education. But assuredly he was not ignorant in respect to that vast knowledge which a far travelled man of great natural powers may acquire. He was not ignorant of his native tongue, although he could not read it, being master of all its subtleness and all its beauties. He was thoroughly qualified to render hateful whatever was truly blameworthy, and to paint truth in colours so simple and vivid, that it was impossible to misunderstand it. All that he has said is true, as regards the essential dogmas of Religion; but he has not said all that is true, and in this respect alone does our religion differ from his." Farther on he adds, that "Mahomet was neither ignorant nor a barbarian; he conducted his enterprise with all the skill, delicacy, perseverance, and intrepidity, which was necessary to ensure its success. His views were as lofty as any which Alexander the Great, or Julius Cæsar, were capable of entertaining, had they been in his position."--Life of Mahomet by Count de Boulainvilliers, book II. pp. 266-8. Amsterdam edit. 1731. [58] Genesis chap. xxviii. v. 18. [59] Omnis enim per se divum natura necesse est Immortali aevo summa cum pace fruatur, Semota ab nostris rebus, sejunctaque longe; Nam privata dolore omni, privata periclis Ipsa suis pollens opibus: nihil indiga nostri, Nec bene promeritis capitur, nec tangitur ira. Lucretius de Rerum Nat. Book I. v. 57, and following. [60] If a work be translated, it always receives a colouring, which is more or less faint or vivid according to the opinions and ability of the Translator.--Volney's Lectures on History. 
37234	----	MY PATH TO ATHEISM By Annie Besant [Third Edition] London: Freethought Publishing Company, 63, Fleet Street, E.C. 1885. TO THOMAS SCOTT, WHOSE NAME IS HONORED AND REVERED WHEREVER FREETHOUGHT HAS-- WHOSE WIDE HEART AND GENEROUS KINDNESS WELCOME ALL FORMS OF THOUGHT, PROVIDED THE THOUGHT BE EARNEST AND HONEST; WHO KNOWS NO ORTHODOXY SAVE THAT OF HONESTY, AND NO RELIGION SAVE THAT OF GOODNESS; TO WHOM I OWE MOST GRATEFUL THANKS, AS ONE OF THE EARLIEST OF MY FREETHOUGHT FRIENDS, AND AS THE FIRST WHO AIDED ME IN MY NEED;-- TO HIM I DEDICATE THESE PAGES, KNOWING THAT, ALTHOUGH WE OFTEN DIFFER IN OUR THOUGHT, WE ARE ONE IN OUR DESIRE FOR TRUTH. ANNIE BESANT. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. The Essays which form the present book have been written at intervals during the last five years, and are now issued in a single volume without alterations of any kind. I have thought it more useful--as marking the gradual growth of thought--to reprint them as they were originally published, so as not to allow the later development to mould the earlier forms. The essay on "Inspiration" is, in part, the oldest of all; it was partially composed some seven years ago, and re-written later as it now stands. The first essay on the "Deity of Jesus of Nazareth" was written just before I left the Church of England, and marks the point where I broke finally with Christianity. I thought then, and think still, that to cling to the name of Christian after one has ceased to be the thing is neither bold nor straightforward, and surely the name ought, in all fairness, to belong to those historical bodies who have made it their own during many hundred years. A Christianity without a Divine Christ appears to me to resemble a republican army marching under a royal banner--it misleads both friends and foes. Believing that in giving up the deity of Christ I renounced Christianity, I place this essay as the starting-point of my travels outside the Christian pale. The essays that follow it deal with some of the leading Christian dogmas, and are printed in the order in which they were written. But in the gradual thought-development they really precede the essay on the "Deity of Christ". Most inquirers who begin to study by themselves, before they have read any heretical works, or heard any heretical controversies, will have been awakened to thought by the discrepancies and inconsistencies of the Bible itself. A thorough knowledge of the Bible is the groundwork of heresy. Many who think they read their Bibles never read them at all. They go through a chapter every day as a matter of duty, and forget what is said in Matthew before they read what is said in John; hence they never mark the contradictions and never see the discrepancies. But those who _study_ the Bible are in a fair way to become heretics. It was the careful compilation of a harmony of the last chapters of the four Gospels--a harmony intended for devotional use--that gave the first blow to my own faith; although I put the doubt away and refused even to look at the question again, yet the effect remained--the tiny seed, which was slowly to germinate and to grow up, later, into the full-blown flower of Atheism. The trial of Mr. Charles Voysey for heresy made me remember my own puzzle, and I gradually grew very uneasy, though trying not to think, until the almost fatal illness of my little daughter brought a sharper questioning as to the reason of suffering and the reality of the love of God. From that time I began to study the doctrines of Christianity from a critical point of view; hitherto I had confined my theological reading to devotional and historical treatises, and the only controversies with which I was familiar were the controversies which had divided Christians; the writings of the Fathers of the Church and of the modern school which is founded on them had been carefully studied, and I had weighed the points of difference between the Greek, Roman, Anglican, and Lutheran communions, as well as the views of orthodox dissenting schools of thought; only from Pusey's "Daniel", and Liddon's "Bampton Lectures", had I gathered anything of wider controversies and issues of more vital interest. But now all was changed, and it was to the leaders of the Broad Church school that I first turned in the new path. The shock of pain had been so! rude when real doubts assailed and shook me, that I had steadily made up my mind to investigate, one by one, every Christian dogma, and never again to say "I believe" until I had tested the object of faith; the dogmas which revolted me most were those of the Atonement and of Eternal Punishment, while the doctrine of Inspiration of Scripture underlay everything, and was the very foundation of Christianity; these, then, were the first that I dropped into the crucible of investigation. Maurice, Robertson, Stopford Brooke, McLeod, Campbell, and others, were studied; and while I recognised the charm of their writings, I failed to find any firm ground whereon they could rest: it was a many-colored beautiful mist--a cloud landscape, very fair, but very unsubstantial. Still they served as stepping stones away from the old hard dogmas, and month by month I grew more sceptical as to the possibility of finding certainty in religion. Mansel's Bampton lectures on "The Limits of Religious Thought" did much to increase the feeling; the works of F. Newman, Arnold, and Greg carried on the same work; some efforts to understand the creeds of other nations, to investigate Mahommedanism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, all led in the same direction, until I concluded that inspiration belonged to all people alike, and there could be no necessity of atonement, and no eternal hell prepared for the unbeliever in Christianity. Thus, step by step, I renounced the dogmas of Christianity until there remained only, as distinctively Christian, the Deity of Jesus which had not yet been analysed. The whole tendency of the Broad Church stream of thought was to increase the manhood at the expense of the deity of Christ; and with hell and atonement gone, and inspiration everywhere, there appeared no _raison d'etre_ for the Incarnation. Besides, there were so many incarnations, and the Buddhist absorption seemed a grander idea. I now first met with Charles Voysey's works, and those of Theodore Parker and Channing, and the belief in the Deity of Jesus followed the other dead creeds. Renan I had read much earlier, but did not care for him; Strauss I did not meet with until afterwards; Scott's "English Life of Jesus", which I read at this period, is as useful a book on this subject as could be put into the hands of an inquirer. From Christianity into simple Theism I had found my way; step by step the Theism melted into Atheism; prayer was gradually discontinued, as utterly at variance with any dignified idea of God, and as in contradiction to all the results of scientific investigation. I had taken a keen interest in the later scientific discoveries, and Darwin had done much towards freeing me from my old bonds. Of John Stuart Mill I had read much, and I now took him up again; I studied Spinoza, and re-read Mansel, together with many other writers on the Deity, until the result came which is found in the essay entitled "The Nature and Existence of God ". It was just before this was written that I read Charles Bradlaugh's "Plea for Atheism" and his "Is there a God?". The essay on "Constructive Rationalism" shows how we replace the old faith and build our house anew with stronger materials. The path from Christianity to Atheism is a long one, and its first steps are very rough and very painful; the feet tread on the ruins of the broken faith, and the sharp edges cut into the bleeding flesh; but further on the path grows smoother, and presently at its side begins to peep forth the humble daisy of hope that heralds the spring tide, and further on the roadside is fragrant with all the flowers of summer, sweet and brilliant and gorgeous, and in the distance we see the promise of the autumn, the harvest that shall be reaped for the feeding of man. Annie Besant. 1878. ON THE DEITY OF JESUS OF NAZARETH "WHAT think ye of Christ, whose son is he?" Humane child of human parents, or divine Son of the Almighty God? When we consider his purity, his faith in the Father, his forgiving patience, his devoted work among the offscourings of society, his brotherly love to sinners and outcasts--when our minds dwell on these alone,--we all feel the marvellous fascination which has drawn millions to the feet of this "son of man," and the needle of our faith begins to tremble towards the Christian pole. If we would keep unsullied the purity of our faith in God alone, we are obliged to turn our eyes some times--however unwillingly--towards the other side of the picture and to mark the human weaknesses which remind us that he is but one of our race. His harshness to his mother, his bitterness towards some of his opponents, the marked failure of one or two of his rare prophecies, the palpable limitation of his knowledge--little enough, indeed, when all are told,--are more than enough to show us that, however great as man, he is not the All-righteous, the All-seeing, the All-knowing, God. No one, however, whom Christian exaggeration has not goaded into unfair detraction, or who is not blinded by theological hostility, can fail to revere portions of the character sketched out in the three synoptic gospels. I shall not dwell here on the Christ of the fourth Evangelist; we can scarcely trace in that figure the lineaments of the Jesus of Nazareth whom we have learnt to love. I propose, in this essay, to examine the claims of Jesus to be more than the man he appeared to be during his lifetime: claims--be it noted--which are put forward on his behalf by others rather than by himself. His own assertions of his divinity are to be found only in the unreliable fourth gospel, and in it they are destroyed by the sentence there put into his mouth with strange inconsistency: "If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true." It is evident that by his contemporaries Jesus was not regarded as God incarnate. The people in general appear to have looked upon him as a great prophet, and to have often debated among themselves whether he were their expected Messiah or not. The band of men who accepted him as their teacher were as far from worshipping him as God as were their fellow-countrymen: their prompt desertion of him when attacked by his enemies, their complete hopelessness when they saw him overcome and put to death, are sufficient proofs that though they regarded him--to quote their own words--as a "prophet mighty in word and deed," they never guessed that the teacher they followed, and the friend they lived with in the intimacy of social life was Almighty God Himself. As has been well pointed out, if they believed their Master to be God, surely when they were attacked they would have fled to him for protection, instead of endeavouring to save themselves by deserting him: we may add that this would have been their natural instinct, since they could never have imagined beforehand that the Creator Himself could really be taken captive by His creatures and suffer death at their hands. The third class of his contemporaries, the learned Pharisees and Scribes, were as far from regarding him as divine as were the people or his disciples. They seem to have viewed the new teacher somewhat contemptuously at first, as one who unwisely persisted in expounding the highest doctrines to the many, instead of--a second Hillel--adding to the stores of their own learned circle. As his influence spread and appeared to be undermining their own,--still more, when he placed himself in direct opposition, warning the people against them,--they were roused to a course of active hostility, and at length determined to save themselves by destroying him. But all through their passive contempt and direct antagonism, there is never a trace of their deeming him to be anything more than a religious enthusiast who finally became dangerous: we never for a moment see them assuming the manifestly absurd position of men knowingly measuring their strength against God, and endeavouring to silence and destroy their Maker. So much for the opinions of those who had the best opportunities of observing his ordinary life. A "good man," a "deceiver," a "mighty prophet," such are the recorded opinions of his contemporaries: not one is found to step forward and proclaim him to be Jehovah, the God of Israel. One of the most trusted strongholds of Christians, in defending their Lord's Divinity, is the evidence of prophecy. They gather from the sacred books of the Jewish nation the predictions of the longed-for Messiah, and claim them as prophecies fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. But there is one stubborn fact which destroys the force of this argument: the Jews, to whom these writings belong, and who from tradition and national peculiarities may reasonably be supposed to be the best exponents of their own prophets, emphatically deny that these prophecies are fulfilled in Jesus at all. Indeed, one main reason for their rejection of Jesus is precisely this, that he does not resemble in any way the predicted Messiah. There is no doubt that the Jewish nation were eagerly looking for their Deliverer when Jesus was born: these very longings produced several pseudo-Messiahs, who each gained in turn a considerable following, because each bore some resemblance to the expected Prince. Much of the popular rage which swept Jesus to his death was the re-action of disappointment after the hopes raised by the position of authority he assumed. The sudden burst of anger against one so benevolent and inoffensive can only be explained by the intense hopes excited by his regal entry into Jerusalem, and the utter destruction of those hopes by his failing to ascend the throne of David. Proclaimed as David's son, he came riding on an ass as king of Zion, and allowed himself to be welcomed as the king of Israel: there his short fulfilling of the prophecies ended, and the people, furious at his failing them, rose and clamoured for his death. Because he did _not_ fulfil the ancient Jewish oracles, he died: he was too noble for the _rôle_ laid down in them for the Messiah, his ideal was far other than that of a conqueror, with "garments rolled in blood." But even if, against all evidence, Jesus was one with the Messiah of the prophets, this would destroy, instead of implying, his Divine claims. For the Jews were pure monotheists; their Messiah was a prince of David's line, the favoured servant, the anointed Jehovah, the king who should rule in His name: a Jew would shrink with horror from the blasphemy of seating Messiah on Jehovah's throne remembering how their prophets had taught them that their God "would not give His honour to another." So that, as to prophecy, the case stands thus: If Jesus be the Messiah prophesied of in the old Jewish books, then he is not God: if he be not the Messiah, Jewish prophecy is silent as regards him altogether, and an appeal to prophecy is absolutely useless. After the evidence of prophecy Christians generally rely on that furnished by miracles. It is remarkable that Jesus himself laid but little stress on his miracles; in fact, he refused to appeal to them as credentials of his authority, and either could not or would not work them when met with determined unbelief. We must notice also that the people, while "glorifying God, who had given such power unto _men_," were not inclined to admit his miracles as proofs of his right to claim absolute obedience: his miracles did not even invest him with such sacredness as to protect him from arrest and death. Herod, on his trial, was simply anxious to see him work a miracle, as a matter of curiosity. This stolid indifference to marvels as attestations of authority is natural enough, when we remember that Jewish history was crowded with miracles, wrought for and against the favoured people, and also that they had been specially warned against being misled by signs and wonders. Without entering into the question whether miracles are possible, let us, for argument's sake, take them for granted, and see what they are worth as proofs of Divinity. If Jesus fed a multitude with a few loaves, so did Elisha: if he raised the dead, so did Elijah and Elisha; if he healed lepers, so did Moses and Elisha; if he opened the eyes of the blind, Elisha smote a whole army with blindness and afterwards restored their sight: if he cast out devils, his contemporaries, by his own testimony, did the same. If miracles prove Deity, what miracle of Jesus can stand comparison with the divided Red Sea of Moses, the stoppage of the earth's motion by Joshua, the check of the rushing waters of the Jordan by Elijah's cloak? If we are told that these men worked by _conferred_ power and Jesus by _inherent_, we can only answer that this is a gratuitous assumption, and begs the whole question. The Bible records the miracles in equivalent terms: no difference is drawn between the manner of working of Elisha or Jesus; of each it is sometimes said they prayed; of each it is sometimes said they spake. Miracles indeed must not be relied on as proofs of divinity, unless believers in them are prepared to pay divine honours not to Jesus only, but also to a crowd of others, and to build a Christian Pantheon to the new found gods. So far we have only seen the insufficiency of the usual Christian arguments to establish a doctrine so stupendous and so _prima facie_ improbable as the incarnation of the Divine Being: this kind of negative testimony, this insufficient evidence, is not however the principle reason which compels Theists to protest against the central dogma of Christianity. The stronger proofs of the simple manhood of Jesus remain, and we now proceed to positive evidence of his not being God. I propose to draw attention to the traces of human infirmity in his noble character, to his absolute mistakes in prophecy, and to his evidently limited knowledge. In accepting as substantially true the account of Jesus given by the evangelists, we are taking his character as it appeared to his devoted followers. We have not to do with slight blemishes, inserted by envious detractors of his greatness; the history of Jesus was written when his disciples worshipped him as God, and his manhood, in their eyes, reached ideal perfection. We are not forced to believe that, in the gospels, the life of Jesus is given at its highest, and that he was, at least, not more spotless than he appears in these records of his friends. But here again, in order not to do a gross injustice, we must put aside the fourth gospel; to study his character "according to S. John" would need a separate essay, so different is it from that drawn by the three; and by all rules of history we should judge him by the earlier records, more especially as they corroborate each other in the main. The first thing which jars upon an attentive reader of the gospels is the want of affection and respect shown by Jesus to his mother. When only a child of twelve he lets his parents leave Jerusalem to return home, while he repairs alone to the temple. The fascination of the ancient city and the gorgeous temple services was doubtless almost overpowering to a thoughtful Jewish boy, more especially on his first visit: but the careless forgetfulness of his parents' anxiety must be considered as a grave childish fault, the more so as its character is darkened by the indifference shown by his answer to his mother's grieved reproof. That no high, though mistaken, sense of duty kept him in Jerusalem is evident from his return home with his parents; for had he felt that "his Father's business" detained him in Jerusalem at all, it is evident that this sense of duty would not have been satisfied by a three days' delay. But the Christian advocate would bar criticism by an appeal to the Deity of Jesus: he asks us therefore to believe that Jesus, being God, saw with indifference his parents' anguish at discovering his absence; knew all about that three days' agonised search (for they, ignorant of his divinity, felt the terrible anxiety as to his safety, natural to country people losing a child in a crowded city); did not, in spite of the tremendous powers at his command, take any steps to re-assure them; and finally, met them again with no words of sympathy, only with a mysterious allusion, incomprehensible to them, to some higher claim than theirs, which, however, he promptly set aside to obey them. If God was incarnate in a boy, we may trust that example as a model of childhood: yet, are Christians prepared to set this early piety and desire for religious instruction before their young children as an example they are to follow? Are boys and girls of twelve to be free to absent themselves for days from their parents' guardianship under the plea that a higher business claims their attention? This episode of the childhood of Jesus should be relegated to those "gospels of the infancy" full of most unchildlike acts, which the wise discretion of Christendom has stamped with disapproval. The same want of filial reverence appears later in his life: on one occasion he was teaching, and his mother sent in, desiring to speak to him: the sole reply recorded to the message is the harsh remark: "Who is my mother?" The most practical proof that Christian morality has, on this head, outstripped the example of Jesus, is the prompt disapproval which similar conduct would meet with in the present day. By the strange warping of morality often caused by controversial exigencies, this want of filial reverence has been triumphantly pointed out by Christian divines; the indifference shown by Jesus to family ties is accepted as a proof that he was more than man! Thus, conduct which they implicitly acknowledge to be unseemly in a son to his mother, they claim as natural and right in the Son of God, to His! In the present day, if a person is driven by conscience to a course painful to those who have claims on his respect, his recognised duty, as well as his natural instinct, is to try and make up by added affection and more courteous deference for the pain he is forced to inflict: above all, he would not wantonly add to that pain by public and uncalled-for disrespect. The attitude of Jesus towards his opponents in high places was marked with unwarrantable bitterness. Here also the lofty and gentle spirit of his whole life has moulded Christian opinion in favour of a course different on this head to his own, so that abuse of an opponent is now commonly called _un_-Christian. Wearied with three years' calumny and contempt, sore at the little apparent success which rewarded his labour, full of a sad foreboding that his enemies would shortly crush him, Jesus was goaded into passionate denunciations: "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites... ye fools and blind... ye make a proselyte twofold more the child of hell than yourselves... ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell!" Surely this is not the spirit which breathed in, "If ye love them which love you, what thanks have ye?... Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that persecute you." Had he not even specially forbidden the very expression, "Thou fool!" Was not this rendering evil for evil, railing for railing? It is painful to point out these blemishes: reverence for the great leaders of humanity is a duty dear to all human hearts; but when homage turns into idolatry, then men must rise up to point out faults which otherwise they would pass over in respectful silence, mindful only of the work so nobly done. I turn then, with a sense of glad relief, to the evidence of the limited knowledge of Jesus, for here no blame attaches to him, although _one_ proved mistake is fatal to belief in his Godhead. First as to prophecy: "The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels: and then shall he reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom." Later, he amplifies the same idea: he speaks of a coming tribulation, succeeded by his own return, and then adds the emphatic declaration: "Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass till all these things be done." The non-fulfilment of these prophecies is simply a question of fact: let men explain away the words now as they may, yet, if the record is true, Jesus did believe in his own speedy return, and impressed the same belief on his followers. It is plain, indeed, that he succeeded in impressing it on them, from the references to his return scattered through the epistles. The latest writings show an anxiety to remove the doubts which were disturbing the converts consequent on the non-appearance of Jesus, and the fourth gospel omits any reference to his coming. It is worth remarking, in the latter, the spiritual sense which is hinted at--either purposely or unintentionally--in the words, "The hour... _now_ is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." These words may be the popular feeling on the advent of the resurrection, forced on the Christians by the failure of their Lord's prophecies in any literal sense. He could not be mistaken, _ergo_ they must spiritualise his words. The limited knowledge of Jesus is further evident from his confusing Zacharias the son of Jehoiada with Zacharias the son of Barachias: the former, a priest, was slain in the temple court, as Jesus states; but the son of Barachias was Zacharias, or Zachariah, the prophet.* He himself owned a limitation of his knowledge, when he confessed his ignorance of the day of his own return, and said it was known to the "Father only." Of the same class of sayings is his answer to the mother of James and John, that the high seats of the coming kingdom "are not mine to give." That Jesus believed in the fearful doctrine of eternal punishment is evident, in spite of the ingenious attempts to prove that the doctrine is not scriptural: that he, in common with his countrymen, ascribed many diseases to the immediate power of Satan, which we should now probably refer to natural causes, as epilepsy, mania, and the like, is also self-evident. But on such points as these it is useless to dwell, for the Christian believes them on the authority of Jesus, and the subjects, from their nature, cannot be brought to the test of ascertained facts. Of the same character are some of his sayings: his discouraging "Strive to enter in at the strait gate, _for_ many," etc.; his using in defence of partiality Isaiah's awful prophecy, "that seeing they may see and not perceive," etc.; his using Scripture at one time as binding, while he, at another, depreciates it; his fondness for silencing an opponent by an ingenious retort: all these things are blameworthy to those who regard him as man, while they are shielded from criticism by his divinity to those who worship him as God. There morality is a question of opinion, and it is wasted time to dwell on them when arguing with Christians, whose moral sense is for the time held in check by their mental prostration at his feet. But the truth of the quoted prophecies, and the historical fact of the parentage of Zachariah, can be tested, and on these Jesus made palpable mistakes. The obvious corollary is, that being mistaken--as he was--his knowledge was limited, and was therefore human, not divine. * See Appendix, page 12. In turning to the teaching of Jesus (I still confine myself to the three gospels), we find no support of the Christian theory. If we take his didactic teaching, we can discover no trace of his offering himself as an object of either faith or worship. His life's work, as teacher, was to speak of the Father. In the sermon on the Mount he is always striking the keynote, "your heavenly Father;" in teaching his disciples to pray, it is to "Our Father," and the Christian idea of ending a prayer "through Jesus Christ" is quite foreign to the simple filial spirit of their master. Indeed, when we think of the position Jesus holds in Christian theology, it seems strange to notice the utter absence of any suggestion of duty to himself throughout this whole code of so-called Christian morality. In strict accordance with his more formal teaching is his treatment of inquirers: when a young man comes kneeling, and, addressing him as "Good Master," asks what he shall do to inherit eternal life, the loyal heart of Jesus first rejects the homage, before he proceeds to answer the all-important question: "Why callest thou _me_ good: there is none good but one, that is, God." He then directs the youth on the way to eternal life, and _he sends that young man home without one word of the doctrine on which, according to Christians, his salvation rested_. If the "Gospel" came to that man later, he would reject it on the authority of Jesus, who had told him a different "way of salvation;" and if Christianity is true, the perdition of that young man's soul is owing to the defective teaching of Jesus himself. Another time, he tells a Scribe that the first commandment is that God is one, and that all a man's love is due to Him; then adding the duty of neighbourly love, he says: "There is _none other_ commandment greater than these:" so that "belief in Jesus," if incumbent at all, must come after love to God and man, and is not necessary, by his own testimony, to "entering into life." On Jesus himself then rests the primary responsibility of affirming that belief in him is a matter of secondary importance, at most, letting alone the fact that he never inculcated belief in his Deity as an article of faith at all. In the same spirit of frank loyalty to God are his words on the unpardonable sin: in answer to a gross personal affront, he tells his insulters that they shall be forgiven for speaking against him, a simple son of man, but warns them of the danger of confounding the work of God's. Spirit with that of Satan, "because they said" that works; done by God, using Jesus as His instrument, were done by Beelzebub. There remains yet one argument of tremendous force, which can only be appreciated by personal meditation. We find Jesus praying to God, relying on God, in his greatest need crying in agony to God for deliverance, in his last: struggle, deserted by his friends, asking why God, his God, had also forsaken him. We feel how natural, how true to life, this whole account is: in our heart's reverence for that noble life, that "faithfulness unto death," we can scarcely bear to think of the insult offered to it by Christian lips: they take every beauty out of it by telling us that through all that struggle Jesus was the Eternal, the Almighty, God: it is all apparent, not real: in his temptation he could not fall: in his prayers he needed no support: in his cry that the cup might pass away he foresaw it was inevitable: in his agony of desertion and loneliness he was present everywhere with God. In all that life, then, there is no hope for man, no pledge of man's victory, no promise for humanity. This is no _man's_ life at all, it is only a wonderful drama enacted on earth. What God could do is no measure of man's powers: what have we in common with this "God-man?" This Jesus, whom we had thought our brother, is after all, removed from us by the immeasurable distance which separates the feebleness of man from the omnipotence of God. Nothing can compensate us for such a loss as this. We had rejoiced in that many-sided nobleness, and its very blemishes were dear, because they assured us of his brotherhood to ourselves: we are given an ideal picture where we had studied a history, another Deity where we had hoped to emulate a life. Instead of the encouragement we had found, what does Christianity offer us?--a perfect life? But we knew before that God was perfect: an example? it starts from a different level: a Saviour? we cannot be safer than we are with God: an Advocate? we need none with our Father: a Substitute to endure God's wrath for us? we had rather trust God's justice to punish us as we deserve, and his wisdom to do what is best for us. As God, Jesus can give us nothing that we have not already in his Father and ours: as man, he gives us all the encouragement and support which we derive from every noble soul which God sends into this world, "a burning and a shining light": "Through such souls alone God stooping shows sufficient of His light For us in the dark to rise by." As God, he confuses our perceptions of God's unity, bewilders our reason with endless contradictions, and turns away from the Supreme all those emotions of love and adoration which can only flow towards a single object, and which are the due of our Creator alone: as man, he gives us an example to strive after, a beacon to steer by; he is one more leader for humanity, one more star in our darkness. As God, all his words would be truth, and but few would enter into heaven, while hell would overflow with victims: as man, we may refuse to believe such a slander on our Father, and take all the comfort pledged to us by that name. Thank God, then, that Jesus is only man, "human child of human parents;" that we need not dwarf our conceptions of God to fit human faculties, or envelope the illimitable spirit in a baby's feeble frame. But though only man, he has reached a standard of human greatness which no other man, so far as we know, has touched: the very height of his character is almost a pledge of the truthfulness of the records in the main: his life had to be lived before its conception became possible, at that period and among such a people. They could recognise his greatness when it was before their eyes: they would scarcely have imagined it for themselves, more especially that, as we have seen, he was so different from the Jewish ideal. His code of morality stands unrivalled, and he was the first who taught the universal Fatherhood of God publicly and to the common people. Many of his loftiest precepts may be found in the books of the Rabbis, but it is the glorious prerogative of Jesus that he spread abroad among the many the wise and holy maxims that had hitherto been the sacred treasures of the few. With him none were too degraded to be called the children of the Father: none too simple to be worthy of the highest teaching. By example, as well as by precept, he taught that all men were brothers, and all the good he had he showered at their feet. "Pure in heart," he saw God, and what he saw he called all to see: he longed that all might share in his own joyous trust in the Father, and seemed to be always seeking for fresh images to describe the freedom and fulness of the universal love of God. In his unwavering love of truth, but his patience with doubters--in his personal purity, but his tenderness to the fallen--in his hatred of evil, but his friendliness to the sinner--we see splendid virtues rarely met in combination. His brotherliness, his yearning to raise the degraded, his lofty piety, his unswerving morality, his perfect self-sacrifice, are his indefeasible titles to human love and reverence. Of the world's benefactors he is the chief, not only by his own life, but by the enthusiasm he has known to inspire in others: "Our plummet has not sounded his depth:" words fail to tell what humanity owes to the Prophet of Nazareth. On his example the great Christian heroes have based their lives: from the foundation laid by his teaching the world is slowly rising to a purer faith in God. We need now such a leader as he was--one who would dare to follow the Father's will as he did, casting a long-prized revelation aside when it conflicts with the higher voice of conscience. It is the teaching of Jesus that Theism gladly makes its own, purifying it from the inconsistencies which mar its perfection. It is the example of Jesus which Theists are following, though they correct that example in some points by his loftiest sayings. It is the work of Jesus which Theists are carrying on, by worshipping, as he did, the Father, and the Father alone, and by endeavouring to turn all men's love, all men's hopes, and all men's adoration, to that "God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and," not in Jesus only, but "_in us all_." APPENDIX: "Josephus mentions a Zacharias, a son of Baruch ('Wars of the Jews,' Book iv., sec. 4), who was slain under the circumstances described by Jesus. His name would be more suitable at the close of the long list of Jewish crimes, as it occurred just before the destruction of Jerusalem. But, as it took place about thirty-four years after the death of Jesus, it is clear that he could not have referred to it; therefore, if we admit that he made no mistake, we strike a serious blow at the credibility of his historian, who then puts into his mouth a remark never uttered." A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE FOURTH GOSPEL AND THE THREE SYNOPTICS EVERY one, at least in the educated classes, knows that the authenticity of the fourth gospel has been long and widely disputed. The most careless reader is struck by the difference of tone between the simple histories ascribed to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and the theological and philosophical treatise which bears the name of John. After following the three narratives, so simple in their structure, so natural in their style, so unadorned by rhetoric, so free from philosophic terms,--after reading these, it is with a feeling of surprise that we find ourselves, plunged into the bewildering mazes of the Alexandrine philosophy, and open our fourth gospel to be told that, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God." We ask instinctively, "How did John, the fisherman of Galilee, learn these phrases of the Greek schools, and why does he mix up the simple story of his master with the philosophy of that 'world which by wisdom knew not God?'" The general Christian tradition is as follows: The spread! of "heretical" views about the person of Jesus alarmed the "orthodox" Christians, and they appealed to John, the last aged relic of the apostolic band, to write a history of Jesus which should confute their opponents, and establish the essential deity of the founder of their religion. At their repeated solicitations, John wrote the gospel which bears his name, and the doctrinal tone of it is due to its original intention,--a treatise written against Cerinthus, and designed to crush, with the authority of an apostle, the rising doubts as to the pre-existence and absolute deity of Jesus of Nazareth. So far non-Christians and Christians--including the writer of the gospel--are agreed. This fourth gospel is not--say Theists--a simple biography of Jesus written by a loving disciple as a memorial of a departed and cherished friend, but a history written with a special object and to prove a certain doctrine. "St. John's gospel is a polemical treatise," echoes Dr. Liddon. "These are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God," confesses the writer himself. Now, in examining the credibility of any history, one of the first points to determine is whether the historian is perfectly unbiassed in his judgment and is therefore likely give facts exactly as they occurred, un-coloured by views of his own. Thus we do not turn to the pages of a Roman Catholic historian to gain a fair idea of Luther, or of William the Silent, or expect to find in the volumes of Clarendon a thoroughly faithful portraiture of the vices of the Stuart kings; rather, in reading the history of a partisan, do we instinctively make allowances for the recognised bias of his mind and heart. That the fourth gospel comes to us prefaced by the announcement that it is written, not to give us a history, but to prove a certain predetermined opinion, is, then, so much doubt cast at starting on its probable accuracy; and, by the constitution of our minds, we at once guard ourselves against a too ready acquiescence in its assertions, and become anxious to test its statements by comparing them with some independent and more impartial authority. The history may be most accurate, but we require proof that the writer is never seduced into slightly--perhaps unconsciously--colouring an incident so as to favour the object he has at heart. For instance, Matthew, an honest writer enough, is often betrayed into most non-natural quotation of prophecy by his anxiety to connect Jesus with the Messiah expected by his countrymen. This latent wish of his leads him to insert various quotations from the Jewish Scriptures which, severed from their context, have a verbal similarity with the events he narrates. Thus, he refers to Hosea's mention of the Exodus: "When Israel was a child then I loved him and called my son out of Egypt," and by quoting only the last six words gives this as a "prophecy" of an alleged journey of Jesus into Egypt. Such an instance as this shows us how a man may allow himself to be blinded by a pre-conceived determination to prove a certain fact, and warns us to sift carefully any history that comes to us with the announcement that it is written to prove such and such a truth. Unfortunately we have no independent contemporary history--except a sentence of Josephus--whereby to test the accuracy of the Christian records; we are therefore forced into the somewhat unsatisfactory task of comparing them one with another, and in cases of diverging testimony we must strike the balance of probability between them. On examining, then, these four biographies of Jesus, we find a remarkable similarity between three of them, amid many divergencies of detail; some regard them, therefore, as the condensation into writing of the oral teaching of the apostles, preserved in the various Churches they severally founded, and so, naturally, the same radically, although diverse in detail. "The synoptic Gospels contain the substance of the Apostles' testimony, collected principally from their oral teaching current in the Church, partly also from written documents embodying portions of that teaching."* Others think that the gospels which we possess, and which are ascribed severally to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are all three derived from an original gospel now lost, which was probably written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and variously translated into Greek. However this may be, the fact that such a statement as this has been put forward proves the striking similarity, the root identity, of the three "synoptical gospels," as they are called. We gather from them an idea of Jesus which is substantially the same: a figure, calm, noble, simple, generous; pure in life, eager to draw men to that love of the Father and devotion to the Father which were his own distinguishing characteristics; finally, a teacher of a simple and high-toned morality, perfectly unfettered by dogmatism. The effect produced by the sketch of the Fourth Evangelist is totally different. The friend of sinners has disappeared (except in the narrative of the woman taken in adultery, which is generally admitted to be an interpolation), for his whole time is occupied in arguing about his own position; "the common people" who followed and "heard him gladly" and his enemies, the Scribes and Pharisees, are all massed together as "the Jews," with whom he is in constant collision; his simple style of teaching--parabolic indeed, as was the custom of the East, but consisting of parables intelligible to a child--is exchanged for mystical discourses, causing perpetual misunderstandings, the true meaning of which is still wrangled about by Christian theologians; his earnest testimony to "your heavenly Father" is replaced by a constant self-assertion; while his command "do this and ye shall live," is exchanged for "believe on me or perish." * Alford. How great is the contrast between that discourse and the Sermon on the Mount.... In the last discourse it is His Person rather than his teaching which is especially prominent. His subject in that discourse is Himself. Certainly he preaches himself in His relationship to His redeemed; but still he preaches above all, and in all, Himself. All radiates from Himself, all converges towards Himself.... in those matchless words all centres so consistently in Jesus, that it might seem that "Jesus Alone is before us."* These and similar differences, both of direct teaching and of the more subtle animating spirit, I propose to examine in detail; but before entering on these it seems necessary to glance at the disputed question of the authorship of our history, and determine whether, if it prove apostolic, it _must_ therefore be binding on us. I leave to more learned pens than mine the task of criticising and drawing conclusions from the Greek or the precise dogma of the evangelist, and of weighing the conflicting testimony of mighty names. From the account contained in the English Bible of John the Apostle, I gather the following points of his character: He was warm-hearted to his friends, bitter against his enemies, filled with a fiery and unbridled zeal against theological opponents; he was ambitious, egotistical, pharisaical. I confess that I trace these characteristics through all the writings ascribed to him, and that they seem to be only softened by age in the fourth gospel. That John was a warm friend is proved by his first epistle; that he was bitter against his enemies appears in his mention of Diotrephes, "I will remember his deeds which he doeth, prating against us with malicious words;" his unbridled zeal was rebuked by his master; the same cruel spirit is intensified in his "Revelation;" his ambition is apparent in his anxiety for a chief seat in Messiah's kingdom; his egotism appears in the fearful curse he imprecates on those who alter _his_ revelation; his pharisaism is marked in such a feeling as, "we know _we_ are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness." Many of these qualities appear to me to mark the gospel which bears his name; the same restricted tenderness, the same bitterness against opponents, the same fiery zeal for "the truth," i.e., a special theological dogma, are everywhere apparent. * Liddon. The same egotism is most noticeable, for in the other gospels John shares his master's chief regard with two others, while here he is "_the_ disciple whom Jesus loved," and he is specially prominent in the closing scenes of Jesus' life as the _only_ faithful follower. We should also notice the remarkable similarity of expression and tone between the fourth gospel and the first epistle of John, a similarity the more striking as the language is peculiar to the writings attributed to John. It is, however, with the utmost diffidence that I offer these suggestions, well knowing that the greatest authorities are divided on this point of authorship, and that the balance is rather against the apostolic origin of the gospel than for it. I am, however, anxious to show that, _even taking it as apostolic_, it is untrustworthy and utterly unworthy of credit. If John be the writer, we must suppose that his long residence in Ephesus had gradually obliterated his Jewish memories, so that he speaks of "the Jews" as a foreigner would. The stern Jewish monotheism would have grown feebler by contact with the subtle influence of the Alexandrine tone of thought; and he would have caught the expressions of that school from living in a city which was its second home. To use the Greek philosophy as a vehicle for Christian teaching would recommend itself to him as the easiest way of approaching minds imbued with these mystic ideas. Regarding the master of his youth through the glorifying medium of years, he gradually began to imagine him to be one of the emanations from the Supreme, of which he heard so much. Accustomed to the deification of Roman emperors, men of infamous lives, he must have been almost driven to claim divine honours for _his_ leader. If his hearers regarded _them_ as divine, what could he say to exalt _him_ except that he was ever with God, nay, was himself God? If John be the writer of this gospel, some such change as this must have passed over him, and in his old age the gradual accretions of years must have crystallised themselves into a formal Christian theology. But if we find, during our examination, that the history and the teaching of this gospel is utterly irreconcilable with the undoubtedly earlier synoptic gospels, we must then conclude that, apostolic or not, it must give place to them, and be itself rejected as a trustworthy account of the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. The first striking peculiarity of this gospel is that all the people in it talk in exactly the same style and use the same markedly peculiar phraseology, (a) "The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into his hand." (b) "For the Father loveth the Son and showeth him all things that Himself doeth." (c) "Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hand." These sentences are evidently the outcome of the same mind, and no one, unacquainted with our gospel, would guess that (a) was spoken by John the Baptist, (b) by Jesus, (c) by the writer of the gospel. When the Jews speak, the words still run in the same groove: "If any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth His will, him He heareth," is not said, as might be supposed, by Jesus, but by the man who was born blind. Indeed, commentators are sometimes puzzled, as in John iii. 10-21, to know where, if at all, the words of Jesus stop and are succeeded by the commentary of the narrator. In an accurate history different characters stand out in striking individuality, so that we come to recognise them as distinct personalities, and can even guess beforehand how they will probably speak and act under certain conditions. But here we have one figure in various disguises, one voice from different speakers, one mind in opposing characters. We have here no beings of flesh and blood, but airy phantoms, behind whom we see clearly the solitary preacher. For Jesus and John the Baptist are two characters as distinct as can well be imagined, yet their speeches are absolutely indistinguishable, and their thoughts run in the same groove. Jesus tells Nicodemus: "We speak that we do know and testify that we have seen, and ye receive not our witness; and no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven." John says to his disciples: "He that cometh from heaven is above all, and what he hath seen and heard that he testifieth, and no man receiveth his testimony." But it is wasting time to prove so self-evident a fact: let us rather see how a Christian advocate meets an argument whose force he cannot deny. "The character and diction of our Lord's discourses entirely penetrated and assimilated the habits of thought of His beloved Apostle; so that in his first epistle he writes in the very tone and spirit of those discourses; and when reporting the sayings of his former teacher, the Baptist, he gives them, consistently with the deepest inner truth (!) of narration, the forms and cadences so familiar and habitual to himself."* It must be left to each individual to judge if a careful and accurate historian thus tampers with the words he pretends to narrate, and thus makes them accord with some mysterious inner truth; each too must decide as to the amount of reliance it is wise to place on a historian who is guided by so remarkable a rule of truth. But further, that the "character and diction" of this gospel are moulded on that of Jesus, seems a most unwarrantable assertion. Through all the recorded sayings of Jesus in the three gospels, there is no trace of this very peculiar style, except in one case (Matt. xi. 27), a passage which comes in abruptly and unconnectedly, and stands absolutely alone in style in the three synoptics, a position which throws much doubt on its authenticity. It has been suggested that this marked difference of style arises from the different auditories addressed in the three gospels and in the fourth; on this we remark that (a), we intuitively recognise such discourses as that in Matt. x. as perfectly consistent with the usual style of Jesus, although this is addressed to "his own;" (b), In this fourth gospel the discourses addressed to "his own" and to the Jews are in exactly the same style; so that, neither in this gospel, nor in the synoptics do we find any difference--more than might be reasonably expected--between the style of the discourses addressed to the disciples and those addressed to the multitudes. But we _do_ find a very marked difference between the style attributed to Jesus by the three synoptics and that put into his mouth by the fourth evangelist; this last being a style so remarkable that, if usual to Jesus, it is impossible that its traces should not appear through all his recorded speeches. From which fact we may, I think, boldly deduce the conclusion that the style in question is not that of Jesus, the simple carpenter's son, but is one caught from the dignified and stately march of the oratory of Ephesian philosophers, and is put into his mouth by the writer of his life. And this conclusion is rendered indubitable by the fact above-mentioned, that all the characters adopt this poetically and musically-rounded phraseology. * Alford. Thus our first objection against the trustworthiness of our historian is that all the persons he introduces, however different in character, speak exactly alike, and that this style, when put into the mouth of Jesus, is totally different from that attributed to him by the three synoptics. We conclude, therefore, that the style belongs wholly to the writer, and that he cannot, consequently, be trusted in his reports of speeches. The major part, by far the most important part, of this gospel is thus at once stamped as untrustworthy. Let us next remark the partiality attributed by this gospel to Him Who has said--according to the Bible--"all souls-are Mine." We find the doctrine of predestination, i.e., of favouritism, constantly put forward. "_All that the Father giveth me_ shall come to me." "No man can come to me except the Father draw him." "That of all _which He hath given me_ I should lose nothing." "Ye believe not, _because_ ye are not of my sheep." "Though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him: _that the saying_ of Esaias the prophet _might be fulfilled._" "Therefore, they _could not believe because_ that Esaias said," &c. "I have chosen you out of the world." "Thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to _as many as Thou hast given him?_" "Those that thou gavest me I have kept and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, _that the Scriptures might be fulfilled._" These are the most striking of the passages which teach that doctrine which has been the most prolific parent of immorality and the bringer of despair to the sinner. Frightfully immoral as it is, this doctrine is taught in all its awful hopelessness and plainness by this gospel: some "_could not_ believe" because an old prophet prophesied that they should not-So, "according to St. John," these unbelieving Jews were pre-ordained to eternal damnation and the abiding wrath of God. They were cast into an endless hell, which "they _could not_" avoid. We reject this gospel, secondly, for the partiality it dares to attribute to Almighty God. We will now pass to the historical discrepancies between this gospel and the three synoptics, following the order of the former. It tells us (ch. i) that at the beginning of his ministry Jesus was at Bethabara, a town near the junction of the Jordan with the Dead Sea; here he gains three disciples, Andrew and another, and then Simon Peter: the next day he goes into Galilee and finds Philip and Nathanael, and on the following day--somewhat rapid travelling--he is present, with these disciples, at Cana, where he performs his first miracle, going afterwards with them to Capernaum and Jerusalem. At Jerusalem, whither he goes for "the Jews' passover," he drives out the traders from the temple, and remarks, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up:" which remark causes the first of the strange misunderstandings between Jesus and the Jews, peculiar to this Gospel, simple misconceptions which Jesus never troubles himself to set right. Jesus and his disciples then go to the Jordan, baptising, whence Jesus departs into Galilee with them, because he hears that the Pharisees know he is becoming more popular than the Baptist (ch. iv. 1-3). All this happens before John is cast into prison, an occurrence which is a convenient note of time. We turn to the beginning of the ministry of Jesus as related by the three. Jesus is in the south of Palestine, but, hearing that John is cast into prison, he departs into Galilee, and resides at Capernaum. There is no mention of any ministry in Galilee and Judaea before this; on the contrary, it is only "from that time" that "Jesus _began_ to preach." He is alone, without disciples, but, walking by the sea, he comes upon Peter, Andrew, James, and John, and calls them. Now if the fourth gospel is true, these men had joined him in Judaea, followed him to Galilee, south again to Jerusalem, and back to Galilee, had seen his miracles and acknowledged him as Christ, so it seems strange that they had deserted him and needed a second call, and yet more strange is it that Peter (Luke v. i-ii) was so astonished and amazed at the miracle of the fishes. The driving out of the traders from the temple is placed by the synoptics at the very end of his ministry, and the remark following it is used against him at his trial: so was probably made just before it. The next point of contact is the history of the 5000 fed by five loaves (ch. vi.), the preceding chapter relates to a visit to Jerusalem unnoticed by the three: indeed, the histories seem written of two men, one the "prophet of Galilee" teaching in its cities, the other concentrating his energies on Jerusalem. The account of the miraculous, feeding is alike in all: not so the succeeding account of the conduct of the multitude. In the fourth gospel, Jesus and the crowd fall to disputing, as usual, and he loses many disciples: among the three, Luke says nothing of the immediately following events, while Matthew and Mark tell us that the multitudes--as would be natural--crowded round him to touch even the hem of his garment. This is the same as always: in the three the crowd loves him; in the fourth it carps at and argues with him. We must again miss the sojourn of Jesus in Galilee, according to the three, and his visit to Jerusalem, according to the one, and pass to his entry into Jerusalem in triumph. Here we notice a most remarkable divergence: the synoptics tell us that he was going up to Jerusalem from Galilee, and, arriving on his way at Bethphage, he sent for an ass and rode thereon into Jerusalem: the fourth gospel relates that he was dwelling at Jerusalem, and leaving it, for fear of the Jews, he retired, not into Galilee, but "beyond Jordan, into the place where John at first baptised," i.e., Bethabara, "and _there he abode_" From there he went to Bethany and raised to life a putrefying corpse: this stupendous miracle is never appealed to by the earlier historians in proof of their master's greatness, though "much people of the Jews" are said to have seen Lazarus after his resurrection: this miracle is also given as the reason for the active hostility of the priests, "from that day forward." Jesus then retires to Ephraim near the wilderness, from which town he goes to Bethany, and thence in triumph to Jerusalem, being met by the people "for that they heard that he had done this miracle." The two accounts have absolutely nothing in common except the entry into Jerusalem, and the preceding events of the synoptics exclude those of the fourth gospel, as does the latter theirs. If Jesus abode in Bethabara and Ephraim, he could not have come from Galilee; if he started from Galilee, he was not abiding in the south. John xiii.-xvii. stand alone, with the exception of the mention of the traitor. On the arrest of Jesus, he is led (ch. xviii. 13) to Annas, who sends him to Caiaphas, while the others send him direct to Caiaphas, but this is immaterial. He is then taken to Pilate: the Jews do not enter the judgment-hall, lest, being defiled, they could not eat the passover, a feast which, according to the synoptics, was over, Jesus and his disciples having eaten it the night before. Jesus is exposed to the people at the sixth hour (ch. xix. 14), while Mark tells us he was crucified three hours before--at the third hour--a note of time which agrees with the others, since they all relate that there was darkness from the sixth to the ninth hour, i.e., there was thick darkness at the time when, "according to St. John," Jesus was exposed. Here our evangelist is in hopeless conflict with the three. The accounts about the resurrection are irreconcilable in all the gospels, and mutually destructive. It remains to notice, among these discrepancies, one or two points which did not come in conveniently in the course of the narrative. During the whole of the fourth gospel, we find Jesus constantly arguing for his right to the title of Messiah. Andrew speaks of him as such (i. 41); the Samaritans acknowledge him (iv. 42); Peter owns him (vi. 69); the people call him so-(vii. 26, 31, 41); Jesus claims it (viii. 24); it is the subject of a law (ix. 22); Jesus speaks of it as already claimed by him (x. 24, 25); Martha recognises it (xi. 27). We thus find that, from the very first, this title is openly claimed by Jesus, and his right to it openly canvassed by the Jews. But--in the three--the disciples acknowledge him as Christ, and he charges them to "tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ" (Matt. xvi. 20; Mark viii. 29, 30; Luke ix. 20, 21); and this in the same year that he blames the Jews for not owning this Messiahship, since he had told them who he was. "from the beginning" (ch. viii. 24, 25); so that, if "John" was right, we fail to see the object of all the mystery about it, related by the synoptics. We mark, too, how Peter is, in their account, praised for confessing him, for flesh and blood had not revealed it to him, while in the fourth gospel, "flesh and blood," in the person of Andrew, reveal to Peter that the Christ is found; and there seems little praise due to Peter for a confession which had been made two or three years earlier by Andrew, Nathanael, John Baptist, and the Samaritans. Contradiction can scarcely be more direct. In John vii. Jesus owns that the Jews know his birthplace (28), and they state (41, 42) that he comes from Galilee, while Christ should be born at Bethlehem. Matthew and Luke distinctly say Jesus was born at Bethlehem; but here Jesus confesses the right knowledge of those who attribute his birthplace to Galilee, instead of setting their difficulty at rest by explaining that though brought up at Nazareth, he was born in Bethlehem. But our writer was apparently-ignorant of their accounts. We reject this gospel, thirdly, because its historical statements are in direct contradiction to the history of the synoptics. The next point to which I wish to direct attention is the relative position of faith and morals in the three synoptics and the fourth gospel. It is not too much to say that on this point their teaching is absolutely irreconcilable, and one or the other must be fatally in the wrong. Here the fourth gospel clasps hands with Paul, while the others take the side of James. The opposition may be most plainly shown by parallel columns of quotations: "Except your righteousness "He that _believeth on the_ Son exceed that of the scribes and hath everlasting life."--iii. 36. Pharisees, ye shall _in no case_ enter Heaven."--Matt. v. 20. "Have we not prophesied in "He that believeth on Him _is thy name and in thy name done not condemned_."--iii. 18. many wonderful works?" "Then will I profess unto them... Depart...ye that work iniquity." --Matt. vii. 22, 23. "If thou wilt enter into life, "He that believeth not the Son keep the commandments."--Mark shall not see life."--iii. 36. x. 17-28. "Her sins, which are many, are "If ye believe not that I am he forgiven, _for she loved_ much."-- ye shall die in your sins."--viii. Luke vii. 47. 24. These few quotations, which might be indefinitely multiplied, are enough to show that, while in the three gospels _doing_ is the test of religion, and no profession of discipleship is worth anything unless shown by "its fruits," in the fourth _believing_ is the cardinal matter: in the three we hear absolutely nothing of faith in Jesus as requisite, but in the fourth we hear of little else: works are thrown completely into the background and salvation rests on believing--not even in God--but in Jesus. We reject this gospel, fourthly, for setting faith above works, and so contradicting the general teaching of Jesus himself. The relative positions of the Father and Jesus are reversed by the fourth evangelist, and the teaching of Jesus on this head in the three gospels is directly contradicted. Throughout them Jesus preaches the Father only: he is always reiterating "your heavenly Father;" "that ye may be the children of your Father," is his argument for forgiving others; "your Father is perfect," is his spur to a higher life; "your Father knoweth," is his anodyne in anxiety; "it is the Father's good pleasure," is his certainty of coming happiness; "_one_ is your Father, which is in heaven," is, by an even extravagant loyalty, made a reason for denying the very name to any other. But in the fourth gospel all is changed: if the Father is mentioned at all, it is only as the sender of Jesus, as _his_ Witness and _his_ Glorifier. All love, all devotion, all homage, is directed to Jesus and to Jesus only: even "on the Christian hypothesis the Father is eclipsed by His only begotten Son."* "All judgment" is in the hands of the Son: he has "life in himself;" "the work of God" is to believe on him; he gives "life unto the world;" he will "raise" us "up at the last day;" except by eating him there is "no life;" he is "the light of the world;" he gives true freedom; he is the "one shepherd: none can pluck" us out of his hand; he will "draw all men unto" himself: he is the "Lord and Master," "the truth and the life;" what is even asked of the Father, _he_ will do; he will come to his disciples and abide in them; his peace and joy are their reward. Verily, we need no more: he who gives us eternal life, who raises us from the dead, who is our judge, who hears our prayers, and gives us light, freedom, and truth, He, He only, is our God; none can do more for us than he: in Him only will we trust in life and death. So, consistently, the Son is no longer the drawer of believers to the Father, but the Father is degraded into becoming the way to the Son, and none can come to Jesus unless Almighty God draws them to him. Jesus is no longer the way into the Holiest, but the Eternal Father is made the means to an end beyond himself. * Voysey. For this fifth reason, more than for anything else, we reject this gospel with the most passionate earnestness, with the most burning indignation, as an insult to the One Father of spirits, the ultimate Object of all faith and hope and love. And who is this who thus dethrones our heavenly Father? It is not even the Jesus whose fair moral beauty has exacted our hearty admiration. To worship _him_ would be an idolatry, but to worship him--were he such as "John" describes him--would be an idolatry as degrading as it would be baseless. For let us mark the character pourtrayed in this fourth gospel. His public career begins with an undignified miracle: at a marriage, where the wine runs short, he turns water into wine, in order to supply men who have already "well drunk" (ch. ii. 10). [We may ask, in passing, what led Mary to expect a miracle, when we are told that this was the first, and she could not, therefore, know of her son's gifts.] The next important point is the conversation with Nicodemus, where we scarcely knew which to marvel at most, the stolid stupidity of a "Master in Israel" misunderstanding a metaphor that must have been familiar to him, or the aggressive way in which Jesus speaks as to the non-reception of his message before he had been in public many months, and as to non-belief in his person before belief had become possible. We then come to the series of discourses related in ch. v. 10. Perfect egotism pervades them all; in all appear the same strange misunderstandings on the part of the people, the same strange persistence in puzzling them on the part of the speaker. In one of them the people honestly wonder at his mysterious words: "How is it that he saith, I come down from heaven," and, instead of any explanation, Jesus retorts that they should not murmur, since no man _can_ come to him unless the Father draw him; so that, when he puts forward a statement apparently contrary to fact--"his father and mother we know," say the puzzled Jews--he refuses to explain it, and falls back on his favourite doctrine: "Unless you are of those favoured ones whom God enlightens, you cannot expect to understand me." Little wonder indeed that "many of his disciples walked no more with" a teacher so perplexing and so discouraging; with one who presented for their belief a mysterious doctrine, contrary to their experience, and then, in answer to their prayer for enlightenment, taunts them with an ignorance he admits was unavoidable. The next important conversation occurs in the temple, and here Jesus, the friend of sinners, the bringer of hope to the despairing--this Jesus has no tenderness for some who "believed on him;" he ruthlessly tramples on the bruised reed and quenches the smoking flax. First he irritates their Jewish pride with accusations of slavery and low descent; then, groping after his meaning, they exclaim, "We have one Father, even God," and he--whom we know as the tenderest preacher of that Father's universal love--surely he gladly catches at their struggling appreciation of his favourite topic, and fans the hopeful spark into a flame? Yes! Jesus of Nazareth would have done so. But Jesus, "according to St. John," turns fiercely on them, denying the sonship he elsewhere proclaims, and retorts, "Ye are of your father, the devil." And this to men who "believed on him;" this from lips which said, "_One_ is your Father," and He, in heaven. He argues next with the Pharisees, and we find him arrogantly exclaiming: "_all_ that ever came before me were thieves and robbers." What, all? Moses and Elijah, Isaiah and all the prophets? At length, after he has once more repulsed some inquirers, the Jews take up stones to stone him, as Moses commanded, because "thou makest thyself God." He escapes by a clever evasion, which neutralises all his apparent assertions of Divinity. "Other men have been called gods, so surely I do not blaspheme by calling myself God's son." Never let us forget that in this gospel, the stronghold of the Divinity of Jesus, Jesus himself explains his strongest assertion "I and my Father are one" in a manner which can only be honest in the mouth of a man.* We pass to the celebrated "last discourse." In this we find the same peculiar style, the same self-assertion, but we must note, in addition, the distinct tritheism which pervades it. There are three distinct Beings, each necessarily deprived of some attribute of Divinity: thus, the Deity is Infinite, but if He is divided He becomes finite, since two Infinites are an impossible absurdity, and unless they are identical they must bound each other, so becoming finite. Accordingly "the Comforter" cannot be present till Jesus departs, therefore neither Jesus nor the Comforter can be God, since God is omnipresent. Since, then, prayer is to be addressed to Jesus as God, the low theory of tri-theism, of a plurality of Gods, none of whom is a perfect God, is here taught. In this discourse, also, the Christian horizon is bounded by the figure of Jesus, the office of the Comforter is sub-servient to this one worship, "he shall glorify me." Jesus, at last, prays for his disciples, markedly excluding from his intercession "the world" he was said to have come to save, and, as throughout this gospel, restricting all his love, all his care, all his tenderness to "these, whom Thou hast given me." Here we come to the essence of the spirit which pervades this whole gospel. "I pray for them; I pray not for the world: not for them who are of their father the devil, nor for my betrayer, the son of perdition." This is the spirit which Christians dare to ascribe to Jesus of Nazareth, the tenderest, gentlest, widest-hearted man who has yet graced humanity. This is the spirit, they tell us, which dwelt in _his_ bosom, who gave us the parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal son. "No," we answer, "this is not the spirit of the Prophet of Nazareth, but" (Dr. Liddon will pardon the appropriation) "this is the temper of a man who will not enter the public baths along with the heretic who has dishonoured his Lord." * "For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy; and because that thou being a man makest thyself God." Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your law, I said, ye are gods? If he called them gods unto whom the word of God came (and the scripture cannot be broken), say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I said I am the son of God?" This is the spirit of the writer of the gospel, not of Jesus: the egotism of the writer is reflected in the words put into the mouth of his master; and thus the preacher of the Father's love is degraded into the seeker of his own glory, and bearing witness of himself, his witness becomes untrue. I must also draw attention to one or two cases of unreality attributed to Jesus by this gospel. He prays, on one occasion, "because of the people who stand by:" he cries on his cross, "I thirst," not because of the burning agony of crucifixion, but in order "that the Scriptures might be fulfilled:" a voice answers "his prayer," "not because of me, but for your sakes." This calculation of effect is very foreign to the sincere and open spirit of Jesus. Akin to this is the prevarication attributed to him, when he declines to accompany his brethren to Judaea, but "when his brethren were gone up then went he also up to the feast, not openly but as it were in secret." All this strikes us strangely as part of that simple, fearless life. We reject this gospel, sixthly, for the cruel spirit, the arrogance, the self-assertion, the bigotry, the unreality, attributed by it to Jesus, and we denounce it as a slander on his memory and an insult to his noble life. We may, perhaps, note, as another peculiarity of this gospel--although I do not enter here into the argument of the divinity of Jesus,--that when Dr. Liddon, in his celebrated Bampton Lectures, is anxious to prove the Deity of Jesus _from his own mouth_, he is compelled to quote exclusively from this gospel. Such a fact as this cannot be overlooked, when we remember that "St. John's gospel is a polemical treatise" written to prove this special point. We cannot avoid noting the coincidence. We have now gone through this remarkable record and examined it in various lights. At the outset we conceded to our opponents all the advantage which comes from admitting that the gospel _may_ be written by the Apostle John; we have left the authorship a moot point, and based our argument on a different ground. Apostolic or non-apostolic, Johannine or Corinthian, we accept it or reject it for itself, and not for its writer. We have found that all its characters speak alike in a marked and peculiar style--a style savouring of the study rather than the street, of Alexandria rather than Jerusalem or Galilee. We have glanced at its immoral partiality. We have noted the numerous discrepancies between the history of this gospel and that of the three synoptics. We have discovered it to be equally opposed to them in morals as in history: in doctrine as in morals. We have seen that, while it degrades God to enthrone Jesus in His stead, it also degrades Jesus, and so lowers his character that it defies recognition. Finally, we have found it stands alone in supporting the Deity of Jesus from his own mouth. I know not how all this may strike others; to me these arguments are simply overwhelming in their force. I tear out the "Gospel according to St. John" from the writings which "are profitable" "for instruction in righteousness." I reject it from beginning to end, as fatally destructive of all true faith towards God, as perilously subversive of all true morality in man, as an outrage on the sacred memory of Jesus of Nazareth, and as an insult to the Justice, the Supremacy, and the Unity of Almighty God. ON THE ATONEMENT. THE Atonement may be regarded as the central doctrine of Christianity, the very _raison d'être_ of the Christian faith. Take this away, and there would remain indeed a faith and a morality, but both would have lost their distinctive features: it would be a faith without its centre, and a morality without its foundation. Christianity would be unrecognisable without its angry God, its dying Saviour, its covenant signed with "the blood of the Lamb:" the blotting out of the Atonement would deprive millions of all hope towards God, and would cast them from satisfaction into anxiety from comfort into despair. The warmest feelings of Christendom cluster round the Crucifix, and he, the crucified one, is adored with passionate devotion, not as martyr for truth, not as witness for God, not as faithful to death, but as the substitute for his worshippers, as he who bears in their stead the wrath of God, and the punishment due to sin. The Christian is taught to see in the bleeding Christ the victim slain in his own place; he himself should be hanging on that cross, agonised and dying; those nail-pierced hands ought to be his; the anguish on that face should be furrowed on his own; the weight of suffering resting on that bowed head should be crushing himself inta the dust. In the simplest meaning of the words, Christ is the sinner's substitute, and on him the sin of the world is laid: as Luther expressed it, he "is the greatest and only sinner;" literally "made sin" for mankind, and expiating the guilt which, in very deed, was transferred from man to-him. I wish at the outset, for the sake of justice and candour, to acknowledge frankly the good which has been drawn forth by the preaching of the Cross. This good has been, however, the indirect rather than the direct result of a belief in the Atonement. The doctrine, in itself, has nothing elevating about it, but the teaching closely connected with the doctrine has its ennobling and purifying side. All the enthusiasm aroused in the human breast by the thought of one who sacrificed himself to save his brethren, all the consequent longing to emulate that love by sacrificing all for Jesus and for those for whom he died, all the moral gain caused by the contemplation of a sublime self-devotion, all these are the fruits of the nobler side of the Atonement. That the sinless should stoop to the sinful, that holiness should embrace the guilty in order to raise them to its own level, has struck a chord in men's bosoms which has responded to the touch by a harmonious melody of gratitude to the divine and sinless sufferer, and loving labour for suffering and sinful man. The Cross has been at once the apotheosis and the source of self-sacrificing love. "Love ye one another _as_ I have loved you: not in word but in deed, with a deep self-sacrificing love:" such is the lesson which, according to one of the most orthodox Anglican divines, "Christ preaches to us from His Cross." In believing in the Atonement, man's heart has, as usual, been better than his head; he has passed over the dark side of the idea, and has seized on the divine truth that the strong should gladly devote themselves to shield the weak, that labour, even unto death, is the right of humanity from every son of man. It is often said that no doctrine long retains its hold on men's hearts which is not founded on some great truth; this divine idea of self-sacrifice has been the truth contained in the doctrine of the Atonement, which has made it so dear to many loving and noble souls, and which has hidden its "multitude of sins"--sins against love and against justice, against God and against man. Love and self-sacrifice have floated the great error over the storms of centuries, and these cords still bind to it many hearts of which love and self-sacrifice are the glory and the crown. This said, in candi d'homage to the good which has drawn its inspiration from Jesus crucified, we turn to the examination of the doctrine itself: if we find that it is as dishonouring to God as it is injurious to man, a crime against justice, a blasphemy against love, we must forget all the sentiments which cluster round it, and reject it utterly. It is well to speak respectfully of that which is dear to any religious soul, and to avoid jarring harshly on the strings of religious feeling, even though the soul be misled and the feeling be misdirected; but a time comes when false charity is cruelty, and tenderness to error is treason to truth. For long, men who know its emptiness pass by in silence the shrine consecrated by human hopes and fears, by love and worship, and the "times of this ignorance God (in the bold figure of Paul) also winks at;" but when "the fulness of the time is come," God sends forth some true son of his to dash the idol to the ground, and to trample it into dust. We need not be afraid that the good wrought by the lessons derived from the Atonement in time past will disappear with the doctrine itself; the mark of the Cross is too deeply ploughed into humanity ever to be erased, and those who no longer call themselves by the name of Christ are not the most backward scholars in the school of love and sacrifice. The history of this doctrine has been a curious one. In the New Testament the Atonement is, as its name implies, a simply making at one God and man: _how_ this is done is but vaguely hinted at, and in order to deduce the modern doctrine from the Bible, we must import into the books of the New Testament all the ideas derived from theological disputations. Words used in all simplicity by the ancient writers must have attached to them the definite polemical meaning they hold in the quarrels of theologians, before they can be strained into supporting a substitutionary atonement. The idea, however, of "ransom" is connected with the work of Jesus, and the question arose, "to whom is this ransom paid?" They who lived in those first centuries of Christianity were still too much within the illumination of the tender halo thrown by Jesus round the Father's name, to dream for a moment that their redeemer had ransomed them from the beloved hands of God. No, the ransom was paid to the devil, whose thrall they believed mankind to be, and Jesus, by sacrificing himself, had purchased them from the devil and made them sons of God. It is not worth while to enter on the quaint details of this scheme, how the devil thought he had conquered and could hold Jesus captive, and was tricked by finding that his imagined gain could not be retained by him, and so on. Those who wish to become acquainted with this ingenious device can study it in the pages of the Christian fathers: it has at least one advantage over the modern plan, namely, that we are not so shocked at hearing of pain and suffering as acceptable to the supposed incarnate evil, as at hearing of them being offered as a sacrifice to the supreme good. As the teaching of Jesus lost its power, and became more and more polluted by the cruel thoughts of savage and bigoted men, the doctrine of the atonement gradually changed its character. Men thought the Almighty to be such a one as themselves, and being fierce and unforgiving and revengeful, they projected their own shadows on to the clouds which surrounded the Deity, and then, like the shepherd who meets his own form reflected and magnified on the mountain mist, they recoiled before the image they themselves had made. The loving Father who sent his son to rescue his perishing children by sacrificing himself, fades away from the hearts of the Christian world, and there looms darkly in his place an awful form, the inexorable judge who exacts a debt man is too poor to pay, and who, in default of payment, casts the debtor into a hopeless prison, hopeless unless another pays to the uttermost farthing the fine demanded by the law. So, in this strange transformation-scene God actually takes the place of the devil, and the ransom once paid to redeem men from Satan becomes the ransom paid to redeem men from God. It reminds one of the quarrels over the text which bids us "fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell," when we remain in doubt whom he is we are to fear, since half the Christian commentators assure us that it refers to our Father in heaven, while the other half asseverate that the devil is the individual we are to dread. The seal was set on the "redemption scheme" by Anselm in his great work, "_Cur Deus Homo_" and the doctrine which had been slowly growing into the theology of Christendom was thenceforward stamped with the signet of the Church. Roman Catholics and Protestants, at the time of the Reformation, alike believed in the vicarious and substitutionary character of the atonement wrought by Christ. There is no dispute between them on this point. I prefer to allow the Christian divines to speak for themselves as to the character of the atonement: no one can accuse me of exaggerating their views, if their views are given in their own words. Luther teaches that "Christ did truly and effectually feel for all mankind, the wrath of God, malediction and death." Flavel says that "to wrath, to the wrath of an infinite God without mixture, to the very torments of hell, was Christ delivered, and that by the hand of his own father." The Anglican homily preaches that "sin did pluck God out of heaven to make him feel the horrors and pains of death," and that man, being a firebrand of hell and a bondsman of the devil, "was ransomed by the death of his own only and well-beloved son;" the "heat of his wrath," "his burning wrath," could only be "pacified" by Jesus, "so pleasant was this sacrifice and oblation of his son's death." Edwards, being logical, saw that there was a gross injustice in sin being twice punished, and in the pains of hell, the penalty of sin, being twice inflicted, first on Christ, the substitute of mankind, and then on the lost, a portion of mankind. So he, in common with most Calvinists, finds himself compelled to restrict the atonement to the elect, and declared that Christ bore the sins, not of the world, but of the chosen out of the world; he suffers "not for the world, but for them whom Thou hast given me." But Edwards adheres firmly to the belief in substitution, and rejects the universal atonement for the very reason that "to believe Christ died for all is the surest way of proving that he died for none in the sense Christians have hitherto believed." He declares that "Christ suffered the wrath of God for men's sins;" that "God imposed his wrath due unto, and Christ underwent the pains of hell for," sin. Owen regards Christ's sufferings as "a full valuable compensation to the justice of God for all the sins" of the elect, and says that he underwent "that same punishment which.... they themselves were bound to undergo." The doctrine of the Christian Church--in the widest sense of that much-fought-over term--was then as follows, and I will state it in language which is studiously moderate, _as compared with the orthodox teaching_ of the great Christian divines. If any one doubts this assertion, let him study their writings for himself. I really dare not transfer some of their expressions to my own pages. God the Father having cursed mankind and condemned them to eternal damnation, because of Adam's disobedience in eating an apple--or some other fruit, for the species is only preserved by tradition, and is not definitely settled by the inspired writings--and having further cursed each man for his own individual transgressions, man lay under the fierce wrath of God, unable to escape, and unable to pacify it, for he could not even atone for his own private sins, much less for his share of the guilt incurred by his forefather in Paradise. Man's debt was hopelessly large, and he had "nothing to pay;" so all that remained to him was to suffer an eternity of torture, which sad fate he had merited by the crime of being born into an accursed world. The second person of the Trinity moved to pity by the helpless and miserable state of mankind, interposed between the first person of the Trinity and the wretched sinners; he received into his own breast the fire-tipped arrows of divine wrath, and by suffering inconceivable tortures, equal in amount to an eternity of the torments of hell, he wrung from God's hands the pardon of mankind, or of a portion thereof. God, pacified by witnessing this awful agony of one who had from all eternity been "lying in his bosom" co-equal sharer of his Majesty and glory, and the object of his tenderest love, relents from his fierce wrath, and consents to accept the pain of Jesus as a substitute for the pain of mankind. In plain terms, then, God is represented as a Being so awfully cruel, so implacably revengeful, that pain _as_ pain, and death _as_ death, are what he demands as a propitiatory sacrifice, and with nothing less than extremest agony can his fierce claims on mankind be bought off. The due weight of suffering he must have, but it is a matter of indifference whether it is undergone by Jesus or by mankind. Did not the old Fathers do well in making the awful ransom a matter between Jesus and the devil? When this point is pressed on Christians, and one urges the dishonour done to God by painting him in colours from which heart and soul recoil in shuddering horror, by ascribing to him a revengefulness and pitiless cruelty in comparison with which the worst efforts of human malignity appear but childish mischief, they are quick to retort that we are caricaturing Christian doctrine; they will allow, when overwhelmed with evidence, that "strong language" has been used in past centuries, but will say that such views are not now held, and that they do not ascribe such harsh dealing to God the Father. Theists are therefore compelled to prove each step of their accusation, and to quote from Christian writers the words which embody the views they assail. Were I simply to state that Christians in these days ascribe to Almighty God a fierce wrath against the whole human race, that this wrath can only be soothed by suffering and death, that he vents this wrath on an innocent head, and that he is well pleased by the sight of the agony of his beloved Son, a shout of indignation would rise from a thousand lips, and I should be accused of exaggeration, of false witness, of blasphemy. So once more I write down the doctrine from Christian dictation, and, be it remembered, the sentences I quote are from published works, and are therefore, the outcome of serious deliberation; they are not overdrawn pictures taken from the fervid eloquence of excited oratory, when the speaker may perhaps be carried further than he would, in cold blood, consent to. Stroud makes Christ drink "the cup of the wrath of God." Jenkyn says, "he suffered as one disowned and reprobated and forsaken of God." Dwight considers that he endured God's "hatred and contempt." Bishop Jeune tells us that "after man had done his worst, worse remained for Christ to bear. He had fallen into his father's hands." Archbishop Thomson preaches that "the clouds of God's wrath gathered thick over the whole human race: they discharged themselves on Jesus only;" he "becomes a curse for us, and a vessel of wrath." Liddon echoes the same sentiment: "the apostles teach that mankind are slaves, and that Christ on the Cross is paying their ransom. Christ crucified is voluntarily devoted and accursed:" he even speaks of "the precise amount of ignominy and pain needed for the redemption," and says that the "divine victim" paid more than was absolutely necessary. These quotations seem sufficient to prove that the Christians of the present day are worthy followers of the elder believers. The theologians first quoted are indeed coarser in their expressions, and are less afraid of speaking out exactly what they believe, but there is no real difference of creed between the awful doctrine of Flavel and the polished dogma of Canon Liddon. The older and the modern Christians alike believe in the bitter wrath of God against "the whole human race." Both alike regard the Atonement as so much pain tendered by Jesus to the Almighty Father in payment of a debt of pain owed to God by humanity. They alike represent God as only to be pacified by the sight of suffering. Man has insulted and injured God, and God must be revenged by inflicting suffering on the sinner in return. The "hatred and contempt" God launched at Jesus were due to the fact that Jesus was the sinner's substitute, and are therefore the feelings which animate the Divine heart towards the sinner himself. God hates and despises the world. He would have "consumed it in a moment" in the fire of his burning wrath, had not Jesus, "his chosen, stood before him in the gap to turn away his wrathful indignation." Now, how far is all this consistent with justice? Is the wrath of God against humanity justified by the circumstances of the case, so that we may be obliged to own that some sacrifice was due from sinful man to his Creator, to propitiate a justly incensed and holy God? I trow not. On this first count, the Atonement is a fearful injustice. For God has allowed men to be brought into the world with sinful inclinations, and to be surrounded with many temptations and much evil. He has made man imperfect, and the child is born into the world with an imperfect nature. It is radically unjust, then, that God should curse the work of His hands for being what He made them, and condemn them to endless misery for failing to do the impossible. Allowing that Christians are right in believing that Adam was sinless when he came from his Maker's hands, these remarks apply to every other living soul since born into the world; the Genesis myth will not extricate Christians from the difficulty. Christians are quite right and are justified by facts when they say that man is born into the world frail, imperfect, prone to sin and error; but who, we ask them, made men so? Does not their own Bible tell them that the "potter hath power over the clay," and, further, that "we are the clay and thou art the potter?" To curse men for being men, _i.e._, imperfect moral beings, is the height of cruelty and injustice; to condemn the morally weak to hell for sin, _i.e._, for failing in moral strength, is about as fair as sentencing a sick man to death because he cannot stand upright. Christians try and avoid the force of this by saying that men should rely on God's grace to uphold them, but they fail to see that this _very want of reliance_ is part of man's natural weakness. The sick man might be blamed for falling because he did not lean on a stronger arm, but suppose he was too weak to grasp it? Further, few Christians believe that it is impossible in practice, however possible in theory, to lead a perfect life; and as to "offend in one point is to be guilty of all," one failure is sufficient to send the generally righteous man to hell. Besides, they forget that infants are included under the curse, although _necessarily_ incapable of grasping the idea either of sin or of God; all babies born into the world and dying before becoming capable of acting for themselves would, we are taught, have been inevitably consigned to hell, had it not been for the Atonement of Jesus. Some Christians actually believe that unbaptized babies are not admitted into heaven, and in a Roman Catholic book descriptive of hell, a poor little baby writhes and screams in a red-hot oven. This side of the Atonement, this unjust demand on men for a righteousness they could not render, necessitating a sacrifice to propitiate God for non-compliance with his exaction, has had its due effect on men's minds, and has alienated their hearts from God. No wonder that men turned away from a God who, like a passionate but unskilful workman, dashes to pieces the instrument he has made because it fails in its purpose, and, instead of blaming his own want of skill, vents his anger on the helpless thing that is only what he made it. Most naturally, also, have men shrunk from the God who "avengeth and is furious" to the tender, pitiful, human Jesus, who loved sinners so deeply as to choose to suffer for their sakes. They could owe no gratitude to an Almighty Being who created them and cursed them, and only consented to allow them to be happy on condition that another paid for them the misery he demanded as his due; but what gratitude could be enough for him who rescued them from the fearful hands of the living God, at the cost of almost intolerable suffering to himself? Let us remember that Christ is said to suffer the very torments of hell, and that his worst sufferings were when "fallen into his father's hands," out of which he has rescued us, and then can we wonder that the crucified is adored with a very ecstasy of gratitude? Imagine what it is to be saved from the hands of him who inflicted an agony admitted to be unlimited, and who took advantage of an infinite capacity in order to inflict an infinite pain. It is well for the men before whose eyes this awful spectre has flitted that the fair humanity of Jesus gives them a refuge to fly to, else what but despair and madness could have been the doom of those who, without Jesus, would have seen enthroned above the wailing universe naught but an infinite cruelty and an Almighty foe. We see, then, that the necessity for an atonement makes the Eternal Father both unjust in his demands on men and cruel in his punishment of inevitable failure; but there is another injustice which is of the very essence of the Atonement itself. This consists in the vicarious character of the sacrifice: a new element of injustice is introduced when we consider that the person sacrificed is not even the guilty party. If a man offends against law, justice requires that he should be punished: the punishment becomes unjust if it is excessive, as in the case we have been considering above; but it is equally unjust to allow him to go free without punishment. Christians are right in affirming that moral government would be at an end were men allowed to sin with impunity, and did an easy forgiveness succeed to each offence. They appeal to our instinctive sense of justice to-approve the sentiment that punishment should follow sin: we acquiesce, and hope that we have now reached a firm standing-ground from which to proceed further in our investigation. But, no; they promptly outrage that same sense of justice which they have called as a witness on their side, by asking us to believe that its ends are attained provided that somebody or other is punished. When we reply that _this_ is not justice, we are promptly bidden not to be presumptuous and argue from our human ideas of justice as to the course that ought to be pursued by the absolute justice of God. "Then why appeal to it at all?" we urge; "why talk of justice in the matter if we are totally unable to judge as to the rights and wrongs of the case?" At this point we are commonly overwhelmed with Paul's notable argument--"Nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?" But if Christians value the simplicity and straightforwardness of their own minds, they should not use words which convey a certain accepted meaning in this shuffling, double sense. When we speak of "justice," we speak of a certain well-understood quality, and we do not speak of a mysterious divine attribute, which has not only nothing in common with human justice, but which is in direct opposition to that which we understand by that name. Suppose a man condemned to death for murder: the judge is about to sentence him, when a bystander--as it chances, the judge's own son--interposes: "My Lord, the prisoner is guilty and deserves to be hanged; but if you will let him go, I will die in his place." The offer is accepted, the prisoner is set free, the judge's son is hanged in his stead. What is all this? Self-sacrifice (however misdirected), love, enthusiasm--what you will; but certainly not _justice_--nay, the grossest injustice, a second murder, an ineffaceable stain on the ermine of the outraged law. I imagine that, in this supposed case, no Christian will be found to assert that justice was done; yet call the judge God, the prisoner mankind, the substitute Jesus, and the trial scene is exactly reproduced. Then, in the name of candour and common sense, why call that just in God which we see would be so unjust and immoral in man? This vicarious nature of the Atonement also degrades the divine name, by making him utterly careless in the matter of punishment: all he is anxious for, according to this detestable theory, is that he should strike a blow _somewhere_. Like a child in a passion, he only feels the desire to hurt somebody, and strikes out vaguely and at random. There is no discrimination used; the thunderbolt is launched into a crowd: it falls on the head of the "sinless son," and crushes the innocent, while the sinner goes free. What matter? It has fallen somewhere, and the "burning fire of his-wrath" is cooled. This is what men call the vindication of the justice of the Moral Governor of the universe: this is "the act of God's awful holiness," which marks his hatred of sin, and his immovable determination to punish it. But when we reflect that this justice is consistent with letting off the guilty and punishing the innocent person, we feel dread misgivings steal into our minds. The justice of our Moral Governor has nothing in common with our justice--indeed, it violates all our notions of right and wrong. What if, as Mr. Vance Smith suggests, this strange justice be consistent also with a double punishment of sin; and what if the Moral Governor should bethink himself that, having confused morality by an unjust--humanly speaking, of course--punishment, it would be well to set things straight again by punishing the guilty after all? We can never dare to feel safe in the hands of this unjust--humanly speaking--Moral Governor, or predicate from our instinctive notions of right and wrong what his requirements may be. One is lost in astonishment that men should believe such things of God, and not have manhood enough to rise up rebellious against such injustice--should, instead, crouch at his feet, and while trying to hide themselves from his wrath should force their trembling lips to murmur some incoherent acknowledgment of his mercy. Ah! they do not believe it; they assert it in words, but, thank God, it makes no impression on their hearts; and they would die a thousand deaths rather than imitate, in their dealings with their fellow-men, the fearful cruelty which the Church has taught them to call the justice of the Judge of all the earth. The Atonement is not only doubly unjust, but it is perfectly futile. We are told that Christ took away the sins of the world; we have a right to ask, "how?" So far as we can judge, we bear our sins in our own bodies still, and the Atonement helps us not at all. Has he borne the physical consequences of sin, such as the loss of health caused by intemperance of all kinds? Not at all, this penalty remains, and, from the nature of things, cannot be transferred. Has he borne the social consequences, shame, loss of credit, and so on? They remain still to hinder us as we strive to rise after our fall. Has he at least borne the pangs of remorse for us, the stings of conscience? By no means; the tears of sorrow are no less bitter, the prickings of repentance no less keen. Perhaps he has struck at the root of evil, and has put away sin itself out of a redeemed world? Alas! the wailing that goes up to heaven from a world oppressed with sin weeps out a sorrowfully emphatic, "no, this he has _not_ done." What has he then borne for us? Nothing, save the phantom wrath of a phantom tyrant; all that is real exists the same as before. We turn away, then, from the offered atonement with a feeling that would be impatience at such trifling, were it not all too sorrowful, and leave the Christians to impose on their imagined sacrifice, the imagined burden of the guilt of the accursed race. Further, the Atonement is, from the nature of things, entirely impossible: we have seen how Christ fails to bear our sins in any intelligible sense, but can he, in any way, bear the "punishment" of sin? The idea that the punishment of sin can be transferred from one person to another is radically false, and arises from a wrong conception of the punishment consequent on sin, and from the ecclesiastical guilt, so to speak, thought to be incurred thereby. _The only true punishment of sin is the injury caused by it to our moral nature_: all the indirect punishments, we have seen, Christ has not taken away, and the true punishment can fall only on ourselves. For sin is nothing more than the transgression of law. All law, when broken, entails _of necessity_ an appropriate penalty, and recoils, as it were, on the transgressor. A natural law, when broken, avenges itself by consequent suffering, and so does a spiritual law: the injury wrought by the latter is not less real, although less obvious. Physical sin brings physical suffering; spiritual, moral, mental sin brings each its own appropriate punishment. "Sin" has become such a cant term that we lose sight, in using it, of its real simple meaning, a breaking of law. Imagine any sane man coming and saying, "My dear friend; if you like to put your hand into the fire I will bear the punishment of being burnt, and you shall not suffer." It is quite as absurd to imagine that if I sin Jesus can bear my consequent suffering. If a man lies habitually, for instance, he grows thoroughly untrue: let him repent ever so vigorously, he must bear the consequences of his past deeds, and fight his way back slowly to truthfulness of word and thought: no atonement, nothing in heaven or earth save his own labour, will restore to him the forfeited jewel of instinctive candour. Thus the "punishment" of untruthfulness is the loss of the power of being true, just as the punishment of putting the hand into the fire is the loss of the power of grasping. But in addition to this simple and most just and natural "retribution," theologians have invented certain arbitrary penalties as a punishment of sin, the wrath of God and hell fire. These imaginary penalties are discharged by an equally imaginary atonement, the natural punishment remaining as before; so after all we only reject the two sets of inventions which balance each other, and find ourselves just in the same position as they are, having gained infinitely in simplicity and naturalness. The punishment of sin is not an arbitrary penalty, but an inevitable sequence: Jesus may bear, if his worshippers will have it so, the theological fiction of the "guilt of sin," an idea derived from the ceremonial uncleanness of the Levitical law, but let him leave alone the solemn realities connected with the sacred and immutable laws of God. Doubly unjust, useless, and impossible, it might be deemed a work of supererogation to argue yet further against the Atonement; but its hold on men's minds is too firm to allow us to lay down a single weapon which can be turned against it. So, in addition to these defects, I remark that, viewed as a propitiatory sacrifice to Almighty God, it is thoroughly inadequate. If God, being righteous, as we believe Him to be, regarded man with anger because of man's sinfulness, what is obviously the required propitiation? Surely the removal of the cause of anger, _i.e._, of sin itself, and the seeking by man of righteousness. The old Hebrew prophet saw this plainly, and his idea of atonement is the true one: "wherewith shall I come before the Lord," he is asked, with burnt-offerings or--choicer still--parental anguish over a first-born's corpse? "What doth the Lord require of thee," is the reproving answer, "but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" But what is the propitiatory element in the Christian Atonement? let Canon Liddon answer: "the ignominy and pain _needed_ for the redemption." Ignominy, agony, blood, death, these are what Christians offer up as an acceptable sacrifice to the Spirit of Love. But what have all these in common with the demands of the Eternal Righteousness, and how can pain atone for sin? they have no relation to each other; there is no appropriateness in the offered exchange. These terrible offerings are in keeping with the barbarous ideas of uncivilized nations, and we understand the feelings which prompt the savage to immolate tortured victims on the altars of his gloomy gods; they are appropriate sacrifices to the foes of mankind, who are to be bought off from injuring us by our offering them an equivalent pain to that they desire to inflict, but they are offensive when given to Him who is the Friend and Lover of Humanity. An Atonement which offers suffering as a propitiation can have nothing in common with God's will for man, and must be utterly beside the mark, perfectly inadequate. If we must have Atonement, let it at least consist of something which will suit the Righteousness and Love of God, and be in keeping with his perfection; let it not borrow the language of ancient savagery, and breathe of blood and dying victims, and tortured human frames, racked with pain. Lastly, I impeach the Atonement as injurious in several ways to human morality. It has been extolled as "meeting the needs of the awakened sinner" by soothing his fears of punishment with the gift of a substitute who has already suffered his sentence for him; but nothing can be more pernicious than to console a sinner with the promise that he shall escape the punishment he has justly deserved. The Atonement may meet the first superficial feelings of a man startled into the consciousness of his sinfulness, it may soothe the first vague fears and act as an opiate to the awakened conscience; but it does not fulfil the cravings of a heart deeply yearning after righteousness; it offers a legal justification to a soul which is longing for purity, it offers freedom from punishment to a soul longing for freedom from sin. The true penitent does not seek to be shielded from the consequences of his past errors: he accepts them meekly, bravely, humbly, learning through pain the lesson of future purity. An atonement which steps in between us and this fatherly discipline ordained by God, would be a curse and not a blessing; it would rob us of our education and deprive us of a priceless instruction. The force of temptation is fearfully added to by the idea that repentance lays the righteous penalty of transgression on another head; this doctrine gives a direct encouragement to sin, as even Paul perceived when he said, "shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" Some one has remarked, I think, that though Paul ejaculates, "God forbid," his fears were well founded and have been widely realised. To the Atonement we owe the morbid sentiment which believes in the holy death of a ruffianly murderer, because, goaded by ungovernable terror, he has snatched at the offered safety and been "washed in the blood of the lamb." To it we owe the unwholesome glorying in the pious sentiments of such an one, who ought to go out of this life sadly and silently, without a sickening parade of feelings of love towards the God whose laws, as long as he could, he has broken and despised. But the Christian teachers will extol the "saving grace" which has made the felon die with words of joyful assurance, meet only for the lips of one who crowns a saintly life with a peaceful death. The Atonement has weakened that stern condemnation of sin which is the safeguard of purity; it has softened down moral differences, and placed the penitent above the saint; it has dulled the feeling of responsibility in the soul; it has taken away the help, such as it is, of fear of punishment for sin; it has confused man's sense of justice, outraged his feeling of right, blunted his conscience, and misdirected his repentance. It has chilled his love to God by representing the universal father as a cruel tyrant and a remorseless and unjust judge. It has been the fruitful parent of all asceticism, for, since God was pacified by suffering once, he would, of course, be pleased with suffering at all times, and so men have logically ruined their bodies to save their souls, and crushed their feelings and lacerated their hearts to propitiate the awful form frowning behind the cross of Christ. To the Atonement we owe it that God is served by fear instead of by love, that monasticism holds its head above the sweet sanctities of love and home, that religion is crowned with thorns and not with roses, that the _miserere_ and not the _gloria_ is the strain from earth to heaven. The Atonement teaches men to crouch at the feet of God, instead of raising loving, joyful faces to meet his radiant smile; it shuts out his sunshine from us, and veils us in the night of an impenetrable dread. What is the sentiment with which Canon Liddon closes a sermon on the death of Christ? I quote it to show the slavish feeling engendered by this doctrine in a very noble human soul: "In ourselves, indeed, there is nothing that should stay His (God's) arm or invite his mercy. But may he have respect to the acts and the sufferings of his sinless son? Only while contemplating the inestimable merits of the Redeemer can we dare to hope that our heavenly Father will overlook the countless provocations which he receives at the hands of the redeemed." Is this a wholesome sentiment, either as regards our feelings towards God or our efforts towards holiness? Is it well to look to the purity of another as a makewight for our personal shortcomings? All these injuries to morality done by the atonement are completed by the crowning one, that it offers to the sinner a veil of "imputed righteousness." Not only does it take from him his saving punishment, but it nullifies his strivings after holiness by offering him a righteousness which is not his own. It introduces into the solemn region of duty to God the legal fiction of a gift of holiness, which is imputed, not won. We are taught to believe that we can blind the eyes of God and satisfy him with a pretended purity. But that every one whose purity we seek to claim as ours, that fair blossom of humanity, Jesus of Nazareth, whose mission we so misconstrue, launched his anathema at whited sepulchres, pure without and foul within. What would he have said of the whitewash of unimputed righteousness? Stern and sharp would have been his rebuke, methinks, to a device so untrue, and well-deserved would have been his thundered "woe" on a hypocrisy that would fain deceive God as well as man. These considerations have carried so great a weight with the most enlightened and progressive minds among Christians themselves, that there has grown up a party in the Church whose repudiation of an atonement of agony and death is as complete as even we could wish. They denounce with the utmost fervour the hideous notion of a "bloody sacrifice," and are urgent in their representations of the dishonour done to God by ascribing to him "pleasure in the death of him that dieth," or satisfaction in the sight of pain. They point out that there is no virtue in blood to wash away sin, not even "in the blood of a God." Maurice eloquently pleads against the idea that the suffering of the "well-beloved Son" was in itself an acceptable sacrifice to the Almighty Father, and he sees the atoning element in the "holiness and graciousness of the Son." Writers of this school perceive that a moral and not a physical sacrifice can be the only acceptable offering to the Father of spirits, but the great objection lies against their theory also, that the Atonement is still vicarious. Christ still suffers _for_ man, in order to make men acceptable to God. It is, perhaps, scarcely fair to say this of the school as a whole, since the opinions of Broad Church divines differ widely from each other, ranging from the orthodox to the Socinian standing-point. Yet, roughly speaking, we may say that while they have given up the error of thinking that the death of Christ reconciles God to-us, they yet believe that his death, in some mysterious manner, reconciles us to God. It is a matter of deep thankfulness that they give up the old cruel idea of propitiating God, and so prepare the way for a higher creed. Their more humane teaching reaches hearts which are as yet sealed against us, and they are the John Baptist of the Theistic Christ. We must still urge on them that an atonement at all is superfluous, that all the parade of reconciliation by means of a mediator is perfectly unnecessary as between God and his child, man; that the notion put forward that Christ realised the ideal of humanity and propitiated God by showing what a man _could_ be, is objectionable in that it represents God as needing to be taught what were the capacities of his creatures, and is further untrue, because the powers of God in man are not really the equivalent of the capabilities of a simple man. Broad Churchmen are still hampered by the difficulties surrounding a divine Christ, and are puzzled to find for him a place in their theology which is at once suitable for his dignity, and consistent with a reasonable belief. They feel obliged to acknowledge that some unusual benefit to the race must result from the incarnation and death of a God, and are swayed alternately by their reason, which places the crucifixion of Jesus in the roll of martyrs' deaths, and by their prejudices, which assign to it a position unique and unrivalled in the history of the race. There are, however, many signs that the deity of Jesus is, as an article of faith, tottering from its pedestal in the Broad Church school. The hold on it by such men as the Rev. J. S. Brooke is very slight, and his interpretation of the incarnation is regarded by orthodox divines with unmingled horror. Their _moral_ atonement, in turn, is as the dawn before the sunrise, and we may hope that it will soon develop into the real truth: namely, that the dealings of Jesus with the Father were a purely private matter between his own soul and God, and that his value to mankind consists in his being one of the teachers of the race, one "with a genius for religion," one of the schoolmasters appointed to lead humanity to God. The theory of M'Leod Campbell stands alone, and is highly interesting and ingenious--it is the more valuable and hopeful as coming from Scotland, the home of the dreariest belief as to the relations existing between man and God. He rejects the penal character of the Atonement, and makes it consist, so to speak, in leading God and man to understand one another. He considers that Christ witnessed to men on behalf of God, and vindicated the father's heart by showing what he could be to the son who trusted in him. He witnessed to God on behalf of men--and this is the weakest point in the book, verging, as it does, on substitution--showing in humanity a perfect sympathy with God's feelings towards sin, and offering to God for man a perfect repentance for human transgression. I purposely say "verging," because Campbell does not _intend_ substitution; he represents this sorrow of Jesus as what he must inevitably feel at seeing his brother-men unconscious of their sin and danger, so no fiction is supposed as between God and Christ. But he considers that God, having seen the perfection of repentance in Jesus, accepts the repentance of man, imperfect as it is, because it is _in kind_ the same as that of Jesus, and is the germ of that feeling of which his is the perfect flower; in this sense, and only in this sense, is the repentance of man accepted "for Christ's sake." He considers that men must share in the mind of Christ as towards God and towards sin, in order to be benefited by the work of Christ, and that each man must thus actually take part in the work of atonement. The sufferings of Jesus he regards as necessary in order to test the reality of the life of sonship towards God, and brotherhood towards men, which he came to earth to exemplify. I trust I have done no injustice in this short summary to a very able and thoughtful book, which presents, perhaps, the only view of the Atonement compatible with the love and the justice of God; and this only, of course, if the idea of _any_ atonement can fairly be said to be consistent with justice. The merits of this view are practically that this work of Jesus is not an "atonement" in the theological sense at all. The defects of Campbell's book are inseparable from his creed, as he argues from a belief in the deity of Jesus, from an unconscious limitation of God's knowledge (as though God did not understand man till he was revealed to him by Jesus) and from a wrong conception of the punishment due to sin. I said, at starting, that the Atonement was the _raison d'être_ of Christianity, and, in conclusion, I would challenge all thoughtful men and women to say whether good cause has or has not been shown for rejecting this pillar "of the faith." The Atonement has but to be studied in order to be rejected. The difficulty is to persuade people to _think_ about their creed, Yet the question of this doctrine must be faced and answered. "I have too much faith in the common sense and justice of Englishmen when once awakened to face any question fairly, to doubt what that answer will be." ON THE MEDIATION AND SALVATION OF ECCLESIASTICAL CHRISTIANITY. THE whole Christian scheme turns on the assumption of the inherent necessity of some one standing between the Creator and the creature, and shielding the all-weak from the power of the All-mighty. "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God;" such is the key-note of the strain which is chanted alike by Roman Catholicism, with its thousand intercessors, and by Protestantism, with its "one Mediator, the man Christ Jesus." "Speak _thou_ for me," cries man to his favourite mouthpiece, whoever it may be; "go thou near, but let me not see the face of God, lest I die." The heroes, the saints, the idols of humanity, have been the men who have dared to search into the Unseen, and to gaze straight up into the awful Face of God. They have dashed aside all that intervened between their souls and the Eternal Soul, and have found it, as one of them quaintly phrases it, "a profitable sweet necessity to fall on the naked arm of Jehovah." Then, because they dared to-trust Him who had called them into existence, and to stretch out beseeching hands to the Everlasting Father, they have been forced into a position they would have been the very first to protest against, and have been made into mediators for men less bold, for children less confiding. Those who dared not seek God for themselves have clung to the garments of the braver souls, who have thus become, involuntarily, veils between their brother-men and the Supreme. There is, perhaps, no better way of demonstrating the radical errors from which spring all the so-called "schemes of redemption" and "economies of Divine grace" than by starting from the Christian hypothesis. We will admit, for argument's sake, the Deity of Jesus, in order that we may thus see the more distinctly that a mediator of any kind between God and man is utterly uncalled for. It is mediation, in itself, that is wrong in principle; we object to it as a whole, not to any special manifestation of it. Divine or human mediators, Jesus or his mother, saint, angel, or priest, we reject them each and all; our birthright as human beings is to be the offspring of the Universal Father, and we refuse to have any interloper pressing in between our hearts and His. We will take mediation first in its highest form, and speak of it as if Jesus were really God as well as man. All Christians agree in asserting that the coming of the Son into the world to save sinners was the result of the love of the Father for these sinners; _i.e._, "_God_ so loved the world that _He_ sent His Son." The motive-power of the redemption of the world is, then, according to Christians, the deep love of the Creator for the work of His hands. This it was that exiled the Son from the bosom of the Father, and caused the Eternal to be born into time. But now a startling change occurs in the aspect of affairs. Jesus has "atoned for the sins of the world;" he "has made peace through the blood of his cross;" and having done so, he suddenly appears as the mediator for men. What does this pleading of the Son on behalf of sinners imply? Only this--_a complete change in the Father's mind towards the world_. After the yearning love of which we have heard, after this absolute sacrifice to win His children's hearts, He at last succeeds. He sees His children at His feet, repentant for the past, eager to make amends in the future; human hands appealing to Him, human eyes streaming with tears. He turns His back on the souls He has been labouring to win; He refuses to clasp around His penitents the arms outstretched to them so long, unless they are presented to Him by an accredited intercessor, and come armed with a formal recommendation. The inconsistency of such a procedure must be palpable to all minds; and in order to account for one absurdity, theologians have invented another; having created one difficulty, they are forced to make a second, in order to escape from the first. So they represent God as loving sinners, and desiring to forgive and welcome them. This feeling is the Mercy of God; but, in opposition to the dictates of Mercy, Justice starts up, and forbids any favour to the sinner unless its own claims are first satisfied to the utmost. A Christian writer has represented Mercy and Justice as standing before the Eternal: Mercy pleads for forgiveness and pity, Justice clamours for punishment. Two attributes of the Godhead are personified and placed in opposition to each other, and require to be reconciled. But when we remember that each personified quality is really but a portion, so to speak, of the Divine character, we find that God is divided against Himself. Thus, this theory introduces discord into the harmonious mind which inspires the perfect melodies of the universe. It sees warring elements in the Serenity of the Infinite One; it pictures successive waves of love and anger ruffling that ineffable Calm; it imagines clouds of changing motives sweeping across the sun of that unchanging Will. Such a theory as this must be rejected as soon as realised by the thoughtful mind. God is not a man, to be swayed first by one motive and then by another. His mercy and justice ever point unwaveringly in the same direction: perfect justice requires the same as perfect mercy. If God's justice could fail, the whole moral universe would be in confusion, and that would be the greatest cruelty that could be inflicted on intelligent beings. The weak pliability, miscalled mercy, which is supposed to be worked upon by a mediator, is a human infirmity which men have transferred to their idea of God. A man who has announced his intention to punish may be persuaded out of his resolution. New arguments may be adduced for the condemned one's innocence, new reasons for clemency may be suggested; or the judge may have been over-strict, or have been swayed by prejudice. Here a mediator may indeed step in, and find good work to do; but, in the name of the Eternal Perfection, what has all this to do with the judgment of God? Can His knowledge be imperfect, His mercy increased? Can His sentence be swayed by prejudice, or made harsh by over-severity? But if His judgment is already perfect, any change implies imperfection, and all left for the mediator to do is to persuade God to make a change, _i.e._, to become imperfect; or, God having decided that sin shall be punished, the mediator steps in, and actually so works upon God's feelings that He revokes His decision, and--most cruel of mercies--lets it go unnoticed. Like an unwise parent, God is persuaded not to punish the erring child. But such is not the case. God is just, and because He is just He is most truly merciful: in that justice rests the certainty of the due punishment of sin, and, therefore of the purification of the sinner! and no mediator--thanks be to God for it!--shall ever cause to waver for one instant that Rock of Justice on which reposes the hope of Humanity. But the theory we are considering has another fatal error in it: it ascribes imperfection to Almighty God. For God is represented as desiring to forgive sinners, and this desire must be either right or wrong. If it be right, it can at once be gratified; but if Justice opposes this forgiveness, then the desire to forgive is not wholly right. Theologians are thus placed in this dilemma: if God is perfect--as He is--any desire of His must likewise be flawlessly perfect, and its fulfilment must be the very best thing that could happen to His whole creation; on the other hand, if there is any barrier of right--and Justice _is_ right--interposed between God and His desire, then His Will is not the most perfect Good. Theologians must then choose between admitting that the desire of God to welcome sinners is just, or detracting from the Eternal Perfection. It is obvious that we do not weaken our case by admitting, for the moment, the Deity of Jesus; for we are striking at the root-idea of mediation. That the mediator should be God is totally beside the question, and in no way strengthens our adversaries' hands. His Deity does nothing more than introduce a new element of confusion into the affair; for we become entangled in a maze of contradictions. God, who is One, even according to Christians, is at one and the same time estranged from sinners, pleading for sinners, and admitting the pleading. God pleads to Himself--but we are confounding the persons: one God pleads to another--but we are dividing the substance. Alas and alas for the creed which compels its votaries to deny their reason, and degrade their Maker! which babbles of a Nature it cannot comprehend, and forces its foolish contradictions on indignant souls! If Jesus be God, his mediation is at once impossible and unnecessary; if he be God, his will is the will of God; and if he wills to welcome sinners, it is God who wills to welcome them. If he, who is God, is content to pardon and embrace, what further do sinners require? Christians tell us that Jesus is one with God: it is well, we reply; for you say he is the Friend of sinners, and the Redeemer of the lost. If he be God, we both agree as to the friendliness of God to sinners. You need no mediator between you and Jesus; and, since he is God, you need no mediator with God. This reasoning is irrefragable, unless Christians are content to assign to their mediator some place which is less than divine; for they certainly derogate from his dignity when they imagine him as content to receive those whom Almighty God chases from before His face. And in making this difference between Jesus and the Father they make a fatal admission that he is distinct in feeling from God, and therefore cannot be the One God. It is the proper perception of this fact which has introduced into the Roman Church the human mediators whose intercession is constantly implored. Jesus, being God, is too awful to be approached: his mother, his apostles, some saint or martyr, must come between. I have read a Roman Catholic paper about the mediation of Mary which would be accepted by the most orthodox Protestant were Mary replaced by Jesus, and Jesus by the Father. For Jesus is there painted, as the Father is painted by the orthodox, in stern majesty, hard, implacable, exacting the uttermost farthing; and Mary is represented as standing between him and the sinners for whom she pleads. It is only a further development of the idea which makes the man Jesus the Mediator between God and man. As the deification of Mary progresses, following in slow but certain steps the deification of Jesus, a mediator will be required through whom to approach _her_; and then Jesus, too, will fade out of the hearts of men, as the Father has faded out of the hearts of Christians, and this superstition of mediation will sink lower and lower, till it is rejected by all earnest hearts, and is loathed by human souls which are aching for the living God. We see, then, that mediation implies an absurd and inexplicable change in the supposed attitude of God towards man, and destroys all confidence in the justice of the Supreme Ruler. We should further take into consideration the strange feeling towards the Universal _Heart_ implied in man's endeavour to push some one in between himself and the Eternal Father. As we study Nature and try to discover from its workings something of the characteristics of the Worker therein, we find not only a ruling Intelligence--a _Supreme Reason_, before which we bow our heads in an adoration too deep for words--but we catch also beautiful glimpses of a ruling Love--a _Supreme Heart_, to which our hearts turn with a glad relief from the dark mysteries of pain and evil which press us in on every side. Simple belief in God at all, that is to say, in a Power which works in the Universe, is quite sufficient to disperse any of that feeling of fear which finds its fit expression in the longing for a mediator. For being placed here without our request, and even without our consent, we have surely, as a simple matter of justice, a right to demand that the Power which placed us here shall provide us with means by which we can secure our happiness. I speak, of course, as of a _conscious_ Power, because a blind Force is necessarily irresponsible; but those who believe in a God are bound to acknowledge that He is responsible for their well-being. If any one should suggest that to say thus is to criticise God's dealings and to speak with presumptuous irreverence, I retort that the irreverence lies with those who ascribe to the Supreme a course of action towards His creatures that they themselves would be ashamed to pursue towards their own children, and that they who fling at us the reproach of blasphemy because we will not bow the knee before their idol, would themselves lie open to the charge, were it not that their ignorance shields them from the sterner censure. All good in man--poor shallow streamlet though it be--flows down from the pure depths of the Fountain of Good, and any throb of Love on earth is a pulsation caused by the ceaseless beating of the Universal Father-Heart. Yet men fear to trust that Heart, lest it should cease beating; they fear to rest on God, lest He should play them false. When will they catch even a glimpse of that great ocean of love which encircles the universe as the atmosphere the earth, which is infinite because God is infinite? If there is no spot in the universe of which it can be said, "God is not here," then is there also no spot where love does not rule; if there is no life existing without the support of the Life-Giver and the Life-Sustainer, then is there also no life which is not cradled in the arms of Love. Who then will dare to push himself in between man and a God like this? In the light of the Universal Reason and the Universal Heart mediation stands confessed as an impertinent absurdity. Away with any and all of those who interfere in the most sacred concerns of the soul, who press in between the Creator and His offspring; between the heart of man and the parent Heart of God. Whoever it may be, saint or martyr, or the king of saints and martyrs, Jesus of Nazareth, let him come down from a position which none can rightly hold. To elevate the noblest son of man into this place of mediator is to make him into an offence to his brethren, and to cause their love to turn into anger, and their reverence into indignation. If men persist in talking about the need of a mediator before they dare to approach God, we must remind them that, if there be a God at all, He _must_ be just, and that, therefore, they are perfectly safe In His hands; if they begin to babble about forgiveness "_for the sake of Jesus Christ?_ we must ask them what in the world they mean by the forgiveness of sin?" Surely they do not think that God is like man, quick to revenge affront and jealous of His dignity; even were it possible for man to injure, in any sense, the Majesty of God, do they conceive that God is an irascible and revengeful Potentate? Those who think thus of God can never--I assert boldly--have caught the smallest glimpse of _God_. They may have seen a "magnified man," but they have seen nothing more; they have never prostrated themselves before that Universal Spirit who dwells in this vast universe; they have never felt their own littleness in a place so great. How _can_ sin be forgiven? can a past act be undone, or the hands go back on the sun-dial of Time? All God's so-called chastisements are but the natural and inevitable results of broken laws--laws invariable in their action, neither to be escaped or defied. Obedience to law results in happiness, and the suffering consequent on the transgression of law is not inflicted by an angry God, but is the simple natural outcome of the broken law itself. Put your hand in the fire, and no mediator can save you from burning; cry earnestly to God to save you, and then cast yourself from a precipice, and will a mediator come between you and the doom you have provoked? We should do more wisely if we studied laws and tried to conform ourselves to them, instead of going blundering about with our eyes shut, trusting that some one will interpose to shield us from the effects of our own folly and stupidity. Happily for mankind, mediation is impossible in that beautiful realm of law in which we are placed; when men have quite made up their minds that their happiness depends entirely on their own exertions, there will at last be some chance for the advancement of Humanity, for then they will work for things instead of praying for them. It is of real practical importance that this Christian notion of mediation should be destroyed, because on it hang all the ideas about trusting to some one else to do our own work. This plan has not answered: we judge it by results, and it has failed. Surely we may hope that as men get to see that prayer has not succeeded in its efforts to "move the arm which moves the world, to bring salvation down," they may turn to the more difficult, but also the more hopeful task, of moving their own arms to work out their own salvation. For the past, it is past, and none can reverse it; none can stay the action of the eternal law which links sorrow with transgression, and joy and peace with obedience. When we slip back on our path upward, we may repent and call on God or man for forgiveness as we list, but only through toil and suffering can the lost way be recovered, and the rugged path must be trodden with bleeding feet; for there is none who can lift the sinner over the hindrances he has built up for himself, or carry him over the rocks with which he has strewed his road. Does the sentimental weakness of our age shrink from this doctrine, and whimper out that it is cold and stern? Ay, it is cold with the cold of the bracing sea-breeze, stringing to action the nerves enfeebled by hot-houses and soft-living; ay, it is stern with the blessed sternness of changeless law, of law which never fails us, never varies a hair's breadth. But in that law is strength; man's arm is feeble, but let him submit to the laws of steam, and his arm becomes dowered with a giant's force; conform to a law, and the mighty power of that law is on your side; "humble yourself under the mighty hand of God," who is the Universal Law, "and He shall lift you up." So much for mediation. We turn with a still deeper repugnance to study the Christian idea of "Salvation." Mediation at least leaves us God, however it degrades and blasphemes Him, but salvation takes us altogether out of His Hands. Not content with placing a mediator between themselves and God, Christians cry out that He is still too near them; they must push Him yet further back, they must have a Saviour too, through whom all His benefits shall filter. "Saviour," is an expression often found in the Old Testament, where it bears a very definite and noble meaning. God is the Saviour of men from the power of sin, and although we may consider that God does _not_ save from sin in this direct manner, we are yet bound to acknowledge that there is nothing in this idea which is either dishonouring or repulsive. But the word "Saviour" has been degraded by Christianity, and the salvation He brings is not a salvation from sin. "The Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ" is the Saviour of men, not because he delivers them from sin, but "because he saves them from hell, and from the fiery wrath of God." Salvation is no longer the equivalent of righteousness, the antithesis of sin; in Christian life it means nothing more than the antithesis of damnation. It is true that Christians may retort that Jesus "saves his people from their sins;" we gladly acknowledge the nobleness and the beauty of many a Christian life, but nevertheless this is _not_ the primary idea attached by popular Christianity to the word "salvation." "Being saved" is to be delivered out of "those hands of the living God," into which, as they are taught by their Bible, it is so fearful a thing to fall. "Being saved" is the _immediate_ result of conversion, and is the opposite of "being lost." "Being saved" is being hidden "in the riven side of Jesus," and so preserved from the awful flames of the destroying wrath of God. Against all this we, believers in an Almighty Love, in a Universal Father, enter our solemn and deliberate protest, with a depth of abhorrence, with a passion of indignation which is far too intense to find any adequate expression in words. There is no language strong enough to show our deeply-rooted repugnance to the idea that we can be safer anywhere or at any time than we are already here; we cannot repel with sufficient warmth the officious interference which offers to take us out of the hands of God. To push some one in between our souls and Him was bad enough; but to go further and to offer us salvation from our Maker, to try and threaten us away from the arms of His Love, to suggest that another's hands are more tender, another's heart more loving than the Supreme Heart,--these are blasphemies to which we will not listen in silence. It is true that to us these suggestions are only matters of laughter; dimly as we guess at the Deity, we know enough not to be afraid of Him, and these crude and childish conceptions about Him are among ourselves too contemptible to refute. "Non ragione di lor, mai guardo e passo." But we see how these ideas colour men's thoughts and lives, how they cripple their intellect and outrage their hearts, and we rise to trample down these superstitions, not because they are in themselves worth refuting, but simply because they degrade our brother-men. We believe in no wisdom that improves on Nature's laws, and one of those laws, written on our hearts, is that sorrow shall tread on the heels of sin. We are conscious that men should learn to welcome this law, and not to shrink from it. To fly from the suffering following on broken law is the last thing we should do; we ought to have no gratitude for a "Saviour" who should bear our punishment, and so cheat us out of our necessary lesson, turn us into spoiled children, and check our moral growth; such an offer as this, could it really be made, ought to be met with stern refusal. We should trust the Supreme so utterly, and adore His wisdom with a humility so profound, that if we could change His laws we should not dare to interfere; nor ought we, even when our lot is saddest, to complain of it, or do anything more than labour to improve it in steadfast obedience to law. We should ask for no salvation; we should desire to fall--were it possible that we _could_ be out of them--into the hands of God. Further, is it impossible to make Christians understand that were Jesus all they say he is, we should still reject him; that were God all they say He is, we would, in that case, throw back His salvation. For were this awful picture of a soul-destroying Jehovah, of a blood-craving Moloch, endowed with a cruelty beyond human imagination, a true description of the Supreme Being, then would we take the advice of Job's wife, we would "curse God and die?" we would hide in the burning depths of His hell rather than dwell within sight of Him whose brightness would mock at the gloom of His creatures, and whose bliss would be a sneer at their despair. Were it thus indeed-- "O King of our salvation, Many would curse to thee, and I for one! Fling Thee Thy bliss, and snatch at Thy damnation, Scorn and abhor the rising of Thy sun. "Is it not worth while to believe," blandly urges a Christian writer, "if it is true, as it is true, that they who deny will suffer everlasting torments?" No! we thunder back at him, _it is not worth while_; it is not worth while to believe a lie, or to acknowledge as true that which our hearts and intellects alike reject as false; it is not worth while to sell our souls for a heaven, or to defile our honesty to escape a hell; it is not worth while to bow our knee to a Satan or bend our heads before a spectre. Better, far better, to "dwell with everlasting burnings" than to degrade our humanity by calling a lie, truth, and cruelty, love, and unreasonableness, justice; better to suffer in hell, than to have our hearts so hard that we could enjoy while others suffer; could rejoice while others are tormented, could sing alleluias to the music of golden harps, while our lyrics are echoed by the anguished wailing of the lost. God Himself--were He such as Christians paint Him--could not blot out of our souls our love of truth, of righteousness, of justice. While we have these we are _ourselves_, and we can suffer and be happy; but we cannot afford to pay down these as the price of our admission to heaven. We should be miserable even as we paced the golden streets, and should sit in tears beside the river of the water of life. Yet _this_ is salvation; _this_ is what Christians offer us in the name of Jesus; _this_ is the glad tidings brought to us as the gospel of the Saviour, as the "good news of God;" and this we reject, wholly and utterly, laughing it to scorn from the depths of our glad hearts which the Truth has made free; this we denounce, with a stern and bitter determination, in the name of the Universal Father, in the name of the self-reliance of humanity, in the name of all that is holy, and just, and loving. But happily many, even among Christians, are beginning to shrink from this idea of salvation from the God in whom they say they place all their hopes. They put aside the doctrine, they gloss it over, they prefer not to speak of it. Free thought is leavening Christianity, and is moulding the old faith against its will. Christianity now hides its own cruel side, and only where the bold opponents of its creeds have not yet spread, does it dare to show itself in its real colours; in Spain, in Mexico, we see Christianity unveiled; here, in England, liberty is too strong for it, and it is forced into a semblance of liberality. The old wine is being poured into new bottles; what will be the result? We may, however, rejoice that nobler thoughts about God are beginning to prevail, and are driving out the old wicked notions about Him and His revenge. The Face of the Father is beginning, however dimly, to shine out from His world, and before the Beauty of that Face all hard thoughts about Him are fading away. Nature is too fair to be slandered for ever, and when men perceive that God and Nature are One, all that is ghastly and horrible must die and drop into forgetfulness. The popular Christian ideas of mediation and salvation must soon pass away into the limbo of rejected creeds which is being filled so fast; they are already dead, and their pale ghosts shall soon flit no longer to vex and harass the souls of living men. ON ETERNAL TORTURE. SOME time ago a Clergyman was proving to me by arguments many and strong that hell was right, necessary and just; that it brought glory to God and good to man; that the holiness of God required it as a preventive, and the justice of God exacted it as a penalty, of sin. I listened quietly till all was over and silence fell on the reverend denunciator; he ceased, satisfied with his arguments, triumphant in the consciousness that they were crushing and unassailable. But my eyes were fixed on the fair scene without the library window, on the sacrament of earth, the visible sign of the invisible beauty, and the contrast between God's works and the Church's speech came strongly upon me. And all I found to say in answer came in a few words: "If I had not heard you mention the name of God, I should have thought you were speaking of the Devil." The words, dropped softly and meditatively, had a startling effect. Horror at the blasphemy, indignation at the unexpected result of laboured argument, struggled against a dawning feeling that there must be something wrong in a conception which laid itself open to such a blow; the short answer told more powerfully than half an hour's reasoning. The various classes of orthodox Christian doctrines should be attacked in very different styles by the champions of the great army of free-thinkers, who are at the present day besieging the venerable superstitions of the past. Around the Deity of Jesus cluster many hallowed memories and fond associations; the worship of centuries has shed around his figure a halo of light, and he has been made into the ideal of Humanity; the noblest conceptions of morality, the highest flights of enlightened minds, have been enshrined in a human personality and called by the name of Christ; the Christ-idea has risen and expanded with every development of human progress, and the Christ of the highest Christianity of the day is far other than the Christ of Augustine, of Thomas à Kempis, of Luther, or Knox; the strivings after light, after knowledge, after holiness, of the noblest sons of men have been called by them a following of Jesus; Jesus is baptized in human tears, crucified in human pains, glorified in human hopes. Because of all this, because he is dear to human hearts and identified with human struggles, therefore he should be gently spoken of by all who feel the bonds of the brotherhood of man; the dogma of his Deity must be assailed, must be overthrown, because it is false, because it destroys the unity of God, because it veils from us the Eternal Spirit, the source of all things, but he himself should be reverently spoken of, so far as truthfulness permits, and this dogma, although persistently battled against, should be attacked without anger and without scorn. There are other doctrines which, while degrading in regard to man's conception of God, and therefore deserving of reprobation, yet enshrine great moral truths and have become bound up with ennobling lessons; such is the doctrine of the Atonement, which enshrines the idea of selfless love and of self-sacrifice for the good of humanity. There are others again against which ridicule and indignation may rightly be brought to bear, which are concessions to human infirmity, and which belong to the childhood of the race; man may be laughed out of his sacraments and out of his devils, and indignantly reminded that he insults God and degrades himself by placing a priesthood or mediator between God and his own soul. But there is one dogma of Orthodox Christianity which stands alone in its atrocity, which is thoroughly and essentially bad, which is without one redeeming feature, which is as blasphemous towards God as it is injurious to man; on it therefore should be poured out unsparingly the bitterest scorn and the sharpest indignation. There is no good human emotion enlisted on the side of an Eternal Hell; it is not hallowed by human love or human longings, it does not enshrine human aspirations, nor is it the outcome of human hopes. In support of this no appeal can be made to any feeling of the nobler side of our nature, nor does eternal fire stimulate our higher faculties: it acts only on the lower, baser, part of man; it excites fear, distrust of God, terror of his presence; it may scare from evil occasionally, but can never teach good; it sees God in the lightning-flash that slays, but not in the sunshine which invigorates; in the avalanche which buries a village in its fall, but not in the rich promise of the vineyard and the joyous beauty of the summer day. Hell has driven thousands half-mad with terror, it has driven monks to the solitary deserts, nuns to the sepulchre of the nunnery, but has it ever caused one soul of man to rejoice in the Father of all, and pant, "as the hart panteth after the water-springs, for the presence of God"? It is only just to state, in attacking this as a Christian doctrine, that, though believed in by the vast majority of Christians, the most enlightened of that very indefinite body repudiate it with one voice. It is well known how the great Broad-Church leader, Frederick Denison Maurice, endeavoured to harmonize, on this point, his Bible and his strong moral sense, and failed in so doing, as all must fail who would reconcile two contradictories. How he fought with that word "eternal," struggled to prove that whatever else it might mean it did _not_ mean everlasting in our modern sense of the word: that "eternal death" being the antithesis to "eternal life" must mean a state of ignorance of the Eternal One, even as its opposite was the knowledge of God: that therefore men could rise from eternal death, aye, did so rise every day in this life, and might so rise in the life to come. Noble was his protest against this awful doctrine, fettered as he was by undue reverence for, and clinging to, the Bible. His appeal to the moral sense in man as the arbiter of all doctrine has borne good fruit, and his labours have opened a road to free thought greater than he expected or even hoped. Many other clergymen have followed in his steps. The word "eternal" has been wrangled over continually, but, however they arrive there, all Broad Churchmen unite in the conclusion that it does not, cannot, shall not, mean literally lasting for ever. This school of thought has laid much stress on the fondness of Orientals for imagery; they have pointed out that the Jewish word Gehenna is the same as Ge Hinnom, or valley of Hinnom, and have seen in the state of that valley the materials for "the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched:" they show how by a natural transition the place into which were thrown the bodies of the worst criminals became the type of punishment in the next world, and the valley where children were sacrificed to Moloch gave its name to the infernal abode of devils. From that valley Jesus drew his awful picture, suggested by the pale lurid fires ever creeping there, mingling their ghastly flames with the decaying bodies of the dishonoured dead. In all this there is probably much truth, and many Broad Churchmen are content to accept this explanation, and so retain their belief in the supernatural character of the Bible, while satisfying their moral sense by rejecting its most immoral dogma. Among the evangelicals, only one voice, so far as I know, is heard to protest against eternal torture; and all honour is due to the Rev. Samuel Minton, for his rare courage in defying on this point the opinion of his "world," and braving the censure which has been duly inflicted on him. He seems to make "eternal" the equivalent of "irremediable" in some cases and of "everlasting" in others. He believes that the wicked will be literally destroyed, burnt up, consumed; the fact that the fire is eternal by no means implies, he remarks, that that which is cast into the fire should be likewise eternal, and that the fire is unquenchable does not prove that the chaff is unconsumable. "Eternal destruction" he explains as irreparable destruction, final and irreversible extinction. This theory should have more to recommend it to all who believe in the supernatural inspiration of the Bible, than the Broad Church explanation; it uses far less violence towards the words of Scripture, and, indeed, a very fair case may be made out for it from the Bible itself. It is scarcely necessary to add to this small list of dissentients from orthodox Christianity, the Unitarian body; I do not suppose that there is such a phenomenon in existence as a Unitarian Christian who believes in an eternal hell. With these small exceptions the mass of Christians hold this dogma, but for the most part carelessly and uncomprehendingly. Many are ashamed of it even while duteously confessing it, and gabble over the sentences in their creed which acknowledge it in a very perfunctory manner. People of this kind "do not like to talk about hell, it is better to think of heaven." Some Christians, however, hold it strongly, and proclaim their belief boldly; the members of the Evangelical Alliance actually make the profession of it a condition of admittance into their body, while many High Church divines think that a sharp declaration of their belief in it is needed by loyalty towards God and "charity to the souls of men." I wish I could believe that all who profess this dogma did not realize it, and only accepted it because their fathers and mothers taught it to them. But what can one say to such statements as the following, quoted from Father Furniss by W. R. Greg in his splendid "Enigmas of Life:" I take it as a specimen of Roman Catholic _authorized_ teaching. Children are asked: "How will your body be when the devil has been striking it every moment for a hundred million years without stopping?" A girl of eighteen is described as dressed in fire; "she wears a bonnet of fire. It is pressed down all over her head; it burns her head; it burns into the skull; it scorches the bone of the skull and makes it smoke." A boy is boiled: "Listen! there is a sound just like that of a kettle boiling.... The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy. The brain is boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is boiling in his bones." Nay, even the poor little babies are not exempt from torture: one is in a red hot oven, "hear how it screams to come out; see how it turns and twists about in the fire.... You can see on the face of this little child"--the fair pure innocent baby-face--"what you see on the faces of all in hell--despair, desperate and horrible." Surely this man realized what he taught, but then he was that half-human being--a priest. Dr. Pusey, too, has a word to say about hell: "Gather in mind all that is most loathsome, most revolting--the most treacherous, malicious, coarse, brutal, inventive, fiendish cruelty, unsoftened by any remains of human feeling, such as thou couldst not endure for a single hour.... hear those yells of blaspheming, concentrated hate as they echo along the lurid vault of hell." Protestantism chimes in, and Spurgeon speaks of hell: "Wilt thou think it is easy to lie down in hell, with the breath of the Eternal fanning the flames? Wilt thou delight thyself to think that God will invent torments for thee, sinner?" "When the damned jingle the burning irons of their torment, they shall say, 'for ever;' when they howl, echo cries, 'for ever.'" I may allude, to conclude my quotations, to a description of hell which I myself heard from an eminent prelate of the English Church, one who is a scholar and a gentleman, a man of moderate views in Church matters, by no means a zealot in an ordinary way. In preaching to a country congregation composed mainly of young men and girls, he warned them specially against sins of the flesh, and threatened them with the consequent punishment in hell. Then, in language which I cannot reproduce, for I should not dare to sully my pages by repeating what I then listened to in horrified amazement, there ensued a description drawn out in careful particulars of the state of the suffering body in hell, so sickening in its details that it must suffice to say of it that it was a description founded on the condition of a corpse flung out on a dungheap and left there to putrefy, with the additional horror of creeping, slowly-burning flames; and this state of things was to go on, as he impressed on them with terrible energy, for ever and ever, "decaying but ever renewing." I should almost ask pardon of tender-hearted men and women for laying before them language so abominable; but I urge on all who are offended by it that this is the teaching given to our sons and daughters in the present day. Father Furniss, Dr. Pusey, Mr. Spurgeon, an English Bishop, surely these are honoured names, and in quoting them I quote from the teaching of Christendom. Nor mine the fault if the language be unfit for printing. I _quote_, because if we only assert, Christians are quick to say, "you are misrepresenting our beliefs," and I quote from writers of the present day only, that none may accuse me of hurling at Christians reproaches for a doctrine they have outgrown or softened down. Still, I own that it seems scarcely credible that a man should believe this and remain sane; nay, should preach this, and walk calmly home from his Church with God's sunshine smiling on the beautiful world, and after preaching it should sit down to a comfortable dinner and very likely a quiet pipe, as though hell did not exist, and its awful misery and fierce despair. It is said that there is no reason that we should not be contented in heaven while others suffer in hell, since we know how much misery there is in this world and yet enjoy ourselves in spite of the knowledge. I say, deliberately, of every one who does realise the misery of this world and remains indifferent to it, who enjoys his own share of the good things of this life, without helping his brother, who does not stretch out his hand to lift the fallen, or raise his voice on behalf of the down-trodden and oppressed, that that man is living a life which is the very antithesis of a Divine life--a life which has in it no beauty and no nobility, but is selfish, despicable, and mean. And is this the life which we are to regard as the model of heavenly beauty? Is the power to lead this life for ever to be our reward for self-devotion and self-sacrifice here on earth? Is a supreme selfishness to crown unselfishness at last? But this is the life which is to be the lot of the righteous in heaven. Snatched from a world in flames, caught up in the air to meet their descending Lord, his saints are to return with him to the heaven whence he came; there, crowned with golden crowns, they are to spend eternity, hymning the Lamb who saved them to the music of golden harps, harps whose melody is echoed by the curses and the wailings of the lost; for below is a far different scene, for there the sinners are "tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night." It is worth while to gaze for a moment at the scene of future felicity; there is the throne of God and rejoicing crowds: "Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets," so goes out the command, and they rejoice because "God has avenged them on her," and again they said "Alleluia, and her smoke rose up for ever and ever." Truly God must harden the hearts of his saints in heaven as of old he hardened Pharaoh's heart, if they are to rejoice over the anguished multitude below, and to bear to live amid the lurid smoke ascending from the burning bodies of the lost. To me the idea is so unutterably loathsome that I marvel how Christians endure to retain such language in their sacred books, for I would note that the awful picture drawn above is not of my doing; it is not the scoffing caricature of an unbeliever, _it is heaven as described by St. John the divine_. If this heaven is true I do not hesitate to say that it is the duty of every human being to reject it utterly and to refuse to enter it. We might even appeal to Christians by the example of their own Jesus, who could not be content to remain in heaven himself while men went to hell, but came down to redeem them from endless suffering. Yet they, who ought to imitate him, who do, many of them, lead beautiful lives of self-devotion and compassion, are suddenly, on death, to lose all this which makes them "partakers of the Divine Nature," and are to be content to win happiness for themselves, careless that millions of their brethren are in woe unspeakable. They are to reverse the aim of their past lives, they are to become selfish instead of loving, hard instead of selfless, indifferent instead of loving, hard instead of tender. Which is the better reproduction of the "mind of Christ," the good Samaritan tending the wounded man, or the stern Inquisitor gloating over the fire which consumes heretics to the greater glory of God? Yet the latter is the ideal of heavenly virtue. Never will they who truly love man be content to snatch at bliss for themselves while others suffer, or endure to be crowned with glory while they are crowned with thorns. Better, far better, to suffer in hell and share the pains of the lost, than to have a heart so hard, a nature so degraded, as to enjoy the bliss of heaven, rejoicing over, or even disregarding, the woes of hell. But there is worse than physical torture in the picture of hell; pain is not its darkest aspect. Of all the thoughts with which the heart of man has outraged the Eternal Righteousness, there is none so appalling, none so blasphemous, as that which declares that even one soul, made by the Supreme Good, shall remain during all eternity, under the power of sin. Divines have wearied themselves in describing the horrors of the Christian hell; but it is _not_ the furnace of flames, _not_ the undying worm, _not_ the fire which never may be quenched, that revolt us most; hideous as are these images, they are not the worst terror of hell. Who does not know how St. Francis, believing himself ordained to be lost everlastingly, fell on his knees and cried, "O my God, if I am indeed doomed to hate thee during eternity, at least suffer me to love thee while I live here." To the righteous heart the agony of hell is a far worse one than physical torture could inflict: it is the existence of men and women who might have been saints, shut out from hope of holiness for evermore; God's children, the work of his hands, gnashing their teeth at a Father who has cast them down for ever from the life he might have given; it is Love everlastingly hated; good everlastingly trampled under foot; God everlastingly baffled and defied; worst of all, it is a room in the Father's house where his children may hunger and thirst after righteousness, but never, never, can be filled. "Depart, O sinner, to the chain! Enter the eternal cell; To all that's good and true and right, To all that's fair and fond and bright, To all of holiness and right, Bid thou thy last farewell." Would to God that Christian men and women would ponder it well and think it out for themselves, and when they go into the worst parts of our great cities and their hearts almost break with the misery there, then let them remember how that misery is but a faint picture of the endless, hopeless, misery, to which the vast majority of their fellow-men are doomed. Christian reader, do not be afraid to realise the future in which you say you believe, and which the God of Love has prepared for the home of some of his children. Imagine yourself, or any dear to you, plunged into guilt from which there is no redeemer, and where the voice cannot penetrate of him that speaks in righteousness, mighty to save. In the well-weighed words of a champion of Christian orthodoxy, think there is no reason to believe that hell is only a punishment for past offences; in that dark world sin and misery reproduce each other in infinite succession. "What if the sin perpetuates itself, if the prolonged misery may be the offspring of the prolonged guilt?" Ponder it well, and, if you find it true, then cast out from your creed the belief in a Jesus who loved the lost; blot out from your Bible every verse that speaks of a Father's heart; tear from your Prayer-books every page that prays to a Father in heaven. If the lowest of God's creatures is to be left in the foul embraces of sin for ever, God cannot be the Eternal Righteousness, the unconquerable Love. For what sort of Righteousness is that which rests idly contented in a heaven of bliss, while millions of souls capable of righteousness are bound by it in helpless sin; what sort of love is that which is satisfied to be repulsed, and is willing to be hated? As long as God is righteous, as long as God is love, so long is it impossible that men and women shall be left by him forever in a state to which our worst dens of earth are a very paradise of beauty and purity. Bible writers may have erred, but "Thou continuest holy, O Thou worship of Israel!" There is one revelation that cannot err, and that is written by God's finger on every human heart. What man recoils from doing, even at his lowest, can never be done by his Creator, from whose inspiration he draws every righteous thought. Is there one father, however brutalized, who would deliberately keep his child in sin because of a childish fault? one mother who would aimlessly torture her son, keeping him alive but to torment? Yet this, nothing less,--nay, a thousand times more, for it is this multiplied infinitely by infinite power of torture,--this is what Christians ask us to believe about our Father and our God, a glimmer from the radiance of whose throne falls on to our earth, when men love their enemies and forgive freely those who wrong them If this so-called orthodox belief is right, then is their gospel of the Love of God to the world a delusion and a lie; if this is true, the teaching of Jesus to publicans and harlots of the Fatherhood of God is a cruel mockery of our divinest instincts; the tale of the good Shepherd who could not rest while one sheep was lost is the bitterest irony. But this awful dogma is not true, and the Love of God cradles his creation; not one son of the Father's family shall be left under the power of sin, to be an eternal blot on God's creation, an endless reproach to his Maker's wisdom, an everlasting and irreparable mistake. No amount of argument, however powerful, should make us believe a doctrine from which our hearts recoil with such shuddering horror as they do from this doctrine of eternal torture and eternal sin. There is a divine instinct in the human heart which may be trusted as an arbiter between right and wrong; no supernatural revelation, no miracle, no angel from heaven, should have power to make us accept as divine that which our hearts proclaim as vile and devilish. It is not true faith to crush down our moral sense beneath the hoof of credulity; true faith believes in God only as a "Power which makes for _Righteousness_" and recks little of threats or curses which would force her to accept that which conscience disapproves. And what is more, if it were possible that God were not what we dream, if he were not "righteous in all his ways and holy in all his works," then were it craven cowardice to worship him at all. It has been well said, "that to worship simple power, without virtue, is nothing but devil-worship;" in that case it were nobler to refuse to praise him and to take what he might send. Then indeed we must say, with John Stuart Mill, in that burst of passion which reads so strangely in the midst of his passionless logic, that if I am told that this is justice and love, and that if I do not call it so, God will send me to hell, then "to hell I'll go." I have purposely put first my strong reprobation of eternal hell, because of its own essential hideousness, and because, were it ever so true, I should deem myself disgraced by acknowledging it as either loving or good. But it is, however, a satisfaction to note the feebleness of the arguments advanced in support of this dogma, and to find that justice and holiness, as well as love, frown on the idea of an eternal hell. The first argument put forth is this: "God has made a law which man breaks; man must therefore in justice suffer the penalty of his transgression." This, like so many of the orthodox arguments, sounds just and right, and at first we perfectly agree with it. The instinct of justice in our own breasts confirms the statement, and looking abroad into the world we see its truth proved by facts. Law is around us on every side; man is placed in a realm of law; he may-strive against the laws which encircle him, but he will only dash himself to pieces against a rock; he is under a code which he breaks at his peril. Here is perfect justice, a justice absolutely unwavering, deaf to cries, unseducible by-flatteries, unalloyed by favouritism: a law exists, break it, and you suffer the inevitable consequences. So far, then, the orthodox argument is sound and strong, but now it takes a sudden leap. "The penalty of the broken law is hell." Why? What common factor is there between a lie, and the "lake of fire in which all liars shall have their part?" Nature is absolutely against the orthodox corollary, because hell as a punishment of sin is purely arbitrary, the punishment might quite as well have been something else; but in nature the penalty of a broken law is always strictly in character with the law itself, and is derived from it. Men imagine the most extraordinary "judgment." A nation is given to excessive drinking, and is punished with cattle-plague; or shows leanings towards popery, and is chastised with cholera. It is as reasonable to believe this as it would be to expect that if a child fell down stairs he would be picked up covered with blisters from burning, instead of his receiving his natural punishment of being bruised. Why, because I lie and forget God, should I be punished with fire and brimstone? Fire is not derivable from truth, nor is brimstone a stimulus to memory. There is also a strange confusion in many minds about the punishment of sin. A child is told not to put his hand into the fire, he does so, and is burnt; the burning is a punishment, he is told; for what? Not for disobedience to the parent, as is generally said, but for disregarding the law of nature which says that fire burns. One often hears it said: "God's punishments for sin are not equal: one man sins once and suffers for it all his life, while another sins twenty times and is not punished at all." By no means: the two men both break a moral law, and suffer a moral degradation; one of them breaks in addition some physical law, and suffers a physical injury. People see injustice where none exists, because they will not take the trouble to distinguish what laws are broken when material punishments follow. There is nothing arbitrary in nature: cause and effect rule in her realm. Hell is then unjust, in the first place, because physical torture has nothing in common with moral guilt. It is unjust, secondly, because it is excessive. Sin, say theologians, is to be punished infinitely, because sin is an offence committed against an infinite being. Of course, then, good must logically be rewarded infinitely, because it is duty offered to an infinite being. There is no man who has never done a single good act, so every man deserves an infinite reward. There is no man who has never done a single bad act, so every man deserves an infinite punishment. Therefore every man deserves both an infinite reward and an infinite punishment, "which," as Euclid says, "is absurd." And this is quite enough answer to the proposition. But I must protest, in passing, against this notion of "sin against God" as properly understood. If by this expression is only meant that every sin committed is a sin against God, because every sin is done against man's higher nature, which is God in man, then indeed there is no objection to be made to it. But this is not what is generally meant by the phrase. It usually means that we are able, as it were, to injure God in some way, to dishonour him, to affront him, to trouble him. By sin we make him "angry," we "provoke him to wrath;" because of this feeling on his own part he punishes us, and demands "satisfaction." Surely a moment's reflection must prove to any reasonable being that sin against God in this sense is perfectly impossible. What can the littleness of man do against the greatness of the Eternal! Imagine a speck of dust troubling the depths of the ocean, an aphis burdening an oak-tree with its weight: each is far more probable than that a man could ruffle the perfect serenity of God. Suppose I stand on a lawn watching an ant-heap, an ant twinkles his feelers at me scornfully; do I fly into a passion and rush on the insect to destroy it, or seize it and slowly torture it? Yet I am far less above the level of the ant than God is above mine. But I must add a word here to guard against the misapprehension that in saying this I am depriving man of the strength he finds in believing that he is personally known to God and an object of his care. Were I the ant's creator familiar with all the workings of its mind, I might regret, for its sake, the pride and scorn of its maker shown by its-action, because it was not rising to the perfection of nature of which it was capable. So, in that nature in which we live and move, which is too great to regard anything as-little, which is around all and in all, and which we believe to be conscious of all, there is--I cannot but think--some feeling which, for want of a better term, we must call a desire for the growth of his creatures (because in this growth lies their own happiness), and a corresponding feeling of regret when they injure themselves. But I say this in fear and reverence, knowing that human language has no terms in which to describe the nature we adore, and conscious that in the very act of putting ideas about him into words, I degrade the ideas and they no longer fully answer to the thought in my own mind. Silent adoration befits man best in the presence of his maker, only it is right to protest against the more degrading conceptions of him, although the higher conceptions are themselves far below what he really is. Sin then, being done against oneself only, cannot deserve an eternity of torture. Sin injures man already, why should he be further injured by endless agony? The infliction of pain is only justifiable when it is the means of conveying to the sufferer himself a gain greater than the suffering inflicted; therefore punishment is only righteous when reformatory. But _endless_ torture cannot aim at reformation; it has no aim beyond itself, and can only arise, therefore, from vengeance and vindictiveness, which we have shown to be impossible with God. Hell is unjust, secondly, because its punishment is excessive and aimless. It is also unjust, because to avoid it needs an impossible perfection. It is no answer to this to say that there is an escape offered to us through the Atonement made by Jesus Christ. Why should I be called on to escape like a criminal from that which I do not deserve? God makes man imperfect, frail, sinful, utterly unable to keep perfectly a perfect law: he therefore fails, and is--what? To be strengthened? by no means; he is to go to hell. The statement of this suffices to show its injustice. We cavil not at the wisdom which made us what we are, but we protest against the idea which makes God so cruelly unjust as to torture babies because they are unable to walk as steadily as full-grown men. Hell is unjust, in the third place, because man does not deserve it. To all this it will probably be retorted, "you are arguing as though God's justice were the same as man's, and you were therefore capable of judging it, an assumption which is unwarrantable, and is grossly presumptuous." To which I reply: "If by God's justice you do not mean justice at all, but refer to some Divine attribute of which we know nothing, all my strictures on it fall to the ground; only, do not commit the inconsistency of arguing that hell is _just_, when by 'just' you mean some unknown quality, and then propping up your theories with proofs drawn from human justice. It would perhaps tend to clearness in argument if you gave this Divine attribute some other name, instead of using for it an expression which has already a definite meaning." The justice of hell disposed of, we turn to the love of God. I have never heard it stated that hell is a proof of his great love to the world, but I take the liberty myself of drawing attention to it in this light. God, we are told, existed alone before ought was created; there perfect in himself, in happiness, in glory, he might have remained, say orthodox theologians. Then, we have a right to ask in the name of charity, why did he, happy himself, create a race of beings of whom the vast majority were to be endlessly and hopelessly miserable? Was this love? "He created man to glorify him." But was it loving to create those who would only suffer for his glory? Was it not rather a gigantic, an inconceivable selfishness? "Man may be saved if he will." That is not to the point; God foreknew that some would be lost, and yet he made them. With all reverence I say it, God had no right to create sentient beings, if of one of them it can ever be truly said, "good were it for that man that he had never been born." He who creates, imposes on himself, by the very act of creation, duties towards his creatures. If God be self-conscious and moral, it is an absolute certainty that the whole creation is moving towards the final good of every creature in it. We did not ask to be made; we suffered not when we existed not; God, who has laid existence on us without our consent, is responsible for our final good, and is bound by every tie of righteousness and justice, not to speak of love, to make the existence he gave us, unasked, a blessing and not a curse to us. Parents feel this responsibility towards the children they bring into the world, and feel themselves bound to protect and to make happy those who, without them, had not been born. But, if hell be true, then every man and woman is bound not to fulfil the Divine command of multiplying the race, since by so doing they are aiding to fill the dungeons of hell, and they will, hereafter, have their sons and their daughters cursing the day of their birth, and overwhelming their parents with reproaches for having brought into the world a body, which God was thus enabled to curse with the awful gift of an immortal soul. We must notice also that God, who is said to love righteousness, can never crush out righteousness in any-human soul. There is no one so utterly degraded as to be without one sign of good. Among the lowest and vilest of our population, we find beautiful instances of kindly feeling and generous help. Can any woman be more degraded than she who only values her womanhood as a means of gain, who drinks, fights, and steals? Let those who have been among such women say if they have not been cheered sometimes by a very ray of the light of God, when the most. degraded has shown kindness to an equally degraded sister, and when the very gains of sin have been purified by being; poured into the lap of a suffering and dying companion. Shall love and devotion, however feeble, unselfishness and sympathy, however transitory in their action, shall these stars of heaven be quenched in the blackness of the pit of hell? If it be so, then, verily, God is not the "righteous. Lord who loveth righteousness." But we cannot leave out of our impeachment of hell that it injures man, as much as it degrades his conceptions of God. It cultivates selfishness and fear, two of his basest passions. There has scarcely perhaps been born into the world this century a purer and more loving soul than that of the late John Keble, the author of the "Christian Year." Yet what a terrible effect this belief had on him; he must cling to his belief in hell, because otherwise he would have no certainty of heaven: "But where is then the stay of contrite hearts? Of old they leaned on Thy eternal word; But with the sinner's fear their hope departs, Fast linked as Thy great name to Thee, O Lord; That Name by which Thy faithful hope is past, That we should endless be, for joy or woe;-- And if the treasures of Thy wrath could waste, Thy lovers must their promised heaven forego." That is to say in plain English: "I cannot give up the certainty of hell for others, because if I do I shall have no certainty of heaven for myself; and I would rather know that millions of my brethren should be tormented for ever, than remain doubtful about my own everlasting enjoyment." Surely a loving heart would say, instead, "O God, let us all die and remain unconscious for ever, rather than that one soul should suffer everlastingly." The terrible selfishness of the Christian belief degrades the noblest soul; the horror of hell makes men lose their self-control, and think only of their personal safety, just as we see men run wild sometimes at a shipwreck, when the gain of a minute means life. The belief in hell fosters religious pride and hatred, for all religious people think that they themselves at least are sure of heaven. If then they are going to rejoice through all eternity over the sufferings of the lost, why should they treat them with kindness or consideration here? Thus hell, becomes the mother of persecution; for the heretic, the enemy of the Lord, there is no mercy and no forgiveness. Then the saints persuade themselves that true charity obliges them to persecute, for suffering may either save the heretic himself by forcing him to believe, or may at least scare others from sharing his heresy, and so preserve them from eternal fire. And they are right, if hell is true. Any means are justifiable which may save man from that horrible doom; surely we should not hesitate to knock a man down, if by so doing we preserved him from throwing himself over a precipice. Belief in hell takes all beauty from virtue; who cares for obedience only rendered through fear? No true love of good is wrought in man by the fear of hell, and outward respectability is of little worth when the heart and the desires are unpurified. We may add that the fear of hell is a very slight practical restraint; no man thinks himself really bad enough for hell, and it is so far off that every one intends to repent at the last and so escape it. Far more restraining is the proclamation of the stern truth that, in the popular sense of the word, there is no such thing as the "forgiveness of sins;" that as a man sows, so shall he reap, and that broken laws avenge themselves without exception. Belief in hell stifles all inquiry into truth by setting a premium on one form of belief, and by forbidding another under frightful penalties.. "If it be true, as it is true, that all who do not believe this shall perish everlastingly, then, I ask, _is it not worth while to believe?_" So says a clergyman of the Church of England. Thus he presses his people to accept the dogma of the Deity of Jesus, not because it is-true, but because it is dangerous to deny it. And this-difficulty meets us every day. If we urge inquiry, we are told "it is dangerous;" if we suggest a difficulty, we are told "it is safer to believe;" and so this doctrine of hell chains down men's faculties and palsies their intellects, and they dare not seek for truth at all, lest he who is Truth should cast them into hell for it. It may perhaps be said by many that I have attacked this dogma with undue vehemence, and with excessive warmth. I attack it thus, because I know the harm that it is doing, because it saddens the righteous heart and clouds the face of God. Only those who have realised hell, and realising it, have believed in it, know the awful shadow with which it darkens the world. There are many who laugh at it, but they have not felt its power, and they forget that a dogma which is only ludicrous to them is weighing heavily on many a tender heart and sensitive brain. Hell drives many mad: to others-it is a life-long horror. It pales the sunlight with its lurid flames; it blackens the earth with the smoke of its torment; it makes the Devil an actual presence; it transforms God into an enemy, eternity into an awful doom. It takes the spring out of all pleasures; it poisons all enjoyments; it spreads gloom over life, and enshrouds the tomb in horror unspeakable. Only those who have felt the anguish of this nightmare know what it is to wake up into the sunlight, and find it is only a disordered dream of the darkness; they only know the glorious liberty of heart and soul, with which they lift up smiling faces to meet the smile of God, when they can say from the depths of their glad hearts, "I believe that God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all; I believe that all mankind is safe, cradled in the everlasting arms." ON INSPIRATION THERE is a certain amount of difficulty in defining the word Inspiration: it is used in so many different senses by the various schools of religious thought, that it is almost necessary to know the theological opinions of the speaker before being quite sure of his meaning when he talks of a book as being inspired. In the halcyon days of the Church, when faith was strong and reason weak, when priests had but to proclaim and laymen but to assent, Inspiration had a distinct and a very definite meaning. An inspired man spoke the very words of God: the Bible was perfect from the "In the beginning" of Genesis to the "Amen" of Revelation: it was perfect in science, perfect in history, perfect in doctrine, perfect in morals. In that diamond no flaw was to be seen; it sparkled with a spotless purity, reflecting back in many-coloured radiance the pure white light of God. But when the chemistry of modern science came forward to test this diamond, a murmuring arose, low at first, but irrepressible. It was scrutinised through the microscope of criticism, and cracks and flaws were discovered in every direction; then, instead of being enshrined on the altar, encircled by candles, it was brought out into the searching sunlight, and the naked eye could see its imperfections. Then it was tested anew, and some bold men were heard to whisper, "It is no diamond at all, God formed in ages past; it is nothing but paste, manufactured by man;" and the news passed from mouth to mouth, until the whisper swelled into a cry, and many voices echoed, "This is no diamond at all." And so things are to-day; the battle rages still; some maintain their jewel is perfect as ever, and that the flaws are in the eyes that look at it; some reluctantly allow that it is imperfect, but still consider it a diamond; others resolutely assert that, though valuable for its antiquity and its beauty, it is really nothing but paste. To take first the really orthodox theory of inspiration, generally styled the "plenary" or "verbal" inspiration of the Bible. It was well defined centuries since by Athenagoras; according to him the inspired writers "uttered the things that were wrought in them when the Divine Spirit moved them, the Spirit using them as a flute-player would blow into the flute." The same idea has been uttered in powerful poetry by a writer of our own day:-- "Then thro' the mid complaint of my confession, Then thro' the pang and passion of my prayer, Leaps with a start the shock of His possession, Thrills me and touches, and the Lord is there. Scarcely I catch the words of His revealing, Hardly I hear Him, dimly understand; Only the power that is within me pealing, Lives on my lips and beckons to my hand." The idea is exactly the same as that of the Pagan prophetesses: they became literally possessed by a spirit, who used their lips to declare his own thoughts; so orthodox Christians believe that it is no longer Moses or Isaiah or Paul that speaks, but the Spirit of the Father that speaks in them. This theory is held by all strictly orthodox believers; this and this only is from their lips, inspiration; hard pressed on the subject they will allow that the Spirit inspires all good thoughts "in a sense," but they will be very careful in declaring that this is only inspiration in a secondary sense, an inspiration which diners in kind as well as in degree from the inspiration of the writers of the Bible. By this mechanical theory, so to speak, it is manifest that all possibility of error is excluded; thus, when Matthew quotes from the Old Testament an utterly irrelevant historical reference--"when Israel was a child, then I loved him and _called my son out of Egypt_", as a prophecy of the alleged flight of Jesus into Egypt, and his subsequent return from that country into Palestine--we find Dr. Wordsworth, Right Reverend Father in God, and Bishop of Lincoln, gravely telling us that "the Holy Spirit here declares what had been in His own mind when He uttered these words by Hosea. And who shall venture to say that he knows the mind of the Spirit better than the Spirit Himself?" Dr. Pusey again, standing valiantly, after the manner of the man, to every Church dogma, however it may be against logic, against common sense, against reason, or against charity, makes a very reasonable inquiry of those who believe in an outward and supernatural inspiration, and yet object to the term verbal. "How," he asks, "can thought be conveyed to a man's mind except through words?" The learned doctor's remark is indeed a very pertinent one, as addressed to all those who believe in an exterior revelation. Thoughts which are communicated from without can only become known to man through the medium of words: even his own thoughts only become appreciable to him when they are sufficiently distinct to be clothed in words (of course not necessarily _spoken_ words); and we can only exclude from this rule such thoughts as may be presented to the mind through mental sight or hearing: e.g., music might probably be composed mentally by imagining the _sounds_, or mechanical contrivances invented by imagining the _objects_; but any argument, any story, which is, capable of reproduction in writing, must be thought out in words. A moment's thought renders this obvious; if a man is arguing with a Frenchman in his own language, he must, to render his arguments clear and powerful, _think_ in French. Now, if the Bible be inspired so as to insure accuracy, how can this be done except through words; for many of the facts recorded must, from the necessity of the case, have been unknown to the writers. Suppose for a moment that the Biblical account of the creation of the world were true, no man in that case could possibly have thought it out for himself. Only two theories can reasonably be held regarding this record: one, that it is true, which implies necessarily that it is literally true and verbally inspired, since the knowledge could only have come from the Creator, and, being communicated must have come in the form of words, which words being God's, must be literally true; the other, that it ranks with other ancient cosmogonies, and is simply the thought of some old writer, giving his idea as to the origin of the world around him. I select the account of the Creation as a crucial test of the verbal theory of inspiration, because any other account in the Bible that I can think of has a human actor in it, and it might be maintained--however unlikely the hypothesis--that a report was related or written down by one who had been present at the incident reported, and the inspiration of the final writer may be said to consist in re-writing the previous record which he may be directed to incorporate in his own work. But no one witnessed the creation of the world, save the Creator, or, at the most, He and His angels, and the account given of it must, if true, be word for word divine; or, if false--as it is--must be nothing more than human fancy. We must push this argument one step further. If the account was communicated only to the man's _mind_, in words rising internally to the inward ear alone, how could the man distinguish between these divine thoughts rising in his mind, and his own human thoughts rising in exactly the same manner? Thoughts rise in our minds, we know not how; we only become conscious of them when they are there, and, as far as we can judge, they are produced quite naturally according to certain laws. But how is it possible for us to distinguish whence these thoughts come? There they are, ours, not another's--ours as the child is the father's and mother's, the product of their own beings. If my thought is not mine, but God's, how am I to know this? it is produced within me as my own, and the source of one thought is not distinguishable from that of another. Thus, those who believe in the accuracy of the Bible are step by step driven to allow that not only are words necessary, but spoken words; if the Bible be supernaturally inspired at all, then must God have spoken not only in human words but also in human voice; if the Bible be supernaturally inspired at all, it must be verbally inspired, and be literally accurate about every subject on which it treats. Unfortunately for the maintainers of verbal inspiration, their theory is splendidly adapted for being brought before the bar of inexorable fact. It is worth while to remark, in passing, that the infallibility of the Bible has only remained unchallenged where ignorance has reigned supreme; as soon as men began to read history and to study nature, they also began to question scriptural accuracy, and to defy scriptural authority. Infallibility can only live in twilight: so far, every infallibility has fallen before advancing knowledge, save only the infallibility of Nature, which is the infallibility of God Himself. Protestants consider Roman Catholics fools, in that they are not able to see that the Pope cannot be infallible, because one Pope has cursed what another Pope has blessed. They can see in the case of others that contradiction destroys infallibility, but they cannot see the force of the same argument when applied to their own pope, the Bible. Strong in their "invincible ignorance," they bring us a divinely-inspired book; "good," we answer; "then is your book absolutely true, and it will square with all known truth in science and history, and will, of course, never be self-contradictory." The first important question which arises in our minds as we open so instructive a book as a revelation from on high, refers naturally to the Great Inspirer. The Bible contains, as might indeed be reasonably expected, many statements as to the nature of God, and we inquire of it, in the first place, the character of its Author. May we hope to see Him in this world? "Yes," answers Exodus. "Moses in days gone by spoke to God face to face, and seventy-four Israelites saw Him, and eat and drank in His presence." We have scarcely taken in this answer when we hear the same voice proceed: "No; for God said thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live; while John declares that no man hath seen Him, and Paul, that no man neither hath nor can see Him." Is He Almighty? "Yes," says Jesus. "With God all things are possible." "No," retorts Judges; "for He could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, _because_ they had chariots of iron." Is He just? "Yes," answers Ezekiel. "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father; the soul that sinneth _it_ shall die." "No," says Exodus. "The Lord declares that He visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children." Is He impartial? "Yes," answers Peter. "God is no respecter of persons." "No;" says Romans, "for God loved Jacob and hated Esau before they were born, that His purpose of _election_ might stand." Is He truthful? "Yes; it is impossible for God to lie," says Hebrews. "No," says God of Himself, in Ezekiel. "I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet." Is He loving? "Yes," sings the Psalmist. "He is loving unto every man, and His tender mercy is over all His works." "No," growls Jeremiah. "He will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy on them." Is he easily pacified when offended? "Yes," says the Psalmist. "His wrath endureth but the twinkling of an eye." "No," says Jeremiah. "Ye have kindled a fire in His anger that shall burn for ever." Unable to discover anything reliable about God, doubtful whether he be just or unjust, partial or impartial, true or false, loving or fierce, placable or implacable, we come to the conclusion that at all events we had better be friends with Him, and surely the book which reveals His will to us will at least tell us in what way He desires us to approach Him. Does He accept sacrifice? "Yes," says Genesis: "Noah sacrificed and God smelled a sweet savour;" and Samuel tells us how God was prevailed on to take away a famine by the sacrifice of seven men, hanged up before the Lord. In our fear we long to escape from Him altogether and ask if this be possible? "Yes," says Genesis. "Adam and his wife hid from Him in the trees, and He had to go-down from His heaven to see if some evil deeds were rightly reported to Him." "No," says Solomon. "You cannot hide from Him, for His eyes are in every place." So we throw up in despair all hope of finding out anything reliable about Him, and proceed to search for some trustworthy history. We try to find out how man was made. One account tells us that he was made male and female, even in the image of God Himself; another that God made man alone, and subsequently formed a woman for him out of one of his own ribs. Then we find in one chapter that the beasts were all made, and, lastly, that God made "His masterpiece, man." In another chapter we are told that God having made man thought it not good to leave him by himself, and proceeded to make every beast and fowl, saying that he would make Adam a help-meet for him; on bringing them to Adam, however, none was found worthy to mate with him, so woman was tried as a last experiment. As we read on we find evident marks of confusion; double, or even treble, accounts of the same incident, as, for instance, the denying a wife and its consequences. Then we see Moses fearing Pharaoh's wrath, and flying out of Egypt to avoid the king's wrath, and not venturing to return until after his death, and are therefore surprised to learn from Hebrews that he forsook Egypt by faith, _not fearing_ the wrath of the king. Then we come across numberless contradictions in Kings and Chronicles, in prophecy and history. Ezekiel prophecies that Nebuchadnezzar shall conquer Tyrus, and destroy it and _take all its riches_; and a few chapters afterwards it is recorded that he did accordingly attack Tyrus but failed, and that as he got _no wages_ for this attack he should have Egypt for his failure. In the New Testament the contradictions are endless; Joseph, the husband of Mary, had two fathers, Jacob and Heli; Salah is in the same predicament, for although the son of Canaan, Arphaxad begat him. When John was cast into prison, Jesus _began_ to preach, although He had been preaching and gaining disciples while John was still at large. Jesus sent the Twelve to preach, telling them to take a staff, and yet bidding them to take none. He eat the Passover with His disciples, although He was crucified before that feast. He had one title on his cross, but it is verbally inspired in four different ways. He rose with many variations of date and time, and ascended the same evening, although He subsequently went into Galilee and remained on earth for forty days. He sent word to His disciples to meet Him in Galilee, and yet suddenly appeared among them as they sat quietly together the same evening at Jerusalem. Stephen's history contradicts our Old Testament. When Paul is converted, his companions hear a voice, although another account says that they heard none at all. After his conversion he goes in and out at Jerusalem with the Apostles, although, strangely enough, he sees none of them, except Peter and James. But one might spend pages in noting these inconsistencies, while even one of them destroys the verbal inspiration theory. From these contradictions I maintain that one of two things must follow, either the Bible is not an inspired book, or else inspiration is consistent with much error, as I shall presently show. I am quite ready to allow that the Bible _is_ inspired, and I therefore lay down as my first canon of inspiration, that: "Inspiration does not prevent inaccuracy." I turn to the second class of orthodox inspirationists, who, while allowing that verbal inspiration is proved impossible by many trivial inconsistencies, yet affirm that God's overruling power ensures substantial accuracy, and that its history and science are perfectly true and are to be relied on. To test this assertion, we--after noting that Bible history is, as has been remarked above, continually self-contradictory--turn to other histories and compare the Bible with them. We notice first that many important Biblical occurrences are quite ignored by "profane" historians. We are surprised to see that while the Babylonish captivity left marks on Israel which are plainly seen, Egypt left no trace on Israel's names or customs, and Israel no trace on Egypt's monuments. The doctrine of angels comes not from heaven, but slips into Jewish theology from the Persian; while immortality is brought to light neither by Hebrew prophet nor by the Gospel of Jesus, but by the people among whom the Jews resided during the Babylonish captivity. The Jewish Scriptures which precede the captivity know of nothing beyond the grave; the Jewish Scriptures after the captivity are radiant with the light of a life to come; to these Jesus adds nothing of joy or hope. The very central doctrine of Christianity--the Godhead of Jesus--is nothing but a repetition of an idea of Greek philosophy borrowed by early Christian writers, and is to be found in Plato and Philo as clearly as in the fourth Gospel. Science contradicts the Bible as much as does history; geology laughs at its puny periods of creation; astronomy destroys its heavens, and asks why this little world took a week in making, while the sun and moon and the countless stars were rapidly turned out in twelve hours; natural history wonders why the kangaroos did not stay in Asia after the Deluge, instead of undertaking the long sea voyage to far Australia, and enquires how the Mexicans, and Peruvians, and others, crossed the wide ocean to settle in America; archaeology presents its human bones from ancient caves, and asks how they got there, if only six thousand years have passed since Adam and Eve stood alone in Eden, gazing out on the unpeopled earth; the Pyramids point at the negro type distinct and clear, and ask how it comes that it was so rapidly developed at first, and yet has remained stationary ever since. At last, science gets weary of slaying a foe so puny, and goes on its way with a smile on its grand, still face, leaving the Bible to teach its science to whom it lists. Evidence so weighty crushes all life out of this second theory of inspiration, and gives us a second rule to guide us in our search: "Inspiration does not prevent ignorance and error." We may pass on to the third class of inspirationists, those who believe that the Bible is not given to man to teach him either history or science, but only to reveal to him what he could not discover by the use of his natural faculties--_e g._ the duties of morality and the nature of God. I must note here the subtilty of this retreat. Driven by inexorable fact to allow the Bible to be fallible in everything in which we can test its assertions, they, by a clever strategic movement, remove their defence to a post more difficult to attack. They maintain that the Bible is infallible in points where no cannonade of facts can be brought to bear on it. What is this but to say, that although we can prove the Bible to be fallible on every point capable of proof, we are still blindly to believe it to be infallible where demonstrated error is, from the nature of the case, impossible? As regards the nature of God, we have already seen that the Bible ascribes to him virtue and vice indifferently. We turn to morality, and here our first great difficulty meets us, for when we point to a thing and say, "that is profoundly immoral," our opponents retort, "it is perfectly moral." Only the progress of humanity can prove which of us is in the right, though here, too, we have one great fact on our side, and that is, the conscience in man; already men would rather die than imitate the actions of Old Testament saints who did that which was "right in the eyes of Jehovah;" and presently they will be bold enough to reject in words that which they already reject in deeds. Few would put the Bible freely into the hands of a child, any more than they would give freely to the young the unpurged editions of Swift and Sterne; and I imagine that the most pious parents would scarcely see with un-mingled pleasure their son and daughter of fifteen and sixteen studying together the histories and laws of the Pentateuch. But taking the Bible as a rule of life, are we to copy its saints and its laws? For instance, is it right for a man to marry his half-sister, as did the great ancestor of the Jews, Abraham, the friend of God?--a union, by the way, which is forbidden by Jewish law, although said to be the source of their race. Is the lie of the Egyptian midwives right, because Jehovah blessed them for it, even as Jael is pronounced blessed by Deborah, the prophetess, for her accursed treachery and murder? Is the robbery of the Egyptians right, because commanded by Jehovah? Are the old cruel laws of witchcraft right, because Jehovah doomed the witch to death? Are the ordeals of the Middle Ages right, because derived from the laws of Jehovah? Is human sacrifice right, because attempted by Abraham, enjoined by Moses, practised by Jephthah, efficacious in turning away God's wrath when Saul's seven sons were offered up? Is murder right because Phineas wrought atonement by it, and Moses sent his murderers throughout the camp to stay God's anger by slaying their brethren? Is it right that the persons of women captives should be the prey of the conquerors, because the Jews were commanded by Jehovah to save alive the virgins and keep them for themselves, except the sixty-four reserved for himself? Is the man after God's own heart a worthy model for imitation? Are Jehu's lying and slaughter right, because right in the eyes of Jehovah? Is Hosea's marriage commendable, because commanded by Jehovah? or are the signs of Jeremiah and Ezekiel the less childish and indecent because they are prefaced with, "thus saith Jehovah?" Far be it from me to detract from the glorious morality of portions of the Bible; but if the whole book be inspired and infallible in its moral teaching, then, of course, one moral lesson is as important as another, and we have no right to pick and choose where the whole is divine. The harsher part of the Old Testament morality has burnt its mark into the world, and may be traced through history by the groans of suffering men and women, by burning witches and tortured enemies of the Lord, by flaming cities and blood-stained fields. If murder and rapine, treachery and lies, robbery and violence, were commanded long ago by Almighty God; if things are right and wrong only by virtue of His command, then who can say that they may not be right once more, when used in the cause of the Church, and how are we to know that Moses speaks in God's name when he commands them, and Torquemada only in his own? But even Christians are beginning to feel ashamed of some of the exploits of the "Old Testament Saints," and to try and explain away some of the harsher features; we even hear sometimes a wicked whisper about "imperfect light," &c. Good heavens! what blasphemy! Imperfect light can mean nothing less than imperfect God, if He is responsible for the morality of these writings. So, from our study of the Bible we deduce another canon by which we may judge of inspiration: "Inspiration does not prevent moral error." There is a fourth class of inspirationists, the last which clings to the skirts of orthodoxy, which is always endeavouring to plant one foot on the rocks of science, while it balances the other over the quicksands of orthodox super-naturalism. The Broad Church school here takes one wide step away from orthodoxy, by allowing that the inspiration of the Bible differs only in degree and not in kind from the inspiration common to all mankind. They recognise the great fact that the inspiring Spirit of God is the source whence flow all good and noble deeds, and they point out that the Bible itself refers all good and all knowledge to that one Spirit, and that He breathes mechanical skill into Bezaleel and Aholiab, strength into Samson's arms, wisdom into Solomon, as much as He breathes the ecstacy of the prophet into Isaiah, faith into Paul, and love into John. They recognise the old legends as authentic, but would maintain as stoutly that He spoke to Newton through the falling of an apple, as that He spoke of old to Elijah by fire, or to the wise men by a star. This school try and remove the moral difficulties of the Old Testament by regarding the history recorded in it as a history which is specially intended to unveil the working of God through all history, and so to gradually reveal God as He makes Himself known to the world; thus the grosser parts are regarded as wholly attributable to the ignorance of men, and they delight to see the divine light breaking slowly through the thick clouds of human error and prejudice, and to trace in the Bible the gradual evolution of a nobler faith and a purer morality. They regard the miracles of Jesus as a manifestation that God underlies Nature and works ever therein: they believe God to be specially manifested in Jewish history, in order that men may understand that He presides over all nations and rules over all peoples. To Maurice the Bible is the explainer of all earth's problems, the unveiler of God, the Bread of Life. There is, on the whole, little to object to in the Broad Church view of inspiration, although liberal thinkers regret that, as a party, they stop half way, and are still trammelled by the half-broken chains of orthodoxy. For instance, they usually regard the direct revelation of morality as closed by Jesus and His immediate followers, although they allow that God has not deserted His world, nor confined His inspiration within the covers of a book. To them, however, the Bible is still _the_ inspired book, standing apart by itself, differing from all other sacred books. From their views of inspiration, which contains so much that is true, we deduce a fourth rule: "Inspiration is not confined to written words about God." From a criticism of the book, which is held by orthodox Christians, to be specially inspired, we have then gained some idea of what inspiration does _not_ do. It does not prevent inaccuracy, ignorance, error, nor is it confined to any written book. Inspiration, then, cannot be an overwhelming influence, crushing the human faculties and bearing along the subject of it on a flood which he can neither direct nor resist. It is a breathing--gentle and gradual--of pure thoughts into impure hearts, tender thoughts into fierce hearts, forgiving thoughts into revengeful hearts. David calls home his banished son, and he learns that, "even as a father pitieth his children, so is the Lord merciful unto them that fear Him." Paul wishes himself accursed if it may save his brethren, and from his own self-sacrificing love he learns that "God will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth." Thus inspiration is breathed into the man's heart. "I love and forgive, weak as I am; what must be the depth of the love and forgiveness of God?" David's fierce revenge finds an echo in his writings; for man writes, and not God: he defaces God by ascribing to Him the passions surging only in his own burning Eastern heart: then, as the Spirit moves him to forgiveness, his song is of mercy; for he feels that his Maker must be better than himself. That part of the Bible is inspired, I do not deny, in the sense that all good thoughts are the result of inspiration, but only as we share the inspiration of the Bible can we distinguish between the noble and the base in it, between the eternal and that which is fast passing away. But as we do not expect to find that inspiration, now-a-days, guards men from much error, both of word and deed, so we should not expect to find it otherwise in days gone by; nor should we wonder that the man who spoke of God as showing His tender fatherhood by punishing and correcting, could so sink down into hard thoughts of that loving Father as to say that it was a fearful thing to fall into His hands. These contradictions meet us in every man; they are the highest and the lowest moments of the human soul. Only as we are inspired to love and patience in our conduct towards men will our words be inspired when we speak of God. Having thus seen what inspiration does not do, we must glance at what it really is. It is, perhaps, natural that we, rejecting, as we do, with somewhat of vehemence, the idea of supernatural revelation, should oftentimes be accused of denying all revelation and disbelieving all inspiration. But even as we are not atheists, although we deny the Godhead of Jesus, so are we not unbelievers in inspiration because we refuse to bend our necks beneath the yoke of an inspired Bible. For we believe in a God too mighty and too universal to be wrapped in swaddling clothes or buried in a cave, and we believe in an inspiration too mighty and too universal to belong only to one nation and to one age. As the air is as free and as refreshing to us as it was to Isaiah, to Jesus, or to Paul, so does the spiritual air of God's Spirit breathe so softly and as refreshingly on our brows as on theirs. We have eyes to see and ears to hear quite as much as they had in Judea long ago. "If God be omnipresent and omniactive, this inspiration is no miracle, but a regular mode of God's action on conscious Spirit, as gravitation on unconscious matter. It is not a rare condescension of God, but a universal uplifting of man. To obtain a knowledge of duty, a man is not sent away outside of himself to ancient documents for the only rule of faith and practice; the Word is very nigh him, even in his heart, and by this word he is to try all documents whatever.... Wisdom, Righteous-ness, and Love are the Spirit of God in the soul of man; wherever these are, and just in proportion to their power, there is inspiration from God.... Inspiration is the in-come of God to the soul, in the form of Truth through the Reason, of Right through the Conscience, of Love and Faith through the Affections and Religious Element.... A man would be looked on as mad who should claim miraculous inspiration for Newton, as they have been who denied it in the case of Moses. But no candid man will doubt that, humanly speaking, it was a more difficult thing to write the Principia than to write the Decalogue. Man must have a nature most sadly anomalous if, unassisted, he is able to accomplish all the triumphs of modern science, and yet cannot discover the plainest and most important principles of Religion and Morality without a miraculous inspiration; and still more so if, being able to discover by God's natural aid these chief and most important principles, he needs a miraculous inspiration to disclose minor details."* Thus we believe that inspiration from God is the birthright of humanity, and to be an heir of God it needs only to be a son of man. Earth's treasures are highly priced and hard to win, but God's blessings are, like the rain and the sunshine, showered on all-comers. "'Tis only heaven is given away; 'Tis only God may be had for the asking; No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by the poorest comer." * Theodore Parker. If inspiration were indeed that which it is thought to be by the orthodox Christians, surely we ought to be able to distinguish its sayings from those of the uninspired. If inspiration be confined to the Christian Bible, how is it that the inspired thoughts were in many cases spoken out to the world hundreds of years before they fell from the lips of an inspired Jew? It seems a somewhat uncalled for miraculous interference for a man to be supernaturally inspired to inform the world of some moral truth which had been well known for hundreds of years to a large portion of the race. Or is it that a great moral truth bears within itself so little evidence of its royal birth, that it cannot be accepted as ruler by divine right over men until its proclamation is signed by some duly accredited messenger of the Most High? Then, indeed, must God be "more cognizable by the senses than by the soul;" and then "the eye or the ear is a truer and quicker percipient of Deity than the Spirit which came forth from Him."* Was Paul inspired when he wished himself accursed for his brethren's sake, but Kwan-yin uninspired, when she said, "Never will I seek nor receive private individual salvation; never enter into final peace alone?" If Jesus and the prophets were inspired when they placed mercy above sacrifice, was Manu uninspired in saying that a man "will fall very low if he performs ceremonial acts only, and fails to discharge his moral duties"? Was Jesus inspired when he taught that the whole law was comprehended in one saying, namely, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself?" and yet was Confucius uninspired when, in answer to the question, "What one word would serve as a rule to one's whole life?" he said, "Reciprocity; what you do not wish done to yourself, do not to others." Or take the Talmud and study it, and then judge from what uninspired source Jesus drew much of His highest teaching. "Whoso looketh on the wife of another with a lustful eye, is considered as if he had committed adultery."--(Kalah.) "With what measure we mete, we shall be measured again."--(Johanan.) "What thou wouldst not like to be done to thyself, do not to others; this is the fundamental law."--(Hillel.) "If he be admonished to take the splinter out of his eye, he would answer, Take the beam out of thine own."--(Tarphon.) "Imitate God in His goodness. Be towards thy fellow-creatures as He is towards the whole creation. Clothe the naked; heal the sick; comfort the afflicted; be a brother to the children of thy Father." The whole parable of the houses built on the rock and on the sand is taken out of the Talmud, and such instances of quotation might be indefinitely multiplied. What do they all prove? That there is no inspiration in the Bible? by no means. But surely that inspiration is not confined to the Bible, but is spread over the world; that much in all "sacred books" is the outcome of inspired minds at their highest, although we find the same books containing gross and low thoughts. We should always remember that although the Bible is more specially a revelation to us of the Western nations than are the Vedas and the Zend-Avesta, that it is only so because it is better suited to our modes of thought, and because it has-been one of the agents in our education. * W. R. Greg. The reverence with which we may regard the Bible as bound up with many-sacred memories, and as the chosen teacher of many of our greatest minds and purest characters, is rightly directed in other nations to their own sacred books. The books are really all on a level, with much good and much bad in them all; but as the Hebrew was inspired to proclaim that "the Lord thy God is one Lord" to the Hebrews, so was the Hindoo inspired to proclaim to Hindoos, "There is only one Deity, the great Soul." Either all are inspired, or none are. They stand on the same footing. And we rejoice to-believe that one Spirit breathes in all, and that His inspiration is ours to-day. "The Father worketh hitherto," although men fancy He is resting in an eternal Sabbath. The orthodox tells us that, in rejecting the rule of morality laid down for us in the Bible, and in trusting ourselves to this inspiration of the free Spirit of God, our faith and our morality will alike be shifting and unstable. But we reck not of their warnings; our faith and our morality are only shifting in this sense, that, as we grow holier, and purer, and wiser, our conception of God and of righteousness will rise and expand with our growth. It was a golden saying of one of God's noblest sons that "no man knoweth the Father save the Son:" to know God we must resemble Him, as we see in the child the likeness of the parent. But in trusting ourselves to the guidance of the Spirit of God, we are not building the house of our faith on the shifting sand; rather are we "dwelling in a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Wisely was it sung of old, "Except the Lord build the house, their labour is but lost that build it." Vain are all efforts of priestly coercion; vain all toils of inspired books; vain the utter sacrifice of reason and conscience; their labour is but lost when they strive to build a temple of human faith, strong enough to bear the long strain of time, or the earthquake-shock of grief. God only, by the patient guiding of His love, by the direct inspiration of His Spirit, can lay, stone by stone, and timber by timber, that priceless fabric of trust and love, which shall outlive all attacks and all changes, and shall stand in the human soul as long as His own Eternity endures. ON THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. IN every transition-stage of the world's history the question of education naturally comes to the front. So much depends on the first impressions of childhood, on the first training of the tender shoot, that it has always been acknowledged, from Solomon to Forster, that to "train up a child in the way he should go" is among the most important duties of fathers and citizens. To the individual, to the family, to the State, the education of the rising generation is a question of primary importance. Plato began the education of the citizens of his ideal Republic from the very hour of their birth; the nursing child was taken from the mother lest injudicious treatment should mar, in the slightest degree, the perfection of the future warrior. On this point modern and ancient wisdom clasp hands, and place the education of the child among the most important duties of the State. The battle at present raging between the advocates of "secular" and "religious" education--to use the cant of the day--is a most natural and righteous recognition of the vast interests at stake when Church or State claims the right of training the sons and daughters of England. No one has yet attempted to explain why it should be "irreligious" to teach writing, or history, or geography; or why it should "destroy a child's soul" to improve his mental faculties. It is among the "mysteries" of the faith, why it is better for our poor to leave' them to grow up in both moral and intellectual darkness, than to dissipate the intellectual darkness by some few rays of knowledge, and to leave the moral training to other hands. If we left a starving man to die because we could only give him bread, and were unable to afford cheese in addition, all would unite in declaiming at our folly: but "religious" people would rather that our street Arabs grew up both heathens and brutes, than that we should improve their minds without Christianizing their souls. Better let a lad grow up a thief and a drunkard, than turn him into an artizan and a freethinker. There can scarcely be a better proof of the unreasonableness of Christian doctrine, than the Christian fear of sharpening mental faculties, without binding them down, at the same time, in the chains of dogma. Only a religion founded on reason can dare to train children's minds to the utmost, and then leave them free to use all the power and keenness acquired by that training on the investigation of any religious doctrine presented to them. We, who have written Tekel on the Christian faith, share in the opinion of the Christian clergy, that man's carnal reason is a terrible foe to the Christian revelation; but here we begin to differ from them, for while they regard this reason as a child of the devil, to be scourged and chained down, we do homage to it as to the fairest offspring of the Divine Spirit, the brightest earthly reflection of His glory, and the nearest image of His "Person"; we would cherish it, tend it, nourish it, as our Father's noblest gift to humanity, as our surest guide and best counsellor, as the ear which hears His voice, and the eye which sees Him, as the sharpest weapon against superstition, the ultimate arbiter on earth between right and wrong. To us, then, education is ranged on the side of God; we welcome it freely and gladly, because all truth, all light, all knowledge, are foes of falsehood, of darkness, of ignorance. If we mistake error for truth a brighter light will set us right, and we only wish to be taught truth, not to be proved right. Most liberal thinkers agree in recognizing the fact that the duties of the State in the matter of education must, in the nature of things, be purely "secular:" that is to say, that while the State insists that the future citizen shall be taught at least the elements of learning, so as to fit him or her for fulfilling the duties of that citizenship, it has no right to insist on impressing on the mind of its pupil any set of religious dogmas or any form of religious creed. The abdication by the State of the pretended right of enforcing on its citizens any special form of religion, is not at all identical with the opposition by the State to religious teaching; It is merely a development of the very wise maxim of the great Jewish Teacher, to render the things of Caesar to Caesar, and the things of God to God. To teach reading, writing, honesty, regard for law, these things are Caesar's duties; to teach religious dogma, creed, or article, is entirely the province of the teachers who claim to hold the truth of God. But my object now is not to draw the line between the duties of Church and State, of school and home; nor do I wish to enter the lists of sectarian controversy, to break a lance in favour of a new religious dogma. The question is rather this: "What are the limits of the religious education which it is wise to impose on the young? Is any dogmatic teaching to be a part of their moral training, and is the dogmatism against which we have rebelled to be revived in a new form? Are the fetters which we are breaking for ourselves to be welded together again for the young limbs of our children? Are they to be fed on the husks which have starved our own religious aspirations, and which we have analysed, and rejected as unfit to sustain our moral and mental vigour? On the other hand, are our children to grow up without any religious teaching at all, without a ray of that sunshine which is to most of us the very source of our gladness, and the renewal of our strength?" I think the best way of deciding this question is to notice the gradual development of the childish body and mind. Nature's indications are a sure guide-post, and we cannot go very far wrong in following her hints. I am now on ground with which mothers are familiar, though perhaps few men have watched young children with sufficient attention to be able to note their gradual development. The first instincts of a baby are purely personal: the "not-I" is for it nonexistent: food, warmth, cleanliness, comprise all its needs and all our duties to it. The next stage is when the infant becomes conscious of the existence of something outside itself: when, vaguely and indistinctly, but yet decidedly, it shows signs of observing the things around it: to cultivate observation, to attract attention, slowly to guide it into distinguishing one object from another, are the next steps in its education. The child soon succeeds in distinguishing forms, and learns to attach different sounds to different shapes: it is also taught to avoid some things and to play with others: it awakes to the knowledge that while some objects give pleasure, others give pain: so far as material things go, it learns to choose the good and to avoid the evil. This power is only gained by experience, and is therefore acquired but gradually, and after a time, side by side with it, runs another lesson; slowly and gradually there appears a dawning appreciation of "right" and "wrong." This appreciation is not, however, at first an appreciation of any intrinsic rightness or wrongness in any given action; it is simply a recognition on the child's part that some of its acts meet with approval, others with disapproval, from its elders. The standard of its seniors is unquestioningly accepted by the child. The moral sense awakes, but is completely guided in its first efforts by the hand of the child's teacher, as completely as the first efforts to walk are directed by the mother. Thus it comes to pass that the conscience of the child is but the reflex of the conscience of its parents or guardians: "right" and "wrong" in a child's vocabulary are in the earliest stages equivalent to "reward" and "punishment;" its final court of appeal in cases of morality is the judgment of the parent.* * The moral sense does show itself, however, in very young children, in a higher form than this; for we may often observe in a young child an instinctive sense of shame at having done wrong. But the moral sense is awakened and educated by the parents' approval and disapproval. This may be proved, I think, by the fact that a child brought up among thieves and evil-livers will accept their morality as a matter of course, and will steal and lie habitually, without attaching to either act any idea of wrong. The moral sense is inherent in man, and is in no way _given_ by the parent; but I think that it is first aroused and put into action by the parent; the parent accustoms the child to regard certain actions as right and wrong; this appeals to the moral sense in the child, and the child very rapidly is ashamed of wrong, as wrong, and not simply from dread of punishment. I would be understood to mean, in the text, that the wish for reward is the first response of the child to the idea of an inherent distinction between different actions; this feeling rapidly developes into the true moral sense, which regards right as right, and wrong as wrong. I append this note at the suggestion of a valued friend, who feared that the inference might be drawn from the text that the moral sense was implanted by the parent instead of being, as it is, the gift of God. It is perhaps scarcely accurate to call this motive power in the child a _moral_ sense at all; still, this recognition of some thing which is immaterial and intangible, and which is yet to be the guide of its actions, is a great step forward from the simple consciousness of outer and material objects, and is truly the dawn of that moral sense which becomes in men and women the test of right and wrong. So far we have considered the growing faculties of the child as regards physical and moral development, and I particularly wish to remark that the moral sense appears long before any "religious" tendency can be noted. There is, however, another side of the complete human character which is very important, but which is slow in showing itself in any healthy child; I mean what may be called the _spiritual_ sense, in distinction from the moral; the sense which is the crowning grace of humanity, the sense which belongs wholly to the immortal part of man: the outstretched hands of the human spirit groping after the Eternal Spirit; the yearning after that all-pervading Power which men call God. I know well that in many precociously-pious children this spiritual sense is forced into a premature and unwholesome maturity; by means of a spiritual hot-house the summer-fruit of piety may be obtained in the spring-time of the childish heart. The imitative instinct of childhood quickly reproduces the sentiments around it, and set phrases which meet with admiration flow glibly from baby-lips. But this strongly developed religious feeling in a child is both unnatural and harmful, and can never, because it is unreal, produce any lasting good effect. Yet is it none the less true that, at an early age, differing much in different children, the "spiritual sense" does show signs of awakening; that children soon begin to wonder about things around them, and to ask questions which can only find their true answer in the name of God. How to meet these questions, how to train this growing sentiment without crushing it on the one hand, and without unduly stimulating it on the other, is a source of deep anxiety to many a mother's heart in the present day. They are unable to tell their children the stories which satisfied their own childish cravings: no longer can they hold up before the eager faces the picture of the manger at Bethlehem, or dim the bright eyes with the story of the cross on Calvary; no longer can they fold the little hands in prayer to the child of Nazareth, or hush the hasty tongue with the reminder of the obedience of the Virgin's son. To a certain extent this is a loss. A child quickly seizes the concrete; the idea of the child Jesus or the man Jesus is readily grasped by a child's intellect; the God of the Old Testament, the "magnified man," is also, though more dimly, understood. These conceptions of the childhood of humanity suit the childhood of the individual, and it is far more difficult for the child to realize the idea of God when he is divested of these materialistic garments. Yet I speak from experience when I say that it is by no means impossible to train a child into the simplest and happiest feelings as regards the Supreme Being, without degrading the Divine into the human. By one name we can speak of God by which He will be readily welcomed to the child's heart, and that is the name of the Father. Most children are keenly alive to natural beauties, and are quick to observe birds, and flowers, and sunshine; at times they will ask how these things come there, and then it is well to tell them that they are the works of God Thus the child's first notions of the existence of a Power he cannot see or feel will come to him clothed in the things he loves, and will be free from any suggestion of fear.* Even those who regard God from the stand-point of Pantheism may use natural objects so as to train the child into a fearless and happy recognition of the constant working of the Spirit of Nature, and so guard the young mind against that shrinking from, and terror of God, which popular Christianity is so apt to induce. The lad or girl who grows up with even the habit of regarding God as the calm and mighty motive-power of the forces of Nature, changeless, infinite, absolutely trustworthy, will be slow to accept in later life the crude conceptions which incarnate the creative power in a virgin's womb, and ascribe caprice, injustice, and cruelty to the mighty Spirit of the Universe. * The ordinary shrinking of a child from the idea of a Presence which he cannot see, but which sees him, will not be felt by children whose only ideas about God are that He is the Father from whose hand come all beautiful things. In any home where the parents' thoughts of God are free from doubt and mistrust, the children's thoughts will be the same; religion, in their eyes, will be synonymous with happiness, for God and good will be convertible terms. There is a deep truth in the idea of Pantheism, that "Nature is an apparition of the Deity, God in a mask;" that "He is the light of the morning, the beauty of the noon, and the strength of the sun. He is the One, the All... The soul of all; more moving than motion, more stable than rest; fairer than beauty, and stronger than strength. The power of Nature is God... He is the All; the Reality of all phenomena." The child fed on this food will have scarcely anything to unlearn, even when he begins to believe that God is something more than Nature; "the created All is the symbol of God," and he will pass easily and naturally on from seeing God in Nature to see Him in a higher form. Of course, as a Theist, I should myself go much further than this: I should speak of all natural glory as but the reflection of the Deity, or as the robe in which He veils His infinite beauty; I should bid my children rejoice in all happiness as in the gift of a Father who delights in sharing His joy with His creatures; I should point out that the pain caused by ignorance of, or by breaking natural laws, is God's way of teaching men obedience for their own ultimate good: in the freedom and fulness of Nature's gifts I should teach them to see the equal love of God for all; through marking that in Nature's visible kingdom no end can be gained without labour and without using certain laws, they should learn that in the invisible kingdom they need not expect to find favouritism, nor think to share the fruits of victory without patient toil. To all who believe in a God who is also the Father of Spirits such teaching as this comes easily; as they themselves learn of God only through His works, so they naturally teach their children to seek Him in the same way. The questions, so familiar to every mother, "Can God see me?" "Where is God?" can only be met with the simple assertion that God sees all, and is everywhere. For there are many childish questions which it is wisest to meet with statements which are above the grasp of the childish mind. These statements may be simply given to the child as statements which it is too young either to question or to understand. Nothing is gained by trying to smooth down spiritual subjects to the level of a child's capacity; the time will come later when the child must meet and answer for itself all great spiritual questions; the parent's care should be to remove all hindrances from the child's path of inquiry, but not to give it cut-and-dried answers to every possible question; religion, to be worth anything, must be a personal matter, and each must find it out for himself; the wise parent will endeavour to save the child from the pain of unlearning, by giving but little formal religious teaching; he cannot fight the battle for his child, but he can prevent his being crippled by a fancied armour which will stifle rather than protect him; he can give a few wide principles to direct him, without weighing him down with guide-books. But even the most general ideas of God should not be forced on a childish mind; they should come, so to speak, by chance; they should be presented in answer to some demand of the child's heart; they should be inculcated by stray words and passing remarks; they should form the atmosphere surrounding the child habitually, and not be a sudden "wind of doctrine." Of course all this is far more troublesome than to teach a child a catechism or a creed, but it is a far higher training. Dogma, _i e_., conviction petrified by authority, should be utterly excluded from the religious education of children; a few great axiomatic truths may be laid down, but even in these primary truths dogmatism should be avoided. The parent should always take care to make it apparent that he is stating his own convictions, but is not enforcing them on the child by his authority. So far as the child is capable of appreciating them, the reasons for the religious conviction should be presented along with the conviction itself. Thus the child will see, as he grows older, that religion cannot be learned by rote, that it is not shut up in a book, or contained in creeds; he will appreciate the all-important fact that free inquiry is the only air in which truth can breathe; that one man's faith cannot justly be imposed on another, and that every individual soul has the privilege and the responsibility of forming his own religion, and must either hear God with his own ears, or else not hear Him at all. We have noticed that the moral sense awakes before the religious (I must state my repugnance to these terms, although I use them for the sake of clearness; but morality _is_ religion, although religion is more than morality, and the so-called religion which is not morality is worthless and hateful). There remains then to consider what we will call the second side of religion, although it is by far its most important side. True religion consists not only in feelings towards God, but also in duties towards men: the first, noble and blessed as they are, should, in every healthy religion, give place to the second; for a morally good man who does not believe in God at all, is in a far higher state of being than the man who believes in God and is selfish, cruel or unjust. Error in faith is forgiveable; error in life is fatal. The good man shall surely see God, although, for a time, his eyes be holden; the evil man, though he hold the noblest faith yet known, shall never taste the joy of God, until he turns from sin, and struggles after holiness. Faith first, and then morality, is the war-cry of the churches; morality above all, and let faith follow in good time, is the watch-word of Theism; so, among us, the principal part of the religious training of our children should be morality; religious feeling may be over-strained, or give rise to self-deception; religious talk may be morbid and unreal; religious faith may be erring, and must be imperfect; but morality is a rock which can never be shaken, a guide which can never mislead. Whether we are right or wrong in our belief about God, whether we are immortal spirits or perishable organizations, yet purity is nobler than vice, courage than cowardice, truth than falsehood, love than hate. Let us, then, teach our children morality above all things. Let us teach them to love good for its own sake, without thought of reward, and they will remain good, even if, in after life, they should, alas! lose all hope of immortality and all faith hi God. A child's natural instinct is towards good; a tale of heroism, of self sacrifice, of generosity, will bring the eager blood flushing up to a child's face and wake a quick response and a desire of emulation. It is therefore well to place in children's hands tales of noble deeds in days gone by. Nothing is easier than to train a child into feeling a desire to be good for the sake of being so. There is something so attractive in goodness, that I have found it more effectual to hold up the nobility of courage and unselfishness before the child's eyes, than to descend to punishment for the corresponding faults. If a child is in the habit of regarding all wrong as something low and degrading, he quickly shrinks from it; all mothers know the instinctive ambition of children to be something superior and admirable, and this instinct is most useful in inculcating virtue. Later in life nothing ruins a young man like discovering that morality and religion are often divorced, and that the foremost professors of religion are less delicately honourable and trustworthy than high-minded "worldly men;" on the other hand, nothing will have so beneficial an effect on men and women entering life, as to see that those who are most joyful in their faith towards God, lead the purest and most blameless lives. "Do good, be good" is, as has been well said, the golden rule of life; "do good, be good" must be the law impressed on our children's hearts. Whatever "eclipse of faith" may await England, whatever darkness of most hopeless scepticism, whatever depth of uttermost despair of God, there is not only the hope, but the certainty of the resurrection of religion, if we all hold fast through the driving storm to the sheet-anchor of pure morality, to most faithful discharge of all duty towards man to love, and tenderness, and charity, and patience. Morality never faileth; but, whether there be dogmas, they shall fail; whether there be creeds, they shall cease; whether there be churches, they shall crumble away; but morality shall abide for evermore and endure as long as the endless circle of Nature revolves around the Eternal Throne. NATURAL RELIGION VERSUS REVEALED RELIGION. ONE is almost ashamed to repeat so trite an aphorism as the well-worn saying that "history repeats itself." But in studying the course taken by the advocates of what is called "revealed religion," in seeing their disdain of "mere nature," their scornful repudiation of the idea that any poor natural product can come into competition with their special article, hall-stamped by heaven itself, I feel irresistibly compelled to glance backwards down the long vista of history, and there I see the conflict of the present day raging fierce and long. I see the same serried ranks of orthodoxy marshalled by bishops and priests, arrayed in all the splendour of prescriptive right, armed with mighty weapons of authority and thunderbolts of Church anathemas. Their war-cry is the same as that which rings in our ears to-day; "revelation" is inscribed on their banners and "infallible authority" is the watchword of their camp. The Church is facing nature for the first time, and is setting her revealed science against natural science. "Mere Nature" is temporarily getting the worst of it, and Galileo, Nature's champion, is sorely pressed by "revealed truth." I hear scornful taunts at his presumption in attacking revealed science by his pretended natural facts. Had they not God's Own account of His creation, and did he pretend to know more about the matter than God Himself? Was he present when God created the world, that he spoke so positively about its shape? Could he declare, of his own personal knowledge, that it was sent hurtling through space in the ridiculous manner he talked about, and could he, by the evidence of his own eye-sight, declare that God was mistaken when He revealed to man how He "laid the foundation of the earth that it never should move at anytime?" But if he was only reasoning from the wee bit of earth he knew, was he not speaking of things he had not seen, being vainly puffed-up in his fleshly mind? Was it probable, _à priori_, that God would allow mankind to be deceived for thousands of years on so important a matter; would in fact--God forgive it!--deceive man Himself by revealing through His holy prophets an account of His creation which was utterly untrue; nay, further, would carry on the delusion for century after century, by working miracles in support of it--for what but a miracle could make men unconscious of the fact that they were being hurried through space at so tremendous a rate? Surely very little reverence, or rather no reverence at all, was needed to allow that God the Holy Ghost, who inspired the Bible, knew better than we did how He made the world. But, the theologian proceeds, he must remind his audience that, under the specious pretext of investigating the creation, this man, this pseudo-scientist, was in reality blaspheming the Creator, by contradicting His revealed word, and thus "making Him a liar." It was all very well to talk about _natural_ science; but he would ask this presuming speculator, what was the use of God revealing science to us if man's natural faculties were sufficient to discover it for himself? They had sufficient proofs of the absurdities of science into which reason, unenlightened by revelation, had betrayed men in past ages. The idea of the Hindoo, that the world rested on an elephant and the elephant on a tortoise, was a sad proof of the incapacity of the acutest natural intellect to discover scientific truth without the aid of revelation. Reason had its place, and a very noble placer in science; but it must always bow before revelation, and not presume to set its puny guesses against a "thus sayeth the Lord." Let reason, then, pursue its way with belief not unbelief, for its guide. What could reason, with all its vaunted powers, tell us of the long-past creation of the world? Eye hath not seen those things of ages past, but God hath revealed them to us by His Spirit. A darkness that might be felt would enshroud the origin of the world were it not for the magnificent revelation of Moses, that "in six days God created the heaven and the earth." He might urge how our conceptions of God were enlarged and elevated, and what a deep awe filled the adoring heart on contemplating the revealed truth, that this wonderful earth with its varied beauty, and the heavens above with their countless stars, were all called forth out of nothing within the space of one short week by the creative fiat of the Almighty. What could this pseudo-science give them in exchange for such a revelation as that? Was it probable, further, that God would have become incarnate for the sake of a world that was only one out of many revolving round the sun? How irreverent to regard the theatre of that awful sacrifice as aught less than the centre of the universe, the cynosure of angelic eyes, gazing from their thrones in the heaven above! Galileo might say that his heresy does not affect the primary truths of our holy faith; but this is only one of the evasions natural to evildoers--and it is unnecessary to remark that intellectual error is invariably the offspring of moral guilt--for consider how much is involved in his theory. The inspiration of Scripture receives its death-blow; for if fallible in one point, we have no reason to conclude it to be infallible in others. If there is one fact revealed to us more clearly than another in Holy Scripture, it is this one of the steadfastness of our world, which we are distinctly told, "cannot be moved." It is plainly revealed to us that the earth was created and fixed firmly on its foundations; that then there was formed over it the vast vault of heaven, in which were set the stars, and in this vault was prepared "the course" for the sun, spoken of, as you will remember, in the 19th Psalm, where holy David reveals to us that in the heavens God has made a tabernacle for the sun, which "goeth forth from the uttermost part of the heaven, and runneth about unto the end of it again." Language has no definiteness of meaning if this inspired declaration can be translated into a statement that the sun remains stationary and is encircled by a revolving earth. This great revealed truth cannot be contradicted by any true science. God's works cannot contradict His word; and if for a moment they appear mutually irreconcileable, we may be sure that our ignorance is to blame, and that a deeper knowledge will ultimately remove the apparent inconsistency. But it is yet more important to observe that some of the cardinal doctrines of the Church are assailed by this novel teaching. How could our blessed Redeemer, after accomplishing the work of our salvation, ascend from a revolving earth? Whither did He go? North, south, east, or west? For, if I understand aright this new heresy, the space above us at one time is below us at another, and thus Jesus might be actually descending at His glorious Ascension. Where, too, is that Right Hand of God to which He went, in this new universe without top or bottom? How can we hope to rise and meet Him in the air at His return, according to the most sure promise given to us through the blessed Paul, if He comes we know not from what direction? How can the lightning of His coming shine at once all round a globe to herald His approach, or how can the people at the other side of the world see the sign of the Son of Man in the heavens? But I cannot bring myself to accumulate these blasphemies; all must see that the most glorious truths of the Bible are bound up with its science, and must stand or fall together. And if this is so, and this so-called natural science is to be allowed to undermine the revealed science, what have we got to rely upon in this world or in the next? With the absolute truth of the Bible stands or falls our faith in God and our hope of immortality; on the truth of revelation hinges all morality, and they who deny to-day the truth of revealed science will tamper tomorrow with the truth of revealed history, of revealed morality, of revealed religion. Shall we, then, condescend to accept natural science instead of revealed; shall we, the teachers of revelation, condescend to abandon revealed science, and become the mere teachers of nature? Thunders of applause greeted the right reverend theologian as he concluded--he happened to be a bishop, the direct ancestor in regular apostolical succession of a late prelate who inherited among other valuable qualities the very argument which closed the speech above quoted--and Galileo, the foolish believer in facts and the heretical student of mere nature, turned away with a sigh from trying to convince them, and contented himself with the fact he knew, and which must surely announce itself in the long run. _E pur si muove!_ Fear not, noble martyr of science: facts alter not to suit theologies: many a one may fall crushed and vanquished before the Juggernaut-car of the Church, but "God does not die with His children, nor truth with its martyrs;" the natural is the divine, for Nature is only "God in a mask." So, looking down at that first great battle-field between nature and revelation I see the serried ranks break up and fly, and the excommunicated student become the prophet of the future, Galileo the seer, the revealer of the truth of God. It is eternally true that nature must triumph in the long run. Theories are very imposing, doubtless, but when they are erected on a misconception the inexorable fact is sure to assert itself sooner or later, and with pitiless serenity level the magnificent fabric with the dust. It is this which gives to scientific men so grave and calm an attitude; theologians wrangle fiercely and bitterly because they wrangle about _opinions_, and one man's say is as good as another's where both deal in intangibles; but the man of science, when absolutely sure of his ground, _can afford to wait_, because the fact he has discovered remains unshaken, however it be assailed, and it will, in time, assert itself. When nature and revelation then come into contact, revelation must go to the wall; no outcry can save it; it is doomed; as well try and dam the rising Thames with a feather, as seek to bolster up a theology whose main dogmas are being slowly undermined by natural science. Of course no one nowadays (at least among educated people, for Zadkiel's Almanac I believe still protests on Biblical grounds against the heresy of the motion of the earth) dreams of maintaining Bible, _i e_., revealed, science against natural science; it is agreed on all hands that on points where science speaks with certainty the words of the _Bible must be explained so as to accord with the dictum of nature_; _i e._, it is allowed--though the admission is wrapped up in thick folds of circumlocution--that science must mould revelation, and not revelation science. The desperate attempts to force the first chapter of Genesis into some faint resemblance to the ascertained results of geological investigations are a powerful testimony to the conscious weakness of revealed science and to the feeling on the part of all intelligent theologians that the testimony graven with an iron pen on the rocks cannot be contradicted or refuted. In fact so successfully has science asserted its own preeminence in its own domain that many defenders of the Bible assert loudly, to cover their strategic movement to the rear, that revelation was not intended to teach science, and that scientific mistakes were only to be expected in a book given to mankind by the great Origin of all scientific law. They are freely welcome to find out any reasons they like for the errors in revealed science; all that concerns us is that their revelation should get out of the way of advancing science, and should no longer interpose its puny anathemas to silence inquiry into facts, or to fetter free research and free discussion. But I challenge revelation further than this, and assert that when the dictates of natural_ religion_ are in opposition to those of revealed _religion_ then the natural must again triumph over the revealed. Christianity has so long successfully impressed on human hearts the revelation that natural impulses are in themselves sinful, that in "the flesh dwelleth no good thing," that man is a fallen creature, thoroughly corrupt and instinctively evil, that it has come to-pass that even those who would be liberal if they dared, shrink back when it comes to casting away their revelation-crutches, and ask wildly _what_ they can trust to if they give up the Bible. Their teachers tell them that if they let this go they will wander compassless on the waves of a pathless ocean; and so determinedly do they fix their eyes on the foaming waters, striving to discern there the trace of a pathway and only seeing the broken reflections of the waving torches in their hands, that they do not raise their heads and gaze upwards at the everlasting stars, the silent natural guides of the bewildered mariner. "Trust to mere nature!" exclaim the priesthood, and their flocks fall back aghast, clutching their revelation to their bosom and crying out: "What indeed is there to rely on if this be taken from us?" Only God. "Mere" God indeed, who is a very feeble support after the bolstering up of creeds and dogmas, of Churches and Bibles. As the sunshine dazzles eyes accustomed to the darkness, as the fresh wind makes shiver an invalid from a heated room, so does the light of God dazzle those who live amid the candles of the Churches, and the breath of His inspiration blows cold on feeble souls. But the light and the air invigorate and strengthen, and nature is a surer medicine than the nostrums of the quack physician. "Mere" God is, in very truth, all that we Theists have to offer the world in exchange for the certainties of its Bibles, Korans, Vedas, and all other revelations whatsoever. On points where they each speak with certainty, our lips are dumb. About much they assert, we confess our ignorance. Where they know, we only think or hope. Where they possess all the clearness of a sign-post, our eyes can only study the mistiness of a valley before the rising sun has dispelled the wreathing clouds. They proclaim immortality, and are quite _au fait_ as to the particulars of our future life. They differ in details, it is true, as to whether we live in a jewelled city, where the dust is gold-dust and the gates pearls, and spend our time in attending Sacred Harmonic Societies with an archangelic Costa directing perpetual oratorios, or whether we lie in rose-embowered arbours with delights unlimited, albeit unintellectual; but if we take them one at a time they are most satisfactory in the absolute information afforded by each. But we, we can only, whisper--and the lips of some of us quiver too much to speak--"I believe in the life everlasting." We do not pretend to _know_ anything about it; the belief is intuitive, but is not demonstrable; it is a hope and a trust, not an absolute knowledge. We entertain a reasonable hope of immortality; we argue its likelihood from considerations of the justice and the love which, as we believe, rule the universe; we, many of us--as I freely confess I do myself--believe in it with a firmness of conviction absolutely immovable; but challenged to _prove_ it, we cannot answer. "Here," the revelationists triumphantly exclaim, "is our advantage; we foretell with absolute certainty a future life, and can give you all particulars about it." Then follows a confused jumble of harps and houris, of pasture-field and hunting-grounds; we seek for certainty and find none. All that they agree in, _i e_., a future life, we find imprinted on our own hearts, a dictate of natural religion; all they differ in is contained in their several revelations, and as they all contradict each other about the revealed details, we gain nothing from them. Nature whispers to us that there is a life to come; revelation babbles a number of contradictory particulars, marring the majesty of the simple promise, and adding nothing reliable to the sum of human knowledge. And the subject of immortality is a fair specimen of what is taught respectively by nature and by revelation; what is common to all creeds is natural, what is different in each is revealed. It is so with respect to God. The idea of God belongs to all creeds alike; it is the foundation-stone of natural religion; confusion begins when revelation steps in to change the musical whisper of Nature into a categorical description worthy of "Mangnall's Questions." Triune, solitary, dual, numberless, whatever He is revealed to be in the world's varied sacred books, His nature is understood, catalogued, dogmatised on; each revelation claims to be His own account of Himself; but each contradicts its fellows; on one point only they all agree, and that is the point confessed by natural religion--"God is." From these facts I deduce two conclusions: first, that revelation does not come to us with such a certainty of its truth as to enable us to trust it fearlessly and without reserve; second, that revelation is quite superfluous, since natural religion gives us every thing we need. I. Revelation gives an uncertain sound. There are certain books in the world which claim to stand on a higher ground than all others. They claim to be special revelations of the will of God and the destiny of man. Now surely one of the first requisites of a Divine revelation is that it should be undoubtedly of Divine origin. But about all these books, except the Koran of Mahomet, hangs much obscurity both as regards their origin and their authorship. "Believers" urge that were the proofs undoubted there would be no room for faith and no merit in believing. They conceive it, then, to be a worthy employment for the Supreme Intelligence to set traps for His creatures; and, there being certain facts of the greatest importance, undis-coverable by their natural faculties, He proceeds to reveal these facts, but envelopes them in such wrappings of mystery, such garments of absurdity, that those of His creatures whom he has dowered with intellects and gifted with subtle brains, are forced to reject the whole as incredible and unreasonable. That God should give a revelation, but should not substantiate it, that He should speak, but in tones unintelligible, that His noblest gifts of reason should prove an insuperable bar to accepting his manifestation, are surely statements incredible, are surely statements utterly irreconcileable with all reverent ideas of the love and wisdom of Almighty God. Further, the believers in the various revelations all claim for their several oracles the supreme position of the exponent of the Will of God, and each rejects the sacred books of other nations as spurious productions, without any Divine authority. As these revelations are mutually destructive, it is evident that only one of them, at the most can be Divine, and the next point of the inquiry is to distinguish which this is. We, of the Western nations, at once put aside the Hindoo Vedas, or the Zendavesta, on certain solid grounds; we reject their claims to be inspired books because they contain error; their mistaken science, their legendary history, their miraculous stories, stamp them, in our impartial eyes, as the work of fallible men; the nineteenth century looks down on thee ancient writings as the instructed and cultured man smiles at the crude fancies and imaginative conceits of the child. But when the generality of Christians turn to the Bible they lay aside all ordinary criticism and all common-sense. Its science may be absurd; but excuses are found for it. Its history may be false, but it is twisted into truth. Its supernatural marvels may be flagrantly absurd; but they are nevertheless believed in. Men who laugh at the visions of the "blessed Margaret" of Paray-le-Monial assent to the devil-drowning of the swine of Gadara; and those who would scorn to investigate the tale of the miraculous spring at Lourdes, find no difficulty in believing the story of the angel-moved waters of Bethesda's pool. A book which contains miracles is usually put aside as unreliable. There is no good reason for excepting the Bible from this general rule. Miracles are absolutely incredible, and discredit at once any book in which they occur. They are found in all revelations, but never in nature, they are plentiful in man's writings, but they never deface the orderly pages of the great book of God, written by His own Hand on the earth, and the stars, and the sun. Powers? Yes, beyond our grasping, but Powers moving in stately order and changeless consistency. Marvels? Yes, beyond our imagining, but marvels evolved by immutable laws. Revelation is incredible, not only because it fails to bring proof of its truth, but because the proofs abound of its falsehood; it claims to be Divine, and we reject it because we test it by what we know of His undoubted works, for men can write books of Him and call them His revelations, but the frame of nature can only be the work of that mighty Power which man calls God. Revelation depicts Him as changeable, nature as immutable; revelation tells us of perfection marred, nature of imperfection improving; revelation speaks of a Trinity, nature of one mighty central Force; revelation relates interferences, miracles, nature unbroken sequences, inviolable law. If we accept revelation we must believe in a God Who made man upright but could not keep him so; Who heard in his far-off heaven the wailing of His earth and came down to see if things were as bad as was reported; Who had a face which brought death, but Whose hinder parts were visible to man; Who commanded and accepted human sacrifice; Who was jealous, revengeful, capricious, vain; Who tempted one king and then punished him for yielding, hardened the heart of another and then punished him for not yielding, deceived a third and thereby drew him to his death. But nature does not so outrage our morality and trample on our hearts; only we learn of a power and wisdom unspeakable, "mightily and sweetly ordering all things," and our hearts tell of a Father and a Friend, infinitely loving, and trustworthy, and good. The God of Nature and the God of Revelation are as opposed as Ormuzd and Ahriman, as darkness and light; the Bible and the universe are not writ by the same hand. II. Revelation then being so utterly untrustworthy, it is satisfactory to discover, secondly, that it is perfectly superfluous. All man needs for his guidance in this world he can gain through the use of his natural faculties, and the right guidance of his conduct in this world must, in all reasonableness, be the best preparation for whatever lies beyond the grave. Revelationists assure us that without their books we should have no rules of morality, and that without the Bible man's moral obligations would be unknown. Their theory is that only through revelation can man know right from wrong. Using the word "revelation" in a different sense most Theists would agree with them, and would allow that man's perception of duty is a ray which falls on him from the Righteousness of God, and that man's morality is due to the illumination of the inspiring Father of Light. Personally, I believe that God does teach morality to man, and is, in very deed, the Inspirer of all gracious and noble thoughts and acts. I believe that the source of all morality in man is the Universal Spirit dwelling in the spirits He has formed, and moving them to righteousness, and, as they answer to His whispers by active well-doing--speaking ever in louder and clearer accents. I believe also that the most obedient followers of that inner voice gain clearer and loftier views of duty and of the Holiest, and thus become true prophets of God, revealers of His will to their fellows. And this is revelation in a very real sense; it is God revealing Himself by the natural working of moral laws, even as all science is a true revelation, and is God revealing Himself by the natural working of physical laws. For laws are modes of action, and modes of action reveal the nature and character of the actor, so that every law, physical and moral, which is discovered by truth-seekers and proclaimed to the world is a direct and trustworthy revelation of God Himself. But when Theists speak thus of "revelation" using the word as rightfully applicable to all discoveries and all nobly written religious or scientific books, it is manifest that the word has entirely changed its signification, and is applied to "natural" and not "supernatural" results. We believe in God working through natural faculties in a natural way, while the revelationists believe in some non-natural communication, made no one knows how, no one knows where, no one knows to whom. Where opposing theories are concerned an ounce of fact outweighs pounds of assertion; and so against the statement of Christians, that morality is derived only from the Bible and is undiscoverable by "man's natural faculties," I quote the morality of natural religion, unassisted by what they claim as their special "revelation." Buddha, as he lived 700 years before Christ, can hardly be said to have drawn his morality from that of Jesus or even to have derived any indirect benefit from Christian teaching, and yet I have been gravely told by a Church of England clergyman--who ought to have known better--that forgiveness of injuries and charity were purely Christian virtues. This heathen Buddha, lighted only by natural reason and a pure heart, teaches: "a man who foolishly does me wrong I will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him the more good shall go from me;" among principal virtues are: "to repress lust and banish desire; to be strong without being rash; to bear insult without anger; to move in the world without setting the heart on it; to investigate a matter to the very bottom; to save men by converting them; to be the same in heart and life." "Let a man overcome evil by good, anger by love, the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth. For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love; this is an old rule." He inculcates purity, charity, self-sacrifice, courtesy, and earnestly recommends personal search after truth: "do not believe in guesses"--in assuming something at hap-hazard as a starting-point--reckoning your two and your three and your four before you have fixed your number one. Do not believe in the truth of that to which you have become attached by habit, as every nation believes in the superiority of its own dress and ornaments and language. Do not believe merely because you have heard, but when of your own consciousness you know a thing to be evil abstain from it. Methinks these sayings of Buddha are unsurpassed by any revealed teaching, and contain quite as noble and lofty a morality as the Sermon on the Mount, "natural" as they are. Plato, also, teaches a noble morality and soars into ideas about the Divine Nature as pure and elevated as any which are to be found in the Bible. The summary of his teaching, quoted by Mr. Lake in a pamphlet of Mr. Scott's series, is a glorious testimony to the worth of natural religion. "It is better to die than to sin. It is better to suffer wrong than to do it. The true happiness of man consists in being united to God, and his only misery in being separated from Him. There is one God, and we ought to love and serve Him, and to endeavour to resemble Him in holiness and righteousness." Plato saw also the great truth that suffering is not the result of an evil power, but is a necessary training to good, and he anticipates the very words of Paul--if indeed Paul does not quote from Plato--that "to the just man all things work together for good, whether in life or death." Plato lived 400 years before Christ, and yet in the face of such teaching as his and Buddha's,--and they are only two out of many--Christians fling at us the taunt that we, rejectors of the Bible, draw all our morality from it, and that without this one revelation the world would lie in moral darkness, ignorant of truth and righteousness and God. But the light of God's revealing shines still upon the world, even as the sunlight streams upon it steadfastly as of old; "it is not given to a few men in the infancy of mankind to monopolise inspiration and to bar God out of the soul.... Wherever a heart beats with love, where Faith and Reason utter their oracles, there also is God, as formerly in the heart of seers and prophets."* * Theodore Tarker. It is a favourite threat of the priesthood to any inquiring spirit: "If you give up Christianity you give up all certainty; rationalism speaks with no certain sound; no two rationalists think alike; the word rationalism covers everything outside Christianity, from Unitarianism to the blankest atheism;" and many a timid soul starts back, feeling that if this is true it is better to rest where it is, and inquire no more. To such--and I meet many such--I would suggest one very simple thought: does "Christianity" give any more certainty than rationalism? Just try asking your mentor, "_whose_ Christianity am I to accept?" He will stammer out, "Oh, the teaching of the Bible, of course." But persevere: "As explained by whom? for all claim to found their Christianity on the Bible: am I to accept the defined logical Christianity of Pius IX., defiant of history, of science, of common sense, or shall I sit under Spurgeon, the denunciator, and flee from the scarlet woman and the cup of her fascinations: shall I believe the Christianity of Dean Stanley, instinct with his own gracious, kindly spirit, cultured and polished, pure and loving, or shall I fly from it as a sweet but insidious poison, as I am exhorted to do by Dr. Pusey, who rails at his 'variegated language which destroys all definiteness of meaning.' For pity's sake, good father, label for me the various bottles of Christian medicine, that I may know which is healing to the soul, which may be touched with caution, as for external application, and which are rank poison." All the priest will find to answer is, that "under sad diversities of opinion there are certain saving truths common to all forms of Christianity," but he will object to particularise what they are, and at this stage will wax angry and refuse to argue with anyone who shows a spirit so carping and so conceited. There is the same diversity in rationalism as in Christianity, because human nature is diverse, but there is also one bond between all freethinkers, one "great saving truth" of rationalism, one article of faith, and that is, that "free inquiry is the right of every human soul;" diverse in much, we all agree in this, and so strong is this bond that we readily welcome any thinker, however we disagree with his thoughts, provided only that he think them honestly and allow to all the liberty of holding their own opinions also. We are bound together in one common hatred of Dogmatism, one common love of liberty of thought and speech. It is probably a puzzle to good and unlearned Christians whence men, unenlightened by revelation, drew and still draw their morality. We answer, "from mere Nature, and that because Nature and not revelation is the true basis of all morality." We have seen the untrustworthiness of all so-called revelations; but when we fall back on Nature we are on firm ground. Theists start in their search after God from their well-known axiom: "If there be a God at all He must be at least as good as His highest creature;" and they argue that what is highest and noblest and most lovable in man _must_ be below, but cannot be above, the height and the nobleness and the loveableness of God. "Of all impossible thing, the most impossible must surely be that a man should dream something of the Good and the Noble, and that it should prove at last that his Creator was less good and less noble than he had dreamed."* "The ground on which our belief in God rests is Man. Man, parent of Bibles and Churches, inspirer of all good thoughts and good deeds. Man, the master-piece of God's work on earth. Man, the text-book of all spiritual knowledge. Neither miraculous or infallible, Man is nevertheless the only trustworthy record of the Divine mind in things pertaining to God. Man's reason, conscience, and affections are the only true revelation of his Maker,"** And as we believe that we may glean some hints of the Glory and Beauty of our Creator from the glory and beauty of human excellence, so we believe that to each man, as he lives up to the highest he can perceive, will surely be unveiled fresh heights of righteousness, fresh possibilities of moral growth. * Frances Power Cobbe. ** Rev. Charles Voysey. To all men alike, good and evil, is laid open Nature's revelation of morality, as exemplified in the highest human lives; and these noble lives receive ever the heavenly hall-mark by the instinctive response from every human breast that they "are very good." To those only who live up to the good they see, does God give the further inner revelation, which leads them higher and higher in morality, quickening their moral faculties, and making more sensitive and delicate their moral susceptibilities. We cannot, as revelationists do, chalk out all the whole range of moral perfection: we "walk by faith and not by sight:" step by step only is the path unveiled to us, and only as we surmount one peak do we gain sight of the peak beyond: the distant prospect is shrouded from our gaze, and we are too fully occupied in doing the work which is given us to do in this world, to be for ever peering into and brooding over the world beyond the grave. We have light enough to do our Father's work here; when he calls us yonder it will be time enough to ask Him to unveil our new sphere of labour and to cause His sun to rise on it. Wayward children fret after some fancied happiness and miss the work and the pleasure lying at their feet, and so petulant men and women cry out that "man that is born of woman... is full of misery," and wail for a revelation to ensure some happier life: they seem to forget that if this world is full of misery _they_ are put here to mend it and not to cry over it, and that it is our shame and our condemnation that in God's fair world so much sin and unhappiness are found. If men would try to read nature instead of revelation, if they would study natural laws and leave revealed laws, if they would follow human morality instead of ecclesiastical morality, then there might be some chance of real improvement for the race, and some hope that the Divine Voice in Nature might be heard above the babble of the Churches. And Nature is enough for us, gives us all the light we want and all that we, as yet, are fitted to receive. Were it possible that God should now reveal Himself to us as He is, the Being of Whose Nature we can form no conception, I believe that we should remain as ignorant as we are at present, from the want of faculties to receive that revelation: the Divine language might sound in our ears, but it would be as unintelligible as the roar of the thunder-clap, or the moan of the earthquake, or the whisper of the wind to the leaves of the cedar-tree. God is slowly revealing Himself by His works, by the course of events, by the progress of Humanity: if He has never spoken from Heaven in human language, He is daily speaking in the world around us to all who have ears to hear, and as Nature in its varied forms is His only revelation of Himself, so the mind and the heart alone can perceive His presence and catch the whispers ot His mysterious voice. Never yet has been broken The silence eternal: Never yet has been spoken In accents supernal God's Thought of Himself. We are groping in blindness Who yearn to behold Him: But in wisdom and kindness In darkness He folds Him Till the soul learns to see. So the veil is unriven That hides the All-Holy, And no token is given That satisfies wholly The cravings of man. But, unhasting, advances The march of the ages, To truth-seekers' glances Unrolling the pages Of God's revelation. Impatience unheeding, Time, slowly revolving; Unresting, unspeeding, Is ever evolving Fresh truths about God. Human speech has not broken The stillness supernal: Yet ever is spoken Through silence eternal, With growing distinctness God's Thought of Himself. ON THE NATURE AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. IT is impossible for those who study the deeper religious; problems of our time to stave off much longer the question which lies at the root of them all, "What do you believe in regard to God?" We may controvert Christian doctrines, one after another; point by point we may be driven from the various beliefs of our churches; reason may force us to see contradictions where we had imagined harmony, and may open our eyes to flaws where we had dreamed of perfection; we resign all idea of a revelation; we seek for God in Nature only; we renounce for ever the hope (which glorified our former creed into such alluring beauty) that at some future time we should verily "see" God, that "our eyes should behold the King in his beauty" in that fairy "land which is very far off." But every step we take onwards towards a more reasonable faith and a surer light of Truth leads us nearer and nearer to the problem of problems, "What is That which men call God?" Not till theologians have thoroughly grappled with this question have they any just claim to be called religious guides; from each of those whom we honour as our leading thinkers we have a right to a distinct answer to this question, and the very object of the present paper is to provoke discussion on this point. Men are apt to turn aside somewhat impatiently from an argument about the Nature and Existence of the Deity, because they consider that the question is a metaphysical one which leads nowhere; a problem the resolution of which is beyond our faculties, and the study of which is at once useless and dangerous; they forget that action is ruled by thought, and that our ideas about God are therefore of vast practical importance. On our answer to the question propounded above depends our whole conception of the nature and origin of evil, and of the sanctions of morality; on our idea of God turns our opinion on the much-disputed question of prayer, and, in fact, our whole attitude of mind towards life, here and hereafter. Does morality consist in obedience to the will of a perfectly moral Being, and are we to aim at righteousness of life because in so doing we please God? Or are we to lead noble lives because nobility of life is desirable for itself alone, and because it spreads happiness around us and satisfies the desires of our own nature? Is our mental attitude to be that of kneeling or standing? Are our eyes to be fixed on heaven or on earth? Is prayer to God reasonable and helpful, the natural cry of a child for help from a Father in Heaven? Or is it, on the other hand, a useless appeal to an unknown and irresponsible force? Is the mainspring of our actions to be the idea of duty to God, or a sense of the necessity of bringing our being into harmony with the laws of the universe? It appears to me that these questions are of such grave and vital moment that no apology is needed for drawing attention to them; and because of their importance to mankind I challenge the leaders of the religious and non-religious world alike, the Christians, Theists, Pantheists, and those who take no specific name, duly to test the views they severally hold. In this battle the simple foot soldier may touch with his lance the shield of the knight, and the insignificance of the challenger does not exempt the general from the duty of lifting the gauntlet flung down at his feet. Little care I for personal defeat, if the issue of the conflict should enthrone more firmly the radiant figure of Truth. One fault, however, I am anxious to avoid, and that is the fault of ambiguity. The orthodox and the free-thinking alike do a good deal of useless fighting from sheer misunderstanding of each other's standpoint in the controversy. It appears, then, to be indispensable in the prosecution of the following inquiry that the meaning of the terms used should be unmistakably distinct. I begin, therefore, by defining the technical forms of expression to be employed in my argument; the definitions may be good or bad, that is not material; all that is needed is that the sense in which the various terms are used should be clearly understood. When men fight only for the sake of discovering truth, definiteness of expression is specially incumbent on them; and, as has been eloquently said, "the strugglers being sincere, truth may give laurels to the victor and the vanquished: laurels to the victor in that he hath upheld the truth, laurels still welcome to the vanquished, whose defeat crowns him with a truth he knew not of before." The definitions that appear to me to be absolutely necessary are as follows:-- _Matter_ is used to express that which is tangible. _Spirit (or spiritual_) is used to express those intangible forces whose existence we become aware of only through the effects they produce. _Substance_ is used to express that which exists in itself and by itself, and the conception of which does not imply the conception of anything preceding it. _God_ is used to represent exclusively that Being invested by the orthodox with certain physical, intellectual, and moral attributes. Particular attention must be paid to this last definition, because the term "atheist" is often flung unjustly at any thinker who ventures to criticise _the popular and traditional idea_ of God; and different schools, Theistic and non-Theistic, with but too much facility, bandy about this vague epithet in mutual reproach. As an instance of this uncharitable and unfair use of ugly names, all schools agree in calling the late Mr. Austin Holyoake an "atheist," and he accepted the name himself, although he distinctly stated (as we find in a printed report of a discussion held at the Victoria Institute) that he did not deny the possibility of the existence of God, but only denied the possibility of the existence of that God in whom the orthodox exhorted him to believe. It is well thus to protest beforehand against this name being bandied about, because it carries with it, at present, so much popular prejudice, that it prevents all possibility of candid and free discussion. It is simply a convenient stone to fling at the head of an opponent whose arguments one cannot meet, a certain way of raising a tumult which will drown his voice; and, if it have any serious meaning at all, it might fairly be used, as I shall presently show, against the most orthodox pillar of the orthodox faith. It is manifest to all who will take the trouble to think steadily, that there can be only one eternal and underived substance, and that matter and spirit must therefore only be varying manifestations of this one substance. The distinction made between matter and spirit is then simply made for the sake of convenience and clearness, just as we may distinguish perception from judgment, both of which, however, are alike processes of thought. Matter is, in its constituent elements, the same as spirit; existence is one, however manifold in its phenomena; life is one, however multiform in its evolution. As the heat of the coal differs from the coal itself, so do memory, perception, judgment, emotion, and will, differ from the brain which is the instrument of thought. But nevertheless they are all equally products of the one sole substance, varying only in their conditions. It may be taken for granted that against this preliminary point of the argument will be raised the party-cry of "rank materialism," because "materialism" is a doctrine of which the general public has an undefined horror. But I am bold to say that if by matter is meant that which is above defined as substance, then no reasoning person can help being a materialist. The orthodox are very fond of arguing back to what they call the Great First Cause. "God is a spirit," they say, "and from him is derived the spiritual part of man." Well and good; they have traced back a part of the universe to a point at which they conceive that only one universal essence is possible, that which they call God, and which is spirit only. But I then invite their consideration to the presence of something which they do not regard as spirit, _i e._, matter. I follow their own plan of argument step by step: I trace matter, as they traced spirit, back and back, till I reach a point beyond which I cannot go, one only existence, substance or essence; am I therefore to believe that God is matter only? But we have already found it asserted by Theists that he is spirit only, and we cannot believe two contradictories, however logical the road which led us to them; so we must acknowledge two substances, eternally existent side by side; if existence be dual, then, however absurd the hypothesis, there must be two First Causes. It is not I who am responsible for an idea so anomalous. The orthodox escape from this dilemma by an assumption, thus: "God, to whom is to be traced back all spirit, _created_ matter." Why, am I not equally justified in assuming, if I please, that matter created spirit? Why should I be logical in one argument and illogical in another? If we come to assumptions, have not I as much right to my assumption as my neighbour has to his? Why may he predicate creation of one half of the universe, and I not predicate it of the other half? If the assumptions be taken into consideration at all, then I contend that mine is the more reasonable of the two, since it is possible to imagine matter as existing without mind, while it is utterly impossible to conceive of mind existing without matter. We all know how a stone looks, and we are in the habit of regarding that as lifeless matter; but who has any distinct idea of a mind _pur et simple?_ No clear conception of it is possible to human faculties; we can only conceive of mind as it is found in an organisation; intelligence has no appreciable existence except as-residing in the brain and as manifested in results. The lines of spirit and matter are not one, say the orthodox; they run backwards side by side; why then, in following the course of these two parallel lines, should I suddenly bend one into the other? and on what principle of selection shall I choose the one I am to curve? I must really decline to use logic just as far as it supports the orthodox idea of God, and arbitrarily throw it down the moment it conflicts with that idea. I find myself then compelled to believe that one only substance exists in all around me; that the universe is eternal, or at least eternal so far as our faculties are concerned, since we cannot, as some one has quaintly put it "get to the outside of everywhere;" that a Deity cannot be conceived of as apart from the universe, pre-existent to the universe, post-existent to the universe; that the Worker and the Work are inextricably interwoven, and in some sense eternally and indissolubly combined. Having got so far, we will proceed to examine into the possibility of proving the existence of that one essence popularly called by the name of _God_, under the conditions strictly defined by the orthodox. Having demonstrated, as I hope to do, that the orthodox idea of God is unreasonable and absurd, we will endeavour to discover whether _any_ idea of God, worthy to be called an idea, is attainable in the present state of our faculties. The orthodox believers in God are divided into two camps, one of which maintains that the existence of God is as demonstrable as any mathematical proposition, while the other asserts that his existence is not demonstrable to the intellect. I select Dr. McCann, a man of considerable reputation, as the representative of the former of these two opposing schools of thought, and give the Doctor's position in his own words:--"The purpose of the following paper is to prove the fallacy of all such assumptions" (i e., that the existence of God is an insoluble problem), "by showing that we are no more at liberty to deny His being, than we are to deny any demonstration of Euclid. He would be thought unworthy of refutation who should assert that any two angles of a triangle are together greater than two right angles. We would content ourselves by saying, 'The man is mad'--mathematically, at least--and pass on. If it can be shown that we affirm the existence of Deity for the very same reasons as we affirm the truth of any geometric proposition; if it can be shown that the former is as capable of demonstration as the latter--then it necessarily follows that if we are justified in calling the man a fool who denies the latter, we are also justified in calling him a fool who says there is no God, and in refusing to answer him according to his folly." Which course is a very convenient one when you meet with an awkward opponent whom you cannot silence by sentiment and declamation. Again: "In conclusion, we believe it to be very important to be able to prove that if the mathematician be justified in asserting that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, the Christian is equally justified in asserting, not only that he is compelled to believe in God, but that he knows Him (sic). And that he who denies the existence of the Deity is as unworthy of serious refutation as is he who denies a mathematical demonstration." ('A Demonstration of the Existence of God,' a lecture delivered at the Victoria Institute, 1870, pp. I and II.) Dr. McCann proves his very startling thesis by laying down as axioms six statements, which, however luminous to the Christian traditionalist, are obscure to the sceptical intellect. He seems to be conscious of this defect in his so-called axioms, for he proceeds to prove each of them elaborately, forgetting that the simple statement of an axiom should carry direct conviction--that it needs only to be understood in order to be accepted. However, let this pass: our teacher, having stated and "proved" his axioms, proceeds to draw his conclusions from them; and as his foundations are unsound, it is scarcely to be wondered at that his superstructure should be insecure, I know of no way so effectual to defeat an adversary as to beg all the questions raised, assume every point in dispute, call assumptions axioms, and then proceed to reason from them. It is really not worth while to criticise Dr. McCann in detail, his lecture being nothing but a mass of fallacies and unproved assertions. Christian courtesy allows him to call those who dissent from his assumptions "fools;" and as these terms of abuse are not considered admissible by those whom he assails as unbelievers, there is a slight difficulty in "answering" Dr. McCann "according to his" deserts. I content myself with suggesting that they who wish to learn how pretended reasoning may pass for solid argument, how inconsequent statements may pass for logic, had better study this lecture. For my own part, I confess that my "folly" is not, as yet, of a sufficiently pronounced type to enable me to accept Dr. McCann's conclusions. The best representation I can select of the second orthodox party, those who admit that the existence of God is not demonstrable, is the late Dean Mansel. In his 'Limits of Religious Thought,' the Bampton Lectures for 1867, he takes up a perfectly unassailable position. The peculiarity of this position, however, is that he, the pillar of orthodoxy, the famed defender of the faith against German infidelity and all forms of rationalism, regards God from exactly the same point as does a well-known modern "atheist." I have almost hesitated sometimes which writer to quote from, so identical are they in thought. Probably neither Dean Mansel nor Mr. Bradlaugh would thank me for bracketing their names; but I am forced to confess that the arguments used by the one to prove the endless absurdities into which we fall when we try to comprehend the nature of God, are exactly the same arguments that are used by the other to prove that God, as believed in by the orthodox, cannot exist. I quote, however, exclusively from the Dean, because it is at once novel and agreeable to find oneself sheltered by Mother Church at the exact moment when one is questioning her very foundations; and also because the Dean's name carries with it so orthodox an odour that his authority will tell where the same words from any of those who are outside the pale of orthodoxy would be regarded with suspicion. Nevertheless, I wish to state plainly that a more "atheistical" book than these Bampton Lectures--at least, in the earlier part of it--I have never read; and had its title-page borne the name of any well-known Free-thinker, it would have been received in the religious world with a storm of indignation. The first definition laid down by the orthodox as a characteristic of God is that he is an Infinite Being. "There is but one living and true God... of _infinite_ power, &c." (Article of Religion, 1.) It has been said that _infinite_ only means _indefinite_, but I must protest against this weakening of a well-defined theological term. The term _Infinite_ has always been understood to mean far more than indefinite; it means literally _boundless_: the infinite has no limitations, no possible restrictions, no "circumference." People who do not think about the meaning of the words they use speak very freely and familiarly of the "infinitude" of God, as though the term implied no inconsistency. Deny that God is infinite and you are at once called an atheist, but press your opponent into a definition of the term and you will generally find that he does not know what he is talking about. Dean Mansel points out, with his accurate habit of mind, all that this attribute of God implies, and it would be well if those who "believe in an infinite God" would try and realise what they express. Half the battle of freethought will be won when people attach a definite meaning to the terms they use. The Infinite has no bounds; then the finite cannot exist. Why? Because in the very act of acknowledging any existence beside the Infinite One you limit the Infinite. By saying, "This is not God" you at once make him finite, because you set a bound to his nature; you distinguish between him and something else, and by the very act you limit him; that _which is not he_ is as a rock which checks the waves of the ocean; in that spot a limit is found, and in finding a limit the Infinite is destroyed. The orthodox may retort, "this is only a matter of terms;" but it is well to force them into realising the dogmas which they thrust on our acceptance under such awful penalties for rejection. I know what "an infinite God" implies, and, as apart from the universe, I feel compelled to deny the possibility of his existence; surely it is fair that the orthodox should also know what the words they use mean on this head, and give up the term if they cling to a "personal" God, distinct from "creation."--Further--and here I quote Dean Mansel--the "Infinite" must be conceived as containing within itself the sum, not only of all actual, but of all possible modes of being.... If any possible mode can be denied of it... it is capable of becoming more than it now is, and such a capability is a limitation. (The hiatus refers to the "absolute" being of God, which it is better to consider separately.) "An unrealised possibility is necessarily (a relation and) a limit." Thus is orthodoxy crushed by the powerful logic of its own champion. God is infinite; then, in that case, everything that exists is God; all phenomena are modes of the Divine Being; there is literally nothing which is not God. Will the orthodox accept this position? It lands them, it is true, in the most extreme Pantheism, but what of that? They believe in an "infinite God" and they are therefore necessarily Pantheists. If they object to this, they must give up the idea that their God is infinite at all; there is no half-way position open to them; he is infinite or finite, which? Again, God is "before all things," he is the only Absolute Being, dependent on nothing outside himself; all that is not God is relative; that is to say, that God exists alone and is not necessarily related to anything else. The orthodox even believe that God did, at some former period (which is not a period, they say, because time then was not--however, at that hazy "time" he did), exist alone, _i e._, as what is called an _Absolute_ Being: this conception is necessary for all who, in any sense, believe in a _Creator_. "Thou, in Thy far eternity, Didst live and love alone." So sings a Christian minstrel; and one of the arguments put forward for a Trinity is that a plurality of persons is necessary in order that God may be able to love at the "time" when he was alone. Into this point, however, I do not now enter. But what does this Absolute imply? A simple impossibility of creation, just as does the Infinite; for creation implies that the relative is brought into existence, and thus the Absolute is destroyed. "Here again the Pantheistic hypothesis seems forced upon us. We can think of creation only as a change in the condition of that which already exists, and thus the creature is conceivable only as a phenomenal mode of the being of the Creator." Thus once more looms up the dreaded spectre of Pantheism, "the dreary desolation of a Pantheistic wilderness;" and who is the Moses who has led us into this desert? It is a leader of orthodoxy, a dignitary of the Church; it is Dean Mansel who stretches out his hand to the universe and says, "This is thy God, O Israel." The two highest attributes of God land us, then, in the most thorough Pantheism; further, before remarking on the other divine attributes, I would challenge the reader to pause and try to realise this infinite and absolute being. "That a man can be conscious of the infinite is, then, a supposition which, in the very terms in which it is expressed, annihilates itself.... The infinite, if it is to be conceived at all, must be conceived as potentially everything-and actually nothing; for if there is anything in general which it cannot become, it is thereby limited; and if there is anything in particular which it actually is, it is thereby excluded from being any other thing. But again, it must also be conceived as actually everything and potentially nothing; for an unrealised potentiality is likewise a limitation. If the infinite can be" (in the future) "that which it is not" (in the present) "it is by that very possibility marked out as incomplete and capable of a higher perfection. If it is actually everything, it possesses no characteristic feature by which it can be distinguished from anything else and discerned as an object of consciousness." I think, then, that we must be content, on the showing of Dr. Mansel, to allow that God is, in his own nature--from this point of view--quite beyond the grasp of our faculties; _as regards us he does not exist_, since he is indistinguishable and undiscernable. Well might the Church exclaim "Save me from my friends!" when a dean acknowledges that her God is a self-contradictory phantom; oddly enough, however, the Church likes it, and accepts this fatal championship. I might have put this argument wholly in my own words, for the subject is familiar to every one who has tried to gain a distinct idea of the Being who is called "God," but I have preferred to back my own opinions with the authority of so orthodox a man as Dean Mansel, trusting that by so doing the orthodox may be forced to see where logic carries them. All who are interested in this subject should study his lectures carefully; there is really no difficulty in following them, if the student will take the trouble of mastering once for all the terms he employs. The book was lent to me years ago by a clergyman, and did more than any other book I know to make me what is called an "infidel;" it proves to demonstration the impossibility of our having any logical, reasonable, and definite idea of God, and the utter hopelessness of trying to realise his existence. It seems necessary here to make a short digression to explain, for the benefit of those who have not read the book from which I have been quoting, how Dean Mansel escaped becoming an "atheist." It is a curious fact that the last part of this book is as remarkable for its assumptions, as is the earlier portion its pitiless logic. When he ought in all reason to say, "we can know nothing and therefore can believe nothing," he says instead, "we can know nothing and therefore let us take Revelation for granted." An atheistic reasoner suddenly startles us by becoming a devout Christian; the apparent enemy of the faithful is "transformed into an angel of light." The existence of God "is inconceivable by the reason," and, therefore, "the only ground that can be taken for accepting one representation of it rather than another is, that one is revealed and the other not revealed." It is the acknowledgment of a previously formed _determination_ to believe at any cost; it is a wail of helplessness; the very apotheosis of despair. We cannot have history, so let us believe a fairy-tale; we can discover nothing, so let us assume anything; we cannot find truth, so let us take the first myth that comes to hand. Here I feel compelled to part company with the Dean, and to leave him to believe in, to adore, and to love that which he has himself designated as indistinguishable and undiscernable; it may be an act of faith but it is a crucifixion of intellect; it may be a satisfaction to the yearnings of the heart, but it dethrones reason and tramples it in the dust. We proceed in our study of the attributes of God. He is represented as the Supreme Will, the Supreme Intelligence, the Supreme Love. _As the Supreme Will_. What do we mean by "will?" Surely, in the usual sense of the word, a will implies the power and the act of choosing. Two paths are open to us, and we will to walk in one rather than in the other. But can we think of power of choice in connection with God? Of two courses open to us one must needs be better than the other, else they would be indistinguishable and be only one; perfection implies that the higher course will always be taken; what then becomes of the power of choice? We choose because we are imperfect; we do not know everything which bears on the matter on which we are about to exercise our will; if we knew everything we should inevitably be driven in one direction, that which is the _best possible course_. The greater the knowledge, the more circumscribed the will; the nobler the nature, the more impossible the lower course. Spinoza points out most clearly that the Divinity _could not_ have made things otherwise than they are made, because any change in his action would imply a change in his nature; God, above all, must be bound by necessity. If we believe in a God at all we must surely ascribe to him perfection of wisdom and perfection of goodness; we are then forced to conceive of him--however strange it may sound to those who believe, not only without seeing but also without thinking--as without will, because he must always necessarily pursue the course which is wisest and best. _As the Supreme Intelligence_. Again, the first question is, what do we mean by intelligence? In the usual sense of the word intelligence implies the exercise of the various intellectual faculties, and gathers up into one word the ideas of perception, comparison, memory, judgment, and so on. The very enumeration of these faculties is sufficient to show how utterly inappropriate they are when thought of in connection with God. Does God perceive what he did not know before? Does he compare one fact with another? Does he draw conclusions from this correlation of perceptions, and thus judge what is best? Does he remember, as we remember, long past events? Perfect wisdom excludes from the idea of God all that is called intelligence in man; it involves unchangeableness, complete stillness; it implies a knowledge of all that is knowable; it includes an acquaintance with every fact, an acquaintance which has never been less in the past, and can never be more in the future. The reception at any time of a new thought or a new idea is impossible to perfection, for if it could ever be added to in the future it is necessarily something less than perfect in the past. _As the Supreme Love_. We come here to the darkest problem of existence. Love, Ruler of the world permeated through and through with pain, and sorrow, and sin? Love, mainspring of a nature whose cruelty is sometimes appalling? Love? Think of the "martyrdom of man!" Love? Follow the History of the Church! Love? Study the annals of the slave-trade! Love? Walk the courts and alleys of our towns! It is of no use to try and explain away these things, or cover them up with a veil of silence; it is better to look them fairly in the face, and test our creeds by inexorable facts. It is foolish to keep a tender spot which may not be handled; for a spot which gives pain when it is touched implies the presence of disease: wiser far is it to press firmly against it, and, if danger lurk there, to use the probe or the knife. We have no right to pick out all that is noblest and fairest in man, to project these qualities into space, and to call them God. We only thus create an ideal figure, a purified, ennobled, "magnified" Man. We have no right to shut our eyes to the sad _revers de la medaille_, and leave out of our conceptions of the Creator the larger half of his creation. If we are to discover the Worker from his works we must not pick and choose amid those works; we must take them as they are, "good" and "bad." If we only want an ideal, let us by all means make one, and call it _God_, if thus we can reach it better, but if we want a true induction we must take _all_ facts into account. If God is to be considered as the author of the universe, and we are to learn of him through his works, then we must make room in our conceptions of him for the avalanche and the earthquake, for the tiger's tooth and the serpent's fang, as well as for the tenderness of woman and the strength of man, the radiant glory of the sunshine on the golden harvest, and the gentle lapping of the summer waves on the gleaming shingled beach.* * "I know it is usual for the orthodox when vindicating the moral character of their God to say:--'All the Evil that exists is of man; All that God has done is only good.' But granting (which facts do not substantiate) that man is the only author of the sorrow and the wrong that abound in the world, it is difficult to see how the Creator can be free from imputation. Did not God, according to orthodoxy, plan all things with an infallible perception that the events foreseen must occur? Was not this accurate prescience based upon the inflexibility of God's Eternal purposes? As, then, the purposes, in the order of nature, at least preceded the prescience and formed the groundwork of it, man has become extensively the instrument of doing mischief in the world simply because the God of the Christian Church did not choose to prevent man from being bad. In other words, man is as he is by the ordained design of God, and, therefore, God is responsible for all the suffering, shame, and error, spread by human agency.--So that the Christian apology for God in connection with the spectacle of evil falls to pieces."--Note by the Editor. The Nature of God, what is it? Infinite and Absolute, he evades our touch; without human will, without human intelligence, without human love, where can his faculties--the very word is a misnomer--find a meeting-place with ours? Is he everything or nothing? one or many? _We know not. We know nothing._ Such is the conclusion into which we are driven by orthodoxy, with its pretended faith, which is credulity, with its pretended proofs, which are presumptions. It defines and maps out the perfections of Deity, and they dissolve when we try to grasp them; nowhere do these ideas hold water for a moment; nowhere is this position defensible. Orthodoxy drives thinkers into atheism; weary of its contradictions they cry, "there is _no_ God"; orthodoxy's leading thinker lands us himself in atheism. No logical, impartial mind can escape from unbelief through the trap-door opened by Dean Mansel: he has taught us reason, and we cannot suppress reason. The "serpent intellect"--as the Bishop of Peterborough calls it--has twined itself firmly round the tree of knowledge, and in that type we do not see, with the Hebrew, the face of death, but, with the older faiths, we reverence it as the symbol of life. There is another fact, an historical one, still on the destructive side, which appears to me to be of the gravest importance, and that is the gradual attenuation of the idea of God before the growing light of true knowledge. To the savage everything is divine; he hears one God's voice in the clap of the thunder, another's in the roar of the earthquake, he sees a divinity in the trees, a deity smiles at him from the clear depths of the river and the lake; every natural phenomenon is the abode of a god; every event is controlled by a god; divine volition is at the root of every incident. To him the rule of the gods is a stern reality; if he offends them they turn the forces of nature against him; the flood, the famine, the pestilence, are the ministers of the avenging anger of the gods. As civilisation advances, the deities lessen in number, the divine powers become concentrated more and more in one Being, and God rules over the whole earth, maketh the clouds his chariot, and reigns above the waterfloods as a king. Physical phenomena are still his agents, working his will among the children of men; he rains great hailstones out of heaven on his enemies, he slays their flocks and desolates their lands, but his chosen ure safe under his protection, even although danger hem them in on every side; "thou shalt not be afraid for any terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day; for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the sickness that destroyeth in the noon-day. A thousand shall fall besides thee, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.... He shall defend thee under his wings, and thou shalt be safe under his feathers." (Ps. xci., Prayer-Book.) Experience contradicted this theory rather roughly, and it gave way slowly before the logic of facts; it is, however, still more or less prevalent among ourselves, as we see when the siege of Paris is proclaimed as a judgment on Parisian irreligion, and when the whole nation falls on its knees to acknowledge the cattle-plague as the deserved punishment of its sins! The next step forward was to separate the physical from the moral, and to allow that physical suffering came independently of moral guilt or righteousness: the men crushed under the fallen tower of Siloam were not thereby proved to be more sinful than their countrymen. The birth of science rang the death-knell of an arbitrary and constantly interposing Supreme Power-. The theory of God as a miracle worker was dissipated; henceforth if God ruled at all it must be as in nature and not from outside of nature; he no longer imposed laws on something exterior to himself, the laws could only be the necessary expression of his own being. Laws were, further, found to be immutable in their working, changing not in accordance with prayer, but ever true to a hair's breadth in their action. Slowly, but surely, prayer to God for the alteration of physical phenomena is being found to be simply a well-meant superstition; nature swerves not for our pleading, nor falters in her path for our most passionate supplication. The "reign of law" in physical matters is becoming acknowledged even by theologians. As step by step the knowledge of _the natural_ advances, so step by step does the belief in _the supernatural_ recede; as the kingdom of science extends, so the kingdom of miraculous interference gradually disappears. The effects which of old were thought to be caused by the direct action of God are now seen to be caused by the uniform and calculable working of certain laws--laws which, when discovered, it is the part of wisdom implicitly to obey. Things which we used to pray for, we now work and wait for, and if we fail we do not ask God to add his strength to ours, but we sit down and lay our plans more carefully. How is this to end? Is the future to be like the past, and is science finally to obliterate the conception of a personal God? It is a question which ought to be pondered in the light of history. Hitherto the supernatural has always been the makeweight of human ignorance; is it, in truth, this and nothing else? I am forced, with some reluctance, to apply the whole of the above reasoning to every school of thought, whether nominally Christian or non-Christian, which regards God as a "magnified man." The same stern logic cuts every way and destroys alike the Trinitarian and the Unitarian hypothesis, wherever the idea of God is that of a Creator, standing, as it were, outside his creation. The liberal thinker, whatever his present position, seems driven infallibly to the above conclusions, as soon as he sets himself to realise his idea of his God. The Deity must of necessity be that one and only substance out of which all things are evolved under the uncreated conditions and eternal laws of the universe; he must be, as Theodore Parker somewhat oddly puts it, "the materiality of matter, as well as the spirituality of spirit;" _i e._, these must both be products of this one substance: a truth which is readily accepted as soon as spirit and matter are seen to be but different modes of one essence. Thus we identify substance with the all-comprehending and vivifying force of nature, and in so doing we simply reduce to a physical impossibility the existence of the Being described by the orthodox as a God possessing the attributes of personality. The Deity becomes identified with nature, co-extensive with the universe; but the God of the orthodox no longer exists; we may change the signification of God, and use the word to express a different idea, but we can no longer mean by it a Personal Being in the orthodox sense, possessing an individuality which divides him from the rest of the universe. I say that I use these arguments "with some reluctance," because many who have fought and are fighting nobly and bravely in the army of freethought, and to whom all free-thinkers owe much honour, seem to cling to an idea of the Deity, which, however beautiful and poetical, is not logically defensible, and in striking at the orthodox notion of God, one necessarily strikes also at all idea of a "Personal" Deity. There are some Theists who have only cut out the Son and the Holy Ghost from the Triune Jehovah, and have concentrated the Deity in the Person of the Father; they have returned to the old Hebrew idea of God, the Creator, the Sustainer, only widening it into regarding God as the Friend and Father of all his creatures, and not of the Jewish nation only. There is much that is noble and attractive in this idea, and it will possibly serve as a religion of transition to break the shock of the change from the supernatural to the natural. It is reached entirely by a process of giving up; Christian notions are dropped one after another, and the God who is believed in is the residuum. This Theistic school has not gained its idea of God from any general survey of nature or from any philosophical induction from facts; it has gained it only by stripping off from an idea already in the mind everything which is degrading and revolting in the dogmas of Trinitarianism. It starts, as I have noticed elsewhere, from a very noble axiom: "If there be a God at all he must be at least as good as his highest creatures," and thus is instantly swept away the Augustinian idea of a God,--that monster invented by theological dialectics; but still the same axiom makes God in the image of man, and never succeeds in getting outside a human representation of the Divinity. It starts from this axiom, and the axiom is prefaced by an "if." It assumes God, and then argues fairly enough what his character must be. And this "if" is the very point on which the argument of this paper turns. "If there be a God" all the rest follows, but _is there a God at all_ in the sense in which the word is generally used? And thus I come to the second part of my problem; having seen that the orthodox "idea of God is unreasonable and absurd, is there any idea of God, worthy to be called an idea, which is attainable in the present state of our faculties?" The argument from design does not seem to me to be a satisfactory one; it either goes too far or not far enough. Why in arguing from the evidences of adaptation should we assume that they are planned by a mind? It is quite as easy to conceive of matter as self-existent, with inherent vital laws moulding it into varying phenomena, as to conceive of any intelligent mind directly modelling matter, so that the "heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handy-work." It is, I know, customary to sneer at the idea of beautiful forms existing without a conscious designer, to parallel the adaptations of this world to the adaptations in machinery, and then triumphantly to inquire, "if skill be inferred from the one, why ascribe the other to chance?" We do not believe in chance; the steady action of law is not chance; the exquisite crystals which form themselves under certain conditions are not a "fortuitous concourse of atoms:" the only question is whether the laws which we all allow to govern nature are immanent in nature, or the outcome of an intelligent mind. If there be a lawmaker, is he self-existent, or does he, in turn, as has been asked again and again by Positivist, Secularist, and Atheist, require a maker? If we think for a moment of the vast mind implied in the existence of a Creator of the universe, is it possible to believe that such a mind is the result of chance? If man's mind imply a master-mind, how much more that of God? Of course the question seems an absurd one, but it is quite as pertinent as the question about a world-maker. We must come to a stop somewhere, and it is quite as logical to stop at one point as at another. The argument from design would be valuable if we could prove, a priori, as Mr. Gillespie attempted to do,* the existence of a Deity; this being proved we might then fairly argue deductively to the various apparent signs of mind in the universe. Again, if we allow design we must ask, "how far does design extend?" If some phenomena are designed, why not all? And if not all, on what principle can we separate that which is designed from that which is not? If intellect and love reveal a design, what is revealed by brutality and hate? If the latter are not the result of design, how did they become introduced into the universe? I repeat that this argument implies either too much or too little.* * "The Necessary Existence of Deity." There is but one argument that appears to me to have any real weight, and that is the argument from instinct. Man has faculties which appear, at present, as though they were not born of the intellect, and it seems to me to be unphilosophical to exclude this class of facts from our survey of nature. The nature of man has in it certain sentiments and emotions which, reasonably or unreasonably, sway him powerfully and continually; they are, in fact, his strongest motive powers, overwhelming the reasoning faculties with resistless strength; true, they need discipline and controlling, but they do not need to be, and they cannot be, destroyed. The sentiments of love, of reverence, of worship, are not, as yet, reducible to logical processes; they are intuitions, spontaneous emotions, incomprehensible to the keen and cold intellect. They may be laughed at or denied, but they still exist in spite of all; they avenge themselves, when they are not taken into account, by ruining the best laid plans, and they are continually bursting the cords with which reason strives to tie them down. I do not for a moment pretend to deny that these intuitions will, as our knowledge of psychology increases, be reducible to strict laws; we call them instincts and intuitions simply because we are unable to trace them to their source, and this vague expression covers the vagueness of our ideas. Therefore, intuition is not to be accepted as a trustworthy guide, but it may suggest an hypothesis, and this hypothesis must then be submitted to the stern verification of observed facts. We are not as yet able to say to what the instinct in man to worship points, or what reality answers to his yearning. Increased knowledge will, we may hope, reveal to us* where there lies the true satisfaction of this instinct: so long as the yearning is only an "instinct" it cannot pretend to be logically defensible, or claim to lay down any rule of faith. But still I think it well to point out that this instinct exists in man, and exists most strongly in some of the noblest souls. * "Is there in man any such Instinct? May not the general tendency to worship a Deity, everywhere be the result of the influence gained by Priests over the mind by the play of the mysterious Unknown and Hereafter upon susceptible imaginations? Besides, what are we to say of the immense number of philosophical Buddhists and Brahmins, for whose comfort or moral guidance the idea of a God or a hereafter is felt to be quite unnecessary? They cannot comprehend it, and consequently acts of worship to God would be deemed by them fanatical. It is traditionalists who either do not think at all, or think only within a narrow, creed-bound circle, that are most devoted to worshipping Deity; and if so, may not the whole history of worship have its origin in superstition and priestcraft! In that case, the theory of an instinct of worship falls to the ground."--Note by the Editor. Of all the various sentiments which are thus at present "intuitional," none is so powerful, none so overmastering as this instinct to worship, this sentiment of religion. It is as natural for man to worship as to eat. He will do it, be it reasonable or unreasonable. Just as the baby crams everything into his mouth, so does man persist in worshipping something. It may be said that the baby's instinct does not prove that he is right in trying to devour a matchbox; true, but it proves the existence of something eatable; so fetish-worship, polytheism, theism, do not prove that man has worshipped rightly, but do they not prove the existence of something worshipable! The argument does not, of course, pretend to amount to a demonstration; it is nothing more than the suggestion of an analogy. Are we to find that the supply is correlated to the demand throughout nature, and yet believe that this hitherto invariable system is suddenly altered when we reach the spiritual part of man? I do not deny that this instinct is hereditary, and that it is fostered by habit. The idea of reverence for God is transmitted from parent to child; it is educated into an abnormal development, and thus almost indefinitely strengthened; but yet it does appear to me that the bent to worship is an integral part of man's nature. This instinct has also sometimes been considered to have its root in the feeling that one's individual self is but a "part of a stupendous whole;" that the so-called religious feeling which is evoked by a grand view or a bright starlight night is only the realisation of personal insignificance, and the reverence which rises in the soul in the presence of the mighty universe of which we form a part. Whatever the root and the significance of this instinct, there can be no doubt of its strength; there is nothing rouses men's passions as does theology; for religion men rush on death more readily and joyfully than* for any other cause; religious fanaticism is the most fatal, the most terrible power in the world. In studying history I also see the upward tendency of the race, and note that current which Mr. Matthew Arnold has called "that stream of tendency, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness." Of course, if there be a conscious God, this tendency is a proof of his moral character, since it would be the outcome of his laws; but here again an argument which would be valuable were the existence of God already proved, falls blunted from the iron wall of the unknown. The same tendency upwards would naturally exist in any "realm of law," although the law were an unconscious force. For righteousness is nothing more than obedience to law, and where there is obedience to law, Nature's mighty forces lend their strength to man, and progress is secured. Only by obedience to law can advance be made, and this rule applies, of course, to morality as well as to physics. Physical righteousness is obedience to physical laws; moral righteousness is obedience to moral laws: just as physical laws are discovered by the observation of natural phenomena, so must moral laws be discovered by the observation of social phenomena. That which increases the general happiness is right; that which tends to destroy the general happiness is wrong. Utility is the test of morality. But a law must not be drawn from a single fact or phenomenon; facts must be carefully collated, and the general laws of morality drawn from a generalisation of facts. But this subject is too large to enter upon here, and it is only hinted at in order to note that, although there is a moral tendency apparent in the course of events, it is rather a rash assumption to take it for granted that the power in question is a conscious one: it may be, and that, I think, is all we can justly and reasonably say. Again, as regards Love. I have protested above against the easiness which talks glibly of the Supreme Love while shutting its eyes to the supreme agony of the world. But here, in putting forward what may be said on the other side of the question, I must remark that there is a possible explanation for sorrow and sin which is consistent with love given immortality of man and beast, and the future gain may then outweigh the present loss. But we are bound to remember that we can only have a _hope_ of immortality; we have no demonstration of it, and this is, therefore, only an assumption by which we escape from a difficulty. We ought to be ready to acknowledge, also, that there is love in nature, although there is cruelty too; there is the sunshine as well as the storm, and we must not fix our eyes on the darkness alone and deny the light. In mother-love, in the love of friends, loyal through all doubt, true in spite of danger and difficulty, strongest when most sorely tried, we see gleams of so divine, so unearthly a beauty, that our hearts whisper to us of an universal heart pulsating throughout nature, which, at these rare moments, we cannot believe to be a dream. But there seems, also, to be a vague idea that love and other virtues could not exist unless derived from the Love, &c. It is true that we do conceive certain ideals of virtue which we personify, and to which we apply various terms implying affection; we speak of a love of Truth, devotion to Freedom, and so on. These ideals have, however, a purely subjective existence; they are not objective realities; there is nothing answering to these conceptions in the outside world, nor do we pretend to believe in their individuality. But when we gather up all our ideals, our noblest longings, and bind them into one vast ideal figure, which we call by the name of God, then we at once attribute to it an objective existence, and complain of coldness and hardness if its reality is questioned, and we demand to know if we can love an abstraction? The noblest souls do love abstractions, and live in their beauty and die for their sake. There appears, also, to be a possibility of a mind in Nature, although we have seen that intelligence is, strictly speaking, impossible. There cannot be perception, memory, comparison, or judgment; but may there not be a perfect mind, unchanging, calm, and still? Our faculties fail us when we try to estimate the Deity, and we are betrayed into contradictions and absurdities; but does it therefore follow that He is not? It seems to me that to deny his existence is to overstep the boundaries of our thought-power almost as much as to try and define it. We pretend to know the Unknown if we declare Him to be the Unknowable. Unknowable to us at present, yes! Unknowable for ever, in other possible stages' of existence?--We have reached a region into which we cannot penetrate; here all human faculties fail us; we bow our heads on "the threshold of the unknown." And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see; But if we could see and hear, this Vision--were it not He? Thus sings Alfred Tennyson, the poet of metaphysics: "if we could see and hear"; alas! it is always an "if." We come back to the opening of this essay: what is the practical result of our ideas about the Divinity, and how do these ideas affect the daily working life? What conclusions are we to draw from the undeniable fact that, even if there be a "personal God," his nature and existence are beyond our faculties, that "clouds and darkness are round about him," that he is veiled in eternal silence and reveals himself not to men? Surely the obvious inference is that, if he does-really exist, he desires to conceal himself from the inhabitants of our world. I repeat, that if the Deity exist, he does-not wish us to know of his existence. There may be, in the very nature of things, an impossibility of his revealing himself to men; we may have no faculties with which to apprehend him; can we reveal the stars and the rippling expanse of ocean to the sightless limpet on the rock? Whether this be so or not, certain is it that the Deity does not reveal himself; either he cannot or he will not. And the reason--I am granting for the moment, for argument's sake, his personal existence--is not far to seek; it is blazed upon the face of history. For what has been the result of theology upon the whole? It has turned men's eyes from earth, to fix them on heaven; it has bid them be careless of the temporal, while luring them to grasp at the eternal; it has induced multitudes to lavish fervent sentiment upon a conception framed by Priests of an incomprehensible God, while diverting their strength from the plain duties which Humanity has before it; it has taught them to live for the world to come, when they should live for the world around them; it has made earth's wrongs endurable with the hope of the glory to be revealed. Wisely indeed would the Deity hide himself, when even a phantom of him has wrought such fatal mischief; and never will real and steady progress be secured until men acquiesce in this beneficent law of their nature, which draws a stern circle of the "limits of Religious Thought" and bids them concentrate their attention on the work they have to do in this world, instead of being "for ever peering into and brooding over the world beyond the grave." "What is to be our conception of morality, is it to base itself on obedience to God, or is it to be sought for itself and its effects?" When we admit that God is beyond our knowing, morality becomes at once necessarily grounded on utility, or the natural adaptation of certain feelings and actions to promote the general welfare of society. As no revelation is given to us as one "infallible standard of right and wrong," we must form our morality for ourselves from thought and from experience. For example, our moral nature, as educated under the highest civilisation, tells us that lying is wrong;* with this hypothesis in our minds we study facts, and discover that lying causes mistrust, anarchy, and ruin; thence we lay down as a moral law, "Lie not at all." The science of morality must be content to grow like other sciences; first an hypothesis, round which to group our facts, then from the collected and collated facts reasoning up to a solid law. Scientific morality has this great advantage over revealed, that it stands on firm, unassailable ground; new facts will alter its details, but can never touch its method; like all other sciences, it is at once positive and progressive. * All men do not think lying wrong, e g.. Thugs and old Spartans. Therefore it is not our moral nature that intuitively tells us thus, but our moral nature as instructed by the moral ideas prevailing in the society in which we happen to be living.--Note by the Editor. "_Is our mental attitude to be kneeling or standing?_" When we admit that the Deity is veiled from us, how can we pray? When we see that that law is inexorable, of what use to protest against its absolute sway? When we feel that all, including ourselves, are but modes of Being which is one and universal, and in which we "live and move," how shall we pray to that which is close to us as our own souls, part of our very selves, inseparable from our thoughts, sharing our consciousness? As well talk aloud to ourselves as pray to the universal Essence. Children _cry_ for what they want; men and women _work_ for it. There are two points of view from which we may regard prayer: from the one it is a piece of childishness only, from the other it is sheer impertinence. Regarding Nature's mighty order, her grand, silent, unvarying march,--the importunity which frets against her changeless progress is a mark of the most extreme childishness of mind; it shows that complete irreverence of spirit which cannot conceive the idea of a greatness before which the individual existence is as nothing, and that infantile conceit which imagines that its own plans and playthings rival in importance the struggles of nations and the interests of distant worlds. Regarding Nature's laws as wiser than our own whims, the idea which finds its outlet in prayer is a gross impertinence; who are we that we should take it on ourselves to remind Nature of her work, God of his duty? Is there any impertinence so extreme as the prayer which "pleads" with the Deity? There is only one kind of "prayer" which is reasonable, and that is the deep, silent, adoration of the greatness and beauty and order around us, as revealed in the realms of non-rational life and in Humanity; as we bow our heads before the laws of the universe and mould our lives into obedience to their voice, we find a strong, calm peace steal over our hearts, a perfect trust in the ultimate triumph of the right, a quiet determination to "make our lives sublime." Before our own high ideals, before those lives which show us "how high the tides of divine life have risen in the human world," we stand with hushed voice and veiled face; from them we draw strength to emulate, and even dare struggle to excel. The contemplation of the ideal is true prayer; it inspires, it strengthens, it ennobles. The other part of prayer is work: from contemplation to labour, from the forest to the street. Study Nature's laws, conform to them, work in harmony with them, and work becomes a prayer and a thanksgiving, an adoration of the universal wisdom, and a true obedience to the universal law. "_Is the mainspring of our actions to be the idea of duty to God, or the of loyalty to law and to man's well-being?_" We cannot serve God in any real sense; we are awed before the Unknown, but we cannot _serve_ it. For the Mighty, for the Incomprehensible, what can we do? But we can serve man, ay, and he needs our service; service of brain and hand, service untiring and unceasing, service through life and unto-death. The race to which we belong (our own families and kinsfolk, and then the community at large) has the first claim on our allegiance, a claim from which nothing can release us until death drops a veil over our work. Surely I may claim that my subject is not an unpractical one, and that our ideas of the Nature and Existence of God influence our lives in a very real way. If I have substituted a different basis of morality for that on which it now stands, if I have suggested a different theory of prayer, and offered a different motive for duty, surely these changes affect the whole of human life And if one by one these theories ate denied by the orthodox, and they reject them because they sever human life from that which is called revealed religion, is not my position justified, that the ideas we hold of God are the ruling forces of our lives? that it is of primary importance to the welfare of mankind that a false theory on this point should be destroyed and a more reasonable faith accepted? Will any one exclaim, "You are taking all beauty out of human life, all hope, all warmth, all inspiration; you give us cold duty for filial obedience, and inexorable law in the place of God?" All beauty from life? Is there, then, no beauty in the idea of forming part of the great life of the universe, no beauty in conscious harmony with Nature, no beauty in faithful service, no beauty in ideals of every virtue? "All hope?" Why, I give you more than hope, I give you certainty: if I bid you labour for this world, it is with the knowledge that this world will repay you a thousandfold, because society will grow purer, freedom more settled, law more honoured, life more full and glad. What is your hope? A heaven in the clouds. I point to a heaven attainable on earth. "All warmth?" What! You serve warmly a God unknown and invisible, in a sense the projected shadow of your own imaginings, and can only serve coldly your brother whom you see at your side? There is no warmth in brightening the lot of the sad, in reforming abuses, in establishing equal justice for rich and poor? You find warmth in the church, but none in the home? Warmth in imagining the cloud-glories of heaven, but none in creating substantial glories on earth? "All inspiration?" If you want inspiration to feeling, to sentiment, perhaps you had better keep to your Bible and your creeds; if you want inspiration to work, go and walk through the east of London, or the back streets of Manchester. You are inspired to tenderness as you gaze at the wounds of Jesus, dead in Judaea long ago, and find no inspiration in the wounds of men and women dying in the England of to-day? You "have tears to shed for him," but none for the sufferer at your doors? His passion arouses your sympathies, but you see no pathos in the passion of the poor? Duty is colder than "filial obedience?" What do you mean by filial obedience? Obedience to your ideal of goodness and love, is it not so? Then how is duty cold? I offer you ideals for your homage: here is Truth for your Mistress, to whose exaltation you shall devote your intellect; here is Freedom for your General, for whose triumph you shall fight; here is Love for your Inspirer, who shall influence your every thought; here is Man for your Master--not in heaven but on earth--to whose service you shall consecrate every faculty of your being. Inexorable law in the place of God? Yes: a stern certainty that you shall not waste your life, yet gather a rich reward at the close; that you shall not sow misery, yet reap gladness; that you shall not be selfish, yet be crowned with love, nor shall you sin, yet find safety in repentance. True, our creed is a stern one, stern with the beautiful sternness of Nature. But if we be in the right, look to yourselves: laws do not check their action for your ignorance; fire will not cease to scorch, because "you did not know." We know nothing beyond Nature; we judge of the future by the present and the past; we are content to work now, and let the work to come wait until it appears as the work to do; we find that our faculties are sufficient for fulfilling the tasks within our reach, and we cannot waste time and strength in gazing into impenetrable darkness. We must needs fight against superstitions, because they hinder the advancement of the race, but we will not fall into the error of opponents and try to define the Undefinable. EUTHANASIA. I HAVE already related to you with what care they look after their sick, so that nothing is left undone which may contribute either to their health or ease. And as for those who are afflicted with incurable disorders, they use all possible means of cherishing them, and of making their lives as comfortable as possible; they visit them often, and take great pains to make their time pass easily. But if any have torturing, lingering pain, without hope of recovery or ease, the priests and magistrates repair to them and exhort them, since they are unable to proceed with the business of life, are become a burden to themselves and all about them, and have in reality outlived themselves, they should no longer cherish a rooted disease, but choose to die since they cannot but live in great misery; being persuaded, if they thus deliver themselves from torture, or allow others to do it, they shall be happy after death. Since they forfeit none of the pleasures, but only the troubles of life by this, they think they not only act reasonably, but consistently with religion; for they follow the advice of their priests, the expounders of God's will. Those who are wrought upon by these persuasions, either starve themselves or take laudanum. But no one is compelled to end his life thus; and if they cannot be persuaded to it, the former care and attendance on it is continued. And though they esteem a voluntary death, when chosen on such authority, to be very honourable, on the contrary, if any one commit suicide without the concurrence of the priest and senate, they honour not the body with a decent funeral, but throw into a ditch.* * Memoirs. A translation of the Utopia, &c, of Sir Thomas Moore, Lord High Chancellor of England. By A. Cayley the Younger, pp. 102,103. (Edition of 1808.) In pleading for the morality of Euthanasia, it seems not unwise to show that so thoroughly religious a man as Sir Thomas Moore deemed that practice so consonant with a sound morality as to make it one of the customs of his ideal state, and to place it under the sanction of the priesthood. As a devout Roman Catholic, the great Chancellor would naturally imagine that any beneficial innovation would be sure to obtain the support of the priesthood; and although we may differ from him on this head, since our daily experience teaches _us_ that the priest may be counted upon as the steady opponent of all reform, it is yet not uninstructive to note that the deep religious feeling which distinguished this truly good man, did not shrink from this idea of euthanasia as from a breach of morality, nor did he apparently dream that any opposition would (or could) be offered to it on religious grounds. The last sentence of the extract is specially important; in discussing the morality of euthanasia we are not discussing the moral lawfulness or unlawfulness of suicide in general; we may protest against suicide, and yet uphold euthanasia, and we may even protest against the one and uphold the other, on exactly the same principle, as we shall see further on. As the greater includes the less, those who consider that a man has a right to choose whether he will live or not, and who therefore regard all suicide as lawful, will, of course, approve of euthanasia; but it is by no means necessary to hold this doctrine because we contend for the other. _On the general question of the morality of suicide, this paper expresses no opinion whatever_. This is not the point, and we do not deal with it here. This essay is simply and solely directed to prove that there are circumstances under which a human being has a moral right to hasten the inevitable approach of death. The subject is one which is surrounded by a thick fog of popular prejudice, and the arguments in its favour are generally dismissed unheard. I would therefore crave the reader's generous patience, while laying before him the reasons which dispose many religious and social reformers to regard it as of importance that euthanasia should be legalised. In the fourth Edition of an essay on Euthanasia, by P. D. Williams, jun.,--an essay which powerfully sums up what is to be said for and against the practice in question, and which treats the whole subject exhaustively--we find the proposition for which we contend laid down in the following explicit terms: "That in all cases of hopeless and painful illness, it should be the recognised duty of the medical attendant, whenever so desired by the patient, to administer chloroform, or such other anaesthetic as may by-and-by supersede chloroform, so as to destroy consciousness at once, and to put the sufferer to a quick and painless death; all needful precautions being adopted to prevent any abuse of such duty; and means being taken to establish, beyond the possibility of doubt or question, that the remedy was applied at the express wish of the patient." It is very important, at the outset, to lay down clearly the limitations of the proposed medical reform. It is, sometimes, thoughtlessly stated that the supporters of euthanasia propose to put to death all persons suffering from incurable disorders; no assertion can be more inaccurate or more calculated to mislead. We propose only, that where an incurable disorder is accompanied with extreme pain--pain, which nothing can alleviate except death--pain, which only grows worse as the inevitable doom approaches--pain, which drives almost to madness, and which must end in the intensified torture in the death agony--that pain should be at once soothed by the administration of an anaesthetic, which should not only produce unconsciousness, but should be sufficiently powerful to end a life, in which the renewal of consciousness can only be simultaneous with the renewal of pain. So long as life has some sweetness left in it, so long the offered mercy is not needed; euthanasia is a relief from unendurable agony, not an enforced extinguisher of a still desired existence. Besides, no one proposes to make it obligatory on anybody; it is only urged that where the patient asks for the mercy of a speedy death, instead of a protracted one, his prayer may be granted without any danger of the penalties of murder or manslaughter being inflicted on the doctors and nurses in attendance. I will lay before the reader a case which is within my own knowledge,--and which can be probably supplemented by the sad experience of almost every individual,--in which the legality of euthanasia would have been a boon equally to the sufferer and to her family. A widow lady was suffering from cancer in the breast, and as the case was too far advanced for the ordinary remedy of the knife, and as the leading London surgeons refused to risk an operation which might hasten, but could not retard, death, she resolved, for the sake of her orphan children, to allow a medical practitioner to perform a terrible operation, whereby he hoped to prolong her life for some years. Its details are too-painful to enter into unnecessarily; it will suffice to say that it was performed by means of quick-lime, and that the use of chloroform was impossible. When the operation, which extended over days, was but half over, the sufferer's strength gave way, and the doctor was compelled to acknowledge that even a prolongation of life was impossible, and that to complete the operation could only hasten death. So the patient had to linger on in almost unimaginable torture, knowing that the pain could only end in death, seeing her relatives worn out by watching, and agonised at the sight of her sufferings, and yet compelled to live on from hour to hour, till at last the anguish culminated in death. Is it possible for any one to believe that it would have been wrong to have hastened the inevitable end, and thus to have shortened the agony of the sufferer herself, and to have also-spared her nurses months of subsequent ill-health. It is in such cases as this that euthanasia would be useful. It is, however, probable that all will agree that the benefit conferred by the legalisation of euthanasia would, in many instances, be very great; but many feel that the objections to it, on moral grounds, are so weighty, that no physical benefit could countervail the moral wrong. These objections, so far as I can gather them, are as follows:-- Life is the gift of God, and is therefore sacred, and must only be taken back by the giver of life.* * We, of course, here, have no concern with theological questions touching the existence or non-existence of Deity, and express no opinion about them. Euthanasia is an interference with the course of nature, and is therefore an act of rebellion against God. Pain is a spiritual remedial agent inflicted by God, and should therefore be patiently endured. _Life is the gift of God, and is therefore sacred, and must only be taken back by the Giver of life_. This objection is one of those high-sounding phrases which impose on the careless and thoughtless hearer, by catching up a form of words which is generally accepted as an unquestionable axiom, and by hanging thereupon an unfair corollary. The ordinary man or woman, on hearing this assertion, would probably answer--"Life sacred? Yes, of course; on the sacredness of life depends the safety of society; anything which tampers with this principle must be both wrong and dangerous." And yet, such is the inconsistency of the thoughtless, that, five minutes afterwards, the same person will glow with passionate admiration at some noble deed, in which the sacredness of life has been cast to the winds at the call of honour or of humanity, or will utter words ot indignant contempt at the baseness which counted life more sacred than duty or principle. That life is sacred is an undeniable proposition; every natural gift is sacred, _i e._, is valuable, and is not to be lightly destroyed; life, as summing up all natural gifts, and as containing within itself all possibilities of usefulness and happiness, is the most sacred physical possession which we own. But it is _not_ the most sacred thing on earth. Martyrs slain for the sake of principles which they could not truthfully deny; patriots who have died for their country; heroes who have sacrificed themselves for others' good;--the very flower and glory of humanity rise up in a vast crowd to protest that conscience, honour, love, self-devotion, are more precious to the race than is the life of the individual. Life is sacred, but it may be laid down in a noble cause; life is sacred, but it must bend before the holier sacredness of principle; life which, though sacred, can be destroyed, is as nothing before the indestructible ideals which claim from every noble soul the sacrifice of personal happiness, of personal greatness, yea, of personal life.* * The word "life" is here used in the sense of "personal existence in this world." It is, of course, not intended to be asserted that life is really destructible, but only that personal existence, or identity, may be destroyed. And further, no opinion is given on the possibility of life otherwhere than on this globe; nothing is spoken of except life on earth, under the conditions of human existence. It will be conceded, then, on all hands, that the proposition that life is sacred must be accepted with many limitations: the proposition, in fact, amounts only to this, that life must not be voluntarily laid down without grave and sufficient cause. What we have to consider is, whether there are present, in any proposed euthanasia, such conditions as overbear considerations for the acknowledged sanctity of life. We contend that in the cases in which it is proposed that death should be hastened, these conditions do exist. We will not touch here on the question of the endurance of pain as a duty, for we will examine that further on. But is it a matter of no importance that a sufferer should condemn his attendants to a prolonged drain on their health and strength, in order to cling to a life which is useless to others, and a burden to himself? The nurse who tends, perhaps for weeks, a bed of agony, for which there is no cure but death--whose senses are strained by intense watchfulness--whose nerves are racked by witnessing torture which she is powerless to alleviate--is, by her self-devotion, sowing in her own constitution the seeds of ill-health--that is to say, she is deliberately shortening her own life. We have seen that we have a right to shorten life in obedience to a call of duty, and it will at once be said that the nurse is obeying such a call. But has the nurse a right to sacrifice her own life--and an injury to health is a sacrifice of life--for an obviously unequivalent advantage? We are apt to forget, because the injury is partially veiled to us, that we touch the sacredness of life whenever we touch health: every case of over-work, of over-strain, of over-exertion, is, so to speak, a modified case of euthanasia. To poison the spring of life is as real a tampering with the sacredness of life as it is to check its course. The nurse is really committing a slow euthanasia. Either the patient or the nurse must commit an heroic suicide for the sake of the other--which shall it be? Shall the life be sacrificed, which is torture to its possessor, useless to society, and whose bounds are already clearly marked? or shall a strong and healthy life, with all its future possibilities, be undermined and sacrificed _in addition to that which is already doomed?_ But, granting that the sublime generosity of the nurse stays not to balance the gain with the loss, but counts herself as nothing in the face of a human need, then surely it is time to urge then to permit this self-sacrifice is an error, and that to accept it is a crime. If it be granted that the throwing away of life for a manifestly unequivalent gain is wrong, that we ought not to blind ourselves to the fact, that to sacrifice a healthy life in order to lengthen by a few short weeks a doomed life, is a grave moral error, however much it may be redeemed in the individual by the glory of a noble self-devotion. Allowing to the full the honour due to the heroism of the nurse, what are we to say to the patient who accepts the sacrifice? What are we to think of the morality of a human being who, in order to preserve the miserable remnant of life left to him, allows another to shorten life? If we honour the man who sacrifices himself to defend his family, or risks his own life to save theirs, we must surely blame him who, on the contrary, sacrifices those he ought to value most, in order to prolong his own now useless existence. The measure of our admiration for the one, must be the measure of our pity for the weakness and selfishness of the other. If it be true that the man who dies for his dear ones on the battlefield is a hero, he who voluntarily dies for them on his bed of sickness is a hero no less brave. But it is urged that _life is the gift of God, and must only be taken back by the Giver of life_, I suppose that in any sense in which it can be supposed true that life is the gift of God, it can only be taken back by the giver--that is to say, that just as life is produced in accordance with certain laws, so it can only be destroyed in accordance with certain other laws. Life is not the direct gift of a superior power: it is the gift of man to man and animal to animal, produced by the voluntary agent, and not by God, under physical conditions, on the fulfilment of which alone the production of life depends. The physical conditions must be observed if we desire to produce life, and so must they be if we desire to destroy life. In both cases man is the voluntary agent, in both law is the means of his action. If life-giving is God's doing, then life-destroying is his doing too. But this is not what is intended by the proposers of this aphorism. If they will pardon me for translating their somewhat vague proposition into more precise language, they say that they find themselves in possession of a certain thing called life, which must have come from _somewhere_; and as in popular language the unknown is always the divine, it must have come from God: therefore this life must only be taken from them by a cause that also proceeds from _somewhere_--i e., from an unknown cause--i e., from the Divine will. Chloroform comes from a visible agent, from the doctor or nurse, or at least from a bottle, which can be taken up or left alone at our own choice. If we swallow this, the cause of death is known, and is evidently not divine; but if we go into a house where scarlet fever is raging, although we are in that case voluntarily running the chance of taking poison quite as truly as if we swallow a dose of chloroform, yet if we die from the infection, we can imagine the illness to be sent from God. Wherever we think the element of chance comes in, there we are able to imagine that God rules directly. We quite overlook the fact that there is no such thing as chance. There is only our ignorance of law, not a break in natural order. If our constitution be susceptible of the particular poison to which we expose it, we take the disease. If we knew the laws of infection as accurately as we know the laws affecting chloroform, we should be able to foresee with like certainty the inevitable consequence; and our ignorance does not make the action of either set of laws less unchangeable or more divine. But in the "happy-go-lucky" style of thought peculiar to ignorance, the Christian disregards the fact that infection is ruled by definite laws, and believes that health and sickness are the direct expressions of the will of his God, and not the invariable consequence of obscure but probably discoverable antecedents; so he boldly goes into the back slums of London to nurse a family stricken down with fever, and knowingly and deliberately runs "the chance" of infection--i e., knowingly and deliberately runs the chance of taking poison, or rather of having poison poured into his frame. This he does, trusting that the nobility of his motive will make the act right in God's sight. Is it more noble to relieve the sufferings of strangers, than to relieve the sufferings of his family? or is it more heroic to die of voluntarily-contracted fever, than of voluntarily-taken chloroform? The argument that _life must only be taken back by the life-giver_, would, if thoroughly carried out, entirely prevent all dangerous operations. In the treatment of some diseases there are operations that will either kill or cure: the disease must certainly be fatal if left alone; while the proposed operation may save life, it may equally destroy it, and thus may take life some time before the giver of life wanted to take it back. Evidently, then, such operations should not be performed, since there is risked so grave an interference with the desires of the life-giver. Again, doctors act very wrongly when they allow certain soothing medicines to be taken when all hope is gone, which they refuse so long as a chance of recovery remains: what right have they to _compel_ the life-giver to follow out his apparent intentions? In some cases of painful disease, it is now usual to produce partial or total unconsciousness by the injection of morphia, or by the use of some other anaesthetic. Thus, I have known a patient subjected to this kind of treatment, when dying from a tumour in the aesophagus; he was consequently for some weeks before his death, kept in a state of almost complete unconsciousness, for if he were allowed to become conscious, his agony was so unendurable as to drive him wild. He was thus, although breathing, practically dead for weeks before his death. We cannot but wonder, in view of such a case as his, what it is that people mean when they talk of "life." Life includes, surely, not only the involuntary animal functions, such as the movements of heart and lungs; but consciousness, thought, feeling, emotion. Of the various constituents of human life, surely those are not the most "sacred" which we share with the brute, however necessary these may be as the basis on which the rest are built. It is thought, then, that we may rightfully destroy all that constitutes the beauty and nobility of human life, we may kill thought, slay consciousness, deaden emotion, stop feeling, we may do all this, and leave lying on the bed before us a breathing figure, from which we have taken all the nobler possibilities of life; but we may not touch the purely animal existence; we may rightly check the action of the nerves and the brain, but we must not dare to outrage-the Deity by checking the action of the heart and the lungs. We ask, then, for the legalisation of euthanasia, because it is in accordance with the highest morality yet known, that which teaches the duty of self sacrifice for the greater good of others, because it is sanctioned in principle by every service performed at personal danger and injury, and because-it is already partially practised by modern improvements in medical science. _Euthanasia is an interference with the course of nature, and its herefore an act of rebellion against God_. In considering this objection, we are placed in difficulty by not being told what sense our opponents attach to the word "nature"; and we are obliged once more to ask pardon for forcing these vague and high-flown arguments into a humiliating precision of meaning. Nature, in the widest sense of the word, includes all natural laws: and in this sense it is of course impossible to interfere with nature at all. We live, and move, and have our being in nature; and we can no more get outside it than we can get outside everything. With this-nature we cannot interfere: we can study its laws, and learn how to balance one law against another, so as to modify results; but this can only be done by and through nature itself. The "interference with the course of nature" which is intended in the above objection does not of course mean this impossible proceeding; and it can then only mean an interference with things which would proceed in one course without human agency meddling with them, but which are susceptible of being turned into another course by human agency. If interference with nature's course be a rebellion against God, we are rebelling against God every day of our lives. Every achievement of civilisation is an interference with nature. Every artificial comfort we enjoy is an improvement on nature. Everybody professes to approve and admire many great triumphs of art over nature: the junction by bridges of shores which nature had made separate, the draining of nature's marshes, the excavation of her wells, the dragging to light of what she has buried at immense depths in the earth, the turning away of her thunderbolts by lightning-rods, of her inundations by embankments, of her ocean by breakwaters. But to commend these and similar feats, is to acknowledge that the ways of nature are to be conquered, not obeyed; that her powers are often towards man in the position of enemies, from whom he must wrest, by force and ingenuity, what little he can for his own use, and deserves to be applauded when that little is rather more than might be expected from his physical weakness in comparison to those gigantic powers. All praise of civilisation, or art, or contrivance, is so much dispraise of nature; an admission of imperfection, which it is man's business, and merit, to be always endeavouring to correct or mitigate.* * "Essay on Nature," by John Stuart Mill. It is difficult to understand how anyone, contemplating the course of nature, can regard it as the expression of a Divine will, which man has no right to improve upon. Natural law is essentially unreasoning and unmoral: gigantic forces clash around us on every side unintelligent, and unvarying in their action. With equal impassiveness these blind forces produce vast benefits and work vast catastrophes. The benefits are ours, if we are able to grasp them; but nature troubles itself not, whether we take them or leave them alone. The catastrophes may rightly be averted, if we can avert them; but nature stays not its grinding wheel for our moans. Even allowing that a Supreme Intelligence gave these forces their being, it is manifest that he never intended man to be their plaything, or to do them homage; for man is dowered with reason to calculate, and with genius to foresee; and into man's hands is given the realm of nature (in this world) to cultivate, to govern, to improve. So long as men believed that a god wielded the thunderbolt, so long would a lightning-conductor be an outrage on Jove; so long as a god guided each force of nature, so long would it be impiety to resist, or to endeavour to regulate the divine volitions. Only as experience gradually proved that no evil consequences followed each amendment of nature, were natural forces withdrawn, one by one, from the sphere of the unknown and the divine. Now, even pain, that used to be God's scourge, is soothed by chloroform, and death alone is left for nature to inflict, with what lingering agony it may. But why should death, any more than other ills, be left entirely to the clumsy, unassisted processes of nature?--why, after struggling against nature all our lives, should we let it reign unopposed in death? There are some natural evils that we cannot avert. Pain and death are of these; but we can dull pain by dulling feeling, and we can ease by shortening its pangs. Nature kills by slow and protracted torture; we can defy it by choosing a rapid and painless end. It is only the remains of the old superstition that makes men think that to take life is the special prerogative of the gods. With marvellous inconsistency, however, the opponents of euthanasia do not scruple to "interfere with the course of nature" on the one hand, while they forbid us to interfere on the other. It is right to prolong pain by art, although it is wrong to shorten it. When a person is smitten down with some fearful and incurable disease, they do not leave him to nature; on the contrary, they check and thwart nature in every possible way; they cherish the life that nature has blasted; they nourish the strength that nature is undermining; they delay each process of decay which nature sows in the disordered frame; they contest every inch of ground with nature to preserve life; and then, when life means torture, and we ask permission to step in and quench it, they cry out that we are interfering with nature. If they would leave nature to itself, the disease would generally kill with tolerable rapidity; but they will not do this. They will only admit the force of their own argument when it tells on the side of what they choose to consider right. "Against nature," is the cry with which many a modern improvement has been howled at; and it will continue to be raised, until it is generally acknowledged that happiness, and not nature, is the true guide to morality, and until men recognises that nature is to be harnessed to his car of triumph, and to bend its mighty forces to fulfil the human will. _Pain is a spiritual remedial agent, inflicted by God, and should therefore be patiently endured._ Does anyone, except a self-torturing ascetic, endure any pain which he can get rid of? This might be deemed a sufficient answer to this objection, for common sense always bids us avoid all possible pain, and daily experience tells us that people invariably evade pain, wherever such evasion is possible. The objection ought to run: "pain is a spiritual remedial agent, inflicted by God, which is to be got rid of as soon as possible, but ought to be patiently endured when unavoidable." Pain as pain has no recommendations, spiritual or otherwise; nor is there the smallest merit in a voluntary and needless submission to pain. As to its remedial and educational advantages, it as often as not sours the temper and hardens the heart; if a person endures great physical or mental pain with unruffled patience, and comes out of it with uninjured tenderness and sweetness, we may rest assured that we have come across a rare and beautiful nature of exceptional strength. As a general rule, pain, especially if it be mental, hardens and roughens the character. The use of anaesthetics is utterly indefensible, if physical pain is to be regarded as a special tool whereby God cultivates the human soul. If God is directly acting on the sufferer's body, and is educating his soul by racking his nerves, by what right does the doctor step between with his impious anaesthetic, and by reducing the patient to unconsciousness, deprive God of his pupil, and man of his lesson? If pain be a sacred ark, over which hovers the divine glory, surely it must be a sinful act to touch the holy thing. We may be inflicting incalculable spiritual damage by frustrating the divine plan of education, which was corporeal agony as a spiritual agent. Therefore, if this argument be good for anything at all, we must from henceforth eschew all anaesthetics, we must take no steps to alleviate human agony, we must not venture to interfere with this beneficent agent, but must leave nature to torture us it will. But we utterly deny that the unnecessary endurance of pain is even a merit, much less a duty; on the contrary, we believe that it is our duty to war against pain as much as possible, to alleviate it wherever we cannot stop it entirely; and, where continuous and frightful agony can only end in death, then to give to the sufferer the relief he craves for, in the sleep which is mercy. "It is a mercy God has taken him," is an expression often heard when the racked frame at last lies quiet, and the writhed features settle slowly into the peaceful smile of the dead. That mercy we plead that man should be allowed to give to man, when human skill and human tenderness have done their best, and when they have left within their reach no greater boon than a speedy and painless death. We are not aware that any objection, which may not be classed under one or other of these three heads, has been levelled against the proposition that euthanasia should be legalised. It has, indeed, been suggested that to put into-a doctor's hands this "power of life and death," would be to offer a dangerous temptation to those who have any special object to gain by putting a troublesome person quietly out of the way. But this objection overlooks the fact that the patient himself must _ask_ for the draught, that stringent precautions can be taken to render euthanasia impossible except at the patient's earnestly, or even repeatedly, expressed wish, that any doctor or attendant, neglecting to take these precautions, would then, as now, be liable to all the penalties for murder or for manslaughter; and that an ordinary doctor would no more be ready to face these penalties then, than he is now, although he undoubtedly has now the power of putting the patient to death with but little chance of discovery. Euthanasia would not render murder less dangerous than it is at present, since no one asks that a nurse may be empowered to give a patient a dose which would ensure death, or that she might be allowed to shield herself from punishment on the plea that the patient desired it. If our opponents would take the trouble to find out what we do ask, before they condemn our propositions, it would greatly simplify public discussion, not alone in this case, but in many proposed reforms. It may be well, also, to point out the wide line of demarcation which separated euthanasia from what is ordinarily called suicide. Euthanasia, like suicide, is a voluntarily chosen death, but there is a radical difference between the motives which prompt the similar act. Those who commit suicide thereby render themselves useless to society for the future; they deprive society of their services, and selfishly evade the duties which ought to fall to their share; therefore, the social feelings rightly condemn suicide as a crime against society. I do not say that under no stress of circumstances is suicide justifiable; that is not the question; but I wish to point out that it is justly regarded as a social offence. But the very motive which restrains from suicide, prompts to euthanasia. The sufferer who knows that he is lost to society, that he can never again serve his fellow-men; who knows, also, that he is depriving society of the services of those who uselessly exhaust themselves for him, and is further injuring it by undermining the health of its healthy members, feels urged by the very social instincts which would prevent him from committing suicide while in health, to yield a last service to society by relieving it from a useless burden. Hence it is that Sir Thomas Moore, in the quotation with which he began this essay, makes the _social authorities_ of his ideal state urge euthanasia as the duty of a faithful citizen, while they yet consistently reprobate ordinary suicide as a _lèse-majestê_ a crime against the State. The life of the individual is, in a sense, the property of society. The infant is nurtured, the child is educated, the man is protected by others; and, in return for the life thus given, developed, preserved, society has a right to demand from its members a loyal, self-forgetting devotion to the common weal. To serve humanity, to raise the race from which we spring, to dedicate every talent, every power, every energy, to the improvement of, and to the increase of happiness in, society, this is the duty of each individual man and woman. And, when we have given all we can, when strength is sinking, and life is failing, when pain racks our bodies, and the worse agony of seeing our dear ones suffer in our anguish tortures our enfeebled minds, when the only service we can render man is to relieve him of a useless and injurious burden, then we ask that we may be permitted to die voluntarily and painlessly, and so to crown a noble life with the laurel wreath of a self-sacrificing death. ON PRAYER. THE mania for Prayer-meetings has lately been largely on the increase, and the continual efforts being made to "Move the arm that moves the world," naturally draw one's attention strongly to the subject of Prayer; to its reasonableness, propriety, and prospect of success. If Prayer to God be reverent as towards the Deity, if it be consistent with his immutability, with his foreknowledge, with his wisdom, and with every kind of trust in his goodness--if it be also, as regards man, permissible by science, and approved by experience, then there can be no doubt at all that it should be sedulously practised, and should be of universal obligation. But if it be at once useless and absurd, if it be forbidden by reason and frowned at by common sense, if it weaken man and be irreverent towards the Being to whom it is said to be addressed, then it will be well for all who practise it to reconsider their position, and at least to endeavour to give some solid reason for persisting in a course which is condemned by the intellect and is unneeded by the heart. The practice of Prayer is generally founded upon the supposed position held by man--first, as a creature towards his Creator, and secondly, as a child towards his Father in heaven. In its first aspect, it is a simple act of homage from the inferior to the superior, parallel to the courtesy shown by the subject to the monarch; it is an acknowledgment of dependence, and a sign of gratitude for the gifts which are supposed to be freely given by God to man--gifts which man has done nothing to deserve, but which come from the free bounty of the giver. Putting aside the whole question of God as Creator, which is not the point at issue, we might argue that, since he brought us into this world without our request, and even without our consent, he is in duty bound to see that we have all things necessary for our life and happiness in the world in which he has thus placed us. We might argue that the "blessings" said to be bestowed upon us, such as food, clothing, &c, can only be called "given" by a fiction, for that they are won by our own hard toil, and are never "gifts from God" in any real sense at all. Further, we might plead that we find "bestowed" upon us many things which are decidedly the reverse of blessings, and that if gratitude be due to God for some things, the contrary of gratitude is due to him for others; and that if praise be his right for the one, blame must be his desert for the second. We should be thus forced into the logical, but somewhat peculiar, frame of mind of the savage, who caresses his fetish when it hears his prayers, and belabours it heartily when it fails to help him. But, taking the position that Prayer is due from man by reason of his creaturehood, it must surely be clear that it cannot be a proper way of manifesting a sense of inferiority to degrade the Being to whom the homage is offered. Yet Prayer is essentially degrading to God, and the character ascribed to him of "a hearer and answerer of Prayer" is a most lowering conception of Deity. For God to hear and to answer Prayer means that Prayer changes his action, making him do that which he would otherwise have abstained from doing; it means that man is wiser than God, and is able to instruct him in his duty; and it means that God is less loving than he ought to be, and will not bestow upon his creature that which is good for him, unless he be importuned into giving it. We are told that God is immutable, "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever;" "God is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent." If this be true--and surely immutability of purpose must be a necessary characteristic of an all-wise and all-good Being--how can Prayer be anything more than a childish fretting against the inevitable? The Changeless One has planned a certain course of action, and is steadily carrying it out; in passionless serenity he goes upon his way; then man breaks in with his feeble cries and petulant upbraidings, and actually turns God from his purpose, and changes the course of his providence. If Prayer does not do this it does nothing at all; either it changes the mind of God or it does not. If it does, God is at the disposal of man's whim; if it does not, it is perfectly useless, and might just as well be left undone. The parable told by Christ about the unjust judge (Luke xviii. 1-8) is a most extraordinary representation of God: "Because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.... And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him?" Verily, the picture of the divine justice is not an attractive one! The judge does his duty, not because it is his duty, not because the widow needs his aid, not because her cause is a just one, but "lest by her continual coming she weary" him. There is only one moral to be drawn from this, namely, that God will not care for his "elect," because they are "his own;" that he will not guard them, because it is his duty; but that, if they cry day and night to him, he will attend to them, because the continual cry wearies him, and he desires to silence it. In the same way God the immutable changes at the sound of Prayer, not because the change will be better or wiser, but because man's cry "wearies" him, and he will be quiet if he obtains his petition. Surely the idea is as degrading as it can be; it puts God on a level with the unwise human parent, who allows himself to be governed by the clamour of his children, and gives any favour to the spoilt child, if only the child be tiresome enough in its petulant persistence. Is Prayer consistent with the _foreknowledge_ of God? It is one of the attributes ascribed to God that he knows all before it happens, and that the future lies mapped out before him as clearly as does the past. If this be so, is it more reasonable to pray about things in the future than things in the past? No one is so utterly irrational as to pray to God, in so many words, to change the things that are gone, or to alter the record of the past. Yet, is it more rational to ask him to change the things that are coming, and to alter the already-written chart of the future? In reality, man's own eyes being blinded, he deems his God such an one as himself, and where he cannot _see_, he can allow himself to _hope_. But there is no excuse from the inexorable logic which pierces us with one horn or the other of this dilemma, however we may writhe in our efforts to escape them; either God knows the future or he knows it not; if he knows it, it cannot be altered, so it is of no use to pray about it, everything being already fixed; if he knows it not, he is not God, he is no wiser than man. But, then, some Christians argue, he has pre-arranged that he will give this blessing in answer to Prayer, and he foreknows the Prayer as well as its answer. Then, after all, it is pre-determined whether we shall pray or not in any given case, and we have only to follow the course along which we are impelled by an irresistible destiny; so the matter is beyond all discussion, and the power to pray, or not to pray, does not reside in us; if there is a blessing in store for us which needs the arm of Prayer to pluck it from the tree on which it hangs, we shall inevitably pray for it at the right moment, and thus--in his effort to escape from one difficulty--the praying Christian has landed himself in a worse one, for absolute foreknowledge implies complete determinism, and prevents all human responsibility of any kind. Is Prayer consistent with the _wisdom_ of God? After all, what does Prayer mean, boldly stated? It means that man thinks that he knows better than God, and so he tells God that which ought to happen. Is there any self-conceit so intolerable as that which pretends to bow itself in the dust before him who created and who upholds the infinite worlds which make up the universe, and which then sets itself to correct the ordering of him who traced the orbits of the planets, and who measured the rule of suns? Finite wisdom instructing infinite wisdom; mortal reason laying down the course of immortal reason; low intelligence guiding supreme intelligence; man instructing God. All this is implied in the fact of Prayer, and every man who has prayed, and who believes in God, ought to cast himself down in passionate humiliation before the wisdom he has insulted and impugned, and ask pardon for the insolent presumption which dared to lay hands on the helm of the Supreme, and to dream that man could be more wise than God. At least, those who believe in God might be humble enough to acknowledge his superiority to themselves, and if they demand that homage should be paid to him by their brethren, they should also confess him to be wiser and higher than they are themselves. Is Prayer consistent with _trust in the goodness_ of God? Surely Prayer is a distinct refusal to trust, and is a proclamation that we think that we could do better for ourselves than God will do for us. If God be "good and loving to every man," it is manifest that, without any pressure being put upon him, he will do for each the best thing that can possibly be done. The people of Madagascar are wiser, in this matter than the people who throng our churches and our chapels, for they say, addressing the good Spirit, "We need not pray to thee, for thou, without our prayers, wilt give us all things that be good for us;" and then they turn to the evil Spirit, saying, that they must pray to _him_ lest, if they do not, he should work them harm, and send troubles in their way. Prayer implies that God judges all good gifts, and will withhold them unless they are wrung from his reluctant hands; it denies that he loves his creatures, and is good to all. In addition to this, it also implies that we will not trust him to judge what is best for us; on the contrary, we prefer to judge for ourselves, and to have our own way. If a trouble comes, it is prayed against, and God is besought "to remove his heavy hand." What does this mean, except that when God sends sorrow, man clamours for joy, and when God deems it best that his child should weep, the child demands cause for smiles? If people trusted God, as they pretend to trust him--if the phrases of the Sunday were the practice of the week--if men believed that God's ways were higher than man's ways, and his thoughts than their thoughts--then no Prayer would ever ascend from earth to the "Throne of grace," and man would welcome joy and sorrow, peace and care, wealth and poverty, as wise men welcome nature's order, when the rain comes down to swell the seed for the harvest, and the sunshine glows down upon earth to burnish the golden grain. But, say the praying Christians, even if Prayer be not defensible as homage from the creature to the Creator, in that it lowers our idea of God, it must surely yet be natural as the instinctive cry from the child to the Father in heaven; and then follow arguments drawn from the family and the home, and the need of communion between parent and child. As a matter of fact,--taking the analogy, imperfect as it is--do we find much Prayer, as from child to parent, in the best and the happiest homes; _is not the amount of asking the exact measure of the imperfection of the relationship?_ The wiser and the kinder the parent, the less will the child ask for; rather, it learns from experience to trust the older wisdom, and to be contented with the love which is ever giving, unsolicited, all good things. At the most, the simple expression of the child's wish is all that is needed, if the child desire anything of which the parent have not thought; and even this mere statement of a wish is still the result of _imperfection, i e._, the want of knowledge on the parent's part of the child's mind and heart In this case there is no pleading, no urging; the single request and single answer suffice; there is nothing which corresponds with the idea of the prophet to pray to God and to "give him no rest" until he grant the petition. In a well-ordered home, the child who persisted in pressing his request would receive a rebuke for his want of trust, and for his conceited self-sufficiency; and yet _this_ is the analogy on which Prayer to God is built up, and in this fashion "natural instincts" are dragged in, in order to support supernatural and artificial cravings. Leaving Prayer, as it affects man's relationship to God, let us look at it as it regards man's relationship to things around him, and ask if it be permitted by our scientific knowledge, and approved by experience and by history. The chief lesson of science is that all things work by law, that we dwell in a realm of law, and that _nothing_ goes by chance. All science is built up upon this idea; science is not possible unless this primary rule be correct; science is only the codified experience of the race, the observed sequence of to-day marked down for the guidance of to-morrow, the teaching of the past hived up for the improvement of the future. But all this accumulation and correlation of facts becomes useless if laws can be broken--i e., if this observed sequence of phenomena can be suddenly broken by the interposition of an unknown and incalculable force, acting spasmodically and guided by no discoverable order of action. Science is impossible if these "providential occurrences" may take place at any moment. A physician, in writing his prescription, selects the drugs which experience has pointed out as the suitable remedy for the disease under which his patient is labouring. These drugs have a certain effect upon the tissues of the human frame, and the physician calculates on this effect being produced; but if Prayer is to come in as a factor, of what use the physician's science? Here is suddenly introduced--to speak figuratively--a new drug of unknown power, and the effect of medicine plus Prayer can in no way be calculated upon. The prescription is either efficient or non-efficient; if it be efficient, Prayer is unnecessary, as the cure would take place without it; if it be non-efficient, and Prayer makes up the deficiency, then medical science is not needed, for the impotency of the drugs can always be balanced by the potency of the Prayer. This argument may be used as regards every science. Prayer is put up for a ship which goes to sea. The ship is fitted for the perils it encounters, or it is unfit. If fitted, it arrives safely without Prayer; if, though unfit, it arrives, being guarded by Prayer, then Prayer becomes a factor in the shipbuilder's calculations, and sound timbers and strong rivets sink into minor importance. If it be argued that to speak thus is to use Prayer unfairly, because it is our duty to take every proper means to ensure safety, what, is this except to say that, after all, Prayer is only a fiction, and that while we bow our knees to God, and pretend to look to _him_ for safety, we are really looking to the strong timbers of the ship-builder, and to the skill of the captain? Science teaches, also, that all phenomena are the results of preceding phenomena, and that an unbroken sequence of cause and effect stretches back further than our poor thoughts can reach. In stately harmony all Nature moves, evolving link after link of the endless chain, each link bound firmly to its predecessor, and affording, in its turn, the same support to its successor. Prayer is put up in the churches for fair weather; but rain and sunshine do not follow each other by chance, they obey a changeless law. To alter the weather of to-day means to alter the weather of countless yesterdays, which have faded away, one after another, "into the infinite azure of the past." The weather of to-day is the result of all those long-past phases of temperature, and, unless they were altered, no change is pos sible to-day. The Prayer that goes up in English churches should really run:--"O God, we pray thee to change all that thou hast wrought in the past; we, to-day, in this petty corner of thy world, are discontented with thy ordering; we desire of thee, then, that, to pleasure our fancy, thou wilt unroll the record of the past, and change all its order, remoulding its history to suit our convenience here to-day." It is difficult to say which is the worse, the self-conceit which deems its own petty needs worthy of such complaisance of Deity, or the ignorance which forgets the absurdities implied in the request it makes. But, after all, it is the ignorance which is to blame: these Prayers were written when science was scarcely born; in those days God was the immediate cause of each phenomena, sending rain from heaven when it pleased him, thundering from heaven against his enemies, pouring hailstones from heaven to slay his foes, opening and closing the windows of heaven to punish a wicked king or to pleasure an angry prophet. In those days heaven was very close to earth: so near that when it opened, the dying Stephen could see and recognise the form and features of the Son of Man; so near that, lest man should build a tower which should reach it, God had himself to descend and discomfit the builders. All these things were true to the writers whose words are repeated in English churches in the nineteenth century, and they naturally believed that what God wrought in days of old he could work also among themselves. But knowledge has shattered the fairy fabric which fancy had raised up; astronomy built towers--not of Babel--from which men could gauge the heaven, and find that through illimitable ether worlds innumerable rolled, and that where the throne of God should have been seen, suns and planets sped on their ceaseless rounds. Further and further back, the ancient God who dwelt among men was pressed back, till now, at last, no room is found for spasmodic divine solutions, but Nature's mighty order rolls on uninterrupted, in a silence unbroken by voice and undisturbed by miraculous volitions, bound by a golden chain of inviolable law. The most learned and the most thoughtful Christian people now acknowledge that prayer is out of place in dealing with "natural order;" but surely it is time that they should make their voices heard plainly, so as to erase from the Prayer-book these obsolete notions, born of an ignorance which the world has now outgrown. Few really _believe_ in the power of Prayer over the weather, but people go on from the sheer force of habit, repeating, parrot-like, phrases which have lost their meaning, because they are too indolent to exert thought, or too fettered by habit to test the Prayer of the Sunday by the standard of the week. When people begin to _think_ of what they repeat so glibly, the battle of Free Thought will have been won. Many earnest people, however, while recognising the fact that Prayer ought not to be used for rain, fine weather, and the like, yet think that it may be rightly employed to obtain "spiritual benefits." Is not this idea also the product of ignorance? When men knew nothing of natural laws they thought they could gain natural benefits by Prayer; now that people know nothing of "spiritual" laws, they think they can gain "spiritual" benefits by Prayer. In each case the Prayer springs from ignorance. Is it really more reasonable to expect to gain miraculous spiritual strength from Prayer, than to expect to give vigour, by Prayer, to arms enfeebled by fever? Growth, slow and steady, is Nature's law; no sudden leaps are possible; and no Prayer will give that spiritual stature which only develops by continual effort, and by "patient continuance in well-doing." The mind--which is probably what is generally meant by the word "spirit"--has its own laws, according to which it grows and strengthens; it is moulded, formed, developed, as the body is, by the play of the circumstances around it, and by the organisation with which it comes into the world, and which it has inherited from a long race of ancestors. Here, too, inexorable law surrounds all, and in mind, as in matter, the "reign of law" Is all-embracing, all-compelling. Is Prayer approved by experience? It seems necessary here to refer to the experience of some, who say that they have found Prayer strengthen them to meet a trouble which they had dreaded, or to accomplish a duty for which their own ability was insufficient. This appears to be very probable, but the reason is not far to seek, and as the explanation of the increased strength may be purely natural, it seems unnecessary to search for a supernatural cause. Prayer, when earnest and heartfelt, appears to exert a kind of reflex action on the person praying, the petition not piercing heaven, but falling back upon earth. A duty has to be done or a trouble has to be faced; the person affected prays for help, and by the intense concentration of his thoughts, and by the passion of his desire, he naturally gains a strength he had not, when he was less deeply and thoroughly in earnest. Again, the interior conviction that a olivine strength is on his side, nerves his heart and braces his courage: the soldier fights with a tenfold courage when he is sure that endurance will make victory a certainty. But all this is no proof that God hears and answers Prayer; if it were so, it would prove also that the Virgin Mother, and all the saints, and Buddha, and Brahma, and Vishnu were alike hearers and answerers of Prayer. In all cases the sincere worshipper gains strength and comfort, and finds the same "answer" to his Prayer. Yet surely no one will contend that all these are "Prayer-hearing and Prayer-answering" Gods? This fancied answer is not a proof of the truth of the worshipper's belief, but is only a proof _of his conviction of its truth_; not the soundness of the belief, but the sincerity of the conviction, is proved by the glow and ardour which succeed the act of Prayer. All the dormant energies are aroused; the soul's whole strength is put forth; the worshipper is warmed by the fire struck from his own heart, and is thrilled with the electricity which resides in his own frame. So far, Prayer is found to be answered, just as every strong conviction, however erroneous, is found to confer increased strength and vigour on him who possesses it. But, excepting this, Prayer is not proved to be efficacious when tested by experience. How many Prayers have gone up to the Father in heaven from his children overwhelmed in the sea, and drowning in floods, and encircled by fire? How many passionate appeals of patriots and martyrs, of exiles and of slaves? How many cries of anguish from beside the beds of the dying, and the fresh graves of the newly-dead? In vain the wife's wail for the husband, the mother's pleading for the only child; no voice has answered "Weep not;" no command has replied, "Rise up;" the Prayers have fallen back on the breaking heart, poor white-winged birds that have tried to fly towards heaven, but have only sunk back to earth, their breasts bruised and bleeding from striking against the iron bars of a pitiless and relentless fate. So continually has Prayer failed to win an answer, that, in spite of the clearness and the force of the Bible promises in regard to it, Christians have found themselves obliged to limit their extent, and to say that God judges whether or no it will be beneficial for the worshipper to grant the petition, and if the Prayer be a mistaken one he will, in mercy, withhold the implored-for boon. Of course, this prevents Prayer from being ever tested by experience at all, because whenever a Prayer remains unanswered the reply is ready, that "it was not according to the will of God." This means, that we cannot test the value of Prayer in any way; we must accept its worth wholly as a matter of faith; we must pray because we are bidden to do so, and fulfil an useless form which affords no tangible results. In this melancholy position are we landed by an appeal to experience, by which we are challenged to test the value of Prayer. The answer of history is even yet more emphatic. The Ages of Prayer are the Dark Ages of the world. When learning was crushed out, and superstition was rampant, when wisdom was called witchcraft, and priests ruled Europe, then Prayer was always rising up to God from the countless monasteries where men dwarfed themselves into monks, and from the convents where women shrivelled up into nuns. The sound of the bell that called to Prayer was never silent, and the time that was needed for work was wasted in Prayer, and in the straining to serve God the service of man was neglected and despised. There is one obvious fact that throws into bright relief the absurdity of Prayer. Two people pray for exactly opposite things; whose Prayers are to be answered? Two armies ask for victory; which is to be crowned? Amongst ourselves, now, the Church is divided into two opposing camps, and while the Ritualists appeal to God for protection, the Evangelical clamour also for his aid. To which is he to bend his ear? which Prayer is he to answer? Both appeal to his promises; both urge that his honour is pledged to them by the word he has given; yet it is simply impossible that he should grant the Prayer of both, because the Prayer of the one is the direct contradiction of the prayer of the other. Again, none of the believers in Prayer appear to consider, that, if it were true that Prayer is so powerful a weapon--if it were true that by Prayer man can prevail with God--it would then be madness ever to pray at all. To pray would be as dangerous a thing as to put a cavalry sword into the hands of a child just strong enough to lift it, but unable to control it, or to understand the danger of its blows. Who can tell all the results to himself and to others which might flow from a granted Prayer, a Prayer made in all honesty of purpose, but in ignorance and short-sightedness? If Prayers really brought answers it would be most wickedly reckless ever to pray at all, as wickedly reckless as if a man, to quench a moment's thirst, pierced a hole in a reservoir of water which overhung a town. But, in spite of all arguments, in spite of all that reason can urge and that logic can prove, it is probable that many will still cling to the practice of Prayer, craving for the relief it gives to the feelings of the heart, however much it may be condemned by the judgment of the intellect. They seem to think that they will lose a great inspiration to work if they give up "communion with God," and that they will miss the glow of ardour which they deem they have caught from Prayer. But surely it may fairly be urged on them that no real good can arise from continuing a practice which it is impossible to defend when it is carefully analysed. Prayer is as the artificial stimulant which excites, but does not strengthen, and lends a factitious brightness, which is followed by deeper depression. Those who have prayed most have often stated that "seasons of special blessing" are generally followed by "special temptations of Satan." The reaction follows on the unreal excitation, and the soul that has been flying in heaven grovels upon earth. To the patient who is weak and depressed from long illness, the bright air of the morning seems chill and cold, and he yearns for the warmth of the artificial stimulants to which he has grown accustomed; yet better for him is it to gain health from the morning breezes, and stimulus from the glad clear sunshine, than to yield to the craving which is a relic of his disease. If they who find in communion with God a sweetness which is lacking when they commune with their brethren--if they who cultivate dependence on God would learn the true dependence of man on man--if they who yearn for the invisible would concentrate their energies on the visible--then they would soon find a sweetness in labour which would compensate for the languor of Prayer, and they would learn to draw from the joy of serving men, and from the serene strength of an earnest life, a warmth of inspiration, a passion of fervour, an exhaustless fount of energy, beside which all Prayer-given ardour would seem dull and nerveless, in the glow of which the fancied warmth of God-communion would seem as the pale cold moonshine in the glory of the rising sun. CONSTRUCTIVE RATIONALISM. IT is a common complaint against the Rationalistic school of thought that they can destroy but cannot construct; that they tear down, but do not build up; that they are armed only with the axe and with the sword, and not with the trowel and the mason's line. "We have had enough of negations," is a common cry; "give us something positive." Much of this feeling is foolish and unreasonable; the negation of error, where error is supreme, is necessary before the assertion of truth can become possible. Before a piece of ground can be sown with wheat, it must be cleared of the weeds which infest it; before a solid house can be built in the place of a crumbling ruin, the ancient rubbish must be carried off, and the rotten walls must be thoroughly pulled down. Destructive criticism is necessary and wholesome; the heavy battering-ram of science must thunder against the walls of the churches; the swift arrows of logic must rain on the black-robed army; the keen lance-points of irony must pierce through the leather jerkin of superstition. But the destruction of orthodox Christianity being accomplished, there remains for the Rationalist much more to do. He has to frame a code which shall rule in the place of the code of Moses and of Jesus; he has to found a morality which shall replace the morality of the Bible; he has to construct an ideal which shall be as attractive as the ideal of the Churches; he has to proclaim laws which shall supersede revelation: in a word, he has to build up the religion of humanity. As the Rationalist looks abroad over the contending armies of faith and of reason, he gradually recognises the fact that his new religion, if it is to serve as a bond of union, must stand on stable ground, apart from the warring hosts. Round the idea of God rages the hottest din of the battle. The old, popular, and traditional belief is wounded to the death, and is slowly breathing out its life. The philosophical subtleties of the metaphysician are beyond the grasp of folk busied chiefly with common work. The new school of Theists, believers in a "spiritual personal God," stands on a slippery incline, whereon is no firm foothold. It simply spreads over the abysses of thought a sentimental veil of poetical imaginings, and bows down before a beatified and celestial man, whose image it has sculptured out of the thought-marble of its sublimest aspirations. If the idea of God be thus warred over, thus changing, thus uncertain, it is plain that the new religion cannot find its foundation on this shifting and disputed ground. While theologians are wrangling about God, plain men are looking wistfully over the shattered idols to find the ideal to which they can cling. The new religion, then, studying the varying phases of the God-idea, seizes on its one permanent element, its idealised resemblance to man, its embodiment of the highest humanity; and, grasping this thought, it turns to men and says, "In loving God you are only loving your own highest selves; in conforming yourselves to the Divine image you are only conforming yourselves to your own highest ideals; the unknown God whom you ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you; in serving your family, your neighbours, your country, you serve this unknown God; this God is Humanity, the race to which you belong; this is the veiled God whom all generations have worshipped in heaven, while he trod the world around them in every human form; this is the only God, the God who is manifest in the flesh: "-- "There is no God, O son, If thou be none." The first great constructive effort of the new religion is thus to transform the idea of God, and to turn all men's aspirations, all men's hopes, all men's labours, into this channel of devotion to humanity, that so the practical outcome of the new motive power may be a steady flow of loving and energetic work for man, work that begins in the family, and spreads, in ever-widening circles, over the whole race. This transformation of the central figure necessarily transforms also the whole idea of religion, which must take its colour from that centre. Revelation from heaven being no longer possible, its place must be supplied by study on earth: revealed laws being no longer attainable, it becomes the duty of the Humanitarian to discover natural laws. This duty is the more cheering from the manifest failure of revealed laws, as exemplified in popular Christianity. "Law," in the mouth of the believer in revelation, means a command issued by God; the "laws of Nature" are the rules laid down by God, in accordance with which all things move; they are the behests of the Creator of Nature, the controlling wires of the mechanism, held by the hand of God. But "law" in the mouth of the Rationalist means nothing more than the observed and registered invariable sequence of events. Thus it is said "a stone falls to the ground in obedience to the law of gravitation." By the "law of gravitation" the Christian would mean that God had ordered that all stones _should_ so fall. The Rationalist would simply mean that all stones _do_ so fall, and that invariable sequence he calls the "law of gravitation." Obedience to the laws of Nature replaces, in the religion of Humanity, obedience to the laws of God. As there is no inspired revelation of these laws the student must carefully and patiently ascertain them, either by direct observation, or most often, in the books of those who have devoted their lives to the elucidation of Nature's code. Scientific books will, in fact, replace the Bible, and by the study of the laws of health, both physical, moral, and mental, the Rationalist will ascertain the conditions which surround him to which he must conform himself if he desires to retain physical, moral, and mental vigour. This difference in the authority which is obeyed leads naturally to the difference of morality between the orthodox Christian and the Rationalist. Christian morality consists of obedience to the will of God, as revealed in the Bible. The grand difficulty regarding this obedience is, that the will of Jehovah, as revealed to the Jews at different times, varies so much from age to age that the most zealous Christian must fail to obey all the conflicting behests prefaced by a "Thus saith the Lord." God would, of course, never command any one to do a thing which was directly wrong, yet God distinctly said: "Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live;" and God sanctioned Slavery, and God commanded Persecution on account of religious convictions: true, Christians plead that all these laws are obsolete, but what is that but to acknowledge that revealed morality is obsolete, _i.e._, that it was never revealed by God at all. For a command to persecute must be either right or wrong: if right, it is the duty of Christians to obey it, and to raise once more the stakes of Smithfield for heretics and unbelievers; if wrong, it can never have come from God at all, and must be blasphemously attributed to him. In God, Christians tell us there is no changeableness, neither shadow of turning; then what pleased him in long past ages would please him still, and what he commanded yesterday would be right to-day. Thus fatally does revealed morality fail when tested, and it becomes impossible to know which particular "will of God" he desires that we should obey. Now, once more, the Rationalist experiences the advantages of his new motive-power; he has to serve Humanity, and is unencumbered by the difficulties attendant upon "pleasing God." Not the pleasure of God, but the benefit of man, is the basis of his morality. Revealed morality is as a child's garment, into-which one should try to force the limbs of a full-grown man; it is the morality of the past stereotyped for the use of today, and is clumsy, archaic, half-illegible from age. Rational morality, on the other hand, grows with the growth of those who follow its dictates; its errors are corrected by wider experience, its omissions are filled up by the irrefragable arguments of necessity. It is founded upon the needs of man; his happiness is its sole object; not only his physical happiness, not only the fulfilment of the desires of the body for ease and comfort, but the satisfaction also of all the cravings of his intellectual and moral powers, the love of truth, the love of beauty, the love of justice. A morality founded on this basis can never be overthrown; one sure test it affords whereby to decide on the morality or the immorality of any-given action: "Is it useful to man? does it tend to the promotion of human happiness?" The will of God is doubtful, and is always disputable, and therefore it can never form the foundation of a universal system of morality, a code which shall unite all men in obedience. A code which shall unite all men must needs be founded on those human interests which are common to all men. Such a code is the utilitarian. For man's happiness is on earth, and can be known and understood; the promotion of that happiness is an intelligible aim; the test of morality may be applied by every one; it is a system which everybody can understand, and which the common sense of each must approve, for by it man lives for man, man labours for man, the efforts of each are directed to the good of all, and only in the happiness of the whole can the happiness of each part be perfected and complete. There is much popular misconception with regard to utilitarianism: "utility" is supposed to include only those material things which are useful to the body, and which tend to increase physical comfort. But utility includes all art; for art cultures the taste and refines the nature. It thus adds a thousand charms to life, deepens, softens, purifies human happiness. Utility includes all study, for study-awakens and trains the intellectual faculties, and therefore increases the sources of happiness possible to man. Utility includes all science; for science is man's true providence, foreseeing the dangers that threaten him, and shielding him against their shock. Science leads man up to those intellectual heights where to stand awhile and breathe in the keen, clear air after dwelling in the turbid atmosphere of daily toils and cares, is as the refreshment of the pure mountain wind to the weary inhabitant of the crowded city streets.. Utility includes all love and search of truth; for the discovery of a truth is the keenest pleasure of which the noblest mind is susceptible. It includes all sublimest virtue; for self-sacrifice and devotion yield the purest forms-of happiness to be found on earth. In a word, utility includes everything which is _useful_ in building up a grander manhood and womanhood, wiser, purer, truer, tenderer than that we have to-day. Such is the basis of the morality which is to supersede the supernatural morality of the Churches; a morality which is: for this life and for this world, since we have this life, and are in this world; a morality which seeks to ensure human happiness on this side the grave, instead of dreaming of it on the other side; a morality which endeavours to carve solid heavens here, instead of seeing them in distant cloud-lands, white and soft and beautiful, but still only clouds. One vast advantage of this humanitarian philosophy is that it endeavours to train men into unselfishness, instead of following the popular Christian plan of making self the central thought. Self is appealed to at every step in the New Testament: if we are bidden to rejoice under persecution, it is because "great is your reward in heaven;" if urged to pray, it is because "thy Father, which seeth in secret, himself shall reward thee openly;" if to be charitable, it is because at the judgment it will bring a kingdom as the recompense; if to resign home or wealth, it is because we shall receive "a hundredfold in this present life, and in the world to come life everlasting;" even the giver of a cup of cold water "shall in no wise lose his reward." It is one system of bribes, mingling the thought of personal pain with every effort of human improvement and human happiness, and thereby directly fostering and encouraging selfishness and gilding it over with the name of religion and piety. Humanitarian morality, on the other hand, while utilising the natural and rightful craving for individual happiness as a motive-power, endeavours to accustom each to look to, and to labour for, the happiness of all, making that general happiness the aim of life. Thus it gradually weakens the selfish tendencies and encourages the social, holding up ever the noble ideal by the very contemplation of its beauty transforming its votaries into its likeness. "Vivre pour au-trui," is the motto of the utilitarian code; and in so living the fullest and happiest life for self is really attained; so closely drawn are the bands that bind men together that happiness and unhappiness re-act from one to another, and as the general standard of happiness rises higher and higher, the wheels of social life run more and more easily, with less of friction, less of jar, and therefore with increased comfort to each individual member. While Christianity developes selfishness by its continual cry of "Save thyself," Utilitarianism gradually developes unselfishness by the nobler whisper, "Save others, and in so doing thou shalt thyself be saved." Delivered from every debasing fear of an unknowable and inscrutable power, Utilitarianism works with a single heart and a single eye for the happiness of the race, stamping with the brand of "wrong" every act the general repetition of which would be harmful to society, or the tendency of which is injurious, and sealing as "right" every act which brightens human life, and makes the general happiness more perfect, and more widely spread. As morality rises higher and higher, human judgment will grow keener and purer, and in the times to come probably many an act now approved on all sides will be seen to be harmful, and will therefore become marked as immoral, while, on the other hand, acts that are now considered wrong, because "offensive to God," will be seen to be beneficial to man, and will therefore be accepted by all as moral. Thus Utilitarian morality can never be a bar to progress, for it will become higher and nobler as man mounts upwards. Revealed morality is as a milestone on the road of the world's onward march: it marks how far the world had travelled when its tables of law were first set up in its place: as a milestone, it is useful, interesting, and instructive, and none would desire to destroy it; but if the milestone be removed from its post as a mark of distance, and be laid across the road as a barrier which none must overclimb in days to come, then it becomes necessary for the pioneers of progress to hew it to pieces that men may go on their way unchecked, and this revealed morality now lies across the upward path of the world, and must be broken in pieces with the hammer of logic and the axe of common sense, so that we may press ever higher up the mountain of progress, whose summit is hid in everlasting cloud. And what has constructive Rationalism to say to us, when we stand face to face with the mighty destroyer of all living things? "Your creed may do well enough to live by," say-objectors, "but is it good to die by?" A creed that is good in life must needs be good in death, and never yet was a hero-life closed by a coward death. What can better smooth the bed of the dying man than the knowledge that the world is the happier for his living, that he leaves it better than he found it, that he has helped to raise and to purify it? What easier pillow to rest the dying head on than the memory of a useful life? The Rationalist has no fear lurking around his death-bed; no lurid gleams from a hell on the other side lighten around him as his breath begins to fail; no angry God frowns on him from the great white throne; no devil stands beside him to drag him down into the bottomless pit; quietly, peacefully, happily, without fear and without dread, he passes out of life. As calmly as the tired child lies down to sleep in its mother's arms, and passes into dreamless unconsciousness, so calmly does the Rationalist lie down in the arms of the mighty mother, and pass into dreamless unconsciousness on her bosom. To the Rationalist, the future of the race replaces in thought the future of the individual; for that he thinks, for that he plans, for that he labours. A heaven upon earth for those who come after him, such is his inspiration to effort and to self-devotion. He seeks the smile of man instead of the smile of God, and finds in the thought of a happier humanity the spur that Christians seek in the thought of pleasing God. His hopes for the future spread far and wide before him, but it is a future to be inherited by his children in this same world in which he himself lives; freer and fuller life, wider knowledge, deepened and more polished culture--all these are to be the heritage of the generations to come, and it is his to make that heritage the richer by every grander thought and nobler deed that he can do to-day. Let us place side by side the dogmas of Christianity and the motive power of the Rationalist, and see which of these two is the gladder life-moulder of man. Christianity has a God in heaven, all powerful and all-wise, who in ages gone by made the universe and fore-ordained all that should happen in time to come; who created man and woman with a serpent to tempt them, and made for them the opportunity of falling; who, having made the opportunity, forced them to take it. It is said that Adam and Eve were free agents, but they were nothing of the kind, for the lamb was slain from the foundation of the world: the sacrifice was offered before the sin was committed; and the sacrifice being made, the sin was its necessary consequence. If Adam had been free, he might not have sinned, and then there would have been a slain lamb and no sin for which he could atone; but God, having provided the Saviour, was obliged to provide the sinner, and therefore he made the tree of knowledge and sent the tempter to entrap the parents of mankind. They fell, according to God's predestination, and thus became accursed, and then the waiting Redeemer was revealed, and "the divine scheme" was complete. Accursed for a sin in which they had no part, the children of Adam are born with an evil nature, and being evil they act evilly, and thereby sink lower and lower; at their feet yawns a bottomless pit, and the road to it is broad, easy, and pleasant; above their heads shines a luxurious heaven, and the path is narrow, steep, and rugged. Their nature--God-given to all--drags them downwards; the Holy Ghost--God given to some--drags them upwards: immortality is their inheritance, and "few there be that find" immortal happiness, while "many there be that go in" at the gate of hell to immortal woe; a severance, bitter beyond all earthly bitterness of parting, is in store for all, since, at the great day of judgment, "one shall be taken and the other left," and there will not be a family some of whose members will not be lost for ever. Eternal life, to the vast majority, is to mean eternal torment, and they are to be "salted with fire," burning yet never burnt up, consuming ever but never consumed. Towards the gaining of heaven, towards the avoidance of hell, all human effort must be turned. "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" All life must be one striving "to enter in at the strait gate, for many shall seek to enter in and shall not be able;" poverty, oppression, misery, what matters it? the "light affliction which is but for a moment worketh a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." Thus this world is forgotten for the sake of another, crushed out of sight beneath the overwhelming grandeur of eternity; the spur to human effort is blunted by the infinitesimal importance of time as compared with eternity; bad government, bad laws, injustice, tyranny, pauperism, misery, all these things need not move us, for "we seek a better country, that is a heavenly;" we are "strangers and pilgrims;" "here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come;" "our citizenship is in heaven," and there also is our home. True, Christians do not carry out into daily life these phrases and thoughts of their creed, but in so much as they do not they are the less Christian, and the more imbued with the spirit of Rationalism. Rationalists they are, the vast majority, six days in the week, and are only Christians on the Sunday. To come out of, these old world dreams into Rationalism is like coming into the open air after a hothouse. Rationalism clears away the terrible God of orthodoxy, the fall, the serpent, the Saviour, the hell, the devil. "Work, toil, struggle," it cries to man; "the ills around you are not the appointment of God, not the effects of his curse; they arise from your own ignorance, and may all be cleared away by your own study, and your own effort. Salvation? Yes, you need saviours, but the saviours must save you from earthly woes and not from the wrath of God; save yourselves, by thought, by wisdom, by earnestness. Redemption? yes, you need redeeming, but the redemption you want is from vice, from ignorance, from poverty, and must be wrought out by human effort. Prayer? yes, you need praying for, but the prayer you want is work compelling the result; not crying out for what you desire, but winning it by labour and by toil. The world stretches wide before you, capable of paying you a thousandfold for all you do for it. Life is in your hands, full of all glorious possibilities; throw away your dreams of heaven, and make heaven here; leave aside visions of the life to come, and make beautiful the life which is." Full of hope, full of joy, strong to labour, patient to endure, mighty to conquer, goes forth the new glad creed into the sad grey Christian world; at her touch men's faces soften and grow purer, and women's eyes smile instead of weeping; at last, at last, the heir arises to take to himself his own, and the negation of the usurped sovereignty of the popular and traditional God over the world developes into the affirmation of the rightful monarchy of man. THE BEAUTIES OF THE PRAYER-BOOK. MORNING PRAYER. "HABIT, is second nature," saith a wise old saw, so it must be from custom that it has become natural to Church people to repeat placidly, week after week, the same palpable self-contradictions and absurdities. A sensible, shrewd man of business puts away his papers on the Saturday night, and apparently locks his mind up with them in his desk; certain it is that he "Goes on Sunday to the church, And sits among his boys; He hears the parson pray and preach," and yet never discovers that his boys are repeating the most contradictory responses, while the parson is enunciating as axioms the most startling propositions. When the preliminary silence in church is broken by the "sentences," the first words that fall from the clergyman's lips are a distinct declaration of the conditions of salvation: "When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive;" and we are further instructed as to our sins, that "if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." These very plain statements take high and comprehensible ground. God is supposed to desire that man should be righteous, and is, therefore, naturally satisfied when "the wicked forsakes his way and the unrighteous man his path." We proceed, then, to confess our sins, and after Mrs. A., whose eyes are straying after her neighbour's bonnet, has confessed that she is erring and straying like a lost sheep, and Mrs. B., who is devising a way to make an old dress look new, has owned plaintively that she is following the devices of her own heart; and Squire C, of the rubicund visage and broad shoulders, has sonorously remarked that there is no health in him, and his son, with the joyous face, has cheerfully acknowledged that he is a miserable sinner--after these very appropriate and reasonable confessions, to a Divine Being who "seeth the heart," and may therefore be supposed to take them for what they are worth, have been duly gone through, we are somewhat puzzled to hear the clergyman announce that God "pardoneth and absolveth all them that truly repent, _and unfeignedly believe His holy Gospel._" What is this sudden appendix to the before-declared conditions of salvation? We had been told that if we confessed our sins God's faithfulness and justice would cause him to forgive us; here we have duly done so, and surely the language is sufficiently strong; we are yet suddenly called upon to believe a "holy Gospel" as a preliminary to forgiveness. But we are not yet, to use a colloquialism, out of the wood; for while we are moodily meditating on this infraction of our contract the time slips on unobserved, and, it being a feast-day, we are startled by a stern voice conveying the cheerful intelligence, "Whosoever will be saved, _before all things_, it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which Faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly." "Before all things?" before repentance? before turning away from our wickedness? before doing that which is lawful and right? And what is this "Faith" which we must keep whole and undefiled if we would save our souls alive? A bewildering jumble of triplets and units, mingled in inextricable confusion. But as he that "will be saved must thus think of the Trinity," we will try and disentangle the thread of salvation. "The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God," says the parson. "They are not three Gods, but one God," shout out the people. We are compelled "to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be God and Lord," reiterates the parson. "We are forbidden by the Catholic Religion to say there be three Gods or three Lords," obstinately persist the people. Then, after some rather intrusive particulars about the family (and very intricate) relations of the Father to the Son, and of both to the Holy Ghost, we are told that "so"--why so?--"there is one Father, not three Fathers, one Son, not three Sons, one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts." In so far as we have been able to follow the meaning, or rather the no-meaning, of the preceding sentences, no one said anything about three Fathers, three Sons, or three Holy Ghosts. The definite article _the_ had been used in each case with a singular noun. We imagine the clause must have been inserted because all ideas as to the meaning; of numerals must have been by this time so hopelessly lost by the congregation, that it became necessary to remark that "the Father" meant one Father, and not three. The list of necessaries for salvation is not yet complete, for "furthermore it is necessary to everlasting salvation, that he also believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ." So far, then, from its being true that the wicked man who turns from his sins shall save his soul alive, we find that our sinner must also believe the Gospel, must accept contradictory arithmetical assertions, must think of the Trinity in a way which makes thought a ludicrous impossibility, and must believe _rightly_ all the details of the method by which a Divine Being became a human being. If a sinner chances to go out of church after the first sentence, and from being a drunkard becomes temperate, from being a liar becomes truthful, from being a profligate becomes chaste, and foolishly imagines that he is thereby doing God's will, and thus saving his soul alive, he will certainly, according to the Athanasian Creed, wake up from his pleasant delusion to find himself in everlasting fire. As sceptics, we need offer no-opinion as to which is right, the creed or the text; we only suggest that both cannot be correct, and that it would be more satisfactory if the Church, in her wisdom, would make up her venerable mind which is the proper path, and then keep in it. After all this, we are in no way surprised to learn from a collect that being saved is dependent on quite a new support, namely, on the knowledge we have of God. How many more things may be necessary to salvation it is impossible to say at this point, but the office for Morning Prayer, at any rate, gives us no more. It would be rash to conclude, however, that we have fulfilled all, for the Church has some more scattered up and down her Prayer-Book; the end of all which double-dealing is, that we can never be sure that we have really fulfilled every condition; sad experience teaches us that when the Church says, "do so-and-so, and you shall be saved," she is, meanwhile, whispering under her breath, "provided you also do everything else." We fail also to see the reasonableness of the constant cry, "for the sake of Jesus Christ," or "through Jesus Christ." We ask that we may lead "a godly, righteous, and sober life" _for His sake_; but this is just what we are told God wishes already, so why should He be asked to grant it for some one else's sake, as though He were unwilling that we should be righteous, and can only be coaxed into allowing us to be so by a favourite son? In the same way we are to come to God's "eternal joy," through Jesus, which is, by the way, another of these endless conditions of salvation. We ask to be defended from our enemies "through the might of Jesus Christ," as though God Himself was not strong enough for the task; and God is urged to send down His healthful Spirit for the "honour of our advocate and Mediator," although that very advocate told His disciples that God would always give that spirit to those who asked for it. To the outside critic, these continual references to Jesus, as though God grudged all good gifts, appear very dishonouring to the "Father in Heaven." Is it considered necessary to press God vehemently to hurry himself? "O God, make speed to save us. O Lord, make haste to help us." Will not God, of his own accord, do things at the best possible time? and further, is it possible for a Divine Being to make haste? It will, perhaps, be considered hypercritical to object to the versicles: "Give peace in our time, O Lord, because there is none other that fighteth for us but only thou, O God." What more do they want than an almighty reinforcement? "None other?" Well, we should have fancied that God and somebody else were really more than were needed. At any rate it sounds very insulting to say to God, "please give us peace, since we cannot count on any assistance except yours." We have nothing to say about the prayers for the Royal Family, except that they do not show any very attractive results, and that it must have much edified George IV. to hear himself spoken of as a "most religious and gracious king." Never surely was a family so much prayed for, but _cui bono?_ If the "Bishops, Curates, and all congregations" truly please God, he is about, the only person that they succeed in pleasing, for the Bishops abuse the clergy, and the clergy abuse the Bishops, and the congregations abuse both. Of the last prayer, we must note the exceeding failure of the petition to grant the Church knowledge of truth, and we cannot help marvelling why, if they really desire to know the truth, they so invariably frown at and endeavour to crush out every earnest search after truth, every effort for clearer light. Of all things that can happen to the Church, the knowledge of the truth would be the least "expedient for" her, for she would fade away before the sunshine of truth as ghosts are said to fly at the cockcrow which announces the dawn. A criticism on the office of Morning Prayer is scarcely complete without a few words upon the canticles appointed to be daily sung by the faithful to the glory of God. Any thing more ludicrously absurd than these from the lips of our congregations it would indeed be difficult to imagine. The _Venite_ (Ps. xcv.) is the first we are called upon to take part in, and the first shock comes when we find ourselves-chanting "The Lord is a great God and a _great king above all gods_." "Above all Gods!" what terrible heresy have we been unwittingly committing ourselves to? Is there not only one God--or, at least, it may be three--but, if three, they are co-equal, and no one is above the other; who are these "all gods" that "the Lord" is "king above?" We remember for a moment that when this psalm was written the gods of the nations around Israel were believed to have a real existence, and that, therefore, it was no inconsistency in the mouth of the Hebrew to rejoice that his national god was ruler above the gods of other peoples. This explanation is reasonable, but then it does not explain why we, who believe not in this multiplicity of deities should pretend that we do. Our equanimity is not restored by the next phrase, "In his hand are all the corners of the earth;" but the earth is a globe, and has no corners. A misty remembrance floats through our mind of Iræneus stating that there were four gospels because there were four corners to the earth and four winds that blew; but since his time things have changed, and the corners have been smoothed off. Is it quite honest to say in God's praise a thing which we know to be untrue, and must we be unscientific because we are devotional? We then hear about our fathers being forty years in the wilderness, although we know that they were not there at all, unless the people--generally looked upon as amiable lunatics--are correct, who assert that the English nation is descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel. Why should we pretend to God that we are Jews, when both He and we know perfectly well that we are nothing of the kind? We come to the _Te Deum_, said to have been composed by S. Ambrose for the baptism of S. Augustine:--"To thee cherubin and seraphin continually do cry." Putting aside the manifest weariness both to God and to the cryers of the never-ceasing repetition of these words, and the degrading idea of God implied in the thought that it gives Him any pleasure to be perpetually assured of His holiness, as though it were a doubtful matter--we cannot help inquiring, "Who are these cherubin and seraphin?" According to the Bible, they are six-winged creatures, who cover their faces with two wings, and their feet with two more, and fly with the remaining pair: they may be seen in pictures of the ark, balancing themselves on their feet-covering wings, and preventing themselves from falling by steadying each other with another pair. "Lord God of Sabaoth," or of "Hosts;" is this a reasonable name for one supposed to be a "God of peace?" The elder Jewish and the Christian ideas of God here come into direct collision: according to one, "the Lord is a man of war" (Ex. xv.), while the other represents him as "the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace" (Isai. ix.). The _Te Deum_ midway changes the object of its song, and addresses itself to the Son instead of to the Father. How far this is permissible is much disputed, for certain it is that in the early ages of Christianity prayer was addressed to the Father _only_, and that one of the Fathers* sharply rebukes those who pray to the Son, since they thereby deprive the Father of the honour due to Him alone. How this can be, when Father and Son are one, we do not pretend to explain. Then ensue those curious details regarding Christ which we shall touch upon in dealing later with the Apostles' Creed. We find ourselves, presently, asking to be kept "this day without sin;" yet, we are perfectly well aware, all the time, that God will do nothing of the kind, and that all Christians believe that they sin every day. Why does the Church teach her children to sing this in the morning, and then prepare a "confession" for the evening, unless she feels perfectly sure that God will pay no attention to her prayer? The wearisome reiteration in the _Benedicite_ is so thoroughly recognised that it is very seldom heard in the church, while the _Benedictus_ (Luke i.) is open to the same charge of unreality as is the _Venite_, that it is a song for Jews only. * Origen. Many other faults and absurdities might be pointed cut which disfigure Morning Prayer, even if the whole idea of prayer be left untouched. The prayers of the-Prayer-Book are dishonouring to God from their childishness, their unreality, their folly, their conflict with sound knowledge. Allowing that prayer may be reasonable, these prayers are unreasonable; allowing that prayer may be reverent, these prayers are irreverent; allowing that prayer may be sincere, these prayers are insincere. They are fragments of an earlier age transplanted into the present, and they are as ludicrous as would be men walking about in our streets to-day clad in the armour of the Middle Ages, the ages of Darkness and of Prayer. EVENING PRAYER. The Church, in her wisdom, fearing that the quaint conceits and impossibilities which we have referred to, the-- "Jewels which adorn the spouse of the eternal glorious King," should not be sufficiently appreciated and admired by her children, if presented to their adoration once only on every day, has appointed for the use of the faithful an office of Evening Prayer, which, in its main features, is identical with that which is to be "said or sung" each morning. Sentences, address, confession, absolution, Lord's Prayer, and versicles, are all exactly reproduced, and Psalms and Lessons follow in due course, varying from day to day. To take the whole Psalter, and analyse it, would be a task too-long for our own patience, or for that of our readers, so we only pick out a few salient absurdities, and ask why English men and women should be found singing sentences which have no beauty to recommend them, and no meaning to dignify them. We will not lay stress on the quaintness of a congregation standing up and gravely singing: "Or ever your pots be made hot with thorns, so let indignation vex him, even as a thing that is raw" (Ps. lviii.); we will not ask what the clergyman means when he reads out to his congregation: "Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove." (Ps. lxviii.) These are isolated passages, which a pen might erase, retaining the major part of the Psalter: we go further, and challenge it as a whole, asserting that it is ludicrously inappropriate as a song-book for sensible people, even although those people may be desirous of praying to, or praising God. Our strictures are here levelled, not at prayer as prayer, but simply at this particular form of prayer. In the first place the Psalter is written only for a single nation; it is full of local allusions, and of references of Israelitish history, which are only reasonable in the mouth of a Jew. With what amount of sense can an English congregation every 15th evening of the month sing such a Psalm as the lxxviii., recounting all the marvels of the plagues and of the exodus, or on the following day plead with God to help them, because "the heathen are come into Thine inheritance; Thy holy temple have they defiled, and made Jerusalem an heap of stones?" (Ps. lxxix.) Is there any respect to God in telling him that "we are become an open shame to our enemies; a very scorn and derision unto them that are round about us" (v. 4), when, as a matter of simple fact, the speakers are become nothing of the kind? Can it be thought to be consistent with reverence to God to make these extraordinary assertions in praying to Him, and then to base upon them the most urgent pleas for His immediate aid? for we find the congregation proceeding: "Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Thy Name; O deliver us and be merciful unto our sins for Thy Name's sake.... O let the vengeance of Thy servant's blood which is shed be openly shewed upon the heathen in our sight. O let the sorrowful sighing of the prisoners come before Thee; according to the greatness of Thy power, preserve Thou those that are appointed to die" (w. 9, 10, 11). Now in all sober seriousness what does this mean? Is this addressed to God, or is it not? If it be, is it right and fit to address to him words that are absolutely untrue, and to cry urgently for aid which is not required, and which He cannot possibly give? If it be not, is it decent to solemnly sing or read phrases seemingly addressed to God, but really not intended to be noticed by him, phrases which use His name as though an appeal to Him were seriously made? It cannot be healthy to juggle thus with words, and to make emotional prayers which are utterly devoid of all meaning. Some devout persons talk very freely about the wickedness of blasphemy, but is not that kind of game with God, in wailings which are devoid of reality, appeals not intended to be answered, a far more real blasphemy in the mouth of any one who believes in Him as a hearer of prayer, than the so-called blasphemy of those who distinctly assert that to them the popular and traditional "God" is a phantom, and that they see no reason to believe in His existence? Passing from this graver aspect of the use of the Psalter as a congregational song-book, we notice how purely comic many of the psalms would appear to us had not the habit-fashion of our lives accustomed us to repeat them in a parrot-like manner, without attaching the smallest meaning to the words so glibly recited. "Every night wash I my bed and water my couch with my tears" (Ps. vi.), is sung innocently by laughing maiden and merry youth, the bright current of whose life is undimmed by the shadow of grief. "Bring unto the Lord, O ye mighty, bring young rams unto the Lord" (Ps. xxix.), is solemnly read out by the country clergyman, who would be beyond measure astonished if his direction were complied with. Then we find the congregation making the certainly untrue assertion: "Moab is my wash-pot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe; Philistia, be thou glad of me" (Ps. lx.). At another time they cry out, "O, clap your hands together, all ye people" (Ps. xlvii.); they speak of processions which have no existence, "The singers go before, the minstrels follow after, in the midst are the damsels playing on the timbrels" (Ps. lxviii.). Another phase of this Psalter, which is offensive rather than comic, is the habit of swearing and cursing which pervades it; we find Christians, who are bidden to love their enemies, and to bless them that curse them, pouring out curses of the most fearful character, and displaying the most reckless hatred: "The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance; he shall wash his footsteps in the blood of the ungodly" (Ps. lviii.). "Let them fall from one wickedness into another, and not come into Thy righteousness" (Ps. lxix.). A nice prayer, truly, for one man to pray for his brother man, to a holy God who is supposed to desire righteousness in man. Then there is that fearful imprecation in Psalm cix., too long to quote, where the vindictive and cruel anger not only curses the offender himself, but passes on to his children: "Let there be no man to pity him, nor to have compassion upon his fatherless children." Of course, people do not really mean any of these terrible things which they repeat day after day; humanity is too noble to wish to draw down such curses from heaven; the people have outgrown the bad spirit of that cruel age when the Psalter was written, and their hearts have grown more loving; but surely it is not well that men and women should stand on a lower level in their prayers than in their lives; surely the moments, which ought to be the noblest, should not be passed in using language which the speakers would be ashamed of in their daily lives; surely the worship of the Ideal should not be degraded below the practice of the Real, or the notion of God be less lofty than the life of man. By making their worship an unreality, by being less than true in their religious feelings, by using words they do not mean, and by pretending emotions they do not experience, people become trained into insincerity, and lose that rare and beautiful virtue of instinctive and thorough honesty. When the prayer does not echo the yearning of the heart, then the habit grows of not making the word really the representative of the thought, of not making the feeling the measure of the expression. Much of the cant of the day, much of the social insincerity, much of the prevalent unreality, may be laid at the door of this crime of the Churches, of making men speak words which are meaningless to the speaker, and of teaching them to be untrue in the moments which should be the truest and the purest. At another time, we might impeach prayer as a whole; we might argue against it, either as opposed to the unchangeableness and the wisdom of God, if a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering God be believed in, or as utterly futile, and proved worthless by experience. But here we only plead for sincerity in prayer, wherever prayer is practised; we only urge that at least the prayer shall be sincere, and that the lips shall obey the heart. Exactly the same objection applies to the "Canticles," which, in modern lips, are absolutely devoid of sense. What meaning has the "song of the blessed Virgin Mary" from an ordinary English congregation; why should English people talk about God promising His mercy "to our forefathers, Abraham, and his seed for ever," when Abraham is not their forefather at all? Why should they ask God to let them "depart in peace," when they have not the smallest desire to depart at all, and why should they assert to Him that they "have seen Thy salvation," when they have seen nothing of the kind? For the perpetually recurring _Gloria_, one cannot help wondering what it means; when was "the beginning," and is the "it" which was at that period, the "glory" which is wished to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; further, what is the good of wishing glory to Him--or to Them--if He--or They--have always had, and always will have it? When we have heard a congregation reciting the Creed, we have sometimes wondered what meaning they attached to it. "The maker of heaven and earth." Do people ever try to carry the mind back to the time before this "making," and realise the period when nothing existed? Is it possible to imagine things coming into existence, "something" emerging from where before "nothing" was? And then Jesus, the only Son, conceived by the Holy Ghost, who proceeds from Himself, and son, therefore, not of "the Father," but of that spirit which only exists in and through "the Father and the Son." Again, how can a "spirit" conceive a material body? If the whole affair be miraculous, why try to compromise matters with nature, by making this kind of pseudo-father? Surely it would be simpler to leave it a complete miracle, and let the Virgin remain the solitary parent. Except for making the story match better with the elder Greek mythology, there is no need to introduce a godparent in the affair; a child without a father is no more remarkable than a mother who remains a virgin. This attempt at reasonableness only makes the whole more outrageously unnatural, and provokes criticism which would be better avoided. A God, who suffered, was crucified, dead, buried, who rose and ascended, is a complete enigma to us. Could He, the impassive, suffer? could He, the intangible, be crucified? could He, the immortal, die? could He, the omnipresent, be buried in one spot of earth, rise from it, and ascend to some place where he was not the moment before? What kind of God is this who is to "come again" to a place where He is not now? If the answer be, that all this refers to the manhood of Jesus, then we inquire, "Is Christ divided?" if He be one God with the Father, then all He did was done by the Father as much as by Himself; if He did it only as man, then God did not come from heaven to save men; then this is not a divine sacrifice at all; then, a simple man cannot have made an atonement for the sin of the world. And where is "the right hand" of Almighty God? Is Jesus sitting at the right hand of a pure spirit, who has neither body nor parts? and, since He is one with God, is He sitting at his own right hand? Such questions as these are called blasphemous; but we fling back the charge of blasphemy on those who try to compel us to recite a creed so absurd. We decline to repeat words which convey to us no meaning, and not ours the fault, if any inquiry into the meaning produce dilemmas so inconvenient to the orthodox. We are also required to believe in "the" Holy Catholic Church, but we know of no such body. Catholic means universal, and there is no universal Church: to believe in that which does not exist would, indeed, be faith without sight. There is the Orthodox Church, but that is anathematised by the Roman; there is the Roman Church, but that is the "scarlet whore of Babylon" in the eyes of the Protestant; there are the Protestant sects, but they are many and not one, a multiformity in disunity. We are asked to acknowledge a "Communion of Saints," and we see those who severally call themselves saints excommunicating each the other; in a "forgiveness of sins," but Nature tells us of no forgiveness, and we find suffering invariably following on the disregard of law; in a "resurrection of the body," but we know that the body decays, that its gases and its juices are transmuted in the alembic of Nature into new modes of existence; in a "life everlasting," when the dark veil of ignorance envelopes the "Beyond the tomb." Only the thoughtless can repeat the creed; only the ignorant cannot see the impossibilities it professes to believe. The two Collects, which are different in the evening prayer to those used in the morning office, call for no special remark, save that they--in common with all prayers--make no practical difference in human life. The devout Christian is no more defended from "all perils and dangers of this night," than is the most careless atheist; wisely, also, does the Christian, having prayed his prayer, walk carefully round his house, and examine the bolts and bars, mindful that these commonplace defences are more likely to be efficacious against burglars than the protecting arm of the Most High. The remainder of the service is the same as that used in the morning, so calls for no further remark. If only people would take the trouble of _thinking_ about their religion; if only they could be led, or even provoked, into trying to realise that which they say they believe, then the foundations of the popular religion would rapidly be undermined, and the banner of Freethought would soon float proudly over the crumbling ruins of that which was once a Church. THE LITANY. The Litany has a fault which runs throughout the Prayer-Book, that "vain repetition" which, according to the Gospel, was denounced by Jesus of Nazareth; the refrain of "Good Lord, deliver us," and "We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord," recurs with wearisome reiteration, and is repeated monotonously by the congregation, few of whom, probably, would know from what they were requesting deliverance, if the clergyman were to stop and ask so unexpected a question. Gods the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are severally besought to have mercy upon the miserable sinners praying to them, and then the Trinity as a whole is asked to do the same. How far this separation is consistent with the unity of the Godhead, and whether in praying to the Son we do, or do not, implicitly pray to the Father, and _vice versa_, those only can tell us who understand the "mystery of the Holy Trinity." This preamble over, the remainder of the Litany is addressed to "God the Son," who is the "Good Lord" invoked throughout, in spite of His reproof to the young man who knelt to Him, calling Him "Good Master;" "why callest thou Me good?" Various dogmas are alluded to in the succeeding verses in which few educated people now retain any belief. How many really care to be delivered "from the crafts and assaults of the devil," or believe in the existence of the devil at all? He is one of those phantoms that can only be found in the darkness, and which fade away when the sun arises. How many believe in the "everlasting damnation," of the same verse, or really consider themselves in the smallest danger of it? No one who believed in hell could pray to be delivered from it in careless accents, for the smallest chance of that awful doom would force a wail of terror from the lightest-hearted of the listeners. Is it consistent to ask Christ to deliver us from His wrath? if He loved men so much as to die for them, it seems as though a great change must have come over His mind since He ascended into heaven, if He really requires to be pressed so urgently not to "take vengeance," and to spare us and deliver us from His wrath. Which is right, the wrath or the love? for they are not compatible; and does God really like to see people crouching before Him in this fashion, praising His mercy while they tremble lest He should "break out" upon them? If we were inclined to be hypercritical we might suggest that the prayer to be delivered from "all uncharitableness" gives a melancholy proof of the inadequacy of prayer; the answer to it may be read weekly in the _Church Times_ and the _Rock_ more especially in the clerical contributions. The other petitions are also curiously ineffectual: "from all false doctrine, heresy, and schism," is so manifestly accepted at the Throne of Grace in these rationalising days. Jesus is then abjured to deliver His petitioners by the memory of His days upon earth, and we get the ancient idea of an incarnate God, so common to all eastern religions, and the curious picture of a God who is born, circumcised, baptised, fasts, is tempted, suffers, dies, is buried, rises, ascends. How God can do all this remains a mystery, but these suffering, and then conquering gods are familiar to all readers of mythologies; we learn further, that God the Holy Ghost can come to a place where He was not previously, although He is the infinite God, and is therefore omnipresent. Verily, it needs that our faith be great. Being delivered sufficiently, the congregation proceed to a number of additional petitions, the first of which is, unfortunately, as great a failure as the preceding ones, for it prays that the Church may be guided "in the right way;" and having regard to the multiplicity of Churches, each one of which goes doggedly in her own particular way, it is manifest that they can't all be right, as they are all different. Then follow prayers for the Royal Family and the Government, and a general request to "bless and keep all Thy people;" a request which is systematically disregarded. In these days of "bloated armaments" it is at least pleasant to dream in church of there being given "to all nations, unity, peace, and concord." The "pure affection" with which God's Word is received is also perfectly imaginary; those who do not believe it criticise and cavil; those who do believe it go to sleep over it. The last part of these verses seems designed simply to pray for everybody all round, and this being satisfactorily accomplished, we come across another trace of an ancient creed: "Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world;" this is a fragment of sun-worship, alluding to the sun-god, when, entering the sign of the Lamb, he bears away all the coldness and the darkness of the winter months, and gives life to the world. The remainder of the Litany is of the same painfully servile character as the earlier portions; God seems to be regarded as a fierce tyrant, longing to wreak His fury on mankind, and only withheld by incessant entreaties. All possible evils seem to be showering down on the congregation, and, if one closed one's eyes, one could imagine a sad-faced, care-worn, haggard group of Covenanters, or Huguenots, instead of the fashionable crowd that fills the pews; and when one hears them ask that they may be "hurt by no persecutions," one is inclined to mutter grimly: "You are all safe, mother Church, and you are the persecutor, not the persecuted." The service concludes with the same unreal cant about afflictions and infirmities, till one could wish almost to hear something of the style of observation made by an angry nurse to a tiresome child: "If you don't stop crying this minute, I will give you something to cry for." If men would only be as real inside the church as they are outside; if they would think and mean what they say, this pitiful burlesque would speedily be put an end to, and they would no longer offer up that sacrifice of lying lips, which are said to be "an abomination to the Lord." PRAYERS AND THANKSGIVINGS UPON SEVERAL OCCASIONS. These special prayers are, perhaps, on the whole, the most childish of all the childish prayers in the Church-book before us. A prayer "for rain;" a prayer "for fair weather:" it is almost too late to argue seriously against prayers like these, except that uneducated people do still believe that God regulates the weather, day by day, and may be influenced in His arrangements by the prayer of some weather-critic below. Yet it is a literal fact that storm-signals fly before the approaching storm, and prepare people for its coming, so that when it sweeps across our seas the vessels are safely in port, which otherwise would have sunk beneath its fury; meteorology is progressing day by day, and is becoming more and more perfect, but this science--as all other science--would be impossible if God could be influenced by prayer; a storm-signal would be needless if prayer could stay the storm, and would be unreliable if a prayer could suddenly, in mid-ocean, check the course of the tempest. Science is only possible when it is admitted that "God works by laws," _i.e._, that His working at all need not be taken into account. The laws of weather are as unchangeable as all other natural laws, for laws are nothing more than the ascertained sequence of events; not until that sequence has been found by long observation to be invariable, does the sequence receive the title of "a law." As the weather of to-day is the result of the weather of countless yesterdays, the only way in which prayers for change can be effectual is that God should change the whole weather of the past, and so let fresh causes bring about fresh results; but this seems a rather large prayer, to say the least of it, and might, by the carnal mind, be considered as somewhat presumptuous. In the prayers "in the time of dearth and famine" we find the old barbarous notion that men's moral sins are punished by physical "visitations of God," and that God's blessing will give plenty in the place of death: if men work hard they will get more than if they pray hard, and even long ago in Eden God could not make his plants grow, because "there was not a man to till the ground;" at least, so says the Bible. The prayer "in the time of war," is strikingly beautiful, begging the All-Father to abate the pride, assuage the malice, and confound the devices of some of His children for the advantage of the others. The "most religious and gracious" Sovereign recommended to the care of God has been known to be such a king as George IV., but yet clergy and people went on day after day speaking of him thus to a God who "searcheth the hearts." A quaint old Prayer-Book remarks upon this prayer for the High Court of Parliament, that the "right disposing of the hearts of legislators proceeds from God," and that "both disbelief and ignorance must have made fearful progress where this principle is not recognised." In these latter days we fear that disbelief and ignorance of this kind _have_ made very considerable progress. The Thanksgivings run side by side with the prayers in subjects, and are therefore open to the same criticisms. None of these prayers or praises can be defended by reason or by argument; reason shows us their utter folly, and their complete uselessness. Is it wise to persist in forcing into people's lips words which have lost all their meaning, and which the people, if they trouble themselves to think about them at all, at once recognise as false? All danger in progress lies in the obstinate maintenance of things which have outlived their age; just as a stream which flows peacefully on, spreading plenty and fertility in its course, and growing naturally wider and fuller, will--if dammed up too much--burst at length through the dam, and rush forward as a torrent, bearing destruction and ruin in its course; so will gradual and gentle reform in ancient habits change all that needs changing, without abrupt alterations, letting the stream of thought grow wider and fuller; but if all Reform be delayed, if all change be forbidden, if the dam of prejudice, of custom, of habit, bar the stream too long, then thought hurls it down with the crash of revolution, and many a thing is lost in the swirling torrent which might have remained long, and might have beautified human life. Few things call more loudly for Reform than our hitherto loudly-boasted Reformation. THE COMMUNION SERVICE. NO doctrine, perhaps, has done so much to cause disunion in the Church as the doctrine of Communion enshrined in the Lord's Supper. A feast of love in idea, it has been pre-eminently a feast of hate in reality, and the fiercest contests have been waged over this "last legacy of the Redeemer." Down to the time of the Reformation it was the central service of the Church universal, Eastern and Western alike: it was the Liturgy, distinguished from every-other office by this distinctive name. Round this rite revolved the whole of the other services, as week-days around the Lord's Day; on its due performance was lavished everything of beauty and of splendour that wealth could bring; sweetest incense, most harmonious music, richest vestments, rarely jewelled vessels, pomp of procession, stateliness of ceremony, all brought their glory and their beauty to render magnificent the reception of the present God. Among the Reformed Churches the festival was shorn of its grandeur; it became once more the simple "supper of the Lord," no memorial sacrifice, but only a commemorative rite; no coming of the Lord to men, but only a sign of the union through faith of the believer with the Saviour. At the present time the old contest rages, even within the bosom of the Reformed Church of England; one party still clings to the elder belief of a real presence of Christ in the elements themselves, or in indissoluble connection with them, and, therefore, celebrates the service with much of the ancient pomp; while the other furiously rejects this so-called idolatry, and makes the service as bare and as simple as possible. Both parties can claim parts of the Communion Office as upholding their special views, for the English service has passed through much of tinkering from High and Low, and retains the marks of the alterations that have been made by each. To those outside the Church this office has particular attraction, as being, in a special manner, a link between the past and the present, and being full of traces of the ancient religion of the world, that catholic sun-worship of which Christianity is a modernised revival. From the Nicene Creed, in which Jesus is described as "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, Begotten not made, Being of one substance with the Father, By whom all things were made"--from this point we breathe the full atmosphere of the elder world, and find ourselves engaged in the worship of that Light of Light, who, being the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature, has for ages and ages been adored as incarnate in Mithra, in Christna, in Osiris, in Christ. We give thanks for "the redemption of the world by the death and passion of 'the Sun-Saviour, who suffered on the Cross for us,' who lay in darkness and in the shadow of death;" we praise Him who fills heaven and earth with His glory, and who rose as "the Paschal Lamb," and has "taken away the sin of the world," bearing away in the sign of the Lamb the darkness and dreariness of the winter; we remember the Holy Ghost, the fresh spring wind, who, "as it had been a mighty wind," came to bring us "out of darkness" into "the clear light" of the sun; then we see the priest, with his face turned to the sun-rising, take the bread and wine, the symbols of the God, and bless them for the food of men, these symbols being changed into the very substance of the deity, for are they not, in very truth, of him alone? "How naturally does the eternal work of the sun, daily renewed, express itself in such lines as 'Into bread his heat is turned, Into generous wine his light.' And imagining the sun as a person, the change to 'flesh' and 'blood' becomes inevitable; while the fact that the solar forces are actually changed into food, without forfeiting their solar character, finds expression in the doctrines of transubstantiation and the real presence." ("Keys of the Creeds," page 91.) After this union with the Deity, by partaking of his very self, we praise once more the "Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world," and is "most high in the glory of God the Father." The resemblance is made the nearer in the churches where much of ceremony is found (although noticeable in all, since that resemblance is stereotyped in the formulas themselves; but in the more elaborate performances the old rites are more clearly apparent) in the tonsured head of the priest, in the suns often embroidered on vestment and on altar-cloth, in the rays that surround the sacred monogram on the vessels, in the cross imprinted on the bread, and marking each utensil, in the lighted candles, in the grape-vine chiselled on the chalice--in all these, and in many another symbol, we read the whole story of the Sun-god, written in hieroglyphics as easily decipherable by the initiated as is the testimony of the rocks by the geologian. But passing by this antiquarian side of the Office, we will examine it as a service suitable for the use of educated and thoughtful people at the present time. The Rubric which precedes the Office is one of those unfortunate rules which are obsolete as regards their practice, and yet which--from their preservation--appear to simple-minded parsons to be intended to be enforced, whereby the said parsons fall into the clutches of the law, and suffer grievously. "An open and notorious evil-liver" must not be permitted to come to the Lord's Table, and this expression seems to be explained in the Exhortation in the Office, wherein we read: "if any of you be a blasphemer of God, an hinderer or slanderer of His word, an adulterer, or be in malice, or envy, or in any other grievous crime, repent you of your sins, or else come not to that holy Table; lest, after the taking of that holy Sacrament, the devil enter into you, as he entered into Judas, and fill you full of all iniquities, and bring you to destruction both of: body and soul." In a late case, the Sacrament was refused to one who disbelieved in the devil and who slandered God's word, on those very grounds, and it would seem to be an act of Christian charity so to deny it; for surely to say that part of God's word is "contrary to religion and decency" must be to slander it, if words have any meaning, and people who do not believe in the devil ought hardly to be sharers in a rite after which the devil will enter into them with such melancholy consequences. It would seem more consistent either to alter the formulas or else to carry them out; true, one clergyman wrote that the responsibility lay with the unworthy recipient who "did nothing else but increase" his "damnation," but it is scarcely a pleasing notion that the clergyman should stand inviting people to the Lord's table and, coolly handing to one of those who accept, the body of Christ, say, "The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life," when he means--in the delicate language used by the above-mentioned clergyman--"The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ damn thy body and soul unto everlasting death." No one but a clergyman could dream of so offensive a proceeding, and, to those who believe, one so terribly awful. The Ten Commandments which stand in the fore-front of the service are very much out of place as regards some of them, to say nothing of the want of truthfulness in the assertion, that "God spake these words," &c. In the second we are forbidden to make any graven image, or any likeness of any thing, a command which would destroy all art, and which no member of the congregation can have the smallest notion of obeying. The Jews, who made the cherubim over the ark, upon which God sat, are popularly supposed not to have disobeyed this command, because the cherubim were not the likeness of anything in heaven, earth, or water: they were, like unicorns, creatures undiscovered and undiscoverable. Yet in direct opposition to this command, Solomon made brazen oxen to support his sea of brass (1 Kings vii. 25,29) and lions on the steps of his ivory throne (Kings x. 19,20) and God himself, said to have ordered Moses to make a brazen Serpent. God is described, in this same commandment as a "jealous God"--which is decidedly immoral and unpleasant who visits "the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;" the justice of this is so obvious that no comment on it is necessary. The fourth Commandment is another which no one dreams of attending to; in the first place, we do not keep the seventh day at all, and in the second, our man-servant, our maid-servant and our cattle do all manner of work on the day we keep as the Sabbath. Further, who in the present day believes that "in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day;" geology, astronomy ethnology have taught us otherwise, and, among those who repeat the response to this commandment in a London church, not one could probably be found who believes it to be true. The fifth Commandment is equally out of place, for dutiful children do not live any longer than undutiful. The remainder touch simple moral duties, enforced by all creeds alike, and are noticeable for their omissions and not for their commissions: the insertion of the Buddhist Commandment against intoxication, for instance, would be an improvement, although such a commandment is naturally not to be found in the case of so gross and sensual a people as the ancient Jews. The alternative prayers for the Queen, which follow next, are only worth noting, because the first enshrines the doctrine of divine right, which is long since dead and buried, except in church; and the other says "that the hearts of Kings are in thy rule and governance," and suggests the thought that, if this be so, it is better to be out of that "rule and governance," the effects on the hearts of Kings not having been specially attractive. The Nicene Creed comes next, and is open to-the objections before made against the Apostles' Creed; the last clauses relating to the Holy Ghost are historically interesting, since the "and the Son" forms the _Filioque_ which severed Eastern from Western Christendom;* * A short but very graphic account of the shameful transaction by which the Filioque clause was, so to speak, smuggled into the Nicene Creed, is to be found in the first ten or twelve pages of the shilling pamphlet written by Edmond S. Fouldes, B.D., entitled "The Church's Creed, or the Crown's Creed".... clearly provides, too, that the Church of Rome once held that the Holy Ghost only proceeded from the Father, as the Dominus in it can only refer to the Father. "Who with the Father and the Son together" ought to be "worshipped and glorified," would be more true to fact than "is," since the Holy Ghost is sadly ignored by modern Christendom, and has a very small share of either prayers or hymns: yet he is the husband of the virgin Mary, and the Father of Jesus Christ; he is, therefore, a very important, though puzzling, person in the Godhead, being the Father of him from whom he himself proceeds: this is a mystery, and can only be understood by faith. The texts that follow are remarkable for their ingenious selection: "Who goeth a warfare," &c. (Cor. ix. 7); "If we have sown,"&c. (I cor. ix. 9); "Do ye know," &c. (I Cor. ix. 13); "He that soweth little," &c, (2 Cor. ix. 6); "Let him that is taught," (Gal. vi. 6). the pervading selfishness of motive is also worth nothing: Give now in order that ye may get hereafter; "Never turn thy face from any poor man, _and then the face of the Lord shall not be turned away from thee_;" "He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord: _and look, what he layeth out, it shall be paid him again_;" "If thou hast much, give plenteously; if thou hast little, do thy diligence gladly to give of that little; _for so gathered thou thyself a good reward in the day of necessity_."* No free, glad giving here; no willing, joyful aid to a poorer brother, because he needs what I can give; no ready offer of the cup of cold water, simply because the thirsty is there and wants the refreshment; ever the hateful whisper comes: "thou shalt in no wise lose thy reward." These time-serving offerings are then presented to God by being placed "upon the Holy Table," and we then get another prayer for Queen, Christian Kings, authorities, Bishops, and people in general, concluding with thanks for the dead, not a cheerful subject to bless God for, if there chance to be present any mourner whose heart is sore with the loss of a beloved one. At this point the service is supposed to end, when no celebration of the Holy Communion is intended, and here we find two Exhortations, or notices of celebration, from the first of which we have already quoted:** in the second, we cannot help remarking the undignified position in which God is placed; it is a "grievous and unkind thing" not to come to a rich feast when invited thereto, wherefore we are to fear lest by withdrawing ourselves from this holy Supper, we "provoke God's indignation against" us. "Consider with yourselves how great injury ye do unto God:" what a very curious expression. Is God thus at the mercy of man? Surely, then, of all living Beings the lot of God must be the saddest, if his happiness and his glory are in the hands of each man and woman; the greater his knowledge the greater the misery, and as his knowledge is perfect, and the vast majority of human kind know and care nothing about him, his wretchedness must be complete. * As if the clergy, with very few exceptions, are not sufficiently provided for by the tithes, &c, without having to go a-begging like either Buddhist or Roman Catholic monks, to both of whom P.P. and P.M. are not inappropriately applied (Professors of Poverty and Practisers of Mendicancy). ** It is, however, only just to say that that portion of it contained between "The Way and Means thereto," and "Offences at God's Hands," is one of the best bits in the whole Prayer-Book, and which far surpasses the generality of sermons one hears afterwards. All things being ready, the clergyman begins by another Exhortation, of somewhat threatening character: "So is the danger great if we receive the same unworthily. For then we are guilty of the Body and Blood of Christ our Saviour; we eat and drink our own damnation, not considering the Lord's Body; we kindle God's wrath against us; we provoke him to plague us with divers diseases, and sundry kinds of death." (Surely we cannot be plagued with more than one kind of death at once, and we can't die sundry times, even after the Communion.) One almost wonders why anyone accepts this very threatening invitation, even though there are advantages promised to "meet partakers." The High Church party have indeed the right to talk much of the real presence, since ordinary bread and wine have none of these fearful penalties attached to the eating and drinking, and some curious change must have taken place in them before all these terrible consequences can ensue. What would happen if some consecrated bread and wine chanced to be left by mistake, and a stray comer into the vestry eat it unknowingly? One thinks of Anne Askew, who, told that a mouse eating a crumb fallen from the Host would infallibly be damned, replied, "Alack, poor mouse!" Then follows a Confession of the most cringing kind, fit only for the lips of some coward suppliant crouching at the feet of an Eastern monarch; it is marvellous that free English men and women can frame their lips into phrases of such utter abasement, even to a God; manliness in religion: is sorely-needed, unless, indeed, God be something smaller than man, and be pleased with the degradation painful to human eyes. The prayer of consecration is the central point of the ordinance; of old they prayed for the descent of the Holy Ghost on the elements, "for whatsoever the Holy-Ghost toucheth is sanctified and clean"--it is not explained how the Holy Ghost, being omnipresent, manages to avoid touching everything--and now the priest asks that in receiving the bread and wine we "may be partakers of" Christ's Body and Blood, and repeats the words, "This is my Body," "This is my Blood," laying his hand alternately-over the bread and the wine: now if this means anything, if it is not mere mockery, it means that after the consecration the bread and wine are other than they were before; if it does not mean this, the whole prayer is simply a farce, a piece of acting scarcely decent under the circumstances. But flesh and blood! Putting aside the extreme repulsiveness of the idea, the coarseness of the act, the utter unpleasantness of eating flesh and drinking blood, all of which has become non-disgusting by habit and fashion, and the distastefulness of which can scarcely be realised by any believer--putting aside all this, is there any change in the bread and wine? Examine it; analyse it; test it in any and every fashion; still it answers back to the questioner, "bread and wine." Are our senses deceived? Then try a hundred different persons; all cannot be deceived alike. Unless every result of experience is untrustworthy, we have here to do with bread and wine, and with nothing more. "But faith is needed." Ah yes! There is the secret: no flesh and blood without faith; no miracle without credulity. Miracle-working priests are only successful among credulously-disposed people; miracles can only be received by those who think it less likely that Nature should speak falsely than that man should deceive; those who believe in this change through consecration cannot be touched by argument; they have closed their eyes that they may not see, their ears that they may not hear; no knowledge can reach them, for they have shut the gateways whereby it could enter, they are literally dead in their superstition, buried beneath the stone of their faith. The reception of the Body and Blood of Christ being over, the people having knelt to eat and drink, as is only right when eating and drinking Christ (John vi. 57), the Lord's Prayer is said for the second time, a prayer and thanksgiving follows, confined to "we and all thy whole Church," for the spirit is the same as that of the prayer of Christ, "I pray not for the world, but for them whom thou hast given me" (John xvii. 9), and then the service winds up with the _Gloria in Excelsis_ and the Benediction. Such is the "bounden duty and service" offered by the Church to God, the service of which the central act must be either a farce or a falsehood, and therefore insulting to the God to whom it is offered. Regarded as a service to God, the whole Communion Office is objectionable in the highest degree; regarded as an antiquarian survival, it is very interesting and instructive; it is surely time that it should be put in its right place, and that its true origin should be recognised. The day is gone by for these barbarous, though poetic, ceremonials; the "flesh and blood," which was a bold figure for the heat and light of the sun, becomes coarse when joined in thought to a human being; ceremonies that fitted the childhood of the world are out of place in its manhood, as the play that is graceful in the child would be despicable in the man; these rites are the baby-clothes of the world, and cannot be stretched to fit the stalwart limbs of its maturer age, cannot add grace to its form, or dignity to its graver walk. THE BAPTISMAL OFFICES. For all purposes of criticism the Offices for "Public Baptism of Infants, to be used in the Church," for "Private Baptism of Children in houses," and "Baptism to such as are of riper years, and able to answer for themselves," may be treated as one and the same, the leading idea of each service being identical; this idea is put forward clearly and distinctly in the preface to the Office: "Dearly beloved, forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin; and that our Saviour Christ saith, None can enter into the kingdom of God, except he be regenerate and born anew of water and of the Holy Ghost; I beseech you to call upon God the Father, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that of his bounteous mercy he will grant to this Child that thing which by nature he cannot have." According to the doctrine of the Church, then, baptism is absolutely necessary to salvation: "_None can enter_... except he be... born anew of water;" thus peals out the doom of condemnation on the whole human race, save that fragment of it which is sprinkled from the Christian font; there is no evasion possible here; no exception made in favour of heathen peoples; no mercy allowed to those who have no opportunity of baptism; none can enter save through "the laver of regeneration." Can any words be too strong whereby to denounce a doctrine so shameful, an injustice so glaring? A child is born into the world; it is no fault of his that he is conceived in sin; it is no fault of his that he is born in sin; his consent was not asked before he was ushered into the world; no offer was made to him which he could reject of this terribly gift of a condemned life; flung is he, without his knowledge, without his will, into a world lying under the curse of God, a child of wrath, and heir of damnation. "By nature he _cannot_ have." Then why should God be wrath with him because he hath not? The whole arrangement is of God's own making. He fore-ordained the birth; he gave the life; the helpless, unconscious infant lies there, the work of his own hands; good or bad, he is responsible for it; heir of love or of wrath, he has made it what it is; as wholly is it his doing as the unconscious vessel is the doing of the potter; as reasonably may God be angry with the child as the potter swear at the clay he has clumsily moulded: if the vessel be bad, blame the potter; if the creature be bad, blame the Creator. The congregation pray that God "of his bounteous mercy," "for thine infinite mercies," will save the child, "that he, being delivered from thy wrath," may be blessed. It is no question of mercy we have to do with here; it is a question of simple justice, and nothing more; if God, for his own "good pleasure," or in the pursuance of the designs of his infinite wisdom, has placed this unfortunate child in so terrible a position, he is bound by every tie of justice, by every sacred claim of right, to deliver the blameless victim, and to place him where he shall have a fair chance of well-being. "It is certain by God's Word," says the Rubric, "that children _which are baptized_, dying before they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved." And those which are not baptized? The Holy Roman Church sends these into a cheerful place called Limbo, and the baby-souls wander about in chill twilight, cursed with immortality, shut out for ever from the joys of Paradise. Many readers will remember Lowell's pathetic poem on this subject, and the ghastly baptism; they will also know into what devious paths of argumentative indecency that Church has wandered in deciding upon the fate of unbaptized infants;--how, when mothers have died in childbirth, the yet unborn children have been baptized to save them from the terrible doom pronounced upon them by their Father in heaven, even before they saw the light;--how it has been said that in cases where mother and child cannot both be saved the mother should be sacrificed that the child may not die unbaptized. Into the details of these arguments we cannot enter; they are only fit for orthodox Christians, in whose pages they may read them who list. Truly, the Lord is a jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, since unborn children are condemned for the untimely death of their mother, and unbaptized infants for the carelessness of their parents or nurses. Of course, the majority of English clergymen believe nothing of this kind; but then why do they read a service which implies it? Why do they use words in a non-natural sense? Why do they put off their honesty when they put on their surplices? And why will the laity not give utterance to their thoughts on these and all such objectionable parts of the Service? In the Office for adults, as regards the necessity of the Sacrament, the words come in: "where it may be had;" but the phrase reads as though it had been written in the margin by some kindly soul, and had from thence crept into the text, for it is in direct opposition to the whole argument of the address wherein it occurs and to the rest of the office, as also to the other two offices for infants. The stress laid upon right baptism, i.e., baptism with water, accompanied by the "name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," appears specially in the office to follow the private baptism of a child, should the child live; for the Rubric directs that if there be any doubt of the use of-the water and the formula, "which are essential parts of Baptism," the priest shall perform the baptismal ceremony, saying, "If thou art not already baptized, I baptize thee," &c. Surely such care and pains to ensure correct baptism speak with sufficient plainness as to the importance attached by the Church to this initiatory rite; this importance she gives to it in other places: none, unbaptized, must approach her altar to take the "bread of life:" none, unbaptized, must be buried by her ministers, "in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life." The baptized are within the ark of the Church; the unbaptized are struggling in the waves of God's wrath outside; no hand can be outstretched to save them; they are strangers, aliens, to the covenant of promise; they are without hope. The whole office for infants reads like a play: the clergyman asks that the infant "may receive remission of his sins;" what sins? The people are admonished "that they defer not the Baptism of their children longer than the first or second Sunday next after their birth." What sins can a baby a week old have committed? from what sins can he need release? for what sins can he ask forgiveness? And yet, here is a whole congregation prostrate before Almighty God, praying that a tiny long-robed baby may be forgiven, may be pardoned his sins of--coming into the world when God sent him! The ceremony would be ludicrous were it not so pitiful. And supposing that the infant does need forgiveness, and has sins to be washed away, why should a few drops of water, sprinkled on the face--or bonnet--of the baby, or even the immersion of his body in the font, wash away the sins of his soul? The water is "sanctified;" we pray: "Sanctify this water to the mystical washing away of sin." As the hymn sweetly puts it: "The water in this font Is water, by gross mortals eyed; But, seen by faith, 'tis blood Out of a dear friend's side." Blood once more! how Christians cling to the revolting imagery of a bygone and barbarous age of gross conceptions. And, applied by faith, it cleanses the soul of the child from sin. Well, the whole thing is consistent: the invisible soul is washed from invisible sin by invisible blood, and to all outward appearance the child remains after baptism exactly what it was before--except it chance to get inflammation of the lungs, as we have known happen, from High Church free use of water, which is, perhaps, the promised baptism of fire. The promises of the sponsors are in full accordance with the rest of the services; promises made by other people, in the child's name, as to his future conduct, over which they have no control. The baby renounces the devil and all his belongings, believes the Apostles' Creed, and answers "that is my desire," when asked if he will be baptized; all which "is very pretty acting," but jars somewhat on the feeling of reality which ought surely to characterize a believer's intercourse with his God. The child being baptized and signed with the Cross, "is regenerate," according to the declaration of the priest. Some contend that the Church of England does not teach baptismal regeneration, but it is hard to see how any one can read this service, and then deny the teaching; it is clearer and fuller than is the teaching of her voice upon most subjects. The ceremony of baptism and the idea of regeneration are both derived from the sun-worship of which so many traces have already been pointed out: the worshippers of Mithra practised baptism, and it is common to the various phases of the solar faith. Regeneration, in some parts, especially in India, was obtained in a different fashion: a hole through a rock, or a narrow passage between two, was the sacred spot, and a worshipper, squeezing himself through such an opening, was regenerated, and was, by this literal representation of birth, born a second time, born into a new life, and the sins of the former life were no longer accounted to him. Many such holes are still preserved and revered in India, and there can be little doubt that the ancient Druidic remains bear traces of being adapted for this same ceremony, although a natural fissure appears ever to have been accounted the most sacred.* * Even in this country, at Brimham Rocks, near Ripon, in Yorkshire, the dead form of the custom is, or was, until very lately, kept up by the guide sending all visitors, who chose to avail themselves of the privilege, through such a fissure. One ought scarcely to leave unnoted the preamble to the first prayer in the baptismal service: "Who of thy great mercy didst save Noah and his family in the ark from perishing by water; and also didst safely lead the children of Israel thy people through the Red Sea, figuring thereby thy holy baptism; and by the baptism of thy well-beloved Son Jesus Christ, in the river Jordan, didst sanctify water to the mystical washing of sin." In the two first examples given the choice of the Church appears to be peculiarly unfortunate, as in each case water was the element to be escaped _from_, and it was a source of death, not of life; perhaps, though, there is a subtle meaning in the Red Sea, it points to the blood of Christ: but then, again, the Red Sea drowned people, and surely the anti-type is not so dangerous as that? It must be a mystery. It would be interesting to know how many of the educated clergymen who read this prayer believe in the story of the Noachian deluge, and of the miraculous passage of the Red Sea; and further, how many of them believe that God, by these fables, figured his holy baptism. Will the nineteenth century ever summon up energy enough to shake off these remnants of a dead superstition, and be honest enough to stop using a form of words which is no longer a vehicle of belief? When the Prayer Book was compiled these words had a meaning; to-day they have none. Shall not a second Reformation sweep away these dead beliefs, even as the first away for its own age the phrases which represented an earlier and coarser creed? THE ORDER OF CONFIRMATION. "These signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." In those remarkable days the "order of Confirmation" might have been in consonance with its surroundings, a state of things which is very far from being its present position. Mr. Spurgeon, writing for the benefit of street preachers, lately pointed out very sensibly that as the Holy Ghost no longer gave the gift of tongues, they had "better stick to their grammars," and in these degenerate days honest effort is more likely to show results more satisfactory than those which ensue from the laying on of Bishops' hands. When the Apostles performed this ceremony, which the Bishop now performs after their example, definite proofs of its efficacy were said to have been seen; so much so, indeed, that Simon, the sorcerer, wished to invest some money in heavenly securities, so that "on whomsoever I lay hands he may receive the Holy Ghost." A Simon would manifestly never be found nowadays ready to pay a Bishop for the power of causing the effects of Confirmation. So far as the carnal eye can see, the white-robed, veiled young ladies, and the shame-faced black-coated boys, who throng the church on a Confirmation day, return from the altar very much the same as they went up to it: no one begins to speak with tongues; if they did, the beadle would probably interfere and quench the Spirit with the greatest promptitude. They are supposed to have received some special gifts: "the spirit of wisdom and understanding; the spirit of counsel and ghostly strength; the spirit of knowledge and true godliness;" and in addition to these six spirits, there is one more: "the spirit of thy holy fear." No less than seven spirits, then, enter these lads and lasses. Wisdom and understanding are easily perceptible: are they wiser after Confirmation than they were before? do they understand more rapidly? do they know more? if there be no perceptible difference is the presence of the Holy Spirit of none effect? if of none effect can his presence be of any use, of the very smallest advantage? if of no use, why make all this parade about giving a thing whose gift makes the recipient no richer than he was before? Besides, what certainty can there be that the Holy Ghost is given at all? Allowing--what seems to an outsider a gross piece of irreverence--that the Holy Ghost is in the fingers of the Bishop to be given away when it suits the Bishop's convenience, or is in a sort of reservoir, of which the Bishop turns the tap and lets the stream of grace descend--allowing all this as possible, ought not some "sign to follow them that believe"? How can we be sure that the Bishop is not an impostor, going through a conjuror's gestures and mutterings, and no magic results accruing? If, in the ordinary course of daily-life, any one came and offered us some valuable things he said that he possessed, and then went through the form of giving them to us, saying: "Here they are; guard and preserve them for the rest of your life;" and the outstretched hand contained nothing at all, and we found ourselves with nothing in our grasp, should we be content with his assurance that we had really got them, although we might not be able to see them, and we ought to have sufficient faith to take his word for it? Should we not utterly refuse to believe that we had received anything unless we had some proof of having done so, and were in some way the better or the worse for it? The truth is that people's religion is, to them, a matter of such small importance that they do not trouble themselves about proof--Faith is enough to comfort them; the six week-days require their brains, their efforts, their thought: the Sunday is the Lord's day, and he must see toft: earth needs all their earnest attention, but heaven must take care of itself; the validity of an earthly title is important, and the confirmation of a right to inherit property in this world is eagerly welcomed, but the Confirmation to a heavenly inheritance is a mere farce, which it is the fashion to go through about the age of fifteen, but which is only a fashion, the confirmation of a faith in nothing in particular to an invisible heritage of nothing at all. THE FORM OF THE SOLEMNIZATION OF MATRIMONY. One of the most curious blunders regarding orthodox Christianity is, that it has tended to the elevation of woman. As a matter of fact, the Eastern ideas about women are embodied in Christianity, and these ideas are essentially degraded and degrading. From the time when Paul bade women obey their husbands, Augustine's mother was beaten, unresisting, by Augustine's father, and Jerome fled from woman's charms, and monks declaimed against the daughters of Eve, down to the present day, when Peter's authority is used against woman suffrage, Christianity has consistently regarded woman as a creature to be subject to man, because, being deceived, she was first in transgression. The Church service for matrimony is redolent of this barbarous idea, relic of a time when men seized wives by force, or else purchased them, so that the wives became, in literal fact, the property of their husbands. We learn that matrimony was "instituted of God in the time of man's innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is between Christ and his Church." It would be interesting to know how many of those joined by the Church believe in the Paradise story of man's innocency and fall. It seems that Christ has adorned the holy estate by his first miracle in Cana; but the adornment is rather of a dubious character, when we reflect that the probable effect of the miracle would be a scene somewhat too gay, from the enormous quantity of wine made by Christ for men who already had "well drunk." Christ's approval of marriage may well be considered doubtful when we remember that a virgin was chosen as his mother, that he himself remained unmarried, and that he distinctly places celibacy higher than marriage in Matt. xix. 11, 12, where he urges: "he that is able to receive it let him receive it." St. Paul also, though he allows it to his converts, advises virginity in preference: "I say to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I;" "he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better" (see throughout 1 Cor. vii.) The reasons given for marriage are surely misplaced; last of all, it is said that marriage is "ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort that the one ought to have of the other;" this, instead of "thirdly," ought to be "first." "As a remedy against sin and to avoid fornication, that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry," is not a reason very honourable to the marriage estate, nor very delicate to read out before a mixed congregation to a young bride and bridegroom; so strongly objectionable is the heedless coarseness of this preface felt to be that in many churches it is entirely omitted, although it is retained--as are all remains of a coarser age--in the Prayer-Book as published by authority. The promise exchanged between the contracting parties is of far too sweeping a character, and is immoral, because promising what may be beyond the powers of the promisers to perform; "to love" "so long as ye both shall live," and "till death us do part," is a pledge far too wide; love does not stay by promising, nor is love a feeling which can be made to order. A promise to live always together might be made, although that would be unwise in this changing world, and the endless processes in the Divorce Court are a satire on this so-called joined by God; "what God hath joined together" man does continually "put asunder," and it would be wiser to adapt the service to the altered circumstances of the times in which we live. The promise of obedience and service on the woman's part should also be eliminated, and the contract should be a simple promise of fidelity between two equal friends. The declaration of the man as he places the ring on the woman's finger is as archaic as the rest of this fossil service, and about as true: "With all my worldly goods I thee endow," says the man, when, as a matter of fact, he becomes possessed of all his wife's property and she does not become possessed of his. One of the concluding prayers is a delightful specimen of Prayer-Book science: "O God, who of thy mighty power hast made all things of nothing." What was the general aspect of affairs when there was "nothing?" how did something emerge where "nothing" was before? if God filled all space, was he "nothing?" is the existence of nothing a conceivable idea? "can people think of nothing except when they don't think at all?" who also (after other things set in order) didst appoint that out of man (created after thine own image and similitude) woman should take her beginning:" "out of man," that is out of one of man's ribs; has any one tried to picture the scene: Almighty God, who has no body nor parts, taking one of Adam's ribs, and closing up the flesh, and "out of the rib made he a woman." God, a pure spirit, holding a man's rib, not in his hands, for he has none, and "making" a woman out of it, fashioning the rib into skull, and arms, and ribs, and legs. Can a more ludicrous position be imagined; and Adam? What became of his internal economy? was he made originally with a rib too much, to provide against the emergency, or did he go, for the rest of his life, with a rib too little? And the Church of England endorses this ridiculous old-world fable. Man was created "after thine own image and similitude." What is the image of God? He is a spirit and has no similitude. If man is made in his image, God must be a celestial man, and cannot possibly be omnipresent. Besides, in Genesis i. 27, where it is stated that "God created man in his own image," it distinctly goes on to declare: "in the image of God created he him; _male and female_ created he them. Thus the woman is made in God's image as much as the man, and God's image is "male and female." All students know that the ancient ideas of God give him this double nature, and that no trinity is complete without the addition of the female element; but the pious compilers of the Prayer-Book did not probably intend thus to transplant the simple old nature-worship into their marriage office. Once more we hear of Adam and Eve in the next prayer, and we cannot help thinking that, considering all the trouble Eve brought upon her husband by her flirtation with the serpent, she is made rather too prominent a figure in the marriage service. The ceremony winds up with a long exhortation, made of quotations from the Epistles, on the duties of husbands and wives. Husbands are to love their wives because Christ loved a church--a reason that does not seem specially _a propos_, as husbands are not required to die for their wives or to present to themselves glorious wives, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing (!); nor would most husbands desire that their wives' conversation should be coupled with fear." Why should women be taught thus to abase themselves? They are promised as a reward that they shall be the daughters of Sarah; but that is no great privilege, nor are English wives likely to call their husbands "lord;" if they did not adorn themselves with plaited hair and pretty apparel, their husbands would be sure to grumble, and the only defence that can be made for this absurd exhortation is that nobody ever listens to it. Among the various reforms needed in the Marriage Laws one imperatively necessary is that all marriages should be made civil contracts--that is, that the contract which is made by citizens of the State, and which affects the interests of the State, should be entered into before a secular State official; if after that the parties desired a religious ceremony, they could go through any arrangements they pleased in their own churches and chapels, but the civil contract should be compulsory and should be the only one recognised by the law. Of course the Church might maintain its peculiar marriage as long as it chose, but it would probably soon pass out of fashion if it were not acknowledged as binding by the State. THE ORDER FOR THE VISITATION OF THE SICK. Of all the services in the Prayer-Book this is, perhaps-, the most striking relic of barbarism, the most completely at variance with sound and reasonable thought. The clergyman entering into a house of sickness, and as he enters the sick man's room and catches sight of him, kneeling down and exclaiming, as though horror-stricken: "Remember not, Lord, our iniquities, nor the iniquities of our forefathers; spare us, good Lord, spare Thy people whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy most precious blood, and be not angry with us for ever." This clergyman reminds one of nothing so much as of one of Job's friends, who appear to have been an even more painful infliction than Job's boils. The sickness, the patient is told, "is God's visitation," and "for what cause soever this sickness is sent unto you: whether it be to try your faith for the example of others, . . . or else it be sent unto you to correct and amend in you whatsoever doth offend the eyes of your heavenly Father; know you certainly, that if you truly repent you of your sins, and bear your sickness patiently, ... it shall turn to your profit, and help you forward in the right way that leadeth unto everlasting life." One might question the justice of Almighty God if the theory be correct that the sickness may be sent "to try your patience for the example of others;" why should one unfortunate victim be tormented simply that others may have the advantage of seeing how well he bears it? If we are to endeavour to conform ourselves to the image of God, then it would seem that we should be doing right if we racked our neighbours occasionally to "try their patience for the example of others." And is the idea of God a reverent one? What should we think of an earthly father who tortured one of his children in order to teach the others how to bear pain? if we should condemn the earthly father as wickedly cruel, why should the same action be righteous when done by the Father in heaven? If we accept the second reason given for the sickness, it is difficult to see the rationale of it. Why should illness of the body correct illness of the mind; does pain cure fretfulness, or fever increase truthfulness? Is not sickness likely rather to bring out and strengthen mental faults than to weaken them? And how far is it true that sickness is, in any sense, the visitation of God for moral delinquencies? Is it not true, on the contrary, that a man may lie, rob, cheat, slander, tyrannise, and yet, if he observe the laws of health, may remain in robust vigour, while an upright, sincere, honest and truthful man, disregarding those same laws, may be miserably feeble and suffer an early death? Is it, or is it not, a fact, that in the Middle Ages, when people prayed much and studied little, when the peasant went to the shrine for a cure instead of to the doctor, when sanitary science was unknown, and cleanliness was a virtue undreamed of,--is it, or is it not, true, that pestilence and black death then swept off their thousands, while these terrible scourges have been practically driven away in modern times by proper attention to sanitary measures, by improved drainage and greater cleanliness of living? How can that be a visitation of God for moral transgressions, which can be prevented by man if he attends to physical laws? Is man's power greater than God's, and can he thus play with the thunderbolts of the divine displeasure? The clergyman prays that "the sense of his weakness may add strength to his faith;" what fine irony is here, as body and mind grow weak faith grows strong; as a man is less able to think, he becomes more ready to believe. It is impossible to pass, without a word of censure, over the passage in the exhortation, taken from the Epistle to the Hebrews, which says, "for they (fathers of our flesh) verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure." Good earthly fathers do not chasten their children for their own amusement, while God does it "for our profit;" on the contrary, they do it for the improvement of their children, while God alone, if there be a hell, tortures his children for his own pleasure and for no gain to them. The succeeding portion of the Exhortation, that, "our way to eternal joy is to suffer here with Christ," is full of that sad asceticism which has done so much to darken the world since the birth of Christ; men have been so engaged in looking for the "eternal joy" that they have let pass unnoted the misery here; they have been so busy planting flowers in heaven that they have let weeds grow here; yes, and they have rejoiced in the misery and in the weeds, because they were only strangers and pilgrims, and the tribulation, which was but temporal, increased the weight of the glory that was eternal. Thus has Christianity blighted the flowers of this world, and entwined the brows of its followers with wreaths of thorns. The concluding portion of the exhortation deals with the duty of self-examination and self-accusation, that you may "not be accused and condemned in that fearful judgment." Very wholesome teaching for a sick man; sickness always makes a person morbid, and the Church steps in to encourage the unwholesome feeling; sickness always makes a person timid and unnerved, and the Church steps in to talk about a "fearful judgment," and bewilders and stuns the confused brain by the terrible pictures called up to the mind by the thought of the last day. But worse follows; for after the sick person has said that he steadfastly believes the creed, the clergyman is bidden by the rubric to "examine whether he repent him truly of his sins, and be in charity with all the world." Imagine a sick person being worried by an examination of this kind, putting aside the gross impertinence of the whole affair. Further, "the minister should not omit earnestly to move such persons as are of ability to be liberal to the poor." When every one remembers the terrible scandals of by-gone days, when priests drew into the net of the Church the goods of the dying, using threat of hell and promise of heaven to win that which should have been left for the widow and the orphan, one marvels that such a rubric should be left to recall the rapaciousness and the greed of the Church, and to invite priests to grasp at the wealth slipping out of dying hands. And here the sick person is to "be moved to make a special confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter," and the priest is bidden to absolve him, for Christ having "left power to his Church to absolve by his authority committed to me," says the priest, "I absolve thee." Confession, delegated authority, priestly absolution, such is the doctrine of the Church of England: all the untold abominations of the confessional are involved in this rubric and sentence; for if the man can absolve a man at one time, he can do it at another. The precious power should surely not be left unused and wasted; whenever sin presses, behold the remedy, and thus we are launched and in full sail. But never in England shall the confessional again flourish; never again shall English women be corrupted by the foul questions of the priests; never again shall Englishmen have their mental vigour and virility destroyed by such degradation. Let the Church fall that countenances such an accursed thing, and leave English purity and English courage to grow and flourish unchecked. The devil is in great force in this service, as is only right in a so generally barbarous an office: "Let the enemy have no advantage of him;" "defend him from the danger of the enemy;" "renew in him whatsoever hath been decayed by the fraud and malice of the devil;" "the wiles of Satan;" "deliver him from fear of the enemy;" all this must convey to the sick person a cheerful idea of the devil lingering about his bed, and trying to get hold of him before it is too late to drag him down to hell. Is there any meaning at all in the expression, "the Almighty Lord.... to whom all things in heaven, in earth and _under the earth_ do bow and obey." Where is "under the earth "? The sun is under some part of the earth to some people at any given time; the stars are under, or above, according to the point of view from which they are looked at. Of course, the expression is only a survival from a time when the earth was flat and the bottomless pit was under it, only it seems a Pity to continued to use expressions which have all but lost their meaning and are now thoroughly ridiculous. People seem to think that any old things are good enough for God's service. The last two prayers are remarkable chiefly for their melancholy and 'craven tone towards God: "we humbly recomment," "most humbly beseeching thee." Surely God is not supposed to be an Eastern despot, desiring this kind of cringing at his feet. Yet the "Prayer for persons troubled in mind or in conscience" is one pitiful wail, as though only by passionate entreaty could God be moved to mercy, and he were longing to strike, and with difficulty withheld from avenging himself. When will men learn to stand upright on their feet, instead of thus crouching on their knees? When will they learn to strive to live nobly, and then to fear no celestial anger, either in life or in death? THE ORDER FOR THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD. It is a little difficult to write a critical notice of a funeral office, simply because people's feelings are so much bound up in it that any criticism seems a cruelty, and any interference seems an impertinence. Round the open grave all controversy should be hushed, that no jarring sounds may mingle with the sobs of the mourners, and no quarrels wring the torn hearts of the survivors. Our criticism of this office, then, will be brief and grave. The opening verses strike us first as manifestly inappropriate: "Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die;" yet the dead is then being carried to his last home, and the words seem a mockery spoken in face of a corpse. In the Fourth Gospel they preface the raising of Lazarus, and of course are then very significant, but to-day no power raises our dead, no voice of Jesus says to the mourners, "Weep not." The second verse from Job is---as is well known--an utter mistranslation: "without my flesh" would be nearer the truth than "in my flesh," and "worms" and body are not mentioned in the original at all. It seems a pity that in such solemn moments known falsehoods should be used. The whole argument in the 15th ch of Corinthians is the reverse of convincing. Christ is not the first fruits them that slept A dead man had been raised by touching the bones of Ehsha (2 Kings xii). Elisha, in his lifetime had raised the dead son of the Shunamite (2 Kings iv.); Elijah, before him, had raised the son of the Widow of Zarephath (2 Kings xvii.); Christ had raised Lazarus, the daughter of Jairus, and the son of a widow. In no sense, then, if the Scriptures of the Christians be true can it be said that Christ has become the first fruits, the first begotten from the dead. "For since by man came death;" but death did not come by man; myriads of ages before man was in the world animals were born, lived and died, and they have left their fossilised remains to prove the falsity of the popular belief. We notice also that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." If this be so, what becomes of the "resurrection of the flesh," spoken of in the Baptismal and Visitation Offices? What has become of the "flesh and bones" which Christ had after his resurrection and with which, according to the 4th Article, he has gone into heaven? Cannot Christ "inherit the kingdom of God"? It is hard to see how, in any sense, the resurrection of Christ can be taken as a proof of the resurrection of man. Christ was only dead thirty-six or thirty-seven hours before he is said to have risen again; there was no time for bodily decay, no time for corruption to destroy his frame: how could the restoration to life of a man whose body was in perfect preservation prove the possibility of the resurrection of the bodies which have long since been resolved into their constituent elements, and have gone to form other bodies, and to give shape to other modes of existence? People talk in such superior fashion of the resurrection that-they never stoop to remember its necessary details, or to think where is to be found sufficient matter wherewith to clothe all the human souls on the resurrection morn. The bodies of the dead make the earth more productive; they nourish vegetable existence; transformed into grass they feed the sheep and the cattle; transformed into these they sustain human beings; transformed into these they form new bodies once more, and pass from birth to death, and from death to birth again, a perfect circle of life, transmuted by Nature's alchemy from form to form. No man has a freehold of his body; he possesses only a life-tenancy, and then it passes into other hands. The melancholy dirge which succeeds this chapter sounds like a wail of despair: man "hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay." Can any teaching be more utterly unwholesome? It is the confession of the most complete helplessness, the recognition of the futility of toil. And then the agonised pleading: "O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death." But if he be most merciful, whence all this need of weeping and wailing? If he be most merciful, what danger can there be of the bitter pains of eternal death? And again the cry rises: "Shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, thou most worthy Judge Eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee." It is nothing but the wail of humanity, face to face with the agony of death, feeling its utter helplessness before the great enemy, and clinging to any straw which may float within reach of the drowning grasp; it is the horror of Life facing Death, a horror that seems felt only by the fully living and not by the dying; it is the recoil of vigorous vitality from the silence and chilliness of the tomb. After this comes a sudden change of tone, and the mourners are told of God's "great mercy" in taking the departed, and of the "burden of the flesh," and they are bidden to give "hearty thanks" for the dead being delivered "out of the miseries of this sinful world." Can anything be more unreal? There is not one mourner there who desires to share in the great mercy, who wants to be freed from the burden of the flesh, or desires deliverance from the miseries of this world. Why should people thus play a farce beside the grave? Do they expect God to believe them, or to be deceived by such hypocrisy? It is urged by some that the Church cannot have a "sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life" as regards some of those whom she buries with this service; and it is manifest that, if the Bible be true, drunkards and others who are to be cast into the lake of fire, can scarcely rise to eternal life at the same time, and therefore the Church has no right to express a hope where God has pronounced condemnation. The Rubric only shuts out of the hope the uhbaptized, the excommunicated, and the suicide; all others have a right to burial at her hands, and to the hope of a joyful resurrection, in spite of the Bible. We may hope that the day will soon come when people may die in England and may be buried in peace without this cry of pain and superstition over their graves. Wherever cemeteries are within reasonable distance the Rationalist may now be buried, lovingly and reverently, without the echo of that in which he disbelieved during life sounding over his grave; but throughout many small towns and country villages the Burial Service of the Church is practically obligatory, and is enforced by clerical bigotry. But the passing knell of the Establishment sounds clearer and clearer, and soon those who have rejected her services in life shall be free from her ministrations at the tomb. A COMMINATION OR DENOUNCING OF GOD'S ANGER AND JUDGMENTS AGAINST SINNERS. THIS service is too beautiful to be passed over without a word of homage; the spectacle of the Church raving and cursing is too edifying to be ungratefully ignored. "Brethren, in the primitive Church there was a godly discipline that, at the beginning of Lent, such persons as stood convicted of notorious sin were put to open penance and punished in this world, that their souls might be saved.... Instead whereof (until the said discipline may be restored again, which is much to be wished), it is thought good," &c. That is, in other words: "In days gone by, we were able to bite, as well as to bark; now that our mouths are muzzled we can only snarl; but, until the old power comes back, which is much to be wished, let us, since we cannot bite, show our teeth and growl as viciously as we can, so that people may understand that it is only the power that is wanting, and not the will, and that, if we could, we would torture and burn as vigorously as we curse and damn." And promptly the priest begins with his curses, and all the people say Amen: what a pretty sight--a whole church full of Christians with one consent cursing their neighbours! Then comes an exhortation; as so many curses are flying about we must take care of our heads: "Let us, remembering the dreadful judgment hanging over our heads, and _always ready to fall upon us_, return to our Lord God." Always ready to fall; but is God, then, always lying in wait to catch us tripping, and crush us with his judgments? Does he punish gladly, and keep his blow suspended, to fall at the first chance our weakness gives him? If so, by no means let us return to our Lord God, but let us rather try to put a considerable distance between himself and us, and endeavour, like the prophet Jonah, to flee from the presence of the Lord. "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God: he shall pour down rain upon the sinners, fire and brimstone, storm and tempest." And who made the sinners? Who called them into the world without their own consent? Who made them with an evil nature? Who moulded them as the potter the clay? Who made it impossible for them to go to Jesus unless he drew them, and then did not draw them? If God wants to pour fire and brimstone on anybody, he should pour it on himself, for he made the sinners, and is responsible for their existence and their sin. "It shall be too late to knock when the door shall be shut; too late to cry for mercy when it is the time of justice." How utterly repulsive is this picture of the popular and traditional God: how black the colours wherein is painted this Moloch; surely the artist must have been sketching a picture of the devil, and by mistake wrote under it the name of God when he should have put the name of Satan. If, however, we submit ourselves, and walk in his ways, and seek his glory, and serve him duly--that is, if we acknowledge injustice to be justness, and cruelty to be mercy, and evil to be good--then we shall escape "the extreme malediction which shall light upon them that shall be set on the left hand." On the whole, brave men and women will prefer to do rightly and justly here, caring much about serving man, and nothing about glorifying such a God, and leaving the malediction alone, very sure that no punishment can befal a man for living nobly, and that no fear need cloud the death-bed of him who has made his life a blessing to mankind. Of course, after all this preface, come cringing confessions of sin. The 51st Psalm leads the way, the congregation having by this time become so thoroughly confused that they see no incongruity in saying that when God has built the walls of Jerusalem, he will be pleased with burnt offerings and oblations, and that "then shall they offer young bullocks upon thy altar." As a matter of fact, they have no intention of offering young bullocks at all--bullocks having become too useful to be wasted in that fashion, but they have so thoroughly left the realm of common sense that they have become unconscious of the absurdities which they repeat. The gross exaggeration of the concluding prayers must be patent to everyone; they are full of the hysteria which passes for piety. "We are grieved and wearied with the burden of our sins," although most of the congregation will forget all about the burden before they leave the church: we are "vile earth and miserable sinners;" we "meekly acknowledge our vileness." One longs to shake them all, and tell them to stand up like men and women, instead of cringing there like cowards, whining about their vileness. If they are vile, why don't they mend, instead of saying the same thing every year? They should be ashamed to tell God of their miserable condition year after year, when his grace is sufficient for them, and they might be perfect as their Father in heaven. The Church in all this service reminds one of nothing so much as a wicked old crone, who whines to the parson and scolds all the children. In days gone by the old woman has been the terror of the village, and her sturdy arm has been shown on many a black eye and bruised face; now she can no longer strike, she can only curse; she can no longer tyrannise, she can only scowl; her palsied tongue still mutters the curses which her shrivelled arm can no longer translate into act, and in her bleared eye, in her wrinkled cheeks, in her shaking frame, we read the record of an evil youth, wherein she abused her strength, and we see descending upon her the gloom of a dishonoured age, and the night of a fathomless despair. FORMS OF PRAYER TO BE USED AT SEA. There is now a special service used at the launching of her Imperial Majesty's war-vessels which has not yet found its way into the Prayer-Book; curious thoughts arise in the mind in contemplating that fashion, conjoined to the office to be "used in her Majesty's navy every day." How does God protect "the persons of us, thy servants, and the fleet in which we serve?" Does prayer make bad ships more seaworthy, or supply the place of stout iron and sound wood? If the ship is not safe without prayer, will prayer make it so? If not, what is the use of praying over it? Either the ship is seaworthy or it is not; if it is, it will sail safely without prayer; if it is not, will prayer carry the rotten ship through the storm? If prayer be so efficacious, would it not be cheaper to use less wood and more prayer? Bad materials roughly put together would serve, for a curate would be cheaper than a shipwright, and much prayer would enable us to dispense with much labour. In "storms at sea," a special prayer is to be used; "O most powerful and glorious Lord God, at whose command the winds blow, and lift up the waves of the sea, and who stillest the rage thereof:" "O send thy word of command to rebuke the raging winds and the roaring sea." Is not this the prayer of utter ignorance, the prayer of an unscientific age? For what does the prayer imply? Only the modest request that the state of the atmosphere round the whole globe may be modified to suit the convenience of a small ship! And not only that, but also that the whole course of weather may be changed during countless yesterdays, the weather of to-day being only an effect caused by them. Such prayers were offered up in former days by a people who knew nothing of the inviolability of natural order, and who imagined that the weather might be changed at their bidding as the clerk may push on the hands of the church clock. The sailors are very frank in their confession: "When we have been safe and seen all things quiet about us, we have forgot thee, our God... But now we see how terrible thou art in all thy works of wonder; the great God to be feared above all." At any rate they cannot be accused of hypocrisy in their dealings with God! Nor is this all. Short prayers are provided for those who have no time for the long ones; and if the danger grows very pressing, everybody who can be spared is to join in a special confession of sins, taken from the Communion Office. It would surely be well to avoid a very pious crew, as they might be wasting the time in prayer which might save the ship by work. One serious thought presents itself for consideration in connection with this supposed power of God to smooth the turbulent billows. Many ships go down year after year; many thousands of lives sink in the pitiless ocean; many a bitter wail goes up from drowning crews; how wickedly cruel to have such power and to see the ship sink in the storm! how icily stony to have such power and to watch unmoved the agony of the perishing! The prayers against the enemy are beautiful effusions; some of the children praying the All-father to enable them to slay his other children: "Stir up thy strength, O Lord, and come and help us." What a curious request! Does the All-strong require to stir up his strength before he can crush a few men? "Judge between us and our enemies." But suppose the enemy is in the right, what then? Suppose English sailors are on the wrong side, as in the dispute between George III. and the American Colonies, such a prayer then becomes a prayer for defeat, not an encouraging thought with which to go into battle. The prayers are also offensive for their cowardice of tone: "Let not our sins now cry against us for vengeance; but hear us thy poor servants begging mercy, and imploring thy help." The praises after victory are as objectionable as the prayers before: "The Lord hath covered our heads and made us to stand in the day of battle." And what of the poor wounded, groaning below in the cockpit, whose heads the Lord hath not covered? "The Lord hath overthrown our enemies, and dashed in pieces those that rose up against us." How thoroughly savage and bloodthirsty the thanksgiving! Is God supposed to rejoice over the sufferings of the defeated? Is he to be thanked for slaying his creatures? And then the victory is to be improved to the "advancement of thy gospel;" the gospel of so-called peace and goodwill is to be advanced by cannon-ball and torpedo, by sabre and cutlass. Truly they must believe that Jesus came to send a sword through the earth. And yet this is the true spirit of Christianity; of the creed which has shed more human blood than any other faith; of the creed which won its way through Europe with the crucifix in one hand, and the battle-axe in the other; of the creed that tortured innumerable victims on the rack, and which lit the funeral pyres of the martyrs; of the creed whose cross has ever been crimson-red, not with the blood of one who died to save humanity, but with the blood of a humanity sacrificed to the glory of God. THE FORM AND MANNER OF MAKING, ORDAINING, AND CONSECRATING OF BISHOPS, PRIESTS, AND DEACONS, ACCORDING TO THE ORDER OF THE UNITED CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND. If the Church of England confined herself in her ministrations to offices which had some demonstrable effect, her occupation would be gone. These Ordination offices stand on a par with that of Confirmation. In both, the Holy Ghost is given by imposition of episcopal hands; in both, no appreciable results follow the gift. The preface to these offices says: "It is evident unto all men diligently reading the Holy Scripture and ancient authors, that from the Apostles' time there have been these orders of ministers in Christ's Church: Bishops, Priests, and Deacons." The "evidence" of this appears doubtful, seeing that all Presbyterians acknowledge no such triple order, and regard bishops as an invention of the devil, and "the pride of prelacy" as "a rag of the scarlet" lady. The three offices before us may, to all intents and purposes, be treated as one, for they are the progressive steps of the ladder which reaches-from earth to heaven, from the poor deacon-curate on 70_l_. a year at the bottom, to the archbishop luxuriating on 15,000_l_. a year at the top. There is much of solemn farce in the opening: the archdeacon presents the candidates for ordination to the bishop, and the reverend father in God, who has had them examined, who knows all about them, and has-probably dined with them the night before, gravely responds, "Take heed that the persons whom ye present unto us be-apt and meet, for their learning and godly conversation, to exercise their ministry duly, to the honour of God and the edifying of his Church." For the learning of some young clergymen, the less said about it the better, but those presented have at least scraped through the bishop's examination, and will not now be turned back. The question is simply a sham, and both candidates and bishop would be thoroughly astonished if the archdeacon replied that any one of them was deficient. The Litany follows after this, and then the Communion Office, with special Collect, Epistle, and Gospel. After the Oath of Supremacy, the bishop examines the candidates for the diaconate: "Do you trust that you are inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon you this office?" is asked of each, and each answers: "I trust so." This ought to be a solemn question: to be inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost is surely an important thing; and when one remembers how very little many of these young men, fresh from college, seem to think of the matter, and how one chooses the Church because it is "gentlemanly," and another because there is a fat living in the family, and another because he is too stupid for any other profession, we can scarcely help wondering at the workings of the Holy Spirit in the heart of man. They are also asked if they "unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures." If they really do believe them at their ordination much change must take place in after life, judging by the amount of scepticism among the clergy. Much of the fault lies in pledging young men of three-and-twenty to absolute belief in what they have probably studied but little; at college all their instruction is in Christian _Evidences_, not in attacks on Christianity; they really know but little of the anti-Christian arguments, and therefore are naturally shaken when they learn them further on. Then the deacon is to read Homilies in Church, and promises to do so, although he never fulfils the promise, and he vows to obey his "Ordinary and other chief ministers of the Church... following with a glad mind and will their godly admonitions." How well the deacons and priests keep this pledge may be seen in the daily struggles between them and their bishops, and in the necessity of passing a Public Worship Regulation Act for the easier suppression of rebellious priests. A year must intervene between the diaconate and the priesthood, and when this year has run, the youthful aspirant to the power of the keys presents himself once more before the Father in God, and the same farce of question and answer is repeated. The service runs as in that for deacons, save the special Epistle and Gospel, until after the Oath of Supremacy; and then comes a long exhortation, wherein what strikes us most is the complete contrast between the priest in theory and the priest in practice: "If it shall happen the same Church, or any member thereof, to take any hurt or hindrance by reason of your negligence, ye know the greatness of the fault, and also the horrible punishment that will ensue see that you never cease your labour, your care and diligence, until you have done all that lieth in you, according to your bounden duty, to bring all such as are or shall be committed to your charge, unto that agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, and to that ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ, that there be no place left among you, either for error in religion, or for viciousness in life." Now change the scene to six weeks later, and our young priest is playing croquet and flirting meekly with his rector's daughters, oblivious of the "horrible punishment" he is incurring from Hodge at the public-house getting drunk unrebuked. "Consider how studious ye ought to be in reading and learning the Scriptures... and for this self-same cause how ye ought to forsake and set aside (as much as you may) all worldly cares and studies." Alas for the special vanities of country clergymen; this one botanizes, and that one zoologizes, and another one geologizes, and a fourth is devoted to his garden, and a fifth to his poultry, and a sixth to his farming, not to speak of those who adorn the bench of magistrates and sternly sentence wicked poachers, and sinful old women who pick up sticks, and children who steal flowers. It may be urged that no set of men could possibly live the life sketched in this exhortation: granted; but, then, why pretend that they are bound to live it, and threaten horrible punishments if they do not perform the impossible? Besides, the bishop expresses his hope that they have well considered the whole matter, and have "clearly determined, by God's grace... you will apply yourself wholly to this one thing, and draw all your cares and studies this way." When the time comes to put the questions to the candidates, this very point forms one of them: "Will you be diligent in prayers, and in reading of the Holy Scriptures, and in such studies as help to the knowledge of the same, laying aside the study of the world and the flesh?" And the candidates solemnly promise to do that which they must know they have no intention of doing. One might further urge, that the perpetual meddlesomeness enjoined in this Office on the priest would make that individual a perfect nuisance to his parishioners if he tried to carry it into practice, and that he would probably very often find his ministrations cut short with unpleasant emphasis. The consecration follows in due course: "Receive the Holy Ghost for the Office and work of a priest in the Church of God... Whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained." And yet some people pretend that the Church of England does not sanction an absolving priesthood! If these words have any meaning, they mean that the young men now ordained have the most awful power given into their hands, that they can, in very truth, lock and unlock heaven, for by their absolution the forgiven sinner may enter, while through their retainment of his sins he may be shut out. How tremendous then is the authority thus given into hands so young and so untried! And surely such power is not to be wasted? Surely it is the duty of these priests to be continually urging people to seek, and continually to be giving, absolution. Why should one sinner die unshriven, when such death may be prevented by the diligence of the priest? Life would be impossible were all this really believed; what priest could live in reasonable comfort if this were true and were realised? All earthly things would sink into insignificance, and life would become a desperate struggle to save and absolve the perishing; real belief would end its days in a lunatic asylum. The Consecration of Archbishop or Bishop is somewhat more ceremonious, but is one in character with the preceding offices. The promise to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God's word is one the fulfilment of which brings unfortunate bishops nowadays into much trouble in the flesh. For when a Colenso "comes down like a wolf on the fold," and a faithful Bishop of Oxford forbids him to tear the lambs of his flock, immediately people mutter "bigoted," "narrow-minded," "tyranny," with sundry other unpleasant adjectives and nouns. Yet can there be no doubt that he of Oxon was only obeying his ordination vow. In truth the present spirit of liberty is thoroughly at issue with the spirit of these offices, and the only effect of maintaining them is to create hypocrites and vow breakers. Nor is it fair to-judge too harshly those who break these foolish vows, for a man may honestly think that he can best serve his generation as clergyman, and may have a general belief in Christianity, and he may then argue that he cannot permit himself to be kept out of a wide sphere of usefulness by a few obsolete vows. The pity is that men, whose common sense is too strong to be bound by foolish promises taken in ignorance in their youth, do not join earnestly together to remove this stumbling-block from before the feet of the next generation, so that, if they deem their church valuable, they may preserve her by adapting her to the realities of the nineteenth instead of the sixteenth century, and may make her services something more than a farce, her ceremonies something better than a show. THE ARTICLES. It is a little difficult to make out how far the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England--"the forty stripes save one"--are binding or non-binding on her members. There is, of course, no question that they accurately sketch her doctrines, and that all her faithful children should accept and believe them with devout piety, but scarcely any dogma can be enforced by law against the laity, the whole spirit of the time being directly antagonistic to such enforcement. But there is no doubt that these Articles are both legally and morally binding on the clergy, as they voluntarily submit themselves to them, and declare their full and free belief in them when entering upon the enjoyment of any benefice of the Establishment. The Royal Declaration, prefixed to the Articles, is sweeping and decisive enough. "The Articles of the Church of England do contain the true doctrine of the Church of England agreeable to God's word; which we do therefore ratify and confirm, requiring all our loving subjects to continue in the uniform profession thereof, and prohibiting the least difference from the said Articles." After this distinct declaration we are commanded "That no man hereafter shall either print, or preach, to draw the Article aside either way, but shall submit to it in the plain and full meaning thereof; and shall not put his own sense or comment to be the meaning of the Article, but shall take it in the literal and grammatical sense." When any outsider has read this declaration it becomes to him one of the mysteries of the faith how it is that English gentlemen, honest, honourable men in everything else, manage to accept livings on condition of declaring their full concord with these Articles, and then deliberately twist them into non-natural meanings, in order that they may be Roman Catholic or Latitudinarian, according to the opinions of the readers. It may, certainly, be conceded that the "literal and grammatical sense" is very often nonsense, and therefore cannot be believed; perfectly true: but these honest men have no right to give the weight of their culture and their goodness to bolster up this falling Church, whose dogmas they can never accept, except by transfiguring their unreason into reason, and their folly into wisdom. Many who are ignorant, and careless, and uncultured are kept as nominal members of the Anglican Church because a glamour is thrown over it by the Broad Church clergy; but their position cannot be too strongly reprobated, _so long as they make no effort to alter that in which they do not believe, so long as they silently support superstitions which without their aid would, long ago, have crumbled into ruin._ Article I. deals with "Faith in the Holy Trinity." Most creeds, certainly all Oriental creeds, cluster around a Trinity; the root of the worship of the Trinity is struck deep into the nature of man, for it is the worship of the life universal, localised in the giver of the life individual, under the symbol of the phallic emblem, the creator of each new existence. The Christian Trinity has, naturally, outgrown the primal barbarism of Nature-worship, although preserving the Trinity in unity: "There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions... and in unity of this Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost" So far have we travelled under the guidance of the Church, and we have before our mind's eye, one God, uncorporeate, passionless, indivisible, and yet divided into three "persons," thus implying three individualities, separate the one from the other. Let us remember that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, but that since there is but one God, the Father is the Son, and the Son is the Holy Ghost, and since the Father is the same as the Son, and the Son is the same as the Holy Ghost, the Father and the Holy Ghost must necessarily be identical. Article II. teaches us that "the Son, which is the word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance;" the Son: that is, the Second Person in the undivided and indivisible Trinity: "begotten from everlasting of the Father;" but the Father is one with the Son, for both are God, and yet there is but one God, and therefore Son and Father are interchangeable terms; the Son then is begotten from everlasting of himself, for in the one true God no division is possible, and "such as the Father is such is the Son;" and further, the Son, being the Son, and at the same time identical with his own Father, takes man's nature: then the Father and the Holy Ghost must also take man's nature, for "such as the Son such is the Father, and such is the Holy Ghost:" and God, "without body," takes man's body, and "without parts" is crucified, and "without passions" suffers. But the Son dies "to reconcile his Father to us;" but he is his Father, and his Father is himself. Can the one living and true God die to reconcile himself to himself, and to offer himself up a sacrifice to himself to appease his own wrath? The bodiless is nailed on the cross: the impassible suffers: the undying dies: the one God on earth is offered to appease the one God in heaven, and there is but one living and true God. If this be so, either the God in heaven or the God on earth must have been a false God, for there is but one true God: and the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, who must be kept indivisible in thought, hang upon the cross, as a sacrifice to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and cry, being the one true God, to "my God, my God" who has forsaken himself. And all this "to reconcile the Father to us:" the Father who is "without passions," and who therefore cannot be angry or need reconcilement. "As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also it is to be believed that he went down into hell." _Down_ into hell; which way is down from a round globe? In the ancient conception of the universe the earth was flat, with heaven above and hell underneath, and Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, when the earth opened her mouth, "went down quick (alive) into hell:" did Jesus do the same? But, hanging on the cross, he said to the penitent thief: "_To-day_ shalt thou be with me in Paradise:" is Paradise the same hell? and is heaven identical with both? Jesus ascended, went up, not down, to heaven: if this be so, might not some confusion arise on the way, for a soul starting downwards from Australia on its way to hell, might be found soaring upwards from England after a few hours' journey. Are heaven and hell both all round the world, and if so, why is one "up" and the other "down"? Rome was right and wise when she set her face sternly against the heliocentric theory; a revolving globe destroys all the old notions of the "heaven above," and of "the water under the earth," and of hell below; and it was a strong argument against the sphericity of the earth that "in the day of judgment, men on the other side of the globe could not see the Lord descending through the air." The Fourth Article teaches us that Christ "took again his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature; _wherewith_ he ascended into heaven, and there sitteth." Body, flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to man's nature; wishes, and appetites, and needs, heart and lungs, for instance; and he took these beyond the atmosphere? lungs to breathe where no air is? heart to pulse where no oxygen can purify the blood? flesh and bones among pure spirits? the form of man sitting on the throne of God? and this flesh, bones, &c, all one with the indivisible, from the God without body and parts, and Jesus the Son of Mary, the crucified man, sitting in his flesh and bones in heaven, not to be separated in thought from the one living and true God, without body, parts, or passions.* Such is the "literal and grammatical sense" of the first four Articles, and to analyse the Fifth, "of the Holy Ghost," would be simply to repeat all that has been said above, since "such is the Son, such is the Holy Ghost." May it not justly be said that belief in the Trinity in Unity is the negation of thought, and that faith is only possible where reason ends? * 1 Cor. xv. 50. Article VI. deals with "the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation," and lays down the Canon that anything not capable of proof from the Bible must not be "required of any man that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation." The converse of this proposition, that dogmas that can be proved therefrom _are_ necessary to salvation, is said not to be binding on the Church, and some notable "depravers" of the Scriptures have successfully slipped through this Article. The list of books given as those "of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church" seems open to grave objections, as the authority of many of the books now accounted canonical has been distinctly challenged. "The history of Jonah is so monstrous that it is absolutely incredible." "Job spake not therefore as it stands written in his book." "Isaiah hath borrowed his whole art and knowledge from David." Thus, among many other staid criticisms, wrote Luther. To go further back, is to find much sharp challenging. The Epistle to the Hebrews is of most doubtful authenticity. The 2nd Epistle of Peter and that of Jude are debatable. The Revelation of St. John the Divine was very slowly received, and the two shorter Epistles which bear his name are dubiously recognised. If only the books are to be received of which there "was never any doubt in the Church," the canonical list must be shorn of most of its ornaments. When Article VII. tells us that the ceremonial and civil precepts of the Old Testament are not binding upon us, it seems a pity that some test is not given whereby unlearned people may be able to distinguish between the "Commandments which are called moral" and the others. Is the command to persecute non-believers in Jehovah (Deut. xiii., xvii. 2--7) binding to-day? Is the command to put Witches to death (Lev. xx. 27) binding to-day? John Wesley said that belief in witchcraft was incumbent on all those who believed the Bible, and if witchcraft was possible then, why not now? or has God changed his mind as to the proper method of dealing with such persons? Are the commands enjoining and regulating Slavery (Ex. xxi. 2--6, and 20, 21; Lev. xxv. 44--46; Deut. xv. 12--18) intended for the guidance of slave-holders to-day? What is there to make the "Commandments which are called moral"--by which we may presume are meant the Ten Commandments--more binding on "Christian men" than the other parts of the law? The Fourth Commandment is essentially a Jewish one, and is not obeyed among Christians. The Second Commandment is invariably ignored, and the Fifth promises a reward which is not given. The Commandments touching murder, adultery, stealing, lying are not peculiar to the Mosaic code. They are found in all moral legislation, and are binding--not because taught by Moses or by Buddha, but--because their observance is necessary to the existence of society. Of the three Creeds of the Church we have already spoken, so pass to Article IX., "of Original or Birth-sin." It seems that a fault and corruption of Nature are naturally "engendered of the offspring of Adam," and that this fault "in every person born into the world deserveth God's wrath and damnation." That seems scarcely fair, since the infant's consent is not asked before he is born into the world, and the fault of being born is, therefore, none of his. How, then, can the babe _deserve_ God's wrath and damnation? And seeing that the very next Article (X.) informs us that our condition is such that a man "cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God," it appears terribly unjust that either child or man should be held accursed because they do not do what God has made them incapable of doing. It would be as reasonable to torture a man for not flying without wings, as for God to punish man for being born of the race of Adam, and for not turning to God when the power so to do is withheld; for "we have _no power to do good works_.... without the grace of God by Christ," and when that grace is not given we lie helpless and strength-less, unable to do right. Nor can any deed of ours make us fit recipients of the grace of God, for (Article XIII.) "works done before the grace of Christ and the Inspiration of his Spirit _are not pleasant_ to God.... neither do they make men meet to receive grace.... yea, rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, _we doubt not but that they have the nature of sin_." So that if a good and noble heathen, who has never heard of Christ, and whose good deeds cannot therefore "spring of faith in Jesus Christ," does some high-minded action, or shows some kindly charity, his good deeds are of "the nature of sin," and in fact make him rather worse off than he was before: as Melancthon said, his virtues are only "splendid vices" because done without faith in a person of whom he has never heard. For (Art. XVIII.) they "are to be accursed that presume to say that every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that law, and the light of nature:" "we are accounted righteous before God (Art. XI.) _only_ for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and _not for our own works and' deservings_." Thus we learn that God cares not for righteousness of life, but only for blind faith, and that he sends us out into a world lying under his curse, without any chance of salvation except by attaining a faith which he gives or withholds at his pleasure, and which we can of ourselves do nothing to deserve, much less to obtain. To crown this beautiful theory we learn,--Article XVII. "of Predestination and Election:"--predestination to life, it seems, "is the everlasting purpose of God whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour." But if this be true, man has no choice of any kind in the matter; for not only is grace to do right the gift of God, but man's acceptance of the gift is also compulsory. God has arranged, before he made the world how many and whom he will save. What, then, becomes of man's boasted free will? Before the creation God drew the plan of every human life, and as the potter moulds the ductile clay into the shape he desires, so God moulds his human pottery after his own will into "vessels made to salvation" or made to dishonour. To talk of man's freedom is a mockery. What freedom had Adam and Eve in Paradise? "They might have stood:" nay; for was not "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world?" Before the sin was committed God had made the atonement for it. If Adam were free not to sin, then it would be possible that he might not have sinned, and then God would have offered a needless sacrifice, and would have a Saviour with no one to save, so that it would have been necessary to provide a sinner in order to utilise the sacrifice. All idea of justice is here hideously impossible; God has predestinated some human beings _out of mankind_. These "in due season" he calls; "through grace they obey the calling;" "they be justified freely... and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity." And the rest--those who are _not_ predestined; those who are _not_ called; those to whom _no_ grace is given; those who are _not_ justified freely; those who have no God's mercy to aid them;--what of them? Made by God, the creatures of his hand, the vessels of his moulding, the clay of his shaping, are they cast into the lake of brimstone, into the fire that never shall be quenched, simply because God in "his sovereignty" put them--unconscious--under his curse and left them there, adding to the cruelty of creation the more savage cruelty of preservation? No! whether such deeds should be wrought by God or man, they would be wickedly wrong. Almighty power is no excuse for crime, and the God of the Articles of the Church of England is a gigantic criminal, who uses his Almightiness to make life that he may torment it, and to create sentient beings foredoomed to bitterest agony, to keenest woe. Such frightful misuse of power can only meet with strongest reprobation from all moral beings; unlimited power turned to evil purposes may trample upon and crush us into helplessness, but it can never force us to worship, nor compel us to adore. These first eighteen Articles of the Church may be said to contain the more salient points of the Church's teaching, and it is needless to point out the utter impossibility of reasonable and gentle-hearted men and women believing in the "plan of, salvation" sketched out in them. They are instinct with the cruel theology of Calvin and of Zwingli, and imply (though they do not so plainly word) the view of the Lambeth Articles of 1595, that "God from eternity hath predestinated certain men unto life; _certain he hath reprobated_." These Anglican Articles must be taken as teaching predestination to damnation as well as to salvation, since those not called to life must inevitably fall to death. The next section--so to speak--of the Articles deals with Church affairs, defining the authority of Churches and of Councils, and explaining the 'doctrine of the Sacraments. It is with these that the High Church party chiefly fall out, for the Twenty-first Article, acknowledging that General Councils may err and have erred, strikes at the root of the infallibility of the Church Universal, so dear to the priestly soul. The Articles on the Sacraments also tend somewhat to the Low Church view of them, and dwell more on the faith of the recipient than on the consecration of the priest. The Article (XXXIII.) levelled against "excommunicate persons," commanding that such an one shall "be taken of the whole multitude of the faithful, as an Heathen and Publican, until he be openly reconciled by penance," is duly believed and subscribed by clergymen, but has no real meaning to-day. If the Thirty-fifth Article were acted upon, some curiosities of English literature would enliven the Churches; for this Article bids the clergy read the Homilies: "we judge them to be read in Churches by the Ministers, diligently and distinctly, that they may be understanded of the people." It is really a pity that this direction is not carried out, for some of the barbarous doctrines of popular Christianity would then be seen as they are described by men who thoroughly believed in them, instead of being known only as they are presented to us to-day, with some of their deformity hidden under the robes woven for them by modern civilisation, wherein humanity has outgrown the old Christianity, and men's reason chastens their faith. The last three Articles touch on civil matters, acknowledging the Royal Supremacy and dealing with other matters pertaining to Caesar, but on the borderland between him and God. Such are the Articles of the Church; believed by few, unknown to many, winked at by all, because religion is practically a matter of indifference to most, and while custom and fashion enforce conformity with the Church, the brain troubles not itself to analyse the claim, or to weigh the conditions of allegiance. Men have become so sceptical as to regard all creeds with indifference, and the half-conceived unbelief of the clergy, sighing with mental reservations, and formally asserting belief where the thought and the lips are at variance, appears to have eaten the heart out of all religious honesty in England, and men lie to God who would revolt at lying to man. If belief in the Articles is now a thing of the past, then the Articles should also pass away; if Churchmen have outgrown these dogmas, why do they suffer them to deface their Prayer-Book, to barb "the shafts of the sceptic, and to give power to the sneer of the scoffer?" THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND CATECHISM WISE men, in modern times, are striving earnestly and zealously to, as far as possible, free religion from the cramping and deadening effect of creeds and formularies, in order that it may be able to expand with the expanding thought of the day. Creeds are like iron moulds, into which thought is poured; they may be suitable enough to the way in which they are framed; they may be fit enough to enshrine the phase of thought which designed them; but they are fatally unsuitable and unfit for the days long afterwards, and for the thought of the centuries which succeed. "No man putteth new wine into old bottles, else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be marred; but new wine must be put into new bottles." The new wine of nineteenth century thought is being poured into the old bottles of fourth century creeds: and sixteenth century formulas, and the strong new wine-bursts the bottles, while the weak new wine that cannot: burst them ferments into vinegar in them, and often becomes harmful and poisonous. Let the new wine be poured into new bottles; let the new thought mould its own expression; and then the old bottles will be preserved unbroken as curious specimens of antiquity, instead of being smashed to pieces because they get in the way of the world. Nothing is more to be deprecated in a new and living movement than the formulating into creeds of the thoughts that inspire it, and the imposition of those creeds on those who join it. The very utmost that can be done to give coherency to a large movement is to put forward a declaration of a few cardinal doctrines that do not interfere with full liberty of divergent thought. Thus, Rationalists might take as the declaration of their central thought, that "reason is supreme," but they would be destroying the future of Rationalism if they formulated into a creed any of the conclusions to which their own reason has led them at the present time, for by so doing they would be stereotyping nineteenth century thought for the restraint of twentieth century thought, which will be larger, fuller, more instructed than their own. Freethinkers may declare as their symbol the Right to Think, and the Right to express thought, but should never claim the declaration by others of any special form of Freethought, before acknowledging them as Freethinkers. Bodies of men who join together in a society for a definite purpose may fairly formulate a creed to be assented to by those who join them, but they must ever remember that such creed will lose its force in the time to come, and that while it adds strength and point to their movement now, it also limits its useful duration, if it is to be maintained as unalterable, for as circumstances change different needs will arise, and a fresh expression of the means to meet those needs will become necessary. A wise society, in forming a creed, will leave in the hands of its members full power to revise it, to amend it, to alter it, so that the living thought within the society may ever have free scope. A creed must be the expression of _living thought_, and be moulded by it, and not the skeleton of dead thought, moulding the intellect of its heirs. The strength of a society lies in the diversity, and not in the uniformity, of the thought of its members, for progress can only be made through heretical thought, _i.e_., thought that is at variance with prevailing thought. All Truth is new at some time or other, and the fullest encouragement should therefore be given to free and fearless expression, since by such expression only is the promulgation of new truths possible. An age of advancement is always an age of heresy; for advancement comes from questioning, and questioning springs from doubt, and hence progress and heresy walk ever hand-in-hand, while an age of faith is also an age of stagnation. Every argument that can be brought against a stereotyped creed for adults, tells with tenfold force against a stereotyped catechism for children. If it is evil to try and mould the thought of those whose maturity ought to be able to protect them against pressure from without, it is certainly far more evil to mould the thought of those whose still unset reason is ductile in the trainer's hand. A catechism is a sort of strait-waistcoat put upon children, preventing all liberty of action; and while the child's brain ought to be cultured and developed, it ought never to be trained to run in one special groove of thought. Education should teach children _how_ to think, but should never tell them _what_ to think. It should sharpen and polish the instruments of thought, but should not fix them into a machine made to cut out one special shape of thought. It should send the young out into the world keen-judging, clear-eyed, thoughtful, eager, inquiring, but should not send them out with answers cut-and-dried to every question, with opinions ready made for them, and dogmas nailed into their brains. Most churches have provided catechism-sawdust for the nourishment of the lambs of their flock; Roman Catholics, Church of Englanders, Presbyterians, they have all their juvenile moulds. The Church of England catechism is, perhaps, the least injurious of all, because the Church of England is the result of a compromise, and has the most offensive parts of its dogmas cut out of the public formularies. It wears some slight apron of fig-leaves in deference to the effect produced by the eating of the tree of knowledge. But still, the Church of England catechism is bad enough, training the child to believe the most impossible things before he is old enough to test their impossibility. To the age which believes in Jack-and-the-bean-stalk, and the adventures of Cinderella, all things are possible; whether it be Jonah in the whale's belly, or Tom Thumb in the stomach of the red cow, all is gladly swallowed with implicit faith; the children grow out of Tom Thumb, in the course of nature, but they are not allowed to grow out of Jonah. When the baby is brought to the font to make divers promises, of the making of which he is profoundly unconscious--however noisily he may at times convey his utter disgust at the whole proceeding--the godfathers and godmothers are directed to see that the child is "brought to the bishop to be confirmed by him, so soon as he can say the creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, in the vulgar tongue, and be further instructed in the Church Catechism set forth for that purpose." It is scarcely necessary to say that these words--being in the Prayer-Book--are not meant to be taken literally, and that the bishop would be much astonished if all the small children in the Sunday School who can glibly repeat the required lesson, were to be brought up to him for confirmation. As a matter of fact, the large majority of godfathers and godmothers do not trouble themselves about seeing their godchildren brought to confirmation at all, and the children are sent up when they are about fifteen, at which period most of them who are above the Sunday School going grade, are rapidly "crammed" with the Catechism, which they as rapidly forget when the day of confirmation is over. The Christian name of the child being given in answer to the first question of the Catechism, the second inquiry proceeds: "Who gave you this name?" The child is taught to answer--"My godfathers and godmothers in my baptism; wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." Thus, the first lesson imprinted on the child's memory is one of the most objectionable of the dogmas of the Church, that of baptismal regeneration. In baptism he is "made" something; then he becomes something which he was not before; according to the baptismal office, he is given in baptism "that thing which by nature he cannot have," and being under the wrath of God, he is delivered from that curse, and is received for God's "own child by adoption;" he is also "incorporated" into the "holy Church," and thus becomes "a member of Christ," being made a part of the body of which Christ is the head; this being done, he is, of course, an "inheritor of the kingdom of heaven" through the "adoption." Thus the child is taught that, by nature, he is bad and accursed by God; that so bad was he as an infant, that his parents were obliged to wash away his sins before God would love him. If he asks what harm he had done that he should need cleansing, he will be told that he inherits Adam's sin; if he asks why he should be accursed for being born, and why, born into God's world at God's will, he should not by nature be God's child, he will be told that God is angry with the world, and that everyone has a bad nature when they are born; thus he learns his first lesson of the unreality of religion; he is cursed for Adam's sin, which he had no share in, and forgiven for his parent's good deed, which he did not help in. The whole thing is to him a play acted in his infancy in which he was a puppet, in which God was angry with him for what he had not done, and pleased with him for what he did not say, and he consequently feels that he has neither part nor lot in the whole affair, and that the business is none of his; if he be timid and superstitious, he will hand over his religion to others, and trust to the priest to finish for him what Adam and his parents began, shifting on to them all a responsibility that he feels does not in reality belong to him. The unreality deepens in the next answer which is put into his mouth--"What did your godfathers and god-mothers then for you?" "They did promise and vow-three things in my name: First, that I should renounce the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the flesh. Secondly, that I should believe all the articles of the Christian Faith. And thirdly, that I should keep God's holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of my life." Turning to the Baptismal Service again, we find that the godparents are asked, "Dost thou, _in the name of this child_, renounce," &c, and they answer severally, "I renounce them all," "All this I steadfastly believe;" and, asked if they will keep God's holy will, they still answer for the child, "I will." What binding force can such promises as these have upon the conscience of anyone when he grows up? The promises were made without his consent; why should he keep them? The belief was vowed before he had examined it; why should he profess it? No promise made in another's name can be binding on him who has given no authority for such use of his name, and the unconscious baby, innocent of all knowledge of what is being done, can never, in justice, be held liable for breaking a contract in the making of which he had no share. Bentham rightly and justly protests against "the implied--the necessarily implied--assumption, that it is in the power of any person--not only with the consent of the father or other guardian, but without any such consent--to fasten upon a child at its birth, and long before it is itself even capable of giving consent to anything, with the concurrence of two other persons, alike self-appointed, load it with a set of obligations--obligations of a most terrific and appalling character--obligations of the nature of oaths, of which just so much and no more is rendered visible as is sufficient to render them terrific--obligations to which neither in quantity nor in quality are any limits attempted to be, or capable of being, assigned." This obligation, laid upon the child in its unconsciousness, places it in a far worse position, should it hereafter reject the Christian religion, than if such an undertaking had not been entered into on its behalf. It becomes an "apostate," and is considered to have disgracefully broken its faith; it lies under legal disabilities which it would not otherwise incur, for heavy statutes are levelled against those who, after having "professed the Christian religion," write or speak against it. Thus in early infancy a chain is forged round the child's neck which fetters him throughout life, and the unconsciousness of the baby is taken advantage of to lay him under terrible penalties. In English law a minor is protected because of his youth; surely we need an ecclesiastical minority, before the expiration of which no spiritual contracts entered into should be enforceable. From the religious point of view, apostacy is far more fatal than simple non-Christianity. Keble writes: "Vain thought, that shall not be at all I Refuse me, or obey, Our ears have heard the Almighty's call, We cannot be as they." Is it fair not to ask the child's assent before making his case worse than that of the heathen should he hereafter reject the faith which his sponsors promise he shall believe? Besides, how absurd is this promising for another; a child is taught not to break _his_ baptismal vow, when he has made no such vow at all; how can the god-parents ensure that the child shall renounce the devil and believe in Christianity, and obey God? It is foolish enough to make a promise of that kind for oneself when changing circumstances may force us into breaking it, but it is sheer madness to make such a promise on behalf of somebody else. The promise to "believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith," cannot take effect until the judgment has grown ripe enough to test, to accept, or to reject, and who then can say for his brother, "he shall believe." Belief is not a matter of will, it is a matter of evidence; if evidence enough supports an assertion, we must believe it, while if the evidence be insufficient we must doubt it. Belief is neither a virtue nor a vice; it is simply the consequence of sufficient evidence. Theological belief is demanded on insufficient evidence; such belief is called, theologically, "faith," but in ordinary matters it would be called "credulity." First amongst the renouncings comes "the devil and all his works." Says Bentham--"The Devil, who or what is he, and how is it that he is _renounced?_ The works of the Devil, what are they, and how is it that they are renounced? Applied to the Devil, who or whatever he is--applied to the Devil's works, whatever they are--what sort of an operation is _renouncement or renunciation?_" Pertinent questions, surely, and none of them answerable. A Court of Law lately sat upon the Devil, and could not find him; "how is the Christian to explain to the child whom it is he has renounced in his infancy? And in the first place, the Devil himself--of whom so decided and familiar a mention, as of one whom everybody knows, is made--where lives he? Who is he? What is he? The child itself, did it ever see him? By any one, to whom for the purpose of the inquiry the child has access, was he ever seen? The child, has it ever happened to it to have any dealings with him? Is it in any such danger as that of having, at any time, to his knowledge, any sort of dealings with him? If not, then to what purpose is this _renouncement?_ and, once more, what is it that is meant by it?" But supposing there were a devil, and supposing he had works, how could the child renounce him? The devil is not in the child's possession that he might give him up as if he were an injurious toy. In days gone by the phrase had a definite meaning; people were supposed to be able to hold commerce with the devil, to commune with familiar spirits, and summon imps to do their bidding; to "renounce the devil and all his works" was then a promise to have nothing to do with witchcraft, sorcery, or magic; to regard the devil as an enemy, and to take no advantage by his help. All these beliefs have long since passed away into "The Old Curiosity Shop" of Ecclesiastical Rubbish, but children are still taught to repeat the old phrases, to rattle the dry bones which life has left so long. The "pomps of this wicked world" might be renounced by Christians if they wanted to do so, but they show a strange obliviousness of their baptismal vow. A reception at court is as good an instance of the renunciation of the vain pomp and glory of this wicked world as we could wish to see, and when we remember that the children who are taught the Catechism in their childhood are taught to aim at winning these pomps in their youth and maturity, we learn to appreciate the fact that spiritual things can only be spiritually discerned. Would it not be well if the Church would publish an "Explanation of the Catechism," so that the children may know what they have renounced? "Dost thou not think that thou art bound to believe, and to do as they have promised for thee?" "Yes, verily; and by God's help so I will. And I heartily thank our heavenly Father, that he hath called me to this state of salvation, through Jesus Christ our Saviour. And I pray unto God to give me his grace, that I may continue in the same unto my life's end." "Bound to believe... as they have promised for thee!" In the name of common sense, why? What a marvellous claim for any set of people to put forward, that they have the right to promise what other people shall believe. And the child is taught to answer to this preposterous question, "Yes, verily." The Church does wisely in training children to answer thus before they begin to think, as they would certainly never admit so palpably unjust a claim as that they were bound to believe or to do anything simply because some other persons said that they should. The hearty thanks due to God "that he hath called me to this state of salvation," seem somewhat premature, as well as unnecessary. God, having made the child, is bound to put him in some "state" where existence will not involve a curse to him; the "salvation" is very doubtful, being dependent on a variety of things in addition to baptism. Besides, it is doubtful whether it is an advantage to be in a "state of salvation," unless you get finally saved, some Christian authors appearing to think that damnation is the heavier if it is incurred after being put in the state of salvation, so that, on the whole, it would probably be less dangerous to be a heathen. The child is then required to "rehearse the articles of his belief," and is taught to recite "the Apostles' Creed," _i.e_., a creed with which the apostles had nothing in the world to do. The act of belief ought surely to be an intelligent one, and anyone who professes to believe a thing ought to have some idea of what the thing is. What idea can a child have of conception by the Holy Ghost and being born of the Virgin Mary, in both which recondite mysteries he avows his belief? Having recited this, to him (as to everyone else) unintelligible creed, he is asked, "What dost thou chiefly learn in these articles of thy belief?" a most necessary question, since they can have conveyed no idea at all to his little mind. He answers: "First, I learn to believe in God the Father, who hath made me and all the world. Secondly, in God the Son, who hath redeemed me and all mankind. Thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me and all the elect people of God." Curiously, the last two paragraphs have no parallels in the creed itself; there is no word there that the Son is God, nor that he redeemed the child, nor that he redeemed all mankind; neither is it said that the Holy Ghost is God, nor that he sanctifies anyone at all. How is the child to believe that God the Son redeemed _all mankind_, when he is taught that only by baptism has he himself been brought into "this state of salvation?" if all are redeemed, why should he specially thank God that he himself is called and saved? if all are redeemed, what is the meaning of the phrase that "all the elect people of God" are sanctified by the Holy Ghost? Surely all who are redeemed must also be sanctified, and should not the two passages touch only the same people? Either the Holy Ghost should sanctify all mankind, or Christ should redeem only the elect people of God. A redeemed, but unsanctified, person would cause confusion as to his proper place when he arrived in the realms above; St. Peter would not know where to send him to. Bentham caustically remarks: "Here, then, in this word, we have the name of a sort of _process_, which the child is made to say is going on within him; going on within him at all times--going on within him at the very instant he is giving this account of it. This process, then, what is it? Of what feelings is it productive? By what marks and symptoms is he to know whether it really is or is not going on within him, as he is forced to> say it is? How does he feel, now that the Holy Ghost is _sanctifying_ him? How is it that he would feel, if no such operation were going on within him? Too often does it happen to him in some shape or other, to commit _sin_; or something which he is told and required to believe is _sin_: an event which cannot fail to be frequently, not to say continually, taking place, if that be true, which in the Liturgy we are all made so decidedly to confess and assert,--viz., that we are all--all of us without exception--so many _'miserable sinners.'_ In the schoolroom, doing what by this Catechism he is forced to do, saying what he is forced to say, the child thus declares himself, notwithstanding, a sanctified person. From thence going to church, he confesses himself to be no better than '_a miserable sinner.'_ If he is not always this miserable sinner, then why is he always forced to say he is? If he is always this same miserable sinner, then this sanctification, be it what it may, which the Holy Ghost was at the pains of bestowing upon him, what is he the better for it?" Besides, how can the child be taught to believe in one God if he finds three different gods all doing different things for him? As clear a distinction as possible is here made between the redeeming work of God the Son and the sanctifying work of God the Holy Ghost, and if the child tries to realise in any fashion that which he is taught to say he believes, he must inevitably become a Tri-theist and believe in the creator, the redeemer, the sanctifier, as three different gods. The creed being settled, the child is reminded: "You said that your godfathers and godmothers did promise for you that you should keep God's commandments. Tell me how many there be? Ans. Ten. Ques. Which be they? Ans. The same which God spake in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, saying, I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods but me." But God has not brought the child, nor the child's ancestors, out of the land of Egypt, nor out of the house of bondage: therefore the first commandment, which is made dependent on such out-bringing, is not spoken to the child. The argument runs: "Seeing that I have done so much for thee, thou shalt have no other God instead of me." The second commandment is rejected by general consent, and it is almost certain that the child will be taught that God has commanded that no likeness of anything shall be made in a room with pictures on the walls. Christians conveniently gloss over the fact that this commandment forbids all sculpture, all painting, all moulding, all engraving; they plead that it only means nothing that shall be made for purposes of worship, although the distinct words are: "_Thou shalt not make any likeness of anything._'" In order to thoroughly understand the state of the child's mind who has learned that "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children," when he comes to read other parts of the Bible it will be well to put side by side with this declaration, Ezekiel xviii. 19, 20: "Yet say ye, why? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live. The soul that sinneth it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father." The fourth commandment is disregarded on all sides; from the prince who has his fish on the Sunday from the fishmonger down to the costermonger who sells cockles in the street, all nominal Christians forget and disobey this command; they keep their servants at work, although they ought to "do no manner of work," and drive in carriage, cab, and omnibus as though God had not said that the cattle also should be idle on the Sabbath day. Although the New Testament is, on this point, in direct conflict with the Old,--Paul commanding the Colossians not to trouble themselves about Sabbaths, yet Christians read and teach this commandment, while in their lives they carry out the injunction of Paul. To complete the demoralising effect of this fourth commandment on the child, he is taught that "in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is," while, in his day-school he is instructed in exactly the opposite sense, and is told of the long and countless ages of evolution through which the world passed, and the marvellous creatures that inhabited it before the coming of man. The fifth commandment is also evil in its effect on the child's mind from that same fault of unreality which runs throughout the teaching of the Established Church. "Honour thy father and thy mother _that thy days may be long in the land._" He will know perfectly well that good children die as well as bad, and that, therefore, there is no truth in the promise he recites. The rest of the commandments enjoin simple moral duties, and would be useful if taught without the preceding ones; as it is, the unreality of the first five injures the force of the later ones, and the good and bad, being mixed up together, are not likely to be carefully distinguished and thus they lose all compelling moral power. The commandments recited, the child is asked--"What dost thou chiefly learn by these commandments?" and he answers that--"I learn two things: my duty towards God and my duty towards my neighbour." We would urge here that man's duty to man should be the point most pressed upon the young. Supposing that any "duty to God" were possible--a question outside the present subject--it is clear that the duty to man is the nearest, the most obvious, the easiest to understand, and therefore the first to be inculcated. Surely, it is only by discharge of the immediate and the plain duty that any discharge becomes possible of one less near and less plain. Besides, the duty to God taught in the Catechism is of so wide and engrossing a nature that to discharge it fully would take up the whole time and thoughts. For in answer to the question, "What is thy duty towards God?" the child says:--"My duty towards God is to believe in him, to fear him, and to love him with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength; to worship him, to give him thanks, to put my whole trust in him, to call upon him, to honour his holy name and his word, and to serve him truly all the days of my life." First, "to believe in him;" but how can the child believe in him until evidence be offered of his existence? But to examine such evidence is beyond the still weak intellectual powers of the child, and therefore belief in God is beyond him, for belief based on authority is utterly valueless. Besides, it can never be a "duty" to believe; if the evidence of a fact be convincing, belief in that fact naturally follows, and non-belief would be very stupid; but the word "duty" is out of place in connection with belief. "To fear him:" that the child will naturally do, after learning that God was angry with him for being born, and that another God, Jesus Christ, was obliged to die to save him from the angry God. "To love him;" not so easy, under the circumstances, nor is love compatible with fear; "perfect love casteth out fear... he that feareth is not made perfect in love." "With all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength." Four different things the child is to love God with: What does each mean? How is heart to be distinguished from mind, soul, and strength? In human love, love of the heart might, perhaps, be distinguished from love of the mind, if by love of the heart alone a purely physical passion were intended; but this cannot explain any sort of love to God, to whom such love would be clearly impossible. Once more, we say that the Church of England should publish an explanation of the Catechism, so that we may know what we ought to do and believe for our soul's health. Bentham urges that to put the "whole trust" in God would prevent the child from putting "any part of his trust" in second causes, and that disregard of these would not be compatible with personal safety and with the preservation of health and life; and that further, as all these services are "unprofitable" to God, they might "with more profit be directed to the service of those weak creatures, whose need of all the service that can be rendered to them is at all times so urgent and so abundant." The duty to God being thus acknowledged, there follows the duty to the neighbour, for which there seems no room when the love, trust, and service due to God have been fully rendered. "_Ques_. What is thy duty toward thy neighbour? _Ans_. My duty towards my neighbour is to love him as myself, and to do to all men as I would they should do unto me. To love, honour, and succour my father and mother. To honour and obey the king, and all that are put in authority under him. To submit myself to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors, and masters. To order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters. To hurt nobody by word or deed. To be true and just in all my dealings. To bear no malice nor hatred in my heart. To keep my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue from evil-speaking, lying, and slandering. To keep my body in temperance, soberness, and chastity. Not to covet nor desire other men's goods; but to learn and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do my duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to call me." The first phase reproduces the morality which is as old as successful social life. "What word will serve as a rule for the whole life?" asked one of Confucius. "Is not reciprocity such a word?" answered the sage. "What thou dost not desire done to thyself, do not to others. When you are labouring for others, let it be with the same zeal as if for yourself." The second phrase is true and right; the next is often foolish and impossible. Who could honour such a king as George IV.? while to "obey" James II. would have been the destruction of England. Honour and obedience to constituted authorities is a duty only when those authorities discharge the duties that they are placed in power to execute; the moment they fail in doing this, to* honour and to obey them is to become partners in their treason to the nation. The doctrine of divine right was believed in when the Catechism was written, and then the voice of the king was a divine one, and to resist him was to resist God. The two following phrases breathe the same cringing spirit, as though the main duty towards one's neighbour were to submit to him. Reverence to any one better than one's-self is an instinct, but "my betters" is simply a cant expression for those higher in the social scale, and those have no right to any lowlier ordering than the simple respect and courtesy that every man should show towards every other. This kind of teaching saps a child's mental strength and self-respect, and is fatal to his manliness of character if it makes any impression upon him. The remainder of the answer is thoroughly good and wholesome, save the last few words about "that state of life unto which it shall please God to call me." A child should be taught that his "state of life" depends upon his own exertions, and not upon any "calling" of God, and that if the state be unsatisfactory, it is his duty to set diligently to work to mend it; not to be content with it when bad, not to throw on God the responsibility of having placed him there, but so to labour with all hearty diligence as to make it worthy of himself, honourable, respectable, and comfortable. At this point the child is informed: "Thou art not able to do these things of thyself, nor to walk in the commandments of God, and to serve him, without his special grace; which thou must learn at all times to call for by diligent prayer." But if the child cannot do these things without God's "special grace," then the responsibility of his not doing them must of necessity fall upon God; for the child cannot pray unless God gives him grace; and without prayer he can't get special grace, and without special grace he can't "do these things;" so that clearly the child is helpless until God sends him his grace, and therefore the whole responsibility lies upon God alone, and he can never blame the child for not doing that which he himself has prevented him from beginning. Diligent prayer for special grace being thus wanted, the child is taught to recite the Lord's Prayer, in which grace is not mentioned at all, and he is then asked--"What desirest thou of God in this prayer?" "I desire my Lord God, our Heavenly Father, who is the giver of all goodness, to send his grace to me and to all people; that we may worship him, serve him, and obey him, as we ought to do." We rub our eyes; not one word of all this is discoverable in the Lord's Prayer! "Send his grace to me and to all people"? not a syllable conveying any such meaning: "that we may worship him, serve him, and obey him "? not the shadow of such a request. Is it supposed to train a child in the habit of truthfulness to make him recite as a religious lesson what is utterly and thoroughly untrue? "And I pray unto God that he will send us all things that be needful both for our souls and bodies, and that he will be merciful unto to us, and forgive us our sins." "All things that be needful both for our souls and bodies" is, we presume, summed up in "our daily bread." Simple people would scarcely imagine that "daily bread" was all they wanted both for their souls and bodies; perhaps the souls want nothing, not being discoverable by any real needs which they express. "And that it will please him to save and defend us in all dangers, ghostly and bodily; and that he will keep us from all sin and wickedness, and from our ghostly enemy, and from everlasting death." Here, again, nothing in the prayer can be translated into these phrases; there is nothing about saving and defending from all dangers, ghostly and bodily, nor a syllable as to defence from our ghostly enemy, by whom a child will probably understand a ghost in a white sheet, and will go to bed in terror after saying the Catechism which thus recognises ghosts--nor from everlasting death. The prayer is of the simplest, but the translation of it of the hardest. "And this I trust he will do of his mercy and goodness, through our Lord Jesus Christ; And therefore I say Amen, so be it." Why should the child trust God's mercy and goodness to protect him? There would be no dangers, ghostly and bodily, no ghostly enemy, and no everlasting death, unless God had invented them all, and the person who places us in the midst of dangers is scarcely the one to whom to turn for deliverance from them. Mercy and goodness would not have surrounded us with such dangers; mercy and goodness would not have encompassed us with such foes; mercy and goodness would have created beings whose glad lives would have been one long hymn of praise to the Creator, and would have ever blessed him that he had called them into existence. The child is now to be led further into the Christian mysteries, and is to be instructed in the doctrine of the sacraments, curious double-natured things of which we have to believe in what we don't see, and see that which we are not to believe in. "How many sacraments hath Christ ordained in his Church?" "Two only as generally necessary to salvation, that is to say, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord." "Generally necessary"; the word "generally" is explained by commentators as "universally," so that the phrase should run, "universally necessary to salvation." The theory of the Church being that all are by nature the children of wrath, and that "_none_ are regenerate," except they be born of water and of the Holy Ghost, it follows that baptism is universally necessary to salvation; and since Jesus has said, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you" (John vi. 53), it equally follows that the Lord's Supper is universally necessary to salvation. Seeing that the vast majority of mankind are not baptized Christians at all, and that of baptized Christians the majority never eat the Lord's supper, the heirs of salvation will be extremely limited in number, and will not be inconveniently crowded in the many mansions above. "What meanest thou by this word _sacrament?_ I mean an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us, ordained by Christ himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, and as a pledge to assure us thereof." If this be a true definition of a sacrament, no such thing as a sacrament can fairly be said to be in existence. What is the inward and spiritual grace given unto the baby in baptism? If it be given, it must be seen in its effects, or else it is a gift of nothing at all. A baby after baptism is exactly the same as it was before; cries as much, kicks as much, fidgets as much; clearly it has received no inward and spiritual sanctifying grace; it behaves as well or as badly as any unbaptized baby, and is neither worse nor better than its contemporaries. Manifestly the inward grace is wanting, and therefore no true sacrament is here, for a sacrament must have the grace as well as the sign, The same thing may be said of the Lord's Supper; people do-not seem any the better for it after its reception; a hungry man is satisfied after his supper, and so shows that he has really received something, but the spirit suffers as much from the hunger of envy and the thirst of bad temper after the Lord's Supper as it did before. But why should the grace be "inward," and why is the soul thought of as _inside_ the body, instead of all through and over it? There are few convenient hollows inside where it can dwell, but people speak as though man were an empty box, and the soul might live in it. The sacrament is "a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof." God's grace, then, can be conveyed in the vehicles of water, bread, and wine; it must surely, then, be something material, else how can material things transmit it? And God becomes dependent on man to decide for him on whom the grace shall be bestowed. Two infants are born into the world; one of them is brought to church and is baptized; God may give that child his grace: the other is left without baptism; it is a child of wrath, and God may not bless it. Thus is God governed by the neglect of a poor, and very likely drunken, nurse, and the recipients of his grace are chosen for him at the caprice or carelessness of men. Strange, too, that Christians who received God's grace need "a pledge to assure" them that they have really got it; how curious that the recipient should not know that so precious a gift has been bestowed upon him until he has also been given a little bit of bread and a tiny sip of wine. It is as though a queen's messenger put into one's hand a hundred £1000 notes, and then said solemnly: "Here is a farthing as a pledge to assure you that you have really received the notes." Would not the notes themselves be the best assurance that we had received them, and would not the grace of God consciously possessed be its own best proof that God had given it to us? "How many parts are there in a sacrament? Two; the outward visible sign, and the inward spiritual grace." This is simply a repetition of the previous question and answer, and is entirely unnecessary. "What is the outward visible sign, or form, in baptism? Water; _wherein_ the person is baptized _in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost_." This answer raises the interesting question as to whether English Christians--save the Baptists--are really baptized. They are not baptized "in," but only "with" water. The rubric directs that the minister "shall _dip it in_ the water discreetly and warily," and that only where "the child is weak it shall suffice to pour water upon it" It appears possible that the salvation of nearly all the English people is in peril, since their baptism is imperfect. The formula of baptism reminds us of a curious difference in the baptism of the apostles from the baptism in the triune name of God; although Jesus had, according to Matthew, solemnly commanded them to baptize with this formula, we find, from the Acts, that they utterly disregarded his injunction, and baptized "in the name of Jesus Christ," instead of in the name of "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." (See Acts ii. 38, viii. 16, x 48, xix. 5, etc.) The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is, that if the Acts be historical, Jesus never gave the command put into his mouth in Matthew, but that it was inserted later when such a formula became usual in the Church. "What is the inward and spiritual grace? A death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness; for being by nature born in sin, and the children of wrath, we are hereby made the children of grace." What? a baby die unto sin? how can it, when it is unconscious of sin, and therefore cannot sin? "A new birth unto righteousness?" but it is only just born, surely there can be no need that it should be born over again so soon? And if it be true that this is the inward grace given, would it not be well--as did many in the early Church--to put off the ceremony of baptism until the last moment, so that the dying man, being baptized, may die to all the sins he has committed during life, and be born again into spiritual babyhood, fit to go straight into heaven? It seems a needless cruelty to baptize infants, and so deprive them of the chance of getting rid of all their life sins in a lump later on. This is not the only objection to baptism. Bentham powerfully urges what has often been pressed:-- "Note well the sort of story that is here told. The Almighty God,--maker of all things, visible and 'invisible,'--'of heaven and earth, and all that therein is.'--makes, amongst other things, a child: and no sooner has he made it, than he is 'wrath' with it for being made. He determines accordingly to consign it to a state of endless torture. Meantime comes somebody,--and pronouncing certain words, applies the child to a quantity of water, or a quantity of water to the child. Moved by these words, the all-wise Being changes his design; and, though he is not so far appeased as to give the child its pardon, vouchsafes to it a _chance_,--no one can say _what_ chance,--of ultimate escape. And this is what the child gets by being 'made'--and we see in what way made--'a child of grace.'" "What is required of persons to be baptised? Repentance, whereby they forsake sin; and Faith, whereby they steadfastly believe the promises of God made to them in that Sacrament. Why then are infants baptised when by reason of their tender age they cannot perform them? [Why, indeed!] Because they promise them both by their sureties, which promise, when they come of age, themselves are bound to perform." Surely it would be better if these things are "required" before baptism, to put off baptism until repentance and faith become possible, instead of going through it like a play, where people act their parts and represent somebody else. For suppose the child for whom repentance and faith are promised does not, when he comes to full age, either repent of his sins or believe God's promises, what becomes of the inward and spiritual grace? It must either have been given, or not have been given; if the former, the unrepentant and unbelieving person has got it on the faith of his sureties' promises for him; if the latter, God has not given the grace promised in Holy Baptism, and his promises are therefore unreliable in all cases. "Why was the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper ordained? For the continual remembrance of the sacrifice of the death of Christ, and of the benefits which we receive thereby." What very bad memories Christians must have! God has come down from heaven on purpose to die for them, and they cannot remember it without eating and drinking in memory of it. The child is then taught that the outward part in the Lord's Supper is bread and wine, and that the inward part is "The Body and Blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper," the body and blood nourishing the soul, as the bread and wine do the body. If the body and blood convey as infinitesimal an amount of nourishment to the soul as the small portions of bread and wine do to the body, the soul must suffer much from spiritual hunger. But how do they nourish the soul? The body and blood must be somehow in the bread and wine, and how is it managed that one part shall nourish the soul while the rest goes to the body? "verily and indeed taken and received." From the eager protestation one would imagine that there must be some doubt about it, and that there might be some question as to whether the invisible and intangible thing were really and truly taken. It needs but little insight to see how woefully confusing it must be to an intelligent child to teach him that bread and wine are only bread and wine one minute and the next are Christ's body and blood as well, although none of his senses can distinguish the smallest change in them. Such instruction will, if it has any effect on his mind, incline him to take every assertion on trust, without, and even contrary to, reason and experiment; it lays the basis of all superstition, by teaching belief in what is not susceptible of proof. "What is required of them who come to the Lord's supper? To examine themselves, whether they repent them truly of their former sins, steadfastly purposing to lead a new life; have a lively faith in God's mercy through Christ, with a thankful remembrance of his death; and be in charity with all men." It is the custom in many churches now to have weekly, and in some to have daily, communion; can the communicants who attend these steadfastly purpose to lead a new life every time? and how many "former sins" are they as continually repenting of? Here we find the overstrained piety which throughout disfigures the Prayer-Book; people are moaning about their sins, and crying over their falls, and resolving to mend their ways, and vowing they will lead new lives, and the next time one sees them they are once more proclaiming themselves to be as miserable sinners as ever. How weary the Holy Ghost must get of sanctifying them! Such is the Catechism that "The curate of every parish shall diligently upon Sundays and Holy Days, after the second lesson at evening prayer, openly in the Church" teach to the children sent to him, and which "all fathers, mothers, masters, and dames shall cause their children, servants, and apprentices (which have not learned their Catechism) to come to the Church at the time appointed," in order to learn; such is the nourishment provided by the Church for her lambs: such is the teaching she offers to the rising generation. Thus, before they are able to think, she moulds the thinking-machine; thus, before they are able to judge, she biases the judgment; thus, from children puzzled and bewildered, she hopes to make men and women supple to her teaching, and out of the Catechism she winds round the children's brains, she forges the chain of creeds which fetters the intellect of the full-grown members of her communion. London: Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, 28, Stonecutter Street, E.C February, 1885. 
45483	----	provided by the Google Print project. THE STORY OF MY MIND How I Became a Rationalist By M. M. Mangasarian 1909 DEDICATION To My Children My Dear Children:-- You have often requested me to tell you how, having been brought up by my parents as a Calvinist, I came to be a Rationalist. I propose now to answer that question in a more connected and comprehensive way than I have ever done before. One reason for waiting until now was, that you were not old enough before, to appreciate fully the mental struggle which culminated in my resignation from the Spring Garden Presbyterian church of Philadelpha, in which, my dear Zabelle, you received your baptism at the time I was its pastor. Your brother, Armand, and your sister, Christine, were born after I had withdrawn from the Presbyterian church, and they have therefore not been baptised. But you are, all three of you, now sufficiently advanced in years, and in training, to be interested in, and I trust also, to be benefited by, the story of my religious evolution. I am going to put the story in writing that you may have it with you when I am gone, to remind you of the aims and interests for which I lived, as well as to acquaint you with the most earnest and intimate period in my career as a teacher of men. If you should ever become parents yourselves, and your children should feel inclined to lend their support to dogma, I hope you will prevail upon them, first to read the story of their grand-father, who fought his way out of the camp of orthodoxy by grappling with each dogma, hand to hand and breast to breast. I have no fear that you yourselves will ever be drawn into the meshes of orthodoxy, which cost me my youth and the best years of my life to break through, or that you will permit motives of self-interest to estrange you from the Cause of Rationalism with which my life has been so closely identified. My assurance of your loyalty to freedom of thought in religion is not based, nor do I desire it to be based, on considerations of respect or affection which you may entertain for me as your father, but on your ability and willingness to verify a proposition before assenting to it. Do not believe me because I am your parent, but believe what you have yourselves, by conscientious and earnest endeavor, found to be worthy of belief. It will never be said of you, that you have inherited your opinions from me, or borrowed them from your neighbors, if you can give a reason for the faith that is in you. I wish you also to know that during those years of storm and stress, when everything seemed so discouraging, and when my resignation from the church had left us exposed to many privations,--without money and without help, your mother's sympathy with me in my combat with the church--a lone man, and a mere youth, battling with the most powerfully intrenched institution in all the world, was more than my daily bread to me during the pain and travail of my second birth. My spirits, often depressed from sheer weariness, were nursed to new life and ardor by her patience and sympathy. One word more: Nothing will give your parents greater satisfaction than to see in you, increasing with the increase of years, a love for those ideals which instead of dragging the world backward, or arresting its progress, urge man's search to nobler issues. Co-operate with the light. Be on the side of the dawn. It is not enough to profess Rationalism--make it your religion. Devotedly, M. M. Mangasarian. CHAPTER I. In the Cradle of Christianity I was a Christian because I was born one. My parents were Christians for the same reason. It had never occurred to me, any more than it had to my parents, to ask for any other reason for professing the Christian religion. Never in the least did I entertain even the most remote suspicion that being born in a religion was not enough, either to make the religion true, or to justify my adherence to it. My parents were members of the Congregational church, and when I was only a few weeks old, they brought me, as I have often been told by those who witnessed the ceremony, to the Rev. Mr. Richardson, to be baptized and presented to the Lord. It was the vow of my mother, if she ever had a son, to dedicate him to the service of God. As I advanced in years, the one thought constantly instilled into my mind was that I did not belong to myself but to God. Every attempt was made to wean me from the world, and to suppress in me those hopes and ambitions which might lead me to choose some other career than that of the ministry. This constant surveillance over me, and the artificial sanctity associated with the life of one set apart for God, was injurious to me in many ways. Among other things it robbed me of my childhood. Instead of playing, I began very early to pray. God, Christ, Bible, and the dogmas of the faith monopolized my attention, and left me neither the leisure nor the desire for the things that make childhood joyous. At the age of eight years I was invited to lead the congregation in prayer, in church, and could recite many parts of the New Testament by heart. One of my favorite pastimes was "to play church." I would arrange the chairs as I had seen them arranged at church, then mounting on one of the chairs, I would improvise a sermon and follow it with an unctuous prayer. All this pleased my mother very much, and led her to believe that God had condescended to accept her offering. My dear mother is still living, and is still a devout member of the Congregational church. I have not concealed my Rationalism from her, nor have I tried to make light of the change which has separated us radically in the matter of religion. Needless to say that my withdrawal from the Christian ministry, and the Christian religion, was a painful disappointment to her. But like all loving mothers, she hopes and prays that I may return to the faith she still holds, and in which I was baptized. It is only natural that she should do so. At her age of life, beliefs have become so crystallized that they can not yield to new impressions. When my mother had convictions I was but a child, and therefore I was like clay in her hands, but now that I can think for myself my mother is too advanced in years for me to try to influence her. She was more successful with me than I shall ever be with her. That my mother had a great influence upon me, all my early life attests. As soon as I was old enough I was sent to college with a view of preparing myself for the ministry. Having finished college I went to the Princeton Theological Seminary, where I received instruction from such eminent theologians as Drs. A. A. Hodge, William H. Green, and Prof. Francis L. Patton. At the age of twenty-three, I became pastor of the Spring Garden Presbyterian church of Philadelphia. It was the reading of Emerson and Theodore Parker which gave me my first glimpse of things beyond the creed I was educated in. I was at this time obstinately orthodox, and, hence, to free my mind from the Calvinistic teaching which I had imbibed with my mother's milk, was a most painful operation. Again and again, during the period of doubt, I returned to the bosom of my early faith, just as the legendary dove, scared by the waste of waters, returned to the ark. To dislodge the shot fired into a wall is not nearly so difficult an operation as to tear one's self forever from the early beliefs which cling closer to the soul than the skin does to the bones. While it was the reading of a new set of books which first opened my eyes, these would have left no impression upon my mind had not certain events in my own life, which I was unable to reconcile with the belief in a "Heavenly Father", created in me a predisposition to inquire into the foundations of my Faith. An event, which happened when I was only a boy, gave me many anxious thoughts about the truth of the beliefs my dear mother had so eloquently instilled into me. The one thought I was imbued with from my youth was that "the tender mercies of God are over all his children," I believed myself to be a child of God, and counted confidently upon his special providence. But when the opportunity came for providence to show his interest in me, I was forsaken, and had to look elsewhere for help. My first disappointment was a severe shock. I got over it at the time, but when I came to read Rationalistic books, the full meaning of that early experience, which I will now briefly relate, dawned upon me, and helped to make my mind good soil for the new ideas. In 1877 I was traveling in Asia Minor, going from the Euphrates to the Bosphorus, accompanied by the driver of my horses, one of which I rode, the other carrying my luggage. We had not proceeded very far when we were overtaken by a young traveler on foot, who, for reasons of safety, begged to join our little party. He was a Mohammedan, while my driver and I professed the Christian religion. For three days we traveled together, going at a rapid pace in order to overtake the caravan. It need hardly be said that in that part of the world it is considered unsafe to travel even with a caravan, but, to go on a long journey, as we were doing, all by ourselves, was certainly taking a great risk. We were armed with only a rifle--one of those flint fire-arms which frequently refused to go off. I forgot to say that my driver had also hanging from his girdle a long and crooked knife sheathed in a black canvas scabbard. Both the driver, who was a Christian, and the Mohammedan, who had placed himself under our protection, were, I am sorry to say, much given to boasting. They would tell how, on various occasions, they had, single-handed, driven away the Kurdish brigands, who outnumbered them, ten to one; how that rusty knife had disemboweled one of the most renowned Kurdish chiefs, and how the silent and meek-looking flint-gun had held at bay a pack of those "curs" who go about scenting for human flesh. All this was reassuring to me--a lad of seventeen, and I began to think that I was indebted to Providence for my brave escort. On the morning of the 18th of February, 1877, we reached the valley said to be a veritable den of thieves, where many a traveler had lost his life as well as his goods. A great fear fell upon us when we saw on the wooden bridge which spanned the river at the base of the hills, two Kurds riding in our direction. I was at once disillusioned as to the boasted bravery of my comrades, and felt that it was all braggadocio with which they had been regaling me. As I was the one supposed to have money, I would naturally be the chief object of attack, which made my position the more perilous. But this sudden fear which seemed to paralyze me at first, was followed by a bracing resolve to cope with these "devils" mentally. As I look back now upon the events of that day, I am puzzled to know how I got through it all without any serious harm to my person. I was surprised also that I, who had been brought up to pray and to trust in divine help, forgot in the hour of real peril, all about "other help" and bent all my energies upon helping myself. But why did I not pray? Why did I not fall upon my knees to commit myself to God's keeping? Perhaps it was because I was too much pre-occupied--too much in earnest to take the time to pray. Perhaps my better instincts would not let me take refuge in words when something stronger was wanted. We may ask the good Lord not to burn our house, but when the house is actually on fire, water is better than prayer. Perhaps, again, I did not pray because of an instinctive feeling that this was a case of self-help or no help at all. Perhaps, again, there was a feeling in me, that if all the prayers my mother and I had offered did not save me from falling into the hands of thieves neither would any new prayer that I might offer be of any help. But the fact is that in the hour of positive and imminent peril--when face to face with death--I was too busy to pray. My mother, before I started on this journey, had made a bag for my valuables--watch and chain, etc.--and sewed it on my underflannels, next to my body. But my money (all in gold coins) was in a snuff-box, and that again in a long silk purse. I was, of course, the better dressed of the three--with long boots which reached higher than my knees, a warm English broadcloth cloak reaching down to my ankles, and an Angora collarette, soft and snow white, about my neck. I rode ahead, and the others, with the baggage horse, followed me. When the two Kurdish riders who were advancing in our direction reached me, they saluted me very politely, saying, according to the custom of the country, "God be with you," to which I timidly returned the customary answer, "We are all in his keeping." At the time it did not occur to me how absurd it was for both travelers and robbers to recommend each other to God while carrying fire-arms--the ones for attack, the others for defense. Of course now I can see, though I could not at the time I am speaking of, that God never interfered to save an _unarmed_ traveler from brigands--I say never, for if he ever did, and could, he would do it always. But as we know, alas, too well, that hundreds and thousands have been robbed and cut to pieces by these Kurds, it would be reasonable to infer that God is indifferent. Of course, the strongly-armed travelers, as a rule, escape, thanks to their own courage and firearms. For, we ask again, if the Lord can save one, why not all? And if he can save all, but will not, does he not become as dangerous as the robbers? But really if God could do anything in the matter, He would reform the Kurds out of the land, or--out of the thieving business. If God is the unfailing police force in Christian, lands, he is not that in Mohammedan countries, at any rate. As the two mounted Kurds passed by me, they scanned me very closely--my costume, boots, furs, cap and so on. Then I heard them making inquiries of my driver about me--who I was, where I was going, and why I was going at all. My driver answered these, inquiries as honestly as the circumstances permitted. Wishing us all again the protection of Allah, the Kurds spurred their horses and galloped away. For a moment we began to breathe freely--but only for a moment, for as our horses reached the bridge we saw that the Kurds had turned around and were now following us. And before we reached the middle of the bridge over the river, one of the Kurds galloping up close to me laid his hand on my shoulders and, unceremoniously, pulled me out of my saddle. At the same time he dismounted himself, while his partner remained on horseback with his gun pointed squarely in my-face, and threatening to kill me if I did not give him my money immediately. I can never forget his savage grin when at last he found my purse, and grabbing it, with another oath, pulled it out of its hiding place. I have already described that my coins were all in a little box hid away in my purse, hence, as soon as the robber had loosened the strings he took out the box, held it in his left hand, while with his right he kept searching in the inner folds of my long purse. While he was running his fingers through the tortuous purse, I slipped mine into his left hand, and, taking hold of the box, I emptied its contents into my pocket in the twinkling of an eye and handed it back to the robber. The Kurd incensed at finding nothing in the purse which he kept shaking and fingering, snatched the box from my hand, opened it, and finding it as empty as the purse, flung it away with an oath. "Are you Moslems or Christians?" inquired one of the Kurds, to my companions. "We are all Moslems, by Allah," they answered. In Turkey you are not supposed to speak the truth unless you say, "by Allah," which means "_by God_." Of course it was not true that I was a Mohammedan. My companions told the Kurds a falsehood about me, to save my life. There was no doubt the Kurds would have killed me, but for the lie _which I did not correct_. When I reached my destination many of my co-religionists declared that I had denied Christ by allowing the Kurds to think that I was a Moslem. As I feel now, my conscience does not trouble me for helping, by my silence, to deceive the Kurds about my religion. In withholding the truth from these would-be assassins I was doing them no evil, but protecting the most sacred rights of man, the Kurd's included. Here was an instance in which silence was golden. But I would not hesitate, any moment, to mislead a thief or a murderer, by speech, as well as by silence. If it is right to kill the murderer in self-defense, it is right to deny him also the truth. But young as I was, what alarmed me at the time was that we should have been led into the temptation of lying to save our lives. Why did a "Heavenly Father" deliver us to the brigands? And of what help was God to us, if, in real peril, we had to resort to fighting or falsehood for self-protection? In what way would the world have been worse off without a "Heavenly Father?" About a month after I arrived at my destination, I received a letter from my mother, to whom the driver, upon his return, had related my adventure with the Kurds. Without paying the least thought to the fact that we had to lie to save our lives, my mother claimed that it was her prayers which had saved _me_ from the brigands. _Sancta Simplicitas!_ But my hospitality to new tendencies did not in the least diminish the anguish and pain of the separation from the religion of my mother. Even after I began to seriously doubt many of the beliefs I had once accepted as divine, it seemed impossible to abandon them. Ten thousand obstacles blocked my way, and as many voices seemed to caution me against sailing forth upon an unknown sea. In a modest way, I was like Columbus, separated from the new world I was seeking, by the dark and tempestuous waste of waters. How often my heart sank within me! I was almost sure of a better and larger world beyond Calvin, or Christ even, but the huge sea rolled between and struck terror upon my mind. But if there are difficulties, there is a way out of them. I am glad that the difficulties, great and insurmountable as they seemed at the time, did not succeed in holding me back. Between Calvinism and Rationalism flowed the deep, dark sea of fear. I have crossed that sea. Behind me is theology with its mysteries and dogmas; before me are the sunny fields of science. Born in the world of John Calvin, baptised in the name of the Holy Trinity, and set apart for the Christian ministry,--I have become a Rationalist. The meaning of both these words, Calvinist and Rationalist, will, I hope, become clear to all the readers of this book. The difference between the Calvinist and the Rationalist is not that the one uses his reason, while the other does not. Both use their reason. It is by using his reason that the Calvinist is not a Catholic, for instance, or a Mohammedan. In the same way the Catholic reasons for his church and against Calvinism. To say that Christianity, or Judaism, should be accepted on faith, without first subjecting its claims to the strain of reason, is also reasoning. Such is the constitution of the mind, that even when men seek to suppress reason, they are compelled to offer reasons for doing so. But there is reasoning and reasoning. The Bushman has his reason for trusting in his amulets; the civilized man, his, for trusting in self-help. Just as the eyes must have light before they can see, Reason must have knowledge before it can reason truly. But it is possible to possess knowledge and still reason badly, just as a man may be in the light, and still not see--by keeping his eyes shut. Nor does it follow that if a man opens his eyes he _will_ see. The eyes obey the will; if we do not wish to see, we will not see even with our eyes open. There are many educated people who allow motives of self-interest, if not to blind, at least to blur their vision. Finally, it is not enough to see for ourselves. We must show to others what we see: My object for telling the story of my mind--how it passed from Calvinism to Rationalism,--is to help others see what I see. CHAPTER II. Early Struggles As I look back upon the period of mental conflict and uncertainty which marked the closing years of my pastorate in the Presbyterian church, I am comforted by the thought that I did not wait until I was accused of heresy, tried by an ecclesiastical court and dismissed from the church before I severed my connection with the Presbyterian denomination. On the contrary, as soon as I had fully persuaded myself that I was no longer a Presbyterian, I, of my own accord, offered my resignation, after stating publicly the reasons which had led me to renounce Calvinism. It was not the church that expelled me; it was I that renounced the church. Of course, even then there were those, who demanded a public trial and my formal deposition from the ministry. The Philadelphia Presbytery met to discuss whether I should not be summoned to appear before them, to receive their censure. But wiser counsel prevailed, and a sensational public trial was avoided. The district attorney of the city of Philadelphia, Mr. George Graham, himself a staunch Presbyterian, explained to the ministers that my resignation had deprived them of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction over me. I had, he explained, unlocked the door and walked out into the open, and it was too late now to talk of expelling me. On the other hand, although my complete severance from Calvinism had been fully announced, still for many days and nights my house was filled with members of my church urging me to remain with them as their pastor, and to hold on to the church building. I am very happy to think that I was able to resist this temptation too. Had I yielded to their entreaties, or allowed myself to be swayed by their arguments, I would have been placed in a position where I could neither be a Rationalist nor a Calvinist, but a preacher of ambiguities, contradicting in one breath what I had said in another. From such a career of duplicity and arrested growth, I was saved by a fortunate decision on my part to give up Presbyterian property as well as the Presbyterian creed. The first Sunday after my resignation, I spoke in a hall on Broad street, in Philadelphia. It was quite a change from a handsome church edifice to a secular hall. I could see that those who followed me out of the Presbyterian denomination felt ill at ease, on a Sunday morning in a public hall. But that was not the worst shock in store for them. When I reached the hall on Broad street it was so densely packed that it seemed impossible for me to reach the platform. In the meantime, my trustees were getting anxious about my failure to appear in the pulpit. The audience too was showing signs of discomfort in the crowded auditorium. It was only by announcing my name, and begging those who stood up in rows at the entrance,--all the seats being occupied--to help me reach the stage, that I could make any progress through the crowd. When at last I faced the audience to deliver my first address from a free platform, I thought of the advice given me by my trustees, that, as much depended upon the impression of my first talk, which would in all probability be extensively reported in the papers, I should take care not to go "too far." What they meant by not going "too far," was that I should let the public know that in the essentials I was as Christian as ever. I do not blame my friends for this advice. They trembled for me and for the organization which was to be launched for the first time on that day. Besides, they were themselves, Presbyterians still, at heart, and had no clear understanding of the meaning of my renunciation of Calvinism. Sentimentally they were with me, but by training and conviction they were still for the creed of their ancestors. Speaking frankly, I had myself agreed to the wisdom of being careful and conservative in my opening address, believing that radical utterances at this time would make me more enemies than friends. But when I began to speak, in the enthusiasm of the moment, joyous over the first taste of freedom of speech, I forgot my caution, and gave my thoughts as they welled up within me, full scope. "To the winds with policy and calculation! Whether I win followers, or lose the last man, I must not stammer,--I must speak!" Under the spell of this thought, which seemed to seize me without at all consulting me, I said many things which changed the color on the faces of my Presbyterian supporters. Unused to freedom of speech, and brought up to believe certain beliefs as sacred, the attempt on my part to subject these to the strain of reason was in the nature of a painful disappointment to them. Thus many of my followers lost heart and quickly returned to the cradle from which, in a moment of excitement, they had leaped forth. But new friends took the place of those who deserted the young movement, and in a very short time, a larger hall was secured. This was St. George's hall, on Arch street, one of the largest halls in Philadelphia. But up to this time we, including myself, believed ourselves to be still Christians, though no longer Presbyterians. As long as we held on to the name of Christian we continued to sail in comparatively smooth waters. We made the word "Christian," of course, to mean what we wanted it to mean. But very soon new perplexities arose. The people who came to hear me, and who paid the expenses of the new organization, as well as directed its policy, while they progressed sufficiently to renounce Presbyterianism, they were very reluctant to part with Christianity altogether. I could criticise Calvin to my heart's content, but I must not, Christ. The church, or churchianity, certainly deserved to be investigated, and its errors exposed, but Christ and Christianity were too sacred to be handled with equal freedom. My trustees felt that as a liberal _Christian_ organization, there was a great future before us; we would soon become one of the largest and most prosperous religious bodies in the city; but if we "attacked" Christ--they called examining the teachings and character of Christ freely "attacking" Christ--we would be disowned by all respectable members, and lose our standing in the esteem of a hitherto friendly public. And the public was indeed friendly at this stage of our evolution. The press of Philadelphia, as well as of New York City, reported daily, for some time, the doings of the new organization. The majority of the editorials in the daily papers commended the course I had taken in avoiding a "heresy trial," and in resisting the great temptation to resort to shifts and subterfuges to enable me to remain at a lucrative post. In these days * departures from Orthodoxy were rare, and naturally, my case created a great stir. But as I have intimated, the preponderance of criticism and comment was favorable. Encouraging letters from Henry Ward Beecher, Lyman Abbott, Prof. David Swing, and other prominent leaders gave the new society an enviable prestige. But my trustees protested that this "good will" of the public, which constituted our best asset, would be lost, and its sympathy turned into antagonism, if I spoke as freely of Christ as I did of Calvin, and subjected the Bible to the same strain of reason that I did the Westminster Catechism. In other words, I was politely made to feel that while it was respectable enough to part with Presbyterianism, it would spell ruin to part also with Christianity. * 1880. In justice to my supporters I must state that when I resigned from the Presbyterian church I had no idea that the step would eventually carry me beyond Christianity itself. "A purer Christianity" was my plea at that time, and I sincerely believed that with Calvinism out of the way there would be left no serious obstacle for reason to stumble over. I was not prepared at that stage of my evolution to perceive the impossibility of separating Calvinism from Christianity without destroying both. Calvinism was a symptom and not the disease itself. The disease was supernaturalism, of which the different sects are the manifestations. It is the disease and not its manifestation that required suppression. I was unable to see the relationship between an infinite God, sovereign of all, and Calvinism, and fancied in my mind that I could keep God and let Calvin go. But faith in a God who knows everything and is absolutely sovereign, spells Calvinism. The step out of Christianity was infinitely more difficult than the step out of Presbyterianism. Had my followers been trained to think rationally, they would have seen that since I did not resign from the Presbyterian church, for a different form of baptism, or communion, but because of its failure to recognize Reason as the highest authority in religion, I was bound, by the very stress and logic of my premises, to drop Christianity as I had been led to drop Calvinism. My trustees were quite unconscious of giving me dangerous advice, or of trying to make of me an example of arrested development. They were my friends, and the friends of the cause, but they could not think logically, and that is why they could not appreciate my reply that we are not free to command the truth,--we must obey the truth. Matters came to a crisis when I delivered a lecture on "Was Jesus God?" I can still see the painful expression on the faces of many of my hearers on that Sunday morning. Did I bring them out of the Presbyterian church to make "infidels" and "blasphemers" of them? A number of my hearers rose and left the hall. The strain upon me was severe. When I sat down I was in a profuse perspiration. When all was over, I must have looked ashen pale. I had hardly any strength left to announce the closing hymn. But my audience suffered perhaps even more than did I. To part with Jesus is not the same thing as parting with Calvin, and that morning I had told them that if Calvin goes, Jesus must go too. _C'est le premier pas qui coûte._ "It is the first step that costs." But I found my second step even more costly. Voltaire speaks of the inevitableness of the second step if the first is taken. They told him how St. Denis had picked up his own head after it had been chopped off by the executioner, and walked a hundred steps with it in his hands. He replied, "I can believe in the ninety-nine steps, it is the first step I find difficulty in believing." Granted the first step, the ninety-nine, or nine million steps are very easy. Would it not be wasteful to argue that St. Denis took the first step, but no more? Is it not equally superfluous to accept one miracle in the Bible, and deny the rest? If one miracle, why not a million? But the aim of the training we had received in the church was not to help us to think logically but how not to think logically. The state of the Christian church, divided, sub-divided, and voicing doctrines diametrically opposed the one to the other, while they all claim to be and are, equally scriptural is a proof of this. I do not blame therefore, the members of my society for taking offense or for withdrawing, as many of them did after the "Jesus" lecture, their support from my work. They could not see the incongruity of accepting one part and rejecting another of a "divine" revelation. If the texts upon which Calvin based his theology were doubtful, what assurance could we have of the genuineness of the more liberal texts. The obscurity or ambiguity of Jesus was really the cause of the contradictions and divisions of his followers. The obscurity and contradictory nature of the text accounts for the crowd of religious sects, each claiming to be the only church of Christ, or, at least, more scriptural than its competitors. It was both a moral as well as a mental relief to escape the bewildering confusion of such a situation. And it was after I had commanded the babel of clashing voices to hush that I could hear the still, small voice of Reason. CHAPTER III. New Temptations Notwithstanding our many heresies we still believed in Christianity--in its moral excellence, as we expressed it. Jesus was not God; Calvin was all wrong; but still there was that in Christianity which could not be found elsewhere. While I myself did not linger long in this indecisive mood, still it was very trying while it lasted. To soften a little the pain of losing Jesus the God, the temptation to exalt him as a perfect moral teacher beyond all others the world had ever seen very nearly swamped me. But there were also financial considerations which made my position at this stage a very critical one. I was, besides, so much in need of companionship and sympathy that I wonder now why I did not rush into the open arms of the first liberal Christian sect that offered to fellowship with me. And there were religious fellowships ready to receive us. Let me first speak of the Unitarians, who very kindly offered to help us, both morally and financially. We were not told that we had to join the denomination before we could receive financial assistance. They offered to help us without any conditions. The Unitarians have a fund to help all "liberal" religious movements, and as a "liberal" religious movement, we could, if we wished, draw upon that fund. We did not accept the financial help, but we were happy to receive such moral support as men like James Freeman Clarke, Edward Everett Hale, Minot J. Savage and other equally distinguished preachers of Unitarianism could give us. The venerable Dr. Furness, more than once, occupied my pulpit, as also the Rev. Gordon Ames, whose church also proposed my name for a life membership in the American Unitarian Association. I can never be too grateful to the Unitarians for their hospitality to me in those trying times. Both Dr. Clarke and Dr. Hale had received me in their homes and given me such counsel as a young man at the threshold of a new career stands in need of. It was thus that Unitarianism, with its gracious hospitality, its tolerance and liberality, came very near persuading me that having gone as far as Unitarianism, it was not necessary to go farther. Thus you see, Moses and Calvin came back to me dressed as Unitarians; but, fortunately for me, I recognized the disguise. If I could "settle down" in Unitarianism, why did I leave the Presbyterian church? The difference between them is after all a difference of quantity. The Presbyterians believe more than the Unitarians, and while the Bible is inspired from cover to cover for the former, the latter believe only in the authority of certain portions of the book. Ernest Renan told the Protestants that they did not have sufficient reason for leaving the Catholic church. "But we could not believe in the mass," replied the Protestants. "If you believe in the virgin birth and the resurrection of the flesh, what but a whim could prevent you from believing also in transubstantiation," argued Renan. We can say the same of Unitarianism. If it can believe in parts of the Bible, as "inspired" or if it can accept, the unity of God, or "the Lordship of Jesus," why not believe a little more? If it drops one dogma on grounds of reason, it must drop all, and if it can accept one dogma, the "Lordship of Jesus," for example, on faith, why not also the Trinity? If God exists, he could be in three or more parts quite as easily as in one. Unwittingly the Unitarian church has helped to strengthen the cause of Orthodoxy. It speaks of Christ as the most perfect being or teacher who has ever visited this planet--a being possessing all the virtues, and none of the defects of human nature,--a being worthy to be called in a special sense, "the Son of God." "Very well," answers the Orthodox believer, "If Jesus was all that, he was God." The difference between Unitarianism and Orthodoxy is that, while the latter calls Christ a God, the former holds that he was more than man. The point is not worth fighting for. Moreover, "If Christ was the type of perfection, as you Unitarians seem to believe," argues the Calvinist, "he could not have claimed to be God, as he certainly does, unless he was God. If he was not God, he was an impostor, and not the most perfect type of character the world has ever seen, as you claim." The answer is decisive. If Jesus believed himself to be only a mortal like ourselves, how explain his language of authority, his forgiving of sins, his miracles, his claim to be equal with the Father, and to have existed from all time? The weapons which Unitarianism uses against Orthodoxy, the latter can easily ignore. Nay, Unitarians are often quoted by the Orthodox to prove that even those who deny the divinity of Jesus, are compelled to admit "that there never was another like unto Him." The point I am endeavoring to make is that I could not accept Unitarianism because its claim about the moral perfection of Jesus was as much an unreasoned dogma, as the belief in his divinity. If I could subscribe to one dogma, why not to all? If there is no evidence that Jesus was God, neither is there any that he was morally perfect. I am aware that there are Unitarians who do not accept even the moral perfection of Jesus. But that only helps to confuse us as to what Unitarianism really stands for. If Jesus was not morally perfect, or the wisest and best teacher, why does he monopolize the Unitarian pulpit? In conclusion, as already intimated, Unitarianism with its God-idea differs from Calvinism, not in kind, but in degree only. Its baggage of the supernatural is not quite so heavy, but what there is of it is every whit as supernatural. But my inexperienced bark had hardly weathered the Unitarian storm which, as I confessed, came very near driving me under shelter, before another danger confronted me and my struggling society. The financial problem was, of course, a pressing one with us. Hall rent had to be paid, which was considerable, and the lecturer and his family had to be supported. The independent course I was following was not adding to the revenues of the society. The moneyed people, and the people accustomed to making generous contributions for church purposes, did not approve of my Rational tendencies. It was at this time that Spiritualism crossed my path, and endeavored, if I may use so trite a phrase, "to flirt with me." "I could have many new supporters, and some moneyed men and women, if I could see the truth of Spiritualism," was whispered in my ears by my own fears and hopes. And then hardly a Sunday passed when at the conclusion of the lecture I was not met by some believer in Spiritualism, who told me how he or she had seen Darwin, or Emerson, or Goethe, or Voltaire at my side on the platform, while I was delivering my address, and how one or the other had smiled upon me with approval. I received messages purporting to come from the world of Spirits, commending my course, and bidding me to go forward unafraid. Opportunities were given me to see tables tip, to hear "celestial" voices, and to be surprised by flashes of light in perfectly dark rooms. For many of the friends who tried to lead my steps toward Spiritualism, I still cherish the tenderest thoughts. They befriended me and my wife, they helped to render those desolate days of anxiety and hardship a little less of a strain upon our resources. But I could become a Spiritualist only with my eyes shut, and I had opened them when I parted with Calvinism. Was I now going to shut my eyes again? My neighbor and colleague, Dr. John E. Roberts, who left the Baptist church to join the Unitarians, and later, became minister of the Church of this World, has recently expressed his interest in Spiritualism. He thinks the Spiritualists have the most comforting doctrine, because of their hope of immortality. Dr. Roberts thinks that we need the spiritual glow of faith in immortality to keep us from withering. But is not immortality as inconceivable as the Trinity? Why should a man object to the Baptist or the Unitarian immortality, if he can accept the immortality of the Spiritualists? Is the evidence furnished by modern mediums more convincing than that furnished by the mediums in the Bible? Are the spirits who manifest themselves in the Old and New Testaments, impostors, while those who appear to Mrs. Piper in Brooklyn are genuine? And is the immortality promised by Mrs. Piper's ghosts different, or better, than the immortality promised by those who communed with Jesus, Peter and Paul? But let us hear Dr. Roberts' reasons for preferring the Spiritualist's certain hope of another life to the silence of Rationalism on the question of the hereafter: "And then I think there is need of a revival along the line of cherishing the old-fashioned hopes. You can see in current literature a strong tendency towards the belief that this world is the end of it. It is surprising to one that will bear in mind how often he finds that strain of pessimism. Men and women in very great numbers are beginning to think that after all maybe eternal sleep is better than eternal life. For, in the grave there can come no pain, no sorrow, no tears. 'On the shore of that vast sea of oblivion no wave of sorrow breaks.' But, to my mind, life is too sweet ever to be given up, and I can't help liking the old-fashioned hope that there is something beyond; that we shall remember and find each other and make reparations for wrongs we have done and explain some things that were misunderstood here. In other words, that we shall live again. For one, without knowing a thing about it, I cling to the old-fashioned hope of immortality." But is it correct to identify "the old-fashioned hope" with optimism, and "the belief that eternal sleep is better than eternal life," or that "in the grave there can come no pain, no sorrow, no tears,"--with pessimism? "The old-fashioned hope" was no hope at all, because it was a private and exclusive hope. It reserved a place in heaven for the few, the elect,--whether Jewish, Mohammedan or Christian,--and condemned the multitude to the pains of hell. Can such a hope make for optimism? Can such a prospect brace up humanity at large? Moreover, the "old-fashioned hope's" picture of eternal life is so prosaic, so savorless, that it has fallen into "innocuous desuetude" even among the elect. Men have expressed their hesitation to decide which they would prefer, the heaven or the hell of the "old-fashioned hope." The grave is more optimistic than the old-fashioned future.= ``_Ah, within our Mother's breast, ``From toil and tumult, sin and sorrow free, ``Sphered beyond hope and dread, divinely calm, ``They lie, all gathered into perfect rest. ``And o'er the trance of their Eternity. ``The cypress waves more holy than the palm_.= But Dr. Roberts likes "eternal life" of some kind. Eternal life! We fear our good friend has stooped to a sonorous phrase. Pliny, one of the illustrious philosophers of the reign of Trajan, thought that man was more fortunate than the gods, because, while "the gods cannot die, man can." We are not in a position to tell whether or not "eternal life" is desirable, for we do not know what it is. How can we desire, or despise the inconceivable? No one can tell whether it is an evil or a blessing to live forever and ever, and ever, and ever,--and ever--unless he has experienced it. Nor can anyone affirm "eternal life" (we think Dr. Roberts means conscious, personal immortality) until he has lived through an eternity. To live a million, million years, is not eternal life. Hence, no one who has not so lived, can speak intelligently of "eternal life." We cannot even say that the gods are immortal. Because they have lived until now, so to speak, is no argument that they will live forever. We have to wait until they prove their ability to live forever, and ever, and ever, before we can pronounce them immortal. No being can be called immortal until he has lived to the end of time. We do not affirm, nor do we deny, the inconceivable. The question of the hereafter is still an open one. There is no reason why people should not speculate about it. We may even hope that tomorrow's science will throw more light upon this interesting problem, but today, all we know about eternal life is that we do not know anything about it. ``_I gazed (as oft I've gazed the same) ``To try if I could wrench aught out of death, ``Which could confirm, or shake, or make a faith, ``But it was all a mystery. Here we are._= Yes, "Here we are,"--that is the great reality. There is cheer and hope and love even in the thought that the present hour is big with possibilities and sweet with memories. We need not think of the grave while our hearts pulse, and our blood is warm. It is queer how all believers in eternal life fear the grave and deepen its gloom. The thought of another life often impoverishes the life we now possess. Pining for the far away tomorrow, we lose the joy at our doors. Schiller describes a recluse at the bar of heaven, arguing that he must have great rewards because he has practiced great privations in life. He received a chilling answer. He is told that if he was foolish enough to let the real life slip through his fingers for a distant reward, there is no power that can make good his losses. Real optimism springs from the thought that the present life may be made dearer and nobler, richer, and happier, and that we may so live as to leave behind us a long and fragrant memory: ``The ripe products of a fertile brain ``Will live and reproduce fair fruit again.= Even at its worst, death is an obligation we owe posterity, and the discharge of it should make no one a pessimist. At any rate, with Grant Allen, we can sing when we feel life's evening gathering about us: ``Perchance a little light will come with morning; ````Perchance I shall but sleep. Dr. Roberts admits, I believe, that he has no evidence to offer, except what he calls "the innate desire for another life." But if the desire for immortality proves another and an endless life, the desire for God, or Christ, or an infallible Revelation, ought to be sufficient to prove their existence. The Spiritualists, like the Orthodox, reason logically enough against beliefs not their own, but when it comes to their own dogmas they do not consult reason at all. I had left Calvinism because it failed to furnish the evidence for its claims, how then could I join the Spiritualists with no more evidence to substantiate their claims than that it was pleasant to desire another life? But there is the testimony of the mediums; yes, and there is the testimony of the apostles. If the latter is not enough to make Christianity true, the former is not enough to prove Spiritualism. The comparatively few lines in which I have tried to tell my early experience as a Rationalist give but an imperfect idea of the effort required under circumstances of stress and anxiety, to keep my ship steady on the troublous waters to which the winds outside the harbor of Calvinism had driven me. In the words of Shelley, I had unfurled my sails to the tempest, and fear and alarm were to be my portion, until I became more accustomed to the swing of the sea, and could command the stars to point the way. The open sea is not like the sheltered harbor. It is easy to go out to sea, but not so easy to find one's way there. During this period of mental struggle to work out a philosophy of life which should fill the vacuum created by the collapse of theology, I was frequently approached by well-meaning, but over-confident, teachers who, in their own opinion, at any rate, had completely and satisfactorily reconciled religion with Reason. Nearly every mail brought me letters recommending some publication which would answer all my difficulties as it had theirs. Not a few of my would-be helpers went to the trouble of calling on me with the same object in view. I shall only speak here of one of the books which was supposed to have untied all the knots, divine and human, which have ever perplexed the brain of man. The book came to me highly recommended. Even President Eliot of Harvard had publicly endorsed it. While it was many years after the period I am now writing of, that my attention was called to this book, nevertheless, it is because the book is typical of the efforts to make Reason approve of the fundamentals of the popular faith, that I reproduce here what I said of it at the time: _Balance_ is the name of a little book with a great aim. Its author, Mr. Orlando Smith, sets out as a new Columbus to discover not another earth, but another truth, which shall give to all known truths new meaning and worth. This truth, he believes, he has discovered, and christens it, "The Fundamental Verity." Lucid illustrations are massed together with telling effect, to show that Nature is equipped with a self-curative genius which makes discord an impossibility. That which is overdone in one direction is underdone equally in an opposite direction. This rhythm, this equivalence which pulls the pendulum in one direction as far as it pushes it in another is the _Fundamental Verity_, which, if grasped as universal and infallible, will remove from our shoulders what Shakespeare calls "the weary weight of all this unintelligible world," and bring Religion and Science, the two gladiatorial contestants in the modern arena, to replace their quarrelous weapons, with which they have given and received gashes deep and bloody, with the olive branch of peace and concord. Having undertaken to demonstrate that the physical world is in the embrace of laws which forever evolve order out of confusion, and that Balance is supreme in every detail of life, from the most momentous to the most minute, that throughout the length and breadth of the universe the account balances perfectly; and that Nature has no failures, and bad debts; that Balance forbids wrong, such for instance as the victory of one force over another, the author believes he has found in this law the unanswerable demonstration for the existence of a Supreme Being who is the author of _Balance_ in the universe and of the immortality of the soul. Thus, having given to these two ambitious propositions a new front, he concludes he has reconciled Religion with Science. It is quite easy to reconcile enemies if they let you interpret their differences to suit yourself. Mr. Smith defines both Religion and Science with a view to reconciliation, and it is no wonder that they stop quarreling immediately. Even in Mr. Orlando Smith's religion, there is an element of the supernatural, a _deus ex machina_--who from the eternities rules the world and is pledged to see that in the end right shall prevail. This is theology and not science. Mr. Smith starts by trying to prove that Nature is just, orderly, and its accounts are always perfect, and then, unfortunately enough, he drags forth once more the obsolete theological argument which science has already rent into tatters, that another life is inevitable since this life is unsatisfactory. Having shown that there are no failures in Nature, he now says, "We must admit, however, that justice is incomplete in this life." That, however, destroys the position that Nature is at present governed by a Supreme Being who makes failure impossible, and the proposition that this Supreme Being must be given more time to work in--an eternity--is theology, not science. If for millions of years this earth could roll under the eye of a Supreme Being and still be imperfect, what reason have we to conclude that the Being who has failed hitherto is going to do better in the unknown future? And what about the animals? Will they have to look forward to another world for justice? Must not their lives be "balanced"' in some way too? Or will Mr. Orlando Smith answer with St. Paul, "Does God care for the oxen"? Toward the end, Mr. Smith develops into a full-fledged pulpiteer, claiming that no hospitals, charities, or institutions of learning,--songs hymns, poems, noble thoughts or sentiments are possible, without the doctrine of a Supreme Being, and of another life. Thus the science with which Mr. Smith began is swallowed up in theology--it is the lamb and the lion lying down together,--but one inside the other. I had renounced Calvinism, not because it would not let me use my reason at all, but because it would not let me use it consistently. I could use it here, but not there, or only so far and no further. The men who offered me substitutes for Calvinism placed restrictions upon reason too, differing only in appearance from those imposed by the church. I had not yet found an organization that respected consistency, and consistency is another word for sincerity. CHAPTER IV. The Critical Period In 1888 I became acquainted with the work of the Ethical Movement, which was then establishing a branch in Philadelphia. The platform of the movement appealed to me strongly, because it was completely divorced from the supernatural. It emphasized the deed, and ignored the creed; or rather, it believed in the creed of the deed. I invited the leaders of this movement to address my society, and to explain to us in detail the philosophy of Ethical Culture. All five of the lecturers of the Ethical Societies in America successively occupied my platform in St. George's hall, and I in return occupied their platforms in New York, Chicago, St. Louis and Philadelphia. This interchange of platforms resulted in my accepting a call from the New York Society for Ethical Culture, and three years later from the Chicago Society, which latter I served as its lecturer for five years. The founder of the Ethical Societies was Dr. Felix Adler, the son of a Jewish Rabbi, who was expected to succeed his father as the spiritual head of the fashionable and wealthy Fifth Avenue synagogue in New York City. But all the other members of the fraternity of lecturers were either ex-ministers of the Christian church, like myself, or had, at one time, studied for the Christian ministry. In the beginning, the movement was consistently and fearlessly Rationalistic. Adler had a lecture on Atheism in which he boldly exposed the weakness of the theistic position. This lecture was printed and widely circulated. The other lecturers also openly antagonized the God idea as robbing the idea of the Good of the attention and love of man. The churches feared the Ethical Movement in those days, and denounced it as an irreligious institution. But soon there appeared a change in the leader and founder of the movement, and gradually also in the majority of his colleagues. The lecture on Atheism was withdrawn from circulation, and Dr. Adler began delivering addresses on immortality, and exalting the character of Christ in the fashion of Unitarianism. All lectures in criticism of the fundamentals of Orthodoxy were as much as prohibited. Orthodox leaders were invited to preach from the platform of the Ethical Societies, and it became the ambition of an Ethical lecturer to deliver only such lectures as no church-goer would object to hear. I do not mean that Orthodox doctrines were promulgated by the Ethical lecturers, but nothing was to be said against them, if nothing could be said in their favor. The aim of the Movement was now defined to be solely the improvement of the morals of its members and of the public, and therefore, like the church, it began to fight "sin," studiously ignoring the debasing superstitions and the bondage of dogma which not only had bankrupted, both mentally and morally, whole nations, but which had also withered the greatest civilization the world had ever seen, and surrendered humanity to the keeping of "the dark ages" for a thousand years. This change in the program of the Ethical Societies greatly pleased the Orthodox world, and all fear of menace or danger to its theological interests from that direction was dissipated. Catholic and Protestant clergymen vied with each other in expressions of admiration for the work of the Ethical Societies, and all praised the tact which the leaders of the movement displayed in refraining from criticisms of the churches and their doctrines, to protest against the degrading effects of which, was the very object for which the Ethical Societies were organized in the first place. Thus it will be seen how completely the Movement came to abandon its original program. The Sunday lectures of the leaders of the Movement became, in time, so "harmless" that preachers recommended them to their flock, while the Ethical lecturers in return publicly declared that it was not necessary for a Trinitarian, a Papist or a Jew to leave his church before he could be admitted to membership in an Ethical Society. The Ethical Societies, in fact, did not encourage people to break away from their ecclesiastical connections, but indirectly, at least, advised them to support the new movement without withdrawing their support from the churches to which they belonged. I cannot imagine that any one seriously believed that a devout Christian, or an Orthodox Jew, would join an Ethical Society for purposes of edification in morals. To do so would be equivalent to an admission that one's divinely appointed church was not satisfying one's highest needs, and to feel that way toward one's own church is to cease to believe in it. Only those then who had parted with the past, with its crushing and hampering freight of dogmas, would think of joining an organization that started as an "Atheistic," or at least, a non-religious society. But the invitation to join the Ethical Societies without leaving their own churches had the effect of drawing the new movement into closer relations with the religious bodies, which in our opinion has greatly handicapped the Ethical lecturers, and impaired their leadership in the world of thought. It is not my intention to bring a charge of deliberate surrender to the churches against the leaders of the Ethical Movement. It will be difficult to find anywhere a finer body of men than the lecturers of the different Ethical Societies in America. But they swerved from the path they had started to follow, and sacrificed a magnificent career to become an annex to the church. Not only the history of the Movement, but also the literature which it now puts forth, lends confirmatory evidence to the criticism I have made against a cause to which I once gave my heart. That the publications of the Ethical Society as well as the Sunday lectures of the leaders, show decidedly reactionary tendencies, it will not be difficult to prove. They do this, first, by maintaining a significant silence on questions the free discussion of which would offend the churches, and in the second place, by indirectly endeavoring to bolster up, by new interpretations, the discredited dogmas of the popular religions. Either of these charges, if true, will be enough to prove that the Ethical Movement has not remained faithful to its original intentions. It is not a secret that the lecturers of the Ethical Societies no longer publicly condemn the false teaching of the churches. These false teachings, in our opinion, form an essential part of both Christianity and Judaism, which have to be exposed and attacked vigorously and without compromise, if morality is ever to make any permanent progress in the world. It should be as impossible to reconcile Ethical Culture with the churches, as it is to reconcile theology with science, and yet, that is precisely what the Ethical lecturers think they Have accomplished. I have only to quote from authoritative Christian sources to show how prejudicial to the interests of morality is the teaching of the churches. For an Ethical Movement systematically to ignore the evil which the churches do by sacrificing reason to dogma is in the nature of treason to its own principles. The whole trend of Christian teaching is that Ethics is secondary. How can the Ethical Societies afford to ignore so fundamental an untruth? Both the established and the non-conformist churches explicitly and officially declare and teach that, "They also are to be accursed that presume to say, that every man shall be saved by the Law, or the sect that he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that Law, and the Light of Nature. For Holy Scripture doth set out unto us only the name of Jesus Christ whereby men must be saved." * Clearly, then, for the churches it is not ethics, but faith in Jesus, a disputed personage at the very best, which represents the highest interests of the race. * Eighteenth Article of the Church of England. That the same unethical doctrine forms the basis of the Reformed churches will be seen from the following: "Much less can men not professing the Christian religion be saved, _be they ever so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature_; and to ascertain and maintain that they can is very _pernicious and to be detested_." * The same indifference, if not contempt for morality is shown by the leading exponents of Christianity. When I was a lad of about fifteen, one of the books placed in my hand, and which I was made to regard almost as inspired as the Bible, was, _Paleys Evidences of Christianity_. Speaking on the scope of the Christian religion, in the second part of his book, he writes: "Moral precepts or examples, or illustrations of moral precepts, may be _occasionally_ given, and be highly valuable, yet still they do not form the original purpose of the mission." The meaning is clear: Christ did not come to make men moral, he came to save those who shall believe in him. And this is also the teaching of leaders like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Charles Spurgeon and General Booth. The burden of Luther's message was that "Christ had come to abolish the Moral Law." The liberty which Luther proclaimed assured the believer that even the decalogue shall not be brought into account against him, "nor its violation be allowed to disturb the conscience of the Christian." ** In the same spirit, Spurgeon cried in his London Tabernacle, Sunday after Sunday, for nearly half a century: "Thirty years of sin shall be forgiven, and it shall not take thirty minutes to do it in." And this doctrine that faith in Christ can in one instant make a man who has led a life of crime and corruption, one of God's saints, Spurgeon and his fellow-clergymen learned from Christ himself, who opened the gates of paradise to the malefactor on the cross, and in one minute wiped out all his past. This example from the gospels shows that, the preachers and the creeds in giving to morality a secondary place, are not misrepresenting the teachings of Christ. What need has a religion which can change men miraculously,--and which makes faith the sole condition of salvation,--for Ethical Culture? * Westminster Catechism. ** Moehler's Works, quoted by Cotter Morison, Service of Man, page 51. What is true of Christianity is equally true of its parent, Judaism. The full stress of the Old Testament is on the necessity of the Ceremonial and not the Moral Law. While the Jews were not only permitted, but were ordered to break every Ethical commandment in the decalogue, to commit theft, murder, massacre, and acts of oppression and brigandage,--every departure from the ritual of Israel was visited by immediate and clamorous punishment. Both Judaism and Christianity make their special objective, not character, but the creed. How, then, can a movement the motto of which is "The deed, not the creed," maintain so profound a silence, or refrain even from calling attention to the positive hurt which the old religions do to the cause of righteousness? What is the defense of Ethical Culture against this charge? If it be answered that, the churches no longer take their creeds or bibles, seriously, notwithstanding their official professions, then the Ethical lecturers should, instead of silently endorsing the hypocrisy which professes one thing and believes another, thunder against it with all their might. This should be done not from motives of hatred or combativeness, but in the spirit of faithfulness to the best interests of man. It is error, and not its victims, against which the Rationalist directs his straight and sounding blows. It was Paine's kindly advice in the French convention to kill the king and spare the man. It is the desire of Reason to destroy false teachings and to help enlighten the teacher. The effect upon the prosperity of the Ethical Societies, both in America and Europe, of this policy of silence, has been really disastrous. Like Unitarianism, the Ethical Movement has drifted into the sheltered harbor where it hugs the wharves made fast by posts and ropes. Both these movements started out for the sea, but not a vessel flying their flags can now be encountered at any distance from the coast. Thirty years ago there were four Ethical Societies in America; there are now these same four and no more, and three of them are without any lecturers. But not only by their silence on the injurious teachings of both Judaism and Christianity, which strike at the very foundations of moral health, but also by their attempts, incredible as it may seem, to discredit science and to seek in metaphysics, or in a sort of attenuated theology, the origins and sanctions of Ethics, the Ethical lecturers have given to decaying dogmas the support they owed to Rationalism. In a contribution by Dr. Adler, head of the fellowship, on one of the fundamentals of the Movement, we see full traces of this deplorable effort to divorce Ethics from science, and wed her to theology. In discussing "The Religion of Duty," the professor, instead of explaining duty in the terms of science, tries to make of it a deeper mystery even than the thrice veiled dogmas of the churches. "Duty," he says, "becomes religion when we recognize that it is not a law or a command that has a merely sensible origin, or can be explained in terms of sensible experience, that we can get to the bottom of it and thoroughly penetrate it with our understanding, or see fully the use of it. * * * It is then that we come to realize that in the moral command there is something awful." The language is not very clear--perhaps because the thought is not very clear--but we believe its meaning is that, a moral command is awful because we cannot understand it. Prof. Adler seems to make of duty a new kind of a god. The qualities and attributes of the deity he bodily transfers to his successor--_Duty_. Accordingly, Duty becomes just as mysterious and awful as God, and we can no more get at the "bottom" of Duty than we can understand the Deity. Duty no more than the Deity can be "expressed in terms of sensible experience," hence it is inexplicable; and the only way we can feel "the majesty and inexplicable augustness of it," says the professor, "is to draw back the curtains and see," and then "we shall find that out of this relation we suddenly get religion." I fear we get it a little too suddenly. Such rapid transformations suggest a _deus ex machina_. There is serious danger of making a fetish out of the word duty. The thinking world has abandoned theism because of the impossibility of explaining in terms of sensible experience, the existence of a personal infinite; but now Prof. Adler wishes to surround his new deity, Duty, with the same "clouds and darkness" which have so long hung about the ancient divinities. In what sense is it a compliment to the moral law to say that it cannot be "explained in terms of sensible experience"? What is gained by putting a dead wall or "curtains" between the intelligence of man and his conscience? Why sneer at the scientific explanation of the origin and growth of the moral sense by calling it "narrow, secular, materialistic and paltry," as Prof. Adler does in this lecture--when no better explanation is offered than a mere rhetorical recommendation "to draw back the curtains and see the majesty and inexplicable augustness of it"? What are these curtains? Who put them there to hide such "augustness"? If the scientific explanation of the origin of the moral sense is a "flat failure," quoting from the professor again, what is _his_ explanation? We are really grieved to see so influential a public leader taking sides against science, the only dependable teacher we have, notwithstanding its many limitations. Again, in his criticism of the evolutionary view, the professor says: "As against the scientific evolutionary view, I plead for what I would call the moral evolutionary view, which asserts that the moral law is a law of our nature, and in so far, the universal nature. * * * We leave the issues to work themselves out; we leave them to mightier powers than we, whose ways we wot not of." Here surely is theology--cap, cassock and all. But what is the difference between the scientific evolutionary view and the moral evolutionary view? If the scientific view is not in accord with the known facts, then it is not scientific. But if it is in harmony with the facts, what do we gain by rejecting it in preference to the "moral evolutionary view"? If on the other hand the "moral evolutionary view" is not scientific, what is its value? According to the generally admitted scientific explanation, morality is just as much the result of evolution as is music or language. Morality is the slow product of the accumulated experience of humanity. But that does not seem to be Prof. Adler's theory. "There is," he says, "a voice that speaks in us out of the ultimate reality of things." But if this voice is not the inherited instincts of the race, what is it? If it is a ready-made, or made to order voice, or a voice not made at all--but, well, an unfathomable something commanding us in tones of the categorical imperative--who placed it there? God, or chance? If conscience, in straight words, is a natural product in the same sense that the brain or the human hand is, then there is no good reason for throwing a mystic veil over this one faculty or sense, or in decorating it with fallacy trimmings and jingling bells in order to make it look exceptionally awful and august. Just as the foolish overpraise of Jesus has nearly ruined him as a living force in the life of the world today, so there is danger of making an idol or a mummy out of morality by taking away all its beautiful naturalness. "I simply think of the moral law within us," says Dr. Adler, "as a hand laid on us. * * * I like to think of the moral law * * * as of a hand; the face we do not see, but the hand we feel." Is not this an attempt to make ethics as mystifying as theology? If this "hand," of which the professor speaks, is endowed with unerring intelligence, how shall we account for the missteps, disastrous in their consequences, which man has taken with this "hand" laid on him? However, this "hand" which we are told "is heavy upon our shoulders as Atlas," is not infallible, what is its worth? Is it necessary to perplex an audience with visions of a "hand," and "a face that belongs to the hand which we do not see," in order to impress it with the beauty and duty of obedience to the dictates of the enlightened and emancipated conscience? But this confusion is the result of the commerce of Ethical Culture with Churchianity and Judaism, in other words, with the supernatural. A teacher who is trying to convince both Christian and Jew that without discarding their obsolete and obstructive dogmas they can join the Ethical Movement, is compelled by the very exigencies of the _mesalliance_ to tarry in the region of fog and obscurity. And this confusion in thought, this lack of decision and clarity in one's concepts, this metaphysical vagueness and bewildering rhetoric is the price Orthodoxy exacts before it will bestow its smile upon a prodigal teacher seeking to return to the fold. We could not agree with the head of the Ethical Movement that it was worth our while to try to win the favor of the churches, or to seek their co-operation. In our opinion such a _rapprochement_ would only redound to the glory of an institution that has proven itself not only incapable of saving the world, but of positively hindering its salvation. This indictment is not voiced in haste, or in malice, but because it is based upon careful observation and study. The church can never become a great moral power until it is rationalized. In this age of enlightenment the church can not be honest and Orthodox at the same time. We recommend this thought to the consideration of the Ethical lecturers. And no institution can make others honest, if it is dishonest itself. Is the church honest with science? Is it honest with history? Is it honest with the Bible? Mark these brave words of Huxley: "When Sunday after Sunday, men who profess to be our instructors in righteousness, read out the statement that 'In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is,' in innumerable churches, they are either propagating what they may honestly know, and, therefore, are bound to know, to be falsities; or if they use the words in some non-natural sense, they fall below the moral standard of the much-abused Jesuit." How refreshing! To the average thinker the inconsistency of advocating Ethics as the supreme good, on the one hand, and on the other, of maintaining a deliberate silence on the demonstrably false teaching of the church which makes belief the greatest of all virtues, has only to be pointed out to be comprehended. And it is Kant, the patron-saint of the American Ethical lecturers, who set them the example of inconsistency. With a rigour which even in a dogmatist of the theological schools would be considered excessive, Emanuel Kant argued that so imperative was the duty to tell the truth that, even to save one's self or another from murder, there must be no departure from it. If you saw an assassin with a drawn dagger running after a man or a woman, and he asked you, "which way the fugitive ran," if you answer him at all, insists Kant, you must tell him the truth. And yet this same philosopher encouraged openly the Lutheran clergy of his day to go on deceiving the people with beliefs which they themselves had discarded, on the score that _populus vult decipi_, and that the clergy are excused by their profession for playing a false part. Is it then from policy or from principle that the Ethical lecturers, starting as they did, by denouncing the supernatural as the destroyer of character, later on came to ignore altogether the existence even of degrading superstitions, and were content to be a moral improvement association merely, somewhat after the pattern, as Marie-Jean Guyau states, of a Christian Temperance Society? * * L'Irréligion de L'Avenir. The battle of progress is to be fought in the mind. An intellectual awakening must precede all real and permanent moral improvement of the world. On the tree of enlightenment alone can ripen the fruit of righteousness and peace. And there can be no enlightenment under the church. Even as the light of the sun can not enter a dungeon, the light of knowledge can not penetrate the mind which it has been the aim of the church to keep shut. The condition of the spread of knowledge as of the sunlight is the same--freedom. Yet freedom is anathema where there is a Revelation. A thousand Ethical Societies could not help Russia unless she began by striking, without sparing or wavering, at the teachings of the Greek church. The new edifice cannot rise side by side with the old--it must rise on the ruins of the old. Can there be any real moral advance in a community in which the following is accepted and taught as a divinely revealed truth: "We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works and deservings. Wherefore, that we are justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort." * * No. XI. of the Articles of the Church of England. All the other Christian churches teach to young and old the same doctrine. Only by self-stultification can an Ethical Society refrain from combating so injurious a teaching with all the earnestness and courage at their command. Nothing would please the priests and rabbis more than to be assured that the efforts of the new teachers will be confined strictly to giving moral exhortations, and that they will leave church and dogma respectfully alone. CHAPTER V. Anchored at Last After nearly ten years of service in the Ethical field, I felt constrained to withdraw from the fraternity of lecturers, because I realized that under the guise of a new name we were all slowly slipping back into the net of theology, from which we had escaped after years of struggle and suffering. When I look over my own lectures delivered during my connection with the Ethical Movement, I find in them clearly the traces of the same reactionary bias. The atmosphere of theology is perceptible on nearly every page, Passages about the moral supremacy of Jesus, His uniqueness, and the indebtedness of the ages to Him, will be found in the publications which will not only show that I had swerved from the path into which I had entered when I left Calvinism, and in which I had persevered against numerous temptations to leave it, but also, what a powerful influence my new environment exerted upon me. In a lecture delivered before the Chicago Ethical Society, I try to prove the spiritual resurrection of Jesus, and His incomparable greatness. In another, delivered before the New York Society, in Carnegie Music Hall, I fail to appreciate the services of such intellectual Titans as Voltaire and Thomas Paine--who flung themselves against a thousand abuses, and by opposing, succeeded in putting an end to them. I make these confessions to show that there was in my course from Calvinism to Rationalism, a break, after all. I missed the straight path, despite all my vigilance, and cannot, therefore, claim the happiness, nor the distinction which belongs to those who have been more consistent than I have been. But it was not very long before I began to see whither I was drifting. I discovered that I was using two sets of weights and measures--one set for Calvinistic Christianity, and another set for _my_ Christianity, and it was only necessary to submit my own interpretations to the same tests which had shown the untenability of Calvinism to discover my self-deception. I had rejected Calvinism because it offered no evidence in support of its dogmas, but what evidence did I offer to prove the moral superiority of _my_ Jesus which I claimed to find in the gospels? Why is not Calvin's word as good as mine, if an assertion may pass for an argument? I began to see, even more clearly than ever before, perhaps, because of my temporary backsliding or _egarement_, as the French would it is as impossible to construct a character of Jesus as it is to write a life of Jesus out of the data in hand. No less an authority than Prof. Conybeare, of Oxford, Fellow of the British Academy and Doctor of Theology, admits that "We cannot, then, aspire to write a life of Jesus. Even Renan failed, and from the hands of a Farrar we merely get under this rubric a farago of falsehood, absurdity, and charlatanry." * This is strong language, but there is no exaggeration in it. If, however, a life of Jesus cannot be written, it follows that, under the circumstances a character of Jesus can not be constructed. How can the character of a man be known whose life is unknown to us? Are a few floating aphorisms ascribed to Jesus enough to justify his beatification? And yet, the other Ethical lecturers, as well as myself, were speaking of Jesus not only as the religious genius of the ages, but also as the one being in whom humanity's hopes and dreams came true. I have quoted elsewhere ** Adler's description of Christ as "a personality of such superlative excellence, so radiant, so incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse." But this rhetorical praise is as untrue of Jesus as it would be of Moses or Mohammed. * Myth, Magic and Morals, page 140. * The Truth About Jesus, page 257. In the fall of 1899 there was presented to me the opportunity of either going to Philadelphia, the scene of my earlier intellectual struggles, as the lecturer of an Independent Society, or of returning to Chicago, after an absence of four years from that city, to be the lecturer of a society which promised to help support a platform pledged to an uncompromising Rationalism. Considerable objection was made by members and lecturers of the Ethical Societies to my trying to organize an Independent Society in Chicago. Was not one liberal society enough in Chicago? it was asked. Did not the Ethical platform answer the purposes which the proposed society wished to serve? Would I not be dividing and thereby weakening the cause by engaging a new lecture hall? My critics did not object to my going to cities where there were no Ethical Societies, but in cities where there was one, I was not needed, was their argument. But time has shown that the society of which I have been the lecturer for the past ten years, does not in the least conflict with, or duplicate the work of the Ethical Societies. There is a radical difference between Ethical Culture and Rationalism, which may be brought out by the help of an illustration: A certain king had many slaves. This king had been a slave-holder for a long, long time. And his slaves had lived in slavery ever since they could remember. There were among the slaves of the king, young and old, men and women, rich and poor. Now there came to the slave-holder, one day, men from a strange country, who demanded that the slaves be given their freedom. The king put them to death, and continued to hold his slaves. From time to time others came demanding freedom for the slaves, but they met a similar fate. Some of the preachers of freedom were burned at the stake, others were tortured to death in dungeons, and others again were put to the sword. But this did not stop the coming of new preachers of liberty. When the number of people believing in freedom for the slave increased sufficiently to command respect, the slave-holder changed his policy. He received the messengers of liberty with great courtesy and hospitality, and expressed the hope that he and they might arrive at a satisfactory arrangement. "Why do you demand the freedom of the slaves?" he asked, very politely. "It is their right, and it alone can develop the best possibilities in them," they answered. "I am perfectly willing,--indeed, I shall cooperate with you toward that laudible end, but on one condition: they shall continue to remain in my care and obey me as their guide and protector." "No," said some of the apostles of liberty, "as slaves they can never be helped to the fuller and better life. Before everything else, they must conquer freedom to obey not you, but their own unfettered and enlightened consciences. Besides, you have been an evil Master, and can no longer be entrusted with the care of others. With the fall of slavery falls all your pretended rights to the allegiance of these men and women. And the slaves can not become free until your real character is exposed and your pretensions to authority divine exploded." But, on the other hand, there were those among the preachers of freedom who were inclined to accept the slave-owner's proposition: "We will come in and do what we can to educate and reform the people. We will say nothing to them about their slavery, or against your authority over them. All we wish is to make good men and women out of them," they said. Behold the difference between "liberal" Christian and Ethical movements, and a thoroughgoing and uncompromising Rationalism. The former think that the intellectual bondage of the church is not an obstacle to the moral and mental development of man, the latter hold, and to my mind, justly, that the first condition of salvation for a slave is that he be free--free from gods, christs, bibles and churches, as well as kings. But the Rationalist Societies of Europe and America need no justification for their existence. They do a work which neither Unitarianism nor Ethical Culture attempt even to do. The work of the Rationalists of Chicago has been singularly successful, both in building up a self-supporting Society with a large membership and a much larger audience which regularly fills Orchestra Hall--the largest and finest on Michigan Avenue, but it has also, together with the other progressive forces at play in the modern world, profoundly influenced the life and thought of the community. Superstition is more ashamed to show her face in Chicago, than perhaps in any other city of its size in America. There are no doubt, Rationalists in many of our other cities, and in large numbers, but in Chicago, Rationalists are organized. They maintain a regular platform, and disseminate Rationalistic publications by the thousands. The ten years in which I have been engaged in this work of constructive Rationalism have been the most fruitful years of my life. They have been years of conscious development in the knowledge and grasp of truths which enrich as well as interpret life. The sense of freedom from inconsistency, which is a kind of insincerity, is a great source, both of power and happiness. Then, the militant note to which the soul of the Rationalist vibrates,--for he is a soldier sworn to free men from the fear of the gods and their priests--a soldier to help man break his holy chains--gives him all the alertness, watchfulness, and courage of a sentinel at his vigil. There have been those who have helped man to political liberty, and others who are nobly endeavoring to help him conquer industrial liberty: but not until man has thrown off the yoke of the gods can he be free indeed. The last king to be dethroned is the heavenly king. If he stays, Tzar and Kaiser, tyrant and despot, pope and priest, in some form or other, will remain with us. Here and there men may succeed in banishing or overthrowing the tyrant,--king or priest, but these will come back again and again, perhaps disguised, but ever really the same, until God from whom they derive their power is unseated, and man becomes forever free. Honor to those who taught us not to kneel before Caesar, but greater honor to him who shall teach us not to kneel at all, and to accept nothing that is given to us for kneeling. CHAPTER VI. Some Objections to Rationalism. "Rationalism is cold," is a frequent criticism advanced by theological people. Without God and the hope of immortality, the Rationalist, according to church-goers, ought to be very miserable. Even if he should manage to escape the consequences of his unbelief while living, he is sure to suffer horrors when he comes to die. Life and death are so awful that only faith in God and the hope of a future life can enable us to endure the one and resign ourselves to the other. Such is the reasoning of Orthodoxy. Strictly speaking, the question of the existence of a God is not a human question. The bare fact that for these thousands of years, and throughout the world, the existence of God has remained an unsolved question, suggests that in all probability it will never be decided by mortals. Certainty about the future is equally impossible. Of course, we do not know what light science may throw upon these problems to-morrow, but speaking modestly, and without dogmatizing, every honest soul must admit, with Shakespeare, that the future is still an "undiscovered country." The essential thing is not that we should believe in a God or in the hereafter, but that we should grow. Whenever, during my ten years of complete severance from the supernatural, I have been called to say a few words in the house of mourning, or at the open grave, I have never pretended to find comfort for the bereaved in the belief in a non-resident God or in a life hereafter. The priest knows, or says he does, where the departed has gone, what kind of a life he leads there, what will be his lot in eternity, and whether we shall meet again. He speaks of these things with the assurance of a schoolboy reciting a page which he has learned by heart. But he is only pretending to possess information which, as a matter of fact, no one possesses. He knows no more of a personal God, or of another life, than anybody else. If we cannot predict what will happen in the next hour, how can we talk with assurance of the secrets of the unending future? If we do not quite understand ourselves, or the world which we daily see, how can we boast of any certain knowledge of a Being who is said to be infinitely and absolutely and incomprehensibly different from us? Silence is more religious than the gossip one hears about such a Being. Modesty is more reverent than dogmatism, and the agnostic is more honest and more eloquent than the garrulous preacher. If men wish to know where the Eternal is, who he is, what he does, what his intentions are, how he should be praised, what humors or provokes him, how many manifestations or persons there are in his godhead, and when he first began his operations, etc., they must not come to a Rationalist for such information. To acquaint man with himself, to show him the way to develop and use his own resources, and in time of sorrow and bereavement, to depend upon the thoughts of the wise and the brave, which heal and sooth and bless, is the consolation Rationalism offers. It is modest, but it is real. Rationalists cannot count on the creeds for consolation. A doll may amuse a baby, but is a grown-up man miserable because he cannot play with a toy? The Rationalist is willing to see Nature in its true light. He prefers reality to illusions, and would rather be awake than dreaming the most seductive dreams which "poppy or mandragora, or all the drowsy syrups of the world" can medicine the mind into. But the greatest consolation of the Rationalist is in this, that he is not under obligation to distort his intellect and twist his affections out of joint in order to justify God's way to man. No sooner a disaster is announced than the clergy begin to concoct excuses for this seeming neglect of Providence. God meant to punish human carelessness; he was angry with the present generation for its unbelief; he wished to speak in tones loud enough to be heard the world over, he was trying to make us more careful in the future, he wished to demonstrate that all human devices and inventions are futile unless "the Lord protect" the ship, the house or the city; and finally, that we do not understand God, for "he moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform," though we know he does everything for the best. Is it not a welcome relief that the Rationalist can bear his great sorrow without resorting to commonplace sophistries of this nature? Not taxed with the burden of vindicating Providence, the Rationalist devotes his energies to the fruitful work of developing his resources against the fortuitous elements at play about him. Only a moment's reflection will prove the futility of all attempts to establish a relation of some kind between God and the world's life. `````_God's in His Heaven, ````All's right with the World!_= is Browning's creed in his _Pippa Passes._ The verse in which the lines occur is, no doubt, excellent poetry, but what about its philosophy? ````"_The lark's on the wing; ````The snail's on the thorn; ````God's in His Heaven- ````All's right with the world!"_= We have seen and heard the lovely lark winging through the crystal air; and a thousand thousand eyes have discovered the snail on the thorn. Is it Browning's idea to intimate that by the same material or tangible proofs we may be sure "God's in His Heaven," and be reassured that "All's right with the world?" The two propositions belong altogether to radically different categories, and to infer from the presence of the lark in the air, or the snail on the thorn, that "All's right with the world," may be good rhyme, but that is all it is. Granting that "God's in His Heaven,"--a question toward which we maintain the modest and honest agnostic position,--it is within the sphere of man to discuss whether "All's right with the world." The world is made up of many countries full of people, and it has had a long history. Certainly "all's not right" in all the countries of the world, nor has it been so during all the periods of time. Is it, for example, true of Russia to-day that "all's right" there? Is it true of Poland, bleeding from a thousand wounds? Has it ever been all right in Turkey? In Browning's opinion, was there a country in Europe--the Europe of his day--of which he could truthfully say that _all_ was right there? But perhaps the poet merely meant to say that since "God's in His Heaven," all is bound to be right, sooner or later,--if not in this world, then, surely, in some other. But is not that begging the question? The mere fact that the best human effort is directed toward making the world better, shows that the world needs mending, and is far from being all right. We fear that Browning used his oft-quoted expression after a very enjoyable breakfast, while looking out upon his green and carefully trimmed lawns, shaded with the overspreading branches of gorgeous trees, and imagined that his cheerful yard was the world. The poet appears to correct his own hasty generalization when a little later he puts in Pippa's mouth the lines: ```"_In the morning of the world, ```When earth was nigher Heaven than now_."= If it is true that the older the world grows, the farther it falls from heaven, then, it can not be all right with the world, even if "God's in His Heaven." And what is Browning's authority that the earth was nearer Heaven once than it is now? Does he believe that the state of barbarism is nearer heaven than that of civilization? Or does he believe that man began life as an angel, and later became a man--a fallen man? It seems as if the former of the two suppositions represents Browning's thought, for in the following lines he shows decided preference for the animal, the primitive, life of the world: ```"_For what are the voices of birds, ```Aye! and of beasts--but words, our words? ```Only so much more sweet?_"= This is reason swallowed up in rhyme, or sense lost in sentiment. Why is the incoherent, instinctive exclamations of childhood, of bird and beast, sweeter than the ripened, rational, progressive, word of man? Surely a bird is more innocent than a man, but a stone is even more innocent than a bird. The beast tears its victims to death, the tree feeds the worms; is not a tree, therefore, purer than a beast? In all nature, there is nothing holier than man, for he alone can be holy. Browning seems to think that we were all so much better off when we were nearer the bird and beast, but evolution is our destiny, and only faint hearts cast wistful glances at the ages left behind. Finally, the great English poet seems to develop further the Asiatic fatalism of "God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world" idea, when in Scene VI., Pippa, in her chamber, exclaims: ```"_All service ranks the same with God-- ```With God, whose puppets, best and worst, ```Are we; there is no last, nor first._"= Indeed! Are we, then, but his puppets'? Is God a puppet showman? And is this a puppet world which he rules? What is the educational value to God of presiding over a race of puppets? Is there any glory for God, as Omar Khayyam suggests, in pushing back and forth, on a checkerboard, mere puppets, and then shutting them up in a closet after he has finished with the game? If we are all his puppets, we cannot much care whether "God's in His Heaven", or somewhere else, and whether or not "All's right with the world." The truth is, Browning, instead of portraying truth, betrays it. He sacrifices reason to imagination, and the result is failure. The attempts of the clergy to reconcile the god-idea with human suffering and wrong have proved equally worthless. Shortly after the disastrous Iroquois fire, in which nearly six hundred lives were lost, the Chicago clergy met, strange to say, to thank God for his tender mercies. Theology cuts strange capers with Reason after it has put out its eyes. It was of course appropriate that, not only the mourners, but the public in general, should observe with sober reflections the anniversary of a holocaust which left a great city in mourning. It is regrettable, however, that the ceremonies at the commemoration service assumed altogether a theological character, excluding thereby from participation many who would have derived great benefit from a purely human expression of sorrow and sympathy. The exercises opened by the ringing of the well known Hymn, _Nearer, My God, to Thee_, which was touchingly rendered by the soloist and quartet to the accompaniment of the piano. All music, softly and feelingly rendered, is sure to be impressive as well as soothing on occasions of this kind. But was it not a pity that some poet's words, free from the theological implication, were not selected in place of this church hymn which is, after all, nothing but the ecstatic outpouring of a superlatively mystical soul? What does it mean, for instance, to be "Nearer and still nearer, to God"? Did the six hundred people who murmured the words of the hymn have any clear idea of what they were asking for when they sang "_Nearer, My God, to Thee?_" No doubt they were comforted by the hymn, but how did it differ from the help which the Asiatic thinks he derives as often as he exclaims _Om Mani Padme Houm_--"O the glorious jewel of the lotus,--amen"? Imagine the effect upon an American audience, had one of the speakers suggested that the audience should sing the Hindoo prayer to the lotus instead of the Christian hymn. But why is not _O the glorious jewel of the lotus_ as intelligible as _Nearer, My God, to Thee?_ Would the millions of Orientals who in sorrow and darkness find light in drawing nearer to the lotus, be in the least moved by the Christian hymn which moistened the eyes of so many in Willard Hall? But why not let the Hindoo have his lotus prayer and the Christian his hymn? We have no objection: if they cannot do without them, they are welcome to them. In our opinion there has never been a religion, however crude or primitive, but has helped some struggling soul; there has not been an idol, however wooden, but has answered some prayers; not a fetish, however cheap, but has inspired some believer. It is with religions as it is with houses: The poorest hut or shanty protects some little ones from the cold, the most rickety roof shields from the storm some shivering child of want--even the hole in the ground into which the savage creeps to escape the ravages of the elements is a refuge. But true as all this is, it still remains as the most religions duty of man to try to replace these primitive shelters by building, as Oliver Wendel Holmes suggests, "more stately mansions" for his soul. Even as liberty with little is better than slavery with prosperity, and as justice is more precious than peace, truth is better than all the consolations which such financial exclamations as _O the glorious jewel of the lotus_, or _Nearer, My God, to Thee_, can afford. "We thank Thee, O God, for the gift of tears; we thank Thee for the ministrations of pain," prayed the reverend comforter. Pain and tears are certainly among man's teachers, but they have not been an unmixed good. Pain has crushed, perhaps, as many souls as it has educated. How many have come and gone to whom pain was simply pain, and who derived no benefit from it whatever? A dispatch from Port Arthur states that "the inmates of the hospitals complain bitterly of the heartlessness of the doctors and sisters of charity, who have become so accustomed to human suffering during the long siege that they have lost all sympathy with their patients." Pain, then, can make people callous as well as sensitive; it can break the spring of the heart as well as sting the will into action. But it is not our purpose, at present, to question the wisdom of being specially and officially "grateful for the ministrations of pain"; our object is to inquire what the officiating clergyman meant when he said, "We _thank_ Thee, O Father, etc." Did he mean it was good of the Deity to visit us, now and then, with such catastrophes as the Iroquois theatre fire? or, did he mean that it was quite considerate of him to make us feel the horror of that event sufficiently as to bring tears from our eyes? In thanking the Lord for pain as a gift, are we to understand that we owe it solely to his loving kindness that we can suffer, and not to any merit on our part? To thank anybody for anything implies the receiving of a favor, and is it this clergyman's idea that in send-ing pain and suffering--earthquakes and floods and terrible fires which in one black hour destroys the lives of dearest children with their helpless parents or guardians--the Deity is doing us a favor? Let us reflect a moment: "We thank Thee, O Father, etc.," Does this mean that there was "a possibility of the Lord withholding from us the ministrations of pain," and that, therefore, we must be thankful to him for not doing so--for not letting us be like the angels who live in a world free from evil and error? We cannot understand what the reverend doctor means when he publicly thanks the Deity for the "ministrations of pain." And will our good neighbor * tell us who he meant by "O Father," and how he connects this "Father" with the unutterable calamity, the shadow of which still darkens our human hearts? Ah, let us be truthful. We are soldiers, and illusions can only spoil us. "We had sinned together," continued the Reverend, "at least someone had sinned, and 'let him without sin cast the first stone,' I have not the heart to recriminate now, as I had not then, because in my own conscience I stand convicted before God of the common negligence. We are common sinners." What do these words mean? Is the good doctor trying to exonerate God by laying the entire blame upon us "common sinners"? * Reverend Lloyd Jones. The theatre fire was in all probability started by an accident which, in the absence of efficient management on the stage and in the auditorium, spread rapidly, converting the building in a few moments into a charnel-house. Why bring the Deity into the affair? What part, according to the doctor, did the Deity play in the Iroquois fire? Did he try to save anybody? Did he try to prevent anybody from being rescued? Did he cause the accident? Did he put it into someone's mind to be careless? Did he confuse the people and throw them into a panic purposely? Did he fold his hands and stand aside to see the burning? Did he wish to help but could not for any moral reasons? Did he regret his inability to prevent the horror? or was he glad it happened because it would teach us a lesson? Did he choose that special way of teaching us a lesson? Had he inevitable reasons for selecting a Wednesday matinee, when more children would be present, to punish "us common sinners, who stand convicted before God." If we cannot answer any of these questions, why do we connect God with the affair? If we cannot say just what God did or did not do in the theatre fire, why talk about it? If this calamity came upon us because of our sins, then, according to the missionary the Martinique earthquake came because the islanders rejected the Protestant religion. And whose sins was God punishing by the Galveston disaster or the Armenian massacres? Has it come to this that a man cannot take a sorrowing, weeping, heart-mangled brother or sister by the hand with sincere and sweet pity, without speculating about the Deity and his mysterious moves? Rationalism saves us from all these contradictions, and gives us the consolation of being sane, even when we cannot have our heart's desire. But to abstain from the worship of unknown beings, does not mean to go through life without an ideal. The feeling of longing, which the poet tells us is "of all the moods of mind, the dearest," is present in every earnest man and woman. To develop our faculties, to accomplish our tasks, to realize our hopes, to reach after our best thoughts--to labor for the beautiful yet-to-be--it is this hope which gives atmosphere to life, and makes our prattle eloquent. The pursuit of the ideal, the vision of a world void of wrong, of a humanity free and strong, of a world sweetened by the harmony of happy lives, of honest loves, of great worth, of innocent joys,--will ever draw us like a loving kiss. Another objection marshalled against Rationalism is that it is too critical, and that it is not "nice" to criticise. "Criticism," it is argued, "dwells upon the things which separate, more than upon those which bring together races and creeds." It certainly is more pleasant to talk of the unities and the fraternities, instead of the differences between men or their views and ideals. Unity is a fine thing, but when it is used as a _shibboleth_, or as a check upon the freedom of thought and speech, it ceases to be desirable. When agreement is the product of unhampered and generous research, it is good; but when it is desired as an excuse for the fear to investigate, then it becomes a cover for error, or a plea for peace and harmony at the cost of truth and growth. The teacher who provokes thought through criticism is a greater helper than he who by repeating set phrases never awakens a new interest in us. To sacrifice everything for the sake of peace and fraternity would be a loss rather than a gain. In Russia, for instance, one has all the freedom in the world, provided, he will speak only well of the government. There would, indeed, be harmony under these conditions, in any camp, but what would it be worth? "Look at my charities," says the Catholic church--"my art, my music--the magnificent cathedrals I have built, which are like beautiful galleries. Is it right to criticise or condemn the evil practices of a church that has done so much good for civilization? Speak, then, of the good the church has done, and say nothing of her persecutions and superstitions, and we will all be of one accord and of one mind." But would such a compromise, though baptised with the high-sounding name of unity, help the cause of progress? Is not progress a dearer word than unity? Is not freedom more precious than peace? Let us have unity if we can, but we must grow, and we must be free. Shall we sell the truth that we may have money to be charitable with? Is it right to sacrifice speech to silence, for the sake of harmony? But is it nice to criticise? Is it not more generous and aesthetic to be on good terms with everybody? What is there more desirable, they say, than to see the ministers of the various cults--the Catholic priest, the Protestant divine, the Jewish rabbi, the Unitarian minister, the Ethicist and Revivalist, arm in arm, and on the same platform, exchanging courtesies and praising one another's work? We are told that when we see such a gathering on one platform, we can be sure that the millenium has arrived. But it will be a millenium for the priest and the rabbi, the healer and the shouter--they are the only ones who will be benefited by such a Pentecostal assemblage. Such fellowship will no doubt throw its mantle of silence over a great many evils which fear the light, and encourage their authors to be defiant and indifferent to the truth. Where there is silence truth has no advantage over error. Is it worth while to sacrifice the most sacred privileges of men in order to bring priest and rabbi together? A great cause is often lost from the desire of its sponsors to be "nice." The teacher who wants to be "nice" may manage not to tell any lies, but he never succeeds in telling any truths, either. He cannot afford to tell the truth, for it may hurt, and he is not "nice" if he hurts. When he cannot tell anything pleasant, he must hold his tongue. Such a teacher is like an acrobat dancing on a tight rope, all he can do is to save himself from falling. There is no more room in modern society for a teacher who is afraid to hurt than there is for the physician who would rather humor the patient than do his duty. And, yet, there are not a few who trim their thoughts so as to make only friends. If the whole truth should at any time escape them by accident, they hasten forthwith to qualify it, or to take back a part of it--just to be obliging and nice. There has never been a reformer in the world who could not have become the idol of the people by following such a method; but idols die and turn to dust, while the heroism of the martyred soul is a perennial benediction. To be "nice" was never the policy of a really earnest man. If Jesus was a historical personage, it does not appear on the records that he ever tried to be "nice"--to pat the priests on the back, or to tell them what good fellows they were, and that when he and they met they should be careful to speak only of the things they agreed upon. Of course the inability, to be "nice" cost Jesus his life. His independence nailed him to the cross, but evidently he prized something else more than he did unity. Luther was not very "nice" when he tore the pope's bull in pieces, and nailed his challenge to Rome on the church doors where everybody could see it. How impolite! That, surely, was a poor way to make friends. "Let us have masculine men," cries Emerson, who was himself thrown out of his pulpit and his church, because he preferred independence to popularity. Another thing which the independent teacher does which is not "nice" is that he takes away the religion of our mothers. What about taking away the religion of heathen mothers? Why is it right to take away the religion of a Chinaman--a religion handed down to him by his mother--and wrong to disturb the religion of an American because it was his mother's religion? Did not Protestantism take away from the Catholics the religion of their mothers? Did not Catholics take away from the pagan Romans the religion of their mothers? Is it only taking away the religion of _our_ mothers that is not "nice"? But the Rationalist is also charged with being negative and not positive. We are told in sonorous language that man cannot live on negations. But it is Orthodoxy that is negative, not Rationalism. The first commandment in the Bible God ever gave man was a negative one: "Thou shalt not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil." It denied man freedom, and science. It denied him the right to progress. And ever since the one aim of the church has been to keep man "poor in spirit". Rationalism, on the contrary, removes the angel with the flaming sword at the gates of Eden, and invites everyone who hungers for knowledge to enter and eat of the tree of life. To know that a thing is not true, is also truth. The mind, like the ground, must be plowed and cleared before it can receive the truth. There can be no truth without the destruction of error. "Your doctrine is well enough for the strong, but the weak must have crutches to walk at all, and you take away from them their crutches," is another criticism often advanced against the Rationalist. It is related that Mr. Ingersoll, when he called one day to see his friend, Mr. --------, who was an invalid, was confronted with an argument he was unable to meet. "As I was sitting in my invalid's chair," began his friend, "and was looking out of the window, I saw a feeble, old man, struggling up the hill yonder, upon his crutches. Evidently, he was in pain, for he moved with extreme care and leaned heavily upon his crutches. I could tell that his crutches were all that sustained him from utter collapse. Then I saw a young man run after him, and when he came up to where the old man was, he kicked off his crutches, and the poor fellow rolled down the hill, a perfect wreck." "That was an outrage," Ingersoll exclaimed, jumping to his feet and walking toward the window. "Where is he?" he asked, impatient with indignation. "You are that man," returned his friend. "I was once a believer; my beliefs comforted me. You came into my life, kicked off my crutches, and now I sit here in this chair, a desolate and hopeless soul, waiting for the flame to blow out." There is no more comparison between a tottering man leaning upon his wooden crutches, and a religion claiming to appeal to the intellect of man, than there is between a watch and a universe, to quote Paley's famous argument for the existence of a God. But, at any rate, is it not cruel to knock an old man's crutches from under him? Let us see. If the old man with the crutches represents the feeble-minded believers, the question to be answered is, how did they come to depend upon the use of crutches in the first place? Was it not more cruel to teach them to depend upon crutches? Are not those who prevent the healthy development of the limbs to enhance the sale of crutches even more cruel than those who despise their use? To bring a man to a state of dependence; to terrorize him into fear; to fetter his faculties so that he cannot train them into service; to arrest his evolution; to keep him a dwarf, clinging like a scared child to the apron strings of his lords; to place in his hands an icon or a crucifix as his only hope--and then to denounce the teachers who rob these poor people of their crutches, is an argument which is bound to recoil with fearful force upon the venders of such artificial helps. It is like depriving a man of house and goods, and then providing a tattered tent for his shelter, and then saying to us: Would you be so cruel as to pull down the only thing that protects his poor head from the elements? Yes! in order that we may awaken in him a sense of the wrong and the oppression and the deprivation of which he is the unconscious victim. Sir Henry Main, in his Popular Government, says, that, if it had been put to a vote whether machinery, when it was first invented, should be introduced into the factories, there would have been recorded an overwhelming vote against its use. It was taking away from the poor man his crutches to compel him to compete with the iron and steel. And, actually, laborers of the time, suffered much and were driven to the wall, by the invention of machinery. But the temporary mischief caused by the introduction of machinery has been fully compensated by its lasting benefits to all classes. Likewise, this or that believer may fall and hurt himself when his theological crutches have been taken away from him, but if thereby his children and the future race can be taught to dispense with the use of so clumsy a contrivance, altogether--who would hesitate to knock them off? Was man meant to be an invalid all his life? Must all the generations of the future limp and hobble, to support the crutch industry? Moreover, if any invalid can be made to give up his crutches, that very fact shows that he did not need them. Grandma, or grandpa, must not be disturbed in their beliefs, we hear people argue. We cannot disturb them, however hard we may try, unless they are intellectually virile enough to keep themselves together without crutches. The very fact that we can shake a man, shows he is strong enough to stand the strain. We cannot induce an invalid to give up his crutches; when we can, then, he is not an invalid. And what do we give in place of the crutches?--the ability to do without them. I have often been asked "Why do we not as a Rationalist Society do works of charity, such as establishing neighborhood guilds, sewing and bathing clubs for the poor, free dispensaries, and hospitals?" There are many who are already doing this kind of work whatever its value may be, but very few who are even attempting to do the work which we have set out to do, namely, to help men to use freely and wisely the noblest of all their gifts--Reason. Is that a work that can be dispensed with? And can public baths, and evening classes do more for a man than they will for an animal if his Reason is still fettered. The emigrant from Russia, or Italy, or Ireland, may join all the guilds and frequent all the night schools, and still remain a mental slave. But he can not take a course in Rationalism, and continue to cling to his chains. Of course, to make men free and enlightened is not enough. They must also be helped to develop the humanities which are the salt of life, but we must first wake him up, for he can not be saved in his sleep. CHAPTER VII. Rationalism and the World's Great Religions. Rationalism does not attack the religions of the world, it tries to explain them. But religions do not wish to be explained, and consequently they denounce the investigator as an enemy of morals as well as of religion. Reason, the theologians contend, is incapable of understanding the divine mysteries, and forgets, of course, that faith alone can discover the hidden things of God. But they do not stop to think that they are reasoning even when they are giving reasons why we should not reason. Beginning with the belief in God, which is the basic belief in nearly all religions, Rationalism endeavors to show the unreasonableness of all the dogmas which deal with the supernatural. It is impossible to talk about an infinite person without making one's self utterly unintelligible, not to say, absurd. There is not a single statement made about a god, which can be harmonized with sense. It is because the beliefs about the supernatural cannot be reconciled with reason,--it is because of the apparent absurdity of the dogmas of religion, that the clergy have had to resort to fire and blood,--the scourge, the dungeon, the rack, the gallows, and hell-fire to force people to believe in them. There is no reliable record of God ever being seen by man. His voice has never been heard. His form and expression or whereabouts remain a mystery to this day. We have nothing but guesses as to the kind of worship he prefers, or why he should be praised. And yet, entire countries have been plundered, pillaged, and laid waste for no other reason than that they held different views from ours on the form or nature of a God whom no man has ever seen, heard or comprehended. Such is the extraordinary folly of man! All religions are absolutely human in origin. There is not, and there has never been, and in the nature of things there never can be a divine or superhuman religion--that is to say, a religion invented by a god. Let us imagine for the sake of argument, however, that a god wished to reveal himself to us. What would be the probable course he would pursue? Would he reveal himself to us as he is, or only as much of himself as we needed to know or could comprehend? To reveal himself to us as he is in all the fulness of his nature would be a moral impossibility, for the reason that only a god could fully comprehend a god. But if he revealed to men only as much of himself as they could grasp, then their knowledge of him must necessarily be imperfect. We are revealing ourselves to the animals, for instance, every day of our life, but still the animals, owing to their limitations, can never know us as we are, but only as they think we are. Likewise our knowledge of supernatural beings must be as incomplete as is the knowledge of animals concerning man. We see objects as the structure of our eyes permits us to see them, or as our minds grasp them. The reflection of the sky in a drop of dew is limited to the capacity of the dew. Owing to this adaptation of objects to the powers of the observer before they can be observed at all, it may be said that objects are seen not as they really are but as they appear to the observer. Since, then, a divine revelation cannot overcome the limitations of the finite mind, God could be no more to us than what _we_ think he is, or in other words, what we make him to be. Another proof that man is the maker of his own gods is that his gods are neither better nor worse than he is himself. The barbarian can never conceive of a civilized diety; on the contrary, the Great Spirit he worships is a projection of his own passions and aspirations--his own vices and virtues. As he advances in refinement and humanity, his God advances too. If he sinks into deeper ignorance and brutality, he drags his God down with him. The God of the Quaker is peaceful; that of the Hebrew was a "man of war." The God of the Negro, who has never seen white folks, is necessarily black. The God of children is a child-god; and in a society where man, not woman, is the ruler, God is a "he." Not only is man the maker of his gods, but he also keeps them in repair--constantly remodeling or retouching them in order to preserve some sort of correspondence between himself and his gods. And why is the god of the Negro black? Because he not only is ignorant of any other color, but because black is for him the color of preference or aristocracy. When he becomes acquainted with white people he associates their color with everything that he fears and despises. He therefore, as a later evolution, makes his devils white. The idea I wish to present is that just as man determines the color of his gods and devils he determines also their characters. He can only invest them with such virtues and vices as he is acquainted with. He can not attribute to them powers which he does not covet for himself. In short he is the maker of the gods he worships and the devils he fears. The pathetic part of all this, however, is that though man makes his own gods, he imagines that the gods have made him. He manufactures an image or an idol, invests it with certain attributes and powers, and then, like a slave, falls down to bite the dust before his own handiwork. Reflect upon this for a moment: The Pope, for instance, owes every one of his prerogatives to the very people who bend before him; they make him infallible, they seat him on a throne, and place the Keys of Heaven and Hell in his hands; yet before this creature of their own vanity or fear they behave like a race of bondsmen. Who created the Sultan or the Czar? Their own subjects! And yet see how these Turks and Russians creep and crawl before the work of their own hands. Is it not absurd for a potter to worship his own pot? In view, therefore, of the undeniable fact that man makes the gods he worships, how pitiable to observe the servility and stupidity with which he plays the sycophant before the images of his own hand or head! Notwithstanding this self-evident truth that all religions are human in origin, every one of them has claimed to be from above. Like puffed-up or ungrateful children, the religions of the world have denied their real, though humble parentage, and have laid claim to a celestial birth. But the fact that each of the great religions, while claiming a supernatural origin for itself, vehemently denies it to all others, renders all such claims exceedingly suspicious. It would be easier for me, for instance, to believe that God has also spoken to you, if he has really spoken to me. But if he has not spoken to me, I am apt to consider the claim that he has spoken to you, as an impertinence. The reason one "inspired" teacher calls another "an imposter" is that he is not sure of his own inspiration. He judges others' pretensions to a divine origin by his own. * The refusal of the different religions to believe in one another is a strong proof that they are all equally unworthy of belief, as far as their supernatural claims are concerned. * Oato used to say that he was surprised one soothsayer could keep his countenance when he saw another manipulating, knowing as he did the imposture he was practicing. Jesus is reported by John the evangelist to have denounced all who preceded his as "thieves and robbers."--Gospel according to John. There is a Hindoo legend that Krishna, the son of God, once showed himself to a group of young ladies who were so charmed with his handsome face and figure that not only did each of the young ladies wish to dance with him, but each insisted that no one else should enjoy the same privilege, whereupon Krishna found himself in an embarrassing position. He was willing enough to dance with the girls, but did not wish to inflame their jealously, so calling upon his resources, he immediately multiplied himself into as many Krishnas as there were maidens, and danced with each and every one of them, taking pains however to leave the impression with each young woman that she alone had danced with the god. So each religious prophet imagines that the Lord has not danced with anybody but himself. The reluctance of the prophets to believe in one another shows how difficult it is for us to ascertain to which of them the revelation has been made. The only way a special revelation could be given would be through an individual--a Moses, a Mohammed, a Jesus, etc. But if we ourselves are not inspired, how are we to tell which teacher is telling the truth? If we are to use our own reason to decide this momentous question, why, then, do we need a revelation? Tell me, I pray you, was it fair in God to have expressed himself privately to some individual, and then to have left it to us to decide whether said individual was or was not inspired? And a revelation, the truth or untruth of which has to be ascertained by the exercise of human reason can claim no superiority to human reason. It follows then unmistakably that a revelation is impossible since it is we who have to decide whether or not it is a revelation. Even as we create the gods, we create also the bibles of the world. Besides the ostensible purpose of a revelation is to make things clear, or to change our ignorance into knowledge. Have the different revelations of the world done this? Have they not, on the contrary, added to the perplexities of the mind? A god who reveals himself to an individual privately and then leaves it to us to decide whether said individual has or has not received a revelation instead of relieving, increases our embarrassment. If it be argued that we should have faith, I answer in which one of the prophets? Shall we have faith in the one our parents believed, in the one of the country we were born in, in the one who agrees with us, or in the one who can force us to accept him? Moreover, if faith can make one prophet inspired, why not another? If faith can make Jesus divine, why not Mohammed? It is our purpose to show that neither gods nor revealed religions can be a proper subject of study, and what cannot be a subject of study cannot be an object of faith. We do not deny the gods, for we know nothing about them to be able to make any reasonable statement concerning them; we simply dismiss them from our thought. But while the supernatural has no interest for the Rationalist, he is very much interested in the interpretations which men have given of it, and the manner in which they have built up a system of morals and a philosophy of life upon it. The great teachers and founders of religions are proper subjects both for criticism and commendation. Being men they cannot claim immunity from a free and fearless examination of their teachings. The more honest a teacher is, the more willing he is to be investigated, and nothing prejudices us more against a teacher than his refusal to be questioned. "He who will have no judge but himself, condemns himself," says the proverb. But to regard these teachers as men, only, is to divest them also of all the magical powers which a fond credulity has ascribed to them. A teacher who seeks converts to his religion by curing a horse, as Zoroaster is supposed to have done, or by changing a stick into a serpent, as Moses claims he did, or water into wine, as Jesus is believed to have done, instead of saving the world, degrades it. We insult our teachers when we ascribe to them miraculous powers such as walking on the water, multiplying, loaves and raising the dead. All the wonders of the world cannot make what is bad, good, or what is false, true. A teacher who has a falsehood which he wishes to pass for the truth may resort to a miracle; but why should an honest soul undertake to win converts by unintelligible performances? If physical and mathematical truth can, unaided, command universal assent, why should there be "signs and wonders" to maintain moral or intellectual truths? Moreover, if a teacher has power to stop the sun, has he not the power to make people see the truth without a miracle? If he can raise the dead, can he not lift the human mind out of error without the aid of extraordinary phenomena? Resorting to miracles to convert people, proves, not the power, but the despair of the teacher. He who can command followers relying solely upon the truth of his teaching is, and remains forever, a greater moral and intellectual force than he who is driven to surprise and bewilder his hearers before he can convert them. * * To aim to convert a man by miracle is a profanation. --Emerson And now before we can make an estimate of the world's leading religions, we must try to arrive at some sort of an agreement as to what we would consider the greatest virtue, and what the greatest vice in religion. There will be no objection, on the part of my readers, to the statement that the most heinous of all vices in any religion is _cruelty_. There is not a crime or an error which is not made worse by cruelty--or softened by the absence of it. Cruelty is the most inexcusable, the most inhuman, the most unreasonable, the most degrading, and the most deadly of the vices that human nature is heir to. Cruelty is consummate wickedness. It is the passion of the bad because it is bad. It is doing evil from pleasure, Think, then, what a serious thing it is for a religion purporting to be "divine" to recommend the halter, the fire-brand and the sword, for instance, against all who do not subscribe to its dogmas. With such a religion in force, it will not be necessary to invent a devil, for man, himself, under its influence, must develop into a fiend of hate and cruelty, withering all he comes in contact with, as the frost blackens all it bites. It is admitted that there is an element of cruelty in almost all the religions of the world;--though of Buddhism it has been claimed that during its nearly twenty-five centuries of existence, it has not killed, much less tortured a single human being in the name of religion. That is certainly an enviable record. It should compel the hot flush of shame to the cheek of those persecuting Faiths which have shed enough human blood "to incamardine the multitudinous seas." As Buddhism is one of the numerically stronger religions of the world, and as it has helped to shape the beliefs and practices recommended by the more recent creeds, a brief examination of its fundamental doctrine would assist us in making an estimate of its moral worth and may be useful to this discussion. What is the teaching which makes of Buddhism a distinctive religion? _Life is an evil_, taught the Hindu reformer. To desire life is the acme of immorality according to this doctrine for it is to desire that which is evil. Desire is the soil in which spring up all the noxious weeds which choke to death the flower of happiness. To cease to desire is to conquer freedom from suffering. Salvation according to Buddhism consists in winding up and sealing forever the book of life, leaving not the remotest possibility for any fresh life to spring up again. This pessimism, which while it has attractions for the speculative and supine Oriental, is justly abhorred by the creative and ever-youthful European. The important question is not, "Is life worth living?" but "How can life be made worth living, since live we must?" While therefore Buddha taught a scrupulous morality, while his own character stands out as one of the noblest, and while his teachings have made countless millions gentle and peaceful, nevertheless, there is in this mildest of religions, much that is positively harmful. The Buddhist conception of life with its blighting pessimism which recommends non-resistance to evil, has emptied a continent of its vigor and converted it into a desert. The teaching of orthodox Buddhism may be likened to the advice which a sea captain, driven by despair, might give to his men on deck--to sink the ship in order to escape the storm. Then again the Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation as an endless chain of nightmares, dragging man through unending births to "the vast void night," has caused untold agony of mind and body. This gloomy view has made life, for millions of people, a misfortune, love a crime, and the earth, a hell! The believers in transmigration or reincarnation forget that the scientific view of man leaves no room for anything to migrate. What science understands by soul is the word which expresses the functions, including brain activity and the circulation of the blood. When these cease there is no soul to go anywhere. Neither could reincarnation produce the moral discipline claimed by its advocates. It is no punishment to return to the world in a lower form of life, since there is no memory, clear and ringing, of a former and higher existence. Moreover, the lower forms of life are more callous and not at all conscious of deflection from a better standard. If a cruel man becomes a tiger, it would be giving him a better chance to be more cruel. Unless the animal can remember his humanity, he can not be disciplined by a descent into a lower stage of being.. But the Buddhist hell, fearful though it is, is, fortunately, not everlasting. Over its gaping mouth is spread the rainbow arch of Nirvana, that is to say, deliverance for all from every form of suffering, in sleep--_eternal sleep_, which will, some day, according to this religion, fold an aching world on its cool and calm bosom. The vice of Buddhism then is its exaggeration of the troubles of life--its deprecation of the opportunities for the pursuit of truth and goodness which life offers. By dwelling too long and too often upon the thorns, Buddhism becomes blind to the rose which is as real as the thorns. And again this Oriental teacher set up an unattainable ideal when he demanded the eradication of all desire from the human soul. Man can only change his desires; he cannot cease to desire. Not to desire is also a desire--a desire to be free from desire. The virtue which we admire most in Buddha's doctrine is gentleness. Buddha is said to have been of all great leaders the most compassionate. He trembled to cause pain to the least of sentient things. The birds, the fishes, the crawling worms, as well as man, he looked upon as his brothers. Buddhism might be called the Religion of Pity. There is little doubt but that wherever Buddhism triumphed there war and persecution, two of the most abominable institutions of all time, practically disappeared. It is with feelings of undivided admiration that I now come to speak of Confucius--the only Rationalist among the immortals of ancient times. If the other founders of Faiths owe their reign over the minds of men, in part at least, to the wonderful miracles attributed to them, Confucius, on the contrary, owes his increasing reputation to the complete absence of the supernatural from his life and doctrines. He has conquered the ages by his common sense. And his sanity assures for him a future which we can not safely predict for the others. Omitting a historical sketch of the great Chinese teacher, and confining ourselves briefly to an exposition of his philosophy or religion, we notice at once that Confucianism devotes itself exclusively to this world--to the now and here. This is very remarkable when we remember how all the other teachers made the world to come, that is to say, some invisible and undiscovered world the principal theme of their preaching. To lose this world that we may win the next was the burden of the teaching of both Buddha and Jesus. But the great Chinaman completely ignored the so-called next world, and directed all his efforts toward the enlightenment of man concerning the world that now is. It will readily be seen what a radical difference there is between Confucius and his colleagues. When they spoke of gods, Confucius spoke of man; when they asked for faith, Confucius recommended knowledge; when they delivered mysteries, Confucius presented facts. With perfect propriety we may call Confucius the first apostle of secularism. Now secularism is the very opposite of supernaturalism, and as the world is becoming more and more secular, that is to say, practical and humanitarian, Confucius is the only one among the great sages who is as much modern as he is ancient. In the teaching of Confucius we do not find the least suggestion of even so much as a Buddhist hell. The religion taught by Confucius is the least theological of any Oriental cult. Confucius was a teacher, not a priest. He worked no miracles, delivered no inspired oracles, dealt in no mysteries, claimed no supernatural powers, did not think that the less sense there was in a religion the more divine it would be, and made no attempt to allure with future promises, or to frighten with hell-fire his hearers. In the long annals of a past musty with age and choking with superstitions innumerable, the page on which is inscribed the name of this sanest of all Asiatics is the fairest and freest from cant and rant. The name of Zoroaster takes us back to a very remote period in the history of our humanity. It has been conjectured that when he began his career as a religious teacher he found his people, the Persians, worshiping the principle of Evil, or Ahriman, the Persian name for Devil. While Zoroaster was unable to wean his people from Ahriman, he did succeed in supplementing the fear of the devil with the love of God or Ormuzd, the principle of goodness. The dualism is the distinguishing characteristic of the religion founded by Zoroaster, and is also its contribution to nearly all the other religions; for we find in Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism the same fundamental belief in the existence of a God invariably accompanied by his rival--the Devil. What the one creates, the other destroys; what the one mends, the other mars; God makes the light, the Devil the darkness; God kindles the flame, the Devil tries to turn it into smoke; God is omnipotent in wisdom, the Devil is equally resourceful in mischief. Zoroastrianism or Mazdaism, then, is the parent of dualism, namely, of the eternal struggle between these two archpowers for the possession of man. Without denying to Zoroaster the name of reformer, and also of empire-builder,--for doubtless his services contributed to the political expansion of Persia, making her on land and sea, one of the great powers of ancient times, and duly acknowledging the beginnings of a high morality in the collected scriptures called the _Avestas_, attributed to his pen,--we are compelled by the evidence to charge the religion of Zoroaster, that is to say, the religion of dualism, of a God plus a Devil, with having invented, so to speak, the awful doctrine of hell, and therefore of religious persecution. It was a natural consequence of the belief in a God opposed by a Devil to make war upon all who were not on the side of God. And as the prophet is himself invariably the vicar or the apostle of God, it followed that all those who refused obedience to his will were in opposition to the Deity and should be suppressed, even as God is trying to suppress the Devil, his antagonist. When we approach the Jewish-Christian faith, we find the dark stream of religious persecution, which had its source in Zoroastrianism, grown into a raging sea. The three religions, Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism, bear to one another the relation of parent and children. Christianity is the elder, and Mohammedanism the younger daughter of Judaism. The predominant trait, which is common to them all, is exclusiveness. It is impossible to be humanitarian or universal and exclusive at the same time, which is another way of saying that, where the spirit of exclusiveness holds sway, there religious toleration will be considered a crime, both against God and the State. Of course in all three of these faiths are to be found passages which seem to possess an accent of universality. But it is a universality conditioned on the conversion of the whole world to the faith in question. "My house shall be a house of prayer for all nations," writes the Jewish prophet, but observe it says,--"My house,"--which means that the whole world will come to worship in a Jewish temple. It does not mean that Pagan and Christian, without embracing the Jewish faith, may each worship his own "Christ" in a Jewish synagogue. It is in this same spirit that the Mohammedan throws open his mosque, and the Christian his cathedral to the whole world. Brotherhood in these religions is limited to those of the true faith. The misbeliever is an alien to whom it is a sin even to say "God speed." Intermarriage is forbidden with a view to emphasize the fact that only through conversion can a stranger become a friend or a brother. Such exclusiveness was bound to breed hatred and persecution. And as men make their gods, an exclusive people will have an exclusive god. The Bible conception of God is one of the most repellant in religious literature. We may say it is the least successful attempt at god-making on record. The three religions we have named have all one and the same God, with only unimportant variations. The authors of the Bible seem to have labored under the impression that to make their God acceptable they had only to make him intensely partisan. One who loves his own only. But they have made him, necessarily, as terrible as he is exclusive. He is not only called a jealous God, but also a consuming fire, a man of war. It is expressly stated that "He is angry every day." The English translators have interpolated the words--"with the wicked,"--but the original as rendered into Latin, German, French and other languages, shows plainly that the editors of King James' Version took undue liberties with the text. The Revised Version has dropped the words _with the wicked_, and the text now conveys the same meaning in the English Bible as in the German, which reads: "Und ein Gott, der taglich dirauet," and in the French, "La colere the Dieu est toujours prete a eclater." "Irascitur per singulos dies," are the words in the Vulgate. To please his makers the God of the Jew, the Christian and the Mohammedan orders the extermination of all who object to be converted: "And thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee: thine eye shall have no pity upon them." Each of the three religions, unfortunately, has been too willing to obey to the letter this unfraternal injunction introduced into the mouth of the Deity by the priesthood. As the authors of the above text claimed to be inspired the priests of these three religions have shed more blood than all the tyrants put together. This is a fearful but absolutely just indictment against the Jewish-Chris-tian-Mohammedan religion. But confining for a moment our remarks to Christianity alone, it must be admitted that in spite of its doctrine of hell, it has certain redeeming features about it which are of undoubted pagan origin and which we do not find in Judaism. The advantage of Christianity over Judaism consists in the former's generous efforts to save the whole world, irrespective of race or color, from the doom of hell. This is the contribution of the Gentile to Christianity. The words of Jesus, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature," were in all probability put in his mouth by a Gentile. What Jesus really said, if, indeed, we can be sure of anything that he said, was, "Go not into the cities of the Gentiles," assuring them at the same time that the world would come to an end before they had even finished preaching to the lost sheep of Israel. Jesus as a Jew shared the belief of his people that "none are beloved before God but Israel." It was the Greek and Latin genius that made of Christianity more than merely another. Jewish sect, by breathing into it as much of its universalism as a dogmatic religion would admit Of course, the best service which paganism rendered Christianity was to introduce into it a new God--the _man_ God as against the all-God Jehovah--who, by personal sacrifices, conquered for the whole world an opportunity to be saved. Christ, as a secondary God--or a junior God--was the revolt of the Gentile world against the Jewish Deity. Whatever good Christianity has done is due to this rebellion which culminated in compelling the dread Jehovah to admit the man-God into full and equal partnership with him. The Jews call this blasphemy; but Christianity, inspired by the Hellenic and Latin genius, weakened the divinity by dividing it into three--later into four, by the addition of a woman to the number. In this alone, namely, in making a new God, and thus taking from the old solitary deity many of his ancient and Semitic prerogatives, Christianity has proved its greater sympathy with paganism than with Judaism. Another leading trait of these three religions is their fear and hatred of freedom of thought To perpetuate their own power the priests of this family of religions found it necessary to suppress, at first by threats of divine punishments, and when these failed, by force of arms, all inquiry. Faith, which meant unquestioning acquiescence, was of God; Science, which meant investigation, was of the Devil. The agents of this group of religions which between them have held Europe, America and a great part of Asia and Africa captive for many centuries, prompted their God to solemnly declare in infallible documents, that a father should not hesitate to kill his own son, or a son his own father; that a mother should destroy her child, and the child its mother,--to prevent them from professing or following another religion. It is impossible to bring a more horrible accusation against a set of men. The worst thing that we can say against the profession of the law or of medicine, pales into insignificance when compared with this specimen of the inhumanity of the priesthood. The day of judgment is here, and the founders of these three religions are summoned to answer at the bar of humanity, awakened from sleep, for the wholesale massacres which have dipped the world in blood, for the Spanish and Scottish inquisitions, and for the sectarianism and hatred which converted men of the same race and country into implacable enemies and persecutors of one another. The religious commentators defend the respective scriptures of these religions by saying that their teachings were limited to the mental level of the times and the peoples. But if God had to descend to the plane of man and become brutal and bigoted like him, how was man benefited by his intercourse with the divine? Furthermore, if the mental and moral limitations of a people determine the character of revelation, what advantage is there in having a revelation? Moreover, because a child cannot comprehend algebra, is it right to teach him that one and one make three? Is the inability of the primitive man to appreciate the higher virtues of generosity, justice and fellowship with aliens, an excuse to command him to exterminate his neighbors, * to bear false witness, ** to practice immorality, to plunder, to be cruel and credulous? *** If a revelation cannot civilize a barbarian, what is its value? * Deut. 7: 16, etc. ** Jer. 4: 10; I. Kings 22: 23; Ezek. 14: 9, etc. ***Exod. 12: 85, 36; I. Sam. 16: 1, 2,; Exod. 1; 18-20, etc. But while denouncing intolerance we must not become intolerant ourselves. With all their faults these three religions have been, in their day, of considerable service to the world. We may justly say of them that having done all the bad and all the good of which they were capable it is time for them to step aside and leave the field to science. Am I asked what good these religions have done? I answer: They have taught man science by forbidding it. It may sound strange, but religion aroused human curiosity, which again discovered science. The time came when man was not satisfied with information only about the next world, about spirits and demons, about mysteries and divine attributes; he asked also information about this world, about man, the past history of the earth and so forth. Just as by seeking the philosopher's stone men discovered chemistry, and by the way of astrology they came to the science of astronomy, and by the way of sorcery and magic to the knowledge of medicine,--so did theology develop into philosophy. Religion also must be credited with having been the first to give man a system of thought. Now a system, however crude, is a work of art. It is a creation. It is a putting together of ideas and beliefs for the purpose of arriving at a conclusion. Thus religion taught man to think connectedly, to see the relation of things, and to think for a purpose, that is to say, to reason. The savage has ideas too, but he can not put them together, he can not classify or systematize them. There has been iron in the bowels of the earth, and lying on the surface in many places for long ages, but only when man could give shape and form to it did he enter the path of civilization. In the same sense, not until man could forge, fuse and combine his ideas into a system of some kind, did he begin his intellectual evolution. Religion started civilization by enabling man to put his ideas together. Even as the worm was the prophecy of the coming man, the creed was the beginning of science. Let us see if we cannot make this idea a little clearer: All religions represent the effort of the human mind to understand itself and its environment. At the core of every religion, however crude, there is a philosophy,--that is to say, every belief, be it ever so foolish, has a meaning, and at one time was a help to man. The savage carries a fetish on his person to secure himself against evil. The civilized man crosses himself in the presence of danger. Both practices embody a truth, and it is the province of criticism to define that truth. When the turbaned Oriental, standing in his mosque, pronounces the name of _Allah_ with such awe and joy, what is it he means? In his groping way he is aiming to be scientific; he is trying his hand at philosophy; he wishes to put his finger upon the nerve of the universe; he is trying to bring the multifarious forces of nature about him into a focus; he is trying to evolve harmony out of chaos,--music out of the discord and babel of life; and he thinks he has succeeded, when he has pronounced the word _Allah!_ Of course, his philosophy is that of a beginner, but it is a philosophy, nevertheless. He is an embryo scientist, taking his first lesson in logical reasoning. That is the truth at the heart of all religions which we must recognize. They represent the desire of man to make things clear to his intelligence, and to wrest life's secret from the universe. Man seeks knowledge because in the consciousness of knowledge there is happiness and power. The strain of ignorance is intolerable to him. Darkness embarrasses his mind and he seeks the light by instinct. The primitive man, for instance, alarmed by the things he did not understand, proposed explanation after explanation, in his effort to throw off the darkness from his mind. When the sky frowned upon him and the winds wailed in his ears, he did not know what to make of them, and felt insecure until he could satisfy himself that he understood how and why the dark clouds swept over the face of the skies and the winds moaned about his dwelling. He felt relieved when he believed that he had grasped the situation. His explanation that the sun and the wind were free agents, like himself, acting from choice, as he thought he did, was a very crude one, but it was an explanation, all the same, and for the time being proved helpful to him. From the very beginning, man has shown a hunger for knowledge, which has put his mind in action. Religion, then, is man's first attempt at scientific and philosophical thinking. Religion is, in a sense, the primer of science and philosophy. The mistake we make is to declare this primer infallible. We take the first composition of the child, so to speak--his first prattle in the presence of the universe--and pronounce it inspired. When Moses, or whoever wrote the first chapters of the book of Genesis, described how man and woman were fashioned, he was trying to be scientific, in his modest way. But the best explanation that his mentality could produce was that God took some clay from the ground and kneaded it into the form of man, and from one of the ribs of this man he formed woman. It is not his science we commend; it is his desire to explain man's origin that honors him, for out of that desire, philosophy, science,--progress--are born. But there is another truth hidden in the bosom of all religions which it is the mission of philosophy to disclose. The first truth I called your attention to was that the primitive beliefs of man represented his effort to understand the world and himself; the second truth is that all the religious rites and ceremonies, the most superstitious of them, embody likewise a truth;--they represent the effort of man to get the control of the universe into his own hands. If today we possess any power over the resources and forces of nature, if we can utilize them, command them to do our errands, to wait upon us, to serve us,--this power is the fruition of that primitive desire of our barbarian ancestors to get the gods under control by presents and compliments. The scientist masters the laws of nature,--the movements of the atmosphere, the currents of the ocean, the lightning's secret, for the purpose of putting a bit into their mouths to control them for human service; but the priest when he offered his bloody sacrifices, when he performed his incantations, and repeated magical formulas, had the same aim in view,--the control of the universe. As soon as primitive man concluded that the sun, for example, or the river, was a god, he set to work to learn the habits, tastes, pleasure of his gods, that he might prevent them from hurting him and encourage them to gratify his needs. In other words, he wished to replace them in the government of the world. He did not feel safe until he could get the reins in his own hands. When I was in one of the churches of Florence, and stood looking at a figure of the pope with the keys of heaven and hell in his hand, it dawned upon me that man, from time immemorial, has coveted the ownership of the universe, and even in his feebleness gave himself the satisfaction of holding the keys in his own hands. But it would be unreasonable to continue to preserve and propagate these religions at great cost to the people, and also at the detriment of more important interests--on the ground that at one time, when man was but a child, they were of service to him. Our ancestors before the age of iron used tools made of stone. Shall these still be given the preference despite the better and more useful implements of modern times--because, forsooth, they started our race in its career of progress? Shall the candle light be permitted to prejudice us against electricity; the stagecoach against the locomotive; the cave of the savage against the sanitary dwellings of modern cities; or the primitive forms of communication against the wonderful wireless? Why, then, should Moses or Mohammed or Jesus stand in the way of the science of the twentieth century? If we may discard our mother's hut or the rag she clothed herself with at one time, why not also her religion? True enough both hut and rag served a purpose and marked a stage in the evolution of man, but the purpose they served was to fit us for something better, that is to say, to make us discontented with and rebellious against the hut and the rag forever. The day of faiths is over. They belong to the furniture of the past. The glorious reign of Science has begun. Thought like a fruit on the tree of evolution has at last ripened. The glow of the sun, and the tints of the sky are upon her. The countries which were the first to replace faith by knowledge have invariably been the first also in civilization. While Palestine remained a desert, Greece became the garden of the world. Whatever of beauty there is in our lives today, we owe it to the immortal Greeks. Truth and goodness flourish in all their glory only among a free and intelligent people. Where there is an infallible faith there can be no liberty of thought, and without liberty of thought there is no mind, and without mind man is not different from the brute. 
59651	----	THE CREATION OF GOD. BY DR. JACOB HARTMANN, M.D. St. Louis Medical College; Bachelor of Medicine, Toronto University; M.B. Trinity College, Ontario; Member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Ontario; Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Edinburgh, Scotland; Member of the County Medical Society of New York, etc., etc. New York: THE TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY, 28 Lafayette Place. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. The Universal Aspect, 9 II. The Earth, 21 III. The Chemical Aspect, 39 IV. The Sun, 51 V. Genesis--The Creation, 67 VI. Genesis--The Garden of Eden, 80 VII. The Deluge, 92 VIII. The Scriptural God--The Creation, 101 IX. The Creation of God--Abraham, 112 X. Moses--Confirmation of the Idea of God, 119 XI. Samuel the Kingmaker, 138 XII. God Save the King, 147 XIII. Jehova Takes a Rest, 170 XIV. The End of National Life, 178 XV. The Christian Era, 200 XVI. Organic Life--Vegetable, 212 XVII. Organic Life--Animal, 221 The Master Tissues. The Muscular Tissues. The Nervous Tissues. XVIII. Food and Food-Substances, 242 XIX. Elimination of Waste Substances, 250 In General. By the Lungs. By the Skin. By the Kidneys. XX. Digestion, Nutrition, 278 XXI. The Elementary Substances, 300 XXII. Alcohol and Its Effects on the System, 310 XXIII. The Soul--What is it? 321 The Mind. XXIV. Sin and Salvation, 340 XXV. The Ecclesiastical Kindergarten, 353 XXVI. Rational Review, 372 XXVII. Visions--Bible Dreams-Revelations, 380 XXVIII. The Planetary Gods, 392 XXIX. Every Man His Own God, 403 Tables { Gateways to Knowledge. { Morals: Whence They Spring. XXX. The Non Credo, 418 Rules for Human Conduct. ILLUSTRATIONS. Map of the Intellectual Faculties--The Mind, opp. title-page. Map of Theological Retrogression, opp. p. 390 Map of the Deluge and Garden of Eden, opp. p. 432 PREFACE. "Si les nommes étaient capables de gouverner toute la conduite de leur vie par un dessein reglé, si la fortune leur était toujours favorable, leur âme serait libre de toute superstition." --Spinoza, 1650. "Il n'y a pas de moyen plus efficace que la Superstition pour gouverner la multitude." --Quinte Curce. "But in the temple of their hireling hearts Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn All earthly things but virtue." "Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest Sets no great value on his hireling faith." "But human pride Is skillful to invent most serious names To hide its ignorance." --Shelley. At this time, in this age of agitation, unrest, dissatisfaction, and doubt among the masses, and all classes, in every civilized part of the globe, in all communities and human organizations, in church and out of church, ecclesiastical bodies of all shades; besides the vast number of theories and doctrines of a popular socialistic, anti-poverty, communistic order, etc., a prevailing skepticism has seized the minds of men, as to the truth, validity, and stability of the entire religious fabric. The unsettled condition of the minds of men, the disturbing elements of the laboring classes, the church quarrels, clerical litigations, disputes, wrangling, and mutual hate about scriptural authenticity, its truth and supernaturalism, the heresies and blasphemies, the unsatisfactory condition of the Roman church, the constant and unremitting papal correspondence, the petty bickering, the selfish zeal, the greed for money, the anxiety to raise funds for all kinds of ecclesiastical establishments, naturally arouse suspicion whether the idea of a God is not going out of fashion, whether the clergy has not lost faith in the Book, whether the Jew, the Jehovistic aristocrat, has not been the primary inventor of these supernatural wares, whether the Christian theologians are not beginning to lose their sway and grip and their pretended supernatural authority over their ignorant devotees. We may ask frankly, honestly, truthfully, and in perfect good faith: Has not the time arrived for a grand and human reformation? For new methods of teaching, for new and more accurate ideas, for a more precise knowledge of the natural, for instructions in absolute facts, for a more thorough understanding of natural laws, for a broader comprehension of man himself and his surroundings, for an abandonment of all the supernatural subterfuge, ignorance, and superstition, of religious fables, miracles, false theories, and misleading doctrines as to God, with their immense sacrifice of human life. Within the limits of the church nothing is to be hoped for, nor can anything be expected, except the greedy grasping of the hard-earned money of the ignorant laboring classes, the fanatical devotees, to sustain and uphold a mercenary priesthood, a rotten supernatural system that has proved so pernicious to mankind. Europe, at one time the rich pasture for the holy Roman Catholic apostolic church, no longer pours the milk and honey into the supreme pontiff's lap as of yore. In a letter dated "Rome, Feb. 3d," Ledochowski writes of Leo XIII.'s solicitude for the good of religion in these parts: "The supreme pontiff has many reasons of sadness on account of the distresses which the impudent endeavors of wicked men are trying to bring upon Christianity, especially in Europe. On the other hand, it is a great consolation to him to see the increase of Catholicism, with God's aid, elsewhere in the world." Of course Ledochowski signifies the pope's great admiration for the wonderful resources--for this flourishing, prolific, and generous American milch-cow. The Roman administration, with that marvelous business tact so characteristic of that church, turns its tender attention, with all its pontifical flummery and grotesque maneuvers, to insinuate its methods upon this republic, to overawe us with a blaze of stupefaction, profounder ignorance and superstition, by honoring America with a resident tax-collector, and to save Gods, their divinities, with the Christ, Holy Ghost, Virgin Immaculate, saints, angels, and all the other theological absurdities. Is it not high time for man and woman to learn that their dependence on any supernatural aid is futile, their prayers and appeals to an imaginary God worse than useless, their cringing fear for the so-called sacred authority cowardly, their submission to priestly rule and authority slavish, and the inculcating of biblical church lore stupefying? Is it not time for man and woman to comprehend themselves, their powers, the uses of their several organs, their functions, and the natural laws that govern them? That ideas, thought, consciousness, intellect, understanding, imagination, knowledge, etc., etc., are but the functions of nervous matter? That everything we know, have discovered, developed, or produced, is the natural product of nerve tissue. In reviewing the history of this theologico-ecclesiastical organization--this Jehovistic Christianized system, from the very beginning to the present time, we find that this many-shaded, ever-changeable, greedy, grasping creed has done during the four thousand years of its existence a vast amount of mischief and little or no good. It had to be civilized instead of civilizing. Instead of elevating their followers, priests rather made every effort to keep them in subjection, steeped in ignorance and superstition. In presenting these pages to the public, it is for the purpose of exposing some simple intelligible facts, some wholesome truths, some few scientific revelations discovered by men of eminence, knowledge, and wisdom, regarding ourselves, this terrestrial globe, and the universe at large of which we are part. It is not possible in modern times to force men to believe, to accept the impossible. At this period of mental transition, the tendency is to think, to reason, to gain knowledge and truth, to be self-supporting, self-sustaining, independent, free, and untrammeled by barbaric delusion and terrorism. They no longer fear and cower before a shadow of some supernatural imaginary thing or being that has no existence and never had. Man must learn to know that man is an evolution of nature's forces, a product of this terrestrial globe; that all the physical and physiological phenomena of his fine muscular and nervous system are the natural products and functions of his organization; that whether soul, spirit, God or Jehovah, they were evolved in the brain of man; that man, as man, with all his endowments, faculties, and capabilities, is part and parcel of this earth, a natural result of natural causes, and the supernatural, the God or gods, is the natural product of man's working faculties. The scientific world has long since discarded every idea of anything supernatural, declared the impossibility, falsity, and absurdity of the scriptural fable, and that God, Jehovah, with all the ingenious priestly inventions, has proved itself pernicious and oppressive to humanity and contrary to intelligence, reason, and common sense. Man to know his rights must know himself, his nature and his natural surroundings, and if he knows himself, he will learn that God did not create man, but that man created God, and that every man is and must be his own God to be a true man. Know the natural, never mind the supernatural. THE CREATION OF GOD. CHAPTER I. UNIVERSAL ASPECT. The beginning of intellectual development consists of observant experience. By frequent and repeated observation man acquired a familiarity with the subjects of that process--a clearer and better understanding of them. Thus, the Chaldean shepherds, while minding their flocks of sheep and cattle, lazily and continuously watched the sky and starry hosts, and by degrees recognized, and acquired a knowledge of, many of the stars, laying the foundation for astronomy. Authorities state that they composed seventy-two volumes on that science, these books dating as far back as 2,540 B.C., treating of the polar star, Venus, Mars, and so on. It is possible that many errors attended their observations; many mistakes may have entered their explanations. That was natural, considering the remoteness of the times and the lack of facilities. Knowledge and truth never come easily. The former is very hard to acquire, the latter very difficult to discover. Every truth, every new idea, has to battle against old established notions. If the new idea is persisted in, which is ordinarily the case, a struggle must ensue. The old idea resists, refuses to yield, no matter how false, ridiculous, or pernicious it may be. Yield, however, it must, and does in the course of time. Truth must win in the long run, though it has to fight its way through depths of ignorance, prejudice, and superstition, sustained by hate, bigotry, terrorism, and persecution. As century after century passed in the Dark Ages, apostles of science and truth appeared, here and there, now and then, calm, dignified, patient, persistent and persevering, untiring, self-denying, men of superior intellect, unswayed and undismayed by existing authorities. These men gave us, though not a complete, a very ample revelation of nature, unfolding its mysteries, explaining its phenomena, making known the truth as far as men had been able to discover up to their time. Nature with its laws man had to observe carefully in order to learn to unravel its secrets, its workings, its forces. There is no way to reveal them except through the mind of man. There are no means of knowing or discovering the intricacies and subtleties of nature's hidden and inexhaustible resources but by careful thought, reason, constant study and application. Not a single problem has ever been solved--in fact, one cannot be solved--except by acquired intellectual powers, developed by the refining process of education of the great nervous centers of man. Many scholars have devoted and still devote their time, their energy, their life, in search of new facts, new truths, concerning the stars, planetary system, and this terrestrial globe we live on especially. Centuries before Christ's time, and after, men were engaged in developing the science of Astronomy--Anaximander, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Herschel, and many others. These men were the apostles of truth, the teachers of facts, and some of them were martyrs to science. The great civilizer, the press of modern times, was recently filled with accounts about the planet Mars, comet, etc., giving all the detailed information obtainable. Everyone who reads the newspapers learns something about Mars, and ventures to give his opinion, whether it is like the earth--inhabited, has seas or atmosphere, etc. So that, whatever new facts are revealed, new truths announced, the minds of men are made so much richer. Knowledge, the progress of science, the discoveries of important facts, the improvements of political, social, or civil laws, do not come to us spontaneously, nor do they come to us suddenly in overpowering quantities; it is a process of gradual acquirement, a slow accumulation, to which every generation contributes its quota of observation and experience that makes up the total wealth of aggregate thought, and is handed down from generation to generation, our common inheritance. This common inheritance is neither all true nor all good. A large proportion that has been handed down to us by the ancients is not true or good, though it is believed to be true and good. The revelations of absolute truths, of actual facts, are of more recent date--discoveries made within the last few centuries. The spurious, so-called revelations are the works of antiquity, which are not based on truth or fact or knowledge or experience. The mental faculties of pristine men were primitive, and their ideas were as primitive. They lived in an age of infancy; it was all surprise, wonder, astonishment, and miracle. When Kepler discovered the law that "Planets revolve in ellipses with the sun at one focus," he worked hard for many days, and after many trials succeeded. He also discovered a second law, which he defines, "A line connecting the center of the earth with the center of the sun passes over equal spaces in equal times;" and his third law, "The squares of the times of revolutions of the planets about the sun are proportioned to the center of their mean distance from the sun." No one ever claimed for Kepler, nor has he laid claim himself, that he was inspired by God, or received the idea through any supernatural agency. The hostile and bitter opposition that Galileo met on the part of the Christian Church is too well known; but the importance of his discoveries, and the truth, remains. All intelligent persons ought to understand Newton's law of gravitation. If they understood the full import and significance of that law, they would never believe in the absurd miracles of Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Christ and Company. The law: "Every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle of matter with a force directly proportional to its quantity of matter, and decreasing as the square of the distance increases." It is most remarkable--that man discovering great truths, concerning which there has never been any dispute, or controversy, or fight; that stand, unaltered and unchanged, forever. Such men have not been inspired by God, Jehovah, Christ, or the Holy Ghost, or anything supernatural. They have accomplished their works by their powers of observation, great mental efforts, skillful explanation and elucidation, accomplished by hard and untiring work. It is astonishing that, in the presence of so many revealed natural truths, so many ascertained scientific facts, and numerous discoveries in this century, which is claimed to be much advanced in civilization, intelligent persons--teachers, preachers, priests, and those laying claim to scholarship--still believe that the visionary figures, the product of distorted imagination or hallucination, of men like Isaiah, Ezekiel, etc., were of supernatural origin. The incredible stories found in the Bible, the fabulous inventions concocted in the imagination of some person or persons away in Chaldea many thousand years ago, are still taught to be true, and the children in the Sunday-schools are instructed to believe these absurdities. The undue haste exhibited in the first chapter of Genesis, in creating the earth, etc., is one of those wonderful puzzles to a child's mind. It is a something that is not easily explained at length to young people without awaking the suspicion of its impossibility, and requires considerable ingenuity to satisfy inquiring minds concerning it. The supernaturalists get over it by a final and complete answer, that admits of no argument--that "With God everything is possible." That being absolutely untrue, the answer explains nothing, but has a tendency to stupefy the child and hinder its educational advancement, for the reason that such an answer puts a stop to all farther inquiry. This really has been the effect of this pernicious teaching for many centuries. All the stories, fables, myths, handed down to us from antiquity may be classed in the same category. There are many of them--yes, a perfect wilderness. All are true in part, but false as a whole. Upon close examination we find glimmerings of truth in all of them. The difference lies in the kind, not in the quality. In the biblical story of creation, the writers had evidently observed, and knew, there were an earth, water, stars, and something above the earth which they called heaven, the atmosphere. That was the limit of their knowledge. They knew they existed, and things and objects that surrounded them existed, and they made an attempt in their primitive method to account for the manner in which these things came into existence. They could know nothing about it, because the most important discoveries were made thousands of years later. Hesiod, 900 B.C., in his "Theogonia," invokes the Muses who inhabit the heavenly mansions, and whose knowledge of generation and birth he had formerly sung: "Tell, ye celestial powers, how first the gods and world were made; the rivers, and the boundless sea, with its strong surge. Also, the bright, shining stars, and wide-stretched heaven above, and all the gods that sprang from them, givers of good things." The Muses answer: "First of all existed chaos; next in order the broad-bosomed Earth; then Love appeared, the most beautiful of immortals. From chaos sprang Erebus and dusky night, and from night and Erebus came Ether and smiling day." He gives a further description, which, like the foregoing, we know to be fiction, yet to contain elements of truth. We are not asked to believe all. He says: "Look up, and view the immense expanse of heaven, The boundless Ether in his genial arms Clasping the earth. Him callest thou God and Jove." It is no easy matter for a man of ordinary education to form a notion of the mental crudeness of the lower type of the human race of our own times; it is far more difficult for him to divest his mind of all its acquisitions through study and observation, and reduce his ideas to the level of those progenitors of his race, the men of antiquity. When men had to struggle with savage beasts, it required superior intelligence to preserve themselves from destruction. That might have led to the worship of the strongest animals, such as the lion and the tiger. But no sooner did man learn the use of iron, which enabled him to kill these his gods, proving himself superior to the thing he worshiped, than these gods were thrown aside. So long as man was unable to explain the mysterious appearances of the sun, moon, and stars, he endowed them with his own intelligence. He worshiped what was to him incomprehensible, mighty, wonderful; made images representing their phenomena or forces for his adoration. In his mind he pictured the sun as a warrior clad in golden panoply, the pale moon he regarded as the queen, and the stars as an immense host of spirits and heroes. Some interpreted the sun to be the child of darkness, the morning the bride of heaven, the clouds a fairy network, and the heat a friend of man; when the heat was very intense, then the sun was slaying his children. They would liken the dark clouds which rested on the earth to a terrible being whom they named the Snake or Dragon, that shut up the waters in his prisonhouse. When the thunder rolled they said that this hateful monster was uttering his hard riddles; and when, at last, the rain burst forth, they said that the bright sun had slain his enemy, and brought the stream of life for the thirsting earth. Professor Max Müller says: "He begins to lift up his eyes; he stares at the tent of heaven, and asks, Who supports it? He opens his ears to the winds, and asks them, Whence and whither? He is awakened from darkness and slumber by the light of the sun, and him whom his eyes cannot behold, and who seems to grant him the daily pittance of his existence, he calls his life, his health, his brilliant Lord and Protector. He gives names to all the powers of nature." All sorts of names were invented to designate any particular force, phenomenon, or characteristic. In the Vedas the sun has twenty different names, each one descriptive of the sun or its aspect. In Persia the blazing sun was adored, and altars smoked perpetually of fire. In Gaul and Britain pillars were raised to the sun, altars to the moon, and fires were heaped under sacrificial caldrons to Cardwen, the earth-goddess. Man's ideas of course underwent modifications as civilization advanced. The religious idea had taken root and elaborated ramifications, and laws were evolved to govern them. The sun of prosperity shone; communities grew stronger and more numerous; from the worship of the physical laws of nature, the laws governing morality became involved. Thus morals invaded nations, over which they enthroned their gods. Every nation elaborated its own details, and slowly took its relative position. As these gods grew in importance men assumed the responsibility to guard them, and the function to attend them. Thus a class called priests were chosen, elected, or self-appointed to minister to them. These functionaries at the same time assumed the moral and political guidance of nations or communities, and individuals. In this manner arose hundreds upon hundreds of Gods: Io, Isis, Jupiter, Juno, etc., etc. The qualities of the gods, like the qualities of men, were good and bad. They were good and evil, light and dark, life and death, and were arranged to suit the time and occasion. When laws were established to govern society, obedience to these laws was declared to be right, disobedience wrong. Men learned this; they became conscious of what was right and what was wrong. The ministration to these gods was acknowledged to be a righteous act. Rules were established to prevent any violation or infringement of the duty due to these gods. A trespass in violation of anything considered sacred was regarded as an evil--a sin. Slowly the consciousness of sin, of doing wrong, of violating the law, was recognized and established, and the attitude men assumed towards the gods, or their conduct towards them, was regarded as moral holiness, sanctity, or piety. The evolution of images, idols, gods and goddesses, was not the work of a day, but of very many centuries. The same may be said of sacrifices, worship, ceremonies, the laws concerning the same, holiness, sin, good and evil, sanctity, sacrilege, divinity, blasphemy, etc., etc. Theologians, as well as theological philosophers and theorists, finding their pet notion of a god strangely interfered with and disturbed by the advancing progress in the knowledge of the natural sciences, bring to their aid additional proof to demonstrate the existence of a god, viz., that all races of men, wherever found, savage, barbarian, Indian, African, etc., on the different parts of the earth's surface, believe in a something higher and greater or more powerful than themselves, a spirit, a soul, a supernatural being. Unfortunately for their argument, this mental condition that is ascribed to the barbarians, etc., as being instinctive or innate--that is, this supernatural element--this having an idea of something they do not understand--proves the contrary, that there is no truth in their assumption. The very fact that they have gone through that process, or are going through it, shows it a kind of educational distemper of a lower order that all primitive races have to pass. As children who learn to read must first know their A B C, it is the road that leads to a higher grade of thought. They begin in surprise and wonder at the natural, concerning which they know nothing. They fear, they adore the forces they cannot overcome. They make images of them in their likeness and worship them. When, however, they have learned through experience to overpower them, they cease to respect them. New forms are adopted, modifications made, and lastly so changed that but a mere shadow of the original remains. All races began in a similar fashion, varying in form and method. The sun, clouds, atmosphere, seasons, oceans, thunder, and all other phenomena in nature--the inability to account for the existence of these led to worship, sacrifice, etc.; and images, idols, gods, originated; and in connection with them, stories, fables, myths, and fictions were supplied by the officiating priests or persons in attendance. The fanciful creations of the imagination hold good and will hold good so long as we do not know anything of the realities of life, of nature, of the actualities, of facts, of truth. But when the masses shall have learned more of nature, then the visionary, the imaginary god, the heirloom and heritage of our antiquated forefathers, will be thrown aside as the images were by Abraham, the idols dismissed or discarded later. The relics, the remnants, of this barbarism still have a hold on the minds of men. Our entire religious fabric rests upon the creation as related in the Bible, handed down to us as the universally acknowledged text-book of all knowledge. The time was when it was dangerous to doubt, and imperiled one's safety or even life to openly state an opinion contrary to the supposed infallible assertions contained in the holy book. The man or men who originally wrote that part of Genesis had not the remotest idea what he or they were talking about. He or they knew nothing of the subject-matter in consideration. The story told is like many other fables that had their origin in those early days of waking humanity. The great masses are not very much better off to-day as regards these notions. They still believe in the Bible, and hang their hopes of salvation on its truth. The churches teach it, and it forms part and parcel of the church creed. It will therefore do no harm to present a few facts--that the holiest priest cannot contradict, that the most pious preacher must admit--that admit of no argument or controversy, because absolutely true. Every intelligent person knows that we live on this earth; that this earth is also called the world, and that this world is a planet; that this planet belongs to a family of planets. This planet of ours, this earth, belongs to a system of planets known as the solar system. And the solar system is mainly comprised within the limits of the Zodiacs. By the Zodiacs is meant a belt of the Celestial Sphere. 8° on each side of the Ecliptic is styled the Zodiac. This division is of very high antiquity, having been in use among the Hindoos and Egyptians. The Zodiac is divided into twelve equal parts, of 30° each, called signs, to each of which a fanciful name is given. The sun is the center. Around him the planets revolve in ellipses. The sun itself has a diameter of 866,000 miles. The major planets revolving around the sun as far as known are as follows: Name. Distance from the sun. Diameter. Vulcan 13,000,000 miles. unknown. Mercury 36,000,000 ,, 3,000 miles. Venus 67,000,000 ,, 7,600 ,, Earth 93,000,000 ,, 8,000 ,, Mars 141,000,000 ,, 4,200 ,, Jupiter 483,000,000 ,, 90,000 ,, Saturn 886,000,000 ,, 73,000 ,, Uranus 1,782,000,000 ,, 33,000 ,, Neptune 2,790,000,000 ,, 37,000 ,, It is not an easy matter to imagine that we are suspended in space; being held up, not by any visible object, but in accordance with the laws of universal gravitation, whereby each planet attracts every other planet and is in turn attracted by all. There are a number of minor planets, satellites, a moon, and meteors or shooting-stars, and comets, etc., etc. The sun, the great central globe, is so vast as to overcome the attraction of all the planets, and compel them to circle around him; next we come to the planets, each turning on its axis while it flies around the sun in an elliptical orbit; then accompanying them are the satellites or moons, each revolving about its own planet, while all whirl in a dizzy waltz about the central orb; next the comets, rushing across the planetary orbits at irregular intervals of time and space; and finally shooting-stars or meteors, darting hither and thither, interweaving all in apparently inextricable confusion. To make the picture more wonderful still, every member is flying with an inconceivable velocity, and yet with such accuracy that the solar system is the most perfect timepiece known. The moon's distance from the earth is 239,000 miles; and it has a diameter of 2,160 miles. The above gives some idea of the immensity of the solar system. And it is but one of the myriads of systems, and our earth a speck amidst it. If on a clear night we cast our eyes upwards, we behold a belt of closely dotted stars extending across the sky--the Milky Way. This galaxy, a luminous, cloudlike band, stretches across the heavens in a great circle, and contains myriads of stars, densely crowded together. Herschel remarks that 288,000 stars once passed across the field of his great reflector in forty-one minutes, and says: "Thus we are to think of our own sun as a star of the second or third magnitude, and of our little solar system as plunged far into the midst of the vortex of worlds, a mere atom along that "'Broad and ample road Whose dust is gold and pavement stars.'" CHAPTER II. THE EARTH. This earth we live on is a planet, and belongs to the solar system of planets. It shines brightly, and appears to other worlds as other planets do to us. It is nearly 25,000 miles in circumference, and has a diameter of a little over 8,000 miles. It is five and a half times denser than water, and weighs about 6,096,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons. The atmosphere that surrounds this earth is like a shell that is two hundred to three hundred or more miles in thickness. We live at the bottom of an immense ocean of gaseous matter, which envelops everything, and presses upon everything with a force which appears, at first, perfectly incredible, but whose actual amount admits of easy proof. Gravity being, so far as is known, common to all matter, it is natural to expect that gases, being material substances, should be acted upon by the earth's attraction, as well as solids and liquids. This is really the case, and the result is the weight or pressure of the atmosphere, which is nothing more than the effect of the attraction of the earth on the particles of air. The amount of pressure exerted upon every square inch of the surface of the earth, and the objects thereon, is from fourteen to fifteen pounds. This enormous force is borne without inconvenience by the animal frames, by reason of its perfect uniformity in every direction; and it may be doubled, or even tripled, without inconvenience. An important law which connects the volume occupied by a gas with the pressure made upon it, is expressed by Mariotte in the following manner. This law is usually called Mariotte's law: "The volume of gas is inversely as the pressure; the density and elastic force are directly as the pressure, and indirectly as the volume." This law has been found to be true no matter how rarefied the air. The atmosphere, like everything else on earth or connected therewith, and like all other planets known, and the earth itself, is composed of elements, as we shall see presently. The atmospheric air is composed of gases, elementary substances, known by the names of Nitrogen and Oxygen, with variable proportions of carbonic acid and watery vapors, and usually a trace of ammonia. Besides these, there may occasionally be other substances present, depending upon local causes, as the odoriferous principles of plants and the miasmata of marshes, etc., etc. Nearly three-fourths of the atmosphere is composed of nitrogen, while about one-fourth or less is oxygen. The following is the relative proportion: By weight. By measure. Nitrogen 76.9 79.3 Oxygen 23.1 20.7 ----- ----- 100 100 Its specific gravity is unity (1), being the standard with which the density of all gaseous substances is compared. It is 814 times lighter than water, and nearly 11,065 times lighter than mercury; 100 cubic inches weigh 31 grains. Oxygen is necessary to combustion, to the respiration of animals, and to various other natural operations, by all of which that gas is withdrawn from the air. It is obvious that its quantity would gradually diminish, unless the tendency of these causes were counteracted by some compensating process. This, to some considerable extent, is accomplished by vegetation, as it is found that healthy plants, under the influence of the sun's light, constantly draw carbonic acid from the air, the carbon of which is retained, while the oxygen is returned. The atmosphere becomes less and less dense from the surface of the earth upwards. Animals and vegetables exist in this atmosphere. They cannot exist in any other. All living things and beings live on this earth's crust. Vegetables are fixed to the soil of this earth, while animals move freely upon it. The earth's crust.--Sir Charles Lyell speaking of this earth's crust says: "By the 'earth's crust' is meant that small portion of the surface of our planet which is accessible to human observation, or on which we are enabled to reason by observations made at or near the surface. These reasonings may extend to a depth of several miles, perhaps ten miles; and even then it may be said that such a thickness is no more than 1/400 part of the distance from the surface to the center. The remark is just, but although the dimensions of such a crust are, in truth, insignificant when compared with the entire globe, yet they are vast and of magnificent extent in relation to man and to the other organic beings which people our globe. Referring to this standard of magnitude, the geologist may admire the ample limits of his domain, and admit at the same time that not only the exterior of the planet, but the entire earth, is but an atom in the midst of the countless worlds surveyed by the astronomer. "The solid part of this earth consists of distinct substances, such as clay, chalk, sand, limestone, coal, slate, granite, and the like. It has been imagined that the various deposits on the earth's surface were created in their present form and in their present position. On the contrary, it has been shown that they have acquired their actual configuration and condition gradually, under a variety of circumstances, and at successive periods, during each of which distinct races of living beings have flourished on the land and in the waters, the remains of these creatures still lying buried in the crust of the earth. "The materials of this crust are not thrown together confusedly; but distinct mineral masses called rock are found to occupy definite spaces and to exhibit a certain order of arrangement. These rocks are divided into four great classes by reference to their different origin, or in other words by reference to the different circumstances and causes by which they have been produced. "The first two divisions, which will at once be understood as natural, are the aqueous and volcanic, or the products of water and those of igneous action at or near the surface.... The aqueous rocks, sometimes called sedimentary or fossiliferous, cover a larger part of the earth's surface than any other. These rocks are stratified, or divided into distinct layers or strata; these strata have been generally spread out by the action of water, like what we daily see taking place near the mouth of rivers or on the land during a temporary inundation. "The remains of animals, especially of aquatic species, are found almost everywhere, imbedded in stratified rocks; and sometimes, in the case of limestone, they are in such abundance as to constitute the entire mass of rock itself. Shells and corals are the most frequent, and with them are often associated the bones and teeth of fishes, fragments of wood, impressions of leaves, and other organic substances. "When geology was first cultivated, it was a general belief that those marine shells and other fossils were the effects and proofs of the deluge of Noah; but all those who have carefully investigated the phenomena have rejected this doctrine. A transient flood might be supposed to leave behind it, here and there upon the surface, scattered heaps of mud and sand and shingle, with shells confusedly intermixed; but the strata containing fossils are not superficial deposits, and do not simply cover the earth, but constitute the entire mass of mountains. Ample proof of these reiterated revelations is given, and it will be seen that many distinct sets of sedimentary strata, each several hundreds or thousands of feet thick, are piled one upon the other in the earth's crust, each containing peculiar fossil animals and plants, which are distinguishable, with few exceptions, from species now living. The mass of some of these strata consists almost entirely of corals, others are made up of shells, others of plants turned into coal, while some are without fossil. "Volcanic rocks are those which have been produced at or near the surface, whether in ancient or modern times, not by water, but by the action of fire or subterranean heat. These rocks are for the most part unstratified, and are devoid of fossils. "There are two other divisions of rock, called Plutonic rocks, granite, etc., and Metamorphic, or stratified crystalline rocks. The members of both these divisions of rocks agree in being highly crystalline and destitute of organic remains. "The composition of the aqueous rocks, mineral composition of strata: These may be said to belong principally to three divisions, as follows: "1. Arenaceous or siliceous rocks. Beds of loose sand frequently met with, of which the grains consist entirely of silex, which term comprehends all purely siliceous minerals, as quartz and common flint. Quartz is silex in its purest form; flint usually contains some admixture of alumina and the oxide of iron. Silica is the mineral used in the manufacture of glass, mixed with a little potassium oxide and lime, or lead, etc. "2. Argillaceous rock. A mixture of silex or flint with a large proportion, usually about one-fourth, of alumina or argil; but in common language, any earth which possesses sufficient ductility, when kneaded up with water, to be fashioned like paste by the hand or by the potter's lathe, is called clay. Such clays vary greatly in their composition. They are, in general, nothing more than mud derived from the decomposition or wearing down of various rocks. The purest clay in nature is porcelain clay or kaolin, which results from the decomposition of a rock composed of feldspar and quartz, and it is almost always mixed with quartz. (The kaolin of China consists of 71.15 parts of silex, 15.86 of alumina, 1.92 of lime, and 6.73 of water.)... One general character of all argillaceous rocks is to give out a peculiar, earthy odor when breathed upon, which is a test of the presence of alumina. "3. Calcareous Rocks. These consist mainly of chalk--lime and carbonic acid. Shells and corals also are formed of the same elements, with the addition of animal matter. Any limestone which is sufficiently hard to take a fine polish is called marble. Many of these are fossiliferous; but statuary marble, which is also called saccharine limestone, as having a texture resembling that of loaf-sugar, is devoid of fossil. Siliceous limestone is an intimate mixture of carbonate of lime and flint, and is harder in proportion as the flinty matter predominates. Marl slate bears the same relation to marl which shale bears to clay, being calcareous shale. Magnesian limestone is composed of carbonate of lime and carbonate of magnesia; the proportion of the latter amounting in some cases to nearly one-half. It effervesces much more slowly and feebly with acid than common limestone. Gypsum is a rock composed of sulphuric acid, lime, and water. It is usually a soft whitish-yellow rock, with a texture resembling loaf-sugar, but sometimes it is entirely composed of lenticular crystals. Alabaster is a granular and compact variety of gypsum found in masses large enough to be used in sculpture and architecture. It is sometimes a pure snow-white substance. It is a softer stone than marble and more easily wrought." When geologists examine the earth's crust, they usually commence with the surface on which we live, and search downwards as far as possible. Lyell constructed a tabular view of the fossiliferous strata. It must be borne in mind that we have no other methods of ascertaining the truth than by close observation, making diligent search, in order to discover what this earth's crust is made of. We have no supernatural facilities to give us information, and we are very certain there never were any. What information we are reckoned to have, handed down by our antiquated barbarian forefathers, is of a different nature. It refers--briefly stated--to the conduct of Man, the manner in which he shall act as an individual, or collectively as a community; including a great number of what are considered now theatrical or mountebank ceremonies, fancy customs, sacrifices, and a repetition of certain phrases, ordinarily called prayers, accompanied by illustrative images and pictures, and movements of body--fantastic symbols and devices created and prescribed by man. Having no other means of ascertaining facts, man was naturally compelled to search for testimony in the earth's crust--to discover what it is composed of; the kind of material; how it was formed; the time it took to form; the period that elapsed between formations; how the layers or strata were superposed one upon another; what substances were found in them; where organic life was first found; what it consisted of; when man first appeared. By examining this table we get a glimpse of the true state of things. This shows the order of superposition, or chronological succession, of the principal European groups: I. Post-Tertiary. A. Post-Pliocene. Periods and Groups. 1. Recent. Peat mosses, shell marls, with bones of land animals, human remains and works of art. Newer parts of modern deltas and coral reefs. 2. Post-Pliocene. Clay, marl, volcanic trap. All the shell of living specimens. No human remains or works of art. Bones of quadrupeds, partly of extinct species. II. Tertiary. B. Pliocene. 3. Newer Pliocene. Boulder formation. Cavern formation, or Pleistocene. Three-fourths of fossil shells of extinct species. A majority of the mammals extinct; but the genera corresponding with those now surviving in the same great geographical and zoological provinces. Icebergs frequent in the seas; glaciers on hills of moderate height. 4. Older Pliocene. A third or more of the species of mollusca extinct. Nearly, if not all, the mammalia extinct. C. Miocene. 5. Miocene. About two-thirds of the species of shells extinct. All the mammalia extinct. D. Eocene. } Fossil shells of the Eocene period, with very 6. Upper Eocene. } few exceptions, extinct. All the mammalia of } extinct species, and the greater part of them 7. Middle Eocene. } of extinct genera. Plants of Upper Eocene } indicating a south European or Mediterranean 8. Lower Eocene. } climate; those of Lower Eocene a tropical } climate. III. Secondary. E. Cretaceous--Upper. 9. Maestricht beds. Yellowish-white limestone. Large marine saurians, etc. 10. Upper white chalk. Marine limestone composed in part of decomposed corals. 11. Lower white chalk. 12. Upper green sand. 13. Gault. Dark-blue marl at base of chalk escarpment. Numerous extinct genera--conchiferous cephalopoda, etc. 14. Lower green sand. Species of shells, etc., nearly all distinct from those of Upper Cretaceous. F. Wealden. 15. Weald clay, of fresh-water origin. Shells of Pulmoniferous mollusca. 16. Hastings sand. Fresh water. Reptiles of, etc. 17. Purbeck beds. Limestone, calcareous slate, etc. Roots of trees; plants, etc. G. Oölite. 18. Upper Oölite. Portland building-stone, sand. 19. Middle Oölite. Oxford clay, dark-blue clay. Large saurians. 20. Lower Oölite. Preponderance of ganoid fish. Plants chiefly cycads, conifers, and ferns. H. Lias. 21. Argillaceous limestone, marl clay. Mollusca, reptiles, and fish analogous to the Oölitic. I. Trias. 22. Upper Trias. Red, gray, green, blue, and white marls, and sandstone, with gypsum. Batrachian reptiles. 23. Middle Trias. Compact grayish limestone, with beds of muschelkalk, of dolomite and gypsum. 24. Lower Trias. Plants different for the most part. IV. Primary. J. Permian. 25. Upper Permian. Yellow magnesian limestone. Organic remains both animal and vegetable, more allied to primary than to secondary period. 26. Lower Permian. Marl slate. Thecodont saurians, heterocercal fish, etc. K. Carboniferous. 27. Coal measures. Great thickness of strata of fluvio-marine origin, with beds of coal of vegetable origin, based on soils retaining roots of trees. Oldest of known reptiles. Sauroid fish. 28. Mountain. Carboniferous or mountain limestone. Limestone with marine shells and corals, etc. L. Devonian. 29. Upper Devonian. Yellow sandstone, paving and roofing stone. Tribe of fish with hard coverings. No reptiles yet known. 30. Lower Devonian. Gray sandstone. M. Silurian. 31. Upper Silurian. Tilestone. Oldest fossil fish yet discovered. Trilobites, etc. 32. Lower Silurian. Caradoc sandstone, etc. No land plants yet known. Footprints of tortoise, etc. 33. Upper and Lower Cambrian. SYNOPSIS. Post-Tertiary. } } Pliocene. } Tertiary or Cainozoic. } Miocene. } } Eocene. } } Mesozoic. } Cretaceous. } } Jurassic. } Secondary or Mesozoic. } Triassic. } } Permian. } } Carboniferous. } } Devonian. } Primary or Paleozoic. } Paleozoic. Silurian. } } Cambrian. } } The precise chemical action upon the elements composing these various geological formations at different remote periods, is no doubt difficult to ascertain. That there always has been some chemical action going on, and that it is continually going on, is certain. How and to what extent we can judge only from the experience of actual observation in the laboratory. Mr. Crale remarks: "The whole surface of the land is exposed to chemical action of the air, and of the rainwater with its dissolved carbonic acid, and in colder countries the frost. The disintegrated matter is carried down the slopes during heavy rain; and, to a greater extent than might be supposed, especially in arid districts, by the wind; it is then transported by the streams and rivers, which when rapid deepen their channels and triturate the fragments." Darwin says: "If the theory be true" (speaking of the time elapsed since the Cambrian lowest formation) "it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Cambrian age to the present day; that during these vast periods, the world swarmed with living creatures. Here we encounter a formidable objection; for it seems doubtful whether the earth, in a fit state for the habitation of living creatures, has lasted long enough. Sir W. Thompson concludes that the consolidation of the crust can hardly have occurred less than 20 or more than 400 million years ago, but probably not less than 98 or more than 200 millions of years. These very wide limits show how doubtful the data are; and other elements may have hereafter to be introduced into the problem. Mr. Crale estimates that about 60 million years have elapsed since the Cambrian period, but this, judging from the small amount of organic change since the commencement of the glacial epoch, appears a very short time for the many and great mutations of life, which have certainly occurred since the Cambrian formation; and the previous 140 millions of years can hardly be considered as sufficient for the development of the varied forms of life which already existed during the Cambrian period." It seems almost impossible for an ordinary mind to grasp the magnitude of the figures, the span of life being so short. Yet some idea may be formed when we compare the age of this earth's crust formation, the hundreds of thousands of years that passed in the evolution of man, and the brief space of time that has elapsed since he has become enabled to give an account of himself. As regards the thickness of the earth's crust, Professor Ramsey has given the maximum thickness, from actual measurement in most cases, of the successive formations in different parts of Great Britain; and this is the result: The Paleozoic strata (not including igneous bed), 57,154 feet. Secondary, 13,190 ,, Tertiary, 2,240 ,, making altogether 72,584 feet; that is, very nearly thirteen and three-quarters British miles. Büchner in his work on "Force and Matter" states: "The so-called coal formation alone required, according to Bischoff, 1,000,177 years; according to Chevandier's calculation, 672,788 years. The Tertiary strata required for their development about 350,000 years; and before the originally incandescent earth could cool down from a temperature of 2,000 degrees to 200, there must, according to Bischoff's calculation, have elapsed a period of 350,000,000 years. Valger calculates that the time required for the deposit of the strata known to us must at least have amounted to 648,000,000 years. I quote these figures simply to show how difficult it is, and the labor required, to form even a proximate idea as to the period of time that must have elapsed for the formation of the various strata known. That all animals were not created at once is certain beyond all cavil and dispute. The development of the various forms of life was an exceeding slow process, and lasted very many thousand centuries. That the earth's crust was not at certain stages of formation in a fit condition either to receive or to maintain the higher types of animal life, is well known. And we know that man's remains are found only in the uppermost surface of the earth's crust. Max Müller says in his "Testimony of the Rocks": "It was not until the earlier ages of the Oölite system had passed away, that the class of Reptiles received its fullest development. And certainly very wonderful was the development which it did then receive. Reptiles became everywhere the lords and masters of the lower world. When any class of air-breathing vertebrates is very largely developed, we find it taking possession of all three terrestrial elements--earth, air, and water. Last of all, the true placental mammals appear, and thus, tried by the test of perfect reproduction, the great vertebral division receives its full development." Agassiz's "Principles of Zoology" says: "We distinguish four ages of nature, comprehending the great geological divisions, namely: "1. The Primary, or Paleozoic age, comprising the lower Silurian, the upper Silurian, and the Devonian. During this age there were no air-breathing animals. The fishes were masters of creation. We may therefore call it the Reign of Fishes. "2. The Secondary age, comprising the Carboniferous, the Trias, the Oölite, and the Cretaceous formations. This is the epoch in which air-breathing animals first appear. The Reptiles predominated over the other classes, and we may therefore call it the 'Reign of Reptiles.' "3. The Tertiary age, comprising the Tertiary formation. During this age terrestrial mammals of great size abound. This is the Reign of Mammals. "4. The Modern age, characterized by the appearance of the most perfect of created beings." The majority of mankind trouble themselves but little whether progress is made in any one of the branches of science or not. Man has no time to think seriously of anything except to provide food for his family. The priest does his thinking, and he is made to contribute part of his labor to support the holy man who does the thinking for him. All he knows is that his soul or his spirit, his hereafter, and his God are well cared for, and he pays for it. Yet every man ought to understand that all his rights, civil and political--all the freedom he enjoys--he has to thank science for procuring and securing. "Shall it be seriously objected to the application of the sciences to philosophical problems that its results are not agreeable? That the truth is not always agreeable, nor always consolatory, nor always religious, nor always acceptable, is as well known as the old experience of the almost total absence of reward, either external or internal, provided for its exemplars. What this or that man may understand by a governing reason, an absolute power, a universal soul, a personal God ... is his own affair. The theologians, with their articles of faith, must be left to themselves; so of the naturalists with their science; they both proceed by different routes.... The same bloody hatred with which science was once persecuted by religious fanaticism would revive now, and with it the Inquisition and Auto-da-fé, and all the horrors with which a refined zealotism has tortured humanity would be resorted to, to satisfy the wishes of the theological cutthroats. A man in advance of his age beholds the struggle of the contending parties from a high point of view, and sees in the eccentricities of this contest merely the natural and necessary expression of the opposing elements which agitate our time. No one can doubt that truth will finally emerge the victor. It certainly will not be long before the battle becomes general. Is the victory doubtful? The struggle is unequal; the opponents cannot stand against the trenchant arm of physical and physiological Materialism, which fights with facts, that everyone can comprehend, while the opponents fight with suppositions and presumptions" (Büchner). "Science and faith exclude each other" (Virchow). Fools still cling to faith; wise men find the truth in science. Note.--Baily's "History of Astronomy," Part I, page 31, § 124, and Part II, pp. 33, 39, maintains that India has existed as a nation, as the records show, 4,320,000 years. The Indians divide this time into four principal periods: First period, that of innocence or simplicity, 1,728,000 years; second period, 276,000; the third period, 864,000; and the ages of misfortune about 422,000--Cali-yon-gan period. Similar statements are made by Cicero ("De Divinat," I, 19), concerning the Chaldeans: "Condemnemus, inquam, hos aut stultitiæ aut vanitatis aut imprudentiæ qui 470 millia annorum ut ipsi dicunt monumentis comprehensa continent." THE ATMOSPHERE. The atmosphere is the gaseous envelope encircling the earth; and it constitutes the ocean of air at the bottom of which we live. We become aware of the existence of the air when we move rapidly and experience the resistance offered to the passage of our bodies, and also when the air is set in motion, giving rise to a wind. We notice the pressure of the atmosphere if we withdraw the air from beneath the hand by a powerful air-pump, for we then find that the hand is pressed down with a force equal to 1.033 kilos. on a square centimeter, or nearly 15 lbs. on every square inch. The total atmospheric pressure which the human body has to support hence amounts to several tons. But this pressure is not felt under ordinary circumstances, because the pressure exercised is exerted equally in every direction. The instrument used for measuring the pressure of the air is termed a barometer, and the average pressure at the sea level is equal to that exerted by a column of mercury 760 mm. high. The air being elastic and having weight, it is clear the lower layers of air must be more compressed than those above them, and hence the density of the air must vary at the different hights above the sea level. The density of the air being thus dependent on the pressure to which it is subjected, the higher strata of air become generally rarefied, and it is hence difficult to say whereabouts the air ceases, but it appears that the limit of the atmosphere is about 200 to 300 miles from the level of the sea. If the whole atmosphere were of the same density throughout as it is at the earth's surface, it would reach only to a height of a little more than five miles above the sea level. Aqueous vapor is contained in the air in quantities varying in different localities and at different times, and depending mainly on the temperature of the air. Air at a given temperature cannot contain more than a certain quantity of moisture in solution; and when it has taken up its maximum quantity, it is said to be saturated with aqueous moisture. The higher the temperature of the air the more water can it retain as vapor; and when air saturated with moisture is cooled, the water is deposited in liquid form in very small globules, forming a mist, fog, or cloud. This is the cause of the fall of rain, snow, and hail; when warm air heavily laden with moisture from the ocean passes into a higher and colder position, or meets with a stratum of air of lower temperature, it cannot any longer retain so much aqueous vapor, and a large quantity assumes a liquid form, falling as rain when the temperature is above the freezing-point, or crystallizing as snowflakes if the temperature is below that point. Hail is caused by the congelation of raindrops in passing through a stratum of air below the freezing-point. The deposition of dew is caused by the rapid cooling of the earth's surface by radiation after sunset, and by the consequent cooling of the air near the ground below the temperature at which it begins to deposit moisture. In general the air contains from 50 to 70 per cent. of aqueous vapor of the quantities necessary to saturate it. If the quantity be not within these limits the air is either unpleasantly dry or unpleasantly moist. The air contains, besides the gases of oxygen and nitrogen, carbonic acid, ammonia, accidental impurities, and volatile organic matter, which latter is the most important, as it probably influences to a great extent the healthfulness of the special situation. We become aware of the existence of such organic putrescent substances when entering a crowded room from the fresh air; and it is probable that the well-known unhealthiness of marshy and other districts is owing to the presence of some organic impurities. We may have occasion to refer to this when speaking of the deluge, etc. CHAPTER III. THE CHEMICAL ASPECT. By the word chemistry we understand the science which investigates the composition of all material substances, taking them apart or separating them, by a chemical process, and discovers the nature and properties of the minutest particle. These small particles have received the name, elements or elementary substances; that term is applied in chemistry to those forms of matter which have hitherto resisted all attempt to decompose them. "We know that we have earth, air, water, and we have seen in Chapter II that the earth's crust is made up of many substances, rocks, coral reefs, clay, marl, feldspar, quartz, limestone, granite, etc., etc. These substances are composed of small particles, or elements, and are called minerals or inorganic substances. There is another class of substances, called organic, that are derived from living things or beings. These are also taken apart or separated into their elementary substances. As plants or animals, all such elementary substances have received the name organic substances because plants and animals have organs of reproduction, hence the name. The taking apart of any substance into its constituent elements is called analysis by chemists. The same elements can also be put together to produce various substances; that is termed synthesis. Chemists have adopted a name for each of the elements, and these names are represented by symbols, or letters. Compound substances may contain two or more elements. When the composition of a substance is determined by splitting the compound into its elementary constituents a chemical analysis of that substance is said to have been made; and if the proportions by weight in which each of the constituents is present be determined, a quantitative analysis of the substance has been made, etc. By chemical action, we signify that which occurs when two or more substances so act upon one another as to produce a third substance differing altogether from the original ones in properties; or when a substance is brought under such conditions that it forms two or more bodies differing from the original one in properties. Chemistry is called an experimental science. In investigating all the materials within his reach, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, whether contained in the earth, sea, or air; whether belonging to the mineral, animal, or vegetable creation, the chemist finds himself obliged to divide substances into two classes: (1) compound substances--those which he is able to split up into two or more essentially different materials; (2) elements or simple substances--those which he is unable thus to split up, and out of which nothing essentially different from the original substances has been obtained. Compound bodies are made up of two or more elementary substances chemically combined with each other; thus sulphur, copper, lead, are elementary bodies; out of each of these nothing different from sulphur, copper, lead, can be obtained; whereas when two of these bodies are heated together, a compound is formed from which both of the original elementary constituents can at any time be obtained. Water is a compound body--it can be split up into two elementary gases, hydrogen and oxygen; common salt, again, is a compound of a gas (chlorine) with a metal (sodium); and limestone, clay, sugar, and wax may serve as examples of compound bodies; whilst phosphorus, charcoal, iron, mercury, and gold may be mentioned as belonging to the class of simple substances. As to physical properties of gases--they have weight, volume, diffusion, density, etc. Theologians insist that there is a God, a God that was first introduced to us by a man with the name of Abraham, advertised by Moses, and has been palmed off upon the masses as a something exceedingly wonderful. A multitude of men who find it to their interest to advocate his pretended claims, are still doing their utmost to sustain their God. We are trying to discover where he is to be found, whether he is a local or a universal God, what he is composed of, whether he resides on earth permanently or transiently, whether he controls the entire solar system or more systems, whether he occasionally takes a trip to other planets; and if he has created everything we want to find out how he has created it. For that reason we have to search, taking a glimpse among the stars, in the earth, atmosphere, etc. Since geology does not respond favorably, we are trying to discover what this earth is composed of. The elementary bodies at present recognized amount to sixty-four in number. Of these about fifty belong to the class called metals. Several of them are of recent discovery, and as yet very imperfectly known. The distinction between metals and certain non-metallic substances or metalloids, although very convenient for purposes of description, is entirely arbitrary, since the classes graduate into each other in the most indefinite manner. The following is a complete list of the elementary substances known, giving their names, symbols, and combining weight: Symbols. METALLOIDS. Combining Weight. Elements of life: of primary importance. O Oxygen [1] II 16 H Hydrogen I 1 N Nitrogen V 14 C Carbon IV 12 Elements of secondary importance. Cl Chlorine I 35.5 Br Bromine I 80 I Iodine I 127 F Fluorine I 29 P Phosphorus V 31 S Sulphur VI 32 Si Silicon IV 28 B Boron III 11 Se Selenium VI 79.5 Te Tellurium VI 179 Mechanics, arts, science, and medicine. Al Aluminium IV 27.4 Ca Calcium II 40 (Cuprum) Cu Copper II 63.5 (Ferrum) Fe Iron IV 56 (Plumbum) Pb Lead IV 207 Mn Manganese IV 55 (Hydrargyrum) Hg Mercury II 200 (Kalium) K Potassium I 39.1 (Argentum) Ag Silver I 108 (Natrium) Na Sodium I 23 (Stannum) Sn Tin IV 118 Zn Zinc II 65.3 (Stibium) Sb Antimony V 122 As Arsenic V 75 Ba Barium II 137 Bi Bismuth V 210 Cr Chromium VI 52.2 Co Cobalt IV 58.7 (Aurum) Au Gold III 197 In Indium IV 74 Mg Magnesium II 24 Ni Nickel IV 58.7 Pd [2] Palladium IV 106.6 Pt Platinum IV 197.5 Sr Strontium II 87.5 Ti Titanium IV 50 W Tungsten VI 184 U Uranium IV 120 Little known, rarely used. Be Beryllium II 9.3 Cd Cadmium II 112 Cs Cæsium I 133 Cr Cerium IV 92 D Didymium II 95 E Erbium II 112.6 Ir Iridium IV 198 La Lanthanum II 92 Li [3] Lithium I 7 Mo Molybdenum VI 96 Nb Niobium V 94 Os Osmium IV 199.2 Rh Rhodium IV 104.4 Rb Rubidium I 85.4 Ru Ruthenium IV 104.4 Ta Tantalum V 182 Tb Terbium Tl Thallium III 204 Th Thorium II 231.5 V Vanadium V 51.3 Y Yttrium II 61 Zr Zirconium III 89.6 All matter is made up of very small particles which are chemically indivisible and which are termed atoms, and the atom of each elementary substance differs essentially from that of every other. All the atoms of each element are alike, and chemical compounds are formed by the combination of unlike atoms. Hence the smallest particle of a compound consists of a group of atoms. This group, which can be divided by chemical but not by mechanical means, is termed a molecule. The smallest particle of an element in a free state is, however, not a single atom, but a group of atoms mechanically indivisible, or a molecule. This explains why elementary bodies act more energetically and enter more readily into combination at the moment of their liberation from a combination than when in the free state. When chemical changes occur, it is the molecules which react upon one another, and the change consists in the change of position of certain atoms contained in the groups. When an element is set free from a compound, the liberated join together to form molecules, unless some body is present with which the element can combine. By an atom we therefore understand the smallest portion of a chemical element which can enter into a chemical compound; by a molecule, the smallest portion of a simple compound body which can occur in the free state or which can take part in a chemical action. All the elements, with the single exception of fluorine, combine with oxygen to form oxides. In this act of combination, which is termed oxidation, heat is always, and light is frequently, given off. When bodies unite with oxygen, evolving light and heat, they are said to burn, or undergo combustion. All bodies which burn in the air burn with increased brilliancy in oxygen gas; and many substances, such as iron, which do not readily burn in the air, may be made to do so in oxygen. Oxygen is a colorless invisible gas, possessing neither taste nor smell. Hydrogen is a colorless invisible gas, possessing neither taste nor smell. It is the lightest gas known, being 14.47 times lighter than air. It combines with oxygen to form water. Nitrogen is a colorless, tasteless, inodorous gas, slightly lighter than air. It does not combine readily with bodies, and it is a very inert substance, neither supporting combustion or animal life, nor burning itself. It has, however, no poisonous qualities, and animals plunged into a jar of this gas die simply of suffocation from want of oxygen. Nitrogen exists in a free state in the air, of which it constitutes four-fifths by bulk. It occurs combined in the bodies of plants and animals, and in various chemical compounds, such as nitre, whence the gas derives its name. Carbon is a solid element; it is not known in the free state, either as a liquid or as a gas. Carbon is remarkable as existing in three distinct forms, which in outward appearance or physical properties have nothing in common, whilst their chemical relations are identical. These three allotropic forms of carbon are (1) diamond, (2) graphite or plumbago, (3) charcoal. These substances differ in hardness, color, specific gravity, etc., but they each yield on combustion in the air or oxygen the same weight of the same substance, carbonic acid or carbon dioxide. Carbon is the element which is especially characteristic of animal and vegetable life, as every organized structure, from the simplest to the most complicated, contains carbon. If carbon were not present on the earth, no single vegetable or animal body such as we know could exist. In addition to the carbon which is found free in these three forms, and contained combined with hydrogen and oxygen in the bodies of plants and animals, it exists combined with oxygen as free carbon dioxide in the air, and with calcium and oxygen as calcium carbonate in limestone, chalk, marble, corals, shells, etc. Plants are able when exposed to sunlight to decompose the carbon dioxide in the air, liberating the oxygen, and taking the carbon for the formation of their vegetable structure, whilst all animals, living directly or indirectly upon vegetables, absorb oxygen, and evolve carbon dioxide. Thus the sun's rays, through the medium of plants, effect deoxidation, or reduction, whilst animals act as oxidizing agents with respect to carbon. Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Carbon--these are the life-giving elements. They are the life-producing and life-sustaining elements. Neither animal nor vegetable life can exist without them. The entire activity of nature depends upon them. Every organic substance contains them. No organic substance can exist without them. The principle of life is due to them. From a blade of grass to an insect, from an insect to an animal, including man, one cannot emerge into life without these elements. The birth, growth, and development of plant and animal depend upon them, the sustenance and nurture. All our food-substances are almost wholly made up of these elements. No force, power, or energy can be produced without their presence. Our muscular strength, our nervous force, our very thoughts, our imagination, as well as digestion, respiration, circulation of the blood, depend on these elements. Our sensations, our pleasures, our pains, depend upon them. All the excitement and depression in life are dependent on them. The beauties of vegetation, all the various shades and colors of flower and blossom, the tints and odors, are dependent on them. No phenomenon in nature, no matter how terrible, delightful, or enchanting, can be manifested without these elements. No earthquake, thunder, storm, lightning, wind, hail, rain, snow, or ice could exist without them. No light, heat, or motion--in fact, none of the physical forces, could be evolved without them. Our atmosphere, ocean, seas, rivers, forests, are composed of them. No art, science, mechanics, architecture, nor indeed anything that we now enjoy, could exist without them. Gunpowder, dynamite, electricity, and all else are dependent on these elements. Why attempt to enumerate the extraordinary roles they play on earth and in the universe? Every plant would wither, every life would perish, without Oxygen; this element may be truly called the breath of life. The creation of God is dependent on these elements, because were it not for man God would never have been. The ark, made of wood, was composed of them. The figure of Christ, and the Virgin Mary, as she is called, as well as all the saints, were and are composed of Oxygen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, etc. We know that these chemical elements enter into the composition of all things in nature--mineral, vegetable, animal. We also may be absolutely certain that no more elements exist now, at this present time, than existed ten, twenty, or one thousand million of years ago. Chemical elementary substances have no greater relative weight towards one another, nor a greater volume, at this present time than they had at any time since the existence of this earth. The total weight of all elements that enter into the formation of this terrestrial globe has never varied, whether they were in solid, fluid, or gaseous state. The law of gravitation has always existed. Elements that enter into the formation of organic beings, vegetable or animal, must in due time undergo decomposition and return to the same elements of which they were composed. The chemical action has always been the same. All substances are subject to chemical action when exposed to the primary elements, oxygen and hydrogen especially. An element can never be annihilated. It may not be out of place to mention some of the substances in daily use. For example, water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen. Air is composed of oxygen and nitrogen. Bread, of starch, sugars--oxygen, hydrogen and carbon. Meats, of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen, etc. Salt, of sodium and chlorine. Vegetables, fruits, etc., of oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. Fats, of oil. alcohols, of oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. The tissues of the animal body are composed of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen. The combination of five elements produces electricity, thus: Zinc (Zn) + copper (Cu) + sulphuric acid, which consists of hydrogen (H2), sulphur (S), and oxygen (O4), = electricity. A few examples in the changes of the combination of oxygen and hydrogen are shown in water. Under conditions of heat and cold it becomes ice, steam, dew, rain, hail, snow, clouds, etc., etc. These phenomena are known. We merely mention these facts to show how much has been discovered by human skill, but of how much more remains to be discovered we can not form the slightest notion. All that has been done in the field of science has been of actual benefit to humanity. For the discoveries are based on fact and truth. They are ushered into this world to alleviate and to lighten the struggle and the burden of men. They come without oppression, without crime, without bloodshed. They come as the great benefactors of mankind. Men would be much better off to-day if they received for their Sunday lessons instruction in the natural, instead of wasting their precious time in repeating the silly twaddle of supernatural extravagance, that tends to stupefy instead of clearing up the understanding. Scientific research has advanced so far, that not only are we able to know, from the discoveries made, the elementary composition of this earth, and all that belongs thereto, but other far more difficult problems have been partially solved. That is, with the aid of newly discovered instruments, we can ascertain, to a considerable extent, the elementary composition of the sun, stars, and distant planets. In 1802 Dr. Wollaston, and later Fraunhofer, discovered and perfected an instrument called the spectroscope. It consists of a prism, fixed upon an iron stand, and a tube carrying a slit. When light passes through a slit it impinges upon a flint glass prism, by which it is dispersed. The light of burning metals has been tested in that manner. Thus when any light passes through the slit of a spectroscope, the substance giving the light may be determined, the elements burning ascertained. If the solar spectrum be examined--the light of the sun's rays--numerous dark lines parallel with the edge of the prism are observed, and reveal a number of colors giving the following: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. These are intersected by fine black lines of different degrees of breadth and shade, which are always present, and always occupy the same relative position in the solar spectrum. These are called Fraunhofer's lines. By the means of this instrument, the spectra of the sun, planets, and moon have been analyzed, and the color and position, the kind of metals these distant bodies are composed of. The sun's atmosphere, from experiments made, is known to contain metals, such as soda, iron, etc., in the condition of glowing gas, the white light proceeding from the solid or liquid strongly heated mass of the sun which lies in the interior. The metals hitherto detected in the sun's atmosphere are about fifteen or more--iron, sodium, strontium, cadmium, magnesium, calcium, chromium, nickel, barium, zinc, cobalt, manganese, aluminium, titanium, hydrogen, etc. So delicate is this instrument that 1/180000000 part of a grain of sodium can be detected, and a portion of lithium weighing 1/6000000 part of a grain has been detected; thus showing that there exists a very strong probability that the sun, planets, and moons are composed of similar, if not the same, elements that this earth is composed of. CHAPTER IV. THE SUN. The Colossus, or brazen statue of the Sun, was placed across the mouth of the harbor of Rhodes, its legs stretched to such a distance that a large ship under sail might easily pass between them. It was seventy cubits high, or a hundred English feet; its fingers were as long as ordinary statues, and few men with both arms could grasp one of its thumbs. Scarcely sixty years had elapsed before this work of art was thrown down by an earthquake, which broke it off at the knees, in which position it remained till the conquest of Rhodes by the Saracens (A.D. 684), when it was beaten to pieces and sold to a Jew merchant, who loaded nine hundred camels with its spoils. Anaxagoras (500 B.C.) taught that there was but one god, and that the sun was only a fiery globe and should not be worshiped. He attempted to explain eclipses and other celestial phenomena by natural causes, saying that there is no such thing as chances, these being only names for unknown laws. For this audacity and impiety, as his countrymen considered it, he and his family were doomed to perpetual banishment. "Man," said Protagoras of Abra (430 B.C.), "is the measure of all things.... Of the Gods I know nothing, neither whether they be nor whether they be not; for there is much that stands in the way of knowledge, as well the obscurity of the matter as the shortness of human life." St. John begins his writings: "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God." But John, like many others of his time, knew nothing more than the use of words to make riddles, which he himself could not see through and no one else could understand. The man or men who first composed that part of scripture that informs us how the sun and earth were created, certainly knew nothing about it, because all that is at present known is of comparatively recent date. For many centuries, the established religion, the church, and the representatives of the theo-Christian organization, did all in their power to prevent light from penetrating their hidden benighted doings. They looked upon themselves as being all in all, knowing all in all--as having had everything worth knowing revealed to them by an agency no one else had access to. The ideas of their mysterious doings, of their mysterious Gods, are hidden from view in deep obscurity--like the temple of the Egyptian Isis, that bore the inscription: "I am all that is, that was, and that will be, and no mortal has lifted my veil." The ancient writers of the scripture were full of deep, mysterious ways, and their writings of hidden meanings. Ordinary mortals were prohibited from making inquiry because the subject was considered too mysterious, and much too sacred. Since then, many mysteries have been dissolved, or have been analyzed by the crucial test of science, and it has been discovered that there is nothing hidden except what our ignorance prevents us from knowing. We have lifted the sacred veil and looked into the temple of nature, as she is, and not as she appears. The more we search, the more we discover, the nearer we get to the truth. There is not the slightest reason why every man, woman, and child at proper age should not be instructed in matters wherein they are immediately interested, the knowledge whereof would undoubtedly be to their benefit. Men have lived through centuries of fable, ages of fiction, long periods of myth. The Christian God is as much of a myth as any myth that ever existed. Humanity having passed through these various mental afflictions, gone through so many bloody surgical operations, we are, as it were, approaching a condition that will soon be declared as convalescent, and this most miserable of theological nurses may at not a very remote period be dismissed. We can say, without the slightest conscientious scruple, or fear of contradiction, with reason to sustain us and the light of science to prove the truth, that There is no God. There never was--except such a one as men have invented, held sacred, and worshiped. There is nothing sacred except what man makes sacred, nothing holy except what man makes holy, nothing divine except what man makes divine. He makes his own God, and he religiously, piously, devoutly prays to and worships it. The more regularly he does so, the more saintly he becomes, or esteems himself. For many thousand years the Sun was worshiped, held sacred, sacrificed to, entempled, etc. As reason and understanding increased, they forsook him as a god, dismissed him as they had dismissed many gods before him. Yet the sun was by far their greatest benefactor and best friend--more than they were aware of. The sun is 93,000,000 miles from the earth. Supposing a railway could be built to the sun, an express train traveling day and night, at the rate of thirty miles an hour, would require 352 years to reach its destination. The light of the sun is equal to 5,563 wax candles held at a distance of one foot from the eye. The heat of the sun that we receive annually is sufficient to melt a layer of ice 180 feet thick, extending over the whole earth. Yet the sunbeam is only 1/300000 part as intense as it is at the surface of the sun. Moreover, the heat and light stream off into space equally in every direction. Of this vast flood, but one twenty-three-hundred-millionth part reaches the earth. The diameter of the sun is about 860,000 miles. Its volume is 1,300,000 times that of the earth, i.e., it would take 1,300,000 earths to make a globe the size of the sun. Its mass is 750 times that of all the planets and moons in the solar system, and 300,000 times that of the earth. Its weight may be expressed in tons thus: 1,910,278,070,000,000,000,000,000,000. The density of the sun is only about one-fourth that of the earth, or 1.41 that of water, so that the weight of a body transferred from the earth to the sun would not be increased in proportion to the comparative size of the sun. The sun rotates on his axis, like a wheel, once in about 25 days. Our astronomers tell us that the solar heat is gradually diminishing. In time the sun will cease to shine, as the earth did long since. Newcomb says that in 5,000,000 years, at the present rate, the sun will have shrunk to half its present size, and that it cannot sustain life on the earth more than 10,000,000 years longer. Of this we may be assured, there is enough heat to support life on our globe for millions of years to come. The sun consists of a central orb, liquid or solid, of exceeding brightness, which of itself would give a continuous spectrum, or in other words which emits all kinds of light. The sunlight is decomposed by means of the spectroscope, already alluded to, in order to discover the kind of elements it is composed of. Therefore Tyndall says: "I think we now possess knowledge sufficient to raise us to the level of one of the most remarkable generalizations of our age. It has long been supposed that the sun and planets have had a common origin and that hence the same substances are more or less common to them all. Can we detect the presence of any of our terrestrial substances in the sun?... I have said that the bright bands of a metal are characteristic of the metal; that we can without seeing the metal declare its name from the inspection of the bands. The bands are, so to speak, the voice of the metal declaring its presence. "Professor Kirchhoff finds iron, calcium, magnesium, sodium, chromium, etc., in the sunlight spectrum. We know also the total amount of solar heat received by the earth in a year, and we can calculate the entire quantity of heat emitted by the sun in a year. Conceive a hollow sphere to surround the sun, its center the sun's center, and its surface at the distance of the earth from the sun. The section of the earth cut by this surface is to the whole area of the hollow sphere as 1 to 2,300,000,000; hence the quantity of solar heat intercepted by the earth is only 1/2300000000 of the total radiation. "The heat emitted by the sun, if used to melt a stratum of ice applied to the sun's surface would liquefy the ice at the rate of 2,400 feet an hour. It would boil per hour 700,000 millions of cubic miles of ice-cold water. Expressed in another form, the heat given out by the sun per hour is equal to that which would be generated by the combustion of a layer of solid coal 10 feet thick entirely surrounding the sun; hence the heat emitted in a year is equal to that which would be produced by the combustion of a layer of coal 17 miles in thickness. These are the results of actual measurements; and should greater accuracy be conferred on them by future determinations, it will not deprive them of their astonishing character. And this expenditure has been going on for ages, without our being able, in historic times, to detect the loss. When the tolling of a bell is heard at a distance, the sound of each stroke soon sinks, the sonorous vibrations are quickly wasted, and renewed strokes are necessary to maintain the sound. Like the bell, "Die Sonne tönt nach alter weise. "But how is its tone sustained? How is the perennial loss made good? We are apt to overlook the wonderful in the common. Possibly to many of us--and to some of the most enlightened among us--the sun appears as a fire differing from our terrestrial fires only in the magnitude and the intensity of its combustion. But what is the burning matter which can thus maintain itself? All that we know of cosmical phenomena declares our brotherhood with the sun--affirms that the same constituents enter into the composition of his mass as those already known to chemistry. But no earthly substance with which we are acquainted--no substance which the fall of meteors has landed on the earth--would be at all competent to maintain the sun's combustion. The chemical energy of such substances would be too weak, and their dissipation would be too speedy. Were the sun a solid block of coal, and were it allowed a sufficient supply of oxygen to enable it to burn at the rate necessary to produce the observed emissions, it would be utterly consumed in 5,000 years. On the other hand, to imagine it a body originally endowed with a store of heat--a hot globe now cooling--necessitates the ascription to it of qualities wholly different from those possessed by terrestrial matter. If we knew the specific heat of the sun, we could calculate its rate of cooling. Assuming this to be the same as that of water--the terrestrial substance which possesses the highest specific heat--at its present rate of emission, the entire mass of the sun would cool down 15,000° Faht. in 5,000 years. In short, if the sun be formed of matter like our own, some means must exist of restoring to him his wasted power. The facts are so extraordinary, that the soberest hypothesis regarding them must appear wild. The sun we know rotates upon his axis; he turns like a wheel once in 25 days: can it be the friction of the periphery of this wheel against something in surrounding space which produces the light and heat? Such a notion has been entertained. But what forms the brake, and by what agency is it held, while it rubs against the sun? The action is inconceivable; but, granting the existence of the brake, we can calculate the total amount of heat which the sun could generate by such friction. We know his mass, we know his time of rotation; we know the mechanical equivalent of heat; and from these data we deduce, with certainty, that the entire force of rotation, if converted into heat, would cover more than one, but less than two, centuries of emission. There is no hypothesis involved in this calculation. "There is another theory, which, however bold it may at first sight appear, deserves our earnest attention. I have already referred to it as the meteoric theory of the sun's heat. Solar space is peopled with ponderable objects. Kepler's celebrated statement that 'there are more comets in the heavens than fish in the ocean' refers to the fact that a small portion only of the total number of comets belong to our system, and are seen from the earth. But besides comets, and planets, and moons, a numerous class of bodies belong to our system--asteroids, which from their smallness might be regarded as cosmical atoms. Like the planets and the comets these smaller bodies obey the law of gravity, and revolve in elliptic orbits around the sun; and it is they, when they come within the earth's atmosphere, that, fired by friction, appear to us as meteors and falling stars. On a bright night twenty minutes rarely pass at any part of the earth's surface without the appearance of at least one meteor. At certain times (the 12th of August and the 14th of November), they appear in enormous numbers. During nine hours of observation in Boston, when they were described as falling as thick as snowflakes, 240,000 meteors were calculated to have been observed. The number falling in a year might perhaps be estimated at hundreds or thousands of millions, and even these would constitute but a small portion of the total crowd of asteroids that circulate round the sun. From the phenomena of light and heat, and by the direct observation of Encke, on his comet, we learn that the universe is filled with a resisting medium, through the friction of which all the masses of our system are drawn gradually toward the sun. And though the larger planets show, in historic times, no diminution of their periods of revolution, this may not hold good for the smaller bodies. In the time required for the mean distance of the earth from the sun to alter a single yard, a small asteroid may have approached thousands of miles nearer to our luminary. "Following up these reflections we should infer that while this immeasurable stream of ponderable matter rolls unceasingly towards the sun, it must augment in density as it approaches the center of convergence. And here the conjecture naturally rises that that weak nebulous light, of vast dimensions, which embraces the sun--the Zodiacal light--may owe its existence to these crowded meteors. However this may be, it is at least proved that the luminous phenomenon arises from matter which circulates in obedience to planetary laws; the entire mass constituting the Zodiacal light must be constantly approaching, and incessantly raining its substance down upon, the sun. "We observe the fall of an apple and investigate the law which rules its motion. In the place of the earth we set the sun, and in place of the apple we set the earth, and thus possess ourselves of the key to the mechanics of the heavens. We now know the connection between hight of fall, velocity, and heat at the surface of the earth. In the place of the earth let us set the sun, with 300,000 times the earth's mass, and instead of a fall of a few feet, let us take cosmical elevations; we thus obtain a means of generating heat which transcends all terrestrial power. "It is easy to calculate both the maximum and the minimum velocity imparted by the sun's attraction to asteroids circulating round him; the maximum is generated when the body approaches the sun from an infinite distance as the entire pull of the sun being then expended upon it; the minimum is that velocity which would barely enable the body to revolve round the sun close to his surface. The final velocity of the former, just before striking the sun, would be 390 miles a second, that of the latter 276 miles a second. The asteroid on striking the sun with the former velocity, would develop more than 3,000 times the heat generated by the combustion of an equal asteroid of solid coal; while the shock, in the latter case, would generate heat equal to that of the combustion of upward of 4,000 such asteroids. It matters not whether the substances falling into the sun be combustible or not; their being combustible would not add sensibly to the tremendous heat produced by their mechanical collision. "Here then we have an agency competent to restore his lost energy, and to maintain a temperature at his surface which transcends all terrestrial combustion. The very quality of the solar rays--their incomparable penetrating power--enables us to infer that the temperature of their origin must be enormous; but in the fall of asteroids we find the means of producing such a temperature. It may be contended that this showering down of matter must be accompanied by the growth of the sun in size; it is so; but the quantity necessary to produce the observed calorific emission, even if accumulated for 4,000 years, would defy the scrutiny of our best instruments. If the earth struck the sun it would utterly vanish from perception, but the heat developed by the shock would cover the expenditure of the sun for a century. "To the earth itself apply considerations similar to those which we have applied to the sun. Newton's theory of gravitation, which enables us, from the present form of the earth, to deduce its original state of aggregation, reveals to us, at the same time, a source of heat powerful enough to bring about the fluid state--powerful enough to fuse even worlds. It teaches us to regard the molten condition of a planet as resulting from mechanical union of cosmical masses, and thus reduces to the same homogeneous process the heat stored up in the body of the earth, and the heat emitted by the sun. Without doubt the whole surface of the sun displays an unbroken ocean of fiery fluid matter. On this ocean rests an atmosphere of flowing gas--a flame atmosphere, or photosphere. But gaseous substances, when compared with solid ones, emit, even when their temperature is very high, only a feeble and transparent light. Hence it is probable that the dazzling white light of the sun comes through the atmosphere from the more solid portions of the surface.... In conclusion, thus writes Professor Thomson: 'The source of energy from which the solar heat is derived is undoubtedly meteoric.... The principal source--perhaps the sole appreciable efficient source--is in the bodies circulating round the sun at present inside the earth's orbit seen in the sunlight by us called "Zodiacal light." The store of energy for future sunlight is at present partly dynamical--that of the motions of these bodies round the sun; and partly potential--that of their gravitation towards the sun. This latter is gradually being spent, half against the resisting medium, and half in causing a continuous increase of the former. Each meteor thus goes on moving faster and faster, and getting nearer and nearer the center, until some time, very suddenly, it gets so much entangled in the solar atmosphere as to begin to lose its velocity. In a few seconds more it is at rest on the sun's surface, and the energy given up is vibrated across the district where it was gathered during so many ages, ultimately to penetrate as light the remotest regions of space.... "'The heat of rotation of the sun and planets, taken all together, would cover the solar emission for 134 years; while the heat of gravitation (that produced by falling into the sun) would cover the emission for 45,589 years. There is nothing hypothetical in these results; they follow directly and necessarily from the application of the mechanical equivalent of heat to cosmical masses.'... "But, continues Helmholtz, though the store of our planetary system is so immense as not to be sensibly diminished by the incessant emission which has gone on during the period of man's history, and though the time which must elapse before a sensible change in the condition of our planetary system can occur is totally incapable of measurement, the inexorable laws of mechanics show that this store, which can only suffer loss, and not gain, must finally be exhausted. Shall we terrify ourselves by this thought? Men are in the habit of measuring the greatness of the universe, and the wisdom displayed in it, by the duration and the profit which it promises to their own race; but the past history of the earth shows the insignificance of the interval during which man has had his dwelling here. What the museums of Europe show us of the remains of Egypt and Assyria we gaze upon in silent wonder, and despair of being able to carry back our thoughts to a period so remote. Still, the human race must have existed and multiplied for ages before the Pyramids could have been erected. We estimate the duration of human history at 6,000 years; but vast as this time may appear to us, what is it in comparison with the period during which the earth bore successive series of rank plants and mighty animals, but no man? Periods during which, in our own neighborhood (Koenigsberg) the amber tree bloomed and dropped its costly gum on the earth and in the sea; when in Europe and North America groves of tropical palms flourished, in which gigantic lizards, and after them elephants, whose mighty remains are still buried in the earth, found a home. Different geologists, proceeding from different premises, have sought to estimate the length of the above period, and they set it down from one to nine million of years. The time during which the earth has generated organic beings is again small, compared with the ages during which the world was a mass of molten rocks. The experiments of Bischoff upon basalt show that for our globe to cool down from 2,000° to 200° centigrade would require 350 millions of years. And with regard to the period during which the first nebulous masses condensed, so as to form our planetary system, conjecture must entirely cease. The history of man, therefore, is but a minute ripple in the infinite ocean of time. For a much longer period than that during which he has already occupied the world, the existence of a state of inorganic nature, favorable to man's existence, seems to be secured; so that for ourselves, and for long generations after us, we have nothing to fear. But the same forces of air and water, and of the volcanic interior, which produced former geological revolutions, and buried one series of living forms after another, still act upon the earth's crust. They, rather than those distant cosmical changes of which we have spoken, will end the human race, and perhaps compel us to make way for new and more complete forms of life, as the lizard and the mammoth have given way to us and our contemporaries. "Grand, however, and marvelous as are these questions regarding the physical constitution of the sun, they are but a portion of the wonders connected with our luminary. His relationship to life is yet to be referred to. The earth's atmosphere contains carbonic acid, and the earth's surface bears living plants; the former is the nutriment of the latter. The plant seizes the combined carbon and oxygen and tears them asunder, storing the carbon and letting the oxygen go free. By no special force, different in quality from other forces, do plants exercise this power--the real magician here is the sun. We have seen how heat is consumed in forcing asunder the atoms and molecules of solids and liquids, converting itself into potential energy, which reappears as heat when the attractions of the separated atoms are again allowed to come into play. Precisely the same considerations which we then applied to heat we have now to apply to light; for it is at the expense of the solar light that the decomposition of the carbonic acid is effected. Without the sun the reduction cannot take place, and an amount of sunlight is consumed exactly equivalent to the molecular work accomplished. Thus trees are formed, thus meadows grow, thus the flowers bloom. Let the rays fall upon the surface of sand, the sand is heated, and finally radiates away as much as it receives; let the same rays fall upon a forest, the quantity of heat given back is less than that received, for the energy of a portion of the sunbeams is invested in building up the trees. I have here a bundle of cotton which I ignite; it bursts into flame, and yields a definite amount of heat; precisely that amount of heat was abstracted from the sun in order to form that bit of cotton. This is a representative case--every tree, plant, and flower, grows and flourishes by the grace and bounty of the sun. "But we cannot stop at vegetable life; for this is the source, mediate or immediate, of all animal life. In the animal body vegetable substances are brought again into contact with their beloved oxygen, and they burn within as a fire burns in a grate. This is the source of all animal power; and the forces in play are the same, in kind, as those which operate in inorganic nature. In the plant the clock is wound up, in the animal it runs down. In the plant the atoms are separated, in the animal they recombine. And as surely as the force which moves a clock's hands is derived from the arm which winds the clock, so surely is all terrestrial power drawn from the sun. Leaving out of account the eruption of volcanoes and the ebb and flow of the tides, every mechanical action on the earth's surface, every manifestation of power, organic and inorganic, vital or physical, is produced by the sun. His warmth keeps the sea liquid, and the atmosphere a gas, and all the storms which agitate both are blown by the mechanical force of the sun. He lifts the rivers and glaciers up the mountains; and thus the cataract and avalanche shoot with an energy derived immediately from him. Thunder and lightning are also his transmuted strength. Every fire that burns and every flame that glows dispenses light and heat which originally belonged to the sun. In these days, unhappily, the news of battle is familiar to us, but every shock, and every charge, is an application or misapplication of the mechanical force of the sun. He blows the trumpet, he urges the projectile, he bursts the bomb. And remember this is not poetry, but rigid mechanical truth. He rears, as I have said, the whole vegetable world, and through it the animal; the lilies of the field are his workmanship, the verdure of the meadows, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. He forms the muscle, he urges the blood, he builds the brain. His fleetness is in the lion's foot; he springs in the panther, he soars in the eagle, he slides in the snake. He builds the forest, and hews it down, the power which raised the tree and that which wields the axe being one and the same. The clover sprouts and blossoms, and the scythe of the mower swings, by the operation of the same force. The sun digs the ore from our mines, he rolls the iron, he rivets the plates, he boils the water, he draws the train. He not only grows the cotton, but he spins the fiber and weaves the web. There is not a hammer raised, a wheel turned, or a shuttle thrown, that is not raised, and turned, and thrown by the sun. His energy is poured freely into space, but our world is a halting-place where the energy is conditioned. Here the Proteus works his spells; the self-same essence takes a million of shapes and hues, and finally dissolves into its primitive and almost formless form. The sun comes to us as heat; he quits us as heat; and between his entrance and departure the multiform powers of our globe appear. They are all special forms of solar power--the molds into which his strength is temporarily poured, in passing from its source through infinitude. "Presented rightly to the mind, the discoveries and generalizations of modern science constitute a poem more sublime than has yet been addressed to the intellect and imagination of man. The natural philosopher of to-day may dwell amid conceptions which beggar those of Milton. So great and grand are they, that in the contemplation of them a certain force of character is requisite to preserve us from bewilderment. Look at the integrated energies of the world--the stored power of our coal fields; our winds and rivers; our fleets, armies, and guns; what are they? They are all generated by a portion of the sun's energy, which does not amount to 1/2300000000th of the whole. This, in fact, is the entire fraction of the sun's force intercepted by the earth, and, in reality, we convert but a small fraction of that fraction into mechanical energy. Multiplying all our powers by millions of millions, we do not reach the sun's expenditure. And still, notwithstanding this enormous drain, in the lapse of human history we are unable to detect a diminution of his store; measured by our largest terrestrial standards, such a reservoir of power is infinite; but it is our privilege to rise above these standards and to regard the sun himself as a speck in infinite extension--a mere drop in the universal sea. We analyze the space in which he is immersed, and which is the vehicle of his power. We pass to other systems and other suns, each pouring forth energy like our own, but still without infringement of the law, which reveals immutability in the midst of change, which recognizes incessant transference and conversion, but neither final gain nor loss. This law generalizes the aphorism of Solomon that there is nothing new under the sun, by teaching us to detect everywhere, under its infinite variety of appearances, the same primeval force. To nature nothing can be added; from nature nothing can be taken away; the sum of her energies is constant, and the utmost that man can do in the pursuit of physical truth, or in the application of physical knowledge, is to shift the constituents of the never-varying total, and out of one of them to form another. The law of conservation rigidly excludes both creation and annihilation. Waves may change into ripples, and ripples into waves--magnitude may be substituted for number, and number for magnitude--asteroids may aggregate to suns, and suns may resolve themselves into flora and fauna, and flora and fauna melt in air--the flux of power is eternally the same. It rolls in music through the ages, and all the terrestrial energy--the manifestations of life, as well as the display of phenomena, are but the modulations of the rhythm" (Tyndall Lecture XII). CHAPTER V. GENESIS--THE CREATION. Man must pass through infancy and childhood before he reaches manhood and maturity. Races and nations also had to pass the stages of infancy and childhood, with all their mistakes, fancy, and fable. In these stages any kind of information and interpretation is readily accepted, without inquiry and without investigation, for the reason that they are not capable of either. To inquire, is the awaking of knowledge; and to investigate, requires understanding. Whatever knowledge has been acquired, that knowledge can be imparted, but no more. If it be true, it cannot be denied or contradicted; if that knowledge be not true, it will be subject to denial, controversy, and dispute, when experience has ripened the understanding. Childhood will listen to anything without contradiction. It accepts the matter as told and believes it. As years pass on, the story that once seemed so impressive and pretty, that was listened to so eagerly, loses its charm, for lack of truth. Fairy tales of past ages were abundant. Every locality had them, and was by them adorned in mystery and wonder. They were ordinarily recited with startling impressiveness. With awe places were pointed out of perhaps some strange apparition, or prodigious occurrence. All of such accounts were either deliberate inventions, or concoctions of a prolific imagination. Early writings abound in them. The improbability of a story grows stronger the farther you go back in the history of humanity. Many of these stories were incorporated in poems, in heroic legends, in tales of the mysterious births of kings and queens, descendants of gods. And the vast majority of the writers of antiquity mix fiction and fact, the possible with the impossible. They treat on the conduct of men, their deeds and misdeeds, according to the extravagant customs of the time. The Book called scripture writings is composed of three elements--fiction, exaggeration, and fact. The fiction consists of all that portion of the writings that relates to God and his miraculous works. The exaggeration consists of impossible doings of men, such as accounts of miracle-healers, resurrectionists, flights to heaven, etc. The facts appertain to the Jewish race actually--that they did exist as a nation, and conducted their affairs in as barbarous a fashion as their neighbors. For nearly two thousand years Christianity has done its utmost to sustain the fiction portion as being absolutely true, and still it teaches these absurdities to be true, and anyone doubting their accuracy is liable to persecution. For every doubter of the current belief, whether in ancient or modern times, is subject to discipline of the church to which he belongs. Recently in our own city many have been subjected to a mild form of persecution for doubting. They were declared to be heretics, blasphemers, etc. I speak of such men as Dr. Newton, Dr. Briggs, and others. Yet, we must concede that every organization has a right to judge as to the qualifications of any one of its members, especially if he is an office-holder. They may reject or accept any member. But since his membership depends on whether he believes in their mode of interpreting this fiction, he must say that he believes it, and proclaim to others that it is true, though he knows it is not. Nothing on earth has given rise to so much dispute, angry quarrel, bitter hatred and abuse, as this fiction. It has been the cause of more villainy, brutality, massacres, and bloody wars than all matters that concern humanity put together. Science universally agrees that the biblical story has not a particle of truth in it; and the older it gets the more it suffers, the weaker it gets, and it finally must undergo complete dissipation, in the presence of the strong light of natural truth. We have a great deal to be thankful for, to have and to enjoy the privilege, the freedom, of exercising and giving expression to opinions concerning matters that have been considered too sacred to be contradicted or criticised. The time has come, or is coming very fast, that we shall be able to dispense with God, Christ, the Holy Ghost, and the Bible as a sacred text-book, both the Old and New Testament. In order to do this we must examine some portion of its text. We should do this for educational purposes. Every man and woman should acquire a proper amount of knowledge, to enable them to think for themselves. Every person knows, or ought to know, that priest and preacher are especially educated to keep the masses as ignorant as they can possibly keep them. It is their trade. It is their bread and butter, like that of every other trade or profession--it is their business, their function, their profit, to sustain and uphold this tottering fabric, this hollow sham, this aerial nothing, with not a truth, not even a shadow of a truth, to support it. Chapter i, verse 1, of Genesis: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth." Verse 2: "The earth was without form and void." (1) God could not have created the earth, as a planet distinct and separate by itself. This terrestrial globe belongs to a system of planets, and they are all not only dependent on one another, but all dependent on the sun for their existence. (2) How can God create a planet, this earth? Where did he get his material from? And was it possible for God to overcome the laws of gravitation? (3) Does it not seem strange that God, who seemed to have direct dealings with Moses, did not give him more information about it? (4) Theologians claim that God is the architect, the designer, the first cause, the creator. Why did it take God to make this terrestrial globe six days? If he was able to make it in six days, he might as well have made it in one day, yes, one hour. If the Word was God, and God was the Word, then the Word ought to have displayed this magical art; he might have simply said, Go! The term designer, architect, creator, implies skill, human skill, a being that has brain. (5) As to heaven, that part that is scripturally indicated as heaven is the atmosphere. (6) We are nowhere told where God was when he was doing all this work. Whether he was floating in space among the meteors and asteroids, or had his residence on Mars or Venus, we are not informed. (7) This earth always had a form. A globe that revolves round its own axis, once in twenty-four hours, and round the sun besides, cannot be without form. It must necessarily have a globular form; nor was it ever void. There is no such thing as a void in fact; it may appear so to one ignorant of natural phenomena. That was undoubtedly the case when that matter was written up. (8) It must also be remembered that every planet in the system of the sun receives a portion of his light. The contact of the sun's rays with the elements of this earth is fatal to any such nonsensical proposition as a void. (9) As to "the darkness on the face of the deep," that could exist only in isolated places, because of an intense fog or mist. The whole surface of the earth could not have a fog at one time. That is impossible. Wherever the sun shines there is light. (10) "And the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters." What waters? Where? We know that only one thing in this solar system can disperse a fog; that is the sun. Verse 3: "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light." This is worse than childish; it is stupid. (1) How could God have light when the sun was not made? (2) And if the sun existed, it was silly on his part to say it. Verse 4: "And God saw the light that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness." How is it possible for any sane person to believe such nonsense, when everybody with a grain of common sense knows that light and darkness depend on the sun, as day and night do? And this is said to have constituted the first day's work. If any man will read it carefully he will perceive that the composition is of a nature to entertain simple-minded people, children, who are unable to understand the ordinary phases of nature. The second day's work is very droll. Verse 6: "And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters," etc. Verse 7: "And God made the firmament," and divided the waters which were under the firmament and the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so. Verse 8: "And called the firmament heaven." There is not a particle of sense in this. If the firmament is heaven, and heaven the atmosphere, we know that we cannot have any water above the firmament. We may have clouds, or a certain quantity of moisture, but no water. If the atmosphere is overloaded with moisture, that moisture is sure to return to the earth in the shape of rain or other form. This portion is important to pious persons, that they may know where their souls go when they go to "heaven"--to the atmosphere! Theologians and religious writers contend that this earth was in a state of aqueous solution. That is all wrong. We have not oxygen and hydrogen enough to produce such a state with. Besides, if it was in an aqueous solution what became of the sixty-two elementary substances that never enter into the composition of water? Nor can the majority of the elements be held in suspension by water. The specific gravity of the different elements cannot be suspended to please anybody. Elisha is supposed to have performed that miracle; he made an axe-head swim (2 Kings vi, 6). This same man also beheld a chariot of fire and horses of fire with which Elijah went to heaven. It seems surprising that men who claim to know something of science insist upon this miraculous supernatural work. They ought to know better. They ought to know that neither God nor man can stop the chemical action of the elements in the presence or absence of the sun's heat. They ought to know that no supernatural power can suspend nature's forces, or nature's laws. They ought to know that no spirit, whether belonging to God or not, can effect such an aqueous solution as these pious gentlemen would have us believe. The third day's work is remarkable. It embraces the 9th to the 13th verses inclusive. "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place and let dry land appear." Was God ignorant of the existence of more oceans than one? of the numerous seas and lakes? or was this creation a local affair near the Gulf of Persia? There is a singular phraseology used: the first day's work is not qualified; the second day, "It was so;" on the third day, "It was so, it was good." Thus, it seems, God did not discover the quality of his work until the third day, when he has it twice--"It was so," as if in surprise, and then that "it was good," as if he lacked self-reliance, or was uncertain how the work would turn out. Verse 11: "And let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind," etc. It is a pertinent question, or questions: (1) On what part of the globe were these planted? (2) In what season of the year were they planted? (3) Did these thrive and flourish in the absence of sunlight? and (4) In what kind of soil and in what locality? Were these trees, grass, herbs, planted at the North Pole, equator, in a subtropical or in a mild climate? Was it winter, spring, summer, or autumn? Was it sandy soil, as in the deserts of Arabia, or hill, valley, or mountain? Or was it really somewhere in Chaldea where the story originated? Remember, we have no sun yet. Verse 13: "And the evening and the morning were the third day." God takes his rest during the night, like any other toiler on the surface of this terrestrial globe. He did not believe in working after proper hours. No doubt he started with sunrise and stopped at sunset, as shepherds and agriculturists usually do. And God simply suspended the natural operations and went to bed. I don't blame him. He was tired. Then again, grass might and does grow in a season, but trees do not. It takes quite a number of seasons for trees to bear fruit. The elements that enter into their composition differ. Some have more of one element, and grow on certain soil and flourish, while others do not. Moreover, there are only certain localities on earth where the growth of any can be accomplished. The fourth day's work is something prodigious: Verse 14: "And God said, Let there be light in the firmament of the heaven" (in the eighth verse God calls the firmament heaven, but in the 14th calls it the firmament of the heaven) "to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years." Verse 15: "And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon earth: and it was so." Verse 16: "And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser to rule the night: he made the stars also." The inventor or the writer of these passages had not the slightest conception of what he was talking about. He spoke and wrote of the mere appearance of what he beheld daily and nightly, the sun and the moon. They could not know, in those remote ages, the important role the sun plays in the solar system, because whatever is known thereon is of very recent date. Talk of setting the sun in the firmament, 93,000,000 miles' distance from the earth, considering its bulk, weight, and condition, is an outrage on common sense. It is a monstrous piece of stupidity to make children believe it, and it is an infamous fraud for any priest or preacher to teach it. Writers in order to explain away the above difficulty quote, for example: "Maimonides (born 1131 A.D.) in his guide, Rashi (1030) and Aben Ezra (1119) in their commentaries, hold that the light of the first day was that of the sun itself, which revolving in its sphere from west to east and from east to west made a day of twenty-four hours. The scripture's saying that it was created on the fourth day is incident to its thus demonstrating its effects upon plants, which appeared on the third day; rain, which proceeded from the exhalations and vapors raised from the earth by the action of the sun's heat thereon, being necessary to their vegetation. Therefore, it is clear that there was no new creation on the fourth day; but the heat implies that on that day the sun developed the effects of his heat on plants." This is one of many explanations of philosophical commentators who have tried to explain away the difficulty of creation, owing to the many doubts that arose in the minds of learned men about the tenth and eleventh centuries A.D.; and especially the Greek philosophers, Aristotle [4] and others. Volumes upon volumes have been written in order to explain away the difficulties theologians encounter. As science advances, explanations and reconciliations become more difficult. Maimonides, in his pious enthusiasm, after having consulted Aristotle and others, is not quite certain, but he claims (according to More, xi, 15): "I propose to show that the creation of the world, as our religion teaches, is not impossible, and all philosophical reasonings to the effect that it is not so, as I have said, they may overthrow, but cannot make any objection against us. As for me, I stand firm in my belief on the question, of whether the world had a beginning or not. I accept the solution of this problem from the prophets, as the prophets explain these things, which speculation cannot reach," etc. (Kusari I, 65, 67). In other words, Maimonides, the authors of the Talmud, and all other writers, theological philosophers, Hebrew and Christian, prove the truth of the Bible by the Bible. One portion of scripture must prove another portion to be true. The Jews use their own biblical authorities to demonstrate one another's statements. Isaiah gives evidence for Moses, and Moses is made to testify for Isaiah, and so the Jewish philosophers whip the devil round the ring. The Christians have a double hold. They have a New Testament. They prove the statements made by persons figuring in the Old Testament by statements made in the New Testament. That is, they make Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Moses, etc., give testimony for John, Mark, Matthew, and Luke; and then make Luke, Matthew, Mark, and John give evidence for Moses, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Elisha, Elijah, etc. The majority of theological writings and commentaries, yes, all of them, were composed and written during the Christian era, and nearly one-half of these after the twelfth century. All are employed with the same subject-matter. Although they lay claim that the Talmud and other works treat of mathematics, physics, medicine, etc., they knew little or nothing about these things, and the little they did know was mostly appropriated from the Greek and other nations. It is not an unusual occurrence for modern thinkers to interpret the statements of ancient writers as they originally never intended. They spoke in enigmas, parables, simply philosophical phrases, without stating a single fact, implying nothing in particular and everything in general. "And he made the stars also." Make the stars! We have shown in a previous chapter that this our solar system is but a speck among the starry host of the universe. From verse 20 to 23 inclusive, God created moving creatures in the water, and fowl that may fly above the earth. This general statement, like all other statements in the Bible, is based on the principle that "with God everything is possible." Unfortunately for God's adherents, that is absolutely not the case. The laws of nature are fixed, permanent. There is no exception in favor of any mortal and natural being, and certainly not for any supernatural and imaginary being. Does it not seem strange that the only animal mentioned in the fifth and sixth days' performance is the whale? "Great whales," it says. Why great whales? They had heard something about the whale, he therefore received prominence, and was mentioned. They had no knowledge of other animals. Or was this great whale purposely inserted to do that extraordinary service to Jonah? And after all this work was done, God saw that it was good. Evidently pleased with his handiwork. On the sixth day he finishes his work--he "brings forth living creatures." Why living creatures? Are not fish, fowl, and whales living creatures? Next come cattle and creeping things. After he created the creeping things he made man. Verse 27: "So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them." If man was made in his own image, God's image, God must have the semblance of man, otherwise man would not be like him. If God has the semblance of man, and creates and desires, works and rests, like a man, he is a man, therefore cannot be supernatural--a God! Verses 28, 29, 30: God places all that he has created at the service of man, giving him full control and dominion to make use of these benefits as he, man, thinks best. "And behold it was very good," and then God took a rest. The entire creation must have taken place in a mild or warm climate, in some isolated locality on the face of the globe. No mention is made of icebergs, snow or hail. There does not seem to have occurred the slightest impediment in any of the work done. No evolutionary period, except the night's rest God reserved for himself, in addition to the whole day Sunday, or rather the seventh day. We are now prepared to make some very pertinent remarks and ask some very pertinent questions: (1) What period elapsed from the time man was created to the time man could use words or speech intelligently? (2) We may assume that no one was present at the time of creation, because man and woman were made the last thing on the sixth day. (3) Who was the first man that received this information? After how many generations or centuries was this news published, and to whom? (4) We are not informed, even by the holy book, of the man's name who was the fortunate recipient of this valuable information. (5) Is it not highly probable that the man who first told this story might also have invented it? We have no proof to the contrary, except the mere say-so of somebody. The statement, as written, is well enough as a fable; that's all. As to fact, there is not a particle of truth to sustain it. But if men are determined to believe it, and are not open to conviction, if they are willfully blind to the truth, they must remain the slaves to a powerful ecclesiastical organization. The 14th verse, however, betrays its origin. When the sun and moon were made for seasons, days, and years, as also for signs, that shows a high degree of civilization. These divisions did not take place before man was created? Were really these divisions made before a living creature inhabited this earth? For whom? For whose use? Writing had not been invented. Athates, or Hermes, the Egyptian, is supposed to be the founder of hieroglyphics, 2,136 B.C. And we do not hear of writing until 1,494 B.C. It is claimed that writing was taught to the Latins by Europa, daughter of Agenar, king of Phoenicia. The doctrine of the solar system as it is now accepted was first taught by Pythagoras of Samos about 529 B.C. Copernicus proved it in the sixteenth century, and Newton demonstrated the truth fully in the year 1695. History claims for the Egyptians that they were the first who fixed the length of the year. The Chaldeans and Persians had adopted the lunar year before Abraham ever dreamed of being exiled by his countrymen, the Chaldeans. Can any man be so silly as to believe that an almanac was made before man was created? There is not an intelligent priest living who is ass big enough to believe any such nonsense. CHAPTER VI. GENESIS--THE GARDEN OF EDEN. The custom of six days' labor and one day's rest is a human invention, and is based on the principles of economy, power-saving, labor-saving, and had been a recognized institution long before the date of the supposed creation. For if the statement of Baily be true (and we have no right to discredit it), human beings have existed, in one state or another, above 4,000,000 years. The record of the Hebrew race is insignificant in comparison. The modern eight-hour movement is the outcome of the economic reforms of labor. Had the composers of the scripture known something of it at that time God might have worked only eight hours instead of from sunrise to sunset. We cannot have the slightest doubt that the above first-given labor regulation existed long, long ago. The Chaldeans had their mode of government, their laws, their social rules and regulations; other neighboring nations had theirs; it was therefore nothing new. This six days' labor clause was incorporated, but there was no need of a God to make it. Verse 4: "And these are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." What generations of heaven? Verse 7: "And the Lord God [In this chapter an extra title is assigned to God--it is the Lord God! Why?] formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." This is a very grave error. Man is not made of dust of the ground. There is comparatively very little dust in his composition. (1) Man contains no more dust than any other animal; the proportion of inorganic constituents in him and other animals is about the same. (2) Animals are constructed anatomically and physiologically the same. They have the same organs, the same number of muscles, and same number of bones, with some few exceptions. They are built on the same general principles as man; or rather, as man came later, we will say that man is constructed on the same general principles as the animals. (3) The same mechanism and functions are to be found in the one as in the other--respiration, circulation, digestion, etc. (4) The proportion of mineral matters contained in a man--or dust, as it is termed in scripture--is about 1/23 to 1/24 of the bodily weight. That is, a body weighing about 125 to 130 pounds would yield about 4 1/2 to 5 pounds of dust, or rather ashes, and the largest proportion of these ashes comes from the solid framework, the skeleton, the bones, composed of phosphates and carbonate of lime. (5) More than two-thirds of the body's weight is water--that is, hydrogen and oxygen. The principal elements found in the body are oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon. There are traces of sulphur, etc., besides the mineral substances above alluded to. Thus man is not made of dust, but of water, oxygen and hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon. If they had made God say that he made man out of water, he would have been much nearer the truth. Solomon repeats the same in his Eccles. iii, 20: "All go unto one place; all are of dust, and all turn to dust again." In the burial service the same absurdity is repeated. Alter your service, your prayer--put water in place of dust. Or better, give all the four elements a chance. Do not teach children we are made out of dust. It is not true. Teach the young what is true. What is the good of lying because some man said, God said so? The "breath of life." Is it not time that men of intelligence, in this age of progress and civilization we boast so much of, cease to pretend to believe such nonsense? It is absurd to talk of its being "parables" and "figures of speech." Either the text means what it says, or it means nothing. There has been an immense amount of controversy over two Hebrew words, viz.: nephesh--breath, respiring, life, life strength, animal soul; ruach--anamos, breath, wind, psyche, soul, spirit, etc. They thought that the life is in the blood. Lev. xvii, 11: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood." Gen. ix, 4, 5: "But the flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof," etc., etc. This controversy has given rise to no end of studies, as psychology--derived from the word psyche,--soul. The literature that has been expended on this subject, psyche, soul, cannot be easily estimated. The matter has been twisted into a science, discussed, argued, lectured on, etc. On the word Theo, Theon--Deos--God, societies and sects, etc., have been formed, as the Theosophists. What is the breath of life that caused so much controversy, in church and out of church? Oxygen. Deprive a man of oxygen and he dies. Deprive a beast of oxygen and it dies. Oxygen thus is essential to life. Neither man nor beast, as we said, can live without it. The issues which this has given rise to are bewildering--theological, metaphysical, Theosophical, philosophical, Agnostic, gnostic, spiritual, etc., etc. Oxygen, however, covers the ground. It represents all, so far as the life of a body is concerned. We now come to Paradise, or the garden of Eden. We will try to locate this garden of Eden geographically, as nearly as possible correctly. Verse 8: "And the Lord God planted a garden eastward of Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed." That was very kind of God. Verse 9: "God planted the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil." A wonderful tree surety. What is most to be regretted is that the species has become extinct. What a boon to humanity if but one tree were planted in every church. Verse 10: "And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it parted, and became into four heads." Verse 11: "The name of the first is Pison; that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold." Verse 12: "And the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and the onyx stone." Verse 13: "And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia." Verse 14: "And the name of the third river is Hiddekel; that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates." Assyria was founded about 2247 B.C. and is situated near the Persian gulf; and seems to be wedged in between the Persian empire on the east, Arabia on the west, or Badien el Arab, and on the southern point the gulf of Persia. Ethiopia comprises Nubia, Sennaar, and Northern Abyssinia, and takes in a stretch of country on the west shore of the Red sea. The two countries are separated by the Red sea, and by Arabia, which extends from the east shores of the Red sea to the west shores of the Gulf of Persia, and Assyria. Some one made a big blunder, or Johnston's atlas is wrong, or they--God--made a mistake in the name. There is considerable distance between the two countries. Assyria lies in Asia and Ethiopia in Africa. Egypt lies farthest north of what is usually known as Ethiopia. Assyria is hemmed in, north by Armenia, west by Media and Susiana, south and southeast by Babylon and Mesopotamia. The river Tigris is the dividing line on the south and southeast. The Parachoatras and Zagrus mountains form the dividing line on the western border, and Armenia is the boundary on the north. Chaldea is, comparatively speaking, a small tract of land situated between the river Euphrates and the Arabian desert, or Badien el Arab, with Babylon on its north and the Gulf of Persia on the southwestern point. The river Euphrates takes its rise in the Gulf of Persia and runs westward, and divides into four branches. The first branch, the Pasitigris, runs somewhat westward through Susiana; the second, Chaosper or Kirkhah, runs northward through Susiana; the third, the river Tigris, runs north, northwest, separating Babylon from Susiana by Assyria; the fourth, the river Euphrates, the farthest south, runs westward, etc. This is the only river near the Gulf of Persia that divides into four branches, and these are the four rivers that are indicated where the garden of Eden was planted. This is near enough geographically to locate this garden which the Lord God planted. It will indeed afford great pleasure for pious people to know whereabouts they can find the garden of Eden. In this rapid-transit age, they can get an excursion ticket and reach this Paradise in a few weeks. This garden was planted in Chaldea. We will now see what God did next. Verse 15: "And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it." God gave the position of gardener to Mr. Adam. The only stipulation in the contract between the Lord God and Adam was (verses 16, 17), he could eat of every tree in the garden except the tree of knowledge. There is a God for you--wants to keep the man he made in his own image, a living soul, as ignorant and as stupid as possible; in addition tempting him to commit a wrong act. Verse 18: "And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him." Very considerate indeed on the part of God. Verse 21: "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh thereof." This is the cleverest kind of surgical operation that was ever performed, without loss of blood, use of antiseptics or anesthetics, without ligature, etc. And out of this rib he made a woman. Why did God make a man of dust and the woman out of the man's rib? Why did he breathe into the nostrils of the man and forget to do it to the woman? The only reasonable explanation that can be given is that, in those days, among the Chaldeans, woman was considered an inferior creature, possessing no soul. She was the slave sometimes, but the servant always. She was the creature of man's lust, of his passion, and she was placed in the Bible by the man that wrote it in just the position and condition she occupied at that period. This is a gross falsehood, it is debasing, it is an infamous libel on truth. Does any woman believe that she is a bone of her husband's bone, and flesh of his flesh? Verse 25: "And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." What is there extraordinary about that? Savage races up to this present time are found in many instances nude. Cæsar describes the Germans as bathing promiscuously in a nude state. Columbus found our American Indians nude. Evidently a degree of civilization had already been attained when this story was evolved. The story had its origin in the romantic regions of Chaldea, somewhere in the neighborhood of the Persian gulf, near the river Euphrates. The singer, the story-teller, or the traveling minstrel tramped from place to place, from one shepherd's tent to another, relating the story to his crude, barbarous countrymen, reciting the curious yet pretty fable of how man was made; the world made; the garden made; how gold, onyx, and bdellium were found, and where; lauding and glorifying their own country, and making out that they were the immediate descendants of the gods. Every nation has its fairy tales, its fables, its myths, its songs, and its romances. Whether they have their origin in Egypt, or come down embellished from Mount Olympus, whether they are the fairy tales of the Rhine, or those from the river Euphrates in Chaldea, they are only the products of imagination. "They spring from fountains and from sacred groves, And holy streams that flow into the sea" (Od. x, 350). Next we come to chapter iii--the childish account of the serpent, and the woman and the fruit she ate. The serpent is made to say, verse 5: "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good from evil." The first knowledge they acquired was, that they discovered they were without clothes. "And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons." Why sewed? With what? Aprons were a very late invention, and were never intended for any such purpose. And then, the conversation between the Lord God and Adam! God calls for Adam while he is hiding. God inquires with a Chinese simplicity, "Where art thou?" This is the blandest kind of conversation that has ever taken place between mortal man and a God. Adam tells him that he has eaten some fruit. Like the boy who had stolen jam out of the jar, it seems Adam could not lie. God grows petulant, angry, cross; scolds him, and immediately deprives him of his position and turns him out of the garden. God had two reasons for doing what he did. One reason was to punish Adam for disobedience; the second, that God got afraid of Adam. Verse 22: "And the Lord God said, Behold the man is become as one of us" (were there more gods than one?), "to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand; and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"---- Was it the fear of competition--that men might interfere with God's occupation, infringe on his monopoly? It seems to have a priestly ring, this forbidding and preventing ordinary mortals to become intelligent. The story is so framed as to express the line of conduct of the higher towards the lower, of the slave towards his master, of the laborer towards his lord; and the 19th verse expresses the subjugation of the poor ignorant creature: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." It is the church and the priest that have taken care to keep the dust in the eyes of the masses. They are the cherubim with a flaming sword that keep the masses away from the tree of life. Chapter iv relates to the crime of murder. God instigates the crime. Abel kept sheep. Cain tilled the ground. Cain brought vegetables to God, and Abel brought the firstlings of his flock and fat. God's taste ran in the meat line; he was somewhat of an epicurean. He respected Abel and his offering, but did not respect Cain's. Then God asks Cain why he is cross, and after Cain kills his brother Abel, he, God, says: Where is thy brother Abel? And God dispossesses Cain and drives him east of Eden to Arabia. A very arbitrary landlord this God. Chapter v: The fourth chapter winds up with Enos the son of Seth. Verse 26: "Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord." Now, Adam lived 930 years, Seth 912 years, and Enos 905 years. God during this period was wholly occupied with these people. Murder is the only incident of importance during the first thousand years. God takes a long rest for nearly 2,000 years before anything of importance occurs. This chapter treats of the genealogy, age, and death of the patriarchs from Adam to Noah. The records of creation are by no means harmonious. There are no less than one hundred and twenty opinions on the subject. The difference between the latest and remotest dates is no less than 3,268 years. Here are some of the dates of the supposed creation of the world. They may be interesting to some, as showing the uncertainty and inaccuracy: Hebrew, 4004 B.C. Septuagint, 5873  ,,  Talmudistic, 5344  ,,  Scaliger, 3950  ,,  Petovias, 3984  ,,  Dr. Hale, 5411  ,,  etc. Here we give the genealogy of Adam and his line: Age. 930 Adam, Born 4004 B.C. Died 3074 B.C. Abel,  ,,  3875  ,,  912 Seth,  ,,  3874  ,,  905 Enos,  ,,  3769 [5] ,,  910 Cainon,  ,,  3679  ,,  895 Mahaloled,  ,,  3609  ,,  962 Jared,  ,,  3544  ,,  815 Enos,  ,,  3282  ,,  969 Methuselah,  ,,  3317  ,,  777 Lamech,  ,,  3130  ,,  365 Enoch,  ,,  3017  ,,  (Translated?) 815 Noah,  ,,  2948  ,,  500 bef. flood. } 315 aft.   ,,   } We may venture to make a very strong interrogation mark after these years. They are, however, in harmony with the rest of the story. Noah closes the fabulous period. We hear no more of God's doings until we come to Abraham, 1921 B.C. And Abraham reached the age of 175 years only. Chapter vi, on the sons of God, etc., is next. I beg to remind the reader we are still in Chaldea, near the Gulf of Persia; near the river Euphrates; near the garden of Eden, where God created man; where we found gold and precious stones; the place where murder was committed; near Arabia, etc. The geographical location is important, and let the reader also remember that the whole tract of land where all these transactions are supposed to have taken place is not so large as any moderate-sized state in our Union. If you will examine a map of this particular region, it will help to bring the truth to your mind, and add considerably to your understanding. It is also well to bear in mind that in this small territory the art of agriculture was pursued, as well as fruit-growing, sewing was invented and aprons were made, and Eve had an apron before she had a dress, and this high state of civilization existed as soon as man and woman appeared on earth! What a contrast with other barbaric, savage, and uncivilized tribes! Eve had a decided advantage over the young female that was captured when Columbus landed December 12th. She was perfectly naked; so says history. Verse 2: "The sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair; and they took them wives all which they chose." Sons of God! Was God married? If so, to whom? How many wives had he? How many sons and daughters? Where was God's residence, if he had any? Were his domestic relations pleasant or not? Was his family large or small? Pray give us some information. Our theologians will tell us, "Ah, that has a spiritual meaning." Verse 3: "And the Lord [not God] said: My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh." Who?--God? "Yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty." This is a crafty statement, because it shows that the average length of life was the same as it is now, with some few exceptions, and as the fabulous age was past, the only way to get out of the difficulty was to give timely notice that extraordinary ages should not occur again. Verse 4: "There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown." Who were these descendants of God that became mighty and men of renown? After God's sons intermarry with the daughters of men, the affairs of man grow worse, instead of better. And God grows despondent: Verse 5: "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Think of God's sons causing all this wickedness on earth. He ought to have brought them up better. What can we expect of a God that cannot raise his own children properly? "Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart." This exhibits the profound ignorance of God. Though he made man, he did not know what the various organs in the body were for. He ought to have known that the heart does not think. Its function is to circulate the blood--a truth which was not discovered until 1618 by Harvey, of England. Verse 6: "And it repented the Lord that he had made man on earth, and it grieved him at his heart." Ha! God has a heart, and he has flesh, and he has sons; he knows what is good, evil, wickedness; repents and grieves; and has domestic relations with--evidently ladies, by whom he has children. We will not mind the preparations of the ark, or the shipbuilding instructions given by God. A God that knew something of mechanics, shipbuilding, dimensions, measurement, etc.--no wonder theologians call God a designer, an architect. He showed some skill in the construction of this boat. As soon as Noah had everything prepared, had loaded his cattle, etc., food and provender, God was ready to destroy his own sons and their relations by drowning them. CHAPTER VII. THE DELUGE. As to the region where the deluge occurred--on the northern edge ascend the Persian mountains; on the east the steep and lofty parallel chains of the Indo-Persian boundary mountains, and on the south the plateau for a thousand miles along the Persian gulf and Arabian sea is bounded by the wild terraced regions of Beloochistan and Faristan. The second division includes the mountainous regions of Armenia, Koordistan, and Azerbijan. Here the table-land is compressed about half its general width. From this plateau, of which a part is mentioned in scripture as the "mountains of Ararat," rises the volcanic cone commonly styled Mount Ararat, to the hight of 17,212 feet above the sea level. The highlands of Syria rise gradually from the neighboring desert to the hight of 10,000 feet in Libanus and Antilibanus, and slope steeply in terraces down to the narrow coastlands of Phoenicia and Palestine. Of the Syrian and Arabian lowlands, the south is hot and arid, with almost no oasis; but the north is watered by the Tigris and Euphrates. Near this isolated corner of Asia, in the neighborhood of the Persian gulf and the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, where the deluge is supposed to have occurred, in the lowlands of that region, Chaldea, immense chains of mountains run in several directions, with highlands 10,000 feet above the level of the sea. Verse 4: "For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth." This deluge is supposed to have taken place about 2348 B.C. Hale puts it at 3154 B.C. The sons of God came upon earth and married the daughters of men about 2948 B.C.; about this date ought to be nearer the flood. Noah was 600 years old when he floated in his ark. We will consider, first, a general deluge. A deluge over the whole earth is an impossibility. 1. We have to take in consideration the inequality of the earth's surface--lowlands, highlands, hills and mountains, plateaus, etc. As to mountains: Asia possesses no less than sixty or seventy mountains, the highest being some 29,000 feet above the sea's level--the Himalaya, Everest. Africa boasts of some thirty or forty mountains, the Kenia and Killamandja being 20,000 feet above the level of the sea, the other mountains grading downward in hight. Europe is adorned with some seventy or eighty mountains, Mount Blanc being the highest, others ranging downwards. South America boasts of some forty or more mountains, the Tupengater being the highest, 22,450 feet above the level of the sea. North America counts some seventy or more mountains, Mt. Elias being 17,900 above the level of the sea. We have plateaus and table-lands ranging from 10,000 feet above the level of the sea downward to near the sea's level. The great basins between the highest points of the earth's surface are filled with water. These immense expanses form oceans, seas, lakes, rivers. The ocean bed is just as uneven as the dry portion of the earth's surface. The numerous islands are the mountains of the ocean bed, some of greater, others of lesser extent. 2. The fluid part of the terrestrial globe fills the hollow places of the solid portion of the earth's crust. These are the great and small depressions, or greater and smaller basins. 3. The earth's weight has always been the same, neither increased nor diminished. This includes both the solid and liquid part of this terrestrial globe. 4. The fluid portion of this terrestrial globe has neither increased nor diminished. It cannot, because the quantity of oxygen and hydrogen is limited to this earth. None can get away, and none can come to it. 5. Water may change its position, or state--split up into elements; make clouds, mist, hail, snow, or rain, or dew--but it ultimately returns to the great basin of water where it came from. 6. If water rises in any one locality beyond the ordinary sea level, water has diminished in some other locality. The quantity of water on the earth's surface has not increased, except in one locality. 7. Rain cannot fall over the whole surface of this earth at one time. 8. There is always daylight and sunshine, night and darkness, on this earth. 9. Heat and cold vary in the different parts of this earth. The atmosphere is different in the various parts of the earth's surface. There is a perpetual winter, summer, spring, or autumn in various parts on this globe. 10. The rays of the sun strike the various portions of the earth at different times. This variation in the direction of the sun's rays produces a corresponding variation in the intensity of the sun's heat and light at different places, and accounts for the difference between the torrid and the frigid regions, etc. 11. The atmosphere does not, and cannot, carry beyond a certain percentage of aqueous vapor. When it becomes overcharged the moisture must fall, in raindrops when the temperature is warm enough. 12. The sun's heat regulates the amount of aqueous vapor the atmosphere can carry in the form of clouds. When the atmosphere is fully saturated, rain must fall. 13. When the atmosphere is cool or cold, the raindrops congeal, and we have snow or hail. 14. There are regions on the earth where it never rains, probably never rained. The rainless region of Asia is of vast extent. It includes part of Tibet, the great desert of Gobi, and part of Mongolia--a space estimated to comprise about 2,000,000 square miles. There are other rainless regions on the face of the earth's surface. There is a great diversity in the yearly amount of rainfall; the highest is about 60 inches, the lowest 21 and less. 15. There is no great difference between the polar and equatorial diameter of the earth, the average number of miles being about 8,000. Taking the above facts in consideration--the conformation of the earth's surface, the elevation above the sea level, table-lands or plateaus, and mountains, the fixed quantity of water upon the surface of the earth, the influence of heat and cold, the condition of the atmosphere, etc., a general deluge must be rigidly excluded. Supposing it rained forty days and forty nights, how many inches of rainfall could we possibly get? We can know to an inch the quantity of rain that would fall. The water would certainly roll down the hills and mountains, fill up the lakes and rivers, overflow the banks, and rise in the lowlands to a certain hight. The deluge, Noah's deluge, was a local affair, if it ever occurred. Granting such a flood did take place, it never extended beyond that portion of Asia, Chaldea. Supposing that the rivers Tigris and Euphrates may have overflowed and caused a flood say of fifty feet rise above the level of the sea (which is impossible, because the surplus waters would flow into the seas and oceans), how insignificant is the rise of fifty feet even in comparison with table-lands 10,000 feet above the sea-level, and mountains 20 to 30,000 feet above the sea-level. As to the extent of the rainstorm that caused this deluge, I do not suppose that the clouds held in the atmosphere extended over 500, or say 1,000, square miles over the region where the rain fell. As to collecting the animals for the ark from all over the globe, that is just as ridiculous as the deluge itself. It is to be presumed that the person or persons who wrote the first seven chapters of the Bible had not the slightest idea of the geographical condition of the earth's surface. It was not known. They thought that their locality embraced the whole earth. Even in Columbus's time they had no idea of the extent of this earth. The seas that they probably had some knowledge of may have been the Gulf of Persia, the Red sea, the Mediterranean or Arabian sea, probably the Caspian. That was about the extent. They had means neither of land travel nor of navigation. Verse 20: "Fifteen cubits upward did the water prevail, and the mountains were covered." A cubit, standard, contains 21 inches. Fifteen multiplied by 21 gives 315 inches, or 26 feet 3 inches. How can 26 feet 3 inches of water cover plateaus 10,000 feet high and mountains like the Ida, 4,000 feet, and the Himalayas 29,000 feet in height? Mount Ararat in Asia Minor is 17,112 feet high. These are figures. They do not lie. We have here positive proof. I defy contradiction. Every man and woman with a little sense can prove it. And any priest or clergyman that will maintain the truth of a general deluge after reading this statement, is either a fool, or a fraud and an infamous liar. In fact, the entire rainfall during the forty days and nights would have had as much effect on this globe as a pint of water would have to drown an elephant. Verse 21: "And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man." Verse 22: "All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, all that was on dry land, died." Verse 23: "And every living substance was destroyed, which was upon the face of the ground, both man and cattle and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth; and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark." Verse 24: "And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days." Mount Ararat is situated in Persia about 150 to 200 miles south of the Black sea, and about 300 miles west of the Caspian sea, about 500 miles east of Aleppo and the Mediterranean sea, and about 700 miles north of the Gulf of Persia, from Mount Sinai about 1,000 or more miles northeast, and a similar distance from the Red sea. Arabia is about 700 miles across between the Persian gulf and the Red sea. The distance between the shores of the Persian gulf and the Caspian sea is about five hundred miles. The Caspian chain of mountains are situated about two hundred miles north of Mount Ararat, and they extend from the Sea of Azof north, running southwest to the Caspian sea. The entire tract of territory where this deluge is said to have occurred does not embrace one thousand miles in any given direction, and takes in but two countries--Turkey and Persia--and only a portion of either. It does not extend farther north than the Caspian mountains and the Black sea, east than the Mediterranean sea, west than the Caspian sea, and south than the Persian gulf and Arabia. Turkistan, Afghanistan, and Beloochistan form the eastern boundary of Persia. The twenty-six feet three inches of the rise of water in consequence of the rain could not have extended beyond the limits indicated above. At the period of the deluge there were immense countries east of Turkistan, Afghanistan, and Beloochistan--Russia north, the Chinese empire and Hindostan farthest south. Europe and Africa could not be reached. So that all living substance was not destroyed and could not be destroyed. Nor was all living substance destroyed in the country where the flood occurred, because those living on high table-lands were out of reach of the flood. We must necessarily draw our own conclusions as to the truth or falsity of the statements contained in verses 21, 22, 23. Some destruction of life may have taken place, limited to the locality. There are other evidences that go to show the incorrectness of the scripture. The Hindoo era, or the era of the Caleyung, dates 3001 B.C., seven hundred and fifty-six years before the deluge. This country was flourishing at the time of the flood. Moreover, the Hindoos counted their months by the progress of the sun through the Zodiacs. Keep the figures of the deluge in mind, 2348 B.C. China, north of Hindostan and east of the deluged territory, was flourishing 2700 B.C. It was not touched by the flood. It had its own floods, separate and distinct from Noah's. In 2347 B.C., one year after the flood, Noah made wine from grapes. Babylon was founded by Belus 2245 B.C. Astronomical observations were made 2234 B.C. Bricks were made 2247 B.C. Babylon was built 2247 B.C. All this region was in a state of civilization one hundred years later, when all men had been destroyed, and the region had been under water twenty-six feet three inches for one hundred and fifty days. One hundred years seems a long time, and a great deal can be done, that's true. In those days civilization was exceedingly slow. People did not progress so rapidly as we do in this New World. There are regions where hardly any progress has been made. They are at a standstill, as it is termed. The people live, feed, and die. The inconsistency, the untruth, of the story of the deluge will be palpable to everyone, if he or she will take the trouble to examine the geographical, physical, and historical facts. I especially call the attention of hysterical, fanatical theologians, supernaturalists, and the whole priestly class, to the declaration that God had nothing to do with this deluge; that the God in whom they believe must be an ass to think that he can drown out the whole terrestrial globe with forty days and nights' rain, with a rise of water of twenty-six feet three inches. It is impossible to enter into every detail in this brief statement. There is, however, ample proof that a general deluge never occurred, and that all animals, whether men or beasts, were never destroyed. How much honor it would reflect for a convention of clergymen, or a gathering of archbishops in saintly conclave assembled, to solemnly declare the whole beginning of Genesis a fabrication, a fiction, a fable--that God had nothing to do with any such performance; that God could not do anything so foolish; that God never did anything contrary to the laws of nature; that neither God nor man could, if they wished, do anything contrary to the laws of nature. And that "We, the archbishops, bishops, and clergy in general, further declare and aver, that we, the sacred representatives of the ignorant masses, no longer believe that God, the so-called father almighty, created either heaven or earth, or beast or man, or anything; that we repudiate, deny, and reject all of the statements made in the book called the Bible; that we do not believe in any supernatural interference; that we have erred and have misinstructed and misguided the masses; that the whole story is false, frivolous, and incredible; that neither the creation, as recited, nor the deluge, or any part thereof, as described, is true." CHAPTER VIII. THE SCRIPTURAL GOD--THE CREATION. The Chaldeans were undoubtedly great admirers of nature at the time we first hear the name of Abraham mentioned in connection with the Bible, about the year 1921 B.C. The people had already arrived at a high degree of civilization. The country belonged to the Assyrian empire under Ninus the Jupiter, 2069 B.C. How long this section of country had been populated, and its inhabitants under a proper form of government, we have no record--in all probability, for many centuries. The Chaldeans had already invented a judicial astrology, which was transmitted to the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. The science of astronomy was known to them, and of it there are records as early as 2234 B.C. The science of arithmetic was used by them--in all probability invented by them; concerning it we have nothing recorded. The kingdom of Babylon existed 2245 B.C. An art of architecture of some kind was already in use among its people, as we see from the fact that they had built important structures. We have no records as to the proficiency they had arrived at in any other branch of science or art. That the art of writing was known to them is probable, otherwise they could not have recorded certain facts about astronomy. The credit of first using hieroglyphics, 2212 B.C., is given to Athates, or Hermes, the Egyptian. The correct division of the days of the week, the months, and the seasons may probably have been known to them, though the Jews take the credit. That these Chaldeans were great observers will not be disputed--otherwise they could not have discovered the fixed stars, planetary system, etc. That they must have had considerable intellectual qualities--perceptive powers and skill in reasoning--developed will be admitted, inasmuch as they were the inventors of astrology, and of what more we have no knowledge. They were great admirers of nature. We may infer that from the fact that they were students of astronomy, acute and close observers of nature. What myths or fables they had, we have at the present time no idea. We have no historical knowledge of these people. We know very little of their manners, culture, science, arts, degree of civilization. Other events occurred about that period. A Phoenician colony under Partholani landed in Ireland 2048 B.C. In 2207 B.C. the government of China was established--it had an imperial dynasty. Fohi was the Chinese monarch. In 2089 B.C. Sicyon was king of Greece. In 2188 B.C. Egypt was established. In 2085 B.C. Egypt was conquered by the shepherd kings of Phoenicia. In 1998 B.C. Ching Hong teaches the Chinese the art of husbandry, and the method of making bread from wheat and wine from rice. In 2095 B.C. pyramids and canals in Egypt. The science of geometry begins to be cultivated. In 2100 B.C. sculpture and painting are employed to commemorate the exploits of Asymandyas. We have no difficulty in arriving at a conclusion that considerable progress had been made in the art of government, in the political and social world, in the arts and sciences, and also in the moral and religious departments of life. As to whatever myths and fables they had, of their origin we know very little, or I may say nothing. The story of the creation and the deluge is in all probability native to the soil. The deluge was in all likelihood a local affair--an overflow of the river Euphrates or the Gulf of Persia. Whether it rained forty days and nights or more, water enough could not fall to the ground to do any serious damage, beyond the locality where it occurred. It would be not amiss even for the most pious, God-fearing man to understand that the rainwater that falls to the surface of the earth was originally taken from the waters that are found on the surface of the earth. The actual quantity of water on the earth was no more after the flood, or after any flood, than before. The water changes position from one locality to another; it does not increase or diminish in quantity, whether it consolidates, evaporates, or liquefies. Whatever elementary form it may assume, the law of gravitation holds its elements down to mother earth. The idea entertained by many theologians, that the whole earth was covered with water, is absurd. We have not water enough on the surface of this earth to serve any such purpose. This problem is just as feasible as trying to drown a man in two inches of water--attempting to cover the entire earth with the water that is upon it. From historical evidence we gather that the people that inhabited this region occupied their time chiefly with raising cattle, and were prone both to the observation of nature and to superstition. The nervous system had at this time undergone considerable training and culture. Their faculties were already developed. They discussed and reasoned about current subjects, especially about those subjects which were nearest and dearest to them--religion and politics. And we are still discussing the same subjects with as much eagerness, acrimony, and hate as these Chaldean shepherds did. They were adorers of nature, which was perfectly in harmony with their occupation. The beauties, the phases, the phenomena of nature, these they could not explain. Ignorant of their character and composition, not understanding the natural, they reasoned themselves into conclusions that there must be a power beyond that sets all these things in motion. They knew nothing of God. In all probability they created nothing new, but may have modified whatever was handed down to them by their fore-fathers--notions, customs, well-outlined rules of conduct, observances, policy, government, etc. The wiser and best-instructed portion of the community selected those things that to them were most beneficial, and for which they thought they ought to be grateful--in their wonderment and admiration they made selection of that which was to them most striking--and this gradually led to a systematization of certain qualities, certain excellences. All things in nature are object-teachers. When we have seen a thing several times, we know it--learn its qualities, etc. So the forefathers of the Chaldeans, admiring nature, came to recognizing what was best, either in themselves or round about them. In order to present these ideas, powers, and excellences in the most striking manner to the senses, symbolic representations, or typical forms, were made, about in the same or similar manner as playthings are made to instruct and amuse children. All the idols and mythological gods are drawn from nature, associated and endowed with such qualities as the human beings had from time to time attained. The motives that suggested these were just as pure as any motives are now. We have symbols and idols among us at this day, four thousand years later. It makes no difference whether it is Christ on a stick, the Virgin Mary on a canvas, or the sacred heart of a saint, it amounts to precisely the same thing; it is object-teaching--an object-lesson. These Chaldeans had any number of symbols and idols, and men were assigned to watch and guard them. They had their ceremonies, their gowns or priestly garbs; they had their places for worship, out of doors or indoors--everything that gave beauty, dignity, and sanctity to their performances. In short, we may conclude that they had what may be called an established religion, with ceremonies, sacrifices, idols, as well as social, moral, and political rules to govern them. There was dissension in those days as there is now. Men differed, argued, discussed; and differences arose. New ideas were intolerated then, as they are now. The old would not yield to the new. Wrangling, anger, passion, jealousy, led to new formations, antagonistic to the old. The old systems had in all probability grown corrupt, domineering, cruel, selfish, and rapacious. A reformation of some kind was in order. Men of ability and sagacity began to grow skeptical as regards the quality and ability of these numerous idols. Something similar is agitating the world to-day. Doubtless it is always to be found. Abraham was an agitator, a reformer, if you will. Josephus thus speaks of him (Chap. VII): "He was a person of great sagacity, both for understanding all things and persuading his hearers, and not mistaken in his opinions; for which reason he began to have higher notions of virtue than others had, and he determined to renew and to change the opinions all men happened then to have concerning God; for he was the first that ventured to publish this notion: That there was but one God, the creator of the universe; and that as to other (gods) if they contributed anything to the happiness of men, each of them afforded it only according to his appointment, and not of their own power. His opinion was derived from the irregular phenomena that were visible both at land and sea, as well as those that happened to the sun and moon and all the heavenly bodies. 'If,' said he, 'these bodies had power of their own, they would certainly take care of their own regular motions; but since they do not preserve such regularity, they make it plain, that so far as they coöperate to our advantage, they do it not of their own abilities; but as they are subservient to him that commands them, to whom alone we ought justly to offer our honor and thanksgiving.' For which doctrines when the Chaldeans, and the people of Mesopotamia, raised a tumult against him, he thought fit to leave that country." In other words, he was driven from his country for sedition and heresy, when he was seventy-five years old. He settled down in a land called Canaan, where he built an altar, and performed a sacrifice to God. In this manner Abraham began to cultivate a reformation and religion among his own people, who were quite numerous. The Egyptians at this period were in a flourishing condition. Canaan was invaded by famine. So Abraham went down to Egypt, "both to partake of the plenty they enjoyed, and to become an auditor for their priests, and to know what they said concerning the gods; designing either to follow them, if they had better notions than he, or convert them to a better way, if his own notions proved the truer." At this time, too, much dissension, quarrel, and antagonism existed between the religious orders, and Abraham was not going to lose such an excellent opportunity. Josephus describes the condition of affairs as follows: "For whereas the Egyptians were formerly addicted to different customs, and despised one another's sacred and accustomed rites, and were very angry one with another on that account, Abraham conferred with each of them, and confuting the reasoning they made use of, every one for their own practices, he demonstrated that such reasoning was vain and void of truth; whereupon he was admired by them in those conferences, as a very wise man and of great sagacity when he discoursed on any subject he undertook; and this not only in understanding it, but in persuading other men also to assent to him. He communicated to them arithmetic, and delivered to them the science of astronomy," etc. Finding perhaps that he could not make proselytes he returned to Canaan. He there divided the tract of land between himself and Lot, each one pursuing his own particular course, Abraham with his notions and Lot with his, unable to agree. An incident worthy of notice occurred. The Assyrians made war on a number of kings, the Sodomites and Lot among them. The Assyrians conquered, and Lot, among the rest, was made captive. Abraham, with three hundred and eighteen men, pursued the Assyrians, slew them, captured all they had, and gained a signal victory--thus showing that Abraham was a power. Lot's affairs with his daughters we pass over, since they have no special interest for us. Abraham had several wives or women, by whom he had a number of children. He had six sons by Katurah, Ishmael by Hagar, Isaac by Sarah, etc. None of the sons adopted his method of thinking except Isaac, who at the age of twenty-five was to have been sacrificed to God. Isaac, being a mild-mannered young man, generous, and obedient to his father's will, readily consented. Upon that, Abraham changed his mind. Isaac then became the heir both of his property and of his ideas concerning God. Abraham had two brothers, Nahor and Haron. Haron left a son, Lot, and two daughters, Sarai and Milcha. Nahor married Milcha and Abraham married Sarai. In this manner the family concentration began. And when Isaac was forty it was decided that he should marry the granddaughter of his brother Nahor, Rebeka, the sister of Laban. Isaac in turn made choice of Jacob as heir to his ideas and property--who took flight on account of Esau, and landed safely at his uncle Laban's house in Mesopotamia. Jacob married Laban's daughters, Leah and Rachel, as well as their handmaids, Zilpha and Bilhah. Now, Laban and his family were idolators. So were Esau and his family. Rachel took along with her the images of the gods which, according to their laws, they used to worship in their own country, etc. Jacob raised his children strict to the rules laid down by his grandfather and father; and the views as regards the rites of worship and circumcision, as well as God in the abstract with all the carnal passions and emotions of man that formerly were the attributes of the idols, as also the sacrifices. The story of Joseph is too well known to be repeated. It is quite enough for our purpose that a famine drove this Jacob's family, as it did Abraham, to Egypt, where they increased and multiplied during a period of nearly four hundred years; that Joseph was famous in the land, and the king gave Jacob and his children leave to live in Heliopolis--for in that city the king's shepherds had their pasturage. This in brief is the story, stripped of the peculiar phraseology, which no doubt was in those days customary. The trouble had begun with Terah, Abraham's father, who hated the Chaldeans; and the Chaldeans returned the same with interest, I suppose. So they moved to Haran in Canaan and settled down on a tract of land, by the right of squatter sovereignty, as it would be called in our times. Terah, the first squatter, turned this land over as a heritage to his son, Abraham; Abraham to Isaac, and Isaac to Jacob. In this manner it became the promised land, the heritage of their fathers. It is no easy matter to suppress and eradicate a practice, a habit, a custom, once firmly ingrafted in a community. Prohibit it as much as you will, it will be done secretly. So after circumcising the Hamerites and Shechemites, the sons of Jacob slaughtered them, on account of the seduction of Dinah, Jacob's daughter. He and his family had to leave for fear of their neighbors, so Jacob told his household to put away the strange gods that were among them, and "be clean and change your garments," he said (Gen. xxxv, 2). This abstract idea of God that Abraham called into life was not so firmly rooted as might have been expected. The taint of the ancient gods more or less remained among them and occasionally cropped up here and there in a most prominent manner. For four hundred years we hear nothing of God or his workings--whether the Jews flourished or were oppressed--nor have the other descendants ever made mention. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob call on this imaginary god when in an emergency, when some task has to be accomplished, some journey has to be undertaken, or a battle has to be fought. During the whole of the period they were in Egypt, notwithstanding they were sorely oppressed, this God paid no attention to them, until a man arose that produced a great crisis in the affairs of this people, in the destiny of this family which had grown into a nation. This was really the first reformation--that is, modification--of the existing religious practices--their numerous gods, perhaps their rites, etc. The sacrifices the Jews retained, with most of the usages and priestly rituals. How many reformations or modifications had taken place before Abraham the reformer, we do not know; and how long these gods (they were very numerous) were in existence we know still less. The evolution of these idols, the existing gods, did not take place all of a sudden. It may have taken thousands of years for anything we know. It required considerable mental training to produce them. Intelligence had assumed some importance, because the people had become proficient in argument, skillful in reasoning, and observers of nature. The ordinary barbarian possesses no such capabilities. His brain is not sufficiently cultured. So long as his wants are amply supplied, there is no necessity to exert himself, the nervous system lies inactive, and this inactivity involves the perpetuation of ignorance. We may reasonably presume that these Chaldeans, these shepherds, had through many centuries of slow culture acquired the knowledge they possessed, the customs and habits they practiced, the laws they promulgated, and the rules of conduct enacted both for social and political purposes. And any innovation on the established laws was resisted and punished, pretty much as it is to-day. So when Abraham, or Terah his father before him, started the reformation, it caused a good deal of commotion and alarm. The upholders of the settled state of affairs were shocked. Anger, passion, partisanship, ran their course then, as they do now. These idolators were just as intolerant then as Christians are to-day. It was either submit or leave. Thus Abraham's and Terah's leaving the land of their fathers and settling on a tract of land where they could cultivate their new idea, their new God, was without any special act, without miracle, without supernaturalism, without mystery, perfectly human, perfectly natural. CHAPTER IX. THE CREATION OF GOD--ABRAHAM. God, such God as we know of now, like all other things and beings on this terrestrial globe was evolved very, very slowly in the minds of man--crude, ill-shapen, ill-fashioned, grotesque, barbarous, savage, semi-civilized: harmonizing with his existing mental condition and all his surroundings; a product of man's rudeness, of his uncultured nature, his inexperienced special senses, with his nervous system just emerging from an instinctive animal life to a grade or two above its former intelligence--the first step towards real humanity. God was not always presented to humanity in his present guise. Oh, no; everyone with a moderate degree of intelligence who chooses to examine the records will find that God has undergone vast and important changes--changes in tendencies and character, conforming with the progressive or retrogressive forms of political and social life of the various communities, corresponding with the periods of the time in which they lived. The idea, in its primary conception, was slowly evolved, without special meaning or signification, dark, mysterious, incomprehensible. We may say, however, that this idea of God was endowed with characteristics best known to men, but of a higher quality than ordinarily then existing; largely reflecting their makers, an embodiment of their own powers and capabilities. There was a time, no matter how remote, when there were creatures resembling the present form of man but of inferior nervous development, that had no knowledge of either God or religion. Nor had man in those ages any more intelligence than he had acquired by experience, or was necessary for his immediate use. It improved as the exigencies of his wants arose, fresh experience leading to new observations, slowly adding to the already accumulated stock. The intelligence of to-day would have been useless a hundred years ago, to the same race even, and of less use still two hundred years ago, and so on. It is very doubtful whether man at first was even conscious of his own existence, any more than the higher type of brute life. This consciousness slowly dawned upon him as his intelligence increased. A child is not conscious of its own existence. It exists so long as the necessary material is contributed towards its existence, or until it has grown strong enough to contribute towards its own. It may after a while acquire intelligence sufficient to become conscious of its own existence or not. The same rule holds good among the types of man such as we find on earth at the present time. During the early stages of man's existence, the muscular powers were exercised most, we may say almost exclusively, the special senses serving in their function as a guide for those powers, with the degree of intelligence obtained from the number of impressions received. These senses had acquired their several experiences from the necessities that from time to time were made manifest. There are writers who make use of extraordinary expressions in regard to nature, as for example, that Nature is mighty, beautiful, wise, etc. Nature is mighty only under certain conditions. Peculiar combinations of elements are essential. The presence or absence of the sun's heat plays always an important part. Nature's being beautiful depends largely upon the education of the senses, the capability of discerning symmetry, harmony, color, etc., and this is acquired by comparison, taste, and habit. What strikes one eye as beautiful, may have just a contrary effect on another, or be passed with perfect indifference by a third. As to wisdom, nature can be wise only through a cultured, well-educated, evenly balanced mind. The expression is applicable only to man. Wisdom is a particular quality eminently and evidently the product of a highly trained nervous system. It is not an easy task at the present time to unravel the mental process of the earliest races of man that first led to the formation and the adoption of the idea that something existed more potent and more powerful than themselves. Yet if we carefully examine the mental condition of some of the wild, barbarous nations existing at the present time, we may infer, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, the mental process the earliest races of man were capable of. Races or tribes, no matter how low in the scale of civilization, that were perfectly secure in their possessions, amply provided by nature against the encroachments of other races, man or animals, existed right along perfectly content, exerting themselves just enough to gather in those substances which they found contributive to the sustenance of their lives. The surplus time was spent in gamboling, frisking, playing, amusing themselves in their primitive condition like children of nature as they were. Progress they made none. There was no occasion for it. Their senses were exercised to the extent of their immediate wants and no more. The natural head of the family or tribe was the oldest, the father. He controlled or governed his descendants. So long as the father was able to exercise his supreme power he was the recognized head, adviser, leader, etc. While in this condition, the primitive customs, habits, or usages practiced in their natural mode of living began, and continued with very few changes for ages. Their language was as simple and crude as their mode of life, just sufficient for their wants. This mode of communication originated mainly from the necessities of life, as hunger, danger, pleasure, protection, surprise, fear, etc. For all these they found expressions, sounds that conveyed the notions to one another, quite intelligible among themselves. They adopted names for things and beings with which they came in contact in their daily lives, and for such instruments, utensils, and clothing as they from time to time invented or discovered by accident. The sounds that expressed their immediate necessity of communicating with one another, their wants--the cries of call, pain, etc.--had no form in particular, no grammatical construction, no rules. Their emotions and passions were limited, because they knew no wants, no conflicts, other than those that arise from feelings inspired by their five senses. And they really had language enough for all purposes--suitable and ample for their condition in life. Arts and sciences they had none. Their simple domestic arrangements were as primitive as they were. Their furniture consisted of little or nothing. Cooking utensils they needed none. There was no occasion to cook; nature's food was ample. This they collected, selected, and fed upon. Clothing they had no use for, in the warm climate they lived in. They were clad in nature's garb, male and female alike. Innocence and virtue was well understood among them. They were moral in their way, committed no wrong--there was no occasion for it. There was plenty for everyone. The larders of nature were free, open, and plentiful. Therefore all were satisfied and happy. Wealth or property they had. All they surveyed was theirs. What belonged to one belonged to the other. Mine and thine was unknown. The more civilized qualifications of property right developed many centuries later. Commerce they knew nothing of. There was no need for that, since furniture, utensils, implements of agriculture, weapons, clothing of any kind, they had no use for. They had no laws--nor law-makers, nor justices, nor judges, nor any officials known in later times. And what is more, they had no God, or idol, or myth, or symbol, or worship, or prayer or religion, or soul, or spirit. Nor did they know anything about what we indicate by the epithets physical or metaphysical, neither theological nor psychological, neither gnostic nor agnostic. They did not know of any of those things. These were evolved and invented later, as the necessities and exigencies arose, as their wants increased, and circumstances changed from internal to external conditions. Consequently, their language was limited. They made use of a limited number of words, or produced articulate sound enough to express just what they wanted, and no more. They may have had two or three hundred different words or sounds in use. We have men to-day among us that have not many more words at command, and their ideas generally correspond in number and quality to their stock of words. The stock of words and the stock of ideas always depend upon the amount of experience and the amount of exercise the five senses have had; together with the urgencies and difficulties they have had to contend with. The power of observation is developed in accordance as the opportunities arise. Each particular special sense develops its own faculties, from the practice, use, and experience of that sense, the role it is called upon to play as necessities arise. And as each object is perceived or observed by the special sense, it is recorded, a picture of the same is retained in the great nervous storehouse for future reference. The retention and recognition of the same goes to the formation of memory. As the stock of objects increases, words or sounds designating the same also increase in number, and the material for the formation of ideas is also largely increased. Ideas can be formed only about such things as we know, or rather such things as any one special sense has been impressed with, has perceived and recognized. Those things or beings by which any one sense has not been impressed, the mind neither has perceived nor is able to recognize. Everyone, whether barbarian or civilized, is perfectly familiar with those things or beings that immediately surround him--that is, all those things and beings which the senses have already been impressed with, perceived and recognized. Sounds, or words, have been invented to designate all such; and these are known; the picture representing any one object is retained, stored away in the great nervous storehouse, the brain--are remembered. The oftener a thing is perceived, the more familiar it becomes and the more easily recognized, the firmer it becomes fixed and the more easily it is recollected. Thus primitive man, with his few wants, and these wants amply supplied by nature, had or invented names for all of them. These formed the earliest collection of names of objects--their appearance, their actions, their habits, etc. All these qualities were associated, identified, and presented by words, in due time, without the presence of the objects. That is to say, the simplest ideas were in this manner formed, and the ideas so formed corresponded with the number of words, and the number of words corresponded with the number of impressions received by the senses. Each sense presents its share--one sense more, another less. A person may have received a large number of impressions on the organ of vision--a painter, for instance--and may have stored away a wealth of artistic knowledge, yet the sense of hearing may be exceedingly poor in the number of impressions received. Such an individual would be rich in artistic ideas but comparatively poor in musical ideas. So it is with all the special senses. Each sense receives impressions on its own account. It has its own special nervous center, and these special centers again are closely connected with the great mass of brain matter. Collectively they have for their function, to receive impressions, retain them, store them away, recollect them, and reproduce them by articulate sound, or to recognize them. In this process then we have the formation of idea, memory, thought; recollection is the endeavor to call back, or form a figure of, an object once already perceived--felt by the senses. CHAPTER X. MOSES.--THE CONFIRMATION OF THE IDEA OF GOD. We will here sketch the military career of Moses. We omit the early incidents of the life of Moses--his childhood, his growth, his education--and begin with his active life. "And the occasion he laid hold of was this: The Ethiopians, who are next neighbors to the Egyptians, made an inroad into their country, which they seized upon, and carried off the effects of the Egyptians, who in their rage, fought against them, and revenged the affronts they had received from them; but being overcome in battle some of them were slain, and the rest ran away in a shameful manner, and by that means saved themselves, whereupon the Ethiopians followed after them in the pursuit, and thinking that it would be an act of cowardice if they did not subdue all Egypt, they went on to subdue the rest with greater vehemence; and when they had tasted the sweets of the country, they never left off the prosecution of the war; and as the nearest parts had not courage enough at first to fight with them, they proceeded as far as Memphis, and the sea itself, while not one of the cities was able to oppose them. The Egyptians, under this sad oppression, betook themselves to their oracles and prophecies" (Josephus, Ch. X). Moses thereupon was appointed general of the Egyptian army against the Ethiopians, and conquered them in the following manner: "But Moses prevented the enemies, and took and led his army, before those enemies were apprised of his attacking them; for he did not march by the river, but by land, where he gave a wonderful demonstration of his sagacity; for when the ground was difficult to be passed over, because of the multitude of serpents, which it produces in vast numbers, and indeed is singular in some of these productions, which other countries do not breed, ... When he had therefore proceeded thus on his journey he came upon the Ethiopians before they expected him; and joining battle with them, he beat them, and deprived them of the hopes they had of success against the Egyptians, and went on in overturning their cities, and indeed made great slaughter of these Ethiopians. Now when the Egyptian army had once tasted of this prosperous success by the means of Moses, they did not slacken their diligence, insomuch that the Ethiopians were in danger of being reduced to slavery, and all sorts of destruction. And at length they retired to Saba, which was the royal city of Ethiopia, which Cambyses afterwards named Meroe, after the name of his own sister. This place was to be besieged with very great difficulty, since it was both compassed by the Nile quite round, and the other rivers Astapus and Astaboms made it a very difficult thing for such as attempted to pass over them; for the city was situate in a retired place, and was inhabited after the manner of an island, being encompassed by a strong wall, and having the rivers to guard them from their enemies, and having great ramparts between the wall and the rivers, insomuch, that when the waters come with the greatest violence, it can never be drowned; which ramparts make it next to impossible for even such as are gotten over the rivers to take the city. However, while Moses was uneasy at the army's lying idle (for the enemies durst not come to battle), an accident happened: Tharbis was the daughter of the king of the Ethiopians; she happened to see Moses as he led his army near the walls, and fought with good courage, and admiring the subtlety of his undertakings, she believed him to be the author of the Egyptians' success, when they had before despaired of recovering their liberty, and to be the occasion of the great danger the Ethiopians were in, when they had before boasted of their great achievements, she fell deeply in love with him; and upon the prevalency of that passion, sent to him the most faithful of all her servants to discourse with him upon their marriage. He thereupon accepted the offer on condition she would procure the delivering up of the city; and gave her the assurance of an oath to take her to be his wife, and that when he had once taken possession of the city, he would not break his oath to her. No sooner was the agreement made, but it took effect immediately; and when Moses had cut off the Ethiopians, he gave thanks to God, and consummated his marriage, and led the Egyptians back to their own land" (Josephus, Chap. V.) These are simple facts, wherein God plays no part. It is a human transaction, a conflict of forces; the strongest and most skillful wins. And when the last place of refuge, the fortress, is besieged, and the Ethiopians are thoroughly beaten, the place seeming impregnable, the army discouraged, a woman, the king's daughter, betrays it, and Moses is victorious. Thermutis, his mother by adoption, raised him and educated him after the manner of princes. He was a great favorite. Her influence gave him not only her protection, advice, and information, but other great advantages such as no other being could obtain, she being constantly at court and a sister to the king. It was no small glory, as well as experience, he reaped. That conquest made him the first man in the land. That jealousies, antagonism and hatred were engendered against him by his rivals, that conspiracies were formed, may readily be imagined, and that finally his life was threatened. Finding it rather dangerous to remain in the country, since he was being closely watched, and all the roads were guarded, and being no doubt fully informed of the plot, Moses fled. "He took flight through the deserts, where his enemies could not suspect he would travel; though he was destitute of food, he went on, and despised that difficulty courageously" (Jos.). Moses was born in 1571 B.C., and was made general of the Egyptian army when he was about thirty-five or thirty-seven years of age. In 1531 B.C. he fled from Egypt and arrived at Midian. He made the acquaintance of a priest named Raguel or Jethro--his future father-in-law, for he married Zipporah, Jethro's daughter. Aaron, his brother, three years older, being born 1574 B.C., must have been a man of considerable influence. He remained during Moses's absence in Egypt. The exodus of the Israelites from Egypt took place in 1491. Daring his forty years' stay with Jethro he minded his cattle near Mount Sinai, where many supposed wonders are related to have occurred. That Moses was not idle is self-evident. A man of that particular type could not remain inactive. What took place between him and Aaron or between him and Thermutis his stepmother is not recorded in history. That some systematic organization did take place is very probable. That all followed in the ordinary course of human events, is to be presumed. And that the plans were laid and matured, how these people were to be molded into a nation, and in what manner they were to leave Egypt, we cannot have a reasonable doubt. It is more than likely that after the successful conquest, he was fired with the ambition to become a ruler himself. Envy and jealousy prevented his ever assuming the crown of Egypt, but what was to hinder him becoming the head and leader of his own people? In his solitary wanderings about Mount Sinai, he was inspired with the thought of delivering his own people, especially as the Pharaoh, his former protector, was dead. Having all the necessary material at hand in court and out of court, he proceeded to carry out his plans. Moses was the man who created Jehova. Ex. vi, 3: "And I appeared unto Abraham and Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God almighty; but by my name Jehova was I not known to them." Not likely! Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were of little or no culture. They were herdsmen who simply differed from their neighbors by substituting an imaginary God for the numerous images and idols that were then in fashion. They had not the remotest idea of the meaning of the God they worshiped, such as Moses now put into the word God. It was no longer a mere abstract copy with him--a thing to dispute, to reason, to argue about. To Moses it became a stern reality. The brain, the nervous system, the senses, the faculties, had undergone a revolution during the four hundred years. Moses, with all the scholastic advantages, raised and educated to rule and govern man and nations, ambitious for power, a great general, a man of determination and force, a man that was capable of plotting against plotters, conspiring against conspirators, who deliberately and shrewdly went to work to organize his people--he conceived then the idea that the simple old-fashioned Adonay--Lord--had lost its importance, being a common-place, every-day God among the Hebrews. He invented the unpronounceable Jehova. It makes little difference whence it is derived, whether from Io, Jovis, Jupiter, etc. Jehova and Mount Sinai are inseparable. Moses knew every stone and crag about that mountain. A man does not live near a mountain, especially a man of great vigor, action, and intellect, but that he observes every nook, every spot, every footpath, and every turn. The conception of Jehova originated at Mount Sinai; and later the power, the establishing and the realization, of his ambition, of his Jehova, took place. The miraculous pretensions and the wonderful workings that appear in the scriptural phraseology were no doubt necessary for the purpose of carrying out the scheme Moses had concocted. In modern times we can regard it only as a very peculiar method of writing up a history. Moses had his emissaries and leaders among his people. When they were told about the wonderful occurrences about Mount Sinai, and what the Great Jehova said to Moses, the story was rehearsed and repeated--about the promised land, their preservation, their liberty. Of course, what could they do otherwise than yield? Their hopes were elated, and they were really interested, and believed that the God of their forefathers had sent Moses as their deliverer. Moses had already their confidence by his past history. The hero, the great conqueror of the Ethiopians, the savior of Egypt--that alone was an immense prestige. But when it was announced that the Jehova, the Lord God, etc., had said this and that to him, that he commanded him to do this and that, where is the miracle, where is the wonder, that they obeyed? When Moses found that the Hebrews would be obedient to whatsoever he should direct, as they promised to be, and were in love with liberty, he began his negotiations with the king of Egypt, who had but lately received the government. As to his contest with the Egyptian priests in performing their respective tricks, called miracles, what wonder that these ignorant creatures believed, when we find stupid people enough of all nations that believe in the miraculous cures of an old rag, purporting to have belonged to Christ or some one else? Whatever was done, and how it was done, we shall never know. That there was nothing supernatural about the transaction is absolutely certain. The people may have believed it to be supernatural, as many millions believe to this day. You may believe a circle to be square, but that does not make it so. The untutored brain is surprised at a trifle, astonished at what it does not understand, and regards every new trick as a miracle. Neither Abraham, Isaac, nor Jacob could perform miracles. They had no use for them, knew nothing of them, and really had not the talent to produce them. Miracles had not been invented, or become the fashion. Moses was undoubtedly a proficient master of the magic arts, and accomplished his purpose thereby. After all, those performances were simply a side-show. He knew the strength of his people. A general of his capacity does not undertake a task of that magnitude without calculating the convincing force to back his demands. Six hundred thousand men on foot--besides children and women--organized under leaders, and no doubt equipped and ready for any emergency--an army of that size means a revolution of no small importance to a state. To avert greater danger, Egypt let them go. Henceforth Moses is the imperial master of the situation, the dictator, the ruler, the lawgiver, as determined as he is imperious--"I am the Lord thy God." And the man Moses knew what he was talking about, and the class of people he was talking to. He was the organizer of the nation, the creator of Jehova, the intimate of God. No other man throughout the Bible before or after Moses pretended to talk with God face to face except Moses. And Moses alone shall come near the Lord (Ex. xxiv, 2). And he took every care that no other man should discover his secret workings. "I am that I am;" that is Moses. "Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you" (Ex. iii, 14). Who but a man accustomed to command and be obeyed would dare use such language? Moses was fully familiar with the locality; and Mount Sinai, where he developed his scheme, he would permit no one to approach. "Take heed to yourself that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it; whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death" (Ex. xix, 12). He would brook no nonsense. He kept these poor ignoramuses in constant terror, in constant dread, of his Jehova. These precautions were used, and terrible things threatened, so that no one should intrude upon his privacy on the mountain, and no doubt were necessary in order to secure his success. We have no clear account of the manner in which these people left Egypt. The population must have numbered close upon three millions. This is entirely omitted. What God said to Moses, and Moses said to God, is continually repeated, but historical facts are wanting. We learn one important fact, however--they did not leave poor. When they departed from Egypt this multitude had to be kept busy, otherwise they would lose confidence in Jehova and in Moses, and relapse into making images. What kind of a God was this Jehova? In Ex. xxxi we find him giving directions about working in brass, silver, gold, furniture, designating who should work at it; but God himself turns stone-mason--in verse 18 we find two tables of Testimony, tables of stone, written by the finger of God. If God had a finger, he had a whole hand. If he had one hand he may have had two. To write needs practice, sight, brain, and all other parts belonging to a man. No doubt, when the tables, etc., were written, it was done by a man. As to the Ten Commandments, they were not new with Moses. They were a codification of Chaldean and Egyptian laws. The day of rest was recognized long ago in those slave-making days. It was a principle of economy, power-saving. Six of the Commandments are natural laws and are instinctively obeyed even among lower animals. All other laws were adopted from recognized customs and usages of the people, mostly taken from the Egyptians, with some few alterations, perhaps, suitable to the existing emergency. When this Republic was founded, there were actually no new laws made, but old laws modified to suit our case; thus the Constitution was framed. Moses did precisely the same thing. The laws were the recognized habits, practices, customs, laws, usages, long established among the nations in that region. And God, or Jehova, had as much to do with the framing of them as he had with the Constitution of this nation. Leviticus may be truly called the cookery-book of Jehova. Just think of it, that God himself told them what to select and how to cook it. They were instructed to forsake the idols or the images of God, but retained the grosser barbaric practices of sacrificing. The detailed account given of the bill of fare is interesting. For a full description we beg to refer the reader to Leviticus. Human nature was strong in Moses. He did what any man high in the affairs of a state would do. He installed his own relations into office--first his own tribe, the Levites. These were immediately installed as a permanent bureaucracy, as well as aristocracy. They were the rulers, lawmakers, preachers, doctors, etc. (Num. i, 47, et seq.). His brother Aaron and his sons were at once installed in the permanent offices. A hereditary aristocracy was established and consecrated as priests of the nation (Lev. viii). And the tribe of Levi were also selected to minister unto the priests, Aaron and sons. The actions of this supposed God are very curious, and even amusing. He assumes so many shades of color, character, and passion, just as a man would under various degrees of excitement, disappointment, and discontent. "Whenever Moses found it necessary to act with promptness and resolution he found it convenient to use his Lord God, Jehova, and usually with excellent effect. But when Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebel Moses gives God advice (Num. xvi, 15). "And Moses was very wroth, and said unto the Lord: Respect not thou their offering." He at once suppresses the rebellion with a strong hand and puts an end to it. Wipe out of the biblical story the dust and cob-webs of superstition and ignorance, cleanse it of the mire and dirt of barbarism, and you find in Moses a man of action, sagacity, and determination; skillful in the arts of war; a man of great will power, energy, and pluck, breaking down all barriers, overcoming all obstacles, conquering all difficulties, in order to secure the final success of his immense undertaking; the creator of Jehova, the great I AM, the maker of God, the leader of a great army, the organizer of a nation, the lawmaker, the lawgiver, the molder and master mind of this great work. His stratagem to preserve the Egyptian army from serpents by filling baskets with ibises, who devour and destroy serpents, is an instance of his foresight, leading his army safely through the swamps without damage, during the war with the Ethiopians. The great feature of Moses's Mount Sinai expedition, and his absence for forty days, and the production of the Ten Commandments, keeps the theological world in a constant stew of wonder and admiration. From the point of reason, common sense, and the light we have now, there is nothing remarkable or wonderful about the forty days' absence or the Ten Commandments. Moses was provided with all the food he needed, and all the assistance he needed, during his stay in the mountain. His own family, as well as his wife's relatives, knew all about the mountain, while the masses were kept at a respectful distance, on penalty of death. What are these Ten Commandments? 1. One God (the concentrated essence of the } Chaldean gods), worship him only. } Natural laws of 2. Have no other God, image, etc. } self-preservation 3. Don't swear by God. } and 4. Rest on the seventh day (economy of } self-protection. muscular forces). } 5. Honor thy parents. } 6. Do not commit murder. 7. Do not commit adultery. 8. Do not steal. 9. Do not bear false witness. 10. Do not desire another man's property. All these laws had been in existence centuries before the coming of Moses. Nations had already adopted them, as a matter of necessity. Crimes of murder and robbery, etc., were familiar among the Chaldeans and other nations. When Isaac sent messengers to Nahor in order to secure Rebeka for his wife, they had to pass through Mesopotamia, "in which it was tedious traveling, both in winter, for a depth of clay, and in summer for a want of water; and besides this, for the robberies there committed" (Jos.). It must be remembered that society had reached a degree of organization and civilization; that these fundamental principles, these natural laws, are observed to a considerable extent even among the lower animals, and that they were strictly enforced in every barbarian as well as more civilized community. In the codification of these laws by Moses there is nothing wonderful, nothing miraculous, supernatural. The whole matter consisted in the adoption of these fundamental principles, these common-law usages, and the proclaiming of them as the laws to govern this newly organized nation, as all other nations had done centuries before them. The laws incorporated in the book of Leviticus, etc., consisting in the regulation or government of the nation, appointing communities or families, dealing with food, dress, sacrifice, crime and its punishment, trade, commerce, domestic affairs, marriage, and above all church affairs, were mostly adoptions from other nations with certain modifications, written up in the manner we find them. The supernatural phenomena recited in the Bible in the books of Moses--what descended from heaven, clouds, pillars, earthquakes, thunder, lightning, rain, deluge, fire, etc., on and about Mount Sinai--and that God performed these wonders to oblige Moses, because he exercised his influence in prayer upon Jehova--form the greatest piece of nonsense that ever was written. Clouds belong to the earth, are composed of earthly elements, are taken from the surface of the earth by a natural process and return to the earth by a natural process. Neither God nor man can influence them. The same may be said of all other phenomena. Water cannot be composed from any other elements than oxygen and hydrogen, and the silly theological twaddle cannot change it. What we ought to know is, at least something of the natural. The more we know of the natural the less we believe of the supernatural--in fact, the latter has largely disappeared. In time, let us hope, these childish delusions will be regarded as some of the remnants of the past and infantile ages of humanity. In all ages and at all times, men of great merit have been admired and honored by mankind. But the mythology and theology that enshrouds ancient heroes, the deification, the supernaturalism, the sanctity, the holiness, and the delusions that accompany and surround their actions, are entirely superfluous. We have outgrown these fables. And truly, these imaginary attributions, these visionary productions, have outlived their usefulness. Whether it be Moses, David, Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Charlemagne, Cromwell, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, or Washington, they were men, nothing but men, and their actions, as also the great good resulting from their actions, that benefited humanity, were natural, not influenced in any way or shape by the smallest particle of supernaturalism. Josephus speaking of Moses says: "He was one that exceeded all men that ever were in understanding, and made the best use of what understanding suggested to him. He had a very grateful way of speaking and addressing himself to the multitude. As to his other qualifications, he had such a full command of his passions, as if he hardly had any such in his soul, and only knew them by their names, as rather perceiving them in other men than himself. He was also such a general of an army as was seldom seen, as well as such a prophet as was never known, and this to such a degree that whatsoever he pronounced, you would think you heard the voice of God himself" (B. iv, ch. viii, 49). The following verse in the Bible is undoubtedly true: "And there was not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face." Moses deserves all the credit for molding the Chaldean God into shape, for creating Jehova, and for inventing prophets and the Jewish oracles. These oracles, or pretended consultations or inquiries of God, whether heathen or Hebrew, were all of a similar nature and character. Whenever the question asked was concerning the success or non-success of a battle, whether they should fight or not, the answer depended on the circumstances and the condition of affairs. If the army was well disciplined, had a good leader, a good general, better than the enemy, they were going to fight. If not so well organized, weaker numerically, or with an indifferent general, they would let fighting alone. The priests if well informed would give either a positive or a negative answer, but if they knew nothing about either party, they would deliver the answer of the oracle in such dubious expressions or terms, that let what would happen to the inquirer, the answer might be accommodated or explained to mean the event that came to pass. The expressions of the Bible during and after the time of Moses are of oracular form, and for that reason of a dubious nature, of marvelous elasticity, accommodating any and every opinion or inquiry, susceptible of a vast variety of interpretations. Many portions may be made to mean anything or everything. There being nothing positive about these biblical expressions, followers of these doctrines have been explaining and explaining. And as new views or opinions are set afloat, clever talkers explain and explain, and grow enthusiastic in explaining. And as fashions change, the explanations change. For centuries these explanations and interpretations have been going on--over what? Among the Jews there were several sorts of oracles: as, first, those that were delivered viva voce, as when God spoke to Moses; secondly, prophetic dreams, as those of Joseph and others; thirdly, visions, as when a prophet in an ecstasy, a nervous, excitable condition, being properly neither asleep nor awake, had what they called supernatural revelations; fourthly, when they were accompanied with the wearing of an ephod, or the pectoral worn by the high priest, who was endowed with the gift of foretelling future things upon extraordinary occasions; and fifthly, by consulting the prophets or messengers sent by God. Moses was the first great prophet, the first great general, the first great lawgiver, the first and only organizer, and with his death God, Jehova, ceases to be active. Everything appears wonderful or miraculous if we do not understand it, or are ignorant and credulous. Thus it was with the manna, that usually falls in certain seasons of the year in that region. Even Moses himself did not know what it was, until it had stuck to his hands and he had tasted it. It was no special favor to the Jews. It falls for all creatures alike, but is not used until it is discovered that it has reached the season when it is good to eat. Nevertheless, it is in our Bible accounted a miracle. No man has ever performed a miracle except to deceive or delude another, who is ignorant of what he is performing, or how it is performed. Miracles are natural events occurring to those that are ignorant, or of little understanding; or they are intentionally performed with the intent to deceive, delude, or defraud. God himself, all believers should know, cannot perform a miracle, contrary to the laws of nature--whether it be the laws governing planets or the laws that govern the various phenomena that appear from time to time on earth. All are simply the result of some natural process. What shrewdness Moses used, whatever cunning, whatever diplomacy, whatever wisdom or courage, was the production of his own will power, the evolution of his own brain, acquired by education and training. He utilized these powers to gain his ends, to the best advantage and welfare of the people he was trying to organize. He may have fully believed in the oracles he invoked, the conception of his own powerful imagination. He may have inspired himself by a concentration of nervous force, stimulated by the immense responsibility that rested upon him. The solitude he enjoyed in the mountain was of great service to his reflecting mind. It gave him an opportunity to analyze every detail, think over every circumstance, form his ideas and his plans. That it was to him a sanctuary, a holy retreat, we can easily imagine, as every place that becomes a retreat for great thinkers is a sanctum to them, and where, when they are deliberating, communing with themselves, it is no place for strangers to intrude. We must, however, not lose sight of an important fact--that whatever may be the products of the brain, of the nervous system, however stimulated or inspired the workings of the imagination and the production of ideas, evolving powerful thoughts, and however sublime and beautiful they may be, they are the effect of the educated faculties; the result of the combined forces of the great nervous centers. Notwithstanding the sagacity and cleverness of Moses, the barbarism and brutality of the age in which he lived was predominant in all his actions towards his enemies. Neither God nor Jehova had any mitigating sentiment, neither pity nor mercy. The ark was a superstitious symbol, and the priest the ready tool to carry out any system to deceive and delude the masses. The ark, the creation of Moses, Aaron, Jethro & Co., was nothing more than an idol of another form. Whether the idol is in the image of somebody or a four-cornered box wherein lies the difference? For several centuries this wooden box plays an important role among these half-civilized barbarians. They were no better than their neighbors, and were not any farther advanced in civilization than the neighboring nations were--indeed, not so much. How Christianity can hold that book, the Bible, as sacred, as a guide for the present civilized age, is indeed a greater wonder and a far more complicated miracle than ever was performed in the Bible. The superstitious, cowardly army of Joshua refused to cross the river Jordan, but the miracle was performed when the priest carried the ark across the river--which was fordable, because they could see the sand at the bottom, and the stream was neither strong nor swift. So the army forded the stream, following the wooden box. The same box was used before the walls of Jericho. The falling of the walls is related in a mysterious fashion, but the slaughter of men, women, and children is made quite plain. The only thing saved was that prostitute Rahab who betrayed the city--and that was all the doings of God and the Box. Joshua sends to Ai three thousand men, and the Israelites get beaten. Then after some hocus-pocus Joshua goes to Ai with thirty thousand and he beats them, "and all the men and women that were killed at Ai were twelve thousand" (Josh, viii, 25). And then he hanged the king of Ai (verse 29). And this was a miraculous victory. Every natural phenomenon was interpreted as a miracle. A hailstorm, an aerial phosphorescence imitating sun and moon, the clouds, thunder, etc.--are all miracles, if they help to beat the enemy. And after the slaying was done the kings were hanged (x, 26). Altogether, Joshua conquered thirty-one kings and took possession of their territories. These kingdoms could not have been very large affairs, since the whole land is not very large. The presumption is that superior numbers and better leadership in reality won the day. When the strong hand of Moses and Joshua has disappeared (Jehova is no longer the stronghold) quarrels, outrages, and discontent arise. Eleven tribes retire from the field of action. Judah, the warrior tribe, does the fighting. The Levites, this aristocratic tribe, watch and guide the nation, dwelling in the forty cities assigned to them. I mention these two tribes especially on account of the important role they play hereafter. A few statements of the mere facts will suffice. Joshua dies in 1443 B.C. Othniel succeeds. Judah's military force fights and beats the Canaanites. Discord and fighting continue, until Eglon the king of Moab enslaves them, 1343 B.C. When Eglon is killed they are freed for a short period, when Jabin the Canaanite subdues them. They are again freed and again enslaved, and so on. Meantime they have their heroes, as Shamgar, who kills six hundred Philistines with an ox-goad, and Samson, who kills one thousand Philistines with a jawbone of an ass, etc. I will append to this chapter a description of some events of Moses's career from Tacitus, Chapter III: "Many authors agree, that when once an infectious distemper was arisen in Egypt and made men's bodies impure, Bocchorius, their king, went to the oracle of (Jupiter) Hammon and begged he would grant him some relief against this evil, and he was enjoined to purge his nation of them, and to banish this kind of men into other countries, as hateful to the gods. That when he had sought for, and gotten them all together, they were left in a vast desert; that hereupon the rest devoted themselves to weeping and inactivity; but one of those exiles, Moses by name, advised them to look for no assistance from any of the gods or from any of mankind, since they had been abandoned by both, but bade them believe in him, as in a celestial leader, by whose help they had already gotten clear of their present miseries. They agreed to it; and though they were unacquainted with every thing, they began their journey at random: but nothing tried them so much as want of water; and now they laid themselves down on the ground to a great extent, as just ready to perish, when a herd of wild asses came from feeding, and went to a rock overshadowed by a grove of trees. Moses followed them, as conjecturing that there was (thereabouts) some grassy soil, and so opened large sources of water for them." Chapter IV: "As for Moses, in order to secure the nation firmly to himself, he ordained new rites, and such as were contrary to other men. All things are with them profane which with us are sacred; and again, those practices are allowed among them which are by us esteemed most abominable. They sacrifice rams by way of reproach to (Jupiter) Hammon. An ox is also sacrificed, which the Egyptians worship under the name of Apis," etc. CHAPTER XI. SAMUEL THE KINGMAKER--THE WARWICK OF ANTIQUITY. Our forefathers of antiquity, no matter to what nation they belonged, dressed every important event with a halo of mystery--fable, myth, and miracle. They knew no better. The mind, the brain, the senses, had reached a stage of development that might well be called childish, with sensuality and selfishness predominating. Fighting, cruelty, and lust were the leading actions prompted. And as in the case of children, ghosts and hobgoblins scared them, shadows and darkness frightened them, unusual sights and noises surprised and alarmed them. And in their calmer moments they wondered. And any natural phenomenon was interpreted as miraculous if it aided any undertaking, and resulted favorably to them. Wealth and women were considered the capital prizes in those days. (That was three thousand years ago; how is it with us?) They were men in physique, but children in the development of their mental faculties. It was then as it is now--every man talks about that which is uppermost in his mind; he makes his comparisons with those things he is most familiar with; his illustrations are drawn from those objects he sees most frequently; his language never extends beyond the number of words at his command; his memory is only equal to the number of things he has stored away; his mind is made up or composed of those ideas that he has gathered from the experience of his senses; his ideas from the number of objects he has come in contact with; his knowledge consists of that which he has learned; his thoughts and reflections extend to that which he knows and never beyond; his understanding depends on all these; and comparatively speaking, few men are in advance of the age in which they live. Ideas, like other things terrestrial, have their birth, growth, development, maturity, and decline, and finally they partially or wholly disappear. The birth of the idea of God, without the various objective representations, had its origin in the mind of man; Abraham being the first, or supposed to be the first, man who conceived the notion that these images, idols, were not the proper thing. He doubted the quality of the gods, and the principal objection to these idols was that they had ears that did not hear, eyes that could not see, etc., etc., but the new God, the later Jehova, could. The strangest of all inconsistencies lies in the fact that while they endowed him with the human faculties, passions, emotions, desires, and feelings, there is nothing tangible about his body. Nothing was accomplished with this God during several centuries in Egypt. Moses brought his Jehova out--as a stern reality. He skillfully manipulated the idea. His own intellect and experience, his force and character, were concentrated in this Jehova. His masterly organization, his discipline, his impressive sternness, imperative and imperial, his stupendous will power, left a lasting impress upon this people during the four centuries. This idea was nursed, nourished, and sustained by the Levites, and when they found their influence was waning they established a concentrated form of government by selecting a sanhedrin or council of seventy and electing the most eligible person they could find on the recommendation of Samuel as their king. This king was Saul, whose reign, fortunately or unfortunately, did not last very long. Competition and struggle with other nations had, if anything, an educational tendency. As they grew numerically stronger, jealousies arose. Ambitious men were grasping for power, and contending faction naturally was the result. The story about the lost asses is like that about another ass we have heard of, that saw the angel and talked--we have many such, even at the present day. These stories are excellent fabrications to entertain juveniles with. And people must be precious asses to believe this nonsense, that God would be such an ass as to interfere with these asses. But something occurred which was perfectly human, and shows the character of the man. It happened to be one of those critical moments in a nation's existence. Nahash the Ammonite had made war against Israel, and encamped against Jabest-Gilead. Saul hearing of it, he did as follows (1 Sam. xi, 7): "And he took a yoke of oxen, and hewed them in pieces, and sent them throughout all the coast of Israel by the hands of messengers, saying, Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen. And the fear of the Lord fell upon the people, and they came out with one consent." Thus Saul collected an army of three hundred thousand men. That is what may be termed practical politics. He was victorious over the Ammonites. As to the prisoners of war, whether captured or having given themselves up, he caused their right eyes to be put out. He plucked their right eyes out, making them useless for war in the future. When he went to war against the Philistines, his army observed how numerous the enemy were. God's army was scared and hid in caves. So he sent to Samuel to consult the oracle, like any other respectable heathen. He also made a conquest of the Amalekites, whom he utterly destroyed. The Hebrews and these people had a grudge of several centuries' standing, because when the Jews went out of Egypt they requested permission to pass through the Amalekites' country, which was refused them (Ex. xvii, et seq.). But Saul offended God by saving Agag, the king of the Amalekites, so said Samuel (1 Sam. xv, 32, 33). "Then Samuel said, Bring ye hither to me Agag, the king of the Amalekites. And Agag came to him delicately. And Agag said, Surely the bitterness of death is passed. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal." Saul's tenderness and mercy towards Agag displeased the stern, cruel priest and soldier. His, Agag's, life had to pay the penalty of death, by the hand of the priest himself, for an offense his forefathers were presumed to have been guilty of, several centuries before. All barbarities, cruelties, and slaughter were done in Jehovah's, God's, the Lord's, name. The same pious crimes were repeated centuries later, under the pretext of doing some imaginary brutal God a great favor. For this transgression Saul is rejected by this priestly Warwick. For this human action this wily priest denounces him, and Saul's act of kindness is interpreted by this domineering priest as a crime against his God. To carry out his political scheme, Samuel went to Beth-lehem. "And the elders of the town trembled at his coming" (1 Sam. xvi, 4). The revengeful priest, with a nerve of iron and a will of steel, was not going to stand any nonsense. Saul had not obeyed him to the letter--it is, Off with your head! Samuel with all the church palaver, priest discipline, and pious hypocrisy, selects a successor, without compunction, without ceremony, and David is anointed to reign instead of Saul. From this time forth to the end of his life Saul is constantly in hot water. He slinks to his home at Gibeah (1 Sam. xv, 34) like a whipped cur, rejected and excommunicated by the priest. Full of apprehension and fear, he blunders at every step he takes. The priestly influence is gone, and God has departed from him and is now with David. The crafty Samuel uses the expression, when others question the propriety of his action: "Men do not see as God seeth." No! Men must have no will except the priest's will. Harassed and maddened by priestly cunning, jealous and angered at David's success in acts of heroism, Saul loses courage, as well as prestige with the people, to such an extent that David finds it not a difficult task to organize a small army of his own, carrying on a sort of desultory war on his own account. Samuel dies, having governed his people twelve years himself, and jointly with Saul eighteen years. He was the greatest man, priest, and general since the times of Moses, a man of singular sagacity and courage, no doubt right royal and honest in his intentions and to his nation. Samuel did more to solidify the nation, and terrify neighboring nations, to infuse courage in his people and inspire them to acts of heroism, than any other of the judges, or any other man, during this period. A curious incident is related of the manner in which Samuel came into the world. It is the first one of its kind in the Bible. Hannah, the wife of Elkanah, had no children, or as the Bible phrase has it, "The Lord had shut up her womb" (1 Sam. i, 5, 6). So she continued praying before the Lord, and Eli the priest marked her mouth (verse 12). She conceived and bore a son, and she named him Samuel. And Eli the priest adopted Samuel. "And the child did minister unto the Lord before Eli the priest" (ii, 12). What the relations were between Hannah and Eli is not known, but that his own sons were not very righteous is testified to by the following passage (1 Sam. ii, 20): "Now Eli was very old, and heard all that his sons did unto all Israel; and how they lay with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation." It was not an unusual thing, in the temples of the heathens, for women to accommodate the gods whenever they felt piously inclined; and also the priests lost no opportunity to gratify their saintly passions, or permit others to gratify theirs so long as it was to benefit the church. Samuel's father, or rather reputed father, did not belong to the priestly tribe. He was an Ephrathite. Eli his adopted father belonged to the priestly caste. I simply cite this story to show how completely human these holy Jehovaists were. Many crimes and disreputable acts were committed under the very shadow of the Lord. Yet Jehova was pleased with anything these priests delighted in. Eli was a heavy man (iv, 18). Fat, which I suppose they meant, shows he was a good liver. He broke his neck by falling off his seat on hearing the ark was taken by the Philistines and Israel beaten. When Samuel took the reins of government he was still young. He subdued the Philistines, regained the ark, and reorganized and consolidated the nation. He made Saul king and general, and a stream of prosperity followed; the choice was a good one, and Saul served his nation well so long as he was obedient to Samuel's commands. Saul's humanity got the better of him, he offended this stern, dictatorial priest, and lost his favor. David, his rival, was already chosen and in the field, on whom all Samuel's influence and priestly glory was shed. Now God deserted Saul and his cause. Henceforth the Lord was with David. Samuel was the first and only kingmaker; Saul and David were his handiwork. He was a priest, a soldier and a statesman of more than ordinary capacity and qualities, far superior to any of the judges that governed Israel during the last four centuries. He was stern and severe, but without blemish otherwise. He was, as far as we can learn from history, a relentless and cruel man towards his enemies. He was of immense will-power, resolute and energetic. He was honored to an extraordinary degree by the people for whom he accomplished so much. He left the nation at his death more firmly united than it had ever been--with an organized army, a stable government, and a well-filled treasury. It was Samuel that really raised the nation to the utmost hight that it ever attained, for he laid the foundation for Solomon's glory, the zenith of Hebrew nationality. It is he that closes the second period of national life, the people having attained under him its maximum standing as a nation, and the greatness which culminated in Solomon, and the only political unity as a nation that the Hebrews ever had. A parallel may be drawn between the two periods. The Egyptian period: Four centuries or so pass without anything being done, until a man rises possessing the necessary qualifications to mold these people into a nation. The second period consists of a struggle with other nations, almost continuously, to exist. Necessities arise; men present themselves who seize the opportunity to fill up the want for the time being, until the coming of Samuel, the right man, at the right time, for the right place. He closes the second act of the Hebrews' struggle for nationality by giving them a centralized form of government, and placing a king at their head to rule them. All the transactions of his life were human, natural. His conduct was perfectly in harmony with the age he lived in. The nation as a whole had become a little more civilized, and had reached as high a point of intelligence as it ever attained--that is, as a nation. Thus far we have not seen anything in their history that other nations had not to contend with. To attribute their acts, individually or as a nation, to any supernatural power, to God, Jehova, or the Lord, is preposterous. In their dealings, their fightings, their cruelty, their brutality, their superstition, and their ignorance, they were in no sense superior to any of the contemporaneous nations. They were no better in their conduct than their neighbors. The strongest had always the best of it; the conquered had to submit to slavery or be killed, women are captured and used, and the plunder is divided. Notwithstanding the priestly rule of the Levites, the Hebrews are constantly relapsing into idolatry, brought back to the fold, and relapsing again. The church was at this time used for all sorts of corrupt purposes. The Jehova that had been brought into the theological world with such an immense boom by Moses had expended a good deal of its original force. The remembrance of that stupendous crisis of the Hebrew national existence was kept alive and the flames were fanned by priestly interest. The God after Moses, the Jehova, had shrunk into the Lord, and the ark was the representative of God. "The ark of God was taken," ... "when she heard tidings of the ark of God" (1 Sam. iv, etc.). And the success or failure of the Hebrews depended on the man who led them. With a weak man as general or leader they were beaten, with a strong man they won. Other nations meanwhile had sprung into life, and become powerful, without Jehova--without the God of the Hebrews. They had, however, idols and images, which seemed to behave with far greater propriety than the God of Israel. So well did these mythological deities manage their affairs, that they almost swallowed up the whole Hebrew race. Samuel, having established a kingdom, and crowned two kings, Saul and David, dies, leaving these two competitors in the field. CHAPTER XII. GOD SAVE THE KING! That was the shout, with the commencement of the new era, when the tallest man in the nation appeared in the midst of the people that had assembled at the call of Samuel (1 Sam. x, 24). I will give a short chronology of this United Kingdom under three kings--Saul, David, and Solomon: Saul is made king 1095 Dies 1055 Rules over Israel about 40 years David born 1085 Kills Goliath 1062 Reigns in Hebron 1055 King over Israel 1048 Dies 1016 Rules over Israel about 40 years Solomon is born 1036 Is crowned king 1015 Lays foundation of Temple 1012 Dedicates the Temple 1004 Worships idols 985 Dies 975 Rules over Israel about 40 years These figures may not be accurate. They are as near as the dates can be had. Josephus gives the dates as follows: Saul reigned with Samuel 18 years After the death of Samuel 22  ,,   David lived 70  ,,   Reigned in Hebron 7 yrs 6m   ,,    ,, Jerusalem 33 years Solomon lived 94  ,,   Having reigned 80  ,,   There is a discrepancy somewhere. Something is wrong in dates, like most other facts in the Bible. David was twenty-three years old when he killed Goliath. Solomon was twenty-one years old when he was crowned king; according to Josephus, fourteen years of age. We have no further interest in the dates of those men, but more in their acts and character. Being the rulers of God's own chosen people--with Jehova for a pilot, protector, and guide--with the wooden Box, the ark, with all its mysterious secrets and its holy enchantments; priests, prophets, and sacrifices, with all their secret necromantic performances, these three men, with all their godly professions, were no better than they should have been, even for the age in which they lived. They were brutal, gross, and licentious. Barbarous crimes were committed by them, with the sanction of their preposterous imaginary God--who is lauded at this present day to the very echo, but the most stupendous piece of folly that ever was palmed off on civilized humanity. Saul, the first king, in exercising his terrible cruelty towards his enemies perhaps only followed the practices and customs of other nations. Why this bloodthirsty man caused 385 persons to be murdered; why he slaughtered all the inhabitants of Nob, men, women, and children, because Abimelech the priest supplied David with food, are some of those things that pulpit orators can best explain. The life of the priest was not sufficient to expiate the offense he had committed, but Saul had his whole family exterminated. The ark was no longer available. Jehova had taken the juvenile David in hand. The priestly oracle refused to be consulted. He, Saul, had recourse to a fortune-telling woman of Endor, who was employed to call up the spirit of Samuel. Saul's jealousies, his quarrels with David, and all his misdeeds, as well as bravery, may be read by those that feel an interest in the matter. He finally committed suicide by falling on his own sword, and the next day the Philistines cut his and his sons' heads off, and deposited them before their idols, Dagon, etc. Where was God? Can it be possible that our Christian neighbors believe that the life and conduct of Saul was directed by any supreme power? That God directed Saul to do so many foolish, barbarous, and murderous acts? We shall probably be more interested in David, the man after God's own heart. David, like Saul, was judiciously selected by Samuel. David's acts and David's conduct were no different from the acts and conduct of any other man in his position and possessing his characteristics. He combined a good deal of philosophy with his bravery; if the Psalms were written by him we have before us a higher type of brain culture, a mind that has undergone some training, is capable of analyzing its own feelings and giving expression to them. His comparisons never extend beyond that--beyond what he knows. He appeals to the higher qualities of men--their good acts, their virtues, their just conduct, their self-restraint, their passions, emotions, faults, and weaknesses. He recognizes them in others, and sees them reflected clearly in himself. His distress and his fears, his gladness and his joys, his trust in an unseen power, are all poetic, some sweet and sentimental. He speaks of his Lord, of his God, as of the pleasant recollections of a dream. Jehova had long since lost the stern reality of Moses, and had changed with the changes the nation had undergone. The formalities had been kept up, the priestly luxuries had increased, the ceremonies were more formal and business-like, but the central power, the centralized government of the people, the mantle of authority, had been shifted from high priest to king. The God, Jehova, was no longer the guide, the power it had been. For twenty-two years after the death of Samuel, Saul had conducted his government and fought his battles without God, ark, or priest, and sought advice and counsel from other and human sources. Skeptics even at this early period began to doubt the existence of a God, "The fool saith in his heart, There is no God" (Ps. xiv, 1). The theocratic period of 395 years from Exodus to Saul had already developed corruption in the church and licentiousness in the Temple. The priestly power received a terrible blow at the hands of Saul when he slaughtered the priest, Abimelech, and his family, thus showing that the representative of God no longer inspired terror; that the priest was nothing more than any other man; that neither God, Jehova, ark, nor any other sanctified paraphernalia could protect him, nor miracle interfere for his preservation. Opinions were freely expressed, discussion arose, and arguments were not wanting to sustain the doubts that had arisen as to the genuineness, the truth, of the God they had adopted. Neighboring nations had their gods. How was it, if their gods were not more potent, that they should win so many battles, and enslave the nation of the true God? The same or similar arguments that Abraham brought to bear on the Chaldean gods were now beginning to be used against Jehova. David, besides being an excellent soldier, a brave general, was a dreamer, a man of imagination. God was to him a sublime vision, a reflected glory of the past. To him, an intense admirer of the beautiful, trees, hills, and valleys, and the phenomena of nature in general, were the wonders of his imaginary God. He was a musician, a poet, a dreamer, in his moments of leisure. Everything he beheld courted, kindled his admiration, awoke new feeling in his sensitive nature, from a pretty flower to a beautiful woman. The conversations which he holds with his visionary God are the simplest and most confidential. He pours out his grievances and his delight to him. "Thou hast put gladness in my heart.... I will both lay me down in peace and sleep" (Ps. iv, 8, 9). That Christian translators of the Bible presume to interpret certain passages and words to mean, to foretell, things or events that occurred one thousand years later, is an assumption, and warrantable neither by the text nor by the actions of the persons writing them. David is supposed to have written the Psalms. When he speaks he refers mainly to himself, addresses himself personally to his Lord. He, David, is himself interested. Then again he speaks of man and things in general, without ever alluding to any one thing or body in the coming future. David's Psalm ii is headed "The Kingdom of Christ." The writer had no more idea of Christ than he had of Peter the Great at the time that that Psalm was written. David wrote one hundred and fifty Psalms as printed in the Bible. In the headings, the superscriptions, the solicitude of Christian believers, trying to torture meanings and significations out of sentences or expressions, led them to commit gross errors, as false as they are ridiculous. Judge for yourself: Psalm ii, 1--The Kingdom of Christ. "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things?" Verse 10: "Be wise, now therefore, O ye kings; be instructed ye judges of the earth." Psalm xlv, 1--The majesty and Grace of Christ's Kingdom. "My heart is inditing a good matter; I speak of the things which I have made touching the king; my tongue is the pen of a ready writer." Verse 10--The Duty of the Church, etc. "Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father's house." Psalm xlvi, 1--Confidence Which the Church, etc. "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." Psalm xlvii--The Nations are Exhorted Cheerfully to Entertain the Kingdom of Christ. Psalm xlviii--The Ornaments and Privileges of the Church. In not one of these Psalms is there the slightest allusion to a church. It is the extravagant language of an exuberant mind, the outcome of an overwrought imagination upon the subject he was thinking about. Psalm l, 1--The Majesty of God in the Church. Psalm li, 18--He Prayeth for the Church. Psalm lxviii, 7--For His Care of the Church. Psalm lxxii, 1--David Praying for Solomon, etc.; and The Truth of Christ's Kingdom. Psalm xciii--The Majesty and Power of Christ's Kingdom. Psalm cxviii, 19--Coming of Christ's Kingdom, etc. The passage referred to, viz., verse 19, is: "Open to me the gates of righteousness; I will go into them, and I will praise the Lord." The absurdity of the interpretation is evident from the fact that out of one hundred and fifty Psalms the Christian Bible-makers were able to find only five that could be twisted to make allusion to Christ--the ii, xlv, lxxii, xcviii, and cxviii, and from these certain sentences were selected, and these verses have as much connection with Christ or his kingdom as they have with the man in the moon. Six of all the chapters are supposed to allude to the church; those are above cited. David had not the remotest notion what would or could happen at any time during his life, or at any time after his death. He was a child of circumstances like Saul, and like many other men after and before them. The same may be said of Moses and Abraham. Opportunity makes the man, if the man is fitting, able, to seize the opportunity when it occurs. No supernatural power had anything to do with any one of these men, or any man that figured in the Bible, any more than God had to do with men that played prominent parts as leaders, rulers, kings, or governors of other nations. Whatever power, skill, intellect, or imagination was developed, it was the proper sum-total of the experience, observation, and instruction of the world's progress. The Hebrews perhaps had special advantages in some respects over other nations, through their migratory instinct or inclination. The contact with so many other nations gave them the advantage of a broader experience and a greater variety of culture. David had enjoyed special advantages. After his first heroic action, he became the leader of a band of desperadoes. And Saul himself unwittingly helped him, by making the bargain with David that if he, David, brought him one hundred foreskins of the Philistines, Saul would give him his daughter Michal for wife. David with his band of chosen men brought him two hundred, and thus obtained his wife Michal. Henceforth David leads a kind of bandit's life, with his six hundred brave followers, evading Saul, who is in hot pursuit of him, and meantime fighting other nations, Philistines, Amalekites, etc.; levying contributions, making conquests, whenever and wherever there was a chance; falling in love easily and gracefully as the most expert leader of a gallant band. The pretty, attractive face of Abigail, the wife of Nabal, was an irresistible temptation. Nabal died from fright, it is said. Later in life when he happened to cast his eyes upon the beautiful nude figure of Bathsheba, he immediately fell in love. Since he was a man of action he satisfied his passion almost immediately, and poor Uriah, a captain of his, was sent to the war to be killed. He was a shrewd and bold warrior, a great lover of woman, a philosopher and a poet. His Psalms bear witness of his acts, deeds, and thoughts. In consequence of his overindulgence with women he contracted a disease, a disease of which he complains most bitterly. Psalm iv: His bones are vexed, he is weary with groaning--"All night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears" (verse 6). Psalm xxxviii: He is in a sad plight: verse 3: "There is no soundness in my flesh;" verse 5: "My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness;" verse 7: "For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease; and there is no soundness in my flesh," etc. The gentleman in all probability was afflicted with a disease known as syphilis in its tertiary stage. There is more of it. A sober reading of these psalms will find them full of indications of human nature with its frailties, weaknesses, impulses, mixed with superstitious fear, a vivid imagination, and an excitable temperament. When his greatness had been established, many conquests made, great wealth accumulated, numerous victories gained, festivities were inaugurated. In order to honor God and the ark, David danced and jumped in complete undress before the Box, in a true half-civilized fashion. We must not consider all these acts as faults. He simply followed the customs of the age. He was the highest representative type of the then struggling civilization. Samuel began, Saul developed, and David consummated a new era of this part of the world of human history--while other sections of the globe were keeping abreast in organizing and drilling the human race to a higher sort of culture, forming nations, establishing kingdoms, producing heroes, evolving lawgivers and poets, and advancing in the arts and war, etc. David died seventy years of age, leaving a large and numerous family. Of his score of sons, there is none worth talking about, except Solomon, his successor. The immense wealth he amassed laid the foundation for the glory of Solomon, who spent it lavishly, luxuriously, freely. All in all David was an excellent character. He preserved the Twelve Tribes, exalting the nation, consolidating the government, making it respected and feared without, and giving them by his valor peace and security and prosperity for the next ruler and for the nation. This young gentleman, Solomon, however, had been fed with a golden spoon. His senses and his passions were prematurely ripe. He did not have to search for opportunity; his desires were easily accommodated and satisfied. His indulgences were many and frequent, and his authority and arbitrariness were soon made manifest. He was surrounded with the best scholars of the day, and whatever facilities were then to be had were got, either in philosophical works or in other books. The higher studies consisted in close observance of moral conduct, and contemplation of the outer world without knowing anything more than the outward appearances. Science, art, and mechanics were little known. The school of poesy had begun. Theological disputes were in fashion, and thus theological doubt furnished ample food for conjecture, hypothesis, and imagination. Men had already entered the field of controversy as to the falsity or the truth of the prevailing opinions. King Solomon in all his glory was the greatest showman upon earth at the time he was living. Let it be understood that it is not our purpose to write history. That has long since been exhausted; nothing new can be discovered. It may, however, be profitable to call attention to the fact that all these men that figure in the scripture were human, perfectly human. That they acted and spoke in accordance with the prevailing degree of intelligence and customs of nations. That in all their dealings and doings there is not one scintilla of evidence that they were anything else than perfectly natural. That they were struggling as a nation for a position among the family of nations. That their methods of warfare were no better than those of their neighbors. By good generalship, brave conduct, and hard fighting they gained influence, affluence, and prestige. By their conquests and victories they got into possession of a fair tract of land. By robbery and plunder they amassed an immense amount of wealth. By their continual successes under David's brave leadership they secured peace from their enemies, their surrounding neighbors; while those nations were subdued and weakened, the Israelites became powerful and strong. A well-disciplined army, a strong and united nation, was the inheritance Solomon received. He was the prince-royal--his father a clever king, and his mother the captain's wife, Mrs. Bathsheba, later queen-wife of David. He was the first real prince that had ever ruled Israel--and also the one that caused their ruin, as a nation, by his extravagant and lascivious conduct. The scriptural story begins in Kings, with the death of David. Solomon, the prince of the blood, was now king in his stead. He ascended the throne when he was twenty-one years of age, having received every educational advantage of a prince. He, after Moses, is the second ruler of Israel that had been instructed and prepared for the high position he was about to occupy. That is the only comparison that can be made between him and Moses. The latter was a giant of intellect, action, and determination, while the former was a luxurious debauchee and squanderer of his father's patrimony. Why there should be so much adoration and adulation poured out on this man, I fail to see. Because he built the temple and made profuse exhibition of his gold and silver? He could not have built it if his father had not plundered other nations, and given him, Solomon, the money to build with. Because he had an immense number of chariots and soldiers, decked with costly trappings? The money was there to provide these with, and later the people were pretty heavily taxed for his extravagance. The only real point of glory may perhaps lie in the fact that he had one thousand women to play with. We all know that he beats the record on that particular branch of human enterprise. There was truly none like him before or since. And lastly, we have his purported writings, consisting of the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Songs of Solomon. No sooner was he seated on his throne than he began to remove all objectionable persons, those that were likely to be troublesome or dangerous. His elder brother, Adonijah, whose aspiration led him to great things, was dispatched by Benaiah, Solomon's future general. Abiathar, the priest, he removed where he could do least damage. Joab, David's general, who sought the altar of the temple for protection, Solomon ordered Benaiah to behead. Zadock he made high priest in place of Abiathar. Shimei was the next man on the list for death, and Benaiah received order to kill him. Having removed all dangerous or antagonistic men, Solomon settled himself firmly in his kingdom. Those that are curious may read all about the Temple, his house, the wall, cherubim, vessels and the like of gold, the royal palace, splendors, etc., etc. He became what is termed a glorious king, but luxury and women soon had their effect upon his judgment. He had reached the zenith of Israel's greatness. He had touched the highest point of its eminence. It was the golden age of the Hebrews--the age of pomp, pride, braggadocio, and exhilaration. Jerusalem became the great center of attraction. Everything obtainable was collected within its walls. No expense was spared. Indeed, the city became the center of luxury, extravagance, and licentiousness. And Solomon was surely, though slowly, paving the way for the destruction of the nation. The older he grew the worse he got. His reason gradually deserted him; he wasted his energy and his strength on his women, so that when he died he was despised, if not hated, by his people. And he left such a rotten condition of affairs that it tumbled to pieces almost before he was dead. In the course of human events, certain results follow a given line of conduct in the affairs of man. The current of events depends upon our actions, whether good or bad, better or worse. Drain or waste of force and energy, of an individual or of a collective body as a community, state, or nation, slowly but surely weakens, undermining the natural healthy condition, and ultimately leads to a breaking down, and may bring about a final disintegration. Solomon began his reign with an abundance. He had a plenty both of means and health; a most extraordinary opportunity, with an ample training and education; an immense, well-organized army; a stable, firm government, with a full quota of understanding or wisdom. As a rule men get wiser as they grow older. They acquire greater deliberation, sounder judgment, better understanding, more skill in the management of affairs, of man and of state. They are generally more conservative in their actions, more cautious in their dealings, more abstemious in their desires. Their pleasures are restricted, their passions subdued, their wants few, and their pursuits in life so evenly regulated, their conduct so accurately adjusted, that a justice and a wisdom seem to guard every thought and every reflection. Solomon's course was like that of a balloon. He started chockfull of wisdom. He was a marvel, and made a prodigious show. He was a startling phenomenon, the wonder of the age. (You know he asked God for wisdom and God gave it to him; why did not God keep him wise?) In old age he lacked wisdom. He had almost grown into a senseless imbecile. He was a squanderer of energy, a roué, a debauchee, a frivolous and licentious old man who frittered away his time and his brains on his women and their playthings. When the pomp, pride, vanity, show, and bluster of his youth and manhood were exhausted, all there was left was the remnants of a glaring painted show. He had, as it were, danced and skipped and capered, sung and spoken his lines, in a blaze of glory and extravaganza on the stage of human affairs; the curtain drops, and alas, you behold, when the paint and gorgeous dress are removed, a simpering, brainless old image-worshiper. But what a colossal church figure this man makes! What a miraculous personality he is made to be! What a wonderful creation of the Christians' God! A pity some pope has not canonized him and manufactured him into a saint. As to his writings--if he really wrote them, and they were not compiled or written for him--it is to be regretted that his conduct was not regulated by them. A most astonishing perversion of truth is the attribution to the eight chapters of the Song of Solomon of the subject of the church's love unto Christ. The following are the chief interpretations: Chapter i, verse 1: "The song of songs, which is Solomon's." Meaning--The church's love unto Christ. Verse 5: "I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon." Meaning--She confesseth her deformity. Verse 7: "Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon," etc. Meaning--And prayeth to be directed to his flock. Verse 8: "If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth," etc. Meaning--Christ directeth her to the shepherd's tent. Verse 9: "I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots." Meaning--And showing his love to her. Verse 11: "We will make thee borders of gold and studs of silver." Meaning--Giveth her gracious promise. Verse 12: "While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof." Meaning--The church and Christ congratulate each other. Chapter ii, verse 1: "I am the rose of Sharon and lily of the valley." Meaning--The mutual love of Christ and his church. Verse 8: "The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills." Meaning--The hope. Verse 10: "My beloved spake and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away." Meaning--The calling of the church. Verse 14: "O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rocks, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely." Meaning--Christ's care of the church. Verse 16: "My beloved is mine and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies." Meaning--The profession of the church, her faith and hope. Chapter iii, verse 1: "By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not." Meaning--The church's fight and victory in temptation. Verse 6: "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and frankincense, with all the powders of the merchant?" Meaning--The church glorieth in Christ. Chapter iv, verse 1: "Behold thou art fair, my love, behold thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks: thy hair is like a flock of goats that appear from Mount Gilead." Meaning--Christ setteth forth the graces of the church. Verse 8: "Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse," etc. Meaning--He showeth his love to her. Verse 16: "Awake O north wind; and come thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits." Meaning--The church prayeth to be made fit for his presence. Chapter v, verse 1: "I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse. I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk; eat O friends; drink ye, drink abundantly, O beloved." Meaning--Christ awaketh his church with his calling. Verse 2: "I sleep, but my heart waketh, it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undented; for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night." Meaning--The church having a taste of Christ's love, is sick of love. Verse 9: "What is my beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women? What is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us?" Meaning--A description of Christ and his graces. Chapter vi, verse 1: "Whither is my beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? Whither is my beloved turned aside? that we may seek him with them." Meaning--The church professeth her faith in Christ. Verse 4: "Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners." Meaning--Christ showeth the grace of the church. Verse 10: "Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?" Meaning--And his love towards her. Chapter vii, verse 1: "How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman." Meaning--A further description of the church's graces. Verse 10: "I am my beloved's, and his desire is towards me." Meaning--"The church professeth her faith and desire." Chapter viii, verse 1: "O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! When I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised." Meaning--The love of the church to Christ. Verse 6: "Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm, for love is as strong as death; jealousy as cruel as the grave; the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame." Meaning--The vehemency of love. Verse 8: "We have a little sister; and she hath no breasts; what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?" Meaning--The calling of the Gentiles. Verse 14: "Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountain of spices." Meaning--The church prayeth for Christ's coming. These are the verses specifically interpreted and marked for Christian worshipers. It must be remembered that the most decent were selected. To say the interpretations are absurd, is putting it very mildly. Solomon had no more idea of Christ than he had of the laws of gravitation. He was describing and writing about that which was constantly occupying his mind and his time. He portrays a love-sick swain, with all the details that are pleasing both to his eye and to his fancy. He gloats and feeds upon his passions, thus: "His left hand should be under my head, and his right hand should embrace me" (viii, 4). "How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights" (vii, 6). "There are threescore queens and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number" (vi, 8). "His mouth is most sweet; yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved," etc. (v, 16). "Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb; honey and milk are under thy tongue" (iv, 11). "Behold his bed, which is Solomon's; threescore valiant men are about it," etc. (iii, 7). "His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me" (ii, 6). "Behold thou art fair, my love, behold thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes" (i, 15). It is an outrage on decency even to attempt to construe the intent of these songs. The man sang about his woman, like any other swain who delights in his love. Solomon enjoyed nude beauties, as many men do in our day, and he represented the various parts of the female anatomy most accurately. He reveled in the luxurious contemplation of them. Pull down the curtain of hypocrisy and falsehood and let's have the truth--as it was, as it is. Solomon died at a pretty fair old age, having lived ninety-four years. The country had been harassed by robbers, the factions began to be restless, conspiracies were forming, and the people were nervously yet patiently waiting for a chance to revolt. No sooner was he dead than the nation split into two kingdoms. Henceforth this people as a nation is doomed. It soon disappears from the family of nations. But--where is Jehova all this while? Note.--"Solomon's wickedness became intolerable, fully confirming my former observations, that his wickedness began early and continued very long" (Josephus, Bk. viii, Chapter vii). THE TWO KINGDOMS--JUDAH, ISRAEL. David was dead; Joab the great general had been decapitated by Solomon; and what Samuel, Saul, and David had built up, Solomon had been very successful in pulling down. Ten tribes revolted immediately and formed the kingdom of Israel, selecting Jeroboam as their king, 975 B.C. In order to establish a church, a temple, of his own, and his own gods, Jeroboam made two golden heifers and built two little temples for them, claiming that men had built the Temple at Jerusalem as men had built the temples here, and so there was no difference between them. Besides, they would save the journey to Jerusalem. This change was immediately put into effect. One class or tribe was dissatisfied. Those were the Levites, and they emigrated to Judea. This new kingdom of Israel was not over-tranquil. Prophets, and stump orators, agitators, naturally arose. Dissension, bickering, and quarrels appeared. The outlook for the kingdom was not of the brightest. Meantime Jeroboam was in clover. Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, was made king of the two tribes, Judah the fighting tribe and Benjamin the king-giving tribe. Besides these two tribes, we must not forget the Levites, for because of them his kingdom was augmented. The priests of all Israel were Levites, and there were quite a multitude of them. Rehoboam was a Solomon on a very small scale. He had only eighteen wives and thirty concubines, and twenty-eight sons and threescore daughters. He followed in his father's footsteps and led a jolly life, as we should call it in our present age. In 971, four years after he ascended the throne, Shishka, king of Egypt, knowing of all the gold and silver Solomon had stuck into the Temple, invaded Judea with some four hundred thousand men, etc., without opposition, cleared the temple of all the gold and everything of value, and returned home without striking a blow. Rehoboam was a coward, he was afraid. As soon as Judea was clear of Shishka's army, Rehoboam had these gold ornaments that had formerly decorated the temple, which had been carried away by Shishka, replaced by brass trimmings of the same make and style, and delivered them to the keeper of the king's palace. These people were too like their brethren in Israel, for "they built them high places, and images, and groves on every hill, and under every green tree" (1 Kings xiv, 23). "And there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all the days of his life" (1 Kings xv, 6). These two nations therefore have been launched at a pretty fair pace on the downhill grade. Judah, however, had the best of it. For the kingdom of Israel lasted only two hundred and fifty-four years. Shalmanezer, king of Nineveh, takes Samaria and carries the Ten Tribes into captivity. These are what are usually known as the lost tribes. Lost nonsenses!--they had forsaken their former method of worship and adopted another. The kingdom of Judah lasted to the time the Temple was burnt, 588 B.C., having lasted three hundred and eighty-seven years--one hundred and thirty-three years longer than the kingdom of Israel. And what is more, these are the very Jews that are scattered all over the world. These latter are the representatives of these three tribes, Levi, Benjamin, and Judah. And if any person is curious enough to inquire of any Jew to what tribe he belongs, he will receive the answer that he belongs to one of the three above mentioned, that originally formed the kingdom of Judah. Why they were preserved is nothing miraculous. It has nothing to do with God or Jehova, or the ark, or any special grace, as people generally believe. The reason is plain and perfectly natural. The Levites preserved them, the Levites sustained them, the Levites were the brainy race. The Levites, the priestly tribe who were appointed by Moses, himself one of that tribe, to be the rulers, governors, lawgivers, fosterers, priests and preachers, were the brain of the whole nation. They clung to the idea of nationhood with all their priestly might, craft, and ingenuity, and are still clinging to it, with all their might and main. Judah and Benjamin survived only because of the Levites. THE MIRACLE-MONGERS. At 958 B.C. Abijah is king over Judah. He reigns only three years. King Asa follows, 955. Nadab follows Jeroboam, king of Israel; dies; and Baasha reigns in 954. "And there was war between Asa, and Baasha king of Israel, all their days" (1 Kings xv, 16). These facts go to show that fighting continued between Israel and Judah. Foreign powers are now invited to help, and the struggle continues. In 918 Ahab is king of Israel. It is during his reign that a new class of men rise, agitators, talkers, prophets, and small miracle-makers. Elijah makes his appearance. Jehu had already prophesied against Baasha; he was a minor star in the field of prophecy. Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, "said unto Ahab," etc., says 1 Kings xvii, 1. Ahab was king of Israel 918. No miracles are reported to have occurred after Moses. Joshua did not perform any, except that incident about the sun. During all these centuries from 1443, the date of Joshua's death, up to the reign of Ahab, not a miracle-maker appears. There are strong men, bad men, fighting men, priests, brave generals, very wicked men, etc., but none performs a miracle. Another class of men are soon to appear. They, however, do not make their appearance until a century later, or so. I mean the nervous men, the visionary dreamers and prophets of the type of Isaiah. In addition, any number of soothsayers, necromancers, fortune-tellers, and quacks had entered into the business of miracle-making on a small scale. And a new school of skeptics and philosophic speculators slowly developed. Civilization had not advanced much, but it nevertheless was progressing. The minds of men had undergone an evolution. The Jehova of Moses, or the simple abstract form of the Chaldean idol of Abraham, had lost its force, prestige, and importance. The ark, that sacred box, is completely lost sight of in these stirring times of revolution, rebellion, dissension, and fighting. The high priest since the time of Saul had to take a subordinate position. He was the minor oracle, the fault-finder, sometimes the counselor, but never the leader. There was also great competition among the prophets. The trade had grown profitable, consequently false prophets, as they were termed, were trying to gain royal favor. The ideas about God and Jehova had increased and multiplied. Disputes and confusion swayed the people. Idolatry flourished, and the Gods of Abraham and Moses were to some extent still sustained by the relatives of the man who created Jehova, Moses. Man's progress in thought, the evolution of the human brain, is slow and uncertain, especially when the line of advance is of a speculative and problematic character. It is not like a scientific question, that can be demonstrated; accompanied by actual proof and absolute certainty; with no discussion or equivocation, no denial or speculation; which once established remains forever the same. Euclid's geometry has never been disputed. Hippocrates in medicine--whatever he said that was known and true, remains unchanged. Everything that is based upon facts lasts forever. CHAPTER XIII. JEHOVA TAKES A REST. God rests and lets the Hebrews take care of themselves for a period of four hundred and seventy-six years. During these several centuries we hear nothing of miracle or of prophecy, of any importance. In fact, we have passed the only time God or Jehova made himself at all conspicuous. He never appeared again so prominently. He made his exit with Moses. When we hear of Jehova it is but the mere echo of his former self. It is not our purpose to examine or criticise the balance of the Old Testament, but for the sake of showing how human and natural is all the course of these people struggling and making an attempt to exist as a nation, it will be well to consider the actual state of affairs of God's people, after they had become a nation. Joshua, the disciple of Moses, the general and leader after him, subdued and conquered the territory Moses had indicated, and divided the land among eleven tribes. He followed the example of his master. He was a man of resolution and energy, and at this time he had a well-disciplined army. He was quick and active in his movements, with the prestige of Moses to back him. He made war on neighboring nations, slaughtered, hanged, and conquered, sparing nothing. He was shrewd and strategic. He consolidated the nation. He was wise, eloquent, and persuasive. This closes the existence of the republican or theocratic form of government, not a very glorious career of the Hebrews as a nation. Nothing very remarkable occurs during these four centuries, but we have a variety of incidents, all interwoven with superstitious notions of a barbaric, miraculous nature. Besides the introduction of the Box, called the ark, female agitators and heroines are introduced. Debora and Barak deliver the people from Sisera, by means of Mrs. Jael Heber, who drives a tent-nail through his temple while he is asleep. Then there is great rejoicing and another miracle is performed. Meantime they were in slavery under the Assyrians for eighty years--freed by Othniel; under the Moabites eighteen years--freed by one Ehud. Under the Canaanites they were in slavery twenty years, and were delivered by Barak and Debora. The Midianites afflicted the country for seven years, and Gideon delivered them. And this period called the era of the judges winds up with the Benjamites abusing the wife of a Levite, from the effects of which she dies. Thereupon the husband cuts the body up in twelve pieces and sends one to each of the Twelve Tribes--of course through his brother Levites. War is made upon the Benjamites whereby they are nearly exterminated. Lust, robbery, plunder, slaughter, superstition, and barbarism marked these few centuries with little intermission. The Levites had utilized the time in establishing the church and their priestly order, and that was actually the governing power during the four hundred and seventy-six years, but always under the name of the God of Moses, and was therefore designated the theocratic form of government. I ask now in all seriousness, can anyone possessing a reasonable amount of understanding really believe that a God, such as Jews and Christians would make us believe that Jehova is, could behave in the manner recited in the history of the judges? It is a poor god that cannot restrain his people from committing crimes and depredations, restraining their brutal instincts and passions, keeping them in order, at peace among themselves and with others. These intestine quarrels began in Moses's time, at the formation and organization of the Jews as a nation, and ceased only with their destruction. The church which was called into life by Moses was firmly established during this period with all the priestly paraphernalia of an Egyptian temple. Aaron may rightly be considered as the first pope of the church, and the Levites the priestly tribe. "And these are the garments which they shall make; a breastplate, and an ephod, and a robe, and a broidered coat, a miter, and a girdle, and they shall make holy garments for Aaron thy brother, and his sons, that he may minister unto me in the priest's office. And they shall take gold, and blue, and purple, and scarlet and fine linen" (Ex. xxviii, 4, 5). These theatrical garments we have to this day in the Christian churches. Some additions have been made, corresponding and harmonizing with the events that have occurred since. We must not for one moment suppose that the Hebrews were the only people that were active and struggled for existence--which existence in their case this Jehova Christendom still looks upon as most miraculous. As a nation the Jews never invented anything. Jehova is the only thing humanity at large has inherited, and he has been a cause of quarrel and discord ever since. Joshua dies 1443 and Saul is made king 1095. Other nations during this period advance more rapidly in civilization without God, without Jehova, than the Hebrews do with his assistance. Dardanus, king of Troy, is busy building cities 1480 B.C. Danmoni invades Ireland 1463 B.C. Perseus establishes the kingdom of Mycene 1457 B.C. Crockery is made by the Greeks 1490 B.C. All kinds of tools and weapons are being made. At 1453 Olympic games are celebrated in Greece. Hercules makes his appearance and arrives in Phrygia 1225 B.C. The Trojan war begins 1194 and Helen elopes with Paris 1204 B.C. Latinus in 1239 reigns in Italy. In 1141 the temple of Ephesus is burnt by the Amazons. Many nations may be cited using dancing music. Singing had already developed. I cite these few items to show that the world was doing bravely without Jehova or God. In 1115 the Chinese not only knew of the mariner's compass, but were compiling a standard dictionary containing forty thousand characters--which is said to have been completed by Pa-aut-she 1100 B.C. These brief statements, these few historical facts--and there are any number of them--I recite for the purpose of showing that other nations developed, other kingdoms existed, other peoples had already made considerable advances in art, science, lawmaking, government, priestcraft, without God, without Jehova, without the ark. These other nations had their oracles, their ceremonies, their customs. And what is more, they still exist as nations. They no doubt had their wonders, their miracles, their spirits, their souls, their ghosts, their holy of holies, their sanctums, their angels, and their divinities, and whatever else has from time to time been invented to control and deceive the masses and to satisfy the priests. What everybody should understand is that these Hebrews during the theocratic form of government were no better than, and in fact not so good as, other nations, or any of their neighbors. The stage of civilization has never yet advanced beyond the natural capacity and capability of the people at any time. Whatever stage has been reached in the world's progress in the past, it was in harmony and corresponded with the degree of nervous culture that had been attained. And just in proportion as the senses were developed, intelligence and understanding advanced. The senses are the sole originators of ideas. The collective experience and training of these senses becomes the standard by which we may judge the height of knowledge any class of people may have reached. Nations kept pace with one another, copying from one another, imitating or modifying or improving those things and conditions with which they were brought in contact, whether by travel, commercial intercourse, or war. All these means of communication served as a means of exchanging ideas, of adopting, rejecting, or improving whatever degree of civilization had been attained. At no time has any individual, community, or nation been especially favored by any supernatural endowment, influence, or miraculous contribution towards their advancement. But each has always been improved by the force, energy, power, of some individual or individuals whose training and education has been such as to fit him or them to concentrate and carry out the ideas that have perhaps been floating for a greater or lesser time in the intellectual atmosphere. When civilization has outgrown the swaddlings of the times, something must yield. A change is sure to be effected. Although it may not take place without a struggle, or at once, ultimately it will and must attain the necessary accommodation. Change or revolution has never yet taken place without some new ideas having been evolved. Doubts have arisen, and processes of reasoning have been set in motion, plans made, in order to upset the old ideas, to replace them by the new. New ideas and improvements ripen slowly. The minds of men are not ready to receive and adopt them. Skepticism as to the existing state of things makes way for the newer and advanced condition of affairs. Our understanding and reasoning faculties are limited to the state of progress and the steps that have been made in the advancement of civilization. We may be a little before our time, but never very much. We could never have had an electric light if Volta had not discovered the battery. Nor would steam power be so generally used if the marquis of Worcester had not had the idea suggested to him A.D. 1663 of a way to drive up water by fire, etc. Men must learn to know and understand that all knowledge, whether belonging to mythology, idolatry, fable, romance, theology, philosophy, or science--all rules adopted for our mode of conduct, either as individuals, communities, or governments--are the products of the brain, evolved by degrees by a perfectly natural process. And just as we advance from infancy to childhood, from childhood to youth, from youth to puberty, from puberty to manhood, from manhood to maturity, from maturity to reasoning, from reasoning to judgment, from judgment to wisdom, so humanity has gone step by step, through many thousands of centuries perhaps, slowly improving in intelligence, accumulating experience. Observing so many phenomena in nature they did not understand, it was all surprise and wonder. And not being able to account for them, in consequence of the infantile development of their nerve centers, admiration of their beauty and usefulness led to gratitude and worship. And they at length made themselves images representing these extraordinary phases. Thus idols in all probability originated. Like children with dolls, they dressed them, painted them, played with them, imitated living beings in their form and shape, endowing them with some of the best human qualities or virtues known to them. The collection of these representations, especially the most prominent ones, formed in due time the center or focus round which fables and myths gathered. The older they grew, the more they were honored, till at length they became established institutions. The history of the human race begins with fables, myths, childish stories, and with idols. These prevail until some one arises and either disputes their authenticity or proves them unreasonable. This tends to produce new ideas, disputes, conflicts, angry passions, and separation. Differences of opinion concerning old ideas and methods lead to the formation of new ones, especially when the old ones cease to interest and become impracticable or burdensome. New ideas in time take the place of the old ones, improved, modified, and adapted to the existing circumstances and conditions. The Levites had for several centuries attempted to govern the Hebrews by means of ecclesiastical discipline, laws, and leadership, but finally discovered that it was anything but a success. Every form had been tried. They were threatened with destruction, in spite of their Jehova and the wooden Box, the ark. Some new stimulant had to be tried to bring about a more healthy condition of affairs. To consolidate the nation if possible, to infuse a new spirit, and divert ideas from discontent, turmoil, and dissension, a king was suggested. Samuel finding a very tall man who bore an excellent reputation for courage and wise conduct, one of the tribe of Benjamin, he selected him as a proper person to become king of the Jews. This man's name was Saul. Samuel himself not only was a clever priest and prophet, but also possessed the necessary qualities to make a good general. It was he who defeated the Philistines after they had gained one victory over the Israelites and captured their ark. During this period of their existence as a republic, an ecclesiastical republic--the theocracy, as it is called--they had to contend and struggle, and undergo many vicissitudes. It was barbarian fighting against barbarian. Regardless of their having on the one side Jehova and the ark, and on the other side Dagon & Co., the victory always remained with the best-disciplined or more numerous army, which also possessed good generalship. CHAPTER XIV. THE END OF NATIONAL LIFE. The Hebrew monarchy established under Saul 1095 B.C., continued and cemented under David, and weakened and ruined under Solomon, terminated in the year 975 B.C., lasting altogether one hundred and twenty years. This marks the culmination of national greatness and glory--and the rapid decline and disintegration. We now come upon the rise of a new class of men, prophets of a new school--visionary men, dreamers and agitators, reformers--besides miracle-mongers and fault-finders. Discontent reigned. Men began to sing the glories of their past greatness, the wonders of Jehova, the miracles of Moses, and the promises that the Lord had made to their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of the land that flowed with milk and honey. It seems almost unaccountable, even from a theological, Christian standpoint, that God, Jehova, the Lord almighty, should not be able to exhibit his wonderful powers regularly, systematically, instead of by fits and starts, on special occasions, after intervening centuries. Why should a God come and go by leaps and jumps, appearing and disappearing at distant ages, now helping and then punishing? Why lead and mislead? Why permit people to be so foolish and senseless as to create rival gods? Why should he be jealous of a wooden god, or of any other kind of an idol? Why should it be necessary to whip people into understanding God, knowing him? Why were there so many thousand people slaughtered to force conviction of his marvelous powers? Is it not an outrage on common sense for a God to stoop to mountebank tricks, subterfuge, and delusion, so-called miracles, in order to establish his existence, or his presence? If God made man, why did he not make him properly to begin with, so as to suit himself at least? Why did he not make him so as to know the father right from the start? Why should this almighty God, this Jehova, keep his chosen people continually on the rack of transgression, crime, and folly? Why did he create them so that they should so easily forget him, and devote their reverence, their veneration, their sacrifices, and their prayers to some brass or wooden image? The excuse so frequently made throughout the Bible, as a reason for losing battles or being made captives, that the Jews forsook their Jehova, their God, is no extenuating circumstance. How comes it that the nations with the heathen gods were victorious and finally conquered the Hebrew nation and led them forth as captives? The heathen gods must have been equal, indeed frequently superior, to the Hebrew God, because they, the heathen gods, were so very often victorious, and finally subdued the Hebrews. The two nations Judah and Israel fell into idolatry almost immediately. Solomon even preferred Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians; and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites (1 Kings xi, 5), and how many other strange gods we have no record. Israel began as a kingdom 975 B.C.; Jeroboam, a servant of Solomon, was the first king and Hoshea the last; Shalmanezer, king of Assyria, took Samaria by force, and drove the Ten Tribes into Media captives, in the year 721 B.C.; this kingdom having lasted two hundred and fifty-four years, and having had during that time nineteen kings. The kingdom of Judah lasted longer, beginning at the same time, 975 B.C. Rehoboam, the son of King Solomon, was the first king. The captivity of Judah and the destruction of Jerusalem was completed 588 B.C. Judah had existed as a nation about three hundred and eighty-seven years. Jehoiachin and Zedekiah were the last kings. During this period they had about twenty-one kings. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, made a conquest of Egypt, besieged Jerusalem, pillaged and burnt the Temple, and carried everything away that he could lay his hands on. With few exceptions, a worse, a more brutal set of men than these rulers never governed any nation. During their successive reigns, we find an unbroken succession of the barbarities which were at that time the generally recognized method of warfare, accompanied by licentiousness, and all the other savageries of these semi-civilized people. Prophet traffic flourished in those days. There were as many kinds of prophets as there were gods, with a complement of priests to correspond. Religious hate and intolerance was manifest on every occasion towards one another. To gain power and control the affairs of state was the chief aim and object. They would curse and destroy one another whenever a favorable opportunity occurred. Two religious fanatics became especially conspicuous about 918 B.C., Elijah and later Elisha. The antagonism and hostility between the leaders of factions was now very intense. Jezebel slaughtered the prophets of her opponents, and Elijah, who was the leader of the Jehova faction, cursed and raved, and many hundred prophets of Baal were slaughtered (1 Kings xviii, 19, 40). It was brutality against brutality, crime against crime, savagedom against savagedom. The bloody struggle continued right along, the slaying being employed on any and every occasion. Thus he caused the killing of the several fifties, as related in 2 Kings i. Elijah was a zealot; harsh, bitter, and merciless to the opponents of his faith. As to the miracles, they answered the purpose well enough for a lot of ignorant, half-civilized country people. We have had similar tricks repeated by priests all along, deluding, cheating, and defrauding the poor simple-minded, ignorant classes. "And it came to pass as they still went on and talked, that behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven" (2 Kings ii, 11). How could a man go up to heaven? The atmosphere around this terrestrial globe is about two to three hundred miles in hight. The law of gravitation prevents the smallest particle from leaving the earth's surface, much more a body of the weight of a man. The whirlwind belongs to the earth, and never reaches beyond a certain hight. Besides, everything taken up by a whirlwind or cloud in due time returns to mother earth. As for the horses and chariot of fire, in later days pious persons pretend to have seen similar appearances. A man sitting before a fire fancies he sees all kinds of pictures and faces; they are the reflections of his mind. So when one fancies representations of figures and objects in the clouds, or in the moon, they are either delusions of vision, or the fancied picture of the imagination. There are delusions of hearing. An unsound condition of the nervous system may produce hallucinations of such a nature; a disease or a mental derangement may occasion this sort of nervous disturbances. A new feature was introduced by these men--the healing art, resuscitating the supposed dead, casting out evil spirits, laying on hands, etc. A sillier piece of charlatanism was never put in print than Elisha's miraculous resuscitating trick on a child in a cataleptic fit (2 Kings iv, 34, etc.). A craftier or more cunning piece of business was exciting Jehu, King Ahab's general, to rebel, and to slaughter the whole of the king's family. Elisha sends a young prophet to Jehu to pour oil on his head and anoint him king, on his promise to exterminate the king's family (2 Kings ix): "For the whole house of Ahab shall perish; and I will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall and him that is shut up and left in Israel" (2 Kings ix, 8). Ahab, Jezebel, and Ahab's seventy sons were all slaughtered. All the great man's priests, and his kinsfolk, were slain. And Elisha called together all the prophets of Ahab's faction, all those that worshiped Baal, and killed them all off. General Jehu was made king as a recompense for the services he had rendered to the Elisha faction. That was about 884 B.C. Usurpation, conspiracy, and bloody crimes mark this period. Intrigue, robbery, spoilings, lust, and degradation seem epidemic in these nations. When they were not fighting each other, they were warring with these barbarities. Elijah had undoubtedly a powerful party at his command when he prompted Jehu to revolt and assume the reins of government. He had everything pretty well organized when Elijah said, "And it shall come to pass, that him that escapeth Hazael shall Jehu slay; and him that escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay." "Yet I have left seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal" (1 Kings xix, 17, 18). These seven thousand were no doubt his immediate disciples, not the commoner herd of people. He selected a man to succeed him, whom he no doubt knew well--a farmer, for Elisha was plowing when he was chosen as chief agitator, arch-conspirator, and inheritor of all the rights and privileges of a revolutionary leader (1 Kings xix, 20, etc.). This plowman, prophet, and conspirator combines in himself also the healer, preacher, and leader, etc. He cures Naaman's leprosy, causes iron to swim, brings blessings to some and curses to others. These knavish tricks succeeded with the ignorance and superstition of the day. The people could be swayed in any direction by a clever, determined, bold talker, consequently were easily excited into the committal of any acts, no matter how revolting or brutal. These political factions led by prophets and priests were not so gentle and polite towards one another as they are at the present day. The church ruled. Gods of either side alternately were in power. Those in power killed off those who were out of power. Whether it is Elijah or Elisha, leaders of the Jehova party, or Queen Jezebel, leader of the Baal prophets of the other party, the result always depends upon numbers and clever leadership. Ferocious brutality never ceases but for a short while. There is not a spark of humanity, no mercy, not an act of kindness or consideration. Menahem was king of Israel 772 B.C. He smote Tipsha and all that were therein. "And all the women therein that were with child he ripped up" (2 Kings xv, 16). Thus we have page after page marked with bloody crime in the book called sacred history, scripture, and what not. And alas! this is God's work, God's own book, God's own people. Much has been said about the inaccuracies in the Bible--the contradictions, the errors that are found. We are not concerned in any of them. We are interested in directing the attention of the reader to the book called holy scripture, a book believed to have been written by supernatural inspiration, relating to certain acts done by God; and these acts, accompanied by wonders, were performed for a people especially selected by him, that were under his protection, guidance, direct supervision; and their leaders, lawgivers, kings, priests, prophets, and teachers were by reason of their holiness in communication with this God, either directly or indirectly, and thereby were endowed with powers that rendered them capable of doing things contrary to the fixed laws of nature. We have endeavored to point to a few of the acts of the greatest and best men figuring in that book called scripture. These men were not divine nor were their acts divine. Their acts were not humane, nor anything approaching what is understood to be humane at the present age. On the contrary, their acts were barbarous, savage, brutal, cruel, and in many instances outrageous. They, the Hebrews, were no better than their neighbors the heathens, whatever their name or nationality might be. The heathen with their idols were just as good in war, in battle, as, if not better than, the Jews were with their God, their Jehova, and the ark, and finally succeeded in subduing the Jews, burning their Temple with God's ark, vessels, etc., taking them captives, and destroying them as a nation. It is evident from history that the principal men of the nation were corrupt; that both the kingdom of Israel and that of Judah were rotten to the core. They were continually warring with each other, as with other nations. Their abuses gave rise to public agitators, who always found supporters. Men of the Elijah and Elisha stamp never lose an opportunity, and they made the most of all of it while they lived. They introduced a school of thought and action that laid the foundation for new sects that culminated in the remote future. The belief in medical miracles was more firmly fastened upon the minds of their followers by the prophets, fortune-tellers, and healers, than by any class previous. Other nations meantime were progressing in civilization--literature, the art of warfare, etc. Greece was gaining laurels. Homer appeared. Hesiod wrote about 900 B.C. Tyrtæus's Elegies, Archilochus's Satires, etc., about 700 B.C. The Persians and Romans were rising and making rapid progress and conquest, soon to sweep smaller peoples and nations aside. These heathen made conquests, gained victories, transplanted the captives, and were altogether far more prosperous and successful with their idols than the Hebrews were with their God. Nothing else better proves that the struggles for supremacy among the human families were perfectly natural, each side depending always on their leaders, their skill in fighting, their bravery, and their organization; that their Gods, their idols, their oracles, and their priests played but a small part in the transactions of life; and that all the gods, whether idols, or mythological, or Jehovistic, and no matter of what nationality, had all about the same material value, power, and importance. From our modern standpoint all the gods may be classed in one category. We may safely pronounce them to be creatures of imagination, sprung into existence through ignorance, fears, and superstition. They are all alike false, frivolous, and foolish. They have not a particle of truth in them. And the Gods that are now held in such high esteem by many people, are no better than the Chaldean idols. Judah is still struggling to retain her grip on her national life. Every effort prolongs the agony. Hezekiah is king 717 B.C. Isaiah is the prophet. Romantic dreamer, songster, critic, and man of visions, he sees distress, ruin, and misery before him; recalls the glories of the past, but sees none of the faults; sees the greatness of the nation of Solomon, David, and Saul, and now beholds the national degradation. He laments this dreadful condition with a bitterness of feeling. Then he hopes against hope that something will happen in the future that will bring about a happy state of his nation and reproduce the golden prosperity of those glittering ages that are gone. This man is a close observer, a visionary man, and a critic. He writes and sings of his own people, of his own country. In the introduction which he gives himself in Isaiah i and ii, he presents his vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem, etc. He reproaches them for their sin, iniquity, corruption, etc.: "Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers" (i, 7). His dream and hope of the future: "And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (ii, 4). This entire chapter, like most of the chapters of Isaiah, is a work of the imagination. It is the fancy of a dreamer who mentally sees the thing he longs for. In his nervous exaltation, visions appear, incoherent, meaningless, except to himself. He brings different parts of different objects together, representing things and scenes he is familiar with, in the form of pictures, natural in parts but unnatural and impossible as a whole. "As for my people, children are their oppressors and women rule over them" (iii, 12). He describes the "tinkling ornaments" about their feet, and their cauls and their round tires like the moon, their chains and bracelets and mufflers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands and the tablets and the earrings, and the rings and nose-jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping-pins, and the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails, etc. This portion is no doubt realistic. It shows his mental condition and the mood he was in. His humor changes: "Now I will sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard" (v, 1). In this chapter he touches upon everything that strikes his fancy. Hell, wind, land, instruments, lions, etc., etc., are all introduced. He rambles all over nature. Imaginary ideas are mixed with realities indiscriminately, for illustration, comparison, lamentation, or complaining. High in the temple he sees the Lord sit; sees the seraphim with six wings, etc. (vii). And in chapter viii he has a "great roll and writes in it with a man's pen concerning Maher-shalal-hash-baz." Verse 1: "And I went to the prophetess; and she conceived, and had a son. Then said the Lord to me, Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz" (3). Isaiah lived after the captivity of the Ten Tribes. He also knows of the constant fighting between the Ten tribes and the two, Israel and Judah. Israel has been carried away captive to other lands and its country has been given to a people called Cutheans, or Samaritans. These cultivated and adopted in some measure the Jewish religion. In moments of despondency he refers to them as he refers to Moab and other nations elsewhere. The whole Christian faith seems to be based on the prophecy of the ninth chapter of Isaiah, 6th and 7th verses. Isaiah starts out in this chapter speaking of the time when God first lightly afflicted the land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, etc. In the 6th verse he says, "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given," etc. That man has no reference to Christ as Maher-shalal-hash-baz. Chapter viii, verse 8: "And he shall pass through Judah; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck, and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of the land, O Immanuel." This really means the son which the prophetess conceived, and called Maher-shalal-hash-baz. Chapter ix, verse 21: "Manasseh and Ephraim, and Ephraim and Manasseh; and they together shall be against Judah," etc. He talks in a confused, mystified fashion, alluding now to this people, now to that; at one time to the Tribes and at another to the Moabites, Assyrians, then to Egypt or Zion; dreams of tyrants, hypocrites, and his hopes revived about the remnants of Israel. When he speaks of the child he has not the remotest dream of Christ. He has no foreknowledge, except what his judgment suggests. He feels annoyed and irritated, then his hope and aspiration soothe and comfort him, and in chapter xi he describes a most happy state of affairs: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them" (verse 6). "And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like an ox" (xi, 7), etc. The wildest and most extravagant kinds of interpretation are given to various passages in Isaiah. Into them the theologians force a meaning: Chapter xxxv, 1: "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose." Christians say it means the joyful flourishing of Christ's kingdom. In chapter xliii, verse 2, Jehova declares: "I, even I, am the Lord; and beside me there is no savior." He repeats it in chapter xliv, verse 6: "I am the first, and I am the last, and beside me there is no God." Verse 8: "Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any." Chapter xlix: "Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken ye people from afar; the Lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name." This is supposed to mean, Christ being sent to the Jews complaineth of them. Chapter lv: "Thus saith the Lord, where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom I have put away? or which creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold! for your iniquities you have sold yourselves, and for your transgression is your mother put away." It is said that this means, Christ sheweth that the dereliction of the Jews is not to be imputed to him, by his ability to save. This is the Christian interpretation of the above passage. It is a misrepresentation of facts as well as meaning. Why twist, torture, and falsify it? Isaiah lived in stirring times. After the captivity of the Ten Tribes, the government and the people were corrupt. An invasion was at hand. Sennacherib invades Judea 712-711 B.C. The Medes and Assyrians were also fighting for supremacy. Being an educated man, he knew the history of his nation--their trials, the triumph and the glory they had enjoyed, and the decline of this people with its pride and pomp to a passing away. He had ample material to supply his imagination; he therefore dreamed, sang praises, saw visions, hoping for something to turn up, miraculous or otherwise, to save the remnant of his nation. He cannot be compared to the two strong, rough miracle-mongers of Israel, Elijah and Elisha, that had lived over a century before him. This idealistic dreamer had not the slightest knowledge of coming events, of what was to happen seven hundred years later. The minds of men had slowly undergone changes. The rigidity of the Mosaic laws had undergone some modification, and some change in interpretation as to the meaning of the many commands and usages. With every battle and with every invasion new notions, new customs, were introduced. The transition was surely laying the foundation for various schools, which was inevitable as the intelligence and education progressed. After Isaiah Jeremiah comes, as a natural result of the age. Manasseh, king of Judah, had been carried captive to Babylon, and restored to power 677 B.C. Ammon and Josiah follow. The latter is killed, and his successor, Jehoahaz king of Judah, is deposed and carried to Egypt 609. Three years later Nebuchadnezzar conquers Jerusalem. Jehoiachin reigns three months, and he is carried off captive to Babylon, besides three thousand of the principal persons of dignity, and among these was Ezekiel (598 B.C.). Zedekiah was appointed king. He was the uncle of Jehoiachin, twenty-one years of age when he began his reign; a bad one it was, and he suffered for it. And he was the last of the kings of Judah. In 588 B.C. Jerusalem was captured and destroyed, the Temple burnt; the sons and friends of Zedekiah were slain; Zedekiah's eyes were put out, and he was bound and taken to Babylon. Jeremiah had spoken a good many truths, and given them ample warnings what would happen. He met with a great deal of opposition--was thrown into prison and made to suffer for his boldness. His exhortations and his appeals availed nothing. The heads of the high priests and those of the rulers were cut off. The destruction was complete. Jeremiah wrote fifty-two chapters, and Christian interpreters managed to find two places in this entire writing that indicated Christ's kingdom: Chapter xxiii, verse 5; "Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper and shall execute justice and judgment in the earth"--meaning, Christ shall rule and save them. Chapter xxxi, verse 22: "How long wilt thou go about, O thou backsliding daughter? for the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth. A woman shall compass a man"--meaning, Christ is promised. These are the only two spots whence any possible allusion can be drawn. This man is unlike the visionary, romantic dreamer Isaiah, whose imagination and nervous exaltation kept him more or less in a state of excitability and carried him into regions of dreamland where his hopes and wishes were planted. Jeremiah writes up the historical occurrences; passes judgment on his own people and on the nations his people had to struggle with, bewailing their corruption, wickedness, wretchedness, misery. He never dreams of Christ or Christianity, nor does he in any part allude to Christ. He also, like Isaiah, wrote and acted in accordance with the times he lived in. He was a steadfast friend to his disciple Baruch. His lamentations describing the miserable state of Jerusalem, bewailing its calamities, are perfectly human, and perfectly natural for a patriot and a poet of his time. Ezekiel was in Chaldea among the captives about 590 B.C. This man is also largely endowed with a prolific imagination; he is a visionary man. He adopts a new method of talking; when the word of the Lord comes to him, "Son of Man" is the manner in which he is addressed. Jeremiah uses the expression, "Sayeth the Lord," or "the word to Jeremiah from the Lord saying"----Isaiah uses, "Thus saith the Lord." Ezekiel wrote forty-eight chapters. The following are interpreted to mean Christ: Chapter xxxiv, verse 20: "Therefore thus saith the Lord God unto them: Behold I, even I, will judge between the fat cattle and between the lean cattle"--meaning, the kingdom of Christ. Chapter xxxvi, verse 25: "Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you; and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you"--meaning, the blessings of Christ's kingdom. Chapter xxxvii, verse 20: "And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes"--meaning, the promises of Christ's kingdom. The political methods of governing nations which had their origin in the ages of barbarism, ignorance, and brutality, left the rotten remnants to construct upon them a system of rules for the guidance of the masses, to control, subjugate, and restrain their mental faculties, the development and advancement of their understanding, and to perpetuate the suppression of their higher intellectual powers. The beliefs in a God with the inferior natural human functions were handed down to us through many centuries, undergoing transitions and changes to suit the occasions, circumstances, and times. The toning down of the Hebrew God is in the first instance mainly due to the beneficent influences of the heathen, as they were then called. The educational facilities the Jews enjoyed during their captivity were of a better and higher order, and how much of the entire book called scripture is due to these opportunities afforded them we shall never know. History teaches us, however, that Ezra, when Cyrus was king of Persia, 457 B.C., was permitted to go to Jerusalem to collect what manuscripts and data he could find, and he is credited to have written the Chronicles 453 B.C. How many more books or parts were written and compiled by Ezra and his companions will remain a mystery. The work of resuscitating the nation--to recover its former importance, to reëstablish some of its former glory--was attempted seventy years later, under Cyrus, who granted the Jews the privilege to return and rebuild the Temple. They were prompted to do this out of pure motives of patriotism, and it can be regarded only as a struggle to continue to exist as a portion of a historic people. The Levites were instrumental in bringing about their return. The tribes were those belonging to the kingdom of Judah. At this time an opposition temple and an opposition religion was established by the people of Samaria, a mixture of Cutheans and Israelites. The rivalry and hatred towards each other was as intense as the hatred and bitter factional fight had been between the Ten Tribes and the two tribes Israel and Judah. Affairs did not succeed well. There were quarrels, wrangles, application to higher authorities to arbitrate and decide their differences and disputes. New kings, new powers, came for conquest and plunder. New leaders, new governors, deceit, treachery, rebellion, assassination, mark these centuries under Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, until 63 B.C., when Judea was made a Roman province. Meantime new sects had organized under different names, each one giving its interpretation as to the signification of the laws contained in the books that were handed down to them. From the multiplicity of opinions, sects, factions, and fanaticisms, the already modified ideas were about to undergo a farther transition, that helped to inaugurate what might well be termed a reformation. While this nation was crumbling to pieces other nations had advanced in civilization, in art, science, and literature, that never claimed to have done anything under the influence of a Jehova, or any symbol representing him. These nations--Greeks, Romans, Persians--seemed to have succeeded better with mythological gods than the Jews with theirs. They had laws to govern them, which required neither smoke nor thunder to make them. Man, plain man, made them. Some were surrounded with mysterious ceremonies, symbols; others were not. Lycurgus reforms the constitution of Sparta 884 B.C. Carpets are made for tents about this time. The art of sculpture rises in Egypt. Buddha's religion is introduced into India, and an attempt is made to discover the primitive language of mankind by Psameticus; and, what is of considerable importance, children are being educated in the Grecian language and manners 660 B.C. These facts are mentioned to show that nations that were not hampered with the Jehovistic religion, that had no miracles, wonders, or arks, were more advanced in the national sciences, had made farther progress in the general civilization of mankind, than the Hebrews. The electricity of amber was discovered by Thales, and he also taught the spherical form of the earth as the true cause of lunar eclipses, 640 B.C. Schools of learning flourished in many places. Authors appeared whose writings are classic to this day--Sappho, Alcæus, Æsop, Pittachus. Solon's legislation in Athens superseded the laws of Draco. It was not the Mosaic God that made these people intelligent, gave them their understanding. Their enlightenment was due simply to the natural processes of the great nervous centers, independent of all supernatural interference. The school of statuary was opened at Athens by Depoenus and Scyllis. Comedies were enacted on a cart by Susarian and Dolon. Dials were invented by Anaximander, etc. Learning is encouraged at Athens, and a public library is founded. All this and much more occurs about 540 B.C. Persia, too, is rapidly spreading its empire; growing powerful; progressing in wealth, commerce, and learning. Zoroaster founds his philosophy, without bloodshed, rapine, or murder. Rome is in a nourishing condition; takes its first census 565 B.C.--811,700 citizens--spreading its empire. We must ever bear in mind that all these nations were called heathen, and their methods of belief are looked upon by Christian teachers as much inferior to their own. Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, is not inferior in his morality to any of the moralists of the age in which he lived, 522 B.C. And we may safely say he is equal even to the morals of to-day. Manners, methods, and fashions change, but certain principles remain. We can examine the pages of the history of other human races and compare them with the Jews, God's own chosen race, his own people, and the heathen takes the prize in every branch of science, art, and the progress of civilization. The Hebrews for many, many centuries, with their blind infatuation with the supernatural, their constant superstitious practices of their ceremonial, their senseless devotion to an imaginary piece of extravagance, were so steeped in stupidity and ignorance that they had neither time nor inclination to observe and examine nature and its workings, so remained slaves to their preposterous practices. Republics become fashionable. Corinth starts with her republican form of government 582 B.C., and Rome follows in abolishing a regal government and establishing a republic 509 B.C. The Carthaginians make a voyage to Great Britain for tin, etc. Sophocles, Plato, Socrates, Aristophanes, and a host of renowned men rise to teach the world how to think, how to speak. Philosophy, medicine, morality, poetry, history, comedy, tragedy, arts, and science had a firm hold on the public mind. A degree of refinement both in manner and in conduct prevailed among all classes. It was about this time that Ezra and his companions were compiling--rather collecting--fragments for composing the book of Chronicles. Other books may have been compiled or written. Nehemiah followed Ezra. He rebuilt and repeopled Jerusalem. For all that, nothing good of a permanent character was accomplished. Time goes on, centuries accumulate; intelligence, experience, and a higher grade of civilization appear. Nations grow more powerful. The struggle for supremacy continues, and Judah, like a shuttlecock, is thrown about from nation to nation, now under one dominion and now under another. Religious opinions, however, are forming. They are hostile, bitter, inimical towards one another; accompanied with all the hatred, jealousy, spite, that religious differences usually engender. They are all anxious to hold office, priestly or otherwise, consequently bribery, lying, and misrepresentation are the means used to gain the influence of those in power. The rivalry between the sects makes matters no better. The Samaritan sect were already in existence when Ezra returned to Jerusalem. Hostilities led to conflicts, and there was little peace between them. In Judea there were several sects, holding various opinions. Like so many political factions, each sought control, and tried to uphold its peculiar views and interpretations. The Sadducees sprang into life about 244 B.C. This sect believed that the soul dies with the body; "nor do they regard the observance of anything besides that the law enjoins them; for they think it an instance of virtue to dispute with those teachers of philosophy whom they frequent; but this doctrine is received but by few, yet by those still of greatest dignity. But they are able to do almost anything of themselves; for when they become magistrates, as they are unwillingly and by force sometimes obliged to be, they addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise hear them" (Josephus). This sect, one would judge, consisted of the wealthy and more enlightened class. "The Pharisees live meanly, despise delicacies in diet, and they follow the contract of reason; and what that prescribes for them, as good for them, they do; and they think they ought earnestly to strive to observe reason's dictates for practice. They also pay respect to such as are in years; nor are they so bold as to contradict them in anything which they have introduced; and, when they determine that all things are done by fate, they do not take away the freedom from men of acting as they think fit; since their notion is, that it hath pleased God to make a temperament, whereby what he wills is done, but so that the will of man can act virtuously or viciously. They also believe that souls have an immortal vigour in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again; on account of which doctrines they are able greatly to persuade the body of the people; and whatsoever they do about divine worship, prayers and sacrifices, they perform them according to their directions; insomuch that the cities gave great attestation to them, on account of their entire virtuous conduct, both in the actions of their lives, and of their discourse also" (Josephus). "The doctrine of the Essenes is this, that all things are best ascribed to God. They teach the immortality of souls and esteem that rewards of righteousness are to be earnestly striven for, and when they send what they have dedicated to God unto the Temple, they do not offer sacrifices, because they have more pure lustrations of their own; on which account they are excluded from the common court of the Temple, but offer their sacrifices themselves; yet is their course of life better than other men; and they entirely addict themselves to husbandry. It also deserves our admiration, how much they exceed all other men that addict themselves to virtue, and this in righteousness; and indeed to such a degree that as it hath never appeared among any other men, neither Greeks nor Barbarians, no, not for a little time, so hath it endured a long while among them. This is demonstrated by that institution of theirs, which will not suffer anything to hinder them from having all things in common; so that a rich man enjoys no more of his own wealth than he that hath nothing at all. There are about four thousand men that live in this way; and neither have many wives, nor are desirous to keep servants; as thinking the latter tempts men to be unjust; but as they live by themselves, they minister one to another. They also appoint certain stewards to receive the income of their revenues, and of the fruits of the ground; such as are good men, and priests, who are to get their coin and their food ready for them. Of a fourth sect of Jewish philosophers, Judas the Galilean was the author. These men agree in all other things with Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only ruler and lord. They also do not value dying any kind of death, nor indeed do they heed the deaths of their relations and friends, nor can any such fear make them call any man Lord" (Josephus). These matters are quoted to show the changes and modifications religious opinions were undergoing, and must have undergone for many centuries previously, until they reached the present stage. The arguments, discussions, and reasons given, as well as the beliefs adopted, differ only in degree and kind from those when Abraham and his father dissented from the mode of worship then extant in Chaldea, some one thousand nine hundred years previous, and from the modifications introduced by Moses, the greater part of which were adopted from the Egyptians--whence the Jews really got the first taste of civilization. These religious notions of the Jews are the opinions, simply the opinions, of a small branch of the human family. There are a great many others. During all these centuries little or nothing was known of the natural, of the more intimate relations of nature and nature's forces. And of all nations the Jewish race knew the least. They were too much occupied with the supernatural to ever learn anything of the natural. The supernatural idea sprang from the mire of ignorance and barbarism and savagery. Crime and outrage mark the centuries as it rolled along in the tide of human events, halting only when forced, and renewing its current when there was nothing to bar its way--struggling madly, conquering, fighting, subduing. Life was of no value, and everything was brutally crushed under this monstrous supernatural idea, until at length it was brought to halt by superior natural forces that in time crushed and subdued it. After one thousand four hundred years of Jehovaism, of various shades and hues, this religion emerges from the past ages to the coming centuries in a new garb, slightly improved, somewhat milder in temper, and wearing altogether a new mask, so that neither Father Abraham nor General Moses would recognize his offspring. CHAPTER XV. THE CHRISTIAN ERA. We come to the beginning of the second two thousand years of modified Jehovaism, called the Christian era. The Christian era, like the Chaldean-Abrahamic era, and like the Mosaic-Jehovistic era, was introduced in a mysterious manner. Both the Mosaic and the Christian were accompanied with miracles, differing in degree and intensity, as also corresponding with the changes and transitions of the times, the progress of intelligence, and the development of brain power. If Moses had made the attempt to perform his miracles in Christ's time, he would have been hooted. He could not have deceived these masses with his tricks as he did the ignorant horde he led out of Egypt. These people had no opinion, no idea, no intelligence. They were the obedient tools and slaves of anyone who exhibited superior skill to control them and keep them in subjection, as the Catholic and Greek church make the ignorant masses subservient to their will at this day. The small end of the wedge of science had begun to make its way into the dense solid mass of ignorance and superstition, through the thick coating of Jehovistic supernaturalism. This thin end, however, opened a chink big enough to give us the first glimpse of the natural. Men began to think, reason, calculate. Their past experience made them think and compare the various conditions of man and things in nature. Philosophy, arts, science, had taken root, in opposition to and in spite of any supernatural theory or any Jehovistic influence. The natural is the proper antidote for this supernatural poison. Greece was one of the first nations that helped to lift the heavy fog that obscured man's intellectual vision: B.C. Aristæus writes a treatise on conic sections, 380 Dionysius invents catapultæ, 399 Aristotle, the founder of the Peripatetics, logician and philosopher, Plato, Diogenes, Demosthenes (Philippics), etc., 368 Gausias of Sycion invents caustic painting, the art of burning colors into wood and ivory, 335 Lysistratus invents molds from which to cast wax figures, 328 The gnomon is invented or constructed to measure altitudes, Euclid of Alexandria writes his celebrated Mathematics, that has never been contradicted or modified, and is used at the present day, 300 Dionysius the astronomer at Alexandria finds the solar year to consist of 365 days 5 hours and 49 minutes, Archimedes the mathematician demonstrates the property of a lever and other mechanical powers, also the art of measuring solids and surfaces and conic sections, and constructs a planetarium, The art of making paper and printing invented by the Chinese, 200 Attalus, king of Pergamos, introduces a book with leaves of vellum, instead of rolls, Pasidonius calculates the hight of the atmosphere to be 800 stadia, Scipio Nascia invents a water clock, Hipparchus lays the foundation of trigonometry, fixes the first degree of longitude, the meridian, These few citations I hope will be convincing proof of the progress made, thus showing that men were observing, reasoning, calculating, governed by demonstration and proof. It would have been impossible for Moses, or any other man, to perform miracles of the nature theologians believe, at the time of Christ. Two conditions are always necessary for every miracle--profound ignorance on the one hand, and a clever fraud on the other. There are, however, another class of miracles, that are at all times in order; that are played and plied on human failing and human weakness, always coupled with ignorance on the one side, and dishonest scoundrelism, a fraud by a priest or church mountebank, on the other. In disturbances of nature, no one believes unless he has ocular proof and demonstration, knowing that these things are subject to natural laws and no one man could produce an earthquake or a thunderstorm. No man could stop the current of the Mississippi river either by praying or by throwing a stick over it. What we can do, that has the appearance of a miracle, is to play upon the susceptibilities, failings, weaknesses, and imaginations of ignorant human nature. These cure-alls, these medical wonder-workers, these spiritual charlatans, these theological miracle-mongers, these fanatical frauds, were introduced more prominently in the Bible story by the celebrated political agitators Elijah and Elisha. The Christian form of religion is a modification of the Hebrew, mixed with either Greek or some other of the numerous doctrines existing at that period. The hero of this reformation is brought to our notice in what is scripturally called a miraculous manner. Matthew introduces the subject by saying (i, 18): "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was in this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost." We have noticed how (Gen. vi, 2) the sons of God married the daughters of men--who the lady was, the mother of these sons, we do not know, or by what process they were brought into this world. There are instances in the Bible when prayer had the effect of producing that interesting condition on woman. We have also the example of Eli, that fat, lascivious priest (whose sons entertained themselves behind the altar with the ladies) who assisted Hannah when the Lord closed her womb. The Temple has served many outrageous purposes, and many amusing as well as instructive lessons might be gathered. Fortunately the Jewish Temple is no exception. The heathen temples were equally guilty. During the reign of Tiberius, the Romans had a temple of Isis, and they had a god called Anubis. A man with the name of Mundus fell in love with a married lady called Paulina, who bribed the priests to permit him to appear to Paulina in the temple as the god Anubis. The priest representing the god Anubis invited Paulina to the temple in order to be entertained by that god. Her husband, pleased with the favor, consented. Paulina was entertained all night at the temple by what she supposed to be the god Anubis, Mundus representing him. Paulina was delighted, her husband also, but Mundus could not hold his tongue. Tiberius heard of it; he caused the temple, priests, and all to be burnt, and Mundus was exiled for three months. The priests were crucified. Anyone curious to know particulars about this matter may consult history. In modern times, living as we do in an age of reason, fact, and science, we do not take the same view of these particular occurrences such as the Bible speaks of as our forefathers, the ancients who lived in an age of fancy and imagination. The Holy Ghost, unless he is in the substantial form of a man, can accomplish nothing, and either Mrs. Mary Joseph had committed an act of indiscretion before marriage, or Joseph himself was the father. It would be far more decent for all parties concerned to legitimatize the child. The effect or result would be just the same, since the young gentleman is to be the great reformer of that age, clever, meek, mild, amiable as he is represented to be in the New Testament. Mark begins his gospel: "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." Luke begins historically and then tells his virgin story (i, 27). John philosophizes, and tells us that (verse 18) "no man hath seen God; the only begotten son which is in the bosom of the father, he hath declared him." In verse 45 he is called the son of Joseph. The entrance of Christ into this world is the most stupid and ridiculous piece of nonsense that was ever written. If Christ is the son of God he can be no relation of David, and Joseph can certainly not be his father. Or if the Holy Ghost was the cause of Mary's condition before marriage, Joseph condoned the offense by living with her, and is the father by adoption and not by nature; and can by no means be a relation or descendant of David. Then again, if Joseph is the father, Jesus is not the son of God. In that case, he might be a relation of David, but no relation to God. Men of ordinary education no longer believe either in the Holy Ghost, the manner of Christ's coming, nor in his divinity. It is an absurd fabrication, an impossibility and contrary to nature. I repeat once more, that neither God, his spirit, nor his holy ghost, can perform anything that is in direct opposition to the laws of nature. The miracles that are attributed to Jesus Christ by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are invariably of a medical nature; embracing all kinds--lepers, palsy, fevers, dropsy, the blind, the dumb, the lame--hemorrhages of women, casting out devils, curing lunatics, healing every disease. The manner of curing is very peculiar--by touch, by rebuke, by word, by spit and touch. A sample or two will suffice: Mark vii, 32: "And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand on him." 33: "And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue." 34: "And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and said unto him, Ephphatha, that is, be opened." 35: "And straightway his ears were opened, and the strings of his tongue were loosed, and he spake plain." Matt. xvii, 15, etc.: Christ rebukes the devil out of a lunatic. Chapter xx, 34: He touches the eyes of two blind men and they see. Luke viii, 43: "And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed by any." 44: "Came behind him, and touched the borders of his garment; and immediately, her issue of blood stanched." Chapter viii, 54 (woman dead): "And put them all out, and took her by the hand, and called saying, Maid, arise." 55: "And her spirit came again, and she arose straightway," etc. John ix, 1: "And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man, which was blind from his birth." Verse 6: "When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay." Luke xiv, 2: He cures a man of dropsy, etc. That these cures were actually performed is not very probable, for the simple fact that the art of medicine was little known, and least known among the Jews. That these four witnesses really were present at the time these operations were performed, we have no proof. Luke says Christ cures blindness by touch; John makes him use spit and clay. We are not told that he was trying experiments. Anyway, every operation was successful. Raising people from the dead was equally successful. Why should we wonder that such miracles could be performed among the lower classes, rude, uneducated, and poor? They were ready to believe any kind of plausible deception; and it was among this class that he found his adherents. These performances called miracles are supposed to have happened nearly two thousand years ago. At that time the masses were not to be compared to the masses of to-day in education, understanding, or in the progress made in every branch of art, science, literature, mechanics, etc. The church Christianity has also progressed somewhat, and there can be no possible excuse for the priests of to-day affirming these pretended cures of Christ. They ought to know that the notions of these things are due to feebleness of intellect in the uncultured brain, to the lack of understanding and the gullibility of the masses. Christ and his disciples were as ignorant as the masses concerning medicine or the healing art. They knew absolutely nothing about it. At 325 A.D., later 318, fathers of the then existing Christian organizations approved of the entire contents. Nay, a large part of it may have been manufactured by them. At this day there is no reason that men should not know better. Every man, whether priest or layman, ought to understand that so-called miraculous cures can be performed only by men, priests or others, that premeditatedly, with intent, cheat, swindle, and defraud some portion of the public, in consequence of the ignorance of the one, and the superior knowledge, shrewdness, and cunning of the other. It is a flagrant abuse of authority, a miserable condition of our laws, a stupendous piece of bigotry, an outrage, that a man can be punished for speaking the truth, and it is an actual miracle that people are still so wonderfully stupid as to believe in the scandalous deception of the healing qualities of an old rag, a coat, pretended to have belonged to Christ or some one else. Recently we read in the daily paper, the Sun: "Berlin, Sept. 26.--In Treves, Herr Reichar has been sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment for ridiculing the holy coat and for attacking the Roman Catholic prelates because they encouraged the people to believe that it had healing qualities. His publisher, Herr Sonnenburg, was sentenced to three weeks' imprisonment. The chief charge against them was blasphemy." Even in this city, some miserable cheat or cheats attempted to perpetrate the same sort of scoundrelism in one of the Catholic churches. During the recent cholera desolation in Hamburg, we read: "In all the churches services of prayer for the abatement of the plague have been held. They have been attended by crowds which have filled the buildings" (Sun). In ancient times plagues were regarded as visitations from God; to-day we know that they are the products of filth and starvation. Sanitary measures and food for the starving are needed, instead of prayer. The churches would answer a far better purpose converted into soup-kitchens and healthy lodging-houses for the poor and homeless. In Russia the condition is still worse. The degradation of the masses is extreme. Of the dreadful doings there we hear but the slightest echo. The Russian priest is an ignorant, intolerant, selfish, tyrannical brute. In time of cholera the clergy walk in procession through the streets in church garb, with banners, crosses, candles, chanting and praying, while the dirt, filth, and cholera poison lie all around them. The pilgrimages to Lourdes are another ecclesiastical swindle. The poor, miserable dupes are enticed in order to be plundered. From the Tribune, "Zola at Lourdes," we quote: "Nothing could be more truly sensational than the annual pilgrimage thither, the flocking to that shrine of tens of thousands of devotees, dozens of special trains running to it daily; the daily processions, with thousands of priests and tens of thousands of the laity; the fervent prayers of the supplicants, and the wild exaltation of those that are miraculously healed--or who believe themselves to be healed.... So M. Zola, accompanied by Mme. Zola, were at Lourdes, and following the crowd, proceeded at once to the holy grotto. He found it surrounded by more than twenty thousand people, of both sexes and of all ages and conditions. Indeed in none of his novels is a more striking scene portrayed than that. In the afternoon the daily procession occurred. At its head marched no less than two thousand priests, monks, and nuns. Then came the holy sacrament, borne beneath a silken canopy. After it came the sick and the suffering who had come thither to be cured. These were cripples on crutches or leaning on the arms of friends; the blind, led by their friends or fellow-pilgrims; sick and deformed infants in their mothers' arms; here and there a cripple and a blind man arm in arm, relying upon each other, the one for support, the other for guidance. Behind these thousands came other thousands of suppliants, sightseers, perhaps some scoffers, while yet other thousands stood by and gazed upon the scene." It is indeed a miracle that we have so many such persons at this stage of progressive civilization. But the church and its priests have exerted every influence to prevent its advance. Fortunately the world at large has outgrown this childish nonsense to some extent. The development of our civil laws, with a greater knowledge of the natural laws, keep the church and priestly fanatics in subjection. As to the resurrection of Christ's body, or anyone else's body, we may put it down as fabulous and untrue. Dead bodies do not rise--cannot rise. From the moment a body is dead the process of decomposition begins, and resuscitation is an impossibility. No one believes it, and the priest of this century even doubts it, though the manner of Christ's birth and death forms the creed of Christian believers, and reads as follows: "I believe in God, the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. He descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father, whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the remission of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting." Does anyone, except the most ignorant, believe any of the items contained in the above creed? The men that composed the Old, and later the New Testament, may have been sincere in their belief, may have acted from pure motives, and I give them credit that their endeavors were honest, that they knew no better. They could not know the truth, have knowledge of the natural. Its forces, its capabilities, its phenomena--these were unknown to them. They erred, were mistaken in what they observed; that of itself is ample excuse for their opinions. No such excuse exists at this present time, and no men or set of men, however organized, priestly or otherwise, should be permitted to delude and stupefy the more ignorant portion of a community. The judge on the bench ought to know better than punish a man because he ridicules the efficacy of an old coat to cure miraculously. It is a disgrace to our civilization, and should not be tolerated. We have a right to criticise any idea, opinion, set of opinions, or ceremonies, no matter how ancient, how originated or by whom entertained or put into practice. We have as much right to protest against the truth or falsity of their statements, as any of our forefathers had in remote ages. Any individual that permits his prejudices to get the better of his judgment, because he belongs to this or that church, is unfit to serve in a public capacity. The judge or magistrate that sentenced Reichar and Sonnenberg at Treves deserves to be branded as the greatest jackass that ever decorated a bench. Ridicule is the only weapon that wipes out these shameful practices, that helps to enlighten the masses, that elevates their thoughts and makes their understanding. It is disgraceful enough for the ancients to have crucified Christ for his opinions, beheaded Paul for his preaching, and crucified St. Peter for his energy. Abraham had a right to have his opinions. He differed with the Chaldeans about their gods, ridiculed them, despised them, argued, reasoned, as best he knew how. He had to leave the land of his birth for his opinions. Moses had a right to set up his Jehova, organize a nation, and fight under his banner. He forced a success with superior numbers and superior skill. Coming to Christ, Paul and Peter had a right to their opinions. They suffered for their opinions, yet their opinions held. We of to-day have a right to deny the truth of their opinion. We have a right to deny any part or the whole of their doctrine, their pretensions, their errors; we have a perfect right to decline to accept their say-so for proof of anyone's having done certain things by supernatural aid. And neither church nor priest can force people to believe in their absurdities, when our reason, understanding, and common sense tell us that it is neither true nor possible. Few men are so dull that they do not recognize the fact that it is unpleasant, as well as unprofitable, for an organized body of men, whether church or other organization, who have prospered, gained influence, control and authority over men, territory or wealth, by means of certain ideas or opinions, to be interfered with or encroached upon by a new and opposing organized body, with new ideas or opinions, lest the former might lose some of their influence, control, or authority over men, territory, or wealth. Selfishness and self-preservation lie at the root of this, and every aggressive movement will be hindered, checked, or prevented if possible. CHAPTER XVI. ORGANIC LIFE--VEGETABLE. The constituent elements that enter into vegetable life consist in the main of three elementary substances. These essential elements consist of oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon. The secondary elementary bodies consist of nitrogen and earthy elements, sulphur and phosphorus. There are also found other elementary substances in lesser quantities in vegetable structures, as potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, silicon, aluminium, iron, manganese, chlorine, bromine, and iodine. These are the materials of which vegetables are made. Vegetables derive all the materials of their fabric from the earth and the air. Plants can possess no simple elements which these do not supply. They may take in, to some extent, almost every element which is thus supplied. The elements above mentioned are not of universal occurrence, nor are they all components of any one vegetable tissue. Although plants and animals have no peculiar elements; though the materials from which their bodies spring, and to which they return, are common earth, water, and air, yet in them these elements are wrought into something widely different from any form of lifeless mineral matters, under the influence of what is usually termed the principle of life. This may be said to consist of a favorable condition brought about by the union of certain elements, under a moist atmosphere and a high temperature, combined with other powerful forces in nature. "When this terrestrial globe began to cool the matter predominating in the atmosphere was water or its elements oxygen and hydrogen, carbonic acid and nitrogen; under the influence of a high temperature, and powerful sources of electricity, numerous combinations were produced between the elements; first carburetted hydrogen, then a nitrogenous combination, more or less analogous to the albuminous matter which we know" (Huxley). Among the innumerable combinations nature produced, during a series of infinite ages, slowly undergoing transformation, the mixture of these substances, acting chemically upon one another, generating and regenerating at the expense of their surroundings, composed the first living being. This being was of excessive simplicity, comparable to the organisms which we call monera. The sun's heat acting upon these elements, and the elements acting upon one another, produced motion. Heat is motion, expansion, restrained and acting in its strife upon the smallest particles of bodies. The principles of life were first produced by the action of the sun's heat upon these vitalizing elements, setting them in motion, generating the required force. The surrounding condition being favorable, the simplest form of physiological life was produced. Once under the influence of what may now be termed the principle of life, in connection with which alone such phenomena are manifested, the three or four simple constituents effected peculiar combinations, giving rise to a few organizable elements--as they are termed, because of them the organized fabric of the vegetable or animal kingdom is built up. This fabric is in a good degree similar in all living bodies; the solid parts, or tissues, in all assuming the form of membranes, arranged so as to surround cavities, or form the walls of tubes, in which fluids are contained. Such a structure is called organized structure, and the bodies so composed are called organized bodies, because such fabrics consist of parts coöperating with one another as instruments or organs adapted to certain ends, and through which alone the living principle, under whose influence the structure itself was built up, is manifested in the operations which the animal or plant carries on. There is in every organic fabric, a necessary connection between its conformation and the action it is destined to perform. This is equally true of the minute structure, or tissue, as revealed by the microscope, and of the larger organs which the tissues form in all plants and animals of the higher grades, such as a leaf, a petal, or a tendril, a hand, an eye, or a muscle. The term organization formerly referred to the possession of organs in this larger sense, that is, of conspicuous parts or membranes. It is now applied as well to the intimate structure of these parts, themselves made up of smaller organs through which the vital forces directly act. Protoplasm, called by Huxley the basis of physical life, is nothing more than a homogeneous albuminous matter. An isolated albuminoid is not living any more than an acid or a base equally isolated is a chemically active body. But a mixture of two or several albuminous substances (a protoplasm contains at least two) might be living, similarly as a mixture of an acid and a base demonstrates the chemical activity of the two bodies. But, whereas in the combination of an acid and a base, the formation of a new body puts an end to the dynamic manifestations of the mixture; the albuminous matter which by its union gives birth to a protoplasm, that is to say, to living matter, is capable of generating itself at the expense of the medium in which it is placed, and in proportion to the dynamic manifestations which it produces, gives birth to some rejected excreta in its midst. Living matter may be roughly compared to an electric pile, the elements of which are capable of regenerating indefinitely. This continual exchange of the elements of living bodies and the medium in which they are placed, is one of the conditions of life. Life is the continued organization, while the molecules constituting the organized body (organism) are in a state of mobile equilibrium, or a continual renovation. A grain of vegetation, or an animal (Rotifera) slowly dried, might not manifest any vital property for a long time. Far from constituting an example opposed to our definition, it on the contrary goes to corroborate it. Whilst the chemical elements which compose it could not act one upon the other, it was necessary that they should be dissolved: Corpora non agunt nisi sulta. One might compare these organisms to a pile where nothing except the fluid is wanting. The eggs of certain animals (birds, etc.), that require a certain heat in order to develop completely, furnish us a case analogous to those chemical actions which could not be accomplished in a perfect manner except by a sufficient elevation of temperature. The long discussions that have taken place in the last few years on this question, the attempted efforts to demonstrate or refute the heterogenic doctrine, have but indifferently served the purposes of science. They have made us at least to see more clearly the impotence of chemistry and physiology alone to solve the biological problem. It is impossible for anyone to study with care the organization of the Infusoria, and even the Protista, and believe that beings so complex are formed by spontaneous generation. The size of an animal or a vegetable signifies nothing in this question. The imperfections of the micrographic investigation have alone permitted the notion of the creation of beings such as the Paramecia, the Mucidina, etc. Even in the more inferior Protista, the Bacteria, and other Schizomycites, the hypothesis of heterogeny is reversed by the simple observation that these beings present a very complicated metamorphosis. An evolution, that is to say a series of supposed forcible metamorphoses, a special condition of the germ, resulting from heredity, consequently proves a generation dependent on other than anterior organisms. This reasoning, however, demonstrates in an unobjectionable manner that the first living beings were formed independent of all preëxisting organization, and that these beings were as little organized as possible. The latest progress in chemistry and in biology permits us to raise the veil partly in recovering the obscure origin of living matter. ANIMAL-VEGETABLES, PROTISTA. When we behold the plants and animals that ordinarily surround us, the distinction between the animal and vegetable kingdom is somehow intuitive. And it seems a loss of time and trouble to indicate the character which separates these two from each other. It is not the same when we descend the scale of organisms. Then we arrive at an inferior region where the distinction disappears gradually, and we soon conceive the existence of a frontier zone between the animal and vegetable, a neutral territory which has been designated the kingdom of Protista. They reproach naturalists for admitting the kingdom of Protista, accusing them of doubling the difficulty, instead of abolishing it; since it is necessary to establish a distinction between Protista, on the one part animal, on the other vegetable. That objection could be made every time they established a new division in the organic kingdom. It does not signify anything for those who know that all divisions that trench on biology are purely subjective and that nature does not bend to our strict system of classification. Natura non facit saltus. All living bodies can be decomposed into visible elements under the microscope, and these have been named Plastides or Cells. That word is employed in a more general sense. The most simple Plastide is the Cytode, a simple mass of protoplasm without a nucleus or membranous envelope. A cell in a restricted meaning of the word is a Cytode presenting a nucleus, that is to say, a mass of protoplasm in the midst of which is a distinct part of the substance ambient differentiated by its aspect and its property. 1. Plants and animals are always produced under the influence of a living body similar to themselves. 2. They develop from a germ or rudiment, and run through a course of changes, to a state of maturity. 3. Plants increase by a process through which foreign materials are taken, made to permeate their interior, and deposited interstitially among the particles of the previously existing substance; that is, they are nourished by food. 4. Plants and animals alone possess the power of assimilation, or the faculty of converting the proper foreign materials they receive into their own peculiar substance. 5. Connected with assimilation, as a part of the functions of nutrition, is a state of internal activity and unceasing change in living bodies; these constantly undergoing decomposition and recomposition, particles which have served their turn being continually thrown out of the system as new ones are brought in. This is true of both plants and animals, but more fully of the latter. 6. The duration of living beings is limited. They are developed, they reach maturity, they support themselves for a time, then perish by death sooner or later. Mineral bodies have no life to lose, and contain no internal principle of destruction. Once formed, they exist until destroyed by some external power. They lie passive under control of physical forces. Life. The great characteristic of plants and animals is life, which these beings enjoy, but minerals do not. We may safely infer that life is not a product, or result, of the organization; but is a force manifested in matter, which it controls and shapes into peculiar forms--into an apparatus, in which means are manifestly adapted to ends, by which results are reached that are in no other way attainable. As we rise in the scale of organized structure from plants through the various grades of the animal organization, the superadded vital manifestations become more and more striking and peculiar. But the fundamental characteristics of living beings--those which all enjoy in common, and which necessarily give rise to all the peculiarities above enumerated--are reducible to two, viz.: 1. The power of self-support, that of nourishing themselves by taking in surrounding mineral matter and converting it into their own proper substance; by which individuals increase in bulk or grow, and maintain their life; 2. The power of self-division or reproduction, by which they increase in number and perpetuate the species. A striking illustration may set both points in a strong light. The larva of the flesh-fly possesses such power of assimilation that it will increase its own weight two hundred times in twenty-four hours, and such consequent power of reproduction that Linnæus did not exaggerate when he affirmed that "Three flesh-flies would devour the carcass of a horse as quickly as a lion." The distinction between vegetable and mineral is therefore well defined. But the line of demarcation between plants and animals is by no means so readily drawn. Ordinarily, there can be no difficulty in distinguishing a vegetable from an animal. All the questionable cases occur on the lower confines of the kingdom, which exhibit forms of the greatest simplicity of structure, and of a minuteness of size that baffles observation. Even here the uncertainty may be attributed rather to the imperfection of our knowledge, than to any confusion of the essential characteristics of the two kinds of beings (the kingdom of Protista above alluded to). The essential characteristics of vegetables doubtless depend upon the position which the vegetable kingdom occupies between the mineral and the animal, and upon the general office it fulfills. Plants are those organized beings that live directly upon the mineral kingdom, upon the surrounding earth, air, water. They alone convert inorganic, or mineral, into organic matter; whilst animals originate none, but draw their whole sustenance from the organized matter which plants have thus elaborated. Plants, having thus the most intimate relations with the mineral world, are generally fixed to the earth, or other substance upon which they grow, and the mineral matter upon which they feed is taken directly into their system by absorption from without, and is assimilated under the influence of light in organs exposed to the air, while animals, endowed with volition and capable of responding promptly to external impressions, have the power of selecting the food ready prepared for their nourishment, which is received into an internal reservoir or stomach. The permanent fabric of plants is composed of only Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen. The tissue of animals contains an additional element, viz., Nitrogen. Plants, as a necessary result of assimilating their inorganic food, decompose carbonic acid and restore its oxygen to the atmosphere. Animals in respiration continually recompose carbonic acid, at the expense of the oxygen of the atmosphere and the carbon of plants. CHAPTER XVII. ORGANIC LIFE--ANIMAL. We have seen that the principal elements, the most active, that enter into the composition of plant life, that form the food substance for the support and nourishment of animals, are mainly composed of three elements, Oxygen, Hydrogen, and Carbon; that during evolution, growth, and development certain elements are absorbed and assimilated, while others, the gases, are exchanged. Plants yield up Oxygen and take in Carbonic acid from the atmosphere, which they store up and elaborate. We have also seen that all the elements that enter into the composition of the various sorts of vegetation, are, chemically considered, seventeen in number. ANIMAL LIFE. The animal, like the vegetable, is also composed of chemical elements, and by chemical analysis has been found to contain eighteen, as follows: 1. Of primary or vital importance: Oxygen, Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen. 2. Of secondary importance, entering into the more solid structures: sulphur, phosphorus, calcium, sodium, chlorine, silicon, potassium, fluorine, magnesia, iron. 3. Accidental constituents: Magnesium, alumina, copper, and lead. The compounds found in the body are recognized as being derived from organic and inorganic substances. Organic substances are obtained: 1. From plants and vegetables, and are termed carbohydrates or non-nitrogenous substances, being composed of Oxygen, Carbon, and Hydrogen--as starch, sugar, etc. 2. From animals: nitrogenous substances; these compounds contain Oxygen, Hydrogen, Carbon, and Nitrogen--as meat, white of eggs; these are also termed albuminous. 3. Mineral, elements of inorganic origin, as soda, potassium, phosphorus, etc. The more highly organized tissues found in the animal are composed of five elements, as muscle, brain, blood; these are Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and sulphur. Albumen, for example, exists in most of the tissues of the body, but especially in the nervous tissue, lymph, chyle, blood, etc. Fibrine is found most abundantly in the blood and the more perfect portions of the lymph and chyle. Gelatinous substances are contained in the cellular or fibro-cellular tissues in all parts of the body, as tendons, ligaments, cartilages, bone, skin, mucous membranes, etc. Chondrine is obtained from cartilages, etc. The general chemical composition of these substances is as follows: Albumen. Fibrine. Gelatine. Chondrine. Carbon 52.5 52.7 50.40 49.97 Hydrogen 7.0 6.9 6.64 6.63 Nitrogen 15.5 15.4 18.34 14.44 Oxygen 22.0 23.5 28.58 Sulphur 1.6 1.2 24.36 } 0.38 (Inorganic } elements.) } Phosphorus 0.4 0.3 ------ ------ ------ ------ 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 It will be observed that in the composition of these tissues, more than half of their constituent elements is Carbon. There is but a very small quantity of Hydrogen. The most abundant inorganic substance in the body is water, which is composed of Oxygen one and Hydrogen two (OH2). More than two-thirds of the body is made up of water. The body is composed of various structures. Of the chief tissues of the human body, the weight is as follows: The skeleton 15.9 per cent. The muscles 41.8  ,,   Thoracic Viscera (lungs, heart, etc.) 1.7  ,,   Abdominal Viscera (liver, etc.) 7.2  ,,   Fat 18.2  ,,   Skin 6.9  ,,   Brain 1.9  ,,   Let us examine, briefly, each of these. The skeleton.--The skeleton, or solid framework of the body, is mainly formed of bones, but is completed in some parts by the addition of cartilages. The bones are bound together by means of ligaments, and are so disposed as to support the softer parts, protect delicate organs, and give attachment to the muscles by which the different movements are executed. There are two hundred and four bones in the body: The vertebral column contains 26 The skull--cranium and face 22 The hyoid bone--bone of the tongue 1 Ribs and sternum, forming the thorax 25 The upper limbs--arms and shoulders 64 The lower limbs 62 Small bones, including the patella or kneecap, to the number of 16 The organic constituents form about 33.3 per cent of the composition of bone, while the remainder, 66.7 per cent, is inorganic matter; as follows: Organic matter (gelatine and blood-vessels) 33.30 { Phosphate of lime 51.04 { Carbonate of lime 11.30 Inorganic substances { Fluoride of calcium 2.00 { Phosphate of magnesia 1.16 { Soda and chloride of sodium 1.20 The mineral or earthy matter enters very largely into the composition of bone. A fibrous membrane covers bone externally, and is called periosteum. The hollow bones contain marrow, composed of fat, 96 parts; water, 3; connecting tissue, 1. Bones are supplied with blood-vessels, which carry the nutritious fluid to them. 1. The master tissues. Primarily, it is the tissue, and not the blood, that gets loaded with carbonic acid, the latter simply receiving the gas from the former by diffusion, and the oxygen which passes from the blood into the tissues being at once taken up in some combination. 2. Nearly one-half of the weight of the body consists of the skeletal muscles, and about one-quarter of the total blood in the body is contained in them. 3. The muscles are always producing carbonic acid (CO2), and when they contract there is a sudden and extensive increase of the normal production. 4. Oxygen is necessary for the life of the muscle; it is for the nervous tissue, but for muscular tissue especially. 5. When venous blood, instead of arterial, is sent through the blood-vessel of a muscle, the irritability speedily disappears, and unless fresh oxygen is administered the muscle soon ceases to act and dies. 6. The oxidation power is determined by the tissue and by the tissue only. 7. All the available evidence goes to show that oxidation takes place in all the tissues and not in the adjoining blood. The master tissues of the body are the muscular and nervous tissues. All other tissues may be regarded as the servants to these. These tissues are the all-important tissues in the body. The muscular tissues constitute and carry out the power, force, or energy of the body. They set the body in motion. They do the work. They regulate the delicate movements of the organs of special sense or function, as the eye, the ear, the tongue, the nose, larynx, thorax, abdomen; and fighting, defending, building, destroying, labor and mechanical skill of whatever nature, depend on them. Of exercise, sport, pain and pleasure, sensation, emotion, expression of the face, in fact all in all in every act of life, the muscles, the voluntary muscles, must perform the work. They are called the muscles of Animal life. They are Voluntary; they may be set in action at will. For guidance, control, coördination, sensation, and motion, the muscular tissues are dependent on the nervous tissues. It is not difficult to understand, I think, as will be explained later on, that all muscular movements are perfectly natural, purely physical and mechanical. The nervous tissue will be a little more difficult to comprehend, for causes that are reasonable and plain. All animals are provided with two distinct sets of organs: 1. The master tissues, the nervous and muscular tissues, the voluntary muscular tissues, which are the organs of animal life, the voluntary, the active organs that do the work, consume the food, and throw off the waste material; and 2. The servants to these, the involuntary tissues, the organs of organic life that prepare the food, carry it to the master tissues, and bring away the waste material. The inherent qualities of both these sets of organs are instinctive, with this difference--the former, the voluntary, the controlling and working master tissues, are capable of development, progressively, acquiring intelligence, maturing into educatedness, etc. The latter, the involuntary, are simply servants to these, and they perform their functions in the same manner instinctively all through life. The muscular and nervous tissues are the educable tissue. By repetition, practice, and exercise they improve and at length exhibit certain degrees of skill in the performance of their work. On the other hand, the organs of mastication, deglutition, digestion, absorption, excretion, circulation, and respiration simply perform their functions instinctively, without possessing the capacity of improvement, and without regard to volition. These act involuntarily throughout life, as preparers and carriers of nourishment to the master tissues, and removers of waste material. The work of the muscular tissues is comparatively easy to understand. We can see the work done, can account for it, can demonstrate it. The performances are capable of absolute proof, and controversy therefore is out of question. The nervous tissues present quite another state of things. The great mass of cerebral matter, with all its complicated organs and their appendages, are hid within the cranium of the skull. We have no ocular proof of anything that is done by that structure, or of the manner in which the tissue acts. That we can see, hear, taste, and smell we know. We recognize the organs that perform these functions. Sensation, feeling, memory, thinking, cannot so easily be accounted for. Among the masses it is a mystery to-day. The doctrine of a dual existence in man is old, still it is held on to with remarkable tenacity. The church still teaches and preaches that soul or spirit is a part of some great personality or individuality not at all connected with nature--supernatural, divine, godly. This supernatural part, it is said, is placed in man some time during the process of birth. This subject will be more fully discussed farther on, in order to show what queer views theologians formerly held on some scientific subjects. I beg to quote from a Talmudistic scholar and philosopher some thousand years ago: PHILOSOPHICO-ANATOMICAL VIEWS OF A CELEBRATED HEBREW AUTHOR, AFTER TALMUDISTIC INTERPRETATION. Jehuda ha-Levi ben Samuel, whose Arabic name was Abulhassan, considered an authority and philosopher of repute, was born in Castile 1085 A.D. He adopted medicine for his profession, but was also a traveler, philosopher, and student, and a Talmudistic scholar and writer. He wrote a book called "Sepher Hakusir: Book Kusari." It is a philosophico-theologico-scientific treatise, conducted in dialogue between himself and the king of Kusar, who became convinced of the truth of his argument and was converted to the Hebrew faith. In the fourth part, section 25, page 246, Jehuda ha-Levi is explaining the harmonious working of the whole universe, and in evidence thereof he cites the world, soul, and year, very learnedly setting forth the mysterious working of creation, the supernatural origin and significance of the Hebrew letters, the secret and hidden meaning of their number, etc. This is based upon the principle that one rests on three, three on seven, and seven on twelve, as follows: Letters: Three Mothers, A. M. Sh. Alof, Mem, Shin. World, Air, Water, Fire. Man, Chest, Abdomen, Head. Year, Dampness, Cold, Heat. Letters: Seven double one. B. G. D. K. Ph. R. T. Bet, Gimmel, Dalet, Kof, Fe, Rosh, Tave. World: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. Man: Wisdom, riches, dominion, life, kindness, posterity, peace. Year: The seven days in the week. The twelve single one letters not mentioned--Man: Organs of hearing, seeing, smelling, speaking, tasting, begetting, dealing, walking, thinking, anger, laughing, sleeping. World: The twelve Zodiacs. "One on three and three on seven and seven on twelve. And these numbers have their functions in common one with another. For example, 'the kidneys counsel,' 'the spleen laughs,' 'the stomach sleeps,' 'the liver gets angry.' It is not to be wondered at that the kidneys have power to give counsel; we observe something similar when the testicles have been removed; one that has been castrated is weaker than a woman; the beard does not grow, and, what is more significant, the person can no longer give advice, counsel. The spleen laughs because of her natural functions, by reason of the blood being protected against the black gall and thickening and turbidity, and from this clearness, purity, nothing but brightness and joy comes. The liver is angry because of the bitterness she forms. The stomach sleeps by reason that it stands in relation with the organs of nourishment. The heart is not thought of, because it is the king. No more do they take in consideration the lungs and diaphragm, because they are necessarily so constituted to be of service to the heart; accidentally only do they serve the rest of the body, and are originally not designed to serve. The brain is under the senses, which emanate from that organ, and are thence distributed. Moreover, as to the organs that are situated below the diaphragm, therein lies a deep meaning. These are the primary vegetations, the primary generatives. The diaphragm separates the vegetative from the animal life, as the throat separates the animal from the rational (Plato in his Timæus explains). Out of the primary generatives, out of the world vegetative, there where the root of being exists, the seed comes, and there the embryo is fashioned out of four elements. God has selected certain parts for his sacrifices--fat, blood, the peritoneum on the liver, the kidneys. On the contrary, he did not select the heart, or the brain, or the lungs, or the diaphragm. This is a deep mystery; the explanation is forbidden. Therefore the prescript, that the Jezisa is permitted to be studied only after undergoing some preparation, by few persons, and only under certain formalities," etc. Maimonides, or Moses ben Maimon (Rambam), 1131-1205 A.D., wrote God Hazaker, the Strong Hand, a very celebrated commentary on the Talmud. He held similar views, and is also considered a very learned authority. THE MUSCULAR TISSUES. The voluntary muscles are for the most part placed in close relation with the skeleton, being attached to the hard parts, and moving these in different directions by their contraction. The muscles are all symmetrical, and with the exception of the sphincters and one or two others are in pairs. Each muscle constitutes a separate organ, composed chiefly of contractile fibrous tissue, which is called muscular, and of other tissues and parts which may be regarded as accessory. Thus muscular fibers are connected together in bundles or fasciculi, and these fasciculi are again embedded in and united together by a quantity of connective tissue, forming the perimysium; and the whole is usually inclosed in an external sheath of the same material. Many of the muscles are connected at their more or less tapering extremities with tendons by which they are attached to the bones or hard parts; and the tendinous bands frequently run to a considerable length either on the surface of the muscle or between its fibers. There are two chief kinds of muscular tissue, the striped, and the plain or unstriped, and they are distinguished by structural peculiarities and mode of action. The striped form of muscular fibers is sometimes called voluntary muscle, because all muscles under the control of the will are constructed of it. The plain or unstriped variety is often termed involuntary, because it alone is found in the greater number of muscles over which the will has no power. The involuntary or unstriped muscles are made up of elongated, spindle-shaped fiber cells, which in their most perfect form are flat, from about 1/4500 to 1/3500 of an inch broad, and about 1/600 to 1/300 of an inch in length; very clear, and granular and brittle so that when they break they often have abruptly rounded or square extremities. The fibers of involuntary muscles form the proper muscular coats of the digestive canal, æsophagus, urinary bladder, trachea, bronchi, gall-bladder, blood-vessels, lymphatics, etc. To this kind of fiber, muscular fiber, the term organic is often applied. The sympathetic or ganglionic portion of the nervous system, which consists of a chain of ganglia connected by nervous cords, extends from the cranium to the pelvis, along each side of the vertebral column, and from which nerves with ganglia proceed to the viscera in the thoracic, abdominal, and pelvic cavities. By its distribution, as well as by its peculiar mode of action, this system is less immediately connected with the mind, as conducting either sensation or the impulses of the will; it is more closely connected than the cerebro-spinal system is with the processes of organic life. The muscles of animal life, or striped muscles, include the whole class of voluntary muscles, the heart, and those muscles neither completely voluntary nor completely involuntary, etc. All these muscles are composed of fleshy bundles called fasciculi, inclosed in coverings of fibro-cellular tissue, by which each is at once connected with, and isolated from, those adjacent to it. Each bundle is again divided into smaller ones similarly ensheathed and similarly divisible; and so on, through an uncertain number of gradations, till we arrive at the primitive fasciculi or the muscular fibers peculiarly so called. Muscular fibers consist each of a tube or sheath of delicate structureless membrane, inclosing a number of filaments or fibrils. They are of cylindrical form, or of prismatic with one or more sides, according to the manner in which they are compressed by adjacent tissues. Their average diameter is about 1/500 of an inch, and their length never exceeds an inch and a half. The arrangement of the elementary substances in a muscular fiber (the sarcos element or protoplasm inclosed in the sarcolemna, the sheath) composing a muscular fiber may be compared to Volta's pile or an electric battery. In fact, both muscle and nerve are made up of electrical molecules, each of the two ends of which is negative--though the development of the electrical current is at present very imperfectly known. Besides, there is every reason to believe that the ground substance is similar in nature to ordinary protoplasm, but without the granular character commonly but not always exhibited. Blood-vessels are largely distributed in the substance of a muscle, carrying the materials necessary for its nourishment and chemico-vital changes, and there are also lymphatic vessels as in other vascular parts of the body. Nerves run through every muscle, by which the muscular contractions are called forth, and a low degree of muscular sensibility is conferred upon the muscular substance. The blood-vessels of the muscular tissues are extremely abundant, so that when they are successfully filled with a colored injection the fleshy parts of the muscle contrast strongly with its tendons. The arteries, accompanied by their veins, enter the muscle at various points and divide into branches, etc. The nerves of a voluntary muscle are of considerable size. Their branches pass between the fasciculi and repeatedly unite with each other in form of a plexus, which is for the most part confined to a small part of the length of the muscle, or muscular division, in which it lies. The voluntary muscles to which distinct names have been given in the system amount to about 240, and they naturally fall under the following four great divisions (the muscles are symmetrical and with few exceptions are in pairs): A. In the axial part of the body: 1. Muscles of the head and neck, 75 2. Muscles of the vertebral column and trunk, 51 B. In the limbs: 3. Muscles of the upper extremities, 58 4. Muscles of the lower extremities, 59 Flesh and blood have nearly the same ultimate composition. On evaporating 1000 parts of blood it yields 790 parts of water and 210 parts solid residue. The elements that enter into the composition of the solid matter are as follows: Flesh. Blood. Carbon, 51.86 51.96 Hydrogen, 7.58 7.25 Nitrogen, 15.03 15.07 Oxygen, 21.30 21.30 Ashes, 4.23 4.43 The general composition of a human muscle is shown by the following table: Water, 744.5 { Myosin and other matters, { elastic elements, etc. 155.4 Solids. { Soluble elements, 19.3 { Gelatine, 20.7 { Extractives, 37.1 { Fats, 23.02 55.5 The muscles of the flesh form a large proportion of the weight of the whole body. Calculated for a man of 150 pounds' weight: The skeleton, bone, 27 lbs. The muscles, 63  ,,  The viscera, with skin, fat, blood, etc., 60  ,,  The property of muscular tissue by which its peculiar functions are exercised, is its contractility--contraction or shortening. This is excited by all kinds of stimuli, applied either directly to the muscles, or indirectly to them through the medium of their nerves. The muscular tissues perform all the physical work--as locomotion, every kind of action and exertion--of the body. The quantity of blood circulated through the body is estimated to be from about 1/10 to about 1/13 part of the body's weight, and about 1/4 of that is distributed in the muscles. As regards the action of the muscles the following general principles ought to be kept in view: 1. That the force exerted by any muscle during its contraction is in proportion to the number of muscular elements or fibers composing the muscle. 2. That the extent of motion, in so far as it merely depends on the shortening of the fibers of the muscle, is in proportion to the length of the fibers. 3. That the direction of the force produced by a contracting muscle is in the line of the axis of the whole muscle if it runs straight between its opposite points of attachment, but in the line of the portion attached to the moving part of the muscle, or its tendon, if it be bent in its course, etc. THE CEREBRO-SPINAL SYSTEM. The Nervous Tissue. The nervous system consists of the cerebrum, pons varolii, cerebellum, medulla oblongata, the spinal cord with its nerves and the sympathetic ganglia, etc. The cerebrum or brain proper constitutes the highest and much the largest portion of the encephalon. The cerebrum consists of two halves, that are connected with each other by the corpus callosum, and with the peduncular masses of the cruri cerebri, the processus a cerebello ad cerebrum; the series of eminences, or cerebral centers or ganglia, concealed from view, named corpora quadrigemina, optic thalamus and corpora striata, etc. The cerebral hemispheres are by far the most bulky part of the cerebrum. Various commissural structures unite the two hemispheres, including the corpus callosum and fornix; and some smaller structures, viz., the pineal gland, the petuitary bodies, and the olfactory bulb. The cerebral hemispheres together form an ovoid mass, in contact with the vault of the cranium, and with its smaller end forward, its greatest width being opposite to the parietal eminences. They are separated in the greater part of their extent by the great longitudinal fissure. The surface of the hemisphere is composed of gray matter, and is molded into numerous smooth tortuous eminences, named convolutions, or gyri, which are marked off from one another by deep furrows, called sulci. The cerebrum is divided into lobes for convenience of study, five in number, called frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal, sphenoidal, and central. The internal structure of the cerebrum is composed of white matter. It consists of tubular fibers varying in size in various parts, but in general still smaller than those in the cord, their average diameter being 1/10000 of an inch. The fibers of white substance present no division. They are arranged in bundles, separated by a network of delicate connective tissue, consisting of cells, etc. The cells are of various forms and sizes--spheroidal, angular, fusiform, etc. The fibers radiate from the white center of each convolution in all directions into the gray cortex, having a course for the most part perpendicular to the free surface. In passing through the gray substance they are arranged in bundles about 1/1500 of an inch in diameter, thus separating some of the nerve cells, etc. The olfactory tract and bulb, the corpora quadrigemina, corpora genicolate, optic thalamus, corpora striata, are all more or less mixed. They possess gray matter. The nerves immediately connected with the brain are of several kinds. And there are twelve pairs of them. They are called cerebral nerves. There are four kinds. 1. Nerves of special sense. 2. Nerves of common sensation. 3. Nerves of motion. 4. Mixed nerves of sensation and motion. The nerves of special sense may with great propriety be termed the nerves of observation, perception--the gateways of intelligence and education. I.--Nerves of special sense: 1. The olfactory supplies the nose, special sense of smell. 2. The optic supplies the eye, special sense of sight. 3. The auditory supplies the ear, special sense of hearing. 4. Part of the glosso-pharyngeal supplies the tongue and pharynx. 5. The gustatory, lingual branch of the fifth, supplies the tongue, sense of taste. II.--Nerves of common sensation: 1. The ophthalmic supplies the eye. 2. The superior maxillary supplies the upper jaw and teeth. 3. The inferior maxillary supplies the lower jaw and teeth. III.--Nerves of motion: 1. The third nerve, motor acuti. } } 2. The fourth nerve, trochlear or } Supply the muscles pathetic. } of the eye. } 3. The fifth, branch of fifth. } } 4. The sixth, abducers. } 5. The facial nerve supplies the muscles of the face. 6. The hyperglossal supplies the muscles of the tongue. IV.--Mixed nerves: 1. The pneumogastric supplies lungs, heart, stomach, larynx, etc. 2. The spinal accessory supplies some muscles of the back. The average weight of the brain in the adult male is about 49 1/2 ounces, a little more than three pounds avoirdupois; in the female 44 ounces; the average difference between the two being from 5 to 6 ounces. The spinal cord has a length of about 16 to 17 inches, and weighs about 1 1/2 ounces. The spinal cord is a continuation of the medulla oblongata, is lodged in the spinal canal, and gives off 31 pairs of nerves, that supply all the muscles of the body with sensitive and motor nerves. The medulla oblongata is pyramidal in form, having its broad extremity upwards. It is expanded laterally at its upper part. Its length from the pons varolii to the lower extremity of the pyramid is about an inch and a quarter; its greatest breadth is nearly an inch; and its thickness from before backwards is about three-quarters of an inch. The medulla is the link between the brain and the spinal cord. The majority of centers for various organic functions are situated in it; as follows: 1. The respiratory center, with its neighboring convulsive center (venous blood excites convulsive centers, etc.). 2. The vaso-motor center. 3. The cardiac-inhibitory center. 4. The diabetic center, or center for producing artificial diabetes. 5. The center for deglutition. 6. The center for the movements of the æsophagus, with its vomiting center. 7. The center for reflex excitation of the secretion of saliva, with which may be associated the center through which the væjus (pneumogastric) influences the secretions of pancreatic juice, and possibly of the other digestive juices. 8. The center for the dilation of the pupil by means of the cervical sympathetic. From the surface of the medulla certain of the cranial nerves arise, namely the sixth (abducens), glosso-pharyngeal, pneumogastric, spinal accessory, etc. The fibers from the spinal cord pass upwards through the medulla oblongata and various other structures and finally reach the cerebrum. The cerebellum, or hinder brain, consists of a body, and of three pairs of crura or peduncles, by which it is connected with the rest of the cerebro-spinal axis. The cerebellum is covered with a gray cortical substance, rather darker than that of the cerebrum. Its greatest diameter is transverse, and extends to about three and a half or four inches; its width from before backwards is about two or two and a half inches; and its greatest depth is about two inches, but it is much thinner round its outer border. It consists of two lateral hemispheres joined by a median portion called the vermiform process, and other structures therewith connected, etc. Minute structure: The cortical gray substance is composed of an external clear gray layer, an inner grayish-red "granule" layer, and between the two a single layer of large cells with long processes, termed the corpuscles of Porkinge (after the man who first described them). Outside all is the layer of fibers and vessels of the pia mater. The external layer consists of a delicate matrix, probably of the nature of connective tissue, consisting of cells and fibers, etc. The cerebellum is probably concerned in the coördination of movements. Its functions seem especially connected with afferent impulses proceeding from the semicircular coats. The spinal cord is a cylindriform column of nerve substance connected above with the brain, through the medium of the medulla oblongata, terminating below, about the lower border of the first lumbar vertebra, in a slender filament of gray or vesicular substance, the filum terminale, which lies in the midst of knots of many nerves forming the codæ equina. Through the center of the cord, running in a longitudinal direction, is a minute canal, which is continuous through the whole length of the cord, and opens above into the space at the back of the medulla oblongata and pons varolii, called the fourth ventricle; the aqueduct of silvius connects it with the third ventricle, lateral and fifth ventricles, near the base of the brain. The cerebro-spinal fluid circulates in the interior of these ventricles and spinal cord. What precise mechanical function it subserves is only surmised, not known. The cerebro-spinal axis is protected by three membranes, named also meninges. They are: 1. An external fibrous membrane, named dura mater, which closely lines the interior of the skull, and forms a loose sheath in the spinal canal; 2. An internal areolo-vascular tunic, the pia mater, which accurately covers the brain and spinal cord; and, 3. An intermediate membrane, the arachnoid, which lies over the pia mater, the two being in some places in close connection, and in others separated by a considerable space. The sympathetic nerves are distributed in general to all the internal viscera, and to the coats of the blood-vessels. Some organs, however, receive their nerves also from the cerebro-spinal system, as the lungs, the heart, and the upper and lower parts of the alimentary canal. The great gangliated cords consist of two series, in each of which the ganglia are connected by intervening cords. These cords are placed symmetrically in front of the vertebral column and extend from the base of the skull to the coccyx. With respect to the functions of the sympathetic nervous system, it may be stated generally that the sympathetic nerve fibers are simple conductors of impressions as those of the cerebro-spinal system are, and that the ganglionic centers have (each in its appropriate sphere) the like powers of conducting and of communicating impressions. The general processes which the sympathetic appears to influence, are those of involuntary motion, secretion, and nutrition. Nerve centers. This term is applied to all those parts of the nervous system which contain ganglion corpuscles, or vesicular nerve-substance--i.e., the brain, spinal cord, and the several ganglia which belong to the cerebro-spinal and the sympathetic system. Each of these nervous centers has a proper range of functions, the extent of which bears a direct proportion to the number of nerve fibers that connect it with the various organs of the body, and with other nervous centers; but they all have certain general properties and modes of action common to them as nervous centers. The brain does not issue any force, except when itself impressed by some force from within, or stimulated by an impression from without; neither do the other nerve centers without such previous impressions produce or issue motor impulses. The more certain and general office of all the nervous centers is that of variously disposing and transferring the impressions that reach them through the several centripetal fibers. In nerve fibers impressions are conducted only in the simple isolated course of the fiber; in all the nervous centers an impression may not only be conducted, but also communicated; in the brain alone it may be perceived. In all cases in which the mind either has cognizance of, or exercises influence on, the process carried on in any part supplied with the sympathetic nerve, there must be conduction of impressions through all the nervous centers between the brain and the part. But instead of, or as well as, being conducted, impressions made on nervous centers may be communicated from the fibers that brought them to others, and in this communication may be either transferred, diffused, or reflected. Along nerve fibers impressions or conditions of excitement are simply conducted; in nerve centers they may be made to deviate from their course, and may be variously diffused, reflected, or otherwise disposed of. Function of nerves. The office of nerves as simple conveyors or conductors of nervous impressions is of a twofold kind: 1. They serve to convey to the nervous centers the impressions made upon the peripheral extremities or parts of their course; 2. They serve to transmit impressions from the brain and other nervous centers to the parts to which they are distributed. For this twofold office of the nerves two distinct sets of nerve fibers are provided, in both the cerebro-spinal and sympathetic systems. Those which convey impressions from the periphery to the center are classed together as centripetal or afferent nerves, or nerves of sensation--sensitive nerves. Those, on the other hand, which are employed to transmit central impulses to the periphery are classed as centrifugal or afferent nerves or motor nerves, conveying impulses to the voluntary and involuntary muscles, etc. Nerves are constructed of minute fibers or tubules full of nervous matter, arranged in parallel or interlacing bundles, which bundles are connected by intervening connective tissue in which their principal blood-vessels ramify. The size of nerve fibers varies, and the same fibers do not preserve the same diameter through their whole length, being largest in their course within their trunk and branches of nerves, in which the majority measure from 1/2000 to 1/3000 of an inch in diameter. As they approach the brain or spinal cord, and generally also in the tissue in which they are distributed, they gradually become smaller. In the gray or vesicular substance of the brain or spinal cord they generally do not measure more than from 1/10000 to 1/14000 of an inch. The chemical composition of nervous matter. Like most of the other tissues of the body, the nervous substance contains a large proportion of water (from three-fourths to four-fifths of its weight). Of the residue which remains after the removal of this by evaporation or other means, the larger part consists of a phosphuretted fat, which may be obtained crystallized, and in this condition was termed protagon. The crystalline substance, however, is in reality a mixture of two other substances, lecithin and neurin. Cerebrin is also described as being frequently met with in conjunction with lecithin. Lecithin. Neurin. Cerebrin. Cholestrin. Carbon, 44 5 17 26 Hydrogen, 90 15 33 44 Nitrogen, 1 1 1 Phosphorus, 1 Oxygen, 9 2 3 1 CHAPTER XVIII. FOOD AND FOOD-SUBSTANCES. There are two kinds of food: 1. Those food substances that are derived from the animal kingdom; and, 2. Food substances that are derived from the vegetable kingdom. Food is taken into the system to replace the material expended by the human body, or the waste products which are thrown off from the master tissues. Definition: Food may be defined to be any natural substance, vegetable or animal, recognized as such, that has undergone neither the process of fermentation nor that of putrefaction. Food may be considered in its relation to two purposes--the nutrition of the tissues, and the production of heat. Under the first of these heads will be included many other allied functions, as for example, secretion and generation; and under the second, not the production of heat only as such, but of all other forces correlated with it, which are manifested by the living body. Foods derived from the animal kingdom are called nitrogenous substances, or azotized. They are also known by the name of proteids. These are mainly derived from meat, milk, eggs, etc. Of several we will examine the chemical composition. It will be well to state in general terms that all food substances contain in their composition from two-thirds to three-fourths, or even more, of water--some more, some less. Proteids. Albumen. Caseine. Syntonin. Gluten. Gelatine. Carbon, 72 Hydrogen, 112 Oxygen, 23 Nitrogen, 18 Sulphur, 1 Phosphorus, R. 2 Non-Nitrogenous Substances. Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. 1. Starch (amyloids), 18 30 15 Sugar cane, 12 22 11 2. Oils and fats composed of stearic acid 18 36 2 of mutton or beef, 3. Mineral--Saline matters, as chloride of sodium, phosphate of lime. Animals cannot subsist on any but organic substances, and these must contain the elements which are naturally combined with them--in other words, not even organic compounds are nutritive unless they are supplied in their natural state. Pure fibrine, pure gelatine, and other principles purified from the substances naturally mingled with them, are incapable of supporting life for more than a brief time. Moreover, health cannot be maintained by any number of substances derived exclusively from one only of the two chief groups of elementary principles mentioned above. A mixture of nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous organic substances, together with the inorganic principles which are severally contained in them, is essential to the well-being, and generally even to the existence, of an animal. The truth of this is demonstrated by experiments performed for the purpose; and is also well illustrated by the composition of the food prepared by nature as the exclusive source of nourishment to the young mammals, namely milk. The composition of milk is: Human. Cow's. Water, 890 858 Solids, 110 142 ---- ---- 1000 1000 Caseine, 35 68 Butter, 25 38 Sugar (with extracts), 48 30 Salts, 2 6 --- --- 110 142 Carb. Hyd. Nit. Oxy. Sulph. R (unknown). Caseine, 72 112 18 23 1 2 In milk, it will be seen from the preceding table, the albuminous group of aliments is represented by the caseine, the oleaginous by the butter, the aqueous by the water, the saccharine by the sugar of milk. Let us compare the composition of these four organic substances and water: Oxy. Hyd. Carb. Nitr. Sulph. R (unknown element). Water, 1 2 Sugar, OH2+ 11 22 12 Caseine, 23 112 72 18 1 2 Olein, 6 38 21 Among the salts of milk are phosphate of lime, alkaline and other salts, and a trace of iron; so that it may be briefly said to include all the substances which the tissues of a growing animal need for their nutrition and which are required for the production of animal heat. The yolk and albumen of eggs stand in the same relation as food for the embryos of oviparous animals, that milk does to the young mammalia; and affords another example of mixed food being provided as the most perfect nutrition. The composition of fowl's egg is: White. Yolk. Water, 80.0 53.73 Albumen, 15.5 17.47 Mucus, 4.5 yellow oil 28.75 Salts, 4.0 6.0 The food substances. 1. Amyloids, starch and sugars. Starch is derived from grain and vegetables, as wheat, barley, rye, oats, corn, rice, sago, tapioca, beans, peas, etc. The vegetables contain from 75 to 90 per cent of water. Starch and sugars are derived from such as potatoes, turnips, carrots, beets, etc., etc. The fruits are largely composed of water, sugars, and acids. All these classes of food contain only three elements.--Starch: Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. 18 30 15 In their composition we have fifteen molecules of water presented carrying eighteen atoms of carbon. Sugar: Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. 12 22 11 In this case again we have eleven molecules of water carrying twelve atoms of carbon. This is the chemical composition of starch and sugar food. 2. Fats are also composed of three elements only--carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Take the fat of mutton or pork: Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. 21 40 1 All other animal oils and fats are composed of these three elements only. 3. Albuminous substances--meats, beef, mutton, veal, pork, birds, and fish, of all descriptions. 4. Besides these, mineral salts, already mentioned. 5. And lastly, water--of which by far the greatest quantity is consumed. The quantity of food ought to be in amount sufficient to replace the waste products of the body. An amount should be taken into the system equal in kind and quantity to the material expended. Since we know the amount of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and the salts that are excreted by the kidneys, skin, and lungs, we may easily calculate the amount of various kinds of food needed to replace them. The outcome being known, the income can be regulated accordingly. The expenditure or waste, we have seen, in daily loss amounts in carbon to about 4,500 grains, and in nitrogen to 300 grains; besides a certain quantity of water, etc. We therefore require starchy substances, meat and fat, water, etc., to replace the quantity lost. Bread, for example, contains 30 per cent of carbon and 1 per cent of nitrogen. If bread alone, therefore, were taken as food, a man would require in order to obtain the requisite nitrogen 30,000 grains, containing of carbon, 9,000 grains; of nitrogen, 300 grains--an excess of carbon above the amount required of 4,500 grains. But a combination of bread and meat would supply much more economically what was necessary: Carbon. Nitrogen. 15,000 grains of bread (rather more than 2 pounds) contains 4,500 grs. 150 grs. 5,000 grains of meat (about 3/4 pounds) contains 500 150 ----- --- 5,000 300 So that 3/4 pounds meat and 2 pounds of bread, or its equivalent, would supply the needful carbon and nitrogen with but little waste. From all these facts it will be plain that a mixed diet is the best and most economical for man; and the result of experience entirely coincides with what might have been anticipated on theoretical grounds only. The quality and quantity of foods to be taken depends largely upon their digestibility. The quantity of food necessary for a healthy man taking free exercise in the open air is as follows: Meat 16 ounces or 1 pound avoir. Bread and all other 19   ,,   ,, 1.19  ,,     ,,   carbohydrates, Fat, butter, 3 1/2   ,,   ,, 0.22  ,,     ,,   Water 52   ,,   ,, 3.38  ,,     ,,   The quantity and quality of food taken into the system every twenty-four hours, should depend upon the amount and kind of labor done, whether muscular or nervous, whether sitting or not, inactive or active, whether indoors or out of doors; upon the kind of atmosphere we breathe; upon season and climate, etc.; also upon the opportunities we have of throwing off the surplus carbon and nitrogen that the system has been overcrowded with. These conditions determine the proper variations of the income, since that has to be regulated and corrected by the outcome, and amounts after all to just so much carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, saline matter, and water as are contained in the proteids, fats, carbohydrates, salts, and water. It matters little how food is prepared. The main feature is that the supply is equal to the loss, of good and wholesome quality. Whether the food is manipulated by an artistic $10,000 cook or by a plain, clean housewife, the result is the same. Whether the special sense of taste, the gustatory nerve, has or has not undergone a high course of training and education, the fact remains that all that can be supplied is the necessary material that has been expended by the work and labor done by the muscular and nervous tissues. The subjoined results, selected from Boussingault, exhibit in a tabular form the relative quantity of organic and inorganic constituents in several kinds of herbage compared in several cases with the root or grain. The water was previously driven off by thorough drying: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leaves of Root of Mangel- Mangel- Potato Pea Clover Wheat Wurzel. Wurzel. Tops. Potatoes. Straw. Peas. Hay. Straw. Wheat. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Carbon 38.10 42.75 44.80 43.72 45.80 46.06 47.53 48.48 46.10 Hydrogen 5.10 5.77 5.10 6.00 5.00 6.09 4.69 5.41 5.80 Oxygen 30.80 43.58 30.50 44.88 35.57 40.53 37.96 38.79 43.40 Nitrogen 4.50 1.66 2.30 1.50 2.31 4.18 2.06 0.35 2.27 Ashes 21.50 6.24 3.90 3.90 11.32 3.14 7.76 6.97 2.43 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subjoined is a table from the same work of the percentage of mineral substances taken up from the soil by various plants: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Substances Acids Oxide of Which -------------------------------- Iron, Charcoal, Yield Ammonia moisture, Ashes. Carbonic. Sulphuric. Phosphoric. Chlorine. Lime. Magnesia. Potash. Soda. Silica. etc. and loss. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Potatoes 13.4 7.1 11.3 2.7 1.8 5.4 51.5 traces 5.6 0.5 0.7 Mangel- Wurzel 16.1 1.6 6.1 5.2 7.0 4.4 39.0 6.0 8.0 2.5 4.2 Turnips 14.0 10.9 6.0 2.9 10.9 4.3 39.7 4.1 6.4 1.2 5.5 Potato Tops 11.0 2.2 10.8 1.6 2.3 1.8 44.5 traces 13.0 5.2 7.6 Wheat 0.0 1.0 47.0 traces 2.9 15.9 29.5 traces 1.3 0.0 2.4 Wheat Straw 0.0 1.0 3.1 0.5 8.5 5.0 9.2 0.3 67.6 1.0 3.7 Oats 1.7 1.0 14.9 0.5 3.7 7.7 12.9 0.0 53.3 1.3 3.0 Oat Straw 3.2 4.1 3.0 4.7 8.3 2.8 24.5 4.4 40.0 2.1 2.9 Clover 25.0 2.5 6.3 2.6 24.6 6.3 26.6 0.5 5.3 0.3 0.0 Pease 0.5 6.7 30.1 1.1 10.1 11.9 35.3 2.5 1.5 traces 2.3 French Beans 3.3 1.3 26.8 0.1 5.8 11.5 49.1 0.0 1.0 traces 1.1 Horse Beans 1.0 1.6 34.2 0.7 5.1 8.6 45.2 0.0 0.5 traces 3.1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHAPTER XIX. THE ELIMINATION OF WASTE SUBSTANCES. The expenditures of the human body, or the waste products which arise from the activity of the master tissues, are thrown off by the excretory tissues, as the lungs, the skin, the kidneys, and the terminal part of the intestines. The lungs are hollow organs, and we may consider them as really two bags containing air, each of which communicates by a separate orifice with a common air tube, through the upper part of which, the larynx, they freely communicate with the external atmosphere. The orifice of the larynx is guarded by muscles, and can be opened or closed at will. Each lung is partially subdivided into separate portions called lobes. The right lung has three lobes, and the left lung has two. Each of these lobes, again, is composed of a large number of minute parts, called lobules. Each pulmonary lobule may be considered a lung in miniature, consisting as it does of a branch of a bronchial tube, air-cells, blood-vessels, nerves, and lymphatics, with a sparing amount of areolar tissue. The terminal portion of each lobule is composed of a group of pouches or air-cells, which communicate with the intercellular air passages. These cells are of various forms, according to the mutual pressure to which they are subject. Their cell walls are nearly in contact, and they vary from 1/50 to 1/90 of an inch in diameter. Outside the cells a network of pulmonary capillaries is spread out so densely that the interspaces or meshes are even narrower than the vessels, which are on an average 1/3000 of an inch in diameter. Between the atmospheric air in the cells and the blood in the vessels nothing intervenes but the thin membrane of the cells and the capillaries, and the delicate epithelium lining the former. And the exposure of the blood to the air is the more complete because the folds of membrane between contiguous cells, and often the spaces between the walls of the same, contain only a single layer of capillaries, both sides of which are thus at once exposed to the air. The enlargement of the capacity of the chest in inspiration is a muscular act; the muscles concerned in producing the effect being chiefly the diaphragm, the external intercostal muscles, etc. From the enlargement produced in inspiration, the chest and lungs return in ordinary tranquil expiration by their elasticity; the force employed by the inspiratory muscles in distending the chest and overcoming the elastic resistance of the lungs and chest wall being returned as an expiratory effort when the muscles are relaxed. The acts of expansion and of contraction of the chest take up, under ordinary circumstances, a nearly equal time, and can scarcely be said to be separated from each other by an intervening pause. The quantity of air that is changed in the lungs in each act of ordinary tranquil breathing is variable, but probably 30 to 35 cubic inches are a fair average in the case of healthy young and middle-aged men. The total quantity of air which passes into and out of the lungs of an adult, at rest, in 24 hours, has been estimated to be about 686,000 cubic inches. This quantity is largely increased by exertion; and it has been computed that the average amount for a hard-working laborer in the same time is 1,568,390. Breathing air is the quantity of air which is habitually and almost uniformly changed in each act of breathing. Complemental air is the quantity of air over and above this which a man can draw into the lungs in the deepest inspiration. After ordinary expiration, such as that which expels the breathing air, a certain quantity of air remains in the lungs which may be expelled by a forcible and deeper expiration; this is termed reserve air. But even after the most violent expiratory effort, the lungs are not completely emptied; a certain quantity of air remains in them, over which there is no voluntary control, which may be called residual air. Its amount depends, in great measure, on the absolute size of the chest, and has been variously estimated at from 40 to 200 cubic inches. Power of Inspiratory Power of Expiratory Muscles. Muscles. 1.5 inches. weak 2.0 inches. 2.0   ,,    ordinary 2.5   ,,    2.5   ,,    strong 3.5   ,,    3.5   ,,    very strong 4.5   ,,    4.5   ,,    remarkable 5.8   ,,    5.5   ,,    very remarkable 7.0   ,,    6.0   ,,    extraordinary 8.5   ,,    7.0   ,,    very extraordinary 10.0   ,,    The blood as it moves through the respiratory organs is exposed to the air that alternately moves into and out of the air-cells and minute bronchial tubes. The blood is propelled from the right ventricle through the pulmonary capillaries in steady streams, and slowly enough to permit every minute portion of it to be for a few seconds exposed to the air, with only the thin walls of the capillary vessels and air-cells intervening. The atmosphere we breathe has in every situation in which it has been examined in its natural state a nearly uniform composition. It is a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen, carbonic acid, and watery vapor, with traces of other gases, as ammonia, sulphuretta, hydrogen, etc. Of every 100 volumes of pure atmospheric air, 79 volumes consist of nitrogen and 21 of oxygen, about. The proportion of carbonic acid is extremely small: 10,000 volumes of atmospheric air contains only about 4 or 5 of carbonic acid. The average quantity of watery vapor in the atmosphere in this country is about 1.40 per cent. The changes produced by respiration on the atmosphere are that: 1. It is warmed; 2. Its carbonic acid is increased; 3. Its oxygen is diminished; 4. Its watery vapor is increased; 5. A minute amount of organic matter and of free ammonia is added to it. 1. The expired air is hotter than the inspired air. The temperature varies from 97° to 99 1/2°. 2. Carbonic acid in respired air is always increased; but the quantity exhaled in a given time is subject to change from various circumstances. From every volume of air inspired about 4 1/2 per cent of oxygen is abstracted; while rather a smaller quantity of carbonic acid is added in its place. Under ordinary circumstances, the quantity of carbonic acid exhaled into the air breathed by a healthy adult man amounts to 1,346 inches, or about 636 grains, per hour. It is estimated that the weight of carbon excreted from the lungs is about 173 grains per hour, or rather more than 8 ounces in 24 hours. Of course the influence of age, sex, respiratory movements, external temperature, season of the year, purity of the respired air, hygrometric state of the atmosphere, period of day, food and drink, exercise and sleep, have to be taken in consideration. The oxygen of respired air is always less than in the same air before respiration, and its diminution is generally proportionate to the increase of the carbonic acid. It has been shown that for every volume of carbonic acid exhaled into the air 1.17421 volumes of oxygen are absorbed from it; and that when the average quantity of carbonic acid, i.e., 1,346 cubic inches, or 636 grains, is exhaled in the hour, the quantity of oxygen absorbed in the same time is 1,584 cubic inches, or 542 grains. The nitrogen in the atmosphere, in relation to the respiratory process is supposed to serve only mechanically, by diluting the oxygen, and moderating the action upon the system. The most obvious change which the blood undergoes in its passage through the lungs is that of color, the dark venous blood being exchanged for the bright scarlet arterial blood. It gains oxygen, loses carbonic acid, becomes 1° to 2° F. warmer; it coagulates sooner and more firmly, and contains more fibrine. The venous blood as it issues from the right ventricle is loaded with carbonic acid. The oxygen present is insufficient to the whole of the hæmoglobin of the red corpuscles; much reduced hæmoglobin is present, hence the purple color of venous blood. As the blood-vessels pass through the capillaries of the lungs, this reduced hæmoglobin takes from the pulmonary air its complement of oxygen, all or nearly all the hæmoglobin of the red corpuscles becomes oxy-hæmoglobin, and the purple color forthwith shifts into scarlet. The hæmoglobin of arterial blood is saturated or nearly saturated with oxygen. Passing from the left ventricle to the capillaries, some of the oxy-hæmoglobin gives up its oxygen to the tissues, becomes reduced hæmoglobin, and the blood in consequence becomes once more venous, with a purple hue. Thus the red corpuscles by virtue of their hæmoglobin are emphatically oxygen-carriers. Undergoing no intrinsic change in itself, the hæmoglobin combines in the lungs with oxygen, which it carries to the tissues; these, more greedy of the oxygen than itself, rob it of its charge, and the reduced hæmoglobin hurries back to the lung in venous blood for another portion. Hæmoglobin combines loosely with carbonic oxide just as it does with oxygen, but the affinity with the former is greater than with the latter. While carbonic oxide readily turns out oxygen, oxygen cannot so readily turn out carbonic acid. This property of carbonic oxide explains its poisonous nature. Respiratory changes in the tissues. Arterial blood passing through the several tissues, becomes once more venous. A considerable quantity of the oxy-hæmoglobin becomes reduced, and a quantity of carbonic acid passes from the tissue into the blood. The blood which comes from a contracting muscle, is not only richer in carbonic acid, but also, though not to a corresponding amount, poorer in oxygen, than the blood which flows from a muscle at rest. A muscle is always producing carbonic acid, and when it contracts there is a sudden and extensive increase of the normal production. Oxygen is necessary for the life of the muscle. When venous blood instead of arterial blood is sent through the blood-vessel of a muscle, the irritability speedily disappears, and unless fresh oxygen be administered the muscle soon dies. Our knowledge of the respiratory changes in muscle is more complete than in the case of any other tissue; but we have no reason to suppose the phenomena of muscle are exceptional. On the contrary, all the available evidence goes to show that in all the tissues the oxidation takes place in the tissues and not in the adjoining blood. It is a remarkable fact, that lymph, serous fluid, bile, urine, and the other secretions contain no free or loosely combined oxygen, while the tension of carbonic acid in peritoneal fluid is as high as six per cent, and in bile and urine is still higher, etc. All these facts point to the conclusion, that it is the tissues, and not the blood, which become primarily loaded with carbonic acid, the latter simply receiving the gas from the former by diffusion; and that the oxygen which passes from the blood into the tissues is at once taken up in the same combinations, so that it is no longer removable by diminished tension. The production of carbonic acid in the muscle is not directly dependent on the consumption of oxygen. The muscles produce carbonic acid in an atmosphere of hydrogen. What is true of muscle is true also of other tissues and of the body at large. Oxygen helps to wind up the vital clock; but once wound up, the clock will go on for a period without further winding (Pflüger). To sum up, then, the result of respiration in its chemical aspect. As the blood passes through the lungs, the low oxygen tension of the venous blood permits the entrance of oxygen from the air of the pulmonary alveolus, through the thin alveolar wall, through the thin capillary sheath, through the thin layer of blood plasma, to the red corpuscles, and the reduced hæmoglobin of the venous blood becomes wholly, or all but wholly, oxy-hæmoglobin. Hurried to the tissues, the oxygen, at a comparatively high tension in the arterial blood, passes largely into the tissues, in which the oxygen tension is always kept at an exceedingly low pitch, by the fact that the tissues, in some way at present unknown to us, pack away, at every moment, into some stable combination each molecule of oxygen which they receive from the blood. With much, but not all, of its oxy-hæmoglobin reduced, the blood passes on as venous blood. How much hæmoglobin is reduced will depend on the activity of the tissue itself. The quantity of hæmoglobin in the blood is the measure of limit of the oxidizing power of the body at large; but within that limit the amount of oxidation is determined by the tissue, and by the tissue alone. The skin is an excretory tissue, and consists principally of two layers, an external covering of epithelium, termed the cuticle or epidermis, and a layer of vascular tissue, named the corium derma or cutis vera. The integument serves (1) for the protection of deeper tissues, (2) as a sensitive organ in the exercise of touch, (3) as an excretory organ, (4) as an absorbing organ, (5) for regulating the temperature of the body. Within and beneath the corium are imbedded several organs with special functions, namely, sudoriferous or sweat glands, sebaceous or fat glands, and hair follicles; and on its surface are sensitive papillæ. The so-called appendages of the skin, the hair and nails, are modifications of the epidermis. Sudoriferous glands: In the middle of each of the transverse furrows between the papillæ, and irregularly scattered between the bases of the papillæ in those parts of the surface of the body in which there are no furrows between them, are the orifices or ducts of the sudoriferous, or sweat glands, by which it is probable that a large portion of the aqueous and gaseous materials excreted by the skin are separated. Each of these glands consists of a small lobular mass, which appears formed of a coil of tubular gland-duct surrounded by blood-vessels and imbedded in the subcutaneous adipose tissue. From this mass the duct ascends, for a short distance, in a spiral manner through the deeper parts of the cutis, then passing straight, and then sometimes again becoming spiral, it runs through the cuticle and opens by an oblique, valve-like apparatus. The sudoriferous glands are abundantly distributed over the whole surface of the body; but are especially numerous, as well as very large, in the skin of the palm of the hand. They are estimated from 2,738 to 3,528 in each superficial square inch. They are almost equally abundant and large in the skin of the sole. The glands by which the peculiar odorous matter of the axilla is secreted form a nearly complete layer under the cutis, and are like the ordinary sudoriferous glands, except in being larger and having very short ducts. In the neck and back, where they are least numerous, the glands amount to 417 on the square inch. The total number is estimated, at 2,381,248; and supposing the orifice of each gland to present a surface of 1/54 of a line in diameter (and regarding a line as equal to 1/10 of an inch) the whole of the glands would present an evaporating surface of about eight square inches. Sebaceous glands secrete a peculiar fatty matter. Like the sudoriferous glands, they are abundantly distributed over most parts of the body. The quantity of matter which leaves the human body by way of the skin is very considerable. It is estimated that while 7 grains pass through the lungs per minute, as much as 11 escape through the skin. The amount varies extremely. It is calculated that the total amount of perspiration excreted from the whole body in 24 hours might range from 2 to 20 kilos. The total amount of perspiration is affected not only by the condition of the atmosphere, but also by the nature and quantity of food taken, the amount of fluid drunk, and the amount of exercise taken. It is also influenced by the mental condition, by medicines and poisons, by disease, and by the relative activity of the other excreting organs, more particularly the kidneys. The fluid perspiration or sweat, when collected, is found to be a clear colorless fluid, with a strong and distinctive odor varying according to the part of the body from which it is taken. Besides accidental epidermic scales, it contains no structural elements. Its reaction is generally acid, but in cases of excessive secretion may become alkaline. The average amount of solids is about 1.81 per cent, of which about two-thirds consists of organic substances. The chief normal constituents are (1) sodium chloride (common salt), with small quantities of other inorganic salts; (2) various acids of the fatty series, such as fermic, acetic, butyric acid, with probably other acids--CH2O2-C2H4O2--C4H8O2; (3) neutral fats and cholestrine; (4) ammonia (NH3) (urea), and possibly other nitrogenous substances. The average loss by cutaneous and pulmonary exhalation in a minute is from 17 to 18 grains; the minimum, 11 grains; the maximum, 32 grains; of the average 18 grains 11 pass by the skin and 7 by the lungs. The maximum loss by exhalation, cutaneous and pulmonary, in twenty-four hours is about 3 3/4 pounds; the minimum, about 1 1/2 pounds. Valentine found the whole quantity lost by exhalation from the respiratory and cutaneous surfaces of a healthy man who consumed daily 40,000 grains of food and drink to be 19,000 grains, or 2 1/2 pounds. Subtracting from this, for the pulmonary exhalation, 5,000 grains, and for the excess of the weight of the exhaled carbonic acid over that of the equal volume of the inspired oxygen, 2,256 grains, the remainder, 11,744 grains, or nearly 1 5/7 pounds, may represent an average amount of cutaneous exhalation in a day. The Kidneys, two in number, are excretory organs. They are deeply seated in the lumbar region, one on each side of the vertebral column, at the back of the abdominal cavity, and behind the peritoneum. The kidneys measure about 4 inches in length, 2 1/2 inches in breadth, and 1 1/2 inches in thickness. The left is usually longer and narrower than the right one. The weight of the kidney is usually stated to be about 4 1/2 ounces in the male and somewhat less in the female. The excretory apparatus consists of fine tubules (the tubuli urineferi), malpighian bodies, blood-vessels, nerves, and lymphatics, etc. The kidneys are highly vascular, and receive their blood from the renal arteries, which are very large in proportion to the organ they supply. Each artery breaks up into four or five branches, these again subdivide and break up into capillaries in the substance of the kidney. The veins arise by numerous venous radicals from the capillary network of the kidney, as seen near the surface of the gland, and collect the blood from the capillary plexus around the convoluted tubules which mainly compose this part, the smaller veins joining together and ultimately forming a single vein and ending in the inferior vena cava. The kidneys are so arranged by their anatomical structure--that of the cortical and medullary substance, the tubuli urineferi, pyramids, malpighian bodies, etc.--that they separate from the blood the solids in a state of solution. The secretion takes place by the agency of the gland cells, and equally in all the parts of the urine tubes. The protoplasmic cells which line at least a large portion of the tubuli urineferi elaborate from the blood certain substances, and discharge them into the channels of the tubules. All parts of the tubular system of the kidney take part in the secretion of urine as a whole, but there is another provision of vessels for a more simple draining off of the water from the blood when required. The large size of the renal arteries and veins permits so rapid a transit of the blood through the kidneys that the whole of the blood is purified by them. The secretion of urine is rapid in comparison with other secretions, and as each portion is secreted, it propels that which is already in the tubes onwards into the pelvis of the kidney. Thence, through the ureter, the urine passes into the bladder, into which its rate and mode of entrance has been watched. The urine does not enter the bladder at any regular rate, nor is there a synchronism in its movement through the two ureters. In a recumbent posture the urine collects for a little time in the ureters, then flows gently, and if the body is raised, runs from them in a stream till they are empty. Its flow is increased in deep inspiration, or straining, and in active exercise, and in fifteen or twenty minutes after meals. Substances taken into the stomach pass very rapidly through the circulation. It does not take longer than one minute for ferrocyanide of potassium to pass through. Vegetable substances pass in from sixteen to thirty-five. Neutral alkaline salts with vegetable acids, which were generally decomposed in transitu, made the urine alkaline in twenty-eight to forty-seven minutes. But the time of passage varied much; and the transit was always slow when the substances were taken during digestion. There are really two distinct parts in the kidney--the actively secreting part, the epithelium of the secreting tubules; and what maybe called a filtering part, the malpighian bodies. The specific gravity of urine is 1020--that is, the average human urine. Urine varies--in the morning before breakfast it is darker, urina sanguinis; urine secreted shortly after the introduction of any considerable quantity of fluid into the body, urina potus; and the urine evacuated immediately succeeding a solid meal of food, urina cibi. The last kind contains a larger quantity of solid matter than either of the others, the first and second being largely diluted with water. Specific gravity: The morning urine is best calculated for analysis. The average healthy range may be stated at 1015 in the winter to 1025 in the summer, and variations of diet and exercise may make a great difference. In disease, the variations may be greater; sometimes descending in albuminaria to 1004, and frequently ascending in diabetes, when the urine is loaded with sugar, to 1050, or even to 1060. The whole quantity of urine secreted in twenty-four hours is subject to variations according to the amount of fluid drunk, and the proportion of the latter passing off from skin, lungs, and alimentary canal. The average quantity voided in twenty-four hours by healthy male adults from twenty to forty years of age amounts to 52 1/2 fluid ounces. The chemical composition of urine. The average quantity of each constituent of the urine in 1,000 parts is: Water (O H2), 967 Urea (C O N2 H4), 14.239 Uric acid (C5 N4 H4 O3), .468 Coloring matter, mucus, and animal extractive matter, 10.107 { Sulphates (soda, potash), } 8.185 Salts. { Bisulphates (lime, soda, } { magnesia, ammonia), } { Chlorides (sodium, potassium), } Silica, etc., Traces. --------- 1,000.000 Urea is the principal solid constituent of the urine, forming nearly one-half of the whole quantity of solid matter. It is also the most important ingredient, since it is the chief substance by which the nitrogen of decomposed tissue and superfluous food is excreted from the body. The salts excreted by the kidneys in 24 hours are: Urea (C N2 H4 O), 512 grains. Chloride of sodium (Na Cl), 177   ,,    Phosphoric acid (H3 P O4), 48   ,,    Sulphuric acid (H2 S O4), 31.11   ,,    Uric acid (C5 N4 H4 O3), 8.53   ,,    The substances excreted consist mainly of carbonic acid gas (C O2), which is expired by the lungs, and urea (C N2 H4 O), which is expelled by the urine. These excretions, or expenditures, or waste products of the human body, present the carbohydrates--starch, sugars, and fats--and the proteids--meats and albumen--taken into the system as food. The daily average loss by the expenditure or waste products of the body is estimated to be about: Carbon, 4,500 grains. Nitrogen, 3 to 500 grains. Besides salts and water. Of all the elements of the income and outcome, the nitrogen, the carbon, and the free oxygen of respiration, are by far the most important. Since water is of use to the body for merely mechanical purposes, and not as food in the strict sense of the word, the hydrogen element becomes a dubious one; the sulphur of the proteids, and phosphorus of the fats, are insignificant in amount; while the saline matters stand on a wholly different footing from the other parts of the food, inasmuch as they are not sources of energy, and pass through the body with comparatively little change. The correct income will consist of so much nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulphur, phosphorus, saline matters, and water, contained in the proteids, fats, carbohydrates, salts, and water of the food, together with the oxygen absorbed by the lungs, skin, and alimentary canal. The outcome will consist of: 1. The respiratory products of the lungs, skin, and alimentary canal, consisting chiefly of carbonic acid and water, with small quantities of hydrogen and carburetted hydrogen, these two latter coming exclusively from the alimentary canal; 2. Perspiration, consisting chiefly of water and salts, with urea by the skin, and other organic constituents of sweat amounting to very little; 3. The urine, which contains practically all the nitrogen really excreted by the body, as well as a large quantity of saline matter and water. HEAT AND TEMPERATURE. The average temperature of the human body in those internal parts which are more accessible, as the mouth and rectum, is from 98.5° to 99.5° F. The chief circumstances by which the temperature of the healthy body is influenced are the following: Age. The average temperature of the new-born babe is only about 1° F. above that proper to the adult. In old age the temperature rises again, and approaches that of infancy. Sex. In the female slightly higher than in the male. Exercise. Active exercise raises the temperature of the body, through muscular contraction, etc. Climate and season. In passing from a temperate to a hot climate, the temperature of the human body rises slightly, rarely more than 2° to 3° F. In summer the temperature of the body is a little higher than in winter, 1/5° to 1/3° F. Cold alcoholic drinks depress the temperature 1/2° to 1°F. Warm alcoholic drinks, as well as warm tea and coffee, raise the temperature about 1/2° F. In disease, as in pneumonia and typhus, it occasionally rises as high as 106° or 107° F. In Asiatic cholera a thermometer placed in the mouth sometimes rises only to 77° or 79° F. The temperature maintained by mammalia of an active state of life averages 101° F. In birds, the average is as high as 107° F., the highest temperature, 111.25°, being in the species of the linnets, etc. The sources and distribution of heat. Wherever metabolism of protoplasm is going on, heat is being generated. All over the body heat is being set free; more abundantly in the more active tissues, and most of all in those tissues the metabolism of which leads to little or no external work. The metabolism of the tissues (including the blood) and of the food within the alimentary canal is the source of the heat of the body. But heat, being continually produced, is as continually being lost, as we have seen, by the skin, urine, and feces. The blood passing from one part of the body to another, and carrying warmth from the tissues where heat is being actively generated, to the tissues or organs where heat is being lost by conduction or evaporation, tends to equalize the temperature of the various parts and thus maintain a constant bodily temperature. Taking the body as a whole, under normal conditions, the chief sources of the production of heat are the muscles, and the abdominal viscera, more especially the liver; and of these the liver deserves attention, inasmuch as it is always at work, whereas the heat produced by the muscles is at least largely dependent on their contracting, and they may remain at rest for a considerable period. The brain, too, may be regarded as a source of heat, since its temperature is higher than that of the arterial blood with which it is supplied. Heat is lost by the skin, respiration, feces, etc. The great regulator, however, is undoubtedly the skin. The more blood passes through the skin the greater will be the loss of heat by conduction, radiation, and evaporation. The working of this heat-regulating mechanism is well seen in the case of exercise. Since every muscular contraction gives rise to heat, exercise must increase for the time being the production of heat; yet the bodily temperature rarely rises as much as a degree C., if at all. By exercise the respiration is quickened and the loss of heat by the lungs increased. The circulation of blood is also quickened, and the cutaneous vascular areas becoming dilated, a large amount of blood passes through the skin. The expenditure of heat may be tabulated thus: By the skin, in conducting, radiating, and evaporating, 77.5 per cent. Warming expired air, 5.2  ,,   Evaporating the water of respiration, 14.5  ,,   In warming urine, etc., 2.6   ,,   THE CIRCULATION. The heart is a hollow muscular organ divided by a longitudinal septum into a right and a left half, each of which is again subdivided by a transverse constriction into two compartments communicating with each other, and named auricle and ventricle. The heart is inclosed in the pericardium and placed behind the sternum and costal cartilages on the border end or base, by which it is attached, being directed upwards, backwards, and to the right, and extending from the level of the fourth to that of the eighth dorsal vertebra, the apex downwards, forwards, and to the left. In size, it is about five inches long, three and a half in its greatest width, and two in its extreme thickness from the anterior to the posterior surface. The weight is from nine to ten ounces. The circulation of the blood.-- The body is divided into two chief cavities, the chest or thorax, and abdomen, by a curved muscular partition called the diaphragm or midriff. The chest is almost entirely filled with lungs and heart, the latter being fitted in, so to speak, between the two lungs, nearer to the front than the back of the chest, and partly overlapped by them. In the living body the heart and lungs are in constant rhythmic movement, the result of which is an unceasing stream of air through the trachea alternately into and out of the lungs, and an unceasing stream of blood into and out of the heart. The blood is conveyed away from the heart by the arteries and returned to it by the veins; the arteries and veins being continuous with each other, at one end by means of the heart, and at the other by a fine network of vessels called capillaries. The blood, therefore, in its passage from the heart passes first into the arteries, then into the capillaries, and lastly into the veins, by which it is conveyed back again to the heart--thus completing a revolution, or circulation. There are two circulations by which all the blood must pass--the one a shorter circuit from the heart to the lungs and back again, which is called the pulmonic; the other the larger circuit, from the heart to all parts of the body and back again, which is called the systemic; and a subordinate stream of blood, that has been collected by the blood-vessels of the intestines, passes by means of the portal vein through the liver, and is called the portal circulation. The principal force provided for constantly moving the blood on this course, is that of the muscular substance of the heart; other assistant forces are (2) those of the elastic walls of the arteries, (3) the pressure of the muscles among which some of the veins run, (4) the movements of the walls of the chest in respiration, and (5) probably to some extent the interchange of relations between the blood and the tissues which ensues in the capillary system during the nutritive processes. The right direction of the blood's course is determined and maintained by the valves of the heart. The heart is divided into two chief chambers or cavities--right and left. Each of these chambers is again divided into an upper and lower portion called respectively auricle and ventricle, which freely communicate with each other. The right auricle communicates on the one hand with the veins of the general system and on the other with the right ventricle. The valvular curtain between the right auricle and the right ventricle is named the tricuspid; by it the auricle is guarded from the ventricle. The ventricle leads directly into the pulmonary artery and this in turn into the lungs. The pulmonary artery is guarded by three semilunar valves. The left auricle again communicates on the one hand with the pulmonary vein and on the other with the left ventricle, which is guarded by the mitral or bicuspid valve. The left ventricle leads directly into the aorta, which is also guarded by three semilunar valves. The aorta is a large artery which conveys the blood to the general system. The arrangement of the heart's valves is such that the blood can pass only in one definite direction, and this is--from the right auricle the blood passes into the right ventricle, and thence into the pulmonary artery, by which it is conveyed to the capillaries of the lungs. From the lungs, the blood, which is now purified and altered in color, is gathered by the pulmonary veins and taken to the left auricle. From the left auricle it passes into the left ventricle, and thence into the aorta, by which it is distributed to the capillaries in every portion of the body. The Heart's action. The heart's action in propelling the blood consists in the successive alternate contractions and dilatations of the muscular walls of the two auricles and ventricles. The auricles contract simultaneously; so do the ventricles; their dilatations also are severally simultaneous; and the contractions of the one pair of cavities are synchronous with the dilatations of the other. Valves--Bi and Tricuspid. During auricular contraction the force of the blood propelled into the ventricle is transmitted in all directions, but being insufficient to raise the semilunar valves, it is expended in distending the ventricle and in raising and gradually closing the auriculo-ventricular valves (tricuspid and bicuspid valves). These when the ventricle is full form a complete septum (partition) between it and the auricle. The arterial or semilunar valves are brought into action by the pressure of the arterial blood forced back towards the ventricles, when the elastic walls of the arteries recoil after being dilated by the blood propelled into them in the previous contraction of the ventricle. The sounds. When the ear is placed over the region of the heart two sounds may be heard at every beat of the heart, which follow in quick succession, and are succeeded by a pause or a period of silence. The first sound is dull and prolonged; its commencement coincides with the impulse of the heart and just precedes the pulse at the wrist. The second is a shorter and sharper sound, with a somewhat flapping character, and follows close after the arterial pulse. First sound. The chief cause of the first sound of the heart appears to be the vibration of the auriculo-ventricular valve, and also, but to a less extent, of the ventricular walls, and the coats of the aorta and pulmonary artery, all of which parts are suddenly put into a state of tension at the moment of ventricular contraction. The second sound is more complete than that of the first. It is probably due entirely to the sudden closure and consequent vibration of the semilunar valves when they are pressed down across the orifice of the aorta and pulmonary artery. Pulse. The heart of a healthy adult man in the middle period of life acts from seventy to seventy-five times per minute. The frequency of the heart's action gradually diminishes from the commencement to near the end of life. In persons of sanguine temperament, the heart acts somewhat more frequently than in those of the phlegmatic; and in the female sex more frequently than in the male; in children, more frequently still. Capacity. The capacity of the two ventricles is probably exactly the same. From the mean of various estimates taken, it may be inferred that each ventricle is able to contain on an average about three ounces of blood, the whole of which is impelled into the respective arteries at each contraction. Every time the ventricles contract three ounces of blood are pumped out of the heart into the lungs and heart respectively. Calculating seventy pulses per minute, the quantity of blood passing through the heart would be about 211 ounces, or 14 1/4 pints per minute; or 895 pints per hour, or 21,480 pints in 24 hours. Velocity. The velocity of the stream of blood is greater in the arteries than in any other part of the circulatory system, and in them it is greatest in the neighborhood of the heart and during the ventricular systole; the rate of movement diminishes during the diastole of the ventricles, and in the parts of the arterial system most distant from the heart. The rate is calculated to be about from 10 to 12 inches per second in the large arteries near the heart. THE BLOOD. Blood is a tissue of which the red corpuscles are the essential and active elements, while the plasma is the liquid matrix. There are two kinds of corpuscles, the white and the red. The protoplasm of the white corpuscles is native indifferentiated protoplasm, in no respect fitted for any special duty, as far as we know at present. The white corpuscles are in reality embryonic structures, concerned chiefly in the production of other forms, such as red corpuscles, and it may be under certain conditions various elements of the other tissues. The red corpuscles have a definite respiratory function. But these form a part only of the blood. The largest portion of the blood, the whole mass of the plasma, is an unorganized fluid with no proper physiological (vital) properties of its own. Its function is to serve as the great medium of exchange between all the tissues of the body. Just as the whole organism lives on the things around it, its air and its food, so the several tissues live on the complex fluid by which they are all bathed and which is to them their immediate air and food. Blood within the living vessel is a fluid; but when shed, or after the death of the vessels, becomes solid by the process known as coagulation. The average specific gravity of human blood is 1056, varying from 1045 to 1075 within the limits of health. It has an alkaline reaction, which in shed blood rapidly diminishes up to the onset of coagulation. Blood may, in general terms, be considered as consisting by weight of more than one-third and less than one-half of corpuscles, the rest being plasma, the corpuscles being supposed to retain the amount of water proper to them. Human blood: corpuscles 513, plasma 487. The average quantity of fibrine in the human blood is said to be two per cent. Composition of serum: In 100 parts there are in round numbers: Water, 90 parts. Proteid substance, 8 to 9   ,,   Fat extractives and saline matter, 2 to 1   ,,   Of the proteid substances the great mass consists of the so-called serum-albumen. Composition of red corpuscles: The red corpuscles contain less water than the serum. In 100 parts of red corpuscle there are: Water, 56.5 Solid, 43.5 The solids are almost entirely organic matter, the inorganic salts in the corpuscles amounting to less than 4 per cent. In 100 parts of dried organic matter of the corpuscles of human blood there are: Hæmoglobin, 90.54 Proteid substance, 8.67 Lecithin, .54 Cholestrin, .25 The blood is distributed as follows in round numbers: In the heart, lungs, large arteries and veins, About one-fourth. In the liver,  ,,      ,,      In the skeletal muscles,  ,,      ,,      In the other organs,  ,,      ,,      The average proportion of the principal constituents of the blood in 1,000 parts is: Water, 784 Red corpuscles (solid residue), 130 Albumen serum, 70 Saline matter, 6.03 Extractive fatty matter, 7.77 Fibrine, 2.20 The chemical composition of hæmoglobin is: Carb. Hyd. Iron. Nit. Oxy. Sulph. 54.2 7.2 0.42 16.0 21.5 6.7 Mucine, 52.2 7.0 12.6 28.2 Proteids, 51.5 6.9 15.2 20.9 0. to 54.5 to 7.3 to 17.0 to 23.5 to 2.0 THE ORGANS OF RESPIRATION. The principal organs of respiration consist of larynx, trachea, bronchi, lungs. The larynx is affixed to the upper end of the windpipe, and is not only the entrance for air into the respiratory organs from the pharynx, but also the organ of voice. The trachea measures from four inches to four inches and a half in length, and from three-quarters of an inch to one inch in width; but its length and width are liable to continual variations, according to the position of the larynx and the direction of the neck. The trachea divides into two branches, called bronchi, right and left. The right bronchus, wider and shorter than the left, measuring about an inch in length, passes outwards almost horizontally into the root of the right lung on a level with the fourth dorsal vertebra. The left bronchus, smaller in diameter but longer than the right, being nearly two inches in length, inclines downwards and outwards to reach the root of the right lung, which it enters on a level with the fifth dorsal vertebra--that is, about an inch lower than the right bronchus. The lungs, placed one on the right and the other on the left of the heart and large vessels, occupy by far the larger part of the cavity of the chest, and during life are always in accurate contact with the internal surface of its walls. Each lung is attached at a comparatively small part of its flattened inner or median surface by a part named the root and by a thin membranous fold, which is continued downwards from it. The pleuræ are serous membranes forming two shut sacs, quite distinct from each other, which line the right and left side of the thorax, forming by their approximation in the middle line the mediastinal partition, and are reflected each upon the root and over the entire free surface of the corresponding lung. The lungs. Each lung is irregularly pyramidal or conical, with its base downwards, and one side (the inner) much flattened. The broad concave base is of a semi-lunar form, and rests upon the arch of the diaphragm. The apex is blunt, and reaches into the root of the neck, above the first rib, where it is separated from the first portion of the subclavian artery by the pleural membrane. The lungs vary much in size and weight, according to the quantity of blood and mucous or serous fluid they may happen to contain, which is greatly influenced by the circumstances immediately preceding death, as well as other causes. The weight of both lungs together, as generally stated, ranges from 30 to 48 ounces, the more prevalent weights being found between 36 and 42 ounces. The proportion borne by the right lung to the left is nearly 22 ounces to 20, taking the combined weight of the two at 42 ounces. The lungs are not only absolutely heavier in the male than in the female, but appear to be heavier in proportion to the weight of the body. The general ratio between the weight of the lungs and body in the adult fluctuates between one to thirty-five and one to fifty. The average weight in twenty-nine cases, male and female: Male. Female. Right lung, 24 ounces. 17 ounces. Left lung, 21   ,,    15   ,,    --------- --------- 45 ounces. 32 ounces. The proportionate weight of the lungs to the body is: Male. Female. 1 to 37 1 to 34 The substance of the lungs is of a light porous spongy texture, and when healthy is buoyant in water. Specific gravity, 0.126; deprived of air, 1.056. When pressed between the fingers, the lungs impart a crepitant sensation, which is accompanied by a peculiar noise, both effects being caused by the air contained in the tissue. On cutting the lung the same crepitation is heard. The pulmonary tissues are endowed with great elasticity, in consequence of which the lungs collapse to about one-third of their bulk when the thorax is opened. The root of each lung consists of bronchi, arteries, and veins, together with the nerves, lymphatic vessels, and glands, connected by areolar tissue, and inclosed in a sheath of the pleura. Respiration consists of an expiration and an inspiration. The air passes in through the nose or mouth, through the larynx, trachea, bronchi, into the lungs. Inspiration: By the contraction of certain muscles, the cavity of the thorax is enlarged; in consequence the pressure of the air within the lungs becomes less than that of the air outside the body, and this difference of pressure causes a rush of air through the trachea into the lungs until an equilibrium of pressure is established between the air inside and that outside the lungs. This constitutes inspiration. Expiration: Upon the relaxation of the inspiratory muscles (the muscles whose contraction has brought about the thoracic expansion), the elasticity of the chest walls and lungs, aided by the contraction of certain muscles and other circumstances, causes the chest to return to its original size, or even become smaller. In consequence of this the pressure within the lungs now becomes greater than that outside, and thus air rushes out of the trachea, until equilibrium is once more established. This constitutes expiration. The inspiratory and expiratory act together form a respiration. The fresh air introduced into the upper part of the pulmonary passages by the inspiratory movement contains more oxygen and less carbonic acid than the old air previously present in the lungs. By diffusion the new or tidal air, as it is frequently called, gives up the oxygen to, and takes carbonic acid from, the old or stationary air, and thus when it leaves the chest in expiration has been the means both of introducing oxygen into and of removing carbonic acid from it. By this ebb and flow of the tidal air and the diffusion between it and the stationary air, the air in the lungs is being continually renewed, through the alternate expansion and contraction of the chest. In what may be considered normal breathing, the respiratory act is repeated about seventeen times a minute; and the duration of the inspiration as compared with that of the expiration and such pause as exists, is about as ten to twelve. When the ordinary respiratory movements prove insufficient to effect the necessary changes in the blood, their rhythm and character become changed. Normal respiration gives place to labored respiration, and this in turn to dyspnoea, which unless some restorative event occurs terminates in asphyxia. Changes of the air in respiration: 1. The temperature of the expired air is variable, but under ordinary circumstances is higher than that of the inspired air. 2. The expired air is loaded with aqueous vapor. 3. The expired air contains about 4 to 6 per cent less oxygen and about 4 per cent more carbonic acid than the inspired air, the quantity of nitrogen suffering but little change. Thus: Oxygen. Nitrogen. Carbon. Inspired air contains 20.81 79.15 .04 Expired ,,     ,,    16.033 79.557 4.380 While the air in passing in and out of the lungs is thus robbed of a portion of its oxygen, and loaded with a certain quantity of carbonic acid, the blood as it streams along the pulmonary capillaries undergoes important correlative changes. As it leaves the right ventricle it is venous blood of a dark purple or maroon color; when the blood has passed through the lungs and falls into the left auricle, it is arterial blood of a bright scarlet hue. In passing through the capillaries of the body from the left to the right side of the heart, it is again changed from the arterial to the venous condition. The average composition of this gas in the two kinds of blood is as follows. From 100 volumes may be obtained: Oxygen. Carbonic Acid. Nitrogen. Of arterial blood, 20 (16) vol. 39 (30) vol. 1 to 2 vol. Of venous blood, 8-12 (6 to 10) 46 (35) vol. 1 to 2 vol. Oxygen plays a most important role on this terrestrial globe. Life, health, and food depend on it. This element penetrates, pervades, everything and everywhere, unites and disunites with all other elements, preserves and destroys. While its absence from a living being, whether plant or animal, is death. When a liquid such as water is exposed to an atmosphere containing a gas such as oxygen, some of the oxygen will be dissolved in the water, that is to say will be absorbed from the atmosphere. The quantity which is so absorbed will depend on the quantity of oxygen which is in the atmosphere above; that is to say, on the pressure of the oxygen; the greater the pressure of the oxygen, the larger the amount which will be absorbed. If, on the other hand, water containing a good deal of oxygen dissolved in it be exposed to an atmosphere containing little or no oxygen, the oxygen will escape from the water into the atmosphere. CHAPTER XX. DIGESTION, NUTRITION. In plant life the permanent fabric consists of only three elements--carbon, hydrogen, oxygen. We know that plants alone convert inorganic or mineral substances into organic matter, and that plants as a necessary result assimilate their inorganic food, decompose carbonic acid, and restore its oxygen to the atmosphere. Vegetation is constructed of cells or vesicles, and has a cellular tissue. A cell is a living organism. It is that which makes up the tissue of plants. For the whole life of the plant is that of the cells which compose it; in them and by them its products are elaborated, and all its vital processes are carried on. Cell multiplication by division, cell growth, cell modification, exist in plants. Fluids are transferred from cell to cell by a process called endosmose. Absorption takes place by the roots, and the substance absorbed is carried up into the leaves, even to the topmost bough of a tree, passing in its course many millions of apparently water-tight partitions. Plants exchange gases, taking in carbonic acid and giving off oxygen. They evolve heat, have organs of reproduction, and elaborate the material for the final evolution of the seed. This seed, whether of grain, of vegetables, or of fruits, is composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. And these constitute the starches and sugars which we find have been evolved by the vegetable or plant, and which form the food for animals. Plants, then, convert the elementary substances, the crude material, into food. In doing so, they pass through the processes known as the essentials of life; these are, birth, growth, development, decline, and death. All organic compounds are transitory. They are constantly appearing and disappearing, composing and decomposing, organizing and disorganizing; and they are always dependent upon a certain degree of heat and moisture for their existence or non-existence. The universal constituents of plant life; of organic existence, which are indispensable to vegetation, are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Every vegetable substance is made up of at least eighty-eight to ninety-nine per cent of these elements. The proper vegetable structure, that is, the tissue itself, consists only of three of these elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen; while the fourth, nitrogen, is an essential constituent of the protoplasm, which plays so important a part in the formation of the cell, etc. Plants prepare or elaborate out of these chemical elements food-substances composed of those elements--starches and sugars--upon which animals subsist. Animals feeding upon these vegetable substances assimilate, elaborate, them into meat substances, flesh, or proteids. These again are composed of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Nitrogen plays the important role in proteids, being the distinguishing feature, as contrasted with substances of vegetable origin, the carbohydrates. Thus man is provided with two kinds of food: derived from plants, carbohydrates; derived from animals, proteids, or albumens, besides water and mineral salts. These foods undergo certain preparations previous to being introduced into the system. In the system the food undergoes farther elaboration, to make it fit to enter into the circulation of the blood, in order to supply suitable material for the master tissues. We will now examine briefly the organs and their secretions that convert food-substances into blood, and, by the blood, into tissue. The solvents and diluents of food in the human animal economy are the saliva of the mouth, the gastric juice of the stomach, the pancreative juice of the pancreas, the bile of the liver, and the juices of the intestines--the succus entericus. The digestive apparatus consists mainly of the alimentary canal together with various glands of which it receives the secretions. The alimentary canal commences at the mouth and terminates at the anus. The average length is about thirty feet, about five or six times the length of the body. The part situated in the head and thorax consists of the organs of mastication, insalivation, and deglutition, and comprises the mouth with the teeth, the salivary glands, and the æsophagus or gullet. The parts contained in the abdomen and pelvis consist of the stomach and the small and large intestines. The glands which are most immediately connected with digestion are very numerous small organs, situated in the mucous membrane of the alimentary canal, and the larger glands, such as the salivary glands, pancreas, and liver, whose ducts open on its inner surface. The mouth is included between the lips and the throat, bounded by the lips, cheeks, tongue, and hard and soft palate. It communicates behind with the pharynx, and through the pharynx with the æsophagus. It is lined throughout with mucous membrane. The mouth contains 32 teeth, 16 in the upper jaw and 16 in the lower jaw. The inferior maxillary bone, or lower jaw, is the only movable bone about the head. The teeth have for their functions biting, grinding, chewing, or triturating any hard food substance that may be introduced into the mouth. The tongue is a muscular organ covered with mucous membrane. By its muscular structure it takes part in the process of mastication and deglutition, and in the articulation of speech, while its mucous membrane, with common and tactile sensibility, is the seat of the sense of taste. The tonsils are two prominent bodies which occupy the recesses formed, one on each side of the fauces, between the anterior and posterior palatine arches and the pillars of the fauces. The saliva, which is poured into the mouth and there mixed with the food during mastication, is secreted by three pairs of glands named from their respective situation parotid, submaxillary, and sublingual. The parotid is the largest of three salivary glands. It lies on the side of the face, in front of the ear, and extends deeply into the space behind the ramus of the lower jaw. Its weight varies from 5 to 8 drachms. It has a duct called the parotid or Stenson's duct. It is about 2 1/2 inches long, and about a line and a half in thickness. Its orifice is opposite the crown of the second molar tooth of the upper jaw. The submaxillary gland weighs about 2 to 2 1/2 drachms, and is situated on the inner surface of the inferior maxillary. The duct is named Wharton's, and is about 2 inches in length. Its orifice is found under the tongue. The sublingual gland weighs about a drachm. It is situated on the floor of the mouth. The ducts are called the ducti Rivintiani. They are from 8 to 20 in number. They may be seen when the tip of the tongue is lifted up. Saliva. Mixed saliva, as it appears in the mouth, is a thick, glairy, generally frothy, turbid fluid. The quantity of saliva secreted in 24 hours varies. The average amount is probably from two to three pints in 24 hours. The composition of saliva is: Water, 994.10 Solids, 5.90 The solids are: Pyaline, 1.41 Fat, 0.07 Epithelium and Mucus, 2.13 { Sulphocyanide of Potassium, } { Phosphate of Soda, } Salts, {    ,,     ,, Lime, } 2.29 {    ,,     ,, Magnesia, } { Chloride of Sodium, } {    ,,    ,, Potassium, } ---- 5.90 The specific gravity varies from 1.004 to 1.008. The rate at which saliva is secreted is subject to considerable variation. When the tongue and muscles concerned in mastication are at rest, and the nerves of the mouth are subject to no unusual stimulus, the quantity secreted is not more than sufficient, with the mucus, to keep the mouth moist. The purposes served by saliva are of several kinds: 1. Acting mechanically in conjunction with mucus, it keeps the mouth in a due condition of moisture, and facilitates the movements of the tongue in speaking, and the mastication of the food. 2. It serves also in dissolving sapid substances and rendering them capable of exciting the nerves of taste. 3. By mixing with the food during mastication, it makes it a soft pulpy mass, such as may easily be swallowed. 4. Saliva performs a chemical part in the digestion of food. It transforms starchy substances into dextrine and grape sugar. Starch is a carbohydrate--carbon 18, hydrogen 30, oxygen 15. C18H30O15 + 3H2O = C6H12O6 + 2(C6H10O5) + 2H2O (Grape sugar.) (Dextrine.) Ptyaline is the salient feature of saliva. It is known as a ferment--acting upon starch and converting it into dextrine and grape sugar. The action of saliva varies in intensity in different animals. The food after having been acted upon and prepared is propelled, by the act of deglutition, through the æsophagus into the stomach, by way of the pharynx. The pharynx is that part of the alimentary canal which unites the cavities of the mouth and nose to the æsophagus. It extends from the base of the skull to the lower border of the cricoid cartilage, and forms a sac open at the lower end, and imperfect in front, where it presents apertures leading into the nose, mouth, and larynx. The pharynx is about four and a half inches in length, and is considerably wider across than it is deep from before backwards. The æsophagus or gullet, the passage leading from the pharynx into the stomach, commences at the cricoid cartilage opposite the lower border of the fifth cervical vertebra, descends in front of the spine, passes through the diaphragm opposite the ninth dorsal vertebra, and ends by an opening at the cardiac orifice of the stomach. It is from nine to ten inches in length. The stomach is situated in the abdominal cavity. It lies in part against the anterior wall of the abdomen, and in part beneath the liver and diaphragm, and above the transverse colon. It is somewhat conical or pyriform in shape. The left part is the larger, and is named the cardiac, or splenic, the right is named the pyloric, extremity. The upper border is about three or four inches in length, is concave, and is named the lesser curvature, while the lower border is much longer, is convex, and forms the greater curvature. The dimensions vary greatly in different subjects, and also according to the state of distension of the organ. When moderately filled, its length is about ten to twelve inches, and its diameter at its widest part from four to five inches. It weighs when freed from other parts about four and a half ounces in the male and somewhat less in the female. The structure of the stomach consists of four coats--a serous, a muscular, an areolar, and a mucous coat. The external or serous coat is derived from the peritoneum. There are three kinds of muscular fibers--longitudinal, circular, and oblique, and the internal mucous lining is a rather thicker, soft, smooth, pulpy membrane, lying in ridges or rugæ, and containing a large number of glands--tubular or gastric glands, and another variety of gland called peptic, besides others. While the stomach contains no food, and is inactive, no gastric fluid is secreted; and mucus, which is either neutral or slightly alkaline, covers its surface. But immediately on the introduction of food into the stomach, the mucous membrane, previously quite pale, becomes slightly turgid and reddened with the influx of a large quantity of blood; the gastric glands commence secreting actively, and an acid fluid is poured out in minute drops, which gradually run together and flow down the walls of the stomach, or soak into the substance introduced. The quantity of this fluid secreted daily has been variously estimated; but the average for a healthy adult has been assumed to range from ten to twenty pints in twenty-four hours. The specific gravity of gastric juice has been found to differ little from that of water, varying from 1.001 to 1.010, and the amounts of solid present to be very small, viz., about 56 per cent. The chemical composition of gastric juice is: Water, 994.40 Solids, 5.59 { Ferment, pepsin, and a trace of ammonia, 3.19 { Hydrochloric acid, 0.20 Solids, { Chloride of calcium, 0.06 {    ,,    ,, sodium 1.46 {    ,,    ,, potassium, 0.55 { Phosphate of lime, magnesia, and iron, 0.12 On starch gastric juice per se has no effect whatever, nor has healthy gastric juice any effect on grape sugar or cane sugar. On fats gastric juice is powerless. The essential property of gastric juice is the power of dissolving proteid matters (meats, albumens, nitrogenous substances), and converting them into a substance called peptones. Gastric juice thus readily dissolves coagulated proteids which otherwise are insoluble, or soluble only with difficulty in very strong acids. Certain conditions are required for the perfection of the process, which are all found in the stomach. The first is a temperature of 100° F. Second, minute division and constant movement favor digestion. Third, the greater the surface presented to the action of the juice, the more rapid the solution. Neutralization of the juice wholly arrests digestion. The digestive action of gastric juice on proteids, like that of saliva on starch, is a ferment action; in other words, the solvent action of gastric juice is essentially due to the presence in it of a ferment body called pepsin. The general effect of digestion of the stomach is the conversion of food into chyme, a substance of various compositions according to the nature of the food, yet always presenting a characteristic thick pultaceous grumous consistence. The small intestines commence at the pylorus and after many convolutions terminate in the large intestines. They measure on an average about twenty feet in length in the adult. For convenience they have been divided into three parts--the duodenum, which extends from eight to ten inches beyond the pylorus; the jejunum, which occupies two-fifths, and the ilium, which occupies three-fifths, of the rest of the canal. The mucous membrane, the interior coat, is the most important to the function of digestion. There are permanent folds, shelf-like processes, of the mucous membrane, called valvular conniventes. There are also villi and glands, as the glands of Lieberkühn, of Peyer, and of Bruner. The glands of Lieberkühn are thickly distributed over the whole surface of the large and small intestines. The glands of Peyer are exclusively in the small intestine. They are found in greatest abundance in the lower part of the ileum near to the ileo-cæcal valve. They are met with in two conditions, viz., either scattered singly, in which case they are termed glandulæ solitairæ, or aggregated in groups varying from one to three inches in length and about half an inch in width, chiefly of an oval form, their long axes parallel with that of the intestines. In this state they are named glandulæ agminatæ. The latter are almost always placed opposite the attachment of the mesentery. In structure they are analogous to lymphatics or absorbent glands, and their office is to take up certain materials from the chyle, elaborate them, and subsequently discharge them into the lacteals, with which vessels they appear to be closely connected. Bruner's glands are confined to the duodenum; they are most abundant and thickly set at the commencement of this portion of the intestines, and are provided with permanent gland ducts. The villi are confined exclusively to the mucous membrane of the small intestines. They are minute vascular processes, from a quarter of a line to a line and two-thirds in length. There are about fifty to ninety in number to a square line. Each villus consists of a small projection of mucous membrane, and its interior is supported throughout by fine retiform or adenoid tissue. Two or more arteries are distributed to each villus, and from their capillaries, which form a dense network, proceed one or two small veins, which pass out at the base of the villus. The lacteal vessels enter the base of each villus, and passing up in the middle extend nearly to the top, where it ends commonly by a closed and somewhat dilated extremity. The office of the villi is the absorption of chyle from the completely digested food of the intestines. The large intestine extends from the termination of the ileum to the anus. It is usually about five to six feet in length, being about one-fifth of the whole length of the intestinal canal. The large intestine is constructed of four coats like those of the stomach and small intestines, namely, the serous, the muscular, the areolar or submucous, and the mucous. It is divided into the ascending colon, transverse and descending colon, and rectum and anus. The cæcum is a short wide pouch, communicating with the lower end of the small intestines through an opening guarded by the ileo-cæcal valve. The appendix vermiformis is attached to the cæcum. The colon commences at the right groin, ascends to the liver, forms the hepatic flexure, then crosses transversely from right to left to the spleen, forms the splenic flexure, descends to the left groin, forms the sigmoid flexure, passes through the pelvis as the rectum, and terminates at the anus. The mucous membrane of the large intestines, like that of the small intestines, is lined throughout by columnar epithelium, but unlike it, is quite destitute of villi and is not projected in the form of valvular conniventes. The peritoneum, or serous membrane of the abdominal cavity, is by far the most extensive and complicated of serous membranes. Like the others, it may be considered to form a shut sac, on the outside of which are placed the viscera, which it covers. The peritoneum forms the mesenteries and omenta for the stomach, small and large intestines, and ligaments for the liver, spleen, uterus, and bladder. The liver is a very important glandular organ, very constant in the animal series, being found in all the vertebrates, and, in a more or less developed condition, in most invertebrate tribes. It secretes bile, and appears to act upon the blood which is transmitted through it. The liver is the largest gland in the body, and by far the most bulky of the abdominal viscera. It measures from ten to twelve inches transversely from right to left, between six and seven inches from its posterior to its anterior border, and about three and a half inches from above downwards where thickest, which is towards the right and posterior part. The average bulk is about eighty-eight cubic inches. The ordinary weight in the adult is between 50 to 60 ounces, about one-thirtieth of the weight of the whole body. The liver is solid to the feel, and of a dull reddish-brown color, with frequently a dark-purplish tinge along the margin. It has an upper surface smooth and convex, and an under surface which is uneven and concave. The liver is divided into two unequal lobes, a right and a left, and on the under surface of the right lobe are three secondary lobes or lobules, named the lobe of Spigolius, the caudate or tailed lobe, and the square lobe. It has five fissures or fossæ, described as the transverse or portal; the umbilical fissure and the fissure of the ductus venosus, together forming the longitudinal fissure; the fossa of the vena cava, and the fossa of the gall bladder. It is held in position by five ligaments formed by layers of peritoneum. The liver is situated on the right side of the body under the diaphragm. The convex surface is protected, on the right by the six or seven lower ribs, and in front by the cartilages of the same, and by the ensiform cartilage, the diaphragm of course being interposed. To the left of the longitudinal fissure the liver is in contact with the pyloric extremity and anterior surface of the stomach, on which it moves freely. When the stomach is quite empty, the left part of this surface of the liver may overlap the cardiac end of that organ. To the right of the longitudinal fissure the liver rests upon the first part of the duodenum and the hepatic flexure of the colon. Farther back it is in contact with the upper part of the right kidney and suprarenal capsule. The two blood-vessels which supply the liver are the hepatic artery and the vena porta. The hepatic vein conveys the blood away from the liver. The lymphatics of the liver are large and numerous, forming a deep and a superficial set. The nerves are derived partly from the coeliac plexus and partly from the pneumogastric nerve, especially from the left pneumogastric. The excretory apparatus of the liver consists of the hepatic duct, the cystic duct, gall bladder, and common bile duct. The hepatic duct is formed by the union of a right and left branch, which issue from the bottom of the transverse fissure and unite at a very obtuse angle; it descends to the right, within the gastro-hepatic omentum. Its diameter is nearly two lines, and its length nearly two inches. At its lower end it meets the cystic descending from the gall bladder, and the ducts uniting together at an angle form the common bile duct. The cystic duct is about one and a half inches in length. The gall bladder is a pear-shaped membranous sac, three or four inches long, about an inch and a half across its widest part, and capable of containing from 8 to 12 fluid drachms. The gall bladder is attached to the liver. The neck, gradually narrowing, becoming constricted, bends downward, and terminates in the cystic duct. The common bile duct (ductus communis choledicus), the largest of the ducts, being from two to three lines in width, and nearly three inches long, conveys the bile from the liver and the gall bladder into the duodenum by a common orifice, with the pancreatic duct on its inner surface, about three to four inches below the pylorus. The liver is an extremely vascular organ, and receives its blood supply from two distinct vessels, the portal vein and the hepatic artery, while the blood is returned from it into the inferior vena cava by the hepatic vein. Its secretion, the bile, is conveyed from it by the hepatic duct, either directly into the intestines, or, when digestion is not going on, into the cystic duct, and thence into the gall bladder, where it accumulates until required. The portal vein, hepatic artery, and hepatic duct branch together throughout the liver, while the hepatic vein and its tributaries run by themselves. At the transverse fissure it is merged into the areolar investment called Glisson's capsule, which surrounds the portal vein, hepatic artery, and hepatic duct, as they enter at this part, and accompanies them in their branches through the substance of the liver. The liver is made up of small roundish or oval portions called lobules, each of which is about 1/20 of an inch in diameter, and composed of minute branches of the portal vein, hepatic artery, hepatic duct, and hepatic vein; while the interstices of these vessels are filled by liver cells. These cells, which make up a great portion of the substance of the organ, are of rounded or polygonal form; about 1/800 to 1/1000 of an inch in diameter. The function of the liver is the secretion of bile. The bile is a somewhat viscid fluid of a yellow, or greenish-yellow, color, a strongly bitter taste, and when fresh a scarcely perceptible odor. It has a neutral or slightly alkaline reaction, and its specific gravity is 1.020. The composition of human bile is: Water, 859.2 Solids, 140.8 ------- 1,000 The solids are: Biliary acids combined with alkalies (bilin), 91.5 Fat, 9.2 Cholestrin, 2.6 Mucus and coloring matter, 29.8 Salts, 7.7 ----- 140.8 Bile is distinguished from the other alimentary secretions by the entire absence of proteids. The chemical composition of bilin, as compared with the organic parts of blood, is: Carb. Hyd. Nitr. Oxy. Sul. Bilin atoms, 76 66 2 22 Blood, 48 36 6 14 { Biliverdin, 16 20 2 5 Coloring matter, { Glycocholic acid, 26 43 1 6 { Taurocholic acid, 26 45 1 7 1 There seems to be some relationship between the coloring matters of the blood and bile; and it may be added, between these and that of the urine also; so that it is possible they may be, all of them, varieties of the same pigment, or derived from the same source. The quantity of bile discharged into the intestines is estimated to be about thirty to forty ounces secreted by an adult man in twenty-four hours. The purposes served by the secretion of bile may be considered to be of two principal kinds, viz., excrementitious and digestive. As an excrementitious substance, the bile serves especially as a medium for the separation of excess of carbon and hydrogen from the blood. Though one of the chief purposes of the secretion of bile may appear to be the purification of the blood by ultimate excretion, yet there are many reasons for believing that while it is in the intestines it performs an important part in the process of digestion. Bile has a slight solvent action on fats, and only a slight emulsifying power. Its functions generally may be considered thus: 1. It assists in emulsifying fatty portions of food, thus rendering them capable of being absorbed by the lacteals. 2. Bile facilitates the absorption of fatty matter. 3. Bile, like the gastric fluid, has a strongly antiseptic power, and may serve to prevent the decomposition of food during the time of its sojourn in the intestines. 4. Bile has been considered to act as a natural purgative, by prompting an increased secretion of the intestinal glands. 5. Another very important function appears to be that of so acting upon certain constituents of the blood passing through it, as to render some of them capable of assimilation with blood generally, and to prepare others for being duly eliminated in the process of respiration. 6. An important influence seems also to be exerted by the liver upon the saccharine matters derived from the alimentary canal. The chief purpose of the saccharine and amylaceous principles of food is, in relation to respiration and the production of animal heat. The pancreas is a long, narrow, flattened gland of a reddish-cream color, larger at one end than at the other, and lying behind the stomach opposite the first lumbar vertebra. It is usually from 6 to 8 inches long, about 1 1/2 inch in average width, and 1/2 to 1 inch in thickness. It weighs about 2 1/4 to 3 1/2 ounces. Its principal excretory duct is called the pancreatic duct, and runs through the entire length of the gland from left to right. The duct opens in a common orifice with the ductus communis choledicus on the inner surface of the duodenum about 4 inches below the pylorus. Healthy pancreatic juice is a clear, viscid fluid, frothing when shaken. It has a very decided alkaline reaction. The pancreas in its minute anatomy closely resembles the salivary glands; and the fluid elaborated by it appears almost identical with saliva. The composition of pancreatic juice is: Water, 980.45 Solids, 19.55 The solids are: Pancreatic, 12.71 Inorganic bases and salts, 6.84 ----- 19.55 Action of pancreatic juice. (1) It acts on starch raw and boiled with great energy, rapidly converting it into grape sugar. (2) On proteids (meats) it also exercises a solvent action, so far similar to that of gastric juice that by it the proteids are converted into peptones. (3) On fats pancreatic juice has a twofold action: it emulsifies them, and it splits up neutral fats into their respective acids and glycerine. Thus pancreatic juice is remarkable for the power it possesses of acting on all food-stuffs--on starch, fats, and proteids. Succus entericus (intestinal juice). The precise action of this is not known. It has been said to act upon starch, to convert proteids into peptones, and to emulsify fats. On the other hand, each of these actions has been denied. The portal system of veins. The portal vein, or vena porta, collects the blood from the stomach, intestines, pancreas, and spleen; and carries it to the liver, from which the bile is secreted; ramifying after the manner of an artery in the substance of the liver and conveying to the capillaries of that organ the blood collected in the main trunk. This blood, together with that of the hepatic artery, after having served for the secretion of the bile and the nourishment of the liver, is withdrawn from that organ by the hepatic veins, and carried by them into the vena cava inferior. Digestion begins at the mouth. Food is masticated by the movement of the lower jaw, broken into small pieces, moistened by the saliva, and starchy substances are converted into sugar. No change takes place during the rapid transit through the æsophagus. In the stomach the proteids are acted upon by the gastric juice and converted into peptones. Fats remain unchanged, and sugars are not acted upon. While these changes are proceeding, the thick grayish liquid, or chyme, formed by the imperfectly dissolved food, is from time to time ejected through the pylorus, accompanied even by large morsels of solid less digested matter. This may occur within a few minutes of food having been token, but the larger escape from the stomach probably does not begin till from one to two and lasts from four to five hours after the meal, becoming more rapid towards the end, such pieces as most resist the gastric juice being the last to leave the stomach. Substances can be absorbed from the cavity of the stomach into the circulation. The presumption is, that the diffusible sugars and peptones pass by osmosis direct into the capillaries, and so into the gastric veins. In the small intestines the semi-digested food, or chyme, as it passes the biliary orifice causes a gush of bile, and at the same time the pancreatic juice which flows freely into the intestine at the taking of the meal, is secreted again with renewed vigor, when the gastric digestion is completed. The conversion of starch into sugar, which may have languished in the stomach, is resumed with great activity by the pancreatic juice. The pancreatic juice emulsifies fats, and also splits them into their respective fatty acids and glycerine, and the bile is able to a certain extent to saponify the free fatty acids. It also appears that the slight emulsifying power of the bile is much increased by the presence of soap; and as a matter of fact, the bile and pancreatic juice do largely emulsify the contents of the small intestines, so that the grayish turbid chyme is changed into a creamy-looking fluid, which has been called chyle. These products as they are formed pass into the lacteals or the portal blood-vessels. Through the large intestine pass off indigestible or undigested constituents of the meal, and the gases generated. Absorption takes place from the stomach, and occurs along the course of the small and large intestines, especially of water. The largest and most important part of the digested material passes away from the canal during the transit of food along the small intestines, partly into the lacteals, partly into the portal vein. Digestion being, broadly speaking, the conversion of non-diffusible proteids and starch into highly diffusible peptones and sugar, and the emulsifying, or division into minute particles, of various fats, it is natural to suppose that the diffusible peptones and sugars pass by osmosis into the blood-vessels, and that the emulsified fats pass into the lacteals. That the great mass of the fat which enters the body from the intestines passes through the lacteals, there can be no doubt; and there is but little doubt that a considerable quantity of peptone and sugar does pass into the portal blood. Chyle is a white milky-looking fluid, which after its escape coagulates, forming a not very firm clot. The nature of the coagulation seems to be exactly the same as that of blood. Lymph seems to be blood minus red corpuscles, and chyle is lymph plus a very large quantity of minutely divided fats. It has been calculated that a quantity equal to that of the whole blood may pass through the thoracic duct in twenty-four hours, and of this it is supposed that about half comes from food through the lacteals, the remainder from the body at large; but these calculations are based on uncertain data. Entrance of chyle into the lacteals. The lacteals begin at a club-shaped lymphatic space lying in the center of the villus, and connected with the smaller lymphatic spaces of the adenoid tissue around it; it opens below into the submucous lymphatic plexus from which the lacteals spring. The thoracic duct is the common trunk which receives the absorbents from both the lower limbs, from the abdominal viscera, from the walls of the abdomen, from the left side of the thorax, left lung, left side of the heart, and left upper limbs, and from the left side of the head and neck. It is from fifteen to eighteen inches long in the adult, and extends from the second lumbar vertebra to the root of the neck. At the last dorsal vertebra there is usually a dilation of the duct, of variable size, which is called the receptaculum chyli, and is the common place of junction of the lymphatics of the lower limbs and the trunks of the lacteal vessels. There are two sets of absorbent vessels--the lacteals, which convey the chyle from the alimentary canal to the thoracic duct; and the lymphatics, which take up the lymph from all the other parts of the body and return it into the venous system. There is a right lymphatic duct, about a quarter to a half inch in length, which receives the lymph from the absorbents of the right upper limb, the right side of the head and neck, the right side of the chest, the right lung and the right half of the heart, and the upper surface of the liver. The thoracic duct terminates on the outer side of the internal jugular vein, in the angle formed by the union of that vein with the subclavian, and the subclavian empties itself in the superior vena cava. Lymphatics and lacteals are furnished with valves serving the same office as those of the veins, and for the most part constructed after the same fashion. Lymph and chyle, unlike the blood, pass only in one direction, namely, from the fine branches to the trunk and so to the large veins, on entering which they are mingled with the stream of blood and form part of its constituents. In some part of their course all lymphatic vessels pass through certain bodies called lymphatic glands. Analysis of lymph and chyle: Lymph. Lymph from Chyle from Thoracic Duct. the Lacteals. Water, 937.32 939.70 902.37 Fibrine, 0.595 10.60 3.70 Albumen, 42.775 38.83 35.16 Fat, 6.51 a little 36.01 Extractive Matter, 5.05 Salts, 7.75 10.87 22.76 ------ ------- ------- 1000. 1000. 1000. Chyle having reached the lymphatic channels, its onward progress is determined by a variety of circumstances. Putting aside the pumping action of the villi, the same events which cause the movement of the lymph generally, also further the flow of the chyle, and these are briefly as follows: 1. The wide-spread presence of valves in the lymphatic vessels causes every pressure exercised on the tissues in which they lie, to assist in the propulsion forward of the lymph. 2. Considering the whole lymphatic system as a set of branching tubes passing from the extravascular regions just outside the small arteries and veins and capillaries, to the large venous trunks, it is obvious that the mean pressure of the blood in the subclavian at the junction with the jugular is the cause of the movement, etc., assisted perhaps by the respiratory movements, and other causes, as osmosis, etc. The average quantity of solid fecal matter evacuated by the human adult in twenty-four hours is about five ounces; an uncertain proportion of which consists simply of the undigested or chemically modified residue of the food, and the remainder of certain matters which are excreted in the intestinal canal. Gases contained in the stomach and intestines. The sources of the gases contained in the stomach and bowels may be enumerated: 1. Air introduced in the act of swallowing either food or saliva. 2. Gas developed by the decomposition of alimentary matter, or of the secretions and excretions mingled with it in the stomach and intestines. 3. It is probable that a certain mutual interchange occurs between the gases contained in the alimentary canal, and those present in the blood of the gastric and intestinal blood-vessels. The movement of the intestines is peristaltic or vermicular, and is effected by the alternate contractions and dilatations of successive portions of the intestinal coats. The contractions, which may commence at any point of the intestine, extend in a wavelike manner along the tube. This is due to the involuntary longitudinal and circular muscular fibers contracting successively from above downwards and from behind forwards, etc. The movements take place slowly, and in health are commonly unperceived by the mind, but they are perceptible when they are accelerated under the influence of any irritation. CHAPTER XXI. THE ELEMENTARY SUBSTANCES. We have thus far discovered that this terrestrial globe is composed of sixty-four elementary substances; that fifty belong to a class called metals, and the remaining fourteen are non-metallic and are called metalloids. We know with absolute certainty the elementary chemical composition of all the substances known to man; everything within the reach of man has been analyzed, whether of inorganic or of organic origin. We also know the principal elements that enter into the composition of organic substances, animal or vegetable. But a thing that is not generally known is the wonderful role certain elements play in nature, especially in the life of plants and animals. If we examine the extraordinary display of combination or composition of some of the elements--especially those that enter into the composition of organic substances--we shall find how few of these elements are essential for the production of life, and its maintenance; and we shall be surprised to find what force or power, and phenomena, they are capable of producing. We shall be surprised to see how nicely and delicately these elementary compositions are adjusted--with what precision the elements enter into combination with each other--and with what astonishing result. The union of the elements that enter into the composition of living matter, must always be very accurately balanced, to insure a healthy or normal condition of either plant or animal. A very slight deviation or change may prove either injurious or destructive to the living organism. In order to obviate writing the names of the elements, we propose to use symbols. The elementary substances that enter into the composition of living matter being few, it will not be difficult to recognize the meaning of the symbols. The four vital elements mentioned in a previous chapter are Carbon. Hydrogen. Nitrogen. Oxygen. Symbols: C H N O The atmosphere we breathe, for example, is what is called a chemical mixture, and is composed of O22N77, with traces of ammonia, etc. The water we drink is a chemical composition, and is constituted by O H2. The number placed against each element indicates the quantity of each one requisite, or found, in the composition, or chemical combination, of the substance indicated. Take water for example. O1 (one) and H2 (two), that represents a chemical compound. It is most abundant, and is by far the most essential, in the formation of organic life. Air, water, fire, are represented by the four elements C H N O. Every power, every force known to man is dependent upon these. Every kind of life is made up of these. Of every phenomenon manifested by nature, whatever the display may be or where it may occur, these elements are the fundamental basis. Protoplasm, which is acknowledged to be the base of physical life, is nothing more than a homogeneous mass of albuminous matter which is composed of C H N O--with a greater or less quantity of each of these elements. These elements enter into the formation of all gases, fluids, and solids. They are invisible at one time and visible at another. Without taste or color or odor in a free state, or even in combination, they assume taste, color, and odor when the elements combine in certain proportions. They become either harmless or poisonous; create, maintain, or destroy life. Oxygen is a tasteless, colorless, and inodorous gas. Hydrogen is a colorless, tasteless, and inodorous gas. Nitrogen is destitute of color, taste, or odor. Carbon is a solid but becomes gaseous in combination with either Oxygen or Hydrogen. The diamond is one of the most remarkable substances known. It is always distinctly crystallized, often quite transparent and colorless, now and then having a shade of yellow, pink, or blue. Carbon is also found as graphite or plumbago. It constitutes a large proportion of all organic structures, animal and vegetable. Pure carbon, diamond, is the hardest substance known. In combination with Oxygen and Hydrogen it forms the softest of living matter, protoplasm. In combination with Oxygen it is poisonous to all animal life, and beneficial to vegetable life. Combined with Hydrogen, it forms the gas we burn, and is destructive to animal life. It is the food-maker in the plant, and it is the food-provider for the animal. It is the combustive agent in nature, in vegetables and in animals. From a thunderstorm to a flickering flame of a candle, carbon displays its power. From the smallest and lowliest aquatic vegetable cell to the highest animal cell tissue, it is the important solidifying, heat-giving element. These elements when free have neither color, odor, nor taste. Combined, however, they acquire odor, taste, and color. O and N, the atmosphere, has no color, taste, or odor. O and H, water, has no color, taste, or odor. N and H, ammonia, has color, taste, and odor. O and C is given off by animals, taken in by vegetables--carbonic acid. C and H, the gas, has taste, odor, and color. N and O produce a gas--laughing gas. Any two of these elements may combine in the form of a gas, a liquid, or a solid. And any one may combine with any other element known and form a substance, a molecule. O combines with all the elements known. H    ,,     ,,  many. N    ,,     ,,  some. C    ,,     ,,  many. Two elements form a substance. Three elements form vegetable life. Four elements form animal life. Common salt is used daily with our food; is harmless and useful; it is known as the chloride of sodium. By analysis this compound is separated, analyzed, into chlorine and sodium. Na stands for sodium, and Cl for chlorine. Combine Cl with H. That forms hydrochloric acid, a strong poison, strong enough to dissolve marble. Cl has little attraction for O. Its chemical energies are principally exerted toward hydrogen and the metals. Cl is one of the best disinfectants, and makes excellent bleaching material. Na (sodium) combines with O, and H, and C. These are some of the combinations: Na Cl = common salt. Cl H = hydrochloric acid, a poison. O Na H = caustic soda. Na2 N O3 = Chili saltpetre. Na2 C O3 = sodium, carbonate, etc. Phosphorus and sulphur and other elements enter into combination with Oxygen and Hydrogen. Both phosphorus (P) and sulphur (S) enter into organic life, but play a subordinate role. The vegetable cell contains liquid, solid, and air. The growing, vitally active cells are filled with liquid, namely O and H, charged with more or less nutritive assimilated matters, C, etc. Sap--the liquid which is imbibed by the roots and carried upwards by the stem--this is the water impregnated with certain gaseous matter derived from the air, and minute portions of earthy matter dissolved from the soil under the influence of light. Sap elaborated--from this we obtain the ternary substances composed of three elements, O C H; also substances composed of four elements, O C H N. The latter represents protoplasm or protein. Vegetable chemical compounds, organic substances, can be produced only under certain vitalizing conditions and influences. Wherever upon the surface of this earth, the sun's rays produce a certain degree of heat, temperature, C H O may combine and evolve vegetable life. In tropical climates, for example, notwithstanding the sun's heat, no vegetation grows on high mountain peaks that are covered with snow and ice year in and year out; nor will vegetation grow in the cold climate of the north. C H and O will produce vegetable life only in the presence of heat. Heat is essential. And there is one source only whence it can be obtained, that is the sun. The climate, as the temperature, etc.; the quantity of elements, and the quality of soil, vary the products of vegetation. That accounts for the immense variety, the differences existing. The organic chemical combinations in vegetable life are infinite. And all these varieties depend on the numerical quantities of each of the elements C H O that enter any composition. The products of vegetation. C H O N Starch food substances, 18 13 15 Sugar, grape, 6 12 6   ,,   cane, H2O + 12 22 11 Oils, aniseed, etc., 10 12 1 Acids, tartaric, 4 6 6  ,,  , citric, etc., 6 8 7 Hydrocyanic, or prussic, acid, one of the strongest poisons, 1 1 1 Tannin or tannic acid, 27 22 17 Turpentine oil (composed of carbon and hydrogen only) 10 16 We have other vegetable products called alkaloids, that are principally found in the bark and the leaves. A few examples will suffice: C H N O Morphia, 17 19 1 3 Strychnine, 21 22 2 2 Quinine (sulphate H2SO4), 20 24 2 2 The essence of coffee and tea, caffein or thein, 8 10 4 2 The alcohols, acids, ethers, and so on, are all composed of these elements: C H O Alcohol, 2 6 1 Acetic acid, 2 4 2 The combinations are infinite. Volumes are filled with organic chemistry. Mere mention only can be made, to show the wonderful power these elements display when variously combined. The products of destructive distillation of coal yield a remarkable series of combinations: Carb. Hyd. Light carburetted hydrogen, marsh gas, or fire-damp, is composed of 1 4 (C1H4) Aceteline, another product, 2 2 (C2H2) Heavy carburetted hydrogen, olefiant gas, the gas we burn, ethelene, 2 4 (C2H4) These may undergo a vast variety of changes and combinations. Chloroform, alcohol, ethers, acids, oils and fats, resins, balsams, etc., etc., all have these elements in combination. Does it not seem strange that the different numerical combinations of the same elements should have such different effects upon the animal system? Why should starch and sugar compounds be good for the sustenance of animal life while other compounds of the same elements prove destructive to life? Or, why should morphia have such a peculiar effect upon the animal tissues--especially the nervous? And why should alcohol have such a peculiar effect upon the master tissues of the body? The difference in the chemical composition of quinine and strychnine is not so very great, yet the action upon the system is by no means the same. The effect upon the tissues is not the same. Those who believe in a God easily dispose of these questions by simply exclaiming, They are the wonderful works of God! That one drop of hydrocyanic acid upon the tongue of an animal should kill is very astonishing; that acid being composed only of one of Carbon, one of Hydrogen, and one of Nitrogen (C N H). Why should it paralyze the brain first, before it affects the heart, since it has to be carried by the blood through the circulation to the brain? The derangement of the functions of that center causes death. The revelations of these important combinations and actions man had to make for himself. They were not brought down to us on tablets of stone by some supernatural agent, nor did spirits or angels communicate the mysteries and the powers of these elements. It is owing to the development of man's intellectual faculties, that the combinations of these elements has been made possible. It was quite a discovery when it was found that nitre, sulphur, and charcoal made gunpowder. There are only five elements in that compound, viz., Nitrogen, potassium, Oxygen, Carbon, and sulphur. Chili saltpeter is used for domestic purposes. Harmless to animal life, so is each one of these elements when they enter into combinations that are not destructive to life. The forces and powers exercised by any compound depend on the number and kind of elements that enter into the composition. And the influence that bears directly upon their mutual activity again depends, when in a state of nature, upon the presence of heat. When a seed, as of wheat or of any starchy vegetable, is thrown into the ground, it will not germinate except in the presence of a certain amount of moisture, and heat, the heat varying from 50° to 80° Fahrenheit, in addition to free communication with the air. Temperature, moisture, air, electricity, kind and quantity of the various elements in the soil present, cause the immense variations in plant life and plant compositions. Yet the same elementary compositions will be found in the same species, and the same conditions generally will be required to reproduce them. Each group of elements that enters into the composition of any substance, carries with it qualities and capabilities peculiar to itself, throughout the vegetable kingdom. Its influence upon the animal economy will depend on the various atomic elements, and the quantities of each, that enter its combinations. For example, the atmosphere, the balance of power between O and N, is essential to both plant and animal. So with water, O H2. And so with those foods, starch and sugars, C18H30O15 or C6 H12O6; in each of these substances Carbon has its complement of Hydrogen and Oxygen. That is, the Carbon is, as it were, diluted in a sufficient quantity of water to make it suitable for food. Rob it of its Oxygen and it becomes a poison, an active poison. The less the quantity of Oxygen in any substance of organic origin the more unfit it becomes as a food. And it becomes poisonous to the animal system in proportion as the Oxygen is absent or removed from the composition. We have representatives of poisonous substances in alcohol, C2H6O, a mild poison; and in hydrocyanic acid, C N H, the strongest poison known. Moreover, we see already peculiar manifestations in vegetable life, humble in character, low in degree. Plants not only rest from activity, but have their sleep and exhibit sensible movement from irritation. The foliage of the locust, and of most leguminous plants, and that of oxalis and wood-sorrel, seem to have their sleep, as seen by the position of their leaves and blossoms. Irritate the mimosa plant, as by roughly touching it, and the leaflets will suddenly change position. In the Dionæa muscipula, or Venus's flytrap, the touch of an insect, alighting upon the upper surface of the outspread laminæ, causes its sides to close suddenly, the strong bristles of the marginal fringe crossing each other like the teeth of a steel trap, and the two surfaces pressing together with considerable force, so as to retain, if not destroy, the intruder, whose struggles only increase the pressure which this animated trap exerts. It is evident that the elementary combinations under certain conditions and the influence of heat, will exhibit vital action, in an organic form--manifest phenomena of life, that are only in degree, and not in kind, inferior to the lowest plant life. The process is the same. The mode of living differs in degree, though the results are different. The combination and exchange of elements takes place in the simple plant life as in the higher animal life. The watery portion of plant life is composed of O and H2, the same as water in a free state or water in animal life, and the combination of Oxygen and Hydrogen with Carbon. The food substances are found in the vital machinery of vegetation. The characteristics of life exhibited in the lower grade of vegetation, are seen in a more perfect degree in animal life--respiration, exchange of gases, imbibition, absorption, assimilation, evolution of heat and motion, the power of incorporating material in its own substance, endosmosis, subjectibility to irritation, exhaustion, spontaneous movement, rest and sleep, capability of being influenced by various stimuli, etc., etc. The combination of O, C, and H, organized and vitalized, in conjunction with a few other less important elements, manifests in conformity with the laws of nature all functions and activities that plant lie is capable of realizing. It would neither be extravagant, nor an exaggeration, considering the important role these elements play in vegetation, if they were rightfully termed the soul-life of plants. CHAPTER XXII. ALCOHOL AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE SYSTEM. All substances taken into the stomach as food are of three kinds, carbohydrates, proteids, and fats. This means, starch, sugars, meats, and fats, besides water and some salts. Food substances carry their own complement of water, serve nutritive purposes when taken into the system, and are easily dissolved by the various fluids in the body. Food may be taken into the system for three purposes: 1. Simply for the maintenance of health; 2. For fattening purposes; 3. For the sake of muscular energy. The body, the human body, consists, speaking in general terms, of carbohydrates, fats, and proteids, and water and saline matters. We have seen that the work done by the master tissues causes a loss, or produces a certain amount of waste material, consisting of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen, and some mineral matter--salts. This loss or waste has to be replaced in quantity and quality sufficient in order to maintain a healthy condition of the body. And, since we know the precise, or almost the precise, quantity of material excreted, which consists of Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Hydrogen, etc., we can also estimate, with considerable precision, the quantity needed to replace it. More than 41 per cent of the entire weight of the body is made up of muscular tissue. The nervous tissue constitutes not quite two per cent. The chemical composition of muscular and nervous tissue--of the solid part only--is Carbon. Hydrogen. Nitrogen. Oxygen. Sul. 51.5 6.9 15.2 20.9 0.3 to to to to to 54.5 7.3 17.0 23.5 2.0 The watery portion of the muscle is not mentioned. Please notice the large quantity of Carbon and the small quantity of Hydrogen in the composition of the solid part of the muscle. We are aware that the muscles are always producing Carbonic Acid--that is, C and O2--and when a muscle contracts, there is a sudden and extensive increase of the normal production. The blood that comes from a contracting muscle is richer in Carbonic acid--that is, it contains one atom more of Carbon and two atoms of Oxygen more. The blood that has passed through the lungs changes from venous to arterial blood. The venous discharges about 5 vols. of Carbonic acid (C O2); the arterial carries away about 5 vols. of Oxygen (O) to the tissues. The carbohydrates taken into the system: Oz. Starch and sugars, about 20 Meats, proteids,  ,,   15 Fats,  ,,   3 1/2 Water,  ,,   52 About 32 ounces of saliva converts the starch into sugar. That is, the saliva changes starch (C18 H30 O15) into sugar (C6 H11 O5). Meats are acted upon by the gastric juice, it requiring about ten to twenty pints to dissolve three-quarters to one pound of meat-stuff; and the substances in the stomach are changed into chyme. The fats are emulsified by the gall from the liver--about 30 to 40 ounces for 3 to 4 ounces of fat. And the pancreatic juice completes the work and still farther dissolves all three kinds of substances, so that, with the aid of the succus entericus, the whole mass is changed into a substance called chyle. All the carbohydrates and proteids in solution, together with the fluids taken into the system, are taken up by the veins of the abdominal organs and conveyed by the portal vein to the liver. Passing through the liver, the blood is collected by the hepatic vein and emptied into the inferior vena cava. The fatty substances are taken up by the lacteals to the receptaculum chyli, passed up the thoracic duct, and poured into the left subclavian vein, which empties its contents into the superior vena cava. Both streams of blood--venous blood--from the superior and inferior vena cava, pass into the right auricle, thence to the right ventricle, through the pulmonary artery into the lungs, there exchange the Carbonic acid for Oxygen, and return by means of the pulmonary veins into the left auricle, thence to the left ventricle, through the aorta into the general system--and to the master tissues. In the tissues the Oxygen is taken up. That is, the Oxygen passes from the blood to the tissues and the tissues throw off the Carbonic acid, which the veins again carry to the right side of the heart. Alcohol is composed of Carbon two (2), Hydrogen six (6), and Oxygen one (1) (C2 H6 O1). Alcohol, like all poisonous substances, carries a small amount of Oxygen. In composition it resembles very much, and probably is, a union of C2 H4 + H2 O, C2 H4 = ethane, olefiant gas, or heavy carburetted hydrogen. It is, in fact, a constituent of the gas we burn, procured from the destructive distillation of coal--in other words, coal gas. To make it plainer, ethane contains two of Carbon, four of Hydrogen + one molecule of water. When alcohol is taken into the system, it is almost immediately absorbed by the veins of the stomach, is carried at once by the portal vein to the liver, and returns from the liver by way of the hepatic vein to the inferior vena cava, to the right auricle, and to the lungs through the right ventricle. But the lungs cannot supply Oxygen enough to satisfy the Carbon of the alcohol. There is only one atom of Oxygen in the composition of alcohol, and three more atoms of Oxygen are needed to form Carbonic acid (C O2). Under ordinary, normal conditions, Oxygen enough is inspired to satisfy the wants of the tissues for combustion purposes, but in the case of alcohol an extra demand for Oxygen is made, and the lungs are not prepared to supply the demand. Since oxidation takes place in the tissues and not in the blood, the blood, being overcharged with heavy carburetted Hydrogen (C2 H4), unloads it into the tissue. The extra amount of Carbon arriving at the tissue, robs it of its Oxygen. The Oxygen arriving from the lungs being insufficient, the tissue loses Oxygen. The presence of Oxygen is necessary for the maintenance of irritability. From the fact that no free Oxygen is present in the muscular tissue the tension is nil or even less than nothing. When the Carbon of the alcohol robs the tissues of its Oxygen, the Hydrogen is set free. What becomes of it? The muscular and nervous tissues contain from 51 to 54 per cent of Carbon in their composition, and 6 to 7 per cent of Hydrogen. The free Hydrogen combines with the Carbon of the tissues and forms carburetted Hydrogen, with which the blood gets overloaded, and carries it to the other tissues. The nervous system, the brain, not receiving the Oxygen necessary, in consequence of the blood being overcharged with both Carbonic acid and carburetted Hydrogen, the nervous substance is first impaired, next exhausted, and lastly its normal activity extinguished. The muscles meantime through having been robbed of both Oxygen and Carbon--receiving no free Oxygen or very little--and through the presence in the circulating fluid of Carbonic acid and carburetted Hydrogen, lose the power to act. The cerebrum, cerebellum, medulla oblongata, with all the other subordinate nervous centers, being impaired by the poison and the absence of Oxygen, the nerves of volition lose control, the cerebrum has its will power impaired or entirely subdued, and the cerebellum loses the power of muscular coördination. Thus, then, the master tissues become crippled. At first alcohol may have a stimulating effect on the nervous system; next, if the indulgence be continued, the nervous forces become exalted; finally, however, depression sets in, and proves at last a complete extinguisher of the intellectual faculties. The muscles first lose the power of coördination, the irritability and tension gradually cease, at length they refuse to act. The brain and muscles being helpless, the body lies in a state of stupor, motionless. The individual is temporarily deprived of his mental faculties, incapacitated, and completely oblivious to all his surroundings. The involuntary organs, however, may act. The stomach may eject its contents, having lost consciousness and will power. The urine and feces may pass off involuntarily. All organs have to suffer, but two more than all the rest--the liver and kidneys. The function of the liver, as we have already seen, is the secretion of the bile. That organ has still another important duty to perform, and that is in converting the starchy substances, or its already converted sugars, in to glycogen = C6 H10 O5. The metabolic activity of the hepatic cells lies in the formation of glycogene. Glycogene is a source of heat in the body. It is constantly present in the muscle, as a functional material no doubt. The chief purposes this substance serves are probably for respiration and production of animal heat. We must bear in mind that fats are composed of C, H, and O, and that both fats and carbohydrates serve nutritive purposes. Whether any difference exists between the two we do not know at present, beyond the fact that in the final combination of the two, while carbohydrates require sufficient Oxygen only to combine with their Carbon, there being already sufficient Oxygen in the carbohydrate itself to form water with the Hydrogen, fats require in addition Oxygen to burn off some of their Hydrogen. Alcohol is not convertible into glycogene. The six atoms of Carbon are complemented by five molecules of water: C6 + 5 O H2 = C6 H{10} O5. As already stated, alcohol (C6 H2 O) contains only one molecule of water (H2 O + C2 H4 ethane). To convert the four of Hydrogen into water, two of Oxygen are needed--and to form Carbonic acid three of Oxygen are wanting. In this connection we may ask, Is alcohol a food? No! Alcohol is in no sense a food! As a stimulant it is very useful, in a certain class of exhausting diseases, but taken in large quantities alcohol acts as a slow poison. The action of the alcohol, which must pass through the liver, is certainly not beneficial. On the contrary, the function of the organ is interfered with and the tissues of which the liver is composed slowly but surely undergo a degenerative process. The alcoholic beverages differ. As for example, whisky, wine, and beer--of the three beer is probably the least injurious. By reason of the hops it contains it helps to allay nervous irritability. When taken continuously in large quantities, it leads to congestion of the liver and the accumulation of fat. Beer contains only four to five per cent of alcohol, or thereabout. The effect of beer on some individuals is somewhat similar, in the increase of size, to the remarkable growth of some aquatic plants, as the gourd, in which the vegetable tissue cells are very large and increase very rapidly. The use of the stronger spirits leads to a degeneration of another kind--contraction of the liver, cirrhosis. The kidneys are the next to suffer severely by the alcoholic fluids. The whole blood is purified by the kidneys. The transit is very rapid; the elimination of impurities must necessarily be rapid. The body under the normal condition eliminates Nitrogen chiefly; this is the urea and uric acid found in the diurnal excretion of urine of fifty-two ounces in the twenty-four hours. But if instead of a man drinking the ordinary allowance of fifty-two ounces of water, a man takes in several hundred ounces, as in the case of some beer-drinkers, it is evident that the kidneys have a great deal more work to perform than usual, in addition to the constant irritability the kidneys, like the liver and other organs, are subject to. The sobering up of a man after a drunk, consists in receiving Oxygen sufficient in quantity into the tissues, to supply the amount he has lost. It takes several hours before sufficient Oxygen has been introduced into the tissues to establish the normal equilibrium. The theories on alcohol are various. I quote some of the more important ones, briefly stated: Liebig thought that alcohol disappeared by complete and rapid combustion. Lallemand and Perrin entertained the theory that alcohol was eliminated by the excretory organs. (That means, perhaps, that alcohol simply promenaded through the system.) Parks was of opinion that alcohol is directly absorbed by the blood-vessels without undergoing any change or decomposition. Another theory was that alcohol is converted into acetic acid (C2 H{4} O2); and that acetic acid is split up into carbonic acid (C O2) and water--which is impossible, as there is not Oxygen enough for both C O2 and H2 O. It appears, then, that alcohol does not disappear by rapid combustion, except when taken in very small quantities and during a state of exhaustion, and then not by combustion. That alcohol is excreted there is no doubt, but when taken in large quantities it is not excreted without leaving its permanent mark behind it. Nor is it absorbed by the blood-vessels without undergoing any change or decomposition, otherwise it would be excreted by the kidneys and skin. That the function of the brain is entirely suspended, for a time at least, needs no argument, because all will power is arrested, the nerves of special sense cease to act, all nerve-centers suspend operation, and the nerve-fibers no longer act as conductors of either motion or sensation. And the muscular tissues are no longer capable of irritation, stimulation, or coördination; contraction, flexion, and extension have been temporarily annihilated; the force, the power, and the action have succumbed to the harmful influence of alcohol. And the cause of it all is--too much carburetted Hydrogen and the absence of Oxygen. This has unbalanced the elements that normally enter into the composition of the tissue both of muscle and nerve. The master tissues, the nervous and muscular, that get drunk, they are the first to feel the stimulation, become excited, depressed, and exhausted. And finally let us sum up some of the effects of alcohol on the system: 1. It is a source neither of heat nor of energy, nor can it be stored up for future use, nor can it be assimilated in the tissues. 2. Alcohol retards the motion of the blood. 3. It induces specific action after the manner of cumulative poisons. 4. By the veins and absorbents alcohol mixes with the blood, and immediately acts as a stimulant on all the tissues with which it is brought in contact. 5. It causes the retention of substances which ought to be eliminated. 6. It is shown by abundant testimony that the blood becomes surcharged with unchanged and unused material, and contains more Carbon than normally, at times as much as 20 to 30 per cent. 7. Alcoholic blood coagulates slowly and extravasates easily. 8. The susceptibility to disease is greater, the resisting force is diminished, and the healing process seriously interfered with. 9. Oxygen is diverted from its proper functions, the exhalation of carbonic acid at the lungs is diminished, both absolutely and relatively, but the pulmonary aqueous vapor is not lessened. 10. The functions of the brain are at once stimulated, and all other organs are excited, and a train of phenomena is induced partly of a chemical nature and partly of a physical or vital. 11. Alcohol produces a temporary increase of the heart's action, and a congestion of the whole of the pulmonary capillaries. 12. It irritates the parts, stimulating the glandular secretions, leads to congestion of the blood-vessels, in time forms spurious melanotic deposits and a gradual thickening of the gastric substance. 13. Fat gradually is increased in the blood, and a milky character is imparted to the serum of the blood, and the red corpuscles in time assume a wrinkled and contracted appearance. 14. The water of the urine is diminished; the chlorides are greatly lessened, as well as the acids and bases. Most people are concerned about themselves only to the extent of securing the immediate satisfaction of their senses. The superficial surroundings they utilize to cater to the enjoyment of such indulgences of acquired taste, habit, passion, feelings or emotions, as prove most gratifying to them, never thinking that their constitution is nothing more than a vitalized chemical machine, temporarily passing through its terrestrial cycle of physiological activity, beginning as a mass of protoplasm, and terminating, when it has gone through all the phases of animal existence, in the distribution of its chemical elements. The deranging effect of alcohol on the nervous and muscular tissues may be compared to the working of an ordinary battery. We know that the action and the force depend on the elements that enter into the composition of the battery, fluids and solids, zinc and copper, and sulphuric acid--representing zinc, copper, sulphur, Oxygen, and Hydrogen. The action of the zinc and copper depends upon the fluids. Other fluids, though composed of three elements, would produce either not the same effect, or no effect at all. It stands to reason that, since we know the kind of fluid that will set the elements in action, we certainly should be very unwise to use another fluid that will either derange or destroy the battery's working capacity. The forces or force are in this instance produced by the combination of certain elements, and in order to continue the activity or action of these elements one upon the other, a constant supply must be kept up. The mechanism of muscular action, or nervous action, depends upon the supply of certain elements; they are continually replacing elements that are used up in the work they have to perform--that is, the function of brain or muscle. The moment elements are introduced that do not or cannot make up the loss of the working expenditure, that tend rather to disorganize or decompose the tissues, the functions and the natural forces are interfered with, weakened, or may be brought to a standstill. The effect of alcohol is much the same on all animals. I mean, that the master tissues of the lower animals will succumb to the influence of alcohol as readily as those of a human being. We know with certainty what gets drunk--where is the spiritual part of man? where is the soul? When the brain is intoxicated, its functions are more or less suspended, its controlling or governing action is lost over the muscular tissue, in addition to the muscles themselves being disabled. Both tissues, having been robbed of their elementary equilibrium, consequently cease working. The moment the equilibrium is reëstablished, the tissues assume their functions the same as before. If a given number of specific parts enter into the construction of any mechanism in order to produce a certain amount of force and effect, the number of specific parts must always be present if the same force and effect is to be realized. Brain and muscle are made up of a specific number of elements; these must be always present if we would have them produce the normal force and effect. When too much Carbon and Hydrogen and too little Oxygen are introduced into the system, as in the case of alcohol, the derangement of these elements is felt in the poisonous effect, because enough Oxygen cannot be supplied to keep up with the demand. CHAPTER XXIII. THE SOUL--WHAT IS IT? Dry truth, real knowledge, hard facts, are less interesting, less entertaining, than a plausible fable or a fanciful story. While the latter is listened to, with eagerness and pleasure, the former barely receives ordinary civility and attention. The effort requisite to understand and to think, requires resolution, determination, and fixed attention. The senses are not stimulated, the emotions and feelings not aroused, by mathematical problems or astronomical calculations. The muscular tissues are much more easily trained, disciplined, and educated than the nervous tissues. In the former we see immediate results. There is a pleasure in the pursuit, a palpable satisfaction in watching the muscular action and physical development. The most agreeable part about that kind of exercise, training--or education if you choose--is that it is easily acquired and soon put in practice, and much admired. It has other advantages in addition. The fatigue and exhaustion in consequence of muscular exercise, add no small amount of enjoyment to that already experienced, by having to replenish the spent energies, to fill the demand for new material called for. The gustatory and olfactory nerves are stimulated by odor of the viands provided, and what is still more important, the glandular activity that is set in motion produces an amount of exhilaration, so satisfactory that it is recognized as one of the principal features for every and on all occasions. "A feast is made for laughter and wine maketh merry" (Eccles. x, 19). Muscular action, however, cannot take place without nervous action. These two tissues are dependent one on the other. Yet the muscular tissue may be considered as subordinate to the nervous tissue. While the muscular tissue may become totally inactive or incapacitated, or even removed, the brain tissue may retain its activity and continue to perform its functions. The very reverse takes place when the brain is either injured or removed. We know by experience, experiments, that injuries or other pathological changes will cause impairment to muscular tissue. It is hard to conceive, and harder still to understand, that an animal--man included--is nothing more than a vitalized machine, composed in the first place of two distinct working parts--muscular and nervous--while all the other portions have to perform duty in order to sustain them. The word function is a term applied to all tissues in general, as kidneys, liver, stomach, etc.; each has its function. So have muscles and nerves. The former has for its function contraction, while the latter has for its function to control and regulate that contraction. The first part of the machinery is governed and checked by the domination of the other. That dominion, that control, is termed Volition, in other words, will power! 1. Will power! What is it? It is a power which every animal possesses, and every animal exercises, in accordance with its particular organization and degree of organic development. 2. Every animal has the power, with the aid of its senses--five senses of sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling--to select substances from the vegetable and mineral kingdom, for its immediate want, for the sustenance of life. 3. It has the power of locomotion to go in search for those substances, and to carry them to a place of safety, for present or future use. It has the power to select the kind of food, to choose that which is beneficial and reject that which is injurious. The five senses direct in that selection. 4. The animal has will power to protect and defend his possessions--through his senses the brain directs and the muscles act. 5. The animal has will power, when the organs of procreation are developed, to choose a partner for the production of young. The senses serve in making the selection, as regards beauty, form, size, etc. 6. It has the will power to nourish and protect its young or to destroy it. 7. Animals have the will power to build their habitation, their home, and furnish it in a manner best suited for their comfort. 8. Animals have the power to articulate sound, and have the will to communicate with each other if they so desire, to antagonize or to quarrel. 9. They have the will power to select from the surrounding elements. They choose water, air, sunshine, high or low altitudes; they migrate from warm to cold, and from cold to warm, climates. 10. They have social intercourse among themselves; have a will power to organize as a band or body to protect themselves against the attacks of other organized bodies, to fight and to battle. 11. Animals instruct their young--guide them and protect them, as well as feed them. They have their code of morals. They have all such functions as serenading, love-making, music, jealousy, pleasure, and anger. Animals have judgment; they can compare and reflect on cold and heat, danger and tranquillity, comfort and discomfort. They can reject or accept. 12. They have memory, perception, and understanding. Domestic and wild animals exhibit these peculiarities. They will manifest their likes and dislikes, hate and love, courage and cowardice. The will power depends on the nervous system--the cerebral hemispheres, the cerebrum or small brain, the thalamus opticus, corpus striata, corpora quadrigemina, the peduncles, medulla oblongata, spinal cord, etc. That is, all the organs that constitute the nervous machinery, that control the muscular tissues in all their acts, and keep a watchful outlook over all other organs of the body. The will power, then, is the power to act in accordance and in harmony with the things recognized, or the selection made by any of the five senses, discriminating between that which is good for them and that which is injurious, or good and evil. Animals in selecting grass for food will avoid that which is injurious to them. The olfactory and gustatory nerves guide them. They will seek shelter, and evidently know what to do when a thunderstorm approaches, etc., etc. Will power is a property, quality, or function belonging to all living creatures in common. The degree of will power depends upon the quality, quantity, and perfection of the nervous organization. Man has will power in a measure greater as the nervous system is developed, educated, and perfected. Morality--a quality that does not exclusively belong to man. What is morality? It is nothing more than a restraint, or check, on our actions and our feelings. It is the regulating of the actions of life towards ourselves and towards others. It is the obedience to recognized and established laws in a community, socially and politically. It means not to trespass against the laws of nature, against ourselves, or against our neighbors. Animals restrain themselves and obey. Morality differs according to the social customs and practices, and the civil laws regulating the same, which were made and adopted for mutual benefit and protection. These are either crude or refined, depending on the condition of society. To a limited degree animals have morality. Man has it in a higher and more refined degree, according to the progress and culture attained. Intelligence--Animals possess intelligence, if the meaning of it is, to recognize sounds and figures, be obedient to the voice, understand what is said, perform certain acts, execute the will of a master, know the difference between right and wrong, express gratitude, exercise watchfulness, protect life and property, remember places and objects in general, be capable of some degree of improvement, susceptible of training and modification of conduct, etc., within the limits of the nervous power the animal has. What is the soul? Is the soul something quite independent of matter? Is it a something entire and complete in itself? A perfect part of a perfect whole? Does the soul possess all the excellences and qualities theologians claim for it? Whence does it come? What does it consist of? Has it an existence separate and apart from the body? If so, where? In what state does it exist previous to entering the body? Does every human being receive a like quality and quantity? Has it consistency? density? elasticity? Is there any connection between the soul principle and matter? Spirit and soul, are they one and the same thing, or do they differ? If so, in what? What is substance soul and substance spirit? Is it self-acting and self-existing? Is the soul susceptible to training and education, and the reception of knowledge? Or is the soul already trained, educated, and possessed of all the knowledge that is now known or likely to be known? Does the will power reside in the soul? And is the nervous system subservient to the soul? Is the soul endowed with passions and emotions? Can the soul deteriorate, be injured or be afflicted? In what degree does the soul differ in the civilized and in uncivilized man? The theological soul has its origin in the Bible, no doubt (from the word nephesh, breathing; the Greek psyche: Latin animas, chayu, breath of life). This word gave the impulse to a vast amount of thought and reflection, both theological and psychological. Discussion and literature followed as extensive as there has ever been on any metaphysical topic. It may be interesting to learn some of the attributes of the soul. Here is a partial list: "Will, passion, love, joy, grief, anger, mirth, sorrow, revenge, contempt, hatred, honor, pride, humility, jealousy, despair, pity, compassion, love of fame, of music, of the marvelous, of notoriety, avarice, guilt, curiosity, astonishment, respect, desire, cheerfulness, melancholy, sense of beauty, sense of the sublime, sense of friendship, feeling of delight, selfishness, generosity, etc." The author of this concoction had not a very clear notion of what he was writing about, otherwise he would have known that animals have in common with man most of the emotions above recited. The soul is a display of nervous phenomena, exhibited under certain circumstances, differing only in intensity of expression, depending upon the kind and character of animal and man. It is one of the common tricks of trade--when theologians argue upon the immortality of the soul, they bring and ring in any amount of biblical evidence to sustain them. They prove nothing. They cannot prove anything. It is the standing puzzle. They try to unravel a mysterious something that is not mysterious. Nor is there any need of mystery. What is essential for us to know is the truth, plain natural facts. There is nothing that we need be either ashamed or afraid of. If we have been deluded by errors made several thousand years ago, regarding the dual composition of man, or have been imposed upon and intentionally retarded in the onward progress, it is time to correct the error and remove the imposition. Let us have a clear, intelligent view of things and look at them as they are. This mystery, like other mysteries, can be cleared up by the light of science and modern investigation. What is the difference between man and animal? Articulate speech and the susceptibility of the brain matter to a high degree of culture. Mind is a term employed to designate the collective acquirements of a man's brain. In proportion as the acquirements are greater or less, the mind is greater or smaller. These acquirements may be simple, complex, or profound. They may be biased, general, or scientific; they may be deep, learned, or superficial. They may be only a slight advance above the general animal instinct; or may have assumed a superior intelligence and may have arisen to a higher plane of intellectual qualities. The acquirement or evolution of mental power and intellectual capacity depends: 1. On the constitutionally inherited capacity and capability. 2. On the size and general conformation of the brain. 3. On the perfect condition of the organs of special sense. 4. On the quality of the nervous structure. 5. On the general physical constitution of the body. 6. On the evenly balanced equilibrium between the vital organs. 7. On the chemical elementary constituents that enter into the composition of the various tissues, especially the nervous tissue. 8. And lastly on the education, training, or culture. 9. I may add, suggestively, on the relative quantity and quality of the gray and white substance of the brain, etc., and perhaps on the depth of the sulci and the size of the convolutions and the general symmetry of the different lobes of the cerebrum, etc. The brain of an idiot is not susceptible to culture or education. He has all the senses, but of an inferior and imperfect order; a brain insufficient in quantity and quality to be capable of acquiring anything. No mind can be formed. The idiot has not any intellect. Has he a soul? Or supposing any portion of the brain is diseased and any one of the special senses ceases to act, as sight, hearing, or any part of the muscular tissue, and the intellect is impaired, either partially or wholly incapacitated, then has the soul suffered any damage, or does the soul remain intact? Or supposing that a child is born blind, or that some one of the nerve centers controlling certain faculties of the brain is absent, and the education is necessarily limited to the remaining nerve centers, is the soul still complete and perfect? Or in case of change of structure of the brain substance, as in softening of the brain; or in case of tumors, blood clots (thrombosis), or syphilitic disease, and paralysis either local or general resulting--depending on the seat of the disease--what has the soul to do with it? Or in disease of the meninges (coverings); or in case of insanity, whatever morbid cause might have produced that condition, where is the soul? Or when, in consequence of morbid changes, the mental and physical expressions, the actions, change, often extravagantly, is the soul affected thereby? When the body is afflicted with disease, does the soul suffer? At what period of fetal development is it that the soul enters the body? Or does it enter at birth? The breath of life is Oxygen. Without that element one could not live. Without it the newly born babe is more helpless than a lower animal. Not a single special sense is fully developed. The brain substance is not fully developed. The babe has no power to will anything. It has no volition--except the act of nursing, and that is not a voluntary act. The organs over which will has no control are the first to act--an infant soils its linen involuntarily. It imbibes nourishment, as a mass of protoplasm imbibes moisture. It has neither will power nor desire. It cannot select. It has neither knowledge nor conscience. Since none of the special senses is able to act, it has no perception of any kind whatsoever. It experiences only two sensations, pain and hunger. Young birds and other young animals do the same. Is there anything in this newly born babe of a supernatural character, such as a soul, spirit; the knowledge of God, or of good and evil? Does there exist in this mass of organized protoplasm anything that may be called divine? Is there aught innate? No! Certainly not! There are what may be termed latent powers--not unlike latent heat--capable of being evolved. You may fashion anything out of it--in the religious line, brutal or uncivilized, etc. It will acquire any kind of speech, from the howling of a dog to the most refined language. It will contract any habit, from that of the lowest animal type to that of the most refined lady or gentleman. You may make either a cannibal out of it or the most fantastic gustatorian. It will either crawl, climb, or walk. It will live anywhere and anyhow. It will either parade nude, be painted, or wear a breechcloth, or wear a swell dress coat, or, if it be a female, a long trailing skirt with all sorts of gewgaws. In religion you may make anything out of this babe. You may make it believe the greatest nonsense. It will believe three gods in one or twenty-five gods in one. It will be a Jew, a Christian, a Mohammedan, or the lowest brute on the face of the earth. This mass of vitalized matter is susceptible to training. The physical part, the muscular part, always develops and is readily trained. In a primitive state it requires but little discipline to acquire muscular strength. The muscular powers are the first to assert themselves. This master tissue, whenever and wherever it excels, receives honor and homage, and prevails among its companions. In barbaric ages this was the controlling force, the ruling spirit, the governing power. The nervous tissues require teaching. The senses must be trained, educated, cultured, refined. The impressions received through the nerve-centers by the senses are stored up in the cerebrum. Though they are at first simple, crude, and incomprehensible, habit, use, or repetition enables them to familiarize us with the surrounding objects. If the brain is fully formed, the infantile education begins. By constant repetition of the same acts, the sense of satisfaction from feeding, and the sense of comfort from cleanliness, are slowly established in the experience of the child. Hunger, cold, heat, and moisture will cause it to manifest its dissatisfaction by crying. It sleeps twenty out of the twenty-four hours, and wakes only to indicate its wants of either hunger or discomfort. The more regularly it is fed, and the more cleanly it is kept, the more peacefully will it rest and the more soundly will it sleep. When, however, an infant is born, though physically fully developed, with face fully formed, but acephalous, without brain--that is, when an arrest of development has taken place--the babe cannot live, it cannot breathe, because the principal part of the nervous system is wanting--the medulla oblongata, cerebrum and cerebellum, etc.--though the lungs, heart, and all other organs are perfectly developed. This arrest of development may take place at any time. It is thus that congenital malformations are produced. Idiots are thus formed, or any other inferior formation of brain may take place. In proportion as the parts are present or wanting--the brain, or rather the nervous system--latent (better, inherent) qualities for future capabilities exist or do not exist. Supposing the optic nerve is arrested in its development, or any organ with which it is immediately connected, the special sense of sight is wanting. Though the eye itself, the organ of sight, may be perfect, all the training and education will never give it capability or skill in arts and sciences. This can never be acquired by that organ. You cannot educate that organ which you have not. Whatever perfect brain formation exists may be trained, fashioned, educated, in any one of the thousands of directions one pleases. It may be given any bent or bias, good, bad, or indifferent--depending upon the influences that are brought to bear on the young brain while it is in the process of developing. An infant has no mind, intellect, thought, idea, memory, or any other nerve quality that nerve structure is capable of developing. Talk of soul or spirit is absurd. It does not exist either in infant or in man any more than it exists in a plant or an animal--unless the term is applied to the collective functions of the great central organs, and in that case it would certainly not be supernatural. At the time when the books of Moses were written--we need not even go so far back as when the fable of creation was first related--they knew nothing of circulation or of respiration, or of the nervous system. It was not even thought of. I believe you may search the Bible from end to beginning and from beginning to end without finding such a thing. No such word as brain is mentioned. What is known of the nervous system is, comparatively speaking, of recent date. "What seems most marvelous is, that we, in the nineteenth century, boasting of a high grade of civilization, and, I may say, with all the modern improvements, should accept and still hold fast to an idea that originated in the brain of some barbarian four thousand or more years ago, away down in Mesopotamia (now Turkey) where they are still considered uncivilized. This is certainly very strange. But ah! that priestcraft! THE MIND. All the organs in the body are capable of performing their functions the moment the child is born. Most organs have performed their functions prior to the child's birth. Circulation, respiration, digestion, secretion, and excretion--these functions are performed at once. These are involuntary, and require no educational training. They are performed while the organism is otherwise entirely helpless. 1. The first few weeks.-- The nervous system is not developed. The special senses are not responsive--neither sight, hearing, taste, nor smell. There are no voluntary muscular movements, no coördinations of muscles. Nervous and muscular tissues undeveloped. Special senses undeveloped, no recognition. It has no mind--no faculties, morality, intellect, memory, reason, judgment. In short, it has nothing innate--no principle of either God, soul, or religion. No will power. The muscular and nervous tissues are not yet able to perform their functions, except such as are reflex and of an involuntary character. No expression. 2. A few weeks after birth.-- Impressions of light perceptible. Sensations slightly improved. Expression still blank. No volition. No recognition. Cry the only sound. 3. Three months.-- Special senses improved. The eye steadier. The child begins to recognize its mother, etc. Utters sounds of satisfaction. Perceives sounds indistinctly. No coördinate movement. Upper extremities more active. Expression of face improved--smiles. 4. Six months.-- Muscular tissues more developed--crawls. No coördination of muscular action. Sight improved--recognizes mother, father, etc. Excretions involuntary. Expressions of pain and satisfaction more palpable. Hearing improved--listens to sounds. Playfulness. Makes sounds of satisfaction and dissatisfaction more distinctly. No articulation. 5. One year.-- Special senses more developed. Coördination still imperfect. Excretion involuntary. Upper extremities more active. Fear manifested. The dawn of want. Recognizes a few objects. Pleasure expressed as well as anger. Likes and dislikes exhibited in some degree. Beginning of articulation. Sounds more distinctly recognized. Sight more perfect. Taste slightly developed. Smell--no discrimination. A child one year old--(a) Recognizes its parents imperfectly. Has slight coördinate movement of the upper extremities, and beginning of coördination of the lower extremities. Manifests its wants by making noises, but has no articulation. Sensations of pleasure, pain, and anger are more plainly expressed. Playfulness is greater. Fear is exhibited. (b) It has no mind, no intellect, no will power. No God, no religion, no soul. No thought, no idea, no conscience. No faculties, no memory, no judgment. No knowledge of objects, or numbers. It knows nothing of comparison, relation, liberty, morality, love, hate, shame, joy, sorrow, despair, envy, ambition, pride, etc., etc. 6. Second year.-- The master tissues begin to perform their functions--the muscular and nervous tissues. Digestive apparatus more completely developed by the appearance of teeth. All the special senses more susceptible. Voluntary muscles begin to act, though imperfectly. Coördination still uncertain. Muscles of articulation attempt to produce articulate sound--beginning to imitate. Recognizes some objects; cannot discriminate. The sense of taste shows signs of development. The sense of smell--no discrimination. The sense of hearing recognizes simple sounds--voice. The sense of sight more distinct. The sense of feeling slightly improved. Attracted by bright-colored objects. Selfishness exhibited--seizes objects indiscriminately. Shows fear; knows nothing of danger. Manifestation of affection toward those who care and provide for its comfort. Excretions still pass involuntarily. Responds feebly to calls. Playful. Cognizant of light and darkness, indoors and out of doors. Shows signs of preference. Training begins; involuntary acts checked to a slight extent only. At the end of the second year the child (a) recognizes its parents and others about it. Has coördinate movements comparatively correct of both lower and upper extremities. May manifest its wants by imperfect articulation. The sensations of pleasure, pain, and anger are more emphatic. (b) The will power is slight. The memory is very feeble. Discrimination begins in simple matters. 7. Third year.-- Training progresses. Coördination complete. Nerve centers formed. Will power attempted. It depends at this age upon the surroundings--the guidance, attention, direction given to the child. It is more susceptible to impression. Memory improving. Perception manifested, but little discrimination. Articulates more perfectly. Imitates to some extent. Excretion controlled. Playful, active. All the senses work. More subject to discipline--obeys more readily. Teachable in right and wrong of a simple character. Likes and dislikes more prominent. Recognizes objects. Begins to pronounce. At the end of this period there is no manifestation of anything innate. The child knows nothing. Only the muscular tissues are more active, and the nervous tissues more susceptible to teaching. It has no faculty of any kind. The functions of the brain are more distinctly manifest through the organs of special sense. The child will become just what you make it; though the latent inherited qualities will give impulse to some directions more than others. Thus inclinations and susceptibilities are awakened that may lead to greater or less distinction. All that the child thus far has developed is instinctive, checked and modified by those in whose care it is. The animal nature predominates, and the child at this stage will become a brute if left to itself. If the proper training, teaching, discipline, or education is from this time forth properly applied and the latent power judiciously brought out, mind and intellectual qualities may be developed--differing in degree and intensity--by the bias or bent given to the functions of the great nervous center. On the culture of this organ depends the kind of creature we may have when full grown in the shape of either man or woman. Any kind of sentiment, belief, or superstition, prejudice, hate, brutality, humanity or inhumanity, good or bad habits, vicious or benign--with no end to the variety, such as we witness among ourselves and among the various nations upon earth--may be inculcated. It is brain function, brain culture, brain education, that produces greater or lesser minds, that evolves from mere intelligence the highest intellectual powers, that marks the difference between man and man from the meanest savage to the greatest philosopher and scientist. Brain may exercise will power without training, culture, or education. The muscles may exercise strength without training, culture, or education. It is the systematic attention of the one as of the other, the frequent repetition, steady practice, that produces skill in the one, as in the other; it is the patient application and perseverance in the one as in the other, sustained by constitutional endurance, that makes the expert in the one as well as in the other. It is the united forces of the master tissues that have produced all that is and was, and will continue to produce all that ever will be. Soul is the product of the imagination. It has no immortality, because it has no existence. There are a class of men that are interested in sustaining the delusion; these are the priesthood. What we want is not the salvation of souls, but the salvation of man. If soul is the collective name of brain product, or combined result of brain function and education, we need not disagree about the word. But if it is insisted upon that the word soul means something distinct and apart from the animal body, a supernatural manifestation, a supernatural gift or endowment, given to man at birth and to man only, and that this piece of supposed God enters the body at some period during birth and quits the body at death, it is not true! On the contrary, it is false. Man has no soul, nor has any other animal, except that power that is produced by the nervous material. The brain has a function to perform, like every other tissue in the body. The muscular tissue, the liver tissue, etc., each perform their function. The great nervous centers and the special senses, being intimately connected, carry all impressions direct to the brain; the retention of impressions, the memorizing, the recollection, the formation of ideas, of thought, imagination, are the immediate functions of the nervous substance. These are secreted in a similar manner as the pancreas secretes pancreatin; with this distinction, that pancreatin is a fluid, while the quality of nerve function is a force, a power, a manifestation, or phenomenon if you choose. Electricity is a product of a similar nature. There are other forces of a nature similar in character, the result of chemical combinations. Let the blood be overcharged with carbonic acid and circulate in the brain, the nerve tissue will at first act irregularly, next very erratically, and finally stop its function altogether. The function of the brain is partially suspended in certain diseases, as in hysteria, epilepsy, and chorea or convulsions. And where there is no brain, or little brain, there is no function or very little function. The variety of brain, with its inequality of size, quantity, quality, the hereditary failings, opportunity, training, education, all, and much more, make up the sum total of mind. As you educate the brain, so the mind will be. It will exhibit energy and endurance, and perform its functions, in proportion as the nervous structure is healthy, the chemical constituents evenly balanced, and the equilibrium of all the organs and tissues of the body evenly and smoothly maintained, so that the molecular and chemical or vital and nervous elements of the brain perform each and every one its proper office. There is no immortality of the soul, nor is there such a thing as death of instinct. There is nothing immortal except the elementary substances, proper; they cannot be destroyed. All live bodies function, no matter how small or how simple; complex bodies also function, and each and every organ that enters into the composition performs its function. Every phase, every phenomenon, is a manifestation of matter. Thunderstorm, lightning, electricity, or thought--whatsoever it may be, call it by any other name, designate it or describe it how you will, we cannot separate any object from this terrestrial globe of matter. The elements composing this world gave birth to life, life manifests its energies in many forms, then returns again to the great ocean of elements whence it came. No soul you will ever find, Trust not in its life or death; Education makes the mind; Oxygen is the life's breath. CHAPTER XXIV. SIN AND SALVATION. What is sin? If we are able to ascertain what sin is, we shall probably understand why salvation should be extended to the one that sins, or to a community of sinners. Everything has a beginning. We draw our deductions by comparison. Men judge in part by their own experience, and in part by the experience of others. We see what is going on in our daily active life, how every work or enterprise, society or society reform, is started and set in active operation. Every beginning is crude and awkward. Rules adopted to govern a family circle, jar and chafe when introduced to govern larger bodies of individuals. What may seem good for a household government would hardly be suitable for a community, and the rules regulating the general community would hardly be available for a people or a nation. Modifications in the rule of conduct are inevitable as families or communities increase numerically. They may be slow, imperceptible, and cause little disturbance. But sudden and radical changes produce quite another effect. They may cause simple irritation or friction among the elements composing the family or community, may cause temporary embarrassment, or may cause an eruption with considerable commotion, and accompanied with more or less serious effects. Change in the methods of conducting and regulating the affairs of mankind, individually or collectively, in small family groups or in large communities, has ever been a matter, not only of great interest and deep concern to mankind, but also of bitter dispute, conflict, and hostility. It has ever been thus, from the time intelligence superseded instinct, with attempts to introduce innovations, new or improved methods regulating the conduct of either individuals or communities, or the general affairs of man. Individual must yield to family, family to community, community to people, and people to nation. Rules once established, no matter how rude, vulgar, or barbarous, or how enlightened and beneficial, were adopted to secure a general uniformity of conduct or line of action for each individual or family belonging to the community or people, for what was considered the best interest of the whole, and their mutual benefit and safety. The most primitive rules were instinctively adopted in the lower order of animal life, the laws of self-preservation and mutual protection. The individual conduct, in either family or community life, is governed accordingly. That is very evident, and requires but little observation to find the secret spring that explains the necessity for its existence. If a community, whether animals or men, are favorably located, have ample provision and comfort, they will live in peace and contentment, thrive, develop, without friction or trouble. Let a lack of food arise, or let the numbers increase and produce a scarcity, strife is inevitable. New, other than peaceful, methods are adopted. Either they quarrel and battle among themselves, or they go in search of food elsewhere--emigrate, in part or as a whole. If they meet with opposition, they will fight--the strongest takes possession, might asserts its right, and the conquerer becomes the ruling power. In the early stages of human civilization, thousands of years ago, the simplest primitive rules were established for the conduct and guidance of the individual living in the community--for, of course, mutual protection and self-preservation. Humanity in a barbarous state adopted these rules, and handed them down from generation to generation until at length they were codified into laws. What are they? Honor thy parents. Do not commit murder. Do not take another man's wife. Do not bear false witness. Do not take anything belonging to another. These are laws for self-preservation and mutual protection! If such simple rules were not recognized and established, neither life nor property would be safe. Destruction of life and forcible possession of property would naturally lead to extermination. The family union is instinctive. The father, like the leader of a flock, is in authority. He is feared, therefore honored. A community soon learns from experience that "in union is strength." Herds of cattle seem to know this, and are ever ready to protect and defend themselves collectively. The lowest savages, barbarians, observe among themselves the first, yes, primitive rules to govern them in community, in family. These rules arose from necessity. It was for each individual's interest, for family interest, and for the interest of the community at large, to adopt these rules, obey them and have them obeyed. These rules were for individual welfare, and for the common welfare of the community at large, the preservation of their lives and the protection of their life and property. So long as any community of human beings, whatever be their condition, have ample provision to satisfy their wants, and are secure from depredations from without, there will be no trouble. Happiness and contentment, as well as peace and prosperity, will characterize their state. As to the relation between males and females, that regulates itself. All communities, barbarians and savages, have always some general recognized rule to guide them. Female chastity is secure among all nations, high and low, civilized and uncivilized, whether they are decorated in a complete suit of nudity, a gauze covering, or a ball-room dress. There is no necessity of going back four or five thousand years. Cæsar relates (Lib. vi, 21) that the Germans were in complete undress costume when bathing promiscuously; yet they had their customs of marriage and marriage ceremonies. In this country we have had the same customs and may have again. When Columbus arrived at one of the islands of the Caribs, 1494, a cacique and his family paid him a visit. This family consisted of two daughters, five sons, and five brothers. "One of the daughters was eighteen years of age, beautiful in form and countenance; her sister somewhat younger; both were naked, according to the custom of these islands, but were of modest demeanor" (Irving). As a further illustration I quote from Irving's description of the people that Peter Martyr met with. He relates: "It is certain that the land among the people is as common as the sun and water; and that 'mine and thine,' the seed of all mischief, have no place with them. They are content with so little, that in so large a country they have rather superfluity than scarceness; so they seem to live in the golden world, without toil, living in open gardens; not intrenched with dykes, divided with hedges, or defended with walls. They deal truly one with another, without laws, without books, without judges. They take him for an evil and mischievous man who taketh pleasure in doing hurt to another; and albeit they delight not in superfluities, yet they make provision for the increase of such roots whereof they make their bread, content with such simple diet, whereby health is preserved and disease avoided." Possibly somewhere on the African continent there may still exist a people that live a life as simple and as happy as those in the time of Columbus. But everything must yield before northern energy and Christian greed; besides, the new-comers need the land for their surplus population. May we not ask, Is not our present high state of civilization the natural outcome of our necessities in the struggle to exist? Is not our high state of nervous development largely due to that struggle? Indolence and inactivity produce nothing. Activity and diligence produce and invent all things. All wrongful acts committed are either injuries done to ourselves, or injuries inflicted upon others. Injuries done to ourselves are not necessarily sins. Onanism, for example, is unquestionably injurious, yet is not recognized as a sin. It leads to the insane asylum, and in many instances underlies religious insanity. There are other disgusting practices that are neither injurious nor recognized as sins. The stomach commits no sin, but leads nevertheless to many wrongs, to one's self. All crimes are sins, but all sins are not crimes. And all injuries done to others are accounted both sins and crimes. What seems very strange yet is wonderfully true is that all sins and crimes against others find their origin in the indulgence of either stomach or sexual organs. Starvation may lead to crime. Hunger often drives to theft. Extravagance, lust, and luxury lead to any variety of crime, from forgery to appropriating another man's wife. In the gratification of those two organs, passions, we find the cradle of all crime. And what we call morality means the proper regulation of these passions, of these organs. The church occasionally takes cognizance of sins, when discovered, that do not come within the category of crime, as was seen recently in the case of a Major Theobald who seduced his niece while nursing his invalid wife; he was suspended for one year, but saved his soul! All our civil justices in the city of New York are kept busy to regulate and to punish overindulgences of the stomach and some other petty wrongs. Our criminal courts are kept busy in punishing those who have wrongfully appropriated other people's property, or injured or killed another. The superior civil courts attend to the disputes about property. Why do those who adopt for their mode of livelihood the profession of theology want to exercise salvation? What have they to save? Let us examine for what sins the Deluge was brought, Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, and Christ was crucified. The principal scriptural sins: Cain commits murder, from jealousy, because God preferred meat to vegetables (Gen. iv, 8). Gen. vi, 5: "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." The contents of this sentence is absurd. The heart cannot imagine, or think. The function of the heart is the circulation of the blood. What this wickedness consisted of, we do not know. History has no record exactly where this Flood or Deluge took place. That it was localized is certain. It was in all probability nothing more than an overflow of the river Euphrates--that is joined by the river Tigris, and terminates in the Gulf of Persia--in consequence of a series of consecutive rainstorms, etc., and God had as much to do with this supposed deluge as he has to do with any deluge in the Mississippi valley when that river overflows. Gen. vi, 6: "And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him at his heart." Now we are getting at God's anatomy! Man may labor under delusions--hear voices, etc. All those extravagant statements are perfectly excusable from our modern standpoint. All this wickedness is supposed to have taken place 2348 before the Christian era, and we have still the same sort of wickedness on earth as there was then. Barbarians inhabited that region--rude, crude, half-civilized herdsmen, not much superior to our Indians. Minding their flocks and increasing their families was their main occupation. Abraham made no scruples in cohabiting with Miss Hagar, Sarah's maid; nor had Jacob any objections to Miss Bilhah, Rachel's maid, nor did he scruple to accommodate Miss Zilpha, Leah's maid, and later we read how Reuben lay with Bilhah, Jacob's mistress. Shechem seduced Dina, Jacob's daughter. Her brothers Simon and Levi killed all the males, etc. At this time, we learn, harlots were in fashion. We have it recited, crime after crime--according to our modern notions--yet these barbarians were God's own people! After killing Shechem, and Hamor his father, and all the rest of the males, they took possession of their property. Lot and his daughters is another instance of biblical ethics. This barbarian family, these shepherds, had their first experience in civilization when they reached Egypt, and whatever they practiced later was adopted from that nation. They had received some training under Egyptian rule for nearly four hundred and thirty years. During this period we hear nothing of sin or transgression. No sooner were they organized as a community than the sins, transgressions, and wickedness broke out anew, and continued right along in a greater or lesser degree through the patriarchal period, theocratic period, and monarchial period. During the entire national existence of nearly one thousand years to their captivity, we have recited sins, transgressions, and crime, crime, transgressions, and sin; and all are perfectly human, perfectly natural among barbarians, savages, half-civilized, and even civilized people. Whether David lusts after a nude woman, or Amnon forces his own sister, it reveals the weakness of animal human nature, and is a breach of the recognized laws, and a lack of discipline. All through the Old Testament the same story is repeated--sensuality, cruelty, and crime; and rebellion against the established laws. It is the burden of song and of prophecy--greed and scramble for power, the cause of continual dissension. The only time the Jews were reasonably quiet was when they were exterminating other nations, plundering and taking forcible possession of their women and female children as well as their property. The great burden of sin throughout the Old Testament consists in the infringement of the law established by Moses, to worship no other god except the one he manufactured--that is, a God endowed with all brutality and sensuality, without a representative form, a God that had all the senses and could utilize them. The wooden idol had these organs but could not use them, while the Mosaic God had them not but could exercise all the functions of animal life. In the light of history, all ages display the same process in the human mind--the same passions and the same tendencies, held more or less under restraint, according to the laws, customs, and habits of the people. The Jews during their whole career were more or less idolators, and were continually relapsing into the idolatry, of some one kind or another, of dead men, which was practiced under different celestial or animal emblems in the neighboring countries. And it was not ended until after the Babylonish captivity, 588 B.C., and when Ezra returned to Jerusalem, 557 B.C., who collected the various manuscripts and put them into some sort of shape and started to rebuild the Temple. This event took place during the reign of Xerxes son of Darius. Ezra and his companions had been educated meanwhile. They had enjoyed the privilege of a Babylonian education. They had the advantage of their learning, their philosophy. Now they returned better equipped mentally than ever they were before their captivity. And for the first time they began to call themselves "holy seed" (chapter ix). They had intermarried with the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, Amorites, etc., (verse 2) "so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands." Verse 6, this priest goes into hysterics: "O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee," etc. Chapter x: He prays, confesses, and weeps and casts himself down before the house of God, etc. Verse 11: "And separate yourself from the people of the land, and from the strange wives." Of course their wives were sent adrift. That was the first time in their history that marriages were restricted to their own nation. This also is the first wholesale divorce on record. Intermarriages they had been guilty of for many centuries, and they were never accounted a sin until the time of Ezra. After this reformation the same sins continue, intermarriages perhaps excepted. The animal predominated, as it naturally would. Selfishness was more prominent than ever. They knew the value of gold, and onyx stone, and bdellium. God had told them all about it in Gen. ii, 11, 12. The commercial enterprise started with creation, and has continued. Jehova had not half the romance and the poesy of Zeus or Jupiter. The latter had all the Grecian refinement, while the former had all the barbarity of Chaldea. Thus, the identical sins continued through the remaining centuries until Christ made his entry on this world's stage. He came opportunely. It was at a time of great agitation. Judea was a Roman province. Pontius Pilate was governor. Corruption, fraud, and crimes of all descriptions were practiced and flourished. The Temple served as a place for barter and business. Sedition, parricide, greed, and seduction were the ruling crimes and passions. Fanatics, heretics, and blasphemers were abundant. There were any number of religious factions, quarreling and fighting among themselves, hating one another heartily, and doing one another as much mischief as in their power lay. The frequent contact with foreign invading nations brought new notions, new customs and usages. New ideas consequently developed--sins and salvation of souls. And humility and meekness were put forth against arrogance of wealth, domineering, and priestly oppression. Communistic and socialistic ideas are always a prolific field for the hungry, poor, and starving. "Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts," etc. (Matt. vi, 11, 12). Christ's camel and needle story confirms it. The result was he had a following, preached reformation, and accusation and persecution put an end to his life. It had taken root, and a new sect was formed. Was his life sacrificed for the sins of humanity? Nonsense! This young man's death has not relieved any one, much more all future generations, of their sins. What? Sacrifice a man to God in place of sheep and cattle? So long as men have senses and passions, so long as we have extremes of poverty and wealth, sin remains. The prevention of sin has never been the function of the church. The trespasses of the natural laws were not properly understood, and the masses are not educated up to that standard even now. Each man and woman pays the penalty if he or she trespass against her or himself; and if they trespass or sin against another, our civil laws take care of that part. Has humanity improved since the coming of Christ? Where do you find it? In the history of the Catholic church? They have two kinds of sin, mortal and venial sin. Mortal sin entails spiritual death. Venial sin does not. Mountains of literature have been written upon that one subject. Hundreds of thousands of men have assumed the task of salvation for nearly two thousand years. What have they accomplished? What have the popes, bishops, and priests done? And what are they doing now? Of what use are they? They have been more of a curse to the world than a benefit. We are too busy to look back at popish history, the power, the ignorance, the superstition, the darkness, and the persecution that overshadowed the world during the popes' tyrannical and bloodthirsty rule. Greed, the chief characteristic of the churchmen, readily finds means to raise money for their use and benefit. In 1517 they sold indulgences for past and future sins. Every crime was pardoned. Luther and reformation came. Did this change or eradicate the evil? No! God, Christ, Holy Ghost, Virgin Mary, etc., assumed only a milder role, only a slight transformation. The Catholic church has been the greatest curse of any church that ever existed. They started their anathemas (curses) at Nice 325 A.D., and have continued cursing, through the twentieth council at Trent, 1546 A.D., and still continue. Their power has to some extent been modified, but the spirit of intolerance only slumbers. They readily accommodate themselves to circumstances. If they cannot rule the nation, they will seize the schools and train the young, inculcating obedience to the church--that the youth shall be subservient to the priest and yield up their earnings to the pope's treasure. These are supported by the masses, assisted by the state, to teach stuff like the following sample: THE LITANY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN. We fly to thy patronage, O holy mother of God! Despise not our petitions, but deliver us from all dangers, O ever glorious and blessed Virgin! Lord have mercy on us. Christ have mercy on us. Lord have mercy on us. Christ hear us. Christ graciously hear us. God the father of heaven have mercy on us. God the son, redeemer of the world, have mercy on us. Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us. Holy Mary, } Holy mother of God, } Holy Virgin of Virgins, } Mother of Christ, } Mother of divine grace, } Mother most pure, } Mother most chaste, } Mother undefiled, } Mother unviolated, } Mother most amiable, } Mirror of justice, } Seat of wisdom, } Cause of our joy, } Spiritual vessel, } Pray for us. Mother most adorable, } Mother of our creator, } Mother of our redeemer, } Virgin most prudent, } Virgin most venerable, } Virgin most renowned, } Virgin most powerful, } Virgin most merciful, } Virgin most faithful, } Vessel of power, } Vessel of singular devotion, } Mystical rose, } Tower of David, } Tower of ivory, } House of gold, } Ark of the covenant, } Gate of heaven, } Morning star, } Health of the weak, } Refuge of sinners, } Comforter of the afflicted, } Queen of angels, } Let us pray. Queen of patriarchs, } Queen of prophets, } Queen of apostles, } Queen of martyrs, } Queen of confessors, } Queen of virgins, } Queen of all saints, } Etc., etc., etc. From the time of Luther up to the present, God, Christ, Holy Ghost, Virgin, etc., have been toned down considerably, until there is indeed very little left except a shade of God. Our creeds now that have dismissed Christ, Holy Ghost, and Virgin, yet retain a hazy something which they still call God. The most erratic of these denominations yell themselves hoarse with shouting Sin and Salvation! The modern kindergarten of Protestant fashionable church organizations, the society churches, the scholarly preachers, entertain their congregations with a novel sort of oratory and classic music. These represent a God at ease, a gentlemanly and mild sort of a God, with a constant aristocratic smile round his lips, as irresistibly attractive as money can make him. Strong drastic terms, as purgatory, hell, and brimstone, are seldom heard. That sort of doctrine is usually reserved and dished up in furnace-like fashion to the poor, half-starved, ignorant sinners. CHAPTER XXV. THE ECCLESIASTICAL KINDERGARTEN. What shall we do to be saved? is a question asked by every religious fanatic. Saved from what? Ignorance? Superstition? Bigotry? Or stupidity? From idiocy or imbecility? Or, are we to be saved from poverty, hunger, starvation, misery and wretchedness, distress and degradation? Barbarism, savagery, or uncivilization does not enter into consideration of these unfortunate conditions. They exist right in the midst of us, in the highest centers of human civilization. Of what good is the talking of spiritual welfare, salvation, and heaven to a hungry stomach? Of what good is it to grow eloquent over celestial conditions when the poor wretch has sunk into the mire of sloth and apathy, when darkness, misery, and disappointment hang over him like a pall at a funeral? Is this the man that is sinning--when tempted to steal some trifle to satisfy hunger? Self-preservation is the first law throughout organic nature. This poverty-stricken individual occupies the lowest strata of civilized life. He must be civilized--for the law makes him so. The starving must not eat, unless charity extends a helping hand. In the state of want and helplessness, all the inherent failings loom up into prominence, and aid to weaken the little resisting force remaining to withstand the temptation of wrongfully supplying his wants. The higher indulgences, either gustatory or sexual, are not within reach of the hungry and depressed; and salvation contemplated in the pleasures derived from overindulgence or excesses certainly does not apply to them. The class of persons in a position to satisfy both digestive and sexual pleasures we find in quite another catalogue of sinners. For some of these there is no salvation, for others there is what may be termed a reparatory saving power, viz., confession and atonement, for which the spiritual part of the body is not held responsible, but only the flesh. It is precisely the men who practice these flesh-begotten sins which the church from the time of St. Paul to the present period has been trying to save, with little or no success. St. Paul is the man who contributed more towards laying the foundation for the entire Christian system than any other man in the Bible. Of course he claims to be an Israelite of the seed of Abraham and of the tribe of Benjamin. Jesus was of the same tribe--and probably the other apostles that figure in the New Testament belonged to the same tribe. That tribe is of mixed blood on the mother side. Whosoever desires to be fully informed upon that subject, let him read Judges, xix, xx, and xxi chapters--a story of licentiousness, barbarism, and butchery the like of which cannot be found in any history. A Levite with his concubine or wife came to Gibeah to lodge overnight. Some Benjamites used and abused the woman till she died. The Levite cut the woman up into twelve parts and sent one part to each tribe. Israel came together in battle with the Benjamites and slaughtered man, woman, and child. Six hundred men escaped to the wilderness, unto the rock of Rimmon. Israel had sworn not to give them their daughters to wife, so they helped them to get wives elsewhere, by means that are very interesting, very savage, and very godly. I simply mention this incident to show that the tribe of Benjamin was of mixed blood. It was not what would be called a natural divine selection, but a forced. Paul with his half-Grecian ideas, whose mind was permeated with Grecian philosophy, used it largely in his argumentations, theologico-philosophic, and in his epistolary correspondence to enlighten and instruct his disciples. The Israelites or Jews up to the time of Christ were not by any means a spiritual nation. They had a god of the flesh; a sort of cannibal god; a politico-religious god, in whose name every kind of horror and brutality was committed. This was not Paul's God. The garb of Socratic and Platonic philosophy adorns the spiritual phase of Paul's idea. The dual existence is distinctly set forth (Cor. xv, 44): "There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body." "For the spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God" (Rom. viii, 16). "Likewise the spirit helpeth our infirmities" (26). "For if ye live after the flesh ye shall die" (13). "For as many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (14). The notion of Paul throughout his epistles of what he terms flesh and spirit, separating them as two distinct parts of the body, and as having a dual existence, on one side the spiritual, the godly, on the other the fleshy, the sinful, the earthly--is due to the educational doctrines that then were in vogue. The anatomical knowledge was limited, and the physiological workings of the nervous system, the functions of the brain, were entirely unknown. The flesh and spirit were the representatives of the muscular and nervous tissue, flesh of the muscular, spirit of the nervous. One of the most mysterious or hidden secrets was this function of the brain. The absence of any positive knowledge of the nervous system until recent times, caused many errors to creep in, and many false impressions were received by mistake; and these blunders through ignorance have remained to a very considerable extent fixed and unaltered. Grecian philosophers who were attempting to give a reason, or account, for the various mental phenomena, came to conclusions which are to-day seen to be contrary to scientific truth. He, Paul, embodied in his writings all the speculative philosophy known at his time. This dual existence had been taught among the Greeks for several centuries. When Paul wrote to the Romans he was in Corinth, and when he wrote to the Corinthians he was at Philippi, Macedonia. The rest of his epistles were written partly from Greece, but mostly from Rome or Italy. Nowhere in the Old Testament is mention made of spirit and flesh after the manner of Paul. They had no knowledge of Grecian philosophy. Of course the mental condition had undergone some changes from the time of Ezra to Christ. Numerous sects had paved the way, and the ideas of various nations had been exchanged. A wonderful metamorphosis had taken place in the God during the one thousand five hundred years that passed between Moses and Paul. The ideal of Moses was a barbarous, cruel God--a determined, imperative, imperious God, that had a purpose in view, a nation to form, a country to conquer. The prince of Egypt, the successful general of a victorious army, talks; every word is a peremptory command. The strong, powerful will of an energetic man stands behind Jehova. There is no philosophy, but all action. No ideality, but muscular force. No humbleness, meekness, or mildness, but the stern exercise of a power that never flinches in any undertaking; regardless of consequences; pitiless in battle; fearless in the struggle, once determined must reach success. There is no display of imagination, no spiritual reflection, no refinement, but there is only the coarse, vulgar, savage God of Chaldean-Egyptian modification. The God had undergone changes in the mental agitation of the times, and Paul had accepted the God as he conceived him, through teachings then prevalent. An orator for a reformation, the cause of Christ he had embraced, coupled with the learning of the Grecian literature, his imagination led him to portray his God in the abstract--a refined ethereal being--in truth, a gentleman of a God. Paul was the real founder of the past and modern church system, the giver of ideas, the furnisher of numerous themes that gave impulse to any number of shades of the various sects now in existence, the promulgator of modification, the pleader of a cause, the moralizer, the humble adviser and counselor of the lowly, ignorant, and poor. He was very earnest and sincere in the cause he had espoused, and, if anything, proud of it--"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (Rom. i, 16). Next to Jew he was Greek. No wonder that his mind was tainted with Grecianism. His God was an alloy of Greek and Jew Gods. The Greek philosophy helped to refine and eliminate the barbarism and brutality out of the Mosaic God. Our modern mountebank preachers have nothing new to agitate and talk about in their fashionable decorated kindergartens of Christianity. They are ever spinning round the same circle. They are sensational, mouthing and gesticulating before a crowd they wish to entertain, and for this they are very handsomely housed, fed, and otherwise recompensed. They are the greedy theological leeches of humanity. They suck the blood, but give nothing in return. Have they advanced the cause of humanity? Is humanity any wiser to-day than these poor ignorant creatures were at the time Paul was trying to get a new idea into their untutored brain? Here is a partial list of Paul's complaints (Rom. i, 29, 30, 31): Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful. For nineteen hundred years these Christian saints have been trying to convert the world--Jews included, for indeed they needed it--and what has been accomplished? Does your kindergarten church teach aught that corrects the above evils? Have you made them all into saints? Paul's argument about circumcision is very ingenious. He proposes an inward circumcision for the outward--heart and spirit (Rom. ii, 29), circumcision through faith. His doctrine, the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life (Rom. vi, 23), is very mischievous. It leads men to give their flesh a full swing and leads them to a satiety of pleasure and satisfaction of earthly bliss--lust or licentiousness, and they let the godly or spiritual part take care of itself. This is not education, but stupefaction. Yet our civilized spiritual purveyors of the soul are still chewing the same theological cud of nineteen hundred years ago. Every transgression against ourselves, against our own body, is a transgression against the law of nature, and the body must pay the penalty. Paul (Rom. xiii, 13) says, "Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and annoying." Paul was a great believer in spiritual gifts. Cor. xii--this chapter has given rise to more crazes, frauds, and cheats than Paul ever dreamed of. Verse 4: "Now these are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit." Verse 7: "But the manifestation of spirit is given to every man," etc. Then he enumerates the gifts--faith-healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning spirits, speaking divers kinds of tongues, interpretation of tongues, etc. (Cor. xii, 9, 10). This of course opens a wide field for imposition and charlatanism. Paul being an authority, cranks and "fakes" are not slow in taking advantage of it. A very large percentage of the masses are ignorant, easily made superstitious and bigoted. Any nonsensical idea is swiftly impressed. They are satisfied with anything they are told--content with a filled stomach and salvation hereafter. This heavenly promise is an immense thing, an ecclesiastical bonanza. For thousands of years, it has been an extraordinary source of income. Hundreds of thousands have lived in ease and luxury, have enjoyed heaven on earth, and let their poor ignorant dupes enjoy the hereafter. Paul also gives the Catholic church a right to use the anathema. Cor. xvi, 22: "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema, maranatha"--"Let him be accursed." The Roman Catholic church has made good use of it. From the time the Nicean Council was held every one of their canons--as their rules are termed--is accompanied by an anathema for every man that does not think, say, or believe as the church or its priests dictate. The church institution is so well organized and the system so well regulated, that they possess the means of squeezing the last cent out of poor ignorant parishioners. They have so many trapdoors to catch the weary simpleton, that if the money does not come through mass, it will come through indulgence, or unction, or sacrament, or anything and everything. They dispose of their spiritual wares at all prices--anywhere, everywhere, and at all times. Here is an instructive example of teaching: "What is the blessed Eucharist? Ans. The body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, under the appearance of bread and wine," etc. The immense amount of evil done by this church is something enormous to contemplate. If a papal medal in honor of the massacre of St. Bartholomew's could be found and put up at auction, it would fetch a small fortune. Literature was almost completely suppressed by this church, by laws published under the seal of the supreme pontiff. How few at the present day know anything of the history of the Catholic church. Their past, their terrible black past, with their God, their Jesus Christ, their Holy Ghost, their Holy Virgin, and their saints--what arrogance, ambition, pride, selfishness, greed, tyranny, licentiousness, terror and torture of the Inquisition, bloody crimes and massacres, they were guilty of! Reflection on these many diabolical outrages makes one's flesh creep, and one wonders why such an institution has not been swept from the face of the earth centuries ago. Have they done any good upon earth? From the time of Moses until after the time of Luther, yes, up to the present time even, they have been continuously thrusting their idea of God into the minds of man with the sword, through blood and slaughter, with what result? Has humanity improved? Paul has much to say about the frailties of human nature (2 Tim. iv, 2, 3, 4): "For men shall be lovers of their own self, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure," etc. The quarrels, dissensions, and protestations of the present day among the teachers and preachers of Christianity are a topic of entertainment in our daily press. Heresy, blasphemy, money disputes, Briggs, Smith, Corrigan, Wigger, etc.--what is it all about that will benefit humanity? Priest and preacher, the modern teachers of the theological kindergarten, have not advanced any in their methods. The civil law holds them in check and keeps them within the bounds of their vocation. Women, the decorations and attractions, the most numerous supporters of all church enterprises, are not held in very high estimation by Paul. 1 Tim. ii, 9: "In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shame-facedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array." Verse 11: "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection." Verse 12: "But I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." The church kindergarten instructions are based upon the writings and teachings of both the Old and the New Testament. Who wrote them, or who compiled them, matters little. They are the accepted doctrines of the church or churches. Whether orthodoxy or heterodoxy, whether monotheism or polytheism, whether the idolatry of calf or idolatry of the figure of Jesus or the Virgin, it amounts to one and the same thing. It is of no serious consequence whether Paul actually wrote the Epistles or some one wrote them in his name several hundred years later; or whether John wrote his Revelations; or Moses the Pentateuch; or whether the whole Bible was compiled a thousand years after Moses. The whole fabric is based upon error, partly due to the times when it was written, partly due to the state of civilization, to the educational status, to the ignorance and superstition of the times, the limited knowledge of nature, and the undeveloped mental faculties, the misinterpretation and misconstruction of every phase and phenomenon their perceptive faculties were unable to explain, the impressions received from the outward world or the feelings and emotions that agitated them within. It is no easy task to overcome the prejudices of the times in which we live. We are instinctively opposed to any innovation, whether the new ideas are an improvement on the old or not. For many generations, and for centuries, the various church organizations have been teaching the old, antiquated idea that the Bible was a supernatural production, that either God had written it or had inspired man to do the work. What does it signify who wrote Æsop's fables, Homer's Iliad, the five books of Moses, Isaiah, or the New Testament, or even Shakespeare? They are written. The question really is, whether the contents are true, are fabulous or historically correct. For many years it has been a recognized fact that the Bible is a composition of fable, fiction, facts, misunderstanding, and misstatement. We only need glance at the absurd trials that are now going on at this present time. These gentlemen, Briggs and Smith, are not the first to doubt the truth of the book. Hundreds have doubted before them. It is skepticism that produces evolution and revolution in the accepted form of worship and faith and belief. Abraham, Socrates, Christ, Luther, and hundreds have doubted. They were skeptics in consequence of a superior insight into the propaganda of certain accepted beliefs. Every speculative theory has been doubted. Great sciences are never doubted. Theology, the offspring of idolatry and mythology, is a purely speculative science--if indeed it can be classed as a science. Therefore, it has always been laboring under a cloud of doubt. What wonder, then, that modern scholars, even clergymen, of superior ability, become skeptics when they compare modern science, modern truth, with ancient fable and falsehood? The debates on progressive sanctification, a middle state, whether sanctification is complete or incomplete at death--where is the heresy? where is the blasphemy? What are these overgrown, lopsided educated men thinking about--these self-constituted righteous bigots, what are they squabbling about? Was not Abraham a heretic and a blasphemer to the Chaldeans, Jesus Christ a heretic and a blasphemer to the Jews, Socrates a heretic and a blasphemer to the Greeks, Luther a heretic and a blasphemer to the Most Holy Apostolic Roman Catholic Church? Why, the entire theological doctrine, the whole spiritual code of morals, all the articles of faith and creeds and canons of the church, all the figures and carvings of Christ, all the paintings, all the steeples, all the belfries on this earth's surface--what are they for? What are all the mountebank church costumes for? What is the use for a man to disguise himself in a stage costume of the Egyptian period, to scare a lot of ignorant boobies? Of what use are your incense, your prayer, and your blessing, your self-conceited holiness, your pretended sanctity, and your priestly hypocrisy? What is it all for? To save sinners? What shall we do to be saved? All this ecclesiastical humbug, preaching and pulpit noise and theological humbug, is about crushing out sin, saving the sinner, and all the supernatural thunder is brought to bear upon the great sinning organs--to wit, the stomach and the sexual organs, to regulate these. God and gods, angels, prophets, and spirits labored--and what is more monstrous and more extravagantly ridiculous, the young man Jesus Christ had to be sacrificed--to save you from overloading your stomach--or rather abusing your stomach--and from overindulging in sexual exercises. Remember, every crime, known or unknown, recognized or not recognized, every evil and every wickedness, every abomination or pollution or defilement, springs from these two sources. I am not taking diseases into consideration, such as David describes in Psalm xxxviii, for example. To satisfy the wants of these organs, leads to greed, selfishness, fraud, forgery, deception, falsehood, corruption, etc. The pleasures resulting therefrom are accompanied by vanity, pride, pamperedness, envy, jealousy, hate, discontent, etc. The indulgences are known as drunkenness, lust, lasciviousness, fornication, adultery, obscenity, debauchery, whoredom, luxury, revelry, and by many other terms. These form the theme of the prophets and the burden of the apostles. These are the sins, the vices, they have been trying to crush and wipe out with their theological absurdities for several thousand years. They have created all sorts of bugaboos to frighten fools, idiots, and stupid ignoramuses into discipline. They have created hell, purgatory, dark and deep pits, brimstone and fire. The gentleman devil, or Mr. Satan, presides over the lower regions, conducts their affairs, only to accommodate the spiritual fraternity, from the pope to the Rev. Sam Patch. But in order to be saved, to go to heaven--an imaginary abode in the atmosphere, a sort of ethereal paradise in the upper strata of the air that surrounds this globe, either with or without sunlight--in order to get one up there some clown of a priest will mumble off masses, a sort of ribald fustian composition that will raise your spirit or your soul right up into the pure upper strata of this terrestrial atmospheric crust. Of course if there are seven heavens you must pay accordingly. In case, however, you miss the aerial place, the heaven, and accidentally become one of the devil's subjects, it stands to reason that Satan requires an extra fee to release you from eternal punishment--which the good, pious priest puts into his pocket. It is a pertinent question to ask our spiritual advisers, whether or not the Christian kindergarten makes a specialty of guarding and regulating, by the celestial medium of the Son of God, the Holy Ghost, the digestive apparatus and the organs of procreation. Because all the sins and vices originate with these. The devil, or Satan, holds his jubilee in the pleasures and extravagant indulgences of man and woman. The church has long since been deprived of its political power and importance. The civil law regulates minor and major crimes, and provides punishment therefor. The only function left for the Christian church, the ecclesiastical kindergarten, is advisory, admonitory, accompanied with frivolous promises--Be good, you well-dressed ladies and gentlemen; pray to our shadows, kneel before yon figure on the cross, sprinkle yourselves with holy water, and contribute liberally toward our support and sustain our kindergarten, then we bless you and give you a pass to the heavenly regions. Basta! Only believe, have faith, never mind about understanding, common sense, and reason, then you surely will be saved, and have a white and clean gown fresh from the laundry, a pair of wings, a golden crown, and you can have your choice of either a trumpet or a harp, which you may either blow or touch, and may sit at the feet of an old man with a long white beard, on a golden chair, his feet resting on the clouds, surrounded by an innumerable host of angels and cherubim that will make music everlasting, where spiritual fountains will keep you cool, oh, and a vast deal more which can not be here recited. Anyone who desires a full and complete description of this celestial paradise, this heaven, including Abraham's bosom, the right hand of Jesus, his beloved Father, and the Holy Ghost in the bargain, may obtain it by making proper application. Ah! what a blessing it would be for the whole human family if the churches were utilized for educational purposes wherein truths, scientific truths, could be taught; where young people could meet to amuse themselves, or be instructed in something useful; where young men and women could entertain themselves by feeding off the tree of knowledge, instead of loafing round saloons, round the street corners, gambling-houses, dives or pool rooms. Young and old must have a pastime, and a place to pass this time; if the state or community does not provide such places in densely populated districts, where are these poor, ignorant creatures to go to? Talk about charity! A large bulk of our charities are advertising schemes. I do not call what I here advocate a charity, but a right. If we want to improve the public morals, if we desire to educate the young men and women, provide district temples for amusement and instruction, open from 10 A.M. to 10 P.M., where they may assemble after working hours, sit, talk, read, or play--may educate the brain, the nervous and muscular tissues, so that both these master tissues may perform their functions skillfully, naturally, and judiciously. Our scientific scholars throughout the world have long since dispensed with the supernatural. Know the natural, is the modern shibboleth. If you want to take care of the machine, understand the machinery, and if you want the coming generation to understand something about it, it is certain that the saloon is not the proper place for it. We ought to guard our public institutions with jealous care. Our public non-sectarian schools are the places for our children. The public schools ought to be numerous enough to accommodate every citizen's children in the land. I think it bad grace for any foreigner to come here to give us advice upon that subject. Archbishop Satolli, papal ablegate, said at the recent meeting of the American archbishops in New York, on "The settling of the school question and the giving of religious education:" "To the Catholic church belong the duty and divine right of teaching all nations to believe the truth of the gospel, and to observe whatsoever Christ commanded. "For the rest the provisions of the Council of Baltimore are yet in force, and in a general way will remain so, to wit: Not only out of our paternal love do we exhort Catholic parents, but we command them, by all the authority we possess, to procure a truly Christian and Catholic education for the beloved offspring given them of God, born again in baptism unto Christ, and destined for heaven, to shield and secure them throughout childhood and youth from the dangers of a mere worldly education, and therefore to send them to parochial or other truly Catholic schools." The beloved offspring given them of God? Nonsense! About as much born of God as a calf, or a flower. Offspring are the natural result of a natural cause. "Born again in baptism unto Christ, and destined for heaven"--would it not be well to ascertain what the Catholic church has ever done to elevate and educate the masses? Does not the educational system of Peter Dens, Satolli, and Co. consist merely of: 1. To hear mass on Sundays and all holy days of obligation; 2. To fast and abstain on the days commanded; 3. To receive worthily the blessed Eucharist at Easter, or within the time appointed; 4. To confess our sins at least once a year; 5. To contribute to the support of our pastor; 6. Not to solemnize marriage at the forbidden times, nor to marry persons within the forbidden degrees of kindom or otherwise prohibited by the church nor clandestinely? The dirt and filth, the nauseating nastiness, of the cesspool of the "Moral Theology" of Peter Dens cannot be printed in the English language. Or perhaps Mr. Satolli will educate the children to mumble over and over the litany of the blessed Virgin, quoted in another chapter, and all the rest of the instructions in mortal sin, venial sin, precepts of the church, infidels and heretics, decalogue, grace, justification, merit, virtue of faith, articles of faith, apostolic creed, church visibility, marks, holiness, authority, infallibility, concerning ecclesiastical councils, supreme pontiff, signs of the cross, magic, miracles, sacrament, worship of relics, worship of images, resurrection, heaven, hell, perdition, purgatory, etc., etc. Satolli and his confréres would rather have parish schools, to educate the young in their ecclesiastical stupidities, and draw the funds from the state treasury in order to sustain them. The Roman Catholic church, in its career as an educational medium, has not contributed one iota towards the progress and advancement of civilization. The opposition of its clergy has always been the severest and most bloody. Humanity "owes them no thanks for the culture and privileges it now enjoys. The church interferes and checks every step forward. The clergy are determined to keep the masses ignorant as long as it is possible. Greed, selfishness, rapacity, dominion, self-righteousness, and self-sanctification have ever been their chief characteristics. Every act and every transaction is justifiable so long as their ends and objects are gained. Satolli represents the pope's big toe, that is ready to be firmly planted on the neck of our public school system, whenever the power of state or nation is secured. The wily priests with their Jesuitic craftiness never lose an opportunity. In a republic they are republicans, in a monarchy they are monarchists. They are anything and everything--but the church with all its abominations first. All else must be subservient to their will, to their power, to their use. They are intolerant, bigoted, and tyrannical all the time. Whether it be to prevent the Methodists from establishing a church in Austria, or to intrude their priestly interference in the public school methods in Waterford, Saratoga, it is the same impudent aggression that has characterized them for ages. They are bound to keep the people ignorant, superstitious, and slaves to their system, in spite of all the existing civilizing influences. What we want, and what we must have, is a public school system of education free from all sectarian bias, with neither catechism nor Bible-reading, neither prayers nor psalm-singing, but a thorough instruction in all matters of a nature directly beneficial in the conduct of this life. The state of transition is rapidly forcing itself upon the minds of men. They can no longer be held in submission. They believe no more in the antiquated notions of four thousand years ago--though modified and decorated to suit modern times. Notwithstanding the ecclesiastical hedges, fences, walls, and draw-bridges that have been erected by priests' sagacity and cunning in order to prevent encroachments on their theological fortifications, it is plain that there is a natural wearing and tearing of effete notions of the past. That the structure, erected on a false and fictitious foundation, has already given way, Protestants can testify. And as the Protestants have yielded to dissenters, etc., so must they all gradually crumble--before the battering-ram of scientific truth first, next before the advancing intelligence of the masses, and lastly before the press, which indiscriminately lays bare before the public every wrangle, every squabble, and every dissension occurring among the followers of Christ. Neither faith, grace, nor brotherly love, the holy kiss of Paul included, prevents these saintly gentlemen from exercising their greed, selfishness, and covetousness, as well as throwing dirt at one another. Father Corrigan vs. Cahenslyism and Wigger--they keep the pecuniary pot boiling. There is neither malice nor jealousy, but all is for the love of Christ. Dollars and cents? These pious brethren would scorn the idea. At Professor Smith's trial for heresy the ladies of Mount Auburn church presented the heretic with a basket of flowers. When in old times we find heretics tried by the Roman Catholic church, Are heretics rightly punished with death? asks the priest. St. Thomas answers in the affirmative. Latimer and Ridley were treated to an excellent bonfire at Oxford, 1555, for being heretics. Nor did Cranmer receive white and pink roses in a bed of fern leaves and smilax. What a change! Professors Smith and Briggs are proud to be heretics. They are praised and complimented for being heretics, and no doubt will be well taken care of when these frivolous proceedings have terminated. Guilty or not guilty, they have gained notoriety enough to place them in an excellent position for the rest of their lives. I call that a high, very sensible, and very respectable sort of martyrdom. Both these gentlemen ought to be very grateful to science for having brought about such a change, that gives them the privilege of differing from their spiritual brethren and becoming respectable heretics with baskets of roses. O Civilization, how much have we to thank you for all this! It is so lovely to be a heretic, a blasphemer, and a martyr in this present generation! What a pity that Daniel's Mene, mene, Tekel upharsin is not quite applicable to the present condition of Christianity. The great ecclesiastical bugbear of Christianity, backed by their God, their Son, Holy Ghost, Virgin Mary, saints, popes, Heaven and Hell, and their infinite methods of salvation, is nothing near so terrible as he used to be. That bugbear has been tamed, and is, comparatively speaking, gentle. His appetites and his passions have been subdued. Indeed Paul deserves no small credit for polishing the Mosaic God. It is only occasionally that Paul mentions his God's wrath or severity, and very mildly too. Paul's God comes near being esthetic. The Mosaic God is muscular and energetic. Paul's God is mild and persuasive. The Mosaic God was a fighting god, conquering territory and molding a political nation. Paul's God has quite another line of business, sin-forgiving and soul-saving. The Mosaic God was all alone engaged in business. Paul's God is a firm--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The occupation of sin-forgiving and soul-saving is carried on with great ceremonials in our Christian kindergartens, accompanied with music, prayer, and psalm-singing. The sins are derived, directly or indirectly, from two organs in the main--to wit, digestive and sexual. Any man or woman that cannot perceive the truth of the above must be exceedingly obtuse. Does anyone believe that the teachings and preachings, with all the complementary paraphernalia and other numerous accessories, are necessary to save us or guard us against transgressions or sin? Supposing all the churches and buildings assigned to the worship of God or gods, and all the priests and preachers, disappeared from the surface of this terrestrial globe, would this planet come to a standstill, or the sun cease to shine? Would the elements entering into the composition of the numerous substances found on or within this earth change their relative proportion, construction, or chemical relation? We need not have the slightest apprehension. New systems of ideas have always displaced and replaced the old systems. As we advance from cycle to cycle, this is continuously taking place. The hand gave way to the stick, the stick to the spade, the spade to the hand-plow, the hand-plow to oxen, oxen to horses, horses to steam, etc. It is the natural progress from one step to another, in every branch of thought, learning, and industry. It is a higher education and a better comprehension of the human machinery, a knowledge of the proper functions of the nervous and muscular tissues, a keener insight into the necessities of life, a regulation and control of the organs of organic life, a riper judgment, and a more evenly balanced brain power. The churches with their ethics and refined methods of the present day, with their eloquent admonitions constantly repeated, cannot be regarded in any other light than as a theological kindergarten for a fashionable musical Sunday entertainment. CHAPTER XXVI. RATIONAL REVIEW. Reason and Reflection. If any person with a, reasonable amount of intelligence will seriously reflect, he may gain sufficient information to satisfy himself as regards the true nature of the conditions that surround him. First try to the best of your ability to present in your mind the outlines of this terrestrial globe, this planet on which we live, with its mountains and its valleys; oceans, seas, and rivers; the two extreme poles, north and south; the center of the earth's surface and the equator, etc. Next try to satisfy your mind that this planet has no immediate connection with any other planet--that it belongs to a system of planets that revolve round the sun, with a space or distance between them of many millions of miles. And That this planet is entire and complete in itself. Whatever substances are about, upon, or within the earth, belong to this planet and no other. That not a particle of any substance can leave this earth, whether visible or invisible. That all formations, no matter of what character or nature, are made from substances belonging to this earth. That the size and weight of this globe has never changed. It is the same now as it was millions of years ago, or will be at any time in the future. That the quantity of water upon the surface of this earth, whether ocean, sea, lake, or river, has neither increased nor diminished. That the solid mineral portion of the earth has neither increased nor diminished either in size or weight. That the fluid, the watery portion, is susceptible to change of position and conditions on the surface of this earth, whether above the earth's surface or upon it. That all clouds, rain, vapor, mist, moisture, dew, snow, hail, must be and is taken from the waters on the surface of the earth, and when clouds, that have been taken from the waters of the earth, fall to the surface of the earth in the form of rain, vapor, mist, moisture, dew, snow, or hail, they simply return what has been temporarily taken or loaned from the waters of the earth. That in the case of all deluges, freshets, overflows, that have ever taken place, the waters that enter into their formation have been taken from the waters of the earth. The waters have simply changed position from one locality to another. That all ice formations are nothing more than solidified water. Water crystallizes by the absence of sunlight, and melts in the presence of the sun's heat. That snow is nothing more than congealed water, and returns to water when heated. That the quantity of water remains the same. Whether it rains forty days and nights, or a whole year, it is neither increased nor diminished. That the deepest portion of the earth's surface is filled with water. Being fluid, it naturally fills up the hollows until it has found its level. If there is more water than it can hold, it will find its way into the next hollow. And the higher portions of the earth's surface will not and cannot be covered by water. Such is the condition of the earth's surface that the deepest places on this terrestrial globe are filled with water; thus oceans, lakes, pools, and rivers are formed. That all living substances, whether vegetable or animal, are composed more than two-thirds of water. That more than two-thirds of the entire quantity of food taken daily into the animal economy consists of water. That is to say, we feed on more than two-thirds of water. Nothing living can maintain its existence without two-thirds of water. Second. All the material taken from the earth's surface, or from the interior of the earth's crust, for any purpose whatsoever, no matter how great the weight or volume may be, does not increase the weight of this earth, or diminish it. The material has simply been moved from one place and deposited in another. The building of one city, or ten thousand cities or more, would not add one pound more or less to the entire weight of this earth. All the stone, coal, iron, copper, silver, gold, lead, and all other mineral substances, used either in building, machinery, or anything human ingenuity can make or invent--all belong to this earth. No matter how great the bulk or quantity, it does not influence this earth one particle. Moreover, this earth would not be in the slightest inconvenienced in its motion or evolution whether there were sixteen billion of persons on its surface, or ten million times as many. Nor would it make the slightest difference to this terrestrial globe whether the entire animal creation was destroyed, or increased indefinitely. It would neither slacken its pace, increase its weight, diminish its size, change its poles, alter its seasons, nor in any other way be affected. The fluids, the solids, and the gases would relatively remain the same. Let it be distinctly understood, that whatever change may take place in some remote future, say one billion million of years, more or less, this earth as a whole will be but little affected. Vegetable and animal life may disappear, but the component parts of the earth cannot be destroyed or changed. Furthermore, whatever is produced upon this earth by the inventive power of man's faculties, in the arts and sciences mechanical, the natural, and what is thought to be supernatural, whatsoever shape or character it may take, whether phase or phenomenon, an idea, thought, or imagination--in fact, every thing, every essence, from an angel to the devil, from a saint to a sinner, from a brass button to a god or gods, holy ghosts or divinities, all, all, are part and parcel of this earth. All there are recorded in any book, called sacred or profane, inspired or uninspired, visionary or materialistic, are the creations of the brain of man, inventions of the brain of man, concoctions and fabrications of the brain of man. Whether devil, saint, angel, or god, they are of earth, earthly, chained to this terrestrial globe so long as there is a brain in human form that can exercise its faculties. Third. No things can leave this earth, whether they are things visible, or things that are not visible. Nothing can come to us from any distant planet, whether it is visible or not visible. All things or beings, whether visible or not visible, tangible or not tangible, perceptible or imperceptible, belong to this earth, are the products of the earth. All things, beings, forms, or shapes, whatever be their nature or consistence, however they have appeared or been produced, on any portion of the surface of this globe, are the products of this earth. All things, beings, forms, shapes, material, or what appears to be material, are produced upon the surface of this earth. All things, beings, forms, shapes, phases, or phenomena, and all manifestations, whether spiritual or supernatural, are the products of this earth, produced through the material composing the nervous matter, by the ordinary physiological mechanism of the animal economy. No psychological condition, as it is termed, can be produced without nervous matter. It is a function of nerve or brain material. It has no existence of itself. It is not a product foreign to matter. The soul is a term employed to represent in the abstract an intellectual product of, or the result of functional activity of, brain substance. Where there is no brain there can be no soul. And souls differ in proportion to size, quality, quantity, educational or brutal development. The mind is the collective term for the entire product of nervous activity, from non-intellectual to intellectual activity. Thus we have all kinds of minds--vulgar, brutal, licentious, pious, enlightened, educated, intellectual, refined, ideal, imaginary, etc., etc. A mind may be simple, mixed, complex, complicated, perverted, disordered, rational or irrational, etc., etc. The mind is of ages--infantile, childish, youthful, young, mature, deliberate, strong, weak, and senile, feminine or masculine, etc., etc. Nervous effects not understood are interpreted to be supernatural, not the product of the matter composing brain; this is false. The so-called spiritual manifestations are, in plain terms, delusions for susceptible nervous conditions, and generally largely adulterated with fraud. Nervous conditions bordering on hallucinations may easily be influenced by a strong nervous force and utilized for swindling purposes. There is as little truth in spirit manifestations as there was in the casting out of evil spirits or devils, as related in the Bible. Fourth. Material prosperity consists in the accumulation of wealth, gained either by industry or inheritance. Wealth is used: 1. To supply food sufficient in quantity to sustain bodily health. 2. To obtain clothing to protect the body from extreme heat, and also for decorative purposes. 3. To furnish domicile or housing to shelter the body against the inclemency of the weather, in luxury as our acquired taste may desire. 4. To give us the opportunities of an education and training that we could not otherwise obtain. 5. To provide for those that are dependent upon us for support, as children and old persons. 6. To exercise charitable acts, in aiding all those that are either disabled or unable to procure the necessities of life--clothing and shelter. Remember that God has not created anything--either plant, animal, or man. While we resemble each other, we are not precisely constructed all alike. Dogs are dogs, for example, yet a Skye terrier is not so big as a Newfoundland dog, nor is either fashioned the same as a bulldog. The same may be said of plants and trees. The structural tissue of all trees is wood, yet are the trees not all alike. Nor can the wood tissue of the various trees be used for the same purpose. Each one is useful in its own particular line or sphere. The same may be said of minerals as to their appearance, qualities, uses, etc., etc. Each individual is simply the offspring of his parents. God has had nothing whatever to do in shaping or fashioning him. He has not endowed him with anything. He has given him neither a soul nor a body. He is a creature that has been placed upon this earth by his parents, with all the qualities, form, general construction, composition, and constitution of his parents. This hardly requires an explanation. Every farmer and cattle-breeder understands it. We have every day illustrations with our race-horses, cattle, etc. Two black persons cannot breed white children. They can mix them, yes. God had nothing at all to do with the selection of either the black man or white woman, or the white man or black woman. Whatever seed is planted, that will grow, and no other. Cabbage seed will yield cabbages, and nothing else. That law holds good in nature--like will produce like; subject, however, to modification of soil, temperature, moisture, of the immediate surroundings. But it will not change the cabbage. It may be finer, of improved quality, larger--that's all. The prevailing notion that we are all created free and equal, is nonsense. 1. We are not created. We are simply the offspring of our parents and inherit all the characteristics and qualities of our parents, which are subject to betterment, improvement, and a higher degree of culture, or deterioration, depending on circumstances and surroundings. 2. We are not born equal by any means, either in muscular strength, brain power, size, constitution, or wealth. Therein lies the difference in the condition and surroundings of man, while we are spending this short-lived existence on this earth. 3. Whether we are born free, depends upon what form of government we live under. We are free to comply with the laws of the government under which we are born, comply with the recognized moral and social laws in the midst of which our parents reside, where we first saw daylight. Dismiss the silly notion from your mind that anything can help you, either priest or any supernatural agency. The priest may help as one man may help another. Prayers can avail you nothing, nor blessings. Every man, to be a man, must act the man! Training, education, culture, makes him one. Free yourself from priestly influence and church dominion, if you would be free. Think and reason. Throw off the shackles of ecclesiastical slavery. Let your own brain work out your own salvation. Never mind the Jehova, the God of barbarism, the Christ of delusion, or the Holy Ghost of the imagination. Shake off the dust of superstition and ignorance if you would be free. It is the noblest work of man to make himself free--to make himself equal, not muscular--free from prejudice, free from superstitions, free from bigotry, free from ignorance, free from vice, free from passions, free from wrong-doing either to yourself or to your fellow-man. Equal you can be in brain power, brain culture, in brain force, by brain culture, education, in the improvement and perfection of the intellectual faculties, so that we may exercise our understanding and judgment, free and untrammeled, to the benefit of ourselves and to the benefit of our neighbors. The perfection you imagine your God ought to be, exalt yourself to that perfection, and be an intelligent free man. CHAPTER XXVII. VISIONS--BIBLE DREAMS--REVELATIONS. These are the fireworks of the imagination. Isaiah's vision, chapter vi, 1, 2: "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. "Around it stood the seraphim; each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly," etc. Ezekiel, chapter iii: Son of man eats the roll. Vision of chapter viii: "A fire below the loins, and the appearance of brightness, as the color of amber upwards," etc. Chapter ix: "Six men with slaughter weapons, clothed in white linen with a writer's inkhorn by the side." Chapter x: "Above the head of the cherubim there appeared over them as it were a sapphire-stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne." Verse 2: "Go in between the wheels even under the cherub, and fill thine hands with coals of fire," etc. Verse 4: "And the house was filled with a cloud," etc. Verse 8: "And there appeared in the cherubim the form of a man's hand under their wings." Verse 9: "Four wheels," etc. Verse 12: "And their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and their wheels were full of eyes round about, even the wheels that they four had." Verse 14: And every one had four faces, the first face was the face of a cherub, the second the face of a man, the third that of a lion, the fourth the face of an eagle, etc. Chapter xxii: Sin. Chapter xxiii: Whoredoms. Chapter xxxviii: Boneyard. Chapter xlvii: Visions of holy waters. Daniel's visions, dreams: Verse 3: Four great beasts came up from the sea. The first was a lion and had eagle's wings. The second was like a bear, it had three ribs in the mouth between the teeth, etc. The third was like a leopard, and had four wings of a fowl, and had four heads. The fourth a beast dreadful and terrible, strong exceedingly--had great iron teeth--and it had ten horns. A little horn came up; in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, a mouth speaking great things. Throne whereon an ancient sat, the hair of his head like pure wool, garments snow-white, etc.; throne of fiery flame, wheels as burning fire. Verse 19: "Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast," etc. His teeth were iron, nails of brass, etc., etc. Chapter viii: A ram had two horns; one was higher than the other. He saw the ram pushing westward, northward, southward, etc. Verse 5: A he-goat with a horn between the eyes; the goat smote the ram, broke the two horns, etc. Zechariah iv: A candlestick all of gold, a hood upon the top of it. Seven lamps thereon, seven pipes to the seven lamps; two olive trees. Chapter v: Flying roll twenty cubits long, ten cubits broad. Verse 9: Two women, and the wind was in their wings; they had wings like a stork. Chapter vi: Four chariots between two mountains of brass. The first chariot had red horses, the second chariot had black horses, the third chariot had white horses, the fourth chariot had grizzled bay horses, etc. The most prominent men in the Old Testament that were endowed with high imaginative powers, were not many. The most noted among them were Isaiah, 681 B.C.; Ezekiel, 591 B.C.; Daniel, 559 B.C.; Zechariah, 535 B.C. These four visionary gentlemen lived during a very exciting, troublesome period. It was the ending of national life. There were continuous wars, constant changes, invasions, robberies, plunder, and all other barbaric crimes that ordinarily accompany these revolutionary events. Israel was made captive 721 B.C.--the lost ten tribes, as they are called. The conquest of Jerusalem was 606 B.C.; the captivity of Judah and destruction of Jerusalem, 588 B.C. It must be remembered that all the prophets, so termed, lived during a time of approaching national dissolution, and date from the death of Jonah, 761 B.C., to the death of Nehemiah, 430. These political preachers, agitators, and fault-finders were altogether some twenty in number. And when national life ceased, these prophets ceased. Men of this particular type and character were no longer needed. They had outlived their usefulness. Their national greatness was rapidly disintegrating--short-lived it was. Luxury, licentiousness, and crime; rapacity, internal disorder, factional strife, lack of order and discipline, made them the prey of neighboring nations, that finally proved their destruction. It was not a question of God or Jehovah or idols; it was a question of organization, discipline, and a higher civilization, that wiped the Jews out as a nation. They struggled as long as they could maintain their existence as a nation. They were overpowered and subdued. It is not, therefore, surprising that these men appealed to their patriotism--their moral sense, of which they had but little--and made every endeavor to reform them. The national pride, love of country and patriotism, fired their imagination. They talked, wrote, and scolded in the name of the visionary God in fashion among them, employing the phraseology then in use, giving vent to their feelings, their passions, their lamentations, their dreams, their visions, the product of an over-excited nervous system, mixing poesy, philosophy, and facts indiscriminately; producing a heterogeneous, fantastic creation of the brain, part true, but false as a whole, dovetailed together as the fancy of the moment suggested. These rambling fireworks of the imagination have little meaning and less sense, except that they portray their feelings, emotions, and practical impressions for the time being. Eliminate the facts out of their writings, and you obtain a residue of wild, incoherent ravings of an over-excited, over-heated brain. We hear nothing of any great mental disturbance or loss of equilibrium, until we reach a new crisis. For nearly four hundred years not a vision, not an angel, not a prophet, is heard of. The religious disputes, the ecclesiastical quarrels, the heated discussions, the hatred, hostility, and opposition that the differences of opinion engendered, caused considerable nervous irritation, mental excitement, and a display of the imagination. This new religion, this reformation, this new organization, produced no small amount of fermentation. It was all nervous, stimulated to a degree of exaltation, rising in intensity to enthusiasm and religious ecstacy, wherein many varieties of nervous phases were exhibited. St. John was on the isle of Patmos when he wrote his Revelations. He could not have chosen a more suitable spot for his visionary work. An isolated little island situated in the Archipelago near Asia Minor, it is one of the smallest islands in that region. It could certainly not contain many inhabitants. It is surrounded by sea and exceedingly lonely. A man with a highly nervous temperament could almost see anything in that dreamland of melancholy and seclusion. John's visions resembled those of his predecessors several hundred years previous. But John came four hundred years later, and had the advantage of more culture. Ideas had multiplied, experience had increased, the imagination was amplified. Education had advanced, and the mental faculties were better developed. He had therefore the brain, the opportunity, and a very favorable locality, to dream, to have visions, and to imagine to his heart's content. He had the material, the impressions, and the state of mind to aid him. Of course we take it for granted that John wrote these Revelations--or some one imagined these things for him. John wrote to the seven churches, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatera, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. None of these places was any considerable distance from Patmos. What he sees: Chapter i: Seven candlesticks. One was like (verse 13) the Son of Man, clothed in garments down to the feet, girt about the paps with a golden girdle. Verse 14: "His head and his hair were white like wool, as white as snow." Verse 15: His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. Verse 16: He had in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. The second and third chapters are advisory to the seven churches. In the fourth his imagination takes a great flight. A more romantic spot to have visions could not be found--about 38° north of the equator, a beautiful sky, mild climate, calm waters, and a solemnity of surroundings that would impress a less imaginative mind. It would have a marvelous effect on an excitable fanatic zealot, brimful with fantastic religious notions. No wonder he beheld the doors of heaven open, and heard a sound of a trumpet--and he was immediately in the spirit; that is, he was either dreaming or in an ecstatic state, and could see all the things he did see with his eyes either closed or open. He saw a throne. One sat in it. It looked like jasper and sardonyx. And he saw a rainbow like emerald. Round about there were twenty-four seats, wherein twenty-four elders were sitting clad in white raiment, with crowns of gold on their heads. Thunder and lightning came out of the throne. There were seven lamps before the throne, and seven spirits of God, and before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal; and in the midst of the throne and round about were four beasts, full of eyes before and behind. The first beast was like a lion, the second beast was like a calf, the third beast had the face of a man, the fourth beast was a flying eagle. And the four beasts had each six wings about him, and they were full of eyes within. Chapter v, 6: There stood a lamb with seven horns, seven eyes, seven spirits, etc. Chapter vi: He saw a white horse, a red horse, a black horse, and a pale horse. The first had a crown, the second a sword, the third a pair of balances, on the fourth sat Death and Hell. There were seals opened, etc., etc. The fifth seal was the souls slain by the sword of God. The sixth seal, earthquake, the sun became black and the moon red, and the heavens departed as a scroll, etc. Chapter vii: He sees four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow, etc. He saw another angel with a seal--for various tribes, etc.--very fanciful, very fantastic, very imaginative. Chapter viii: The seventh seal opened. Seven angels with seven trumpets standing before God. One angel stood with a golden censer. Five filled the censer with fire. Voices. Thunderings, lightnings, and an earthquake. Verse 7: The first angel sounded. There followed hail and fire, mingled with blood; trees and green grass were burnt up. Verse 8: The second angel sounded. A mountain of burning fire was cast into the sea, and the third part of the sea became blood. Verse 9: A third part of the creatures and a third part of the ships were destroyed. Verse 10: The third angel sounded. A great star fell from heaven, burning. Verse 11: The fourth angel sounded. A third part of the sun and moon were smitten, a third part of the stars, etc. Chapter ix: The fifth angel sounded. A star falls into the bottomless pit. He mixes smoke, locusts, scorpions, torments, horns, battles, crowns of gold. Verse 7: Faces of men with hair of women and teeth of lions. He sees breastplates of iron. There is sound in the wings, sound in the chariots running to battle, etc., etc. Verse 17: He sees the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth and brimstone; and the heads of the horses were the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire, and smoke, and brimstone. Verse 19: For their power is in their mouths and their tails; and their tails were like unto serpents, etc. Chapter x, 4: Seven thunders utter voices. John takes the little book out of the angel's hands, eats it up, and it is as sweet as honey but bitter in his belly. We pass on through the extravagances of the succeeding chapter to xvi. Seven angels and seven plagues and seven vials of wrath. The first vial of wrath was poured upon earth; the second vial of wrath was poured upon the sea; the third vial of wrath was poured upon rivers and fountains of water; the fourth angel poured his vial upon the sun; the fifth angel poured his vial upon the seat of heat; the sixth angel poured his vial into the river Euphrates, and the waters were dried up, unclean spirits like frogs came out of the mouth of the dragon, etc. The seventh angel poured his vial into air--voices--thunder--lightning. A more jumbled mass of hysterical nonsense was never concocted by the brain of man. With this silly twaddle of an over-excited nervous system, he continues to give vent to absurd impulses and perverted impressions of a theoleptic nature. In chapter xx he sees an angel from heaven having the keys of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold of the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years. Verse 3: "And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up," etc., etc. Verse 9: "And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them." Verse 10: "And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beasts and the false prophets are, and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever," etc. That this so-called revelation is not the product of a healthy brain is self-evident. That John was reveling in the realms of fantasie, while he was laboring under a theological nightmare, is so palpable, that he might almost be accused of being a monomaniac. And that this abominable concoction of absurdities should form the basis of a system of moral education, and be tolerated as a supernatural production, is an outrage on common sense. The whole construction is the fabric of a man bordering on a state of hallucination, where fancy, fact, and fiction are indiscriminately mixed and compounded with the theoleptical effervescence of an almost demented enthusiast. There is not a particle of sense in the entire twenty-two chapters, except such as refer to earthly particulars. The combination is false in conception, and pernicious in its tendencies. He sees and hears things so glaringly ridiculous that it is really surprising that any sensible preacher can regard the writings in the light of seriousness. It is perhaps as unique an erratic compilation of material substances as was ever produced, based on ignorance, superstition, and a diseased mind. That man, St. John the Divine, had no more conception of the size of this earth or its configuration than he had of electricity, or a steam-engine. Of course I understand that theologians do not--or pretend not to--look upon the statements literally. They may interpret the contents of Revelation from a spiritual point of view, nothing will or can relieve it of its defects. Whatever he meant by his ravings, in those days, they do not contain a particle of practical sense. When he beheld the doors of heaven open and heard a sound of a trumpet, he was immediately in the spirit. Then his mind spliced together thrones of jasper, emerald, seats, elders, white raiment, crowns of gold, seven lamps, seven spirits, a sea of glass, and four beasts full of eyes, a lion, calf, man, eagle, six wings, four horses, death and hell, seven angels, seven vials of wrath, hail, fire, blood, thunder, lightning, brimstone, a bottomless pit, etc., etc. Thoughts were flying through his brain that embraced pretty much all he knew, that he had either heard, read about, or had had some personal experience of, bringing all the things, objects, substances, and phenomena to bear upon his imagination, forming ideas to illustrate his heaven or hell, his saints and sinners, his salvation and his perdition. The mind was in a state of delirious confusion. John's mind had had a larger experience, his imagination was more amplified and expanded, than the mind and imagination of his predecessors Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah. The time and locality were not the same. The burden of John's thoughts was of a quite different nature. The nervous phenomena of theological excitement and irritation was purely visionary, while those of the Old Testament were largely tainted with the politics of their time. The former writers were loaded down with the expected ruin of their nationality; were filled with patriotism; were hoping and wishing for some one to come and help them out of their dire distress. Their ideas and thoughts led them to flights of imagination within the limits of their knowledge. John was fully charged with the philosophy and teachings of his times, and he mustered all his knowledge to open the gulf between the two extremes of bliss and punishment, the saved and lost. Thus he invented the appearance of heaven, with all the material substances, to exhibit its fearful glory, and showed the interior of his bottomless pit with its darkness, fire and brimstone. All these things might have appeared very terrible to the ignorant fishermen he had to deal with. It may still leave a strongly unpleasant impression on a great many of our ignorant population. Very few sensible people take any stock in John's incoherent, erratic flight of imagination. It may be regarded as a very curious composition of antiquity--senseless, useless, meaningless; admirable in its way, but nothing more than a production of an overwrought, unbalanced, over-stimulated, and over-exalted imagination. We may distinctly perceive the progress that had been made in the evolution of the imagination, in the multiplication of ideas, in the amplification of thought, from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to David, from David to Isaiah, from Isaiah to John. The nervous system, the brain, had undergone some modifications among these people, but not of a nature that was likely to be a lasting benefit to humanity. On the contrary, these speculative ideas caused a great deal of friction of thought, bitter quarrels, hatred, crime, and bloodshed. Neighboring nations, who had neither Jehova nor Christ, revealed to us the light of science that never produced a friction nor a quarrel--being based on eternal truth. From the very beginning of their conception to the present day this remains unchanged, unaltered and untouched, a monument of Truths, an inheritance for all future generations. The God-Christ-Holy-Ghost idea has ever been a source of greed, selfishness, intolerance, bigotry, quarrel, hatred, licentiousness, cruelty, and crime. Bickering and quarreling are still going on. And the grasping hand of greed holds the ignorant bigot by the throat to squeeze the last cent out of him, to enrich and aggrandize the most pernicious organization humanity was ever plagued with. Heresy, blasphemy, is as fashionable to-day as it was in the rankest days of popery. Fortunately the civil law reigns supreme, otherwise these ecclesiastical monomaniacs would be at each other's throats. At this stage of scientific civilization, we can afford to look on at the theological quarrels and antics as a result of a nervous craze that is perfectly harmless. After all it is but the physiological effect of an educational training, the development of the faculties and the evolution of the imagination; the brain functions in proportion to the progress made in the culture in general, harmonizing with the times, circumstances, and conditions of the period in which we live. Every age has its turn in the evolution of the mental faculties, and it must go through its stage. The visionary period, the result of a theological hallucination of an over-exalted imagination, can occur only under certain favorable conditions, viz., on the one hand a highly susceptible nervous temperament, a strongly biased educational training, and an enthusiastic excitability, and on the other, an ignorant, bigoted, poor, and helpless population. SHADES OF INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. FROM BARBARISM TO CIVILIZATION, MULTIPLICITY OF GODS TO NATURE, DARKNESS TO LIGHT. Barbarism, savagery, ignorance, Chaldaism. Women Barbarians. 200 B.C. idolatry. Astronomy. degraded A.D. 1893. MANY GODS. (Paganism 766,312,000 slaves. PHYSICAL GOD. remaining). 1921-450 B.C. Very little light. Hebrewism, 6,000,000. Physiology, science, mathematics, mythology, women honored science breaking. 1921-500-0 B.C. Greece a nation. Ignorance, superstition. Buddhism, 320,000,000. 1100 B.C. Uncivilization (to our notion). Confucianism. Caste rule. Brahmanism, 120,000,000. Philosophy, 320,000,000 gods. ONE GOD. Mohammedanism, 166,000,000. Tyrants. A.D. 600. Polygamy. FIVE GODS. Roman Catholic Still A.D. 325. Father, Son, and Ghost, Virgin, Christianity, 200,000,000. degraded. A.D. 800. saints, relics, etc. Idolatry, Greek Christianity, figure-painting, ignorance, 80,000,000. intolerance, non-progression, superstition, bigotry. Dark Ages. A.D. 325 to 1517. THREE GODS. Protestantism--Luther, Women 200 to A.D. 1517. Class Rule. Calvin--100,000,000. sub- 300 A.D. 1693. Progression, toleration, Episcopalianism. ordinate. sects. A.D. 1572. superstition, bigotry, Presbyterianism. A.D. 1730. civilization, selfishness, Baptists. greed. Methodism. Wesley. ONE GOD. Universalism. A.D. 1691. Enlightened, advancing. Unitarianism. Ethical Culture. DOUBTFUL GOD. A.D. 1550. Latest theological A.D. 1870. metamorphosis. NO GOD. Science, nature, fact, truth. Manhood, womanhood. Intellectual development. In modern times, if a man should attempt to rave after the style of John, he would certainly be declared a fit candidate for an insane asylum. What was possible on the Isle of Patmos by John would be an utter impossibility to-day. It is not because we have not religious fanatics enough, but education, reason, and science have advanced, so that such extravagant fire-works of the imagination would be declared evidence of an insane condition of the mind. On the following page a diagram of various shading shows the growth of intelligence and enlightenment of the various religious denominations, indicating the beginning of actual progress with the Reformation, and how little there is left of the entire religious fabric that has been handed down these many centuries. The darkness of ignorance is still hiding the truth. The church is doing its utmost to train the young in the pernicious doctrine of superstition and falsehood of antiquity. The clergy would stop our public school system, if they could drag humanity back into the mire of brutality. The sooner the Bible, with its God, Jehova, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, the prophets and the apostles, with all the angels, heaven, and hell, are placed under a glass case to be viewed and admired as a matter of antique curiosity the better. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE PLANETARY GODS. The Terrestrial God. Why man should claim that the terrestrial God, the God that was created on this earth, extends his sway beyond the limits of this globe, is not easily accounted for. It is an assumption that is not at all warranted. We know that the composition of the planets that belong to the family of the solar system are the same as that of our own, this earth. All those worlds seem to be constructed of the same chemical elementary substances as this globe of ours, and working on the same general universal plan. That all the planets of the solar system, and the sun itself, possess the same common characteristics as this earth, is evident. The planets all move in the same direction round the sun. They all revolve upon their own axes, and round the sun. They have day and night, seasons and periods of revolution. They have their atmospheres, snows, rings, and all the necessary equipments of a planet proper. They seem to have seas, mountains, valleys, poles, equators, etc. Some of the planets seem to be in a much higher state of organization than our own. Take Saturn, for example, with its series of rings and satellites, its immense distance from the sun, 886,000,000 miles, moving at the rate of 22,000 miles per hour, and having a year equal to about 30 years of our globe. He flourishes at a distance from us of about 300,000,000 miles. He has a diameter of 73,000 miles. His volume is 700 times that of the earth, and he receives his light from the sun, just the same as we do. It is admitted by astronomers that the Saturnal scenery is most magnificent, and surpasses anything we are familiar with. The rings form immense arches, which span the sky and shed a soft radiance around; while in the strange beauty of the night eight moons in all their different phases, full, new crescent, or gibbous, light up the starry vault. We know that the planets are composed of the same elementary substances as this world whereon we live, that they are also surrounded with an atmosphere, have water upon them, receive the sun's heat, exhibit all the peculiar characteristics of this globe of ours, and all the planets seem to be obeying the same general universal laws. Can anyone give us a plausible reason why there is no organized vital matter on our neighboring planets--plants, living creatures, similar to those found on this terrestrial globe? If the elementary substances are the same as those that are found on this earth, and they have a similar sunshine, heat, moisture, and temperature, all the forces may be presumed to be the same or similar. There is no reason that the elements should not enter into organic life of a similar, perhaps either inferior or superior, organization to that existing on this world? What is to hinder them? It is certainly possible, therefore probable. May we not assume that it is both possible and probable? Those on earth who believe that this globe of ours was especially fitted up for us, made for man only, are very presumptuous. There was no special forethought for the adaptation or convenience of creatures like ourselves. As to the forethought, adaptation, or convenience, the hog, the elephant, the ass, and the fly enjoy their life just as much as men do. It is very convenient for them. But not more so than it is for man, and it is no more convenient for man than it is for the animals. We are certainly nearer the truth to say that the other planets are inhabited by beings, races, that may exhibit as much intelligence as, if not more than, we do on this globe. The conditions of light and heat may not be the same. The other planets may vary in form and structure, and have shapes not at all familiar to us. That, however, does not in any way interfere with the reasonable probability, nay, certainty, that they are inhabited. Whether they are inhabited or not, matters little. Yet we may safely make the inference that these planets are not simply placed in space for our convenience. May not the inhabitants of Venus, Mercury, Mars, Flora, Mnemosene, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, etc., think that this earth has been created by their respective gods for their convenience? Have they not as much right to have each of them a god as this earth is supposed to have? Has not the god of Jupiter as much right to be proclaimed by a portion of its inhabitants to be the creator of all the planets, sun, moon, and stars, as this sectarian, terrestrial God has? The right to this power, to this prerogative, is as much vested in the god of Neptune or Saturn, as in this earthly God. Imagine the god of Saturn complacently smiling at the arrogance of this pigmy of a terrestrial god. May not the god of Venus have a preëmptory claim to the godship of this planetary system? Or the god of Uranus, or of any other of the planets? Or possibly every planet has its god that acts as superintendent over his own territory, the laws of gravitation preventing his divinity from leaving his place of abode. Or, perhaps there are no planetary gods--every solar system may have, perhaps, only one god, residing on the great sun himself, communicating directly with all his subject planets by the rays he sends forth. It is not at all unlikely that perhaps every solar system has its god. And over these many solar system gods, somewhere in the immensity of space, a god of immense magnitude may preside. So you may go on multiplying gods, sub-gods and superior gods, without end. Where do we find that a man, or a set of men, have a right to arrogate to themselves the power or privilege to assume that this terrestrial God has anything at all to say or to dictate on any other planet? This earthly God has no more right to interfere with the business of Mars or Mercury than the god of Saturn has a right to interfere with our earthly affairs. Should it, however, transpire that any planetary god, whether he comes from Uranus, or Neptune, or any other planet, should interfere, we who were made in his image will assemble in the houses we have built for his sake, for the terrestrial God's sake, and pass resolutions advising our terrestrial God to say to the other planetary gods: "Hands off, ye gods, if you please! For the sake of peace and harmony among the gods of this planetary system, we, representing this terrestrial God by proxy--since it really makes no great difference in the end of the great gathering-in of the elementary substances all organic beings are composed of--we, the organized elements of this earth, men, animals, plants, etc., more especially the highest organized beings, men, having a more perfected nervous system, being the elect of all terrestrial productions, claim the right to speak for our God, and proclaim to all planetary gods, potentates, majesties, holies of holies, or their representatives, that they have no right whatsoever to interfere with our terrestrial management. We can have our little local pet God or Gods if we desire, so long as our methods do not in any way inconvenience them." Let it be taken for granted that the same, elementary substances are found (of which we have evidence) in the sun and all the planets, and probably in the stars we see; that their gaseous fluids and solid substances are of similar nature to the elements known to us; and that they also receive the same sun's heat (or the distant stars may receive light and heat from some other suns), is it not more than likely that the conditions produced by the contact of these elements with the sun's heat, may resemble those we are familiar with? If there is heat there must be motion, there must be friction, there must be consumption and expenditure of heat, also expansion and contraction. If these forces exist, other forces necessarily must also exist, as cold from absence of heat, dynamic force, electric and magnetic forces. We may readily suppose that there are currents of air. Water may be agitated by the wind. If atmospheres surround these planets there is only one source of heat that can keep them in a gaseous state, and that is the sun. Heat from the same source keeps the Oxygen and the Hydrogen fluid. If evaporation and consolidation exist why should there not be aqueous vapor, rain, etc.? We must concede that the elements known as Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and Carbon are found in these distant planets. We cannot be far wrong in supposing that there are carbonic acid, ammonia, and maybe other combinations. Atoms certainly must exist, and molecules (a drop of water is a molecule). There may also be conductions of heat, of molecular motion. What then is to hinder the evolution of phenomena on these distant planets being regulated by laws very similar to the laws of this earth--radiation and absorption of heat, combustion and explosion, tension and velocity of the various elements, under peculiar circumstances favoring all these conditions? That elements wherever found possess the same physical properties when brought under the same influence of heat and moisture, there can be no doubt, whether they are farther removed, or nearer to the contact of the sun's rays. It is a fact, a well-established fact, that different substances require varying degrees of temperature to reduce them to a liquid, gaseous, or solid condition, and no matter where the temperature is produced the result will be the same. If, for example, a temperature can be procured on the surface of Uranus, or Saturn, sufficient to melt iron, lead, or silver, these metallic substances will melt at Uranus or Saturn as quickly as on the earth's surface. The laws regulating radiation, absorption, dispersion, or contraction, or any other phase the elementary substances may assume, under heat or pressure, etc.--these laws will hold good on any of the planets just as well as on this terrestrial planet. It is therefore far from unreasonable to presume that the organizable elements may have assumed a vitality on the distant planets, evolved and developed creatures in accordance with known laws, or laws that are still unknown to us. Because it is perfectly natural for these substances to organize themselves into life, under a certain degree of temperature, moisture, and electricity, when these necessary elements are present--as natural as that oxygen and hydrogen make water, or that the sun's heat sets all the elementary substances into a state of activity. We have no reason to doubt that these planets, or even the sun, have not their own vital products just as well as this earth. These vital products may be of low grade, or of a very highly organized nature. We may assume, without fear of any great error, that wherever there are air and water there is life. Because if there is heat it is a sun's heat, otherwise there could not be air and water. If there is a sun's heat, atmosphere, and water, there is certainly life, lowly or highly developed. The degree of organic development depends on the age of the planet--whether it has been in existence a few millions of years more or a few millions of years loss. These organic forms may have advanced to any degree of perfection and possess qualities like or unlike our own, or they may still exist in a very primitive state of evolution. Let it be distinctly understood that on the degree of organic development depends whether they have reached our height of perfection of nervous development, or the development of a substance capable of performing functions similar to the brain substance animals are endowed with on this earth, with physiological action the same or similar--whether undergoing gradual changes, and accumulating experience, they may have arrived at that degree of perfection to be capable of thinking and reflecting, may have acquired understanding of a nature possessing all the fear, wonder, and ignorance of certain states of nervous development, where the ideas are just forming and imagination barely assuming form. They may, I say, have begun evolving their gods, or images representing the same, or may have reached that state of perfection that every creature is endowed with such powers, understanding, and reasoning, acquired by millions of years of training and education, that they constitute gods in themselves. Or the creatures inhabiting these planets may be in a condition like that of creatures many, many ages past upon earth--may have no knowledge of gods or God, but are undergoing the necessary evolutionary changes that will ultimately bring them to that happy elysium, when they will be capable to produce their God or gods, as we have done on this earth. Why is it not possible that a higher order of beings inhabiting Saturn are at this moment employing instruments in order to ascertain the constitution and condition of this terrestrial globe, speculating on the probability whether this earth is inhabited or not? They may have positive knowledge that this planet has an atmosphere several hundred miles in depth. They may know its size, diameter, its distance from the sun, and that this planet revolves in an ellipse as the planet Saturn does. They may also know that the elements are of the same nature; and that there are mountains, seas, an equator, a north and a south pole, but only one moon. Looking at this planet as a star of this solar system, of perhaps the third or the fourth magnitude, nothing compared with their own, either in size, moons, belts, or other important features, these higher organized beings on Saturn may be able to behold worlds beyond themselves far more vast than their own, and regard this planet, Venus, Mercury, etc., as very insignificant affairs. Why may they not have appliances, modes of travel or communication, as far removed in intelligence from our highest order of beings, as the difference between a frog and the pope? We have no reason to exclude any supposition, however wild and extravagant, as to the conditions of other planets. It is not entirely imaginary. Inferences may be drawn from what we know, and deductions made from our practical experience. This problem is safer to speculate on, having a solid basis to start with. Those who believe in the actuality of an existing God have not a thing to base his existence on, except the natural functions of the brain. But if we concede that this earth has a God, what right have we to assume that each other planet has not a god of its own? We have no evidence to the contrary. Who dares to state positively that they have not a god? Why should this insignificant terrestrial planet God presume, or persons for him, that he controls and governs planetary bodies hundreds of times larger, and perhaps far more important, than this small solar system? How do we know that the inhabitants of other planets have not had angels, saints, and saviors? How do we know that they have not had beings who pretended to know all about their god, and were as brutal, as savage, and as demented as some of the persons figuring in scripture, or the tyrannical, bloody papists of the Dark Ages? The imagination of man supplied us with Gods or a God on earth; the imagination is justified in supplying other planets with a god or gods. The god of Jupiter, Mars, or Saturn, etc., may with as much force and propriety say, "I am that I am; I am the great I am, the creator of all things. You, Planet Earth, may be a little older, riper, more solidified, have a solid crust, yet remember our god is just as good as yours, and better. You have only one moon--a fossil world, a mere cinder. And, moreover, our god is fourteen hundred times larger than yours, because our globe is that much larger. Our globe has a diameter of ninety thousand miles. And we have four satellites, or moons. Our largest is as big as your whole earth. Therefore, it is ridiculous for you to claim superiority. As to my neighbor Saturn, with his eight moons and belts, his god smiles at your presumption. I, the god of Jupiter, agree with the great god of Saturn and others, that your terrestrial affected greatness is too ridiculous to be worthy of our serious consideration. In fact, it is absurd for your earthly godship to claim to have made the sun that great luminary that gives us all heat, light, and life." Let us go but one step farther into space to show the fallacy of the assumption that this terrestrial God created all planets, stars, etc. At the present time it is considered that the star Alpha (a) Centauri in the southern hemisphere is the nearest to the earth. Its distance is more than 200,000 times that of the earth from the sun, or twenty trillions of miles. Light would require about four and a half years to travel this enormous distance. The stars which we see at such immense distances are suns. The vast distance at which the stars are known to be, precludes the thought of their shining, like the planets or the moon, by reflecting back the light of our sun. They must be self-luminous, and are doubtless each a center of a system of planets and satellites. Our sun is but a star. As we see only the suns of these distant systems, so their inhabitants see only the sun of our system, and that as a small star. Arrogant, conceited humanity, with an unbounded assurance and self-confidence, mixed with profound ignorance, have the impudence to claim that their terrestrial God created all the stars, suns, and planetary systems that are so far away in space that the eye of man cannot behold them--no, not even with the strongest instrument yet made. We may be compared to maggots on a big cheese, crawling over its surface; they may with equal propriety claim that their cheese is the only cheese ever created, and that it was made for their own special use, and that all other cheeses were made only for their benefit. Some of the maggots might equally claim that there was only one God--the man who made the cheese. That is, that man, the maggot's god, made the cow that gave the milk that produced the cheese whereon the maggot dwelt. Let every planet have its God, And every God its planet. Much mystery lies in the word, You simply have to scan it. Let every man his own God make, God in man, pure and elect, Let common sense and reason wake! Knowledge, truth, makes man perfect. Go search your God through depths of space On suns and stars infinite. The mind expands to every place. To distance without limit. If you don't find the God you seek Search within yourselves. Perchance, You'll find your God, quite good and meek, But not in your ignorance. CHAPTER XXIX. EVERY MAN HIS OWN GOD. Writers and thinkers with a strong theological bias, seem to fear that the world would go to pieces if the scriptural God or Gods were deposed. They seem to apprehend that the moral and political economy would seriously suffer, and the moral idea especially be destroyed. When these gentlemen find it impossible to reconcile the difficulties that overshadow the personal and triple-headed deities--that somehow they cannot make them harmonize with the recent discoveries and the development in natural sciences--they attempt to mold them so as to fit the requirements of the occasion. Thus, it was discovered that the prime essence of the world is God, or something that pervades all nature; that he is the first great cause, and that this implies some huge mountain of will power, and an immense ocean of intelligence; that he is the creator of all things--that out of him this world emerged and out of the world all the various activities and objects were developed by the life inherent in the substances, etc. Then again they represent him as a great designer--declare that God designed all things and beings, and put everything in shipshape order; and after the design was finished he set the machinery in motion. These, and interminable similar pet theories and excuses, are made for God to retain a foothold in the mind of man. Clever brains and prolific imaginations have succeeded in clothing God, or Gods, with all the attributes thus far discovered either in man, beast, planet, or space--extension, contraction, elasticity, etc.--modes, limitation, finite, infinite, absolute--everything, in fact, that has ever been printed in the largest encyclopedia known. These gentlemen should have had memories that the original doubts in Abraham's mind were the result of common sense and reason; that he still retained the sensual qualities of the Chaldean gods. The modifications and transitions of that first idea are very marked, as well as very numerous. By the time we reach Christ, he is not the same. It is to be regretted that we have no compliments to waste on this God--alias Jehova--because a more bloody, selfish, monstrous idea cannot be well portrayed, if the story in the Bible be true. And certainly he, and his triple alliance, does not exhibit one redeeming quality during the centuries of Christianity, because a more hideous, outrageous, criminal monster cannot be constructed, except by human ingenuity and by human devices. In another chapter we call the attention of the reader to some of the most barbarous abominations of the Roman Catholic church, and such a polluted set of butchering popes as words fail to give any adequate idea of. All this goes to show that this imaginary idea of God may be made to fit any person or any purpose. It is but reasonable to inquire, Does God create the Brain, or does the Brain create God? That is really the entire question in a nutshell. We know, with absolute certainty, that God does not make brain, otherwise we should have it perhaps a little more uniform, and of a better quality. Besides, all other animals possessing brain would, of course, be entitled to the knowledge of this God in proportion to the size, quantity, and quality of the brain. This, then, being impossible, we have no other means of arriving at the truth than by concluding that Brain created God. Every brain cannot create God; the great nervous centers may be insufficient, either in quantity or quality, to enable the brain to acquire qualifications that will give expression to more than the instinctive number of sensations and emotions. Creatures generally are limited to the instinctive number of sensations and emotions; and act, move, and have their being in harmony with these. Animals of all classes belong to this category, and not infrequently man, too. By that is meant, man in an uncultured state, and even among them the degree of experience and the power of observation make the difference between one set of savages and another. Intelligence, understanding, and reasoning power depend on some kind of experience. The repetition of experience constitutes, in some measure, the training of the senses, and through the senses and the cerebral hemispheres the intellect is thus formed and mind developed. The intellectual acquirements may be limited by the ascendency of some predominating ideas or opinions that check progress. As for example, the absence of schools in communities, the forcible prevention of education, the prohibition of education by priestly authority of the church, and the suppression by ecclesiastics of all ideas except their own. This we may term limitation of brain culture by undue interference of the ascendent idea or ideas that limits the range of intelligence and subjects the will power to the control and direction of what the people presumed to be a greater right than their own. Prescribed limits of education check or stunt the natural progress, and if any progress is made, the people must break through the prescribed limits, as was the case with Luther, Spinoza, Voltaire, Renan, etc. The ascendency of man over animals checks their further progress in the way of intelligence. The superior hostile intelligence holds possession and will not permit further development. As regards animals, we have taken possession of the earth, and have put a stop to all further advancement. Supposing a man develops an idea, it is not an easy matter to persuade his next-door neighbor, who is his equal perhaps in intelligence; but, it is not difficult to inculcate his pet idea into his child. It is, as it were, virgin ground, and he plows it to his liking. He has complete control. He is master. He directs it as he wishes, and prevents others from planting strange ideas or ideas hostile or antagonistic to his own. In this manner we commence breeding ideas, and we continue breeding the same ideas, on the same principle as breeding pigeons or chickens; they are all of the same kind, if you don't cross them; and the more eggs you lay the more chickens you get, and if they multiply rapidly, especially if you have many hens to one rooster (as the Jews had), what a multitude to spoil a garden-patch! That is precisely what happens, and that is what actually took place with Abraham. We have also a natural limitation to brain culture. We may instance the orang-outang, the Bushman, the negro, the idiot, etc.--brains that are not susceptible to much culture or education. The understanding, the development of the intellectual faculties, is limited of necessity. There is no possibility of going beyond their capacity; it will hold a given measure and no more. Even among these, the range of intelligence may vary some degrees. Impairment, effectiveness, or entire absence of any one of the senses, limits intellectual acquirements. The uniform activity of all the senses is thereby hindered. We have in addition innumerable varieties of brain in size, quality, quantity, form; as also inherited failings or diseased conditions. The qualities of God depend upon the qualities of the man. There has not yet been a god conceived by the human mind but greediness was the chief element. Men made gods for others, whose inferior intellect was easily swayed to believe in great benefits they were to expect, but never got, yet were continually paying for. Every man or woman is responsible for his or her acts, and no God--supposing there to be any--can save him or her. There can be no intercession between man, and nature or nature's laws. Every living being is held to strict accountability to the prevailing forces and the controlling elements that compose it. It is always a question of unchangeable equilibrium between the elements and the surrounding medium, as to the kind of a God we may acquire. A man can see no farther than his sight will permit him. The organ of sight, the eye, may be so constituted that we can barely recognize the nearest object, or we may without difficulty distinguish the smallest object at a great distance. This condition, of seeing objects near, at a moderate distance, or far off, or not seeing at all, depends on the natural construction of the organ itself. The difference between the various qualities of sight is due to the proper qualities and shape of the various structures that enter into the composition of the organ of vision. Every part must be perfect--the lens, the iris, the cornea, the vitreous humor, etc. Not only must the parts be perfect, but they must also be in a healthy condition, to produce accurate vision. All this answers well for ordinary purposes in life, taking in such impressions as the apparatus of vision may from time to time receive. These are retained, stored up; thus memory of objects, the impressions of which have been recorded, may be recalled to mind either in actuality or in imagination. The education of that organ consists in the number, variety, and kind of impressions received. This constitutes the degree of educational experience, being regulated by the amount of knowledge of the greater or lesser number of objects that have been recorded through the retina on the great central nervous system. Experience, long practice, matures and perfects the knowledge of all things that meet the eye; understanding becomes more thorough, intellect clearer, and judgment more accurate, enabling us by that means to recognize the smallest imperfection, the slightest deviation, and the most delicate shade of harmony, in color and form. We all know how hard it is for a child to recognize shapes, objects, colors, etc. We know its long and tedious repetitions of looking at one and the same thing an infinite number of times before it will recognize it. We know that a child will repeat things, or the names of things, without knowing anything about them; or, it may know the names of things yet not recognize the things when presented to its sight. The decision or judgment whether the thing is right and proper, is left to the person who has already had experience and acquired knowledge and understanding concerning these matters. Thus the child may be directed rightly or wrongly, and its education must depend on the accuracy of the instruction received. However, the impressions received in the early part of life remain firm, and are not easily removed or eradicated, no matter how faulty, wrong, how perverse and false, they may be. The stronger and deeper the impressions and the longer they have become habituated to them, the harder it is to correct them, the more difficult to explain the errors. It is in such cases almost impossible to convince, and a tedious task to eradicate. By these early educational processes durable habits are acquired, that become persistent and remain during life; especially when no contrary influences have been brought to bear upon them to modify or correct them. It is almost an impossibility to train or educate the organ, whether sense of sight or ear, or the organ of voice, after a certain ago has been reached. An artist must start young in his artistic education if he has any desire to excel in that art--that is, if the organs of sight and touch are to be evenly balanced. So that whenever any person inherits the necessary qualities of sight and touch, and these become educated, I mean accurately trained, skill must result in excellence, and from that reach to a degree of perfection. The high art of painting becomes this man's ideal, and this ideal his god, if the education of the other senses has not materially interfered in shading his ideal, or the moral and social qualities, giving his productions a tone or tint that may cloud or brighten his efforts, not forgetting the inherent or acquired bias of other surroundings that may influence his mind. In the culture of music or of the ear, there is a wonderful difference in the kind of sounds a person has received as his earliest impressions, the number of sounds his scale of the notes consists of. What we term the monotonous sounds of Chinese music delight the Chinaman's ear, and he cannot conceive how it is possible for Europeans to tolerate the immense amount of confusion that is usually displayed in an orchestra. Yet the European is delighted with our music and finds the Chinese music very dull. The same difference, but not to that degree, exists among the various European nationalities. Sprightly France thinks British music very dull, etc. Painting is an art, but everybody cannot paint, though everybody has sight and touch. That art requires a great deal of training. The vast majority of mankind are not able even to draw an accurate outline of any object. Sight, the organ of vision, is a difficult organ to educate. The same difficulties confront us with other organs. A degree of perfection is requisite in the construction of the organ in order to confer the necessary qualification for a higher training. And here too the education consists of receiving impressions through the organ of hearing to the brain, and these, like the impressions of sight, are recorded, that is to say, they are retained, in memory, so that we may recall them, or recognize them, when familiar sounds strike the ear. Any kind of simple sound is easily retained. A child will much more easily recognize the voice of a cat or a dog than a painting or a picture, and will remember the one but not recognize the other. There is certainly a difference in the educational capabilities of these organs. Simple sounds are easily retained and easily reproduced. A simple combination of sounds are also retained without difficulty. Thus it comes that we are all more or less imitators of sounds or simple melodies. These seem to contribute to our amusement more readily, either for our own satisfaction, or for the satisfaction of others, or both. These reproductions of sounds or melodies do not require any mental effort or physical effort. The organ of voice may be used--that is, we attempt to sing. We may hum, or we can pucker our lips together and whistle. Each individual whistles in his own peculiar fashion, seldom two alike. They may be similar, but never alike. The fault may lie in the lips, the tongue, in the form of the opening made, the manner of blowing through the opening formed by the lips, the duration and strength of the expiration, dryness or moisture of the mouth, the thickness or flabbiness of cheeks, etc., etc. Hence it comes that every man has his whistle. You may take a class and train them to whistle a melody, say "Yankee Doodle." Each one will produce similar successive sounds or notes, so that that particular melody is recognized, but each one will have his own "Yankee Doodle," with peculiarities, characteristics peculiarly his own. If, for example, he is musically inclined, or has had any training in music, he or she may put a quaver or two in, as a variation, more or less. Yet each one will still own his own whistle and pipe his own "Yankee Doodle." That is just what happens with God. We have no God, we never had one, but we have been educated up to one. In childhood we already hear the first indistinct sound, and we don't know whether it is the bark of a dog or the mew of a cat. By and by, as we grow older and are ready to attend Sunday-school, or some other institution where these instructions are imparted, you learn the melody of "Yankee Doodle"--rather puzzling at first, but it comes. Variations are put in to suit special cases and special occasions, and each individual member of any one class whistles his "Yankee Doodle" to the best of his ability--entirely his own; he is perfectly happy with it; it does not in any way interfere in the ordinary pursuits in life, his pleasures, his stomach, his diversion nor his business; and really it makes no difference where he is, in the street, in the factory, in the store, on the exchange, in the hovel or in the palace, he carries his "Yankee Doodle" with him. Whistle it over a birth, over a wedding, or over a funeral, whistle it wherever you will, it is the same "Yankee Doodle." It is used on all occasions--in wars on the battlefield, or at peace on parade, etc. Thus it happens that everyone, male or female, has his or her own peculiar "Doodle." If the man or woman or child had never heard this melody they would certainly not have known anything about it, and therefore could not have enjoyed that particular melody. He or she might have heard another melody just as simple, perhaps just as stupid, but differently constructed. The culture of these theological ideas forms the fundamental groundwork of our educational church system, and each sect has its own method of planting its seed according to its peculiar notions. We must always bear in mind that before nerve tissue was developed, nerve force or thought could not exist; that the phenomena of imagination, or the product of a combination of ideas, the result of the impressions received by the senses, retained, and passing, connectedly or disconnectedly, through the brain, could not be effected except by experience and training. The idea of a God or Gods impressed early in life, while the brain is being developed--the brain tissue of course--remains firmly rooted, and is very difficult to change or eradicate later in life. In case a change is ever produced, it takes place by a process of reasoning, when understanding has been acquired. The acceptance of an idea or an opinion requires little sense and no reasoning, and, indeed, no education. Children believe anything they are told, until they grow older and learn to know better. Men and women believe because they don't know better. Accidentally they were placed in a particular groove of thinking, wherein they can glide forward, backward, round in a circle, perpetually, with ease and without interruption, without effort and without understanding. This perpetual gliding motion, within circumscribed limits, is over the same God, Holy Ghost, Christ, sin and salvation, or the reverse; no advancement or progress. Whatever has been accomplished in the affairs of men, has been done without the prescribed limits, and to that we owe our present civilization and material prosperity. Whoever the first individual was that proposed worship, no matter how it originated, or what it was, or how crude, the thought was the product of some man's brain. Whether he ever stood face to face with his own idea like Moses, or Mohammed, or anyone else, makes not the slightest difference. It was a man's individual notion, prompted by fear, ignorance, or astonishment. It is the work of the brain just the same. It was their idols, images, god, gods, and men that were endowed with divinity, were held sacred, worshiped, and honored. These human inventions were supplemented by other human inventions, rites and rituals, up to this present time. We discard ideas that have been tried and found wanting for modified or new ones--as Abraham, Moses, Christ, Mohammed, Luther, Wesley, etc. The notions of these men in turn have undergone the civilizing filtering process, until there is little left but the mere sound. The Unitarians, for example, have stripped the Christian trinity down to a skeleton. They seem to say: This was once the great bugaboo: you need not be scared, it's perfectly harmless. It has been civilized, you know. Science did it. Hell is out of fashion. Heaven we have on earth, if we have the means to do it with. We can be angels if we wish to, saints if necessary, and holy if desirable. Every man makes his own heaven, his own hell, his own angels, his own bliss, and his own god. Yes, he has his own saints and his own divinities. A woman does precisely the same thing. The imagination supplies all the necessary material for their production, selected from natural objects and put together in a manner most pleasing, acceptable, and satisfactory to each one. We make them as good as we know how, as pretty and as delightful as our taste and fancy can create them. Yet the kind of whimsical representations of the mind depends largely upon the condition of the nervous system, time of life, and our daily occupation. A young girl at puberty, whose mind is entering into that beautiful paradise of dreamland, blooming with buds of hopes and rosy wishes, experiences the delights of new sensations, creates her God, her Jesus, or her Holy Ghost, to fill the nooks of her aspirations, with all the abounding exaltation and luxuries of her creative power. Every cloud has wings, every star bright eyes that wink and beckon her to future bliss, to desires unknown yet longed for. She listens with eager ears for every sound. The zephyrs of the spring of life are wafting music to her ear. As she gazes with gushing eyes into ethereal space, she is searching the heavens for coming enchantment. Her doll, the god or the plaything of childhood, has lost its interest, and all the pretty things that formerly were so pleasing have lost their charm, as the bell and smaller infantile toy had lost theirs before the doll had nestled into her affections. Now a more realistic feeling permeates her senses, and beauties of a new and more attractive form occupy her agitated heart and brain. What is the awakening of these new emotions, the unfolding of these new sentiments, that seem to linger on the borderland of restrained passion? Is it not the dawn of love, the transitory period, that bridge of nervous exaltation that leads from puberty to maternity? She has her own god, a figure to her notion as pure, refined, and beautiful as she can picture in the visions of her waking or sleeping dreamland mind. Her sighs, her prayers, her devotions, are directed to him. This is her coming Messiah, her angel, her everything, that is to realize all her hopes and expectations. It is her God. Can a jockey or a prizefighter have feelings like these? The former has a horsey god, the latter a muscular. The fisherman, the sailor, the soldier, each in his sphere has his or her god. Underlying all the busy activities of daily life, whatever feelings of care or pleasure each may experience, it is but upon rare occasions he puckers his lips to give vent to his devotional feelings and whistles his Yankee Doodle--his God! Our gods are as we make them. If we are good our god is good, if we are pure our god is pure, and if our senses are subordinate to our reason and understanding our god will be one of reason and understanding, but if we are impure, bad, and evil-minded, our senses and passions ruling supreme, reason and understanding are subordinate in our god, and the evils of animal sense predominate. Every man is his own god. As he is, so is his god. As he makes himself, so will his god be. As he protects himself, so God will protect him. As he guides himself, so will God guide him. Whatsoever a man accomplishes for himself, that will God accomplish for him. Whatsoever a man does for himself, that God will do for him. If a man supports himself, God will support him. If he neglects himself, God will neglect him. The more he depends on himself, the surer is his dependence on God. As he saves himself, so God will surely save him. As he injures himself, so will he be injured by God. As a man punishes himself, so will he be punished by God. God will help him who can help himself. If a man is true to himself, God will be true to him. By industry, economy, and sobriety you will confer blessings on yourself; you have no need of God to bless you. Make yourself a good man or woman, and you will surely have a good God. A brutal man never has a meek god, a stingy man a generous god, nor a vicious man a merciful god. Every man brings himself to the level of a brute or lower, or to the highest type of nobility of man. God never made man, but every man makes his god. THE GATEWAYS THROUGH WHICH KNOWLEDGE ENTERS THE SENSES. The functions of the brain. Perception--Receiving impressions--Retaining impressions--Reproducing impressions--Knowing--Forming simple ideas--Compound ideas--Complex ideas--Mixed ideas and complicated ideas--Conducting, transferring, and reflexation-- Coördination. Sight. Hearing. Touch-feeling. Smell. Taste. Recognition } Comparing } Discernment } Attention } In Retention } common. Succession } Identity } Diversity } Continuity Contemplation Distance Distance Distance Color Solidity Solidity Solidity Figure Figure Shape Shape Shape { long Size { thick Size { thin Dimensions Dimensions Softness Softness Softness Hardness Hardness Hardness Rough Roughness Roughness Roughness Smooth Smoothness Smoothness Smoothness Motion Motion Motion Motion Action Action Action Action Dryness Dryness Dry Dryness Moisture Moisture Moist Moisture Fluidity Fluid Fluidity Fluidity Vibration Vibration Vibration Vibration Heat Heat Heat Heat Cold Cold Cold Cold Pain Pleasure Odor Odor Expansion Expansion Expansion Expansion Contraction Contraction Contraction Contraction Resistance Resistance Relation Relation Relation Rest Rest Rest Unrest Unrest Sound Appearance Proportion Proportion Proportion Proportion \----------------------------------v----------------------------------/ | PRODUCE Sensations Emotions--Feelings-- Ideation--Thought--Understanding-- Reflection--Recollection--Deliberation--Induction-- Memory--Imagination--Judgment--Intellect--Will Power--Mind: The normal products of a healthy nervous system. (The abnormal result from a deranged condition of the cerebro-spinal system.) MORALS: WHENCE THEY SPRING. To be moral means that the organs be properly and legitimately used, in accordance with the law of nature: STOMACH. SEXUAL ORGANS. For nutrition of the body. For the propagation of the species. Wants Normally Supplied. Satisfaction } { Satisfaction Contentment } LEAD TO Health and Happiness, { Contentment Comfort } Purity, Chastity, Love, { Comfort Pleasure } Affection, Joy. { Pleasure Peace } { Peace Abnormal Use of the Organs. Starvation } { Passion Hunger } LEAD TO Vanity, Negligence, Indolence, { Lust Poverty } Deception, Discontent, Selfishness, { Overindulgence Luxury } Disease. { Lasciviousness Extravagance } { Vice Drunkenness } { Whoredoms Crime. Sin. -------- Will Power Intellectually Used. Industry, Integrity, Activity, Honor, Courage, Goodness, Charity, Benevolence, Sympathy, Pity, Humanity. -------- Be wise, let the gods and church alone; They're false, contrary to nature's plan. Trespass not, there's nothing to atone. Be human, an upright man. All their rites and creeds are full of flaws. As nature's products, we thrive and grow. But we must be ruled by nature's laws If we'd happy be--ourselves must know. Morals! are the laws we must obey. Infringe them not, prayers cannot save. Though blessed, we the penalty must pay. Not to God, or church, or priest be slave! CHAPTER XXX. THE NON CREDO. Religion, supernaturalism, ecclesiastical control of human affairs, have done more harm than the good they have ever effected. For several thousand years they have been doing the worst of mischief--in spite of their conceited belief to the contrary--to actual enlightenment, to the advancement and prosperity of the masses, to the progress of nations generally. They have been a persistent barrier to every step forward, and have persecuted every idea that threatened in any way to interfere with their organized system. The sacred or Hebraic nationality, steeped in barbarism, washed in cruelty, and bathed in the blood of humanity, was succeeded by another organized system, the Roman Catholic church, which was by no means an improvement upon the Bible methods. They added savagery and cruelty of a more refined character. They associated with it a tyranny and a persecution that fairly blackens the pages of history. All was done, however, for the sacred cause, with the cant, sanctimoniousness, greed, and selfishness that only the church and its saintly priests could be capable of. These self-styled divine organizations ever have been, and are even now, inimical to the best social interests of humanity. Their own aggrandizement was of greater importance to them than the welfare of the oppressed. They are the real promoters of class distinction. They are the promulgators of sectarian hate. They lessen the dignity of woman. They are the fomentors of prejudice and superstition. They are the supporters and sustainers of the opulent, the powerful, the wealthy and influential, to the detriment and debasement of the poor and more unfortunate classes. They are the actual enemies of virtue and simplicity of life--by their expensive church trappings, their gorgeous adornments, their costly decorations, their glaring exhibition, their glittering finery, their pompous display of church dress, their gilded magnificence, their showy grandeur, their ostentation and boastful ceremonies, overawing the senses, and subduing the humble, the ignorant, making them mentally more stupid, the slaves to a pernicious system of doctrine. In ancient times, in the days of antiquity, the males were the chief worshipers. They were the privileged portion of the community, who assumed the duties to come in direct contact with all that was considered sacred, holy, or divine. Woman was considered as a defiled or polluted creature, unworthy or unfit to come within the sacred precincts of their temples or participate in any church affairs, or to minister in any of their ecclesiastical rites or ceremonies. Women had nothing to say. They have nothing to say to this day, in the Roman Catholic church especially, and in the orthodox Protestant denominations very little, because Paul lays down the law in Cor. xiv, 34: "Let your women keep silence in your churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law." The sacred Christian view of woman is that she is an inferior creature. She is the slave, the plaything, the toy of pleasurable gratification. God himself so ordained it, when he created Adam out of the dust and Eve out of one of Adam's ribs. That was the Chaldean mode of explaining her inferiority and of subjecting woman to man. These barbarians, first the Hebrews, and Christians later, did not think fit to place woman on a level with man. Therefore they placed her in the lower scale of creation as a servant and handmaid to man. The heathens, the Greeks especially, were more considerate, politer, and more refined towards women. Women were honored by them, which is evident from the composition of the council of Jupiter, the supreme divinity. This was composed of six gods, namely, Jupiter, Neptune, Mercury, Apollo, Mars, and Vulcan; and six goddesses, namely, Juno, Ceres, Vesta, Minerva, Diana, and Venus. To this assembly no other deities were admitted. There is some sense, reason, and humanity in this arrangement. It is very unlike the great masculine bully of a God, what Christians call sacred and scriptural Jehova, an intermeddling, sensual, beef-eating affair, who has sons and never tells any one where they came from, who the mother was (Gen. vi, 2): "And the sons of God," etc. Vestal virgins were admitted by the Romans to their temples, thus showing that woman was honored. She was equally privileged with man to minister to the sacred offices of the gods. Civilization has advanced, progress has been made in the arts and sciences, the intellectual faculties are more developed, and to woman has been conceded her proper place among the learned and the more liberal portion of humanity. Intellectually no line of demarcation is drawn. Cultured brain is cultured brain, whether found in man or in woman. Both sexes stand on the same platform, on an equal footing, and they receive equal honor and recognition if the mental capacity is equal. What is the relation of woman to-day to the respective churches to which she may belong? Has the Roman Catholic church receded one step from her antiquated ecclesiastical position? Or have the orthodox Protestants? Not one step! Woman still holds the same degraded position in the Christian church as she did a thousand years ago. Circumstances have somewhat ameliorated the relative position of church and worshipers. Formerly the males were the principal church attenders and worshipers. In modern times it is the women who make the congregations. The male, if he attends, does so to please the female more than himself. Besides, the sexual attractions contribute very largely towards these Sunday entertainments. "Women" (says Maudsley, in his "Pathology of Mind," ch. iv, page 143) "are naturally more prone to religious worship than man, and more apt to fall into a morbidly subjective habit, first, because of the preponderance of the affective life in them, and secondly, because they have not the distracting and correcting and intellectually hardening influences of outside interests and pursuits which men have. If unmarried women chance to come, as by reason of those conditions they are apt to do, under the ignorant and misapplied zeal of unwise priests who mistake for deep religious feeling what is really morbid self-feeling springing at bottom from unsatisfied instinct or other uterine action upon the mind, the mischief is greatly aggravated. It were well if those who make it their business to guide the consciousness of mankind through the manifold changes and chances of life were to be at the pains to inquire how much supposed religious feeling may be due to physiological causes, before they sanction or enjoin a repeated introspection of the feelings. He whose every organ is in perfect health knows not he has a body, and only becomes conscious that he has organs when something wrong is going on; in like manner a healthy mind in the sound exercise of the functions is little conscious that he has feeling, and only gets very self-conscious when there is something morbid in the processes of its activity. The ecstatic trances of such saintly women as Catherine de Sienne and St. Theresa, in which they believed themselves to be visited by their Savior and to be received as veritable spouses into his bosom, were, though they knew it not, little else than vicarious sexual orgasm; a condition of things which the intense contemplation of the naked male figure, carved or sculptured in all its proportions on the cross, is more fitted to produce in women of susceptible nervous temperament than people are apt to consider. Every experienced physician must have met with instances of single and childless women who have devoted themselves with extraordinary zeal to habitual religious exercises, and who having gone insane as a culmination of their emotional fervor, have straightway exhibited the saddest mixture of religious and erotic symptoms--a boiling over with lust, in voice, face, gesture, under the pitiful degradation of disease. On such persons the confessional has had sometimes the most injurious effect, more especially in those churches which spring Romanism in their ritual, have not placed confession under the stringent regulations and safeguards with which the Roman Catholic church surrounds it. The fanatical religious sects, such as the Shakers and the like, which spring up from time to time in communities and disgust them by the offensive way in which they mingle love and religion, are inspired in great measure by sexual feelings. On the one hand, there is probably the cunning of a hypocritical knave or the self-deceiving duplicity of a half-insane one, using the weaknesses of weak woman to minister to his vanity or to his lust, under a religious guise; on the other hand, there is an exaggerated self-feeling, rooted often in sexual passions, which is unwittingly fostered under the cloak of religious emotion, and which is apt to conduct to madness or to sin. In such case the holy kiss of love owes its warmth to the sexual impulse which inspires it, consciously or unconsciously, and the mystical religious union of the sexes is fitted to issue in a less spiritual union. Without doubt, an excessive development of the emotional life in any other direction would be equally pernicious. All that the unwise religious teacher can be blamed for is his disposition to foster the egotistic development of emotion, without considering its real origin, by the overwhelming importance which he teaches the individual to attach to himself and his destiny. Instead of urging him to lessen the gap between himself and nature until he loses self in a sympathetic oneness with nature, he stimulates him to widen it more and more until he rises to the insane conceit of himself as something entirely distinct from nature--an unrelated, spiritual essence, for whose benefit the universe and all that there is has been specially created. Assuredly were not man now, as he always has been, instinctively wiser than his creeds, were he not moved by a deeper impulse than consciousness can give account of, he would make no progress in civilization." The church has lost its grip on the male portion of society. They have considerably outgrown the ecclesiastical swaddling of scriptural doctrine of the ancient and modern theology. The woman is the stronghold as worshiper, and sustainer of the sacred masculine prerogative whom they can easily influence. By reason, as the holy book claims, of their intellectual feebleness, women are the submissive tools of cunning priests, sentimental and emotional appeals, and yield readily to their extravagant dictum. The priests exhort them, with their conventional religious phraseology, to be partakers of some mysterious glory to be found somewhere in infinite space. Keeping ever in sight the same stupefying refrain of the orthodox prayer and blessing: "Blessed and glorious trinity, trinity in unity, three--one, three persons in one God, tri-personal, triune, coeternal, coequal, God-man, O Lord God! who art one God, one Lord! not one only person, but three persons in one substance! O Lord God! Lamb of God! Son of the father! O God the son, Redeemer of the world! O God the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the father and the son! The blessing of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, be among you. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, bless, preserve, and keep you. Glory be to the father, and to the son, and to the Holy Ghost. Now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be all honor and glory. Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth ever, one God, world without end," etc. These are the terms and doxologies, forms of prayer and blessings. Can anyone conceive a more meaningless set of phrases? These are automatically repeated year in and year out, with the same intonation, gesture, whirling and buzzing in a circle. Do not the brains become blunted, the senses dulled? Or is it a mere mechanical effort, accompanied by an extraordinary amount of insincerity and actual duplicity of character? The conceit of these theological gentlemen, claiming divine superiority, is in consequence of the frequent repetition of the above vapid nonsense, that they are the truly chosen and elect, separate and apart from other people. Though they accept and place trust in the above creed, God, Son, and Holy Ghost, and delude themselves with prayers, blessings, psalm-singing, and the rest of supernatural subterfuge, do they believe that it will save them--save their bodies from dissolution, when the vital organs have ceased to perform their functions? These fixed delusions are not wholesome. Encouraging them is misleading and deceiving those who are ignorant of the actual state of nature. It is playing upon the weak and simple-minded. It means corrupting their morals and their understanding. It is paralyzing to every human effort. It is degrading manhood and womanhood. Analyze the meaning of the belief, the language employed, the associations of ideas, and seriously consider the amount of sense you can discover. Does not this rigid system of changeless belief prevent intellectual development? Does it not bar proper inquiry into the phenomena of nature? Does it not encourage a cowardly dependence on priestcraft and hypocritical cunning? Does it not extinguish every impulse towards the evolution of thought? Does it not stamp out the energies and aspirations of man and woman? Is not the kneeling and praying before some daub of a picture or the figure of some supposed God or saint debasing and degrading to the individual? Is not the act of prayer a humiliating acknowledgement either of an enfeebled mind or of a contemptible slave? Is not the will power subdued and deteriorated and the natural energy destroyed? Are not the functions of the brain seriously interfered with, the mental faculties checked in the normal process of development, and the powers of reason stifled by the asphyxiating influences of prayer? Does it not blunt the sense of responsibility, breed insincerity, foster falsehood, promote lying, and offer a premium for wrong-doing and a shelter for crime? Imagine the stupefying effect of counting beads. The "Rosary" is a series of prayers, and consists of fifteen decades. Each decade contains ten Ave Marias, marked by small beads, preceded by a pater noster, marked by a larger bead, and concluded by a gloria patri. Five decades make a chaplet, which is a third of a rosary. What a sluggardizing effect on the intellect, what a suppression of intelligence, and how near it brings them to the borderland of monomaniacs, by the constant mumbling of those insipid compositions. The sooner we get rid of the belief in this supernatural intervention in human affairs the better for our physical, moral, and mental welfare. Every time the priest induces his pupil to repeat a prayer, he stupefies and degrades his pupil. He knocks the pins of self-restraint and self-reliance right from under him. The blessing the pupil receives, and the forgiveness at the confessional, shift the responsibility for his acts off his shoulders, thus leading him to believe himself irresponsible for any wrong he may commit. The absurd doctrine inculcated, that God made him necessarily makes him irresponsible. If God was a fool big enough to make him bad, or silly, why should he be responsible? The priest who helps to maintain and sustain this belief, helps to weaken the pupil's mind and rather gives him license to indulge than restrains him. You are taught to deceive yourselves and deceive others by prayer, but you cannot bribe nature; you cannot deceive nature. The penalty must be paid for every transgression. And prayers are absolutely useless, nay, every prayer is an admission of an act of cowardice, just as every blessing pronounced is a humiliation to those receiving it. What necessity is there for a man who is supposed to teach morality to be dressed like a clown in scarlet, purple, or other-colored coat and decorated with an antiquated headgear like a mountebank going through a series of peculiar gesticulations and ceremonials of buffoonery, in order to sustain this ecclesiastical humbug? Would it not be better to train the intellect by teaching the young how to observe accurately, to reason soundly from facts, to think honestly and act sincerely, have the truth revealed and nature and nature's laws soundly and practically interpreted? An insight into the secret workings of nature would lead to a more precise adjustment on the part of man to his complex surroundings, guard cautiously against the infringement of nature's laws, and correspondingly produce gain in intellectual power. How can a man be otherwise than reckless, or willfully disobedient, to laws he is entirely ignorant of, though he brings certain punishment upon himself? Can there be any better discipline than to learn the cause and know the root of all evils, in order to avoid them, thus improving the morals and inducing one to take earnest pains to do well in the future? There is more satisfaction in doing right than many may think, if people were instructed how. Unfortunately, the ecclesiastical mills of forgiveness are too busy teaching supernatural follies, which actually mislead the ignorant and the foolish. As a foolish woman spoils her own child by her own silly conduct, so the supernatural creeds have spoilt humanity by perverting the moral responsibility in teaching their pernicious beliefs. Wonder why the world has not become better? Teach men the moral and physical laws of nature, by lessons of experience, that may guide them in their conduct through life. Teach them to learn prudence, and observe them faithfully and sincerely. Good, natural, healthy thoughts produce good actions; by their frequent repetition, generate good habits of doing well, of doing right. The nervous structures that are brought into play, the mental activities, function these excellences, developing these faculties, generating higher moral feelings. We finally come to regard as doing wrong acting contrary to our acquired habit. Good impulses to act right and do well come out of good feelings. To act otherwise becomes repugnant to our acquired habits, our second nature, and is judged unwise by our reason and understanding. Let nature teach you to be wise, and when you understand the natural you will cease to believe in aught supernatural. Do not believe in a God--there is no such thing. Do not believe in the divinity of any man, whether he be called Moses, Jesus Christ, or Martin Luther. Do not believe that the book called the Bible, sacred scripture, and Testaments, new or old, is sacred, holy, or inspired by any supernatural being. Do not believe the story of the creation as recited in the five books of Moses--they are not true. It is a fiction, a sort of fairy tale. It is the work of the imagination of man. Do not believe in any miracle. No man can perform a miracle, except to the ignorant and stupid. No man in the Bible ever performed a miracle. Those said to have been performed were deceptions, tricks, and delusions. Do not believe in the Holy Ghost. There are no ghosts, either holy or unholy. And above all, do not give credence to that very silly piece of nonsense, that the Holy Ghost committed adultery with Mrs. Mary Joseph, the reputed mother of Jesus Christ. Nor believe that the young man Jesus was the son of God, nor that he came upon earth to save the world from sinning. Do not believe that there are three Gods in one, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; nor God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Ghost. This fallacy, compounded of Hebraic theology and Grecian mythology, is an absurd fabrication--this trinity in unity, and unity in trinity. Do not believe in a heaven, nor in a hell. You make your own heaven, and your own hell. Nor place any reliance on future rewards, or future punishments. Your good conduct will bring your rewards and your bad conduct your punishments. Do not believe in angels, spirits, or any supernatural existences. Have no faith in anything you do not understand. Place no reliance on divine interference. Do not follow blindly any ecclesiastical teachings. Rely upon yourself. Let reason and common sense be your guide. Do not pray--praying makes a coward of you. Nor place confidence in the blessing of any man, be he the pope or some fanatical preacher. Never kneel before any image, whether it be the nude figure of Christ, or a daub painting of the Virgin Mary. Do not be the dupe of priestly cunning. Do not be afraid of anything except your own bad deeds, your vicious habits, and your own transgressions. SOME RULES AND DUTIES IN LIFE. Health is essential for physical and mental labor. The maintenance of health consists in having proper food, proper clothing, and proper shelter. Work is a duty, nature demands it. Exercise that duty. Earn so much as will provide the necessary comforts in life. Indolence is a vice, and laziness a crime. They are of no good to their practicers, and a curse to others. Economy is a law of nature. Save your surplus produce of industry. It comes useful in time of need. Avoid excesses of all kinds. Do not overtax or over-stimulate the organs of the body. Luxuries are injurious to health. Remember the stomach is only a receptacle for food and not a cesspool for all kinds of refuse. Cleanliness of stomach and body is necessary for the healthy action both of mind and body. A rigid adherence to the natural rules is the surest safeguard against disease. Make judicious use of everything. Abuse neither yourself nor others. Each individual is his own guardian over his own acts. He himself is responsible for his own misdeeds, whether through ignorance, want of proper education or understanding, or weakness. Our guide through life should be: Speak the truth always. Let yes and no be the form of speech. Every promise fulfill. Never deceive yourself, or deceive others. Promise nothing you cannot perform. Honesty is ennobling, dishonesty debasing. Let every word and act be strictly reliable, never waver or fail in your integrity. Be punctilious in your duties towards others. Do not cheat yourself or your neighbors. Misrepresentation is wrong. Have confidence in yourself, others will have confidence in you. Do not slander others, lest you do an injury, doing evil without benefit to yourself. A slanderer is despised. Let your motives be pure, your purpose upright. Be mild in speech, even in temper. Kind words are inexpensive. Anger and passion are brutal qualities, be human. Do not get excited over trifles, it does not prolong life. If your habits are bad, mend them. Good impulses come from good feelings, as bad impulses from bad feelings. Our character is molded by our habits, as our habits are by our instruction. By your conduct gain the esteem of your fellow-men. It is better to be loved than hated. Injure no one. Despise no one. Be neither prejudiced nor bigoted. Gain the respect of every man, and respect those that deserve to be respected. Obey the existing laws. Learn to depend on yourself. Trust in your own judgment, none will be so true to you as yourself. Hope is delusive, action is certain. Reveal not your own thoughts to others lest they betray you. Confidence, self-possession, and presence of mind guard against surprises. Do not mind other people's business, you may not find time to mind your own. Negligence is a fault, diligence is a virtue. Frivolity is the froth of life. It has neither strength nor substance. There is more satisfaction in an ounce of peace than in a ton of wrangling. Control your appetites, subdue your passions, if you would be human. Remember there is no heaven beyond this life, therefore make your home and your life as beautiful as you can. Few wants well supplied, is better than many wants unsatisfied. Desire nothing you cannot obtain, it will save you annoyance. Do not assume to be what you are not. Nature has marked you. Do not be tempted by trifles, life is too short and time too precious. Pleasures are enjoyable where the senses are not overstrained. Be not too proud, nor too vain, no matter how great you are; man, like the animal, is composed only of eighteen elements. Ambition is laudable, when others are not made to suffer. Do not try to be greater than you are; a gill will never fill a pint. Gain understanding, and let reason and common sense guide you in all your acts. Look out. Save your honor, your integrity, and your character. Our duty on earth is to be good, to do right, and contribute to the betterment of our fellow-men. The higher we rise in intelligence, the farther we are removed from the brute. Free yourself from all supernatural notions, all antiquated beliefs, and all superstitions. The humanization of mankind marks the progress of civilization. The excitement of pleasure is not lasting; exhaustion stops all enjoyment; too much sunshine is fatiguing; too much laughter is trying. Empty stomachs make a bad audience, hunger breeds discontent. Poverty is degrading; it ruins health, breeds disease, and lowers the morals. Neglect yourself and everybody will neglect you. Lost opportunities are seldom recovered. The higher you climb the farther you are removed from the lower levels. One wrong act loses the balance of integrity, our esteem suffers. One grain of intelligence is worth a pound of brute force. Be prudent, discreet, and deliberate in all transactions in life, but quick in decision. Distrust persuasive, bland, smooth, suave talkers. A pious hypocrite is the worst of frauds. Your own faults are the greatest misfortune. A brave man is never discouraged, and simpletons are the prey for sharpers. Don't be a coward in danger, or pray when disaster overtakes you. Self-abuse is the worst abuse. Your expenditure should never exceed your income. Aspire to be better, not worse. You cannot get wealthy on nothing. Millionaire and beggar belong to this earth, whether living or dead. Our success in life depends on the quality of Brain. Polished steel is of greater value than common iron ore, so are intellectual faculties of greater worth than uncultured brains. The weaker must yield to the stronger. The friction of life is great; the less the resisting force, the sooner it yields. In the struggle the strongest survive. Tenacity to life and tenacity to our possessions lead to success. Let those who accumulate great wealth unjustly, yield it readily to those who are most in need. A man can accumulate vast riches only by the industry of many, never by his own. Remember dead men enjoy nothing, therefore be wise, be reasonable, make your heaven on earth, your paradise of your home. Be your own God, your own Savior, your own priest. NOTES [1] Explanation.--The Roman numerals placed opposite the above list of elementary substances present the difference or equivalent or saturating power of each element. Hydrogen, for example, is a monad, a simple particle, or atom, or unit. Oxygen is a dyad, represented by II, two. It requires two atoms of hydrogen to saturate one of oxygen, or its equivalent, to form water. A triad, III, requires three monads; a tetrad, IV, four; a pentad, V, five; a sexad, VI, six units or monads, their respective equivalents or saturating power. A monad or monogenic element replaces another one by one. An atom of a polygenic element, that is, a dyad, etc., on the other hand, always takes the place of, or is equivalent to, two or more atoms of a monogenic element. [2] Important. [3] Exception. [4] Aristotle, 343 B.C., logician and philosopher, founder of the Peripatetics. [5] Weights and measures were invented about this period. 
46986	----	THE CHRIST A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidences of His Existence By JOHN E. REMSBURG "We must get rid of that Christ." --Emerson New York THE TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY Forty-nine Vesey Street. To My Wife Nora M. Remsburg This Volume is Inscribed Humbly he came, Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shape Of man, scorned by the world, his name unheard Save by the rabble of his native town, Even as a parish demagogue. He led The crowd; he taught them justice, truth, and peace, In semblance; but he lit within their souls The quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword He brought on earth to satiate with the blood Of truth and freedom his malignant soul. At length his mortal frame was led to death. I stood beside him; on the torturing cross No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense; And yet he groaned. Indignantly I summed The massacres and miseries which his name Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried "Go! Go!" in mockery. --Shelley. PREFACE. "We must get rid of that Christ, we must get rid of that Christ!" So spake one of the wisest, one of the most lovable of men, Ralph Waldo Emerson. "If I had my way," said Thomas Carlyle, "the world would hear a pretty stern command--Exit Christ." Since Emerson and Carlyle spoke a revolution has taken place in the thoughts of men. The more enlightened of them are now rid of Christ. From their minds he has made his exit. To quote the words of Prof. Goldwin Smith, "The mighty and supreme Jesus, who was to transfigure all humanity by his divine wit and grace--this Jesus has flown." The supernatural Christ of the New Testament, the god of orthodox Christianity, is dead. But priestcraft lives and conjures up the ghost of this dead god to frighten and enslave the masses of mankind. The name of Christ has caused more persecutions, wars, and miseries than any other name has caused. The darkest wrongs are still inspired by it. The wails of anguish that went up from Kishenev, Odessa, and Bialystok still vibrate in our ears. Two notable works controverting the divinity of Christ appeared in the last century, the Leben Jesu of Strauss, and the Vie de Jesus of Renan. Strauss in his work, one of the masterpieces of Freethought literature, endeavors to prove, and proves to the satisfaction of a majority of his readers, that Jesus Christ is a historical myth. This work possesses permanent value, but it was written for the scholar and not for the general reader. In the German and Latin versions, and in the admirable English translation of Marian Evans (George Eliot), the citations from the Gospels--and they are many--are in Greek. Renan's "Life of Jesus," written in Palestine, has had, especially in its abridged form, an immense circulation, and has been a potent factor in the dethronement of Christ. It is a charming book and displays great learning. But it is a romance, not a biography. The Jesus of Renan, like the Satan of Milton, while suggested by the Bible, is a modern creation. The warp is to be found in the Four Gospels, but the woof was spun in the brain of the brilliant Frenchman. Of this book Renan's fellow-countryman, Dr. Jules Soury, thus writes: "It is to be feared that the beautiful, the 'divine,' dream, as he would say, which the eminent scholar experienced in the very country of the Gospel, will have the fate of the 'Joconda' of Da Vinci, and many of the religious pictures of Raphael and Michael Angelo. Such dreams are admirable, but they are bound to fade.... The Jesus who rises up and comes out from those old Judaizing writings (Synoptics) is truly no idyllic personage, no meek dreamer, no mild and amiable moralist; on the contrary, he is very much more of a Jew fanatic, attacking without measure the society of his time, a narrow and obstinate visionary, a half-lucid thaumaturge, subject to fits of passion, which caused him to be looked upon as crazy by his own people. In the eyes of his contemporaries and fellow-countrymen he was all that, and he is the same in ours." Renan himself repudiated to a considerable extent his earlier views regarding Jesus. When he wrote his work he accepted as authentic the Gospel of John, and to this Gospel he was indebted largely for the more admirable traits of his hero. John he subsequently rejected. Mark he accepted as the oldest and most authentic of the Gospels. Alluding to Mark he says: "It cannot be denied that Jesus is portrayed in this gospel not as a meek moralist worthy of our affection, but as a dreadful magician." This volume on "The Christ" was written by one who recognizes in the Jesus of Strauss and Renan a transitional step, but not the ultimate step, between orthodox Christianity and radical Freethought. By the Christ is understood the Jesus of the New Testament. The Jesus of the New Testament is the Christ of Christianity. The Jesus of the New Testament is a supernatural being. He is, like the Christ, a myth. He is the Christ myth. Originally the word Christ, the Greek for the Jewish Messiah, "the anointed," meant the office or title of a person, while Jesus was the name of the person on whom his followers had bestowed this title. Gradually the title took the place of the name, so that Jesus, Jesus Christ, and Christ became interchangeable terms--synonyms. Such they are to the Christian world, and such, by the law of common usage, they are to the secular world. It may be conceded as possible, and even probable, that a religious enthusiast of Galilee, named Jesus, was the germ of this mythical Jesus Christ. But this is an assumption rather than a demonstrated fact. Certain it is, this person, if he existed, was not a realization of the Perfect Man, as his admirers claim. There are passages in the Gospels which ascribe to him a lofty and noble character, but these, for the most part, betray too well their Pagan origin. The dedication of temples to him and the worship of him by those who deny his divinity is as irrational as it will prove ephemeral. One of the most philosophic and one of the most far-seeing minds of Germany, Dr. Edward von Hartmann, says: "When liberal Protestantism demands religious reverence for the man Jesus, it is disgusting and shocking. They cannot themselves believe that the respect in which Jesus is held by the people and which they have made use of in such an unprotestant manner, can be maintained for any length of time after the nimbus of divinity has been destroyed, and they may reflect on the insufficiency of the momentary subterfuge. The Protestant principle in its last consequences, disposes of all kinds of dogmatic authority in a remorseless manner, and its supporters must, whether they like it or not, dispense with the authority of Christ." CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE Christ's Real Existence Impossible 13 CHAPTER II. Silence of Contemporary Writers 24 CHAPTER III. Christian Evidence 50 CHAPTER IV. Infancy of Christ 65 CHAPTER V. Ministry of Christ 120 CHAPTER VI. Crucifixion of Christ 213 CHAPTER VII. Resurrection of Christ 296 CHAPTER VIII. His Character and Teachings 340 CHAPTER IX. The Christ a Myth 433 CHAPTER X. Sources of the Christ Myth--Ancient Religions 444 CHAPTER XI. Sources of the Christ Myth--Pagan Divinities 499 CHAPTER XII. Sources of the Christ Myth--Conclusion 566 THE CHRIST. CHAPTER I. CHRIST'S REAL EXISTENCE IMPOSSIBLE. The reader who accepts as divine the prevailing religion of our land may consider this criticism on "The Christ" irreverent and unjust. And yet for man's true saviors I have no lack of reverence. For him who lives and labors to uplift his fellow men I have the deepest reverence and respect, and at the grave of him who upon the altar of immortal truth has sacrificed his life I would gladly pay the sincere tribute of a mourner's tears. It is not against the man Jesus that I write, but against the Christ Jesus of theology; a being in whose name an Atlantic of innocent blood has been shed; a being in whose name the whole black catalogue of crime has been exhausted; a being in whose name five hundred thousand priests are now enlisted to keep "Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne." Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of humanity, the pathetic story of whose humble life and tragic death has awakened the sympathies of millions, is a possible character and may have existed; but the Jesus of Bethlehem, the Christ of Christianity, is an impossible character and does not exist. From the beginning to the end of this Christ's earthly career he is represented by his alleged biographers as a supernatural being endowed with superhuman powers. He is conceived without a natural father: "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When, as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. i, 18). His ministry is a succession of miracles. With a few loaves and fishes he feeds a multitude: "And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes divided he among them all. And they did all eat, and were filled. And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes. And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men" (Mark vi, 41-44). He walks for miles upon the waters of the sea: "And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away. And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray; and when the evening was come, he was there alone. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves; for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea" (Matt. xiv, 22-25). He bids a raging tempest cease and it obeys him: "And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full.... And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm" (Mark, iv, 37-39). He withers with a curse the barren fig tree: "And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee, henceforth, forever. And presently the fig tree withered away" (Matt. xxi, 19). He casts out devils: "And in the synagogue there was a man, which had a spirit of an unclean devil.... And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him and hurt him not" (Luke iv, 33, 35). He cures the incurable: "And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off; and they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go show yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed" (Luke xvii, 12-14). He restores to life a widow's only son: "And when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and much people of the city were with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. And he came and touched the bier; and they that bore him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother" (Luke vii, 12-15). He revivifies the decaying corpse of Lazarus: "Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.... Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already.... And when he had thus spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth" (John xi, 14-44). At his crucifixion nature is convulsed, and the inanimate dust of the grave is transformed into living beings who walk the streets of Jerusalem: "Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints, which slept, arose and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many" (Matt. xxvii, 50-53). He rises from the dead: "And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock; and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.... And, behold, there was a great earthquake; for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door.... And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail" (Matt. xxvii, 59, 60; xxviii, 2, 9). He ascends bodily into heaven: "And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven" (Luke xxiv, 50, 51). These and a hundred other miracles make up to a great extent this so-called Gospel History of Christ. To disprove the existence of these miracles is to disprove the existence of this Christ. Canon Farrar makes this frank admission: "If miracles be incredible, Christianity is false. If Christ wrought no miracles, then the Gospels are untrustworthy" (Witness of History to Christ, p. 25). Dean Mansel thus acknowledges the consequences of the successful denial of miracles: "The whole system of Christian belief with its evidences, ... all Christianity in short, so far as it has any title to that name, so far as it has any special relation to the person or the teaching of Christ, is overthrown" (Aids to Faith, p. 3). Dr. Westcott says: "The essence of Christianity lies in a miracle; and if it can be shown that a miracle is either impossible or incredible, all further inquiry into the details of its history is superfluous" (Gospel of the Resurrection, p. 34). A miracle, in the orthodox sense of the term, is impossible and incredible. To accept a miracle is to reject a demonstrated truth. The world is governed, not by chance, not by caprice, not by special providences, but by the laws of nature; and if there be one truth which the scientist and the philosopher have established, it is this: THE LAWS OF NATURE ARE IMMUTABLE. If the laws of Nature are immutable, they cannot be suspended; for if they could be suspended, even by a god, they would not be immutable. A single suspension of these laws would prove their mutability. Now these alleged miracles of Christ required a suspension of Nature's laws; and the suspension of these laws being impossible the miracles were impossible, and not performed. If these miracles were not performed, then the existence of this supernatural and miracle-performing Christ, except as a creature of the human imagination, is incredible and impossible. Hume's masterly argument against miracles has never been refuted: "A miracle is a violation of the laws of Nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable that all men must die; that lead cannot of itself remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water; unless it be that these events are found agreeable to the laws of Nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or, in other words, a miracle, to prevent them? Nothing is esteemed a miracle if it ever happens in the common course of Nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die suddenly; because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against any miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit the appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle" (Essay on Miracles). Alluding to Christ's miracles, M. Renan, a reverential admirer of Jesus of Nazareth, says: "Observation, which has never been once falsified, teaches us that miracles never happen but in times and countries in which they are believed, and before persons disposed to believe them. No miracle ever occurred in the presence of men capable of testing its miraculous character..... It is not, then, in the name of this or that philosophy, but in the name of universal experience, that we banish miracles from history" (Life of Jesus, p. 29). Christianity arose in what was preeminently a miracle-working age. Everything was attested by miracles, because nearly everybody believed in miracles and demanded them. Every religious teacher was a worker of miracles; and however trifling the miracle might be when wrought, in this atmosphere of unbounded credulity, the breath of exaggeration soon expanded it into marvelous proportions. To show more clearly the character of the age which Christ illustrates, let us take another example, the Pythagorean teacher, Apollonius of Tyana, a contemporary of the Galilean. According to his biographers--and they are as worthy of credence as the Evangelists--his career, particularly in the miraculous events attending it, bore a remarkable resemblance to that of Christ. Like Christ, he was a divine incarnation; like Christ his miraculous conception was announced before his birth; like Christ he possessed in childhood the wisdom of a sage; like Christ he is said to have led a blameless life; like Christ his moral teachings were declared to be the best the world had known; like Christ he remained a celibate; like Christ he was averse to riches; like Christ he purified the religious temples; like Christ he predicted future events; like Christ he performed miracles, cast out devils, healed the sick, and restored the dead to life; like Christ he died, rose from the grave, ascended to heaven, and was worshiped as a god. The Christian rejects the miraculous in Apollonius because it is incredible; the Rationalist rejects the miraculous in Christ for the same reason. In proof of the human character of the religion of Apollonius and the divine character of that of Christ it may be urged that the former has perished, while the latter has survived. But this, if it proves anything, proves too much. If the survival of Christianity proves its divinity, then the survival of the miracle-attested faiths of Buddhism and Mohammedanism, its powerful and nourishing rivals, must prove their divinity also. The religion of Apollonius languished and died because the conditions for its development were unfavorable; while the religions of Buddha, Christ, and Mohammed lived and thrived because of the propitious circumstances which favored their development. With the advancement of knowledge the belief in the supernatural is disappearing. Those freed from Ignorance, and her dark sister, Superstition, know that miracles are myths. In the words of Matthew Arnold, "Miracles are doomed; they will drop out like fairies and witchcraft, from among the matter which serious people believe" (Literature and Dogma). What proved the strength of Christianity in an age of ignorance is proving its weakness in an age of intelligence. Christian scholars themselves, recognizing the indefensibility and absurdity of miracles, endeavor to explain away the difficulties attending their acceptance by affirming that they are not real, but only apparent, violations of Nature's laws; thus putting the miracles of Christ in the same class with those performed by the jugglers of India and Japan. They resolve the supernatural into the natural, that the incredible may appear credible. With invincible logic and pitiless sarcasm Colonel Ingersoll exposes the lameness of this attempt to retain the shadow of the supernatural when the substance is gone: "Believers in miracles should not try to explain them. There is but one way to explain anything, and that is to account for it by natural agencies. The moment you explain a miracle it disappears. You should not depend upon explanation, but assertion. You should not be driven from the field because the miracle is shown to be unreasonable. Neither should you be in the least disheartened if it is shown to be impossible. The possible is not miraculous." Miracles must be dismissed from the domain of fact and relegated to the realm of fiction. A miracle, I repeat, is impossible. Above all this chief of miracles, The Christ, is impossible, and does not, and never did, exist. CHAPTER II. SILENCE OF CONTEMPORARY WRITERS. Another proof that the Christ of Christianity is a fabulous and not a historical character is the silence of the writers who lived during and immediately following the time he is said to have existed. That a man named Jesus, an obscure religious teacher, the basis of this fabulous Christ, lived in Palestine about nineteen hundred years ago, may be true. But of this man we know nothing. His biography has not been written. E. Renan and others have attempted to write it, but have failed--have failed because no materials for such a work exist. Contemporary writers have left us not one word concerning him. For generations afterward, outside of a few theological epistles, we find no mention of him. The following is a list of writers who lived and wrote during the time, or within a century after the time, that Christ is said to have lived and performed his wonderful works: Josephus, Statius, Philo-Judaeus, Ptolemy, Seneca, Hermogones, Pliny the Elder, Valerius Maximus, Arrian, Appian, Petronius, Theon of Smyrna, Dion Pruseus, Phlegon, Paterculus, Pompon Mela, Suetonius, Quintius Curtius Juvenal, Lucian, Martial, Pausanias, Persius, Valerius Flaccus, Plutarch, Florus Lucius, Justus of Tiberius, Favorinus, Apollonius, Phaedrus, Pliny the Younger, Damis, Tacitus, Aulus Gellius, Quintilian, Columella, Lucanus, Dio Chrysostom, Epictetus, Lysias, Silius Italicus, Appion of Alexandria. Enough of the writings of the authors named in the foregoing list remains to form a library. Yet in this mass of Jewish and Pagan literature, aside from two forged passages in the works of a Jewish author, and two disputed passages in the works of Roman writers, there is to be found no mention of Jesus Christ. Philo was born before the beginning of the Christian era, and lived until long after the reputed death of Christ. He wrote an account of the Jews covering the entire time that Christ is said to have existed on earth. He was living in or near Jerusalem when Christ's miraculous birth and the Herodian massacre occurred. He was there when Christ made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. He was there when the crucifixion with its attendant earthquake, supernatural darkness, and resurrection of the dead took place--when Christ himself rose from the dead, and in the presence of many witnesses ascended into heaven. These marvelous events which must have filled the world with amazement, had they really occurred, were unknown to him. It was Philo who developed the doctrine of the Logos, or Word, and although this Word incarnate dwelt in that very land and in the presence of multitudes revealed himself and demonstrated his divine powers, Philo saw it not. Josephus, the renowned Jewish historian, was a native of Judea. He was born in 37 A. D., and was a contemporary of the Apostles. He was, for a time, Governor of Galilee, the province in which Christ lived and taught. He traversed every part of this province and visited the places where but a generation before Christ had performed his prodigies. He resided in Cana, the very city in which Christ is said to have wrought his first miracle. He mentions every noted personage of Palestine and describes every important event which occurred there during the first seventy years of the Christian era. But Christ was of too little consequence and his deeds too trivial to merit a line from this historian's pen. Justus of Tiberius was a native of Christ's own country, Galilee. He wrote a history covering the time of Christ's reputed existence. This work has perished, but Photius, a Christian scholar and critic of the ninth century, who was acquainted with it, says: "He [Justus] makes not the least mention of the appearance of Christ, of what things happened to him, or of the wonderful works that he did" (Photius' Bibliotheca, code 33). Judea, where occurred the miraculous beginning and marvelous ending of Christ's earthly career, was a Roman province, and all of Palestine is intimately associated with Roman history. But the Roman records of that age contain no mention of Christ and his works. The Greek writers of Greece and Alexandria who lived not far from Palestine and who were familiar with its events, are silent also. Josephus. Late in the first century Josephus wrote his celebrated work, "The Antiquities of the Jews," giving a history of his race from the earliest ages down to his own time. Modern versions of this work contain the following passage: "Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works; a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day" (Book XVIII, Chap. iii, sec. 3). For nearly sixteen hundred years Christians have been citing this passage as a testimonial, not merely to the historical existence, but to the divine character of Jesus Christ. And yet a ranker forgery was never penned. Its language is Christian. Every line proclaims it the work of a Christian writer. "If it be lawful to call him a man." "He was the Christ." "He appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him." These are the words of a Christian, a believer in the divinity of Christ. Josephus was a Jew, a devout believer in the Jewish faith--the last man in the world to acknowledge the divinity of Christ. The inconsistency of this evidence was early recognized, and Ambrose, writing in the generation succeeding its first appearance (360 A. D.) offers the following explanation, which only a theologian could frame: "If the Jews do not believe us, let them, at least, believe their own writers. Josephus, whom they esteem a very great man, hath said this, and yet hath he spoken truth after such a manner; and so far was his mind wandered from the right way, that even he was not a believer as to what he himself said; but thus he spake, in order to deliver historical truth, because he thought it not lawful for him to deceive, while yet he was no believer, because of the hardness of his heart, and his perfidious intention." Its brevity disproves its authenticity. Josephus' work is voluminous and exhaustive. It comprises twenty books. Whole pages are devoted to petty robbers and obscure seditious leaders. Nearly forty chapters are devoted to the life of a single king. Yet this remarkable being, the greatest product of his race, a being of whom the prophets foretold ten thousand wonderful things, a being greater than any earthly king, is dismissed with a dozen lines. It interrupts the narrative. Section 2 of the chapter containing it gives an account of a Jewish sedition which was suppressed by Pilate with great slaughter. The account ends as follows: "There were a great number of them slain by this means, and others of them ran away wounded; and thus an end was put to this sedition." Section 4, as now numbered, begins with these words: "About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into disorder." The one section naturally and logically follows the other. Yet between these two closely connected paragraphs the one relating to Christ is placed; thus making the words, "another sad calamity," refer to the advent of this wise and wonderful being. The early Christian fathers were not acquainted with it. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen all would have quoted this passage had it existed in their time. The failure of even one of these fathers to notice it would be sufficient to throw doubt upon its genuineness; the failure of all of them to notice it proves conclusively that it is spurious, that it was not in existence during the second and third centuries. As this passage first appeared in the writings of the ecclesiastical historian, Eusebius, as this author openly advocated the use of fraud and deception in furthering the interests of the church, as he is known to have mutilated and perverted the text of Josephus in other instances, and as the manner of its presentation is calculated to excite suspicion, the forgery has generally been charged to him. In his "Evangelical Demonstration," written early in the fourth century, after citing all the known evidences of Christianity, he thus introduces the Jewish historian: "Certainly the attestations I have already produced concerning our Savior may be sufficient. However, it may not be amiss, if, over and above, we make use of Josephus the Jew for a further witness" (Book III, p. 124). Chrysostom and Photius both reject this passage. Chrysostom, a reader of Josephus, who preached and wrote in the latter part of the fourth century, in his defense of Christianity, needed this evidence, but was too honest or too wise to use it. Photius, who made a revision of Josephus, writing five hundred years after the time of Eusebius, ignores the passage, and admits that Josephus has made no mention of Christ. Modern Christian scholars generally concede that the passage is a forgery. Dr. Lardner, one of the ablest defenders of Christianity, adduces the following arguments against its genuineness: "I do not perceive that we at all want the suspected testimony to Jesus, which was never quoted by any of our Christian ancestors before Eusebius. "Nor do I recollect that Josephus has anywhere mentioned the name or word Christ, in any of his works; except the testimony above mentioned, and the passage concerning James, the Lord's brother. "It interrupts the narrative. "The language is quite Christian. "It is not quoted by Chrysostom, though he often refers to Josephus, and could not have omitted quoting it had it been then in the text. "It is not quoted by Photius, though he has three articles concerning Josephus. "Under the article Justus of Tiberias, this author (Photius) expressly states that the historian [Josephus], being a Jew, has not taken the least notice of Christ. "Neither Justin in his dialogue with Trypho the Jew, nor Clemens Alexandrinus, who made so many extracts from ancient authors, nor Origen against Celsus, has ever mentioned this testimony. "But, on the contrary, in chapter xxxv of the first book of that work, Origen openly affirms that Josephus, who had mentioned John the Baptist, did not acknowledge Christ" (Answer to Dr. Chandler). Again Dr. Lardner says: "This passage is not quoted nor referred to by any Christian writer before Eusebius, who flourished at the beginning of the fourth century. If it had been originally in the works of Josephus it would have been highly proper to produce it in their disputes with Jews and Gentiles. But it is never quoted by Justin Martyr, or Clement of Alexandria, nor by Tertullian or Origen, men of great learning, and well acquainted with the works of Josephus. It was certainly very proper to urge it against the Jews. It might also have been fitly urged against the Gentiles. A testimony so favorable to Jesus in the works of Josephus, who lived so soon after our Savior, who was so well acquainted with the transactions of his own country, who had received so many favors from Vespasian and Titus, would not be overlooked or neglected by any Christian apologist" (Lardner's Works, vol. I, chap. iv). Bishop Warburton declares it to be a forgery: "If a Jew owned the truth of Christianity, he must needs embrace it. We, therefore, certainly conclude that the paragraph where Josephus, who was as much a Jew as the religion of Moses could make him, is made to acknowledge Jesus as the Christ, in terms as strong as words could do it, is a rank forgery, and a very stupid one, too" (Quoted by Lardner, Works, Vol. I, chap. iv). The Rev. Dr. Giles, of the Established Church of England, says: "Those who are best acquainted with the character of Josephus, and the style of his writings, have no hesitation in condemning this passage as a forgery, interpolated in the text during the third century by some pious Christian, who was scandalized that so famous a writer as Josephus should have taken no notice of the gospels, or of Christ, their subject. But the zeal of the interpolator has outrun his discretion, for we might as well expect to gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles, as to find this notice of Christ among the Judaizing writings of Josephus. It is well known that this author was a zealous Jew, devoted to the laws of Moses and the traditions of his countrymen. How, then, could he have written that Jesus was the Christ? Such an admission would have proved him to be a Christian himself, in which case the passage under consideration, too long for a Jew, would have been far too short for a believer in the new religion, and thus the passage stands forth, like an ill-set jewel, contrasting most inharmoniously with everything around it. If it had been genuine, we might be sure that Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Chrysostom would have quoted it in their controversies with the Jews, and that Origen or Photius would have mentioned it. But Eusebius, the ecclesiastical historian (I, 11), is the first who quotes it, and our reliance on the judgment or even honesty of this writer is not so great as to allow our considering everything found in his works as undoubtedly genuine" (Christian Records, p. 30). The Rev. S. Baring-Gould, in his "Lost and Hostile Gospels," says: "This passage is first quoted by Eusebius (fl. A. D. 315) in two places (Hist. Eccl., lib. i, c. xi; Demonst. Evang., lib. iii); but it was unknown to Justin Martyr (fl. A. D. 140), Clement of Alexandria (fl. A. D. 192), Tertullian (fl. A. D. 193), and Origen (fl. A. D. 230). Such a testimony would certainly have been produced by Justin in his apology or in his controversy with Trypho the Jew, had it existed in the copies of Josephus at his time. The silence of Origen is still more significant. Celsus, in his book against Christianity, introduces a Jew. Origen attacks the argument of Celsus and his Jew. He could not have failed to quote the words of Josephus, whose writings he knew, had the passage existed in the genuine text. He, indeed, distinctly affirms that Josephus did not believe in Christ (Contr. Cels. i)." Dr. Chalmers ignores it, and admits that Josephus is silent regarding Christ. He says: "The entire silence of Josephus upon the subject of Christianity, though he wrote after the destruction of Jerusalem, and gives us the history of that period in which Christ and his Apostles lived, is certainly a very striking circumstance" (Kneeland's Review, p. 169). Referring to this passage, Dean Milman, in his "Gibbon's Rome" (Vol. II, p. 285, note) says: "It is interpolated with many additional clauses." Canon Farrar, who has written the ablest Christian life of Christ yet penned, repudiates it. He says: "The single passage in which he [Josephus] alludes to him is interpolated, if not wholly spurious" (Life of Christ, Vol. I, p. 46). The following, from Dr. Farrar's pen, is to be found in the "Encyclopedia Britannica": "That Josephus wrote the whole passage as it now stands no sane critic can believe." "There are, however, two reasons which are alone sufficient to prove that the whole passage is spurious--one that it was unknown to Origen and the earlier fathers, and the other that its place in the text is uncertain" (Ibid). Theodor Keim, a German-Christian writer on Jesus, says: "The passage cannot be maintained; it has first appeared in this form in the Catholic church of the Jews and Gentiles, and under the dominion of the Fourth Gospel, and hardly before the third century, probably before Eusebius, and after Origen, whose bitter criticisms of Josephus may have given cause for it" (Jesus of Nazara, p. 25). Concerning this passage, Hausrath, another German writer, says it "must have been penned at a peculiarly shameless hour." The Rev. Dr. Hooykaas, of Holland, says: "Flavius Josephus, the well known historian of the Jewish people, was born in A. D. 37, only two years after the death of Jesus; but though his work is of inestimable value as our chief authority for the circumstances of the times in which Jesus and his Apostles came forward, yet he does not seem to have mentioned Jesus himself. At any rate, the passage in his 'Jewish Antiquities' that refers to him is certainly spurious, and was inserted by a later and a Christian hand" (Bible for Learners, Vol. III, p. 27). This conclusion of Dr. Hooykaas is endorsed by the eminent Dutch critic, Dr. Kuenen. Dr. Alexander Campbell, one of America's ablest Christian apologists, says: "Josephus, the Jewish historian, was contemporary with the Apostles, having been born in the year 37. From his situation and habits, he had every access to know all that took place at the rise of the Christian religion. "Respecting the founder of this religion, Josephus has thought fit to be silent in history. The present copies of his work contain one passage which speaks very respectfully of Jesus Christ, and ascribes to him the character of the Messiah. But as Josephus did not embrace Christianity, and as this passage is not quoted or referred to until the beginning of the fourth century, it is, for these and other reasons, generally accounted spurious" (Evidences of Christianity, from Campbell-Owen Debate, p. 312). Another passage in Josephus, relating to the younger Ananus, who was high priest of the Jews in 62 A. D., reads as follows: "But this younger Ananus, who, as we have told you already, took the high priesthood, was a bold man in his temper and very insolent; he was also of the sect of Sadducees, who are very rigid in judging offenders, above all of the rest of the Jews, as we have already observed; when, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity. Festus was dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrim of judges and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned" (Antiquities, Book XX, chap. ix, sec. 1). This passage is probably genuine with the exception of the clause, "who was called Christ," which is undoubtedly an interpolation, and is generally regarded as such. Nearly all the authorities that I have quoted reject it. It was originally probably a marginal note. Some Christian reader of Josephus believing that the James mentioned was the brother of Jesus made a note of his belief in the manuscript before him, and this a transcriber afterward incorporated with the text, a very common practice in that age when purity of text was a matter of secondary importance. The fact that the early fathers, who were acquainted with Josephus, and who would have hailed with joy even this evidence of Christ's existence, do not cite it, while Origen expressly declares that Josephus has not mentioned Christ, is conclusive proof that it did not exist until the middle of the third century or later. Those who affirm the genuineness of this clause argue that the James mentioned by Josephus was a person of less prominence than the Jesus mentioned by him, which would be true of James, the brother of Jesus Christ. Now some of the most prominent Jews living at this time were named Jesus. Jesus, the son of Damneus, succeeded Ananus as high priest that very year; and Jesus, the son of Gamaliel, a little later succeeded to the same office. To identify the James of Josephus with James the Just, the brother of Jesus, is to reject the accepted history of the primitive church which declares that James the Just died in 69 A. D., seven years after the James of Josephus was condemned to death by the Sanhedrim. Whiston himself, the translator of Josephus, referring to the event narrated by the Jewish historian, admits that James, the brother of Jesus Christ, "did not die till long afterward." The brief "Discourse Concerning Hades," appended to the writings of Josephus, is universally conceded to be the product of some other writer--"obviously of Christian origin"--says the "Encyclopedia Britannica." Tacitus. In July, 64 A. D., a great conflagration occurred in Rome. There is a tradition to the effect that this conflagration was the work of an incendiary and that the Emperor Nero himself was believed to be the incendiary. Modern editions of the "Annals" of Tacitus contain the following passage in reference to this: "Nero, in order to stifle the rumor, ascribed it to those people who were abhorred for their crimes and commonly called Christians: These he punished exquisitely. The founder of that name was Christus, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was punished as a criminal by the procurator, Pontius Pilate. This pernicious superstition, thus checked for awhile, broke out again; and spread not only over Judea, the source of this evil, but reached the city also: whither flow from all quarters all things vile and shameful, and where they find shelter and encouragement. At first, only those were apprehended who confessed themselves of that sect; afterwards, a vast multitude were detected by them, all of whom were condemned, not so much for the crime of burning the city, as their hatred of mankind. Their executions were so contrived as to expose them to derision and contempt. Some were covered over with the skins of wild beasts, and torn to pieces by dogs; some were crucified. Others, having been daubed over with combustible materials, were set up as lights in the night time, and thus burned to death. Nero made use of his own gardens as a theatre on this occasion, and also exhibited the diversions of the circus, sometimes standing in the crowd as a spectator, in the habit of a charioteer; at other times driving a chariot himself, till at length those men, though really criminal, and deserving exemplary punishment, began to be commiserated as people who were destroyed, not out of regard to the public welfare, but only to gratify the cruelty of one man" (Annals, Book XV, sec. 44). This passage, accepted as authentic by many, must be declared doubtful, if not spurious, for the following reasons: 1. It is not quoted by the Christian fathers. 2. Tertullian was familiar with the writings of Tacitus, and his arguments demanded the citation of this evidence had it existed. 3. Clement of Alexandria, at the beginning of the third century, made a compilation of all the recognitions of Christ and Christianity that had been made by Pagan writers up to his time. The writings of Tacitus furnished no recognition of them. 4. Origen, in his controversy with Celsus, would undoubtedly have used it had it existed. 5. The ecclesiastical historian Eusebius, in the fourth century, cites all the evidences of Christianity obtainable from Jewish and Pagan sources, but makes no mention of Tacitus. 6. It is not quoted by any Christian writer prior to the fifteenth century. 7. At this time but one copy of the "Annals" existed, and this copy, it is claimed, was made in the eighth century--600 years after the time of Tacitus. 8. As this single copy was in the possession of a Christian the insertion of a forgery was easy. 9. Its severe criticisms of Christianity do not necessarily disprove its Christian origin. No ancient witness was more desirable than Tacitus, but his introduction at so late a period would make rejection certain unless Christian forgery could be made to appear improbable. 10. It is admitted by Christian writers that the works of Tacitus have not been preserved with any considerable degree of fidelity. In the writings ascribed to him are believed to be some of the writings of Quintilian. 11. The blood-curdling story about the frightful orgies of Nero reads like some Christian romance of the dark ages, and not like Tacitus. 12. In fact, this story, in nearly the same words, omitting the reference to Christ, is to be found in the writings of Sulpicius Severus, a Christian of the fifth century. 13. Suetonius, while mercilessly condemning the reign of Nero, says that in his public entertainments he took particular care that no human lives should be sacrificed, "not even those of condemned criminals." 14. At the time that the conflagration occurred, Tacitus himself declares that Nero was not in Rome, but at Antium. Many who accept the authenticity of this section of the "Annals" believe that the sentence which declares that Christ was punished in the reign of Pontius Pilate, and which I have italicized, is an interpolation. Whatever may be said of the remainder of this passage, this sentence bears the unmistakable stamp of Christian forgery. It interrupts the narrative; it disconnects two closely related statements. Eliminate this sentence, and there is no break in the narrative. In all the Roman records there was to be found no evidence that Christ was put to death by Pontius Pilate. This sentence, if genuine, is the most important evidence in Pagan literature. That it existed in the works of the greatest and best known of Roman historians, and was ignored or overlooked by Christian apologists for 1,360 years, no intelligent critic can believe. Tacitus did not write this sentence. Pliny the Younger. This Roman author, early in the second century, while serving as a pro-consul under Trajan in Bithynia, is reputed to have written a letter to his Emperor concerning his treatment of Christians. This letter contains the following: "I have laid down this rule in dealing with those who were brought before me for being Christians. I asked whether they were Christians; if they confessed, I asked them a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; if they persevered, I ordered them to be executed.... They assured me that their only crime or error was this, that they were wont to come together on a certain day before it was light, and to sing in turn, among themselves, a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and to bind themselves by an oath--not to do anything that was wicked, that they would commit no theft, robbery, or adultery, nor break their word, nor deny that anything had been entrusted to them when called upon to restore it.... I therefore deemed it the more necessary to enquire of two servant maids, who were said to be attendants, what was the real truth, and to apply the torture. But I found it was nothing but a bad and excessive superstition." Notwithstanding an alleged reply to this letter from Trajan, cited by Tertullian and Eusebius, its genuineness may well be questioned, and for the following reasons: 1. The Roman laws accorded religious liberty to all, and the Roman government tolerated and protected every religious belief. Renan says: "Among the Roman laws, anterior to Constantine, there was not a single ordinance directed against freedom of thought; in the history of the Pagan emperors not a single persecution on account of mere doctrines or creeds" (The Apostles). Gibbon says: "The religious tenets of the Galileans, or Christians, were never made a subject of punishment, or even of inquiry" (Rome, Vol. II, p. 215). 2. Trajan was one of the most tolerant and benevolent of Roman emperors. 3. Pliny, the reputed author of the letter, is universally conceded to have been one of the most humane and philanthropic of men. 4. It represents the distant province of Bithynia as containing, at this time, a large Christian population, which is improbable. 5. It assumes that the Emperor Trajan was little acquainted with Christian beliefs and customs, which cannot be harmonized with the supposed historical fact that the most powerful of primitive churches flourished in Trajan's capital and had existed for fifty years. 6. Pliny represents the Christians as declaring that they were in the habit of meeting and singing hymns "to Christ as to a god." The early Christians did not recognize Christ as a god, and it was not until after the time of Pliny that he was worshiped as such. 7. "I asked whether they were Christians; if they confessed, I asked them a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; if they persevered I ordered them to be executed." That this wise and good man rewarded lying with liberty and truthfulness with death is difficult to believe. 8. "I therefore deemed it more necessary to inquire of two servant maids, who were said to be attendants, what was the real truth, and to apply the torture." Never have the person and character of woman been held more sacred than they were in Pagan Rome. That one of the noblest of Romans should have put to torture young women guiltless of crime is incredible. 9. The declaration of the Christians that they took a solemn obligation "not to do anything that was wicked; that they would commit no theft, robbery, or adultery, nor break their word," etc., looks like an ingenious attempt to parade the virtues of primitive Christians. 10. This letter, it is claimed, is to be found in but one ancient copy of Pliny. 11. It was first quoted by Tertullian, and the age immediately preceding Tertullian was notorious for Christian forgeries. 12. Some of the best German critics reject it. Gibbon, while not denying its authenticity, pronounces it a "very curious epistle"; and Dr. Whiston, who considers it too valuable to discard, applies to its contents such epithets as "amazing doctrine!" "amazing stupidity!" Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny--these are the disinterested witnesses adduced by the church to prove the historical existence of Jesus Christ; the one writing nearly one hundred years, the others one hundred and ten years after his alleged birth; the testimony of two of them self-evident forgeries, and that of the third a probable forgery. But even if the doubtful and hostile letter of Pliny be genuine, it was not written until the second century, so that there is not to be found in all the records of profane history prior to the second century a single allusion to the reputed founder of Christianity. To these witnesses is sometimes, though rarely, added a fourth, Suetonius, a Roman historian who, like Tacitus and Pliny, wrote in the second century. In his "Life of Nero," Suetonius says: "The Christians, a race of men of a new and villainous superstition, were punished." In his "Life of Claudius," he says: "He [Claudius] drove the Jews, who at the instigation of Chrestus were constantly rioting, out of Rome." Of course no candid Christian will contend that Christ was inciting Jewish riots at Rome fifteen years after he was crucified at Jerusalem. Significant is the silence of the forty Jewish and Pagan writers named in this chapter. This silence alone disproves Christ's existence. Had this wonderful being really existed the earth would have resounded with his fame. His mighty deeds would have engrossed every historian's pen. The pages of other writers would have abounded with references to him. Think of going through the literature of the nineteenth century and searching in vain for the name of Napoleon Bonaparte! Yet Napoleon was a pigmy and his deeds trifles compared with this Christ and the deeds he is said to have performed. With withering irony Gibbon notes this ominous silence: "But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world, to those evidences which were represented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, demons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of Tiberius, the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman empire, was involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe" (Rome, Vol. I, pp. 588-590). Even conceding, for the sake of argument, both the authenticity and the credibility of these passages attributed to the Roman historians, what do they prove? Do they prove that Christ was divine--that he was a supernatural being, as claimed? No more than do the writings of Paine and Voltaire, which also contain his name. This evidence is favorable not to the adherents, but to the opponents, of Christianity. If these passages be genuine, and their authors have penned historical truths, it simply confirms what most Rationalists admit, that a religious sect called Christians, who recognized Christ as their founder, existed as early as the first century; and confirms what some have charged, but what the church is loath to admit, that primitive Christians, who have been declared the highest exemplars of human virtue, were the most depraved of villains. An unlettered and credulous enthusiast, named Jones, imagines that he has had a revelation, and proceeds to found a new religious sect. He gathers about him a band of "disciples" as ignorant and credulous as himself. He soon gets into trouble and is killed. But the Jonesists increase--increase in numbers and in meanness--until at length they become sufficiently notorious to receive a paragraph from an annalist who, after holding them up to ridicule and scorn, accounts for their origin by stating that they take their name from one Jones who, during the administration of President Roosevelt, was hanged as a criminal. The world contains two billions of inhabitants--mostly fools, as Carlyle would say--and as the religion of this sect is a little more foolish than that of any other sect, it continues to spread until at the end of two thousand years it covers the globe. Then think of the adherents of this religion citing the uncomplimentary allusion of this annalist to prove that Jones was a god! CHAPTER III. CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE. The Four Gospels. Farrar, in his "Life of Christ," concedes and deplores the dearth of evidence concerning the subject of his work. He says: "It is little short of amazing that neither history nor tradition should have embalmed for us one certain or precious saying or circumstance in the life of the Savior of Mankind, except the comparatively few events recorded in four very brief biographies." With these four brief biographies, the Four Gospels, Christianity must stand or fall. These four documents, it is admitted, contain practically all the evidence which can be adduced in proof of the existence and divinity of Jesus Christ. Profane history, as we have seen, affords no proof of this. The so-called apocryphal literature of the early church has been discarded by the church itself. Even the remaining canonical books of the New Testament are of little consequence if the testimony of the Four Evangelists be successfully impeached. Disprove the authenticity and credibility of these documents and this Christian deity is removed to the mythical realm of Apollo, Odin, and Osiris. In a previous work, "The Bible," I have shown that the books of the New Testament, with a few exceptions, are not authentic. This evidence cannot be reproduced here in full. A brief summary of it must suffice. The Four Gospels, it is claimed, were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, two of them apostles, and two companions of the apostles of Christ. If this claim be true the other writings of the apostles, the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, and the writings of the early Christian Fathers, ought to contain some evidences of the fact. Twenty books--nearly all of the remaining books of the New Testament--are said to have been written by the three apostles, Peter, John, and Paul, a portion of them after the first three Gospels were written; but it is admitted that they contain no evidence whatever of the existence of these Gospels. There are extant writings accredited to the Apostolic Fathers, Clement of Rome, Barnabas, Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp; written, for the most part, early in the second century. These writings contain no mention of the Four Gospels. This also is admitted by Christian scholars. Dr. Dodwell says: "We have at this day certain most authentic ecclesiastical writers of the times, as Clemens Romanus, Barnabas, Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp, who wrote in the order wherein I have named them, and after all the writers of the New Testament. But in Hermas you will not find one passage or any mention of the New Testament, nor in all the rest is any one of the Evangelists named" (Dissertations upon Irenaeus). The Four Gospels were unknown to the early Christian Fathers. Justin Martyr, the most eminent of the early Fathers, wrote about the middle of the second century. His writings in proof of the divinity of Christ demanded the use of these Gospels had they existed in his time. He makes more than three hundred quotations from the books of the Old Testament, and nearly one hundred from the Apocryphal books of the New Testament; but none from the Four Gospels. The Rev. Dr. Giles says: "The very names of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are never mentioned by him [Justin]--do not occur once in all his writings" (Christian Records, p. 71). Papias, another noted Father, was a contemporary of Justin. He refers to writings of Matthew and Mark, but his allusions to them clearly indicate that they were not the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. Dr. Davidson, the highest English authority on the canon, says: "He [Papias] neither felt the want nor knew the existence of inspired Gospels" (Canon of the Bible, p. 123). Theophilus, who wrote after the middle of the latter half of the second century, mentions the Gospel of John, and Irenaeus, who wrote a little later, mentions all of the Gospels, and makes numerous quotations from them. In the latter half of the second century, then, between the time of Justin and Papias, and the time of Theophilus and Irenaeus, the Four Gospels were undoubtedly written or compiled. These books are anonymous. They do not purport to have been written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Their titles do not affirm it. They simply imply that they are "according" to the supposed teachings of these Evangelists. As Renan says, "They merely signify that these were the traditions proceeding from each of these Apostles, and claiming their authority." Concerning their authorship the Rev. Dr. Hooykaas says: "They appeared anonymously. The titles placed above them in our Bibles owe their origin to a later ecclesiastical tradition which deserves no confidence whatever" (Bible for Learners, Vol. III, p. 24). It is claimed that the Gospel of Matthew originally appeared in Hebrew. Our version is a translation of a Greek work. Regarding this St. Jerome says: "Who afterwards translated it into Greek is not sufficiently certain." The consequences of this admission are thus expressed by Michaelis: "If the original text of Matthew is lost, and we have nothing but a Greek translation; then, frankly, we cannot ascribe any divine inspiration to the words." The contents of these books refute the claim that they were written by the Evangelists named. They narrate events and contain doctrinal teachings which belong to a later age. Matthew ascribes to Christ the following language: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church" (xvi, 18). This Gospel is a Roman Catholic Gospel, and was written after the beginning of the establishment of this hierarchy to uphold the supremacy of the Petrine Church of Rome. Of this Gospel Dr. Davidson says: "The author, indeed, must ever remain unknown" (Introduction to New Testament, p. 72). The Gospel of Luke is addressed to Theophilus. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, who is believed to be the person addressed, flourished in the latter half of the second century. Dr. Schleiermacher, one of Germany's greatest theologians, after a critical analysis of Luke, concludes that it is merely a compilation, made up of thirty-three preexisting manuscripts. Bishop Thirlwall's Schleiermacher says: "He [Luke] is from beginning to end no more than the compiler and arranger of documents which he found in existence" (p. 313). The basis of this Gospel is generally believed to be the Gospel of Marcion, a Pauline compilation, made about the middle of the second century. Concerning this Gospel, the Rev. S. Baring-Gould, in his "Lost and Hostile Gospels," says: "The arrangement is so similar that we are forced to the conclusion that it was either used by St. Luke or that it was his original composition. If he used it then his right to the title of author of the Third Gospel falls to the ground, as what he added was of small amount." Mark, according to Renan, is the oldest of the Gospels; but Mark, according to Strauss, was written after the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written. He says: "It is evidently a compilation, whether made from memory or otherwise, from the first and third Gospels" (Leben Jesu, p. 51). Judge Waite, in his "History of Christianity," says that all but twenty-four verses of this Gospel have their parallels in Matthew and Luke. Davidson declares it to be an anonymous work. "The author," he says, "is unknown." Omitting the last twelve verses of Mark, which all Christian critics pronounce spurious, the book contains no mention of the two great miracles which mark the limits of Christ's earthly career, his miraculous birth and his ascension. Concerning the first three Gospels, the "Encyclopedia Britannica" says: "It is certain that the Synoptic Gospels took their present form only by degrees." Of these books Dr. Westcott says: "Their substance is evidently much older than their form." Professor Robertson Smith pronounces them "unapostolic digests of the second century." The internal evidence against the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel is conclusive. The Apostle John did not write it. John, the apostle, was a Jew; the author of the Fourth Gospel was not a Jew. John was born at Bethsaida; the author of the Fourth Gospel did not know where Bethsaida was located. John was an uneducated fisherman; the author of this Gospel was an accomplished scholar. Some of the most important events in the life of Jesus, the Synoptics declare, were witnessed by John; the author of this knows nothing of these events. The Apostle John witnessed the crucifixion; the author of this Gospel did not. The Apostles, including John, believed Jesus to be a man; the author of the Fourth Gospel believed him to be a god. Regarding the authorship of the Fourth Gospel, Dr. Davidson says: "The Johannine authorship has receded before the tide of modern criticism, and though this tide is arbitrary at times, it is here irresistible" (Canon of the Bible, p. 127). That the authenticity of the Four Gospels cannot be maintained is conceded by every impartial critic. The author of "Supernatural Religion," in one of the most profound and exhaustive works on this subject ever written, expresses the result of his labors in the following words: "After having exhausted the literature and the testimony bearing on the point, we have not found a single distinct trace of any of those Gospels during the first century and a half after the death of Jesus" (Supernatural Religion, Vol. II, p. 248). Fifteen hundred years ago, Bishop Faustus, a heretical Christian theologian, referring to this so-called Gospel history, wrote: "It is allowed not to have been written by the son himself nor by his apostles, but long after by some unknown men who, lest they should be suspected of writing things they knew nothing of, gave to their books the names of the Apostles." The following is the verdict of the world's greatest Bible critic, Baur: "These Gospels are spurious, and were written in the second century." Acts, Catholic Epistles, and Revelation. The Acts of the Apostles is supposed to have been written by the author of the Third Gospel. Like this book it is anonymous and of late origin. It contains historical inaccuracies, contradicts the Gospel of Matthew, and conflicts with the writings of Paul. Concerning the last, the "Bible for Learners" (Vol. III, p. 25) says: "In the first two chapters of the Epistle to the Galatians, he [Paul] gives us several details of his own past life; and no sooner do we place his story side by side with that of the Acts than we clearly perceive that this book contains an incorrect account, and that its inaccuracy is not the result of accident or ignorance, but of a deliberate design." This book purports to be the product chiefly of three minds: that of the author who gives a historical sketch of the early church, and those of Peter and Paul whose discourses are reported. And yet the three compositions are clearly the products of one mind--that of the author. The evident purpose of the work is to heal the bitter dissensions which existed between the Petrine and Pauline churches, and this points unmistakably to the latter part of the second century as the date of its appearance, when the work of uniting the various Christian sects into the Catholic church began. Renan considers this the most faulty book of the New Testament. The seven Catholic Epistles, James, First and Second Peter, First, Second and Third John, and Jude, have never been held in very high esteem by the church. Many of the Christian Fathers rejected them, while modern Christian scholars have generally considered them of doubtful authenticity. The first and last of these were rejected by Martin Luther. "St. James' Epistle," says Luther, "is truly an epistle of straw" (Preface to Luther's New Testament, ed. 1524). Jude, he says, "is an abstract or copy of St. Peter's Second, and allegeth stories and sayings which have no place in Scripture" (Standing Preface). The First Epistle of Peter and the First Epistle of John have generally been accorded a higher degree of authority than the others; but even these were not written by apostles, nor in the first century. Dr. Soury says that First Peter "dates, in all probability, from the year 130 A. D., at the earliest" (Jesus and the Gospels, p. 32). Irenaeus, the founder of the New Testament canon, rejected it. The Dutch critics, who deny the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel, and assign its composition to the second century, say: "The First Epistle of John soon issued from the same school in imitation of the Gospel" (Bible for Learners, Vol. III, p. 692). Second Peter is a forgery. Westcott says there is no proof of its existence prior to 170 A. D. Smith's "Bible Dictionary" says "Many reject the epistle as altogether spurious." The brief epistles of Second and Third John are anonymous and of very late origin. They do not purport to be the writings of John. The superscriptions declare them to be from an elder, and this precludes the claim that they are from an apostle. The early Fathers ignored them. Revelation is the only book in the Bible which claims to be the word of God. At the same time it is the book of which Christians have always been the most suspicious. It is addressed to the seven churches of Asia, but the seven churches of Asia rejected it. Concerning the attitude of ancient churchmen toward it, Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, says: "Divers of our predecessors have wholly refused and rejected this book, and by discussing the several parts thereof have found it obscure and void of reason and the title forged." "The most learned and intelligent of Protestant divines," says the Edinburgh Review, "almost all doubted or denied the canonicity of the book of Revelation." It is a book which, Dr. South said, "either found a man mad or left him so." Calvin and Beza both forbade their clergy to attempt an explanation of its contents. Luther says: "In the Revelation of John much is wanting to let me deem it either prophetic or apostolical" (Preface to N. T., 1524). Considered as evidences of Christ's historical existence and divinity these nine books are of no value. They are all anonymous writings or forgeries, and, with the possible exception of Revelation, of very late origin. While they affirm Christ's existence they are almost entirely silent regarding his life and miracles. The Epistles of Paul. Of the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul, seven--Ephesians, Colossians, Second Thessalonians, First and Second Timothy, Titus, and Hebrews--are conceded by nearly all critics to be spurious, while three others--Philippians, First Thessalonians, and Philemon--are generally classed as doubtful. The general verdict concerning the first seven is thus expressed by the Rev. Dr. Hooykaas: "Fourteen epistles are said to be Paul's; but we must at once strike off one, namely, that to the Hebrews, which does not bear his name at all. ... The two letters to Timothy and the letter to Titus were certainly composed long after the death of Paul.... It is more than possible that the letters to the Ephesians and Colossians are also unauthentic, and the same suspicion rests, perhaps, on the first, but certainly on the second of the Epistles to the Thessalonians" (Bible for Learners, Vol. III, p. 23). The author of Second Thessalonians, whose epistle is a self-evident forgery, declares First Thessalonians to be a forgery. Baur and the Tubingen school reject both Epistles. Baur also rejects Philippians: "The Epistles to the Colossians and to the Philippians ... are spurious, and were written by the Catholic school near the end of the second century, to heal the strife between the Jew and the Gentile factions" (Paulus). Dr. Kuenen and the other Dutch critics admit that Philippians and Philemon, as well as First Thessalonians, are doubtful. That the Pastoral Epistles are forgeries is now conceded by all critics. According to the German critics they belong to the second century. Hebrews does not purport to be a Pauline document. Luther says: "The Epistle to the Hebrews is not by St. Paul, nor, indeed, by any apostle" (Standing Preface to Luther's N. T.). Four Epistles--Romans, First and Second Corinthians, and Galatians--while rejected by a few critics, are generally admitted to be the genuine writings of Paul. These books were written, it is claimed, about a quarter of a century after the death of Christ. They are the only books of the New Testament whose authenticity can be maintained. Admitting the authenticity of these books, however, is not admitting the historical existence of Christ and the divine origin of Christianity. Paul was not a witness of the alleged events upon which Christianity rests. He did not become a convert to Christianity until many years after the death of Christ. He did not see Christ (save in a vision); he did not listen to his teachings; he did not learn from his disciples. "The Gospel which was preached of me is not after man, for I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it" (Gal. i, 11, 12). Paul accepted only to a very small extent the religion of Christ's disciples. He professed to derive his knowledge from supernatural sources--from trances and visions. Regarding the value of such testimony the author of "Supernatural Religion" (p. 970) says: "No one can deny, and medical and psychological annals prove, that many men have been subject to visions and hallucinations which have never been seriously attributed to supernatural causes. There is not one single valid reason removing the ecstatic visions and trances of the Apostle Paul from this class." The corporeal existence of the Christ of the Evangelists receives slight confirmation in the writings of Paul. His Christ was not the incarnate Word of John, nor the demi-god of Matthew and Luke. Of the immaculate conception of Jesus he knew nothing. To him Christ was the son of God in a spiritual rather than in a physical sense. "His son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead" (Rom. i, 3, 4). "God sent forth his son, made of a woman [but not of a virgin], made under the law" (Gal. iv, 4). With the Evangelists the proofs of Christ's divinity are his miracles. Their books teem with accounts of these. But Paul evidently knows nothing of these miracles. With him the evidences of Christ's divine mission are his resurrection and the spiritual gifts conferred on those who accept him. The Evangelists teach a material resurrection. When the women visited his tomb "they entered in and found not the body of Jesus" (Luke xxiv, 3). The divine messengers said to them, "He is not here, but is risen" (6). "He sat at meat" with his disciples; "he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them" (30). "Then he said to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side" (John xx, 27). This is entirely at variance with the teachings of Paul. "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead" (1 Cor. xv, 20, 21). "But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die; and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be" (35-37). "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body" (44). "Now this I say brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (50). The Christ that Paul saw in a vision was a spiritual being--an apparition; and this appearance he considers of exactly the same character as the post mortem appearances of Christ to his disciples. "He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve; after that he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; ... after that, he was seen of James; then of all the Apostles. And last of all, he was seen of me also" (1 Cor. xv, 5-8). CHAPTER IV. THE INFANCY OF CHRIST. We have seen that the Four Gospels are not authentic, that they are anonymous writings which appeared late in the second century. If their contents seemed credible and their statements harmonized with each other this want of authenticity would invalidate their authority, because the testimony of an unknown witness cannot be accepted as authoritative. On the other hand, if their authenticity could be established, if it could be shown that they were written by the authors claimed, the incredible and contradictory character of their contents would destroy their authority. As historical documents these books are hardly worthy of credit. The "Arabian Nights" is almost as worthy of credit as the Four Gospels. In both are to be found accounts of things possible and of things impossible. To believe the impossible is gross superstition; to believe the possible, simply because it is possible, is blind credulity. These books are adduced as the credentials of Christ. A critical analysis of these credentials reveals hundreds of errors. A presentation of these errors will occupy the five succeeding chapters of this work. If it can be shown that they contain errors, however trivial some of them may appear, this refutes the claim of inerrancy and divinity. If it can be shown that they abound with errors, this destroys their credibility as historical documents. Destroy the credibility of the Four Gospels and you destroy all proofs of Christ's divinity--all proofs of his existence. 1 When was Jesus born? Matthew: "In the days of Herod" (ii, 1). Luke: "When Cyrenius was governor of Syria" (ii, 1-7). Nearly every biographer gives the date of his subject's birth. Yet not one of the Evangelists gives the date of Jesus' birth. Two, Matthew and Luke, attempt to give the time approximately. But between these two attempts there is a discrepancy of at least ten years; for Herod died 4 B. C., while Cyrenius did not become governor of Syria until 7 A. D. A reconciliation of these statements is impossible. Matthew clearly states that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod. Luke states that Augustus Caesar issued a decree that the world should be taxed, that "this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria," and that Jesus was born at the time of this taxing. The following extracts from Josephus, the renowned historian of the race and country to which Jesus belonged, give the date of this taxing and the time that elapsed between the death of Herod and the taxing, and which reckoned backward from this gives the date of Herod's death: "And now Herod altered his testament upon the alteration of his mind; for he appointed Antipas, to whom he had before left his kingdom, to be tetrarch of Galilee and Berea, and granted the kingdom to Archelaus.... When he had done these things he died" (Antiquities, B. xvii, ch. 8, sec. 1). "But in the tenth year of Archelaus's government, both his brethren, and the principal men of Judea and Samaria, not being able to bear his barbarous and tyrannical usage of them, accused him before Caesar.... And when he was come [to Rome], Caesar, upon hearing what certain accusers of his had to say, and what reply he could make, both banished him, and appointed Vienna, a city of Gaul, to be the place of his habitation, and took his money away from him" (Ibid, ch. 13, sec. 2). "Archelaus's country was laid to the province of Syria; and Cyrenius, one that had been consul, was sent by Caesar to take account of people's effects in Syria, and to sell the house of Archelaus" (Ib. sec. 5). "When Cyrenius had now disposed of Archelaus's money, and when the taxings were come to a conclusion, which were made in the thirty-seventh of Caesar's victory over Antony at Actium," etc. (Ib., B. xviii, ch. 2, sec. 1). The battle of Actium was fought September 2, B. C. 31. The thirty-seventh year from this battle comprehended the time elapsing between September 2, A. D. 6, and September 2, A. D. 7, the mean of which was March 2, A. D. 7. The mean of the tenth year preceding this--the year in which Herod died--was September 2, B. C. 4. It has been suggested by some unacquainted with Roman history that Cyrenius [Quirinus] may have been twice governor of Syria. Cyrenius was but once governor of Syria, and this not until 7 A. D. During the last years of Herod's reign, and during all the years of Archelaus's reign, Sentius Saturninus and Quintilius Varus held this office. Even if Cyrenius had previously held the office the events related by Luke could not have occurred then because Judea prior to 7 A. D. was not a part of Syria. The second chapter of Luke which narrates the birth and infancy of Jesus, conflicts with the first chapter of this book. In this chapter it is expressly stated that Zacharias, the priest, lived in the time of Herod and, inferentially, that the conceptions of John and Jesus occurred at this time. Christian chronology, by which events are supposed to be reckoned from the birth of Christ, agrees with neither Matthew nor Luke, but dates from a point nearly intermediate between the two. According to Matthew, Christ was born at least five years before the beginning of the Christian era; according to Luke he was born at least six years after the beginning of the Christian era. This is 1907: but according to Matthew Christ was born not later than 1912 years ago; while according to Luke he was born not earlier than 1901 years ago. At least ten different opinions regarding the year of Christ's birth have been advanced by Christian scholars. Dodwell places it in 6 B. C., Chrysostom 5 B. C., Usher, whose opinion is most commonly received, 4 B. C., Irenaeus 3 B. C., Jerome 2 B. C., Tertullian 1 B. C. Some modern authorities place it in 1 A. D., others in 2 A. D., and still others in 3 A. D.; while those who accept Luke as infallible authority must place it as late as 7 A. D. 2 It is generally assumed that Jesus was born in the last year of Herod's reign. How long before the close of Herod's reign was he born? Matthew: At least two years (ii, 1-16). Matthew says that when the wise men visited Herod he diligently inquired of them the time when the star which announced the birth of Jesus first appeared. When he determined to destroy Jesus and massacred the infants of Bethlehem and the surrounding country, he slew those "from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men," clearly indicating that Jesus was nearly or quite two years old at this time. In attempting to reconcile Matthew's visit of the wise men to Jesus at Bethlehem with the narrative of Luke, which makes his stay there less than six weeks, it has been assumed that this visit occurred immediately after his birth, whereas, according to Matthew, it did not occur until about two years after his birth. 3 In what month and on what day of the month was he born? Not one of his biographers is prepared to tell; primitive Christians did not know; the church has never been able to determine this. A hundred different opinions regarding it have been expressed by Christian scholars. Wagenseil places it in February, Paulius in March, Greswell in April, Lichtenstein in June, Strong in August, Lightfoot in September, and Newcome in October. Clinton says that he was born in the Spring; Larchur says that he was born in the Fall. Some early Christians believed that it occurred on the 5th of January; others the 19th of April; others still on the 20th of May. The Eastern church believed that he was born on the 7th of January. The church of Rome, in the fourth century, selected the 25th of December on which to celebrate the anniversary of his birth; and this date has been accepted by the greater portion of the Christian world. 4 What determined the selection of this date? "There was a double reason for selecting this day. In the first place it had been observed from a hoary antiquity as a heathen festival, following the longest night of the winter solstice, and was called 'the Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun.' It was a fine thought to celebrate on that day the birth of him whom the Gospel called "the light of the world".... The second reason was, that at Rome the days from the 17th to the 23d of December were devoted to unbridled merrymaking. These days were called the Saturnalia.... Now the church was always anxious to meet the heathen, whom she had converted or was beginning to convert, half-way, by allowing them to retain the feasts they were accustomed to, only giving them a Christian dress, or attaching a new and Christian signification to them" (Bible for Learners, vol. iii, pp. 66, 67). Gibbon says: "The Roman Christians, ignorant of the real time of the birth of Jesus, fixed the solemn festival on the 25th of December, the winter solstice when the Pagans annually celebrated the birth of the sun." 5 What precludes the acceptance of this date? Luke: At the time of his birth "there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night" (ii, 8). Shepherds did not abide in the field with their flocks at night in mid-winter. The Rev. Cunningham Geikie, D. D., a leading English orthodox authority on Christ, says: "One knows how wretched even Rome is in winter and Palestine is much worse during hard weather. Nor is it likely that shepherds would lie out through the night, except during unseasonably fine weather" (Christmas at Bethlehem, in Deems' Holydays and Holidays, p. 405). "The nativity of Jesus in December should be given up."--Dr. Adam Clarke. In regard to the date of Christ's birth Dr. Farrar says: "It must be admitted that we cannot demonstrate the exact year of the nativity.... As to the day and month of the nativity it is certain that they can never be recovered; they were absolutely unknown to the early fathers, and there is scarcely one month of the year which has not been fixed upon as probable by modern critics." The inability of Christians to determine the date of Christ's birth is one of the strongest proofs of his non-existence as a historical character. Were the story of his miraculous birth and marvelous life true the date of his birth would have been preserved and would be today, the best authenticated fact in history. 6 Where was Jesus born? Matthew and Luke: In Bethlehem of Judea (Matt. ii, 1; Luke ii, 1-7). Aside from these stories in Matthew and Luke concerning the nativity, which are clearly of later origin than the remaining documents composing the books and which many Christian scholars reject, there is not a word in the Four Gospels to confirm the claim that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Every statement in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as well as Acts, concerning his nativity, is to the effect that he was born in Nazareth of Galilee. He is never called "Jesus of Bethlehem," but always "Jesus of Nazareth." According to modern usage "Jesus of Nazareth" might merely signify that Nazareth was the place of his residence and not necessarily the place of his birth. But this usage was unknown to the Jews. Had he been born at Bethlehem, he would, according to the Jewish custom, have been called "Jesus of Bethlehem," because the place of birth always determined this distinguishing adjunct, and the fact of his having removed to another place would not have changed it. Peter (Acts ii, 22; iii, 6); Paul (Acts xxvi, 9), Philip (John i, 45), Cleopas and his companion (Luke xxiv, 19), Pilate (John xix, 19), Judas and the band sent to arrest Jesus (John xviii, 5, 7), the High Priest's maid (Mark xiv, 67), blind Bartimaeus (Mark x, 47), the unclean spirits (Mark i, 24; Luke iv, 34), the multitudes that attended his meetings (Matt. xxi, 11; Luke xviii, 37), all declared him to be a native of Nazareth. To the foregoing may be added the testimony of Jesus himself. When Paul asked him who he was he answered: "I am Jesus of Nazareth" (Acts xxii, 8). Many of the Jews rejected Christ because he was born in Galilee and not in Bethlehem. "Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the scriptures said, That Christ cometh out of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?" (John vii, 41, 42). Concerning this subject the "Bible for Learners" says: "The primitive tradition declared emphatically that Nazareth was the place from which Jesus came. We may still see this distinctly enough in our Gospels. Jesus is constantly called the Nazarene, or Jesus of Nazareth. This was certainly the name by which he was known in his own time; and of course such local names were given to men from the place of their birth, and not from the place in which they lived, which might constantly be changing. Nazareth is called in so many words his own, that is his native city, and he himself declares it so" (vol. iii, pp. 39, 40). That Jesus the man, if such a being existed, was not born at Bethlehem is affirmed by all critics. That he could not have been born at Nazareth is urged by many. Nazareth, it is asserted, did not exist at this time. Christian scholars admit that there is no proof of its existence at the beginning of the Christian era outside of the New Testament. The Encyclopedia Biblica, a leading Christian authority, says: "We cannot perhaps venture to assert positively that there was a city called Nazareth in Jesus' time." 7 His reputed birth at Bethlehem was in fulfillment of what prophecy? "And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda; for out of thee shall come a governor that shall rule my people Israel" (Matthew ii, 6). This is a misquotation of Micah v, 2. The passage as it appears in our version of the Old Testament is itself a mistranslation. Correctly rendered it does not mean that this ruler shall come from Bethlehem, but simply that he shall be a descendant of David whose family belonged to Bethlehem. Concerning this prophecy it may be said, 1. That Jesus never became governor or ruler of Israel; 2. That the ruler referred to was to be a military leader who should deliver Israel from the Assyrians. "And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into the land ... thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian" (Micah v, 5, 6). 8 Jesus is called the Son of David. Why? Matthew and Luke: Because Joseph, who was not his father, but merely his guardian or foster father, was descended from David. The Jews expected a Messiah. This expectation was realized, it is claimed, in Jesus Christ. His Messianic marks, however, were not discernible and the Jews, for the most part, rejected him. This Messiah must be a son of David. Before Jesus' claims could even be considered his Davidic descent must be established. This Matthew and Luke attempt to do. Each gives what purports to be a genealogy of him. If these genealogies agree they may be false; if they do not agree one must be false. 9 How many generations were there from David to Jesus? Matthew: Twenty-eight (i, 6-16). Luke: Forty-three (iii, 23-31). Luke makes two more generations from David to Jesus in a period of one thousand years than Matthew does from Abraham to Jesus in a period of two thousand years. 10 How many generations were there from Abraham to Jesus? Matthew: "From Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations"--in all, forty-two generations (i, 17). Here Matthew contradicts his own record given in the preceding sixteen verses; for, including both Abraham and Jesus, he names but forty-one generations: 1. Abraham, 2. Isaac, 3. Jacob, 4. Judas, 5. Phares, 6. Ezrom, 7. Aram, 8. Aminadab, 9. Naason, 10. Salmon, 11. Booz, 12. Obed, 13. Jesse, 14. David, 15. Solomon, 16. Roboam, 17. Abia, 18. Asa, 19. Josaphat, 20. Joram, 21. Ozias, 22. Joatham, 23. Achaz, 24. Ezekias, 25. Manasses, 26. Amon, 27. Josias, 28. Jechonias, 29. Salathiel, 30. Zorobabel, 31. Abiud, 32. Eliakim, 33. Azor, 34. Sadoc, 35. Achim, 36. Eliud, 37. Eleazer, 38. Matthan, 39. Jacob, 40. Joseph, 41. Jesus Christ. 11 Does Luke's genealogy agree with the Old Testament? It does not. Luke gives twenty generations from Adam to Abraham, while Genesis (v, 3-32; xi, 10-26) and Chronicles (1 Ch. i, 1-4; 24-27) each gives but nineteen. 12 How many generations were there from Abraham to David? Matthew: "From Abraham to David are fourteen generations" (i, 17). From Abraham to David are not fourteen, but thirteen generations; for David does not belong to this period. The genealogical table of Matthew naturally and logically comprises three divisions which he recognizes. The first division comprises the generations preceding the establishment of the Kingdom of David, beginning with Abraham; the second comprises the kings of Judah, beginning with David the first and ending with Jechonias the last; the third comprises the generations following the kings of Judah, from the Captivity to Christ. 13 How many generations were there from David to the Captivity? Matthew: "From David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations" (i, 17). In order to obtain a uniformity of numbers--three periods of double seven (seven was the sacred number of the Jews) each--Matthew purposely falsifies the records of the Old Testament. A reference to the Davidic genealogy (1 Chronicles iii) shows that he omits the generations of Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah, and Jehoiakim, four Jewish kings, lineal descendants of David, whose combined reigns amount to over eighty years. Matthew. Chronicles. David, David, Solomon, Solomon, Reboam, Rehoboam, Abia, Abia, Asa, Asa, Josaphat, Jehoshaphat, Joram, Joram, Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah, Ozias, Azariah, Joatham, Jotham, Achaz, Ahaz, Ezekias, Hezekiah, Manasses, Manasseh, Amon, Amon, Josias, Josiah, Jehoiakim, Jechonias. Jechoniah. The first three omissions are thus explained by Augustine: "Ochozias [Ahaziah], Joash, and Amazias were excluded from the number, because their wickedness was continuous and without interval." As if the exclusion of their names from a genealogical list would expunge their records from history and drain their blood from the veins of their descendants. But aside from the absurdity of this explanation, the premises are false. Those whose names are excluded from the list were not men whose "wickedness was continuous and without interval," while some whose names are not excluded were. Ahaziah reigned but one year. Joash reigned forty years and both Kings and Chronicles affirm that "He did that which was right in the sight of the Lord" (2 Kings xii, 2; 2 Chron. xxiv, 2). Amaziah reigned twenty-nine years, and he, too, "did that which was right in the sight of the Lord" (2 Kings xiv, 3). On the other hand, Rehoboam, Joram and Jechonias, whose names are retained in Matthew's table, are represented as monsters of wickedness. 14 Name the generations from David to the Captivity. Matthew. Luke. David, David, Solomon, Nathan, Roboam, Mattatha, Abia, Menan, Asa, Melea, Josaphat, Eliakim, Joram, Jonan, Ozias, Joseph, Joatham, Juda, Achas, Simeon, Ezekias, Levi, Manasses, Matthat, Amon, Jorim, Josias, Eliezer, Jechonias. Jose, Er, Elmodam, Cosam, Addi, Melchi, Neri. 15 How many generations were there from the Captivity to Christ? Matthew: "From the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations" (i, 17). Matthew is again guilty of deception. A reference to his table shows that there were but thirteen generations. In order to carry out his numerical system of fourteen generations to each period he counts the generation of Jechonias in this period which he has already counted in the preceding period; thus performing the mathematical feat of dividing 27 by 2 and obtaining 14 for a quotient. Had Matthew given a true summary of this genealogy, assuming the generations from the close of the Old Testament record to Christ to be correct, instead of these periods of double seven each, we would have the following: "So all the generations from Abraham to David are thirteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are nineteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are thirteen generations." 16 Name the generations from the Captivity to Christ. Matthew. Luke. Chronicles. Salathiel, Salathiel, Pediah, Zorobabel, Zorobabel, Zerubabel, Abiud, Rhesa, Hananiah, Eliakim, Joanna, Schecania, Azor, Juda, Shemaiah, Sadoc, Joseph, Neariah, Achim, Semei, Elioenai, Eliud, Mattathias, Hodaiah, Eleazer, Maath, (Here the genealogy of Chronicles ends.) Matthan, Nagge, Jacob, Esli, Joseph, Naum, Jesus. Amos, Mattathias, Joseph, Janna, Melchi, Levi, Heli, Matthat, Joseph, Jesus. 17 According to the accepted chronology, what was the average age of each generation from David to Jesus? Luke: Twenty-five years. Matthew: Forty years. 18 What was the average age from David to the Captivity? Matthew: Thirty-seven years. According to Chronicles the average age of the same line for the same period was but twenty-six years. 19 What was the average age from the Captivity to Jesus? Luke: Twenty-eight years. Matthew: Fifty years. While the average age from David to the Captivity by way of Solomon was but twenty-six years the average age from the Captivity to Jesus by the same line, according to Matthew, was fifty years. This proves the falsity of Matthew's genealogy from the Captivity to Jesus. 20 What was the average length of each generation from Abraham to David? Matthew and Luke: Seventy years. Seventy years is said to constitute the natural life of man. According to these Evangelists Christ's Pre-Davidic ancestors only reached maturity at seventy. How slow was man's development then--a babe in his mother's arms at twenty; a playful child at forty; at sixty an ardent youth wooing a blushing maiden of half a hundred years; at three score years and ten a fond young father rejoicing at the birth of his first-born! 21 What was the average length of each generation from Adam to Abraham? Luke: One hundred years. 22 How many generations were there from Adam to Abraham? Luke: Twenty (iii, 34-38). Luke makes less than half as many generations from Adam to Abraham in a period of two thousand years as he does from David to Jesus in a period of one thousand years. 23 How many generations were there between Rachab, the mother of Booz, and David? Matthew: Three--Booz, Obed and Jesse (i, 5, 6). Rachab lived at Jericho when it was taken by the Israelites. Jericho was taken 1451 B. C., the year that Moses died. David was born 1085 B. C.--nearly four centuries later. 24 Assuming the generations following the Captivity in Matthew and Chronicles to run parallel, how many generations were there between the last generation named in Chronicles and Jesus? Matthew: Four. Yet Chronicles was written, it is claimed, from 458 to 604 years before Christ. "If the Chronicles were written by Ezra, the date of their composition was not far from B. C. 458, the year of the return from the Captivity. If by Daniel, the earlier period of from 604 to 534 must be adopted."--Rev. Dr. Hitchcock. 25 Name the first ten ancestors of Jesus. Luke: Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Maleleel, Jared, Enoch, Mathusala, Lamech, Noe (iii, 36-38). Archeological researches have shown these to be ten Babylonian kings. 26 Who was Sala? Luke: "Sala, which was the son of Cainan, which was the son of Arphaxad" (iii, 35, 36). "And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years and begat Salah" (Genesis xi, 12). According to Luke Sala was the grand-son of Arphaxad; according to Genesis he was the son of Arphaxad. 27 Who begat Ozias? Matthew: "Joram begat Ozias" (i, 8). "Ahaziah his [Joram's] son, Joash his son, Amaziah his son, Azariah [Ozias] his son" (1 Chronicles iii, 11, 12). According to the New Testament Ozias was the son of Joram; according to the Old Testament he was the great great-grandson of Joram. 28 Who was Josiah's successor? Matthew: Jechonias (i, 11). "Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah, and made him king in his father's stead" (2 Chronicles xxxvi, 1). "For thus saith the Lord touching Shallum, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, which reigned instead of Josiah, his father" (Jeremiah xxii, 11). "And Pharaoh-nechoh made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in the room of Josiah, his father, and turned his name to Jehoiakim" (2 Kings xxiii, 34). According to Matthew, Josiah's successor was Jechonias; according to Chronicles, Jehoahaz; according to Jeremiah, Shallum; according to Kings, Jehoiakim. 29 Who was the father of Jechonias? Matthew: "Josias begat Jechonias" (i, 11). Josias was not the father but the grandfather of Jechonias. "And the sons of Josiah were, ... the second Jehoiakim.... And the sons of Jehoiakim: Jechoniah, his son" (1 Chron. iii, 15, 16). 30 When did Josias beget Jechonias? Matthew: "And Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away into Babylon" (i, 11). Josiah became king 641 B. C. and died 610 B. C. Jechonias was carried to Babylon 588 B. C., 22 years after Josiah died. 31 Did Jechonias have a son? Matthew: "And after they were brought to Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel" (i, 12). "As I live, saith the Lord, though Coniah [Jechonias], the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence.... O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling no more in Judah" (Jeremiah xxii, 24-30). This curse was pronounced upon Jechonias before he was taken to Babylon. By this divine oath Jesus is precluded from becoming an heir to the throne of David. God swears that Jechonias shall be childless, and that no descendant of his shall ever sit upon the throne. Yet Matthew, in the face of this oath, declares that Jechonias did not remain childless, that he begat a son, Salathiel, the progenitor of Jesus. In attempting to make Jesus an heir to David's throne Matthew makes God a liar and perjurer. 32 Matthew says that Salathiel was the son of Jechonias. Who does Luke declare him to be? "The son of Neri" (iii, 27). 33 Who was the father of Zorobabel? Matthew: "And Salathiel begat Zorobabel" (i, 12). Luke: "Zorobabel, which was the son of Salathiel" (iii, 27). Here both Evangelists agree--agree to disagree with Chronicles which says that Zorobabel was the son of Pedaiah, the brother of Salathiel. "And the sons of Pedaiah were Zerubbabel and Shimei" (1 Chron. iii, 19). 34 Who was the son of Zorobabel? Matthew: "And Zorobabel begat Abiud" (i, 13). Luke: "Rhesa, which was the son of Zorobabel" (iii, 27). Each contradicts the other, and both contradict the Old Testament (1 Chron. iii, 19, 20). 35 Who was the father of Joseph? Matthew: "And Jacob begat Joseph" (i, 16). Luke: "Joseph, which was the son of Heli" (iii, 23). 36 If Jesus was descended from David, the descent was through one of David's sons. Which one? Matthew: Solomon (i, 6-16). Luke: Nathan (iii, 23-31). Luke reaches the same person by way of one brother that Matthew does by way of the other. 37 Many commentators attempt to reconcile these discordant genealogies by assuming that Matthew gives the genealogy of Joseph, while Luke gives the genealogy of Mary. What do the Evangelists themselves declare? Matthew: "And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ," etc. (i, 16). Luke: "And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli," etc. (iii, 23). Dr. Geikie, in his "Life of Christ" (vol. i, p. 531, note), says: "The genealogies given by both Matthew and Luke seem unquestionably to refer to Joseph." Regarding this the Rev. Dr. McNaught says: "Let the reader bear in mind how Matthew states that 'Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary,' and how Luke's words are 'Joseph which was the son of Heli,' and then let him say whether it is truthful to allege that these different genealogies belong to different individuals. Is it not plain that each of them professes to trace the lineal descent of one and the same man, Joseph?" William Rathbone Greg says: "The circumstance that any man could suppose that Matthew when he said, 'Jacob begat Joseph,' or Luke, when he said, 'Joseph was the son of Heli,' could refer to the wife of the one, or the daughter-in-law of the other, shows to what desperate stratagems polemical orthodoxy will resort in order to defend an untenable position." Smith's "Bible Dictionary" offers the following explanation: "They are both the genealogies of Joseph, i. e., of Jesus Christ, as the reputed and legal son of Joseph and Mary. The genealogy of St. Matthew is Joseph's genealogy as legal successor to the throne of David. St. Luke's is Joseph's private genealogy, exhibiting his real birth, as David's son, and thus showing why he was heir to Solomon's crown. The simple principle that one Evangelist exhibits that genealogy which contained the successive heirs to David's and Solomon's throne, while the other exhibits the paternal stem of him who was the heir, explains all the anomalies of the two pedigrees." This "simple principle" necessitates three disagreeable postulates. 1. That the lineage of Nathan, who is not the recorded possessor of even one wife, survived, while that of Solomon who had seven hundred wives became extinct. 2. That Joseph was legal successor to the throne of David, when Heli, his father, was not. 3. That the first chapter of Matthew contains more than a score of errors. That little word "begat" is fatal to the above theory. Matthew declares that Jacob begat Joseph. If Jacob begat Joseph, then Jacob, and not Heli, was the father of Joseph. According to Matthew, the royal line descends from David to Joseph unbroken; each heir begetting the succeeding one, thus precluding the possibility of a collateral branch inheriting the throne. The hypothesis that Jesus was merely the adopted son and legal heir of Joseph and yet fulfilled the Messianic requirements is untenable. Strauss says: "Adoption might indeed suffice to secure to the adopted son the reversion of certain external family rights and inheritances; but such a relationship could in no wise lend a claim to the Messianic dignity, which was attached to the true blood and lineage of David" (Leben Jesu, p. 122). The Messiah must be a natural and lineal descendant of David, which Peter expressly declares Jesus to be: "God had sworn with an oath to him [David], that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne" (Acts ii, 30). It is assumed by some that a Levirate marriage had taken place between the parents of Joseph, and that the one genealogy belonged to the natural, the others to the legal father of Joseph. By a Levirate marriage if a man died without heirs his remaining brother married his widow and raised up heirs to him. But in this case the brothers would have the same father, and the genealogies would differ only in the father of Joseph. It is only by a succession of Levirate marriages and a juggling of words, which no intelligent critic can seriously entertain, that such a hypothesis can be considered possible, even waiving the Old Testament writers, and the Evangelists themselves, whose language forbids it. Eusebius advances an explanation characteristic of this ecclesiastical historian and of the early church whose history he professes to record. The Jews, it is said, were divided in their opinions regarding the descent of the Messiah. While some contended that his descent must be through the royal line, others believed that because of the excessive wickedness of the kings the descent would be through another line. Eusebius says: "Matthew gives his opinion, Luke repeats the common opinion of many, not his own.... This last view Luke takes, though conscious that Matthew gives the real truth of the genealogy." Matthew's genealogy is self-evidently false; while Luke's according to the admission of the historian of the primitive church, is merely a fabrication of early Christians, designed to influence those who rejected Matthew's genealogy of the Messiah. 38 If the miraculous conception be true the Davidic descent could only be through Mary. Was Mary descended from David? "We are wholly ignorant of the name and occupation of St. Mary's parents. She was, like Joseph, of the tribe of Judah, and of the lineage of David (Ps. cxxxii, 11; Luke i, 32; Rom. i, 3)."--Smith's Bible Dictionary. Three passages are cited in support of this claim: 1. "The Lord hath sworn in truth unto David; he will not turn from it. Of the fruit of thy body will I sit upon thy throne. If thy children will keep my covenant and my testimony that I shall teach them, their children shall also sit upon thy throne forevermore" (Ps. cxxxii, 11, 12). 2. "He shall be great, and shall be called the son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David" (Luke i, 32). 3. "Concerning his son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh" (Rom. i, 3). The second and third passages do not refer to Mary; the first passage refers neither to Jesus nor Mary. There is no evidence to prove that Mary was descended from David. On the contrary there is evidence to prove that she was not descended from him. 1. "The angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city in Galilee, called Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary" (Luke i, 27). Joseph, and not Mary is declared to be of the house of David. 2. It is stated that Joseph went to Bethlehem "to be taxed with Mary," not because they, but "because he was of the house and lineage of David" (Luke ii, 4, 5). 3. Mary was the cousin of Elizabeth (Luke i, 3), and Elizabeth "was of the daughters of Aaron" (i, 5), i. e., descended from Levi, while the house of David was descended from Judah. This desperate, yet ineffectual, effort to establish the Davidic descent of Mary is virtually an abandonment of the genealogical tables of Matthew and Luke, and a falling back upon this pitiable argumentum in circulo: Mary was descended from David because the Messiah was to be descended from David, and Jesus was the Messiah because Mary was descended from David. These genealogies do not give the lineage of Mary who is said to have been his only earthly parent, but the lineage of Joseph who, it is claimed, was not his father. But if Joseph was not the father of Jesus, what is the use of giving his pedigree? If Joseph was not the father of Jesus how does proving that he was descended from David prove that Jesus was descended from David? If these genealogies run through Joseph to Jesus, as stated by Matthew and Luke, then Joseph must have been the father of Jesus; and if he was the father of Jesus the story of the miraculous conception is false. The Synoptics, as we have seen, are for the most part, mere compilations, made up of preexisting documents. These documents belonged to different ages of the primitive church. In the first ages of the church Christians believed that Jesus was simply a man--the son of Joseph and Mary. The genealogies of Matthew and Luke, which trace his descent from David through Joseph, belonged to this age. The story of the miraculous conception was the product of a later age. If the dogma of the miraculous conception be true, if God, and not Joseph, was the father of Jesus as taught, these genealogies, being genealogies of Joseph, fail to prove what they are intended to prove, the royal descent of Jesus from David. The genealogies of Matthew and Luke and their accounts of the miraculous conception mutually exclude each other. 39 Did Jesus believe himself to be descended from David? Synoptics: He did not (Matt. xxii, 41-46; Mark xii, 35-37; Luke xx, 41-44). A principal objection to accepting Jesus as the Messiah by the Jews was the fact that he was not descended from David. He tacitly admitted that he was not, and the whole burden of his argument was to convince them that it was not necessary that he should be. 40 The miraculous conception was in fulfillment of what prophecy? Matthew: "Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel" (i, 22, 23). This is esteemed the "Gem of the Prophecies," and may be found in the seventh chapter of Isaiah. The facts are these: Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, king of Israel, had declared war against Ahaz, king of Judah. God assured Ahaz that they should not succeed, but that their own kingdoms should be destroyed by the Assyrians. To convince him of the truth of this he requested Ahaz to demand a sign. "But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord.... Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel.... Before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings." In the succeeding chapter the fulfillment of this prophecy is recorded: "And I went unto the prophetess; and she conceived, and bare a son. Then said the Lord to me, Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz. For before the child shall have knowledge to cry, My father, and my mother, the riches of Damascus [the capital of Rezin's kingdom] and the spoils of Samaria [the capital of Pekah's kingdom] shall be taken away before the king of Assyria." Rezin and Pekah were overthrown by the Assyrians about 720 B. C. One of the most convincing proofs of Christ's divinity, with many, is the supposed fact that he was born of a virgin and that his miraculous birth was foretold by a prophet seven hundred years before the event occurred. Now, there is not a passage in the Jewish Scriptures declaring that a child should be born of a virgin. The word translated "virgin" does not mean a virgin in the accepted sense of the term, but simply a young woman, either married or single. The whole passage is a mistranslation. The words rendered "a virgin shall conceive and bear a son" should read, "a young woman is with child and beareth a son." In this so-called prophecy there is not the remotest reference to a miraculous conception and a virgin-born child. The Jews themselves did not regard this passage as a Messianic prophecy; neither did they believe that the Messiah was to be born of a virgin. Next to the preceding the following is most frequently cited as a Messianic prophecy: "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, ... until Shiloh come" (Genesis xlix, 10). If Shiloh refers to Christ the prophecy was not fulfilled, for the sceptre did depart from Judah 600 years before Christ came. But Shiloh does not refer to a Messiah, nor to any man. Shiloh was the seat of the national sanctuary before it was removed to Jerusalem. This so-called prophecy, like the preceding, is a mistranslation. The correct reading is as follows: "The preeminence shall not depart from Judah so long as the people resort to Shiloh." "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be declared Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace" (Isaiah ix, 6). Prof. Cheyne, the highest authority on Isaiah, pronounces this a forgery. Every honest Christian scholar must admit this. It is a self-evident forgery. No Jewish writer could have written it. To have declared even the Messiah to be "The mighty God, the everlasting Father" would have been the rankest blasphemy, a crime the punishment of which was death. These alleged Messianic prophecies are, in their present form, Christian rather than Jewish. Christian translators and exegetists have altered their language and perverted their meaning to make them appear to refer to Christ. The following is an example: "I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS" (Jeremiah xxiii, 5, 6). The correct rendering of this passage is as follows: "I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the land. In his days Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is the name whereby they shall call themselves: The Eternal is our righteousness." To make a Messianic prophecy of this passage and give it effect no less than eight pieces of deception were employed by the editors of our Authorized Version: 1. The word "branch" is made to begin with a capital letter. 2. The word "king" also begins with a capital. 3. "The name" is rendered "his name." 4. The pronoun "they," relating to the people of Judah and Israel, is changed to "he." 5. The word "Eternal" is translated "Lord." 6. "The Lord our righteousness" is printed in capitals. 7. In the table of contents, at the head of the chapter, are the words "Christ shall rule and save them." 8. At the top of the page are the words "Christ promised." Another example of this Messianic prophecy making is the following: "Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem, unto Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and three score and two weeks" (Daniel ix, 25). The term "week," it is claimed, means a period of seven years, and assumed that by Messiah is meant Christ. Seven weeks and three score and two weeks are sixty-nine weeks, or 483 years, the time that was to elapse from the command to rebuild Jerusalem to the coming of Christ, if the prophecy was fulfilled. The decree of Cyrus to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple was made 536 B. C. According to the accepted chronology Christ was born 4 B. C. From the decree of Cyrus, then, to the coming of Christ was 532 years instead of 483 years, a period of seven weeks, or forty-nine years, longer than that named by Daniel. Ezra, the priest, went to Jerusalem 457 B. C. This event, however, had nothing whatever to do with the decree for rebuilding Jerusalem and the temple. It occurred 79 years after the decree was issued, and 58 years after the temple was finished. But a searcher for Messianic prophecies found that from the time of Ezra to the beginning of Christ's ministry was about 483 years, or sixty-nine prophetic weeks; and notwithstanding there was a deficiency of 79 years at one end of the period, and an excess of 30 years at the other, it was declared to fit exactly. Christian theologians pretend to recognize in the Old Testament two kinds of Messianic prophecies: 1. Specific predictions concerning Christ which were literally fulfilled; 2. Passages in which the writer refers to other persons or events, but which God, without the writer's knowledge, designed as types of Christ. The fallaciousness of the former having been exposed--it having been shown that there is not a text in the Jewish Scriptures predicting the coming of Christ--they now rely chiefly upon the latter to support their claims. These "prophecies" are almost limitless; for a firm believer in prophecy can, with a vivid imagination, take almost any passage and point out a fancied resemblance between the thing it refers to and the thing he wants confirmed; apparently oblivious to the fact that the passage is equally applicable to a thousand other things. Had the Mormons accepted Joe Smith as a Messiah instead of a prophet they would have no lack of prophecies to support their claims; and by translating and revising the Scriptures to suit their views, as Christians did, these prophecies would fit him as well as they do the Christ. 41 What name was to be given the child mentioned in Isaiah's prophecy? "They shall call his name Emmanuel" (Matthew i, 23). What name was to be given Mary's son? "Thou shalt call his name Jesus" (Matt. i, 21). In the naming of the Christian Messiah Isaiah's prophecy was not fulfilled. He was never called Emmanuel, but Jesus. 42 To whom did the angel announcing the miraculous conception appear? Matthew: To Joseph (i, 20, 21). Luke: To Mary (i, 26-38). "An angel did not appear, first to Mary, and also afterwards to Joseph; he can only have appeared either to the one or to the other. Consequently, it is only the one or the other relation which can be regarded as historical. And here different considerations would conduct to opposite decisions.... Every criticism which might determine the adoption of the one, and the rejection of the other, disappears; and we find ourselves, in reference to both accounts, driven back by necessity to the mythical view."--Strauss. 43 For what purpose was the Annunciation made? Luke: Simply to acquaint Mary with the heavenly decree that she had been chosen to become the mother of the coming Messiah (i, 26-33). Matthew: To allay the suspicions of Joseph respecting Mary's chastity and prevent him from putting her away (i, 18-20). 44 Did the Annunciation take place before or after Mary's conception? Luke: Before (i, 26-31). Matthew: After (i, 18-20). 45 Who was declared to be the father of Jesus? Matthew: The Holy Ghost (i, 18, 20). With the Jews the Holy Ghost (Spirit) was of feminine gender; with the Greeks, of masculine gender. The belief that the Holy Ghost was the father of Jesus originated, not with the Jewish Christians of Palestine, as claimed, but with the Greek Christians of Alexandria. 46 What prediction did the angel Gabriel make to Mary concerning Jesus? "The Lord shall give unto him the throne of his father David" (Luke i, 32). Respecting this prediction the Rev. Dr. Hooykaas, of Holland, says: "If a messenger from Heaven had really come to bring a divine revelation to Mary, the result must have confirmed his prediction; and since Jesus never fulfilled these expectations it is obvious that the revelation was never made." 47 When Mary visited Elizabeth what did she do? Luke: She uttered a hymn of praise (i, 46-55). Had Mary uttered such a hymn we would suppose that it would have been original and inspired by the Almighty Father of her unborn child. Yet the hymn which Luke puts into her mouth was borrowed from the song of Hannah. Hannah. Mary. "My heart rejoiceth in the Lord" (1 "My spirit hath rejoiced in God" Sam. ii, 1). (Luke i, 47). "If thou wilt indeed look on the "For he hath regarded the low affliction of thine handmaid" (i, estate of his handmaiden" (48). 11). "Talk no more so exceeding proudly" "He hath scattered the proud" (ii, 3). (51). "The bows of the mighty men are "He hath put down the mighty from broken, and they that stumbled are their seats and exalted them of girded with strength (4). low degree" (52). "They that were full hath hired out "He hath filled the hungry with themselves for bread; and they that good things; and the rich he hath were hungry ceased" (5). sent empty away" (53). 48 What decree is said to have been issued by Caesar Augustus immediately preceding the birth of Christ? Luke: "That all the world should be taxed" (ii, 1). No such decree was issued by Augustus, nor even one that the Roman world should be taxed. The taxation of different provinces of the empire was made at various times, no general decree ever having been issued and no uniform assessment ever having been attempted by Augustus. An enrollment of Roman citizens for the purpose of taxation was made in Syria 7 A. D. 49 Of what king was Joseph a subject when Jesus was born? Matthew: Of Herod. If Jesus was born during the reign of Herod, Joseph, whether a resident of Judea or of Galilee, could not have been taxed by Augustus, for neither province was then a part of Syria. Both provinces belonged to Herod's kingdom and Herod's subjects were not taxed by the Roman government. 50 Of what province was Joseph a resident? Matthew: Of Judea. Luke: Of Galilee. If he was a resident of Galilee he could not have been taxed by Augustus, even in the time of Cyrenius, for Galilee was not a Roman province, but an independent state, and had no political connection with Syria. Again, this decree could not have applied to Judea prior to the banishment of Archelaus, ten years after the time of Herod; for Judea did not become a Roman province until that time; and while Archelaus had paid tribute to Rome the assessments of the people were made by him and not by Augustus. 51 Why was Joseph with his wife obliged to leave Galilee and go to Bethlehem of Judea to be enrolled? Luke: "Because he was of the house and lineage of David," and Bethlehem was the "city of David" (ii, 4). Even if he had been subject to taxation there was no law or custom requiring him to leave his own country and go to that of his ancestors to be enrolled. The assessment, according to the Roman custom, was made at the residence of the person taxed. Nothing surpasses in absurdity this story of Luke, that a woman, on the eve of confinement, and the subject of another ruler, was dragged across two provinces to be enrolled for taxation. In regard to this taxation Dr. Hooykaas says: "But here again we are met by overwhelming difficulties. In itself, the Evangelist's account of the manner in which the census was carried out is entirely incredible. Only fancy the indescribable confusion that would have arisen if every one, through the length and breadth of the land of the Jews, had left his abode to go and enroll himself in the city or village from which his family originally came, even supposing he knew where it was. The census under David was conducted after a very different fashion. But it is still more important to note that the Evangelist falls into the most extraordinary mistakes throughout. In the first place history is silent as to a census of the whole (Roman) world ever having been made at all. In the next place, though Quirinus [Cyrenius] certainly did make such a register in Judea and Samaria, it did not extend to Galilee; so that Joseph's household was not affected by it. Besides it did not take place till ten years after the death of Herod, when his son Archelaus was deposed by the Emperor, and the districts of Judea and Samaria were thrown into a Roman province. Under the reign of Herod nothing of the kind took place, nor was there any occasion for it. Finally, at the time of the birth of Jesus the governor of Syria was not Quirinus, but Quintus Sentius Saturninus" (Bible for Learners, vol. iii, pp. 55, 56). 52 Was Jesus born in a house or in a stable? Matthew: "And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother" (ii, 11). Luke: "And she brought forth her first born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger" (ii, 7). Nothing can be clearer than that the author of Matthew supposes that Jesus was born in a house. The author of Luke, on the other hand, expressly declares that he was born in a stable. Luke's story concerning the place of Mary's accouchement has been received, while that of Matthew has been ignored. Christ's birth in a manger and death on the cross are the lodestones that have attracted the sympathies of the world, and kept him on the throne of Christendom; for sentiment rather than reason dominates mankind. Referring to Luke's story, the "Bible for Learners" says: "Such is the well-known story of the birth of Jesus, one of the sweetest and most deeply significant of all the legends of the Bible. That it is a legend, without even the smallest historical foundation, we must, of course, admit" (vol. iii, p. 54). Justin Martyr states that Jesus was born in a cave, and this statement Farrar is disposed to accept: "Justin Martyr, the Apologist, who, from his birth at Shechem, was familiar with Palestine, and who lived less than a century after the time of our Lord, places the scene of the nativity in a cave. This is, indeed, the ancient and constant tradition both of the Eastern and the Western churches, and it is one of the few to which, though unrecorded in the Gospel history, we may attach a reasonable probability" (Life of Christ, p. 3). 53 Why did Joseph and his wife take shelter in a stable? Luke: "Because there was no room for them in the inn" (ii, 7). Luke states that there was an inn at Bethlehem. There was no inn in the place. Dr. Geikie says: "We must not moreover think of Joseph seeking an inn at Bethlehem, for inns were unknown among the Jews" (Christmas at Bethlehem). 54 What celestial phenomenon attended Christ's birth? Matthew: A new star appeared and stood in the heavens above him (ii, 1-9). Luke: An angelic choir appeared and sang praises to God (ii, 13, 14). Matthew's story of the star and the Magi, even to the language itself, was borrowed from the writings of the Persians; Luke's story of the celestial visitants was taken from Pagan mythology. 55 Who visited him after his birth? Matthew: Wise men from the East (ii, 1-11). Luke: Shepherds from a neighboring field (ii, 8-20). Matthew makes no mention of the shepherds' visit; Luke is evidently ignorant of the visit of the wise men. 56 From where did the wise men come? Matthew: "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the East to Jerusalem, saying: Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the East, and are come to worship him" (ii, 1, 2). By the "East" was meant Persia or India, and from one of these countries the Magi are popularly supposed to have come. Justin Martyr says: "When a star rose in heaven at the time of his birth, as is recorded in the 'Memoirs' of his Apostles, the Magi from Arabia, recognizing the sign by this, came and worshiped him" (Dialogues, cvi). If they came from Arabia, as this Christian father declares, they came not from the East, but from the South. 57 What announcement did the angel make to the shepherds? "For behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people" (Luke ii, 10). According to Luke the visit of the angels is to proclaim to the world the birth of the new-born Messiah. Had the celestial phenomenon reported by this Evangelist really occurred the news of it would have quickly spread over Palestine. Yet the people of Jerusalem, only a few miles away, learn nothing of it; for, according to Matthew, the first intimation that Herod has of Christ's birth is from the wise men who visit him at a much later period. The inhabitants of Bethlehem themselves are ignorant of it. Could they have discovered to Herod this wonderful babe, or the place where his parents abode while there if they had departed, it would have saved their own children from the wrath of this monarch. But they knew nothing of him. 58 What effect had the announcement of Christ's birth upon Herod and the people of Jerusalem? Matthew: "When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him" (ii, 3). According to Matthew the announcement filled with alarm the entire populace, and the most diligent efforts were made to discover and destroy the babe. In strange contrast to this statement of Matthew is Luke's narrative (ii, 22-27), which declares that Jesus, when forty days old, was brought to Jerusalem and publicly exhibited in Herod's own temple, without exciting any alarm or provoking any hostility. 59 What did his parents do with him? Matthew: They fled with him into Egypt (ii, 13, 15). Luke: They remained with him in Palestine (ii, 22-52). "All attempts to reconcile these two contradictory statements, seem only elaborate efforts of art."--Dr. Schleiermacher. 60 When unable to discover Jesus what did Herod do? Matthew: "Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under" (ii, 16). If this statement be true hundreds of innocent babes (the Greek Calendar says fourteen thousand) must have perished, a crime the enormity of which is almost without a parallel in the annals of history. It is strange that Mark, Luke, and John make no mention of this frightful tragedy. Luke's silence is especially significant. It is passing strange that the Roman historians and Rabbinical writers of that age, who wrote of Herod, should be silent regarding it. Josephus devotes nearly forty chapters to the life of Herod. He narrates with much particularity every important event in his life. He detested this monarch and dwells upon his crimes and errors. Yet Josephus knew nothing of this massacre. In this silence of Josephus Dr. Farrar recognizes a difficulty too damaging to ignore. He says: "Why then, it has been asked, does Josephus make no mention of so infamous an atrocity? Perhaps because it was performed so secretly that he did not even know of it. Perhaps because, in those terrible days, the murder of a score of children, in consequence of a transient suspicion, would have been regarded as an item utterly insignificant in the list of Herod's murders. Perhaps because it was passed over in silence by Nikolaus of Damascus, who, writing in the true spirit of those Hellenizing courtiers, who wanted to make a political Messiah out of a corrupt and blood-stained usurper, magnified all his patron's achievements, and concealed or palliated all his crimes. But the more probable reason is that Josephus, whom, in spite of all the immense literary debt which we owe to him, we can only regard as a renegade and a sycophant, did not choose to make any allusion to facts which were even remotely connected with the life of Christ" (Life of Christ, pp. 22, 23). A more absurd reason than the first advanced by Farrar it is difficult to conceive. The second, that it was a matter of too little consequence to record, an explanation which other Christian apologists have assigned, is as unreasonable as it is heartless. The silence of Nikolaus, who wrote of Herod after his death, is also significant, and the excuse offered by Farrar that he omitted it because he was the friend of Herod, even if admitted, cannot apply to Josephus, who abhorred the memory of this monarch. The contention that Josephus purposely ignored the existence of Christ because he saw in him a menace to his faith is childish. Jesus Christ, admitting his existence, had made no history to record. His birth was attended by no prodigies, and there was nothing in his advent to excite the fear or envy of a king. Josephus mentions no Herodian massacre at Bethlehem because none occurred. Had Herod slain a single child in the manner stated the fact would be attested by a score of authors whose writings are extant. Herod did not slay one babe. This story is false. Herod's massacre of the infants of Bethlehem and the escape of Jesus was probably suggested by Kansa's massacre of the infants of Matura and the escape of Krishna. Pharaoh's slaughter of the first born in Egypt may also have suggested it. 61 What was the real cause of Herod's massacre? Matthew: The visit of the wise men and the disclosures made by them (ii, 1-16). These wise men, it is claimed, were under divine guidance. In view of this terrible slaughter their visit must be regarded as a divine blunder. 62 In the massacre of the innocents what prophecy was fulfilled? Matthew: "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not" (ii, 17, 18). This so-called prophecy is in Jeremiah xxxi, 15. It was written at the time of the Babylonian captivity and refers to the captive Jews. In the next verse Jeremiah says: "They shall come again from the land of the enemy." 63 When Herod died what did the Lord command Joseph to do? "Arise, and take the young child and his mother and go into the land of Israel, for they are dead which sought the young child's life" (Matthew ii, 20). "And the Lord said unto Moses in Midian, Go, return to Egypt: for all the men are dead which sought thy life" (Exodus iv, 19). 64 The sojourn of Joseph and Mary with Jesus in Egypt was in fulfillment of what prophecy? Matthew: That "spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son" (ii, 15). This may be found in Hosea xi, 1, and clearly refers to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. 65 Jesus was subsequently taken to Nazareth. Why? Matthew: "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, He shall be called a Nazarene" (ii, 23). The Bible contains no such prophecy. Fleetwood admits that "the words are not to be found" in "the prophetical writings," and Farrar says, "It is well known that no such passage occurs in any extant prophecy" (Life of Christ, p. 33). The only passage to which the above can refer is Judges xiii, 5. Here the child referred to was not to be called a Nazarene, but a Nazarite, and Matthew knew that "Nazarene" and "Nazarite" were no more synonymous than "Jew" and "priest." A Nazarene was a native of Nazareth; a Nazarite was one consecrated to the service of the Lord. Matthew likewise knew that this Nazarite referred to in Judges was Samson. 66 Had Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth previous to the birth of Jesus? Luke: They had. Matthew: They had not. "And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, ... to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife.... And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth" (Luke ii, 4, 5, 39). "When he [Joseph] arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt: and was there until the death of Herod.... But when Herod was dead, ... he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. And when he heard that Archelaus did reign in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither; notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee: and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth" (Matthew ii, 14-23). According to Luke their home was in Nazareth of Galilee; according to Matthew their home was in Bethlehem of Judea. Luke states that they merely visited Bethlehem to be enrolled for taxation and fulfill a certain Messianic prophecy. Matthew states that after the flight into Egypt and the death of Herod they were returning to Judea when fearing Archelaus they turned aside into Galilee to avoid this ruler and fulfill another Messianic prophecy. 67 How did the parents of Jesus receive the predictions of Simeon concerning him? Luke: "And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him" (ii, 33). Why should they marvel at the predictions of Simeon when long before they had been apprised of the same thing by the angel Gabriel? 68 Does the name "Joseph" belong in the text quoted above? It does not. The correct reading is: "And his father and his mother were marvelling at the things which were spoken concerning him." It declares Joseph to be the father of Jesus, and as this did not harmonize with the story of the miraculous conception the makers of our version substituted "Joseph" for "father." 69 What does Luke say regarding the infancy of John and Jesus? "And the child [John] grew and waxed strong in spirit" (i, 80). "And the child [Jesus] grew and waxed strong in spirit" (ii, 40). Between the growth of the man John and the growth of the God Jesus there is, according to the Evangelist, no difference, and the growth of each is identical with that of the demi-god Samson. 70 What custom did Jesus's parents observe? Luke: "His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover" (ii, 41). The preceding verse (40) shows that Luke means every year following the birth of Jesus. In the succeeding verse (42) it is clearly implied that Jesus always accompanied them. It is impossible to reconcile this statement of Luke, who evidently knows nothing of the enmity of Herod and Archelaus, with the statements of Matthew who declares them to have been his mortal enemies. 71 On one of these occasions where did they find him? Luke: "They found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions" (ii, 46). Not until the time of Gamaliel, who lived as late as the middle of the first century, was a child allowed to sit in the presence of the rabbis. He was always required to stand, and those acquainted with the Jewish history of that age know that the rabbis were the most rigid sticklers for ecclesiastical formalities, the slightest breach of which was never tolerated. The author of the third Gospel is familiar with the later, but not with the earlier custom. 72 What was the medium of communication through which the will of Heaven was revealed to the participants in this drama? Matthew: A dream (i, 20; ii, 12, 13, 19, 22). Luke: An angel (i, 11, 26; ii, 9). In Matthew every message respecting the child Jesus is communicated by means of a dream; in Luke every announcement is made through the agency of an angel. Yet, after all, these Evangelists differ only in terms; for Luke's angels are created out of the same stuff that Matthew's dreams are made of, and the world is fast coming to a realization of the fact that this whole theological structure, founded on sleepers' dreams and angels' tales, is but "The baseless fabric of a vision." CHAPTER V. THE MINISTRY OF CHRIST. 73 When, and at what age, did Jesus begin his ministry? Luke: "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar" (iii, 1). "Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age" (23). In the fifteenth year of Tiberius, who began his reign in August, 14 A. D., Jesus, according to Matthew, was at least thirty-three years of age; according to Luke, about twenty-two. Regarding this subject, Dr. Geikie writes as follows: "The age of Jesus at his entrance on his public work has been variously estimated. Ewald supposes that he was about thirty-four, fixing his birth three years before the death of Herod. Wieseler, on the contrary, believes him to have been in his thirty-first year, setting his birth a few months before Herod's death. Bunsen, Anger, Winer, Schurer, and Renan agree with this. Lichtenstein makes him thirty-two. Hausrath and Keim, on the other hand, think that he began his ministry in the year A. D. 34, but they do not give any supposed date for his birth, though if that of Ewald be taken as a medium he must have been forty years old, while, if Wieseler's date be preferred, he would only have been thirty-seven.... Amidst such difference, exactness is impossible" (Life of Christ, vol. i, pp. 455, 456). 74 John the Baptist is said to have been the person sent to announce the mission of Christ. Who was John the Baptist? Jesus: "This is Elias, which was for to come" (Matthew xi, 14). John: "And they asked him [John], what then? Art thou Elias? And he saith, I am not" (i, 21). A question of veracity between Jesus and John. 75 The advent of John was in fulfillment of what prophecy? Mark: "As it is written in the prophets, Behold I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare the way before thee" (i, 2). This passage is quoted from Malachi (iii, 1): God threatens to destroy the world, and says (iv, 5), "Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord." John expressly declared that he was not Elijah (Elias), and the destruction of the world did not follow his appearance. 76 What was predicted concerning John? "He shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb" (Luke i, 15). For the above Luke was indebted to the biographer of Samson. "Both [Samson and John] were to be consecrated to God from the womb, and the same diet was prescribed for both."--Strauss. 77 When the conception of John was announced what punishment was inflicted upon Zacharias for his doubt? Luke: "And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; ... And behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things be performed" (i, 19, 20). This was evidently suggested by a passage in Daniel: "And when he [Gabriel] had spoken such words unto me, I set my face toward the ground, and I became dumb" (x, 15). 78 Where was John baptizing when he announced his mission to the Jews? John (New Ver.): "In Bethany beyond Jordan" (i, 28). Bethany was a suburb of Jerusalem and was not beyond Jordan. The Authorized Version reads "Bethabara," conceded to be an interpolation, regarding which Geikie says: "The most ancient MSS. read Bethany instead of Bethabara, but no site of that name is now known on the Jordan. Bethabara was introduced into the text by Origen" (Life of Christ, vol. i, p. 566). 79 How old was Jesus when John began his ministry? Luke: "About thirty years of age" (iii, 2, 3, 23). Matthew: "In those days [when Jesus' parents brought him out of Egypt and settled in Nazareth, he being then about two years of age] came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea" (ii, 19-23; iii, 1). Matthew, it is claimed, was written only ten or twenty years after Jesus' baptism. If so, the phrase "in those days" clearly implies that he was but a child when John began his ministry. If the phrase was intended to comprehend a period of thirty years this gospel, it must be admitted, was written at least one hundred years after the event described. 80 Were Jesus and John related? Luke: They were, their mothers being cousins (i, 36). Mary had visited the mother of John, and each was acquainted with the character of the other's child. John before his birth is declared to have recognized and acknowledged the divinity of the unborn Jesus (Luke i, 41-44). Yet, according to the Fourth Gospel, at the beginning of Jesus' ministry John said, "I know him not" (i, 33). 81 When Jesus desired John to baptize him, what did the latter do? Matthew: "John forbade him saying, I have need to be baptized of thee" (iii, 14). According to Matthew, John was not only acquainted with Jesus, but cognizant of his divine mission, which cannot be harmonized with his statement in the Fourth Gospel. Dr. Geikie admits that John and Jesus were strangers to each other. He says: "Though cousins, the Baptist and the Son of Mary had never seen each other" (Life of Christ, vol. i, p. 389). This is not only a rejection of Matthew's statement, but a repudiation of the first chapter of Luke, one of the most important chapters of the New Testament; for it is utterly impossible for reason to harmonize these alleged revelations concerning the miraculous conceptions and divine missions of John and Jesus to their parents and the fact that John remained for thirty years in absolute ignorance of Jesus' existence. 82 What did John say regarding Jesus? "He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear" (Matthew iii, 11). "There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose" (Mark i, 7). 83 What other testimony did he bear concerning Jesus? "And of his fulness have all we received" (John i, 16). This was uttered prior to the beginning of Jesus' ministry, and before he had been baptized with the Holy Ghost. At this time "his fulness" had not been received, and the words are an anachronism. 84 At Jesus' baptism there came a voice from heaven. To whom were its words addressed? Matthew: To those who stood by. "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (iii, 17). Luke: To Jesus himself. "Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased" (iii, 22). 85 John heard this voice from heaven; did he believe it? Matthew: He evidently did not; for he afterwards sent two of his disciples to ascertain if Jesus were the Christ. "Now when John had heard in prison the words of Christ, he sent two of his disciples, and said unto him, Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?" (xi, 2, 3). 86 Do all the Evangelists record Jesus' baptism by John? They do not. According to the Synoptics, John's baptism of Jesus was the initial act in his ministry, and one of the most important events in his career. But of this baptism the author of the Fourth Gospel knows nothing. In regard to this omission the author of "Supernatural Religion" says: "According to the Synoptics, Jesus is baptized by John, and as he goes out of the water the Holy Ghost descends upon him like a dove. The Fourth Gospel knows nothing of the baptism, and makes John the Baptist narrate vaguely that he saw the Holy Ghost descend like a dove and rest upon Jesus, as a sign previously indicated to him by God by which to recognize the Lamb of God" (p. 681). 87 With what did John say Jesus would baptize? Mark and John: "He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost" (Mark i, 8; John i, 33). Matthew and Luke: "He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire" (Matt. iii, 11; Luke iii, 16). 88 How many were baptized by John? Matthew and Mark: "Jerusalem and all Judea" (Matt. iii, 5; Mark i, 5). John, if the account in Josephus is to be credited, made some converts; but all the inhabitants of Judea were not baptized by him. Is John the Baptist a historical character? Aside from the anonymous and apocryphal writings of the church, which appeared in the second century, the only evidence of his existence is a passage in Josephus (Antiquities, B. xviii, ch. v, sec. 2). The language of this passage, while not avowedly Christian like the passage pertaining to Christ, is yet of such a character as to excite suspicion regarding its genuineness. Its position strongly suggests an interpolation. Josephus gives an account of the troubles that arose between Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, and Aretas, king of Arabia Petrea. Herod had married the daughter of Aretas; but becoming infatuated with Herodias, his sister-in-law, he resolved to put her away and marry Herodias. Discovering his intentions his wife obtained permission to visit her father, who when he had been informed of Herod's perfidy, made war upon him and defeated him in battle. Herod appealed to the Emperor Tiberius, who was his friend, and who ordered Vitellius, governor of Syria, to invade the dominions of Aretas and capture or slay him. I quote the concluding portion of section 1 and the opening sentence of section 3 of the chapter containing this history, separating the two with an ellipsis: "So Herod wrote about these affairs to Tiberius, who, being very angry at the attempt made by Aretas, wrote to Vitellius to make war upon him, and either to take him alive, and bring him in bonds, or to kill him, and send him his head. This was the charge that Tiberius gave to the president of Syria.... So Vitellius prepared to make war with Aretas, having with him two legions of armed men." It will be readily observed that the two sections are closely connected, the one naturally and logically following the other. Yet between these two closely connected sections, the section containing the account of John the Baptist is inserted. 89 Who held the office of high priest at the time Jesus began his ministry? Luke: "Annas and Caiaphas" (iii, 2). If the writer were to declare that Washington and Monroe were presidents of the United States at the same time it would be no more erroneous than the declaration of Luke that Annas and Caiaphas were high priests at the same time. Two priests never held this office jointly. Caiaphas was high priest at this time, and three others had held the office previous to him and subsequent to Annas. Referring to Pontius Pilate's predecessor, Gratus, who was procurator of Judea from 15 to 26 A. D., Josephus says: "This man deprived Ananus [Annas] of the high priesthood, and appointed Ishmael, the son of Phabi, to be high priest. He also deprived him in a little time, and ordained Eleazer, the son of Ananus, who had been high priest before, to be high priest; which office, when he had held for a year, Gratus deprived him of it, and gave the high priesthood to Simon, the son of Camithus, and, when he had possessed the dignity no longer than a year, Joseph Caiaphas was made his successor" (Antiquities B. xviii, ch. ii, sec. 2). 90 Who was tetrarch of Abilene at this time? Luke: Lysanias (iii, 1). Lysanias was put to death at the instigation of Cleopatra sixty years before Jesus began his ministry. "She [Cleopatra] hurried Antony on perpetually to deprive others of their dominions, and give them to her; and as she went over Syria with him, she contrived to get it into her possession; so he slew Lysanias" (Josephus, Antiq., B. xv, ch. iv, sec. 1). At the time mentioned by Luke the territory of Abila, or Abilene, was no longer a tetrarchy. 91 Where was Jesus three days after he began his ministry? Synoptics: In the wilderness fasting (Matt. iv, 1; Mark i, 9-13; Luke iv, 1). John: At a wedding in Cana, feasting (i, ii). 92 Was he led, or driven by the spirit into the wilderness? Matthew and Luke: "Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness" (Matt. iv, 1; Luke iv, 1). Mark: "And immediately the spirit driveth him into the wilderness" (i, 12). 93 When did the temptation take place? Mark: During the forty days' fast. "And he was there in the wilderness forty days tempted of Satan" (i, 13). Matthew: After the fast. "And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights ... the tempter came to him" (iv, 2, 3). 94 During the temptation the devil is said to have set him on the temple. On what part of the temple did he set him? Matthew and Luke: "On a pinnacle" (Matt. iv, 5; Luke iv, 9). The indefinite article "a" clearly implies that the temple had several pinnacles, whereas it had but one. After eighteen hundred years the Holy Ghost discovered his mistake and moved the Oxford revisers to substitute "the" for "a." 95 What did the devil next do? Matthew: "The devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world" (iv, 8). It must have been "an exceedingly high mountain" to have enabled him to see the kingdoms of the opposite hemisphere. 96 What did the devil propose? "All these things will I give thee [Jesus], if thou wilt fall down and worship me" (Matthew iv, 9). If Jesus was the Christ, and Christ was God, as claimed, who owned "these things," he or the devil? Think of a tramp offering you a quit-claim deed to your home for a meal. 97 Where did the devil take him first, to the temple, or to the mountain? Matthew: To the temple (iv, 5-8). Luke: To the mountain (iv, 5-9). Concerning this discrepancy, Farrar says: "The order of the temptation is given differently by St. Matthew and St. Luke, St. Matthew placing second the scene on the pinnacle of the temple, and St. Luke the vision of the kingdoms of the world. Both orders cannot be right" (Life of Christ, p. 70). Some of the ablest Christian scholars have refused to accept the Temptation as historical. Farrar says: "From Origen down to Schleiermacher some have regarded it as a vision or allegory--the symbolic description of a purely inward struggle; and even so literal a commentator as Calvin has embraced this view" (Ibid, p. 65). 98 Had John been cast into prison when Jesus began his ministry? Matthew: He had. John: He had not. Matthew says that immediately after his temptation, and before he began his ministry, "Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison" (iv, 12). Then "he departed into Galilee; and leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum" (12, 13). "From that time Jesus began to preach" (17). This was the beginning of his ministry. According to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus had called his disciples; had traveled over Galilee and Judea; had baptized (iii, 22); had performed miracles (ii, 1-11, 23; iii, 2); had held controversies with the Jews (ii, 18-21; iii, 1-21); had attended the Passover (ii, 13-23); had purged the temple (ii, 13-16); and after all these things "John was not yet cast into prison" (iii, 24). 99 Name the Twelve Apostles. Matthew. Mark. Luke. Simon Peter Simon Peter Simon Peter Andrew Andrew Andrew James James James John John John Philip Philip Philip Bartholomew Bartholomew Bartholomew Thomas Thomas Thomas Matthew Matthew Matthew James Less James Less James Less LEBBEUS THADDEUS JUDAS Simon Simon Simon Judas Iscariot Judas Iscariot Judas Iscariot John does not name the Twelve Apostles and this important omission is admitted to be a grave defect in the Fourth Gospel. 100 Relate the circumstances attending the calling of Peter. Matthew: "And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets, and followed him" (iv, 18-20). Luke: "He [Jesus] stood by the lake of Gennesaret, and saw two ships standing by the lake; but the fishermen were gone out of them and were washing their nets. And he entered into one of the ships, which was Simon's, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people out of the ship. Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught" (v, 1-4). "And when they had this done they inclosed a great multitude of fishes" (6). "And Jesus said unto Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. And when they [Peter, James and John] had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed him" (10, 11). John: "Again the next day after John stood, and two of his disciples; and looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus" (i, 35-37). "They came and saw where he [Jesus] dwelt, and abode with him that day.... One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias.... And he brought him to Jesus" (40-42). Here are three accounts of the calling of Peter, each entirely at variance with the others. 101 In what country were they when Peter was called? Synoptics: In Galilee. John (Old Ver.): In Perea (i, 28-42). Bethabara and the territory beyond Jordan were in Perea. John (New Ver.): In Judea. Bethany and all the country surrounding it were in Judea. 102 Who did Jesus declare Peter to be? "Thou art Simon the son of Jona" (John i, 42). "Simon, son of Jonas" (John xxi, 15). "Thou art Simon the son of John" (John, New Ver., i, 42; xxi, 15). There is no relation whatever between "Jona," or "Jonas," and "John." Jona (Jonah), or Jonas, means a dove; John means the grace of God. 103 Jesus gave Simon (Peter) the name of Cephas. What meaning did he attach to the word Cephas? "Thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone" (John i, 42). "Thou shalt be called Cephas (which is by interpretation, Peter)" (Ibid, New Ver.). Here Jesus is represented as interpreting the meaning of an Aramaic word, with which his hearers were familiar, by the use of a Greek word of whose meaning they were ignorant, the incongruity of which must be apparent to every reader. 104 When were James and John called? Matthew: After Peter was called. After giving an account of the calling of Peter and Andrew, Matthew says: "And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them. And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed him" (iv, 21, 22). Luke: At the time that Peter was called. Luke states that James and John were partners of Peter, and with him on the lake, in another boat, when the miraculous draught of fishes was made, that both boats were filled with the fish, "And when they [Peter, James and John] had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed him" (v, 1-11). 105 Where was Jesus when he called Peter, James and John? Matthew: "Walking by the sea of Galilee" (iv, 18-21). Luke: On the lake in a ship (v, 1-11). In regard to Matthew's and Luke's accounts of the calling of Peter, James and John, Strauss says: "Neither will bear the other to precede, or to follow it--in short, they exclude each other" (Leben Jesu, p. 337). 106 Was Andrew called when Peter was called? Matthew and Mark: He was (Matt. iv, 18-20; Mark i, 16-18). According to Luke, Andrew was not called when Peter was called, but after he was called. According to John (i, 35-42) Andrew was the first to follow Jesus. 107 Who was called from the receipt of custom? Matthew: "A man named Matthew" (ix, 9). Luke: "A publican named Levi" (v, 27). Orthodox scholars claim that Matthew and Levi are the same person. Dr. Hooykaas does not believe that they are the same, and does not believe that any one of the Apostles was called from the receipt of custom. He says: "It is in reality very unlikely that Levi and Matthew are the same man, or that one of the Twelve was a tax-gatherer" (Bible for Learners, vol. iii, p. 201). 108 Who was the mother of James the Less and Joses? In the earlier parts of their narratives, Matthew (xiii, 55) and Mark (vi, 3) declare them to be sons of the Virgin Mary and brothers of Jesus. Paul (Gal. i, 19) affirms that James was the brother of Jesus. Later Matthew (xxvii, 56) and Mark (xv, 40) state that James and Joses were sons of Mary, the sister of the Virgin. 109 Who was their father? If they were sons of the Virgin Mary, Joseph must have been their father. But Matthew (x, 3) and Mark (iii, 18) state that James the Less was "the son of Alpheus." According to John (compare John xix, 25 with Matthew xxvii, 56) Cleophas was their father. Referring to this and the preceding discrepancy, Smith's "Bible Dictionary" says: "This is one of the most difficult questions in the Gospel history." 110 Were Matthew and James the Less brothers? It is not admitted that they were. Yet it is claimed that Matthew and Levi were the same; Mark (ii, 14) declares that Levi was "the son of Alpheus"; while both Matthew and Mark (Matt. x, 3; Mark iii, 18) declare that James was "the son of Alpheus." 111 To what city did John belong, and where was it located? John: "Bethsaida of Galilee" (xii, 21). John states that Peter was a resident of Bethsaida (i, 44), and as John and Peter were partners (Luke v, 10), they must have belonged to the same city. But Bethsaida was not in Galilee, but in Gaulonitis. Hence if John wrote the Gospel ascribed to him, he did not know the location of his own city. It is remarkable with what ease theologians harmonize the most discordant statements. In this case the only thing required was, in drawing the map of Palestine, to make two dots instead of one and write the word Bethsaida twice. 112 Who was the tenth apostle? Mark: Thaddeus (iii, 18). Matthew: "Lebbeus, whose surname was Thaddeus" (x, 3). In the earlier manuscripts of Matthew, the words, "whose surname was Thaddeus," are not to be found. Subsequent transcribers added them to reconcile his Gospel with Mark. 113 How many of the apostles bore the name of Judas? Matthew and Mark: But one (Matt. x, 1-4; Mark iii, 14-19). Luke: Two (vi, 16). 114 One of these was Judas Iscariot. Who was the other? Luke (Old Ver.): "The brother of James" (vi, 16). Luke (New Ver.): "The son of James." 115 Name the chief apostles. Synoptics: Peter, James and John. John: Peter and John. In the Synoptics, Peter, James and John constitute an inner circle or group who are with their master on every important occasion. In John this group is limited to Peter and John. 116 Who was Jesus' favorite apostle? Synoptics: Peter. John: John. From the Synoptics the conclusion is inevitable that if there was one disciple whom Jesus esteemed higher than the others it was Peter whom he is declared to have chosen for the head of his church. John, on the other hand, assuming that he wrote the Fourth Gospel, as claimed, takes frequent occasion to impress us with the idea that he was the bright particular star in the Apostolic galaxy. Four times (xiii, 23; xix, 26; xx, 2; xxi, 20) he declares himself to be "the disciple whom Jesus loved." If John wrote the Fourth Gospel this self-glorification proves him to have been a despicable egotist; if he did not write it the book is a forgery. The first assumption, if correct, impairs its credibility; the latter destroys its authenticity. 117 Is the Apostle James mentioned in John? He is not. This omission is the more remarkable when we remember that James was not only one of the chief apostles, but the brother of John. Respecting this omission, Strauss says: "Is it at all probable that the real John would so unbecomingly neglect the well-founded claims of his brother James to special notice? and is not such an omission rather indicative of a late Hellenistic author, who scarcely had heard the name of the brother so early martyred?" (Leben Jesu, p. 353.) 118 What other disciples besides the Twelve did Jesus send out? Luke: "After these things the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place, whither he himself would come" (x, 1). In not one of the other twenty-six books of the New Testament is this important feature of Christ's ministry mentioned. The seventy elders of Moses doubtless suggested it. "And the Lord came down in a cloud, and spoke unto him [Moses], and took of the spirit that was upon him, and gave it unto the seventy elders" (Num. xi, 25). Seventy was a sacred number with the Jews and is of frequent occurrence in their writings. "And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls" (Ex. i, 5). Abimelech had "seventy brethren" (Jud. ix, 56). "Ahab had seventy sons" (2 K. x. 1). Isaiah prophesied that "Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years" (xxiii, 15). Jeremiah prophesied that the Jews were to "serve the king of Babylon seventy years" (xxv, 11). In Ezekiel's vision there stood before the idols of Israel "seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel" (viii, 11). In Daniel's vision "seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon the holy city [Jerusalem]" (ix, 24). 119 What charge did Jesus make to his disciples? "Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not" (Matt. x, 5). "Then cometh he [with his disciples] to a city of Samaria" (John iv, 5). "And he abode there two days" (40). 120 Did Jesus have a habitation of his own? Matthew: "And leaving Nazareth he came and dwelt in Capernaum" (iv, 13). Mark: "Jesus sat at meat in his [Jesus'] house" (ii, 15). Luke: "And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head" (ix, 58). 121 His residence in Capernaum was in fulfillment of what prophecy? Matthew: "The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthali, by way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; the people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death is light sprung up" (iv, 15, 16). The "prophecy" which Matthew pretends to quote is in Isaiah (ix, 1, 2), and reads as follows: "Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulon, and the land of Naphtali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict her by way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined." Matthew both misquotes and misapplies this passage. He eliminates the facts and alters the language to make a Messianic prophecy. The words were not intended as a prophecy. The events mentioned by Isaiah had occurred when he wrote. The "great light," which they had already seen, referred to his own work in destroying witchcraft and idolatry. 122 Were Zebulon and Nephthali situated "beyond Jordan," as stated? They were not. "Beyond Jordan" means east of the Jordan, which formed the eastern boundary of Palestine. Zebulon and Nephthali were both situated west of the Jordan. 123 Were Peter, Andrew, James and John with Jesus when he taught in the synagogue at Capernaum? Mark: They were (i, 16-21). Luke: They were not; for they had not yet been called (iv, 31; v, 1-11). 124 Did Jesus perform many miracles in Galilee at the beginning of his ministry? Matthew: "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And his fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them" (iv, 23, 24). Mark: "He healed many that were sick with divers diseases, and cast out many devils" (i, 34). Luke: "All they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them. And devils also came out of many" (iv, 40, 41). John declares that his curing the nobleman's son (iv, 46-54), which was not until the second mission in Galilee, was the second miracle he performed there, his miracle at Cana being the only one he performed during the first period of his ministry. According to this Evangelist (iv, 45) all the notoriety he had at this time in Galilee, had been achieved, not by any miracles he had performed in that country, but through the reports of some Galileans who had seen his works at Jerusalem in Judea. In regard to these conflicting statements of the Evangelists, Farrar says: "At this point we are again met by difficulties in the chronology, which are not only serious, but to the certain solution of which there appears to be no clew" (Life of Christ, p. 124). 125 Did he perform any miracles before he called his disciples? Luke: He did (iv, 40, 41; v, 1-11). John: "And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage [at Cana, where he turned the water into wine].... This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana" (ii, 1-11) Luke declares that he had performed many miracles before the first disciples were called; John declares that his disciples had been called and were with him when he performed his first miracle. 126 When was the miraculous draught of fishes made? Luke: At the beginning of his ministry (v, 6). John: Not until after his death and resurrection (xxi, 11). 127 What accident was caused by the enormous draught of fishes? Luke: "Their net brake" (v, 6). John: "For all there were so many, yet was not the net broken" (xxi, 11). In Luke and John we have two different versions of a Pythagorian legend. After comparing and noting the agreements and variations of the three versions of the legend, Strauss says: "If there be a mind that, not perceiving in the narratives we have compared the finger-marks of tradition, and hence the legendary character of these evangelical anecdotes, still leans to the historical interpretation, whether natural or supernatural; that mind must be alike ignorant of the true character both of legend and of history, of the natural and the supernatural" (Leben Jesu, p. 339). 128 How long did the Jews say it took to build the temple? "Forty and six years was this temple in building" (John ii, 20). One year and six months was this temple in building. Josephus (B. xv, ch. xi) gives a full account of the building of the temple. Of its commencement, he says: "And now Herod, in the eighteenth year of his reign, and after the acts already mentioned, undertook a very great work--that is, to build of himself the temple of God" (sec. 1). Concerning its completion, he says: "But the temple itself was built by the priests in a year and six months--upon which all the people were full of joy; and presently they returned thanks, in the first place, to God; and in the next place, for the alacrity the king had shown. They feasted and celebrated this rebuilding of the temple" (sec. 6). The building of the temple was begun in 19 B. C.; it was finished and dedicated in 17 B. C. 129 Where did Jesus deliver his so-called Sermon on the Mount? Matthew: "He went up into a mountain" (v, 1). Luke: "He came down with them, and stood in the plain" (vi, 17). Both Matthew and Luke represent him as being on a mountain; but while Matthew has him go up into the mountain to deliver his sermon, Luke has him come down out of the mountain to deliver it. In regard to this discrepancy, the Dutch theologian, Dr. Hooykaas, says: "The Evangelist [Matthew] had a special motive for fixing upon a mountain for this purpose. He intended to represent Jesus laying down the fundamental laws of the kingdom of heaven as the counterpart of Moses who promulgated the constitution of the Old Covenant from Mount Sinai. Luke, on the other hand, not wishing Jesus to be regarded as a second Moses, or another lawgiver, just as deliberately makes the Master deliver this discourse on a plain" (Bible for Learners, Vol. III, p. 141, 142). 130 Did he deliver his sermon sitting or standing? Matthew: "He was set" (v, 1). Luke: He "stood" (vi, 17). 131 Repeat the Beatitudes which are common to both Evangelists. "Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew v, 3). "Blessed be ye poor; for yours is the kingdom of God" (Luke vi, 20). "Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted" (Matthew). "Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh" (Luke). "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled" (Matthew). "Blessed are ye which hunger now: for ye shall be filled" (Luke). "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake" (Matthew). "Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil for the Son of man's sake" (Luke). "Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you" (Matthew). "Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in like manner did their fathers unto the prophets" (Luke). The agreements between the two versions of this sermon, of which the foregoing are a part, are ample to prove them to be reports of the same discourse; while the variations are certainly sufficient to disprove the infallibility of the evangelistic reporters. Whether it be historical or fabricated--whether Jesus delivered the sermon or not--Matthew and Luke have given merely different versions of the same composition. The exordiums are the same; the perorations are the same--both end with the illustration of the men, one of whom built his house on a frail, the other on a firm foundation; the doctrines enunciated are substantially the same; while the words in which they are clothed proclaim a common origin. Matthew's version is longer than Luke's; either Matthew has added to, or Luke has taken from the original report of the sermon. 132 Repeat the Golden Rule. "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets" (Matthew vii, 12; Luke vi, 31). Seventy years before Christ, Hillel, the Jewish rabbi, said: "Do not to others what you would not have them do to you. This is the substance of the law." Rabbi Hirsch says: "Before Jesus, the Golden Rule was one of the household sayings of Israel." 133 Repeat the Lord's Prayer. According to Matthew. Old Version. New Version. "Our Father which art in heaven, "Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom Hallowed be thy name. Thy come. Thy will be done in earth, as kingdom come. Thy will be done, it is in heaven. Give us this day as in heaven, so on earth. Give our daily bread. And forgive us our us this day our daily bread. And debts as we forgive our debtors. And forgive us our debts, as we also lead us not into temptation, but have forgiven our debtors. And deliver us from evil: For thine is bring us not into temptation, the kingdom, and the power, and the but deliver us from the evil glory, for ever. Amen" (vi, 9-13). one." According to Luke. Old Version. New Version. "Our Father which art in heaven, "Father, Hallowed be thy name. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom Thy kingdom come. Give us day come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, by day our daily bread. And so in earth. Give us day by day our forgive us our sins; for we daily bread. And forgive us our sins; ourselves also forgive every for we also forgive every one that is one that is indebted to us. And indebted to us. And lead us not into bring us not into temptation." temptation: but deliver us from evil" (xi, 2-4). The commonly accepted version of the Lord's Prayer is the Authorized Version of Matthew. This version is admitted to be grossly inaccurate. It contains sixty-six words. The Revised Version of Matthew contains but fifty-five. Twenty-four words either do not belong to the prayer, or have been misplaced; while words which do belong to it have been omitted. If the custodians of the Christian Scriptures have permitted the prayer of their Lord to be corrupted to this extent, what reliance can be placed upon the genuineness of the remainder of these writings? The Lord's Prayer, like so many more of the precepts and discourses ascribed to Jesus, is borrowed. Dr. Hardwicke, of England, says: "The so-called 'Lord's Prayer' was learned by the Messiah as the 'Kadish' from the Talmud." The Kadish, as translated by a Christian scholar, Rev. John Gregorie, is as follows: "Our Father which art in heaven, be gracious to us, O Lord, our God; hallowed be thy name, and let the remembrance of thee be glorified in heaven above and in the earth here below. Let thy kingdom reign over us now and forever. The holy men of old said, Remit and forgive unto all men whatsoever they have done against me. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil thing. For thine is the kingdom, and thou shalt reign in glory for ever and for evermore." The eminent Swiss theologian, Dr. Wetstein, says: "It is a curious fact that the Lord's Prayer may be constructed almost verbatim out of the Talmud." The Sermon on the Mount is derived largely from the teachings of the Essenes, a Jewish sect to which Jesus is believed by many to have belonged. 134 When and where was the Lord's Prayer delivered? Matthew: During his Sermon on the Mount, before the multitude. Luke: At a later period, before the disciples alone (xi, 1). 135 Was the Sermon on the Mount delivered before Matthew (Levi in Mark and Luke) was called from the receipt of custom? Matthew: It was (v, 7; ix, 9). Luke: It was not (v, 27; vi, 20). 136 When did Jesus cleanse the leper? Matthew: After the Sermon on the Mount (v, 1; viii, 1-4). Luke: Before the Sermon on the Mount (v, 12-14; vi, 20-49). 137 When did he cure Peter's mother-in-law? Matthew: After he cleansed the leper (viii, 2, 3; 14, 15). Mark and Luke: Before he cleansed the leper (Mark i, 29-31; 40-42; Luke iv, 38, 39; v, 12, 13). 138 Was this before or after Peter was called to the ministry? Luke: Before (iv, 38, 39; v, 10). Matthew and Mark: After (Matt. iv, 18, 19; viii, 14, 15; Mark i, 16, 17; 30, 31). 139 Were James and John with Jesus when he performed this cure? Mark: They were (i, 29). Luke: They were not. They had not yet been called (iv. 38, 39; v, 10, 11). 140 When was the centurion's servant healed? Matthew: Between the cleansing of the leper and the curing of Peter's mother-in-law (viii, 2-14). Luke: Not until after both these cures had been performed (iv, 38, 39; v, 12, 13; vii, 1-10). 141 Who came for Jesus? Matthew: The centurion came himself (viii, 5). Luke: The centurion did not come himself, but sent the Jewish elders for him (vii, 2-4). 142 Where was he when he performed this miracle? Matthew and Luke: In Capernaum (Matt. viii, 5; Luke vii, 1). John: In Cana (iv, 46). According to Matthew and Luke, Jesus was in Capernaum while the patient lived elsewhere; according to John, Jesus was in Cana while the patient lived in Capernaum. John says he was a nobleman's son, but all critics (as well as the Archbishop of York, in his "Harmony of the Gospels") agree that he refers to the same miracle. 143 When did he still the tempest? Matthew: Before Matthew was called from the receipt of custom (viii, 23-27; ix, 9). Mark: After Matthew (Levi) was called (ii, 14; iv, 35-41). 144 When did he cast out the devils that entered into the herd of swine? Matthew: Before Matthew was called to the ministry (viii, 28, 33; ix, 9). Mark and Luke: Not until after he was called (Mark ii, 14; v, 1-13; Luke v, 27; viii, 26-33). 145 How many were possessed with devils? Matthew: "There met him two possessed with devils coming out of the tombs" (viii, 28). Mark and Luke: "There met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit" (Mark v, 2; Luke viii, 27). 146 When asked his name what did the demoniac answer? "My name is Legion" (Mark v, 9). Concerning this the Rev. Dr. Giles says: "The Four Gospels are written in Greek, and the word 'legion' is Latin; but in Galilee and Perea the people spoke neither Latin nor Greek, but Hebrew, or a dialect of it. The word 'legion' would be perfectly unintelligible to the disciples of Christ, and to almost everybody in the country" (Christian Records, p. 197). 147 How many swine were there? Mark: "They were about two thousand" (v, 13). If each hog received a devil there must have been two thousand devils. Legion must have been a very large man, or they were very little devils. 148 Where did this occur? Matthew: In "the country of the Gergesenes" (viii, 28). Mark and Luke: In "the country of the Gadarenes" (Mark v, 1; Luke viii, 26). It is generally conceded by orthodox critics that it occurred neither in the country of the Gergesenes nor in the country of the Gadarenes, but in the country of the Gerasenes. It could not have occurred in the country of the Gadarenes because it is said to have occurred on the sea shore and Gadara was situated several miles from the sea. Voltaire says the story is disproved by the fact that the event is alleged to have taken place in a country where no swine were kept. 149 Do the Evangelists all agree in regard to the expulsion of demons by Jesus? The Synoptics abound with these miracles: Matthew viii, 28-34; ix, 32-34; xv, 22-28; xvii, 14-21; Mark i, 21-28; v, 1-20; vii, 24-30; ix, 20-29; Luke iv, 31-37; viii, 26-39; ix, 37-42. John never mentions them. 150 What great miracle did Jesus perform at Nain? Luke: "Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her. And when the Lord saw her he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother" (vii, 12-15). The other Evangelists were certainly ignorant of this miracle; for if they had known of it they could not have omitted it, as it is the most important miracle related by a Synoptist, and, with one exception, the most important of all Christ's miracles. A miracle almost identical with this is related of Apollonius. Referring to the two, Baur says: "As according to Luke, it was a young man, the only son of a widow, who was being carried out of the city; so, in Philostratus, it is a young maiden already betrothed, whose bier Apollonius meets. The command to set down the bier, the mere touch, and a few words, are sufficient here, as there, to bring the dead to life" (Apollonius of Tyana and Christ, p. 145). 151 In their accounts of his curing the paralytic what parenthetical clause is to be found in each of the Synoptics? "(Then saith he to the sick of the palsy)" (Matthew ix, 6; Mark ii, 10; Luke v, 24). As the clause is superfluous, this agreement, instead of furnishing proof of divine inspiration, tends to prove what has already been affirmed, that these books are not original, but copied, for the most part, from older documents. 152 What effect had the teachings of Jesus upon the people? Matthew: "They were astonished at his doctrine" (xxii, 33). Mark: "They were astonished at his doctrine" (i, 22). Luke: "They were astonished at his doctrine" (iv, 32). 153 What did he say to the people in regard to letting their light shine? "No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candle stick" (Luke, Old Ver., xi, 33). "No man, when he hath lighted a lamp, putteth it in a cellar, neither under the bushel, but on the stand" (New Ver.). 154 What did he say concerning the way that leads to life? "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life" (Matthew, Old Ver., vii, 14). "Narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life" (New Ver.). The Old Version has a strait gate and a narrow way; the New Version a narrow gate and a strait way. 155 Quote the words which relate the calling of Peter. John: "He [Andrew] first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is being interpreted the Christ. "And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone" (i, 41, 42). The last clause of each is an interpolation. 156 Where was John baptizing when Jesus and his disciples came into Judea? John: "In Aenon near to Salim" (iii, 22, 23). This is declared by nearly all critics to be a geographical error. No place corresponding to this existed in Judea. 157 What city of Samaria did Jesus visit? John: "Then cometh he to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar" (iv, 5). Samaria contained no city of this name. Bible commentators believe that Shechem is intended. 158 What did his disciples say to him when about to leave Bethany? "Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee" (John xi, 8). The disciples were themselves Jews, and the above is not the language of a Jew speaking of his own people, but of a foreigner. 159 Where was he when he dined with publicans and sinners? Mark: At his own house. "As Jesus sat at meat in his house, many publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus and his disciples" (ii. 15). Luke: At the house of Levi. "And Levi made him a great feast in his own house; and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them" (v, 29). 160 What did the Pharisees say to his disciples, because they, with Jesus, dined with publicans and sinners? "Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?" (Luke v, 30.) "Why eateth your master with publicans and sinners?" (Matthew ix, 11.) 161 Who inquired of Jesus the reason for his disciples not fasting? Matthew: "Then came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?" (ix, 14.) Luke: "And they [the scribes and Pharisees] said unto him, why do the disciples of John fast often, ... and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees; but thine eat and drink?" (v, 33.) 162 What did he say when reproved for plucking the ears of corn on the Sabbath? "Have ye never read what David did?... How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar, the high priest, and did eat the shew bread?" (Mark ii, 25, 26.) David did not do this "in the days of Abiathar," but in the days of Ahimelech. "Then came David to Nob to Ahimelech the priest.... So the priest gave him hallowed bread; for there was no bread there but the shew bread" (1 Sam. xxi, 1, 6). 163 What did he claim regarding Moses? "He [Moses] wrote of me" (John v, 46). The passage referred to is quoted in Acts iii, 22, and may be found in Deuteronomy xviii, 15. It alludes to Joshua, the successor of Moses. "The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken." Had Jesus been omniscient he would have known that Moses did not write this; that it was not written until nearly 800 years after the time of Moses. 164 Jesus is credited with having raised the daughter of Jairus from the dead. Was she really dead? Matthew: Jairus said, "My daughter is even now dead" (ix, 18). Mark: He said, "My little daughter lieth at the point of death" (v, 23). Luke: It was reported that "she lay a dying" (viii, 42). According to Matthew, in this miracle he restored the dead to life; according to Mark and Luke, he merely healed the sick. 165 Who of Christ's disciples witnessed the raising of Jairus' daughter? Mark and Luke: Peter, James and John (Mark v, 37-40; Luke viii, 51). John, who alone of his alleged biographers is said to have witnessed this miracle, is the only one who fails to mention it. "A proper witness is silent, while an improper witness testifies."--Bishop Faustus. 166 What did Jesus say when sending out his Twelve Apostles? "He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me" (Matthew x, 40; Luke x, 16). According to John (xiii, 20) these words were uttered not at the beginning of his ministry as stated by Matthew and Luke, but at the Last Supper; regarding which "Supernatural Religion" says: "It is clear that its insertion here is a mistake." 167 What command did he give them respecting the provision of staves? Matthew and Luke: They were not to provide themselves with staves. "Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves" (Matt. x, 9, 10; Luke ix, 3). Mark: "Commanded them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only" (vi, 8). 168 When the Samaritans refused to receive him what was said? Luke: "And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them even as Elias did? "But he turned and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. "For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And they went to another village" (ix, 54-56). It is conceded by the best Christian scholars that the words "as Elias did" and all that follow, excepting "he turned and rebuked them," are spurious. 169 What did Jesus say to the multitude concerning John the Baptist? "From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence" (Matthew xi, 12). The words, "from the days of John the Baptist until now," signify that a long period of time had elapsed since the days of John. Yet, on the very day that Jesus is said to have uttered them, he received a visit from the disciples of John, who was still living (Matthew xi, 2, 3). 170 Whose rejection of him provoked the declaration, "A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country"? Matthew: "And when he came into his own country [Galilee], he taught them in their synagogue, ... and they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country" (xiii, 54-57). John: "He departed thence, [he had come from Judea and Samaria] and went into Galilee. For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honor in his own country. Then when he was come into Galilee, the Galileans received him" (iv, 43-45). According to Matthew, he was without honor in Galilee; according to John, he went to Galilee because he was without honor in Judea. According to Matthew the Galileans rejected him; according to John "the Galileans received him." According to Matthew, Galilee was "his own country"; according to John, Judea was "his own country." Regarding these contradictory statements, Scott, in his "English Life of Jesus" (p. 114), says: "The Synoptists in every case give a special reason for his leaving Galilee, while the fourth gospel is equally careful in specifying the reason for his leaving Jerusalem. According to the former, Jesus would not have left Galilee if he could have avoided it; according to the latter, he would have remained at Jerusalem if he could have done so with safety. The inconsistency is glaring." 171 When he came into his own country and taught in the synagogue what did the people say? Mark: "Is not this the carpenter?" (vi, 3.) Matthew: "Is not this the carpenter's son?" (xiii, 55.) 172 When Herod heard of his wonderful works, what did he say? "This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead" (Matthew xiv, 2). Here, early in Christ's ministry, the tetrarch of Galilee is represented as entertaining the Christian doctrine of a bodily resurrection. 173 When and for what reason was John beheaded? Matthew and Mark: "But when Herod's birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias [Salome] danced before them, and pleased Herod. Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask. And she, being before instructed of her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist's head in a charger. And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath's sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her. And he sent, and beheaded John in the prison. And his head was brought in a charger, and given to the damsel: and she brought it to her mother" (Matt. xiv, 6-11; Mark vi, 21-28). This account of the death of John is utterly at variance with that given in Josephus. This historian, assuming the passage relating to John to be genuine, says: "Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise rebellion (for they seemed to do anything he should advise), thought it best by putting him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause, and not bring himself into difficulties, by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it should be too late. Accordingly he was sent a prisoner, out of Herod's suspicious temper, to Macherus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there put to death" (Antiquities, B. xviii, ch. v, sec. 2). Macherus, where Josephus states that John was executed, was a place far removed from Herod's capital--was outside of his dominions--in Arabia Petrea. Referring to the Evangelistic account of John's death, Dr. Hooykaas says: "This eminently dramatic story certainly cannot be accepted as it stands. It betrays too much art in its striking contrasts between the manners of the court and the person of the prophet. We have already seen that the occasion of John's imprisonment is not correctly given by the Gospels. That such a man as Herod 'delighted in hearing' John is, to say the least, an exaggeration. The ghastly scene in which the prophet's head is carried into the festive hall may not be quite impossible in such an age and at such a court, but it is hardly probable. It is easy to see that Herodias is drawn after the model of Ahab's wife, who hated and persecuted the first Elijah; and Salome is evidently copied from Esther, for she, too, visits the prince by surprise, captivates him by her beauty, obtains a promise of anything up to the half of his kingdom, and at the festive board demands the death of her enemy as the royal boon" (Bible for Learners, vol. iii, p. 272). 174 Who was Herodias? Synoptics: "His [Herod's] brother Philip's wife" (Matt. xiv, 3; Mark vi, 17; Luke iii, 19). Herodias was a grand-daughter of Herod the Great, and married her uncle Herod, the disinherited son of Herod the Great. She subsequently married Antipas, the Herod who is said to have put John to death. Herod's brother Philip (Tetrarch of Trachonitis and Gaulonitis) was not the son of Marianne, as the first husband of Herodias was, but the son of Cleopatra. Philip's wife was Salome, the daughter of Herodias. The daughter of Herodias, instead of being a damsel dancing at the court of Herod, as the Synoptics declare, was at this time the wife of an aged ruler of a foreign province. According to Whiston, she became a widow in the very year in which John died. Herodias was not the wife, but the mother-in-law of Herod's brother Philip. Whiston, in his translation of Josephus, attempts to gloss over the Synoptics' error by inserting in brackets after Herod the word "Philip." Scribners' "Bible Dictionary" concedes the error and accounts for it "By supposing that there is a confusion between the first husband and the son-in-law of Herodias, for her daughter Salome married Philip the tetrarch." 175 What is said of the numbers baptized by Jesus and his disciples as compared with those baptized by John? John: "The Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John. (Though Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples.)" (iv, 1, 2.) Matthew (iii, 5) and Mark (i, 5) declare that John had baptized "Jerusalem and all Judea." It is admitted, both in the New Testament and by Christians, that Jesus made but few converts during his lifetime, and to assert or intimate that he and his disciples baptized more than John is preposterous. 176 Who furnished the loaves and fishes with which the multitude in the desert was fed? Synoptics: The disciples (Matt. xiv, 15-17; Mark vi, 35-38; Luke ix, 12, 13). John: "A lad" (vi, 9). 177 How many were fed? Mark: "And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men" (vi, 44). Matthew: "And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children" (xiv, 21). 178 Where did this miracle occur? Luke: "In a desert place belonging to the city called Bethsaida" (ix, 10). Mark says that after the miracle "He constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go to the other side before unto Bethsaida" (vi, 45). If the miracle was performed in a place belonging to the city of Bethsaida, as stated by Luke, they did not cross the sea to reach Bethsaida, as stated by Mark. 179 After feeding the five thousand what did Jesus do? Matthew and Mark: "He sent the multitudes away" (Matt. xiv, 22; Mark vi, 45). John: He did not send the multitude away, but withdrew himself into a mountain (vi, 15). 180 For what purpose did he go to the mountain? Matthew and Mark: "And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain, apart to pray" (Matt. xiv, 23; Mark vi, 46). John: "When Jesus therefore perceived that they [the multitude] would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain alone" (vi, 15). Matthew and Mark say nothing about the attempt to make him king; John says nothing about his praying. 181 Were his disciples with him? Matthew and Mark: "And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitude away. And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray; and when the evening was come, he was there alone. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea" (Matt. xiv, 22-24; Mark vi, 45-47). Luke: "And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him" (ix, 18). Matthew and Mark send his disciples ahead in a ship to make room for his miracle of walking on the sea, a miracle that Luke knows nothing of. 182 To what port did he command his disciples to sail? Mark: "Unto Bethsaida" (vi, 45). Pursuant to this command toward what place did they steer? John: "Toward Capernaum" (vi, 17). Where did this bring them? Matthew: "Into the land of Gennesaret" (xiv, 34). 183 Jesus himself is said to have followed them on foot. Where did he overtake them? Matthew and Mark: "In the midst of the sea" (Matt. xiv, 24-26; Mark vi, 47, 48). John: As they were nearing the land (vi, 19-21). According to John, he walked entirely across the sea; according to Matthew and Mark, but half way across. Christ's walking on the sea was probably suggested by Job (ix, 8), who says God "treadeth upon the waves of the sea," or, according to the Septuagint, "walking upon the sea as upon a pavement." 184 What remarkable feat was attempted on the trip? Matthew: "And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. And when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him" (Matt. xiv, 29-31). Mark and John, who relate with much particularity the events of this voyage, do not mention Peter's adventure. "Probably they had good reason for omitting it. A profane mind might make a jest of an apostle 'half seas over,' and ridicule an apostolic gate-keeper who couldn't keep his head above water."--Bradlaugh. 185 What did the Jews say to Jesus respecting his Messianic mission? "Search and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet" (John vii, 52). Search and look; for out of Galilee arose some of their greatest prophets, Jonah, Hosea, Nahum and Elijah. It may be urged that it is the Jews who give expression to the error; but it is plain the Evangelist accepts the statement as true. 186 What notable incident occurred at Jerusalem? John: The release by Jesus of the woman taken in adultery (vii, 53; viii, 1-11). This is popularly regarded as one of the most admirable acts in Christ's ministry. In the New Version the twelve verses relating it are declared by the Oxford revisers to be an interpolation. 187 In the miracle of restoring the sight of the man born blind, what did he tell the man to do? "Go wash in the pool of Siloam" (John ix, 7). "The Lord sent the blind man to wash, not in, as our version has it, but at the pool of Siloam; for it was the clay from his eyes that was to be washed off."--Smith's Bible Dictionary. 188 What is the meaning of the word "Siloam"? John: "Which is by interpretation, 'Sent'" (ix, 7). Which is not by interpretation "sent," but "aqueduct." 189 Who provoked the displeasure of the Pharisees by eating with unwashed hands? Matthew and Mark: The disciples of Jesus (Matt. xv, 1, 2; Mark vii, 1, 2). Luke: Jesus himself (xi, 37, 38). 190 Of what nationality was the woman who desired Jesus to cast the devil out of her daughter? Matthew: "A woman of Canaan" (xv, 22). Mark: "The woman was a Greek" (vii, 26). 191 What did his disciples say when he expressed his intention of feeding the four thousand? Mark: "And his disciples answered him, From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness? And he asked them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven" (viii, 4, 5). Why should they be surprised at his intention of feeding four thousand with seven loaves when but a few weeks before he had fed five thousand with five loaves? In regard to this miracle Rev. William Sanday, of England, author of "Jesus Christ," the most important article in Scribners' "Bible Dictionary," says: "Are the two Feedings of Mark to be regarded as two events or one? Besides the general resemblance between the two narratives, a weighty argument in favor of the latter hypothesis is, that in the second narrative the disciples' question implies that the emergency was something new. They could hardly have put this question as they did if a similar event had happened only a few weeks before." This is also the opinion of Dr. Schleiermacher. 192 After feeding the four thousand where did he come? Matthew (Old Ver.): "Came into the coasts of Magdala" (xv, 39). Matthew (New Ver.): "Came into the borders of Magadan." 193 Where does Mark say he came? "Came into the parts of Dalmanutha (viii, 10). Criticising this statement, the "Bible for Learners" says: "Mark makes him journey still farther north, through the district of Sidon, and then turn southeast to the lake of Galilee, pass some way down its eastern shore apparently, and finally take ship and cross in a southwesterly direction to Dalmanutha, where we meet him once again. But the Evangelist's geography is open to suspicion, and we are inclined to lay these apparently purposeless wanderings of Jesus to the account of Mark's want of accuracy" (Vol. iii, p. 282). 194 What did he say to the Pharisees who asked for a sign? "There shall no sign be given unto this generation" (Mark viii, 12). "There shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas" (Matthew xvi, 4). 195 On the way to Caesarea Philippi what remarkable discovery was made by Peter? Matthew: "He [Jesus] asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven" (xvi, 13-17). According to Matthew, Jesus is astonished at the discovery of Peter and attributes it to a revelation from Heaven. Yet previous to this, and in the presence of Peter, according to the same writer, the other disciples had declared him to be "the Son of God" (Matthew xiv, 33). 196 The Synoptics all declare that the Messiahship of Jesus was not revealed to his disciples until late in his ministry. Is this true? John: It is not. It was known to them at the beginning of his ministry. Before Peter was called Andrew said, "We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ" (i, 41). On the following day Nathanael said to Jesus, "Thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel" (49). 197 When did the Transfiguration take place? Matthew and Mark: Six days after the discourse in which he announced his second coming (Matt. xvii, 1; Mark ix, 2). Luke: "About an eight days after these sayings" (ix, 28). 198 Was the countenance of Jesus changed? Matthew and Luke: It was. "And his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light" (Matt. xvii, 2). "The fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistening" (Luke ix, 29). Mark: The appearance of his raiment only was changed. "And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow" (ix, 3). 199 When did Peter propose building the three tabernacles to Jesus, Moses and Elias? Matthew and Mark: While Moses and Elias were yet with them (Matt. xvii, 3, 4; Mark ix, 4-8). Luke: After they had departed (ix, 33). 200 What did the voice from the clouds declare? Mark and Luke: "This is my beloved Son; hear ye him" (Mark ix, 7; Luke ix, 35). Matthew: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, hear ye him" (xvii, 5). Luke's account of the Transfiguration differs in many respects from that of Matthew and Mark. Luke says that Jesus went up into the mountain to pray; Matthew and Mark make no mention of this. Luke says the disciples were asleep when Moses and Elias appeared. According to Matthew and Mark they were awake. Luke says that Moses and Elias "spake of his decease." Matthew and Mark do not know what they talked about. 201 Who witnessed the Transfiguration? Synoptics: Peter, James and John (Matt. xvii, 1; Mark ix, 2; Luke ix, 28). It is remarkable that Matthew, Mark and Luke, who did not witness the Transfiguration, are the only ones to report it; while John, who is declared to have witnessed it, knows nothing about it. Concerning this and other events which John is said to have witnessed, Greg says: "All the events said to have been witnessed by John alone are omitted by John alone. This fact seems fatal either to the reality of the events in question or to the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel." Regarding this subject Scott says: "By some singular fatality the writer of the fourth gospel seems incapable of describing any one incident in the life of Jesus as the Synoptics have described it.... It is hard to believe that we are reading narratives which profess to relate the life of the same person.... If then in these particulars, the Synoptic Gospels are correct, the Johannine version of the events is pure fiction; and if the latter be taken as the true account, no dependence whatever can be placed upon the former" (Life of Jesus, pp. 259-263). 202 Compare the account of the Transfiguration of Jesus with the account of Moses at Mount Sinai. Matthew. Exodus. "And after six days Jesus taketh "Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Peter, James, and John his Nadab and Abihu" (xxiv, 9). brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart, "And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount. "And was transfigured before them, and his face did shine as the sun, "And the glory of the Lord abode and his raiment was white as the upon Mount Sinai, and the cloud light" (xvii, 1, 2). covered it six days; and the seventh day he called unto Moses "While he yet spake, behold, a out of the midst of the cloud. bright cloud overshadowed them; and behold a voice out of the "And the sight of the glory of the cloud," etc. (5). Lord was like devouring fire" (15-17). We have in each account a prophet and three companions; in each the persons mentioned go up into a mountain; in each there is a supernatural brightness; in each an overshadowing cloud; in each a celestial voice speaking out of the cloud; in each Moses is a prominent figure; in each a period of six days is mentioned. 203 What occurred immediately after the Transfiguration? Matthew: "His disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, that Elias is come already and they know him not.... Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist" (xvii, 10-13). It is quite natural that the writing of one story concerning Elias should suggest another; but reason forbids the acceptance of both as true. If Elias was seen and recognized at the mountain, as stated, the above conversation did not follow that appearance. 204 What ailed the man's son whom Jesus cured after the Transfiguration? Matthew (Old Ver.): He was a lunatic (xvii, 15). Matthew (New Ver.): He was an epileptic. Mark: He had "a dumb spirit" (ix, 17). 205 When the authorities at Capernaum demanded tribute of Jesus what did he command Peter to do? "Go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money; that take, and give unto them for me and thee" (Matthew xvii, 27). Matthew does not venture to say that Peter was successful, doubtless recognizing the fact that there ought to be limits even to a fish story. Regarding this story Archbishop Trench says: "It is remarkable, and is a solitary instance of the kind, that the issue of this bidding is not told us." Dr. Farrar says: "I agree with the learned and thoughtful Olshausen in regarding this as the most difficult to comprehend of all the gospel miracles" (Life of Christ, p. 288). 206 What was the nature of the tribute demanded? It was an annual tax, known as the temple service tax, a tax from which no Jew, rich or poor, was exempt. Regarding the time and manner of its collection, Farrar says: "On the 1st of Adar, the demand was made quietly and civilly; if, however, it had not been paid by the 25th, then it seems that the collectors of the contribution (tobhin shekalim) might take a security for it from the defaulter" (Life of Christ, p. 285). The tax was always collected in the early spring. Yet according to Matthew it was collected from Jesus in the autumn, just before the feast of tabernacles. Either Matthew was ignorant of the time of its collection, or Jesus was a defaulter. Nor is this the only difficulty needing explanation. It is assumed that Peter secured the coin in the manner directed. If so, how did it come into existence? Did Jesus miraculously create it? If so, he was a counterfeiter. Was it a lost coin? In this case, if he was omniscient, as claimed, he knew the owner and should have restored it. 207 After leaving Galilee where did Jesus go? Matthew: "Into the coasts of Judea beyond Jordan" (xix, 1). The Jordan being the eastern boundary of Judea, no "coasts of Judea" existed beyond it. 208 In going to Jerusalem to attend his last Passover, what route did he take? Luke: "He passed through the midst of Samaria" (xvii, 11). Mark: He "cometh into the coasts of Judea by the farther side of the Jordan" (x, 1). Two entirely different routes. As the province of Samaria lay between those of Galilee and Judea, the direct route from Galilee to Jerusalem was "through the midst of Samaria." The orthodox Jews, however, in order to avoid the Samaritans, whom they thoroughly despised, usually crossed the Jordan, which formed the boundary of the three provinces, came down on the east side of the river through Perea, recrossed the river, and thus entered "into the coasts of Judea from the farther side of Jordan." 209 What city did he pass through on his way to Jerusalem? Luke: "And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho" (xix, 1). Luke here contradicts his previous statement that "he passed through the midst of Samaria," for Jericho was not on the route from Samaria, but on the route from Perea by way of "the farther side of Jordan," the route which Mark declares he took. 210 What miracle did he perform on the way? Luke: "As he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off; and they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves to the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed" (xvii, 12-14). The other Evangelists do not mention this miracle. Concerning it the "Bible for Learners" says: "It is an unsuccessful imitation of the account we have already examined of the healing of a leper. It is absolutely unhistorical" (Vol. iii, p. 310). 211 Was it one or two blind men that sat by the wayside beseeching him to heal them? Mark: "Blind Bartimeus, the son of Timeus, sat by the highway side begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me" (x, 46, 47). Luke: "A certain blind man sat by the wayside begging: ... And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me" (xviii, 35, 38). Matthew: "Two blind men sitting by the wayside, when they heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou son of David" (xx, 30). 212 What inquiry did the disciples make regarding the cause of the man's blindness? "Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John ix, 2). Regarding this, Mrs. Evans, in her "Christ Myth" (p. 55), says: "Such a suggestion has no meaning when uttered by a Jew, but to a believer in the transmigration of souls the query would be natural and pertinent, and the story appears to be a modification of a well-known Buddhistic parable." 213 When did this occur? Luke: "As he was come nigh into Jericho" (xviii, 35). Matthew: "As they separated from Jericho" (xx, 29). Mark: "As he went out of Jericho" (x, 46). Mark agrees with Luke and disagrees with Matthew as to the number of men, and agrees with Matthew and disagrees with Luke as to the time of its occurrence. 214 What did Jesus say regarding divorce? Mark: "And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery" (x, 11, 12). This was written by one acquainted with the Roman, but not with the Jewish law. The Jewish law did not recognize the right of a wife to put away her husband for any cause whatever. Matthew (v, 31, 32) and Luke (xvi, 18) knew better. 215 According to Mark he said, "Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery." What did he say according to Matthew? "Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery" (xix, 9). This is a notable discrepancy. According to Mark if a husband divorce his wife for any cause whatever he cannot lawfully marry another. According to Matthew if he divorce his wife for fornication he can lawfully marry again. 216 In his conversation with the rich man what commandments did he prescribe? "Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor thy father and thy mother" (Luke xviii, 20). "Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honor thy father and thy mother" (Mark x, 19). "Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honor thy father and thy mother; and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matthew xix, 18, 19). No two of the Synoptics agree. Mark and Matthew each give a commandment not given by either of the others. 217 What great miracle did he perform at Bethany? John: The raising of Lazarus from the dead. "Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead" (xi, 14). "Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh; for he hath been dead four days" (38, 39). "Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me" (41). "And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave clothes" (43, 44). The Synoptics make no mention of this miracle; and as it is the greatest miracle ascribed to Jesus it was certainly unknown to them. Commenting on the doubtful character of alleged events narrated by one Evangelist and omitted by the others, Strauss says: "But this ground of doubt falls with incomparably greater weight, on the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus in the fourth gospel. If the authors or collectors of the three first gospels knew of this, they could not, for more than one reason, avoid introducing it into their writings. For, first, of all the resuscitations effected by Jesus, nay, of all his miracles, this resurrection of Lazarus, if not the most wonderful, is yet the one in which the marvelous presents itself the most obviously and strikingly, and which, therefore, if its historical reality can be established, is a preeminently strong proof of the extraordinary endowments of Jesus as a divine messenger; whence the evangelists, although they had related one or two other instances of the kind, could not think it superfluous to add this also. But, secondly, the resurrection of Lazarus had, according to the representation of John, a direct influence in the development of the fate of Jesus; for we learn from xi, 47 ff., that the increased resort to Jesus, and the credit which this event procured him, led to that consultation of the Sanhedrim in which the sanguinary counsel of Caiaphas was given and approved. Thus the event had a double importance--pragmatical as well as dogmatical; consequently, the synoptical writers could not have failed to narrate it, had it been within their knowledge" (Leben Jesu, p. 548). Referring to this miracle and the restoration of the sight of the man born blind, Prof. Newman says: "That the three first narrators should have been ignorant of them is simply impossible; that they should not have felt their preeminent value is incredible" (Religion not History, p. 27). There are three alleged instances in the Gospels of Christ restoring the dead to life. 1. The raising of the daughter of Jairus from her death bed, related by Matthew. 2. The raising of the son of the widow of Nain from his bier as they were carrying him to the grave, related by Luke. 3. The raising of Lazarus from his grave after he had lain four days, related by John. Even if these miracles were possible one fact disproves them: the silence of the other Evangelists. Of these three stories not one is confirmed by another Evangelist. His less important miracles, such as healing the sick, are, many of them, recorded in all of the gospels, or at least in all of the Synoptics; yet each of these, his greatest miracles, stands alone, unnoticed by the other writers. Mark and Luke mention the daughter of Jairus, but only to deny the miracle by declaring that she was not dead. Had these miracles really been performed, all of the Evangelists would have had a knowledge of them, and all would have recorded them. These writers do not complement each other, as claimed: they exclude each other. There are many Lives of Napoleon; but not one of his biographers has seen fit to omit his greatest victories because some other biographer has narrated them. 218 Who was it requested that James and John might sit, one on the right and the other on the left hand of Jesus in his kingdom? Matthew: "She [their mother] said unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom" (xx, 21). Mark: "They [James and John] said unto him, Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left, in thy glory" (x, 37). 219 Who occupies a seat at the left hand of Jesus? Mark: God (xvi, 19). The modesty of the foregoing request is apparent. Zebedee's family were evidently trying to play a sharp game on Jesus, and get a first mortgage on his Father's throne. 220 What did Jesus affirm in regard to the mustard seed? "Which indeed is the least of all seeds; but when it is grown is the greatest among the herbs" (Matthew xiii, 32). A mustard seed is not "the least of all seeds;" neither is the plant "the greatest among herbs." 221 With faith as large as a grain of mustard seed, what did he say his disciples could do? "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place and it shall remove" (Matthew xvii, 20). "If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you" (Luke xvii, 6). 222 In the parable of the Great Feast what was the character of the feast? Matthew: A wedding "dinner" (xxii, 4). Luke: "A great supper" (xiv, 16). 223 Whom did the giver of the feast send to invite the guests? Matthew: "His servants" (3). Luke: "His servant" (17). Such errors may be considered trivial and their notice captious; but infallible writings do not contain even trivial errors. 224 What befell the servants, or servant? Matthew: "And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them" (6). Luke: The servant returned unharmed (21). 225 What did the giver of the feast declare respecting those who refused to attend? "That none of those men which were bidden shall taste my supper" (xiv, 24). As they had already declined to do so, the force of the interdiction is not apparent. 226 Relate the circumstances connected with the attendance of the guest who wore no wedding garment. Matthew: "Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.... And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment; and he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless" (xxii, 8-12). The relator of this incident, which is omitted by Luke, would have us suppose that the frequenters of the highways went clad in wedding garments. The parables of Jesus are declared to be perfect models of Literary composition, and filled with lessons of divine wisdom. A few of them possess some literary merit; but the most of them are faulty. They contain many questionable ethical teachings; they are illogically constructed; the imagery is unnatural, and the language crude. 227 In the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen did the owner of the vineyard send one servant, or more than one, each time to collect the rent? Mark and Luke: He sent but one (Mark xii, 2-5; Luke xx, 10-12). Matthew: He sent more than one (xxi, 33-36). 228 What happened to the servants? Matthew and Mark: Some of them were killed. Luke: They were beaten and sent away, but none were killed. 229 In the parable of the Talents how did the master apportion his money? Matthew: He gave to the first servant five talents, to the second two, to the third, one (xxv, 15). Luke: He gave to each one pound (xix, 13). 230 What was their gain? Matthew: Each doubled his money (16, 17). Luke: The first increased his tenfold, the second fivefold (16, 18). 231 What did the unprofitable servant do with the money entrusted to him? Matthew: He "digged in the earth, and hid his lord's money" (xxv, 18). Luke: He said, "Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin" (xix, 20). 232 What are the concluding words of Jesus in this parable? "For unto every one that hath shall be given: ... but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew xxv, 29, 30). "That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him. But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me" (Luke xix, 26, 27). 233 In the lawyer's interview with Jesus, who was it, the lawyer, or Jesus, that stated the two great commandments? Matthew and Mark: Jesus. "Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, saying, Master which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (xxii, 35-39). Luke: The lawyer. "And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? And he [the lawyer] answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself" (x, 25-27). 234 "And after that they durst not ask him any questions." After what? Matthew: After his controversy with the Pharisees respecting David and Christ (xxii, 41-46). Mark: After his conversation with the scribe regarding the commandments (xii, 28-37). Luke: After confuting the Sadducees in regard to the resurrection (xx, 27-40). 235 Did his controversy concerning David and Christ take place with the Pharisees, as stated by Matthew? Luke: It did not. It was with "certain of the scribes" (xx, 39). 236 Where was Jesus on the day preceding his triumphal entry into Jerusalem? John: With Lazarus at Bethany (three miles from Jerusalem) (xii, 1-15). Luke: With Zaccheus near Jericho (twenty miles from Jerusalem) (xix, 1-40). 237 Preparatory to his triumphal entry what command did he give his disciples? "Go ye into the village over against you; in the which at your entering ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither" (Luke xix, 30). "Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me" (Matthew xxi, 2). 238 Did he ride both animals? Matthew: He did. "And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, and brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon" (6, 7). The equestrian feat of his riding two asses, a large one and a small one, at the same time, must have heightened the effect of this sublime pageant. Matthew is continually seeing double. In the demoniac of Gadara he sees two demoniacs; in the blind man by the wayside he sees two men; and in other instances where the other Evangelists see but one person or thing he sees two. 239 The riding of two asses by Jesus was in fulfillment of what prophecy? Matthew: "And this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass" (xxi, 4, 5). Matthew's rendering of this passage (Zechariah ix, 9) arises from a misunderstanding of the meaning of its words. The prophet, or poet, does not mean two asses, but one; the clause "a colt the foal of an ass," is merely a poetical repetition or qualification of the preceding clause. This blunder of Matthew is significant. It exposes the fictitious character of this so-called Gospel history. It proves that Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem is not a historical event--that this story is a pure fabrication, suggested by this alleged prophecy. 240 When did Jesus purge the temple? Synoptics: At the close of his ministry, a few days before his death (Matthew xxi, 12-16; Mark xi, 15-18; Luke xix, 45-48). John: At the beginning of his ministry, three years before his death (ii, 13-22). Origen doubted the occurrence of this event, believing it to be a mere allegory. 241 When did he curse the fig tree? Matthew: After he purged the temple (xxi, 12-19). Mark: Before he purged the temple (xi, 12-15). 242 When was the tree discovered by his disciples to be withered? Matthew: As soon as cursed (19). Mark: Not until the next morning (13-20). 243 Mark says that he visited the tree for the purpose of obtaining figs. Why did the tree contain no fruit? Mark: "Because the time of figs was not yet" (13). This was before the Passover which occurred in March or April. In that part of Palestine where the miracle is said to have been performed the bocore, or early fig, ripened its first crop during the latter part of June; while the kermus, or fig proper, ripened in August. What a spectacle! An omniscient God searching for figs in March, and disappointed at not finding them--creating a tree to bear fruit in the summer and cursing it for not bearing in the spring! 244 What did Jesus accuse the Jews of doing? Matthew: Of having slain prophets and wise men, among them "Zacharias son of Barachias" (xxiii, 35). The Zacharias mentioned was slain in Jerusalem, 69 A. D.; so that Matthew makes Jesus refer to an event that occurred forty years after his death. Referring to this passage, the Catholic scholar, Dr. Hug, says: "There cannot be a doubt, if we attend to the name, the fact and its circumstances, and the object of Jesus in citing it, that it was the same Zacharias Barouchos, who, according to Josephus, a short time before the destruction of Jerusalem, was unjustly slain in the temple." Commenting on this passage, Prof. Newman says: "There is no other man known in history to whom the verse can allude. If so, it shows how late, how ignorant, how rash, is the composer of a text passed off on us as sacred truth" (Religion not History, p. 46). 245 Repeat his lamentation concerning Jerusalem's rejection of him. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" (Matthew xxiii, 37; Luke xiii, 34.) Where was he when he uttered this lamentation? Matthew: During his visit at Jerusalem. Luke: In Galilee before he went to Jerusalem. Not only are these writers at variance with each other as to the time and place of utterance, but the lamentation itself, which declares that he had made repeated efforts to convert Jerusalem, is at variance with both of them. For according to Matthew he had just arrived on his first visit to Jerusalem, while according to Luke he had never yet, during his ministry, visited Jerusalem. 246 Who anointed Jesus? Matthew and Mark: "A woman" (Matt. xxvi, 7; Mark xiv, 3). Luke: "A sinful woman" (vii, 37). John: Mary, the sister of Lazarus (xii, 3). Luke's "sinful woman" is recognized as Mary Magdalene. Farrar says: "In the popular consciousness she will till the end of time be identified with the Magdalene." Matthew and Mark's "woman" may be harmonized with either Mary Magdalene or Mary the sister of Lazarus; but Luke and John are irreconcilable. 247 Where did she put the ointment? Matthew and Mark: On his head (Matt. xxvi, 7; Mark xiv, 3). Luke and John: On his feet (Luke vii, 38-46; John xii, 3). 248 Where did this occur? Matthew, Mark and John: In Bethany (Matt. xxvi, 6; Mark xiv, 3; John xii, 1). Luke: In Nain (vii, 11-37). 249 At whose house did it occur? Synoptics: At the house of Simon (Matt. xxvi, 6, 7; Mark xiv, 3; Luke vii, 36-40). John: At the house of Lazarus (xii, 1-3). 250 Who was Simon? Matthew and Mark: A leper (Matt. xxvi, 6; Mark xiv, 3). Luke: A Pharisee (vii, 39-40). 251 At what time during his ministry did this anointing occur? Matthew, Mark and John: At the close of his ministry (Matt. xxvi, xxvii; Mark xiv; John xii). Luke: Early in his ministry (vii, 36-50). 252 Did it occur before or after his triumphal entry? Matthew and Mark: After (Matt. xxi, 1-11, xxvi, 6-13; Mark xi, 1-11, xiv, 3-9). John: Before (xii, 1-15). 253 How many days before the Passover did it occur? Mark: Two days (xiv, 1-3). John: Six days (xii, 1-3). "The prima facie view would certainly be that the anointing at Bethany was placed by Mark two days and by John six days before the Passover."--Scribner's Bible Dictionary. 254 Who objected to this apparent waste of the ointment? Matthew: "His disciples" (xxvi, 8, 9). John: "Judas Iscariot" (xii, 4, 5). These different versions of the anointing of Jesus present so many discrepancies that some have supposed that two or more anointings were made. The Archbishop of York, the most popular of Gospel harmonists, concedes that but one anointing was made. After an exhaustive review of the case, Strauss says: "Without doubt, we have here but one history under three various forms; and this seems to have been the real conclusion of Origen, as well as recently of Schleiermacher." 255 While Jesus was at Jerusalem there came a voice from heaven. For what purpose was the voice sent? John: For the sake of those who stood by. "Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes" (xii, 30). Of what benefit was the voice when those who heard it were unable to distinguish it from thunder? "The people therefore, that stood by and heard it, said that it thundered" (29). The Evangelists relate several instances of celestial voices being heard. As there is, in nearly every instance, a disagreement in regard to the message conveyed, it is probable that an electrical disturbance inspired the voice, while a vivid imagination interpreted its meaning. Regarding these voices, the Duke of Somerset says: "A belief in these heavenly voices was a common superstition among the Jews." 256 When did the Last Supper take place? Synoptics: On the Passover (Matt. xxvi, 18-20; Mark xiv, 16-18; Luke xxii, 13-15). John: On the day preceding the Passover. Luke says: "And they made ready the passover. And when the hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles with him. And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer." John, in his account of the Last Supper, says it was "before the feast of the passover" (xiii, 1). The Evangelists all agree that his trial and execution took place on the day following the Last Supper. John says the Jews "went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover" (xviii, 28). After narrating the events of the trial, John says: "And it was the preparation of the passover" (xix, 14). According to the Synoptics, the Last Supper was eaten on the 14th Nisan, and, by our mode of reckoning time, on Thursday evening; according to John, it was eaten on the 13th Nisan, and, by our mode of reckoning, on Wednesday evening. The Synoptics declare that this supper was the regular Paschal meal; according to John, it was an ordinary meal, the Paschal meal not being eaten until after Christ's death. "The Synoptics represent most clearly that Jesus on the evening of the 14th Nisan, after the custom of the Jews, ate the Passover with his disciples, and that he was arrested in the first hours of the 15th Nisan, the day on which he was put to death. Nothing can be more distinct than the statement that the last supper was the Paschal feast.... The fourth Gospel, however, in accordance with the principle which is dominant throughout, represents the last repast which Jesus eats with his disciples as a common supper, which takes place, not on the 14th, but on the 13th Nisan, the day 'before the feast of the Passover.'"--Supernatural Religion. Thousands of pages have been written in vain attempts to reconcile this grave discrepancy. Scribner's "Bible Dictionary," which contains the best fruits of orthodox scholarship, both of England and America, concedes a contradiction. It says: "The Synoptics seem to identify the two [the Last Supper and the Paschal meal], whereas St. John expressly places the Last Supper before the Passover." After an exhaustive review of the subject, Strauss voices the conclusion of German scholars in the following words: "Our only course is to acknowledge an irreconcilable contradiction between the respective accounts, without venturing a decision as to which is the correct one" (Leben Jesu, p. 702). 257 The Synoptics state that the Last Supper was the Paschal meal. Describe the Paschal meal. "All leaning upon the cushions around the table, the first cup of wine was served, and grace pronounced over the same and the feast. This cup of wine being disposed of, vegetables and sauce were placed on the table, and the vegetables, dipped in the sauce, were blessed and eaten. Next the unleavened bread, the bitter herb, and a piquant sauce called Haroseth were served, and the bitter herb, dipped in the Haroseth, was blessed and eaten. Then the Paschal lamb was placed on the table with portions of another sacrifice. One of the company asked the question why all this was done, during which the second cup of wine was served. The head of the table explaining narrated the story of the Exodus, closed with a hymn, spoke the second time grace over the wine, and all disposed of the same. Now came the breaking of the bread and the eating and drinking. This finished, the third cup of wine was served, and grace after meal was pronounced. After which the fourth cup was served, and the ceremonies closed with hymns and psalms, and disposing of the fourth cup of wine" (Mishna). This was the Paschal meal as it was observed in the reputed time of Christ and up to 70 A. D. After the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple the great Passover feast retained but the shadow of its former glory. The Paschal meal and the ceremonies attending it were generally shortened. The fact that the Evangelists were unacquainted with the regular Paschal meal, that the Synoptics were familiar only with the ceremonies of later times, shows that the Last Supper is a myth, and the Gospels the products of a later age. Criticising the Synoptics' accounts of the Paschal meal, Dr. Isaac Wise, an able Jewish scholar, says: "If any evidence is required that neither Mark nor Matthew had ever seen the Paschal meal, or described that of Jesus, it is furnished here. They do not mention any one point connected with the Paschal supper, the ceremonies of which were established. They mention only one ceremony, viz., the breaking of the bread, and the cup of wine after the meal, which is not only a mistake, but shows conclusively, that either of them had seen the Paschal supper, after the destruction of Jerusalem, in some Jewish house, and the ceremonies connected therewith, called the Seder. Therefore, no mention whatsoever is made of the main thing--the Paschal lamb--and the bread is broken after the meal, which was done by the Jews after closing the Paschal meal, outside of Jerusalem, when the altar had been destroyed; and no Paschal lamb was eaten" (Martyrdom of Jesus, pp. 36, 37). "Luke begins correctly, but makes a mistake in having the bread broken right after the first cup of wine was handed round, which was done so at every festive meal, except at the one described, and has but two cups of wine instead of four. So we know that Luke did not describe what actually happened that evening. He had seen the Jewish custom of opening the festive meals with grace over the wine and bread, and made of it an introduction to the Last Supper, without knowing that just that evening the custom was changed" (Ibid. p. 38). 258 What ceremony was instituted at the Last Supper? Synoptics: The Eucharist (Matt. xxvi, 26-28; Mark xiv, 22-24; Luke xxii, 19, 20). John: The washing of feet (xiii, 4-9). John does not mention the former ceremony, and the Synoptics do not mention the latter; yet each is said to have been performed immediately after supper. 259 He told his disciples that he would no more drink of the fruit of the vine until he drank it in his Father's kingdom. When was this? Matthew: After instituting the Eucharist. "And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. "But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom" (xxvi, 26-29). Luke: Before instituting the Eucharist. "For I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come. "And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you" (xxii, 18-20). 260 At the Last Supper did Jesus pass the cup once, or twice? Matthew and Mark: Once (Matt. xxvi, 26-30; Mark xiv, 16-26). Luke: Twice (xxii, 13-20). Regarding this discrepancy, Scribners' "Bible Dictionary" says: "The temptation to expand was much stronger than to contract; and the double mention of the cup raises real difficulties of the kind which suggest interpolation." 261 Where was Jesus when he uttered his last prayer? Synoptics: In the garden of Gethsemane (Matt. xxvi, 36-39; Mark xiv, 32-36; Luke xxii, 39-42). John: In Jerusalem before he retired to the garden (xvii, xviii, 1). 262 What is said of his agony at Gethsemane? Luke: "His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground" (xxii, 44). Whatever was the character of this so-called "bloody sweat," it may be remarked that Matthew, who was an apostle; Mark, who is claimed to be the interpreter of Peter, an apostle who was with Jesus at the time; and John who was not only an apostle, but present also, do not refer to it. Luke, who was not an eye-witness--who was not an apostle--is the only one who mentions it. 263 How many times did Jesus visit Jerusalem during his ministry? John: At least four times (ii, 13; v, 1; x, 22, 23; xii, 12). The Synoptics record but one visit. 264 To what country was his ministry chiefly confined? Synoptics: To Galilee. John: To Judea. According to the Synoptics nearly his entire ministry was confined to Galilee. It was only at the close of his ministry, a few days before his death, that he visited Judea to attend the Passover. According to John his ministry was confined chiefly to Judea. It requires but three or four of his twenty-one chapters to record his work in Galilee. Farrar says: "The Synoptists almost confine themselves to the Galilean, and St. John to the Judean ministry" (Life of Christ, p. 361). 265 How long did his ministry last? Synoptics: One year. John: At least three years. The Rev. Dr. Giles says: "According to the first three Gospels, Christ's public life lasted only one year" (Christian Records, p. 11). Referring to this and the preceding discrepancy, the author of "Supernatural Religion" says: "The Synoptics clearly represent the ministry of Jesus as having been limited to a single year, and his preaching is confined to Galilee and Jerusalem, where his career culminates at the fatal Passover. The fourth Gospel distributes the teaching of Jesus between Galilee, Samaria, and Jerusalem, makes it extend over at least three years, and refers to three Passovers spent by Jesus at Jerusalem" (p. 681). Irenaeus, the greatest of the early Christian Fathers, and who lived in the century following Jesus, declares that his ministry lasted twenty years. In his principal work, "Against Heresies," he combats the heresy of a one-year ministry of Jesus. He says: "They however, that they may establish their false opinion regarding that which is written, 'To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,' maintain that he preached for one year only, and then suffered in the twelfth month. They are forgetful of their own disadvantage, destroying his whole work, and robbing him of that age which is both more necessary and more honorable than any other; that more advanced age, I mean, during which also, as a teacher, he excelled all others. For how could he have had disciples if he did not teach? And how could he have taught, unless he had reached the age of a master? For when he came to be baptized, he had not yet completed his thirtieth year, but was beginning to be about thirty years of age.... Now, that the first stage of early life embraces thirty years, and that this extends onward to the fortieth year, every one will admit; but from the fortieth and fiftieth year, a man begins to decline toward old age; which our Lord possessed, while he still fulfilled the office of a teacher.... He did not therefore preach for only one year, nor did he suffer in the twelfth month of the year. For the period included between the thirtieth and fiftieth year can never be regarded as one year" (Book ii, ch. xxii, secs. 5, 6). 266 What is said regarding the extent of his works? John: "If they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books" (xxi, 25). In the very next verses of the Bible (Acts i, 1, 2) Luke declares that his brief Gospel contains a record "of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which he was taken up." 267 Can the alleged teachings of Jesus be accepted as authentic? Three facts disprove, for the most part, their authenticity. 1. The most important teachings ascribed to him by the Synoptics were borrowed, either by him or his biographers, from other teachers and writers. 2. His teachings as presented by the Synoptics, and as presented by John, exclude each other. No critic can seriously contend that the discourses and sayings of Jesus recorded in the Synoptics and those given in the Fourth Gospel emanated from the same mind. They are wholly dissimilar, both in doctrine and phraseology. Dr. Westcott says: "It is impossible to pass from the Synoptic Gospels to that of St. John without feeling that the transition involves the passage from one world of thought to another. No familiarity with the general teaching of the Gospels, no wide conception of the character of the Savior, is sufficient to destroy the contrast which exists in form and spirit between the earlier and later narratives" (Introduction to Study of Gospels, p. 249). 3. The discourses attributed to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel were evidently composed by the author of that Gospel. This is apparent to every careful reader. The teachings ascribed to Jesus in John, then, are spurious; while those ascribed to him in Matthew, Mark and Luke are of doubtful authenticity. If any of the teachings of Jesus have been preserved they exist in the first three Gospels, but the unauthentic character of the Gospels themselves, renders it impossible to ascribe to him with certainty a single teaching. CHAPTER VI. THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST. 268 When did Jesus first foretell his passion? Synoptics: Not until late in his ministry (Matt. xvi, 21; Mark viii, 31; Luke ix, 21-27). According to John (ii, 19-22) he referred to it at the beginning of his ministry. 269 When did he announce his betrayal? Matthew and Mark: At the Last Supper, while they were eating. "Now when the even was come, he sat down with the twelve. And as they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me" (Matt. xxvi, 20, 21; Mark xiv, 18). Luke and John: Not until after supper (Luke xxii, 20, 21; John xiii, 2-21). John says that after supper he washed his disciples' feet and delivered a discourse to them, after which he said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me." 270 Did Jesus say who should betray him? Matthew and John: He did (Matt. xxvi, 25; John xiii, 26). Mark and Luke: He did not. 271 How did he disclose his betrayer? Matthew: By an implied affirmative answer to Judas' question, "Is it I?" "Then Judas which betrayed him, answered and said, Master, is it I? He said unto him, Thou hast said" (xxvi, 25). John: By giving Judas a sop. "Jesus answered, He it is to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot." 272 When did Satan enter into Judas? Luke: Before the Last Supper (xxii, 3-7). John: After the Last Supper (xiii, 1-27). 273 How did Judas betray Jesus? Matthew and Mark: "Now he that betrayed him, gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he; hold him fast. And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, Master, and kissed him" (Matt. xxvi, 48, 49; Mark xiv, 44, 45). According to John, Judas did not betray him with a kiss. 274 What did Jesus say to Judas when he betrayed him? "Friend, wherefore art thou come?" (Matthew xxvi, 50.) "Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?" (Luke xxii, 48.) 275 What was Judas, and what office did he hold? John: "He was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein" (xii, 6). Judas was thus the first Christian treasurer. But why did Jesus, if omniscient, as claimed, select a thief for this office? Was he unable to conduct his ministry without the aid of one? 276 What did Judas receive for betraying his master? Matthew: "And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver" (xxvi, 15). "It is strange that a man who kept the purse, and knew what he would lose by the death of his chief, should abandon the profits of his office for so small a sum."--Renan. 277 What did he do with the money? Matthew: "Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders.... And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed" (xxvii, 3-5). Peter: "Now this man [Judas] purchased a field with the reward of iniquity" (Acts i, 18). 278 The purchase of the potter's field was in fulfillment of what prophecy? Matthew: "That which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, ... and gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me" (xxvii, 9, 10). This was not spoken by Jeremiah, but by Zechariah. "And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prized at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord" (xi, 13). It is evident that the account of the betrayal was inspired, not by a historical fact, but by a desire to "fulfill" a Messianic prophecy. Zechariah did not predict an event, but his words did suggest a fiction. This is the more probable from the fact that Matthew is the only Evangelist who mentions the thirty pieces of silver. The story of Christ's last visit to Jerusalem and the story of his betrayal exclude each other. According to the Evangelists he was not arrested for any offense he had committed during this visit, but for offenses he had committed prior to this. Yet during this visit he is said to have appeared openly with his disciples, making a triumphal entry into the city, visiting the temple and teaching in public. In the face of this the story that the Jews were obliged to bribe one of his disciples in order to apprehend him is absurd. One of these stories must be false. Regarding them Lord Amberley observes: "The representation of the Gospels, that Jesus went on teaching in public to the very end of his career, and yet that Judas received a bribe for his betrayal, is self-contradictory" (Life of Jesus, p. 214). To those who believe the accounts of the betrayal of Jesus to be historical, the ecclesiastical historian, Neander, in his "Life of Christ," advances a suggestion that is worthy of consideration. The betrayal of Jesus by Judas, it is suggested, was intended as a test of his Messiahship. If Jesus was the Messiah, Judas reasoned, he could save himself; if he was not the Messiah he was an impostor and deserved death. 279 What became of Judas? Matthew: He "went and hanged himself" (xxvii, 5). Peter: "Falling headlong he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out" (Acts i, 18). Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, one of the chief Christian authorities of the second century, and who wrote before the books of Matthew and Acts were written, gives the following account of the fate of Judas: "Judas walked about in the world a great example of impiety; for his body having swollen so that, on an occasion, when a wagon was moving on its way, he could not pass it, he was crushed by the chariot and his bowels gushed out." The German commentator, Dr. Hase, attempts to reconcile his suicide, as related by Matthew, with his death by accident, as related by Peter, by supposing that he attempted to hang himself, but that the rope broke, causing him to fall with such force as to disembowel himself. This harmonist apparently forgets to note that Peter says he fell "headlong," which makes it necessary to suppose that he hung himself by the feet. 280 To whom did Peter deliver his speech describing the fate of Judas? "Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples" (Acts i, 15). Is it not reasonable to suppose that the alleged information conveyed in his speech was as familiar to the disciples whom he addressed as to himself? Regarding this De Wette aptly says: "In the composition of this speech the author has not considered historical decorum." 281 What did Peter say in regard to the name of the field? "And it was known unto all the dwellers of Jerusalem; insomuch as that field is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood" (Acts i, 19). Here Peter is represented as interpreting in Greek a Jewish word to his Jewish brethren. 282 Were there more than one of Jesus' disciples concerned in his betrayal? John: There were. "For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were [of his disciples] that believed not, and who should betray him" (vi, 64). 283 When the Jewish council met to plan the arrest of Jesus, to what conclusion did they come? Matthew and Mark: Not to arrest him on the feast day (Matt. xxvi, 3-5; Mark xiv, 1, 2). Yet this was the very day on which Matthew and Mark declare that he was arrested. 284 Who arrested him? Matthew and Mark: "A great multitude ... from the chief priests and elders of the people" (Matt. xxvi, 47; Mark xiv, 43). Luke: "The chief priests, and captains of the temple, and the elders" themselves (xxii, 47-52). 285 Who does John say was sent to arrest him? A "band of soldiers and officers" (xviii, 3, New Ver.). This contradicts the Synoptics, who declare that it was a mob of civilians. 286 What is said regarding the multitude sent out to apprehend him? Synoptics: They were armed "with swords and staves" (Matt. xxvi, 47; Mark xiv, 43; Luke xxii, 52). Were the disciples armed? All: They were, or one of them at least (Matt. xxvi, 51; Mark xiv, 47; Luke xxii, 38, 50; John xviii, 10). This is incredible, for Jews were never allowed to carry arms on a holy day. 287 How did they go out to capture him? John: "With lanterns and torches" (xviii, 3). His enemies are represented as believing that his arrest could be secured only by strategy and stealth. Under these circumstances is it reasonable to suppose that the chief priests would send out a torchlight procession to apprehend him? Besides, as it was at the full of the moon, what need had they of lanterns and torches? Again, lanterns were unknown in Palestine. 288 When the band sent to capture him first came up to him what did they do? Matthew and Mark: "They laid hands on him and took him" (Matt. xxvi, 47-50; Mark xiv, 43-46). John: "They went backward and fell to the ground" (xviii, 3-6). 289 What did Peter do when Jesus was arrested? John: "Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear" (xviii, 10). Yet no efforts were made to arrest and punish Peter, notwithstanding he was recognized and pointed out by the kinsman of the wounded man. It may be urged that Jesus had healed the servant's ear. This, even if true, would not have removed the guilt of the militant disciple. Had Peter really committed the deed, it is not probable that he would have visited the house of the high priest and remained in the presence of his enemies. 290 When was Jesus bound? John: When he was arrested (xviii, 12). Matthew and Mark: Not until after his trial before the Sanhedrim when he was taken to Pilate (Matt. xxvii, 2; Mark xv, 1). According to Luke he was not bound. 291 What did they do with Jesus when he was taken? Matthew: "Led him away to Caiaphas" (xxvi, 57). John: "Led him away to Annas first" (xviii, 13). 292 Did he have an examination before his trial? John: He did (xviii, 13-23). Our laws provide for what is known as a preliminary examination before a magistrate. This was forbidden by the Jewish law, and his alleged examination before a priest could not have taken place. 293 Before whom did his preliminary examination take place? John: Before Annas (xviii, 13-23). The Synoptics state that he was examined and tried before Caiaphas. 294 Repeat John xviii, 24. "Now Annas had sent him bound unto Caiaphas the high priest" (Old Ver.). "Annas therefore sent him bound unto Caiaphas the high priest" (New Ver.). This verse follows the account of Jesus' preliminary examination and shows clearly that this examination took place before Annas, and that he was not sent to Caiaphas until its conclusion. The King James translators, in order to hide the discrepancy, prefixed the word "now" and changed the tense of the verb, substituting "had sent" for "sent," so that it might appear that Annas had sent him to Caiaphas before the examination commenced. Concerning this corruption of the text, Scott says: "There is no conjunction 'now,' and an aorist cannot mark a definite time. If a hiatus is suspected, it may be indicated by an asterisk; but to insert words and alter the force of a tense in order to get over a grave historical difficulty is sheer dishonesty" (Life of Jesus, p. 289, note). 295 Matthew and John state that Caiaphas was high priest at this time. Who does the author of Acts state was high priest? "And Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest, were gathered together at Jerusalem" (iv, 6). Luke (iii, 2), who is declared to be the author of Acts, says that Annas and Caiaphas were both high priests. Criticizing John's account of the examination before Annas, the author of "Supernatural Religion" says: "The Synoptics know nothing of the preliminary examination before Annas, and the reason given by the writer of the fourth Gospel why the soldiers first took Jesus to Annas: 'for he was father-in-law to Caiaphas who was first high priest that year,' is inadmissible. The assertion is a clear mistake, and it probably originated in a stranger writing of facts and institutions with which he was not well acquainted, being misled by an error equally committed by the author of the third Gospel, and of the Acts of the Apostles.... Such statements, erroneous in themselves and not understood by the author of the fourth Gospel, may have led to the confusion in the narrative. Annas had previously been high priest, as we know from Josephus, but nothing is more certain than the fact that the title was not continued after the office was resigned; and Ishmael, Eleazar, and Simon, who succeeded Annas and separated his term of office from that of Caiaphas, did not subsequently bear the title. The narrative is a mistake, and such an error could not have been committed by a native of Palestine, and much less by an acquaintance of the high priest" (p. 660). 296 What is said regarding the tenure of Caiaphas' office? John: He was "high priest that year" (xi, 49). John's language implies that the high priest was appointed annually, whereas he held his office for life, or until removed. Caiaphas had been high priest for many years. 297 What had Caiaphas prophesied concerning Jesus? John: "He prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation; and not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad" (xi, 51, 52). A high priest did not assume the role of prophet, much less would he have given utterance to the prophecy ascribed to Caiaphas. The Roman procurator might have expressed such a sentiment, for according to Roman law and ethics an individual could be sacrificed for the welfare of the state. The high priest, on the other hand, could not have uttered such a sentiment, because it was abhorrent to the Jewish mind. If all Israel could have been saved, and could have been saved only by the death of one of its innocent members, that member could not have been put to death, because, according to Jewish law, it would have made of every Jew concerned in it a murderer. It was a fundamental principle of the Jewish code that, "No human life must be abandoned on account of any other life." 298 Did Jesus have a trial before the Sanhedrim? Synoptics: He had (Matt. xxvi, 57-75; Mark xiv, 53-72; Luke xxii, 54-71). It was about this time (30 A. D.), that the Sanhedrim ceased to have jurisdiction over capital offenses. After its jurisdiction ceased Jesus could not have been tried before it; and before its jurisdiction ceased he would not have had a subsequent trial before Pilate. 299 Where was his trial held? Matthew and Mark: At the palace of the high priest. No trial was ever held at the residence of the high priest. All meetings of the Sanhedrim were held in the hall adjoining the temple. A trial at any other place would have been illegal. 300 What was the charge preferred against him? All: Blasphemy. Jesus, it was charged, had declared himself to be the son of God. This, if true, would not have constituted blasphemy. It was no offense against the law for a man to claim that he was the son of God. All men, and especially all good men, were recognized as the sons of God. Referring to Christ's claim, a Jewish writer says: "No law, no precedent, and no fictitious case in the Bible or the rabbinical literature, can be cited to make of this expression a case of blasphemy." And even if he had been proven guilty of blasphemy, he could not have been put to death, for blasphemy, at this time, had ceased to be a capital offense. And is it reasonable to suppose that the Romans would have condemned a man to death for an offense against a religion in which they did not themselves believe, but which they regarded as one of the vilest of superstitions? It may be urged that in his trial before Pilate the charge was changed to sedition. This charge was not sustained. 301 What is said regarding witnesses? Matthew and Mark: "Now the chief priests, and elders, and all the council, sought false witnesses against Jesus, to put him to death; but found none; yea, though many false witnesses came, yet found they none" (Matt. xxvi, 59, 60; Mark xiv, 55, 56). When every step thus far taken by the council had been illegal, why should it have been so particular in regard to the witnesses? The fact is the Evangelists were ignorant of Jewish laws. They believed that while the prosecution of Jesus was unjust it was yet conducted according to the established rules of Jewish courts. Referring to Mark, Dr. Wise says: "In his ignorance of Jewish law, he imagined the trial which he described was lawful among the Jews. He proves this, in the first place, by the very statement that witnesses were sought and produced. A court convoked and acting in rebellion to law and custom can be considered only a band of rebels. What use have such men of witnesses? Being lawless from the beginning, no legal restraint makes the presence of witnesses necessary.... He certainly thought of an honest, lawful trial, in the legal form; an honest and legal examination of witnesses, a fair consideration of the testimony, and after mature reflection the rejection thereof on account of insufficiency" (Martyrdom of Jesus, pp. 69, 70). 302 What did the so-called false witnesses that appeared against him testify that he had said? "I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days" (Matthew xxvi, 61). "I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands" (Mark xiv, 58). 303 What had Jesus said? "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up" (John ii, 19). Passing over the discrepancies of Matthew and Mark, if they have given the substance of these witnesses' testimony, then they were not false, but truthful witnesses; for Jesus, it is seen, had given utterance to such a declaration. If he referred to the temple of his body, as John affirms, and the Jews misunderstood him, the fault was his, not theirs. Josephus gives an account of a so-called prophet who, a few years later, boasted of his supernatural powers in much the same manner that Jesus is said to have done: "There came out of Egypt about this time to Jerusalem, one that said that he was a prophet, and advised the multitude of the common people to go along to the Mount of Olives, as it was called, which lay over against the city, and at the distance of five furlongs. He said further, that he would show them from hence, how, at his command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down" (Antiquities, Book xx, chap. viii, sec. 6). 304 Was he questioned by the Sanhedrim? Synoptics: He was. They tried to convict him by his own testimony (Matt. xxvi, 62-64; Mark xiv, 60-63; Luke xxii, 66-71). A Jewish court did not question a prisoner. A prisoner could not even plead guilty. 305 To the priest's question, "Art thou the Christ?" what answer did he give? Mark: "Jesus said, I am" (xiv, 61, 62). Luke: "He said unto them, If I tell you, ye will not believe" (xxii, 67). 306 When did his trial before the Sanhedrim take place? Matthew and Mark: During the night. After his arrest, which probably occurred not later than midnight, they at once "led him away to Caiaphas the high priest, where ... the chief priests, and elders, and all the council [Sanhedrim]" had assembled, when his trial immediately began (Matt. xxvi, 57-68; Mark xiv, 58-65). Luke: Not until the next morning. During the night he was held in custody at the house of the high priest. "As soon as it was day, the elders of the people and the chief priests and the scribes came together, and led him into the council" (xxii, 66). This, according to Luke, was his first and only appearance before the Sanhedrim. Matthew and Mark, in addition to the night trial mentioned by them, also mention an adjourned session in the morning corresponding to the meeting of Luke. 307 Could this trial have been held in the night as stated by Matthew and Mark? It could not. The Jewish law prohibited the opening of a trial at night. The Sanhedrim could not hold a session before 6 a. m. or after 3 p. m. Luke was seemingly acquainted with this law; Matthew and Mark were not. 308 During what religious festivities was his trial held? Synoptics: During the feast of the Passover. It could not have been held during the Passover, for no trials were held by the Jews during this feast. 309 On what day of the week was it held? Synoptics: On Friday, the day preceding the Sabbath. No trial for a capital offense was ever allowed to begin on the day preceding the Sabbath. 310 How long did this trial last? All: But a few hours. The Jewish law required at least two days for a capital trial--one for prosecution, and one for the defense. 311 Did he have a defender or counselor in the Sanhedrim? Synoptics: He did not. According to the Synoptics he had no counsel, and the Sanhedrim were unanimous in their condemnation of him. This was contrary to Jewish law. The Sanhedrim might be unanimous in their belief that he was guilty, but it was the duty of at least one of them to defend him. This was the law: "If none of the judges defend the culprit, i. e., all pronounce him guilty, having no defender in the court, the verdict of guilty was invalid and the sentence of death could not be executed" (Maimonides). Dr. Geikie admits that the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrim, as related in the Gospels, was in nearly every particular contrary to Jewish law. He says: "The accused was in all cases to be held innocent, till proved guilty. It was an axiom, that 'the Sanhedrim was to save, not to destroy life.' No one could be tried and condemned in his absence, and when a person accused was brought before the court, it was the duty of the president, at the outset, to admonish the witnesses to remember the value of human life, and to take care that they forgot nothing that would tell in the prisoner's favor. Nor was he left undefended; a Baal-Rib, or counsel, was appointed, to see that all possible was done for his acquittal. Whatever evidence tended to aid him was to be freely admitted, and no member of the court who had once spoken in favor of acquittal could afterwards vote for condemnation. The votes of the youngest of the judges were taken first, that they might not be influenced by their seniors. In capital charges, it required a majority of at least two to condemn, and while the verdict of acquittal could be given at once, that of guilty could only be pronounced the next day. Hence, capital trials could not begin on the day preceding a Sabbath, or public feast. No criminal trial could be carried through in the night; the judges who condemned any one to death had to fast all the day before, and no one could be executed on the same day on which the sentence was pronounced." (Life of Christ, vol. ii, p. 487.) 312 Had Jesus been tried, convicted and executed by the Jews would he have been crucified? He would not. Crucifixion was a mode of punishment never employed by the Jews. Had the Jews executed him he would have been stoned. It is impliedly stated in the Synoptics, and expressly stated in John, that the Sanhedrim's jurisdiction over capital crimes had ceased. "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death" (xviii, 31). The Sanhedrim's authority ceased in 30 A. D., and it is generally claimed by Christians that the crucifixion occurred from one to five years after this time. 313 What does Peter say in regard to the mode of punishment employed in his execution? "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree" (Acts v, 30). "And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom ye slew and hanged on a tree" (x, 39). Concerning this, Mrs. Evans says: "With regard to his death, it was said that the Jews slew him and hanged him on a tree; and again that he was taken down from the tree; expressions which do not imply crucifixion, but rather the legal execution for such crimes as the one alleged, that is, stoning to death and the exposure of the dead body upon a stake, or a tree" (Christ Myth, p. 79). 314 How was he treated by the Sanhedrim? Matthew and Mark: "They spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands" (Matt. xxvi, 67; Mark xiv, 65). Every Jew, and every other person acquainted with the Jewish history of that age, knows that this is false. The Sanhedrim was composed of the wisest and the best men of that race. Superstitious, bigoted and fanatical some of them doubtless were, but in that august court law and dignity and decorum reigned. These accounts of the trial of Christ before the Sanhedrim afford overwhelming proof that they were not written by apostles nor by residents of Palestine. They were written by Gentile Christians, or by Jewish converts living in foreign lands, and presumably the former, for even foreign Jews must have possessed a better knowledge of Jewish laws and customs than the Evangelists display. 315 During the trial Peter denied his master. What had Jesus predicted concerning his denial? Matthew, Luke and John: "Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, that this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice" (Matt. xxvi, 34; Luke xxii, 34; John xiii, 38). Mark: "And Jesus saith unto him, Verily I say unto thee, that this day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice" (xiv, 30). 316 Did Peter deny him three times before the cock crew? Matthew, Luke and John: He did (Matt. xxvi, 69-75; Luke xxii, 54-62; John xviii, 15-27). Mark: He did not; he had denied him but once when the cock crew (xiv, 66-68). 317 Where were they when Jesus foretold Peter's denial? Matthew and Mark: At the Mount of Olives (Matt. xxvi, 30-35; Mark xiv, 26-30). Luke: In Jerusalem, at supper, before they went out to the Mount of Olives (xxii, 7-39). 318 What did Peter do when he entered the palace? Luke: "Peter sat down among them" (xxii, 55). John: "Peter stood with them" (xviii, 18). 319 When was he first accused of being the friend of Jesus? John: As he entered the room (xviii, 16, 17). Mark and Luke: As he sat by the fire (Mark xiv, 66, 67; Luke xxii, 54-57). 320 When was he accused the second time? John: In the house as he "stood and warmed himself" (xviii, 25). Matthew: "When he was gone out into the porch" (xxvi, 71). 321 By whom was he accused the second time? Matthew and Mark: By a "maid" (Matt. xxvi, 71; Mark xiv, 69). Luke: By a "man" (xxii, 59, 60). 322 Who accused him the third time? Matthew and Mark: "They that stood by" (Matt. xxvi, 73; Mark xiv, 70). John: "One of the servants of the high priest" (xviii, 26). 323 Was Jesus present when Peter denied him? Matthew and Mark: He was not. Luke: He was. "The Lord turned and looked upon Peter" (xxii, 60, 61). 324 Where was Jesus next sent for trial? Luke: To Herod, tetrarch of Galilee, who was attending the Passover at Jerusalem (xxiii, 6-11). In the matter of trials the Evangelists, as in everything else, have overdone things. Notwithstanding no trial was ever held during the Passover they give him four trials in one day, and not finding courts enough in Judea for the purpose, they import one from Galilee. There is nothing more improbable than this alleged examination of Jesus by Herod. Imagine the Governor General of Canada sitting in judgment on a criminal at Washington, because the criminal is a Canadian, or an Ohio court holding a session in New York because the prisoner arraigned once lived in Ohio. The offenses with which Jesus was charged were committed, not in Herod's province, Galilee, but in Pilate's province, Judea. It is strange that John, who pretends to relate every important event connected with the trial of Jesus, should omit his trial before Herod. Concerning this Strauss says: "The conjecture, that it may probably have appeared to him [John] too unimportant, loses all foundation when it is considered that John does not scorn to mention the leading away to Annas, which nevertheless was equally indecisive; and in general, the narrative of these events in John is, as Schleiermacher himself confesses, so consecutive that it nowhere presents a break in which such an episode could be inserted. Hence even Schleiermacher at last takes refuge in the conjecture that possibly the sending to Herod may have escaped the notice of John, because it happened on an opposite side to that on which the disciple stood, through a back door; and that it came to the knowledge of Luke because his informant had an acquaintance in the household of Herod, as John had in that of Annas; the former conjecture, however, is figuratively as well as literally nothing more than a back door; the latter, a fiction which is but the effort of despair" (Leben Jesu, pp. 764, 765). 325 What was the result of Pilate's sending Jesus to Herod? Luke: "And the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together, for before they were at enmity between themselves" (xxiii, 12). Pilate and Herod did not become friends. To the day of Pilate's recall they were enemies. Herod was continually plotting and striving to unite with his tetrarchy the province of Judea which belonged to his father's kingdom, and which his father had promised to give him. 326 Did Jesus's trial before Pilate take place in the presence of his accusers? Luke: It did (xxiii, 1-4, 13, 14). John: It did not (xviii, 28). 327 Did Pilate go out of the judgment hall to consult with those who were prosecuting Jesus? Luke: He did not (xxiii, 1-25). John: He did. "Pilate then went out unto them [the Jews], and said, What accusation bring ye against this man? They answered and said unto him, If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee.... Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews? Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?" (xxiii, 29, 30, 33, 34.) The prosecution and the defense are both declared to have returned insolent answers to the questions of Pilate. The Jewish priests were too wise for this, and Christians will be loath to admit that their Savior was so indiscreet and so impolite as to indulge in such insolence. 328 What was the result of his trial before Pilate? All: Pilate declared him innocent and sentenced him to death. "And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people, said unto them, Ye have brought this man unto me, as one that perverteth the people; and, behold, I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man touching those things whereof ye accuse him.... And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required.... He delivered Jesus to their will" (Luke xxiii, 13, 14, 24, 25). "Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him, and crucify him; for I find no fault in him" (John xix, 6). It is impossible to believe that the highest court of a country would pronounce a prisoner innocent and then condemn him to death. Judicial murders are sometimes committed, but the murderers do not confess their guilt. It is declared that Pilate desired to release Jesus but could not. Who ruled Judea, Pilate or the Sanhedrim? According to the Evangelists, the Romans ruled Judea, while the Jews ruled the Romans. Between the Pilate of the New Testament and the Pilate of history there is nothing in common. The Pilate of the New Testament is subservient to the Jews, acceding to their every wish, even to murdering an innocent prisoner. The Pilate of history is noted for his hatred of the Jews and his cruelties to them. It was these which provoked his recall. 329 When Pilate could not prevail upon the Jews to allow him to release Jesus, what did he do? Matthew: "He took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person" (xxvii, 24). Matthew does not appear to realize the absurdity of supposing that a Roman official would adopt a custom peculiar to a people whom he held in contempt. "And all the elders of that city, that are next unto the slain man shall wash their hands ... and they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood" (Deuteronomy xx, 6, 7). 330 What indignities were heaped upon Jesus during his trial before Pilate? John: "Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him. And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head, and they put on him a purple robe, and said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they smote him with their hands. Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I bring him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in him. Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man!" (xix, 1-5.) These indignities Jesus is said to have suffered, not at the hands of a Jewish mob, but at the hands of a Roman court, from which the Jews had absented themselves and whose proceedings they could not witness nor directly influence. Every lawyer knows that for more than two thousand years the Roman court has been the world's model for dignity and fairness. That an innocent and defenseless prisoner was subjected to these insults and brutalities in a Roman court, presided over by a Roman governor, none but a slave of superstition can believe. 331 When was he scourged? Matthew and Mark: Before he was executed. "And when he [Pilate] had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified" (Matt. xxvii, 26; Mark xv, 15). John: Before the termination of his trial (xix, 1-16). Scourging was frequently inflicted by the Romans before execution, but never before the prisoner was convicted and sentenced. The "Bible Dictionary" concedes the illegal and unusual character of the scourging mentioned by John. "In our Lord's case, however, this infliction seems neither to have been the legal scourging after sentence nor yet the examination by torture" (Acts xxii, 24). 332 What custom is said to have been observed at the Passover? All: The release of a prisoner by the Roman governor (Matt. xxvii, 15; Mark xv, 6; Luke xxiii, 17; John xviii, 39). "Now at that feast the governor was wont to release unto the people a prisoner, whom they would." There is no historical authority whatever for this alleged custom. It was a custom that the Roman government in Judea could not with safety adopt. The Jews were a subject people, waiting and hoping for an opportunity to throw off the Roman yoke. To release to them "whomsoever they desired" (Mark xv, 6) might be to release a political prisoner whose liberty would endanger the government itself. This story was probably suggested by a custom of the Roman emperors who released a prisoner at their birthday festivals. 333 They demanded and obtained the release of Barrabas. Who was Barrabas? John: A robber. "Now Barrabas was a robber" (xviii, 40). Mark and Luke: A murderer. "Barrabas (who for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison)" (Luke xxiii, 18, 19; Mark xv, 7). 334 By whom was Jesus clad in mockery? Matthew, Mark and John: By Pilate's soldiers (Matt. xxvii, 27, 28; Mark xv, 16, 17; John xix, 1, 2). Luke: By Herod and his soldiers. "And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe" (xxiii, 11). 335 What was the color of the robe they put on him? Matthew: "They stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe" (xxvii, 28). Mark and John: "They put on him a purple robe" (John xix, 2; Mark xv, 17). 336 When did this occur? John: During his trial (xix, 1, 2, 12-16). Matthew and Mark: After Pilate had delivered him to be crucified (Matt. xxvii, 26-28; Mark xv, 15-17). 337 Describe the mocking of Jesus. Matthew: "Then released he Barrabas unto them; and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers. And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe. And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand; and they bowed the knee before him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!" (xxvii, 26-29.) The original of this account of the mocking of Jesus is to be found in Philo's "Adversus Flaccum," written more than one hundred years before the Gospels made their appearance. Herod Agrippa was on his way from Rome to Palestine to assume the government of that country. When he stopped at Alexandria his enemies, to annoy him, instituted a mock coronation, which Philo relates as follows: "There was a certain poor wretch named Carrabas, who spent all his days and nights in the roads, the sport of idle children and wanton youths; and the multitude, having driven him as far as the public gymnasium, and having set him up there on high, that he might be seen of everybody, flattening out a papyrus leaf, put it on his head instead of a crown, and clothed the rest of his body with a common mat in place of a robe, and in lieu of a sceptre thrust into his hand a reed, which they found lying by the wayside. And when he had received all the insignia of royalty, and had been dressed and adorned like a king, young men bearing sticks on their shoulders stood on each side of him in imitation of guards, while others came up, some as if to salute him, and others pretending to plead their causes before him" (Philo's Works, vol. iv, pp. 68, 69). 338 Who smote Jesus after his trial? Mark: "The servants did strike him with the palms of their hands" (xiv, 65). John: "One of the officers which stood by struck Jesus with the palm of his hand" (xviii, 22). The stories of these mockings, revilings, and brutal assaults cannot be accepted as historical. They are self-evidently false. Were they alleged to have been committed by an irresponsible Jewish or Roman mob they might be credited; but when they are declared to have been committed by, or while in the custody of the highest Jewish and Roman officials they must be rejected. 339 To whom did Pilate deliver him to be crucified? Matthew and Mark: To the Roman soldiers. "And when he had scourged Jesus he delivered him to be crucified. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus.... And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull, ... they crucified him" (Matt. xxvii, 26-35; Mark xv, 15-24). John: He delivered him to the Jews. "And he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King! But they cried out, Away with him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar. Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus and led him away. And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of the skulls, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha; where they crucified him" (xix, 14-18). Matthew and Mark plainly state that Jesus was delivered to the Roman soldiers; John just as plainly states that he was delivered to the Jews. Matthew and Mark declare that he was crucified by the soldiers; John declares that he was crucified by the Jews. Were it not that John elsewhere (xix, 23) contradicts himself and states that the soldiers crucified him, the conclusion would be, after reading John, that he was crucified by the Jews. Peter declares that the Jews executed him. Addressing the Sanhedrim, he says: "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree" (Acts v, 30). 340 Who was compelled to carry the cross? Synoptics: "And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name; him they compelled to bear his cross" (Matt. xxvii, 32; Mark xv, 21; Luke xxiii, 26). John: The cross was borne by Jesus himself (xix, 17). 341 Where was Simon when they compelled him to carry the cross? Mark: "Coming out of the country" (xv, 21). The correct reading of this is, "coming from the field," i. e., "coming from his work." This is improbable as they did not work on the Passover. 342 The Synoptics agree in stating that Simon was compelled to carry the cross. Is this probable? It is not. In executions of this kind the criminal was always required to carry it himself as a mark of disgrace. 343 It is inferred from the Synoptics that the cross was too heavy for Jesus to bear, and Christian writings and paintings represent him bending with fatigue beneath the burden of the entire cross. What was the burden he was required to carry? Simply the patibulum, or cross piece, which was not heavy. The upright portion of the cross was a permanent fixture. 344 On his way to execution he made a speech to the women of Jerusalem who bewailed his fate. Alluding, as is alleged, to the coming destruction of Jerusalem, what did he declare they would say? "To the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us" (Luke xxiii, 30). Luke attempts to put into the mouth of Jesus a quotation from Hosea, but his memory was defective. What the prophet said was as follows: "To the mountains, Cover us; and to the hills, Fall on us" (Hosea x, 8). Renan pronounces this speech spurious. He says: "The speech to the women of Jerusalem could scarcely have been conceived except after the siege of the year 70." 345 Where was he crucified? Matthew and Mark: At "a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull" (Matt. xxvii, 33; Mark xv, 22). Luke: At Calvary (xxiii, 33). Calvary, like Golgotha, means a place of skulls in the vicinity of Jerusalem. The explanation given by Christian commentators is that "it was a spot where executions ordinarily took place, and therefore abounded in skulls." Fleetwood says it "was called Golgotha, or Place of Skulls, from the criminals' bones which lay scattered there" (Life of Christ, p. 416). Where Jewish customs prevailed--and it is admitted that they did prevail in Jerusalem and Judea at this time, and had for hundreds of years--a human skull or bone was not allowed to be exposed for even a moment. 346 What was the inscription on the cross? Mark: "The King of the Jews" (xv, 26). Luke: "This is the King of the Jews" (xxiii, 38). Matthew: "This is Jesus the King of the Jews" (xxvii, 37). John: "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews" (xix, 19). There was placed on the cross a certain inscription. According to Luke and John it appeared in Greek, Latin and Hebrew. Four divinely inspired historians attempt to report in Greek the exact words of this inscription. Yet no two of their reports agree. 347 Did the name of Jesus appear on the cross? Matthew and John: It did. Mark and Luke: It did not. 348 Did the word "Nazareth" appear in the inscription? John: It did. Synoptics: It did not. 349 What did they offer him to drink before crucifying him? Matthew: "Vinegar mingled with gall" (xxvii, 34). Mark: "Wine mingled with myrrh" (xv, 23). Luke: "Vinegar" alone (xxiii, 36). The draughts mentioned by Matthew and Mark refer to a Jewish mixture intended to produce stupefaction and lessen pain. Had the Romans crucified him it is not probable that they would have observed this Jewish custom. 350 How was he fastened on the cross? Luke and John: His hands and feet were nailed to it (Luke xxiv, 39; John xx, 25, 27). The Evangelists do not say that he was nailed to the cross; but it has been inferred from the texts mentioned in Luke and John that he was. In crucifixion the victim was usually bound to the cross. Nails were sometimes driven through the hands, but never through the feet. The allusions to the supposed wounds on his hands and feet were evidently inserted in the accounts for the purpose of establishing his identity after the resurrection. Great prominence has been given them by Christians in order to make Christ's crucifixion appear especially cruel and create sympathy for him. 351 At what hour of the day was he crucified? Mark: "It was the third hour [nine o'clock in the morning]" (xv, 25). Luke: "It was about the sixth hour [noon]" (xxiii, 44). John: At the sixth hour he had not been sentenced and delivered to the executioners; hence he was not crucified until the afternoon (xix, 14-16). Dr. Geikie admits that three hours may have elapsed between the termination of his trial and his crucifixion. Hence, according to John, the crucifixion may have occurred as late as three o'clock in the afternoon. It has been attempted to explain the discrepancy between Mark and John by supposing that John used a different method of reckoning time. Concerning this, Prof. Sanday, one of England's highest orthodox authorities, says: "The writer of this was at one time inclined to look with favor on these attempts. If the premise could be proved, the data would work out satisfactorily.... But it must definitely be said that the major premise cannot be proved, and that the attempt to reconcile the two statements on this basis breaks down." 352 How did the soldiers divide the garments? Matthew: "And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots" (xxvii, 35). John: "Then the soldiers when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said, therefore, among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be; that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots" (xix, 23, 24). According to Matthew they cast lots for all the garments; according to John they cast lots for the coat alone. John here makes the same error in regard to the garments that Matthew does in regard to the ass on which Jesus made his triumphal entry. In the verse cited from Psalms garments and vesture are the same thing--the clothing of the writer. One of the chief characteristics of Hebrew poetry, or much of it at least, is that each successive thought is stated twice, but in different words. 353 Who were crucified with Jesus? Mark and Matthew: "And with him they crucify two thieves" (Mark xv, 27; Matt. xxvii, 38). Thieves were not crucified. Crucifixion, or death in any form, for theft was contrary to both Jewish and Roman law. Theft was not a capital offense. 354 His crucifixion between two thieves fulfilled what prophecy? Mark: "And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, And he shall be numbered with the transgressors" (xv, 28). "The same thing might be said of the thieves."--Paine. This passage is not to be found in the earlier manuscripts of Mark, and Westcott declares it to be an interpolation. 355 How long did Jesus survive after being placed upon the cross? Luke: About three hours (xxiii, 44). A Jamaica negro slave, crucified in 1760, lived two hundred and ten hours. Kitto says: "We may consider thirty-six hours to be the earliest period at which crucifixion would occasion death in a healthy adult" (Biblical Cyclopedia, Art. Crucifixion). 356 What were his last words? Matthew: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (xxvii, 46). Mark: "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (xv, 34.) Luke: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (xxiii, 46). John: "It is finished" (xix, 30). With the Four Gospels before them, Christians do not know what his last words were. The two most popular English Lives of Christ are those of Dr. Farrar and Dr. Geikie. These writers were contemporaries and friends, and both were adherents of the same church. Both, with these Gospels for their authorities, attempt to portray the closing scene. I quote from each: Dr. Farrar: "And now the end was come. Once more, in the words of the sweet Psalmist of Israel, but adding to them that title of trustful love which, through Him, is permitted to the use of all mankind, 'Father,' he said, 'into Thy hands I commend my spirit.' Then with one more great effort he uttered the last cry--the one victorious word, 'It is finished.'" Dr. Geikie: "A moment more, and all was over. The cloud had passed as suddenly as it rose. Far and wide, over the vanquished throngs of his enemies, with a loud voice, as if uttering his shout of eternal victory before entering into his glory, he cried, 'It is finished!' Then, more gently, came the words, 'Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.'" 357 In what language were his last words uttered? Matthew: In Hebrew. Mark: In Aramaic and Hebrew. The language spoken by Jesus and by the people of Palestine at this time was the Aramaic. Mark attempts to give the words of Jesus in this language. But while the first two words are Aramaic, the last two are Hebrew. The words Mark attempts to give are "Elohi, Elohi, metul mah shabaktani?" This Gospel was written by one ignorant of the language of Palestine. 358 Matthew interprets the Hebrew words quoted by him to mean, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Is this correct? It is not. The words mean, "My God, my God, why hast thou sacrificed me?" The Gospel of Matthew, it is claimed, originally appeared in Hebrew. But this shows that the author of Matthew did not understand the Hebrew language. 359 What are the words given by Matthew and Mark? The first words of the 22d Psalm. In the words of Farrar, "He borrowed from David's utter agony the expression of his own." Is it probable that a man in the agonies of a terrible death would devote his expiring breath to a recital of Hebrew poetry? When even the dying words of this Christ are borrowed, is it not evident that the whole story of his life is fabulous? The accounts of the crucifixion given by the Evangelists are to a large extent reproductions of the 22d Psalm, even to the language itself, the poetical allusions of the psalmist being transformed into alleged historical facts. The devout Christian who is familiar with this Passion Psalm sees in the Evangelists' account of the crucifixion a wonderful fulfillment of prophecy. But the critic sees merely the borrowed embellishments of a legend. 360 What expression did his words, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani," provoke? Matthew: "Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias" (xxvii, 47). This is additional proof of Matthew's ignorance of Hebrew. He supposes a similarity of sound between the two words, whereas they were utterly unlike in pronunciation. Eli was pronounced Ali (long a), while Elias was pronounced Eleeyahu. But even had they been so much alike in sound that one might have been mistaken for the other, as Matthew supposes, the alleged incident is disproved by the fact that the Jews were not allowed to attend the execution, while to the Romans the words were meaningless. 361 Who was it bade them see whether Elias would come to his rescue? Mark: The one who gave him the sponge filled with vinegar. "And one ran and filled a sponge full of vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink, saying, Let alone, let us see whether Elias will come to take him down" (xv, 36). Matthew: It was not this person, but those who were with him. "And straightway one of them ran, and took a sponge and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink. The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him" (xxvii, 48, 49). In regard to these alleged last words of Jesus, Dr. Hooykaas says: "It seems to us far more probable that these words of the Messianic passion-psalm were put into the mouth of Jesus by tradition than that he really uttered them. The sequel, too, throws great suspicion on the report; for the Jews were not allowed to approach the cross, and what did the Roman soldiers know about Elijah? Besides, if the Jews had really heard him cry "Eli!" or "Eloi!" they would hardly have mistaken the words of the twenty-second Psalm for a cry to the precursor of the Messianic kingdom--a mistake upon which their raillery is made to depend. We must, therefore, put aside these words, as in all probability unhistorical" (Bible for Learners, vol. iii, p. 454). 362 Did the thieves between whom he was crucified both revile him? Matthew and Mark: They did. "And they that were crucified with him reviled him" (Mark xv, 32; Matt. xxvii, 44). Luke: They did not; but one reviled him. "And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him.... But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?" (xxiii, 39, 40.) If these men were crucified with Jesus, as claimed, neither reviled him. Reason rejects the statement that a dying man, suffering unutterable agony, reviled a fellow sufferer. 363 What request did the penitent thief make of Jesus? Luke: "And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom" (xxiii, 42). Here the dying thief is represented as being familiar with a subject which the disciples themselves did not at this time comprehend. 364 What did Jesus say to the thief? "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise" (Luke xxiii, 43). Instead of going to the Christian Heaven above, they went to the Jewish-Pagan Sheol (Hell) below. Did Jesus recant on the cross? Did he renounce the Kingdom of God when God deserted him? Concerning this remarkable passage, Smith's "Bible Dictionary" says: "The Rabbis in the time of our Savior taught there was a region of the world of the dead, of Sheol, in the heart of the earth. Gehenna was on one side, with its flames and torments; Paradise on the other, the intermediate home of the blessed.... It is significant, indeed, that the word 'paradise' nowhere occurs in the public teaching of our Lord, or in his intercourse with his disciples. Connected as it had been with the thoughts of a sensuous happiness, it was not the fittest nor the best word for those whom he was training to rise out of sensuous thoughts to the higher regions of the spiritual life. For them, accordingly, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of God, are the words most dwelt on. With the thief dying on the cross the case was different. We can assume nothing in the robber-outlaw but the most rudimentary forms of the popular belief. The answer to his prayer gave him what he needed most, the assurance of immediate rest and peace." The explanation of the apologist is as lame as the story of the Evangelist. Did Jesus go to Hell with the thief because the thief was unfit to go to Heaven with him? This apologist says that Jesus used these words--gave expression to a false doctrine--because the thief was incapable of comprehending the true doctrine. But this conflicts with the alleged words of the thief himself which show that he did comprehend the nature of the kingdom of Heaven. It was this, and not the peace of the grave, for which he prayed. 365 What were the centurion's words? Luke: "Certainly this was a righteous man" (xxiii, 47). Matthew: "Truly this was the Son of God" (xxvii, 54). We have here the anomaly of a Roman officer--a Pagan--entertaining a Jewish doctrine of a Messiah, and accepting the Christian claim that Jesus was the Messiah. If this be true it is strange that he permitted his soldiers to insult and abuse Jesus. 366 After Jesus expired what did one of the soldiers do? John: "One of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side" (xix, 34). It is remarkable that the Synoptics, who pretend to relate every important incident connected with the crucifixion, make no mention of the spear thrust. 367 What is said to have issued from the wound? John: "And forthwith came there out blood and water" (xix, 34). According to a well known physiological fact, if Jesus was still alive or had but recently expired, not blood and water, but blood alone would have flowed from the wound. If he was dead, and it is stated that he was, then neither blood nor water would have flowed from it. When blood is drawn from a living body it becomes separated into two parts, a thick substance known as febrine, and a watery fluid known as serum. John was familiar with this fact and supposed that this also took place in a corpse, which is not the case. Dr. Cabanes, a noted physician of Paris, writes as follows regarding the crucifixion of Jesus: "It appears that crucifixion alone could not have produced the death of Jesus, and in reference to the wounds produced by the nails, these wounds being the result of crushing, the hemorrhage was small. A burning fever might possibly occur which would be manifested by an intense thirst, but the flow of blood could not be sufficient to cause death. Death in this case is preceded by a comatose condition which would be inconsistent with the cry uttered in a loud voice by Jesus shortly before his last breath. All the commentators of the gospels further agree that Jesus did not remain more than three to six hours on the cross, and death cannot be produced by an exposure of this duration to this mode of torture. "The generally accepted version of the lance wound received by Jesus is that the blow was struck on the left side and that there flowed from the wound water mingled with blood. It has been correctly remarked that blood does not flow from a corpse, and therefore if blood followed the lance stroke, Jesus must have been alive; further, in order that the blow might have killed the dying man, it must have injured a vital organ. It must be observed that a lance directed upward and from right to left could not reach the right-hand cavities of the heart without first opening the peritoneal cavity, traversing the liver, the pericardium and perhaps the pleura. We must therefore ask how the few hundred grams of blood which a right ventricle could contain, could penetrate to the exterior of the body after such a great wound. Also with those who die slowly there is found a distended heart in which the blood has very rapidly coagulated, and it must follow that if a flood of the liquid appeared on the side of Jesus it could not have come from the heart. With regard to the vena cava, its situation is too far back to have allowed it to be touched by the lance. If the wound had been in the stomach a lesion of the digestive tube would have been disclosed by an ejection of blood mingled with alimentary matter, either from the mouth or the opening of the wound, or at least by a discharge of blood into the abdominal cavity. Had the liver been touched the symptoms of an internal hemorrhage would have been observed, as in the case of President Carnot, in whose case the blow of the poignard, directed downward, perforated the liver and the portal vein, inducing a state of coma, whereas Jesus, we have been told, cried out with a loud voice. We thus see that death was not due to the lance wound or to the torture of crucifixion, as so often stated." 368 Was Christ's suffering foretold by the prophets? Peter: "But those things, which God before had showed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled" (Acts iii, 18). God had not showed by the mouth of all his prophets, nor by the mouth of even one of his prophets, that Christ should suffer. The prophets know nothing of a suffering Messiah. There is not a text in the Old Testament referring to such a Messiah. The passages relating to suffering cited by the Evangelists and applied to Christ have no reference whatever to a Messiah. The Encyclopedia Britannica says: "That the Jews in the time of Christ believed in a suffering and atoning Messiah is, to say the least, unproved and highly improbable." 369 What marvelous events occurred at the time of the crucifixion? Matthew: "There was darkness over all the land" (xxvii, 45). "The veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose" (51, 52). Mark and Luke: "There was darkness over the whole land" (Mark xv, 33). "And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom" (38). Mark and Luke know nothing of two of the important events related by Matthew; John is ignorant of all of them. Had these events really happened, the naturalists and chroniclers of that age would have recorded them. As they make no mention of them, we know that they did not occur. If we accept the claims of their followers, nearly all the gods and heroes of antiquity expired amid the convulsions of Nature. The soul of Romulus went out amid the battling of her elements; "the sun was darkened and the sky rained fire and ashes" when the Hindu Krishna left his saddened followers; "the earth shook, the rocks were rent, the graves opened, and in a storm which threatened the dissolution of the universe," Prometheus closed his earthly career; a pall of darkness settled over Egypt when her Osiris died; the death of Alexander was succeeded by six hours of preternatural gloom; and-- "Ere the mighty Julius fell, The grave stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets." 370 How long did the darkness last? Synoptics: From the sixth to the ninth hour (Matt. xxvii, 45; Mark xv, 33; Luke xxiii, 44). According to Matthew and Luke this darkness lasted from the time that he was suspended upon the cross until he died. Yet his executioners are ignorant of it. Luke says: "His acquaintances, and the women that followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things [the crucifixion]" (xxiii, 49), which they could not have done had this darkness really occurred. If this darkness occurred, and began at the sixth hour, as stated by the Synoptics, then, according to John, the conclusion of the trial, the sentencing of Jesus, the preparations for his execution, and the journey to Golgotha, all took place during the darkness, a conclusion which the nature of the narrative utterly precludes. Christian apologists have cited Phlegon who notices an eclipse which occurred about this time. But there is a variance of at least six years in regard to the time that Jesus was crucified. Besides an eclipse could not have occurred within two weeks of a Passover, on the occurrence of which he is declared to have been executed. Farrar says: "It could have been no darkness of any natural eclipse, for the Paschal moon was at the full" (Life of Christ, p. 505). Geikie says: "It is impossible to explain the origin of this darkness. The Passover moon was then at the full, so that it could not have been an eclipse. The earlier fathers, relying on a notice of an eclipse that seemed to coincide in time, though it really did not, fancied that the darkness was caused by it, but incorrectly" (Life of Christ, Vol. ii, p. 624, Notes). "The celebrated passage of Phlegon," says Gibbon, "is now wisely abandoned" (Rome, Vol. i, p. 589, Note). 371 Was the veil of the temple rent, as our Gospel of Matthew declares? The Gospel of Matthew, it is affirmed, originally appeared in Hebrew, St. Jerome, who had this original version, says: "In that Gospel which is written in Hebrew letters, we read, not that the veil of the temple was rent, but that a lintel (or beam) of a prodigious size fell down." Commenting on this alleged prodigy, the rending of the veil, Strauss says: "Now the object of the divine Providence in effecting such a miracle could only have been this: to produce in the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus a deep impression of the importance of his death, and to furnish the first promulgators of the gospel with a fact to which they might appeal in support of their cause. But, as Schleiermacher has shown, nowhere else in the New Testament, either in the apostolic epistles or in Acts, or even in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in connection with the subject of which it could scarcely fail to be suggested, is this event mentioned: on the contrary, with the exception of this bare Synoptical notice, every trace of it is lost; which could scarcely have been the case if it had really formed a ground of apostolical argument. Thus the divine purpose in ordaining this miracle must have totally failed, or, since this is inconceivable, it cannot have been ordained for this object--in other words, since neither any other object of the miracle, nor yet a mode in which the event might happen naturally can be discovered, it cannot have happened at all" (Leben Jesu, p. 789). 372 Matthew declares that the dead arose on the day of the crucifixion. When did they come out of their graves? Not until after Christ's resurrection, which did not occur until the following week. "And many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection" (Matt. xxvii, 52, 53). "They were polite enough to sit in their open graves and wait for Christ to rise first."--Ingersoll. 373 From what source was Matthew's story regarding these marvelous events derived? From Zechariah: "And his feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the East, and the Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof ... and half of the mountain shall remove toward the North, and half of it toward the South.... Ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah King of Judah; and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear" (xiv, 4-6). Concerning this Dr. Wise says: "God who comes, according to Zachariah, to fight for Jerusalem, will stand upon Mount Olivet. Therefore, Jesus, during his fight against Pharisees, Sadducees and priests, had to make his principal home on Mount Olivet. But he could not split the mountain, as Zachariah imagined God would, and move one part North and the other South; therefore, the curtain of the temple had to be torn in twain when Jesus died, although none has ever mentioned the fact. The curtain was there some thirty-five years after the death of Jesus; had it been torn, somebody must have noticed it. The earthquake mentioned by Zachariah, of course, was borrowed to embellish Calvary.... Because Zachariah states God coming to Jerusalem, 'And the Lord my God cometh, all the saints with thee,' therefore the saints and not the sinners had to resurrect and visit the city on that particular day. But in the fertile imagination of Zachariah, the day of that terrible combat must be dark.... This darkness was transported over to Calvary to embellish the scene.... So these miracles were not wrought, but the entire outer embellishment of Calvary is taken from Zachariah; not because it was believed this prophecy referred to Jesus, but simply because the evangelical writers were incompetent to invent original poetry" (Martyrdom of Jesus, p. 116). 374 What request did the Jews make of Pilate concerning Jesus and the malefactors? John: They "besought Pilate that their legs might be broken" (xix, 31). This punishment, known as crurifragium, was a distinct mode of execution and was never united with crucifixion. Crucifixion, we have seen, was not employed to punish theft. Neither was crurifragium. Yet we are asked to believe that both modes of execution, two of the cruelest forms of punishment, were combined to punish these offenders. The Synoptics do not mention this punishment. 375 When the soldiers broke the legs of the thieves, why did they spare those of Jesus? John: "That the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken" (xix, 36). This refers to Exodus xii, 46, and relates to the disposition to be made of the lamb used at the Passover. Nearly the entire chapter from which John quotes is devoted to this subject. Among other things it states that "They shall eat the flesh in that night, ... his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof. And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning" (8-10). If a part of this prophecy was fulfilled, may not all of it have been fulfilled? And if all of it was fulfilled, will not this account for the empty sepulchre? Regarding the failure of the soldiers to break the legs of Jesus, as ordered, "Supernatural Religion" says: "An order having been given to the Roman soldiers, in accordance with the request of the Jews, to break the legs of the crucified, we are asked to believe that they did not execute it in the case of Jesus. It is not reasonable to suppose, however, that Roman soldiers either were in the habit of disregarding their orders, or could have any motive for doing so in this case, and subjecting themselves to the severe punishment for disobedience inflicted by Roman military law. It is argued that they saw that Jesus was already dead, and, therefore, that it was not necessary to break his legs; but soldiers are not in the habit of thinking in this way; they are disciplined to obey" (p. 993). 376 What demand was made by the Jews on the evening of the crucifixion? John: That their bodies be taken down from the cross (xix, 31). John was evidently familiar with the Mosaic law (Deut. xxi, 22, 23) which, in cases of hanging, enjoined the burial of the body on the day of execution, but seemingly ignorant of the Roman law under which they were executed, which, in cases of crucifixion, prohibited burial, requiring the body to remain upon the cross until decayed, or birds and beasts had devoured it. The Jews esteemed it sinful to allow a criminal to "remain all night upon the tree;" but the Jewish law was inapplicable to the Roman mode of punishment which presupposed that the criminal would remain on the cross several days and nights before death ensued. 377 What additional reason was there for having the bodies taken down? Mark: "Because it was the preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath" (xv, 42). The Sabbath began at sunset on the day that he is declared to have been crucified. The Jewish law would not permit his body, whether dead or alive, to be exposed on the Sabbath. Crucifixion, as we have seen, was a lingering death; several days usually elapsing before the victim expired. Now, is it reasonable to suppose that the Jews would demand, as claimed, a punishment lasting several days when they knew that he must be taken down from the cross in a few hours? 378 What did Pilate do when Joseph solicited the body of Jesus? Mark: "Pilate marveled if he were already dead" (xv, 44). Why should Pilate marvel if he were already dead when previous to this, according to John (xix, 31-33), he had, at the request of the Jews, ordered his soldiers to dispatch him if alive and take his body away? 379 Were the disciples present at the crucifixion? John: They were, or one, at least (xix, 26). According to the Synoptics, all were absent; all had forsaken their Master, all had fled. The Twelve Apostles at this time, unless Judas had already hung himself, as Matthew declares, numbered one traitor and eleven cowards. 380 What women followed Jesus and witnessed his execution? Matthew and Mark: Women of Galilee (Matt. xxvii, 55; Mark xv, 40, 41). Luke: "Daughters of Jerusalem," that is, women of Judea (xxiii, 28). 381 Where were Mary Magdalene and her companions during the crucifixion? Matthew and Mark: "Looking on afar off" (Mark xv, 40; Matt. xxvii, 55, 56). John: They "stood by the cross" (xix, 25). 382 Was Mary, the mother of Jesus, present? John: She was (xix, 25). Synoptics: She was not. The Synoptics do not expressly state that she was absent, but if she was present, as John affirms, is it possible that they would ignore the fact when they mention "the strolling Magdalene" no less than seven times? 383 Who stood by the cross with the mother of Jesus? John: "Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Cleophas" (xix, 25). Mary must have been a very popular name to be given to two daughters of the same family. It is not probable that these sisters were both named Mary. John never mentions the name of Jesus' mother, and it is evident that he did not suppose her name was Mary. Were John the only Gospel, Christians would be ignorant of the Virgin's name. Mariolatry did not originate in the Johannine church. 384 To whom was entrusted the care of Jesus' mother? John: "When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by whom he loved [John], he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own house" (xix, 26, 27). "The teacher who had been to him as a brother leaves to him a brother's duty. He is to be as a son to the mother who is left desolate."--Bible Dictionary. Very touchingly expressed. But why was this duty imposed upon John when the Apostle James (the Less) was a brother of Jesus and a son of Mary? Was he a worthless ingrate, unable and unwilling to care for her? And what of Joses, and Juda, and Simon, and her daughters who remained at home? Had they turned their mother out of doors? 385 In whose sepulcher was the body of Jesus placed? Matthew: Joseph "laid it in his own new tomb which he had hewn out in the rock" (xxvii, 60). John: "Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulcher, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jew's preparation day; for the sepulcher was nigh at hand" (xix, 41, 42). It is evident from John that the sepulcher did not belong to Joseph, but that it was one which happened to be convenient to the place of crucifixion; for, as Strauss justly argues: "The vicinity of the grave, when alleged as a motive, excludes the fact of possession." 386 Was his body embalmed when it was laid in the sepulcher? John: It was. "He [Joseph] came therefore, and took the body of Jesus. And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury" (xix, 38-40). Mark and Luke: It was not embalmed. "The women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulcher, and how his body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments" (Luke xxiii, 55, 56); intending to embalm it "when the Sabbath was past" (Mark xvi, 1). 387 What is said in regard to wrapping the body of Jesus by Joseph? Mark: "He bought fine linen, and took him down, and wrapped him in the linen" (xv, 46). This statement is rejected by critics. A member of the Sanhedrim would not desecrate the Passover by making a purchase on it. 388 What was the amount of the material used in embalming Jesus? John: A hundred pounds (xix, 39). This was sufficient to embalm a dozen bodies. Yet after seeing his body literally buried in the material, the women, we are told, procured more. 389 When did the women procure materials for embalming Jesus? Luke: "They returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the Sabbath Day" (xxiii, 56). Mark (New Ver.): "And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices that they might come and anoint him" (xvi, 1). According to Luke they prepared the spices before the Sabbath began, that is, before the end of the sixth day; according to Mark, they did not procure them until "the Sabbath was past," that is, not until the beginning of the first day. 390 When did they go to embalm the body? Mark and Luke: "When the Sabbath was past, ... the first day of the week" (Mark xvi, 1, 2; Luke xxiv, 1). Is it reasonable to suppose that in that warm spring climate (Dr. Geikie speaks of the fierce heat that prevailed at the time), they would let a wounded body lie two days, until decomposition had commenced, and then attempt to embalm it? 391 When was the sepulcher closed? All: When the body was placed in it (Matt. xxvii, 60; Mark xv, 46; Luke xxiii, 53, xxiv, 1, 2; John xix, 41, 42, xx, 1). According to the Evangelists, the stone was rolled to the door of the sepulcher as soon as the body was deposited, and according to Mark and Luke, the women were troubled as to who should roll away the stone when they went to embalm the body. In sepulture of this kind, the tomb was not closed until the third day, and when once closed it was not to be opened. This deviation from the customary mode is evidently for the purpose of establishing faith in the doctrine of the resurrection, by shutting off all means of escape or removal without supernatural aid. The Evangelists are particular to state that Joseph "rolled a great stone to the door." In a single paragraph, Scribner's "Bible Dictionary" concedes no less than seven Synoptical errors regarding the trial, crucifixion and burial of Jesus: "The Synoptists make the Sanhedrim say beforehand that they will not arrest Jesus 'on the feast day,' and then actually arrest him on that day; that not only the guards, but one of the disciples carries arms, which on the feast day was not allowed; that the trial was also held on the feast day, which would be unlawful; that the feast day would not be called 'Preparation'; that the phrase 'coming from the field' (Mk. xv, 21) means properly 'coming from work'; that Joseph of Arimathea is represented as buying a linen cloth (Mk. xv, 46), and the women as preparing spices and ointments (Lk. xxiii, 56), all of which would be contrary to law and custom." 392 In what year was Jesus crucified? Not one of the Evangelists knows. They agree that he was crucified during the time that Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judea, and Joseph Caiaphas was high priest of the Jews. But this, so far as Matthew, Mark and John are concerned, may have been any time from 26 to 36 A. D. Luke, while he does not state the particular year, nor furnish data for determining it, is more definite. He says that Jesus began his ministry in "the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar," and his narrative clearly implies that he was crucified at the following Passover. Tiberius commenced his reign in August, 14 A. D. The fifteenth year of his reign, then, extended from August, 28 A. D., to August, 29 A. D. If Jesus began his ministry during the first months of this year, he might have been crucified as early as the spring of 29. But it is generally conceded that the time which this would allow for his ministry was far too brief, and that he could not have been crucified before 30 A. D. The Christian Fathers who, for the most part, accepted the tradition of Luke and affirmed that his ministry lasted but one year, or less, held that the crucifixion occurred in 29 A. D. Scribner's "Bible Dictionary" gives preference to 29 A. D. Cuthbert Hamilton Turner, M.A., Oxford, the New Testament chronologist of that work, after a lengthy review of the subject, says: "To sum up briefly, the separate results of five lines of enquiry harmonize with one another beyond expectation, so that each in turn supplies fresh security for the rest. The nativity in B. C. 7-6; the age of our Lord at the baptism, 30 years, more or less; the baptism in A. D. 26 (26-27); the duration of the ministry between two and three years; the crucifixion in A. D. 29." This authority states that his ministry lasted two or three years. It was necessary to do this or reject John. By taking a year or more from John's ministry of Jesus and adding it to the one year ministry of the Synoptics--by assuming that the Synoptics omit to mention one or more Passovers, and that one of the Passovers mentioned by John was some other feast--it pretends to have reconciled the discrepancy regarding the length of Christ's ministry. But if his ministry lasted two or three years, as affirmed, he could not have been crucified in 29 A. D. With orthodox commentators, a favorite method of reconciling Old Testament dates, as I have noted in a previous work, is to assume that a king, concerning the date of whose accession, or length of reign, a discrepancy appears, reigned in consort with his predecessor for a number of years sufficient to cover the discrepancy. This dishonest method of explanation--for it is a dishonest trick, intended to deceive the reader and hide from him an error--has been employed to reconcile Luke and John. By assuming that Tiberius divided the government with Augustus for two years preceding his accession to the throne, an assumption for which there is no credible authority, and that Luke accordingly reckons the fifteenth year from 12 A. D., instead of 14 A. D., when he really became emperor, it is possible to give Jesus a ministry of two or three years and still have him crucified in 29 A. D. But another irreconcilable difficulty remains. The Synoptics state that he was crucified on the Passover and on the day preceding the Sabbath, that is, on Friday. If so, he could not have been crucified in 29 A. D., for the Passover did not fall on Friday that year. Dr. Farrar says it is "highly probable that the crucifixion took place at the passover of March, 30 A. D." Justice Bradley of the United States Supreme Court, who made an exhaustive examination of all the evidence and arguments bearing on the question, decided in favor of 30 A. D. He says: "There were only three years from A. D. 27 to A. D. 36, inclusive, in which the 1st of Nisan, and consequently the 15th of Nisan, happened on Friday, and these were A. D. 27, 30 and 33, the last of which is very doubtful. But the crucifixion could not have happened before A. D. 28, and probably not later than A. D. 31. Therefore the year 30 is the only one which satisfies all the conditions of the problem.... Now, since in A. D. 30, the 1st of Nisan fell on Friday, the 24th of March, the 15th fell on Friday, the 7th of April, which was the day of the crucifixion." Dr. Farrar and Justice Bradley are agreed in regard to the year of the crucifixion, but they are not agreed in regard to the calendar month in which it occurred. Dr. Farrar says it occurred in March; Justice Bradley says it occurred in April. Justice Bradley says that 30 A. D. satisfies all the conditions. It does satisfy the conditions of the Synoptics, but it does not satisfy the conditions of John, as claimed. To satisfy the conditions of John it is necessary to adopt the untenable hypothesis of 12 A. D. as the date of Tiberius Caesar's accession. But whatever satisfies the conditions of John must necessarily conflict with those of the Synoptics. Some Christian scholars place the crucifixion in 31 A. D., others in 32 A. D. But neither year can be harmonized with the Synoptics' statement that he was put to death on the Passover, or with John's that he suffered on the day of Preparation. Neither can they be harmonized with either the Synoptics or John in regard to the duration of his ministry. It is probable that a majority of Christian scholars today believe that Jesus was crucified in 33. Renan accepted this date. He says: "According to the calculation we adopt, the death of Jesus happened in the year 33 of our era. It could not, at all events, be either before the year 29, the preaching of John and Jesus having commenced in the year 28, or after 35, since in the year 36, and probably before the Passover, Pilate and Kaiapha both lost their offices." The adoption of 33 allows for the four years' ministry ascribed to Jesus by John, but it cannot be reconciled with the brief ministry ascribed to him by the Synoptics. As for Renan, who in the first edition of his "Jesus" accepted the authenticity of John, but subsequently rejected it and accepted only the Synoptics, he has no Evangelistic authority for 33. The Dutch theologians, Kuenen, Oort and Hooykaas, and many other Rationalists, give 35 A. D. the preference. To accept this year, however, it is necessary to reject the Passover crucifixion, and to assign to Jesus a much longer ministry than even John assigns. Of one hundred Christian authorities who attempt to name the year in which Christ was crucified, twenty-three say 29, eighteen 30, nine 31, seven 32, thirty-seven 33, and six 35 A. D. Thus it will be seen that not a year that can be named can be harmonized with the accounts of the crucifixion given in the four gospels. The result is that there is as great a lack of agreement in regard to the time of Christ's death as there is in regard to the time of his birth. Christians do not know when he was born, they do not know when he died, they cannot prove that he lived. 393 On what day of the month was he crucified? Synoptics: On the 15th of Nisan. John: On the 14th of Nisan. This discrepancy is conceded by Scribner's "Bible Dictionary." It says: "It is the Last Supper which the Synoptics appear to fix by identifying it with the Passover. They say expressly that on the morning of the 'first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the passover' (Mk. xiv, 12), the disciples asked where the Passover was to be eaten. This would be on the morning of Nisan 14. In the evening, which from twilight onwards would belong to Nisan 15, would follow the Last Supper, and on the next afternoon (still, on the Jewish reckoning, Nisan 15) the crucifixion. St. John, on the other hand, by a number of clear indications (John xiii, 1, xviii, 28, xix, 14, 31) implies that the Last Supper was eaten before the time of the regular Passover, and that the Lord suffered on the afternoon of Nisan 14, about the time of the slaying of the Paschal lamb. We are thus left with a conflict of testimony." 394 On what day of the week was he crucified? Synoptics: On Friday. John: On Thursday. The Synoptics agree that he was crucified on the day following the Preparation, that is, on the day of the Passover, and the day preceding the Sabbath. As the Jewish Sabbath fell on Saturday, he was, therefore, crucified on Friday. John repeatedly declares that his trial and crucifixion occurred on "the preparation of the passover." If the Passover occurred on Friday, as the Synoptics state, he was crucified on the preceding day, or Thursday. It is claimed by some, though the claim is disputed, that the Synoptics are in error, that the Passover was never held on Friday. 395 On what day of the feast did the crucifixion occur? Synoptics: On the Passover. John: On the day of Preparation. It is expressly stated in the Synoptics that he celebrated the Passover before his death. "Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the passover must be killed. And he sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare us the passover, that we may eat.... And they made ready the passover. And when the hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles with him. And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer" (Luke xxii, 7-15; Matt. xxvi, 17-20; Mark xiv, 12-18). The author of the Fourth Gospel declares that the Last Supper was not the Paschal meal, and that Jesus was crucified on the day preceding the Passover, that is, on the day of Preparation. He refers to the events connected with the Last Supper as having taken place "before the passover" (xiii, 1); after supper, when Jesus bade Judas do quickly what he proposed to do, he states that the disciples "thought because Judas had the bag, that Jesus had said unto him, Buy those things that we have need of against the feast" (xiii, 29); at the trial, he says, the Jews "themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they might be defiled, but that they might eat the passover" (xviii, 28); when Pilate is about to deliver him up to be crucified, he even goes out of the way to repeat that "It was the preparation of the passover" (xix, 14). This discrepancy is not, like many other Bible discrepancies, an unintentional error. It represents a conflict between two dogmas. The primitive church was rent with dissensions regarding this question, some contending that Christ suffered on the 14th Nisan, others that it was on the 15th. During the second century--the century in which our gospels appeared--this controversy was especially bitter. According to John (i, 29, xix, 33, 36) Jesus was the Paschal Lamb, and as such, must be slain on the day of Preparation. The slaying of the lambs began at three o'clock in the afternoon, the hour at which Jesus is said to have expired. The Synoptics, on the other hand, in order to enable him to partake of the Paschal meal and institute the Eucharist, which is a survival and perpetuation of the Passover, must prolong his existence until after this meal, and consequently his crucifixion cannot take place until the following day. It was impossible for him to be the Paschal Lamb and at the same time partake of the Paschal meal. This necessarily produced a schism. The Fourth Gospel was written in support of the one side, the Synoptics in support of the other. It is declared by the most eminent fathers of the second century that the Apostle John, whom some of them had known, was accustomed to observe the Paschal meal. This is another argument against the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel. Referring to the Lord's Supper, as recorded in John, the "Bible for Learners" says: "It was not the Paschal meal. The Passover did not begin until the following evening; for he himself who was the true Paschal Lamb, and as such made an end of all sacrifices, must be put to death at the very day and hour ordained for the slaughter of the lamb--not twenty-four hours later as the Synoptic Gospels say" (Vol. iii, p. 684). Admitting the discrepancy, but without determining which is correct, Smith's "Bible Dictionary" says: "The crowning application of the Paschal rites to the truths of which they were the shadowy promises appears to be that which is afforded by the fact that our Lord's death occurred during the festival. According to the Divine purpose, the true Lamb of God was slain at nearly the same time as 'the Lord's Passover,' in obedience to the letter of the law." It was not "according to the Divine purpose" that Jesus was slain at the Passover, but it was according to a human invention that he is declared to have been slain at this time. These attempts to connect the crucifixion with the Passover afford the strongest proof that it is a myth. 396 What led to the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus? John: His miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead. On learning of it the Jewish council met, and "from that day forth they took counsel together for to put him to death" (xi, 47, 53). This is more difficult to believe than the miracle itself. It is the most improbable statement ever penned--the one that does most violence to human reason. The crudest savages on earth would not have slain nor even harmed a man who had proved himself the Conqueror and King of Death. 397 What did Christ say during his ministry concerning the cross? "He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me is not worthy of me" (Matthew x, 38; Luke xiv, 27). "Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Mark viii, 34). "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke ix, 23). These utterances are alleged to have been made early in his ministry. Now, the cross as a Christian symbol is supposed to have been adopted after, and not until after, the crucifixion. Its introduction in the passages quoted suggests one of two things: either that the Synoptics put into the mouth of Jesus words that he never uttered, or that the cross, as a religious symbol, was used before the crucifixion, in which case its adoption by the church is no proof of the crucifixion. 398 The so-called historical books of the New Testament, the Four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, declare that Christ was crucified. Do the remaining books of the New Testament confirm it? In the first four Pauline Epistles, known as the genuine Epistles of Paul, the verb crucify--crucified appears in ten different texts, as follows: "Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed" (Romans vi, 6). "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?" (1 Corinthians, i, 13.) "But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness" (23). "For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (ii, 2). "For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (8). "For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God" (2 Corinthians xiii, 4). "I am crucified with Christ" (Galatians ii, 20). "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?" (iii, 1.) "And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts" (v, 24). "But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (vi, 14). Webster defines this word as follows: "1. To nail to a cross; to put to death by nailing the hands and feet to a cross or gibbet, sometimes, anciently, by fastening a criminal to a tree with cords. 2. In scriptural language, to subdue; to mortify; to destroy the power or ruling influence of. 3. To reject and despise. 4. To vex or torment." The first, only, denotes a physical crucifixion, which, it is claimed, Christ suffered. The word, as used by Paul, in most instances, clearly denotes a crucifying of the passions and carnal pleasures, and the exceptions, when taken in connection with Paul's well known teachings, and allowing for the probable corruption of the original text, do not confirm the Evangelistic accounts of the crucifixion. Besides this it is admitted that Paul did not witness the crucifixion, and that these Epistles, even if authentic, were not written until nearly thirty years after it is said to have occurred. In the eighteen books which follow, the word crucify appears but twice--in Hebrews (vi, 6) and in Revelation (xi, 8). The word crucifixion does not appear once in the Bible. Concerning the books we have been considering in this criticism, Paine writes as follows: "Whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul were written by him or not, is a matter of indifference; they are either argumentative or dogmatical; and as the argument is defective and the dogmatical part is merely presumptive, it signifies not who wrote them. And the same may be said for the remaining parts of the Testament. It is not upon the Epistles, but upon what is called the Gospel, contained in the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and upon the pretended prophecies, that the theory of the church calling itself the Christian Church is founded. The Epistles are dependent upon those, and must follow their fate; for if the story of Jesus Christ be fabulous, all reasoning founded upon it as a supposed truth must fall with it" (Age of Reason). 399 How old was Jesus at the time of his death? Luke: He was but little more than thirty years old. John: He was nearly fifty. In a controversy with the Jews, during his ministry, he said: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw, and was glad. Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?" (viii, 56, 57.) This implies that he was nearly fifty at this time. Discussing the question of Jesus' age, St. Irenaeus, the most renowned of the early Christian Fathers, and the founder of the New Testament canon, who lived in the century immediately following Jesus, says: "He [Christ] came to save all through means of himself--all I say, who through him are born again to God--infants and children, and boys, and youths, and old men. He therefore passed through every age; becoming an infant for infants, thus sanctifying infants; a child for children, thus sanctifying those who are of this age, being at the same time made to them an example of piety, righteousness and submission; a youth for youths, becoming an example to youths, and thus sanctifying them for the Lord. So likewise, he was an old man for old men, that he might be a perfect master for all; not merely as respects the setting forth of the truth, but also as regards age; sanctifying at the same time, the aged also, and becoming an example to them likewise. Then, at last, he came on to death itself, that he might be the first born from the dead, that in all things he might have the pre-eminence; the Prince of Life, existing before all, and going before all" (Against Heresies, Book iv, ch. xxii, sec. 4). Commenting on the passage quoted from John, Irenaeus says: "But besides this, those very Jews who thus disputed with the Lord Jesus Christ, have most closely indicated the same thing. For when the Lord said to them, 'Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad;' they answered him, 'Thou art not yet fifty years old; and hast thou seen Abraham?' Now, such language is fittingly applied to one who has already passed the age of forty, without having yet reached his fiftieth year, yet is not far from this latter period. But to one who is only thirty years old, it would unquestionably be said, 'Thou art not yet forty years old.' For those who wished to convict him of falsehood, would certainly not extend the number of his years far beyond the age which they saw he had attained.... It is altogether unreasonable to suppose that they were mistaken by twenty years, when they wished to prove him younger than the times of Abraham.... He did not then want much of being fifty years old" (Ibid. sec. 6). Nor did Irenaeus depend upon the Fourth Gospel alone for his authority. He was the companion of the aged Polycarp, whom Christians claim to have been the companion of the Apostle John. Concerning the testimony of Polycarp and others, he writes: "Those who were conversant in Asia with John, the disciple of the Lord, [testify] that John conveyed to them that information. And he (John) remained among them up to the times of Tragan. Some of them, moreover, saw not only John, but the other apostles also, and heard the same account from them, and bear testimony to the statement" (Ib., sec. 5). In regard to this testimony of the "divine Irenaeus," as he is called, Godfrey Higgins says: "The church has been guilty of the oversight of letting this passage from Irenaeus escape. One of the earliest, most respected, and most quoted of its ancient bishops, saints and martyrs, tells us in distinct words that Jesus was not crucified under Herod and Pontius Pilate, but that he lived to be turned fifty years of age. This he tells us on the authority of his master, St. Polycarp, also a martyr, who had it from St. John himself, and from all the old people of Asia" (Anacalypsis). Of this testimony and its consequences, Judge Waite, in his "History of Christianity" (pp. 329, 330) says: "It must be remembered that Irenaeus had been a companion of Polycarp and others who had seen John, and that he was speaking of what had come to his personal knowledge from the elders in Asia. If, then, Irenaeus tells the truth, the evidence in favor of the fact is almost overwhelming. If, on the other hand, he would deliberately falsify in a matter of this importance, what is his testimony worth as to the origin of the four gospels? Against this evidence, we have only the silence of the gospels. But if the silence of the Synoptics is consistent with a ministry of three or four years, why is not the further silence of all the gospels consistent with a ministry of twenty years? "How would such a theory affect the received chronology concerning Christ? The date of the crucifixion at not later than A. D. 36, or when Christ was, by the received chronology, forty years old, is settled by the fact, that in that year, Pontius Pilate was removed from his government.... If, then, it be accepted as a historical fact that Christ was about fifty years old at this crucifixion, the date of his birth would have to be set back at least ten years." Every line of these accounts of the trial and crucifixion of Christ bears the ineffaceable stamp of fiction. There was no Christ to crucify, and Jesus of Nazareth, if he existed, was not crucified as claimed. For more than fifteen centuries an inoffensive, industrious and moral people have been persecuted, robbed and butchered by Christians, because their forefathers are said to have slain a mythical God. Supposing that from the myth of Prometheus had sprung a popular religion, which, in its day, had, like the religions of Osiris, Bacchus, Krishna and Christ, overspread the earth. Then think of the devotees of this religion massacring the Hellenists because Zeus had crucified Prometheus! How long must our mythology, with all its attendant evils, rule and curse the world? How long must an innocent people suffer for an alleged crime that was never committed? CHAPTER VII. THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 400 How long did Jesus say he would remain in the grave? "For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew xii, 40). How long did he remain in the grave? Synoptics: Being buried on Friday evening, and having risen on or before Sunday morning, he was in the grave, at the most, but two nights and one day. 401 What occurred on the morning of the resurrection? Matthew: "There was a great earthquake" (xxviii, 2). The other Evangelists know nothing of this earthquake. They not only omit it, but their accounts of the resurrection preclude the possibility of its occurrence. 402 Who were the first to visit the tomb on the morning of the resurrection? John: "Mary Magdalene" (xx, 1). Matthew: "Mary Magdalene and the other Mary" (xxviii, 1). Mark: "Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome" (xvi, 1, 2). Luke: "Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women" (xxiv, 1-10). 403 Who was Salome? "The wife of Zebedee, as appears from comparing Matt. xxvii, 56, with Mark xv, 40."--Smith's Bible Dictionary. Matthew says that the women who witnessed the crucifixion were "Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's children." Mark says the women were "Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome." This is a discrepancy that can be reconciled only by supposing that the mother of Zebedee's children (James and John) was Salome. But the Gospel of the Egyptians, older than either Matthew or Mark, and accepted by early Christians as authentic, states that Salome was a single woman. 404 At what time in the morning did the women visit the tomb? Mark: "At the rising of the sun" (xvi, 2). John: "When it was yet dark" (xx, 1). If they came "at the rising of the sun," or "when the sun was risen" (New Ver.), it was not yet dark. 405 When does Matthew say they came? "In the end of the Sabbath as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week" (xxviii, 1). If they came "in the end of the Sabbath," and Jesus had already risen, then his resurrection took place, not on the first day of the week, as claimed, but on the seventh day. Matthew was a Jew; yet the author of this Gospel was seemingly ignorant of the Jewish method of computing time, according to which the Sabbath began and ended at sunset. He evidently supposed that the night preceding their visit to the tomb belonged to the seventh day, whereas it belonged to the first day. 406 Was the tomb open, or closed, when they came? Luke: "They found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre" (xxiv, 2). Matthew: The tomb was closed. The stone was not rolled from the door until after they came (xxviii, 1, 2). This, in the opinion of most critics, is the meaning of Matthew's language. 407 Whom did they meet at the tomb? Matthew: "The angel" (xxviii, 2-5). Mark: "A young man" (xvi, 5). Luke: "Two men" (xxiv, 4). John: "Two angels" (xx, 12). 408 Were these men or angels in the sepulchre or outside of it? Matthew: Outside of it (xxviii, 2). Mark, Luke and John: Inside of it (Mark xvi, 5; Luke xxiv, 3, 4; John xx, 11, 12). 409 Were they sitting or standing? Luke: Standing (xxiv, 4). Matthew, Mark and John: Sitting (Matt. xxviii, 2; Mark xvi, 1; John xx, 12). 410 What were the first words they spoke to the women? Matthew and Mark: "Be not affrighted" (Mark xvi, 6; Matt. xxviii, 5). Luke: "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" (xxiv, 5.) John: "Woman, why weepest thou?" (xx, 13.) 411 Did Mary Magdalene observe the divine messengers when she first came to the tomb? Synoptics: She did (Matt. xxviii, 1-5; Mark xvi, 1-5; Luke xxiv, 1-4). John: She did not (xx, 1, 2, 11, 12). 412 Who became frightened at the messengers? Matthew: "The keepers did shake, and became as dead men" (xxviii, 4). Mark and Luke: "They [the women] were affrighted" (Mark xvi, 5; Luke xxiv, 5). 413 What did the women do when they became frightened? Mark: "They went out quickly and fled" (xvi, 8). Luke: "They bowed down their faces to the earth" (xxiv, 5). 414 Did the women see Jesus? Matthew: They did. "As they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them" (xxviii, 9). Luke: They did not see him (xxiv). 415 Did the women tell the disciples what they had seen? Luke: They "returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest" (xxiv, 9). Mark: "Neither said they anything to any man; for they were afraid" (xvi, 8). With these words the Gospel of Mark ends, the words that follow being an interpolation. In this appended passage Mary Magdalene is declared to have seen Jesus and informed them of it, but they "believed not." 416 How many disciples visited the tomb? Luke: But one, Peter (xxiv, 12). John: Two, Peter and John (xx, 3). 417 Who looked into the sepulchre and beheld the linen clothes? Luke: "Then arose Peter, and ran into the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes" (xxiv, 12). John: "So they ran both together; and the other disciple [John] did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes" (xx, 4, 5). 418 Did Peter enter into the sepulchre? John: He did. "Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre" (xx, 6). Luke: He did not. He looked into the sepulchre "and departed" (xxiv, 12). 419 State all of the appearances of Jesus mentioned by the Evangelists. Matthew. 1. To the two Marys (xxviii, 9). 2. To the eleven in Galilee (17). Mark. 1. To Mary Magdalene (xvi, 9). 2. To two of his disciples (12). 3. To the eleven at meat (14). The appearances of Jesus mentioned in Mark are all in the apocryphal supplement. The Gospel of Mark proper does not record a single appearance of Jesus. Luke. 1. To Cleopas and his companion (xxiv, 13-31). 2. To Simon (Peter) (34). 3. To the eleven and others (36). John. 1. To Mary Magdalene (xx, 14-18). 2. To ten (?) disciples (19-24). 3. To the eleven (26-29). 4. To Peter, John and others (xxi). The last chapter of this Gospel which contains the account of his fourth appearance, and which ascribes the authorship of the Gospel to the "beloved disciple" (John), is a forgery. No two of the Evangelists agree. No two of them are fully agreed in regard to a single appearance. Each not only omits the appearances mentioned by the others, but his narrative in nearly every instance excludes them. As Strauss says, "The designation of the locality in one excludes the appearances narrated by the rest; the determination of time in another leaves no space for the narratives of his fellow-evangelists; the enumeration of a third is given without any regard to the events reported by his predecessors; lastly, among several appearances recounted by various narrators, each claims to be the last, and yet has nothing in common with the others. Hence nothing but wilful blindness can prevent the perception that no one of the narrators knew and presupposed what another records." Referring to the different accounts of the resurrection given by the Evangelists, Dr. Westcott says: "They contain difficulties which it is impossible to explain with certainty" (Introduction to Study of Gospels, p. 329). Dr. Farrar makes the following admission: "Any one who will attentively read side by side the narratives of these appearances on the first day of the resurrection, will see that they have only been preserved for us in general, interblended, and scattered notices, which, in strict exactness, render it impossible, without many arbitrary suppositions, to produce from them a certain narrative of the order of events. The lacunae, the compressions, the variations, the actual differences, the subjectivity of the narrators as affected by spiritual revelations, render all harmonies at the best uncertain" (Life of Christ, vol. ii, p. 432, note). 420 State the appearances mentioned by Paul. 1. "He was seen of Cephas." 2. "Then of the twelve." 3. "After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once." 4. "After that he was seen of James." 5. "Then of all the apostles." 6. "And last of all he was seen of me also." Paul says that his first appearance was to Peter. This contradicts all of the Evangelists. His next appearance, Paul declares, was to the twelve. But there were no twelve at this time; for Judas had deserted them and his successor had not been elected. Paul evidently knew nothing of the betrayal of Jesus by Judas. He says Jesus was seen by five hundred brethren at once. The Evangelists are all ignorant of this appearance, while the author of Acts states that there were but one hundred and twenty "brethren" in all, and even this number is considered too large by critics. He says that he appeared to James, an appearance of which the Evangelists know nothing. After this he states that he was seen of all the apostles. This is the only appearance mentioned by Paul which can be reconciled with any of the Evangelists, and this cannot be reconciled with all of them. "Last of all he was seen of me also." Paul's belief in the resurrection was based solely upon Jesus' supposed appearance to him; for the other alleged appearances he had rejected. Not until he imagined that he had seen Jesus did he believe that the disciples had seen him, and the appearance of Jesus to him, which occurred several years after the resurrection and ascension, is represented as an occurrence of exactly the same character as his appearances to the disciples. Paul's vision was clearly a delusion, and if so the other appearances, measured by Paul's criterion, were delusions also. The Rev. John W. Chadwick truly says: "Paul's witness to the resurrection is the ruin of the argument." 421 To whom did Jesus first appear? Matthew: To Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (xxviii, 1, 9). Mark and John: To Mary Magdalene alone (Mark xvi, 9; John xx, 14-18). Luke: To Cleopas and his companion (xxiv, 13-31). Paul: To Cephas (Peter) (1 Cor. xv, 5). 422 Where was Mary Magdalene when Jesus first appeared to her? John: At the sepulchre (xx, 11-14). Matthew: On her way home from the sepulchre (xxviii, 8, 9). 423 Did Mary know Jesus when he first appeared to her? Matthew: She did (xxviii, 9). John: "She ... knew not that it was Jesus" (xx, 14). 424 Was she permitted to touch him? Matthew: "They [Mary Magdalene and her companion] came and held him by the feet" (xxviii, 9). John: "Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not" (xx, 17). 425 Where did he appear to his disciples? Matthew: In Galilee. Luke: In Jerusalem. Matthew says that when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary visited the tomb an angel appeared to them and said: "Go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him" (xxviii, 7). As they ran to convey this intelligence, Jesus himself met them and repeated the command: "Go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me" (10). "Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him" (16, 17). Luke (xxiv, 13-35) states that on the day of the resurrection Jesus journeyed to Emmaus, a village some distance from Jerusalem, with Cleopas and his companion. They did not recognize him until after their arrival there, when they returned at once to Jerusalem and informed the disciples. "As they thus spake Jesus himself stood in the midst of them" (36). He conversed with them for a time, after which "he led them out as far as to Bethany" where he took his final leave of them and ascended to heaven (38-51). Instead of bidding them go to Galilee, a three days journey from Jerusalem, as Matthew states, his command was "Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high," which, according to Acts (ii, 1-13), was not until the day of Pentecost, seven weeks later. Matthew's narrative forbids the supposition of any meeting in Judea, while Luke's precludes the possibility of a meeting in Galilee. Regarding this discrepancy Dean Alford says: "We must be content to walk by faith, and not by sight" (Greek Testament, p. 905). 426 How far from Jerusalem was Emmaus, where Jesus made his first appearance? Luke: "Which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs" (xxiv, 13). Threescore furlongs was seven and one-half Roman, or about seven American miles. Emmaus of Judea was about twenty-five miles, or two hundred furlongs from Jerusalem. There was an Emmaus in Galilee, about seventy miles from Jerusalem. It is believed by some that the legend related to the latter place and was subsequently transferred by Luke to Judea. 427 How many disciples were present when he first appeared to them? Matthew and Luke: Eleven (Matt. xxviii, 16, 17; Luke xxiv, 33-36). John: But ten, Thomas being absent (xx, 19-24). Paul: Twelve (1 Cor. xv, 5). 428 What effect had his presence when he first appeared to them? Luke: "They were terrified and affrighted" (xxiv, 36, 37). John: "Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord" (xx, 20). 429 How many of the disciples doubted the reality of his appearance? Matthew: "Some doubted" (xxviii, 17). John: But one doubted--Thomas (xx, 24, 25). 430 Were they all finally convinced of his resurrection? John: They were. Matthew: They were not. 431 When he appeared to them did they know that he must rise from the dead? John: "For as yet they knew not that he must rise from the dead" (xx, 9). This cannot be reconciled with the Synoptics, who state that during his ministry he had acquainted them with it. "From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day" (Matthew xvi, 21; Mark viii, 31; Luke ix, 22). 432 Paul says that the last appearance of Jesus was to him. What did his companions do when they saw the light which attended the appearance? Acts: "The men which journeyed with him stood speechless" (ix, 7). Paul: "We were all fallen to the earth" (Acts xxvi, 14). 433 Did Paul's companions see Jesus? Acts: They did not. "The men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man" (ix, 7). This shows that Jesus' alleged appearance to Paul was an imaginary and not a real appearance. 434 The author of Acts says that his companions heard a voice. Is this true? Paul: "They that were with me ... heard not the voice" (Acts xxii, 9). 435 Was Jesus seen by woman after his resurrection? Matthew, Mark and John: He was. Luke and Paul: He was not. According to Luke and Paul his most faithful followers were not honored by a visit from their Lord, but were neglected and ignored. The resurrection was not for woman. Nowhere is sex prejudice more conspicuous than in the accounts of the resurrection written by Paul and the Pauline Evangelist. To ignore the testimony of Mary Magdalene is to ignore the testimony of the chief witness for the resurrection. 436 From where did Jesus rise? All: From the dead. "He is risen from the dead" (Matt. xxviii, 7). "It behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead" (Luke xxiv, 46). "He was risen from the dead" (John xxi, 14). According to the Evangelists Jesus rose, not from the grave--not from the place where the bodies of the dead were deposited--but from the lower world--from the realm of the dead--where the shades of the departed were supposed to repose. Regarding this Dr. Hooykaas says: "Let us begin by considering what that word 'resurrection' really meant, whether applied to Jesus or to others. Later representations, down to our own times, have regarded it as equivalent to a rising from the grave; but the question is, what it meant in the faith and preaching of the Apostles, in the genuine, original, primitive tradition that Jesus had risen. Now, 'resurrection' means elsewhere a return from the realm of shades to the human life on earth; and Jesus too had left the underworld, but not, in this case, to return at once to life upon the earth, but to be taken up provisionally into heaven. Originally the resurrection and ascension of Jesus were one. It was only later that the conception sprang up of his having paused upon earth, whether for a single day or for several weeks, on his journey from the abyss to the height. "We may, therefore, safely assert that if the friends of Jesus had thought as we do of the lot of those that die, they would never have so much as dreamed of their Master's resurrection or ascension. For to the Christian belief of today it would be, so to speak, a matter of course that Jesus, like all good and noble souls--and indeed above all others--would go straight 'to a better world,' 'to heaven,' 'to God,' at the instant of his death; but in the conception of the Jews, including the Apostles, this was impossible. Heaven was the abode of the Lord and his angels only; and if an Enoch or an Elijah had been caught up there alive, to dwell there for a time, it was certain that all who died, without exception, even the purest and most holy, must go down as shades into the realms of the dead in the bowels of the earth--and thence, of course, they would not issue excepting by 'rising again.' And this is why we are never told that Jesus rose 'from death,' far less 'from the grave,' but always 'from the dead'" (Bible for Learners, vol. iii, p. 463). 437 Was he readily recognized by his friends? Matthew, Luke and John: He was not. Matthew says that when his disciples met him in Galilee, after having gone there for the express purpose of meeting him, "some doubted" (xxviii, 17). Luke says that two of his friends journeyed with him from Jerusalem to Emmaus, conversing with him on the way, and notwithstanding they had been informed of his resurrection, they did not recognize him until after they had reached the village. John says that when Mary Magdalene met him she "knew not that it was Jesus, ... supposing him to be the gardener" (xx, 14, 15); and when he met his disciples at the Lake of Tiberius they "knew not that it was Jesus" (xxi, 4). 438 Did his appearances indicate a corporeal, or merely a spiritual existence? The Evangelists declare that he was not only seen by his disciples and others, but that he conversed with them. Matthew says the two Marys held him by the feet, Luke says he invited the disciples to handle him, and John says that Thomas examined his wounds; while both Luke and John state that he partook of nourishment. On the other hand, Luke says that while he sat at meat with Cleopas and his companion at Emmaus "He vanished out of their sight" (xxiv, 31). John says that while the disciples were assembled in a room in Jerusalem, "when the doors were shut," Jesus came "and stood in the midst" (xx, 19). Eight days later the appearance was repeated: "Then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst" (26). Mark says that after he appeared to Mary Magdalene "he appeared in another form" to two of his disciples (xvi, 12). While the first named appearances can be reconciled with so-called spiritual manifestations, the latter cannot be reconciled with a corporeal existence. In the preceding chapter we have shown that the alleged crucifixion of Jesus is unworthy of belief. If he was not crucified the story of his resurrection is, of course, a fiction. But conceding, for the sake of argument, that he was crucified; does this make his resurrection probable, or even possible? The crucifixion of a man is a possible occurrence; but the corporeal resurrection of a man who has suffered death is impossible. These reputed appearances of Jesus, if they have a historical foundation, were evidently mere subjective impressions or apparitions. Although he is declared to have remained on earth forty days, he made, at the most, but two or three brief visits to his disciples, appearing and disappearing like a phantom. Instead of abiding with them, teaching them the doctrines of his religion--of which they professed to be ignorant--and preparing them for their coming ministry he is represented as keeping in seclusion, or roaming aimlessly along the country highways, like some demented creature. Referring to his appearance to his disciples, Jerome says: "The apostles supposed him to be a spirit, or according to the Gospel which the Nazarenes receive [the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew] an incorporeal demon." The possibility, and even prevalency, of apparitions similar to those related of Jesus are recognized by every student of psychology. Sir Benjamin Brodie, in his "Psychological Inquiries" (p. 78), says: "There are abundant proofs that impressions may be made in the brain by other causes simulating those which are made on it by external objects through the medium of the organs of sense, thus producing false perceptions, which may, in the first instance, and before we have had time to reflect on the subject, be mistaken for realities." The appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene was not believed even by the disciples. If the disciples believed that Mary was deluded, is it unreasonable to believe that they were deluded also? Illusions are contagious and may affect many minds as well as one. Dr. Carpenter, one of the highest English authorities on mental science, says: "If not only a single individual, but several persons should be 'possessed' by one and the same idea or feeling, the same misinterpretation may be made by all of them; and in such a case the concurrence of their testimony does not add the least strength to it" (Principles of Mental Physiology, p. 208). In confirmation of this is cited the following from a work on "The Philosophy of Apparitions," by Dr. Hibbert, F.R.S.E.: "A whole ship's company was thrown into the utmost consternation by the apparition of a cook who had died a few days before. He was distinctly seen walking ahead of the ship, with a peculiar gait by which he was distinguished when alive, through having one of his legs shorter than the other. On steering the ship towards the object, it was found to be a piece of floating wreck." These supposed appearances of Jesus were, at the most, only apparitions, and "Apparitions," to quote Dr. Hibbert again, "are nothing more than morbid symptoms, which are indicative of an intense excitement of the renovated feelings of the mind" (Philosophy of Apparitions, p. 375). Lord Amberley advances a psychological explanation of the reputed appearances of Jesus from which I quote the following: "Whatever other qualities Jesus may have possessed or lacked, there can be no question that he had one--that of inspiring in others a strong attachment to himself. He had in his brief career surrounded himself with devoted disciples; and he was taken from their midst in the full bloom of his powers by a violent and early death. Now there are some who have been taught by the bitter experience of their lives how difficult, nay, how impossible it is to realize in imagination the fact that a beloved companion is in truth gone from them forever.... We fondly conceive that in some way the dead must still exist; and if so, can one, who was so tender before, listen to our cry of pain and refuse to come? Can one, who soothed us in the lesser troubles of our lives, look on while we are suffering the greatest agony of all and fail to comfort? It cannot be. Imagination declines to picture the long future that lies before us. We cannot understand that we shall never again listen to the tones of the familiar voice; never feel the touch of the gentle hand; never be encouraged by the warm embrace that tells us we are loved, or find a refuge from miserable thoughts and the vexations of the world in the affectionate and ever-open heart. All this is too hard for us. We long for a resurrection; we should believe in it if we could; we do believe in it in sleep, when our feelings are free to roam at pleasure, unrestrained by the chilling presence of the material world. In dreams the old life is repeated again and again. Sometimes the lost one is beside us as of old and we are quite untroubled by the thought of parting. Sometimes there is a strange and confusing consciousness that the great calamity has happened, or has been thought to happen, but that now we are again together, and that a new life has succeeded upon death.... Granting only a strong emotion and a lively phantasy, we may comprehend at once how, in many lands, to many mourners, the images of their dreams may also become the visions of their waking hours" (Analysis of Religious Belief, pp. 275, 276). Renan says: "For the historian, the life of Jesus finishes with his last sigh. But such was the impression he had left in the heart of his disciples, and of a few devoted women, that during some weeks more it was as if he were living and consoling them. Had his body been taken away, or did enthusiasm, always credulous, create afterwards the group of narratives by which it was sought to establish faith in the resurrection? In the absence of opposing documents this can never be ascertained. Let us say, however, that the strong imagination of Mary Magdalene played an important part in the circumstance. Divine power of love! Sacred moments in which the passion of one possessed gave to the world a resuscitated God" (Life of Jesus, p. 296). 439 If Jesus appeared in a material body, was he naked, or clothed? This is not a vital, but it is a pertinent question. It is stated that he appeared to Mary Magdalene immediately after the resurrection. Did he appear to her naked, or was he clothed? As she mistook him for the gardener, and as the gardener undoubtedly went clad, it may be presumed that Jesus was clad also. If so, where did he procure his clothes? His own garments were divided among the soldiers, and his grave clothes were left in the sepulchre. If it be assumed that he was taken from the tomb by his friends, as some critics believe, the difficulty vanishes. 440 What is said of the saints who arose on the day of the crucifixion? Matthew: They "came out of the graves after the resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many" (xxvii, 53). Before Matthew's wholesale resurrection of the saints the resurrection of Jesus pales into insignificance. In the opinion of many supernaturalists Matthew has mixed too large a dose of the miraculous for even Christian credulity to swallow, and they would gladly omit this portion of it. Regarding this story Dr. Farrar says: "An earthquake shook the earth and split the rocks, and as it rolled away from their places the great stones which closed and covered the cavern sepulchres of the Jews, so it seemed to the imaginations of many to have disimprisoned the spirits of the dead, and to have filled the air with ghostly visitants, who after Christ had risen appeared to linger in the Holy City" (Life of Christ, vol. ii, p. 419). Dean Milman dismisses it in much the same way. Referring to the earthquake, he says: "The same convulsion would displace the stones which covered the ancient tombs and lay open many of the innumerable rock-hewn sepulchres which perforated the hills on every side of the city, and expose the dead to public view. To the awe-struck and depressed minds of the followers of Jesus, no doubt, were confined these visionary appearances of the spirits of their deceased brethren" (History of Christianity, vol. i, p. 336). If the minds of the disciples were so greatly affected that they imagined they beheld the resurrected bodies of strangers whom they had never met and of whom they had probably never heard--for they were nearly a hundred miles from the graves of their own kindred--is it strange that they should imagine they saw the resurrected Master with whom they had daily associated for months and perhaps years? To characterize these resurrected saints as "ghostly visitants" and "visionary appearances," and the resurrected Christ as a real being, is a distinction without a scintilla of evidence to support it. Both appearances, if they be historical, belong to the same class of mental phenomena; and are, indeed, the offspring of the same minds. 441 When did the resurrection take place? All: In the night. Who witnessed it? All: No one. The author of "Supernatural Religion" says: "The remarkable fact is, therefore, absolutely undeniable, that there was not, and that it is not even pretended that there was, a single eye-witness to the actual Resurrection. The empty grave, coupled with the supposed subsequent appearances of Jesus, is the only evidence of the Resurrection" (p. 1004). 442 It is said that a guard was stationed at the tomb. Why was this done? Matthew: "The chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command, therefore, that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead" (xxvii, 62-64). Is it not strange that his enemies should be cognizant of this when his disciples "knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead?" (John xx, 9.) Regarding this the "Bible for Learners" says: "Was such a foolish report really circulated among the Jews? In any case this story, which is worked out elaborately in the Gospel of Nicodemus, is quite absurd. Is it likely that the enemies of Jesus would have heard a prophecy of his rising again when his very friends never dreamed of it for a moment, and when he had never once spoken of his 'resurrection' in public?" (Vol. iii, p. 480.) 443 On what day did the Sanhedrim visit Pilate for the purpose of obtaining a guard? Matthew: On the Sabbath (xxvii, 62). Matthew, after describing the death and burial of Jesus, says: "Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate." It is generally conceded by Christian commentators that by "the next day" Matthew refers to the Sabbath, for if Jesus was crucified and buried on Friday, no other day can be meant. To avoid the disagreeable consequences of such an admission a few have contended that by "the day of preparation" is meant the Preparation of the Passover. But this renders the passage unintelligible. By "preparation" Matthew means, not the Preparation of the Passover, but the preparation of the Sabbath. This is made clear by the other Synoptics. After relating the events of the crucifixion, Mark begins his account of the burial with these words: "And now when the even was come, because it was the preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath" (xv, 42). Luke, after giving an account of the crucifixion and burial, says: "And that day was the preparation and the Sabbath drew on" (xxiii, 54). It is claimed by the Evangelists that the Jewish priests of that period were such rigid observers of the Sabbath that they sought to put Jesus to death for simply healing the sick on that day. That the Sanhedrim desecrated the Sabbath, and especially the Passover Sabbath, by visiting and transacting business with a heathen ruler cannot be accepted as possible. 444 When was the guard placed at the tomb? Matthew: Not until the second night. It is argued that Jesus must have risen because a guard was placed at his tomb so that it was impossible for his disciples to "come by night, and steal him away." But had his body really been left in the tomb, as claimed, they would have taken it the first night had they desired it. The passage cited from Matthew in the preceding criticism declares that a guard was not requested of Pilate until the day following the crucifixion, so that the tomb was without a guard the first night. The sepulchre was not opened and examined when the guard was placed there on the following day. "So they went and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch" (Matt. xxvii, 66). Had the seal been found unbroken at the end of three days it would not have proved that Jesus' body still remained in the tomb. It would merely have proved that the body had not been removed after the seal was placed on it. It may be urged that Jesus had prophesied that he would not rise until the third day, and that an earlier disappearance of the body could not be harmonized with a strict fulfillment of the prophecy. But of this prophecy the disciples, we have seen, were ignorant. 445 What is said in regard to the opening of the tomb? Matthew: "In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And behold there was a great earthquake; for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.... And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay" (xxviii, 1-6). Matthew's story of the guard was evidently inserted for the express purpose of establishing a belief in the resurrection by making it appear impossible for his friends to have removed the body from the sepulchre. Yet this story suggests, if it does not prove, the very thing that he attempts to prove impossible. The sepulchre was opened in the presence of witnesses--the guards and the women. Jesus did not emerge from it, nor did it contain his body. It was empty when opened. This renders probable, if not certain, one of two things: either his body was not deposited there, or it was removed before the watch was set. Commenting on the empty tomb L. K. Washburn says: "If Jesus got out of the grave alive, he was put into it alive. If he was put into it dead, he was taken out dead. A depopulated sepulchre is not proof that its former tenant has moved to heaven. It is merely proof that somebody has stolen a dead body." 446 What did the guards do when they left the tomb? Matthew: "Some of the watch came into the city, and showed unto the chief priests all the things that were done" (xxviii, 11). To one acquainted with the discipline of the Roman army this story of the soldiers leaving their post thirty-six hours before the expiration of the watch assigned and going into the city and telling the Jews what had transpired is incredible. 447 What did the chief priests do? Matthew: "They gave large sums of money unto the soldiers, saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept" (12, 13). The penalty for sleeping while on duty was death, and no bribe could have induced them to declare that they were guilty of this offense even if the priests had promised to intercede for them. Again, had this transaction really occurred it would have been known only by the parties concerned in it, and when disclosure meant the direst punishment to both the bribe-givers and the bribe-takers, neither would have divulged the crime. Strauss, criticising the alleged action of the Jewish priests, says: "Their conduct, when the guards returning from the grave apprised them of the resurrection of Jesus, is truly impossible. They believe the assertion of the soldiers that Jesus had arisen out of his grave in a miraculous manner. How could the council, many of whose members were Sadducees, receive this as credible? Even the Pharisees in the Sanhedrim, though they held in theory the possibility of a resurrection, would not, with the mean opinion they entertained of Jesus, be inclined to believe in his resurrection, especially as the assertion in the mouth of the guards sounded just like a falsehood invented to screen a failure in duty. The real Sanhedrists, on hearing such an assertion from the soldiers, would have replied with exasperation: You lie! you have slept and allowed him to be stolen; but you will have to pay dearly for this, when it comes to be investigated by the procurator. But instead of this, the Sanhedrists in our gospel speak them fair, and entreat them thus: Tell a lie, say that you have slept and allowed him to be stolen; moreover, they pay them richly for the falsehood, and promise to exculpate them to the procurator. This is evidently spoken entirely on the Christian presupposition of the reality of the resurrection of Jesus; a presupposition, however, which is quite incorrectly attributed to the Sanhedrim" (Leben Jesu, pp. 806, 807). 448 What is said of the resurrection by Peter? "Him God raised up the third day, and showed him openly; not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead" (Acts x, 40, 41). If God really wished to convince all the people why did he not show him to all the people? It is said that more than two millions of Jews attended the Passover. Had he desired to prove to them that Jesus was the Christ he would have assembled this multitude at midday and in their presence raised his crucified and buried Son. Yet not a single human being witnessed the resurrection, and not a single disinterested witness is said to have seen him after his death. Like a thief he escapes from his prison in the night and avoids publicity. This story of the resurrection is clearly a priestly invention and the composer of the speech ascribed to Peter was conscious of the fact. 449 What did Paul teach regarding the resurrection of Christ? "That Christ should suffer and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead" (Acts xxvi, 23). If Christ was the first to rise from the dead what becomes of the miracles of Lazarus, of the widow of Nain's son, and of the daughter of Jairus? What becomes of Matthew's saints who rose from the dead on the day of the crucifixion, two days before Christ rose? 450 What did Paul teach regarding the resurrection of the dead in general? "If the dead rise not, then is Christ not raised" (1 Corinthians xv, 16). "He that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more" (Job vii, 9). 451 When did the disciples receive the Holy Ghost? John: "And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost" (xx, 22). This was on the evening of the resurrection. Forty days after this he said to them: "Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence" (Acts i, 5). Acts: "And when the day of Pentecost was fully come ... they were all filled with the Holy Ghost" (ii, 1-4). This was seven weeks after the resurrection. 452 On what day of the week did it occur? John: "The first day of the week" (xx, 19). John, like the author of the first Gospel, is evidently ignorant of the Jewish method of reckoning time. He makes the evening (it was night) following the first day a part of that day instead of the next day to which it belonged. 453 Did Thomas receive the Holy Ghost? John: He did not. He was absent when the disciples received it (xx, 19-25). 454 Who had Jesus said would send the Holy Ghost to his disciples? "The Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send" (John xiv, 26). "I [Jesus] will send him unto you" (xvi, 7). 455 What effect had the Holy Ghost upon them? Acts: They "began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance" (ii, 4). Concerning this "gift" Greg says: "Ignorance and folly too often became the arbiters of wisdom--and the ravings of delirium were listened to as the words of inspiration, and of God. If Jesus could have returned to earth thirty years after his death, and sat in the midst of an assembly of his followers, who were listening in hushed and wondering prostration of mind to a speaker in the 'unknown tongue,' how would he have wept over the humiliating and disappointing spectacle! how would he have grieved to think that the incoherent jargon of delirium or hysteria should be mistaken for the promptings of his Father's spirit!" (Creed of Christendom, p. 250.) 456 Who heard them speak in new tongues? Acts: "Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians" (ii, 9-11). Did representatives of all these nations really assemble to hear the disciples, or was this merely an imaginary gathering of the writer? Evidently the latter. 457 To the charge of drunkenness what reply did Peter make? "These are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day" (Acts ii, 15). A profane mind, unacquainted with Jewish customs, might infer from this that the disciples were not in the habit of becoming intoxicated before nine o'clock in the morning. 458 What inquiry did Paul make of John's disciples? "Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?" What did they say in reply? "We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost" (Acts xix, 2). This was many years after the death of Jesus. Either this colloquy is false, or the story of John the Baptist is false. If John was the forerunner of Christ, as claimed, his disciples became followers of Christ; and if they became followers of Christ they were acquainted with the doctrine of the Holy Ghost--if it existed at this time. 459 When did Jesus' disciples begin to baptize? Matthew and Mark: Not until after his resurrection (Matt. xxviii, 18, 19; Mark xvi, 15, 16). John: At the beginning of his ministry. "After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judea; and there he tarried with them, and baptized" (iii, 22). "The Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John. (Though Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples.)" (iv, 1, 2). 460 What form of baptism is Jesus said to have prescribed for the use of his apostles? "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Matthew xxviii, 19). The apostles did not baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, but in the name of Christ alone. "Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ" (Acts ii, 38). "They were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus" (viii, 16). "He commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord" (x, 48). "They were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus" (xix, 5). Concerning this Greg says: "That this definite form of baptism proceeded from Jesus, is opposed by the fact that such an allocation of the Father, Son, and Spirit, does not elsewhere appear, except as a form of salutation in the epistles; while as a definite form of baptism it is nowhere met with throughout the New Testament. Moreover, it was not the form used, and could scarcely, therefore, have been the form commanded; for in the apostolic epistles, and even in the Acts, the form always is 'baptizing into Christ Jesus,' or, 'into the name of the Lord Jesus'" (Creed of Christendom, p. 191). This ecclesiastical formula was not adopted by the church until late in the second century, and then, not for baptism, but for admission into the church. In regard to this the Rev. Dr. Hooykaas says: "Baptism into the name of God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit, means baptism into the confession of or faith in these three, and is a short epitome of Christian doctrine of which Jesus certainly never dreamed; nay, it is obvious from all accounts that, even in the apostolic age, it was as yet quite unknown; and the still later age which drew up the words by no means intended them as a baptismal formula, but rather as a statement of the conditions of admission into the community. In making the utterance of these words, instead of the imposition of these conditions, the first act of admission into the community of Christ, the Church has confounded words with things" (Bible for Learners, vol. iii, pp. 472, 473). 461 What was his final command to the apostles? "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark xvi, 15). This is utterly irreconcilable with Acts (xi, 1-18). Eight years after the death of Jesus, Peter is condemned for preaching to the Gentiles. "And the apostles and brethren that were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God. And when Peter was come to Jerusalem, they that were of the circumcision contended with him" (1, 2). How does he meet the accusation and justify his conduct? By reminding them that it was the express will of their Master? No; he tells them that while in a trance at Joppa he had a vision instructing him to carry the gospel to the Gentiles. "When they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life" (18). 462 How long did Jesus remain on earth? Luke: One day (xxiv). John: At least ten days (xx, xxi). Acts: He was "seen of them forty days" (i, 3). The greatest discrepancy is between Luke and Acts, two books which it is claimed were written by the same author. 463 Where did the ascension take place? Mark: In Jerusalem (xvi, 14, com. Luke xxiv, 33). Luke: At Bethany (xxiv, 50, 51). Acts: At Mount Olivet (i, 9-12). 464 Describe the ascension. Luke: "And it came to pass while he blessed them he was parted from them and carried up into heaven" (xxiv, 51). The ascension of Romulus doubtless suggested the story of the ascension of Jesus. 465 What occurred at the ascension? Acts: "While they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven" (i, 10, 11). It is remarkable that the Evangelists who find space to record the sayings of lunatics and devils, have not room to record the words of angels, or even note their presence. 466 For what purpose did Jesus ascend to heaven? "I go to prepare a place for you" (John xiv, 2). What was the need of this when the place had already been "prepared ... from the foundation of the world" (Matthew xxv, 34)? 467 Did Jesus ascend bodily into heaven? Luke: He ascended to heaven in a body of flesh and blood (xxiv, 36-43, 50, 51). Paul: "But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die; and that which thou sowest thou sowest not that body that shall be" (1 Corinthians xv, 35-37). "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body" (44). "Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God" (50). The whole theology of Paul is opposed to the bodily resurrection and ascension of Jesus. The "Bible for Learners" says: "In speaking of the resurrection, he [Paul] does not mean the reanimation of the body of Jesus; and indeed he expressly excludes such a thought by ascribing to the Christ a glorified and spiritual body not made of flesh and blood. It is equally certain that he thinks of the Christ as having appeared from heaven; and his ranking the appearance to himself--unquestionably the product of his own fervid imagination--as parallel with those which preceded it [his appearances to the disciples], seems to indicate that they were all visions alike" (Vol. iii, p. 467). 468 Do all the Evangelists record the ascension? Matthew and John, both of whom are declared to have been apostles, and the only Evangelists who are supposed to have witnessed the ascension, know nothing of it. The last twelve verses of Mark, it is admitted, are spurious; while the words, "carried up into heaven," of Luke do not appear in the Sinaitic version, the oldest version of the New Testament extant. With this forged appendix to Mark and this interpolated passage in Luke eliminated, the Four Gospels contain no mention of the ascension. 469 Had any man ever ascended to heaven before Jesus? Jesus: "No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven" (John iii, 13). Then that story about Elijah is a fiction, is it? In regard to the resurrection and ascension Thomas Paine says: "As to the account given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the necessary counterpart of his birth. His historians having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground. The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told exceeds every thing that went before it. The first part, that of the miraculous conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity; and therefore the tellers of this part of the story had this advantage, that though they might not be credited, they could not be detected.... But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension through the air, is a thing very different as to the evidence it admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the womb. The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon-day, to all Jerusalem at least. A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; and as the public visibility of this last related act was the only evidence that could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to the ground, because that evidence never was given.... It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it. Who were the authors of it is as impossible for us now to know, as it is for us to be assured that the books in which the account is related were written by the persons whose names they bear; the best surviving evidence we now have respecting this affair is the Jews. They are regularly descended from the people who lived in the times this resurrection and ascension is said to have happened, and they say, it is not true. It has long appeared to me a strange inconsistency to cite the Jews as a proof of the truth of the story. It is just the same as if a man were to say, I will prove the truth of what I have told you by producing the people who say it is false" (Age of Reason, pp. 10, 11). "The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and credulity believe" (Ibid, 161). "Supernatural Religion" says: "The whole of the evidence for the Resurrection reduces itself to an undefined belief on the part of a few persons, in a notoriously superstitious age, that after Jesus had died and been buried they had seen him alive. These visions, it is admitted, occurred at a time of the most intense religious excitement, and under circumstances of wholly exceptional mental agitation and distress. The wildest alternations of fear, doubt, hope and indefinite expectation, added their effects to oriental imaginations already excited by indignation at the fate of their Master, and sorrow or despair at such a dissipation of their Messianic dreams. There was present every element of intellectual and moral disturbance. Now must we seriously ask again whether this bare and wholly unjustified belief can be accepted as satisfactory evidence for so astounding a miracle as the Resurrection? Can the belief of such men, in such an age, establish the reality of a phenomenon which is contradicted by universal experience? We have no evidence as to what actually occurred. We do not even know the facts upon which they based their inferences. We only know that they thought they had seen Jesus and that they, therefore, concluded that he had risen from the dead. It comes to us as bare belief from the Age of Miracles, unsupported by facts, uncorroborated by evidence, unaccompanied by proof of investigation, and unprovided with material for examination. What is such belief worth? We have no hesitation in saying that it is absolutely worth nothing" (pp. 1048, 1049). The Rev. Dr. Phillip Schaff, one of the most eminent evangelical Christian scholars of this country, in his "History of the Christian Church," makes this candid admission regarding the resurrection and ascension of Christ: "Truth compels us to admit that there are serious difficulties in harmonizing the accounts of the Evangelists, and in forming a consistent conception of Christ's resurrection body hovering as it were between heaven and earth, and a supernatural state, of a body clothed with flesh and blood and bearing the wound prints, and yet so spiritual as to appear and disappear through closed doors and to ascend visibly to heaven." CHAPTER VIII. CHARACTER AND TEACHINGS. 470 Who was Jesus Christ? Mark: He was the son of man. Matthew and Luke: He was the Son of God. John: He was God himself. In the Four Gospels are presented three entirely different conceptions of the Christ. In Mark he is represented as the son of human parents--the Messiah--but simply a man. In Matthew and Luke we have the story of the miraculous conception--he is represented as the Son of God. In John he is declared to be God himself. "In the beginning was the Word [Christ], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (i, 1). According to Mark Christ is a man; according to Matthew and Luke, a demi-god; according to John, a God. Voltaire thus harmonizes these discordant conceptions: "The son of God is the same as the son of man; the son of man is the same as the son of God. God, the father, is the same as Christ, the son; Christ, the son, is the same as God, the father. This language may appear confused to unbelievers, but Christians will readily understand it." This is quite as intelligible as the Christian Confession of Faith, Article II of which reads as follows: "The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God, and very Man." "The theological Christ is the impossible union of the human and divine--man with the attributes of God, and God with the limitations and weaknesses of man."--Ingersoll. 471 Is God a visible Being? Jacob: "I have seen God face to face" (Genesis xxxii, 30). John: "No man hath seen God at any time" (i, 18). 472 How many Gods are there? Mark: One. John: Three. Mark teaches the doctrine of Unitarianism (Monotheism), or one God. John teaches, not the doctrine of Unitarianism or one God, nor yet the doctrine of Trinitarianism or three Gods in one, but the doctrine of Tritheism or three distinct Gods, separate and independent of each other. 473 Is the doctrine of the Trinity taught in the New Testament? "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one" (1 John v, 7). This is the only passage in the New Testament which clearly teaches the doctrine of the Trinity, and this passage is admitted by all Christian scholars to be an interpolation. When the modern version of the New Testament was first published by Erasmus it was criticised because it contained no text teaching the doctrine of the Trinity. Erasmus promised his critics that if a manuscript could be found containing such a text he would insert it. The manuscript was "found," and the text quoted appeared in a later edition. Concerning this interpolation Sir Isaac Newton, in a letter to a friend, which was afterward published by Bishop Horsley, says: "When the adversaries of Erasmus had got the Trinity into his edition, they threw by their manuscript as an old almanac out of date." Alluding to the doctrine of the Trinity, Thomas Jefferson says: "It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticism that three are one and one is three, and yet, that the one is not three, and the three not one.... But this constitutes the craft, the power, and profits of the priests. Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of fictitious religion, and they would catch no more flies" (Jefferson's Works, vol. iv, p. 205, Randolph's ed.). Again Jefferson says: "The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God, like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs" (Ibid, p. 360). 474 Was Christ the only begotten Son of God? John: He was "the only begotten Son of God" (iii, 18). "There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children unto them" (Genesis vi, 4). 475 By what agency and when was the Christ begotten? Matthew and Luke: By the Holy Ghost at the time of his conception by the Virgin Mary. According to Justin the Holy Ghost begat the Christ, not at the conception of Jesus, as claimed by these Evangelists, but at his baptism. At his baptism the voice from heaven said: "Thou art my son; this day have I begotten thee" (Dialogues 88). The correctness of Justin's statement is corroborated by Hebrews: "Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, today have I begotten thee" (v, 5). Christ's priesthood began at his baptism. 476 Of what gender is the Holy Ghost? Matthew (Greek Ver.): Masculine gender. Matthew (Hebrew Ver.): Feminine gender. The Holy Ghost (Spirit), as was noted in a previous chapter, was with the Greeks of masculine gender, with the Jews of feminine gender. The Gospel According to the Hebrews, which, it is claimed, was the original Gospel of Matthew, represented Jesus as saying, "Just now my mother, the Holy Ghost, laid hold on me." If the Holy Ghost was the mother of Jesus did he have two mothers? According to our Greek version of Matthew, as well as that of Luke, he had one mother and three reputed fathers--God, the Holy Ghost, and Joseph. 477 Christ, it is affirmed, was born of Mary. If so, what relation did she bear to him? 1. If he was born of Mary she was his mother. 2. She "being with child by the Holy Ghost," and Father, Son and Holy Ghost being one, she bore to him the relation of wife. 3. God being the Father of all mankind, and God and Christ being one, she was his daughter. 4. She being the daughter of God, and Christ being the Son of God, she was therefore his sister. Consequently Mary bore to him the relation of mother, wife, daughter and sister. 478 The greater portion of the Christian church affirms the perpetual virginity of Mary. It is claimed that Jesus was her only child and that the conception and birth of him did not destroy her virginity. Is this confirmed by the Evangelists? It is not. Matthew and Mark say: "Is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? and his sisters, are they not all with us?" (Matt. xiii, 55, 56; Mark vi, 3). Luke (viii, 19) and John (vii, 3) both declare that he had brothers. To maintain this dogma it is affirmed that by "brethren and sisters" is meant cousins. Dr. Farrar, who in regard to this as in regard to most disputed points, assumes a non-committal or conciliatory attitude, concedes that "the natural supposition that, after the miraculous conception of our Lord, Joseph and Mary lived together in the married state, and that James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon, with daughters, whose names are not recorded, were subsequently born to them," is "in accordance certainly with the prima facie evidence of the Gospels" (Life of Christ, p. 51). 479 Who did Mary say was the father of Jesus? Luke: When he remained behind in Jerusalem, and they found him in the temple, "his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father [Joseph] and I have sought thee sorrowing" (ii, 48). To believe that a Jewish virgin was overshadowed by a spirit, and miraculously conceived and bore a child, requires more convincing proof than the dream of a credulous lover. We ought at least to have the testimony of the mother. But we have it not. She testifies that Joseph is his father. 480 What did Jesus' neighbors say regarding his paternity? Matthew: They said, "Is not this the carpenter's [Joseph's] son?" (xiii, 55.) Luke: "They said, Is not this Joseph's son?" (iv, 22.) John: "They said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph?" (vi, 42.) The Rev. Dr. Crapsey, of the Episcopal church, in his work on "Religion and Politics" (p. 289), makes this significant admission regarding the divine origin of Jesus: "The fact of his miraculous birth was unknown to himself, unknown to his mother, and unknown to the whole Christian community of the first generations." Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams, wrote: "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" (Jefferson Works, vol. iv, p. 365, Randolph's ed.). 481 Who did Peter declare him to be? "Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God" (Acts ii, 22). Who did Paul declare him to be? "There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy ii, 5). The Christ of Peter and Paul was not a God, but a man--a man upon whom had been bestowed divine gifts--but yet a man. 482 What testimony is ascribed to Paul? "Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh" (1 Timothy iii, 16). This is a gross perversion of Scripture for the purpose of making Paul a witness to Christ's divinity. Regarding this text and the Trinitarian text inserted in 1 John, Sir Isaac Newton, in his letter previously quoted from, says: "What the Latins have done in this text (1 John v, 7) the Greeks have done to Paul (1 Tim. iii, 16). They now read, 'Great is the mystery of godliness; God manifest in the flesh'; whereas all the churches for the first four or five hundred years, and the authors of all the ancient versions, Jerome as well as the rest, read, 'Great is the mystery of godliness, which was manifest in the flesh.' Our English version makes it yet a little stronger. It reads, 'Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh.'" In conclusion Newton says: "If the ancient churches, in debating and deciding the greatest mysteries of religion, knew nothing of these two texts, I understand not why we should be so fond of them now the debate is over." 483 Christ is declared by the Christian creed to be "the very and eternal God." God, it is claimed, is omnipotent. Was Christ omnipotent? "The Son can do nothing of himself" (John v, 19). "I can of mine own self do nothing" (30). 484 God is omniscient. Was Christ omniscient? Referring to his second advent he says: "Of that day and hour knoweth no man, ... neither the Son" (Mark xiii, 32). 485 God is omnipresent. Was Christ omnipresent? "I am glad for your sakes that I was not there" (John xi, 15). "Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, thither ye cannot come" (vii, 36). "And now I am no more in the world" (xvii, 11). 486 God is self-existent. Was Christ self-existent? "I live by the Father" (John vi, 57). "He liveth by the power of God" (2 Corinthians xiii, 4). 487 Did Christ have a preexistence? "Before Abraham was, I am" (John viii, 58). According to the Synoptics his existence began with his life on earth. 488 Was he infinite in wisdom? Luke: He "increased in wisdom" (ii, 52). If he increased in wisdom his knowledge was limited, and limitation of knowledge is not an attribute of an infinite God. 489 Was he infinite in goodness? "Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God" (Mark x, 18). 490 Was he infinite in mercy? "He that believeth not shall be damned" (Mark xvi, 16). "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire" (Matthew xxv, 41). "Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not: Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida!... It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of Judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell" (Matthew xi, 20-23). 491 His resurrection is adduced as the chief argument in proof of his divinity. Did he raise himself from the dead? Peter: He did not. God raised him. "Jesus Christ of Nazareth, ... whom God raised from the dead" (Acts iv, 10). If Christ, then, did not rise from the dead by his own volition, was his resurrection any proof of his divinity? No more than the resurrection of Lazarus was proof of Lazarus's divinity. 492 His miraculous conception is adduced as another proof of his divinity. Is this the only miraculous conception claimed in the Bible? It is not. Isaac, Samson, Samuel and John the Baptist are all claimed to have been miraculously conceived (Genesis xviii, 10, 11; xxi, 1-3; Judges xiii, 2, 3, 24; 1 Samuel i, 9-11, 20; Luke i, 7-13). 493 His miracles, it is claimed, attest his divinity. Were he and his disciples the only ones who performed miracles? These alleged miracles were performed before his time--the Old Testament abounds with them--and they have been performed since his time. They were performed by others in his own time--were performed by those who ignored and rejected him--were performed by the disciples of Satan himself (Matthew vii, 22; xii, 27; Mark ix, 38; xiii, 22; Luke ix, 49). "Supernatural Religion" says: "The supposed miraculous evidence for the divine revelation, moreover, is without any special divine character, being avowedly common also to Satanic agency, but it is not original either in conception or details. Similar miracles to those which are supposed to attest it are reported long antecedent to the promulgation of Christianity, and continued to be performed for centuries after it. A stream of miraculous pretension, in fact, has flowed through all human history, deep and broad as it has passed through the darker ages, but dwindling down to a thread as it has entered days of enlightenment. The evidence was too hackneyed and commonplace to make any impression upon those before whom the Christian miracles are said to have been performed, and it altogether failed to convince the people to whom the revelation was primarily addressed. The selection of such evidence, for such a purpose, is much more characteristic of human weakness than of divine power" (p. 699). Archbishop Trench says: "Side by side with the miracles which serve for the furthering of the kingdom of God runs another line of wonders, the counter-workings of him who is ever the ape of the Most High.... This fact that the kingdom of lies has its wonders no less than the kingdom of truth, is itself sufficient evidence that miracles cannot be appealed to absolutely and finally, in proof of the doctrine which the worker of them proclaims" (Miracles of Our Lord, p. 22). The miracles of Christ, like the miracles of Satan, existed only in the minds of his credulous and deluded followers. "Ye shall have miracles, aye, sound ones too, Seen, heard, attested, everything but true." --Thomas Moore. 494 Prophecy is appealed to in support of his divinity. It is claimed that the writers of the Old Testament predicted his coming. Do such predictions exist? In his work on "The Bible," as well as in a previous chapter of this work, the writer has shown that there is not a single passage in the Old Testament that, in the original text, refers in the remotest degree to Jesus Christ. Greg shows that much of Old Testament history, like Deuteronomy, is presented in the form of anticipatory narrative. To the Christian argument that the Messianic predictions, at least, were written long anterior to the time of Christ, he replies: "This is true, and the argument would have all the force which is attributed to it, were the objectors able to lay their fingers on a single Old Testament prediction clearly referring to Jesus Christ, intended by the utterers of it to relate to him, prefiguring his character and career, and manifestly fulfilled in his appearance on earth. This they cannot do. Most of the passages usually adduced as complying with these conditions, referred, and were clearly intended to refer, to eminent individuals in Israelitish history; many are not prophecies at all; the Messiah, the anointed deliverer, expected by the Jews, hoped for and called for by their poets and prophets, was of a character so different, and a career so opposite, to those of the meek, lowly, long-suffering Jesus, that the passages describing the one never could have been applied to the other, without a perversion of ingenuity, and a disloyal treatment of their obvious signification, which, if employed in any other field than that of theology, would have met with the prompt discredit and derision they deserve" (Creed of Christendom, pp. 135, 136). 495 His own prescience is cited in proof of his divinity. The destruction of the temple by the Romans, it is claimed, was a wonderful instance of the fulfillment of prophecy. But did his so-called prophecy have reference to this event? No one can read this prophecy (Matthew xxiv, 1-3) and then honestly contend that it did. He clearly refers to his second coming and the end of the world when the temple, in common with all sublunary things, shall be destroyed. In the verse immediately following this prediction, his disciples say: "Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?" But even if this so-called prophecy had referred to this event it is rendered nugatory by the fact that the book containing it was not composed until a hundred years after the destruction of the temple. 496 When was Christ's second coming and the end of terrestrial things to take place? "There be some standing here that shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom" (Matthew xvi, 28). "This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled" (Luke xxi, 32). Seventy-five generations have passed, and still the world rolls on, unmoved by Christ's and Mother Shipton's prophecies. 497 Did the Apostles believe that the second coming of Christ and the end of the world were at hand? Peter: "The end of all things is at hand" (1 Peter iv, 7). James: "The coming of the Lord draweth nigh" (James v, 8). John: "Ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists: whereby we know that it is the last time" (1 John ii, 18). Paul: "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air" (1 Thessalonians iv, 16, 17). Renan, ever ready to palliate or overlook the errors of his hero, frankly admits that the predictions concerning his second advent and the end of the world were a dismal failure. "It is evident, indeed," he says, "that such a doctrine, taken by itself in a literal manner, had no future. The world, in continuing to exist, caused it to crumble. One generation of man at the most was the limit of its endurance. The faith of the first Christian generation is intelligible, but the faith of the second generation is no longer so. After the death of John, or of the last survivor, whoever he might be, of the group which had seen the master, the word of Jesus was convicted of falsehood" (Life of Jesus, pp. 203, 204). 498 To what extent was the gospel to be preached before his second coming? "Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come" (Matthew x, 23). "The gospel must first be published among all nations" (Mark xiii, 10). 499 Did Jesus claim to be the Christ or Messiah from the first? John: He did. Early in his ministry "The woman [of Samaria] saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he" (iv, 25, 26). Synoptics: He did not announce his Messiahship until late in his ministry. 500 Who where the first to recognize his divinity? Synoptics: Devils and unclean spirits (Matthew viii, 28, 29; Mark iii, 11, 12; Luke iv, 41). 501 What is said of Jesus in Hebrews? "Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels" (ii, 9). "Being made so much better than the angels" (i, 4). 502 What did he say respecting his identity with God? "My Father and I are one" (John x, 30). "My Father is greater than I" (xiv, 28). 503 How did he attempt to establish his claims? "It is also written in your law, that the testimony of two men is true. I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me" (John viii, 17, 18). But if "I and my Father are one," how does that fulfill the law? 504 What did he say regarding the truthfulness of his testimony concerning himself? "Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true" (John viii, 14). "If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true" (v. 31). 505 Did Jesus' neighbors believe in his divinity? Matthew: "When he was come into his own country," and to his own home, "He did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief" (xiii, 54, 58). 506 What opinion did his friends entertain of him? Mark: "And when his friends heard of it [his work], they went out to lay hold on him; for they said, He is beside himself" (iii, 21). 507 Did even his brothers believe in him? John: "Now the Jews' feast of tabernacles was at hand. His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. For there is no man that doeth any thing in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, shew thyself to the world. For neither did his brethren believe in him" (vii, 2-5). These three passages are fatal to the claim of Christ's divinity. If he was unable to convince his neighbors, his friends, or even his own family of his divinity he was not divine. Much less was he the "very God," as claimed. According to the Christian scheme, man by his disobedience fell--was lost. God desired to save him. Christ--God manifest in the flesh--came on earth for this purpose. What was required of man to secure salvation? Simply to believe that Jesus was the Christ. In order for him to believe this what was necessary? That Jesus should convince him that he was divine. If he was all-powerful he could have done this; if he was all-just he would have done this. Did he do this? His own race rejected him. Disbelief in Christ's divinity disproves his divinity. 508 The writings of the New Testament are adduced as the evidences of Christ's divinity and the divine character of Christianity. Do the writers of the New Testament claim to be inspired? With the possible exception of the author of Revelation, they do not. Paul says, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God." But the "scripture" of Paul was the scripture of the Old Testament. His words have no reference whatever to the writings of the New which did not exist in his time. If the New Testament is not inspired and infallible, what follows? "If the New Testament is defective the church itself is in error, and must be given up as a deception."--Dr. Tischendorf. "It is not a word too much to say that the New Testament abounds with errors."--Dean Alford. 509 What is said of the Apocryphal Gospels which appeared in the early ages of the church? "Several histories of his [Christ's] life and doctrines, full of pious frauds and fabulous wonders, were composed by persons whose intentions perhaps were not bad, but whose writings discovered the greatest superstition and ignorance. Nor was this all; productions appeared which were imposed upon the world by fraudulent men, as the writings of the holy Apostles."--Mosheim. Is the above less true of the books we are reviewing? Are not these writings "full of pious frauds and fabulous wonders"? Do not these writings display "the greatest superstition and ignorance"? Have not these writings been "imposed upon the world by fraudulent men, as the writings of the holy (?) Apostles"? If some of these apocryphal Gospels had been accepted as canonical, and the canonical Gospels had been rejected as apocryphal, these canonical Gospels would appear as untruthful and foolish to Christians as the apocryphal Gospels do. 510 Let us examine the religious teachings ascribed to Christ. For what purpose was his blood shed? "This is my blood of the New Testament which is shed for many" (Mark xiv, 24). "This cup is the New Testament in my blood, which is shed for you" (Luke xxii, 20). "This is my blood of the New Testament which is shed for many FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS" (Matthew xxvi, 28). The above is one of the most significant discrepancies in the Bible. The Atonement is the chief doctrine connected with Christ and orthodox Christianity. The text quoted from Matthew is the only text in the Four Gospels which clearly teaches this doctrine. Two other texts (Matthew xx, 28; John i, 29) are adduced in support of it, but do not clearly teach it. Now Matthew has falsely ascribed to Jesus the revelation of the Atonement, or Mark and Luke have either ignorantly or intentionally omitted this greatest of Christian doctrines. They contain no mention of the Atonement as understood by orthodox Christians. 511 For whom did he say his blood was shed? "This is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many [interpreted by the church to mean all mankind]" (Mark xiv, 24). "This cup is the New Testament in my blood, which is shed for you [addressed to his disciples alone]" (Luke xxii, 20). 512 Was his blood really shed? The crucifixion was not a bloody death, and aside from the self-confuted story of John about blood and water flowing from his corpse, the Evangelists do not state that a drop of blood was shed. 513 Christ, it is affirmed, was both God and man. Was it the human, or the divine part of him that suffered death? If only the human, this sacrifice was not an exceptional one, for thousands have died for their fellow men. If the divine part was sacrificed does God cease to exist? 514 His death is called an infinite sacrifice. If only the man died can this be true? The offering of a finite being, it must be admitted, would not constitute an infinite sacrifice. 515 If the God was crucified does he suffer endless pain? If not, then his suffering was not infinite, and the sacrifice in this case was not an infinite one. 516 If God died, but subsequently rose from the dead, was there not an interregnum when the universe was without a ruler? If so, then it must be conceded that the existence of the universe is not dependent upon the existence of God. 517 Are all mankind to be saved by Christ? "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to me" (John xii, 32). "Many be called but few chosen" (Matthew xx, 16). 518 What does Paul affirm concerning the Atonement? "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures" (1 Corinthians xv, 3). By "scriptures" Paul means the Old Testament, and according to the scriptures of the Old Testament, "Every man shall be put to death for his own sins" (Deuteronomy xxiv, 16). Like nearly all the doctrines ascribed to Christ, the atonement is in the highest degree unjust and absurd. Referring to this doctrine, Lord Byron says: "The basis of your religion is injustice. The Son of God, the pure, the immaculate, the innocent, is sacrificed for the guilty. This proves his heroism, but no more does away with man's sin than a schoolboy's volunteering to be flogged for another would exculpate a dunce from negligence." Greg justly charges Christians with "holding the strangely inconsistent doctrine that God is so just that he could not let sin go unpunished, yet so unjust that he could punish it in the person of the innocent." "It is for orthodox dialectics," he says, "to explain how Divine Justice can be impugned by pardoning the guilty, and yet vindicated by punishing the innocent!" (Creed of Christendom, pp. 338, 339.) 519 It is claimed that the sacrifice of Jesus was necessary for our salvation. Through whom was this sacrifice secured? All: Judas Iscariot procured it, and Pilate and the Jews offered it. Are not Christians, then, in condemning these men, ungrateful to their greatest benefactors? A man is dangerously ill. The druggist provides a remedy, the physician administers it and saves his life. When restored does he show his gratitude by praising the drug and damning the doctor? 520 In permitting the crucifixion of Jesus, who committed the greater sin, Pilate or God? John: "Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he [God] that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin" (xix, 11). Hon. Allan L. McDermott, in his memorable speech in Congress, in 1906, protesting against the persecution of Jews by Christians, said: "If an omnipotent God orders anything done, the human instruments selected to carry out his orders cannot be charged with the acts commanded. The doctrine of repondeat superior applies. If what happened could have been prevented by the Romans or by the Jews, then the New Testament is worthless. Let us assume that the Jews crucified Christ. Could they have done otherwise? Were they greater than God? According to the Bible, the crucifixion was arranged for by the Father. Why blame the Jews or the Romans or any other mortals? They did not know what they were doing. The Roman soldiers did not believe that they were crucifying the son of God; they did not know they were crucifying God himself. Why blame the instruments? Why persecute the descendants? According to the Synoptic Gospels and according to John, the arrangements for the crucifixion--every detail--were made by Almighty God, and were known to Christ." 521 What was the character of his death? Homicide. "Jesus of Nazareth, a man ... ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain" (Acts ii, 22, 23). Regicide. "The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David" (Luke i, 32). "This is the King of the Jews" (xxiii, 38). "There they crucified him" (33). Deicide. "The Word [Christ] was God" (John i, 1). "I and my Father are one" (x, 30). "They crucified him" (xix, 18). Suicide. "I [Christ] lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself" (John x, 17, 18). 522 What did Jesus teach respecting the resurrection of the dead and the doctrine of immortality? "For the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth" (John v, 28, 29). "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life" (39). "As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away, so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more."--Job (vii, 9). "His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish."--Psalms (cxlvi, 4). "For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts.... As one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath, so that man hath no preeminence over a beast."--Ecclesiastes (iii, 19). 523 His resurrection is accepted by Christians as a proof and type of man's resurrection and immortality. What was the nature of his resurrection? According to all of the Evangelists it was merely a reanimation of his undecayed body. Other bodies supposedly dead have been revived, but neither these resuscitations nor the supposed reanimation of Jesus' corpse affords proof that bodies which ages ago crumbled into dust and whose particles subsequently entered into the composition of myriads of other bodies will be reunited into the original beings. And as Jesus almost immediately disappeared after his alleged resurrection and has never since been seen this resurrection did not evince his own immortality, much less that of mankind in general. 524 Did Christ descend into hell? Peter: He did (Acts ii, 31; 1 Peter iii, 19). Peter states that "his soul was not left in hell," which necessitates the assumption of his having gone there. He also declares that after his death he "went and preached unto the spirits in prison [hell]." The Confession of Faith (Art. III) says: "As Christ died for us, and was buried; so also is it to be believed that he went down into hell." For what purpose did Christ descend into hell and preach to its inhabitants? If it was to redeem them his mission was fruitless; if it was not to redeem them his mission was useless. Early Christian writers almost uniformly spelled the name of Christ, not "Christos" (the Anointed), but "Chrestos." Chrestos was a Pagan name given to the judge of Hades in the lower world. 525 What is taught regarding justification by faith and justification by works? Paul: "A man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, ... for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified" (Galatians ii, 16). "If righteousness come by the law then Christ is dead in vain" (21). "To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness" (Romans iv, 5). "Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law" (iii, 28). James: "But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?" (ii, 20). "Ye see, then, how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only" (24). The church accepts the teachings of Paul and condemns or ignores the teachings of James. Martin Luther, in his "Table Talk," thus defines the position of the Protestant church: "He that says the gospel requires works for salvation, I say flat and plain he is a liar." "Every doer of the law and every moral worker is accursed, for he walketh in the presumption of his own righteousness." "If men only believe enough in Christ they can commit adultery and murder a thousand times a day without periling their salvation." Luther rejected and denounced the book of James because it teaches the efficacy of good works. The English "Confession of Faith" affirms the following: "That we are justified by Faith only, is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort" (Art. XI). "Works done before the grace of Christ, and the inspiration of the Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ.... Yea rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin" (Art. XIII). "Morality! thou deadly bane, Thy tens o' thousands thou hast slain! Vain is his hope, whose stay and trust is In moral mercy, truth and justice! "No--stretch a point to catch a plack; Abuse a brother to his back; Be to the poor like onie whunstane, And haud their noses to the grunstane; Ply ev'ry art o' legal thieving: No matter, stick to sound believing. "Learn three-mile prayers, and half-mile graces, Wi weel-spread loaves, and lang wry faces, Grunt up a solemn, lengthen'd groan, And damn a' parties but your own: I'll warrant, then, ye're nae deceiver, A steady, sturdy, staunch believer." --Robert Burns. 526 What does Christ teach regarding salvation? "Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die" (John xi, 26). "He that believeth on him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already" (iii, 18). "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not on the Son shall not see life" (36). A demand so preposterous could have been made only in support of claims that were realized to be untenable. Credulity was appealed to because convincing evidence could not be adduced. Claims which reason rejects are manifestly false, and it is only by a renunciation of reason that they can be accepted as true. The absurdity of this requirement of Christ is thus exposed by the poet Shelley: "This is the pivot upon which all religions turn; they all assume that it is in our power to believe or not to believe: whereas the mind can only believe that which it thinks true. A human being can only be supposed accountable for those actions which are influenced by his will. But belief is utterly distinct from and unconnected with volition: it is the apprehension of the agreement or disagreement of the ideas that compose any proposition. Belief is a passion or involuntary operation of the mind, and, like other passions, its intensity is precisely proportionate to the degree of excitement. Volition is essential to merit or demerit. But the Christian religion attaches the highest possible degree of merit and demerit to that which is worthy of neither, and which is totally unconnected with the peculiar faculty of the mind whose presence is essential to their being" (Notes to Queen Mab). 527 Did Christ abrogate the Mosaic law? "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law" (Matthew v, 18). "The law and the prophets were until John; since that time the Kingdom of God is preached" (Luke xvi, 16). Paul: "The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come we are no longer under a schoolmaster" (Galatians iii, 24, 25). "But now we are delivered from the law" (Romans vii, 6). "Christ certainly did come to destroy the law and the prophets."--Henry Ward Beecher. 528 What is taught regarding the forgiveness of sin? "He [God] is faithful and just to forgive sins" (1 John i, 9). "The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins" (Mark ii, 10). "Today I offer you the pardon of the gospel--full pardon, free pardon. I do not care what your crime has been. Though you say you have committed a crime against God, against your own soul, against your fellow-man, against your family, against the day of judgment, against the cross of Christ--whatever your crime has been, here is pardon, full pardon, and the very moment you take that pardon your heavenly Father throws his arms about you and says: 'My son, I forgive you. It is all right. You are as much in my favor now as if you never had sinned.'"--Dr. Talmage. This doctrine of forgiveness of sin is a premium on crime. "Forgive us our sins" means "Let us continue in our iniquity." It is one of the most pernicious of doctrines, and one of the most fruitful sources of immorality. It has been the chief cause of making Christian nations the most immoral of nations. In teaching this doctrine Christ committed a sin for which his death did not atone, and which can never be forgiven. There is no forgiveness of sin. Every cause has its effect; every sinner must suffer the consequences of his sins. 529 What is taught regarding future rewards and punishments? "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned" (Mark xvi, 16). These words, while appearing in the unauthentic appendix to Mark, yet express clearly the alleged teachings of Jesus. Above all they have formed the key note of orthodox Christianity in all ages of the church. Between the lines of this passage the eye of the unfettered mind discerns in large capitals the word FRAUD. These words are the words of an impostor. Had Jesus been divine he would not have been compelled to resort to bribes and threats to secure the world's adherence. Had he even been a sincere man he would not have desired converts on such terms. These words are either the utterance of a false Messiah, conscious of his impotency, or the invention of priests who intended them to frighten the ignorant and credulous into an acceptance of their faith. Concerning this teaching Col. Ingersoll says: "Redden your hands with human blood; blast by slander the fair fame of the innocent; strangle the smiling child upon its mother's knees; deceive, ruin, and desert the beautiful girl who loves and trusts you, and your case is not hopeless. For all this, and for all these, you may be forgiven. For all this, and for all these, that bankrupt court established by the gospel will give you a discharge; but deny the existence of these divine ghosts, of these gods, and the sweet and tearful face of Mercy becomes livid with eternal hate. Heaven's golden gates are shut, and you, with an infinite curse ringing in your ears, with the brand of infamy upon your brow, commence your endless wanderings in the lurid gloom of hell--an immortal vagrant, an eternal outcast, a deathless convict." "A gloomy heaven above opening its jealous gates to the nineteen-thousandth part of the tithe of mankind! And below an inexorable Hell expanding its leviathan jaws for the vast residue of mortals! O doctrine comfortable and healing to the weary wounded soul of man!"--Robert Burns. 530 Did he teach the doctrine of endless punishment? "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment" (Matthew xxv, 46). That is the most infamous passage in all literature. It is the language, not of an incarnate God, but of an incarnate devil. The being who gave utterance to those words deserves not the worship, but the execration of mankind. The priests who preach this doctrine of eternal pain are fiends. There is misery enough in this world without adding to it the mental anguish of this monstrous lie. Less than a hundred years ago, when Christ was yet believed to be divine, in nearly every pulpit, to frighten timid and confiding mothers, dimpled babes were consigned to the red flames of this eternal hell. Then came the preachers of humanity--the Ballous, the Channings, the Parkers and the Beechers--preachers with hearts and brains, who sought to humanize this heavenly demon, to make of him a decent man, and civilize his fiendish priests. To these men is due the debt of everlasting gratitude. With the return of every spring the emancipated of the race should build above their sacred dust a pyramid of flowers. Not by the sects known as Universalists and Unitarians, small in numbers, though in the character of their adherents the greatest of the Christian sects, must we estimate the importance of the work of Ballou and Channing and other Liberal ministers. The influence of their teachings has permeated every Christian sect, and quickened every humane conscience. In the minds of all intelligent Christians, largely as the result of their labors, this heartless demon and this cruel dogma are dead. In their creeds they still survive. They are ashamed of the dogma; they abhor it. They should abhor its author, and banish both. "What! I should call on that Infinite Love that has served us so well? Infinite cruelty rather, that made everlasting hell, Made us, foreknew us, foredoom'd us, and does what he will with his own; Better our dead brute mother who never has heard us groan." --Tennyson. 531 Is it possible to fall from grace? Peter: "If after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning" (2 Peter ii, 20). "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand" (John x, 27, 28). "There is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized."--Confession of Faith, Art. IX. 532 Is baptism essential to salvation? "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved" (Mark xvi, 16). "Except a man be born of the water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God" (John iii, 5). "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them" (Matthew xxviii, 19). Was the penitent thief baptized? Paul says: "I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius.... For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel" (1 Corinthians i, 14, 17). 533 What constitutes Christian baptism, immersion or sprinkling? With millions of Bibles in circulation, the Christian does not know. If he affirms, as many scholars affirm, that immersion is the mode authorized by the Bible, then he must admit that the greater portion of Christendom has rejected this mode and adopted one not authorized by the Scriptures. To whom is this rite to be administered, to both adults and infants, or to adults alone? After eighteen centuries of controversy; after employing millions of priests to interpret the Scriptures; after Anabaptists and Pedobaptists have baptized their swords in each others' blood, the church is not prepared to answer. 534 Did Christ command his disciples to repeat and perpetuate the observance of the Eucharist? Luke: He did. "This do in remembrance of me." Matthew, Mark and John: He did not. It is admitted by Dr. Westcott and others that the earlier versions of Luke did not contain the injunction quoted. Christ, then, according to the Four Gospels did not institute the Eucharist as a sacrament to be observed by his disciples and the church. Referring to the Twelve Apostles, the Rev. Dr. Minot J. Savage says: "They knew nothing about any sacraments; they had not been instituted" (What is Christianity?). 535 What did he teach in regard to the efficacy of prayer? "All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive" (Matthew xxi, 22). This is one of the cardinal doctrines of his religion. He is continually impressing upon the minds of his hearers the necessity and the efficacy of prayer. Referring to this doctrine, Greg says: "This doctrine has in all ages been a stumbling block to the thoughtful. It is obviously irreconcilable with all that reason and revelation teach us of the divine nature; and the inconsistency has been felt by the ablest of the Scripture writers themselves. Various and desperate have been the expedients and suppositions resorted to, in order to reconcile the conception of an immutable, all-wise, all-foreseeing God, with that of a father who is turned from his course by the prayers of his creatures. But all such efforts are, and are felt to be, hopeless failures. They involve the assertion and negation of the same proposition in one breath. The problem remains still insoluble; and we must either be content to leave it so, or we must abandon one or other of the hostile premises. "The religious man, who believes that all events, mental as well as physical, are pre-ordered and arranged according to the decrees of infinite wisdom, and the philosopher, who knows that, by the wise and eternal laws of the universe, cause and effect are indissolubly chained together, and that one follows the other in inevitable succession--equally feel that this ordination--this chain--cannot be changed at the cry of man. To suppose that it can is to place the whole harmonious system of nature at the mercy of the weak reason and the selfish wishes of humanity. If the purposes of God were not wise, they would not be formed: if wise, they cannot be changed, for then they would become unwise. To suppose that an all-wise Being would alter his designs and modes of proceeding at the entreaty of an unknowing creature, is to believe that compassion would change his wisdom into foolishness.... If the universe is governed by fixed laws, or (which is the same proposition in different language), if all events are pre-ordained by the foreseeing wisdom of an infinite God, then the prayers of thousands of years and generations of martyrs and saints cannot change or modify one iota of our destiny. The proposition is unassailable by the subtlest logic. The weak, fond affections of humanity struggle in vain against the unwelcome conclusion" (Creed of Christendom, pp. 322, 323). 536 Where are we commanded to pray? "When thou prayest enter into thy closet" (Matthew vi, 6). How long ought we to continue in prayer? "Men ought always to pray" (Luke xviii, 1). 537 Did Christ assume for himself the power of answering petitions? "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name that will I do" (John xiv, 13). But soon realizing that his capital was too small to conduct a business of such magnitude, he was compelled to announce that, "Whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you" (xv, 16). 538 Does God know our wants? "Your father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him" (Matthew vi, 8). Then what is the use of prayer? Is God a mischievous urchin taunting his hungry dog with a morsel of bread, and shouting, "Beg, Tray, beg!"? 539 What portion of their goods did he require the rich to give the poor to obtain salvation? Rich Ruler, No. 1: "Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" (Luke xviii, 18.) Jesus: "Sell all that thou hast and distribute unto the poor" (22). Rich Ruler, No. 2: "Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor" (Luke xix, 8). Jesus: "This day is salvation come to this house" (9). 540 What did he teach respecting the publicity of good works? "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works" (Matthew v, 16). "Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men to be seen of them" (vi, 1, New Ver.). 541 What original rules of table observance did he teach his disciples? Matthew: To abstain from washing their hands before eating. "They wash not their hands when they eat bread" (xv, 2). John: To wash their feet after eating. "He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel and girded himself. After that he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded" (xiii, 4, 5). The proneness of Christ's followers to neglect his ordinances and precepts which require some sacrifice or effort to obey, and the readiness with which they observe those which do not, find a fitting illustration in the reception accorded these teachings. While the early Christians, many of them, accepted the first as a religious obligation not to be violated, the second was ignored. Writing of Christian monks and nuns, Lecky says: "The cleanliness of the body was regarded as a pollution of the soul, and the saints who were most admired had become one hideous mass of clotted filth. St. Athanasius relates with enthusiasm how St. Antony, the patriarch of monachism, had never, to extreme old age, been guilty of washing his feet.... St. Abraham the hermit, however, who lived for fifty years after his conversion, rigidly refused from that date to wash either his face or feet.... St. Euphraxia joined a convent of one hundred and thirty nuns, who never washed their feet, and who shuddered at the mention of a bath" (European Morals, Vol. II, pp. 109, 110). 542 What religious formula is to be found in the New Testament? "In the name of Jesus." "In the name of Jesus" the disciples cast out devils and performed other miracles; "In the name of Jesus" they baptized their converts; "In the name of Jesus" salvation was secured. This formula, with various modifications, is in general use in the church today. It betrays the heathen origin of Christianity. Referring to its use Prof. Meinhold of Bonn University says: "Name and person were at one time closely combined, and elementary religious ideas were connected with the words. He who knew the name of a divinity and could pronounce it was in this way able to secure a blessing. It was the use of the name of Jesus in the sacraments that made them effective, in the spirit of sorcery. This idea came from the lowest type of religious thought, reflected in religious mysteries in the days of Jesus, and was embodied in the earliest Christianity." 543 What is taught respecting the use of oaths? God: "Swear by my name" (Jeremiah xii, 16). Christ: "Swear not at all" (Matthew v, 34). 544 What opposing rules of proselytism did Christ promulgate? "He that is not with me is against me" (Luke xi, 23). "He that is not against us is for us" (Luke ix, 50). 545 What is to befall him that hath nothing? "Whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath" (Matthew xiii, 12). Ex nihilo nihil fit. 546 What did he say would be the fate of those who took up the sword? "They that take the sword shall perish with the sword" (Matthew xxvi, 52). He evidently considered this commendable, for he immediately issued the following command to his disciples: "He that hath no sword let him sell his garments and buy one" (Luke xxii, 36). 547 What did he say regarding the fear of death? "Be not afraid of them that kill the body" (Luke xii, 4). "After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him" (John vii, 1). 548 What is to be the earthly reward of those that follow Christ? "There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, but he shall receive a hundred fold now in this time" (Mark x, 29, 30). "Who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?" (1 Peter iii, 13.) "For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matthew xi, 30). "In the world ye shall have tribulation" (John xvi, 33). "Ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake" (Luke xxi, 17). "Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution" (2 Tim. iii, 12). "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth" (Hebrews xii, 6). 549 What promise did Christ make to Paul at the commencement of his ministry? "I am with thee and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee" (Acts xviii, 10). "Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned" (2 Corinthians xi, 24, 25). 550 How are Christ's true followers to be distinguished from those of the devil? "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin" (1 John iii, 9). "He that committeth sin is of the devil" (8). Judged by this standard what is the comparative strength of these sovereigns' subjects? "There is no man that sinneth not" (1 Kings viii, 46). "There is not a just man upon earth" (Ecclesiastes vii, 20). "There is none righteous, no, not one" (Romans iii, 10). 551 Great stress is placed upon the moral teachings of Jesus. What did he teach? Did he advocate industry and frugality? "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth" (Matthew vi, 19). "Take no thought for your life what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on" (25). "Take therefore no thought for the morrow" (34). 552 What were the early Christians? Acts: They were Communists. "They had all things common.... For as many as were possessors of land or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles' feet; and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need" (iv, 32-35). Most Christians condemn Communism; but was the Communism of nineteen hundred years ago better than the Communism of today? To condemn Communism is to condemn primitive Christianity. Yet, Christians profess to abhor the Communistic ideas of modern teachers, while they worship as a God the founder of this Communistic sect of Palestine. 553 What did he teach respecting poverty and wealth? "Blessed be ye poor" (Luke vi, 20). "Woe unto you that are rich" (24). Poverty is a curse; wealth honestly acquired and wisely used is a blessing. "The rich man's wealth is his strong city: the destruction of the poor is their poverty" (Proverbs x, 15). 554 In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, what befell the representatives of vagrancy and respectability? "The beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom" (Luke xvi, 22). "The rich man also died, ... and in hell he lifted up his eyes" (22, 23). "See the red flames around him twine Who did in gold and purple shine! "While round the saint so poor below, Full rivers of salvation flow. "Jesus, my Lord, let me appear The meanest of thy creatures here." 555 Why was Dives' request that his brothers be informed of their impending fate refused? "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them" (Luke xvi, 29). Moses and the prophets do not teach the doctrine of endless punishment, nor even that of a future existence, much less that the mere possession of wealth, acquired perhaps by honest industry, is a crime which can be expiated only by the sufferings of an endless hell. Christ's Kingdom was a kingdom of vagrants and paupers. "A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew xix, 23). "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (24). 556 While at the temple with his disciples what act did he commend? Mark and Luke: That of the poor widow who threw two mites into the treasury (Mark xii, 43; Luke xxi, 3). This widow's offering illustrates the characteristic generosity of the poor and the heartless greed of the church. This text has enabled a horde of indolent priests to prey upon widows and orphans; to filch the scanty earnings of the poor, and live like parasites upon the weak and sickly calves of humanity. 557 Did he practice the virtue of temperance? "The Son of Man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man and a winebibber" (Luke vii, 34). 558 What was his first miracle? John: "There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee.... And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine.... And there were set there six water pots of stone, ... containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the water pots with water. And they filled them up to the brim" (ii, 1-7). This water he turned into wine. Here is Christ supplying a party already "well drunk" with more than one hundred gallons of wine. As they were intoxicated when he performed the miracle, would it not have been better for them and better for the millions who have accepted him as a moral guide, if at the beginning of the feast he had turned the wine into water? The morality taught by Jesus suffers in comparison with that taught by Mohammed. Mohammed prohibited the use of intoxicating drink, and the Mohammedans are a temperate people; Jesus sanctioned the use of intoxicating drink, and the Christian world abounds with drunkenness. Referring to the miracle at Cana, Strauss says: "Not only, however, has the miracle been impeached in relation to possibility, but also in relation to utility and fitness. It has been urged both in ancient and modern times, that it was unworthy of Jesus that he should not only remain in the society of drunkards, but even further their intemperance by an exercise of his miraculous power" (Leben Jesu, p. 584). 559 Did he oppose slavery? All: He did not. "Slavery was incorporated into the civil institutions of Moses; it was recognized accordingly by Christ and his apostles."--Rev. Dr. Nathan Lord, President of Dartmouth College. "At the time of the advent of Jesus Christ, slavery in its worst forms prevailed over the world. The Savior found it around him in Judea; the apostles met with it in Asia, Greece and Italy. How did they treat it? Not by denunciation of slave-holding as necessarily sinful."--Prof. Hodge of Princeton. "I have no doubt if Jesus Christ were now on earth that he would, under certain circumstances, become a slaveholder."--Rev. Dr. Taylor of Yale. Rousseau says: "Christ preaches only servitude and dependence.... True Christians are made to be slaves." 560 What did the apostles teach? Peter: "Servants [slaves], be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward" (1 Peter ii, 18). Paul: "Let as many servants [slaves] as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor" (1 Timothy vi, 1). "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling" (Ephesians vi, 5). The Rev. Dr. Wilbur Fisk, president of Wesleyan University, says: "The New Testament enjoins obedience upon the slave as an obligation due to a present rightful authority." 561 Did he favor marriage? Matthew: He advocated celibacy, and even self-mutilation as preferable to marriage (xix, 10-12). Following this teaching of their Master, Christians, many of them, have condemned marriage. A Christian pope, Siricius, branded it as "a pollution of the flesh." St. Jerome taught that the duty of the saint was to "cut down by the axe of Virginity the wood of Marriage." Pascal says: "Marriage is the lowest and most dangerous condition of the Christian." G. W. Foote of England says: "Jesus appears to have despised the union of the sexes, therefore marriage, and therefore the home. He taught that in heaven, where all is perfect, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage." "Monks and nuns innumerable owe to this evil teaching their shriveled lives and withered hearts."--Mrs. Besant. 562 What did he encourage women to do? Luke: To leave their husbands and homes, and follow and associate with him and his roving apostles--"Mary, called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance" (viii, 2, 3). 563 What did he say respecting children? "Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not." But it was only the children of Jews he welcomed. The afflicted child of a Gentile he spurned as a dog. When the woman of Canaan desired him to heal her daughter, he brutally replied: "It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs" (Matthew xv, 26). The soldiers who spit on Jesus in Pilate's hall did not do a meaner thing than Jesus did that day. And if he afterwards consented to cure the child it was not as an act of humanity to the sufferer, but as a reward for the mother's faith in him. Concerning this brutal act of Jesus, Helen Gardener says: "Do you think that was kind? Do you think it was godlike? What would you think of a physician, if a woman came to him distressed and said, 'Doctor, come to my daughter; she is very ill. She has lost her reason, and she is all I have!' What would you think of the doctor who would not reply at all at first, and then, when she fell at his feet and worshiped him, answered that he did not spend his time doctoring dogs? Would you like him as a family physician? Do you think that, even if he were to cure the child then, he would have done a noble thing? Is it evidence of a perfect character to accompany a service with an insult? Do you think that a man who could offer such an indignity to a sorrowing mother has a perfect character, is an ideal God?" 564 He enjoined the observance of the commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother." Did he respect it himself? More striking examples of filial ingratitude are not to be found than are exhibited in the Gospel history of Jesus Christ. When visiting Jerusalem with his parents, he allows them to depart for home without him, thinking that he is with another part of the company; and when they return to search for him and find him, he manifests no concern for the trouble he has caused; when during his ministry his mother and brothers are announced, he receives them with a sneer; at the marriage feast, when his mother kindly speaks to him, he brutally exclaims, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" Throughout the Four Gospels not one respectful word to that devoted mother is recorded. Even in his last hours, when the mental anguish of that mother must have equaled his own physical suffering, not one word of comfort or farewell greeting escapes from his lips; but the same studied disrespect that has characterized him all his life is exhibited here. 565 Did he not promote domestic strife? "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: for from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law" (Luke xii, 51-53). "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law" (Matthew x, 34, 35). 566 What did he require of his disciples? "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke xiv, 26). It is scarcely possible in this age of enlightenment and unbelief to realize what sorrows and miseries these accursed teachings of Christ once caused. The eminent historian Lecky, in his "History of European Morals," has attempted to describe some of their awful consequences. From his pages I quote the following: "To break by his ingratitude the heart of the mother who had borne him, to persuade the wife who adored him that it was her duty to separate from him forever, to abandon his children, uncared for and beggars, to the mercies of the world, was regarded by the true hermit as the most acceptable offering he could make to his God. His business was to save his own soul. The serenity of his devotion would be impaired by the discharge of the simplest duties to his family. Evagrius, when a hermit in the desert, received, after a long interval, letters from his father and mother. He could not bear that the equable tenor of his thought should be disturbed by the recollection of those who loved him, so he cast the letters unread into the fire. A man named Mutius, accompanied by his only child, a little boy of eight years old, abandoned his possessions and demanded admission into a monastery. The monks received him, but they proceeded to discipline his heart. 'He had already forgotten that he was rich; he must next be taught to forget that he was a father.' His little child was separated from him, clothed in rags, subjected to every form of gross and wanton hardship, beaten, spurned and ill-treated. Day after day the father was compelled to look upon his boy wasting away with sorrow, his once happy countenance forever stained with tears, distorted by sobs of anguish. But yet, says the admiring biographer, 'though he saw this day by day, such was his love for Christ, and for the virtue of obedience, that the father's heart was rigid and unmoved' (Vol. ii, 125, 126). "He [St. Simeon Stylites] had been passionately loved by his parents, and, if we may believe his eulogist and biographer, he began his saintly career by breaking the heart of his father, who died of grief at his flight. His mother, however, lingered on. Twenty-seven years after his disappearance, at a period when his austerities had made him famous, she heard for the first time where he was and hastened to visit him. But all her labor was in vain. No woman was admitted within the precincts of his dwelling, and he refused to permit her even to look upon his face. Her entreaties and tears were mingled with words of bitter and eloquent reproach. 'My son,' she is represented as having said, 'why have you done this? I bore you in my womb, and you have wrung my soul with grief. I gave you milk from my breast, you have filled my eyes with tears. For the kisses I gave you, you have given me the anguish of a broken heart; for all that I have done and suffered for you, you have repaid me by the most cruel wrongs.' At last the saint sent a message to her to tell her that she would soon see him. Three days and three nights she had wept and entreated in vain, and now, exhausted with grief and age and privation, she sank feebly to the ground and breathed her last sigh before that inhospitable door. Then for the first time the saint, accompanied by his followers, came out. He shed some pious tears over the corpse of his murdered mother, and offered up a prayer consigning her soul to heaven" (Ibid, 130). 567 Did he not indulge in vituperation and abuse? "Ye fools and blind" (Matthew xxiii, 17). "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites" (14). "All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers" (John x, 8). "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" (Matthew xxiii, 33.) Regarding these abusive epithets of Christ, Prof. Newman says: "The Jewish nation may well complain that they have been cruelly slandered by the gospels. The invectives have been burnt into the heart of Christendom, so that the innocent Jews, children of the dispersion, have felt in millennial misery--yes, and to this day feel--the deadly sting of these fierce and haughty utterances" (Jesus Christ, p. 25). 568 Relate his treatment of the Pharisee who invited him to dine with him. Luke: "And as he spake, a certain Pharisee besought him to dine with him; and he went in, and sat down to meat. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that he had not first washed before dinner. And the Lord said unto him, now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. Ye fools ... hypocrites!" (xi, 37-44.) Was such insolence of manners on the part of Jesus calculated to promote the interest of the cause he professed to hold so dear at heart? Supposing a Freethinker were to receive an invitation to dine with a Christian friend and were to repay the hospitality of his host with rudeness and abuse, interrupting the ceremony of "grace" with an oath or a sneer, and showering upon the head of his friend such epithets as "hypocrite" and "fool." Would such insolent behavior have a tendency to gain for him the world's esteem or aid the cause he represents? And are we to approve in a God conduct that we regard as detestable in a man? It may be urged that God is not subject to the rules of human conduct. Grant it; but is it necessary for him in order to exhibit his divine character to assume the manners of a brute? 569 Do the Pharisees deserve the sweeping condemnation heaped upon them by Christ and his followers? In marked contrast to the diatribes of Jesus is the testimony of Josephus: "Now, for the Pharisees, they live meanly [plainly], and despise delicacies in diet, and they follow the conduct of reason; and what that prescribes to them as good for them, they do; and they think they ought earnestly to strive to observe reason's dictates for practice.... The cities give great attestations to them on account of their entire virtuous conduct, both in the actions of their lives, and their discourses also" (Antiquities, Book xviii, chap. i, sec. 3). Paul, the Christian, when arraigned before Agrippa, believed that no loftier testimonial to his character could be adduced than the fact that he had been a Pharisee (Acts xxvi, 4, 5). 570 What is said in regard to his purging the temple? John: "And the Jews' Passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: and when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables" (ii, 13-15). No currency but the Jewish was accepted in the temple, while doves, lambs, and other animals were required for offerings. These persons performed the very necessary office of supplying the Jews with offerings and exchanging Jewish coins for the Roman money then in general circulation. What right he had to interfere with the lawful business of these men, and especially in the manner in which he did, it is difficult to understand. 571 Describe the cursing of the fig tree. Matthew: "Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered. And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away" (xxi, 18, 19). Jesus cursed a living tree and it died; Mohammed blessed a dead tree and it lived. The alleged conduct of Jesus on many occasions, notably his harsh treatment of his mother, his abuse of the Pharisees, his purging the temple and his cursing the fig tree, is not the conduct of a rational being, but rather that of a madman. If these stories be historical they would indicate that he was not wholly responsible for his words and acts. Dr. Jules Soury, of the University of France, believes that he was the victim of an incurable mental disorder. In a work on morbid psychology, entitled "Studies on Jesus and The Gospels," Dr. Soury cites a long array of seemingly indisputable facts in support of his theory. From his preface to the work, I quote the following: "Jesus the God, gone down in his glory, like a star sunk beneath the horizon but still shedding a few faint rays on the world, threw a halo round the brow of Jesus the Prophet. In the dull glow of that twilight, in the melancholy but charming hour when everything seemed wrapped in vague, ethereal tints, Jesus appeared to Strauss and Renan such as he had shown himself to his first disciples, the Master par-excellence, a man truly divine. Then came the night; and as darkness descended on those flickering gospel beginnings there remained nought to be descried through the obscurity of dubious history, but dimly looming, the portentous outline of the gibbet and its victim. "In the present work Jesus makes his appearance, perhaps for the first time, as a sufferer from a grave malady, the course of which we have attempted to trace. "The nervous, or cerebral disorder, at first congestive and then inflammatory, under which he labored, was not only deep-seated and dangerous--it was incurable. Among us at the present time that affection may be seen daily making kings, millionaires, popes, prophets, saints, and even divinities of poor fellows who have lost their balance; it has produced more than one Messiah. "If we be right in the interpretation of data which has been followed in the study of morbid psychology, Jesus, at the time of his death, was in a somewhat advanced stage of this disorder, He was, to all appearance, cut off opportunely; the gibbet saved him from actual madness. "The diagnosis which we have ventured to draw is based on three sets of facts which are attested by the most ancient and trustworthy of the witnesses of his career. "1. Religious excitement, then general in Palestine, drove Jesus to the wilderness, where he lived some time the life of a recluse, as those who considered themselves to have the prophetic mission often did. Carried away with the idea that he was divinely inspired to proclaim the coming of the Messiah, he left his own people and his native place, and, attended by a following of fishermen and others of the same class, went about among the towns and villages of Galilee announcing the speedy approach of the Kingdom of Heaven. "2. After having proclaimed the coming of the Messiah, like other contemporary Jewish prophets, Jesus gradually came to look upon himself as the Messiah, the Christ. He allowed himself to be called the Son of David, the Son of God, and had among his followers one, if not more, of those fanatical Sicarii, so graphically described by Josephus, who were waiting for the deliverance of Israel from the yoke of Rome. Progressive obliteration of the consciousness of his personal identity marks the interval between the somewhat vague revelation which he made to his disciples at the foot of Mount Hermon and the day when, before Caiaphas and before Pilate, he openly declared that he was the Messiah, and by that token the King of the Jews. "3. The cursing of the fig tree whereon there were no figs, because 'the time of figs was not yet,' the violent conduct toward the dealers and changers at the temple, were manifestly foolish acts. Jesus had come to believe that everything was permitted him, that all things belonged to him, that nothing was too hard for him to do. For a long time he had given evident signs of perversion of the natural affections, especially with respect to his mother and brethren. To the fits of anger against the priests and religious ministers of his nation, to the ambitious extravagance of his words and acts, to the wild dream of his Messianic grandeur, there rapidly supervened a characteristic depression of the mental faculties and strength, a giving way of the intellectual and muscular powers. "Each of those periods in the career of Jesus corresponds to a certain pathological state of his nervous system. "By reacting on the heart, the religious excitement he labored under and the attendant functional exacerbations had the immediate effect of accelerating the circulation, unduly dilating the blood vessels, and producing cerebral congestion. "Chronic congestion of the brain, subjectively considered, is always attended in the initial stage with great increase of the moral consciousness, extraordinary activity of the imagination, often leading to hallucinations, and later on with absurdly exaggerated, frequently delirious ideas of power and greatness. That stage is also usually characterized by irritability and fits of passion. "Objectively considered what is observable is hypertrophy of the cellules and nerve-tubes, excessive cerebral plethora and vascularity due to the great efflux of blood and superabundant nutrition of the encephalon. Inflammation of the meningeal covering, and of the brain itself, is, sooner or later, a further result of the chronic congestion. The vessels, turgid and loaded with blood, permit the transudation of the blood globules; the circulation becomes impeded, then arrested, with the result of depriving the cortical cerebral substance of arterial blood, which is its life; the histological elements undergo alteration, degenerate, become softened, and as the disorganization proceeds are finally reduced to inert detritus. "The brain may remain capable more or less well of performing its functions when deprived to a large extent of its necessary food, but not so when the cerebral cellules are disorganized. Dementia consequently is the natural sequel of the congestive stage. To the destruction of the cortical substance supervenes partial or total loss of consciousness, according to the extent of the lesion. Such portions of the encephalon as continue capable of performing any duty being in a state of hyperaemia, there is often delirium more or less intense up to the last. "The process of the disorder is irregular; remissions occur during which the reasoning faculties seem to be recovered. But whether the duration extends only to a few months or to several years, the increasing weakness of the patient, the intellectual and muscular decay, the cachetic state into which he falls, the lesions of other organs performing essential functions which ensue, bring life to a close, and frequently without suffering. "This is how Jesus would have ended had he been spared the violent death of the cross." Nearly all the religious founders have been affected, to a greater or less extent, with insanity. Genius itself is closely allied to insanity--is indeed, in many cases, a form of insanity. Moreau de Tours in his "La Psychologie Morbide" (p. 234) says: "The mental disposition which causes a man to be distinguished from his fellows by the originality of his mind and conceptions, by his eccentricity, and the energy of his affective faculties, or by the transcendence of his intelligence, take their rise in the very same organic conditions which are the source of the various mental perturbations whereof insanity and idiocy are the most complete expressions." Buddha, Mohammed, and probably Jesus, united with certain strong mental and moral characteristics, a form of insanity which manifested itself in a sort of religious madness--a madness that was contagious and which has attacked and afflicted the greater portion of the human race. 572 Did he not teach the doctrine of demoniacal possession and exorcism? Synoptics: He did. After alluding to the prevalency of superstition among the Jews of this period, Renan says: "Jesus on this point differed in no respect from his companions. He believed in the devil, whom he regarded as a kind of evil genius, and he imagined, like all the world, that nervous maladies were produced by demons who possessed the patient and agitated him" (Life of Jesus, p. 59). Dr. Geikie says: "The New Testament leaves us in no doubt of the belief, on the part of Jesus and the Evangelists, in the reality of these demoniacal possessions" (Life of Christ, vol. ii, p. 573). Demonology was born of ignorance and superstition. In this debasing superstition Jesus believed. It was a part of his religion, and has remained a part of Christianity; for while the more intelligent of his professed disciples have outgrown this superstition they have to the same extent outgrown Christianity. The more ignorant, the more depraved, and, at the same time, the more devout of his followers, still accept it. Regarding this superstition, the author of "Supernatural Religion" says: "The diseases referred to by the gospels, and by the Jews of that time, to the action of devils, exist now, but they are known to proceed from purely physical causes. The same superstition and medical ignorance would enunciate the same diagnosis at the present day. The superstition and ignorance, however, have passed away, and, with them, the demoniacal theory. In that day the theory was as baseless as in this. It is obvious that, with the necessary abandonment of the theory of 'possession' and demoniacal origin of disease, the largest class of miracles recorded in the gospels is at once exploded. The asserted cause of the diseases of this class, said to have been miraculously healed, must be recognized to be a mere vulgar superstition" (p. 159). Prof. Huxley, in one of his essays, discussing the Gadarene miracle, says: "When such a story as that about the Gadarene swine is placed before us, the importance of the decision, whether it be accepted or rejected, cannot be overestimated. If the demonological part of it is to be accepted, the authority of Jesus is unmistakably pledged to the demonological system current in Judea in the first century. The belief in devils who possess men and can be transferred from men to pigs becomes as much a part of Christian dogma as any article of the creeds." 573 What became of the swine into which Jesus ordered the devils to go? Matthew: "And behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters" (viii, 32). It may be pertinent to inquire what these inoffensive animals had done that they should merit such cruelty, or what their owner had done that his property should be thus wantonly destroyed. In his narrative of this miracle Fleetwood says: "The spectators beheld, at a distance, the torments these poor creatures suffered; with what amazing rapidity they ran to the confines of the lake, leaped from the precipices into the sea, and perished in the waters" (Life of Christ, p. 121). In striking contrast to the religion of Buddha, the religion of Christ has made its adherents cruel and unmerciful. To this Christian writer the torture and destruction of these domestic animals is no more than the burning of a field of stubble. In this miracle he sees only a manifestation of love and kindness on the part of his Savior. Referring to the request of the inhabitants that he depart from their country, he says: "The stupid request of the Gadarenes was complied with by the blessed Jesus, who, entering the ship, returned to the country from whence he came, leaving them a valuable pledge of his love, and us a noble pattern of perseverance in well-doing, even when our kindnesses are condemned or requited with injuries" (Ibid, p. 122). 574 What did Jesus say to the strange Samaritan woman whom he met at the well? "Thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband" (John iv, 18). "Christ here makes himself a wandering gypsy, or Bohemian fortune teller, and I much wonder that our gypsies do not account themselves the genuine disciples of Jesus, being endowed with like gifts, and exercising no worse arts than he himself practiced."--Woolston. 575 Was he not an egotist and given to vulgar boasting? Speaking of himself, he said: "Behold, a greater than Solomon is here" (Matthew xii, 41, 42). 576 Did he not practice dissimulation? John: "And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I know that thou hearest me always, but because of the people which stand by I said it" (xi, 41, 42). Luke: After his resurrection when he intended to stop at Emmaus with his companions, "He made as though he would have gone further" (xxiv, 28). 577 After performing one of his miraculous cures, what charge did he make to those who witnessed it? Mark: "He charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it" (vii, 36). Did he desire them to disregard his commands? If he did he was a hypocrite; if he did not he was an impotent--in either case a fallible man instead of an omnipotent God. 578 On the approach of the Passover what did he say to his brethren? "Go ye up unto this feast; I go not up yet unto this feast" (John vii, 8). The correct reading of the last clause is, "I go not up unto the feast." The American revisers, to their credit, urged the adoption of this reading; but the Oxford revisers retained the error. In uttering these words, Jesus, if omniscient, uttered an untruth; for John says: "But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret" (10). 579 Why did he teach in parables? "That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them" (Mark iv, 12). He deceived the people that he might have the pleasure of seeing them damned. 580 What immoral lesson is inculcated in the parable of the Steward? He commends as wise and prudent the action of the steward, who, to provide for his future welfare, causes his master's creditors to defraud him. "There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. So he called every one of his lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he unto another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill and write fourscore. And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely; for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations" (Luke xvi, 1-9). 581 In the parable of the Laborers what unjust doctrine is taught? The assignment of equal rewards for unequal burdens. He justifies the dishonest bargaining of the householder who received twelve hours of labor for a penny, when he paid the same amount for one (Matthew xx, 1-16). Regarding the parables of Jesus, W. P. Ball, an English writer, says: "With one single exception, the parables attributed to Jesus are thoroughly religious and decidedly inferior in their moral tone, besides possessing minor faults. The God who is to be the object of our adoration and imitation is depicted to us as a judge who will grant vengeance in answer to incessant prayer, as a father who loves and honors the favorite prodigal and neglects the faithful and obedient worker, as an employer who pays no more for a life-time than for the nominal service of a death-bed repentance, as an unreasonable master who reaps where he has not sown and punishes men because he made them defective and gave them no instructions, as a harsh despot who delivers disobedient servants to tormentors and massacres those who object to his rule, as a judge who is merciful to harlots and relentless towards unbelievers, as a petulant king who drives beggars and outcasts into the heaven which is ignored by the wise and worthy, as a ruler of the universe who freely permits his enemy the devil to sow evil and then punishes his victims, as a God who plunges men in the flames of hell and calmly philosophizes over the reward of the blest who from Abraham's bosom behold the sight and are not permitted to bestow even so much as a drop of cold water to cool the parched tongues of their fellow-creatures amidst hopeless and unending agonies, in comparison with which all earthly sufferings are but momentary dreams." 582 What did he teach regarding submission to theft and robbery? "Of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again" (Luke vi, 30). 583 Why was the woman taken in adultery released without punishment? John: Because those having her in custody were not without sin themselves (viii, 3-11). The adoption of this principle would require the liberation of every criminal, because all men are fallible. If man cannot punish crime because not free from sin himself, is it just in God, the author of all sin, to punish man for his sins? 584 Whom did he pronounce blessed? "Blessed are the poor in spirit" (Matthew v, 3). "Is poverty of spirit a blessing? Surely not. Manliness of spirit, honesty of spirit, fulness of rightful purpose, these are virtues; but poverty of spirit is a crime."--Bradlaugh. 585 Did he teach resistance to wrong? "Unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other" (Luke vi, 29). "He who courts oppression shares the crime." Lord Amberley, referring to this teaching of Jesus, says: "A doctrine more convenient for the purposes of tyrants and malefactors of every description it would be difficult to invent" (Analysis of Religious Belief, p. 355). 586 He taught his hearers to return good for evil. Did he do this himself? "I pray for them [his followers], I pray not for the world" (John xvii, 9). "Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father" (Matthew x, 33). 587 The Golden Rule has been ascribed to Christ. Was he its author? Five hundred years before the time of Christ Confucius taught: "What you do not like when done to yourself do not to others." Centuries before the Christian era Pittacus, Thales, Sextus, Isocrates and Aristotle taught the same. 588 What maxim does Paul attribute to Jesus? "Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts xx, 35). These are not "the words of the Lord Jesus," but of the Pagan Epicurus, a man whose character Christians have for centuries defamed. Concerning the teachings of Jesus, Col. Thomas W. Higginson says: "When they tell me that Jesus taught a gospel of love, I say I believe it. Plato taught a gospel of love before him, and you deny it. If they say, Jesus taught that it is better to bear an injury than to retaliate, I say, yes, but so did Aristotle before Jesus was born. I will accept it as the statement of Jesus if you will admit that Aristotle said it too. I am willing that any man should come before us and say, Jesus taught that you must love your enemies, it is written in the Bible; but, if he will open the old manuscript of Diogenes Laertus, he may there read in texts that have never been disputed, that the Greek philosophers, half a dozen of them, said the same before Jesus was born." Buckle says: "That the system of morals propounded in the New Testament contained no maxim which had not been previously enunciated, and that some of the most beautiful passages in the apostolic writings are quotations from Pagan authors, is well known to every scholar.... To assert that Christianity communicated to man moral truths previously unknown, argues on the part of the asserter either gross ignorance or wilful fraud" (History of Civilization, vol. i, p. 129). John Stuart Mill says: "It can do truth no service to blind the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion of the noblest and most valuable moral teaching has been the work not only of men who did not know, but of men who knew and rejected the Christian faith" (Liberty). 589 We are told that Christ manifested "a strong and enduring courage which never shrank or quailed before any danger however formidable." Is this true? It is not. When he heard that John was imprisoned, he retreated to the Sea of Galilee (Matthew iv, 12, 13); when John was beheaded, he took a ship and retired to a desert (xiv, 13); in going from Galilee to Judea, he went beyond the Jordan to avoid the Samaritans; when his brethren went up to Jerusalem he refused to accompany them for fear of the Jews (John vii, 8, 9); when the Jews took up stones to stone him he "hid himself" (viii, 59); when the Pharisees took council against him he fled (Matthew xii, 14, 16): at Gethsemane, in the agonies of fear, he prayed that the cup might pass from him; at Calvary, he frantically exclaimed, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" Commenting on this dying exclamation of Christ, Dr. Conway says: "That cry could never be wrung from the lips of a man who saw in his own death a prearranged plan for the world's salvation, and his own return to divine glory temporarily renounced for transient misery on earth. The fictitious theology of a thousand years shrivels beneath the awful anguish of that cry." 590 What was the character of Christ's male ancestors? Assuming Matthew's genealogy to be correct, nearly all of those whose histories are recorded in the Old Testament were guilty of infamous crimes or gross immoralities. Abraham married his sister and seduced her handmaid; Jacob, after committing bigamy, seduced two of his housemaids; Judah committed incest with his daughter-in-law; David was a polygamist, an adulterer, a robber and a murderer; Solomon had a thousand wives and concubines; Rehoboam, Abijam, Joram, Ahaziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Manasseh, Amon and Jehoiachin, are all represented as monsters of iniquity; while others are declared to have been too vile to even name in his genealogy. 591 What female ancestors are named in his genealogy? Matthew: Thamar, Rachab, Ruth and Bathsheba. Regarding these women the Rev. Dr. Alexander Walker says: "It is remarkable that in the genealogy of Christ, only four women have been named: Thamar, who seduced the father of her late husband; Rachab, a common prostitute; Ruth, who, instead of marrying one of her cousins, went to bed with another of them; and Bathsheba, an adulteress, who espoused David, the murderer of her first husband" (Woman, p. 330). Matthew Henry, a noted Christian commentator, says: "There are four women, and but four, named in this genealogy, ... Rachab, a Canaanitess, and a harlot besides, and Ruth, the Moabitess.... The other two were adulteresses, Tamar and Bathsheba" (Commentary, Vol. v). 592 Who was his favorite female attendant? Luke: "Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils" (viii, 2). Referring to this woman, Dr. Farrar says: "This exorcism is not elsewhere alluded to, and it would be perfectly in accordance with the genius of Hebrew phraseology if the expression had been applied to her in consequence of a passionate nature and an abandoned life. The Talmudists have much to say respecting her--her wealth, her extreme beauty, her braided locks, her shameless profligacy, her husband Pappus, and her paramour, Pandera" (Life of Christ, p. 162). In a chapter on "Sanctified Prostitution," Dr. Soury writes: "The Jewess is full of naive immodesty, her lip red with desire, her eye moist and singularly luminous in the shade. Yearning with voluptuousness, superb in her triumphs, or merely feline and caressing, she is ever the 'insatiable,' the woman 'with seven devils' of whom the scripture speaks, a kind of burning furnace in which the blond Teuton melts like wax. So far as in her lay, the Syrian woman, with her supple and nervous arms, drew into the tomb the last exhausted sons of Greece and Rome. But who can describe the grace and the soft languor of these daughters of Syria, their large black eyes, the warm bistre tints of their skin? All the poets of the decadence, Catullus, Tibullus, Propercius, have sung this wondrous being. With soft and humble voice, languid and as though crushed by some hidden ill, dragging her limbs over the tiles of a gynaecium, she might have been regarded as a stupid slave. Often, her gaze lost in long reveries, she seemed dead, save that her bosom began to swell, her eye lighted up, her breath quickened, her cheeks became covered with crimson. The reverie becoming a reality by a matchless power of invovation and desire, such is the sacred disease which, thanks to Mary Magdalene, gave birth to Christianity" (Religion of Israel, pp. 70, 71). 593 Who were his apostles? "A dozen knaves, as ignorant as owls and as poor as church mice."--Voltaire. "Palestine was one of the most backward of countries; the Galileans were the most ignorant of the inhabitants of Palestine; and the disciples might be counted among the most simple people of Galilee."--Renan. "His followers were 'unlearned and ignorant men,' chosen from the humblest of the people."--Farrar. 594 What power is Christ said to have bestowed on Peter? "And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matthew xvi, 19). On this remarkable bestowal of power, which has exerted such a mighty influence in the government of the church, but of which Mark, Luke and John know nothing, Greg comments as follows: "Not only do we know Peter's utter unfitness to be the depositary of such a fearful power, from his impetuosity and instability of character, and Christ's thorough perception of this unfitness, but we find immediately after it is said to have been conferred upon him, his Lord addresses him indignantly by the epithet of Satan, and rebukes him for his presumption and unspirituality; and shortly afterwards this very man thrice denied his master. Can any one maintain it to be conceivable that Jesus should have conferred the awful power of deciding the salvation or damnation of his fellow-men upon one so frail, so faulty, and so fallible? Does any one believe that he did?" (Creed of Christendom, p. 189). 595 When Peter discovered that Jesus was the Christ what did he do? Mark: "And Peter took him [Christ] and began to rebuke him" (viii, 32). What did Jesus do in turn? Mark: "He rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me Satan" (33). What a spectacle! The incarnate God of the universe and his vicegerent on earth indulging in a petty quarrel! 596 Give an account of Peter's denial of his Master. Matthew: "Now when Peter sat without in the palace: and a damsel came unto him, saying, Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee. But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest. And when he was gone out into the porch, another maid saw him, and said unto them that were there, This fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth. And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man. And after a while came up to him they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech bewrayeth thee. Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man" (xxvi, 69-74). 597 What did Peter say to Jesus in regard to compensation for his services? "Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?" (Matthew xix, 27). What request was made by James and John? Mark: "They said unto him, Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory" (x, 37). This shows that self-aggrandizement inspired the actions of his followers then as it does today. 598 What is said of John in the Gospel of John? "There was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of his disciples whom he loved" (xiii, 23). "The disciple standing by whom he [Jesus] loved" (xix, 26). "The other disciple whom Jesus loved" (xx, 2). "Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper.... This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things" (xxi, 20, 24). If the Apostle John wrote this Gospel, as claimed by Christians and as declared in the Gospel, he was a vulgar egotist. 599 What is said regarding the conduct of his Apostles on the evening preceding the crucifixion? Luke: "And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest" (xxii, 24). This was immediately after he had announced his speedy betrayal and death and when his disciples, if sincere, must have manifested the deepest sadness and humility. If the Evangelist is not a base calumniator the Apostles were a set of heartless knaves. 600 When the Jews came to arrest Jesus what did the disciples do? Matthew: "Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled" (xxvi, 56). Mark: "And they all forsook him, and fled" (xiv, 50). Justin says: "All his friends [the Apostles] stood aloof from him, having denied him" (Apology i, 50). One scarcely knows which to detest the more, the treachery of Judas in betraying his Master, or the imbecility and cowardice of the other apostles who took no measures to prevent it and who forsook him in the hour of danger. 601 What became of the Twelve Apostles? The New Testament, a portion of which is admitted to have been written as late as the latter part of the first century and nearly all of which was really written in the second century, is silent regarding them. Christian martyrology records their fates as follows: St. Peter was crucified, at his own request head downward, and buried in the Vatican at Rome. St. Andrew, after having been scourged seven times upon his naked body, was crucified by the proconsul of Achaia. St. James was beheaded by Herod Antipas in Palestine. St. John was "thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil" by Domitian, but God "delivered him." St. Philip was scourged and crucified or hanged by the magistrates of Hierapolis. St. Bartholomew was put to death by a Roman governor in Armenia. St. Matthew suffered martyrdom at Naddabar in Ethiopia. St. Thomas was shot to death with arrows by the Brahmans in India. St. James the Less was thrown from the pinnacle of the temple at Jerusalem and dispatched with a club where he fell. St. Simon was "crucified and buried" in Britain. St. Jude was "cruelly put to death" by the Magi of Persia. St. Matthias, the successor of Judas Iscariot, if Christian tradition is to be credited, was put to death three times, crucified, stoned, and beheaded. Nothing can be more incredible than these so-called traditions regarding the martyrdom of the Twelve Apostles, the most of them occurring in an empire where all religious sects enjoyed as perfect religious freedom as the different sects do in America today. Whatever opinion may be entertained respecting the existence of Jesus, the Twelve Apostles belong to the realm of mythology, and their alleged martyrdoms are pure inventions. Had these men really existed Christian history at least would contain some reliable notice of them, yet all the stories relating to them, like the story of Peter at Rome, and John at Ephesus, are self-evident fictions. In the significant words of the eminent Dutch theologians, Dr. Kuenen, Dr. Oort and Dr. Hooykaas, "All the Apostles disappear without a trace." 602 What are Paul's teachings regarding woman and marriage? "It is good for a man not to touch a woman" (1 Corinthians vii, 1). "I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn" (8, 9). "Art thou loose from a wife? seek not a wife" (27). "He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife. There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and spirit; but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband" (32-34). "So then he that giveth her in marriage doeth well; but he that giveth not in marriage doeth better" (38). "This coarse and insulting way of regarding women, as though they existed merely to be the safety-valves of men's passions, and that the best men were above the temptation of loving them, has been the source of unnumbered evils."--Annie Besant. "Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands" (Colossians iii, 18). "As the church is subject unto Christ so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything" (Ephesians v, 24). "Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church" (1 Corinthians xiv, 34, 35). "Let women learn in silence with all subjection" (1 Timothy ii, 11). "That she [woman] does not crouch today where St. Paul tried to bind her, she owes to the men who are grand and brave enough to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior to his God."--Helen Gardener. 603 Did Paul encourage learning? "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God" (1 Corinthians iii, 19). "Knowledge puffeth up" (viii, 1). "If any man be ignorant let him be ignorant" (xiv, 38). "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy" (Colossians ii, 8). "The clergy, with a few honorable exceptions, have in all modern countries been the avowed enemies of the diffusion of knowledge, the danger of which to their own profession they, by a certain instinct, seem always to have perceived."--Buckle. "We know the clerical party; it is an old party. This it is which has found for the truth those two marvelous supporters, ignorance and error. This it is which forbids to science and genius the going beyond the Missal and which wishes to cloister thought in dogmas. Every step which the intelligence of Europe has taken has been in spite of it. Its history is written in the history of human progress, but it is written on the back of the leaf. It is opposed to it all. This it is which caused Prinelli to be scourged for having said that the stars would not fall. This it is which put Campanella seven times to torture for saying that the number of worlds was infinite and for having caught a glimpse of the secret of creation. This it is which persecuted Harvey for having proved the circulation of the blood. In the name of Jesus it shut up Galileo. In the name of St. Paul it imprisoned Christopher Columbus. To discover a law of the heavens was an impiety, to find a world was a heresy. This it is which anathematized Pascal in the name of religion, Montaigne in the name of morality, Moliere in the name of both morality and religion. There is not a poet, not an author, not a thinker, not a philosopher, that you accept. All that has been written, found, dreamed, deduced, inspired, imagined, invented by genius, the treasures of civilization, the venerable inheritance of generations, you reject."--Victor Hugo. "There is in every village a lighted torch, the schoolmaster; and a mouth to blow it out, the parson."--Ibid. 604 What admissions are made by Paul regarding his want of candor and honesty? "Being crafty, I caught you with guile" (2 Corinthians xii, 16). "Unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews" (1 Corinthians ix, 20). "I am made all things to all men" (22). "For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why yet am I also judged as a sinner?" (Romans iii, 7.) "I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do you service" (2 Corinthians xi, 8). 605 What is said of the persecutions of Paul? "And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, and desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem" (Acts ix, 1, 2). This was Saul the Jew. "But there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.... If any man preach any other gospel than that ye have received, let him be accursed" (Galatians i, 7, 9). "I would they were even cut off which trouble you" (v, 12). This was Paul the Christian. The leopard changed his name but did not change his spots. The alleged cause of Paul's sudden conversion and the transference of his hatred from Christianity to Judaism may well be questioned. The story of the apparition will not account for it. A genuine change of belief is not usually effected suddenly. Men sometimes change their religion for gain or revenge. It has been charged that Paul twice changed his, the first time for the hope of gain, the second from a desire for revenge. The Ebionites, one of the earliest of the Christian sects, claimed that Paul was originally a Gentile, that becoming infatuated with the daughter of the high priest he became a convert to Judaism for the purpose of winning her for a wife, but being rejected, he renounced the Jewish faith and became a vehement opponent of the law, the Sabbath, and circumcision (Epiphanius Against Heresies, chapter xxx, sec. 16). 606 What was Christ's final command to his disciples? "Love one another" (John xiii, 34). Christian writers prate about brotherly love, and yet from the very beginning the church of Christ has been filled with dissensions. Christ himself quarreled with his apostles. Paul opposed the teachings of James (Galatians ii, 16-21); James condemned the teachings of Paul (ii, 20). Paul proclaimed himself the divinely appointed apostle to the Gentiles: "The gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me" (Galatians ii, 7). Peter contended that the mission had been assigned to him: "And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel" (Acts xv, 7). Paul declared Peter to be a dissembler. "But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him face to face, because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, he did eat with Gentiles; but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him" (Galatians ii, 11-13). John denounced Paul as a liar. "Thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars" (Revelation ii, 2). From these seeds of dissension death has reaped a bloody harvest. Dr. Talmage says: "A red line runs through church history for nearly nineteen hundred years--a line of blood; not by hundreds, but by millions we count the slain." Lord Byron says: "I am no Platonist; I am nothing at all. But I would sooner be a Paulician, Manichean, Spinozist, Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the seventy-two villainous sects who are tearing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord and hatred of each other." 607 Quote Paul's characterization of Christians. "Not many wise ... not many noble are called" (1 Corinthians i, 26). "Base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen" (28). "We are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things" (iv, 13). "We are fools for Christ's sake" (10). 608 What did Christ say respecting the intellectual character of his converts? "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes" (Matthew xi, 25; Luke x, 21). Commenting on this expression of thanks, Celsus, who lived at the time the Four Gospels made their appearance, says: "This is one of their [the Christians'] rules: Let no man that is learned, wise, or prudent come among us; but if they be unlearned, or a child, or an idiot, let him freely come. So they openly declare that none but the ignorant, and those devoid of understanding, slaves, women, and children, are fit disciples for the God they worship." Concerning the Christian teachers of that age Celsus writes as follows: "You may see weavers, tailors, fullers, and the most illiterate of rustic fellows, who dare not speak a word before wise men, when they can get a company of children and silly women together, set up to teach strange paradoxes among them." 609 Whom did Christ declare to be among the first to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Harlots and thieves. "The harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you" (Matthew xxi, 31). "Today shalt thou [the thief] be with me in paradise" (Luke xxiii, 43). 610 What promise did he make to his followers? "In my Father's house are many mansions.... I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself" (John xiv, 2, 3). "Christians believe themselves to be the aristocracy of heaven upon earth, they are admitted to the spiritual court, while millions of men in foreign lands have never been presented. They bow their knees and say they are 'miserable sinners,' and their hearts rankle with abominable pride. Poor infatuated fools! Their servility is real and their insolence is real but their king is a phantom and their palace is a dream."--Winwood Reade. The Christ is a myth. The Holy Ghost Priestcraft overshadowed the harlot Superstition; this Christ was born; and the Joseph of humanity, beguiled by the Gabriel of credulity, was induced to support the family. But the soldiers of Reason have crucified the illegitimate impostor; he is dead; and the ignorant disciples and hysterical women who still linger about the cross should take his body down and bury it. CHAPTER IX. THE CHRIST A MYTH. The conceptions regarding the nature and character of Christ, and the value of the Christian Scriptures as historical evidence, are many, chief of which are the following: 1. Orthodox Christians believe that Christ is a historical character, supernatural and divine; and that the New Testament narratives, which purport to give a record of his life and teachings, contain nothing but infallible truth. 2. Conservative Rationalists, like Renan, and the Unitarians, believe that Jesus of Nazareth is a historical character and that these narratives, eliminating the supernatural elements, which they regard as myths, give a fairly authentic account of his life. 3. Many radical Freethinkers believe that Christ is a myth, of which Jesus of Nazareth is the basis, but that these narratives are so legendary and contradictory as to be almost, if not wholly, unworthy of credit. 4. Other Freethinkers believe that Jesus Christ is a pure myth--that he never had an existence, except as a Messianic idea, or an imaginary solar deity. The first of these conceptions must be rejected because the existence of such a being is impossible, and because the Bible narratives which support it are incredible. The second cannot be accepted because, outside of these incredible narratives, there is no evidence to confirm it. One of the two last is the only true and rational conception of the Christ. Jesus Christ is a myth. But what do we understand by the term myth? Falsehood, fable, and myth, are usually considered synonymous terms. But a falsehood, a fable, and a myth, while they may all be fictions and equally untrue, are not the same. A falsehood is the expression of an untruth intended to deceive. A fable is an avowed or implied fiction usually intended to instruct or entertain. A myth is a falsehood, a fable, or an erroneous opinion, which eventually becomes an established belief. While a falsehood and a fable are intentional and immediate expressions of fiction, a myth is, in most cases, an unconscious and gradual development of one. Myths are of three kinds: Historical, Philosophical, and Poetical. A Historical myth according to Strauss, and to some extent I follow his language, is a real event colored by the light of antiquity, which confounded the human and divine, the natural and the supernatural. The event may be but slightly colored and the narrative essentially true, or it may be distorted and numberless legends attached until but a small residuum of truth remains and the narrative is essentially false. A large portion of ancient history, including the Biblical narratives, are historical myths. The earliest records of all nations and of all religions are more or less mythical. "Nothing great has been established," says Renan, "which does not rest on a legend. The only culprit in such cases is the humanity which is willing to be deceived." A Philosophical myth is an idea clothed in the dress of historical narrative. When a mere idea is personified and presented in the form of a man or a god it is called a pure myth. Many of the gods and heroes of antiquity are pure myths. John Fiske refers to a myth as "a piece of unscientific philosophizing," and this is a fairly good definition of the philosophical myth. A Poetical myth is a blending of the historical and philosophical, embellished by the creations of the imagination. The poems of Homer and Hesiod, which were the religious text books of the ancient Greeks, and the poetical writings of the Bible, which helped to form and foster the Semitic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, belong to this class. It is often difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish a historical from a philosophical myth. Hence the non-agreement of Freethinkers in regard to the nature of the Christ myth. Is Christ a historical or a philosophical myth? Does an analysis of his alleged history disclose the deification of a man, or merely the personification of an idea? The following hypothesis, written by Mrs. Besant, of England, is, to a considerable extent, an epitome of the views of Strauss, who, in his masterly "Leben Jesu," adopts the historical myth: "The mythic theory accepts an historical groundwork for many of the stories about Jesus, but it does not seek to explain the miraculous by attenuating it into the natural.... It attributes the incredible portions of the history to the Messianic theories current among the Jews. The Messiah would do this and that; Jesus was the Messiah; therefore, Jesus did this and that--such, argue the supporters of the mythical theory, was the method in which the mythus was developed.... Thus, Jesus is descended from David, because the Messiah was to come of David's lineage; his birth is announced by an angelic visitant, because the birth of the Messiah must not be less honored than that of Isaac or of Samson; he is born of a virgin, because God says of the Messiah, 'this day have I begotten thee,' implying the direct paternity of God, and because the prophecy in Is. vii, 14, was applied to the Messiah by the later Jews; born at Bethlehem, because there the Messiah was to be born (Micah v, 2); announced to shepherds, because Moses was visited among the flocks, and David taken from the sheepfolds at Bethlehem; heralded by a star, because a star should arise out of Jacob (Num. xxiv, 17), and 'the Gentiles shall come to thy light' (Is. lx, 3); worshiped by Magi, because the star was seen by Balaam, the magus, and astrologers would be those who would most notice a star; presented with gifts by these Eastern sages, because kings of Arabia and Saba shall offer gifts (Ps. lxxii, 10); saved from the destruction of the infants by a jealous king, because Moses, one of the great types of the Messiah, was so saved; flying into Egypt and thence returning, because Israel, again a type of the Messiah, so fled and returned, and 'out of Egypt have I called my son' (Hos. xi, 1); at twelve years of age found in the temple, because the duties of the law devolved on the Jewish boy at that age, and where should the Messiah then be found save in his Father's temple? recognized at his baptism by a divine voice, to fulfil Is. xlii, 1; hovered over by a dove, because the brooding spirit (Gen. i, 2) was regarded as dove-like, and the spirit was to be especially poured on the Messiah (Is. xlii, 1); tempted by the devil to test him, because God tested his greatest servants, and would surely test the Messiah; fasting forty days in the wilderness, because the types of the Messiah--Moses and Elijah--thus fasted in the desert; healing all manner of disease, because Messiah was to heal (Is. xxxv, 5-6); preaching, because Messiah was to preach (Is. lxi, 1-2); crucified, because the hands and feet of Messiah were to be pierced (Ps. xxii, 16); mocked, because Messiah was to be mocked (Ib. 6-8); his garments divided, because thus it was spoken of Messiah (Ib. 18); silent before his judges, because Messiah was not to open his mouth (Is. liii, 7); buried by the rich, because Messiah was thus to find his grave (Ib. 9); rising again, because Messiah could not be left in hell (Ps. xvi, 10); sitting at God's right hand, because there Messiah was to sit as king (Ps. cx, 1). Thus the form of the Messiah was cast, and all that had to be done was to pour in the human metal; those who alleged that the Messiah had come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, adapted his story to the story of the Messiah, pouring the history of Jesus into the mould already made for the Messiah, and thus the mythus was transformed into a history." The foregoing theory, with various modifications, is accepted by a majority of Freethinkers at the present time. The hypothesis that Christ is a philosophical myth, based, like the preceding one, upon the Messianic idea, is thus presented by T. B. Wakeman: "Never was there an example of a word becoming a believed person, under this law of materialization, more plainly and evolutionally than the 'Messiah' and 'Son of Man' of the Hebrew prophecies.... The Christ, 'Jesus,' was no man, for the reason that he was prophesied and visionated into this world and life to do a work that it would be utterly absurd to suppose a man could ever do. The Romans had killed, and could easily kill, every man who had tried to resist their oppression. Now the God Yahweh by his 'eternally begotten son,' spiritized as the 'Son of Man,' that is the 'Soul of the State,' as Shakespeare makes Ulysses say it, must, in order to be of any avail appear with supernatural powers. He was the personified people, Israel; he had been crucified alive, in their subjection and massacre even to the death and Hades. But by supernatural power he, the Israel, would rise again and bring the final judgment backed by the infinite power of the nation's Father, Yahweh. It was only a Spirit-God who could do this--nothing less could be originated, or thought of, or provided, for such a superhuman purpose. A person, a man, a reformer, a weak edition of Socrates, or Savonarola or Bruno! How absurd! The human heart in its despair by its imagination, brought a God into the world to do a God's work. 'No man,' said Napoleon; 'nor a God,' says Science, except the idea. Such it was that finally united the millions of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America, in a dream so intoxicating that it dares not to be awakened though the dawn of Science is here." Mr. Wakeman argues that the silence of history for one hundred years after the alleged appearance of Christ can be explained only upon this hypothesis of an ideal Christ. To this the advocate of the historical mythus may, I think, very properly reply: History, for the most part, takes cognizance only of noted men and important events; and while this silence precludes the existence of the supernatural Christ of Christians, and even that of the human Jesus of Renan, it does not necessarily preclude the existence of an obscure religious teacher and an insignificant sect which subsequently, by a chain of fortuitous circumstances, became the mightiest among the religions of the world. Again, this hypothesis presupposes a considerable degree of intellectuality on the part of those who evolved this ideal Christ, while tradition represents the founders of the Christian religion as grossly ignorant. Had this Christ originally sprung from the Hellenistic Jews of intellectual Alexandria instead of from the Jewish dregs of illiterate Galilee, Mr. Wakeman's theory would appeal with surprising force. Still it must be admitted that some of the earliest Christian sects denied the material existence of Christ. Another philosophical hypothesis, the astronomical, which regards Christ as a solar myth, is advanced by Volney. "These mythological traditions recounted that, 'in the beginning, a woman and a man had, by their fall, introduced into the world sin and misery.' "By this was denoted the astronomical fact that the celestial virgin and the herdsman (Bootes), by setting heliacally at the autumnal equinox, delivered the world to the wintry constellations, and seemed, on falling below the horizon, to introduce into the world the genius of evil (Ahrimanes), represented by the constellation of the serpent. "These traditions related that the woman had decoyed and seduced the man. "And, in fact, the virgin setting first seems to draw the herdsman after her. "That the woman tempted him by offering him fruit fair to the sight, and good to eat, which gave the knowledge of good and evil. "And, in fact, the virgin holds in her hand a branch of fruit which she seems to offer to the herdsman; and the branch, emblem of autumn, placed in the picture of Mithra between winter and summer seems to open the door and give knowledge, the key to good and evil. "That this couple had been driven from the celestial garden, and that a cherub with a flaming sword had been placed at the gate to guard it. "And, in fact, when the virgin and the herdsman fall beneath the western horizon, Perseus rises on the other side; and this genius, with a sword in his hand, seems to drive them from the summer heaven, the garden and dominion of fruits and flowers. "That of the virgin should be born, spring up, an offspring, a child, who should bruise the head of the serpent, and deliver the world from sin. "This denotes the sun, which, at the moment of the winter solstice, precisely when the Persian magi drew the horoscope of the new year, was placed on the bosom of the virgin, rising heliacally in the eastern horizon. On this account he was figured in their astrological pictures under the form of a child suckled by a chaste virgin, and became afterward, at the vernal equinox, the ram, or lamb, triumphant over the constellation of the serpent, which disappeared from the skies. "That, in his infancy, the restorer of divine and celestial nature would live abased, humble, obscure and indigent. "And this, because the winter sun is abased below the horizon and that this first period of his four ages or seasons is a time of obscurity, scarcity, fasting and want. "That being put to death by the wicked, he had risen gloriously; that he had reascended from hell to heaven, where he would reign forever. "This is a sketch of the life of the sun, who, finishing his career at the winter solstice, when Typhon and the rebel angels gain the dominion, seems to be put to death by them; but who soon after is born again, and rises into the vault of heaven, where he reigns." Count Volney's portraiture of the second member of the Christian godhead is, for the most part, accurate. Numerous other analogies between him and the ancient sun gods might be named. It is the belief of many, however, that these solar attributes of Christ are later accretions borrowed by the Roman Catholic church from the Pagan religions which it supplanted. While all Freethinkers are agreed that the Christ of the New Testament is a myth they are not, as we have seen, and perhaps never will be, fully agreed as to the nature of this myth. Some believe that he is a historical myth; others that he is a pure myth. Some believe that Jesus, a real person, was the germ of this Christ whom subsequent generations gradually evolved; others contend that the man Jesus, as well as the Christ, is wholly a creation of the human imagination. After carefully weighing the evidence and arguments in support of each hypothesis the writer, while refraining from expressing a dogmatic affirmation regarding either, is compelled to accept the former as the more probable. CHAPTER X. SOURCES OF THE CHRIST MYTH--ANCIENT RELIGIONS. Christ and the religion he is said to have founded are composite products, made up, to a great extent, of the attributes, the doctrines, and the customs of the gods and the religions which preceded them and existed around them. The Christian believes that Christ is coexistent with his father, Jehovah--that he has existed from the foundations of the world. This is in a measure true. The years that have elapsed since his alleged incarnation are few compared with the years of his gestation in the intellectual womb of humanity. To understand the origin and nature of Christ and Christianity it is necessary to know something of the religious systems and doctrines from which they were evolved. The following, some in a large and others in but a small degree, contributed to mold this supposed divine incarnation and inspire this supposed revelation: 1. Nature or Sex Worship. 2. Solar Worship. 3. Astral Worship. 4. Worship of the Elements and Forces of Nature. 5. Worship of Animals and Plants. 6. Fetichism. 7. Polytheism. 8. Monotheism. 9. The Mediatorial Idea. 10. The Messianic Idea. 11. The Logos. 12. The Perfect Man. 1. Nature or Sex Worship. The deification and worship of the procreative organs and the generative principles of life is one of the oldest and one of the most universal of religions. It has been called the foundation of all religions. In some nations the worship of the male energy, Phallic worship, predominated; in others the worship of the female energy, Yoni worship, prevailed. But in all both elements were recognized. Mrs. Besant says: "Womanhood has been worshiped in all ages of the world, and maternity has been deified by all creeds: from the savage who bowed before the female symbol of motherhood, to the philosophic Comtist who adores woman 'in the past, the present, and the future,' as mother, wife, and daughter, the worship of the female element in nature has run side by side with that of the male; the worship is one and the same in all religions, and runs in an unbroken thread from the barbarous ages to the present time." Among the life generating gods may be named Vishnu, Osiris, Zeus, Priapus, Adonis, Bacchus, Saturn, Apollo, Baal, Moloch, and Jehovah. Among the receptive life producing goddesses were Isis, Rhea, Ceres, Venus, Istar, Astarte, Aschera, Devaki, Eve, and Mary. Where the worship of the female element largely prevailed the Virgin and Child was a favorite deity. Isis and Horus, Rhea and Quirinus, Leto and Apollo, Devaki and Krishna, Mary and Christ, all had their inception in the sex worship of primitive man. The symbol of Phallic worship, the cross, has become the emblem of Christianity. I quote again from our English authoress: "We find the cross in India, Egypt, Thibet, Japan, always as the sign of life-giving power; it was worn as an amulet by girls and women, and seems to have been specially worn by the women attached to the temples [sacred prostitutes], as a symbol of what was, to them, a religious calling. The cross is, in fact, nothing but the refined phallus, and in the Christian religion is a significant emblem of its Pagan origin; it was adored, carved in temples, and worn as a sacred emblem by sun and nature worshipers, long before there were any Christians to adore, carve, and wear it. The crowd kneeling before the cross in Roman Catholic and in High Anglican churches is a simple reproduction of the crowd who knelt before it in the temples of ancient days, and the girls who wear it amongst ourselves are--in the most innocent unconsciousness of its real significance--exactly copying the Indian and Egyptian women of an elder time." The "American Cyclopedia" says: "The crux ansata, so common on Egyptian monuments, symbolizes the union of the active and passive principles of nature. In the Etruscan tombs have been found crosses of four phalli." Regarding this subject, McClintock and Strong's "Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature," a standard orthodox Christian authority, says: "The sign of the cross is found as a holy symbol among several ancient nations.... Sometimes it is the phallus" (Art. Cross). The same authority says that the Tau or sign of life (one form of the Phallic cross) "was adopted by some of the early Christians in lieu of the cross.... Christian inscriptions at the great oasis are headed by this symbol; it has been found on Christian monuments at Rome" (Art. Egypt). Dr. Thomas Inman, of England, one of the foremost authorities on ancient symbolism, says: "It has been reserved for Christian art to crowd our churches with the emblems of Bel and Astarte, Baalim and Ashtoreth, linga and yoni, and to elevate the phallus to the position of the supreme deity" (Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism, p. 16). Describing the chasuble, worn by Christian priests, Dr. Inman says: "Its form is that of the vesica piscis, one of the most common emblems of the yoni. It is adorned by the Triad. When worn by the priest, he forms the male element, and with the chasuble completes the sacred four. When worshiping the ancient goddesses, whom Mary has displaced, the officiating ministers clothed themselves in feminine attire. Hence the use of the chemise, etc. Even the tonsured head, adopted from the priests of the Egyptian Isis, represents 'l'anneau'; so that on head, shoulders, breast and body, we may see on Christian priests the relics of the worship of Venus, and the adoration of woman! How horrible all this would sound if, instead of using veiled language, we had employed vulgar words. The idea of a man adorning himself, when ministering before God and the people, with the effigies of those parts which nature as well as civilization teaches us to conceal, would be simply disgusting, but when all is said to be mysterious and connected with hidden signification, almost everybody tolerates and many eulogize or admire it!" (Ibid, p. 104). Westropp and Wake, in their "Ancient Symbol Worship," state that Judaism and Christianity have been largely derived from Phallic worship. Westropp says: "Circumcision was in its inception a purely Phallic ordinance." Our Christian marriage ceremonies, he says, are relics of this worship. Wake says: "In the recognition of God as the universal father, the great Parent of mankind, there is a development of the fundamental idea of Phallism. In the position assigned to Mary as the mother of God the paramount principle of the primitive belief is again predominant. The nimbus, the aureole, the cross, the fish, and even the spires of churches, are symbols retained from the old Phallic worship." Dr. Alexander Wilder says: "There is not a fast or festival, procession or sacrament, social custom or religious symbol, existing at the present day which has not been taken bodily from Phallism, or from some successive system of Paganism." Aschera, the voluptuous goddess of fertility, was a Hebrew goddess and was worshiped, along with Jehovah, in the temple itself at Jerusalem. Jules Soury, of France, in his "Religion of Israel" (p. 68), says: "Under the kings of Judah and Israel, the symbol of Aschera [the phallus] became an object of general piety which was found in every house. Thus in the provinces of France, we still find gigantic crosses on the high roads, on the crossways of the woods which serve as resting places at the Fete Dieu, while, under the porches of churches, vendors of religious toys still sell little Christs in wood or metal for a few half-pence. The rich women of Israel, the bourgeoises of Jerusalem, wore the symbols of Aschera in gold and silver, a sort of medals of the Virgin of the time, which were at once jewels and objects of devotion." Dulaure, another French author, tells us that the worship of Priapus, the god of procreation, under the name of St. Fontin, with rites of the most indelicate character, prevailed in the Catholic church in several provinces of France and Italy up to the middle of the eighteenth century, or later. The sex worship of the Semitic tribes of Western Asia had its origin, it is believed, in India, where, under the name of Sakti worship, it prevails today, three-fourth of the Hindoos, it is claimed, belonging to this sect. The worship is thus described by the "Encyclopedia Britannica's" chief authority on the subject, Prof. H. H. Wilson: "The ceremonies are mostly gone through in a mixed society, the Sakti being personified by a naked female, to whom meat and wine are offered and then distributed amongst the company. These eat and drink alternately with gesticulations and mantras--and when the religious part of the business is over, the males and females rush together and indulge in a wild orgy." The foregoing is almost an exact description of the Agapae, or Love Feasts, as they were observed for a time in the early Christian church. Associated with the worship of Aschera and other goddesses of this character was what is known as sacred prostitution. Thousands of women, the fairest and best bred of their race, and also men (sodomites), prostituted themselves for the support of their religion. John Clark Ridpath, in his "History of the World," dwells upon this institution. It was practiced for centuries among the Hebrews, constituting a part of the temple worship, the Jewish kings, with the exception of a few, like Hezekiah and Josiah, sanctioning it. Solomon's temple was largely a Pagan temple. Before it stood two Phallic pillars, while its doors were ornamented with symbols of Phallic and Solar worship. Solomon worshiped, in addition to other Pagan deities, Astarte (Ashtoreth), the Sidonian Aschera (1 Kings xi, 5, 7). The pietistic writers of the Bible condemn it, but in spite of a few spasmodic efforts to suppress the worship, it continued to flourish until long after the Captivity. From Soury's account of the sanctified prostitution of Israel I quote the following: "The tents of the sacred prostitutes were generally erected on the 'high places,' where sacrifices were offered, beside the tablet of Baal or Iahveh [Jehovah] and the symbol of Aschera (Isaiah lvii, 7, et seq.; Ezekiel xxiii, 14; Hosea iv, 17). These tents were woven and ornamented with figures by the priestesses of Aschera. Robed in splendid garments, their tresses dripping with perfumes, their cheeks painted with vermilion, their eyes black-circled with antimony, their eyelashes lengthened with a compound of gums, musk and ebony, the priestesses awaited the worshipers of the goddess within these tents (Numbers xxv, 8) on spacious beds (Isaiah lvii, 8); they fixed their own price and conditions, and poured the money into the treasury of the temple" (Religion of Israel, p. 71). After describing the temple of Zarpanit, which was furnished with cells for the use of the Babylonian women, Dr. Soury says: "Cells of the same kind, serving the same purpose, existed at Jerusalem in the very temple of Jehovah, wherein Aschera had her symbol and was adored" (Ibid 72). "Prostitutes," says this writer, "were of both sexes. The men were called kedeschim, the women kedeschoth--that is 'holy, vowed, consecrated.' Deuteronomy bears witness that both the one and the other brought the hire of their prostitution into the treasury of the temple of Jehovah. This paid in part the expenses of worship at Jerusalem" (Ib. 73). "If then, in Hebrew law and practice," says Dr. Inman, "we find such a strong infusion of the sexual element, we cannot be surprised if it should be found elsewhere, and gradually influence Christianity" (Ancient Symbolism). "The worship of God the Father has repeatedly clashed with that of God the Mother, and the votaries of each respectively have worn badges characteristic of the sex of their deity.... Our sexual sections are as well marked as those in ancient Jerusalem, which swore by Jehovah and Ashtoreth respectively" (Ibid). It is well known that religious prostitution has been practiced in some form by Christ's devotees from the earliest ages of the church down to the present time. Writing of the middle ages, Lecky, the historian of European morals, says: "We may not lay much stress on such isolated instances of depravity as that of Pope John XXIII., who was condemned, among many other crimes, for incest and adultery; or the abbot-elect of St. Augustine, at Canterbury, who in 1171 was found, on investigation, to have seventeen illegitimate children in a single village; or an abbot of St. Pelayo, in Spain, who in 1130 was proved to have kept no less than seventy concubines; or Henry III., Bishop of Liege, who was deposed in 1274 for having sixty-five illegitimate children; but it is impossible to resist the evidence of a long chain of Councils and ecclesiastical writers, who conspire in depicting far greater evils than simple concubinage.... The writers of the middle ages are full of accounts of nunneries that were like brothels, of the vast multitude of infanticides within their walls, and of that inveterate prevalence of incest among the clergy, which rendered it necessary again and again to issue the most stringent enactments that priests should not be permitted to live with their mothers or sisters" (History of European Morals, Vol. II, P. 331). For centuries the worship of the Virgin Mary, the Christian goddess of reproduction and motherhood, was supreme; the worship of God and Christ being subordinated to it. During these centuries, Hallam tells us, chastity was almost unknown. In every land, every class ignored the seventh commandment, because it was taught and believed that all offenses of this character were condoned by the Virgin. Hallam cites numerous instances of her alleged interventions in behalf of those who indulged in illegitimate practices. The following is one: "In one tale the Virgin takes the shape of a nun, who had eloped from the convent, and performs her duties ten years, till, tired of a libertine life, she returns unsuspected. This was in consideration of her having never omitted to say an Ave as she passed the Virgin's image" (Middle Ages, p. 604). Christian chivalry, so much lauded in our day, was simply a form of sex worship. Hallam characterizes it as unbridled libertinism. The writings of that age, like those of Boccaccio, he says, indicate "a general dissoluteness in the intercourse of the sexes.... The violation of marriage vows passes in them for an incontestable privilege of the brave and the fair" (Ibid, p. 666). Holy pilgrimages to the shrines of saints were usually pilgrimages to the shrine of Venus. "Some of the modes of atonement which the church most approved, were particularly hostile to public morals. None was so usual as pilgrimage; whether to Jerusalem or Rome, which were the great objects of devotion, or to the shrine of some national saint, a James of Compostella, a David, or a Thomas Becket. This licensed vagrancy was naturally productive of dissoluteness, especially among the women. Our English ladies, in their zeal to obtain the spiritual treasures of Rome, are said to have relaxed the necessary caution about one that was in their own custody" (Ib., p. 607). The prelates of the church, being equally culpable, winked at the licentiousness of the lower orders of the clergy. "In every country," says Hallam, "the secular and parochial clergy kept women in their houses, upon more or less acknowledged terms of intercourse, by a connivance of their ecclesiastical superiors" (Ib., p. 353). "A writer of respectable authority asserts that the clergy frequently obtained a bishop's license to cohabit with a mate" (Ib., p. 354). Another form of "sanctified" sexual indulgence, and which received the sanction of the church, was what is known as Marquette. Concerning this custom Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage, in her "Woman, Church and State," says: "The law known as Marchetta, or Marquette, compelled newly-married women to a most dishonorable servitude. They were regarded as the rightful prey of the Feudal Lord from one to three days after their marriage, and from this custom the eldest son of the serf was held as the son of the Lord.... Marquette was claimed by the Lord's Spiritual, as well as by the Lord's Temporal. The Church, indeed, was the bulwark of this base feudal claim." This is affirmed by the French historian, Michelet. He says: "The lords spiritual (clergy) had this right no less than the lords temporal. The parson, being a lord, expressly claimed the first fruits of the bride" (La Sorcerie, p. 62). The brazen lewdness of medieval Christianity has been driven into privacy. But it still exists, and it is still religious. The Italian patriot, Garibaldi, bears this testimony: "In Rome, in 1849, I myself visited every convent. I was present at all the investigations. Without a single exception we found instruments of torture, and a cellar with the bodies of infant children." Referring to the priests connected with certain convents, Dr. Inman says: "Their practice was to instruct their victims that whatever was said or done must be accompanied by a pious sentence. Thus, 'I love you dearly' was a profane expression; but 'I desire your company in the name of Jesus,' and 'I embrace in you the Holy Virgin,' was orthodox." Protestant readers, generally, will accept this testimony as true of Catholic countries. But have Protestant countries a purer record? Lecky, classed as a Protestant historian, says: "The two countries which are most thoroughly pervaded by Protestant theology are probably Scotland and Sweden; and if we measure their morality by the common though somewhat defective test that is furnished by the number of illegitimate births, the first is well known to be considerably below the average morality of European nations, while the second, in this as in general criminality, has been pronounced by a very able and impartial Protestant witness, who has had the fullest means of judging, to be very far below every other Christian nation" (European Morals, Vol. I, p. 391). The religion of Christ as it exists today is not only in its external forms, but in its very essence, largely a survival of the nature worship of old. That it is closely allied to it is admitted by Christian ministers themselves. The Rev. Frederick Robertson says: "The devotional feelings are often singularly allied to the animal nature. They conduct the unconscious victim of feelings that appear divine, into a state of life at which the world stands aghast; fanaticism is always united with either excessive lewdness or desperate asceticism" (Essays). The Rev. S. Baring-Gould, in "Freaks of Fanaticism," says: "The religious passion verges so closely on the sexual passion that a slight additional pressure given to it bursts the partition, and both are confused in a frenzy of religious debauch." The Rev. J. H. Noyes says: "Religious love is a very near neighbor to sex love, and they always get mixed in the intimacies and social excitement of [religious] revivals." 2. Solar Worship. Scarcely less prevalent than sex worship was the worship of the sun. While sex worship was confined chiefly to the generation of human life, sun worship comprehended the generation of all life. The sun was recognized as the generative power of the universe. He overshadows the receptive earth from whom all life is born. I quote from M. Soury: "Amid all these forces, the mightiest is, without contradiction, the sun, the fire of heaven, father of earthly fire, unique and supreme cause of motion and life on our planet. There is no need or reason to understand that the very life, and as it were the blood of our celestial father flows in the veins of the Earth, our mother. In the time of love, when the luminous heaven embraces her, from her fertilized womb springs forth a world. It is she who quivers on the plains where the soft moist air waves gently on the grasses; it is she who climbs in the bush, who soars in the oak, who fills the solitude with the joyous twitter of birds beneath the cloudlet, or from the leaf-lined nests; it is she who in seas and in running waters, or mountains and in woods, couples the gorgeous male with the ardent female, throbs in every bosom, loves in every life. But all this terrestrial life, all this warmth and all this light are but effluents from the sun." (Religion of Israel, pp. 3, 4.) Prof. Tyndall says: "We are no longer in a poetical but in a purely mechanical sense, the children of the sun." "The sun," said Napoleon Bonaparte, "gives all things life and fertility. It is the true God of the earth." John Newton, M.R.C.S., of England, says: "The glorious sun, that 'god of this world,' the source of life and light to our earth, was early adored, and an effigy thereof used as a symbol. Mankind watched with rapture its rays gain strength daily in the Spring, until the golden glories of Midsummer had arrived, when the earth was bathed during the longest days in his beams, which ripened the fruits that his returning course had started into life. When the sun once more began its course downwards to the winter solstice, his votaries sorrowed, for he seemed to sicken and grow paler at the advent of December, when his rays scarcely reached the earth, and all nature, benumbed and cold, sunk into a death-like sleep. Hence feasts and fasts were instituted to mark the commencement of the various phases of the solar year, which have continued from the earliest known period, under various names, to our own times" (The Assyrian Grove). The most prominent deities in the pantheons of the gods were solar deities. Among these were Osiris, Vishnu, Mithra, Apollo, Hercules, Adonis, Bacchus, and Baal. In the worship of some of these gods sex and solar worship were united. The early Israelites were mostly sun worshipers. And even in later times, the sun god, Baal, divided with Jehovah the worship of the Jews. Saul, Jonathan, and David named their children in honor of this god. "Saul begat Jonathan, ... and Esh-baal. And the son of Jonathan was Merib-baal" (1 Chron. viii, 33, 34). David named his last son, save one, Beeliada, "Baal Knows," (1 Chron. xiv, 7). Solomon's worship included not merely the worship of Jehovah, but that of Baal and other gods. His temple was filled with Pagan ornaments and emblems pertaining to solar worship. Regarding this the Rev. Dr. Oort of Holland says: "Solomon's temple had much in common with heathen edifices, and slight modifications might have made it a suitable temple for Baal. This need not surprise us, for the ancient religion of the Israelitish tribes was itself a form of Nature-worship just as much as the religions of the Canaanites, Phenicians, Philistines, and other surrounding peoples were. Most of the Israelites certainly saw no harm in these ornaments, since they were not aware of any very great difference between the character of Yahweh [Jehovah] and that of Baal, Astarte, or Moloch" (Bible for Learners, vol. ii, p. 88). Long after the time of Solomon the horses and chariots of the Sun were kept in the temple (2 Kings xxiii, 11). Many of the stories concerning Moses, Joshua, Jonah, and other Bible characters are solar myths. Samson was a sun god. Dr. Oort says: "Sun-worship was by no means unknown to the Israelites.... The myths that were circulated among these people show that they were zealous worshipers of the sun. These myths are still preserved, but, as in all other cases, they are so much altered as to be hardly recognizable. The writer who has preserved them for us lived at a time when the worship of the sun had long ago died out. He transforms the sun god into an Israelite hero [Samson]" (Ibid i, p. 414). St. Augustine believed that Samson and the sun god Hercules were one. Charles Francois Dupuis, in his "Origin of Worship," one of the most elaborate and remarkable works on mythology ever penned, shows that nearly all the religions of the world, including Christianity, were derived largely from solar worship. All the solar deities, he says, have a common history. This history, summarized, is substantially as follows: "The god is born about December 25th, without sexual intercourse, for the sun, entering the winter solstice, emerges in the sign of Virgo, the heavenly Virgin. His mother remains ever-virgin, since the rays of the sun, passing through the zodiacal sign, leave it intact. His infancy is begirt with dangers, because the new-born Sun is feeble in the midst of the winter's fogs and mists, which threaten to devour him; his life is one of toil and peril, culminating at the spring equinox in a final struggle with the powers of darkness. At that period the day and night are equal, and both fight for the mastery. Though the night veil the Sun and he seems dead; though he has descended out of sight, below the earth, yet he rises again triumphant, and he rises in the sign of the Lamb, and is thus the Lamb of God, carrying away the darkness and death of the winter months. Henceforth he triumphs, growing ever stronger and more brilliant. He ascends into the zenith, and there he glows, on the right hand of God, himself God, the very substance of the Father, the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, upholding all things by his life-giving power." Dr. G. W. Brown, author of "Researches in Oriental History," says: "Strange as it may seem, whilst Mithras and Osiris, Dionysos and Bacchus, Apollo and Serapis, with many others [including Christ] in name, all masculine sun gods, and all interblended, a knowledge of one is generally a knowledge of the whole, wherever located or worshiped." If Christ was not originally a solar god he wears today the livery of one. His mother, the Virgin, was the mother of the solar gods; his birthday, Christmas, is the birthday of all the gods of the sun; his Twelve Apostles correspond to the twelve signs of the Zodiac; according to the Gospels, at his crucifixion the sun was eclipsed, he expired toward sunset, and rose again with the sun; the day appointed for his worship, the Lord's day, is the die solis, Sunday, of the sun worshipers; while the principal feasts observed in memory of him were once observed in honor of their gods. "Every detail of the Sun myth," says the noted astronomer, Richard A. Proctor, "is worked into the record of the Galilean teacher." The cross we have seen was a symbol of Phallic worship. The cross, and especially the crucifix, was also an emblem of solar worship. It was carved or painted on, or within, a circle representing the horizon, the head and feet and the outstretched arms of the sacrificial offering or crucified Redeemer pointing toward the four quarters of the horizon. The Lord's Supper, observed in memory of Christ, was observed in memory of Mithra, Bacchus, and other solar gods. The nimbus, or aureola, surrounding the head of Jesus in his portraits represents the rays of the sun. It was thus that the ancient adorers of the sun adorned the effigies of their god. There still exists a pillar erected by the sun worshipers of Carthage. On this pillar is carved the sun god, Baal, with a nimbus encircling his head. The Christian doctrine of the resurrection had its origin in sun worship. As the sun, the Father, rose from the dead, so it was believed that his earthly children would also rise from the dead. "The daily disappearance and the subsequent rise of the sun," says Newton, "appeared to many of the ancients as a true resurrection; thus, while the east came to be regarded as the source of light and warmth, happiness and glory, the west was associated with darkness and chill, decay and death. This led to the custom of burying the dead so as to face the east when they rose again, and of building temples and shrines with an opening toward the east. To effect this, Vitruvius, two thousand years ago, gave precise rules, which are still followed by Christian architects." Max Mueller, in his "Origin of Religion," (pp. 200, 201), says: "People wonder why so much of the old mythology, the daily talk, of the Aryans was solar: what else could it have been? The names of the sun are endless and so are his stories; but who he was, whence he came and whither he went, remained a mystery from beginning to end.... Man looked up to the sun, yearning for the response of a soul, and though that response never came, though his senses recoiled, dazzled and blinded by an effulgence which he could not support, yet he never doubted that the invisible was there, and that, where his senses failed him, where he could neither grasp nor comprehend, he might still shut his eyes and trust, fall down and worship." This worship of old survives in the worship of today. A knowledge of the location, the limits and the nature of the sun has gradually convinced the world that this is not God's dwelling place; but somewhere in the infinite expanse of the blue beyond they fancy he has his throne. To this imaginary being is rendered the same adoration that was rendered to him by primitive man--the adoration of childish ignorance. 3. Astral Worship. The worship of the planets and stars was probably a later development than sex and solar worship. It flourished for a time in nearly every part of the world, and left its impress on the religions that succeeded it. In Chaldea, one of the principal sources of Judaism and Christianity, the worship of the stars prevailed. I quote from Dr. Ridpath: "In their aspirations for communion with the higher powers, the yearning of the ancient Chaldeans turned upwards to the planets and the stars. The horizon of the Babylonian plain was uniform and boundless. It was the heaven above rather than the earth beneath, which exhibited variety and life. The Zodiac was ever new with its brilliant evolutions. Through the clear atmosphere the tracks of the shining orbs could be traced in every phase and transposition. With each dawn of morning light, with each recurrence of the evening twilight, a new panorama spread before the reverent imagination of the dreamer, and he saw in the moving spheres not only the abode but the manifested glory of his gods" (History of the World, vol. 1, p. 138). "Until today, in the high light of civilization, the idea of some kind of domination of the stars over the affairs of human life has hardly released its hold on the minds of men; and the language of the old Chaldean ritual of signs has still a familiar sound in the ears of the credulous" (Ibid, p. 140). After alluding to the ancient Vedic religion, which recognized in the stars the souls of our departed ancestors, Prof. John Fiske says: "The Christianized German peasant, fifty centuries later, tells his children that the stars are angels' eyes, and the English cottager impresses it on the youthful mind that it is wicked to point to the stars, though why he cannot tell" (Myths and Myth Makers, p. 76). In the Zodiac the Sun had twelve palaces. Each palace had a star for a god, and each was subject to the Sun. Each day of the week was governed by a planet, and each hour of the day had its controlling star. Many scholars, including Jefferson, have held that Christ and his Twelve Apostles relate to the Zodiac and were derived from this stellar worship. The seven days of the week are still dedicated to the old planetary gods, and, with a few modifications, bear their names. "Chambers' Encyclopedia" says: "The Jews, as well as the early Christians, had no special names for the single days, but counted their number from the previous Sabbath, beginning with Sunday, as the first after the Sabbath, and ending with Friday, as the sixth after the previous, or eve (Ereb) of the next Sabbath. After a very short time, however, young Christianity, which in the same manner had endeavored to count from the feria secunda, or second day after Sunday, to the Septima (or Saturday), had to fall back again upon the old heathen names" (Art. Week). The planetary gods Nardouk (Jupiter), Adar (Saturn), Istar (Venus), Nergal (Mars), and Nebo (Mercury), were all worshiped by the ancient Israelites. Istar was called "Queen of the Stars." Moloch, the rival of Jehovah, who shared for centuries the worship of the Hebrews, had his blazing star, the emblem of his implacable cruelty. The worship of Astarte, daughter of the moon, and "Queen of Heaven," whose emblem was a star, was introduced by Solomon himself (1 Kings xi, 5; 2 Kings xxiii, 13). For more than three hundred years she had her temple in Jerusalem. And even today devout Jews address orizons to the new moon, a relic of the worship of Astarte. The rosary is a survival of astral worship. It was once a symbol of the stars. The author of "Supernatural Religion" says: "The belief that sun, moon and stars were living entities possessed of souls was generally held by the Jews at the beginning of our era." The same belief was entertained by the Christian Fathers. Origen says: "As the stars move with so much order and method that under no circumstances whatever do their course seem to be disturbed, is it not the extreme of absurdity to suppose that so much order, so much observance of discipline and method could be demanded from or fulfilled by irrational beings?" Out of astral worship grew the so-called science of astrology. Of this "Chambers's Encyclopedia" says: "Astrology is one of the most ancient forms of superstition, and is found prevailing among the nations of the East at the very dawn of history. The Jews became much addicted to it after the Captivity." One of the so-called Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament reads: "There shall come a star out of Jacob" (Num. xxiv, 17). "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, ... and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was" (Matt. ii, 1, 2, 9). This marvelous event at the advent of the Christian Messiah was a complete "fulfillment" of what had been predicted centuries before concerning the appearance of the expected Persian Messiah, the original of the expected Messiah of the Jews. Graves says that the language of Matthew clearly betrays the astrological origin of his story: "The practice of calculating nativities by the stars was in vogue in the era and country of Christ's birth, and had been for a long time previously in various countries. 'We have seen his star in the east, and have come to worship him.' Now mark, here, it was not the star, nor a star, but 'his star'; thus disclosing its unmistakable astrological features" (Sixteen Crucified Saviors, p. 53). After referring to the prevalency of astrology at the beginning of, and anterior to, the Christian era, Strauss says: "When such ideas were afloat, it was easy to imagine that the birth of the Messiah must be announced by a star, especially as, according to the common interpretation of Balaam's prophecy, a star was there made the symbol of the Messiah. It is certain that the Jewish mind effected this combination; for it is a rabbinical idea that at the time of the Messiah's birth a star will appear in the east and remain for a long time visible.... In the time of Jesus it was the general belief that stars were always the forerunners of great events." Jesus in the Apocalypse declares himself to be "the bright and morning star" (xxii, 16). He "had in his right hand seven stars" (i, 16). "The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches" (20). His second coming will be heralded by "signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars" (Luke xxi, 25). The star of the Magi which pointed so unerringly to the cradle of Christ points not less unerringly to one of the sources from which Christ came. 4. Worship of the Elements and Forces of Nature. The elements and forces of nature, Volney believes, inspired the first ideas of God and religion: "Man, reflecting on his condition, began to perceive that he was subjected to forces superior to his own, and independent of his will. The sun enlightened and warmed him, fire burned him, thunder terrified him; the wind beat upon him, and water drowned him." "Considering the action of the elements on him, he conceived the idea of weakness and subjection on his part, and of power and domination on theirs; and this idea of power was the primitive and fundamental type of every idea of the Divinity." "The action of these natural existences excited in him sensations of pleasure and pain, of good or evil; and by a natural effect of his organization he conceived for them love or aversion; he desired or dreaded their presence; and fear or hope gave rise to the first idea of religion." From this elemental worship Indra, Agni, Zeus, Odin, Jehovah and other gods were evolved. Jehovah was originally a god of the atmosphere. He manifested himself in the tempest; he unchained the waves of the sea; the wind was his breath; the thunder was his voice, the lightning his messenger. He filled the air with frost; he precipitated the hail; he blanketed the earth with snow; he deluged the land with rain; he congealed the water of the stream, and parched the verdure of the field. Fire worship overspread Asia, and Jehovah, like Moloch, became a god of fire. "There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured; coals were kindled by it" (2 Sam. xxii, 9). He appeared to Abram as "a smoking furnace and a burning lamp" (Gen. xv, 17). He revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush. "The bush burned with fire, but the bush was not consumed" (Ex. iii, 2). When David called to him "he answered him from heaven by fire" (1 Ch. xxi, 26). To the fleeing Israelites he was a "pillar of fire" (Ex. xiv, 24). "The Lord descended upon" Sinai "in fire" (xix, 18). When he appeared upon Horeb "the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven" (Deut. iv, 11), "and the Lord spake out of the midst of the fire" (12). "The cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night" (Ex. xl, 38). On the Jewish altar for centuries the sacred fire was kept burning. When Aaron, Gideon, Solomon and Elijah made offerings to Jehovah "there came a fire out from before the Lord, and consumed" the offerings (Lev. ix, 24; Jud. vi, 21; 2 Ch. vii, 1; 1 K. xviii, 38). Elijah was translated in "a chariot of fire" (2 K. ii, 11). Elisha was surrounded by "horses and chariots of fire" (vi, 17). With fire he consumed his enemies. "The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire" (Gen. xix, 24). When Nadab and Abihu "offered strange fire before the Lord" (Lev. x, 1), "there went out fire from before the Lord and devoured them" (2). When the Israelites displeased him at Taberah, "the fire of the Lord burnt among them and consumed them" (Num. xi, 1). When the hosts of Satan encompassed the Christian saints, "fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them" (Rev. xx, 9). "It is now a matter of demonstration," says M. Soury, "that at the time of the Exodus from Egypt, in the desert, and even in the time of Judges, light and fire were not to the Israelites mere symbols of the deity, but were the deity himself." Christ inherited the fiery nature of his Father. He baptized his disciples with fire. "He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire" (Matt. iii, 11). "And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them" (Acts ii, 3). He consigned his enemies to everlasting punishment in the unquenchable fires of hell. "The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire" (Matt. xiii, 41, 42). "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire" (xxv, 41). "To be cast into hell fire: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. For every one shall be salted with fire" (Mark ix, 47-49). His disciples were imbued with the same spirit and belief. "And they (the Samaritans) did not receive him.... And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" (Luke ix, 53, 54.) Some vestiges of ancient fire worship have been transmitted to our time. John Newton says: "A sacred fire, at first miraculously kindled, and subsequently kept up by the sedulous care of priests and priestesses, formed an important part of the religion of Judea, Babylonia, Persia. Greece and Rome, and the superstition lingers amongst us still. So late as the advent of the Reformation, a sacred fire was kept ever burning on a shrine at Kildare, in Ireland, and attended by virgins of high rank, called 'inghean au dagha,' or daughters of fire. Every year is the ceremony repeated at Jerusalem of the miraculous kindling of the Holy Fire at the reputed sepulchre, and men and women crowd to light tapers at the sacred flame" (The Assyrian Grove). 5. Worship of Animals and Plants. In the infancy of the world animals were deified and adored, and trees and plants were regarded as sentient beings and received the homage of man. Nearly every animal has been an object of worship. This worship flourished for ages in Egypt and India. In Egypt the worship of the bull (Apis) was associated with that of Osiris (Serapis). The cow is still worshiped in India. Serpent worship has existed in every part of the world. Remnants of animal worship survived in Judaism and Christianity. Satan was a serpent; Jehovah, like Osiris, was worshiped as a bull; Christ was the lamb of God, and the Holy Ghost appeared in the form of a dove. Closely allied to this worship, and to some extent a part of it, is the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. Some of the Jews believed in this. So did many of the early Christians, including Origen. The leek, the lotus, and other plants were held as sacred or divine. The rose was the divine flower of Greece. Its petals had been dyed with the blood of her favorite goddess. In many nations the lily was the sacred emblem of virginity. Christians still attach a sort of sacredness to it. "The groves were God's first temples," says Bryant. The groves, too, were among man's first gods. Volumes have been written on the ancient worship of trees. Not only the Druids of Britain, but the Greeks, and the Semitic races of Asia were worshipers of trees. The giant oaks and the symmetrical evergreens were gods. The rustling of the aspen and the moaning of the pines were the audible whisperings of Divinity which the prophets interpreted. "The worship of trees," says Soury, "only disappeared in Syria at a very late date.... The largest and tallest trees, and the evergreen ones, were adored as gods. A great many Semitic myths were connected with the vegetable world. Thus the pomegranate, famous for the richness of its fruit, was sacred to Adonis and Aphrodite. The almond, which, while nature seems inanimate, comes forth first from winter's sleep, the amygdalis, the 'great mother,' gave birth to a crowd of Semitic legends" (Religion of Israel, pp. 66, 67). The tree, like the serpent, was an emblem of immortality. The Garden of Eden had its Tree of Life. Newton says: "'I am come that they might have Life, and that they might have it abundantly' (John x, 10). Life is the reward which has been promised under every system, including that of the founder of Christianity. A Tree of Life stood in the midst of that Paradise which is described in the book of Genesis; ... and in a second Paradise, which is promised to the blessed by the author of the book of Revelation, a tree of life shall stand once more 'for the healing of the nations.'" There still exist in Palestine venerable trees which receive not merely the reverence, but the worship of Mussulmans and Christians. Some of these trees they believe possess divine curative powers. Travelers have observed them covered with strips of cloth or strings, which are tied to the twigs. This is done to induce the spirit of the tree to heal or drive away disease. Sex worship, as we have seen, bequeathed some of its doctrines and rites to nearly every religion that has existed since its time. It became associated with tree worship. The Bible abounds with "sacred groves." In Palestine hundreds of them were consecrated to Aschera, the favorite goddess of the ancient Jews. These groves were devoted to sacred prostitution. In some of them the worship of Baal and Aschera were combined; in others that of Jehovah and Aschera. "These sanctuaries of Aschera," says M. Soury, "were charming spots, shady groves of green trees, often watered by running streams, mysterious retreats where all was silence save the cooing of the doves sacred to the goddess. The symbol of Aschera, a simple pillar, or the trunk of a tree, perhaps with its leaves and branches, was the emblem of generative power." The spots once occupied by these groves are still deemed holy ground. Many of them are marked by Mohammedan mosques and Christian chapels. The sacred groves of Palestine where devout and voluptuous Jews mingled the worship of Jehovah and Aschera live, too, in the Protestant camp meetings of our western world, where, in shady bowers, Christians worship fervently at the altar of Christ, and then, not infrequently, meet clandestinely and pay their vows to Aschera. The palm tree, and where the palm did not grow, the pine, both symbols of the phallus, were worshiped. Newton says: "Palm-branches have been used in all ages as emblems of life, peace, and victory. They were strewn before Christ. Palm-Sunday, the feast of palms, is still kept. Even within the present [19th] century, on this festival, in many towns of France, women and children carried in procession at the end of their palm-branches a phallus made of bread, which they called, undisguisedly, 'la pine,' whence the festival was called 'La Fete des Pinnes.' The 'pine' having been blest by the priest, the women carefully preserved it during the following year as an amulet" (The Assyrian Grove). 6. Fetichism. Closely related to the foregoing worship is fetichism, the worship of idols and images. This is popularly supposed to be the religion only of savages and barbarians; but it also prevails to some extent among people who are considered civilized and enlightened. While it was opposed by some of the kings, priests, and prophets, idolatry flourished among the Jews from the earliest ages down almost to the Christian era. Abraham's father, Terah, was an idolater (Josh. xxv, 2). Jacob's wives were daughters of an idolater. Rachel stole and hid her father's images (Gen. xxxi, 30-34). Jacob's family were, for a time at least, idolaters. "Then Jacob said unto his household, and all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you.... And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods that were in their hands, ... and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem" (Gen. xxxv, 2-4). The kingdoms of Israel and Judah were steeped in idolatry. Israel "set them up images" and "served idols" (2 Kings xvii, 10, 11), and "did offer sweet savor to their idols" (Ezek. vi, 13). Judah was "full of idols" (Is. ii, 8). The fetichism of Christ's ancestors reappeared in the image worship of his devotees. The Christians of the middle ages, Dr. Draper says, "were immersed in fetichism." "The worship of images, of fragments of the cross, or bones, nails and other relics, a true fetich worship, was cultivated" (Conflict, p. 49). "A chip of the true cross, some iron filings from the chain of St. Peter, a tooth or bone of a martyr, were held in adoration; the world was full of the stupendous miracles which these relics had performed. But especially were painted or graven images of holy personages supposed to be endowed with such powers. They had become objects of actual worship" (Intellectual Development of Europe, vol. i, p. 414). Concerning the fetichism of the church, "Chambers's Encyclopedia" says: "It was usual not only to keep lights and burn incense before the images, to kiss them reverently; and to kneel down and pray before them, but some went so far as to make the images serve as godfathers and godmothers in baptism, and even to mingle the dust of the coloring matter scraped from the images with the Eucharist elements in the Holy Communion.... In many foreign churches, especially in Italy, in southern Germany, and in France [at the present time], are to be found images which are popularly reputed as especially sacred, and to which, or to prayers offered before which, miraculous effects are ascribed." Bishop Newton, of England, admits and deplores the existence of Christian fetichism. He says: "The consecrating and bowing down to images; the attributing of miraculous powers and virtues to idols; the setting up of little oratories, altars and statues in the streets and highways and on the tops of mountains; the carrying of images and relics in pompous procession, ... all these are equally parts of pagan and popish superstition." Greek, Lutheran, and Anglican churches are not free from fetichism, and even the Evangelical churches of this country make a fetich of a book. 7. Polytheism. Polytheism, the doctrine of a plurality of gods, has prevailed in every part of the world. The most interesting pantheons of the gods were those of India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The Hebrews, who were polytheists, borrowed their gods from Assyria and Babylonia. The pantheon of these nations comprised twelve principal gods and nearly a thousand minor deities. The chief of these gods was El. His consort was Elath. The Hebrews worshiped El under the name of El Shaddai and various other names. Elohim of the Bible, translated God, denotes the plural and included El and the minor gods who surrounded him. Yahweh, Iahveh, Jehovah, etc., as he is variously called--for Jews and Christians cannot spell and do not even know the name of their principal deity--is a god of Assyro-Babylonian origin. In addition to their national god, Jehovah, many of the Jews worshiped Baal, Moloch, and Tammouz, male deities, and Astarte, Aschera, and Istar, female deities. That the writers of the Bible recognized a plurality of gods--were polytheists--is proved by the following: "And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us" (Gen. iii, 22). "Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?" (Ex. xv, 11.) "Among the gods, there is none like unto thee, O Lord" (Ps. lxxxvi, 8). "The Lord is a great God, and a great king above all gods" (Ps. xcv, 3). "Thou shalt not revile the gods" (Ex. xxii, 28). Monotheism, the doctrine of one god, is not merely the worship of one god, but the belief in the existence of one god only. Many were monotheistic in worship--worshiped one god, their national deity--while at the same time they were polytheistic in belief--believed in the existence of many gods. The Jews who worshiped Jehovah have been called monotheists. And yet, for a thousand years, they believed in the existence of Kemosh, Baal, Moloch, Tammouz, and other deities. They believed that Jehovah was their national god and that they owed allegiance to him; just as the subjects of an earthly king profess their loyalty to him without denying the existence of other kings. While Christians profess Monotheism they are really polytheists--worship three gods--Father (Jehovah), Son (Christ), and Holy Ghost; and recognize a god of Evil, Satan. To these must also be added a female deity, the Virgin Mary, who is to the devout Catholic as much of a divinity as Isis and Venus were to ancient polytheists. The canonization and adoration of the saints, too, are analogous to the worship of the inferior deities of ancient times. After recounting what he believes to be the salutary influences exerted by the medieval conception of the Virgin, Lecky says: "But the price, and perhaps the necessary price, of this was the exaltation of the Virgin as an omnipresent deity of infinite power as well as infinite condescension. The legends represented her as performing every kind of prodigy.... The painters depicted her invested with the divine aureole, judging men on equal terms with her Son, or even retaining her ascendancy over him in heaven. In the devotions of the people she was addressed in terms identical with those employed to the Almighty. A reverence similar in kind but less in degree was soon bestowed upon the other saints, who speedily assumed the position of the minor deities of Paganism" (History of Rationalism, Vol. I, pp. 226, 227). Regarding the deification and worship of saints Hallam says: "Every cathedral or monastery had its tutelar saint, and every saint his legend, fabricated in order to enrich the churches under his protection, by exaggerating his virtues, his miracles, and consequently his power of serving those who paid liberally for his patronage. Many of those saints were imaginary persons; sometimes a blundered inscription added a name to the calendar; and sometimes, it is said, a heathen god was surprised at the company to which he was introduced, and the rites with which he was honored" (Middle Ages, p. 603). The church historian Mosheim admits and deplores the truth of this: "It is, at the same time, as undoubtedly certain, as it is extravagant and monstrous, that the worship of the martyrs was modeled, by degrees, according to the religious services that were paid to the gods before the coming of Christ" (Ecclesiastical History, p. 98). Bishop Newton says: "The very same temples, the very same images, which were once consecrated to Jupiter and the other demons [gods], are now consecrated to the Virgin Mary and the other saints." Milman says that at an early period "Christianity began to approach to a polytheistic form, or at least to permit what it is difficult to call by any other name than polytheistic, habits and feelings of devotion" (History of Christianity, Vol. III, p. 424). 8. Monotheism. Monotheism, as previously stated, is the doctrine of one god only. It has gradually displaced, to a great extent, the fetichism and polytheism of earlier times. Comte's law of human development is as follows: 1. Theological, or fictitious, 2. Metaphysical, or abstract, 3. Scientific, or positive. "In the Theological state, the human mind, seeking the essential nature of things, the first and final causes (the origin and purpose) of all effects--in short Absolute knowledge--supposes all phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of supernatural beings. "In the Metaphysical state, which is only a modification of the first, the mind supposes, instead of supernatural beings, abstract forms, veritable entities (that is, personified abstractions) inherent in all things, and capable of producing all phenomena. "In the final, the Positive state, the mind has given over the vain search after Absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws--that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance" (Positive Philosophy, pp. 26, 27). The lowest state of human development is the theological. Here the masses of mankind still repose. Only the scholars and thinkers have advanced beyond this and many of these have only reached the second or metaphysical state. The highest point in the theological state is monotheism. To Judaism Christians ascribe the glory of having been the first religion to teach a pure monotheism. But monotheism existed long before the Jews attained to it. Zoroaster and his earliest followers were monotheists, dualism being a later development of the Persian theology. The adoption of monotheism by the Jews, which occurred only at a very late period in their history, was not, however, the result of a divine revelation, or even of an intellectual superiority, for the Jews were immeasurably inferior intellectually to the Greeks and Romans, to the Hindus and Egyptians, and to the Assyrians and Babylonians, who are supposed to have retained a belief in polytheism. This monotheism of the Jews was chiefly the result of a religious intolerance never before equaled and never since surpassed, except in the history of Christianity and Mohammedanism, the daughters of Judaism. Jehovistic priests and kings tolerated no rivals of their god and made death the penalty for disloyalty to him. The Jewish nation became monotheistic for the same reason that Spain, in the clutches of the Inquisition, became entirely Christian. Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples, if they existed, were probably monotheists, believed that Jehovah was the only God, and neither believed nor claimed that Jesus was other than the son of man. As generations passed the man became obscured, his deeds were magnified until at length he was accepted as the Son of God, and a God himself. The deification of Jesus, then, together with the apotheosis of other mortals, cannot be regarded as an evolution from Jewish monotheism to a higher plane, but rather as a relapse from monotheism to polytheism. 9. The Mediatorial Idea. This idea had its origin chiefly in the worship of the elements and forces of nature by primitive man. He believed that these elements and forces were intelligent beings. He realized that in their presence he was in a measure helpless. He therefore sought to win their favor and appease their wrath. He made offerings to them; he prayed to them; he worshiped them. But other men, more wise, more cunning, and more fortunate, appeared to have greater influence with these deities. He employed them to intercede for him; and thus the priesthood was established. The priest was the first mediator. More complex religious systems were in time evolved, and in some of them mediatorial gods appeared. The mediatorial idea was prominent in the Persian system. Mithra was the Persian mediator. The worship of Mithra was carried to Rome and the Romans became acquainted with the mediatorial idea. In an exposition of Philo's philosophy, Mrs. Evans says: "The most exalted spirits are able to raise themselves to the pure essence and find peace and joy which earthly conditions cannot disturb; but weaker natures need a helper in a Being, who, coming from above, can dwell below and lift their souls to God. The majority of mankind, in their passage along the slippery path of life, are sure to fall, and would perish if it were not for a mediator between themselves and God.... The power of the Caesars, culminating in Augustus, enabled them to claim divine honors from the people, already disposed to see in them chosen agents of celestial sovereignty. Rome, according to the expression of Valerius Maximus, recognized in the Caesars the mediators between heaven and earth. And that was before Christianity introduced its anointed mediator" (The Christ Myth, pp. 90, 92). The God of the Jews, to quote the words of Jefferson, was "cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust." He had cursed his creation; he had drowned a world; he had imposed the sentence of death--spiritual as well as physical--upon his children. To placate this monster, to induce him to remit this sentence, the priests were powerless. Millions of animals, and even human beings, had been sacrificed to him in vain. At length his "only begotten son," Jesus Christ, offered himself as a sacrifice to atone for the sins of the world. The sacrifice was accepted, and a reconciliation was effected between God and man. Thus Christ became the great mediator of Christianity. "There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. ii, 5). "He is the mediator of the new testament" (Heb. ix, 15). From Persia and from Rome this mediatorial God has come. 10. The Messianic Idea. The desire for a deliverer naturally arises in the minds of a people who are in subjection and bondage. This desire was the germ of the Messianic idea. While there are traces of this idea in the earlier writings of the Hebrews, it reached its highest development during and immediately following the Captivity, and again in the Maccabean age. The Messiah of Judaism and the Messiah, or Christ, of Christianity, were derived from the Persian theology, the adherents of each system modifying the doctrine to suit their respective notions. In its article on Zoroaster, "Chambers's Encyclopedia" says: "There is an important element to be noticed, viz., the Messiah, or Sosiosh, from whom the Jewish and Christian notions of a Messiah are held by many to have been derived.... Even a superficial glance at this sketch will show our readers what very close parallels between Jewish and Christian notions on the one hand, and the Zoroastrian on the other, are to be drawn." Christians cite numerous passages from the writings of the Old Testament which they claim foretold the advent of Jesus. Not one of these passages, as originally penned, refers in the remotest degree to him, though many of them do refer to the office he is said to have filled. The Jews hoped for a deliverer, for a national leader who would reestablish the kingdom of Israel, and restore to it the glory of David's reign. They were loyal to the house of David and believed that this deliverer would be a descendant, a son, of David. Pietists, too, in the fervor of their religious enthusiasm dreamed of universal conversion to the Jehovistic theocracy. In the writings of their prophets and poets these hopes and dreams found expression. "I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David, my servant, thy seed will I establish forever, and build up thy throne to all generations" (Ps. xxxix, 3, 4). "And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him" (Dan. vii, 27). While the Messianic idea was originally a Persian idea, the materials used in the formation of the Christian Messiah were drawn largely from the Jewish Scriptures. There are passages in the Old Testament, as we have seen, which predict the coming of a Messiah. These furnished a portion of the materials out of which this Messianic deity, Christ, was formed. There are many more which have no reference whatever to a Messiah which have been made to serve as Messianic prophecies. The Old Testament, as we have it, is alleged to be a Jewish work. It is, rather, a Christian work. It is a Christian version of ancient Jewish writings, every book of which has been more or less Christianized. Much of it is scarcely recognizable to a Jewish scholar. This is especially true of so-called Messianic prophecies. The Christian Messiah was, on the one hand, modeled, to a considerable extent, after the Jewish ideal, while the Jewish materials, on the other hand, were freely altered to fit the new conception. Referring to the work of the Evangelists, M. Renan says: "Sometimes they reasoned thus: 'The Messiah ought to do such a thing; now Jesus is the Messiah, therefore Jesus has done such a thing.' At other times, by an inverse process, it was said: 'Such a thing has happened to Jesus; now Jesus is the Messiah; therefore such a thing was to happen to the Messiah.'" (Jesus, p. 27). That the so-called Messianic prophecies of the Jewish Scriptures were the immediate source of the Christ is apparent. That he was, however, merely a borrowed idea and not a historical realization of these prophecies is equally apparent. The Jews were expecting a Messiah. Had Jesus realized these expectations they would have accepted him. But he did not realize them. These prophecies were not fulfilled in him. He was not a son of David; he did not deliver his race from bondage; he did not become a king; the important events that were to attend and follow Messiah's advent form no part even of his alleged history. His rejection by the Jews proves him to be either a false Messiah, or an imaginary being--a historical myth, or a pure myth--in either case a myth. The Jewish argument against Jesus as the Messiah is unanswerable: "We do not find in the present comparatively imperfect stage of human progress the realization of that blessed condition of mankind which the prophet Isaiah associates with the era when Messiah is to appear. And as our Hebrew Scriptures speak of one Messianic advent only, and not of two advents; and as the inspired Book does not preach Messiah's kingdom as a matter of faith, but distinctly identifies it with matters of fact which are to be made evident to the senses, we cling to the plain inference to be drawn from the text of the Bible, and we deny that Messiah has yet appeared, and upon the following grounds: First, because of the three distinctive facts which the inspired seer of Judah inseparably connects with the advent of the Messiah, viz., (1) the cessation of war and the uninterrupted reign of peace, (2) the prevalence of a perfect concord of opinion on all matters bearing upon the worship of the one and only God, and (3) the ingathering of the remnant of Judah and of the dispersed ten tribes of Israel--not one has, up to the present time, been accomplished. Second, we dissent from the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah announced by the prophets, because the church which he founded, and which his successors developed, has offered, during a succession of centuries, most singular contrast to what is described by the Hebrew Scriptures as the immediate consequence of Messiah's advent, and of his glorious kingdom. The prophet Isaiah declares that when the Messiah appears, peace, love, and union will be permanently established; and every candid man must admit that the world has not realized the accomplishment of this prophecy. Again, in the days of Messiah, all men, as Scripture saith, 'are to serve God with one accord'; and yet it is very certain that since the appearance of him whom Christians believe to be Messiah, mankind has been split into more hostile divisions on the ground of religious belief, and more antagonistic sects have sprung up, than in any historic age before Christianity was preached." With orthodox Jews the belief in a Messiah is a deep rooted conviction. For 2500 years there has been displayed in front of the synagogue this sign: "Wanted--a Messiah." During this time many, including Jesus, Bar-Cocheba, Moses of Candia, and Sabatai Zevi, have applied for the place, but all applicants have been rejected, and the Messianic predictions of the Jewish prophets are yet to be fulfilled. So, too, are those of the Persian prophet. In the meantime the followers of Jesus--turning from the Jews to the Gentiles--have from this borrowed idea evolved a deity who divides with Brahma, Buddha, and Allah, the worship of the world. 11. The Logos (Word). The exaltation and deification of Jesus is thus described by the Dutch theologian, Dr. Hooykaas: "When Jesus was gone, those who had known him personally insensibly surrounded him with a glory that shone at last with a more than human splendor. The spiritual blessings which flowed in ever rich measure from his person and his gospel compelled the Christians to exalt him ever more and more. The title of Son of God, which his followers had given him as the future Messiah, was elastic and ambiguous enough to lend itself very readily to this process. The idea of his being the Messiah now no longer sufficed; he was something other and something far more than the Jewish Messiah. The philosophy and theology of the day were laid under contribution; and nothing could so well indicate his significance for all humanity and his unapproachable exaltation as the idea that he was the Word" (Bible for Learners, Vol. III, pp. 670, 671). The doctrine of the Logos, or Word, as an emanation or essence of divine wisdom is very old. It is found in the ancient religions of Egypt and India. It was recognized in the Persian theology, and was incorporated into the Jewish theology by the Babylonian exiles. It constitutes an important element in the Platonic philosophy. It received its highest development and exposition in the writings of the Jewish philosopher Philo, a contemporary of Jesus. Concerning the Logos, Dean Milman, in his "History of Christianity," says: "This Being was more or less distinctly impersonated, according to the more popular or more philosophic, the more material or the more abstract, notions of the age of the people. This was the doctrine from the Ganges, or even the shores of the Yellow Sea, to the Ilissus: it was the fundamental principle of the Indian religion and the Indian philosophy; it was the basis of Zoroastrianism; it was pure Platonism; it was the Platonic Judaism of the Alexandrian school." Another English clergyman, Mr. Lake, says: "We can trace its [the Word's] birthplace in the philosophic speculations of the ancient world; we can note its gradual development and growth; we can see it in its early youth passing (through Philo and others), from Grecian philosophy into the current of Jewish thought" (Philo, Plato, and Paul, p. 71). The presentation of Jesus as an incarnation of the Logos belongs to the second century and is prominent in the Fourth Gospel. The ideas are chiefly those of Plato and Philo. Plato's trinity was Thought, Word and Deed. The Word occupies the second place in the Platonic trinity as it does in the Christian trinity. That the author of the gospel of John, written more than a century after the time of Philo, borrowed largely from that philosopher, is shown by the following parallels drawn from their writings: Philo.--"The Logos is the Son of God" (De Profugis). John.--"This [the Word] is the Son of God" (i, 34). Philo.--"The Logos is considered the same as God" (De Somniis). John.--"The Word was God" (i, 1). Philo.--"He [the Logos] was before all things" (De Leg. Allegor). John.--"The same [the Word] was in the beginning with God" (i, 2). Philo.--"The Logos is the agent by whom the world was made" (De Leg. Allegor). John.--"All things were made by him [the Word]" (i, 3). Philo.--"The Logos is the light of the world" (De Somniis). John.--"The Word was the true light" (i, 9). Philo.--"The Logos only can see God" (De Confus. Ling.). John.--"No man hath seen God.... He [the Word] hath declared him" (i, 18). 12. The Perfect Man. The New Testament contains at least five different mythical types or conceptions of Jesus Christ: 1. The Messiah of the synoptics, omitting the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke. 2. The Son of God, or demi-god, introduced in these opening chapters. 3. The incarnate Logos or God of John. 4. The Christ of Paul. 5. Eliminating these more or less supernatural types, there remains in these writings, in addition to the purely natural and purely human Jesus of Nazareth, a type known as the Ideal or Perfect Alan. This type is not only mythical, but, in the stricter sense, supernatural and superhuman; for the perfect man must always remain an ideal rather than a real type of man. The last type is believed by many to represent the primal stage in the deification of Jesus. This conception of Jesus has been held by many Rationalistic Christians, and by some conservative Rationalists in all ages. This, too, forms a part of the dualistic conception of Christ entertained by orthodox Christians, a conception which supposes him to have combined in his incarnation both a human and a divine element which made him both man and God. The portrayal of the vicarious suffering and death of this man has been one of the most powerful agents in the propagation of Christianity. The molders of primitive Christianity were greatly influenced by various philosophical speculations--by the teachings of Pythagoras and Plato among the earlier, and by the writings of Philo and Seneca among the later philosophers. To Philo, we have seen, they were indebted largely for the Logos; to Seneca they were indebted chiefly for the Ideal or Perfect Man. The following extracts are from "The Christ Myth" of Mrs. Evans: "Seneca advises the cherishing of a hope that victory in the form of a wise man will finally appear, because humanity requires that the exemplification of perfection should be visible." "Seneca's conception of perfect humanity was a combination of the wise man of the Platonists and Stoics and the gentle sufferer who endures insult and sorrow." "The Logos of Philo was too ethereal to answer all the demands of feeble humanity. The God-man must live and suffer and die among and for the people in order to make the sacrifice complete." "Philo endowed the Logos of Heraclitus with the authority of a priestly mediator, who, floating between earth and heaven, brings God and man together; Seneca places this mediator as a suffering man among men. Philo, from his Jewish standpoint, made the Logos the priestly intercessor; Seneca, from the standpoint of his Stoical society, believed in the possibility of a perfect man as savior and guide of weaker men." Cognizant of the striking resemblance between some of the writings of the New Testament and the writings of the Stoics, particularly of Seneca, modern Christian apologists affect to believe that this philosopher was acquainted with the history and the gospel of Christ. But the Stoical philosophy propounded by Seneca had been forming ever since the time of Zeno, three centuries before the time of Christ. Seneca himself was born before the Christian era, and no part of the New Testament was in existence when he wrote. Relative to this contention Lecky writes: "It is admitted that the greatest moralists of the Roman empire either never mentioned Christianity, or mentioned it with contempt.... The Jews, with whom the Christians were then identified, he (Seneca) emphatically describes as 'an accursed race.'" (European Morals, vol. 1, pp. 340, 342). During the second and third centuries Christian scholars ransacked Pagan literature for recognitions of Christ and Christianity. Regarding this, Lecky says: "At the time, when the passion for discovering these connections was most extravagant, the notion of Seneca and his followers being inspired by the Christians was unknown" (Ibid, p. 346). Gibbon says: "The new sect [Christians] is totally unnoticed by Seneca" (Rome, vol. i, 587, note). Out of all these various religious systems and doctrines--out of sex worship and sun worship--out of the worship of the stars and the worship of the elements--out of the worship of animals and the worship of idols--out of Polytheism and Monotheism--out of the Mediatorial and Messianic ideas--out of the Logos and the Ideal Man of the philosophers--this Christ has come. CHAPTER XI. SOURCES OF THE CHRIST MYTH--PAGAN DIVINITIES. In the preceding chapter I have noticed some of the typical religious systems and beliefs from which Christ and Christianity were to a great extent derived. I shall next notice more particularly some of the so-called divine beings--some of the gods, and some of the mortals endowed with supernatural gifts, belonging to these systems. I shall show that there were many sons of gods besides Jehovah's "only begotten Son"; that each of them possessed some attribute possessed by him; that all of them lived or existed in the minds of men, centuries before his time; and that many of them were prototypes of him, and furnished in a large degree the ideas which suggested him, or which are associated with him and his religion. My list will comprise the following, all of whom were believed by their worshipers or followers to be of divine descent: Krishna, Buddha, Confucius, Laou-tsze, Zoroaster, Mithra, Sosiosh, Adonis, Osiris, Horus, Zeus, Apollo, Perseus, Hercules, Dionysos, Prometheus, Esculapius, Plato, Pythagoras, Bacchus, Saturn, Quirinus, Odin, Thor, and Baldur. Krishna. Krishna was the eighth Avatar or incarnation of the god Vishnu, one of the Hindoo Trinity. In this incarnation Vishnu, it is said, "appeared in all the fullness of his power and glory." His mother was Devaki. He is believed to be a historical character, but his real history, like that of Jesus, is almost entirely obscured by myths. He lived from 900 to 1,200 years before the Christian era. The story of his life is to be found in the "Bhagavat," one of the "Puranas," while his religious teachings are given in the "Bhagavad-Gita," a poem belonging to the "Mahabarata." The points of resemblance between Krishna and Christ that have been printed would fill a volume. Some of these are apocryphal, and not confirmed by the canonical scriptures of India. The limits of this chapter preclude an extended list even of the undoubtedly genuine. I shall confine myself chiefly to a presentation of the most important ones relating to their births. These, according to the Christian translator of the "Bhagavat Purana," Rev. Thomas Maurice, are as follows: 1. Both were miraculously conceived. 2. Both were divine incarnations. 3. Both were of royal descent. 4. Devatas or angels sang songs of praise at the birth of each. 5. Both were visited by neighboring shepherds. 6. In both cases the reigning monarch, fearing that he would be supplanted in his kingdom by the divine child, sought to destroy him. 7. Both were saved by friends who fled with them in the night to distant countries. 8. Foiled in their attempts to discover the babes both kings issued decrees that all the infants should be put to death. Writing of Krishna in the eighteenth century, Sir William Jones says: "In the Sanscrit dictionary, compiled more than two thousand years ago, we have the whole history of the incarnate deity, born of a virgin, and miraculously escaping in infancy from the reigning tyrant of his country" (Asiatic Researches, Vol. I, p. 273). The subsequent careers of these deities are analogous in many respects. Their missions were the same--the salvation of mankind. Both performed miracles--healed the sick and raised the dead. Both died for man by man. There is a tradition, though not to be found in the Hindoo scriptures, that Krishna, like Christ, was crucified. Various incidents recorded in the life of Christ were doubtless suggested by similar incidents in the life of Krishna. He washed the feet of his disciples because Krishna had washed the feet of the Brahmins. He taught his disciples the possibility of removing a mountain, because Krishna, to protect his worshipers from the wrath of Indra, raised Mount Goverdhen above them. His parents in their flight with him, as related in the Gospel of the Infancy, stopped at a place called Maturea. Krishna was born at Mathura. The earliest followers of each were from the lower classes of society, those of Krishna being herdsmen and milkmaids. Christ's most ardent worshipers have from the first been women. "Chrishna," to quote the authority last mentioned, "continues to this hour the darling god of the women of India." McClintock and Strong's "Cyclopedia" notes the following events in the history of Krishna which correspond with those related of Christ: "That he was miraculously born at midnight of a human mother, and saluted by a chorus of Devatas [angels]; that he was cradled among cowherds, during which period of life he was persecuted by the giant Kansa, and saved by his mother's flight; the miracles with which his life abounds, among which were the raising of the dead and the cleansing of the leprous" (Art. Krishna). The celebrated missionary and traveler, Pere Huc, who made a journey of several thousand miles through China and Thibet, says: "If we addressed a Mogul or Thibetan this question, Who is Krishna? the reply was instantly, 'The savior of men.'" "All that converting the Hindoos to Christianity does for them," says Robert Cheyne, "is to change the object of their worship from Krishna to Christ." Of Krishna's gospel, the "Bhagavad-Gita," "Appleton's Cyclopedia" says: "Its correspondence with the New Testament is indeed striking." The parallels between Krishna and Christ to be found in the Hindoo scriptures and the Christian Gospels are too numerous and too exact to be accidental. The legends of the one were borrowed from the other. It is admitted by Christian scholars that Krishna lived many centuries before Christ. To admit the priority of the Krishna legends is to deny, to this extent, the originality of the Gospels. To break the force of the logical conclusion to be drawn from this some argue that while Krishna himself antedated Christ, the legends concerning him are of later origin and borrowed from the Evangelists. Regarding this contention Judge Waite, in his "History of the Christian Religion," says: "Here then, we have the older religion and the older god. This, in the absence of any evidence on the other side, ought to settle the question. To assume without evidence that the older religion has been interpolated from the later, and that the legends of the older hero have been made to conform to the history of a later character, is worse than illogical--it is absurd." Sir William Jones, one of the best Christian authorities on Sanscrit literature, and the translator of the "Bhagavad-Gita," says: "That the name of Krishna, and the general outline of his history, were long anterior to the birth of our Savior, and probably to the time of Homer [950 B. C.], we know very certainly" (Asiatic Researches, Vol. I, p. 254). Buddha. The ninth incarnation of Vishnu was Buddha. The word Buddha, like the word Christ, is not a name, but a title. It means "the enlightened one." The name of this religious founder was Siddhartha Gautama. He was born about 643 B. C., and died 563 B. C. His mother, Mahamaya, was a virgin. Dean Milman, in his "History of Christianity," says: "Budh, according to a tradition known in the West, was born of a virgin" (Vol. I, p. 99, note). Devaki, Mary, and Mahamaya, all gave birth to their children among strangers. Krishna was born in a prison, Christ in a stable, and Buddha in a garden. "Werner's Encyclopedia," in its article on Buddha, speaks of "the marvelous stories which gathered round the belief in his voluntary incarnation, the miracles at his birth, the prophecies of the aged saint at his formal presentation to his father, and how nature altered her course to keep a shadow over his cradle, whilst the sages from afar came and worshiped him." The "Tripitaka," the principal Bible of the Buddhists, containing the history and teachings of Buddha, is a collection of books written in the centuries immediately following Buddha. The canon was finally determined at the Council of Pataliputra, held under the auspices of the Emperor Asoka the Great, 244 B. C., more than 600 years before the Christian canon was established. The "Lalita Vistara," the sacred book of the Northern Buddhists, was written long before the Christian era. Buddha was "about 30 years old" when he began his ministry. He fasted "seven times seven nights and days." He had a "band of disciples" who accompanied him. He traveled from place to place and "preached to large multitudes." Bishop Bigandet calls his first sermon the "Sermon on the Mount." At his Renunciation "he forsook father and mother, wife and child." His mission was "to establish the kingdom of righteousness." "Buddha," says Max Muller, "promised salvation to all; and he commanded his disciples to preach his doctrine in all places and to all men." "Self-conquest and universal charity" are the fundamental principles of his religion. He enjoined humility, and commanded his followers to conceal their charities. "Return good for evil"; "overcome anger with love"; "love your enemies," were some of his precepts. Buddha formulated the following commandments: "Not to kill; not to steal; not to lie; not to commit adultery; not to use strong drink." Christ said: "Thou knowest the commandments, do not commit adultery; do not kill; do not steal; do not bear false witness; honor thy father and thy mother (Luke xviii, 20). Christ ignored the Decalogue of Moses and, like Buddha, presented a pentade which, with the exception of one commandment, is the same as that of Buddha. Prof. Seydel, of the University of Leipsic, points out fifty analogies between Christianity and Buddhism. Dr. Schleiden calls attention to over one hundred. Baron Harden-Hickey says: "Countless analogies exist between the Buddhistic and Christian legends--analogies so striking that they forcibly prove to an impartial mind that a common origin must necessarily be given to the teachings of Sakay-Muni and those of Jesus." Concerning the biographical accounts of the two religious teachers Harden-Hickey says: "One account must necessarily be a copy of the other, and since the Buddhist biographer, living long before the birth of Christ, could not have borrowed from the Christian one, the plain inference is that the early creed-mongers of Alexandria were guilty of an act of plagiarism." The following are some of the parallels presented by this writer: Both have genealogies tracing their descent from ancestral kings. Both were born of virgin mothers. The conception of each was announced by a divine messenger. The hymns uttered at the two annunciations resemble each other. Both were visited by wise men who brought them gifts. Both were presented in the temple. The aged Simeon of the one account corresponds to the aged Asita of the other. As "the child (Jesus) grew and waxed strong in spirit," so "the child (Sakay-Muni) waxed and increased in strength." Both in childhood discoursed before teachers. Both fasted in the wilderness. Both were tempted. Angels or devatas ministered to each. Buddha bathed in the Narajana, and Christ was baptized in the Jordan. The mission of each was proclaimed by a voice from heaven. Both performed miracles. Both sent out disciples to propagate their faiths. In calling their disciples the command of each was, "Follow me." Buddha preached on the Holy Hill, and Christ delivered his sermon on the Mount. The phraseology of the sermons of Buddha and the sermon ascribed to Christ is, in many instances, the same. Both Buddha and Christ compare themselves to husbandmen sowing seed. The story of the prodigal son is found in both Scriptures. The account of the man born blind is common to both. In both the mustard seed is used as a simile for littleness. Christ speaks of "a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand"; Buddha says, "Perishable is the city built of sand." Both speak of "the rain which falls on the just and on the unjust." The story of the ruler, Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night, has its parallel in the story of the rich man who came to Buddha by night. A converted courtezan, Magdalena, followed Jesus, and a converted courtezan, Ambapali, followed Buddha. There is a legend of a traitor connected with each. Both made triumphal entries, Christ into Jerusalem, and Buddha into Rajagriba. Both proclaimed kingdoms not of this world. The eternal life promised by Christ corresponds to the eternal peace, Nirvana, promised by Buddha. Both religions recognize a trinity. "Catholic and Protestant missionaries," to quote Max Muller again, "vie with each other in their praises of Buddha." Bishop Bigandet, one of the leading Christian writers on Buddha, says: "In reading the particulars of the life of Buddha it is impossible not to feel reminded of many circumstances relating to our Savior's life as sketched by the evangelists. It may be said in favor of Buddhism that no philosophic-religious system has ever upheld to an equal degree the notions of a savior and deliverer, and the necessity of his mission for procuring the salvation of man." St. Hilaire says: "He [Buddha] requires humility, disregard of worldly wealth, patience and resignation in adversity, love to enemies ... non-resistance to evil, confession of sins and conversion." The bishop of Ramatha says: "There are many moral precepts equally commanded and enforced in common by both creeds. It will not be rash to assert that most of the moral truths prescribed in the gospel are to be met with in the Buddhistic scriptures." Writing of Buddhism, Mrs. Spier, in her "Life in Ancient India," says: "Before God planted Christianity upon earth, he took a branch from the luxuriant tree, and threw it down to India." The external forms of Christianity, especially of Catholic Christianity, are modeled in a large degree after those of Buddhism. Of Northern Buddhism (Lamaism) the "Encyclopedia Britannica" says: "Lamaism, with its shaven priests, its bells and rosaries, its images and holy water, its popes and bishops, its abbots and monks of many grades, its processions and feast days, its confessional and purgatory, and its worship of the double Virgin, so strongly resembles Romanism that the first Catholic missionaries thought it must be an imitation by the devil of the religion of Christ." The central object in every Buddhist temple is an image of Buddha. The central object in every Catholic church is an image of Christ. Holy relics and the veneration of saints are prominent in both. Buddha commanded his disciples to preach his gospel to all men. Christ commanded his disciples to do the same. In obedience to these commands the world was filled with missionaries, and largely as the result of this the adherents of these religious systems outnumber those of all others combined. Christian tradition says that Thomas visited India. Some believe that it was in this way that the early Christians became acquainted with the history and teachings of Krishna and Buddha. This may be true, but so far as the Buddhistic element in Christianity is concerned it is quite as reasonable to suppose that Buddhist missionaries had previously carried their religion to Alexandria and Rome, where the molders of the Christian creed obtained their knowledge of it. "That remarkable missionary movement, beginning 300 B. C.," says Max Muller, "sent forth a succession of devoted men who spent their lives in spreading the faith of Buddha over all parts of Asia." Harden-Hickey says: "It is not doubted at the present day that Indian religious ideas, and indeed more particularly those of Buddhism, reached and were even propagated as far as Egypt, Asia Minor, and Palestine, long before the Christian era." Connected with the triumphs of these religious faiths there is a historical analogy deserving mention. Three centuries after the time of Buddha, Asoka the Great, emperor of India, became a convert to the Buddhist faith, made it the state religion of the empire, and did more than any other man to secure its supremacy in the East. Three centuries after Christ, Constantine the Great, emperor of Rome, became a convert to the Christian faith, made it the state religion of his empire, and won for it the supremacy of the West. Remuset says: "Buddhism has been called the Christianity of the East." It would be more appropriate to call Christianity the Buddhism of the West. Buddha, and not Christ, was "The Light of Asia." At this torch Christians lighted their taper and called it "The Light of the World." Confucius. This great Chinese sage and religious founder was born 551 B. C. His followers believed him to be divine. His birth was attended by prodigies. Magi and angels visited him, while celestial music filled the air. His disciples invented a genealogy for him, giving him a princely descent from Hoang-ti, a Chinese monarch, just as the Christian Evangelists at a later period invented genealogies for Christ, giving him a princely pedigree from David. Concerning his deification the "International Encyclopedia" says: "By the irony of fate he was deified after his death, and, like Buddha, Confucius, who had little belief in the supernatural, became a divinity." As Boulger states, "His name and his teachings were perpetuated by a band of devoted disciples, and the book which contained the moral and philosophical axioms of Confucius passed into the classical literature of the country and stood in the place of a Bible for the Chinese" (History of China, p. 16). Of all the great religious systems which have appeared since the dawn of history Buddhism and Confucianism, as originally presented, from a rational standpoint, stand pre-eminent. In both the supernatural is almost entirely absent. Both are godless religions, and both have been, for the most part, bloodless religions. The adherents of both have practiced in the highest degree what the adherents of their great rival have only professed: "On earth peace, good will toward men." Both systems, like primitive Christianity, have been corrupted; but the system of Confucius has suffered less than that of Buddha. The religious, or rather ethical, system taught by Confucius, is the religion of the intellectual aristocracy of China, and, to a great extent, the religion of the most enlightened everywhere. Christian scholars have been surprised to find in the writings of Confucius some of the best teachings attributed to Christ. The Golden Rule has been ascribed to the Christian founder. And yet this rule is the very essence of Confucianism and was borrowed from it. In a presentation of the teachings of the Chinese sage, Rev. James Legge of Oxford University, the highest European authority on China and Confucius, says: "Foremost among these we must rank his distinct enunciation of the Golden Rule, deduced by him from his study of man's mental condition. Several times he gave that rule in express words: 'What you do not like when done to yourself do not to others.'" To retain for Christ a portion of the credit due Confucius, Christians assert that the Chinese moralist merely taught the negative form of this rule, the abstaining from doing to others what we dislike to have them do to us, while Christ taught the positive form, the doing to others what we desire them to do to us. Regarding this Mr. Legge says: "It has been said that he only gave the rule in a negative form; but he understood it also in its positive and most comprehensive form, and deplored on one occasion at least, that he had not himself always attained to taking the initiative in doing to others as he would have them do to him." Another analogy may be noticed. The religion of Confucius enjoins absolute obedience to national rulers. This, too, is a prominent tenet of the Christian religion. As the result of this, Confucianism became and has remained the state religion of China, while Christianity became and has remained the state religion of Europe. Laou-tsze. Laou-tsze, the other great religious founder of China, was born 604 B. C. His entry into the world and his exit from it were attended by miracles. Like Christ he was miraculously conceived; like Christ he ascended bodily into heaven. He was believed to be an incarnation of an astral god. His gospel, the "Tao Teh King," was written by him. "Tao" means "the way." Christ was called "the Way." Man, according to this gospel, is both a material and a spiritual being. By the renunciation of riches and worldly enjoyments the soul attains to immortality. The most divine of mortals are, like Enoch and Elijah, translated to heaven without suffering death. Laou-tsze taught that men to be righteous must become "as little children." Christ said: "Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. xviii, 3). The more ignorant followers of Laou-tsze, like the more ignorant followers of Christ, believe that many diseases are caused by evil spirits, and their priests, like Christ, practice exorcism to expel them. Like the Catholics, they have monasteries and convents. Of Laou-tsze's writings Prof. Montuci, the Italian philologist, says: "Many things about a triune God are so clearly expressed that no one who has read this book can doubt that the mystery of the Holy Trinity was revealed to the Chinese five centuries before the coming of Christ." There is one element in Christianity which was not borrowed from Paganism--religious intolerance. Referring to Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taouism, a writer on China says: "Between the followers of the three national religions there is not only a total absence of persecution and bitter feeling, but a very great indifference as to which of them a man may belong.... Among the politer classes, when strangers meet, the question is asked: 'To what sublime religion do you belong?' and each one pronounces a eulogium, not on his own religion, but on that professed by the others, and concludes with the oft-repeated formula: 'Religions are many; reason is one; we are all brothers.'" Zoroaster. The Persian prophet Zoroaster lived and wrote at least 1200 years before the Christian era. From his teachings some of the most important doctrines of Christianity, as well as of Judaism, were derived. According to the Persian theology the universe is ruled by two great powers, Ormuzd (God) and Ahrimanes (Satan). The one represents light, the other darkness; the one is good, the other evil. Between these two powers there is perpetual war. The center of battle is man, each striving for his soul. God created man with a free will to choose between good and evil. Those who choose the good are rewarded with everlasting life in heaven; those who choose the evil are punished with endless misery in hell; while those in whom the good and evil are balanced pass into an intermediate state (purgatory), to remain until the last judgment. To save mankind God sent a savior in the person of Zoroaster with a divine revelation, the "Zend Avesta." Like Christ, Zoroaster was of supernatural origin and endowed with superhuman powers. Like Christ, he believed that Satan would be dethroned and cast into hell; like Christ he believed that the end of the world and the kingdom of God were at hand; like Christ, he taught his followers to worship God; like Christ he declared that God heard and answered prayer; like Christ he was tempted by Satan; like Christ he performed miracles; like Christ he was slain by those whom he had come to save. McClintock and Strong's "Cyclopedia" gives a summary of the principal doctrines of Zoroaster among which are the following: "The principal duty of man in this life is to obey the word and commandments of God. "Those who obey the word of God will be free from all defects and immortal. "God exercises his rule in the world through the works prompted by the Divine Spirit, who is working in man and nature. "Men should pray to God and worship him. He hears the prayers of the good. "All men live solely through the bounty of God. "The soul of the pure will hereafter enjoy everlasting life; that of the wicked will have to undergo everlasting punishment" (Art. Zoroaster). Devils and angels are of Persian origin. Dr. Kalisch, the eminent Jewish scholar, says: "When the Jews, ever open to foreign influence in matters of faith, lived under Persian rule, they imbibed, among many other religious views of their masters, their doctrines of angels and spirits, which, in the region of the Euphrates and Tigris, were most luxuriantly developed" (Leviticus, part II, p. 287). "The belief in spirits and demons was not a concession made by educated men to the prejudices of the masses, but a concession which all--the educated as well as the uneducated--made to Pagan polytheism" (Ibid). Strauss says: "It is in the Maccabean Daniel and in the Apocryphal Tobit that this doctrine of angels, in the most precise form, first appears; and it is evidently a product of the influence of the Zend religion of the Persian on the Jewish mind. We have the testimony of the Jews themselves that they brought the names of the angels with them from Babylon" (Leben Jesu, p. 78). Baptism, communion, and even confirmation, are rites that were performed in Persia a thousand years before the advent of Christ. Dr. Hyde, in his "Religion of the Ancient Persians," says: "They do not use circumcision for their children, but only baptism or washing for the inward purification of the soul.... After such washing, or baptism, the priest imposes on the child the name given by his parents. Afterwards, in the fifteenth year of his age, when he begins to put on the tunic, the sudra, and the girdle, that he may enter upon religion, and is engaged in the articles of belief, the priest bestows upon him confirmation." The following, from the "Britannica," was written by England's leading authority on Zoroaster, Professor Gildner: "Like John the Baptist and the Apostles of Jesus, Zoroaster also believed that the fullness of time was near, that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. Through the whole of the Gathas (the Psalms of Zoroaster) runs the pious hope that the end of the present world is not far off. He himself hopes along with his followers to live to see the decisive turn of things, the dawn of the new and better aeon. Ormuzd will summon together all his powers for a final struggle and break the power of evil forever; by his help the faithful will achieve the victory over their detested enemies, the daeva worshipers, and render them powerless. Thereupon Ormuzd will hold a judicium universale upon all mankind and judge strictly according to justice, punish the wicked, and assign to the good the hoped-for reward. Satan will be cast, along with all those who have been delivered over to him to suffer the pains of hell, into the abyss, where he will thenceforward lie powerless. Forthwith begins the one undivided kingdom of God in heaven and on earth." Substitute "Christ" for "Zoroaster," "God" for "Ormuzd," and "Gospels" for "Gathas," in the above, and we have almost an exact exposition of the teachings of Christ. And Zoroaster taught at least 1200 years before Christ taught, and wrote his "Gathas" more than 1300 years before the Gospels were written. The writings of Zoroaster were the principal source of the most important theological doctrines ascribed to Christ, as the Buddhistic writings were of his ethical teachings. Mithra. This god was the offspring of the Sun, and, next to Ormuzd and Ahrimanes, held the highest rank among the gods of ancient Persia. He was represented as a beautiful youth. He is the Mediator. From the Rev. J. W. Lake I quote the following: "Mithras is spiritual light contending with spiritual darkness, and through his labors the kingdom of darkness shall be lit with heaven's own light; the Eternal will receive all things back into his favor, the world will be redeemed to God. The impure are to be purified, and the evil made good, through the mediation of Mithras, the reconciler of Ormuzd and Ahriman. Mithras is the Good, his name is Love. In relation to the Eternal he is the source of grace, in relation to man he is the life-giver and mediator" (Plato, Philo, and Paul, p. 15). The "International Encyclopedia" says: "Mithras seems to have owed his prominence to the belief that he was the source of life, and could also redeem the souls of the dead into the better world.... The ceremonies included a sort of baptism to remove sins, anointing, and a sacred meal of bread and water, while a consecrated wine, believed to possess wonderful power, played a prominent part." Concerning Mithra "Chambers's Encyclopedia" says: "The most important of his many festivals was his birthday, celebrated on the 25th of December, the day subsequently fixed--against all evidence--as the birthday of Christ. The worship of Mithras early found its way into Rome, and the mysteries of Mithras, which fell in the spring equinox, were famous even among the many Roman festivals. The ceremonies observed in the initiation to these mysteries--symbolical of the struggle between Ahriman and Ormuzd (the Good and the Evil)--were of the most extraordinary and to a certain degree even dangerous character. Baptism and the partaking of a mystical liquid, consisting of flour and water, to be drunk with the utterance of sacred formulas, were among the inauguration acts." In the catacombs at Rome was preserved a relic of the old Mithraic worship. It was a picture of the infant Mithra seated in the lap of his virgin mother, while on their knees before him were Persian Magi adoring him and offering gifts. Prof. Franz Cumont, of the University of Ghent, writes as follows concerning the religion of Mithra and the religion of Christ: "The sectaries of the Persian god, like the Christians', purified themselves by baptism, received by a species of confirmation the power necessary to combat the spirit of evil; and expected from a Lord's supper salvation of body and soul. Like the latter, they also held Sunday sacred, and celebrated the birth of the Sun on the 25th of December.... They both preached a categorical system of ethics, regarded asceticism as meritorious and counted among their principal virtues abstinence and continence, renunciation and self-control. Their conceptions of the world and of the destiny of man were similar. They both admitted the existence of a Heaven inhabited by beatified ones, situate in the upper regions, and of a Hell, peopled by demons, situate in the bowels of the earth. They both placed a flood at the beginning of history; they both assigned as the source of their condition, a primitive revelation; they both, finally, believed in the immortality of the soul, in a last judgment, and in a resurrection of the dead, consequent upon a final conflagration of the universe" (The Mysteries of Mithras, pp. 190, 191). The Rev. Charles Biggs, D.D., says: "The disciples of Mithra formed an organized church, with a developed hierarchy. They possessed the ideas of Mediation, Atonement, and a Savior, who is human and yet divine, and not only the idea, but a doctrine of the future life. They had a Eucharist, and a Baptism, and other curious analogies might be pointed out between their system and the church of Christ" (The Christian Platonists, p. 240). I quote again from McClintock and Strong: "In modern times Christian writers have been induced to look favorably upon the assertion that some of our ecclesiastical usages (e. g., the institution of the Christmas festival) originated in the cultus of Mithraism. Some writers who refuse to accept the Christian religion as of supernatural origin, have even gone so far as to institute a close comparison with the founder of Christianity; and Dupuis and others, going even beyond this, have not hesitated to pronounce the Gospel simply a branch of Mithraism" (Art. Mithra). The Christian Father Manes, founder of the heretical sect known as Manicheans, believed that Christ and Mithra were one. His teaching, according to Mosheim, was as follows: "Christ is that glorious intelligence which the Persians called Mithras.... His residence is in the sun" (Ecclesiastical History, 3rd century, Part 2, ch. 5). The Mithraic worship at one time covered a large portion of the ancient world. It flourished as late as the second century, but finally went down before its young and invincible rival which appropriated, to a great extent, its doctrines, rites and customs. Sosiosh. The Messianic idea, as we have seen, came from Persia. The expected Messiah of the Jews and the Christ of Christians are of Persian origin. Sosiosh, the Messiah of the Persians, is the son of Zoroaster, "begotten in a supernatural way." He constitutes a part of the Persian Trinity. He exists, as yet, only in a spiritual form. His incarnation and advent on earth are yet to be. When he comes he will bring with him a new revelation. He will awaken the dead and preside at the last judgment. Zoroaster, it is claimed, predicted his coming, declaring that he would be born of a virgin, and that a star would indicate the place of his birth. "As soon, therefore," said Zoroaster, "as you shall behold the star, follow it whithersoever it shall lead you and adore that mysterious child, offering your gifts to him with profound humility." "And, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was.... And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and fell down, and worshiped him; and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts" (Matthew ii, 9, 11). Adonis. From Babylonia, including Accadia, Chaldea, and Assyria, much of Christianity has come. Christ himself was descended from the Babylonian pantheon; his father, Jehovah, being originally a Babylonian god. Adonis, Tammouz, Tam-zi, or Du-zi, as he was variously called, was a Babylonian deity whose worship gradually spread over Syria, Phoenicia and Greece. He was one of the most ancient of the sons of gods. His origin may be traced to that fertile, and perhaps earliest, source of gods and religions, Accadia. His worship was a combination of sun worship and sex worship. He was the god of light, and life, and love. Associated with his worship in Babylonia and Syria was the worship of Istar; and in Phoenicia and Greece the worship of Venus. Under the name of Tammouz, Adonis was worshiped by the Jews. At the very gates of the temple, Ezekiel tells us, "There sat women weeping for Tammouz" ("Adonis" in Catholic ver.) (viii, 14). In the Bible he is frequently referred to as "the only son." One of the months of the Hebrew calendar was named in honor of him. The abstaining from the use of pork by the Jews had its origin in the legend of the slaying of Adonis by the wild boar. And the eating of fish on Friday by Christians is doubtless due to the fact that Friday was consecrated to Venus by her Asiatic worshipers and fish was eaten in her honor. In a citation of Babylonian and Biblical analogies, the "Encyclopedia Britannica" says: "The resemblance is still more striking when we examine the Babylonian mythology. The sacred tree of Babylonia, with its guardian cherubs--a word, by the way, which seems of Accadian origin--as well as the flaming sword or thunderbolt of fifty points and seven heads, recall Biblical analogies, while the Noachian deluge differs but slightly from the Chaldean one. Indeed, the Jehovistic version of the flood story in Genesis agrees not only in details, but even in phraseology with that which forms the eleventh lay of the great Babylonian epic. The hero of the latter is Tam-zi or Tammuz, 'the sun of life,' the son of Ubaratutu, 'the glow of sunset,' and denotes the revivifying luminary of day, who sails upon his 'ark' behind the clouds of winter to reappear when the rainy season is past. He is called Sisuthrus by Berosus, that is, Susru 'the founder,' a synonym of Na 'the sky.' The mountain on which his ark rested was placed in Nisir, southwest of Lake Urumiyeh. Its peak, whereon the first altar was built after the deluge, was the legendary model after which the zigurats or towers of the Babylonian temples were erected. Besides the account of the flood, fragments have been met with of stories resembling those of the tower of Babel or Babylon, of the creation, of the fall, and of the sacrifice of Isaac--the latter, by the way, forming the first lay of the great epic. The sixth lay we possess in full. It describes the descent of Istar into Hades in pursuit of her dead husband Du-zi, 'the off-spring,' the Babylonian Adonis. Du-zi is but another form of Tam-zi and denotes the sun when obscured by night and winter." Concerning the two lays of this Babylonian or Assyrian epic which pertain to Adonis, Dr. Soury says: "The two important episodes of this epic hitherto discovered, 'The Deluge,' and 'The Descent of Istar into Hell,' yield the best commentary on the Biblical stories of the deluge and hell (sheol). We have henceforth the epigraphic proof, confirming the valuable testimony of Berosus, that these legends--like those of the creation, of the Tower of Babel, etc.--did not originate in Palestine, but were carried thither by the Hebrews with the civilization and worship of the people of the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, amid whom they had sojourned for centuries.... The Babylonian deluge is also a chastisement from the deity; it is the consequence of man's corruption (Assyrian poem, line 22). The details of the building of the Babylonian ark (line 24), into which are introduced the various pairs of male and female animals (line 80), of the shutting of the doors of the ark (line 89), of the duration, increase and decrease of the flood (lines 123-129), of the sending out of a dove, a swallow and a raven (lines 140-144), etc., leave no doubt as to the origin of the legend of Genesis" (Religion of Israel, p. 10). The noted Assyriologist, George Smith, of the British Museum, who discovered the tablets containing these fragments of the Babylonian epic, says that the original text of these legends cannot be later than the 17th century B. C., and may be much earlier, thus antedating the oldest books of the Bible nearly 1,000 years. From these and other Babylonian and Persian legends the most of the Old Testament legends were borrowed. This fact disproves the existence of the orthodox Christ. If the accounts of the creation, the fall of man, and the Noachian deluge, as given in the Bible, are not authentic, but merely borrowed fables, then there remains no foundation for an atoning Savior. Describing the worship of Adonis, "Chambers's Encyclopedia" says: "His festivals were partly the expressions of joy, partly of mourning. In the latter the women gave themselves up to the most unmitigated grief over the 'lost Adonis.'... This period was followed by a succession of festive and joyful days, in honor of the resurrection of Adonis." These festivals correspond to the Good Friday and Easter of Christians, commemorating the death and resurrection of Christ. The most ardent worshipers of Adonis were women. No other character, real or imaginary, has so stirred the passions and the emotions of woman as this beautiful young lover of Venus. His tragic death bathed with immortal sadness the hearts of his devotees, and from the remotest ages down to a very late period moved to tears the daughters of men who adored him. Writing of Bethlehem at the close of the fourth century, St. Jerome says: "The lover of Venus is mourned in the grotto where Christ wailed as an infant." Along with the "Holy Sepulchre" of Christ, there still exists the "Tomb of Adonis," where "the women of the ancient mysteries, in the intoxication of a voluptuous grief, came to cover with tears and kisses the cenotaph of the beautiful youth." "Even at the present time," says Renan, "the Syrian hymns sung in honor of the Virgin are a kind of tearful sigh, a strange sob." Moved by the same passions and the same emotions that thrilled the hearts of the female worshipers of Adonis, it is the women of Christendom, who, more than any other cause, keep alive the memory and the religion of Christ. Thus writes a Carmelite nun describing the passionate adoration of her Christian sisters: "One day they have raised their eyes to an adorable face. A horrible diadem of interlaced branches binds the august forehead; rubies of blood roll slowly upon the livid pallor of the cheeks; the mouth has forgotten how to smile. It is a man of sorrows. They have looked upon him and found him more beautiful, more noble, more loyal than any spouse. They have felt a stronger heart-beat in his divine breast; they have understood that death no more dare touch his emaciated figure, and that his conjugal fidelity is eternal. "Captivated, ravished, enamoured, enraptured, they have loved him. Rendered insensible by love, they have trampled cruelly upon the broken hearts of fathers and desolate mothers; they have listened, tearless, to the woeful beseechings of those who desire them for companions; they have followed to Carmel the unique lover, the immortal husband." The ancient adoration of Adonis survives in this modern adoration of Jesus. We see here the same strange commingling of superstition and fanaticism, of love and sorrow, of ecstasy and agony, of chastity and lust. The religion is the same; the worship is the same. The divine lovers only have been changed. The beautiful Pagan has been supplanted by the Ideal Man. Writing of the Protestant women of his day, Thomas Jefferson says: "In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and praying parties, where, attended by their priests, ... they pour forth their love to Jesus in terms as amatory and carnal as their modesty would permit to a mere earthly lover" (Jefferson's Works, Vol. IV, p. 358, Randolph's ed.). Osiris. One of the most ancient and one of the most renowned of all the gods was Osiris, the Savior of Egypt. He was the son of Seb (earth) and Nu (heaven). He appears in the hieroglyphics of Egypt as early as 3427 B. C. Two thousand years before Christ his worship was universal in Egypt, and during the succeeding centuries spread over much of Asia and Europe, including Greece and Rome. Its priests looked confidently forward to the time when all men would be brought to Osiris, just as Christian priests today look forward to the time when all men will be brought to Christ. Osiris was slain by Typhon (Satan), but rose again and became the ruler of the dead. He presides at the judgment of the departed where the good are rewarded with everlasting life, and the wicked are destroyed. The Osirian Bible is called the "Book of the Dead." Christians are indebted to this religion largely for their views concerning immortality and a bodily resurrection. They believe that through the death and resurrection of Christ they have inherited eternal life, that when their earthly career is ended they will live again in him. Regarding the Egyptians' belief, the "International Encyclopedia" says: "Just as Osiris died and lived again, so the spiritual personality of the deceased lived again and was merged in Osiris." Of Osiris the Rev. Dr. Charles Gillett, of Union Theological Seminary, says: "The belief in him and in the immortality which he symbolized was the deepest in Egyptian religious thought." Sir John Gardner Wilkinson, one of the most eminent Egyptologists, says: "The peculiar character of Osiris, his coming upon earth for the benefit of mankind, with the titles of 'Manifester of Good' and 'Revealer of Truth'; his being put to death by the malice of the Evil One; his burial and resurrection, and his becoming the judge of the dead, are the most interesting features of the Egyptian religion." John Stuart Glennie, another English writer, notes the following analogies between the religion of Osiris and the religion of Christ: "In ancient Osirianism, as in modern Christianism, we find the worship of a divine mother and child. In ancient Osirianism as in modern Christianism, there is a doctrine of atonement. In ancient Osirianism, as in modern Christianism, we find the vision of a last judgment, and resurrection of the body. And finally, in ancient Osirianism, as in modern Christianism, the sanctions of morality are a lake of fire and torturing demons on the one hand, and on the other, eternal life in the presence of God" (Christ and Osiris, p. 14). Referring to Osiris, McClintock and Strong's "Cyclopedia" says: "He was regarded as the personification of moral good. He is related to have been on earth instructing mankind in useful arts; to have been slain by his adversary Typhon by whom he was cut in pieces; to have been bewailed by his wife and sister Isis; to have been embalmed; to have risen again, and to have become the judge of the dead, among whom the righteous were called by his name and received his form--a wonderful fore-feeling of the Gospel narrative" (Art. Egypt). Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris, was the greatest of female divinities. Her worship was coexistent and coextensive with that of her divine brother and husband. We have the following picture of her in the Apocalypse: "And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars" (Revelation xii, 1). The worship of Isis existed in Rome and Alexandria during the formative period of Christianity and Christians borrowed much from it. Horus. This popular Egyptian god was the son of Osiris and Isis. Osiris and Horus were both solar deities; Osiris was the setting sun, Horus the rising sun. Christ, it is claimed, existed before his incarnation; and Horus, it was claimed, existed even before the incarnation of his father. Christ when an infant was carried into Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod; Horus when an infant was carried out of Egypt to escape the wrath of Typhon. To avenge the death of his father he afterward vanquished Typhon. He was the last of the gods who reigned in Egypt. Festivals and movable feasts similar to those celebrated in honor of Christ were held in his honor. In India and Egypt, ages before the appearance of Christianity, the doctrine of the Trinity prevailed. Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva constituted the principal trinity of India, while the most important Trinity of Egypt was Osiris, Isis, and Horus. Even the Christian doctrine of a Trinity in Unity, an absurdity which Christianity alone is supposed to have taught, was an Egyptian doctrine. Samuel Sharp, in his "Egyptian Mythology" (p. 14), says: "We have a hieroglyphical inscription in the British Museum as early as the reign of Sevechus of the eighth century before the Christian era, showing that the doctrine of Trinity in Unity already formed part of their religion and that * * * the three gods only made one person." Dr. Draper says: "For thirty centuries the Egyptians had been familiar with the conception of a triune God. There was hardly a city of any note without its particular triads. Here it was Amum, Maut, and Khonso; there Osiris, Isis, and Horus" (Intellectual Development, Vol. I, p. 191). Dr. Inman affirms the Egyptian origin of the Christian trinity: "The Christian trinity is of Egyptian origin, and is as surely a Pagan doctrine as the belief in heaven and hell, the existence of a devil, of archangels, angels, spirits and saints, martyrs and virgins, intercessors in heaven, gods and demigods, and other forms of faith which deface the greater part of modern religions" (Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism, p. 13). There are two myths connected with Horus analogous to stories found in the Old Testament, and which were old when these stories were written. The hiding of Horus in a marsh by his mother undoubtedly suggested the myth of the hiding of Moses in a marsh by his mother. When Horus died Isis implored Ra, the sun, to restore him to life. Ra stopped his ship in mid-heaven and sent down Thoth, the moon, to bring him back to life. The stopping of the sun and moon by Isis recalls the myth of the stopping of the sun and moon by Joshua. The deification and worship of the Virgin had its origin in the worship of Isis, and the adoration of the Virgin and Child is but the adoration of Isis and Horus transferred to Mary and Jesus. Describing the Paganization of Christianity Dr. Draper says: "Views of the Trinity, in accordance with Egyptian tradition, were established. Not only was the adoration of Isis under a new name restored, but even her image standing on the crescent moon reappeared. The well-known effigy of that goddess, with the infant Horus in her arms, has descended to our days in the beautiful artistic creations of the Madonna and Child" (Conflict, p. 48). That the Virgin Mary of the Roman Catholic church was borrowed from Egypt is shown by the fact that in the earlier representations of her, she was, like Isis, veiled. Concerning this Draper, in his "Intellectual Development" (Vol. I, p. 361), says: "Of the Virgin Mary, destined in later times to furnish so many beautiful types of female loveliness, the earliest representations are veiled. The Egyptian sculptors had thus depicted Isis; the first form of the Virgin and Child was the counterpart of Isis and Horus." Dr. G. W. Brown, author of "Researches in Oriental History," writes: "Mural illustrations of this mother and child are not confined to Egypt, but are scattered all over Asia Minor, and are numerous in Italy, while many temples and shrines are yet found which were erected to their memory. Matthew ii, 15, claims to be a quotation from one of the prophets: 'Out of Egypt have I called my son.'" Writing of the ancient Gnostics, C. W. King, a noted English author, says: "To this period belongs a beautiful sard in my collection, representing Serapis, * * * whilst before him stands Isis, holding in one hand the sistrum, in the other a wheatsheaf, with the legend: 'Immaculate is our lady Isis,' the very term applied afterwards to that personage who succeeded to her form, her symbols, rites, and ceremonies" (Gnostics and Their Remains, p. 71). Regarding the transference of the attributes of Isis to Mary, Newton, in his "Assyrian Grove and Other Emblems," says: "When Mary, the mother of Jesus, took the place in Christendom of 'the great goddess,' the dogmas which propounded her immaculate conception and perpetual virginity followed as a matter of course." "The 'Black Virgins,'" says King, "so highly reverenced in certain French cathedrals during the middle ages, proved, when critically examined, basalt figures of Isis." Mrs. Besant believes that Christianity was derived chiefly from Egypt: "It grew out of Egypt; its gospels came from thence [Alexandria]; its ceremonies were learned there; its Virgin is Isis; its Christ Osiris and Horus." Of the antiquity of Egypt's religion, and the mutability of the gods, that brilliant young Englishman, Winwood Reade, thus writes: "Buried cities are beneath our feet; the ground on which we tread is the pavement of a tomb. See the pyramids towering to the sky, with men, like insects, crawling round their base; and the Sphinx, couched in vast repose, with a ruined temple between its paws. Since those great monuments were raised the very heavens have been changed. When the architects of Egypt began their work, there was another polar star in the northern sky, and the southern cross shone upon the Baltic shores. How glorious are the memories of those ancient men, whose names are forgotten, for they lived and labored in the distant and unwritten past. Too great to be known, they sit on the height of centuries and look down on fame. * * * The men are dead, and the gods are dead. Naught but their memories remain. Where now is Osiris, who came down upon earth out of love for man, who was killed by the malice of the evil one, who rose again from the grave and became the judge of the dead? Where now is Isis the mother, with the child Horus in her lap? They are dead; they are gone to the land of the shades. To-morrow, Jehovah, you and your son shall be with them." Zeus. Zeus, Jove, or Jupiter, as he is variously called, was the greatest of the sons of gods and held the highest place in the pantheons of Greece and Rome. He was the son of the god Kronos and the goddess Rhea. The gods of Greece, while mostly pure myths, were yet intensely human. In these gods human vices sank to the lowest depths and human virtues rose to the loftiest heights. Zeus was one of the most puerile, one of the most sublime, one of the most depraved and one of the most beneficent of deities. In the words of Andrew Lang, "He is the sum of the religious thought of Hellas, found in the numberless ages between savagery and complete civilization." Zeus, like Christ, assumed the form of man. The life of the infant Pagan deity, like that of the infant Christian deity, was imperiled. Kronos tried to destroy him, but he was secreted in a cave and saved. There was a widely accepted tradition among primitive Christians, before the myth of the shepherd's manger gained credence, that Christ was cradled in a cave. Concerning these myths, Strauss says: "The myths of the ancient world more generally ascribed divine apparitions to countrymen and shepherds; the sons of the gods, and of great men were frequently brought up among shepherds. In the same spirit of the ancient legend is the apocryphal invention that Jesus was born in a cave, and we are at once reminded of the cave of Jupiter (Zeus) and the other gods" (Leben Jesu, p. 154). This god, like Jehovah, became the ruler of heaven and earth. Like Jehovah he became dissatisfied with the human race, and with the aid of Pandora, who brought death into the world, tried to destroy it that he might create a new race. Seneca refers to Zeus as "the guardian and ruler of the universe, the soul and spirit, the lord and master of this mundane sphere * * * from whom all things proceed, by whose spirit we live." Lecky says: "The language in which the first Greek dramatists asserted the supreme authority and universal providence of Zeus was so emphatic that the Christian fathers commonly attributed it either to direct inspiration or to a knowledge of the Jewish writings" (European Morals, Vol. I, p. 161). One of the daughters of Zeus was Persephone, Life. Her mother was Demeter, the Earth. Hades seized Persephone and carried her to his regions in the lower world where she became his wife. Then Earth became disconsolate and could not be consoled. To assuage the grief of the sorrowing mother Hades agreed to give her back to Earth for half the year. While Life dwells with her mother, Earth, we have summer, and flowers, and fruits, and joy. When Life returns to her husband, Hades, winter and desolation return to Earth. Of this goddess Ridpath says: "Persephone is close to Eve. Eve means Life, and should have been so rendered, and would have been but for the blundering of the English translators" (History of the World, Vol. II, p. 501). The realm of Hades was called by his name. The term was borrowed by the writers of the New Testament but has been translated "hell." Christians took possession of Hades' kingdom; but Hades was dethroned to make room for the Oriental Satan, and the sad yet peaceful abode of departed spirits was transformed into a lake of fire, the habitation of the damned. The inhabitants of Crete, who believed in the incarnation and death of Zeus, guarded for centuries with zealous care what they alleged to be the tomb of their god. Apollo. This god, one of the principal solar deities, was the son of Zeus. His mother was Leto. Like Mary, Leto had no hospitable place for her accouchement, and brought her child forth on the barren isle of Delos, where female divinities ministered to them. The isle was illuminated by a flood of light, the prototype of a later scene where "the glory of the Lord shone round about" the shepherds in the field at Bethlehem; while sacred swans, like the celestial visitants of Luke, made joyous gyrations in the air above them. Apollo was the best beloved god of Greece, and was represented as one of the most perfect types of manly beauty. Like Christ he led on earth a lowly life, following for a time the humble avocation of a herdsman. Like Christ he came to reveal the will of his father. He chose for his disciples a crew of sailors or fishermen. These, like the disciples of Christ, were endowed with miraculous powers. Apollo was regarded as a savior. He rescued the people from the deadly python, which was desolating the land. Numerous festivals, similar to those held in honor of Christ, were held in honor of Apollo. In its article on this god McClintock and Strong's "Cyclopedia" says: "Towards the later period of the supremacy of paganism in the Roman Empire, Apollo, as the deity of the sun, had assumed the chief place in heathen worship. As indicating that Christ was the true 'light of the world,' the 'Sun of righteousness'--the most favorite figure used in speaking of the Savior in the early centuries--this very figure of Apollo was often introduced as indicating Christ." Leto, the mother of Apollo, was believed to be, like Mary, the mother of Christ, a mortal raised to divinity. Her worship, like that of Mary, was widespread and lasted for centuries. Perseus. The Virgin myth, the Holy Ghost myth, and the Herodian myth all have their prototypes in Perseus. Long before his birth it was prophesied that he would be born of the virgin Danae, and that he would supplant Acrisius in his kingdom. To prevent this Acrisius confined Danae in a tower. Here she was overshadowed by Zeus in "a shower of gold," and Perseus was born. To destroy him Acrisius placed him with his mother in a chest and cast them into the sea. They drifted to an island and the child was saved. He grew to manhood, performed many wonderful works, vanquished his enemy and ascended the throne. Hercules. This god was the son of Zeus and the virgin Alcmeni. His mother, like the mother of Jesus, retained her virginity after the birth of her child. The Greek babe, like the Jewish babe, had an enemy. Hera attempted to destroy the former, just as Herod afterward attempted to destroy the latter. Like Christ he died a death of agony. When his labors were finished, he closed his earthly career by mounting a funeral pyre from which, surrounded by a dark cloud, amid thunder and lightning, he ascended to heaven. The Tyrian Hercules was worshiped by the Jews, and Jason, the Jewish high-priest, sent a religious embassy with an offering of 300 drachms of silver to this god. Prof. Meinhold, of the University of Bonn, says: "The transfiguration and ascension of Christ may be compared to the heathen apotheosis of such heroes as Hercules, while the story of the descent into Hades is modeled after such narratives as those describing the visit of Hercules and Theseus to the lower world." Max Muller pronounces Hercules a solar god. His twelve labors, like the twelve apostles of Christ, correspond to the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Christians have admitted the resemblance of this god to Christ. Parkhurst's "Hebrew Lexicon" says: "The labors of Hercules seem to have had a still higher view and to have been originally designed as emblematical memorials of what the real son of God and savior of the world was to do and suffer for our sakes." The Rev. Heinrich Rower says: "We are all acquainted with the fact that in their mythological legends the Greeks and the Romans and other nations of antiquity speak of certain persons as the sons of the gods. An example of this is Hercules, the Greek hero, who is the son of Jupiter, and an earthly mother. * * * All those men who performed greater deeds than those which human beings usually do are regarded by antiquity as of divine origin. This Greek and heathen notion has been applied to the New Testament and churchly conception of the person of Jesus. We must remember that at the time when Christianity sprang into evidence, Greek culture and Greek religion spread over the whole world. It is accordingly nothing remarkable that the Christians took from the heathens the highest religious conceptions that they possessed, and transferred them to Jesus. They accordingly called him the son of God, and declared that he had been supernaturally born of a virgin. This is the Greek and heathen influence which has determined the character of the account given by Matthew and Luke concerning the birth of Jesus." Dionysos. Zagreus was the son of Zeus. He was slain by the Titans, buried at the foot of Mount Parnassus, and rose from the dead as Dionysos. He was the god of fruit and wine. Like those of Christ his most devoted followers were women. He is the beloved son and occupies a throne at the right hand of his father, Zeus. His empty tomb at Delphi was long preserved by his devotees as proof of his death and resurrection. The stories of the resurrection of Adonis in Phoenicia, of Osiris in Egypt and of Dionysos in Greece were old when Christ was born, and paved the way for the origin and acceptance of the story of his resurrection. Justin Martyr recognized the analogies between Christianity and Paganism. Addressing the Pagans, he writes: "When we say that the Word, who is the first born of God, was produced without sexual union, and that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven; we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter (Zeus)" (First Apology, ch. xxi). Festivals, called Lenaea and the Greater Dionysia, corresponding in a measure to the Christmas and Easter of Christians, were celebrated in honor of this god. Prof. Gulick, professor of Greek in Harvard University, describing these festivals, says: "In the winter came various celebrations in honor of Dionysos, god of nature and the vine, the object of which was to wake the sleeping spirit of generation and render him propitious for the coming of spring and the sowing of crops * * * The wine-casks were opened, and all, even slaves, were allowed perfect holiday and liberty to drink in honor of the god. The last day of the festival was a sort of All Souls' Day, being devoted to the gods of the underworld and the spirits of the dead" (Life of the Ancient Greeks, pp. 274, 275). "The Great Dionysia," says Prof. Gulick, "held in the spring, was the occasion of display and magnificence" (Ibid, p. 113). So-called Christian burial is identical with Greek burial. Ancient Greek sepulture is thus described by Ridpath: "To the dead were due the sacred rites of sepulture * * * When a Greek fell into his last slumber, the friends immediately composed the body * * * The corse was clad in white and laid upon a bier. Flowers were brought by the mourning friends, who put on badges of sorrow * * * Cemeteries were arranged outside the city walls * * * Over each [grave] was raised a mound of earth, and on this were planted ivy and roses. * * * Over the grave was erected a memorial stone or monument, and on this was an inscription giving the name of the dead, an effigy perhaps of his person, a word of praise for his virtues, and an epigram composed for his memory" (History of the Word, Vol. II, p. 497). Prometheus. The Titan god, Prometheus, was the son of Iapetus and Asia. He is one of the most sublime creations of the human imagination. When Zeus, like Jehovah, became enraged at mankind and sought to destroy it, Prometheus, like Christ, came on earth to intercede and suffer for the race. Hurled to Tartarus by the thunderbolts of Zeus he came again to endure, if need be, eternal agony for man. For centuries Greeks and Romans believed the story of this vicarious god to be historical. Grote, the historian, says: "So long and so firmly did this belief continue, that the Roman general Pompey, when in command of an army in Kolchis, made with his companion, the literary Greek Theophanes, a special march to view the spot in Caucasus where Prometheus had been transfixed" (Greek Mythology, pp. 92, 93). Referring to the Greeks and their great tragedy, "Prometheus Bound," A. L. Rawson says: "Its hero was their friend, benefactor, creator, and savior, whose wrongs were incurred in their behalf, and whose sorrows were endured for their salvation. He was wounded for their transgressions, and bruised for their iniquities; the chastisement of their peace was upon him, and by his stripes they were healed" (Isaiah liii, 5), (Evolution of Israel's God, p. 30). Alluding to this subject, Dr. Westbrook writes: "The New Testament description of the crucifixion and the attending circumstances, even to the earthquake and darkness, was thus anticipated by five centuries" (Bible: Whence and What?). The dying Christ shares with the dying Prometheus the sympathies of men. But how trivial the crucifixion, how light the suffering, and how weak the courage of the Christian god appear compared with the cruel crucifixion, the infinite suffering, and the deathless courage of the immortal Pagan! Transfixed to the rock on Caucasus, the Golgotha of Greek mythology, with the devouring eagle feeding forever on his vitals, there falls from his lips no murmur of pain, no Sabachthani of despair. What lofty heroism, what enduring patience, what unselfish love, this tragic story has inspired! "To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy power which seems omnipotent; To love and bear; to hope till hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, to falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great, and joyous, beautiful and free." --Shelley. Esculapius. Esculapius was the illegitimate son of the nymph Coronis, by Apollo. The mother, at the instigation of Apollo, was slain by Diana; but the child was spared. He became noted for his wonderful curative powers. He healed all diseases, and even restored the dead to life. He was called "The Good Physician." He was struck by a thunderbolt and ascended to heaven. The Greeks worshiped him. The miraculous cures ascribed to Christ, many of them, doubtless, had their origin in the legends of Esculapius. Justin Martyr says: "In that we say he [Christ] made whole the lame, the paralytic, and those born blind, we seem to say what is very similar to the deeds said to have been done by Esculapius" (First Apology, ch. xxi). Plato. One of the most gifted of mortals was Plato. His followers believed him to be of divine descent. Concerning his parentage, Dr. Draper says: "Antiquity has often delighted to cast a halo of mythical glory around its illustrious names. The immortal works of this great philosopher seemed to entitle him to more than mortal honors. A legend into the authenticity of which we will abstain from inquiring, asserted that his mother, Perictione, a pure virgin, suffered an immaculate conception through the influence of Apollo. The god declared to Ariston, to whom she was about to be married, the parentage of the child" (Intellectual Development, Vol. I, p. 151). Concerning this myth, McClintock and Strong's "Cyclopedia" says: "Legend, which is traced back to Spensipus, the nephew of Plato, ascribed the paternity of Plato to the god Apollo; and, in the form in which the story is told by Olympiodorus, closely imitates the record in regard to the nativity of Christ" (Art. Plato). Immaculate conceptions were common in Greece. "The furtive pregnancy of young women, often by a god," says Grote, "is one of the most frequently recurring incidents in the legendary narratives of the country." The Christian story of the miraculous conception has not even the merit of originality. With the Platonic legend before him, all that the Evangelist had to do was to substitute Jehovah for Apollo, Joseph for Ariston, Mary for Perictione, and Jesus for Plato. The philosophy of Plato is a strange compound of profound wisdom concerning the known and of vague speculations respecting the unknown. The latter form no inconsiderable portion of the religion ascribed to Christ. The Christian religion is supposed to be of Semitic origin; but its doctrines are, many of them, the work of Greek theologians; its incarnate God bears a Greek name, and its early literature was mostly Greek. Draper recognizes three primitive modifications of Christianity: 1. Judaic Christianity; 2. Gnostic Christianity; 3. Platonic Christianity. Platonic Christianity, he says, endured and is essentially the Christianity of to-day. The following are some of the principles of Plato's philosophy: There is but one God, and we ought to love and serve him. The Word formed the world and rendered it visible. A knowledge of the Word will make us happy. The soul is immortal, and the dead will rise again. There will be a final judgment; the righteous will be rewarded, and the wicked punished. The design argument, the chief argument relied upon by Christians to prove the divine origin of the universe, is a Platonic argument. In a letter to the author twenty-five years ago, James Parton wrote: "Read carefully over the dialogue, Phaedo. You will see what you will see: the whole Christian system and the entire dream of the contemplative monk." Phaedo deals chiefly with the soul--its nature and destiny. The following quotations are from the translation of Henry Cary, M.A., of Oxford: Death is defined by Plato as "the separation of the soul from the body." "Can the soul, which is invisible, and which goes to another place like itself, excellent, pure, and invisible, and therefore truly called the invisible world, to the presence of a good and wise God, (whither if God will, my soul also must shortly go), can this soul of ours, I ask, being such and of such a nature, when separated from the body, be immediately dispersed and destroyed, as most men assert? Far from it." "If that which is immortal is imperishable, it is impossible for the soul to perish, when death approaches it." "When, therefore, death approaches a man, the mortal part of him, as it appears, dies, but the immortal part departs safe and uncorrupted, having withdrawn itself from death." After death, Plato says, the souls are conducted to a place where they "receive sentence and then proceed to Hades." If the soul "arrives at the place where the others are, impure, ... every one shuns it, and will neither be its fellow traveler or guide, but it wanders about oppressed with every kind of helplessness.... But the soul which has passed through life with purity and moderation, having obtained the gods for its fellow travelers and guides, settles each in the place suited to it." "If the soul is immortal, it requires our care not only for the present time, which we call life, but for all time; and the danger would now appear to be dreadful, if one should neglect it. For if death were a deliverance from everything, it would be a great gain for the wicked, when they die, to be delivered at the same time from the body, and from their vices together with the soul; but now, since it appears to be immortal, it can have no other refuge from evils, nor safety, except by becoming as good and wise as possible." Christ, it is claimed, "brought immortality to light." Yet Phaedo was written nearly four centuries before Christ came. McClintock and Strong's "Cyclopedia" concedes Plato's "near approximation to the doctrines of Christianity--some of which," it says, "he announces almost in the language of the Apostles." Continuing, this authority says: "We know no more terrible and sublime picture than the passage in which he depicts the dead presenting themselves for judgment in the other world, scarred and blotched and branded with the ineradicable marks of their earthly sins. Yet this is but one of many analogous passages. This approximation to revealed truth is among the most insoluble problems bequeathed to us by antiquity.... We offer no solution of the enigma, which awaits its Oedipus. We only note the existence of the riddle" (Plato). Prof. Gunkel, of Berlin, says: "'Christianity is a syncretistic religion. It is providential that it passed safely over from the Orient into the Greek world. It imbibed both influences, and acquired many features that were foreign to the original gospel.'" Pythagoras. This religio-philosophical teacher lived in the sixth century B. C., the century in which flourished Buddha, Laou-tsze, and Confucius, three of the world's greatest religious founders. Greece was his native, and Italy his adopted, country. His history is largely obscured by myths. He was claimed to be, like Plato, the son of Apollo. He was said to have performed miracles and to have been endowed with the gift of prophecy. He traveled in Egypt and India, and his system contains some elements of the Egyptian and Buddhist religions. There was a small Jewish sect, known as the Essenes, which adopted to a large extent the teachings of Pythagoras. Jesus is believed to have belonged to this sect. There is an Essene element in the New Testament which is especially prominent in the teachings ascribed to Christ. Josephus, in his "Wars of the Jews," describes at length the doctrines and customs of this sect. From Josephus and the New Testament I cite a few of the parallels between the religion of the Essenes and the religion of Christ. "These men are despisers of "A rich man shall hardly enter into riches" (Wars, B. II, ch. viii, the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. xix, sec. 3). 23). "It is a law among them, that "Neither said any of them that those who come to them must let aught of the things which he what they have be common to the possessed was his own; but they had whole order" (Ibid). all things common" (Acts iv, 32). "They carry nothing at all with "Provide neither gold, nor silver, them when they travel into remote nor brass in your purses, nor scrip parts" (Sec. 4). for your journey" (Matt. x, 9, 10). "Every one of them gives what he "Give to him that asketh thee" hath to him that wanteth it" (Matt. v, 42.) (Ib). "And he took bread, and gave "A priest says grace before meat" thanks" (Luke xxii, 19). (Sec. 5). "Blessed are the peace-makers" "They ... are the ministers of (Matt. v, 9). peace" (Sec. 6). "But I say unto you, Swear not at "Whatsoever they say also is all; ... but let your communication firmer than an oath; but swearing be, yea, yea; nay, nay" (Matt. v, is avoided by them" (Sec. 6). 34, 37). Closely allied to the Essenes and the primitive Christians is another Pythagorian sect, known as the Therapeuts of Egypt. Regarding this sect, four different theories are held: 1. That they were a Jewish sect. 2. That they were a Jewish Christian sect. 3. That they were Pagans, many of whose teachings were incorporated into the Christian creed. 4. That they are a myth, that the "De Vita Contemplativa" of Philo, which contains the only account of them, is a Christian forgery, written for the purpose of extolling the monastic life, the celibacy, and the asceticism of the church. Bacchus. Bacchus was a Roman god, or rather a Roman modification of the Greek god, Dionysos. He was the god of wine. He cultivated the vine, made wine, and encouraged its use. His worship extended over nearly the whole of the ancient world. It consisted largely of protracted festivals, where wine flowed freely, and joyous and noisy ceremonies were indulged in. This god and his worship have survived in Christ and Christianity. Christ was called a "winebibber" (Luke vii, 34); he made wine--his first miracle was the conversion of water into wine (John ii, 1-10); he blessed the winecup, and commanded his disciples to drink in remembrance of him (Luke xxii, 17), just as the devotees of Bacchus drank in remembrance of their god. Christianity, more than all other religions combined, has contributed to keep alive the Bacchanalian feasts and revelries. "Bacchus," says Volney, "in the history of his whole life, and even of his death, brings to mind the history of the god of Christians" (Ruins, p. 169). The cabalistic names of Bacchus and Jesus, Volney says, were the same. United with the worship of Bacchus, and similar to it, was the worship of the goddess Ceres (Demeter). Her rites were known as the Eleusinian mysteries. Cakes were eaten in her honor. And thus in the bread of Ceres and the wine of Bacchus we have the bread and wine of the Christian Eucharist. "It is well known," says Dr. Westbrook, "that the Athenians celebrated the allegorical giving of the flesh to eat of Ceres, the goddess of corn, and in like manner the giving his blood to drink by Bacchus, the god of wine." This worship, like the Mithraic worship, which also included the communion, had its origin in the East, and was one of the first, as well as one of the last, of the religions of ancient Greece and Rome. Another rite connected with the mysteries was the use of holy water. Lempriere, in his "Classical Dictionary," describing the Eleusinian mysteries as they existed in Greece centuries before the Christian era, says: "As the candidates for initiation entered the temple, they purified themselves by washing their hands in holy water." The mysteries comprehended the origin of life, and nature worship was included in the ceremonies. At the festivals women carried the phallus in their processions. Regarding the worship of Bacchus and Ceres at Rome, "Chambers' Encyclopedia" says: "These rites degenerated, and came to be celebrated with a licentiousness that threatened the destruction of morality and of society itself. They were made the occasion of the most unnatural excesses. At first, only women took part in these mysterious Bacchic rites, but latterly men also were admitted." The Roman government suppressed the later Bacchanalian and Eleusinian feasts, together with the Christian Agapae, because of their debaucheries, obscenities, and supposed infant sacrifices. Meredith, in "The Prophet of Nazareth" (pp. 225-231), institutes an examination to ascertain "how far the Eleusinian and Bacchanalian feasts resembled the Christian Agapae." His conclusion is that the facts "show clearly that the Christian Agapae were of pagan origin--were identically the same as the pagan feasts." Gibbon says: "The language of that great historian [Tacitus, in his allusion to Christians] is almost similar to the style employed by Livy, when he relates the introduction and the suppression of the rites of Bacchus" (Rome, vol. 1, P. 579). Referring to the Agapae, Dr. Cave says it was commonly charged that Christians "exercised lust and filthiness under a pretense of religion, promiscuously calling themselves brothers and sisters, that by the help of so sacred a name their common adulteries might become incestuous" (Primitive Christianity, Part II, chap. v). Describing the Carpocratians, an early Christian sect, Dr. Cave says: "Both men and women used to meet at supper (which was called their love-feast), when after they had loaded themselves with a plentiful meal, to prevent all shame, if they had any remaining, they put out the lights, and then promiscuously mixed in filthiness with one another" (Ibid). The "International Cyclopedia" says: "With the increase of wealth and the decay of religious earnestness and purity in the Christian church, the Agapae became occasions of great riotousness and debaucheries." The Agapae, with their excesses eliminated, survive in the love-feasts of modern Christians. Webster defines "love-feast" as "a religious festival, held quarterly by the Methodists, in imitation of the Agapae of the early Christians." That these mysteries of Bacchus and Ceres were adopted by the early Christians is largely admitted by the great church historian himself. Writing of the second century, Mosheim says: "The profound respect paid to the Greek and Roman mysteries, and the extraordinary sanctity that was attributed to them, was a further circumstance that induced the Christians to give their religion a mystic air, in order to put it upon an equal foot, in point of dignity, with that of the Pagans. For this purpose they gave the name of 'mysteries' to the institutions of the gospel, and decorated particularly the holy Sacrament with that solemn title. They used in that sacred institution, as also in that of baptism, several of the terms employed in the heathen mysteries and proceeded so far at length as even to adopt some of the rites and ceremonies of which these renowned mysteries consisted." (Ecclesiastical History, p. 56.) England's highest authority on early Christian history, Dean Milman, says: "Christianity disdained that its God and its Redeemer should be less magnificently honored than the demons (gods) of Paganism. In the service it delighted to breathe, as it were, a sublimer sense into the common appellations of the Pagan worship, whether from the ordinary ceremonial or the more secret mysteries. The church became a temple; the table of the communion an altar; the celebration of the Eucharist, the appalling, or unbloody sacrifice.... The incense, the garlands, the lamps, all were gradually adopted by zealous rivalry, or seized as the lawful spoils of vanquished Paganism and consecrated to the service of Christ. "The church rivaled the old heathen mysteries in expanding by slow degrees its higher privileges.... Its preparatory ceremonial of abstinence, personal purity, ablution, secrecy, closely resembled that of the Pagan mysteries (perhaps each may have contributed to the other)" (History of Christianity, Vol. III, pp. 312, 313). Smith's "Dictionary of Antiquities" says: "The mysteries occupied a place among the ancients analogous to that of the holy sacraments in the Christian church." The "Encyclopedia Britannica" makes the same statement. James Anthony Froude, in a letter to Prof. Johnson, of England, says: "I have long been convinced that the Christian Eucharist is but a continuation of the Eleusinian mysteries. St. Paul, in using the word teleiois, almost confirms this." Saturn. One of the oldest and most renowned of the European gods was Saturn, whose name was given by the ancients to one of the planets and to one of the days of the week. He was worshiped by the inhabitants of Italy more than a thousand years before Christ came, and centuries before Rome took her place among the nations of the earth. His temples were located in various parts of Italy, the latest and the principal one being at Rome. His chief festival, and the greatest of all the Roman festivals, was the Saturnalia celebrated at the time of the winter solstice. This festival survives in the Christian festival of Christmas. The following description of the Saturnalia is from the pen of Ridpath: "The most elaborate of all the celebrations of Rome was that of Saturn, held at the winter solstice, and afterwards extended so as to include the twenty-fifth of December.... The festival was called the Saturnalia. Labor ceased, public business was at an end, the courts were closed, the schools had holiday. Tables, laden with bounties, were spread on every hand, and at these all classes for the nonce sat down together. The master and the slave for the day were equals. It was a time of gift-giving and innocent abandonment. In the public shops every variety of the present, from the simplest to the most costly, could be found. Fathers, mothers, kinspeople, friends, all hurried thither to purchase, according to their fancy, what things soever seemed most tasteful and appropriate as presents" (History of the World, Vol. III, p. 97). Concerning this festival the "Encyclopedia Britannica" says: "All classes exchanged gifts, the commonest being wax tapers and clay dolls. These dolls were especially given to children, and the makers of them held a regular fair at this time." One of the principal rites, the "Britannica" says, was the burning of many candles. "The modern Italian carnival," says "Chambers' Encyclopedia," "would seem to be only the old pagan Saturnalia baptized into Christianity." Quirinus. Nearly every reader is familiar with the story of the founding of Rome. Rhea Silvia, a vestal virgin, bears twins by the god Mars. As they are heirs to the throne which Amulius has usurped, he attempts to destroy them by drowning. They are miraculously preserved and finally rescued by a shepherd. One of them, Romulus, becomes the founder and king of Rome. After a reign of 37 years he is translated by his father, and eventually becomes the tutelary god of the Romans, under the name of Quirinus. The following account of his translation is from "Chambers' Encyclopedia": "While he was standing near the 'Goat's Pool' in the Campus Martius, reviewing his militia, the sun was eclipsed, and a dark storm swept over the plain and hills. When it had passed, the people looked round for their king, but he was gone. His father, Mars, had carried him up to heaven (like the prophet Elijah) in a chariot of fire. Some time after he reappeared in a glorified form to Proculus Julius, announced the future greatness of the Roman people, and told him that henceforth he would watch over them as their guardian god, under the name of Quirinus" (Art. Romulus). Next to the Saturnalia, the most important religious festival of Pagan Rome was the Quirinalia, which celebrated the ascension of Quirinus. It corresponds to Ascension Day, one of the principal religious festivals of the Christian church, which celebrates the ascension of Christ. The supernatural darkness of the Roman myth, it is believed, suggested the supernatural darkness of the crucifixion myth. The reappearance of Quirinus in a glorified form is also believed by some to have suggested the transfiguration. Odin. Odin, the All-Father, held the highest rank in the Northern pantheon. He was the son of Boer and Bestla. Freya was his queen. His religion prevailed among the Scandinavians and among the Goths, the Saxons, and other ancient German tribes. Some believe that he was an ancient hero who with a horde of Goths or Scythians conquered the North a thousand years or more before the Christian era. The prevailing opinion, however, is that the Norse mythology had its birth in Asia--in India, Persia, or Accadia--and was carried by the Aryans to northern Europe, where it underwent many modifications. This mythology recognized as existing in the beginning, two worlds--one the warm South, the other the icy North. The entrance to the Southland was guarded by a flaming sword. Between heat and cold, as between good and evil, there was perpetual strife. From heat Ymir (Chaos), the father of giants, was evolved. Odin and his brothers slew Ymir and from his body created the earth, his flesh forming the land, his blood the sea. Out of two trees Odin made man and woman, and breathed into them the breath of life. For the abode of man a fruitful garden was planted in the center of the earth and called Midgard. Beneath the earth dwells Hel, the goddess of the dead. Loki is the god of evil. He will be chained for a time and then released. A bloody war will follow. On one side, led by Loki, will fight the hosts of Hel; on the other Odin and his followers. Loki will triumph for a while, mankind will be destroyed, and heaven and earth will be consumed by fire. But Odin will be victorious in the end. He will create a new heaven and a new earth. He will be the ruler of all things, and will dwell in heaven, where the best and bravest of his followers are to be received after death. The Norse, the Persian, and the Christian doctrines, regarding the destruction of the world by fire, all had a common origin. Thor. Thor was the son of Odin and the virgin Earth. He was called the first born son of God. His worship was more widespread than that of any other Northern god. In the temple at Upsala he occupied the same place in the Scandinavian Trinity that Christ does in the Christian Trinity. Like Christ he died for man and was worshiped as a Savior. Midgard had a serpent, more formidable if not more wily than that of Eden, which threatened to destroy the human race. Thor attacked and slew the monster, but was himself killed by the venom which was exhaled from it. The slaying of the serpent of Midgard by Thor, the slaying of the python by the Greek god, and the bruising of the head of the serpent of Hebrew mythology by Christ, are analogous myths. Thor dwells in a mansion in the clouds. The thunder we hear in the sky is the noise of his chariot wheels, and the flashes of lightning are from his hammer which he dashes against the mountains. The "Britannica" says: "Some of the monks of a later period endeavored to persuade the Northmen that in Thor their forefathers had worshiped Christ, the strong and mighty Savior of the oppressed, and that his mallet was the rude form of the cross." "The sign of the hammer," says "Chambers," "was analogous to that of the cross among Christians." Baldur. One of the purest, one of the gentlest, and one of the best beloved of all the gods was Baldur, the beautiful son of Odin and Freya. In him were combined all things good and noble. The envious gods, inspired by Loki, shot their arrows at him in vain until the blind god Hoder pierced his body with an arrow of mistletoe and he passed into the power of Hel, the pallid goddess of death. Sometime--when the old order of things has passed away--in another and better world, where envy, and hatred, and war are unknown, Baldur will live again. "The death of Baldur," says Prof. Rasmus B. Anderson, the highest authority on Norse mythology, "forms the turning point in the great drama.... While he lived the power of the asas (gods) was secure, but when Baldur, at the instigation of Loki, was slain, the fall of creation could not be prevented." Writing of Norse mythology, Andrew Lang says: "There is, almost undoubtedly, a touch of Christian dawn on the figure and myth of the pure and beloved and ill-fated god Baldur, and his descent into hell." Odin, and Thor, and Baldur, and their divine companions are worshiped no longer; but their religion has left a deep impress on the religion that supplanted it. The Christianity of Scandinavia, of northern Germany, of England, and of America, the whole of Protestant Christianity, in short, and to some extent Catholicism itself, has been modified by this strange and fascinating faith. Regarding this subject "Chambers' Encyclopedia" says: "So deep-rooted was the adhesion to the faith of Odin in the North, that the early Christian teachers, unable to eradicate the old ideas, were driven to the expedient of trying to give them a coloring of Christianity." The selection of December 25th as the date of the Nativity was doubtless suggested by the Mithraic or some other solar worship of the East, but the Protestant Christmas came from the North. The mistletoe with which Baldur was slain reappears in this festival. The fire wheel, a remnant of the old Norse sun worship, existed among German Christians until the nineteenth century. The burning of the Yule log still survives. In some provinces of Germany the festival is still called by its Pagan name. Rev. Samuel M. Jackson, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Church History, New York University, says: "The Romans had, like other Pagan nations, a nature festival, called by them Saturnalia, and the Northern peoples had Yule; both celebrated the turn of the year from the death of winter to the life of spring--the winter solstice. As this was an auspicious change the festival was a very joyous one.... The giving of presents and the burning of candles characterized it. Among the northern people the lighting of a huge log in the houses of the great and with appropriate ceremonies was a feature. The Roman church finding this festival deeply intrenched in popular esteem, wisely adopted it" (Universal Cyclopedia). The festival of Easter belongs to this religion. It was observed in honor of the Saxon goddess Eastre, or Ostara, the goddess of Spring. It celebrated, not the resurrection of Christ, but the resurrection of Spring and flowers. It still retains the name of this goddess. Nearly every festival of the church--and the Catholic and English churches have many--are of Pagan origin. Every day of the week bears a Pagan name--four of them the names of Scandinavian gods--Tuesday the name of Tiu (Tyr), Wednesday the name of Woden (Odin), Thursday the name of Thor, and Friday that of Freya. Even the Christian "hell" was derived from "Hel," the name of the Norse goddess of the lower world. CHAPTER XII. SOURCES OF THE CHRIST MYTH--CONCLUSION. In each of these divinities we find some element or lineament of Christ. And all of them existed, either as myths or mortals, long anterior to his time. Plato, the latest of them to appear, was born in the fifth century B. C. These Pagan divinities and deified sages, together with the religious systems and doctrines previously noticed, were the sources from which Christ and Christianity were, for the most part, derived. The following religious elements and ideas, nearly all of which Christians believe to have been divinely revealed, and to belong exclusively to their religion, are of Pagan origin: Son of God, Messiah, Mediator, The Word, The Ideal Man, Annunciation, Immaculate conception, Divine incarnation, Genealogies showing royal descent, Virgin mother, Angelic visitants, Celestial music, Visit of shepherds, Visit of Magi, Star of Magi, Slaughter of innocents, Temptation, Transfiguration, Crucified Redeemer, Supernatural darkness, Resurrection, Ascension, Descent into Hell, Second advent, Unity of God, Trinity in Unity, Holy Ghost (Spirit), Devil, Angels, Immortality of the soul, Last judgment, Future rewards and punishments, Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, Fatherhood of God, Brotherhood of man, Freedom of the will, Fall of man, Vicarious atonement, Kingdom of God, Binding of Satan, Miracles, Prophecies, Obsession, Exorcism, The priesthood, Pope and bishops, Monks and nuns, Worship of Virgin, Adoration of Virgin and Child, Worship of saints, Worship of relics, Image worship, Inspired Scriptures, The cross as a religious symbol, Crucifix, Rosary, Holy water, Lord's Day (Sunday), Christmas, Easter, Baptism, Eucharist, Washing of feet, Anointing, Confirmation, Masses for the dead, Fasting, Prayer, Auricular confession, Penance, Absolution, Celibacy, Poverty, Asceticism, Tithes, Community of goods, Golden Rule and other precepts. The Old Testament consists largely of borrowed myths. Nearly everything in Genesis, and much of the so-called history which follows, are but a recital of Assyrian, Babylonian, Chaldean and other legends. Dr. Draper says: "From such Assyrian sources, the legends of the creation of the earth and heaven, the garden of Eden, the making of man from clay, and of woman from one of his ribs, the temptation by the serpent, the naming of animals, the cherubim and flaming sword, the Deluge and the ark, the drying up of the waters by the wind, the building of the Tower of Babel, and the confusion of tongues, were obtained by Ezra" (Conflict, p. 223). The ten antediluvian patriarchs, Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah, whom Luke presents as the first ten progenitors of Christ, are now known to have been a dynasty of Babylonian kings. Abram, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah, whom both Matthew and Luke declare to have been ancestors of Christ, and whom Matthew places at the head of his genealogy, were not persons at all, but merely tribes of people. In regard to this Rev. Dr. Oort, professor of Oriental languages at Amsterdam, says: "They do not signify men, so much as groups of nations or single tribes. Abram, for instance, represents a great part of the Terachites; Lot, the Moabites and Ammonites, whose ancestor he is called; Ishmael, certain tribes of Arabia; Isaac, Israel and Edom together; Jacob, Israel alone; while his twelve sons stand for the twelve tribes of Israel. * * * Here and there the writers of the old legend themselves point out, as it were, that the patriarchs whom they bring upon the scene as men are personifications of tribes" (Bible for Learners, Vol. I, pp. 100-102). Moses, the reputed founder of Judaism and archetype of Christ, doubtless existed; but nearly all the Bible stories concerning him are myths. David and Solomon, from whose house Christ is said to have been descended, are historical characters; but the accounts respecting the greatness of their kingdom and the splendor of their reigns are fabulous. Christ and Christianity are partly creations and partly evolutions. While the elements composing them were mostly derived from preexisting and contemporary beliefs, they were not formed as a novelist creates a hero and a convention frames a constitution. Their growth was gradual. Jesus, if he existed, was a Jew, and his religion, with a few innovations, was Judaism. With his death, probably, his apotheosis began. During the first century the transformation was slow; but during the succeeding centuries rapid. The Judaic elements of his religion were, in time, nearly all eliminated, and the Pagan elements, one by one, were incorporated into the new faith. Regarding the establishment of this religion Lecky says: "Christianity had become the central intellectual power of the world, but it triumphed not so much by superseding rival faiths as by absorbing and transforming them. Old systems, old rites, old images were grafted into the new belief, retaining much of their ancient character but assuming new names and a new complexion" (Rationalism, Vol. I. p. 223). Its origin is thus traced by Mrs. Besant: "From the later Jews comes the Unity of God; from India and Egypt the Trinity in Unity; from India and Egypt the crucified Redeemer; from India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, the virgin mother and the divine son; from Egypt its priests and its ritual; from the Essenes and the Therapeuts its asceticism; from Persia, India, and Egypt, its sacraments; from Persia and Babylonia its angels and devils; from Alexandria the blending into one of many lines of thought." (Freethinkers' Text Book, p. 392.) Concerning this, Judge Strange, another English writer, says: "The Jewish Scriptures and the traditionary teachings of their doctors, the Essenes and Therapeuts, the Greek philosophers, the Neo-Platonism of Alexandria and the Buddhism of the East, gave ample supplies for the composition of the doctrinal portion of the new faith; the divinely procreated personages of the Grecian and Roman pantheons, the tales of the Egyptian Osiris, and of the Indian Rama, Krishna, and Buddha, furnished the materials for the image of the new Savior of mankind." (Portraiture and Mission of Jesus, p. 27.) Dr. G. W. Brown, previously quoted, says: "The Eclectics formed the nucleus into which were merged all the various religions of the Orient. Mithra, of the Zoroastrians; Krishna and Buddha, of the Brahmans; Osiris, of the Egyptians, and Bacchus, of the Greeks and Romans, all disappeared and were lost in the new God Jesus, each of the predecessors contributing to the conglomerate religion known as Christian, Buddha and probably Bacchus contributing the most." Dr. John W. Draper, recognized on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most erudite, one of the most philosophic, and one of the most impartial of historians, in the following paragraphs tells the story of the rise and triumph of this ever-changing faith: "In a political sense, Christianity is the bequest of the Roman Empire to the world." "Not only as a token of the conquest she had made, but also as a gratification to her pride, the conquering republic brought the gods of the vanquished peoples to Rome. With disdainful toleration, she permitted the worship of them all. That paramount authority exercised by each divinity in his original seat disappeared at once in the crowd of gods and goddesses among whom he had been brought. Already, as we have seen, through geographical discoveries and philosophical criticism, faith in the religion of the old days had been profoundly shaken. It was, by this policy of Rome, brought to an end." "In one of the Eastern provinces, Syria, some persons in very humble life had associated themselves together for benevolent and religious purposes. The doctrines they held were in harmony with that sentiment of universal brotherhood arising from the coalescence of the conquered kingdoms. They were doctrines inculcated by Jesus." "From this germ was developed a new, and as the events proved, all-powerful society--the Church; new, for nothing of the kind had existed in antiquity; powerful, for the local churches, at first isolated, soon began to confederate for their common interest. Through this organization Christianity achieved all her political triumphs." "After the abdication of Diocletian (A. D., 305), Constantine, one of the competitors for the purple, perceiving the advantages that would accrue to him from such a policy, put himself forth as the head of the Christian party. This gave him, in every part of the empire, men and women ready to encounter fire and sword in his behalf; it gave him unwavering adherents in every legion of the armies. In a decisive battle, near the Milvian bridge, victory crowned his schemes. The death of Maximian, and subsequently that of Licinius, removed all obstacles. He ascended the throne of the Caesars--the first Christian emperor." "Place, profit, power--these were in view of whoever now joined the conquering sect. Crowds of worldly persons, who cared nothing about its religious ideas, became its warmest supporters. Pagans at heart, their influence was soon manifested in the paganization of Christianity that forthwith ensued." "As years passed on, the faith described by Tertullian was transmuted into one more fashionable and more debased. It was incorporated with the old Greek mythology. Olympus was restored, but the divinities passed under other names. The more powerful provinces insisted on the adoption of their time-honored conceptions. Views of the Trinity, in accordance with Egyptian traditions, were established." "Heathen rites were adopted, a pompous and splendid ritual, gorgeous robes, mitres, tiaras, wax-tapers, processional services, lustrations, gold and silver vases, were introduced. The Roman lituns, the chief ensign of the augurs, became the crozier. Churches were built over the tombs of martyrs, and consecrated with rites borrowed from the ancient laws of the Roman pontiffs. Festivals and commemorations of martyrs multiplied with the numberless fictitious discoveries of their remains. Fasting became the grand means of repelling the devil and appeasing God; celibacy the greatest of the virtues. Pilgrimages were made to Palestine and the tombs of the martyrs. Quantities of dust and earth were brought from the Holy Land and sold at enormous prices, as antidotes against devils. The virtues of consecrated water were upheld. Images and relics were introduced into the churches, and worshiped after the fashion of the heathen gods.... The apotheosis of the old Roman times was replaced by canonization; tutelary saints succeeded to local mythological divinities." "As centuries passed, the paganization became more and more complete." "The maxim holds good in the social as well as the mechanical world, that, when two bodies strike, the form of both is changed. Paganism was modified by Christianity; Christianity by Paganism" (Conflict, pp. 34-52). While affirming the divine origin of Christianity, the church historian Mosheim admits its early paganization. He says: "The rites and institutions, by which the Greeks, Romans, and other nations had formerly testified their religious veneration for fictitious deities, were now adopted, with some slight alterations, by Christian bishops, and employed in the service of the true God.... Hence it happened that in these times the religion of the Greeks and Romans differed very little in its external appearance from that of the Christians. They had both a most pompous and splendid ritual. Gorgeous robes, mitres, tiaras, wax-tapers, crosiers, processions, lustrations, images, gold and silver vases, and many such circumstances of pageantry, were equally to be seen in the heathen temples and the Christian churches" (Ecclesiastical History, p. 105). The Rev. Dr. R. Heber Newton, in an article which appeared in the North American Review, says: "There is, in fact, as we now see, nothing in the externals of the Christian church which is not a survival from the churches of paganism.... The sacramental use of water and bread and wine, the very sign of the cross--all are ancient human institutions, rites and symbols. Scratch a Christian and you come upon a Pagan. Christianity is a rebaptized paganism." "Christendom," says Dr. Lyman Abbott, "is only an imperfectly Christianized paganism." The creeds of old are dead or dying, and the celestial kings, who seemed so real to their worshipers, are mostly crownless phantoms now. Buddha, Laou-tsze, and Confucius, the wise men of the East, command the reverence of nearly half the world, and the Persian prophet has a few followers; but from these faiths the supernatural is vanishing. Millions yet believe that Krishna, the Christ of India, is the son of God; but this faith, too, is waning. The intellectual offspring of Plato's brilliant brain survive, but all that remains of his divine father is a mutilated effigy. The genial Sun still warms and lights the earth, but centuries have flown since Mithra, his beloved, received the adoration of mankind. The fire still glows upon the hearth, but the great Titan who brought it down from Heaven lives only in a poet's dream. The crimson nectar of the vine moves men to mirth and madness now as when the swan of Teos sang its praise, but Bacchus and the ancient mysteries are dead. Above storm-wrapped Olympus, as of old, is heard the thunder's awful peal, but it is not the voice of Zeus. The voice of this, the mightiest of all the gods, is hushed forever. The populous and ever-growing empire of the dead still flourishes, but in its solemn court Osiris no longer sits as judge. The mother, as of yore, presses to her loving heart her dimpled babe and fondly gazes into its azure eyes to woo its artless smile; but Egypt's star-crowned virgin and her royal child, who once received the homage of a world, are now but mythic dust. Manly beauty thrills our daughters' hearts with love's strange ecstasy, and the feigned suffering of the dying hero on the mimic stage moistens their eyes with tears; but Adonis sleeps in his Phoenician tomb, his slumbers undisturbed by woman's sobs. The purple flower, substance of his dear self, which Venus carried in her bosom, withered long ago. When, at eve, the summer shower bathes with its cooling drops the verdure of the fields, across the sun-kissed cloud which veils the Orient sky may still be seen the gorgeous bridge of Bifrost; but over its majestic arch the dauntless Odin rides no more. "The fair humanities of old religions, The power, the beauty, and the majesty, That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished; They live no longer in the faith of reason." --Schiller. What has been the fate of the Pagan gods will be the fate of the Christian deity. Christianity, which supplanted the ancient faiths, will, in turn, be supplanted by other religions. On two continents already the cross has gone down before the crescent. The belief in Christ as a divine being is passing away. The creeds, as of old, affirm his divinity, but in the minds of his more enlightened followers the divine elements are disappearing. What was formerly believed to be supernatural is now known to be natural. What were once living verities are now dead formalities. Slowly and painfully, but surely and clearly, men are becoming convinced that there are no divine beings and no supernatural religions--that all the gods, including Christ, are myths, and all the religions, including Christianity, human productions. In the words of Jules Soury, "Time, which condenses nebulae, lights up suns, brings life and thought upon planets theretofore steeped in death, and gives back ephemeral worlds to dissolution and the fertile chaos of the everlasting universe--time knows nought of gods nor of the dim and fallacious hopes of ignorant mortals." With these sublime pictures--a retrospect and a prophecy--from the gallery of the great master, I close this long-drawn subject: "When India is supreme, Brahma sits upon the world's throne. When the sceptre passes to Egypt, Isis and Osiris receive the homage of mankind. Greece, with her fierce valor, sweeps to empire, and Zeus puts on the purple of authority. The earth trembles with the tread of Rome's intrepid sons, and Jove grasps with mailed hand the thunderbolts of Heaven. Rome falls, and Christians, from her territory, with the red sword of war, carve out the ruling nations of the world, and now Christ sits upon the old throne. Who will be his successor?" "I look again. The popes and priests are gone. The altars and the thrones have mingled with the dust. The aristocracy of land and cloud have perished from the earth and air. The gods are dead. A new religion sheds its glory on mankind.... And as I look Life lengthens, Joy deepens, Love intensifies, Fear dies--Liberty at last is God, and Heaven is here." 
19566	----	public domain works from the University of Michigan Digital Libraries.) [Illustration: Robert Patterson] FABLES OF INFIDELITY AND FACTS OF FAITH: BEING AN EXAMINATION OF THE EVIDENCES OF INFIDELITY. BY REV. ROBERT PATTERSON, D. D. REVISED AND ENLARGED. CINCINNATI: WESTERN TRACT SOCIETY. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by WESTERN TRACT SOCIETY, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C. Stereotyped by OGDEN, CAMPBELL & CO., 176 Elm St., Cincinnati. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE. Did the World Make Itself? 7 Eternity of Matter. Disproved by its Composite Nature. Disproved by its Motion. Evolution only a big Perpetual Motion Humbug. Work of a Designer in the structure of the Eye. The Eye-Maker sees over a wide Field and far. The Eye-Maker sees Perfectly. CHAPTER II. Was Your Mother a Monkey? 34 The Divine Fact of Evolution Quite Different from the Atheistic Theory. State the Question Sharply--Why? Darwin's Answer. The Ancestral Monkey, Fish, Squirt. Natural Selection. Intended to Exclude God. 1. _The History of the Theory._ Indian; Phoenician; Greek; Popish; La Place's Theory; The Vestiges of Creation. Herbert Spencer's Contradictory Theory. The Evolutionists' Hell. Spontaneous Generation--two Theories; the Conflicting Theories of Progress; Tremaux; Lamarck; the Climatal; Darwin's; Huxley's; Parson's; Mivart's; Hyatt's; Cope's; Wallace's; the Gods; Denounced by the Princes of Science. Agassiz's Deliverance Against it. Imperfection of the Theory Eked out. Huxley's Protoplasm. Tyndall's Potency of Life in Matter. Buchner's Matter and Force. Lubbock's Origin of Civilization. Consequences of the Brutal Origin of Man. Propagandism of Atheism. 2. _The Theory Illogical and Incoherent._ Darwin Admits Insufficiency of Proof. Useless as an Explanation of Nature. Self-Contradictory; _e. g._, Protoplasm. Wallace's Self-Contradictions. Incoherency of the Denial of Design with the Assertion of Progress. Failure of Alleged Facts to Sustain the Theory. Does not Account for the Origin of Anything. Wild Assumptions Made by Darwin. Erroneous Assumption of the Tendency of Natural Selection to Improve Breeds. Assumption of Infinite Possibility of Progress in Finite Creatures. 3. _An Unfounded Theory._ No Evidence of the Facts Possible. None Ever Alleged, save Gulliver's. Domestication Disproves Transmutation--Horses; Pigeons; Dogs. The Egyptian Monuments. The Mummied Animals. The Geological Record. The Limits of Geological Time. 4. _Embryology._ Testimony of Scientists: 1. Embryology Only Analogical. 2. Embryos _not_ all Alike. 3. Four Distinct Plans of Structure. 4. Germs Always True to the Breed. 5. _Gradations of Species._ Lamarck's Statement. Birth Descent not Inferable from Gradation. No such Imperceptible Blending in Nature. The Fact of the Present Existence of Distinct Species. Sterility of Hybrids. Geological Species Distinct. The Intermediate Forms not Found. The Gradation Does not Begin with the Lowest Forms. Four Kingdoms from the Beginning. The New Species Began with the Giants. The Gaps Fatal to the Theory. The Abyss Between Death and Life. The Gulf Between the Plant and the Animal. The Gaps Between Species Which will not Breed Together. The Gaps Between Air Breathers and Water Breathers, &c. The Great Gulf Between the Brute and the Man. Natural Selection Could not Have Deprived a Monkey of Hair. Nor Have Given a Human Brain. The Brain-Worker Contravenes Natural Selection at Every Step. Civilization the Contradiction of Natural Selection. Morality and Religion the Direct Contraries of Natural Selection. Tendency Immoral, Degrading, and Atheistic. CHAPTER III. Is God Everybody, and Everybody God? 91 Pantheism Described. An Antiquated Hindooism. A Jesuitical Atheism. Grossly Immoral. A Practical Atheism. CHAPTER IV. Have We Any Need of the Bible? 112 Civilization and the Bible. Revelation Not Impossible. The Mythical Theory. The Inner Light. Many Ignorant of God. Heathen Morality--Plato's. Infidel Morality--Paine's. CHAPTER V. Who Wrote the New Testament? 147 The Bible Not Just Like Any Other Book. Two Modes of Investigation. Did the Council of Nice Make the Bible? The Mythical Theory. The Evidence of Celsus. The Fragment Hypothesis. The Bank Signature Book. Could the New Testament be Corrupted? CHAPTER VI. Is the Gospel Fact or Fable? 169 The Nature of Historical Evidence; Letters; Monuments. Contemporary Letters of Peter, Pliny and John. Prove the Existence of Churches. And Their Worship, Holiness, and Sufferings. CHAPTER VII. Can We Believe Christ and His Apostles? 190 The Gospel a Unit; Must Take or Refuse it All. Apostles' Testimony Circumstantial. Witnesses Numerous and Independent. Confirm Their Testimony with Their Blood. CHAPTER VIII. Prophecy, 210 Political--Napoleon's--Wrong. Presidential Candidates. Draper's Dogma of Youth and Decrepitude of Nations. Statesmen Prophets. General Claim for All Genius. Instances of Secular Prediction: Cayotte's of the French Revolution. The Oracles of Apollo. Vettius Valens' Twelve Vultures. Spencer's of the Disruption of the American Union. Saint Malachi's Prophecies. Mohammed's Prophecies. Seneca's of the Discovery of America. Dante's of the Reformation. Plato's of Shakespeare. Symbolical Language of Prophecy. Anybody may Predict Downfall of Nations. An Awful Truth if it be True. But Bible Predictions Circumstantial--Egypt; Babylon; Nineveh; Judea. Predict Life and Resurrection. The Arabs; Jews; Seven Churches; Messiah. CHAPTER IX. Moses and the Prophets, 266 God the Author of the Bible. Every Other Book Inspired? Connection of Bible History and Morality. Hume's Sophism. Miracles Being Violations of Laws of Nature, Contrary to an Unalterable Experience. No Testimony can Reach to the Supernatural. Records of Facts Not Judged by Your Notions. Rationalistic Explanation of the Miracles. Bible Account of Creation Unscientific. Antiquity of Man. The Anachronisms of the Pentateuch. Bishop Colenso's Blunders: The Universality of the Deluge. Joshua Causing the Sun to Stand Still. Cain's Wife. Increase of Jacob's Family in Egypt. The Number of the First-Born. The Fourth Generation. The Bishop's Blunders in Camp Life. Sterility of the Wilderness. Population of the Promised Land. Modern Discoveries in Bible Lands. Egyptian Monuments of Joseph. Assyrian Ethnology and Genesis, Chaps. x. and xi. Sennacherib's Conquest of Palestine. Belshazzar's Kingship. The Moabitic Inscriptions, and Omri and Ahab. The Samaritan Pentateuch. The Character of the Books--Austere. Variety of Writers and Unity of Plan. Contained the Surveys, and the Laws of the Nation. Introduced New and Republican Usages. Moses' Law in Advance of Modern Social Science. Testimony of the Jewish Nation. Testimony of Christ. The Lost Books. The Law Abolished by the Gospel. The Imperfect Morality of Old Testament. Polygamy, Slavery, and Divorce. The Education of the World a Gradual Process. The Imprecations of Scripture. CHAPTER X. Infidelity Among the Stars, 335 Scientific Objections to the Bible. The Infinity and Self-Existence of the Universe. Disproved by Its Evident Limits. Its Composite Materials. Its Steady Loss of Heat. Buffon's Explosion of Planets. The Nebular Theories. The Fiction of Homogeneous Matter. The Contradictory Theories. The Perpetual Motion Machine. Contrary to Facts of Astronomy. Contradicted by Astronomers. Impossibility of any Cosmogony. CHAPTER XI. Daylight Before Sunrise, 378 Infidel Objections to Genesis. The Hindoo Chronology. The Egyptian Chronology. The Bible Age of the Earth. The Solid Firmament. Light Before the Sun. CHAPTER XII. Telescopic Views of Scripture, 423 The Source of the Water of the Deluge. The Stars Fighting Against Sisera. The Astronomers of the Great Pyramid. The Grand Motion of the Sun. The Formation of Dew. The Multitude of the Stars. The Descent of the Heavenly City. CHAPTER XIII. Science or Faith? 466 Must Faith Fade Before Science? Scientists as Partial as Other People. Have no Such Certainty as is Claimed. 1. _Mathematical Errors._ The Infinite Half Inch, Etc. The Doctrine of Chances. No Mathematical Figures in Nature. The French Metric System. The Lowell Turbine Wheel. 2. _Errors of Astronomy._ Kant's Predictions; Le Verrier's. Herschel's Enumeration of Errors. Sun's Distance; Other Measurements. The Moon's Structure and Influence. La Place's Proposed Improvement. The Sun's Structure, Heat, Etc. The Sizes, Distances, and Densities of the Planets. Errors About the Nebulæ. Errors About Comets. The Cosmical Ether. The Cold of Infinite Space. From This Chaos Springs the Theory of Development. 3. _Errors of Geology._ No _Fact_ of Geology Anti-Biblical. All Anti-Biblical Theories Based on an _If_. No Geological Measure of _Time_. All Calculations of Time by Geologists, which Have Been Tested, Have Proved Erroneous--the Danish Bogs; the Swiss Lake Villager; Horner's Nile Pottery; the Raised Beaches of Scotland; Lyell's Blunder in the Delta of the Mississippi; Sir Wm. Thompson's Exposure of the Absurdity of the Evolutionists' Demands for Time. Conflicting Geological Theories--the Wernerian, Huttonian, and Diluvian Theories; the Catastrophists and Progressionists; Eleven Theories of Earthquakes; Nine Theories of Mountains; False Geology of America; Scotland Kicked About Too. 4. _Errors of Zoology._ Lamarck's Vestiges; Tremaux; Darwin's Contradictions; Huxley; Mivart, and Wallace. Blunders of the French Academy, Denouncing Quinine, Vaccination, Lightning Rods, and Steam Engines. Uncertainty of Science Increases in Human Concerns. Second-hand Science Founded on Somebody's Say So. 5. _All Science Founded on Faith._ Reason Also Based on Faith. This Life Depends on Faith. We Demand Truths of which Science is Ignorant. All Our Chief Concerns in the Domain of Faith. Religion the Most Experimental of the Sciences. The Only Science which can Make You Happy. Try for Yourself. PREFACE. This is not so much a volume upon the Evidences of Christianity, as an examination of the Evidences of Infidelity. When the Infidel tells us that Christianity is false, and asks us to reject it, he is bound of course to provide us with something better and truer instead; under penalty of being considered a knave trying to swindle us out of our birthright, and laughed at as a fool, for imagining that he could persuade mankind to live and die without religion. Suppose he had proved to the world's satisfaction that all religion is a hoax, and all men professing it are liars, how does that comfort me in my hour of sorrow? Scoffing will not sustain a man in his solitude, when he has nobody to scoff at; and disbelief is only a bottomless tub, which will not float me across the dark river. If Infidels intend to convert the world, they must give us some positive system of truth which we can believe, and venerate, and trust. A glimmering idea of this necessity seems lately to have dawned upon some of them. It is quite possible that they have also felt the want of something for their own souls to believe; for an Infidel has a soul, a poor, hungry, starved soul, just like other men. At any rate, having grown tired of pelting the Church with the dirtballs of Voltaire and Paine, they begin to acknowledge that it is, after all, an institution; and that the Bible is an influential book, both popular and useful in its way. Mankind, it seems, will have a Church and a Bible of some sort; why not go to work and make a Church and a Bible of their own? Accordingly they have gone to work, and in a very short time have prepared a variety of ungodly religions, so various that the worldly-minded man who can not be suited with one to his taste must be very hard to please. Discordant and contradictory in their positive statements, they are agreed only in negatives; denying the God of the Bible, the resurrection of the dead, and judgment to come. Nevertheless each discoverer or constructor presents his system to the world with great confidence, large claims to superior benevolence, vast pretensions to learning and science, and no little cant about duty and piety. Wonderful to tell, some of them are very fond of clothing their ungodliness in the language of Scripture. No pains are spared to secure the wide spread of these notions. Prominent Infidels are invited to deliver courses of scientific lectures, in which the science is made the medium of conveying the Infidelity. Scientific books, novels, magazines, daily newspapers, and common school books, are all enlisted in the work. The disciples of Infidelity are numerous and zealous. It would be hard to find a factory, boarding-house, steamboat or hotel where twelve persons are employed, without an Infidel; and harder still to find an Infidel who will not use his influence to poison his associates. These systems are well adapted to the depraved tastes of the age. The business man, whose whole soul is set on money-making and spending, is right glad to meet the Secularist, who will prove to him on scientific principles, that a man is much profited by gaining the whole world, even at the risk of his soul, if he has such a thing. The young and ill-instructed professor of Christianity, whose longings for forbidden joys are strong, has a natural kindliness toward nationalism, which befogs the serene light of God's holy law, and gives the directing power to his own inner liking. The sentimental young lady, who would recoil from the grossness of the Deist, is attracted by the poetry of Pantheism. Infidelity has had, in consequence, a degree of success very little suspected by simple-minded pastors and parents, and which is often discovered too late for remedy. This book is written to expose the _folly_ of some of these novel systems of Infidelity--leaving others to show their wickedness. It may surprise some who would glory in being esteemed fiends, to learn that they are only fools. If they should be awakened now to a sense of the absurdities which they cherish as philosophy, it might save them from awaking another day to the shame and everlasting contempt of the universe. I have not taken up all the cavils of Infidelity. Their name is Legion. Nor have I troubled my readers with any which they are not likely to hear. Leaving the sleeping dogs to lie, I have noticed only such as I have known to bark and bite in my own neighborhood, and know to be rife here in the West. They are stated, as nearly as possible, in the words in which I have heard them in public debate, or in private conversation with gentlemen of Infidel principles. I have made no references to books or writers on that side, save to such as I am assured were the sources of their sentiments. In such cases I have named and quoted the authors. Where no such quotations are noticed it will be understood that I am responsible for the fairness with which I have represented the opinions which are examined. It is not my design to fight men of straw. Every historical or scientific fact adduced in support of the arguments here used is confirmed by reference to the proper authority. But it has not been deemed needful to crowd the pages with references to the works of Christian apologists. The Christian scholar does not need such references; while to those for whose benefit I write, their names carry no authority, and their arguments are generally quite unknown. One great object of my labor will be gained if I shall succeed in awaking the spirit of inquiry among my readers, to such an extent as to load them to a prayerful and patient perusal of several of the works named on the next page. They have heard only one side of the question, and will be surprised at their own ignorance of matters which they ought to have known. Books on the Evidences are not generally circulated. Ministers perhaps have some volumes in their libraries; but in a hundred houses, it would be hard to find half a dozen containing as many as would give an inquiring youth a fair view of the historical evidences of the truth of the gospel. Nor, where they are to be found, are they generally read. Being deemed heavy reading, the magazine, or the newspaper is preferred. Ministers do not in general devote enough of their time to such sound teaching as will stop the mouths of gainsayers. I have been assured by skeptical gentlemen, who in the early part of their lives had attended church regularly for twenty-two years, that during all that time they had never heard a single discourse on the Evidences. Moreover, the protean forms of Infidelity are so various, and many of its present positions so novel, that books or discourses prepared only twenty years ago miss the mark; and rather expose to the charge of misrepresentation, than produce conviction. New books on Infidelity are needed for every generation. The lectures expanded into this volume were delivered in Cincinnati, in 1858. Replying to different, and discordant systems of error, whose only bond is opposition to the gospel, they are necessarily somewhat disconnected. No attempt was made to mold them into a suit of royal armor, but merely to select a few smooth pebbles from the brook of truth, which any Christian lad might sling at the giant defiers of the armies of the living God. Having proved acceptable for this purpose, and a steadily increasing demand for repeated editions wearing out the original plates, the author has been requested by British and American publishers to revise the work in the light of the recent discoveries of science. This he has attempted; with what success the reader will judge. Conscious of its many defects, yet grateful to God for the good which he has done to many souls by its instrumentality, the author again commends the book to the Father of Lights, praying him to use it as a mirror to flash such a ray of light into many dark souls as may lead them into the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. SAN FRANCISCO, March 30, 1875. * * * * * The author having been repeatedly asked by inquirers for the names of books on the Evidences of Christianity, subjoins a list of those easily accessible in the West. It is not supposed that any one inquirer will read all these; but it is well to read more than one, since the evidence is cumulative, and it is impossible for any writer to present the whole. Having a list of several works, the inquirer who can not obtain one may be able to procure another. There are many other works on the Evidences on the shelves of all our principal booksellers. _Modern Atheism_, by James Buchanan, LL. D. _Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation_, by James McCosh, LL. D., and George Dickie, M. D. _Religion and Geology_, Edward Hitchcock, LL. D. _The Architecture of the Heavens_, J. P. Nichol, LL. D. _The Christian Philosopher_, Thomas Dick, LL. D. _Natural Theology_, William Paley, D. D. _The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature_, Joseph Butler, D. C. L. _The Bridgewater Treatises_, Whewell, Chalmers, Kidd, &c. _The Comprehensive Commentary_, William Jenks, D. D. _The Cause and Cure of Infidelity_, Rev. David Nelson. _A View of the Evidences of Christianity_, William Paley, D. D. _The Eclipse of Faith_, ascribed to Henry Rogers. _The Restoration of Belief_, ascribed to Isaac Taylor. _Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity_, University of Virginia. _The Divine Authority of the Old and New Testaments Asserted_, J. Leland, D. D. _The Bible Commentary._ _An Apology for the Bible, in a Series of Letters to Thomas Paine_, R. Watson. _A View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion_, S. Jenyns. _A Letter to G. West, Esq., on the Conversion of St. Paul_, Lord Lyttleton. _Observations on the History and Evidence of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ_, Gilbert West, Esq. _Difficulties of Infidelity_, Faber. _Dissertations on the Prophecies_, Thos. Newton, D. D. _An Introduction to the Critical Study of the Scriptures_, T. H. Horne, Vol. I. _The Evidences of Christianity_, Charles Petit McIlvaine, D. D. _Rawlinson's Historical Evidences._ _Modern Skepticism_, by Joseph Barker. _Haley's Discrepancies of the Bible_, W. G. Holmes, Chicago. _The Superhuman Origin of the Bible_, Rogers. _Christianity and Positivism_, McCosh. _The Supernatural in Relation to the Natural_, McCosh. _Aids to Faith_, Appleton & Co. _Modern Skepticism_, Randolph & Son. _Modern Doubt_, Christlieb. _Alexander's Evidences of Christianity._ CHAPTER I. DID THE WORLD MAKE ITSELF? _Understand, ye brutish among the people; And, ye fools, when will ye be wise? He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see? He that chastiseth the heathen, shall he be not correct? He that teacheth man knowledge, shall he not know?_--PSALM xciv. 8, 9. Has the Creator of the world common sense? Did he know what he was about in making it? Had he any object in view in forming it? Does he know what is going on in it? Does he care whether it answers any purpose or not? Strange questions you will say; yet we need to ask a stranger question: Had the world a Creator, or did it make itself? There are persons who say it did, and who declare that the Bible sets out with a lie when it says, that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Whereas, say they, "We know that matter is eternal, and the world is wholly composed of matter; therefore, the heavens and the earth are eternal, never had a beginning nor a Creator." But, however fully the atheist may know that matter is eternal, we do not know any such thing, and must be allowed to ask, How do _you_ know? As you are not eternal, we can not take it on your word. The only reason which anybody ever ventured for this amazing assertion is this, that "all philosophers agree that matter is naturally indestructible by any human power. You may boil water into steam, but it is all there in the steam; or burn coal into gas, ashes, and tar, but it is all in the gas, ashes, and tar; you may change the outward form as much as you please, but you can not destroy the substance of anything. Wherefore, as matter is indestructible, it must be eternal." Profound reasoning! Here is a brick fresh from the kiln. It will last for a thousand years to come; therefore, it has existed for a thousand years past! The foundation of the argument is as rotten as the superstructure. It is not agreed among all philosophers that matter is naturally indestructible, for the very satisfactory reason that none of them can tell what matter in its own nature is. All that they can undertake to say is, that they have observed certain properties of matter, and, among these, that "it is indestructible by any operation to which it can be subjected in the ordinary course of circumstances observed at the surface of the globe."[1] The very utmost which any man can assert in this matter is a negative, a want of knowledge, or a want of power. He can say, "Human power can not destroy matter;" and, if he pleases, he may reason thence that human power did not create it. But to assert that matter is eternal because man can not destroy it, is as if a child should try to beat the cylinder of a steam engine to pieces, and, failing in the attempt, should say, "I am sure this cylinder existed from eternity, because I am unable to destroy it." But not only is the assertion of the eternity of matter unproven, and impossible to be proved, it is capable of the most demonstrable refutation, by one of the recent discoveries of science. The principle of the argument is so plain that a child of four years old can understand it. It is simply this, that all substances in heaven and earth are compounded of several elements; but no compound can be eternal. We say to our would-be philosophers, When you tell us that matter is eternal, how does that account for the formation of this world? What is this matter you speak of? This world consists not of a philosophical abstraction called matter, nor yet of one substance known by that name, but of a great variety of material substances, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, sulphur, iron, aluminum, and some fifty others already discovered.[2] Now, which of these is the eterna-matter you speak of? Is it iron, or sulphur, or clay, or oxygen? If it is any one of them, where did the others come from? Did a mass of iron, becoming discontented with its gravity, suddenly metamorphose itself into a cloud of gas, or into a pail of water? Or are they all eternal? Have we fifty-seven eternal beings? Are they all eternal in their present combinations? or is it only the single elements that are eternal? You see that your hypothesis--that matter is eternal--gives me no light on the formation of this world, which is not a shapeless mass of a philosophical abstraction called matter, but a regular and beautiful building, composed of a great variety of matters. Was it so from eternity? No man who was ever in a quarry, or a gravel pit, will say so, much less one who has the least smattering of chemistry or geology. Do you assert the eternity of the fifty-seven single substances, either separate or combined in some other way than we now find them in the rocks, and rivers, and atmosphere of the earth? Then how came they to get together at all, and particularly how did they put themselves in their present shapes? Each of them is a piece of matter of which _inertia_ is a primary and inseparable property. Matter _of itself_ can not begin to move, or assume a quiescent state after being put in motion. Will you tell us that the fifty-seven primary elements danced about till the air, and sea, and earth, somehow jumbled themselves together into the present shape of this glorious and beautiful world, with all its regularity of day and night, and summer and winter, with all its beautiful flowers and lofty trees, with all its variety of birds, and beasts, and fishes? To bring the matter down to the level of the intellect of the most stupid pantheist, tell us in plain English, _Did the paving stones make themselves?_ For the paving stones are _made_ out of a dozen different chemical constituents, and each one is built up more ingeniously than the house you live in. _Now, did the paving stones make themselves?_ No conviction of the human mind is more certain than the belief that every combination of matter proves the existence of a combiner, that every house has had a builder, and that every machine has had a maker. No matter how simple the combination, if it be only two laths fastened together by a nail, or two bricks cemented with mortar, or the sole of an old pegged boot, all the atheists in the world could not convince you that those two laths, or those two bricks, or those two bits of leather existed in such a combination from all eternity. If any wise philosopher tried to persuade you that for anything you could tell they might have been always so, you would reply, "No, sir! You can't cram such stuff down my throat. Even a child's common sense shows him that those two laths were not always so nailed together; that those two bricks were not always so placed, one on the top of the other; and that those two pieces of old sole leather were not always pegged together in the sole of a boot." There is no conviction more irresistible than our belief that _no compound can possibly be eternal_. But the universe is the greatest of all compounds. Everything in it is compound. Chemists speak of simple substances, or elements of matter, and it is well enough to separate the elements of things in our thoughts, for the sake of distinct consideration, and to speak of the properties of pure oxygen, or of pure hydrogen, or of pure carbon, or of pure gold, or of pure iron, or of pure silver. But then we should always remember that there is nothing pure in the world, that there is no such thing in nature as any substance consisting only of a single element, pure and uncombined with others. Just as your gold eagle is not pure gold, but alloyed with copper, everything in nature is alloyed. Everything in the heavens above, and in the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth, is compound. The air you breathe, simple as it seems, is composed of three gases, and is besides full of what Huxley calls "a stirabout" of millions of seeds of animalculæ and motes of dust visible in the sunbeam. That hydrant water you are about to swallow is a rich aquarium full of all manner of monsters, which the oxy-hydrogen microscope will exhibit to your terrified gaze, devouring each other alive. Should you get rid of them by evaporating your water, your chemist will tell you that still your pure water must be a compound of oxygen and hydrogen. There is no help for it. Many years ago some astronomers fancied they had found clouds, or nebulæ, of gas, quite simple and uncompounded with anything else, a great many millions of miles away in the sky. They were so very far away that they thought nobody would ever be able to fly so far to bottle up a specimen of that gas and bring it back here to earth and analyze it, to find out whether it was pure and simple, or compound. So they felt quite safe in affirming that there was the genuine, simple, homogeneous gas, in the nebulæ, with which Almighty God had nothing whatever to do, but which had first made itself and then had condensed into our present world. But unfortunately for this brilliant discovery the spectroscope opened windows into the nebulæ, and showed very plainly that they were on fire; and fire is a compound; it can not burn without fuel and something to support the combustion; so that settled the alleged simplicity of the nebulæ. It is now demonstrated, therefore, that every known substance existing in nature is a compound, and therefore can not be eternal. And the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. No number of finite existences can be eternal. The universe, then, can not be eternal. Suppose, however, that, for the sake of argument, we should grant our atheistic world-builder his materials, away off beyond the rings of Saturn, or the orbit of Uranus (since he seems to like to have his quarries a good way off from his building), would he be any nearer the completion of his world-making? As Cornwallis declared that the conquest of India resolved itself ultimately into a question of bullocks, the prime consideration in the construction of the world, after you have got your materials, is that of transportation. When one beholds the three great stones in the temple of Baalbec, each weighing eleven hundred tons, built into the wall twenty feet high, and a fourth in the quarry, a mile away, nearly ready for removal, he asks, "How did the builders move those immense stones, and raise them to their places?" And when we behold the quarry out of which these stones were taken, and all the other quarries of the world, and all the everlasting mountains, and the whole of this solid earth, and boundless sea, brought, as our theorists affirm, from far beyond the orbit of the most distant planet, we raise the question of transportation, and demand some account of the wagon and team which hauled them to their places. We can not get rid of the necessity for transportation by evaporating the building stones into gas, for a world of gas weighs just as many tons as the world made out of it. Before we can make a world we must have _power_; but we can never get power out of the world to build itself. The atheists' world is only a great machine. The first law of mechanics is that action and reaction are equal; consequently machinery can never create power. You will never lift yourself by pulling at your boot-straps; much less can a machine lift and carry itself. It is no matter how big you make the wheels of your machine, as big as the orbits of the planets if you like, still it is only a machine, unless it has a mind in it; and your big machine can no more create power than a little machine as small as a lady's watch. Nor does it make the least difference in respect to making power, of what materials your perpetual motion peddler makes his machine--whether of a skein of silk on a reel in a bottle, or of steel and zinc electro magnets running upon diamond points, or whether he melts up his steel, and zinc, and diamonds into red hot fire mist; it is still only a machine, made of these materials, as destitute of power as the smaller machines made out of it. The atheists' universe is only a big machine, and no machine can create power, no more than a paving stone. It has been, however, proposed to manufacture power by the law of gravitation, according to which all bodies attract each other, directly in proportion to their mass, and inversely as the square of their distances. This law appears to prevail as far as our observation extends through space; and our world builders affirm that it must have operated eternally, and that not only were the separate parts of our earth thus drawn together, but that all the orbs of heaven were caused to revolve under its influence. Suppose, however, we grant that matter was eternal, and the force of gravitation eternally operating upon it, would that sufficiently account for the building up of even our own little planetary system? By no means. The unresisted force of gravitation would, in far less than an eternity, draw all things together toward the center of gravity of the universe. We should not have separate stars, and suns, and planets, and moons, revolving in orderly orbits, but one vast mass of matter, in which all motion had long since ceased. There must be some power of resistance to gravitation, and nicely balanced against it, a centrifugal force--no matter whether you call it heat, light, or electricity, or by any other name--from which balance of power the movements of the universe are regulated. But here again we arrive at the same conclusion from the balance of power to which we were before driven by the combination of matter--regulated power proclaims a regulator, a governor. Power belongeth unto God. In world-building we need not only a quarry of materials, and power for transportation, but a head to plan their arrangement. For, as ten thousand loads of brick and stone dumped down higgledy piggledy will not build a house, neither will ten thousand millions of materials poured into a chaos make a world like this earth, arranged in order and beauty. It is grossly absurd to imagine that the inanimate materials of the earth arranged themselves in their present orderly structure. Absurd as it seems to every man of common sense, there are persons claiming to be philosophers who not only assert that they did, but will tell you how they did it. One class of them think they have found it out by supposing every thing in the universe reduced to very fine powder, consisting of very small grains, which they call atoms; or, if that is not fine enough, into gas, of which it is supposed the particles are too fine to be perceived; and then by different arrangements of these atoms, according to the laws of attraction and electricity, the various elements of the world were made, and arranged in its present form. Suppose we grant this gassy supposition, that the world millions of ages ago existed as a cloud of atoms, does that bring us any nearer the object of getting rid of a Creator than before? The atoms must be material, if a material world is to be made from them; and so they must be extended; each one of them must have length, breadth and thickness. The atheist, then, has only multiplied his difficulties a million times, by pounding up the world into atoms, which are only little bits of the paving stones he intends to make out of them. Each bit of the paving stone, no matter how small you break it, remains just as incapable of making itself, or moving itself, as was the whole stone composed of all these bits. So we are landed back again at the sublime question, _Did the paving stones make themselves, and move themselves?_ Others will tell you that millions of years ago the world existed as a vast cloud of fire mist, which, after a long time, cooled down into granite, and the granite, by dint of earthquakes, got broken up on the surface, and washed with rain into clay and soil, whence plants sprang up of their own accord, and the plants gradually grew into animals of various kinds, and some of the animals grew into monkeys, and finally the monkeys into men. The fire mist they stoutly affirm to have existed from eternity. They do not allege that they remember that (and yet as they themselves are, as they say, composed body and soul of this eternal fire mist, they ought to remember), but only that there are certain comets which occasionally come within fifty or sixty millions of miles of this earth, which they suppose may be composed of the fire mist which they _suppose_ this world is made of. A solid basis, truly, on which to build a world! A cloud in the sky, fifty million of miles away, may possibly be fire mist, may possibly cool down and condense into a solid globe; therefore, this fire mist is eternal, and had no need of a Creator; and our world, and all other worlds, may possibly have been like it; therefore, they also were never created by Almighty God. Such is the atheist's ground of faith. The thinnest vapor or the merest supposition will suffice to risk his eternal salvation upon; provided only it contradicts the Bible and gets rid of God. We can not avoid asking with as much gravity as we can command, Where did the mist come from? Did the mist make itself? Where did the fire come from? Did it kindle of its own accord? Who put the fire and mist together? Was it red hot enough from all eternity to melt granite? Then why is it any cooler now? How could an eternal red heat cool down? If it existed as a red hot fire mist from eternity, until our atheist began to observe it beginning to cool, why should it ever begin to cool at all, and why begin to cool just then? Fill it as full of electricity, magnetism and odyle as you please; do these afford any _reason_ for its very extraordinary conduct? The utmost they do is to show you _how_ such a change took place, but they neither tell you _where the original matter came from_, nor _why its form was changed_. Change is an effect, and every effect requires a cause. There could be no cause outside of the fire mist; for they say there was nothing else in the universe. Then the cause must be in the mist itself. Had it a mind, and a will, and a perception of propriety? Did the mist become sensible of the lightness of its behavior, and the fire resolve to cool off a little, and both consult together on the propriety of dropping their erratic blazing through infinite space, and resolve to settle down into orderly, well-behaved suns and planets? In the division of the property, _what became of the mind_? Did it go to the sun, or to the moon, or to the pole star, or to this earth? Or, was it clipped up into little pieces and divided among the stars in proportion to their respective magnitudes; so that the sun may have, say the hundredth part of an idea, and the moon a faint perception of it? Did the fire mist's mind die under this cruel clipping and dissecting process; or is it of the nature of a polypus, each piece alive and growing up to perfection in its own way? Has each of the planets and fixed stars a great "soul of the world" as well as this earth, and are they looking down intelligently and compassionately on the little globe of ours? Had we not better build altars to all the host of heaven and return to the religion of our acorn-fed ancestors, who burned their children alive, in honor of the sun, on Sun-days? An aqueous solution of this difficulty of getting rid of Almighty God, is frequently proposed. It is known that certain chemical solutions, when mixed together, deposit a sediment, or precipitate, as chemists call it. And it is supposed that the universe was all once in a state of solution, in primeval oceans, and that the mingling of the waters of these oceans caused them to deposit the various salts and earths which form the worlds in the form of mud, which afterward hardened into rock, or vegetated into trees and men. Thus, it is clearly demonstrated that there is no need for the Creator if--if--if--we only had somebody to make these primeval oceans--and somebody to mix them together![3] The development theory of the production of the human race from the mud, through the mushroom, the snail, the tortoise, the greyhound, the monkey and the man, which is now such a favorite with atheists, if it were fully proved to be a fact, would only increase the difficulty of getting rid of God. For either the primeval mud had all the germs of the future plants and monkeys, and men's bodies and souls, in itself originally, or it had not. If it had not, where did it get them? If it had all the life and intelligence in the universe in itself, it was a very extraordinary kind of God. We shall call it the _mud-god_. Our atheists then believe in a god of muddy body and intelligent mind. But if they deny intelligence to the mud, then we are back to our original difficulty, with a large appendix, viz: _The paving stones made themselves first and all atheists afterward._ The whole theory of development is utterly false in its first principles. From the beginning of the world to the present day, no man has ever observed an instance of the spontaneous generation of life. There is no law of nature, whether electric, magnetic, odylic, or any other, which can produce a living plant or animal, save from the germ or seed of some previous plant or animal of the same species. Nor has a single instance of the transmutation of species ever been proved. Every beast, bird, fish, insect and plant brings forth after its kind, and has done so since its creation. No law of Natural Philosophy is more firmly established than this, _That there is no spontaneous generation, nor transmutation of species._ It is true there is a regular gradation of the various orders of animal and vegetable life, rising like the steps of a staircase, one above the other; but gradation is no more caused by transmutation than a staircase is made by an ambitious lower step changing itself into all the upper ones. To refer the origin of the world to the laws of nature is absurd. Law, as Johnson defines it, is a rule of action. It necessarily requires an acting agent, an object designed in the action, means to attain it, and authoritative enforcement of the use of those means by a lawgiver. Are the laws of nature laws given by some supposed intelligent being, worshiped by the heathen of old, and by the atheists of modern times, under that name? Or do they signify the orderly and regular sequence of cause and effect, which is so manifest in the course of all events? If, as atheists say, the latter, this is the very thing we want them to account for. How came the world to be under law without a lawgiver? Where there is law, there must be design. Chance is utterly inconsistent with the idea of law. Where there is design there must, of necessity, be a designer. Matter in any shape, stones or lightnings, mud or magnets, can not think, contrive, design, give law to itself, or to any thing else, much less bring itself into existence. There is no conceivable way of accounting for this orderly world we live in but one or other of these two: Either an intelligent being created the world, or--_the paving stones made themselves_. "Here are two hypotheses, of which the oldest is admitted to offer a full and consistent explanation of all the facts of science. There can be no better cause for any given formation than that God created it so. Men of science, however, allege that creation (out of nothing) is 'scientifically inconceivable;' but this is only throwing dust in our eyes; of course, science can not _verify_ it, neither can it verify any other theory of causation. The question is whether reason can accept the fact, though science can not even imagine the process? If not, there is nothing for us but the _eternity of matter_, for evolution itself has to face the very same difficulty when asked to account for its primal germ. It is surely more conceivable that God created the first matter out of nothing, than that nothing evolved something out of itself, by an imminent law of its nature. This point, however, our scientific men are sadly given to shirking. They profess in general not to hold the eternity of matter, but they have nothing to suggest for its origin. They accept it as the starting point of evolution, and decline to speculate on its cause. This, as Dr. Christlieb observes of Bauer's kindred system of criticism, is 'beginning without a beginning--everything is already extant'. We may as well start with species, as with protoplasm, if the inquiry is not to be pushed beyond the fact. The evolutionist is bound to answer whether the process is eternal, or how it began to be. Either it had a beginning or it had not; if it had, creation out of nothing is conceded, and there is nothing left to dispute. It is puerile to except to the _frequency_ of creative acts on the ordinary hypothesis of specific origin, because it is freely open to science to reduce the several 'kinds' to the lowest _minimum_ it can experimentally establish. Moreover--besides the utter inconsequence of such purely relative ideas as _often_ and _rare_--it is far more reasonable that an eternal, personal author of creation should watch over his work to shape and diversify it at his pleasure, than that, after a single act, he should relapse into _inertia_ like the Hindu Brahmin. To concentrate the whole evidence of design in one original act, ages upon ages ago, with no opening for after interference, undermines belief in a personal designer, simply because it leaves him nothing to do."[4] Leaving these brutish among the people who assert the latter, to the enjoyment of their folly, let us ascertain what we can know of the great Creator of the heavens and the earth. God refers the atheists of the Psalmist's days to their own bodies for proofs of his intelligence, to their own minds for proofs of his personality, and to their own observation of the judgments of his providence against evil-doers for proofs of his moral government. Our text ascribes for him perception and intelligence: _He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see?_ It does not say, he has an eye or an ear, but that he has the knowledge we acquire by those organs. And the argument is from the designed organ to the designing maker of it, and is perfectly irresistible. A blind god could not make a seeing man. Let us look for a little at a few of the many marks of design in this organ to which God thus refers us. We shall first observe the mechanical skill displayed in the formation of the eye, and then the optical arrangements, or rather a few of them, for there are more than eight hundred distinct contrivances already observed by anatomists in the dead eye, while the great contrivance of all, the power of seeing, is utterly beyond their ken. I hold in my hand a box made of several pieces of wood glued together, and covered on the outside with leather. Inside it is lined with cotton, and the cotton has a lining of fine white silk. You at once observe that it is intended to protect some delicate and precious article of jewelry, and that the maker of this box must have been acquainted with the strength of wood, the toughness of leather, the adhesiveness of glue, the softness and elasticity of cotton, the tenacity of silk, and the mode of spinning and weaving it, the form of the jewel to be placed in it, and the danger against which this box would protect it--ten entirely distinct branches of knowledge, which every child who should pick up such a box in the street would unhesitatingly ascribe to its maker. Now, the box in which the eye is placed is composed of seven bones glued together internally, and covered with skin on the outside, lined with the softest fat, enveloped in a tissue compared with which the finest silk is only canvas, and the cavity is shaped so as exactly to fit the eye, while the brow projects over like a roof of a veranda, to keep off falling dust and rain from injuring it while the lid is open; and the eyebrows, like a thatch sloping outward, conduct the sweat of the brow, by which a man earns his bread, away around the outer cover, that it may not enter the eye and destroy the sight. If it were preposterous nonsense to say that electricity, or magnetism, or odyle, contrived and made a little bracelet box, how much more absurd to ascribe the making of the cavity of the eye to any such cause. Let us next look at the shape of the eye. You observe it is nearly round in its section across, and rather oval in its other direction, and the cavity it lies in is shaped exactly to fit it. Now there are eyes in the world angular and triangular, and even square; and as you may readily suppose, the creatures which have them can not move them; to compensate for such inconvenience, some of them, as the common fly, have several hundred. But, unless our heads were as large as sugar hogsheads, we could not be so furnished, and we must either have movable eyes or see only in one direction. Accordingly, the Contriver of the eye has hung it with a hinge. Now there are various kinds of hinges, moving in one direction, and the Maker of the eye might have made a hinge on which the eye would move up and down, or he might have given us a hinge that would bend right and left, in which case we should have been able merely to squint a little in two directions. But to enable one to see in every direction, there is only one kind of hinge that would answer the purpose--the ball and socket joint--and the Former of the eye has hung it with such a hinge, retaining it in its place partly by the projection of the bones of the face, and partly by the muscles and the optic nerve, which is about as thick as a candlewick, and as tough as leather. Most of you have seen a ship, and know the way the yards are moved, and turned, and squared by ropes and pulleys. The rigging of the eye, though not so large, is fully as curious. There is a tackle, called a muscle, to pull it down when you want to look down; another tackle to pull it up when you have done; one to pull it to the right, and another to the left; there is one fastened to the eyeball in two places, and geared through a pulley which will make it move in any direction, as when we roll our eyes; and the sixth, fastened to the under side of the eye, keeps it steady when we do not need to move it. Then the eyelids are each provided with appropriate gearing, and need to have it durable too, for it is used thirty thousand times a day; in fact every time we wink. If God had neglected to place these little cords to pull up the eyelash, we should all have been in the condition of the unfortunate gentleman described by Dr. Nieuwentyt, who was obliged to pull up his eyelashes with his fingers whenever he wanted to see. There is, too, another admirable piece of forethought and skill displayed by the Former of the eye, in providing a liquid to wash it, and a sponge to wipe it with, and a waste pipe, through the bone of the nose, to carry off the tears which have been used in washing and moistening the eye. Now what absurdity to say that a law of nature, say gravity, or electricity, or magnetism has such knowledge of the principles of mechanics as the eye proclaims its Former to have--that it could make a choice among multitudes of shapes of eyes and kinds of joints, and this choice the very best for our convenience; and that having known and chosen, it could have manufactured the various parts of this complicated machine. Such a machine requires an intelligent manufacturer; and yet we have only as yet been looking at the dead eye, paying no regard to sight at all. Even a blind man's eye prove an intelligent Creator. Let us now turn our thoughts to the instrument of sight. The optic nerve is the part of the eye which conveys visions to the mind. Suppose, instead of being where you observe it, at the back part of the eye, it had been brought out to the front, and that reflections from objects had fallen directly upon it. It is obvious that it would have been exposed to injury from every floating particle of dust, and you would always have felt such a sensation as is caused by a burn or scald when the skin peels off, and leaves the ends of the nerves exposed to the air. The tender points of the fibers of the optic nerve, too, would soon become blunted and broken, and the eye, of course, useless. How, then, is the nerve to be protected, and yet the sight not obstructed? If it were covered with skin, as the other nerves are, you could not see through it. For thousands of years after men had eyes and used them, they knew no substance, at once hard and transparent, which could answer the double purpose of protection and vision. And to this day they know none hard enough for protection, clear enough for vision, and elastic enough to resume its form after a blow. But men did the best they could, and put a round piece of brittle but transparent glass in a ring of tougher metal for the protection of the hands of a watch; and he who first invented the watch crystal thought he had made a discovery. Now, observe in the eye, that forward part is the watch glass; the cornea, made of a substance at once hard, transparent and elastic--which man has never been able to imitate--set into the sclerotica, that white, muscular coat which constitutes the white of your eye, acts as a frame for the cornea, and answers another important purpose, as we shall presently see. [Illustration: Structure of the Human Eye] But, supposing the end of the nerve protected by the glass, we might have had it brought up to the glass without any interposing lenses or humors, as, in fact, is nearly the case with some crustacea. We can not well imagine all the inconveniences of such an eye to us. If we could see distinctly at all, we could not see much farther or wider than the breadth of the end of the nerve at once. Our sight would then be very like that faculty of perceiving colors by the points of the fingers, which some persons are said to possess. In that case, seeing would only be a nicer kind of groping, and our eyes would be more conveniently fixed on the points of our fingers; or, as with many insects, on the ends of long antennae. Such a form of eye is precisely suited to the wants of an animal which has not an idea beyond its food, which has no business with any object too large for its mouth, and whose great concern is to stick to a rock and catch whatever animalculæ the water floats within the grasp of its feelers. But for a being whose intercourse should be with all the works of God, and whose chief end in such intercourse should be to behold the Creator reflected in his works, it was manifestly necessary to have a wider and larger range of vision; and, therefore, a different form of eye. Both these objects, breadth of field combined with length of range, are obtained by placing the optic nerve at the back of the eye, and interposing several lenses, through which objects are observed. By this arrangement a visual angle is secured, and all objects lying within it are distinctly visible at the same time. This faculty of perceiving several objects at the same time is a special property of sight which tends greatly to enlarge our conceptions of the knowledge of Him who gave it. A man who never saw can have no idea of it. He can not taste two separate tastes at once, nor smell two distinct smells at once; nor feel more than one object with each hand at once; and if he hears several sounds at the same time, they either flow into each other, making a harmony, or confuse him with their discord. Yet we are all conscious that we see a vast variety of distinct and separate objects at one glance of our eyes. I think it is manifest that the Former of such an eye not only intended its owner to observe such a vast variety of objects, but from the capacity of his own sight to infer the vastly wider range of vision of Him who gave it. Besides the breadth of the field of vision, we also require length of range for the purpose of life. The thousand inconveniences which the short-sighted man so painfully feels are obvious to all. Yet it may tend to reconcile such to their lot to know that thousands of the liveliest and merriest of God's creatures can not see an inch before them. Small birds and insects, which feed on very minute insects, need eyes like microscopes to find them; while the eagle and the fish hawk, which soar up till they are almost out of sight, can distinctly see the hare or the herring a mile below them, and so must have eyes like telescopes. We, too, need to observe minute objects very closely, as when we read fine print, or when a lady threads a fine needle at microscope range; but, if confined to that range, we could not see our friends across the room, or find our way to the next street. Again, in traveling we need to see objects miles away, and at night we see the stars millions of miles away; but then, if confined to the long range, we should be strangers at home, and never get within a mile of any acquaintance. Now, how to combine these two powers, of seeing near objects and distant ones with the same eye, is the problem which the Maker of the eye had to solve. Let us look how man tried to solve it. A magnifying lens will collect the rays from any distant object, and convey them to a point called the focus. Then suppose we put this glass in the tube of an opera-glass, or pocket spy-glass, and look through the eye-hole and the concave lens, properly adjusted, in front of it, we shall see the image of the object considerably magnified. But suppose the object draws very near, we see nothing distinctly; for the rays reflected from it, which were nearly parallel while it was at a distance, are no longer so when it comes near, but scatter in all directions, and those which fall on the lens are collected at a point much nearer to the lens than before, and the eye-glass must be pushed forward to that focus. Accordingly, you know that the spy-glass is made to slide back and forward, and the telescope has a screw to lengthen or shorten the tube according to the distance of the objects observed. Another way of meeting the case would be by taking out the lens, and putting in one of less magnifying power, a flatter lens, for the nearer object. Now, at first sight, it would seem a very inconvenient thing to have eyes drawing out and in several inches like spy-glasses, and still more inconvenient to have twenty or thirty pairs of eyes, and to need to take out our eyes, and put in a new set twenty times a day. The ingenuity of man has been at work hundreds of years to discover some other method of adapting an optical instrument to long and short range, but without success. Now, the Former of the eye knew the properties of light and the properties of lenses before the first eye was made; he knew the mode of adjusting them for any distance, from the thousands of millions of miles between the eye and the star, to the half-inch distance of the mote in the sunbeam; and he had not only availed himself of both the principles which opticians discovered, but has executed his work with an infinite perfection which bungling men may admire, but can never imitate. The sclerotic coat of the eye, and the choroid which lies next it are full of muscles which, by their contraction, both press back the crystalline lens nearer the retina, and also flatten it; the vitreous humor, in which the crystalline lens lies, a fine, transparent humor, about as thick as the white of an egg, giving way behind it, and also slightly altering its form and power of refraction to suit the case. Thus, that which the astronomer, or the microscopist, performs by a tedious process, and then very imperfectly, we perform perfectly, easily, instantly, and almost involuntarily, with that perfect compound microscope and telescope invented by the Former of the human eye. Surely, in giving us an instrument so admirably fitted for observing the lofty grandeur of the heavens and the lowlier beauties of the earth, he meant to allure us to the discovery of the perfections of the great Designer and Former of all these wondrous works. But there is another contrivance in the eye, adapted to lead us further to the consideration of the extent of the knowledge of its power. We are placed in a world of variable lights, of day and night, and of all the variations between light and darkness. We can not see in the full blaze of light, nor yet in utter darkness. Had the eye been formed to bear only the noonday glare, we had been half blind in the afternoon, and wholly so in the evening. If the eye were formed so as to see at night, we had been helpless as owls in the day. But the variations of light in the atmosphere may be in some measure compensated, as we know, by regulating the quantity admitted to our houses--shutting up the windows. When we wish to regulate the admission of light to our rooms, we have recourse to various clumsy contrivances; paper blinds, perpetually tearing, sunblind rollers that will not roll, venetian blinds continually in need of mending, awnings blowing away with every storm, or shutters, which shut up and leave us in entire darkness. A self-acting window, which shall expand with the opening of light in the mornings and evenings, and close up of its own accord as the light increases toward noon, has never been manufactured by man. But the Former of the eye took note of the necessities and conveniences of the case, and besides giving a pair of shutters to close up when we go to sleep, he has given the most admirable sunblinds ever invented. The nerve of the eye at the back of its chamber can not see without light, and its light comes through the little round window called the pupil, or black of the eye--which is simply a hole in the iris, or colored part. Now this iris is formed of two sets of muscles: one set of elastic rings, which, when left to themselves, contract the opening; and another set at right angles to them, like the spokes of a wheel, pulling the inner edge of the iris in all directions to the outside. In fact it is not so much a sunblind, as a self-acting window, opening and closing the aperture according to our need of light, and doing this so instantaneously that we are not sensible of the process. It is self-evident that the Maker of such an eye was acquainted with the properties of light, and the alternations of night and day, as well as with the mechanical contrivances for adjusting the eye to these variable circumstances. He has given us an eye capable of seeking knowledge among partial darkness, and of availing itself for this purpose of imperfect light; an apt symbol of our mental constitution and moral situation in a world where good and evil, light and darkness, mix and alternate. Perhaps some one is ready to ask, What is the use of so many lenses in the eye? It seems as if the crystalline lens and the optic nerve were sufficient for the purpose of sight, with the cornea simply to protect them. What is the use of the aqueous humor and the vitreous humor? Light, when refracted through the lens, becomes separated into its component colors--red, yellow, green, blue, and violet; and the greater the magnifying power of the lens, and the brighter the object viewed, the greater the dispersion of the rays. So that if the crystalline lens of the eye alone were used, we should see every white object bluish in the middle, and yellowish and reddish at the edges; or, in vulgar language, we should see starlight. This difficulty perplexed Sir Isaac Newton all his life, and he never discovered the mode of making a refracting telescope which would obviate it. But M. Dolland, an optician, reflecting that the very same difficulty must have presented itself to the Maker of the eye, determined to ascertain how he had obviated it. He found that the Maker of the eye had a knowledge of the fact that different substances have different powers of refracting or bending the rays of light which pass through them, and that liquids have generally a different power of refraction from solids. For instance, if you put a straight stick in water, the part under water will seem bent at a considerable angle, while if you put the stick through a little hole in a pane of glass it will not seem so much bent. He further discovered that oil of cassia had a different power of refraction from water, and the white of an egg still a different power. He discovered also that the first lens of the eye, the aqueous humor, is very like water; that the crystalline lens is a firm jelly, and that the vitreous humor is about the consistency of the white of an egg. The combination of these three lenses, of different powers of refraction, secures the correction of their separate errors. He could not make telescope lenses of jelly, nor water; therefore, he could not make a perfect achromatic telescope, but he learned the lesson of mutual compensations of difficulties which the Maker of the eye teaches the reflecting anatomist, and procuring flint and crown glass of different degrees of refraction, he arranged them in the achromatic lens so as nearly to remedy the defect. I think that you will at once admit that Dolland's attempt to remedy the evils of confused sight in the telescope indicated a desire to obtain a precise and correct view of the objects; and that his success in constructing an instrument, nearly perfect, for the use of astronomers, gave evidence that he himself had a clear idea of that perfect and accurate vision which he thus attempted to bestow on them. Shall we then imagine any inaccuracy in the sight of Him, who not only desired, but executed and bestowed on us, an instrument so perfectly adapted to the imperfections of this lower world, and whose very imperfections are the materials from which he produces clear and perfect vision? No! in God's eye there are no chromatic refractions of passions, or prejudice, or party feeling, or self-love. He sees no reflected or refracted light. O Father of Light! with whom is no variableness, or shadow of turning, open our eyes to behold Thee clearly! Our text thus leads us to a knowledge of God's character, from the structure of the bodies he has given us. He that formed my eye sees. Though my feeble vision is by no means a standard or limit for his Omniscience, yet I may conclude that every perfection of the power of sight he has given me existed previously in him. Has he endowed me, a poor puny mortal, the permanent tenant of only two yards of earth, with an eye capable of ranging over earth's broad plains and lofty mountains, of traversing her beauteous lakes and lovely rivers, of scanning her crowded cities, and inspecting all their curious productions, and specially delighting to investigate the bodily forms of men, and their mental characters displayed on the printed page? Has he given me the principle of curiosity, without which such an endowment were useless? Then most undoubtedly he has Himself both the desire to observe all the works of his hands, and the power to gratify that desire. The Former of the eye must of necessity be the great Observer. Wheresoever an eye is found of his handiwork, and wheresoever sight is preserved by his skill, let the owner of such an instrument know that if he can see, God can, and as surely as he sees, God does. If it is possible for us to behold many objects distinctly at once, it is not impossible for God to behold more. If he has given us an eye to look from earth to heaven, then his eye sees from heaven to earth. If I can see accurately, God's inspection is much more impartial. And if he has given me the power of adjusting my imperfect vision to the varying lights and shades of this changing scene, let me not dream for a moment that he is destitute of a corresponding power of investigating difficulties, and penetrating darknesses, and bringing to light hidden works and secret things. God is light. In him is no darkness at all. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all things are naked and opened to the eyes of him with whom I have to do. He has seen all my past life--my faults, my follies, and my crimes. When I thought myself in darkness and privacy, God's eye was upon me there. In the turmoil of business, God's eye was upon me. In the crowd of my ungodly companions, God's eye was upon me. In the darkness and solitude of night, God's eye was upon me. And God's eye is on me now, and will follow me from this house, and will watch me and observe all my actions, on--on--on--while God lives, and wheresoever God's creation extends. "O God, Thou has searched and known me; Thou knowest my down sitting and mine uprising; Thou understandest my thoughts afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, And art acquainted with all my ways For there is not a word in my tongue, But, lo! O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me! It is high, I can not attain unto it; Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? And whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there, If I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there! If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there shall thy hand lead me, And thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me,' Even the night shall be light about me; Yea the darkness hideth not from thee, But the night shineth as the day, The darkness and the light are both alike to Thee." FOOTNOTES: [1] Reid's Chemistry, II. § 37. [2] Johnson's Turner's Chemistry, § 341. [3] It might be supposed that such a theory is too palpably absurd to be believed by any save the inmates of a lunatic asylum, had not the writer, and hundreds of the citizens of Cincinnati, seen a lecturer perform the ordinary experiment of producing colored precipitates by mixing colorless solutions, as a demonstration of the self-acting powers of matter. Common sense, being a gift of God, is righteously withdrawn from those who deny him. [4] John Bull. CHAPTER II. WAS YOUR MOTHER A MONKEY? In the previous chapter we saw the evidences of God's skill and wisdom in the adaptations of nature, fitting the organs of animals for hearing, walking, and eating, and especially in the structure of the human eye. This has long been owned by candid minds as an unanswerable argument, demonstrating the being of God by the works of his hands. But since that chapter was written a school of scientists has arisen, of whom Mr. Darwin is at present the most popular, claiming to be able to show how all the species of living things can evolve, not only their eyes, but their legs and wings and lungs, and every part of them, from a little bit of primeval life stuff, called protoplasm, by the influence of Natural Selection. Mr. Darwin owns that the formation of an eye is rather a tough job for a little pin point germ of protoplasm; but he has no doubt that it has been done, and he writes several books to show us how. We propose to look into this self-evolving process, as he and his brother evolutionists describe their theory. It is necessary, right here at the outset, to distinguish the theory of the evolutionists from the great fact of evolution. Almighty God created the world, not only for his own pleasure, but also for his own glory, that men and angels might learn to know him by his works. Creation is thus God's great object lesson for men and angels to learn. But learning is a process, gradual, slow, from one step to another. Therefore the object lesson must not be precipitated all in a heap upon the infantile intellects of the learners, but unfolded by degrees. Geologists assure us that so it was in the past; that first the lifeless strata were deposited; next, light was evolved; afterward, fishes, and marine reptiles, and birds; then came the carboniferous or plant era; afterward the mammalia; last of all man. You observe here an ascending scale of creation, beginning with first principles and simple forms, and ascending to the most complicated; a series of experiments in God's great lecture-room, illustrative of the various steps of the evolution of the divine idea. But six thousand years before geology was born Moses described this same evolution of creation, in the first chapter of Genesis. As he could not have learned it from any science known in his day, God Himself must have shown it to him. The divine idea is still in process of evolution for our instruction. We behold it in the continual formation of new strata by the destruction of the old; in the chemical combinations of the elements of the air, sea, and earth; in the evolution of the grass from the seed, and of the oak from the acorn; in the development of the insect germ into the caterpillar, and the butterfly; in the hatching of the egg into the chicken; and in the growth of the infant into the man. We observe also a divine development of society, an advance of civilization, a providential guidance of history, and a fall and disorder among mankind, with a process of redemption, medical, educational, political and religious, for the human race. The whole process, therefore, of the creation, natural history, and moral government of the world, is the development of a divine idea, according to a divine plan, by the direct or mediate efficacy of divine power, for the accomplishment of the divine purpose as revealed to us in the divine word, the Holy Scriptures. Galen taught that the study of physiology was a divine hymn. This divine development is to be clearly and sharply distinguished from the atheistic theory of evolution. They differ in the following particulars: 1. The divine development of the world is a great fact; the theory of atheistic evolution is only a baseless theory, a fiction. 2. The divine development begins in the beginning, with God, creating the heavens and the earth; but the theory of atheistic evolution has no beginning, asserting the eternal existence of a changing world. 3. The divine development is the unfolding of an intelligent plan, showing the adaptation of means to ends for the accomplishment of a purpose; the atheistic theory of evolution denies plan, purpose, adaptation and final cause. 4. The divine development is conducted, and continually reinforced by the will of the Omnipotent God; the atheistic development evolves only the forces of matter. 5. The divine development has a moral character, and terminates in the highest holiness and happiness of all obedient men and angels; but the atheistic development contemplates and promises only the evolution of animal instinct and passions, the eternal death of the individual, and, for the universe, only purposeless cycles of progress, and catastrophies of ruin. In this chapter we discuss only the theory of atheistic evolution. In the discussion of all questions affecting human life it is advantageous to trace them to their origin, and to follow them out to their practical results. Thus we get a clear view of the whole subject, and are enabled to assign to it its proper influence. It is also a great benefit to the mass of mankind to conduct such discussions in plain language, and to translate the roundabout phrases, and the Latinized words of scientific men, as much as we can, into the vulgar tongue; to state the subjects of discussion so as to be understood of the people. So we shall put the whole business of Darwinism and development before you, reader, in a nutshell, by simply asking you the question at the head of this chapter, "Was your mother a monkey?" What a question! Well, then, your grandmother? her grandmother? or does it seem less offensive, or more likely to you to go back some thousands of years, and say your forefathers were apes? That is exactly what Mr. Darwin says when we translate his scientific language into the vulgar tongue: "The early progenitors of man were no doubt once covered with hair, both sexes having beards; their ears were pointed and capable of movement; and their bodies were provided with a tail having the proper muscles. The foot, judging from the condition of the great toe in the foetus, was then prehensile, and our progenitors, no doubt, were arboreal in their habits, frequenting some warm forest-clad land. The males were provided with great canine teeth, which served them as formidable weapons."[5] This ancient form "if seen by a naturalist, would undoubtedly have been ranked as an ape or a monkey. And as man, under a genealogical point of view, belongs to the CATARHINE or Old World stock (of monkeys), we must conclude, however much the conclusion may revolt our pride, that our early progenitors would have been properly thus designated."[6] So here you have your genealogy, name and thing fully described. Mr. Darwin thinks it is quite an honorable pedigree: "Thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of noble quality. * * * Unless we willfully close our eyes, we may, with our present knowledge, approximately recognize our parentage, nor need we feel ashamed of it. The most humble organism is something much higher than the inorganic dust under our feet; and no one with an unbiased mind can study any living creature, however humble, without being struck with enthusiasm at its marvelous structure and properties."[A] There are people, however, who do not grow enthusiastic at the idea of their long-tailed progenitors; but there is no accounting for taste in such matters! For elderly people, who do not take so enthusiastically to monkeys as his junior readers, Mr. Darwin has provided a rather less gymnastic ancestry. How would you like to have a fish for your forefather? If it were one of Neptune's noble tritons, or the Philistine fish-god, Dagon, or a mermaid, it might not be so repulsive as the ape; or even a twenty-pound salmon, flashing its silver and blue in the sunlight as it spins the line off the reel, might not be so utterly disgusting as the monkey burlesque of humanity. But, alas! Mr. Darwin has been sent to this proud nineteenth century as the prophet to teach us humility, and here is the scientific statement of the structure of our fishy forefathers: "At a still earlier period the progenitors of man must have been aquatic in their habits, for morphology plainly tells us that our lungs consist of a modified swim bladder which once served as a float. These early predecessors of man thus seen in the dim recesses of time must have been as lowly organized as the lancelot or amphibioxus, or even still more lowly organized."[7] That certainly is a very humble origin. We are not, however, by any means to the end of our pedigree. Mr. Darwin says that your codfish aristocracy are descended from a race of squirts--the squirts which you picked up on the shore and squeezed, when you were a boy, discharging these primitive Babcock Extinguishers upon your playfellows, irreverently regardless of the harm done the poor squirt, the ancestor of the human race. If you doubt it, here is the latest deliverance of infallible science upon the subject. He describes the Ascidians: "They hardly appear like animals, and consist of a simple tough leathery sack, with two small projecting orifices. They belong to the Molluscoida of Huxley, a lower division of the great family of the Mollusca; but they have recently been placed by some naturalists among the vermes or worms. Their larvæ somewhat resemble tadpoles in shape, and have the power of swimming freely about. * * * We should thus be justified in believing that, at an extremely remote period, a group of animals existed resembling in many respects the larvæ of our present Ascidians, which diverged into two great branches, the one retrograding in development and producing the present class of Ascidians, the other rising to the crown and summit of the animal kingdom, by giving birth to the vertebrata."[8] Thus it appears that Mr. Darwin deduces his origin, and that of mankind in general, from one of these Ascidians, or, in plain English, makes them a race of squirts. The notion of evolution is a belief that all living beings, plants as well as animals, have not been created, but, like Topsy, just grew, from the very smallest germs or spores. Evolutionists inform us that all kinds of organisms have been evolved from four or five primeval germs or spores; or more consistently with their great principle, that the simple gave birth to the differentiated, from one primeval germ or egg. Mr. Darwin alleges four or five primal forms, acknowledging that analogy would lead him up to one. But other members of this school consistently and boldly follow up the stream to its fountain, and allege a single primeval living seed as the origin of all living things, and that this must have been a microscopic animalcule, or plant spore, of the very lowest order, which, multiplying its kind, gave birth to improved and enlarged offspring; and they, in their turn, grew, and multiplied, and differentiated into varieties; and so, in the course of endless ages, the poorer sorts perishing and the better sorts prospering, the world became filled with its existing populations, without any new creative acts of God, and without any particular providential care over the new species. The particular process according to which this multiplication and improvement took place, Mr. Darwin calls Natural Selection. Every creature tends to increase and multiply; and the very slowest breeders would soon fill the earth, were their multiplication not checked by hunger, by the attacks of enemies, and by the struggle for existence. But all are not born alike strong, or swift, or of the same color; some of the same brood are better fitted to escape enemies, or to fight the battle of life, than others. These will survive, while the weak ones perish. This Mr. Wallace calls, the survival of the fittest. They will transmit their superior size, or swiftness, or better color, or whatever superiority they possess, to their offspring. The process will go on in successive generations, each adding an infinitesimal quantity to the stock gained by the past generation; just as breeders of improved stock increase the weight of cattle by breeding from the largest; or breeders of race-horses increase the speed by breeding from the swiftest. In this way varieties from the same family will grow into different species. And, as only those differences which are beneficial to the animal are preserved, they will grow into improved species; and, as variations of all sorts take place, so all sorts of varieties and species arise in process of time. All will thus tend to perfect themselves according to the laws of nature, and without any special oversight or care of God, or of anybody but Natural Selection; which Mr. Darwin takes special care to describe as an unintelligent selector. He defines the nature which selects to be "the aggregate action and product of natural laws," and these laws are "the sequences of events as ascertained by us." He ridicules the idea of God's special endowment of the fantail pigeon with additional feathers, or of the bull dog's jaws with strength, and says, "But if we give up the principle in the one case, if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally guided in order, for instance, that the greyhound, that perfect image of symmetry and vigor, might be formed; no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations alike in nature, and the results of the same general laws which have been the groundwork through Natural Selection of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided."[9] This, then, is the grand distinctive difference of Mr. Darwin's mode of producing the various animals; namely, that it is unintelligent, their variations are not designed nor intended by the Creator, but they are the results of a method of trial and error, producing a hit-and-miss pattern. The failures all perish, and the successes live and prosper; but there is no intentional or special guidance of God in the business. And the business includes the whole process of peopling the globe, from the creation of the first four or five germs down to the last formation of human society. God is thus dismissed from the greatest part of the world's life, including all human affairs. This is not exactly atheism in theory, but practically it amounts to much the same thing. It is this excommunication of God's agency from the management of the world, and especially from human affairs, by Mr. Darwin's method, which has so commended his books to the ungodly world. There is a general agreement among this class of writers, that Mr. Darwin has destroyed the basis of the argument for the being of God from design as displayed in the adaptations of birds and beasts to their conditions. Mr. Huxley says that "when he first read Mr. Darwin's book, what struck him most forcibly was the conviction that teleology, as commonly understood, had received its death blow at Mr. Darwin's hands."[10] "For the notion that every organism has been created as it is, and launched straight at a purpose, Mr. Darwin substitutes the conception of something which may fairly be termed a method of trial and error. Organisms vary incessantly; of these variations the few meet with surrounding conditions which suit them and thrive; the many are unsuited and become extinguished. * * * For the teleologist (the Christian) an organism exists, because it was made for the conditions in which it was found. For the Darwinian an organism exists, because out of many of its kind it is the only one which has been able to persist in the conditions in which it was found. * * * If we apprehend the spirit of the Origin of Species rightly, then nothing can be more entirely and absolutely opposed to teleology, as it is commonly understood, than the Darwinian theory."[11] Prof. Haeckel argues to the same purpose that Darwin's theory leads inevitably to Atheism and Materialism. Dr. Buchner says of Darwin's theory, "It is the most thoroughly naturalistic that can be imagined, and far more atheistic than that of his decried predecessor, Lamarck." Carl Vogt also commends it because "It turns the Creator, and his occasional intervention in the revolution of the earth and in the production of species, without any hesitation out of doors, inasmuch as it does not leave the smallest room for the agency of such a Being. The first living germ being granted, out of it the creation develops itself progressively by Natural Selection, through all the geologic periods of our planet, by the simple law of descent. No new species arise by creation, and none perishes by annihilation; the natural cause of things, the process of evolution of all organisms, and of the earth itself, is of itself sufficient for the production of all we see. Thus man is not a special creation, produced in a different way, and distinct from other animals, endowed with an individual soul, and animated by the breath of God; on the contrary, man is only the highest product of the progressive evolution of animal life, springing from the group of apes next below him."[12] Whether, therefore, Mr. Darwin himself intends his theory to be atheistic or not, it has had the misfortune to be so viewed by the greater number of its supporters; and, accordingly, it is this view of it which we shall keep prominent in the following discussion. Mr. Darwin does undoubtedly intend his theory to be antagonistic to the Bible account of creation and providence, and an improvement upon it; and, whether atheistic or not, it is undoubtedly anti-Christian. _I. The History of the Theory._ The first thing which strikes a common person on first hearing this theory is that it is a very queer notion for any Christian man to invent. We are naturally curious to know how a man, educated in a Christian country, could have fallen into it. But it is, in fact, no new discovery, but an old heathen superstition. Some four hundred years before Christ, when the world had almost wholly apostatized into idolatry, Democritus, among the Greeks, became offended with the vulgar heathen gods, and set himself to invent a plan of the world without them. From Eastern travelers the Greeks knew that the Brahmins, in India, had a theory of the world developing itself from a primeval egg. He set himself to refine upon it, and imagined virtually the Nebular Hypothesis. He said that all matter consisted of very small atoms, dancing about in all directions, from all eternity, and which at last happened into the various forms of the present world. The ancient Phoenicians held a theory that all life was from the sea; and that, as the wet mud produces all sorts of herbs in spring now, so originally it produced all manner of animals. They worshiped it as a god, and called it Mot, or Mud. Anaximander took up the theory and carried it out in true Darwinian style, alleging that the first men sprang from the ground watered by the sea, and that they had spines like sea urchins; evidently deriving them from the Radiates. Lucretius still further developed the theory in a poem in six books. The spread of Christianity, however, hindered the spread of the doctrine, as Mr. Tyndall feelingly laments, until the Saracens overspread the East, when some of them, it seems, favored it. But it seems to be an unlucky dogma, since, with the downfall of the power of the false prophet, the anti-Christian form of science went down again. The dogma of the transmutation of species reappeared, however, in the Romish Church in a religious form; the old heathenism, which had never been wholly banished from the minds of men, thus reasserting itself. About the tenth century some began to teach that the bread of the communion of the Lord's Supper was transubstantiated, and the wine also, into the body, and blood, and soul, and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is probably the most complete transmutation of species which has ever been imagined or described. The evolution of bread into Deity is only equaled by Mr. Tyndall's endowment of matter with all the potencies of life and thought; a miracle differing from the popish transubstantiation only in the element of time, but in its essential nature equally supernatural. The dogma excited great discussion for centuries, and produced as many theories of transubstantiation as we now observe of evolution, keeping philosophic minds and pens busy till the dawn of modern science after the Reformation. La Place threw out the Nebular Hypothesis, which is substantially Democritus' concourse of atoms, only La Place endeavored to substitute circular motions under the law of gravitation, instead of Democritus' chance arrangement, as a sufficient cause for the formation and motions of planets. Herschel's discovery of the nebulæ was hastily laid hold of by a number of writers, and notably by the author of the Vestiges of Creation, as furnishing the primeval matter necessary for world-making; and till the spectroscopic discoveries of the composite nature of gaseous nebulæ, they were claimed as specimens of worlds in process of formation. La Place supposed his nebulous matter to be gas in a state of white-heat combustion, compared with which the heat of the hottest fire would be a cool bath. In no other way could he dissipate the world's substance into sufficient thinness for his vortices. But Spencer saw that this tremendous heat would be fatal to all forms of life, and especially to sensitive beings; and Tyndall shows us that this original matter must have had all the potencies of life and sensation, and a potency of sensation means being able to feel. Now the worst fate threatened against sinners in the Bible is a place in the lake burning with fire and brimstone, which burns at 500° Fahrenheit; but the temperature of the original fire-mist was a thousand times hotter. Some of these scientists call such a fate as the Bible threatens against the wicked, cruel. But here is a hell manufactured by the evolutionists infinitely worse than that of the Bible; for the hell of the Bible is only for the wicked, but the evolutionists' hell is indiscriminately for all, saints and sinners, and all sorts of creatures, innocent as babes unborn of any crime; yet they, or, which is the same thing, the matter containing all the potency of their sensations, that is their power of feeling, were born in this hell, and kept in it from all eternity, until it pleased the evolutionists to begin to cool it down a little. However, it was rather scientific than benevolent reasons which induced Mr. Spencer to reverse the order of procedure, and make his star dust cold to begin with, and to heat it up by condensation and pressure to about the temperature of molten iron; which was still an uncomfortably warm lodging for Mr. Tyndall's potencies of sensation for some millions of years. The division of opinion about the original nebulæ, however, still prevails; some evolutionists of the old-fashioned order still taking their nebulæ hot, while others, with Spencer, prefer it cold, with star dust. As to the Spontaneous Generation of life, there has been less progress of opinion, though great variety has been exhibited. Ovid and Virgil describe the way in which a carcass produces bees. It was generally believed that putrid meat produced the maggots, till the blow-flies were discovered laying their eggs. Then it was alleged that the entozoa, the worms found in the bodies of animals, were self-produced, without eggs, until the microscope discovered that one could lay 60,000 eggs. Strauss, however, adhered to the idea that as the tapeworm, as he supposed, was self-produced, so man was originated by the primeval slime. So also Professor Vogt, and M. Tremaux develop their animals from the land, and the latter accounts for their various qualities from the various qualities of their respective birthplaces, the crop being conditioned by the soil. But Mr. Darwin derives all his organisms from the sea. Electricity in its galvanic form was for a while the agent to fire the earthly or marine mud with the vital spark; and Mr. Crosse's experiments were supposed instances of the creation of acarii or mites in the battery bath, until it was found that the bath contained eggs and the electricity only hatched them. Some English evolutionists still adhere to the theory of Spontaneous Generation, but the leading Germans deny any instance of it being known. Huxley denies that any case of it has been established as now practicable; but supposes that if we could have been present at the beginning of the world, when all the elements were young and vigorous, we should have seen the chemical elements of the earth and air combining to form living beings, by the mere powers of their nature. If that were the fact, it would be a fact unique and unparalleled, utterly out of the course of nature, and so as contrary to the theory of evolution as if these living beings had been inspired with life by Almighty God. So the theory here again is divided. Two utterly irreconcilable ideas of the origin of life claim our belief--the theories of Biogenesis, and of Abiogenesis, the one says all life is from the egg, and has always been so; and so we have an eternal begetting of finite creatures; the other alleges the spontaneous beginning of plants and animals; a fact, if it be a fact, as unparalleled as creation, and far more miraculous. As to the history of the progress of the germs of plants and animals thus produced, we find still greater diversities of opinion, not only as to details, but as to principles. Each inventor has added to, or altered, the original idea of evolution, until it has been burdened with more improvements and new patents than the sewing machine; only the evolutionary improvements bid fair to improve the theory out of existence. We have seen M. Tremaux, with the autochthonic Athenians, deriving the powers of improvement of plants and animals from their native soils. Lamarck on the contrary, inspired all his plants and animals--fungi and frogs, and elephants and apes--with the desire of getting on in the world and improving their limbs by exercise; so the greyhound grew slim and fleet by running; the giraffe's neck elongated by reaching up to the branches of the trees on which it browsed, and the duck acquired web feet by swimming. Others attributed the evolution of differences to external conditions. The negro became black by exposure to the tropical sun; the arctic hare received its coat of thick white fur from the cold climate, and the buffalo and camel their humps of fat from the sterility of their pastures at certain seasons, and the consequent need of a reserved store of fat for food for the rest of the body. Mr. Darwin's doctrine of Natural Selection refuses Lamarck's notion of any conscious attempt of the plant or animal at improvement; and equally denies the power of external nature to improve anything, except by killing off poor specimens, save in that very limited range where good pastures make fat animals for a season or two. An innate power of accidental variation to a very small amount, and the slow but constant adding up of profitable variations during countless generations, with the killing off of the unimproved breeds by Natural Selection, is his patent populator and improver. But this theory is too slow for the nineteenth century, and so neither Huxley, nor Parsons, nor Mivart, nor even Wallace, accepts the doctrine as Darwin propounds it. It is, in fact, already becoming unpopular among scientific men. Lyell proposed the origination of new species by leaps; as we see great geniuses born of commonplace parents; and Huxley supports that opinion, and Parsons, Owen and Mivart coincide in this inexplicable explanation. The author of the Vestiges of Creation accounts for improved species from a prolongation of the period of gestation. But Hyatt and Cope derive them from quite the contrary process--accelerated development of gestation. MM. Ferris and Kolliker derive them from parthenogenesis, a mode of genesis of which our world offers no example whatever. The origin of man, with all his mental powers and religious aspirations, is the great difficulty. Mr. Mivart excludes man wholly from the influence of Natural Selection, from the time he acquired a soul. Mr. Wallace, rejecting the action of one Supreme Intelligence for everything but the origin of universal forces and laws, "Contemplates the possibility that the development of the essentially human portions of man's structure and intellect may have been determined by the directing influence of some higher intelligent beings acting through natural and universal laws;"[13] _i. e._, the gods of the old heathen nations. And so after twenty-two centuries wandering over the world, we have got back to where Democritus started from--to pure old heathenism. After such a history of the theory of evolution, and in presence of such contradictory presentations by its advocates, I need scarcely say that it is by no means an established scientific principle, were it not for the insolent manner in which some of them assert it as scientifically demonstrated; and denounce the Bible doctrine of creation as mere superstition, "A feather bed of respectable and respected tradition," and warn off Christians from any attempt to investigate theories of cosmogony; and overbear the ignorant by the array of the names of men of science who give their sanction to some phase of the theory. But let it be borne in mind that no well-established scientific principle, no demonstrated law, exhibits such contradictory and conflicting phases as those we have just witnessed. The laws of gravitation, or of chemical affinity, for instance, offer no such contradictions of their adherents; because they are founded on facts, while evolution is a mere notion, founded on ignorance and error, as we shall presently see. Accordingly, by far the greater number of the greatest scientists oppose it, as utterly unscientific, and have recorded their opposition, and the reasons for it. Sir John Herschel and Sir Wm. Thompson, among astronomers, have proclaimed its antagonism to the facts of physical astronomy. No new facts subversive of the foundations of faith in God as recognized in the universe by Bacon, Newton, Boyle, Descartes, Leibnitz, Pascal, Paley and Bell, have been discovered by such scientists as Whewell, Sedgwick, Brewster, Faraday, Hugh Miller, or our American geologists, Dawson, Hitchcock, and Dana. Nor have the deliberate and expanded demonstrations of its unscientific character by the late lamented Agassiz been ever fairly met, much less overturned. I refer to these honored names for the benefit of that large class who must take their science upon faith in some scientific prophet or apostle, in default of any possibility of personal investigation of the facts. Indeed, to the great majority, even of so-called scientific men, their science must be founded upon faith in the dogma of some scientific pope and council. And to such it may be reassuring, amidst the evolutionists' cries of Science! Science! to know that a great many of the greatest scientists, in spite of all these confused assertions, do still believe in Almighty God, do call their souls their own, and hope when they die to go to heaven. As a specimen of the contempt in which this theory is held by the princes of science, read the following extract of an address by Agassiz, at a recent meeting of the Academy of Science:[14] "As I grow older in the ranks of science," said the professor, "I feel more and more the danger of stretching inferences from a few observations to a wide field. I see that the younger generation among naturalists are at this moment falling into the mistake of making assertions and presenting views as scientific principles which are not even based upon real observation. I think it is time that some positive remonstrance be made against that tendency. The manner in which the evolution theory in zoology is treated would lead those who are not special zoologists to suppose that observations have been made by which it can be inferred that there is in nature such a thing as change among organized beings actually taking place. _There is no such thing on record._ It is shifting the ground from one field of observation to another to make this statement, and when the assertions go so far as to exclude from the domain of science those who will not be dragged into this mire of mere assertion, then it is time to protest. "He thought it was intolerant to say he was not on scientific grounds because he was not falling into the path which was occupied by those who maintain that all organized beings have been derived from a few original progenitors. Other supporters of the transmutation doctrine assume that they can demonstrate the changes to have taken place by showing certain degrees of resemblance; but what they never touch is the quality and condition of those few first progenitors from which they were evolved. They assume that they contained all that is necessary to evolve what exists now. That is begging the question at the outset; for if these first prototypes contained the principle of evolution, we should know something about them from observation, and it should be shown that there are such organized beings as are capable of evolution. "I ask, Whence came these properties? If this power and capacity of change is not inherent to the first progenitors, then I ask, Whence came the impulses by which those progenitors which have not this power of change in themselves acquire them? What is the power by which they are started in directions which are not determined by their primitive nature? From the total silence of the supporters of the transmutation theory on these and other points, _he did not think it worth their while to take the slightest notice of this doctrine of evolution in his scientific considerations_. He acknowledged what the evolutionists had done incidentally in scientific research; none had done more than Mr. Darwin. He believed he had been injured woefully by his adherents. He was a far better man than most of his school made him." It is to be acknowledged, however, that many scientists are evolutionists. Mr. Darwin is not alone in his belief. If he were, it would not be worth while to spend time in examining it. Quite a number of scientific men have fallen into it, and lecture and write commendations of it; and it has become quite popular among a certain class who do not like to accept the Bible doctrine that God created man, with its necessary consequence that the creature ought to obey his Creator; and they have proceeded to patch it out into completeness--for, as you observe, it is a little defective; like its own primeval squirt, it lacks a head and a tail--it has neither a beginning nor an end properly fitted to it. It takes a piece out of the middle of the universe from the management of God, but it leaves the beginning and the end totally unaccounted for; telling us neither whence came the first germs, nor whither tends the final fully developed angel. Mr. Darwin, though he calls one of his works, the Origin of Species, really avoids the question of origin. He admits the miracle of the creation of the four or five original germs of life, which, according to the evolutionists, is as unscientific as if he admitted four or five hundred. They desire to escape the operation of God altogether. Moreover, he gives no account of the origin of the law of heredity, by which each being produces its like; nor yet of the origin of the power of variation, according to which profitable variations occur. Here, then, is still a field in which God reigns. But it is specially with Mr. Darwin's admission of the Creator to bestow the origin of life that evolutionists are displeased. If they admit God at the beginning of the world they see plainly that there is no possibility of getting rid of him afterward. Messrs. Huxley, Spencer, Tyndall, Buchner, Haeckel and Vogt combine their forces accordingly to evolve the world as we find it without God's intervention. Mr. Huxley, perceiving that to make either man, or monkey, or nomad, you must have materials, kindly brings a little pitcher of protoplasm, which he calls the physical basis of life. It is the meat our Cæsar feeds on, and indeed, for that matter, all living things. All vegetable and animal tissues are made up mostly of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen; and as the materials of which all living beings are built are the same originally, and are simply these chemical substances with a little iron, salt and lime, with their properties, he will have it that all life, including man's life and thought, is merely a development of protoplasm. This is the clay out of which all the various bricks, and tiles, and tea cups, and porcelain vases of the great world building are built. We don't need to begin with monkeys, nor fish, or pollywogs, now to develop into men, for we go down to the very bottom, since we have the stuff they all are made of, namely, protoplasm. Still this clay needs a potter to mold and bake it. The difficulty about the protoplasm is that it must be _alive_. You can not get a living pollywog, no more than a living elephant, out of dead protoplasm. Mr. Huxley shows very well that all protoplasm consists of the same materials; in fact, that all flesh is grass, as the Scripture says. The difficulty is how to convert the grass into flesh, unless by some animal eating it; or to convert the nitrogen, carbon and water into grass or grain, or any other form of protein or protoplasm, without the previous action of some plant. In short, how are we to make the chemical materials live? Here Mr. Tyndall comes in and endows the matter of the universe with life, and with all the potency of producing bodies and souls. In his famous Belfast Address he says: "Abandoning all disguise, the confession that I feel bound to make before you is that I prolong the vision backward, beyond the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in this matter, which we in our ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form and quality of life." Yet, after all this marvelous endowment of matter with all potency, we have not got quite back to the beginning. For still the questions arise, Where did this almighty matter come from? Who endowed it with these wonderful potencies? And how does it happen to work so well, in such orderly and regular evolution of star dust, suns, planets, pollywogs, monkeys, men and maggots, in eternal cycles, ever advancing higher and doing better and better for the race, though poorly enough, it appears, for the miserable individuals? Here Buchner, Vogt, Spencer and other materialists come in and perfect that which was lacking; showing how the star dust made itself, and how the paving stones made themselves, and are under no obligations to any Creator but themselves. Matter and force are all they need, and endless time in which to work, and they will account for the universe without any Creator at all. Everything and every person must be just as it is, according to the regular operation of the laws of Nature. As Buchner, Vogt and Spencer have given the system a head, Lubbock, Evans and others have supplied it with a tail, and demonstrated how society, and morals, and religion have been excogitated by the apes out of their meditations in the forests. It is a fearful and wonderful account they give us of the origin of marriage from the battles of the baboons, of the rights of property established by terrible fights for groves of good chestnuts, of the beginnings of morals from the instincts of brutes, and of the dawnings of religion, or rather of superstition, from the dreams of these animals; the result of the whole being that civilization, and society, and law, and order, and religion, are all simply the evolution of the instincts of the brutes, and that there is no necessity for invoking any supernatural interference to produce them. The termination of the whole, as far as you and I are concerned, is that "We shall fade away as the faint cloud melts into the blue ether," into the eternal sleep of death. It thus appears that there is an orderly succession and attempted adjustment of one part of the doctrine of evolution to another, and that all the various workers are cooperating toward one grand result. It is true they differ widely in their professed religious creeds and political partialities. Mr. Darwin avows his belief in a Creator. Mr. Huxley votes on the London School Board for the introduction of the Bible into the public schools. Mr. Spencer is willing to allow the existence of some great unknowable mystery. Some of the French and German evolutionists dispense with any reference to God, as an unnecessary hypothesis. Others oppose the idea of God altogether, as inimical to progress. M. Comte proposed a worship of humanity. M. Strauss would worship the universe. But with all this variety of uniform, and armor, and tactics, the evolutionists are all soldiers of the same army, and are all fighting the same great battle, for the brutal origin of man, and his independence of God. From which independence of God, and brutal origin of mankind, result very important consequences. For the belief of this notion necessarily destroys all faith in the Bible, and in the Christianity which it reveals, and revolutionizes the basis of the civilization founded upon it, and all the laws protecting life, property, marriage and religion; which laws are based upon the belief of mankind in the dignity of man, the sacredness of human life, and the sanction of morality by the All-seeing Judge of all the earth, who will reward every man according to his works. For all practical purposes it makes no great difference whether a man denies that there is any God at all, or admits that there is some kind of a god who created the world millions of years ago, and just set it a spinning to work out its destiny as best it might, but never after concerned himself about it, or its people, and never will; for nobody will ever trouble his head about a god who never troubles his head about him. Most of the evolutionists are zealous advocates of their system. These propagandists have had such a degree of success in attracting public attention, in inspiring a large proportion of the secular press, besides scientific journals, as advocates of their notions, and in obtaining entrance for them into the common school books, put into the hands of our children, and into massive quartos published by State legislatures with the money of Christian people, and in the prevalent corruption of public morals and breach of private trusts necessarily resulting from the evolution of these principles, that we are compelled, in self-defense, to examine the doctrine of evolution. It is all very well for Mr. Tyndall to warn off everybody, but evolutionists, from any investigations into cosmogony; about which he owns that they know very little now, and will not know much for some millions of years to come. But common people, who will not live so long, but who in the meantime have to live and make money, and save it, who have children to rear, and houses which they do not want burned over their heads, who have taxes to pay, increasing every year, and public plunderers to prosecute and whose ballots may be asked one of these days for the substitution of the communes of the original apes, and the Red Republic for these United States, all upon the alleged scientific proof for the truth of the doctrine of evolution, and the consequent abolishment of Christianity--common people, I maintain, by whose money and votes this dogma is to be established, will not be debarred from asking the why and the wherefore, neither by Mr. Tyndall, nor by any other scientific pope. It is a little too late in the day for men who do not know their own mind from the Alps to Belfast, and who doubt whether God made them whenever they are dyspeptic, to stand up before the public demanding that we shut our eyes and open our mouths, and swallow every preposterous notion they think proper to proclaim as science, to the destruction of our faith in the God who made us, of our respect for our brethren of mankind, and of our hope of heaven. _II. The Illogical Structure of the Theory._ When men come before the world with a dogma freighted with such wide-reaching revolutions, they ought to be prepared to furnish the most irrefragable proofs of its truth, and of its obligation and authority. We should be able to establish it beyond all controversy as based on a series of facts which take their place historically in the line of the inductive sciences; about which all men of science are agreed, as all astronomers, for instance, are agreed about gravitation; and we should be able to show that each of the alleged consequences flows inevitably and logically from these established facts. Ignorance, hypothesis, assumption of facts, sophisms, begging the question, and the like, are wholly impertinent in any such discussion. Were they even tolerable in the field of metaphysical discussion, they must, by the rules of the Positive Philosophy itself, banishing all but ascertained facts from the halls of science, be excluded from this discussion of an alleged general law of nature. But when we enter on the examination of the dogma of evolution, we find its parentage among ignoble superstitions; its fundamental facts still lie in the darkness of ignorance and assumption; and its reasoning is illogical and absurd. The most prominent feature which arrests our notice as we look closely at the theory of evolution, as presented by any of its prominent atheistical advocates is, _its illogical and incoherent structure_. The writer contradicts himself. The various parts of the theory do not hang together. The alleged facts do not sustain the conclusions deduced from them. Mr. Darwin's books especially abound in the most intolerable assumptions of principles and facts, not only without proof, but in the face of unanswered and unanswerable objections. And the theory is useless for the purpose of its proposal. All this is utterly at variance with the method of true science. None but a mind debauched by bigoted attachment to a preconceived theory could overlook these fatal defects in the system. Indeed both Darwin and Huxley admit that acceptance of the evidence must be preceded by belief in the principle of evolution. It is marvelous that any properly educated student of mental science should accept a theory so incoherent, in which the rents are scarcely held together by the patches. We can only exhibit a few specimens of the multitude of these fatal inconsistencies and deficiencies. The theory is useless as an explanation of the arcana of Nature. Mr. Darwin is, by his own acknowledgment, a very ignorant man--ignorant of the very things necessary for him to know before he can construct a method of creation, and unable to explain to us what he sets out to explain. He confesses himself ignorant of the origin and laws of inheritance, by which his whole system hangs together; of the common ancestors from which he alleges all creatures are derived; of the laws of correlation of parts, though these are indispensable to development; of the reasons of the extinction of species, which is the great business, the very trade of his great agent, Natural Selection. He has no knowledge of the duration of past ages, though that duration is an essential element of his calculations. The spontaneous variations of plants and animals are the very mainspring of his machine; but he tells us he knows nothing of the laws governing them; nor has he any information about the creation of the primordial forms, nor about the date of beginning, or rate of progress.[15] All which are necessary to be known in order to the formation of a correct theory. Again and again, when confronted with facts which his theory can not explain, he takes refuge in confessions of ignorance. When he meets facts which flatly contradict his theory of the imperceptible beneficial acquirement of organs, or of properties by inheritance--such as the sterility of hybrids, the instincts of neuter bees, the battery of the electric eel, the human eye, and the eye of the cuttle-fish, he owns that "_it is impossible to conceive_ by what steps these wondrous organs have been produced." When asked for the missing links between existing species, he refers us to the undiscovered fossiliferous strata below the Silurian. So Sir C. Lyell refers us for a view of the apes, which developed the first men, to the unexplored geological regions of Central Africa! And Rev. Baden Powell refers us, for the missing links of the chain of development, to "that enormous period of which we are, from the conditions, _precluded from knowing any thing whatever_." And as to the Origin of Species, the very thing the title of his book proclaims, and how the original germs varied into the four or five primeval forms, and these into the next, he says: "_Our ignorance of the laws of variation is profound!_" And that is science! The Christian acknowledges his ignorance of the method of creation; but he presents a sufficient cause for the existence of the facts. The evolutionist ridicules the Bible account of creation as incomprehensible, and then he gives us an account which he himself owns to be incomprehensible, and which we, besides, perceive to be absurd. He proposes to explain to us the origin of species, and locates it in the geological strata of an unexplored continent, and in those remote ages of which by the conditions _we are precluded from knowing any thing whatever_! Objecting to the idea of the God of the Bible, as a self-existent, infinite, intelligent, omnipotent, good Spirit, because of its unthinkability, Messrs. Spencer, Tyndall, and the rest assure us of the eternal self existence of an intelligent cloud of gas, endowed with all promises and potencies, of life and thought, as a simple and intelligible substitute! Belief in God Almighty is only superstition, but faith in Mr. Tyndall's gas-god is science. Mr. Spencer honestly lands in the unknowable. Well, then, what science have we gained of the mysteries of our origin? Of the self-contradictions of evolutionists, we have an instance in Huxley's treatment of the fundamental fact of his system--protoplasm. The grand question is: How does the protoplasm become alive? In his famous lecture on the subject, Physical Basis of Life, he argues throughout, that life is a property of protoplasm; that protoplasm owes its properties to the nature and arrangement of its molecules; that there is no more need to infer or allege a faculty called vitality, to account for the production of these various properties of the protoplasm from its chemical constituents, than to infer a power called aquosity, to account for the generation of water from oxygen and hydrogen; and that our thoughts are the expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena. Briefly, our minds are manufactured by our bodies. But in his more recent work, the Classification of Animals, 1869, without any retraction of his previous error, or acknowledgment that he has changed his mind, he flatly contradicts his Physical Basis, accepting and indorsing "the well-founded doctrine that life is the cause and not the consequence of organization." A still more ridiculous incoherency of the same sort is displayed in the logical department of Huxley's Physical Basis of Life; where, after trying to persuade us to put our feet on the ladder which leads in the reverse direction from Jacob's, and to descend with him into the slough of materialism, and affirming that "our thoughts are the expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena;" he goes on to say, that he does not believe in materialism. And he tries to vindicate himself by asserting that "we know nothing about the composition of any body whatever as it is." And this after deducing our thoughts from the molecular changes of the protoplasm! A pretty story truly, and an impudent one! Here is a man who will tell you all about how your body made your soul out of protoplasm, and in the next page acknowledges that he knows nothing about the composition of either the body or soul as it is! And yet this man will mock the believers in the Bible as "smothering their minds under a respectable feather bed of tradition," because they hesitate to shut their eyes, and swallow his contradictions. Mr. Wallace gives us a specimen of this logical incoherence affecting if possible still more deeply the foundations of philosophic faith.[16] He heads his paragraph _Matter is Force_, and goes on to argue that matter is essentially force, and nothing but force; that matter, as popularly understood, does not exist. Then in a couple of pages he goes on to argue "that the whole universe is not merely dependent on, but actually _is_, the will of higher intelligences, or of one Supreme Intelligence." But the whole tenor of his book is thus demolished; since evolution, if it means anything, means the interposition of natural law between the will of the one Supreme Intelligence and the universe. And on this theory Mr. Wallace's criticisms on Mr. Darwin and others are impious, being criticisms upon parts of the will of the one Supreme Intelligence. Similar instances of self-contradiction could be given, did space permit, from almost every advocate of evolution. Our space permits the exhibition of but a single instance of the inherent incoherency of the theory. There is nothing in which all the atheistic evolutionists are more emphatic than in the exclusion of design from the universe. All their arguments and sneers are leveled against the idea, that the adaptations of Nature were designed or intended by an intelligent mind; and the theory of evolution is welcomed chiefly because it enables them to give some account of the order of the world, without any acknowledgment of a providence guiding it to some end or purpose. But yet all these same evolutionists proclaim progress as the great law of Nature, and expend themselves with wonderful eloquence in tracing the progress of nebulæ into worlds, and of worms into men. They glory in progress of the past, and prophesy progress in the future, apparently in the most childish unconsciousness, that the very idea of progress involves design, and that the fact of progress asserts providence. Nor is there any escape by alleging necessity of Nature, which is merely endowing the designer of progress with omnipotence as well as omniscience. The illogical character of the theory is still further manifested by the failure of its alleged facts to sustain the consequences deduced from them. Suppose all the facts alleged by the atheistic evolutionists were granted, how would they do away with the evidence of the being and government of God? as they loudly allege they do. Let it be granted that all men grew up from monkeys, and the monkeys from worms, and all worms grew from invisible animalculæ, and that the animalculæ flashed into life by the chemical contact of the materials of the protoplasm, and that the protoplasm was a natural crop of the cooling globe, and that the cooling globe condensed itself out of fire mist or nebulæ or star dust, I demand to know how does all that enable me to get rid of the law of causation? It is a necessary law of my nature to believe that every effect demands an adequate cause. It is equally a law of my nature to believe that every compound, or composite substance, is an effect, that the compound did not compound itself. Here is a great effect--a universe in solution, with all the chemical constituents of our globe and solar system floating in it, and all their laws of chemical affinity and proportion, and all their electrical attractions and repulsions, in full operation (else we would never get a universe to thicken down out of it); and besides, all the potencies of vegetable and animal life, and all the great powers of the human mind, in a rather vaporous condition, it is true, but still all there--Socrates, Seneca and Solomon, Moses, Solon and Blackstone, Homer, Milton and Shakespeare, Demosthenes, Cicero and Daniel Webster, Watt, Stephenson, Fulton and Morse, popes, puritans and evolutionists, universities and newspapers and congresses, the United States and the British Empire, and the rest of mankind--all boiled up into Mr. Tyndall's potencies, but all there in potency, just as truly as they ever were here in fact. Well! here is a great effect just as imperatively demanding a great First Cause as the world afterward formed out of it. These substances did not make themselves then, any more than the resulting persons or paving stones make themselves now, and they did not endow themselves with these potencies, nor calculate and establish these laws of chemical combination in exact proportion, nor determine scientifically the laws of gravitation and electricity and light and heat, before they came into being; which must have all been established before a single particle of the star dust could begin to cool, or to approach another. The very first idea of matter or of force we can form demands law, and law is merely another name for the divine order of Nature. Whatever foundation for Natural Religion, for faith in God as the Creator and Governor of the world, is afforded by the existing order of the world, it is in no degree logically weakened (though it may be practically) by viewing that order as reached by a process of evolution, since that process also must have been designed, planned, adapted to its purpose, and divinely superintended. Accordingly, we find that many philosophers, and some divines, acknowledge a process of the evolution of God's great idea, and adore him for the growth alike of forests and firmaments, regarding evolution, thus conditioned, as profoundly religious. St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, of old, and many modern speculators, have assented to the theory of evolution as perfectly consistent with belief in God, as its Author. It is utterly illogical to allege that evolution has banished final causes. Grant it all its facts, and these facts proclaim God. It is evident, however, that evolutionists are not confident of the ability of the facts which they are able to allege to sustain their theory, since they are perpetually postulating assumptions necessary to their argument, but which are utterly unproved, and incapable of proof. Mr. Darwin is the most notorious offender against inductive science in this respect. I have now before me a list of eighty-six assumptions of this sort in the Origin of Species alone. Those in his other works are too numerous to mention. He continually mistakes his own assertions, or even his own mere conjectures, for proof, and refers back to them, and builds further assumptions upon them accordingly; and he assumes facts unproven and incapable of proof; and principles which he must know are denied by his opponents. We can only take a few instances at random. He assumes that all dogs are developed from wolves (Descent of Man, page 48); that the instincts of animals are developed (page 38); that language was developed (page 53); that there is a wider interval between the lamprey and the ape than between the ape and the man, thus begging the question of man's brutality (page 34); that the savage is the original state of man (page 63); that parental instincts are the result of Natural Selection, after owning utter ignorance of their origin (page 77); that the ideas of glory and infamy are the workings of sympathy (page 82); the heredity of moral tastes (page 98); that the standard of morality has been rising since the giving of the ten commandments (page 99); that our ancestors were quadrupeds (page 116); that there have been thousands of generations (page 125); that breeds have the character of species (Origin of Species, page 411); that rudimentary organs are inherited abortions (page 424); that there are four or five original progenitors, and distant evidence of only one (page 425); he assumes descent to prove his geology (page 428); and perpetual progress toward perfection (pages 59, 140, 176, 428), in the face of his own facts of retrogression. Then look at the outrageous character of the assumption that beneficial variations may be added up indefinitely, that is, to infinity. Because a gymnast can leap over two horses, can his son leap over three? and his son over four? and his son over five? and can we in time breed a man who will leap to the moon? And yet the whole theory is based upon forgetfulness of the maxim, that there is a limit to all things, and of the fact, that in creatures of flesh and blood this limit is very soon reached. Look again at the utterly erroneous assumption that the tendency of the struggle for life is to improve the combatants; an assumption contradicted by the whole history of famine, war, pauperism, and disease, among brutes and men. Were the survivors of the Irish famine of 1847, or those of the Persian, or Bengali famines improved by their struggle for life? It is true the fittest survived; but that was all; they were miserably emaciated and demoralized. Were the peasantry of Europe improved by the wars of the French Revolution? On the contrary, though the fittest survived, France was obliged to lower the recruiting standard three inches. In all cases the struggle for life injures all concerned. And yet upon these two fundamental assumptions the theory is built; of which that of the indefinite accumulation of small profitable variations is outrageously impossible and absurd; and the other, of the improvement of breeds by starvation and hardships, is contrary to all observation and experience! Take away these two assumptions, and the whole theory of the gradual improvement of plants and animals by such agency vanishes. There is no such power of indefinite improvement by Natural Selection, as Mr. Darwin asserts. The utmost it can do is to keep breeds up to the natural standard, or near to it, by destroying the weakest; but at the same time it weakens the strongest also. Were there no other objection, this one would be fatal, that Mr. Darwin assigns an elevating power to a depressing agency, and asserts war, famine, hardship, and disease as his holy angels perfecting progress. Mr. Darwin presents the most preposterous assumptions with such coolness and apparent unconsciousness of their utter improbability to his readers, and with such an entire ignoring of the necessity of any further attestation than his own _ipse dixit_, as to warrant serious suspicions of his sanity. Take, for instance, his bear and whale story. Hearne reports having seen in the Arctic regions a bear swimming in the water for hours, with his mouth wide open, catching flies; and Mr. Darwin says if the supply of flies were constant (where the winter lasts eight months of the year 40° below zero) _he can see no difficulty in the production at length of an animal as monstrous as a whale_! M. Comte's disciples never suspected their master's sanity till he invented a religion for them. 2. This theory, it should be remembered, is _merely a theory_, _a mere notion_, _a hypothesis_. It is not even alleged that it is based upon facts actually discovered. The alleged facts of the cooling of the nebulæ, the chemical origin of life upon our globe, and the development of the original Ascidian into the fish, and that into the monkey, and of the monkey into the man, never were witnessed by anybody, nor could they be witnessed. La Place was honest enough to call his part of the theory, The Nebular _Hypothesis_. He had no idea of claiming for it the rank of a fact of science upon which he, or anybody else, might build a system. Nor are the modern assertors of evolution able to establish a single instance of the chemical origin of life at the present day; though thousands of experiments have been made attempting that exploit, by English, French, and German chemists during the last forty years. Nor has a single case of the transmutation of species ever been observed in wild animals or plants; nor has any change of species been produced in tame ones by domestication or culture. No naturalist has seen a community of apes in the process of improvement toward manhood; nor has any philologist described the first attempts of the monkeys toward the articulation of language, or the manufacture of clothing, unless we except Mr. Lemuel Gulliver's interesting account of the Yahoos. It must be acknowledged that the animals described by that accurate observer, and graphic describer, approach more nearly to those required by Mr. Darwin's theory than any ever seen before, or since. Hence it is greatly to be desired that some scientific evolutionists should thoroughly explore those regions, investigate the manners and customs of the Yahoos with the enthusiasm of a true Darwinian, and minutely describe those interesting features which would enable us to decide whether they are monkeys progressing to manhood, or men brutalizing into apehood; but which Mr. Gulliver's lack of scientific enthusiasm for evolution prevented him from closely examining. But until the scientific standing of Mr. Gulliver's Yahoos is determined, the theory of evolution must be assigned to the mountains of speculations, big with expectation, but which yet await the birth of their first fact. Mr. Darwin indeed alleges the results of domestication upon animals and plants, as producing permanent varieties as different in appearance as many which are ranked by naturalists as different species, and he alleges that Natural Selection carries on a similar process of improvement among wild animals and plants. But the facts of domestication are most emphatic in refusing to acknowledge any change of species of the most carefully bred animals. The efforts of breeders have been exerted for thousands of years upon the dog, the ox, the goat, the sheep, and the ass, the horse, and the camel, among animals; and upon the goose, the duck, and the pigeon, and for a shorter time, but still for two thousand years, upon the common barn-door poultry. Farmers in all lands, since the deluge, have used their best exertions to improve the cereals, the fruit trees, the vines, and root crops, and vegetables, and the result has been some valuable modifications of size, shape, flavor, and fertility; but in no case whatever has any change of species been effected. All the efforts of breeders have not succeeded in making the horse specifically different from the noble animal described in the Book of Job four thousand years ago. The sheep has not become a goat, nor the goat a sheep, by all the pains of all the shepherds since the days of Abel. The ass displays not the least tendency to become a horse, nor the goat to become a cow. Mr. Darwin makes great capital out of pigeons, enumerating all the varieties owned by fanciers, and showing how the Indian emperors bred them a thousand years before Christ. But it is strange that he does not see that this makes against his theory; since in all that time this most variable of birds has never been transmuted into any other species. The pigeon has never been changed into a crow, or a magpie, or a woodpecker, or a chicken; has never, in fact, become anything else than a pigeon. Dogs are also somewhat variable in their varieties, and Mr. Darwin relies greatly upon supposed variations from some one assumed ancestral pair of dogs, into the greyhound, mastiff, terrier, and lapdog. But granting all these unproven variations, no instance is alleged of a dog ever becoming a cat or a lion by any care or culture. It will not do to allege, that, for anything we know to the contrary, our present breeds of domestic animals and plants may be so different from those called by the same names in ancient times as to be really different species. We do know many things to the contrary. In the tombs of the Egyptians, and the sculptures of the Assyrians, we have pictures of the various plants, birds, and animals, from three to four thousand years old, as well as of man, the most domestic animal of the whole. These paintings and sculptures assure us that in all those millenniums domestication has not produced the slightest change in the races of animals, plants, or men. The Ethiopian has not changed his skin, nor the leopard his spots. The negro was then the same black-skinned, woolly-headed, flat-nosed, thick-lipped, long-heeled person he is to-day, as pompous, good-humored, and fond of finery. The Assyrian statues are good, recognizable likenesses of eminent living Jewish merchants, in London and New Orleans. The old Pharaohs of the monuments can be matched for face and figure any day in the bazars of Cairo. The greyhound of the tombs is the same variety now used for coursing hares in the desert. The camel, the ass, and the Arab, and Assyrian breeds of horses, have not been at all improved in forty centuries. Even Mr. Darwin's favorite pigeons would seem to have ceased to vary; for the carrier-pigeons let loose by Sesostris, to carry the news of his coronation to all the cities of Egypt, do not differ a feather from the modern Egyptian carrier-pigeons. The various wild animals, and many of the plants, are represented on these monuments in great variety. Among these I have noted the lotus, the papyrus, the leek, the palm, wheat, barley, and millet; the crocodile, the frog, the crane, the flamingo, the ibis, the goose, the owl, the ostrich, the peacock; and of beasts the now famous ancestral ape, Ptolemy's tame lion, the leopard, the gazelle, the hippopotamus, the giraffe, and the wild boar, and many others. But there is not the least perceptible change in the corresponding species now inhabiting Egypt and the desert. We can go further than the mere external appearance; for we can actually dissect specimens of the various animals, and thus satisfy ourselves whether any physiological change, amounting to a transmutation of species, has occurred, or was in progress; and the investigation has been conducted by no less a physiologist and zoologist than Cuvier, whose authority in such matters no naturalist will dispute. And this is what he says: "It might seem as if the ancient Egyptians had been inspired by nature, for the purpose of transmitting to after ages a monument of her natural history. That strange and whimsical people, by embalming with so much care the brutes which were the objects of their stupid adoration, have left us in their sacred grottoes cabinets of zoology almost complete. Climate has conspired with art to preserve the bodies from corruption, and we can now assure ourselves with our own eyes what was the state of a good number of species three thousand years ago. * * * I have endeavored to collect all the ancient documents respecting the forms of animals, and there are none equal to those furnished by the Egyptians, both in regard to their antiquity and abundance. I have examined with the greatest care the engraved figures of quadrupeds and birds upon the obelisks brought from Egypt to ancient Rome; and all these figures, one with another, have a perfect resemblance to their intended objects, such as they still are in our days. My learned friend, Geoffrey St. Hilaire, convinced me of the importance of this research, and carefully collected in the tombs and temples of Upper and Lower Egypt as many mummies of animals as he could procure. He has brought home the mummies of cats, ibises, birds of prey, dogs, crocodiles, and the head of a bull. After the most attentive and detailed examination, not the smallest difference is to be perceived between these animals and those of the same species which we now see, any more than between human mummies and skeletons of men of the present day."[17] There is then not the first fact, or appearance of a fact, to be adduced in proof of the change of species either by domestication, or Natural Selection, or any other process known to man. That any such evolution of any animal, or plant, into one of another species ever occurred, is a mere empty notion, in support of which no facts can be adduced. All the animals and plants of which we know anything have remained unchanged since the beginning of man's observation of them. The theory endeavors to account for a change which never happened. It is a mere empty dream, unworthy of a serious consideration by any mind imbued with the first principle of inductive science--namely, that all science is the orderly knowledge of facts; and whose first rule is, _first ascertain your facts_. But it is urged, that though such a change has not occurred during the brief period of human history, it may have been practicable in the lengthened periods revealed by geology, and while the forces of nature were more vigorous during the youth of our planet. This, in fact, is the grand resource of the modern evolutionists--the almost infinite periods and possibilities of geology. We refuse, however, to follow Mr. Powell into those unexplored realms of the infinite past and discuss the possibilities of ages, of which "by the conditions we can not know anything whatever." We will go as far as the geological strata furnish us with any facts, any evidences of life, any traces of plants or animals of which corresponding species still exist, and will unhesitatingly affirm, on the authority of the most eminent geologists, that such geological representatives of existing species furnish no evidence whatever of evolution into higher forms. On the contrary, we shall show that many species have existed without the slightest change for many thousands, aye, and millions of years, sufficiently long to establish the fact of the permanence of species during the geologic ages known to man. Geologists are generally agreed that the first Florida Coral Reef is at least 30,000 years old; but Agassiz asserts, uncontradicted, that the insect which built it has not altered in the least in that period, and he says regarding it: "These facts furnish evidence, as direct as we can obtain in any branch of physical inquiry, that some at least of the species of animals now existing have been in existence 30,000 years, and have not undergone the slightest change in that period." But we can go still further back, and demonstrate the permanence of vegetable structure. Hugh Miller says: "The oak, the birch, the hazel, the Scotch fir, all lived, I repeat, in what is now Britain, ere the last great depression of the land. The gigantic northern elephant and rhinoceros, extinct for untold ages, forced their way through the tangled branches; and the British tiger and hyena harbored in their thickets. Cuvier framed an argument for the fixity of species on the fact that the birds and beasts of the catacombs were identical in every respect with the animals of the same kind that live now. But what, it has been asked, is a brief period of 3,000 years, when compared with the geologic ages? Or how could any such argument be founded on a basis so little extended? It is, however, to no such narrow basis that we can refer in the case of these woods. All human history is comprised in the nearer corner of the immense period they measure out; and yet from their first appearance in creation till now, they have not altered a single fiber. And such on this point is the invariable testimony of Paleontologic science, testimony so invariable that no great Paleontologist was ever yet an asserter of the Development Hypothesis."[18] To the same purpose let us hear Huxley's testimony, since no one will suspect him of undue respect for Moses: "Obviously if the earliest fossiliferous rocks now known are coeval with the commencement of life, and if their contents give us any just conception of the earliest fauna and flora, the insignificant amount of modification which can be demonstrated to have taken place in any one group of animals and plants, is quite incompatible with the hypothesis that all living forms are the results of a process of necessary progressive development entirely comprised within the time represented by the fossiliferous rocks."[19] We are fully warranted, then, in alleging, that no such transmutation of species is known to science, as an existing fact, or as having ever occurred. As to the supposition on which the evolutionists fall back, that such a miracle might have happened thousands of millions of years before the formation of the lowest rocks known to us, we might well decline the discussion of may-be's as facts of science. But there is a positive denial of unimaginable periods of time for Mr. Darwin's evolution to try its blundering experiments. We are empowered to say positively, No! There is no such length of time for you, Mr. Darwin, on this little globe at least. This rotating world had a beginning; so had our moon; and our sun, too, began to burn one day. And there are data of the revolution of these bodies, and of the secular cooling of the earth, and of the gradual combustion of the sun, and of the retardation of the earth's motions, from which Sir Wm. Thompson (in his Treatise on Geological Time) calculates, that our earth has not been in a fit state for plants and animals for more than a hundred millions of years; and he demonstrates the absurdity of the demand for unlimited time, as contradictory to the facts of physical astronomy. Hence we deny the possibility of evolution in the infinite ages of the past. There never were any such ages on this world of ours. 4. Failing to find facts, evolutionists fall back upon analogies, and support their hypothesis by the supposed analogy of the _growth of the embryos of all plants and animals from germs alleged to be originally perfectly similar_--simple protoplasm cells, which by subsequent evolution, differentiate themselves as widely as the moss from the man. The subject is too obscure for popular discussion. I can only announce the results of the latest and most authoritative researches.[20] 1. Analogy is a very unsafe guide here, because the differences between the limited life of the individual, and the alleged unlimited life of the race, are precisely those of which we have no analogy. 2. It is not true that "the original substratum or material is in every instance alike," nor that the "primordial cell is in every instance the same," whether of the "lichen or the man;"[21] nor as others allege, "that chemical reagents detect no differences between them." Chemical reagents are very clumsy instruments for the analysis of living beings, and their properties and powers; which are the antagonists of chemical reactions. Nevertheless, heat is a well-known chemical agent, and the application of heat to a fertilized, and to an unfertilized, germ develops a whole world of difference between them. The one becomes a chicken, the other an addled egg. Moreover, the application of different degrees of heat to different germs produces the most various reactions. The germs of trout are speedily killed by the moderate temperature of 65° Fahrenheit, while the germs of most animalculæ and plants develop rapidly at that temperature. Such instances might be multiplied, but these are sufficient to contradict the rash assertion of sameness, because a hasty observer did not take pains to discover differences. 3. There are four distinct plans of structure in the animal kingdom, and at least three, perhaps more, in the vegetable kingdom; and every germ, from the first instant when its evolution can be seen at all, is seen to develop only according to its own proper method. There is no more confusion of germs, or embryos, than of plants or animals. 4. No instance has ever been known of a germ producing an animal, or plant, of another species, by any process of stopping short of ripening, or undue prolongation of it. Every seed breeds true to its kind, or not at all, or produces a deformity. Embryology utterly refuses the notion of the transmutation of species. Mr. Darwin's various references to rudimentary organs, like the bones of a hand in the flipper of the whale, or the teats of male animals, and the like, can hardly be called arguments. He tries to account for them and fails; acknowledging ignorance of the laws of heredity. Some of them he will have to be young organs in process of evolution, others organs aborted for want of exercise. In this category he ought to place the tail which he ought to have inherited from his ancestors, as he is greatly exercised to know what became of it. But it is evident that his attempts to build arguments on such things, and to account for occasional variations by atarism, are in contradiction to his principles. Most of the known instances of the origination of permanent varieties were not the result of infinitesimal improvements, but were sudden and complete at once. The Japan peacocks, the short-legged sheep, the porcupine man and his family, and the six-fingered men, were not at all the results of a slow process of evolution; on the contrary, they were born so, complete at once, in utter contradiction of the theory. 5. The only other line of argument, which has any show of probability, is that based upon _the gradations of the various orders of plants and animals_. Not but that there are many other arguments adduced, but they are of too technical a character to be intelligible to any but zoologists, and of too little weight to demand consideration after the leading arguments are overturned. But this argument from gradation, though logically unsound, is plausibly specious, and therefore demands notice. By far the ablest exhibition of this argument is that made by Lamarck, and we give it as he presents it: "The greater the abundance of natural objects assembled together, the more do we discover proofs that everything passes by insensible shades into something else; that even the more remarkable differences are evanescent, and that nature has for the most part left us nothing at our disposal for establishing distinctions, save trifling, and in some respects puerile particularities. We find that many genera among plants and animals are of such an extent, in consequence of the number of species referred to them, that the study and determination of these last have become almost impracticable. When the species are arranged in a series, and placed near to each other, with a due regard to their natural affinities, they each differ in so minute a degree from those next adjoining, that they almost melt into each other, and are in a manner confounded together. If we see isolated species, we may presume the absence of some more closely connected, and which have not yet been discovered. Already there are genera, and even entire orders, nay, whole classes which present this state of things." He then goes on to present, "as a guide to conjecture," what his successors now assert as a fact: "In the first place, if we examine the whole series of known animals, from one extremity to the other, when they are arranged in the order of their natural relations, we find that we may pass progressively, or at least with very few interruptions, from beings of more simple to those of more compound structure; and in proportion as the complexity of their organization increases, the number and dignity of their faculties increase also. Among plants a similar approximation to a graduated scale of being is apparent. Secondly, it appears, from geological observations, that plants and animals of more simple organization existed on the globe before the appearance of those of more compound structure, and the latter were successively formed at more modern periods, each new race being more fully developed than the most perfect of the preceding one."[22] From this gradation of nature, thus stated, the evolutionists go on to infer genealogy, the birth descent of the larger from the smaller, and of the more complex from the simpler forms, as the only scientific explanation. But it is by no means the only scientific explanation of the order of nature. The best naturalists, from Moses to Agassiz, have regarded the order of nature as the development of the divine idea, have prosecuted their researches on that view, and have regarded that as a sufficient and scientific explanation of the gradation of plants and animals, as they actually exist. The idea of birth descent can not be logically connected with that of gradation; especially with a gradation upward. Were the order of nature such as Lamarck describes, how could any man logically infer the birth descent of each of its classes from the next below? Here is an ironmonger's sample card of wood screws, beginning with those one-quarter of an inch long, and proceeding by gradations of one-sixteenth of an inch to those of four inches. Does the gradation show that the little ones begot the big ones? It may be said the wood screws do not beget progeny. Well, here is a hill containing twenty-three potatoes, weighing from half an ounce to half a pound, and quite regularly graded. Did the small potatoes beget the big ones? The inference of birth descent from gradation is utterly illogical, and of a piece with the incoherency which we have seen in the other parts of the theory. It never could be inferred from the facts stated, even did nature correspond to Lamarck's description. But nature does not correspond to Lamarck's description. That description corresponded moderately, perhaps, to the science of his day, which was based chiefly upon external resemblances; but no scientific naturalist of the present day would accept it as a correct statement of the facts revealed by modern science. In the first place there is no such imperceptible blending and shading off of species as the description would imply, obliterating all distinctions of species, and rendering it impossible even for a naturalist to distinguish one species from another. Since the time of Lamarck, structure and physiology have been more studied than mere external appearances; so that from a tooth or bone Cuvier or Agassiz could reconstruct an animal, and indicate its internal organization, as well as its form and habits. But even in Lamarck's days, and even to the most uneducated, there was no such imperceptible shading and blending as the theory requires. It is well to look here at its requirements, for they are not fully presented by its friends. Mr. Darwin gives us a diagram exhibiting the variation of an original species into a score or so of varieties, ending in distinct species. But this is very far, indeed, below the necessities of the case. The horse hair worm lays 8,000,000 of eggs; and the primeval germ, whatever it was, could hardly be less fertile, since fertility increases with simplicity of structure. But, taking 8,000,000 to begin with, here were as many varieties; since no two of them, or of any creature, could be exactly alike. The next generation would give 8,000,000 times as many varieties, and so on till Natural Selection began to thin off the feeble. But here we have, instead of a few well-marked varieties, an infinite multitude of imperceptible variations, rendering classification impossible. And as all these were only varieties of the same breed, they would breed together, and thus still more confuse the complexity, and render distinction of species impossible. For, in spite of all Mr. Darwin has to say about the extinction of the weaker varieties, the fact is, they are not at all extinguished, but keep their ground as well as the higher classes, or perhaps better. And if a snail, or a worm, can contrive to live now in an unimproved condition, why should its improving cousin die off? Did its improvement kill it? And so of improving mollusks, and well-doing radiates, and aspiring rabbits, and all the rest. The world ought to be so full of them that no man could sort them off into species, or tell which was fish, which was flesh, and which red herring; and no pork packer could distinguish hog from dog. But instead of any such horrible confusion of a world full of mongrels, we discover a clear and well defined distinction of species, known even to the poor animals themselves, and by their instincts made known to all mankind. The Creator, who created all creatures after their kind, implanted in them an instinct of breeding only with their own species; and placed a bar in the way of man's vain attempts to work confusion of species, by rendering the hybrid offspring of different species sterile, or only capable of breeding back to the pure blood. Innumerable attempts have been made by fraud and force to procure cross breeds of different species of plants and animals, but always with the same result--the extinction of the progeny of the hybrid, unless bred back to nature. While a mingling of various breeds of the same species--horses, sheep, or cattle--generally increases fertility, the attempt to mingle different species, as the horse and the ass, though so similar, always produces sterile offspring. It is impossible to conceive any form in which the Creator could more emphatically protest against the attempt to confuse the distinctions of species He established. God has fixed a barrier against the mixture or confusion of species by cross breeding, by ordaining the sterility of hybrids. Mr. Darwin labors in vain to explain away this great fact. It can not be explained into conformity with the evolution theory; for in that theory all species are only breeds or varieties of one species, and ought to increase their fertility by cross breeding. With all scientific naturalists, as with all people of common sense, this proves that species have a distinct existence in nature, and that the Creator has ordained the continuance of their distinct existence; which is the denial of evolution. When Mr. Darwin retreats into the geologic ages, and confessing that his principle has ceased to be operative now in our world, and refers us to them for such evolution of one species from another, he abandons the fundamental principle of his school--the uniformity of nature--and falls back on Christian ground the necessity for supernatural origins. He virtually admits the death or superannuation of Natural Selection, since it has retired from the business of species-making. But when we go back to those old geologic ages, we find that species were then not only as distinct as now, but that the distinctions were even bolder and more visible. Many of them have ceased to exist, but they have left their shells, their petrified casts, and their bones, by which we can see that they stood apart in well-defined groups, without any such blending and confusion as the evolution theory asserts. Over three thousand species are already classified. Between every two of them there ought to be, on Mr. Darwin's showing, a hundred intermediate variations at the least; and between some of the more widely separated forms there ought to be thousands of intermediate varieties; as for instance between the bear and the whale; and a still greater number between the mollusk with its external shell, and the vertebrate with its internal skeleton. And we ought to find these intermediate forms closely connected with their parents and their children. For intermediate forms in another continent could not be the connecting links between the mollusks and vertebrates of a distant country, say of England. In the same strata in which we find the two ends of the chain, and lying between the two ends of the chain, we ought to find the connecting links. And we ought to find a hundred connecting links for every specimen of distinct species, since Mr. Darwin alleges that they must have lived and died somewhere; and we have seen they must have lived and died right there where they were born, and where they begot their progeny. The geological strata ought to be full of connecting links. But when we come to look for them they are not there. Geology knows nothing about them. It has plenty of distinct, well-defined species--trilobites, and ammonites, and echinoderms, palms, ferns, firs, and mosses, all sorts of quadrupeds from a mouse to a mastodon, and all just as clean-cut and well-defined as the species of existing animals. Mr. Darwin can not find his connecting links between the species, which ought to have been a hundred times more plentiful than the species they connected. These connecting links are missing links. He ought to be able to overwhelm his opponents, and bury them under mountains of the bones of intermediate species. But all his friends can do is to suggest about half a dozen, while he needs three hundred thousand. He can not pay half a cent on the dollar. In his grief he turns round and abuses the defectiveness of the geological record, which he says he could never have suspected of being so defective but for this failure to meet his drafts. But he need not blame the geological record for not preserving bones of animals which never lived. Geology says there never was any such confusion of species as evolution asserts. But not only does the general structure of the web of nature present a clearly striped pattern, instead of the mottled gray of the theory--neither the beginning, nor the middle, nor the end is like what the evolution theory would produce. The gradation does not begin, as the theory asserts and demands, with the monads. On the contrary, we find that there are four kingdoms of animal life--in an ascending scale--the radiate, or starfish; the mollusk or oyster; the articulate, or insect; and the vertebrate, or animals with backbones. Now the evolution ought to have begun at the bottom, with the radiate, the coral, and the starfish; it should have gone upward, the coral developing into the oyster, and the oyster into the lobster, and the lobster into the salmon, and so on. But instead of that we discover, away down in the Silurian strata, at the very beginning of life, _all the four kingdoms_--the radiates, the mollusks, the articulates, and the fish! Evidently, then, there was no such beginning of the world as evolutionists suppose. Then as we work upward along the line of march, and of the development of the divine idea, we observe that when new species were introduced, they did not work up slowly from small and weak beginnings; beginning with dwarfs and growing up to giants; but, on the contrary, the giants head the column. The geological books are full of them--sharks forty feet long, frogs as big as oxen, ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus of fabulous proportions--were not their skeletons preserved--pterodactyles, or bats, as big as a dog, the mastodon giganteus, beside which an ordinary modern elephant is like a Shetland pony beside a dray horse, ferns as big as oak trees, and mosses eighteen inches in diameter, shell fish of the nautilus order the size of dinner plates, and crustaceans, cousins to the lobster, three feet long. And all this at the very first start in life of these respective families, and in overwhelming multitudes. That was no age of small beginnings, and small progressive improvements. On the contrary, these old families, like some other old families, seem to have rather lost rank, and bulk, and influence; at least their modern representatives cut no such figure in the world as their predecessors. As we proceed along the line we meet gaps which slay the theory of genealogical descent altogether. A gap is fatal to it. If a family dies out, that is the end of it. You can not resuscitate it after a few centuries, and go on with that breed; much less can you pick up a breed quite different, and attach it to your old genealogy. But in the line of evolution we meet these fatal gaps; and no evolutionist has bridged them, because they can not possibly be bridged. The first great gap is the abyss between death and life. No human power can cross it. How could the chemical actions of dead matter infuse vitality into the first germ, or bud of a plant? For chemical actions are the antagonists of life, and constantly laboring to destroy the living organism, and finally they succeed. There is no process of evolution known to man which can carry evolution across this abyss. But till evolution crosses this gulf it can not even begin to operate. This first abyss is its grave. But, supposing life begun in the plant first, as the theory requires, there is another gap between the life of the plant and that of the animal; for all animal life is sustained by another sort of food than that which feeds the vegetable. The vegetable feeds solely on chemical, unorganized matters; the animal solely on matter organized, on some plant, or on some other animal which feeds on plants. No animal can live on the food of plants. Here then is another gap which can not be bridged over, nor crossed; for the plant in process of conversion into an animal is in process of starvation, and when the process is about to be completed, it will end like the miser's horse, whose master diminished his oats Darwinianly, a single grain a day, until he had brought him to live on just one grain per day, when, alas! the victim of the experiment died. And so ends evolution experiment No. 2. Then we come on a multitude of gaps, breaks in the uniformity of nature, called for by the evolutionists, between the species which will not breed together. There ought to be no such species on the theory; or, if there are, there ought to be a multitude of intervening varieties toning down the interval; for instance, between the horse and the cow, and between the sheep and the hog. All the ingenuity of all the evolutionists has been tasked in vain to produce any instance of the confusion of two such species, or of the production of a new true species by the intermixture of blood. But they might just as well try to convert iron into gold, or sulphur into carbon. In fact, evolution is the modern physiological form of the old chemical superstition, alchemy, substituting for the transmutation of metals the problem of the transmutation of animals. It were endless to attempt to exhibit the impossibilities of crossing the gaps between the water-breathing fish and the air-breathing animal; between the flying-bird and the quadruped; between instinct and education; between brute selfishness and maternal affection; between the habits of the solitary and those of the gregarious, and those of the colonial insects and animals. No one of these is accounted for satisfactorily by the theory of evolution. But space forbids the attempt. We only cite one other gulf which the theory can not cross: the gulf between the brute and the man. We should rather say the three gulfs; for between man's body and that of the brute there is a gap which Natural Selection can not cross; another between man's intellectual powers and those of brutes; and the third, and widest of all, between his conscience and their brutal appetites. The gulf between man's body and that of any brute is marked along the whole line, from the solid basis of the feet, enabling him to stand erect, look upward and behold the stars; along the line of the stiff backbone, maintaining the dignified posture; to the hands, on which treatises have been written, displaying their wonderful superiority over those of all other creatures, and enabling man to do what no other animal has done, to fill the world with his handiworks, and alter the very face of nature with his ax, and spade, and steam engine. His tongue and organs of articulate speech alone, were there no other characteristic, proclaim him different from all other animals; none of those resembling him in outward form making the slightest attempts toward articulate language or being able to do so. Man alone, of all the animals, possesses no natural covering, but is exposed naked to the inclemency of the elements. What little hair he possesses is chiefly on the breast, where it is of little use as a covering, and on the head, which in other animals is never better protected than the body. Mr. Darwin alleges that the first men were hairy, like apes. Well, how did they lose their hair? Not by Natural Selection, which only perpetuates _profitable_ variations; but the loss of hair to an ape would be as unprofitable as the loss of your clothes to you. Not by Sexual Selection, for there is not the slightest evidence that nudity was ever popular in apedom. We have undoubted evidence, in the two bone needles found with the bones of the man of Mentone, that the primeval men were naked, and complete proof that Natural Selection could not effect such a disadvantageous change had they been hairy. Here, then, we have an _inferiority_ to other animals in the animal structure, strangely at variance with the general superiority, and only to be accounted for as an educational provision. But chiefly in the human head does the great outward distinction appear. The brain is the great instrument with which the mind works. You can gauge the strength of Ulysses by his bow, and the bulk of the giant by the staff of his spear, which was like a weaver's beam. The brain of the largest ape is about thirty two cubic inches. The brains of the wildest Australians are more than double that capacity. They measure from seventy-five inches to ninety. Europeans' brains measure from ninety to one hundred inches. There are instances of Esquimaux measuring over ninety. Even the brain of an idiot is double the size of that of the orang-otang. But how did man get this extraordinary development of brain, far beyond his necessities? For the cave man of Mentone, who hunted the bison, had as good a head as Bismarck. Natural Selection could not develop an ape's brain in advance of his necessities. But here we have a prophetic structure; man's head developed far in advance of his necessities. Here is a power at work superior to Natural Selection. With such an instrument man has gone to work and supplied his deficiencies. Inferior to many animals in strength and speed, he has manufactured weapons, and subdued them all, asserting himself as the lord of creation, conquering even the mighty mastodon, and piercing the huge Caledonian whale with his reindeer harpoon. He has remedied his want of hair by the manufacture of clothing from the spoils of his victims. He has rendered himself independent of the weather by the shelter of his house. He has ceased to be dependent on the spontaneous fruits of the forest by the cultivation of the soil, and so has become a cosmopolite, confined to no province of creation. He has constructed ships, and provisioned them for long voyages, and visited, and colonized every coast of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australia. He has formed civilized societies with laws, government, and religion. He has leveled roads, navigated rivers, tunneled mountains, dug navigable canals, constructed steamboats, built railroads, invented electric telegraphs, and steam printing presses; and generally he has developed ideas of society, nationality, and of the universal brotherhood of man, not only not possible under the laws of Natural Selection, but in the most direct contrariety to those laws, which work only for the benefit of the individual. Never under those laws could any great community of animals be formed, never could they obtain the notion of representative government, never combine their powers for any national enterprise, nor could the most hairy and muscular-tailed of Mr. Darwin's ancestors secure subscribers sufficient to warrant him in starting even a county newspaper. But it is in the moral sense which enables man to distinguish right from wrong, the conscience, which forbids and reproves the unbridled indulgence of the animal appetites, that we observe the grand distinction between man and the brute. There is nothing in the writings of evolutionists more pitiable than their attempts to degrade conscience into a mere gregarious instinct, an outcome of utility to the tribe, and to pleasurable sensations, resulting from the exercise of the social instincts. It would appear that these writers had so sophisticated their own minds that they have ceased to understand the fundamental, world-wide difference between right and gain, between duty and pleasure. "Do justice, though the heavens fall," could never be evolved by Natural Selection. That is the law of the sharpest tooth, and the longest claws, and the biggest bull; the Napoleonic theology, whose god is always on the side of the strongest battalions; the law of the perdition of the weak, and the survival of the strongest. In obedience to its laws the birds forsake their parents as soon as they can shift for themselves; the herd tramples down the wounded deer; the wolves devour their wounded brothers; the queen bee puts her sisters to death, and the neuters sacrifice all the males of the hive. In obedience to the laws of Natural Selection, the males fight for the most attractive females, and keep as many as they can, and form societies on that basis. But man has a sense of justice, and mercy, and gratitude, and love. Here is an animal who knows he ought to tell truth, and do right, and honor his parents, and respect and love his brethren. Whether he always does his duty or not, he feels and owns he ought to do it. Justice, and mercy, and the fear of God, are not at all the attributes of brutes, and never could have been produced by the evolution of their instincts. No animal possesses any knowledge of God, nor practices any form of religious worship. Religion, then, could not be the evolution of what has no existence. We have now considered the theory of the atheistical evolution of man, and of all plants and animals from one primeval germ, by the unintelligent operation of the powers of nature. We have seen that there are as many contradictory applications of the theory as there are advocates of it; that in any shape it is incoherent, illogical, and absurd; that it is destitute of any support from facts; that the alleged analogy of embryology fails to give it countenance; that the order of nature in its gradations is contradictory of the theory; that it utterly fails to account for the origin of life, for the distinctness of the four classes of the animal kingdom, for the distinctness of species which refuse to breed together, for the absence of the intermediate forms necessary to the theory; and, above all, that it can give no satisfactory account of man's bodily, mental, and moral superiority to all other animals, nor for his possession of a knowledge of God. Its tendency, moreover, is inevitably to degrade man, to destroy that sense of his dignity which is the principal security of human life, to obliterate a belief in the divine origin and sanction of morality, and in the existence of a future life of rewards and punishments, and so to promote the disorganization of society, and the degradation of men to the level of brutes, living only under the laws of their brutal instincts. For all these reasons we reject the theory as unscientific, absurd, degrading to man, and offensive to the God who made him. FOOTNOTES: [5] The Descent of Man, p. 198, American Edition. [6] The Descent of Man, p. 191, Am. Ed. [7] Descent of Man, p. 199, Am. Ed. [8] Descent of Man, 197, Am. Ed. [9] The Variations of Animals, etc., Vol. II. page 515. [10] Lay Sermons, p. 30. [11] Lay Sermons, 303. [12] Cited by Hodge in "What is Darwinism?" Page 73, etc. [13] Natural Selection, 372 A., Am. Ed. [14] From the _Presbyterian_, December 7, 1872. [15] Origin of Species, 4, 10, 127, 9, 97, 100, 409, 410, 415, 423. Descent of Man, 192, 204, and II.--15, 257. [16] Natural Selection, p. 365. Am. Ed. [17] Theory of the Earth, 123. [18] Testimony of the Rocks, 77. [19] Address at Annual Meeting of the Geological Society, 1862. [20] Agassiz's Methods of Study. [21] Draper's Human Physiology, 506. [22] Lyell's Principles of Geology, Book III., Chapter 33. CHAPTER III. IS GOD EVERYBODY, AND EVERYBODY GOD? Pantheism is that perversion of reason and language which denies God's personality, and calls some imaginary soul of the world, or the world itself, by his name. While Pantheists are fully agreed upon the propriety of getting rid of a God who could note their conduct, and call them to account for it hereafter, and who would claim to exercise any authority over them here, they are by no means agreed, either in India, Germany, or America, as to what they shall call by his name. Public opinion necessitates them to say they believe in a God, but almost every one has his own private opinion as to what it is. We shall speak of it as we hear it pronounced from the lips of its prophets, here, as well as in the writings of its expounders, in Europe, and Asia. Some of them declare, that it is some absolutely unknown cause of all the phenomena of the universe, and others, that it is the universe itself. A large class speak of it as the great soul of the world, while the more materialistic regard it as the world itself, body and soul; the soul being the sum of all the imponderable forces, such as gravitation, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, galvanism, vegetable and animal life, and especially the mesmeric influence, of which many of them regard intellect as a modification; and the body being the sum of all the ponderable substances, such as air, water, earth, minerals, vegetables, and bodies of animals and men. This creed is popularly expressed in the sentence so often heard, "God is everything, and everything is God." But this vast generalization of all things into the higher unity--this exalting of monkeys, men, snails, and paving stones to the same level of divinity--by no means meets the views of the more unphilosophical and aspiring gods and goddesses, for the very reason that it is so impartial. To deify a man and his cat by the same process is not much of a distinction to the former; and of what advantage is it to be made a god, if he does not thereby obtain some distinction? This leveling apotheosis is generally confined to the German Pantheists; their more ambitious American brethren ascribe the contented humility which accepts it to the continual influence of the fumes of tobacco and lager beer. Man is the great deity of the other class. Renan boldly says: "For myself, I believe there is not in the universe an intelligence superior to that of man; the absolute of justice and reason manifests itself only in humanity; regarded apart from humanity that absolute exists only as an abstraction. The infinite exists only when it clothes itself in form."[23] And as the soul of man is, rather inconsistently for people who believe everything God, supposed to be superior to the rest of him, they go off into great rhapsodies of adoration of their own souls. "The doctrine of the soul--first _soul_, and second _soul_, and evermore _soul_"[24]--is the doctrine which is to regenerate the world. God, in their view, is nothing till he attains self-consciousness in man. "The universal does not attract us till housed in the individual. Who heeds the waste abyss of possibility? Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mere egotism vanishes. The currents of the universal being circulate through me. I am part or particle of God." "I stand here to say, 'Let us worship the mighty and transcendent soul.'" "God attains to self-consciousness only in the human soul." "Honor yourself." "Reverence your own individuality." "The soul of man is the highest intelligence in the universe." Such are the dogmas which, under the name of Philosophy, are poured forth oracularly, unsupported by reason or argument, by the prophets of the new dispensation--the last and highest achievement of the human intellect. It is very unfortunate, however, for the honor of the prophets of the nineteenth century, that this profound discovery was invented, and illustrated, patented, and peddled, by the Hindoos, among the people of India, two thousand years before the divinity had struggled into self consciousness in the mighty and transcendent souls of Schelling, Hegel, and Strauss, of Atkinson, Parker, or Emerson. We mean to show in this lecture, that it is an _Antiquated, Hypocritical, Demoralizing Atheism_. 1. _Pantheism is an Antiquated Heresy._--It has rotted and putrefied among the worshipers of cats, and monkeys, and holy bulls, and bits of sticks and stones, on the banks of the Ganges, for more than two thousand years; yet it is now hooked up out of its dunghill, and hawked about among Christian people, as a prime new discovery of modern philosophy for getting rid of Almighty God. As the Hindoo Shasters are undoubtedly the sources from which French, German, and American philosophers have borrowed their dogmas, and as they have not had time to take the whole system, we shall edify the public by a view of this sublime theology as exhibited in the writings of the Pantheistic philosophers of India, as follows: "When existing in the temporary imperfect state of _Sagun_, Brahm (the Pantheist deity) wills to manifest the universe. For this purpose he puts forth his omnipotent energy, which is variously styled in the different systems now under review. He puts forth his energy for what? For the effecting of a creation out of nothing? 'No,' says one of the Shasters, but to '_produce from his own divine substance a multiform universe_.' By the spontaneous exertion of this energy he sends forth, from his own divine substance, a countless host of essences, like innumerable sparks issuing from the blazing fire, or myriads of rays from the resplendent sun. These detached portions of Brahm--these separated divine essences--soon become individuated systems, destined, in time, to occupy different forms prepared for their reception; whether these be fixed or movable, animate or inanimate, forms of gods or men, forms of animal, vegetable, or mineral existences. "Having been separated from Brahm in his imperfect state of _Sagun_, they carry along with them a share of those principles, qualities, and attributes that characterize that state, though predominating in very different degrees and proportions; either according to their respective capacities, or the retributive awards of an eternal ordination. Among others it is specially noted, that as Brahm at that time had awakened into a consciousness of his own existence, there does inhere in each separated soul a notion, or a conviction, of its own _distinct_, independent, individual existence. Laboring under this delusive notion, or conviction, the soul has lost the knowledge of its own proper nature--its divine origin, and ultimate destiny. It ignorantly regards itself as an inferior entity, instead of knowing itself to be what it truly is, a consubstantial, though it may be an infinitesimally minute portion of the great whole, a universal spirit. "Each individual soul being thus a portion of Brahm, even as a spark is of fire, it is again and again declared that the relation between them is not that of master and servant, ruler and ruled, but that of whole and part! The soul is pronounced to be eternal _a parte ante_; in itself it has had no beginning or birth, though its separate individuality originated in time. It is eternal _a parte post_; it will have no end--no death; though its separate individuality will terminate in time. Its manifestation in time is not a creation; it is an effluence from the eternal fount of spirit. Its disappearance from the stage of time is not an extinction of essence--a reduction to nonentity; it is only a refluence into its original source. As an emanation from the supreme, eternal spirit, it is from everlasting to everlasting. Neither can it be said to be of finite dimensions; on the contrary, says the sacred oracle, 'being identified with the Supreme Brahm, it participates in his infinity.' "After having enumerated all the elementary principles, atoms, and qualities successively evolved from Brahm, one of the sacred writings states, that though each of these had distinct powers, yet they existed separate and disunited, without order or harmonious adaptation of parts; that until they were duly combined together, it was impossible to produce this universe, or animated beings; and that therefore it was requisite to adopt other means than fortuitous chance for giving them an appropriate combination, and symmetrical arrangement. The Supreme, accordingly, produced an egg, in which the elementary principles might be deposited, and nurtured into maturity." "All the primary atoms, qualities, and principles--the seeds of future worlds--that had been evolved from the substance of Brahm, were now collected together, and deposited in the newly produced egg. And into it, along with them, entered the self-existent himself, under the assumed form of Brahm; and then he sat vivifying, expanding, and combining the elements, a whole year of the creation, or four thousand three hundred millions of solar years! During this amazing period, the wondrous egg floated like a bubble on the abyss of primeval waters, increasing in size, and blazing refulgent as a thousand suns. At length the Supreme, who dwelt therein, burst the shell of the stupendous egg, and issued forth under a new form, with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, and a thousand arms. Along with him there issued forth another form, huge and measureless. What could that be? All the elementary principles having now been matured, and disposed into an endless variety of orderly collocations, and combined into one harmonious whole, they darted into visible manifestation under the form of the present glorious universe! A universe now finished, and ready made, with its entire apparatus, of earth, sun, moon, and stars. What, then, is this multiform universe? It is but a harmoniously arranged expansion of primordial principles and qualities. And whence are these? Educed or evolved from the divine substance of Brahm. Hence it is that the universe is so constantly spoken of, even by mythologists, as a manifested form of Brahm himself, the supreme, invisible spirit. Hence, too, under the notion that it is the manifestation of a being who may assume every variety of corporeal form, is the universe often personified, or described as if its different parts were only the different members of a person, of prodigious magnitude, in human form. It is declared that the hairs of his body are the trees of the forest; of his head, the clouds; of his beard, the lightning. His breath is the circling atmosphere; his voice, the thunder; his eyes, the sun and moon; his veins, the rivers; his nails, the rocks; his bones, the lofty mountains![25] "The substantial fabrics of all worlds having now been framed and fitted up as the destined abodes of different orders of being, celestial, terrestrial, and infernal, the question next arises, How or by whom were produced the various organized forms which these orders of being were designed to animate? Though hosts of subtle essences or souls flowed forth from Brahm, all of these remain inactive till united to some form of materialism. From this necessity the gods themselves are not exempted. While the souls of men, and other inferior spirits, must be encased in tabernacles fashioned out of the grosser elements, the souls of the gods, and all other superior spirits, must be made to inhabit material forms, composed of one or other of the infinitely attenuated and invisible rudimental atoms that spring direct from the principle of consciousness. "Interminable as are the incoherencies, inconsistencies, and extravagancies of the Hindoo sacred writings, on no subject, perhaps, is the multiplicity of varying accounts and discrepancies more astonishing than on the present. Volumes could not suffice to retail them all. Brahma's first attempts at the production of the forms of animated beings were as eminently unsuccessful as they were various. At one time he is said to have performed a long and severe course of ascetic devotions, to enable him to accomplish his wish; but in vain; at another, inflamed by anger and passion at his repeated failures, he sat down and wept; and from the streaming tear drops sprang into being, as his first boon, a progeny of ghosts and goblins, of an aspect so loathsome and dreadful, that he was ready to faint away. At one time, after profound meditation, different beings spring forth: one from his thumb, another from his breath, a third from his ear, a fourth from his side. But enough of such monstrous legends."[26] There now, reader, you have the original of the Development Theory, with Vestiges of Creation enough to make half a dozen new infidel cosmogonies, besides the genuine original of Pantheism, from its native soil. Our western Pantheists will doubtless reverence their venerable progenitors; and, should the remainder of the family find their way here in a year or two, via Germany, the public will be better prepared to give a fitting reception to such distinguished visitors, including their suite of divine bulls and holy monkeys, their lustrations of cow dung, ecstatic hook swingings, burning of widows, and drowning of children, and other Pantheistic Philosophies, from the banks of the Ganges. What an outrage of decency for such men to call themselves philosophers and Christians! The relationship of American Pantheism with that of India is unblushingly acknowledged by the recent Pantheistic writers: "When ancient sages came to believe in the absolute goodness, justice, love, and wisdom of the deity, or providence, they fell into that peace which needed nothing, feared nothing, and therefore worshiped nothing. Nothing to blame, nothing to praise; the perfect whole became one great divinity. It was so in Magadha and Benares; it is so in Concord and Boston."[27] 2. _Pantheism is a System of Deception and Hypocrisy._--Has any man a right to pervert the English language, by fixing new meanings to words, entirely different from and contrary to those in common use? If he knows the meaning of the words he uses, and uses them to convey a contrary meaning, he is a deceiver. The name God, used as a proper name, in the English tongue, means "the Supreme Being; Jehovah; the Eternal and Infinite Spirit, the Creator and Sovereign of the Universe."[28] If, then, a man says he believes in God, but when forced to explain what he means by that name, says he means steam, heat, electricity, galvanism, magnetism, mesmeric force, odyle, animal life, the soul of man, or the sum of all the intelligences in the universe, he is a deceiver, and vain talker, abusing language to conceal his impiety. Pantheism is simply Jesuitical Atheism. Willing to dethrone Jehovah, but unable and unwilling to place any other being in his stead, as Creator and Ruler of the universe, yet conscious that mankind will never embrace open Atheism, Pantheists profess to believe in God, only that they may steal his name to cloak their Atheism. We, in common with all who believe in God, demand, that, as their divinity is, by their own confession, essentially different from God, they shall use a different word to describe it. Let them call it Brahm, as their brethren in India do, or any other name not appropriated to any existing being in heaven or earth, or under the earth; and let them cease to profane religion, and insult common sense, by affixing the holy name of the Supreme to their thousand-headed monster. But the very perfection of Jesuitism is reached, when Pantheists profess their high respect for the Christian religion. They do not generally speak of it as a superstition, though some of the vulgar sort do; nor do they decry its mysteries, as Deists are in the habit of doing; nor, as Socinians, and Unitarians, and Rationalists, do they attempt to reduce it to a mere code of morals. They grant it to be the highest development of humanity yet reached by the majority of the human race. The brute, the savage, the polytheistic idolater, the star worshiper, the monotheist, the Christian, are all, in their scheme, so many successive developments of humanity in its upward progress. There is only one step higher than Christianity, and that is Pantheism. Well knowing that Christianity is diametrically opposed to their falsehoods, and that the Bible, everywhere, teaches that the natural progress of man has ever been down from a state of holiness to idolatry and barbarism, they have yet the hardihood to profess respect for it, as a system of concealed Pantheism, and to clothe their abominations in Scripture language. They speak, for instance, of the "beauty of holiness in the mind, that has surmounted every idea of a personal God;" and of "God dwelling in us, and his love perfected in us," when they believe that he dwells as really in every creature: in that hog, for instance. Then they will readily acknowledge that the Bible is inspired. They _can accept_--that is the phrase--they can accept the Book which denounces death upon those fools who, "professing themselves to be wise, change the truth of God into a lie, and worship and serve the creature more than the Creator," as merely a mystic revelation of the Pantheism which leaves man to "erect everything into a God, provided it is none: sun, moon, stars, a cat, a monkey, an onion, uncouth idols, sculptured marble; nay, a shapeless trunk, which the devout impatience of the idolater does not stay to fashion into the likeness of a man, but gives its apotheosis at once." Oh, yes; they accept the Bible as inspired--a God inspired Book--inasmuch as _every_ product of the human mind is a development of Deity. The Bible, then, when we have the matter fully explained, is quite on a level with Gulliver's Travels, or Emerson's Address to a Senior Class of Divinity. There is nothing, however, in this vast system of monstrosities, which fills the soul of a Christian with such loathing and detestation, as to hear Pantheists profess their veneration for the Lord Jesus, and claim him as a teacher of Pantheism. If there is one object which they detest with all their hearts, it is the Judge of the quick and dead, and the vengeance which he shall take upon them that know not God, and obey not the gospel. Any allusion to the judgment seat of Christ fills them with fury, and causes them to pour forth awful blasphemies. They know that the Lord Jesus repeatedly declared himself the Judge of the living and the dead--that "the hour is coming in which all that are in their graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation;" and that the very last sentence of his public discourses is, "And these" (the wicked) "shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal." When they drop the mask for a moment, they can accuse apostles and disciples with "dwelling with noxious exaggeration about the _person_ of Christ."[29] Christ, as revealed in the gospel, they hate with a perfect hatred. But when it becomes necessary to address Christians, and beguile them into the deceitfulness of Pantheism, the tune is changed. Christ becomes the model man--"one conceived in conditions favorable to the highest perfectibility of the individual consciousness; and so possessed of powers of generalization far in advance of the age in which he lived. They can listen to and honor one of the best expounders of God and nature in the Man of Nazareth."[30] The vilest falsehoods of Pantheism are ascribed to Jesus, that those who, ignorant of his doctrine, yet respect his name, may be seduced to receive them. Of him who declared, "Out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, thefts, false witness, blasphemies," they have the hardihood to declare, "He saw with open eyes the mystery of the soul; alone, in all history, he estimated the greatness of man." Calculating upon that ignorance of the teaching of Christ which is so general among their audiences, they dare to represent the only begotten Son of God as teaching Pantheism: "One man was true to what is in you and me; he saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said in this jubilee of sublime emotion, 'I am divine. Through me God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see thee when thou also thinkest as I now think.' Because the indwelling Supreme Spirit can not wholly be got rid of, the doctrine of it suffers this perversion, that the divine nature is attributed to one or two persons, and denied to all the rest, and denied with fury." Yes, truly, the divine nature is emphatically denied to all unregenerated men, and denied, too, by that divine teacher thus eulogized. Hear him: "Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me; for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? Even because ye can not hear my word. Ye are of your father, the devil; and the works of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh it of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it." Let Pantheists, then, cease to wind their serpent coils around Christianity, and to defile the Bible with their filthy lickings. The Lord Jesus will not suffer such persons to bear even a true testimony to him, and his followers will not permit them to ascribe their falsehoods to him, without reproof. Let them stand out and avow themselves the enemies of Christ and his gospel, as they are, and cease their abominable pretenses of giving to the world the ultimate development of Christianity. What concord hath Christ with Belial? 3. _Pantheism is a System of Immorality._--It loosens all the sanctions of moral law. If there is anything upon which all Pantheists are agreed, it is in the denial of the resurrection, the judgment, and the future punishment of the wicked. Their whole system, in all its range, from Spiritualism to Phrenology, is expressly invented to get rid of God's moral government. If man is the highest intelligence in the universe, to whom should he render an account of his conduct? Or who would have any right to call him to account? Then, if we are developments of deity, deity can not offend against itself. Further, if our development, both of body and mind, be the inevitable result of the laws of nature--of our organization and our position--man is but the creature of circumstances, and, therefore, as is abundantly argued, can not be made responsible for laws and their results, over which he has no control. "I am what I am. I can not alter my will, or be other than what I am, and can not deserve either reward or punishment."[31] Before hundreds of the citizens of Cincinnati, a lecturer publicly denied the right of either God or man to invade his individuality, by taking vengeance upon him for any crime whatever. Thousands, who are not yet Pantheists, are so far infected with the poison that they utterly deny any right of vindictive punishment to God or man. But this is not all. Again and again have we listened with astonishment to men, declaring that there was no moral law--no standard of right and wrong, but the will of the community. Of course it was quite natural, after such a declaration, to assert that a wife who should remain with a husband of inferior intellectuality, or unsuitable emotions, was committing adultery; that private property is a legalized robbery; and that when a citizen becomes mentally or physically unfit for the business of life, he confers the highest obligation on society, and performs the highest duty to himself, by committing suicide, and thus returning to the great ocean of being! We might think that confusion of right and wrong could not be worse confounded than this; yet there is a blacker darkness still. _The distinction between good and evil is absolutely denied._ The Hindoo Pantheists declare that they can not sin, because they are God, and God can not offend against himself; there is no sin--it is all _maya_--delusion. So the American and English school tells us it lives only in the obsolete theology. Evil, we are told, "is good in another way we are not skilled in."[32] So says the author of "Representative Men." "Evil," according to old philosophers, "is good in the making; that pure malignity can exist is the extreme proposition of unbelief. It is not to be entertained by a rational agent. It is Atheism; it is the last profanation." "The divine effort is never relaxed; the carrion in the sun will convert itself into grass and flowers; and man, though in brothels, or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that is good and true."[33] Emerson, in a lecture in Cincinnati, is reported by the editor of _The Central Herald_, as saying in his hearing: "To say that the majority of men are wicked, is only to say that they are young." "Every man is indebted to his vices--virtues grow out of them as a thrifty and fruitful plant grows out of manure." "There is hope even for the reprobate, and the ruffian, in the fullness of time." If these were only the ravings of lunatics, or the dreamings of philosophers, we should never have hunted them from their hiding-places to scare your visions; but these doctrines are weekly propounded in your own city, and throughout our land, from platform and press, to thousands of your children and their school-teachers, of your work, men and your lawgivers, to your wives and daughters. Again and again have our ears been confounded in the squares of New York, and the streets of Philadelphia, and the market-places of Cincinnati, by the boisterous cry, _What is sin? There is no sin. It is all an old story._ Let men who fear no God, but who have lives, and wives, and property to lose, look to it, and say if they act wisely in giving their influence to a system which lands in such consequences. Let them devise some religion for the people which will preserve the rights of man, while giving license to trample upon the rights of God; or, failing in the effort, let them acknowledge that the enemy of God is, and of necessity must be, the foe of all that constitutes the happiness of man. Impiety and immorality are wedded in heaven's decree, and man can not sunder them. 4. _Pantheism is Virtually Atheism._--It may scarce seem needful to multiply proofs on this head. How can any one imagine a being composed of the sum of all the intelligences of the universe? Such a thing, or combination of things, never was distinctly conceived of by any intelligent being. Can intelligences be compounded, or like bricks and mortar, piled upon each other? If they could, did these finite intelligences create themselves? If the soul of man is the highest intelligence in the universe, did the soul of man create, or does the soul of man govern it? Shall we adore his soul? Some Pantheists have got just to this length. M. Comte declares, that "At this present time, for minds properly familiarized with true astronomical philosophy, the heavens display no other glory than that of Hipparchus, or Kepler, or Newton, and of all who have helped to establish these laws." _Establish_ these laws! Laws by which the heavenly bodies were guided thousands of years before Kepler or Newton were born. Shall we then adore the souls of Kepler and Newton? M. Comte has invented a religion, which he is much displeased that the admirers of his Positive Philosophy will not accept, in which the children are to be taught to worship idols, the youth to believe in one God, if they can, after such a training in infancy, and the full-grown men are to adore a Grand Etre, "the continuous resultant of all the forces capable of voluntarily concurring in the universal perfectioning of the world, _not forgetting our worthy auxiliaries, the animals_."[34] Our Anglo-Saxon Pantheists, however, are not quite philosophical enough yet to adore the mules and oxen, and therefore refuse worship altogether. "Work is worship," constitutes their liturgy. "As soon as the man is as one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action."[35] "Labor wide as earth has its summit in heaven. Sweat of the brow, and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton meditations, all sciences, all spoken epics, all acted heroisms, martyrdoms, up to that agony of bloody sweat, which all men have accounted divine! Oh, brother, if this is not worship, then I say, the more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky." "No man has worked, or can work, except religiously."[36] "Adieu, O Church! Thy road is that way, mine is this. In God's name, adieu!"[37] Such is the theory. How faithfully acted out, you can learn from the thousands who are now, publicly, upon God's holy Sabbath, working religiously upon the bridge that is to span the river, or less ostentatiously in their shops and workrooms throughout the city. Within a circle of three miles' radius of the spot you now occupy, one hundred thousand intelligent beings in this Christian city worship no God. The abstraction, which the Pantheist calls God, is no object of worship. It is not to be loved. If it does good, it could not help it, and did not intend it. It is not to be thanked for benefits. It, the sum of all the intelligence of the universe, can not be collected from the seven spheres to receive any such acknowledgment. It can not deviate from its fated course of proceeding; therefore, says the Pantheist, why should I pray? It neither sees his conduct, nor cares for it; and he denies any right to call him to account. It did not create him, does not govern him, will not judge him, can not punish him. It is no object of love, fear, worship, or obedience. It is no god. He is an Atheist. He believes not in any God. HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD. He is distinct from, and supreme over all his works. He now rules, and will hereafter judge all intelligent creatures, and will render to every one according to his works. 1. _Reason declares it._ The world did not make itself. The soul of man did not make itself. The body of man did not make itself. They must have had an intelligent Creator, who is God. God is known by his works to be distinct from them, and superior to them. The work is not the workman. The house is not the builder. The watch is not the watchmaker. The sum of all the works of any worker is not the agent who produced them. Let an architect spend his life in building a city, yet the city is not the builder. The maker is always distinct from, and superior to, the thing made. You and I, and the universe, are made. Our Maker, then, is distinct from, and superior to us. One plan gives order to the universe; therefore, one mind originated it. The Creator is over all his creatures. 2. _Our consciousness confirms it._ If a blind god could not make a seeing man, a god destitute of the principle of self-consciousness (if such an abuse of language may be tolerated for a moment) could not impart to man the conviction, _I am_,--the ineradicable belief that I am not the world, nor any other person; much less, everybody; but that I am a person, possessed of powers of knowing, thinking, liking and disliking, judging, approving of right, and disapproving of wrong, and choosing and willing my conduct. My Maker has at least as much common sense as he has given me. He that teacheth man knowledge, shall he not know? 3. _Our ignorance and weakness demand a Governor of the world wiser than ourselves._ The soul of man is not the highest intelligence in the universe. It can not know the mode of its own operation on the body it inhabits, much less the plan of the world's management. Man may know much about what does not concern him, and about things over which he has no control; but it is the will of God that his pride should feel the curb of ignorance and impotence where his dearest interests are concerned, that so he may be compelled to acknowledge that God is greater than man. He may be able to tell the place of the distant planets a thousand years hence, but he can not tell where himself shall be next year. He can calculate for years to come the motions of the tides, which he can not control, but can not tell how his own pulse shall beat, or whether it shall beat at all, to-morrow. Ever as his knowledge of the laws by which God governs the world increases, his conviction of his impotence grows; and he sees and feels that a wiser head and stronger hand than that of any creature, planned and administered them. Ever as he reaches some ultimate truth, such as the mystery of electricity, of light, of life, of gravitation, which he can not explain, and beyond which he can not penetrate, he hears the voice of God therein, demanding him to acknowledge his impotence. "Where is the way where light dwelleth, And as for darkness, what is the place thereof? Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, Or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his seasons? Or canst thou guide Arcturus, with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, That abundance of waters may cover thee? Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go And say unto thee, 'Here we are?'" 4. _Our consciences convince us that God is a Moral Governor._ The distinction between brutes and men is, that man has a sense of the distinction between right and wrong. If we find a tribe of savages, or individuals who indulge their appetites without rule, and who do wrong without any apparent remorse or shame, we designate them brutes. Even those who in words deny any difference between right and wrong, do in fact admit its existence, by their attempts to justify that opinion. Though weaker, or less regarded in some than in others, every man is conscious of a faculty in himself which sits in judgment on his own conduct, and that of others, approving or condemning it as right or wrong. In all lands, and in all ages, the common sense of mankind has acknowledged the existence and moral authority of conscience, as distinct from and superior to mere intellect. No language of man is destitute of words conveying the ideas of virtue and vice, of goodness and wickedness. When one attempts to deceive you by a willful lie, you are sensible not only of an intellectual process of reason detecting the error, but of a distinct judgment of disapprobation of the crime. When one who has received kindness from a benefactor, neglects to make any acknowledgment of it, cherishes no feelings of gratitude, and insults and abuses the friend who succored him, we are conscious, not merely of the facts, as phenomena to be observed, but of the ingratitude, as a crime to be detested. And we are irresistibly constrained to believe that he who taught us this knowledge of a difference between right and wrong, does himself know such a distinction; and that he who implanted this feeling of approval of right, and condemnation of wrong, in us, does himself approve the right, and condemn the wrong. And as we can form no notion of right or wrong unconnected with the idea that approbation of right conduct should be suitably expressed, and that disapprobation of wrong conduct ought also to be suitably expressed--in other words, that right ought to be rewarded, and wrong ought to be punished--so we are constrained to trace such a connection from our minds to the mind of him who framed them. This conviction is God's law, written in our hearts. When we do wrong, we become conscious of a feeling of remorse in our consciences, as truly as the eye becomes conscious of the darkness. We may blind the eye, and we may sear the conscience, that the one shall not see, nor the other feel; but light and darkness, right and wrong, will exist. The awful fact which conscience reveals to us, that we sin against God, that we know the right, and do the wrong, and are conscious of it, and of God's disapprobation of it, is conclusive proof that we are not only distinct from God, but separate from him--that we oppose our wills against his. And every pang of remorse is a premonition of God's judgment, and every sorrow and suffering which the Governor of the world has connected with sin--as the drunkard's loss of character and property, of peace and happiness, the frenzy of his soul, and the destruction of his body--is a type and teaching of the curse which he has denounced against sin. 5. _The World's History is the record of man's crimes, and God's punishments._ Once God swept the human race from earth with a flood of water, because the wickedness of man was great on the earth. Again, he testified his displeasure against the ungodly sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah, by consuming their cities with fire from heaven, and leaving the Dead Sea to roll its solemn waves of warning to all ungodly sinners, to the end of time. By the ordinary course of his providence, he has ever secured the destruction of ungodly nations. No learning, commerce, arms, territories, or skill, has ever secured a rebellious nation against the sword of God's justice. Ask the black record of a rebel world's history for an instance. Egypt, Canaan, Nineveh, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome. Where are they now? Tyre had ships, colonies, and commerce; Rome an empire on which the sun never set; Greece had philosophy, arts, and liberty secured by a confederation of republics; Spain the treasures of earth's gold and silver, and the possession of half the globe. Did these secure them against the moral government of God? No! God's law sways the universe; that law which, with the brazen fetters of eternal justice, binds together sin and misery, crime and punishment, and lays the burden on the backs of all ungodly nations, irresistibly forcing them down--down--down the road to ruin. The vain imagination that refuses to glorify God as God, leads to darkness of heart, thence to Atheism, thence to gross idolatry, onward to selfish gratification, violent rapacity, lust of conquest, and luxury, licentiousness, and effeminacy begotten of its spoils; then military tyranny, civil war, servile revolt, anarchy, famine and pestilence, and the sword of less debauched neighbors, Christ's iron scepter, hurl them down from the pinnacle of greatness, to dash them in pieces against each other, in the valley of destruction; and there they lie, wrecks of nations, ruins of empires, naught remaining, save some shivered potsherds of former greatness, to show that once they were, and were the enemies of God. Oh, America, take warning ere it be too late! God rules the nations. "He that chastiseth the heathen, shall he not correct you?" A day of retribution, reader, comes to you, as an individual. Neither your insignificance nor your unbelief can hide you from his eye, nor can your puny arm shield you from his righteous judgment. His hand shall find out his enemies. Oh, fly from the wrath to come! "Seek the Lord while he may be found." He is not far from every one of us. His breath is in our nostrils. His Word is in our hands. "Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." FOOTNOTES: [23] Cited in Pressense's _Jesus Christ, His Life and Times_. Page 10. [24] Emerson. [25] Duff's India, pages 99-114. [26] Duff's India, page 119. [27] Man's Origin and Destiny, 293. [28] Webster's Dictionary. [29] Emerson's Address to a Senior Class in Divinity. [30] Hennell's Christian Theism, which shows how Theists of every nation--Christian, Jew, Mohammedan, or Chinese--can meet upon common ground. [31] Atkinson's Letters, page 190. [32] Festus, page 48. [33] Swedenborg, or the Mystic (quoted by Pierson, 41), p. 68. [34] Politique Positive, Vol. II. page 60. [35] Emerson. [36] Carlyle--Past and Present. [37] Carlyle--Life of Sterling. CHAPTER IV. HAVE WE ANY NEED OF THE BIBLE? Religion consists of the knowledge of a number of great facts, and of a course of life suitable to them. We have seen three of these: that God created the world; that he governs it; and that he is able to conquer his enemies. There are others of the same sort as needful to be known. Our knowledge of these facts, or our ignorance of them, makes not the slightest difference in the facts themselves. God is, and heaven is, and hell is, and sin leads to it, whether anybody believes these things or not. It makes no sort of difference in the beetling cliff and swollen flood that sweeps below it, that the drunken man declares there is no danger, and, refusing the proffered lantern, gallops on toward it in the darkness of the night. But when the mangled corpse is washed ashore, every one sees how foolish this man was, to be so confident in his ignorance as to refuse the lantern, which would have shown him his danger, and guided him to the bridge where he might have crossed in safety. Some of the facts of religion lie at the evening end of life's journey; the darkness of death's night hides them from mortal eye; and living men might guide their steps the better by asking counsel of one who knows the way. If they get along no better by their own counsel in the next world than most of them do in this, they will have small cause to bless their teacher. Who can tell that ignorance, and wickedness, and wretchedness are not as tightly tied together in the world to come, as we see them here? Solomon was a knowing man and wise; and better than that, in the esteem of most people, he made money, and tells you how to make it, and keep it. You will make a hundred dollars by reading his Proverbs and acting on them. They would have saved some of you many a thousand. Of course such a man knew something of the world. He was a wide-awake trader. His ships coasted the shores of Asia, and Africa, from Madagascar to Japan; and the overland mail caravans from India and China drew up in the depots he built for them in the heart of the desert. He knew the well-doing people with whom trade was profitable, and the savages who could only send apes and peacocks. He was a philosopher as well as a trader, and could not help being deeply impressed with _the great fact_, that there was a wide difference among the nations of the world. Some were enlightened, enterprising, civilized, and flourishing; others were naked savages, living in ignorance, poverty, vice, and starvation, perpetually murdering one another, and dying out of the earth. Solomon noticed _another great fact_. In his own country, and in Chaldea, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and some others, God had revealed his will to certain persons for the benefit of their neighbors. He did so generally by opening the eyes of these prophets to see future events, and the great facts of the unseen world, and by giving them messages of warning and instruction to the nations. From this mode of revelation, by opening the prophets eyes to see realities invisible to others, they were called seers, and the revelations they were commissioned to make were called visions; and revelation from God was called, in general, vision. Solomon was struck with the fact that some nations were thus favored by God, and other nations were not. The question would naturally arise, What difference does it make, or does it make any difference, whether men have any revelation of God's will or not? Solomon was led to observe a _third great fact_. The nations which were favored with these revelations were the civilized, enterprising, and comparatively prosperous nations. In proportion to the amount of divine revelation they had, and their obedience to it, they prospered. The nations that had no revelation from God were the idolatrous savages, who were sinking down to the level of brutes, and perishing off the face of the earth. He daguerreotypes these three great facts in the proverb: "Where there is no vision the people perish; but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." Oh, says the Rationalist, the world is wiser now than it was in Solomon's days. He lived in the old mythological period, when men attributed everything extraordinary to the gods. But the world is too wise now to believe in any supernatural revelation. "The Hebrew and Christian religions like all others have their myths." "The fact is, the pure historic idea was never developed among the Hebrews during the whole of their political existence." "When, therefore, we meet with an account of certain phenomena, or events of which it is expressly stated or implied that they were produced immediately by God himself (such as divine apparitions, voices from heaven, and the like), or by human beings possessed of supernatural powers (miracles, prophecies, etc.), such an account is so far to be considered not historical." "Indeed, no just notion of the true nature of history is possible without a perception of the inviolability of the chain of finite causes, and of the impossibility of miracles."[38] A narrative is to be deemed mythical, 1st. "When it proceeds from an age in which there were no written records, but events were transmitted by tradition; 2d. When it presents, as historical, accounts of events which were beyond the reach of experience, as occurrences connected with the spiritual world; or 3d. When it deals in the marvelous, and is couched in symbolical language."[39] So also a host of others, who pass for biblical expositors, lay it down as an axiom, that all records of supernatural events are mythical, viz: fables, falsehoods, because miracles are impossible. Of course, from such premises the conclusion is easy. A revelation from God to man is a supernatural event, and supernatural events are impossible; therefore, a revelation from God is impossible. But it would have been much easier, and quite as logical, to have laid down the axiom in plain words at first, that a revelation from God is impossible, as to argue it from such premises; for it is just as easy to _say_, that a revelation from God is impossible, as to _say_ that miracles are impossible; and as for _proof_ of either one or the other, we must just take their word for it. One can not help being amazed at the cool impudence with which these men take for granted the very point to be proved, and set aside, as unworthy of serious examination, the most authentic records of history, simply because they do not coincide with their so-called philosophy; and at the credulity with which their followers swallow this arrogant dogmatism, as if it were self-evident truth. Let us look at it for a moment. Other religions have their myths, or fables, therefore, the Hebrew and Christian records are fables, says the Rationalist. Profundity of logic! Counterfeit bank bills are common, therefore none are genuine. "The fact is, the pure historic idea was never developed among the Hebrews," _i. e._, Moses and the prophets were all liars. That is the fact, you may take my word for it. "Indeed, no just notion of the true nature of history is possible without a perception of the inviolability of the chain of finite causes, and of the impossibility of miracles" which translated into plain words is simply this: No man can understand history who believes in God Almighty. "A narrative is to be deemed fabulous when it proceeds from an age in which there were no written records," such, for instance, as any account of the creation of the first man--for no event could possibly happen unless there was a scribe there to write it. Or, of the fall of man--we do not know that Adam was able to write, and no man can tell truth unless he writes a history. "A narrative is to be deemed fabulous when it presents, as historical, accounts of events which were beyond the reach of experience, as events connected with the spiritual world." Is it not self-evident that you and I have had experience of everything in the whole universe, and whoever tells us anything which we have never seen is a liar. "When a narrative deals in the marvelous," such as Xenophon's Retreat of the Ten Thousand, Herodotus' History, or Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, dealing as it does in such marvelous accounts as the death of half the inhabitants of the empire in the reign of Galerius, or any other history of wonderful occurrence--it is of course a myth. Does not every one know that nothing marvelous ever happened, or, if it did, would any historian trouble himself to record a prodigy? "Or, if it is couched in symbolical language," as is every eloquent passage in Thucydides, Robertson, Gibbon, or Guizot, the records of China, and of India, the picture-writing of the Peruvians, and especially the Egyptian hieroglyphics, which were fondly expected to do such good service against the Bible--it must be at once rejected, without further examination, as mythological and unworthy of any credit whatever. Thus we are conclusively rid forever of the Bible, for sure enough it is couched in symbolical language. Blessed deliverance to the world! But then, alas! this great deliverance is accompanied with several little inconveniences. All poetry, three-fourths of the world's history, and the largest part of its philosophy, is couched in symbolical language, and especially the whole of the science of metaphysics, from which these very learned writers have deduced such edifying conclusions, is, from the beginning to the end, nothing but a symbolical application of the terms which describe material objects, to the phenomena of mind. Alas! we must forever relinquish "the absolute," and "the infinite," and "the conditioned," with all their "affinities and potencies," up to "higher unity," and "the rhythm of universal existence," and all the rest of those perspicuous German hieroglyphics, whether entombed in their native pyramids for the amazement of succeeding generations, by Fichte, Schelling, or Hegel, or "worshiping in the great cathedral of the immensities," "with their heads uplifted into infinite space," or "lying on the plane of their own consciousness," in the writings of Carlyle, Emerson, and Parker. They are myths, the whole of them, for they "are couched in symbolical language;" and Bauer, De Wette, and Strauss have pronounced every thing couched in symbolical language to be mythical. Let us henceforth deliver our minds from all anxiety about history, philosophy, or religion, and stick to the price current and the multiplication table, the only accounts that are not "couched in symbolical language." Such is the sort of trash that passes for profound philosophy when once it is made unintelligible, and such are the canons of interpretation with which men calling themselves philosophers and Christians sit down to investigate the claims of the Bible as a revelation from God. If they would speak out their true sentiments, they would say, "There can not be any revelation from God, because there is no God." But they could not call themselves professors of Christian colleges, and pastors of Christian churches, and reap the emoluments of such situations, if they would honestly avow their Atheism. Besides, the world would see too plainly the drift of their teaching; therefore it is cloaked under a profession of belief in God, the Creator, who however is to be carefully prevented from ever showing himself again in the world he has made. No proof is attempted for the declaration that miracles are impossible. Yet, surely, if it implies a contradiction to say so, that contradiction could be shown. That it is not self-evident is shown by the general belief of mankind that miracles have occurred. No man who believes in a supernatural being can deny the possibility of supernatural actings. The creation of the world is the most stupendous of all miracles, utterly beyond the power of any finite causes, and entirely beyond the reach of our experience, yet some of these men admit that this miracle occurred. Supernatural events then are not impossible, nor unprecedented. The vain notion that God, having created the world at first, left it for ever after to the operation of natural laws, is conclusively demolished by the discoveries of geology. These discoveries established the fact recorded in Scripture, that in bringing the world into its present form there were several distinct and successive interpositions of supernatural power, in the distinct and successive creations of different species of vegetable and animal life. In former periods, they tell us, the earth was so warm that the present races of men and animals could not have lived on it, and the plants and animals of that age could not live now. These very men are profuse in proving that the earth existed for ages before _man_ made his appearance upon it. This being the case, we are compelled to acknowledge the creating power of God above the laws of nature, for there is no law of nature which can either create a new species of plants or animals, nor yet change one kind into another, make an oak into a larch, or an ox into a sheep, or a goose into a turkey, or a megatherium into an elephant, much less into a man. Some men have dreamed of such changes as these, but no instance of such a change has ever been alleged in proof of the notion. The most distinguished anatomists and geologists are fully agreed that no such change of one animal into another ever took place; much less that any animal ever was changed into a man. Cuvier, from his comprehensive survey of the fossils of former periods, establishes the fact, "that the species now living are not mere varieties of the species which are lost." And Agassiz says, "I have the conviction that species have been created successively, at distinct intervals."[40] Revelations of God's special interpositions in the affairs of this world are thus written by his own finger in the fossils and coal, and engraved on the everlasting granite of the earth's foundation stones. Dumb beasts and dead reptiles start forward to give their irrefutable testimony to the repeated supernatural acts of their Creator in this world which he had made. Every distinct species of plants and animals is proof of a distinct supernatural overruling of the present laws of nature. The experience of man is not the limit of knowledge. His own existence is a proof that the chain of finite causes is not inviolable. Geology sweeps away the very foundations of skepticism, by demonstrating that certain phenomena produced immediately by God himself--the phenomena of the creation of life--have occurred repeatedly in the history of our globe. Revelation is not impossible because supernatural. The world is just as full of supernatural works as of natural. Nor is it incredible because it records miracles. The miracles recorded in the coal measures are as astonishing as any recorded in the Bible. The Rationalist next assures us, however, that any external revelation from God to man is _useless_, because man is wise enough without it. The vulgar exposition of this sentiment is familiar to every reader. "You need not begin to preach Bible to me. I know my duty well enough without the Bible." The more educated attempt to reason the matter after this fashion: "Miraculous phenomena will never prove the goodness and veracity of God, if we do not know these qualities in him without a miracle."[41] We may remark, in passing, that there are some other attributes of God besides goodness and veracity--holiness and justice for instance--which are proved by miracles. "Can thunder from the thirty-two azimuths, repeated daily for centuries, make God's laws more godlike to me? Brother, no. Perhaps I am grown to be a man now, and do not need the thunder and the terror any longer. Perhaps I am above being frightened. Perhaps it is not fear but reverence that shall now lead me! Revelation! Inspirations! And thy own god-created soul, dost thou not call that a revelation?"[42] It is manifest, however, that if Mr. Carlyle needs not the Sinai thunder to assure him that the law given on Sinai was from God, there were then, and are now, many who do, and some of his own sect who doubt in spite of it. If he is above the weakness of fearing God, all the world is not so. The claims of a divine teacher are as unceremoniously rejected as those of a divine revelation. "If it depends on Jesus it is not eternally true, and if it is not eternally true it is no truth at all," says Parker. As if eternally true, and sufficiently known, were just the same thing; or as if because vaccination would always have prevented the smallpox, the world is under no obligation to Jenner for informing us of the fact. In the same tone Emerson despises instruction: "It is not instruction but provocation that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing." Again says Parker, "Christianity is dependent on no outside authority. We verify its eternal truth in our soul."[43] His aim is "to separate religion from whatever is finite--Church, book, person--and let it rest on its absolute truth."[44] "It bows to no idols, neither the Church, nor the Bible, nor yet Jesus, but God only; its Redeemer is within; its salvation within; its heaven and its oracle of God."[45] The whole strain of this school of writers and their disciples is one of depreciation of external revelation, and of exaltation of the inner light which every man is supposed to carry within him. Religion is "no Morrison's pill from without," but a "clearing of the inner light," a "reawakening of our own selves from within."[46] So Mr. Newman[47] abundantly argues that an authoritative book revelation of moral and spiritual truth is impossible, that God reveals himself within us and not without us, and that a revelation of all moral and religious truth necessary for us to know is to be obtained by _insight_, or gazing into the depths of our own consciousness. The sum of the whole business is, that neither God nor man can reveal any religious truth to our minds, or as Parker felicitously expresses it, "on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing." Now, we are tempted to ask, Who are these wonderful prodigies, so incapable of receiving instruction from anybody? And to our amazement we learn, that some forty odd years ago they made their appearance among mankind as little squalling babies, without insight enough to know their own names, or where they came from, and were actually dependent on an external revelation, from their nurses, for sense enough to find their mothers' breasts. And as they grew a little larger, they obtained the power of speaking articulate sounds by external revelation, hearing and imitating the sounds made by others. Further, upon a memorable day, they had a "book revelation" made to them, in the shape of a penny primer, and were initiated into the mysteries of A, B, C, by "the instructions of another, be he who he may." There was absolutely not the least "insight," or "spiritual faculty," or "self-consciousness" in one of them, by which they then could, or ever to this hour did, "find true within them" any sort of necessary connection between the signs, c, a, t--d, o, g--and the sounds _cat_, _dog_, or any other sounds represented by any other letters of the alphabet. Faith in the word of their teachers is absolutely the sole foundation and only source of their ability to read and write. On "the word of another, and as his second, be he who he may," every one of them has accepted every intelligible word he speaks or writes. There is living on Martha's Vineyard an old man who has never been off the island, and the extent of his knowledge is bounded by the confines of his home. He has been told of a war between the North and South, but as he had never heard the din of battle, nor seen any soldiers, he considered it a hoax. He is utterly unable to read, and is ignorant to the last degree. A good story is told of his first and only day at school. He was quite a lad when a lady came to the district, where his father lived, to teach school. He was sent, and as the teacher was classifying the school, he was called upon in turn and interrogated as to his studies. Of course he had to say he had never been to school, and knew none of his letters. The schoolmistress gave him a seat on one side until she had finished the preliminary examination of the rest of the scholars. She then called him to her and drew on the blackboard the letter A, and told him what it was, and asked him to remember how it looked. He looked at it a moment, and then inquired: "H-h-how do you know it's A?" The teacher replied that when she was a little girl she had been to school to an old gentleman, who told her so. The boy eyed the A for a moment and then asked: "H-h-how do you know but he l-l-lied?" The teacher could not get over this obstacle, and the poor boy was sent home as incorrigible. Mr. Emerson, and the whole school of those who despise instruction, had better appoint this man their prophet of the inner light, and endow Martha's Vineyard as the Penikese of skepticism. But the knowledge of letters is not half of their indebtedness to external revelation. For they will not deny that a Fiji cannibal has just the same "insight," "spiritual faculty," "mighty and transcendent soul," "self-consciousness," or any other name by which they may dignify our common humanity, which they themselves possess. How does it happen, then, that these writers are not assembled around the cannibal's oven, smearing their faces with the blood, and feasting themselves on the limbs of women and children? The inner nature of the cannibal and of the Rationalist is the same--whence comes the difference of character and conduct? And the inner light, too, is the same; for they assure us that "inspiration, like God's omnipresence, is coextensive with the race." Is it not, after all, mere external revelation, in the shape of education--aye, moral and religious teaching that makes the whole difference between the civilized American and his inspired Fiji brother? These gentlemen not only acknowledge, but try to repay their obligations to external revelation. As it is impossible for God to give the world a book revelation of moral and religious truth, they modestly propose to come to his assistance, it being quite possible for some men to do what is impossible for God. Accordingly, we have a book revelation of moral and religious truth, from one, in his treatise on "The Soul," an "external revelation" from another, in his "Discourse Concerning Religion," a "Morrison's pill from the outside," from a third, in his "Past and Present," and "announcements" from a fourth, which assuredly the great mass of mankind never "found true within them," else his orations and publications had not been needed to convert them. It is to be understood, then, that an "external revelation," or a "book revelation" of spiritual truth is impossible, only when it comes from God, but that these gentlemen have proved it quite possible for themselves to deliver one. In so doing they have undoubtedly attempted to meet the wishes of the greater part of mankind, who have in all lands and in all ages longed for some outward revelation from God, and testified their desire by running after all sorts of omens, auguries, and oracles, consulting witches, and treasuring Sibylline leaves, employing writing mediums, and listening to spirit-rappers. The "inspiration which is limited to no sect, age, or nation--which is wide as the world, and common as God,"[48] has never produced a nation of Rationalists; a fact very unaccountable, if Rationalism be true; and one which might well lead these writers to acknowledge at least one kind of total depravity, namely, that inspired men should love the darkness of external revelations, and even of book revelations, and read Bibles, and Korans, and Vedas, and "Discourses Concerning Religion," and "Phases of Faith," while yet "everything that is of use to man lies in the plane of our own consciousness." Surely, such a universal craving after an external revelation testifies to a felt necessity for it, and renders it probable, or at least desirable, that God would supply the deficiency. Is the religious appetite the only one for which God has provided no supply? The fact is undeniable, that the grand distinction between man and the brutes presents itself right at this point. God guides animals by direct revelation--by their instincts; but having given man reason, and free will, he gives him the whole field of life for their exercise upon the indirect revelations he makes to us through the mediation of others. For all that we know of history, geography, politics, mechanics, agriculture, poetry, philosophy, or any of the common business of life, from the baking of a loaf of bread, or the sewing of a shirt, to the following of a funeral, and the digging of a grave, we are indebted to education, not to inspiration. All analogy then induces the belief that religion also will be taught to mankind by the ministry of human teachers, rather than by the direct inspiration of every individual. But we are instructed, that, "as we have bodily senses to lay hold on matter, and supply bodily wants, through which we obtain naturally all needed material things, so we have spiritual faculties to lay hold on God, and supply spiritual wants; through them we obtain all needed spiritual things." That we have both bodily senses and spiritual faculties is doubtless true; but whether either the one or the other obtain all needed things is somewhat doubtful. I can not tell how it is with mankind in Boston, for I am not there; and this being a matter in which religious truth is concerned, Mr. Emerson will not allow me to receive instruction about it from any other soul; but I see from my window a poor widow, with five children, who has bodily senses to lay hold on matter, and supply bodily wants; yet in my opinion she has not obtained naturally all needed material things; and if there be a truth which lies emphatically in the plane of her own consciousness, it is, that she is in great need of a cord of wood, and a barrel of flour, for her starving children. I know, also, a man, to whom God gave bodily senses to lay hold on matter, and supply bodily wants, who, by his drunkenness, has destroyed these bodily senses, and brought his family to utter destitution of all needed material things. From one cause or another, I find multitudes here in poverty and destitution, notwithstanding they have bodily senses. It is reported, also, that there is a poor-house in Boston, and poverty in Ireland, and starvation in Madeira, and famine in the inundated provinces of France, and misery and destitution in London; which, if true, completely overturns this beautiful theory. For, if, notwithstanding the possession of bodily senses, men do starve in this world for want of needful food and clothing, it is very possible that they may have spiritual faculties also, and yet not obtain through them all needed spiritual things. The second part of the theory is as baseless as the first. All men have spiritual faculties, and have not obtained by them all needed spiritual things. They have not in their own opinion, and surely they are competent judges of "what lies wholly in the plane of their own consciousness." In proof of the fact that mankind have not, in their own opinion, obtained all needed spiritual things by the use of their spiritual faculties, without the aid of external revelation, we appeal to all the religions of mankind, Heathen, Mohammedan, and Christian. Every one of these appeals to revelations from God. Every lawgiver of note professed to have communication with heaven, Zoroaster, Minos, Pythagoras, Solon, Lycurgus, Numa, Mohammed, down to the chief of the recent revolution in China. "Whatever becomes of the real truth of these relations," says Strabo of those before his day, "_it is certain that men did believe and think them true_." If mankind has found the supply of all their spiritual wants within themselves, would they have clung in this way to the pretense of external revelations? Is not the abundance of quack doctors conclusive proof of the existence of disease, and of the need of physicians? Not only was the need of an external revelation of some sort acknowledged by all mankind, but the insufficiency of the pretended oracles which they enjoyed was deplored by the wisest part of them. We never find men amidst the dim moonlight of tradition, and the light of nature, vaunting the sufficiency of their inward light; it is only amidst the full blaze of noonday Christianity that philosophers can stand up and declare that they have no need of God's teaching. Had such men lived in Athens of old, they would have found men possessed of spiritual faculties, and those of no mean order, engaged in erecting an altar with this inscription, "_To the Unknown God._" One of the wisest of the heathen (Socrates) acknowledged that he could attain to no certainty respecting religious truth or moral duty, in these memorable words, "We must of necessity wait, till some one from him who careth for us, shall come and instruct us how we ought to behave toward God and toward man." The chief of the Academy, whose philosophy concerning the eternity of matter occupies a conspicuous place in the creed of American heathens, had no such confidence in the sufficiency of his own powers of discovering religious truth. "We can not know of ourselves what petition will be pleasing to God, or what worship we should pay to him; but it is necessary that a lawgiver should be sent from heaven to instruct us." "Oh how greatly do I long to see that man!" He further declares that "_this lawgiver must be more than man, that he may teach us the things man can not know by his own nature_."[49] Whether this want of a revelation from God was real, or merely imaginary, will appear by a brief review of the opinions and practices of those who never enjoyed, and of those who reject the light of God's revelation. _They knew not God._ If there is any article of religion fundamental, and indispensable to its very existence, it is the knowledge of God. It is admitted by Rationalists that the spiritual faculties are designed to lay hold on God. It has been proved in the previous chapter, and it will be admitted by all but Atheists, that God is an Intelligent Being. And further it has been proved that God is not everything and everybody, but distinct from and supreme over all his works. Besides, in this country at least, there will not be much difference of opinion as to the propriety of a rational being adoring a brute, or a log of wood, or a lump of stone. It will be allowed that such stupidity shows both ignorance and folly. Now let us inquire into the knowledge of God possessed by the people who have no vision. The Chaldeans, the most ancient people of whom we have any account, and who had among them the immediate descendants of Noah, and whatever traditions of Noah's prophecies they preserved, were probably the best instructed of the heathen. Yet we find that they gave up the worship of God, adored the sun, and moon, and stars of heaven, and in process of time degenerated still further, and worshiped dumb idols. From this rock we were hewn; the common names of the days of the week, and especially of the first day of the week, will forever keep up a testimony to the necessity of that revelation which delivered our forefathers and us from burning our children upon the devil's altars on Sun-days. The Egyptians were reputed the most learned of mankind, and Egypt was considered the cradle of the arts and sciences. In her existing monuments, hieroglyphic inscriptions, and tomb paintings, we have presented to us the materials for forming a more correct opinion of the religion and life of the Egyptians than of any other ancient people; and the investigation of these monuments is still adding to our information. Infidel writers and lecturers have not hesitated to allege that Moses merely taught the Israelites the religion of Egypt; and some have had the hardihood to allege that the ten commandments are found written on the pyramids, as an argument against the necessity of a revelation. If the statement were true, it would by no means prove the conclusion. Egypt was favored with divine revelations to several of her kings, and enjoyed occasional visits from, or the permanent teachings of, such prophets as Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, for four hundred years; a fact quite sufficient to account for her superiority to other heathen nations, as well as for the existence of some traces of true religion on her monuments. But the alleged fact is a falsehood. Some good moral precepts are found on the Egyptian monuments, but the ten commandments are not there. It may be charitably supposed that those who allege the contrary never learned the ten commandments, or have forgotten them, else they would have remembered that the first commandment is, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me;" and that Pharaoh indignantly asks, "Who is Jehovah that I should obey his voice? I know not God:" and that the second is, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image," etc., and would have paused before alleging that these commands were engraved on the very temples of idols, and by the priests of the birds, and beasts, and images of creeping things which they adored. It is very doubtful if they believed in the existence of one supreme God, as most of the heathen did; but if they did, "they did not under any form, symbol, or hieroglyphic, represent the idea of the unity of God," as is fully proved by Wilkinson.[50] On the contrary, the monuments confirm the satirical sketch of the poet,[51] as to the "monsters mad Egypt worshiped; here a sea-fish, there a river-fish; whole towns adore a dog. This place fears an ibis saturated with serpents; that adores a crocodile. It is a sin to violate a leek or onion, or break them with a bite." Cruel wars were waged between different towns, as Plutarch tells us, because the people of Cynopolis would eat a fish held sacred by the citizens of Latopolis. Bulls, and dogs, and cats, and rats, and reptiles, and dung beetles, were devoutly adored by the learned Egyptians. A Roman soldier, who had accidentally killed one of their gods, a cat, was put to death for sacrilege.[52] Whenever a dog died, every person in the house went into mourning, and fasted till night. So low had the "great, the mighty and transcendent soul," been degraded that there is a picture extant of one of the kings of Egypt worshiping his own coffin! Such is man's knowledge of God without a revelation from him. The Greeks, from their early intercourse with Egypt, borrowed from them most of their religion; but by later connections with the Hebrews, about the time of Aristotle and Alexander, they gathered a few grains of truth to throw into the heap of error. After the translation of the Scriptures into Greek, in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, any of their philosophers who desired might easily have learned the knowledge of the true God. But before this period we find little or no sense or truth in their religion. And the same remarks will apply to the Romans. Their gods were as detestable as they were numerous. Hesiod tells us they had thirty thousand. Temples were erected to all the passions, fears, and diseases to which humanity is subject. Their supreme god, Jupiter, was an adulterer, Mars a murderer, Mercury a thief, Bacchus a drunkard, Venus a harlot; and they attributed other crimes to their gods too horrible to be mentioned. Such gods were worshiped, with appropriate ceremonies, of lust, drunkenness, and bloodshed. Their most sacred mysteries, carried on under the patronage of these licentious deities, were so abominable and infamous, that it was found necessary, for the preservation of any remnant of good order, to prohibit them. It may be supposed that the human race is grown wiser now than in the days of Socrates and Cicero, and that such abominations are no longer possible. Turn your eyes, then, to India, and behold one hundred and fifty millions of rational beings, possessed of "spiritual faculties," "insight," and "the religious sentiment," worshiping three hundred and thirty millions of gods, in the forms of hills, and trees, and rivers, and rocks, elephants, tigers, monkeys, and rats, crocodiles, serpents, beetles, and ants, and monsters like to nothing in heaven or earth, or under the earth. Take one specimen of all. There is "the lord of the world," Juggernath. "When you think of the monster block of the idol, with its frightfully grim and distorted visage, so justly styled the Moloch of the East, sitting enthroned amid thousands of massive sculptures, the representative emblems of that cruelty and vice which constitute the very essence of his worship; when you think of the countless multitudes that annually congregate there, from all parts of India, many of them measuring the whole distance of their weary pilgrimage with their own bodies; when you think of the merit-earning assiduities constantly practiced by crowds of devotees and religious mendicants, around the holy city, some remaining all day with their head on the ground, and their feet in the air; others with their bodies entirely covered with earth; some cramming their eyes with mud, and their mouths with straw, while others lie extended in a puddle of water; here one man lying with his foot tied to his neck, another with a pot of fire on his breast, a third enveloped in a network of ropes; when, besides these self-inflicted torments, you think of the frightful amount of involuntary suffering and wretchedness arising from the exhaustion of toilsome pilgrimages, the cravings of famine, and the scourgings of pestilence; when you think of the day of the high festival--how the horrid king is dragged forth from his temple, and mounted on his lofty car, in the presence of hundreds of thousands, that cause the very earth to shake with shouts of 'Victory to Juggernath, our Lord;' how the officiating high priest, stationed in front of the elevated idol, commences the public service by a loathsome pantomimic exhibition, accompanied with the utterance of filthy, blasphemous songs, to which the vast multitude at intervals respond, not in the strains of tuneful melody, but in loud yells of approbation, united with a kind of hissing applause; when you think of the carnage that ensues, in the name of sacred offering--how, as the ponderous machine rolls on, grating harsh thunder, one and another of the more enthusiastic devotees throw themselves beneath the wheels, and are instantly crushed to pieces, the infatuated victims of hellish superstition; when you think of the numerous Golgothas that bestud the neighboring plain, where the dogs, jackals and vultures seem to live on human prey; and of those bleak and barren sands that are forever whitened with the skulls and bones of deluded pilgrims which lie bleaching in the sun,"[53] you will be able to see an awful force of meaning in the words of our text, and to realize more fully the necessity of a revelation from God, for the preservation of animal life to man. Literally, where there is no vision the people _perish_. Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word which proceedeth from the mouth of God. Take one other illustration of ignorance of God in the minds of those who close their eyes against the light of revelation--the heathen of Europe and America, possessing that inspiration which is wide as the world, looking abroad upon all the glorious works of the great Creator, and declaring there is no God. On the other hand, we have men, possessed of this same inspiration, deifying everything, and outrunning even the Hindoos in the multitude of their divinities, declaring that every stick, and stone, and serpent, and snail that crawls on the earth is God, and making professions of holding spiritual communings with them all. To crown the monument of folly, the chief of the Positive Philosophy comes forth with a revelation from his spiritual faculties, in which by way of improving on the proverb "both are best," and of being sure of the truth, he unites Atheism, and Pantheism, and Idolatry--teaches his child to worship idols, the youth to believe in one God, and himself and other full-grown men to adore the "resultant of all the forces capable of voluntarily contributing to the perfectioning of the universe, _not forgetting his worthy friends, the animals_." To such darkness are men justly condemned who shut their eyes against the light of God's revelation. Where there is no vision the people perish intellectually. He who turns away his ears from the truth must be turned unto fables. "Hear ye and give ear, be not proud, for the Lord hath spoken. Give glory to the Lord your God before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and while ye look for light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness." _Without a revelation from God, the mind of man can attain to no certainty regarding the most important of all his interests, the destiny of his immortal soul._ He knows well--for every sickness, and sorrow, and calamity declares it, and quick returning troubles will not allow him to forget--that the Ruler of the world is offended with him; and conscience tells him why. The sense of guilt is common to the human race. This is, indeed, "the inspiration which knows no sect, no country, no religion, no age; which is as wide as humanity." Reason asks herself, Will God be always thus angry with me? Shall I always feel these pangs of remorse for my sins? Will misery follow me forever, as I see and feel that it does here? Or shall my soul exist under God's frowns, or perish under his just sentence, even as my body perishes? Does the grave hide forever all that I loved? Have they ceased to be? Shall we ever meet again? Or must I say, "Farewell, farewell! An eternal farewell!" And in a few days myself also cease to be? The only answer Reason gives is--solemn silence. The wisest of men could not tell. Who has not dropped a tear over the dying words of Socrates, "I am going out of the world, and you are to continue in it, but which of us has the better part is a secret to every one but God." Cicero contended for the immortality of the soul against the multitudes of philosophers who denied it in his day; yet, after recounting their various opinions, he is obliged to say, "Which of these is true, God alone knows; and which is most probable, a very great question."[54] And Seneca, on a review of this subject, says: "Immortality, however desirable, was rather promised than proved by these great men."[55] The multitude had but two ideas on the subject. Either their ghosts would wander eternally in the land of shadows, or else they would pass into a succession of other bodies, of animals or men. From the nakedness and desolation of unclothed spirit, and the possibility which this notion held out of some close contact with a holy and just judge, the soul shrank back to the hope of the metempsychosis, and hoped rather to dwell in the body of a brute, than be utterly unclothed and mingle with spirits. This is the delusion cherished by the people of India and many other lands to this day. How unsatisfactory to the dying sinner this uncertainty. "Tell me," said a wealthy Hindoo, who had given all his wealth to the Brahmins who surrounded his dying bed, that they might obtain pardon for his sins, "Tell me what will become of my soul when I die?" "Your soul will go into the body of a holy cow." "And after that?" "It will pass into the body of the divine peacock." "And after that?" "It will pass into a flower." "Tell me, oh! tell me," cried the dying man, "where will it go last of all?" Where will it go last of all? Aye, that is the question Reason can not answer. The rejectors of the Bible here are as uncertain on this all-important subject as the heathen of India. They have every variety of oracles, and conjectures, and suppositions about the other world; but for their guesses they offer no proof. When they give us their oracles as if they were known truths, we are compelled to ask, How do you know? The only thing in which they are agreed among themselves is in denying the resurrection of the body; a point which they gathered from their heathen classics. A poor, empty, naked, shivering, table-rapping spirit, obliged to fly over the world at the sigh of any silly sewing girl, or the bidding of some brazen-faced strumpet, is all that ever shall exist of Washington, or Newton, in the scheme of one class of Bible rejectors. To obtain rest from such a doom, others fly to the eternal tomb, and inform us that the soul is simply an acting of the brain, and when the brain ceases to act, the soul ceases also. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. But even this hog philosophy is reasonable, compared with the dogma of the large majority, that a man may blaspheme, swear, lie, steal, murder, and commit adultery, and go straight to heaven--that "many a swarthy Indian who bowed down to wood and stone--many a grim-faced Calmuck who worshiped the great god of storms--many a Grecian peasant who did homage to Phoebus Apollo when the sun rose or went down--many a savage, his hands smeared all over with human sacrifice--shall sit down with Moses and Jesus in the kingdom of God."[56] To such wild unreason does the mind of man descend when it rejects the Bible. Life and immortality are brought to light by the gospel. Where there is no vision, hope perishes. The only plausible creed for him who rejects it is the eternal tomb, and the heart-chilling inscription: "Death is an eternal sleep!" _Without a revelation from God, men are as ignorant how to live, as how to die._ They have no rule of life having either truth or authority to direct them. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, of the purity of whose blood we are so proud, trusted to their magical incantations for the cure of diseases, for the success of their tillage, for the discovery of lost property, for uncharming cattle and the prevention of casualties. One day was useful for all things; another, though good to tame animals, was baleful to sow seed. One day was favorable to the commencement of business, another to let blood, and others wore a forbidding aspect to these and other things. On this day they were to buy, on a second to sell, on a third to hunt, on a fourth to do nothing. If a child was born on such a day, it would live; if on another, its life would be sickly; if on another, it would perish early.[57] Their descendants who reject the Bible are fully as superstitious. Astrologers, and Mediums, and Clairvoyants, in multitudes, find a profitable trade among them; and one prominent anti-Bible lecturer will cure you of any disease you have, if you will only inclose, in a letter, a lock of hair from the right temple, and--a--five dollar bill. The precepts of even the wisest men, and the laws of the best regulated States, commanded or approved of vice. In Babylon prostitution was compulsory on every female. The Carthaginian law required human sacrifices. When Agathoclas besieged Carthage, two hundred children, of the most noble families, were murdered by the command of the senate, and three hundred citizens voluntarily sacrificed themselves to Saturn.[58] The laws of Sparta required theft, and the murder of unhealthy children. Those of ancient Rome allowed parents the power of killing their children, if they pleased. At Athens, the capital of heathen literature and philosophy, it was enacted "that infants which appeared to be maimed should either be killed or exposed."[59] Plato, dissatisfied with the constitution, made a scheme of one much better, which he has left us in his Republic. In this great advance of society, this heathen millennium, we find that there was to be a community of women and of property, just as among our modern heathens. Women's rights were to be maintained by having the women trained to war. Children were still to be murdered, if convenience called for it. And the young children were to be led to battle at a safe distance, "that the young whelps might early scent carnage, and be inured to slaughter." The teachings of all these philosophers were immoral. He may lie, says Plato, who knows how to do it. Pride and the love of popular applause were esteemed the best motives to virtue. Profane swearing was commanded by the example of all their best writers and moralists. Oaths are frequent in the writings of Plato and Seneca. The gratification of the sensual appetites was openly taught. Aristippus taught that a wise man might steal and commit adultery when he could. Unnatural crimes were vindicated. The last dread crime--suicide--was pleaded for by Cicero and Seneca as the mark of a hero; and Demosthenes, Cato, Brutus, and Cassius, carried the means of self-destruction about them, that they might not fall alive into the hands of their enemies. The daily lives of these wisest of the heathen corresponded to their teachings, so far at least as vice was concerned. The most notorious vices, and even unnatural crimes, were practiced by them. The reader of the classics does not need to be reminded that such vices are lauded in the poems of Ovid, and Horace, and Virgil; that the poets were rewarded and honored for songs which would not be tolerated for a moment in the vilest theater of New York. Recently some daily papers and broad-church preachers have taken to the canonization of heathen saints; they denounce vigorously the bigotry of any who will not open to them the gates of heaven, or who will, in general, deny salvation to good heathens. But we do not deny salvation to good heathens, or to good Jews, or to good Mohammedans, or to anybody who is good. God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him. Nor are we about to usurp Peter's keys, and lock anybody out of heaven, or into it either; we are only acting as jurymen upon the life and conduct of men held up to our children as noble examples of a good life, in their classics, by heathens like themselves, and recommended now by Christian clergymen, as fitter for the kingdom of God, than bad Christians; which last may be very true, and so much the worse for the bad Christians. But the question is not to be thus decided by comparisons, or by generalities; we must have specified individual heathen saints. When, however, we come to look for them, these saints and heroes prove to be only fit for the penitentiary, according to the laws of any of our States; and were they living now, and behaving themselves according to their accustomed habits, the best of them would be fortunate if they got there before they were tarred and feathered by an outraged public. Socrates, Seneca, and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, form the stock specimens trotted out of the stables of heathen morality, for the admiration and reverence of Christians in this nineteenth century. But it has been well remarked of Socrates, that no American lady would live with him a year without applying for a divorce, and getting it, too, upon very sufficient grounds. Seneca, who wrote so beautifully upon morals, was an adulterer; and, moreover, prostituted his pen to write a defense of a man who murdered his mother. And Marcus Aurelius directed the murder of thousands of innocent men and women, causing young ladies to be stripped naked and torn to pieces by wild beasts, in the public amphitheater, and others to be roasted alive in red-hot iron chairs, for no other offense but that they avowed themselves Christians. Such are these boasted saints and heroes of heathendom. What, then, must the lives of the vulgar have been? In the very height of Roman civilization, Trajan caused ten thousand men to hew each other to pieces for the amusement of the Roman people; and noble ladies feasted their eyes on the spectacle. In the Augustan age, when the invincible armies of Rome gave law to half the world, fathers were in the habit of mutilating their sons rather than see them subjected to the slavery and terrible despotism of their officers. What, then, must the state of the people of the vanquished countries have been? Whole provinces were frequently given over to fire and sword by generals not reputed inhuman; and such was the progress of war and anarchy, and their never-failing accompaniments, famine and pestilence, that, in the reign of Gallienus, large cities were left utterly desolate, the public roads became unsafe from immense packs of wolves, _and it was computed that one-half of the human race perished_. This was just before the toleration of Christianity. God would allow the wisest and bravest of mankind to try the experiment of neglecting his gospel and living without his revelation, until all mankind might be convinced that such a course is suicidal to nations. "Where there is no vision, the people perish." A brief reference to the codes of morals which the modern opposers of the Bible would substitute for it in Christian lands shall conclude our proof of the necessity of such a revelation of God's law to man, as shall guide his life to peace and happiness. The family is the basis of the commonwealth. Destroy family confidence and family government, and you destroy society, subvert civil government, and bring destruction on the human race. Mankind are so generally agreed on this subject, that adultery, even among heathens, is regarded and punished as a crime. The whole school of Infidel writers and anti-Bible lecturers, male and female, apologize for, and vindicate this crime. Lord Herbert, the first of the English Deists, taught that the indulgence of lust and anger is no more to be blamed than the thirst occasioned by the dropsy, or the drowsiness produced by lethargy. Mr. Hobbes asserted that every man has a right to all things, and may lawfully get them if he can. Bolingbroke taught that man is merely a superior animal, which is just the modern development theory, and that his chief end is to gratify the appetites and inclinations of the flesh. Hume, whose argument against miracles is so frequently in the mouths of American Infidels, taught that adultery must be practiced, if men would obtain all the advantages of life, and that if practiced frequently, it would by degrees come to be thought no crime at all--a prediction as true as Holy Writ; the fulfillment of which hundreds of the citizens of Cincinnati can attest, who have heard a lecturer publicly denounce the Bible as an immoral book, and in the same address declare that if a woman was married to a man, in her opinion of inferior development, it was her duty to leave him and live with another. This duty is by no means neglected, as the numerous divorces, spiritual marriages, separations, and elopements among this class of persons, testify. Voltaire held that it was not agreeable to policy to regard it as a vice in a moral sense. Rousseau, a liar, a thief, and a debauched profligate, according to his own printed "Confessions," held the same high opinion of the inner light as our American Spiritualists. "_I have only to consult myself_," said he, "_concerning what I do. All that I feel to be right, is right._"[60] In fact, the purport of this inner light doctrine is exactly as Rousseau expressed it, and amounts simply to this, _Do what you like._ On this lawless principle these men acted. Take, for example, the chief saint on the calendar of American Infidelity, whose birthday is annually celebrated by a festival in this city, and in whose honor hundreds of men, who would like to be reputed decent citizens, parade the streets of Cincinnati in solemn procession--Thomas Paine--the author of "The Age of Reason," as his character is depicted by one who was his helper in the work of blaspheming God and seducing men, and whose testimony, therefore, in the eyes of an Infidel, is unimpeachable--William Carver. "MR. THOMAS PAINE: I received your letter, dated the 25th ult., in answer to mine, dated November 21, and after minutely examining its contents, I found that you had taken to the pitiful subterfuge of _lying_ for your defense. You say that you paid me four dollars per week for your board and lodging, during the time you were with me, prior to the first of June last; which was the day that I went up, by your order, to bring you to York, from New Rochelle. It is fortunate for me that I have a living evidence that saw you give me five guineas, and no more, in my shop, at your departure at that time; but you said you would have given me more, but that you had no more with you at present. You say, also, that you found your own liquors during the time you boarded with me; but you should have said, 'I found only a small part of the liquor I drank during my stay with you; this part I purchased of John Fellows, which was a demi-john of brandy, containing four gallons,' and this did not serve you three weeks. This can be proved, and I mean not to say anything I can not prove, for I hold truth as a precious jewel. It is a well-known fact that you drank one quart of brandy per day, at my expense, during the different times you boarded with me; the demi-john above mentioned excepted, and the last fourteen weeks you were sick. Is not this a supply of liquor for dinner and supper." * * * "I have often wondered that a French woman and three children should leave France and all their connections, to follow Thomas Paine to America. Suppose I were to go to my native country, England, and take another man's wife and three children of his, and leave my wife and children in this country, what would be the natural conclusion in the minds of the people, but that there was some criminal connection between the woman and myself?"[61] The death of this man was horrible. The Philadelphia _Presbyterian_ says: "There is now in Philadelphia a lady who saw Paine on his dying-bed. She informs us that Paine's physician also attended her father's family in the city of New York, where in her youth she resided, and that on one occasion whilst at their house, he proposed to her to accompany him to the Infidel's dwelling, which she did. It was a miserable hovel in what was then Raisin Street. She had often seen Paine before, a drunken profligate, wandering about the streets, from whom the children always fled in terror. On entering his room she found him stretched on his miserable bed. His visage was lean and haggard, and wore the expression of great agony. He expressed himself without reserve as to his fears of death, and repeatedly called on the name of Jesus, begging for mercy. The scene was appalling, and so deeply engraven on her mind, that nothing could obliterate it."--_Philadelphia Presbyterian_, March 17, 1857. The physician's statement has been common, many years, and corresponds with the above. So do Grant Thorburn's representations agree with both. And the piece published by Rev. Jas. Inglis in his "Waymarks in the Wilderness," which has proved so distasteful to the Paineites here, substantially agrees with all the others. It is only the truthfulness of it which is so offensive. It may be of interest to state, that the facts therein named are the recollections of old Dr. McClay, a Baptist minister of known power and veracity. The fact of Paine's miserable, and cowardly, and man-forsaken end is too true. Let no one be foolhardy enough to follow them, rejecting to do it, a fourfold cord of strong testimony; nay, we may add, a stronger cord of fivefold testimony, as Paine's nurse testifies like the rest. In the East these facts are so notorious that even Infidels disown allegiance or attachment to Paine, if they wish to be considered respectable. Some of the severest denunciations against him, which we ever heard, have been from Infidels. Indeed this is more than plain from the very fact of all the Infidels having forsaken Paine on his death-bed. Who was his doctor? A Christian. Who was his nurse? A Christian? Who were his most constant visitors and sympathizers? Thorburn, McClay, etc., Christians. They went, for mercy's sake; Infidels, having no "bowels of mercies," kept away. Carver, Jefferson, etc., were far from him in his extreme hour. The testimony of Mons. Tronchin, a Protestant physician from Geneva, who attended Voltaire on his death-bed, was: That to see all the furies of Orestes, one only had to be present at the death of Voltaire. ("_Pour voir toutes les furies d'Oreste, il n'y avait qu'a se trouver a la mort de Voltaire._") "Such a spectacle," he adds, "would benefit the young, who are in danger of losing the precious helps of religion." The Marechal de Richelieu, too, was so terrified at what he saw that he left the bedside of Voltaire, declaring that "the sight was too horrible for endurance."[62] And these are the saints, and apostles, and heroes of Infidelity, to whose memories Infidels make orations and festivals, and whose writings are reprinted in scores of editions, not only over Christendom, but even in India, to teach mankind how to live and how to die! Such are the lives and deaths of those who denounce the Bible as an immoral Book, and blaspheme the God of the Bible as too unholy to be reverenced or adored! "But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit." In the Free Love Institute about to be established in our vicinity, we shall have the full development of these filthy principles and practices. Let fathers and husbands look to this matter. Especially let ungodly men set to work and devise some law of man capable of binding those who renounce the law of God, and with it all human authority. For there can be no law of man, unless there is a revealed law of God. "What right," says the Pantheist, the Fourierist, the Spiritualist, the Atheist, "what right have you to command me? Right and wrong are only matters of feeling, and your feelings are no rule to me. The will of the majority is only the law of might, and if I can evade it, or overcome it, my will is as good as theirs. Oaths are only an idle superstition; there is no judge, no judgment, no punishment for the false swearer." Take away the moral sanction of law, and the sacredness of oaths, and what basis have you left for any government, save the point of the bayonet? Take away the revealed law of God, and you leave not a vestige of any authority to any human law. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," said the immortal framers of the basis of the American Confederation, "that all men are created equal; that they are _endowed by their Creator_ with certain unalienable rights." It was well said. The rights of God are the only basis of the rights of man. One of the most sagacious of modern statesmen has borne his testimony to this fundamental truth--that religion is the only basis of social order--in words as trenchant as the guillotine which suggested them. "It is not," says Napoleon, "the mystery of incarnation which I perceive in religion, but the mystery of social order. It attaches to heaven an idea of equality which prevents the rich from being massacred by the poor."[63] Once in modern times, the rejectors of the Bible had opportunity to try the experiment of ruling a people on a large scale, and giving the world a specimen of an Infidel Republic. You have heard one of them here express his admiration of that government, and declare his intention to present a public vindication of it. Of course, as soon as practicable, that which they admire they will imitate, and the scenes of Paris and Lyons will be re-enacted in Louisville and Cincinnati. Our Bibles will be collected and burned on a dung-heap. Death will be declared an eternal sleep. God will be declared a fiction. Religious worship will be renounced; the Sabbath abolished; and a prostitute, crowned with garlands, will receive the adorations of the mayors and councilmen of Cincinnati and Newport. The reign of terror will commence. The guillotine shall take its place on the Fifth Street Market place. Proscription will follow proscription. Women will denounce their husbands, and children their parents, as bad citizens, and lead them to the ax; and well-dressed ladies, filled with savage ferocity, will seize the mangled bodies of their murdered countrymen between their teeth. The Licking will be choked with the bodies of men, and the Ohio dyed with their blood; and those whose infancy has sheltered them from the fire of the rabble soldiery will be bayoneted as they cling to the knees of their destroyers.[64] The common doom of man commuted for the violence of the sword, the bayonet, the sucking boat, and the guillotine, the knell of the nation tolled, and the world summoned to its execution and funeral, will need no preacher to expound the text, _Where there is no vision, the people perish._ FOOTNOTES: [38] Strauss' Life of Jesus, 64, 74, 87. [39] Bauer's Hebrew Mythology. [40] See Pearson on Infidelity, page 93, 40th edition; and Agassiz's Penikese lectures. [41] Newman's Phases of Faith, 157. [42] Carlyle's Past and Present, 307. [43] Discourse on Religion, p. 209. [44] Carlyle's Past and Present, p. 312. [45] Ib. p. 37. [46] The Soul, p. 342. [47] Ib. p. 359. [48] Parker's Discourses, 171, 33. [49] Plato. Republic. Books IV. and VI., and Alcibiades II. [50] Manners and Customs of Ancient Egyptians, Second Series, Vol. II. page 176, et passim. [51] Juvenal, Satire XV. [52] Diodorus Siculus, Book I. [53] Duff's India, page 222. [54] Tusc. Quæst. lib. 1. [55] Seneca, Ep. 102. [56] Parker's Discourse, 83. [57] Turner's Anglo-Saxons, b. vii. chap. 13. [58] Diodorus Siculus, b. xx. chap. 14. [59] Aristotle, Polit. lib. vii. chap. 17. [60] Horne's Introduction of the Scriptures, Vol. I. page 25. [61] Printed repeatedly in New York newspapers, and given entire in the report of the discussion between Dr. Berg and Mr. Barker. W. S. Young, Philadelphia, 1854. [62] _The Occident_, 20th August, 1874, San Francisco. [63] Ardeches' Life of Napoleon I. 222. [64] Horne's Introduction to the Scriptures, Vol. I. page 26, where ample references to contemporary French writers are given. CHAPTER V. WHO WROTE THE NEW TESTAMENT? "The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen."--2 Thess. iii. 17. Religion rests not on dogmas, but on a number of great facts. In a previous chapter we found one of these to be, that people destitute of a revelation of God's will ever have been, and now are, ignorant, miserable, and wicked. If it were at all needful, we might go on to show that there are people in the world, who have decent clothing and comfortable houses, who work well-tilled farms and sub-soil plows, and reaping machinery, who yoke powerful streams to the mill wheel, and harness the iron horse to the market wagon, who career their floating palaces up the opposing floods, line their coasts with flocks of white-winged schooners, and show their flags on every coast of earth, who invent and make everything that man will buy, from the brass button, dear to the barbarian, to the folio of the philosopher, erect churches in all their towns, and schools in every village, who make their blacksmiths more learned than the priests of Egypt, their Sabbath scholars wiser than the philosophers of Greece, and even the criminals in their jails more decent characters than the sages, heroes, and gods of the lands without the Bible; and that these people are the people who possess a Book, which they think contains a revelation from God, teaching them how to live well; which Book they call the Bible. This is the book about which we make our present inquiry, Who wrote it? The fact being utterly undeniable, that these blessings are found among the people who possess the Bible, and only among them, we at once, and summarily, dismiss the arrogant falsehood presented to prevent any inquiry about the Book, namely, that "Christianity is just like any other superstition, and its sacred books like the impositions of Chinese, Indian, or Mohammedan impostors. They, too, are religious, and have their sacred books, which they believe to be divine." A profound generalization indeed! Is a peach-tree just like a horse-chestnut, or a scrub-oak, or a honey-locust? They are all trees, and have leaves on them. The Bible is just as like the Yi King, or the Vedas, or the Koran, as a Christian American is like a Chinaman, a Turk, or a Hindoo. But it is too absurd to begin any discussion with these learned Thebans of the relative merits of the Bible as compared with the Vedas, and the Chinese Classics, of which they have never read a single page. Let them stick to what they pretend to know. The Bible is a great fact in the world's history, known alike to the prince and the peasant, the simple and the sage. It is perused with pleasure by the child, and pondered with patience by the philosopher. Its psalms are caroled on the school green, cheer the chamber of sickness, and are chanted by the mother over her cradle, by the orphan over the tomb. Here, thousands of miles away from the land of its birth, in a world undiscovered for centuries after it was finished, in a language unknown alike at Athens and Jerusalem, it rules as lovingly and as powerfully as in its native soil. To show that its power is not derived from race or clime, it converts the Sandwich Islands into a civilized nation, and transforms the New Zealand cannibal into a British shipowner, the Indian warrior into an American editor, and the Negro slave into the President of a free African Republic. It has inspired the Caffirs of Africa to build telegraphs, and to print associated press dispatches in their newspapers; while the Zulus, one of whom would have converted Bishop Colenso from Christianity, if he had been a Christian, are importing steel plows by hundreds every year. It has captured the enemy's fortresses, and turned his guns. Lord Chesterfield's parlor, where an infidel club met to sneer at religion, is now a vestry, where the prayers of the penitent are offered to Christ. Gibbon's house, at Lake Lemon, is now a hotel; one room of which is devoted to the sale of Bibles. Voltaire's printing press, from which he issued his infidel tracts, has been appropriated to printing the Word of God.[65] It does not look as if it had finished its course and ceased from its triumphs. Translated into the hundred and fifty languages spoken by nine hundred millions of men, carried by ten thousand heralds to every corner of the globe, sustained by the cheerful contributions and fervent prayers of hundreds of thousands of ardent disciples, it is still going forth conquering and to conquer. Is there any other book so generally read, so greatly loved, so zealously propagated, so widely diffused, so uniform in its results, and so powerful and blessed in its influences? Do you know any? If you can not name any book, no, nor any thousand books, which in these respects equal the Bible--then it stands out clear and distinct, and separate from all other authorship; and with an increased emphasis comes our question, Who wrote it? With all these palpable facts in view, to come to the examination of this question as if we knew nothing about them, or as if knowing them well, we cared nothing at all about them, and were determined to deny them their natural influence in begetting within us a very strong presumption in favor of its divine origin, were to declare that our heads and hearts were alike closed against light and love. But to enter on this inquiry into the origin of the Book which has produced such results, with a preconceived opinion that it must be a forgery, and an imposition, the fruit of a depraved heart, and a lying tongue, implies so much home-born deceit that, till the heart capable of such a prejudice be completely changed, no reasoning can have any solid fulcrum of truth or goodness to rest on. It is sheer folly to talk of one's being wholly unprejudiced in such an inquiry. No man ever was, or could be so. As his sympathies are toward goodness and virtue, and the happiness of mankind, or toward pride and deceit, and selfishness and savageness, so will his prejudices be for or against the Bible. On looking at the Bible, we find it composed of a number of separate treatises, written by different writers, at various times; some parts fifteen hundred years before the others. We find, also, that it treats of the very beginning of the world, before man was made, and of other matters of which we have no other authentic history to compare with it. Again, we find portions which treat of events connected in a thousand places with the affairs of the Roman Empire, of which we have several credible histories. Now, there are two modes of investigation open to us, the dogmatic and the inductive. We may take either. We may construct for ourselves, from the most flimsy suppositions, a metaphysical balloon, inflated with self-conceit into the rotundity of a cosmogony, according to which, in our opinion, the world should have been made, and we may paint it over with the figures of the various animals and noble savages which ought to have sprung up out of its fornea, and we may stripe its history to suit our notions of the progress of such a world, and soaring high into the clouds, after a little preliminary amusement in the discovery of eternal red-hot fire-mists, and condensing comets, and so forth, we may come down upon the summit of some of this earth's mountains, say Ararat, and take a survey of the Bible process of world-making. Finding that the Creator of the world had to make his materials--a business in which no other world-maker ever did engage--and, further, that God's plan of making it by no means corresponds to our patent process and that the article is not at all like what we intend to produce when we go into the business, and that it does not work according to our expectations, we can denounce the whole as a very mean affair, and the Book which describes it as not worth reading. If one wants some new subject for merriment, and does not mind making a fool of himself, and is not to be terrified by old-fashioned notions about God Almighty, and is perfectly confident that God can tell him nothing that he does not know better already, and merely wants to see whether he is not trying to pass off old fables upon wide-awake people for facts--this dogmatic plan will suit him. On the other hand, if one is tolerably convinced that he does not know everything, not much of the world he lives in, less of its history, and nothing at all about the best way of making it, and that when it needs mending it will not be sent to his workshop; that he knows nothing about what happened before he was born unless what other people tell him, and that, though men do err, yet all men are not liars, that all the blessings of education, civilization, law and liberty, from the penny primer to the Constitution of the United States, came to him solely through the channel of abundant, reliable testimony; that the only way in which he can ever know anything beyond his eyesight with certainty, is to gather testimony about it, and compare the evidence, and inquire into the character of the witnesses; that when one has done so, he becomes so satisfied of the truth of the report that he would rather risk his life upon it than upon the certainty of any mathematical problem, or of any scientific truth, whatever--that ninety-nine out of every hundred citizens of the United States are a thousand times more certain that the Yankees whipped the British in 1776, declared the Colonies free and independent States, and made Washington President, than they ever will be that all bodies attract each other directly as their mass, and inversely as the squares of their distances, that the sum of the angles of any triangle is equal to two right angles, or that the earth is nearer the sun in winter than in summer--and that certainty about the Bible history is just as attainable, and just as reliable, as certainty about American history, if he will seek it in the same way--and if he is really desirous to know how this Book was written, which alone in the world teaches men how to obtain peace with God, how to live well, and how to die with a firm and joyful hope of a resurrection to life eternal, and what part of it is easiest to prove either true or false--then he will take the inductive mode. He will begin at the present time, and trace the history up to the times in which the Book was written. He will ascertain what he can about that part of it which was last written--the New Testament--and begin with that part of it which lies nearest him--the Epistles. By the comparison of the documents themselves, with all kinds of history and monuments which throw light on the period, he will try to ascertain whether they are genuine or not. And from one well-ascertained position he will proceed to another, until he has traversed the whole ground of the genuineness of the writings, the truth of the story, and the divine authority of the doctrine. This is my plan of investigation; one thing at a time, and the nearest first. It is not worth while to inquire whether it be inspired by God, if it be really a forgery of impostors; nor whether the gospel story is worthy of credit, if the only book which contains it be a religious novel of the third or fourth century. We dismiss then the questions of the inspiration, or even the truth of the New Testament, till we have ascertained its authors. We take up the Book, and find that it purports to be a relation of the planting of the Church of Christ, of its laws and ordinances, and of the life, death and resurrection of its Founder, written by eight of his companions, at various periods and places, toward the close of the first century. There is a general opinion among all Christians that the Book was composed then, and by these persons. We want to know why they think so? In short, is it a genuine book, or merely a collection of myths with the apostles' names appended to them by some lying monks? Is it a fact, or a forgery? In any historical inquiry, we want some fixed point of time from which to take our departure; and in this case we want to know if there is any period of antiquity in which undeniably this Book was in existence, and received as genuine by Christian societies. For I will not suppose my readers as ignorant as some of those Infidels who allege that it was made by the Bible Society. It used to be the fashion with those of them who pretended to learning, to affirm that it was made by the Council of Laodicea, in A. D. 364; because, in order to guard the churches against spurious epistles and gospels, that Council published a list of those which the apostles did actually write, which thenceforth were generally bound in one volume. Before that time, the four Gospels were always bound in one volume and called "The Gospel." The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles universally and undoubtedly known to be written by Paul, to the churches of Thessalonica, Galatia, Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Colosse, and to Philemon, a well-known resident of that city, and those to Timothy and Titus, missionaries of world-wide celebrity, the First General Epistle of Peter, and the First General Epistle of John, which were at once widely circulated to check prevailing heresies--were bound in another volume and called "The Apostle." The Epistle to the Hebrews, being general, and anonymous, _i. e._, not bearing the name of any particular church, or person, to whom anybody who merely looked at it could refer for proof of its genuineness, as in the case of the other Epistles--was not so soon known by the European churches to be written by Paul. The General Epistles of James, Jude, and the Second General Epistle of Peter, lying under the same difficulty, and besides being very disagreeable to easy-going Christians, from their sharp rebukes of hypocrisy, and the Second and Third Epistles of John, from their brevity, and the Revelation of John, being one of the last written of all the books of the New Testament, and the most mysterious--were not so generally known beyond the churches where the originals were deposited, until the other two collections had been formed. They were accordingly kept as separate books, and sometimes bound up in a third volume of apostolical writings. Besides these, at the time of the Council of Laodicea, and for a long time before, other books, written by Barnabas, Clement, Polycarp, and other companions and disciples of the apostles, and forged gospels and epistles attributed by heretics to the apostles, were circulated through the churches, and read by Christians. The Council of Laodicea did, what many learned men had done before them; it investigated the evidence upon which any of these books was attributed to an apostle; and finding evidence to satisfy them, that the Gospel written by Luke had the sanction of the Apostle Paul, that the Gospel of Mark was revised by the Apostle Peter, that the Epistle to the Hebrews was written by Paul, and the other Epistles by John, Jude, James, and Peter, respectively, and not finding evidence to satisfy them about the Revelation of John, they expressed their opinion, and the grounds of it, for the information of the world.[66] Into these reasons we will hereafter inquire, for our faith in Holy Scripture does not rest on their canons. We are not now asking what they _thought_, but what they _did_; and we find that they did criticise certain books, reported to be written by the apostles of Jesus Christ some three hundred years before, approve some, and reject others as spurious, and publish a list of those they thought genuine. Infidels admit this, and on the strength of it long asserted that the Council of Laodicea made the New Testament. At length they became ashamed of the stupid absurdity of alleging that men could criticise the claims, and catalogue the names of books before they were written; and they now shift back the writing--or the authentication of the New Testament--for they are not quite sure which, though the majority incline to the former--to the Emperor Constantine, and the Council of Nice which met in the year 325. Why they have fixed on the Council of Nice is more than I can tell. They might as well say the Council of Trent, or the Westminster Assembly, either of which had just as much to do with the Canon of Scripture. However, on some vague hearsay that the Council of Nice and the Emperor Constantine made the Bible, hundreds in this city are now risking the salvation of their souls. We have in this assertion, nevertheless, as many facts admitted as will serve our present purpose. There did exist, then, undeniably, in the year 325, large numbers of Christian churches in the Roman Empire, sufficiently numerous to make it politic, in the opinion of Infidels, for a candidate for the empire to profess Christianity; sufficiently powerful to secure his success, notwithstanding the desperate struggles of the heathen party; and sufficiently religious, or if you like superstitious, to make it politic for an emperor and his politicians to give up the senate, the court, the camp, the chase, and the theater, and weary themselves with long prayers, and longer speeches, of preachers about Bible religion. Now that is certainly a remarkable fact, and all the more remarkable if we inquire, How came it so? For these men, preachers, prince, and people, were brought up to worship Jupiter and the thirty thousand gods of Olympus, after the heathen fashion, and to leave the care of religion to heathen priests, who never troubled their heads about books or doctrines after they had offered their sacrifices. In all the records of the world there is no instance of a general council of heathen priests to settle the religion of their people. How happens it then that the human race has of a sudden waked up to such a strange sense of the folly of idolatry and the value of religion? The Council of Nice, and the Emperor Constantine, and his counselors, making a Bible is a proof of a wonderful revolution in the world's religion; a phenomenon far more surprising than if the Secretaries of State, and the Senate, and President Grant should leave the Capital to post off to London, to attend the meetings of a Methodist Conference, assembled to make a hymn book. Now what is the cause of this remarkable conversion of prince, priests, and people? How did they all get religion? How did they get it so suddenly? How did they get so much of it? The Infidel gives no answer, except to tell us[67] that the austerity, purity, and zeal of the first Christians, their good discipline, their belief in the resurrection of the body and the general judgment, and their persuasion that Christ and his apostles wrought miracles, had made a great many converts. This is just as if I inquired how a great fire originated, and you should tell me that it burned fast because it was very hot. What I want to know is, how it happened that these licentious Greeks, and Romans, and Asiatics, became austere and pure; how these frivolous philosophers suddenly became so zealous about religion; what implanted the belief of the resurrection of the body and of the judgment to come in the skeptical minds of these heathen scoffers; and how did the pagans of Italy, Egypt, Spain, Germany, Britain, come to believe in the miracles of one who lived hundreds of years before, and thousands of miles away, or to care a straw whether the written accounts of them were true or false? According to the Infidel account, the Council of Nice, and the Emperor Constantine's Bible-making, is a most extraordinary business--a phenomenon without any natural cause, and they will allow no supernatural--a greater miracle than any recorded in the Bible. If we inquire, however, of the parties attending that Council, what the state of the case is, we shall learn that they believed--whether truly or erroneously we are not now inquiring--but they believed, that a teacher sent from God, had appeared in Palestine two hundred and ninety years before, and had taught this religion which they had embraced; had performed wonderful miracles, such as opening the eyes of the blind, healing lepers, and raising the dead; that he had been put to death by the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, had risen again from the dead, had spoken to hundreds of people, and had gone out and in among them for six weeks after his resurrection; that he had ascended up through the air, to heaven, in the sight of numbers of witnesses, and had promised that he would come again in the clouds of heaven, to raise the dead, and to judge every man according to his works; that before he went away he appointed twelve of his intimate companions to teach his religion to the world, giving them power to work miracles in proof of their divine commission, and requiring mankind to hear them as they would hear him; that they and their followers did so, in spite of persecutions, sufferings, and death, with so much success, that immense numbers were persuaded to give up idolatry and its filthiness, and to profess Christianity and its holiness, and to brave the fury of the heathen mob, and the vengeance of the Roman law; that a difference of opinion having arisen among them as to whether this teacher was an angel from heaven, or God, whether they should pray and sing psalms to Him, as Athanasius and his party believed, or only give Him some lesser honor as Arius and his party believed, and this difference making all the difference between idolatry on the one hand, and impiety on the other, and so involving their everlasting salvation or damnation, they had embraced the first opportunity after the cessation of persecution, and the accession of the first Christian Emperor, to assemble three hundred and eighteen of their most learned clergymen, of both sides, and from all countries between Spain and Persia, to discuss these solemn questions; and that, through the whole of the discussions, both sides appealed to the writings of the apostles, as being then well known, and of unquestioned authority with every one who held the Christian name. These facts, being utterly indisputable, are acknowledged by all persons, Infidel or Christian, at all acquainted with history.[68] Here, then, we have the books of the New Testament at the Council of Nice well known to the whole world; and the Council, so far from _giving_ any authority to them, _bowing to theirs_--both Arian and Orthodox with one consent acknowledging that the whole Christian world received them as the writings of the apostles of Christ. There were venerable men of fourscore and ten at that Council; if these books had been first introduced in their lifetime, they must have known it. There were men there whose parents had heard the Scriptures read in church from their childhood, and so could not be imposed upon with a new Bible. The New Testament could not be less than three generations old, else one or other of the disputants would have exposed the novelty of its introduction, from his own information. The Council of Nice, then, did not make the New Testament. It was a book well known, ancient, and of undoubted authority among all Christians, ages before that Council. _The existence of the New Testament Scriptures, then, ages before the Council of Nice, is a great fact._ We next take up the assertions, propounded with a show of learning, that the books of the New Testament, and especially the Gospels, were not in use, and were not known till the third century; that they are not the productions of contemporary writers; that the alleged ocular testimony or proximity in point of time of the sacred historians to the events recorded is mere assumption, originating in the titles which Biblical books bear in our canon; that we stand here (in the gospel history), upon purely mythical and poetical ground; and that the Gospels and Epistles are a gradually formed collection of myths, having little or no historic reality. So Strauss, Eichorn, De Wette, and their disciples here, attempt to set aside the New Testament. In plain English, it is a collection of forgeries. These assertions are absurd. In the hundred years between the death of the apostles, and the beginning of the third century, there was not time to form a mythology. The times of Trajan's persecution, and that of the philosophic Aurelius, and the busy bustling age of Severus, were not the times for such a business. Bigoted Jews would not, and could not, have made such a character as Jesus of Nazareth; and the philosophers of that day, Celsus and Porphyry, for instance, hated it when presented to them as heartily as either Strauss or Paine. There were not wanting thousands of enemies, able and willing, to expose such a forgery. The aspect and character of the gospel narrative are totally unlike those of mythologies. Hear the verdict of one who confessedly stands at the head of the roll of oriental historians: "In no single respect--if we except the fact that it is miraculous--has that story a mythical character. It is a single story, told without variations; whereas myths are fluctuating and multiform: it is blended inextricably with the civil history of the times, which it everywhere reports with extraordinary accuracy; whereas myths distort or supersede civil history: it is full of prosaic detail, which myths studiously eschew: it abounds with practical instruction of the simplest and purest kind; whereas myths teach by allegory. Even in its miraculous element it stands to some extent in contrast with all mythologies, where the marvelous has ever a predominant character of grotesqueness which is absent from New Testament miracles. (This Strauss himself admits, _Leben Jesu_, 1-67.) Simple earnestness, fidelity, painstaking accuracy, pure love of truth, are the most patent characteristics of the New Testament writers, who evidently deal with facts, not with fancies, and are employed in relating a history, not in developing an idea. They write that 'we may know the certainty of the things which are most surely believed' in their day. They 'bear record of what they have seen and heard.' I know not how stronger words could have been used to prevent the notion of that plastic, growing myth which Strauss conceives to have been in apostolic times."[69] The character of Christ exhibited in the Gospels is the contrary of that of the heroes of mythology; as contrary as holiness is to sin. The invention of such a character by any man, or by the wisest set of men who ever lived, would have been a miracle nearly as great as the existence of such a person. When the character of Christ was presented to the wisest men of the Greeks, and Romans, and Hebrews, so far from admiring him as a hero, they crucified him as an impostor, and persecuted the preachers of his gospel. There was nothing mythical in the ten persecutions; these at least were hard historical facts. Every line of examination of time, place, and circumstances proves the falsehood of the mythical theory, and establishes the truth of the gospel history. The authenticity of the gospel history, and of the Apostolic Epistles is confirmed by the testimony of their enemies. It is a well-authenticated and undeniable fact, that, in the close of the second century, Celsus, an Epicurean philosopher, wrote a work against Christianity, entitled, "The Word of Truth," in which he quotes passages from the New Testament, and so many of them, that from the fragments of his work which remain, we could gather all the principal facts of the birth, teaching, miracles, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, if the New Testament should be lost. If Paine quotes the New Testament to ridicule it, no man can deny that such a book was in existence at the time he wrote. If he takes the pains to write a book to confute it, it is self-evident that it is in circulation, and possessed of influence. So Celsus' attempt to reply to the Gospels, and his quotations from them, are conclusive proofs that these books were generally circulated and believed, and held to be of authority at the time he wrote. Further, he shows every disposition to present every argument which could possibly damage the Christian cause. In fact, our modern Infidels have done little more than serve up his old objections. Now nothing could have served his purpose better than to prove that the records of the history of Christ were forgeries of a late date. This would have saved him all further trouble, and settled the fate of Christianity conclusively. He had every opportunity of ascertaining the fact, living, as he did, so near the times and scenes of the gospel history, and surrounded by heretics and false Christians, who would gladly have given him every information. But he never once intimates the least suspicion of such a thing--never questions the Gospels as books of history--nor denies the miracles recorded in them, but attributes them to magic.[70] Here, then, we have testimony as acceptable to an Infidel as that of Strauss or Voltaire--in fact, utterly undeniable by any man of common sense--that the New Testament was well known and generally received by Christians as authoritative, when Celsus wrote his reply to it, in the end of the second century. If it was a forgery, it was undoubtedly a forgery of old standing, if he could not detect it. But we will go back a step farther, and prove the antiquity of the New Testament by the testimony of another enemy, two generations older than Celsus. The celebrated heretic, Marcion, lived in the beginning of the second century, when he had the best opportunity of discovering a forgery in the writings of the New Testament, if any such existed; he was excommunicated by the Church, and being greatly enraged thereat, had every disposition to say the worst he could about it. He traveled all the way from Sinope on the Black Sea, to Rome, and through Galatia, Bithynia, Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, the countries where the apostles preached, and the churches to which they wrote, but never found any one to suggest the idea of a forgery to him. He affirmed that the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistle to the Hebrews, those of James and Peter, and the whole of the Old Testament, were books only for Jews, and published a new and altered edition of the Gospel of Luke, and ten Epistles of Paul, for the use of his sect.[71] We have thus the most undoubted evidence, even the testimony of an enemy, that these books were in existence, and generally received as apostolical and authoritative by Christians, at the beginning of the second century, or within twenty years of the last of the apostles, and by the churches to which they had preached and written. The only remaining conceivable cavil against the genuineness of the books of the New Testament is: "That they bear internal evidence of being collections of fragments written by different persons--and are probably merely traditions committed to writing by various unknown writers, and afterward collected and issued to the churches under the names of the apostles, for the sake of greater authority." This theory being received as gospel by several learned men, has furnished matter for lengthy discussions as to the sources of the four Gospels. Translated into English, it amounts to this, that Brown, Smith, and Jones wrote out a number of essays and anecdotes, and persuaded the churches of Ephesus, Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, and the rest, to receive them as the writings of their ministers, who had lived for years, or were then living, among them; and on the strength of that notion of their being the writings of the apostles, to govern their whole lives by these essays, and lay down their lives and peril their souls' salvation on the truth of these anecdotes. As though they could not tell whether such documents were forgeries or not! It is almost incredible how ignorant dreaming book-worms are of the common business of life. Most of my readers will laugh at the idea of a serious answer to such a quibble. Nevertheless, for the sake of those whose inexperience may be abused by the authority of learned names, I will show them that the primitive Christians, supposing them able to read, could know whether their ministers did really write the books and letters which they received from them. If you go into the Citizens' Bank, you will find a large folio volume lying on the counter, and on looking at it you will see that it is filled with men's names, in their own handwriting, and that no two of them are exactly alike. Every person who has any business to transact with the bank is requested to write his name in the book; and when his check comes afterward for payment, the clerk can tell at a glance if the signature is the same as that of which he has a single specimen. If there has been no opportunity for him to become personally acquainted with the bank, as in case of a foreigner newly arrived, he brings letters of introduction from some well-known mutual friend, or is accompanied by some respectable citizen, who attests his identity. Business men have no difficulty whatever in ascertaining the genuineness of documents. It is only when people want to dispute Holy Scripture that they give up common sense. Holy Scripture was known to be the genuine writing of the apostles, just in the same way as any other writing was known to be genuine; only the churches who received the writings of the apostles had ten thousand times better security against forgery than any bank in the Union. In one of the first letters Paul writes to the churches--the second letter to the Thessalonians--to whom he had been preaching only a few weeks before, sent from Athens, distant only some two days' journey, full of allusions to their affairs, commands how to conduct themselves in the business of their workshops, as well as in the devotions of the church, and explanations of some misunderstood parts of a former letter sent by the hand of a mutual friend--he formally gives them his signature, for the purpose of future reference, and comparison of any document which might purport to come from him, with that specimen of his autograph. He gives not the name merely, but his apostolic benediction also, in his own handwriting: _The salutation of me Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen._ It shows the heart of an apostle of Christ; but what concerns the present question is the remark, which every business man will in a moment appreciate, how immensely the addition of these two lines adds to the security against forgery. It is a very hard thing to forge a signature, but give a business man two lines of any man's writing besides that, and he is perfectly secure against imposition.[72] The churches to which the Epistles were written, and to which the Gospels were delivered, consisted largely of business men, of merchants and traders, tent makers and coppersmiths, city chamberlains, and officers of Cæsar's household, and the like. Does any one think such men could not tell the handwriting of their minister, who had lived among them for years; or that men who were risking their lives for the instructions he wrote them, would care less about the genuineness of the documents, than you do about the genuineness of a ten dollar check? I am not as long in this city as Paul was in Ephesus, nor one fourth of the time that John lived there, yet I defy all the advocates of the mythical theory of Germany, and all their disciples here, to write a myth half as long as this essay, and impose it on the elders and members of my church as my writing. Let it only be presented in manuscript to the congregation--there was no printing in Paul's days--and in five minutes a dozen members of the church will detect the forgery, even if I should hold my peace. And were I to leave on a mission to China or India, and write letters to the church, would any of these business men, who have seen my writing, have the least hesitation in recognizing it again? Do you think anybody could forge a letter as from me, and impose it on them? What an absurdity, then, to suppose that anybody could write a gospel or epistle, and get all the members of a large church to believe that an Apostle wrote it. The first Christians, then, were absolutely certain that the documents which they received as apostolic, were really so. The Church of Rome could attest the Epistle to them, and the Gospels of Mark and Luke written there. The Church of Ephesus could attest the Epistle to them, and the Gospel, and Letters, and Revelation of John written there. And so on of all the other churches; and these veritable autographs were long preserved. Says Tertullian, who was ordained A. D. 192: "Well, if you be willing to exercise your curiosity profitably in the business of your salvation, visit the apostolical churches in which the very chairs of the apostles still preside--in which their authentic letters themselves are recited (apud quæ _ipsæ authenticæ literæ_ eorum recitantur), sounding forth the voice and representing the countenance of each one of them. Is Achaia near you, you have Corinth. If you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi, you have Thessalonica. If you can go to Asia, you have Ephesus; but if you are near to Italy, you have Rome." There can not be the least doubt about the preservation of documents for a far longer time than from Paul to Tertullian--one hundred and fifty years. I hold in my hand a Bible, the family Bible of the Gibsons--printed in 1599--two hundred and fifty-seven years old, in perfect preservation; and we have manuscripts of the Scriptures twelve to fourteen hundred years old, like the Sinaitic Codex, perfectly legible. They were moreover directed to be publicly read in the churches, and they were publicly read every Lord's day. Is it credible that an impostor would direct his forgery to be publicly read? If the epistle was publicly read during Paul's lifetime, that public reading in the hearing of the men who could so easily disprove its genuineness, was conclusive proof to all who heard it, that they knew it to be the genuine writing of the Apostle. The primitive churches then had conclusive proof of the genuineness of the Apostolic Epistles and Gospels. The only difficulty which now remains is the objection that they might have been corrupted by alterations and interpolations by monks, in later times. We have two securities against such corruptions, in the way these documents were given, and the nature of their contents. They were sacred heirlooms, and they were public documents. Could you, or could any man, have permission to alter the original copy of Washington's Farewell Address? Would not the man who should attempt such sacrilege be torn in a thousand pieces? But Washington will never be an object of such veneration as John, nor will his Farewell Address ever compare in importance with Paul's Farewell Letter to the Philippians. Besides, these Gospels and Letters were public documents, containing the records of laws, in obedience to which men are daily crossing their inclinations, enduring the mockery of their neighbors, losing their money, and endangering their lives. They contained the proofs and promises of that religious faith in God and hope of heaven, for the sake of which they suffered such things. Is it credible that they would allow them to be altered and corrupted? You might far more rationally talk of altering the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution of the United States. Translated into different languages--transported into Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Carthage, Egypt, Parthia, Persia, India, and China--committed to memory by children, and quoted in the writings of Christian authors of the first three centuries, to such an extent, that we can gather the whole of the New Testament, except twenty-six verses, from their writings--appealed to as authority by heretics and orthodox in controversy--and publicly read in the hearing of tens of hundreds of thousands every Sabbath day in worship--we are a thousand times more certain that the New Testament has not been corrupted, than we are that the Declaration of Independence is genuine. On this ground then we plant ourselves. The whole story of a late and gradual formation of the New Testament, or, in plain English, of its forgery, stands out as an unmitigated falsehood in the eyes of every man capable of writing his own name. The first churches could not be deceived with forgeries for apostolic writings. Nor could they, if they would, allow these writings to be corrupted. Be they true or false, fact or fiction, the books of the New Testament are the words of the Apostles of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In the next chapter we will inquire into the truth of their story. FOOTNOTES: [65] The Family Christian Almanac for 1859, p. 57, American Tract Society, New York. [66] Acta Concitia, sub voce Laodicea, Canon iv. Lardner vi. p. 368. [67] Gibbon's Decline and Fall, II. p. 267. [68] The original authorities may be found collected in the fourth volume of Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel History; abstracts of them, with ample references, in Mosheim and Neander's Ecclesiastical Histories, and in Stanley's Eastern Church. [69] Rawlinson's _Historical Evidences_, page 227. [70] Origen Contra Celsum, passim. [71] Lardner, Vol. IX. page 358. [72] In fact, some persons were trying to impose a letter, "as from us," containing declarations, that the day of Christ was upon them. CHAPTER VI. IS THE GOSPEL FACT OR FABLE? "For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God; and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come."--1 Thess. i. 9, 10. In the last chapter we ascertained that the Gospels and Epistles were not forgeries of some nameless monks of the third century--that the shopkeepers, silversmiths, tent-makers, coppersmiths, tanners, physicians, senators, town councilors, officers of customs, city treasurers, and nobles of Cæsar's household, in Rome, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Athens, and Alexandria, could no more be imposed upon in the matter of documents, attested by the well-known signatures of their beloved ministers, than you could by forged letters or sermons purporting to come from your own pastor--and that the documents which they believed to contain the directory of their lives, and the charter of that salvation which they valued more than their lives, which they read in their churches, recited at their tables, quoted in their writings, appealed to in their controversies, translated into many languages, and dispersed into every part of the known world, they neither would, nor could, corrupt or falsify. The genuineness of the copies of the New Testament, which we now possess, is abundantly proved by the comparison of over two thousand manuscripts, from all parts of the world; scrutinized during a period of nearly a hundred years, by the most critical scholars, so accurately that the variations of such things as would correspond to the crossing of a t, or the dotting of an i, in English, have been carefully enumerated; yet the result of the whole of this searching scrutiny has been merely the suggestion of a score of unimportant alterations in the received text of the seven thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine verses of the New Testament. This is a fact utterly unexampled in the history of manuscripts. There are but six manuscripts of the Comedies of Terence, and these have not been copied once for every thousand times the New Testament has been transcribed, yet there are thirty thousand variations found in these six manuscripts, or an average of five thousand for each, and many of them seriously affect the sense. The average number of variations in the manuscripts of the New Testament examined, is not quite thirty for each, including all the trivialities already noticed. We are, then, by the special providence of God, now as undoubtedly in possession of genuine copies of the Gospels and Epistles, written by the companions of Jesus, as we are of genuine copies of the Constitution of the United States, and of the Declaration of Independence. These are historic documents, of well-established genuineness and antiquity, which we now proceed to examine as to their truthfulness. There is no history so trustworthy as that prepared by contemporary writers, especially by those who have themselves been actively engaged in the events which they relate. Such history never loses its interest, nor does the lapse of ages, in the least degree, impair its credibility. While the documents can be preserved, Xenophon's Retreat of the Ten Thousand, Cæsar's Gallic War, and the Dispatches of the Duke of Wellington, will be as trustworthy as on the day they were written. Yet some suspicion may arise in our minds, that these commanders and historians might have kept back some important events which would have dimmed their reputation with posterity, or might have colored those they have related, so as to add to their fame. Of the great facts related in memoirs addressed to their companions in arms, able at a glance to detect a falsehood, we never entertain the least suspicion. If, to this be added, the correspondence of monuments, architecture, painting, statuary, coins, heraldry, and a thousand changes in the manners and customs of a people, we become as absolutely convinced of the truth of the narrative thus confirmed by these silent witnesses as if we had seen the events described. No man who visits the disinterred city of Pompeii, and sees the pavements marked by the wheel ruts, has any doubt that the Romans used wheeled carriages. When he sees the court-yards adorned with mosaic figures, and the walls with paintings of the gods, and of the manners of the people who worshiped them, he is profoundly impressed with the conviction that they excelled in the fine arts, and in the coarse vices of heathenism. When he visits the Coliseum, that vast ruin declares that the wealth of an empire, once devoted to the gratification of the most savage passions, has been diverted into some other channel. When he visits the catacombs, and reads long lines of heathen epitaphs, with their despairing symbols of broken columns, extinguished torches, and their heart-breaking "Farewell! an eternal farewell!" and then turns to the monuments of only two centuries later, and reads, "He sleeps in the Lord," "He waits the resurrection to life eternal," recording the hopes of whole generations of survivors, he can not doubt the truth of the written records of the conversion of the Roman Empire. There is, moreover, another kind of contemporary history not so connected and regular as the formal diary or journal, which does not even propose to relate history at all, but is for that very reason entirely removed from the suspicion of giving a coloring to it; which, at the cost of a little patience and industry, gives us the most convincing confirmations of the truth, or exposures of the mistakes of historians, by the undesigned and incidental way in which the use of a name, a date, a proverb, a jest, an expletive, a quotation, an allusion, flashes conviction upon the reader's mind. I mean contemporary correspondence. If we have the private letters of celebrated men laid before us, we are enabled to look right into them, and see their true character. Thus Macaulay exhibits to the world the proud, lying, stupid tyrant, James, displayed in his own letters. Thus Voltaire records himself an adulterer, and begs his friend, D'Alembert, to lie for him; his friend replies that he has done so. Thus the correspondence of the great American herald of the Age of Reason exhibits him drinking a quart of brandy daily at his friend's expense, and refusing to pay his bill for boarding. In the unguarded freedom of confidential correspondence the vail is taken from the heart. We see men as they are. The true man stands out in his native dignity, and the gilding is rubbed off the hypocrite. Give the world their letters, and let the grave silence the plaudits and the clamors which deafened the generation among whom they lived, and no man will hesitate whether or not to pronounce Hume a sensualist, or Washington the noblest work of God--an honest man. If we add another test of truthfulness, by increasing the number of the witnesses, comparing a number of letters referring to the same events, written by persons of various degrees of education, and of different occupations and ranks of life, resident in different countries, acting independently of each other, and find them all agree in their allusions to, or direct mention of, some central facts concerning which they are all interested, no one can rightfully doubt that this undesigned agreement declares the truth. But if, in addition to all these undesigned coincidences, we happen upon the correspondence of persons whose interests and passions were diametrically opposed to those of our correspondents, and find that, when they have occasion to refer to them, they also confirm the great facts already ascertained, then our belief becomes conviction which can not be overturned by any sophistry, that these things did occur. If Whig and Tory agree in relating the facts of James' flight, and William's accession, if the letters of his Jacobite friends and those of the French ambassador confirm the statements of the English historian, and if we are put in possession of the letters which James himself wrote from France and Ireland to his friends in England, does any man in his common sense doubt that the Revolution of 1688 did actually occur? When, in addition to all this concentration and convergence of testimony, one finds that the matters related, being of public concern, and the changes effected for the public weal, the people have ever since observed, and do to this day celebrate, by religious worship and public rejoicings, the anniversaries of the principal events of that Revolution, and that he himself has been present, and has heard the thanksgivings, and witnessed the rejoicings on those anniversaries, the facts of the history come out from the domains of learned curiosity, and take their stand on the market-place of the busy world's engagements. We become at once conscious that this is a practical question--a great fact which concerns us--that the whole of the law and government of a vast empire has felt its impress--that our ancestors and ourselves have been molded under its influence, and that the religion of Europe and America, under whose guardianship we have grown to a prominent place among the people of earth, and may arrive at a better prominence among the nations of the saved, has been secured by that Revolution. We could scarcely know whether most to pity or contemn the man who should labor to persuade us that such a Revolution had never occurred, or that the facts had been essentially misrepresented. Now it is precisely on this kind of evidence that we believe the great facts of the Christian Revolution. We have contemporary histories, formal and informal; letters, public and private, from the principal agents in it, and opposers of it, dispersed from Babylon to Rome, and addressed to Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Asiatics, written by physicians, fishermen, proconsuls, emperors, and apostles. We have miles of monuments, paintings, statuary, cabinets of coins, and all the heraldry of Christendom. And these great facts stand out more prominently on the theater of the world's business as effecting changes on our laws and lives, and their introduction as authenticated by public commemorations, more solemn and more numerous than those resulting from the English or the American Revolution. Our main difficulty lies in selecting, from the vast mass of materials, a portion sufficiently distinct and manageable to be handled in a single essay. We shall be guided by the motto already announced as the rule of inductive research. One thing at a time; and the nearest first. The Epistles, being nearer our own times than the Gospels, claim our first notice, and first among these, those which stand latest on the page of sacred history, the letters of John; two from Peter to the Christians of Asia; and those which Paul, in chains for the gospel, dictated from imperial Rome. From the abundant notices of the early Christians by historians and philosophers, satirists and comedians, martyrs and magistrates, Jewish, Christian, and heathen, I shall select only two for comparison with the Epistles and of the apostles; and both those heathen--the celebrated letter of Pliny to Trajan, and the well-established history of Tacitus; both utterly undeniable, and admitted by the most skeptical to be above suspicion. Not that I suppose that the testimony of men who do not take the trouble of making any inquiry into the reality of the facts of the Christian religion is more accurate than that of those whose lives were devoted to its study; or that we have any just reason to attach as much weight to the assertions of persons, who, by their own showing, tortured and murdered men and women convicted of no crime but that of bearing the name of Christ, as to those of these martyrs, whose characters they acknowledged to be blameless, and who sealed their testimony with the last and highest attestation of sincerity--their blood. Considered merely as a historian, whether, as regards means of knowledge, or tests of truthfulness, by every unprejudiced mind, Peter will always be preferred to Pliny. But because the world will ever love its own, and hate the disciples of the Lord, there will always be a large class to whom the history of Tacitus will seem more veritable than that of Luke, and the letters of Pliny more reliable than those of Peter. For their sakes we avail ourselves of that most convincing of all attestations--the testimony of an enemy. What friends and foes unite in attesting must be accepted as true. The facts which we shall thus establish are not, in the first instance, those called miraculous. We are now ascertaining the general character for truthfulness of our letter writers and historians. If we find that their general historic narrative is contradicted by that of other credible historians, then we suspect their story. But if we find that, in all essential matters of public notoriety, they are supported by the concurred testimony of their foes, and that the narrative of the miracles they relate bears the seals of thousands who from foes became friends, from conviction of its truth, then we receive their witness as true. Even in Paul's day, heathen Greek writers bore testimony to the apostles, what manner of entering in they had unto the converts of Thessalonica; and how they turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead--even Jesus, who delivered us from the wrath to come. Pliny wrote forty years later. Pliny, the younger, was born A. D. 61, was prætor under Domitian, consul in the third year of Trajan, A. D. 100, was exceedingly desirous to add to his other honors that of the priesthood; was accordingly consecrated an augur, and built temples, bought images, and consecrated them on his estates; was, in A. D. 106, appointed Governor of the Roman Provinces of Pontus and Bithynia[73]--a vast tract of Asia Minor, lying along the shores of the Black Sea and the Propontis; and including the province anciently called Mysia, in which were situated Pergamos and Thyatira, and in the immediate vicinity of Sardis and Philadelphia. Pliny reached his province by the usual route, the port of Ephesus; where John had lived for many years, and indited his letters, A. D. 96, scarcely ten years before. The letters of Peter to the strangers scattered through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, bring us to the same mountainous region, eight hundred miles distant from Judea; whence, in earlier days, our savage ancestors received those Phoenician priests of Baal, whose round towers mark the coasts of Ireland nearest to the setting sun; and whence, about the period under consideration, came the heralds of the Sun of Righteousness, who brought the "_Leabhar Eoin_"[74] which tells their children of him in whom is the life and the light of men. Natives of these countries had been in Jerusalem during the crucifixion of Jesus, and, though only strangers, had witnessed the darkness, and the earthquake, and had heard the rumors of what had come to pass in those days; and on the day of Pentecost had mingled with the curious crowd around the apostles, and heard them speak, in their own mother tongues, of the wonderful works of God. The remainder of the story of their conversion we gather from the letters of Peter, John, and Pliny. "Pliny, to the Emperor Trajan, wisheth health and happiness:[75] "It is my constant custom, Sire, to refer myself to you in all matters concerning which I have any doubt. For who can better direct me when I hesitate, or instruct me when I am ignorant? "I have never been present at any trials of Christians, so that I know not well what is the subject matter of punishment, or of inquiry, or what strictures ought to be used in either. Nor have I been a little perplexed to determine whether any difference ought to be made upon account of age, or whether the young and tender, and the full grown and robust, ought to be treated all alike; whether repentance should entitle to pardon, or whether all who have once been Christians ought to be punished, though they are now no longer so; whether the name itself, although no crimes be detected, or crimes only belonging to the name ought to be punished. "In the meantime, I have taken this course with all who have been brought before me, and have been accused as Christians. I have put the question to them, whether they were Christians. Upon their confessing to me that they were, I repeated the question a second and a third time, threatening also to punish them with death. Such as still persisted, I ordered away to be punished; for it was no doubt with me, whatever might be the nature of their opinion, that contumacy and inflexible obstinacy ought to be punished. There were others of the same infatuation, whom, because they are Roman citizens, I have noted down to be sent to the city. "In a short time the crime spreading itself, even whilst under persecution, as is usual in such cases, divers sorts of people came in my way. An information was presented to me, without mentioning the author, containing the names of many persons, who, upon examination, denied that they were Christians, or had even been so; who repeated after me an invocation of the gods, and with wine and frankincense made supplication to your image, which, for that purpose, I have caused to be brought and set before them, together with the statues of the deities. Moreover, they reviled the name of Christ. None of which things, as is said, they who are really Christians can by any means be compelled to do. These, therefore, I thought proper to discharge. "Others were named by an informer, who at first confessed themselves Christians, and afterward denied it. The rest said they had been Christians, but had left them; some three years ago, some longer, and one or more above twenty years. They all worshiped your image, and the statues of the gods; these also reviled Christ. They affirmed that the whole of their fault or error lay in this: that they were wont to meet together, on a stated day, before it was light, and sing among themselves alternately, a hymn to Christ as a God, and bind themselves by a sacrament, not to the commission of any wickedness, but not to be guilty of theft, or robbery, or adultery; never to falsify their word, nor to deny a pledge committed to them, when called upon to return it. When these things were performed, it was their custom to separate, and then to come together again to a meal, which they ate in common, without any disorder; but this they had forborne since the publication of my edict, by which, according to your command, I prohibited assemblies. After receiving this account, I judged it the more necessary to examine two maid servants, which were called ministers, by torture. But I have discovered nothing besides a bad and excessive superstition. "Suspending, therefore, all judicial proceedings, I have recourse to you for advice; for it has appeared to me a matter highly deserving consideration, especially upon account of the great number of persons who are in danger of suffering. For many of all ages, and every rank, of both sexes likewise, are accused, and will be accused. Nor has the contagion of this superstition seized cities only, but the lesser towns also, and the open country. Nevertheless, it seems to me that it may be restrained and arrested. It is certain that the temples, which were almost forsaken, begin to be frequented. And the sacred solemnities, after a long intermission, are revived. Victims, likewise, are everywhere brought up, whereas, for some time, there were few purchasers. Whence, it is easy to imagine, what numbers of men might be reclaimed, if pardon were granted to those who shall repent." * * * * * "Trajan to Pliny, wisheth health and happiness:[76] "You have taken the right course, my Pliny, in your proceedings with those who have been brought before you as Christians; for it is impossible to establish any one rule that shall hold universally. They are not to be sought after. If any are brought before you, and are convicted, they ought to be punished. However, he that denies his being a Christian, and makes it evident in fact, that is, by supplicating to our gods, though he be suspected to have been so formerly, let him be pardoned upon repentance. But in no case, of any crime whatever, may a bill of information be received without being signed by him who presents it, for that would be a dangerous precedent, and unworthy of my government." I must request my reader now to procure a New Testament, and read, at one reading, the First General Epistle of Peter, the First General Epistle of John, and the Seven Epistles to the Churches in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea--only about as much matter as four pages of _Harper's Magazine_, or half a page of the _Commercial_--that he may be able to do the same justice to the apostles as to the governor. He will thus be able to see the force of the various allusions to the numbers, doctrines, morals, persecutions, and perseverance of the Christians, contained in those letters; the object which I have in view being, to establish their authenticity by proving the truthfulness of their allusions to these things. If you think this too much trouble, please lay down the book, and dismiss the consideration of religion from your thoughts. If the letters of the apostles are not worth a careful reading, it is of no consequence whether they are true or false. 1. These letters take for granted, that the fact of the existence of large numbers of Christians, organized into churches, and meeting regularly for religious worship, at the close of the first century, is a matter of public notoriety to the world. Here, in countries eight hundred miles distant from its birthplace, in the lifetime of those who had seen its founder crucified, we find Christians scattered over Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia--churches in seven provincial cities, the sect well known to Pliny, before he left Italy, as a proscribed and persecuted religion, the professors of which were customarily brought before courts for trial and punishment--though he had not himself been present at such trials--and now so numerous in his provinces, that a great number of persons, of both sexes, young and old, of all ranks, natives and Roman citizens, professed Christianity. Others, influenced by their example and instruction, renounced idolatry; victims were not led to sacrifice; the sacred rites of the gods were suspended, and their temples forsaken. The existence, then, of churches of Christ, consisting of vast numbers of converted heathens, at the close of the first century, is in no wise mythological or dubious. It is an established historical fact. The Epistles of the apostles stand confirmed by the Epistles of the governor and the emperor. 2. The second great fact presented in the Epistles, and confirmed by the letters of the governor and the emperor, is, that the worship of the Christian Church then was essentially the same which it is now. We find these Christians of the first century commemorating the death and resurrection of Christ, and rendering divine honors to him; the "stated day" on which they assembled for worship, and the "common meal," are as plain a description of the "disciples coming together upon the first day of the week, to break bread," as a heathen could give in few words. Their terms of communion too, to which they pledged their members by a sacrament, "not to be guilty of theft, robbery, or adultery; never to falsify their word, or deny a pledge committed to them," find their counterpart in every well-regulated church at this day. The articles of the Christian faith, then, are not the "gradual accretions of centuries," nor is the "redemptive idea, as attaching to Christ, a dogma of the post-Augustine period." The churches of the first century commemorated the death and resurrection of Jesus, as that of a divine person, "singing the hymn to him as a God," which their descendants sing at this day around his table: "Forever and forever is, O God, thy throne of might, The scepter of thy kingdom is a scepter that is right, Thou lovest right, and hatest ill; for God, thy God, Most High, Above thy fellows hath with th' oil of joy anointed thee." And the question will force itself upon our minds, and can not be evaded, How did these apostles persuade such multitudes of heathens to believe their repeated assertions of the death, resurrection, and glory of Jesus? In the space of three octavo pages, Peter refers to these facts eighteen times. John, in like manner, repeatedly affirms them. The Christian religion consists in the belief of these facts, and a life corresponding to them. Now, how did the apostles persuade such multitudes of heathens to believe a report so wonderful, profess a religion so novel, renounce the gods they had worshiped from their childhood, and all the ceremonies of an attractive, sensual religion; "temples of splendid architecture, statues of exquisite sculpture, priests and victims superbly adorned, attendant beauteous youth of both sexes, performing all the sacred rites with gracefulness; religious dances, illuminations, concerts of the sweetest music, perfumes of the rarest fragrance," and other more licentious enjoyments, inseparable from heathen worship. How did they persuade them to exchange all this for the assembly before daybreak, the frugal common meal, the psalm to Christ, and the commemoration of the death of a crucified malefactor? If we add, that they commemorated his resurrection, by observing the Lord's day, the question comes up, How did they come to believe that he was risen from the dead? Could a few despised strangers, or a few citizens if you will, persuade such a community, purely by natural means, to believe such a report, to care whether the Syrian Jew died or rose, or to commemorate weekly, by a solemn religious service, either his death or resurrection? It is evident they believed what they commemorated. How did they come to do so? But whether we can answer the question or not, the fact stands out as indisputable, that not merely the writers of the Epistles and Gospels, and a few enthusiasts, but an immense multitude of all ages, of both sexes, and of every rank--the whole membership of the primitive churches--did believe in the death, resurrection, and glory of the Lord Jesus, and did render to him divine worship. The second great fact, affirmed in the Epistles, stands confirmed by the testimony of the heathen governor, and of the Roman emperor. 3. A mere theory of a new religion, unconnected with practice, may be easily received by those who care little about any, so long as it brings no suffering or inconvenience. But the religion of these Christians was, as you see, a practical religion. If their new worship required a great departure from the worship of their childhood, their Christian morals required a still greater departure from their former mode of life. I need not remind you of the moral codes of Socrates, Plato, and Aristides, who taught that lying, thieving, adultery, and murder were lawful; nor how much worse than the theory of the best of the heathen were the lives of the worst; nor how unpopular to persons so educated would be such teaching as this--"Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin: that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries; wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the living and the dead." "Lay aside all malice, and guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings." "Whosoever abideth in Christ sinneth not. Whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him. Little children, let no man deceive you. He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil." So sharp, and stern, and strictly virtuous is apostolic religion, as displayed in these letters. Is it possible then that these converted heathens did really even approach this standard of morality? Did this gospel of Christ actually produce any such reformation of their lives? You have the testimony of apostates, eager to save their lives by giving such information as they knew would be acceptable to the persecutor; you have the testimony of the two aged deaconesses, under torture; you have the unwilling, but yet express, testimony of their torturer and murderer, that all his cruel ingenuity could discover nothing worse than an excessive superstition and culpable obstinacy. What, then, does this philosophic inspector of entrails, and adorer of idols, call an excessive superstition and culpable obstinacy? Why, they bound themselves by the most solemn religious services, not to be guilty of theft, robbery, or adultery; not to falsify their word, nor deny a pledge committed to them; and when some senseless blocks of brass were carried on men's shoulders, into the court-house, to represent a mortal man, they would not adore them, nor pray to them; no, not though this philosopher compiled the liturgy, and set the example. For this refusal, and this alone, he ordered them away to death. Doubtless they heard, in their hearts, the well-known words, "Let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evil-doer, or as a busybody in other men's matters. But if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf." The morality of the Epistles, then, was not a merely a fine theory, but an actual rule of life. The moral codes of the apostles were received as actually binding on the members of the churches of the first century. In this all-important matter of the rule of a good life--the fruits by which the tree is known--the integrity, authority, and success of the apostles, in turning licentious heathens into moral Christians, is authenticated by the unwilling testimony of their persecutors. The Epistles of the apostles stand confirmed, as to their ethics, by the letters of Trajan and Pliny. 4. The only other fact to which I call your attention, from among the multitude alluded to in these letters, is the cost at which these converts from heathenism embraced this new religion. Every one who renounced heathenism, and professed the name of Christ, knew very well that he must suffer for it. "Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you, but rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings, that when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad with exceeding joy;" this was the welcome of the Bithynian convert into the Church of Christ. Persecution by fire and sword was then the common lot of the Church. "I have never been present at any trials of the Christians," says the governor. Such trials were well known to him it seems. He was not sure whether he should murder all who ever had borne the name of Christ, or only those who proved themselves to be really his disciples, by refusing to revile him, and return to idolatry; and the merciful emperor commands him to spare the apostates. Above twenty years before--in A. D. 86--there were apostates from the persecuted religion. In A. D. 90, John had written, "they went out from us, that it might be made manifest they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us; but they went out that it might be made manifest that they were not all of us." So it seems Pliny thought: "They all worshiped your image, and other statues of the gods; these also reviled Christ. None of which things, as is said, they who are really Christians can by any means be compelled to do." What these means were he tells us: "I put the question to them, whether they were Christians. Upon their confessing to me that they were, I repeated the question a second and a third time, threatening, also, to punish them with death. Such as still persisted, I ordered away to be punished." What is very remarkable, it was, it seems, "usual in such cases, for the crime to spread itself, even whilst under persecution." In the face of such dangers, these heathen would still profess faith in Christ, and when they might have saved their lives by reviling him, refused to do so. From the published rescript of the emperor, approving of Pliny's course, and condemning to death all who were convicted of being really Christians; from the public circulars of the apostles, warning them of "fiery trials," "Satan casting some of them into prison," and exhorting them to "be faithful unto death;" and from such comments on these as the torture and public execution of aged women as well as men--the terms of discipleship were well known to the whole world. Yet we see that in the face of all this, "great numbers of persons, of both sexes, and of all ages, and of every rank," in Pliny's opinion, were so steadfast in their faith, that "they were in great danger of suffering." Here, then, is another well-attested fact, in which the testimony of the apostles stands confirmed by the signatures of the Bithynian governor, and the Roman emperor--a fact which stands forth clear, prominent, most undoubted, without the smallest trace of anything mythological or misty about it--that, in A. D. 106, great numbers of converted heathens did suffer exile, torture, and death itself, rather than renounce Christ; and that it was well known that the Christian faith enabled its professor to overcome the world. These four great facts of the later Epistles, being thus established beyond dispute, in pursuance of our plan, we ascend the stream of history some forty years, to the time of the earlier Epistles, when Paul lay in the Prætorian prison, and his faithful companion, Luke, wrote the continuation of his narrative of the things most surely believed among the Christians; when "apostles were made as the filth of the world, and the offscouring of all things;" and Christians "were made a gazing stock both by reproaches and afflictions;" "were brought before kings and rulers, and hated of all nations for Christ's name sake;" "endured a great fight of afflictions;" were "for his sake killed all the day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter;" "were made a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men." We remove the field of our investigation from a remote province of Asia, to one equally remote from Judea, and far more unfavorable for the growth of the religion of a crucified Jew, to the proud capital of the world, imperial Rome. The time shall be shortly after the burning of the city, in A. D. 64, and during the raging of the first of those systematic, imperial, and savage persecutions through which the Church of Christ waded, in the bloody footsteps of her Lord, to world-wide influence, and undying fame. Our historian shall be the well-known Tacitus; and the single extract from his history, one of which the infidel Gibbon says:[77] "The most skeptical criticism is obliged to respect the truth of this important fact, and the integrity of this celebrated passage of Tacitus." I shall not insert quotations from Paul or Luke; that were merely to transcribe large portions of the Epistles and Gospels, which whoever will not carefully peruse, disqualifies himself for forming a judgment of their veracity. The confirmation of the four facts already established, of the existence, worship, morals, and sufferings of the disciples of Christ; and these facts as well known within thirty years after his death, will sufficiently appear by the perusal of the following testimony of Tacitus.[78] After relating the burning of the city, and Nero's attempt to transfer the odium of it to the sect "commonly known by the name of Christians," he says: "The author of that name was Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to death as a criminal, under the procurator, Pontius Pilate. But this pestilent superstition, checked for a while, broke out afresh, and spread not only over Judea, where the evil originated, but also in Rome, where all that is evil on the earth finds its way, and is practiced. At first, those only were apprehended who confessed themselves of that sect; afterward, _a vast multitude_ discovered by them; all of whom were condemned, not so much for the crime of burning the city, as for their enmity to mankind. Their executions were so contrived, as to expose them to derision and contempt. Some were covered over with the skins of wild beasts, that they might be torn to pieces by dogs; some were crucified; while others, having been daubed over with combustible materials, were set up for lights in the night time, and thus burned to death. For these spectacles Nero gave his own gardens, and, at the same time, exhibited there the diversions of the circus; sometimes standing in the crowd as a spectator, in the habit of a charioteer; and, at other times, driving a chariot himself; until at length these men, though really criminal, and deserving of exemplary punishment, began to be commiserated, as people who were destroyed, not out of regard to the public welfare, but only to gratify the cruelty of one man." We add no comment on this remarkable passage. Take up your New Testament and read the contemporary history--Acts xxii. to the end of the book--and the letters of Paul from Rome, to Philemon, Titus, the Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and the Second to Timothy, written when the aged prisoner was ready to be offered, and the time of his departure, amidst such scenes and sufferings, was at hand. Then form your own opinion as to the origin and nature of that faith in Jesus which enabled him to say: "None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto me, that I may finish my course with joy, and the testimony which I have received of the Lord Jesus." "I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day." Whatever may be your opinion of the apostle's hope for the future, you must acknowledge that we have ascertained, beyond contradiction, these four facts of the past: 1. That without the power of force, or the help of governments, and in spite of them, the apostles did convert vast multitudes of idolaters from a senseless worship of stocks and stones, to the worship of the one living and true God; a thing never done by the preachers of any other religion before or since. 2. That without the help of power or civil law, and solely by moral and spiritual means, they did persuade multitudes of licentious heathens to give up their vices, and obey the pure precepts of the morality contained in their Epistles; a thing never done by the preachers of any other religion before or since. 3. That these converts were so firmly persuaded of the truth of their new religion, that, with the choice of life and worldly honor, or a death of infamy and torture before them, multitudes deliberately chose to suffer torture and death rather than renounce the belief in one God, obedience to his laws, and the hope of eternal life through Jesus Christ, which they had learned from the sermons and letters of these apostles; a thing never done by the professors of any other religion before or since.[79] 4. The faith which produced such an illumination of their minds; which caused such a blessed change in their lives; which filled them with joy and hope, and enabled them even to despise torture and death, was briefly this: "That Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again on the third day, according to the Scriptures; that he ascended up into heaven, and will come again to judge the world, and reward every man according to his works; and that whosoever believes these things in his heart, and confesses them with his mouth, shall be saved; and he that believeth them not shall be damned." It is a fact, then, indisputably proven by history, that the New Testament does teach a religion which can enlighten men's minds, reform their lives, give peace to their consciences, and enable them to meet death with a joyful hope of life eternal. It has done these things in times past, and is doing them now. These are its undoubted fruits. Reader, this faith may be yours. It will work the same results in you as it has done in others. Like causes ever produce like effects. Jesus waits to deliver you from your sins, to fill you with joy and peace in believing, and make you abound in hope, by the power of the Holy Ghost. He has promised, if you will ask it, "I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord." FOOTNOTES: [73] Lardner VII. page 18, _et seq._ [74] Pronounced Laar Owen--John's Book. [75] Lib. X. Ep. 97, Lardner VII. 22. [76] Lib. X. Ep. 98, Lardner VII. 24. [77] Decline and Fall, Vol. II. page 407. [78] Lib. XV. chap. 44. [79] The sufferings of the Jews, under Antiochus, are no exception. They suffered for their faith in the true God, the Messiah to come, and a resurrection to life eternal. CHAPTER VII. CAN WE BELIEVE CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES? "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life * * * that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you."--1 John i. 1. We have seen that the companions of Jesus wrote the books of the New Testament; that their statements of the existence, worship, morals, and faith of the Christian Church are confirmed by their enemies, and that multitudes of heathens were turned from vice to virtue by the belief of the testimony of these men. They testified that Jesus Christ did many wonderful miracles, died for our sins, and rose again from the dead; that they saw, and felt his body, and ate, and drank, and conversed with him for forty days after his resurrection; that he ascended up to heaven in their sight; that he sent them to tell the world that he will come again in the clouds of heaven, with his mighty angels, to judge the living and the dead; that he who believes these things and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. This is their statement. The question is, Can we believe them? 1. The first thing which strikes us in their testimony is, that it stands out utterly different from all other religions. There is nothing in the world like it, not even its counterfeits. The great central fact of Christianity--that Christ died for our sins, and rose again from the dead--stands absolutely alone in the history of religions. The priests of Baal, Brahma, or Jupiter, never dreamed of such a thing. The prophets of Mohammedanism, Mormonism, or Pantheism, have never attempted to imitate it. The great object of all counterfeit Christianity is to deny it. There is no instance in the whole world's history of any other religion ever producing the same effects. We demand an instance of men destitute of wealth, arms, power, and learning, converting multitudes of lying, lustful, murdering idolaters, into honest, peaceable, virtuous men simply by prayer and preaching. When the Infidel tells us of the rapid spread of Mohammedanism and Mormonism--impostures which enlist disciples by promising free license to lust, robbery, and murder, and retain them by the terror of the scimeter and the rifle ball; which reduce mankind to the most abject servitude, and womanhood to the most debasing concubinage; which have turned the fairest regions of the earth to a wilderness, and under whose blighting influence commerce, arts, science, industry, comfort, and the human race itself, have withered away--he simply insults our common sense, by ignoring the difference between backgoing vice and ongoing virtue; or acknowledges that he knows as little about Mohammedanism, as he does about Christianity. The gospel stands alone in its doctrines, singular in its operation, unequaled in its success. 2. The next important point for consideration is, that the Christianity preached by Christ and his apostles is a whole--a single system, which we must either take or leave--believe entirely, or entirely reject it as an imposture. There is no middle ground for you to occupy. It is all true, or all false. For instance, you can not take one of Paul's Epistles and say, "this is true," and take another of the same man's letters, containing the very same religion, and say, "this is false." If you accept the very briefest of Paul's Letters, that to Philemon, containing only thirteen sentences on private business, you accept eleven distinct assertions of the authority, grace, love, and divinity of our Lord. Nor can you say you will accept Peter's Letters and reject Paul's; for you will find the very same facts asserted by the one as by the other; and moreover, Peter indorses "all the epistles of our beloved brother Paul" as on the same pedestal of authority with the other Scriptures. You can not say, "I will accept the letters and reject the history," for the letters have no meaning without the history. They are founded upon it, and assume or allege its facts on every page. Were the gospels lost, we could collect a good account of the birth, teaching, death, resurrection, ascension, and almighty power of the Lord Christ from Paul's Epistles; and these letters are just as confident in alleging the miraculous part of the history as the gospels themselves. Neither can you gain any advantage by saying, "I accept the gospels, but reject the letters," for there is not a doctrine of the New Testament which is not taught in the very first of them, the Gospel by Matthew. Further, the gospels contain the most solemn authentication of the commissions of the apostles, so that whoever rejects their teaching, brings upon himself guilt equal to that of rejecting Christ himself. "Lo, I am with you alway"--"He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me"--"Whosoever will not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city." It is, if possible, more absurd to attempt to dissect the morality of the gospel from its history, and to say, "We are willing to receive the Christian code of morals as a very excellent rule of life, and to regard Jesus as a rare example of almost superhuman virtue, but we must consider the narrative of supernatural events interwoven with it as mythological," _i. e._, false. Which is much the same as to say, "We will be very happy to receive your friend if he will only cut his head off." Of what possible use would the Christian code of morals be without the authority of Christ, the lawgiver? If he possessed no divine authority, what right has he to control your inclination or mine? And if he will never return to inquire whether men obey or disobey his law, who will regard it? Do you suppose the world will be turned upside down, and reformed, by a little good advice? Nay, verily, the world has had trial of that vanity long enough. "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in the body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing, therefore, _the terrors of the Lord_, we persuade men." Take away the miraculous and supernatural from the gospel history, and there is nothing left for you to accept. There is no political economy nor worldly morality in it. It is wholly the history of a supernatural person, and every precept of his morality comes with a divine sanction. Further, you know nothing of either his life or his morality but from the gospel history, and if the record of the miracles which occupy three-fourths of the gospels be false, what reason have you to give any credit to the remainder? For, as the German commentator, De Wette, well says, "The only means of acquaintance with a history is the narrative we possess concerning it, and beyond that narrative the interpreter can not go. In these Bible records, the narrative reports to us only a supernatural course of events, which we must either receive or reject. If we reject the narrative, we know nothing at all about the event, and we are not justified in allowing ourselves to invent a natural course of events of which the narrative is totally silent." So, you see, you can not make a Christ to suit your taste, but must just take the Christ of the gospel, or reject him. If you reject the testimony of Christ and his apostles as false, and say you can not believe them in matters of fact, how can you respect their morality? Of all the absurdities of modern Infidelity, the respectful language generally used by its advocates in speaking of Christ and his apostles is the most inconsistent. He claimed to be a Divine Person, and professed to work miracles. The Infidel says he was not a Divine Person, and wrought no miracles. The consequence is unavoidable--such a pretender is a blasphemous impostor. And yet they speak of him as a "model man," an "exemplar of every virtue." What! an impostor a model man? A blasphemer and liar an exemplar of every virtue? Is that the Infidel's notion of virtue? Why, the devils were more consistent in their commendations of his character, "We know thee who thou art, THE HOLY ONE OF GOD." Let our modern enemies of Christ learn consistency from their ancient allies. We have also learned from our Master to refuse all hypocritical, half-way professions of respect for his character and teachings from those whose business is to prove him a deceiver, and whose object in speaking respectfully of such a One can only be to gain a larger audience, and a readier entrance for their blasphemy among his professed disciples. From every man who professes respect for Christ's character, and for the morality which he and his apostles taught, we demand a straightforward answer to the questions: "When he declared himself the Son of God, the Judge of the living and the dead, did he tell the truth, or did he lie? When he promised to attest his divine commission by rising from the dead on the third day, had he any such power, or did he only mean to play a juggling imposture? Is Jesus the Christ the Son of the Living God, or a deceiver?" There is no middle ground. He that is not with him is against him. The case is just the same with regard to the witnesses of his miracles, death, and resurrection. They either give a true relation of these things, or they have manufactured a series of falsehoods. How can we believe anything from persons so habituated to lying as the narrators of the mighty works of Jesus must be, if those mighty works never were performed? How can we accept their code of morals if we refuse to believe them when they speak of matters of fact? Is it possible to respect men as moral teachers, whom we have convicted of forging stories of miracles that never occurred, and confederating together to impose a lying superstition on the world? For this is plainly the very point and center of the question about the truth of the Bible, and I am anxious you should see it clearly. A fair statement of this question is half the argument. The question then is simply this, Was Jesus really the Divine Person he claimed to be, or was he a blasphemous impostor? When the apostles unitedly and solemnly testified that they had seen him after he was risen from the dead, that they ate and drank with him, that their hands had handled his body, that they conversed with him for forty days, and that they saw him go up to heaven, did they tell the truth or were they a confederated band of liars? There is no reason for any other supposition. They could not possibly be deceived themselves in the matters they relate. They knew perfectly whether they were true or not. We are not talking about matters of dogma, about which there might be room for difference of opinion, but about matters of fact--about what men say they saw, and heard, and felt--about which no man of common sense could possibly be mistaken. "That which we have seen with our eyes, which we have heard, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life * * * that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you." Such is their language. We must either take it as truth, or reject it as falsehood. It is utter nonsense to talk of the intense subjectivity of the Jewish mind, and the belief of the apostles that the Messiah would do wonders when he came, and the powerful impressions produced by the teaching of Jesus on their minds. We are not talking about impressions on their minds, but about impressions produced on their eyes, and ears, and hands. Did these men tell the truth when they told the world that they did eat and drink with Jesus after he rose from the dead, or did they lie? That is the question. 3. It is a hard matter to lie well. A liar has need of a good memory, else he will contradict himself before he writes far. And he needs to be very well posted up in the matters of names, dates, places, manners and customs, else he will contradict some well-known facts, and so expose his forgery to the world. Therefore writers of forgeries avoid all such things as much as possible, and as surely as they venture on specifications of that sort they are detected. A man who is conscious of writing a book of falsehoods does not begin on this wise: "Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate being Governor of Judea, and Herod being Tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip Tetrarch of Iturea and of the regions of Trachonitis, and Lysanias Tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiphas being high priests, the Word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness." Here in one sentence are twenty historical, geographical, political, and genealogical references, every one of which we can confirm by references to secular historians. The enemies of the Lord have utterly failed in their attempts to disprove one out of the hundreds of such statements in the New Testament. The only instance of any _public political event_ recorded in the gospel, said not to be confirmed by the fragments of secular history we possess, is Luke's account of a census of the Roman Empire, ordered by Augustus Cæsar. Were it so that Luke stood alone in his mention of this, surely his credit as a historian would be as good for this fact, as the credit of Tacitus, when he states matters of which Suetonius makes no mention, or of Pliny, when he relates things not recorded by Tacitus. But we can account for the want of corroborative history in this instance, when we know that all the history of Dion Cassius, from the consulships of Antistius and Balbus to those of Messala and Cinna--that is, for five years before and five years after the birth of Christ--is lost; as also Livy's history of the same period. It is certain that some one did record the fact, for Suidas, in his lexicon upon the word _apographe_, says, "that Augustus sent twenty select men into all the provinces of the empire to take a census, both of men and property, and commanded that a just proportion of the latter should be brought into the imperial treasury. And this was the first census." To object to the gospel history, that everything contained in it of the doings of Christ and his apostles in Judea, is not recorded by the historians of Greece and Italy, is much the same as to say that there are a multitude of facts recorded in D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation in Germany, of which Hume and Macaulay make no mention in their histories of England. How should they?--treating of different countries, and for the most part of different periods, and writing civil and not church history? Does anybody go to Macaulay to look for the history of the Westminster Assembly, or to Bancroft for an account of the Great Revival in New England? Or is the veracity of Baillie, or Edwards suspected, because political history does not concern itself much about religion? It is enough that not a single statement of the gospel history has ever been disproved. I might give you quotations from the enemies of the Christian faith, from Josephus the Jew, and Celsus, and Porphyry, heathen philosophers, and from the Emperor Julian, the apostate--who, having been raised a Christian, became a heathen, and used all his ingenuity to overturn the religion of Christ--expressly admitting the principal miracles recorded in the gospel. But I attach no such importance to the testimony of this class of persons as to suppose that it should be placed, for one moment, on a level with the testimony of the apostles, or that their testimony to the facts of the life and death of Christ needs any confirmation from such witnesses. We have such overwhelming evidence of the sincerity and truth of the witnesses chosen by God to bear testimony to the resurrection of Christ, as we never can have of the credibility of any secular historian whatever. You will remember that these are the writers whose accounts of the existence, the faith and worship, the numbers and morals of the Christian Church, we have seen so strikingly confirmed by their enemies; and we now inquire, Can we believe the other part of their history to be as true? These are the men who taught the heathen a pure Christian morality, one principal article of which was, "Lie not one to another, seeing ye have put off the old man with his deeds"--"All liars shall have their portion in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone"--and we are to inquire if they themselves lied; lied publicly, lied repeatedly, if the very business of their lives was to propagate falsehood, and if they died with a lie in their right hands. You will remember that we proved conclusively that the belief of the death and resurrection of Jesus did turn immense multitudes of wicked men to a life of virtue, and now we are to inquire if the belief of a lie produced this blessed result, and whether, if so, there be any such thing as truth in the world, or any use in it? 4. Of no other series of events of ancient history do we possess the same number of records by contemporary historians, as of the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. We have four direct systematic memoirs of him by four of his companions; and we have a collection of letters by four others, in which the events of the memoirs are continually referred to. At the mouth of two or three witnesses any man's property and life will be disposed of in a court of justice, but here we have the testimony of eight eye-witnesses of the facts they relate, and they refer to five hundred other persons, the greater part of whom were then alive, who had also seen and heard Christ after his resurrection. These eight persons give us their separate and independent statements of those things they deemed worthy of record in the life and death of Christ, and of the sayings and doings of several of his friends and enemies. Now every person knows that it is impossible to make two crooked boughs tally, or two false witnesses agree. You never saw two lying reports of any considerable number of transactions agree, unless the one was copied from the other. It is evident that the gospels were not copied from each other, for they often relate different events, and when they relate the same occurrence, each man relates those parts of it which he saw himself, and which impressed him most. Yet the utmost ingenuity of infidelity has utterly failed to make them contradict each other in any particular. Here are eight witnesses to the truth of the same story, four of whom in their letters make occasional allusions to the facts of the history as being perfectly well known, and therefore needing only to be alluded to, yet these cursory references fit into the history with every mark of truthfulness. Does the history of Matthew, written at Jerusalem, tell us that Jesus took Peter, and James, and John up into a high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them? Peter, in his letter, written from Babylon, says, "We were eye-witnesses of his majesty. We were with him in the holy mount."--2 Peter ii. 10. If the history tells how Paul was beaten and cast into prison at Philippi, and his feet made fast in the stocks, and that, nevertheless, he manfully defended his birthright as a Roman citizen, and made the tyrannical magistrates humble themselves, and apologize for their illegal conduct, we find Paul himself, in a letter to a neighboring church, appealing to their knowledge of the facts, "that after we had suffered before, and were shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention. For our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile. For neither at any time used we flattering words, as ye know, nor a cloak for covetousness."--1 Thessalonians ii. 2. Hundreds of such undesigned coincidences may be found in the New Testament, confirming the veracity of the several historians and letter writers, and giving that impression of the naturalness and truth of the story, which can neither be described nor disputed. The reader who desires to prosecute this interesting branch of the evidences of Christianity will find an ample collection of these coincidences in Paley's Horæ Paulinæ. This agreement of independent writers is the more remarkable, as the writers were persons of very various degrees of education, of different professions and ranks of life, born in different countries, and writing from various places in Italy, Greece, Palestine, and Assyria, without any communication with each other. Matthew was an officer of customs in Galilee; Mark a Hebrew citizen of Jerusalem; Luke a Greek physician of Antioch; James and John owned and sailed a fishing smack on Lake Tiberias; Jude left his thirty-nine acres of land, worth nine thousand denarii, to be farmed by his children when he went forth to preach the gospel; and college-bred Paul carried his sturdy independence in his breast, and his sail needles in his pocket, and dictated epistles, and cut out marquees and lug-sails in the tent factory of Aquila, Paul & Co., at Corinth. Several of his letters were written in a dungeon in Rome; the last of Peter's is dated at Babylon; Matthew's Gospel was penned at Jerusalem, and John's Gospel and Epistles were written at Ephesus. The agreement of eight such witnesses, of such different pursuits, and so scattered over the world, in the relation of the same story, in all its leading particulars, together with their variety of style and manner, and their various relations of minor incidents, yet without a single contradiction, are most convincing proofs that they all tell truth. Nothing but truth could be thus told without contradiction. The fact that some considerable difficulties and many minor obscurities in these brief though pregnant narratives, prevent the combination of eight accounts so independent in their sources, and various in their style, and design, and auditors, into a flowing historical novel, a homogeneous mass, rounded and squared to our ideas of mathematical precision, is only an additional proof of their truth to nature, which abhors mathematical, as much as truth does rhetorical figures. Like the variety of expression used by American, German, French, and Polish witnesses in our courts of justice, testifying the same facts in their native idioms, though in English words, the apparent discrepancy, but actual harmony, becomes the most decisive test of the absence of any collusion, and consequently of the verity of the facts which such various witnesses unite in testifying. Especially will any such apparent discrepancy resolve itself into our own unskillfulness or ignorance, when we remember that the mists of ages, and the drapery of a strange language, and world-wide removal of residence, and the turning of the world upside down by the progress of Christian civilization, and our consequent ignorance of the thousand little details of every-day life, well known to the writer and his immediate readers, and of the force of expressive idioms, perfectly familiar to them--have rendered us not near so capable of detecting inaccuracies, as those contemporary writers and opponents, who allowed them--if they existed--to pass unchallenged. Like those antique coins, whose rust-dimmed and abbreviated inscriptions exercise the patience and historic lore of the antiquarian, though neither are needed to declare the precious material, this very rust of antiquity, through which his patience has penetrated, becomes one of the inimitable marks of historic verity. Every year throws some new light on texts difficult to us from our ignorance of those manners, customs, names, and places, which Infidel malice and Christian piety have combined to explore; and from the ruins of Nineveh and the sepulchers of Egypt we receive unlooked-for testimonies to the minute accuracy of the penmen of the Bible. 5. The manner in which the apostles published their testimony to the world bears every mark of truthfulness. Deception and forgery skulk, and try to spread themselves at first in holes and corners, but he that doeth truth cometh to the light. Had the apostles been conscious of falsehood, would they have dared to assert that Jesus was risen from the dead in the very streets of the city where he was crucified? in the temple, the most public place of resort of the Jews who saw him crucified? and to the teeth of the very men who put him to death? If conscious of falsehood, would they have dared, before the chief priests, and the council, and all the senate of Israel, to assert that "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins. And we are his witnesses of these things, and so is also the Holy Ghost which God hath given to them that obey him."--Acts v. 30. Would Paul, had he been conscious that he was relating falsehood, have dared to appeal to the judge, before whom he was on trial for his life, as to one who knew the notoriety of these facts, "For the king knoweth of these things, before whom also I speak freely; for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him: for this thing was not done in a corner."--Acts xxvi. 26. Would such appeals have been suffered to pass uncontradicted had the statements of the apostles been false? The boldness of their manner, however, of telling their story, is little, compared with the boldness of the design which they had in view in telling it; which was nothing less than to convert the world. Now the idea of proselyting other nations to a new religion was absolutely unknown to the world at that time. The Greeks and Romans never dreamed of any such thing. They would sometimes add a new god to their old Pantheon, but the idea of turning a nation to the worship of new deities was never before heard of. The Jews were so indignant at the project, that when Paul hinted it to them, they cried, "Away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that he should live." And this new and strange idea, of conquering the world for a crucified man, is taken up by a few private citizens, who resolve to overturn the craft by which priests have their wealth, and to bring the kingdoms of the world to become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. Impostors would never have appealed to their power of working miracles as the apostles did; nor could enthusiasts have done so without instant exposure. It is remarkable, that while in addressing those who believed their divine commission, they rarely allude to it (fourteen of the epistles make no allusion to apostolic miracles), but dwell on a subject of far greater importance--a holy life--they never hesitate to confront a Simon Magus, or a schismatical church at Corinth, or a persecuting high priest and sanhedrim with this power of the Holy Ghost. "Tongues," says Paul, "are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not;" and this is true of all other miracles. This marks the difference between real miracles and those of pretenders; who have never attempted to establish a new religion by them, or to convert unbelievers hostile to their claims and able to examine them, without immediate exposure. But you never heard of an impostor standing up before the tribunal of his judges and alleging the miraculous cure of a well-known public beggar, lame from his mother's womb, whom they had seen at the church gate every Sabbath for forty years, and bringing the man into court after such a fashion as this, "If we this day be examined of the good deed done unto the impotent man, by what means he is made whole, be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand before you whole." Such an appeal was unanswerable. "Beholding the man that was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it." Nay, they were compelled to acknowledge "that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem--we can not deny it."--Acts iv. The denial of the miracles of the gospel is a modern invention of the enemy. The scribes, and priests, emperors, and philosophers of the first centuries, who had the best opportunity of proving their falsehood, were unable to do so. The persecutors and apostates, whose malice against the Church knew no bounds, never dared to utter a charge of deception against the apostles. Why, then, you ask, did they not all become Christians? Because miracles can not convert any man against his will. Christianity is not merely a belief in miracles, but the love of Christ, and a life of holiness. There are many readers of this book who would not turn from their sins if all the dead in Spring Grove Cemetery would rise to-morrow to warn them from hell. God does not intend to force any man to become a Christian. He just gives evidence enough to try you, whether you will deal honestly and fairly with your own soul and your God, and if you are determined to hate Christ and his holy religion, you shall never want a plausible excuse for unbelief; as it is written, "Unto them which are disobedient, Christ is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense." These ancient enemies of Christ acknowledged the reality of his miracles, but attributed them to magical power, or the help of Satan. The Jews said that he had acquired the power of miracles by learning to pronounce the incommunicable name of God. Modern Infidels deny all his miracles save the greatest--the turning of men from their sins. They can not deny that; they can not ascribe it to the power of Satan or of magic, for they do not believe in either; but they follow as nearly in the footsteps of their fathers as possible, when they tell us that multitudes of men, in every age, and in every land, have been turned from falsehood to truth by the belief of a lie, and from vice to virtue by the example of an impostor! 6. But the strongest proof of the truth of the facts of the gospel is the existence, the labors and sufferings of the apostles themselves. Nobody denies that such men lived, and preached, and were persecuted on account of their preaching that Jesus died and rose again. Now, if this was a falsehood, what motive had they to tell it? It was very displeasing to their rulers who had crucified him, and who had every inclination to give them the same treatment. To preach another king, one Jesus, to the Romans, was to bring down the power of the empire upon them. Nothing could be more absurd in the eyes of the Grecian philosophers than to speak of the resurrection of the body. Nor could any plan be devised more certain to arouse the fury of the pagan priesthood, than to denounce the craft by which they had their wealth, and to preach that they are no gods which are made by hands. The most degraded wretch, who perishes by the hand of the hangman is not so contemptible in our eyes, as the crucified malefactor was in the eyes of the Roman people; nor could anything more disagreeable to the Jewish nation be invented than the declaration, that the Gentiles should become partakers of the kingdom of God. What then should induce any man in his senses to provoke such an opposition to a new religion, and to make it so contemptible and disagreeable to those whom he sought to convert, if he were manufacturing a lie to gain power and popularity? The religion they preached was not adapted to please sensual men, nor to allow its preachers in sensual gratifications. "Our exhortation," says Paul--and every reader of the New Testament knows that he says truth--"Our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor of guile." Infidels admit that they preached a pure morality. But it is a long time since men learned the proverb, "Physician, heal thyself." "Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? Thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?" It could not, then, be to obtain license for lust that these men preached holiness. There is only one other conceivable motive which should induce men to confederate together for the propagation of falsehood--the design of making money by it. But their new religion made no provision for any such thing. One of their first acts was to desire the church to elect deacons who might manage its money matters, and allow them to give themselves wholly to prayer and to the ministry of the word. Twenty-five years after that they could appeal to the world that "Even to this present hour, we" (the Apostles) "both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place, and labor working with our hands; being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: we are counted as the filth of the world, and the offscouring of all things to this day." Their book opens with the story of their Master's birth in a stable, with the manger for his cradle, and one of its last pictures is that of his venerable apostle chained in a dungeon, and begging his friend to bring his old cloak from Troas, and to do his diligence to come before winter. Unpopular, pure, and penniless, if the gospel story were not true, how could it have had preachers? They at least believed it. The last and most convincing testimony which any man can give to the truth of a statement of fact is to suffer rather than deny it. Many have wondered why God allowed his dear servants to suffer so much persecution in the first ages of the Church. One principal reason was to give future ages an irresistible proof of the sincerity and faithfulness of the witnesses for Christ. The apostles lived lives of persecution and suffering for the name of Jesus; sufferings which they might have avoided if they had only abstained from preaching any more in this name. But, said they, "We can not but speak of the things which we have seen and heard." One who had no personal acquaintance with Jesus, and whose first interview with him was while he was breathing out threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, is converted and called to be an apostle; and behold the prospect Jesus presents to him, "I will show him _how great things he must suffer for my name_." "The Holy Ghost testifieth," says Paul, "that in every city bonds and afflictions abide me. Yet none of these things move me." That at least was a true prophecy. "Seven times," says Clement, "he was in bonds, he was whipt, he was stoned; he preached both in the East and West, leaving behind him the glorious report of his faith, and so having taught the whole world righteousness, and for that end traveled even to the utmost bounds of the West, he at last suffered martyrdom by the command of the governors, and went to his holy place, having become a most eminent pattern of patience to all ages."[80] Hear his own appeal to those who envied his authority in the church, "Are they ministers of Christ, I am more: in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths often. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep: in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by my own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness."--1 Corinthians ii. 23. Man can give no higher proof of his veracity, than a life such as this, unless it is to seal it with his blood; and this crowning testimony to the truth the apostles gave. Save the aged disciple, who, after torments worse than death, survived to address the persecuted church as, "Your companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ," they all suffered martyrdom for the truth of the gospel history. Let me again remind you that the gospel is not a collection of dogmas, but a relation of facts; that these twelve men did not preach the death and resurrection of Jesus, because they had read them in a creed, but because they had seen them with their own eyes; that they lived holy lives of toil, and hardship, and poverty, and suffering, in preaching these facts to the world; and that they died painful and shameful deaths as martyrs for their truth. You admit these things. Then I demand of you, "What more could either God or man do to convince you of their truthfulness?" The faithful and true witness himself has given you this last, undeniable test of veracity. With the certainty of an ignominious death before him, he solemnly swears to the truth of this fact, and dies for it. "And the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God? Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said. Hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." Unbeliever, are you prepared to meet him there, and prove him a perjured impostor? FOOTNOTES: [80] Wake's Trans. of Clement, Ep. ad Cor. v. CHAPTER VIII. PROPHECY. "In fifty years all Europe will be either Cossack, or Republican." So prophesied the most sagacious of modern politicians, by the inspiration of genius, calculating the prospects of the future by the light of his past experience. This prediction of Napoleon's is a very fair specimen of the oracles of human sagacity; which always overlooks the most stupendous facts--such as the conversion of an empire--and the commonest experiences--such as the birth of a brace of conflicting twins from the womb of the Rachel of revolution, when history happens to predict the failure of the self-elected conquering savior. Man learns to believe whatever he fondly desires, to expect what he believes, and to predict what he expects. His predictions are the mirrors which photograph his own moods of mind, rather than views through a telescope directed to the distant cloud-capped mountains of futurity. But it is confidently asserted that the science of party politics is simply the exercise of the gift of prophetic vision on the theater of civil life; and that a sagacious politician is, within his own sphere, a prophet. He applies the conditions of the past, so far as he knows them, to the calculation of the future. His success proves his sagacity, not his supernatural inspiration. Why should religious predictions be attributed to a different power? For the very simple and satisfactory reason, that the great majority of the calculations of party politicians are failures, while the predictions of the Bible are verified by the event. Name a dozen leaders of American politics during the last half century, and you name half a score of disappointed presidential candidates, whose unfinished monuments prevent the kindly green sward of oblivion from vailing their disappointments, and check the prayer of the passing pilgrim that they may rest in peace; while of the last half dozen who have occupied the presidential chair, and guided the destinies of the most progressive half of the world, not a single man had been suggested by the political leaders even ten years before his election. No wonder politicians become shy of prediction. But it is alleged, that while on a field so contracted as to become the arena of mere personal partialities it is confessedly difficult to predict the future, on the wider field of the world's great interests, the well-known uniformity of human passions and interests render their results calculable to the sagacious statesman. Thus Draper argues, that nations, like the individuals composing them, have fixed periods of growth, manhood, decay, decrepitude, and death--more or less rapid, according to the stock and situation. Those who accept that dogma argue that all that is necessary in order to predict the fate of a nation is a correct calculation of its present age; whether of childhood, manhood, or senility. It is wonderful how rashly men will risk their reputation for common sense on the sound of a plausible analogy, which, even were it valid, would not justify the inference drawn from it. For, suppose that there were as fixed laws of national as of individual life, can any man predict the period of the life of any individual, much less his destiny? May not the life of the nation be as liable to accidents and diseases as that of the individual? But the claim has been actually made, that the skillful statesman, or philosophic observer, is able to foresee, and foretell, even such accidents. Dean Stanley quotes Mill as suggesting an ordinary sign of statesmanship in modern times: "To have made predictions often verified by the event, seldom or never falsified by it." Others give a still wider range to prophetic inspiration. They tell us that all genius is prophetic, inasmuch as it grasps general laws, universal in their range, and unvariable in their operation, the application of which to particular events constitutes prediction. The Hebrew prophets were sagacious observers of human nature, and made very shrewd calculations of the future progress of events by a careful induction of the invariable laws of nature from the history of the past. But there was nothing supernatural in that. Every poet, philosopher, and statesman is more or less of a prophet. Indeed foresight, like insight, is common to all men: a superior degree of this common possession constitutes the prophet. Men of profound insight, or of extensive foresight, are equally rare in all departments of science. Ignorance ascribes to supernatural inspiration the sagacity derived from extensive observation of nature and history; while philosophy traces to the same source the inspiration of Moses and Mohammed, of Isaiah and Apollo, of the Principia, Paradise Lost, and the Apocalypse, of Rothschild, Napoleon, and Bismarck. Some geniuses expend themselves in poems, some in paintings, others in predictions. All are alike imperfect and fallible. Once in centuries, perhaps, we are astonished by the advent of a master, while occasional less perfect attempts and shrewd guesses keep the fires of ambition alive in the human breast. But if this were a correct account of the case we should have our best prophets as the result of our widest observations of nature and history; the best should come last. The prophets of this nineteenth century should be far ahead of Moses in prophetic foresight, standing as they do on the summit of the observatory built by the experience of forty centuries. Whereas, as a matter of fact, the world knows nothing about these modern prophets, or their predictions. The instances alleged by Rationalists are contemptibly trivial when compared with the Bible predictions. Contrast, for instance, Cayotte's alleged prediction, that the fate of Charles would befall Louis XVI., and that the rabble would fill Paris with anarchy--with Daniel's grand historic outline of the four great empires; or with our Savior's detailed prediction of the siege of Jerusalem. Cayotte's guess commanded no respect, even while the coming event cast its shadow before it; nor did he profess to utter it in the name of the Great Disposer of all events as the seal and authentication of a revelation of moral duty to man; and so it was of no value to those threatened by the calamity. But our Lord's predictions were so authoritative in their tone, and so definite in their details, that they enabled his disciples to escape the impending destruction at that time; and their fulfillment has furnished a decisive proof of his divine foresight to all generations. We are told by men who could not read one of Apollo's oracles to save their lives, nor recite one of Isaiah's prophecies to save their souls, that Apollo's oracles, no less than Isaiah's, were inspired. Could such persons be prevailed upon to read carefully any single prophetic book of Scripture, with the historic facts to which it refers, or even the briefest abridgment of these facts, such as that contained in The Comprehensive Commentary, they would not thus expose their ignorance alike of heathen and Christian oracles. The differences between them are too numerous to be easily enumerated. The oracles of the heathen are always sources of gain to their prophets. The ancient Pythoness must have a hecatomb, the writing medium a dollar, and the modern Pythoness of the platform a dime. But under the inspiration of God even a Balaam becomes honest, and the leprosy of Naaman marks the sordid Gehazi and his seed forever. The oracles of the heathen are always immoral in their tendency. From the first spiritual communication through the serpent medium in the tree of knowledge, down to the last spiritual marriage rapped out by the oracle, they are all in favor of pride, ambition, lying, lust, and murder. The oracles of God begin with a prohibition of curiosity, pride, covetousness, and theft: "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." And they are uniformly of the same tenor, forbidding, reproving, threatening vice, and encouraging virtue, down to the last: "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city; for without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." This last mark--falsehood--belongs to all heathen oracles, from the first utterance by the serpent, down to the last response rapped out by the medium. Take any one heathen oracle of which we have any definite account--and the number is very small--and you will find that, if it is not "as equivocal as Apollo," _it is false_. For instance, Dean Stanley very confidently refers to certain heathen oracles, "the fulfillment of which, according to Cicero, could not be denied without a perversion of all history. Such was the foreshadowing of the twelve centuries of Roman dominion, by the legend of the apparition of the twelve vultures to Romulus, which was so understood 400 years before its accomplishment." Comparing the prophetic predictions with such fables, he says: "_It is not that they are more exact in particulars of time and place_; none can be more so than that of the twelve centuries of the Roman Empire."[81] The oracle thus exalted to a level with the predictions of our Lord and his apostles is quoted by Censorinus,[82] A. D. 238, from Varro, who died B. C. 28. Varro stated that he had heard Vettius, no common augur, of great genius in disputing, a match with any of the most learned, say, "If it was so, as the historians related, as to the auguries of the founding of the city of Romulus and the twelve vultures, since the Roman people had passed 120 years safe, it would reach 1,200." Dean Stanley misquotes the oracle, and does injustice to the old heathen prophet. He spake no word whatever about _dominion_; all he dared conjecture for his city was _safety_. Even that is put in a highly hypothetical mood. The augury begins with an "if," regarding the apocryphal story of Romulus and the twelve vultures. But whether the fable of the vultures be true or not, the augury of twelve centuries of safety deduced from it is undeniably false, whether it refers to the material city, or to the political constitution then established. The city then built was burnt by Brennus, the Gaul. Its successor was taken and plundered by Alaric, in A. D. 410; again by Genseric, and the Vandals, in 455; and again by the Ostrogoths, in 546. Thus the material city was repeatedly taken and destroyed during the twelve centuries succeeding its founding. If the augury referred to the duration of the political constitution then instituted, every school-boy knows that half a dozen revolutions falsified the prediction. If, however, it be alleged that it referred to the ultimate fate of the city of Rome, that it should cease to exist after twelve centuries, it is self-evidently false; for now, after the lapse of twenty-six centuries, Rome is larger, its people more numerous, and its territory wider than it was for centuries after Romulus saw the twelve vultures. Thus God "frustrateth the tokens of the liars." Yet men who have read Roman history, and whose business it is to read their Bibles, continue to cite Vettius Valens as a prophet, and to compare his false auguries with the predictions of the Scriptures of truth! This is only one of a number of such secular predictions confidently cited by the learned Dean as having been as minute and specific as those of Scripture, and undeniably fulfilled. But a scholar of his own church has examined his references and alleged facts, and the result is, that not a single instance remains of the fulfillment of any definite prediction given by the original writers; and where the transcriber and the Dean have helped them out to a more definite prediction, it has proved a false prophecy, as in the case of Sterling's and Spence's prediction of the year of the disruption of the Union of the United States. Dr. Pusey summarizes this discussion in his work on Daniel (p. 637), from which we extract and condense the following paragraphs on this subject: "Dean Stanley produces a certain number of alleged predictions in secular history, as counterparts of the predictions of _the political events_ of their own, and the surrounding nations," in the Hebrew prophets, _i. e._ (in religious language), "of God's judgments upon both for their sins against himself and their fellow-men." He says, "Every one knows instances, both in ancient and modern times, of predictions which have been uttered, and fulfilled, in regard to events of this kind. Sometimes such predictions have been the results of political foresight. Many instances will occur to students of history. Even within our own memory the great catastrophe of the disruption of the United States of America _was foretold, even with the exact date, several years beforehand_. Sometimes there has been an anticipation of some future epoch in the pregnant sayings of eminent philosophers and poets; as for example the intimation of the discovery of America by Seneca; or of Shakespeare by Plato; or the Reformation by Dante. Sometimes the result has been produced by the power of divination, granted in some inexplicable manner to ordinary men. Of such a kind were many of the ancient oracles, the fulfillment of which, according to Cicero, could not be denied without a perversion of history. Such was the foreshadowing of the twelve centuries of Roman dominion by the legend of the apparition of the twelve vultures to Romulus, which was so understood 400 years before its actual accomplishment. Such, but with less certainty, was the traditional prediction of the conquest of Constantinople by the Mussulmans; the alleged predictions by Archbishop Malachi, whether composed in the eleventh or sixteenth centuries, of the series of popes down to the present time; not to speak of the well-known instances which are recorded both in French and English history. But there are several points which at once place the prophetic predictions on a different level from any of these. _It is not that they are more exact in particulars of time and place_; none can be more so than that of the twelve centuries of the Roman Empire; and our Lord himself has excluded the precise knowledge of times and seasons from the widest and highest range of prophetic vision." (Jewish Church, 463. The Bible: its Form and Substance, pages 80, 82.) "It might safely be admitted," says Dr. Pusey, "that the outward predictions of time and place are of the body, rather than of the soul of prophecy, yet as indications that he revealed himself, who alone could know long before what he willed to bring to pass by his Providence, the predictions of the Hebrew prophets are not to be paralleled by any human history. "Definite predictions of the Hebrew prophets have been instanced above. Dr. Stanley's instances of secular fulfillment are unhappy." He then proceeds to examine in their turn the political, poetic, Popish, Mohammedan, and heathen oracles quoted by Dean Stanley. _I. The Political Predictions._ Sterling, as quoted by Mr. Spence, so far from predicting the great catastrophe of the disruption of the United States _at the end_ of the four years, says that no wise man would predict anything even within those four years. "It appears to me that amid so many elements of uncertainty as to the future, both from the excited state of men's minds in the States themselves, and the complication of surrounding circumstances, no wise man would venture to foretell the probable issue of American affairs during the next four years." (On the American Union, page 14.) And this was written amid all the heavings which preceded the bursting of the volcano. It followed, after statesmen had, one after another, seen the elements of that disruption. The probability of the severance of the North and South has been a speculation to which the older of us have long been familiar. And now [1864] who would venture to predict the time of the close of that sad war? (First edition.) Now [1865] that it has come to an end Americans taunt Europeans with their want of foresight in their anticipations as to its issue. The _Times_ correspondent retorts as to false anticipations of Americans--(1) that the issue would not interfere with slavery; (2) that there would be separation without bloodshed; (3) that the war would last only some ninety days; (4) that the United States would break up into fragments (Northern); (5) they contemplated that the interests of trade would suffice for the harmony of North and South when separated, etc., etc. June 6, 1865. Europeans almost universally anticipated the success of the South. So little did the human sagacity of men really sagacious, with intimate knowledge of the strength of the different parties, their numbers, resources, and all the calculations as to modern warfare, enable them to anticipate within half a year the result of a war, which, through the vivid description of it, and clear knowledge, was carried on almost under their eyes. And these men would have us to suppose that Hebrew prophets, living in the center of a small people, could, with mere human knowledge, foretell with absolute certainty the overthrow of flourishing empires, when at the acme of their power! _II. The So-called Prophecies of S. Malachi._ These have long been recognized to be a forgery, unmeaning except for the immediate purpose for which they were "forged by the partisans of the Cardinal Simoncelli, one of the candidates for the tiara, who was designated by the words 'de antiquitate orbis,' because he was of Orvieto, in Latin, 'orbs vetus.'" (Biog. Unv'l v. Wion.) Menestrier published a refutation of the pretended prophecies of S. Malachi, Paris, 1689, written with much solidity. Don Feijoo also refuted these pretended prophecies in his _Teatro Critico_. The Noveau Dictionnaire Historique, by MM. Chaudon and Delaudine, speaks of the "errors and anachronisms with which this impertinent list swarms." "The forgetfulness of common sense makes itself felt in a few pages. Those who have set themselves to explain these too noted insipidities, always find some allusion, forced or probable, in the country, name, arms, birth, talents of the popes, the cardinalatory dignities they had borne, etc.; _e. g._, the prophecy which related to Urban the Eighth was, _Lilium et Rosæ_." It was fulfilled to the very letter, say these absurd interpreters, for that pope had in his coat of arms bees, which suck lilies and roses. (Art. Malachi and Wion.) III. Dr. Pusey proceeds to examine the process by which a prediction of _the conquest of Constantinople_ has been manufactured for the false prophet, Mohammed. "In the mosque of Sultan Mohammed the Second," says V. Hammer, "which was finished A. D. 1469, there stands, to the right of the main door, on a marble slab, on an azure field, in gold raised characters, the tradition of the prophet relating to Constantinople. 'They _will conquer_ Constantinople; and blessed the prince, blessed the army which shall fulfill this.'" (Constant v. d. Bosporos I. 393.) Or (as he renders more exactly in Gesch d. Osm. Reich, p. 523), "the best prince is he who conquers it, and the best army, his army." This tradition, being above eight centuries after Mohammed, has, of course, no value. It reappears in a different form in Ockley, the conquest being presupposed, rather than prophesied. Ockley says (History of Saracens, II. 128), "Mohammed having said, 'The sins of the first army which takes the city of the Cæsar are forgiven.'" Ockley referring only vaguely to Bokhari, who, early in the third century, after Mohammed selected 7,000 traditions which he held to be genuine, out of some 267,000, I applied to my friend, M. Reinaud, professor of Arabic at Paris, and member of the Institute, not doubting that with his large knowledge he would be able to point out to me the passage in the _Sahih_. This, with his well-known kindness, he has done, amid his many labors. It puts an end to all questions about prophecy. The passage is this: As Omm Heram has related to us that she heard the prophet say, "The first army of my people which shall war by sea will acquire merits with God, Omm Heram said, 'I said, O Apostle of God, I will be among them.' He said, 'Thou shalt be among them.' Then the prophet said, 'The first army of my people which shall attack the city of the Cæsar, their sins shall be forgiven them.' Then I said, 'I will be with them, O Apostle of God.' He said, 'No!'" M. Reinaud adds, "There is no question but that Mohammed conceived the idea of the invasion of the Roman Empire, and of the kingdom of Persia by his disciples. He himself shortly before his death tried his strength against the Roman forces in Syria. But the passage does not say what Ockley makes him say. It does not say that Constantinople would be taken." The other prophecy referred to by Von Hammer is as follows: "Have you heard of a city of which one side is land, the two others sea? They said, 'Yea, O Apostle of God.' He said, 'The last hour will not come without its being conquered by 70,000 sons of Isaac. When they come to it they will not fight against it with weapons and engines of war, but with the word, There is no god but God, and God is great!' Then will one side of the sea walls fall; and at the second time the second; and at the third time the wall on the land side; and they will enter in with gladness." The framer of this prophesy expected the walls of Constantinople to fall like those of Jericho, which he must have had in mind. He expected it to fall before Arabs, "sons of Isaac," not before Turks. * * * Yet, contrary to the expectation, and the prophecy, it did fall before the Turks, after having been seven times besieged by the Arabs, and four times by the Turks; by whom it was taken A. D. 1453. The framer of the prediction anticipated that the representatives of the followers of the prophet would be Arabs to some indefinite period, near the last hour; he expected a miraculous destruction of Constantinople; it was besieged seven times by those before whose war-cry he expected it to fall. It did not fall before those before whom he said it would fall; it fell in an ordinary way, not in that predicted; it was besieged in the way in which he said it would not be besieged; lastly, it fell, but its walls fell not. _Every detail of the prediction is contrary to the fact._ As for the mere capture, it befalls all great cities in turn; so that a prediction of the capture of any great city would be the safest of all prophecies. But the prediction did not anticipate, what is now certain, that as soon as Christian jealousies permit, before the end of the world, it will be wrested from its captors. IV. The legend of Romulus and the vultures, and the falsehood of the prediction based upon it, have been exposed on a previous page. V. In regard to Seneca's alleged prediction of the discovery of America, it was exceedingly vague; and was wholly based on the undoubted knowledge of its existence by the ancient Egyptians, and by Plato, Proclus, Marcellus, Ammianus, Marcellinus, Diodorus, Aristotle, and Plutarch; whose assertions influenced Columbus to undertake the search for it. Nothing could be more certain than that such a continent would be rediscovered. But in the only indication which Seneca gives us of its location he erred; for Thule is still the utmost land northward, no new continent having been discovered, nor remaining to be discovered, toward the North Pole. VI. As to the heathen oracles we have already spoken enough. VII. "The anticipation of Shakespeare by Plato amounts to this, that he makes Socrates compel his friends to admit, 'that it belongs to the same man, how to compose comedy and tragedy, and that he who is by skill a composer of tragedies is also a composer of comedies.' (Sympos fin.) * * * But it is mere confusion to speak of this as _anticipation_. Plato does not say that there would be any greater combination of the two talents than there had been; he does not even say that the highest excellence in one involved excellence in the other; he simply says that the two faculties belonged to the same mind. According to his maxims, if true, it would be rather marvelous that they were not more frequently combined than that they were remarkably in one mind." VIII. "Those best read in Dante are at a loss to find in him any trace of a prediction of the Reformation. Dante, with his firm faith in all Roman doctrine, could not have imagined or anticipated such a disruption as Luther's. Dean Stanley corrects an unimportant misprint or two in the second edition of his book, on the ground of the above statements. He does not even attempt to supply a passage from Dante. I have looked for one in vain." Yet such a collection of errors, absurdities, falsehoods, and impostures is gravely presented, in this nineteenth century, by a learned clergyman, as comparable in regard to exact fulfillment with the oracles of God. It is not intended here to discuss the question of the continuance of prophetic powers in the Church. If, as many believe, the promise in Joel ii. 28--"It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, that your sons and your daughters shall prophesy," etc.--is a promise not yet exhausted, predictions given by the Holy Spirit may have been given through Christians in former times, and may still be given. But if such be the fact, these are not secular predictions; but spiritual and supernatural, and of the same class with those of Scripture; they are therefore not to be cited by Rationalists as examples of secular prediction. But it is objected that "the prophecies of Scripture are as obscure as the oracles; are all wrapped up in symbolical language; that many of them have a double meaning; that no two interpreters are agreed as to the meaning of the unfulfilled predictions; and that no man can certainly foretell any future event by means of them." The objection proceeds on a total mistake of the nature and design of prophecy, which is not to unvail the future for the gratification of your curiosity, but to give you direction in your present duty; precisely the reverse of the oracles referred to, which proposed to tell their votaries what should happen, but rarely condescended to direct them how to behave themselves so that things might happen well. The larger part of the prophecies of Scripture is taken up with directions to men how to regulate their conduct, rather than with information how God means to regulate his. There is just as much of the latter as is sufficient to show us that the God who gave the Bible governs the world, and even that always urges the same moral lesson: "Say ye to the righteous that it shall be well with him, for he shall eat the fruit of his doings." "Woe to the wicked; it shall be ill with him, for the reward of his hands shall be given him." Whenever a vision relates to what God will do in the distant future, it is dark and mysterious; but whenever any directions are given necessary for our immediate duty, then the "vision is written and made plain on tables, _that he may run that readeth it_." The possessors of a clearly engrossed title-deed have surely no reason to complain that the president has chosen that his seal appended to it shall consist of a device, which, by reason of its being hard to read, and harder to imitate, secures both himself and them against forgery. The double meaning of some prophecies is a double check. So far from resembling the equivocations of heathen oracles, by taking either of two opposite events for a fulfillment, they require both of two corresponding ones; and some prophecies, like a master key, open several successive events, and thus show that the same mind planned both locks and key. When the prediction is fulfilled all mystery vanishes, and men see plainly that thus it was written; that is to say, men who look; for the man who will not open his eyes will never see anything that it concerns him to know. But the man who thinks that it concerns him so much to know what God will do with the world a hundred years after he is dead, that unless the prophecies of the Bible are all made plain to him, he will neither read God's word, nor obey his law, may go on his own way. We expound no mysteries to such persons; for it is written, "None of the wicked shall understand." As to the objection taken from the symbolical language of prophecy, and which seems to a number of our modern critics so weighty that they remove to the purely mythologic ground everything "couched in symbolical language," and account nothing to be prediction unless "literal history written in advance"--I would merely ask, How is it possible to reveal heavenly things to earth-born men but by earthly figures? Do you know a single word in your own, or any other language to express a spiritual state, or mental operation, that is not the name of some material state, or physical operation, used symbolically? Heart, soul, spirit, idea, memory, imagination, inclination, etc., every one of them a figure of speech--a symbol. Nay, is there a letter in your own, or in any other alphabet, that was not originally a picture of something? I demand to know in what way God or man could teach you to know anything you have never seen, but by either showing you a picture of it, or telling you what it is like? That is simply by type or symbol; these are the only possible media of conveying heavenly truth, or future history to our minds. When, therefore, the skeptic insists that prophecy be given literally, in the style of history written in advance, he simply requires that God would make it utterly unintelligible. We can gather clear and definite ideas from the significant hieroglyphics of symbolical language, but the literalities of history written in advance would be worse to decipher than the arrow-headed inscriptions of Nineveh. Just imagine to yourself Alexander the Great reading Guizot, instead of Daniel; or Hildreth, as being less mysterious than Ezekiel; and meeting, for instance, such a record as this: "In the year of Christ, 1847, the United States conquered Mexico and annexed California." "In the year of Christ--what new Olympiad may be that?" he would say. "The United States of course means the States of the Achæn League, but on what shore of the Euxine may Mexico and California be found?" What information could Aristotle gather from the record that, "In 1857, the Transatlantic Telegraph was in operation?" Could all the augurs in the seven-hilled city have expounded to Julius Cæsar the famous dispatch, if intercepted in prophetic vision, "Sebastopol was evacuated last night, after enduring for three days an infernal fire of shot and shell?" Nay, to diminish the vista to even two or three centuries, what could Oliver Cromwell, aided by the whole Westminster Assembly, have made of a prophetic vision of a single newspaper paragraph of history written in advance, to inform them that, "Three companies of dragoons came down last night from Berwick to Southampton, by a special train, traveling 54-1/2 miles an hour, including stoppages, and embarked immediately on arrival. The fleet put to sea at noon, in the face of a full gale from the S. W.?" Why, the intelligible part of this single paragraph would seem to them more impossible, and the unintelligible part more absurd, than all the mysterious symbols of the Apocalypse. The world has accepted God's symbols thousands of years ago, and it is too late in the day for our reformers to propose new laws of thought, and forms of speech, to the human race. David's prophetic lyrics, Christ's graphic parables, Isaiah's celestial anthems, Ezekiel's glorious symbols, and Solomon's terse proverbs, will be recited and admired, ages after the foggy abstractions of mystified metaphysicians have vanished from the earth. The Thirst of Passion, the Cup of Pleasure, the Fountain of the Water of Life, the Blood of Murder, the Rod of Chastisement, the Iron Scepter, the Fire of Wrath, the Balance of Righteousness, the Sword of Justice, the Wheels of Providence, the Conservative Mountains, the Raging Seas of Anarchy, and the Golden, Brazen, and Iron Ages, will reflect their images in truth's mirror, and photograph their lessons on memory's tablet, while the mists of the "positive philosophy," "the absolute," and "the conditioned," float past unheeded, to the land of forgetfulness. God's prophetic symbols are the glorious embodiments of living truths, while man's philosophic abstractions are the melancholy ghosts of expiring nonsense. The prophetic symbols are sufficiently plain to be distinctly intelligible _after_ the fulfillment, as we shall presently see; sufficiently obscure to baffle presumptuous curiosity before it. Had they been so written as to be fully intelligible beforehand, they must have interfered with man's free agency, by causing their own fulfillment. They hide the future sufficiently to make man feel his ignorance; they reveal enough to encourage faith in the God who rules futurity. The revelation of future events, however, is not the principal design of the prophecies of the Bible; they bear witness to God's powerful present influence over the world now. For God's prophecy is not merely his foretelling something which will certainly happen at some future time, but over which he has no control--as an astronomer foretells an eclipse of the sun, but can neither hasten nor hinder it--but it is his revealing of a part of his plan of this world's affairs, to show that God, and not man, is the sovereign of this world. For this purpose he tells beforehand the actions which wicked men, of their own free will, will commit, contrary to his law, and the measures he will take to thwart their designs, and fulfill his own. Nay, he declares he will so manage matters that, without their knowledge, and even contrary to their intentions, heathen armies, and infidel scoffers shall serve his purposes, and show his power; while yet they are as perfectly voluntary in all their movements as if they, and not God, governed the world. Every fulfilled prophecy thus becomes an instance and evidence of a supernatural government; and is, to a thinking mind, a greater miracle than casting mountains into the sea. The style of prophecy corresponds to this design. It is not by any means apologetic, or supplicating; but, on the contrary, majestic, convincing, and terrifying to the ungodly. "_Remember this and show yourselves men. Bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors. For I am God, and there is none else. I am God, and there is none like me. Declaring the end from the beginning, And from, ancient times the things that are not yet done, Saying_, 'MY COUNSEL SHALL STAND, AND I WILL DO ALL MY PLEASURE.'"[83] Infidels feel the power of this manifestation of God in his word; and are driven to every possible denial of the fact, and evasion of the argument drawn from it. They feel instinctively that Bible prophecies are far more than mere predictions. They would rather endow every human being on earth with the power of predicting the future than allow the God of heaven that power of ruling the present which these prophecies assert. Hence the attempt to admit their predictive truth, and yet deny their divine authority, by ascribing them to human sagacity. Transatlantic steam navigation has produced a remarkable change in the tone of Infidel writers and speakers in regard to the prophecies of the Bible. You could not converse long with an Infidel on this subject, a few years ago, until he would assure you, with all confidence, that the prophecies were all written after their fulfillment, and so were not prophecies at all. But now that travelers of all classes, scoffers, sailors, and doctors in divinity, scientific expeditions, and correspondents of daily papers, have flooded the world with undeniable attestations that many of them are receiving their fulfillment at this day, none but the most grossly ignorant and stupid attempt to deny that the prophecies of the Bible were written thousands of years since, and that many of them have since been accomplished; and that so many have been fulfilled that their accomplishment can not be ascribed to chance. But the force of the argument for the divine inspiration of the prophets is met by the assertion, that there is nothing supernatural in prophecy, and that it is only one form of the inspiration of genius applying the general laws of nature. Calculating securely on that profound ignorance of the Bible which characterizes their followers, modern writers inform them that "none of the prophets ever uttered any distinct, definite, unambiguous prediction of any future event which has since taken place, which a man without a miracle could not equally well predict." It is alleged that the prophecies, in predicting the overthrow of the nations of antiquity, predicted nothing beyond the ken of human sagacity, enlightened by a careful study of the experience of the past, and the invariable laws of nature; that it requires no inspiration to foretell the decay of perishing things; that the invariable progress of all things, empires as well as individuals, is first upward, through a period of youthful vigor and energy, then onward through a period of ripe maturity, and then downward, through a gradual decay, and final dissolution, to the inevitable grave. The world's history is but a history of the decline and fall of nations. 1. Now, if this be true, it is an awful truth for the Infidel, for _it sweeps away the last vestige of a foundation of his hope for eternity_. The only reason any unbeliever in Revelation could ever give, or that modern Rationalists do give, for their hope of a happy eternity, is the analogy of nature--the alleged constant progress of all things toward perfection in this world. It is an awkward truth that individually we must die, and the worms crawl over us; but then the wretched fate of the individual was to be compensated by the glorious progress of the race onward and ever onward and upward; from the fungus to the frog, and from the frog to the monkey, from the monkey to the man, from the noble savage wild in woods, to the pastoral tribe, thence to the empire and the federal republic, and finally to the reign of individual and passional attraction, and union with the sum of all the intelligences of the universe, through a constant progress toward infinite perfection. But, alas! it seems it was a false analogy, an ill-observed fact, a delusion; the course of nature is all the other way. The tendency of all perishing things is not to perfection, but to perdition; and it needs no inspiration to tell that man's loftiest towers, and strongest cities, and proudest empires will come to ruin; or that the most polished, powerful, and populous nations of antiquity will dwindle down into Turks, Moors, and Egyptians. Here is a fact of awful omen. Death reigns in this world of ours; death moral, social, political, and physical, has ever trampled upon man, proud man, learned man, civilized man, over all the plans of man, over every man, and over every association of men, even the largest, the widest, the mightiest. And now the Infidel, having taken away our hope of help from heaven, comes with the serpent's hiss, and fiendish sneer, to taunt the perishing world with this miserable truism--that the tendency of everything on earth is to perdition, and that it needs no inspiration to tell it. Truly it does not. Were that all the prophets of God had to tell us--as it is all the prophets of Infidelity can prophecy--we had as little need for the one as for the other. Earthquake and hurricane, volcano and valley flood, autumn frosts and winter blasts, fever, consumption, war, and pestilence, the grave-yard and the charnel-house, the Parthenon and the Pyramids, the silent cities of Colorado, and the buried palaces of Assyria, unite to attest this awful doom. But what reason has the skeptic to believe that this invariable law of nature shall ever be repealed, and this inevitable progress of all things to perdition be arrested? Why may not men be as selfish, and filthy, and grasping, and murderous in the other world, as they are in this? Why may not the course of nature be as fatal to the sinner's prosperity there as it is here? Why may not the progress of the proud empires and spheres of futurity be such as the skeptic declares the progress of the past to have been, so invariably toward dissolution and death, that it shall need no inspiration to predict its course downward, downward, ever downward, to endless perdition? Stand forward, skeptic, and point the world to an instance in which an ungodly nation has stemmed this all-destroying torrent of ruin; or acknowledge that all you can promise the nations of the world to come, from your experience of the invariable laws of nature, is _perdition, endless perdition_. 2. It is manifest, however, that this destruction of nations and desolation of empires must have had a beginning some time or other. Nations could not perish before they had grown, nor empires be destroyed till they had accumulated; and during all this period of their growth and vigor the experience of mankind would never lead them to predict their ruin. The sagacious observer, beholding Babylon, Nineveh, Damascus, and Tyre, growing and flourishing during a period of a thousand years past, could have had no reason from such an experience to expect anything else than a thousand years of prosperity to come. Especially impossible is it for human sagacity, enlightened by experience, to predict _unexampled_ desolations, destructions such as the world had never witnessed. _Now the predictions of the Bible are predictions of unexampled desolations, and unparalleled ruin of empires._ The desolation of any extensive region of the earth, or the overthrow of any great nation, was an event absolutely unknown to the world when the prophets of the Bible began to utter their predictions; unless the skeptic will allow the truth of the Bible record of the prediction and execution of the deluge, and the destruction of Sodom. War and conquest had indeed caused some provinces to change masters; one nation had made marauding invasions on others, and carried off cattle and slaves; but the result of the greatest military operation of which we have any record, at the commencement of the prophetic era--the conquest of Palestine by the Israelites--so far from desolating the region, or exterminating the people, had been merely to increase its productiveness, and to drive its former occupants to new settlements, where at that era they were fully able to cope with their former conquerors. Whatever the experience of thirty centuries may have since taught the nations concerning the certainty of the connection between national crime and national ruin, a long-suffering God had not then given any such signal examples of it, as those of which he gave warning by the prophets. The course of the nations and cities founded after the deluge had been regularly onward and prosperous, and they were just rising to the maturity of their power and splendor when Jonah, Micah, Hosea, and Isaiah, began to pronounce their sentences. They denounced desolation and solitude against nations more populous than this continent, one of whose cities enumerated more citizens than some of our proud commonwealths, and displayed buildings, a sight of whose crumbling ruins is deemed sufficient recompense for the perils of a journey of six thousand miles. The hundred churches of Cincinnati could all have been conveniently arranged in the basement of the temple of Belus; on the first floor our hundred thousand non-church-going citizens might have assembled to listen to a lecture on spiritualism from some eloquent Chaldean soothsayer; and the remaining seven stories would have still been open for the accommodation of the natives of the original Queen City. Every product of earth was trafficked in the markets of Tyre; a single Jewish house imported annually more gold than all the banks of this continent possess; and the whole coinage of the United States since 1793 would want a hundred millions of dollars of the value of the golden furniture of a single temple in Babylon. In fact, in the suburbs of Babylon or Nineveh, Washington or Cincinnati would have been insignificant villages; and the stone-fronted brick palaces of Broadway and the Fifth Avenue would make passable stables and haylofts for the mansions of Thebes or Petra. So far, therefore, from being the teaching of experience, there was nothing more utterly unexampled and unparalleled than the complete desolation of any nation at the time the prophets of Israel predicted such things. If the world has grown wiser since regarding the decline and fall of empires, it has gathered the best part of its sagacity from the prophecies. The degradation of the seed of Ham, and the colonization of Asia by the descendants of Japhet, were however undeniably predicted by Noah long before any examples or experiences of such things had occurred. Centuries after the degradation of Canaan had been predicted, his descendants were powerful, prosperous, and colonizing the shores of the world. But God foresaw, and compelled their ancestor to foretell, the corruption of the blood which would reduce his descendants to be servants of servants to their brethren; and now the ruins of their cities, and of the people descended from Canaan, are proverbial alike in the libraries and slave markets of the world. But on the other hand, the colonization of the world by the descendants of Japhet was as particularly predicted by Noah as the degradation of the Canaanites; and this can not be called a prediction of destruction, but rather of great prosperity: "God shall enlarge Japhet." Every emigrant ship which discharges its cargo at New York, and every new prairie farm in America, and every sheep ranch in Australia, and every new cattle kraal in South Africa fulfills the prediction: "He shall dwell in the tents of Shem." The various Greek, Roman, English, and Russian Empires of Asia attest the truth. From the Volga to the Amour, and from Hong Kong to Singapore, and from the Ganges to the Indus, Japhet to-day dwells in the tents of Shem. 3. The prophecies of the Bible are not vague general denunciations of natural decline and extinction to all the nations of the world, which, if they were merely the exposition of a universal _natural_ law of national death, they would be; nor yet the application of any such natural and inevitable law to some particular nation, denouncing its destruction, without any specification of time, manner, instrument, or cause of its infliction. They are all the applications of _moral law_--sentences pronounced on account of national wickedness. In every case the prophecy charges the crimes, and specifies the punishment, selected by the Judge of all the earth. The nations selected as examples of divine justice are as various as their sentences are different; covering a space as long as from Eastport to San Francisco, and climes as various as those between Canada and Cuba; peopled by men of every shade of color and degree of capacity, from the negro servant of servants, to the builders of the Coliseum, and the Pyramids. They minutely describe, in their own expressive symbols, the nations yet unfounded, and kings unborn, who should ignorantly execute the judgments of the Lord. They predict the futures of over thirty States, _no two of which are alike_; each prediction embracing a large number of minute particulars, any one of which was utterly beyond the range of human sagacity. To predict that a man will die may require no great sagacity; but to tell the year of his death, that he will die as a criminal, allege the crime for which he will be sentenced, the time, place, and manner of his execution, and the name of the sheriff who will execute the sentence, is plainly beyond the skill of man. Such is the character of Bible predictions. Zedekiah's sentence was thus pronounced; and thus, too, the sentences of nations doomed to ruin for their crimes are recorded in the Bible, that men may know that the mouth of the Lord hath spoken them. If, for instance, a prophet should declare that New York should be overturned, and become a little fishing village, and that her stones and timber, and her very dust, should be scraped off and thrown into the East River; that Philadelphia should become a swamp, and never be inhabited, from generation to generation; that Columbus should be deserted, and become a hog-pen; that Louisville should become a dry, barren desert; and New Orleans be utterly consumed with fire, and never be built again; that learning should depart from Boston, and no travelers ever pass through it any more; that New England should become the basest of the nations, and no native American ever be President of the Union, but that it should be a spoil and a prey to the most savage tribes; and that the Russians should tread Washington under foot for a thousand years; but that God would preserve Pittsburg in the midst of destruction--and if all these things should come to pass, would any man dare to deny that the prophet spake not the dictates of human sagacity, or the calculations of genius, but the words of God? To attempt to illustrate the divine wisdom displayed in a system of connected predictions, covering the destiny of the nations of the world, and extending from the dawn of history to the end of time, by presenting two or three instances of the fulfillment of specific predictions, would be something like exhibiting a fragment of a column as a monument of the skill of the architect of a temple; yet, as such a fragment may excite the curiosity of the traveler to visit the structure whence it was taken, I shall present two or three prophecies in which specific predictions are given, concerning the _geographical, political, social, and religious condition_ of three of the great nations of antiquity--_Egypt, Judea, and Babylon_--the fulfillment of which is spread over the surface of empires and the ruins of cities, patent to all travelers at the present hour, and abundantly attested in many volumes.[84] Could human sagacity have calculated that Egypt--the most defensible country in the world, bounded on the south by inaccessible mountains, on the east by the Red Sea, on the west by the trackless, burning desert; able to defend the mouths of her river with a powerful navy, and to drown an invading army every year by the inundation of the Nile; which had not only maintained her independence, but extended her conquests for a thousand years past, whose victorious king, Apries, had just sent an expedition against Cyprus, besieged and taken Gaza and Sidon, vanquished the Tyrians by sea, mastered Phoenicia and Palestine, and boasted that not even a god could deprive him of his possessions--Egypt, which had given arts, sciences, and idolatry to half the world, and which had not risen to the full height of its world-wide fame, or the extent of its influence for twenty-five years after the prediction[85]--that Egypt should be invaded, conquered, spoiled, become a prey to strangers and evermore to strangers, never have a native prince, sink into barbarism, renounce idolatry, and become famous for her desolations? Yet the Bible predictions are specific on all these matters: "_I will make the rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of the wicked: and I will make the land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers: I the Lord have spoken it. Thus saith the Lord God; I will also destroy the idols, and I will cause the images to cease out of Noph; and there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt._"[86] Let Infidels read the fulfillment of these predictions, as described by Infidels: "Such is the state of Egypt. Deprived twenty-three centuries ago of her natural proprietors, she has seen her fertile fields successively a prey to the Persians, the Macedonians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Georgians, and at length the race of Tartars distinguished by the name of the Ottoman Turks. The Mamelukes, purchased as slaves and introduced as soldiers, soon usurped the power and selected a leader. If their first establishment was a singular event, their continuance is not less extraordinary; they are replaced by slaves brought from their original country."[87] Says Gibbon: "A more unjust and absurd constitution can not be devised than that which condemns the natives of the country to perpetual servitude under the arbitrary dominion of strangers and slaves. Yet such has been the state of Egypt about five hundred years. The most illustrious sultans of the Baharite and Beyite dynasties were themselves promoted from the Tartar and Circassian bands; and the four and twenty beys, or military chiefs, have ever been succeeded, not by their sons, but by their servants."[88] Mehemet Ali cut off the Mamelukes, but still Egypt is ruled by the Turks, and the present ruler (Ibrahim Pasha) is a foreigner. It is needless to remind the reader that the idols are cut off. Neither the nominal Christians of Egypt, nor the iconoclastic Moslem, allow images to appear among them. The rivers, too, are drying up. In one day's travel forty dry water-courses will be crossed in the Delta; and water-skins are needed now around the ruined cities whose walls were blockaded by Greek and Roman navies. "_It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations: for I will diminish them, that they shall no more bear rule over the nations._"[89] Every traveler will attest the truth of this prediction. The wretched peasantry are rejoiced to labor for any who will pay them five cents a day, and eager to hide the treasure in the ground from the rapacious tax-gatherer. I have seen British horses refuse to eat the meal ground from the mixture of wheat, barley, oats, lentiles, millet, and a hundred unknown seeds of weeds and collections of filth, which forms the produce of their fields. For poverty, vermin, and disease, Egypt is proverbial. Let us hear a scoffer's testimony, however: "In Egypt there is no middle class, neither nobility, clergy, merchants, nor landholders. A universal air of misery in all the traveler meets points out to him the rapacity of oppression, and the distrust attendant upon slavery. The profound ignorance of the inhabitants equally prevents them from perceiving the causes of their evils, or applying the necessary remedies. Ignorance, diffused through every class, extends its effects to every species of moral and physical knowledge. Nothing is talked of but intestine troubles, the public misery, pecuniary extortions, and bastinadoes."[90] The objector perhaps will allege in extenuation the modern improvements now in progress, the Suez Canal, the railroads, the steamboats on the Nile, the bridge across the Nile at Cairo, and the sugar and cotton plantations. But if these were as evident tokens of progress in Egypt, as they would be in America, they would not in the least invalidate the facts of the past degradation of Egypt for centuries. But these speculations of the Khedive are of no advantage to the people; rather, on the contrary, do they afford him additional opportunities of exacting forced labor from the miserable peasants. I have seen the population of several villages, forced to leave their own fields in the spring, to march down to an old, filthy canal, near Cairo, and almost within sight of the gate of the palace, men, and women, and little boys, and girls, like those of our Sabbath-schools, scooping up the stinking mud and water with their hands, into baskets, carrying them on their heads up the steep bank, beaten with long sticks by the taskmasters to hasten their steps; while steam dredges lay unused within sight. Egypt is still the basest of the nations. Here, then, we have conclusive proof of the fulfillment at this day of four distinct, specific, and improbable Bible predictions: concerning the country, the rulers, the religion, and the people of Egypt. Let us note now a distinct and totally different judgment pronounced against the transgressors of another land. Pre-eminent in inflicting destruction on others, her retribution was to be extreme. Degradation and slavery were to be the portion of the learned Egyptians, but utter extinction is the doom of mighty Babylon. It is written in the Bible concerning the land where the farmer was accustomed to reap two hundred-fold: "_Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleth the sickle in the time of harvest. * * * Every purpose of the Lord shall be performed against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a desolation without an inhabitant. * * * Behold the hindermost of the nations shall be a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert. * * * Because of the wrath of the Lord it shall not be inhabited, but it shall be wholly desolate._"[91] Proofs in abundance of the fulfillment of these predictions present themselves in every volume of travels in Assyria and Chaldea. "Those splendid accounts of the Babylonian lands yielding crops of grain of two and three hundred fold, compared with the modern face of the country, afford a remarkable proof of the _singular desolation_ to which it has been subjected. The canals at present can only be traced by their decayed banks. The soil of this desert consists of a hard clay, mixed with mud, which at noon becomes so heated with the sun's rays, that I found it too hot to walk over it with any degree of comfort."[92] "That it was at some former period in a far different state is evident from the number of canals by which it is traversed, now dry and neglected; and the quantity of heaps of earth, covered with fragments of brick and broken tiles, which are seen in every direction--the indisputable traces of former cultivation."[93] "The abundance of the country has vanished as clean away as if the besom of desolation had swept it from north to south; the whole land, from the outskirts of Babylon to the farthest stretch of sight, lying a melancholy waste. _Not a habitable spot appears for countless miles._"[94] As the desolation of the country was to be extraordinary, so the desolation of the city of Babylon was to be remarkable. When the prophet wrote, its walls had been raised to the height of three hundred and fifty feet, and made broad enough for six chariots to drive upon them abreast. From its hundred brazen gates issued the armies which trampled under foot the liberties of mankind, and presented their lives to the nod of a despot, who slew whom he would, and whom he would allowed to live. Twenty years' provisions were collected within its walls, and the world would not believe that an enemy could enter its gates. Nevertheless, the prophets of God pronounced against it a doom of destruction as extraordinary as the pride and wickedness which procured it. Tyre, the London of Asia, was to _become a place for the spreading of nets_,[95] and the Infidel Volney tells us its commerce had declined to _a trifling fishery_; but even that implies some few resident inhabitants. Rabbah, of Ammon, was to become _a stable for camels and a couching place for flocks_.[96] Lord Lindsay reports that "he could not sleep amidst its ruins for the bleating of sheep, that the dung of camels covers the ruins of its palaces, and that the only building left entire in its Acropolis is used as a sheepfold."[97] Yet sheepfolds imply that the tents of their Arab owners are near, and that some human beings would occasionally reside near its ruins. But desolation, solitude, and utter abandonment to the wild beasts of the desert is the specific and clearly predicted doom of the world's proud capital. The most expressive symbols are selected from the desert to portray its desertion. "_Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there: but wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces._"[98] Every traveler attests the fulfillment of this strange prediction. "It is a tenantless and desolate metropolis," says Mignon; who, though fully armed, and attended by six Arabs, could not induce them by any reward to pass the night among its ruins, from the apprehension of evil spirits. So completely fulfilled is the prophecy, "_The Arabian shall not pitch his tent there._" The same voice which called camels and flocks to the palaces of Rabbah, summoned a very different class of tenants for the palaces of Babylon. Rabbah was to be a sheepfold, Babylon a menagerie of wild beasts; a very specific difference, and very improbable. One of the later Persian kings, however, after it was destroyed and deserted, repaired its walls, converted it into a vast hunting-ground, and stocked it with all manner of wild beasts; and to this day the apes of the Spice Islands, and the lions of the African deserts, meet in its palaces, and howl their testimony to the truth of God's Word. Sir R. K. Porter saw two majestic lions in the Mujelibe (the ruins of the palace), and Fraser thus describes the chambers of fallen Babylon: "There were dens of wild beasts in various places, and Mr. Rich perceived in some a strong smell, like that of a lion. Bones of sheep and other animals were seen in the cavities, with numbers of bats and owls." Various destructions were predicted for Babylon. "_I will make it a habitation for the bittern, and pools of water_,"[99] says one prophecy. "_Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness_,"[100] says another. How can such contradictions be true? says the scoffer. But the scoffer's contradiction is a fact. God can cause the most discordant agencies to agree in effecting his purpose. Babylon is alternately an overflowed swamp, from the inundations of the obstructed Euphrates, and an arid desert, under the scorching rays of an Eastern sun. Says Mignon: "Morasses and ponds tracked the ground in various places. For a long time after the subsiding of the Euphrates great part of this place is little better than a swamp." At another season it was "a dry waste and burning plain." Even at the same period, "one part on the western side is low and marshy, and another an arid desert."[101] Another, and widely different agent, to be employed in the destruction of the great center of tyranny and idolatry, is thus specifically and definitely indicated in the prediction: "_Behold, I am against thee, O destroying mountain, saith the Lord, which destroyest all the earth: and I will stretch out my hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain. And they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations; but thou shalt be desolate forever, saith the Lord._"[102] "There is one fact," says Fraser, "in connection with the most remarkable of these relics (the Birs Nimrod), which we can not dismiss without a few more observations. All travelers who have ascended the Birs have taken notice of the singular heaps of brick-work scattered on the summit of this mound, at the foot of the remnant of the wall still standing. To the writer they appeared the most striking of all the ruins. That they have undergone the most violent action of fire is evident from the complete vitrification which has taken place in many of the masses. Yet how a heat sufficient to produce such an effect could have been applied at such a height from the ground is unaccountable. They now lie on a spot elevated two hundred feet above the plain, and must have fallen from some much more lofty position, for the structure which still remains, and of which they may be supposed originally to have formed a part, bears no marks of fire. The building originally can not have contained any great proportion of combustible materials, and to produce so intense a heat by substances carried to such an elevation would have been almost impossible, for want of space to pile them on. Nothing, we should be inclined to say, short of the most powerful action of electric fire, could have produced the complete, yet circumscribed, fusion which is here observed. Although fused into a solid mass, the courses of bricks are still visible, identifying them with the standing pile above, but so hardened by the power of heat, that it is almost impossible to break off the smallest piece; and, though porous in texture, and full of air-holes and cavities, like other bricks, they require, on being submitted to the stone-cutter's lathe, the same machinery as is used to dress the hardest pebbles."[103] The doom of Nineveh, the great rival and predecessor of Babylon, was also predicted as the result of two apparently contradictory agencies--an overrunning flood and a consuming fire. But both these antagonistic elements conspired to devour her. The river, with an overrunning flood, swept away a large portion of the walls. The besiegers entered through the breach, and set the city on fire. The charcoal, burnt beans, and slabs of half-calcined alabaster, in the British Museum, demonstrate the fulfillment of the prediction. Egypt was to be reduced to slavery and degradation. Babylonia to utter barrenness and desolation; but a different and still more incredible doom is pronounced in the Bible upon Judea and its people. The land was to be emptied of its people, and remain uncultivated, retaining all its former fertility, while the people were to be scattered over all the earth, yet never to lose their distinct nationality, nor be amalgamated with their neighbors: "_I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savor of your sweet odors. And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. Then shall the land enjoy her Sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her Sabbaths._"[104] "_Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, and the Lord have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land. But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil-tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves._"[105] "_The generation to come, of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, * * * Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger?_"[106] It is superfluous to adduce proof of the undeniable and acknowledged fulfillment of these predictions, but as an example of the way in which God causes scoffers to fulfill the prophecies, let us again hear Volney: "I journeyed in the empire of the Ottomans, and traversed the provinces which were formerly the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria. I enumerated the kingdoms of Damascus and Idumea, of Jerusalem and Samaria. This Syria, said I to myself, now almost depopulated, then contained a hundred flourishing cities, and abounded with towns, villages, and hamlets. What has become of so many productions of the hand of man? What has become of those ages of abundance and of life? _Great God! from whence proceed such melancholy revolutions? For what cause is the fortune of these countries so strikingly changed? Why are so many cities destroyed?_ Why is not that ancient population reproduced and perpetuated? A mysterious God exercises his incomprehensible judgments. He has doubtless pronounced a secret malediction against the earth. He has struck with a curse the present race of men in revenge of past generations."[107] The malediction is no secret to any who will read the twenty ninth chapter of Deuteronomy; nor is the avenging of the quarrel of God's covenant confined to the sins of past generations. The philosopher who would understand the fates of cities and empires should read the prophecies. The Word of God specifies no less distinctly and definitely the destiny of the Jewish than of the Babylonian capital, but fixes on a widely different kind of destruction. Babylon was never to be built again, but devoted to solitude; busy Tyre to become a place for spreading nets; the caravans, which once brought the wealth of India through Petra, were to cease, and the doom was to "cut off him that passeth by and him that returneth." But Jerusalem, it was predicted, should long feel the miseries of a multitude of oppressors, should never enjoy the luxury of a solitary woe, but "_be trodden down of the Gentiles_."[108] Saracens, Tartars, Turks, and Crusaders, Gentiles from every nation of the earth, fulfilled the prediction of old, even as hosts of pilgrims from all parts of the earth do at this day. So minute and specific are the predictions of Scripture, that the fate of particular buildings is accurately defined. One temple to the living God, and only one, raised its walls in this world, which he had made for his worship. Its frequenters perverted it from its proper use of leading them to confess their sinfulness, to seek pardon through the promised Savior to whom its ceremonies pointed, and to learn to be holy, as the God of that temple was holy. They hoped that the holiness of the place would screen them in the indulgence of pride, formality, and wickedness. The temple of the Lord, instead of the Lord of the temple, was the object of their veneration. But the doom went forth. "_Therefore for your sakes shall Zion be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become as heaps, and the mountain of the house like the high places of the forest._" History has preserved, and the Jews to this day curse the name of the soldier, Terentius Rufus, who plowed up the foundations of the temple. It long continued in this state. But the Emperor Julian the Apostate conceived the idea of falsifying the prediction of Jesus, "_Behold your house is left unto you desolate_,"[109] and sent his friend Alypius, with a Roman army, and abundant treasure, to rebuild it. The Jews flocked from all parts to assist in the work. Spades and pickaxes of silver were provided by the vanity of the rich, and the rubbish was transported in mantles of silk and purple. But they were obliged to desist from the attempt, for "horrible balls of fire breaking out from the foundations with repeated attacks, rendered the place inaccessible to the scorched workmen, and the element driving them to a distance from time to time, the enterprise was dropped."[110] Such is the testimony of a heathen, confirmed by Jews and Christians. The inclosures of the mosque of Omar, forbidding them all access to the spot on which it stood, leave it desolate to the Jews to this day. I have seen them (in 1872) kissing a few large stones, supposed to belong to its foundations or sub-structures, from the outside; for which miserable privilege they were obliged to pay their oppressors. On approaching the spot from the Zion gate, right across Mount Zion to the temple ruins, our way lay through a plowed field of young barley, and gardens of cauliflowers hedged with enormous rows of cactus. To this day Zion is plowed as a field. 4. No sane man can believe that such minute and accurate predictions of various and improbable events could be the result of human calculations; yet there is another feature of the Bible prophesies still farther removed beyond the reach of human sagacity, and that is, remarkable and unaccountable _preservation amidst the general ruin_. If, as skeptics allege, destruction is the natural and inevitable doom, then preservation is supernatural and miraculous--a miracle of divine power controlling nature; and its prediction is a miracle of divine wisdom. Now the prophecies of the Bible contain several very definite, and widely different predictions of the preservation of people and cities from the general destruction. We shall refer in this case also to those of whose fulfillment there can be no manner of doubt, for the facts are palpable and undeniable at the present day. The prediction of the character and fate of the Arabs stands out a remarkable contrast to the predictions of the destruction of the surrounding nations. Of their ancestor, Ishmael, it was predicted: "He will be a wild man; his hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren."[111] The nomad and warlike habits of the sons of Ishmael are here distinctly predicted; and the singular anomaly which exempts them alone, of all the people of the earth, from the law, "They that take the sword, shall perish by the sword." The unconquered Arab laughs alike at the Persian, Greek, Roman, Turkish, and French invaders of his deserts, levies tribute on all who enter his territory, and dwells to-day, a free man, in the presence of all his brethren, as God foretold. Of the Israelitish nation God predicted, that it should be a peculiar, distinct people, separate from the other nations of the world: "_Lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations._"[112] In apparent contradiction to this separation, he further threatened to punish them for their sins, by dispersing them over the world: "_I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you._"[113] "_For lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the last grain fall upon the earth._"[114] It was further threatened, as if to make sure of their national destruction: "_And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shall have none assurance of thy life._"[115] Contrary to all appearances, and in spite of all this dispersion and persecution, it is predicted that Israel shall still exist as a nation, and be restored to the favor of God, and that prosperity which ever accompanies it: "_And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am the Lord their God._"[116] Here are four distinct predictions, of national peculiarity, universal dispersion, grievous oppression, and remarkable preservation. The fulfillment is obvious, and undeniable. You need no commentary to explain it. Go into any clothing-store on Western Row, or into the synagogue in Broadway, and you will see it. The Infidel is sorely perplexed to give any account of this great phenomenon. How does it happen that this singular people is dispersed over all the earth, and yet distinct and unamalgamated with any other? How does it happen that for eighteen hundred years they have resisted all the influences of nature, and all the customs of society, and all the powers of persecution, driving them toward amalgamation, and irresistible in all other instances? In the face of the power of the Chinese Empire, in spite of the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition, amid the chaos of African nationalities, and the fusion of American democracy, in the plains of Australia, and in the streets of San Francisco, the religion, customs, and physiognomy of the children of Israel are as distinct this day as they were three thousand years ago, when Moses wrote them in the Pentateuch, and Shishak painted them on the tombs of Medinet Abou. How does the Infidel account for it? It will not do to allege the favorite story about purity of blood and Caucasian race; for the question is, How does it happen that this people, and this people alone, have kept the blood pure; while all other races are so mingled that no other race can be found pure on earth? Besides, lest any should suppose such a cause sufficient for their preservation, another nation, descended from the same father and the same mother--the children of Jacob's twin brother--has utterly perished, and there is not any remaining of the house of Esau. Human sagacity, with all the facts before its face, can not give any rational account of the causes of this anomaly. It can not tell to-day why this people exists separate from, and scattered through all nations, from Kamschatka to New Zealand; how, then, could it foretell, three thousand years ago, this singular exception to all the laws of national existence? While the sun and moon endure, the nation of Israel shall exist as God's witness to God's word, an undeniable proof that the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. A very peculiar feature of the desolation of Israel was the _desolation_, but not the _destruction_ of the cities. In most cases of the desolations of war, the cities have been burned and the buildings destroyed. There is no shelter for man or beast in the mounds of rubbish which cover the ruined cities of Assyria. Where the buildings have not been destroyed, or have been rebuilt, they have again been inhabited; as we see in the cases of Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and many others. But on the cities of Israel it was written that God's curse should go forth "till the cities should be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be left utterly desolate." But for a long time the literal fulfillment of this prediction was not witnessed, as the cities on this side the Jordan had been mostly reduced to ruins. The richest and most populous part of the land, however, was the land of Bashan; where, in a territory of about thirty miles by twenty, sixty cities still remain standing to attest the wonderful fertility of the soil and industry of the people. "And though the vast majority of them are deserted, _they are not ruined_. * * * Many of the houses in the ancient cities of Bashan are perfect, as if only finished yesterday. The walls are sound, the roofs unbroken, the doors, and even the window shutters in their places."[117] From two hundred to five hundred houses have been found perfect in some of these cities; and from the roof of the Castle of Salcah, Dr. Porter counted thirty towns and villages dotting the plain, many of them perfect as when first built; "yet for more than five centuries there has not been an inhabitant in one of them." So sure is every word of God. Take another instance of preservation, so remarkable amid the surrounding destruction, that it arrested the attention and admiration of the author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, skeptic and scoffer though he was. The seven churches of seven of the most considerable cities of Asia were then, as the churches of Christ still are, the salt of the earth. Ten righteous men would have averted God's judgments from Sodom. Jesus pronounced the sentences of these churches seventeen hundred and sixty years ago, and the present condition of the cities attests the divine authority of the record containing them. They are various and specific. Three were to be utterly destroyed. Against two no special threatening is denounced. To the remaining two promises of life and blessing are given. Ephesus, famous for its magnificence, the busy avenue of travel, the seat of the temple of Diana, long the residence of an apostle, and afterward of Christian bishops--"one of the eyes of Asia"--as it stood first on the roll of cities, first receives the doom of abused privileges: "_I will remove thy candlestick out of its place, unless thou repent._" Says Gibbon: "The captivity and ruin of the seven churches of Asia was consummated (by the Ottomans) A. D. 1312; and the barbarous lords of Ionia and Lydia still trample on the monuments of classic and Christian antiquity. In the loss of Ephesus the Christians deplored the fall of the first angel, and the extinction of the first candlestick of the Revelation. _The desolation is complete_, and the temple of Diana or the church of Mary will equally elude the search of the curious traveler."[118] Since Gibbon's day the foundations of the temple have been discovered twelve to fourteen feet below the soil; but no church of Christ remains to illuminate the minds of the few squalid and lazy dwellers in the village of Aisayalouk. One cobbler's stall represented the whole manufacturing industry of Ephesus; and four boys playing a game like drafts, with pebbles, in front of it seemed the only public likely to patronize its theater, as I took note of its people and their occupations, in 1872. Then leaving the storks in their nests, on the top of the ruined arches of its great aqueduct, to proceed toward the ruins of the great theater, we tried in vain to procure horses or asses for the ladies; found the only road so filled with water from the recent rains as to be impassable, and were fain to plunge on foot through the plowed fields till we reached the elevation on which it was erected. Here we surveyed its rock-hewn seats, capable of accommodating an audience larger than that of all the theaters of New York; but there was no longer a voice to cry, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" The sea has forsaken the harbor, which is now a pestilential morass. We passed through the ruins of the custom-house, now miles inland, and found a single Turkish soldier on guard. The peasants who cultivate some parts of the plain come from distant villages, and fever, filth, and beggary reign in Ephesus. Had the twenty thousand patrons of the drama, in the thirty-one theaters of New York, honored the theater of Laodicea with their presence, its polite citizens would have accommodated them all on the reserved seats, retiring themselves to ten thousand less commodious sittings, and to two less gigantic theaters. While yet busy in the erection of their splendid places of public amusement, Jesus said, "_I will spew thee out of my mouth._" "The circus, and three stately theaters of Laodicea, are peopled with wolves and foxes," says Gibbon. The church was spewed out of Christ's mouth, and the city too. It has been overturned by earthquakes, and is now nothing but a series of magnificent ruins, from which, however, ample evidence may be collected of its former magnificence. Those of the aqueduct, the theater, and the amphitheater, are remarkable; in the latter an inscription has been found showing that it was in course of erection when the Lord dictated the warning to its people. But the warning was unheeded, and now the whole space inside the city walls is strewn with fragments of columns and pedestals. A Lydian capitalist once deposited in the vaults of Sardis more specie than is now in circulation in this whole continent. But Jesus said, "_Thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead. If, therefore, thou shalt not watch, I will come upon thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee._" "Sardis," says Gibbon, "is a miserable village." A later writer (Durbin) tells us that the Turks say, "Every one who builds a house in Sardis dies soon, and avoid the spot." Arundell, in his account of his visit to the seven churches, says: "If I were asked what impresses the mind most strongly on beholding Sardis, I should say, its indescribable _solitude_, like the darkness of Egypt, that could be felt. So deep the solitude of the spot, once the lady of kingdoms, produces a feeling of desolate abandonment in the mind which can never be forgotten." Connect this feeling with the message of the Apocalypse to the church of Sardis, "Thou hast a name that thou livest, and _art dead_, and then look around and ask, Where are the churches? Where are the Christians of Sardis? The tumuli beyond the Hermus reply, '_All dead!_'--suffering the infliction of the threatened judgment of God for the abuse of their privileges. Let the unbeliever, then, be asked, Is there no truth in prophecy?--no reality in religion?" Only twenty-seven miles north of this desolate metropolis, the manufactories of Thyatira dispatch weekly to Smyrna, cloths, as famous over Asia for the brilliancy and durability of their hues as those which Lydia displayed to the admiration of the ladies of Philippi. Two thousand two hundred Greek Christians, two hundred Armenian, and a Protestant Church under the care of the missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, assemble every Sabbath to commemorate the resurrection of Him who said to the church of Thyatira: "_I will put upon you no other burden; but that which ye have already hold fast till I come._" The fragrant citron (_Bergamot_) still flourishes around the birthplace of Galen; but the ruins of the famous library of 200,000 manuscripts are far less durable memorials of the city of booksellers than those beautifully dressed skins, which, taking their name (_Pergamena_) from the place of their manufacture, will preserve the name and fame of Pergamos as long as parchment can preserve man's memorials, or God's predictions. Though famous for fragrance, physic, and philosophy, Pergamos was infamous for idolatry, licentiousness, and persecution; yet still endeared to Jesus as the scene of the martyrdom of faithful Antipas, and the dwelling-place of a hidden church; and widely different sentences are recorded against those opposite classes. The public memorials are to perish, but the hidden word to endure. "The fanes of Jupiter and Diana, and Venus and Esculapius (worshiped under the symbol of a live snake), were prostrate in the dust, and where they had not been carried away by the Turks to cut up into tombstones or pounded into mortar, the Corinthian columns and the Ionic, the splendid capitals, the cornices and the pediments, all in the highest ornament, were thrown in unsightly heaps,"[119] is the comment on the threatening of Jesus, "_I will fight against them_--the idolaters--_with the sword of my mouth_." The 3,000 Greek and 300 Armenian Christians, and even the 10,000 Turkish inhabitants of the modern Pergamos, have received hundreds of copies of the promise, "_To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it._" But whether the hidden church of Pergamos shine forth or not, Gibbon was inaccurate in stating, in the face of facts, that "the god of Mohammed without a rival is invoked in the mosques of Pergamos and Thyatira." God's providence is as discriminating as his prophecy, though unbelief may overlook both. We have noted here instances of the prediction of remarkable destruction to Sardis, Ephesus, and Laodicea; of continued existence to Pergamos and Thyatira; let us now note a prediction of remarkable escape and preservation from the universal doom. If it requires no inspiration to prophecy destruction--the universal fate of humanity, according to the Infidel--surely it requires more than human skill to say that any city shall escape this universal fate, and more than human power to avert this destruction. Of Philadelphia, but twenty-five miles distant from the ruins of Sardis, Jesus said, and the Bible records the prophecy: "_I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I will also keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God; and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name._" "Philadelphia alone," says Gibbon, "has been saved by prophecy, or courage. At a distance from the sea, forgotten by the emperors, encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her valiant sons defended their religion and their freedom alone for fourscore years, and at length capitulated with the proudest of the Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies and churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect--_a column in a scene of ruins_--a pleasing example that the paths of honor and safety may be the same." In the pages of this eloquent writer it would be hard to discover another instance of unqualified hearty commendation of soldiers or sufferers for Christianity and liberty, such as Gibbon here bestows on Philadelphia's valiant sons. But it was written, "_I will make them come and worship before thy feet_," and the skeptic and scoffer must fulfill the word of Jesus; even as the unbelieving Mohammedan also does, when he writes upon it the modern name, Allah Sehr--_The City of God._ _A majestic solitary pillar_, of high antiquity, arrests the eye of the traveler, and reminds the worshipers in the six modern churches of Philadelphia of the beauty and faithfulness of the prophetic symbol. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but Jesus' word shall not pass away. Improbable to human sagacity as this preservation must have seemed, the resurrection of a fallen city is more utterly beyond man's vision. In the Bible, however, tribulation and recovery were foretold to Smyrna: "_Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life._" "The populousness of Smyrna is owing to the foreign trade of the Franks and Armenians," says the scoffer. No matter to what it is owing, he who dictated the Bible foresaw it, and made no mistake in foretelling it. Says Arundell: This, the other eye of Asia, is still a very flourishing commercial city, one of the very first in the present Turkish empire in wealth and population, containing 130,000 inhabitants. The continued importance of Smyrna may be estimated from the fact that it is the seat of a consul from every nation in Europe. The prosperity of Smyrna is now rather on the increase than the decline, and the houses of painted wood, which were most unworthy of its ancient fame and present importance, are rapidly giving way to palaces of stone rising in all directions; and, probably, ere many years have passed, the modern town may not unworthily represent the ancient city, which the ancients delighted to call the crown of Ionia. Commercial activity and architectural beauty, however, are but a small part of the glorious destiny of the community to which Jesus says, "I will give thee a crown of life." Mark Twain suggests that the prophecy refers to the church, rather than to the city; but forgets to remind us that the Church of Christ is well represented and crowned with life in Smyrna. God's predictions regard the vital part of communities, the spiritual forces; these, vigorous and outspreading, secure the material progress. Close the Bible House, printing presses, and schools of America, and real estate would not be worth much more than in Asia. The Lord Christ rules this world. His blessing has revived both the church and the city of Smyrna, according to his promise. In 1872 I found its harbor busy with coasting craft and ocean steamers, and its railroad doing a brisk business. Smyrna is a live city. Deliverance from the curse of sin, and communion with the Lord of Life, alone can secure either a nation's or an individual's immortality. Smyrna possesses the gospel of salvation. Several devoted English and American missionaries proclaim salvation to its citizens. From its printing presses thousands of copies of the Word of Life issue to all the various populations of the Turkish Empire. A living Church of Christ in Smyrna holds forth, for the acceptance of the dying nations around her, that crown of life promised and granted by the Word of God, not to her only, but to all who love his appearing and his kingdom. 5. This is the grand distinction of God's word of prophecy, _that it is the Word of Life_. It is the only word which promises life, the only word which bestows it on fallen humanity. Recognizing no inevitable law of destruction but the sentence of God, no invariable law of nature superior to the counsel of Jehovah, nor any progress of events which his Almighty arm can not arrest and reverse, it points a despairing world to sin as the cause of all destruction, to Satan as the author of sin, to ungodly men in league with him as the foes of God and man, and to Christ pledged to perpetual warfare with such until the last enemy be destroyed. This word of prophecy tells us, that the battle-fields Messiah has won are earnests of that great victory; points to the columns which he has preserved erect amid scenes of ruin, as assurances that he is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him; goes to the graveyards where fallen Smyrnas, idolatrous Saxons, debased Sandwich Islanders, and cannibal New Zealanders have buried the image of the living God, and in Jesus' name proclaims, "_I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live_;" and, amid the very ruins of destroyed cities, and the crumbling heaps of their perished memorials, beholds the assurances that Satan's rule of ruin shall not be perpetual, anticipates the day when the course of sin and misery shall be reversed, and teaches Adam's sons to face the foe, and chant forth that heaven-born note of victorious faith, "_Oh, thou enemy! destructions are come to a perpetual end._" Come forth, trembling skeptic, from the cave of thy dark invariable experience of death and destruction, and from the vain sparks of thy misgiving hopes of an ungodly eternity to come less miserable than the past, and lift thine eyes to this heavenly sunrising on the dark mountain tops of futurity, the like of which thou didst never dream of in all thy Pantheistic reveries. Search over all the religions of the world--the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the arrow-headed inscriptions of Assyria, the classic mythologies of graceful Greece and iron Rome, the monstrous shasters of thine Indian Pundits, or the more chaotic clouds of thy German philosophies--in none of them wilt thou ever find this divine thought, _an end of destructions--a perpetual end_. Cycles of ruin and renovation, and of renovation and ruin, vast cycles, if you will, but evermore ending in dire catastrophies to gods and men--an everlasting succession of death and destructions--is the fearful vista which all the religions of man, and thine own irreligion, present to thy terrified vision. But thou wast created in the image of the living God, and durst not rest satisfied with any such prospect. Now I come in the name of the Lord to tell thee, that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him _should not perish, but have everlasting life_;" and I demand of thee that thou acknowledge this promise of life everlasting to be the word of that living God, and to show cause, if any thou hast, why thou dost relinquish thy birthright, and spurn the gift of everlasting life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord? But, if thou hast no sufficient cause why thou shouldest choose death rather than life, then hear, and your soul shall live, while I relate the promise which God hath made of old to our fathers, and hath fulfilled to us, their children, by raising up his Son, Jesus Christ, from the dead, and sending him to bless you, by turning away every one of you from your iniquities. For there can be no deliverance from misery and destruction but by means of delivery from sin and Satan. It is quite in agreement with the manner of our deliverance from any of the evils of our fallen condition, that our deliverance from the power of sin and Satan be effected by the agency of a deliverer. Our ignorance is removed by the knowledge of a teacher, our sickness by the skill of a physician, the oppressed nation hails the advent of a patriotic leader, and oppressed humanity acknowledges the fitness and need of a divine Deliverer, even by the ready welcome it has given to pretenders to this character, and by the longing desire of the wisest and best of men for a divinely commissioned Savior; a desire implanted by the great prophecy, which stands at the portal of hope for mankind, in the very earliest period of our history, that "_the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head_," and so leave man triumphant over the great destroyer. The prophecies regarding the Messiah are so numerous, pointed, various, and improbable, as to set human sagacity utterly at defiance; while they are also connected so as to form a scheme of prophecy, which gradually unrolls before us the advent, the ministry, the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord, the progress of his gospel over all the world, and the blessed effects it should produce on individuals, families, and nations. It closes with a view of the second coming of Jesus to conquer the last of his enemies, and take possession of the earth as his inheritance. I can only lop off a twig or two from this blessed tree of life, in the hope that the fragrance of the leaves may allure you to take up the Bible, and eat abundantly of its life-giving promises. As I have in the previous chapters abundantly proved the veracity of the New Testament history, I shall now with all confidence refer to its account of the birth, life, and death of Jesus, as illustrating the prophecies. The time, the place, the manner of his birth, his parentage and reception, were plainly declared, hundreds of years before he appeared. When Herod had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born, and they said unto him, "In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet: _And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art not the least among the princes of Judah: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel._" The first verse of this chapter records the fact, "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea." The throne of Judah was to be occupied by strangers, and the line of native princes was to cease upon the coming of this Governor, and not till his coming: "_The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh shall come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be._" On the day of his crucifixion the rulers of the Jews made this formal and public announcement of the fact, "We have no king but Cæsar." He was to address a class of people whom no other religious teacher had condescended to notice before, and very few save those sent by Him ever since: "_The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek: he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound._" Hear Jesus' words: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, _and the poor have the gospel preached to them_. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me." Yet, notwithstanding his feeding of thousands, and healing of multitudes, and teaching of the lowest of the people, it was foretold he should be unpopular: "_He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not._" The brief records are: "Then all the disciples forsook him and fled." "Then began Peter to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man." "Pilate saith unto them, Ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the passover: will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the Jews? Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber." All the prophets agree in predicting that for the sins of his people, and to atone for their guilt, he should be put to death by a shameful public execution: "_In the midst of the week Messiah shall be cut off, but not for himself. He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. He was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. They pierced my hands and my feet._" The record says: "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." "And when they were come to the place which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left. Then said Jesus, _Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do._" The one grand unparalleled fact, one which demands the hope of dying men for a victory over the great destroyer, and a resurrection from the tomb--the fact that one man born of a woman died, and did not see corruption, but rose again from the dead and went up into heaven, and dieth no more--forms the theme of many a prophetic psalm of triumph: "_Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor wilt thou give thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life. Thou wilt make me full of joy with thy countenance. Thou hast ascended on high. Thou hast led captivity captive._" Often did Jesus predict this prodigy before friend and foe: "_Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, when he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again._" The last chapters of the gospels relate the proofs by which he convinced his incredulous disciples that the prophecy was fulfilled: "Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. And when he had thus spoken, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he saith unto them, Have ye here any meat? And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and of an honey comb. And he took it and did eat before them; and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things. And behold I send the promise of my Father upon you, but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high. And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. And while he was blessing them he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven, as he went up, behold two men stood by them in white apparel, which said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." With your own eyes you shall see the fulfillment of this prophecy. Every eye shall see him. The clouds of heaven shall then reveal the vision now sketched on the page of revelation: "And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life; and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them; and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God, out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying: neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, _Behold, I make all things new._ And he said unto me, WRITE, FOR THESE WORDS ARE TRUE AND FAITHFUL." FOOTNOTES: [81] Jewish Church, 463, 4. The Bible, 80. [82] De Die Natali, c. 17, cited in Pusey on Daniel, 642. [83] Isaiah, chap. xlvi. 8-11. [84] Newton on the Prophecies, and Keith on the Prophecies, are to be found in all respectable libraries. The former contains valuable extracts from ancient historians; the latter from the journals and engravings of travelers. [85] Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, I. 169. Herodotus, II. 169. [86] Ezekiel, chap. xxx. [87] Volney's Travels, I. 74, 103. [88] Decline and Fall, chap. lix. [89] Ezekiel, chap. xxix. [90] Volney, I. 190. [91] Jeremiah, chaps. l. and li. [92] Mignon's Travels, 31. [93] Trans. Bombay Lit. Soc. I. 123. [94] Porter's Babylonia, II. 285. [95] Ezekiel, chap. xxvi. [96] Ezekiel, chap. xxv. [97] Lindsay's Travels, II. 78, 117. [98] Isaiah, chap. xiii. [99] Isaiah, chap. xiv. [100] Jeremiah, chap. li. [101] Mignon, 139. [102] Jeremiah, chap. li. [103] Fraser's Mesopotamia, page 145. [104] Leviticus, chap. xxvi. [105] Isaiah, chap. vi. [106] Deuteronomy, chap. xxix. [107] Volney's Ruins of Empires, Book I. [108] Luke, chap. xxi. [109] Micah, chap. iii. Matthew, chap. xxii. [110] Ammianus Marcellus, 23d chap. I. [111] Genesis, chap. xvi. 12. [112] Numbers, chap. xxiii. [113] Leviticus, chap. xxvi. [114] Amos, chap. ix. [115] Deuteronomy, chap. xxviii. [116] Leviticus, chap. xxvi. [117] Porter's Giant Cities of Bashan, passim. [118] Decline and Fall, chap. lxiv. [119] Macfarlane's Seven Apocalyptic Churches. CHAPTER IX. MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. In the foregoing chapters we have found, that we have great need of God's teaching; that he has sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to show us the way of life; that the gospel preached by him and his apostles has proved itself the power of God, by saving men from their sins; and that this gospel is truly recorded in the New Testament. From these facts, already settled, we proceed, according to our plan of investigation, to examine those which may be more obscure; to examine the Old Testament by the light of the New. The great majority of Jews and Christians have always believed, that the world was in as great need of God's teaching before the coming of Christ as it has been since; that God did put his words into the mouths of certain persons, called prophets; and that he caused them to tell them truly to their neighbors; that he enabled these prophets to make predictions of future events beyond the skill of man to calculate, and to do miracles which the power of man could not perform, as proofs that they spake the Word of God; that he caused them truly to record in writing a great many of these revelations, and so much of the history of the times in which, and of the people to whom, they were given, as was needful for a right understanding of them; that he has so managed matters since, as that these revelations and narratives have been faithfully preserved in the books of the Old Testament; that we are bound to believe these revelations to be true, not because we can otherwise demonstrate their truth, but because God, who can not lie, has declared it; and that we are bound to do the things they command, not merely because we see them to be right, but because God commands us. It is needful to consider the divine authority of the Old Testament distinctly from that of the New, not only because it is a distinct subject in itself, and because our plan of investigation leads us backward from the known and established fact of the divine authority of the New Testament to the discovery or disproof of the like character in the Old; but because a great many persons admit, in words at least, that Christ was a teacher sent from God, who, either in so many words, or in effect, deny the divine authority of the Old Testament. Some of the modern Rationalists have revived the creed of the Gnostics of the first century--that the Hebrew Jehovah was a being of very different character from the Deity revealed by Jesus Christ. They will extol to the skies the world-wide benevolence, compassion and kindness of the gospel of Christ, in contrast with the alleged national pride, bigotry, and exclusiveness of the Hebrew prophets. Others are desirous of appearing remarkably candid in bestowing on the Old Testament a liberal commendation as a collection of religious tracts of merely human origin, and of various degrees of merit; some of them of extraordinary literary excellence, well suited to the infancy of the human intellect, and highly useful in their time in raising men from fetichism and idolatry to the worship of one God; but which, containing many errors along with this grand truth, have been set aside by the more perfect teachings of Christ and his apostles, much in the same way as the old Ptolemaic astronomy was displaced by the discoveries of Newton. Others still are willing to acknowledge the Old Testament as inspired, provided we will allow Shakespeare and the Koran to be inspired also. Besides all these, there are several scores of scholars anxious to conceal its nakedness under theories of inspiration made and trimmed in a great many styles, but all cut from the same doctrine, to wit, that God revealed his truth aright to Moses and the prophets, but they went wrong in the telling of it. Now, all these notions are refuted by the fact, that God is the Author of the Bible. When we say that God is the Author of the Bible, and that it carries with it a divine authority because it is the Word of God, we do not mean that God is the Author of every saying in it, and that every sentiment recorded in it is God's mind, any more than we mean to make D'Aubigne responsible for every sentiment of priests, popes and monks which he has faithfully recorded in his History of the Reformation. On the contrary, we find, in the very beginning of the Bible, a very full expression of the devil's sentiments recorded in the devil's own words--_Ye shall not surely die_--and they are not one whit less devilish and lying, though recorded in the Bible, than when expounded by any modern Universalist preacher. But we mean that it is very true that the devil was the preacher of that first Universalist sermon: and that God thought it needful to let mankind know the shape of the doctrine, the character of the preacher, and the consequences of listening to error; and therefore directed Moses to record it truly for the information of all whom it may concern. So there are many other sayings of wicked men, and even of good men, recorded in the Bible, which are very false; but the Bible gives a true record of them, by God's direction, that we may not be ignorant of Satan's devices. Nor, when we say that God directed the prophets what to write, and how to write it, so that they did not go wrong in the writing of his word, do we mean that he also so guided every piece of their behavior, as that they never went wrong in doing their own actions; nor that the sins of the saints, recorded in the Bible, are anything the less sinful for being recorded there, or for being performed by men who ought to have known better. There is not a perfect man upon the earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not. If the Bible had left the faults of its writers undiscovered it would not have been a true history. But these very writers of the Bible tell us their own transgressions, under the direction of the Spirit of God; a thing writers in general are very shy about. Moses tells us how he spake unadvisedly with his lips, and was punished for it. David's penitential psalms record the bitter tears he wept over his transgression; tears which could not wash out the sentence against the man after God's own heart--_the sword shall never depart from thy house_. An overburdened people, a rotten court, a falling empire, continual strife, a family of scolding women, and a foolish son--might have been considered sufficient marks of God's displeasure, without causing the wisest of men to pen, and publish to the world, such a minute record of his madness, folly and misery, as we find in Ecclesiastes. But these shipwrecked mariners were divinely directed to pile up the sad memorials of their errors on the reefs where they were wrecked, as beacons of warning to all inexperienced voyagers on life's treacherous sea. The light-house is built by the same authority as the custom-house, and is even more necessary. Now let us take note of the objects of our investigation. We are not in search of the literary beauty or poetic inspiration of the Bible; but we inquire by what right does it command our obedience? Nor are we about to inquire whether, when we have tried the Bible at the tribunal of our reason, we shall give it a diploma to commend it to the patronage of other critics; but whether it comes to us attested by such evidence of being the Word of God, that our reason shall reverently bow down before it as a higher authority, and seek light from it by which to judge of all spiritual and moral matters. Attempts are continually made to confuse these great questions, by concessions of the literary excellence of the Bible, on the part of those who deny its divine authority. For instance, one of the modern oracles of infidelity says, and his admirers incessantly repeat the grand discovery: "The writings of the Prophets contain nothing above the reach of the human faculties. Here are noble and spirit-stirring appeals to men's conscience, patriotism, honor and religion; beautiful poetic descriptions, odes, hymns, expressions of faith almost beyond praise. But the mark of human infirmity is on them all, and proofs or signs of miraculous inspiration are not found in them."[120] But what do the toiling millions of earth care about beautiful poetic descriptions of a heaven and a hell that have no reality? Or what does it signify to you or me, reader, that the Bible raises its head far above the other cedars of earthly literature? If its top reaches not to heaven, can it make a ladder long enough to carry us there? The Bible contains predictions beyond the reach of the human faculties, as we have fully proved. These predictions at least are from God, and have no mark of human infirmity on them. It does not at all meet this question to grant that the Bible is inspired, just as every work of genius is inspired; nor to profess that they believe the Bible to be from God, just as every pure and holy thought, and every good work, proceed from him. When the assertors of the divine authority of the Bible speak of it as inspired, they mean that it is so as no other book is; and when they speak of it as coming from God, they mean that it does not come simply as a gift of God's bounty, as the soldier's land-warrant comes from the government; but that it comes like the laws of Congress, carrying authority with it to command our obedience. We feel no interest whatever in the discussion of an inspiration, "like God's omnipotence, not limited to the few writers claimed by the Jews, Christians and Mohammedans, but as extensive as the race;"[121] or perhaps as extensive as all creation, and leading us to regard even "the solemn notes of the screech owl" as inspired.[122] What manner of use could the Bible be to an ignorant soul groping its way to truth and holiness, or to a dying sinner hastening to the judgment seat of God, if it were true, that "the Bible's own teaching on the subject is that everything good in any book, person or thing, is inspired? Milton and Shakespeare, and Bacon and the Canticles, the Apocalypse and the Sermon on the Mount, and the Eighth Chapter of the Romans are all inspired. How much inspiration they respectively contain must be gathered from their results."[123] This liberal grant of inspiration, alike to Moses and Mohammed, to Christ and to Shakespeare, is evidently a denial of divine authority to any of them. If Hamlet, and the Sermon on the Mount, and the Koran, are all of a like divine authority, or all alike without any, it is merely a matter of taste whether I worship at Niblo's or the Tabernacle, or keep a harem in my house or a prayer-meeting. Most men, however, find it hard to believe that Christ and Mohammed taught exactly the same religion, or that the church and the theater are precisely equal and alike in their influences on the heart and life; and so they reject several of these inspired men, and cleave to the one they like best. Whereas, if this theory be true, they ought not to act in such a disrespectful way toward any inspired man; but ought to attend the church, the theater and the harem with equal regularity, and serve God, Mammon and Belial with equal diligence. "Oh," it is replied, "they are not all inspired in the same degree. It does not follow that because Byron, and Shakespeare, and Paul are all inspired, that their writings will produce exactly the same results, or that they are alike suitable for every constitution and temper. How much inspiration they severally possess must be determined by their results. The tree is known by its fruits; and experience is the price of truth." But truth may be bought too dear. I am sick and need some medicine, but know not exactly what kind, or how much to take. "Here," says my Rationalist friend, "is a whole drug store for you. Every drawer, and pot, and bottle is full of medicine. Help yourself." But, my good sir, how am I to know what kind will suit me? There are poisons here, as well as medicines; and I can not tell the difference between arsenic and calomel. One of my neighbors died the other day from swallowing oxalic acid instead of Glauber's salts. Be kind enough to put the poisons on one shelf, and the medicines on the other, or, at least, to label them, so that I may know which to choose and which to refuse. "Oh," says my Rationalist friend, "this distinction between medicines and poisons is all an antiquated, vulgar prejudice. What you call poisons are really medicines. Medical virtue is not confined to the few specifics recognized by the Homeopathics, the Regular Faculty, or the Hydropathics, but is as extensive as the world. Everything on earth has a medical virtue; but how much, and of what sort, must be determined by experience. In fact, you must try for yourself whether any particular drug will kill you, or cure you. So here is the whole drug store to begin your cure with." A valuable gift, truly! "In the day we eat thereof, our eyes will be opened, and we shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." I think, reader, you and I will let somebody else try that experiment. "Why should men throw away their common sense, and swallow everything as inspired?" says another friend of the Rationalistic school. "God has given us reason to discern between good and evil, and commanded us to use it. _Prove the spirits, whether they be of God._ _I spake as to wise men._ _Judge ye what I say_, is the language of Scripture. The right of private judgment is the inalienable inheritance of Protestants. I am for examining the Bible according to the principles of reason and truth. 'That only is to be regarded as true and valid which is matter of personal conviction.' The Old Testament is in many places contrary to my convictions of truth and reason. I find that it consists of a great variety of treatises of various degrees of merit. Even in the same book it presents often strange contrasts--sublime moral precepts on one page; on the next, solemn requirements of frivolous ceremonies, utterly unworthy of God; or solemn narrations of miraculous interferences with the established course of nature, which, taken literally, are absolutely incredible. The judicious reader must therefore discriminate between those divine precepts of morality which were infused into the minds of the Hebrew sages, and those Jewish prejudices which their education and character inclined them to regard as equally important; and he must divest the narrative of facts as they actually occurred, from the national legends and traditions which the compilers of the Pentateuch added to adorn the history." This, it will be seen, at once raises another and very important question, namely: By what standard are the writings of the Old Testament to be judged? Or rather it settles the question by taking it for granted, that every inquirer is to judge them according to his own notions of reason and truth. But this does not help me out of my difficulty; for it supposes me already to possess the knowledge, and the virtue, which a revelation from God is needed to communicate. If I am able, by my own reason, to construct a perfect standard of morals to judge the Bible by, what need have I for the Bible revelation? And if I have the right to refuse obedience to any commands I may judge frivolous or unreasonable, before I know whether they came from God or not, and am bound to obey only those which agree with my notions of right, what authority has the law of God? A revelation from God which should submit its truths to be judged by the ignorance, and its commands by the inclinations, of sinful men, would by that very submission declare its worthlessness. The use of a divine revelation is either to tell us some truth of which we are ignorant, or to enjoin some duty to which we are disinclined. Besides, it is not possible to make any such dissection of the moral precepts of the Bible, from the miraculous history which forms their skeleton, as will leave them either truth or authority. It is the miraculous history that gives sanction to the divine morality, and without it the ten commandments would have no more hold on any man's conscience than the wise saws which Poor Richard says. Take, for instance, one of the first and most important of the Bible moralities--the sacredness of marriage--which is wholly based upon a narrative of events utterly unparalleled; and, if judged by the usual course of nature, perfectly incredible. The original difference in the formation of man and woman, and God's making at first one man and one woman, and joining them together with his blessing, constitute the reasons, and consecrate the pledge of marriage. "_For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother_--although the claims of the parental relation are very strong--_and cleave to his wife_--with whom it may be he has but a few weeks' acquaintance--_and they two shall be one flesh_. _What therefore God hath joined together let no man put asunder._" But if the cause had no existence, save in the brain of some antediluvian novel-writer, and God did not so unite them, the consequence is only a notion also, and any man may leave his wife whenever he likes. By far the most incredible narrative in the Bible is contained in the first verse: "_In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth._" All the other miracles recorded in it sink into familiarity compared with this stupendous display of the supernatural. To the believer of this first great miracle none of its subsequent narratives can seem incredible. But it is precisely upon this unexampled and incredible narrative that the whole structure of Bible morality is built. If this extraordinary narrative be rejected as false, all the moral precepts of the Bible are not worth a feather. The morality of the Bible, then, stands or falls with its history of God's supernatural works among men. It has been argued, that no amount of testimony can authenticate accounts of miracles; since a miracle, being a violation of the laws of nature, is contradicted by an unalterable experience, but only supported by fallible human testimony. But every step of this sophism is in error. A miracle can not be proven to be any more a violation of the laws of nature, than the existence of the nature regulated by laws. It may be more unusual, but not more supernatural. The restoration of life to a dead man is no greater violation of the laws of nature than the first bestowal of life on dead matter. Were the resurrections as common as childbirths nobody would consider them violations of the laws of nature. Moreover, our knowledge of the laws of nature is not based upon my experience, or yours, but upon the testimony of our teachers; which, so far from being uniform and invariable as to the supremacy of the commonplace in nature, is perfectly conclusive as to the repeated occurrence of the miraculous. The miracles of Scripture are better authenticated than the facts of science. Scientific men talk a great deal of nonsense about the laws of nature, as if they were the only agents known in this world. But every man knows that he himself possesses the power to control the laws of nature, by bringing a higher law to arrest a lower; as when the power of vegetation arrests the law of gravitation, and sends the drop of rain which had trickled down the outside of the bark of the pine, climbing up again a hundred feet; or as when the power of animal life converts a hundred weight of grass into a leg of mutton; or as when the power of the human intellect transforms a pound of zinc into telegrams, or a ton of niter and sulphur into death and destruction. Now if man can thus control and use the laws of nature for human purposes, why can not the God who made him so cunning do as much? Aye, and as much more as God is greater than man? But we are told that no testimony can prove that any wonderful work has been wrought by God. "No testimony can reach to the supernatural; testimony can apply only to apparent sensible facts; testimony can only prove an extraordinary, and perhaps inexplicable, phenomenon or occurrence; that it is due to supernatural causes is entirely dependent on the previous belief or assumption of the parties."[124] But when Christ said, "If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you;" or when he said, at the grave of Lazarus, to Martha, "Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believe thou shouldest see the glory of God?" can we not believe our Lord's testimony, that he cast out devils, and raised the dead, by the direct intervention of God? He appeals to his miracles as evidences of his divine authority: "The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me." "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do though ye believe not me, believe the works; that ye may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in him."[125] Now I demand to know whether this testimony of our Lord is not to be believed? And whether he does not directly claim to work miracles by the immediate power of God? The testimony of the man whom God authenticates, by enabling him to do such miracles as those of Moses and of Christ, is conclusive as to the power by which they are wrought. So you read in Exodus iii. that God commissioned Moses to work miracles as signs of his divine commission, and seals of his testimony recorded in the Bible. If we proceed now to examine the facts of this history, it is evident, that neither your reason or mine, nor our personal convictions, can be any rule of what is true and valid. The most that reason can say about history is, that the story seems probable; but so does any well-written novel; or that it is improbable; but truth is often stranger than fiction; and every genuine history relates wonderful events. Neither does our personal knowledge enable us to tell what was the original historical fact, how much was added by the Hebrew prejudices of Moses, and which are the legends with which it was afterward adorned; for neither you nor I were there to see. Nor can any two of those critics, who have undertaken to divide the facts from the fables according to their personal convictions of what is true and valid, agree upon any common principle of gleaning, or in gathering in their results. And if they could, the crop would not be worth barn-room; for the only conclusion in which they seem at all likely to agree is, that the story of creation in the beginning of the Book is a myth, like one of Ovid's Metamorphoses; and that the prophecy of the resurrection, at the end, is another; and that there are a great many legends in the middle. Now, if so, why winnow such chaff? But while the Jewish people exist as a distinct race, it is impossible rationally to deny some extraordinary origin of their extraordinary character and customs; and the Bible is the only history which pretends to tell it. The utter failure of Rationalistic criticism to give any rational account of the facts which must be admitted to account for the existence of the Jews as a distinct people, is ludicrously apparent in the attempts generally made to explain the miraculous narratives of the Bible. The tree of good and evil was a poisonous plant, like the poison oak, or the machineal tree, under which our first parents fell asleep, and dreamed about the temptation, and the fall. The shining face of Moses was the natural effect of electricity. Zechariah's vision was the smoke of the lamps of the golden candlestick in the temple. The wise men of the East were some peddlers who presented toys to the child Jesus; and the star which went before, their servant carrying a torch. The angels who ministered to Christ in his temptation were a caravan bearing provisions. The transfiguration was an electric storm. The plagues of Egypt, the passage of the Red Sea, and the miracles of the desert, were merely natural phenomena, dextrously used by Moses and Aaron to suit their purpose. It is alleged that these enthusiastic patriots, full of the superstitions of an early age, which attributed all prodigies to God, and placed all heroes under his guidance, succeeded by their fiery eloquence in inspiring their captive countrymen with the love of liberty; and had political dexterity enough to create a faction in their favor in the Egypt cabinet. Then taking advantage of a fortunate succession of calamities arising from natural causes--such as an extraordinary rising of the Nile, in consequence of which it was more deeply colored than usual with the red mud of Nubia, and overflowed the country to a greater extent than usual, leaving on its retreat numerous ponds, which, of course, bred swarms of frogs and gnats, and raised malaria, spreading various sicknesses over the land, both to man and beast; a devastating visit of locusts, the well-known scourge of Africa; a remarkable thunder-storm, accompanied with hail, causing great havoc of growing crops, as such hail-storms always do; followed by the chamsin, or dust-storm from the desert, darkening the air with clouds of dust and sand; and by an extraordinary mortality, the natural result of these various causes--they persuaded the superstitious Egyptians that these calamities were tokens of the displeasure of the God of the Hebrews, and improved the opportunity to escape, while the resources of the Egyptians were exhausted, and their minds confounded by these various misfortunes. Leading them to that part of the Red Sea south of Suez, where a succession of shoals stretch across from the Egyptian to the Arabian side, they crossed safely at low water, while the Egyptian army perished by the rising of the tide; and the Israelites betaking themselves to a wandering, pastoral life in the wilderness of Arabia, lived, as the Bedouins do at this day, on the milk of their flocks and the manna which was spontaneously produced by the tamarisk trees of Sinai; where they remained until they had framed a civil and religious code, and whence they prosecuted their conquests in various directions for fifty years, until their invasion of Palestine. This is the sum of what, with various modifications, Rationalist writers and preachers present us, as the genuine historic basis of the Mosaic narrative. It really does seem to have been very fortunate for the Israelites that so many misfortunes should happen to fall upon their oppressors, all in one season, and just at the time that men of such cleverness as Moses and Aaron were among them; and that the Egyptians should luckily have imbibed the superstition, that all nature was under the direction of a Supreme Moral Governor, who was able and willing to wield all the elements for the punishment of oppressors. It was also very lucky for these poor, overworked, and oppressed slaves--the class which in all other ages and countries suffers most from hard times--that they should have escaped unhurt by these calamities; for if they had suffered by them as well as the Egyptians, they could not have persuaded them that God favored Israel. Here one can not but wonder that these learned Egyptians, whose colleges of priests were planted on the banks of the Nile, and who had made the climate, soil, and productions of their native land their constant study, should have been so ignorant of these natural causes of the plagues--so easily discovered nowadays by anybody who makes a summer trip to Egypt--as to be terrified into emancipating their slaves by a stormy season. Just imagine to yourself a couple of abolitionist lecturers proceeding to Lexington and commanding the slaveholders of Kentucky to liberate their slaves immediately, on pain of the Ohio being muddy during high water, and the swamps of the river-bottom being full of frogs and musquitoes! But this interpretation does not reach the climax of absurdity till our Rationalist Punch, by way of signalizing his deliverance from Egyptian bondage, makes Pharaoh and his army forget that the tide ebbs and flows in the Red Sea, raises the tide over a shoal faster than cavalry could gallop from it, gathers an annual crop of twenty millions of bushels of manna from the thorn-bushes of Sinai, and feeds three millions of men, women, and children for forty years upon purgative medicine!!! "We must then give up the problem as insoluble; for if reason be insufficient to give authority to the Bible, and criticism fails to discover its truth, how are we to know that it possesses either?" Just as you would discover the truth of any other history, or the authority of any other law. You do not say, "The tale of the successive swellings of the Catawba, the Yadkin, and the Dan--three times in a fortnight, in February, 1781, immediately after the American army had retreated across these rivers, preventing Cornwallis and the British forces from crossing till the little handful of weary and famished patriots had escaped--savors of the marvelous and leans so much toward the superstition of a special providence, that it must be rejected as not historical." You inquire if there be sufficient testimony to the fact. You do not say, "The Revised Statutes present internal evidence of being a collection of political tracts by various authors, written at different times, differing also in style, and of various degrees of merit, many of them contrary to my inmost personal convictions; therefore I can not acknowledge them as true and valid." You simply ask if this be a true copy of the laws passed by the legislature and signed by the governor? Our inquiry about the truth of the history, and the authority of the laws of the Bible, must be of the same kind--an inquiry after testimony. Is this Book genuine or a forgery? Is it a true history or a lying romance? Have we any testimony on the subject? But it is alleged that the Book contains in itself evidence of having been written in an unscientific age, and in an unhistorical manner; and, particularly, that its statements of the creation of the world, and of mankind, only six thousand years ago, are refuted by the discoveries of geology; which show us, that the world is many millions of years old, and that man has been on this world at least one hundred thousand years. In support of this last assertion, geologists refer to the remains of the lake dwellings in Switzerland; to skeletons of men found in caves, with bones of animals now extinct; to flint tools and weapons found in gravel beds, said to be of remote antiquity; to bones found deep in the Mississippi bottom; and to the monuments of Egypt. In replying to this objection, we have first to say that we have elsewhere, in this volume, shown that the Bible nowhere alleges that God created the earth only six thousand years ago, but in many places emphatically affirms the contrary. In the second place, as to the antiquity of man, the Bible nowhere says, that Adam was the first human being whom God created; nor that he and his posterity were the only intelligent beings occupying this world before our tenancy of it; nor that we are even now the exclusive occupants. On the contrary, it makes very distinct allusions to other races, capable of assuming serpentine, swinish, and human bodies, and of meddling disastrously in earthly affairs in former times; though, as it does not profess to teach us truths which do not concern us, it gives us no narration of the creation or history of pre-Adamite animals or men. But there is no more ground of objection against the Bible for neglecting to give us a history of pre-Adamite men, if there were such men, than for neglecting to describe the pre-Adamite animals, or the coal measures, or the nebulæ, or the climate, soil, population, and politics of Jupiter. The Bible has one great object--to teach men how to be holy and happy; and it can not be shown that the chronicles of the pre-Adamites, if they kept chronicles of their alleged savage state, would help us in the acquisition of holiness. No discoveries, then, which geologists may make of pre-Adamite races of men, can at all affect the credit of Moses' account of the creation of Adam, and of the history of his family. They may fill museums, if they please, with their flint arrow-heads and axes, they may pile up pyramids of stone mortars, they may perhaps some day discover an old-world bronze railroad, and bronze-clad or copper-bottomed steamboats, they may produce pre-Adamic electric, aeronautic engines, and magnetic sewing machines, or bone needles, we care not which; and we will admire them, and confess that they are very curious, and perhaps very old; but unless they can show that Adam was descended from these old-world folks, we have no biblical quarrel with them. Like Moses, we will let them rest in peace. But we would remark, thirdly, that no such discoveries have yet been made. No human bone, implement, or monument, has yet been discovered which can be proved to be more ancient than Adam, or nearly so ancient. There is not a single indisputable fact to show, that any of the tools, bones, or monuments; alleged in this discussion, is of any specific date whatever, save that the Danish bogs came down to the date of the Danish invasion of Ireland in the eleventh century; the burnt corn of the Swiss lake dwellings was probably that which Julius Cæsar describes the Helvetians as burning preparatory to their invasion of Gaul; and the monuments of Egypt, for which Bunsen claimed twenty thousand years, are now acknowledged by the best Egyptologists to reach not quite to 3000 B. C. As to the bone found at the base of the bluff at Memphis, it was not found _in situ_, and probably was washed out of some Indian grave at the top, and buried in the _debris_. The Abbeville skull[126] _had a fresh tooth in it_, for which thirty-five thousand years was claimed, until examination by a competent committee exposed the deception. Where there is a good paying demand for pre-Adamite skulls, there will always be a good supply. Dr. Dowler calculates the age of a skeleton of an Indian, found at the depth of sixteen feet in digging the gas works at New Orleans, at fifty thousand years; while the U. S. Coast Surveying Department show that the whole Delta is not more than four thousand four hundred years old. These gross errors, which affront our common sense, wherever we are able to test geological calculations, fill us with mistrust of their allegations of evidence, which, from the nature of the case, we can not test. Of this class is the discovery of human bones in caves containing the bones of cave bears, rhinocerii, mammoths, and other extinct animals. The argument is that man and these animals lived at the same time. Very well, what time was that? There is no evidence to show that it was a hundred thousand years ago. The Siberian hunters fed their dogs on the flesh of a mammoth they found frozen in mud bluffs at the mouth of the Lena, and its hair and wool are now in the museum of St. Petersburg. Dr. Warren's _mastodon giganteus_ had some bushels of pine and maple twigs, in excellent preservation, in its stomach, when exhumed in Orange County, New York; and you may see for yourself the vegetable fiber found in its teeth in his museum in Boston.[127] Does any one believe that the vegetable fiber and maple twigs have kept their shape one hundred thousand years? The mammoth found in the ditch of the Tezcucoco road must have fallen in after the Incas had dug that ditch. The Indians have a tradition that their fathers hunted a huge deer with a hand on his face, which slept leaning against the trees. And there is good geological reason for believing that the final extinction of the mammoth, the European rhinoceros, and their contemporaries, was caused by the change of climate in Northern Europe, Asia, and America, caused by the elevation of these northern lands, which has been going on since the tenth century, and which, about three centuries ago, closed the Polar Sea, rendering Greenland uninhabitable. The juxtaposition, then, of the bones of man and extinct animals is no proof of the remote antiquity of either. And no proof has been made from the nature or depth of the overlying deposits. The shape, size, and general character of the skulls alleged to be of such remote antiquity give no countenance to the theory of man's brutal origin; which is the great thing to be gained by giving him a remote antiquity. The Enghis skull is in no way inferior to many good modern Indian skulls; and the man of Mentone stood six feet one in his stocking soles (if he wore stockings), having a good John Bull head between his shoulders, with a facial angle equal to that of Generals Grant or Von Moltke; and in fact being a fine old Gallic gentleman, all of the good old times. Geologists, however, lay stress on the cumulative character of the evidence they produce; owning that no single fact is conclusive, but claiming that credence should be given to the accumulation of facts. But no accumulation of ciphers will amount to anything. All the alleged facts are found to be fatally defective either in authenticity or definiteness. No multitude of doubts can assure us of the certainty of a fact or assertion. The evidence for the pre-Adamite antiquity of man is only a gathering of facts doubtful, and wholly indeterminate, without any element of proof of remote antiquity.[128] But there is a source of evidence of the most undeniable character, to which we may appeal for a decision of the subject. The law of population is as certain as any other law of nature; and it tends to the regular increase of mankind. Population tends to double itself every twenty-five years, as we see in the United States. In less favored countries the rate is not so rapid. In Europe it doubles every fifty years; and nowhere in less than two centuries. And the result is, that if the human race had existed on this earth under existing laws of nature, as the evolutionists allege, for one hundred thousand years, not only must they have multiplied until their bones would have covered the earth, and filled the sea, but, as Sir John Herschel shows, they would have formed a vertical column, having for its base the whole surface of the earth, and for its height three thousand six hundred and seventy-four times the sun's distance from the earth![129] The existing population of the globe corresponds pretty well to the natural increase of three pairs in forty centuries, which is something near to the Bible chronology. The laws of population, then, inexorably refuse the indefinite, or even the remote antiquity of mankind, and vindicate Moses as a writer of truthful history. The alleged anachronisms of the Pentateuch have been adduced as testimony that it could not have been written till long after the time of Moses. These alleged anachronisms are generally the insertion of a modern name of a city instead of the ancient name, or an explanatory addition which would not have been necessary in the days of Moses. Now if all these cases could be proved, they would at most only show that the scribes who copied the manuscripts in later ages had inserted these explanatory changes or additions, under proper authority. Everybody's common sense will tell him, that Moses did not narrate his own death in the last chapter of Deuteronomy; but it is none the less true though Joshua, or some other prophet, added that postscript. But Hengstenberg has[130] examined these alleged anachronisms in detail, and shown that the objectors allow themselves to interpolate into the text a meaning of their own in order to show the inaccuracy of the Bible. For instance, Genesis xii. 6, "The Canaanite was then in the land," they maintain could only be written after the Canaanites had been driven out. They interpolate _still_, which is not in the text. But they entirely mistake the meaning of the passage, which refers to an earlier statement of the same fact, chapter x. 15, to show that Abraham, the heir of the promise, came as a stranger and a pilgrim to a land preoccupied by a powerful people, who are again mentioned, chapter xiii. 7, for the purpose of showing how Lot and Abraham came to be so crowded as to separate. Another of the prominent instances is the name of the ancient city of Hebron, which, in the book of Joshua, is said to have been anciently called Kirjath-arba. But Numbers xiii. 22, which states that Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt, and was the residence of Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the sons of Anak, shows that the writer was well acquainted with the history of the place, and Genesis xxxv. 27 shows that Hebron was the first name, and that it had two other names added to it, both after the time of Abraham, since Mamre was his contemporary, and the Anakim lived centuries later. This may stand for a specimen of the alleged anachronisms of the Pentateuch. But now comes Bishop Colenso with his slate and pencil to demonstrate to us that, no matter who wrote it, or by what external authority it is commended, the Pentateuch is so full of arithmetical errors, and of impossible narratives, in its accounts of common affairs, as well as in its miraculous stories, that not only is it not the Word of God, but that it is not even a truthful history, and stands self-convicted of being a collection of fables. Of course, if that can be proved, there is an end of the matter, though it would still seem strange that it should have been left for the bishop to discover Moses' ignorance of arithmetic, and of camp-life among the Arabs. Nevertheless the very novelty of a bishop assaulting the Bible in such a style has secured for him a large number of readers, many of them ignorant enough to believe his assertions, though too indolent to test his calculations, or even to read the passages he criticises. This renders some notice of his criticisms necessary according to our plan of considering objections according to their popularity, rather than according to their merit. For, on examining the bishop's objections to the Bible, they are all found to arise from want of science, want of sense, or ignorance of Scripture--an inability to read the Scriptures in their original Hebrew, or even to cite them correctly in English. In some criticisms he contrives to compile these three kind of blunders into a single chapter, making a mosaic of very amusing reading indeed. Of course we can only give specimens of his peculiar style of attack on the Bible; for to expose all his blunders would require some volumes as large as his own. But we shall select illustrative instances of the bishop's blunders from each of the departments indicated above. As a specimen of the bishop's blunders in science, let us take the first which he offers--his attempt to convict Moses of a contradiction to geology in his account of the deluge. Bishop Colenso declares that the Bible teaches that the deluge was universal, and that this is contradicted, among other things, by certain geological discoveries, in Auvergne, of volcanic cones of light cinders, which would have been swept away by any such flood. Aye, if they had only been there at that time! But Eli de Beaumont, a learned geologist, not convicted of so many blunders as the bishop, alleges that the whole of the system of Teanarus, including the elevation of Stromboli, and Ætna, has been formed since the catastrophe of the principal Alps; and that the volcanoes of Auvergne and the Vivarrus are of post-Adamic origin.[131] So the bishop's geology does not contradict what he thinks the Bible says after all. On the contrary, so far from geology contradicting a universal deluge, the best geologists speak of every part of the earth having been repeatedly under the sea, and they collect its fossils on the tops of the mountains. But the bishop ought to know that hundreds of years ago, before geology was born, some of the most learned bishops and theologians of his own Church, as well as some of the chief scholars of the dissenters, following the most learned of the Hebrew rabbis, did not believe that the Bible taught that the deluge was universal. For instance, Bishop Stillingfleet, in his great work, _Origines Sacra_, says: "I can not see any urgent necessity from the Scriptures to assert that the flood did spread over all the surface of the earth. That all mankind, those in the ark excepted, were destroyed by it, is most certain, according to the Scriptures. The flood was universal as to mankind, but from thence follows no necessity at all of asserting the universality of it as to the globe of the earth, unless it be sufficiently proved that the whole earth was peopled before the flood; which I despair of ever seeing proved." Matthew Poole says: "Where was the need of overwhelming those regions of the earth in which there were no human beings? It would be highly unreasonable to suppose that mankind had so increased before the deluge as to have penetrated to all the corners of the earth. It is indeed not probable that they had extended themselves beyond the limits of Syria and Mesopotamia. Absurd it would be to affirm that the effects of the punishment, inflicted upon men alone, applied to those places in which there were no men. If, then, we should entertain the belief that not so much as the hundredth part of the globe was overspread with water, still the deluge would be universal; because the extirpation took effect upon all the part of the globe then inhabited." Nor does the language of the Bible necessarily convey the idea that the whole surface of the globe was covered with water. Dathe, professor of Hebrew (in his _Opuscala ad Crisin_, edited by Rosenmuller, 1795), says: "Interpreters do not agree whether the deluge inundated the whole earth or only the regions then inhabited. I adopt the latter opinion. The phrase _all_ does not prove the inundation to have been universal. It appears that in many places _kol_ is to be understood as limited to the thing or place spoken of. Hence all the animals introduced into the ark were only those of the region inundated." But the most literal rendering of the language of Moses does not necessitate our belief that when he says that the waters covered the whole earth, _arets_, he meant the whole globe. The common Bible meaning of this word is land, country, or region, as the perpetually recurring phrases, the land, _arets_, of Havilah, the land of Nod, the land of Ethiopia, the land of Goshen, the land of Egypt, the land of Canaan, which occurs three hundred and ninety times, may convince every reader beyond the possibility of mistake. How now, from this word being used by Moses, could this learned bishop conclude that he necessarily meant to describe the globe? Moses says, "The waters prevailed upon and covered the whole country." The bishop translates, "covered the whole globe;" evidently in order to make Moses commit a blunder. But reference is made to the expression, "All the high hills under the whole heavens were covered;" which the bishop will have it meant all the mountains under the moon. But the popular use of the word "heavens," in Moses' day, had as little reference to universal space, as the word earth, or land, had to the whole globe. It meant simply the visible heavens over any place; and its extent was defined by the extent of the earth those visible heavens covered. Thus Moses himself defines it, Deuteronomy iv. 32: "Ask from the one side of heaven unto the other." Deuteronomy xxviii. 8: "Thy heaven over thee shall be as brass." Deuteronomy ii. 25: "This day I will begin to put the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven." And so commonly throughout the Bible, "the clouds of heaven," "the fowls of heaven," refer to the optical heavens. Such is the meaning in Genesis. Noah describes the deluge as it appeared to him, as covering all the hills within the horizon of observation, and Moses copies Noah's log-book. The geologist adds his testimony to the existing evidences of the recent submergence of a large region of Persia and Turkey around the Caspian Sea, and its subsequent elevation. But it is no part of our business to show in what way God produced the deluge. Geology shows us, however, that the submergence of parts of the earth beneath the sea, and their subsequent elevation, is the most common of all geological phenomena; almost all existing continents and islands having been submerged. The bishop is as far behind the age in his astronomy as in his geology. He blindly follows the Infidels of the last century in their attack on Joshua's miracle, arresting the sun and moon, as inconsistent with their science; which taught the immobility of the sun and moon, it seems, and was entirely ignorant of the modern discovery of the grand motions of the fixed stars, including our sun, and of the dependence of all the planets, including our earth and moon, upon that grand motion for the motive power of their revolutions.[132] One wonders from what college the bishop came out ignorant of facts known to the boys of American common schools. A great many of the bishop's blunders are occasioned by want of sense. The process is very simple. The sacred history is very brief. Only the headings of things are recorded. Much must be supplied by the common sense of the reader. The manners of the East are very different from ours. Three thousand years have greatly changed the face of the country. Ignore all this, and interpret the Pentateuch as though it consisted of the letters of Our Own Correspondent, and you will find difficulties on every page. Such is the style of Colenso's criticism. Assume that Moses gives a full and complete chronicle of all events which have happened since the creation, and then dispute the recorded facts because it can easily be shown he omitted many. But the bishop has not the honor of discovering this method, or of founding this school of criticism. We have heard village critics of the loom and the forge discuss such questions as are handled by Colenso, and the Essays and Reviews, and often with much more acuteness and penetration. With what _eclat_ has our village critic unhorsed the itinerant preacher with the inquiry, What became of the forks belonging to the nine and twenty knives which Ezra brought back from Babylon? but was, alas! himself routed in the moment of triumph by the inquiry as to the sex of the odd clean beasts of Noah's sevens. How often has our village blacksmith critic requested a sermon upon the genealogy of Melchizedek, which the minister agreed to furnish when our blacksmith could tell him the foundry which manufactured Tubal Cain's hammer and anvil. Lot's wife, the witch of Endor, Jonah's whale, the sundial of Ahaz, and the population of Nineveh, were all duly discussed, together with the bodies in which the angels dined with Abraham. Did the loaves and fishes miraculously multiply in numbers, or increase in size? Where did the angel get the flour to bake the cake for Elijah? Did our Lord catch the fish by net, or by miracle, which he used in the Lord's Dinner on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. But _the_ question--which we marvel beyond measure that the bishop overlooks--always was, Where did Cain get his wife? This is the fundamental question for such critics. The difficulty, it will be perceived, lies across the very threshold of the history. How did he stumble over it without record of his misadventure? It recurs, however, on every page. If the bishop will only answer that question, and introduce us politely to Cain's wife, I will engage that she will answer most of these other difficult questions. Had Seth a wife? How could Noah and his three sons build a ship larger than the Great Eastern? We can imagine the roars of laughter with which the bigger school-boys will greet the serious exhibition of their old tests of dullness, in a printed book, and by a learned bishop, as objections to the inspiration of the Bible. But the bishop does actually devote Chapter V. to the impossibility of Moses addressing all Israel; Chapter VI. to the extent of the camp compared with the priest's duties; Chapter XX. to the grave difficulty of the three priestly families consuming the offerings of some millions of people; which surely to a bishop of the Church of England should not be an unparalleled feat. Such chapters enable us to appreciate the mental caliber of our critic, and excuse us from argument with a man incapable of interpreting popular phrases. He would prove the associated press dispatches all a myth, because it is impossible for the House of Commons to appear at the bar of the House of Lords--six hundred men to stand on four square yards of floor; for McClellan to address the Army of the Potomac, which extended along a line of thirty miles; for Grant and Sherman--two men--to capture Vicksburg and thirty thousand prisoners! Manifestly impossible. The most specious of all the sophistry spread over the volume is that contained in the Seventeenth Chapter, regarding the increase of Jacob's family, of seventy persons, to a nation of two or three millions, in Egypt, during the two hundred and fifteen years to which he confines the bondage. But it is only another case of Cain's wife. The Pentateuch gives us the list of Jacob's children and their wives, but makes no formal mention in that place of their servants and retainers. These, in Abraham's times, amounted to three hundred fencible men, or a population of fifteen hundred; who would have increased in Jacob's time to several thousands, capable of defending the border land of Goshen against the marauding Bedouin. And this population could easily increase to the three millions of the Exodus, at the same ratio in which the population of the United States is now increasing; so that it is a mere superfluity of naughtiness for the bishop to deny what the sacred historian so emphatically asserts: "That the people were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and the land was filled with them." But the bishop utterly ignores the people of the _clan_, and taking his slate and pencil ciphers out the impossibility of Jacob's _family_ amounting to so many. And yet it is not impossible that in the four hundred and thirty years which the sacred historian so precisely asserts as the period of their sojourn in Egypt, Exodus xii. 40, the family alone might have multiplied as fast as the family of the famous Jonathan Edwards, which, in a hundred years after his death, numbered two thousand souls. Peter Cartwright, the venerable Methodist minister, celebrated his eighty-seventh birthday on the first of September, 1871, at Pleasant Plains, Sangamon County, Illinois, surrounded by one hundred and twenty children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Now, if this family of two persons could so increase in eighty-seven years, why could not Jacob's family, of seventy persons, increase in equal ratio? In that case, even in the two hundred and fifteen years to which the bishop limits the sojourn in Egypt, the Israelites would have amounted to over eight millions. If it be objected that this was a case of special blessing, we answer that the Israelites are expressly asserted to have been specially and wonderfully multiplied. There is, therefore, no improbability in Moses' numbers. The bishop ascribes to Moses another of his own blunders; this time, however, in reading his Bible in plain English, which correctly translates the Hebrew--Exodus xiii. 2. The Lord commands Moses and Israel to "Sanctify to him every male that openeth the womb, both of man and beast," from the time of the death of the first-born of the Egyptians. The impropriety of _ex post facto_ legislation, the reason assigned for this law, and the grammatical meaning of the language in the present tense, all combine to show that the law is prospective; and the number of the first-born, twenty-two thousand two hundred and seventy-five, afterward given in Numbers, shows plainly that this is the meaning, being about the proper increase of thirteen months. But the bishop strangely blunders into the notion that this is the number of all the first-born of Israel; only about one in forty-five or fifty, and therefore argues against the historical veracity of the Pentateuch. A good many of the bishop's blunders arise in this way from misreading his Bible. He makes another blunder of this kind, and as usual charges it on Moses, in his misreading of Leviticus xxiii. 40, as if directing Israel to make booths of palm branches and willows at the feast of tabernacles, instead of bearing the palms of victory in triumph into the temple of God. The son of the chief rabbi of London ridicules the bishop's Hebrew scholarship here, saying that any Jewish child could have set him right; but had he read even his English translation carefully he need not have blundered here. In connection with the subject of the numbers of the people we notice his tacit assumption--that Moses records everything necessary for a statistical table--in his criticisms on the numbers of the Danites and Levites, Chapters XVIII. and XVI.; and on Judah's family, Chapter II. He takes it for granted that because the Exodus took place in the lifetime of the fourth generation of some of the sons of Jacob, therefore there were none but four generations born in the two hundred and fifteen years to which he confines the bondage, and none but those whose names are recorded. This is a blunder of the same sort as if he should mistake the list of the British peerage for a census of all the families of Great Britain, and calculate the average duration of human life by the ages of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Palmerston. But here we have a wonderful instance of the providence which often makes objectors refute themselves. The chapter on Judah's family (II.) shows that in forty-two years Judah had grandchildren ten or twelve years old; as many Syrians, Persians, and Hindoos have at this day. But if six generations could thus be born in Syria, or India, in a century, why not in Egypt? And 1 Chronicles vii. 20, 21 enumerates ten generations of the sons of Ephraim; giving ample opportunity for the biblical increase. Another set of the bishop's blunders is occasioned by his utter ignorance of camp-life, especially among the Arabs. In Chapter VIII. he assumes that all the people had tents, and the bishop orders them made of leather. But he concludes they could not possibly get them, nor if they had them could they carry them. By and by he provides them with two millions of cattle, however; and it is likely each of them had a skin, and was able to carry it for a while, while the Hebrews dwelt in the booths of the encampments they still commemorate in the feast of tabernacles. But the word "tents" is the common phrase for any kind of shelter in Scripture, including even houses in the expression, "To your tents, O Israel," used in the days of David. In Chapter IX. he discusses the probability of their obtaining arms in Egypt. A week with one of the Union armies would show him how speedily freedmen can provide themselves with arms and learn tactics; and a short residence in Ireland would teach him the utter impossibility of preventing a discontented people from arming themselves even with firearms; much more when every grove furnished artillery. He protests that all Egypt could not furnish lambs enough for the passover; because in Natal an acre will only graze one sheep, forgetting that Moses was not raising sheep in Natal, but in the best of the land of Goshen, which, if as fertile as the county of Dorset in England, would easily keep five millions of sheep. In Chapter X. he insists on the impossibility of giving warning of the passover, and subsequent march, in one day, to a population as large as London, scattered over two or three counties. Has he forgotten the straws carried over all Ireland in one night, and the Chupatties of the Indian Mutiny? The negro insurrection of Charleston was known by the negroes of Louisiana two days before their masters received the intelligence by mail. Critics know little of the power of the love of freedom. But there is no reason for the bishop's supposition that all the preparations for leaving were made in one day, save his own mistake of the Hebrew of Exodus xii. 12, as referring to the night of the day on which God spake to Moses, instead of the night of the day of which he was speaking, as the slightest reflection on the context shows. In Chapter XI. the bishop assumes the functions of Major-General, and masses his army--rank, and file, wagon train, hospital, commissariat, contrabands, droves of cattle, and camp followers--into a mass of fifty front and twenty-two miles long. Very naturally he gets into a tremendous jam, out of which we have no intention of extricating him; merely remarking that bishops do not make good generals, and that Arab Sheikhs do not march in that way. They scatter themselves and their cattle over the whole country for forty or fifty miles, and have no confusion; and attend moreover to Moses' sanitary camp regulations, in their several encampments. In Chapter XII. he exerts himself to starve the cattle for want of pasture and water; garbling Moses' account of the wilderness for that purpose, Deuteronomy viii. 15, "Beware that thou forget not Jehovah, thy God, who led thee through the great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, _where there was no water_." Here he stops, as if this was all that referred to the subject. But when we turn to the passage, we find that he omits the most material part of the speech. For Moses goes on to say, in the hearing of all Israel, who could certainly have contradicted him had the fact not been well known to them, "Who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint." Moses' account is quite self-consistent, and the bishop's garbling of it is dishonest. There were districts of Arabia so dry and sterile that but for this miraculous supply both men and beasts had perished; but the greater part of the country was simply uninhabited pasture land, sufficiently productive even now to support several Arab tribes; and much better wooded and watered then. The monuments of Egypt abundantly testify the number and power of its shepherd kings, who pastured their flocks upon it in their successive invasions of Egypt. The bishop says, Chapter XIII., that the climax of inconsistencies between facts and figures is reached when we come to the notice by the Lord to Israel, contained in Exodus xxiii. 29, "I will not drive them, the Canaanites, out from before thee in one year, lest the land become desolate, and the beasts of the field multiply against thee." The argument is that a population of two millions was assigned to a territory of only eleven thousand square miles; and consequently would be more dense than the population of the agricultural region of England, where there is no danger of wild beasts multiplying. But the objection is again based on a blunder, and a garbling of the text of Scripture. Had the bishop done himself and his readers the justice to complete the passage which he has half cited, by inserting the next two verses, he could have read verse thirty-one: "And I will set thy bounds from the Red Sea even to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river," _i. e._, the Euphrates, as other passages show, Genesis xv. 18. That is to say, a territory five hundred miles long by one hundred miles broad, or fifty thousand square miles, was to be occupied by two millions of people. That is about the present population, and all travelers testify that three-fourths of it lies desolate. Prof. Porter saw seventy deserted towns and villages in Bashan alone. But for the rifle and gunpowder the wild beasts would now overpower the inhabitants. By a wonderful providence, contemporaneously with these attacks, the Lord has raised up an army of scholars, travelers, and archæologists, whose explorations illustrate the Bible in a remarkable manner, throwing new light upon its history, poetry, and prophecy. It is refreshing to turn from the cavils of ignorant criticism to the clear light of discovered facts and imperishable monuments. The Bible history has recently received a wonderful amount of illustration and confirmation from the researches of scholars and discoverers amid the ruins of Egypt, Persia, and Assyria; completely exploding the theory that this history was a comparatively recent composition, written long after the events which it records, and betraying its want of genuineness by the anachronisms and errors of description of historical and natural events with which it abounds. Wherever it differed from the statements of any Greek, or other heathen historian, it was forthwith alleged that Moses was wrong, and the profane author was right; and for a long time nobody could bring any evidence on the other side, because there were no contemporary records; the oldest heathen historian being a thousand years later than Moses. But by some strange inspiration, the Lord set a multitude of explorers to work upon the monuments of Egypt, deciphering the hieroglyphics which had so long puzzled the world, digging into the mounds which had for centuries covered the ruined palaces and cities of Persia and Assyria, and bringing to Europe ship-loads of recovered statues, marbles, cylinders, mummies, obelisks, papyrii, covered with all manner of pictures and inscriptions, civil, religious, and political, contemporary with the Bible history, and setting the best scholars of Europe to decipher and translate them. They are only, as yet, in the middle of their labors, but already so much has been discovered as to warrant the assertion that before they have finished they will furnish full corroboration of all the great outlines of Old Testament history. Egypt was the first to come forward in furnishing her quota of commentary to the corroboration of the Books of Moses. Hengstenberg's _Egypt and the Books of Moses_, Wilkinson's _Ancient Egyptians_, and Osburn's _Monumental History of Egypt_, furnish almost a commentary upon Moses' account of Egyptian affairs, confirming every biblical allusion to Egypt as historically correct, and revealing to us even the natural causes of the seven years high Nile and plenteous harvests; in the overflow of the great central lake in Nubia wearing away the embankment; and of the seven years subsequent low Nile and famine, by the drought consequent on this immense drainage. The very titles of Joseph as, "Director of the Full and Empty Irrigating Canals," "Steward of the Granaries," etc. etc., are still to be read on his tomb at Sakkarah,[133] and much more of the same sort. F. Newman ridicules the Bible narrative of Shishak's expedition against Rehoboam as a mere fictitious embellishment of an otherwise tame narrative;[134] but Egyptologists, like Stuart, Poole, and Brugsch, have examined the inscription of Shishak, at Karnak, and allege that it fully corroborates the Scripture history.[135] Some of the most obscure portions of the Bible, which have long been stumbling-blocks to commentators and historians, are now thus illuminated by the light of modern discoveries of monuments and inscriptions found in the ruins of the ancient cities of Persia and Assyria, upon which they in turn cast such light as to enable the discoveries of Layard and Rawlinson to assume an intelligible coherency. The tenth and eleventh chapters of Genesis, written a thousand years before Herodotus or Manetho, and which Rationalistic commentators were so long "unable to verify by their own consciousness," and which were therefore consigned to the realm of mythology, are now acknowledged by the first scholars and discoverers to stand at the head of the page of reliable history, and to form the basis of all scientific ethnography. The diversity of languages among mankind seems not to have attracted the attention of the Greek philosophers. When modern inquirers began to investigate the matter, they were well-nigh confounded by the multitude of dialects and languages. The labor of three generations of scholars has been expended upon philology, the most ancient monument of mankind. And the result is that all the various languages of earth have at length been classified under three tongues--the Shemitic, the Aryan, and the Turanian. But this most recent discovery of comparative philology was narrated by Moses thirty centuries ago, with the historical account of the origin of the division of the primeval family into three separate colonies, colonizing the earth after their families and after their tongues.--Genesis x. 32. The discovery of this coincidence fills Bunsen with astonishment. "Comparative philology," he says, "would have been compelled to set forth as a postulate the supposition of some such division of languages in Asia, especially on the ground of the relation of the Egyptian language to the Shemitic, even if the Bible had not assured us of the truth of this great historical event. It is truly wonderful; it is a matter of astonishment; it is more than a mere astounding fact that something so purely historical, and yet divinely fixed--something so conformable to reason, and yet not to be conceived of as a mere natural development--is here related to us out of the oldest primeval period, and which now for the first time, through the new science of philology, has become capable of being historically and philosophically explained." The brief, yet definite, assertions of the Hamitic origin of the old empire of Babylon, and of an Asiatic Cush or Ethiopia, which have been so repeatedly charged against the Bible as blunders, even by some profound scholars, have been vindicated by the recent discoveries in the mounds of Chaldea Proper of multitudes of inscriptions in a language which Sir H. Rawlinson affirms "is decidedly Cushite or Ethiopian," and the modern languages to which it makes the nearest approaches are those of Southern Arabia and Abyssinia. The old traditions have then been confirmed by comparative philology, and both are side lights to Scripture. * * * "The primitive race which bore sway in Chaldea Proper is demonstrated to have belonged to this Ethnic type."[136] "The conquest of Palestine is recorded on the annals of Sennacherib, and the cylinder of Tiglath-Pileser describes his invasion of Palestine. The names of Jehu, of Amaziah, of Hezekiah, of Omri, Ahaz, and Uzziah have been made out. _The very clay which sealed the treaty between the kings of Judah and Assyria, with the impresses of their joint seals upon it, is preserved in the Nineveh gallery._ The library of Assurbanipal, in twenty thousand fragments, contains among other scientific treatises, such as astronomical notices, grammatical essays, tables of verbs, genealogies, etc., an historico-geographical account of Babylonia and the surrounding countries. As far as these fragments have been translated, the district and tribal names given in the Bible correspond very closely with them."[137] But this is not the only illustration and confirmation which these old Assyrian monuments offer to the Sacred Writings. From the first invasion of the Assyrians, under Tiglath-Pileser, to the restoration of Israel from Babylon, and the rebuilding of the temple, under Darius, the Bible history is full of references to the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian monarchies, and their affairs with Israel and Judah. And the inscribed tablets, cylinders, and temple tablets, and statues, are full of references which directly or indirectly elucidate and corroborate the Bible history, attesting to skeptics the truthfulness of its wonderful narrative; the very stones of Nineveh, and the ruined palaces of Babylon and Assyria, crying out in vindication of the veracity of the Bible. Already so much has been discovered as to fill several volumes, to which we must refer the reader for details.[138] One of the alleged historical errors greatly insisted on by Rationalistic commentators was the statement by Daniel, that Belshazzar was King of Babylon when it was taken by the Medo-Persians, and that he was slain at the storming of the city. Herodotus and Berosus had stated that Nabonnidus was king, and that he was not in the city then, but was afterward taken prisoner and treated generously by Cyrus. These accounts seemed contradictory; and as Herodotus and Berosus were generally esteemed respectable historians, the Rationalists ridicule Daniel as an erroneous writer of history. But one of Sir H. Rawlinson's discoveries has vindicated the prophet, and also explained how the historians were truthful too. W. Taylor, one of Rawlinson's assistants, discovered an inscribed cylinder in Ur of the Chaldees containing an account of the reign of this very Nabonnidus, which Sir Henry describes in a letter to the _Athenæum_, (1854, page 341): "The most important facts, however, which they disclose are that the eldest son of Nabonnidus was named Bel-shar-ezar, and that he was admitted by his father to a share in the government." This name is undoubtedly the Belshazzar of Daniel, and thus furnishes a key to the explanation of that great historical problem which has hitherto defied solution. We can now understand how Belshazzar, as _joint-king_ with his father, may have been Governor of Babylon when the city was attacked by the combined forces of the Medes and Persians, and may have perished in the assault which followed; while Nabonnidus, leading a force to the relief of the place, was defeated, and was obliged to take refuge in Borsippa, capitulating after a short resistance, and being subsequently assigned, according to Berosus, to an honorable retirement in Carmania. A minute coincidence also is thus brought to light, showing the accuracy of the inspired historian in one of the details of his narrative. Belshazzar elevates him to the position of Grand Vizier, or Prime Minister, which, under ordinary circumstances, would be the _second_ place of dignity in the empire. But Daniel represents the king as raising him to the _third_ place, which we now see to be strictly correct, since Belshazzar himself was the second in rank. Thus the weapons discharged against the Bible ever recoil upon the heads of its assailants. Not only among the monuments of the great historic nations do we now discover corroborations of Scripture, the records and monuments of even obscure nations are most strangely turning up and being discovered, after lying unnoticed for centuries, as if God had reserved their testimony for the time when it would be needed and valued. The Bible does not refer to the history of the surrounding nations, save in connection with their relations to Israel; but it is surprising to see how many of these references are corroborated by recent discoveries. The Bible, for instance, describes[139] Omri as establishing a kingdom with his capital at Samaria, and he and his son, Ahab, making war on Mesha, King of Moab, conquering him and making him pay an annual tribute of one hundred thousand lambs and one hundred thousand rams, with the wool. But it came to pass that when Ahab was dead that the King of Moab rebelled against the King of Israel. Now amid the perpetual wars of the petty kingdoms of Asia, and after the utter extirpation of the Moabitish nation, the chances were millions to one against our recovering any historical monuments whatever of that people; and almost infinite against recovering any which should coincide with the half dozen allusions to them in the Bible. But Mr. Klein discovered in the ruins of Dibon, one of the ancient cities of Moab, and Capt. Warren recovered, the fragments of the now famous Moabite Stone, on which, in the old Samaritan characters, we read: "I, Mesha, son of Jobin, King of Moab. My father reigned over Moab thirty years, and I reigned after my father. I erected this altar unto Chemosh, who granted me victory over mine enemies, the people of Omri, King of Israel, who, together with his son, Ahab, oppressed Moab a long time--even forty years,"[140] etc. But space forbids even the enumeration of the corroborations of Bible history from the days of Abraham to the time of the first census of the Roman Empire, when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria the second time. In every instance where its monuments have spoken of biblical affairs they have confirmed the accuracy of the Bible history. The history of Great Britain, or of the United States, is not more authentic than, and not so accurate as, the long line of history recorded in the Bible. No important error has been proven in any of its historical statements of the world's history for forty centuries. This accuracy contrasted with the acknowledged errors of the best historians, is proof to every candid mind of divine direction and help to the sacred writers. Sweeping away, then, these cobwebs, we open the volume and form our opinion of its genuineness and authenticity from its own internal evidences--its nature and contents--and from the way in which it was used by the Hebrew nation. It is important at the outset to know how long these documents have undoubtedly existed. No one denies that they were in existence eighteen hundred years ago. Indeed, the first literary attack on them which has been recorded was made about that time; and Josephus' defense of the Scriptures against Apion still exists. The very same writings which the Protestant churches now acknowledge as canonical, and none other, were then acknowledged to be of divine authority by the Jews. It is true they bound their Bibles differently from ours, but the contents were the very same. They made up their parchments of the thirty-nine books in twenty-two rolls or volumes, one for every letter of their alphabet; putting Judges and Ruth, the two books of Samuel, the two books of Kings, the two books of Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, Jeremiah's Prophecy and Lamentations, and the twelve minor prophets, in one volume respectively. They also distinguished the five books of Moses as, _The Law_; the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon as, _The Psalms_; and all the remainder as, _The Prophets_.[141] Moreover, it is well known that two hundred and eighty-two years before the Christian era, these writings were translated into Greek and widely circulated in all parts of the world. They were, in fact, not only popular, but received as of divine authority by the Jews at that time, read in their synagogues in public worship, and regarded with sacred reverence. How did they come to receive them in this manner? These writings were not only acknowledged by the Jews; their bitterest enemies--the Samaritans--owned the divine authority of the five books of Moses, and preserve an ancient copy of them, differing in no essential particular from the Hebrew version, to this day. The Samaritans always bore to the Hebrews such a relation as Mohammedans do to Christians, and the Hebrews returned the grudge with interest: "For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans." These heathen Babylonians, four centuries or more before the Christian era, were somehow induced to receive the Pentateuch as of divine authority, and to frame some sort of religion upon it. Their enmity to the Jews is conclusive proof that, since that time, neither Jews nor Samaritans have altered the text; else the manuscripts would show the discrepancy. These books are not such as any person would forge to gain popularity, or to make money by. There is nothing in them to bribe the good opinion of influential people, or catch the favor of the multitude. On the contrary, their stern severity, and unsparing denunciation of popular vice and profitable sin must have secured their rejection by the Jewish people, had they not been constrained by undeniable evidence to acknowledge their divine authority. They set out with the assertion of the divine authority of the law of Moses, and everywhere sharply reprove princes, priests, and people for breaking it. The prophets, so far from seeking popularity, are foolhardy enough to denounce the bonnets, hoops, and flounces of the ladies, and to cry, Woe! against the regular business of the most respectable note-shavers,[142] to croak against the march of intellect, and shake public confidence in the prosperity of their great country,[143] to ally themselves with fanatic abolitionists, and introduce agitating political questions into the pulpit; crying, _Woe to him that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work._[144] To crown all, they organized abolition clubs to procure immediate emancipation, and published incendiary proclamations in the cities of the slaveholders,[145] and, strange to say, they were allowed to escape with their lives; and their writings were held sacred by the children of those very men and women they so unsparingly denounced; a conclusive proof that the calamities they predicted had compelled them to acknowledge these prophets as the heralds of God. The proof must have been conclusive, indeed, which compelled the Jews to acknowledge the writings of the prophets as sacred. Another very striking feature of these writings is, their mutual connection with each other. They were written at various intervals, during a period of a thousand years' duration, by shepherds and kings, by prophets and priests, by governors of States and gatherers of sycamore fruit; in deserts and in palaces, in camps and in cities, in Egypt and Syria, in Arabia and Babylon; under the iron heel of despotic oppression, and amid the liberty of the most democratic republic the world ever saw; yet, circumstances, and lapse of time, they ever hold to one great theme, always assert the same great principles, and perpetually claim connection with the writers who have preceded them. There is nothing like this in the histories of other nations. Two centuries will work such changes of opinion, that you can not find nowadays any historian who approves the sentiments of Pepys or Clarendon, whatever use he may make of their facts. But the historians of the Bible not only refer to their predecessors' writings, but refer to them as of acknowledged divine authority. Thus the very latest of these books gives the weight of its testimony to the first--"_And they set the priests in their divisions, and the Levites in their courses for the service of God, which is at Jerusalem, as it is written in the book of Moses._"[146] And Daniel spake of the books of Moses as well known when he says, "_Therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God._"[147] The shortest book in the Old Testament--the prophecy of Obadiah, consisting only of twenty sentences--contains twenty-five allusions to the preceding histories and laws. The last of the prophets shuts up the volume with a command to "_Remember the law of Moses._" In fact, just as the epistles prove the existence and acknowledged authority of the gospels; so do the prophets prove the existence and acknowledged authority of the law of Moses. They were acknowledged not merely by one generation of the Jewish people, but by the nation during the whole period of its national existence; and they are of such a character, that they must then, and now, be taken as one whole--all accepted, or all rejected together. The reader of the Old Testament will speedily find that these writings are not merely a connected history of the nation, of great general interest, like Bancroft's or Macaulay's, but of no such special interest to any individual as to force him, by a sense of self-interest, or the danger of loss of liberty or property, to correct their errors. On the contrary, every farmer in Palestine was deeply concerned in the truth and accuracy of the Bible; for it contained not only the general boundaries of the country, and of the particular tribes, like the survey of the Maine boundary, or of Mason and Dixon's line, but it delineated particular estates, also, and was, in fact, the report of the Surveyor-General, deposited in the county court for reference, in case of any litigation about sale or inheritance of property.[148] The genealogies of the tribes and families were also preserved in these writings; and on the authenticity and correctness of these records, the inheritance of every farm in the land depended; for as no lease ran more than fifty years, every farm returned to the heirs of the original settler at the year of jubilee.[149] Thus every Jewish farmer had a direct interest in these sacred records; and it would be just as hard to forge records for the county courts of Ohio, and pass them off upon the citizens as genuine, and plead them in the courts as valid, as to impose at first, or falsify afterward, the records of the commonwealth of Israel. This will appear more clearly when we consider that they contained also the laws of the land--the Constitution of the United States of Israel, with the statutes at large--according to which every house, and farm, and garden in the whole country was possessed, every court of justice was guided,[150] every election was held, from the election of a petty constable, to that of Governor of the State,[151] and the militia enrolled, mustered, officered, and called out to the field of battle.[152] These laws prescribed the way in which every house must be built, regulated the weaver in weaving his cloth, and the tailor in making it, and the cooking of every breakfast, dinner and supper eaten by an Israelite over the world, from that day to this.[153] Now, let any one who thinks it would be an easy matter to forge such a series of documents, and get people to receive and obey them, try his hand in making a volume of Acts of Assembly, and passing it off upon the people of Ohio for genuine. Let him bring an action into one of the courts, and persuade the judges to give a decision in his favor, upon the strength of his forged or falsified statutes, and then he may hope to convince us that the laws of Moses are simply a collection of religious tracts, which came to be held sacred through lapse of time, nobody knows how or why. Nor were these laws, and the usages thus established, common, and such as the people would be ready easily to adopt. On the contrary, Moses repeatedly asserts, and all ancient history shows, that they were quite peculiar to the Hebrew people then; and they are to this day confined to the republics which, like our own, have drawn their ideas from the Bible. It is enough to name the common law and trial by jury; the armed nation; the right of free public assembly, free speech, free passport, and free trade; the election of civil, judicial, and military officers by universal suffrage; the division of the land in fee-simple among the whole people; the rights of women to hold real estate in their own right, to speak in public assemblies, and to prophetic functions; and the support of religion by the voluntary offerings of the people. Our own republic resembles Israel as a daughter her mother. The land of liberty was the Bible country. The first republic which the world ever saw was designed by Almighty God, and revealed to the world in the Bible, and by the example of the United States of Israel. From that pattern our forefathers copied all the grand features of our glorious republic--the equitable distribution of the land, in fee-simple, among the people; securing them, by the jubilee, against the introduction of feudal tenure, and landlordism; the abolition of a standing army, and the defense of the country by the militia; the election of all officers, civil and military, from the town constable, and the justice of the peace, up to the president of the republic, the Lord Jehovah himself, by universal suffrage--and the Federal Union of the twelve tribes into one nation, with township, county, and state governments, with a common law, common schools, and the equality of all citizens before the law; the right of naturalization; sanitary and social institutions, such as modern philanthropists are only beginning to dream of, for the elevation of the people; and all this avowedly held in trust for all mankind, as a fountain of blessings for all the families of the earth. No such ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity, ever existed among the wisest heathen nations--the Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, or Romans. On the face of the whole earth there never was, and there is not to-day, a free republic outside of the light and liberty of the Bible. The so-called republics of Athens and Rome were hideous aristocracies, and tyrannies. From the Bible the men of the Continental Congress learned the grand truth, which they emblazoned on the forefront of their immortal Declaration of Independence, "That all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" thus planting the rights of man upon the only immovable basis--the throne of the eternal God. But there were other features of the Mosaic legislation so far in advance of the ideas of our modern Materialism as not to have been even yet suggested in our social congresses, nor even dreamt of by our most advanced Christian philanthropists, in their endeavors after the elevation of the masses. Moses' idea was the prevention of pauperism, and of the conflict between labor and capital, and of the gambling speculating fever, and the formation of an independent, intelligent, joyous, religious, healthy, and thrifty people, well-bred, well-fed, well-lodged, able to fight their foes on the battle-field, to reap their ridge on the harvest-field, to enjoy the blessings of healthy families, and to rejoice before the Lord. A volume would be needed to develop the social bearings of the laws of the Hebrews. We can only suggest for consideration the laws regarding inalienability of the homestead, and the bankrupt law; the laws of marriage and inheritance; the laws of servitude and wages; the sanitary laws regarding building, clothing, bathing, eating, and contagion; the protection of the rights of animals; the dispersion of the educated class; and the three great national festivals, during which the whole people were released from the labors of the field, and of the kitchen, and enjoyed during the eight summer days of each picnic such an excitement of social enjoyment, religious fervor, and political patriotism, as modern Christendom anticipates in the millennium, but which neither Church nor State has, as yet, systematically attempted to nurture. That the Hebrews did not obey the law, and so did not enjoy the happiness obedience would have secured, is only what God foresaw, and foretold repeatedly, with solemn warning of the disastrous degradation to which disobedience to God's laws must ever reduce man. Nevertheless, even their very imperfect conformity to these institutions gave them such superiority of blood and breeding to their ungodly neighbors, that they have survived the most powerful nations, and, in spite of dispersion, exile, disfranchisement, and persecution, they exist as a distinct people, superior intellectually, commercially, and morally to all the heathen nations at this day. How much higher had been their position had they fully obeyed the law. Our argument is, that this law of liberty, equality, fraternity, and religion, was worthy of our Father in heaven, and a seed of blessing to all the families of the earth. To a Jew living before the coming of Christ, the unanimous testimony of his nation, confirmed by all the commemorative observances of the sacrifices, the passover, the Sabbath, and the jubilee, by the reading of the law and the prophets, and the singing of the historical psalms in the temple and the synagogues, by the execution of the laws of Moses in the courts, and by the very existence of his nation as a distinct people, separate from all the other nations--could leave no doubt that laws so peculiar and beneficent must have been enacted by a wisdom superior to that of man, and their observance imposed by divine authority; nor that the miracles by which these laws were authenticated, and the national existence of the people of Israel was secured, were genuine, and divine. The chain of historical and internal evidence is too strong to be broken, while the Jewish nation exists. But yet this historical and internal evidence of the authority of the Old Testament is but the smallest part of that which we possess, who have the testimony of Christ on this subject. For this testimony removes the question from the mists of antiquity, and even from the debatable ground of historic certainty, and resolves the whole process of searching for, and comparing and examining a host of second-hand witnesses, into the easy and certain one of hearing the Author himself say, whether he acknowledges this Book to be his or not. Christians receive the Old Testament as the Word of God, because Jesus says so. Now, reader, it is of the utmost importance that you should stop just here, and give a plain, confident answer to these questions: Dost thou believe upon the Son of God? Is Jesus the Messiah of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write? Are you perfectly satisfied of the truth of the New Testament, and willing to venture your eternal salvation upon the words of Christ contained in it? For, if not, of what use is it for you to trouble yourself about the Old Testament? You might as well waste your time in examining the genuineness of the bills of a broken bank; they may be genuine or they may be forgeries; but who cares? They will never be paid. If the first promises of the bank of heaven, to send the Messiah eighteen hundred years ago, have been fulfilled, its other paper may be also valuable; if not, it must be equally worthless. If the New Testament be not of divine authority, you may place the prophets on the same shelf with the Poems of Ossian; and then follows the serious consequence, that there is not a grain of hope left for you or for any man on earth. If Jesus be indeed an Almighty Savior, and if he has indeed risen from the dead, then, through the power of his mighty love, your filthy soul may be washed from its sins, and your mortal body may be raised from the rottenness of the grave. But if Christ be not risen, you are yet in your sins. You have no notion that any of the gods of the heathen, or the precepts of the Koran, can purify your heart. You know well that Infidelity never sanctified any of your comrades. Conscience tells you that you are not any better now than you were a year ago, but worse. You are yet in your sins; and in them you must live and die! Aye, while your immortal soul lives, while the laws of human nature continue, you must carry those brands of infamy on your character, and daily progress from bad to worse; sinking deeper and deeper in the contempt of all intelligent beings; and, were there no other avenger, in the remorse and despair of your own mind, you must experience the horrors of perdition. Jesus, able to save to the uttermost, all that come unto God by him, is your only hope. There is none other name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved. If his gospel be true, you may be saved; if it is false, you must be damned. If you have the shadow of a doubt of the truth of the New Testament, go over the subject again; re-read the former chapters of this book; pray to God for light and truth; above all, read the Book again and again; and if, in your case, as in that of one of the most famous teachers of German Neology--De Wette--the careful study of the New Testament impels you to rush through all the mists of doubt to the higher standpoint of a lofty faith, and the sunshine of real religion; and if with him you can now say, "Only this one thing I know, that in no other name is there salvation than in the name of Jesus Christ the crucified, and that for humanity there is nothing higher than the incarnation of Deity set before us in him, and the kingdom of God established by him,"[154] you may then go on with your inquiry into the divine authority of the Old Testament. With the Master himself before you, the Author, the Inspirer, by whom, and for whom, the prophets spake, and to whom all the Scriptures point, you will not think of wasting time in examining second-hand evidence; but go direct to Jesus himself. His testimony will not be merely so much additional testimony--another candle added to the chandelier by whose light you have perused the evidences of the Scriptures; it will shine out on your soul as the light of the Sun of Righteousness with healing on his wings. Every word from his lips will awaken in your heart the voice from heaven, "_This is my beloved Son. Hear him._" What saith Christ, then, respecting the Old Testament? The moment you open the New Testament to make this inquiry, you are met by a reference to the Old. "_The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham_," is its formal title; and the most cursory perusal tells you that you have taken up, not a separate and independent work, which you can profitably peruse and understand without much reference to some foregoing volumes--as one might read Abbott's Life of Napoleon without needing at the same time to study the History of the Crusades--but that you have taken up a continuation of some former work--the last volume in fact of the Old Testament--and that you can not understand even the first chapter without a careful reading of the foregoing volumes. Before you have finished the first chapter you meet with the most unequivocal assertion of the harmony of the gospels and the prophecies, and of the divine authority of both--"_Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet_," etc. The whole tenor of the New Testament corresponds to this beginning, teaching that the birth, doctrine, miracles, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and second coming of the Lord, are the fulfillments of the Old Testament promises and prophecies; of which no less than a hundred and thirty-nine are expressly quoted, beginning with Moses and ending with Malachi. We can not explain this by saying, with the mythical school of interpreters, that this was merely the opinion of the writers of the gospels and of the Jews of their age; whose longings for the Messiah led them to imagine some curious coincidences between the events of Christ's life and the utterances of these ancient oracles to be ready fulfillments; and that Christ did not deem it needful in all cases to undeceive them. For to suppose that Christ--the Truth--would sanction or connive at any such sacrilegious deception, is at once to deprive him, not only of his divine character, but of all claim to common honesty. So far from the Jews longing for any such events as those which fulfilled the prophecies, they despised the Messiah in whom they were fulfilled, and refused to believe in him; and his disciples were as far from the gospel ideal of the Messiah, when Jesus needed to reproach them with, "_O fools, and slow of heart, to believe all that the prophets have spoken._"[155] It was not the Jews, nor yet the disciples, but the Lord himself who perpetually insisted on the divine authority of the Old Testament as the _Word_ of his Father, and the sufficient attestation of his own divine character, after this manner: "_Ye have not his word abiding in you; for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not. Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. * * * Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?_"[156] His first recorded sermon contains a remarkable and solemn attestation to the divine authority of the Old Testament, and of his own relation to it as its substance and supporter, "_Think not that I am come to destroy the law, and the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled._"[157] The whole of this discourse is an exposition of the true principles of the Old Testament, stripping off the rubbish by which tradition had made void the law of God, and enforcing its precepts by the sanction of his divine authority. And in one of his last discourses after his resurrection: "_Beginning at Moses, and the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. * * * And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures._"[158] In this distinct enumeration of the whole of the Scriptures of the Old Testament; in the assertion that they all treated of him, and that their principal predictions were fulfilled in him; and in his bestowal of divine illumination to enable them to understand these divine oracles--we have such an indorsement of their character by the Truth himself, as must command the faith and obedience of every believer in him. Had no objections been raised against particular doctrines or features of the Old Testament, we should stop here; perfectly satisfied with the attestations to the truth of its history, given by the continual references, and to the authority of its precepts, by the solemn formal declarations of the Son of God. But some popular objections to its completeness and perfection demand a brief notice. 1. The general character of the Old Testament being then ascertained beyond doubt, our first inquiry must be as to the integrity and completeness of the collection. For it is manifest that their divine authority being admitted, any attempt to add to them any human writings, or to take away those which were from God, would be a crime so serious in its consequences, that it could not escape the notice of him who severely rebuked even the verbal traditions by which the Jews made void the law of God. Now we are told by some that a great many inspired books have been lost; and they enumerate the prophecy of Enoch; the book of the Wars of the Lord; the book of Joshua; the book of Iddo the seer; the book of Nathan the prophet; the acts of Rehoboam; the book of Jehu, the son of Hanani; and the five books of Solomon, on trees, beasts, fowls, serpents, and fishes; which are alluded to in the Bible. If the case were so, it is difficult to see what objection could be raised against the divine authority of the books we have, because of the divine authority of those we have not; for it is not supposed that one divinely inspired book would contradict another. Nor yet can we see how the loss of these books should disprove their inspiration, much less the inspiration of those which remain, any more than the want of a record of the multitude of words and works of Jesus himself which were never committed to writing,[159] should be an argument against the divine authority of the Sermon on the Mount. It will hardly be asserted that God is bound to reveal to us everything that the human race ever did, and to preserve such records through all time, or lose his right to demand our obedience to a plain revelation of his will; or that we do well to neglect the salvation of our own souls until we obtain an infallible knowledge of the acts of Rehoboam. But there is not the shadow of a proof that any of these were inspired books, or that some of them were books at all. The Bible nowhere says that Enoch wrote his prophecy, or that Solomon read his discourses on natural history; nor of what religious interest they would have been to us any more than the hard questions of the Queen of Sheba, and his answers to them. Though the loss of these ancient chronicles may be regretted by the antiquarian, the Christian feels not at all concerned about it; knowing as he does, on the testimony of Christ, that the Holy Scriptures, as he and his apostles delivered them to us, contain all that we need to know in order to repent of our sins, lead holy lives, and go to heaven; and that we have the very same Bible of which Jesus said: "_They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. * * * If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead._"[160] 2. Another objection is, that the religion of the Old Testament was essentially different from that of the New. It is at once acknowledged, that the light which Christ shed on our relations to God, and to our brethren of mankind, is so much clearer than that of the Old Testament that we see our duties more plainly, and are more inexcusable for neglecting them, than those who had not the benefit of Christ's teaching. And no objection can be raised against God for not sending his Son sooner, or for not giving more light to the world before his coming, unless it can be shown that he is debtor to mankind, and that they were making a good use of the light he gave them. So that the question is not, Did God give as full and expanded instructions to the Church in her infancy as he has given in her maturity? but, Did he give instructions of a different character? It is not, Did Christ reveal more than Moses? but, Did Christ contradict Moses? And here, at the very outset, we are met by Christ's own solemn formal disclaimer of any such intention: "_Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill._" And as to the actual working of the Christian religion, when Paul is asked, "_Is the law then against the promises of God?_"[161] he indignantly replies, "_God forbid!_" But it is urged, "Judaism is not Christianity. You have changed the Sabbath, abolished the sacrifices, trampled upon the rules of living, eating, and visiting only with the peculiar people, you neglect the passover, and drop circumcision, the seal of the covenant, all on the authority of Christ. Do you mean to say that these are not essential elements of the Old Testament religion?" Undoubtedly. Outward ceremonies of any kind never were essential parts of religion. "_I will have mercy and not sacrifice_," is an Old Testament proverb, which clearly tells us that outward ceremonies are merely means toward the great end of all religion. "_The law_," says the Holy Ghost, by the pen of Paul, "_was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ_." The bread of heavenly truth is served out to God's children now on ten thousand wooden tables, instead of one brazen altar; but it is made of the same corn of heaven, it is dispensed by the same hand of love, to a larger family, it is true, but received and eaten in the exercise of the very same religious feelings, by any hearer of the gospel in New York, as by Abraham on Moriah. By faith in Christ the sinner now is justified, "_Even as Abraham believed God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness._" So says one who knew both law and gospel well. "_Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid! Yea, we establish the law!_" The Epistles to the Romans and to the Hebrews are just demonstrations of this truth, that the law was the blossom, the gospel the fruit. But it is alleged that the religion of the Old Testament could not but be defective, as it wanted the doctrines of immortality and the resurrection; of which, it is alleged, the Old Testament saints were ignorant. It were easy to prove, from their own words and conduct, that Job, Abraham, David, and Daniel, were not ignorant of these great doctrines.[162] But the manner in which our Lord proves the truth of the resurrection, by a reference to it as undeniably taught in the Old Testament, must ever silence this objection. "_But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living._"[163] 3. But it is objected the Hebrew Jehovah tolerated and approved polygamy, slavery, and divorce; and, in general, a low code of morals among the Hebrews. But we demand to know what standard of morals our objectors adopt? That of the ancient oriental world in which Israel lived? Then the laws of Jehovah were very far in advance of that age. The slave had his blessed Sabbath rest secured to him; which is more than modern civilization can secure for her railway slaves; his master was forbidden to treat him cruelly; and the maid-servant's honor was protected by the best means then known; while the Sacred Writings held up for example the primitive example of marriage, interposed the formality of a legal document before divorce, and elevated the family far above the degraded state of the heathen around them. But the objector falls back on the morals of Christendom, the civilization of the nineteenth century, and judges the laws of Moses by that standard. Very well. This is simply to say that our ideas have been raised to the standard of Christianity; and then the objection is that the laws of Moses are not so spiritual and elevated as the precepts of Christ. Our Lord himself asserts the same thing. He says Moses tolerated divorce because of the hardness of the people's hearts; but from the beginning it was not so. And Paul (Hebrews viii. 6, 7) alleges the imperfection of Moses' law as a good reason for the introduction of a better covenant. The Bible itself then recognizes an advance from good to better, the path of the just shining more and more unto the perfect day. But then it is asked, Is God the Author of an imperfect law? Could God give a defective code of morals? The question entirely misses the design of God's revelation as a process of educating his children. Suppose we ask, Could God speak Hebrew--a language so defective in philosophical terms? God must condescend to the mental, and even, in some degree, to the moral level of mankind if he is to reach us at all. All education must begin low, and rise from step to step. The A, B, C of morals must be first learned. The whole analogy of providence shows this to be God's method of procedure. The kingdom of God is like the growing seed; first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. Gradual, and even slow, progress is the law of nature. Our modern civilization, which is so proudly invoked, is very far indeed from any such perfection as might enable us to look down upon Moses' legislation with contempt. We have only to name our standing armies and conscriptions; our national promises to pay debts, which no one ever expects to pay; our laws regarding drunkenness, and our revenues derived from the licenses for the sale of liquors; the utter failure of our attempts to put down betting, gambling, and stock and gold speculations, prostitution, bribery, frauds, and plundering of the public funds; to convince ourselves that there are many things law can not do, even in this nineteenth century of civilization. Our little progress, such as it is, has not been made all at once, or by one great advance. God gives mankind blessings by degrees. He gave the mariner's compass to the fourteenth century, the printing press and America to the fifteenth, the Bible in the vulgar tongue to the sixteenth, parliamentary government to the seventeenth, the steam engine to the eighteenth, railroads and the telegraph to the nineteenth. One might as well cavil at his providence for not giving the Hebrews sewing machines, Hoe's printing presses, and daily newspapers, when they entered into Canaan, as for delaying to give them the elements of Christian civil law, and social life, before they were able to value and to use them. As it was, Moses' law was so far in advance of their own ideas of propriety, and so far in advance of those of all the people around them, that they were continually falling back from it, and rebelling against it, and subjecting themselves to the discipline which God had threatened for disobedience. Thus they were kept ever looking upward to a higher model. Their transgressions must be confessed as sins, and atoned for by bloody sacrifices, declaring the transgressor worthy of death. Their consciences were educated to the idea of holiness, an idea utterly wanting among the heathen; and the law became a powerful motive power, urging them to higher and holier lives, and preparing them to receive the higher and holier example and precepts of Christ. The imperfection, then, of the law of Moses, so far from being an evidence of the human origin of the Bible, is a mark of the infinite wisdom of the great Lawgiver in adapting his legislation to the condition of his people; and while tolerating for the time then present an imperfect state of society, just as at this time he tolerates a Christendom far below the gospel standard, yet implanting in the minds of his people principles of righteousness and love which were certain eventually to raise them to the high level of the kingdom of God. This, then, is simply an instance of the general law of divine development. 4. Again, however, it is contended, "that the morality of the Old Testament was narrow and bigoted; requiring, indeed, the observance of charity to the covenant people, but allowing Israel to hate all others as enemies, and as well expressed in the text, _Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy._"[164] But let it be noticed, that this is no text of Scripture, nor does our Lord so quote it. He does not say it is so written, but, _ye have heard it said by them of old time_. The first part is God's truth; the second is the devil's addition to it, which Christ clears away and denounces. It were easy to quote multitudes of passages from the Old Testament, commanding Israel to show kindness to the stranger, and a whole host of promises, that in them all the families of the earth should be blessed; any one of which would sufficiently refute the foolish notion, that the morality of the Old Testament was geographical, and its charity merely national. But the simple fact, that the most sublime sanction of world-wide benevolence which ever fell even from the lips of Christ himself, was uttered by him as the sum and substance of the teachings of the Old Testament, conclusively confutes this dogma. The Golden Rule was no new discovery, unless its Author was mistaken, for he says: "_Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them_: FOR THIS IS THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS."[165] He declares the very basis and foundation of the whole Old Testament religion to be those eternal principles of godliness and charity, which he quotes in the very words of the law: "_Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets._"[166] The law and the prophets, then, taught genuine world-wide benevolence, Christ being witness; and the moral law of the Old Testament is the moral law of the New Testament, if we may believe the Lawgiver. 5. Still, it is alleged, "it can not be denied that the writers of the Old Testament breathed a spirit of vindictiveness, and imprecated curses on their enemies, utterly at variance with the precepts of the gospel, which command us to bless and curse not; and even in their solemn devotions uttered sentiments unfit for the mouth of any Christian; nor that their views of the character of God were stern and gloomy, and that they represented the Hebrew Jehovah as an unforgiving and vengeful being, utterly different from the kind and loving Father whom Christ delighted to reveal." This, if the truth were told, is the grand objection to the Old Testament. The holy and righteous sin-hating God, presented in its history, is the object of dislike. The God who drowned the old world, destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah by fire from heaven, commanded the extermination of the lewd and bloody Canaanites, thundered his curses against sinners of every land and every age, saying, "_Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them_," requiring all the people to say _Amen_,[167] is not the God whom Universalists can find in their hearts to adore. A mild, easy, good-natured being, who would allow men to live and die in sin without any punishment, would suit them better. They try to think that he is altogether such an one as themselves, and an approver of their sin. But it is worth while to inquire whether the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ be in this respect anything different from the Hebrew Jehovah, or whether the gospel has in the least degree lessened his displeasure against iniquity. Paul thought not that he was a different person, when he said: "_We know him who hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord._"[168] Jesus thought not that he was more lenient to sinners when he cried, "_Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! * * * Thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell * * * It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee._"[169] It is not in the Old Testament, but in the New, that we are told that Jesus himself shall come "_In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power._"[170] It is not an old, bigoted Hebrew prophet giving a vision of the Hebrew Jehovah, but the beloved disciple who leaned on Jesus' breast, picturing the Savior himself, who says: "_He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood; and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; and he treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God._"[171] Let no man imagine that the New Testament offers impunity to the wicked, or that the Old Testament denies mercy to the repenting sinner, or that Christ exhibited any other God than the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob--the same Hebrew Jehovah who _commands the wicked to forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and to return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon_.[172] It is exceedingly strange that those who dwell upon the paternal character of God, as a distinctive feature of Christ's personal teaching, should have forgotten that the hymns of the Old Testament church, a thousand years before his coming, were full of this endearing relation; that it was by the first Hebrew prophet that the Hebrew Jehovah declared, "_Israel is my son, even my first-born; and I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me_;"[173] and that by the last of them he urges Israel to obedience by this tender appeal: "_If I be a father, where is mine honor?_"[174] It was not Christ, but David--one of those gloomy, stern, Hebrew prophets--who penned that noble hymn to our Father in heaven, which Christ illustrated in his Sermon on the Mount: "The Lord is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide, Neither will he keep his anger forever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins, Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities; For as the heaven is high above the earth, So great is his mercy to them that fear him; As far as the East is from the West, So far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, So the Lord pitieth them that fear him."--Psalm ciii. It is utter ignorance of the Old Testament which prompts any one to imagine that it presents any other character of God than "_The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty._"[175] This is the name which God proclaimed to Moses, and this is the character which he proclaimed in Christ, when he cried on the cross: "_My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel._"[176] Justice and mercy are united in Christ dying for the ungodly. It is untrue to say that the prophets of the Old Testament were actuated by a spirit of malice, or of revenge for personal injuries as such, in praying for, or prophesying destruction on the inveterate enemies of God and his cause.[177] Of all Scripture characters, David has been most defamed for vindictiveness; but surely never was man more free from any such spirit, than the persecuted fugitive, who, with his enemy in his hand in the cave, and his confidential advisers urging him to take his life, cut off his skirt instead of his head; and on another occasion prevented the stroke which would have smitten the sleeping Saul to the earth, and sent back even the spear and the cruse of water, the trophies of his generosity. When cursed himself, and defamed as a vengeful shedder of blood by the Benjamite, he could restrain the fury of his followers, protect the life of the ruffianly traitor, and thus appeal to God as the witness of his innocence: "O Lord, my God! if I have done this, If there be iniquity in my hands, If I have rewarded evil to him that was at peace with me, Yea I have delivered him that without cause was mine enemy."[178] It is true that he does bitterly curse several living persons; of whom it is observable that some had done him no sort of personal injury; as Doeg the Edomite--the Nana Sahib of his day--who anticipated the scenes of Cawnpore, in the streets of Nob, by mercilessly butchering unoffending men, helpless women, and innocent babes. But surely no friend of humanity can imagine that it is improper that the chief magistrate of Israel, anointed for the very purpose of being a terror to evil doers, should express his righteous indignation against such atrocities; nor confound such public execration with the petty gnawings of private revenge. Still less can the fearer of God doubt the propriety of his expressing by the mouth of his prophet, that displeasure he signally displayed by his providence, scathing and blasting the accursed wretch into a terror to all bloody and deceitful men who shall read their own warning in his doom. "God shall likewise destroy thee forever, He shall take thee away and pluck thee from thy dwelling, And root thee out of the land of the living."[179] We have the most solemn assurance, that every one of the historical incidents of Scripture is recorded for our instruction, and that every prophecy gives a lesson to all ages. "_Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come._"[180] The imprecations of the Bible against individual sinners are the gibbets on which these malefactors are hung up for warning to all men to flee the crimes that brought them to that fate. It is put beyond the possibility of doubt, by the combined testimony of the Lord and his apostles, that by far the greater number of the curses which David uttered, he spoke in the person of Christ himself, of whom he was a type; and with direct reference to the crimes and punishment of his enemies. Thus the Sixty-ninth Psalm, and the One hundred and ninth, pre-eminently the cursing Psalms, are most explicitly and repeatedly asserted by Christ, by Peter, and by John, to belong to Christ, and to express his very words: "_This scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus. * * * For it is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein. And, His bishopric let another take._"[181] If any one feels reluctant to imagine that such cursings should fall from the lips of the merciful Savior, let him remember that the most awful curse which shall ever fall on the ears of terrified men shall be pronounced by Jesus himself, "_Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels._"[182] The solemn facts of the Bible will not accommodate themselves to our likes and dislikes. Christ loves righteousness and hates iniquity; in the Bible he takes leave to say so, and he expects his people to share his feelings, and to be willing to express them on fit occasions. Personal revenge, and curses for mere personal injuries, are forbidden in the New Testament as well as in the Old. But it was an apostle of Jesus Christ who cried, "_If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed. Though we or an angel from heaven bring any other gospel unto you, let him be accursed._"[183] Nor until we can in some measure feel this holy indignation against sin, and this burning desire to see all tyranny, superstition, bribery, licentiousness, and profanity, crushed and banished from the earth, can we pray in truth "_Thy kingdom come._" Still less can we be prepared for the rejoicings of heaven over the conquest of the enemies of God and man: "_Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for God hath avenged you on her._" Reader, you hope to go to heaven; but it may be a different place from what you dream of. Did you ever study the employment of the saints there? Are you washed from your sins? Is your mind purified from your carnal notions? Unless a man be born again he can not see the kingdom of God. Are your likes and dislikes, your sentiments and sympathies, your understanding and your will, all brought into subjection to Christ? Can you heartily love and adore a sin-hating, sin-avenging God? Or do you shrink back in terror or dislike from God's denunciations of wrath against the wicked? Would your benevolence lead you to deal alike with the righteous and the wicked; and to abhor the thought of destroying them that destroy the earth? Then how will you join in the hallelujahs of heaven; for God's judgments are the themes of thanksgiving and praise from saints and angels there, and this is their song: "_Hallelujah, salvation, and glory, and honor, and power, unto the Lord, our God, for true and righteous are his judgments; for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hands. And again they said, Hallelujah! And her smoke rose up for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God that sat on the throne, saying, Amen! Hallelujah! And a voice came out of the throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye his servants; and ye that fear him, both small and great. And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Hallelujah!_ FOR THE LORD GOD OMNIPOTENT REIGNETH."[184] And now, if this be the character of God, if he be indeed one who hates iniquity, and punishes impenitent sinners, we need not wonder that those who spake his word should utter imprecations, either in the Old Testament or in the New; but rather bless the mercy which warns before justice strikes, which hangs the red lantern over the abyss, and which seeks by the terrors of the Lord to persuade men from perdition. The curses of the Bible are denounced against the enemies of God, with the design of showing sinners their danger, and leading them to repentance. The conclusion, then, of our investigation is, that the Old Testament is the Word of God no less than the New; that it is in no respect contrary to it; that all its parts--the law and the prophets, and the Psalms--are of divine authority; that all its contents were written by divine direction, whether prophecy or history, ceremony or morality, promise or threatening, curses or blessings. It is of the Old Testament principally that the Holy Ghost declares: "_All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works._"[185] FOOTNOTES: [120] Parker's Absolute Religion, p. 205. [121] Parker's Discourses on Religion, p. 161. [122] Macknight's Doctrine of Inspiration, p. 161, and seq. [123] Macknight's Doctrine of Inspiration, p. 192, etc. [124] Essays and Reviews, page 121. [125] John, chap. x. 25, 38. [126] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1864, p. 254. Annual Cyclopædia, 1863, p. 377. [127] Mastodon Giganteus, Boston, 1855, p. 199. [128] For a fuller discussion of the subject, and references to the authorities, which our space here forbids, I must refer the curious reader to the _Princeton Review_, Vol. XL. No. 4, where I have noticed every fact bearing on the subject up to that date; merely adding that no new fact, establishing man's remote antiquity, has been established up to this date, September 21, 1874. [129] Familiar Lectures, page 456. [130] Authenticity of the Pentateuch, II. 150. [131] Creation's Testimony to its God. London, 1867, page 338. [132] See this subject more fully discussed in chapter XII., Telescopic Views of Scripture. [133] Osburn's Monumental History. [134] Hebrew Monarchy, 160. [135] Prof. Rawlinson's Modern Skepticism, 285. [136] Ancient Monarchies I. 65. [137] W. R. Cooper, Secretary Biblical Archæological Society, in _Faith and Free Thought_, page 257. [138] Rawlinson's Illustrations of Scripture. [139] 2 Kings, chap. iv. 2 Chronicles, chap. xx. [140] Recovery of Jerusalem, page 496, Gunsberg's Essay. [141] Josephus against Apion, Book I. Sect. 8. Horne's Introduction Chap. ii. Sect. 1. [142] Isaiah, chap. iii. 16. Ezekiel, chap. xviii. 12. [143] Jeremiah, chaps. xxi., and xxii. 16. [144] Jeremiah, chap. xxii. 13. [145] Jeremiah, chap. xxxiv. [146] Ezra, chap. vi. 18. [147] Daniel, chap. ix. 11. [148] Joshua, chaps. xiii.-xix. [149] 1 Chronicles, chaps. i.-ix. Leviticus, chap. xxv. [150] Exodus, chap. xxi. 6. Deuteronomy, chap. i. 16; chap. xix. [151] Exodus, chap. xviii. 21. [152] Deuteronomy, chap. xx. Numbers, chap. x. 9. [153] Deuteronomy, chap. xxii. 8, 11, 12. Leviticus, chap. xi. [154] Preface to Exposition of the Apocalypse. [155] Luke, chap. xxiv. 25. [156] John, chap. v. 38, 39, 46, 47. [157] Matthew, chap. v. 17, 18. [158] Luke, chap. xxiv. throughout. [159] John, chap. xx. 30. [160] Luke, chap. xvi. 29. [161] Galatians, chap. iii. 21. [162] Job, chap. xix. 25. Psalm xvi. 10. Hebrews, chap. xi. 13-16. Daniel, chap. xii. 2, 3. [163] Matthew, chap. xxii. 31, 32. [164] Matthew, chap. v. 43. [165] Matthew, chap. vii. 12. [166] Matthew, chap. xxii. 35-40. [167] Deuteronomy, chap. xxvii. 26. [168] Hebrews, chap. x. 30. [169] Matthew, chap. xi. [170] 2 Thessalonians, chap. i. [171] Revelation, chap. xix. [172] Isaiah, chap. lv. [173] Exodus, chap. iv. 22. [174] Malachi, chap. i. [175] Exodus, chap. xxxiv. [176] Psalm xxii. [177] 2 Timothy, chap. iv. 14. [178] Psalm vii. [179] Psalms vii. and lii. and 2 Samuel, chaps. xvi., xxi. and xxii. [180] 1 Corinthians, chap. x. [181] John, chap. ii. 17; chap. xv. 25; chap. xix. 28. Acts, chap. i. 20. [182] Matthew, chap. xxv. 41. [183] Galatians, chap. i. 9. 1 Corinthians, chap. xvi. 22. Revelation, chaps. xix., xx. and xxi. [184] Revelation, chaps. xix., xx. and xxi. [185] 2 Timothy, chap. iii. 16, 17. CHAPTER X. INFIDELITY AMONG THE STARS. A little or superficial knowledge of philosophy may incline a man's mind to Atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.--BACON. When skeptics, who are determined not to believe in the Bible, find the historical evidences of its genuineness, authority, and inspiration, impregnable against the assaults of criticism, they turn their attention to some other mode of attack, and of late years have selected their weapons from the physical sciences. The argument thus raised is, that the Bible can not be the Word of God, because it asserts facts contrary to the teachings of science. Of this warfare Voltaire may be considered the leader, in his celebrated attack on the chemical processes recorded in Scripture; in which he exposed himself to the ridicule of all the chemists and metallurgists in Europe, by denying the possibility of dissolving the golden calf; the solution of gold being actually found in every gilder's shop in Paris, and known even to coiners and forgers, for hundreds of years before he made this notable discovery. The result was ominous. The whole circle of the sciences has been ransacked for such arguments, and especially has every new discovery been hailed by skeptics as an ally to their cause, until further acquaintance has demonstrated that the stranger, too, was in alliance with religion. Thus, when a few years ago, Geology began to upheave his titanic form, he was eagerly greeted as a being undoubtedly not of celestial, but rather of subterranean, or even of infernal origin, willing to employ his gigantic powers in the assault upon heaven, and able to overwhelm the Bible and the Church under the ruins of former worlds. But now that skeptics have discovered the proofs he gives of the presence of the Almighty on this world of ours, they are getting shy of his acquaintance, and are cultivating the society of some still more juvenile visitors from the chambers of animal magnetism and biology. The same scene will doubtless be acted over again; and these infantile strangers, when able to give distinct utterance to the facts of their developed consciousness, will bear testimony to the truth of God. Such objections to the Bible are very rarely brought forward by truly scientific men. It is a phenomenon, like the advent of a great comet, to find a man profoundly versed in science attack the Bible. Your third or fourth rate men of learning attain distinction in this field. An anti-Bible writer or lecturer has generally been promoted to that high eminence from the school-room, or the editorial sanctum of an unsuccessful newspaper; or his patients have not sufficiently appreciated his physic; or he has failed in getting a patent right for his wonderful perpetual motion; or possibly he has enlarged his practical knowledge of science in the laboratory of some college, or has had his head turned by being asked to hear the mathematical recitations during the sickness of some professor. But to hear of men like Galileo, Kepler, Boyle, Newton, and Leibnitz, or Lyell, Mantell, Herschel, Agassiz, Hitchcock, Faraday, Balbo, Nichol, or Rosse, heading an attack upon Christianity, would be an unprecedented phenomenon. Such men are profoundly impressed with the thorough agreement between the facts of nature rightly observed, and the declarations of the Bible rightly interpreted. It is equally rare to hear of a specialist in any department of science assume Atheistic ground in that department; though a few of that class are willing to believe that some other department of science, of which they have no personal knowledge, favors Infidelity. Even Huxley, with all his nonsense about the identical composition of the protoplasm of the mutton chop, and that of the lecturer, denies, and disproves, spontaneous generation, and votes in the London School Board for the reading of the Bible. The leading Infidel writers, such as Comte and Spencer, are not distinguished by any personal scientific researches and discoveries; they are merely collectors and retailers, at second-hand, of other men's discoveries. The original scientific explorers and discoverers are few and modest. Nevertheless, the other class, being both the most numerous and the most noisy, make up by loquacity for their deficiency of science, and counterbalance their ignorance by their assurance. Such writers, assuming that they have outstripped all the philosophers of former days, will tell you how foolishly David, and Kepler, and Bacon, and Newton, and Herschel dreamed of the heavens declaring the glory of the Lord, and the firmament showing his handiwork; "while at the present time, and for minds properly familiarized with true astronomical philosophy, the heavens display no other powers than those of natural laws, and no other glory than that of Hipparchus, of Kepler, of Newton, and of all who have helped to discover them." Theology belongs only to the infancy of the human intellect; metaphysical philosophy is the amusement of youth; but the full-grown man has learned to relinquish both religion and reason, and comes to the "positive state of science in which the human mind, acknowledging the impossibility of obtaining absolute knowledge, abandons the search after the origin and destination of the universe, and the knowledge of the secret causes of phenomena." The crown of modern science is ultimately to be placed upon the brow of Atheism; but long before that eagerly desired achievement, the old Bible theology is to be buried beyond the possibility of a resurrection, under mountains of natural laws, and monuments of scientific discovery. These assertions, confidently made, and perseveringly reiterated in the ears of ungodly men ignorant of the facts, of impetuous youths eager to throw off the restraints of religion, of Christians weak in the faith, and even poured into the unsuspecting mind of childhood, produce the most painful results; and it becomes the imperative duty of the bishops of the Church of Christ not to allow them to pass unchallenged, but to convince the gainsayers, and stop the mouths of these unruly and vain talkers; or, if that be not possible, to make their folly manifest to all men. The implements for such a service are well tried and abundant, and the difficulty lies only in making a proper selection. At first view, the extinction of religion by science seems very unlikely. It is as unlikely that any thing that an Infidel says about religion should be true, as that a blind man should describe the sun correctly, or even read a chapter accurately, with the book open before him? I shall show you presently that learned Infidels make the grossest blunders respecting the plainest Scripture records of scientific facts. It is very unlikely that Infidels, who lay no claim to prophetic inspiration, should make any predictions about religion more reliable than those they have been telling so abundantly for two hundred years past, respecting the immediate overthrow of Christianity and the Bible; which, nevertheless, has been going on conquering new kingdoms every year, its missionaries outstripping scientific ardor in exploring the mysteries of African geography, honorably receiving the prizes which the Infidel Volney instituted for philological proficiency, and printing Bibles from Voltaire's printing-press. And it is very unlikely that these physical sciences, so long worshipers in the temple of God, should now become impious; as unlikely as that Hitchcock, or McCosh, or Hodge, or Barnes should now, in their old days, renounce the Bible, and blaspheme God. What! astronomy, and zoology, and botany, and ethnography, that were suckled at the breast of the Bible, raise their hands against the mother that bore them! Incredible! These sciences made an early profession of religion; taught Sabbath-school in the days of Job, Zophar, and Elihu; wrote sacred poetry, and were licensed to preach, in the days of Solomon; poured forth prophetic raptures in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah; wrote volumes on the politics of Christianity in Babylon, and painted glorious visions of the victories of the Lamb of God, and dazzling views of the landscapes of paradise restored, in Patmos; employed the gigantic intellect of Newton, the elegant pen of Paley, the eloquence of Chalmers, Herschel's heaven-piercing eye, and Miller's muscular arm, to guard the outer courts of the sanctuary, while they sung sublime anthems to the music of David's harp within. Have they now, after such a life of devotion, relinquished all these sublimities and beatitudes, taken lodgings in the sty, and renounced their faith in God, and hope of heaven, for the Infidel maxim, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die?" God forbid! On the contrary, all matured science glorifies its Creator. As a specimen of the testimony of matured science to religion, let us look at the progress of astronomy, as it has successively swept away one Atheistic theory after another, answered anti-Bible objections, and illustrated promises couched in heavenly figures, long incomprehensible to the Church. If, in order to present something like a fair outline of the bearings of astronomy on modern Atheism, we should have occasion to repeat, expand, and illustrate some things already introduced in previous chapters, the repetition won't hurt us. A good story is nothing the worse for being twice told; and the story of our opponents is nothing but a ceaseless repetition of the Atheism of twenty centuries. The progress of astronomical science has swept away the alleged facts on which all systems of Atheism have been based. 1. _It has refuted the fundamental dogma of Atheism, that the universe is infinite, and therefore self-existent._ The assertion is confidently made by Atheists and Pantheists, that the universe has no boundaries; not merely none which we can see, but that it actually fills all immensity; suns succeeding suns, and firmament clustering beyond firmament, throughout infinite space. It is indispensable for the Atheist not only to assert, but to prove this to be the fact, if he would convince himself, or any other person, that the universe had no Creator, but exists by the necessity of its own nature; for that which exists by the necessity of its own nature must exist in all time, and in every place. No reason can be given why self-existent suns, planets, and moons should exist in any one portion of space, and not exist in any other similar portion of space. For if such a reason could be given, that reason must show a cause for their existence in the one place, and their non-existence in another; and that cause must have existed before the universe, and must have been a cause sufficient to produce the effect. This sufficient cause includes ability to produce, wisdom to arrange, and force to put in motion all the powers of the universe; qualities which reside only in an intelligent being. This is the cause which the Bible asserts when it says, "In the beginning GOD created the heavens and the earth," and which Atheists deny when they assert that "the universe is eternal and infinite." Now, this fundamental article of the creed of Infidels is utterly incapable of proof. If the fact were really so, they never could prove it. They acknowledge no revelation from an infinite understanding, but found their belief on the knowledge of a number of finite and ignorant beings. Before they are competent to pronounce upon the extent of the universe, they must explore it thoroughly; which, when they shall have done, they will have demonstrated that it has boundaries, seeing they have discovered them; but, if they have not thoroughly explored the universe, they can not say that it is infinite, because they do not know. The very utmost, then, which could possibly be asserted on the matter would be, not that the universe has no boundaries, but that man has never reached them. As in the case of ocean soundings, if we can not find bottom, we are not therefore to conclude that there is none, but that our line is not long enough, or our lead not heavy enough to reach it. It were a logical absurdity to say, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts--that any number of finite parts could compose an infinite universe. Each sun or planet is a finite object, and any possible number of them can be counted in a sufficient time. It is impossible that any number can be infinite; for we are not using the word infinite here in the loose sense in which it is used by mathematicians, when they speak of an infinite series; that is, a series which, though it has no end, has a beginning; but in the strict sense of something having neither beginning nor end. A beginning of the universe, either in space or time, is the very thing the Atheist denies. The same objection applies to the allegation, that infinite space is full of ether, air, gas, nebulæ, or any other kind of matter. It is an assertion incapable of proof; and therefore thoroughly unscientific; as all Infidel theories are. But if it could be proven that every part of space accessible to our telescopes is full of an ether whose undulations transmit light, as we believe it can, that would be only a proof of the finitude of matter. That ether consists of parts whose movements can be measured and numbered; and no possible multitude of such parts can amount to the infinite. While reason thus enables us to show this dogma of the infinity of the universe to be theoretically improbable, and logically irrational, science has lately taken a more decisive step, and demonstrated it to be actually false. The universe has boundaries, and we have seen them. The proof is simple, and easily demonstrable. That broad band of luminous cloud which stretches across the heaven, called the Milky Way, consists of millions of stars, so small and distant that we can not see the individual stars, and so numerous that we can not help seeing the light of the mass; just as you see the outline of the forest at a distance, but are unable to distinguish the individual trees. Besides this mass of stars to which our solar system belongs, there are thousands of smaller similar clouds in various parts of the heavens, which have successively been shown to consist of multitudes of stars. But all around these star-clouds the clear blue sky is discovered by the naked eye. Now, it is easy to perceive, that if all the regions of infinite space were filled either with self-luminous suns, or planets capable of reflecting light, or luminous nebulæ, or comets of gaseous consistency, at such distances as the Milky Way, or any other star-cloud demonstrates to be safe and practicable, we should see no blue sky at all; but the whole vault of heaven would present that whitish light resulting from the mingling of the rays of multitudes of stars, planets, and comets, which the Milky Way does actually exhibit. No matter how small or how distant these stars, _if they were only infinitely numerous_, it is impossible that there could be any point in the heavens unilluminated by their rays, even although the stars themselves were invisible to our eyes, or even to our telescopes. The whole heaven would be one vast Milky Way. Or rather, as Humboldt reasons, "If the entire vault of heaven were covered with innumerable strata of stars, one behind the other, as with a widespread starry canopy, and light were undiminished in its passage through space, the sun would be distinguished only by its spots, the moon would appear as a dark disc, and amid the general blaze not a constellation would be visible."[186] It would appear also to follow, as a necessary consequence, that such an infinite multitude of blazing suns must generate a heat compared with which the general conflagration would be cool and comfortable. But the telescope shows us a state of matters vastly different from this. It shows us, in fact, that space, so far from being occupied with suns and stars, is mostly empty. Our universe is only a little island in the great ocean of infinite space. Though the telescope discovers multitudes of stars where the naked eye sees none, yet they are, in far the greater number of instances, "_seen projected on a perfectly dark heaven, without any appearance of intermixed nebulosity_."[187] And even through the Milky Way, and the other nebulæ, the telescope penetrates, through "_intervals absolutely dark, and completely void of any star, of the smallest telescopic magnitude_."[188] It may assist us to understand the full import of this declaration, to remember that Lord Rosse's large telescope clearly defines any object on the moon's surface as large as the Custom House. Its power of penetrating space surpasses our power of imagination, but is represented by saying, that light, which flashes from San Francisco to London quicker than you can close your eye and open it again, requires _millions of years_ to travel to our earth from the most distant star-cloud discoverable by this telescope.[189] If a galaxy like this of ours existed anywhere within this amazing distance, that telescope would discover its existence. It has, in fact, augmented the universe visible to us, 125,000,000 times, and thus made us feel that not merely this world, which constitutes our earthly all, and yon glorious sun, which shines upon it, but all the host of heaven's suns, and planets, and moons, and firmaments, which our unaided eyes behold, are but as a handful of the sand of the ocean shore compared with the immensity of the universe. But ever, and along with this, it has shown us the ocean as well as the shore, and revealed boundless regions of darkness and solitude stretching around and far away beyond these islands of existence. The telescope, then, enlarges and confirms our views of the extent of the unoccupied portions of space. If there were only one dark point of the heavens no larger than the apparent magnitude of the smallest star, this one unoccupied space would sufficiently disprove the infinity of the universe, inasmuch as there would be a portion of space of boundless length, and of a diameter not less than the diameter of the earth's orbit, say 190,000,000 miles, in which stars might exist, as they do in its borders, but yet do not. But the argument becomes utterly overwhelming, when the attempt is made to calculate the proportion of space occupied by the stars to that left unoccupied. Whether we take Herschel's computation, that the nebulæ cover one two hundred and seventieth part of the superficies of the visible heaven,[190] or Struve's supposition of the existence of a star subtending no measurable angle, in every part of the visible sky as large as the surface of the moon, the vast disproportion of the universe, to the space in which it is placed, forces itself upon our notice. For, upon the largest of these computations, the proportion of existence to empty space is mathematically proved to be not greater than as the cube of one to the cube of two hundred and sixty-nine; that is to say, there is room for 19,395,109 such universes as this of ours in that small part of infinite space open to the view of Herschel's telescopes. But when we come to consider the vastness of these regions of darkness, over which no light has traveled for twenty millions of years, and remember also that astronomers have looked clear through the nebulæ, and find that they bear no more cubical proportion to the infinite darkness behind them than the sparks of a chimney do to the extent of the sky against which they seem projected, so far from imagining the universe to be infinite, we stand confounded at its relative insignificance, and are convinced that it bears no more proportion to infinite space than a fishing-boat does to the Atlantic Ocean. There is no possible evasion of this great fact, by any contradictory hypothesis. It can not be objected "that stars may exist at infinite distances, whose light has not yet reached the limits of our universe." If they do, they did not exist from eternity, for there is no possible distance over which light could not have traveled, during eternal duration. But their eternal existence is the very thing which the Atheist is concerned to prove. Grant that infinite space is filled with worlds _which had a beginning_, and their necessary existence instantly falls, and we are compelled to seek for a cause of their beginning of existence; that is to say, a Creator. Nor will it answer the purpose to say, "that for anything we know to the contrary, these dark regions may be filled with dark stars." If the fact were so, it is equally fatal to the dogma of self-existence. Some stars shine; others are dark. Why so? Wherefore this difference? Variety is an effect, and demands a prior cause. Were there only two stars in the sky, or two substances on the earth, and those unlike in any particular, that plurality, and that variety, would prove that they could not be infinite or self-existent, but dependent upon some cause for their existence, and for their variety of form. But we do know many things contrary to the notion that the dark regions of infinite space may be full of dark stars. Light is not the only indication of the presence of a star. The attraction of gravity, which is wholly independent of light, is a proof quite as certain and satisfactory to the astronomer. The presence of stars and planets too faint to be discovered by the naked eye, and of one, the planet Neptune,[191] as far distant from the planet disturbed by its attraction as the earth is from the sun, was ascertained, and its place pointed out by Adams and Le Verrier, _before it was seen_. If the dark interplanetary spaces, then, were full of dark attracting bodies, the perturbations of the other planets would discover their existence. So the presence of some invisible stars at much greater distances from their visible associates has been discovered by Bessel,[192] and it is quite possible that a dark firmament may yet be discovered, containing as great a number of dark stars as we now behold of luminaries; another group of islets in the ocean of infinite space. But the very facts which will prove their existence will disprove their infinity; for we can know their presence only by their perturbation of the proper motions of the visible stars; but if infinite space were full of dark bodies, the visible stars would have no room to move at all. It is easily demonstrable, that if infinite space were filled with dark stars, the equilibrium and coherence of our galaxy, and of all other clusters of stars, would be destroyed. The existence of nebulæ, and clusters, and the revolutions of the binary stars, are conclusive proof that the dark parts of infinite space are not full of dark attracting bodies. Nor can the Atheist here raise his usual argument from unknown facts, and say that, "far beyond the range of our most powerful telescopes, a boundless expanse of firmaments may exist." It concerns not our present argument whether such exist or not. Whatsoever discoveries may be made to eternity, of firmaments, ten thousand times ten thousand times larger than we now behold, _they can never bear the smallest proportion to the infinite space in which they exist_. Beyond these islets will extend gulfs and oceans immeasurable. Our argument, however, has no concern with the unknown possible, but with the actual fact--visible to the naked eye and confirmed by the telescope--that there is a portion of space in which millions of universes such as this might exist with safety, yet they do not. Worlds, therefore, do not exist by the necessity of their own nature, wherever there is room for them, but must have had some pre-existent, external, and supernatural cause of their existence in this place and not in other places. This implies choice--will--God. The physical refutation of the self-existence of the universe is completed by the discovery, _that all the orbs of heaven, as well as the earth, are in motion, and that an orderly and regulated motion_.[193] The fact need not be illustrated, for it is not denied. The consequence is inevitable. That which is self-existent must be unchangeable; for change is an effect, and demands a cause; and the cause must exist before the effect, and produce it. Whatsoever is changeable, then, is a product of a prior cause, and so not self-existent. But every part of the universe is changeable, for it is in motion, which is a change of place; and, therefore, is not self-existent, but the product of a prior cause. Professor Fick, who was some time since called from Zurich to fill the professorship of physiology at Wurzburg, and who is known by his experiments on muscular physics, in a recent work on the transformation of force, brings out the argument in proof of the non-eternity of our universe in a new form. He shows that heat is continually being lost by radiation; and when mechanical force is converted into heat _some_ of that heat can never be brought back to be mechanical force. And as this change from mechanical force to heat is ever going on, all force must at last turn into heat, in which case all difference of temperature would be lost and universal stagnation and death would be the result. He then concludes in the following words, which we quote from _Nature_, Macmillan's weekly: "We are come to this alternative; either in our highest, or most general, our most fundamental scientific abstractions some great point has been overlooked; or the universe will have an end, and must have had a beginning; could not have existed from eternity, but must at some date, not infinitely distant, have arisen from something not forming part of the chain of natural causes, _i. e._, must have been created."[194] To this it has been replied, that motion is the normal condition of matter; arising from the force of gravitation, acting in and upon the various bodies composing the universe; and mathematical calculations have been attempted to show how vortices, and spiral motions, could be produced by the force of gravitation, and the mutual resistances of the atoms originally composing the universe. But this attempt is easily seen to be a failure. The attraction of gravitation alone can not possibly produce any such motion as we behold in the heavens; nor can it originate, nor sustain, any kind of eternal motion whatever. For the attraction of gravitation is always in right lines; but there is no rectilinear motion in the heavens; all celestial motions are curvilinear. Nor can the attraction of gravitation account for the maintenance of any kind of eternal motion. Its tendency is to draw all bodies to the center of gravity, and to keep them there, in one vast heap, by the force of their mutual attraction; thus bringing all motion to an eternal rest. To this it is now replied that motion is the equivalent of light, heat, electricity, and chemical reaction; all of which are convertible into motion. These are properties of matter, and inseparable from it, and so as eternal as itself. We have already disproved the eternity of matter; but if, for the sake of argument, it were granted, yet would not the regulated and orderly motions of the universe be thereby accounted for. For these forces either exactly balance the force of gravitation, or they do not. If they do not, and their repulsion prevails, by even the slightest degree, the particles of matter had been driven away into infinite space millions of years ago, and suns, and planets, and atheistic philosophers, would have vanished like the baseless fabric of a vision. But if the attraction of gravitation had prevailed, by even the weight of an ounce, long ages ago sun, moon and stars would have rushed together into one vast mountain mass, whose attraction would have been so great, that no living creature could move upon its surface, and whose parts would be compressed into a density compared with which quicksilver would be lighter than cork. But if, on the other hand, it be alleged, that these inherent forces of matter exactly balance its power of gravitation--with which they have no other apparent relation--then the argument is irresistible, that these grains of sand and drops of water and globes of granite being unequal to such calculations, there was some calculating engineer at work arranging the motions of the stars. No mechanical law is a sufficient cause for this motion. To allege that a power of orderly, regulated motion--and there is no other sort of motion in heaven or earth--is an inherent property of matter, is simply to insult our common sense, and overturn the foundation of all reason. For we have no knowledge of matter, and can have none, more certain than we have of the constitution of our own minds, which requires us to trace up every change among material objects to _the energy and will of a person_ capable of planning and effecting the change. To refer us to the law of gravity is not to give us a cause for the motions of the heavenly bodies, but only a _name_; for law is only _a rule of action_. We demand a lawgiver--an agent--a _force_, capable of producing effects. When the law of projectiles makes a cannon-ball, and projects it, we will believe that the law of gravity made the worlds, and moves them. "Descending within the mind's interior chambers, I find no conviction so sure of the existence of an external world, as is my belief in the reality of _power_--of something that sustains succession, and causes order. Again, then, whence this idea, and what is it? What this attribute with which I endow material laws, and raise them into _forces_? Now, in my apprehension, the strictest scrutiny can not obtain for these inquiries any reply save one; we _primarily_ connect the idea of _power_ with no change or movement, except an act or determination of the FREE WILL; but from such acts, that idea is inseparable. If, therefore, in order to explain the progress of material things, we require the agency of _efficient causes_, is not this a direct and solemn recognition--through all form and transiency--of the necessity of an _ever-present creative power_; a power requisite and necessary to uphold--to renew the universe every moment--or, rather, to prolong creation by the persistence of the creative act? And, in very truth, startling though it be, such is the only and ultimate scientific idea of the divine omnipresence. Law is not even the Almighty's minister; the order of the material world, however close and firm, is not merely the Almighty's ordinance. The _forces_, if so we name them, which express that order, are not powers which he has evolved from the silences, and to whose guardianship he has committed all things, so that he himself might repose. No! above, below, around, _there_ is God; there his universal presence, speaking to finite creatures, in finite forms, a language which only the living heart can understand. In the rain and sunshine; in the soft zephyrs; in the cloud, the torrent, and the thunder; in the bursting blossom, and the fading branch; in the revolving season, and the rolling star; there is the infinite essence, and the mystic development of HIS WILL."[195] 2. _Scientific astronomy inexorably demolishes the Atheistic scheme for the arrangement of the solar system by accident, commonly known as Buffon's cosmogony._ "Buffon supposed that the force of a comet falling obliquely on the sun has projected to a distance a torrent of the matter of which it is composed, as a stone thrown into a basin causes the water which it contains to splash out. This torrent of matter, in a state of fusion, has broken into several parts, which have been arrested at different distances from the sun, according to their density, or the impetus they received. They then united in spheres, by the effect of the motion of rotation, and condensing by cold, have become opaque and solid planets and satellites."[196] This formation of worlds by accident, it is true, gave no reason for the form of their orbits, for their rotation on their axes, in one direction, and that, too, the direction of their motion, nor for several other matters, of which Infidels make little account, but about which plain men like to ask, namely: Where did the sun come from? What melted it down into a fluid state, fit to be splashed about? Where did the comet come from? And who threw it with so correct an aim through infinite space as exactly to hit the sun _in an oblique direction_. Creation, it seems, was nearly missed, after all. This chaotic theory never gained much respect from men of science, though its simplicity speedily opened its way among the vulgar, and it has ever been a favorite with the most ignorant class of Infidels, numbering thousands of warm advocates, even at the present day. It was thought to be very much corroborated by the discovery of the asteroids, and their supposed formation by the explosion of a larger body. There is a certain proportion observed in the distances of the orbits of the planets from each other--a breadth or gauge, as it were, on the celestial railroad. But there was the breadth of a track between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter on which no train ran, and this vacancy excited the curiosity of astronomers. In the first seven years of this century, three very small planets were discovered, running near this track; and Dr. Olbers, the discoverer of Pallas, finding that they were nearly in the same track, and sometimes crossed each other, and that they were diminutively small--bearing about the same proportion to a regular planet which a hand-car does to a freight train--imagined that they were formed by the explosion of a large planet; that the boiler of the large locomotive had burst, the fragments had all lighted upon the track again, in the shape of hand-cars, and the hand-cars had magnanimously resolved to keep running, and do the business of the line; and that, as there must have been material enough in the original planet to make some thousands of them, more would be discovered by watching two depots, at the crossings of the tracks, in the constellations Virgo and the Whale, where they must all pass. In fact, he did himself find another, very near one of these nodes; more recently many others have been found; and astronomers now expect to hear of one or two more every year. At first sight his theory seemed strengthened by every new discovery. It is true, reflecting men could not help wondering at such a marvelously regular explosion as would produce beautiful little orderly planets, going so regularly too, and all by accident. They never heard of the blowing up of a palace producing cottages, or the explosion of a steamboat throwing off the hurricane deck in the shape of whaleboats, or the bursting of a locomotive producing model engines, or even hand-cars. However, as the theory removed God out of sight, it was generally accepted and freely used by Infidels, to show that the world had no need of a Creator. But astronomers saw, that as each new asteroid had a track of its own, and ran to a different terminus, and the roads in which they ran were of different gauges and grades--one little asteroid, Pallas, running up and down a track inclined thirty-five degrees, just as speedily as the others--every new discovery increased the difficulty of accounting for their origin by explosion. But the discovery of the planet Hygeia, at a vast distance from the others, utterly overturned the explosion theory. Loomis says: "The difficulties in the way of our regarding these small planets, as fragments of a single body, were well nigh-insuperable before the discovery of Hygeia. This last discovery has probably given the death-blow to the theory of Olbers. The orbit of Hygeia completely incloses the orbits of several of the asteroids, its perihelion distance--that is, its least distance from the sun--exceeding the aphelion--or greatest distance--of Flora by _twenty-five millions of miles_. _No change of position of the orbits could, therefore, bring these orbits to a coincidence._"[197] The matter has been finally settled by the greatest of modern mathematicians, Le Verrier, who has subjected the eccentricities, distances, and inclinations of the orbits of the asteroids to a mathematical investigation, the result of which is as follows: "In the present state of things, these eccentricities and these inclinations are totally incompatible with Olbers' hypothesis, which supposed that the small planets--some of which were discovered even in his day--were produced from the wreck of a larger star, which had exploded. The forces necessary to launch the fragments of a given body in such different routes (whose existence we should be obliged to suppose) would be of such an improbable intensity, that the most limited mathematical knowledge could not but see its absurdity." He concludes the memoir by advancing four propositions, "which forever annihilate Olbers' hypothesis."[198] 3. _The progress of astronomical discovery has utterly refuted the notion of creation by natural law, known as the Development Theory, or the Nebular Hypothesis._ Scientific Infidels knew that there was too much order and regularity in the motions of the planets to allow any rational mind to ascribe these motions to accident, according to Buffon's notion. They saw that these movements must be regulated by law. La Place, an eminent mathematician, saw that there are at least five great regularities pervading the system, for which Buffon's theory gave no reason: 1. The planets all move in elliptical orbits, nearly circular. They might, on the contrary, have been as elongated as those of comets. 2. They revolve in orbits nearly in the plane of the sun's equator. They might have revolved in orbits inclined to it at any angle, or even in the plane of his poles. 3. They revolve around the sun all in the same direction, which is the direction of his rotation on his axis. 4. They rotate on their axes, also, so far as known, in the same direction. 5. The satellites (with the exception of those of Uranus) revolve around their primary planets, and also rotate on their axes, in the same normal direction. It was evident, even to the believers in chance, that so many regularities were not produced by accident. La Place found, by computing the chances by the formula of probabilities, that the chances were two millions to one against these regularities happening by chance, _and four millions to one in favor of these motions having a common origin_. The grand phenomenon being a motion of rotation in the whole system, of which the rotation of the sun is the central part, he thought if he could account for this, he could explain all the rest. He set out by supposing, that the sun and planets originally existed as a vast cloud of gaseous matter, intensely heated--a vast fire-mist--placed in a region of space much cooler, and that this cloud, by gradual cooling, and the pressure of its parts, settled down into solid forms. It was supposed that some portions of this cloud would begin to cool sooner than others, and so become solid sooner, and that the hot gas, rushing to the solid part, would form a vortex, which would set the cloud in motion around its center. As the speed of its rotation would increase, and the outside condense and grow solid before the inside, the cloud would whirl off the rings of solid matter, which would keep revolving in the same orbits in which they were cast off, and would revolve faster and faster as they grew cooler and more solid, till they broke up, by the force of their velocity, into smaller pieces; which fragments, in their turn, repeated the process, until the present number of planets and their satellites was produced.[199] This theory differs from Buffon's much as a low pressure engine, deriving most of its power from the condenser, differs from one of high pressure. La Place does not explode the boiler to make his planets, but merely runs his train so fast as to break an axle every now and then, when the wheel runs off with the velocity it has got, and keeps its track as well as if it had an engineer to guide it, grows into a little locomotive by dint of running, and after a while breaks an axle too--breaking is a hereditary failing of these suns and planets that had no God to make them--and the wheels thus thrown off supply it with moons and rings, like Saturn's. The illustration is not nearly so absurd as the theory, inasmuch as a locomotive is an incomparably less complicated contrivance than a planet. However the nonsense was cradled in the halls of philosophy by means of antiquity, and distance. As no fiction was too marvelous for the credence of the Greek, if it were only a hundred years old, or located beyond the Euxine, so to our development philosopher any impossibility may be accepted, if it can only be dissolved into gas, and located a good many millions of miles away; and to make it an article of faith on which he will risk his soul, it is only necessary to give it a remote antiquity. No Papist ever insisted more on antiquity as the solvent of all absurdity. Antiquity, distance, and expansion are his trinity, with which all absurdities become scientific facts. Herschel had discovered numbers of nebulæ, or luminous clouds, in the distant heavens shining with a distinct light, but which, with the highest magnifying power he could apply, presented no trace of stars. Some nebulæ, it is true, his largest telescope resolved, like our own Milky Way, into beds of distinct stars; but there were others--for instance, one in the belt of Orion--visible to the naked eye as a cloud, but which his forty feet telescope only displayed as a larger cloud, without any shape of stars. Now, reasoning upon the matter, he found that if these nebulæ were composed of stars as large as those distinctly visible, they must be immensely distant to be indistinguishable by his telescope, and exceedingly numerous and close together to give a cloud of light visible to the naked eye. In fact, the suns of those firmaments must be so close to each other as to present a blaze of glory, and complexities of revolution inconceivable to the dwellers on earth. But as this daring idea seemed incredible, even to his giant mind, he thought the appearance of these nebulæ might be more rationally accounted for by supposing that they were not stars at all, but simply clouds of gaseous matter, like the matter of comets, from which he supposed that stars were formed by a long process of condensation and solidification. He thought this theory was favored by the fact, that nebulæ are generally seen in those portions of the heavens that are not thickly strewn with stars; and also by the various forms of these clouds. Some were merely loose clouds, without any definite form; others seemed gathering toward the center. In some, of a roundish, or oval form, the central mass seemed well defined. In a few, the process seemed nearly complete, a bright star shining in the midst of a faint nebulous halo. Here, then, it was said, we see the whole progress of the growth of stars; their development from the gaseous nebulous fluid into solid, brilliant suns. La Place accepted Herschel's discoveries as conclusive proof of the truth of his theory, and it was generally accepted by the scientific world. Oddly enough, Infidels seem not to have noticed that those appearances of _condensation toward the center_, which seemed to Herschel so strongly in favor of his theory of the nebulous fluid, were diametrically opposed to La Place's requirements of _condensation at the circumference_; and these two contradictory notions were supposed to support each other, and to furnish a solid basis for the development hypothesis. This theory, as stated by Herschel, and expounded by Nichol, Dick, and other Christian writers, _is not necessarily Atheistical_. On the contrary, they allege that it furnishes us with greater evidences of the power of God, and gives us higher ideas of his wisdom, to suppose a system of creation by development, under natural law, than by a direct exercise of his will. Undoubtedly, had God so pleased he could have made suns from fire-mists, according to some plan which his infinite wisdom could devise, and his omnipotent power could execute; but it is beyond the possibilities even of omniscience and omnipotence to make worlds, or to make anything but nonsense, according to La Place's plan. Had God so pleased, to make firmaments grow as forests do, and if he should please to enable us to discover such celestial growth in some distant part of heaven, we should have the same kind of evidence of his being, power, wisdom, and goodness in this creation by natural law which we now have from his providence by natural law, in the growth of the fruits of the earth, and as much greater an amount of it as the heavens are greater than the earth. The first beginning of primeval elements demands a Creator. The contrivance of the law of development proclaims a Contriver. The force by which it operates--whether that of gravity or chemical reaction--must be the force of an Agent. _The development theory, then, fails to account for the origin of the universe, or even of our own world._ Herbert Spencer, its most eloquent expounder, admits this. He says: "It remains only to point out that while the genesis of the solar system, and of countless other systems like it, is thus rendered comprehensible, the ultimate mystery continues as great as ever. The problem of existence is not solved; it is simply removed farther back. The Nebular Hypothesis throws no light on the origin of diffused matter; and diffused matter as much needs accounting for as concrete matter. The genesis of an atom is not easier to conceive than the genesis of a planet. Nay, indeed, so far from making the universe a less mystery than before, it makes it a greater mystery. Creation by manufacture is a much lower thing than creation by evolution. A man can put together a machine, but he can not make a machine develop itself. The ingenious artisan, able as some have been, so far to imitate vitality as to produce a mechanical piano-forte player, may in some sort conceive how, by greater skill, a complete man might be artificially produced; but he is unable to conceive how such a complex organism gradually arises out of a minute, structureless germ. That our harmonious universe once existed potentially as formless, diffused matter, and has slowly grown into its present organized state, is a far more astonishing fact than would have been its formation after the artificial method vulgarly supposed. Those who hold it legitimate to argue from phenomena to noumena, may rightly contend that the Nebular Hypothesis implies a First Cause as much transcending 'the mechanical god of Paley,' as this does the fetish of a savage."[200] The Nebular Hypothesis, then, can not exist without God. However, as it seems to remove him to a great distance from this present world, both in space and time, it has become popular with Atheists. The Nebular Hypothesis, as presented by Atheists, _imagines a state of primeval matter as simple, or homogeneous, of which science presents no example, in heaven or on earth_. This homogeneous condition of matter is the very foundation of the theory. Spencer reasons at great length, that all progress is from the simple to the differentiated. And it is indispensable for the Atheists to prove that the primeval world was composed of matter perfectly simple and homogeneous. If they alleged that it was composed of several ingredients, nobody would believe them that this compound was eternal. There is no conviction of common sense stronger than that every compound has been put together by some compounder. They could not persuade a child that a plum pudding made itself, or that a steamship filled with passengers existed so from eternity, much less a planet with a much larger crew and company. They therefore alleged that the first matter of the universe was perfectly homogeneous and simple. When common people objected that no such thing was to be seen in this world nowadays, since all things here--stones, water, air, earth, plants, animals--are compounded and built up out of a great variety of matters, they claimed that this is the result of the growth of our planet; but that the nebulæ, which astronomers see far away in the sky, are young suns and planets, just beginning to condense, and that the gas they consist of is the genuine, simple, homogeneous matter out of which this world, and all worlds, originally made themselves. They thought the nebulæ were so very far away that nobody would ever go there to see and come back to contradict them; and so they were quite safe in pointing to them as examples of homogeneous matter. Now one does not see, if the nebula had been exactly what the development men assert--_simple, homogeneous matter_--_how they could ever have made such a composite world as this out of it_, or indeed how they could make anything but itself out of it. No chemical actions or reactions can begin in a simple substance; there must always be at least two simple substances to make a compound. Heating or cooling a simple substance will never make it a compound. You may heat water in a boiler and cool it again as often as you please, but your heating and cooling will never make coffee out of it, unless you put coffee into it. So you may heat and cool your simple nebula to all eternity, but you will never get coffee out of it, much less coffee and coffee-pot, china and company, with the biscuits and butter; all which, and a great deal more, our philosophers contrive to churn out of the primeval homogeneous nebula. But the progress of science has enabled us to show that the nebulæ, far from being simple, homogeneous matter, are compounded of as many ingredients as the flame of your lamp or gas light, which is combined of half a score of different substances. By the discovery of Spectrum Analysis we are able to analyze the chemical composition of the most distant flames, to tell whether they proceed from solids or gases in a state of combustion, and what are the gases and minerals consumed in them. As space forbids the details of this discovery here, I can only state the results, namely that some of the nebulæ consist of clouds of small solid stars, of which the nebula in Orion is an instance; but others consist of flames of gases, in all cases compound, and showing, besides the oxygenated flame, the lines which declare the presence of hydrogen, and of several metals. Thus it is proved, that no such eternal, homogeneous nebulæ are to be found in heaven, and consequently nobody could ever make worlds out of a substance which had no existence. This theory of development was always _a mere notion, a castle in the air_, and never could be anything more. To say that it was mere moonshine would be to give it far too respectable a standing; for moonshine has a real existence, and may be seen and felt. But nobody ever saw or felt a homogeneous nebula. Indeed, its inventor never pretended that he, or anybody else, ever saw one; or saw it sailing off into moons, and planets, and suns, or ever would see any such thing. No scientific man has ever pretended that it was an established fact, or anything more than a theory, a notion. Young people, who are invited to hazard their souls on the strength of this miscalled scientific theory, should remember that it is not science, which means something a man knows, but merely a theory, which is some notion which he imagines. _It is an unsatisfactory notion._ It does not answer the purpose of its inventors. As we have already seen, it gives us no account of the origin of the homogeneous matter of the nebula. It gives no answer to the questions, How did it get to be so hot, while all the space around it was so cold? Is the fire that heated it burning still, or is it exhausted for want of fuel? Were the germs of all the plants and animals in it while it was blazing at a white heat? If they were, how did they escape being burnt to ashes? If they were not, where did they come from? For there was nothing but that nebula then in existence. Did it contain within itself all the principles of things, all the forces now found in the worlds which grew out of it? If so, how came they there? If not, how did attraction, and repulsion, vegetable life, animal life, intellect, and free will, work themselves into that cloud of homogeneous gas? Professor Tyndall thus exposes the absurdity of the supposition that the nebula contained the elements of mind: "For what are the core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the noble forms of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanisms of the human body, but the human mind itself--emotion, intellect, will, and all these phenomena, were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a notion is more than a refutation."[201] _It was only one of several contradictory notions._ Thus a writer in the _Atlantic Monthly_, so far from accepting the notion that the sun and earth are solidifying and cooling down, as explanatory of the facts revealed by astronomy and geology, infers the very contrary from the acknowledged facts, namely, that we are coming up to the nebular condition, rather than developing from it. He writes as follows: "The earth is progressing by excessively slow changes toward the solar and nebulous condition. Its history is a repetition of the solar, and a time must arrive when the surface, becoming incandescent, will be obscured only by casual dark pits in a brilliant atmosphere, a _souvenir_ of the present darkness of the crust; yet during a certain period, within fixed limits of gravitating force and heat of mass, the human race may continue to exist; progressing, we may suppose, in force and fineness of organization. The race will perish, perhaps, in the order of nature, by failure or insufficient number of offspring, a principal cause of the extinction of superior races. The earth must become lone and voiceless long before the incandescence of the crust. Science may follow it into the condition of an attendant star, and then of an expanding nebula. "In the cosmos all movements are cyclical, and recurrent, without change, save interchange among forms of motion. A universe which is, in its total, the same to-day as yesterday, and always, would appear idle and dull if it were not the footstool of divine force, upon which the creative will maintains a certain equipoise, necessary to the continued production of spiritual forms." _It is an impracticable notion, contrary to the first principle of mechanics, that action and reaction are equal._ The grand requirement of the system--power to work the engine--can never be raised by La Place's, nor by any other mechanical plan. The cooling cloud of fire-mist is simply a very big machine, and no machine can generate power to work itself. If La Place could have somehow or other got power for the motion of rotation outside of his cloud, he might have made it revolve, and scatter off great lumps of the lightest outside stuffs, as your grindstone scatters off drops of water when you turn it rapidly; but, having no such power, his theory is a plan to make the grindstone turn itself. It is, therefore, precisely of the same value as any one of the hundred of ingenious schemes for creating power by machinery, of the perpetual motion men, in defiance of the first law of mechanics, that action and reaction are equal. Moreover, he proposes to raise the power by making the gas cool at one part of the surface faster than at another, and so to make a vortex around that spot, which would set the whole mass to revolving. But no conceivable reason can be alleged why the homogeneous mass should begin to cool at one place faster than another, or indeed why an eternally hot mass should ever begin to cool at all. But, letting that pass, to make the required vortex for the rotation of the whole mass, it should not begin to cool at any part of the surface, but at the center, where, as every engine driver who ever saw a condenser, and every woman who ever cooled a dish of mush knows, it could not possibly begin to cool till the outside mass had become cold; and so no motion could be produced. This is so well known in the machine shops that it is rare to find a machinist own the theory. But even a more fatal objection has been raised by one of the most eloquent expounders of the theory. Mr. Spencer shows us that the mass, condensing under the influence of gravitation, so far from cooling _must necessarily evolve heat_. He is perfectly clear and decided on this matter, _that the condensing mass could never, by any possibility, begin to cool, but must begin to heat, and go on heating till it burst out in a blaze_. He says: "Heat must inevitably be generated by the aggregation of diffused matter into a concrete form; and throughout our reasonings we have assumed that such generation of heat has been an accompaniment of nebular condensation."[202] "While the condensation and the rate of rotation are progressively increasing, the approach of the atoms necessarily generates _a progressively increasing temperature_. As this temperature rises light begins to be evolved, and ultimately there results a revolving sphere of fluid matter radiating intense light and heat--a sun."[203] This, it will be perceived, is exactly the reverse of the original nebular theory of a cooling globe, or spheroid of homogeneous nebular matter, diffused by intense heat, and cooling down into suns, and moons, and planets. So far as the Spencer system is accepted, it displaces La Place's theory, and the inventor accordingly works out a new theory of his own, and equally inconsistent with known facts and principles. But as Mr. Spencer candidly owns that his scheme can neither generate matter nor force, as we have already seen, it needs no further discussion in this connection. The fact is simply this, a chemical perpetual motion is as impossible as a mechanical one. The discovery of the convertibility of forces shows this. The development theory of the generation of motion by processes of the self-heating or the self-cooling of the machine, or by chemical actions and reactions, is, in its last analysis, only a big perpetual motion humbug. Even were the rotation, and the cooling process, to take place, as is supposed, _no such results would proceed from these combined operations as the case requires_; for, according to the theory, as the cooling and contracting rings revolve in the verge of a vortex of fluid less dense than themselves, one of these two results must take place: either, as is most probable, from their exceeding tenuity, the rings will break at once into fragments, when, instead of flying outward, they will sink toward the center, and, as long as they are heavier than the surrounding fluid, _they will stay there_; and, as the cooling goes on on the outside, so will the concentration of the heavier matter, till we have _one_ great spheroid, with a solid center, liquid covering, and gaseous atmosphere. A vortex will never make, nor allow to exist beyond its center, planets heavier than the fluid of which it is composed. The other alternative, and the one which La Place selected, was the supposition that the cooling and contracting rings did not at first break up into pieces, but retained their continuity; but, contrary to all experience and reason, he supposed that these cooling rings kept contracting and widening out from the heated mass, at the same time. The only fluid planetary rings which we can examine--those of Saturn--have been closing in on the planet since the days of Huygens, and eventually will be united with the body of the planet. Every boy who has seen a blacksmith hoop a cart-wheel has learned the principle, that a heated ring contracts as it cools, and in doing so presses in upon the mass around which it clings. But, according to this nebular notion, the fire-mist keeps cooling and shrinking up, while the rings, of the very same heat and material, keep cooling faster, and widening out from it; a piece of schismatical behavior without a parallel among solids or fluids, either in heaven or earth, or under the earth. Plateau's illustration of the mode in which centrifugal force acts in overcoming molecular attraction, has been cited as a demonstration of the truth of the nebular hypothesis. The conditions, however, are entirely different. By means of clock-work he caused a globule of oil to rotate in a mixture of alcohol and water _of the same density_, thus entirely getting rid of the power of gravitation; and by increasing the velocity he caused it to flatten out into a disc, and finally to project a multitude of minute drops, which continued their revolutions so long as the fluid in which they floated kept revolving by the motion of the rotating spindle, _the divergent drops, the central mass, and the surrounding fluid, being all the while of the same density_. But the essential conditions of the nebular theory are, that _the central mass_ exert an attraction of gravitation upon all its parts, and _therefore be denser than the surrounding ether or empty space_, and that _the cooling and contracting rings be of a different density from the rest of the mass_. Their divergence from the more fluid portion is supposed to arise from their growing denser. And Reclus shows[204] that the divergent drops owe their existence to the _expansion_, not to the _contraction_, of the globule of oil. This experiment, then, contradicts the theory, so far as it is applicable. Plateau himself never adduced this experiment in support of the nebular theory; but having, by way of illustration, spoken of the revolving drops as satellites, and finding that expression misunderstood, he corrected the error in a subsequent paper. He says: "It is clear that this mode of formation is entirely foreign to La Place's cosmogonic hypothesis; therefore we have no idea of deducing from this little experiment, which only refers _to the effects of molecular attraction_, and _not to those of gravitation_, any argument in favor of the hypothesis in question; an hypothesis which _in other respects we do not adopt_."[205] _It was always contrary to the facts of astronomical science._ It has accordingly been repudiated by the most eminent astronomers. Sir John Herschel declares that the appearance of those groups, or clusters, of stars, supposed to be formed by the condensation of nebulæ is quite different from that depicted by this theory, and that no traces of the ring-making process is visible among them. He thus describes the appearances of these groups; exactly the contrary of that demanded by the theory, which he emphatically disclaims, from the presidential chair of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. "If it is to be regarded as demonstrated truth, or as receiving the smallest support from any observed numerical relations which actually hold good among the elements of the primary orbits, I beg leave to demur. Assuredly it receives no support from the observation of the effects of sidereal aggregation as exemplified in the formation of globular and elliptic clusters, supposing them to have resulted from such aggregation. For we see this cause working out in thousands of instances, to have resulted, _not_ in the formation of a single large central body, surrounded by a few smaller attendants disposed in one plane around it, but in systems of infinitely greater complexity, consisting of multitudes of nearly equal luminaries, grouped together in a solid elliptic or globular form. So far then as any conclusions from our observations of nebulæ can go, the result of agglomerative tendencies _may_ indeed be the formation of families of stars of a general and very striking character, but we see nothing to lead us to presume its further result to be the surrounding of those stars with planetary adherents."[206] _This theory is contradicted by the peculiarities of our solar system._ The orbits of the comets being inclined at all angles to the sun's equator, are often out of the plane of his rotation, and so in the way of the theory. The moons of Uranus revolve in a direction contrary to all the other bodies, and fly right into the face of the theory. According to the nebular theory, the outer planets, first cast off from the sun, ought to be lighter than those nearer him, as these had longer pressing near the middle of the mass; and the sun himself, having been pressed by the weight of all the rest of the system, should be the densest body of the whole. And the author of _The Vestiges of Creation_, in expounding the theory, manufactures a set of facts to suit it, and tells his readers that the planets exhibit a progressive diminution in density from the one nearest the sun to that which is most distant. Our solar system could not have lasted thirty years had that been the case. The Earth, Venus, and Mars, are nearly of the same density. Uranus is more dense than Saturn, which is nearer the sun. Neptune is more dense than either. The sun, which ought to be the heaviest of all, according to the theory, is only one-fourth the density of the earth. La Place himself has demonstrated that these densities and arrangements are indispensable to the stability of the system. But they are plainly contradictory to his theory of its formation.[207] The palpable difference of luminosity between the sun and the planets, which, as they are all made of the very same materials, and by the same process, according to this theory, ought to be equally self-luminous, is in itself a self-evident refutation of the nebular hypothesis, or of any other process of creation by mere mechanical law. "The same power, whether natural or supernatural, which placed the sun in the center of the six primary planets, placed Saturn in the center of the orb of his five secondary planets; and Jupiter in the center of his four secondary planets; and the earth in the center of the moon's orbit; and, therefore, had this cause been a blind one, _without contrivance or design_, the sun would have been a body of the same kind with Saturn, Jupiter, and the Earth; that is, _without light or heat_. Why there is one body in our system qualified to give light and heat to all the rest, I know no reason, but because the Author of the system thought it convenient." So says the immortal Newton.[208] The great expounder of modern science--Humboldt--is equally explicit in enumerating the decisive marks of choice and will in the construction of the solar system, and in contemptuously dismissing the notion of development and creation by natural law from the halls of science. "Up to the present time, _we are ignorant, as I have already remarked, of any internal necessity--any mechanical law of nature_--which (like the beautiful law which connects the square of the periods of revolution with the cube of the major axis) represents the above-named elements--the absolute magnitude of the planets, their density, flattening at the poles, velocity of rotation, and presence or absence of moons--of the order of succession of the individual planetary bodies of each group, in their dependence upon the distances. Although the planet which is nearest the sun is densest--even six or eight times denser than some of the exterior planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune--the order of succession in the case of Venus, the Earth, and Mars, is very irregular. The absolute magnitudes do, generally, as Kepler has already observed, increase with the distances; but this does not hold good when the planets are considered individually. Mars is smaller than the Earth; Uranus smaller than Saturn; Saturn smaller than Jupiter, and succeeds immediately to a host of planets, which, on account of their smallness, are almost immeasurable. It is true, the period of rotation generally increases with the distance from the sun; but it is in the case of Mars slower than in that of the Earth, and slower in Saturn than in Jupiter."[209] "_Our knowledge of the primeval ages of the world's physical history does not extend sufficiently far to allow of our depicting the present condition of things as one of development._"[210] Sir David Brewster adds his testimony as follows: "Geology does not pretend to give us any information respecting the process by which the nucleus of the earth was formed. Some speculative astronomers indeed have presumptuously embarked in such an inquiry; but there is not a trace of evidence that the solid nucleus of the globe was formed by secondary causes, such as the aggregation of attenuated matter diffused through space; and the _nebular theory_, as it has been called, though maintained by a few distinguished names, has, we think, been overturned by arguments which have never been answered. Sir Isaac Newton, in his four celebrated letters to Dr. Bentley, has demonstrated that the planets of the solar system could not have been thus formed and put in motion round a central sun."[211] 4. _Astronomy not only exposes the folly of past cosmogonies, but demonstrates the impossibility of framing any true theory of creation, and thus refutes all future cosmogonies._ The grand error of all cosmogonies lies in the arrogant assumption, on which every one of them must be founded, _that the theorist is acquainted with all substances, and all forces in the universe_, and with all the modes of their operation; not only at the present period, and on this earth, but in all past ages, and in worlds in widely different, and utterly unknown situations; for, if he be ignorant of any substance, or of any active force in the universe, his generalization is avowedly imperfect, and necessarily erroneous. That unknown force must have had its influence in framing the world. Its omission, then, is fatal to the theory which neglects it. A theory of creation, for instance, which would neglect the attraction of gravitation would be manifestly false. But there are other forces as far reaching, whose omission must be equally fatal; for instance, the power of repulsion. A conviction of this truth has given rise to a constant effort to simplify matters down to the level of our ignorance, by reducing all substances to one, or at most two simple elements, and all forces to the form of one universal law; but the progress of science utterly blasts the attempt. Instead of simplifying matters, the very chemical processes undertaken with that view revealed new substances, and every year increases our knowledge of nature's variety. No scientific man now dreams of one primeval element. In the same way, astronomy, which, it was boasted, would enable us to account for all the operations of the universe, by reducing all motion to one mechanical law, has revealed to us the existence of other forces as far reaching as the attraction of gravitation, and more powerful; and substances whose nature and combinations are utterly unknown. But every cosmogony is just an attempt to simplify matters, by ignoring the existence of these unknown substances, and mysterious forces; a process which science condemns, as utterly unphilosophical and absurd. Astronomy has shown us _our ignorance of the substances_, or _materials_, _of our own little globe_. It has demonstrated that the whole body of the earth must have an average density equal to iron. As the rocks near the surface are much lighter, those toward the center must be heavier than iron, to make up this density. Of what, then, do they consist? The geologist says he does not know. No geologist ever saw them. No mortal ever will see them, and report their chemical constitution, their dip, and the arrangement of their strata, to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The very utmost "we can say is that they are unlike anything with which we are acquainted." Very well; then be pleased to have the decency to abstain from telling us how the world was made, when you don't know what it is made of. The sun's heat, at its surface, is 300,000 times greater than at the surface of the earth, but a tenth of this amount, collected in the focus of a lens, dissipates gold and platinum in vapor. When the most vivid flames which we can produce are held up in the blaze of his rays, they disappear. If a cataract of icebergs, a mile high, and wider than the Atlantic Ocean, were launched into the sun with the velocity of a cannon-ball, the small portion of the sun's heat expended on our earth would convert that vast mass into steam as fast as it entered his atmosphere without cooling its surface in the least degree. "The great mystery, however, is to conceive how so enormous a conflagration (if such it be) can be kept up. Every discovery in chemical science here leaves us completely at a loss, or rather seems to remove farther the prospect of probable explanation."[212] Yet, the sun is the nearest of the fixed stars, and by far the best known, and most nearly related to us. In fact, we are dependent on his influences for life and health. But if the theorist _can not tell his substance, or the nature and cause of the light and heat he sends us_, how can he presume so far on the world's credulity as to present a theory of his formation? "Astronomical problems accumulate unsolved upon our hands, because we can not, as mechanicians, chemists, or physiologists, experiment on the stars. Are they built of the same material as our planet? Are Saturn's rings solid, or liquid? Has the moon an atmosphere? Are the atmospheres of the planets like ours? Are the light and heat of the sun begotten of combustion? And what is the fuel which feeds these unquenchable fires? These are questions, which we ask, and variously answer, _but leave unanswered after all_."[213] But, till he can answer these, and a thousand questions like these, let no man presume to describe the formation of these unknown orbs. Comets constitute by far the greatest number of the bodies of our solar system. Arago says seven millions frequent it, within the orbit of Uranus.[214] They are the largest bodies known to us, stretching across hundreds of millions of miles. They approach nearer to this earth than any other bodies, sometimes even involving it in their tails, and generally exciting great alarm among its inhabitants. But the nature of the transparent luminous matter of which they are composed is utterly unknown. As they approach the sun, they come under an influence directly the opposite of attraction. The tail streams away from the sun, over a distance of millions of miles, _and yet the rate of the comet's motion toward the sun is quickened_, as though it were an immense rocket, driven forward by its own explosion. Further, while the body of the comet travels toward the sun, sometimes with a velocity nearly one-third of that of light, the tail sends forth coruscations in the opposite direction, with a much greater velocity. The greatest velocity with which we are acquainted on earth is the velocity of light, which travels a million of times faster than a cannon-ball, or at the rate of 195,000 miles per second; but here is a substance capable of traveling twenty-three times faster, and here is a force propelling it, twenty-three times greater than any which exists on earth. Its existence was first discovered by the coruscations of the comet of 1807. "In less than one second, streamers shot forth, to two and a half degrees in length; they as rapidly disappeared, and issued out again, sometimes in proportions, and interrupted, like our northern lights. Afterward the tail varied, both in length and breadth; and in some of the observations, the streamers shot forth from the whole expanded end of the tail, sometimes here, sometimes there, in an instant, two and a half degrees long; _so that within a single second they must have shot out a distance of 4,600,000 miles_."[215] Similar exhibitions of this unknown force were made by the comet of 1811, by Halley's comet, and several others. In these amazing disclosures of the unknown forces of the heavens, do we not hear a voice rebuking the presumption of ignorant theorists, with the questions, Knowest _thou_ the ordinances of heaven? Canst _thou_ set the dominion thereof in the earth? Hear one of the most distinguished of modern astronomers expound the moral bearings of such a discovery: "The intimation of a new cosmical power--I mean of one so unsuspected before, but which yet can follow a planet through all its wanderings--throws us back once more into the indefinite obscure, and checks all dogmatism. How many influences, hitherto undiscovered by our ruder senses, may be ever streaming toward us, and modifying every terrestrial action. And yet, because we had traced one of these, we have deemed our astronomy complete! Deeper far, and nearer to the root of things, is that world with which man's destiny is entwined."[216] We can have no reason, save our own self-sufficient arrogance, to believe that the discovery of these two forces exhausts the treasures of infinite wisdom. Humboldt thus well refutes the folly of such an imagination: "The imperfectibility of all empirical science, and the boundlessness of the sphere of observation, render the task of explaining the forces of matter by that which is variable in matter, an impracticable one. What has been already perceived, by no means exhausts that which is perceptible. If, simply referring to the progress of science in our own times, we compare the imperfect physical knowledge of Robert Boyle, Gilbert, and Hales, with that of the present day, and remember that every few years are characterized by an increasing rapidity of advance, we shall be better able to imagine _the periodical and endless changes which all physical sciences are destined to undergo. New substances and new forces will be discovered._"[217] Thus, all true science, conscious of its ignorance, ever leads the mind to the region of faith. Its first lesson, and its last lesson, is humility. It tells us that every cosmogony, which the children of theory so laboriously scratch in the sand, must be swept away by the rising tide of science. When we seek information on the great questions of our origin and destiny, and cry, "Where shall wisdom be found, and what is the place of understanding?" The high priests of science answer, in her name, "It is not in me; the measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea." We receive this honest acknowledgment as an inestimable boon. We are saved thereby the wearying labor of a vain and useless search after knowledge which lies not in her domain. We come down to the Bible with the profound conviction that science can give us no definite information of our origin, no certainty of our destiny, and but an imperfect acquaintance with the laws which govern this present world. If the Bible can not inform us on these all-important questions, we must remain ignorant. Science declares she can not teach us. The Word of God remains, not merely the best, but absolutely the only, the last resource of the anxious soul. The Bible gives us no theory of creation. It simply asserts the fact, that "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," but does not tell us _how_ he did so. The knowledge could be of no use to us, for he never means to employ us as his assistants in the work of creation. Nor could we understand the matter. The force by which he called the worlds into being, and upholds them in it, exists in no creature. "He stretcheth forth the heavens alone. He spreadeth abroad the earth by himself." "He upholdeth all things by the word of his power." But it presents anxious, careworn, humbled souls with something infinitely more precious than cosmogonies; even an explicit declaration of the love toward them of him who made these worlds. "Thus saith the Lord, THY REDEEMER, And he who formed thee from the womb: I am the Lord, who maketh all things; Who stretcheth forth the heavens alone, And spreadeth abroad the earth, by myself." "He healeth the broken in heart, And bindeth up their wounds. He telleth the number of the stars, And calleth them all by their names. Great is our Lord, and of great power; His wisdom is infinite!" Yes, the Creator of heaven and earth, who upholds all things by the word of his power, became a man like you, and dwelt on earth, and suffered the sorrow, the shame, the pain, the death, that sinful man deserved; and when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. From that heavenly throne his voice now sounds, reader, in your ear, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and _I will give you rest_." FOOTNOTES: [186] Cosmos III. 138. [187] Herschel's Outlines, chap. xvii. sec. 887. [188] Cosmos III. 197. [189] Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, 9th ed. p. 180. [190] Cosmos IV. 292. [191] Nichol's Contemplations on the Solar System, xxx. [192] Cosmos III. 253. [193] Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, chap. xvi. [194] _New York Evangelist_, May 5, 1870. [195] Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, 9th edition, 272. [196] Pontecoulant in _System of the World_, p. 70. [197] Progress of Astronomy, 70. [198] Memoirs of the French Academy, by M. Le Verrier; from _The Annual of Scientific Discovery_, for 1855, p. 376. [199] Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, p. 558, ed. of 1853. [200] Illustrations of Universal Progress, page 298. [201] Fragments of Science and Scientific Thought, p. 163. [202] Illustrations of Progress, page 292. [203] Illustrations of Progress, page 34. [204] The Earth, page 256. [205] Taylor's Scientific Memoirs, Vol. V., cited in McCosh's Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation, p. 403. [206] Opening Address to the British Association, 1845. [207] Taking water as the unit of density, Mercury is 6.71; Venus, 5.11; Earth, 5.44; Mars, 5.21; Saturn, 0.76; Uranus, 0.97; Neptune, 1.25; the Sun, 1.37.--Cosmos IV. p. 447. [208] Newton's Optics, IV. p. 438. [209] Cosmos, IV. p. 425. [210] Cosmos, III. p. 28. [211] More Worlds Than One, p. 45. [212] Herschel's Outlines, VI. Sect. 400. [213] Dr. George Wilson, F. R. S. E., in Edinburgh Phil. Journal, V. p. 53. [214] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, p. 360. [215] Dick's Sidereal Heavens, chap. xx. [216] Nichol's Solar System, p. 76. [217] Cosmos, III. p. 27. CHAPTER XI. DAYLIGHT BEFORE SUNRISE. In the last chapter we saw astronomy demonstrating our need of a revelation from God. In this we shall see how it illustrates and confirms that revelation. Seen through the telescope, the Bible glows with celestial splendor. Even its cloudy mysteries are displayed as clouds of light, and its long misunderstood phrases are resolved, by a scientific investigation, into galaxies of brilliant truths, proclaiming to the philosopher that the Book which describes them is as truly the Word of God as the heavens which it describes are his handiwork. If, once in a century, a profound practical astronomer is found denying the inspiration of the Bible, he will either acknowledge, or discover himself, not familiar with its contents. For the most part, the charges brought against the Bible, of contradicting the facts of astronomy, are based upon misstatements and mistakes of its teachings, and so do not fall within the range of the telescope, or the department of the observatory. The Sabbath-school teacher, and not the astronomer, is the proper person to correct such errors. A few months' instruction in the Bible class of any well-conducted Sabbath-school would save some of our popular anti-Bible lecturers from the sin of misrepresenting the Word of God, and the shame of hearing children laugh at their blunders. A favorite field for the display of their knowledge of science, and ignorance of the art of reading, by our modern Infidels, is the Bible account of creation, in the first chapter of Genesis, which is alleged to be utterly irreconcilable with the known facts of astronomy and geology. Leaving the latter out of view, for the present, the astronomical objections may all be arranged under four heads. First: that the Bible account of the creation of man, only some six or seven thousand years ago, must be false; because the records of astronomical observations, taken more than seventeen thousand years ago, by the Hindoos and Egyptians, are still in existence, and have been verified. Second: that the light of some of the stars, now shining upon us, and especially of some of the distant nebulæ, must have left them millions of years ago, to have traveled over the vast space which separates them from us, and be visible on our globe now; whereas, the Bible teaches that the universe was created only some six or seven thousand years ago. Third: that the Bible represents God as creating the sky a solid crystal, or metallic sphere, or hemisphere (they are not agreed which), to which the stars are fastened, and with which they revolve around the earth; which every school-boy knows to be absurd. Fourth: that the Bible represents God as creating the sun and moon only two days before Adam, and as creating light before the sun, which is also held to be absurd. 1. The first of these objections--that the Hindoos and Egyptians made astronomical observations thousands of years before Adam, and that the accuracy of these observations has been verified by modern calculations--_is simply untrue_. No such observations were ever made. The pretended records of such have been proved, in the case of the Hindoo astronomy, to be forgeries, and in the case of the Egyptian records, blunders of the discoverers. There is not an authentic uninspired astronomical observation extant for two thousand years after Adam. The objection, however, is worth noticing, and its history worth remembering, as a specimen of the way in which ignorant men swallow impudent falsehoods, if they only seem to contradict the Word of Truth. When the labors of oriental scholars had made the Vedas and Shasters--the sacred books of the Hindoos--accessible to European philosophers, a wonderful shout was raised among Infidels. "Here," it was said, "is the true chronology. We always knew that man was not a degenerate creature, fallen from a higher estate, some few thousand years ago, but that he has existed from eternity, in a constant progress toward his present lofty position; and now we have the most authentic records of the most ancient and civilized people in the world--the people of India--reaching back for millions of years before the Mosaic cosmogony, and allowing ample time for the development of the noble savage into the cultivated philosopher. These records have every mark of truth, giving minute details of events, and histories of successive lines of princes; and, moreover, record the principal astronomical facts of the successive periods--eclipses, comets, positions of stars, etc.--which attest their veracity. Henceforth, the Hebrew records must hide their heads. Neither as poetry nor history can they pretend to compare with the Vedas." The Hindoo Shasters were accordingly, for a time, in high repute, among people who knew very little about them. Even Dr. Adam Clarke was so far led away with the spirit of the age, as to pollute his valuable commentary by the insertion of the _Gitagovinda_, after the Chaldee Targum on the Song of Solomon; where the curious reader can satisfy himself as to the scientific value of such Pantheistic dotings. By the Infidels of Britain and America they were appealed to as standard works of undoubted authority; and hundreds, who declared that it was irrational credulity to believe in the Bible, risked their souls on the faith of the Vedas, _of which they never had read a single sentence_! Now, when we remember that these veracious chronicles reach back through _maha yugs_ of 4,320,000 years of mortals, a thousand of which, or 4,320,000,000, make a _kalpa_ or one day of the life of Brahma, while his night is of the same duration, and his life consists of a hundred years of such days and nights, about the middle of which period the little span of our existence is placed; that among the facts of the history are the records of the seven great continents of the world, separated by seven rivers, and seven chains of mountains, four hundred thousand miles high (reaching only to the moon); of the families of their kings, one of whom had a hundred sons, another only ten thousand, another sixty thousand, who were born in a pumpkin, nourished in pans of milk, reduced to ashes by the curse of a sage, and restored to life by the waters of the Ganges; and that among the astronomical observations, by which the accuracy of these extraordinary facts is confirmed, are accounts of deluges, in which the waters not only rose above the tops of earth's mountains, but above the seven inferior and three superior worlds, _reaching even to the Pole Star_[218]--we may well wonder at the faith which could receive all this as so true, that on the strength of it they rejected the miracles of the Bible as false. Even Voltaire ridiculed these stories. But a visionary man, named Baillie, calculated the alleged observations backward, and found them sufficiently correct to satisfy him that all the rest of the story was equally true. It never seems to have occurred to him, that if he could calculate eclipses _backward_, so could the Hindoos. It is just as easy to calculate an eclipse, or the position of a planet, backward as forward. If I watch the motion of the hands of a clock accurately, and find that the little hand moves over the twelfth of a circle every hour, and the large hand around the circle in the same time, and that the large hand, now at noon, covers the little one, I can calculate, that at sixteen minutes and a quarter past three it will nearly cover it again; but then, it is just as easy to count that the two hands were covered at sixteen minutes and a quarter before nine that morning, or that they were exactly in line at 6 A. M. If my clock would keep going at the same rate for a thousand years, I could predict the position of the hands at any hour of the twenty-ninth of March, of the year 2857; but it is evident that the very same calculation applied the other way would show the position that the hands would have had a thousand years ago, or five thousand years ago, just as well. And if I were to allege that my clock was made by Tubal Cain, before the flood, and for proof of the fact declare, that on the first of January, 3857 B. C., at 6 o'clock P. M., I had seen the two hands directly in line, and some wiseacre were to calculate the time, and find that at that hour the hands ought to have been just in that position, and conclude thence that I was undoubtedly one of the antediluvians, and the clock no less certainly a specimen of the craft of the first artificer in brass and iron, the argument would be precisely parallel to the Infidel's argument from the Tirvalore Tables, and the astronomy of the Vedas. But suppose my clock ran a little slow; say half a minute in the month, or so; or that it was made to keep sidereal time, which differs by a little from solar time, and that I did not know exactly what the difference was; it is evident that on a long stretch of some hundreds or thousands of years, I would get out of my reckoning, and the hands would not have been in the positions I had calculated. Now, this was just what happened with the Brahmins and their calculations. The clock of the heavens keeps a uniform rate of going, but they made a slight mistake in the counting of it; and so did their Infidel friends. But our modern astronomers have got the true time, set their clocks, and made their tables by it; and on applying these tables to the pretended Hindoo observations, find that they are all wrong, and that no such eclipses as they allege ever did occur or possibly could have happened in our solar system.[219] So the Hindoo astronomy is now consigned to the same tomb with the Hindoo chronology and cosmogony, except when a missionary, on the banks of the Ganges, exhibits it to the pupils of his English school, as a specimen of the falsehoods which have formed the swaddling bands of Pantheism. Failing in the attempt to substitute Brahminism for Christianity, Infidels beat a retreat from India, and went down into Egypt for help. Here they made prodigious discoveries of the scientific and religious truths believed by the worshipers of dogs and dung beetles, recorded upon the coffins of holy bulls, and the temples sacred to crows and crocodiles. The age was favorable for such discoveries. Napoleon and his savans cut out of the ceiling of a temple, at Denderah, in Egypt, a stone covered with uncouth astronomical, astrological, and hieroglyphic figures, which they insisted was a representation of the sky at the time the temple was built; and finding a division made between the signs of the crab and the lion, and marks for the sun and moon there, they took it into their heads that the sun must have entered the Zodiac at that spot, on the year this Zodiac was made; and, calculating back, found that must be at least seventeen thousand years ago. Hundreds of thousands visited the wonderful antediluvian monument, in the National Library, in Paris, where it had been brought; and where Infidel commentators were never wanting to inform them that this remarkable stone proved the whole Bible to be a series of lies. A professor of the University of Breslau published a pamphlet, entitled _Invincible Proof that the Earth is at least ten times older than is taught by the Bible_. Scores of such publications followed, and for forty years Infidel newspapers, magazines, and reviews kept trumpeting this great refutation of the Bible. From these it descended to the vulgar, with additions and improvements; and it is now frequently alleged as proving that "ten thousand years before Adam was born, the priests of Egypt were carving astronomy on the pyramids." There is scarcely one of my French or German readers who has not heard of it. It did not shake the Skeptic's credulity in the least that no two of the savans were agreed, by some thousands of years, how old it was--that they could not tell what the Egyptian system of astronomy was--_and that none of them could read the hieroglyphics which explained it_. Whatever might be doubtful, of one thing they were all perfectly sure, that it was far older than the creation. But in 1832 the curious Egyptian astronomy was studied, and it appeared that the sun and moon were so placed on the Zodiac to mark the beginning of the year there; and the dividing line fenced off one half of the sky under the care of the sun, while the other was placed under the moon's patronage. Then it was discovered that the positions of the stars were represented by the pictures of the gods whose names they bore--Jupiter, Saturn, etc.--and by calculating the places of these pictures back, it was found that this Zodiac represented their places in the year of our Lord 37; the year of the birth of Nero, a great temple-builder and repairer. Finally, Champollion learned to read the hieroglyphics, and the names, surnames, and titles of the emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, and Domitian were found on the temple of Denderah; and on the portico of the temple of Esneh, which had been declared to be a few thousand years older than that of Denderah, were found the names of Claudius and Antoninus Pius; while the whole workmanship and style of building have satisfied all antiquarians that these buildings were erected during the declining days of art in the Roman Empire. The Roman title, _autocrat_, engraved on the Zodiac itself, attests its antiquity to be not quite two thousand, instead of seventeen thousand years. But, not satisfied with merely demolishing the batteries of Infidelity, astronomy has been employed to ascertain the dates of numbers of events recorded on Egyptian monuments to have happened to one or other of the Pharaohs, "beloved of Ammon, and brother of the sun," when such a star was in such a position. Mr. Poole has spent years in gathering such inscriptions, and in calculating the dates thus furnished. The astronomer royal, at Greenwich, Mr. Airy, has reviewed the calculations, and finds them correct. Wilkinson, the great Egyptologist, agrees with their conclusions. And the result is, that _the astronomical chronology of the Egyptian monuments sustains the Bible chronology_.[220] Geology comes forward to confirm the testimony of her elder sister, and assures us, that the alleged vast antiquity of the Egyptian monuments is impossible, as it is not more than 5,000 years since the soil of Egypt first appeared above water, as a muddy morass.[221] The learned Adrian Balbo thus sums up the whole question: "No monument, either astronomical or historical, has yet been able to prove the books of Moses false; _but with them, on the contrary, agree, in the most remarkable manner, the results obtained by the most learned philologists and the profoundest geometricians_."[222] 2. To the second objection--that astronomers have discovered stars whose light must have been millions of years traveling to this earth, and that consequently these stars must have existed millions of years ago, and therefore the Bible makes a false declaration when it says the universe was created only some six or seven thousand years ago--I reply by asking, _Where does the Bible say so?_ "What," says our objector, "is not that the good old orthodox doctrine of Christians and commentators? Do they not unanimously denounce geologists and astronomers as heretics, for asserting the vast antiquity of the earth?" We shall see presently that no such unanimity of denunciation has ever existed, and that some of the most ancient and learned Christian commentators taught the antiquity of the earth, from the Bible, before geology was born. But that is not the question before us just now. We are not asking what the good old orthodox doctrine of Christians, or the unanimous opinion of commentators may have been; but what is the reading of the Bible--_What does this Book say?_--not, "What does somebody think?" "Well," replies our objector, "does not the Bible say, in the first of Genesis, that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, and Adam on the sixth; and are not chronologists agreed that that was not more than seven thousand years ago, at the very utmost?" If the Bible had said that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, and that the end of that period was only seven thousand years ago, it would by no means follow that the beginning of it was only a few hours before that; for every Bible reader knows, that the most common use of the word _day_, in Scripture, is to denote, not a period of twenty-four hours, but a period of time which may be of various lengths.[223] In this very narrative (Genesis ii. 5) it is used to denote the whole period of the six days' work: "In the day the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." Does it mean just twenty-four hours there? In the first of Genesis, its duration is defined to consist of "the evening and the morning." Before our Infidel chronologist finds out the Bible date of creation, he must be able to tell us _of what length was the evening which preceded the first morning_, and with it constituted the first day? God has of set purpose placed stumbling-blocks for scoffers at the entrance and the exit of the Bible, as a rebuke to pride and vain curiosity.[224] The duration of the seventh day is also hidden from man. It is God's Sabbath, on which he entered when he ceased from the work of creation, a rest which still continues, and which he invites us to enter into (Hebrews iv. 1-5) as a preparation for the eternal rest. God's rest day has already lasted six thousand years, and no man can tell how much longer it may last. Perhaps his working days were each as long. But if our objector had read the Bible attentively, he would have seen that it _does not say that God created the heavens and the earth in six days_. Before it begins to give any account of the six days' work, it tells us of a previous state of disorder; and going back beyond that again, it says: "_In the beginning_, God created the heavens and the earth." It is as self-evident that this _beginning_ was before the six days' work, as that the world must have existed before it could be adjusted to its present form. How long before, the Bible does not say, nor does the objector pretend to know. It may have been as many millions of years as he assigns to the stars, or twice as many, for anything he knows to the contrary. He must have overlooked the first two verses of the Bible, else he had never made this objection; which is simply a blunder, arising from incapacity to read a few verses of Scripture correctly. But it is replied, "Does not the Bible say, in the fourth commandment, 'In six days the Lord made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is,'" etc.? True. But we are speaking just now of a very different work--the work of _creation_. If any one does not know the difference between _create_ and _make_, let him turn to his dictionary, and Webster will inform him that the primary literal meaning of _create_ is, "To produce; to bring into being from nothing; to cause to exist." The example he gives to illustrate his definition is this verse, "In the beginning God _created_ the heavens and the earth." But the primary meaning of _make_ is, "To compel; to constrain;" thence, "to form of materials;" and he illustrates the generic difference between these two words by a quotation from Dwight: "God not only _made_, but _created_; he not only made the work, but the materials." Both words are as good translations of the Hebrew originals, _bra_, and _oshe_, as can be given. If any of my readers has not a dictionary he can satisfy himself thoroughly as to the different meanings of these two words, and of their equivalents in the original Hebrew, by looking at their use in his Bible. Thus, he will find _create_ applied to the creation of the heavens and the earth, in the beginning, when there could have been no pre-existent materials to make them from; unless we adopt the Atheistic absurdity, of the eternity of matter--that is to say, _that the paving stones made themselves_.[225] Then it is applied to the production of animal life--verse twenty-one--which is not a product or combination of any lifeless matter, but a direct and constant resistance to the chemical and mechanical laws which govern lifeless matter: "God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth."[226] Next it is applied to the production of the human race, as a species distinct from all other living creatures, and not derived from any of them. "God _created_ man in his own image."[227] It is in like manner applied to all God's subsequent bestowals of animal life and rational souls, which are directly bestowed by God, and are not in the power of any creature to give. "Thou sendest forth thy spirit: they are _created_." "Remember now thy _Creator_, in the days of thy youth."[228] In all these instances, the use of the word determines its literal meaning to be what Webster defines it: "To bring into being from nothing." The metaphorical use of the word is equally expressive of its literal meaning, for it is applied to the production of new dispositions of mind and soul utterly opposite to those previously existing. "Create in me a clean heart;" which God thus explains: "A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh."[229] The Hebrew word _bra_ has as many derivative meanings as our English word _create_; as we speak of "creating a peer," "long abstinence creating uneasiness," etc.; but these no more change the primitive idea in the one case than in the other. From this word _create_, the Bible very plainly distinguishes the words _make_ and _form_, using them as the complement of the former, in many passages which speak of both creation and making. Thus, man was both created and made. His life and soul are spoken of as a creation; his body as a formation from the dust; his deputed authority over the earth also implies a primal creation, and subsequent investiture; and so both terms are applied to it. So the words _make_ and _form_ are applied to the production of the bodies of animals from pre-existing materials, while animal life is ever spoken of as a product of creative power. But, that we may see that these processes are distinct, and that the words which express them have distinctive meanings, _the Author of the Bible takes care to use them both_ in reference to this very work, in such a way that we can not fail to perceive he intends some distinction, unless we suppose that he fills the Bible with useless tautologies. For instance, "On the seventh day, God rested from all his work, which God _created_ and _made_." "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth, when they were _created_; in the day the Lord God _made_ the earth and the heavens." "But now thus saith the Lord that _created_ thee, Jacob, and he that _formed_ thee, O Israel." "For thus saith the Lord that _created_ the heavens, God himself, that _formed_ the earth, and _made_ it; he hath established it; he _created_ it not in confusion; he _formed_ it to be inhabited."[230] In all these passages _creation_ is clearly distinguished from _formation_ and _making_, if the Bible is not a mass of senseless repetitions. If _create_, and _make_, and _form_, have all the same meaning, why use them all in the same verse? These, and many similar passages, show that the Bible teaches the work of _creation_--calling things into being--to be previous to and distinct from the work of _making_--forming of materials already created. Between these two widely different processes--of the original creation of the universe, and the subsequent preparation of the habitable earth, by the six days' work--two intervening periods are indicated by Scripture, both of indefinite length. The first of these is that which intervened between the original creation and the period of disorder indicated in the second verse. The second is that disordered period during which the earth continued without form and void. That original chaos which some would find in the second verse, never had any existence, save in the brains of Atheistic philosophers. It is purely absurd. God never created a chaos. Man never saw it. The crystals of the smallest grain of sand, the sporules of the humblest fungus on the rotten tree, the animalculæ in the filthiest pool of mud, are as orderly in their arrangements, as perfect after their kind, and as wisely adapted to their station, as the angels before the throne of God. And as man never saw, so he has no language to describe, a state of original disorder; for every word he can use implies a previous state of regularity; as disorder tells of order dissolved; confusion of previous forms melted together. So the poets who have tried to describe a chaos have been obliged to represent it as the wreck of a former state. Both the Bible language and the Bible narrative correspond to the philosophy and philology of the case; for, by the use of the substantive verb, in the past tense, implying progressive being, according to the usual force of the word in Hebrew, we are told literally, "the earth _became_ without form and void." God did not create it so, but after it was created, and by a series of revolutions not recorded, it became disordered and empty. The Holy Spirit takes care to explain this verse, by quoting it in Jeremiah iv. 23, as the appropriate symbolical description of the state of a previously existing and regularly constituted body politic, reduced to confusion by the calamities of war. Again, he explains both the terms used in it in Isaiah xxxiv. 11, by using them to describe, not the rude and undigested mass of the heathen poet, but the wilderness condition of a ravaged country, and the desolate ruins of once beautiful and populous cities: "He will stretch out upon it the line of _confusion_, and the stones of _emptiness_." In both these cases the previous existence of an orderly and populous state is implied. And finally, we are expressly assured, that the state of disorder mentioned in the second verse of Genesis i., was not the original condition of the earth--Isaiah xlv. 18--where the very same word is used as in Genesis i. 2, "He created it not, _teu_, _disordered_, in _confusion_." The period of the earth's previous existence in an orderly state, or that occupied by the revolutions and catastrophes which disordered its surface, is not recorded in Scripture. The second period is that of disorder, which must have been of some duration, more or less, and is plainly implied to have been of considerable length, in the declaration that "the Spirit of the Lord moved"--literally, _was brooding_ (a figure taken from the incubation of fowls)--"upon the face of the waters." But no portion of Scripture gives any intimation of the length of this period. If, then, astronomers and geologists assert that the earth was millions, or hundreds of millions of years in process of preparation for its present state, by a long series of successive destructions and renovations, and gradual formations, _there is not one word in the Bible to contradict that opinion_; but, on the contrary, very many texts which fully and unequivocally imply its truth. But, as the knowledge of the exact age of the earth is by no means necessary to any man's present happiness, or the salvation of his soul, it is nowhere taught in the Bible. God has given us the stars to teach us astronomy, the earth to teach us geology, and the Bible to teach us religion, and neither contradicts the other. This is no new interpretation evoked to meet the necessities of modern science. The Jewish Rabbins, and those of the early Christian Fathers who gave any attention to criticism, are perfectly explicit in recognizing these distinctions. The doctrine of the creation of the world only six or seven thousand years ago is a product of monkish ignorance of the original language of the Bible. But Clement of Alexandria, Chrysostom, and Gregory Nazianzen, after Justin Martyr, teach the existence of an indefinite period between the creation and the formation of all things. Basil and Origen account for the existence of light before the sun, by alleging that the sun existed, but that the chaotic atmosphere prevented his rays from being visible till the first day, and his light till the third.[231] Augustine, in his first homily, represents the first state of the earth, in Genesis i. 1, as bearing the same relation to its finished state, that the seed of a tree does to the trunk, branches, leaves, and fruit. Horsley, Edward King, Jennings, Baxter, and many others, who wrote during the last two centuries, but before the period of geological discovery, explained the second verse substantially as did Bishop Patrick, a hundred and fifty years ago. "How long all things continued in confusion, we are not told. _It might have been, for anything that is here revealed, a very great while._"[232] Some persons, however, have supposed that the chaos of the second verse succeeded immediately to the creation of the first, and that the six days' work in like manner followed that instantaneously, or at least after a very brief interval, because the records of these cycles are connected by the word _and_, which, they think, precludes the idea of any lengthened periods or intervals. But the slightest reflection upon the meaning of the word will show that _and_ can not of itself be any _measure_ of time, its use being to indicate merely _sequence_ and _connection_. When used historically, it always implies an interval of time; for there can be no succession without an interval; but the length of that interval must be determined from the context, or some other source. A very cursory perusal of the Bible, either in English or Hebrew, will show that very often in its brief narratives, the interval indicated by _and_, and its Hebrew originals, is a very long time. The descent of Jacob and his children into Egypt is connected with the record of their deaths, in the very next verse, by this word _and_, which thus includes nearly the lifetime of a generation. That event, again, is connected with a change of dynasty in Egypt, and the oppression and multiplication of the Israelites there, recorded in the next verse, by the same word, _vau_, _and_; while the period over which it reaches was over two hundred years.[233] So in the brief record of the family of Adam, after reciting the birth of Seth, the historian adds, in the next verse, "And to Seth also was born a son, and he called his name Enos;" while the interval thus indicated by the word _and_ was a hundred and five years. The command to build the ark, recorded in the last verse of the sixth chapter of Genesis, is connected with the command to enter into it, in the first verse of the seventh chapter, by this same word _and_, although we know, from the nature of the case, that the interval required for the construction of such a huge vessel must have been considerable; and from the third verse of the sixth chapter, we learn that it was a hundred and twenty years. So the births and deaths of the antediluvians are connected by this same word _and_, throughout the fifth chapter of Genesis; while the interval, as we see from the narrative, was often eight or nine hundred years. The descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ, to qualify him for judging the world, is connected with the actual discharge of that office, in the destruction of Antichrist by the breath of his mouth, by this word _and_,[234] although the interval has been over eighteen hundred years. If in the records of the generations of mortal men, the word _and_ is customarily employed as a connecting link in the narrations of events separated by an interval of hundreds of years, it is quite consistent with the strictest propriety of language to employ it, with an enlargement proportioned to the duration of the subject of discourse, to connect intervals of millions, in the narrative of the generations of the heavens and the earth. The Bible uniformly attributes the most remote antiquity to the work of creation. So far from supposing man to be even approximately coeval with it, the emphatic reproof of human presumption is couched in the remarkable words, "Where wast thou, when I laid the foundations of the earth?" In majestic contrast with the frail human race, Moses glances at the primeval monuments of God's antiquity, as though by them he could form some faint conceptions even of eternity, and sings, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the universe, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God."[235] The very word here used, _the beginning_, is in itself an emphatic refutation of the notion that the work of creation is only some six or seven thousand years old. Geologists have been unable to invent a better, and have borrowed from the Bible this very form of speech, to designate those strata beyond which human knowledge can not penetrate--_the primary formations_. But, with far greater propriety, the Holy Spirit uses this word with regard to ages, compared with which the utmost range of the astronomer's or geologist's reasonings is but as the tale of yesterday. For this word, in Bible usage, marks the last promontory on the boundless ocean of eternity; the only positive word by which we can express the most remote period of past duration. It is not a date--a point of duration. It is a period--a vast cycle. It has but one boundary; that where creation rises from its abyss. Created eye has never seen the other shore. It is that vast period which the Bible assigns to the manifestations of the Word of God, "whose goings forth have been of old, from everlasting." Carrying our astonished gaze far back beyond the era of his creature, man, and ages before the "all things" that were made by Him, the Bible places this _beginning_ on the very shore of the eternity of God, when it declares, "_In the beginning_ was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."[236] Thus, both by the use of the imperfect tense, _was_, denoting continued existence, and by the connection of this _beginning_ with the eternity of the Word, does the Bible teach us to dismiss from our thoughts all narrow views of the period of duration employed in manifesting the glory of the self-existent Eternal One, and to raise our conceptions to the highest possible pitch, and then to feel, that far beyond the grasp of human calculation lies that _beginning_ which includes the years of the right hand of the Most High, and is even used as one of the names of the Eternal: "I AM THE BEGINNING _and the Ending, saith the Lord, who is, and who was, and who is to come_--THE ALMIGHTY."[237] In another Bible exhibition of the eternity of the Son of God, we are conducted from that _beginning_, downward, stage by stage, from those periods of remote antiquity prior to the formation of water, the upheaval of the mountains, the alluvial deposits, the subsidence of the existing sea basins, and the adornment of the habitable parts of the earth, to that comparatively recent event, the existence of the sons of men. Our ideas of the eternity of the love of Christ are thus enhanced, by the vastness of the ages which stretch out between the human race and that beginning when He was, as it were, "The Lamb slain from before the foundations of the world." "The Lord possessed me _in the beginning of his way_, _Before his works of old_. I was set up from everlasting, _From the beginning, or ever the earth was_. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; When there were no fountains, abounding with water; Before the mountains were settled, Before the hills, was I brought forth; While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, Nor the highest part of the dust of the world When he prepared the heavens, I was there; When he described a circle upon the face of the deep; When he established the clouds above; When he strengthened the fountains of the deep; When he gave to the sea his decree, That the waters should not pass his commandment; When he appointed the foundations of the earth: Then was I by him, as one brought up with him; And I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him: Rejoicing in the habitable parts of his earth; And my delights were with the sons of men."[238] Let the geologist, then, penetrate as deeply as he can into the profundities of the foundations of the earth, and bring forth the monuments of their hoary antiquities: we will follow with the most unfaltering faith, and receive with joy these proofs of his eternal power and Godhead. Let the astronomer raise his telescope, and reflect on our astonished eyes the light which flashed from morning stars, on the day of this earth's first existence, or even the rays which began to travel from distant suns, millions of years ere the first morning dawned on our planet: we will place them as jewels in the crown of Him who is the bright and morning star. They shall shed a sacred luster over the pages of the Bible, and give new beauties of illustration to its majestic symbols. But never will geologist penetrate, much less exhaust, the profundity of its mysteries, nor astronomer attain, much less explore, the sublimity of that beginning revealed in its pages; for eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, either the antiquity, or the nature, or the duration of the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. Human science will never be able to reach the Bible era of creation. It is placed in an antiquity beyond the power of human calculation, in that sublime sentence with which it introduces mortals to the Eternal: "_In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth._" 3. The third objection we have named is equally unfounded. _The Bible nowhere teaches that the sky is a solid sphere, to which the stars are fixed, and which revolves with them around the earth._ I know that Infidels allege that the word _firmament_, in the first chapter of Genesis, conveys this meaning. It does not. Neither the English word, nor the Hebrew original, has any such meaning. As to the meaning of the English word, I adhere to the dictionary. Infidels must not be allowed to coin uncouth meanings for words, different from the known usage of the English tongue, for which Webster is undeniable authority. His definition of _firmament_ is, "The region of the air; the sky, or heavens. In Scripture, the word denotes an expanse--a wide extent; for such is the signification of the Hebrew word, coinciding with _regio_, _region_, and _reach_. The original, therefore, does not convey the sense of solidity, but of stretching--extension. The great arch or expanse over our heads, in which are placed the atmosphere and the clouds, and in which the stars _appear_ to be placed, and are _really_ seen." The word _firmament_, then, conveys no such meaning as the Infidel alleges, to any man who understands the English tongue. No Hebrew speaking man or woman ever did, or ever could understand the original Hebrew word _reqo_ in any other sense than that of _expanse_; for the verb from which it is formed means to extend, or spread out, as even the English reader may see, by a few examples of its use, in the following passages of Scripture; where the English words by which the verb _reqo_ is expressed, are marked in italics. "Then did I beat them small as the dust of the earth, and did stamp them as the mire of the street, and _did spread them abroad_." "The goldsmith _spreadeth it over_ with gold." "Thus saith the Lord: he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that _spread forth_ the earth." "I am the Lord, that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone, and _spreadeth abroad_ the earth by myself." "To him that _stretcheth out_ the earth above the waters." "The censers of these sinners against their own souls, let them _make them broad_ plates, for a covering for the altar. _And they were made broad._" "Hast thou with him _spread out_ the sky;"[239] or, in Humboldt's elegant rendering, "the pure ether, _spread_ (during the scorching heat of the south wind) as a melted mirror over the parched desert."[240] We might refer to the opinions of lexicographers, all unanimous in ascribing the same idea to the word; but the authorities given above are conclusive. The meaning, then, of the Hebrew word rendered firmament is so utterly removed from the notion of compactness, or solidity, or metallic or crystalline spheres, that it is derived from the very opposite; the fineness or tenuity produced by processes of expansion. Science has not been able to this day to invent a better word for the regions of space than the literal rendering of the original Hebrew word used by Moses--_the expanse_. The inspired writers of the New Testament, though they found the world full of all the absurdities of the Greek philosophy, and their Greek translations of the Bible continually using the word _stereoma_, which expressed these notions, _never used it_ but once, and then not for the sky, but for the _steadfastness of faith_ in Christ. Their thus using it once shows that they were acquainted with the word, and its proper meaning, and that their disuse of it was intentional; while their disuse of it, and choice of another word to denote the heavens, proves decisively that they disapproved of the absurdity which it was understood to express. Now, whether you account for this fact by admitting their inspiration, or by alleging that they drew their language from the Hebrew original, and not from the Greek translation, it is in either case perfectly conclusive as to the scriptural meaning of the word. Indeed, it is marvelous how any man who is familiar with his Bible, and knows that the Scriptures usually describe the sky by metaphors conveying the very opposite ideas to those of solidity or permanence--as, "stretched out like a curtain," "spread abroad like a tent to dwell in," "folded up like a vesture," and the like--should allow himself to be imposed on by the impudent falsehood of Voltaire, that the Bible teaches us that the sky is a solid metallic or crystal hemisphere, supported by pillars. Those beautiful figures of sacred poetry in which the universe is represented as the palace of the Great King, adorned with majestic "pillars," and "windows of heaven," whence he scatters his gifts among his expectant subjects in the courts below, have been grossly abused for the support of this miserable falsehood. We are assured, that so ignorant was Moses of the true nature of the atmosphere, and of the origin of rain, that he believed and taught that there was an ocean of fresh water on _the outside_ of this metal hemisphere, which covered the earth like a great sugar-kettle, bottom upward, and was supported on pillars; and at the bottom of the ocean were trap-doors, to let the rain through; which trap-doors in the metal firmament are to be understood, when the Bible speaks of the windows of heaven. Now, the bottom of an ocean is an odd place for windows, and a trap-door is rather a strange kind of watering-pot; and if Moses put the ocean of fresh water on the _outside_ of his metal hemisphere, he must have changed his notions of gravity materially from the time he planned the brazen hemisphere for the tabernacle, which he turned mouth upward, and put the water in the _inside_. While such writers are quite clear about the metal trap-doors and the ocean, they have not yet fully fathomed the construction and arrangement of the pillars. Whether the Bible teaches that they are "pillars of salt," like Lot's wife, or of flesh and blood, like "James, Cephas, and John," or such "iron pillars and brazen walls" as Jeremiah was against the house of Israel--whether they consisted of "cloud and fire," like the pillar Moses describes in the next book as floating in the sky over the camp of Israel, or are "pillars of smoke," such as ascend out of the wilderness--whether they are those "pillars of the earth which tremble" when God shakes it, or "the pillars of heaven which are astonished at his reproof"--whether they are the pillars of the earth and its anarchical inhabitants, which Asaph bore up, or are composed of the same materials as Paul's "pillar and basis of the truth," or the pillars of victory which Christ erects "in the temple of God"[241]--they have not yet decided. Whether the Hebrews understood these pillars to be arranged on the outside of the metal hemisphere, and if so, to imagine any use for them there; or in the inside, and in that case whether they kept the sky from falling upon the earth, or only supported the earth from falling into the sky, these learned men are by no means agreed. Having trampled the pearl into fragments, their attempts to combine them into another shape are more amusing than successful; and it is hard to say which of the seven opinions ascribed to the Bible by Infidel commentators is least probable. That opinion, however, will, doubtless, after more vigorous and protracted rooting, be discovered and greedily swallowed amid grunts of satisfaction; an appropriate reward of such laborious stupidity. The absurdities of the Greek philosophers were not drawn from the Bible. Had the Greeks read the Bible more, they would have preserved the common sense God gave them a great deal longer, and would not, while professing themselves to be wise, have become such fools as to adore blocks and stones, and dream of metal firmaments. But they turned away their ears from the truth, and were turned unto such fables as Infidels falsely ascribe to the Bible. A thousand years before the cycles and epicycles of the Ptolemaic astronomy were invented, and before learned Greeks had learned to talk nonsense about crystal spheres, and trap-doors in the bottom of celestial oceans, the writers of the Bible were recording those conversations of pious philosophers concerning stars, and clouds, and rain, from which Galileo derived the first hints of the causes of barometrical phenomena. The origin of rain, its proportion to the amount of evaporation, and the mode of its distribution by condensation, could not be propounded by Humboldt himself with more brevity and perspicuity than they are expressed by the Idumean philosopher: "He maketh small the drops of water; they pour down rain according to the vapor thereof, which the clouds do drop and distill upon man abundantly. Also, can any understand the spreadings of the clouds, or the noise of his tabernacles?"[242] The cause of this rarefaction of _cold water_ is as much a mystery to the British Association as it was to Elihu; and even were all the mysteries of the electrical tension of vapors disclosed, "the balancings of the clouds" would only be more clearly discovered to be, as the Bible declares, "the wonderful works of Him who is perfect in wisdom." But the gravity of the atmosphere, the comparative density of floating water, and its increased density by discharges of electricity, were as well known to Job and his friends as they are to the wisest of our modern philosophers. "He looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven, _to make weight to air, and regulate waters by measure, in his making a law for the rain, and a path for the lightning of thunder_."[243] Three thousand years before the theory of the trade winds was demonstrated, or before Maury had discovered the rotation and revolutions of the wind-currents, it was written in the Bible, "The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about to the north. _And the wind returneth again, according to his circuits._"[244] Thousands of years before Newton, Galileo, and Copernicus were born, Isaiah was writing about the "orbit of the earth," and its insignificance in the eyes of the Creator of the host of heaven.[245] Job was conversing with his friends on the inclination of its axis, and its equilibrium in space: "He spreadeth out the north over the empty space, and hangeth the earth upon nothing."[246] So far from entertaining the least idea of the waters of the atmosphere being contained either on the outside or the inside of a metal or solid hemisphere, the writers of the Bible never once use, even figuratively, any expression conveying it. On the contrary, the well-known scriptural figures for the fountains of the rain, are the soft, elastic, leathern waterskins of the east, "the bottles of the clouds," or the wide, flowing shawl or upper garment wherein the people of the east are accustomed to tie up loose, scattering substances.[247] "He bindeth up the waters in his thick cloud, and the cloud is not rent under them." "Who hath bound the waters in a garment;" "As a vesture thou shalt change them;" or the loose, flowing curtains of a royal pavilion; or the extended covering of a tent: "his pavilion around him were dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies;" "the spreadings of the clouds, and the noise of his tabernacle;" "he spread a cloud for a covering."[248] Instead of the notion of a single ocean, the "number of the clouds" is proverbial in the Scriptures[249] for a multitude; and in direct opposition to the permanence of a vast metallic arch, the chosen emblems of instability and transitoriness, and of the utmost rapidity of motion, suitable even for the chariot of Jehovah, are selected from the heavens.[250] In short, there is not the slightest vestige of any foundation in Scripture for the notions long afterward introduced by the Greek philosophers. Yet Christians, who have read these passages of Scripture over and over again, allow themselves to give heed to Infidels, who have not, asserting, without the shadow of proof, that Moses taught absurdities which were not invented for a thousand years after his death. The Bible gives hints of many profound scientific truths; it teaches no absurdities; _and, instead of countenancing the notion that the sky is a solid metal hemisphere, it teaches, both literally and figuratively, directly the contrary_. 4. We come now to the fourth objection, _that the Bible represents God as creating light before the sun_, which is supposed to be an absurdity, _and as creating the sun, moon, and stars only two days before Adam_. This is the only astronomical objection to the Bible account of creation which has any foundation of Scripture statement to rest upon; but we shall soon see that here, also, Infidels have not done themselves the justice of reading the Bible with attention. I have already corrected that confusion of ideas and carelessness of perusal which confounds the two distinct and different words, _create_ and _make_, so as to make both mean the same thing. God _created_ the heavens, as well as the earth, _in the beginning_; a period of such remote antiquity that, in Bible language, it stands next to eternity. The sun and moon then came into being. Through what changes they passed, or when they were endowed with the power of giving light to the universe, the Bible nowhere declares; but on the fourth day, it tells us, they _were made lights_, or, literally, _light-bearers_, to this earth. The comparatively insignificant place allotted to the stars, in the narrative of this earth's formation, corresponds, with the strictest propriety, to the nature of the discourse; which is not an account of the system of the universe, but of the process of preparation of this earth for the abode of man. Compared with the influences of "the two great light-bearers," those of the stars are very insignificant; since the sun sheds more light and heat on the earth in one day, than all the fixed stars have done since the creation of Adam. It is evident, from the words, that Moses is not speaking either of their original creation, or of their actual magnitude, but of their appointment and use in relation to us, when he says, "And God made two great light-bearers (the greater light-bearer to rule the day, and the lesser light bearer to rule the night), and the stars. And God set them in the firmament of the heavens, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and the night, and to divide the light from the darkness." Neither here nor elsewhere does he say they were _created_ at this time, but in all the subsequent references uses other words, such as "prepared," "divided," "made," "appropriated," "made for ruling," "gave;" a studious omission, which shows that the Author of the Bible had not forgotten how long it was since he had called them into being. _The Bible, then, does not say that God created the sun and stars only two days before Adam._ Another correction of careless Bible reading is necessary, that we may be satisfied about what the Bible _does not say_, ere we begin to defend what it does say. The Bible does not say, nor lead us to believe, that the darkness spoken of in the second verse of the first of Genesis had existed from eternity. Darkness is not eternal; it requires the exercise of creative power for its production. Light is the eternal dwelling of the Word of God.[251] The darkness which brooded over our earth, at the period of its formation, is very plainly described in the Bible as a temporary phenomenon, incident to, and necessary for, the birth of ocean. It is confined by the adverb of time, _when_, to the period of condensation, upheaval, and subsidence, occupied by the birth of that gigantic infant, "_when_ it burst forth as though it had issued from the womb; _when_ I made the cloud a garment for it, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it, and broke up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors."[252] The sun may have shone for millions of years before upon the earth, or might have been shining with all his brilliance at that very time, while not a single ray penetrated the thick darkness of the vapors in which earth was clothed. But whether or not, darkness must, from its very nature, be limited, both in space and time. To speak of infinite and eternal darkness is as unscriptural as it is absurd. The source of light is Uncreated and Eternal.[253] Further--if my readers are not tired with these perpetual corrections of careless reading and mistaken meaning--the light called into existence in the third verse of the first chapter of Genesis is as evidently a different word from _the two lights_ spoken of in the fourteenth verse, as the singular is different from the plural; and the thing signified by it is as distinct from the things spoken of in the fourteenth verse, as the abstract is from the concrete; as, when I say of the first, "light travels 195,000 miles per second," but mean a totally distinct subject when I say, "Extinguish the lights." The Hebrew words are even more palpably different, the word for _light_, in the third verse, being _aur_, while the words for _the lights_, in the fourth day's work, are _maurt_ and _at emaur_; words as distinct in shape and sense as our English words, _light_ and _the lighthouses_. The locality of the light of the third verse is, moreover, wholly different from that of the light-bearers of the fourteenth verse. That was placed on earth--these in heaven. It was of the earth alone the writer was speaking, in the second verse; the earth alone is the subject of the following verses. It was the darkness of earth that needed to be illuminated; but there is not the remotest hint, in any portion of Scripture, that any other planet or star was shrouded in gloom at this time. But, on the contrary, we are most distinctly informed that the wonders which God was performing in this world at that very time were distinctly visible amid the cheerful illumination of other orbs, "when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy,"[254] as this earth emerged from its temporary darkness. It was not from the light of heaven, but out of this darkness of earth, that God, who still draws the lightning's flash from the black thunder-cloud, commanded the light to shine.[255] And it was upon this earth, and not throughout the universe, that it produced alternate day and night. To extend this command for the illumination of the darkened earth, so as to mean the production of light in general, and the lighting of the most distant telescopic, and even invisible stars--which are neither specified in the command itself, nor by any necessity of language or Scripture implied in it, but, on the contrary, excluded, by the express Scripture declarations of the pre-existence of light, and of morning stars--is an outrage alike against all canons of criticism, laws of grammar, and dictates of common sense. The command, "Let there be light," had respect to this earth only. The Bible does represent this earth as illuminated at a time when the sun was not visible from its surface--perhaps not visible at all. Now, if any one will undertake to scoff at the Bible for speaking of light without sunshine, or of the sun shining upon a dark earth--as Infidels abundantly do--we demand that he tell us, What is light, and how is it connected with the sun? If he can not, let him cease to scoff at matters too high for him. If he can tell us, he knows that the retardation of Encke's comet, which every year falls nearer and nearer the sun, has discovered the existence of an attenuated ether in the expanse or firmament; and that the experiments of Arago on the polarization of light have finally demonstrated that our sensation of light is exerted by a series of vibrations or undulations of this fluid,[256] he will then be able to perceive the propriety with which the Author of light and of the Bible speaks, not of _creating_ light, as if it were a material substance, but of _forming_ or commanding its display. And he will be better able to comprehend the beauty and scientific propriety with which he selected the active participle of the verb _to flow_, as the name for the undulations of this fluid; for the primary meaning of the Hebrew verb _ar_ is, _to flow_, or, when used as a noun, _a flood_. "It shall be cast out and drowned, as by the _flood_ of Egypt."[257] And of the like import are the nouns, _iar_ and _aur_, formed from it. "Who is this that covereth up like a _flood_, whose waters are moved like the rivers?"[258] The philosopher, even though he be a skeptic, will cease to mock the Bible when he reads there, that 6000 years ago its Author termed light _the flowing--the undulation_. "In the words of the 'Son of God,' and the 'Son of Man,' no less than in his works, with all their adaptation to the circumstances of the times and persons to whom they were originally delivered, are things inexplicable--concealed germs of an infinite development, reserved for future ages to unfold."[259] To the man of learning and reflection, this progressive fullness, and unfathomable depth of the Scripture, is a most conclusive proof that it was dictated by Him in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. But the ignorant scoffers--the great majority--will mock on, and speak evil of the things they know not. Their mockery is founded on two assumptions, which they believe to be irrefutable; that the sun is the only possible source of light to the earth; and that it is impossible for the sun to exist without illuminating the earth. Unless they can _prove_ both of these assumptions to be true, they can not prove the Bible account of creation to be false, nor even show it to be impossible. Neither of these assumptions can possibly be proved true; for none of them can explore the universe, to discover the sources of light, nor put the sun through every possible experiment, to discover that his light is an inseparable quality. The only thing Infidels can truly allege against the Bible account of the origin of light is, _their ignorance of the process_. The argument is simply this: "God could not cause light without sunshine, _because I don't know how he did it_. Nor _can I understand_ how the sun shone on a dark earth; therefore, it is impossible." These arguments from ignorance need no other answer than the questions, Do you know how the sun shines at all? Is your ignorance the measure of God's wisdom? But I shall demonstrate the utter falsehood of both these assumptions, by showing the actual existence of many sources of light besides the sun, and the perfect possibility of the existence of the sun without sunshine, and of sunshine without any light reaching the earth. Thus, both the alleged _impossibilities_ upon which the argument against the truth of the Bible is based will be removed, and the gross ignorance of natural science displayed by professedly scientific scoffers at the Bible exposed. Light, so far from being solely derived from the sun, exists in, and can be educed from, almost any known substance. Even children are familiar with the light produced by the friction of two pieces of quartz; and no one needs to be informed how light may be produced by the combustion of inflammable substances. But the number of these substances is far greater than is generally supposed, and light can be produced by processes to which we do not generally apply the idea of burning. Resins, wool, silks, wood, and all kinds of earths and alkalies, are capable of emitting light in suitable electrical conditions; so that the surface of our earth may have been a source of light in past ages, as it even now is,[260] near the poles and the equator, flashing its Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis, and sending out its belts of Zodiacal light,[261] far into the surrounding darkness. Schubert, quoted by Kurtz, says: "May not that polar light, which is called the Aurora of the North, be the last glittering light of a departed age of the world, in which the earth was inclosed in an expanse of aerial fluid, from which, through the agency of electric magnetic forces, streamed forth an incomparably greater degree of light, accompanied with animating warmth, almost in a similar mode to what still occurs in the luminous atmosphere of our sun?" Again, the metallic bases of all the earths are highly inflammable. A brilliant flame can be produced by the combustion of water. All the metals can be made to flash forth lightnings, under suitable electric and magnetic excitements. The crystals of several rocks give out light during the process of crystallization. Thousands of miles of the earth's surface must once have presented the lurid glow of a vast furnace full of igneous rocks. Even now, the copper color of the moon during an ellipse shows us that the earth is a source of light.[262] The mountains on the surface of Venus and the moon, and the continents and oceans of Mars, attest the existence of upheaval and subsidence, and of volcanic fires, capable of producing such phenomena, and of course of sources of light in those planets, such as exist on the earth. We know, then, most certainly, that there are many other bodies capable of producing light besides the sun. That God could command the light to shine out of darkness, and convert the very ocean into a magnificent illumination, the following facts clearly prove. "Capt. Bonnycastle, coming up the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the seventh of September, 1826, was roused by the mate of the vessel, in great alarm, from an unusual appearance. It was a starlight night, when suddenly the sky became overcast, in the direction of the high land of Cornwallis County, _and an instantaneous and intensely vivid light, resembling the Aurora, shot out of the hitherto gloomy and dark sea_, on the lee bow, which was so brilliant that it lighted everything distinctly, even to the mast-head. The light spread over the whole sea, between the two shores, and the waves, which before had been tranquil, now began to be agitated. Capt. Bonnycastle describes the scene as that of _a blazing sheet of awful and most brilliant light_. A long and vivid line of light, superior in brightness to the parts of the sea not immediately near the vessel, showed the base of the high, frowning, and dark land abreast; the sky became lowering, and more intensely obscure. Long tortuous lines of light showed immense numbers of large fish, darting about as if in consternation. The topsail yard and mizzen boom were lighted by the glare, as if gas-lights had been burning directly below them; and until just before daybreak, at four o'clock, the most minute objects were distinctly visible."[263] The other assumption, that the sun could not possibly have existed without giving light to the earth, is contradicted by the most familiar facts. The earth and each of the planets might have been, and most probably were, surrounded by a dense atmosphere, through which the sun's rays could not penetrate. It is not at all necessary to prove that such was the fact. I am only concerned to prove the _possibility_; for the Infidel's objection is founded on the presumed _impossibility_ of the coexistence of a dark earth and a shining sun. Any person who has ever been in Pittsburg, Glasgow, or the manufacturing districts of England, and has seen how the smoke of even a hundred factory chimneys will shroud the heavens, can easily comprehend how a similar discharge, on a larger scale, from the thousands of primeval volcanoes,[264] would cover the earth with the pall of darkness. By the eruption of a single volcano, in the island of Sumbawa, in 1815, the air was filled with ashes, from Java to Celebes, darkening an area of more than 200,000 square miles; and the darkness was so profound in Java, three hundred miles distant from the volcano, that nothing equal to it was ever witnessed in the darkest night.[265] Those who have witnessed the fogs raised on the Banks of Newfoundland, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and in the Bay of San Francisco, by the mingling of currents of water of slightly different temperatures, can be at no loss to conceive the density of the vapors produced by the boiling of the sea around and over the multitude of volcanoes[266] which have produced the countless _atolls_ of the Pacific, and by the vast upheavals of thousands of miles of heated rocks of the primary formations into the beds of primeval oceans. While such processes were in progress, it was impossible but that darkness should be upon the face of the deep.[267] Even now, a slight change of atmospheric density and temperature would vail the earth with darkness. We see this substantially done every time that God "covereth the light with clouds, and commandeth it not to shine by the cloud that cometh betwixt," although the sun continues to shine with all his usual splendor. To understand how there may be a day without sunshine, we need only conceive the whole earth temporarily enveloped in the vapors of the unastronomical atmosphere of Peru, thus described by Humboldt: "A thick mist obscures the firmament in this region for many months, during the period called _tiempo de la garua_. Not a planet--not the most brilliant stars of the southern hemisphere--are visible. It is frequently almost impossible to distinguish the position of the moon. If, by chance, the outline of the sun's disc be visible during the day, it appears devoid of rays, as if seen through colored glasses. According to what modern geology has taught us to conjecture concerning the ancient history of our atmosphere, its primitive condition in respect to its mixture and density _must have been unfavorable to the transmission of light_. When we consider the numerous processes which, in the primary world, may have led to the separation of the solids, fluids, and gases around the earth's surface, the thought involuntarily arises, _how narrowly the human race escaped being surrounded with an untransparent atmosphere_, which, though not greatly prejudicial to some classes of vegetation, would yet have completely vailed the whole of the starry canopy. All knowledge of the structure of the universe could then have been withheld from the inquiring spirit of man."[268] The sun, then, may have shone with all his brilliancy, for thousands of years, and a single ray never have penetrated the darkness upon the face of the deep. But we will go further, and show that so far from light being an essential property of suns, it is a very variable attribute, and that in several cases suns have ceased, and others begun, to shine, before our eyes. The fixed stars are self-luminous bodies, similar to our sun, only immensely distant from us. Their numbers, magnitudes, and places, are known and recorded. But new stars have frequently flashed into view, where none were previously seen to exist; and others have gradually grown dim and disappeared, without changing their place; and a few which had disappeared have reappeared in the same spot they formerly occupied; while others have changed their color since the era of astronomical observation. In short, there is no permanence in the heavens, any more than on the earth; but a perpetual progress and change is the destiny of suns and stars, of which the most conspicuous indication is the variability of their powers of giving light, of which I shall transcribe a few instances. "On the eleventh of November, 1572, as the illustrious Danish astronomer, Tycho, was walking through the fields, he was astonished to observe a new star in the constellation Cassiopea, beaming with a radiance quite unwonted in that part of the heavens. Suspecting some delusion about his eyes, he went to a group of peasants, to ascertain if they saw it, and found them gazing at it with as much astonishment as himself. He went to his instrument, and fixed its place, from which it never after appeared to deviate. For some time it increased in brightness--greatly surpassed Sirius in luster, and even Jupiter. It was seen by good eyes in the daytime; a thing which happens only to Venus, under very favorable circumstances; and at night it pierced through clouds which obscured the rest of the stars. After reaching its fullest brightness, it again diminished, passed through all degrees of visible magnitude, assuming in succession the hues of a dying conflagration, and then finally disappeared." "It is impossible to imagine anything more tremendous than a conflagration that could be visible at such a distance."[269] Astronomers now recognize a class of such _Temporary Stars_, which have appeared from time to time in different parts of the heavens, blazing forth with extraordinary luster, and after remaining awhile, apparently immovable, have died away, and left no trace.[270] Twenty-one of such appearances of new suns are on record.[271] Still further, many familiar suns have ceased to shine. "On a careful re-examination of the heavens, _many stars are found to be missing_."[272] "There are many well authenticated cases of the disappearance of old stars, whose places had been fixed with a degree of certainty not to be doubted. In October, 1781, Sir William Herschel observed a star, No. 55 in Flamstead's Catalogue, in the constellation Hercules. In 1790 the same star was observed by the same astronomer, but since that time no search has been able to detect it. The stars 80 and 81 of the same catalogue, both of the fourth magnitude, have likewise disappeared. In May, 1828, Sir John Herschel missed the star No. 42, in the constellation Virgo, which has never since been seen. Examples might be multiplied, but it is unnecessary."[273] The demonstration of the variableness of the light-giving power of suns is completed by the phenomena of the class called _Variable Stars_; though the best astronomers are now agreed that _variability, and not uniformity_, in the emission of light, is the general character of the stars.[274] But the variations which occur before our eyes impress us more deeply than those which require centuries for their completion. Sir John Herschel has observed, and graphically described, one such instance of variation of light. "The star Eta Argus has always hitherto been regarded as a star of the second magnitude; and I never had reason to regard it as variable. In November, 1837, _I saw it, as usual_. Judge of my surprise to find, on the sixteenth of December, that _it had suddenly become a star of the first magnitude_, and almost equal to Rigel. It continued to increase. Rigel is now not to be compared with it. It exceeds Arcturus, and is very near equal to Alpha Centauri, being, at the moment I write, the fourth star in the heavens, in the order of brightness."[275] It has since passed through several variations of luster. Humboldt gives a catalogue of twenty-four of such stars whose variations have been recorded. "A strange field of speculation is opened by this phenomenon. Here we have a star fitfully variable to an astonishing extent, and whose fluctuations are spread over centuries, apparently in no settled period, and with no regularity of progression. What origin can we ascribe to these sudden flashes and relapses? What conclusions are we to draw as to the comfort or habitability of a system depending for its supply of light and heat on such an uncertain source? Speculations of this kind can hardly be termed visionary, when we consider that, from what has been before said, we are compelled to admit a community of nature between the fixed stars and our own sun; and when we reflect, that geology testifies to the fact of extensive changes having taken place, at epochs of the most remote antiquity, in the climate and temperature of our globe; changes difficult to reconcile with the operation of secondary causes, such as a different distribution of sea and land, but which would find an easy and natural explanation in a slow variation of the supply of light and heat afforded by the sun himself."[276] "I can not otherwise understand alterations of heat and cold so extensive as at one period to have clothed high northern latitudes with a more than tropical luxuriance of vegetation, and at another to have buried vast tracts of Europe, now enjoying a genial climate, and smiling with fertility, under a glacier crust of enormous thickness. Such changes seem to point to causes more powerful than the mere local distribution of land and water can well be supposed to have been. In the slow secular variations of our supply of light and heat from the sun, _which, in the immensity of time, may have gone to any extent, and succeeded each other in any order, without violating the analogy of sidereal phenomena which we know to have taken place_, we have a cause, not indeed established as a fact, but readily admissible as something beyond a bare possibility, fully adequate to the utmost requirements of geology. A change of half a magnitude on the luster of our sun, regarded as a fixed star, spread over successive geological epochs--now progressive, now receding, now stationary--_is what no astronomer would now hesitate to admit as a perfectly reasonable and not improbable supposition_."[277] The most eminent astronomers are perfectly unanimous in their deductions from these facts. They regard _variability as the general characteristic of suns and stars, our own sun not exempted_. "We are led," says Humboldt, "by analogy to infer, that as the fixed stars _universally_ have not merely an apparent, but a real motion of their own, so their surfaces or luminous atmospheres are generally subject to those changes (in their "light process") which recur, in the great majority, in extremely long, and therefore unmeasured, and probably undeterminable periods, or which, in a few, recur without being periodical, as it were, by a sudden revolution, either for a longer or a shorter time." And he asks, _Why should our sun differ from other suns?_ In reference to the extinction of suns, he says: "What we no longer see is not necessarily annihilated. It is merely the transition of matter into new forms--into combinations which are subject to new processes. Dark cosmical bodies may, by a renewed process of light, again become luminous."[278] In confirmation of the fact adduced in support of this view, by La Place, "that those stars which have become invisible, after having surpassed Jupiter in brilliancy, have not changed their place during the time they continued visible," he adds, "The luminous process has simply ceased." Bessel asserts[279] that, "_No reason exists for considering luminosity an essential property of these bodies._" And Nichol sums up the matter in the following emphatic words: "No more is light _inherent_ in the sun than in Tycho's vanished star; and with it and other orbs, a time may come when, through the consent of all the powers of nature, he shall cease to be required to shine. _The womb which contains the future is that which bore the past._"[280] Here, then we behold astronomy presenting to our observation facts and processes so similar to those which revelation presents to our faith, that all those men who are most profoundly versed in her lore, reasoning solely from the facts of science, and without any reference to the Bible, unanimously conclude that there was such a state of darkness and confusion before our era, as the Bible declares--that its causes were most probably such as the Bible implies--and that the sudden illuminating of dark bodies, and their extinction, and even re-illumination, are facts so perfectly well authenticated as matters of observation in regard to other suns, that no reasonable man can hesitate to believe any credible assurance that our sun has passed through such a process. With what feelings, then, are we to regard men who, in defiance of the most common facts, and in contradiction to the demonstrations of science, blaspheme the God of truth as a teacher of falsehood, because he speaks of light distinct from that of the sun? Surely, such men are those whom he describes as "having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts. In whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not."[281] These facts, of the sudden kindling of stars, their gradual passage through all the hues of a dying conflagration, and their final extinction, and present blackness of darkness, are facts of fearful omen to the enemies of God. They are the original threatenings of Heaven, whence the fearful language of Bible warning is derived. They attest its truth, and illustrate its import. The favorite theory of the unbeliever is the uniformity of nature. "Where," says he, "is the promise of Christ's coming to judgment; for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were since the beginning of the world?" But the telescope dispels the illusion, exhibits the course of nature as a succession of catastrophes, displays the conflagration of other worlds, and the extinction of their suns, before our eyes, and asks, _Why should our sun differ from other suns?_ It is not the preacher, but the philosopher, who has turned prophet, when--looking back on the period when the Siberian elephant and rhinoceros were frozen amid their native jungle, and icebergs visited the plains of India--he proclaims, "_The womb that bore the past contains the future._" The threatenings of God's Word are invested with a mantle of terrible literality by the facts we have been contemplating. Raised at the day of resurrection, in these bodies, and with these senses, and this capability of rejoicing in the light, and shuddering and pining amid outward gloom, physical darkness will be the terrible prison of those who chose darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. The Father of Lights shall withdraw his blessed influences from the hearts, the dwellings, the eyes, of those who say to him, "Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways." The sun shall cease to vivify God's corn, and wine, and oil, which ungodly men consume upon their lusts. The moon shall cease to shine upon the robber's toil, and the stars to illumine the adulterer's path. The light of heaven shall cease to gild the field of carnage, where men perform the work of hell. In the very midst of your worldliness and business, unbeliever, when you are in all the engrossment of buying and selling, and planting and building, and marrying and giving in marriage, without warning or expectation, "the sun shall go down at noon, and the stars shall be darkened in the clear day." As in the warning and example given to the enemies of the Lord in Egypt, thick darkness, that may be felt, shall wind its inevitable chains around you, preventing your escape from the judgment of the great day, and giving you a fearful foretaste of that "blackness of darkness for ever" of which you are now forewarned in the Word of Truth. "The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, And the stars shall fall from the heavens, And the powers of the heavens shall be shaken; And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in the heavens, And then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn; And they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, With power and great glory." "Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness; There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." "Hear ye, and give ear; be not proud, For the Lord hath spoken. Give glory to the Lord, your God, Before he cause darkness, And before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains; And while ye look for light, He turn it into the shadow of death, And make it gross darkness." "I am the light of the world; He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, But shall have the light of life."[282] FOOTNOTES: [218] Duff's India, 127. [219] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, p. 83. [220] Poole's Horæ Egyptiacæ. [221] Henri L'Egypte Pharonique. [222] Atlas Ethnographique, Eth. I. [223] See Cruden's Concordance, Art. _Day_. [224] Dan., chap. xii. 10. Job, chap. xxxviii. 4. Col., chap. ii. 18. [225] Chap. I. _Did the World Make Itself?_ [226] Genesis, chap. i. 21. [227] Genesis, chap. i. 27. [228] Psalm civ. 30. Eccl., chap. xii. 1. [229] Psalm li. 10. Ezekiel, chap. xxxvi. 26. [230] Genesis, chap. ii. 1-5. Isaiah, chap. xliii. 1-7; chap. xlv. 1, 2. [231] Wiseman's Lectures on the Connection of Science and Revealed Religion, 1-297. [232] Commentary on Genesis, i. 2. [233] Exodus, chap. i. 5, 8. [234] Isaiah, chap. xi. 3, 4. [235] Psalm xc. [236] John, chap. i. 1. [237] Revelation, chap. i. 8. [238] Proverbs, chap. viii. 22. [239] Samuel, chap. xxii. 43. Isaiah, chap. xl. 19; chap. xliv. 24; chap. xlii. 5. Psalm cxxxvi. 6. Numbers, chap. xvii. 38. Job, chap. xxxvii. 18. [240] Cosmos v. 2, p. 60. [241] Genesis, chap. xix. 26. Exodus, chap. xiii. 20; chap. xxxiii. 10. Jeremiah, chap. i. 18. Galatians, chap. ii. 7. Song, chap. iii. 6. Job, chap. ix. 6; chap. xxvi. 11. Psalm lxxv. 3. 1 Timothy, chap. iii. 15. Revelation, chap. iii. 12. [242] Job, chap. xxxvi. 27. [243] Job, chap. xxviii. 24--literal reading. [244] Ecclesiastes, chap. i. 6. [245] Isaiah, chap. xl. [246] Job, chap. xxvi. 7. [247] Ruth, chap. iii. 15. [248] Job, chap. xxxviii. 37; chap. xxvi. 8; chap. xxxviii. 9; chap. xxxvi. 29. Psalm cv. 39; lxxvii. 17. [249] Isaiah, chap. xliv. 22. Jeremiah, chap. iv. 13. Job, chap. xxxviii. 37. Proverbs, chap. xxx. 4. [250] Ecclesiastes, chap. xi. 4. Psalm civ. 3. Matthew, chap. xxix. 30. [251] Isaiah, chap. xlv. 7. 1 John, chap. i. 5. Daniel, chap. ii. 22. 1 Timothy, chap. vi. 16. [252] Job, chap. xxxviii. 9, 10. Literally, _In my making_, etc. [253] Revelation, chap. xxi. 23; chap. xxii. 5. Isaiah, chap. lx. 19. [254] Job, chap. xxxviii. 7. [255] 2 Corinthians, chap. iv. 6. [256] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, Sec. 19-23. [257] Amos, chap. viii. 8. [258] Jeremiah, chap. xlvi. 7. Genesis, chap. xli. 1-18. See Parkhurst's Hebrew Lexicon, sub voce. [259] Neander. [260] Cosmos, Vol. I. p. 196. [261] Annual of Scientific Discovery. 1856. [262] Cosmos, Vol. I. p. 196. Nichol's Solar System, 184. [263] Somerville's Connection of Physical Sciences, 288. [264] Cosmos, Vol. I. p. 250. [265] Lyell's Principles of Geology, 465. [266] Cosmos, Vol. I. p. 250. [267] Cosmos, Vol. I. pp. 198, 216. [268] Cosmos, Vol. III. p. 139. [269] Nichol's Solar System, 188. Connection of Physical Sciences, 363. [270] Herschel's Outlines, Sec. 827. [271] Cosmos, Vol. VIII. p. 210. [272] Herschel's Outlines, Sec. 832. [273] Mitchell's Planetary and Stellar Worlds, 294. [274] Cosmos, Vol. III. p. 253. [275] Astronomical Observations, 351. [276] Herschel's Outlines, Sec. 830. [277] Astronomical Observations, 351. [278] Cosmos, Vol. III. pp. 222-232. [279] Cosmos, Vol. III. p. 246. [280] Solar System, 190. [281] Ephesians, chap. iv. 18. 2 Corinthians, chap. iv. 4. [282] Matthew, chap. xxiv. 29. John, chap. viii. 12. Jeremiah, chap. xiii. 15. Matthew, chap. xxii. 13 and chap. xxv. 30. CHAPTER XII. TELESCOPIC VIEWS OF SCRIPTURE. No kind of knowledge is more useful to man than the knowledge of his own ignorance; and no instrument has done more to give him such knowledge than the telescope. Faith is the believing of facts we do not know, upon the word of one who does. If any one knows everything, or thinks he does, he can have no faith. A deep conviction of our own ignorance is, therefore, indispensable to faith. The telescope gives us this conviction in two ways. It shows us that we see a great many things we do not perceive, tells us the size and the distances of those little sparks that adorn the sky, and leads us to reason out their true relations to our earth. Then it tells us, that what we see is little of what is to be seen; that our knowledge is but a drop from the great ocean, a rush-light sparkling in the vast darkness of the unknown. It tells us, that we do not see right, and that we do not see far; and that there may be things, both in heaven and earth, not dreamed of in our philosophy. Further, it confirms the Bible testimony concerning the facts of its own province, by removing all improbability from some of its most wonderful narratives, attesting the accuracy of its language, and confirming, by some of its most recent discoveries the truth of its statements. Our space will only allow us to select five illustrations of the tendency of faith in the telescope, to produce faith in the Bible. 1. One of the latest astronomical discoveries throws light upon one of the most ancient scientific allusions of the Bible, and one which has perplexed both commentators and geologists; _that which hints at the second causes of the deluge_. Not that it is at all needful for us to be able to tell where God Almighty procured the water to drown the ungodly sinners of the old world, before we believe his word that he did so; unless, indeed, somebody has explored the universe, and knows that there is not water enough in it for that purpose, or that it is so far away that he could not fetch it; for, as to the fact itself, geology assures us that all the dry land on earth has been drowned, not only once, but many times. It is not the province of the commentator, but of the geologist, to account for the phenomenon. Several solutions of the difficulty of finding water enough for the purpose have been proposed. One of these supposes that some of the internal caverns of the earth are filled with water, which, when heated by neighboring volcanic fires, would expand one twenty-third of its bulk, and flow out, and raise the ocean. When the volcanic fire was burnt out, and the water cooled, it would of course contract to its former dimensions, and the ocean recede. These caverns they suppose to be meant by "the fountains of the great deep," in Genesis vii. 11. But the Bible describes another, and plainly a very important source of the waters of the deluge, in the rain which fell for forty days and forty nights. At present, all the water in our atmosphere comes from the sea, by evaporation; and the quantity is too insignificant to cover the globe to any considerable depth. Divines and philosophers were perplexed to give any adequate explanation of this language, and considered it simply as Noah's description of the appearance of things as viewed from the ark, rather than an accurate explanation of the actual causes of the deluge. Now, it is certainly true, that the Bible does describe things as they appear to men. It is, however, beginning to be discovered, that these popular appearances are closely connected with philosophical reality. Our purblind astronomy and prattling geology may be as inadequate to expound the mysteries of the Bible philosophy as was the incoherent science of Strabo and Ptolemy. The experience of another planet, now transacting before our eyes, admonishes us not to limit the resources of Omnipotence by our narrow experience, or to suppose that our young science has catalogued all the weapons in the arsenal of the Almighty. The planet Saturn is surrounded by a revolving belt, consisting of several distinct rings, containing an area a hundred and forty-six times greater than the surface of our globe, with a thickness of a hundred miles. From mechanical considerations it had been proved, that these rings could not be of a uniform thickness all around, else when a majority of his seven moons were on the same side, the attraction would draw them in upon him, on the opposite side; and once attracted to his surface, they could never get loose again, if they were solid.[283] It was next ascertained that the motions of the moons and of the rings were such, that if the inequality was always in the same place, the same result must follow; so that the ring must be capable of changing its thickness, according to circumstances. It must be either composed of an immense number of small solid bodies, capable of shifting freely about among themselves, or else be fluid. Finally, it has been demonstrated that this last is the fact; that the density of this celestial ocean is nearly that of water; and that the inner portion, at least, is so transparent, that the planet has been seen through it.[284] "The ring of Saturn is, then, a stream or streams of fluid, rather denser than water, flowing about the primary."[285] The extraordinary fact, which shows us how God can deluge a planet when he pleases, I give not in the words of a divine, but of a philosopher, whose thoughtless illustration of Scripture is all the more valuable, that it is evidently unintentional. "M. Otto Struve, Mr. Bond, and Sir David Brewster, are agreed that Saturn's third ring is fluid, that this is not of very recent formation, and that it is not subject to rapid change. And they have come to the extraordinary conclusion, that the inner border of the ring has, since the day of Huygens, been gradually approaching to the body of Saturn, and that we may expect, sooner or later--perhaps in some dozen years--to see the rings united with the body of the planet. _With this deluge impending, Saturn would scarcely be a very eligible residence for men, whatever it might be for dolphins._"[286] Knowing, as we most certainly do, that the fluid envelopes of our own planet were once exceedingly different from the present,[287] here is a possibility quite sufficient to stop the mouth of the scoffer. Let him show that God did not, or prove that he could not, suspend a similar series of oceans over the earth, or cease to pronounce a universal deluge impossible. 2. That sublime ode, in which Deborah describes _the stars in their courses as fighting against Sisera_[288] has been rescued from the grasp of modern scoffers, by the progress of astronomy. It has been alleged as lending its support to the delusions of judicial astrology; by one class desiring to damage the Bible as a teacher of superstition, and by another to help their trade. The Bible reader will doubtless be greatly surprised to hear it asserted, that the Bible lends its sanction to this antiquated, and, as he thinks, exploded superstition. He knows how expressly the Bible forbids God's people to have anything to do with it, or with its heathenish professors. "Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven, for the heathen are dismayed at them."[289] And they will be still more surprised to learn, that those who object against the Bible, that it ascribes a controlling influence to the stars, are firm believers in Reichenbach's discovery of _odyle_; an influence from the heavenly bodies so spiritual and powerful, that they imagine it able to govern the world, instead of God Almighty.[290] The passage thus variously abused is a description, in highly poetic strains, of the battle between the troops of Israel and those of Sisera; of the defeat of the latter, and of an earthquake and tempest, which completed the destruction of his exhausted troops. The glory of the victory is wholly ascribed to the Lord God of Israel; while the rain, the thunder, lightning, swollen river, and "the stars in their courses," are all described, in their subordinate places, as only his instruments--the weapons of his arsenal. "Lord, when thou wentest out of Seir, When thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, The earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, The clouds also dropped down water; The mountains also melted from before the Lord, Even that Sinai, from before the Lord God of Israel." Then, after describing the battle, she alludes to the celestial artillery, and to the effects of the storm in swelling the river, and sweeping away the fugitives who had sought the fords: "They fought from heaven; The stars in their courses fought against Sisera; The river Kishon swept them away; That ancient river, the river Kishon."[291] After describing some further particulars the hymn concludes with an allusion to the clearing away of the tempest and the appearance of the unclouded sun over the field of victory: "So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord; But let them that love thee be as the sun, when he goeth forth in his might." Where is there the least allusion here to any controlling influence of the stars? You might just as well say, "The Bible ascribes a controlling influence over the destinies of men, to the river Kishon;" for they are both spoken of, in the same language, as instruments in God's hand for the destruction of his enemies. But it is objected, "Even by this explanation you have the Bible representing the stars as causing the rain." Not so fast. If a man were very ignorant, and had never heard of anything falling from the sky but rain, he might think so. And if the Bible did attribute to the stars some such influence over the vapors of the atmosphere, as experience shows the moon to possess over the ocean, are you able to demonstrate its absurdity? Deborah, however, when she sang of the stars _in their courses_ fighting against Sisera, was describing a phenomenon very different from a fall of rain--was, in fact, describing a fall of ærolites upon the army of Sisera. Multitudes of stones have fallen from the sky, and not less than five hundred such falls are recorded. "On September 1, 1814, a few minutes before midday, while the sky was perfectly serene, a violent detonation was heard in the department of the Lot and Garonne. This was followed by three or four others, and finally by a rolling noise, at first resembling a discharge of musketry, afterward the rumbling of carriages, and lastly that of a large building falling down. Stones were immediately after precipitated to the ground, some of which weighed eighteen pounds, and sunk into a compact soil, to the depth of eight or nine inches; and one of them rebounded three or four feet from the ground." "A great shower of stones fell at Barbatan, near Roquefort, in the vicinity of Bordeaux, on July 24, 1790. A mass fifteen inches in diameter penetrated a hut and killed a herdsman and bullock. Some of the stones weighed twenty-five pounds, and others thirty pounds." "In July, 1810, a large ball of fire fell from the clouds, at Shahabad, which burned five villages, destroyed the crops, and killed several men and women."[292] Astronomers are perfectly agreed as to the character of these masses, and the source whence they come. "It appears from recent astronomical observations that the sun numbers among his attendants not only planets, asteroids, and comets, but also immense multitudes of meteoric stones, and shooting stars."[293] Ærolites are, then, really stars. They are composed of materials similar to those of our earth; the only other star whose materials we can compare with them. They have a proper motion around the sun, in orbits distinct from that of the earth. They are capable of emitting the most brilliant light, in favorable circumstances. Some of them are as large as the asteroids. One, of 600,000 tons weight, passed within twenty-five miles of the earth, at the rate of twenty miles a second. A fragment of it reached the earth.[294] "That ærolites were called _stars_ by the ancients is indisputable. Indeed, Anaxagoras considered the stars to be only stony masses, torn from the earth by the violence of rotation. Democritus tells us, that invisible dark masses of stone move with the visible stars, and remain on that account unknown, but sometimes fall upon the earth, and are extinguished, as happened with the stony star which fell near Aegos Potamos."[295] When Deborah, therefore, describes the _stars in their courses_ as fighting against Sisera, it is an utterly unfounded assumption to suppose that she has any allusion to the baseless fancies of an astrology everywhere condemned by the religion she professed, when a simple and natural explanation is afforded by the fact, that stars do fall from the heavens to the earth, and _that they do so in their courses_, and just by reason of their orbital motion; and that the ancients both knew the fact, and gave the right name to those bodies. Let no reasonable man delude himself with the notion that God has no weapons more formidable than the dotings of astrology, till he has taken a view of the arsenals of God's artillery, which he has treasured up against the day of battle and of war. Here it may be well to notice the illustration which the remarkable showers of meteors, particularly those of November, 1833, shed upon several much ridiculed texts of Scripture. Scientific observation has fully confirmed and illustrated the scientific accuracy of the Bible in such expressions as, "the stars shall fall from heaven;" "there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp;" "and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." Whatever political or ecclesiastical events these symbols may signify, there can be no question, now, that the astronomical phenomenon used to prefigure them is correctly described in the Bible. Most of my readers have seen some of these remarkable exhibitions; but for the sake of those who have not, I give a brief account of one. "By much the most splendid meteoric shower on record, began at nine o'clock, on the evening of the twelfth of November, 1833, and lasted till sunrise next morning. It extended from Niagara and the northern lakes of America, to the south of Jamaica, and from 61° of longitude, in the Atlantic, to 100° of longitude in Central Mexico. Shooting stars and meteors of the apparent size of Jupiter, Venus, and even the full moon, darted in myriads toward the horizon, _as if every star in the heavens had darted from their spheres_." They are described as having been as frequent as the flakes of snow in a snow-storm, and to have been seen with equal brilliancy over the greater part of the continent of North America.[296] The source whence these meteors proceed is distinctly ascertained to be, as was already remarked with regard to the ærolites, a belt of small planetoids, revolving around the sun in a little less than a year, and in an orbit intersecting that of the earth, at such an angle, that every thirty-three years, or thereabouts, the earth meets the full tide on the twelfth of November. These meteors are true and proper stars. "All the observations made during the year 1853 agree with those of previous years, and confirm what may be regarded as sufficiently well established: the cosmical origin of shooting stars."[297] 3. The language of the Bible with respect to _the circuit of the sun_ is found to have anticipated one of the most sublime discoveries of modern astronomy. True to the reality, as well as to the appearance of things, it is scientifically correct, without becoming popularly unintelligible. There is a class of aspirants to gentility who refuse to recognize any person not dressed in the style which they suppose to be fashionable among the higher classes. A Glasgow butcher's wife, in the Highlands, attired in all the magnificence of her satins, laces, and jewelry, returned the courteous salute of the little woman in the gingham dress and gray shawl with a contemptuous toss of the head, and flounced past, to learn, to her great mortification, that she had missed an opportunity of forming an acquaintance with the Queen. So a large class of pretenders to science refuse to become acquainted with Bible truth, because it is not shrouded in the technicalities of science, but displays itself in the plain speech of the common people to whom it was given. They will have it, that because its author used common language, it was because he could not afford any other; and as he did not contradict every vulgar error believed by the people to whom he spoke, it was because he knew no better; and because the Hebrews knew nothing of modern discoveries in astronomy, geology, and the other sciences, and the Bible does not contain lectures on these subjects, the God of the Hebrews must have been equally ignorant, and the Bible consequently beneath the notice of a philosopher. You will hear such persons most pertinaciously assert, that Moses believed all the absurdities of the Ptolemaic astronomy; that the earth is the immovable center, around which revolve the crystal sphere of the firmament, and the sun, and moon, and stars, which are attached to it, after the manner of lamps to a ceiling; and that he, and the world generally in his day, had not emerged from the grossest barbarism and ignorance of all matters of natural science. Yet these very people will probably tell you, in the same conversation, of the wonderful astronomical observations made by the Egyptians, ten thousand years before the days of Adam! So beautiful is the consistency of Infidel science. But when you inquire into the source of their knowledge of the philosophy of the ancients, you discover that they did not draw it from the writings of Moses, of which they betray the grossest ignorance, nor of any one who lived within a thousand years of Moses' time. Voltaire is their authority for all such matters. He transferred to the early Asiatics all the absurdities of the later Greek philosophers, and would have us believe that Moses, who wrote before these Greeks had learned to read, was indebted to them for his philosophy. Of the learning of the ancient patriarchs Voltaire does not tell them much, for a satisfactory reason. Yet it might not have required much learning to infer, that the eyes, and ears, and nerves of men who lived ten times as long as we can, must have been more perfect than ours; that a man who could observe nature with such eyes, under a sky where Stoddart now sees the ring of Saturn, the crescent of Venus, and the moons of Jupiter, with the naked eye,[298] and continue his observations for eight hundred years, would certainly acquire a better knowledge of the appearance of things than any number of generations of short-lived men, called away by death before they have well learned how to observe, and able only to leave the shell of their discoveries to their successors; that unless we have some good reason for believing that the mind of man was greatly inferior, before the flood, to what it is now, the antediluvians must have made a progress in the knowledge of the physical sciences, during the three thousand years which elapsed from the creation to the deluge, much greater than the nations of Europe have effected since they began to learn their A, B, C, about the same number of years ago; and that though Noah and his sons might not have preserved all the learning of their drowned contemporaries, they would still have enough to preserve them from the reproach of ignorance and barbarism; at least until their sons have succeeded in building a larger ship than the ark, or a monument equal to the Great Pyramid. The Astronomer Royal of Scotland[299] has demonstrated, that in this imperishable monument, erected four thousand years ago, the builders, who took care to keep it alone, of all the buildings of Egypt, free from idolatrous images or inscriptions, recorded with most laborious care, in multiples of the earth's polar diameter, a metric system, including linear and liquid measures, and a system of weights based on a cubical measure of water of uniform temperature; which uniform temperature they took the utmost care to preserve. He shows further, that they were acquainted with the precession of the equinoxes, with the density of the earth, and with the earth's distance from the sun; or at least calculated it at what proves to be nearly a mean of our discordant calculations; and that they were acquainted with problems just beginning to attract the attention of the science of Europe. When we know that the Chaldeans taught the Egyptians the expansive power of steam, and the induction of electricity by pointed conductors; that from the most remote antiquity the Chinese were acquainted with decimal fractions, electro-magnetism, the mariner's compass, and the art of making glass; that lenses have been found in the ruins of Nineveh, and that an artificial currency was in circulation in the first cities built after the flood;[300] that astronomical observations were made in China, with so much accuracy, from the deluge till the days of Yau, B. C. 2357, that the necessary intercalations were made for harmonizing the solar with the lunar year, and fixing the true period of 365-1/4 days; and that similar observations were conducted to a like result within a few years of the same remote period, in Babylon;--if the reader does not conclude that the world may have forgotten as much ancient lore during eighteen hundred years of idolatrous barbarism before the coming of Christ, as it has learned in the same number since, he will, at least, satisfy himself that the ancient patriarchs were not ignorant savages.[301] "Whole nations," says La Place, "have been swept from the earth, with their languages, arts, and sciences, leaving but confused masses of ruins to mark the place where mighty cities stood. Their history, with a few doubtful traditions, has perished; _but the perfection of their astronomical observations marks their high antiquity, fixes the periods of their existence, and proves that even at that early time they must have made considerable progress in science_."[302] The Infidel theory, that the first men were savages, is a pure fiction, refuted by every known fact of their history. That, however, is not the matter under discussion. We are not inquiring now, what Moses and the prophets _thought_, but what the Author of the Bible _told them to say_. The scribe writes as his employer dictates. "I will put my words in thy mouth," said God to Jeremiah. "My tongue is as the pen of a ready writer," said David. The prophets began, not with "Thus saith Isaiah," but "Thus saith the Lord." Unless the Word of God was utterly different from all his other works, it must transcend the comprehension of man in some respects. The profoundest philosopher is as ignorant of the cause of the vegetation of wheat as the mower who cuts it down; but their ignorance of the mysteries of organic force is no reason why the one may not harvest, and the other eat and live. Just so God's prophets conveyed previous mysteries to the Church, of the full import of which they themselves were ignorant; even as Daniel heard but understood not. The prophets, to whom it was revealed, that they did not minister to themselves, but to us, inquired and searched diligently into the meaning of their own prophecies; which meaning, nevertheless, continued hid for ages and generations.[303] If the prophets of the old economy might be ignorant of the privileges of the gospel day, of which they prophesied, at God's dictation, they might very well be ignorant, also, of the philosophy of creation, and yet write a true account of the facts, from his mouth. Let us suppose, then, that the ancient Hebrews and their prophets were, if not quite as ignorant of natural science as modern Infidels are pleased to represent them, yet unacquainted with the discoveries of Herschel and Newton; and, as a necessary consequence, that their language was the adequate medium of conveying their imperfect ideas, containing none of the technicalities invented by philosophers to mark modern scientific discoveries; and that God desired to convey to them some religious instruction, through the medium of language; must we suppose it indispensable for this purpose that he should use strange words, and scientific phrases, the meaning of which would not be discovered for thirty-three hundred years? Could not Dr. Alexander write a Sabbath-school book, without filling it full of such phrases as "right ascension," "declination," "precession of the equinoxes," "radius vector," and the like? Or, if some wiseacre did prepare such a book, would it be very useful to children? Perhaps even we, learned philosophers of the nineteenth century, are not out of school yet. How many discoveries are yet to be made in all the sciences; discoveries which will doubtless render our fancied perfection as utterly childish to the philosophers of a thousand years hence as the astronomy of the Greeks seems to us; and demand the use of technical language, which would be as unintelligible to us as our scientific nomenclature would have been to Aristotle. If God may not use popular speech in speaking to the people of any given period, but must needs speak the technical language of perfect science, and if science is now, and always will be, of necessity, imperfect, we are led to the sage conclusion, that every revelation from God to man must always be unintelligible! Does it necessarily follow, that because the Author of the Bible uses the common phrases, "sun rising," and "sun setting," in a popular treatise upon religion, that therefore he was ignorant of the rotation of the earth, and intended to teach that the sun revolved around it? He is certainly under no more obligation to depart from the common language of mankind, and introduce the technicalities of science into such a discourse, than mankind in general, and our objectors in particular, are to do the like in their common conversation. Now, I demand to know whether they are aware that the earth's rotation on its axis is the cause of day and night? But do you ever hear any of them use such phrases as "earth rising," and "earth setting?" But if an Infidel's daily use of the phrases, "_sun rising_," "_sun setting_," and the like, does not prove, either that he is ignorant of the earth's rotation as the cause of that appearance, or that he intends to deceive the world by those phrases, why may not Almighty God be as well informed and as honest as the Infidel, though he also condescends to use the common language of mankind? Do you ever hear astronomers, in common discourse, use any other language? I suppose Lieut. Maury, and Herschel, and Le Verrier, and Mitchell, know a little of the earth's rotation; but they, too, use the English tongue very much like other people, and speak of sunrise and sunset; yet nobody accuses them of believing in the Ptolemaic astronomy. Hear the immortal Kepler, the discoverer of the laws of planetary revolution: "We astronomers do not pursue this science with the view of altering common language; but we wish to open the gates of truth, without affecting the vulgar modes of speech. We say with the common people, 'The planets stand still, or go down;' 'the sun rises, or sets;' meaning only that so the thing appears to us, although it is not truly so, as all astronomers are agreed. How much less should we require that the Scriptures of divine inspiration, setting aside the common modes of speech, should shape their words according to the model of the natural sciences, and by employing a dark and inappropriate phraseology about things which surpass the comprehension of those whom it designs to instruct, perplex the simple people of God, and thus obstruct its own way toward the attainment of the far more exalted end to which it aims." It is evident, then, that God not only may, _but must_, use popular language in addressing the people, in a work not professedly scientific; and that if this popular language be scientifically incorrect, such use of it neither implies his ignorance nor approval of the error. But it may be worthy of inquiry whether this popular language of mankind, used in the Bible, be scientifically erroneous. If the language be intended to express an absolute reality, no doubt it is erroneous to say the sun rises and sets; but if it be only intended to describe an appearance, and the words themselves declare that intention, it can not be shown to be false to the fact. Now, when the matter is critically investigated, these phrases are found to be far more accurate than those of "earth rising," and "earth setting," which Infidels say the Author of the Bible should have used. For, as up and down have no existence in nature, save with reference to a spectator, and as the earth is always down with respect to a spectator on its surface, neither rising toward him, nor sinking from him, in reality, nor appearing to do so, unless in an earthquake, the improved phrases are false, both to the appearance of things, and to the cause of it. Whereas, our common speech, making no pretensions to describe the causes of appearances, can not contradict any scientific discovery of these causes, and therefore can not be false to the fact; while it truly describes all that it pretends to describe--the appearance of things to our senses. And so, after all the outcry raised against it by sciolists, the vulgar speech of mankind, used by the Author of the Bible, must be allowed to be philosophical enough for his purpose, and theirs; at least till somebody favors both with a better. Though we are in no way concerned, then, to prove that every poetical figure in Scripture, and every popular illustration taken from nature, corresponds to the accuracy of scientific investigation, before we believe the Bible to be a revelation of our duty to God and man, yet it may be worth while to inquire, further, whether we really find upon its sacred pages such crude and egregious scientific errors as Infidels allege. We have seen in the last chapter, that they are not able to read even its first chapter without blundering. Indeed, they generally boast of their ignorance of its contents. It is a very good rule to take them at their word, and when they quote Scripture, to take it for granted _that they quote it wrong_, unless you know the contrary. The first thing for you to do when an Infidel tells you the Bible says so and so, is to get the Book, and see whether it does or not. You will generally find that he has either misquoted the words, or mistaken their meaning, from a neglect of the context; or perhaps has both misquoted and mistaken. Then, when you are satisfied of the correct meaning of the text, and he tells you that it is contrary to the discoveries of science, the next point is to ask him, _How do you know?_ You will find his knowledge of science and Scripture about equal. Both these tests should be applied to scientific objections to the Bible, as they are all composed of equal parts of biblical blunders, and philosophical fallacies. In the objection under consideration, for instance, both statements are wrong. The Bible does not represent the earth as the immovable center of the universe, or as immovable in space at all. It does not represent the sun and stars as revolving around it. Nor are the facts of astronomy more correctly stated. It is not the Bible, but our objector, that is a little behind the age in his knowledge of science. If we inquire for those texts of Scripture which represent the earth as the immovable center of the universe, we shall be referred to the figurative language of the Psalms, the book of Job, and other poetical parts of Scripture, which speak of the "foundations of the earth," "the earth being established," "abiding for ever," and the like, when the slightest attention to the language would show _that it is intended to be figurative_. The accumulation of metaphors and poetical images in some of these passages is beautiful and grand in the highest degree; but none, save the most stupid reader, would ever dream of interpreting them literally. Take, for instance, Psalm civ. 1-6, where, in one line, the world is described as God's house, with beams, and chambers, and foundations; but in the very next line the figure is changed, and it is viewed as an infant, covered with the deep, as with a garment. "Bless, the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, thou art very great; Thou art clothed with honor and majesty: Who coverest thyself with light, as with a garment; Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain; _Who layeth the beams of his chambers upon the waters_: Who walketh upon the wings of the wind: Who maketh his angels spirits: His ministers a flaming fire: _Who laid the foundations of the earth, That it should not be removed for ever_. Thou coveredst it with the deep, as with a garment: The waters stood above the mountains." But if any one is so gross as to insist on the literality of such a passage, and to allege that it teaches the absolute immobility of the earth, let him tell us what sort of immobility the third verse teaches, and how a building could be stable, the beams of whose chambers are _laid upon the waters_--the chosen emblems of instability. "He hath founded it upon the seas: he hath established it upon the floods," says the same poet, in another Psalm--xxiv 1. This, and all other expressions quoted as declaring the immobility of the earth _in space_, are clearly proved, both by the words used, and the sense of the context, to refer to an entirely different idea: namely, _its duration in time_. Thus, Ecclesiastes i. 4, "One generation passeth away, and another cometh; but the earth abideth forever," is manifestly contrasting the duration of earth with the generations of short-lived men, and has no reference to motion in space at all. Again, in Psalm cxix. 89-91, our objectors find another Bible declaration of the immobility of the earth in space: "For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven; Thy faithfulness is unto all generations; Thou hast established the earth, and it abideth. _They continue to this day_, according to thine ordinances." The same permanence is here ascribed to the heavens (to which, as our objectors argue, the Bible ascribes a perpetual revolution) as to the earth. The next verse explains this permanence to be _continuance to this day_; durability, not immobility. That the word _establish_ does not necessarily imply fixture, is evident from its application, in Proverbs viii. 28: "He _established_ the clouds," the most fleeting of all things. Nor is the Hebrew word _kun_ (whence our English word, cunning), inconsistent with motion; else, the Psalmist had not said that "a good man's footsteps are _established_ by the Lord."[304] "He _established_ my goings." Wise arrangement is the idea, not permanent fixture. The same remarks apply to Psalm xciii. 1; xcvi. 10; 1 Chronicles xvi. 30, and many other similar passages. "The world is established, that it can not be moved; Thy throne is established of old: Thou art from everlasting." Where the establishment, which is contrasted with the impossible removal, and which explains its import, is evidently not a local fixing of some material seat, in one place, but the everlasting duration of God's authority. The idea is not that of position in space, at all, but of continued duration. Space does not allow us to quote all the passages which refer to this subject; but after an examination of every passage in the Bible usually referred to in this connection, and of a multitude of others bearing upon it, I have no hesitation in saying, that it does not contain a single text which asserts or implies the immobility of the earth in space. The notion was drawn from the absurdities of the Greek philosophy, and the superstitions of popery, but was never gathered from the Word of God. But it is alleged that other passages of Scripture do plainly and unequivocally express the motion of the sun, and his course in a circuit; as, for instance, the Nineteenth Psalm: "In them he hath set a tabernacle for the sun, Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, And rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of heaven, And his circuit unto the ends of it." And again, in the account of Joshua's miracle, in the tenth chapter of his book, it is quite evident that the writer supposed the sun to be in motion, in the same way as the moon, for he commanded them both to stand still: "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies." Now, it is said, if the writer had known what he was about, he would have known that the sun was already standing still, and would have told the earth to stop its rotation. And if the earth had obeyed the command, we should never have heard of the miracle; for, as the earth rotates at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, the concussion produced by such a stoppage would have projected Joshua, and Israelites, and Amorites, beyond the moon, to pursue their quarrel among the fixed stars. When we hear men of some respectability bring forward such stuff, we are constrained to wonder, not merely were they ever at school, but if they ever traveled in a railroad car, or whether they suppose their hearers to be so ignorant of the most common facts as to believe that there is no way of bringing a carriage to a stand but by a sudden jerk, or that God is more stupid than the brakeman of an express train. We will do them the justice, however, to say, that they did not invent it, but merely shut their eyes, and opened their mouths, and swallowed it for philosophy, because they found it in the writings of an Infidel scoffer, and of a Neological professor of theology[305]--an edifying example of Infidel credulity! Let it be noticed, that in neither of these texts, nor in any other portion of Scripture, does the Bible say a single word about the revolution of the sun _round the earth_, as the common center of the universe; on which, however, the whole stress of the objection is laid. The passages do not prove what they are adduced to prove. They speak of the sun's motion, and of the sun's orbit, _but they do not say that the earth is the center of that orbit_. These texts, then, do not prove the Author of the Bible ignorant of the system of the universe. The objection is based upon utter ignorance of one of the most important and best attested discoveries of modern astronomy; the grand motion of the sun and solar system through the regions of space, and the dependence of the rotation of all the orbs composing it, upon that motion. It is not the Author of the Bible who is ignorant of the discoveries of modern astronomy--when he speaks of the orbit of the sun, and his race from one end of the heavens to the other, and of the need of a miraculous interposition to stop his course for a single day--but his correctors, who have ventured to decry the statements of a Book which commands the respect of such astronomers as Herschel and Rosse, while ignorant of those elements of astronomy which they might have learned from a perusal of the books used by their children in our common schools. For the benefit of such, however, I will present a brief explanation of the grounds upon which astronomers are as universally agreed upon the belief of the sun's motion around a center of the firmament, as they are upon the belief of the revolution of the earth round the sun. When you are passing in a carriage, at night, through the street of a city lighted up by gas-lamps in the streets, and lights irregularly dispersed in the windows, or passing in a ferry-boat, from one such city to another, at a short distance from it, you observe that the lights which you are leaving appear to draw closer and closer together, while those toward which you are approaching widen out, and seem to separate from each other. If the night were perfectly dark, so that you could see nothing but the lights, you could certainly know not only that you were in motion, but also to what point you were moving, by carefully watching their appearances. So, if all the fixed stars were absolutely fixed, and the sun and planets, including our earth, were moving in any direction--say to the north--then the stars toward which we were moving would seem to widen out from each other, and those which we were leaving would seem to close up; so that the space which appeared between any two stars in the south, in a correct map of the heavens, a hundred years ago, would be smaller, and that between any two stars in the north would be larger, than the space between the same stars upon a correct map now. Now, such changes in the apparent positions of stars are actually observed. The stars do not appear in the same places now as they did a hundred years ago. The fixed stars, then, are either drifting past our solar system, which alone remains fixed; or, the fixed stars are all actually at rest, and our sun is drifting through them; or, our solar system and the so-called fixed stars are both in motion. One or other of these suppositions must be the fact. The first is simply the old Ptolemaic absurdity, only transferring the center of the universe to the sun. The second is contrary to the observed fact, that multitudes of the stars, which were supposed to be fixed, are actually revolving around each other, in systems of double, triple and multiple suns. And both are contrary to the first principles of gravitation; for, as every particle of matter attracts every other, directly as the mass, and inversely as the square of the distance, if any one particle of matter in the universe is in motion, the square of its distance from every other particle varies, and its attraction is increased in one direction, and diminished in another; and so every particle of matter in free space, as far as the force of gravitation extends, will be put in motion too. But our earth, and the planets, and the double and triple stars, are in motion, and the law of gravitation extends to every known part of the universe; therefore every known particle of matter in the universe is in motion too, our sun included. The third supposition, then, is most indisputably true; our solar system, and all the heavenly bodies, are in motion. To this conclusion all the observed facts conform. The Bible does say that the sun moves, and moves in a curve. All mathematicians prove that it must of necessity do so. All astronomers assert that it does so. The unanimous verdict of the scientific world is thus rendered by Nichol: "_As to the subject itself, the grand motion of the sun, as well as its present direction, must be received now as an established doctrine of astronomy._"[306] But the discovery was anticipated, three thousand years ago, by the Author of the Bible. But, as will readily be perceived, the difficulty of determining either the direction or the rate of this motion is immensely increased in this case; for we are now not like persons riding in a carriage, watching the fixed lights in the street to determine our direction and rate of progress; but we are watching the lamps of a multitude of carriages, moving at various distances, and with various velocities, and, for anything we can tell at first sight, in various directions. We are on board a steamer, and are watching the lights of a multitude of other steamers, also in motion; and it is not easy to find out, in the darkness, how either they or we are going. If each were pursuing its own independent course, without any common object or destination, the confusion would be so great that we could learn nothing of the rate or direction either of our own motion or theirs. But astronomers are not content to believe that the universe is governed by accident. The whole science is based upon the assumption, that a presiding mind has impressed the stamp of order and regularity upon the whole cosmos. They are deeply convinced that God's law extends to all God's creation; that all his works display his intelligence, as well as his power, and proceed according to a wise plan. Having seen that all the stellar motions previously known are orderly motions, in circular or elliptical orbits, and that the most of the solid bodies belonging to our own system revolve in one direction, they reasoned from analogy, that this might be the case with the sun and the fixed stars, and went to work with great diligence, to see whether it was or not; and, by comparing a great multitude of observations, ancient and modern, made both in the northern and southern hemispheres, and on all sorts of stars, they have come to the conclusion, that our sun, and all the bodies of the solar system, are flying northward, at the rate of three millions three hundred and thirty-six thousand geographical miles a day--five thousand times faster than a railway express train--toward the constellation Hercules, in R. A. 259° Dec. 35°. Further, as the direction of this motion is slowly and regularly changing, just as the direction of the head of a steamer in wearing, or of a railway train running a curve, it is certain that the sun is moving, not in a straight line, but in a curve. The revolution of the sun in such an orbit was known to the Author of the Bible when he wrote, "_his circuit_ is to the end of heaven." The direction of the circumference of a circle being known, that of its center can be found; for the radius is always a tangent to the circumference, and the intersection of two of these radii will be the center; so that, if we certainly knew the sun's orbit to be circular, or nearly so, we could calculate the center. But as we do not certainly know its form, we can not certainly calculate the center; we can only come near it. And as we know that the line which connects the circumference with the center of the sun's orbit, runs through the group of stars known as the Pleiades, or the Cluster; and as all the stars along that line seem to move in the same direction--a different direction from that of the stars in other regions, just as they must do if they and we were revolving around that group--Argelander and others have concluded, with a high degree of probability, that the grand center around which the sun and our firmament revolve, is that constellation which the Author of the Bible, more than three thousand years ago, called _kyme_--_the pivot_. It would require a greater knowledge of electro-magnetism than most of my readers possess, to explain the connection of the earth's rotation with the sun's grand movement. I will merely state the facts. Electro-magnetism is induced by friction. The regions of space are not empty, but filled with an ether, whose undulations produce light; and this ether is sufficiently dense to retard the motions of comets. The friction, produced by the rapid passage of the sun and solar system through this ether, must be immense, and is one source of electricity, and the principal source of electro-magnetism. This kind of electricity differs from the other kinds, in that _its action is always at right angles to the current, and tends to produce rotation in any wheel, cylinder, or sphere, along whose axis it flows_.[307] The sun, and all the planets, traveling in the direction of their poles, the current is of course in the direction of the axis; and the result is, that while the sun moves along his grand course, he and all the bodies of the system will rotate, by the influence of the electro-magnetism generated by that motion; and if he stops, his and their rotation stops too. Day and night on earth are produced by the sun's motion causing the earth's rotation. You can see the principle illustrated by the child who runs along the street with his windmill, to create a current, which will make it revolve. The Author of the Bible made no mistake when, desiring to lengthen the day, he commanded the sun to stand still. It is not the Creator, but his correctors, who are ignorant of the mechanism of the universe. Thus, these long-misunderstood and much-assailed Scriptures are not only vindicated, but far more than vindicated, by the progress of astronomical discovery. It not only proves the language of the Bible to be correct; it assures us that it is divine. The same Hand which formed the stars to guide the simple peasant to his dwelling, at the close of day, and to lead the mighty intellects of Newton and of Herschel among the mysteries of the universe, formed those expressions which, to the peasant's eye, describe the apparent reality, and, to the astronomer's reason, demonstrate the reality of the appearance of the heavens, and are thus, alike to peasant and philosopher, the _oracles of God_. Nor is this the only instance of such Bible oracles. Thousands of years before philosophers knew anything of the formation of dew, Moses described it exactly, and noticed how it differed from the rain which drops down, while the dew evaporates. "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall _distill_ as the dew."--Deuteronomy xxxii. 2. Solomon described the cycloidal course of the wind, and recorded it in Ecclesiastes long before Admiral Fitzroy's discovery; as he also anticipated the doctrine of aqueous circulation in his pregnant proverb: "Unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again."--Ecclesiastes i. 7. Job declared the law of pneumatics when he declared that "God maketh _weight_ for the winds." Long before Madler, the celebrated Russian astronomer, published his remarkable opinion: "I regard the Pleiades as the central group to the whole astral system, and the fixed stars, even to its outer limits, marked by the Milky Way; and I regard Alcyone as that star of all others, composing the group which is favored by most of the probabilities as being the true central sun of the universe," Moses tells us they were known as "the hinge, or pivot," of the heavens; and God asks, "Canst thou bind the secret influences of the Pleiades?" Though Peter was no geologist, and probably incapable of calculating the ratio of the central heat, he tells us that the heavens and the earth are "reserved unto fire," literally, "stored with fire." Equally in advance of modern medical science, thousands of years before our modern discoveries, the Author of the Bible declared that "the life is in the blood," and spoke of the slow combustion of starvation exactly in the language of the most recent physiology, "they shall be _burnt_ with hunger, and devoured with burning heat."--Deuteronomy xxxii. 24. Here we have scientific truth not discovered for centuries by our men of science, but revealed by prophets--scientific discovery, in advance of science--predictions of the future progress of the human intellect, no less than revelations of the existing motions of the stars. He who wrote these oracles knew that the creatures to whom he gave them would one day unfold their hidden meaning (else he had not so written them), and in the light of scientific discovery, see them to be as truly divine predictions of the advance of science, as the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, read among the ruins of Thebes or Babylon, are seen to be predictions of the ruin of empires. Man's discoveries fade into insignificance in the presence of such unfolding mysteries; and we are led to our Bibles, with the prayer, "Open mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law." 4. The ancient charter of the Church was written in the language of one of the most recent astronomical discoveries, thirty-six hundred years before Herschel and Rosse enabled us to understand its full significance: "He brought him forth abroad, and said unto him, _Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be._"[308] The scenery was well calculated to impress Abraham's mind with a sense of the ability of Christ to fulfill a very glorious promise, by a very improbable event; but the illustration was as well calculated as the promise to test the character of that faith which takes God's Word as sufficient evidence of things not seen; for, if the promise was a trying test of faith, so was the illustration. Before this, God had promised that his seed should be as the dust of the earth; and afterward he declared it should be as the sand of the seashore; the well-known symbol of a multitude beyond all power of calculation. To couple the stars of heaven with the sand upon the seashore in any such connection as to imply that the stars too were innumerable, or that their number came within any degree of comparison with the ocean sands, must have seemed to Abraham in the highest degree mysterious, even as it has appeared to scoffers, in modern times, utterly ridiculous; for, though the first glance at the sky conveys the impression that the stars are really innumerable, the investigations of our imperfect astronomy seem to assure us that this is by no means the case. And, as the patriarch sat, night after night, at his tent door, and, in obedience to the command of Christ, counted the stars, and made such a catalogue of them as his Chaldean preceptors had used, he would very speedily come to the conclusion, that so far as he could see, they were by no means innumerable; for the catalogue of Hipparchus reckons only one thousand and twenty-two as visible to one observer, and the whole number visible in both hemispheres by the naked eye does not exceed eight thousand.[309] And even if we suppose, that these old patriarchs had better eyes, as we know they had a clearer sky, than modern western observers, and that Abraham saw the moons of Jupiter, and stars as small, still the number would not seem in the least degree comparable with the number of the sands upon the seashore--whereof a million are contained in a cubic inch,[310] a number greater than the population of the globe in a square foot,[311] while the sum total of the human race, from Adam to this hour, would not approach to the aggregate of the sands of a single mile. Though the stars of a size too small to be visible to our eyes, are much more numerous than the larger stars, yet even up to the range of view possessed by ordinary telescopes, they are by no means innumerable. In fact, they are counted and registered, and the number of the stars of the ninth magnitude, which are four times as distant as the most distant visible to our eyes--so distant that their light is five hundred and eighty-six years in traveling toward us--is declared to be exactly thirty-seven thousand seven hundred and thirty-nine. Abraham's sense and Abraham's faith must have had many a conflict on this promise, as the faith and the sense of many of his children, especially the scientific portion of them, have since, when reading such portions as this; and those other Scriptures which represent it as an achievement of Omniscience, that "he telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names."[312] It is indeed remarkable how God delights to test the faith of his people, and to stumble the pride of fools, by presenting this mysterious truth, of the innumerable multitude of the stars, in every announcement of the wonderful works of Him who is perfect in wisdom. Infant astronomy stretched out her hands to catch the stars, and count them. Many a proud Infidel wondered that Moses could be so silly as to suppose he could not count the stars, and the believer often wondered what these words could mean. But faith rests in the persuasion of two great truths: "God is very wise," and "I am very ignorant." The increase of knowledge, by widening the boundaries of our ignorance, seemed for a time to render the difficulty even greater. The increased power of Herschel's telescope, and his discovery of the constitution of the Milky Way, mark an era in the progress of astronomy, and enlarge our views of the extent of the universe, to an extent inconceivable by those who have not studied the science. Where we see only a faint whitish cloud stretching across the sky, Herschel's telescope disclosed a vast bed of stars. At one time he counted five hundred and eighty-eight stars in the field of his telescope. In a quarter of an hour, one hundred and sixteen thousand passed before his eye. In another portion, he found three hundred and thirty-one thousand stars in a single cluster.[313] He found the whole structure of that vast luminous cloud which spans the sky, "to consist entirely of stars, _scattered by millions, like glittering dust_, on the background of the general heavens." Yet still it was not supposed to be at all impossible to estimate their numbers. Even this distinguished astronomer, a few years ago, computed it at eight or ten millions. Schroeter allowed twenty degrees of it to pass before him, and withdrew from the majestic spectacle, exclaiming, "What Omnipotence!" He calculated, however, that the number of the stars visible through one of the best telescopes in Europe, in 1840, was twelve millions; a number equaled by a single generation of Abraham's descendants, far below the power of computation, and utterly insignificant, as compared with the sands of the sea. Had our powers of observation stopped here, the great promise must still have seemed as mysterious to the astronomer, as it once seemed to the Patriarch. But if either the Father of the Faithful, or the Father of Sidereal Astronomy, had deluded himself with the notion, that he fully comprehended either the words or the works of Him who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working, and argued thence that, because the revealed words and the visible works seemed not to correspond, they were really contradictory, he would have committed the blunder of modern Infidels, who assume that they know everything, and that as God's knowledge can not be any greater than theirs, every Scripture which their science can not comprehend must be erroneous. The grandest truths, imperfectly perceived in the twilight of incipient science, serve as stumbling-blocks for conceited speculators, as well as landmarks on the boundaries of knowledge to true philosophers, who will ever imbibe the spirit of Newton's celebrated saying: "I seem to myself like a child gathering pebbles on the shore, while the great ocean of knowledge lies unexplored before me;" or the profound remark of Humboldt: "What is seen does not exhaust that which is perceptible." But the progress of science was not destined merely to coast the shore of this ocean. In 1845, Lord Rosse, and a band of accomplished astronomers, commenced a voyage through the immensities, with a telescope which has enlarged our view of the visible universe to one hundred and twenty-five million times the extent before perceived, and displayed far more accurately the real form and nature of objects previously seen. Herschel's researches into the Architecture of the Heavens, which have justly rendered his name immortal as the science he illustrated, had revealed the existence of great numbers of _nebulæ_--clouds of light--faint, yet distinct. He supposed many of these to consist of a luminous fluid, pretty near to us; at least, comparatively so; for to believe that they were stars, so far away as to be severally invisible in his forty feet telescope, while yet several of these clouds are distinctly seen by the naked eye, involved the belief of distances so astounding, and of multitudes so incredible, and of a degree of closeness of the several stars so unparalleled by anything which even he had observed, that his imagination and reason failed to meet the requirements of such a problem. The supposition was, however, thrown out by this gigantic intellect, that these clouds might be firmaments; that the Bible word _heavens_ might be literally plural; and more than that, he labored in the accumulation of facts which tended to confirm it. He disclosed the fact, that several of these apparent clouds, which, to very excellent telescopes, displayed only a larger surface of cloudy matter, did, in the reflector of his largest telescope, display themselves in their true character, as globular clusters, consisting of innumerable multitudes of glorious stars; and, moreover, that, stretching away far beyond star, or Milky Way, or nebulæ, he had seen, in some parts of the heavens, "a stippling," or uniform dotting of the field of view, by points of light too small to admit of any one being steadily or fixedly examined, _and too numerous for counting_, were it possible so to view them! What are these? Millions upon millions of years must have elapsed ere that faint light could reach our globe, from those profundities of space, though it travels like the lightning's flash. If they are stars, the sands of the seashore are as inferior in numbers as the surface of earth is inferior in dimensions to the arch of heaven. But if these faint dots and stipplings are not single stars!--if they are star-clouds--galaxies--firmaments, like our Milky Way--our infinity is multiplied by millions upon millions! Imagination pants, reason grows dizzy, arithmetic fails to fathom, and human eyes fear to look into the abyss. No wonder that this profound astronomer, when a glimpse of infinity flashed on his eye, retired from the telescope, trembling in every nerve, afraid to behold. And yet this astounding supposition is a literal truth; and the light of those suns, whose twilight thus bowed down that mighty intellect in reverent adoration, now shines before human eyes in all its noonday refulgence. One of the most remarkable of these nebulæ--one which is visible to a good eye in the belt of Orion--has been disclosed to the observers at Parsontown as a firmament; and minute points, scarce perceptible to common telescopes, blaze forth as magnificent clusters of glorious stars, so close and crowded, that no figure can adequately describe them, save the twin symbol of the promise, "the sand by the seashore," or "the dust of the earth." "There is a minute point, near Polaris," says Nichol, "so minute, that it requires a good telescope to discern its being. I have seen it as represented by a good mirror, blazing like a star of the first magnitude; and though examined by a potent microscope, clear and definite as the distinctest of these our nearest orbs, when beheld through an atmosphere not disturbed. Nay, through distances of an order I shall scarcely name, I have seen a mass of orbs compressed and brilliant, so that each touched on each other, _like the separate grains of a handful of sand_, and yet there seemed no melting or fusion of any one of the points into the surrounding mass. Each sparkled individually its light pure and apart, like that of any constituent of the cluster of the Pleiades."[314] "The larger and nearer masses are seen with sufficient distinctness to reveal the grand fact decisive of their character, viz: that they consist of multitudes of closely related orbs, forming an independent system. In other cases we find the individual stars by no means so clearly defined. Through effect, in all probability, of distance, the intervals between them appear much less, the shining points themselves being also fainter; while the masses still further off _may be best likened to a handful of golden sand, or, as it is aptly termed, star dust_; beyond which no stars, or any vestige of them, are seen, but only a patch or streak of milky light, similar to the unresolved portions of our surrounding zone."[315] To say, then, that the stars of the sky are actually innumerable is only a cold statement of the plainest fact. Hear it in the language of one privileged to behold the glories of one out of the thousands of similar firmaments: "The mottled region forming the lighter part of the mass (the nebula in Orion) is a very blaze of stars. But that stellar creation, now that we are freed from all dubiety concerning the significance of those hazes that float numberless in space, how glorious, how endless! Behold, amid that limitless ocean, every speck, however remote or dim, a noble galaxy. Lustrous they are, too; in manifold instances beyond all neighboring reality--beyond the loftiest dream which ever exercised the imagination. The great cluster in Hercules has long dazzled the heart with its splendors, but we have learned now that among circular and compact galaxies, a class to which the nebulous stars belong, there are multitudes which infinitely surpass it--nay, that schemes of being rise above it, sun becoming nearer to sun, until their skies must be one blaze of light--a throng of burning activities! But, far aloft stands Orion, the pre-eminent glory and wonder of the starry universe! Judged by the only criticism yet applicable, it is perhaps so remote that its light does not reach us in less than fifty or sixty thousand years; and as at the same time it occupies so large an apparent portion of the heavens, how stupendous must be the extent of the nebula. It would seem almost as if all the other clusters hitherto gauged were collected and compressed into one, they would not surpass this mighty group, _in which every wisp--every wrinkle--is a sand-heap of stars_. There are cases in which, though imagination has quailed, reason may still adventure inquiry, and prolong its speculations; but at times we are brought to a limit across which no human faculty has the strength to penetrate, and where, as now, at the very footstool of the secret THRONE, we can only bend our heads, and silently _adore_. And from the inner Adyta--the invisible shrine of what alone is and endures--a voice is heard: "Hast thou an arm like God? Canst thou thunder with a voice like Him? Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, Or loosen the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his seasons? Canst thou guide Arcturus and his sons?[316] He telleth the number of the stars: He calleth them all by their names. Great is our Lord, and of great power; His understanding is infinite."[317] Thus, nobly does science vindicate Scripture, and display the wisdom and power of the Lord of Hosts, whose kingdom extends through all space, and endures through all duration. He who called these countless hosts of glorious orbs into being is abundantly able to multiply, to an equally incalculable number, the humble sands which line the oceans of terrestrial grace, the brilliant stars which shall yet adorn the heavens of celestial glory. All, of every nation, who shall partake of Abraham's faith, are Abraham's children. They are Christ's, and so Abraham's seed, and heirs, according to this promise.[318] When the great multitude, which no man can number, out of every nation, and tongue, and people, stand before the throne of God, and cause the many mansions of our Father's house to re-echo the shout, "Salvation to our God which sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb," the answering hallelujahs of the most distant orbs shall expound the purport of that solemn oath to Abraham and Abraham's seed: "By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing I will bless thee, and _in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore_."[319] 5. It is not probable that the mysteries of the distant heavens, _or of those future glories of the redeemed which the Bible employs them to symbolize_, will ever be fully explored by man, or adequately apprehended in the present state of being. But it is most certain that God would not have employed the mysteries of astronomy so frequently as the symbols of the mysteries of the glory to be revealed, had there not been some correspondence between the things which eye hath not seen, and these patterns shown in the mount. So habitual, indeed, is the Scripture use of these visible heavens as the types of all that is exalted, pure, cheering, and glorious, that, to most Christians, the word has lost its primary meaning, and the idea first suggested to their minds by the word _heaven_ is that of future glory; yet their views of the locality and physical adornments of the many mansions of their Father's house are dim and shadowy, just because they do not acquaint themselves sufficiently with the divine descriptions in the Bible, and the divine illustrations in the sky. The Bible would be better understood were the heavens better explored. "I go," said Jesus, "to prepare a _place_ for you." The bodies of the saints, raised on the resurrection morn, will need a _place_ on which to stand. The body of the Lord, which his disciples handled, and "saw that a spirit had not flesh and bones, as they saw him have," is now resident in a place. Where He is, there shall his people be also. Why, then, when the Bible employs all that is beauteous in earth, and glorious in heaven, to describe the adornments of the palace of the King of kings, should we hesitate to believe that the power and wisdom of God are not exhausted in this little earth of ours, but that other worlds may as far transcend ours in glory, as many of them do in magnitude?--or, to allow that the glorious visions of Ezekiel and John were not views of nonentities, or mere visions of clouds, or of some incomprehensible symbols of more incomprehensible spiritualities, but actual views of the existing glories of some portion of the universe, presented to us as vividly as the dullness of our minds and the earthliness of our speech will permit? It is certain that the recent progress of astronomical discovery has revealed celestial scenery which illustrates some of the most mysterious of these visions. It has long been known, that "one star differeth from another star in glory," and that the orbs of heaven shine with various colors. Sirius is white, Arcturus red, and Procyon yellow. The telescope shows all the smaller stars in various colors. Under the clear skies of Syria their brilliance is vastly greater than in our climate. "_One star shines like a ruby, another as an emerald, and the whole heavens sparkle as with various gems._"[320] But the discovery of the double and triple stars has added a new harmony of colors to these coronets of celestial jewels. These stars generally display the complementary colors. If the one star displays a color from the red end of the spectrum, the other is generally of the corresponding shade, from the violet end. For instance, in O2 Cygni, the large star is yellow, and the two smaller stars are blue; and so in others, through all the colors of the rainbow. "It may be easier suggested in words," says Sir John Herschel, "than conceived in imagination, what a variety of illumination two stars--a red and a green, or a yellow and a blue one--must afford a planet circulating around either, and what cheering contrasts and grateful vicissitudes a red and a green day, for instance, alternating with a white one, and with darkness, must arise from the presence or absence of one, or other, or both, from the horizon."[321] But suppose one of the globular clusters--for instance, that in the constellation Hercules--thus constituted; its unnumbered thousands of suns, wheeling round central worlds, and exhibiting their glories to their inhabitants; "skies blazing, with grand orbs scattered regularly around, and with a profusion to which our darker heavens are strangers;" the overhead sky, seen from the interior regions of the cluster, _must appear gorgeous beyond description_. In the strictest literality it might be said to the dwellers in such a cluster, "Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw herself." The surrounding walls of such a celestial palace must seem indeed "garnished with all manner of precious stones." Sapphire, emerald, sardius, chrysolite, and pearl, must seem but dim mirrors of its glorious refulgence. Under its ever rising suns the gates need not be shut at all by day, "for there shall be no night there." That glorious place now exists, though far away. But the Lord of these hosts has said, "Behold, I come quickly." He will not tarry. A thousand times faster than the swiftest chariot, our solar system and the surrounding firmament wing their flight toward that same glorious cluster in Hercules. As our firmament approaches, under the guidance of Omnipotent wisdom, it too must fly to meet our sun, with a velocity increasing with an incalculable ratio. The celestial city will then be seen to descend from heaven. Once within the sphere of its attractions, our sun and surrounding planets will feel their power. Their ancient orbits and accustomed revolutions must give way to the higher power. Old things must pass away, and all things become new. A new heaven, no less than a new earth, will form the dwelling of righteousness. These are no longer the visions of prophecy merely, but the sober calculations of mathematical science, based upon a foundation as solid as the attraction of gravitation, and as wide as the existence of that ether whose undulations convey the light of the most distant stars; for, so surely as that attraction is efficient, must all the firmaments of the heavens be drawn more closely together; and as certainly as they revolve not in empty space, but in a medium capable of retarding Encke's comet three days in every revolution, must that retarding medium bring their revolutions to a close. "And so," said Herschel, casting his eye fearlessly toward future infinities, "we may be certain that the stars in the Milky Way will be gradually compressed, through successive stages of accumulation, until they come up to what may be called the ripening period of the globular cluster." Unnumbered ages may be occupied with such a grand evolution of celestial progress, beyond our power of calculation; but will the changes of created things, even then, have come to an end? Hear again the voice, not of the prophet, but of the astronomer: "Around us lie stabilities of every order; but it is _stability_ only that we see, not _permanence_." As the course of our inquiry has already amply illustrated, even majestic systems, that at first appear final and complete, are found to resolve themselves into mere steps or phases of still loftier progress. Verily, it is an astonishing world! Change rising above change--cycle growing out of cycle, in majestic progression--each new one ever widening, like the circles that wreathe from a spark of flame, enlarging as they ascend, finally to become lost in the empyrean! And if all that we see, from earth to sun, and from sun to universal star-work--that wherein we best behold images of eternity, immortality and God--if that is only a state or space of a course of being rolling onward evermore, what must be the Creator, the Preserver, the Guide of all!--He at whose bidding these phantasms came from nothingness, and shall again disappear;--whose name, amid all things, alone is _Existence_--I AM THAT I AM? "Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands; They shall perish, But thou shalt endure; Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment: As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed; But thou art the same, And thy years shall have no end. The children of thy servants shall continue, And their seed shall be established before thee." Psalm cii. 25 "And I saw a new heaven, and a new earth; For the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, And there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, Coming down from God out of heaven, Prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, And he will dwell with them, And they shall be his people, And God himself shall be with them, and be their God." Revelation xxi. * * * * * Reader, is this glorious heaven your inheritance? Is this unchangeable Jehovah your God? Are you looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God? Is it your daily prayer, Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly? FOOTNOTES: [283] Kendall's Uranography, 268. [284] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1856, p. 380. [285] Ibid. 1852, p. 376. [286] Ibid. 1856, p. 377. [287] Cosmos, Vol. I. pp. 198-215. [288] Judges, chap. v. [289] Jeremiah, chap. x. [290] Some of my readers may deem any notice of such a subject, in the nineteenth century, entirely unnecessary; but having lived for some years within sight of the dwelling of a woman who publicly advertised herself in the newspapers as a professor of astrology, and seen the continual flow of troubled minds to the promised light--the humble serving-girl stealing up the side entrance, and the princely chariot discharging its willing dupes at the door, and rolling hastily away, to await them at the corner--I know of a certainty that folly is not yet dead. There are women, aye, and men too, who are above the folly of reading the Bible, but just wise enough to pay five dollars for, and spend hours in the study of an uncouth astrological picture, representing a collocation of the stars, which was never witnessed by any astronomer. There are men who would not give way to the superstition of supposing that their destiny was regulated by the will of Almighty God, yet who believe that every living creature's fate is regulated by the aspect of the stars at the hour of his nativity; the same stars always causing the same period of life and mode of death; though every day's experience testifies the contrary. The same stars presided over the birth of the poor soldier, who perished in an instant at Austerlitz; of his imperial master, who pined for years in St. Helena; of the old gentleman who died in his own bed, of gout; and of the batch of puppies, whereof old Towser was the only surviving representative, the other nine having found their fate in the horse-pond, in defiance of the controlling stars. They were all born at the same hour, and under the same auspices, and destined to the same fate, by the laws of astrology. Yet half a dozen professors of astrology find patrons enough in each of our great cities to enable them to live and to pay for advertising in the daily papers. [291] Judges, chap. v. [292] Dick's Celestial Scenery, p. 57, Applegate's edition, where many such instances are related. [293] Vaughn's Report to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Annual of Scientific Discovery for 1855, p. 364. [294] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, 382. [295] Cosmos, Vol. I. p. 122; Vol. IV. p. 569. [296] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, 383. [297] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1854, p. 361. [298] Letter to Herschel, from Oroomiah, in Persia--Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1854, p. 367. [299] _Life and Work in the Great Pyramid_, by Piazzi Smyth, F. R. S., LL. D. [300] "These tablets (of unbaked clay, with inscriptions, found in the tombs of Erech, the city of Nimrod--Genesis, chap. x. 10--and deciphered by Rawlinson) were, in point of fact, the equivalent of our bank notes, and prove that a system of artificial currency prevailed in Babylon and Persia at an unprecedentedly early age; centuries before the introduction of paper and writing." _Rawlinson, in News of the Churches, February, 1858, p. 50._ [301] Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Egyptians, Vol. III. p. 106; Cosmos, Vol. I. pp. 173, 182; Chinese Repository, Vol. IX. p. 573; Williams' Middle Kingdom, Vol. II. p. 147. [302] Somerville's Connection of Physical Sciences, 82. [303] Daniel, chap. xii. 8. 1 Peter, chap. i. 10. Ephesians, chap. i. 3. [304] Psalm xl. 1, and xxxvii. 23, margin. [305] M. Voltaire; M. Cheneviere; Theol. Essays, Vol. I. p. 456. [306] Humboldt's Cosmos, Vol. I. p. 139; Herschel's Outlines, 380; Kendall's Uranography, 205. [307] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, 171, 337, 315; Architecture of the Heavens, 286. [308] Genesis, chap. xv. 5. [309] Cosmos I. 140. [310] Ehrenberg computes that there are forty-one millions of the shells of animalculæ in a cubic inch of Bilier Slate. [311] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1860, p. 341. [312] Psalm cxlvii. 4. [313] Dick's Sidereal Heavens, 59; Herschel's Outlines. [314] Architecture of the Heavens, 62. [315] Architecture of the Heavens, 64. These unresolved milky streaks and patches have since been discovered to be true nebulæ, or phosphoric clouds, in some way connected with their adjacent stars. [316] Architecture of the Heavens, 144. [317] Job, chap. xxxviii. 31. Psalm cxlvii. 4. [318] Genesis, chap. xxii. 16. [319] Galatians, chap. iii. 14, 29. Gen. xxii. 16, 17. [320] Architecture of the Heavens, 217. [321] Architecture of the Heavens, 77, 130. CHAPTER XIII. SCIENCE, OR FAITH? "Faith is destined to be left behind in the onward march of the human intellect. It belongs to an infantile stage of intellectual development, when experience, dependent on testimony, becomes the slave of credulity. Children and childish nations are prone to superstition. Religion belongs properly to such. Hence the endless controversies of religious sects. But as man advances into the knowledge of the physical sciences, and becomes familiarized with mathematical demonstration and scientific experiment, he demands substantial proofs for all kinds of knowledge, and rejects that which is merely matter of faith. The certainties of science succeed the controversies of creeds. Science thus becomes the grave of religion, as religion is vulgarly understood. But science gives a new and better religion to the world. Instead of filling men's minds with the vague terrors of an unknown futurity, it directs us to the best modes of improving this life."--"This life being the first in certainty, give it the first place in importance; and by giving human duties in reference to men the _precedence_, secure that all interpretations of spiritual duty shall be in harmony with human progress."--"Nature refers us to science for help, and to humanity for sympathy; love to the lovely is our only homage, study our only praise, quiet submission to the inevitable our duty; and truth is our only worship."--"Our _knowledge_ is confined to this life; and _testimony_, and _conjecture_, and _probability_, are all that can be set forth in regard to another."--"Preach nature and science, morality and art; _nature, the only subject of knowledge_; morality, the harmony of action; art, the culture of the individual and society."[322] Or, if you will insist upon preaching religion, support it "with such proofs as accompany physical science. This I have always loved; for I never find it deceives me. I rest upon it with entire conviction. There is no mistake, and can be no dispute in mathematics. And if a revelation comes from God, why have we not such evidence for it as mathematical demonstration?" Such is the language now used by a large class of half-educated people, who, deriving their philosophy from Comte, and their religion from the _Westminster Review_, invite us to spend our Sabbaths in the study of nature in the fields and museums, turn our churches into laboratories, exchange our Bibles for encyclopedias, give ourselves no more trouble about religion, but try hard to learn as much science, make as much money, and enjoy as much pleasure in this life as we can; because we _know_ that we live now, and can only _believe_ that we shall live hereafter. I do not propose to take any notice here of the proposal of Secularism--for that is the new name of this ungodliness--to deliver men from their lusts by scientific lectures, and keep them moral by overturning religion. That experiment has been tried already. But it is worth while to inquire, Is science really so positive, and religion so uncertain, as these persons allege? Is a knowledge of the physical sciences so all-sufficient for our present happiness, so attainable by all mankind, and so certain and infallible, that we should barter our immortality for it? And, on the other hand, are the great facts of religious experience, and the foundations of our religious faith, so dim, and vague, and utterly uncertain, that we may safely consign them to oblivion, or that we can so get rid of them if we would? The object of this chapter is to refute both parts of the Secularist's statement; to show some of the uncertainties, errors, contradictions, and blunders of the scientific men on whose testimony they receive their science; and to exhibit a few of the facts of religious experience which give a sufficient warrant for the Christian's faith. Scientific observations are made by fallible men exposed to every description of error, prejudice and mistake; men who can not possibly divest themselves of their preconceived opinions in observing facts, and framing theories. Lord Bacon long ago observed that "the eye of the human intellect is not dry, but receives a suffusion from the will and the affections, so that it may be almost said to engender any science it pleases. For what a man wishes to be true, that he prefers believing." "If the human intellect hath once taken a liking to any doctrine, either because received and credited, or because otherwise pleasing, it draws everything else into harmony with that doctrine, and to its support; and albeit there may be found a more powerful array of contradictory instances, these, however, it does not observe, or it contemns, or by distinction extenuates, and rejects."[323] A prejudiced observer sees the facts distorted and exaggerated. "Thus it is that men will not see in the phenomena what alone is to be seen; in their observations they interpolate and expunge; and this mutilated and adulterated product they call a fact. And why? Because the real phenomena, if admitted, would spoil the pleasant music of their thoughts, and convert its factitious harmony into a discord. In consequence of this many a system professing to be reared exclusively on observation and fact, rests, in reality, mainly upon hypothesis and fiction. A pretended experience is indeed the screen behind which every illusive doctrine regularly retires. 'There are more false facts,' says Cullen, 'current in the world than false theories.' Fact, observation, induction, have always been the watchwords of those who have dealt most extensively in fancy."[324] We propose, therefore, to show that, _I. The students of the physical sciences have no such certain knowledge of their facts and theories as Secularists pretend._ 1. Mathematical science relating merely to abstract truth is supposed to possess powers of demonstration, and capability of scientific certainty superior to all other kinds of knowledge, but the moment we begin to apply it to any existing facts we enter the domain of liability to errors as numerous as our fallible observations of these facts; and when we attempt to apply mathematical demonstration to the infinite, and to enter the domain of faith, in which as immortals we are chiefly concerned, it baffles, deceives, and insults our reason. Take the following illustrations: Let an infinite whole be divided into halves; the parts must be either finite or infinite. But they can not be finite, else an infinite whole would consist of a finite number of parts; neither can they be infinite, being each less than the infinite whole. Again: it is mathematically demonstrable, that any piece of matter is infinitely divisible. A line therefore of half an inch long is infinitely divisible, or divisible into an infinite number of parts. Thus we have an infinite half inch. Further, for a moving body to pass a given point requires some time; and to pass an infinite number of points must require an infinite number of portions of time, or an eternity; therefore, as half an inch contains an infinite number of points, it will require eternity to pass half an inch. Again: it is mathematically demonstrable, that a straight line, the asymptote of a hyperbola, may _eternally approach_ the curve of the hyperbola and _never meet_ it. But no axiom can be plainer than that if two lines continually approach each other they must at length meet. Here is a demonstration contradicting an axiom; and no man has ever yet shown the possibilities of reconciling them, nor yet of denying either side of the contradiction. Again: it is a fundamental axiom, contained in the definition of a circle, that it must have a center; but the non-existence of this center is mathematically demonstrable, as follows: Let the diameter of the circle be bisected into two equal parts; the center must be in one, or the other, of these parts, or between them. It can not be in one of these parts, for they are equal; and, therefore, if it is in the one, it must also be in the other, and thus the circle would have two centers, which is absurd. Neither can it be between them, for they are in contact. Therefore the center must be a point, destitute of extension, something which does not occupy or exist in space. But as all existences exist in space, and this supposed center does not, it can not be an existence; therefore it is a non-existence. In like manner it has been mathematically demonstrated,[325] that motion, or any change in the rate of progress in a moving body, is impossible; because in passing from any one degree of rapidity to another, all the intermediate degrees must be passed through. As when a train of cars moving four miles an hour strikes a train at rest, the resulting instantaneous motion is two miles an hour; and the first train must therefore be moving at the rate of four, and at the rate of two miles an hour at the same time, which is impossible. And so the ancients demonstrated the impossibility of motion. Thus the non-existence of the most undeniable truths, and the impossibilities of the most common facts are mathematically demonstrable; and the proper refutation of such reasoning is, not the scientific, but the common sensible; as when Plato refuted the demonstration of the impossibility of motion, by getting up and walking across the floor. In the hyperbola we have the mathematical demonstration of the error of an axiom. In the infinite inch we behold an absurdity mathematically demonstrated. So that it appears we can give mathematical demonstration in support of untruth, impossibilities and absurdities; and our reason can not discover the error of the reasoning! Alas, for poor humanity, if an endless destiny depended upon such scientific certainty! Yet mathematical reasoning about abstract truth is universally conceded to be less liable to error than any other form of scientific analysis. This line, then, is too short to fathom the ocean of destiny; too weak to bear inferences from even the facts of common life. Attempts have indeed been made to apply mathematics to the facts of life in what is called the doctrine of chances. By this kind of calculation it can be shown, that the chances were a thousand millions to one that you and I should never have been born. Yet here we are. But when we begin to apply mathematics to the affairs of every-day life, we immediately multiply our chances of error by the number and complexity of these facts. The proper field of mathematics is that of magnitude and numbers. But very few subjects are capable of a mathematical demonstration. _No fact_ whatever which depends on the will of God or man can be so proved. For mathematical demonstration is founded on necessary and eternal relations, and admits of no contingencies in its premises. The mathematician may demonstrate the size and properties of a triangle, but he can not demonstrate the continuance of any actual triangle for one hour, or one minute, after his demonstration. And if he could, how many of my most important affairs can I submit to the multiplication table, or lay off in squares and triangles? It deals with purely ideal figures, which never did or could exist. There is not a mathematical line--length without breadth--in the universe. When we come to the application of mathematics, we are met at once by the fact that there are no mathematical figures in nature. It is true we speak of the orbits of the planets as elliptical or circular, but it is only in a general way, as we speak of a circular saw, the outline of its teeth being regularity itself compared with the perturbations of the planets. We speak of the earth as a spheroid, but it is a spheroid pitted with hollows as deep as the ocean, and crusted with irregular protuberances as vast as the Himalaya and the Andes, in every conceivable irregularity of form. Its seas, coasts, and rivers follow no straight lines nor geometrical curves. There is not an acre of absolutely level ground on the face of the earth; and even its waters will pile themselves up in waves, or dash into breakers, rather than remain perfectly level for a single hour. Its minuter formations present the same regular irregularity of form. Even the crystals, which approach the nearest of any natural productions to mathematical figures, break with compound irregular fractures at their bases of attachment. The surface of the pearl is proportionally rougher than the surface of the earth, and the dew-drop is not more spherical than a pear. As nature then gives no mathematical figures, mathematical measurements of such figures can be only approximately applied to natural objects. The utter absence of any regularity, or assimilation to the spheroidal figure, either in meridianal, equatorial, or parallel lines, mountain ranges, sea beaches, or courses of rivers, is fatal to mathematical accuracy in the more extended geographical measurements. It is only by taking the mean of a great many measurements that an approximate accuracy can be obtained. Where this is not possible, as in the case of the measurements of high mountains, the truth remains undetermined by hundreds of feet; or, as in the case of the earth's spheroidal axis, Bessel's measurement differs from Newton's, by fully eleven miles.[326] The smaller measures are proportionately as inaccurate. No field, hill, or lake, has an absolute mathematical figure; but its outline is composed of an infinite multitude of irregular curves too minute for man's vision to discover, and too numerous for his intellect to estimate. No natural figure was ever measured with absolute accuracy. All the resources of mathematical science were employed by the constructors of the French Metric System; but the progress of science in seventy years has shown that _every element_ of their calculations was erroneous. They tried to measure a quadrant of the earth's circumference, supposing the meridian to be circular; but Schubert has shown that that is far from being the case; and that no two meridians are alike; and Sir John Herschel, and the best geologists, show cause to believe that the form of the globe is constantly changing; so that the ancient Egyptians acted wisely in selecting the axis of the earth's rotation, which is invariable, and not the changing surface of the earth, as their standard of measure. The Astronomer Royal, Piazzi Smyth, thus enumerates the errors of practice, which they added to those of their erroneous theory: "Their trigonometrical survey for their meter length has been found erroneous, so that their meter is no longer sensibly a meter; and their standard temperature of 0° centigrade is upset one way for the length of their scale, and another way for the density of the water employed; and their mode of computing the temperature correction is proved erroneous; and their favorite natural reference of a quadrant of the earth is not found a scientific feature capable of serving the purpose they have been employing it for; and even their own sons show some dislike to adopt it fully, and adhere to as much of the ancient system as they can."[327] But coming down to more practical and every-day calculations, in which money is invested, how very erroneous are the calculations of our best engineers, and how fatal their results. Nineteen serious errors were discovered in an edition of _Taylor's Logarithms_, printed in 1796; some of which might have led to the most dangerous results in calculating a ship's place, and were current for thirty-six years. In 1832 the _Nautical Almanac_ published a correction which was itself erroneous by one second, and a new correction was necessary the next year. But in making this correction a _new error was committed of ten degrees_.[328] Who knows how many ships were run ashore by that error? Nor can our American mathematicians boast of superior infallibility to the French or British. In computing the experiments which were made at Lowell (for a new turbine wheel), it was found that when the gate was fully open, the quantity of water discharged through the guides was _seventy per cent. of the theoretical discharge_. (An error of thirty per cent.) The effect of the wheel during these experiments was eighty-one and a half per cent. of the power expended; but when the gate was half open the effect was sixty-seven per cent. of the power, while the discharge through the guides eleven per cent. more than the theoretical discharge. But when the opening of the gate was still further reduced to one-fourth of the full opening, the effect was also reduced to forty-five per cent. of the power, while the discharging velocity was raised to _forty-nine per cent. more than that given by the theory_.[329] An unscientific man would hardly call that good guessing; but it was the best result of labored and expensive scientific calculation. No wonder the _London Mechanics' Magazine_ says: "More can be learned in this way (testing engines in the workshop) in half an hour, than can be derived from the theoretical instructions, however good, in a year." So much for the infallibility of a mathematical demonstration. In regard even to the very limited circle of our relations which can be measured by the foot rule, and the small number of our anxieties which may be resolved by an equation, if by mathematical accuracy be meant anything more than tolerable correctness, or by mathematical demonstration a very high degree of probability, mathematical certainty is all a fable. 2. _Astronomy._ The omniscience and prescience of the human intellect have been largely glorified by some Infidel lecturers, upon the strength of the accuracy with which it is possible to calculate and predict eclipses, and to the disparagement of Bible predictions. And this glorification has been amazingly swollen by Le Verrier's prediction in 1846 of the discovery of the planet Neptune. But the prediction of some unknown motion would form a more correct basis for a comparison of the prophecies of science with those of Scripture; such, for instance, as Immanuel Kant's prediction of the period of Saturn's rotation at six hours twenty-three minutes fifty-three seconds; "which mathematical calculation of an unknown motion of a heavenly body," he says, "_is the only prediction of that kind in pure Natural Philosophy_, and awaits confirmation at a future period." It is a pity that this unique scientific prediction should not have had better luck, for the encouragement of other guessers; but after waiting long and vainly, for the expected confirmation, it was finally falsified by Herschel's discovery of spots on the surface of the planet, and observation of the true time, ten hours sixteen minutes forty-four seconds.[330] This, however, was not his only astronomical prediction. He predicted that immense bodies in a transition state between planets and comets, and of very eccentric orbits, would be found beyond the orbit of Saturn, and intersecting it, but no such bodies have been discovered. Uranus and Neptune have no cometary character whatever, their orbits are less eccentric than others and do not intersect, nor approach within millions of miles of Saturn's orbit. The verification of Le Verrier's prediction affords even a more satisfactory proof of the necessarily conjectural character of astronomical computations of unknown quantities and distances. The planet Neptune has not one-half the mass which he had calculated; his orbit, which was calculated as very elliptical, is nearly circular; and the error of the calculation of his distance is three hundred millions of miles![331] "Let us then be candid," says Loomis, "and claim no more for astronomy than is reasonably due. When in 1846 Le Verrier announced the existence of a planet hitherto unseen, and when he assigned it its exact position in the heavens, and declared that it shone like a star of the eighth magnitude, and with a perceptible disc, _not an astronomer of France, and scarce an astronomer in Europe, had sufficient faith in the prediction to prompt him to point his telescope to the heavens_. But when it was announced that the planet had been seen at Berlin, that it was found within one degree of the computed place, that it was indeed a star of the eighth magnitude, and had a sensible disc--then the enthusiasm not only of the public generally, but of astronomers also, was even more wonderful than their former apathy. The sagacity of Le Verrier was felt to be almost superhuman. Language could scarce be found strong enough to express the general admiration. The praise then lavished upon Le Verrier was somewhat extravagant. _The singularly close agreement between the observed and computed places of the planet was accidental._ So exact a coincidence could not reasonably have been anticipated. If the planet had been found even ten degrees from what Le Verrier assigned as its probable place, _this discrepancy would have surprised no astronomer_. The discovery would still have been one of the most remarkable events in the history of astronomy, and Le Verrier would have merited the title of First Astronomer of the age."[332] Nevertheless, astronomy from the comparative simplicity of the bodies and forces with which it has to deal, and the approximate regularity of the paths of the heavenly bodies, may be regarded as the science in which the greatest possible certainty is attainable. It opens at once the widest field to the imagination, and the noblest range to the reason; it has attracted the most exalted intellects to its pursuit, and has rewarded their toils with the grandest discoveries. These discoveries have been grossly abused by inferior minds, ascribing to the discoverers of the laws of the universe the glory due to their Creator; and boasting of the power of the human mind, as if it were capable of exploring the infinite in space, and of calculating the movements of the stars through eternity. Persons who could not calculate an eclipse to save their souls, have risked them upon the notion that, because astronomers can do so with considerable accuracy, farmers ought to reject the Bible, unless its predictions can be calculated by algebra. It may do such persons good, or at least prevent them from doing others harm, to take a cursory view of the errors of astronomers; errors necessary as well as accidental. Sir John Herschel, than whom none has a better right to speak on this subject, and whose devotion to that noble science precludes all supposition of prejudice against it, devotes a chapter to _The Errors of Astronomy_,[333] which he classifies and enumerates: "I. External causes of error, comprehending such as depend on external uncontrollable circumstances; such as fluctuations of weather, which disturb the amount of refraction from its tabulated value, and being reducible to no fixed laws, induce uncertainty to the amount of their own possible magnitude. "II. Errors of observation; such as arise for instance from inexpertness, defective vision, slowness in seizing the exact instant of the occurrence of a phenomenon, or precipitancy in anticipating it; from atmospheric indistinctness, insufficient optical power in the instrument, and the like. "III. The third, and by far the most numerous class of errors, arise from causes which may be deemed instrumental, and which may be divided into two classes. "The first arises from an instrument not being what it professes to be, which is _error of workmanship_. Thus if an axis or pivot, instead of being as it ought, exactly cylindrical, be slightly flattened or elliptical--if it be not exactly concentric with the circle which it carries--if this circle so called be in reality not exactly circular--or not in one plane--if its divisions, intended to be precisely equidistant, shall be in reality at unequal intervals--_and a hundred other things of the same sort_. "The other subdivision of instrumental errors comprehends such as arise from an instrument not being placed in the position it ought to have; and from those of its parts which are made purposely movable not being properly disposed, _inter se_. These are _errors of adjustment_. Some are unavoidable, as they arise from a general unsteadiness of the soil or building in which the instruments are placed.[334] Others again are consequences of imperfect workmanship; as when an instrument, once well adjusted, will not remain so. But the most important of this class of errors arise from the non-existence of natural indications other than those afforded by astronomical observations themselves, whether an instrument has, or has not, the exact position with respect to the horizon, and the cardinal points, etc., which it ought to have, properly to fulfill its object. "Now, with regard to the first two classes of error, it must be observed, that in so far as they can not be reduced to known laws, and thereby become the subjects of calculation and due allowance, _they actually vitiate in their full extent the results of any observations in which they subsist_. With regard to errors of adjustment, not only the possibility, _but the certainty of their existence in every imaginable form, in all instruments_, must be contemplated. _Human hands or machines never formed a circle, drew a straight line, or executed a perpendicular, nor ever placed an instrument in perfect adjustment, unless accidentally, and then only during an instant of time._" The bearing of these important and candid admissions of error in astronomical observations upon all kinds of other observations made by mortal eyes, and with instruments framed by human hands, in every department of science, is obvious. No philosophical observation or experiment is absolutely accurate, or can possibly be more than tolerably near the truth. The error of a thousandth part of an inch in an instrument will multiply itself into thousands, and millions of miles, according to the distance of the object, or the profundity of the calculation. Our faith in the absolute infallibility of scientific observers, and consequently in the absolute certainty of science, being thus rudely upheaved from its very foundations by Sir John Herschel's crowbar, we are prepared to learn that scientific men have made errors great and numerous. To begin at home, with our own little globe, where certainty is much more attainable than among distant stars, we have seen that astronomers of the very highest rank are by no means agreed as to its diameter. Its precise form is equally difficult to determine. Newton showed that an ellipsoid of revolution should differ from a sphere by a compression of 1/230. The mean of a number of varying measurements of arcs, in five different places, would give 1/299. The pendulum measurement differs very considerably from both, and "no two sets of pendulum experiments give the same result."[335] The same liability to error, and uncertainty of the actual truth, attends the other modes of ascertaining this fundamental measurement. A very small error here will vitiate all other astronomical calculations; for the earth's radius, and the radius of its orbit, are the foot-rule and surveyor's chain with which the astronomer measures the heavens. But this last and most used standard is uncertain; and of the nine different estimates, it is certain that eight must be wrong; and probably that all are erroneous. For example, Encke, in 1761, gives the earth's distance from the sun at 95,141,830 Encke, in 1769, 95,820,610 Lacaille, 76,927,900 Henderson, 90,164,110 Gillies and Gould, 96,160,000 Mayer, 104,097,100 Le Verrier, 91,066,350 Sir John Herschel, 91,718,000 Humboldt, 82,728,000[336] Here now is the fundamental standard measure of astronomy; and nine first-class astronomers are set to determine its length; but their measurements range all the way from seventy-seven to one hundred and four millions of miles--a difference of nearly one-fourth. Why the old-fashioned finger and thumb measure used before the carpenter's two-foot rule was invented never made such discrepancies; it could always make a foot within an inch more or less; but our scientific measurers, it seems, can not guess within two inches on the foot. Their smaller measurements are equally inaccurate. Lias says the Aurora Borealis is only two and a half miles high; Hood and Richardson make its height double that, or five miles; Olmsted and Twining run it up to forty-two, one hundred, and one hundred and sixty miles![337] When they are thus inaccurate in the measurement of a phenomenon so near the earth, how can we believe in the infallibility of their measurements of the distances of the stars and the nebulæ in the distant heavens? The moon is the nearest to us of all the heavenly bodies, and exercises the greatest influence of any, save the sun, upon our crops, ships, health and lives, and consequently has had a larger share of astronomical attention than any other celestial body. But the most conflicting statements are made by astronomers regarding her state and influences. There is no end to the controversy whether the moon influences the weather; though one would think that question, being rather a terrestrial one, could easily be decided. Schwabe says Herschel is wrong in saying that the years of most solar spots were fruitful; but Wolf looks up the Zurich meteorological tables, and confirms Herschel. In _Ferguson's Astronomy_, the standard text-book of its day, we are informed that "Some of her mountains (the moon's) by comparing their height with her diameter, are found to be three times higher than the highest hills on earth." They would thus be over fifteen miles high. But Sir Wm. Herschel assures us that "The generality do not exceed half a mile in their general elevation." _Transactions of the Royal Society_, May 11, 1780. Beer and Madler have measured thirty-nine whose height they assure us exceed Mont Blanc. But M. Gussew, of the Imperial Observatory at Wilna, describes to us, "a mountain mass in the form of a meniscus lens, rising in the middle to a height of seventy-nine English miles."[338] As this makes the moon lopsided, with the heavy side toward the earth, the question of an atmosphere, and of the moon's inhabitability is reopened; and the discussion seems to favor the man in the moon; only he keeps on the other side always, so that we can not see him. The best astronomers have gravely calculated the most absurd problems--for instance the projection of meteorites from lunar volcanoes; Poisson calculated that they would require an initial velocity of projection of seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-five feet per second; others demanded eight thousand two hundred and eighty-two; Olbers demanded fourteen times as much; but La Place, the great inventor of the nebular theory, after thirty years' study fixed it definitely at seven thousand eight hundred and sixty-two! It appears that the absurdity of the discharging force of a part greater than the attracting force of the whole never occurred to him.[339] This same La Place supposed, that he could have placed the moon in a much better position for giving light than she now occupies; and that this was the only object of her existence. As this was not done he argued that her waxing and waning light was a proof that she was not located by an Omniscient Creator. He says he would have placed her in the beginning in opposition to the sun, in the plane of the ecliptic, and about four times her present distance from us, with such a motion as would ever maintain that position, thus securing full moon from sunset to sunrise, without possibility of eclipse. But Lionville demonstrates that "if the moon had occupied at the beginning the position assigned her, by the illustrious author of the _Mecanique Celeste_, she could not have maintained it but a very short time."[340] In short, La Place's hypothetical calculations generally have proved erroneous when applied to any existing facts; and we have no reason to attach more value to his nebular theory calculations. The sun is the principal orb of our system, and by far the most conspicuous, and the most observed of all observers, astronomers included. But we have seen already how contradictory their measurements of his distance, and their observations of the influence of his spots. Far more conflicting are the theories as to his constitution, of which indeed we may truly say very little was known before the application of photography and the spectroscope to heliography within the last seven years. One astronomer fixed the period of his rotation at twenty-five days, fourteen hours, and eight minutes; another at twenty-six days, forty-six minutes; another at twenty-four days, twenty-eight minutes.[341] In regard to the sun's heat, a matter fundamental to the nebular theory, the calculations differ widely, and some of them must be grossly erroneous. M. Vicaire called the attention of the French Academy, at a recent meeting, to this unsatisfactory condition of science. Father Secchi estimates it at eighteen million Fahrenheit; while Pouillet says it ranges from two thousand six hundred and sixty-two to three thousand two hundred and one; and others range from two hundred thousand downward. The most singular thing is that these results are derived from observations or radiations made by apparatus identical in principle.[342] But Waterston calculates the temperature of the solar surface at above ten, and probably twelve million Fahrenheit.[343] Now what feeds these enormous fires? The old opinion of astronomy, that the sun was a mass of fire, was assailed by Sir Wm. Herschel, who maintained that it was in the condition of a perpetual magnetic storm. This notion was altered into the belief of a central dark body, surrounded by a stratum of clouds, outside of which is a photosphere of light and heat; which some made one thousand five hundred miles in depth, others four thousand. Outside of this was another layer of rose-colored clouds. To this theory Arago, Sir John Herschel and Humboldt assented. But Le Verrier declares that the facts observed during late eclipses are contrary to this theory, and a new theory is slow in process of construction, to be demolished in its turn by later observations.[344] One of the most recent theories is that the fuel is furnished by a stream of meteorites, planetoids, and comets, falling in by the power of attraction, and being speedily converted into gas flames; a process the very reverse of the theory of the evolution of the solid celestial bodies from gas. But it is pretty evident from these conflicting theories that nobody knows anything certainly as to the materials of the sun, or the fuel which feeds his flames. But if the very best astronomers do not know of what he is made, is it not too great a demand upon our credulity to ask us to believe that they can tell how he was made? The size, density, and distances of the planets, which form such essential elements in the calculations of the nebular theory of evolution, are equally uncertain. Ten or twelve years ago Mercury was believed to be nearly three times as dense as the earth (2.94); and the theory of evolution was partly based upon this assumed fact. But Hausen now finds that it is not half so dense; that, as compared with the earth, it is only 1.22; and that its mass is less than half (5/12) of what had been confidently calculated.[345] Corrections of the masses and densities of other planets are also offered. Still wider differences prevail in calculating the velocities of these bodies; velocities _calculated_ and found to correspond with the theory of evolution. Bianchini gives the period of the rotation of Venus at twenty-four days, eight hours; but Schroeter says it is not as many hours as Bianchini gives days; that it is only twenty-three hours and twenty minutes. Sir Wm. Herschel can not tell which is right, or whether both are wrong.[346] From such imperfect and erroneous calculations astronomers have deduced what they called a _law_, which holds the same place in nature that the Blue Laws of Connecticut maintain in history; and which like them have imposed upon the credulous. Titius and Bode imagined that they had discovered that, "When the distances of the planets are examined, it is found that they are almost all removed from each other by distances which are in the same proportion as their magnitudes increase." And this _law_ played an important part in introducing the theory of evolution, which, it was alleged, exactly corresponded with such an arrangement. But more accurate calculations and recent discoveries have dissipated the supposed order of progression. Humboldt says of it, it is "a law which scarcely deserves this name, and which is called by Lalande and Delambre a play of numbers; by others a help for the memory. * * * In reality the distances between Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus approximate very closely to the duplication. Nevertheless, since the discovery of Neptune, which is much too near Uranus, the defectiveness in the progression has become strikingly evident." And Olbers rejects it, as "contrary to the nature of all truths which merit the name of laws; it agrees only approximately with observed facts in the case of most planets, and what does not appear to have been once observed, not at all in the case of Mercury. It is evident that the series, 4, 4+3, 4+6, 4+12, 4+48, 4+96, 4+192, with which the distances should correspond, is not a continuous series at all. The number which precedes 4+3 should not be 4; _i. e._, 4+0, but 4+3/2. Therefore between 4 and 4+3 there should be an infinite number, or as Wurm expresses it, for _n_=1, there is obtained from 4+2^{n-2}.3; not 4, but 5-1/2."[347] Thus this so-called law is erroneous in both ends, and defective in the middle. Finally it has been utterly abolished by the discovery of the planet Vulcan, which does not correspond to any such law.[348] If the theory of evolution then corresponds to Bode's law, as its advocates alleged, it corresponds to a myth. About the nebulæ which have played so large a part in the atheistic world building, our astronomers are utterly at variance. Sir John Herschel says they are far away beyond the stars in space. But the Melbourne astronomer, M. Le Seur, suggests that the star Eta and the nebulous matter are neighbors; that the nebulous matter formerly around it, which has recently disappeared, while the star has blazed up into flames, is being absorbed and digested by the star. This has happened before, thirty years ago, to that star. Why may not our sun also absorb and burn up nebulæ. But if so, what becomes of the rings of the nebular theory? The light of the stars is almost the only medium through which we can observe them, and it would naturally be supposed that astronomers would be at pains to have clear views of light. But the most surprising differences of statement regarding it exist among the very first astronomers. They do not see it alike. Herschel says a Herculis is red; Struve says it is yellow. They dispute about its nature, motion, and quantity. Some astronomers believe the sun to be the great source of light, at least to our system. But Nasmyth informs the Royal Astronomical Society that "the true source of latent light is not in the solar orb, but in space itself, and that the grand function of the sun is to act as an agent for the bringing forth into existence the luciferous element, which element I suppose to be diffused throughout the boundless regions of space."[349] The nature of light is however still as great a mystery as when Job demanded, "Where is the way where light dwelleth?" The undulatory theory of light, now generally accepted, assumes that light is caused by the vibrations of the ether in a plane transverse to the direction of propagation. In order to transmit motions of this kind, the parts of the luminiferous medium must resist compression and distortion, like those of an elastic solid body; its transverse elasticity being great enough to transmit one of the most powerful kinds of physical energy, with a speed in comparison with which that of the swiftest planets of our system is inappreciable, and its longitudinal elasticity immensely greater--both of these elasticities being at the same time so weak as to offer no perceptible resistance to the motion of the planets, and other visible bodies.[350] Is the velocity of light uniform? Or, if variable, is the variation caused by the original difference of the projectile force of the different suns, stars, comets, etc.? or by the different media through which it passes? Arago alleges that light moves more rapidly through water than through air; but Brequet asserts that the fact is just the reverse.[351] Both admit that its velocity varies with the medium. Jacobs alleges that during the trigonometrical survey of India he observed the _extinction_ of light reflected through sixty miles of horizontal atmosphere.[352] How, then, can astronomers make any reliable calculations of the velocity of light reaching us through regions of space filled with unknown media? Newton calculated the velocity of light at one hundred and fifty-five thousand five hundred and fifty-five and five-ninth miles a second; but Encke shows he erred thirty per cent. Other eminent astronomers make the time of the passage of light from the sun all the way from eleven to fourteen minutes, instead of Newton's seven or eight. Busch reckons its velocity at one hundred and sixty-seven thousand nine hundred and seventy-six miles; Draper one hundred and ninety-two thousand; Struve two hundred and fifteen thousand eight hundred and fifty-four. Wheatstone alleges that electric light travels at the rate of two hundred and eighty-eight thousand miles a second; but Frizeau's calculations and measurements give only one hundred and sixty-seven thousand five hundred and twenty-eight for the light of Oxygen and hydrogen.[353] Thus we have a variation of one hundred and twenty thousand miles a second in all calculations of sidereal distances. Humboldt tries to reconcile these differences by the suggestion, that no one will deny, that lights of different magnetic or electric processes may have different velocities; a fact which throws all sidereal astronomy into inextricable confusion, and sets aside all existing time tables on sidereal railroads. They are no more agreed as to its composition after it reaches us than as to its velocity. Newton taught that it consisted of seven colors; Wallaston denies more than four; Brewster reduces the number to three--red, yellow, and blue. Newton measures the yellow and violet, and finds them as forty to eighty. Fraunhofer makes the proportion twenty-seven to one hundred and nine. Wallaston's spectrum differs from both. Field says, "No one has ventured to alter either estimate, and no one who is familiar with the spectrum will put much faith in any measurement of it, by whosoever and with what care soever made."[354] He says white light is composed of five parts red, three yellow, and eight blue; which differs wholly from Brewster, who gives it three parts red, five yellow, and two of blue. Equally wild are their calculations of the quantity of light emitted by particular stars. Radeau calculates Vulcan's light at 2.25 that of Mercury; Lias, from the same observations, at 7.36, nearly three times as much.[355] Sir John Herschel calculates that _Alpha Centauri_ emits more light than the sun; that the light of Sirius is four times as great, and its parallax much less; so that by such a calculation Sirius would have an intrinsic splendor sixty-three times that of the sun. But Wallaston only calculates his light at one-fourth of this amount; and Steinheil makes it only one two-hundredth part of the former estimate.[356] Astronomers have lately been comforting the world with the assurance that we have little to fear from comets; that the superstitious fear of the comets prevalent in the past was ill founded, because comets are so very thin that we might pass through one without its breaking up anything. But that, as Principal Leitch shows us, is not the only question. "We know that the most deadly miasmata are so subtle that it is impossible to detect them by any chemical tests, and a very homeopathic dose of a comet, in addition to the elements of our own atmosphere, might produce the most fatal effects."[357] The phenomena indicative of cosmical processes are out of the range of astronomical observation. We can only observe those indicated by light, and gravitation; but how small a proportion of the formative processes of our own world indicate themselves by these two classes of phenomena! How few of the chemical, vegetative, animal, moral, social, or even geological processes, now progressing under our own observation, could give us notice of their existence by the two channels of light and gravitation? How, then, can philosophers ever learn the process of building worlds like our own in which many other powers are at work? Astronomers are not all agreed as to the existence of a cosmical ether; nor do those who assert it agree as to its properties. What is its nature, density, power of refraction and reflection of light, and resistance to motion? What is its temperature? Is it uniform, or like our atmosphere, ever varying? These are manifestly questions indispensable to be answered before any theory of the development of worlds is even conceivable. But of the properties of this all-extending cosmical atmosphere, which is the very breath of life of the development theory, astronomers present the most conflicting statements. Professor Vaughan says, "If such a body exists, it is beyond our estimation of all that is material. It has no weight, according to our idea of weight; no resistance, according to our idea of calculating resistance by mechanical tests; no volume, on our views of volume; no chemical activity, according to our experimental and absolute knowledge of chemical action. In plain terms, it presents no known re-agency by which it can be isolated from surrounding or intervening matter."[358] Or, in plainer terms, we know nothing about it. The only fact about it which astronomers have ventured to specify and calculate is its temperature; for upon this all the power of the development world-making process depends. But they are very far from any agreement; indeed, they are much farther apart than the equator from the poles. Stanley finds the temperature of absolute space--58°; Arago--70°; Humboldt--85°; Herschel--132°; Saigey--107°; Pouillet, to be exact to a fraction--223-6/10° below the freezing point; though when it gets to be so cold as that one would think he would hardly stay out of doors to measure fractions of a degree. But Poisson thinks he is over 200° too cold, and fixes the temperature accurately, in his own opinion, 8-6/10°. Moreover, he alleges that there is no more uniformity in the temperature of the heavens than in that of our own atmosphere, owing to the unequal radiations of heat from the stars; and that the earth, and the whole solar system, receive their internal heat from without, while passing through hot regions of space.[359] From this chaos of conflicting assertions of unknown facts the theory of development develops itself. Its fundamental postulate is the difference of temperature between the nebulæ and the surrounding space. But the fact is that nobody knows what is the temperature of either space or nebulæ, nor is anybody likely ever to know enough of either to base any scientific theory upon. Astronomy will never teach men how to make worlds; nor is it of the least consequence that it does not; since we could not make them, even if we knew how. From these specimens of the errors and contradictions of the best astronomers, the teachers upon whose accuracy we depend for our faith in science, we can see, that though the Pope and the Infidel savans may claim infallibility, yet after all the savant is just as infallible as the Pope, viz: he is right when he is right, and he is wrong when he is wrong, and that happens frequently and common folks can not always tell when. There is no such thing, then, as infallible science upon faith, in which I can venture to reject God's Bible, and risk my soul's salvation. Science is founded on faith in very fallible men. 3. _Geology_, one of the most recent of the sciences, and in the hands of Infidel nurses one of the most noisy, has been supposed to be anti-Christian. The supposition is utterly unfounded. Such of its facts as have been well ascertained have demonstrated the being, wisdom, and goodness of an Almighty Creator, with irresistible evidence. Nor, though a wonderful outcry has been raised about the opposition between the records of the rocks and the records of the Bible, regarding the antiquity of the earth, has any one yet succeeded in proving such an opposition, for the plain reason that neither the Bible nor geology says how old it is. They both say it is very old. The Bible says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;" and by the use which it makes of the word _beginning_, leaves us to infer that it was long before the existence of the human race.[360] If the geologist could prove that the earth was six thousand millions of years older than Adam, it would contradict no statement of the Bible. The Bible reader, therefore, has no reason to question any well ascertained fact of geology. But when Infidels come to us with their geological _theories_ about the mode in which God made the earth, or in which the earth made itself, and how long it took to do it, and tell us that they have got scientific demonstration from the rocks that the Bible account is false, and that our old traditions can not stand before the irresistible evidence of science, we are surely bound to look at the foundation of facts, and the logical superstructure, which sustain such startling conclusions. Now it is remarkable that every Infidel argument against the statements of the Bible, or rather against what they suppose to be the statements of the Bible, is based, not on the _facts_, but upon the _theories_, of geology. I do not know one which is based solely on facts and inductions from facts. Every one of them has a wooden leg, and goes hobbling upon an _if_. Take for example the argument most commonly used--that which asserts the vast antiquity of the earth--a thing in itself every way likely, and not at all contrary to Scripture, if it could be scientifically proved. But how does our Infidel geologist set about his work of proving that the earth is any given age, say six thousand millions of years? A scientific demonstration must rest upon _facts_--well ascertained facts. It admits of _no suppositions_. Now what are the facts given to solve the problem of the earth's age? The geologist finds a great many layers of rocks, one above the other, evidently formed below the water, some of them out of the fragments of former rocks, containing bones, shells, and casts of fishes, and tracks of the feet of birds, made when these rocks were in the state of soft mud, and altogether several miles thick. He has a great multitude of such facts before him, but they are all of this character. Not one of them gives him the element of _time_. They announce to him a succession of events, such as successive generations of fishes and plants; but not one of them tells how long these generations lived. The condition of the world was so utterly different then, from what it is now, that no inference can be drawn from the length of the lives of existing races, which are generally also of different species. The utmost any man can say, in such a case, is, _I suppose_, for there is no determinate element of time in the statement of the problems, and so no certain time can appear in the solution. Here is a problem exactly similar. A certain house is found to be built with ten courses of hewn stone in the basement, forty courses of brick in the first story, thirty-six courses in the second, thirty-two in the third; with a roof of nine inch rafters covered with inch boards, and an inch and a half layer of coal tar and gravel; how long was it in building? Would not any school-boy laugh at the absurdity of attempting such a problem? He would say, "How can I tell unless I know whence the materials came, how they were conveyed, how many workmen were employed, and how much each could do in a day? If the brick had to be made by hand, the lumber all dressed with the hand-saw and jack-plane, the materials all hauled fifty miles in an ox-cart, the brick carried up by an Irishman in a hod, and the work done by an old, slow-going, jobbing contractor, who could only afford to pay three or four men at a time, they would not get through in a year. But if the building stone and sand were found in excavating the cellar, if the brick were made by steam and came by railroad, a good master builder, with steam saw and planing mills, steam hoists, and a strong force of workmen, would run it up in three weeks." So our geologist ought to say; "I do not know either the source of the materials of the earth's strata, nor the means by which they were conveyed to their present positions; therefore I can not tell the time required for their formation. If the crust of the earth was created originally of solid granite, and the materials of the strata were ground down by the slow action of frost and rain, and conveyed to the ocean by the still slower agencies of rivers and torrents--hundreds of millions of ages would not effect the work. But if the earth was created in such a shape as would rationally be considered the best adapted for future stratification; if its crust consisted of the various elements of which granite and other rocks are composed; if these materials were ejected in a granular or comminuted form, and in vast quantities by submarine volcanoes generated by the chemical action of these elements upon each other; and if, after being diffused by the currents of the ocean, and consolidated by its vast pressure, the underlying strata were baked and melted and crystallized into granite[361]--a very few centuries would suffice. Until these indispensable preliminaries are settled, geology can make no calculations of the length of time occupied by the formation of the strata." But instead of saying so, he _imagines_ that God chose to make the earth out of the most impossible materials, by the most unsuitable agencies, and with the most inadequate forces; and that therefore a long time was needed for the work. In short, to revert to our illustration of the house-building, he _supposes_ that Almighty God built the earth with the ox-team, and employed only the same force in erecting the building, which he now uses for doing little jobbing repairs. Almost all geological computations of time are made upon the supposition that only the same agents were at work then which we see now, that they only wrought with the same degree of force, and that they produced just the same effects in such a widely different condition of the earth as then prevailed. It takes a year say to deposit mud enough at the bottom of the sea to make an inch of rock now; _and if mud was deposited no faster_ when the geological strata were formed, they are as many years old as there are inches in eight or nine miles depth of strata. But this is not the scientific proof we were promised. How does he prove that mud was deposited at just the same rate then as now? The very utmost he can say is that it is a very probable supposition. I can prove it a very improbable supposition. But it is enough for my present purpose to point out that, probable or improbable, it is _only supposition_. No proof is given or can possibly be given for it. Any conclusion drawn from such premises can be only a _supposition_ too. And so the whole fabric of geological chronology, upon the stability of which so many Infidels are risking the salvation of their souls, and beneath which they are boasting that they will bury the Bible beyond the possibility of a resurrection, vanishes into a mere _unproved notion_, based upon an _if_. It is truly astonishing, that any sober-minded person should allow himself to be shaken in his religious convictions by the alleged results of a science so unformed and imperfect, as geologists themselves acknowledge their favorite science to be. "The dry land upon our globe occupies only _one-fourth_ of its whole superficies. All the rest is sea. How much of this fourth part have geologists been able to examine? and how small seems to be the area of stratification which they have explored? We venture to say not one _fiftieth part of the whole_."[362] "Abstract or speculative geology, were it a perfect science, would present a history of the globe from its origin and formation, through all the changes it has undergone, up to the present time; describing its external appearance, its plants and animals at each successive period. _As yet, geology is the mere aim to arrive at such knowledge_; and when we consider how difficult it is to trace the history of a nation, even over a few centuries, we can not be surprised at the small progress geologists have made in tracing the history of the earth through the lapse of ages. To ascertain the history of a nation possessed of written records is comparatively easy; but when these are wanting, we must examine the ruins of their cities and monuments, and judge of them as a people from the size and structure of their buildings, and from the remains of art found in them. This is often a perplexing, always an arduous task; _much more so is it to decipher the earth's history_."[363] "The canoes, for example, and stone hatchets found in our peat bogs afford an insight into the rude arts and manners of the earliest inhabitants of our island; the buried coin fixes the date of some Roman emperor; the ancient encampments indicate the districts once occupied by invading armies, and the former method of constructing military defenses; the Egyptian mummies throw light on the art of embalming, the rites of sepulture, or the average stature of ancient Egypt. This class of memorials yields to no other in authenticity, but it constitutes a small part only of the resources on which the historian relies; whereas in geology it forms the only kind of evidence which is at our command. For this reason _we must not expect to obtain a full and connected account of any series of events beyond the reach of history_."[364] "There are no calculations more doubtful than those of the geologist."[365] In fact, no truly scientific geologist pretends that it stands on the same level with any authentic history, much less with the Bible record; inasmuch as the discovery of a single new fact may overturn the whole theory. "It furnishes us with no clew by which to unravel the unapproachable mysteries of creation. These mysteries belong to the wondrous Creator, and to him only. We attempt to theorize upon them, and to reduce them to law, and all nature rises up against us in our presumptuous rebellion. A stray splinter of cone bearing wood--a fish's skull or tooth--the vertebra of a reptile--the humerus of a bird--the jaw of a quadruped--_all_, _any_ of these things, weak and insignificant as they may seem, become in such a quarrel too strong for us and our theory--the puny fragment in the grasp of truth forms as irresistible a weapon as the dry bone did in that of Samson of old; and our slaughtered sophisms lie piled up, 'heaps upon heaps,' before it."[366] The history of the progress of geology furnishes abundant proof of the truth of these admissions of weakness and fallibility. In almost every instance when we have had the opportunity of testing geological calculations of time they have proved to be erroneous; and sometimes grossly erroneous. The lake dwellings of Switzerland, which were once alleged to be at least fifteen thousand years old, are found surrounded by heaps of burnt corn; illustrating Cæsar's account of the burning of their corn by the Helvetians, preparatory to the invasion of Gaul, which he repelled. The peat bogs of Denmark, surrounding stumps of oak, beech, and pine, claimed to be successive growths, and at least twelve thousand five hundred years old, have been compared with a piece of primeval bog and forest, on the Earl of Arran's estate, in Scotland, which corresponds perfectly to the Danish bog; but which shows the three growths not successive, but contemporaneous, at different levels; the bog growing as well as the trees. And the frequent discovery of Danish remains of the stone and bronze ages in the old Danish forts and battle-fields of Ireland fixes their historical period at the era of the Danish invasion; some of these stone and bronze weapons being found on the battle-field of Clontarf, dating A. D. 827. Skeletons of warriors with gold collars, bronze battle-axes, and flint arrow heads are quite common in the Irish bogs. The absence of iron, on which so great a theory of the stone, bronze, and iron ages as successive developments of civilization has been raised, is easily accounted for by the perishable nature of iron when exposed to moisture. But that this Celtic race used iron also, as well as bronze and stone, is proved incontestably by the discovery, in 1863, of the slag of their iron furnaces, among a number of flint weapons, and Celtic skulls, at Linhope, in Northumberland; the iron itself having perished by rust.[367] The pottery, glass, and handmills found beside these skulls show that their owners were by no means the degraded savages supposed to represent the so-called stone age. Horner's Nile pottery, discovered at a depth of sixty feet, and calculated to be twelve thousand years old, and fragments found still deeper in this deposit, and calculated at thirty thousand years, were found to be underlaid by still deeper layers, producing Roman pottery; and in the deepest boring of all, at the foot of the statue of Rameses II., the discovery of the Grecian honeysuckle, marked on some of these mysterious fragments, which they had claimed as pre-historic, proved that it could not be older than the Greek conquest of Egypt. Sir Robert Stephenson found in the neighborhood of Damietta, at a greater depth than Mr. Horner reached, a brick bearing the stamp of Mohammed Ali.[368] The shifting currents of all rivers flowing through alluvial deposits bury such things in a single season of high water. The raised beaches of Scotland are quite conspicuous geological features of the Highlands, and have furnished themes for calculations of their vast antiquity. Here and there human remains had been discovered in them, but no link could be had to connect them otherwise than geologically with history. Geologists, accordingly, with their visual generosity of time, assigned them to the pre-Adamite period. But recently the missing link has been found, and these progenitors of Tubal Cain, and the pre-Adamites generally, are found to have been in the habit of supping their broth out of Roman pottery! Lyell, the acknowledged prince of geologists, is famous for his chronological blundering; of which his calculations of the age of the delta of the Mississippi is a very good American example. He calculates the quantity of mud in suspension in the water, and the area and depth of the delta, and says it must have taken sixty-seven thousand years for the formation of the whole; and if the alluvial matter of the plain above be two hundred and sixty-four feet deep, or half that of the delta, it must have required thirty-three thousand five hundred years more for its accumulation, even if its area be estimated at only equal to the delta, whereas it is in fact larger.[369] He makes no allowance for tidal deposits. But Brig. Gen. Humphrey, of the United States Surveying Department, goes over Lyell's calculations, and shows that instead of 3,702,758,400 cubic feet of mud brought down by the Mississippi, as estimated by Lyell, the actual amount is 19,500,750,000,000; that the rate at which the delta is now advancing into the gulf is fifty feet per annum, and that the age of the delta and alluvial deposit is four thousand four hundred, instead of Lyell's one hundred thousand five hundred years.[370] We might go on and give a dozen such instances of geological miscalculations of time did space permit; but these are enough to disabuse us of any faith in such calculations. With such specimens before us of the miscalculations of the smaller periods by geologists, we are not surprised to find that they grossly exaggerate the larger cycles of time. The necessities of the evolution of the ascidian into the snail, of the snail into the fish, and of the fish into the lizard, of the lizard into the monkey, and of the monkey into the man, by slow and imperceptible changes, demanded an almost infinite length of time; and the geologists of that school accordingly asserted the existence of animal life upon our globe for hundreds of thousands of millions of years. But Sir Wm. Thompson, one of the first mathematicians, demonstrates[371] the impossibility of any such length of time being spent in the process of cooling our little globe. Beginning with their own assumption, of a globe of molten granite cooling down to the present state, he proves that the earth can not have been in existence longer than a hundred millions of years; and of course that plants and animals have existed on it a much shorter time; as for the greater part of that period it was too hot for them. The geologists are now becoming ashamed of their poetical cycles, and some acknowledge that their chiefs blundered egregiously in their calculations. The principles of geology seem to be as unsettled as its facts. There is no agreement upon any of its theories. The history of its theories, like that of their framers, begins with their birth, and ends with their burial. Each new theory placed the tombstone upon the preceding, and inscribed it with the brief record of the antediluvian, "and he died." A busy time they must have had with their Wernerian, Huttonian, and Diluvian hypotheses; not to mention the Hutchinsonian theory, the animal spirits flowing from the sun, the vegetative power of stories, and other sage and serious facts and theories, theological and philosophical, invented to account for the world's creation. "No theory," says Lyell, "could be so far-fetched or fantastical as not to attract some followers, provided it fell in with the popular notion." "Some of the most extravagant systems were invented or controverted by men of acknowledged talent." A more amusing exhibition of philosophical absurdity can not be found than those chapters which he devotes to "The Historical Progress of Geology,"[372] unless perhaps the scientific discussions of the erudite acquaintances of Lemuel Gulliver. Let it not be supposed that the progress of inductive science, and the prevalence of the Baconian philosophy have banished absurdities and contradictions from the sphere of geology. It would require a man of considerable learning to find three geologists agreed, either in their facts, or in their theories. In a general way, indeed, we have the Catastrophists, with Hugh Miller, overwhelming the earth with dire convulsions in the geological eras, and upheaving the more conservative Lyell and the Progressionists; who affirm that all things continue as they were from the beginning of the world. And there is perhaps a general agreement now that the underlying _primitive_ rocks, so called, are not primitive at all, as geologists thought twenty years ago; but, like the foundations of a Chicago house, have been put in long after the building was finished and occupied. But then comes the question how they were inserted--whether as Elie de Beaumont thinks, the mountains were upheaved by starts, lever fashion, or, as Lyell affirms, very gradually, and imperceptibly, like the elevation of a brick house by screws.[373] Nor is there the least likelihood of any future agreement among them; inasmuch as they can not agree either as to the thickness of the earth's solid crust which is to be lifted, or the force by which it is to be done? Hopkins proves by astronomical observation that it is eight hundred miles thick. Lyell affirms that at twenty-four miles deep there can be no solid crust, for the temperature of the earth increases one degree for every forty-five feet, and at that depth the heat is great enough to melt iron and almost every known substance. But then there is a difference between philosophers about this last test of solidity--those who believe in Wedgewood's Pyrometer, which was the infallible standard twenty years ago, asserting that the heat of melted iron is 21,000° Fahrenheit; while Professor Daniells demonstrates by another infallible instrument that it is only 2,786° Fahrenheit;[374] which is rather a difference. In one case the earth's crust would be over two hundred miles thick, in the other twenty-four. But then comes the great question, What is below the granite? and a very important one for any theory of the earth. It evidently underlies the whole foundation of speculative geology, whether we assume with De Beaumont and Humboldt, that "the whole globe, with the exception of a thin envelope, much thinner in proportion than the shell of an egg, is a fused mass, kept fluid by heat--a heat of 450,000° Fahrenheit, at the center, Cordier calculates--but constantly cooling, and contracting its dimensions;" and occasionally cracking and falling in, and "squeezing upward large portions of the mass;" "thus producing those folds or wrinkles which we call mountain chains;" or, with Davy and Lyell, that the heat of such a boiling ocean below would melt the solid crust, like ice from the surface of boiling water--and with it the whole theory of the primeval existence of the earth in a state of igneous fusion, its gradual cooling down into continents and mountains of granite, the gradual abrasion of the granite into the mud and sand which formed the stratified rocks, and all the other brilliant hypotheses which have sparked out of this great internal fire. Instead of an original central heat he supposes that "we may _perhaps_ refer the heat of the interior to chemical changes constantly going on in the earth's crust."[375] Now if the very foundations of the science are in such a state of fusion, and floating on a _perhaps_, would it not be wise to allow them to solidify a little before a man risks the salvation of his soul upon them? The various theories are contradictions. The igneous theory assault the aqueous theory with the greatest heat; while the aqueous theorists pour cold water, in torrents, upon the igneous men. The shocks of conflicting glacier theories have shaken the Alps and convulsed all North America; and have not yet ceased. There are eleven theories of earthquakes, which have been, and are still, such energetic agents in geology; and the whole eleven afford not the least rational idea of their causes; nor of any means of preventing, predicting, or escaping their ravages. The best geologists have described fossil tracks as the footprints of gigantic birds, which others equally as authoritative pronounce the tracks of frogs and lizards. Indeed, a good part of every geological treatise, and of the time of every association of geologists, is taken up with refutations of the errors of their predecessors. There are no less than nine theories of the causes of the elevation of mountains; some scoop out the valleys by water; others by ice; others heave up the mountains by fire; and some by the chemical expansion of their rocks; while others still upheave them by the pressure of molten lava from beneath; and others again make them out to be the wrinkles of the contraction of the supposed crust of the liquid interior. Of all these theories an able geologist says: "The many proposed theories of mountain elevation are based upon assumptions which unfortunately are not true; but that is an unimportant matter to the majority of our speculating geologists; and one never seen by the inventors of the theories, who allow themselves to be led captive by a poetic imagination, instead of building their inductions upon field observations. "Thus, to suppose that mountains are elevated by a wedge like intrusion of melted matter is to give to a fluid functions incompatible with its dynamic properties. So also the supposition that the igneous rocks were intruded, as solid wedges separating and lifting the crust, is opposed to the fact that no apparent abrasion, but generally the closest adhesion, exists at the line of contact of the igneous and stratified rocks. Equally fatal objections may be advanced against the other theories."[376] Multitudes of the alleged facts of Infidel geologists are as apocryphal as their theories. Thus in a recent ponderous quarto volume, the production of half a dozen philosophers, this identical impossible theory--of the cooling of the earth's crust down to solidity, while an irresistible central heat remains below--is presented to the world as an ascertained fact; we are informed of the discovery of a human skull fifty-seven thousand years old, _in good preservation_; asked to believe that two tiers of cypress snags could not be deposited in the delta of the Mississippi in less than eleven thousand four hundred years; and to calculate that the delta of the Nile must have been a great many ages in growing to its present size, because it is quite certain that for the last three thousand years _it has never grown at all_.[377] It were easy to fill a volume with such mistakes of geologists, but my limits restrict me to a few specimens. Silliman's Journal, in a review of "_The Geology of North America_, by Julius Marcoe, U. S. Geologist, and Professor of Geology in the Federal Polytechnic School of Switzerland; quarto, with maps and plates," says: "The author describes the mountain systems of north America as _he supposes they must be_, according to the theoretical views of Elie de Beaumont." "Thus one single fossil--that one a species of pine, and only very much resembling the _Pinites Fleurotti_ of Dr. Monguett--_establishes_ a connection between the New Red of France, and that of America. This is a very strong word for a geologist to use on evidence so small, _and so uncertain_, with the fate of four thousand or five thousand feet of rock at stake, and the beds beneath, containing 'perhaps Belemnites.' The prudent observer would have said, _establishes nothing_; and such is the fact." "_On such evidence_ a region over the Rocky Mountains, which is one thousand miles from north to south, and eight hundred miles from east to west, is for the most part colored in the maps as Triassic. Such a region would take in quite a respectable part of the continent of Europe." "We now know beyond any reasonable doubt, that all the country from the Platte to the British Possessions, and from the Mississippi to the Black Hills, is occupied by Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks. And as regards the region from the Platte southward to the Red River, very far the largest part _is known to be not Triassic_, while it is possible the Trias may occur in some parts of it." "It is unfortunate in its bearing on the progress of geological science to have false views about some five hundred thousand miles of territory, and much more besides, spread widely abroad through respectable journals, and transactions of distinguished European Societies."[378] One can not but sympathize with the poor abused Rocky Mountains, tormented and misrepresented for a thousand miles by this French geologist. But our American patriotism may be partially pacified when we find that Europe fares no better; and that Great Britain, and Old Scotland, Hugh Miller's own cradle, which has been the very lecture room of geologists, has nevertheless been most grossly misrepresented in all books and maps, up till the last decade. The _Edinburgh Review_, a competent authority, says (No. cxxvii.): "The new light which has been thus thrown on the history of the geological series of Scotland (by Sir Roderick Murchison), showing that great masses of crystalline rocks, called primary, and supposed to be much more ancient than the Silurian system, are here simply metamorphosed strata of that age, may with justice be looked upon as one of the most valuable results which have been attained by British geologists for many years." A very just remark indeed! If only geologists would learn a little modesty from this discovery, which completely turns upside down their old world-building process of grinding down all the upper strata out of the molten granite, and gives us, instead, the baking of the strata into crystalline rocks; a process exactly the reverse of the former, and of that asserted by the theory of evolution. There is no prospect of any cessation of the war of geological theories. 4. _Zoology._ Equally hostile to each other are the expounders of the development of man from the monkey. As Ishmaelites their hand is against every man. Each is a law in theorizing unto himself. Their contendings may well teach us caution. Lamarck set those right who preceded him. The author of the _Vestiges of Creation_ outstripped Lamarck, and Mr. Darwin sets both aside; while he in his turn is severely censured by M. Tremaux, and has all his reasoning controverted in favor of the new theory. Lamarck believed in spontaneous generation; Darwin does not. The author of the _Vestiges of Creation_ expounded a law of development, and Mr. Darwin replaces it by Natural Selection. M. Tremaux has repudiated the origin which Mr. Darwin has assumed, and insists on our believing that, not water, but the _soil_, is the origin of all life, and therefore of man. With him there is no progress; all creatures have reached their resting place. But man rises or sinks, according to the more ancient or recent soil he dwells upon. Professor Huxley is unwilling to abandon his idea that life may come from dead matter, and is not disposed to accept of Mr. Darwin's explanation of the origin of life by the Creator having, at first, breathed it into one or more forms. While accepting of Mr. Darwin's theory of a common descent for man with all other creatures, he not only differs from him as to the beginning, but he admits that there is no gradual transition from the one to the other. He acknowledges that the structural differences between man and even the highest apes are great and significant; and yet because there is no sign of gradual transition between the gorilla, and the orang, and the gibbon, he infers that they all had a common origin; whereas the more natural conclusion from the facts would be that they had separate beginnings. Mr. Wallace, whose claims are admitted to be equal to these of Mr. Darwin, as the propounder of the theory of the origin of species by Natural Selection, has firmly asserted that, with all its resources, Natural Selection is utterly inadequate to account for the origin and structure of the human race.[379] Thus they go, biting and devouring each other, until at last it becomes a reproduction of the Kilkenny cats, and there is nothing left but the tails. We have only to wait, and the current Infidel theory will certainly be exposed and demolished next year, by the author of some equally impossible theory. Not merely individual scientists, but the most learned societies have blundered. "Has not the French Academy pronounced against the use of quinine and vaccination, against lightning rods and steam engines? Has not Reaumer suppressed Peysonnel's 'Essay on Corals,' because he thought it was madness to maintain their animal nature? Had not his learned brethren decreed, in 1802, that there were no meteors, although a short time later two thousand fell in one department alone; and had they not more recently still received the news of ether being useful as an anæsthetic with sure and unanimous condemnation?"[380] If space permitted we could go over the circle of the sciences, and show that a similar state of uncertainty and exposure to error exists in them all. We have, however, confined our attention to those whose certainty is now most loudly vaunted, and whose theories are most largely used as the basis of Infidelity. Nor have we by any means exhausted the list of errors and contradictions of these. A volume as large as this would be required to present the list of several hundred errors, absurdities, contradictions, and mutual refutations of scientists, in the physical sciences, now before me; errors not sought after, but incidentally observed and noted in the spare hours' reading of a busy professional life. It is worthy of notice, that the uncertainties of science increase just in proportion to our interest in it. It is very uncertain about all my dearest concerns, and very positive about what does not concern me. The greatest certainty is attainable in pure mathematics, which regards only ideal quantities and figures; but biology--the science of life--is utterly obscure. The astronomer can calculate with considerable accuracy the movements of distant planets, with which we have no intercourse; but where is the meteorologist bold enough to predict the wind and weather of next week, on which my crops, my ships, my life may depend? Heat, light, and electricity may be pretty accurately measured and registered, but what physician can measure the strength of the malignant virus which is sapping the life of his patient? The chemist can thoroughly analyze any foreign substance, but the disease of his own body which is bringing him to the grave, he can neither weigh, measure nor remove. Science is very positive about distant stars and remote ages, but stammers and hesitates about the very life of its professors. 4. Such, then, are a few of the uncertainties, imperfections, and positive and egregious errors of science at its fountain head. To the actual investigator infallible certainty of any scientific fact is hardly possible, error exceedingly probable, and gross blunders in fact and theory by no means uncommon. But how greatly diluted must the modified and hesitating conviction possible to an actual observer become, when, as is generally the case, a man is not an actual observer himself, but _learns his science at school_. Such a person leaves the ground of demonstrative science, and stands upon faith. The first question then to be proposed to one whose demonstrative certainty of the truths of physical science has disgusted him with a religion received on testimony and faith, is, How have you reached this demonstrative certainty in matters of science? Are you quite sure that your certainty rests not upon the testimony of fallible and erring philosophers, but solely upon your own personal observations and experiments? To take only the initial standard of astronomical measurements--the earth's distance from the sun. Have you personally measured the earth's radius, observed the transit of Venus in 1769, from Lapland to Tahiti at the same time, calculated the sun's parallax, and the eccentricity of the earth's orbit? Would you profess yourself competent to take even the preliminary observation for fixing the instruments for such a reckoning? Were you ever within a thousand miles of the proper positions for making such observations? Or have you been necessitated to accept this primary measure, upon the accuracy of which all subsequent astronomical measurers depend, merely upon hearsay and testimony, and subject to all those contingencies of error and prejudice, and mistakes of copyists, which, in your opinion, render the Bible so unreliable in matters of religion? Or to come down to earth. You are a student of the stone book, with its enduring records graven in the rock forever; and perhaps have satisfied yourself that "under the ponderous strata of geological science the traditionary mythology and cosmogony of the Hebrew poet has found an everlasting tomb." But how many volumes of this stone book have you perused personally? You are quite indignant perhaps that theologians and divines, who have no practical or personal knowledge of geology, should presume to investigate its claims. Have you personally visited the various localities in South America, Siberia, Australia, India, Britain, Italy, and the South Seas, where the various formations are exhibited; and have you personally excavated from their matrices the various fossils which form the hieroglyphics of the science? Have you, in fact, ever seen one in a thousand of these minerals and fossils _in situ_? Or are you dependent on the tales of travelers, the specimens of collectors, the veracity of authors, the accuracy of lecturers, aided by maps of ideal stratifications, in rose-pink, brimstone-yellow, and indigo-blue, for your profound and glowing convictions of the irresistible force of experimental science, and of the shadowy vagueness of a religion dependent upon human testimony? To come down considerably in our demands, and confine ourselves to the narrow limits of the laboratory. You are a chemist perhaps, and proud, as most chemists justly are, of the accuracy attainable in that most palpable and demonstrative science. But how much of it is experimental science _to you_? How many of the nine hundred and forty-two substances treated of in Turner's Chemistry have you analyzed? One-half? One-tenth? Would you face the laughter of a college class to-morrow upon the experiment of taking nine out of the nine hundred, reducing them to their primitive elements, giving an accurate analysis of their component parts, and combining them in the various forms described in that, or any other book, whose statements, because experimentally certain, have filled you with a dislike of Bible truths, which you must receive upon testimony? In fact, do you know anything worth mention of the facts of science upon your own knowledge, except those of the profession by which you make your living? Or, after all your boasting about scientific and demonstrative certainty, have you been obliged to receive the certainties of science "upon faith, and at second-hand, and upon the word of another;" and to save your life you could not tell half the time who that other is, by naming the discoverers of half the scientific truths you believe? What! are you dependent on hearsay, and probability, for any little science you possess, having in fact never obtained any personal demonstration or experience of its first principles and measurements, nor being capable of doing so? Then let us hear no more cant about the uncertainty of a religion dependent upon testimony, and the certainties of experimental science. Whatever certainty may be attainable by scientific men--and we have seen that is not much--it is very certain you have got none of it. The very best you can have to wrap yourself in is a second-hand assurance, grievously torn by rival schools, and needing to be patched every month by later discoveries. Your science, such as it is, _rests solely upon faith_ in the testimony of philosophers, often contradictory and improbable, and always fallible and uncertain. 5. Nor would you cease to be dependent upon faith could you personally make all the observations and calculations of demonstrative science. The knowledge of these facts does not constitute science; it is merely the brick pile containing the materials for the building of science. Science is knowledge systematized. But if the parts of nature were not arranged after a plan, the knowledge of them could not be formed into a system. Chaos is unintelligible. Our minds are so constituted that we look for order and regularity, and can not comprehend confusion. We possess this expectation of order before we begin to learn science, and without it would never begin the search after a system of knowledge. All scientific experiment is but a search after order, and order is only another name for intelligence--for God. Deprive us of this fundamental faith in cause and effect, order and regularity--of reason, in short--and science becomes as impossible to man as to the orang-outang. _All science, even in its first principles, rests upon faith._ Not only science, reason, also, is founded upon faith; for we can not prove by reason the truths which form the data of reasoning. The intuitions of the mind, which form the postulates necessary to the first process of reasoning, are believed, not proven. When the wise fool attempted to prove his own existence by the celebrated sophism, "I think, therefore I exist," he necessarily postulated his existence in order to prove it. How did he know that there was an "I" to think? And how did he know that the "I" thought? Certainly not by any process of reasoning, but by faith. He believed these truths; but could never reason them into his consciousness. Faith, then, underlies reason itself. We may now proceed to inquire whether or not faith, which we have found so prevalent even among those who repudiate it, is a thing to be ashamed of; or if it be a sufficiently certain and reliable basis for human life and conduct. 1. We are met at the very outset by the great fact that God has so constituted the world and everything in it, that _in all the great concerns of life we are necessitated to depend on faith_; without any possibility of reaching absolute certainty regarding the result of any ordinary duty. We sow without any certainty of a crop, or that we may live to reap it. We harvest, but our barns may be burned down. We sell our property for bank-bills, but who dare say they will ever be paid in specie? We start on a journey to a distant city, but even though you insure your life, who will insure that fire, or flood, or railroad collision may not send you to the land whence there is no return? Science is the child of yesterday; but from the beginning of the world men have lived by faith. Before science was born, Cain tilled his ground without any mathematical demonstration that he should reap a crop. Abel fed his flock without any scientific certainty that he should live to enjoy its produce; and Tubal Cain forged axes and swords without any assurance that he should not be plundered of his wages. All the experience of mankind proves that experimental certainty regarding the most important business of this life is impossible. By what process of philosophical induction is religion alone put beyond the sphere of faith and hope? If religious duties are not binding on us, unless religion be scientifically demonstrated, then neither are moral obligations; for these two can not be separated. Is it really so, that none but scientific men are bound to tell the truth, and pay their debts; and that a person may not fear God, and go to heaven, unless he has graduated at college? The common sense of mankind declares that we live by faith, not by science. 2. _We demand the knowledge of truths of which science is profoundly ignorant._ Science is but an outlying nook of my farm, which I may neglect and yet have bread to eat. Faith is my house in which all my dearest interests are treasured. Of all the great problems and precious interests which belong to me as a mortal and an immortal, science knows nothing. I ask her whence I came? and she points to her pinions scorched over the abyss of primeval fire, her eyes blinded by its awful glare, and remains silent. I inquire what I am? but the strange and questioning _I_ is a mystery which she can neither analyze nor measure. I tell her of the voice of conscience within me--she never heard it, and does not pretend to understand its oracles. I tell her of my anxieties about the future--she is learned only in the past. I inquire how I may be happy hereafter--but happiness is not a scientific term, and she can not tell me how to be happy here! Poor, blind science! 3. _All our dearest interests lie beyond the domains of science, in the regions of faith._ Science treats of things--faith is confidence in persons. Take away the persons, and of what value are the things? The world becomes at once a vast desert, a dreary solitude, and more miserable than any of its former inhabitants the lonely wretch who is left to mourn over the graves of all his former companions--the last man. Solitary science were awful. Could I prosecute the toils of study alone, without companion or friend to share my labors? Would I study eternally with no object, and for no use; none to be benefited, none to be gratified by my discoveries? Though you hung maps on every tree, made every mountain range a museum, bored mines in every valley, and covered every plain with specimens, made Vesuvius my crucible, and opened the foundations of the earth to my view--yet would the discovery of a single fresh human footprint in the sand fill my heart with more true hope of happiness, than an endless eternity of solitary science. I can live, and love, and be happy without science, _but not without companionship, whose bond is faith_. Faith is the condition of all the happiness you can know on earth. Law, order, government, civilization, and family life, depend not upon science, but upon confidence in moral character--upon faith. In its sunshine alone can happiness grow. It is faith sends you out in the morning to your work, nerves your arms through the toils of the day, brings you home in the evening, gathers your wife and your children around your table, inspires the oft-repeated efforts of the little prattler to ascend your knee, clasps his chubby arms around your neck, looks with most confiding innocence in your eye, and puts forth his little hand to catch your bread, and share your cup. Undoubting faith is happiness even here below. Need you marvel, then, that you must be converted from your pride of empty, barren science, and casting yourself with all your powers into the arms of faith, become as a little child before you can enter into the kingdom of heaven? 4. But religion is not founded upon faith as distinct from observation and experiment. _It is the most experimental of all the sciences._ There is less of theory, and more of experience in it than in any other science. Its faith is all practical. It is a great mistake to suppose that faith is the opposite pole of experience. On the contrary, experience is the fruit which ripens from the blossom of faith. We have seen how an underlying conviction of the existence of an intelligent planner and upholder of the laws of nature is the source of all scientific experiment, and systematized knowledge. A similar underlying conviction of the existence of a moral governor of the world is the source of all religious experience. _He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of those that diligently seek him._ But this fundamental axiom believed, long trains of experience follow; of every one of which you can be, and actually are, infinitely more certain than of any fact of physical science. Your eyes, your ears, your touch, your instruments, your reason, may be deceived; but your consciousness can not. If your soul is filled with joy, that is a _fact_. You know it, and are as sure of it as you are that the sun shines. If you feel miserable, you are so. A sense of neglected duty, a consciousness that you have done wrong, and are displeased with yourself for it; a certainty that God is displeased with you for wrong-doing, and that he will show his displeasure by suitable punishment; the tenacious grasp of vicious habits on your body and soul, and the fearful thought that by the law of your nature these vipers, which you vainly struggle to shake off, will forever keep involving you more closely in their cursed coils--these are _facts of your experience_. You are as certain that they give you disquiet of mind, when you entertain them, as that the sea rages in a tempest; and that you can no more prevent their entrance, nor compel their departure, nor calm nor drown the anxiety they occasion, than you can prevent the rising of the tempest, dismiss the thunder-storm, or drown Etna in your wine-glass. Of these primary facts of moral science, and of others like them, you possess the most absolute and infallible certainty from your own consciousness. They result from the inertia of moral matter, which, when put into a state of disturbance, has no power of bringing itself to rest; as expressed in the formula, _There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked._[381] Let us now go out of your own experience, as you must do in every other science, into the region of observation, and study a few of the other phenomena of religion. Your comrade, Jones, has taken to drinking of late, and also to going with you to Sunday lectures, and in the evening to other places of amusement. He has, however, been warned that the next time he comes drunk to the workshop he will be discharged; and as he is a clever young fellow, and knows more about the Bible than you, having gone to Sabbath-school when a boy, and is able to use up the saints cleverly, you would be sorry to lose his company. So you set on him to go with you to hear a temperance lecture, hoping that he may be induced to take the pledge; for if he does not you fear he will soon lie in the gutter. He curses you, and himself too, if ever he listens to any such stuff; and refuses to go. You can easily gather a hundred other illustrations of the great law of the moral repulsion between vice and truth, expressed in the following formula: "_This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved._"[382] Your life, however, is but a long illustration of this principle. Have you not willingly remained in ignorance of the contents of the Bible, because you dislike its commands? There is another fact of the same science--there, in the gutter before you, wallowing in his own vomit, covered with rags, besmeared with mud, smelling worse than a hog, his bruised and bleeding mouth unable to articulate the obscenities and curses he tries to utter. "Is it possible that can be Bill Brown! Why, only three years ago we worked at the same bench. It was he who introduced me to the Sunday Institute; as clever a workman and as jovial a comrade as I ever knew, but would get on a spree now and again. He had a good father and mother, got considerable schooling, had good wages, got married to a clever girl, and had two fine children. Is it possible he could make such a beast of himself in such a short time?" Yes, quite possible, and more, quite certain. Not only in his case, but in all others, the law of moral gravitation is universal and infallible. "_Evil men and seducers wax worse and worse._"[383] The degradation may not always be in this precise form, nor always as speedy; as all heavy bodies do not fall to the same place, nor with like rapidity. But it is always as certain and always as deep, and will one day be far more public. Fix it firmly in your mind. It concerns you more than all the science you will ever know. You, too, are in the course of sin, and you know it. You have already begun to fall. Come again into this room. "What, into a prayer-meeting? I don't go to such places." But, if you want to study the phenomena of religion scientifically, you should go to such places; just as if you want to study geology, you should go to the places where the strata are exposed to view. I do not ask you to speak, and to ask people to pray for you, but only to look on and listen. If you are a philosopher I wish you to cease dogmatizing about fanaticism, and enthusiasm, and the ignorance, and credulity of believers, at least until you philosophically examine the evidence upon which they believe. You can set aside, if you please, their unfounded beliefs concerning matters beyond their capacity, and also their confident hopes for futurity. What I wish you to examine is their _actual experience of religion_, as they severally relate it. For as we have seen, the facts of consciousness are just as certain, and as ascertainable, as the facts discovered by our senses; and there is no reason in the world why we should not pursue the study of religion in the same way that we gain a knowledge of science; namely, by collecting and studying the facts accumulated by those who have made experiments, and have obtained a practical knowledge of the matter. There are here, as you see, a great number of religious experimenters. They are also of very various conditions of life, and of various degrees of education. Many of them are moreover well known to you, so that you are in a favorable position for forming a fair judgment of their discoveries. There is your comrade Smith, Hopkins who does the hauling for your establishment, Lawyer Hammond, Professor Edwards, whose chemical lectures you attend, Dr. Lawrence, who lectured before the Lyceum last winter, Mr. Heidenberger, who wrote a series of articles on Comte's Positive Philosophy for the Investigator, Mrs. Bridgman, your Aunt Polly, who nursed you during your typhoid fever, and a great many others whom you know quite well. Professor Edwards leads in prayer, and gives a brief address. You never dreamt that he was hoaxing you when he told you of his chemical experience; have you any reason to offer for believing that he now solemnly, and in the presence of God, lies to you and to this assembly, when he tells you of the peace he has found in believing in Christ, and the happiness he experiences in uniting with his brethren in the worship of God? Or is he more liable to error in noting the fact of his mental joy or sorrow, than in observing the effect of the extraordinary ray in double refraction? If not, the fact that he has felt this religious experience, is just as certain as the fact, that he has seen polarized light. There is your comrade Smith, whom you have known for years, actually got up to speak in meeting. You are surprised; but listen: "Neighbors and friends, most of you know I never cared much about religion, and was often given to take more liquor than was good for me, and then I would fight and curse awful bad. I knew as well as anybody that it wasn't right, and always felt bad after a spree, and many a time I said I would turn over a new leaf, and be good. But it was all no use, for as soon as any of the fellows would come around after me, I always went along with them, till at last I gave it up and said it was no use to try. Still, whenever any of my acquaintances died, I felt scared like; and I kept away as far as I could from churches and preachers and such like, because I could not bear to think about God and judgment to come. Well, about five weeks ago my little Minnie set on me one Sabbath morning to carry her to church, and to please the little creature--for she is as pert a darling as you could see anywhere--I told my wife to get her ready, and we would go. She seemed as if she would cry, and kept talking to herself all the way. When we got into the church the singing almost upset me, for I had not been to a church since I was a little fellow, just before father and mother died. But it seemed as if it was the same tune, and as if the tune brought them all back, and as if I saw them again and all the family, and heard mother sing as she used to, and I forgot church and everything, and thought I was a little fellow playing about on the floor just as I used to do when I was a happy child. When they stopped I was so sorry, and wished I could just be as innocent and as happy as I was then. Well, it seemed like the preacher had been reading my thoughts, for he gave out for his text, '_Verily, verily, I say unto you, unless a man be born again he can not see the kingdom of God._' He began to preach how Jesus can give us new hearts, and save us from our sins; that his blood cleanses from all sin; that he is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God through him. The tears came into my eyes, and I could hardly keep my mouth shut till I got out. When I got home I knelt down, and cried to Jesus to save me from my sins; and my wife prayed too, and we cried for mercy. The Lord heard us, and I felt light and happy, and I went to church again, and sung with the rest. And the best of it is, the Lord delivered me from the drink; as I told a man who asked where I was going to-day, and I told him I was going to prayer-meeting, for I had got religion now. He said there were a great many religions, and most of them wrong, and a great many people said all religion was only a notion, and preaching only nonsense. I says to him, 'Look here, stranger, do you see that tavern there?' 'Yes,' says he. 'Well,' says I, 'do you see me?' 'I do, of course,' says he. 'Well,' says I, 'every little fellow in these parts knows that so long as Tom Smith had a quarter in his pocket he could never pass that tavern without having a drink. All the men in Jefferson could not stop him. Now look here,' says I, 'there is my week's wages, and I can go past, and thank God I don't feel the least like drinking, for the Lord Jesus has saved me from it. If you call that a notion, it is a mighty powerful notion, and it is a notion that has put clothes on my children's backs, and plenty of good food on my table, and songs of praise to the Lord in my mouth. _That's a fact, stranger._ Glory be to God for it. And I would recommend you to come to prayer-meeting with me, and maybe you would get religion too. A great many people are getting religion now.'" His last remark is certainly very true. There are so many, and of such various characters and grades of life, and in so many places, that every reader can easily find several Tom Smiths of his own acquaintance, whose conversions display all the essential facts of this case, and prove that: 5. The facts of religious experience _are better attested, and more unobjectionable_ than those of any other science. Unless they can be shown to be unreasonable or impossible, we are bound to receive them, when presented by the experimentists who have discovered them, though personally we may not have any such experience; just as we believe the chemists, or the astronomers who relate their discoveries which personally we have not observed. But the facts of religion are _by no means unreasonable_. They can not be shown to contradict any known law of the human mind. It is true they are mysterious. But so are the facts of physical science--heat, light, electricity, gravitation. Of either, we may be quite certain that such phenomena exist, and utterly ignorant of the mode of their operation. It were as utterly unphilosophical to deny that Almighty God could impart nervous energy to the languid limbs of your sick neighbor, because you are ignorant of its origin and means of transmission, as to deny that God could impart spiritual electricity to his paralyzed soul, because you are ignorant of the mode in which he bestows it. And ignorance is all that you can plead in this case. You must just admit that having tried an experiment which you have not, your religious friend has a right to know more than you. Moreover, the facts of religion are presented for belief upon _the most abundant and reliable testimony_. In physical science you must rely on the testimony of a very few observers--the great bulk even of scientific men having no opportunity of testing the facts themselves, and being well satisfied if any fact is confirmed by the testimony of two or three philosophers--and this testimony often contradictory, and always fallible, as the discordant results of their experiments prove. But here you have a great multitude of experimentists, in every city and village of the land, of every variety of intellect and education, prosecuting the same course of experiments, and all arriving at the same results. They do not all confess the _same_ sins, but they all felt the power of _some_ sin, and felt miserable in their guilt. And however they may differ in their external circumstances, their inward constitution, or in their views of the outward part of religion, there is no difference among them about the great facts of their religious experience. They all believed the faithful saying that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, cried to God for mercy through him, and received peace of mind, grace to live a new life, and to delight in the worship of God. Do you know any science which has been prosecuted by one-hundredth part of this number of inquirers? Which has been confirmed by one-thousandth part of this number of experimenters? Or any experiment tried with such uniform and unfailing success as this, "_Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved?_"[384] Why then do you hesitate to admit the correctness of these facts? Is it because you perceive they lead to results which you dislike? They do lead to results. They are effects and tell us of a cause. They are powerful effects, and proclaim a powerful cause. They are moral and spiritual effects, and assure us of the existence of a moral and spiritual agent who has caused them. They are holy effects, and convince your sinful soul that they are produced by a holy being. But they are also benevolent, life-giving, blessed effects, and proclaim that God is love. The Lord, the Spirit, is as plainly declared in the facts of religious experience, as the Creator is in the creation of the universe; and it were as rank Atheism to attribute these orderly and blessed results to chance or to evil passions, as to attribute the Cosmos to blind fate, or to the beasts that perish. He is as much an enemy to his happiness who denies the one, as a foe to his reason who rejects the other. Dear reader, why should you not believe in, 6. _The only science which can make you happy?_ which can bestow peace of mind, nerve you to conquer your evil habits, enable you to live a holy and happy life, and to die with a blessed hope of a glorious resurrection? You know there is no science which makes any such offers, or which you would believe if it did. But the Bible unfolds a science which does, and enables you to believe it too. The facts of religious experience give most convincing evidence of the reality and power of the grace of God. It were as easy to persuade a Christian that he had produced this change of heart and life by the excitement of his own feelings, as that he had kindled the sun with a lucifer match. And the character of the work and the worker assures him that it will not be left unfinished. His faith receives these facts of religious experience as the first installments upon God's bonds, and as pledges for the payment of the remainder of his promises. The joy and peace which God gives him now, prove most satisfactorily his ability and willingness to give him larger measures of these enjoyments when he is capable of receiving them. Just as we have good reason to believe that he who has made the sun to rise out of darkness will guide him onward in his course to perfect day, have we also good reason to believe that he that hath begun the good work of his grace in us will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Christ is in us the hope of glory. This eternal life, which is begun in our souls, is so much superior to mere animal vitality, that we can not doubt that he who has given us the greater, will also give us the lesser, and quicken our mortal bodies also, by his Spirit which dwelleth in us. We know that our Redeemer liveth. 7. And now, in conclusion, dear reader, we ask you not to take these things on our testimony, nor yet on our experience; _but to try for yourself_. Oh taste and see that the Lord is good. Come see the Savior who has saved us, and be saved by him too. There is nothing more dangerous, unless resisting the evidence of the truth as it is in Jesus, than acknowledging this to be truth without immediately obeying the gospel. God requires your immediate and cordial acceptance of Christ to save you from your sins. He tells you that the only way of escape from your sins now and from hell hereafter is through him; for there is none other name given under heaven or among men whereby you must be saved. He promises to hear your prayer and give you his Holy Spirit to work in you the work of faith with power, if you will only and earnestly ask. "_Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: What man is there of you whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?_"[385] Thus you will come to possess an actual experimental knowledge of the most excellent of the sciences. In the present begun enjoyment of eternal life you will, not merely believe in, but positively _know_, its Author, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent. You will rest in no fallible and erring testimony of man's wisdom, but your faith will stand in the power of God. You will be able to say, "_Now we believe not because of thy sayings: for we have heard him ourselves, and_ KNOW _that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the World._"[386] Hear God's own warrant and invitation to your poor, thirsty soul, to forsake your vanities and come and be eternally blessed in Christ. Have the witness in yourself and be a living proof of the blessed reality of religion. "Ho every one that thirsteth! Come ye to the waters! And he who hath no money! Come ye, buy and eat! Yea, come! Buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? And your labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me and eat ye that which is good, And let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear and come unto me: Hear and your soul shall live: And I will make an everlasting covenant with you, Even the sure mercies of David. Behold! I have given him for a witness to the people, A leader and a commander to the people: Behold! thou shall call nations that thou knowest not, And nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee, Because of the Lord thy God, And for the Holy One of Israel, for he hath glorified thee. "Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, Call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, And to our God for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are my ways higher than your ways, And my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, And return not thither again, But water the earth, and cause it to bring forth and bud, That it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater; So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: It shall not return unto me void, But it shall accomplish that which I please, And it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace. The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, And all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, And instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: _And it shall be to the Lord for a name, For an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off._" FOOTNOTES: [322] Holyoak's Discussion with Grant and Tonney. [323] Bacon Novum Organum, I. xlix. xlvi. [324] Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures, I. 53. [325] Journal of Speculative Philosophy, I. 20. [326] Humboldt, _Cosmos_, Vol. I. p. 7, 156. [327] Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, 356. [328] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1852. [329] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1852. [330] _Cosmos_, 4, 518. Dick's _Celestial Scenery_, chap. III. Sec. 7. [331] _Cosmos_, 1, 75. Loomis' _Progress of Astronomy_, pp. 34, 40 [332] Loomis' _Progress of Astronomy_, p. 34, etc. [333] _Outlines of Astronomy_, III. Sec. 13, 140. [334] Thus several of the best telescopes in the world are rendered nearly useless by the passage of heavy railroad trains in their vicinity. [335] Somerville's Physical Sciences, VI. [336] Cosmos IV. 477. Phillips' Address to the British Association, 1865. [337] North British Review, LXV. [338] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1864, 158. [339] Cosmos I. 109. [340] Cosmos IV. 501. [341] Cosmos IV. 378. [342] Harper's Magazine, June, 1872, p. 149. [343] Annual Scientific Discovery, 1864, 134. [344] Cosmos III. 40; IV. 363. Annual, 1861, 395, 396. [345] Cosmos IV. 474. [346] Kendall's Uranography, p. 11. [347] Cosmos, 443-5. [348] North British Review, No. LXV. [349] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1852, 119. [350] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1854, 150. [351] Cosmos III. 115. [352] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1860. [353] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1852, 139. [354] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1864, 166. [355] Plurality of Worlds, XII. [356] North British Review, LXV. [357] God's Glory in the Heavens, 168. [358] Annual Scientific Discovery, 1863, 324. [359] Cosmos IV. 378. [360] See this proved chapter XI., _Daylight Before Sunrise_. [361] See the possibility of such a source of volcanic action, of such a formation of plutonic rocks, proved by Lyell. _Principles_, chaps. XXXII. and XII. [362] Sir David Brewster, K. H., D. C. L., F. R. S., _More Worlds than One_, p. 56. [363] _Rudiments of Geology_, W. & R. Chambers, p. 10. [364] Lyell's _Principles of Geology_, p. 3. [365] Miller, _Old Red Sandstone_, p. 25. [366] Hugh Miller, _Footprints of the Creator_, p. 313. [367] American Cyclopædia, 1863, p. 374. Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1861, p. 351. [368] London Quarterly Review, 1866, No. 51, p. 240. [369] Lyell's Second Visit to the United States. [370] _The Advance_, Chicago, May 28, 1868. [371] Geological Time. [372] _Principles_, Chaps. III. and IV. [373] _Principles_, chap. XI. [374] _Principles_, p. 530. [375] _Principles_, chap. XXXI. [376] Chambers' Cyclopædia Art. Appalachians. [377] Types of Mankind, 329, 335, 338. [378] The American Journal of Science and Art, edited by Profs. Silliman and Dana, XXVI. 235, 300. [379] Frazer--Blending Lights, p. 113. [380] De Vore's _Modern Magic_, 58. [381] Isaiah, chap. xlviii. 22. [382] John, chap. iii. [383] 2 Timothy, chap. iii. Read the whole chapter. [384] Romans, chap. x. Read the chapter. [385] The Sermon on the Mount. Read it all. [386] John, chap. iv. [THE END.] Transcriber's Notes: Missing punctuation, including periods, hyphens, and commas, has been added. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Variations in spelling have been left as in the original in the following words: coveredst coverest orang-otang orang-outang water-skin waterskin The following words use an oe ligature in the original: foetus Phoenician Phoebus Phoenicians Phoenicia The spelling of the last name of Scottish astronomer John Pringle Nichol has been corrected throughout the text. The spelling of the last name of French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck has been corrected throughout the text. The spelling of the last name of French physicist Claude-Servais-Mathias Pouillet has been corrected throughout the text. The spelling of the last name of Hellenistic astrologer Vettius Valens has been corrected throughout the text. The spelling of the last name of French mathematician Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier has been corrected throughout the text. A series of three asterisks * * * represents an ellipsis in the text. Shorter and longer rows of asterisks have been standardized to three asterisks. The carat ^ character indicates that the following numbers (enclosed in {} brackets) are superscripted in the original. The mathematical formula 4+3/2 is rendered 4 + 1-1/2 in the original. Footnote 15 reads "Origin of Species, 4, 10, 127, 9, 97, 100, 409, 410, 415, 423. Descent of Man, 192, 204, and II.--15, 257." The page number "9" is probably a typographical error, but it has been left as in the original.